Imam Zaid Shakir discusses Islamâs stance on the LGBTQ issue and limits as Muslims, and in regards to the LGBTQ community. How, Muslim youth should interact with the LGBTQ community, including when their own Muslim friends identify as LGBTQ. He also explains how youth can be ambassadors of Islam while still respecting other communities.
Zaid Shakir – LGBTQ and Islam – Our Approach
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The speakers discuss the challenges faced by individuals who don't have the wherewithal to pursue their passions and the importance of humility in protecting laws of their religion. They also touch on the theory that a person and God create the same sex attraction and that sex attraction is a result of a love for one's lust. The host discusses the challenges faced by individuals achieving spiritual income and the importance of humility in shaping behavior.
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I saw
a shoe
shed a few tears.
I'm gonna read the write up that I got
to kind of
explain the approach to the write up with us, which I'm sure many of you have read, expand on this lambs deaths on the LGBT issue
over our limits as Muslims in regards to the LGBT community, address house interaction interact with the LGBT community, including when their own friends identify as LGBTQ. So
it is confusing.
This is a this is a very serious topic. But this is a mini session. This is not this no nor.
And so I think we should try to
deal with those issues as they've been framed in a way that will be palatable to someone who is
aged in
North America.
So I like to just start by mentioning something Roman for those of us who are Muslim, and I'm not assuming every single individual in this room is Muslim. And I'm also assuming I am assuming that some people might identify themselves as part of the LGBTQ community.
So what I'd like to start with is the idea of Muslims as Muslims who talk clearly even though we're
not falafel gin, in
the room, that I've only created the gin and the humans that they worship me.
And we can translate that and they serve me, because his servant, even in some context, might be translate as a slave. But servant is a better word, in the context of worship. So we are to be servants.
And the I think the most critical component of servitude is humility. And, in fact, these two ideas of brought together lost a ton of autonomy, and a mom inches or a bed around them led into him should it be
that the servants of the All Merciful Allah subhanho wa Taala, Almighty God are those who walk humbly upon the earth.
And so, the spirit of worship
must involve humility, it must involve ourselves before I will move on trusting in divine guidance, trusting that our Creator who created us,
we did not create it ourselves this auditorium did not create ourselves itself rather recently, I saw a debate online
where the person was arguing for the existence of God
there is
this held up is held
cell phone and said can you conceive of this long creating itself
and obviously, the person first tried to skirt around it because in the context of the argument, an argument not
screaming argument the effort to prove a certain point,
premises and
extrapolating from those premises certain conclusions understood once they acknowledge the phone can create itself they will travel
in any case and then he went on to say okay, you have to acknowledge that you can't say this is the component in plastic bits of metal Charles, not even metal or
that was the unrefined metal in the ground, in the dirt. It just refined itself process itself into wires and the silicon that was brought from the Congo or wherever just made itself into a chip that had the capability of storing information on it that can then be retrieved.
Impossible. So is the universe more complex?
This
is a human being more complex than the cell, this cell phone has a camera.
Right?
is a camera.
The memory in this in this camera has a limit.
The memory of this camera has no limit
the the
distance that this camera can record
hasn't been
this is far far can see things that distinguish things at a far greater range.
And we get frustrated with a beautiful way over there trying to get in and we look at it. And I can't post that on Facebook.
So what was more complex,
you know, this, this camera when this phone goes kaput, in 2.7 years, planned obsolescence. So whatever iPhone This is, you get the new one. Because this one goes kaput, that cameras.
This camera can last 100 years, never changing the film never needing a new memory chip ever exhausting. It's
in any case,
we have a creator, just as his phone has a creator. And just as the maker of this phone has given us an instruction manual as to how best and most productively in operating this phone. the maker of humanity has given us an instruction manual as to how best to function as human most productively function as human beings. And so it comes down in many instances, good we trust the manual that the maker has given us through prophets, scripture that has been sent for our guidance, or do we trust ourselves? Or do we trust people totally unequivocably reject not only the instruction manual reject the existence of a creator altogether?
So when we commit ourselves to worshiping our Lord was saying, I trust my Lord. And I Oh my God, my judgment before the judgment on my Lord. That's really the essence of worship.
Now saying that
worship challenges us. And Joseph, does this challenge us in ways that say classical understanding
might challenge someone who is a member of the LGBTQ community, and also trying to reconcile that with being a Muslim.
It challenges people heterosexual.
So a person who doesn't have the wherewithal to get married, heterosexual
cannot personally just a lie, no, forget it. I don't have a job.
I will accomplish right now.
Sleep under a bridge. That is cool. That's good friends. Actually, some of them are really sharp. You have interesting conversations.
But
I met this beautiful woman, this event.
And I got I have to have her you know, I know Islam says A, B, C and D. But
you know,
so that person is challenged. That person cannot act on their desires. That person cannot fulfill their passions, because they don't have the wherewithal. And so
every
teaching in the religion would say that person is forbidden for that person to get that is forbidden for that person to have relations with that woman
or that man to have relations with that woman, that person is challenged. Some people might be challenged. They might have a propensity,
perhaps better described as a proclivity for kleptomania
when they go into a store and they see something
They really want the finger start itching, and the next notes craning.
And then it's a problem. That's when we have a Word Clock kleptomania.
They love stealing things,
especially things that they find very attractive, or potentially beneficial, can they take it, they can take it challenged.
They're challenged in terms of their nature. And they might argue, me the statement. And indeed that's the case. That's true. And so to go back to the topic here, there might be a same * attraction. And of course, I know that doesn't cover the full spectrum of LGBTQ
we'll just use that as the most prominent
category, there might be a same * attraction and the person and God created in the person
just as there might be an overwhelming heterosexual.
And, of course,
God created that, or there might be,
he chose kleptomania. And God created that.
Or there might be a propensity towards a lot of things.
There might be a person who says, and this theory is debatable, this is all what I mentioned so far.
Present present evidence.
Last fall on the last one, but just to move on.
God, Almighty, Allah subhanho wa Taala says, We in and in Russia, when we say what were the
poverty.
When an army was there, they came a terror
wall, and
that it's been been
a warning to people.
This is the passive voice, it's been placed in people, the love of their loss, not just the loss of the love, was shut out.
Shadow for women, for men, for women, for children, for money,
for aimed up treasures of gold and silver, branded steed, and cattle, cattle, cultivated fields, all of this the worth of his worldly life and along with the law is the greatest return
the greatest source of repose. And so a lot of time is telling us there are lusts that have been the
appealing to us.
And it tells them very powerful germs
and nasty, so is beyond our control. It has been made that we haven't done it ourselves, say in the National
Zoo, you know, this
is very
luring to people who love their lust, not just their loss, but love of their lives.
So many actors,
for go for
the test for person because red is in the realm of the topic. Rather it's in the realm of other realms who people have very powerful urges and tribes is Who do we love?
we love ourselves we love our lust
or do we love Allah subhanho wa Taala
That's the question. Another person Watch out Thomas's would say to them Mohammed calling can
watch your Roku.
Show like I said I have a second of all.
I have a little wine bottle so do what you had to
do.
We
say to the Mohammed if it be that your parents and mentioned specifically fathers with a generic language that your parents that you choose, that your siblings, that just spouses, that the wealth you have earned of your kid falls, the wealth you have earned. The business you fear, the climate, the dwellings you delight in are more we love it to a happy life, meaning you can love all that stuff.
supposed to love it. We're supposed to love our parents. We're supposed to love our children. We're supposed to love our siblings, he was supposed to love our our spouses.
Law says the man and the woman,
woman a
man in the few that can
go wrong. So we amongst the sizes made for you from yourself, spouse in order that you live together with them and peace and tranquility. And he's made between you love and mercy rajala
saying he has put up so we're supposed to love all of that. A lot of us do with a beautiful house. Thank you.
So how would you not love my house? Thank you
be right over the door. That's from the grace of my Lord.
That's as good as what I have a feeling more beloved than a law that is best for meeting that because of all of that, I will go
against my will.
And so the question is not love.
The question is, who do we love?
Who we love.
And if we love Allah subhanho wa Taala then we give priority to what Allah tala desires over what we desire. And it's not a law is not trying to impress us. One of the calamities of modernity or post modernity is that the divine has been moved removed from most of our live transactions and calculations. we've extracted the divine.
And by so doing,
we live in our understanding of justice to this world as material.
And so in this context, a lot of people, I'll speak about it in a heterosexual context, just to kind of contextualize it
in some kind of rhetorical device.
I really love Juliet.
And her parents got in the way of my love.
Because they will not allow me to fulfill my full humanity, by uniting with Juliet is wrong.
And God
inspired them because it's God's universe.
God isn't fit.
A lot of
people that I meet a lot
on my service in the Hmong two foot mile, and let's see, how to lean
on my servants, oppression forbidden for myself, and
therefore development.
So, if we lived into the world, we could make an argument that
Almighty God has impressed Romeo
why not allowing him to fulfill his wealth?
But as we expanded beyond this world, and as humans, our affair transcends this world, we have failed this podium
is limited to this world. One day, this is not to be splinters in a junkyard one, maybe it will be a lump
COVID it'll be in a place, a lot of it is not this place that catches fire with burns, and there's just some charcoal that have this.
But that's it for this book.
And when we say postmodernity, removing God from the equation, a lot of people, this one, the atheist arguments, say we have no different than this.
We just call it a lucky gene that allowed us to talk and think and be able to reason to ration. But essentially, we're no different than its, therefore our destiny is no different than this. And this was that some of the ancient apps
evolve over here on me, who's willing to revive his crumbly bones that are trying to just crush them to power. When the dust settles,
we became physically, we our destiny is different, just as our existence is different. Our existence is different from all of
our existence is different than the apes. I was listening to kg, or some of you from California,
largest radio stations west of the Mississippi, who were discussing
evolution. And a guy was, as many of us who write and listening to talk radio.
Two minutes, I'm just in that introduction.
Let me finish the kgl story. So they're writing about that he's, he's going down the highway on a car, that human beings make 70 miles an hour
participating in the discussion. And so the guy in the car says, you know, I'm just a monkey, I'm just an eighth.
And
that's all I have. And the host of this show, he said, you might believe you're just a monkey, but I never saw a monkey that can make a car that can propel you through space,
along a road 60 miles an hour, talking on a cell phone via an invisible beam that's possible for satellite and geocentric Earth orbit, talking to someone 500 miles away. I never saw a monkey that could do that.
Our existence is unique. Our destiny is unique. And some of the time let me go back to a point I was developing.
There's a whole lot that's going to get skipped. And I apologize that this isn't getting the Justice it deserves. So we were talking about the oppression of one limiting
the fulfilment or cycling of the passions, love loss desires, to this world to make an argument,
what is the argument that says okay, I created these things we're thinking, the whole range of dimensions, LGBTQ, heterosexual, kleptomania, whatever it might be, whatever the
left side,
as one fuse the time.
And some say the meaning of that station of karma
of the Lord, and they deny their souls the things in inclines towards in many instances.
I didn't have
the paradise will be the
paradise we're not talking 20 years in this world. We're not talking 3040 years, we're not talking the average 72 year lifespan. We're not talking the exceptional 100 years that a person might have in this world we're talking
that for their effort to restrain themselves,
not from feelings that might be impossible to restrain from actions
that are deemed to be forbidden.
And we mentioned an array of actions.
That effort is rewarded with eternal bliss, eternal happiness
that will make the life of this world in terms of its
duration and in terms of is significant
on the greatest scale of things. And so I was saying
that, and the challenges that people have,
well, we are challenged,
to try to overcome or restrain ourselves. And that's one part of the conversation. So implicitly, I'm saying, If you feel these powerful urges that might push you the context of this talk, and listen to get the head on sexual kleptomania, in the context of LGBTQ community, and you work against that, your reward is eternal happiness. Now, someone might say, and I'll stop here, that's easy for you to say, you don't, you're not dealing with those challenges. Everyone has challenges, they're dealing with different types, and that might well be true.
And so that challenge for you might be exponentially more difficult than it is for me, we have a principal and our religion,
and as you will
be rewarded will receive from our Lord,
for being on board is commensurate with the difficulty, and the struggle that's involved in a way. And so the more difficult the struggle, the greater the reward.
And that that difficult difficulty,
is reconfigured in ways it's not in the world. I can I can really, really, really, really, really love
this one.
And she's not really reciprocating My love, which really pains me deeply. There's no reciprocity, but our love for law offices series always reciprocated.
And so as believers, one of the things we tried to do, and this is intricately connected, what we're talking about, is to make the love of Allah highest level, and those who are able to do that. So we talk about a spiritual world from an essence a mere shadow to a so as change with physical carnal appetites in us to the depths of
the soul that begins to question those of us
through that questioning process becomes content with a loss of habitat time. And that's the end.
And that contentment leads to pleasure for a while. And that pleasure of the law, these no laws pleasure, so in a lot of niches, and that's
a
huge gap. Rock me here all the time, Barbara Lee had returned to your Lord pleasing role in it. And please put more
reciprocated love. And so
before that, one would have that motivation. robbia maglia. Kevin, that's the perfect soul is the soul that finds fulfillment and the love of God. And that's the goal of the businesses leave all this stuff we've talked about.
And that is the highest state can achieve arrabiata we'll talk about that. Some people were shooting fear the fire, that's a motivation. Some people worship You,
longing for heaven. I wish you are pure love.
And so once we've transcended those physical karma, appetites and lust and attraction, whatever they are, then we move into the realm of pure love. And that love is so blissful, because that love that connection with a lot time and connects us to something that transcends this world. So the level of satisfaction and the level of bliss and the level of
losing ourselves within that though, some people refer to us that that
is so deep
All these
fights
become totally irrelevant.
Understand
what he's given us
a lot what's good for you gives him a sound understanding of this religion.