Zaynab Ansari – ‘Content of Character’ Opening Night [Knoxville]
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
How this will be scheduled.
We will start with some introductory remarks, break
for Maghrib, and then resume,
inshallah till Aisha prayer. So we will be,
breaking in about half an hour to pray,
Magrib Insha'Allah.
And what we will do, I just want
everyone this is the only time I'll ask
you to take your phones out, but I
have a slide here
that says sharing is
sharing.
So it's a this is a patented
trademarked expression that if you use it, you
have to give me royalties on.
But if you share that link inshallah, celebrate
mercy.com/tenesse,
That link will give people access to watch
this online live.
They can go ahead. They'll just put in
their email. It'll redirect them to a YouTube,
livestream of tonight's program, and people watching online
will be able to ask questions a bit
later in the program too.
And this flyer, which we are about to
post on, Facebook and Twitter,
you can also share, which has the same
link on it.
So
we will go ahead and ask our local
Hafiz,
Omar al Sharif. I don't know if I
should call you doctor Omar yet.
Not yet. Okay. About to start residency.
But you call
Doctor Omar,
go ahead and lead us with an opening
Quran or a citation before we begin.
Inshallah, we will go ahead and begin. And
if you missed it the first time, please
make sure to share the link for tonight's
program.
So,
first of all, we know why we're here.
I mean, this, these programs that we take
around the country, including here in my hometown,
are here to increase the love and knowledge
of the prophet salaam and his character
because you can't love someone that you don't
know.
And that's the whole premise behind our programs.
And
to start off, we just wanna thank
some of the people who helped make this
possible,
some of the organizations that helped make this
possible.
First and foremost, this class began here in
Knoxville, actually,
about a year and a half ago,
with Ustad Usama Cannon.
And
this is very hard to to,
follow-up
Ustad Usama, especially now that he's been diagnosed
with a terminal illness.
So we just wanna ask everyone here if
we can
all pause,
and recite the Fatiha for Allah to cure
him
and to, be there for his family and
give them patience.
Some of us here were fortunate enough to
be in,
Chicago
not too long ago and, and, spend some
time with Ustad Usama,
there and, and greet him. And he actually
gave a public talk where he mentioned that
this is the first,
masjid where he ever gave a khutba, actually,
a Friday khutba. It was in Knoxville. So,
this was this was a picture from his
khutba, actually,
here when he came about a year and
a half ago.
And as the, Sheikh Habei Allah was saying
that the prophet
literally gave people the shirts off their back,
he actually gave me that thawb right after
the the Khutba. So
we wanna thank, the Muslim community of Knoxville,
obviously, for hosting this, the board, and all
who and the volunteers who helped, bring this
program here to the Masjid.
I wanted to ask, sister Reem who not
only represents MCK but wears 2 hats with
a newer academy to
say a couple of words for
a few seconds, she said. So why don't
you come on up Reem, Insha'Allah.
We also have a couple of other sponsors
we're going to mention as well before we
get started.
Thank you, Reem.
So, yes. Sheikh Habela will be coming back
in May for the Teixeir graduation, so we
want everyone to be there. And we're also,
hoping we can bring him to,
again to Knoxville for a program similar to
what we did for,
kids actually at at in Arizona. So we
we gotta talk about that at some point.
That was that was a very difficult program.
That's news to me.
Yeah. We're actually trying to do a little
bit of fundraising to try to get make
that happen so that Sheikha Baytullah, another teacher,
and a munshid, Nasheed Singer can do a
pro an all day program with the kids.
And newer academy kids, but also public and
private school kids in Knoxville, an all day
sierra day program inshallah. It was very successful
in Arizona,
but we're trying to hopefully,
do a little bit of fundraising so that
we can make that happen, hopefully, inshallah.
And
we also wanna thank one of our sponsors,
University Islamic Financial, and I think brother Wissam.
Where is brother Wissam?
He is right there. Please come to the
front and introduce
university on the mic.
I just wanna introduce you to the to
the group. He came in from Jersey. Right?
The big state of New Jersey. Yes.
I never liked New Jersey until I married
someone from New Jersey.
Smart man. Smart man. Smart man.
My name is Wissam with University Sami Financial.
It is a pleasure, to be here along
with brother Tarek and all the wonderful
things that he does, especially with, you know,
all that goes on across the country about
Islam and the deen. It's important for us
to learn not just, you know, about the
but
also to implement it. Right? What good is
it to know something is good for you,
but not actually to actually implement it to
benefit from it, So may Allah accept from
all of our actions.
I see. Okay.
So I'm all supposed to, quickly introduce our
company real quick. University Islamic
Financial
University Islamic Financial
provides Sharia compliant home financing as well. So
if you're looking to purchase a home in
a Sharia compliant manner, please let me know.
I'll pass around my cards as well.
Our program is a very simple program, which
is basically
based on the Morabaha model, which is a
marked up sale. So you find a home,
negotiate the price, we purchase it, resell it
to you at a higher price, and break
up the payment equally over a period of
time. House is 100,000.
We purchase it for a 100,000.
We sell it to you for, let's say,
a 120,000.
Break up the payments equally over 10 years,
for example,
and you pay us back in installments.
Marked up installment sale, you are 100%
owner of the property from day 1. You
can do anything you want with the home,
sell it at a profit, rent it out,
and so on. You keep all of that.
We have a great group of independent Sharia
scholars that have reviewed and approved the programs
to make sure that it is Sharia compliant.
Our brother Tarek did not introduce me as
sheikh Wissam or Molena Wissam. He just said
Wissam.
So we do have a great group of
scholars that have reviewed and approved the program.
Also, some people might think Islamic finance is
more expensive.
With us, it is not. If you compare
us to the larger players out there in
the market, you'll see that our payments are
competitive out there because we all know everybody's
Sharia compliant, right, until it costs a dollar
more. So with us, we try not to
give that excuse.
And last but not least, we've been doing
this for many years. So we will handhold
you throughout the process. So make sure that
all that anxiousness that goes into purchasing a
home, we'll also guide you through those paperwork
that is needed to make it as smooth
as
possible. Once again, my name is Wissam with
University Islamic Financial.
For your time.
And he has a table outside, so if
you want more information, you can check with
him. He'll be here tonight and tomorrow,
Inshallah. And he has some business cards as
well.
Lastly,
in terms of sponsors, we have the Fawakett
Institute,
and I wanted to announce something pretty exciting
here. I have a one minute video to
show you. But before I show that one
minute video,
we we are starting an online Arabic course
along with Fuwekha Institute,
for
kind of a beginners level Arabic. So people
who
at least
either with ease or with difficulty can already
read the Quran
with ease or difficulty.
This is a meant to be a class,
inshallah, that will teach Quranic Arabic. It's an
online course,
so people attend a weekly online class with
their teacher who comes live on their webcam.
It's interactive, so students are interacting, asking questions.
They can see the lessons on the screen.
And we started this recently with a group
in Portland, Oregon after a program we did
there. And we're gonna be starting it inshallah
with them again.
This starts in Ramadan.
And I actually attended some of these sessions.
I found them really
interesting, very interactive,
and so I wanted to show you this
quick video. We have flyers about this that
you may have seen outside too.
But in Surafate Hamir, he doesn't.
Right? And this word ilah is a word
we take for granted in level 1. We
learn it the 1st day of class. You
learn the word ilah, but it's not there.
When you start to learn Arabic, Arabic, you
start to pick up things
that you did not ever
realize before, whether something is there or it's
not there.
The deeper you go into Nahu
or Saf, the more you understand about Hadith.
The deeper you go into Hadith, the more
you understand about Quran.
The deeper you go into Quran,
you start to see
ayat and masuras of the Quran or like
the night sky.
Like, all of these stars
splattered onto the night sky. And at first,
it's overwhelming.
But eventually, people start noticing patterns.
Then they start noticing shapes, and they start
connecting.
So these class sizes are pretty small, 20
seats available, like I said.
And, for those who are interested, we have
some preregistration
forms,
and this will start Sunday, May 20th. So
Sunday,
Sunday early afternoon in Ramadan, there'll be, like,
3 sessions, and then it will move to
Monday nights. This is a year long program,
weekly classes. Each class is about 2 to
3 hours long.
And literally after a first few sessions, people
have said as they're reciting Quran, they're starting
to unlock the meanings.
And even in Ramadan as you're attending Tarawiyah,
you're reading the Quran, you'll start to understand
many of the words you're reading as well.
So we hope inshallah that if you have
any questions, you can talk to me about
this inshallah, but it will start in Ramadan.
And those who do register this weekend will
also get one of the one of the
months will be free of cost. So there's
a monthly fee, but 1 month will be
free if if you sign up this weekend,
inshallah.
So without any further delay, inshallah, we're going
to go ahead and go into our first
hadith. Oh, I do wanna mention one thing
is that unfortunately tonight
conflicted with Sheikh Hassan's daughter's birthday,
and it's very hard to get him to
leave his daughter on her birthday,
as I learned tonight.
Good man. Good man. Good man. So inshallah,
he will be joining us tomorrow, but, we
will that just means we'll have some extra
time inshallah with Ustad Azayna, with Sheikh Arbeidullah,
and also some extra q and a tonight
inshallah. So we apologize for that, but he
will be joining us tomorrow morning,
for the program inshallah.
So I will now turn it over to,
Sheikh Obeyed Allah.
It is,
indeed a great honor, a great privilege,
to be here with you this evening.
The Knoxville community, is
from among
the most hospitable
and beautiful communities
that I've been privileged to
serve
at.
We pray Jum'ah
here this afternoon,
And I was so impressed
with how
warm
and brotherly and sisterly,
I found the community.
I'm also very honored to share this platform
with Ustada Zaina Bensari
who
actually,
she doesn't know this,
but led to me having something of
a crisis
as a teacher. I was
she joined us for the Island Winter Program
in California.
And the presentation was so thorough. It was
so thought provoking.
It was so,
inspiring
that I looked and said,
I don't know what I've been doing for
the last 5 years,
but I haven't been teaching Islam. If
that's what teaching Islam is, I don't know
what I've been doing with my life.
But,
I've I've forgiven her for that.
It, it was it was worthwhile reflection that
I needed to to do, and it's a
great honor to be here in Knoxville.
I esteem
the work that Teisseire Seminary is doing.
It is always
a great privilege
to speak on the platform,
the celebrate mercy,
offers.
We've come here
this weekend
to discuss
character.
And we know that the prophet
said
I was only sent
and in Arabic grammar
this form is known as Hasr,
restriction.
The only reason
I was dispatched
Are we stopping for monthly? It is Muslim,
yes. Subhanallah. Everything should stop. That was a
teaser then. Okay.
Okay. Is there someone here back and make
a van and then we'll re resume?
I didn't realize it was so early, actually.
K. We will go ahead and, resume
We have a long stretch of time now,
so we will go ahead and,
resume with the program, with the introduction, and
then move on to we are only doing
1 hadith tonight, and we have 9
tomorrow. So 9 is a very
full day of programming,
So we are gonna cover 1. It is
a long hadith tonight, and there's a lot
of things you can unpack,
beautiful lessons from it, but
tonight will be an intro,
Hadith 1, and the rest of the 9
hadith tomorrow.
So before we conclude it for
Salat Al Maghrib,
I was mentioning the hadith of the prophet
that I was only sent
to perfect
or to dictate
noble traits of character.
And we were mentioning
that this is the Arabic grammatical
form known as hasr
or restriction.
This restricts
the reason
for the prophet
being sent to us
as the perfection
of noble
or honorable
traits of character.
That means
that the Muhammadan
gift to the world
is
the instruction
in character.
For salaf al Maghrib,
our brother beautifully recited
from
from Surah to Toba.
It is he
that sent
his messenger
with guidance
and the religion of truth
to make it prevail
over all other ways of life.
Now the great misfortune,
and this has been a destructive
misfortune,
of Muslims
in our time
is that we interpret
this preeminence
as a sociopolitical
or even military preeminence that
Islam has to be socially
and politically and militarily
dominant. But that is not true.
One only needs to look at our history
to know that Muslims have not always
been politically
or socially
or militarily dominant.
This ayah
is talking about what? The triumph
of our faith as something that transforms
the conduct of human beings.
And for me,
this takes me back to
my very beginning
as someone interested in Islam.
I was 16 years of age
when I first started exploring Islam.
And like so many other people,
my
my entry into Islam
was reading the autobiography of Malcolm X
who I am convinced
was a is a friend of Allah
And I think that
his karama
or the miracle
associated with him
is how many people have been deeply impacted
and affected by his life story.
People from
different, you know, different backgrounds,
different walks of life,
different ethnicities,
different ages,
there's something in that story.
And I still remember
reading it
as a youth
being completely
wrapped
in the narrative.
And I asked myself,
what was it about his story?
And I think
it was because it laid out for us
a tale of human
transformation
that a person started as one thing
and became something else.
In his autobiography,
Malcolm talks about being a junkie who was
addicted to heroin.
He talks about being a womanizer.
He talks about being a thief.
He talks about being a gangster.
And then his life ends
with him making Hajj,
coming back,
continuing his work,
fighting for justice
on behalf of under resourced,
marginalized
communities,
and ultimately
losing his life in that pursuit.
And I think that as a young man,
it captured my attention because
it suggested to me that I too could
change.
And when you look at the people around
the prophet
we have many tales of transformation.
None perhaps greater
than that of Omar Ibn Al Khattab
a person
that by his own testimony
was on his way to committing
the most heinous crime
that anyone in humanity
can commit. What crime was that?
To kill the messenger of Allah
And now
he's someone after whom we name our children,
Zeeshan.
This is saying
This is someone and there is some
debate
about the providence or about the historical veracity
of this account. But nonetheless, it serves a
purpose.
Some people
would see Sayna Omar
walking around the streets of Medina.
This is when he was the Khalifa.
The report goes that sometimes he would be
weeping
and sometimes he would be laughing.
And so, you know, Omar
was a redoubtable person.
He was a
very, what's
the word I'm looking for? Redoubtable is too
it's he was very and domineering has a
negative connotation.
He was intimidating.
He was bold. He was intrepid.
So if you were going to ask him
a revealing question, one had to get up
some gumption to do that.
Say, you know,
is one of those people. You know, this
is a peculiar habit. I wanna ask him,
but I don't know. Maybe not.
Maybe I won't ask him. So they had
to get up some gumption.
And someone said, yeah, I'm not
I have a question for you.
Why is
it that sometimes we see you weeping,
walking by by yourself?
And sometimes, we see you laughing,
walking by yourself.
And he said, you really want to know?
I said, yes.
He said, when you see me laughing,
it's because I'm remembering
this idol
that I used to worship.
You know, I used to prostrate to this
idol. I used to worship this idol, but
the idol was made out of dates.
And if no one was looking
and I got hungry, you know, while I
was doing, you know, all of this worship
and adoration, I would just take a piece
of the idol, eat it, and just keep
on worshiping.
And when I think about that,
it's so silly
that I could consider as my god something
I could consume
that it makes me laugh.
But when you see me weeping,
it is because I remember
having a daughter.
And I took her out into the desert.
This is the practice of female infanticide.
And I buried her alive.
And then he said, she was of age.
Because as I was digging her grave
and the sand was getting into my beard,
she was cleaning the sand out of my
beard.
How could I have been so cruel? How
could I have been so insensitive
that I would kill my own daughter?
And he went from that
to becoming
somebody
concerning whom when you talk about the depth
of his sensitivity.
And Omar is often maligned
in Muslim communities. We see people doing things
unconscionable,
behaving rudely,
behaving in an unmannerly
way. And they say, yeah. I see. I'm
like Omar.
No. You're like Shaitan.
You're not like Omar.
It's not like Omar.
Say no. Omar became someone
whose sensitivity
had reached depths,
where if someone told him that an animal
stumbled on an unpaved road
in Medina, he would fear that Allah
was going to take him to account for
that.
Now where did he learn that?
Can everyone hear me?
This
is how he became who he became.
So we know that this feature
of personal transformation
and refinement of character
was central
in the prophet's ministry, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Unfortunately,
it is not always central
in how we instruct in the deen in
our religious communities.
At 16,
I embraced Islam,
and I still remember my first day entering
a masjid.
It was a scary experience.
For 1,
I saw men wearing very long robes,
and they looked like people in the, you
know, the Watchtower Society of Jehovah's Witnesses
would come by my neighborhood, like, passing out
tracks
and they always had, like,
artistic depictions
of scenes from the bible and you'd have
people wearing robes and something that looked like,
you know, a man like a turban.
And when I went to the Meshed, I
said, hey. Those guys are dressed like the
people in the Jehovah Witnesses tracks.
This is interesting.
And it was it was it was really
the beginning of an odyssey,
And when I think back
to being a tender
16 year old,
entering this community for the first time, a
community that was
very foreign to me,
a community
that at the time
was
kind of inaccessible
to me. You know, I still remember going
to the masjid,
and I didn't know anything about how to
pray,
but
the motto is if you've never been there,
act like you've been there before.
So I just stood next to the brother.
He was praying his sunnah. Now
funny story, just to lighten the mood a
little bit. I assumed some I saw a
Muslim somewhere. I said, I'm I'm Muslim too.
Where can I pray? They said Friday prayer,
and they gave me an address.
And I showed up at 9 AM
because I assumed
that it was like church. This is a
Friday that we had off of school
and I had all my best, you know,
I had my Sunday's best
and I'm sitting in the parking lot. And
I still remember when it got to be
maybe 10, I said,
maybe it was Thursday.
He said, no. No. No. No. He did
I distinctly remember him saying Friday. So so
I'm just gonna wait. I'm just gonna wait.
I'm just gonna wait.
Juma started at 1:15.
People started to arrive
at about,
right, somebody said 2.
People started to arrive at about 12:30.
An older Daisy gentleman came up to me
and said, are you in the right place?
And I said, this is the mosque. Right?
He said, yes. This is the mosque. Well,
I'm in the right place.
This is this this is this is this
is where I wanna be.
He said, when did you get here?
I said, I got here at 9 AM.
And then this beautiful man, he said, well,
you know,
there's a Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam. I didn't know what he was talking
about. I thought that Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was
the Prophet's last name.
There's this Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam. I was like, okay. I know Mohammed.
I don't know sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
That people that come to Jum'ah
are like people making sacrifice.
The first person that gets there gets the
reward of a camel,
then a cow, all the way down to
the last person that gets the reward of
an egg.
He said,
today you got the big, big one.
And I was very I was very pleased
at that.
I got the big, big one.
And so we went in
and I saw him making salah, and so
I just stood next to him. Even though
he was praying, you know, maybe to hit
the masjid or sunnah, I just stood right
next to him and I just was, like,
clearly looking at him doing whatever he did.
But
every time we would go into
Sujood,
I will put my hands all the way
out like I saw in movies. And
afterward, he said to me,
you know, brother,
we're not swimming.
We're praying.
And then he gave me a book called
The Prophet's Prayer Made Easy,
And this is significant. I'm not telling you
this just to humor you.
This was my introduction to the Shutter Eyet.
This was my introduction to this idea that
things have to be done
in a certain way.
In the next,
maybe 10 years
of my Islam,
with some blame worthy excess,
was a 10 years of what I would
call
where we became
very focused on the outward.
Very
focused. I still remember him giving me that
book, my looking in it, and thinking to
myself, this is so different than my Christian
religious experience.
You actually have to do this in a
particular way.
Certain things
must be said at certain times.
And I learned about the concept of sunnah.
Unfortunately,
sunnah,
for many of the people I was learning
with,
was restricted to the motherhood of sunnah,
how you wore your clothes.
The fact that you ate with your middle
finger, your index finger, and your thumb,
that you would lie recumbent on your right
side.
This is what I thought of when I
thought of sunnah.
It wasn't until
maybe being in Egypt,
attending Azhar
to study Sharia
that someone said to me, don't forget
the deeper
inward aspect of the sunnah of Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
And he said,
when it comes to our salah,
if we make a mistake within it, we
have
we have a prayer for forgetfulness.
And then he said to me, but the
prophet
said,
Whoever has even an atom's weight of arrogance
in their heart
will not enter paradise.
What's the for that?
What do you do for that?
So which one
has a lower margin of error?
You can make the prayer.
You can make a mistake,
and you can amend that mistake
by making.
If you have an Adam's weight of arrogance
in your heart,
There is nothing you can do but work
on that arrogance
to rid yourself of it.
And he gave me the rest of the
hadith
in which the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
as soon as he said this, a man
said to him,
But a man loves that his clothes
are nice
and that his shoes
are nice.
Is this
what you mean by kibr?
Is this what you mean by arrogance?
And the prophet
said,
no.
Nice clothes, nice shoes. This is not from
arrogance. Thank god.
Thank god for that man.
Saved my life.
This is not from arrogance.
Looking down
on people
and rejecting the truth when it comes to
you.
Now how many of us have that issue?
I remember distinctly, Imam Al Ghazali
saying
one of the signs
he said this in Bidayatul Hidayat,
that one is making progress
on the spiritual
path
is that they don't encounter anybody that they
deem themselves superior to.
If they see someone older than them,
this person has more good deeds than I
do.
If they see someone younger than them, this
person does not have the sin that I
do.
He said,
even a non Muslim.
This person disobeys Allah and they don't know
any better. I disobey Allah and I know
better.
Who am I better than?
Then he said,
butrul haq,
rejecting
the truth when it comes to you. Now
many of us
thinking about the truth
in
kind of meta terms, meaning the truth with
a capital t,
all of us, Insha'Allah, have accepted the truth.
The truth of the prophecy of Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
But if you think about lesser truths,
say someone comes to you
and they say you wronged me
or you offended me,
do we possess the humility
to say I acknowledge that offense?
I'm sorry about what I did to you.
Or do we immediately
go into some exculpating explanation?
No. No. No. No. No. Some of us,
we try to apologize,
but not really apologize.
I'm sorry that your feelings are hurt.
What does that mean?
I'm not acknowledging any wrongdoing,
but I'm acknowledging that you have taken offense
to something that I've done. This is better.
The humble person is the one that can
say without reservation.
I'm sorry for what I've done if I've
done something wrong.
Where will we learn to acquire these states
if not
from watching the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam?
Emulating him
in the fullness
of his sunnah.
And this,
as I was mentioning before,
is the great Muhammadan
gift.
If you look
at the writings
of many behaviorists,
classical and contemporary,
Many of them suggest
that the human being is formed
in their formative years
between the ages of maybe
29.
And what happens there
cannot be changed. So that if a child
is ridiculed
by a parent
or a teacher,
that person
or that child
will grow into
an insecure adult
and there's nothing that can be done about
that.
They say that
if someone
dealt with food insecurity
as a child,
It will be very or even poverty.
That person will become maybe something like a
hoarder or something like that,
and there's nothing that can be done about
that.
It's just who they are,
And in the person of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam,
we have someone who came to remove these
ahlal,
to remove these yokes,
to remove these chains from us
so that we can be free
to be beloved to Allah
I was given the earlier,
and I was mentioning something that I recently
learned
from, Masha'Allah, a new friend of mine, doctor
Bilal Ware,
in which
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
when he says and I totally butchered this
at Jumah. I hope I don't do it
now.
Whenever you find Allah Ta'ala saying he loves
something.
In
the Quran,
the thing that follows that, the direct object
of his love
is always
a trait of character
that can be embodied by human beings.
Says that he loves the muttaqeen,
so he loves taqwa.
There are 7 of them
and he loves pissed
And he loves Ihsan. So he loves taqwa.
He loves that we
revere him.
He loves taqwa that we revere him. He
loves Ihsan.
He loves spiritual excellence.
He loves pissed
equity.
He loves
or that we rely
on him.
He loves
He loves purity.
He loves
Or did I say Ihsan? Yeah. I said
Ihsan.
He loves sabr.
He loves
patience and he loves toba
and he loves repentance.
These seven traits of character
are the only things that Allah ta'ala mentions
that he loves
in the Quran.
And the reason that the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam is the Habib of Allah
is because he is the fullest
and most perfected
embodiment
of all of those traits of character.
And if we follow him,
we can similarly
be loved
by God. We know that Allah says in
the Quran,
Say,
if you love Allah
then follow me. Follow the prophet alaihis salaam.
And if you do so, the result will
be,
right, the juwaba shard or
the juwaba talab. The talab is
This is the Talib.
The answer to the Talib.
Allah will love you.
If you follow the prophet, alayhi, salaam, Allah
will love you.
But we have to follow the prophet alaihis
salaam
in the entirety of his sunnah.
Not simply its outward aspects.
Its inward aspects
and its outward aspects.
So,
it is absolutely
beautiful
to wear white,
especially on jumah,
but that
is much easier
than controlling your temper.
You see?
It's much easier
to wear white
than it is to deal
with your jealousy.
It's much easier to eat with your right
hand
than it is to deal with your envy.
It is much easier
to kneel when taking a drink
than to
lower the humility
to people in your midst so that all
of them feel validated and ingratiated by you.
This
is the sunnah of the prophet
that we must adhere to
if we want to earn that divine love.
I'll say one more thing and then I'll
pass to Ustadh Azainab,
and we can prepare to actually go into
the first hadith of this collection.
We really
have to focus on bringing some love back
into Islam.
We have to focus on bringing love back
into Islam.
You know, I was once giving a khutbah,
and I was talking about love.
And after the khutbah, someone someone said to
me, you know, imam, the khutbah was okay,
but it was kind of like Sufi stuff.
And I said,
in what way?
Well, you were talking about love,
and I said, Muslims don't talk about love.
It's California Islam to talk about love.
A man came to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam,
and he said to him,
Oh messenger of god, when is the day
of judgment?
I'm hearing so much about it.
Mountains rent asunder,
children becoming gray haired,
women delivering prematurely.
When is all of this going to happen?
When the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
as he was want to do,
he posed the question to that man,
what have you prepared for?
That man
responded with honesty.
He said, what have I prepared for?
Not a whole lot
in terms of my prayer,
not a whole lot in terms of my
fasting,
not a whole lot in terms of my
But I do know one thing.
I know that I love God and I
love his messenger
And the prophet alaihi wa sallam said,
In another rewire, enter.
A man and by extension, a woman will
be with those whom they love
and you will be with those whom you
love in another recension of this hadith.
So how does it become something secondary,
something tertiary,
something Sufi,
something Californian
to talk about love in our religion.
I talked to Muslims all over the country,
and many of them
are hurting because
they don't feel love in the Muslim community.
Most people who leave Islam
don't leave because
they've discovered that, no, there's not one god,
there's 2.
That doesn't normally happen.
It's that the Muslim community has become a
very inhospitable
place,
a very unsafe
place.
And I'm thinking how does this happen
except
through neglect
of the sunnah of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. I'll close with this.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
was once exiting
his home,
and he saw a man
preparing to slaughter a goat
and the the goat
was laying on its side.
The man had his foot on the goat
like this,
and he was sharpening
the blade
with which he was going to perform the
slaughter
and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said,
do you want to kill the animal twice?
And the man looked up at him confusedly
and perplexed.
You're sharpening the blade with which you are
going to take its life right in front
of the animal.
What do you think this is doing to
the animal?
I read that and I broke down in
tears.
I said, this is what Allah means when
he says,
we have not sent you except as a
mercy to everything that exists.
This man
is concerned about the psychological
suffering of animals on their way to the
slaughter.
We say that we're living his sunnah and
we're not even concerned about living human beings.
We have to get back to this
deep,
thorough,
comprehensive
understanding of the sunnah
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. The
revivocation of our community
will only come through reviving the sunnah
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
But it has to start with the kalb.
It has to start with the inward. And
then all of the beauty that comes from
that
will manifest outwardly.
We are here this weekend
to discuss the color and to discuss that
inward.
Thank you.
Do you have something to to add?
Oh, you have your own mic?
Oh, okay, mister
Wong. I get to effectively pass the mic.
I wanna pass the the other myself.
I
have to say,
I would much rather be in the audience
as opposed to speaking.
Sheikh
is is, too kind when he mentioned the
alum program. And I have to I want
I wanted to say this, Sheikh that,
the alum program, quite honestly,
when I always kind of looking at the
announcements and flyers and descriptions, I was always
thinking, okay. That would be really nice to
attend as a student. So
I've really, really, enjoyed attending. It's an excellent
program,
I really encourage everybody to look into the
island program.
And,
I really want to convey my thanks to
and the celebrate Mercy team.
You know, when I was, coming up, the
way we
studied Sira was really just through the medium
of of of books. I mean, we read
books about the prophet
You know, there was
the only epic film made about the prophet's
life of Risala. Right? The message.
So,
you know, our way of kind of engaging
with interacting with the Sira was through,
you know, it was through the the written
word. And,
I just really want to say that this
is
a blessing that we should not take lightly.
Right? That we should not dismiss that. We
are able to
get this glimpse into the beautiful sira of
the prophet
his life story
through sitting with Sheikh Arbeidullah
who studied at Al Al Azhar. And I
really wanted to mention how blessed we are
to have that opportunity.
There was, when I was studying in Damascus,
there was a a school that some people
went to where their final year, they actually
got to do it at Al Azhar. So
we need to make sure that we we
honor and,
and respect
and,
really benefit from the learning and experience of
our.
May Allah reward you and your family.
But my point about this and celebrate mercy,
again, the blessing of having this type of
platform, this type of venue,
I think it it's it's really remarkable
because in this quite honestly, in this day
and age,
it's not always easy to sit down and,
and sort of and and go through a
book from cover to cover.
The other day,
in our
Islam in the West class at the at
the seminary,
we were looking at,
some
research, some data that's some some research that's
that's been done on Muslims in this country
and and and and and the data that
they,
the findings that they arrived at as a
result of their research. And,
I'll mention that in a second, but there
was a study that they did also on
the number of,
the number of adults.
Right?
The the number of adults in
in this country, the percentage of adults who've
actually read a book, right, in,
who've who've who've read a book in the
last year.
And,
the results were not very sort of,
what's the word,
very heartening.
Right? The percentage of adults who
in the past year had actually managed to
read a book or part of a book,
and this is in any format. Right? Whether
we're talking about an actual
book as in pages and a book that
you open or or an ebook,
the percentage was really quite low. And what
was kind of and there was a clear
sort of divide between people who lived in
urban areas and people who lived in rural
communities.
I was actually this this was counterintuitive
for me.
It was interesting to note that actually a
greater percentage of younger people had read a
book versus
the, an an older population. So I wasn't
expecting to see that.
But, you know, I'm I'm mentioning this I'm
mentioning this, the study, right, to
to make the point that, you know, it
is increasingly difficult to sit down with a
text, a book.
And that was the way that when I
was coming up that most of us actually
learned about the prophet's story
We read books. We read books of biography,
sira. We read hadith books.
Right?
Maybe if we were fortunate enough to have
someone to sit and study with or to
go to a lecture or you know? And
in those days, you actually had something you
young people have never heard of this, but
something called an audio cassette, and you'd put
in something called a tape player. Yeah.
And, you'd listen, you know, to these stories
about the prophet So
I just really want to say I love
this this this this venue, this setting of
actually sitting down
and, celebrating the sira of the prophet
through this particular format. So I would really
encourage everybody here to look into the offerings
of celebrate mercy and and and to support
celebrate mercy. This is very important to keep
this project going.
So to the
to the many, beneficial points,
and insightful points that Sheikh made,
I wanted to talk about
there are 2 things that I wanna talk
about here.
This idea of,
transformation
occurring by virtue of actually
being
in the presence of, in the company of,
actually sort of, sharing companionship
with someone of good character.
And
I really want to emphasize this point. And
I'm sure that Sheikh Rabaydala will come back
to this point over the weekend.
You know, that's one of the things when
you read books, these books of Sira. Right?
And
sometimes you come away with the sense that
it's just sort of one campaign, right, one
battle after another.
And, you know, I think that
one of the things about that narrative that
we have to be really sort of
aware and kind of even critical of in
the sense that
if we really think, right, that Islam
in this historical context spread
the way it did and affected people's hearts
the way it did because the Muslims won
various campaigns or engaged in various battles or
skirmishes, I think we're really misreading Sira.
Now the early biographers of the prophet
were very much interested in how he
fought those campaigns
This was an inter an interesting topic to
them, and it and it makes sense. Right?
At this in this particular age, you know,
the the the borders of the Islamic
polity were expanding. So it would have made
sense to have really focused on that aspect
of the Sira, military and political and so
on.
But we really have to make sure that
we take another look at at Sira, and
this is why I love this particular type
of platform or venue
because there are so many stories even in
the midst of those very battles and skirmishes
and military engagements
themselves. Even in the midst of that,
there are so many
stories
of
human interaction and engagement and
transformation
where someone,
for example, is, there was there was a
group. This is towards the end of the
the the the prophet's mission in Medina. Right?
This is kind of when he is
kind of consolidating,
you know, his authority over the peninsula.
And
there was one particular
clan or tribe kind of a base really
sort of not a tribe, but kind of
a clan or a sub clan, and they
were kind of the last holdouts. And,
you know, they actually one of their their
their and their intention was to actually
kind of take the Muslims by surprise
and and launch an attack on the prophet
Right? And the the the sort of the
the group that he'd left Madinah with. Right?
This kind of like scouting group.
But the point is is that this person
whose intention was enmity and hostility,
right, he had some type of interaction
with the prophet
and that interaction
completely
changed his mind about the prophet,
peace and blessings be upon him. And you
see that happen time and time again
where someone who
is not at all predisposed
to
accepting the prophet
who's who actually decided that it was their
opportunity to kind of rid Arabia of of
of this person and his presence that when
they meet the prophet
that they declare their on the spot.
I mean, this is not something that can
happen at the point of a sword.
It's just it's impossible.
And so this is why I really wanna
emphasize this point that we should really
read the Sira
with a view of accessing those stories of
personal transformation.
Alright?
Because
as the prophet himself recognized
that we don't know what is contained within
a person's heart.
Right?
And in an instant, Allah
can enact
change and transformation in that person's heart. You
know, we were having this debate the other
day in our Surah class
talking about
some of the sort of,
elites of Mecca, some of these the people
who are the last holdouts to be they
literally they become Muslim when the writing is
on the wall, so to speak.
And, you know, it's very tempting to sort
of question their motivation.
Was it because of this was it you
know, was was there some type of sort
of expediency for them at, you know, in
becoming Muslim at this point? Was it because
they recognize that sort of the the arc
of history was kind of bending in in
in the direction of the prophet
Like, what was their motivation? Right?
The people people like Abu Sufiyal Ibn Harib,
for example.
And, you know, and it and it's tempting
again to sort of account for this person's
conversion,
you know, from the standpoint of politics or
economics or whatever, you know, or just sort
of political pressure in these kinds of conversations.
But I don't think that we can diminish
and dismiss the role
the the role of
that sort of,
evocative.
Right? That
evocative
power
of the prophet's character
Because all this time, these very last holdouts,
the very last people to become Muslim,
they have had an opportunity all this time
to really observe the prophet
in the context of both war and peace.
And I think it's very valid to argue
that
at the end of the day,
that perhaps that there there was something about
the prophet's
patience
and his forbearance
and his willingness to really sort of accept
people for who they were
that motivated them to accept Islam. Right? And,
of course, Allah knows best in terms of
what is within,
people's hearts. Right? But I really wanted to
mention that point. I wanna come back to
it. Now the second point
is, I wanted to say something about gratitude
because, you know, Sheikh was listing,
you know, was listing these various characteristics
that
that these qualities that Allah
praises in the Quran is being beloved to
him.
And
and then also, Sheikh was making that contrast
between,
right, the the the ease of following some
of the
some of the outward aspects of the sunnah.
Right?
And the difficulty
that we have to sort of it it's
very difficult to kind of muster
the ability to deal with
those inner aspects. Right? So for example, we're
we're, you know, Sheikh said it's easy, for
example, to have those outer accoutrements. Right? But
when it comes to their that really hard
work
of, reforming the inner,
dealing with things like jealousy
and arrogance and envy
and
rancor and all these, you know, diseases of
the heart, that's very, very, very difficult
indeed.
And as he was speaking, I was thinking
about the role of shukr, of gratitude,
and how I really want us to
understand shukr, gratitude
as
a central,
principle
guiding the conduct
and the manners of the prophet
This like, for if you were to ask
me about, like, what is the single most
factor that just
really kind of endears me to the prophet
and reading,
his
and trying to understand something of the sunnah,
it's the fact that
he was able to muster
true and sincere thankfulness and gratitude in the
most difficult of circumstances.
And I you know, if Allah would just
kinda bless me with a fraction of that
ability,
I'd be happy for the for the rest
of my life.
Because
when we are able to sit down
and
ponder
the many
blessings of Allah
that if we really took the time to
sit down and think about the numerous
blessings that we enjoy,
that maybe we wouldn't have time to sort
of go in the direction of anger or
bitterness or
resentment or jealousy or or any of those
negatives.
So I really want us to think about
how the
prophet how he really
embodied
gratitude and and
the full richness
of being a human being that's totally immersed
in love and devotion
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. I mean, this
really is at the heart of this of
this.
So I'm so excited about,
this particular hadith collection content of character.
And, you know, let me just say this
as an aside, if I may,
that
okay.
So, you know, so there's this debate about
hadith itself. Right?
And I I wanted to mention this because
we have this conversation sometimes through our students
at the seminary. I know it within the
Islam program as well
about the role and the the relevance
of of hadith today.
And,
you know, I always for me, it's something
that I kind of I look at in
wonderment, and I also kinda shake my head
in sort of dismay
when I come across people who make these
arguments about
dispensing with the hadith. Right?
People make this I mean, these are people
even some of them consider themselves within
some aspect,
some, of of who who make this argument.
Right? That I either not explicitly identifying with
other groups and they make this argument.
And,
you know, I it's just it is such
a problematic
argument
theologically,
intellectually,
and I think ethically.
Because if we decide that we're going to
sort of sift through the hadith of the
prophet
and, we we retain those that we agree
with that accord with our our our postmodern
liberal sensibilities.
Right?
And then we decide we're gonna discard the
rest.
Right? What happened? And what are we doing
there? I mean, that in and of itself,
in my view, is an exercise really in
kind
of arrogance on the one hand and futility
on the other, because we're never going to
be able to to bring to bear any
objective sort of,
set of criteria in terms of which hadith
we're going to accept and implement and which
ones we're gonna discard.
And this event,
this opportunity to learn, to grow, to become
illuminated
by this glimpse into the prophetic sira, right,
it would be completely
impossible, right, to to enjoy this.
And, apparently, there's some notes being set in
my direction, so I might wanna put these
back on. Alright.
Ah, okay. Okay.
Okay.
How better. Okay. So,
you know, this type of event would be
completely impossible to benefit from if we had
this attitude towards the hadith.
Let me ask you this. Where do we
derive
any ethical framework from to begin with?
Right? It's from the sunnah of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi alaihi
sallam.
Yes. It's about, you know, how to dress
and how to eat and enter the masjid
with the right foot and and all these
things that we these mannerisms. Yes.
But what about the
belief system
and
the moral framework
underlying these practices? We get this from the
hadith as well.
So I am just very grateful
to Sheikh and the the celebrate Mercy team
for
reviving
this celebration of the hadith. That's very, very
important to me, especially as an instructor, so
I wanted to mention that. So, I've been
given a couple warnings. The first one I
ignored because I wasn't wearing my that's probably
why I took the glasses off so I
wouldn't see the, yeah, the the notice. But
so those were a couple, reflections on on
your beautiful presentation.
So
So I believe
oh, you want me to hold the mic?
Is this better? Yeah. Okay. That's good. Yeah.
No.
Yeah.
So we're about to begin actually reading from
the Hadith of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And it's important to remember
that
when you're sitting in a majlis of Hadith,
you are listening to the words of the
prophet
and he does not speak from Caprice.
And
of all of the sciences,
all of the
of Islam,
The one
that was afforded
perhaps
the greatest degree of
ceremony.
After the after the recitation of Quran
was the study of the hadith of the
prophet
It's recorded
that people would come to the home
of the great scholar, Manek Iben Anis.
And if someone asked him a question about
a matter, you know, a question
of
he would just give them the answer. Is
this halal? Is this haram? He would just
say, yes, no. Usually, he would say, did
this happen yet? If it didn't happen, then,
I'm not going to give you a hypothetical.
You know, answers like that but very casually,
he would address the questioner
but if someone asked him about a hadith
of the prophet
he would say, hold on.
Invite them in.
Go Istahama.
Take a full
purificatory
bath.
Put on new clothes
or clean clothes.
Apply perfume.
Burn bukhoor.
Tell the person, sit down.
Look at them and say, now.
We are ready to narrate
the Hadith of the prophet So
I shouldn't have showed up today in a
tuxedo,
but I didn't. That's the most ceremonial dress
in my culture.
I would have worn a tuxedo and really
I should've. I may do that next time.
If we're doing hadith, I'm wearing a tux.
Black tie,
double breast, and 6 on 2.
Now we are ready to narrate the hadith
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And
when people
commenting
on the majalis of Hadith
of old,
they said they were remarkably
similar
to how the companions of the prophet
would sit in his presence.
They would sit leaning toward him
gravely,
serious,
and almost
like statuesque
in their stillness.
Like to your,
like birds were perched on their heads.
Leaning in and listening.
And this is how people
responded
to the majesty
that was contained in the words of the
prophet
And even though we're removed
by some generations,
we have access
to those words via senate,
and we should be thankful for that.
We should be grateful for that, as my
colleague, Usana Zaynab was saying.
So,
you gonna read the hadith?
Okay.
Abdullah ibn Salam said,
when the
messenger
of
god
arrived in Medina,
the people rushed to gather
and I was among the people who first
arrived to see him.
When I first saw his face,
I knew that this could not be the
face of a liar.
The first words that I heard the messenger
of god
say, were,
oh people,
spread peace.
Feed one another.
Maintain
family ties.
And pray at night
while others are asleep.
You will then enter paradise
in peace.
The first thing
that I want you to focus on
with regard to this hadith of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
is that Abdullah ibn Salam
one of the Jewish rabbis of Medina
sees the face of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam,
and immediately
he knows
this is not the face of a liar.
I want you to think about that. What
is that?
This is not based on something the prophet
said, salallahu alaihi wasallam.
This was based on his awe inspiring
presence.
And this is something that we've, you know,
my teacher, my mentor,
you know, doctor Sherman Jackson,
he says
and I'm going to translate it so it'll
be an actual English that we can understand.
He says that we live
in a cult
of post enlightenment
genius,
where we think that everything that affects us
can be worked out in the mind.
But the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam does not simply speak to your
mind,
it also speaks to your heart.
And this is one of the reasons why
we say sunnah and not talim.
We don't say the teachings
of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Because
even though, masha'allah, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam,
he's the he's the most,
he's the most intelligent of people.
His teachings don't simply
educate,
they inspire.
Can I tell you guys like a story
that was told to me?
Talk about inspiration from the sunnah,
and it's about to get real. This is
real stuff. This is like Islam in real
life.
There was a brother
and he married
a woman
that had children.
And he was really having a difficult time
adjusting to being a stepfather.
It was
a mixture
of 2 things that really grated against him.
1,
the children
were a reminder of an amorous connection she
had with another man.
When he saw those children, he was reminded
that she had a lover before him.
And he was now entering the lives of
those children
as a role model and a provider,
in spite of the fact that they were
not his children.
And for those of you that don't live
in blended families,
you probably don't realize that
it does require
a very serious
a very serious adjustment
to get used to. I know because my
wife,
you know, Hafidullah, may Allah bless her and
preserve her. One of the most intelligent women
in the world. And if you see her,
make sure you say I said that.
Right?
She's a step parent, you know.
My and I'm not trying to make the
mood somber, just giving you some context.
My first marriage ended because my wife passed
away in Egypt,
And she's buried there in
and I was
alone for maybe 3 years
and then
Allah bless me to remarry.
But the woman I married,
she didn't have any children, but I had
a daughter from my first marriage.
And blended families are tough, man. It's a
real
it requires some very serious
commitment
to being honest, being open, and dealing with
our feelings and our
in a very real way. So this brother,
he was having difficulty
with being a stepfather,
and he said that whenever he heard the
children call his name,
it just
just, you know, they were saying, you know,
I want some oatmeal.
Cook us something. We're hungry. It's like, look,
I'm not your well, I kinda am your
I'm not your father, but I'm I'm, you
know, it's like, look, you're not mine. Well,
you are mine. And so,
my teacher
was reading the tafsir of Ibn Kathir.
And no, he was reading the sira of
Ibn Kathir.
And he came
to
a part of the sira
where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
was speaking to Salama
after the martyrdom of Abu Salama at Uhud.
And
he said to Salama, you know,
Allah can give you even better than Abu
Salama.
And she said, what?
Who could ever be better than Abu Salama?
And the prophet
said, well, you know I am a prophet.
Really? And I'm not making you guys think
I'm, like, putting like a like
hip hop translation. No. No. This is well,
you know I am a prophet.
And she said, wait wait.
Are you suggesting that maybe we could be
an item? Maybe that we could be married
and the prophet
said, yes, this is actually my
this is what I'm saying
and this is this just blew me away.
She said, no, absolutely
not. That I cannot be married to you.
Now, pause.
Pause.
This is what differentiates
the prophet
from every megalomaniacal
cult leader.
This is a woman
that believes that this man receives revelation
from the lord of the heavens and the
earth,
and she feels completely
empowered
in his presence to say, you are good
enough to be god's messenger, but I don't
want you as my husband.
And she knows that he will not use
his power coercively
or irresponsibly.
He says,
what every man who was initially rejected by
a woman says,
why not?
What's wrong with me?
Why not? I said, this is my messenger,
Alaihi Wasallam.
Why not?
He didn't say, Allah will not accept your
duet.
How dare you reject me? I have angels
that back me up.
How can you, I'm good enough. I'm the
Amin of the one in heaven. How can
you, how can you, how can you reject
my proposal? And why not? She said, there
are three reasons I can't be married to
you.
1,
you're married to other women
and I'm a very jealous woman.
2,
I'm of age, meaning I'm not young. If
you're looking for someone young and impressionable
that can be molded very easily, that's not
me.
I'm mature
and I'm older.
And 3, I have children
that I'm caring for.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said,
as for your jealousy,
Allah will deal with that. Brothers, don't try
this. You never know.
See, I you got you always have to
give that caveat.
This is the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
You can't do this.
I could see some brother's face sliding, oh,
that's what I'm supposed to say.
No.
That's the caveat. Don't try this at home.
The first part. He said, as for your
jealousy, Allah will deal with that.
As for the fact that you're mature,
I appreciate your maturity.
And I too am mature.
I'm not
young. And as for the fact that you
have children,
they will be like my children.
I will treat them like my babies.
My teacher said, he picked up the phone.
He called his brother. He listened to this.
Just listen to this from the seal of
the prophet alaihis salaam.
He said, as soon as the brother heard
the Hadith, he started weeping.
And he said, I feel like the weight
of the world has been lifted off of
my shoulders.
I've
talked to counselors.
People that and I'm not disparaging
counseling, but he said, I've talked to counselors.
People have attempted to offer me self help
books,
This, that. But knowing that the prophet
could embrace the role of being a stepfather,
I know now that I can do it
and there is no loss of face.
There is nothing diminished in my masculinity.
Nothing diminished in me as a person in
embracing a woman that has children. This is
the inspiration
that comes from the sunnah of the prophet,
alaihis salaam.
He didn't say anything to him rationally
that made him change. It was just that
Muhammad, alaihis salam, he did this so I
can do it.
So the fact that Abdullah ibn Salam
he sees the prophet
and he is inspired by his presence. This
is what we want.
We want to be inspired by looking at
the prophet
So don't just open your mind
as you read his Hadid,
Similarly, open your heart.
Be inspired.
Be inspired by the seal of the prophet
Then he says, the first words I heard
him say,
afshus Salam,
spread peace.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
he begins with salaam
and he ends with salaam.
The first instruction,
the first
wasiah
or wasiah from this wasiah.
Spread peace.
Now the obvious meaning of this
is to actually say, assalamu alaikum.
And the prophet alaihis salaam in another hadith
actually said, one of the signs of the
end of time
And the response
to some people just like blurred out some
grumbling
combination of syllables.
What was that?
And it's amazing the way that salaam not
only can it break ice,
salaam can melt ice. I'll tell you a
story. You know, when I lived in Egypt,
there was
a but like a a doorman.
He lived in a utility.
He lived in the utility of our building
and we'd be going in and out of
the Masjid.
What?
These are the words of the prophet. 10
minutes.
So I don't know why he'll be having
this.
10 minutes?
You know, they when they flash these things
while you're speaking, it's never to say you're
doing great or like
good going. It's never I've never seen this
way flash them and says, great going. It's
always like,
5 minutes.
I'm gonna get one because I'm a
speaker. I'm gonna get one for just the
speakers and put a big thumb on it,
thumbs up like,
just to change the flow.
I was in Egypt
and he was the and
in retrospect,
I realized that we would go in and
out of the building all the time going
to the masjid coming back, going to the
masjid coming back.
And I just don't think we were sensitive
enough
thinking about his condition and the condition of
his family.
A doorman. A doorman. But he was living
like in a like a a utility, like
a like almost like a closet with his
entire family.
And people would go in and come out,
go in and go come out.
And I think that this is such a
known and acceptable part of Egyptian life
that, you know, people really didn't think too
much of it. Like, all this entire family,
he and his wife,
Umrabi,
they had maybe 5 5 children.
And the size of the place they live
was maybe from here
to maybe that wall in length and maybe
not even the size of this side of
the masjid. It's much smaller than that.
And I think that for him,
us being students of the deen,
never really asking what we can do for
you.
Is there a way that we can help
you? But going in and out of the
mess straight and coming, I think he regarded
this with like some hypocrisy like the nerve
of you people. So whenever we would
say to him, he would always respond
I had never heard that before. He just
and always purposely
dismissive. Assalamu alaikum.
You know, almost like, man, get out of
here.
Whatever, man.
And I still remember
my young and I and then I thought
to myself stuck for the last thought, well,
maybe he just, you know, doesn't know how
to kind of issue the salaam with all
of the grammatical.
He just says salaam but I can't. I
don't know.
But I have my young daughter with me
and she walked out of the alley and
she's learning salaam and she says, salaam alaikum.
And he looked at her and said, and
I said,
And
I just it just made me think, what
a beautiful
greeting. But if you really don't intend salaam
for that person,
like I'm saying salaam alaikum, but am I
looking into your condition to see to it
that you have some salaam,
that you have sufficient food,
that you're well,
that you're okay,
to see if I can do something for
you, then my salaam is going to ring
a little bit hollow.
And when the salaam is connected with a
real desire for a person to have salaam,
then not only does it break ice, it
can melt ice.
And this is why he returned my daughter
salaam.
If you're not like them,
all of these
going and coming and you're not.
It really made me think about what we
have to convey when we give salaam. So,
that's the first thing.
The second meaning that we can also
benefit from as a community in terms of
We
should become peacemakers
in any setting in which we are active.
1st and foremost, in our families,
we have to become people that make peace,
people that spread peace. We have an entire
media
dedicated to spreading strife,
dedicated to spreading division
dedicated to spreading controversy.
We have to
offer something countervailing
and that we want to be people that
spread peace.
We want to be people that spread togetherness,
people that spread unity.
I find it quite compelling
that the prophet
in saying,
when it was permissible for a Muslim not
to tell the truth,
he said, there are only 3 occasions
in which it is okay
for a Muslim not to tell the truth.
The first of them is in military conflict.
Right? Just because we're Muslim, we don't say,
hey, ready your reinforcements. We're attacking at 3
o'clock. No. We don't understand. We don't do
that.
The second
is that it is okay for a spouse
to to tell a
fib, we used to call them but a
a lie to the spouse in order to
protect their feelings.
So, that if the wife ask
put a thumb on his picture.
If the wife ask,
tell me the truth.
Do you enjoy my cooking more than your
mother's?
The husband can say, ever since I married
you, I don't even think about my mother's
cooking.
You say that. If the if
the husband ask, babe, I got an interview
today.
You know, I'm wearing my favorite, you know,
lime green suit.
I look good in this. Right?
Oh, maybe you're gonna knock it. You look
good. You look hamdulillah.
If you know he's actually dedicated to wearing
the suit. If you can change his mind,
change his mind.
I don't know if lime green is that's
a little loud for the first interview. I
I wouldn't go with that. But if you
know this is his thing and he wants
to, you look great,
Or he says, you know, I've been working
out. Am I getting any results?
I'm seeing, I see,
I see something. I'm not no. I see
something.
No. I see some results.
Even though she's thinking, I don't see anything.
What are you doing at the gym? Are
you spending all of your time at the
smoothie bar?
Are you actually working out? But you know,
no, I see, oh, I see no.
Babe, I see some, okay,
this is permissible. And the last thing
is when making peace between people.
Zaid can say to Amar
or I can say to Amar, you know,
I just talked to Zaid.
He was telling me how much he misses
you.
He was telling me how he wishes that
you would call him. He was telling me
that, you know, the time that you all
spent together, this was some of the best
time of his life
and he regrets the fact that you guys
aren't on good terms
and then I could go to, I'm gonna
say, I was just talking to Zayd.
He was telling me that he misses you.
He was telling me how much he loves
you. He was telling me, he wishes you
would call him.
And when the 2 see each other, they're
gonna say, you know,
Ubay told me what you said.
What? Man, I didn't say anything like that.
I would never say something like that about
you.
It was funny because Ubay told me that
you said some nice things about me.
Oh, and they will notice
you're trying to get them to reconcile.
You're trying to bring their hearts back together.
And if somebody from the outside
is that concerned with our being at peace,
we almost owe it to that person
to actually
return to to incline toward each other. This
is permissible.
This is the value that Islam places on
spreading peace
that even so, it's so much
of an emphasized value in our tradition that
we can even say something that's not true
to bring people back together.
Right?
The next thing the prophet was
and feed people.
Feeding people
is also a means to spreading peace.
Right? This is
truly, I have been given the most comprehensive
speech
because I'm telling you, I've been in the
Muslim community. I've been Muslim now
for almost
20 years. Which,
you know, if you didn't, I was saying
my normal joke, that means I converted when
I was 2.
But you heard me say 16. So, you
know that I'm going on 36 this year.
If you can do mine.
So, I've been Muslim almost
20 years and in that time, I can
honestly say that I have seen nothing
relieve tension
and put to rest animosity
like a good chicken biryani.
Good.
People are sitting and they're eating good barbecue.
You know, man, I heard about what you
said about me.
But this chicken,
it makes it all okay.
I really appreciate you inviting me, man.
This is a means of spreading peace, but
also
sharing food
is a means of demonstrating
practical concern about people.
And this is something that religious people don't
always do. Sometimes, we wanna prosolatize.
We wanna get out. Whatever our movement is,
we wanna call people to that.
We want people to become Muslim but in
terms of really caring about giving them something
that is benefiting them practically, we could care
less.
I know people and I've seen this. I'm
not saying this to shame our community. I'm
saying this to spur us into action.
I've seen people
going down to homeless shelters,
not
to give people clothing,
to offer them
mental health
services,
or to give them food,
but just to give them pamphlets.
He'll take this and if somebody
takes the Shahada, they just leave.
No concern about the fact that you're homeless.
No concern about the fact that you're hungry
but
I have moved one step closer to being
relieved of my own doubt about Islam
because somebody accepted it and this is what
I wanted from you. I've instrumentalized
your Shahada to help me get rid of
my sheikh.
But I really don't care about you.
This is not the model of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
I don't look at you as just another
number
that adds to our ranks.
You're a human being about whom I I'm
concerned whether you accept Islam or not. Now,
the Islam,
this is my responsibility to tell you about
this man, Muhammad Alaihi Wasallam and I have
to do that
but in terms of me wanting to help
you,
it's not contingent on your accepting Islam.
I wanna help you because you're my brother
in humanity. You're my sister in humanity. This
is why I'm helping you.
Telling you about Islam, this is just my
responsibility.
So, feed people. We'll stop there inshallah because
I can tell Talik is getting, he's very
he's very nervous.
Talik is he he's very he's very uncomfortable
right now.
We'll stop inshallah. I I can feel the
cousin.
We'll stop
and we'll go to
and we'll resume with this Hadith.
She can finish it up or we can
resume with this Hadith tomorrow inshallah.
Alright, miss.
So I believe it's time for, q q
and a. Is that what we're gonna do
right now?
Is that
okay.
Okay.
Okay. So
the I mean, Sheikh Jarrah Beddah law covered
this hadith really, comprehensively, and it's true. There's
there is the line, because I've got in
my notes here about, you know, connecting family
ties. So that that is part of a
hadith. But I wanted to actually say a
couple things about,
about the narrator. Right?
Because this hadith
that comes to us from Abdullah bin Salam
just to give us a little background. Is
that okay? So, so his given name was
actually Al Hussein ibn Salam, and,
he was, a rabbi from Bani Reinuqar,
which was one of the 3,
main,
Jewish tribes in Medina.
And
he'd actually been studying the,
studying the Torah, looking for sort of signs
of the the coming prophet and messenger. So
and, this is one of the most,
fascinating companions, you know, just just in terms
of his his his his his background. Right?
And, so this is someone who is, again,
avidly
studying his own scripture
in anticipation of this coming prophet and messenger.
And,
there are several hadith where he's actually kind
of describing this encounter, right, with the prophet.
You know, in one of the hadith, he
actually says that,
you know, he was kind of out because
he would he would tend to his orchards.
He had, I think, date palms and this
type of thing. Right? So,
he was actually tending to his his orchard
when he,
heard that the prophet had arrived I think
maybe in. And,
he actually
the this hadith to me is kind of
interesting because it seems to suggest that that
Abdullah ibn Salam had actually decided to become
Muslim even prior to meeting the prophet
because when he heard of the prophet's arrival,
right, peace and blessings be upon him, he
exclaimed to his aunt
that, that someone is here, and he said
and he says I think I think Hari
says he says Allahu Akbar, and he proclaims
his Shahada. His aunt's like, what what's wrong
with you? And, Abdullah ibn Salam says, well,
this the person who's here is a brother
of Moses. This is a brother of Musa
who's arrived. It's a fascinating story.
So, so Abdullah ibn Salam actually goes to
meet the prophet
and this is where he receives he he
hears the hadith that that Sheikh narrated.
And this hadith
comes to us in a few different collections.
I found it in ibn Majah in Turmavi.
And,
but there's
also, apparently, there's also a version of this
in Bukhari because what's so interesting is that,
in one particular version, in the first half
of the the first half of the hadith,
Abdullah ibn Salam actually goes to the prophet
and poses 3 questions, very kind of esoteric
questions.
And, I'll defer to Sheikh Abd, for the
commentary because they're very esoteric questions.
And he says that only
only a prophet, only a messenger would know
the answer to these three questions. So he
asks the messenger
and the the prophet answers all three questions
correctly. Right? And,
and then the prophet says to to to
Abdul Salam, what is your name? He says
al Hussein. He says your name is now
Abdullah, so he kinda gives him this name.
Right? And then,
and then the second part of the hadith
is,
Abdullah bin Salam
goes back and he tells, you know, his
his family that, you know, that that, again,
there's absolutely no way that someone like this
person could like, again, this is not the
countenance. This is not the face of someone
who lies. Right? And then this is when
he he quotes
So it's a it's a fascinating hadith, and
I just kinda wanted to give give you
all that that background. Right? That he's just
he's just taken on an intellectual level and,
spiritually,
he's just really taken with the prophet
And and, also, one more thing about Abdullah
ibn Salam, which I thought was so interesting.
He narrates some some fasting, a hadith, and
the and another one he narrates is the
hadith of,
Right?
There's this hadith,
where where Abdullah bin Salam is asking the
prophet
can you give me more detail about that
hour
or that time
on,
right, on Friday where one's dua is answered.
So just wanted to give you all that
background. So I'm looking forward to to the
continuation of of our discussion tomorrow.
So we'll take, in these last 15 minutes
here
sorry, Ahmed.
We'll take a a question from the brothers
and from the sisters. We'll alternate for the
next 15 minutes, before we pray.
So we'll start on the sister side since
there's well, at least in the beginning, there
were a lot more sisters. I think the
brothers came late.
But do we As is custom.
Do we have a question on the sister
side
on any of the topics that we've addressed?
Anything that came to mind?
Okay. That was easy. Somebody.
Nothing now. Okay. We'll come back to the
sisters. How about on the brother's side?
Anything.
Yes. There's a question there. Yes.
We'll repeat the question on the mic too.
So go ahead.
So the question was, what sparked your interest
in Islam initially?
You know, there's so many,
you know, my
my wife jokes that
every time I tell the
story,
I tell a different version of the story.
And I say that, you know, all of
the riwayat are sahihah.
All of them are authentic.
It's just that there was the confluence of
so many different things going on.
I think I was,
yeah, it's just it's it's it's it's a
complex story. You know, I'm from Chicago,
which,
is still the headquarters of the nation of
Islam.
So I was
very familiar with Muslims
in terms of, you know, people that said
they were Muslim and they wore bow ties
and they sold bean pies and they sold
papers
and,
they were strong advocates for black people. So
I benefited
from this historical
relationship between
this proto Islamic movement, is how I like
to refer to it,
and,
the African American kind of historical,
narrative so that I could look upon Islam
and see it as something that was mine.
I did not feel that I was
culturally
apostating. Like, I have to stop being black
in order to be Muslim. That is kind
of the kind of the larger context. And
then inside that context,
I think it was the autobiography of Malcolm
X.
It was, once I was in Saturday detention.
I'm not gonna tell you why I was
there. Again, this class is about transformation. Try
to be transformation. I think transformation.
You know, I was a kid. I used
to like to I was I like to
fight. When I was a kid, I used
to fight a lot.
I just I was man, if if if
you said something about me, I would fight.
I was a person I like to fight.
So I was in Saturday detention presumably for
fighting.
And
I was sitting there, like, purposely looking bored.
Like, I have my proctor. His name was
mister DeVries.
I, you know, I pray for mister DeVries
now, actually. He and I was just trying
to look bored, you know, just
you know, children trying to just, like, look
like like clearly they're demonstrating their boredom, you
know. And he came to me and he
gave me a world civilizations book. It wasn't
a course that I was taking. But he
said, just just busy yourself with something. Read
this.
And as Allah
would have it,
I opened the book
to the chapter on the Ottoman Empire.
I just started reading, you know,
looking at it.
And
there was a small inset
on Ottoman religious life and so they had
to talk about Islam.
And the caption on the top of that
page was, there is no god but god.
And even though
I knew something about Islam,
I was familiar with Malcolm X, the movie,
the book. There was something about that that,
like, got my attention. The statement seemed so
counterintuitive
like there is no god but god. Now
if it was translated, there's no god but
Allah, I don't think it would have sparked
my interest in the same way. But because
they said there is no god but god
said, what? No god? What what? And I
started reading
and they had a very short paragraph about
Tawhid.
Muslims believe in a God that is 1.
A God that is indivisible,
absolutely incomparable,
unique.
He he has no children,
no consort.
And I remember thinking to myself,
man, that sounds so
it was like
the simple beauty of truth.
I read it and said, man, that sounds
good to me. That's how I I remember
my feeling about that. Now these are non
Muslim writers presumably, just writing almost in an
encyclopedic
way about Islam. But when I read that,
I said, man, it feels good.
Indivisible,
incomparable,
no children, no consort,
unique,
Transcendent
but imminent.
Man, that sounds good to me. So I
wanted to learn more about Islam.
And so I started, you know, researching
and became Muslim.
Became Muslim but in this and and if
my wife is here, she say, that's not
what you said last time.
There's other parts of the story too.
Yeah. Well, then, so I had a had
a had a Nigerian
classmate
named Siraj.
And
Siraj had this peculiar
like habit
of not eating lunch for some weeks throughout
the year. You know, he'd come to the
lunch table but he wouldn't eat. He would
just sit there and he was actually a
portly kinda kid. So we would make fun
of him. You know, why why don't you
we know you eat sometime.
Look at you. You can't fool us by
not eating lunch. We used to pick on
him.
But when I was reading about Islam, I
read about Ramadan and something said to me,
maybe Siraj is not eating lunch
because he's fasting
for this, you know, I didn't say Ramadan
but Ramadan or something.
So, I went to him and I said,
Siraj,
are you
Muslim?
He's like, now,
in addition to fighting,
I was the man with the jokes.
I'm talking about if you came to school
and you had anything in your outfit that
wasn't right, I was lighting you up.
I was that kid waiting for you at
the door.
What are those? Now I'm going, I was
that kid.
So when I first asked him, Suraj,
are you are you Muslim? He was apprehensive.
Like, is this a set up for a
joke?
He said, yeah. Why? I said, because I
know you don't eat sometimes. Are you fasting
for, like, Ramadan?
He's like, yeah.
How did you know that? I said, well,
I've been reading encyclopedia.
Another thing the kids don't know what, like,
what is that?
We used to have these things called encyclopedias
that you would keep in your home.
I gotta tell you about it sometime.
So
I said, can you tell me something about
Islam?
And he said, and this is why we
have to teach our children because they also
can be du'a.
He said, I really don't know a lot
about Islam. It's just something my dad tells
me to do.
I said, because I was
my son, I was pressing. I said, well,
can you introduce me to your father? Because
I want someone to tell me something about
about, Islam.
And he said, okay. Well, come come by
the house maybe
after school.
So I went by his house. His father,
his name was
Hakim. He just passed away, you know, Allah.
And
his father, very gentle man. The first thing
he asked me,
what does your mother think about this? You
know, you're learning about I said, no, my
mother my mother is a chemist by trade.
My mother is very open minded person, a
crackling smart woman.
My mother's very intelligent and she just she
encouraged us to read all sorts of things.
Right?
And so I said, my mother, she's, you
know, she's open. She just likes me to
explore, to read. She would have no reservation
about you telling me about Islam.
So he talked to me for about
10 minutes and I was literally, this is
not figurative, leaping out of my seat. Every
time he says something about the prophet
or Allah, I was like, that's true. That's
true. That's true. That that is true. That
is true. That is true. And I said,
I wanna I wanna I wanna
become a Muslim. I wanna convert to this
religion right now. 16 years old. He said,
you sure? And so he he gave me
my shahada right there in his kitchen.
And when I converted, he gave me 2
things.
He gave me a a kulfi, a topi,
and a miswack.
And I thought that these were like the
sacred relics of Islam.
And I would carry them with me everywhere
I went.
No matter what I the kufi, I would
just have it in my pocket.
And I would sometimes see people that I
thought were, like, Muslim looking,
and I would say, you know, I too
am a Muslim.
But I don't know anything, you know. And
they would say, you are? I will pull
out the toffee. How do I get this?
Clearly, I'm Muslim. And they'd be like, really?
Then I will pull out the miss wagon.
You think anybody just walks around with a
stick in their pocket?
Yes. I'm Muslim.
And it was actually one of those people
that I met that told me about the
Jumah that I told you guys about that
I attended. They said, they have Jumah at
this place called the AIA, and you should
go down there and check it out. And
that's kind of like how I became Muslim.
So the the question just for those watching
online was, what is the first resource to
give new Muslims to learn or first thing
they should do when they the the when
they first become Muslim on on learning about
Islam, especially if they may be
hesitant to go to the Masjid or frightened
to go to a Masjid?
You wanna take that?
No, please.
You know, I think that to answer your
question, sister, I think it I I would
kind of take it, you know, on a
on a case by case basis because, I
mean, I have encountered people who have that
sort of,
reluctance, that anxiety, whatever,
whatever it is, to actually
go to the the Masjid. But what I
what I would say is that if they
are
hesitant to go to the Masjid, at the
very least, that they need to act they
need to befriend. Right? I don't again, I
don't know what the details of of the
of of this case are, but they need
to befriend someone who is a Muslim simply
because
there are certain pitfalls, I think, associated with
gleaning all of our Islam, say, from a
book or in in in in in the
case of today, the Internet, it's very hard
to separate the wheat from the chaff,
right, if we're online.
And,
again, back to the the back to the
point that
was making and that I also that I
said earlier that
how are people transformed. Right? They were transformed
by having
that direct interaction with the prophet
or
sitting with one of the companions. Right? So
that this so this idea of faith and,
faith and companionship,
friendship,
this is very, very important. So I would
just say that person should take baby steps.
And
part of that should be, again, befriending and
keeping company with somebody who is,
a little bit longer and and and stronger
in their faith.
Just just practically speaking in terms of learning
how to pray and how to make and
and these kinds of things.
And, and, also, I would I would actually
like to sort of if it were if
if I were in your shoes, I would
want to kind of get to the bottom
of where is this anxiety coming from.
The masjid is,
you know, it's it's it's not anything to
be afraid of. I think sometimes people
sometimes I think because, people are concerned they
don't have the right etiquette or or AdDeb
or this type of thing or they don't
know the protocol they got. You know? And,
I think it's really, really important to con
to con to convey to that person,
that
you're gonna find many different people in the
Masjid along sort of a spectrum of of
practice of Islam. You're going to maybe come
to the Masjid and find people who are
new in their own journey of learning. So
there should be nothing to to fear in
that in that regard. But, again, for for
me, I would say it's very important to
have consistent,
companionship and association with somebody who can teach
them, right, the ways of the of of
of this new faith. That's very, very, very
important.
And also and also, I would I just
wanna,
add to that by saying and also for
us,
Suhba, we cannot underestimate the importance
or the value of of of
keeping company with good people.
You know, sometimes,
you know, people, they come to me and
they say, you know, obeyed, your
faith seems to have persisted,
over the years.
You know, what do you do when you're
really at a low point? Because we know
the prophet
faith, it goes up and it goes down.
And I said, you know, actually, ma'am,
it's not
reading the most have always
reconnects me. It always nourishes me.
But it's not simply that
and it's not, you know, studying, you know,
studying,
studying Akida, studying creed.
Sometimes, it's simply reflecting on the fact
that the best human beings I know
are Muslims.
The best human beings I know, the best
women and men I know
are Muslims.
And sometimes
that is enough to fortify my faith. I
think about them and I say, you know
what?
I'm having a a moment right now, but
if those people became
like they are
because of following the sun of the prophet
there must be good in that.
There must be good in that.
So it's not just for even new Muslims,
it's for all of us to be sure
that we keep company with people that inspire
us. You know, the prophet said,
when it comes
to the affairs of the dunya,
look to people that have less than you.
But when it comes to the affairs of
the,
look to people that have been given more
than you. And it's amazing that I think
we've inverted that.
We spend our time watching reality TV.
And in spite of the fact that this
is a reality show,
nobody's working.
Nobody's work the reality consists of being filmed
and attending parties.
I'm thinking whose reality is that?
This is reality TV. Nobody goes to work.
It's just people being filmed walking around,
and we long for their lives.
Look at what they have.
Look at how glamorous they look. All of
these filters to which you see the people.
Right? We spend our time hanging out with
these people, and then we look at our
own lives as being
unsatisfactory,
uninspiring.
Oh, man.
Then when it comes to the
we look at the least common denominator.
Well, at least I'm not beating my wife.
What?
Lisa, you know, Lisa, I try to pray
3 prayers a day. At least I make
3.
You know? At least I'm not on drugs.
It's like, I know.
Invert that. When it comes to the dunya,
look to people that have less than you
so that you can say, thank god
for all that I have been given.
Look at all of the blessing I enjoy
that I'm not grateful for.
And when it comes to
look at those
look at those men and women that are
friends of god and say, man, how could
I ever that are friends of god and
say, man, how could I ever aspire to
be like them? This is what we have
to do. This is important for all of
us. And Allah knows best. Allah knows
best.
I guess we'll take one more from the
brothers, Inshallah.
Yes. I think well, I know your your
your your target's younger brother. Should we still
give him the privilege?
People might think it's nepotism. This won't count.
It's a quick quick question. People might think,
oh, it's it's nepotism. No. It's okay. Let
me show that. Your mom will become Muslim.
Yes. Actually, you know, it's actually my,
he said that my mom become Muslim. You
know, what's interesting
is that
my my sister is 3 years younger than
me. So she was 13 when I became
Muslim.
And,
she came to me and she said,
hey, Will, which is my given name? My
given name is Will.
If you call me by that name, I'll
think either you went to grade school with
me or you're in my family. So be
prepared for a hug if you call me
Will. And I'm I'm gonna fake it to
Will. What's that? It's been so long since
I see there's only certain people calling me
Will. And so my sister said,
Will,
people are saying that you became Muslim.
And I said, my sister's name is Portia.
I said, yeah, this is true.
She said, well, I can't let you do
it without me.
And my sister became a Muslim just like
that.
We gotta do this together. You know what
I'm saying? You know, 2 peas in a
pod. You know what it is? We gotta
do this together. So my sister became Muslim.
My grandmother,
masha'Allah, she became Muslim.
My grandfather became Muslim, Alhamdulillah.
3 of my best friends, they became Muslim.
My mother
has a very interesting relationship with Islam.
I wanna say that it's unique.
In a one conversation, you hear hallelujahs, Masha'Allah's,
you
know, praise the Lord,
Inshallah. It's very unique but but she did
take her Shahadah,
and I pray that, Allah helps all of,
my friends and family and me especially to
deepen, our faith, inshallah, our commitment, inshallah.
Yes. One more question.
Yes.
So I I think the question was,
if you grew up in a Muslim family,
and then you're here in America and you're
seeing so many different ways of life, so
many
different beliefs, and sometimes it weakens your iman.
How do you deal with that and strengthen
it in your belief and your practice?
You know, funny story. And I've told this
story many times. At this point, if I
was telling the story, my wife will roll
her eyes at me again.
But I was in Cairo,
that's where I did my training.
And I walked into this barbershop.
And I was watching the barber to see
if I wanted him to cut my hair.
Now I know you're thinking,
the degree of difficulty on my haircut is
very low.
And you would be right in assuming that.
But I'm still very particular about the way
it's done.
It's just a holdover from the days of
my youth.
I was like, no. No. You you can't
cut my hair. You're not good enough. First,
like, it's really nothing to do.
No. No. No. No. I don't know. I
don't like the way you do it. I
don't like the way I like the way
you hold the razor. No. No. You can't
cut my hair. So I'm watching this barber
and I'm watching how he, you know, performs
the haircut.
And I noticed that he's good.
So then the trick became okay. How do
I try to trick him that I'm from
Saeed Masr?
That I'm from Southern Egypt.
Because if he knows that I'm American, the
price of the haircut would double.
So I try my best, some
daddy
but
at some point,
It just comes out. It's just certain things.
It just comes out that you speak classical
Arabic.
So he stopped and said, intermittent fame.
Where are you from? And I was thinking,
oh, no.
He knows that I'm not Egyptian. You know
what I'm saying? I tried my best
to kinda affect an Egyptian, you know,
accent, but it didn't work. So at this
point, knowing that my cover was blown, I
just said to him,
come in.
Guess.
Now we're speaking for
come in, you guess.
He said, oh, I know where you're from.
I said, you do? I said, yep.
Senegal.
I don't
know. I said, I'm not from Senegal.
I said, I'm from somewhere West of Senegal.
He said,
there's something West of Senegal?
Mafish
Mafish Haggard, you know, there's nothing West of
Senegal.
And I said, no. There's something west of
synagogue. He said, where are you from? I
said, America.
He said, America Chikabig.
A true story.
And he said, if you're from America,
I have one question for you.
And I'm thinking he's going to ask me
about,
you know, Israel and Palestine
or American foreign policy.
The war in
the war in Iraq. I said, what's that?
He said, Obama.
Muslim
Muslim or not.
And I said, Obama?
He's not Muslim.
He's not Muslim.
By his own testimony, he's a Christian. He
said, well, I can it's more Usain.
But his name is Usain.
Mafish Masih E B Islam Hussein.
There's no such thing as a Christian with
the name Hussein.
And I said,
he came from a musk his father
came from a Muslim family in Kenya.
But after some time at university, at Jamia,
influenced by the ideals of radical socialism,
he eventually became a communist.
And after that, he became an atheist,
his father, Obama's father.
And when I said he said,
what is a?
This man had never, this was just a
a man in the street in Cairo. He
had never heard the term atheist before in
his life. Atheist, what is that?
What is?
And I explained to him what an atheist
was.
And he looked at me like,
you mean to tell me there are actually
people like that?
I said, yes.
He could not believe it. Now, what I
found
deep is that he didn't say anything about
their salvation or he said,
so what do they do when a baby
is born?
How do they get married?
What holidays do they celebrate?
He cannot imagine life
without the social cohesion and community
given to life by religious community. He cannot
imagine life without that. He's Egyptian.
He cannot imagine life without that. And when
I explained to him, atheism was
prevalent in Western Europe, beginning to spread in
America, even spreading in the air world a
little bit. He said, no. No. Not not
in the air world. No. No. No. He's
in denial. Right? No. No. This is not
true.
But then he thought about it.
And he said, he
said, praise be to my lord. He is
the best of creators.
And I said, what makes you say that?
He said, my lord must be on vain
if he can create and sustain people who
don't even believe in him.
And I said to myself,
that's beautiful.
This is someone he didn't do any implicit
bias training at Harvard.
He didn't take sensitivity courses.
This is just a man with a Quranic
view of the world.
And when he sees diversity, something as radically
different from Islam as atheism,
it reinforces
his belief
in the greatness of his creator.
How do we get to that?
He sees something
it's like, my lord is all vain.
His hunk is amazed. There are people that
don't even believe in god.
That's amazing.
And this became not something that made him
uncomfortable. Wait. If if there are people like
that, what does that mean for my tradition?
This is something that deepen his commitment to
Islam,
deepen his devotion to Allah
That is how we have to be. When
I see people,
and I get to travel college campuses throughout
the country. So I meet people that believe
all sorts of things and nothing at all.
And I'm always thinking,
Allah has ennobled
the men and women that are children of
Adam because he has given us the ability
to contemplate these great questions.
Some of us arrive at the correct conclusion.
We we pray that our iman persists. Some
of us arrive at different conclusions, but the
fact that
Some of us arrive at different conclusions,
but the fact that god has given us
the ability to think about these things
and to choose,
this
is the the the the karama.
This is the this is this is the
miraculous thing that we're still thinking about this.
And I think that
broad, not frustrated by diversity, not frustrated by
difference, not frustrated by difference, not frustrated
by
Not frustrated by diversity.
Not frustrated by difference. No. We enforced
by diversity.
That's what I I I'll never forget that
that that that was one of the most
beneficial things I experienced in Cairo and he
was just a barber.
I said, man, it's a simple man,
but his faith is deep in my thinking
about how the people in creation
very different than me.
My lord is the best of creators.
That's how I wanna be. And that's how
I think we have to educate our children
to be. And Allah knows
best.
Just a quick reminder
for,
anyone watching online that's watching the free livestream.
If you wanna continue watching tomorrow,
you can just go to celebrate mercy.com/content
and register to view, Saturday's program
online.
I definitely wanna thank all of our, teachers,
and will be joining tomorrow for their time.
It's always difficult to travel away from family
or to spend time away from family and
preparing for these sessions too.
To all the people who helped. I wanna
also note,
there's a couple
of board members who are board members of
Celebrate Mercy that are, with us. I think
is Aubay still here? I'm here. I'm here.
Okay.
Many people don't know this, but, brother Aubayd
Rahman, doctor Aubayd Rahman is is also on
the board of Celebrate Mercy,
and he may have had to leave early
due to his family, but we also have,
doctor Zeeshan Tayev. Do you mind raising your
hand, Zeeshan? Who's visiting us from Cincinnati.
And brother Supan, do you mind coming in
for a second here?
There's also people who have been on our
team that are that are
not here.
Sister Samar,
Malik, sister Hasna Al Azul.
This is brother Supan who manages our events
from behind the scenes.
He's the newest part of our team. And
we also have sister Afifa in Toronto
and brother who now is in California. So
all these people really do a lot of
work to put this together in your local
volunteer team on the ground,
And
we will see you,
tomorrow at 9:30 in the morning.
So that is
11 and a half hours from now.
So make sure to get enough sleep. As
you saw, there's a lot to unpack in
just one hadith that we didn't even finish,
but there's 9 more tomorrow. It'll be a
really beautiful time, a lot of, beautiful stories
and lessons. So we'll continue tomorrow, Inshallah. I'll
just ask,
Usaid
to, to end us with a closing dua,
Inshallah. Okay. Please.
To, end us with a closing dua, and
then we'll go ahead and pray.