Upholding Faith, Serving Humanity

Upholding Faith, Serving Humanity

Opening Invocation

(bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim)

Alhamdulillah, first of all, I want to thank these extraordinary ladies that the only problem with them up here is it's actually more interesting to watch them than listen to the speakers.

Sign Language and the Prophet's Recognition

I'm learning a lot of sign language. I learned, for instance, this is Allah, and our Prophet ﷺ, we believe that the names of God are called tawqīfiyyah. Most of the ulema believe that the names are fixed, the names that the Prophet ﷺ gave, either through the Quran or things in the hadith.

And then there's asmā al-mushtaqqah, and the ulema get into debates about those. But he gave the name of Allah through sign language, by his acknowledgment ﷺ, because when they brought the mute woman to him, she was unable to speak. And the Prophet ﷺ said, who am I? First he asked her, where is God? And she pointed like this.

And then he said, who am I? And then she pointed to the heaven and then to him. And the Prophet said:

(Sahih Muslim 537)

Release her because she's a believer. And so her ishārah, to the heaven, is a name of God.

So this is actually one of the names of God, to point to the heaven, according to the hadith tradition. So our Prophet spoke sign language, and so this is a sunnah, really, to have these people up here.

The Importance of Knowing Islam

I want to read a quote, and I'm doing this for the president of ISNA, because this was somebody who was a professor at Hartford Seminary, one of the extraordinary scholars of the United Kingdom who came to these shores to teach Islam.

His name was Duncan MacDonald, he's very well known, and he wrote this in 1907, 1907, when Palestine was still called Palestine. He said, Islam is a present reality and the Muslim faith a living organism, a knowledge of whose laws may be of life or death for us in the other camp. I'll just repeat that.

Islam is a present reality and the Muslim faith a living organism, a knowledge of whose laws may be of life or death for us who are in another camp. For there can be little doubt that the three antagonistic and militant civilizations of the world are those of Christendom, Islam, and China. When these are unified and come to a mutual understanding, then, and only then, will the cause of civilization be secure.

When these are unified or come to a mutual understanding, then, and only then, will the cause of civilization be secure. It's interesting that today, the three powers that are vying right now in the world for place are the lands that were traditionally associated with the Christians, Christendom, which means Europe and North America, and to a lesser extent, South America, with no offense intended. China and the Muslim lands.

Global Power Dynamics

China is a serious threat to the economic hegemony of the West. They now represent about 4% of the world's GDP, as opposed to the United States, which is about almost 30%. But China is growing at a rate of about 10% a year, and we're sluggishly trying to maintain what we have in this country.

There are shifts of power that are happening. If you look at the Muslim world, for some reason or another, God chose it to put some of the most important natural resources on the planet in the Arabian Peninsula and in Iraq. Right now, there's a conflict raging in Iraq, largely due to the fact that there are massive oil reserves in Iraq.

There's people that say it's not about the oil, but it's about the oil. What we're being told here is that knowledge of Islam is something absolutely necessary to secure civilization, and the Muslims would absolutely agree with that, not only for the people in another camp, but for the Muslims themselves. Their knowledge of Islam is as important to secure civilization in the Muslim world, and much of what we see is a direct result of the ignorance of the truth of Islam.

The Importance of Al-Qaeda (The Foundation)

And so I want to address a few issues, because understanding these things is absolutely essential, and the ignorance of the Muslim world and what the Muslims believe is threatening right now the security of this country, and the security of other places as well. In Pakistan and India, everybody studies Al-Qaeda, everybody. When I was in Saudi Arabia, my son, who's seven years old, was going through Al-Qaeda, studying Al-Qaeda.

And when we were going to head back to the United States, I realized to make sure to tell him when you go through the immigration, if they say, what were you doing in Saudi Arabia? Don't say, I was studying Al-Qaeda. Because Al-Qaeda is the little book that every Muslim in South Asia learns how to read the Quran with. It's called Al-Qaeda.

It's the base of your knowledge of the Quran. So when they asked, what are those people studying in those madrasas in Pakistan? They said, Al-Qaeda. And they said, we need to get rid of those madrasas.

There's so much ignorance out there. There's so much ignorance, and we need to help alleviate that ignorance. We need to be out there explaining to people what we believe.

The Prophet's Farewell Sermon: Four Major Problems

This religion is so extraordinary, and we have failed to convey this message. Just a few things that the Prophet ﷺ mentioned at his farewell address on the Hajj. In this farewell address, in his stunning eloquence, conciseness, the brilliance that Allah gave him because he was sent as a mercy.

When the Prophet ﷺ identified the problems of this world, he summed them up in four major problems. And those problems are still with us today. We've made some progress, but not enough.

First Problem: Economic Injustice

The first problem is the problem of economic injustice. The Prophet ﷺ, it was his want to identify problems by looking at the most extreme case of it. When he talked about the seven deadly sins, instead of talking about anger, he talked about killing people.

Instead of talking about lust, he talked about fornication. Instead of talking about greed, he talked about eating the wealth of an orphan. He took the worst examples of those qualities that human beings have in order for us to understand what these things lead to.

In the farewell address, he identified riba, usury, as one of the great sins of humanity. And he said, from this day forward, usury is over, and I begin with the usury of my own family, al-Abbas, who lent money in Mecca. This was establishing economic justice, and this is one of the most important desires of Islam, to bring about economic and social justice.

The Mortgage Crisis and Modern Economic Injustice

This is what the Prophet ﷺ was telling his people. If you look today at the mortgage crisis, what is at the root of this crisis? This crisis is the crisis that could really destroy this economy. Millions of people, there are already 1.8 million people that have foreclosed on their homes.

Just do the math. There are people now that are shaking about next month's payments because their arm suddenly changed, and now from paying $1,800 a month, they have to pay $2,500, and they don't understand it because they don't teach these things in school. They don't teach people about mortgages.

They don't teach people about compound interest. The average American student in American colleges today has $2,000 worth of credit card debt. Learning to be consumers and live lives of indebtedness.

And indebtedness in the Islamic tradition is a type of servitude. It's a type of slavery. It's something that our Prophet sought refuge from. He would say:

أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْمَغْرَمِ

I seek refuge in you from overwhelming debt, from being overwhelmed by debt. But this is something people don't understand anymore. People buy beyond their means.

American Values and Consumption

This is the American way. It wasn't always the American way. America was once a country of thrift.

It was a country of saving. Everybody had savings accounts. They didn't know about this spending, spending, spending.

Shop until you drop. When World War II was going on, President Roosevelt told people to be patriotic by conserving, by growing gardens in their backyard, by recycling. When the war on terror began, people were encouraged to be patriotic by going out and shopping.

This is risking your dollars, economic injustice. The people that took these mortgages from people that were not creditworthy, what did they do with those mortgages? They sold them to overseas investors. They sold them to overseas investors.

This is greed and venality at its worst. And the problem is, is Jesse James and Frank James or Al Capone aren't robbing the banks anymore. They're on the bank boards.

That's what's happening. This is America. And American people deserve better than they're being given.

Second Problem: Racism

The next thing that the Prophet ﷺ identified was racism. And racism doesn't go away. A leopard's spots might fade, but they don't change.

Racism is a major problem today in this country, a country in which a civil war was fought over the issue of slavery. And it wasn't until a hundred years later that those people were enfranchised with civil rights, and yet we're still not there. We've come a long way, and it's undeniable, but we're still not there.

And this is what the Prophet ﷺ meant when he said, There's no preference of an Arab over a non-Arab, or a non-Arab over an Arab, or a white man over a black man, or a black man over a white man, except in piety. And I challenge anyone to show me a historical personage who came with this dictate before the Prophet ﷺ, because I don't believe there is one. This is one of the unique gifts of Islam to the world.

Islam's Gift: Brotherhood of Humanity

And Arnold Toynbee said, one of the great gifts of Islam to the world was the brotherhood of man, truly introducing the brotherhood of man. Because it wasn't done in Christianity. Blacks were the accursed

descendants of Ham for centuries in Christianity.

The most vociferous supporters of the slave trade in this country were some of the most religious people. Rabbis and Christians that wrote tracts on why slavery, the enslavement of black people was not only biblical, it was natural. Islam never produced this type of slavery, ever.

There was never any servitude based on race. Islam came to promote the brotherhood, the sisterhood of humanity. And this is why Islam has raised and elevated us up from tribes to Bani Adam, to the tribe of Adam and Eve.

This is what we're called in the Quran, Bani Adam. We are all brothers and sisters and cousins. And this is a message.

If you want to serve humanity, take that message out to humanity, that we're all brothers and sisters. We are the human family. This is one family.

Global Inequality and the Need for Action

And this message needs to get out to the people, because racism is killing us. We have a world of haves and have-nots, which is largely still based on color. Whether people want to deny it or not, it is a fact of life that the majority of brown people and black people are living in sub-human conditions.

There are one billion people in slums today living on this planet. One out of every six people is living in a slum, in a slum. One out of every six people.

And we're spending 500 billion dollars on armaments. We're spending 500 billion dollars on bombs. This is going to secure us in a world increasingly becoming insecure because of the disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

We need a global Marshall Plan. America can be great in the way that it rebuilt Europe if we direct our energies towards helping other places in the world. Not to bomb them out of existence, not to destroy their infrastructures, but to enhance their lives.

To bring potable water to them. This is what America should be about. This is a country with gifts that are beyond belief.

America's True Values and the Role of Muslims

And with great gifts come great responsibility. And I believe that the Muslim community is in this country today to remind America to be America. To remind this country to be America.

Because America has forgotten its way. We've gone astray. And if you don't see it, and Mr. President, and there's people here that represent the administration, that's fine.

Welcome

Welcome. We welcome you. We have nothing to hide.

We're not a secret society. Our agendas aren't hidden. We don't have secret meetings at night.

You're tapping most of our phones and you know what we're talking about. We're talking about being hassled at the airport. But Mr. President, close down Guantanamo Bay.

That is not America. Close it down. Shut it down.

Mr. Padilla had a civil court trial, had representation, and it proved that they can do it through the process of law. Due process of law. That's what America is about.

It's not about extraordinary rendition. It's not about having a black bag put over your head and shoved in the back of a van and suddenly finding yourself in some eastern bloc country with a prison cell in a frozen cell being interrogated by people that you wonder whether they had a mother when they were growing up. That's not America.

That's not the America that I know. That's not the America that I learned about in my civics courses.

The Question of Torture

We need to end the fact that we can have a Time Magazine headliner, the torture question, as if it's a question.

Since when did torture become a question? Because 1,400 years ago, our prophet prohibited torture, and if we haven't caught up with that edict yet, we're way, way behind.

America was founded on dignity. It was founded on breaking away from the European yoke of tyranny. That's what America is about.

It's taken a while for Americans to get used to the fact that that's not just about white people. It's about all people, but they're getting used to it. It's time we reminded this country once again, torture is not American.

Torture is not American. And these young men that were released and sent back to Britain, British citizens, Canadian citizens, this poor man, Mr. Arar, who was kidnapped and taken to Syria and tortured, his wife said he came back like a shell of a man. And this country has yet to apologize.

The Power of Apology

We need to apologize. There's nothing wrong with apologizing. When you do something wrong, there's nothing wrong with saying, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.

That's being American. That's being American. You want to know what an American is? That's being American.

Willingness to admit your mistakes, redress your wrongs. That's what the Civil War was about. That was what the apology to the Japanese that were interned during World War II was about.

We apologize to those people because this country made an egregious mistake by taking people because of the way they look and putting them in internment camps, thinking that they were a threat to this country. During the World War II, many German-Americans were accused of being Nazis. Not one single German-American that was arrested during that time was proven to have any connection with Nazi Germany.

American Muslims: Law-Abiding and Productive

Where are all these people that have been detained and interned? They all didn't pan out because you are American Muslims. This is American Islam.

Law-abiding people, productive members of the society, people that if they packed up and left today, there would be a healthcare crisis in this country. There would be a crisis of physicians. People would find that their cardiac surgeon wasn't available. People whose life depends on these people suddenly would feel jeopardized.

The governor of Ohio said he'd have a healthcare crisis if the Muslim doctors packed up and left. Muslim-Americans are providing great services. That's just one area.

How many engineers, and I'll guarantee you there wasn't a Muslim engineer that built that bridge that collapsed. And I challenge anybody to go look and find out if there was, because we have Muslim engineers that built Sears Tower. Seriously, that building is a testimony to Muslim engineering.

And if you'll trust a Muslim to build a building that tall, you're trusting Muslims. If you're going to climb up that building, even though a Muslim built it, he didn't build it for any engineered obsolescence. He built it to last, because that was a Muslim committed to excellence.

The Future of American Muslims

And that's what this community is about. Our community is growing. It's changing.

We have immense potential in this community. And look around at these young people, because they're bold, young people that are emerging into a new America. And they're going to be part of forging a new America.

And I'm looking forward to that place. I'm looking forward to a place when the Hadis and the Abdullahs and the Ahmeds and the Zainabs, when they begin to move into the positions of power and authority in this country, having in their hearts a commitment to truth, justice and the Islamic way, which does not negate the American way, if it's an American way that's true to its own principles. And that's why when we have people like Keith Ellison in Congress and the onus is on him, because he's a good man, but the onus is on him to maintain his integrity, to maintain his goodness.

And we ask Allah to give him tawfiq. We ask Allah to give him tawfiq. But we want to see more, increasingly more faces, more American faces.

We've got Dr. Gupta, a Hindu doctor that all the Americans love. I want to see Dr. Abdullah Khan on CNN. I want to see Dr. Abdullah Khan giving Americans advice about how to lower their cholesterol.

Seriously, we've got Dr. Gupta from a Hindu family. And I guarantee you, he was probably second in his class and it was Abdullah Khan who was first.

The Excellence of This Community

Because these people are bright. Seriously, Indians scare me they're so bright. I mean, they invented zero, right? And they invented zero so that they could get into the millions. We have talent in this community.

Let's empower this talent. We've got these women are just amazing. They're stunning, really.

These women out there, I'm amazed at each one of you and we honor you. Those women that are committed to this religion that are out there in the face of increasing antagonism, animosity, unfortunately, stupidity and foolishness at times that degrades the one who's insulting you and doesn't degrade you. He degrades himself because when you degrade another, you only succeed in degrading yourself.

That's the nature of degradation. Islam is about elevation and our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was somebody who never took any insult seriously.

When they attempted to call him Mudhammam, he said, isn't it wondrous how God has removed their tongues from criticizing me. They're talking about somebody called Mudhammam and I'm Muhammad. He wouldn't even allow those things to seep into his heart. And this is where we have to do.

We have to rise up to the best of our ability to achieve the level of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.

Third Problem: Women's Rights

The next thing that the Prophet said in his extraordinary khutbah was he said, your women have rights. And this is an issue that of all people, we have to address it because we have failed to live up to the challenge of Islam in honoring our women.

We have failed to live up to that challenge. Our Prophet said:

(Source Name)

Only noble people ennoble women and only wretched and abased people degrade women. We need to elevate our women.

We need to put them in positions. We need to listen to their voices, their voices of wisdom. Hafsa, the wife of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, when the Prophet said something, she said, no, but the Quran doesn't say that.

The Quran says this. Aisha did the same thing. This was a man who listened to women, who empowered women to challenge him in his own statements without fear.

This is where we have to go with our women. This is where the ummahāt al-mu'minīn when they went at the hajj and they didn't get in to make their umrah and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was despondent when he went into the tent. His own wife said to him, go out, shave your head, sacrifice your animal.

He took her advice and he did that. That is the best proof that the advice of women should be heeded, should be listened to. That is the best proof.

So we need to listen to our women, empower our women, strengthen our women.

Fourth Problem: Manipulation of Nature

The last thing that the Prophet said in this hadith, he said that al-nasī'u ziyadatun fī al-kufr manipulating calendars and this was the intercalation of the Arabs. They used to manipulate calendars to make sacred months and non-sacred months move according to their whims.

To me this is an indication of the manipulation of nature itself. That God has an order in the world and when you manipulate that order you're causing harm. It's a type of disbelief.

We have now scientists that are out of control and if ethics is not restored in its central position in science, if things aren't examined ethically, where these things are leading, what the fuqahā called al-nadhr ilā al-ma'ālāt, looking at long-term effects. If these things aren't thought out deeply, we're headed down a perilous path. We're headed down a perilous path and Islam has immense guidance for us in these issues.

Respecting People of Different Faiths

Islam has immense guidance for us and if we don't take this out, this extraordinary guidance, not everybody will become Muslim and that's obviously not the desire of God because Allah says:

That do not curse the idols. The Prophet was told not to curse the gods of the Mushrikīn because they would in turn curse God without knowledge. And then Allah says a very important thing, and like that God has made the actions of each peoples appear good to them.

It's God who did that for a hikmah, for a reason. People are doing often what they think is the right thing to do and we have to honor people in their best attempts at reaching the truth. That's where the Muslims should be, at helping.

The Prophetic Approach to Dialogue

When the Prophet said:

That one of us is guided. When he was speaking to the non-Muslims he was told to say from God, one of us is guided and the other is astray. Let's talk and see who's guided and who's astray.

And then he said:

You won't be asked about our crimes. And we won't be asked about what you're doing. What greater insāf, what greater unbiased conversation is this? To attribute to yourself wrongdoings and attribute to your interlocutor actions.

This is the way that we need to move out and talk to people. We have failed to communicate our truth to other people. We have alienated many, many people.

And it's time that we really thought deeply about what we're doing here. We have to empower our young people in the Senate, in this country. And the Senate's in trouble.

It's not just in the bathrooms. It's also in the main room. It's in the main room.

Really, it's in the Senate hall. It's not just in the bathrooms. It's in the Senate hall.

Praying for Our Leaders

They're in trouble. And we should pray for these people. Really, we should pray for their guidance.

Aisha said that it's only a fool who imprecates against his rulers. It's a fool. Because when you imprecate against the people that are in charge of your political affairs, you're actually making a prayer against yourself.

We should pray for their guidance. But they're in trouble. The word Senator comes from a Latin word.

The same root word is senile. You get the same word senile from that. It means old.

Senator is an old man, like a shaykh. An old man once asked a young lady to marry him. And she said, you're an old man. And he said:

The Need for Young Leadership

We need some young people in there. We need some young people here at ISNA. Really, we need to let our young people in.

And that's why I saw that tonight and I was happy to see these young people. Because like Shaykh Abdullah said, and he's a Shaykh and I'm a Shaykh too. We're getting old.

We need young people. We need energy. People to carry this to the next level.

We've come to a certain level and may Allah give us strength to continue on. But we need to take it to the next level. The Muslims in America need to move to the next level.

And you need to think deeply about what that is. Because this community is power. There's power in this room and there's power in the American Muslim community.

And there's people fearful of that power. But unlike people who use power unjustly, we're a people committed to justice. And we're not just a people committed to justice for the Muslims.

Universal Justice, Not Just Muslim Justice

We want justice for all people. And that's why I don't want to see any Muslim lobbying in Washington. I want to see humanitarian lobbying.

I want to see a strong Pakistan and a strong India living harmoniously side by side as two nations. I don't want to see these people go into war with each other. Because a war between Pakistan and India harms all of us.

And certainly doesn't benefit the Pakistanis and the Indians. And Pakistanis and Indians are of the same blood. They share the same DNA.

They share the same language. They're a people of one origin. And they might differ in some things.

Celebrating Human Diversity

Hyderabadis, I love Hyderabadis. Hyderabadis are not like people from Mumbai. They're different.

I can tell a Hyderabadi. They walk a certain way. When they offer you tea, they do it in a certain way.

These are the beautiful differences of humanity. When Shaykh Abdullah bin Bayyah was asked about Muslims living in the West, he said, look at the nature around you. The bird and the eagle, the sparrow and the eagle were created by the same god.

They fly in the same air. They breathe the same air. They're of the same species.

But they're different types. This is what makes the world beautiful. We want Hyderabadis to be different from people from Mumbai.

And people from Karachi as well. If it was all one, I love you. I mean, that's really... We want to see difference.

I want to see difference. We're committed to difference. We're committed to difference.

Rejecting Sectarianism

We want to see a difference. And then, in ending, I'll say, all of the sectarianism that we see in the Muslim world, we know has nothing to do with our religion. We know that.

We know it in the depths of our heart. Sectarianism is something that Allah and his messenger despise:

Hold together to the rope of God, the Quran, the rope of God that descended from heaven. Hold on to it together.

Sunni, Shia, Jafari, Maliki, all of us. Let's just hold on to that rope that says that we're brothers. And let's not allow this sectarian poison to come into the American Muslim community.

Let's not allow this sectarian poison to come into the American Muslim community. The Barelvi and the Deobandi, let's pray together. Really, the people from Al-Maghrib Institute, from Zaytuna Institute, let's put our hands together in an American Islam that recognizes diversity.

This is what we have to be about. And if we're not about this, we're harming our religion. We're harming our faith.

And in the end, we're disgracing our messenger who came as a mercy to all mankind. Islam is a mercy. It's a mercy we need to take out to the world.

Social Mercy, Not Just Social Justice

We need to take this mercy. People talk about social justice. I don't want social justice.

I want social mercy. That's what I want. I want to see a social mercy movement.

This is about īthār. There's two. Everybody's clamoring for justice and everybody thinks they've got the just cause.

We need mercy. We need compassion. We need our hearts to be ignited with the love of God, so that we're able to look at others and want for them what we want for ourselves.

Closing Prayer

Jazakumullah khairan. And may Allah bless this organization. May Allah bless ISNA and strengthen Dr. Munir Fareed, Ingrid Mattson, Imam Majid, all the people here, Abdullah Idrees, Sayyid Sayyid.

Jazakumullah khairan. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Jazakumullah khairan.