The death of what made us favoured by Allah

The Parable of the Ship

Imagine a group of people decided to get on a ship for a journey. A group of them ended up on the upper deck of the ship and a group of them ended up on the lower deck of the ship. Those who are on the lower deck of the ship, they got thirsty one day and they said we're going to go upstairs and ask them for some water.

But when they wanted to go upstairs, the people upstairs said, "Guys, please don't trouble us by coming upstairs — find some other way to get water." So then the people on the bottom of the ship started discussing: how do we get some water? We're really thirsty, upstairs nobody's letting us get water, what do we do? They said, "We have a great genius idea, one of the best inventions of the century. What do we do? The sea has loads of water — make a hole in the bottom of the ship and we'll get some water from the sea."

And here the Prophet says: if the people on the top floor close their eyes and say "let them do what they're doing," they're all going to sink. And if they stop them, they'll all survive.

Commanding Good and Forbidding Evil

This hadith is about a very crucial part of our religion — which is the part of our religion to do with correcting, with guiding, with advising others. And it is to command the good and to forbid the evil.

The Effect of Secularization on Muslims

As Muslims living in a western country, we are affected by what happened to Christianity in Europe. If you look at Europe, if you look at the world that we live in today — do you see anybody practicing religion outdoors? Do you see anybody displaying their religion publicly? Do you see anybody praying in a public place other than Muslims? It doesn't exist.

Why doesn't it exist? It's because of what was born 100 to 300 years ago — what they call the separation of church and state. So religion became something you go to the church, you do your thing, when you leave you don't talk about religion, you don't think about religion, you don't display religion, you certainly don't pray in a public place. Religion certainly has nothing to do with finance or economics or marriage or divorce, your work or your means of income — religion has nothing to do with these things. It's just something you know, on a Saturday when you feel a bit down, you go, you say some things to the pastor, you feel better about yourself.

This version of faith, this version of religion, is called secularization. And this began to affect Islam and Muslims, where many Muslims began to feel that our religion is a culture that we inherited from our parents, and on Friday we turn up to the masjid and we do some rituals and that's it — but this religion doesn't inform what I do outside the masjid. All I have to do is do what's inside the masjid; outside the masjid, please don't talk to me about it.

And so what died in this process of secularization of Islam? What died in this process is this idea of Muslims guiding towards what is good and correcting towards what is wrong.