Jumma Khutba | Sh. Alauddin El Bakri

Facing Overwhelm with Faith and Action

The normal reaction of the human when they're faced with big tasks and so many challenges, and you add to that bad news and news of death and genocide and massacres, is that you feel overwhelmed and you want to get into a cocoon and just get home and just isolate yourself and maybe just connect with your Lord and do nothing because it feels overwhelming. Our faith does not allow us to do that. We don't have the luxury that in the face of trials and tribulations and in the face of major events that affect the ummah, it does not suffice that you just stay at home, pray five times a day, and do nothing.

We believe in Allah and in this dunya, Allah told us, prepared us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and socially to prepare ourselves that we will face hardship and trials and tribulations so that we can be ready, because this life is a life of tests. Now, we see light at the end of the tunnel. We see that our brothers and sisters in Gaza wrote history with their blood.

A Shift in Public Opinion

They changed public opinion. I don't know if you know or not, but one of the hardest things is to change the opinion of one family. How many times have you tried to convince your family of one matter and they didn't change their mind? Now imagine your extended family. Now imagine a town, a state, a country. Now imagine public opinion worldwide. In the last two years, it has significantly changed.

In the U.S., Palestinian favorability went from minus 47 to plus 1. Never ever in the history of the United States has there been any social issue — anything — where public opinion went in two years from minus 47, when you compare the Palestinians and the Palestinian issue in the minds of the public, to plus 1. It's unprecedented. And this is only one country, which is made of 50 states, our country, the United States of America. Now if you think about globally, all the continents.

Now where do we take it from here? This is the time for us to build on that. Not to go and hide and feel depressed and overwhelmed. Anyway, Allah never judges us by the results, but He asks us to do the action.

Two Things We Must Return To

I see two things, my dear brothers and sisters, that we need to go back to — Al-Qur'an Al-Kareem — visit it, learn it, and go ahead and implement it. These two things are: one is the narrative, and two is the action.

If you are as old as I was — in my mid-twenties when September 11 happened — we faced so many backlashes, and we had to go through 10 years after that of struggling with public opinion. And we were told that there is an inevitable clash of civilizations. Between who? Between Muslims and Christians. And that this is the inevitable. And that became the narrative. It's the inevitable. We have to go to war. It's gonna happen. There's no other choice.

My dear brothers and sisters, right now when we have a favorable public opinion, it's our time to bring about our narrative.

The Qur'anic Narrative: No Clash of Civilizations

From us, from a Muslim point of view, when we read Qur'an, Sunnah, and Seerah, what do we see? What's the narrative? The narrative is: there is no clash of civilization. On the contrary, the first event in the beginning of the da'wah of the Prophet ﷺ — by the fifth year, Rasulullah ﷺ did silent da'wah. It wasn't secret, but it was private da'wah for three years. He opened up. After two years, Mecca became unbearable for the Sahaba. Torture, killing — it was unbearable.

The Prophet ﷺ instructed the Sahaba to go to al-Najashi, knowing that he was a Christian king in a Christian kingdom. And he told them, this king — no one is oppressed under his sight. So go and seek refuge there. The first political asylum of Muslims was to a Christian king and Christian kingdom. I'm just wondering, where is the clash of civilizations? Where is this inevitable animosity?

Who's writing history? Because as they say, the winner writes history. No, alhamdulillah, our history is preserved. Our ulama in the past — one of the only nations that was able to preserve its heritage is the Muslim nation, through memorizing the Qur'an and the sciences of transmitting the hadith and the seerah.

Interestingly, if you jump to al-Najashi and the Sahaba — do you know that the Sahaba for 15 years were in Abyssinia, out of the entire 23 years of the Prophet's ﷺ da'wah? If you were Ja'far ibn Abi Talib, you would have not seen the Prophet ﷺ for 15 years — leaving in the fifth year in Mecca and coming back in the seventh year in Medina. سبحان ربي العظيم.

How Allah Speaks About Christians in the Qur'an

How does Allah speak about the Christians in the Qur'an? Can we just open the Qur'an and read? In Surah Al-Ma'idah, Allah tells us:

And you will find the closest in mawaddah to the believers are those who said, "We are Nasara" — we are Christians. That is because amongst them are priests and monks, and they are not arrogant.

Now I want you to put a line under the word mawaddah. Because the way we do in the Qur'an, we take the word and we see how Allah used it in the rest of the Qur'an. How is this word used? And we see how it's used in the hadith. The word mawaddah is used in the Qur'an to describe the relationship between a husband and wife:

Allah says: you will find the closest in mawaddah to the believers are those who said, "We are Nasara, we are Christians." That is because amongst them are priests and monks, and they are not arrogant. SubhanAllah — we can see it today. There is a huge difference between the Christians and the others that Allah told us are the worst in animosity to us — that they are arrogant, that they will rewrite history, that they will look at reality and say, "No, no, it's not happening." We are imagining a different reality. Allah spoke about them. This is the narrative of the Qur'an.

The Prophet ﷺ and His Relationships with Non-Muslims

The narrative of the Qur'an: that the Prophet ﷺ asked for the hand of Ramla bint Abi Sufyan, when her husband, Ubaidullah ibn Jahsh, left Islam because he couldn't stop drinking alcohol. So he left Islam — even though he had gone in hijrah from Makkah to Abyssinia — and he converted to Christianity. So the Prophet ﷺ asked al-Najashi to be his representative in front of Ramla. And al-Najashi sent his royal lady servant to Ramla and gave her the glad news that Rasulullah ﷺ was asking for her hand. And al-Najashi paid 400 golden dinars as her mahr. The highest mahr of any woman the Prophet ﷺ married was that of Ramla, because the one who paid the mahr was al-Najashi.

The Prophet ﷺ was also gifted when he sent a letter to al-Muqawqas of Egypt inviting him to Islam — he sent a gift in return, as was the tradition at the time. Two ladies: Marya and Sirin. Marya came to him as a Christian. He accepted the gift from a Christian king — a Christian servant that came to him. He invited her to Islam. She became Muslimah. He married her ﷺ and she gave birth to Ibrahim, the son of the Prophet ﷺ.

And the Prophet ﷺ told the Sahaba when you go to Egypt, be nice to the people of Egypt:

(Recorded by al-Hakim in al-Mustadrak, and others)

You have nasab — lineage — because of Marya al-Qibtiyya. And you have sihr — in-law relationship — because the mother of Ismail was Hajar, from Egypt. Where is this clash of civilizations? Where does it come from? Is it our narrative? No. So we should tell our narrative. And we're not saying this because we're scared. And we're not being naive that once we say this everyone will love us. No. There will be people that no matter what you say, they will hate you. But is that the majority? No. Now the statistics and the numbers show that that's not the majority. All the youth 40 years and under in America are pro-Palestinian right now.

It's sometimes easy to be negative — oh, everyone hates us, we can't do anything, let's go home. No. We want to look at the real facts on the ground and let's bring our narrative.

The Mistranslation That Is Used Against Us

My dear brothers and sisters, one ayah was translated in one of the translations of the Qur'an by someone whose mother language was not English. And this ayah is now taken and we are attacked with it — "Look at the Muslims, Allah tells them in the Qur'an:"

"O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as friends." Look at the translation — as friends. "So you can never trust the Muslims — God tells them don't take the Jews and the Christians as friends, they are the friends of one another." That is a big mistranslation.

Awliya refers to the one that you put your security in their hand. That's your wali. You know when a girl tries to get married, she has to have her wali — her father usually. If he passed away, her uncle, her khal, mamu, or her older brother. That's your wali — your guardian, your protector.

The Call to Action: Halal and Haram as a Blueprint

My dear brothers and sisters, look at the halal and haram in the Qur'an as we move from the narrative to the action. There are certain ayat in the Qur'an we can look at and think they are simply about halal and haram, but actually they carry a deeper hint for us. What does Allah want us to do in the world of action?

Allah says — and this is all in Surah Al-Ma'idah, and we should all go home today and read Surah Al-Ma'idah:

"Today the tayyibat are halal for you. And the food of the People of the Book is halal for you, and your food is halal for them."

Their food is halal for you — I understand. Simple to understand. But why did Allah say and your food is halal for them? We know our food is halal, but for them? What's the hint here? When these ayat were revealed there were no restaurants. The only time you can eat the food of the People of the Book is when you go to their homes. This is a hint for us. This is a plan of action. This Qur'an is for every time and place. What Allah is saying is: if you get invited, answer the invitation — for their food is halal for you. Not only that — invite them, for your food is halal for them.

There were no restaurants at the time of the Prophet ﷺ — you can't say "oh I'm going to invite them to my food at the restaurant." No, no. That's why Rasulullah ﷺ, when a Jewish woman invited him to a meal, he actually answered and went with the Sahaba. The fact that that meal later turned out to be poisoned is a different issue, a different discussion. But did the Prophet ﷺ answer the invitation of the Jewish woman or did he not? Yes, he did.

Our Neighbors, Our Responsibility

What is the plan for us? This is not the time to hide. This is not the time to cocoon. This is not the time to let the few amongst them — let's say 10% of them who hate us no matter what — define the relationship between us and the People of the Book. We're not going to compromise our deen.

Allah teaches us to say:

He is the One who owns the mulk. And we say:

We don't worship any one other than Him, sincere to Him in our deen — even if the non-believers are not happy with it. We're not going to change our deen. We're not going to change our iman to please others. But why do we have to go and imagine that everyone is against us? Why do we give the pleasure to the 10% that are not happy with us no matter what, to define the relationship between us and the People of the Book?

Who are our neighbors? You are in the south, you are in Texas. You're not the lone star. It's a Christian country. It always bothers me — how in the world the cowboys of Punjab and the cowboys of Arabia and the cowboys of the Sahara desert cannot get along with the cowboys of Texas? And people who come from the depths of Russia and Europe who have never seen or looked after a cow in their life can connect with them better?

Allah tells us in this ayah — not only is your food halal for them and their food halal for you — Allah tells us you can marry from the honorable women of the People of the Book. So where do we go with the translation of the ayah that says "don't take the Jews and the Christians as friends"? Are you kidding me? That is a wrong translation. What are you going to say — sitting in front of the sheikh at the day of your nikah with a non-Muslim, a Christian honorable lady or a Jewish honorable lady — "Listen lady, we're going to get married but we can't love one another or be friends"? What kind of nonsense is that?

I still cannot understand the depth of when Allah tells us you can marry an honorable Christian woman and she doesn't have to convert. I still cannot even process that. The Qur'an is ahead of us. The Qur'an is ahead of us by miles.

The Time to Shine

My dear brothers and sisters, it's a call for the narrative and a call for the action. Let's build on what these people wrote with their blood. This is not the time to hide. This is not the time to run. This is the time to shine. This is the time to invite and to open. We're not scared. We're very assured of our iman and faith. We should be very comfortable interacting with our neighbors. May Allah inspire us to do al-haqq.

أقول ما تسمعون وأستغفر الله لي ولكم فاستغفروه إنه الله الرحيم

Second Khutbah — Du'a

الحمد لله وحده والصلاة والسلام على من لا نبي بعده