LoveStruck Session 2

LoveStruck: Modesty, Lowering the Gaze, and Protecting the Heart

Khutbah by Brother Abdelrahman Murphy

Opening

One time, as Sheikh Ridwan said, I grew up in Chicago, born and raised, as many of you know, and so part of being a Chicagoan, part of growing up in the Chicago landscape, a permanent fixture of growing up in Chicago, every summer, or every, after, you know, in the late summer, what was it? What came to town? Four letters.

If you're trying to get married, you go. ISNA. ISNA was the fixture of my youth growing up, and for anyone here, every year, any Chicagoan, if you ask them what went on every year, they would say, oh man, the ISNA convention. The single brothers would be like, oh yeah, the ISNA convention. The single sisters would be like, oh God, the ISNA convention.

And so tons of Muslims came from all over the United States to come and take part in this amazing conference. Now part of this weekend, part of the ritual this weekend is that usually if you're taking part in it, you usually don't sleep, or if you do sleep, you sleep during the day.

The McDonald's Incident: A Wake-Up Call

So a bunch of friends and I, we went out one night, we were hungry, we went to the Hard Rock, or the Rock and Roll McDonald's. We went downtown, and it's right next to this club called Excalibur. So it's right next to this club, and as we were there, as we were at this McDonald's and we were ordering our fish filets, of course, this brother comes up, Muslim brother, giant chain necklace, Allah, mashallah, smells like weed, hardcore, eyes bloodshot, I know we might be laughing but this isn't funny.

He walks in, he has the name of Allah on his chest, and the same breath that is blowing down on that name of Allah has the pungent smell of weed on it. He walks in, and because it was about 2am and that's when the clubs let out, he sees these women dressed up, I don't even know if I can say they were dressed up because really I mean like, don't you have to be wearing clothes to be dressed? And so they were walking, and he looks, and he makes a really disgusting comment to his friend. Really, I don't even want

to say it, I thought I would say it, I thought I would step out of my box and say it, but I know I'm big and strong, but really I'm too shy to say it. It was that bad.

Then he looks at me and he sees the kufi, and he goes, "Oh yeah, let me get a fish filet," and he goes, "Come on brother, we've got to stay at the beehive." As he's making derogatory sexual comments about this girl who walks by, he orders a fish sandwich and looks at me and gives me a principle of Islamic law dealing with a difference of opinion, talking about not eating meat, something which is debated among scholars when there is nothing in the debate among scholars about making derogatory sexual comments about women. When there is nothing debated about looking at a girl or looking at someone in a very attractive manner.

And he looks at me and he says, "Come on bro, we've got to stay at the beehive, we've got to stay halal here." Maybe what he's putting into his mouth is halal, but what he's putting into his eyes, what he's hearing with his ears, that is not halal.

The Main Issue: What We Feed Our Hearts

As a community, we become obsessed with small issues. And tonight I want to address in my brief talk, a very large issue that as a Muslim community here in the West, we've begun to sweep it under the rug. And that is the issue of modesty, lowering the gaze, and the P word, pornography. This issue is affecting children as young as 11 years old.

If you look online and you go for statistics, you see that 12% of the internet are pornographic websites. 3% of those 12% are child pornography websites. And there are much more, many more statistics I can rattle off to you, but I think we get the point.

One thing that we have to address in our spiritual life, as Muslims growing up in America, particularly the youth, but the youth are not the only ones who suffer from this problem, is the concept that just like this brother was making the mistake, may Allah guide us all including him, that what you put in your mouth is important, what you feed your body is important, but what you let into your eyes and to your ears is more important than even sometimes the food that you put into your body.

Because what you put into your eyes and into your ears goes directly into your heart. You might say, no it goes to your brain, it goes to your memory, but the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّم) they tell us that our hearts are directly affected by the things that we look at and the things that we hear.

The Story of the Affected Heart

There was once a story that one of my teachers told in a classroom where a person went up to him, a man went up to him and he said, "Ya Sheikh, Ya Sheikh, I've been married for years now, but in the past

few years, I've noticed that I'm not attracted to my wife any longer." And this man had kids. "I'm not attracted to my wife any longer."

And so the Sheikh asked him questions, said, "Well, you know, don't laugh, but he said, did she gain some weight? I mean, did her image change?" And he goes, "No, she stayed the same, I stayed the same, we both look the same." He goes, "Did anything happen? Was there a car accident? Was there something deformed her image?" And he goes, "No, everything's the same."

And the Sheikh right away asked the question, "Do you have a problem lowering your gaze when it comes to women walking by the street? Do you look at pornography?" And the guy said, "Yeah, how do you know? How'd you know that? I didn't mention anything about that. Does it say it on my forehead?"

And the Sheikh said something very interesting, and I want all of us, if there's one thing that you take home from this speech tonight, from my speech, this is the one thing. The Sheikh said, "When you indulge, when you fall in love, when you eat, sleep, and breathe from the haram, then the halal becomes disgusting to you. When you adore things that you're not supposed to adore, when Allah subhana wa ta'ala says, don't do something because it's not gonna be good for you, and you still engage in it, you still fall into it, and you don't care about falling into it, then Allah subhana wa ta'ala will take away any semblance of love for anything permissible from your heart."

The Story of Contaminated Water

One time, Siraj Wahaj was telling a story where he went, Siraj Wahaj grew up in what city, who knows? Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in New York City, does New York City have crystal clear tap water, or is it like mud? Really dirty tap water. So Siraj Wahaj says that he grew up, and this is the story he's telling, he said, "I grew up on tap water, I grew up on the New York tap water, so much so that every time that I drank the tap water, it tasted good to me, I liked it, I enjoyed it."

"Even though it was filthy, it wasn't pure, I enjoyed it because I grew used to it. He said, then at once I went to go speak somewhere, and there were mountains nearby, and the brothers who invited me to speak, we had some time off, they took me to the mountain, and we went and we saw a fresh stream of spring water. We saw a fresh stream, beautiful, I've never seen one before in my life."

"He said, I went to it, and the brothers gave me a cup, and they said, go ahead and have a sip. So he took the cup, and he's really excited, and he grabs a cup of the water, and he takes a sip, expecting it to taste like sweet water, just like we see those commercials, Ice Mountain, Fiji, all these amazing logos. As soon as the water touches the back of his throat, he begins to vomit."

"He begins to vomit, profusely. Everything is coming out of his stomach. Anything he's eaten for the last 12 hours is now empty from his body, violently vomiting."

And again, he told this story with the same principle, if you become used to something which is filthy, then something which is pure will no longer be good to you. Your heart will no longer want the pure.

The Spiritual Reality from the Quran

Allah subhana wa ta'ala in Surah Al-Insan, he talks about how he created mankind from a single drop of semen, of fluid. And then he mentions two senses. The first two senses that he mentions are that we were:

"[Hearing and seeing]"

Hearing and seeing. When I'm introduced to you, when I'm talking to you, you meet me for the first time, or when I'm telling you about a subject, normally the things that are most important are the things that I'm going to mention first. That's not the most important thing about myself. I might tell you, hey I'm a Muslim, I'm a youth director at a masjid, I enjoy playing basketball, I love the Chicago Bulls who just killed the Dallas Mavericks of the night.

Allahu Akbar. I might tell you more important things about myself, but this is, and this is the same principle that Allah subhana wa ta'ala has in the Quran. When he's speaking to mankind, there's no time, there's no time to waste, there's no words to waste.

The verses aren't meant there to be empty, like oh I can skip over this verse, I can skip over that verse, no, every single word in the Quran is valuable. That's why Allah subhana wa ta'ala said it. So when Allah subhana wa ta'ala talks about how he created mankind, and then he says the first two senses are hearing and seeing, this reinforces the fact that we have to watch out what we listen to, the music that we listen to.

The Story of the Kaaba

A brother came to my house, we were having a dinner. And this story is not meant to scare us, well it is, but it's meant to remind us of the blessing that Allah subhana wa ta'ala gave us. And this guy tells me, he goes, "You know what, this summer," and this wasn't this year by the way, he goes, "This past summer I just went to Umrah."

How many of you have been to Umrah before or seen the Kaaba in person, done Hajj, has anyone done Hajj this year? Those of you who have seen, mashaAllah, those of you who have seen the Kaaba in person, what did you feel in your heart, did it feel nice, did it feel good, did you feel close to Allah?

This brother, he told me, "Brother Murphy, I felt really scared when I saw the Kaaba. I felt really scared when I saw the Kaaba." So you felt scared, why? That's the house of Allah, Allah loves you more than your own mother even loves you, how could you feel scared? And he said, "I don't know, when I saw it, I felt as if I didn't like it. I felt as if I didn't want to be there. My heart contracted and I felt, I don't want to be here right now."

And if you look at Surah Al-Baqarah, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tells us why. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala mentions what group of people in Surah Al-Baqarah, Bani Israel. And he talks about Bani Israel, and he talks about how they would go to Musa عَلَيْهِ السَّلام they would go to Prophet Musa and they would say, "Musa, show us a miracle." And Musa would say, "Okay," so he splits the sea.

They were like, "Okay, that's pretty cool." Then they would say, "Yeah, it wasn't that good, show us another miracle." As if splitting the sea wasn't good enough. So he splits the sea for them, then Firaun, the guy who's chasing them, trying to kill them, he dies in that sea. He dies in that sea. And they say, "Okay, yeah, that's cool, thanks, I know he was trying to kill us and all, you know, high five, but not good enough for us. Show us another miracle."

They keep making these mistakes and they keep asking for miracles. Musa keeps showing miracles, keeps showing miracles. Then finally Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says something very interesting. He says that when Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gave them a miracle, the final miracle that they got, all of their hearts turned into stone, or they contracted, or they were like stone.

And the scholars of Quran, they say the reason why is because when they were exposed to the pure miracle of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala's miraculous signs, they were so used to disobeying Allah that their God, their Ilah, the thing that they worship with their heart and soul was not Allah. So when they saw a sign from Allah, their hearts contracted out of fear and out of disgust.

And so when I told this brother this verse or this chapter or this portion from the Quran, he began to cry tears from his eyes. And he asked me the question, he said, "Is there any hope for me?" He said, "Brother Murphy, I've been looking, I've been checking out girls, I've been looking at pornography for years now. Is there anything I can do to fix my heart?"

And as he looked at me and cried, wallahi, I didn't know what to say to him. So we have to, as a community, really address this problem seriously.

Practical Solutions

Number one, if you are a parent, you need to make sure that you have complete supervision over your child's computer. As some of the other shuyukh might say, do not let a computer enter a bedroom that has a closed door.

And this is not because you don't trust your children, kids. This isn't because your parents don't trust you. It's because shaitan is older than all of us, and he's smarter than all of us, and he knows all the tricks in the book. He knows what image to pop up on Facebook to get your mind working. So you have to make sure, parents, that you have supervision and monitoring over your kids' computers.

Number two, my brothers and sisters, my young brothers and sisters who I love so much, please watch out what you hear and what you watch. Please watch for what you listen to and what you see. Because