Striving for the Common Good

Striving for the Common Good

Opening Remarks and Award Presentation

Imam Majid will say a few words about this, but we are presenting as ISNA. This is my stuff, my turn, my turn. Presented to Sheikh Hamza Yusuf by the Islamic Society of North America. This award is presented to you in recognition of your untiring efforts of being an inspiration for individuals seeking knowledge and for the cause in Islamic, in North America and society at large. Sheikh Hamza Yusuf. What was missing from my speech earlier, that ISNA is a platform that bring different Muslim scholars, diversity of Muslim scholars, to address the Muslim community.

And that really representations of how diverse we are. And therefore, it is here in ISNA, we exchange ideas, we listen to different point of views of various Muslim scholars. And I would like to thank Sheikh Hamza Yusuf for being coming to the ISNA now for a while, and he said the award be given to the people who are on their way out, meaning that people are retiring.

No, that's not true. We gave an award today to Karen Armstrong, she was going to have years and years of giving, God willing, inshallah. And the award be given to Sheikh Hamza is also appreciating his great work. I would like just to tell you that the Zaytuna College have bought the building. They have a place now. And they have address.

And therefore, we'd like to ask Allah to bestow the blessing upon this great project. And I would like you to continue, by the way, to be generous and give to ISNA tonight before you leave. I give you Sheikh Hamza Yusuf.

Gratitude and the Importance of ISNA

I praise Allah, thanking him, and ask Allah inshallah to bless all of you and bless this institution moving into its 50th year. I'm slightly older than ISNA. And inshallah, I hope that we all recognize the importance of this institution because I mentioned earlier today at a brunch that we did for Zaytuna that I consider ISNA, and I don't say this to flatter ISNA or to exaggerate because in reality, all of us are part of this institution.

ISNA is a reification of something that's really a group of human beings. The single most important thing about this institution is that it is an institution that represents perpetuity of Islam in the United States. And I think it can't be underestimated the importance of perpetuity, the importance of longevity, the importance of the idea that something comes into existence and is sustained and maintained over generations, because that type of continuity is what enables this torch to be passed to the next generation.

The Foundation of Religion Through Institution Building

Without institution building, we don't have civilization, and we also don't have religion. Religions are founded

by great human beings that we believe these true religions were founded by prophets from God, but these prophets always have around them extraordinary human beings. And if you study the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the people around him are some of the most stunning characters in any human narrative.

He was blessed with a group of people. Allah says:

He has given you help from God and these believers that are with you.

God will suffice you, and according to one tafsir, one commentary on this, and it will suffice you those who you have with you, these people.

The Companions as Extraordinary Builders

They were great builders. The Sahaba were extraordinary builders. I have a friend of mine who's a professor in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Abdullah Al-Qadi, who's a scholar of Islamic sciences, but he's also a world-class city planner, recognized in the United States for his work with GPS and city planning, who got his doctorate from Portland University.

He actually did a study on the building of the trench in Medina and shows that this is one of the most extraordinary events in terms of pure planning, the engineering of it. The Prophet ﷺ was a profound planner. He was not somebody that did things ad hoc.

He was always in a deep state of awareness of his Lord, but he was always somebody who understood the asbab, the means, that God has given us to do things in this life. And if you read Imam al-Qahtani's extraordinary work, Taratib al-Idariyya, showing you that the Prophet ﷺ created institutions in Medina. A lot of people don't know that there were actually close to 40 mosques in the city of Medina during the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ.

People think that only he founded his big mosque and everybody went. No, he put a mosque in every neighborhood because he wanted people to have community. And this is why having many masjids is actually a positive thing, it's not a negative thing.

Masjids were meant to be in a hayy, in a neighborhood, so that people could come together, worship together. He even had people making masjids in their own homes. And so people had a room that was used for ibadah in their houses.

This is the way of making the sacred permeate the mundane. And so the Prophet ﷺ was a great builder of institutions. And this is something that's really important. Our community developed some of the greatest

endowments in human history. Now, we're here in the United States as a community, and the theme is one nation under God. How does that relate to Muslims? I want to look at it from two aspects.

The Dialectic of American History

The first is that America has always been a dialectic. It's a country that has always had two forces. A force that's reactionary and dark, and then a force that is progressive and light.

And this is something that's consistent throughout American history. One of the best ways to study American history is to study the Constitution and the amendments, and how those amendments came about. Because you will see such an interesting debate that's constantly going on in the United States of America.

John Adams, when he was elected president, one of the first things that he did, a revolutionary, is he put into legislation this idea of aliens and sedition acts. And this was that anybody that criticized the government or the president was arrested. There was somebody who made, a newspaper man made a remark, he'd been a congressman as well, he made a remark that at the inauguration he hoped that the cannon would misfire and hit the president.

He was arrested, put into jail for making that remark. That was repealed by people that recognized that if you were going to be true to the Bill of Rights, the idea of freedom of speech, that that was unacceptable, and people should be allowed to make such remarks. Again, President Wilson during his administration, you had a sedition act.

There were far more people arrested during that time. Anybody that criticized the government. People were arrested for saying that World War I was a capitalist conspiracy. They were literally arrested and taken to jail. So it's important to remember that this is not new what's happening. The idea of the Patriot Act, the idea of these problems that are happening in America, this is part of the story of America.

But it's the fighting back in a civil way that is what makes America move forward. In the Federalist Papers, in paper 63, one of the arguments that's made is that the Senate is an important organization in order to prevent the American people from exercising their temporary delusions. That people, as a people, they have temporary delusions.

Current Challenges and Temporary Delusions

So one of the temporary delusions that we have today is that the Muslims in America are a threat to the security of the United States of America as a community. One of the delusions in the United States today is that somehow Sharia law is a threat to the United States of America. We have states that are passing anti-Sharia laws.

They don't even know what the Sharia is and they're passing anti-Sharia laws in legislation. 42 million dollars has been spent according to a study on the Islamophobic literature and the films and all of these things that have

been produced. 42 million dollars and this is what officially that we know about.

There's a lot of money that we don't know about. So when we think of the United States, we have to think of ourselves as part of a story. The Muslims are part of a narrative and we have been part of this narrative from the beginning.

Muslims in American History

The Muslims were here from the very start. There's evidence that we were probably here before Columbus and that's a debatable point but we know that the Muslims have been here for over 500 years. There's ample historical evidence to prove that.

We have cities in the United States that were named by Muslims. There are several cities in the United States that were named Medina. We have a city in Indiana that's called Muhammad, the city of Muhammad, Illinois. Muhammad, Illinois. We have a city in Indiana called Medina and many of the graveyards have a hand with a finger pointing up and they have Muslim names on this and these are Turkish and Arabs that came to that city and founded that city and named it after Medina. We have a city that was first named Mecca and then they changed it to Medina.

So the Muslims have been here and they have been part of this. We know in this city there was a beautiful Muslim that was painted by the great painter Peale who also painted George Washington, Yaron Mahmoud. This man was noted for he lived in Georgetown. He was a freed slave. He was a Fulani. He was brought to America as a slave.

He was a Fulani and he was noted for chanting his Islamic prayers while walking around Georgetown and he was such a pleasant person that Peale who originally planned to paint him in a day ended up spending several days with him. This is part of American history. Islam is the only religion that was honored.

If you go to the Library of Congress, it is the only religion that is mentioned. If you look at the dome above the Library of Congress in the main hall, you will see Islam. All of the other names are names of civilizations but Islam was singled out because of its contribution to human knowledge and this is really important for us to remember.

Muslim Participation in American Wars and Society

So we have been part of this story. Muslims fought in all of these wars in American history, fought for this country. Muslims died in World War II for this country, in World War I, in the Civil War there were Muslims fighting.

So this idea somehow that we're alien is a completely unacceptable idea. The second thing I want to emphasize about it is that the Muslims, many Muslims, many of you are immigrants in the post-1965 act of immigration which enabled people to come to this country from countries that traditionally it was very unusual. There were

always people from these countries and Jefferson actually mentions Mohammedans and Hindus as people that he wanted to feel safe living in America.

So he mentioned this in his letters about his Virginia act of toleration. So it's very important to remember that America is a land of immigrants. There is ample evidence even that the original inhabitants of America, the aboriginals came from Asia over the Bering and the Navajo people, their genetic disposition is identical to peoples in Mongolia.

So everybody that has come to America has come as an immigrant, even the original inhabitants of the new world. So it's very important for us to remember that America is a story of immigrants and that you are part of that story. Those of you who have come late are still part of that story and you cannot see yourselves as somehow as foreigners.

America has always had accents, always. There's no point in American history that there were not Americans with accents. When Tammany Hall was at the height of its power, many of those politicians spoke and gave their speeches with Irish brogue and they were part of America. They were embraced sometimes and other times they were not. They were fought and they had to duke it out on the streets until they found their place at the table.

The African-American Muslim Legacy

African-Americans, this is one of the both tragic and great stories of this country is the African-American story and the Muslims are part of that story because we know that there's ample evidence that one-fifth out of the Muslim population were probably from Muslim background.

When Malcolm X made that statement, James Michener who was an author of historical novels, he wrote Shogun and some other novels, James Michener said that's complete fantasy. Well Alex Haley who wrote Roots with Malcolm X was disturbed by that, just the dismissive. He wrote an article, Michener saying that this was complete rubbish.

Alex Haley was upset by that and so what he decided to do was actually study the issue and so he decided to study his own family and he wrote a book called Roots and this book became a television series that had a massive impact on the American psyche in the early 70s. What he found out was that his own ancestor and this is really a type of providential act as far as I'm concerned, his own ancestor Kunta Kinte was a Muslim. So Alex Haley who wrote, who co-wrote with Malcolm X, the autobiography of Malcolm X, he was the one that took all the interviews and he put this piece together.

When he studied his own lineage, he found out that he was from a Muslim family in Senegambia. This is an extraordinary aspect. So we have many many people here who are African Americans who have Muslim ancestors flowing in their blood. Many of the Irish Americans have African American blood also. So my point is don't see yourselves as aliens here. Alien acts are always thrown out in American history.

America has temporary delusions but it's the people that call them back to their sanity. Those are the voices that we have to listen to and those are also the voices that we have to project from our own community. And so this is the second aspect of this and then I want to conclude with something about our own community that's deeply troubling to me.

Muslims as an Active Voice for Good

The Muslims in this country have to become an active voice for good. America, it's called one nation, we used to say one nation indivisible. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

In many ways, we've become many nations divided under godlessness, with licentiousness, and just lust for all. And we as a people really need to think about why it is that pornography is the number one form of media now in the United States of America. We've entered into a pornified culture.

Pamela Paul wrote about this in a book called Pornified, it's one of the most disturbing books that I've read. Chris Hedges in his book The Empire of Illusion, the second chapter of that, I actually regret reading it because it was so troubling and disturbing to me about what's happening in the culture of pornography. One of the pornographers recently wrote an open letter to Mitt Romney saying the Republican party needs to tone down its anti-pornography rhetoric because they don't have their pulse on America.

America has embraced pornography and it's about time the Republican party embraced pornography. That is what we're dealing with. We are dealing with an incredibly vile force in this country that's corrosive and that is literally eviscerating the moral character that has always been there in this country.

The Need for Intelligent Religious Voices

And if the Muslims don't become a voice, a rational voice, an intelligent voice, not a reactionary pseudo- religious or bad religious voice, because there's a lot of bad religion out there, we have to be people rooted in intelligence, in spirituality. Plato talks about the problem of stories in cultures and the corrosive effect they can have on youth. In his time he was talking about the plays of Aristophanes.

He was talking about some of the classical literature that today is read for moral edification. If he saw the type of stories that were now on a daily basis consumed by our young people, I think that he would completely write off the possibility for any real spirituality, any real metaphysical aspect or element to this culture. So we have to realize the absolute danger of this.

We need to be people that are providers and creators of a positive culture, a culture of life, not a culture of death. We used to call people that watch people in private acts of intimacy, they were called peeping toms. It's a crime in the United States.

Now we have large numbers of people watching people in public acts of depravity and profanity, and we call these consumers, consumers of entertainment. Peeping toms are classified as psychologically ill people, and yet

people that are consuming this culture that we have ample evidence of the harm that it's having. I listened to a lecture at the Witherspoon Institute on the effects of pornography in terms of the neuroplasticity of the brain and how brains become rewired, and it was one of the most troubling talks I'd ever heard.

And we now know that our young children from the ages of 12 to 17 are having exposures to pornography on a regular basis, many, many young people. This is a serious problem in our culture, and this is one of the problems.

The Problem of Food and Consumption

Another aspect that I think the Muslims should be at the forefront is the problem of food in this country. We now have an obesity epidemic in this country that is spreading all over the world because of the types of food we're eating. There's ample evidence now that plant-based diets are the most important types of diets. Our Prophet ﷺ was extremely conservative in what he ate.

He did not encourage overeating. In fact, he encouraged slightly under-eating, and this is clear in our sunnah. All of these problems that we're seeing in obesity are from the way our food is produced.

In fact, one of the people at the National Institute for Health said that we produce our food like crack cocaine. It's designed to have an addictive effect on people. We have people now addicted to fast foods. This is real. These are real addictions. And Muslims, we have a religion that's predicated on halal and tayyib, on halal and pure food.

It's one of the most important things. In fact, they said that the early companions, the early community, they were more concerned about their food than any other aspect of their lives, to eating good things, to eating wholesome things, and to making sure that they were purchased with pure money, that the money and the earnings were pure.

We know in Surah Al-Kahf, when they sent the people of the cave into the city, they asked, he told him:

Look for the purest food.

I mean, this is in Surah Al-Kahf, look for the purest food, because people of righteousness are always concerned with what their body is made up of, because it's the body that is going to be your energy, either spiritual or demonic. And when you're eating negative food, you're going to be doing negative things.

The Wisdom of Sidi Ahmed Zarruq

Sidi Ahmed Zarruq, may Allah have mercy on him, and may Allah restore him back to his place of resting, because we recently found out, many of us, that Sidi Ahmed Zarruq's grave was desecrated in Libya, literally dug up. And these people claimed that Libyans were worshipping Ahmed Zarruq. Sidi Ahmed Zarruq said that

all of the blessings of the world are in two things, the company you keep and the food that you eat. So make sure your company is good company, and make sure your food is pure food.

We should be encouraging organic farms, we should be encouraging organic gardens, we should be at the forefront of the urban homesteading movement. These are things that Muslims should be involved in. We should reject, don't think, you know, don't think I'm going to go to McDonald's and have a halal fish, right? Seriously, because the whole way that McDonald's, everything about McDonald's is antithetical to our Prophet ﷺ and his sunnah, and I'm speaking openly, I don't care what anybody says, I am telling you that fast food is something that is destroying people, and we have to oppose fast food consumption.

Practical Steps for Sustainable Living

Don't drink Coca-Cola, don't drink Pepsi-Cola, don't drink Kalthar-Cola, don't drink cola, drink water, drink milk, drink soy milk if you want to, but don't drink these drinks that have no, nothing good for you, and the way they're produced is unhealthy. We have an unsustainable consumption of plastic. If you look back there and look at the number of plastic cans, plastic bottles of water that are back there, we've got a garbage fill in ISNA, because we're drinking, this is unsustainable, it cannot be sustained, we have to find alternative approaches to the way we consume things, we have to be committed to being green, the green deen, we have to, but we have to have commitment, I don't want applause, I want real commitment, I want people to commit to changing their lives, we need to divest in our homes, we need to be, people, we talk about boycotting Israel, I'm talking about boycotting all of them.

If you can recognize their names, you should be boycotting them, because these people are destroying this planet, they're over-consuming, they're over-selling, Costco is a crisis, the whole Costco mentality, do you know that they don't even put labels on Costco halls, so you don't know where things are in Costco, because they want you to wander around, because they know people will have impulse buying and buy more things than they actually needed, this is social psychology, you are being manipulated like mice in a maze, and we need to oppose this type of mentality, because it's destroying people.

Taking Back Our Country Through Moral Commitment

So I'm really asking you to really think about the better world buying guide, we should have our own Muslim version of that, of really making choices, I don't fly United Airlines anymore because they get an F, I don't fly American, I fly Virgin American, I fly Southwestern, and I fly the JetBlue, because these have the highest ratings in terms of how they treat their employees, in terms of their commitment to social responsibility, the amount of money they're having, legislation is not having an impact on these people, they control legislation, the only thing that will have an impact on these people is that we stop supporting them, because they have bought our senators, they have bought our congressmen, Mitt Romney speaks on their behalf, and Barack Obama speaks on their behalf, we need to take back our country, and the way we do that is by educating

ourselves, and educating others, and making moral commitments, moral commitments to not being part of the madness that we're in.

Allah said:

Be witnesses unto mankind, be witnesses unto mankind.

You are the best community brought forth.

We have to embody those meanings, we need to stop supporting clothes, you know I get now my clothes are made, I have a tailor who prays five prayers in the masjid, and I go and he makes me my clothes in one day, and I know that the garments are actually fair trade garments, I don't want to support this system anymore, and I don't think you should want to, or you should, we need to have an exit strategy, and we can do that, there are morally committed Americans that are not Muslims, that are living pure lives in terms of what they practice, than most of the Muslims that I know.

Rejecting the Usury System

I know people that don't carry credit cards in their wallets, because they don't believe in them, non-Muslim peoples that are doing this, they will not carry credit cards, I met a Catholic who was so committed to the idea of not having usury, and she felt, and she actually engaged the Muslims, and she said I was so deeply disappointed, because when I found out Muslims, like the Catholics of old, before 1832, Muslims also maintain the prohibition of usury, but still unlike the Catholics, still adhere to it, and she said when I went to try to create a group of people that could work together to get out of the usury system, we should have our own credit cards, we can do this, Muslims can have their own credit cards, we need to have our own banks, banks are not easy, they're not hard to start, it's very easy to start, it's so easy to start, that instead of the bank robbers, they used to rob the banks, they realized we can just start our banks, why rob them and risk going to jail, let's just open up our own banks, and then we can rob all the people, right, this is what they did, so they actually got on the boards of the banks, right, really, this is what's happened.

So this is absolutely imperative that we really think about this, I would recommend going to moveyourmoney.org about moving out of the major banks into the smaller credit unions, local credit unions, local banks, as a first step, because all of these major banks, they own all of the pawn shops, they own all of the usurious check cashing schemes in the poorest neighborhoods, it's the same companies, you should look at the documentary Maxed Out and see what they do, it's sinister what they do, and they destroy your credit scores, because they want you to have low credit scores, so if you miss one payment, you get knocked down on your credit score, because they want you to pay more interest, it's all a game, it's a scheme, and people have been really, unfortunately, they've become victims, but it's because of our lack of vigilance, it's our lack of vigilance,

so this is, I really feel this absolutely necessary that we become part of the solution and not part of the problem, but we have to do it with real moral commitment, that's the only way.

The Problem of Anathematization in Our Communities

The final thing that I want to talk about is the problem of anathematization in our communities, the problem of attacking other Muslims, my father last year read the Qur'an from beginning to end in English with notes, and I said what's the thing that struck you most about the book, he said the prohibition of sectarianism, I want you just to think about that, the prohibition of sectarianism, that was what struck him most, somebody who's familiar with other revelations and other religious literature, and that really hit me, because I started thinking of all those verses in the Qur'an:

Don't be shia, don't split into sects, all those prohibitions of sectarianism, and I really took it to heart, and I just thought one of the most extraordinary things about our community is they developed a type of tolerance of difference of opinion that is really unique in the history of world religions in many ways, they were able to literally incorporate difference of opinion within the framework of an exegetical tradition, a way, a hermeneutic, a way of interpreting literature, recognizing that there are many ways to understand the same thing, there are limits to those, it's not infinite, so they did put parameters, but the parameters were quite broad, and they were very very wary of anathematization, the idea of saying somebody was not a Muslim, it's very hard to get kicked out of Islam, it's very easy to come into Islam, it's very hard to get kicked out.

The Principle of Fallibilism

But we have so many Muslims now that have arrogated to themselves the idea that if you don't agree with me, you're not a Muslim, they have lost a sense of what has been termed in some traditions fallibilism, the idea that we are fallible creatures by our very nature, we can be certain about Islam, and we should be certain about Islam, because certainty is one of the prerequisites of faith in our religion, but we should always have a fallibilistic understanding of our own interpretation of that religion, or our own understanding of that religion.

Imam Shafi'i, one of the greatest scholars in religious history, said, whenever I debate with an interlocutor, I always assume, if I believe in my position, that I'm right, but I could be wrong, and that he is wrong, but he could be right. In other words, he had a sense of fallibilism, that my interpretation might not be the right, and I should always be open to listening to another possibility.

This is certainly for the scholars more than for the common people, but it's very important that we incorporate that in our understanding, this idea of just calling anybody that disagrees with us a kafir or a mubtadi'. This is a serious problem in our community, and we need to take it seriously. Really, we need to take it seriously.

One of the principles in our tradition is, it was articulated by Abu Hanifa, and Sidi Abdullah Ibrahim, in one of his books, says it this way in poetry, to deem a thousand atheists to be Muslims by error is easier in the sight of

God than to consider one Muslim a kafir. We should really take that seriously. Be very careful about making takfir of other Muslims, and I know many of my closest friends have been called kafirs.

Really, many of my closest friends, somebody up here who I know saying I'm one of them. No, we have this problem, so we need to understand. I'm a committed orthodox Muslim. I follow the Maliki school. I try to follow the dominant opinion. I was trained in the Kalam tradition. I inclined towards the text of Imam At-Tahawi in terms of just what as an articulation of creed, and I accept the way of Junaid As-Salik. This was our tradition. Islam is threefold.

The Three Dimensions of Islam

It is creed, it is law, and it's beauty and the making of beauty. These are the three dimensions of Islam. If any one of them is lacking, we have an incomplete Islam. Our Islam is incomplete. If we're not making things beautiful, then something's wrong with our Islam.

So my request to all of you, inshallah, is really commit to turning your abodes into Dar al-Islam, into houses of Islam, making your houses houses of pure food, of pure clothing, of fair trade, using fair trade, becoming green in your homes, teaching your children these things, exercising them in our masajid. I'm so tired of going to masajid and seeing styrofoam glasses and plates. Really, we shouldn't be doing this.

A Lesson in Extravagance

One Mauritanian who was here in the United States, we were in the city in New Mexico, and he had just gotten here. He was raised in a Bedouin tradition. He'd just gotten here, and somebody took a glass and drank it and then threw it into the garbage can. And he said, what did he just do? And I said, what do you mean? He said, what did he just do? He just threw that cup into that. Is that a garbage? I said, yeah. He said, why did he do that? I said, well, it's a throwaway cup. He said, what do you mean? I said, they just use it one time and throw it away.

He said to me, this is the most extreme extravagance. And he said:

That extravagant people are the brethren of the demons.

Allah hates wasters. He said, that was a perfectly good cup. He could have used it over and over again. Think about this.

The Environmental Crisis and Our Responsibility

It's untenable. This planet is, we're in a real peril right now. Our fish are going to be dead in about 30 years, according to scientists. We're living in really apocalyptic times, and people are taking it like a joke. We need a global planetary tawbah. We need teshuvah, metanoia.

We need to change our minds. We need a global repentance. We need a global repentance as a species, because we have messed this planet up so badly, and it's not right to our children. It's not right to the future generations. We should be stewards and caretakers.

I'm putting in the earth a caretaker.

When the angels heard that, they said:

Are you going to put one that sheds blood and sows corruption?

Fasad can mean pollution as well. And Allah said:

I know what you don't know.

What he knew is there would be always that community of believers that reminded people of what they should be doing.

We need an excuse with our Lord on the day of judgment. We should be those people.