The Call to Dawah

The Call to Dawah

Opening Remarks

(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim), As-salātu wa-s-salāmu ʿalá ashraf al-anbiyāʾ wa-l-mursalīn. As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-raḥmatullāhi wa-barakātuh.

I'd like just to ask first off, how many people are Muslims in here? Are Muslims? Practicing Muslims? I don't want to embarrass some people or something. So, the majority are, I'm taking it. Which, I find it a little difficult, only because I like to keep focused at a level that everybody is going to understand. And so, since there are some people that are not practicing Muslims, I'll try to minimize the use of vocabulary that is common coin amongst the Muslims.

And then, for those who saw a tape, I guess I heard that there was a video from Islam and I made an excuse that I hadn't had any sleep. And I'm going to use that same excuse today because, in fact, I actually got off a plane from Jeddah and then got on a plane with a short interval of a day to Canada. So, I was in Mecca and Medina during Ramadan. And actually, the reason I'm here in the States is because I was invited here. And the people in Mecca thought I was insane when I told them that I had to go because I had a talk in Toronto, Canada. They said, how can you leave the Kaaba for a talk in Toronto, Canada? And I said, well, I made the commitment before I actually knew I was going to be in Mecca during that blessed time. So, I'm keeping my commitment here. So, due to this jet lag, I also feel like I'm at about 37,000 feet right now. So, if I talk over your heads, it's only because of that experience.

The Global Spiritual Awakening

About the topic, a call to Dawah, if you look, I think my experience has been, I've done a lot of traveling, my experience has been really to sum it up, a sociologist at Berkeley who's been there for several years told me not too long ago that for about 30 years he was an atheist. And just recently he had come to realize that there is a God. This was what he said. And he said, but what shocked him was that it wasn't only his realization, but really something that he felt that was taking place all over the world.

And I think right now, in the sense that while we see intense darkness in the world, I think there's also these beacons of light that are emanating out from different corners on the earth. And I think it's not simply the Muslims that are rediscovering their faith, but I think it's happening in many regions on the earth. And I don't think that the reason that this is happening is something that can be reduced to a materialistic explanation, which is generally how Western, certainly Western analysts like to interpret these things. They like to say that the reason that there's a resurgence of Islam in the Muslim world is due to the fact that there's geopolitical situations there that are ripe for the situation to come about. People tend to find simplistic answers in religion. When times get complicated, people tend to look towards religion for answers. And I don't think it can be reduced to that simple of a formula for interpreting it.

Unprecedented Changes in Human Society

What I would say, though, is that we have seen in our lifetimes things and events, really, that have been phenomenal. Anybody that's over 30 years of age has seen extraordinary changes in human society. People that are around 70 or 80 or 90 years old have seen unbelievable changes, things that really are unimaginable if they hadn't seen them.

If you look at this century alone, one of the great arguments against religion is that all the wars that humans have fought have been so-called, quote-unquote, religious wars. And yet, if we look at all these so-called religious wars, we'll find that, in fact, the amount of people that died in those religious wars is minuscule compared to the amount of people that have died in this century alone due to such ideologies as communism and democracy. We have seen in this century over 180 million people killed through technological means. 180 million people. And really, that's a conservative estimate.

We've seen in our lifetime hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, killed. Many of us have seen it on television. And the most recent example, certainly, was the Gulf War, and now Bosnia and Herzegovina. And these are only the ones that get news coverage. There's things going on in Burma. There's things going on in the Philippines. There's things going on in Kashmir, in Africa, in many different areas in Africa that don't have the benefit, if we can call it a benefit, of getting news coverage or concern.

The Search for Meaning

And I think there's a deep sense amongst a lot of people that these are extremely unusual times, that they're times of great events. What we've witnessed, really, with the destruction of sovereign states in the last few years, and I think the dismantling is going to continue. It's not completely intact because the apparatus whereby it would create, basically, a one-world situation is not fully intact, but it's moving, and it's been moving for some time towards that direction.

So while all of this is happening, while all of these people have been killed, while all these wars have taken place, there's this deep sense, right, of despair in many places. There's also a deep sense of cynicism in many places. And I think from that environment, there's a need for answers. There's a need for light because the human being, by his nature or by her nature, is unable to exist in a void. People have to have meaning.

The Dismantling of Christianity in the West

If we look at the 19th century and really what happened to religion, how religion was dismantled from the lives of people, because it's something that actually we can see the progress that took place. In the 19th century, we had the Industrial Revolution in the West and had massive changes that began to take place. But within the intellectual atmosphere, what was happening was there was deep analysis, really, of traditional religious texts in a field that was called philology.

And what these people began to discover was that these texts were, in fact, there was a great deal of mythology, for instance, in the Old and New Testament. There were a lot of things that could be traced back to roots that were alien to the basic and fundamental claims of those books themselves. And this led to, really, a sense of... It basically destroyed Christianity, is what it did. It took some time, right? But what these intellectuals really kind of worked out was that what we're dealing with is, in the Old Testament, a very parochial book or a provincial book whereby there's this tribal deity that goes around destroying anybody that opposes these twelve tribes in the midst of the deserts of Egypt and what's now present-day Israel.

And then you move to the New Testament, which has a little more of a universal flavor. It's a little easier to swallow than the Old Testament. But it's got all this metaphysical fiction. And so these people looked at this, and then at the same time, while this was going on, this critical analysis of these texts, and it was beginning to seep down into the centers of learning, at the same time, there were remarkable transformations taking place in the social sciences.

The Rise of Materialism and Nihilism

Darwin's theory was really a justification for colonialism because racism, ultimately, is a way that the people that exploit are able to, in a sense, justify their exploitation. It's nothing other than that. Racism is not about color. It's not about ethnic background. What it is about is that exploiters need a justification for exploiting the people that they're exploiting or for feeling good about it.

So if we look at people that we tyrannize and terrorize and say, these people are really, they're not fully human, their frontal lobes aren't as developed as ours, they're really only useful for bondage or slavery, like Aristotle had his peoples that were naturally inclined towards bondage. And so the whole Darwinian picture really justified the Europeans going into Africa, into the Middle Eastern countries, into India and Asia, and made them really feel okay about being Christian and about doing all these things to these people in these places. So you had that taking place.

And then you had communism. You had a materialistic explanation of class tension, of struggles within societies, basically being about bread and about food and about basic primary needs. And then as religion is losing its foot in the European psyche, what develops out of that really is what Nietzsche termed nihilism, or a void, really.

And what Nietzsche said is once we eliminate God as an absolute value from the picture, all other values automatically disappear. You see. Because if I don't believe in a hesab, in an account, in a reckoning, if I don't believe that there's a moral authority outside of myself that imposes upon me moral imperatives, then really nobody can impose anything upon me.

If there's nothing absolute, if things are relative in their nature, then nobody can tell me what to do or what to say. If, for instance, as a humanist, I choose not to kill, this is a hypothetical imperative. I choose not to kill. Somebody else down the road can say, I choose to kill. Right? And this happens.

Why did you kill him? Well, it was Monday. I don't like Mondays. Somebody actually said that. They killed something. Somebody went and shot a bunch of children in California, I think. And they asked him why they did it. Well, it was Monday. I don't like Mondays. You see, and that is really neat. I mean, you're getting into deep nihilism there where there's nothing there. It's just a void.

So if I've watched The Predator 50 times, which I think that person did, I haven't seen it one time, but I'm supposing it's some gruesome movie about a guy that goes around shooting people and kind of feeling good about it, right? And so this person had watched this program 50 times or something and then went out and did it, right? And then people say, well, there's no scientific evidence that watching television has any effect on the behavior of people. We've done several studies and there's no proof, right?

The Moral Void in the West

So the point of all that is suddenly Europe's without any moral foundation or base, as if they ever had one. There's an argument that they didn't because if you look at what they did, like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, I can't hear what you're saying because your actions are shouting so loudly, right? So while the Europeans have always told us about, and these are my grandparents I'm talking about now, the Europeans have always told us about democracy and Rousseau's rights of man and all these wonderful concepts, right?

The fact of the matter is Europe seems to be kind of a leukemia on the social body. Or leukemia is too, that's a nice disease. It's more like a malignant growth, right? The kind of wherever it goes, it just eats people up, right? In leukemia you kind of get withered and just kind of fade away. Malignancies just get bigger and bigger. Until they kill everybody, right?

And so there is an argument but I would tend to say that there was at one time some moral base. To give you an example, the Pope actually once declared using crossbows as cruel and barbaric warfare. Therefore it can only be used on the Muslims, right? Not on Christians because it was cruel and barbaric to use it on Christians. Let's find another way to kill Christians that's less cruel and less barbaric like swords and things like that. Whereas Muslims, since they're cruel and barbaric, let's use cruel and barbaric weapons to wipe out the Muslims.

So there was some moral base. It didn't have a real strong foundation but it was there. Now it's not there anymore.

The Crisis in the Muslim World

Now if you look at the Muslim countries, right? Don't. If you haven't, don't. Especially if you're not Muslim. Just ignore them, pretend they don't exist and read about Islam. If you're from these unfortunate places, then if you do look at them, basically what we're dealing with is people that also, unlike Christianity, that all of a sudden realized they had a made-up religion, right? That's what they realized, that it was made up.

So now that's how you can get these guys that say I've got a prayer cloth here. If you send $50, you'll get your prayers answered because I swear it on the Bible. And people send in $50. And that's what Christianity has been reduced to. They don't have anything other than that. It's in a superstitious phase because it's philosophical and the philosophical and spiritual content of Christianity was basically destroyed. It really starts post-Renaissance but it heats up 17th, 18th and 19th century, finishes it off.

That did not happen to Islam. What happened to Islam was in some ways more devastating and in some ways not. It was not more devastating in the sense that Islam itself never lost the power of the truth of Islam amongst the Muslims. What happened was the Muslims were defeated militarily and that created such a massive crisis in the Muslim psyche.

And the reason for that is simply stated the Quran promises victory. It's actually a promise. I mean the Quran talks about and the Hadith talks about the nature of the war between truth and falsehood that there are days that the truth has its day and then there are days where falsehood has its day but ultimately truth manifests and falsehood disappears and then what happens is people go into decline and if you can read the Quran and look there's deep analysis of societies in the Quran.

The Psychological Impact of Military Defeat

So what happens is is that the Muslims basically believed that we had such an innate superiority that it really led to a type of superiority complex that we can't be defeated because we're Muslims. Simple as that. And what happens is that they're defeated and so there's this massive crisis. How is it that we're defeated?

Well all of a sudden you have all these ignorant Muslims that are seeing these Europeans coming with this massive technology and they're just knocked out by it. I mean how do you fight people with swords when they have cannons and machine guns and now nuclear missiles? Right? And so because of this deep crisis that took place Islam in a sense lost its bearings within the society but not initially.

The Colonial Strategy of Cultural Dismantling

What happens is very sophisticated. The colonialists come in and they recognize that there's still this thing intact. So we have to really dismantle it because as long as there's even a semblance of this thing intact we're threatened. Our presence here is threatened and our interests. They're always talking about vested interests. America's vested interests. The vital interests of the Gulf region. This is what they talk about. They talk about interests because that's what it's all about. Interests.

And so what happens is is that they recognize the basic and fundamental thing that the Muslims need to be disengaged from is their book. Now they were already to a great degree separated from the book but not completely and part of the reason was there were still very strong institutions of learning within the Muslim world.

Breaking the Historical Link

And so what happens is and it's very sophisticated how they did it is that they recognize that they had to break this historical link that the Muslims had with these traditions. So what they made the Muslims feel is that they were backward and that these traditions were backward that writing on a board and memorizing the Quran is backward because now we have paper.

And so the Muslims developed this deep sense of inferiority whereas they had what destroyed them was their superiority complex. Right? Of thinking we can never be destroyed so let's just sit around and drink sugared drinks in the palaces of Istanbul or the palaces of Cairo or wherever they were and then the Europeans meanwhile are busy whittling away at developing more sophisticated crossbows more sophisticated cruel and barbaric ways of killing Muslims and before you know it they were there, right? With their cruel and barbaric ways of killing Muslims and the Muslims were kind of like what happened? Right? Like waking up from a dream.

And so the whole educational system begins to be dismantled and this is all documented you can actually go and read how they did this. Right? They studied it they sent in people studied the whole thing recognized here's key issues these are the things they're divisive about they reintroduced areas of divisiveness amongst the Muslims particularly the Aqidah which is a big area that the Muslims have always had some Aqidahs like the belief system but pretty much things were smoothed out so let's renew this argument so now you have Muslims all over the Muslim world making Takfir, right? Calling other Muslims their Aqidah is not straight and this isn't right and that's not right and that goes on all over the Muslim world now, right?

The Final Severance: The Destruction of Traditional Islamic Education

So as these institutes are destroyed the last one that was actually intact was the Yusufiyah which in 1938 is basically finished off by the French and so there you severed now completely the Muslims from a historical link to their traditional understanding of Islam and what emerges out of this is a new... I'm going to get to if you don't think this has anything to do with Dawa it does but I'm going the long way around, right? So just be patient we've got how much time left? How long have I been talking? 20 minutes, okay. Is this boring? Okay, alright I just want to make sure because I'm like I said about 37,000 feet I keep wanting to say coffee, tea.

So, where were we? Right, the Yusufiyah. So what happens is they dismantled all these and what's left is these a few kind of places left in the middle of Swat Valley in Pakistan or India or the deserts of Mauritania or Mali and

the only people now that go to religious schools are the people that can't get into any other school, right? So you've got like 4th and 5th, 6th rate intellects studying Islamic Law that was written by 1st rate intellects. Right?

Now that's a big problem because they can't understand them. So now they've had to rewrite all the old books in this new, what they call Fiqh al-Wadih, right? Clear Fiqh like clear jurisprudence because that other stuff was so difficult and ambiguous. What it means is jurisprudence for mentally incapacitated people, right? So we wonder why we're not producing any 1st rate thinkers in Islamic thought, right? Because nobody's studying it. They're all in engineering school discovering the latest cruel and barbaric way to blow up people.

The Modern Muslim Predicament

And they're working for Rockwell International doing it or wherever, I don't know. I mean, isn't that what Muslims are all the brilliant Muslims I just met this guy, he's like a PhD and nuclear physicist from Algeria and he's working on a new laser device to zap people, right? Which is probably nicer than a crossbow through the heart but nonetheless, it's kind of got the same mentality there, right? Fry your enemy. That'll be the motto of the corporation that sells it, right?

You don't have to drop smart bombs just make them disappear with our new laser device that can actually be automated from your command control in Washington, D.C. with the satellite over Dubai. So you don't even have to go over there, right? No more costs of shipping all the troops over and all this logistics. Just push a button and Baghdad disappears. I mean, that's where they're heading, isn't it? It seems like that.

If you look at it, if you want to get into arms that's a real interesting, right? These great western people that love peace and the United Nations is founded on breaking down weapons, swords into plowshares, right? So we can grow wheat for everybody and these same people, right? are sitting on the boards of corporations that are spreading vast amounts of highly destructive technology all over the third world. Over 50% of arms sales goes to the third world and 49% of that goes to the Middle East itself. But those same people are there saying we will not let anything interfere with the peace process except our profits because we can't interfere with that because that's the bottom line which is what these people are all about the bottom line. So there you have it.

American Cultural Imperialism

That's the state of the Muslim world now and now America has worked out even a better way of dealing with the whole thing. America is so sophisticated they're like eons ahead of everybody else in how to control and manipulate people. So the Americans say let's not dismantle anything let's let them do whatever they want but let's broadcast our television programs there so you can all just sit and vegetate and watch I Love Lucy reruns in Cairo in Arabic, right? I love Lucy, right? I love you Lucy. I mean that's what they're doing in Cairo.

Actually it's a big crisis because the Quranic madrasas now the children can't memorize the Quran because they're memorizing I Love Lucy reruns. I mean seriously this is actually happening people can't memorize

anymore because they sit and watch flickering cathode rays that zap your brain so before you know it there's no longer any neurological pathways so people can't think anymore that's why they continue watching it because it gets more and more thoughtless each year because they realize now in Hollywood why produce really expensive stuff when people are so stupid now we can just put anything on there so now they have all these programs where they just run around behind people in 911 they don't even have to pay for actors or anything they just run around actual real people and film them and then people sit and watch these things they watch them.

The Connection to Dawah

So anyway, what does this have to do with dawah? What it has to do with dawah is that we're up against very serious competition when we call people to Islam we're up against I Love Lucy reruns and 911, right? which is a real concern for people that have to do dawah but nobody's doing it so why even worry about it, right?

Well, what it has to do with dawah is the fact that there's an Arab proverb that has a lot of truth in it and it says:

"[Quran principle]"

Somebody that doesn't have something can't give it, right? Now Islam is obviously something and according to the Muslim belief it's the most precious thing but if you don't have it you can't give it.

The Two Aspects of Islam: Mecca and Medina

Now if we look at Islam, right? Islam has basic two fundamental aspects to it the first and we can almost look at it like Mecca and Medina and it's beautiful the dichotomy between the two that we've been given Mecca and Medina and they're very different. Mecca is mountainous it's rugged it's harsh all the people are harsh not all of them but most of them and Medina is all flat and soft and easy it's actually Mecca is called Wa'r and Medina is called Sahl one means hard another means easy, soft and the people in Medina are all easy and soft, right?

In Mecca it's like this guy was trying to do I was just there and this guy wanted to do Tawaf, right? and he was trying to get through people and these people from Mecca didn't want him to get through and told him to go around and he said the guy said just do Tawaf from outside right? from way out there don't don't go up there and the guy looks at him and says you know, you're like what a sweet man you are great sense of humor.

So the point of that little story is that there's this dichotomy and really the way we look at it is there's a personal salvation right? which we can look at as the Meccan period and then there's a social salvation that we can look at as the Medinan period and Islam addresses both issues and oddly enough the personal salvation is more difficult than the social salvation that's why if you look at Mecca it's all persecution and struggle and Medina is all victory right? it's all really it became easy once they got to Medina.

I mean they had Jihad and they had all this struggle it was all still there but it was all sudden it was different all sudden they had what's called Izzah in the Arabic language in the Quranic language dignity and you know Allah

raised them up and the secret of their being raised up is that they were so low and humble right? that's the secret of it.

Personal Islam: Belief and Action

So you can look Islam has these two aspects it has the Meccan which is the personal salvation which has two aspects to it that's all very simple the first aspect is what we believe and it can be summed up in when the man asked the Prophet for advice he said:

(قُلْ آمَنْتُ بِاللَّهِ ثُمَّ اسْتَقِمْ - "Qul amantu billahi thumma-staqim" (Sahih Muslim 38)

Say I believe in Allah and then be upright. That's it that's all there is to it that is what is called personal Islam and that is what is ingrained in these people during the Meccan period is believe in Allah and then act accordingly right?

And what happens is if you do that you will find that people suddenly become hostile right? they become hostile why? because all of a sudden your actions are actually threatening the status quo because if you start acting upright and everybody else is something else right? the way the jinn put it is so beautiful right? we have righteous people and then we have all these other people.

The Challenge of Acting Upright

So if you act upright you will find that people start getting a little uneasy you see if the woman puts on the hijab and actually instead of displaying her sexuality actually covers it and conceals it all of a sudden people get a little and they never got worried about nuns right? all these nuns right? wearing this I mean it's a hijab right? the nuns wear a hijab in fact they probably got it from the Muslims but nobody ever got upset this is against women's rights right?

Well of course they'll say because the nuns chose that right? that's what they'll say well didn't didn't the Muslim women choose it? no no no you see they've been brainwashed they didn't really they only think they chose that but in reality they didn't choose that you see it's just a socialization well what about the nuns? isn't that kind of a socialization? no no no that's something different why? well because that's Christianity an end of argument right? oh ok I'm silly of me to even question that.

So there you have it right? If you act upright you get people upset which is so odd right? because what they say is they want people to act upright but what they say and what they do like Mr. Emerson said your actions shout louder than your words and the truth of the matter is we're living in probably the most barbaric society that's ever existed right? western civilization.

The Evolution of Western Piracy into Colonialism

I mean really what what's happened ok is that well let's look at Queen Elizabeth right? that great bastion of

Christianity Queen Elizabeth had these characters around her that were called corsairs right? what the Arabs called qarasina and really what the corsairs were they were pirates and and what they did they went around attacking ships and stealing all their gold and bringing it back and giving a good portion of it to the crown and so it was kind of like a mafia setup the queen was like the god mother or whatever you want to call her and these guys were all these real slimy henchmen and but it all looked really good because she was the defender of the faith right? Christianity and they were these knights which were noble titles but nonetheless what they went around doing was pirating people and this develops right? into colonization.

It started out just as these characters running around pirating the Spanish and saying well we really did it because we're at war but what they were really doing was just pirating so they go back to England and the English army would actually protect these pirates and ultimately the Muslims were kind of this problem because the Muslims were actually and it's interesting because this is what the criminal always will say that the society is unjust that's the nature of the criminal he has to say that in the same way that racism is justified because really what it's about is exploitation the same thing criminals will say it's the society that did this to me that's what they'll do.

So what these pirates did is they called the Muslim army which was the Ottoman army pirates and they were actually these noble people because the Ottoman navy actually patrolled the Mediterranean and they had tributes just like now you have tributes right like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait they just paid a big giant one for this army to go out there and defend their little kingdoms whatever you want to call them sheikhdoms or something but it's still it's the same basic principle so what happens is that this army said you know hey you can't pirate around here because we don't believe in this stuff right so suddenly they said we got to find another way to get around to Asia because these Muslims are real pain right so they start sending out these and finally the rest is history right they discover this whole thing.

Modern Organized Crime at the National Level

So what's happened now is it's become so sophisticated because these pirates now wear three piece suits they don't have patches on their eyes anymore but they still have skull and bones right George Bush right remember the club he was a he's still a member in good standing right you have to dig up somebody's bones as your initiation right somebody said his was Geronimo that's what he had to do go dig up Geronimo's bones so he's a member of the skull and bones club which is a very elite secret club so is Buckley right everybody know that idiot that poses as an intellectual he has a television program oh you know he's got this kind of what do they call it firing line or something so they're all members of the skull and bones club right because that's their old flag it's the same group.

So what they've done is they've solidified all their power right and now they work at the level of nations and actually they've gone beyond that right now they call it the united nations which is really just a pirate organization because they realize that crime doesn't pay but organized crime does right so if we get organized

The Spider's Web Metaphor

It's interesting all their signs and symbols are spider webs have you ever noticed that the united nations is a spider's web over the earth and the CBS it's a spider's web on an eye right it's all spider's webs I just started I read a book on spiders it's not funny I read it because I wanted Allah says that they're like spiders right and that's what Allah says they're like a spider that takes a house that's what Allah says about these people:

"Mathalu alladheena ittakhadhu min dunillahi awliya'a kamathali al-'ankabooti ittakhadhat baytan wa inna awhana al-buyooti la-baytu al-'ankabooti law kanu ya'lamoon"

So I wanted to understand that metaphor so I started reading about spiders and it's amazing that they're just like spiders it's a beautiful metaphor because spiders one of the things spiders do is that they actually don't eat their victims they have this poison they inject in their fangs a poison that liquefies the internals of their victims and then they suck all their vital fluids out of them so all there's left is a shell in this spider's web right which is what we call western civilization and now the Muslim world they're just all shells in this spider's web right and the spider keeps getting bigger and bigger.

And every time a victim comes into the web they have the most sophisticated telecommunication system the spiders right they don't need satellites but it's very similar they always have a string attached to the web so anything that touches the web even if they're sleeping the web shakes and they wake up and they run to the web and if it's a big victim and they realize they might get out of the web they have all these milking glands and they squirt they squirt all this extra silk onto their victims so they totally cover them up in this stuff but if it's just a little one right then they just sit kick back in the white house and just watch it just watch it kind of die right.

So I mean seriously like Iraq was kind of a big victim right so they went down there and they shot out all this stuff and got them completely wrapped up whereas Bosnia is kind of this it's not funny it's not a joke but it's a metaphor Bosnia is this kind of little victim stuck in the web that they can just sit back and watch it suffocate from the webs of intrigue that they've created and it's interesting that this Jewish writer wrote what he called about all the how they armed Iraq it's called the spider's web it's an interesting book to read the spider's web so that's what they do.

The Muslim World in a Comatose State

So what's this have to do with dawah I know you're all asking that question it has a lot to do with dawah because what we're dealing with now in the Muslim society is a society in turmoil and in really decay is I mean decay kind of indicates that there's still something alive there right I mean if something's in a decaying state it's not completely wiped out but it's almost too easy a word to use the way I look at the Muslim world it's like I

can't remember his name but he wrote a book called Coma where they kept these people alive just in a coma so that they could use their organs right and that's what the western powers do to the Muslim world they keep them just in a comatose state so they can get their oil and get their cotton and get all this right is organ donors because they have a dying society up here in the west that's based on consumption and that's the only thing.

See the meaning of these people's lives is to consume and if you take that away from them all of a sudden they're in a complete void and voids are scary. 80% of Americans that attempt meditation have acute anxiety attacks because they close their eyes and all of a sudden they say oh my god I'm inside myself give me something to look at some stimulation turn on quick turn on the television turn on the music right let me look at a billboard they get very uneasy right because all of a sudden they might have to think about something like why am I here why was I created where am I going when I die right those are kind of scary questions for somebody that's never given them an ounce of thought right and they've kind of lived their lives based on the fact that those questions don't exist.

I mean it's very frightening you see them on their death beds right I used to work in a critical care unit and watch them die I don't want to die I don't want to die I saw that many times why because that's the way they've lived their lives you see they're frightened they're scared.

Islam Removes Fear

You know what Islam is about is about taking away fear see if you're a Muslim what are you afraid of right because the first thing that you accept as a Muslim the very first thing there's no God but Allah which means there's nothing that I should have any fear of except God and therefore everything else becomes secondary death is a secondary see if you believe in God if you believe in the fact that you were created for a purpose and that you're going somewhere and it all has meaning then all of a sudden everything becomes secondary to that primary fact which it is a fact you see.

I mean the prophet said:

(Sahih Bukhari)

"Inna al-jannata haqqun wa-n-nara haqqun wa-l-qiyamata haqqun" The Garden is true, the Fire is true, the Day of Rising and Judgment is true, the Mizan the Balance is true.

Calling Ourselves First

So really getting back to this what we're calling people to first of all we have to call ourselves that's the first thing we have to call ourselves every day you have to be giving dawah to yourself constantly every day of your life it doesn't stop you become Muslim I've seen people they become Muslim and I tell them some people kind of get upset when I explain Islam to them people that have become Muslim that I've given shahada to and people around and say why did you tell them all that stuff it's so heavy right because it's better they stay out of the house right than come in and be a foul guest right and if you don't want to observe the manners of the house

don't come into the house because the house has manners and the house has a lord he's called rabbul bait and if you come into dar al-islam into the abode of islam you better observe the manners of the house and the manners of the house came from the lord of the house and if you don't want to observe them get out of the house because you're just fouling up the house.

And that's what's happening all over the muslim world you have these people that are claiming they're in the house right but they don't use the toilet they urinate wherever they want to right they leave the food all over the place just to rot so give the house a stench and then people that see the house think you know it's like somebody that looks at a mansion that's totally dilapidated right and they think i wouldn't want to live there right as a beautiful it looks like it was a beautiful thing at one time i mean that's the way people look at islam now if you hear orientalists talk about islam the golden years of islam right that's what they talk about the golden years of islam because now they look at it just like a mansion in total dilapidation right.

Rebuilding the House of Islam

So what we want to do is find out where the carpenters are to rebuild this thing right because it's there all the blueprint I mean what we have now that house is gone right what they call the golden years it's over:

"Tilka ummatun qad khalat laha ma kasabat wa lakum ma kasabtum"

Those people they're gone they have what they earn and you have what you earn you see they're gone we can't live off them anymore it's no longer viable but what we have is we have a vision of what it was once at one time but we also have an intact blueprint and what we need is a critical mass of people that will take on this deen personally take on it as individuals and then call other people to it you see we have to rectify our homes we have to rectify our character we have to become people of istiqama of uprightness and if we're not we can't call anybody to anything because we don't have anything to call people to it's an empty call you see and dawah is not an empty call.

The Need for Social Islam

I mean dawah is a call to the house to the abode of Islam it's calling people enter into the abode and right now my sustenance and I'm sure many of your sustenance is a personal sustenance because we're not living social Islam you see I would love to be living social Islam I would love to be living in a society where there weren't thieves because people don't need to steal where there weren't drugs because people don't have need to get out of their state and into a state that puts them into a sense of oblivion where they don't have to think about the problems of their lives you see where women aren't beaten in their homes because they have recourse to ways of solving their marital disputes and their troubles that are humane and that are based on justice and wisdom you see.

I mean that's the society that I yearn for is a society where people can live Islam where knowledge is the highest and most primary function of the human being to acquire knowledge and to worship based on that knowledge acquired. Al-Bukhari has a chapter in his great opus that's called:

بَابُ الْعِلْمِ قَبْلَ الْقَوْلِ وَالْعَمَلِ - "Babu al-'ilmi qabla al-qawli wa-l-'amal" (Sahih Bukhari, Book of Knowledge(

The chapter of knowledge before speaking and action you see because Islam is based on knowledge the first thing that comes down in the Quran is:

"Iqra bismi rabbika alladhi khalaq"

Read that's the first thing that comes down read what in the name of your Lord learn knowledge in the name of your Lord learn knowledge because Allah has commanded don't learn knowledge to make more money right don't learn knowledge to get a degree don't learn knowledge so that you can go work for a corporation that's developing new and improved ways of killing people learn knowledge because you were commanded to learn knowledge and then apply that knowledge and then take that knowledge out to other people and that's what Islam is about.

The Call to the Way of Ibrahim

It's a very fundamental call back to the way of Ibrahim alayhi as-salam to the way of the Hanif and Ibrahim was a simple man living in the midst of a desert in a tent but he had the deepest spiritual experience of anyone in his time you see because he was a Hanif he was a an upright man it's a man that believes in the Deen of fitrah the inherent religion of man and woman which is Islam and acts upright and that is Ibrahim and our call is to the way of Ibrahim as it was finalized in the way of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and that's the call of the Muslims and it's the call of truth and the people that hear it and respond to it will be the people whose hearts have that mill have that Hanif you see and they're out there they have to be I don't believe that they're not and we have to go find them that's your job in Toronto they're out there they must be I don't believe they're not because this is the Fitrah it's the inherent nature people will never be happy until they submit to Allah and people won't be happy until they know why they were created and the Quran tells us to worship him to adore him to love Allah and that's what it's about.

Dar al-Islam Reduced to the Individual

So we have that individual Islam and that's all we have now Dar al-Islam the abode of Islam has been reduced to your own body you are Dar al-Islam now there is no longer this integral thing that we can call Dar al-Islam and this other thing that we can call Dar al-Harb this is a time when as the Arabs say everything's mixed up nothing's clear nothing's clear anymore I mean that's the truth of the matter and the only thing that is clear right is the vision of this teaching because it's still there and it's still intact and it's there for the one that takes it up but it has certain conditions.

The Conditions of Dawah

And just to say a few things about the conditions the first condition is sincerity:

"Wama umiru illa li-ya'budu Allaha mukhlisina lahu ad-deen"

For Allah it's not for you it's not a personal way of being better than other people it's not a way of banging people over the head with hadith or ayahs or verses of Quran you see which some people do they take the deen becomes this tool whereby I can become a petty tyrant in the same way that Saddam Hussein is a big tyrant right so I can beat people over the head with hadith.

The teaching is a teaching of tabshir it's not a teaching of tanfir it's a teaching of calling people in the best way of calling people back to their own selves you see of the real true nature which is submission that is the true nature of man is to be in submission to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and that is what the call is it's a call to that bushra that good news that if you submit to Allah if from a believer or a male or a female whoever does a righteous action after their belief right from male or female and they have iman then Allah tells us:

"Man 'amila salihan min dhakarin aw untha wa huwa mu'minun fa-lanuhyiyannahu hayatan tayyibatan"

We will bring to life for them a beautiful and pure life you see so even in the midst of all this turmoil those people who have that individual sense of Islam will have a pure and beautiful life and that will be able to sustain them through this time.

The Time of Sabr (Patience)

Because we're in times of sabr we're in the time that the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said holding on to Islam is like holding on to a coal of fire that's what it's like you see and Islam is about sabr and da'wah is about learning sabr about learning patience about learning how to interact with people about learning how to subjugate the nafs about learning how to become humble and it's difficult and it's a journey and we're all on it you see none of us have arrived we arrive when we die and the whole thing is a process of becoming better and better you see.

I wish Islam was a coat that you could buy in a store and just put it on and all of a sudden you're a Muslim but it's not it's not acquired with ease it's painfully acquired and so I'm just been given the warning from the moderator that's nice usually it says 10 minutes usually they say 22 seconds left right I won't mention any places where I've had that happen to me so I'm well I'm gonna just cut it here because my thoughts have been a little disconnected right we're like I said it's an age of disintegration so my talk was a little disintegrated but it just has to do I'm using excuses right there as they say like excuse is worse than what you did wrong so I'm just gonna stop it here and if people have questions I'm gonna remain standing because I'll probably fall asleep if I sit down.

Question and Answer Session

Question: Ridiculing Christianity

Question from the audience: Peace and blessings be upon the most honorable of the prophets and messengers. Call to Islam and ridicule Christianity and Christians while addressing an audience in the bastion of Christian learning in Canada University of Toronto. Da'wah is not a form to ridicule anyone.

Answer: I mean Allah when my background I was actually raised a Greek Orthodox and Greek Orthodox are cruel and mean people they're the ones that are bombing Sarajevo so I've still got some of that cruel and mean streak in me I went to Catholic Jesuit schools as well so part of my distaste for modern Christianity is my experience with it but I'm not certainly not speaking as somebody who was born Muslim right and then like Ahmad Deedat right everybody's favorite critique of Christianity but I accept that as a a criticism because it's a question but it's really a criticism and I accept that and it's not good to ridicule people or other religions.

But on one hand I'm gonna get nasty now the Quran says like fight them the way they fight you right and I've read so many books written by fundamental Christians I've actually got about 15 of them in my library and I've read quite a few of them one because you can read them in about 10 minutes and two because it's important to know your enemy and I do say enemy because these people are really very adamantly against Islam and one of them is Shahroosh's book I don't know if any of you know that man but he's a Palestinian Christian who purposely ridicules Islam purposely makes fun of the Quran and says terrible things another one is called the Islamic invasion which was written by so called PhD in Islamic studies I don't know what PhD stands for in that case.

And one of the things in there just to give you an example of what this guy says unlike Christianity the Muslims believe in a cruel God right nowhere in the Quran is the love of God displayed right and another one of the things he says Allah is really the name of a moon goddess right and that's why the Muslims worship the Kaaba which has a rock there that they believe came from the moon right that was once white right the color of the moon now it's black so I've read a lot of those books they make me very angry and sometimes that anger manifests a little bit but I do accept the general criticism.

The Quran's Respect for People of the Book

I will say the Quran does honor the people of the book Ahl al-Kitab particularly the Christians but even the Jews in the sense that that they're people of a book a true book what exists now the Torah right and the Injil that the Quran talks about no longer exists what exists now are books that have been grossly altered right so when I was talking about what the if you read the Bible and I have read the Bible a lot of people have not read the Bible.

In fact somebody called me the other day and said that he had written an article for the newspaper in California and one of the things that he'd said was you know that Muslims do not force other people to become Muslims

there's no coercion:

There's no coercion in the deen and so this person wrote back a rebuttal to the same newspaper and said you can say that but the truth of the matter is your book says kill them wherever you find them right and there is a verse in the Quran that actually does say that right but the Quran if you look the Quran says right:

Woe to those who pray beware of those who pray right woe to those who pray so if I quote that to you now you would automatically think if you'd never heard the Quran so the Quran obviously is against praying right well you have to finish the ayah right:

Those that are heedless in their prayers in other words the hypocrites so the Quran has to be taken in context if you take it out of context then you lose the meaning.

And so that's what this person did he took a verse out of contextual context or thematic context and then it looks one thing so I wrote back for him a letter and I quoted Psalm 138 right which says smash the babies of Iraq's heads up against the blessed are those who smash the babies of Iraq's heads up against the or the babies heads of Iraq up against the rocks of Zion right so I said obviously the Bible is calling us to smash Iraqi babies heads up against rocks which looks like scriptural justification for desert storm so and then the other one which is if you really want to read the interesting section of the Bible is Deuteronomy so I'm after accepting the criticism here I am ridiculing this book so I apologize for that anyway.

Different Types of Love

My you know Christians there are genuine genuinely devout Christians good people and I believe that in fact one of the difficulties I had after becoming Muslim was the fact that I have met Christians that I really believe were totally genuine in their love for God and and I just had the difficulty with understanding that and things like in the Deen and Allah and Islam and actually Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya solved the that difficulty for me in his book called Al-Jawab al-Kafi which is the complete answer and in that book he says that that there are different types of love and he said that there's love of God and he said but this love is not enough and it's the love that Christians and Jews and idol worshippers have for God.

And so what he was indicating there was that Christians, Jews and idol worshippers can actually love God which to me it kind of it made sense for me in in understanding how I have met people from different faiths who have a genuine love of God but what he says is that what is needed is love of what Allah loves not simply love of Allah but love of what Allah loves and hate of what Allah hates and that is called Sharia right that is the code whereby the human being acts according to the way that Allah has commanded the person to act.

And so I would say that that I do apologize if I offended anybody in here that is Christian. We are in a I really think in the particularly in the west in a post-Christian era I think the religion has it is very difficult for Christians to actually be a moral authority or a moral voice because of what has happened to their religion and certainly what has happened to the leaders of their religion and those televangelists that I ridiculed I think any devout true Christian would ridicule them as well because they are an object of ridicule they are the worst type of people because they exploit people's spiritual needs and I am certainly opposed to that so I apologize and I and I accept that that criticism.

Question: Marriage and Converting Women

Question: The question is related to the issue of dawah a lot of the Muslim youths from Arab countries to African countries they get to imagine Muslim girls and those girls they get to convince them that they are Muslims so that they get married because they know these Muslim youths are good they make good husbands they're worthy and after a little while my Muslim brother naively thinks that he is marrying a good wife and then after a few weeks she's dead with her family to church and the poor man is so so much devastated frustrated almost to the point that he might get crazy or something so we understand that it is allowable in Islam to get married to non-Muslims but if he would get to that point don't we think that it's not good to do we better get married to a good Muslim girl and maintain a strong Islamic family a Muslim family and instead of that what's your opinion brother?

Answer: Insha'Allah. A'udhu billahi min al-ray. I seek refuge in Allah from opinions. I think it's a big it's a big social crisis that a lot of Muslims do come to these countries and certainly youth come and there's a what what the big Zbigniew Brzezinski calls. I always wonder about there's a lot of Americans that say I go ridicule I can ridicule them because I'm an American a lot of Americans say so what's your name? Abdulaziz Abdel what? right but they can get Zbigniew Brzezinski and Arnold Schwarzenegger well if you give a name like Abdulaziz they say Abdel what? look I'll just call you Abdel and you're kind of like well actually that means slave right? so I'm not a slave I'm the slave of Abdulaziz which they don't say they end up saying okay and so you get Abdel right working at whatever they're working at or they change it to Mike or something like that make it easier just call I have and I won't say that now I got to watch it now I like to feel a little self conscious just let me try to finish that question.

The one of the big troubles is that the foundation of marriage in Islam is an acceptance of Allah and his messenger and that is what is going to maintain a marriage if you don't have recourse to some absolute source right or fundamental values we'll chalk that word erase that word fundamental take it back I didn't say that if you don't have recourse to values right or some absolutes then there'll be troubles and Islam really should be that that source so if you marry a Christian or a Jewish woman from the people of the book which according to the Qur'an is permissible although there are some strong opinions that it's not permissible to marry Christians that was Abdullah Ibn Umar's opinion he was a great faqih from Medina the son of Umar Ibn al-Khattab.

And in fact Sheikh Abdallah great Moroccan scholar of this age actually wrote a book against it saying and his proofs I think he does it from there's a principle called sadd adh-dhara'i which is like cutting off the pretext and what he considered was if you were in a Muslim society and the woman was Christian that should you die for instance then the society would take it upon themselves to make sure that your children were raised as Muslims whereas if you're in a Christian society you see and you marry a Christian woman and you happen to die which is certainly a possibility then she could raise your children Christian and you don't have any way of preventing that and so that was his opinion about that.

I personally think some of the finest Muslims that I have met have been women that have converted to Islam there's some very strong Muslim sisters that have converted from Christianity and Judaism and other religions to Islam and I would certainly make that a condition before I married for that reason for the children so that's where I stand about that.

Question: University Education or Jihad

Question: I'm a 19 year old student who is very confused with whether I should get a university education or fight for Jihad. Can you elaborate on the disparity of secular education and religious education and how they can be merged?

Answer: That's a very long answer because you have to go into really about Jihad and what Jihad is and what the prerequisites for that one of the basic principles of Jihad especially at your age would be taking permission from your family and the other thing about a lot of where there are Muslim crises the problem is not actual numbers of people but it's actually basically get down to military hardware and logistical needs and the Bosnians have vastly outnumber the Serbs but they're completely unarmed you see so the crisis there is not a number of people and the same was true in Afghanistan I was in Peshawar during when the Russians were still there and that was one of the things that they told me there's plenty of people it's about weapons hardware and Kashmir is a similar situation and the Philippines Eritrea what we have is really not a shortage of manpower but we have a shortage one we don't have true leadership in other words there's no governments that are supporting the besieged Muslims wherever they are and two there's just not weapons right so yeah you have to just think about that.

Merging Secular and Religious Knowledge

Can you elaborate on the disparity of secular education religious education how they can be merged? Well I was saying to somebody earlier that there's in Islamic in really in an Islamic society there would be no such thing as secular education it doesn't exist because there's no such thing as secular knowledge there's only fard 'ayn and fard kifaya any knowledge is either classified as 'ayn kifaya makruh or haram right and that's all there is.

So for instance fard 'ayn would be you have to learn how to pray everybody has to know how to pray if you go to umrah you have to know how to do umrah I'll give you an example at the kaaba there's all these people that go around kaaba and they're in ihram and they're going and they'll go along touching the kaaba as they make the

tawaf which breaks your shawt right your circumambulation around the kaaba it actually breaks it right if you touch the kaaba because you're inside the kaaba because there's this marble layer that goes out it's called shadharwan and it's actually part of the kaaba right the original foundations of Ibrahim alayhi as-salam and and tawaf going up is around the kaaba so if you go in you're actually part of your body is inside the kaaba so it invalidates your shawt right.

Now some people would say well you're picking hairs there but you're not because that's the nature of sharia you have things that you do and things that you don't do that's all sharia is awamr and nawahi it's commands and prohibitions and so you have to if you go on umrah it becomes fard 'ayn upon you to learn how to do umrah you can't go there with a book and as you get there to the black stone you start looking now how do I do this it shouldn't be to that point and you see people like that during hajj they're trying to work out how to do their hajj when they should have learned it back home so that's a fard 'ayn right.

If you buy and sell you have to learn the rules of buying and selling you cannot do anything without knowing how to do it and it's an important element of our teaching is to learn what Allah has commanded you to do.

Umar radiAllahu 'anhu used to go into the souq into the marketplace and he would actually test people right it's called nowadays they call it quality assurance right the muslims have that concept in our deen in the sharia he used to go in and he used to pull the dates off the top to see if the ones underneath were as good as the ones on top and if they weren't he would tell them that you're you know that you're cheating people right.

It's like you go to the Safeway do you have a Safeway in Canada? No ok I saw in Saudi Arabia safest way right and it had the big S it was just like Safeway right but it's called safest way right poor Saudi guy went to school in California and went back and said I want to make something just like America safest way there was probably some legalistic problems calling it Safeway so but there they always have the big strawberries on the top big giant ones and then if you actually when you buy it and then pull off the top all the ones at the bottom are squashed and small that's the same principle right:

(مَنْ غَشَنَا فَلَيْسَ مِنَّا - Man ghashana falaysa minna)

It's the one that cheats us isn't from us so that's what Umar used to do right so you have to learn those things.

Now the other knowledge are called like medicine is a religious knowledge because it's an obligation on some people to learn it so it's not secular it is by its nature religious because Muslims don't have a concept of secular see the Christians right I'll try to watch myself here the Christians split the religion at a point when they say that Jesus said and I don't believe it but they say that Jesus said give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto God what is God's now I don't believe a prophet would say that because we don't believe anything is for Caesar we say everything is Allah's so how can you give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's everything is God's right?

So but that verse in the New Testament is the verse that is used to split church and state right now we don't have that problem because one we don't have a church there is no church and two we don't really have a state right so

it's a it's a Christian problem church and state.

Islamic Governance vs. the State

Muslims have what's called a dawla which is actually a later you know it's a later invention of the fuqaha to call dawla in the like diplomatic rules the dawla is the opposite of state. State comes from a Latin word which means status right which is staying the same we get static from it like static the status quo the way things are. Dawla actually means the thing that's constantly changing so it's really the opposite of a state one because what states do is they hoard wealth right what the Islamic government does is it gives wealth out there is no hoarding in fact zakat has to be redistributed immediately it has to go back into the community and by Islamic law it's supposed to be gathered in the community and redistributed back into the very same community there is no centralization of power in Islamic law there is no Washington D.C. right that is a totally.

What there is is there is a Khalifa which is a really a it's a representation of the prophetic hub whereby everything revolves around it you see that's what it is he is the Khalifa of who of the messenger of Allah that's what the Khalifa is if he obeys him we obey him if he disobeys him we don't obey you see so our hearing and obeying is based on his hearing and obeying right and so if he's not hearing and he's not obeying then we don't listen to him and we don't obey him and that's what he said from Umar when he took out he gave a talk to some people and he said what would you do if Umar started going crooked and one of the Sahaba pulled his sword out and said I'd straighten you with this and so Umar said alhamdulillah there's still people in this ummah that would straighten Umar if he went crooked so he was just checking that's what they call a checks and balance system right.

In Washington you have Congress and the President that's a checks and balance you have to have that system so Umar was giving us the concept of checks and balances you see to remind us future generations if he starts going astray we have to straighten him out right now what happens when everybody goes crooked that's the problem so I have a reputation of giving very long answers alright go ahead.

Question: Individual vs. Societal Dawah

Question: Assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.

"And whatever the Messenger has given you - take; and what he has forbidden you - abstain from."

That what dawah is now is just to look at yourself and build yourself your Muslim personality and look at other personality like it's individualistic it's more, it doesn't link it has no links to the societal level because if you, the sum of individuals doesn't make a society and if we have a hundred percent Muslim individual, it doesn't necessarily make by itself a Muslim society or a Muslim dawah or a government so there must be, as we see in the seerah, the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam from earlier times in Mecca his messengers to leaders of the greatest nations then like Kisra and Heraclius and he asked them to get into Islam and he also went around the tribe and he went around Mecca asking to get and to give him rule to give him to rule by Allah's rules and

Allah's sharia some of them gave him conditional rule he rejected it so he was after something the idea is that there is a method he outlined for us and we can see clearly in the seerah.

Answer: No, no I just, when I talk I try to talk to the audience I'm speaking to people have, there's called maraatib at-takleef, right? and people have different takleef which is your your responsibility there's different responsibilities for the vast majority of people they are not responsible for instance the rulers the people that are to rectify the rulers are