True Spirit of Islam

The True Spirit of Islam

Opening Praise and Introduction

(الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ وَصَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَى سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ الطَّيِّبِينَ الطَّاهِرِينَ وَصَحَابَتِهِ وَمَن تَبِعَهُم بِإِحْسَانٍ إِلَى يَوْمِ الدِّينِ - al-ḥamdu lillāhi wa ṣallā allāhu ʿalā sayyidinā muḥammadin wa ʿalā ālihi aṭ-ṭayyibīna aṭ-ṭāhirīna wa ṣaḥābatihi wa man tabiʿahum bi-ʾiḥsānin ʾilā yawmi d-dīn) All praise is for Allah, and may Allah send blessings upon our master Muhammad and upon his noble and pure family and his companions and those who follow them with excellence until the Day of Judgment.

Inshallah, I'll attempt to talk about the spirit of Islam. If you translate that into Arabic, it would be ruh al-Islam, the spirit of Islam.

The Spirit and the Limits of Knowledge

They asked the Prophet about the ruh. And the Prophet ﷺ was commanded to say about the ruh that it is from the command of Allah. And then immediately after:

"And you have not been given of knowledge except a little."

And I think that's a good starting point to talk about the spirit of Islam. Because for me, one of the essential spirits of Islam is literally entering into a state of humility before Allah. One of the crises of our age is the crisis of ignorance.

The Danger of Compounded Ignorance

And one of the things about ignorance is although there are several types, the worst type is what's called الْجَهْلُ الْمُرَكَّبُ - al-jahl al-murakkab, which is what the Arabs call compounded ignorance. And this is the type of ignorance where people think they actually know something. And one of the fascinating things to me in the Qur'an is that the Qur'an actually begins after al-Fatiha with alif-lam-mim.

And if you look in any commentary of the Qur'an, they always say (اللَّهُ أَعْلَمُ - Allahu a'lam), Allah knows what alif-lam-mim is. And immediately after that Allah says:

"This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah."

Submission as the Key to Understanding

And one of the indications there is that if you go to this book without a state of submission, without surrendering to Allah (لَا يَزِيدُ الظَّالِمِينَ إِلَّا خَسَارًا - lā yazīdu aẓ-ẓālimīna ʾillā khasārā) - it increases those who transgress with loss. And so the Qur'an itself

can lead people astray who do not submit to the requisite factor in benefiting from the Qur'an, which is that they're people of taqwa. And people of taqwa are people who stop at their hadd, they literally stop at their limit.

They know their limit and they stop at that point. And this is why immediately after that Allah says (هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ - hudan lil-muttaqīn) - it's a guidance for the people of taqwa. And the people of taqwa are people, the first thing that they believe in is that which they cannot see.

"They believe in the unseen."

And this is the essence of entering into Islam, is literally to enter in a state of submission:

"Enter into Islam completely."

"I have submitted my face to Allah."

That I have submitted my entire being, my essence to Allah. And so the ruh of Islam, the spirit of Islam is literally a spirit of submission. And part of submitting is submitting to those who have been given knowledge of which we have no knowledge of.

The Prophet as the Source of Knowledge

And the first that we look to are always the prophets, and for us it is the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. This is who the Muslims look to, as the one who gives them definitive knowledge, as the one who gives them the knowledge of which there is no doubt.

"Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination. It is not but a revelation revealed."

The Prophet ﷺ did not desire this revelation, he did not seek it out. He was a man who was literally in a state of ibadah to Allah.

The Beginning of Revelation

He would go to the cave, the ghar, and he would yatahannaf in the riwayah. It says he used to do certain types of worship that were known to the Hanif of his time. Some type of meditation of which we really don't have any clear or definitive text on that matter.

But he used to go and he would do this meditation, and then the revelation begins:

"Read in the name of your Lord who created."

And this beginning of the revelation really is something that tells us about the essence of Islam, the spirit of Islam itself. The first thing that he was commanded to do is iqra.

Iqra: The Foundation of Knowledge

And iqra is the basis of knowledge. This is the basis of human knowledge:

"Nun. By the pen and what they inscribe."

When I was in Mauritania, where they still have in the deserts of Mauritania, the people there have impeccable adab to the book of Allah and to these things. I was using a pen to clean my nails, because they use reed pens to write on the lawah. And one of the fuqaha there threw a rock at me, and he said (يَا حَمْزَةُ لَقَدْ أَقْسَمَ اللَّهُ سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى بِهَذَا الْقَلَمِ وَلَا يَصْلُحُ لِمِثْلِ هَذَا - Ya Hamza) Allah has sworn by this pen, and this pen is not made for something like this to clean the nails.

And I never forgot that. And it's been hard since that. I see people throw pens, toss pen across the room, and I'm always deeply sensitive to that, simply because of this teaching that took place from somebody.

Honoring the Pen

In Mauritania, they take these big pens that have plastic covers, and they make beautiful ornamented covers and put them on them to honor the pen. Because Allah has honored the pen by swearing by the pen, and Allah only swears by something that is great. So the knowledge, iqra, bismi rabbika, and this is the second element.

Iqra, why do we read? We read in order to come to know Allah. The intellect is nurtured to come to know Allah.

The Split Between Knowledge and Worship

My contention that the modern world is based literally on a split.

The Europeans took from us iqra, and they left us bismi rabbika. You see, we stopped reading and they started reading, and we kept worshipping Allah, but without intellects anymore. At a certain point, and I haven't actually... Somebody told me exactly what date it was, but I haven't worked it out myself.

But at a certain point, it seems like the entire ummah literally switched off their intellects. And it's an amazing phenomenon. Because an ummah that was literally addicted to discovery and the pursuit of knowledge, suddenly becomes an ummah completely divorced from the pursuit of knowledge, and we're literally left with a blind imitation with very little reflection.

Except for a few great scholars that have maintained the traditions of Islam. And then the greatest tragedy of that, is that when we have begun to start studying and learning, the Muslims have gone to western methodologies, and literally abandoned this incredible tradition that we have. Which is not to say that there's not benefit in much of the developments and the knowledges that have taken place in the west.

But at the same time, we should recognize that we have an extraordinary and vast tradition. And the abandonment of this tradition is one of the most detrimental things to the condition of the Muslims in our present time. And we have to seriously look at the impact and the effects of this.

Asking Those Who Know

When Allah told us to read, He also told us to ask those who know, if you don't know:

"Ask the people of knowledge if you do not know."

You have to ask the people of remembrance if you do not know. This is part of the adab of the Muslims. The spirit of Islam is literally to recognize our own limitations and that we must learn from others.

The Story of Ubay ibn Ka'b

Ubay ibn Ka'b, one of the great teachers of the Qur'an, who was a companion of the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet came to him and said that he was commanded by Jibril, by Allah to read surah al-Bayyinah, to Ubay ibn Ka'b.

And Ubay (may Allah be pleased with him), when he heard that, he said (يَا رَسُولَ اللهِ السَّمَانِي بِاسْمِي - Ya Rasulallah), did he mention my name? And he said, (سَمَّاك - Sammak) - He mentioned your name. And Ubay ibn Ka'b wept tears because his name was mentioned by Allah to Jibril, to the Prophet ﷺ.

Ibn Abi Jamrah took from this hadith a beautiful meaning, is that he said that the Prophet is teaching his ummah that they should never think that they've gained so much knowledge that they cannot benefit from those that are lower than them or less than them in knowledge. The Arabs have a beautiful proverb (يُوجَدُ فِي النَّهْرِ مَا لَا يُوجَدُ فِي الْبَحْرِ - Yūjadu fī an-nahri mā lā yūjadu fī al-baḥri) - You can find sometimes in rivers what you don't find in oceans.

Learning from Unexpected Sources

And there's a beautiful tradition of Muhammad ibn Hassan, who asked one of the companions of Abu Yusuf (may Allah be pleased with them), he had a jariah who was with Abu Yusuf, and she said, did you ever hear anything from him? And she mentioned just something she heard him talking about in fiqh.

And he was amazed, she didn't understand what it meant, but it actually helped him solve a problem that he had had. And so he said, subhanallah, I learned from that to take knowledge even from the people that don't even understand what they're carrying. We live in a time literally where the Muslims have moved away.

Understanding Priorities

Which is not to say that the beard is not important.

I'm not in any way diminishing the importance, nor do I believe that the beard is, what some people say it's from the qushur of Islam. There's no qushur in Islam. There's no shells or superficial things in Islam.

Islam is a deep teaching. It's a teaching, it's din al fitrah. And the beard itself is from fitrah.

But, when Muslims make it their life goal to scold other Muslims for not having beards, or make it their life goal to scold Muslims because their pants are over their ankles, which even that, I mean, there's illa for it.

There's a reason for that, which is khuyala. And so part of what the Prophet ﷺ was teaching these early Muslims, was to understand the maslaha, the illa in these things.

Understanding the Reasons Behind Rulings

For instance, in this hadith, where the Prophet said:

(Sahih Muslim 977)

"I forbade you from visiting graves, but now visit them, for indeed they remind you of the Hereafter."

Because it reminds you of the next life. So in this hadith, the Prophet is telling us why he's telling us to do it. So that we have bayyinah, we have a basira, we have a proof, we understand what we're doing.

We're not simply doing it out of blind imitation. When you understand the reasons of shariah, and this is something extremely important to understand what are called ilal. In the Qur'an, what they call in tafsir, tanbih al kitab, where Allah explains:

"O you who have believed, decreed upon you is fasting as it was decreed upon those before you that you may become righteous."

To literally nurture taqwa in the heart of the believer.

The Wisdom of Islamic Teachings

And so understanding this, this is why during the fasting, it's much stronger to lower the gaze, not to speak about haram things, not to do ghibah. They're haram in all the times, but during the fasting, they're even more a priority لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ - in order that you might learn these things. The Prophet ﷺ taught his sahaba these things.

The Absurdity of Zahiri Literalism

One of the things he said about when you're hunting, if the animal goes into the water, and it's still alive, and he said, (فَلَا تَأْكُلْ مِنْهُ - fa la ta'kul minhu) - don't eat from it. (فَيُمْكِنُ أَنْ أَعَانَهُ الْمَاءُ عَلَى الْمَوْتِ - fa yumkinu an a'anahu al-ma'u 'ala al-mawt) - maybe the water caused it to die. And that would be by ikhtinaq, or by suffocation.

And it's not permissible to eat meat from which the animal died of suffocation. The Prophet ﷺ told us also:

"Every intoxicant is haram." (Sahih Muslim 2003)

Everything that harms the intellect is impermissible. And this is why the Muslims with these modern drugs, except for Abu Muhammad al-Zahiri, Ibn Hazm, who, there's some people trying to revive his madhab for some reason.

The Absurdity of Zahiri Literalism

But Ibn Hazm was a Zahiri, and he felt that khamar specifically meant wine that the Arabs knew, and it didn't apply to other types of things. And people say, I mean they're using this somewhere in the gulf states or something where I live, you know, you can drink scotch, but you can't drink wine.

Subhanallah.

This type of madness. I mean this is just part of it. That's the spirit, right? In fact, here they're having a liquor conference.

Subhanallah:

"A group will be in Paradise and a group in the Blaze."

If they ask you, are you in the liquor conference? Say, I'm in the dhikr conference. Subhanallah.

They drink to forget. We pray to remember. It's a big difference.

It's a different religion. Subhanallah. Now unfortunately Muslims don't do dhikr anymore, they bicker.

They do liquor, and Muslims now they bicker, and we're supposed to do dhikr. So we have to get it straight. Really, start doing some dhikr of Allah.

The Limited Scope of Legal Rulings

In the shari'ah, if you look at the shari'ah itself, there are only 500 verses that deal with ahkam. There are approximately according to Imam Suyuti, in his Iklil, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, there's only approximately

500 hadith that deal with ahkam. And I want to bring out a really important thing, and I hope people appreciate this.

The Capacity of Early Scholars

The imams of the early communities were brilliant human beings. Allah gave these people intellects. They were literally containers.

Somebody asked me, why is it that we can't contain the knowledge that people had before? And I'll show you why. If you have a cup like this, and a cup like this, and you start pouring, at a certain point, it can't hold anymore. You see that? It can't hold anymore.

But if you have a big container, it can hold it. Well, if you look at these early Muslims, they were huge containers. And unfortunately, we've become very narrow containers.

So literally, you try to pour it in, and unfortunately, in order for you to pour anything in, you have to be emptied in the first place. So when people come, and they think they know everything, and you try to pour some knowledge in there, it just spills out. Because somebody came up to me and asked me, they asked me, brother, what's your opinion about such and such? And I said, well, such and such.

The Problem of Sectarianism

And then he started arguing with me. I said, well, you didn't want my opinion, you just wanted to suss me out. Right? I mean, this is what we do, we suss people out.

What is he? Is he a Sufi? Is he a Wahabi? Is he a Salafi? I mean, this is where we're at. And this is a bad place to be:

"He has named you Muslims before."

I'll just give you a really example of how far from the spirit of Islam some of us have gone. When I was in England, Dr. Jamal, somebody played a tape from me in which the man was slandered. And it was a tape sold, you can buy it in Muslim stores.

A Personal Example of Sectarian Division

And the man was slandered. And I told the person who had the tape, I said, I know that that can't be true.

Somebody said that he said something.

I said, I don't believe that he said that. When I saw him today, he wanted to ask me. He didn't believe it.

He wanted to ask me if I was a Habashi. Which is a group in Lebanon. And I don't want to go in because I don't like to talk about groups and use their name.

But I am definitely not a Habashi. I'm an Amriki. I mean, it's probably better to be a Habashi literally from Ethiopia than a, you know, I mean, Habash has a blessed land.

The Prophet blessed it and prayed on its leader. But I'm definitely not a Habashi from Lebanon. Alright, I'm a Muslim from California.

But he asked me that because he said somebody called him and said, I think he's a Habashi. And I said, the only way that I could think that somebody even could confer that at all is that, you know, even though I pray northeast, it makes more sense to me southeast. You know, but that's just an issue.

The Maliki Position on Qibla

I don't like to get involved in those things. I mean, Alhamdulillah, in the Maliki Madhab, you have a huge spectrum of possibility for Qibla. The Prophet said in Medina, that when you're in Medina, that for the ha'il, that you have to go to either east or west when you go to the toilet.

Indicating that the janub, either facing or having your back is facing towards the Qibla, which is bad adab. But, I mean, they said this ridiculous thing.

And I asked him and he said, Astaghfirullah.

And I knew, I just wanted to just hear it from his own mouth, and tell him, you know, that I knew that that was not true. But this is something Muslims do.

We have literally become sussers, outers, and then everybody has to fit into a category.

Appreciating Different Scholars

And I don't like to fit in categories. I happen to like Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (may Allah have mercy on him). And I've benefited greatly from his books.

I also like Ibn Taymiyyah. There's a lot of people that don't, they don't like that. You see, because suddenly the right brain and the left brain, there's a corpus callosum is blocked.

And they say, no, no, no, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, either you like Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and you don't like Ibn Taymiyyah, or you like Ibn Taymiyyah and you don't like Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, but don't tell me you like both of them. You see, and I say, Alhamdulillah, I like both of them. So, tough luck.

The Poetry of Imam Shafi'i

And this is what Imam Shafi'i (may Allah have mercy on him) said in beautiful poetry:

By Allah, I am giving you sincere counsel. Be a faqih and a Sufi, not just one. For that one, the Faqih, is somebody who they haven't tasted taqwa in their heart.

If they don't have a technical term called tasawwuf. And he said, and the other one, the Sufi, is ignorant. And how can an ignorant one ever yasluh? How can he be someone of salah? And in other words, that the inward and the outward have to be joined.

The Complete Muslim

The real mu'min is the mu'min who has his outward Islam is intact, his iman is intact, and ihsan is manifesting.

And this is a whole and complete human being. But some of us have become so focused on the outward that we've literally forgotten the inward experience of Islam.

And really the spirit of Islam is ultimately:

"And that to your Lord is the finality."

This is where we are going. Each one of us will die.

I will die and have to be before my Lord:

"The Day when mankind will stand before the Lord of the worlds."

On that day human beings will stand before the Lord of the world. This is where we're gonna be.

Seeking Mercy, Not Just Justice

Like the man he said, I used to always demand justice when I looked at all these people around me. And then I started looking at myself and I started begging for mercy. And really there's a lot of truth to that.

You see, because it's so easy for us just to find the fault of other human beings. It's very difficult to see the fault of yourself. One of the valuable sayings in the New Testament that I tell Christians a lot of times when they start picking on Islam, I say, you know, in your book it says that before you pull the speck out of the eye of your brother, pull the two by four out of your own eye.

And there's a lot of wisdom in that saying. That people need to look at their own selves and they need to assess where they're at. And what are we doing? I mean somebody came, they were criticizing a book that was written saying, it has mistakes in it.

The Perfection of Allah's Book Alone

Subhanallah. Alhamdulillah. Every book other than the book of Allah has mistakes in it.

Every single book. Imam Al-Shafi'i said, I looked at the Risalah 40 times. The book he wrote, the Risalah.

I looked at it 40 times and I kept finding mistakes. After 40 times I gave up and said, only Allah's book is perfect. And I'm just gonna put it out for the people.

Now people, somebody told me the other day, he said, I looked at my book twice after they sent it to the press and I thought of Imam Al-Shafi'i. (May Allah have mercy on him), what a difference between them. But that's where we're at.

A Story from Mauritania

So this idea of having a deep taqwa, really of having a taqwa. When I was in Mauritania, and I'll tell you this story, and I haven't told this story publicly, but I'll tell you this story. My teacher there, Murabit al-Hajj, who really, I have never met somebody that embodies the spirit of Islam more than this human being.

Because he's somebody that, he's 92 years old, and since the time he was a child, he was given to worship of Allah and to studying. And at about the age of 20 years old, he begged his mother permission to make Hajj on foot during a time when Mauritania, the people were wearing leather on their backs in order to survive because they were so poor. And his mother gave him permission with the promise that he would come back.

The Journey of a True Scholar

And he walked from Mauritania to Sudan. And when he got to Sudan, he sat with the ulama there. And he told me that once a Sudanese man told him, he said, Sharif, Sharif, come.

And he wanted to show him something. And it was a silent, it was a film, it was an outdoor cinema, a silent film. And I said, what was it? And he said, there were two giant pictures of men and they were shooting each other.

And I said, what did you do? He said, I said, I seek refuge with Allah, and I left it. Which is fitrah. And then he went to, the thing he remembered that he told me the Egyptians when they're amazed at something, they say, ya salam.

And then he went to the haram, and he prayed in the haram, and made his hajj. And he walked from Mecca to Medina. And he spent some time in the mujawara.

And then he went back to Mauritania on foot. And he began teaching, and he's been teaching there for over 70 years. His habit everyday is to get up about four hours before fajr, and to begin making tahajjud.

A Life of Worship and Teaching

And when he recites the Quran, he weeps from the fear of Allah. And then at fajr he goes, and he walks to the masjid. At 92 years old, he walks like a young man.

I was there last year. And he calls the adhan himself, and then he leads the prayer. And he does his tahajjud for maybe three or four hours.

For the prayer he recites from Juz Amma. Because he said, the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari 703)

"Whoever leads you in prayer, let him shorten it."

And then he sits from fajr, and he teaches until dhuhr.

And students come, and he teaches until dhuhr. He goes and he has lunch, and has a short nap. And then he gets up after, and teaches until asr.

He goes and he makes the asr prayer, and then teaches until isha. And people come and wake him up in the night, and he gets up and he teaches. And this has been his life for over 70 years.

And thousands of Muslims have studied with him from all over North Africa and West Africa. And one of the things, I was once in his presence, and he's a Bedouin man. And his robe had some dirt on it.

A Lesson in Humility

And it occurred to me, the hadith of (النَّظَافَةُ مِنَ الْإِيمَانِ - an-naẓāfatu mina al-īmān) - cleanliness is from iman. It just crossed my heart. And at that point, he put down his book, and he looked at me, and he smiled, and he said, Hamza (أَسَمِعْتَ الْحَدِيثَ الْبَدَادَةُ مِنَ الْإِيمَانِ - asamiʿta al-ḥadītha al-badādata mina al-īmān) - have you heard of the hadith that the Prophet ﷺ said, that badada is from iman? And I said, I've never heard that.

And he said, go get the qamus, and we'll look up badada. And he had me look up badada, and it was a word that meant, somebody that doesn't particularly care about their outward appearance. And that that was part of iman.

About several years later, I was in Medina, and I mentioned this to somebody, and he said, I can't believe that that's a hadith. And it kind of hurt me that, and I was coming out of the masjid, I went to a bookstore, and I climbed up a ladder, pulled out a book, and it was hujjatullah al-balighah of Imam al-Dahlawi. And I opened the book, and it was Imam al-Dahlawi explaining the difference between al-tahur (النَّظَافَةُ شَطْرُ الْإِيمَانِ - an-naẓāfatu shaṭru al-īmān) - cleanliness is half of iman, and (الْبَدَاذَةُ مِنَ الْإِيمَانِ - al-badādatu mina al-īmān)

He said, both of the hadiths are sound, but he said, al-badada is for the people who live in the desert, the badiyah. That if they are concerned with their outward appearance, that it leads to riya and khuyala. And it's not a good attribute, but the people of the city should be more concerned about their appearance, because they're people of hadara.

Glimpsing True Worship

And I just, this man really, what I got in living with him was literally a glimpse of ibadah, of what real ibadah is. And I think many of us have forgotten that.

We've really forgotten what it is simply to humble ourselves before Allah, and to really study the deen, to learn the deen, and to become people of understanding.

The Prophet ﷺ said in the sahih hadith that Muawiyah relates:

(Sahih al-Bukhari 71, Sahih Muslim 1037)

"The one who Allah wants good for him, He gives him understanding of the deen."

He gives him understanding of the deen. And part of understanding the deen is acting on it, it's implementing it.

Taking Islam Out with Humility

So really the spirit of Islam is based on learning the deen and acting on it and taking it out to people, and taking it out in a state of humility and submission. Not taking it out in a state of arrogance and self-righteousness. The sahaba (may Allah be pleased with them), they were not arrogant people.

When they went to the corners of the earth, they went with deep humility. But they had izzah, they had izzat al-nufus. They weren't humble in a meek sense.

No, they were like lions. But they were humble in the sense that they recognize that the rest of the world was in the state they were in because they had not been given Islam. And they had been given Islam.

And Islam is a blessing. Wallahi it's a blessing. And Umar in his great and deep knowledge said that Islam that this deen will dissipate and disappear if the Muslims don't understand what jahiliyyah is.

Understanding Jahiliyyah to Preserve Islam

And in another transmission he said He doesn't truly know Islam unless he knows jahiliyyah. That we have to understand Part of this revelation was to come down to make clear the way of the mujrimeen. To understand how we deviate.

How we leave Islam. And what happens to people who deviate. The Quran is a book of sunan.

It's a book explaining how creation works. We have to take it upon ourselves. We have to apply it in our lives and give it to our children.

And if we don't do this, really, we're destroyed. We're destroyed. I mean for me in the end, the spirit of Islam is summed up in the spirit of the Prophet.

The Spirit of Mercy

And Allah told us If I'm emphasizing rahma a lot, it's only because what I'm seeing is so much rage in this world. There's so much anger and indignation and rage. And really people, we need to become ruhama baynana.

We have to have this spirit of rahma between us. We have to begin to unite on broad-based principles. We have to begin to set aside differences that can... that they have another place and another time.

In better times. And this historically has happened. The Muslims had the luxury of having differences.

They had the luxury of having differences. We no longer have that luxury. Which does not and never means and I do not imply in any way compromising the deen of Allah.

Islam as a Universal Deen

But we have to recognize that our deen is a universal deen. It encompasses many different types of people.

Many different types of understanding.

And even in the early community, this manifested in the sahaba. Their understandings were not the same. The understanding of Abu Bakr was not like the understanding of other sahaba.

And so just appreciating the differences amongst us. And recognizing that these differences are ayat. They're signs.

They're beautiful signs. This gathering, wallahi, if you just reflect on the power of Islam to join human beings together in the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood in a way that no other religion has succeeded in doing. If you look, the Christians until very recently had African pews.

The Unity of Islam

Even in their segregated churches. Most of the churches were separate. And even to this day they have the Korean church, the Japanese church, this church and that church.

And the Jews, it's confined to only one ethnic group anyway. So you can't even eat with them. I mean, I went to a conference and after the, it was a dialogue between Jew, Christian and Muslim.

And when we went to lunch, the Jewish man couldn't eat with us. Because the plates, our plates are unclean in their religion. If they eat from a non-Jews plate, it's considered najis.

Subhanallah. Subhanallah. That's amazing if you think about that.

So anyway, I'm not going to go on anymore. We're done here. InshaAllah.