Our Vision For The Future Part 2 of 2

Khutbah - Complete Edition

Opening Salutation

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى أَشْرَفِ الْأَنْبِيَاءِ وَالْمُرْسَلِينَ، سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ

Opening Khutbah (Khutbat al-Hajah)

إِنَّ الْحَمْدَ لِلَّهِ، نَحْمَدُهُ وَنَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ ، وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَمِنْ سَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا ، مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللهُ فَلَا مُضِلَّ لَهُ، وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلَا هَادِيَ لَهُ،

وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ، وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

"[O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims.]"

"[O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah, through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed Allah is ever, over you, an Observer.]"

"[O you who have believed, fear Allah and speak words of appropriate justice. He will [then] amend for you your deeds and forgive you your sins. And whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly attained a great attainment.]"

أَمَّا بَعْدُ، فَإِنَّ أَصْدَقَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابُ اللهِ، وَخَيْرَ الْهَدْيِ هَدْيُ مُحَمَّدٍ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ، وَشَرَّ الْأُمُورِ مُحْدَثَاتُهَا ، وَكُلَّ مُحْدَثَةٍ بِدْعَةٌ، وَكُلَّ بِدْعَةٍ ضَلَالَةٌ،

وَكُلَّ ضَلَالَةٍ فِي النَّارِ

Introduction and Welcome

Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh. On behalf of the Islamic Cultural Club, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to tonight's lecture. Let me begin by giving a brief background of our respected speaker, Sheikh Khalid Yasin. Sheikh Khalid Yasin was born in New York City and brought up as a Christian, where he spent most of his childhood.

Sheikh Khalid Yasin embraced Islam in 1965 with the late Sheikh Dawood Ahmad Faisal of the Islamic Mission of America, located in Brooklyn, New York. Sheikh Khalid Yasin studied over the course of 30 years Fiqh, Sunnah, Aqidah, Ahkam, memorization of the Quran, Islamic history, and the Arabic language with several well-known teachers and mentors. Sheikh Khalid Yasin has dedicated the last 20 years removing misconceptions about Islam and Muslims.

Sheikh Khalid Yasin has delivered lectures in more than 43 countries worldwide, resulting in over 56,000 persons embracing Islam directly from his hands. These figures have been corroborated through many sources. There are hundreds of students in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Australia, Europe, United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States who have completed these Dawah technique and Dawah management courses, two of the most powerful and effective courses given by Sheikh Khalid Yasin.

Sheikh Khalid Yasin has dedicated himself to the revival of Islam in the world and he is the founder and CEO of the following registered organizations: the Islamic Television Trust, the Purpose of Life Trust, Purpose TV Prime, the Islamic Information Network, and the Purpose of Life Center. Tonight's lecture, interestingly titled, Recipe for My Future, will be followed by a question and answer session. Please note that we will have the Isha prayers in congregation after the Q&A session.

Without making you wait any further, I request Sheikh Khalid Yasin to deliver his lecture.

Main Lecture: Recipe for My Future

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ، الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ

Peace and blessings be upon the most honored of the Prophets, peace be upon him, and upon his family, his companions, his wives, his children, and others. The best hadith is the book of Allah. The best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad, peace be upon him. And the worst of things is that which is invented, and every invention is an innovation, and every innovation is a misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire.

Dear brothers and sisters, distinguished guests, faculty members, university administrators, and to our neighbors, colleagues, and associates among the non-Muslims, we want to thank His Highness Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi for his wise and benevolent leadership, which is quite evident by anyone who has the fortune, as myself and my colleagues, to visit Sharjah, a truly unique and phenomenal country. We also want to thank the hard work of the Islamic Club of the American University of Sharjah for organizing this public presentation. We ask of Allah to increase all of them with academic excellence and diligence in the pursuit of their career.

On behalf of the Purpose of Life Foundation, Purpose Media Group, and the United States of America, I am quite honored to present our topic tonight, Recipe for My Future, with the subtitle, Implementing Islam Between Ideality and Reality, which is intended to inspire and to provoke young people to think, especially our

students, to give deep and sustained thinking about the ingredients and the components which will inevitably dictate the outcome of their future, their ability to compete, and their general performance and participation in the modern world.

The Foundation of Planning in Quran

I want to begin with an ayah of the Quran. Allah said to us in the Quran:

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

إِنَّا كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقْنَاهُ بِقَدَرٍ

"[Indeed, all things We created with precise measure.]"

This ayah of the Quran says: Verily, we have proportioned and measured for everything a plan. Or, another way to translate it: Verily, we have proportioned and measured everything.

Allah also mentioned in the Quran:

"[No disaster strikes upon the earth or among yourselves except that it is in a register before We bring it into being - indeed that, for Allah, is easy.]"

Allah says: No misfortune or condition, in the earth nor in yourselves, except that we have written it, that is, we have planned it, we have prescribed it, in detail, before its actual occurrence. And that is surely easy, an easy matter for Allah.

So, let us start with this ayah, so we can just sort of reflect upon that. Verily, all things have we created, in planned proportion and measure. These verses clearly show that both the conception and result of every created thing, is according to a plan. Thus, Allah is teaching us, that His work is made according to a plan and a record. This is true, and an inspiration for any sincere believer to follow in practice.

This whole idea, that the world that we are living in, somehow, it just came into its own existence through its own accord and by its own volition, is absolutely foolishness, in spite of the intellectualness of it. You know, so educated fools set the rules.

It's like imagining a huge junkyard, maybe the size of this city, this university city, where all the old cars and scrap metal is just placed in that, and so we just send some helicopters over this huge junkyard, and we just drop some bombs on it, and afterwards we get some Mercedes and BMWs and Land Rovers. That's not going to happen. That's not the way it happens.

This world didn't happen that way, and our creation didn't happen that way. It happened according to a plan.

Planning in the Sunnah

Planning is also in the sunnah of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.

Turning our attention to the life and example of Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, Muslims say, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, this is our etiquette to the Prophet, this is our courtesy to the Prophet. We learned that his actions were based upon planning in both the religious and worldly domains.

It is reported in Sahih al-Bukhari that the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

"If the hereafter is about to occur, and in the hands of one of you is a plant, which he or she was about to plant in the ground, you must do so as long as you have a chance."

One of the companions of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, his name was Omar ibn al-Khattab, radiyallahu anh. He said: "For your worldly affairs, construct your plans based upon the assumption that you're going to live forever. And as for the work reserved for the hereafter, construct your plans based on the assumption that you're going to die tomorrow."

Implementing Faith Between Ideality and Reality

Allah also mentioned to us in Surah Al-Ma'idah:

"And we have revealed to you, O Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the book in truth, Al-Qur'an, confirming that which was preceded in the scriptures that were sent to the Prophets before it. As a criterion over it, so judge between them by what Allah has revealed, and do not follow their inclinations away from what has come to you of the truth. To each of you, we have prescribed a law and a methodology. Had Allah willed, He would have made you one nation, united in religion and also in your forms. But He intended to test you in what He has given you. So race towards all that is good. To Allah, certainly, you shall all return together. And He will then inform you concerning that which you used to have differences concerning."

So the challenge for all of us is to learn to implement our faith, whether we are Christians or whether we are of the Jewish faith or whether we are Hindus or Buddhists or atheists or deists or no faith, human beings, students,

most of you.

It is your challenge to implement your faith, your moral doctrines, between ideality and reality. Right now, you students, you may not realize it, but the environment that you're living in is fairly ideal when you compare it to the rest of the world. You may take that for granted.

But one day, you will graduate. And one day, based upon your career choices, you will travel, and you will leave this ideal environment. And you'll find out that you won't see a masjid. You can drive on the highway for half a day, and you won't see a masjid.

You'll find out maybe on every corner there's a pub or a club or people selling alcohol or prostitutes walking the streets. You may find out that religion may not even be tolerated in a particular society. Some of our sisters who are dressed in khemar, hijab, or niqab may not even be allowed or tolerated in that society. You may find that your faith is tested in every dimension that you find.

Critical Questions for Self-Reflection

Who am I really? I mean, not who your parents say you are, not who you pretend to be, but who are you when you are by yourself? Who are you when you're away from eyes who scrutinize? Who are you inside your heart in the dark? What are your real aspirations, Muhammad and Fatima? That's the question.

Who am I really? Allah knows, and you know, and soon you'll be tested, and the world will know.

The next question is: What moral convictions do I actually believe in strongly? That means, I could replace the word moral conviction with religion, the system of life, I could replace that with Islam, a complete system of life, but for the non-Muslims who are sitting here, we just keep it moral convictions. Moral convictions, the parameters of do's and don'ts, wants and desires, aspirations and dreams.

What moral convictions do I actually believe in? When I'm away from the ideal environment, who will set the parameters? Who will set the goalposts? And who will set the lines on the side to tell you what's out of bounds? What do I actually believe in in my heart? What am I passionate about? That's the question.

Why have I chosen my educational discipline? Is it because this educational discipline promises me the prospect of earning good money? The answer is, for most of you, yes. Is it because it promises you a better quality of life, so you think? Stronger, more powerful, more influential associates? An easier way to climb towards the top of the world?

Why have I chosen this educational discipline? Because the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, told us:

إِنَّمَا الْأَعْمَالُ بِالنِّيَّاتِ

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1907)

“Everything will be judged according to its original intention.”

Do I practice and follow religion because of culture? You know, something you inherited from your parents? Or am I self-motivated? Or is it a little bit of both?

How will my religious beliefs or my moral beliefs support me in my chosen academic career? And what I mean by that is, have I made a plan to synthesize, to integrate my moral beliefs with my academic career? Because if you didn't decide to do that yet, then let me tell you what you're headed for. It's like an Olympic diver getting up on that 30-foot diving board, making that jump into the air, making his pirouette upside down, and then ready to make his entry into the pool, and when he looks down, he finds there's no water in the pool. What's he headed for? A bad decision.

So how will my religious beliefs support me in my chosen academic career? And you're gonna need support.

How will I serve society through my religious belief in my academic career? Because at the end of the day, you know, those of you who are headed towards careers of service, doctors and lawyers and pharmacists and engineers, it's about service. Not serving yourself, but serving humanity. Not serving Muslims or Christians, people of your own faith, but serving humanity.

So how will I serve society through my religious belief, that is, the integration of my religious belief in my academic career, the goods and services that I'm going to excel in? How will I serve society through my religious belief in my academic career?

Do I really believe that Islam or whatever my faith system may be, do I really believe that faith and God can become a superior element in a godless, material-oriented world? Do I really believe that?

Because I can say to you that most of you students here, you know, you're swimming with the fish. You don't even have to go fishing. You're swimming with the fish. You can just go swimming and reach out and grab a fish.

Meaning that you're Muslims. You're born Muslims. You're in a Muslim country. You're reading the Quran since you were four years old. You've read all the books, the ummahat al-kutub. You got masjids every 500 yards.

However, most of you sitting in this room as students, you haven't sat down and had a sincere, thorough discussion with your non-Muslim colleague, neighbor, co-worker, or friend. You haven't had that kind of a conversation. Why? Because you really don't feel confident that you have the capability to present Islam to this non-Muslim.

Why? Because the media has made us, has caused us to develop an inferiority complex. We're Muslims on the outside because we have to be. Our parents expected of us. The society expected of us. After all, your name is Muhammad, Ahmed. Your name is Fatima, Khadija.

So what else can you be? But when you sit down with someone of a different faith, you don't feel the compulsion. You don't feel the need. You don't even feel the motivation to ask a few questions or to make a demonstration or to manifest the system of faith that you follow.

And if that's the way you are in an ideal environment, what's going to happen when you graduate and you move to the real environment? What's going to happen is that the dawah or the invitation is going to be made to you. So these are questions you need to ask yourself. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Am I confident when discussing Islam with my colleagues and friends? I mean, you know, when you get on Facebook, Twitter, MSN Messenger, you're in those chat rooms or whatever they call them. Are you talking about faith? Are you inviting people to the principles that you're supposed to represent? What are you talking about in those chat rooms?

Are you the leader? Are you holding leverage? Are you the inviter or are you the one being invited? And when the issue about Islam comes, when we are called terrorists, you know, when we are called extremists, when we are called fanatics, you know, when the enemies of Allah and the enemies of Islam create this atmosphere of Islamophobia and they demonize us, they dehumanize us, they marginalize us, do you respond or do you react?

How will my religious convictions, now this is you asking yourself the questions, you know, I'm just posing these questions because after sitting in a lot of workshops and traveling across the world, after talking to young people all over across the world, young Muslims in particular, we came up with about 42 questions and we narrowed it down to 10.

How will my religious convictions and my career choices contribute to my selection of a marriage partner?

Now I know the eyes, they play a big part in selecting a marriage partner and they should if you can see. And the appetite and the desires, they also play a big part and they should if you have sensitivity and you can feel.

But you know, the eyes can deceive you and the passions, they only last a little while. And when you move past that hour in the shower, you feel me, you understand what I'm talking about. When you move past that hour in the shower and the reality sets in that you're going to be with this person, hopefully, prospectively, the rest of your life, then you're going to see, I should have really thought about this.

And that's why in the Muslim world, we're not talking about the non-Muslim world, two out of every seven marriages end in 180 days. Four out of seven marriages end in three or four years.

So you need to ask this question over and over. How will my moral convictions, what I really believe inside myself, the parameters that I have set for myself, the values and the principles that I have ingested that I say that I represent, and then my career choices, how does that really contribute to my selection of a marriage partner?

You need to ask these questions because if you don't, you're already making that move in that Ferrari. You're coming around that curve doing 150, 170 miles an hour. And then when you press on the brake, guess what? It's not there. What you're headed for? Bad decision.

Is my Islamic education on par, in parity with my academic pursuits? You know, I'm crunching for this test I got to take, my finals. You know, I'm just going through all these books and answering all these questions and staying up all night long and drinking coffee and smoking shisha, hubbly-bubbly and hanging out with my friends and turning those pages.

But am I diligently getting up for the fajr prayer? Am I reading Quran? What do I know about the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? If I needed to give a talk extemporaneously, that means like without no preparation, about Islam, the Quran, and the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and integrate that with the values and realities of the world today, and just extemporaneously, without any preparation, I had to give a presentation to 500 people. Could I do it?

The answer is, most of you, absolutely not. Because your Islamic preparation is not in par with your academic pursuits, because these academic pursuits is based upon your attraction to the material world.

Making a Life Plan

You have to ask these questions for yourself now. Because if you don't ask these questions for yourself now, then you're going to get stuck between the ideality and the reality.

What are my dreams? And everybody has a right to dream. What are my visions? What do I really want? I've fashioned for myself. But what are your actual experiences? Because dreams, they do come true, but guess what? They're built day by day. And if you're not living your dream day by day, and you didn't write your dream down, guess what? You ain't living no dream. You think you are until you meet the reality, and you find out, and you wake up, it's a nightmare.

What's the distinction between my culture that my mom and dad gave me, that the society gave me, that the university gave me, that I experience when I go into all these beautiful masjids? You know, the culture, that means, you know, the default environment that I was born in and connected to, some of which is good, and some of which is not good. Some of which is based on Islam, and some that's based upon just stone-cold foolishness, and nobody explains it. It's just something that we do because we were born in a certain place.

What's the distinction between my culture that I know about, that I've been practicing, that's being reinforced every day, and my worldview? Have I developed a worldview? And shame on you. It's a tragedy that you don't have a worldview, when fiber optics and telecommunications have given you access to information just like that from all over the world.

How long would it take me to understand the parameters and the scope of the world that we live in? How long would it take me to understand how many cultures and subcultures? How long would it take me to understand what is a transnational corporation as opposed to a local business? How long would it take me to understand all the various religions and influences and philosophies of the world that we live in today?

These are questions you have to ask yourself. What about the distinction between my family, my grandmother and grandfather, my mom and dad, my siblings, my cousins, my extended family, and the new family that you're headed towards? Because most of you sitting in this room right here, three years from now, you're going to have one or two children.

What kind of family do you really want, and what kind of family do you really have, and what about your new family? What are your new aspirations? What are you going to do for them in this changing, challenging world that we live in?

And what about my society, where I live at right now? What do I know about my society for really? What's its goods? What's its services? What's its scope? What's its offer? What's its future? What's the 20-year plan in the society of the ruler or the government that I live in?

You need to know about your society, but guess what? Because of fiber optics and telecommunications, the world has now become what? A global village. So you need to understand my society within the context of the world community.

It takes research and introspection. Allah told us in the Quran:

"Travel through the earth and see what was the condition of those that came before you who disbelieved. See how Allah dealt with them."

What about my education? You know, these hallways and these classrooms, you know, all these papers and these booklets and all these issues that you've got to go through and all these disciplines you've got to go through to prepare yourself to go out in the world, meet the challenges, and bring that bread and butter back to the table and live the life that you really want to live.

See, so you know there's a difference between education and life experience. And what's the distinction between my associates that I call friends and my real friends that I can depend upon? We're on the same page morally. We got the same aspirations. We're playing on the same field of life. We share intimacy about values and ethics. We have reciprocity between each other in regards to trust and loyalty.

How do I distinguish my intimate, my real, genuine friends from all the associates that I have to come in contact with just to make it in life? And what about my plans? What about my plans? My plans, what I want to do.

How many of you in this auditorium tonight, and let me be honest with yourself, you don't have to be answering me because I'll be gone, and you're only going to hear the echo. Ask yourself, how many of you right now already got a five-year plan written? You thought about it. You developed it. You wrote it. You spoke it to yourself. You ingested it. And every week or month, you're making adjustments to it because after all, a building is put together brick by brick and floor by floor.

So now, what's your plan? So by a show of hands, how many of you can say with all these resources that you have at your hands and your fingertips, how many of you can say that you have a five-year plan?

Well, if you haven't done it, guess what? The Chinese students, the Singaporean students, the Indian students, the Japanese students, they got a plan. And yes, that's why Palestine is in the hands of people who have a five-year plan while the Arabs are still eating food.

Most of the Israeli army that is holding occupation, most of those soldiers are between the age of 16 and 19 years old. What are my plans before I get involved and become subordinate to the planning of others? You know, the Quran says:

"They plot and plan, and Allah also plans, but Allah is the best of planners."

You know, there's a statement: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

And by virtue of the fact that none of you stood up and said, I mean, just overtly, straightforward, I have a five-year plan, that means you don't have it. Well, it's never too late to correct.

Brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, it's about measuring ideality and reality, and you have to ask yourself about the challenges that you are facing today, and the drama and the trauma that you're going to be facing tomorrow. Be prepared.

Ask yourself, what are my moral principles, really? And how will I hold on and practice and implement and retain those moral values when I move forward into the world and I live within a neo-immoral environment? What will you do?

And what about my teachers? The teachers who taught me religion and the teachers who taught me academic sciences and my mom and dad and the others in my family who advised me. Those are my teachers. So what will happen to the influence of my teachers when I move out into the world and I find myself with new influences?

The Recipe Analogy

Brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, if you will ask the most famous chefs in the world how they achieve their status or the secret to their success, they will tell you it includes three things.

One, a controlled environment. You know, a kitchen is a what? It's a controlled environment. Kitchen is not like the bedroom. If you want things to come out right, in the kitchen, it has to be a controlled environment. Whether

The Future of Islam

You young brothers and sisters, as far as I'm concerned, you have the world in front of you. You got a lot of challenges, yes you do, but you got a lot of resources. And it is my belief that with you or without you, Islam is on the rise and Islam is on its way to taking a glorious position as Allah promised:

"It is He who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion, although those who associate others with Allah dislike it."

Islam will rise and take the position that it needs to take along with material and human resources. Islam will become a civilization again.

And just to sort of tap upon that, so we're not talking about something in a void or a bubble or we're just not using some kind of nostalgia or rhetoric. When I became a Muslim in 1965 and some of my colleagues are sitting down here can bear witness to that, there may have been around 65,000 new Muslims in the whole country of North America, in the whole North American continent.

Now, if you want to understand the continent, it's like 8 million square miles. That's North America, that's just the United States, so without Canada. 65,000 new Muslims and about 2.5 million immigrant Muslims who have come from different places.

Fast forward 21st century today. In North America there are 8 million Muslims, over 4,000 masjids, and now the new Muslims, the reverts if we want to call them, or the converts that some people might want to call them, they are 42% of that 8 million, so about 3.6 million new Muslims in the last 40 years.

Since 9-11, you know, the witch hunt, you know, the war against Islam, the war against Muslims and the invasion of the Muslim lands and the extraction and exploitation of the Muslim resources. During these last 12

years, they plan, they plot and plan. And Allah plans too, but who's the best at planning? Allah.

What I have experienced for myself in my country, where the heart of Islamophobia had come out of, and I'm so glad as an American citizen that I can say I'm so glad that George Bush went back to the bushes and that we got a black man in the White House, and not just because he's black, but also because we got Hussein in the White House. We got Mubarak in the White House. Nobody would ever think of that. Nobody could have ever considered that. Nobody ever conceived of that 10 years ago. But guess what? It has happened.

Now, he has the right to say he's not a Muslim. And I accept what he says because he's the President of the United States. But no doubt, he was raised as a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. His stepfather was a Muslim. He studied Quran in a madrasa.

You can't be going to no madrasa for three years and you don't know the Fatiha. So you might have lost something on the way to the presidency, but guess what? Hussein is still there, grandson of the Prophet, (صلى الله عليه وسلم). Mubarak is still there.

So this is what Allah has done. But let's take it a little bit further. Since 2011, in my country, let's not talk about the world, more than 100,000 people have taken shahada, have embraced Islam since 9-11 in America.

And the numbers are still growing and growing and growing. And this is without organized dawah. This is without people like yourself who haven't given a shahada since you came into school. This is by the plan of Allah. So what will happen when the Muslims really have their own institutions? What will happen when the Muslims become mature, the Muslims like yourselves become mature?

More people are coming to Dubai than are going to Las Vegas and Disneyland. The favorite place to come to, one out of every five tourists in the world, they choose to come to Dubai as opposed to any other places that they used to go to. That's one out of five.

And you know, Islam is not even really happening here yet. Muslims are happening, but Islam is not very clear and distinct, like a pearl, like the buruj. But it will be inshallah.

And in America, alhamdulillah, according to just the ratio, according to the numbers, if you use algorithms or algebra or whatever you want to use, just projections, it's projected by the year 2020 that there will be in America 15 million Muslims and 8 million of those will be new Muslims.

So let's put everything in context and say that the world is changing very fast. And guess what? Islam has its place in spite of the Muslims.

We ask Allah that all of us will reflect upon these matters. We ask Allah that all of us that are sitting in this room today that if you don't have a life plan, that you will go to the internet. I mean, they've got people and organizations and institutions and people who themselves, they have already laid it out for you. They've told you how to connect the dots. They've given you the recipe.

And it's free. Just download it and implement it. You'll find out that once you implement a life plan, all the ingredients that you're presently using now will come into focus. You will be a more focused person. Your education will become more profound. Your effect upon your family, your effect upon your society, your effect upon the world will be much more profound.

Question and Answer Session

You have your chance now. Those of you sitting in the audience, you have your chance to ask questions. Now, listen. Don't be asking me no questions about do I really think they got Osama. And say what you think about, you know what I'm saying, four wives.

And don't be asking me no tricky questions and no fiqh questions. Because that's not what we talked about. The title was A Recipe for My Life with a subtitle of Implementing Islam Between Ideality and Reality.

So if you've got a question, it's got to be on the subject matter. You ask your question in 30 seconds and I will give you also a concise answer to the best of my ability. But you've got to ask a question relevant to the topic. If you don't, I have to excuse you and we've got to move on. Now, we're going to start with the sisters.

Question 1: Respond vs React

Question: Thank you for the talk. It's amazing. I really enjoyed it. You mentioned something about respond versus react. Can you elaborate more about this point?

Answer: Yes. Well, all we have to do is just, you know, rewind the clock, rewind the tape, you know, back like say like three or four years and see what did Muslims do when somebody slandered the Prophet and wrote some cartoons.

What did the Muslims do? Did they respond or react? Yes. Okay, and when some people made a film, you know, called Fitna, you know, the devil in Holland that made the film Fitna, Geert Wilders, that's the devil's name.

When he made that film, Fitna, what did the Muslims do? Did they respond with another film or did they react? Yes. See, and then when Terry Jones, that foolish man down in Florida, said he want to burn the Quran, did the Muslims respond or react? And this more recent fiasco, you know, the innocence of the Muslims or the innocence of Islam or whatever they called it, what did Muslims do? Did they respond or did they react?

And then the question is, look at the difference between responding and reacting. See, reacting is somebody pushing the buttons and the Muslims just going crazy, just going bananas.

So, I think just in the graphics of that, you get my drift. That we Muslims, we need to put our resources together, gather ourselves together. We need to see what they said and then we come up with a dignified,

powerful, resourceful response.

And you'll find out that when Muslims are reacting, they're making movies of it. We look just like fools. We're falling right into the trap.

But when we learn to respond, that is, you tolerate, you keep your composure, you see, and you're able to deliver an alternative message, then you find out that when you deliver an alternative message, a lot of people appreciate it and a lot of people become Muslims or a lot of people become allies because they receive a dignified response.

Question 2: Parents Forcing Career Choices

Question: My question is that in this culture, or the Arab culture, or the Indian culture and Pakistani culture, there's this idea that, you know, the parents think that their children should be engineers and doctors and stuff like that. I know many students who are my colleagues and they've been forced into their majors and they're not enjoying it at all and they're forced into doing it and they're like suffering through the four years that they gotta go through. So, how would we be able to convince the parents or how do we get around this idea into implementing it into our plan?

Answer: Well, you know, let me kind of like be non-intellectual in my response to that, okay? First of all, in case you don't understand it, you know that when a young man graduates from school, he got hair on his chest just like his dad. He got a beard, his voice is just like his dad, and he's just as tall as his dad. So how's dad just gonna be mandating and telling him what to do?

Now, you gotta respect your father, your uncle, your grandfather. You know, you have to, you gotta, your father and mother, they paid the cost to be the boss, all of that, but guess what? You are not their slaves and they don't own you. And when you get to the age where you violate something the law said violate, they're not punished, you will be punished.

That means you have your own decisions to make. But if you don't make those decisions, you're gonna find your parents are gonna make those decisions for you, and after you graduate, if you don't know how to make decisions, when you go into the real world, somebody else is gonna be making decisions for you.

So, young brothers and sisters, planning is the issue. When you got a plan, sit down and talk to your mother and father and say, listen, I did everything you told me to do to the best of my ability. I made a few little mistakes and I cleaned it up. I love you. I respect you. I do everything that you want me. I have followed all the mandates you expected of me. I went to school. I did more than what you asked. I graduated with honors.

Now I want to get married to who I want to marry, not who you want me to marry. Because if your mother and father found a beautiful girl from India, I mean, you know what I mean, she's beautiful inside. She's your cousin. She's a Hafiza of Qur'an. She got taqwa. You know what I mean.

But she's bald-headed and buck-toothed. What you gonna do? Say, well, I just got to marry? No. Say, no, Pop. It ain't happening. I got the right to my eyes and my feelings and what I have measured out for life because this is somebody that I have to be married to forever. I don't think so.

So I'm being graphic, but bottom line is, young brothers and sisters, make your plan. Work your plan. Plan your work. Work your plan. Sit down with your mother and father and say, this is my life plan. It's sacred to me. I love you, and you're part of that plan. You are the foundation of that plan. But I got my life to live in the world that we living in today. You have lived your life in the world it used to be. I'm honoring that. And one day, you're gonna be my dependents. I'm gonna take care of you. So you gotta trust me also to live my life with the respect that I have for the tools that Allah has given to me. That's my answer to you.

Question 3: How to Invite People to Islam

Question: One lady wants to ask, how can you ask people to convert to Islam?

Answer: How can you ask people to convert? Same way that you choose a restaurant to go to. I mean, it's the same way you decide whether you want to live in a small apartment or you want to live in a high-rise condo. The same way that you decide what clothes that you want to put on, what job you want to have, what career that you want to choose.

If you are firm and confident about it, you are proud about it. You have self-esteem. You love Islam. You love something. You have high confidence and esteem. Tell me that if you got a new car, you got a new ring, you got some new clothes, you got a new house, tell me you don't ask your friends to come and visit you.

So I just go to them and ask them to convert? No, no, you don't go to them and just ask them. It's not like that. See, most of what Islam is, it's like it's in the senses. They have to smell Islam. Islam is not a book. They gotta smell Islam. They gotta taste Islam. They gotta hear Islam. They gotta feel Islam.

If they're not feeling it through you, then you got a lot of explaining to do. But when people come to Dubai, they ain't asking about the history of Dubai. Ain't nobody asking about the faith of the people of Dubai. Man, they coming here because they see all that bling bling, and everywhere they go is a mall. I mean, Dubai is like a huge mall. And people are coming here with money, and they are willing to spend all their money, whether in the night time or the day time, and go home broke with whatever they got while they was in that marketplace.

So Islam is greater than that. We gotta make our Islam attractive. We gotta make people salivate. You gotta make Islam attractive so you don't have to do that much talking. People will ask you, Fatima, this faith system that you are in that make you guys successful, you guys can put up these buildings, you can build new roads. I mean, you can do in 10 years what it took the West to do in 60. How'd you do that?

When you visit the Grand Mosque in Oman, or you visit the Grand Mosque here, and you see the architecture, and you see all these skyscrapers. When you go from one end of Sheikh Zayed Road to the other, you got more

Question 4: Difficulty Practicing Islam in the West

Question: I would like to ask, like you were talking about in your lecture, when people who live in Sharjah and Muslim cultural societies move towards the US or the far west, or any place in Europe, is it more difficult to practice Islam over there compared to here? Is there some sort of cultural problem which we might face after graduating from here? Or are there practicing Muslims as well over there?

Answer: Actually, brother, that's a good question. You know, to be honest, the dichotomy between the east and the west are not so much a clash of civilization, but it's this inversion of hand and glove. That's all it is.

You see, living here is a challenge. It has its own set of challenges. And you know better those restrictions and those challenges than I do. You know, in America, we may not have some of the restrictions that you have. You know, you can go to America and feel like you are so free and find out that you're so free that you lost all your value.

You know, you can be here and you can feel like, you know, there's so many restrictions and rules and this and that, but then that's the price we pay to have security. So the idea is to appreciate the environment where you are. Make an assessment of the environment where you are. See where the resources are. You know, see what are the liabilities, see what are the risks, see what are the values, and see the resources, and then go to the west and make the same assessment.

And the challenge in front of you is to take the best out of the worst, use the resources that you have where you are, and then go to the west and use the resources that they have and you'll find that you'll have the best of both worlds. Because Allah, He said to us in the Quran:

"And spend out of what We have provided for them."

One of the conditions of our faith: "Use the resources."

Don't be afraid, you know, don't be like a fish in a fishbowl. Don't be afraid to jump out and swim in the water.

Meet those challenges, because that's what Muslims did before us. Of course, when you go to the west, there's a lot of grave, blatant immorality.

But guess what? We've been doing these exercises all of our lives to protect ourselves and to insulate ourselves from that. See how ironic it is? 80% of all the new Muslims that have come about in the last 20 years or 30 years or 40 years, where have they come from? The Muslim world or the western world? The western world.

So if you want to feel Islam, the dynamism of Islam, not the culture of Islam, not just masjids and institutions and people walking around with robes and you hear the adhan and you go inside the malls and you hear the adhan. I mean, that's beautiful. I love it. And for me, a wife here and a wife there. So that means I can spend half my time getting the best of both worlds. Just a joke, sisters. So, you get my drift, right?

Question 5: How to Develop a Life Plan

Question: Sister, how do I develop a life plan?

Answer: Sister, take out a sheet of paper. Same way you do when you make your shopping list. And, you know, put a line in the middle of it. And put all your aspirations and all the things that you'd like to do. And on the other side, put the who, what, why, when, how, and where. Put that down. You start like that.

Go to Google. Or go to El Wahi. Because in case you guys don't know, there is another search engine in the world. It's called El Wahi. And it belongs to us. It does the same thing except El Wahi, you can't get no porn. And, you know, we Muslims, we don't want no porn, right? So, go to El Wahi.

Go to a search engine. And put in, how do I develop a life plan? And you will be amazed how many different templates there are. So you start out like that.

Second thing, find a mentor. Somebody who's already done a life plan. They could be Hindu, Buddhist, they could be whatever, it doesn't matter. They've done a life plan. Let them coach you. Let her coach you.

And you'll find that six months from now or three months from now, you will have a life plan in front of you. And it's not static. You're going to make adjustments as you move along. Whether it's day by day or week by week or month by month, year by year.

And you're going to find out that that life plan gives you focus. That life plan, when you get up in the morning, it gives you momentum. It gives you motivation. It gives you a feeling of knowing where you are. And then after a while, when you talk to other people about your life plan, it's like, it catches. It's contagious.

After a while, there's five of your friends that did it. And then there's 25 and then there's 50 brothers and sisters who have done it. And then on Facebook, you're not sharing disjointed ideas and frivolous talk. You're sharing your life plan with people. That's my suggestion.

Question 6: Islamic Restrictions on Earning Money

Question: We want to ask if Islam has some restrictions about earning money. Can we make money as much as we want or we should make money only according to our needs?

Answer: There's no limit. You can make as much money as you want. The Quran never told us that there's a limit on what we can make. Allah told us, seek your bounty of the hereafter. Allah said, seek the hereafter. But don't forget your bounty in this world.

And just to show us, you know, that the companions or the prophets and the three generations, you know, because of the sacrifices that they made, they lost everything. They were restricted in their clothes, their person, their food, and their land, and their pleasures, and their freedom, and everything.

But 20 years after the Quran was revealed, two-thirds of the earth and its wealth was under the feet of the Muslims. To such an extent that one companion of the Prophet said, I have never even seen all of the land that I own, and I've never even met all the captives that are under my hand. And I haven't even counted all the wealth that I have.

So, you know, the issue is not how much. The issue is what will you do with it. And the restrictions that Islam has, there's no restrictions except what is haram. And if you measure what's haram against the bounties of Allah, you cannot count the bounties of Allah. The haram is only mentioned in the Quran seven major things.

That's it. Everything else is open to you. But the issue is managing it. The issue is being just with it. The issue is dispersing it. The issue is giving people the rights that belong to them. And understanding that Allah gave it to you as a trust.

So, no, there's no restrictions. As a matter of fact, to be a Muslim, it's the greatest thing in the world when it comes to economy, when it comes to business. And that's just another thing I want to tell you, Muslims, is that what I would advise for all of you, along with whatever degree that you're taking, take a business degree. Take a certificate course in business.

So that if your other plans don't work because the world changes, guess what? Business never changes and the opportunity of business is always there. You feel me? So I hope I answered that question for you.

Question 7: Avoid Insulting Other Religions When Sharing Islam

Question: About telling people about Islam, when people started talking about Islam, they started saying about how wrong the other religion is. And that kind of like cuts off the conversation between you and the other side.

So what would you give an advice for these people? If you like, you want to show the beauty of Islam without insulting the other person's religion.

Answer: Well, you know, look, if I want to talk about an apple tree, do I talk about the rotten apple or do I talk about the apple? You see, if you start off with negativity, you're going to end up with negativity.

You're talking to another human being. You're not talking to a Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or whatever the case might be. You're talking to another human being. What does another human being want to hear? You're going to start out talking about how incorrect their beliefs are and how correct yours are? You're starting off wrong.

No, everything is in parity. You talk to a human being like they are a human being, like they have rights, like they got common sense, like they have a set of values, okay, just like they have ethics, just like you do.

And then in that conversation, you begin discussing the system of life that comes as a result of those values. Islam is a value system. Islam is not a religion. You want to confine it just to a religion and you think it's better than other religions, and that's the way you want to be talking to people about it, you wind up isolated by yourself because nobody wants to hear or talk to a person that's chauvinistic about what they have.

So, you want to wear your Islam. Let other people ask you about that suit that you're wearing. Let people ask you about the lifestyle that they can see, that they can feel. Don't start off with, you know, your religion is wrong and their religion is wrong and we're the only ones that's right, because if that's the case, if we're the only ones that's right, why can't we correct our own societies?

No. Let's have discussions of reciprocity. Discussions in which we give and we take. And let's be tolerant. And let's be sensitive. And let's have empathy and sympathy for other human beings because that's how our Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم), that's how he was.

He wasn't walking around Medina, beating on his chest, handing out booklets and pamphlets and telling people that he's the new sheriff in town. No, the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), when he started his dawah, he started his dawah with the words:

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

Translation: He said, "Give food. Go to the people and serve food. Good food. And also, when they invite you, go and eat their food. And give good greetings to whom you know and whom you don't know."

So it's inter-socialization, you see. That's how it starts. Being a good friend, being a good neighbor, being a good colleague, setting a good pattern, you know, showing people the model of your conduct, your behavior.

You see, if you see somebody pull up with a Rolls Royce, you say, oh wow. So the whole thing is about not trying to give dawah with rhetoric, but give dawah by sharing the values and let people make a decision for themselves.

Question 8: Responsibility to Teach Non-Muslim Professors

Question: Sheikh, I want to ask you, as a student as most of us here, we get to meet a lot of non-Muslim professors in most of our classes. Is it our responsibility to preach them for Islam?

Answer: No. No. Those professors are here and they're being paid a salary to transfer information to you. You're not getting no salary to transfer nothing to them. What you should do is learn to have a genuine dialogue with your professor.

Don't get into trying to teach your professor because you didn't come here to teach your professor. But in the course of your professor teaching you or delivering something to you, you have the chance to have an interaction, a genuine interaction.

And there's a Chinese proverb that says, when the carpenter works on the wood, the wood works on the carpenter. You got me? Did you feel what I just said? So, you know, you're going to be with a professor, okay, or you're going to be with a teacher for four years of high school, four years of undergraduate, another two or three years in graduate, and as it's moving on, and you're telling me that all the Quran that you have read, all the principles from the Prophet Muhammad that you have gained, that in this interaction of answering and doing essays and asking questions and sharing things, you don't gain the respect of that professor, that that professor is not intelligent enough to be able to understand that you have a set of principles and values?

Yes, they do, but sometimes they don't pay attention because they think that it's not relevant for this age. It's your job and my job to show them that Islam is ageless, boundless, timeless, and that for every time and every age and every society and every set of circumstances, Islam, the Quran, and the life of the Prophet is perpetual and is relevant. That's your job.

And guess what? If you're going to graduate school, you've got seven years to do that. That's our challenge in front of us. That's a real good question.

Question 9: Modern Banking System and Interest

Question: I want to ask you about the modern banking system, and when we talk about the modern banking system, of course, one thing comes to mind that is interest, which is completely haram in Islam. But, of course, you have to save money in the modern world and otherwise you can't live your life. It seems like there's no way out of this interest, so what can we do about this thing which is completely haram?

Answer: Brother, listen. First of all, that's like a specific question, but I'll just answer it like this. In the last 20 years, the Muslim economists, bankers, financiers, they have come up with platforms to demonstrate the value

and the distinction of Islamic banking.

It's all around you. Now, it's not perfect. It's not mature. It hasn't come with parity with the rest of the world, but guess what? When the banking crisis took place all over the world, the Muslim banks, they didn't fall because we don't speculate. We don't buy fish that's still swimming. We don't buy debts.

We don't buy all this paper money that's up in the air. We don't do that. We don't trade in that. We don't buy animals that are still in the stomach of the other animal. We don't buy fruits and all of that that have not, the trees have not even been planted. We don't invest in the fish that's still swimming in the sea.

We don't do that. And we don't also do compounded interest. We don't do that because our principles and our ethics don't allow us to do that. Because of this, Allah has made the Islamic banks insulated from what we see has happened around the world, and that's a reality.

Now, in another 20 years, it may virtually come out, okay, that they're going to see the manifestation of the superiority and the preference of the Islamic banking system. So, have faith. Have vision. Study those systems, and when you sit down and talk with people, you don't have to deal with rhetoric. Deal with facts. It'll come, inshallah.

Closing Remarks

Brothers and sisters, again, I want to thank the Islamic Club, the hard workers. It's not easy to set something up like this here. The other thing is that we have to understand that the reason maybe that we didn't get the kind of turnout that they might have wanted is just simply because we just got the permission a few days ago.

The other thing is that we just want to remind you is that while you were sitting in your seats, we were playing a promo there, and you need to go to challengeyoursoul.com. It's the alternative to Facebook. You need to go to alwahi.com. It's the alternative to Google. You need to go to Purpose TV, because we have put together a platform that will, inshallah, compete with the Discovery Channel.

So, you need to go there because it's there to give you hope. If it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that you would want, then just give us time, inshallah. Give us time.

So we thank Allah, we want to just say:

You guys were great. I mean, really great. May Allah bless all of you, inshallah. May Allah preserve for us, and may Allah give to us something for what we intended, inshallah.

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.

Closing Prayer

الْفَاتِحَة

[Surah Al-Fatihah - Quran 1:1-7]

End of Lecture