The New Muslim in Our Mosque is the Canary in the Coal Mine Ustadh

Personal Reflection on Shahada

Before Monica gets here, I want to say something. This is just to kind of create a really authentic space. The night that John said he wanted to say his shahada, if I would have retired after that night, I would have felt fulfilled.

And the reason is this. You probably don't know all of this, but he said, I'd like to say my shahada on Sunday. And we've seen a shahada or two in our day, so it's, you know, business as usual.

But we still get excited, so everyone comes around. I think you got there at like 6 or something. I said, do you want to say the shahada before class or after class? He said, after class.

I said, as you like, whatever works for you. Then class got finished. I said, are you ready to say your shahada? He said, no, I'm waiting for my mother.

I said, okay, we can wait a few minutes. So we waited a few minutes. Then I said to him, I said, is your mother here? He said, no.

I said, do you want to wait for her? And he said in front of the whole community, she waited nine months for me to come out of the womb. I think I can wait a few minutes for her. And all of the sisters were like, yeah.

Like in a moment's time, he redeemed half of the species because of that statement, right? The lady's like, she finally has. And then he waited for mom. And then mom came, and she held his hand while he said his shahada.

And I looked up, I remember looking up and seeing Micah across the room. He's crying, I'm crying, but I'm trying not to let anybody see that I'm crying. Mom's crying, and John's crying.

Everyone's crying, and there was this moment where I said to myself, it's happening. But there's two things I thought about. The first one's more problematic than the second one.

Generational Differences

The first one I thought was, how come I didn't think about doing that? It didn't even cross my mind. It didn't even occur to me take your parents with you to the masjid for your shahada. And the reason it didn't is for so many people from my generation, our conversion was part of, who knows what part, it was part of a social rebellion.

It was part of the proverbial rage against the machine. It was part of our revolution. So I'm converting partly because I want to agitate the situation with the power structure.

Why would I take my parents with me? I want to go and say, I'm Muslim, deal with it. That's part of the 1990s generation ex-culture. That's the first thing I thought to myself.

How come I didn't think about that? And the second thing I thought to myself was, if I had thought about bringing my mother or any family member for that matter to my shahada, I would not have had a place that I could have realistically taken her to. Because things have changed. Things have changed a lot.

Even in the 16 or so years I've been Muslim, things have changed a lot for Muslims in the Bay Area. The idea that not only will we welcome our friends and family members and neighbors and our colleagues from other faith communities, not only will we welcome them, but we will make their accommodation and their feeling comfortable an absolute priority for our community. That's a significant shift.

In other words, it's not just like, yeah, you can bring your friend. It's like, no, bring your friend and they will be royalty to us. Let alone if you bring a family member. Let alone if you bring your mom. You don't have to roll out the green carpet, right? Green instead of red Muslims. No, but that reminds me of a situation I had, and this is what I mean about the canary in the coal mine.

Family Integration Story

My wife and the kids one year were with my mother during Christmas, and I was on my way to Mauritania to visit some of my teachers, and I called my mother I think on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or some time around that time, and she said to me, son, you'd be really proud of me. I said, why? She said, we had a Muslim Christmas this year. And I know half of you in the audience are going, arudhu billah, because that's what I thought.

I was like, arudhu billah, Muslim Christmas. I didn't say that to her, but I said, mom, what do you mean? She said, well, I know that the prophet Muhammad's favorite color was green, so we only put green lights on the tree. And instead of putting an angel on top of the tree, we put a star on Christmas.

I was just like, oh, okay, mom. Left it at that. I could have easily said, what? Haram, bid'ah, shirk, not necessarily in that order.

Repeated it three times, mom, don't you know this is my religion, my kids are there, what are you teaching my children? Trying to pollute the purity, son. I said, okay, mom. And I left it at that.

Probably two years later, and my wife is here, she should tell you if I'm making this, you know. Two years later, I was there for Christmas. My father is a devout Christian, goes to church, devout.

My mother is kind of like, well, you'll get it in the story. And Muhammad, well, actually, I'll tell the story in a different order. Before that happened, this was really interesting.

I was cooking in the kitchen, thank God. And my mother came up, she said, I still have the Star of Crescent. She said, would you put it on the tree for me? And that's outside of my comfort zone.

I personally, I just wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. Personal conviction, call it what you want to. But what did I say? I said, mom, I'm cooking, I've got food on my hands.

I can't do it. She said, don't say it, fine. So they did it.

Then, about ten minutes later, my oldest son Muhammad came to his grandmother. He said, grandma, I'm confused. And that's a conversation that many of our kids, some of them in grad school, if they had a space to really have the conversation, they would say, what? I'm confused.

If we're being honest. There's a lot of people that are confused. But when they're young, they're not afraid to actually say, grandma, I'm confused.

She said, well, some of us are celebrating Christmas, some of us aren't. I'm confused. It's going to look a lot like the future of Islam in America.

Don't be surprised. And she said, what? Honey, your grandfather's a Christian. But you and your brother and your sisters and your mom and your dad and me, we're Muslim.

Isn't that what she said? That's what she said. And I wasn't like, tap beer! Because that was what she said. Let it happen as a process.

Historical Perspective on Integration

And if we were to really look back at the history of Islam, in what are now Muslim-majority countries, if we studied the history, we would see that it didn't just show up. Islam didn't just show up. That it came little by little and began to integrate into the society that it came to.

And there was a negotiation process between the cultural realities of that country and what they were experiencing and the Muslims as they came there. And the same thing's going to have to happen here if Muslims are going to have a sustainable presence in this country. So having spaces where a mother can attend her son's shahadah and hold his hand and then she blessed us with some words of wisdom after his shahadah, to me, alhamdulillah, that's a sign that something very good is happening.

May Allah increase us in everything.

Personal Journey

The uncle's question was about how I personally learned about Islam and experienced it. And then kind of how that translated into understanding what Islam meant and what being Muslim meant.

You know, there's like a long version and a medium version and a short version. I don't have like a tweetable version yet of that story to try to get it that short. Because like when you heard John talk about beginning to ask the question of the reality of God, that's where it began for me.

And I was both challenged and blessed by the fact that my household did not have a standard religion. My father came from a very traditional black Baptist family. And my mother was nominally Christian and interestingly converted to Mormonism as a young lady.

So she was a, what you call a Jack Mormon. She was a Mormon that wasn't particularly adherent to her faith. But she was interestingly the Mormons, every single time my mother got sick, it was in the hospital or had a child or a birthday, she had left the church 20 plus years before that.

They still would come check up on her. They'd know if she was in the hospital. They knew she was there. They'd show up at the hospital. I don't even know how they knew. But they did.

So I didn't have like a state religion so to speak or a standard religion in the house. So asking the question of God's presence and reality was a personal one. The nation of Islam was the first opportunity that I had to look at anything outside of standard kind of the Christian offerings.

So I first heard about the nation of Islam through my older brother, or heard about it through hip hop music and then joined the nation of Islam and through his experience of the nation of Islam met a Sunni Muslim named Bilal. Imam Bilal, Rizalullah Khair. And then he told me about Islam.

So when I left high school I identified as a Muslim but I hadn't said my shahada. And Yahya Rodis and I went to school together since like 6th grade. So we were both on this kind of spiritual journey traveling together.

And then in high school we began to meet Muslims and then we met Brian Davis now known as Mustafa Davis. And he and I were at sushi one day. This is the media version believe it or not.

We were at sushi one day and he says to me I'm thinking about revisiting religion. I said you should become Muslim. He said are you a Muslim? I said no but my brother is.

He said well what do they believe? I said they believe in the oneness of God and they believe in Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. He left and went to Barzano with the intention to buy a bible. Look, he goes with the intention to buy a bible and on his way into the religion sections comes to Eastern philosophy and sees the book Muhammad by Martin Lings.

He picked it up and he said that all of the Abu Ibn Abu Ibn this is really hard to give a lecture while you guys got that because no one is going to concentrate. We'll wait till that passes. He said all the Abu Ibn confused him because the genealogy of the Prophet, peace be upon him at the beginning of the lineages at the beginning of the book said I was confused so I put it back on the shelf but right next to it was the Quran and he picked up the Quran and opened it to Surah Maryam.

And Ustad Ali is here, Ustad Ali Atai and I wouldn't even attempt to begin talking about anything about the bible while he's anywhere in my proximity. But I would say that coming from a Christian family and

coming from a Christian framework to read Surah Maryam is going to rock your world because it's so crystal clear. It's such a crystal clear conversation.

So he said he read it and he wept in the bookstore and he took the Quran home with him he said but I didn't read anything else because I was afraid I would find something that I didn't like so I only read Surah Maryam. I only read Surah Maryam. That was Wednesday.

By Friday he was Muslim. He went to the masjid and became Muslim and he came back to campus and he's now the resident as-salamu alaykum, my brother guy on campus with the kufi and the beard and so on and so forth and then he took me to MCA the day I became a Muslim. So it was kind of this feedback loop.

Heart Transformation

What happened in my heart there was two things one was clarity around the divine and what I mean by that is what you heard John talk about his comments about questioning the supposed divinity of Christ and then understanding Allah as the only true one God and experiencing that and then secondly the universality of prophecy in Islam that Islam accepts the previous prophets and the previous revelations was very important to me because I didn't want to do a religion that was the my way or the I way religion if it wasn't going to be inclusive I couldn't do it so the inclusivity and honestly my first introduction to the Prophet, peace be upon him was through the pamphlet Muhammad in the Bible translated by Dr. Jamal Badawi and unfortunately I spent more time arguing with Christian friends and peers with the pamphlet than I did actually meditating on it because you know people like to use those things for fuel but yeah that's what it was for me

Questions and Discussion

On the Beginning of Islam

Question: When Islam started?

Answer: You mean Islam with a capital I or Islam with a lower case I None of the above None of the above All of the above Islam with a capital I began with the advent of Sayyidina Muhammad, peace be upon him Islam with a lower case I if you understand the framing here began when Allah created the heavens and the earth that everything in the heavens and the earth was a submission to Allah but Islam in this most recent manifestation came with the beloved Sayyidina Muhammad, peace be upon him as the affirmation of all of the previous prophets but it's always been the way the way of Allah

On Converts and Community Integration

Question from Sister: One of the things when people who converted to Islam meet, aside from what's your name where are you from, where do you live and so on, how did you become Muslim? Everybody

HEADING

has their own story It's our own fingerprint It's quite unique... At what point does one stop being a convert at what point does one do you ever feel like you know maybe I shouldn't be asked all the time, like hey how did you convert and I just don't know what's appropriate or not appropriate because I figure the point is that they're Muslim now...

Answer: I hear you asking a deeper question and it's almost kind of like when do converts stop being trophies and when do they become members of the community because it's really not even so much what you're asking but how you're asking it and I'll give you one gauge, when people have names and they're not called new brother I'm not trying to be funny the new brother or the new sister has a name, her name is Salih or her name is Salma or her name is Su'aib or her name is whatever and his name is Juan or his name is Jeffrey or his name is Ahmed, he's not just a new brother, he's a person...

You never stop being a convert the sahaba never stop being converts they were people who embraced Islam from a different faith, that reality never goes away, they may establish Iman as a reality in themselves between them and Allah to where they go from just being Muslim to being mu'min, that's what many of the sahaba did...

And I think an even deeper question to ask is, how many of our youth are having conversion experiences that are born Muslim? that are born Muslim in Muslim families, I know Muslim families that don't even know that their children are atheists, they'll get up and pray with them, but they don't even know that the kids don't even believe in Allah so how many Muslim kids from Muslim families are basically converts once the light goes off, may Allah make it easy for all of us

Closing

May Allah increase us in everything and guide us all to what is best for this life and the hereafter.

"And Allah knows best."

Note: This khutbah emphasizes the vital role of new Muslims as indicators of the health of the Muslim community in America, using the metaphor of canaries in coal mines to illustrate how converts serve as early warning systems for potential problems within the community.