Remaining Firm in Confusing Times

Remaining Firm in Confusing Times

Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi

Opening and Praise

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ سَابِغِ النِّعْمَةِ وَخَالِقِ الْإِنْسَانِ بَعْدَ الْعَدَمِ، فَالْحَمْدُ ثُمَّ الْحَمْدُ ثُمَّ الْحَمْدُ لَكَ حَمْدًا كَثِيرًا طَيِّبًا يَا رَبِّ لَكَ، أَعْطَيْتَنَا خَيْرًا كَثِيرًا رَبَّنَا سَتَرْتَ عَنْ كُلِّ الْوَرَى عُيُوبَنَا، ثُمَّ الصَّلَاةُ بَعْدَ وَالتَّسْلِيمُ عَلَى نَبِيِّ الْمُصْطَفَى الْكَرِيمِ

Verily all praise is due to Allah. We praise him and we seek his help. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and the consequences of our actions. Indeed whomever Allah guides, none can misguide. And whomever Allah misguides, none can guide him back to the straight path. I bear witness and I testify that there is no deity worthy of worship other than Allah. And that Muhammad ibn Abdullah al-Hashimi al-Arabi al-Qurashi is the final prophet and the most perfect worshipper.

As to what follows, Allah has reminded us in the Quran to have a consciousness of him when he says:

"O you who believe, have taqwa of Allah the way that it is befitting that taqwa be made of Allah. And do not die except in a state of Islam."

The Historical Incident: The Delegation to Abu Talib

My dear brothers and sisters in Islam, around the fourth or fifth year of the prophetic da'wah in the Meccan phase, a delegation came to Abu Talib comprised of some of the leading dignitaries of the Quraysh. Including al-Walid ibn Utbah, including Umayyah ibn Khalaf, including Abu Sufyan. Essentially you had a group of them who were of the most noble and they were on the fence. They weren't of the worst like Abu Lahab, like Abu Jahl. And they were definitely not of the best. They were in the middle if you like, in the spectrum of Kufr.

And they approached Abu Talib, the chieftain of the Quraysh and the uncle of the Prophet. And they said, "O Abu Talib, go to your nephew and request for him an audience that we are willing to listen. We're willing to listen and to see what he has to present. But we have one condition. And that condition is that our slaves cannot be in the same gathering as us."

And they meant by our slaves, the freed slaves like Bilal, like Ibn Mas'ud, like Suhaib al-Rumi who were considered to be of a lower social class than the Quraysh. And they said this is the compromise: "If he's willing to compromise and he can have an exclusive audience with us. And he gets rid of the riffraff, the low caste. Because we don't want the people to say that we sat on the same couch as our slaves. We were in the same audience as the lower group of people. And if he agrees to this, tell him we will be open to his message."

The Nature of Their Opposition

So this group of people were not that gung-ho about polytheism, about mushrik, shirk. They were open to the idea of monotheism. But they did not like this aspect of Islam. Which aspect? Racial equality. They did not like it. So they asked the Prophet ﷺ to compromise on this.

Abu Talib was excited. This is now a break. This is now we can get a peace between the two warring parties. Maybe we can reach a compromise. And Abu Talib excitedly ran to the Prophet ﷺ and he said, "Oh my nephew, surely your people have agreed to your religion with a very reasonable compromise. Accept it and khalas, this feud will be over."

The Prophet's Deliberation

What was the compromise? He said to him. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Let me think about it." And he then went to Dar al-Nadwa and he raised this issue with the sahaba over there. And he said, "What do you think? Should we allow this delegation to come and we ask the others to step outside and we have this private delegation? And they will feel honored and welcome and they might accept Islam."

One of the senior sahaba, whose name I won't mention - perhaps some of you might have bad thoughts, I'm not going to mention his name - one of the senior sahaba, well known, he said, "Ya Rasulallah, how can you not accept this compromise? You have the leaders of the Quraysh willing to accept Islam. And as for Bilal and Ammar ibn Yasir and fulan and fulan, we will make it up to them in other ways afterwards. No big deal. We will give them other gifts and make them - you know, they're good people, they're going to understand. They're sacrificing for the sake of the da'wah. No big deal."

The Divine Revelation

And it is possible, it is possible that ideas swirled even in the head of our Prophet ﷺ. The temptation was great. You have here the leaders of the Quraysh accepting Islam. But then Allah revealed multiple verses, not one but at least two - Surat al-An'am and Surat al-Kahf - multiple verses in which Allah laid clear: There is no compromise when it comes to the foundations of our religion.

Three times - don't you dare - three times in this verse of Surat al-Kahf: Do not expel the very people that are worshipping Allah night and day for the sake of a pleasure of this world. In Surat al-An'am: If you were to expel them, ya Rasulallah, you will be doing zulm upon those people, the religious Muslims.

The Prophet's Response

It is said that when these verses came down, the Prophet ﷺ stood up and he walked to where Bilal was, and Ibn Mas'ud was, and Suhayb al-Rumi was. And he sat down and he said, "Allah has commanded me

to be with you and not them. Allah has commanded me to be with you and not them." And so the compromise was rejected and the religion of Islam continued forth.

The Revolutionary Nature of Racial Equality

And by the way, this issue of racial equality - subhanallah, we now fourteen centuries later, we take legitimate pride, and we should, alhamdulillah, our religion preaches racial equality. But I want you to understand that when those verses came down, the concept of racial equality was non-existent. Not just amongst the Arabs, frankly amongst humanity.

In my reading of history, no philosopher, no theologian, no preacher before our Prophet ﷺ had such a stark and explicit and unequivocal message of human equality. No one. Every society and every civilization felt themselves better than others. The children of Israel, perhaps even religiously, they have that right because Allah said, "I have chosen you over everyone else." The ancient Greeks felt themselves better. The Romans felt themselves better. The Chinese felt themselves better. Every civilization said, "We are the best and everybody else is not as good as us." This was ingrained in humanity.

Consistency Throughout the Prophet's Mission

And from the beginning of Islam, our Prophet ﷺ came and he preached from the very beginning. Up until when? Till the final khutbah that he gave. Can you imagine? Twenty-three years of consistent preaching. Racial equality did not come in the fifth year of the hijrah, in the tenth year of the da'wah, in the seventh year of the persecution. No! Racial equality came with the very revelation of Tawheed and that was not allowed to be compromised from the beginning to the very end.

As we are all aware, what was the final khutbah? What was the khutbat ul wada'ah? Five paragraphs we've memorized, they're in your masajid and houses. Five paragraphs, one of them dedicated to racial equality:

"There is no superiority of an Arab over non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab, nor a black over white, nor a white over black, except in taqwa."

That was the last khutbah and I just gave you an incident from the first of the da'wah. Twenty-three years of consistency.

Lessons from the Time of Umar ibn al-Khattab

Even though, my dear brothers and sisters, this message of racial equality was from the beginning, obviously we still have these issues to deal with. And this is from the earliest of times, by the way. It's an interesting incident in the khilafah of Umar ibn al-Khattab - it's a side note here.

In the khilafah of Umar ibn al-Khattab, Abu Sufyan and a number of those delegates who accepted Islam in the conquest of Makkah, some of the remnants of the old guard, they came to visit the house of Umar. And they were told, "Wait, you're gonna be given an audience, he's busy with something." So they sat outside.

Then Bilal came along with Salman al-Farisi and Suhaib al-Rumi. And when Umar heard that they were outside, he let them in immediately without any waiting time. And some of these elders of the Quraysh who are now Muslim, they said, "Can you believe these people who used to be our abid have been caused to enter the house of Umar before us?"

And Abu Sufyan remarked, "Can you blame them? Islam was presented to us and them, and they accepted and we delayed. So now they shall be accepted and we will be delayed." Abu Sufyan laid it straight for them.

But the point is, these notions remained. As you all remember, in the conquest of Makkah, when Bilal climbed over the Kaaba, one of the mushrikun said, "How I'm happy my father is dead, because if he were alive, he'd have a heart attack and die seeing Bilal climb the Kaaba." He said this at the conquest of Makkah.

The Main Point: Compromise in Religious Fundamentals

My point, my dear brothers and sisters, is not necessarily to go into the issue of racial equality, is to go to something even beyond and bigger than this. And that is the following: When Allah revealed this concept of racial equality, even some of the Muslims whom we know and love, they were willing to let it go for what they thought was a healthy compromise. "We're getting political power. We're getting something useful. We're gaining the leaders of the Quraysh."

But Allah said no. "Don't do that. Stick with the quality of people." Because how did Allah describe those people? "They are invoking Allah, making dua, worshipping Allah morning and night. Do not cause your eyes to gaze away from them to a people who have the dunya, to a people that have izzah and glory in this dunya but none in the akhira. If you do so, you will be from the dhalimeen."

Contemporary Challenges

My dear brothers and sisters, we are now being faced with many areas where we're being asked to compromise. The issues are not just about civil rights anymore and racial equality. The fact of the matter is, alhamdulillah, by and large, by and large, people have come to this conclusion that publicly they cannot be blatant racist. The term racist is considered to be anathema. And I know it still exists, I know this country is manifesting - all of this is there. But nobody publicly, no politician, no respected mainstream person can claim to be a racist.

We have now come to a level in human society where by and large any quote on quote civilized person, any politician, any leader must at least verbally claim that he's not a racist. So the issue is not compromising racism. The issue is compromising other aspects of our faith. Whether it be our interpretation of gender, our interpretation of sexuality, our interpretation of family, our interpretation of a host of other issues.

The Challenge to Contemporary Muslims

We are now being put to the same test. And all too often, those that are born and raised in lands other than Islam, so they absorb values other than Islam, a lot of times our own generation, those younger than me, they question: "Why would we not tolerate this and that? Why would we not embrace these values?" Sometimes they even want to project these values onto the faith itself. And they wish to reinterpret the Qur'an in a manner that it has never been interpreted historically for the last 14 and a half centuries.

The Nature of Faith in Islam

And this leads us to the real point of this khutba. My dear brothers and sisters, faith in our religion, faith in our religion is neither blind nor fully reasoned. It is in the middle. We do not blindly believe, but neither do we require rationality for every aspect of Islam. There are certain aspects that we might not understand, but we will have to trust in the wisdom of Allah.

Racial equality was not understood by some of the sahaba. They were willing to compromise it. Racial equality was something novel when it came down. And that is why one of the senior most sahaba said, "No big deal, ya Rasool Allah. We'll make it up to them. We'll kick them out now. Tomorrow we'll give them some gifts. They'll be fine." But that is not the point. The point is that this message is standing on an entire system. Once you accept it, you accept the system.

The Process of Coming to Islam

Now, do we accept it on blind faith? No. For those who don't believe in Islam, those that are outside the faith, they are commanded by Allah to use their rationality, to think and contemplate, and to come to the reasonable conclusion that Allah exists, that the Qur'an is the speech of Allah, that our Prophet ﷺ is his prophet. The big questions are answered by the mind: Is there a God? Yes. What type of God? One, all perfect. Which religion fits? You check, check, check, and you get to the religion of Islam through process of elimination and through process of internal support. That's a separate topic altogether.

Once you come to the logical and rational conclusion that Islam is a religion from God, that the Qur'an is a book from Allah, that the Prophet ﷺ is a sent prophet, once you come to this logical and rational conclusion, now, you do not question and interrogate every single minutia of the law.