Breaking Spiritual Silence

Breaking Spiritual Silence

Imam Zaid Shakir

Opening Prayers and Salutations

O Allah, send blessings upon the beloved Muhammad, O Lord, send blessings and peace upon him.

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may peace and blessings be upon the master of the messengers, our master and beloved Muhammad, and upon his family and companions, and may peace be upon them in abundance.

Our Lord, to You is the praise, as befits the majesty of Your Face and the greatness of Your dominion. Glory be to You! We cannot count [enough] praises upon You; You are as You have praised Yourself.

And may Allah send blessings and peace upon our master Muhammad and upon his family and companions in abundance.

Peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon you.

All praise is due to Allah, all praise is due to Allah who has guided us to this, and we would not have been guided if Allah had not guided us. All praise is due to Allah who has sent down the Book upon His servant and has not made in it any crookedness. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

Gratitude and Context

All praises due to Allah who has blessed us together here, who has blessed us with the Qur'an, who has blessed us with the articulation of the Qur'an through our Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

Alhamdulillah, Sheikh Hassan just recited very beautifully moving words from the Book of Allah:

"You should know that the life of this world is none other than play and amusement and adornment."

In other words, things that can potentially and will definitely, if one isn't mindful of one's primary purpose in this world, which is to worship Allah, distract from that great reality.

Then those things will be a distraction from that great reality of who we are.

Remember Who You Are

As Sheikh Khalil just mentioned: "Remember who you are." I like to, when I talk to the children sometimes, because they all saw it—not that I encourage people to watch Disney movies, but I know usually they've all seen the Lion King. "Hakuna Matata for the rest of my days, it's my trouble-free philosophy, Hakuna Matata."

And so I ask, what is the turning point? So Simba is just his Hakuna Matata-ing, if you can make Hakuna Matata into a verb. So he's just Hakuna Matata for the rest of his days. He's chilling like a villain in the pond with Timon and Pumbaa, his newfound friends, while the kingdom is being destroyed.

So I ask, what's the turning point? What snaps Simba out of it and makes him realize that he's the new king and he has a responsibility to save the kingdom? And usually they'll say, "When he sees his father." He sees his father reflected in the pond, the sky reflected in the pond, and he tells him, "Simba, remember who you are."

And then Simba snaps out of it.

Muslims Forgetting Their Identity

And I think one of the reasons that not just our young folks—the children and youth—but even the older folks, we fall into these funks, into a malaise, and we get trapped up and wrapped up in the dunya. So Simba, he was trapped up in the dunya. It's nice. Lions don't swim, but he's out there swimming, and he's eating his slimy and satisfying grubs, and he's just hanging out with his friends. So he's wrapped up in the world and the pleasures of the world, and he forgets who he is. He forgets he's the king, and he forgets that the kingdom is in desperate trouble, that it is being taken over and is being destroyed. And so he races back and he saves the kingdom.

As Muslims, we forget who we are. We forget who we are. Men and women—Allah tells the women, when the Prophet's wives, they start haranguing him and hassling him about the dunya, what does Allah reveal?

"O wives of the Prophet, you're not like other women."

Oh Muslims, you're not like other people. They're the people of the world, and we're supposed to be the people of the akhira. We live in the world, we have responsibilities in the world, we seek justice in the world, but not at the sake of our very soul. Not at the sake of our very soul.

The Price of the Soul

It's mentioned in the Bible—I came from a Christian family, so I can quote the Bible, you can excuse me—but one of the verses in the Bible: "What profits a man if he gains the world but he loses his very soul?"

If these fools who are fighting in Iraq and Syria and murdering each other and competing in atrocities—what if they gain Syria, or they gain Iraq, or they gain Yemen, or they gain one of these other plots of dirt, but they lose their soul because they slaughtered a Muslim, they slaughtered one who said لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله

Which is haram! What does the dirt mean? What does the power mean? What does the authority mean when the reality sinks in that it wasn't about the world, it wasn't about controlling this or that plot of land? It was about obeying Allah, staying within the limits set by Allah:

"These are the limits set by Allah, don't violate them, don't even approach them."

The Reality of Ownership

And then the reality sets in. So you got Saddam's old treasure—the treasury was looted—or you looted a museum and you got some priceless piece. Or you went in like these people going into Tikrit and you got someone's television out of their house, or you got their bicycle, or you got their car. What does it mean? And you think it's yours, and you forgot that it belongs to Allah.

"Say: O Allah, Owner of Sovereignty."

Everything, all of the dominion is for Allah. He gives the authority and the dominion and the power and the victory to whom He's pleased with, not based on how many people they can murder or slaughter, how many rights they can trample on, how much property can be usurped. Forget that. That doesn't bring victory.

Massacring innocent people doesn't bring victory. Trampling on the rights of other human beings and Muslims doesn't bring victory. Controlling this or that piece of land doesn't bring victory.

"Victory only comes from Allah."

The Delusion of Worldly Power

So if we think, "If I can do something more desperate, if I can try a little harder, if I can murder a little more viciously, if I can broadcast it all over the world to strike fear into the hearts of people, I'll help bring victory"—no, you'll bring the scorn of the nations, you'll bring the hatred of the nations, you'll bring the contempt of the nations, you'll bring the wrath of the nations and the wrath of Almighty God down upon you. And that's what we see happening. You can call it whatever you want to call it, but that's what's happening.

And we have to take a stand. We have to remember Allah created us for something better than that. So you get the dirt, and you get the land, and you get the power, and you get the authority, but you got it by violating the rights that Allah said don't approach, don't come near. And then what awaits you?

"My wealth is gone." What you looted or pillaged is gone. My authority, my standing before the people is gone. Now I have to meet Allah based on what I sent forward for my soul.

Don't Be Deceived by the World

Don't be deceived, brothers and sisters. Don't be deceived by the world.

"Know that the life of this world is just play."

In other words, it makes you like a child. What does a child want to do? A child wants to play all day. And one of the reasons—if you're not familiar, go get a book by Dr. Leonard Sax, S-A-X like saxophone, not E—Dr. Leonard Sax, "Boys Adrift," and how our boys are being caught up in a cycle of perpetual adolescence, not able to grow up and assume the responsibilities of being a man. He's not a Muslim, so if you're like, "Wow, that sounds like my 25-year-old," it's widespread. It's being encouraged.

Because as long as we play, someone's making money. As long as we play, someone's making money, because the things we play with aren't free. The places we play aren't free. They have admission charges. You have to get a membership to the gym. You have to pay to go to Chuck E. Cheese's. When I grew up, we didn't have Chuck E. Cheese's. We had the backyard. It was better for the imagination, stimulating the imagination. You have to pay to play. They even say you have to pay to play.

So the longer you can keep a person in a childlike state of play, the more money someone can make. This is the nature of our time, and this is the nature of the world. But Islam tells us to grow up. Islam tells us to grow up because you're created for more than play.

Play, Amusement, and Adornment

But play is child-like, and they run around and run around, and they get tired, and it's good exercise, it's healthy, but nothing constructive. Play doesn't result in anything constructive. Yes, it builds character, physical fitness, etc., but play doesn't organize the world, play doesn't build institutions, play doesn't challenge injustices in lawful ways. So it makes you tired. That's the world—just amusement, just wasting time, wasting time.

So play we engage in with our body. Lahw, we engage with our mind. We just amuse ourselves to death. Lahw is television—hour after hour after hour after hour. And we leave it; we've just wasted time. And all these other things that are put out there to waste our time.

Wa-zeenah, wa-zeenatun, just adorning ourselves and adorning things. We fix up our house, we fix up our car. And I hope Muslims don't do it, but we really fix—some people really fix up their car. It's zeenah, just adorn it. They get 25-inch spinning rims, and they get a bobblehead dog in the back window, and they put little things on it, get a customized license plate: "My car." Most people figure that out—you're driving it. But you want to put an exclamation on it: "My car!" Get little feathery things painted on the back and the sides. Zeenah.

And then it just—you get a dent here, and then you're ready to shoot the guy after the first dent. "Yo man, what you doing? Did you see me coming?" Then after the second dent, you want to shoot him, ready to strangle him. And after the third dent, you don't even care anymore because you finally figured out it's just a car. It's made out of metal. I'm driving. I'm bound to bump into things. That's the nature of cars and driving. And then after the sixth, seventh, eighth dent, you're ready to send it to the scrap yard. And you say, "Alhamdulillah, I didn't shoot that guy over this piece of junk."

The Betrayal of Worldly Orientation

That's the world. The one who encourages you to just act, they've made you tired. Whoever directs you to the

world—you know, "Get a bigger house, get a faster car, get some new shoes"—some of you remember a singing group, Tower of Power. "They don't make—" "I never heard of Tower of Power!" You either try to make believe you never listen to music, or you're not that old. But see, I had an excuse. I wasn't a Muslim when I was listening to Tower of Power.

But they say:

"You done started to let your hair grow

You're spending big bucks on your wardrobe

You've been hanging out with the so-called hippie set

But while you search for the right road

There's one thing you should know

What's hip today just might become passé"

You're chasing it today, then it's out of style tomorrow.

So one who encourages you to get wrapped up in that lifestyle has betrayed you.

"Whoever orients you towards the dunya has betrayed you, and whoever orients you towards Allah, that's the one who's giving you sincere advice."

Because we're in this world to worship Allah, not to chase the dunya. We're in this world to worship Allah, not to chase power. We're in this world to worship Allah.

"I have only created the jinn and the humans to worship Me."

That's why we're in this world.

That's why we're in this world, brothers and sisters.

Understanding Our Role in the World

Everything else is an illusion, everything else is a delusion. And a function of our worship of Allah and a function of our knowing Allah is knowing the rights that other human beings have over us. So we're not saying we run away from the world, but we understand we're prisoners in the world.

الدُّنْيَا سِجْنُ الْمُؤْمِنِ وَجَنَّةُ الْكَافِرِ (Sahih Muslim 2956)

"The world is a prison for the believer and a paradise for the disbeliever."

So what's one meaning of that? When you're in prison, you don't do what you want, when you want, how you want. You do what the warden wants, when the warden wants, how the warden wants. And as a prisoner in this

world, the believer does what Allah wants, the ultimate warden, when Allah wants, how Allah wants.

In Ramadan, we don't eat what we want, even if it's lawful. We don't eat when we want. We eat when Allah wants us to eat. We drink when Allah wants us to drink. We don't pray—we don'