FRIENDLY non-Muslims visit our Mosque – AMAZED at what they learned

and we'll be following this with a dinner so i'm looks like i'm in between you and the dinner right okay bismillah rahim i start in the name of god the most beneficent and the most merciful welcome and greet all of you with the islamic greeting of assalam alaikum man all of you know what it means right it means peace of god be upon you and what do you think is a response to this greeting is that a guess so the response is that means may god's peace be upon you too so that's how we greet each other when we meet each other and those from our thank you because in fact when jesus when he used to meet his disciples that was the greeting he used to greet his disciples with john chapter number 20 verse number 19 when he went to the upper chamber the very first thing he mentioned to them is peace be upon you so we muslims we say we are following jesus and moses and abraham and all the prophets and all the messengers so the reason we are having this open house is that you know people may have fear of the unknown i went to jerusalem in the west bank in the year 2018 with my family so when i went there as i was leaving from there i went to a store to pick up some souvenirs and the lady up there the muslim lady wearing the hijab she was just asking me the question you know where are you from so i meant she mentioned from the u.s then she asked me this city in the u.s i said chicago when i said chicago she had this concern on her face and she looked at me and she said are you okay up there in chicago right we hear that you know there's a lot of killing and shooting up there i hope you guys are safe up there right so that means that if people only hear and only judge about other people other face other countries other cities that means they would always be fear of the unknown so for that reason when we come and meet with each other when we come and break bread with each other right and when we shake hands and smile and get to know each other many a times the walls that are there between cultures and faiths and nationalities and races they will go away and then we can see each other with so many commonalities with our sister rose over here we were looking into some of the commonalities that we have and when she asked me the question about the differences i said let's start with the commonalities right then i went over five commonalities which we can go over later on in the q a session then there are differences also so on behalf of the mosque i would like to give all of you a big round of applause for coming over here meeting with us and dropping the barriers and learning about islam thanks for coming right come on and on behalf of all of you right the about to be breaking of the fast and all the decorations and all the marketing and the planning and the delicious lunch and not lunch dinner which is going to come let's give a big round of applause to all the volunteers of this you know blessed mosque over here yes no this is a breaking of the iftar iftar is the meal that we take when we break the fast so this is the breaking of the iftar with our non-muslim brothers and sisters now who can tell me okay you know some of you have been here before right you were saying you came here before so uh you may know this answer right so the question is this when do you think which president started the iftar in the white house with the muslims which president do you think you have the choice of clinton president clinton president bush president obama president trump right now yeah is that the final answer right okay what if i say to you it goes back to the 1800s the early 1800s the first decade of 1800s who was the president in that time and nobody googles now i'm watching you guys right come on okay who is the history teacher here okay you guys got it jefferson you're right good jefferson right so in 1809 way back in the first decade of 1800s the iftar was done inviting the muslim delegation from libya along with the president and the staff of the president so what we are doing here is not unique so we always pray that may god bless this event bless the volunteers and bless the gathering so we can always be guided so we can live as brothers and sisters right i mean as we say so i was requested so but let me end with this because time is running why i want to give you guys in a lot of time for q a so fasting is one of the pillars uh what other four pillars that you can think of that we muslims that we believe in just with the raise of hand you can you can mention you know this pillar and that pillar go for it anyone um yeah yeah so to give the charity to the poor the needy the homeless right so that's also one of the important pillars of islam so 2.5 of our saved assets each year we calculate it and we give to the needy people around us so our brothers and sisters from the cio gc the council they are here they also have a department in which they collect the money locally and they distribute the money locally to the needy people all right so we are down so we are done with two pillars one is ramadan the second one is uh giving charity okay three more to go education education is an obligation it's not one of the pillars by the way so gaining education is an obligation in islam right but when it comes to the pillars uh what other three pillars yes brother belief in one god yes believe in one god actually testimony of faith testimony of faith so it goes like this in in arabic so a muslim all throughout the day especially in our prayer we recite the testimony of faith so the translation is this that i bear witness there is no other god besides one god allah and i bear witness that muhammad is the messenger of allah by the way uh when we say the word allah some of you may be thinking and maybe we may be you know believing that muslims we worship a different god when we say the word allah but that's not the case that's not the case so allah is not the god of the muslims only or the middle eastern or the indian pakistani we say allah is the name of the same universal god who in hebrew you say as jehovah or elohim or yahweh in spanish what is the name for god in spanish dears right and what was the language of jesus peace be upon him and what was the name of god in that language what was his language it was not english by the way no what was the language of jesus aramaic language yes so in that language the name for god is very close to the word allah so two more pillars to go by the way yeah pilgrimage and prayer right so very soon our fourth prayer of the day is going to happen so as you can see the rose over here we stand shoulder to shoulder and then we face the specific direction by the way where do we face when we pray but when i was in india east would be china right i don't think i want to praise towards china face mecca right yes so anywhere that muslim is so i was praying west when i was in india so we face mecca so that also shows the unity so in mecca is the first and the oldest house for the worshipping of one god and that was built by two prophets i will give you the name of the first prophet uh abraham who was the eldest son of abraham yes you know all the answers take the mic right very good i'm impressed uh yeah so father and son they both built the house of worship uh but more than five thousand years ago so that is what we face right and then the last pillar is pilgrimage so once in a lifetime if the means allow muslims go for pilgrimage so how many muslims have been to pilgrimage by the way okay quite a few you know this is such a amazing awesome experience once a person goes for pilgrimage just imagine all of chicago that three million people coming in one place they're putting aside the concept of race race nationality economic status right anything that they take for granted they're just coming there as a human being as a human family doing the rituals together it has such a humongous sense that we belong to this one humanity this one human family you know malcolm x when he went for pilgrimage you know before going there before converting to islam he had many many racist you know ideas about certain race and white people and whatnot but after he went for hajj he had such a profound transformation because he prayed with the whitest of the people he ate with them he did rituals with them and then he wrote a letter to his friend in the usa saying that if america also embraces islam all the racial problems are going to go away right yes that's what he said by the way so these are the five pillars of islam so quickly the six beliefs of islam the very first one is to believe in the absolute oneness of god the second one is to believe in the angels the third one is to believe in all the prophets and all the messengers so we say that adam was the very first prophet to his people to his progeny so who do you think muslims regard as the last and the final prophet and you know the answer go for it muhammad yes prophet muhammad peace be upon him right it says in the quran chapter 33 verse number 40 that he's the seal of the prophet no new prophet no new messenger so that's the third belief the fourth belief is we believe in all the scriptures that god has given to guide humanity so we believe in the scripture given to prophet abraham and moses and david and jesus right so we believe in the scriptures in the original form in which they came and the last scripture that we believe is which one the last and the final that we say is the word of god for all of humanity which one is that the quran yes so just a quick footnote about the quran well of the many many amazing facts the three quick ones right one amazing fact is that there are 15 million people in the whole world who memorize the whole quran from the very first page to the last page and our imam who was reciting the quran he already knew in his memory what to recite correct he memorized the whole quran by the way from the first page to the last page so there are 15 million people who memorize the whole quran so if i'm going to ask you the question the one from the church over here how many pages of genesis 2 have you memorized right it's not easy but those muslims who memorize the quran not in english or spanish or urdu or hindi they memorize in the original arabic language so in the month of ramadan especially from the memory the imam himself and other imams that stand up there no book in the front and they recite the whole quran in the whole month they finish reciting the whole quran from the memory right so that's one important awesome amazing fact about the quran the second amazing fact about the quran is that uh the the comprehensive and the complete guidance it provides for humanity so we say that humanity needs guidance for a person and family and for humanity so quran along with the example of muhammad peace be upon him it has comprehensive guidance to to eradicate racism and poverty and all the isms which are out there that is breaking humanity apart quran has solutions for you know suicide and homicide and gambling uh and and and intoxicants quran has solutions for the breakdown of the family structure so anything that we need humanity needs a good economic system political system social system educational any system that we need quran does have solutions for it so one important thing is that uh before all of you leave in the back i can see some gift backs up there every single one of you on behalf of the mosque on behalf of a gain piece you will get every single family a copy of your own quran in english right in that awesome yes amazon 10 dollars in this mosque free why not fifth important belief in islam is to believe in the day of judgment we say that one day every single human is going to die and we have to stand in front of god and god would be judging us based upon how we live this life just like a teacher judges or evaluates the students at the end of the semester for how they perform the whole semester the attendance policy perhaps the you know the assignments the quizzes the exams in the same way we say that our grand evaluation would be in front of god on the day of judgement in which god would be evaluating us based upon how we live this life so in a nutshell if a person has the right belief worshiping only one god not associating any partners and then doing good deeds the way god wants us to do then god says he promises those people eternal paradise right and then we also believe in hell fire those people who keep on associating partners taking a human or idol or you know animal or any creation along with the creator that's when god says that there would be consequences so in closing what what i'm reminded of you know when i see gatherings like this when we see us as brothers and sisters coming together right uh trying to work out things despite the differences what i'm reminded of is a passage from the quran and i want to recite that passage now and close so this passage is from chapter 49 of the quran verse number 13 chapter 49 verse number 13 god is addressing to all of humanity not just the muslims god is addressing to all of humanity and god is saying that all mankind oh humanity i have created you from one single male and one single female and made you into nations and peoples and tribes that you get to know each other not that you may hate and despite and discriminate with each other god is saying that he made us into nations and peoples and tribes that you get to know each other then god says that the best amongst you is the one who is a god-fearing well-mind mannered and pious person so we hope and pray that all of us all of humanity as brothers and sisters with god's guidance inshallah as we say god willing we can eradicate you know poverty and racism anti-semitism and islamophobia with the with the guidance of god and we can establish societies which are based upon morality and unity based upon justice and the outcome would be nothing less than loving peace may god help us all may god guide each one of you may god bless all of you thanks a lot for coming thank you so don't be shy by the way right you better ask here then go to mr google you know tonight next thank you for that question yeah yes right there i just have a quick question how is ramadan decided every year is it the same for the dates sure sure so for for the religious holidays muslims go with the lunar calendar so the lunar calendar is like 10 to 11 days shorter than the solar calendar so each time the ramzan is moving ahead you know like 10 days 11 days based upon the siding of the moon so some mosque what they do is they already calculate based upon the astronomical calculation but some other mosque if they want to go with the more traditional way they would i actually like to go with the actual sighting of the new moon so there would be people out there all over the usa canada and south america once decide the new moon then they decide that the next day would be the first day of ramadan my name is i'm a christian and i've been teaching the bible for 40 years now some of which i do memorize if you gotta remember the bible is 66 books 1189 chapters and over 32 000 words and after 40 years i remember some of them i am impressed to hear 15 million people memorized correct i'm very impressed with that can you tell me though how many chapters i heard you mentioned chapter 49 but how many there is chapters the breath words because if you have 15 million people memorize that i have grandchildren that i can't remember the name yes yes so so the quran is a bit shorter than the bible so quran has 114 chapters and it is actually a bit shorter than the new testament yes even with the new testament so what you will get today would be actually the translation of the quran so it will be about this size okay yeah so in arabic the actual quran is in arabic but still it's a book right it's not like one page or two it's still a book you know even my third grader he memorized 40 chapters of the quran in arabic so you have a competition with him okay i know he beat you okay so again two important ways the quran has been preserved one way is in the mind of the person or in the memory of the people so muhammad peace be upon him he became the very first memorizer of the quran and then he taught to his to his muslims of the time they memorized it and then that memorization process is coming from that time to our time all the generations without skipping any generation and then through writing also so people the scribes they wrote down the quran in front of the prophet and then we have copies going back all the way to the first generation so the important amazing uh way of check and balance is that if someone makes a mistake like a scribe before the printing press if they make the mistake in writing because of poor you know lightning or people are tired and whatnot if they make any mistake in the paper or in the in the manuscript the memorizers they will identify it they will find there's a mistake they will correct it and that manuscript will become pure as the original so that is not there in any scripture but this is like a dynamic way a dual way of check and balance and that also speaks about the prophecy god mentions in the quran chapter 15 verse number 9 that it is god who has sent down this message and he will preserve it right there thank you i'm michael freeman um i'm an educator by nature and you said that you education is an obligation and you also spoke about how they learn about the other prophets so they're obviously learning about old testament new testament and the quran so at what age do they start and is there like i know some people have sunday schools some people have catechism depending on their religion is there a specific name for you the classes that your students take [Music] yeah it's called sunday school it is sunday school by the way but besides the sunday school we also have saturday school we also have evening school we also have full-time islamic schools in the chicagoland area they are close to about 25 to 30 full-time islamic schools on top of it there are many muslim children also they're getting home schooled so any one of those ways our children they get educated about the previous prophets about the quran and about the life of prophet muhammad peace be upon him so they get to know what to do what not to do the do's and the don'ts and the guidance but education is not limited only to the spiritual education because in the quran no less than 750 times god is uh commanding encouraging recommending the muslims and the humans that think and ponder and do the research go around the world learn history and then you will arrive at the truth so we say that islam is a faith of intellectuals people who are educated and god wants us to gain education not only of spirituality but of the nature and the physics and the sciences for that reason some of you may know as a history teacher you may know as a teacher muslims took it to heart way back you know thousand years ago twelve hundred years or years ago to such an extent that now today all the sciences that we have the muslims of the past they led the foundations to those sciences for example right for example we say that even cena he's been named as the father of medicine for such a humongous contribution that muslim physician that he made he is also named as the father of pharmacology because in the field of pharmacology also he made humongous contribution al-razi one more muslim pediatrician he's called as a father of pediatrics right and uh chemistry anyone chemistry major here ibn hayan he's been called as the father of chemistry right uh he discovered uh many many assets and you know when we go to our labs the flash the test tube he's the one who invented those many of them even haitham he's called as the father of optics right so i can go on and on so based on the importance islam has on education muslims they became the movers and the shakers and they became the catalyst of the actual renaissance okay one quiz question based upon the education that she brought right okay who can name the oldest continuous university in the history of the world according to the guinness book of world records and according to unesco which university is the oldest continuous university house of wisdom [Music] uh that is the second one but there is even older than that all right but that's that's good that's close enough oh okay muslims not you guys you guys know the answer okay they're cheating all right i can give you guys the hint okay it's in africa okay it's in a country which as it starts with the letter m oh you got it all right morocco yes who said that okay she got it very good so in morocco in morocco is the oldest continuous university it was built in the year 859 before harvard and cambridge and you know penn state any university that we take for granted that we think we are the initiators it were the muslims way back thousand years ago they were laying foundations for universities and hospitals and pharmacies but even more amazing fact about that university is this it was made by a muslim lady right all right it was made by a muslim lady her name is fatima alfari wearing the hijab she laid the foundation for the oldest continuous university it's in morocco in the city of fez and the name of the campus is the university of harawayin so you know despite all the negative press that the women that they get that they don't have any voice or they are oppressed and subjugated no islam empowered women with education to such a degree that they were the movers and the shakers and the catalyst to the educational institutions that we study from in this country yes yeah why not go for it driver for the women of islam yes okay more questions you know no one is asking question from the back side yes ma'am go ahead sure sure so that's a good observation so we muslims we pray five times a day so the very first prayer is before sunrise and where is the time for the sunrise up there oh right there okay let me come close to it here so this is the time of the sun this is the time of the morning prayer before the sunrise it starts and we pray in the mosque at this time so when we are fasting we should stop fasting before 4 30 and then we assemble in the mosque to pray right so that's the first prayer of the day the second prayer of the day is right here this circle over here it starts about 12 50 but in the group we pray in the mosque at 1 30 right so that's the second prayer of the day the third prayer of the day likewise it starts at 5 43 and we we congregate in the mosque at 6 00 pm so just before all of you came we just finished our third prayer the fourth prayer which is coming up the green circle that you see is at sunset so the sunset time today is 7 48 so we are going to break the fast and pray right here and you can watch us uh the fourth prayer of the day and the last one the time starts at 9 10 and then we congregate at 9 30 and pray here so those are the five uh times of the daily prayer and as we know that because of the solar calendar these times they move each single day by about a minute or two minutes right did they like saying it's time changing gonna really like if they get rid of that it's gonna really make the sun longer yes so we do accommodate the daylight saving time so yeah so we do uh we do go with the you know daylight saving time any country that we live in and the prayer time table it reflects that by the way so many people who may have apps we muslims we have apps so we don't have to know and memorize it we can just open the app then we can figure out what are the time slots for the five daily prayers yeah very good question yes ma'am i was told that the time of prayers would be more on the highway the marble ground highway that they can go into that and the app will show them the nearest mosque to go to debris sure sure so she's saying that uh suppose if you're traveling you know chicago to ohio and the time for prayer comes in if i stop at the rest area how would i know which direction to pray and there's a app for it right and the time for it yes what about you know since you have to pray at certain times and he said there was an app and it'll let you know where the moss are so they know your response to go to to pray sure so there are two things right one thing would be the abs they are location based so suppose if i'm any remote area because of the gps it will let me know that what time and what prayer is due at that time secondly the app also has uh the location of the closest mosque to that location where i am so if i have time i can go to the closest mosque then come back to the road which i'm traveling so modern technology right makes it easy yes okay go ahead more questions we still have some more time yes sir no i will not add because uh the two young ladies they have a date of fruits in their hand because we are five minutes away from breaking the fast so what we will do at this point is uh you can go ahead and pass the dates uh but make sure as you bite into them there's a seed inside right so make sure that you don't bite the seed uh there's a dentist close by now i'm just all right so don't bite on the seed uh secondly is that you know just before uh the breaking of the fast this is like a really special moment for the muslims to do like the special prayers to the creator so we'll be just silent in that time and then approximately at 7 47 right 7 45 then we will call then we will make the call for prayer so before every prayer we have the call for prayer uh it's in arabic but we will do the translation once that happens muslims are going to pray up there and you can watch then dinner time right so with that may god guide and bless all of us don't make this as the first and the last time you're always welcome to come here this is also your place and may god keep us together as brothers and sisters under god's guidance again thank you very much i'll do the translation and we make our own judgments based on what we hear and it's how long it is god is great god is great god is great god is great [Music] i bear witness there is no other god besides god i bear witness no other god besides god i bear witness muhammad is his messenger i bear witness muhammad is the messenger of god come to prayer [Music] come to prayer come to your success come to your success allah is great allah is great [Music] no other god besides one god allah so that is the call for prayer that if you go to a muslim majority country like saudi arabia or egypt or in other countries you can see this call for prayer coming like outside the mosque like big speakers so the purpose is that if a person is doing some work or you know job and whatnot they wrap it up and then they come to the mosque and pray but because of the regulation in the zoning we cannot have it you know blasting this uh 4 30 am in the morning right you guys all would be awake what's going on right so this is called for prayer and yeah this is how we do it affirming the oneness of god messengership of prophet muhammad peace be upon him and uh reaffirming the faith in the oneness of god so what we are going to do is led by the imam who just recited for us those beautiful passages uh we are going to again uh do the fourth prayer of the day and he will again recite from the memory as you can see he will not have any phone any book any scripture but from the memory he is going to recite so in the in the prayer there are there are three units so one unit is from the time that we stand up we bow down and we prostrate that's one unit so we repeat that three times and this is in arabic and the followers we are just listening and he's the only one reciting so i'm going to join them now [Music] is so what they're doing right now you may be thinking these are the optional prayer okay so what you saw before that was the obligatory this is the optional for extra brownie points right perhaps extra rewards especially in this month we are supposed to like pray more uh read more quran right and be the best so that carries on for the rest of our lives so we have one question here then i will oh no question okay okay fine question is your prayers the same every every day at the same time okay so the prayers have five uh five slots within the five stars then you can pray anytime so every mosque is going to decide you know what in the slot of let's say the night prayer let's pray at 10 o'clock even though the time starts at 9 10 it goes all the way to midnight and passed do you say the same thing oh say the same thing yes so every prayer has a we recite the first chapter of the quran call as the opening then after that the imam he recited some other passages from the quran so those passages may differ uh based on the choosing of the imam right but every prayer has to have the opening chapter recited yes and what if you can't make it to the master okay what if you cannot make to the mosque suppose if we are working somewhere hospital or in a school we can pray anywhere that we want we do exactly the same thing we can pray individually but by coming to the mosque there's more reward by coming and praying in the mosque one extra footnote about the prayer is that the way that we are praying the previous prophets they used to pray like that as i mentioned before right we are following the message and the rituals of the previous prophets they also used to pray this way for example it says in the in the book of genesis chapter 17 verse number three when a good news was given to abraham uh he uh placed his forehead on the ground and he started praying to one god exactly the same way uh moses it says moses and even in numbers chapter 20 verse number six when the time for prayer came they'd washed themselves then they went and they prayed by placing their forehead on the ground and praying to one god jesus did exactly the same thing it says in matthew chapter 26 verse number 39 when people were coming after him he went to the garden of gethsemane right you guys remember from the bible he moved away to the garden of gethsemane over there he placed his forehead on the ground and then he said that oh god take this cup of death away from me not my will but your will so we say we are following all the prophets in the message of one god in their fasting also in their prayers yes ma'am one more question yeah very patient we're going to start the dinner okay do all your prayers come from the quran or do you uh pull from the old testament as well important right so the question is do the prayers that come from the quran or do we go to the all or the new testament so actually if i were not clear before we go only to the quran and to the example and the practices of prophet muhammad peace be upon him even though we respect the old and the new testament we do say that some remnants of the previous revelation is still in there but we say that we don't go for guidance to the all in the new testament so the way that we pray right now this is the way that god taught muhammad peace be upon him to pray through gabriel so the way that he was standing facing the direction uh the recitation uh and all the different uh motions in prayer we are following exactly the way that was done by prophet muhammad peace be upon him so now we pray that oh god give us the dinner finally all right thank you very much thank you so much

Channel: Sabeel Ahmed

Views: 117,568

Keywords: dr. sabeel ahmed, latinos converting, who are the muslims?, women in islam, ask a muslim, islam vs christianity, sabeel ahmed debate, non muslim listening to quran, revert to islam, converted to islam, sharia law, christian music 2020, quran recitation really beautiful, surah rahman qari abdul basit, converts to islam story, sunni shia debate english, sharia law pakistan, quran in english translation, christianity in china, what is islam religion, johnny depp amber heard

Id: PiZ_XZEKJEo

Length: 40min 6sec (2406 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/sexy-melon]

“Yeah it’s called Sunday school” this guy got jokes lol