Islam 101

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi everybody thanks for having me my name is Mona I'm and I'm an Islamic educator and lecturer and I go around to whoever will have me talking about my faith and answering questions I know a lot a lot of people have questions these days and so I feel like it's important to be out there and to answer the questions before I start today I just kind of on a sadder note wanted to put it out there that you know I know a lot of times when I go to different places people haven't ever met somebody Muslim in real life and have never had a personal relationship and I just want to put it out there in case I'm the only Muslim person you meet that you know what happened in Manchester is something that you know we unequivocally myself my family my community my mosque unequivocally condemned what has happened there we don't believe it's part of our faith that teaches people to do this and we grieve for the families and the victims and the people who are affected living there and it's the same with whenever anything happens in the United States or whether it's overseas our hearts really truly go out and our prayers go out to those families that are affected so I just wanted to start off by saying that because you know some people could see it as insensitive that we're here to talk about something that they feel is somehow affiliated with recent events so anyway I'm here to do Islam 101 and a little bit about myself I was born in Massachusetts I grew up in West Boylston and I initially went to BU to pursue a degree in international relations didn't take too well and I ended up traveling abroad to Pakistan where I studied Islamic theology I chose to specialize in comparative religion that doesn't make me an expert in anything at all it doesn't make me an expert in other religions but I am familiar with the core tenants of other religions I do have a son who's 20 - he's a nursing student and my husband back there is Steve he's a convert to Islam and we've been married for 17 years and I like things like home decorating reading cooking you know really boring stuff I also like to talk about face and I like to do a lot of charity work and I feel very passionate about the cause of refugees who are resettled in the United States why am I here today so first of all I'll just mention that you know mutual respect is sort of what I do I respect your choice of lifestyle religion point of view and I just ask that you do the same for me I'm not here to convert anyone sometimes when I organize these presentations people call the library or the school or the venue and say you know we don't want someone you know teaching our children or don't we don't want people indoctrinated us and that's I just want to make it clear that I'm not here to do that I'm not here to proselytize I'm just going to talk about what I know about my religion and I'm going to share that with you and answer your questions I'm also not here for like a debate I'm happy to answer anything that is controversial something you may feel as difficult you feel free to please ask I would rather you ask them to make your own assumptions but as I said I won't engage in a lengthy argument back and forth with you you're entitled to your opinion I'm entitled to mine and that's how we hopefully live together in peace my focus and expertise is on theology so religious studies more so than politics or geography I can comment on some things but there may be some questions you will ask that I will simply tell you I don't know or I'm not an expert on that if we do run out of time I do have business cards I'm happy to pass them out you're free to email me at any time if in the future you're having a conversation with someone family member and a question comes up and you think back to this presentation you go I don't think Mona talked about that and you'd like to ask me I'm perfectly more than willing to answer your questions so just talking a little bit about Islam and Muslims and I'll explain the two terms in a moment oftentimes there are certain stereotypes that we think of when we picture a Muslim person and then there are realities and in my daily life I feel like there's a big dichotomy between what people perceive as Muslim looking and what and who Muslims actually are in terms of you know these are people that I interact with on a daily basis their family their friends and so there are some images here which are a little bit different than maybe some of the images you may have seen in the media oftentimes people think of Muslim women as all wearing black or covering their faces oftentimes you know what some men are guys with big scruffy beards definitely Arab looking definitely not American right so they're sort of exotic eyes that made to look very foreign and very weird but these images are a little bit more comfortable to me because they sort of reflect the type of Muslim people I know you have some young girls on skateboards you have sports fans out in Detroit police officer how many of you guys remember it's a Haj Mohammed from the Olympic fencing team the US Olympic fencing team no one remembers her okay she's right there and doctors you know ten percent of doctors in America are actually of the Islamic faith okay so just some information about Islam as a religion Islam is a religion it's not a political ideology it's not a philosophy it's the third in the continuation of the line of Abrahamic faiths so we believe that Judaism Christianity and Islam follow as a three Abrahamic faiths as for the religion of Islam what sort of fits into it there are three primary category categories of Sciences are learning within the faith the first is beliefs our theology like what we actually believe in our Creed the second is practice or legality like what's allowed what's not allowed what are our good deeds what are evil deeds and then the third one is morality so morality is sort of a continuous process of improving yourself being a better person achieving those personality traits that make you closer to God so what does the word Islam actually mean the word Islam the word is derived from the Arabic word Salaam you guys may have heard people say assalamualaikum have you heard that before it means peace be upon you the word Salam actually means peace and Islam is a derivative of that word in terms of the actual term the word Islam it means submission to the will of our creator or to God it must be a willing and a peaceful submission and a Muslim is the person who chooses to submit to God so the difference here is Islam is the name of the religion Muslim is the name of the person who follows that religion so you know when Donald Trump said Islam hates us he was talking about the entire religion not about the people so we should you just you know just to correct the terminology a little bit I said that Islam has to be a willing and peaceful submission and some people challenge me on that but I'm going to talk to you about our theology and these are some verses from the Quran that express the freedom of religion or how important it is that we choose our religion the first is a verse from the chapter of a cow let there be no compulsion in religion truth stands out clear from error whoever rejects evil and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks and God hears and knows all things the second verse is a short chapter called the disbelievers and little children when they're you know first learning to pray when they're seven and eight years old this is one of the chapters that they first memorize and in Arabic it actually kind of lines so it reads as such say o non-believers I do not worship that which you worship nor do you worship what I worship nor do I worship what you worship for you is your religion and for me is my religion and the last verse I mentioning here is from the chapter of the cave it says and say the truth is from your Lord so whosoever will let him believe and whoever wills let him disbelieve so these are just three verses there are 6,500 verses in the Quran approximately and these are just three that I mentioning I certainly cannot go into a long dissertation but if flan is a religion which theologically preaches freedom of religion why do we suppose that is do you think that God wants us to be forced into any particular thing he gave us free will the ability to choose right from wrong so why would we want to force others or be forced he wants a willing and a peaceful submission a submission that is you are at peace with your decision and you are peaceful within yourself and your peaceful with the people who are around you so just talking a little bit about who Muslim people are and where they live this is sort of a map from the Pew Research Center showing where Muslims are concentrated in the world so you can see that the u.s. is kind of a very very light green that kind of comes farther down on the list and some of the African and Middle Eastern countries are darker green to reflect a higher concentration of Muslim population do you guys know what the most populous Muslim country is in the world any guesses Indonesia you guys are very smart Indonesia's over here the series of islands and in fact Indonesia has the most number of Muslims but it's not only a Muslim country there are Hindus Christians Buddhists Muslims and many other minority faiths living together peacefully in Indonesia does anyone know what the second-most populous Muslim country is in the world Pakistan no close though India yes so India you'll notice over here it's not even dark green now why is that huge population so even a minority in India is a huge number okay in fact I believe there are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan even though Pakistan is a Muslim majority country and India is a Muslim minority country okay so numbers are different from percentages how many Muslims do you think there are in the United States or what percentage would you get one one Muslim one percent yes yes just trying to lighten the mood yes it's about 1% of Americans so that's about 3.3 million Muslims in America what do you guys think well you know based on what you've seen will you say it's about 1% you interact with one out of every hundred people you meet are Muslims you thought it would be more so you see more Muslim people around it really depends on where you are in the United States there might be a slightly higher population in New England and in New York in the up you know in the northern areas versus maybe Kansas or Arkansas the numbers might be a little bit lower there but overall its 1% and obviously Muslims are more concentrated in urban areas ok well what do we exactly believe what does the faith of Islam teach us to believe I said that Islam consists a belief practice and morality so let's talk a little bit about the beliefs across all different sects and denominations worldwide there are six key beliefs that all Muslims agree on one is the belief in God the second is to believe in the angels the third is to believe in the prophets the fourth is to believe in the books the fifth is to believe in the last day or Judgment Day and the last is the supremacy of divine will or that God's will is supreme over that of men sometimes called fate or predestination I don't use those terms because I don't think they they're they just describe very accurately what we believe in so who is a lot so I've been saying God right you've been hearing me say the Creator God but you've also heard the word a lot have you heard this word before so who is he and and why am i using different terms well the word Allah is actually just the Arabic word for the God okay and it consists of two different words in Arabic the word el it actually means the the definite article th e the in the word Allah means something that's inspiring or worthy of worship or set people worship with a lowercase G so you say the God equals like the one God okay so when we translate from arabic to english this is what we get in hebrew goddess al Aloha in aramaic ilaha okay so these are similar Middle Eastern languages Arabic is another Middle Eastern language and so you can hear the similarity down here I actually have appearance in green is the Arabic symbol or the writing of the word Allah in Arabic okay and you'll notice maybe you can't see it from there but you'll notice that the term is repeated here this is a website that shows the translation of the Bible into any language so on the right here you have Genesis in English and on the left you have Genesis in Arabic okay and so you can see wherever the word God is is being spoken here that correspondingly the word Allah is being used in Arabic and Arab Christians you know Christians who live in the Arab world and speak Arabic they use the word a lot to mean God as well now we don't necessarily agree in the same concept of who God is but we use the same work so the word Allah it doesn't represent a foreign God it doesn't represent something different other than God itself the word Allah just means the god what is our belief about God we believe that we are worshipping the same God as the Jews and the Christians and this is it from verse from the Quran from the chapter of the spider it reads say to the people of the scripture who do you guys think the people of the scripture might be the Jews the Jews and the Christians okay in our belief the people of the scripture or the people of the book are the Jews and Christians and we differentiate them from the disbeliever okay the people of Scripture are different people we believe in that which has been revealed to us and that which has been revealed to you our God and your God is one and we are those who are in submission to him or Muslims okay so this is our belief we believe that we are worshiping the same God what is our concept of God so we believe we're worshiping the same God that we call him by the same name however we have a different concept of who he is okay so some basic information we believe he's one alone with no partners associates children parents or divisions what do I mean by divisions so we don't believe in the Trinity there's no Father Son and Holy Spirit he's just one he has no gender so we refer to him as he for a lack of our language being able to describe something which is free of gender okay however he is not male he is not female he's nothing like his creation so if he doesn't have children he doesn't reproduce he doesn't need to have gender okay he's nothing like anything that he creates he actively watches over his creation and he knows every detail we believe that God knows the number of leaves on every single tree the number of insects that are crawling in the earth and that he knows the moment a leaf falls off of the tree so he actively pays attention I know that some of the Greek philosophers you know Plato and what not they would believe that God created the world and then you know left it to its own devices so we kind of don't have that perspective we have a the perspective that he actively cares and watches over his creation we say that he transcended the balance of time matter in space sounds very philosophical or new-agey but really it's very simple God doesn't need to exist in time because he's eternal he's absolute he has no beginning and he has no end he's always existed and he will always exist so therefore time is meaningless for God time is in a loop it's in a circles right for us there is a day we are born there's a day we you know have a tenth birthday party there's a day that we die you know so there is our lives are described in terms of years or age right because time is relevant for us in terms of matter God does not require matter to exist he creates matter so he does not need anything to exist and he also transcends the boundaries of space so he's not necessarily above us or below us or to the left of us or to the right of us he's everywhere at once okay he doesn't need directionality or space to exist there's nothing comparable to him we can't conceive of something that is like him and understand it we can only talk about his attributes he is close to us and he is responsive to our prayer so he says in the Quran if my worshippers ask you about me tell them that I am near and I answer the prayer of the one who called on me okay so we have this sense that God is near that he's listening metaphorically near not physically near right so I just said he doesn't need space and we know him through 99 names and attributes that he talks about himself with in the Quran so some of those names would be the merciful the compassionate the Creator okay the destroyer the subtle the aware the manifest he has 99 names I couldn't go over all of them if I had more time maybe the concept of prophets so I talked about the concept of God what is it that we believe about prophets and you'll notice there's an S on the end of the word so we obviously believe in more than just one prophet we believe that there were well over a hundred thousand prophets that were sent to mankind from the beginning of time until Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him came 1400 years ago all right some narrations say there may have been as many as two hundred and twenty-four thousand the point being is that they were extremely numerous okay so from the chapter of Jonah's the Quran says and for every nation there is a messenger from the chapter of the opener and there is not a people but a Warner has gone among them from the chapter of the forgiver and indeed we have sent prophets before you O Muhammad some we have related to you their story and some we have not related to you their story they're honest trustworthy and dutiful in the delivery of the message they're in intelligent and free of intentional sinning and they are righteous and virtuous people so we generally believe that the prophets are not capable of doing something evil and that they are free from sin so there are 25 prophets mentioned in the Quran most of them are also mentioned in the Bible okay these are the English names are obviously there are Arabic names for each of them you'll notice Adam Noah you know we have the same story of Noah and the flood Moses and the parting of the Red Sea Abraham and his sons Isaac and Ishmael okay and we believe that Prophet Muhammad was descended from Ishmael okay and obviously the Jews were descended from Isaac okay so we actually believe that we are the half-brothers and sisters of the Jews okay we believe in Jacob Joseph job Solomon David all the same prophets that are mentioned in the Bible there might be a couple up here that you don't recognize any that you don't know or don't look familiar Enoch the Enochs actually in the Bible who who'd food Shuaib okay so we believe Shu able is the father-in-law of Moses and I don't know that there's there's no biblical equivalent to hood he was one of the Arab prophets so there were some prophets that were sent to Arabia in prehistoric times and so they were some of their names are here solid food those would be ones maybe you don't recognize what was a message of all of the prophets so we believe that all the prophets taught the same exact message what was it Moses declared in Deuteronomy here o Israel the Lord our God is one God 1,500 years later Jesus peace be upon him mentions the first of all commandments is hear o Israel the Lord our God is one Lord from mark and then the call of Mohammed 600 years later if you see upon him and your God is one God there is no god but he this is from the chapter of the cow so you might have one thing I might have met neglected to mention as we obviously also believe that Jesus we believe he's one of the prophets okay we don't believe that he's a son of God or God himself but rather he was one of the prophets and a righteous person and interesting fact is that Jesus is actually mentioned in the Quran more often than Prophet Muhammad okay and we did not send any messenger before you O Muhammad but that we revealed to him saying none has the right to be worshipped but I so worshiped me and so this is our belief that all the prophets were teaching the same message of monotheism that God was one and he alone was worthy of worship and secondly that all the prophets taught that there will be a Hereafter meaning there is life after death that you will be resurrected and you'll be held to account so we also believe you'll notice I quoted Deuteronomy and Mark right so we also believe in many different holy books we don't only believe in the Quran we believe in the Psalms as they were revealed to Prophet David and we believe that Abraham received some Scrolls or some pages of Revelation torah was revealed to moses the gospel revealed to jesus and the quran to prophet muhammad peace be upon all of the prophets each of them brought holy word of god and revelation to mankind we believe that there may be other books that were revealed to mankind but we can't be sure of them we don't know about them perhaps some of the writings we we think are very inspirational were revelation at some point and have been changed when it comes to the holy books we believe that all of them are revelations from God and all of them are true however when there is a discrepancy because we believe that the Quran was revealed later obviously chronologically later it's the most current and therefore the most authentic okay and therefore if there's any discrepancy between the holy books we defer to the Quran there's a lot of things and stories that are in the Bible that are not in the Quran and Quranic scholars of exegesis would look to what was in the Bible and what did the Jewish establishment believe what did Christian scholarship believe about this story they would look to that as reputable information that that they could use to instruct Muslim people about their religion we believe that there's a day of judgment so we believe after we die our souls will remain in the grave hovering over our body until angel is four field blows the trumpet and the world will end everything will be destroyed and then human beings will be resurrected from their graves and their bodies will be recreated and their souls will be reunited with a new body at that point they will stand in judgment judgment by who by God so I have here a picture of the scales of justice it's not really about the court system but really we believe that all of our deeds are being recorded so we believe every Muslim has two angels with them actually every human being of any face one on the right which is writing down every good thing that we do so every time we help someone smile it a stranger giving charity that angel is writing down our good deed and one on the left and every time we tell a lie or cheat or do something wrong hurt someone then that angel on the left is writing it down and each one is collecting a scroll a scroll of good deeds and a scroll of evil deeds on the day of judgment your Scrolls will be weighed against each other and you obviously want the heavier ones to be the good one so that you can go to the good place right so we do believe in heaven and hell and we believe that our deeds will be the thing that will get us one place the other we also believe that there is divine grace that there is forgiveness that God can intercede for us and so there are a lot of other paths to heaven even if we're very sinful people okay we also believe that God's will reign supreme over man so not everything is in our control right we can control our choices we can control whether we do something good or something bad but certain things are put in our way that sometimes we have no control over right so for instance with the tornado were to come in tomorrow that would be God's will there wouldn't be much we could do about it people get ill and have terminal illnesses the time that you die you know dying in an accident is something that is under God's control everything is under God's control but that he gives us free will and he's just seeing how we interact with those choices so these are a couple of memes which I think expressed the concept well some things happen beyond our control the best thing to do is put it in God's hand and have faith the other one is you cannot control what happens to you but you can control your attitude towards what happens to you and that you'll be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you so these are concepts that kind of have to do with whatever goes on in our lives if it's bad or if it's good we be will be thankful for it we'll be grateful for it okay because it's a test of our patience it's a test of our faith and it's just a fact of life God is in control of some things and there is a wisdom for everything he does even if it seems unfair or unjust it's something for us to be testing our faith on what are the key practices so we talked about belief those are the six key beliefs of all Muslims what are the things we practice what are the things we physically do okay the first is the Shahada or the testa fication of faith so it is to say on the tongue what you believe in your heart and it is to say ashhadu an LA ilaha illallah wa ashhadu anna muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu which means i bear witness or i testify to that there is no God worthy of worship except for the one God and I bear witness and testify that Muhammad is the prophet and Messenger of God servant and messenger of God okay so to say that believing in your heart sincerely is to become a Muslim so when a person wants to convert to the faith they only need to recite this in their language and in Arabic in front of witnesses to become a Muslim there is no other ceremony or procedure Muslims pray five times a day we are ordered to pray five times a day before the Sun rises at high noon in the afternoon in the early dusk so when the Sun starts setting and then late at night when the sky turns from blue to black okay so these five times are 365 days a year okay there are some exceptions obviously but we make every effort to pray those five times if we miss a prayer we make it up as soon as we remember it is considered a major sin to miss a prayer on purpose to be forgetful to fall asleep okay you know you make it up your human right fasting we do in the holy month of Ramadan so we're coming up on the holy month of Ramadan which is supposed to start they're saying Saturday they think they'll be able to fight the moon the new moon so Muslims are on a lunar calendar and so therefore our months don't always line up with a solar calendar and every year our month shift so this year we're going to start fasting may 27th next year it may be a little earlier right so every year those days will shift however it's 30 days that we have seen from food water intimacy and bad language okay from sunrise to sunset so once the Sun sets we feast we eat we drink we relax okay now we start all over again right before the Sun rises okay we do this for 30 days there's a got the mandatory charity so this is kind of like tithing except that tithing is typically used to fund the church however the zakat is a mandatory charity we have to pay to purify our wealth why might we need to purify our wealth what's wrong with it is it dirty so we're not greedy yeah what else anything else sometimes there may be some ill-gotten gains okay whether we were conscious of it or not conscious of it so we think of it as doing our duty to the society we pay two and a half percent of our expenses after all two and a half percent of our wealth after expenses are paid okay there is also a calculation on crops or business inventory things like that would also be Zach audible or taxable okay this money has to go to take care of the needy so the hungry the homeless people who don't have a place to live people who are in need it's not used to build institutions it's not used for anything like that it has to be used in those particular tasks the hodge how many of you guys have heard of the hodge or seen it on TV yeah so it's a pilgrimage it is an obligatory act for every person who is well enough physically and financially can afford to go you have to do it once in a lifetime you go to Mecca Saudi Arabia and there are a number of rites and rituals that we perform there and prayers I'll talk a little bit more about it so the whole world of the mosque Muslims pray everywhere and anywhere and if you happen to be out in public and see somebody praying in a park or at a mall or at a strange place this is not because that person is trying to flaunt themselves or do anything like that it's actually because we are required to stop and pray when the time for prayer arrives so when High Noon comes in I have a short window during which I can do my prayers and if I don't do it on time it's a sin so if I'm somewhere out and I don't think I can get to a home or a private place I have to find a place to pray where I am and the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said the whole earth has been made good for me a means of purification and a place of Prayer so wherever a man or woman may be when the time for prayer comes let him or her pray wherever he or she is these are pictures of people praying in sort of odd places just to kind of give you the idea you have some people on an airplane I don't think that today they would be able to do this probably an older picture just for security reasons people praying outside the Coliseum on the back of a taxicab up in the north pole on top of a rock at the International Space Station and underwater so people will pray wherever they are whenever they have to be that particularly odd places to pray but people will pray at the time and this is a picture of the hug yeah yeah it's particularly difficult on the airplane there are some accommodations we can do so on a long travel we can actually combine some of our prayers together or shorten some of them depending on the school of thought that you follow however eventually you will end up having to pray nowadays I think most people will pray in their seat because there just isn't as much room and also for security reasons they usually don't let people just you know take up the walkway also people we're not supposed to have anyone pass in front of us when we're praying so it's kind of difficult if you get up and you know other people need to move around planes are much tighter than they used to be so yeah most people would pray in their seat where they are yeah it's also hard to calculate the direction so we pray towards Mecca so if I had to pray right here and now I take out my phone app that has a compass and I calculate east northeast from where I am and I'd be like okay it's this way right I don't know if it's actually that way that I would calculate the direction and I would pray it in that direction if I had to when you're on a plane you're moving and you're moving at a high rate of speed so calculating the shortest distance between your spot and Mecca is actually almost impossible so the direction is sort of a little bit less important at that point in time yes this is a picture of the Hajj for those of you who haven't seen it before there's approximately three to four million people that defend on Mecca every year there's a short period of time ten days to two weeks that people go they usually first report to Mecca although some people go to Medina to visit the prophet's mosque but this is considered the holiest spot on earth for Muslims we believe that Abraham built this mosque see that little black square in the middle we call that the Kaaba which is just Arabic for the cube okay and it's not actually black it's made out of cement blocks but they cover it with this beautiful black velvet covering that covered in gold embroideries out of love and respect for it but we believe that Abraham built it with his son Ishmael and so it's a very holy spot for us we actually believe that there are two mountains you can actually can't see them here they're two mountains called Safa and Marwah and we believe that Hagar Abraham's wife ran with baby Ishmael from Mountain to mountain looking for water looking for help looking for civilization and that's one of the rituals we perform when we're at the Hajj so we actually run back and forth between those two mountains trying to remember her feelings at that time people go around the Kaaba seven times it's actually very difficult takes a long time because there's literally billions of people trying to do the same thing you can actually do it way up here on the upper deck which is easier but longer okay and people come down here they try to get their hands on it there's a black stone we believe fell from heaven it's mounted on the Kaaba it's mounted on there and people try to get a chance to touch it so yeah this is what it looks like you can see all the tall buildings in the background we talked about beliefs practices and now we're going to talk about moral moral values or morality personality characteristics the ideal personality of a Muslim so these are things that we are striving to achieve on a daily basis the first one our most important is sincerity being that we do things for the sake of pleasing God not for wealth not for fame not because we want everyone to think we're wonderful devout people but because we want God to be pleased with us truthfulness and honesty trustworthiness and keeping promises and commitments being moderate being thrifty you guys know what being thirsty is sometimes when I have younger audiences they're like what's the risk I've never heard of a thrift store basically through if you know not being extravagant right modesty so modesty and not only dress but in speech and attitude and approach to others generosity and hospitality if you ever visit a Muslim person's house you know they just won't let you leave without feeding you something or giving you something to drink because it's part of our faith we're encouraged to be very hospitable seeking knowledge is considered really important Brotherhood a sense of humanity doing something to make the earth a better place sense of patience and perseverance at hardship whenever difficulty strikes hardship strikes us mercy and kindness to one another tolerance or forgiveness good speech and good etiquette and then treating the heart of things like hate jealousy and anger we think that those emotions are gateways to sin so most likely if you get angry or jealous that's when you might become violent or when you might say something you don't mean to say right and so by freeing the heart of those emotions on a constant basis we set ourselves up for success these are just some of our moral values most of these are documented in the Quran as things that we are supposed to strive for or they're in the prophetic traditions so those are the three main categories now I put the next series of slides are really just things that people always ask about so the first thing people always ask about is why do you wear that why do you dress like that right a Muslim women cover up so first of all I mentioned modesty as one of our moral values it's not only for women modest dress and approach in speech and manner of walking are prescribed for both men and women okay as I have men there too but just in terms of the way that we dress we dress according to how we believe God ordained for us to dress the Quran has two different verses which mention to us to cover over our bodies in a particular way okay it is somewhat vague which is why you will see different with some women practicing modesty differently so I wear a blazer and a skirt other women wear a loose black gown some women feel they need to cover their faces other women are much more liberal you will find some Muslim women don't cover themselves at all or they just wear regular clothing that you know anyone of you how you might be dress so you'll see that different women express their modesty in different ways it is generally thought that the covering of the head is a requirement however not every woman feels confident enough to do it or is forced to do it every single person is asked to comply with God's commend to the extent that they are able and they are only accountable to God so we don't have like the hijab police that comes after people and beats them up if they don't listen or they don't dress a certain way that's not part of our faith and there are no punitive punishments mentioned in the Quran for people who don't dress certain way it's something that's between an individual and their Lord I have pictures of people of other faiths that look similar to Muslim dress such as Orthodox Jews who do cover in the same way even conservative Jews tend to have some kind of tickle or head covering or they wear a wig Catholic nuns and you know nuns of all different types do wear the habit and that kind of looks sort of similar to how we dress I also have a couple of my heroines over here so you know Mary the Virgin Mary is someone who is a very highly revered personality in Islamic beliefs and she has a whole chapter devoted to her in the Quran and we look at her as the example of chastity and devotion and commitment to God and so we look at how she is typically depicted and she's typically depicted wearing very long loose moderate clothes almost often with something over her head and so we think of her in a sense as an example for us of how to behave and how to interact with others mother Teresa is one of my personal heroines and you can see that different people of the cloth have taken this kind of attire men again also have to dress modestly their requirements a little different because of the leak of the male physique of a female are a little bit different obviously and so they are required to wear loose moderate clothing they're not supposed to wear tight skinny jeans or anything that's transparent or shows those things that we kind of wish that they wouldn't when we go out and see how people dress so you know they are also expected to dress and act modestly towards the opposite gender and towards everyone in general these are pictures of women that I think defy stereotypes so oftentimes you know when the hijab is talked about or when women's attire is talked about it's most often depicted as a very horrible oppressive barbaric sort of images that we see in the media but these images feel a little bit more to me like what I'm used to experiencing when it comes to the way we dress the good job does not have to prevent people from pursuing their careers their education their hobbies you know there are many Muslim women athletes all around the world who do participate in sports while they are completely covered and they do that by choice so some general misconceptions about women in Islam I had to add this because people oftentimes mention these to me so one is that women are not allowed to drive I drove to get here women are only not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia there are 50 Muslim countries 50 Muslim majority countries and another couple of dozen where there's a large Muslim minority in the world and there's one country that put a law on the book saying that women shouldn't drive it's not part of our religion women you survive camels at the time of Prophet Muhammad peace even days to ride horses so there's no religious restriction on women driving a car women are not allowed to be educated so when Malala wrote her book about her personal story what she went through and being shot in Afghanistan by the Taliban many people developed this idea that women are not allowed to be educated or discouraged from education in Islam this is contrary to the truth in fact women as well as men are ordered seeking knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim this is a statement of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon so women are encouraged and ordered to educate themselves as much as possible and they're in no way shape or form religiously banned from education yes the Taliban obviously then he'll want women to go to school but again that's an example of when you have a single you know country or single incidence of something sort of defining what we think about an entire faith women are not allowed to work this is also not correct the first wife of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him Khadijah you know she was a wealthy businesswoman she worked many women in the time of Prophet Muhammad worked and so we don't have any restriction on women working and in fact you'll meet many Muslim women in the work force almost all of my good friends who are women have full-time jobs and Families women are allowed not only to work but they are allowed to keep all their own earnings and they are not required to spend on their household expenses or on their children if they choose to do that that is regarded as charity okay however they are not required to women are punished jailed and beaten if not covered up again there are only two countries where there's any type of government intervention and people's attire and those would be Iran and Saudi Arabia and even then it is restricted to certain areas or parts of the city where there is a police presence that actually pays attention to how women might be dressed a morality police or something like that this is a minority generally speaking you know people dress how they want my mother has never worn a head covering she grew up in Egypt and nobody ever said anything to her in fact most of her peers and kids that she went to school with never did and so this concept that we're developing that you know it's just evil oppressive attire that you know you get punished for not doing it's just it's really just a story that we're being told to demonize the religion and the people who choose to practice it yes are some women under social pressure to dress a certain way definitely but I was liking that too you know sort of I remember when I was growing up and I grew up right here some of my friends I remember in the 80s it came into fashion to wear these really like cut-up jean shorts or cutoff right and I remember all of my friends getting upset because their mothers and fathers wouldn't let them go out wearing it you know they felt it was indecent so yes there are social pressure the hijab is considered the gold standard in most Middle Eastern and Muslims you know majority countries and so yes family members will want their daughters or their you know wives or whoever to dress in a certain way because they consider it the most proper but again that's more of a social thing than it is a religious thing women are considered less than men this is just not true obviously there are some images there is some behavior which makes people believe that but the Quran tells us that whoever does good whether male or female God promises them a happy life in this life and in the next there are many verses of the Quran which address men and women equally and call out women as recipients of the same reward or potentially punishment women cannot be experts or leaders in faiths like the Catholic Church a woman doesn't lead a mixed congregation but we have an imam that can be a prayer leader that can lead a group of women we have women's scholars we have women authors we have women you know experts in our in all different areas of faith so it's really just a matter of you know when you're practicing the actual ritualized prayer on Friday at that point in time women don't leave the congregation women cannot hold political leadership is also not true I have a whole list in my backup slides of Muslim women who are political leaders today either in Congress and Parliament's prime ministers former Prime Minister's there's a whole long list of them so there's just simply not true as well now I wanted to reserve there's no clock but I wanted to reserve at least a good amount of time for any of your questions I do have more slides because I typically get the same questions all the time but please feel free to ask anything that you're curious about anything you've wondered about and don't feel like you can't ask it actually takes quite a lot to offend me so you can feel free to ask me whatever you like yeah oh yeah so we believe that all the prophets were sent to man and jinn kind so let's believe that there are two creations that have freewill jinns and human beings you guys have heard of the genie in the bottle genie the word genie comes from jinn okay the singular of jinn is jinn knee that's one jinn is plural for like the whole race okay so we believe there are different races within the jinn they live on the earth with us but we do not see them okay they do operate in our world they live in remote areas sometimes we believe that you know when you you find a haunted house or you see or hear something unexplained we believe that because of the jinn okay that are living there they're made from fire we believe that man mankind is made from clay and jinns were made from fire we believe that they can fly they're very fast they're very strong I'm trying to think of what other information you might need to know some of the jinns are Christian some are Muslims some are atheist you know they're just like human beings they have their own civilization except for the fact that some of the jinn are demons so they follow Satan okay so we also believe that there are demons people who Jen's who have pledged themselves to Satan and they help Satan in his a cause to dissuade people from faith and doing good deeds okay angel yes we believe in angels oh we don't believe that Angels have freewill so we believe that God created angels from light but they have no choice but to obey God and they only do things with God's permission so one of the key differences between Islam and Christianity here is that I believe that it's a Christian belief that that Satan is a fallen angel so we don't have that concept we believe that Satan was a jinn and he disobeyed God and so God punished him but the angels are not capable of sinning or disobedience they can only do what they're told and they have different tasks they have different duties there are the Angels that write down our our deeds there are the Angels that bring us sustenance there are the Angels that bring revelation so like Gabriel peace be upon him so we have we believe in angel Michael so we have very similar we call him the Caillou but Michael and so we have very similar beliefs about angels except for that we don't believe they have freewill does that answer your question yeah any other questions yeah that yeah so first of all we're encouraged to forgive one another as much as possible because the Quran says do not want God to forgive you so because it is a godly thing to forgive we are encouraged to forgive one another however we do also have the concept that God forgives every sin except that you associate partners with him you know you you associate false gods with him other than that he can and will forgive every single sin however in the case that you wronged another human being you do need to seek their forgiveness because God will you know that's an offense to fellow man right so you need that person to forgive you yeah so we do have that concept yes [Music] so you might be asking about Sharia law okay so Sharia law is basically like Islamic canonical law so we have laws that are based on verses of the Quran the gerak the Quran is mostly a book about spirituality is beliefs and very little of it you know less than 10% of the book is actually do's and don'ts and rules and regulations but there are some laws that are ordained in the Quran the word Sharia it refers to a waterway that leads to a main source that's sort of the general meaning of the word the word in Arabic for street is Shara you can hear that they're very similar words it's a path right it's divine directives regarding every aspect of our life so how I have to wash up before I pray as part of Sharia law fasting during Ramadan that's part of Sharia law everything that I'm required to do or or forbidden from doing is part of Sharia law it is not limited to just a penal system so oftentimes when people think about Sharia law they think about punishments that are imposed so it's a full body of divine laws code of conduct and teachings which are supposed to benefit both the individual and the society it covers worshiped social behavior business transactions marriage and divorce inheritance politics economics and penal laws okay so that's what it consists up Islam does not really differentiate between modern and secular times and historic times and we don't really have a concept of secular everything is encompassed in our faith okay it's a complete way of life it's very hard for us to say oh wait this is a religious law versus this is secular law okay how and where does Sharia apply a lot of times people are very afraid of Sharia law there's actually a 40 million dollar industry Islamophobia industry in the United States that is just targeted at making people afraid of Muslims and Islam and one of the messages that they're always perpetrating is that Sharia law is coming to America or you may have heard the term creeping Sharia okay so for instance like you know they have a problem with halal meat you know we have dietary restrictions just like Jews have kosher you know we have halal and they have a problem with you know halal turkeys being sold on Thanksgiving you know this is just you know something to make people feel alarmed and scared it's just how we choose to treat the animal and it's about treating the animal humanely it's about sacrificing the animal in the name of God that's really all it's about but anyway the Sharia must be applied in a legitimate Islamic state okay it's not something that gets applied in a non Islamic state so last I checked America was not an Islamic state Isis is not an Islamic state I'll get into that why but I have to mention it since they call themselves an Islamic state even within an Islamic state the non-muslim minority is not subject to those laws the evidence for this is that when the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was the leader of the city of Medina there were Jews living amongst his people and when they came forward with a dispute he adjudicated very dispute according to Jewish rabbinical law at the time he did not adjudicate them according to Islamic law so the non local minority is never subject to the same laws even if we were in an Islamic state freedom of religious practice is protected within Islam and the Islamic state and when not living in an Islamic state Muslims are required by the Sharia to obey the laws of the land why is this because we believe that when you enter a foreign country you enter you are making a de facto contract with that country to obey its law okay so if you were to go to another country like the Vietnam or Thailand one of these countries where you know using a drug trafficking is a capital offense right so I remember being in an airport once and there was a sign saying you know warning to American citizens drug trafficking is a capital offense and you know your embassy can't help you basically so when you go to a foreign country you know that they have their own laws and you have to obey them so when you enter it you've made an agreement to obey those laws or else face the consequences right so we're not living in our own Islamic states we are required to follow the laws and in fact it's considered part of our own Sharia that we have to obey the laws of the place we are living in so I said that Isis wasn't an Islamic state and I said that only Islamic law or Sharia law can apply in an Islamic state what are the conditions of an Islamic state why is Isis not considered an Islamic state even though they call themselves at right the first one is diplomacy so the country has to have diplomatic acknowledgement there are no embassies to Isis right nobody else acknowledges them as a nation there has to be security or secure Authority they have to be able to keep their country under control well they're constantly their borders are moving they're constantly at war they're constantly gaining and losing ground right so they're not a secure state they have to be thought of as an Islamic state with consensus of other nations and other Muslim nations have to say yep that's an Islamic state or leaders or scholars your people have to accept you as a righteous leader so the caliph of the Islamic state as he calls himself his people didn't nominate him they didn't pledge him they didn't say we agree that you're our leader okay so he doesn't qualify for an Islamic state adherence to Islamic principles in the application of Sharia law so for instance Isis burns people right they behead people they mutilate people these are all prohibited in Islamic law the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said treachery is forbidden all where warfare has to be open and declared he said not to mutilate dead bodies okay he said no one punishes with fire except for the lord of the fire what does that mean that means only God can punish and Hellfire people should not punish one another with right so these are parts of Islamic law that they are not adhering to therefore they cannot claim to be an Islamic state so if I just say you know my house in West Boylston is monel and and that's my country I mean that's exactly what they've done they've basically said we are a state ok and we are an Islamic State but nobody else acknowledges them and they don't fit the criteria of being a state ok so that being said I'll mention within the Islamic state so ideally within a Muslim country or within an Islamic state these are the rights of those who are minorities or who don't ascribe to the same faith so prophet muhammad said beware whoever is cruel and hard to a non-muslim minority curtail their rights or burdens them with more than they can bear or take anything from them against their free will I Prophet Muhammad will complain against that person on the day of judgement so it's regarded as a serious sin as a serious infraction and something that should not be done the second is a letter to the Christians of Madrid as a neighboring nation written by the first caliph after the Prophet peace be upon him passed away his name is Abu Bakr and it says in the name of God the beneficent the merciful this is a written statement of God's slave Abu Bakr the successor of muhammad the prophet and messenger of god he affirms for you the rights of a protected neighbor in yourselves your lands your religious community your wealth retainers and servants those of who you are present or abroad your bishops and monks your monasteries and all that you own be it great or small you shall not be deprived of it and shall have full control over it so the authentic Islam mainstream Islam is a religion and a perspective that respected the rights of those who did not follow the same faith and who treated even neighboring states as safe from harm ok so this is what our religion teaches us this is what Sharia law teaches us ok did I answer I know someone asked you ask me a simple question about Islamic law and I gave you a dissertation but did I answer your question ok you have a question yep no in fact and you know what could be considered in Islamic state there is virtually no consensus over that most Muslim majority countries are not really considered Islamic States and in fact many of themselves call themselves Democratic republics and they have different system of governance so to differing degrees they may or may not have Islamic laws on the books they may just have you know secular laws so it depends on the country but generally speaking if you ask most Muslims is there an Islamic state most of them will be like oh no if anything maybe you could look at you know a country like Saudi Arabia as supposedly an Islamic state with the exception that their leadership is a monarchy which is not really what we agree with so they're not really necessarily all fitting all the criteria to differing degrees they represent Islamic niss okay I hope that answers your question yeah you have another follow-up yep good yeah sure yes so who are the summation or that here the two main denominations of Muslims in the world are Sunni and Shia shear represents only maybe 10 to 15 percent of Muslims in the world the only countries that have a majority of Shia would be like Iran and it comes close in Iraq okay however the rest of the Muslim countries in the world have a Sunni majority primarily the difference between Sunnis and Shias is political not really theological we pray the same we fast the same we believe in the same books the same prophet okay and the difference between the two sects emerged at the time of the death of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and at the time when he was passing away the discrepancy became who will follow him in leadership okay so the Shia position on leadership was it should remain with the bloodline of Prophet Muhammad so they wanted Ali his cousin to take leadership the Sydney position was it should remain with the most virtuous or qualified people who have the endorsement of the people and so therefore it is the 'sydney belief that Abu Bakr was person who the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him asked to lead prayers when he was on his deathbed and so he was the most virtuous or the most qualified okay so therefore they followed that line there are other things for instance there's a leadership structure difference that Shia have the Imam ate and the assumed you have the Caliphate they're kind of just a difference in name however within the Shia sects there are twelve hours and seven or so the 12 hours believe there were twelve imams after prophet muhammad and the seven or believe there are seven and both sexes believe that one of the imams is missing and is going to come back at the end of time okay the Caliphate we basically believe that you know the people nominate who they believe is the most qualified most virtuous person to follow and the word caliph means the one who follows in the footsteps of somebody else so that person is trying their best to follow in the footsteps of Prophet Muhammad both sexes have a very high level of respect for the family of the Prophet although the Shia tend to claim that that's their domain that they love the bloodline of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him the Shia believe that the people who were talipes before Ali were usurpers so they did not have their right and everything they did is suspect however the Sunni believe that all of the Caliph's after the Prophet Muhammad the four caliphs were righteously guided people and as was Ali the fourth of them so they sort of don't like anybody who came before Ali the tragedy of Karbala so this is later on you know several generations later the grandchildren of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him Hasan and Husayn they were very tragically slaughtered by the Caliphate okay and so some Shias really they celebrate this day or they commemorate this day with a lot of mourning okay and so some of them self-harm so they do like self-flagellation you may have seen pictures where they will hit themselves with chains or they will cut themselves and leave themselves suddenly it basically regard this as a major tragedy and they do mourn the loss however they do believe that this is incorrect to to commit self and then within the schools of jurisprudence so we have we have schools of jurisprudence or schools of thought around Islamic law there are four accepted schools of thought that Shias have only a couple of their own and they differ a little bit in terms of how to practice the laws I guess that's the best overview summary I can give you I hope I answered your question it's the same I would say less than less than 10 percent of Muslims are going to meet in the u.s. are Shia and in Massachusetts are approximately 200 mosques and I believe only two or three are Shia okay so it kind of gives you that 10 percent ratio right any other questions yeah well it's not really justified it's forbidden to harm anyone who isn't fighting you actively except in self-defense or to liberate an oppressed people it's forbidden to fight another person so and it's even more of a sin to kill you know your own brother and face so the the conflicts between Shia and Sunni as I mentioned they're mostly political and they're mostly people vying for power in the region mostly people looking for representation in government where you know there's there is a lot of political upheaval so right now in Iraq for instance the government is all in shambles and this year's are looking for more representation or domination so it's really not a religious fight it's really more of a political fight you know so how do we justify it we don't justify it it's not justified it's something we abhor hopefully that answers your question you guys have any other questions yes [Music] that's kind of a good question I'm not sure if I'm the best person to answer that question I mean the Crusaders always do the beginning of Christian Muslim discord because there was a lot of Christian with some cooperation good relations yeah and even in Jerusalem today I mean all the traditions are there people pray at the temple people pray at the mosque it up saw people pray a wailing wall we really don't have a sense that we have to have hatred to people of other faiths but the Crusades are sort of the the initial I would say in history one of the earliest sort of outright battles between faiths and it was looked at as you know we need to cleanse the holy land of the Muslims and so therefore the Muslims who were there we're defending their there they were defending their place so yeah I would say probably but I mean your guess is as good as mine I'm not really a historian so I could just tell you that it's one of the things that a lot of Muslims when they're you know they have some animosity they go back to the Crusades you know they wanted to kill us all they still want to kill us all you know they don't want us to exist so this is a common thinking that you'll see in you know when there is hatred people have to justify hatred against an enemy and so they'll always go back to yes just like the Jews killed Jesus yeah so yeah so Muslims actually don't believe that that Jesus Jesus was crucified so we don't believe that the Jews killed Jesus but we believe that they want to do and that they killed other prophets so but we don't have animosity towards the Jews because of anything like that there's no religious animosity towards the Jews what you see is sometimes Muslim Jewish animosity comes from political conflicts like the israel-palestine problem again it comes down to history and politics more so than theology okay do you guys have any other questions I'm sorry to answer that very well but yeah yeah so earlier translations of the Quran were done by Orientalists and most of the Orientalists were particularly committed to basically disproving Islam as a faith so obviously they translated the book with some glance but the Quran has been translated into every language on earth a lot of the modern translations you can find today are pretty good so Yusuf Ali is a really good one Marmaduke Pickthall yeah I can I can email you some names but most of them are pretty decent the thing about the Quran is we only believe it's the Word of God in Arabic and it needs to be understood in Arabic and that's why Muslim children when they're young they start learning the Arabic language even if they're not Arabic speaking okay because we are taught that we have to learn our book and recite it in our own language and understand it in our own language there's so much that's lost in translation the Arabic language is very rich and it's very hard to translate I find it difficult sometimes when I'm trying to translate things one book that you might want to look at it's called the study Quran it's sort of a book of exegesis and it's a bit sophisticated but if you're somebody who's studious you might find some benefit in that book it's also very controversial in the Muslim community some people love it some people hate it but most of the more common translations that you will see Karen Armstrong is a great person John Esposito has written a lot of really good books on Islam and they're both not Muslim yeah so I would say Yusuf Ali's one of the best and secondly yeah I am personally I mean not every word is perfect but as an overall translation I would say it's one of the better ones yeah any other questions yes you mean as recent as like yesterday or you mean just in general yeah so I know that there have been some hate crimes there's been an increase in hate crimes over the last couple of years since 2014 against mosques and against Muslim people you know I'm sure that that's also the case in Massachusetts there's a group called the Muslim Justice League that basically does like pro bono and representation for Muslims have been targeted so yes there has been you know more likely than not what you see is just stuff that you might consider microaggressions stuff that doesn't get reported you know people just yelling out their window go back to your country or just saying rude things to you or you know vandalism things like that there was a mosque breaking attempt at the Worcester Islamic Center it was a mentally disturbed individual so you know there has been definitely some targeting but nationwide there's a very clear trend upwards towards hate against Muslims yeah for sure in Massachusetts you know you there are a few spots of your cases hate crimes that have happened I can't tell you the details of them I know that you know if you if you search news articles you will find them but if you want to follow up I'll have somebody who who works on cases send you some some information if you want okay yes we don't reach that gap I would say you know oftentimes it's really simple things you know I would say the first step is probably trying to get to know someone Muslim in your community if there is anyone that you don't know and just reaching out and saying hey I'm your neighbor I live in town and if you ever need anything you know give me a call or hey let's be friends let's get coffee let's get lunch because I think that's one of the hardest things we are only 1% of the population so only one in hundred people is Muslim and it's very hard to you know be known as human beings and not be known as a stereotype or what happens on TV when you get to know someone for hey their kids are in school and they do this job and you know it's a lot easier to reconcile you know a very small minority of people that do barbaric things with the vast majority of you know 1.6 billion people on the earth so I would say that's the first step the second step would be you know when you see or hear of something discriminatory you know just don't be afraid to speak up and be brave I remember that earlier in the year there was an incident wearing this wasn't a Muslim person there was a Hispanic woman at jcpenney and she was standing in line you may have seen videos online if you're on social media but this person in line behind her was just insulting her telling her to go back to her country telling her she was using all the tax dollars you know and just went on a rant and everybody in the line at JC Penney was just quietly waiting nobody said anything I think that's one of the hardest and bravest things to do is to speak up and say you know what that's not cool you shouldn't talk like that you know she is just a much right to buy her goods at targeted you do or JC Penney or whatever I would say that you know that's one of the hardest things to do but one of the most needed things is when someone will stand up when something is going on sometimes it's just someone yelling at you it doesn't become a police incident you know but it becomes that person feels scared and then doesn't want to go out for weeks because what if this happens to me again so expressing solidarity just through personal relationships or if your workplace you can help someone who's Muslim you know we're going to be fasting for 30 days so if you work with someone Muslim you know kind of try to be a little bit understanding of the fact that they're hungry and tired and probably haven't slept enough you know help them advocate with their employer or their school depending on your position you know if you work somewhere where you can make a difference and that's really important and I would just say be aware you know and spread information so if you like if I share with you some information about Muslims condemning terrorism so let me find something here so this has happened the other day right you know that there was an attack in Manchester so of course the first thing I get to see on my social media is Muslims don't do enough to prevent this they don't condemn this and of course I just quickly googled and found all Muslims condemning terrorism and Exeter and and providing solidarity for the victim and so sometimes it's just that people hear negative things and they don't hear positive things so say the positive things to be fair right so if you can help by just promoting information telling people what good resources they can read telling people what misconceptions are out there you've learned what some misconceptions are out there today tell people what you know so I would say those are probably some of the best ways to show solidarity they're all obviously be other opportunities as things happen we had as I said a break-in attempt at the mosque and there's a group called in Worcester called showing up for racial justice it's called surge they got together they came to the mosque on a Friday and they just stood out there with signs saying you know we support our Muslim neighbors just as people were driving by on the street and they could see the signs and that says something important to us and when people pulled up to pray they first were like oh no people are protesting us you know then they got closer they saw the signs and they said you know we support you and they were really comfort and they felt really good that you know their neighbors did support them so I think there's a lot of different ways and there's creativity that you can you know kind of come up with on your own but I hope that answers your question yeah any other questions [Music] yeah there is much more in common especially between the Abrahamic faiths so Judaism Christianity and Islam I mean the difference are actually the differences are really minut compared to all that we have in common and all that we believe in so that's just something else you can let people know the other thing is I do go to churches I go to temples I go to whoever invites me I'm happy if you think that there's a congregation or a group or an employer or someone who would be interested in learning more and would like to sit through a presentation like this I'm happy to do it and I don't charge anything so it's something that you can let me know and we can organize yep we don't so religious like obligations are not required of children until they reach the age of puberty so generally speaking sometimes young kids will want to practice or fast half a day or you know want to do what mom and dad are doing so some depending on the age and the health of that child different families do different things to kind of train their children so like I didn't start trying to fast till I was like 12 or 13 it didn't become required on me till I was a little bit older than that as for you know there are some kids that do it younger or they do a half-day or they only do it when they have the day off and they generally the parents will decide if it's right for their children we do start training children as young as 7 or 6 to pray 5 times a day you can imagine if they suddenly had to pray 5 times a day when they turn 15 that that would be very challenging right so if they don't have the habit they haven't learned how to do it at a young age it's going to be really tough so we do try to encourage children at different levels from a young age to practice their worships so that when they reach the age they kind of already have the habits down pat yeah so that it's not required yes we're tools yeah so not like we don't have like a bat mitzvah or we don't have like communion or like you'll have a particular time it's a private family thing when a person reaches puberty so we don't have a particular ritual we do have rituals when when a person has a child so we have something called an Akiko which is a celebration of the birth of the child we give charity by sacrificing an animal for that child and we feed other people with the with the animal we have a party we invite people and stuff like that so we thank God for the blessing of the child and that's usually done within the first week or two of the birth or at least within the first couple of years so but we don't have like oh you've reached the age kind of party we kind of regarded as very private so we don't publicize it the only difference you might notice is that person now starts showing up to prayers all the time that person is now fasting all the time and people can generally tell when someone reaches that age yeah so no we don't have a ritual any other questions yeah you've been preaching or proselytizing so it's considered a communal obligation which means that not every individual is required to proselytize or to preach however the entire Muslim community in the world has to make sure that accurate and true information can be found about the religion that they publish books that they make themselves available to answer questions that they are going out there and talking to people who don't know about God so there are groups of people who do it they go to villages they go to remote areas you know and they talk to people about God definitely it is something that is considered an obligation but not something that is an obligation on every person so there's a select group of people who specialized in doing that and who are good at it and have sort of attained the skills at doing it well and they do try to make it an effort nowadays it's mostly like publishing pamphlets and we don't go door-to-door and like knock on people's doors and ask them about God you know so it just depends on where you are in different organizations and their tactics and the things that they do to try to promote or teach people about religion I find that what I do is a sort of preaching although I'm not really trying to convert anybody to my face I'm really just trying to win hearts and minds and make people sort of know who Muslims really are as a people and so you could consider that a type of preaching as well although the goal isn't necessarily conversion it's just about information delivery okay any other questions did I answer that did you get I know I'm kind of all of you understood okay any other questions I don't know how much time I have left but if you have anything else please raise your hand or I can give you a business card or see you afterwards Oh ten more minutes so feel free you have any questions yeah [Music] but like Christianity some people believe it's involving like interpretations that change in our modern world all the day yeah I said very it's a very good question so you're asking about reform or change in the faith so generally speaking in Islam remain stream ideology about reform is that the more authentic it is the older it is so the closer it is to the time of prophet muhammad peace be upon another lifetime the more accurate the more authentic the more corrected the closer it is to what God wants from us so in one sense we are sort of a fundamentalist faith in the sense that we go back to the origins and the sources and that's why when I was talking to you about ideology I was going back to verses of the Quran or statements of the Prophet peace be upon him as opposed to you know modern ideology about this topic or that topic that being said there is obviously some room for modernization and there is obviously some room for interpretation for instance you know modern scientific you know developments so one of the things that modern scholars have debated in recent times R is surrogacy allowed okay that's a modern issue it didn't exist at time of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him so therefore today's scholars have to go back to original sources and try to figure out is this permitted or not okay and on what basis and so they have to come up with their decision so there are always going to be you know even when they first started doing artificial insemination there the same question is this permissible can we do this so there's always been some ongoing discussion about modern technology and developments and for the most part Islam is not opposed to science or technology or development but we do look at everything from a moral perspective is this something that would have been permitted at the time of Prophet Muhammad peace upon so we do look at everything from the lens of the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him 1400 years ago on the other hand you know there are a lot of issues with an Islamic thought that are not black and white you know one of the things people often struggle with when they first come to the faith if they convert is that there's no you know a lot of there are some things that are you know drinking is forbidden okay work is forbidden there are some things that are very clear-cut but then there are other things that are sort of there are some evidence this way there's some evidence that way it may not be as clear and so within those issues there are different perspectives different ideologies different schools of thought and so within those those sort of undefined topics there is room for interpretation and so there are people who interpret things more modern there are some who are more traditional so definitely there is some room for that but generally speaking we go back to the traditions so hopefully that kind of answers your question yes alcoholic beverages and any intoxicants drugs anything that's not taken for medicinal purposes is forbidden yes so a really good book on that topic I don't know if you want to read it it's called misquoting Muhammad and it's written by Jonathan Brown and he sort of tackles the issue of modernity and development of Islamic thought over time so that might be a book you might want to read on that topic sorry it's a long book too so I apologize but any other questions yes [Music] yeah yeah so we it's actually an issue of debate about his specialness amongst the theologians but basically we regard him as the greatest of all the prophets because prophet muhammad was chosen to be the last of all the prophets so one of the key components of our theologies that we have to believe that he was the last and that there wouldn't be no prophets after him and so therefore that is a coveted honor you know to be that last one and he was also the only prophet who delivered a universal message meaning for all peoples all nations and all times whereas the other prophets were sent to their specific people so for instance you know Moses was sent to the Jews and Jesus was sent to reform the Jews right so we sort of believe that they were sent to a particular time in place and therefore that's why we believe our laws are the final say on law but everything that came before the laws could have been the same or different for instance for some religions before Islam they may have permitted alcohol or forbidden it but we believe since it was finally forbidden with Prophet Muhammad that it's then finally forbidden so just to give an example okay so you know he's special in that sense you know we would it's generally believed by mainstream Muslims that Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was the greatest of all of the prophets because we have a story in our tradition called the Asura Mirage so it's called the Ascension and during the life of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him he ascended first to Jerusalem and then to the heavens and when he went to Jerusalem he led the prayer of all the prophets who passed before him so we believe that to mean that he was greater than you know he was considered the leader among all of the other prophets so hopefully that makes sense yeah any other questions how long is what did he live on earth 63 years yes any other questions okay trouble that's fine don't worry yeah we invited some folks to come in for a tour and listen to the sermon yeah our men but the women stood back and forth in Christianity there are people who say women are men like yak women have certain roles and avengers role okay you want a little explanation okay I'll answer it as best I can so is actually kind of like three or four questions with one but that's fine so when you went into the mosque and women were seated at the back and they pray at the back I don't know if you stayed through the whole prayer or just for the sermon and the men were seated at the front for us there's really no preference to front or back it's not really that Oh the front is the good place and the back is the bad place in fact our tradition is that men line up from front to back and women line up from back to front and you'll notice when you go into Islamic institutions like mosques or schools that there's a gender separation typically okay and typically in places where there are large groups or large crowds so you may have noticed there were like three four hundred people there that day maybe five hundred on our holidays it could be five or six thousand and you may have noticed there were separate doors there's a door for men there's a door for women so we don't interact with people who are the opposite gender that are not our family in the sense that we interact only with them on a professional level so for instance if you're if a man were to pray next to me and he wasn't my husband or my uncle or my father or someone that I familiar with he'd be a stranger to me I wouldn't touch him I wouldn't shake his hand I wouldn't give him a hug I would consider that a sin okay and he would consider it the same also and that's part of how we observe physical modesty so if I were to have a man praying next to me I don't know if you saw the prayer we actually pray like literally side by side where we don't leave gaps in between one another we believe that Satan goes in the gap okay and we believe that this is part of our fellowship right the sisterhood or their Brotherhood and so the woman that would be praying next to me would literally have her leg touching my leg her arm touching my arm her shoulder touching my shoulder and we would go into prostration so how you guys may have noticed Muslim people prostrate you know you put your head and your nose on the ground and your hands on the ground and so you'd be literally touching arms and legs it's very close it's very tight it would be very uncomfortable at least for me personally to do that surrounded by two men that I don't know okay who are not my relative right so the separation between men and women is for the comfort of both men and women in that scenario because we are encouraged to pray closely and to be united and facing God okay so that's one thing the other thing is that you know we want to remain extremely focused during prayer so if I'm in prayer and my phone rings I don't look at it to see who's calling I won't get out of prayer and go check my messages if I'm thirsty I won't take a break and get a drink I'm in prayer I'm in prayer till I'm finished okay and I'm completely focused just on God I'm not supposed to be thinking about or doing anything else in fact if I even change directions it invalidate smiter okay so therefore I don't want to be thinking about the man behind me can he see my my bottom when I'm prostrating the man next to me is he touching me that would be way too distracting so instead of being focused on worship and on godliness I'm now concerned about who's touching me who's looking at me and that is an extremely uncomfortable position to be in so therefore when we pray we pray in a separate location men being in the front women being is just simply easier for women to not worry about who's looking at her or who might be staring and it's also it helps everyone to remain focused to be separated by gender so that's the reasoning why and it's not because men are better than women or women are better than men it's it has nothing to do with that whatsoever the separation of doors and things like that is for convenience so if I come in in the winter and I'm taking off my boots and I'm bending over I really and there's a hundred different men coming in at the same time I don't want to be worried about bumping into them and so when I'm going about society like not in the mosque I'm really cautious and careful I wait for my space I don't want to bump into people who I don't know so that's just sort of like a space thing that I observe when I go out and most Muslim people do this as well I personally although you may meet Muslim people who do I don't shake hands with people of the opposite side okay so even if they put out their hand I say I'm so sorry please don't be offended it's a religious practice I just don't shake hands with with men sometimes they get offended and sometimes they understand but that's my practice I have plenty of friends that do shake hands with men because they just don't want the you know they don't want the scrutiny they don't want to explain themselves they just think it's easier to just shake hands and and get it over with and walk away and they also don't want to take the risk of offending another person so regardless but how people practice is slightly different in some people's homes you'll find that some homes are very stringent in terms of gender separation and others are very open so if I invite people to my home men and women if they're with their families we're all in the same space you know we eat in the same space we do everything but I do know Muslim people who have a separate entrance for men and a separate entrance for women it's a minority of people but it definitely happens so gender separation is something which is not meant to put women in a worse place or to assume that she's lower but really it's for the comfort of both genders to exercise the maximum amount of modesty and the maximum amount of comfort in their in their different daily lives so that's that sort of it as for you asking if it's a political thing there definitely is patriarchy right it's not part of Islam it's not part of our religious teachings there is social and cultural patriarchy which exists in every country and it exists in America it exists in Middle Eastern countries and you will see that you know oftentimes people do have this attitude that you know women are beneath me or whatever it's not often and it's not related to religion but it is definitely something that you know does exist it's not pertaining to our faith we're definitely not taught that but yes I mean you can say some cultures do have a sort of patriarchal mentality so I hope that kind of answers your question yeah [Music] that would just be so uncomfortable obviously when I'm at home as long as there are no strange men in my home I'm not covered up I would wear whatever there's a certain standard even between women like I wouldn't show anything between like my navel and my knees even to other women but you know I might wear a shorter skirt I might wear you know pants I might wear a t-shirt or a tank top it's not really an issue it would be a major hardship if we had to be covered up all the time obviously I don't take a shower like this you know you know so I've actually had people ask me you know do you keep that on all the time you sleep with that on obviously I don't but you know if a male comes to visit or if I have to answer the door you know I'll slip something on and I'll go answer the door so when I'm in front of strangers yes when I'm home now okay thank you guys so much for coming and I'm here Oh not necessary if you have another question you can come up I'll be here for a few more minutes or I can hand you a business card if you want to stand up thanks again for having [Music]

Channel: BCTV

Views: 9,360

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Keywords: islam, islam 101, a islamic story, islam a religion of peace, islam beliefs, islam conversion, islam crash course, islam explained, islam in america, islam is a religion of peace, islam prayer, islamic, islamic guidance, islamic lectures, islamic videos, islam lecture, islam lecture english, islam life

Id: BsU3OvlnvKk

Length: 90min 5sec (5405 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2017