Khutbah: The Generation of Doubt

foreign describes in the 14th ayah of surah a very scary concept that i've been talking to you guys about for the last couple of weeks but i realized something this week that i missed and i wanted to first address that and then go forward our prophet salallahu said describing what he was given describing the revelation of the quran and the teachings that he was given even the ones we find in his hadith i was given comprehensive words the word jawamiyah is the plural of jammeh which means gatherer so he was given a few words that carry a lot of meanings so it would take me a hubba to describe a few words from the quran right and even that is summarizing some of the teachings that are inside of that ayah so there are very comprehensive lessons from many many angles that are captured in very few words and it's one of the powers of the quran that it's dealing with very rich realities in very very few words and in light of that one of the things that i missed among the many others that i missed in talking about this ayah is last time i spoke to you about how knowledge that is supposed to be a means of humility became a means of you know recognition a social kind of dominance and it became a source of competition validation right and that's the wrong reason to be seeking sacred knowledge we seek allah's knowledge to become more humble slaves of allah not so we can establish how much more knowledgeable we are over someone else or how more correct we are over someone else that's the exact opposite of the purpose of learning this religion so that's something we talked about last time and how people that are you know supposedly learning allah's deen are supposed to be the examples of that kind of humility are the ones that unfortunately sometimes become a source of division and conflict and creating groups and cults that are at odds against each other each seeking for more territory more validation no we're the true flag bearers of islam no they're not and they're not and they're not it becomes a culture of invalidation of each other but there's another dimension to the same thing where he says they didn't fall into disagreement until after knowledge came to them out of bhagi i talked to you about bhagi about the urge not to be satisfied with what you have you want more you want more you want more right that's bari from it also comes the idea you want more influence than the other person has you want more people to listen to you than they're then are listening to them you want yourself to be recognized more as an authority than they are right so this was on the one hand a commentary on the on the corruption of the scholarship of the israelites what happened among the jews and the christians but obviously it's timeless enough that allah mentioned it about them it was revealed about them but it's a lesson and warning to us because diseases stay the same human tendencies are the same but there's another dimension the one i didn't mention so i want to talk to you about that now and that is that yes scholars know a lot about islam someone who's learning knows quite a bit about islam but the average muslim the one who didn't learn arabic and didn't study and get into jazz and tajweed and didn't memorize the quran and didn't sit in you know went to normal regular school went to college university went to juma on you know fridays or whatever right and learned some basics about how to read the quran maybe even a little bit learn the basics of the prayer the the average congregation that's coming to the friday prayer or even the eat prayer even they know the basics everybody knows that in islam alcohol is forbidden everybody knows in islam that zina has forbidden or that you know riba is forbidden these are not complicated teachings these are the basics that pretty much everybody knows every muslim knowledgeable or not knows that there are five prayers in our religion that there's a dress code in our religion that there are certain guidelines about interaction between the genders and our religion right there are there are conditions or there are rights of parents in our religion there's such a thing as inheritance laws in our religion we know these basics even if we know all that don't know all the details we know there are rules in place for some of these fundamental parts of life right but what happens in a society is that you society often gets divided from the point of view of religious psychology that some people consider themselves let's just say they call themselves normal or they call themselves liberal or they call themselves you know muslim but not too muslim right and then they look at somebody who's practicing even a little bit more than them as two islamic or too muslim or they're muslim muslim et cetera they get these kind of or mala or whatever right and so they you get inside of a muslim community those who identify themselves as not too strict and they look at another as too strict and then we i already talked to you about the people that do practice many of them have very good character and actually embody the teachings of islam but many of them are learning islam as a source of dominance and corruption within themselves so even those who look like they're religious look like they're practicing can have can be a pretty bad example but today let's turn the tables on those who know even a little bit they know a little bit and they look at their behavior and they use that to justify to themselves you know all these people with beards and all these women with hijab they're all extreme they're all crazy i want to be nothing like them i want nothing to do with them and that's why i don't pray or that's why i don't go to the masjid or that's why i don't you know this all this stuff is extreme and you know they may be doing those people that you're criticizing may be doing something wrong it's true but for you and i to use that as an excuse to throw away the rest of islam and say none of it applies to me because those people are so messed up right and why did why would they do that they already know some things just because somebody else is corrupt or not alcohol is still haram it didn't become halal because a religious guy is corrupt right what is wrong is still wrong whether or not somebody who prays five times like for example in my case i one time i was i was cheated in business very badly by a half of the quran right he used to lead the taraweeh prayers very religious guy he would look at him and say masha'allah right you want to pray behind this because i was really good but he cheated like thousands out of me in a business deal many many years ago right now i could use that as an excuse to say all these hof i don't want to pray behind any of them they're all corrupt forget it i don't even want to memorize the quran anymore because of this how this hafiz has scarred me from his no he hasn't he's messed up that doesn't mean the memorization of the quran is not noble that doesn't mean praying in the masjid isn't a isn't a worthy act so what we what we do is out of my uh what i could do is out of my spite for that person i can use that as an excuse they use the expression throw the baby out with the bath water so throw islam out along with the example of this corrupt muslim right so now i'm justifying just abandoning all the teachings of islam while it's not that i don't know i already know i know what i'm doing is i know it i know what i what i'm supposed to do and i'm not doing it on purpose but i'm using my spite against this person that i don't want to make them feel like i want to be like them i want nothing to do with them my spite against them is actually my own bari so even though i know this ayah does apply not just to the scholars but those even who know the basics and then use that buggy that animosity that urge to not be anything like them or give somebody else the upper hand or appear like they're somebody else like the others they don't like out of that spite they don't want to practice any of it so then you get families muslim families that it's not an unheard of phenomenon many of you that are listening to you might even identify with this phenomenon it doesn't matter which country you come from which culture you come from you might be raised in a family where not only are they afraid of people that look religious they look like they pray five times all these people are extreme stay away from them you're terrified of them but even if you started practicing any part of islam that's harmless like you started praying you just started praying and your family is going to have a heart attack they're going to have a panic attack are you becoming extreme what's next are you going to blow something up is that what you're going to do like there's there's an entire and then what happens next is now the family is going to start attacking the religion every time you're around because they want to show you how evil all of these people are and you're becoming just like them even though you're becoming nothing nothing like anything corrupt you just decided and i even experienced a friend a person i became friends with who came from a family where they were muslim for many generations but because of colonization and what happened in their country and you know overwhelming cultures of secular influence they kind of lost islam over the generations right and they they adapted they adopted some of the practices of the other cultures that were in their country i don't have to name the country but in the other religions that were found in their country drinking is normal so over time in in a generation or two drinking became normal for the muslims so they're away from their religion and drinking became part of like breakfast lunch and dinner there's a beer there right this is a common thing and if you're going to get into a business you're just going to open up a bar it's good money it's easy money right and this one family member decides that he just doesn't want to be part of the business anymore he just he somehow stumbles on to some things about the quran some things about islam and he says you know what i'm going to start praying so first he's drinking and praying then he hears the ayat about that don't go near the prayer when you're drunk until you know what you're saying so he stops drinking and here's the ayat about the the you know the consumption of alcohol is one of the abominations and evils from the work of the devil are you going to stop or not so he stops he stops now he's not telling his family to stop he's not telling anybody else he's not lecturing anybody else he's just not drinking himself but his family went against him his father disowns him he can't they're yelling at him at every gathering because he's not picking up the beer and drinking he's not hurting you but somehow you're becoming insecure by him not partaking because you may you're accusing him of making them feel bad you're making us look bad what are we all going to hell you're too good for us you can't drink you can't do and he's he's getting abused now because he's just holding on to a little bit of the religion and then what comes next every time he's around there's conversations about how extreme these muslims are how crazy these people are don't become crazy like them he's done nothing crazy he just walked away from something that has always been evil that allah described as evil right so what what you get then is you've got the religiously observing the the conservative if you will right and they have their own domination issues and internal conflicts and then those that are barely holding on to islam barely have any practices in islam and they've got their own domination issues they have bahri and home too and then in both of those households the next generation is being raised and these next generations if you're raised in a in a a religious quote unquote by today's definition a religious family and you were raised in a very conservative household and all you saw was your father your mother or the khutbas you attended the attended all you heard your whole life was how they are this school of thought is correct and that one is going to hell and this one is deviant and that one is confident stay away from them and you have to dress like them and look like them and talk like them and the moment you start asking any questions you're going to go to hellfire et cetera et cetera you have this fire and brimstone kind of religion your whole life then you know what eventually a young person who learns to think for themselves burns out and they say i don't want you know i was part of this cult i don't want anything to do with it either they grow up becoming exactly like their generation was they they carry on the same narrow-mindedness and conflict or they burn out and they want nothing to do with their religion on the other hand you've got a family that has that is scared of the religion and it's okay we're muslim enough for the eve prayer okay that's enough we're muslim enough for some charity here and there maybe the 27th of ramadan will do something but other than that i don't don't give me too much islam it's not for me that's for those crazy people and their next generation says why are we even holding on to this 27th of ramadan or whatever what's the point of it it's i mean you guys think it's all crazy so why not get rid of it why do we have any of it you know so you've got next generations that are either holding on to not what wasn't the religion to begin with islam didn't come so you can defend your school of thought islam didn't come so you can defend your your cult islam came to teach us the word of allah and to share the rahm of allah with humanity right but when when islam becomes either this cage something else that it wasn't there that wasn't islam originally but that's what it becomes now it's it's a it's a litmus test if you address this and this and this way then you're muslim if you're not just if you're if you know their culture is in the muslim world if your turban is the wrong color then you're you're a kafir if you're if your head is there are some people that will look at me giving this whole bar right now and call me a kafir because my head isn't covered right i'll say this is against islam etc and that's their reading of that's islam for them and and if they're free to that opinion well what's going to happen in the next generation that will become islam for the next generation which means they're in doubt about what islam truly is and when the actual religion the actual word of allah is even presented here's what happens in religious circles this is the wild thing and this is a conversation i had with one of my mentors and teachers dr akram it was fascinating he was sitting with a group of scholars right and he mentioned an ayah and he mentioned the hadith of the prophet and this is someone who has a jazz in hadith he studied bukhari and muslim for 30 40 years of his life he studied under great scholars around the world right and he's mentioning the hadith of the prophet saws and obviously he's not misquoting it or taking it out of context because he's a scholar himself and he's sitting in the gathering of scholars and he says this is what the prophet saws said right and they're having dinner together supposed scholars and one of them said yeah but what did shaykh so and so say and he paused for a woman and said you already know what the messenger of allah said you already know what the quran said and you know that it's in its proper context and yet to you that has less validation until this other person validates what this hadith says or looks at it until they look at it differently until then i can't accept it that's one thing that a a non-scholar would make a comment like that because they don't know any better maybe i should check with some scholarly research maybe the hadith is being misused but when this kind of a conversation is happening among knowledgeable people and even they will put the word of someone else over and above the word of allah and his messengers you know what that means that that school of thought or that opinion that that that's that that cult is actually their religion not islam itself not allah and his messenger himself it's shocking then what what religion is that that's not a religion that's just that's just the mafia that's what that is you know and on the flip side what i'm describing are people that just they're pushing islam away pushing islam away but they want their kids to be good right i don't want islam too much islam in my family but i don't want my child to go against the culture either so just get me enough islam that my child lives according to my expectations and i'll only bring in islam when i see that my kid is going too far so the only time i'll use islam is if my child becomes a life a child becomes addicted to drugs we should probably go find a sheikh or something to spiritually heal this child or if a child is going against the wishes of the parents then maybe we can bring in islam and say islam says parents have rights other than that you're allergic to islam you want nothing to do with it you push it away but when you need it to exert some kind of control over the next generation then you bring it in right so what happens to that next generation that's in the next few minutes i'll explain to you what allah says here he says when that first generation is broken up and they're selective about their religion and they're in just in constant conflict with each other and no doubt about it those who inherited the book much after them so those who inherit the book after these generations have become generations of division and conflict and internal power struggles and selective exp you know as citation selective application of the religion then the next generation allah says about them that those who inherited the book after them who they are absolutely in in doubt regarding it they're in doubt about their religion now you and i would think that somebody who used to live in pakistan or bangladesh or egypt or morocco or algeria or jordan or you know malaysia indonesia afghanistan etc they're raised in a muslim family there are muslim muslims for many generations they're holding on to their religion they're holding on to their tradition the child is being raised here in the adhan his entire life or her entire life right they've heard the quran they've seen the eight celebrations and all of it they will hold on to their religion and what is allah saying that those that have held on to the religion for so many generations but with this kind of conflict what's going to happen to the next generation they will be endowed about it they are in doubt about it and shaq in arabic arabic is really rich and the quran talks about doubt in many ways so there are multiple words in arabic and in the quran for doubt and shaq is one of them and shakka in arabic is actually used when two things are so close to each other you can't tell them apart you know when you weld things together weld metals together it looks like one piece but when you when you uh screw things together or you know lego pieces you can tell it's two pieces but if you weld metal together it looks like one piece right so when they would make the speed the spear and the tip and they would weld it so well together you can't tell where this the tip ends and the spear begins it looks like one carved piece that would actually be shack right so the idea is two things that are merged and fused together from it developed a notion of a kind of doubt where something that is true and something that is false are so close together that you cannot tell them apart and that kind of doubt where you can't tell the difference between right and wrong at all your can they look equal to you why would ask yourself this question why would someone ever look at right and wrong and they're confused which one is right which one is wrong or they look the same to me the only way they would do that in this ayah is they saw their elder generation do the right thing and do the wrong thing all at the same time they were doing they were praying and they were lying they were doing hajj and they were earning rabbah right they were talking about allah and being grateful and being humble and they were being arrogant and backbiting and all of this they were giving charity and they were cheating people out of inheritance at the same time they're giving zakat and earning money they're doing the right and the wrong all at the same time all the time and the next generation what is it and they talk about the the unity of the ummah this is one ummah we have one islam we have one prophet we have one quran and yet why you know this this school of thought versus this school of thought this sheikh versus that shift this verse is that they ai et cetera et cetera et cetera conflict confident conflict all the time so they saw the right and the wrong merge together all the time so they're like i can't even tell what's right or wrong i'm just confused the next generation is just raised confused sheik kim minhu and shaq can be even more fundamental well if this is the religion then how do we even know we're following the right religion i mean this is the kind of drama that happens in every religion and you know what's crazy i used to think this is a muslim problem until i studied religious psychology and the you know psychology of the church and religious sociology and the kind of politics you find within the islamic you know religious circle the masjid politics scholarship politics school of thought politics et cetera are exactly the same as church politics and synagogue politics and temple pal exactly the same exactly the same thing like i said before the diseases are the same throughout generations just like good has always been good evil has always been evil human tendencies have always been human tendencies you find the same power struggles in the church you find the same power circles in the synagogue you summon the same power struggles in the masjid and the muslim community so what they what what a young generation then says is all of our all these religions are the same issues all these people have the same personality disorders what's the difference anyway why this is just the money making scheme just donate five dollars and get your salvation right everybody's just they just want money that's all they want and all they want is fight with each other those are the two things that become apparent about about the religion to them so they're in doubt about they're not sure why should even what's what do i even get out of following this religion what did you get and then you have a generation you would think oh oh my my child lost their religion because they came to america right they were around non-muslims and they lost their faith they went to australia and they got liberalized or they went to you know europe and they got you you know they they got immersed in european culture and lost their faith no this ayah is saying you could be lahore you could be in the sahaba you could be in kuala lumpur you could be in jakarta you don't have to be in new york city you don't have to be in london you know you're you you don't have to be in hamburg to lose your religion that environment is yeah i told you before it's not the environment that makes it breaks the real religion of islam the people of faith have always been in environments that are hostile to their faith that's actually where the faith gets stronger not weaker right but allah is saying for that this next generation it doesn't even matter if they're surrounded by the adhan it doesn't even matter if they're surrounded by an islamic environment they're in absolutely doubt about it and the doubt isn't that's bad enough that they can't even tell the difference between islam and not islam because they become equal to them that's what they've seen practically but there's another doubt there's another layer and you know what that is allah says the last word here is murib it's a sifa of shaq and the word murib you know for my arabic students is actually lazin it's the mujarra to be in doubt pattern is to put others in doubt and from it is and the islam that was a little bit technical but i'll make it simple they're in a kind of doubt that when others see them they become doubtful they become doubtful so it's you know how you have someone sick but that sickness is infectious the next generation is in a kind of can in limbo that anybody that comes around them that may was was even thinking about islam there are non-muslim thinking about islam when they come into contact with this next generation of muslims they get disturbed why should they even consider islam and then notice the a new word for doubt is being used based on rabe the first doubt i talked about was shaq this word is murib from rabb like the beginning of the quran the word rabe actually means a kind of doubt that is that it disturbs you has disturbance in it in it so now there are people that are becoming disturbed about their faith they're getting disturbed by being around this next generation of muslims it's bothers it hurts the heart to be around them and they're spreading disturbance meaning they're spreading a a an image of the religion they're spreading an impression of the religion that instead of when you hear about islam it should bring calm to your heart right but no this next generation is spreading a kind of islam by the way they live now in doubt themselves that when others see this islam it actually bothers them they're spreading a bothersome kind of doubt about this religion like it's something evil something you should be disturbed about you know you be unsure about and that's how the religion is lost over generations that's the consequence of what we what we find ourselves in and this this horrifying reality that is described in just these few words it seems so hopeless because what does it seem to tell you that islam is being lost and then more lost and then more lost after every generation and instead of the next generation finding stronger iman and stronger you know conviction they're actually now doubt is spreading skepticism is spreading agnosticism is spreading you know internal conflicts about islam are spreading criticism of the quran of the sunnah and then eventually everything is fair game so now a muslim can ask how could the prophet do this how come the quran says that how come this how come that as if the quran should be doubted in right the book that began with it becomes common for the next generation to pose questions to the quran as if it's something disturbing and bothersome that doesn't sit well so now the islam is associated with disturbance not harmony and peace this is the conflict that has been described in this ayah very serious very heavy stuff and in face of this conflict allah reveals what the prophet should do so now as i end this i want to tell you what's going to happen in the next album which is you know the prophet saws was told that when he has come in the time in makkah by the time he's come there have been generations of people that received the torah received the injeel and they've gone through this process the one that i'm describing as if you and i are going through it now our generations are going through it now there are people that came before us they already went through this and things have gotten really really bad and then the prophet is being told these are this is the audience you have to deal with this is what you have to deal with the problem with what he's told is you're telling me that these people already know and they still don't follow so if i teach them i'm teaching them something they already what they already know and these people are messed up and they have bhagi between them not because they don't know but because they already know so me teaching them what they already know and reinforcing it is not going to do any better for them it will only increase them in more and their next generation is actually disturbed about the faith even more they don't even want to know anymore so the prophet is being told essentially that you have a nearly impossible audience to give your message to it's like a hopeless cause right so why is he even being given this mission if they're so impossible what's he supposed to do in the next ayah after describing this problem after describing this issue then allah will tell the prophet sallam what should you what do i expect from you you know because the messenger was sent to allah to preach the message of islam to the mushrikun of makkah and to the people of the book in medina and beyond right so there's two basic audiences the jewish christians later on and early on the mushrik in these ayaat allah told him that it's really hard for the mushrikeen to accept to to to listen to what you're saying to them what you're calling them to it's hard they're not going to accept it so you first ayah twenty number twelve thirteen he told him mushrikun harsel next ayah the okay at least the jews and christians will be easier because they know no they are they fall into conflict even after knowing and their next generation lost cause then these are my audiences and you've told me they're impossible to deal with then he's told what he should do and that's what we are going to come to now that's going to be ayah number 15 of this um this remarkable passage that's what the next quota is going to be about then the mandate of the prophet salallahu in face of all of this so allah does not give us a mission without first having us understand the seriousness of the problem so that's what he's done in these ayahs he helps us understand the seriousness of the problem and then given the rasool salam the mandate and we're going to have to really understand that mandate because by extension that becomes our mandate may allah help us understand internalize and live up to that mandate that was given to our messenger so we can reverse this negative tide and bring back what is supposed to be brought back [Music] foreign

Channel: Bayyinah Institute

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Id: K7qQdRKeQJw

Length: 32min 9sec (1929 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021