Spiritual Martial Arts: Taking Care Of Your Spirit & Body | Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

we're witnessing really in many ways the decline and fall of a great civilization because as the uh the poet said um nations are only the morality that they have and when their morality goes the Nations go with it so it's very important for those of us whether you're Christian or Jewish or Muslim that we hold on to those values because the uh the Quran talks about a group called ulubakiya in Surat Hood Allah says had there not been more would that there were more people of the remnants and in the and in the tafsiris they say that the ulubakiya are the people that hold on to the virtues of a civilization in its rise when it's in its decline they hold on to the things that made a place great like integrity honesty Chastity loyalty love of one's country Iman to love your country is part of Faith you want good for your country when it's bad you want to remind that it's bad when it's good you want to encourage its goodness so may Allah restore you just did because we're not people that look forward to destruction where people that love to see flourishing human flourishing one of the most important things in being in a body is taking care of the body all of us are embodied Souls so we are literally inside Allah God has created the human being as an embodied creature so we live inside bodies and these bodies are trusts they're sacred trusts that are given to us and that's why we're told to take care of them said that your body has a right over you the right of the body is that you take care of the body you eat well you sleep well and you exercise one of the most important things in pre-modern cultures was having a martial spirit and that was partly because there was so much violence in the pre-modern world now the violence still exists but it's usually done through technology in the past violence was done with Spears and swords men met on battlefields fought Wars territory we live in a in a in a country that even before the Europeans got here there were many many tribal conflicts and fights and the people that lived here had to learn to defend themselves to protect themselves and this is part of the Islamic Traditions the muscle spirit is very important when countries invaded you people that have the courage to defend it it's very interesting that what we're seeing now in some places when the avaran people were defending their country from two invasions in the first Invasion we considered them Heroes but in the second invasion they suddenly became terrorists because Defending Your Country against people is a god-given right every human being has the right to defend themselves and to defend their country our Prophet peace be upon him said whoever fights and dies defending his property is a martyr whoever fights and dies defending his life is a martyr whoever fights and dies defending his family is a martyr that self-defense is a human right and we live unfortunately in a world that is often aggressive and violent and so the martial spirit is something this culture Now talks about toxic masculinity as if it's an overdose of masculinity but the reality of it what they term toxic masculinity is actually deficient masculinity it's a loss of virtue it's a loss of chivalry it's a loss of the true male nature which is to defend what's right to honor women to defend children to defend the Hearth and Home these are really important qualities in our tradition our Prophet salallahu was a Statesman he was a prophet he was a Statesman he was a general he was a father a benefactor who was the latest he said over 400 000 homeless people in his life I did an estimate of how many meals he did based on the average feeding 70 people twice a day he fed over 400 000 people that's a Sunnah of our Prophet taking care of homeless people taking care of the downtrodden our Prophet saws was also a martial artist and his art was grappling all of the quraish which is the tribe he came from were known for grappling and for sprinting and for archery and for horseback riding in fact even Abbas said none of the other Arabs could defeat the quration in grappling foreign except he defeated them the prophet Muhammad met the greatest wrestler of the parish and he was considered the greatest wrestler on the Arabian Peninsula his name was and the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam said to him do you want to wrestle with me to see who's stronger Allah and so he said sorry the prophet saw item through him and then he said he immediately jumped up and he said Muhammad do that again now people that study martial arts will know that he wanted to learn the technique because he was the that was the first time he'd ever been thrown Imam wrote a very interesting book called hastening to grappling or hastening to wrestling and he talks about the importance of learning how to wrestle and this is something all of the Muslims did in Mecca and Medina they learn how to defend themselves and not just the men but also the women and we have great warrior women no Seva mint Cobb the aunt of the Prophet salallahu Islam we have no Seva also as well great warrior in fact she would wear a a veil a turban with a veil and they thought that she was a man fighting even Walid initially thought it was a man fighting with them Sofia when she saw that The Archers nuseva when she saw that The Archers had fled the battlefield immediately went to the prophet's eyes and she was taking care of she was nursing the wounded she went to the prophet Allah and she said she began to defend him she was wounded 13 times in that defense so people can encourage a kind of effeminate nature but in the end this will backfire on any people because the world is always going to have its problems and so self-defense is a very important quality that we have to inculcate in young people but also the warrior Spirit like the great Japanese tradition of the Bushido that was a book that I just gave uh Habib training the samurai Mind by Dr Cleary who wrote that about the Bushido spirit it's a translation of a a Japanese text and part of the Bushido Spirit was to purify the soul that martial arts is learning how to fight the other but there's a spiritual martial arts which is of fighting the ego and every true martial artist knows and its ego gets that they said that the boys were never defeated by anybody the prophet salallahu in wrestling it said to the point where they gave up drinking zamzam because that was a sacred water for them in other words they became arrogant about their prowess and this happens to people they become arrogant when they become too militarily powerful they become arrogant one of the great pain and masters of China and Minister asked him what destroys a nation and he said too many successful Wars and the man didn't understand that and he said how could too many successful Wars destroy a nation and he said because the wars will weaken their people and the rulers become haughty and arrogant and you never have a weakened people with haughty and arrogant rulers except they will perish our Prophet salallahu encouraged but he never he encouraged training and and he would tell his people to train but he never desired to meet an enemy on the battlefield and in al-bukhari he said I do never desire to meet an enemy never desire to meet an enemy but if you have to meet them then be brave then be brave the prophet salallahu he would grappling was the way that the prophet saws would determine if a young person was ready to be part of his army when they were defending their Homeland Medina which was aggressed upon several times he would actually have them wrestle and he would watch them and determine if they were ready so grappling was the the art that determined their their ability to be part of the army his own two son uh grandsons Hassan and Hussein he had them uh he was watching them wrestle and he said come on Hassan and Fatima the the mother looked at the prophet he said do you prefer Hassan he said no but I hear jibril saying come on Hussein the prophet salallahu was a great martial spirit but always for the good and he always wanted the best for all people he's a mercy according to our tradition the Quran says we have only sent you as a mercy to all the worlds so it's a great blessing to have a warrior Spirit like khabib in the Muslim Community Muslims have been thrown to the ground all over the world we have a lot of places where they've been battered upon by armies that have much Superior forces and unfortunately there's a lot of suffering the great Afghan people a great scholarly people with a great tradition have been broken and suffering greatly the Libyan people and other people with a great warrior spirit they've also been suffering the yemeni people the great people suffering the Palestinians who historically were very peaceful people Palestinians have a very peaceful tradition there's over three thousand travel logs written in the 19th century about visiting Palestine by Europeans not one of them mentions violence or civil Strife between the religious communities the Palestinians were never known for that a kind of belligerence the Iraqis another people of great learning so much of our science mathematics comes out of Iraq falling on hard times so there's it's it's not surprising that people that they feel uplifted when they see Habib throw down people that trash talk our religion and and feel like shouting out Allahu Akbar I was thinking about trash talking him until I watched him fight Conor McGregor that I changed my mind so my son because we're Irish my sons are half Mexican half Irish but because we're Irish one of my sons actually was a Conor McGregor fan until he saw that a Muslim was going to fight him and then he switched sides and that's proof that Faith trumps Clan and that's one of the powers of our religion is that we give up nationalism for something greater which is the spirit so I wouldn't dare Trash Talk Habib I actually just gave him a hug and I felt like I was hugging a rod of iron so he actually squeezed me to check me out and so I'm gonna go home and start lifting some weights so next time I see him so anyway alhamdulillah it's a great blessing to be here I really hope that people take these words to heart that we need to really encourage especially our young people so many young kids now are just playing these ridiculous games wasting their life we see so many overweight young people now when I was young you never saw overweight young people it was very rare but now there's so many overweight young people which is very unhealthy and over time it gets worse and worse so it's really important to have your kids train uh I had my boys go to a Korean uh up to the black belt the older ones because I really believe in that and when I was younger a lot of us were very uh influenced by uh the great martial artist Bruce Lee and so a lot of young people from my generation who shows you how old I am from my generation you know everybody was suddenly wanting to learn martial arts and that's what a martial Spirit does it really restores that desire especially in young men to learn how to defend themselves but then to to honor that knowledge never to abuse that knowledge to be truly of the martial Spirit which is as Rumi said sometimes we pick up the sword to take the sword out of the hands of Mad Men and that's the essence of our tradition our Prophet was not a belligerent person he did not like War he loved peace and after every prayer that he prayed the five prayers a day he said Allah you are peace and you love peace and peace comes from you and goes back to you may you cause us to live in peace so it's a great blessing to live in peace but as a wise man said if you want to live in peace always be prepared for war and that's why the Quran says foreign seek to terrorize your enemies it doesn't mean to terrorize it says be strong and prepare for war so that you deter your enemies from wanting to destroy you or to fight you and if you look at the Latin word deter it's from de terre out of fear they don't want to fight you because they're afraid of you and in a world which is often dog eat dog it's very important for people to have some fear in their hearts about aggressing on others so may God put the fear of God in the hearts of the wrong doers and the way that he does that is by making the right doers the Saudi Hoon the worthy ones the righteous that righteous Band of Brothers strong so that people fear to aggress upon them there's a lot of criminals out there and there needs to be people to counter that and you take your sides in this world you're either on the side of righteousness or you're on the other side there's no neutral ground in this world so choose your side but choose well because there are consequences we're all on the doors of infinity

Channel: Muslim Community Center - MCC East Bay

Views: 15,942

Keywords: MCC East Bay MCC Muslim Community Center Mosque Khutbah, pleasanton mosque, mosque in california, mcc east bay, masjids in Bay Area, mcc masjid

Id: ifLt1DaYsh8

Length: 18min 44sec (1124 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023