Winning Our Children Back to Islam - by Jeffrey Lang

dr jeffrey lang is a professor of mathematics at the university of kansas and he has written two books on islam in america struggling to surrender and even angels ask and he's currently writing a third one so good luck in childhood he embraced islam in 1982 a year after receiving his phd from purdue university he's married and has three daughters ages 12 14 and 15. and that's pretty much all i know about so all right tonight shall i we'll be talking about and those are his words and he'll do the explaining inshaallah the exile of american born muslims that's it all right salaam alaikum okay the exile of american-born muslims what am i gonna talk about uh uh begin with with a question what is the largest group of muslims in america the largest group of muslims in america well of course uh among the muslims what's the largest group well let's see um men no maybe not women uh immigrants converts i don't know well let's uh just try to calculate that roughly they say that in the united states they're somewhere between some estimates are as low as four million muslims some are as many as eight let's take the median the medium between those two let's take six for our hypothesis here let's say there are six million muslims in america right now i think that's it doesn't affect the calculations all that much but let's say there are six estimates are that there is a approximately a million of those six muslims approximately a million of those are converts okay so we'll take the million or so converts and put them on the side temporarily that leaves five million other muslims okay but wait a minute for a second let's take those five million in those million and put them back together look at that six million muslim population most of those muslims are family members they come from muslim families the average muslim family has at least three children muslims seem to have like to have children so they maybe four or five would be a proper average but let's say three just to make it conservative so that says in a family of five muslims we have of three that are children three that are americans born in this society the muslim parents that's 60 of those 6 million muslims are americans born from of muslim families in america 60 percent of 6 million is 3.6 million tossed back in a million converts that's 4.6 million 4.6 million out of 6 million is at least 75 percent somebody tell me where they are because i go from mosque to mosque to mosque around this country to islamic center to islamic center to islamic center speaking to muslim audiences and i don't see them they're unrepresented in almost every audience i see oh you might have one two three four five showing up at conferences like this maybe even 10 or 15 but if you go to most muslim communities about america and you go to their masjids you go to their community meetings you go to the community events they're not there lawrence kansas we're said to have somewhere now the estimates are between 500 and a thousand american born muslims living in that community and the surrounding communities do you know how many show up to the friday prayer weekend week out or community meetings two myself and one other where is that 75 the invisible 75 percent that we rarely see through the past 50 years has been a large-scale steady flow of immigrants to the america to america from muslim countries through the past 50 years there were large-scale immigrations before that but for the past 50 years almost half a century we've had a sustained continuous influx of muslims from throughout the world and although they have created american muslim institutions like msa ichna isn't aina i think amc various uh other abbreviations and etc the religion has not really taken root in this country even after half a century because in order to take root it has to take root among the indigenous population among the born population we've been here half a century when i entered this religion back in 1982 and i used to go to the mosque to pray i would find that the composition of the mosque consisted basically of immigrant muslims and visiting foreign students and a handful or two of converts to islam in the 1990s early 1990s whenever i would go to a mosque anywhere in the country i would find that the majority of that community would be immigrant muslims visiting foreign students and one or two at most converts in that congregation when i go to the mosque today the situation is the same in 50 years you could make you could have at least three generations of muslims where's the second and the third we want we're talking about taking the world taking the message of islam to the world winning the modern world to islam we're not even winning with our own children so we have to start asking why now we normally hear the usual excuses the negative image of islam in america we could always blame it on the press but let's face it i mean over the last 50 years or so the press has become a little bit more balanced oh you still have some demonization i guess they talk a lot about the taliban and the oppression of women there according to the you know american media the destruction of the buddhas but that kind of stuff doesn't really affect the outlook of our children they could toss that off as prejudice and they usually do osama bin laden is public enemy number one according to the us government the soviet union is no longer the public the enemy so osama bin laden will have to substitute but again one person or the fame or or dis fame of one person is not going to drag our children away from the masjids not from our communities we have to really start thinking more serious about where have all our children gone as the song used to say back in the 60s where have all the children gone well how can we find out well you could start by asking them but usually if we are if we ask our children why they don't seem to have the same commitment to islam the same love of islam the same commitment to its going to its institutions and participation usually not going to elaborate on their reasons because they know that if they tell us that we will not like what they hear i had interviewed young muslim kids at the university of kansas and at other universities that have no participation whatsoever in their communities and they come to me and they tell me all the doubts they have about this religion all the reason why they're skeptical about it all the problems they have with this religion i said did you ever talk to your parents about it most of them said they always all have the same story i asked this question once my father just belted me or i asked this question once and my parents said you're not a believer or i asked this one question and they told me if you keep on thinking like that you're going to get out of this house so they learn not to talk about it just to keep it to themselves there are some ways to tell if you actually go out and solicit their response in the past several years i've been getting hundreds of emails from american muslim kids i really can't answer them all but i asked them for their reasons or their whatever problems they might like to communicate to me that they have with this religion and you'll be quite surprised at the depths of the questions and the problems that they have one another method aside from soliciting information from them another method is just go to the websites and chat rooms that they go to to the various islamic websites and various chat rooms and see the discussions that take place there and record that information and start pouring through it and see what their problems and their issues are it'll be quite it's quite revealing so far i've collected several hundred pages of data on what our children are and converts also because they're part they're part of the american muslim sector of our society charting what they have to say about our religion and what problems they have and why they're not participating and why they're drifting away from this religion because half of the people that emailed me start from the beginning with this remark i either think or am no longer either think or am i either think i am or no longer am a believer i think i'm becoming an atheist so where have all these children gone well no i don't this is not scientific because i'm soliciting this information this is not a an objective poll but you could guess what some of the problems are and they're rather obvious one of the main problems they have is a clash they see a clash between the culture that they grow up in the surrounding culture the culture that helps to shape their minds and the culture the religious subculture that they're asked to be a part of this issue of culture class of separating culture from religion of trying to separate essential islam from interpretations of islam culturally based interpretations of islam is a central issue among that 75 percent of muslims in america that invisible 75 and there are many cultural issues that they bring up i don't have time to lim to delineate them all but of course you can imagine what's on the top of their list the issue of the roles of men and women no issue looms larger among that silent majority in our community that invisible majority than that and the kids tell me that they have doubts about islam because they see islam as subjugating women i don't want to debate the issue yet i'm just trying to share with you some information if you wanted to debate about islam and women islam the other night that was for the other night just trying to share some information and outline a very long chapter in my book in my next book they say that women are discouraged from attending congregational prayers some of them describe the mosque as a men's club as a young men's muslim association the ymma one lady rome they tell stories how they were kicked and thrown out of the mosque because they wanted to attend the friday prayer and not be shunted to some small dingy dark room in the back where a couple of other ladies are stranded but they don't even get to see the speaker and they have to sit in some closet somewhere listening to the friday prayer they tell me these kind of stories how they fought bravely and maybe with a couple of other sisters and resolutely until they were practically almost bodily thrown out or at least threatened that way and so they stopped going and their connection to the community ended right there i remember when i was back in san francisco we had four young lady converts they all converted around the same time i have no idea why it was almost a miracle four students female students converting to the religion they almost did it as a team they needed to sort of support each other to give each other courage to give it a shot they started attending the nightly prayer the morning and the nightly prayers because the founder of prayer is pretty tough to get up to and get the hamas for but these students made it because they love to hear the quran recite it well several men in the masjid went berserk what ladies in the mosque one man got so irate that he threatened in front of the entire community with the ladies present that if any more women were to show up in the mosque he was going to throw them out bodily the ladies didn't want to be the center of controversy they stopped coming to the mosque three of those ladies aren't muslims today women are denied positions of influence in our community denied positions on boards of directors denied representation in the community political representation social representation we call that disenfranchisement when you're not allowed to let your opinion and voice and perspective be heard community decisions they complain are made almost entirely by men the women's voice is not heard except among their fellow women but since the major community decisions are made by men they're excluded from that that's their complaint women converts so far have been a small exception a slight exception to what i've talked about so far of that 75 percent there's a considerable number of lady converts to islam that participate in their communities great odds or at least that's what they say that's what they're reporting to me against great odds because not only do these ladies feel rightly or wrongly just trying to help us understand why people are not coming that we would expect to be coming why the this majority is almost invisible what they tell me is that they're treated like second-class citizens in the muslim community as a matter of fact they tell me they're treated like third class citizens in the muslim community or fourth class citizens because they tell me on the top you have the muslim men and then next you have the women from foreign countries muslim women from foreign countries then on the third tier you have the immigrant women muslims and then on the fourth tier you have the american lady convert now whether that is rightly or wrongly perceived the fact that that perception exists should be a concern to us what are we doing to communicate that perception i'll tell you right now the male convert doesn't feel the same especially if he is white blonde-haired blue-eyed anglo-saxon male he doesn't feel the same the day i became a convert it was as if an angel came down from the heavens there were tears flowing from people's eyes brothers were hugging me left and right people were stopping me in the halls congratulating me some people were kissing my hand they couldn't get their hand keep their hands off me i walked the day i became a i went to a meeting i must have had my my pockets were so filled with people's addresses and papers i looked ridiculous i looked like the scarecrow in the wizard of oz i remember i was driving home and somebody said to me oh brother if i could only bring you to my country this country was kuwait if i could only bring you to my country and they could see you with your blonde hair and blue eyes and white skin and your american accent i thought my god i mean if the prophets and this message didn't work what when what am i going to achieve i don't know what's what is this business this color this color obsession what i didn't know at that time i was new i learned i quickly caught on later on but i said if i was what a black american and you dragged me in front of that audience they'd be less impressed he didn't say anything i later learned of course that was true but back to the women converts they claim that they are the subject of derision they're ignored they're disrespected they're marginalized disenfranchised ostracized from their own community that they are not given equal status with other members of the committee especially men but even other women they claim that oftentimes they claim that the women the traditional muslim women treat them worse than a traditional muslim men now i know it seems far-fetched to you it seems like a fairly open-minded community so much of this probably doesn't apply to you but i found in my own experience that muslim men could harbor some let's say misogynist views towards women i remember once a lady and her mom a student and her mom came to the mosque to learn about this great religion they heard about they heard a great speech about islam and they were so turned on to this idea that they wanted to go to the mosque mother and daughter to learn more about it they arrived at the islamic center the brother opened the door to see two smiling ladies and standing in front of them and he slammed it in their face and he was quite proud of that he was bragging about it later sometimes these prejudices and attitudes could go rather deep i've experienced it myself when i was in san francisco we had an imam of the islamic center i'm not going to mention the time or the place or the era we had an imam of one of the islamic centers and he was accused and it was an accusation by six ladies by six ladies who attended his arabic classes six lady converts they accused him of sexual harassment accused him of making sexual overtures to him he was married and had children by the way they accused him i'm not saying the accusations were true or false but the community apparently felt otherwise he came they took their complaint to the leaders of the mosque the leaders of the mosque had a herring the women of course were not present but i was they took a written statement by the women and read it in front of the community members and then various community members even the leaders themselves stood up and began to defend the pouring man they said those ladies are prostitutes they said they're nothing but american i heard it with my own heirs they claimed that they were b-i-t-c-h-e-s's if you know what i mean i heard one phenomenally demeaning derogatory statement after the next despite all that i know you're probably thinking well jeff you're an american and you're just defending your countrymen and frankly i don't like to be put in this position beca precisely because of that reason i lose some credibility when i do this but frankly my god brothers and sisters if i don't do it nobody else is going to because i don't hear anyone else talking about this i've been in this community 20 years and i just never hear it spoken no wonder our children feel separated from their community i only brought up one cultural issue there are other cultural issues as well which i don't have time to go into the children also complain and the converts also complain that there is an intellectual divide that they have to face that they cannot seem to relate to the the speeches the positions the thought the perspectives that come free from behind the pulpits of the islamic institutions in america they can't relate to them maybe it's our own fault you know because we've pushed our children we've pushed them to become some of the most educated some of the brightest some of the hardest working some of the most competitive students in america our best children are going our children are among some of the best students in america we have them in harvard and yale and stanford and in all the ivy league schools in the big ten they're getting degrees in areas of critical research they're among they're learning things like oh critical methods of historical study literary criticism textual criticism form criticism they're learning some of the most modern and most revealing historical critical techniques some of them are becoming scientists they're becoming leaders of critical thought and innovative thought in america that is their mindset and they've done and they've done very well but when they go to the mosque they're told one thing and when they go to their school and everything they've learned and everything they become tells them to take another approach and i'm not saying this is good or bad i'm just trying to explain the way that what they explain to me because in their education and in their schooling and now in their minds they're taught rationalism cold objective reasoning while in the community the stress is on tradition following traditional thought don't quest question the tradition don't raise difficult or controversial questions they see a conflict there a conflict of thought in the in their education and in their society and in their entire life they're taught individualism it has its good and bad sides but they're taught individualism we teach them conformance to community norms don't rock the boat don't don't make a fitna don't create havoc in the community don't ask too many questions one american lady convert back on the west coast she converted when she was 53 years old her husband had died several years earlier she discovered this religion by reading the koran converted to the religion and she would be constantly going to the leaders of her community asking them questions especially about the role of men and women in islam badgering them again and again because she didn't find the answers were satisfactory and she was attacking them on rational grounds at first they politely replied and then they tolerate a little more and then they started to get a little bit angry with it and finally they just told her just leave us alone keep your questions to yourself you are only a convert we've been muslims all our life you are only a convert [Music] the lady had a reply she said so were all the companions of the prophet peace be upon him our community the american community teaches our children innovation adaptation relativism our community stresses the eternal and immutable our students are taught critical objective research we're told we teach them to revere the ancient authorities there is uh and they see it as a conflict they see it as two mutually exclusive approaches that both sides are unwilling to meld to bring together the two approaches to seek reconciliation since our children since this great seventy five percent of musl am i are you guys getting exhausted i could tie this up in one minute i thought you'd want i tell you the truth i expected you to want to throw me out of here but okay since this great 75 percent at least this great 75 percent of invisible majority is told that our communities are the true practical model of islam in america and since they have these conflicts intellectual conflicts with that model they see they begin to have a difficult time seeing the relevance of islam in their life they start to see this as a religion that lacks relevance perhaps is even irrelevant and little by little are that 75 percent drifts farther and farther away from this community there have been entire muslim communities in america that have entirely disappeared from the past a trace of them left if you take away right now the immigrants and the students from the muslim popular from the muslims in america the masjids and our institutions will be empty and those masjids and institutions will be converted to some other secular uses the children mention i call them children some of them in their 20s 30s even 40s some of them are professors at schools doctors lawyers these second generation muslims and converts report that they have problems with other issues as well which i don't have enough time ago to get into they just they talk about problems with classical islamic theology theology is a theory our theories we construct trying to understand the relationship between god and ourselves theology is a theoretical enterprise of man they have disagreements and problems with the classical mythology the essential classical mythology is the school of vallashree the other central school was the mutezzler they debated it out for the first few centuries the lashrey's viewpoint finally went out but our young people really can't make any real find any real relevance in either approach they seem to see major conflicts between both approaches and what is stated in the quran and part of the problem is is that when it comes to systems of thought we always have to keep them alive the answers and the interpretations and the work of scholars in the past must always be reviewed critically analyzed updated we always have to be checking and rechecking the work of the scholar because no scholar has the final word this is true in physics it's true in mathematics it's true in engineering it is true in the study of history it is true in social science it is true everywhere if we rely on any centuries thought then we inevitably become stagnant intellectually and we stopped reaching the minds of future generations until finally so much time passes where they can't even recover the original irrelevant message of relevance to the message of whatever area thought that is they can't even recover a link between that message and themselves because too much time has passed and it's too hard work our children many of them are suspicious of the hadith collections they learn all these critical methods of historical research and now they begin to have doubts why does that happen because the science of hadith has now been put on a shelf and we are refused to revive the that say it to perform that same type of critical research that was done centuries ago how many real hadith scholars is nad critics matan critics historical critics how much of that criticism is really going on today even if that criticism only brings us back to the same point we were before that is good but it's kept alive it's kept alive the great indian thinker iqbal wrote a book about the revivation of the islamic sciences he said this is extremely important we must always investigate and reinvestigate and research the work of the past either perfect it or confirm it or confirm it but if you just put it up on a shelf and let the science die and just rely on it the work of the people of the past then we become disconnected with it and we have the problem we have today with our children no longer have confidence in one of the most important areas of our community building they're complaining about it there's a huge distrust among them almost every kid that emails me brings up this subject sooner or later what are we doing to answer them and i don't just mean answer them i mean answer them according to their level of thinking according to their experience according to their level of thought according to the techniques of critical investigation that they're learning in american universities what are we doing to reach them they're suspicious of islamic law they fail to see the relevance of that the key question they keep asking is how much of this is religion and how much of this is culture how do you separate religion from culture they keep saying again and again how do you tell what is essential to islam from what is not essential how do you know when some ideas were added to the religion and how do you know which ones are essential and religious original to this faith that's the question they're asking asking we don't even allow them to ask it and we don't prepare ourselves to answer it we need to create an intellectual space in this community where these issues can be discussed researched studied confirmed or revised we need to start thinking again we need to start researching again we need to start critically investigating again or else we're going to lose a generation because we're not commun we will be unable to communicate to them according to their level of thinking and that's why we have to allow these kids to come into this community and when they come into this community community we have to allow them to voice their concerns to voice their questions to make their position known and then we have to patiently and painstakingly and intelligently and rationally respond to them because as long as we fail to do that we give them a we give them a one-way ticket outside of our community the type of scholarship we need to have we need to revive all the great islamic sciences we definitely need to revive that especially here in america where we are on the front lines of the confrontation and i hate to call it confrontation but on the front lines of this confrontation between islamic thought and western thought i don't see it as it has to be a confrontation but right now it is that way and i think one thing we have to do is get out of the bunkers but in any case what can we do right now i'll take about eight minutes of your time and try to summarize that like i said one create in our communities the intellectual space to be able to start discussing things discussing problems discussing issues discussing questions because right now in our communities we run them like some one of those one of those oppressive oligarchies that most of our communities come from immigrate from when they come to the united states you know what an oligarchy is those where you have a small group of people ruling the entire country controlling all the thought coming in and going out and not allowing any dissenting opinions it seems i've been at the university of kansas 20 years and every time a new administration comes to power it's always some kind of coup and then after they come to power anybody who disagrees with them you no longer hear them giving a friday prayer speech you know they're not allowed to disseminate any information in the mosque and that group controls all thought all expression in the mosque until another group could somehow or other manipulate the situation and get their coup and then the whole situation just starting over and over again we have to have freedom of speech and expression in our community or at least create the space for it and that's why i like addressing muslim student associations especially the american-born students there if you can't find space to have your ideas discussed and expressed make space form another association call it the second generation movement call it the second generation muslim association call it the american converts association call it whatever you want but create that space where you can research learn discuss and live to the best of your ability this religion intellectually and fully but you got to create that intellectual space a lot of scholarship needs to be done i don't think i've discussed that well enough here today or made my position clear but not a lot of scholarship needs to be done in our community and we also need to have our community become much more open where free expression exists and when we're tolerant of differences of opinion but frankly my brothers and sisters i think that's going to be too long going to take too long and it's going to come too late unless we suddenly radically change our whole approach to what we're trying to accomplish in america but we can do things right away we can do some things and i'm going to make three last suggestions and then i'm going to say goodbye i hope i didn't upset anybody too much today but you know i really don't like giving these type of speeches i'd rather give a cheerleading speech like i'm often asked to give or i'd rather you know talk about theology which is my favorite thing but i'll i feel the obligation when i was asked to talk about this speech i feel i felt obligated so here i am there's three things we could do even though most of us are not scholars most of us haven't done the type of critical investigative research i thought most of us are engineers mathematicians etc we're not social scientists we're not critical historians we don't have phds in history and the social sciences even so we could still do some things we could start to approach that issue of separating religion and culture by just being as amina said introspective by asking ourselves the question what if are we doing something wrong what things might we be doing wrong and we could start at to the best with the knowledge we possess we could already start making progress we could start saying what things in this religion are more tradition and what things are essential because in this context we have to make that separation because we are trying to take this religion to these americans the second and third generation and converts and non-muslims and when we do that we don't want to burden them with a lot of extra things we want to only take them to the essentials because if you add something that is not essential you're going to draw them away from the religion you're going to obscure the truth so for example here's just a very simple example i talked about the seclusion of women that exist in many muslim communities especially their denial of the ability to attend the prayer on the same floor with the men as as they do for example in mecca and medina let us take that issue brothers and sisters let us just say hypothetically that even though that might be a viable cultural interpretation in another country let us say that that is not strictly speaking essential to the religion let us say that we looked in the in the prophet's record peace be upon him and we saw that men and women interacted in the mosque in medina oh i only need five men and women reacted interacted in the mosque of medina attended the prayers in the mosque of medina that that was a family friendly environment let's say we could prove that case and i think we can but let's say we can i don't want to argue it now but let's say the seclusion practice that is being practiced in our community is not really necessary essential to the religion you may have rationalizations for it but let's say it's not essential to the religion and now count how many americans who were interested in islam who showed interest in this a religion how many of our children have left the religion aside because of that one issue because of that one issue if that is not essential to this religion if it is not strictly speaking required by this religion and everywhere that is practiced that is obscuring people from seeing the truth of islam then it's not the press that is driving those people away from the religion it is not some foreign it's not some western conspiracy that is preventing them from seeing the truth of islam it is us it is us it's just a hypothetical question how many people for how many people in this country is the truth of islam obscured by practices and notions that we have no explicit divine warrant all those traditions if we impose them on people however small they could be a barrier between them and the truth of islam and the quran criticizes this says in no uncertain terms have you considered what provisions god has sent down for you and how you made some of it haram and some of it halal of your own making say has god indeed permitted you or do you invent a lie concerning god it was talking to the mushroom king people who associate with god that which is not of god they make something sacred that god specifically did not enjoy and it criticizes him for that and it says in another verse and say not for anything you invent this is halal and this is haram so that you invent a lie against allah because when you do that you commit as we all know shirk associating with god that which is not of god and why is that such a serious sin is it because god is a jealous god it's because his feelings get hurt is it because of some personal divine problem no the problem with any kind of shirk making something sacred that god has not made sacred the problem with that is is you obscure the truth and you place a barrier between the truth truth and that person and give them an excuse and a reason not to even consider your religion that's the problem and the quran gives trivial almost seemingly trivial examples it criticizes in a very harsh way the mecca and polytheists because they used to slip the errors of cattle and condemns them for that for doing that without any divine warrant something so small you're saying something so small the problem is is when you do that maybe you think it's small but later on for another person that could be give him a reason to dismiss you of faith oh look at that look what they do i can't consider that religion that can't be the truth that's ridiculous you know crime gives many examples of that nature i'll give you a very simple one the term son of god the jews say that ezra is the son of god the christians say jesus of the son of god that is the saying with their of the saying with their mouths imitating the statements of disbelievers of old of deniers of old what's the problem here well in the mouth of the jews yes they called ezra of the son of god they called many other jews the son of god in jewish history in jewish terminology that means one who is loved by god one who has a special relationship a special affinity to god that doesn't have any literal meaning so what's the problem with using that terminology because what happened to it this terminology which had no divine warrant no explicit divine warrant when it came to christianity began to be taken literally jesus is the son of god god the son second person of the trinity do you know there are millions millions tens of millions of people in the west that are now atheists and agnostics exactly because of that they think the statement doesn't make sense so by just introducing a terminology like that without any divine warrant has created a huge barrier between people and realizing the relationship with god so what else can we do this is the last thing i want to suggest yes we should be more open create a more open tolerant environment invite these kids back into our communities and be open and tolerant and let them have their you know let them air their opinions not and when i talk about kids i'm not just talking about kids i mean converts as well create a more open environment for research and discussion yes we need to do that second we must make every effort to separate what is essential from islam from what is not essential from to islam and we have to really develop some good vigorous critical scholars muslim scholarship in this country because right now really brothers and sisters i mean let's let's be honest we just really don't have any real good critical scholars in this country i mean come on most of our hadith scholars are former engineers you know most of us going around the country lecturing have degrees in something you know we haven't we haven't learned real research techniques in any of these areas let's just be honest you know our scholarship compared to western scholarship and religion looks almost juvenile i'm sorry to say it at least as far as this country is concerned and i count myself as much at fault as any of us but the third thing we could do is follow the model that god gave us in the quran and in the prophet's life example what model am i speaking of before you know where you're going you have to know where you're coming from you have to know where you are right now if i want to get from here to lawrence kansas i better find my place on the map well where are we right now as a community if i look at the two phases of the prophet's mission peace be upon him the mecca face and the medina phase which phase would you think this community is closer to right now the mecca phase obviously i mean i don't even have to make the argument to you we're surrounded by a huge culture that doesn't hasn't received our message hasn't even considered our message and we've had something face some discrimination we're a tiny minority we're taking a new message we're facing a tremendous jahalia to use the arabic term you know that's our situation we're closer to the mecca phase in the mecca phase if we're in the mecca phase then we should be following more or less in trying to bring people back into this religion the meccan model following the mecca plan and now if we look to the quran we'll find that three percent three percent you just take all the verses in the quran that are of a legal nature and then count all the verses of the quran take the quotient and you'll find out that about three percent of them are commands and prohibitions divine commands and prohibitions 97 of the quran teaches ethics the relationship between god and man the purpose of life morality other truths as well this the history of nations in the past teaches us how to be self-critical um how to use reason and faith the extreme importance of using reason and faith teaches many many major themes you know what i was taught when i became a convert rules rules rules if i hadn't studied this religion myself and entered this religion and all i received were rules rules rules i would have left it the next day thank god i read the quran first if we're going to draw these indigenous people our own children that second third and fourth generation those converts and non-muslims into this religion let us begin by following the model established by god himself through his prophet muhammad peace be upon him as he once said to muad bin jebel on his way to beco take the dual leadership of the community in yemen he said as you all well know he said first teach them that there is no god but god and that muhammad is his messenger and when they have fully understood that then teach them how to pray and when they be consistent in that and they've developed in that fully then teach them about fasting during ramadan and then once they've accomplished that then teach them what about paying zakat and making the hatch and so forth and so on he said make things easy for people and do not make them difficult and inform them of the glad tidings and do not repulse them i mean you've all heard it before we've all heard it before do we practice that here we're trying to win these kids back over to this religion we're trying to bring a community of people into listening this religion and the first thing we do is get them in that door we tell them okay okay you cover your hair you do this give her the gold okay don't do this don't do that don't do that i don't mind i don't mind telling the people what are the muslim behaviors and or whatever but that's become our we we are obsessed with only that i've attended friday prayers for 20 years now in this country and every friday it's the same thing the teachers are either political about muslim politics or they're about rules and regulations or somebody's diatribe about you know problems going on in the muslim community they never discuss the other 97 of the quran virtually never or else there's just brief allusions to that and be tolerant when we bring people into our community don't expect them to become middle easterners or you know arabs or pakistanis or sri lankans the next day or ever even give them time to grow into the religion give them the space to grow give them the room to grow give them the right to ask give them the right to question give them time to develop the koran gave them 13 years in mecca and then slowly but surely brought them along after that we always put the cart before the horse give them time if we if our kids come to our community not so modestly dressed it's better that they come than not come at all have to start if you know they have this or that problem if their behavior is not perfect from our particular perspective it's better that they come and hear the message it's better that they work out for themselves what it is to be a muslim in america because that's the generation that's gonna have to take this into the future it's better than for them to be among us than not to be among us if the prophet and his companions adopted our approach to probably be no muslims today how about the time the man came and he urinated in the mosque in that famous hadith report the companions were ready to kill the guy the report says that they already had their hands on him how do you know because the report says the prophet said let him go go get some water and pour it over it you've been sent to make things easy for people not to make them hard let's follow the mecca plan let's just give it a try do i think because i've said this to you today you're going to go out and try it no way jose but if some of you here care about your children if some of you care about the people of america want to bring them this message then i beg you to give it a try establish a mosque a halfway house call it whatever you want make it so that people who feel shy to come to the regular mosque will come to that as they are to hear the message and to pray even though they're not perfect even though they may have flaws that you think you see no matter what you see give it give establish an institution where we could follow that mecca plan am i talking to the leadership of messages here no because they'll never do what i just said am i talking to the leaders of america no not at all they have their leadership their positions to protect i'm talking to the parents i'm talking to the young young muslim men and women the few of you that are here today i'm talking to that second generation i'm talking to those converts please just do it and the rest of the community instead of slandering them and complaining about them and making up all sorts of strange slanders and gossip about them just give them your support give them your support know that those people are on a mission a mission to take this message to the greater community i know that some of you can't tolerate that and i understand that and as harry truman used to say you can't take that kind of environment so if you can't stand the heat just stay out of the kitchen but for those people that are going to take the heat and are willing to work with real americans and to show the patience and the tolerance and the wisdom and to carry out this plan that allah once carried out with the people of mecca and spread throughout the world for those people who are willing to engage in that to invest the time energy effort resources to take out ads in the paper to publicize this venture please at least don't stand in their way even if you're not willing to give them your support i had a lot of other things i had to say but you're looking as exhausted as i feel so thank you so much and for at least hearing me out and may allah bless you and bless you and your children and your children's children and salaam alaikum with allah [Music] that was wonderful uh okay we have 15 minutes insha allah for questions and answers and i beg you please please if you have a comment wait to the end or come and deliver it directly after the 15 minutes inshallah unless you have a question and please make it short come all right otherwise please stay there write it and they can answer it for you insha'allah after 10 30. all right i'm gonna say one thing okay short questions no statements short questions no statements if you're going to make a statement i'm actually going to interrupt you because that's the only way we're going to get through this tonight okay [Music] uh one question is uh for uh blonde hair brother uh i want you to know that i'm not american but uh in some way you are not alone in your problems uh many times i came to marjit i pray on the front of the other muslims and then after that they came ask me if i'm muslim so uh i'm i came from the part of europe where other people didn't know that they are until 10 years ago that they are muslims they are just like most of us here don't know that they are 40 million muslims in china right now and they are suffering also and but i see there is a many negative things that you saw i agree with you totally but uh during the your experience and your life as a muslim do you see any changes in a good way i mean i have experience in the measures where i went you you are true totally your your your speech is true and i agree with it but in some way from the male side in islam i see some positive things that they are getting to and my other so my question is do you see same thing i mean it's not well i would close that question and the other question is for all three of you uh if uh you are living in community which uh there is a merged or islamic center or community center and in some reasons uh they are elder people more respectable people but in some way they are shutting you down or everybody who has a new idea they kind of shut you down or they ignore you you know what i'm talking about what we are all facing especially our sisters in islam so uh do you think uh do you reck i mean is there would you approve if like uh if you are if you if you're being long time ignored in your community and do you think that it's a good idea to separate from that community and or form another new one thank you very much so american [Music] i could i just don't want to hug the microphone concerning the first question have seen uh of course i've seen uh some change uh among in the communities over the last 20 years but from my perspective it's it's take coming along too slowly because uh our kids are growing up i mean if it takes another 10 years before we you know make a little more change then we'll probably lose another generation you know so i mean the clock is ticking so you know i'm really asking for a radical uh ins introspection on our part is really needed as far as the other question i'll let these two take it i'm sure they'll agree with me you noticed in my speech i didn't emphasize separating yourself from the community but establishing other uh ventures other institutions that don't compete with the community but work hopefully working with the community but maybe you know they will not give you your support but you know and other hamas that could be modeled on the mecca plan where you could draw people in hopefully it'll get the support of the community but you know that that venture has to be carried out no matter what but i don't see that as an alternative community i just see it as a part of the community that's fulfilling an essential function of our mission here in america well of course the answer is no for the second question otherwise we're going to have a new community every day really i remember we said that allah and his plan that he's gonna test you and you're gonna be faced with different people from different backgrounds and most of the times these people they have good intention too but the the only thing missing is just knowledge or they're ignorant or they're not they're mistake or they need someone who teaches who teach who can teach them and be patient with them and that's part of the working for the path of allah however there are some cases that you don't have choice because you just feel you find yourself just just losing your energy losing your time but those are really exceptional you have to be vic very careful and it's not anyone who can make those decisions unity in islam it's one of the highest things and it's really uh very crucial and you we don't play with it so if there are uh problems in the community work to solve them and ask allah and be patient be patient be patient and allah will help you do that unless there are some really serious exceptions that you don't have any choice allah [Music] ditto you know no you you you can't we have to be careful about this big of making divisions and um like brother jeffrey said we can have other things that are happening within the community that will work as assets to our particular islamic center or masjid but don't start a new masjid try to develop the unity and just the work that you want to do do this and build it in with your your center and in time inshallah it will become a part of it but you never give up on your community [Music] lang you made us feel very sad tonight and broke our hearts from what we heard about our brothers how they arrogant and the ignorant about islam and they forgot the only woman mentioned in the quran by name is maryam and the prophet muhammad allah mentioned many a hadith how to respect our woman when he said my book three mothers he mentioned dormant and islam will never spread in this country and in other parts of the globe if we ignore the woman we have to raise the flag and hold it very fair very firm and say respect woman's because they are our daughters our wives our sisters this is the only way islam will spread in this globe what we mentioned today and inshaallah i will for my part i will spread this word inshallah and i hope everyone here will do the same thing insha allah and you too okay my question is addressed to sister amina i my question was addressed to sister amina i you gave us a lot of things to think about tonight and my question was let's say we check ourselves and we see that we are slightly male efficient or extremely male fish in one of these categories could you give us some specific ideas on how to improve not just general but kind of more specific you know it it subhanallah this is one of the most beautiful questions i think i've ever been asked and i can't believe this is being asked by one so young masha'allah gives me such hope for the future in in seeing such a really astute question being asked thank you as far as what we can really do to change ourselves i find the most important thing is to come to know allah and i suggest this you know through studying the attributes and seeing how they apply i know some of the the sisters anyway who've been with me for the last couple of days have been hearing a lot about this in particular but making a conscientious effort to apply what you will learn about the creator allah to yourself and seeing how it should influence your conduct and behavior it's really not hard to be a muslim it's not hard it's easy to be a muslim we make it hard because we burden it with so many superficial things that other people can see you know how do you tie your hijab how do you wear your hair how long is your beard okay we have all of these wonderful things that we can judge each other oh he's better than he is because his beard is longer or he wears a koofi and he doesn't wear a koofie and oh my god did you see that one had a necklace on yesterday when we're not looking at what's inside um [Music] we judge each other very harshly we make other people afraid of us muslims are afraid of muslims more than they are of non-muslim when brother jeffrey is talking about the situation of our young people i spend most of my time on university campuses and most of these young people were born and raised in this country and yet they still connect themselves also with another country and they all tell me how much they are afraid of muslims they're afraid to go to the masjid because they're going to be criticized for this they're afraid to participate in this particular thing because they're going to be criticized for something else so they just stay away and i have them tell me you know i feel safer with the non-muslims because they're not so critical we change ourselves by first of all knowing who allah is and you learn that through the 99 attributes and then just changing one little tiny thing at a time [Music] and i i've actually named several of them you know not judging each other that's a that's a biggie okay trying to exhibit the attributes of allah that should be shown through us you know his mercy his compassion not burdening our islam with superficial things don't worry about what other people think of you they can't put you in heaven they can't put you in hell that's the biggest thing to remember nobody it doesn't matter if they like you or not it doesn't matter if they tar and feather me later today what matters is between allah and me no one else puts me in heaven no one else puts me in hell um i wanted to i came late and i wanted to tell you how much i enjoyed your lecture jeffrey lang mr link i've been a convert for about 10 years and it really moved me and it really reminded me my own experience i've seen so many even men leave you know come and i see their faces and they come a few times and then you don't see them anymore and it seems like almost a problem i know this has been addressed numerous times of you know you have the arabs over here and the pakistanis over here and this group over here and there's no support group for new converts when they first come i look at i have lots of friends who are mormons and other religions and they set up they do a much better job of keeping committees or whatever going to to encourage these people to come but we get in our social groups here and there and everywhere and then we have this lethargy i don't mean to be lecturing i'm getting to my question but i don't know how to overcome that kind of lethargic me and several other muslims american muslims and other muslims have tried to get things started for the kids to encourage them young to develop their pride but it's the parents you know you get boy scouts started and the kids are excited and the parents don't bring them they don't sign them up they don't see the importance of it the same thing with girl scouts or when we have movie nights or this night the kids don't come people don't bring them and we need to encourage these kids young to start developing a pride and start the kind of conversations that they need to have when they get older to have that support group to talk to and i don't know how to that's my question how do we overcome that kind of lethargic attitude that we face who's here for two three years you're not here for two or three years yeah i guess just keep trying you know to keep trying keep communicating that message don't don't give up i've been doing saying it for 20 years you know i'm still trying i don't have much hope that you know anybody will listen to me but you know even if i even if i uh die uh you know whenever even if i die with those being the last words on my lips at least i know i tried you know i'm not saying i'm always right i'm not saying that you know i uh that i have all the answers but i'm just doing the best that i can but about your comment about even men converting to this religion and leaving soon after that phenomenon happens much more often than with women the past year we've had two converts on the lawrence kansas campus convert to religion they went to a couple of friday prayers and they never showed up again and it happens year in year out male converts especially don't stay in the religion somehow i don't know what it is women have well women are just stronger i mean it's just it's just true the there is a hadith from the prophet but before mentioning the hadith i would like to say something which is uh something for the people are reverted to islam you might think that once you've reverted to islam you're going to go to the mosque you're going to find angels it's like when the it's like the one who gets married and he's expecting an angel right really and that's not right that's that's not the way it is you're gonna go to the mosque or the islamic center you're gonna find people practicing islam you're gonna find maybe a lot of ignorance and misbehavior and mischaracter and again it's part of that test that you're going to to face and allah gonna put you through that test you see well are you really getting to islam from the door or from the window which one now let me come back to the hadith prophet the way you are you'll be governed so and when you i i was listening to one of the uh one of the experts in uh whatever they call it human science uh social science research and he said something really interesting he said when you choose the behavior you choose the consequences in other words if you do not try to change it then that's the way it's going to be that's the way it's going to last and that's why process the way you are the way you will be governed in other words if you do not change it that's the way it's going to stay and that's the garbage we have in back home because people are not doing what's supposed to be done so that we change that dictatorship and people are just keeping quiet so the first thing is a test from allah we not have angels in the mosques or in in islamic centers as wives are not angels and husbands are not angels either and it's a test and we have to to to to choose the behavior so that the consequence can sequences are the right consequences and we have to work on it and we should work on it and whatever you do and whatever you face allah is going to reward you for that and whatever patience you have allah will reward you for that it's good to to just tell these things to the non-muslims and to the new reversed muslims so they don't get any misunderstanding what islam is what muslims are and what the practice and the real message the difference between the two okay one more question my question dr jeffrey in a way the three speeches in my opinion compliment each other one of the main areas you mentioned in your speech is the lack of scholars here in this country and in my opinion that's number one lack of knowledge you know is one of the main reasons of too many things we see here so as far as i know there are two universities in this country which are teaching hadith both quran and hadith i just want everybody here to know that they can attend that either full-time and or part-time basis the second which is my question to you does it help if american kids from second or third or fourth generation as you mentioned will get scholarships in muslim countries where they have highly recognized islamic universities you'll find that in al-azhar you'll find that in morocco you'll find that in tunisia that's at least the areas i know about so does that help if you have those american kids will go there memorize quran know about hadith because one of the main goals should be 10 or 15 years from now every single imam in an islamic center should have the knowledge yeah yeah i think it could help to send our boys and girls to uh to islamic institutions abroad to uh to learn from uh classical scholarship you know the the sciences it's also important though that our scholars in in the west also come to learn and understand and be able to utilize the modern you know the latest and and the latest methods and understand the the current developments in this social sciences and inside and in and in historical and social science research are you following me because if they're going to reach the population that they have to work with the population that under that speaks and and communicates and thinks in that mode they're going to have to master that mode as well you see are you following me so i'm so i i think it's extremely important that we urge you know bright young muslims you know to get education in america in the social sciences in the religious in religious studies in uh historical studies and then if they are gifted they'll want to go they'll actually want to go to the muslim lands because we want them to direct their and like you said scholarships would be extremely beneficial research scholarships would be extremely beneficial in this regard because we want them to take that knowledge that they learn here the current methods of historical and social research and then we want to take them and learn of this great body of information this great legacy that we've inherited from the past we want them to study it and be able to now communicate what they learned to the western audience so you know we want them to take from the modern you know from from their current environment what knowledge needs to be gained and we want them to apply that research capability to studying the legacy that is uh before them are you following me exactly that's why i said i mean you need somebody who was born and raised here that's the best case scenario so they know about the issues here okay yes and then if they go issues the mode of thought the current methods of research because if they just communicate in a say in a level that is foreign in a mode of thought and in a dialectic that is foreign to this society they they will not be able to reach the the audience that they want to reach are you following me yeah yeah thank you thank you i have to add one thing on there okay i i promise i'll make it quick all right because uh brother jeffrey brought it up and he said our boys and girls all right the brother only set about educating the men the most important thing subhanallah is to educate the women the women are the first teachers of the children if the women do not have the knowledge the women do not have the practice the children are going to have a very hard time having it we concentrate so much on educating the men it's time we concentrated on educating the women i think amina mostly wanted to just make that clear for the audience but even if he did you have to realize that when you in arabic men it's a generic term it can include men and women and you know so and i understood that to be the sense of what he said so but for the rest of the audience just so that nobody gets the wrong idea huh

Channel: IslamiCity

Views: 205,780

Rating: 4.7407732 out of 5

Keywords: islamicity, Jeffrey Lang, children, agnostic

Id: Xx57mZ8wgzs

Length: 83min 14sec (4994 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2016