One Faith, Many Voices

 Asalamualikum WRWB. Alhumdulilah the 7^th of February was an inspirational evening with three highly inspiring scholars: the outstanding Shaykh Abdullah bin bayyah; the motivating Iman Zaid Shakir; and the remarkable Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.

As can be expected, I was very excited about the event, not particularly because of the theme of the event, but because, once more, we would be blessed with the exceptional company and teachings of some of the best teachers around. Merhaba merhaba was all I could think as I sat up on the gallery waiting for our respected teachers to enter. The outcome was massive; this in-turn increased my excitement as it felt exceedingly good to know that the love and respect for these deserving scholars was instilled in hundreds and hundreds of young and old hearts. SubhanAllah!

I won’t go on much about my own personal feelings as I know they are of no interest to you all :-P, so I’ll just press on. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my notebook, and throughout Imam Zaid and Shaykh Abdullah’s speeches I sat their somewhat gloomy for I could not note it all down. Undeniably, they were beautiful speeches, indicating to us that difference of opinion is indeed a mercy from Allah, and differences mostly come from us interpreting or understanding things in our own diverse ways. That doesn’t necessarily mean that one is right and the other is wrong, it just means that our differing in thinking has let to a differing in understanding. Great examples were given of great Sahabas and Awliyas about how they too used to differ yet still went on to respect each others understandings and thinking even whilst they may have hugely contrasted. [As I said before, I didn’t have my notebook, so was not able to write these examples down, and so I will not narrate them here for no doubt my weak mind will get the names and the situations all wrong, sorry!] Imam Zaid illustrated how we spend too much time ‘worrying’ and ‘arguing’ about these differences when there are so many more important things in the world that need our attention and energy, for example, the increase in aids. Shaykh Abdullah stressed what I wrote earlier, that from one source, a hundred meanings can be interpreted an understood depending on the individual and we need to respect that these differences do occur and that they are from Allah. [I just want to add here that Shaykh Abdullah’s presence alone was remarkable, his soft spoken Arabic touched me within and his humbleness and sweetness was a form of teaching in itself.] Alhumdulilah two great speeches of which I sadly can’t relate anymore as my feeble mind not only has forgotten but without my notes I’m finding it tricky expressing the few thing I do remember. Please forgive me.

However, when it came to Shaykh Hamza’s speech, I had by now managed to borrow some paper and a pen from my friend, who had dug it out form somewhere deepppp within her bag (may Allah bless her). So what follows are bullet points of our great Shaykh’s speech, which though was very brief (due to lack of time), was highly enlightening. His talk was based on the recent cartoon fiasco, so here goes:

·        Yes the British government is concerned about what is going on in their country but they have every right to do so. The British government do a lot more than other countries like the USA to ‘engage’ and understand Muslims and hence we should count ourselves lucky.

·        We are all ‘committed to social order’; those who are not are shaytaan, they are ‘human demons’ because social order is a grand blessing that you will realise if you ask the people living in countries where social order has totally broken down, countries like Iraq, Palestine, and Kashmir. Even Allah says that ‘you should worship God for the lone reason that he has given you security and saved you from hunger.’

·        It is the Muslim community’s responsibility to teach people our religion, the ‘true sense’ of our religion. Sadly, our religion is now being determined by news headlines when it should really be determined by the great Muslim scholars like Imam Al-Ghazali and others. But now news showing people wearing suicide bombings and doing demonstrations is what is defining our religion today. So it is upon us to teach our correct religion.

·        These people don’t realise who the Prophet (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam) is; they don’t realise what a huge blessing to the world the coming of the Prophet (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam) was; they don’t know that they are using the benefits of his existence; they don’t know that much of the benefits of modern society come directly from him.

Shaykh Hamza then went on to quote 3 extraordinary Englishmen who in their time realised the greatness and uniqueness of the Prophet Muhammad (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam) and the Shaykh emphasised how we need such people in this day and age. We need to teach people what a blessing our prophet was! The three men quoted were; Duncun McDonald, Edwin Arnold and Samuel Scott. All three men comprehended and appreciated the enormity and exceptionality of Prophet Muhammad (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam) and the dominant important figure that Islam has and always will have in the world. [I will write the bits and pieces I managed to get down form the quotes.]

Duncan McDonald says. ‘… there is little doubt that the three antagonistic and militant civilizations of the world are those of Christendom, Islam and china, when these are unified or come to a neutral understanding then, and only then will the cause of civilization be secure.’

Samuel Scott said, ‘Muhammad was that lofty genius and political sagacity of an Arabian Shepard who was deficient in the very rootlets of learning and was reared amongst the barbarous people divided into tribes…’

Samuel then goes on to describe the people before our Prophet Muhammad’s reign with words and phrases like, ‘hostility’, ‘degrading’, ‘knew no gods but a herd of grotesque and monstrous idols’, ‘robbery was their profession’, ‘murder their pastime’ ‘deceitful’ ‘cruelty’ ‘arrogance’, ‘relentless enmity’.

 He then says, ‘…to undertake the radical amelioration of such political and social conditions was a task of appalling difficulty…’

Then he says, ‘…Credit is due to the man who carried it out…if the object of religion be the integration of moral, the demolition of evil, the promotion of human happiness and the expansion of human intellect, then the performance of good works will avail…’

Lastly he says, ‘…So on that great day when mankind with be summoned to its final reckoning, it is neither irreverent nor unreasonable to admit that Muhammad was indeed an apostle of god…’

[SubhanAllah, even these unbelievers believed and knew the greatness of our final Prophet (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam) for we all know that what he carried out, the way he changed sooooo many unbelievers into believers was indeed a miracle; especially in a time and place where corruption was at its peak!]

Shaykh Hamza ended with the following vital points:

·        We have to restore the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam) to the Muslim community.

·         The prophet honours ambassadors; he would never have allowed the destruction of an embassy; he would never have allowed the destruction of property or this type of want and rage. All this is not our prophet’s tradition.

·         It is the Akhlaak of the Messenger of God (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam) that needs to be reintroduced into this discourse and until this Akhlaak of the prophet is restored we are going to see more madness.

·        So those people/those of you, who really want to defend the honour of the prophet, defend it first and foremost by behaving like him!

Alhumdulilah I need not add anything more. I hope and pray all the above makes sense and aids you all in some way or form. May Allah bless our shayukh and elevate them to greater greatness. May Allah give us tawfiq and the ability to listen to our shayukh with our eyes, ears, and hearts (as Shaykh AHM said.) May we all learn our Prophet (Sallaluhu-Alaihi-Wasalam)’s teachings and follow his Sunnah and act and live life the way he would have wanted us to. Finally may Allah bless the organisers and all the volunteers of this event (yes it was crowded but trust me there was barakah in that crowd Alhumdulilah!). Ameen Ya Rabb. Walaikumsalam.