Call to Dawah

Transcript Details

Event Name: Call to Dawah
Transcription Date:Transcription Modified Date: 4/13/2019
Transcript Version: 1


Transcript Text

<DUA>

Shaykh Hamza: how many people are Muslims in here, are practicing Muslims.  I don't want to embarrass in person so the majority are I'm taking it. which I find it a little difficult only because I like to keep focused at a level that everybody is going to understand and so since there are some people that are not practicing Muslims i'll try to minimize the use of vocabulary that is common coin among the muslims

.Then for those who saw a tape i guess i heard that there was a that there was a video from ISNA and i made an excuse that i hadn't had any sleep and i'm going to use that same excuse today because in fact i actually got off a plane from Jeddah and then got on a plane with a short interval of a day to Canada so I was in Mecca and Medina during Ramadan and actually the reason I'm here in the states is because i was invited here and the people in Mecca thought I was insane when I told them that I had to go because I had a talk in Toronto Canada they said how can you leave the couch for a talk in

toronto canada and i said well i made the commitment before i actually knew i

was going to be in Mecca during that

blessed time so I'm keeping my

commitment here so due to this jetlag

and I'm also feel like I'm at about

37,000 feet right now so if I talk over

your heads it's only because of that

experience. 

About the topic a call to Dawa if you

look I think my experience has been I've

done a lot of traveling my experience

has been really to sum it up the

sociologist at Berkeley who's been there

for several years told me not too long

ago that for about 30 years he was an

atheist and just recently he had them

come to realize that there is a God this

was what he said and he said but what

shocked him was it wasn't only his

realization but really something that he

felt that was taking place all over the

world and I think right now in the sense

that while we see intense darkness in

the world I think there's also these

beacons of light that are emanating out

for in different corners on the earth

and I think it's not simply the Muslims

that are rediscovering their faith but I

think it's happening in many regions on

the earth and I don't think that the

reason that this is happening is

something that can be reduced to

materialistic explanation which is

generally how Western certainly Western

analysts like to interpret these things

they like to say that the reason that

there is a resurgence of Islam in the

Muslim world is due to the fact that

there's geopolitical situations there

that are ripe for the situation to come

about people tend to find simplistic

answers in religion when times get

complicated people tend to look towards

religion for answers and I don't think

it's it's can be reduced to that simple

of a formula for interpreting it what I

would say though is that we have seen in

our lifetimes things and events really

that have been phenomenal anybody that's

over 30 years of age has seen

extraordinary changes in human society

people that are around 70 or 80 or 90

years old

scene unbelievable changes things that

really are unimaginable if they hadn't

seen them if you look at this century

alone one of the great arguments against

religion is that all the wars that

humans have fought have been so-called

quote unquote religious wars and yet if

we look at all these so-called religious

wars will find that in fact they the

amount of people that died in those

religious wars is miniscule compared to

the amount of people that have died in

this century alone due to such

ideologies as communism and democracy we

have seen in this century over 180

million people killed through

technological means 180 million people

and really that's a conservative

estimate we've seen in our lifetime

hundreds of thousands of people if not

millions killed many of us have seen it

on television and the most recent

example certainly was the Gulf War and

now bosnia and herzegovina non in burma

there's things going on in the

philippines there's things going on in

kashmir in africa in many different

areas in africa that don't have the

benefit if we can call it at benefit of

getting news coverage or concern and i

think there's a deep sense amongst a lot

of people that these are extremely

unusual times that there are times of

great events what we've witnessed really

with the destruction of sovereign states

in the last few years and I think the

dismantling is going to continue it's

not completely intact because the

apparatus were by it would create

basically a one world situation is not

fully intact but it's moving and it's

been moving for sometimes towards that

direction so

all of this is happening while all of

these people have been killed while all

these wars have taken place there's this

deep sense right of despair in many

places there's also a deep sense of

cynicism in many places and I think from

that environment there's a there's a

need for answers there's a need for

light because the human being by his

nature or by her nature is unable to

exist in a void people have to have

meaning if we look at the 19th century

and really what happened to religion how

religion was dismantled from the lives

of people because it's something that

actually we can see the progress that

took place in the 19th century we had

the Industrial Revolution in the West

and had massive changes that began to

take place but within the intellectual

atmosphere what was happening was there

was deep analyses really of traditional

religious texts in a field that was

called falal adji and what these people

began to discover was these texts were

in fact there was a great deal of

mythology for instance in the old and

new Testament there were a lot of things

that could be traced back to Ruth that

were alien to the basic and fundamental

claims of those books themselves and

this led to a really a sense of

it basically destroyed Christianity is

what it did it took some time right but

what these intellectuals really kind of

worked out was that what we're dealing

with is in the Old Testament a very

parochial book or a provincial book

whereby there's this tribal deity that

goes around destroying anybody that

opposes these twelve tribes in the midst

of the deserts of Egypt and and what's

now present-day Israel and then you move

to the New Testament which has a little

more of a universal flavor it's a little

easier to swallow than the Old Testament

but it's got all this metaphysical

fiction and so these people looked at

this and then at the same time while

this was going on this critical analysis

of these texts and it was beginning to

seep down into the centers of learning

at the same time there were remarkable

transformations taking place in the

social sciences Darwin's theory was

really a justification for colonialism

because racism ultimately is is a way

that the people that exploit are able to

in a sense justify their exploitation

it's nothing other than that racism is

not about color it's not about ethnic

background what it is about is about

exploiters need a justification for

exploiting the people that they're

exploiting or for feeling good about it

so if we look at people that we

terranize and terrorize and say these

people are really they're not fully

human their frontal lobes aren't as

developed as ours they're really only

useful for a bondage or slavery like

Aristotle had his peoples that were

naturally inclined towards bondage and

so the whole Darwinian picture really

justified the Europeans going into

Africa into the middle eastern

India and Asia and made them really feel

okay about being Christian and about

doing all these things to these people

in these places so you had that taking

place and then you had communism you had

a materialistic explanation of class

tension of struggles within societies

basically being about bread and about

food and about basic primary needs and

then as religion is losing its its foot

in the European psyche what develops out

of that really is what neat a tourney

ilysm or avoid really and what Nietzsche

said is once we eliminate God as an

absolute value from the picture all

other values automatically disappear you

see because if I don't believe in a

piece AB in an account in a reckoning if

I don't believe that there's a moral

authority outside of myself that imposes

upon me moral imperatives then really

nobody can impose anything upon me if

there's nothing absolute if things are

relative in their nature then nothing

can nobody can tell me what to do or

what to say if for instance as a

humanist I choose not to kill this is a

hypothetical imperative I choose not to

kill somebody else down the road can say

I choose to kill right and this happens

why did you kill him well it was Monday

I don't like Monday somebody actually

said that they killed something somebody

went and shot a bunch of children in

California I thing and they asked him

why they did it while it was Monday I

don't like Mondays you see and that is

really neat I mean you're getting in too

deep Neil ISM there where there's

there's nothing there it's just a void

so if I've watched the predator 50 times

which I think that person did I haven't

seen it one time but I'm supposing it's

some gruesome

movie about a guy that goes around

shooting people and kind of feeling good

about it right and so this person

watched this program 50 times or

something and then went out and did it

right and then people say well there's

no scientific evidence that watching

television has any effect on the

behavior of people we've done several

studies and there's no proof right so

the point of all that is suddenly

Europe's without any moral foundation or

base as if they ever had one there's an

argument that they didn't because if you

look at what they did like Ralph Waldo

Emerson said I can't hear what you're

saying because your actions are shouting

so loudly right so while the Europeans

have always told us about these are my

grandparents I'm talking about now the

Europeans have always told us about

democracy and and Russo's rights of man

and all these wonderful concepts right

the fact of the matter is Europe seems

to be kind of a leukemia on the from the

social body or leukemia students and

that's a nice disease it's more like a

malignant growth right the kind of

wherever it goes it just eats people up

right leukemia you kind of get withered

and just kind of fade away malignancies

just get bigger and bigger until they

kill everybody right and so there is an

argument but I would tend to say that

there was at one time Sam Morril base to

give you an example the Pope actually

once declared using crossbows as cruel

and barbaric at warfare therefore it can

only be used on the Muslims right not on

Christians because it was cruel and

barbaric to use it on Christians let's

find another way to kill Christians it's

less cruel and less barbaric

like swords and things like that whereas

Muslims since they're cruel and barbaric

let's use cruel and barbaric weapons to

wipe out the Muslim so there was some

moral base it didn't have a real strong

foundation but it was there now it's not

there anymore now if you look at the

Muslim countries right don't if you

haven't don't especially if you're not

Muslim just ignore them pretend they

don't exist and read about Islam if

you're from these unfortunate places

then if you do look at them basically

what we're dealing with is people that

also unlike Christianity that all sudden

realize they had a made-up religion

right I knew it that's what they realize

that it was made up and so now that's

how you can get these guys that say I've

got a prayer cloth here if you send

fifty dollars that you'll get your

prayers answered because I swear it on

the Bible and people send in fifty

dollars and that's what Christianity has

been reduced to you see they don't have

anything other than that it's in a

superstitious phase because it's

philosophical and it's fill the

philosophical and spiritual content of

Christianity was basically destroyed

during the it really starts post

Renaissance but it heats up seventeenth

eighteenth and nineteenth century

finishes it off that did not happen to

Islam what happened to Islam was in some

ways more devastating and in some ways

not it was not more devastating in the

sense of Islam itself never lost its the

power of the truth of islam amongst the

Muslim what happened was the Muslims

were defeated militarily and that

created such a massive crisis in the

Muslim psyche and the reason for that is

simply stated the Quran promises victory

it's actually a promise I mean the Quran

talks about and the Heidi talks about

the the nature of the war between truth

and falsehood that there are days that

the truth has its day and then there are

days where false it has a day but

ultimately truth manifests and falsehood

disappears and then what happens is

people go into decline and if you can

read the Quran and look there's deep

analyses of societies in the Quran so

what happens is is that the Muslims

basically believed that we had such an

innate superiority right did it really

led to a type of superiority complex

that we can't be defeated because we're

Muslims simple as that and what happens

is that they're defeated and so there's

this massive crises how is it that we're

defeated well all of a sudden you have

all these ignorant Muslims that are

seeing these Europeans coming with this

massive technology and they're just

knocked out by it right I mean how do

you fight people with swords when they

have cannons and machine guns and now

nuclear missiles right and so because of

this deep crises that took place Islam

in a sense lost its bearings within the

society but not initially what happens

is very sophisticated the colonialists

come in and they recognize that there's

still this thing intact so we have to

really dismantle it because as long as

there's even a semblance of this thing

intact we're threatened our presence

here is threatened and our interest

they're always talking about vested

interests America's vested interests

right the vital interests of the Gulf

region right this is what they talk

about they talk about interest because

that's what it's all about interest and

so what happens is is that they

recognize the basic and fundamental

thing that the Muslims meet need to be

disengaged from is their book now they

were already too

great degree separated from the book but

not completely and part of the reason

was there were still very strong

institutions of learning within the

Muslim world you see Oscar was still

this center of knowledge and learning

and people that went there did learn the

whole traditional model even if it was

somewhat solidified right it had become

solidified but nonetheless there were

people that knew a Quranic worldview and

they were able to explain it to people

they went people went came from all over

the world studied there went back to

their countries fame and fast at Dakara

we yen the same in the you Sophia in

barracks in Marrakech the same with the

zaytuna the Neela me and Bob Dodd and

turkey the madrasas that were all over

Turkey so there was this thing that was

still somewhat intact and so what

happens is and it's very sophisticated

how they did it is that they they

recognize that they had to break this

historical link that the Muslims had

with these traditions so what they made

the Muslims feel is that they were

backward and that these traditions were

backward that riding on a board and

memorizing the Quran is backward because

now we have paper right and so the

Muslims develop this deep sense of

inferiority whereas they had what

destroyed them was their superiority

complex right of thinking we