<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