Islam and the West: UK

Transcript Details

Event Name: Islam and the West: UK
Description: Youtube Auto-Generated
Transcription Date:Transcription Modified Date: 1/2/2021
Transcript Version: 1


Transcript Text

Moderator: And now i take great pleasure in introducing our beloved sheikh to speak on today's theme

[Applause]

peace be upon you interesting way that allah would give us to greet each other we sometimes wonder if the arabs have even forgotten what salaam means

i want to, before i start, just clarify something because i'm worried some of you might be here because of a poster that was put out on the website and it was very cleverly done it was

obviously a parody for me but unfortunately not a parody for other people because somebody, a well-known person, that i won't mention to you called and after reading this was askedto speak at a demonstration and they were going to demonstrate my talk because the uh instead of shifa presents an unmissable fundraising event for the shifa school, "islam in the west" delivered by hamza yusuf hansen, personal imam to

george bush.

And i'm going to talk about the following

topics islam in the west

relations between islam and the west are

possibly at their lowest ebb in decades

i mean that's indicates to me that

lois ebb i mean you have to grant some

sophistication here

you know because people that can use

metaphors

tend to be a little more clever than

people that can't use metaphors

so this is primarily due to radicals who

wish to distort the true nature

of the west islam in the west is an epic

lecture i mean

it's kind of an interesting adjective

epic

lecture never heard that before

have to remember that

aiming to demonstrate how the west

embodies

true islam in all of its facets

from government and society through to

its foreign and defense policy

like urinating on people this lecture is

particularly pertinent

for the muslim community as our

salvation lies not in what the

extremists call

quran and sunnah but following and

emulating

the leading countries of the west

britain and the united states of america

so that's not to be missed

well there's a few things i want to say

i don't know who did this

i don't necessarily have to assume it

was a muslim i can assume it was just

somebody that

who knows i don't know i allah knows the

hearts of people

and i don't you know i don't know i mean

this is a traumatized person

might be a lecturer that

doesn't get very many people to show up

for their lectures or something and just

doesn't like people that do i don't know

but i think

it's interesting because what i just

would like to say about this is

i sometimes really worry that our

religion

has in essence become

really a book on a shelf and i think

it's interesting

that siddiy ibrahim hewitt

mentioned about where do i put islam

into this

where do i fit it into the curriculum

and i think that's really important

because

i have never since the day i became

muslim i have never understood

islam to be a subject

i haven't understood it to be something

that

you study i mean there are things that

within islam

that you study you study fich for

instance

you study

arabic i mean that's

very important you can study tafsir

hadith

there's plenty of things you can study

in a madrasa

or a university or wherever you go to

school

but i've never understood islam to be a

subject i've always understood islam or

i hope i have

i've always understood islam to be

actually a state

a state that you're actually in called

islam and it's it's a descriptive state

and and i find it very interesting that

the three qualities

that allah uses in the quran to describe

people who are of faith are

the first one is muslim the second one

is and the third one is

those are the three qualities that allah

uses to describe human beings

and i find it really interesting that

all three of them

are in the western tradition of arabic

because i'm supposed to talk about the

west and things

is number four it's a fourth uh on on

the

15 verb permutations

it's a fourth form and that goes under

the

the uh the paradigm of afada

af allah

that's how it goes if you ever studied

arabic and if you didn't you just

learned the fourth form

so if you look at that aslam ayushlimo

islam and for muslim

those are the the the categories

now what's really interesting is that

the fourth form

in arabic is used to create a transitive

situation for an intransitive first form

now if you this is supposed to be

talking about education so i'm assuming

all of you

are educated right because that's what

the topic's about it's about education

so i hope that you know the difference

between a transitive

and an intransitive verb but if you

don't i'll just give you a little lesson

in grammar to remind you because i'm

sure some of you didn't go to grammar

school

right because you didn't get good enough

grades or something like that and

in the other schools in england where

the the plebeians i think go to right is

the patrician class

that goes to the those grammar schools

right before they go to eaton

or wherever they go but if you were a

plebeian

then you probably didn't learn the

difference between a transitive or an

intransitive verb but nonetheless like

uh moliere's character who's amazed to

learn that he's been speaking

prose all of his life you've also been

using transitive and intransitive verbs

most of your life

so to clarify the meaning a transitive

verb

needs an object an intransitive verb

doesn't need an object in other words if

zade hits amar and the arabs love

using hit i mean that's always

invariably

the sentences that they use in their

grammar books to teach little children

about how language works it's always

zade hitting

ammo you know and i really with us

it was jane c's spot

i mean you can tell how old i am right

um now it's

you know uh uh hillary has

two mommies or something like that right

so but times are changing right so

the arabs are still using zayd hit ammo

right i mean that's always what they use

all right so so if you look at those

three

words let's look at them seluma right

saloma is the the first base or selima

yes

right beautiful word salim

what does that mean it means something

that is

whole something that is whole

now that's really interesting salam

is the one without any defects it's a

name of god

the one that has no defects it's there's

a wholeness

there's nowhere where you can point and

say that's out of place

salim is safe sound

right so aslama means so there you

understand

intransitive is a state you see it's a

state

i am salim

i don't need any object that that that

is a sentence

that doesn't have an object i'm the

subject

i am salim an assalam

which means i'm whole i'm safe i'm

integral

i'm together right that's what it means

now if you look at amuna right which is

another one or amina yatmanu

it means to be safe

and secure to be safe

and secure to be

in a situation of trust

you're not worried you feel

am in

and then you look at the third one

which means to be beautiful

and that's the third that's the highest

so the first one is

to be whole you're not a hypocrite right

because hypocrites are split

they're inside and they're outside or

different so they're not salim

there's no there's no salama there's no

wholeness to a hypocrite

right and then the

the the next stage is because you're

whole

right you're secure you feel secure you

know who you are

you're not trying to fool anybody you

feel secure

and then the next stage is when people

look at you

your hassan

you're actually something that is

pleasing

for others to experience now if you take

that to the

to make those all intransitive you go to

the fourth form

you could go to the second but the

fourth form

is actually a more interesting form for

the for this meaning than the second

this isn't a lecture in arabic grammar

so i won't explain the difference

between

but if you look at the this fourth form

aslama means to make whole

right to make whole it also means to

surrender

right why because things are at war so

when you surrender

there's no longer separation

right there's no longer antagonism

there's a state of

salama or salaam so it's entering into a

state of peace

so astama means that aslam means to give

up the ghost

to die aslam enough sahu right

so all of these are ways in which that

first form

is takes an object

he gave up his soul

right he entered into a state of

submission

right now if you look at the next one

amana if you just took that using the

system that's taught by the morphologist

that would mean to make safe to make

something

safe right amina and then when if you

use the preposition

ba then it means to actually make safe

yourself through a means so am an

ability

to make yourself safe through a means

but it's also obviously to believe in it

by extension that's one of the nuanced

meanings of it

and then you look at the the third and

the highest asana to make

beautiful

so those are all qualities of

the believer right i mean that's how

allah describes them they're in a state

so that's how i've

understood islam it's actually a state

that you're supposed to be in

now one of the things that's really

interesting is you very rarely meet

people that are in that state and so you

start to begin to wonder

well what is this then is this really i

mean

is there a religion out there called

islam

are there people out there called

muslims are there actually people that

believe in these things

because belief necessitates that you act

according to it

i mean that's the nature if it's not

it's called hypocrisy and hypocrisy is

never considered belief

in any religious tradition that i know

of except

hypocrisy right

i mean that's that's my understanding is

that hypocrisy

is not accepted it's not an acceptable

state to be in to be in a hypocritical

state

so the reason that i just said all that

was

really it just amazes me

the state that we find ourselves in

because you know i've said this before

but i really believe

all this clamoring for an islamic state

is a little tiresome it's just a little

tiresome because all these characters

that are clamoring for this islamic

state when i actually look at them

i don't see them in an islamic state

i don't see them in an islamic state

so if they are not sedoma i want to know

how they can bring about aslama

if if they're not i want to know how

they can bring

and if they're not hasouna i want to

know how they can bring about

asana i want to know how a transitive

state that's not there how you can take

that to an

intransitive state if you don't have

something how do you take it to

somewhere else

how do you take people from here to

there

if you weren't there in the first place

do you see i mean i'd really like

somebody to figure that out

because i know there's something in

miracles in the catholic tradition and

you'll even find it oddly enough in the

islamic tradition

called by location you know the ability

to be in two places at one time you can

look it up in an

encyclopedia of catholic theology by

location you know

so maybe they can do it it's just

miraculous

but if they could perform miracles

couldn't they just you know wave their

magic tuspy and say

islamic state be you know and it is

well it's not that easy is it and just

like that you know in islamic education

what is that

i mean i hate this adjective i think we

should just get rid of it

islamic because adjectives

qualify right they give a quality

to to a noun and i just i think we're

making a big mistake

in in using this adjective when you

can't see it anywhere

where's the quality where is it so i

think we should just talk about

education let's forget about islamic

education let's just talk about

education i mean what is that stop

making claims

let's stop calling these things islamic

schools and just

just call them schools i mean the

history of islam there's never been a

school

called the islamic school imam

al-ghazali never taught an

institute called the islamic school why

because they were in the state of islam

they didn't need adjectives

to describe something that was

self-evident to everybody you use

adjectives when there's some kind of

ambiguity

right you use adjectives when you want

to explain to people

something about the the substantive

but when they don't need to have that

explanation you don't need the adjective

right because words should be used

properly and they should be used in

their place and that's called adab

or adab in in the arabic tradition adab

is putting everything in its proper

place and the adib is the literary man

because he always puts words

in their proper place and it's the

highest form of

of adam right is to actually speak

properly to speak well to speak

appropriately

so having said that

i want to just clarify a few things and

then i'll talk a little bit about what

the

subject is one i've never been an imam

to george bush

i was invited after 9 11 it was actually

around september 15th i was invited

by somebody who was working in the white

house contact me was actually a muslim

and his father was very devout muslim

very well known

in america he was one of the founding

members of the muslim student

association

and his son was working there and and i

got a call

and my initial reaction was

the famous hadith

sultan of tutina whoever goes

into the places where rulers are

he'll have tribulations right that's a

hadith

and i proved it right again

but the counsel that i was given

by my teachers and the people i take

advice from they said

they felt it was very important and it

certainly is quranic i mean nobody could

deny that musa alayhi salem is a prophet

and he went

he was sent to faraon who claimed he was

god

not you know that his country was god

so uh if you go to

uh if a prophet can go to firaoun and

he's told to speak

kindly to him

speak gently to him you know i mean

that's quran if you don't like that ayah

you know you have to write your own

quran and start your own religion

right there's people that do that

you can start your own religion because

the quran says

you know

you believe in parts of the book and

then you don't believe in other parts

and i believe in the entire quran

there's nothing in there that i don't

believe in but i also believe that the

quran is a very sophisticated book

it's not uh there's no such thing as you

know the dummies guide to revelation

right the idiot's guide to guidance

right i mean we just that's not our

religion there's other religions out

there for people that are looking

for that right but that's not islam the

quran says that this is a book for

people that think

deeply the quran says don't they reflect

deeply on this book or are their hearts

sealed

and i actually believe that the quran

does have guidance for any situation it

has guidance

for people when there i mean there's a

verse in the quran that says

that whoever

takes allegiance

with people that are their enemies

woman to a woman to allah w