bismillah
[Music]
sha Allah Sheikh Hamza Yusuf will be
speaking about a number of topics that
were online on those a tuna website that
the the the people got to vote on on
what topic they wanted to hear and there
was an overwhelming response on all of
the topics and people were interested in
all the topics so in Java Sheikh Hamza
will give a brief overview of all those
topics sha Allah without further ado she
comes to us a Mithila cd-rom the the
topics that were put out on the internet
and people were asked to vote on them I
thought all of them were good and so I
thought I'd just talk a little bit about
each one because I think it relates to
the conference itself what we're going
to be talking about these theological
fault lines and a lot of the problems
that we're dealing with the first one
was about two Hadees in relationship to
the current global situation of Muslims
which the first one is be kind to
neighbors whoever believes then along
the last day let him not forget about
his neighbor honor his neighbor and then
the other one was whoever believes in
along the last day let him speak well or
be silent the Leopold higher on LDLs
mode and we know in a hadith the Prophet
Salah I said him said that gibreel would
come to him and keep telling him to be
mindful of the neighbor to the point
where the prophets Elijah him said I
thought he was going to have the
neighbor be included in the inheritance
laws so that they would actually inherit
from the wealth of the person
what's interesting about the Muslim
understanding about neighbors is that
this was never understood in the history
of Islam to exclude neighbors that were
not of your faith it always included
Jews Christians and any other peoples
that were your neighbors because the
neighbor has a right over you in fact in
the waha reMed hub which was practiced
in Andalusia for some time originally
from Iranian jurist in the vehement have
they considered it prohibited to go to
bed without checking if 40 neighbors
from each direction in your hai went to
bed satiated in other words they took
literally the hadith he does not believe
in Allah and the last day who goes to
bed satiated and his neighbor is hungry
as if it negated your faith that you
could go to bed neglecting your
neighbors so what do we make now of this
interdependent world where people the
Muslims are no longer at the gates of
Vienna they're inside treating the
patients of Vienna in their hospitals
what do we make of this new situation in
some ways it's not new and that's
important to remember that the this idea
somehow of a pluralistic world and a
multicultural world is new it is new in
the West because in the Western
tradition any type of difference was
very often crushed with impunity
difference of religion was not tolerated
until really after the Protestant
revolutions and Reformation that led to
these horrible religious wars led to the
Enlightenment and then finally to
accepting other Christian sects and to a
certain degree the Jewish people
but now we see in America that people of
various faiths
living side by side we for instance our
school right now
even though we've got a campus that is
going to go through a renovation but
right now we're teaching our students in
a Baptist Seminary
so we're Muslims renting from a Baptist
Seminary now granted these are Baptists
in Berkeley California so they're
probably a little more open-minded about
having Muslims teaching their theology
in their seminary but that that is the
fact of modern American society we have
mosques where parking lots are shared
with synagogues and with churches and it
works out perfect because we show up on
Friday they show up on Saturday and the
other show up on Sunday so they have
their problems on different days but
this is a reality of American society
the ancient Muslim world was very
multicultural
it was very pluralistic there was
interaction with many different cultures
in fact it's arguable that the Muslims
were eventually conquered by the
European colonialists because they had
created a world in which the military
was becoming increasingly less important
there were so many good relations
between different countries that the
Muslims were trading with the Chinese
they were trading with the Hindus they
were trading with the Christians of
Central Asia this was the reality of the
Muslim world a highly multicultural
world and you can see it linguistically
and many of their statements but the
inculcation of love of the neighbor for
Belgium and this is one of the most
important commandments of Christianity
love your neighbor as yourself love God
with all of your heart and love your
neighbor as yourself this in reality
according to Martin Luther was a
reduction of the Ten Commandments to two
central
Commandments because if you look at the
Ten Commandments they can be summed up
in these two commandments love God with
all your heart so that would mean
honoring the Sabbath not taking his name
in vain do it and then love your
neighbor as yourself that would mean not
coveting his goods not coveting his wife
these things so that really sums up
Christianity Judaism can be summed up
according to Rabbi Gama one of the great
scholars again love your name love God
and then love your neighbor everything
else is just commentary Christian Islam
according to Fahad Dino Rossi can be
summed up in two statements are you bad
that a holic will hit metal Hulk
worshipping the creator and serving his
creation I'll help the first hadith that
is taught in the tradition of Maha
design is the muscle cell below alia in
which the prophets eliezer him said in
an unbroken chain that's taught to this
day as the first hadith given to a
haughty student Rahim Unni or Hama Hama
Rahman aha moments that are manfred arc
ER ham comb or your hammock own memphis
emma those who show mercy though on
those in the earth the merciful will
show mercy on those who show mercy on
those in the earth so the amount of
grace that you get from God is
commensurate with the amount of grace
that you show to allows creation that's
the first hadith based on the idea that
the Prophet was a rama a mercy to all
the worlds so that leads to the next
question which is how we deal with
extremists this was put on there and I
think a lot of people voted for this if
you look right now everything is being
brought up again the news is filled with
crazy Muslims the all the talking heads
of
Obama has just announced a major
outreach program to the Muslims the
Muslim community in the United States
hopefully not involving entrapment right
so a lot of Muslims when they hear these
things you know it's like the Native
Americans used to say white man speaks
with forked tongue now you can say I
don't know what we'd have to do now
because not just the whites are speaking
with forked tongues anymore fright
workout better just say that a lot of
people speak with forked tongues these
days so how do we deal with our
extremists first of all it's not on us
to deal with our extremists the vast
majority of Muslims are not obliged to
be dealing with extremists those who
deal with the extremists are to law
enforcement agencies if that extremism
involves violence whether it's in the
Muslim lands or and then or in the lands
of other than the Muslims although
according to one view anywhere where
Muslims are able to pray and fast and
practice their religion it's a land of
Islam and the Prophet said Jorun idiot
or do masti than what the hora the whole
world el árbol the whole world is a
place of worship for my community and he
said go where you want and wherever you
find good stay there so how do we deal
with the extremists the law enforcement
eel with those who are violent but not
through entrapment and other things we
we come from a system of law in the West
that does not believe in pre-emptive law
enforcement in the way that it has
become imagined today in fact Eisenhower
completely another mitai 's the idea of
pre-emptive war
and he actually said that this is a Nazi
idea it's it's not we don't have that in
our understanding of a just war the idea
of oh I'm a little worried about these
people and so let's go crush them before
they crush us and we have unfortunately
a best-selling author in the United
States New York Times bestseller that
argued for a pre-emptive nuclear strike
on Muslims and there was no uproar about
that if Muslims argued for a pre-emptive
nuclear strike on Europeans or Americans
what would people be saying about that
but we have somebody here who's arguing
for a preemptive strike that it might be
necessary that's at a certain point to
kill them before they kill us this is
the type of madness that we're doing
when I was asked to speak in in
Washington about extremism I said look
extremism as an as American as apple pie
this is one of the most extreme
societies on the planet I said no we're
in the Muslim world do you have water
drinking contests to see how much water
a person can drink they had a woman die
here in Southern California in a
water-drinking contest because you can
actually upset your your your
electrolyte balance and die but they
were let's see how many they had a
cockroach eating contest where a man
died after the cockroach eating contest
and the prize for the contest was a boa
constrictor and he ate the most and
somebody said he was the life of the
party
well he was the death of the after-party
because he literally died from eating so
many cockroaches we're in the Muslim
world are you gonna have a watermelon
eating contest where are you gonna have
a hot dog eating contest and yet you can
go on YouTube and I'm sure you'll find
hundreds of videos of people having hot
dog eating contest that is an extreme
form of behavior we have extreme sex in
this culture we have extreme music for
the first time you asked doctors
especially those who are in
nose and throat expertise about young
people losing their hearing because
they're listening to music at extreme
levels and then if you don't think we
have extreme violence just look at some
of the gun called culture the type of
gun power that people are obsessed with
they go out and shoot machine guns you
don't need a machine gun to kill a moose
people hunt fish they fish with with
dynamite just go drop the dynamite it
blows up and all the fishes come to the
surface
that's one way of that's not the kind of
relaxed you know I mean I mentioned last
week I saw a Chinese man flying a
Chinese kite in San Francisco in the
park you know we have a lot of Chinese
in San Francisco they go out and they do
Tai Chi publicly and they do and he was
flying his kite and it was he was like
he was doing Tai Chi and I was just
watching him and then this man came from
the indigenous culture not the ancient
indigenous culture but the indigenous
call it took me a while to work out when
because I would hear my Muslim immigrant
friends say oh he was American it took
me a while to work out that meant white
that's like a code word for white I
didn't know that you know I said what do
you mean you're American yeah
citizenship I mean white that finally
came out so anyway this was this guy was
an American he's got his supersonic kite
that made a noise that literally he
almost had to plug your ears it was like
a drone striker of kites and he was
flying this kite around yeah
yeah and making it and there's a Chinese
man just flying his kite like a Tai Chi
master and I was thinking what a
juxtaposition of two cultures one that
inculcates quietude and stillness and
harmony and the other that is obsessed
with adrenaline rushes and I know ER
doctors that go skydiving on the weekend
because nothing beats splitting open the
sternum and doing a cardiac massage like
the only thing that'll even come close
to adrenaline rush like that is
skydiving on the weekend skydiving is an
extreme sport in fact I would argue that
anybody that sky dives if they're not in
the military is a stark raving lunatic
I would never jump out of a plane unless
I absolutely had to and you'd probably
have to push me out stay even if I had
to that is a crazy thing to do Muslims
respect life they don't risk their lives
unless they have to Mauritania think
you're you're a lunatic to swim in the
ocean
Mauritania live on the ocean they never
go swimming they think people that swim
in the ocean are mad because they know
what's in the ocean that you can't see
right and in this country after when I
was a kid they had a film called Jaws
nobody swam for months after that film
because they realized what was in the
ocean so extremism is a human problem
but when you have extreme conditions a
certain type of extremism emerges when
you have the type of imbalance that we
have in the world today you cannot be
surprised at violent responses to those
incredible conditions that people are
suffering under and I would argue that
the African American situation in this
country led to the type of violent
responses even though again if you
studied Cohen tell history you'll know
that a lot of this was entrapment also
but the militancy that emerged in the
1960s
was a result of extreme conditions and I
heard Brazil Brazil insky who was in
Carter's administration I heard him give
us talk about dealing with Muslim
extremism and he said if you do not deal
with the genuine grievances like the
grievances of the african-american
community in the 1960s if you don't deal
with those grievances then you cannot
expect the type of violent response to
stop you have to look at what is being
said
McChrystal one of these generals who was
in charge of the special forces in Iraq
said we have to understand why they're
fighting we want to pretend like this
false narrative that oh they just don't
like us they don't like our freedoms
okay well why aren't they
bombing Sweden Sweden's a more open
society than the United States I mean
the site this mythology that has been
created around these scenarios is just
unacceptable people deserve a better
understanding of the problem and if we
don't give them a better understanding
they won't be able to address the real
issues here the real problems the
Palestinian problem has to be addressed
you're looking at over 60 years of
madness in Palestine 60 years and even
going back further into the 1920s when
you had the the British Mandate and
bringing in a lot of the Jewish
immigration and there were if you go
back and read that early period it's a
very interesting history and I was
surprised to know that the one of the
first Zionist questions I read a book by
a Zionist who argued that one of the
first questions was that they would
succeed or fail on based on how they
treated the Arabs so the original
settlers in Israel were concerned about
that problem but it just became a
response that we see the results of it
today one of my Syrian friends said to
me why isn't anything
anybody doing anything about Syria and I
said to him well welcome to the club
that's what the Palestinians have been
saying for the last 70 years this is the
human condition people are overwhelmed
but if you don't address the real
problems I'm talking about the root
problems if you look at what we have is
an emergency when we have things like
Boston and these are emergency
situations in a medical system you have
the emergency room but you also have the
intensive care unit you have the other
units that take care of people of lesser
extremes and then you also should have
in place a preventive system of medicine
where you educate the people about
exercise about staying well health care
needs to be addressed from all of the