of the different meanings of mat in the
Arabic language and one of them is
formal Sahaba and a Mac I'm with you it
could also mean indeed Maya hamsa to
than an ear I have five denars with me
so there's different need but he was
saying it's a valid interpretation to
say that it's for Musa haba
to have that there there the OMA is one
the Jews and the Arabs in Medina were
one OMA anyway but the other thing that
he really has mastered is a solid fit
and he knows the great textbooks of our
tradition and so in trying to grapple
with what's happening and one of the
things because we're in such an
enlightened age and there's so many
brilliant commentators on the internet
that are always enlightening us with
their amazing insights and their
impeccable grammatically sound syntax
you know but one of the things that
people you know like why are you just
talking about the minorities what about
all the majorities right and part of
something that we have to understand as
our as Muslims is that when Muslims
fight amongst each other that's just
Muslims fighting amongst each other but
when they oppress minorities in the name
of Islam that's a blemish on the
religion when they're doing it in the
name of the religion and this is about
our religion which is not the property
of the Muslim community and we have a
type of tribalism there's a tribal
mentality you know what I call Benno
Islam this idea that this is my tribe
and the Sahaba were all converts lest
you forget right they were converts to
the religion so this idea is that this
is somehow the possession of the Arabs
or the possession of the Saudis or the
possession of Isis or the possession of
the Pakistani or the Turks or any other
ethnicity no this is a religion that has
an open invitation to humanity
from any chef and human who ever wants
to believe let him believe whoever wants
to disbelieve let him just believe but
it's an open invitation and there's very
clear verses in the Quran that if you
turn away from it God will bring other
people and they won't be like you like
if you're not going to live up to this
faith you'll be replaced with other
people because the human project is
predicated on worship of the Creator if
there's no sound worship there's no
reason for the project to go on and it
ends when when that stops the prophets
all I centum said the end of time will
not come until there's no one left on
the earth to say God so the Atheist win
right Dawkins and all these people
they'll be happy to know that in this
world they eventually they win and you
can see the way things are going it
would appear that that's that's the way
things are going because more and more
people are abandoning faith seeing it as
a problem instead of a solution seeing
it as a sickness instead of a healing
seeing it as an obstacle instead of the
remover of obstacles so he you know in
thinking about this revival of the
mattoon and sexual slavery concubinage
and these things that for instance
graham would in his article using
bernard heiko as a foundation argues
that these muslims that think that isis
isn't following their religion they just
have a distorted version of their
religion and this basically graham woods
argument in that Atlantic Monthly
article that what they were doing or
what they're doing in Syria in Iraq is
actually from Islam it's not an anomaly
they're just practicing things that
Wilson haven't been practicing for a
thousand years and
people like glenn beck has written a
book recently it's number three last
time i look number three bestseller on
the new york times bestseller it is
called the problem is islam argues that
there are many many good muslims but
they're not good because they're muslim
they're good because they're not
practicing islam right and so we're
getting large numbers of people being
indoctrinated into this idea somehow
that our religion is a death cult and
arguably a death cult has emerged within
our religion this whole idea you know
ashada to ohio tuna is slogan that
martyrdom is our goal that's that's not
the goal of muslims that's not that
that's not to go the Prophet said let's
at amend only Allah I do he said also
don't ask for death right and if there
was a better way to die than in the arms
of your wife in your bed then he would
have died that way that's where he died
he didn't die on the battlefield less
than 0.1% of Sahaba actually died in on
the battlefield it's a very small number
of the Sahaba actually died on the
battlefield so this kind of cult of
death that has emerged within the
religions actually very alien to the
Islamic tradition and we he asked about
who the martyr was and they said the
Mars the one who dies fee Sevilla and he
said then the martyrs of my Ummah would
be very few that's in a satya hadith but
he said the martyr is the one who dies
when a building collapses on him or when
he falls off his camel or when he gets
dysentery or when he drowns there's lots
of ways to be a martyr
so in grappling with this Sheikh
Abdullah came up with this idea of
reviving the constitution of Medina it's
sometimes it's referred to as the
constitution of Medina sake Fenton
Medina the cut the the constitution of
Medina for want of a better word was an
agreement
in which the profit when he came to
Medina he was invited by some of the
ålesund huzzah Raj but he was not in
full power he had very few followers at
that time there were several Jewish
tribes in Medina there were three major
ones which all of us know Benny upon
OFAC Benny Benny Nevada and Vinny
Florida and he entered into a treaty in
the first year of hijra with them a
Madonna in which they would all agree in
their own religious expressions to work
towards righteousness and to defend one
another and this was this was a pact but
what's interesting about the pact is it
had equal rights in terms of citizenship
and Imam Shafi said this is an agreement
of our community one of the most
intriguing aspects of this Constitution
is that even the most skeptical of
Orientalists actually believe that this
is an authentic legal document patricia
crone a who died a few years back you
know one of the Hagah rights accepted it
Fred doner somebody who's worked a lot
on the origins of Islam accepted it it
there's a few different recensions
that are found even his hop in his
sierra has a a copy we don't have any
original copy but we do know that it was
a valid document and what I spoke on in
Marrakesh I mean chef Abdullah did his
he gave his kid a methoxy Leah what he
calls top Syria which is giving it a
foundational basis in the tradition
where he goes he looks at all the
different texts he looks at he's got
enough ahim with that every studies
these concepts that are misunderstood
like jihad jizya Vilma
arguing that you know that these are
these are really misunderstood concepts
in our tradition and think about what's
important to remember about Chef
Abdullah is that he is not a modernist
by any stretch he is he is very much
embedded in tradition but he's a
creative traditionalist and one of the
things about twinbee arnold 20 the great
english historian who wrote a study in
history 9 volume study of history where
he studied 21 civilizations why they
rose how they maintained their power
why they began to decline and why they
collapsed and argues that out of those
21 civilizations that he studied only
there were only seven living
civilizations today but what he argues
in there is that civilizations are
confronted with challenges and if they
have creative minorities that can
grapple with these challenges they're
able to withstand the challenges and
sometimes overcome them surmount them
but when the challenges become
insurmountable due to a dearth of these
creative thinkers then the civilization
collapses and this is one of the real
trying aspects of our civilization right
now we have very few creative people
most of the people in power I don't
think could get middle managerial jobs
at corporations with their
qualifications a lot of them I've read
the SAT scores that they have on a lot
of these people in the Senate and
Congress and it's embarrassing I mean
they weren't even good in school like
Dan Quayle said if I knew I would have
got this far I would have studied harder
you know and that is a case against
democracy it's a case for monarchy
because at least they know they're going
to be in power so anyway I'll just go
through some of the things that I looked
at it is sanam with Sam at tolerant
Islam one of the verses in sort of that
hatch this was it's a very important
verse I mean everything is important but
but this loan a default locking Nessa
Oh Desiree in wash and NASA barber home
by baldon LaHood D'Amato hood image in
wash Suwannee oh whoa bein Maserati well
message it will charisma logic a tiara
well I am Sauron Allahu magnums
Auroville inna llaha policies had it not
been for God using some people to defend
other people you would have seen the
Suwannee the the churches the beyond the
temples of salah whathe tune so the
monastery is the the churches and the
synagogues and then the massage it were
in wearing god's name is often mentioned
and then the ummah differ does it go
back to massage it the the head of the
meal is a diadem massage it or is it I
doubt all of them you know I think it
makes more sense to say it goes back to
all of them because these are places
where the Abrahamic God of Abraham
certainly is being warship and Allah
says to attack enemies and SWAT invented
or vehicle you know this is a word we
share and one of these recent debates at
Wheaton College that courageous lady who
said that you know we worship the same
God and she's right but the concept of
the God differs the God is the lord of
the of the heavens and the earth the
creator and sustainer of the heavens and
the earth we can differ on how we
conceptualize that God but the God is
the same God in in the same way if you
look at I mean it's a poor analogy but
you have Republicans and Democrats both
of them believe in government but they
have very different concepts of how what
government should be right and and and
so people differ in their
conceptualization of ideas but the idea
of God is the same and one of the things
about our tradition like the Catholics
called the via negativa you know the
gating way which is the way of the
unknowable God and certainly if you read
Aquinas on God even Aquinas on the
Trinity it's very clear that the
Catholics believe in a God that cannot
be
temporal cannot be in place is not
complex is of simple reality I mean
these these these are these are
understandings that the Christian
theologians had centuries ago so the
idea and then obviously the logos and
the Incarnation those are all mysteries
in that tradition but the God which is
behind the personas what Meister Eckhart
calls the Godhead is the unknowable God
right the God of that with the you know
the in the Vedic tradition they called
the god of the near guna you know the
God who that's attribute list that we
the doubt that can be named is not the
eternal Dao you know so there's in our
tradition we believe that God is that
which is unlike anything in fact Joe as
Whitlock I show you how the law is
magette to call God a thing is only
magette it's it's because out of edit we
can't say he's no thing but he's not a
thing God is not a thing because the
word in Arabic poor thing is shape which
means willed into existence a shaitan
right the shay already is is in the
mushiya
so all these things that allah have
created they're already embedded in our
language is a metaphysic of creation but
we call God a thing out of Edom to say
that he's not no thing but there is no
thing like him they said committed he
Satan
there is no shape like God but at Buhari
has a chapter called the permissibility
of saying using thing to talk about God
so this is the God that we worship the
the unknowable God but he has revealed
himself to us through language and that
language is problematic because language
always
creates ambiguities it's not like
mathematics which is the language of
numbers it's the language of ideas and
concepts and and you can't pin them down
the more you pin down a concept the more
elusive it becomes and so allah is
ar-rahman ar-rahim but any number over
infinity has cancelled out so anything
you can think about God's mercy is
cancelled out but he's given us mercy in
the world to let us know something about
his mercy it's an approximation it's
tuck ribbon money it's to approximate
these meanings to our consciousness so
had it not been then they all these
religious places would be destroyed so
this permissibility for fighting which
came in sort of thought Hajj was in
defense of religious institutions so the
jihad right Athena in Ladino parted una
be on whom woolum oh these people have
been given permission to defend
themselves because they were oppressed
for their religion so the actual enla
you know the the legal rationale for
jihad initially was purely religious
persecution and obviously it extends to
any forms of oppression and so if you
look at the fatima kiya it's a period of
religious persecution so the prophet of
all people knew firsthand what it was
like to be persecuted for your religion
he tasted the pain of that reality and
and what's interesting and intriguing
about the the pagans in mecca is they
were worried about the economic impact
that monotheism would have on their
trade and commerce like they never
thought that people one day would come
from Indonesia or from California to go
to Mecca in those days it was just the
Arab tribes that were going but they
thought these tribes are coming because
they've got idols in the Kaaba if he if
he gets his way all these idols are
going to be destroyed who's going to
come
the Jews and the Christians aren't going
to come they have Jerusalem so we're
going to be stuck here without any
revenue and that was the mentality of
these people because they really didn't
have a problem with adding another God
but if you said only one God and let ela
ha there's no other God in the law that
troubled them and so the provençal isin
em during this persecution they first
went to the Najah she and one of the
things that I think Muslims forget is
that we have three Sunan from our
prophet the sunnah of powerlessness
which is the sunnah of mecca and this
son is not abrogated but the muslims act
as if it's been abrogated if you say
that it's abrogated that means his 13
years in mecca have no real meaning like
all that suffering he went through all
that patience sabudana ali acid in the
more ethical agenda all those things
don't really have any any meaning to us
anymore they're just a historical fact
so that Sunnah is it just has no meaning
to us that's basically what people are
saying when they say that the Meccan
period is over
Mecca period is never over if the
conditions in which the Meccan period
occurred returned then the same Sunnah
of Mecca returns and that's that even if
Antonia said that so the second Sunnah
is the Sunnah of because remember Sunnah
is his applaud his off I'll and his Iker
are odd you know it's what he deems
correct so the next one is how to live
in a non-muslim society that's not
persecuting you and that's the son of
ethiopia of Habashi they were allowed to
practice their faith and and and the
lesson is the sunnah of when you have
sovereignty when god has empowered you
again
and figuratively because all piled up
worth a lab is that when God puts you in
a position in which you're representing
his power because all power is God's so
in that type of situation how do you
behave and again the magnanimity that he
showed so that then he made his Hedorah
to Medina after 13 years of persecution
he makes this he general he attempted
you to go he was thinking about going to
Hajj up in Eastern Arabia he went to
different tribes asking them if they
would take him he was kind of Yahoo will
know about it he used to go and ask for
tribal protection none of them helped
him
and finally the house and the huzzah Raj
who were in a town called Yathrib and
these were two Yemeni tribes or Kalani
the Yemenis are divided into Hemi Aries
and Kalani's they were Kalani Yemenites
who left after the the famous dam broke
and many of the Yemenites went to syria
and different places they went to to
medina yesterday at the time and the
house and the Hazara zarba know allah
they were from the same ancestor so
they're actually one family but like the
Hatfields and the McCoys family's feud
and so they began to feud and and they
had allies from amongst the Jews so the
else had their allies in the huzzah Raj
had their allies and right before the
Prophet came they had a war called how
to bhagwath in which they fought each
other and and Pereda was involved and
Alberta was involved so the Jews used to
tell them you know there's a prophet
coming that's why we're here he's coming
to this city when he comes he's going to
get rid of all your idols and and they
used to hear this and one of the
intriguing aspects of the Arab in Medina
is that if
had a really sick child they would swear
an oath to God because they believed in
our laws the Supreme God it would swear
an oath that they'll raise it a Jew if
it lives and so there were there were
actually several Jewish Arab children in
Medina and that acara javi Dean was
revealed because some of them wanted to
force their children to be Muslim even
though they were Arabs who had raised
them as Jews because they had very high
regard for the Jews because they were
people of the book and they used to ask
them for things even though they didn't
convert to Judaism they would ask them
and so the the Piranha was revealed that
you can't compel them to convert to
Islam they they leave them in their
Judaism unless they want to convert to
Islam that's one of the as Bob that's
mentioned so there the the Jews in
Medinah
there were probably I mean these
estimates are hard but there were
probably around thirty thousand there
were more Jews and there were Arabs in
Medina and and the Jews had primarily
they were agriculturalists and they and
they controlled the soup and the no pay
no pot in particular had control over
the marketplace and so the Arab Jews and
the Jews who were farmers used to bring
their crops to the bend or pay no pot
and then they would they would buy them
and sell them in the marketplace to
Arabs that would come and then they were
also Goldsmith's and and money lenders
so these were the occupations so when
the first thing that the Prophet did was
he asked about the soup and they said
it's been your pay no class and he said
the Muslims should have their own soup
right so this is his economic foresight
and so he actually has set up a separate
market which obviously would have
angered Ben okay no Pat because they
would have seen that as breaking their
monopoly but that's what he did and his
soup was very interesting because it was
more like what we would call today a
flea market he did not allow anybody to
own a stall it was first-come
first-serve so you couldn't get like the
best play
and it was if you got there the earliest
you got the best place and so it was a
very egalitarian marketplace and so the
first thing he did was he built a soup
and he built the Masjid those were the
first two axud he did his first hota
which i will have been sanam the Jewish
rabbi heard he got everybody together in
Medina said yahan ass up shoo saddam
spread peace well up i am open and and
and feed food feed food well salud while
cielo are ham and maintain your kinship
bonds and that remember that's a deep
statement in relation to alison has
garage as well as the jews that were at
war with each other
maintain your kinship bonds don't fight
you're all related to each other
maintain those bonds well soluble a
Leigh Whannell Sunni young that's Hotel
generative is Salam and pray at some
portion of the night when people are
sleeping and you'll enter into paradise
with peace so it begins with peace and
it ends with peace as his first Hopa
begins with peace and it ends with peace
so in Medina he establishes the Masjid
and he in the marketplace and been open
open even though it entered into an
agreement begin to have talks with the
flourish and so this is the beginning of
the breakdown of of the sofa they have
and and they give them basically aid at
Badr and so they are expelled to he
allows them to take all of their wealth
and they went to to Hiva but it's
important to note at this time the
Prophet is very weak there's probably
less than 2,000 men that he has the Jews
were more powerful than he was and the
men okay nope I was expecting for a the
end of the earth to come to his aid and
they didn't which indicates that they
recognized that what they did was
breaking the treaty and the Jew many of
the Jews were very upright they were
they're honest people and they were
people of their word and the Prophet
mentioned that about especially mo Haiti
and others for afar and we know the
Arabs have a saying o famine Samoan more
trustworthy than Samoan more trustworthy
and Samuel who was the famous Jew that
would not give up the armor of
immigrants who left it as a trust with
him and actually lost his child because
of that and he's the famous poet jihad a
poet as well so these are the tribes the
Yehuda Ben Israel Benoit Marvin Jose de
Bono Duchamp been on a job bono Avenue
that inaba-san ABBA Majed it was from
that Abba in Philippi own this is a
Jewish tribe so Muslims only know the
the try and that should be sure play
about with a par Muslims only know the
the you know the three tribes but these
are all all Jews mentioned in the sofa
so there were many Jews in Medinah that
did not break their trust and you can
see the dominant tries Benny for a law
that should be a law not a ball and that
Bennett a nor back then in a beer and
and and then there was a this is later
right there were Medina was actually
protected by these lava tracks and
anybody who's ever seen the lava tracks
you cannot it's almost impossible to
walk on them they're they're quite
dangerous because they're very sharp you
can't take animals across and that's why
the trench was such a useful way of
protecting Medina because it Medina was
literally surrounded by in fact in
Arabic is called lava with a bow you
know it's like this Israeli lady
recently said you know Palestine doesn't
exist because the Arabs don't have a P
in their language
so they're not the V either they say so
lava is actually lava is the Arabic word
ball is fine so buffoon has a bead so
that'll work
so this is a very important event Imam
Shafi said l'm adam mo hadith and
Minetta in me the SIA and Norris ooh la
la la la anyway said I'm lemon Asura Ben
Medina T Radha and yahuda calf at and a
lady Jie Jie I know of no one from
amongst the people of prophetic
biography that differ that the Prophet
SAW lady sinem when he came to Medina he
entered into an alliance with all of the
Jews without jizya now at hazard or hood
beneath Alaba refused to go out because
they said it was sipped and the only one
that went out was mo Hajduk there were
two jews that fought at a hood and
mahalia was killed
mahalia there's a he laughs about
whether he became Muslim or not even his
Hawk says Aminah well I'm useless for
other valid ilayhi ill foodini
he believed in Allah but he didn't
become Muslim because he was just too
accustomed to his own religion but he he
told the Jews we made a promise to
defend the Prophet we should do it he
went out he fought he was actually
martyred and he left all of his property
with the Jews to give to the Prophet and
the first endowment in Islam came from
the wealth of Mahadev according to one
tradition and the Prophet said about him
o Haiti hyrulean he's the best of the
Jews and then you
graduated as absent a fifth year the the
Jews of high bar and high bar was a it's
right I think 60 kilometers from from
Medina around their high bar was an
agricultural Oasis where the Jews lived
and they worked and they had a lot of
date orchards there and they had they
they weren't United they had several
open and the open are these se hace
they're called in Iran these these
fortresses and bene no beer the
leadership of been out there who yebin
of Bob Keane Ana Nabi ribbon Michael
Pape they were in high bar stirring up
and convincing them that we need to get
the allied with the chorus with Fasano
with Papa fan and these Arab tribes in
the area of any flame and just deal with
this once and for all
so they actually amassed an alliance of
about 10,000 and they and and this is
what rasa in the fifth year and so they
march on Medina this really isn't a
battle it's a skirmish because they
never fight about ten people died all
together despite the fact they were
there for you know almost a month and
they begin to aim begins to sow
dissension amongst them but during that
time the the nobility leadership goes to
Benny Paraiba the leadership of any poor
Eva and initially the leadership of
being a parade that doesn't want to have
anything to do with it they actually
help dig the trench they didn't want to
be involved in treachery but they were
convinced by a even a knock pop that
we've got 10,000 people this is it they
the Muslims at the time only
three thousand men that's all and they
were not well armed and so they really
thought they could take care of it and
he could he was very convincing he was a
very powerful leader and he convinced
Cobb but I said a what ID to ally with
them and so this is the treasonous event
that occurs during the Battle of during
the skirmish of alasa and they really
wanted to annihilate the Muslims so this
was kind of a genocide 'el attempt at
ridding the peninsula of the Muslims and
so the Quraish leave about the fan
leaves all of the Arab tribes leave and
they're left with Benny parada are in
there open a handful of them actually
went out to fight now what happens after
that is very murky to me I've read
several accounts of it I went through
all the serie literature on it I read
for a comedy book I read kiss stars work
the Israeli historian which is a very
pretty serious piece of scholarship
arguing against Barca atmos book but I'm
still convinced that it's grossly
exaggerated the numbers and there's
nothing sound on that the only thing in
a body that started in more had said
that the mulatto should be killed and
that Eddie when lisa and surat al-ahzab
clearly says very contractor una FATA
what's your own effect I mean the Quran
is very clear that some people were
killed and some were taken captive that
did occur it's undeniable but the
numbers and if you look at the the event
it just doesn't smack it doesn't sound
all the prisoners were kept in the house
admit that hadith I asked a father who
knows all the houses of Medina inside
out because they were all very well very
well studied and I asked them how many
people could be held in a house like
that he said it's a small house maybe 10
and if you read also the idea of digging
a ditch in the middle of the marketplace
of Medina it just doesn't make sense
there's several things in that narrative
that I find really really problematic
but anyway it's there and I think I
don't think any numbers should be
mentioned because we just don't know and
Imam addict did not accept it miss hawk
as a Mahad myth he was not a mod he was
just student of Zoey
they actually chased him out of Medina
he's he's the source he did an
incredible service to his ammonite then
that goes undiminished but he was not a
solid source in hadith and the rigor of
mattock in particular is is
well-established Malik did not like to
use anything that smacked of a weakness
and so you know the numbers are
definitely problematic but what happens
then is that the Prophet goes and he
makes a salud idea and what's really
intriguing about this event is they go
to make Amara but they're not allowed to
make their own bra and they meet that
hudaibiya and and the the Quraish send
out a waft earth man goes in to speak
with them they send out a WA and they
have a they're going to debate about
what's going to happen so they they come
to some agreements but all of the points
the Prophet compromises literally every
single point
he's just compromised even muhammad
rasool allah they said we don't accept
that and he told the ally to erase it
and Adi said I can't do it that's the
the Sophia called that Maharaja to Dubya
it's like a
disobeying the Prophet out of a depth of
the Prophet like he just said I can't
erase it and so the Prophet said show me
where it is and he pointed to it and the
Prophet himself erased Rasool Allah and
just said this a agreement between
Muhammad and Abdullah and the Potters
because the core I said we don't accept
that so you said not a problem
get rid of it every single point the the
Sahaba were so distraught at this and
they said everybody wavered except elbow
buckle even OMA even a ha ha
he went to Abu Bakr and he said Ali
sorrow Salman
isn't he the Messenger of God what are
we doing why are we cut they all had
their weapons they were ready to fight
why are we compromising like this
Abu Bakr he grabbed him he said you know
he reminded him and just shook him to
his core the prophets eyes and went in
he asked him Sodom Oh what he should do
she said look cut your hair go out and
sacrifice just give them some sense of
closure on their pilgrimage so he did
that and then they saw that and they did
that and they felt better on the way
back enough attack netic of the ravine
that's what's revealed like this is a
big opening what's the opening
compromise in every situation the
opening was peace this is the first time
in the history of his message where he's
actually got peace because the Jews now
he goes to haibach and and he defeats
them at high bar and enters into a
treaty with them they promised that as
ab half the date harvest so he entered
into a treaty that they would take half
the date harvest or they could leave and
go to syria they choose they decided to
choose to stay so they entered into a
contract with them that there would be a
non-belligerent treaty treaty of
non-belligerent this the first time the
prophet has peace from here on from the
sixth year on all you see is people
becoming Muslim Zoe said that man Fuji -
Islam fatone Alberta who cannot out of
AMA men who know fact before this was
greater than this fact this is an
opening that was a peaceful opening
there was no fighting and it's called a
victory it was a non-violent victory and
this was the greatest
victory ii to the the opening of Mecca
which was also a non-violent victory so
the two greatest victories of the
Prophet were victories of non-violence
in the mechanical potato - s people
would fight every time they met phonemic
Eretz in whose honor when they finally
had peace what would be a third power
and they stopped fighting what a
Menendez ba-ba-boom ba-ba and people
felt safe from one another well tackle
Fatah Fowler though they meet and then
they&