A Qur'anic Odyssey: Examining the Imams in the Islamic Community of Prophet Muhammed and Examining Ourselves

WITH ALLAH’S NAME, THE MERCIFUL BENEFACTOR, THE MERCIFUL REDEEMER

A Qur’anic Odyssey: Examining the Imāms in the Islāmic Community of Prophet Muhammed

and Examining Ourselves

Khatīb: Jibrīl Abdul-Hafīz (جبريل عبدالحفيظ)

E-mail: NewAfrica2@aol.com or new_africa_now@yahoo.com

Friday, March 6, 2009 / Khutba-tul-Jumu’ah, Rabi-al-awwal 9, 1430

As Salaam ‘Alaykum: We thank Allāh, we seek His help, we ask for His forgiveness, we believe and put our complete trust in Him, Mighty and Sublime is He. We witness that there is no G’d but Allāh, He alone is without partners, and we witness that Muhammed is His Servant and Messenger, the prayers and peace be on him, on his descendants, his companions, and peace be on Allāh’s Messengers (all of them), and what follows of this traditional salutation.

Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) has said in Sūrah 24:21

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا تَتَّبِعُوا خُطُوَاتِ الشَّيْطَانِ وَمَن يَتَّبِعْ خُطُوَاتِ الشَّيْطَانِ فَإِنَّهُ يَأْمُرُ بِالْفَحْشَاء وَالْمُنكَرِ وَلَوْلَا فَضْلُ ﷲِ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَتُهُ مَا زَكَا مِنكُم مِّنْ أَحَدٍ أَبَدًا وَلَكِنَّ ﷲَ يُزَكِّي مَن يَشَاء وَﷲُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ

To bring clarity about this language, ﴾ خُطُوَاتِ الشَّيْطَانِ ﴿ khu-tu-wā-tish-shay-tān | the devil’s footsteps we must acquire a functional understanding of what Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) has revealed. الشَّيْطَانِ must be avoided if we want to keep our humanity in check. الشَّيْطَانِ | The chief enemy of man who is far from the truth and mercy of Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) knows his purpose is to infect humanity with his diseased, arrogant, contemptuous, perverted, self delusional, intoxicated thinking that convinces fools to believe that humanity is too inferior to serve the one and only deity who is known by the proper name Allāh and other improper names.

As human beings it is imperative that we take a critical look at how we deify behavior by making it an object of worship. In this case, we identify Al-Islām as behavior that embodies our complete way of life. However, it is a sin and a shame that we are now deifying the works of the revered scholars and militant deviants by elevating their schools of thought as the only behavior that is acceptable to Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى).

In the Islamic Community of Prophet Muhammed (ﺼﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﻮ ﺴﻠﻢ) there is only one deity whose proper name is Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى), there is only one Prophet Muhammed (ﺼﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﻮ ﺴﻠﻢ) who is the Messenger of Allāh to 1,500,000,000 people serving Allāh in different ways from the cradle to the grave. What makes us think that the only way to serve Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) is by cloning a make believe identity, overdosed on the intoxicated idea of self-righteous superiority?

Yes we have beautiful traditions and ceremonial expressions that are linked to the practices of Prophet Muhammed (ﺼﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﻮ ﺴﻠﻢ); nevertheless, we can’t deify any entity as an object of worship. Prophet Muhammed has said,

أَفْضَلُ الذِّكْرِ لَا إِلهَ إِلَّا اللهُ

The most excellent thinking is that there is no deity except Allah.

The mindset that leads to hostility, hatred, and the idea that whoever is not an identical clone of us is fit for nothing but fuel to keep the fires of hell burning is repulsive. It is a mindset that led to the genocidal crime against humanity known as slavery, the holocaust; it is the mindset that fostered the genocide in Rwanda. It is the mindset that evolves into Satanic thinking, it is a disease that we seek protection with Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) from.

Take the digestive system, we consume food to survive, yet the fact is that our bodies process what we put in ourselves and extract what is best for itself and eliminates as wastes what it can’t use. Likewise, this same process is in place as it relates storing reprocessed spiritual information, we take what we need, it benefits us, but nevertheless, if we don’t eliminate the excess over time it will clog up our spiritual digestion system and decay into a foul, stinking, rotten mess that contaminates us to the point of spiritual death. This is why Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) has said in Sūrah, 29:45

اتْلُ مَا أُوحِيَ إِلَيْكَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَأَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاء وَالْمُنكَرِ وَلَذِكْرُ ﷲِ أَكْبَرُ

اتْلُ | ut-lu is اَﻠﻔِﻌْﻞُٱﻷﻤْﺮُ | al-fiﻉ-lul-amr | Qur’anic language formed as a command, past, present and future tense order from Allāh (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) teaching us in this case to اتْلُ | recite (!) what was revealed to you from the book and أَقِمِ | a-qim | keep the prayer devotion straight (!); surely prayer تَنْهَى | tan-hā | restrains from الْفَحْشَاء | al-fah-shā-i | indecency; adultery; fornication; sodomy. Illicit sexual conduct and الْمُنكَرِ | al-mun-kar | what is repugnant, disliked and strange to human nature; وَلَذِكْرُ ﷲِ أَكْبَرُ

أَقُولُ قَوْلِي هذَا وَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللهَ لِي وَلَكُم