| THE STREET MMBAR JUM'AH KHUTBAH (20 December 2013) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_street_mimbar/ PLEASE e-mail Suggestions & Criticisms to khutbahs@yahoo.com It is in such a manner that We make plain Our signs so that the course of the Criminals may become clear. |
Bismillah Ar-Rahmaan Ar-Raheem.
Alhumdulillah. Peace and blessings on Muhammad (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam), his Noble Companions and Family.
Brothers and sisters, committed Muslims…
AQEEDAH IN PERSPECTIVE
This particular ayah is the ninety third ayah in Surah An Nisa'. Translated into English it means
And whosoever kills (or) slays deliberately another Muslim he will end up in the hell fire and he will be condemned by Allah and Allah will reject him and Allah will prepare for him a formidable suffering. (Surah An Nisa' verse 93)
Within the cause of all of the sectarian violence which is consuming the lives of many innocent Muslims across the world what are the imperatives that are presented to any public gathering of Muslims by other Muslims is the necessity of unity. To that end there are some Muslims intellectuals and scholars who are waking up to their responsibility and they are holding forums across the world where finally they are beginning to put the divisive issues on the table for the purpose of debate, challenge and ultimately convergence. Now unity has many facets and some of them have been discussed here, on the street, on this occasion an in some of those occasions it has been mentioned that unity is a byproduct of iman. But unity exists is the public domain; unity of thought, unity of perspective, unity of action and perhaps a unity of results; but because unity exists in the public domain it is impossible to talk about unity with a personal iman. So if unity exists in the public domain and if unity is a byproduct of iman then we must talk about a social iman. When we even mention a social iman we cannot even talk about it when there is a divided public mind. If we are to face facts we have to admit to ourselves that we have a divided public mind- that mind is divided along various fault lines. It could be divided due to gender considerations, that public mind could be divided due to national considerations, due to racial considerations and finally due to sectarian considerations; but when you have a divided public mind that means that you have no public mind! If we Muslims are to accept the mandate and the obligation of having to confront institutional injustice in our world and to confront the illegitimate exercise of power in our world there can be equivocation, no vacillation and no tarad'dud as far as our public mind is concerned. Indeed Allah says,
And as for those who reject Allah's participation and sponsor of human affairs, they are allies and sponsors of one another and if you Muslims do not do the same… (Surah Al Anfal verse 73)
Meaning that you are not allies and sponsors of one another (or) meaning that if you have a divided public mind
… then there will be on earth a general ambience of corruption and a transcendent destabilization. (Surah Al Anfal verse 73)
If we look around us at the world today there exists the general ambiance of corruption- it doesn't matter what system you focus on, be it economic, political, social, financial- which suggests that the Muslims are not being allies and sponsors of one another for if they were allies and sponsors of one another this level of corruption and destabilisation and lack of security would not exist and so that suggests that we have a divided public mind. A Muslim public mind is necessary to focus on the major issues that affect us all, issues of family, issues of poverty, issues of oppression, issues of injustice, issues related to the polarisation of wealth, issues related to the degradation of the environment. All of these demand a unified and a unitary public mind that knows what strategic objectives it has to deal with and this public mind is based upon a foundation of deliberation and challenge. Most of us, (in fact you can say this about ninety nine percent of all Muslims in the world), have an individual attachment and connection to Allah but at the same time that they have this individual connection and attachment to Allah they fail to take this connection into the public space. In fact many of them fear to take this connection with Allah into the public space. We have our individual beliefs and we have our individual methods of translating those beliefs into a connection with Allah but when we take those beliefs into the public space, (let us back up into the individual realm), does any body challenge our beliefs in the individual realm? When you are observing your individual connection to Allah (and) your individual attachment to Allah does anyone come up to you and challenge you and ask you why do you believe as you believe (or) why do you act as you act? That only happens in the public space. When you take your beliefs and your ideas and whatever comes to you from the Qur'an and from the example of Allah's Messenger that is when you receive the challenge "why do you act as you act (or) why do you believe as you believe? Why do you behave as you behave?" For unless you take your beliefs and activities into the public space and unless those are not challenged in the public space you are never force to justify why you believe what you believe in and why you behave in a certain way. It is only when you are forced into the public space to justify and to back up and to rationalise what you believe in that your belief becomes a conviction. Your belief becomes a conviction when somebody challenges it and when you are forced to justify it. So, in a sense, because we only have a personal connection to Allah we have no convictions! That's right brothers and sisters- we have, in the public space, no convictions because we are afraid to justify why we believe a certain way and why we act in a certain way in the public space.
One of these issues that requires a public mind but at the same time divides it is this issue of aqidah. This word is thrown around by many people without them taking the time to define its historical context and its definition. When we talk about the issue of aqidah today what we mean is a theological perspective and by the word perspective we don't mean this persons view or that person's view (or) this person's perspective or that person's perspective. By the word perspective what we mean is something like- let's put this into perspective so that when we talk about aqidah in a few words (and we will expand on this in a little bit), it is the idea of a theological perspective, (and we want you to keep this in mind), because there many people out there who are translating this word as a belief structure or as a creed or as a ideology or as a doctrine but all of these definitions come from a position that accepts the idea of a separation of church and state. So we want you to efface all those definitions in your mind and think of aqidah in the terms of a theological perspective.
One side of our public mind, (we hate to use these terms but because we have a divided public mind we have no choice), says that the other side of our public mind has a defective aqidah. So you have some on the Sunni side of our public mind that say "the Shi'is have a defective aqidah" and then they extend this so called defect into the domain of takfir and they say "because these people have a defective aqidah thereby they are Kafirs and, further, because they are Kafirs it is ok to justify their killing and murder." If we had a mature public mind, the first question this public mind would ask is this concept of aqidah a Qur'anic or a Prophetic concept. If we had a mature public mind, that ought to be the first question it ought to ask. Can we ground these ideas in the Qur'an and in the Sunnah. If you were to do your research you would find that the word aqidah is not a Qura'nic and Prophetic word. You would not find the word in a single ayah or in a single hadith of the Prophet. Also with regard to the attachment that the concept aqidah has to takfir one of the other things that you will not find in the Qur'an is that the word kufr is not used in a liberal fashion. The word kufr is applied almost throughout the ayaat of the Qur'an to people in power who use that power in an abusive fashion. The word kufr is never applied to the ordinary individual because generally that ordinary individual, especially within the realm of those who abusively and excessively apply power, is oppressed is oppressed and he does not have the time or the luxury to join an organised opposition to the truth or to the authority of Allah. When we talk about kufr we are talking about an organised opposition to the truth and an organised opposition to the correct exercise of power. So this word aqidah doesn't appear in the Qur'an and it doesn't appear in a single hadith of the Prophet and it doesn't mean this concept in entirely useless. This concept is not entirely useless if it is presented in the context of its inception and subsequent development. When the early Muslims expanded outside the Arabian Peninsula they met people of other faiths and in particular they met the Christians or what are considered to be today Eastern Orthodox Christians, they met the Christians of the Byzantine empire and they met the Zoroastrians of the Persian empire . The clerical hierarchies of these two religions had been working with the theology that had been evolving over hundreds and perhaps thousands of years and so they posed an important question to the Muslims. They said we are people of scripture and you are people of scripture so what makes you distinctive from us? This was a challenge that was issued to the Muslims, we are people of scripture, how are you different? So the Muslims had to respond to this challenge and in response to this challenge they started enunciating a theology and the majority of the work that was done in this area was done by a group known as the Mu'tazilah. This is the so called rationalist movement in Islam. It emerged because of the necessity of this question of enunciating an Islamic theology and it died out when this necessity faded. Ironically, in today's world, who champion the idea of an aqidah and use it to accuse other Muslims of being Kafirs, those are the same ones who reject the Mu'tazilah as those who went off on a tangent of kufr?! Nonetheless, this concept of aqidah emerged not to differentiate a Muslim from another Muslim but to differentiate a Muslims from non-Muslims. That is the genesis of this concept; but at the same time that this concept emerged there were illegitimate governments that were ruling over the Muslim world and as this concept was maturing and developing these governments- all of whom were illegitimate- picked up these immature and under developed concepts and they used these concepts to silence political dissent in their societies, meaning that they used these immature ideas of aqidah and accused their political opponents of kufr. Has anything changed in the fourteen hundred years since this idea was developed? Don't we have illegitimate governments in our world today who use the same ideas that were applied to non-Muslims? Don't they use the same ideas to accuse political adversaries who are calling for justice of kufr and there-by rationalise imprisonment and their murder? To be sure, aqidah is a matter of shura. If we are going to try to develop those criteria that define exactly what a Muslim is, this is a matter of discussion and debate and challenge. This is not a matter of individual scholarship. Convergence on what a universal Islamic aqidah can only take place when all of the existing ideas are brought to the table from all different factions, from all different schools of thought, even from Islamic political parties. Put all of your ideas on the table and let's compare these ideas through the filtering mechanism of the Qur'an and the Sunnah and let's engage in this debate. No matter how great and how expansive and how deep the scholarship of an individual is he cannot come up by himself with the criteria of what a Muslim is and what a Muslim isn't. This can only come through putting your ideas on the table and having other people of core knowledge come and challenge these ideas. That is how convergence on the issue of aqidah can take place but it can never take place by an illegitimate government endorsing a particular position and ramming it down the throats of everyone else. This is what happened in Islam history.
In the early days of the intellectual Islamic ferment which was basically within the first and two hundred years when the Muslims were engaging with people of other scriptures there was a high degree of exchange between Muslims of all schools of thought. A sort of an unofficial shura was taking place but before this unofficial shura between Islamic intellectuals, heads of schools of thought, progenitors of different theological views could reach a conclusion it's preliminary results were hijacked by illegitimate governments and these illegitimate governments chose a particular position not because of its particular value but in order to secure a political advantage over their political opponents, not necessarily their theological opponents. By the way, by this same prescription and by this same procedure this is how wahabism emerged in the Arabian Peninsula . If there was a public mind at the time there is no way on earth that wahabism could have become a theological and thereby a political and military force but because a public mind that engaged in deliberation and challenge didn't exist at the time that is what enabled wahabism to emerge as a theological concept.
The issue of aqidah cannot be separated from the behaviour of criminal governments. It is these criminal governments that forced all dissenting positions, be they theological positions or political positions, into hiding and thus the shura that should have taken place in the Muslim world has been replaced by individual scholarship and as we have already mentioned, no individual scholarship regardless of how expansive and hop deep and how proficient and how efficient it is can replace an Islamic shura because any individual scholar has to have his ideas tested by other scholars within the domain of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. If these ideas are not challenged by other scholars and other people of core knowledge (and) if this debate does not take place then it is impossible to qualify what a shura is. What we are saying is a shura (and) the issue of a public mind demands a public mind. It cannot come out of the mind of individuals. This is one of those things that has to have a public mind in it in order to qualify what it is and to the extent that individuals qualify what an aqidah is, whether they're in the Peninsula or whether they're anywhere else in the world, they give themselves the right to dispel shura and to court individual scholars to come up with what an aqidah is. This kind of process is defective! It's not that people have a defective aqidah, the process to qualify an aqidah is defective. So these criminal governments forced all political opposition into hiding by the threat of death or the threat of imprisonment or the threat of torture. So we Muslims today have inherited the legacy of this scholarly discord where these scholars couldn't communicate with each other and because of this scholarly discord of the course of fourteen or fifteen centuries we have a situation today where we have a divided public mind. We're thirteen hundred years behind schedule this shura of what defines a Muslim finally took place! This was called at taqrib bayna al madha'hib al Islamiyyah, The Institute for the reconciliation between the Islamic schools of thought. This was a series of engagements that took place between the Islamic seminaries in Qum and the Islamic seminaries in Egypt Peninsula you know that you have to reject it. This is the kind of stuff that takes time. Convergence doesn't happen over night. Convergence happen when other people share your conviction and when you justify what you believe in and why you believe that way! If you don't have the capacity to put it in a public forum then you don't have the capacity to develop a public mind and that is what this Majma' was trying to do, (i.e.), to develop a Muslim public mind. So it came out with a conclusion that if you happen to belong to anyone of eight schools of thought then none of the members of those eight schools of thought can accuse another member of a different school of thought as being a Kafir. Those eight schools of thought are the following: the four, so-called Sunni schools of thought, (i.e.) the Hanafi, the Shafi'i, the Maliki and the Hanbali; the two major Shi'i schools of thought, (i.e.) the Zaydi and the Ithna Ashari, and the remaining two are the Dhahiri school of thought, the key member of that school of though is ibn Hazm and then the last one is the Ibadi school of thought which are the remnants of the Khawarij. All of these are considered to be Muslims and none from amongst them can characterise another adherent from another school of thought as a non-Muslim. Brothers and sisters- this took twenty five years. What we need to recognise here is that when this idea of an aqidah was developed it was never developed with the view to declaring another Muslim as a Kafir. It was develop to try and help non-Muslims and those who were becoming Muslims (on) what makes a Muslim distinct from other People of previous Scripture- that's why the concept was developed. What we need to recognise is that this concept in its immature stages was hijacked by fraudulent governments in order to expand the privileges of exclusivity.
Brothers and sisters…
In our divided public mind there are those who are using non-Qur'anic and non-Prophetic words to characterize other Muslims as Kafirs and there are those amongst us who are avoiding the use of Qur'anic words and Prophetic words to rescue our brothers from this accusation. There are those amongst us who say "the cure for this problem is knowledge. That our problem is ignorance." Well- we might agree that the problem is ignorance- ignorance of our history, ignorance of the complexities of political life, ignorance of the unifying and the binding ayaat of the Qur'an. We think that is a simple minded approach to not only defining the problem but coming up with the solution for if we don't characterize the problem properly we will have a bigger problem delivering the solution properly. Accumulating knowledge in and of itself without a directional course and without a filtering mechanism is not a cure for ignorance. Ignorance is contextualized by socializing institutions. In the world today we have an ignorance that is fostered, that is nurtured, that is perpetuated, that is expanded and that is exploited by criminal governments. Brothers and sisters- we have to understand that ignorance does not exist in a vacuum. Ignorance is socialized into our lives by corrupt power. We have to understand that. There is a connection between ignorance and the criminal exercise of power and thereby accumulating knowledge in and of itself is not a cure for ignorance. These criminal governments accomplish this overall ambiance of ignorance by liberally funding a broad network of court scholars and also by creating another broad network of academics, of pundits, of media personalities and others who populate think tanks and television stations and universities. This is how the criminal governments socialize ignorance into our lives so when we talk about ignorance we cannot afford to separate it from the role of criminal governments in our societies. Just one practical example of how this kind of ignorance is socialized into our public lives, of how this kind of ignorance divides our private mind… There's a prince in Arabia . He came out and said, referring to the royals in Arabia, "we support Israel against (Islamic) Iran Iran Somalia Georgetown University Georgetown
This khutbah was presented by Imam Afeef Khan on the occasion of Jum'ah on 13 December 2013 on the sidewalk of Embassy Row in Washington D.C.
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