Month: June 2026

 

Introduction to Dhul Qarnayn

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

Today I want to talk about Dhul Qarnayn. As you guys know, Dhul Qarnayn is a person or a thing, but we know him as a person. A person mentioned in the Quran, so I want to just kind of elaborate on it a little bit more. But before I elaborate on it, let me sort of read the verses in the Quran so we can be reminded what I’m talking about. Let me share the screen.

Okay, so here I have put the verses in the Quran. In Surah 18, starting with verse 83, the Quran says:

[18:83] They ask you about Dhul Qarnayn; say, ‘I will narrate to you some of his history.’

[18:84] We gave him authority on earth and provided him with all kinds of means.

[18:85] Then he pursued one way.

[18:86] When he reached the west, he found the sun setting in a vast ocean.”…

By the way, this is how Rashad translated it, and technically in Arabic, it’s more literally “in a spring of dark mud.” It’s okay, both of them are correct.

[18:86] …And found people there. We said, ‘O Dhul Qarnayn, you can rule as you wish; either punish or be kind to them.’

[18:87] He said, ‘As for those who transgress, we will punish them, then they will return to their Lord; he will commit them to more retribution.

[18:88] As for those who believe and lead a righteous life, they receive a good reward; we will treat them kindly.’

[18:89] Then he pursued another way.

[18:90] When he reached the far east, he found the sun rising on people who had nothing to shelter them from it.

[18:91] Naturally, we were fully aware of everything he found out.

[18:92] He then pursued another way.

[18:93] When he reached the valley between the two palisades,…

Here, technically in the Quran, it can be translated as “the two barriers,” or “the two high lands,” or “the two mountains,” or even “the two continents’ highlands.” It’s like northern lands, two continents, so all of them are correct.

[18:93] …He found people whose language was barely understandable.

[18:94] They said, ‘Oh Dhul Qarnayn, Gog and Magog are corruptors of the earth; can we pay you to create a barrier between us and them?’

[18:95] He said, ‘My Lord has given me great bounties; if you cooperate with me, I will build a dam between you and them.

[18:96] Bring to me masses of iron.'” Once he filled the gap between the two palisades, he said, “Blow.” Once it was red hot, he said, “Help me pour tar on top of it.”

Here, “tar” in Arabic is actually also brass or copper. Brass, basically brass is, I think, copper and some other metal. Is it nickel or something? I don’t remember. You guys can search it online. AI these days is really good for these things; just search it on AI—what is brass? Brass is copper and something else, a tiny bit. So basically, copper is too soft. In the past, they would make brass by mixing a tiny bit of another metal to make it stronger.

[18:96] …He said, “Help me pour tar or brass or copper on top of it.

[18:97] Thus they could not climb it, nor could they bore holes in it.

[18:98] He said, ‘This is mercy from my Lord. When the prophecy of my Lord comes to pass, he will cause the dam to crumble. The prophecy of my Lord is truth.’

[18:99] At that time, we will let them invade with one another, then the horn will be blown, and we will summon them all together.

[18:100] We will present hell on that day to the disbelievers.

[18:101] They are the ones whose eyes were too veiled to see my message, nor could they hear.”

So these are the verses which pretty much talk about Dhul Qarnayn in the Quran. And I kind of brought this up because there’s so much speculation about who this person is, who is Dhul Qarnayn.

Outlandish Theories and Scholarly Debates

Especially recently, probably like a few months ago, I sometimes receive crazy ideas or outlandish—let me call them outlandish ideas. A guy from India contacted me—he’s not even a submitter. Instead of asking, “How do I join? How do I become a submitter?” instead of asking about the basics, he’s like, “My father knows who Dhul Qarnayn is, and it’s Jesus.” What? Okay, out of nowhere. Okay, we don’t see that in the Bible; we don’t see that in any scripture—it’s not like other sources matter, but it’s kind of too new. If it’s too new, then you really better prove it well, and he didn’t really have much, and I didn’t even pay attention to it, to be honest.

Let’s kind of go over some theories of what scholars, so-called scholars, say Dhul Qarnayn is. Recently there are so many crazy online people just saying stuff in chats and things like that; they think they found something, but typically scholars throughout centuries have sort of narrowed it to pretty much two people.

Some scholars said Dhul Qarnayn was Alexander the Great. But here in this verse it says, “We gave him authority on earth,” meaning someone, some important, strong person who was helped by the people and who had influence. So we’re not talking about any sort of non-important person.

The older scholars thought that it’s talking about Alexander. The newer scholars thought that it’s talking about Cyrus II, Cyrus the Great. One of them was king of Macedonia, the other one was king of Persia. Both of them lived before Jesus, about similar times. Cyrus the Great—I don’t know exactly when he lived. Let’s check Cyrus the Great, when did he live? I think around 480 or something. No, actually 480 was pretty much the peak of the Persian Empire, so it should have been earlier.

By the way, why do they come up with these ideas, Alexander or Cyrus? Because there are statues or coins where these two people are depicted with horns. Let’s search Cyrus the Great with horns. Okay, so this is a depiction of Cyrus the Great with horns. I hope you guys can see it. Let me get a bigger photo. It’s hard to make it larger. As you can see, there’s this—maybe you can see it better here—this is a drawing of this, if we can call it a 2D statue.

Don’t pay attention to this one, this is just like fake AI and stuff. So this is Cyrus the Great with two horns.

And then we have Alexander the Great with two horns—this is in a coin, I think. So we have here Alexander the Great being depicted with two horns.

Based on these two artifacts, this archaeological evidence, scholars disputed, “Oh, he must be Alexander the Great,” or “He must be Cyrus the Great.” But which one is it, if any of them?

As I said before, archaeology is really very unreliable to reach religious conclusions. The reason for that is because if we rely on archaeology, we might as well go and search for other people who have two horns, like Amun, the Egyptian “god” with two horns. We have Amun with two horns; there are so many other Egyptian idols with two horns.

And then even recently—it’s a copycat, by the way—Alexander the Great was a copycat of Cyrus. And we have the national hero of Albanians, Skanderbeg, which is his Turkish name—his real name is George Kastrioti Skanderbeg. You can see he has two horns, like here for example. Why did he have these? Because the Turkish people—they didn’t really distinguish between Macedonians and Albanians very well—thought this guy was from Macedonia. “Skander” in Turkish means Alexander; it’s the Turkish version of Alexander. So basically, they kind of branded him as the new Alexander. As you can see, when we rely on history and archaeology, it’s really hard to reach the right conclusion, and we go through very wild theories.

The Biblical Context of the Quran

This is mostly because people forget, when they go through these wild theories, they forget that the Quran was revealed within a certain context. And part of that context is that the Quran was revealed while the Bible existed. Actually, I think there’s a verse—I don’t know if I’m saying it exactly word for word—but there’s a verse in the Quran which says to Muhammad, “We did not reveal anything to you which was not revealed before you,” meaning pretty much there’s not much new in the Quran which you cannot find in the Bible unless it has nothing to do with the Jews. If it has anything to do with the Jews and the ancient Israelis, it has to be in the Bible. You cannot just make it up: “Oh, Alexander the Great, because here’s a coin with two horns.” If we go with those theories, we can pretty much make up anything. To know exactly who it is, if we don’t find it in the Quran, we have to look in the Bible.

By the way, we don’t follow the Bible; it’s more like we are informed that the Quran is revealed within a society where the Bible already existed. The Bible already existed when the Quran was revealed, so the Quran is talking within that context, assuming that people already know the Bible. A lot of people didn’t know the Bible when the Quran was revealed in Saudi Arabia, but some people did: the Jews, the Christians, and within that context, the Quran was revealed.

Before we find out from the Bible who Dhul Qarnayn is—the translation of Dhul Qarnayn means literally “the one with two horns”—before we find it out from the Bible, let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

Praise be to God, there is no other God except God.

Now I’m going to read the verses in the Bible which talk about Dhul Qarnayn. By the way, these two horns which are depicted on those people were sort of inspired by the Bible. Let me share the screen.

The Vision of Daniel

Let’s read the Bible verses which will help us figure out who it is—is it Alexander the Great or is it Cyrus the Great? Daniel lived before Cyrus the Great, and let me actually show the map a little bit.

This is the map of the Middle East, and here we have Turkey. At that time, the Turkish people were not here; they were somewhere in Asia. Before this—here we’re talking around the 5th century BC, before Christ—there was a group of people here which were called Lydians.

Here, where Iran is today, was a group of people called the Medes and the Persians, two groups of people. And here, where Iraq is, that’s where Babylon was—the Babylonians. The Jews, which included all the way to Israel, had been taken away from their home; basically, they were in exile. The king at that time, the king of Babylon, had decided to take them as slaves from Israel to send them to where Iraq is today, in Babylon. So basically, they were taken away from their home, their temple was destroyed, and this is the context.

Babylon was this bad kingdom which had oppressed the Jews, similar to how Pharaoh had oppressed the Jews as mentioned in the Quran. The Jews got oppressed again by the Babylonians, and in that environment, there were three other groups of people: the Medes north of Iran, the Persians south of Iran, and the Lydians which were pretty much living where Turkey is today. In that context, God inspired, in the Bible, a guy named Daniel, who was a messenger and a prophet, to sort of make predictions about what will happen in the future while he was living in Babylon. Basically, he’s one of the Jews who is living in Babylon under Babylonian people. God reveals things which will happen in the future, and here’s what the Bible says. This was told to Daniel through a dream or through a vision—it doesn’t matter, we’ll see, or even through a prophecy. In the past, they didn’t really distinguish sometimes between these words; they didn’t have the words for this—they said “vision,” which sometimes meant dreams, sometimes meant prophecy.

Daniel 8 in the Bible—I’m reading from the Bible now, and this is a subtitle of the Bible, it’s not in the original one, it’s just the translators doing it:

The Vision of the Ram and Goat

8 ¹ “During the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, —I think this must be a Babylonian king— I, Daniel, saw a vision after the earlier vision that had appeared to me.

by the way, this is before Cyrus the Great and before Alexander the Great, this is before anything happened.

² As I observed the vision, I looked around the citadel of Susa in Elam Province (this is in Iran). While I watched, I found myself beside the Ulai Canal.

By the way, all these locations are in Iran, south of Iran, these locations which are mentioned there. 

³ “Then I turned my head to look, and to my surprise, a two-horned ram…

I did this in bold on purpose because now we can see where the two-horned one came from

…was standing beside the canal. The two horns grew long, the first one growing longer than the second, with the longer one springing up last. ⁴ I watched the ram charging westward,

Can you see the sort of connection with what the Quran says?

northward, and southward…

Let’s go back to the map. So here’s this guy who lives in Babylon, which includes Israel, Iraq, and all of these. He’s saying the ram charged westward, northward, and southward. But from Saudi Arabia, it would have been different; it would have been eastward because Saudi Arabia is in the south, so there’s no southward—if he went to Iraq or to Saudi Arabia, like to Mecca, to people in Mecca it would have been north, but to people in Israel it would be west. So anyway, what I’m saying is there are slight differences because Daniel and Muhammad lived in different locations.

Let’s continue to read:

⁴ I watched the ram charging westward, northward, and southward; no animal could stand before him.”

What does the Quran say? It says, [18:84] We provided him with all kinds of means and we gave him authority.” In the Bible, it says:

No animal could stand before him, nor was there anyone who could deliver from his control.

And this is in a vision what Daniel saw.

He did as he pleased and exalted himself. ⁵ “As I watched and wondered, a male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the entire earth without touching the ground. The goat had a distinctive horn between its eyes.

so now it’s only one horn, the second goat has only one horn.

“It approached the ram with two horns that I had observed while standing beside the canal and charged at him out of control with rage.”

So basically, a goat with one horn is attacking a ram—a ram, by the way, is a male sheep—is attacking the ram with two horns.

⁷ I saw it approach the ram, overflowing with fury at him, and run into him with the full force of its strength. The goat shattered the ram’s two horns, and the ram could not oppose it. So the goat threw him to the ground and trampled him. No one could rescue the ram from its control. ⁸ Then the goat grew extremely great, but when it was strong, its great horn was shattered. In its place, four distinctive horns grew out in all directions.”

Gabriel’s Interpretation

And then here, Gabriel in the Bible helps Daniel interpret what the meaning of the vision is, or the dream whatever it is, or the prophecy. Gabriel then tells him the meaning, and this is important because in this context, the Quran says, “They ask you about Dhul Qarnayn.” Because The Jews had asked Muhammad who Dhul Qarnayn is, and that’s when these verses were revealed. Then why would the Jews ask Muhammad who Dhul Qarnayn is, who the one with two horns is? Because they thought that unless Muhammad is a prophet, he cannot tell them. Because here even Daniel, who was a prophet as well, was not able to know unless Gabriel told him.

So basically, this was a test by the Jews to see if Muhammad is a real prophet, by asking him about something which only Gabriel could reveal. Of course, only God through Gabriel could reveal, which no one would be able to know unless God told them. This was their way of seeing if Prophet Muhammad is a liar or a true prophet. Of course, they didn’t believe him anyway, but this was their way of distinguishing.

Let’s continue to read. It says:

Gabriel Interprets the Vision

¹⁵ “After I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I tried to understand it. All of a sudden, there was standing in front of me one who appeared to be valiant. ¹⁶ I heard the voice of a man calling out from the Ulai Canal, ‘Gabriel, interpret what that fellow has been seeing.’

So Gabriel appears to Daniel in the form of a man, telling him what he saw, what was the meaning of the ram with two horns and the goat with one horn.

¹⁷ “As he approached where I was standing, I became terrified and fell on my face. But he told me, ‘Son of man, understand that the vision pertains to the time of the end.’ (meaning in the future). ¹⁸ “While he had been speaking with me, I had fainted^[q] on my face, but he touched me and enabled me to stand upright on my feet. ¹⁹ Then he said, ‘Pay attention! I’m going to brief you about what will happen at the end of the period of wrath, because its end is appointed. ²⁰ The ram that you saw with a pair of horns are the kings of Media and Persia.

So it’s the kings of Media and Persia. By the way, here it says the kings of Media and Persia. Cyrus the Great is the one who united these two kingdoms, so he became the king of Media and Persia both at the same time, and that’s partly the meaning of the two horns: because he was a king of two nations at the same time.

The Legacy of Cyrus the Great

How did this happen? If you search on AI, you’ll see that Cyrus the Great, when he was young—he was a descendant of the king of Persia, but his mom was the daughter of the king of Media. And the king of Media saw a dream, according to legends, while he was a child, that Cyrus was going to become the new king. So he became jealous, and he tried to kill him. He ordered someone to kill him, but the person couldn’t do it; they gave Cyrus to a shepherd. Later on, he grew up with that shepherd family. Later on, through some kind of game, they figured out that he is really the descendant of the king of Persia. His grandfather from his mom’s side—basically his mom’s dad, the Median king—tried to attack Persia, but his soldiers defected; they didn’t go along with his plan. In this way, Cyrus was actually able to capture his grandfather. He forgave him, but in this way, he became the king of both Media and Persia. So basically, Cyrus became a king of two kingdoms at the same time.

And here the Bible is telling us: ²¹ The rough goat is the king of Greece…

Meaning the goat with one horn, not the goat with two horns.

…and the great horn between its eyes is its first king.

which was Alexander the Great.

²² The shattered horn and the four that took its place are four kingdoms that will come from his nation, but they will not have his strength.

So basically here, before Cyrus the Great and Alexander the Great lived, the Bible told them what will happen through Daniel.

Now let’s just see how that happened. Cyrus the Great was born in the south of Iran—there’s a tomb of Cyrus the Great which is here.

He was born about here, and then the Quran says he traveled east. If you look at history, what happened is he attacked Media—I mean, Media attacked him, then he sort of overpowered them, so he became a king of two kingdoms. Then he went all the way to today’s Turkey, which at that time was Lydia, all the way to the west, which is what the Quran says—all the way to the west.

By the way, there’s a couple of things we might talk about another day because today I spent too much time; we can even identify the places where the spring with black water could have been. There’s to this day a part of an island there. So he went all the way to the west—meaning ruling all those places. Then he went all the way to the east, and then he went here to the north, and this is actually the border between Europe and Asia, let’s call it between the two continents.

So basically, that’s what Cyrus did. Alexander, on the other hand, only traveled east to capture the new kingdom. Alexander’s kingdom later on destroyed the Persian kingdom, but he didn’t destroy Cyrus the Great; Cyrus the Great established the kingdom. He was the first king of Persia, and after many bad kings after him, eventually Alexander defeated them. But here the Bible is telling us that the one with two horns is the king of Persia, not the king of Greece.

Let’s look at some more prophecies to see if it fits. Here we have it mentioned in Isaiah, chapter 45, verses 1-7. Isaiah was one of the messengers during the times of the ancient Israelis.

Isaiah 45:1-6

Cyrus: God’s Deliverer

45 This is what the Lord says to his anointed, Cyrus,—Now Cyrus is mentioned by name in the Bible— whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him”—what the Quran says: “provided him with all kinds of means”—

look, he will make the mountains level; what does the Quran say? That he leveled the place between the two mountains

“I’ll shatter bronze doors and cut through iron bars.“—these are materials which were used to build the dam—

³ I’ll give you concealed treasures
    and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you’ll know that it is I, the Lord,
    the God of Israel, who calls you by name.

So here, through Isaiah, God is talking to Cyrus.

so that you’ll know that it is I, the Lord,
    the God of Israel, who calls you by name.
⁴ For the sake of Jacob my servant,
    Israel my chosen,
I’ve called you,
    and he has established you with a name,
        although you have not acknowledged me.

And this is important. What God is saying, I have supported you, meaning God supported Cyrus even though Cyrus has not acknowledged God properly. Because if you look at the ancient sources of what Cyrus believed, he actually allowed idols in his kingdom, but he did believe in God; he had another name for God. I don’t know what the Persian name was. So basically, he believed in God, he was a good man, but he didn’t have the knowledge of the Bible; he was just a person who believed in God naturally.

⁵ I am the Lord, and there is no other besides me:
    and there are no gods.
I’m strengthening you,
    although you have not acknowledged me,

So he didn’t acknowledge that it was the God of the Jews necessarily, he just believed in God in general, the way we say today God, not necessarily “Allah”.

Let me read another verse, and these are predictions about Cyrus the Great:

Isaiah 45:13

God will Bless Cyrus

Rebuilding the Second Temple

By the way, why is Cyrus mentioned in the Bible? Why is it important? It’s because Cyrus, after he did everything which the Quran says about him, actually attacked Babylon after that and did manage to free the Jews from Babylon, send them back to Israel, and build their temple.

The Jews at this time were held as slaves in Babylon after having been purified. Basically, first of all, they became bad, the Babylonians occupied them, they were purified for many decades, and then Cyrus the Great, with God’s permission, freed them again—similar to how Moses freed them from Egypt—and actually built their temple, gave them money to build the temple. This is what is known as the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed later on by the Romans after they rejected Jesus.

The Second Temple was technically not really built by the Jews; it was built by a guy who was not even a Jew. And that’s kind of why it makes sense for Jesus to say, “Destroy this temple and I will build it in three days.” It wouldn’t make sense for Jesus to say “destroy this temple” if it was built properly by God’s people. This Second Temple was built unofficially, basically not necessarily with the same status as the First Temple, which was built by Solomon with God’s full guidance. This was built just by a righteous man who was not even a prophet. By the way, Dhul Qarnayn was not a prophet or a messenger; he was just a righteous king, an average good king. I mean, he was extraordinary in the sense that he was a very important king, the one who founded the Persian Empire, but spiritually he probably was not better than us.

Let me try to finish now. This part of the Bible is actually just history; it’s not revealed scripture, but it exists in today’s Bibles. I didn’t include it in our version of the Bible, so it’s not revealed, it’s just history which was included in the Bible. This is after Cyrus was a king; this is not a prophecy, it’s just a description of what happened after the fact.

Ezra, who was a scribe, not a prophet, he added this part in the Bible:

Ezra 1:1-4

An Edict to Rebuild the Temple

1 During the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in fulfillment of the message from the Lord spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord prompted Cyrus, king of Persia, to make this proclamation throughout his entire kingdom, which was also released in written form:

² An Official Statement

from Cyrus, King of Persia

So basically, the Second Temple was built even though the Jews didn’t fully deserve it.

Interactive Q&A

So, Dhul Qarnayn is Cyrus the Great. This is sort of the answer to who was the one with two horns, Dhul Qarnayn. God willing, in the next Friday sermon or the Friday after that, I will explain what is Dhul Qarnayn, the one with two horns. Because here, if you pay attention carefully, we will see that he was not necessarily just a human. Yeah, he was a human based on this interpretation of the Bible, but there’s a way to understand these verses in a deeper version and realize what is Cyrus the Great. God willing, I’ll answer that question in the next sermon—not just who is Dhul Qarnayn, the one with two horns, but what is the one with two horns.

Let me stop sharing, and should I check if there’s any chats? Let me just see. Does anyone have any questions?

Oh, Adam Fraser said zinc. Yeah, so brass is copper and zinc.

Faisal, you’re ruining my next sermon—I’m joking. Faisal is saying, “Can Dhul Qarnayn mean two generations instead of just two horns?” Yeah, it can also mean two generations; both of them are correct, and that’s going to help us a little bit more with understanding what is Dhul Qarnayn. Spoilers! It’s okay. Yeah, but God willing, we’ll use both meanings—the one with two horns and the one with two generations—to understand what is Dhul Qarnayn, what is the one with two horns.

“Where is the barrier he made?” So the barrier he made is between the two continents, which is today’s—and God willing, I’ll explain this more one day when we talk about Gog and Magog—around here: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, these countries between the two mountains. There’s a mountain here and a mountain there. By the way, it will never be discovered because the Quran says it will be destroyed in the end times. So basically, people will not be able to discover it until the end times.

And by today, it was probably not some sort of great thing; it was just some local, very small part which they filled with iron, and today it might have been mixed and covered with soil, and it’s probably not very pure iron anyway. If I was an archaeologist—which I don’t think they’ll discover it, so I don’t think they should even try—they should just look for areas with extra iron in one of these mountains. Yeah, it’s not really that important where exactly, but it’s one of these countries, because it’s never going to be discovered until the end of times, like when it gets destroyed when the whole earth gets destroyed, including those mountains and including the barrier.

Officially, this is the border between Europe and Asia.

Let me close this. For those who have to do the contact prayer, you can—oh, sorry, I didn’t share the screen. Let me share the screen again. I don’t need to share it because people actually know where Georgia and Azerbaijan and these countries are.

Okay, so for those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. The rest of you, peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Introduction:

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God. Today I want to actually make a commentary on the surah, the Romans. I’m just going to read some verses and kind of comment on it a little bit.

I seek refuge in God from Satan the rejected. Surah 30 in the Quran is titled: “The Romans”.

[30:0] In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

[30:1] A. L. M. —which we know the geometrical value of ALM is 71, so we can also just say 71.

[30:2] Certainly, the Romans will be defeated.

[30:3] In the nearest land. After their defeat, they will rise again and win.

[30:4] Within several years. Such is God’s decision, both in the first prophecy, and the second. On that day, the believers shall rejoice.

[30:5] In God’s victory. He grants victory to whomever He wills. He is the Almighty, Most Merciful.

[30:6] Such is God’s promise – and God never breaks His promise – but most people do not know.

Okay, so I just want to comment on these verses. These verses are sort of understood in a very narrow, specific way based on historical sources, and I want to expand today more on that. To do that, before I do that, I want to first show the history of the Romans—who they were and things like that—so we can understand it better and then know how it applies to us today.

One of the things which I quite often like to do online—when I’m bored—is I like to watch states expand. Let’s say how the US was colonized or how ancient empires expanded. It’s just kind of like watching maps—I like maps. So I’m going to show a YouTube video. I hope you guys can see it okay.

The Expansion and Splitting of Rome

The YouTube video is “History of the Romans Every Year.” So basically here at the right corner, let me see if you guys can see it—yeah, I think you can see it—here at the right corner, we have the year, and here we have whoever was the king and the capital. Rome pretty much started around the year 750. It’s not for sure, but approximately then. I’m just going to play the video so we can see how Rome; the Roman Empire, expanded and then how it kind of vanished, and comment. Maybe I’ll comment on the way, so let me play the video. I’m going to play it at 1.5 speed so it doesn’t get boring.

Basically, this red dot here is Rome. Supposedly, I don’t know if it’s true, started by two brothers—one of the two brothers—and it just expanded from there.

So this is around the year 600 BC (Before Christ).

And about 500 BC.

And this is around the year 300 BC.

Pretty much as Greeks are getting weaker, the Roman Empire is much stronger, but they are including the Greeks there.

By the year 50, it includes Israel as well, Jerusalem. So at year zero, which is when Jesus was born, it included Israel, so technically Jesus was born in Israel but within the Roman Empire. [By year 150] It expanded I think all the way to Britain and all the way to Romania, I guess, and Spain.

Now we have two sides, I don’t know exactly the dates. First it was split for practical reasons, and then it remained like that: split into the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire—two separate empires, sort of separate empires.

We are around the year 400 here. The Western Roman Empire pretty much fell very early around the 400s, depending on how you define it.

The Eastern Roman Empire, they called themselves, by the way, Romans. Here in the video, it says Byzantine, which is a later name used by historians and the Greeks because what they wanted to say is that they weren’t Christian enough—that’s what they meant by that, and it’s a later name. But the people in the year 400 in that region—let’s say the people in Turkey, the people in Egypt, the people in the Balkans, the people in Syria, the people in Israel—if you ask them, “What are you?” they would say Roman. That’s all they knew. They didn’t identify themselves as Egyptian or Albanian like today; they would say Roman in that region if you asked them in that year. Later on, they renamed those regions. They had cities of course, so they would say “I’m from Jerusalem if someone is from Jerusalem or from Petra. They themselves would think that they are Romans.

The Revelation of the Prophecy

Around this time, Muhammad was born. Now we are at year 595, 602, 606, 608, 610, 611, 612.

This is the key part. Most historians will focus only on this part because the Quran does mention it. Let’s go back to the Quran, what the Quran says. The Quran says, [30:2] Certainly, the Romans will be defeated. That’s how Rashad translated it, but in the Arabic, it says certainly the Romans pretty much just got defeated.

This Surah was revealed in the year, I think, 613 or 614—I think 614 is the more accurate date—and it says certainly the Romans pretty much got defeated in the nearest land. After their defeat, they will rise again and win. So in the year about 614, Muhammad was being persecuted in Mecca, and news comes from the Romans that they had been defeated. News comes to Saudi Arabia, and God reveals this Surah telling Muhammad pretty much don’t worry, they will rise again and win.

The reason why this is revealed is because the idol worshippers of Mecca during the time of Muhammad favored the Persians more because they didn’t have scripture; they were not people of the scripture. Meanwhile, Muhammad and the believers wanted the Romans to win because the Romans had the scripture—they had the Bible and all that. So they were rooting for two different teams, if you can say that.

The Romans got defeated in 614, which is pretty much the time when Muhammad is really being persecuted a lot in Mecca. Later on, we’ll see that when the believers win at the Battle of Badr—which is the first time that the believers win—is also when the Romans come back and defeat the Persians back.

Here we’re at year 612, and what happened, by the way, in 614—pay attention to this region around Jerusalem. This is year 612 now, 614—look, they kind of lost Jerusalem.

No, this is 615, the map is going fast. Around 614 they lost Jerusalem, and this is the region which would be in contact with the Arabs, meaning that the Arabs, when they thought of Romans, they pretty much thought of the closest part which they encountered from the Romans. That’s why the Quran says “in the nearest land,” meaning whatever part of the Roman Empire is nearest to Mecca and to Muhammad, that was defeated—not necessarily all Romans. We can understand it like that, even though you’ll see we can also understand it globally.

Around 614 this region was lost around Jerusalem; the Persians defeated the Romans, and then about 8 to 10 years later they get it back. That’s what the historians will mention as the reason for this Surah. We’re going to 619—look, the Persians even got Egypt at some point, and look now at around 624 or around 630 they get it back again.

The map is moving fast, so it’s really hard to catch it. Around 630 they have it back again, and this is what the believers of the past meant when they read this surah; this is what they understood.

Expanding to a Global Prophecy: The Fall of 1453

However, as we can see, Rome is a big empire spanning through many centuries. Do you think God would just mention a specific case? Let’s continue because actually they lose it again. Does it mean that actually they didn’t win? What happened? Let’s actually continue through the whole history and understand it fully.

Rome is losing again here, meaning it’s getting smaller around the 600s. By the way, at this time, even though in the year 700 Rome was part of the Roman Empire, it was actually Constantinople which was the capital—the center moved to Constantinople, what today is called Istanbul. We’re around the 800s. As you can see, the Roman Empire is just getting weaker and weaker. Even at this point, if you ask these people, “What are you?” they would say Romans.

The year 1000 comes. As you can see, the Roman Empire is getting weaker and weaker, and they were just trying to survive as they were. At this time they were being attacked by the Ottomans, or surrounded by the Ottomans who are, at least in name, Muslims. Pay attention now to these regions, which are pretty much colonies of Constantinople. The main region is the center in Constantinople at this time.

Here is the year 1447, and in the year 1453 Constantinople falls; it becomes Istanbul after that. That’s when the historians agree that the Roman Empire fell—it pretty much was defeated in the year 1453. Let’s go to 1452—look, Constantinople is gone. By the way these are some regions which end up losing as well. Pretty much the Roman Empire ends in 1453. It’s defeated by many nations gradually. But finally, the Ottomans give an end to it in 1453 when Constantinople falls, or according to some, when it is freed. This is pretty much the history.

The question which I want to ask is: when we now go and read the Quran again, it says:

[30:2] Certainly, the Romans will be defeated.

[30:3] In the nearest land. After their defeat, they will rise again and win.

[30:4] Within several years. Such is God’s decision, both in the first prophecy, and the second. On that day, the believers shall rejoice.

[30:5] In God’s victory. He grants victory to whomever He wills. He is the Almighty, Most Merciful.

When we read these verses, does it make more sense to just think of a specific case in history, or do you think it’s talking about all of the Roman Empire? It definitely makes more sense to talk about all of the Roman Empire. So what I’m saying is that the way they understood it in the past about a specific battle in the year 614 is such a limited understanding. The Quran does apply to it, but it’s limited because it’s not the whole Roman Empire which loses. Here the Quran is talking about the Romans being defeated; I don’t think we should limit it only to the fall of Jerusalem. Technically, when the Quran says the Romans will be defeated, it is a big historical prediction for centuries, for thousands of years, and eventually they did get defeated in 1453.

Understanding “The Nearest Land” in Time

But then what does the Quran say? It says “in the nearest land.” How can we understand “in the nearest land” In this case? We can understand it actually with a better understanding. So when the Quran says “the Romans will be defeated”, we can understand it many ways. However, the best understanding, at least for us, for our generation, is that it is talking about all of the Roman Empire, not just Jerusalem. All of the Roman Empire will be defeated, and it says “in the nearest land.” What does it mean? It means the land which is nearest to us for the Roman Empire.

So basically, if we go backwards in time, who are the people who would be the nearest to us in time—not in space, in time—who would be Romans? That would be Istanbul.

Basically, what it’s saying here is that the Romans will finally be defeated in the nearest land—which is Istanbul, because that’s the latest time that the Roman Empire existed, which is nearest to us. When we read the Quran today, the nearest Roman Empire to us in the past was in 1453. Before that, it was even further, deeper in history, further in the past. But the nearest part was in 1453. So the Quran says that “the Romans will be defeated in the nearest land”, meaning in Istanbul, after their defeat they will rise again and win. It’s a prophecy.

What does it mean that the Romans will rise again and win? If we understand it like this, it actually helps us sort of understand the future, not just the past. The way they understood it in the past, it was all about the past. But if we understand it like this about all of the Roman Empire, we don’t just focus on the past, but in this way we can also understand the future.

Again, what the verse is saying: “Certainly the Romans will be defeated in the nearest land”—meaning the nearest land to us in time is Istanbul. And then it says after their defeat they will rise again and win. What does it mean they will rise again and win?

In 1957, there was a thing called the Treaty of Rome, where the European Union was created, and the European Union is pretty much similar to the Roman Empire. How is it similar? First, it starts with Rome. By the way, 1957 is a multiple of 19, but it doesn’t matter. It starts with Rome, and it expands and contracts—there are countries which join, countries which leave, similar to Rome. And it’s a predominantly Christian community, which was exactly how Rome was. And it’s pretty much in a similar region—it doesn’t have to be exactly the same region because even the ancient Roman Empire had different regions at different times in history. But they all included Rome. It wouldn’t make sense for the Quran to call the Romans Romans unless it included Rome, because that’s where the name comes from.

Let’s look at the European Union, which was created in 1957. Let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah

Praise be to God. There’s no other God except God.

The Romans were defeated in 1453 totally, and then they didn’t come back until the Treaty of Rome, which established sort of a new community of different regions, now they are countries to join and leave. Let’s look at the history of the European Union—this is shorter. The European Union started in 1957. Technically, they say that it started earlier, but then it was called the European Steel and Coal Community. I don’t think that counts as EU. The reason is that after World War II, some of these countries agreed that they are going to produce steel together, not separately, so that they could not produce weapons and fight against each other. They didn’t want to fight again, so it was called the European Steel and Coal Community. But that doesn’t make a state; that doesn’t make an empire or a community, because it’s just about steel, it’s just business.

In 1957, when the Treaty of Rome happens, that’s when they eliminated tariffs and created a common market. Basically, that’s what makes a state. They wanted to have shared travel, a shared market, and trade without tariffs—basically the beginning of a new entity which is called the European Union. Let’s see the history of this European Union.

This is 1957, so these are the first countries which join. The UK joins around the 1970s. Greece joins around 1981. Basically, a community which started again with Rome is expanding through 1995, 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008,

and it’s pretty much similar even today. So this community is expanding.

Future Predictions and the Rejoicing of Believers

Looking back at the Quran, we can actually make predictions because what does the Quran say? Certainly the Romans will be defeated. They were totally defeated in 1453 when the Ottomans defeated them in the nearest land, meaning in Istanbul. After their defeat, they will rise again and win, because here it’s talking still about the nearest lands, meaning that EU will rise again and win, basically capture Istanbul—probably willingly, it doesn’t have to be a war. Turkey has wanted to be part of the EU for a long time; they just don’t want them because they are mostly Muslim. So the EU doesn’t want Turkey to be part of the EU, even though Turkey for a long time has wanted to become part of it. I don’t know about today, it has shifted a little bit, I think they don’t want it as much.

But we can see here that eventually, the prediction we can make is that eventually Istanbul will become European again, whatever it means. I don’t know what it means exactly. Does it mean they join on their own, or does it mean there’s going to be a war and they lose? It doesn’t matter. The important part is—and a lot of Turkish people probably want to be part of it, it’s fine—we can predict into the future what will happen based on verses in the Quran, if we understand the Quran globally, not just as one specific event.

The more important part is what the Quran says after that, in the next verses: it says “within several years.” The Romans will win again, meaning Istanbul will become again part of the Roman Empire, in this case EU, it says within several years. By the way, the “several years” in Arabic doesn’t give us specific years, and we can know that exactly from here. Maybe we can talk another time about this.

ALM, the value of this is 71, so 71 years from—I explained something in the video of the end times, you can see that in the video of the end times. Within several years, such is God’s decision, both in the first prophecy and the second. This has many meanings. The first prophecy can be understood the old-fashioned way or the new-fashioned way, but also the first prophecy meaning when they lost and when they win. There are so many ways to understand it, and all of them are correct. What I’m saying is this is the most correct because it includes all of history. All of them are correct, but this is the most correct way to understand it, because it includes all of history, not just one specific time.

On that day—and this is the important part—on that day the believers shall rejoice in God’s victory. He grants victory to whomever he wills. He is the almighty, most merciful. What does it mean? This means that when Istanbul becomes part of Europe—whatever it means, I don’t know if it’s going to be called the European Union, or if it is going to change its name, it doesn’t matter how it’s called. The important part is that it’s going to become part of a predominant community which is mostly Christian, where Rome is also in the same community. We can define it like that, because I don’t want to make predictions about the EU specifically; the EU can change, it can fall, it doesn’t matter. The important part is that Istanbul will be part of that future community which is very likely the EU, which is why in the video at times I called it Europe instead of the EU, because you never know, they change the names.

The important part is that at that time, it says the believers shall rejoice. Some people say today it’s part of Europe. It’s not. I mean, part of it is in the European continent, but does it really share the same trade? Can people from Istanbul travel to Rome without a visa? No. So, basically, think of it like when people of Istanbul can travel to Rome without a visa and without any restrictions, like basically being considered the same citizens as the people of Rome. So, basically, when the citizens of Rome and the citizens of Istanbul are pretty much citizens of the same community, that’s the better definition. So, it says on that day the believer shall rejoice, and this is the good news. The good news is that around that time—which I believe is told to us by this ALM, by the number of years—so, around that time, the believers, and this is by the way after the smoke comes, the believers will become a dominant community, basically with mosques with thousands—I don’t know how many—probably a million, lots of submitters. And they are going to be able to meet with each other and they will rejoice, meaning that they will feel like, “Oh kind of we won, we made it. We made it”. Even today, the community is going well, but we really are such a small community, and during the time they feel like, oh, we kind of made it. So, let’s just keep going.

Does anyone have any questions? If you want to know exactly when that year is, I don’t want to specifically focus on the years here; it is in the video “The End Times” and the video explaining Quranic initials predicting the future.

Questions from the Congregation

Faisal is asking, “Will the rejoice of the believers be just because of travel restrictions or will other things happen?”

No, the believers will rejoice because—I didn’t want to go into specifics, but let me say it like that—at that time, the next messenger will come. And by rejoice, that means that actually they will sing songs. The method of preaching for the next messenger will be to sing, and they will sing. Singing is connected with victory in pretty much all the times of believers. David sang when he won; whenever the believers won, they did sing, or whenever they sang they did win—whichever causes the other one. What it’s talking about here is that the future messenger and the believers will be in a state of joy and celebration. It doesn’t have to do with the travel restrictions; that’s for the Turkish people, meaning that the Turkish people can rejoice for having the travel restrictions removed, but submitters are not necessarily Turkish people. Submitters will rejoice for another reason, which is that yes, Alban was correct about this, yes, the next messenger came, and yes, we are having fun, if we can say it like that, with the next messenger. Basically, they will be dominant; they will have reason to be happy in this world. Of course, we are happy for the next world and we’re happy in our souls, but I’m talking about ethnically happy, more rich.

Let’s see if someone has any other question. The reason why I’m saying this, partly, is because when the Romans won again during Muhammad’s time, Muhammad didn’t win with the Romans; he won in the Battle of Badr, which was a separate winning. One more question, and God willing, I will end it.

Faisal is saying, “If we are alive then,” with a smiley face. “If we are alive then we will be so old.”

Well, let me say something. For those who get lucky to have children, they want their children to be happy more than them, and only parents understand this. It doesn’t matter if someone is not enjoying that part. Probably a lot of us will be dead, maybe most of us, I don’t know. A lot of us, some of us will survive. People live long these days. And by the way, Faisal, why so pessimistic? I think you’ll be alive, you’re so young, God willing. I don’t know for sure, but I think you’ll probably be alive—old, but yeah, alive. Okay, so anyway.

Faisal is saying, “Ah, I’m not pessimistic, just a wake-up call.”

Yeah, okay, thanks for the reminder. I understand you’re being a little bit—but yeah, it’s important to understand that then it’s not going to feel like—because here is the issue. When believers become old, they focus on the hereafter more and more. Moses never managed to go to the promised land on this earth, even though God had promised the people of Israel that they would go to the promised land; Moses never managed that. However, he got better: he went to heaven, and that’s the bigger promised land. If you ask Moses at the time, “Would you rather go to heaven or wait for this victory?” Moses would say, “Yeah, I want to go to heaven,” because by the time people get old, they really look forward to the next life rather than this life. They want the other submitters, the younger submitters, to be happy, but for themselves, they just want to prepare for the next world. That’s how a typical believer behaves. They get old, and they just want things for the next life more than for this life.

God willing, whoever gets old among us—most of, I think almost all of us are believers, if not all—wait for this victory. This is just such a flimsy victory, flimsy in the sense that it’s just about this world. It’s not really that important—I mean its important because the Quran mentions it. But its not the most important thing; only a few verses about it are in the Quran. The real victory is in heaven.

Let’s do the contact prayer for whomever has to do the contact prayer, and the rest of you, peace be upon you.

 
Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Divine Timelessness and the Universal Appeal of Quranic Stories

Praise be to God, there is no other god except God. Let me just address a small thing before I continue with the main topic. I see that typically some people have a habit of kind of waiting for the Friday sermon to start for them to join the chat. The idea is so that you join the chat whenever you’re available, even earlier. Because sometimes I delay the Friday sermon a little bit thinking that no one is online or, I mean, I see some people online and then I’m like, “Oh, let me wait a little bit until others join.”

But you guys are waiting for me to start so you can join, so it’s kind of like it’s delaying everything. And by the way, these musics which I’ve done—part of the reason why the AI did, part of the reason why I’m showing them, they are really not important, is because I just wanted some delay until we get used to starting on time, and those get shorter and shorter. But eventually, God willing, I’m just going to start on time whenever the 12:00 is or in whatever universal time, I’m just going to start on time. If you’re late, you’re late. So just please try to start having a habit of actually joining a little bit earlier so you can be on time rather than joining in time. Because with technology, then you’ll be a little bit late. That’s just a small thing.

So now I can see a lot of people have joined. Yeah, so what do I want to talk about today?

The Rainbow Analogy: Perception vs. Totality

A couple of days ago I was thinking like, I don’t know, I read some kind of article from a scientist that rainbows are not real, which I already knew, but like the way they were putting it. And it got me thinking about some aspects of the stories in the Quran. So the idea is that when people look at the rainbow, if you look at the rainbow, it kind of looks real. It looks like you’re seeing some colors, and you think it has a specific location at a specific time.

According to one of the scientists, and a lot of scientists agree with that—I also mostly agree with that—the rainbow is not real. Because if you look at the rainbow, from a certain location, let’s say from one hill when it’s raining all above all the hills in that region, when someone looks at the rainbow from that one hill, they think it’s in that direction. But when another person looks at that hill, he is not going to see the rainbow in the same location. He’s going to see his own rainbow. So was the rainbow even real if it changed location based on where you are? You can think of it as an illusion. That’s according to the article, that the rainbow is an illusion, it’s not real.

I would say that’s also not too fully correct to say because you cannot call something which everyone sees not real. To me, the totality of all rainbows is real. Let’s say when it rains from every hill, from every location, and I’m looking at the rainbow, now I’m moving here, I’m looking at the rainbow again, I’m moving here, I’m looking at the rainbow again, and when I add all of those up, that’s real.

Basically, the one specific rainbow which I’m looking at, is a tiny bit real—0.00 whatever, how many options we have there, 0.001% real. And then we have another rainbow which is 0.0001% real, and when you look at all of them, you add them up, then the total is 100% real. The totality of all the rainbows is real. But each specific rainbow you look at is not really fully real, it’s mostly fake.

And by the way, what do I mean by real? I mean materially real in this world for things. According to physics, for things to be real in this world, they have to be in, to have a time and a place. They have to be at a specific time in a specific place. And the rainbow doesn’t really have a specific place. Wherever you move, it’s there. It does have a specific time, though, like when it rains, it’s there.

Biblical Context and the Universal Scope of the Quran

And I want to connect this with some of the stories from the Quran, because the reason why the rainbow actually looks a little bit more real than other things is because it has this universal appeal. Exactly that what enables it, the reason why it sort of doesn’t look fully real, it appeals to all the people. So it has universal appeal, kind of like everyone sees their own rainbow. And I’m not talking here about subjectivity versus objectivity, I’m just talking like everyone sees their own rainbow, which gives it the universal appeal. Everyone would love to see a rainbow. Everyone thinks, “Oh, I saw a rainbow, it was special.” It’s as if though it has to do with you, something with you, with the way you’re seeing it.

In the same way, God intentionally, even though the stories in the Quran are definitely real—they have a specific time and a place where they happened, they definitely happened in a specific time in a specific place—God sort of doesn’t focus on the time much, because those stories have a universal appeal. God doesn’t specifically tell us, “Abraham lived in the year 950 BC“, like you never hear that in the Quran, or “Moses lived in like 450 BC.” That’s not really important because those stories have universal appeal. Everyone can see something which relates to them in relation to that story.

And these stories, even though they have a universal appeal, a lot of them because they are mentioned in the Bible, we kind of know when they happened. We can connect them to something, oh, these are the ancestors of children of Israel, and the ancestors of children of Israel are Israel, whatever, Isaac, Abraham, Joseph, messengers like that, and Noah. Noah by the way was an ancestor of all the people as well. But these are mentioned in the Bible because the Bible mentions them specifically because they are ancestors of children of Israel.

Because the children of Israel were the only nation to be chosen at that time in the ancient times, God only mentioned to them what had to do with them. God didn’t tell them a story about China or a story about Arabs, God didn’t tell them about that, or Europeans or Africa. God didn’t tell them those stories, only what had to do with the children of Israel. So you have those stories in the Bible—stories which had to do with the children of Israel. They kind of knew those stories anyway, based on folklore, like one father telling their son the story, and then he telling his son, and him telling his son. So even though God revealed them, a lot of those stories, the main parts of those stories, they already knew through tradition—they already knew through hearing it from other people.

The Three Arabian Messengers: Hud, Saleh, and Shu’aib

But there are some messengers which are not mentioned. And why are they not mentioned, by the way? Because sometimes people will say, like especially the Christians will be like, oh, why does the Bible not mention Hud? It must be a fake book or whatever. It doesn’t because it has nothing to do with the children of Israel. It’s outside of that scope. The Bible only deals with the worldview which has to do with the children of Israel. Even the Quran says, even Jesus when the Quran says that Jesus was sent to the children of Israel saying, “I come to you as a messenger to the children of Israel.” And anything outside of that is not mentioned in the Bible, even if it’s true.

And three messengers which truly came, which are mentioned in the Quran, which are not mentioned in the Bible—we know why, not because they are not true, but because they have nothing to do with children of Israel—are Hood, Saaleh, and Shu’aib. So these three messengers are mentioned in the Quran, but they are not mentioned in the Bible. And because of this, I think they actually have even bigger universal appeal, kind of like the rainbow. They are true by the way, not fake like the rainbow, but they have a bigger appeal. Everyone can relate to that story. The reason is that most people today are not children of Israel, and most people today don’t live in biblical times. Therefore, these kind of stories about Hood, Shu’aib, Saaleh have to do with us, with any time, more than the other stories.

And why do they have to do more with us at all times? All three of them were messengers who were sent in what today is Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula. Again, God only mentioned the ones which people already knew during Muhammad’s time. So those stories already existed during Muhammad’s time. It’s not like God revealed something which they had no idea what it was. People knew stories about Hud because, again, why did they know about that? It was stories about the ancestors of—if we can call them, Arabs. Then they were not fully Arabs, sort of the ancestors of pre-Arabs. So that’s why the Quran mentions them, because the Quran was revealed to Muhammad who lived among the Arabs. Those stories were already known among the Arabs. God wanted to relate to what they were talking about, wanted to talk about things which they were already talking about.

So yeah, those three messengers, all three of them were sent to what today is the Arabian Peninsula. And the reason is because Muhammad was an Arab, so God told them stories which they already talked about so that they could relate to it. However, God really doesn’t focus in the Quran telling us that, because they relate to all human beings.

Modern Civilization and the Patterns of Destruction

And how do they relate to all human beings? It’s because these are stories about destruction, messengers being sent to a whole community, the community not believing, the community being destroyed. And this is kind of the story of all of us, of the whole modern civilization. Messengers are being sent, the whole world pretty much doesn’t believe except for a few people, and in the end times, the world will be destroyed.

Now the whole world is kind of one community, more and more, like with online and stuff, with AI, with all of this, we’re just pretty much one community. You can trade and buy. I mean, not fully yet, because let’s say you can go in some country, they still don’t use Amazon. Amazon is like where you buy things online, so it’s not really fully integrated yet. But most of the world is really integrated, meaning it acts like one city. And when it becomes fully one city, and fully city—by fully city I mean fully built—then it’s time for the world to be destroyed. That’s when the end of the world will come.

Now what I want to do in the second sermon is just read these three stories: the story of Hood, the story of Saaleh, the story of Shu’aib. All three stories are sort of told about three times each, so they are going to repeat it a little bit. It’s going to be repetitive. However, that might actually help us remember them.

By the way, the Quran doesn’t say the same thing with the same words. Sometimes it will tell something, and sometimes Christians will think this is a contradiction. For example, if I say, “when I was coming back from work, I met John and I had coffee with him.” If I say that, then another time if I say, “When I was coming back from work, I met John and I gave him a ride,” both of them are true. Both of them can be true. I had coffee and then gave him a ride, or maybe I gave him a ride and we had coffee in the car. So both of them can be true. So just because you have differences in the story, it doesn’t mean it’s not true. What it means is that God wants to tell us more. In one specific case, He wants to tell us about the coffee; in the other case, He wants to tell us about the ride. In this way, we learn more. In other words, God doesn’t want to repeat Himself too much in the same way because then we wouldn’t learn new things.

So yeah, the stories will repeat partly, but they will kind of be told in a different way. Don’t fall into the trap of some Christians who say that this is why it’s fake because it’s not told the same way. It doesn’t have to be told the same way. Even in their books, their gospels are not told the same way. They don’t tell the same story about Jesus; some of them tell something else, others tell something else. But all of them can be true unless they are in contradiction, which sometimes in the Bible they are actually, but not in the Quran. By contradiction, I mean someone says, “After work I went home,” but then in another story I say, “After work I did not go home.” That’s a contradiction. That’s a clear contradiction.

So yeah, let’s repent, and then God willing we’ll read the stories. Let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

Non-Biblical Prophets: The Accounts of Hood, Saleh, and Shuayb

Praise be to God, there is no other god except God. So let me just read these three stories from the Quran which are non-Jewish stories. You cannot find these stories in the Bible; they are only in the Quran or in ancient Arab tradition. Let’s start with Hood, then we have the story of Saaleh, and then we have the story of Shu’aib.

I seek refuge in God from Satan.

The Story of Hood (The People of ‘Ad)

Account I

[7:65] To `Aad we sent their brother Hood. He said, “O my people, worship God; you have no other god beside Him. Would you then observe righteousness?”

[7:66] The leaders who disbelieved among his people said, “We see that you are behaving foolishly, and we think that you are a liar.”

[7:67] He said, “O my people, there is no foolishness in me; I am a messenger from the Lord of the universe.

[7:68] “I deliver to you my Lord’s messages, and I am honestly advising you.

[7:69] “Is it too much of a wonder that a message should come to you from your Lord, through a man like you, to warn you? Recall that He made you inheritors after the people of Noah, and multiplied your number. Remember God’s blessings, that you may succeed.”

[7:70] They said, “Did you come to make us worship God alone, and abandon what our parents used to worship? We challenge you to bring the doom you threaten us with, if you are truthful.”

[7:71] He said, “You have incurred condemnation and wrath from your Lord. Do you argue with me in defense of innovations you have fabricated – you and your parents – which were never authorized by God? Therefore, wait and I will wait along with you.”

[7:72] We then saved him and those with him, by mercy from us, and we annihilated those who rejected our revelations and refused to be believers.

Account II

[11:50] To `Aad we sent their brother Hood. He said, “O my people, worship God; you have no other god besides Him. You are inventing.

[11:51] O my people, I do not ask you for any wage. My wage comes only from the One who initiated me. Do you not understand?

[11:52] “O my people, seek forgiveness from your Lord, then repent to Him. He will then shower you with provisions from the sky, and augment your strength. Do not turn back into transgressors.”

[11:53] They said, “O Hood, you did not show us any proof, and we are not abandoning our gods on account of what you say. We will never be believers with you.

[11:54] “We believe that some of our gods have afflicted you with a curse.” He said, “I bear witness before God, and you bear witness as well, that I disown the idols you have set up –

[11:55] “beside Him. So, give me your collective decision, without delay.

[11:56] “I have put my trust in God, my Lord and your Lord. There is not a creature that He does not control. My Lord is on the right path.

[11:57] “If you turn away, I have delivered to you what I was sent with. My Lord will substitute other people in your place; you cannot harm Him in the least. My Lord is in control of all things.”

[11:58] When our judgment came, we saved Hood and those who believed with him, by mercy from us. We saved them from a terrible retribution.

[11:59] Such was `Aad – they disregarded the revelations of their Lord, disobeyed His messengers, and followed the ways of every stubborn tyrant.

[11:60] Consequently, they incurred condemnation in this world, and on the Day of Resurrection. Indeed, `Aad rejected their Lord. Indeed, `Aad, the people of Hood, have perished.

Account III

[26:123] `Aad disbelieved the messengers.

[26:124] Their brother Hood said to them, “Would you not be righteous?

[26:125] “I am an honest messenger to you.

[26:126] “You shall reverence God, and obey me.

[26:127] “I do not ask you for any wage; my wage comes from the Lord of the universe.

[26:128] “You build on every hill a mansion for vanity’s sake.

[26:129] “You set up buildings as if you last forever.

[26:130] “And when you strike, you strike mercilessly.

[26:131] “You shall reverence God and obey me.

[26:132] “Reverence the One who provided you with all the things you know.

[26:133] “He provided you with livestock and children.

[26:134] “And gardens and springs.

[26:135] “I fear for you the retribution of an awesome day.”

[26:136] They said, “It is the same whether you preach, or do not preach.

[26:137] “That affliction was limited to our ancestors.

[26:138] “No retribution will ever befall us.”

[26:139] They thus disbelieved and, consequently, we annihilated them. This should be a lesson, but most people are not believers.

[26:140] Most assuredly, your Lord is the Almighty, Most Merciful.

Account IV

[46:21] Recall that the brother of `Aad warned his people at the dunes – numerous warnings were also delivered before him and after him: “You shall not worship except God. I fear for you the retribution of a great day.”

[46:22] They said, “Did you come to divert us from our gods? We challenge you to bring (the retribution) you threaten, if you are truthful.”

[46:23] He said, “The knowledge about this is with God; I only deliver to you what I was sent to deliver. However, I see that you people are ignorant.”

[46:24] When they saw the storm heading their way, they said, “This storm will bring to us much needed rain.” Instead, this is what you challenged (Hood) to bring; violent wind wherein there is painful retribution.

[46:25] It destroyed everything, as commanded by its Lord. By morning, nothing was standing except their homes. We thus requite the guilty people.

The Story of Saaleh (The People of Thamud)

Account I

[7:73] To Thamoud we sent their brother Saaleh. He said, “O my people, worship God; you have no other god beside Him. Proof has been provided for you from your Lord: here is God’s camel, to serve as a sign for you. Let her eat from God’s land, and do not touch her with any harm, lest you incur a painful retribution.

[7:74] “Recall that He made you inheritors after `Aad, and established you on earth, building mansions in its valleys, and carving homes from its mountains. You shall remember God’s blessings, and do not roam the earth corruptingly.”

[7:75] The arrogant leaders among his people said to the common people who believed, “How do you know that Saaleh is sent by his Lord?” They said, “The message he brought has made us believers.”

[7:76] The arrogant ones said, “We disbelieve in what you believe in.”

[7:77] Subsequently, they slaughtered the camel, rebelled against their Lord’s command, and said, “O Saaleh, bring the doom you threaten us with, if you are really a messenger.”

[7:78] Consequently, the quake annihilated them, leaving them dead in their homes.

[7:79] He turned away from them, saying, “O my people, I have delivered my Lord’s message to you, and advised you, but you do not like any advisers.”

Account II

[11:61] To Thamoud we sent their brother Saaleh. He said, “O my people, worship God; you have no other god beside Him. He initiated you from the earth, then settled you in it. You shall seek His forgiveness, then repent to Him. My Lord is always near, responsive.”

[11:62] They said, “O Saaleh, you used to be popular among us before this. Are you enjoining us from worshiping what our parents are worshiping? We are full of doubt concerning everything you have told us.”

[11:63] He said, “O my people, what if I have solid proof from my Lord, and mercy from Him? Who would support me against God, if I disobeyed Him? You can only augment my loss.

[11:64] “O my people, this is God’s camel to serve as a proof for you. You shall let her eat from God’s earth, and do not touch her with any harm, lest you incur an immediate retribution.”

[11:65] They slaughtered her. He then said, “You have only three days to live. This is a prophecy that is inevitable.”

[11:66] When our judgment came, we saved Saaleh and those who believed with him by mercy from us, from the humiliation of that day. Your Lord is the Most Powerful, the Almighty.

[11:67] Those who transgressed were annihilated by the disaster, leaving them in their homes, dead.

[11:68] It was as if they never lived there. Indeed, Thamoud have rejected their Lord. Absolutely, Thamoud have incurred their annihilation.

Account III

[26:141] Thamoud disbelieved the messengers.

[26:142] Their brother Saaleh said to them, “Would you not be righteous?

[26:143] “I am an honest messenger to you.

[26:144] “You shall reverence God, and obey me.

[26:145] “I do not ask you for any wage; my wage comes only from the Lord of the universe.

[26:146] “Do you suppose you will be left forever, secure in this state?

[26:147] “You enjoy gardens and springs.

[26:148] “And crops and date palms with delicious fruits.

[26:149] “You carve out of the mountains luxurious mansions.

[26:150] “You shall reverence God, and obey me.

[26:151] “Do not obey the transgressors.

[26:152] “Who commit evil, not good works.”

[26:153] They said, “You are bewitched.

[26:154] “You are no more than a human like us. Produce a miracle, if you are truthful.”

[26:155] He said, “Here is a camel that will drink only on a day that is assigned to her; a day that is different from your specified days of drinking.

[26:156] “Do not touch her with any harm, lest you incur retribution on an awesome day.”

[26:157] They slaughtered her, and thus incurred sorrow.

[26:158] The retribution overwhelmed them. This should be a lesson, but most people are not believers.

[26:159] Most assuredly, your Lord is the Almighty, Most Merciful.

Account IV

[27:45] We have sent to Thamoud their brother Saaleh, saying, “You shall worship God.” But they turned into two feuding factions.

[27:46] He said, “O my people, why do you hasten to commit evil instead of good works? If only you implore God for forgiveness, you may attain mercy.”

[27:47] They said, “We consider you a bad omen for us, you and those who joined you.” He said, “Your omen is fully controlled by God. Indeed, you are deviant people.”

[27:48] There were nine gangsters in the city who were wicked, and never did anything good.

[27:49] They said, “Let us swear by God that we kill him and his people, then tell his tribe, `We know nothing about their death. We are truthful.’ “

[27:50] They plotted and schemed, but we also plotted and schemed, while they did not perceive.

[27:51] Note the consequences of their plotting; we annihilated them and all their people.

[27:52] Here are their homes utterly ruined, because of their transgression. This should be a lesson for people who know.

[27:53] We save those who believe and lead a righteous life.

The Story of Shu’aib (The People of Midian)

Account I

[7:85] To Midyan we sent their brother Shu`aib. He said, “O my people, worship God; you have no other god beside Him. Proof has come to you from your Lord. You shall give full weight and full measure when you trade. Do not cheat the people out of their rights. Do not corrupt the earth after it has been set straight. This is better for you, if you are believers.

[7:86] “Refrain from blocking every path, seeking to repel those who believe from the path of God, and do not make it crooked. Remember that you used to be few and He multiplied your number. Recall the consequences for the wicked.

[7:87] “Now that some of you have believed in what I was sent with, and some have disbelieved, wait until God issues His judgment between us; He is the best judge.”

[7:88] The arrogant leaders among his people said, “We will evict you, O Shu`aib, together with those who believed with you, from our town, unless you revert to our religion.” He said, “Are you going to force us?

[7:89] “We would be blaspheming against God if we reverted to your religion after God has saved us from it. How could we revert back to it against the will of God our Lord? Our Lord’s knowledge encompasses all things. We have put our trust in God. Our Lord, grant us a decisive victory over our people. You are the best supporter.”

[7:90] The disbelieving leaders among his people said, “If you follow Shu`aib, you will be losers.”

[7:91] The quake annihilated them, leaving them dead in their homes.

[7:92] Those who rejected Shu`aib vanished, as if they never existed. Those who rejected Shu`aib were the losers.

[7:93] He turned away from them, saying, “O my people, I have delivered to you the messages of my Lord, and I have advised you. How can I grieve over disbelieving people.”

Account II

[11:84] To Midyan we sent their brother Shu`aib. He said, “O my people, worship God; you have no other god beside Him. Do not cheat when you measure or weigh. I see that you are prosperous, and I fear for you the retribution of an overwhelming day.

[11:85] “O my people, you shall give full measure and full weight, equitably. Do not cheat the people out of their rights, and do not roam the earth corruptingly.

[11:86] “Whatever God provides for you, no matter how small, is far better for you, if you are really believers. I am not a guardian over you.”

[11:87] They said, “O Shu`aib, does your religion dictate upon you that we must abandon our parents’ religion, or running our businesses in any manner we choose? Surely, you are known for being clement, wise.”

[11:88] He said, “O my people, what if I have solid proof from my Lord; what if He has provided me with a great blessing? It is not my wish to commit what I enjoin you from. I only wish to correct as many wrongs as I can. My guidance depends totally on God; I have put my trust in Him. To Him I have totally submitted.

[11:89] “And, O my people, do not be provoked by your opposition to me into incurring the same disasters as the people of Noah, or the people of Hood, or the people of Saaleh; and the people of Lot are not too far from you.

[11:90] “You shall implore your Lord for forgiveness, then repent to Him. My Lord is Most Merciful, Kind.”

[11:91] They said, “O Shu`aib, we do not comprehend many of the things you are telling us, and we see that you are powerless among us. If it were not for your tribe, we would have stoned you. You have no value for us.”

[11:92] He said, “O my people, does my tribe command a greater respect than God? Is this why you have been heedless of Him? My Lord is fully aware of everything you do.

[11:93] “O my people, go on doing what you wish, and so will I. You will certainly find out which of us will incur shameful retribution; you will find out who the liar is. Just wait in anticipation, and I will wait in anticipation along with you.”

[11:94] When our judgment came, we saved Shu`aib and those who believed with him, by mercy from us. As for the evil ones, they were struck by a disaster that left them dead in their homes.

[11:95] It was as though they never existed. Thus, Midyan perished, just like Thamoud had perished before that.

Account III (The People of the Woods)

[26:176] The People of the Woods disbelieved the messengers.

[26:177] Shu`aib said to them, “Would you not be righteous?

[26:178] “I am an honest messenger to you.

[26:179] “You shall reverence God, and obey me.

[26:180] “I do not ask you for any wage; my wage comes only from the Lord of the universe.

[26:181] “You shall give full measure when you trade; do not cheat.

[26:182] “You shall weigh with an equitable scale.

[26:183] “Do not cheat the people out of their rights, and do not roam the earth corruptingly.

[26:184] “Reverence the One who created you and the previous generations.”

[26:185] They said, “You are bewitched.

[26:186] “You are no more than a human being like us. In fact, we think you are a liar.

[26:187] “Let masses from the sky fall on us, if you are truthful.”

[26:188] He said, “My Lord is the One who knows everything you do.”

[26:189] They disbelieved him and, consequently, they incurred the retribution of the Day of the Canopy. It was the retribution of an awesome day.

[26:190] This should be a lesson, but most people are not believers.

[26:191] Most assuredly, your Lord is the Almighty, Most Merciful.

Account IV

[29:36] To Midyan we sent their brother Shu`aib. He said, “O my people, you shall worship God and seek the Last Day, and do not roam the earth corruptingly.”

[29:37] They disbelieved him and, consequently, the earthquake annihilated them; they were left dead in their homes by morning.

[29:38] Similarly, ‘Aad and Thamoud (were annihilated). This is made manifest to you through their ruins. The devil had adorned their works in their eyes, and had diverted them from the path, even though they had eyes.

Conclusion: Ancestral Focus and the Local Message

That’s kind of the end. As you can see, Shu’aib talks about even the previous messengers and tribes like ‘Aad and Thamoud. Which are his ancestors—people of the past from his tribe. The same genealogy, if we can say. He doesn’t talk about the Jewish Messengers. They all focused on what they know from their ancestors.

These are pretty much the three stories: the story of Hood, the story of Saaleh, and the story of Shu’aib.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. The rest of you, you can do it later whenever your time for the contact prayer comes. Peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

The Easiest Way to Heaven: The Power of Belief

Praise be to God, there is no other God except God. God willing, today I want to talk about the fact that God made the way to heaven the easiest way possible, and I literally mean the easiest way possible.

What got me thinking about this recently is that I saw a trailer for a movie like The Odyssey. Some of you might have seen it. It’s supposed to be a big-budget movie, and the background story of The Odyssey, in the ancient Greek myths, is that one of the gods is not happy with the main character and imposes some challenges for him. He has to go through those challenges to achieve the success, and he ends up having a really long trip which could have been a very short trip. And in many religion you see this—kind of like fake religions. Like the gods will demand a lot. They ask a lot, requiring you to do a certain type of yoga and this amount of hours. Or they ask lots of sacrifices—let’s say the Aztec religions. They even demand human sacrifices, in some ancient religions. And you can see that they were actually not that creative because —those are fake gods of course. They don’t exist— but the way humans imagined them is as not really that merciful.

But our God, The True God, is The Most Merciful. And we know that because God willing, today I will tell you why he made it so that we can go to heaven in the easiest way possible. I am not talking about an “easy way” as some sort of relative term “Oh, it’s kind of easy” —you know how when someone learns advanced math, like calculus, and someone asks them how they did it, they say it’s easy. Not in that way. I literally mean easy for everyone: no efforts at all, the easiest way possible, no efforts at all. God says this in the Quran a lot because it’s true, not because he is trying to convince us as an advertisement strategy. It is a fact. So, let’s analyze what I mean by this.

What True “Ease” Means in God’s System

For us to get to heaven, God didn’t say that to get to heaven, you have to lift 200 kilograms of weights, or to get to heaven you have to climb the highest peak in the world. God didn’t make it like they make it in school. To get to heaven you have to go twelve years in school, eight years, or four years, whatever it is. Or to get to heaven you have to complete this course and after you complete this course you get a certificate and then you get to heaven. All of those require effort. Some of them more efforts, some of them less efforts. But they do require effort. Its a level of difficulty. It’s not any of those, it is actually easier. It’s easier than let’s say, to get to heaven you have to lift up your hand. Just say I want to get to heaven. It easier even than that. Imagine if heaven was like: “Who wants to go to heaven, lift up your hand”. That would require efforts, see there’s some effort. I have to lift up my hand. That’s a little bit hard. I mean not that hard, but it does require some effort. It is easier than that. Or let’s say God could have made it so that oh to get to heaven you have to wink maybe. Just go like this and you’ll go to heaven. That’s easy. Just wink or blink your eyes or blink twice. If you blink twice you can get to heaven. God could have made it like that. God could have made it any way he wanted. Of course, he made it the correct way and the most merciful way, but he could have made it any way he wanted. He could have made any of those as requirements. Because he’s God. He could have done that. But he made it easier than any of those. It’s easier than just blinking your eyes. It’s easier than lifting your hand. It’s easier than anything possible. It’s the easiest way possible.

So what does it require to make it to heaven according to the way God designed the system? To get to heaven all God asks from us is believe. So if you want to go to heaven, believe. Simple as that. No action required, no efforts required, no thinking required. Belief is just belief. You either believe it or you don’t. See, disbelief actually requires more effort because when you disbelieve, you’re like, “Oh, is he trying to fool me? Is there some manipulation going on? What are the chances? What’s going on behind closed doors?” So that’s disbelief. You’re evaluating. You’re sort of trying to think from the perspective of the other side. You’re trying to kind of like see if you’re being tricked. That requires some efforts, because now you have to think and analyze. It becomes more like a chess game. But, all that is required, it’s the easiest thing possible. All that God requires us to make it to heaven is just believe. That’s it. Just believe.

Religious “Laws” as Divine Predictions

Someone might say, “But wait a minute, doesn’t God ask us to do the contact prayer, honor our parents, do not commit adultery, give the zakat, what else there’s so many requirements, don’t drink alcohol, don’t eat pork, read the Quran, stuff like that” Doesn’t God require that? Well, if we truly understand the Quran at the deeper level, we see that those are just results. Those are the results of belief. That’s why the Quran never says, do the contact prayer. It says if you believe, you will do the contact prayer. In a verse in the Quran and quite a few verses, God says something like you have to do the contact prayer, you have to do this, you have to do that, there’s quite a a few sort of requirements given there, and then it says this is difficult indeed but not so for the believers. So, for the believers it’s easy, for the disbelievers it’s hard. So, if you believe those come automatically it’s a prediction it’s not a law which you have to fulfill. It’s not like oh you have to do this, you have to do that’s how we understand it usually. And actually in English quite often it’s translated like that, which is fine. Because in the western culture they think of things like that as laws, like even the laws of Newton as they are described as laws. What they really mean is predictions about what will happen if you drop let’s say a ball, they say “oh, the law of gravity”. What they mean is, it’s a prediction of what will happen. God’s will. A better a better way to to express it is God’s will. And actually in the Arabic when you look at it how the Quran describes the words for laws it’s it actually decree. It means decree. Decree means this is what will happen. A prophecy. This is God’s will and God has willed or God has decreed that this will happen. Meaning if you believe, and that’s the requirement, if you believe and that requirement is as we can see is absolutely easy. If you believe you will do the contact prayer. It’s not that God is forcing you, but you will just end up being a person who does the contact prayer. It’s like saying you if you’re an apple you’ll have some sugar in it. It’s automatic. If you believe you will not drink alcohol. Of course, if you believe fully, if you believe 100%. If you believe 50%, you might end up drinking alcohol once in a while. Not that I recommend it, but what I’m saying is like all those are actually just results, prophecies about what a believer will do.

But the way you make it to heaven is through belief. And of course, if you believe, the signs of believe are those. It’s like check marks. Oh, I I know I believe because I’ve done this, this this. It’s not like, oh, I have to do this so I can believe. No contact prayer ever can lead you to believe. But belief, absolute belief will always lead to a contact prayer. Can you see the difference? Like which leads to to which you can force yourself. There’s a verse in the Quran which says who wo to the those who do the contact prayers who are healed during the contact prayers. You can force yourself to do the contact prayer. It’s not going to lead to belief if you force yourself. But if you believe it will lead to the contact prayer, not because it’s hard, but because it’s easy. And it just it just works. It just And someone actually asked me like years ago, oh, how do you do you then how do you then how do you believe? Well, you either do or you don’t. That’s kind of like God made it like that. That’s how easy it is. You do. If you believe, you believe. If you don’t believe, you don’t believe. And that’s because God has chosen who’s going to go to heaven. And who’s going to go to hell? If you believe, you’ll go to heaven. If you don’t believe, you will go to hell. That’s it. It’s the easiest thing possible. Why is why is believe the easiest thing possible? It doesn’t require any physical effort. You don’t have to lift up your hand or anything. It doesn’t require any mental effort. It’s not even a mental effort. You don’t even have to breathe harder. It’s the easiest thing possible. Believe, just you just believe. Like you hear something and you believe it. Like children can do it. You know when a child first kind of let’s say becomes two or three years old, you tell them something, they just believe. Oh yeah, that’s true. That what it is. They ask you why does it rain? Oh, because there’s evaporation in the air and that it cools down. Sort of. It’s sort of true. And they believe. Children will believe. They don’t think. In the beginning, they don’t think you’re lying. It’s the easiest thing. A child can do it. As soon as they learn how to speak, they can do it. Okay, just think. Seriously, just think how much effort does it require to believe? Zero. Zero efforts. Like you hear it, you believe it or you don’t. No action, no thinking, no preparation, none of that is required. It’s the easiest thing. It doesn’t take a few months like a course or a few years like school. So you can be ready to go to heaven. No, you just at that same moment you get a certificate to heaven, if you just believe. Just believe. As simple as that. You cannot force yourself to believe. But if you believe, you believe. It’s as simple as that. You just believe and that’s it. I’m not telling you to believe. If you believe, you believe. If you don’t believe, you don’t believe. I cannot make you a believer. If you are a believer; if God made you a believer; if God chose the destiny for you to be to heaven, he made you a believer. And all the others then come afterwards. Like doing the contact prayer. It’s not that then they have to be done. God has told Muhammad, let’s say—that’s why people who tell us about these so-called laws are called prophets; they’re telling us what will happen in the future—a believer will do the contact prayer. An absolute believer will always do the contact prayer. It’s a prophecy. It’s a future prediction about what will happen to a certain person. Just like saying, “Oh, an old person eventually will die.” It’s a prophecy. That’s also in the Quran. The Quran says everyone dies. We think of it as a law. That’s also a “law”. But can anyone sort of cause the law or not cause the law? It just happens. When you get old, you die eventually. And you either go to heaven or not. But there’s nothing you can do about it. The same thing with belief. You either believe or you don’t. If God chooses you to be a to be a believer, you will be a believer. If God chooses you not to you won’t be a believer.

Momentary Belief vs. Continuous Submission

By the way, belief is momentary. Like for every moment you can be a believer or disbeliever. So, I don’t want to classify people that easy like that. We can classify people into submitters versus non-submitters. But belief is at every moment, you are a believer or a disbeliever. You can be a believer most of the moments most of the time and a disbeliever part of the time. So it’s about the moment; every moment you are a believer or a disbeliever. God chooses you to be a believer or disbeliever compared to submission which is kind of like an official one-time thing, which you can do. The difference is like marriage and love. You can choose to be married and you’re kind of constantly married even if you don’t do anything. But love is at every moment. At every moment you love someone or you don’t. But later on you might not and then later on you might love them again. So it measures every moment. But marriage kind of, it’s more like a one time thing. That’s how submission and belief are. Of course in good circumstances, love should lead to marriage and marriage should continue with love. Just like belief should lead to submission and submission should continue with additional belief. But, at the end of the day belief is what matters. And is the easiest thing, the thing which matters the most God made it the easiest thing possible.

Some people think that when God is saying God made religion easy in the Quran, when God says that in the Quran, they think that God is trying to advertise the religion, they think, “Oh, it’s actually a little bit hard. You have to do the contact prayer. That’s how most people think.” And then, when they read that, they’re like, “Oh, God is just trying to advertise it. He’s trying to encourage us.” Kind of like when you go, let’s say if you go to a gym or let’s say if you go to school and you’re having difficulties and let’s say your parents tell you, “Oh, it’s easy.” Like “just try this, try that. It’s easy.” They’re trying to encourage you to finish that task. When God says it’s easy, he doesn’t, he’s not trying to do that. He’s just like it’s easy. It’s literally easy. It’s a fact. There’s no hidden motive behind that. Just easy. It’s just easy. How easy? You just believe. What action does believe require? None. What efforts does believe require? None. You believe or you don’t. It’s just (Snaps finger) like that. It’s even easier than that. Actually, this requires some effort. But you just believe. Like, has anyone thought about how much effort does it require to believe? It’s less effort than disbelieving. Disbelieving actually requires some effort. You have to think and to calculate and to strategize, when you disbelieve. But when you believe, no effort whatsoever. And I mean absolutely no effort. Not relatively no effort. Absolutely no effort. You hear it and you believe. That’s it.

And I don’t get it how some people just cannot do that. It’s really interesting how some people just cannot do that. When someone tells you something, you just believe. How hard is it? How some people cannot do that. I don’t get it. Like you tell them something, especially criminals, you tell them, let’s say the police will tell them, “Oh, you have to come to the police station.” “Oh, I know you’re trying to arrest me.” Like immediately they think something else. It’s like their communication is broken. You tell them something, they think something else. Typically criminals will do that. Like, “Oh, can you come here?” Maybe you want to give them a free pizza. They’ll be like, “Oh, what does he want?/ What does she want?” Like they think beyond that. They think they are smart. Let me just think beyond it. How about you just don’t. Just take their word for it? That’s what belief requires. I’m just going to—whatever the person says—I’m just going to take their words for it. Of course, the Quran prevents us from believing anyone, like not being stupid. Because that would be naive. But naive, if you got no other information except for God’s information, being naive, would be a good thing. Because we have the Quran, it prevents us from being naive. But belief like as a principle, it has zero efforts. Let’s repent, Touboo ila Allah.

Praise be to God. There’s no other god except God.

The Nature of our Choice and the Final Challenge

Someone might say, it could have been even easier and let’s see if it could have been easier. Like God could have been even more merciful and make it even easier. Some people might say, you know what? What if it was no belief at all? Like it doesn’t matter if you believe. Let’s say what if God made it so for you to be in heaven or to go to heaven, it doesn’t even matter if you believe, like you have to do nothing. Why didn’t God just do that? He did actually. Belief is the next easiest thing possible. The easiest thing is to do nothing, like just exist. The easiest thing: exist, the next easiest thing is belief. So why didn’t God make it so that we just exist? He did. He created us in heaven. We wanted the challenge and he gave us the easiest possible challenge. Imagine God creating the creatures. “I’m going to create these creatures; the easiest thing possible. They are in heaven already. No efforts whatsoever. No challenge to fulfill, no course to take, no nothing.” You’re just in heaven. That’s how we were in heaven. And then when Satan challenged God’s absolute authority, we wanted a challenge. I guess that’s how humans are. And He could have been mad. He could have been like, “Oh, you guys are maybe with Satan’s side. So, I’m going to give you a challenge to go back to heaven.” You want a challenge? Fine. I’ll give you a challenge. 10 years in school, 50 years working in a mine, whatever. God could have made it like that. But he didn’t. Even after asking for a challenge, for a test, what did God do? He made it the easiest possible. Just believe. The Quran says that God gave Adam words by which he redeemed him. All Adam had to do, is believe. Believe those words. Whatever God told him, believe it and that’s it.

Of course, if you believe that will lead to certain features which you will have. You’ll do the contact prayer, you’ll do that. But that’s just the result. It’s automatic. It’s kind of like a ball rolling down the hill. Whether the ball will roll down this hill or that hill. That’s the initial moment. But then afterwards it just rolls down, down the hill. No efforts. Sometimes we try to make efforts, understandable. Because we see other people doing it and we think “Oh, let’s try”. That’s kind of training for probably future belief but it really doesn’t lead to belief. You either believe or you don’t believe. That shows that you want to believe. But wanting to believe it doesn’t mean you believe. Believing actually requires no efforts. That this is really hard for some people to get it. It just requires no efforts. You believe, it requires no efforts to believe. And then actually when you do it like that, even the so-called laws which are actually prophecies about what will happen to you, just feel easier. “Okay, I believe. So, it’s my destiny that I’m going to do the contact prayer at this time of the day, that time of the day. It’s my destiny. It’s not that I’m kind of like forcing myself into that destiny. It’s just my destiny. God willed it.”

By the way, this is why in the Quran, God, whenever He gives a law, so-called law, which is a decree, a prophecy, he always says, “Oh, you who believe.” He doesn’t say, “Oh, do the contact prayer.” And some people do it and other people don’t do it. That would be with efforts because some people are doing, other people are not doing it. But he says, “Oh, you who believe, do the contact prayer.” That means that no one is breaking the law. No one is breaking God’s law. If he said do the contact prayer, everyone would do the contact prayer, because God’s word is True. In the Quran, it says that when God says be, it is. Like there’s no way to escape it. If God said, “Oh, you people do the contact prayer.” Everyone would do the contact prayer because what God says is true and it becomes true. God’s word automatically becomes true. If God said, “Oh, you people do the contact prayer.” Everyone in the world would do the contact prayer. It would be automatic. There’s no choice. But some people don’t do it, because God didn’t say for them to do it. God said, “Oh you who believe, do the contact prayer.” So it’s a prophecy. If you believe, you can think of it like this. If you believe, it is God’s will that you will do the contact prayer. If you do not believe, it is again God’s will, because of your own mistakes, but it is again God’s will, that you will not do the context prayer.

By the way, God doesn’t want your contact prayer. Doesn’t want a person’s contact prayer if he doesn’t believe. What’s the value of it, if you don’t believe. As I’m saying what matters is that we believe, and that’s how we get to heaven. However, it’s a feature. It’s how a person is when he believes that he does the contact prayer. He doesn’t lie and all of those. So yeah, God created religion in the easiest way possible. It requires absolutely no effort. Just believe. When God says that, believe it. When God says something else, believe it. And by the way, this shows how merciful God is. It’s like people want God to be hard like some more difficult God for us. That’s why, I guess, some of them don’t believe. They’re like, “Oh, that’s what it takes. I thought it should be something else.” No, you just believe and then it’s the result of belief that you do other things. But those other things don’t send you to heaven. It’s the belief which sends you to heaven, or hell if you don’t believe.

But believing comes automatically with features. What do I mean with features? It’s just it happens. It’s God’s will that those who believe will do that. Will do the good things. It just feels natural. Try it. It doesn’t even make sense to say try it. because you either believe or you don’t. But what I’m saying is when you believe, if you just empty your mind and you believe, you’re like “Okay let me just focus on belief. do I believe?” And then you will see that everything gets easier instead of focusing, “Oh, do I do this? Do I do that? Do I do that? What about this law? What about that law? What about” How about you just believe. If you believe, by the way, it doesn’t matter what I say, you’ll make the right choice. Doesn’t matter what I say, you’ll make the right choice. It doesn’t matter if you have the Quran, you’ll make the right choice. Belief existed before the Quran. Before the Quran was revealed. And then it’s a feature of believers that when the Quran is revealed, they believe. But if it wasn’t the Quran, if it was some other book, the Bible which God revealed or whatever, they would believe that. So it’s about the belief. It’s not about this rule, that rule.

Of course, eventually every person gets a better and better believer. Every submitter, because if he’s a true submitter, and true believer they become better and better believers, so they fulfill more and more of those “laws”, which are actually, in Arabic, decrees, God’s will. It’s not things we have to do. In the law, like in the western country sense, like it’s the law not to drive the car in the red traffic light. That’s the way they think of laws. You can actually break the law if you want to. I’m not talking laws like that. I’m talking laws like what they call, the law of gravity. It just happens. It’s not a human choice to make it or break it. It just happens. If you are a believer, you end up doing that. If you’re a disbeliever, you end up doing that. It’s a prophecy. What will happen to you? How will your life look like if you believe? If you believe your life will look like someone who doesn’t lie, someone who doesn’t steal, someone who doesn’t drink alcohol, someone who does the contact prayer, someone who doesn’t eat pork, someone who doesn’t gamble.

Clarification on Complicated Situations and Mindsets

By the way, let me just answer quickly. I think someone asked about gambling. Gambling; yeah it’s prohibited in the Quran and it’s sort of sometimes we don’t have a choice. There’s products which include gambling in it, let’s say a chocolate or something because they are mixed with a good thing, then yeah, it’s probably fine. But if you can separate it, then gambling is absolutely prohibited. For example, if you own a company and you want to use gambling as an advertisement strategy, you have a choice. You can separate the gambling from the company. So basically, unless you’re an employee there and you have no choice, but if it’s your company and you have a choice to use gambling as an advertisement strategy, then you shouldn’t do it. A believer wouldn’t do it. It’s obvious a believer wouldn’t do it. But again, if you believe, you would make the right choice, even if I didn’t tell you. If you don’t believe, you’d make the wrong choice, even if I told you. So, it’s not about sort of trying to force ourselves to go after the laws. It’s about believing. You just believe or you don’t. You’re either a believer, or you’re not. And then if you’re a believer, you will be automatically—God has willed it, that you will end up doing those good things which the Quran mentions and not doing the bad things which the Quran mentions. It’s as simple as that.

And the belief is the easiest thing you can do. You just believe. I don’t like can anyone tell me is there any effort in belief? Absolutely no effort. You just believe. Even a less effort than that, would be not to do anything at all. But God did it for us. We didn’t want it. We’re like, “Oh, we want some challenge.” “Fine. Here is the easiest challenge possible. Just believe.” And still, most of the people fail. I guess it’s too easy for them. I don’t know. People like difficult things. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. There’s something wrong with them. The Quran says there is a disease in their heart or in their mind. There’s definitely something wrong with them. Because imagine a creature has been created—which is the human being. God has created a creature and one of the easy features of that creature is to just believe. You know how you put some input, some words in the computer and it’s just going to take it as that. A computer can do that. Like it cannot believe, but the computer can sort of just take words for its value. Like you tell the computer, write hello and the computer will do it. It’s not that difficult. So here’s this creature; the easiest thing it can do—it can do more difficult things, but the easiest thing it can do, is believe. And it doesn’t, sometimes. there’s something wrong. If a person doesn’t believe there’s something wrong. There’s some disease in their heart or in their mind, they are literally crazy. But I don’t want to go there because they can call us crazy too they’ve been calling us crazy. So I don’t want to play that game, but literally they are crazy. Sorry for like going back to it. But yeah, there’s something wrong with them, there’s just something wrong with them. So the easiest thing—just believe. Just take the word for what it is. God is great. Just believe. No. That’s what they do. No. What do you mean? How hard can it be? No. Maybe he’s not. Maybe? That’s how they think. Imagine telling them there’s no other god except God. Just believe. That’s all you have to “Oh, they go into intricacies and stuff.”

Anyway, for those who have to do the contact prayer, let’s do the contact prayer. If you believe you will do the contact prayer. If you don’t believe you will not do the contact prayer when the time of the contact prayer comes.

Salam Alaikum. Peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

The Spiritual Importance of Hope in God’s Mercy

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

In the past, but partly in today’s world as well, people went through difficulties. Either difficulty through health, difficulty through poverty, difficulty through not having the right people around you, travel difficulties, things like that, inconvenience difficulties, discomfort difficulties, not having a place to sit, for example, and things like that.

And in the past, they were more, if we can call them, they were never random, but more random in the sense that people would have different difficulties at different times. Someone would be more rich, someone would be more poor. In today’s world, this has kind of been a little bit more standardized because of the modern world, what I call the global forced behavior, and so some of that is actually just common for everyone. And yeah, you still have variation, but a lot of it is common.

The Modern System of Delayed Gratification

One of the, let’s say, common difficulties is the delay of any sort of, let’s call, gratification. Delay of the first home. People today get the first home a little bit later than they would have gotten it in the past. It’s not their fault; it’s just the system has created that situation. And it is what it is. If instead of getting, let’s say, your home at 30 or 40, you might get it at 50. Or instead of getting married at 20, you might get married at 30 or 40. It’s just everything has been delayed.

Of course, the people in power have done that, thinking that they are going to solve our problems. Democracies thinking that, “Oh, what do we do about,” let’s say for example, in their mind, “how do we solve poverty? We do this, we do that, we do that, we educate people.” But that actually just delays stuff; it just delays poverty for later or delays things for later.

Given that so much of this is delayed—your first marriage if you’re not married, your first kids if you don’t have kids, your first home if you don’t have a home, your first car if you don’t have a car, your first bike if you don’t have a bike. Some people don’t even have a bike. It’s okay. It’s normal.

What could it be, the first job. Your first job can be delayed. In the past, people when they got 16, 18, yeah, it was not the best job, but they had something to do. Today, a lot of people go to college, even masters, sometimes doctors. They don’t get a job until 25, 30. And it’s normal. It’s okay. It’s delayed. So all of these are delayed.

Why Believers Must Never Lose Hope

When all of these are delayed, it’s really important for submitters, for us, for the believers, not to lose hope. It’s really important not to lose hope. Why is it important not to lose hope? It’s because if you hope that things will get better, which is what a believer should believe, then it shows that you know that God is merciful.

Because when you lose hope, what do you think inside? “Oh, God is not merciful.” Because if God is merciful, He wouldn’t let you forever, or for a very very long time, more than you can handle, He wouldn’t let you in a difficult situation. Eventually, it will end. All difficult situations for believers, eventually they end. Be it a few years, a decade more, a few more years, they all end. All the bad situations end if you’re a believer. If you’re a disbeliever, the difficult situation can last forever. But if you’re a believer, it will end. Eventually, it will end.

That’s because God is merciful. And because He is merciful, He wouldn’t let you suffer forever or be in a bad situation forever. So it’s really important that you have hope.

The topic of today that I’m emphasizing is that we shouldn’t lose hope if we are believers. We shouldn’t, let me specify more correctly, we shouldn’t lose hope of God’s mercy. That’s how the Quran says it. Because if you lose hope of God’s mercy, you don’t believe that God is merciful.

Being merciful is one of God’s important qualities or names. God is many things. God is just, God is Great, God is powerful. All of those are important. But one of those important qualities of God, is that God is merciful. And if you lose hope, that shows that you don’t believe inside of you that God is merciful. So when you want to be more hopeful, just remember God is merciful. He’s not going to let you in that situation forever.

Lessons from the Stories of the Prophets

This is especially important because when you look back at what happened with the previous prophets, you’ll see that actually if they didn’t have hope, it would be unreasonable, or none of the situations which happened would happen.

Adam

Let’s go back to Adam. Adam did get kicked out of heaven. Let’s take him as an example. Adam made a mistake with his wife. He got fooled by Satan. What did God say? “Get out of here. Get out of heaven,” or the Garden of Eden. “Get out. Get out of the Garden of Eden.”

If Adam didn’t have hope that he might get potentially back to heaven, he would never ask God to forgive him or he would never pray to Him. The Quran says God gave Adam specific words by which He redeemed him. But if Adam didn’t have hope, thinking, “Oh, now I’m out of heaven and it’s over for me. Done,” if Adam thought like that, he would never get back in heaven. He would never pray. He would never ask God to forgive him because he lost hope. So it’s important to have hope, and he had hope because he knew that God is merciful. Kind of like you get kicked out, you know, “Oh, yeah. He might actually let me back. He’s merciful. He’s not going to let me down.” A lot of the prayer comes from hope.

Moses

Or let’s take the example of Moses and the children of Israel. When Moses went to preach to Pharaoh and to release the children of Israel, what did Pharaoh do? Pharaoh made it harder for them. Like in the Bible, it says Pharaoh made it twice as, like let’s say if they had to carry one brick, the next day they would have to carry two bricks, only because Moses asked from Pharaoh to free the children of Israel. So it became twice as difficult for them for a while. If they didn’t have hope, what would they do? They’d give up. They’d be like, “Oh, let’s we are siding with Pharaoh now.”

Abraham

Or let’s take the example of Abraham. Abraham was promised that he was going to have a child, and his wife, and it lasted for years, years and years and years. A promise. If he didn’t have hope, God knows what he would have done. Kind of like his wife a little bit lost hope because then they kind of had another child through one of her slaves, but still they mostly kept hope. Abraham kept the hope.

Jacob

Or the case of Jacob. When they took Joseph away from him, they thought that they totally fooled him. But they didn’t. Jacob knew that Joseph was, he had certain information that Joseph was still alive. If Jacob lost hope, imagine he would think that Joseph is dead. So he would live all his life thinking that Joseph is dead. And if Jacob lost hope, the situation would have turned differently.

Jonah

Or the situation of Jonah. He got swallowed by the fish, whale, whatever it is. And according to the Quran and the Bible, he stayed there for three days. He stayed in the belly of the fish. If Jonah lost hope and didn’t pray to God, the only reason why someone would pray to God in the middle of the belly of the fish in total darkness, the only reason why they would pray to God is if they hoped that, “Maybe God will forgive me, and maybe God will take me out of the situation. Maybe God will make it better.”

That’s, by the way, having hope is not a guarantee that what you want will be granted, because a lot of those are wishes, but it’s definitely in general going to get better. Sometimes we limit ourselves to like, “Oh, I cannot build a house because I want that bigger house.” Yeah, we’re just delaying it ourselves. It’s our own fault. However, we should hope that in general things get better. Why? Because God is merciful, and they get better for believers.

Muhammad

And by the way, there are roller coasters, meaning that sometimes they get worse for a while, but it’s always temporary. Let’s say the example of Muhammad. Muhammad preached to Meccans for a while. Things got worse, actually. Similar to the case of the children of Israel, for a while things got worse. Muhammad thought that Meccans eventually will believe. He had hope that God will be merciful and eventually the situation will become easier and the Meccans will believe. But for a while, they actually got worse. They kicked him out. They fought him. If he didn’t have hope, he would give up. He’d be like, “Oh, I thought Mecca is going to eventually get better.” But it didn’t. It got worse for a while. And he would have given up, and giving up means that you don’t believe that God is merciful.

The Distortion of Time During Hardship

And by the way, hope, let me sort of remind you that it’s really important to know that after a difficult situation, things get better if you’re a believer. Because when you go through a difficult situation—it could be not having enough money, or maybe having depression, whatever it is—whatever that difficult situation is, it seems that it’s going to last longer than it is, or you might even be convinced that it’s going to last forever.

Why? Because when we are in a difficult situation, as a lot of us know this, when you’re going through tough times, it seems like time is moving slower.

Let me take an example. Let’s say that you have some kind of big health problem in your body, and the doctor tells you, “Oh, you have to do surgery. Then after the surgery, you will have to lay down in your bed for two weeks. You cannot move, you cannot do anything else for two weeks, and then you’ll get better.”

If you hear this information when you are sick, really sick, you will think that two weeks is very long, especially if you’re in pain. Time moves really slowly. Every second it seems like every second is too long, every second is too long, and that convinces you that two weeks is really long. “How am I going to last for two weeks like that?” That’s unbearable. You think it’s unbearable. And that convinces you that maybe you shouldn’t have hope.

However, if anyone else is told before they are sick or after they are sick, “You’re going to have to go through surgery and it’s going to last for two weeks,” if you’re not suffering at the moment when you hear that, it doesn’t seem as long. Because when you are doing well, it feels like time is moving fast. So two weeks, you’re like, “Yeah, of course, after two weeks I’ll get better and that’s it.”

So it’s especially important to have hope, and I’m reminding you to understand that things get better eventually, that no bad situation lasts forever. It’s especially important because if you are actually in that situation right now, or whenever, you will think that it’s going to last longer than it does. It feels like it’s going to last longer, so it’s easier to lose hope. Let’s repent.

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

Quranic Verses on Hope and Mercy

And now let me actually just read some verses from the Quran, which remind us not to lose hope.

Surah 39, verse 53 says:

“Proclaim, ‘Oh my servants who exceeded the limits, never despair of God’s mercy, for God forgives all sins. He is The Forgiver, Most Merciful.’”

See again, God is reminding us that He is most merciful. Because understanding that quality of God, knowing that God is merciful, is what gives you hope. Because He could be the most powerful God; if He’s not a good God, a merciful God, that doesn’t mean that things will get better. But if He’s merciful, things definitely will get better for believers.

Then in Surah 3, verse 139, it says:

“You shall not waver, nor shall you grieve, for you are the ultimate victors if you are believers. If you suffer hardship, the enemy also suffers the same hardship. We alternate the days of victory and defeat among the people. God thus distinguishes the true believers and blesses some of you with martyrdom. God dislikes injustice.”

In Surah 12, verse 87, the example of Jacob is given, where Jacob says:

“Oh my sons, go fetch Joseph and his brother, and never despair of God’s grace.”

So don’t give up, basically.

“And never despair of God’s grace. None despairs of God’s grace except the disbelieving people.”

And this is a strong statement. If you think that things will never get better for you, never, then you have forgotten that God is graceful, that God is Most Gracious, and that God is The Most Merciful. Let’s not despair of God’s grace, especially in difficult times.

How Difficulties Get Solved and Equalized

It’s important to remember this because, as I said, in difficult times it seems like time is slowing down. Time is moving less fast, which makes you think that it’s going to last forever, but it just goes away. You could be in the worst depression; it can go away. By the way, I’m not saying you shouldn’t seek help with doctors, therapists, things like that. You should do that. But it’s going to go away. If you’re a believer, it’s going to go away, whatever difficulty you are on, or it can be solved with a change of situation.

You can even have some kind of permanent health problem, maybe born without an arm or something. Eventually, even if you don’t change, things will get easier for you because, let’s say, phones are created where you can speak to the phone, so you don’t need the arm as much anymore. Most people today actually don’t cook. A lot of people don’t cook. They don’t need their arm as much. I mean, it’s important to have arms, but the differences are not that big.

Or let’s say someone is married, someone is not married. The differences have become less and less pronounced as we move into the future. But as people age, at a certain point, let’s say 60 or 70, someone who’s married and someone who is not married, their life is about the same, about equal. Because that person who got married, he’s blessed, but he might have some difficulty with kids who are teenagers, you have to send them to college, so there are difficulties. And the guy or the woman who never got married, now she’s totally free. Basically, she doesn’t have to spend money for college. So at some point they get equalized.

Even someone who doesn’t have an arm, it gets better. Even for that person, it gets better. At some point, they all get a little bit older. What are they going to do? Stay on the phone. The person who doesn’t have an arm is going to speak on their phone, similar to the person who does have an arm.

So what I’m saying is it gets better. There are so many ways it can get better because God is merciful. And the most important part, it definitely gets better in heaven. So let’s not forget that, even after death it gets better. Even when we die, or the process of death, it might be difficult for a week, for two weeks, for a month. Some people suffer with diseases for years, 10 years, 20 years, and it eventually gets better. If you’re a believer, it gets better.

The Promise of Ease

Let me read the last two verses from the Quran. Surah 94, verse 5 says:

“With difficulty comes ease. Indeed, with difficulty comes ease.”

This is what the Quran says. “With difficulty comes ease.” And this should give you hope if you truly believe this. “With difficulty comes ease. Indeed, with difficulty comes ease.”

And this is especially important because here’s the good news. If you went already through difficulty, or if you’re going through difficulty, that’s guaranteeing you that you will have an easy time in the future, or in the near future, or the far future, either way. So with difficulty comes ease.

The good news is that other people who have not gone through that difficulty, they eventually might have to; otherwise, they will not get to the same place in heaven. They might get to a lower heaven, or if they are bad people, they might go to hell. But if they want to get to the same place in heaven as you, if they haven’t gone through that difficulty, they will go through it in the near future when they get older, whatever it is. But if you went through it already, good news, it’s going to be easier if you trained more. Let’s say if you had a hard physical life, when the disease hits you or something, it’s going to feel easier.

So yeah, let’s not forget this. Let’s not forget that with difficulty comes ease, and that God is The Most Merciful. If we understand these and keep these two facts in our mind, then we will not lose hope of God’s mercy.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer or whenever the time. So, whenever the time for contact prayer is, just do the contact prayer. Peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

 

Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God. Today I want to talk about the end of witchcraft practice. I think one of the people wanted to know more about it. It’s usually a topic I’m not really interested to talk about, but it’s probably important that we cover it so we can put it behind our backs and we don’t really have to discuss it too much.

So in this sermon, God willing, what I’m going to prove is that witchcraft practice doesn’t exist anymore. And please pay attention to my words, I’m not saying that witchcraft doesn’t exist; what I’m saying is that witchcraft practice does not exist. What does this mean? What it means is that no one in the world today knows how to do witchcraft. No one, or no one does witchcraft. It does exist, people might try it, it existed in the past, but no one actually knows how to do it. It’s like saying, “Oh, heart surgery exists, but there’s no surgeon in the world.” Well, yeah, if heart surgery exists but there’s no surgeon in the world who can do heart surgery, what’s the point? In the same way, witchcraft does exist. It did exist in the past where there were people who knew how to do it. It’s not that they actually did it, but I’ll explain how it works.

But today, there’s no one who knows how to do it. Actually, by explaining it, I’ll tell everyone how it works. The issue is that I’ll also explain why it never has the effect, or the intended effect.

The Semantic Meaning of Witchcraft (Sihr) in the Final Testament

First of all, we cannot deny that witchcraft exists because it is mentioned in the Quran. The word in the Quran which included witchcraft is «Sihr», which means something covered, hidden, or sort of done “underneath the table”—misleading stuff.

And that word in the Quran includes more than witchcraft. So, God willing, I’ll explain the other meanings of that word some other day;

Because we have Technological or Scientific Witchcraft: Like magicians doing tricks with magnets, like pretending to levitate stuff with a magnet for example, and stuff like that; For example like David Copperfield stuff. And these are different, these are what they call : «Tricks», «Illusions» or «Magic». That is also included in the Arabic word which the Quran mentions, and that is not necessarily all evil because it ends and people know that it is actually a trick.

So, if I use these same verses to explain other concepts in the future – which God willing I will do because those are more important and more relevant for our times – If I use the same verses do not get confused by saying : «But this word is about witchcraft»;

The word has several meanings. But in this sermon, I want to focus on the meaning of that word in Arabic which can be translated as witchcraft in English. Basically the stuff which they also call magic, or sorcery, stuff which is done through Jinns, through demons.

Defining the Spiritual Entities: Jinn vs. Demon

Now, before I explain this, let me sort of first define some words because here in the explanation, I use the word demon instead of jinn. Because in the Western world, sometimes they kind of misunderstand; they think that jinns are just some kind of creatures which exist in the Islamic interpretation, but they don’t exist really. The Christians sometimes—well, Christians do have demons in the Bible; you can read about demons in the Bible. And while the Muslims talk about jinns, the difference is that demons are simply bad jinns, and witchcraft only happens through the bad jinns. All jinns are bad, by the way—all jinns are bad—but once you dominate them, they are not as bad anymore. It’s kind of like saying « All wolves are dangerous, but if you dominate them, if you make them dogs, then they are not as dangerous». So yeah, it’s kind of like that. It’s like having a word for a wolf, but you don’t have a word for dog.

In the Christian tradition, they have separate words. In the Islamic tradition, they use the same word jinn. In the Christian tradition, they use the word demon for the bad jinn, and I don’t think they have a word for the, let’s say, the “good jinn”. There’s no such thing as a good jinn, but there’s such a thing as a dominated jinn. If you dominate the jinn by good deeds, let’s say if the jinn is stronger than you, it’s a bad jinn; if you are stronger than the jinn, we can say it’s a good jinn. It’s going to go to heaven, but it went to heaven because it was dominated, not because it wanted to. And then eventually, of course, that jinn is going to enjoy heaven; later on, it’s going to realize that being dominated was a good thing. But for now, he doesn’t understand it. No jinn ever wants to do good, so they are technically all potential demons. If they are allowed to dominate, they are demons; if they are not allowed to dominate, we can just call them jinns. So, because the dominating ones—the dominating jinns—are the ones which are used for witchcraft, then I’m just going to use the word the demon. Let’s try to clarify that; I’m just going to use the word demon so that even the Christians can understand stuff about witchcraft.

Analyzing the Four Physical Forces of the Universe

So that’s one thing. The other thing is, first of all, I want to lay down how witchcraft works, even though it today doesn’t really practically work, but how it would work in theory. And first, let’s explore the possibilities first. For those who are, let’s say, more versed in science, a lot of people like scientists—definitely like the physicists—but a lot of people have enough knowledge in science. We know that we can reduce all the forces in this universe into four forces, which are:

1. Force of Gravity

2. The Electromagnetic Force

3. The Strong Force

4. The Weak Force

So these are the four forces in physics. And by the way, in another video clarification, God willing, someday I’ll explain why these are not forces at all. These are just descriptions of how things work; they are not forces because everything is controlled by God. But for the purposes of this Friday sermon, I’m going to call them forces, sort of going along with how the physicists call them, or laws, let’s say physical laws. Let’s call them physical laws or forces; that’s how they call them. I don’t believe they should be called like that, but for the purposes of this, let’s call them like that just so we can understand this better.

So, physicists reduce all the forces of the universe into four forces, and they have never been able to find another one. So basically, anything, any effect on anything which you want to describe, should be able to be reduced into these four forces: either gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, or the weak force. If it’s not one of these four, basically it’s fake. Any force you can reduce into these—like how the plants grow, if you simplify it, it comes down to these four forces. How the earth moves around the sun, or the sun around the earth, depending on how you want to see it, you can reduce it to these four forces. How the TV works, you can reduce it to these four forces. How the computer works, you can reduce it. Anything on this earth, it boils down to these four forces.

The Scientific Impossibility of Direct Witchcraft Causation

And with these four forces, if we accept that these are the four forces which work in this world, witchcraft has no place in it. Meaning that there’s no way you can describe witchcraft. You can describe how the sun moves, you can describe how the computer works, you can describe how the phone works, you can describe anything in this world if it’s true, if it’s real. If it’s fake, you cannot describe it. You cannot tell, for example, how Santa Claus flies with a sled; you cannot describe it with these four forces because it’s fake, it’s not real.

So witchcraft cannot be reduced—the effects—like if someone tries to explain, “Okay, so I’m going to move…” Let me just give an example of witchcraft: “Oh, I’m going to take the hair of this person, and I’m going to blow into it, and I’m going to do this, I’m going to say abracadabra,” or whatever they say, “and this will have an effect; basically, it will cause that person to have an accident.” There’s no way you can describe this effect through these four forces, which means it’s fake, it’s not happening. So there’s no cause and effect, basically. I’m not causing it by doing that witchcraft thing; I’m not causing it.

Then what’s happening? What is actually happening? And by the way, let me just give some examples of what I mean when I talk about witchcraft. I mean, like for example, taking a thread and tying a knot and blowing into it and saying, “Oh, I wish this person divorces.” Or kind of like—I don’t know what they typically do—or the voodoo, like taking a doll, putting a needle into it and saying, “Oh, I wish this person—let’s say in his head or in his stomach—I wish that person gets stomach pain or stomach cancer or something.” Basically the idea of causing something out there through some sort of witchcraft practice. And as I just showed, there’s no such thing as that causation. It cannot happen, because if it did, it should have been explainable by those four forces or physical forces. We can explain everything else; why not this? It should have been explainable.

Explaining Witchcraft as a Pre-Arranged Agreement (The Hill Analogy)

Then what’s happening in witchcraft? What’s happening when people do witchcraft? Let me explain it with another example so that we can understand why it looks like a force, it looks like a causation when it’s not causation.

Let’s say I use a magnet—and now I’m describing a real thing—let’s say I use a magnet, and whenever I move that magnet underneath the table, the metal coin will move. So we’re sort of causing it; according to physicists, we’re causing the coin to move if we move the magnet underneath the table and the coin is on top of the table. We cause it. No one is seeing what we’re doing; we’re sort of tricking them, but there is a cause. At the end of the day, I don’t believe in that cause, as I’m going to explain in that video, but at least according to physicists, we can say that there’s a cause; it’s described by the electromagnetic force, and there’s an explanation for it.

However, there’s another way to make it look like a cause, but it’s not. Let’s say, for example, I’m on one side of the hill, and I tell another friend on the other side of the hill—let’s say we want to play a prank, we want to trick a third friend. And I tell this friend, let’s say we have a walkie-talkie or some kind of phone, or we’re messaging—maybe I’m messaging with my phone—and I tell him, “Whenever I write, raise your hand.” Basically, there’s no force; it’s just that we have agreed, we have pre-arranged an agreement of what we are going to do. And that friend can actually sort of show if he wants to not go along with that—he might not go along with that—but let’s say we pre-agree to that, and we have an arranged agreement to trick the third friend. So with my phone, I tell him, “Every time I tell you ‘raise your arm’ with my phone, you raise your arm.” So I tell this third friend, “Look, whenever I raise my eyebrows, that friend over there is going to raise his arm.” As I raise my eyebrows, I write “raise your arm,” and the friend is going to raise his arm on another hill somewhere where he cannot hear us. And the third friend will be like, “Wait a minute, is there some kind of force which is causing it?” No, it’s just the pre-arranged agreement.

Coordinated Demonic Ideas: A Theoretical Case Study

As we can see, if there’s no way to explain witchcraft through forces because it doesn’t exist as a cause, it must be, by necessity, a pre-arranged agreement. So how can it happen? How can a pre-arranged agreement happen? I’ll show an example of how that pre-arranged agreement happens, or let’s call it coordinated ideas. We are coordinating some idea, and we’re kind of going to make it look like a force, like something is being caused. Let me take sort of an example of how witchcraft would have happened in practice in the past, or how in theory it can happen today—but then I’m going to show why it doesn’t happen actually.

Before I actually go to this example, let me explain, because I don’t want you guys to look at the graph before I sort of give the example. Let’s take an example: let’s say that a wife and a husband marry, and they both have an ex-boyfriend and an ex-girlfriend from the past. Now, let’s say the husband has married, and his ex-girlfriend—and by the way, I’m not sort of justifying any of these; all I’m saying is it can happen, it’s a thing which happens in practice—the ex-girlfriend of the husband cannot accept the fact that he got married. She hates him, or maybe she doesn’t hate him, maybe she’s still in love with him and she thinks she’s going to be in love with him, and she actually doesn’t want him to get married to someone else. So she goes to a sorcerer, to a person who practices witchcraft. In today’s world, I’m saying “practices” because it really is not real practice, but let’s say in the past—let’s say if we took an example of the past and put it today where witchcraft would really exist—and sort of see how it would work.

Let’s say in the past it would probably be an ex-wife instead of an ex-girlfriend. So let’s say the previous wife, she’s not happy that he got married again with someone better maybe, maybe her best friend or whatever—there’s something she doesn’t like about it. She goes to a sorcerer and she says, “I want you to cause my ex-husband to divorce. He has gotten married now; I don’t want that, I don’t like that marriage, I want them to divorce.” So the sorcerer, the person who practices witchcraft, says, “Oh, for this service, you’re going to have to pay, let’s say, $500.” Okay, she goes, gets the money, pays the dollars.

The Mechanism of Demon Worship and the Limits of Satan’s Power

Then how does it happen? How is it, quote-unquote, “caused”? It’s not really caused; it’s just a pre-arranged agreement. What happens there is that person, because he is a bad person—let me go to the graph now—that person talks to his demon.

And he might have unnecessary symbolism, like looking in the mirror, burning some coal, whatever they do—I don’t know what witchcraft practices typically are or how they are attempted to be done. But yeah, let’s say he has some kind of ritual. That ritual actually does nothing; it never did anything. The ritual is there so that he can serve the demon, so that the demon can agree to serve him. So the practice doesn’t do anything; it’s sort of demon worship. It’s not that it’s causing the witchcraft; it’s demon worship. So the person is agreeing to sell his soul to worship the demon with that practice so that the demon can sort of do something, can pay him back.

And by the way, none of this is automatically executed, because the Quran says that the demons have no power over human beings, so they cannot sort of cause things. No demon can ever cause anything. They cannot move this table, they cannot move something. Some of those things happened during Solomon’s times, but those are miracles; we’re talking outside of miracles. And by the way, we know that the last miracle was the mathematical miracle, so therefore we’re not talking about miracles here. Here we’re talking about real life without miracles, which is today.

Demons cannot do any of that; they cannot move the table, they cannot move the home, they cannot do anything. The Quran says they have no power, absolutely no power over you. The only power they have is to suggest ideas, give you ideas. Like for example, when I’m just walking down the street and I’m like, “Oh, maybe I should push this person so he will fall.” That’s an idea from a demon. Or maybe, “Oh, maybe I should skip the prayer today.” I think it is my idea, but the idea comes from the demon. So the only thing, the only power—it’s not even a power that the demons have—is to suggest, to give you an idea. But they are going to make it look like a force—I’ll explain how. And you are absolutely free to choose whether you want to listen to the demon or not. So the demons are not causing anything. The demon is just giving you an idea, and then you choose whether you want to listen to the demon or not.

Probability of Evil Actions in a Depraved Society

Now, in this example here, as you can see, I put 0.9 in all the arrows. What does this 0.9 represent? I’m assuming here that all these people and these demons and the probability of these actions is 0.9. Basically, I’m assuming that this example is in a society where people are 90% bad. Every time a demon gives you an idea, nine times out of ten you listen, you like the idea, so you do it. The demon doesn’t force you to do anything bad; the demon gives you the idea only. But if you’re a bad person in a bad society in the past where people on average are 90% bad—let’s say Sodom and Gomorrah, or Babylon, or whatever—if the people are on average 90% bad, there’s a 90% chance that they will listen to the demon. So technically, whatever—let’s say the demon gives ten ideas, nine of those ideas on average you will listen to, and in one of them you will not listen to because you just don’t like it. Maybe the idea is too extreme, too evil, or maybe the idea is not extreme enough, it’s not evil enough. So whatever it is, if the person is 90% bad, he’s going to listen to the demon 90% of the time; he’s going to like the demon’s idea 90% of the time. So this is that example of everyone listening to one another 90% of the time for a bad idea, if there’s a bad idea.

The Coordinated Chain of Suggestions

Let’s now explain how witchcraft would work. The ex-wife for example would go to the sorcerer. The sorcerer would tell the demon (he is technically worshiping him) : « I’m sort of doing this, I’m now your best friend, Can you please separate the husband and the wife? Can you please do that for me? » .He does not have to listen because he is also independent, but even the demon is 90% bad. So there’s a 90% chance that the demon will listen.

Now, this demon has to think : “How do I do this? How do I cause a wife and a husband to separate?” And he has an idea, which I call coordinated ideas. He says, “What if I go to the demon of the wife, basically the jinn of the wife? What if I go to the demon of the wife and tell him…”

Basically, this demon knows from these other demons what the weakness of the wife is, or what the weakness of the son of the wife is. Here, let’s imagine we have a family, we have :

• The wife.
• The son of the wife and the husband. 
• The manager. (let’s say the wife works somewhere)
• The ex of the wife. (though not the ex of the husband who ordered the sorcerer. She us not in this graph, she ordered the witchcraft, she is paying for the witchcraft)
• The husband. 

Technically, this demon -Demon 1- will have to think of a pre-arranged giving of ideas to all these demons so that they can all coordinate in a way where they will cause the separation of the husband and the wife.

 So the demon will be saying : “Wait a minute, how can I separate this wife and this husband? Okay, I know that a month ago the husband told her not to talk to her ex, and that was the last time she spoke to her ex. Fine. So if her ex calls her on the phone, she is not going to answer because she agreed to that.”

Demon 6 (Demon of the husband) told Demon 1 that the husband also told his friend that : « If she ever answers the phone call of the ex-husband again, I’m going to divorce her». Or maybe it’s just in his mind; the husband has decided in his mind, in his heart, that if she ever talks again to her ex, he is going to divorce her. It has come down to that.

Now, Demon 1, all he has to do is convince the wife to answer and talk to her ex when he calls her on the phone. So the demon is saying : “Wait a minute, under what condition would she answer her ex? Not in a normal condition. Maybe she should get fired; she will be desperate, and maybe because her ex has another business, she will think that maybe he will find another job for her, or maybe something like that.”

The Division of Roles Among the Jinn

Demon 1 thinks, “I’m quite sure if her son is around, the son of the husband and the wife, if her son is around, she’s not going to answer because she doesn’t want the son to hear the conversation. So I have to create a situation where the son is not home, the manager fires her, the ex calls her, and the husband hears that.” Kind of like the demon has to create that situation. He cannot do it physically; all he can do is give ideas.

So Demon 1 will tell Demon 3, which is the demon of the son, “Today, go and watch…” I don’t know, anime, whatever the teenagers do today. By the way, none of the demons can execute this through suggesting good ideas. Let’s say if Demon 3 wants to separate the son from his mom, he’s not going to say to “Oh, go do the prayer.” Because demon 3 is not going to agree to that, he is bad as well. The demon of the son (Demon 3) will say : «Wait a minute, why should the part which I suggest be the good part ? My mission in this life is to actually make the son bad. I do not care what you other duties are. You guys are trying to execute this coordinated scheme but why would I be part of it by suggesting something good ?»

Scriptural Context: The Kingdom of Satan

And There is a verse in the Bible about this where Jesus says Satan would never work against his kingdom, meaning that all the demons have to suggest something bad; they cannot suggest anything good. (Matthew 12:26 / Mark 3:26 / Luke 11:18)

So if Demon 3 wants to separate the son from his mom temporarily to go into another room or in a friend’s home or whatever, he cannot say : “Oh, why don’t you go do the prayer in this way your mom can be alone .” No, it doesn’t work like that. Demons never suggest anything good.

And this is very important, because some people think that we can use jinns for good things. Never. It’s always for bad things. So Demon 1 will tell Demon 3 : “Go tell the son some idea which separates him from his mom.”

So Demon 3 says : “Oh, wait a minute, I’ll tell him to go to his room, lock his room, and go on his phone to watch something bad.” If he’s a teenager, you can think of what it could be. So then the son says, “Oh, I have an idea, I’m going to go watch (whatever)” . Maybe he starts watching something violent, and then from that it turns into something else. And so the son has an idea: “I’m going to go into my room and I’m going to lock the door, I don’t want my mom to see.” So he goes there. Now the wife is alone.

Now Demon 1 tells Demon 4 (Demon of the manager of the women) : “Write an email to her telling her that she’s gotten fired.” So she had just received an email that she’s gotten fired. The manager probably hated her all along, but today he decided (Demon 4 told him the idea) : ”What if I fire her? Let me fire her.” So the manager fires her. Now the wife has no job and the son is not around.

Then Demon 1 tells Demon 5 (Demon of her ex-husband who has a business now) : “Go and drink in a bar” , because he knows every time he drinks,  he calls his ex-wife, who is now the wife of another husband. And what are the chances that he will listen? 90%, because he’s 90% evil. So this guy goes into a bar and drinks.

So :

• The son is not with his mom.
• The manager informed her that she lost her job.
• The ex who drank all night long in a bar calls her.

And then Demon 1 tells Demon 6 (Demon of the husband) who tells the husband : “When you go back home from your work to the husband, don’t inform her. Don’t knock on the door, try to surprise her. Go there without being noticed and see what she’s doing.” That’s also a bad idea; spying is a bad idea. A good husband will not try to catch his wife; he will try to kind of find solutions for his wife. But anyway, so Demon 1 tells Demon 6 : “When you go home, go in sneakily.”

The Illusion of Sorcery vs. The Reality of Social Pressure

And all of these criteria are now met. The husband catches his wife talking to her ex, and then he says : “No, I want a divorce.” And this now looks like this sorcerer had some kind of power. All it was was pre-arranged ideas. So it was done through social means rather than some kind of physical force. It is just pre-arranged ideas.

And by the way, there’s only a 90% chance in a society where people are on average 90% evil that they will actually be able to execute it. Because let’s say the manager might actually want to write the email, but the human resources do not allow him or something like that. So even sometimes when they agree to do it, when they think it’s a good idea, they might not be able to execute it. Or let’s say you want to go and steal; most of the time you will be afraid because there might be a police presence, you might get caught. So there’s also a chance that they might want to do whatever the demon suggest. Or they might not be able to because of social pressure or they are too afraid. Maybe someone is seeing him at that time. Maybe the son wants to go into his room and separate from his mom, but they don’t have a key, so he cannot lock the door. Maybe they don’t have a big home where they have separate rooms.

These are all on average. So assuming that on average these entities : (the demons, the wife, the son, the manager, the ex, the husband) are 90% evil in a society where 90% of the time evil is allowed, we can calculate what are the chances that witchcraft will work. Before we calculate it, let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

Statistical Probability of Witchcraft Success

Praise be to God, there is no other god except God. Now let’s calculate what are the chances that this sorcerer—the witchcraft worked, in practice it worked. Let’s calculate it.

So we have a 0.9 chance that the demon will listen to the sorcerer; we have a 0.9 chance that Demon 2 will listen to Demon 1; 0.9 chance that Demon 3 will listen to Demon 1, and so on; 0.9 chance that the wife will listen to Demon 2; 0.9 chance that the wife will be able to execute it. And so all of these, we’re average—this is average in a society where people are on average 90% bad. So how do we calculate what are the chances that all of these will be successful, all of these suggestions will be executed? And then we calculate—whoever knows statistics, this is how we calculate it. So basically, we multiply this:

We’ll multiply all of these and you get the probability of how successful this whole thing can be as a total. And let’s see how many of these we have—how many arrows basically: one, two, three, four, five, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. So basically, 0.9 times 0.9, 16 times, which is:

0.9¹⁶ ≈ 0.18

So there’s an 18% chance that the witchcraft works in this scenario. So in a society where people are on average 90% evil, there’s an 18% chance that witchcraft works. Basically, when someone goes and pays for the witchcraft, it works one in five times—about one in five times.

The Impact of Civilized Systems and Global Force Behavior

Now, I’ve shown in the video, The Global Forced Behaviour, that people today (the good and the bad people) are less extreme, meaning that the bad people are not 90%-100% bad, but at most 75% bad, it’s going to reach 70% bad. So 30% is forced, meaning that it’s controlled totally by governments and it’s within a civilized system that allows people to be only 70% bad in maximum. Here in this example, the maximum is 100%, but they are on average being 90% bad. But in today’s world (in reality like the actual world today) the maximum that a person can potentially be bad is 70%, not 100%. Because 30% is forced. (meaning that 30% is shared between good people and bad people)

So basically, bad people (criminals) cannot go and just steal and kill because the police will catch them, and good people cannot go and do extremely good deeds because again the police will catch them (the police catch both the good guys and the bad guys sometimes), or whatever the reason is. So what I’m saying is that today people are forced, and there’s no escape from it. The world has reached a level where people can be at a maximum 70% bad, not 100%, and no one reaches the maximum.

Let’s assume that we reach close to the maximum; instead of 70%, 60%. Let’s say that we live in a society where people are on average 60% bad. Let’s take this same example and see what would be the chance of witchcraft working today in the actual world, not in theory, because whatever I told so far is in theory. In theory, this witchcraft (because people are 90% bad) had an 18% chance that it would work.

However, let’s see in practice today :

So on average in this same example, we are assuming that people and the demons and everything in today’s world are 60% bad. So the society, which sort of determines the actions, will allow people to be 60% evil. These people are on average 60% evil, and these jinns (demons) are also about 60% evil because they have been forced by these people to be 60% evil because otherwise they cannot sort of have a coordination. And because all the averages are all about 60%, we have the chance that Demon 1 will listen to the sorcerer is 60%.

So now we have the same example, the only difference is that all these entities in this graph are 60% evil instead of 90%.

So let’s calculate that again. How did we calculate it? We multiplied all of these, which means that it is the same as saying 0.6 to the power of 16. Let’s calculate it again.

0.6¹⁶ ≈ 0.0002

Let’s go to the calculator, and remember last time it was an 18% chance. Let’s see now: 0.6 to the power of 16 is 0.0002. A 0.0002 chance, meaning less—that means one in 5,000.

The Statistical Insignificance of Modern Sorcery

So basically, the probability that witchcraft will work in a society where people are on average 60% evil is one in 5,000. That scientifically cannot even be proven, because the chances that the wife and the husband would divorce without witchcraft are even higher. Basically, the wife and the husband probably have a 10% divorce rate anyway within that year, and you went to the sorcerer, you paid for it, now it’s 10.0002%. How did that change anything? So basically, it just did not work.

Do you see what I mean? It’s like saying : “Oh, I’m going to eat in my whole life one spoon of sugar less, and I hope I lose weight.” How are you going to lose weight if you just remove one spoon of sugar in your whole life and never again? How is that going to cause you to lose weight? So even though in theory witchcraft exists. And I’m being generous here, I’m assuming that the people are 60% evil, which is almost the maximum, on average it is much less than that because there is good in that society. There’s good people; maybe this son is a believer, so that would be not a 60% chance, that will be a 10% chance or maybe a 30% chance that he will listen to the demon. And most of today’s societies are mixed : good people and bad people; there is good people in some families, bad people, stuff like that. So it’s mixed at work, in family, etc.

So this is the best-case scenario for the demons if they get lucky with this scenario, they will still not be able to execute this coordinated scheme; they will only be able to execute it one in 5,000 times. And who tries 5,000 times just for this? For that, they are not going to even try it because it’s easier to just let them be, and there’s a 10% chance of divorce anyway. And you cannot prove scientifically that witchcraft exists today because of something which we call the statistical significance levels, and basically we ignore that last 5%, and there is no way to prove it because it’s less than that; it is 0.0002 today in the best-case scenario.

But in a real scenario, it’s probably like one in a million. So if anyone pays for witchcraft, they have to try one million times for it to work, and no demon would agree to waste his time one million times for one thing when he can go on and do other things. Basically, even the demons will give up; they’ll just kind of try to do other, different things. Basically, witchcraft does not work today. It just does not work.

Projections for the Next Century

Let’s take something in the future.

Because the global force behavior will force people not to be as evil, but also the good people will not be as good. So let’s say take the best-case scenario for demons—by best-case scenario I mean like the worst-case scenario for humanity, the best-case scenario for the demons—let’s say 100 years from now when, let’s say, people will be 30% good or 30% bad, sorry. In this scenario, let’s calculate, let’s go to the calculator again:

0.3¹⁶ ≈ 0.000000004

0.3 to the power of 16, that’s 0.0000… I don’t know how many zeros, but it’s probably almost like four in a billion, if not more.

So basically, a demon would not even agree to this because it’s a waste of time. Why would the demon waste his time with this sort of pre-arranged idea when he has better things to do? Demons cannot cause anything, but they can just shoot bad ideas in the dark. Instead of coordinating it, the demon (Demon 3) can say : “Oh, I’m just going to tell the son to do something bad. I don’t have to arrange it with Demon 1. Why should I even arrange it? It’s not even going to work, it’s one in a billion. Why should I even try?”  If I told you that there’s a one in a billion chance that you’ll catch a fish if you fish, will you even try, or will you just say : “Actually, I’m just going to go to the market and buy fish” ? That’s much easier, much better for you.

So because people today are not bad enough to have a relationship with the demons, witchcraft does not exist. Anyone who says that they know how to do witchcraft or whatever, it just doesn’t work; It is fake witchcraft; it does not exist in practice. In theory it does, but in practice it does not.

The Quranic Proof: The End of Saints and Anti-Saints

And by the way, this is just a statistical way of proving why it does not exist in practice, why no one practices witchcraft for real. The Quranic way would be to say that just like there are very good people which we call saints and they are supported with miracles, there are bad people who worship jinns and they could have coordinated ideas to hurt people. And there are no saints anymore today. Why? There are no saints because the last miracle is the mathematical miracle. No more miracles means no more saints.

Dispensational Context: The Mathematical Miracle

Since the time of Rashad Khalifa, there were no more saints which means no more miracles, and on the other side of the spectrum that means no more anti-saints (if we can call them that). We can think of the sorcerers as anti-saints, people who are the opposite of saints. And because miracles do not exist, witchcraft also does not exist.

Basically, to simplify it, because miracles don’t exist, witchcraft does not exist. I mean, the mathematical miracle does exist, but it’s spread all over. Just like witchcraft does exist, but it’s spread in every person a little bit, so everyone is doing it a tiny bit, but no one is really doing it. So there’s no witchcraft practice; there’s no person who can say, “Oh, this person knows how to do witchcraft,” or “I know how to do witchcraft.” They’re all lying; they don’t know how to do it. But everyone is doing it a little bit unintentionally because, by chance, some demons sometimes will listen to you and you might listen to the demons; it’s just pure chance. There’s no way it’s any more significant—statistically significant—than random chance. Husbands will separate from their wives, people will get cancer, all of that, but it’s just shooting in the dark.

Practical Analogies: The Changing Impact of Sorcery

And the best way, probably, to explain for people who don’t know statistics is to give examples. But before I give examples, let me summarize it. So, the chances of witchcraft working before the Industrial Revolution—and why the Industrial Revolution? Because that’s when the Industrial Revolution led to bigger governments, and bigger governments forced people to do things like they can force people to have a certain lifestyle that brings the bad people and good people, makes them more similar. So before the Industrial Revolution, which was in the 1800s, the chances of witchcraft working were 18% (0.18). In our times, it’s about 0.0002%, which is much less than anything else, than things happening by chance. Basically, if a husband and a wife—I’m repeating myself—if a husband and a wife have a 10% chance of divorcing in the first year, increasing that by 0.0002%, so now it’s 10.0002%, it’s not going to change anything. That’s for today. And in about 100 years from now, it’s going to be a 0.000004% chance, whatever—it doesn’t even matter, it’s just zero, almost zero percent chance that witchcraft will work in the future.

Now, some people don’t know what these numbers mean much, so let me give you an example to show you why witchcraft doesn’t work—just examples.

The Historical Analogy (Before the 1800s)

Let’s say the example of the likelihood that the witchcraft will work through the sorcerer before the Industrial Revolution: Let’s say you have a neighbor and there is a wall separating you, you don’t see them. Like in many traditional cultures, they have walls which separate one neighbor from another neighbor’s yard. So they don’t see each other but they can hear him and say: “Oh, the neighbor went out of his home because I can hear him coughing” or “I can hear whatever.”

So let’s say you’re waiting for the neighbor to be on the other side of the wall, and throwing a few arrows towards his yard and hoping that they will fall on your neighbor, that they will kill him. The chances of witchcraft in the past were like that, just throwing arrows and hoping that your neighbor will die from those arrows. It was small, but at least it can work by chance.

We concluded that it was about 18% in very bad societies, which is not low actually. If you try it five times, it might work. By “work” ,it’s a bad thing. God will punish you in the end for doing it. But at least we could say that there was witchcraft practice.

The Modern Analogy (Today)

Now in today’s world, the example is like this: it’s like smoking a cigarette in your home and hoping that your neighbor who lives in another home across the street will get lung cancer from it. What are the chances? (So this is people who engage in witchcraft, or even witchcraft defense-there’s no such thing-). Just being a good person, not being in that diagram in a bad society is good enough. And worshiping God of course is good enough to protect us from witchcraft.

It’s so hopeless today that witchcraft will work. The people who think that they are doing witchcraft are like someone who smokes a cigarette and hopes that his neighbor will get lung cancer. How is he going to get lung cancer? The smoke has to go through the windows of the neighbor. What are the chances then that it’s going to go exactly into that cell which will cause the cancer? People smoke all their life and sometimes they don’t get cancer (20-30 cigarettes a day or 100. I don’t know how many they smoke). They do all of that, and still maybe or maybe not that they will get cancer. It’s still a bad thing, but it’s not going to work if you just smoke yourself and hope that your neighbor will get cancer.

The Future Analogy (100 Years from Now)

And a hundred years from now, the third example is like this: witchcraft is as effective as smoking a cigarette in your home and hoping that your neighbor who is not even in his home, will get lung cancer from it. So let’s say the neighbor moved out of town and you’re like : “Oh, I’m going to smoke a cigarette because I want to hurt my neighbor, so I have a strategy: I’m going to smoke a cigarette and hopefully the secondhand smoke will go through the window. It doesn’t matter, I’m going to open the window. Hopefully a tiny bit of that smoke will go to his home, and hopefully he’s going to inhale it, and then it’s going to cause him cancer.”

He’s not even home! So maybe some of that smoke will go up in the clouds and come down to him in another town and cause cancer to him. It’s very unlikely. It exists in theory; we can say : “Oh, that smoke can go in the clouds, through the rain it will come down, some of those chemicals can go to him, he might drink it.” In theory it does exist, but what are the chances that you caused it? Almost zero. What are the chances that the sorcerer caused it? Zero. So the conclusion is witchcraft today in practice does not exist.

Smart Sociopaths vs. Dumb Sociopaths

Let me now analyze what type of people do witchcraft today, because we can see it doesn’t work : It’s dumb disbelievers. In the past, it was at least high-IQ disbelievers (people who are evil, but they knew that they were evil). Today, people who try witchcraft, they are just dumb.

Misattributed Adage: The Definition of Insanity

There’s a saying, I think, which is attributed to Einstein, but I don’t think Einstein said it. It goes something like: “Crazy people or idiots are those who do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.”

So these people who engage in witchcraft (usually religious people in different countries) all they are is dumb. They don’t even do it; they think they are doing it. They are just repeating the same thing, it doesn’t even work. And there’s a verse in the Quran for such people, it says : they lose both this life and the next life, meaning that it didn’t even work in this life and it’s bad in the next life.

And why is it bad? Because as that person thinks that he is going to get the jinn (the demon) to work for him, it’s actually that the demon would have done that bad deed anyway (maybe not at that exact time or in the exact way, but he would love to do it anyway). All that this person is doing is serving the demon, to think that he’s going to get some favors. So in reality, it is the sorcerer who is working for the demon. So basically, they are selling their soul for a promise from a demon, and the demon cannot even do it because we just proved that the chances are so low. So they get nothing in this world out of it, plus in the next world God will tell them : “Oh, you worshiped the demon.” So they get nothing in this world, nothing in the next world, because they are dumb and evil.

At least the people in the past (I’m not saying they were better, they were actually worse) they were smart and evil. The witchcraft actually worked, so it was the smart people who did it. So basically, the difference between people who do witchcraft today and people who did witchcraft in the past is that the people in the past who did witchcraft were smart sociopaths, and generally, people who do witchcraft today are dumb sociopaths. It doesn’t even work; they just think it works. Both smart sociopaths and dumb sociopaths are evil, but one of them at least knows what he’s doing, the other doesn’t even know what he’s doing. So it doesn’t work and it’s totally dumb to do witchcraft.

The Modern Alternative: Technology and Espionage

The question is: what would smart sociopaths do today? Because they are not doing witchcraft; they’ve left the witchcraft behind. It doesn’t work. They’ve tried it, it doesn’t work. They’ve tried, “Oh, let me ask the jinn…” It doesn’t work. The husband and the wife would divorce anyway; “I didn’t increase the chances, it was 10% then, now it’s 10% again, so what’s the point?” The smart sociopaths go into some other field because they realize witchcraft doesn’t work. The dumbo sociopaths basically have inherited a tradition which doesn’t work anymore.

The smart sociopaths have moved into other fields. So basically, someone who would have done witchcraft in the past, if you take that same type of person and put him today, he would probably be in the CIA, KGB, whatever MI—whatever the UK version is, or the Korean version of the CIA is. So what they do today is they influence people and situations through coordinated ideas, but actually at least they work, sort of, partly.

So basically, smart sociopaths have given up on witchcraft because it doesn’t work. They do other stuff today; they are in the CIA, spies behind the wall, kind of like influencers in the social media things like that. By the way, the reason why witchcraft is totally dumb today is because you can do—not only doesn’t it work, but you can have better effects, if there’s any such—if it worked, better effects with just a fake account. Basically, everything I showed here, you can do with a fake account without using demons.

So instead of using Demon 1, you create a fake account, and then you tell the manager to—but oh, by the way, it might not work because they will not listen, but it’s the same as with the jinn, they don’t have to listen. So let’s say if there’s a 60% chance that the manager will listen to the demon, you can create a fake account and tell the manager, “I saw this employee kiss an employer.” And then you can create—with another fake account, you can contact the son pretending to be his friend and tell him that his mom is cheating or whatever, or you can create a fake account.

So basically, the type of person who would have done witchcraft in the past, that sort of impulse today is done through fake accounts, and that’s why when people contact me with fake accounts, I call them the jinn names, like with fake names. Let’s say they create another account with a different name and they want to know something from me, sometimes people will contact me like that with fake accounts. I tell them, “Is this your jinn name?” It’s partly true, partly a joke, partly a way to sort of put them down because they deserve it. But yeah, fake accounts are a modern way of executing these ideas—not through jinns, but through technology—because basically, you can do a lot of this through technology.

And by the way, it’s not as bad, actually; a fake account is not as bad because the likelihood that a fake account will convince the wife or the son or the manager to do that thing is very low, while the likelihood that the demon will convince them is much higher because they don’t know where it comes from. Plus, the likelihood that you’ll get caught by the police if it’s a bad, really bad thing, a bad crime—the likelihood that you get caught is really high. So it’s not worth it. If it’s a small crime, should you even do it? It doesn’t have any effect.

So what I’m saying is basically the way witchcraft worked in the past is as if though you had a fake account, fake names, and tried to influence, to give ideas to different groups, or try to convince people of some things—like create a fake photo. So that does happen today a lot, by the way, and those people, I can say that they are like—it’s their jinn version which is doing that.

Closing Remarks

So yeah, that’s pretty much it. Let me summarize: witchcraft in practice doesn’t exist today. If anything, the people who would have done witchcraft in the past now have moved to the CIA, KGB, and stuff like that, and it’s only the dumb people who are doing it, which doesn’t even work because dumb people do things which don’t work. And that’s it, yeah.

And unfortunately, this time I cannot engage with chats because my phone is not connected to the chats to the website. It’s a long story because I’m in my sister’s home, actually. Okay, so that’s it. God willing, we’ll talk again during the next Friday. Those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer, and the rest of you, peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

As you guys might be able to notice from the background, I’m speaking from a different place. I came—I mean, we came—to meet with my family in one of my sister’s villas in Montenegro. For those who don’t know where it is, it’s southeast Europe. It’s actually kind of a special place for me because this is where I was struggling once to—by the way, I don’t really believe in special places in the world, it’s just a personal special place—because when I was struggling to, let’s say, decode, if I can call it like that, the Quranic initials. When I was having a busy life with work and stuff like that, after I discovered the H.M. initials and what their meaning is, I thought, yeah, actually it’s possible to do the others as well. But then I was struggling. It’s a story for another time. I was struggling like, what do the others mean? Then, only when I came here to a quiet place did God tell me the meaning of the other Quranic initials. So yeah, for those reasons, when I come here I feel more quiet.

Submitters Retreats vs. Rashad’s Conferences

But yeah, speaking of vacation places, the topic of today is the submitters retreat. And as we concluded—maybe before I talk about the conclusion—I’m quite sure probably most of you know that Rashad also organized what he called conferences. And this is not exactly the same; it’s probably not the same at all.

The difference is that Rashad saw the conferences as a subcategory of fighting or struggling in the cause of God, while I see the submitters retreat as a subcategory of immigration in the cause of God, and those are different.

The reason why it’s different now is because we do the fighting and the striving online. We already do that. We go online, we preach, the Quran is online, the materials, videos are online. So we already do that. Whatever Rashad did with conferences, we do with just having a website. Our website is a replacement for his conferences. The retreat—what I’m calling retreats—are actually a subcategory, of immigration.

And to boil it down, like to the basics. Pretty much, maybe all—but im not sure if it’s all—but maybe all the differences between what Rashad did and what we are doing boils down to the fact that we have the internet. Because we have the internet, things are a little bit different.

The Impact of Geopolitics on Religious Execution

All the differences between Rashad and Muhammad, when it comes to how they executed religion—how they practiced religion, they all boil down to the fact that Rashad lived in a democracy, Muhammad lived in a non-democratic place. You can all boil it down to that:

Why Muhammad did it differently? No democracy.

Why Rashad did it differently? He has democracy.

Why Alban is doing it differently? He had democracy and the internet.

So these are the slight differences. In the end times, it might be different. Democracy might vanish again, even if they still call it democracy. The world is going that way, as you guys know it’s starting to go that way. But towards the end of the world, democracy is going to vanish. But let’s not rush to claim that it has vanished yet; there is still democracy in the world. Most of the world is a democracy, and because of democracy, there’s freedom of religion for the most part. Because democracies don’t guarantee full freedom of religion, they guarantee freedom of religion for the most part. And because of that, we don’t have to fully immigrate in the cause of God fully.

But, as we concluded in the last Friday sermon, even though we have freedom of religion mostly, the part which is let’s say missing, is the opportunities which are being denied to us by the Sunnis and the Shia to enjoy the benefits of the group prayer. A submitters retreat is just that—compensating for the fact that we have been denied opportunities for the group prayer. This is just a summary of what we spoke about last time.

Planning the 2027 Retreat: Timing and Location

God willing, let’s talk about the submitters retreat. When do I plan to organize it?

• Time: 2027, next year, God willing. The reason for that is because it’s two years after our Hajj, so that would be a nice time to meet.

• Season: Very likely in the spring. If we don’t do it in spring, potentially in autumn or fall, but very likely in spring, God willing.

What about the location? As I’m saying, I don’t believe in really special locations. Even including Mecca and all of that. I mean, each location has a specific role, but I don’t believe in let’s say—I’ve seen memes and videos online of light emanating from Mecca and things like that, trying to prove how this location is better than that, or Christians saying how Rome is special, or the Jews thinking that Jerusalem—Yeah, they had important roles, but God can organize people even outside of those let’s say, so called, sanctimonious locations, if we can call them like that. But I don’t believe in them. But they do have a special role during history. And that’s why, by the way, God changed the Qibla—first it was Mecca, then Jerusalem, then Mecca again.

Finding the Geographic Center of Submitters

So, I wanted to figure out where should we meet—in which location should we meet. When you guys submitted the zakat, you also reported in which city and country you live in. And that enabled me to just take the cities and put it in AI, ChatGPT and that came up with the coordinates of each city—the latitude and longitude. So, I found the averages for the latitude and the averages for the longitude, that gives you the center, the center of where the submitters are. We don’t have to have a center. It’s more like, how can we minimize the cost. That’s what I mean by center.

Basically, the idea is to spend the least amount of money we can spend, to be able to meet with one another. For example, if we can organize a retreat in Hawaii, but it’s going to be so far from everyone, because that’s too far from everyone. Anyone who would travel there is going to be too far. So that’s why I wanted to see where the center is approximately, so that we don’t spend as much money. We can go to the retreat with less money. So I did that, found the center, and it came up to here—the center of all the submitters who live today.

By the way, if we find the center of all the people who live today in the world, it’s actually in Turkey, south of Turkey. It’s not in Mecca. It’s not in Jerusalem. It’s south of Turkey, unlike what the religious people want to tell you. Jerusalem has a specific role. Mecca has a specific role. I think it’s the edge of the center. And there’s a good reason for that, which explained partly in the video clarification the end times. There I tell how Mecca is the edge of the center, but the center came in this place for us, for our group, which is the Ionian Sea. That place there, that red dot, is called the Ionian Sea. It’s part of the Mediterranean and it’s south of Italy.

Travel Restrictions and the Schengen Area

But the problem with Italy is that most of the people, especially those who live outside of Europe, wouldn’t be able to get a visa to travel there. The next closest city is Greece—the same, because Italy and Greece are part of what’s called the Schengen area. Schengen area means it’s a common area within Europe where people can travel without visas. But that means that those countries have much bigger restrictions for people outside of Europe. So Greece is part of that Schengen area as well, both Greece and Italy.

The next country there is Albania, and Albania is not part of the Schengen area, at least not yet. So that means that people from around the world can travel there much easier. So the next closest place is Albania, if we look at it purely from the geography.

The Advantages of Albania

Let’s say one potential very good place to meet is Albania because we would spend less like that. It doesn’t have visa limitations, for most people—I think probably for no people if we justify it correctly. And it also has  electronic visa, so people don’t have to go somewhere to get a visa; they can just do it online. So let’s say it’s a very suitable spot. And it also has a very nice Riviera in the south of Albania. It’s like a beautiful nature, sea, and all of that, and it’s not very expensive. So those are the advantages.

Considering Istanbul as a Contender

But then I said, “Wait a minute. What if I ask ChatGPT? If I put the coordinates and see if there is another way to travel, even if it’s not the center exactly—where we would minimize the costs.” And because Istanbul has lots of flight connections, a lot of people who travel to Albania actually travel through Istanbul. Some people.

Istanbul is here, by the way, this yellow dot here, and here is the south of Albania, this yellow dot here. So because of lots of flight connections, that actually came up also as one of the locations which would be equally as cheap as Albania. So we have these two potential places where we can meet, which I think are the best contenders for now: either Albania or Istanbul. And it’s going to depend on how things change until then—either where people join from, which locations join more, whether the center will shift a little bit, or what we might prefer.

The idea of Istanbul is that we would have a cultural experience in the sense that it’s a big city. Some people like to visit cities; it’s a much different experience. Maybe it’s a little bit too crowded for a retreat. Hotels might be a little bit more expensive, but it has its advantages. Flights have more connections, and the experience would be like—I don’t know if anyone likes baklava, Turkish delights, and stuff like that. So things like that. It does have its advantages. Right now in my mind, they are kind of equal in whether we might organize the retreat here or there.

The Third and Fourth Options: Montenegro and Umrah

And the third place, a third contender, is Montenegro, where I am right now, which is here just north of Albania. The benefit of Montenegro is that we sort of have a base here, and it’s much easier to organize and all of that. But right now, it’s not actually a serious contender because it doesn’t have electronic visas. So for a lot of people, they would have to travel to get a visa. They would have to go to an embassy or something. But in the meantime, if Montenegro creates an e-visa system, which they are about to do, if they do it in time, well, that would also be a serious contender, a place where we could meet.

So these are the three locations. If any of these don’t work for whatever reason, God willing, the fourth location is Umrah—meaning in Mecca.

By the way, why did I go for these locations this time at least? It’s because it’s much more expensive actually to go to Mecca. It was like 40 to 50% more expensive to meet in Mecca because the hotels are more expensive and flights are more expensive. And for some of you who know, the weather is not the best, is it? It’s not easy, especially if we go to Arafat and stuff like that. For those reasons, God willing, because here we’re not trying to do Hajj; we’re just trying to do group prayer with other submitters.

Still, once in a while, we will meet in Mecca so people can do Hajj. Maybe we’ll meet once in another location and then once in Mecca, or twice in another location then once in Mecca, or three times in another location then once in Mecca. It’s going to depend on how well these retreats go in another location. We might just decide that, “Wait a minute, we went to Albania, or we went to Istanbul, or we went to Montenegro, but it was a little bit of a waste of time because we didn’t feel very spiritually fulfilled.” So it’s all subject to change. Or maybe people were not behaving very well, and in Mecca they behave better. So maybe that could be a reason why we might stop this, but let’s try it. I think it’s worth trying. God willing, next year. It’s cheaper than Mecca, so it’s worth trying.

Future Plans for Regional Splits

And this is for as long as we have a small number of submitters, where it only makes sense to meet in one place of the world. Eventually, when we reach a sufficient number of submitters—I don’t know, 200, 300, something like that—then we can split into groups. We can have people in the east and people in the west. Then the center would be somewhere else; it might be the south of France for the western people, and I don’t know where the center of the eastern people could be—Armenia or Kazakhstan, I have no idea, it could be somewhere there.

Then we might split it again into different regions: maybe Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the US. That would be a nice split so that people can meet only within those regions. During that time, if Americans can meet within a nice place in America—I don’t know, like Mexico for example, or something like that. So these are not permanent locations. We’re just trying it, figuring it out as we go, and trying to do our best. And that’s pretty much it. Let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

Interactive Q&A and Community Feedback

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

For this second sermon, I just want to see if anyone has anything to say, maybe either about this topic or some other topic—something constructive, not destructive.

By the way, just so I can explain, there are about 51 submitters online right now, but there are definitely more submitters than that. Some of them might share the group chat, or a couple of them notified me that it doesn’t work on their computer for whatever reason.

Jad is saying: “Lebanon requires a visa for Albania but not for Turkey.”

• Alban: I don’t understand exactly what you mean. Do you mean to travel to Lebanon, or to travel from Lebanon to Albania or Turkey?

Youssef is saying: “How about Morocco?”

• Alban: Yeah, Morocco would be a good location, but I think after we split into two groups. I would like to go to Morocco one day; it looks like a nice country to go to. It’s on my bucket list to go to Morocco.

Adnane is saying: “Turkey is visa-free for Morocco.”

• Alban: Yeah, okay. Turkey is a good option because its visas are easy, but also Albania’s visas are easy. So I don’t think anyone will have problems to get a visa in Turkey or in Albania.

User Chat: “Lebanon?”

• Alban: We might do one in Lebanon eventually, either when we split into two groups, but even within a group, I think it’s a place with good weather.

Jad is saying: “We need a visa going to Albania.“

• Alban: But it’s an e-visa. It’s an easy visa. You just go online, you just apply—kind of like Umrah. It’s probably even easier. By e-visa I mean like you don’t have to go to an embassy; you just go online.

God willing, I’ll inform people about the information. So yeah, I’m just kind of getting a feeling of what people prefer. Some people seem to prefer Turkey more, but I know a couple of people who cannot travel to Turkey actually.

Mehdi is saying: “The Middle East is unstable. Europe is better.”

• Alban: Yeah, for now, the Middle East is a little bit unstable. I agree, Lebanon right now might not be the best option, plus it’s not at the very center. In the future, probably it might shift a little bit towards the east if people from Bangladesh join, or more people from India join. The center might shift east, and then if it’s safer, we can do it in Lebanon.

Someone said: “Indonesia”

• Alban: Indonesia is just too far. This is not about desires; it’s about the centers. So it would be too expensive. We are thinking of locations where it would be the cheapest for the whole group.

Turkey is nice. I like Turkey. I like Istanbul actually, because it’s such a metropolitan city—like you get lots of cultures there. I wouldn’t say it’s necessary to be near the city only for flight connections. In Albania, actually, the idea is not to do it near a city, but to do it close to a sea or mountains. I’m going to have to think about the location because I can see how some people prefer something more than others, but they are thinking of it from their perspective. What about people from the US? What about people from Bangladesh? What about people from Africa?

Fannol is saying: “Both Albania and Turkey are good choices”

Faisal is saying: “Yes, I pray we all have it easily accessible. Let’s pick the choice best for everyone as much as possible.”

• Alban: Yeah, I agree. I think what we should try to do—even though it’s helping to know your preferences—What we should try to do is to find the choice which is, as a total, the best for everyone and not focus on just what’s best for someone.

By the way, even Indonesia might be a good choice someday when we split into many groups, but maybe for East Asia—for countries like Malaysia, Australia, things like that. But that’s far in the future. And then eventually, God willing, we might have just specific countries—let’s say Spain, France, Italy, things like that. Each, when we have many submitters, they can just meet each within their country. Okay, I can see preferences. People are leaning a little bit more towards Turkey. Some are writing about Albania and Montenegro as better choices. I’ll have to think about it definitely. I’m not going to be biased. Honestly, I don’t care about Albania or Turkey as states; I’m just going to try to find a place based on these three criteria:

1. Travel restrictions: Which country has the least travel restrictions. So, easiest way to get visas?
2. Cheapest flights.
3. Cheapest accommodation and hotels.

If we combine those three, in which one can we go in the easiest way as a group?

Faisal is saying something I considered as well: “If both are the same prices, why not see which one is easier to do group contact prayers?”

• Alban: The easier to do the group contact prayer together would be Albania because we could find a hotel and book a conference room which is nice. Because in Istanbul, that would be much more expensive. However, the advantage in Istanbul is that we can do a few of those prayers in one of the mosques which are occupied by Sunnis, and that would be also an interesting experience just to try it. So they both have advantages. Istanbul would probably give us some cultural advantages; we would be able to see some mosques. They really have beautiful mosques there. But in Albania, we’d have a better conference room, and we would definitely pray together all the time.

  Because in Istanbul, I checked hotels, and the hotels which have conference rooms we can use for prayer are much more expensive. Plus, I would probably have to tell someone to organize it—like to go and ask the hotel, “Oh, we want to use the conference room, but we want to book it for prayer, and we will have to move these chairs and these tables” In Istanbul, that’s not going to be easy for me to organize. In Albania, it is much easier for me. Someone can help maybe there. We’ll see. God willing, I’m aware of a lot of people’s restrictions and preferences. Thanks for sharing more.

  Yeah, some people are preferring it for the mosque. By the way, even if we go to Istanbul, I don’t think we’re going to pray at those mosques often. I would prefer that we do pray the prayer more often together, but we can do that as an additional experience.

Jad: “Wouldn’t there be a religious clash in Istanbul when it comes to doing the group contact prayer in their mosques?”

• Alban: We’ll pretty much do it similar to how we did it in Mecca. We just join the prayer and then leave. In big mosques, people really don’t care who you are or what you’re doing because there are so many groups of people who go there. And there’s even Christians are allowed in those mosques; they just go as visitors and visit those mosques. So it’s very let’s say, liberal when it comes to that. People just go in and go out.

I’ll probably finish the contact prayer soon just to see if there’s any other chats. Whichever it is, God willing, the important thing is that we meet.

Someone is saying: “I think the Submitters from Bangladesh would prefer where the visa restrictions are the least, and the travel and accommodation is the least.”

• Alban: I agree with that, which is what I’m going to try to maximize—meaning to minimize costs so that it’s as easy as possible for travel, both financially and when it comes to restrictions.

Trevor is saying: “We can take over the mosque with our presence and maybe we will get some converts. Lol.”

• Alban: I guess I’m old; I’m saying “L-O-L” instead of “lol.” Okay. No, we’re not going to try, by the way, to convert people in the mosques. One of the video clarifications, I say that one of the rules of the mosque is not to try to convert people in there. If you go to worship God, fine. If you want to convert people, just do it outside of the mosque. Trevor was just joking; I don’t think he was being serious.

Muhammad is saying: “We can’t pray in Hagia Sophia because it was built as a church.”

• Alban: Actually, that’s not true. In the video clarification where I talk about—and it’s good that you brought this up—where I talk about the places of worship, I say that we are allowed to pray in any church which was built before Muhammad. Because before Muhammad, there was no real distinction between mosques and churches; it was just places of worship. So, Hagia Sophia was built before Muhammad, which means that they had not rejected Muhammad. They were not people who had rejected Muhammad; they were early Christians. They might not have been perfect, but it was a legal place of worship which was built by let’s say, believers. So it is allowed to pray in Hagia Sophia, whatever the pronunciation is. It is not allowed to pray in churches which were built after Muhammad.

Fazal: “Are all the Turkish submitters here in Istanbul?”

• Alban: Yeah, most of the people from Turkey are in Istanbul—the submitters—but a few of them are actually from more south. So not all of them. I think it’s a little bit more than half.

Conclusion

I can see the preferences. God willing, I’ll try to do what’s best for everyone, and I hope no one takes it personally. I know people from Morocco might want to go to Morocco. The issue is we have to find a common solution; it’s about preferences. I also want to go to Morocco someday; it’s a nice place.

And by the way, it might really matter whether we do it in Albania versus Istanbul on the ideas which I have on what to do—like what can we do there, which mosques can we visit, what activities can we do. Of course, everything is voluntary, optional. But once I think of some ideas of what we can do here or what we can do there, we will see which is more preferable and things like that.

Anyway, let’s finish it at this point. Yeah, someone is saying 17 people in Istanbul. Yeah, I’ve counted everyone from every region. That’s how I came up with the center.

Let’s finish the contact prayer now. For those who have to do the contact prayer, Aqim Al Salat, and the rest of you: Peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

What I want to talk about today is partial immigration in the cause of God. As you might have noticed in a lot of Friday sermons, but also video clarifications, I emphasize that we can partially apply some of the things which the Quran mentions because the conditions under which we are today quite often are partially true for us. So this is one of those examples and, God willing, let’s find out what partial immigration in the cause of God actually means.

First of all, we all agree that immigration in the cause of God is a good deed. This is mentioned many times in the Quran. It mentions how immigrants are a degree higher than non-immigrants, that they will be rewarded by God, and that if anyone dies while immigrating to God, they’ll go to heaven. There are many verses like that, and basically, it’s an easy thing to conclude that immigration in the cause of God is a good deed (3:195, 8:74, 9:20 , 22:58).

But what are the reasons for immigration in the cause of God? When do we have enough reasons to immigrate in the cause of God? Let me go over them.

• One reason is if we are evicted from our homes and deprived of our properties (59:8).

  • If you don’t have a home and a property, or if you are denied entry to your home, you might be forced to immigrate.

• Another reason is the fear of big injustice and your life being in danger (28:21).

  • For example, this applied to the case of Moses when he escaped from Pharaoh. He had killed someone accidentally while trying to help, and then the other person accused him the next day. Moses thought that people would not understand and would accuse him, so he felt his life was in danger. People told him his life was in danger.

  • Unfairly punishing someone is different; if someone commits a sin, that doesn’t mean they should immigrate, they should actually get the punishment. But if someone knows that they are unfairly going to be punished, then it’s different. So that’s another reason to immigrate in the cause of God.

By the way, these first two reasons were involuntary because you are just forced and there’s nothing you can do about it. The other ones I’m going to mention are more voluntary.

Redefining Immigration to the Messenger today

These first two reasons were involuntary because you are just forced and there’s nothing you can do about it. The other ones which I’m going to mention are more voluntary.

These reasons of immigration which I am mentioning, in general they just don’t apply to us. (There might be rare exceptions) That’s why I am showing them in red color.

In a democratic country (what they call a «free country») like today where almost all of us are (and in the future it is going to be even more), these reasons for immigration don’t really exist. For all practical purposes, they just don’t exist :

• Who has kicked you out of your home? 
• Who has denied us from our properties? 
• Who thinks his life is in danger in his country so they have to move to another country?

I don’t see any of us being in that situation.

The third case is also like that, and let me explain. Immigrating to the messenger of God (4:100) today is not a reason for immigration. I explained this in one of the video clarifications titled The Clarifying Messenger. There, I explain all the different subcategories of where I am not a messenger of God, where Alban is not a messenger of God. Some people think I’m just being funny or trying to sound smart, but I’m actually laying down when I am a messenger of God and when I’m not.

For example, I say there that :

• When Alban sleeps, He is not a messenger of God.
• When Alban eats, He is not a messenger of God.
• When Alban presents a Friday sermon like this, unless it is a video clarification, Alban is not a messenger of God.
• When Alban is just walking in the park or staying home, He is not a messenger of God.
• When Alban is chatting with you in the chat, He is not a messenger of God.

The only time Alban is the messenger of God is when he publishes video clarifications.

I make this clear in The Clarifying Messenger. There, I tell you that I’m not a messenger of God in almost all cases except when I am presenting in English online in a video clarification, and in that case, you can always hear it online. So there is no reason to physically immigrate to the messenger of God, because the messenger of God really is online. You cannot find the messenger of God offline today.

Some people find it strange that one can be a messenger of God sometimes and not a messenger of God at other times. But this was true with Muhammad as well :

• Until the age of 40 : He was not a messenger of God.
• After 40 : He was a messenger of God most of the time when he was reciting the Quran, but when he said some stuff which might have been recorded in what they call hadith, he was not acting as a messenger of God.

So this is not a new idea. It looks like a new idea because people have simplified things, but it is really not a new idea.

What this means is that this verse about immigrating to the messenger of God does not really apply in our situation. There’s no reason for you to use this verse to say : “I am immigrating to the messenger of God.” For example, right now I am living in Canada but no one should say : “Oh, I am going to Canada because that is where the messenger is” , because the messenger is online. If you have access online, you have already fulfilled it, so there’s no reason to immigrate for this purpose. This does not apply in our situation either.

Religious Rights and the rightful Maintenance of Mosques

The fourth reason is If you are Wronged (16:41).

(I put this in sort of orange color because it might apply to someone in an individual case, but it does not apply to us at all as a community. Individually it might apply to someone)

Let’s say you’re walking someday down the street in what they call a bad neighborhood and someone beats you. So you decide : “I’m going to sell my home, I’m going to go to another neighborhood or to another city because there’s too much violence in my neighborhood.” Yeah, that can apply, but it does not apply to us as a community. Most of us live in safe neighborhoods, I think. So it might be an isolated incident where it applies to an individual, but it does not apply to us as a community.

Basically, all of these reasons which I presented are not good enough reasons in today’s society, or they don’t happen to us. We don’t have the reasons to immigrate in the cause of God for these reasons. They might apply in The End Times (during the time of the Mahdi or etc.) but today with us, they don’t really happen in practice.

The final reason to immigrate in the cause of God in Surah 4:97. They have translated it in many different ways : some translate it as oppression, some as a weakened state. But actually the literal meaning of that word in Arabic: is basically when you don’t have equal opportunities like other religions.

A way to summarize all of those meanings is probably to say:

If we are denied religious rights (4:97)

If we are denied religious rights, then we have a reason to immigrate in the cause of God. And God willing, I will show why this is a partial reason to immigrate in the cause of God, not a full reason. It’s a partial reason because we are only denied our religious rights a tiny bit. For most of our religion, we are not denied our religious rights.

Let’s go over some basics of our religion and see if they are denied:

The right to say the Shahadah (witnessing) :

The first thing which we believe in our religion is the right to say the shahada, the right to say there is no other god except God, which is called the witnessing in English.

•  Do we have the right to say that?
• •  Yes, we do. No one has denied this to us. This has not been denied. We are free to do this.

The right to fast during Ramadan : 

• Has our right to fast during Ramadan been denied?
• • No. Ramadan came and went, and to whomever it applied, we did fast. I fasted. I think all of the submitters to whom it applied they fasted.
•  Did someone tell you not to fast?
•  Did the police come to your home and tell you not to fast?
•  Did they fire you from your job or beat you because you fasted?
• • No. So this religious right has not been denied; we are free in this aspect as well.

The right to Zakat : 

• Has our right to give zakat been denied?
• • No, because we are doing zakat, and even though it’s online, we are doing it. No police here in Canada has ever come to our home and said : “Oh, you guys are organizing zakat, you will have to report to the police.” No, it has never happened. We are free to do this as well, and I’m quite sure this happens for almost all of you.

The right to do Hajj :

We have the right to go to Hajj. There were a few limitations, but we basically did Hajj. Whoever could afford and wanted to come with us to do Hajj did come, and it went perfectly.

There was a tiny bit of a limitation when we went to Mina, for example; there were some guards or workers who didn’t want to let us go there, but God willing, someday I will show that Mina is not an obligatory part of Hajj anyway. So basically, in that tiny part where they wanted to deny us our right, that was not obligatory for us anyway. Mina is part of Hajj, let me make it clear, it’s part of Hajj, but it’s not an obligatory part, and there’s a difference there. I’ll explain it one day.

To summarize, we have not been denied our right to do Hajj.

The right to do the Contact Prayers :

The right to do the contact prayer also has not been denied to us. I did the contact prayer yesterday, the day before, and the day before that. No one said : “Oh, you’re doing the contact prayer, you’re going to have to report to the police,” or “You’re going to be fired because of this.” There might be some isolated incidents, but maybe you asked a little bit for it, or maybe there’s just not enough space. We’re not talking about that; I’m talking about in general. We as a community are not being denied our religious rights to do the contact prayer, so we are free to do this religious right as well.

There is one thing, however, which we as a community are being denied :

The right to maintain God’s masjids.

In Surah 9, verse 18, it says:

“Only shall maintain the masjids of God those who believe in God and the Last Day, and observe the contact prayer, and give the zakat and do not fear except God.”

If someone fulfills these criteria, they have the right to maintain the masjids of God. These criteria are fully fulfilled by us. We as submitters believe in God, we believe in the Last Day, we observe the contact prayers, we give the zakat, and we do not fear except God. What this means is that we should have the right to maintain the masjids of God.

I can tell you from practice, I tried once and they reported me to the police. I went to a few masjids (not just one masjid). That’s a long story but for the purposes of this, I tried to maintain the masjids of God without permission from the Sunnis or the Shias. By maintain, I mean in that case I wanted to remove Muhammad’s name from the walls because that shouldn’t be there. Those masjids where we are permitted to pray belong to God; we don’t need anyone’s permission. Those belong to God, they don’t belong to the Sunnis, they don’t belong to the Shia. Since the day they were dedicated to God, they still belong to God.

That means that we have the right to maintain those masjids more than anyone else, and here’s why: because actually, the others do not have the right to maintain those masjids : Verse 9:18 says the right belongs to those who observe the contact prayers and give the zakat. However, the Sunnis most of the time don’t give the Zakat in most Sunni countries or Shia countries, and in some countries where they do, it’s not accepted. The reason is that the Quran says that nothing of what they spend, including the Zakat, is accepted because they disbelieved in God’s messenger. Unless they believe in God’s messenger, their zakat is not accepted, and because their zakat is not accepted, they lose the right to maintain God’s masjids.

So the Sunnis and the Shia do not have the right to maintain the masjids of God. We have the right to maintain the masjids of God. However, in practice, we are being denied that right. We are not allowed to do that.

As an example, I wanted to maintain a masjid and when I tried to remove Muhammad’s name, what happened ? They called the police and reported me. It went peacefully, I didn’t go to prison, but I could not maintain the masjid of God. I was denied that right. I did it fully peacefully. And I don’t recommend anyone else do it because it doesn’t work.

Why doesn’t it work?

It doesn’t work because you are not allowed to use violence or to do it by force, which I didn’t do. You’re not allowed to fight people inside the masjid of God. Therefore, you cannot do it by force.

The only way is to defeat those people who have occupied those masjids from the outside and then free the masjid. But in that case, you would have to fight the whole state because all they have to do is call the police. 

Today’s democratic states think that those masjids belong to the Sunnis or to the Shia, so there’s nothing we can do about it. For this reason, we have been denied this religious right. This is the only religious right which I found in the Quran which has been denied to us. We are the rightful maintainers of God’s masjids, but we are being denied that right.

Before I continue further, let’s repent.

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

Calculating the Denied Benefits and the Concept of the “Submitter’s Retreat”

So we concluded that the only right which they have denied us is to maintain the masjids of God. When we lost this right, we also lost the benefits which come with it. Had we had the chance to maintain the masjids, it would mean that we would organize the Friday gatherings locally. That would mean we wouldn’t have to do it online at all, because you guys wouldn’t meet me like this, your souls in another body would actually get to hear about this message in a physical masjid, not online. In that case, we would be able to enjoy the extra benefits of group prayer.

In previous sermons (Estimating Group Prayer Values, The problem of establishing mosques today, The Call to the Friday Gathering), we went over the fact that when you do a group prayer, you get extra benefits from it. Because we are being denied the right to maintain God’s masjids, we are also being denied the extra benefits of group prayer during Friday (because we can go at another time, that’s fine)

Someone might say : “Oh, but you guys have chosen not to go, they are not stopping you.” Well, let me give you an example. Let’s say a wife or a husband commits adultery and the other one divorces them. The one who broke the marriage is the one who committed adultery, not the one who decided to divorce them. It’s the same way with the Sunnis. Even though we do not go to those masjids during the Friday prayers, it’s the Sunnis who committed the religious adultery. It is them who made the mistake which forces us effectively to separate from them. So effectively, they have denied our right to maintain the masjids of God.

Let’s estimate the denied extra benefits :

• Why are we going through this estimation? 
• • It’s because we want to know how much of our religious rights have been denied to estimate how much reason we have to immigrate in the cause of God.

As we concluded earlier, we have a reason to immigrate when religious rights are denied, so we are going to calculate exactly how much it is.

The total potential benefits of Friday group prayer can be calculated as:

Total Benefits = 52 Fridays × 2 rakaats × 4.76 (group multiplier)=495 rakaats

I am using a group multiplier mean of 4.76 because we currently have 65 people. From the calculation method I showed you in the previous Friday sermon (Estimating Group Prayer Values), if there are 65 people, doing one rakaat counts as 4.76 rakaats. So, 495 rakaats is the total we would get if we went to a physical mosque. But we are denied all of it.

However, we found a way to get back part of it through the online Friday gathering. We already found a way to get back some of those benefits (the minimum) by doing the Friday gathering online while doing four rakaats for the individual prayers. What we are doing today is:

52 Fridays × 4 rakaats = 208 rakaats

We are getting this back. However, this is the minimum.

• What do I mean by the minimum?

• • Because we concluded in the last Friday sermon that doing four rakaats individually is the same value as doing two rakaats with four people. This means that when we organize the Friday gathering online the way we are doing it today, it counts exactly the same as if we were in a village and prayed the Friday prayer with a total of four people. That’s how much it is worth. It fulfills the minimum because the minimum threshold for a Friday gathering is four people. We are fulfilling the minimum, and it is good enough, but we could have benefited much more.

The minimum we are benefiting is 208 rakaats, but we could have benefited 495 rakaats. Let’s calculate the difference:

We are still denied the religious right to :

495 – 208 = 287 rakaats of extra benefits

The Sunnis, the Shias, and the democratic states (or whichever state which support them because they are in power) have denied us the religious right to enjoy 287 rakaats of extra benefits in a group prayer on Friday. Our religious rights have been denied by this much.

• What did we conclude earlier?
  • Therefore, we have a reason to partially immigrate.
• Why do I say partially?
  • Because for all the other reasons, we had no right to immigrate; the only reason is this gap. Therefore, we have a reason to partially immigrate to the cause of God up to the amount of reaping these extra benefits of 287 rakaats.
• How many days of immigration would that be if we want to get back those 287 rakaats which have been denied to us? 
• How much would we have to travel to get them back? (The Quran says you have a reason to immigrate to get them back)

• How many days would it take us to do those 60 rakaats?

So we have a valid reason to immigrate for 3.5 days per year to get back those 287 extra rakaats of benefits.

We have reason to immigrate but only partially and only for 3.5 days per year.

(Not like during Muhammad’s time when they had reasons to immigrate for 365 days per year, for the whole year, because they were beaten, they were denied some rights, etc. And that is not happening to us.)

The more appropriate word in English would be to call it a “retreat” rather than an immigration. That’s just the word we use in English for short-term, very temporary immigration. I mean, who says : “I’m immigrating for three and a half days”? They would probably say, “I’m going on a retreat,” or “I’m going on vacation.” So very likely, we’ll call this the Submitters’ Retreat. 

Affordability Calculations for the Retreat

• Who can afford to come to the retreat?

• • Not all people immigrated with Muhammad to Medina during his time. For example, there were slaves who could not immigrate because they were not allowed to leave their master’s home without permission, so it was just not possible for them. A few of them Muhammad and some believers bought so they could immigrate, but a lot of them could not. It is just not possible for some people; some people are just too poor, and it is okay.

Don’t feel guilty if you cannot do this tiny partial immigration, because it happened to the people of the past and they were still submitters. In my heart for the community, for every one of us, we should still consider those people submitters even if they cannot immigrate, because as long as they do the contact prayer and give the Zakat, they are submitters.

Verse 2:273 reminds us that some people cannot afford or are not wealthy enough to emigrate, or simply might have obstacles to travel. For example, mothers with children under two years old might not find it suitable to travel because they have to feed their baby, or students without an income, or people with prohibitive physical disabilities, or people in extreme old age, and of course, people who do not have enough money. These categories very likely just cannot immigrate, and it is fine if they cannot come to that retreat.

But I want to focus on the last one: the people who don’t have enough money.

• How much money would you need to have to be able to afford this retreat?

• How do you know if you can come to the retreat and afford it?

We can calculate that as well :

Because you did not have to travel to a physical mosque every Friday since we made it available for you online, you saved about 40 minutes (0.66 hours) of extra time each Friday. Because a group of people made it possible for you to do it online, you have extra time which you could have used for work :

0.66 hours × 52 weeks = 34.32 hours in a year

You have that extra time, and you could have turned that time into money.

Assuming that we’ll organize the retreat to be partially on the weekend, you might end up with two days of the retreat happening during workdays. Two workdays equal 16 hours of work. Yes, you had all that extra online time, but if you come to the retreat, you’ll lose some of that work time.

By the way, we are not going to repay you or apologize for the time that you lose with your family, because the Quran says the real family is the believers. So I’m not going to say : “I’m sorry that you have to leave your family who maybe are not submitters.” No, I am not sorry, because the real family is the submitters. But I am sorry you might have to leave work for two days, and for that, I am going to discount that lost work time in the calculation of how much you can afford, so it is taken into account :

34.32 hours saved – 16 hours lost = 18.32 hours of net extra work time

Since a standard year has 1,920 hours of work, 18.32 hours of work represents roughly 1/104th of your annual work.

Therefore, to find out if you can afford it, take your annual net income after taxes (whatever it is: $5,000, $10,000, $50,000, $100,000) and divide it by 104:

That result is how much you should be able to afford to buy the ticket to travel to the retreat. If your travel ticket is more expensive than that, you don’t have to come. It’s fine, you simply cannot afford it. If you still want to come despite it being more expensive than what you would naturally afford, you are welcome to come anyway; it’s your choice. All I am telling you is that it is possible to calculate if you can afford it. So I do not want people to use empty excuses. I can know how much you can afford.

To make it affordable for most submitters (because our group is very widespread globally), we will organize it every two years, God willing, in the near future. We’ll start with every two years, and then when we have many subgroups, we will do it every year, God willing.

When you submitted your Zakat, you also used your income to calculate the Zakat, so I used those numbers to calculate who can afford this retreat and who cannot. If we do it every two years, most people can afford it : about 60% of our people. But if we do it every single year, it’s going to be only about 30-40% of people who can afford it, which is not enough. I think at least more than half of the people should be able to afford it. That is why I decided on a schedule of every two years.

This is all a practical solution. It’s not a religious law. We might change it or switch it later, and that’s okay. In practice, I’m trying to give you an opportunity to get back the denied benefits which the Sunnis and the Shia have denied you of. That’s all. It’s an opportunity, not a religious obligation. Because I feel sorry for you and for myself, that the Sunnis, the Shias, and the democratic countries have denied us a religious right, which has resulted in denying us some benefits. I’m giving you an opportunity to reclaim those benefits by coming to a retreat.

If it is organized every two years, your income is twice as much, so instead of dividing by 104, you simply divide by 52 :

That is how much you should be able to afford to buy the ticket to travel to the retreat.

Reallocating Zakat to Fund Accommodations

So take your annual net income after taxes, divide it by 52, and you will know how much money you have to buy a ticket to come to a retreat if we organize it every two years instead of every one year. And as a bonus, we’ll pay for your hotel or accommodation from the collected zakat, God willing.

We have already collected some zakat from different subgroups of zakat. A lot of it was intended to promote the message online, to pay ads. We tried Google ads, we tried YouTube ads, and we tried some other types of ads so that the message of God can reach people, but what happened is I realized it was not effective. So, all I am going to do is redirect that money which a lot of it was not used, redirect it and pay the hotel for people who come to the retreat.

Now, people have paid that zakat, so they might have a question about it. They’ll be like : “Oh, wait a minute. Can you actually do it? Why should I pay the money, and someone else comes to the retreat and gets the benefit, getting a free hotel?”  

Let’s see if that’s actually according to the Quran, Verse 9:60 says: 

“Charities shall go to the poor, the needy, the workers who collect them, the lonely, to free the slaves, and to those burdened by sudden expenses, In the cause of God, and to the traveling alien. Such is God’s commandment. God is omniscent, Most Wise.”

All people who are doing the Friday gathering online are lonely because we are not in a physical group. So, we have a reason to pay the hotel for them. 

What are we doing?

We are gathering in a retreat to pray, to do the contact prayer, and to worship God. That is strictly in the cause of God. The verse ends:

So what we are doing is using this zakat to give it to these three categories. People who come to that retreat fulfill and are a part of all three of those. So basically, they fulfill half of the reasons we have to give the Zakat.

Nature and Schedule of the Submitter’s Retreat

Think of the retreat as a vacation (The Submitters’ Retreat). We are not going to do some kind of conference where we have to present stuff and things like that. The main thing we are trying to achieve there is doing the contact prayer together for three and a half days. That’s it. Other things are optional. Someone might want to meet someone, someone might want to enjoy the views. They can do it separately in groups. It doesn’t matter

We might just share time. You can think of it as a vacation, you can think of it as an opportunity to learn, or you can think of it as an opportunity to do extra group worship (Worshiping God in a group, etc.) .Whatever you want to do. The important part is that we do the contact prayer together.

As we can see, we do have a reason according to the Quran to use a portion from the collected Zakat to pay for the hotel or accommodation. God willing, whoever comes to the retreat gets the hotel for free. And that’s a lot of money, by the way. I’ve calculated it, and it is like tens of thousands of dollars if most people come.

Rewards for Both Immigrants and Supporters

The second verse which has to do with this is 8:74. It says:

“Those who believed and emigrated and strove in the cause of God, as well as those who hosted them and gave them refuge, and supported them, these are the true believers. They have deserved forgiveness and a generous recompense.”

• Who are those who hosted and supported them?
  • Those who hosted and supported them are the people paying for the hotel for them.

Basically, if you gave the penalty Zakat because you live with a non-submitter and you paid a penalty zakat for that ; if you come to the retreat, you’ll enjoy the benefits of giving that. But if you don’t come, then someone else will enjoy that benefit, and it’s fine because in that case, you are the supporter, you are the host, and the other person is the immigrant. You are supporting someone doing that, and it is fine. It is within this verse; it’s within what the Quran recommends :The verse says they have deserved forgiveness and generous circumstances.

Both those who are giving the Zakat which is being used partially for the hotel) and those who are using the hotel to meet with other submitters to do the contact prayer together, both get a reward from God. They are both considered true believers according to God. It says : “these are the true believers.” It is a sign of true belief.

Concluding Remarks and Q&A

We’ll talk about locations of the retreat (like where, how, and when) on future Friday gatherings, God willing.

Does anyone have any questions or anything to say?

• Faisal is saying :“Exciting.”
  • Alban says : «Yeah, yeah, I think it’s also exciting»
• George Parfin is saying : «I can help you make better YouTube videos»
• • Alban says : «George, you’re a young submitter, you need to learn.» 

Any other comments?

By the way, George Parfin joined us as a submitter. May God bless him.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. Peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

Let me just inform you that last Friday’s sermon, where I think it was titled “Completing the Friday Gathering,” I deleted it from YouTube. And there are two reasons why I deleted it. One is that the initial intention of that Friday sermon was to solve a social problem, and I ended up creating a rule—a new religious rule—which I didn’t like the way it came out. And God willing, I’ll redo it for that reason.

But also, there is a second reason. The second reason is that I did some calculations there, and I didn’t take into account some other factors. One of those important factors is that the prayers do not have the same values in groups versus when you do them individually. So, God willing, I will redo that Friday sermon completely. So please try just to forget that I did it in the first place. It’s deleted now from YouTube.

The Objective: Adjusting the Calculations

But this is a good opportunity because now I can focus on those two mistakes and correct them in more detail. So today, what I want to do before I redo last Friday’s sermon, today I want to just focus on that adjustment. So I forgot to take into account a specific adjustment which should have been done in those calculations. So I’m just going to focus on that adjustment. The adjustment mainly deals with the idea that group prayers and individual prayers do not have the same value for that particular individual. So let me focus on that today, and then we’ll use this to adjust what I was trying to do in the last Friday sermon.

Okay, so let me share the screen. Okay, so the topic of today is “Estimating Group Prayer Values.” How would we estimate group prayer values?

Individual Prayer vs. Group Prayer Values

We know when you do an individual prayer, let’s say you do the noon prayer, the value of that prayer for you is one prayer. Now, of course, in other videos I do mention that God rewards it 40 times (Reconstructing the Muslim Prayer Completely from the Quran), but that’s for the next world. God rewards every good deed 40 times, but that’s for the next world. God rewards it even more because the hereafter is forever. But I’m talking about how much does God consider it to be—that’s for the next world. For this world, one prayer is one prayer.

However, is one prayer in a group still one prayer, or is it more than one prayer for you? And that’s what I want to focus on to estimate this. And by the way, I’m calling it estimating group prayer values; I’m not calling it calculating group prayer values. The reason for that is because it’s an approximate estimation, and that’s on purpose to keep it simple, because I’m purposefully ignoring a lot of other factors like gender. Gender has an effect, the age of the person has an effect, the setting where they are doing the prayer—all of those have effects. Is it in a mosque, is it not in a mosque? And many other things do, like the faith of the person who’s doing the prayer, the sincerity of the person who’s doing the prayer—all of those do have an effect on the value of the prayer.

However, if you ignore all of those and just focus on the effect of the group on the prayer, then we can simplify it and talk about it. That’s why I’m calling it estimating group prayer, because it’s not exact, because we’re disregarding on purpose so many other factors. And so how do we estimate the group prayer? The idea is actually quite basic. Let’s say that you are doing the prayer alone. That prayer, let’s say that noon prayer, is just one prayer.

The Spiritual Mechanics of Group Synergy

However, now let’s say you add another person to that group—to you—and now you’re doing the prayer together with one other person. The prayer for you is one prayer still. But what’s the value of your prayer for that other person? It does have a value, otherwise you wouldn’t do it in a group. Why would that person join you if there’s no value to joining you? What’s the purpose of joining you? What’s the purpose of doing it together if there’s no value to it? So it does have a value for that person.

So what’s that value, how much value is that? You can indirectly or logically think of it by using the verse in the Quran which says:

“Whoever mediates a good deed receives a share thereof…” [Quran 4:85]

In English, you can also call it: whoever enables a good deed receives a share thereof. Because whenever you mediate, you’re enabling. You’re enabling, you’re making it possible for that person to do the group prayer. So you’re doing the prayer yourself, but also when the other person is there, you’re enabling him to do his prayer in a group. You are the group for that person.

Your one prayer is one prayer, but to that person, the prayer is half of the group prayer because your prayer is half of the group prayer. His prayer is half of the group prayer. So your prayer now has one prayer plus half a prayer, plus 1/2 prayers, because the group has two people. So now the value of your prayer is 1.5, and the value of his prayer or her prayer is also 1.5, because he’s also enabling you to do the contact prayer. So a prayer in a group, the value for each individual has the value of 1.5. In other words, when two people separately do the contact prayer, each of their prayers is just one prayer. But if they do the prayer together, those two people, now the total of those two prayers is three prayers because each of them is one and a half. As you can see, there’s an additional value to it just from the fact that you’re doing it in a group.

Distinguishing Worldly Blessings from Eternal Reward

And let me focus on something actually really important. As you can see, the group—and this in business or in economy is called synergy—there’s an additional value which is being added just from the fact that you’re doing it in a group. But what’s important, so we don’t misunderstand this topic, is that this does not automatically make people who are in groups better than people who live alone. And here’s why: because even though the prayer has a bigger value, that person, because he or she lives in a group, they get the benefits also. Being in a group might enable you to get married, when you need some help, someone might help you, it just feels better and easier to live in a group, someone might give you a ride. So you get the benefits. If you don’t, you’ll get them in the next world.

But almost always, the benefits which come from the group prayer are utilized—are used in this world. Yes, the group prayer has extra value, but almost all of it is used for this world, not for the next one. For the next one, the most important part is your individual prayer—the value of your individual prayer.

So let’s not misunderstand, let’s not think that maybe people who are doing it in a group might be in a higher place in heaven. Well, people who have a chance to do it in a group and don’t do it in a group, yeah, that’s a problem. But if you’re in a group and you do the group prayer, it does have an extra value and you get the benefits of it in this world. But regardless if you get them in this world or the next world, it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing, so it does have an extra value.

The Mathematical Formula: The Harmonic Series

As we said, the value of prayer in a group of two people does have that extra 0.5 because you are half of the group. So you’re enabling that person, you’re half of the group prayer. So your prayer is 1 + 1/2. And with this logic, now we can calculate, what if there’s three people? Well, in a group of three people, then when you add that third person, your prayer now—the value for that third person—is only 1/3 because there’s three people. 1/3 of the group prayer has been enabled by you, 1/3 of the group prayer has been enabled by this other person, and 1/3 of the group prayer has been enabled by that other person. So your extra group value for that third person is 1/3.

So now, what is the total value of the group prayer for you in a group of three people? In a group of three people, it’s 1 + 1/2 + 1/3, whatever that is. So that’s the formula. Then when you add the fourth person, it’s 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 if it’s a group of four people, and so on. So the formula in math of how to calculate the group prayer value for you—and I am not talking about the value of the total group prayer, all the prayers in the group, I’m talking about the value for you for the fact that you did the prayer in a group when you pray with other believers, of course—takes this form or expression:

And the “n” here is the group size. So if there’s 100 people in the group, you add these numbers up to 100. If there’s a thousand people in the group, you go up to 1,000. If there’s 50 people in the group, you go up to 50. So you add these numbers up to 1/50.

This is the form in math, and in math, this has a name. It’s called the harmonic series. They named it like this—it’s not really important—because these numbers also are used in musical notes. The notes in music are created by the lengths of chords, of actual wires in a guitar, which are these specific numbers. But that’s just the name.

Convergence vs. Divergence in Group Size

The more important part is to analyze whether this is a convergent series or a divergent series. There’s two types of series. And this is a series, meaning that it’s a list of additions which end up at a certain point or they might never end in some types of math. Is this convergent or divergent?

As you can see all the numbers are getting smaller and smaller—1/2, 1/3, 1/4—they are getting smaller as we increase the group size. Each additional value to that prayer is getting smaller and smaller. Then the idea is, if it gets so small, will it even change anything at the end? Let’s say if there’s 1 million people or 2 million people, will it change anything there at the end, or will the addition be smaller than the increase in the number? If it has a limit to how big this number can be, then it’s called convergent; it converges. Let’s say the limit is 100—no matter how many numbers you add here, you will never get more than 100, the total value will never be more than 100. That would be convergent.

But in this case, this is a divergent series. It’s divergent because if you go up to 100 million, you will still get a bigger number than a specific number. It doesn’t have a limit; it doesn’t have a ceiling to how high it can go. However, even though it doesn’t have a ceiling, it slows so much that for practical purposes, it behaves almost like a convergent series. There’s no limit, but it really slows a lot. So it’s almost like it has a ceiling for practical purposes.

And what do I mean by practical purposes? I mean that we don’t have an infinite number of people in the world. There’s eight billion people in the world. I don’t know what the number would be for 8 billion, but probably if we add this series all the way to the 8 billionth person, we probably will get like 25—the value of 25 or something. Basically, if you do the prayer—I don’t know if that’s correct, actually, you can do it on ChatGPT to calculate it. All you have to do is add the harmonic series up to 8 billion, and it’s going to give you an answer. I don’t know what it is; it’s probably 25, 30, 40—I have no idea. But the number is still quite small, because as you add more people in the group, each person in the group is less and less valuable for your prayer because they are a smaller part of that bigger group. So that’s the idea. Yes, it does increase forever, but it slows down so much to the point that for practical purposes, you cannot really expect a number to be more than 20.

Practical Examples of Group Values

Let’s go through some examples.

• In a group of one: The value of your prayer is 1.

• In a group of two people: The value of your prayer is 1 + 1/2, which is 1.5. So there’s an extra value of 0.5.

• In a group of three people: The value of your prayer is 1.83. So we add 1 + 1/2 + 1/3, that’s 1.83.

• In a group of four people: The value of your prayer is 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4, and that’s 2.

If you do the prayer with four people—being a part of a group of four people—then the value of your prayer is double whatever you did alone. And this is important because this has some connection with the Friday gathering.

But before we do that, let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

The Jurisprudential Value of a Four-Person Group

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

Okay, so the conclusion is if we do the prayer with four people in a group, then the value of our prayer doubles. And this is important because, as we said in previous Friday gatherings—I think it was early on Friday sermons—we said that when you do the Friday prayer alone, we do four rakaats, four units. But when we do it in a group, if all the submitters join in that group—not if some of them do it and some don’t, if all the submitters join in that group—then we do two rakaats if we do it regularly in a mosque with all the submitters there. So then we do only two rakaats. So we do four when we do it alone, but we do two if we do it in the correct setting with the group.

And as you can see, because we do four when you do it alone, if it was a group of two people and we did two rakats only, that would be less than doing four rakaats. So what this means is that unless there’s four or more people in the group, doing the Friday prayer with two rakaats has less value than doing four rakaats alone. This means, if we go by this logic, that the minimum number of people in a group prayer on Friday must be four or more people. Because if you do it with less people and you do two rakaats—if you do it somewhere outside, if you do only two rakaats—the prayer for you, if you do it with three people, the prayer for you is going to be 1.83. But you would have gotten a bigger value if you just did it alone with four rakaats, because then you would get double value from the four rakaats instead of two on Friday. So this means that we need at least four people to do the Friday gathering.

Clarifying Structural Group Sizes: 4, 20, 40, and 100

Now, some people I think have gotten a little bit confused because I’ve thrown so many numbers in relation to this. I’ve mentioned the number 20, I’ve mentioned the number 100, I’ve mentioned the number 40, and now I’m mentioning the number four. And all of these have different reasons why I mention them, so there’s no contradiction here. I mentioned the number 20 in relation to what is the minimum group size to organize the religion, which is what we’re doing. I’ve mentioned the number 100 in relation to what is the minimum group size to have a separate group, a following group after that. The next generations, they cannot say, “Oh, we’ll just have 20 people and we’ll separate, we’ll have our own separate group.” No, to have a separate group you need 100—by separate, I mean like the same religion but a subgroup. So that’s 100.

But for practical reasons, in an organized religion, to have an affordable way of building a mosque for the Friday prayer, you need about 40 people—and I’ll talk about that another time, about 40 people. But for just doing the Friday gathering in an unorganized group, disregarding the fact that you have to build a mosque, if you just do it anywhere—let’s say outside—then you just need four people. So all of these are separate things. And so the conclusion here is that we need four people.

Quranic Proofs for the Minimum Threshold of Four

Can we find this in the Quran? Yes, indirectly. In the Quran it says when you do a transaction, have two witnesses. So let’s say you’re in a Friday prayer—by transaction a business deal, let’s say someone wants to sell a home to another person. There’s two people: one of them wants to sell the home to the other one. They meet in a Friday gathering. After the Friday gathering, the person says, “You know what, I want to buy your home.” The other says, “Okay, deal. Where’s the witnesses?” You need two witnesses. So those two people plus two witnesses, that’s four people, otherwise the community cannot function.

There’s another verse in the Quran which says if someone commits adultery, you need four witnesses. So you cannot function as a community unless there’s a minimum of four people. And we are here disregarding the fact that if you want to build a mosque you need even more people, and if you want to organize the religion you need 20 or 100 depending on the situation.

But here we’re talking about an informal way of organizing. You need at least four people, otherwise you cannot fulfill some of the laws in the Quran. Because let’s say there’s three people exiting the masjid. On the way out of the masjid, they see two people committing adultery. What can they do? There’s nothing they can do because they don’t have four people. But if there’s four people, they can execute God’s law. I mean, in a democracy that might be dangerous, but whatever, that’s for another day. What I’m saying is it wouldn’t be possible. Let’s imagine in the past, it wouldn’t be possible to have a group with less than four people. And this means one leader and three followers. When they do the prayer, one person leads the prayer and a minimum of three people for the Friday prayer should be following—if we are doing it, of course, if we’re not doing it online like this.

Linguistic Insights from Arabic Plurality

Anyway, so—and by the way, this is why the Arabic grammar has—the plural starts with three rather than with two. Unlike English where we have the singular which is one person and then we have the plural which is two or more, in Arabic, the grammar also has a third version. It has a version for one, which is singular. Then what they call the smaller plural, which is two people. And then what they call the bigger plural, which is three or more people. It’s a different form of words in Arabic. So the way the ancient Arabs thought of it is like you have to have three people to think of them as a group; you cannot think of two people as a group. So you have a group of three, plus the leader is four.

So again I’m repeating, we need four people in an informal setting to have a group Friday prayer—not two, not three, you need four. However, if you want to build a mosque, then the situation changes. Then you have to also estimate: is it efficient to build a mosque with four people? That’s another question. And because we’re doing it online now, the issue is: is it better to build a mosque with, let’s say, 10 people or something? Those are all different answers. Here, I’m just going to focus on what is the value of the group prayer, and then we’ll use this for other conclusions. But please don’t rush into conclusions because there’s other factors to consider. Let’s just learn this as a separate fact.

Mathematical Expansion of the Harmonic Series

Okay, so if we have, let’s say, 10 people, the value of the prayer would be 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 all the way to 1/10 — that would be 2.92. That’s the value of the group if there’s 10 people in the group. If there’s 20 people in the group, the value would be 3.59. If there’s 30 people in the group, the value would be 4. If there’s 60 people in the group, the value would be 4.67. If there’s 100 people in the group, the value would be 5.18. If there’s a thousand people in the group, the value would be 7.58.

So this means that if you pray in a group of a thousand believers—not just any group, it has to be submitters and believers—if you pray in a group of a thousand believers, your prayer is seven times more valuable. So you do one prayer, it counts as seven. If you pray in a group of 10,000 people, the value of your prayer is 9.78. If you pray in a group of 100,000 people, the value of your prayer is 12.09. If you pray in a group of 1 million people, the value of your prayer is 14.39.

For practical purposes, it’s hard to imagine a prayer with a bigger group. In Kaaba they say that the sacred masjid fits about 4 million people, but honestly, do they even pray together sometimes? Like, there’s separate sections, people pray in the yards, they count that as well. I don’t know if that’s a prayer together. So for practical purposes, I don’t think it really makes sense to go beyond a million. You just don’t see who’s there or who’s praying, who’s not praying. So it’s not that you have to see it, but the issue is like, there’s separate sections, they’ve created roads between sections of the masjid—is it really a full group then? So, yeah, but as you can see, it’s kind of like it’s hard for practical purposes to imagine a prayer because of the group effect to have more than 14 times the value of your actual prayer.

Group Values Within Multi-Denominational Mosques

Now, what if you pray in permissible mosques dominated by Sunnis or Shia? Now, then the value is different because, as we know, we are allowed to pray in some mosques which are dominated by Sunnis—in some of them, and I deal with that in another video (Places of Worship) . And in those mosques, if we happen to be there, then there might be Sunnis there and you might be forced to join them in the prayer. And in that case, what is the value of your prayer? In that case, we have to use the idea from that video clarification (Demographics of Heaven and Hell) where I concluded that in each group, whether a state group, religious group, or whatever, there’s always, sort of almost by chance, for every 10 disbelievers, there is one believer. They don’t know that they are believers; they think they are Sunnis, but there’s one person there who’s honest for every 10 people who are evil people. And so that means that among Sunnis, by chance, you’ll get one person who’s a believer. And by the way, even the Quran mentions that there are believers in the groups of disbelievers.

You go into a Sunni mosque, for every 10 disbelievers there’s one believer. You don’t know who that person is, you might never know, but he’s there, he’s probably there. So in this situation, what’s the value of your prayer? Now, to calculate the value of your prayer in that situation, first imagine that all the prayers of these disbelievers go to waste. The Quran says whoever commits idol worship, all his works will be nullified, meaning that his prayer is just nothing, as if he never prayed. It’s like he went to the gym. For all the Sunnis, when they do the prayer, it’s like going to the gym. I mean, when you go to the gym, at least you gain some muscle or whatever, there’s some health benefits, but there you don’t even gain much muscle. It might be good for your health maybe a little bit, I don’t know. What I’m saying is it doesn’t count as a prayer for all those disbelievers—the 10 disbelievers. But for one person among them, for some reason, he probably hasn’t committed idol worship in his heart, and it counts as a good thing.

So in that situation, what’s the value of your prayer? In this case, the value of your prayer is one, but the next person is zero, for the next person is zero, for the next person is zero. Then on average, the 11th person, his prayer does count. So then that 11th person, how much value does he have for you? He’s the 11th person, he’s not the second person. He’s the 11th person in the group. So 1 + 1/11, because now you are one among 11 people. And then for that next person who’s a believer, he’s 1/22, for the next person is 1/33. So that’s how we calculate the value of our prayer in a group setting in a permissible mosque with Sunnis or Shias.

And this is the form, this is the math expression:

depending on how many people there are. So let’s calculate that, let’s take some examples. So let’s say there’s 110 people—see, this ends with 110 in a mosque, that’s typical. In a typical mosque, if you go there and pray, it’s usually about 100 people, that’s quite typical. So the value of that would be 1 + 1/11 + 1/22 + 1/33—if you add all those numbers up to 1/110. If you add all of them up, you get 1.26, which is not even enough for a group prayer, for a Friday prayer, because it has to be more than two, otherwise it would be better just to do four rakaats instead of two and that’s it. So it’s not even enough if you do it with Sunnis to count as the Friday prayer.

If there’s a thousand people, if you add all of them up, see now it’s—again, this series is slowing, it’s increasing much slower—it’s 1.46 if you do it with a thousand people. Finally, with 1 million people, it gets the value of 2, and this is probably the setting in Kaaba maybe. Because even in Kaaba they have separated the group, so you can never think of it as 1 million people. So the conclusion here is that if you go into God’s mosques which are dominated by Sunnis, even if the mosque has a million people, it would be better for you just to pray with four submitters separately than to pray in that mosque. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go there; all I’m saying is there’s more value to praying with submitters than to praying with Sunnis in a mosque. Even if there’s 1 million Sunnis compared to just four submitters, just four submitters gives you more value.

Let me go back to that because here, with just four submitters, we achieve the value of two, and imagine with more submitters. But if you pray in a mosque—in a permissible mosque with Sunnis—you need a million Sunnis to just let’s say have that additional value as much as four submitters, which is a big difference.

The Amplify Effect of Group Actions in Scripture

Yeah, so now what Quranic verses support this idea? Let’s say verse four. By the way, I can prove this specifically, but then I would have to go into taking into account all other factors like gender, age, and all of that, and I don’t want to go too much into it. I don’t think it helps to focus on gender differences, so I’m just going to sort of superficially support the idea. So, Surah 4 verse 85 says:

“Whoever mediates or enables a good deed receives a share of the credit thereof, and whoever mediates an evil work incurs a share thereof. God controls all things.” [Quran 4:85]

So this is the basic idea of why the group prayer has more value than an individual prayer for you—why it has more value for you as well, for each individual in that group.

By the way, this same idea, as you can see from this verse, is also true in an evil group. This is why sometimes people don’t realize how much they are damaging their life by hanging around bad people, because as you can see, the deed is amplified by the group. This is why the gangs, the mafia, all of that are worse than they think. Someone probably just buys the gun, the other one person kills the person—that’s a big deal there. Being part of that group where someone got killed, that’s a big deal.

Oh, by the way, this is also the reason why there’s no contradiction in the Quran when the Quran says if you kill someone—I’m talking about like as a believer—if you kill someone, then yeah, it’s a bad deed. But if you kill in a group setting, meaning in a war, it’s not necessarily bad. The reason is that if a believer kills a believer, whatever was good in that person now becomes a sin for you because you stopped his good deeds. But if that person is half-half, let’s say he’s half good, half bad, then you sort of half killed the person. Yeah, it’s killing, but for 50% of it maybe you had the justification, for another 50% you didn’t have. But this is dangerous because you’re adding sins to yourself.

However, in a group setting—let’s say in war, when Muhammad fought with the believers in actual war—even though you might have let’s say committed a 50% sin, let’s say the group was 100 people. 100 people fought against a thousand disbelievers, let’s say. Yeah, but the reward is five times more. So in this case, even though you did a sin which is prohibited in the Quran—it’s prohibited in the Quran to kill someone—in a group setting in war, the benefits outweigh the costs, because in the group setting your reward was five times more. Therefore, it outweighs the sin. That’s why wars are allowed and killing is not. Okay, so this is one of the reasons, not all the reasons.

The Realities of Associative Responsibility

Okay, so but I want to also sort of focus on the idea that some people think that—you know, you might have heard the expression, and this is important because some submitters don’t fully appreciate this—a lot of times you hear it in English, they say, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” What they mean by it is like, yeah, he or she might be useful, an enemy might be useful for some situation, so I’m just going to keep them close to me just in case. It doesn’t work like that. Once you’re part of a group, whatever they do, you’re responsible for part of it. And as you can see, it amplifies. Let me go back here: if the group is 100 people, even if you do something not as bad, it’s five times worse. You then become part of that mafia.

The next verse which supports this idea, it says for example in Surah 7 verse 161, it says:

“Recall that they were told, (the people of Moses) ‘go into this town to live and eat therefrom as you please. Treat the people amicably and enter the gate humbly. We will then forgive your transgressions; we will multiply the reward for the righteous.'” [Quran 7:161]

Because they were a group of people, and if they joined the town, there would be a bigger group and the rewards would be multiplied.

Then we have Surah 61 verse 4. It says:

“God loves those who fight in His cause united in one column, like the bricks in one wall.” [Quran 61:4]

There’s an additional goodness in being united.

Surah 2 verse 43 says:

“You shall observe the contact prayers and give the obligatory charity and bow down with those who bow down.“[Quran 2:43]

If there was no additional value to the group prayer, God would never order us to bow down with those who bow down. There’s an additional value to that; that’s why God mentions it. We bow down with those who bow down because it’s better than bowing down alone.

Then Surah 18:28 says:

“You shall force yourself to be with those who worship their Lord day and night seeking Him alone. Do not turn your eyes away from them seeking the vanities of this world, nor shall you obey one whose heart We rendered oblivious to Our message, one who pursues his own desires and whose priorities are confused.” [Quran 18:28]

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God. Some music for teenagers. When I was a teenager, I liked that music. I’m guessing teenagers like that music more. Now I’m not sure if I do like it anymore, but yeah, it’s okay. It made me smile. Today what I want to talk about, is the topic of over-religiosity. Typically, this would be a good topic, where with some topics I find that it’s useful to just be ironic or to sort of almost ridicule, which is always not a nice way to do it, but some things when you step back, they just look ridiculous. Really ridiculous. And I cannot help but take that approach. But this time I’m going to try not to do it. If I do it, sorry. And I’m going to try not to do it, not to be ironic with it or not to use sarcasm to drive the point home about this topic, because there could be reasons beyond our control. There are reasons beyond our control for some of us which make us over-religious.

There are different reasons why people are over-religious. And what do I mean by over-religious? When I say over-religious, I mean like unnecessarily religious or harmfully religious. Yeah, a person can be harmfully religious. Let’s distinguish between righteousness and religiousness. Righteousness is pretty much always good. Religiousness is not always good. Probably Pharaoh was religious. The Pope is very religious. Is it good? Not necessarily good. But still, because for some of us over-religiosity is a little bit beyond our control, I’m going to try to be nice about it and not laugh at it. But at the back of my mind, I’m always thinking, should I laugh at it? So yeah, but I’ll try to be nice. Let me try to be nice.

So yeah, there’s different reasons why people are over-religious. By over-religious again, I don’t mean over-righteous or over-sincere; what I mean is over-religious—the person looks more religious than he really is. There’s something off. And reasons for over-religiosity are a few, and some of them are beyond the people’s control and others are within their control. Because some of those reasons are beyond their control, basically they are not bad reasons. I don’t want to laugh at the over-religious people. Rashad, by the way, did laugh at over-religious people, which made sense, but there are some groups of people who don’t have things under their control, so it’s not good to laugh at them. Okay, so just keep that in mind.

Reasons Behind Over-Religiosity

1. Low Levels of Intelligence

What are the reasons why people become over-religious? One of the reasons is low levels of intelligence. Scientists have done studies; they simply ask people, “Do you believe in God or not?” And it turned out that people who are more intelligent were more likely to say that they don’t believe in God. And they use this as some sort of proof that dumb people believe in God. It’s not actually the case. The reality is that people who are not as intelligent are more over-religious. So basically, only about 10% of people really believe in God. But people who are a little bit dumber are afraid to admit it because they are afraid that society will judge them. And people who are smarter will be like, “Oh, there’s no God.” If they don’t believe there’s a God, they will say there’s no God, if that’s what they believe. So basically, in those tests, the people who are smarter told the truth of what they really believe, and people who are not as smart were trying to hide it because they thought that they were going to be judged. Because of that, you’ll get a slightly larger number of people among the smart people who say that they don’t believe in God. So yeah, one of the reasons for being over-religious, unnecessarily religious, or religious because you think society wants you to be religious, is low levels of intelligence. And a lot of you probably have noticed this. If you go into some cultures, you’ll see, “Oh, wait a minute, these people are really religious.”

Another reason why people—and this is beyond a person’s control, by the way; we never laugh at low levels of intelligence. We don’t laugh at it because intelligence is just mind beauty. Would you laugh at someone who’s not as beautiful? No, it’s not nice. It’s not fair. God created all of us, and God can make anyone ugly or pretty; it’s God’s choice. So, it’s beyond our control. And because of that, we don’t laugh at people who are not good-looking. But at the same time, for the same reason, we shouldn’t laugh at people who are not as smart. They are what they are. It’s okay. Everyone is their own person. It’s fine. Everyone is good-looking enough and everyone is smart enough for their own good. So yeah, we don’t laugh at that. However, it is true that people who are slightly less smart will tend to be slightly over-religious. And again, it doesn’t show anything about their true belief. It shows their level of religiosity; it doesn’t show their level of belief or their level of righteousness or their level of sincerity.

2. Poverty

Another reason why people might be over-religious is poverty. If you go to poor countries, you’ll notice that they are more religious, and they are forced by poverty. Because when you don’t have a job, when you’re poor, when there’s no other option, and there are people like that around you, yeah, you’ll kind of get into religious stuff unnecessarily. Like, for example, the bathroom needs to be fixed, you forget about it, you read the Quran or something. It’s a way to avoid the reality. Yeah, that might be over-religiosity. Yeah, fix the bathroom first, maybe. But whatever. But it’s okay. It’s okay, I’m trying not to laugh because, again, this is beyond people’s control. It’s beyond people’s control. No one can control how rich or poor they are. What does the Quran say? God makes people rich or poor. God gives and God takes. So if God wants to make someone rich, God will make someone rich. If God wants to make someone poor, God can make someone poor. It’s not in our control. And for that reason, if that causes a little bit of more religiosity, over-religiosity, it was beyond the person’s control. It doesn’t mean it’s good. Over-religiosity is first unnecessary and most of the time harmful. It confuses things. People who are not as good will seem better. People who are actually better will not seem as good. So it kind of confuses the situation. But it happens. It happens.

3. Overcompensation for the Past

The third reason of over-religiosity is overcompensation for the careless life of the past. So let’s say—and I’m going to use some really bad examples here—but let’s say someone lived as a prostitute in the past, and then when she becomes religious, she now totally has to wear the hijab. Like, good women do not actually remove the hijab, but her past is like a prostitute, probably. So it’s overcompensation. Or people who might have been, let’s say, really harsh in the past—they beat people, they bullied people—now they’re extra nice, they are the nicest person ever. It’s overcompensation. So some aspects of over-religiosity are caused by overcompensation, especially if the sinful life was too long. Let’s say until their 40s or 50s someone was a bad person—which is okay, anyone can change. I’m not saying it’s okay, but anyone can change. I truly believe people change. They really change. Like, someone really actually can be a prostitute and become a good person; it’s possible. And that’s probably one of the worst cases, but it’s possible. So people can truly change. However, staying in a sinful life for a long time, is going to cause you to overcompensate. Then you really want to be the best of the best, which is not really sort of in your range—it’s beyond your league, but you kind of are trying. That’s because you’re trying to overcompensate. You’re trying to overcompensate for past sins. And this is probably a little bit reasonable, to try to overcompensate, but it also causes over-religiosity, unnecessary religiosity.

4. Ego

Another reason—and this is probably a reason to ridicule—why people are over-religious is ego. They think that they are special. And this is probably the most dangerous form of over-religiosity. They become religious, they think—typically a Jew will do this. A Jew will be religious and be like, “Oh, we’re God’s chosen people. I’m the best. I’m better than others.” So typically, if a Jew is over-religious, it’s because of his ego. He thinks he’s special, he’s better than others, his life is more important than the life of others. So that could be one reason for over-religiosity. One of the most dangerous reasons is ego, thinking that you’re special, that there’s something special about you compared to other people.

5. Hypocrisy

Another reason for over-religiosity is hypocrisy. And this is actually probably not a good reason to mention because hypocrisy can cause both over-religiosity and under-religiosity depending on the circumstance. It will cause over-religiosity when someone reaches leadership positions—let’s say the Pope, some Imams, some leaders. They become over-religious because they are leaders, but it’s because of their hypocrisy. They don’t believe; they want other people to think that they are really special and really religious, so they’ll become over-religious. Even the stuff they wear, you can see the Pope—like, over-religiosity because of hypocrisy, but other religious leaders as well. But I don’t think we should really use hypocrisy as one of the main reasons for over-religiosity because hypocrisy can also cause under-religiosity. Some people want to stay in between; they kind of want to embrace religion, but they think it’s too much. So, let’s take the example of the prostitute again because it’s easier. If she’s a hypocrite, she might be under-religious. She’ll be like, “You know what, I’ll embrace this. I’m going to fix my life, but you know, maybe I’ll still keep my makeup. I’ll still keep my provoking dresses and all of that, and bad clothes. I’ll still keep the photos on my social media; they are there, they’re in the past, but I’ll keep them.” Kind of like under-religious. So, hypocrisy can also cause under-religiosity.

Typically, in our situation, hypocrisy causes under-religiosity. Because it’s very unlikely in the early generations of believers, to have hypocrites among the leaders. Usually, in the very late generations of believers, the hypocrites can become leaders. Fake believers can become leaders; that’s usually towards the end. But towards the beginning, a lot of leaders here know that you always have to give more than you take. It doesn’t benefit anyone to be a leader and a believer in this situation materially. It doesn’t benefit anyone; you always have to give more than you take. All the leaders know this—whoever is helping and whatever, you see that you have to give more than you take. And this keeps the hypocrites out. So this is not really our problem. When I’m speaking about over-religiosity, really, let’s not be concerned about it. Let’s not sort of think that, “Oh, this guy is over-religious because maybe he’s a hypocrite.” That’s actually not very likely until the end of the world. It can happen, but it’s very unlikely. Because hypocrisy typically, in the earlier generations, causes under-religiosity. People kind of want to be religious, but they are always looking for a loophole. “Oh, is it allowed maybe?” you tell them, “Oh, don’t eat pork,” they’ll be like, “Oh, is it allowed maybe a little bit?” or “Don’t drink alcohol,” hypocrites will typically be like, “But what if it’s a tiny bit? What if it’s during the night? What if it’s kind of like…” They seek loopholes. Anyway, so hypocrisy can be a reason for over-religiosity, but usually among the leaders. So let’s sort of forget about it.

6. Hyper-Religiosity as a Medical Condition

And another reason, unfortunately, of over-religiosity is what is called hyper-religiosity. And this is actually a psychological condition, a medical condition. If you search on chatgpt or whatever, what is hyper-religiosity in psychology, it’s a person who is acting really religious to the point of harming themselves and not being functional in society. Typically, this is caused by some types of epilepsy in the brain, or bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. So really, mental diseases can lead to over-religiosity, and these are easy to tell. They are really not that dangerous because you can tell, but they can be more dangerous online. Typically, these people cannot be—it’s harder to tell online when people are contacting us online, that the person has schizophrenia, or maybe he or she has bipolar disorder, or he or she has some kind of epilepsy which is causing them to be over-religious. So it can be a disease, but it’s not in their control. So it’s unfortunate. It’s unfortunate for them; probably the best thing to do is to just ignore it. But online it can happen more often. You might face some situation like that in your life where someone approaches you online and they want to talk about God or Jesus or whatever, and they are just bipolar or maybe they just have schizophrenia. It happens online more because you cannot tell their behavior—it’s harder to figure it out through typing. But yeah, once you kind of see that there’s something off, you just disregard them. The Quran says disregard the ignorant. By ignorant, that means also the people who don’t know much, but also people who might have a mental disease. Just disregard them. Don’t deal with them. It’s okay. They have their own problems. You can feel sorry for them and that’s it, but you don’t have to get them out of their situation. In many countries, there’s a medical system for that.

So yeah, these are typical reasons of over-religiosity. Some of them are bad—ego, hypocrisy potentially—but others are beyond people’s control. That’s why we should be careful not to laugh at over-religious people. However, over-religiosity is not a good thing. Typically, it’s not a good thing. Let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

Alhamdulillah. Ashhadu An la ilaha ila Allah Wahdahu la sharika Lah. Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

And all of us are victims of over-religiosity. I just did it right now. I didn’t need to say it in Arabic; I should have just said it in English. It’s not necessary online because you guys can say it, but whatever. Yeah, I just said alhamdulillah La ilaha ila Allah. I could have just said it in English, that would be enough. But I was a little bit over-religious, maybe out of habit. But it happens to all of us. I don’t know—am I overcompensating? Maybe I’m a little bit dumb, maybe I’m a little bit poor. I don’t know what’s causing it. But yeah, it can be caused.

Examples of Over-Religiosity

1. Using Expressions in Another Language

But let me now go to some examples of over-religiosity. One example is using expressions in another language. You ask someone, “How are you doing?” “I’m good. Alhamdulillah.” What? Okay, if the person has an Arabic background, fine. But quite often it’s over-religious, just the person trying to be more religious. Would he say it to himself? “Oh, today I feel good. Alhamdulillah.” They’d probably say, “Today I feel good, thanks to God,” when they think. But when someone else asks them, they are like, “Oh, I’m good. Alhamdulillah.” Whatever. And anyway, I’m trying not to laugh at it because it’s a good thing. But why would you say it in another language if that’s not your mother tongue, if that’s not your natural language? Why would you say it in another language? Does it just make it sound more religious? Like having expressions in other—or the Christians will be like, “Oh, praise Jesus, hallelujah, hallelujah.” Do they even know what it means? It’s kind of—it just sounds more religious. There’s some secret symbolism in there which they think is there. So yeah, it’s just over-religious. It’s just trying to act more religious than they truly are. When they exit that church or that mosque or that social gathering, they really are not those people. They are different; they feel different. But they are trying to be more religious than they truly can handle. So that’s one example of over-religiosity: just using expressions in another language which is not your language. Typically among the Muslims, it’s in Arabic. I can understand the Arabs, but not the other people. Why would you go to use an Arabic expression?

2. Naming Children After Prophets

Another example of over-religiosity is, for example, naming the kids after previous prophets. I mean, who would name their kid Jesus? Or naming kids in languages which are not their own. If none of the parents are Arabs, why would they name their kid in Arabic? Or if none of the parents are Italian, why would they name their kid in Italian? So yeah, one of the examples of over-religiosity is naming kids. “Oh, I’m going to name my kid…” Let’s say, what are some of the prophets? John, Jesus… John, why? It’s unnecessary. Or to go even beyond that, naming the kid according to the name of a prophet in Arabic—why not even John, like Yahya, or stuff like that? That’s over-religious. And how do we know it’s over-religious? The prophets themselves didn’t do that. You don’t see any prophet being like, “Oh, I’m going to…” Moses didn’t go like, “Oh, I’m going to name my kid Abraham.” Abraham existed before Moses. Moses never said, “I’m going to name my kid Isaac.” Isaac existed before Moses, and he was a prophet, and Moses had respect for Isaac, but you don’t see that example there. You don’t see that. You see the opposite. They try to name kids according to names which were not found before. I mean, some cultures have respect for their elders; yeah, that’s a little bit understandable. Even if, let’s say, some people named their kid Abraham, it’s because they were recent descendants of Abraham—people who came just after Abraham. So it was because Abraham was their father or grandfather or things like that, but not for religious reasons. So yeah, this is one—I don’t think it helps with anything. Naming your kid after a prophet or using words from the Quran which are actually in Arabic, if you’re not an Arab, it doesn’t make sense. That’s an example of over-religiosity.

And you can see it typically like so many Muslims—I mean Sunnis and Shia—so many of them will name their kid Muhammad. Muhammad. How many Muhammads are there in the world? Can someone help me? Probably a big—I think Muhammad is the most popular name in the UK, I’m not sure, because everyone names their kid Muhammad. Muhammad, what is it? It’s ridiculous. So imagine the kid walking around, “Oh, who are you?” “I’m Jesus.” Does it make sense? It doesn’t make sense. Plus, it’s a little bit against the Quran because the Quran says Jesus was the Messiah. Does it mean this guy is the Messiah? Or the Quran says that Aaron was a prophet, and if someone is named Aaron, does it mean this guy is a prophet? So it is a little bit against the Quran—not fully, but a tiny bit against the Quran. Now, if we have done it or we plan to do it—if we plan to do it, I’d encourage you not to, but if you do it, it’s fine. What I’m saying is, it’s probably because you are over-religious, and it’s probably because you’re trying to overcompensate for your past sins. You’re trying to be more religious than you can handle, and it’s because in the past you were not religious enough, so you’re overcompensating. So yeah, I myself am happy that, let’s say, my mom named me Alban, and my siblings all have Albanian names. Our mom named us; I think. It’s fine. Actually, typically in the Bible, if you look at examples, they had names which had meaning, like Jewish names which had meaning. I don’t know what Moses means; it probably means water or something like that, like the one who is found in water or something. So they had a reason why they named the kid in that way, but not some other people’s reason—their own reason. What’s the reason to name someone Jesus when you’re not living in the time of Jesus? So yeah, that’s an example of over-religiosity. However, it happens to all of us because it’s beyond our control. Some of us have lived different lives, so there could be reasons which are beyond our control which can cause over-religiosity. So I’m not going to judge it. However, I’m also not going to approve it. If you can fix your over-religiosity, fix it. It’s okay. I think it’s better if you’re not over-religious. You have to be practical.

3. Pushing each other for “Religiosity”

Another example of over-religiosity is pushing people. Like, some of us went to Hajj, and there were people pushing other people to go and kiss the Kaaba or touch the Kaaba, or be as close to the Kaaba as possible. That’s not in the Quran, but they try to do that. And why is that bad? Because by trying to be more religious than is possible, what they are doing is they’re pushing, for example, sometimes the opposite gender—men pushing women, women pushing men. How does that work? That’s against the Quran. Why would you touch a woman? Why would you touch a man if you’re a woman? It doesn’t make sense. But over-religiosity causes them to think that it’s okay. “Oh, in this case, it’s okay, we’ll push each other.” It’s never okay to push each other. I think probably in war, maybe in war there might be a reason, but in other cases, I don’t see a reason to push each other—or maybe jokingly, I don’t know if that’s a good reason. But what I’m saying is yeah, that’s an example of over-religiosity: pushing people to get closer to the Kaaba. Why would you push people?

4. Decorating Homes with Religious Symbols

Another example of over-religiosity is, for example—let me check my microphone if it’s on. Okay, it’s on. Another example of over-religiosity is decorating the home with religious symbols. I visited someone’s home once, a long time ago—not a submitter—and his house was full of religious symbols. Kaaba here, a verse there, a verse there, another verse there, another symbol there, the name of Muhammad there… what is it? It almost looked creepy. You know, if you go to a Buddhist home, there’s Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, Buddha. Or if you go to some kind of Hindu home, you have all these idols, symbols, different colors. What is that? That’s just over-religious. It doesn’t help with anything. Yeah, it can be even verses of the Quran. What? Yeah, this is probably an example of over-religiosity. Do you have a favorite verse from the Quran? If yes, then probably you’re over-religious. So if someone asks you, “What’s your favorite verse?” “Oh, this is my favorite verse, and I put it on the wall.” That’s over-religious. There’s no such thing as a favorite verse. All verses are equal in the Quran. God reveals all verses in the Quran; we shouldn’t separate them. But some people will take it, put it on the wall: “This is my favorite verse.” Yeah, we can do that for practical reasons. Rashad put up some papers of the mathematical miracle, kind of like investigating stuff, helping him to memorize stuff—that’s different. But I’m saying, like, people who now that we know the mathematical miracle, why would they even put like the number 19 here and there? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s over-religious. It has nothing to do with righteousness.

By the way, in the Quran, it says righteousness is not turning your faces towards the east or the west. Then it gives you a list of what is righteous. And putting stuff on the wall is kind of like—it’s religious, but it’s not righteous. Similar to how turning towards the Qibla is religious, not necessarily righteous. And by the way, a little bit of religiosity is okay. I’m here talking about over-religiosity. And what do I mean by a little bit of religiosity? Like Contact Prayers are religiosity. Yeah, we do The Contact Prayers, fasting, zakat, going to Hajj—that’s religiosity, but it’s also righteousness. But once you try to go beyond them, it’s probably over-religiosity. You’re just adding it on top; it doesn’t make sense.

5. Outward Appearance and Dress Codes

Another example of over-religiosity is how people look. Typically, women will wear a hijab—it’s just over-religiosity. They think that they are better than they actually are. Or a man will grow a beard. By the way, this beard which I have right now has nothing to do with religion. Let me just make this clear. The story of how this beard came to be is like this: basically, I found online that after I got married, some women—a little bit less than half of women—prefer beards, meaning they think that beards make men look better. And a little bit more than half of women think that if men remove the beard, it makes them look better. So I was wondering which group my wife was in. So I asked her, “Do you think beards make men look better or not?” She didn’t want to sort of admit it, but I extracted it from her—I pressured her. “Which one is it? Which one are you?” And she said, “No, I think beards make men look better.” So I’m like, “Okay, I’ll do this for my wife.” So the beard is just for my wife. There’s absolutely no religious reason for my beard. And the second reason probably is practicality, and in this case, it’s actually anti-religiosity. I heard once—and I’m not an atheist, as we know—I heard once Fidel Castro, I think he’s an atheist but also a non-religious person, they asked him, “Why did you grow the beard?” and he said, “Oh, it’s just easier, it’s more practical because I don’t have to shave.” Yeah. So I satisfied my wife’s desires while also doing something which is easier. It’s easier for me not to shave every day. But either choice is fine. What I’m trying to point out is my beard has no religious reason.

But some people will grow their beard for religious reasons. That’s over-religiosity. And the reason for that is even if it is good—which I don’t think it is—even if it is a good thing to grow your beard, it probably falls on that range of good deeds which is beyond 75%. Meaning that some of you guys probably remember a video which I published called The Global Forced Behavior. In that video, I said that for our generation, the maximum good we can do is 75%. We cannot be 100% good; we can only be 75% good. So anything beyond that is just fake; it’s not possible. And even if the beard or the hijab falls in that range, it’s beyond that, so you’re just faking it. It’s not you. There are so many other things you can fix before that. How about before you wear the hijab, first start with having less glitter in your dress? A lot of those women with the hijab will have lots of glitter. “Oh, I have this design, that design.” How about stop the glitter first, and then wear the hijab? But no, they wear the hijab while still maintaining all the glitter, all the fancy stuff. Yeah, remove the glitter first, and then wear the hijab. So what I think is, even if it’s any good, it’s beyond what would make sense for anyone today. So it’s over-religious. It’s not what they would have done; it’s just them ending up doing it for different reasons which have nothing to do with righteousness—reasons which either have to do with their low IQ, living in a poor country, overcompensating, or ego, or hyper-religiosity, which I don’t think is the case for most of them because diseases are rarer than we think anyway. So that’s another reason.

6. Praying for Sports and Games

Okay, let me give you actually a very good example of over-religiosity. How many of you—probably the younger men or boys will know this—have seen football players (but I’m going to call it the US version, soccer players) or even basketball players? I think with soccer players, they score a goal and then they prostrate, or if he’s Christian, he might actually do the cross before he starts the game or kiss the cross before he starts to play, or pray before the game. “Oh God, please help Arsenal defeat Real Madrid,” or something. “Please help Barcelona defeat Arsenal.” And why is this over-religious? Because even though it looks like it’s a good thing that the person is praying, what is he praying for? For a game. It’s a game. At the end of the day, it’s a game. Why would you pray to God for a game? It’s a game. First you have to realize that it’s a game. So what if one person from one team prays, and another person from the other team also prays, and they are both of the same religion? What’s going to happen? Which prayer is God going to answer? It doesn’t make sense. The only prayers where you pray to God to win is if the believers are fighting the disbelievers. But this is just two teams; it’s a game. Does it make sense to include prayer into the game?

By the way, I don’t agree with some institutions which try to prohibit it. They say, “Oh, sports should unite people, we shouldn’t pray.” Let them pray, whatever. But I’m saying it’s ridiculous. It’s over-religious. Yeah, they can do that, but it’s ridiculous. It’s over-religious. Why would you pray for a game? It’s a game. At the end of the day, you have to realize it’s a game. It doesn’t help the believers, it doesn’t help the disbelievers—it’s just a game. Since when did people start taking games seriously? Okay, has our life changed if Barcelona or Real Madrid won? It hasn’t. So, it’s just a game. And let’s say Ronaldo will go to Saudi Arabia to play, and then there, I think I saw a recent one, he’s like—oh, he says, Bismillah before he kicks the penalty. “Oh, I’m going to shoot the penalty. Bismillah.” Why? It’s a game. Why? So you’re afraid the penalty is going to go wrong. What if it goes wrong? It’s a game. Aren’t we playing to see who’s better? Not to kind of like include God into that. So yeah, that’s just over-religious. It has nothing to do with righteousness. It actually damages religion because it makes religion seem less important. It ridicules the religion by praying for a game. It’s a game.

7. Imposing Extra Dietary Prohibitions

Another example of over-religiosity is extra prohibitions. God, for example, prohibited pork. And they’ll try to be a little bit extra. “Oh, I don’t eat sugars. I don’t eat vegetables. I have a carnivore diet. I’m a vegetarian.” Okay, some of them might have medical reasons, but a lot of them are just over-religious thoughts interfering in your life. Unless the doctor tells you, “Oh, you shouldn’t eat meat,” why wouldn’t you eat meat? Or unless the doctor tells you, “Oh, you should only eat meat,” why wouldn’t you eat vegetables? It makes it difficult, let’s say, for your family. What are they going to cook? So yeah, that’s an example of over-religiosity, kind of those extra dietary prohibitions. “Oh, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.” It’s over-religious if you do it for a religious reason, if you do it thinking that it’s going to make you somehow better, function better, and it’s going to bring you closer to God. No, it’s not. God has laid down the laws which are in the Quran, and that’s it. You don’t have to go beyond that.

Conclusion: Be Real

To conclude, typically over-religiosity is when people go for more symbolical things which actually don’t change much, but they disregard the basics. They probably missed the prayer one day, but now they’re going to really focus on the night of destiny or stuff like that. That’s over-religious. God willing, I’ll deal with the night of destiny another day, where you’ll see that the conclusion is that, yeah, it makes sense to do something during the night of prayer, but typically when you have a mosque, not outside of a mosque. Still, what I’m saying is there’s these hints of over-religiosity, and all of us have them. I did it today, but they are not good. Let’s not fool ourselves with over-religiosity and thinking that it’s righteousness. A lot of it has nothing to do with righteousness.

And to conclude, I think we should be real. Be real. Black Americans have a very good saying, “be real.” Why don’t you be real? Let’s be real. And when you’re real, you don’t try to be who you are not. And that helps you prevent over-religiosity.

Anyway, I don’t know if I should conclude or should continue a little bit more. Does anyone have anything to say or some kind of example? Let’s try to keep it quick though. Let’s see if someone is typing. Faisal is saying, “I really like this sermon.” Yeah, I assume so, Faisal, you would like it. I don’t think Faisal is a person who’s over-religious. Some people can improve with over-religiosity. They can improve it a little bit. But again, a lot of that is beyond the people’s control, so let’s not judge it. It happens. It happens to everyone.

By the way, some of the stuff actually makes sense to be practical, to be over-religiously practical. For example, when we went to Hajj, the women had to wear the hijab, but it’s just for practical reasons. Just when you go to the border, you have to show the passport. It just makes it easier for you to do the other good things.

Trevor is saying also “Yes, great sermon.” Thank you very much.

Moneruzzaman is saying, “what about dhikr, some of the verses like last three ayats of Surah ‘Asr?” I don’t know which verses you’re referring to, but first of all, this is an example of over-religiosity. Surah ‘Asr—I don’t know, it’s Arabic. Can you tell me in English, or can you tell me the Surah number? But regardless, yeah, dhikr is good, but let’s not sort of try to package it into, “Oh, we do it during the night of destiny, we do it during this day.” Remembrance of God is good at any time; however, you don’t have to package it. I’m talking about the packaging. When you are over-religious, you package it. You give it a package: “oh, I’m going to package it into Arabic,” or “I’m going to package it into these circumstances,” or “I’m going to combine it with this night or that day. Maybe on Friday it’s better.” You know, remembrance of God is always good. That’s good. But once you package it into some certain forms—”I’m going to do it in Arabic, not English, not my language; I’m going to do this”—once you package it, it becomes over-religious.

Faisal is saying, “Would you say that hadith is over-religious or just as the wrong way to be religious?” It’s both, Faisal. Yeah, it’s both. Hadith is a good example of over-religiosity, but it’s also an example of fake religiosity and also an example of bad religiosity. So, it’s all of those. Also an example of good things gone wrong. You know, people with good intentions having led to the wrong conclusions, but maybe sometimes they were not smart enough sometimes. So, yeah, it’s an example of a lot of those.

Okay, so Adam Fraser is saying that his son’s name is Karim. Okay, it’s kind of a Quran Arabic name, but his wife is Palestinian, so it makes a little bit more sense. I myself wouldn’t probably recommend it, but it’s okay. May God protect your son, Adam. So his wife speaks Arabic, so it makes a little bit of sense to name his son in Arabic. It’s fine. Okay. Everyone is saying congratulations, Adam. Congratulations, Adam, for the son. I hope he’s healthy and I hope he has a good life, God willing.

Okay, so yeah, I’m going to end it here because I don’t want to—or maybe just a couple more minutes. Oh, everyone is saying congratulations, Adam. Okay, so I’m going to end it here and you guys can, if you want to continue to talk, feel free. For those who have to do The Contact Prayer, do The Contact Prayer. The rest of you, Peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director