Introduction and the Principle of Questioning Hadith

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

Some people will like some of these, some people will not like them. If you don’t like it, blame the AI. If you like it, also thanks to the AI. So basically, the AI did it while trying to achieve my request to include different cultures into the music and different music genres. So it’s going to be different pretty much, God willing, every time.

What I want to talk about today is actually I want to connect to the last Friday sermon. What we concluded in the last Friday sermon is that if someone brings us information from the Quran, we shouldn’t ask why that rule in the Quran is so. But if someone is bringing us information from hadith or any other human being, then we are allowed to ask why. Like if they say this rule should be like this, then we ask, “Why is that rule in such a way? What’s the reason behind it?” And I want to apply that logic a little bit. And by the way, there’s other ways to deal with hadith—we spoke about it—but this is an alternative way. Anyway, one of the ways; it doesn’t have to be like this every time.

I want to use this, let’s say, principle and apply it to one of the hadiths which is quite well known. It’s the hadith based on which the Sunnis and the Shia, but especially the Sunnis, sort of have reached some sort of conclusion that there are three sacred mosques. They sort of believe, depending on how they express it—some of them will actually just say it like this, but some of them will express it a little bit differently—but the basic idea according to them is that there are three sacred mosques. One is the one in Kaaba, the one in Mecca, the sacred masjid; the other one is in Medina, according to them; and then the other one is Masjid al-Aqsa, the one in Jerusalem. And according to them, all three of these are sacred, and we should sort of—it’s okay, or maybe we should do some sort of pilgrimage in all three of them, and that’s a good thing.

Anyway, so I just want to, let’s say, tackle this hadith or elaborate on this hadith. This is not, by the way, this is not even a hadith; this is their conclusion based on a hadith. But let me show you. Let me actually repeat that, but before I do that, let me actually share the screen. Okay, so let me talk about the hadith about the three sacred mosques, what they call the three sacred mosques.

The Hadith of the Three Mosques and Asking “Why”

The hadith goes more specifically like this. It doesn’t say anything about the sacred mosques, but the hadith goes more like Muhammad said, according to them, that no one should ever travel—by travel he meant overnight travel, or like long-distance travel, not like just walking a little bit like five miles or less than whatever, so let’s not go into defining what travel means—but the hadith says that no one should travel to any mosque of the world except to three mosques, and he mentioned the three mosques according to the hadith, which is the mosque in Mecca, the mosque in Medina, and the mosque in Jerusalem. So only to these three mosques is someone allowed to go and visit them through traveling. If you’re already in other mosques, let’s say if you’re in Istanbul already, yeah, you can go to another mosque if it’s allowed, of course, but you shouldn’t go to that specific mosque—you shouldn’t travel overnight or have a long travel just to go and visit it. So this is kind of the general rule in the hadith, that we shouldn’t travel to other mosques except those three.

And what’s our approach towards this hadith? All we have to do is ask why. Why? Why should we only travel, or why are we not allowed to travel to other mosques, but we are allowed to travel to these three mosques according to the hadith? And once I explain why—by the way, the Muslim scholars cannot tell you why. They can tell you about the sacred mosque in Mecca, which is in the Quran because the Quran says so and God says so. That’s an answer; that’s a good answer. But the Quran doesn’t mention the Medina mosque, and the Quran doesn’t mention the Jerusalem mosque as a sacred mosque, a mosque which we should visit. So then if we ask why, they cannot tell you why. But let me explain why and show you why those other two don’t apply.

Analyzing the Context of the Three Mosques

Basically, if Muhammad said this—let’s assume that he did—the reason why we should be expected to travel to the mosque in Mecca is that we have to go to Hajj. The Quran makes it a rule that Hajj is obligatory at least once in a lifetime to travel there. So that’s the reason why we are allowed to travel there, because eventually we’ll have to go to Hajj if we can afford it. That’s a clear reason; it’s in the Quran, so there’s no need to ask why anymore.

Why, then, did Muhammad also include the Medina mosque? Well, the reason is because Muhammad was there. There are some verses in the Quran which say you should emigrate to the messenger of God or you should follow the messenger of God or things like that. Because the Prophet Muhammad was living in Medina, people could be excused to travel to the mosque in Medina then—because they didn’t travel for the mosque, they traveled there to meet Muhammad. And that’s a good reason. If there’s a prophet and there’s no internet—in the past, they couldn’t sort of communicate online—if they really wanted to get the message, they would have to travel there. There are verses in the Quran which discourage the believers from meeting him in his home, so basically it would be logical for them to go and meet him in the mosque, and then they would talk about stuff or ask questions, or maybe they just wanted to hear what he had to say. So that’s the reason why Muhammad might have told them that they are allowed to travel to Medina: because he was there. However, once you remove the reason, he’s not there anymore. So we don’t travel to Medina; we are not allowed to travel to Medina. By the way, God willing, I’ll go to the idea of proving the concept of not traveling to other mosques except for the sacred mosque from the Quran as well, but here I’m just tackling the hadith.

Then the other question is, why did Muhammad also include the mosque in Jerusalem? The reason for that is because the Quran tells us that Muhammad traveled in one night from Mecca to—the Quran says—the farthest place of prostration. So that means if Muhammad excluded that, he would have done a wrong thing to travel there. This doesn’t prove any rule; it just proves that Muhammad was careful not to exclude it for that specific saying because he himself had done it, and basically he didn’t want to exclude himself from the group of believers when he made a rule about it. And it’s going to happen, God willing, even during the last days with Al-Mahdi when he travels from Mecca to the mosque in Jerusalem. That’s also sort of a prophecy. I’m guessing he’s going to travel via an airplane or high-speed train; I don’t know what the exact method of travel will be then, but it’s going to be doable to travel during one night from Mecca to Jerusalem. But that’s an issue for another day.

What I’m saying here is that the reason to visit the Jerusalem mosque does not exist anymore—not for us, at least. It existed only for Muhammad and the last messenger, Ahmed. So that reason doesn’t apply to us; therefore, we should not travel—by travel I mean long-distance travel—to visit that mosque as some sort of ritual or pilgrimage. The reason for the Medina mosque doesn’t exist anymore because the Prophet Muhammad is not there anymore, so therefore that reason is also nullified. So we are left with an excuse to travel to only one mosque, which is the sacred mosque in Mecca, the Kaaba basically. If Muhammad lived today, he would say that there is no reason to travel to visit any mosque except for the sacred masjid in Mecca.

Scriptural Proofs Against Traveling to Distant Mosques

But then the question is, and this is the main topic of today: Why are we not allowed to travel to visit mosques in distant places? Why shouldn’t we do that? Isn’t visiting a mosque a good thing? Well, technically it’s not efficient. That’s the main reason, but it also goes against some verses in the Quran. Let me go through those verses. There are many verses, by the way, but I’m just going to bring two because I want to stick to the topic.

Surah 2, verse 187 is a long verse, but I’m just going to read this part:

“…and do not have relations with them while you are retreating in the mosques…”

Basically, people are allowed, or it’s a good thing, to retreat to any masjid during the last ten days of Ramadan while fasting. But then Surah 2, verse 184 and verse 185 say we should not fast when traveling. By the way, Rashad translated it as we are allowed not to fast when traveling, but if you look in Arabic, it says we should not fast when traveling. So basically, if you’re traveling long-distance, which includes traveling overnight, then you shouldn’t fast.

This would create a contradiction. Let’s say during Ramadan I want to travel to a famous mosque in Egypt because I want to spend ten days there as a retreat. In this way, I apply the verse about retreating in a masjid, but then that conflicts with the other verse which says if you travel, you shouldn’t fast. The whole idea of retreating to the masjid is a process of the fasting ritual—it’s an extra method of fasting. So there would be a conflict here: if you go to a distant masjid, you should stop fasting, but the verse implies that if you go to a masjid for a retreat, you are expected to fast because that’s part of the Ramadan process. Basically, one rule doesn’t allow you to fast, and another rule says if you fast, you cannot travel.

Based on these two verses, this shows that it was never meant for the submitters to travel—by travel I mean overnight travel where you stay more than the night. The rule from the Quran is that we should not be expected to travel overnight to any mosque, except if you’re doing Hajj, and even then, it’s during the Umrah portion of the Hajj.

Practical Implications and Community Money

There are other ways we can conclude from the Quran that we shouldn’t travel to distant mosques. For example, there would be a conflict during Hajj. As you guys know, on Friday during Hajj, we ended up praying in a mosque in Arafat. For those who were there, they know we prayed outside of that masjid because it was really hot that day. But if we were allowed or expected to travel to distant mosques for the Friday gathering, then technically we should have been expected to go back to the sacred masjid in Mecca to do the Friday gathering. But no, we just stayed there. If you’re doing Hajj and you’re in Arafat, you don’t travel back to Mecca just because it’s Friday, because that would conflict with the Hajj rites.

So this means we are not expected to travel to distant mosques. Pretty much the rule is about a one-hour walking distance; if you have to walk more than an hour, it’s probably too distant for you to go to the Friday gathering. That is the general concept from the Quran: we should not travel to any distant mosque unless it’s the sacred masjid in Mecca during Umrah.

What does this mean for us? Based on this, I want to establish some principles when establishing mosques using community money.

1. Reasonable Distance

Submitters cannot be expected to travel to the mosques we establish more than a reasonable walking distance—meaning about an hour of walking.

Why am I specifying “with money from the community”? If you want to establish a mosque alone with your own money, you don’t have to follow these principles. If you want to build a mosque in a triangle shape, feel free to do it if you invest your own private money. You can establish a mosque at the North Pole if you want. God would accept it if done with an honest heart. But if you’re using community money, you have to use it in the best way possible. The only reason someone is allowed to collect money on behalf of the community is because they presumably know how to maximize its utility.

What’s wrong with a triangle mosque? It has physical limitations. How are people in the sharp corners going to pray? When they try to bow down, they’ll hit the wall with their head. But with private money, you have the freedom to do what you want. Rashad, for example, rented a place with his own money and did what he wanted. But when establishing a mosque with community funds, we must make sure we do it the best way possible.

Before I continue with the rest of the points, let’s repent. Praise be to God, there is no other God except God.

2. Minimum Local Population

More than 40 submitters should live within walking distance. I think I might have explained this somewhere else, or God willing I’ll explain it in the future because it’s a longer point regarding choosing a leader. But the second principle is that at least 40 submitters must live within walking distance.

3. Capacity Requirements

The mosque should fit at least 100 people. It doesn’t make sense to build a mosque where people don’t fit, because those 40 initial people are going to become 100. There’s a verse in the Quran which says that 100 steadfast believers can defeat 200. Why would you establish a mosque which doesn’t fit 100 people? If you establish such a small mosque, you are structurally setting us up for defeat if we are ever attacked. We have to make sure that the mosque is a place we can protect and defend.

4. Direct Ownership (No Rented Spaces)

The mosque cannot be a rented space from another owner. This is what Rashad did, but he did it with his own private money, which is different. If we are collecting community funds, it cannot be rented. This principle comes from the verse in the Quran stating that the mosques belong to God alone. If we rent a property from someone named John, that space belongs to John and God. But the Quran says a masjid must belong to God alone. The property owner must be God alone—it cannot even belong to us as a community entity. It must be permanently dedicated to God. Therefore, you cannot just pay rent to a building owner and call it a mosque.

These principles make establishing a mosque a major challenge today, making it very unlikely to happen easily. But God willing, we will get closer to the solution.

Demographic and Geographic Calculations

Let’s do some calculations based on these principles. The world has about 8 billion people. In a typical city, there are about 300,000 people living within a one-hour walking distance. I am focusing on the one-hour radius because, as established, we are not allowed to travel to distant mosques. Out of those 300,000 people, at least 40 need to be submitters to make establishing a mosque feasible and logical.

If you combine these facts—8 billion total people, needing 40 submitters within every 300,000-person radius—the math dictates that we would need to reach about 1 million submitters worldwide to begin establishing local mosques. Anyone who knows basic math can calculate this:

This sounds like terrible news because we are an online community that is currently very far away from a million members. However, that calculation is true only under the assumption of perfect homogeneity—meaning that submitters are distributed perfectly evenly across the globe. But our distribution is not completely homogeneous. We have concentrated pockets of people; recently we’ve seen pockets in Turkey, earlier in Bangladesh, and before that in Kosovo. For example, there are quite a few submitters in Kosovo, but right next door in Bulgaria, there are none.

Accounting for this lack of homogeneity yields a more realistic, advanced calculation: we actually need about 50,000 submitters worldwide to start having meaningful, localized mosque solutions. Since we only have about 60 submitters right now, a huge gap remains between where we are and the 50,000 needed.

We can narrow this gap further. In my video titled The Global Forced Behavior, I explain that for about 25% of people today, the problem is structurally unsolvable. They might live in a remote village, or have scheduling conflicts at work—it is just the reality of today’s world. We cannot realistically apply the Quran more than 75% of the way right now. Because 25% of the population cannot participate regardless, we can reduce our target number from 50,000 to 37,500.

Closing the Gap Through Strategic Effort

We can reduce that 37,500 target even further to about 8,000 by focusing our preaching efforts on English speakers. Right now, I speak in English. About 20% of the world’s population understands English. By targeting this segment rather than the entire global population, we focus on high-density zones where localized community thresholds can be met much faster.

This is why I highly encourage anyone under the age of 35 who struggles with English to dedicate time to learning it. Over the next five to ten years, it will allow you to communicate with other submitters and improve your daily life.

By focusing on English preaching and encouraging the youth to learn the language, the target number drops to 8,000. Furthermore, conducting our Friday sermons online bridges the remaining gap significantly. It fulfills half of the traditional communal need by bringing us together for the sermon portion, even if we must still perform the contact prayers individually.

It’s not really fulfilling. We’re doing it online, so when we finish this, we’re not going to do the prayer together. We’re just going to do the contact prayer separately. So this reduces it to about 4,000 people.

By the way, I know these numbers, let’s say, don’t make much sense in this case, but I’m using a specific logic—and I use this logic a lot, by the way. Let’s say someone told you that you had two boxes. One of them has $10 and the other one has zero dollars. You know that one has $10 and the other has zero. Then someone tells you, “If I give you $6, would you take the $6 or choose one of the boxes?” It could be zero or 10, but I would choose six because the average of zero and 10 is five. So, six is better than five. I know there’s no $5 bills in the boxes; I know each box has either zero or $10. But I can think of them as though whichever box I choose is going to have $5. That’s the way to think about it to sort of turn probabilities into an actual expected result.

Basically, here I’m turning a 50% probability into an actual expected number, which really doesn’t make sense mathematically, but it answers our fulfillment of the need. It’s not, let’s say, some sort of purely logical conclusion. What I’m saying is that because of the online Friday sermons, we are not in a very big emergency to reach 8,000 members—4,000 would be enough because we already have a solution for half of the problem. So this online aspect is the biggest solution to our problem.

The Role of Hajj and Collaborative Travel

Now, going to Hajj together every five years also reduces the problem from about 4,000 down to 3,000. How?

By the way, if we went to Hajj every year for seven days, the whole problem would be gone. Why? Because we do the Friday sermons online, and then during the year we are expected to naturally pray together 52 times because the year has 52 weeks. To be fully fulfilled as a group, we would have to do the two rakaats of prayer 52 times within a year to reach that fulfillment of being part of a group. You can actually achieve that volume during Hajj. If you stay during Hajj for, let’s say, 10 days and you do five prayers together each of those days, you get 50 prayers together. So we would be fulfilling that need during Hajj.

However, it’s not a full solution. Even though technically we could fully solve the situation through Hajj, I don’t want to propose that fully because it’s not fair to the people who cannot afford it. During this past year, we had approximately 20 people come out of a total community of about 40 submitters at the time. So only half of the people managed to come to Hajj. What about the other half? We wouldn’t have a solution for them. I don’t see this as a complete solution because it only works if people can afford it or if people are rich enough, and I care about the poor people as well. I don’t want to solve the gap fully through Hajj.

Maybe we can just go every five years. It’s going to reduce the gap a little bit. We know from the Quran it’s obligatory only once in a lifetime, but if you do it voluntarily every five years, it helps solve this problem a little bit. We thought it’s a nice middle ground. If you calculate how many prayers we do together by going every five years, it mathematically comes to about 3,200. But because real people are a little bit more dynamically distributed in the community, the gap is reduced a little bit more than that. That’s why I estimated about 3,000.

Concentrating the Community: The Marriage App

Now, God willing, there’s going to be a marriage app. I am sorry for delaying it; I promised this marriage app quite a few months ago—probably about five months ago when I started it, or maybe three or four, I don’t know. Finally, I have a first draft of it from the freelancer who is helping build it. But it just takes too much time to review, edit, propose changes, and make sure it works well. Sorry for the delay, but God willing, when we have it, it will probably be one of the very first solutions we implement. I don’t know exactly when—maybe in a month, maybe two or three months. If I had to guess, I would probably say about two or three months, God willing, depending on how complicated it gets.

The marriage app is going to reduce our target number from 3,000 down to 1,500. Why? Because a lot of those people, when they get married, move to each other’s locations. So now we are focusing the community into certain geographic zones.

By the way, when you marry a non-submitter, it doesn’t help that focus; it divides the community a little bit more. If you marry a non-submitter, you might get stuck in a location where you don’t want to be. It’s fine—marrying a non-submitter is allowed under certain conditions—but it doesn’t help build the local community. It makes it more difficult. But if you marry a submitter through this upcoming app, you actually help the community by consolidating our presence in specific areas. Then when you have children, that focus intensifies even more. That helps the community reach the threshold faster and reduces the gap further. So then we would need only 1,500 people globally to start having meaningful solutions through physical mosques.

Conclusion and Future Solutions

There is an additional new solution coming soon, God willing. I don’t want to go into detail right now because it’s going to turn into a very long Friday sermon. God willing, I’ll propose this meaningful solution probably after the marriage app—so maybe in about six months, I don’t know exactly. I don’t want to mention it now because I really want to have the details laid down correctly, presentable, and finalized before we talk about it.

In conclusion, we managed to reduce this structural gap from 1 million down to 1,500, and this final upcoming solution is going to reduce that gap by half again—from 1,500 down to 750.

What does this mean? This means that if we achieve just 750 submitters online, we can have meaningful solutions to worship God together and feel fulfilled as a community and as a group—similar to how people used to worship in a mosque in the past, meeting during Friday gatherings and daily prayers.

Now the target has been reduced to 750, and 750 is a highly realistic number. It’s entirely within what we can achieve within my lifetime. It’s doable, and I think by now you all believe that it’s doable too. In the past, it might have felt like we were too far away from making an impact. But we’ve been improving recently. Just a few months ago we were 40 submitters, and now we are 60. Reaching 750 is absolutely doable if we speed things up. God willing, that new solution is going to reduce this gap even more, and that’s the good news.

I’m sorry for taking too long today. For those who have to do the contact prayer, please go ahead and do the contact prayer. For the rest of you, peace be upon you.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director