Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains why it makes little sense to hate a religious group we ourselves once chose, with an exception for groups that transgress, and urges us to focus instead on what our own group does correctly: the Contact Prayers and Zakat.

Video Transcript:

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

I was just browsing online yesterday, being surprised over and over again at how unserious the online religious discourse has become. One thing I noticed in a few of the videos was that they were projecting hate towards groups that they themselves had chosen before. For example, in one video I heard the sentence, “I used to be a Quranist, but beware of Quranists.” Another video said something like, “I used to be one of them, but now I realize how evil they are.” Another said something like, “I used to be a Sunni,” and then went on speaking hatefully against them, or, “I used to be a Catholic, but here is my critique,” and so on. By the way, these sentences came from people who were not born into those previous religious groups. They chose those groups and then hated them later, after switching to a new group, or maybe they first switched and then started hating them.

This doesn’t fully make sense, and here’s why. But before I tell you why, let me first say that I can understand how someone might hate a religious group into which he was born, because he did not choose it while in this world. But hating a previous religious group which they themselves chose doesn’t make sense, for two potential reasons.

First, if they chose that group because they did not have all the necessary information when they joined, while being relatively intelligent, then the people in that group probably also just lack the information, and once they gradually get that information, like he did, they might also switch to a better group. So there is no reason to hate them. They are just on the same path he was on, simply at an earlier stage.

On the other hand, if he chose that earlier group because he was not intelligent enough, not being able to process the information correctly in his brain despite having all the information, then how does he know that he is in the correct group now? Clearly his brain makes mistakes. So again, there is no justification to hate the previous group, because he can be wrong now as well.

So when they focus on hating the previous religious groups which they themselves chose before, it’s like hating yourself in the past. The Quran, in verse 4:94, says, “Remember that you used to be like them, and God blessed you.” So there is no reason for anyone in any religious group to hate a previous religious group which they had chosen before.

There is an exception, though. If the previous group transgresses against people, or against you, then you have a reason. Verse 29:46 says do not argue with the people of the scripture except in the nicest possible manner, unless they transgress. This is why we see that God told Moses to speak to Pharaoh nicely, in verse 20:44, because Moses used to belong to that group of Pharaoh. But then, in verse 17:102, we see that Moses was not speaking to Pharaoh nicely, because by that time Moses had witnessed the transgressions of Pharaoh. Pharaoh doubled the workload of the slaves, the people of Moses, for no reason. He wanted to humiliate them.

Anyway, these are the general principles regarding when it is reasonable or unreasonable to hate a previous group to which you belonged. But in practice, the situation is usually much more dynamic. It’s probably never the case that they fully transgressed or did not transgress at all, or that you lacked all the information, or that you were completely unintelligent, or that the group into which you were born had nothing to do with the group which you chose first. It’s a combination of all those factors at different levels. So in practice, you just do what feels right with an honest heart. Here I was just exploring this idea in theory, and because it doesn’t help much in practice, it is probably one of the least important portions of a Friday sermon that I have given.

However, let’s make this Friday sermon more important. Let me remind you that instead of focusing on what is wrong in other groups, let’s focus on what is right in our group. Something which our group is correct about, and which no other group has exactly like us, is that we do both the Contact Prayers and the Zakat correctly. These two just cannot be wrong. Even if somehow they cannot seem to realize why these are very important and why these are obligatory, they still cannot ever prove that these are wrong. How can prostrating to God be wrong? How can helping other people through charity be wrong? The Bible says charity never fails. It just cannot be wrong. Praising God in our Contact Prayer cannot be wrong. Glorifying God in our Contact Prayer cannot be wrong. Bowing to God in our Contact Prayer cannot be wrong. So let’s focus on that. Let’s focus on what we know absolutely for sure cannot be wrong.