Friday Sermon by: Rashad Khalifa, Imam of Masjid Tucson
Summary:
In this Friday sermon, Rashad Khalifa presents the idea of universal unity through devotion to God alone, explains how the law of polygamy must not be abused, and describes the vastness of the universe to show how great God is and that God is doing everything.
Video Transcript:
Praise be to God. And I bear witness that there’s only one God, Allah. Looks like the rain is delaying a number of people, so I’m going to start with the less important subjects and give the important subjects to the second khutbah. In this khutbah, I’m going to talk about the subject for the Muslim Perspective that we’ll be preparing inshallah in the next few days. one important subject is I don’t know if it’s a new idea, but it’s an idea called universal unity. And I’m abbreviating it UU, universal unity through devotion to God alone. The idea is that the Protestants are fighting the Catholics in Ireland, the Jews are fighting the Muslims in the Middle East, the Hindus are fighting the Sikhs in India, the Sunnis and Shias are fighting each other in Iran and Iraq. And there is one thing in common among all those people, the Protestants, the Catholics, the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Muslims, the Sunnis, the Shias. This one common bond is belief in God. They all believe in God. So it dawned on me that if we rise above the human factors, if the human race rises above the human factors, such as Jesus, Mary, Muhammad, the saints, and so on, they’ll be united. There’d be no reason to be different. The reason the Sunnis are fighting the Shias is because they reverence human factors. The reason the Protestants are fighting the Catholics is Martin Luther, a human factor. The reason the Mormons are Mormons is Joseph Smith. And so on. So it is these human factors, Muhammad, Jesus, Mary, Joseph Smith, and so on, that cause the differences. If we focus on the one common linkage, that is belief in God, we would have one objective to love, one objective to worship, one and the same.
So this is why I called it universal unity. I finished the video program a couple of days ago. I mean the shooting of it. I’ll be editing it in the next 2 weeks. And then inshallah we’ll be showing it in Washington, DC, and New York, Boston, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the major centers. And the Chicago. We got Chicago also. So the program will emphasize these points of differences and the one point of unity. And I will be asking them to get together with us in promoting universal unity. The complete name is universal unity through devotion to God alone. And by the way, we’re going to change the sign out there. While studying this subject, I realized that you can submit to somebody while hating his guts. So submission is not really a good word. Devotion is a positive word. So we’re going to change the sign make it “Happiness Is Devotion to God Alone”.
This is a product of this a universal unity idea. This is one subject. And we’re I’m going to put this in the Muslim Perspective on the back page. On the front page, I’m going to talk about polygamy, which is a very popular subject. I had a call from New York, Sayyida Ahmed, most of you know her, and they’re having a big problem with New York Muslims abusing the law, God’s law, polygamy. So, I want to start off by saying that we have laws, divine laws in the Quran. Polygamy is one of them. It is God’s law. It is allowed. But, I want to say that when when we abuse God’s law, any of God’s laws, the retribution is really not worth it. The retribution is severe. We can’t cheat ourselves and justify things for ourselves. But, when we look at the subject of polygamy, our example is the Prophet Muhammad. Sometimes they accuse us that we do not follow the example of the Prophet, and this is a lie. But, our example here, a perfect example, is the Prophet Muhammad. He had one wife until she died. For 25 years, he had one wife. All his youth, from the age of 25 to 50. He had only one wife, had all his children from her, except one. And after Khadijah died, he married widows of his friends who had children to give them his name. He had a couple of political marriages that were actually forced on him. Abu Bakr told him, “You have to marry my daughter. You must marry my daughter.” So, he married Aisha. And they lie. They say that he married Aisha when she was nine. Well, even now, when when a girl is born in a family, they they name her her husband to be when she’s still 9 hours old. She’s going to marry, you know, some cousin. So, this is happening now. And this is what happened with Aisha. He did not marry her until she was a mature woman. That was a political marriage. Another political marriage was his friend Omar. Who told him, “You’ve got to marry my daughter Hafsa.” Also, so but his marriages after Khadijah died, were all to alleviate sorrow. So, here is an important criterion for polygamy is that you alleviate sorrow. You do not create sorrow. I’m going to put this in the perspective. So, somebody who who wants to use this law has to be very careful not to abuse it. And he has to use this criterion. Am I creating sorrow or alleviating sorrow? Will there be creation of pain or removal of pain? This is This is one thing. Am I driven by lust? Or am I driven by charitable feelings? We have We are We are very special people who are people who decided to worship God alone and follow his laws. And we have to be the harshest on ourselves. So, I’m going to write this on the front page of the Muslim Perspective. I think these are all the criteria I could think of, but I think we don’t need to say anymore once we think of the the example of the prophet, especially that he was living in a society where polygamy was a way of life.
And every man had 20, 30 wives, 200 wives, depending on how rich he was. That was a way of life in the society. Well, in this society, it is not a way of life. It is even illegal, according to the laws of this country. But it is the law is being abused everywhere. I hear examples from everywhere in the country by by Muslims. And they’re paying dearly because abusing God’s law. When you become a Muslim, you know better. When you know better, the responsibility is is is multiplied many fold, and the retribution is really severe. It’s not worth it. Tubu ila Allah: repent.
The important subject I want to talk about in this khutbah is I was reading the Bible preparing this book about Jesus. And in one place, Jesus told the people, “Your problem is that you do not know God.” And this happens to be the problem right now. People do not know God. So, I’m going to review with you some scientific facts that you already know. Cuz what if we know God, we will understand why every page of the Quran says God alone, worship God alone. And we’ll understand the blasphemy of putting human creatures anywhere near God. We live in something called the solar system. And our sun is 93 million miles away. 93 million miles away. This is 93,000 times as much as from here to New York. 93,000 times. Go to New York and coming back. 93,000 times. That is the how far the sun is from us. The light of the sun takes 4 minutes to reach us. That’s the speed of light. 93 million miles in 4 minutes. The solar system has 12 planets, maybe more that that they haven’t discovered yet. And this the solar the sun and the 12 planets around it occupy a distance that goes to 4 billion miles. Okay, 4,000 millions miles of miles. This is our solar system. Our sun is a star. And in our universe, there are a billion trillion stars. This is stated clearly in the Quran when God says in Surah 40 that the creation of the heavens is a lot more difficult than the creation of the human being. If you can imagine that. But here we have a billion trillion heavenly bodies, no, excuse me, only stars. Because there are uncountable decillions of other heavenly bodies associated with those stars. A billion trillion stars in 1 billion galaxies.
All these are scientific facts. 1 billion galaxies. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way galaxy. And our next door galaxy is 2 million light years away. That’s next door. If you live 2 million years and travel at the speed of light, doing nothing else but traveling at the speed of light, you will go to the next door galaxy in 2 million years. There are a billion of those, billion galaxies. And we learn from Quran that this Now, by the way, it will take you something like 100 billion years to just count them, not create them, just to count the stars. They do it scientifically by taking a picture at random of the sky and counting what’s in the picture and then multiplying by the They calculate the circumference of the of the earth and the visible stars. This is how they But if you count them one to They take 1 second per star to count. It would take you 100 billion years, day and night, without stopping, just to count them. Now, all this we’re taught in Quran is in the smallest and the innermost of seven universes. So, all this vastness is in the smallest universe. Imagine seven balls inside each other. The second universe is bigger. The third is bigger than the two. The third universe, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh. Can you imagine the circumference of the seventh universe? How long is it, the circumference? There is no number that can describe that. We do not have a you know, at the time of the Quran revelation, they didn’t count beyond 1,000. And now, with our computers, we do not have a number that will even if you estimate the differences between the seven universes and being very conservative you still will not have a number that will describe the circumference of the seventh universe in in light years or millions of light years. Infinity would be the closest and most honest description of the circumference of the seventh universe. If you go to the edge of of our solar system the earth will be almost invisible. You have to use very very powerful telescopes in our solar system. If you go to the edge of our galaxy the earth is absolutely invisible. And on this earth walked the man called Jesus or Muhammad. So the people do not know God. They’re unaware of who God is because this infinity the circumference of the seventh universe we’re told in Surah 39 is held within God’s right hand. This allegorical description being withheld within God’s right hand there is to tell us how big God is, how great God is and who God is. Because it is not held within his hands is the difference from holding something like this or like this inside. How much space do you have inside your hand? God is great. And because of this greatness God is capable of treating you as if you’re the only creature in the universe. God has that capability and he does. He’s closer to you personally than your jugular vein. God is great. We cannot understand or encompass the greatness of God. God is capable of treating every ant as if it is the only creature in the universe. Can you imagine the circulatory system of the ant? The heart of the ant does have a heart and it beats. It’s not like our heart, but it does have a heart. It has a circulatory system. And God controls that. As if it is the only creature in the universe. So, when God says in Surah 53 God is the one who makes you happy or miserable. God is the one who makes you rich or poor. And when we raise the new understanding, which is absolutely essential for you to go to heaven. Namely, God is doing everything.
We need to know who God is to understand and appreciate that step. God is doing everything. The only thing we do is choose to be with God or with Satan. This is it. After that, God takes over. And God makes you rich or poor. Happy or miserable. God is doing everything. However, misery comes from Satan. But God in accordance with God’s will. So, the ultimate doer is God and we bring the misery on them on ourselves. We choose to put our finger in the fire or not. So, when it hurts is because we chose to put our finger in the fire and it is God’s law that when you put your finger in the fire, it hurts. So, we bring the pain on ourselves. So, if you have any problem of any kind, you just have to ask yourself why do I have this problem? And you have to dig and find out why and remove the reasons. You have to be honest with yourself.