Summary:
In this live Friday sermon, Alban Fejza uses the story of Abraham and the idols, and everyday examples such as praying on muddy ground, tasting berries and first aid, to show how to be practical in religion by doing what you can, where you are, without transgressing.
Video Transcript:
Praise be to God; there is no other god except God. Today I want to talk about being practical in religion.
Abraham and the big idol
Before going into the details, I want to read some verses from the Quran and use them as an example of being practical. I am reading from Sura 21, verses 52 to 67, the story most of us know, where Abraham destroys the idols.
He said to his father and his people, “What are these statues to which you are devoting yourselves?” They said, “We found our parents worshiping them.” He said, “Indeed, you and your parents have gone totally astray.” They said, “Are you telling us the truth, or are you playing?” He said, “Your only Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, who created them. This is the testimony to which I bear witness. I swear by God, I have a plan to deal with your statues as soon as you leave.” He broke them into pieces, except for a big one, that they may refer to it. They said, “Whoever did this to our gods is really a transgressor.” They said, “We have heard someone threatening them; he is called Abraham.” They said, “Bring him before the eyes of all the people, that they may bear witness.” They said, “Did you do this to our gods, O Abraham?” He said, “It is the big one who did it. Go ask them, if they can speak.” They were taken aback, and said to themselves, “Indeed, you are the ones who are transgressing.” Yet they reverted to their old ideas: “You know full well that these cannot speak.” He said, “Do you then worship beside God what possesses no power to benefit you or harm you? You have incurred shame by worshiping idols beside God. Do you not understand?”
We know this story well. It is a very good example of monotheism, of not being an idol worshiper. The Quran tells us that Abraham was never an idol worshiper; he always worshiped God alone.
But I want to focus on one part of the story. If Abraham was preaching God alone, with no other idols, why did he destroy all the idols except the big one? The Quran says “that they may refer to it,” but that is God’s reason. What was Abraham thinking as he was destroying them?
I had a similar experience when deleting Muhammad’s name from some mosques, so I think I partly understand Abraham’s state of mind. I don’t think he planned it in detail. He was simply being practical.
Imagine there were about 25 idols in that place. Abraham probably used a big stick, a bat or a sword. He likely started with the smallest ones, because it is easier to test whether it works, and moved on to bigger and bigger ones. Then he reached the big one. Imagine it was as big as a room or a house. Maybe he could not climb it, maybe it was too high to reach, or maybe he hit it and nothing happened.
So even though Abraham was a total monotheist who did not want to allow any idols, he ended up leaving one for practical reasons. That does not mean the idol should be worshiped. It means Abraham could not fully finish the job. If each small idol took him one minute, he could destroy 24 of them in 24 minutes before anyone caught him. If the last one would take another hour, fetching chisels and tools, it would put him at much greater risk. Abraham never approved of that idol. It was simply impractical to destroy it.
Doing what you can, where you are
Abraham was being practical even in such an important situation. It was simply too much work to achieve a tiny bit more. In economics this is called the law of diminishing returns. If you are hungry, the first bite of food may save you from starvation, and the second bite also does a good job. At some point, an extra bite does not help much. In the same way, destroying that last idol was not that important. He had already proved the point that idols should not be worshiped.
Then the question is: should he destroy all the idols in the world? There were more idols than those 20 or 25, so should he go to the next town and destroy those too? In theory, yes. In practice, he was in that town, and that is what he dealt with. He was not going to fix the whole world.
Fixing the whole world is good in theory, but in practice you start from where you find yourself. You fix your home, your neighborhood, your town. If you never reach the whole state or the whole world, it is what it is. That is what I mean by being practical in religion: you do your best within your means. The Quran may tell you what the full picture should be, never worship idols and destroy all idols, but in practice you do what you can. If you want to stay in the same religion for a long time, you have to be practical. Theory is one thing; practice is another.
“Without being a transgressor”
The Quran itself gives us a practical allowance. In Sura 2, verse 173, and in some other suras, it prohibits eating the meat of pigs, blood and similar things. Then it says that if one is forced, without being deliberate or malicious, there is no sin. That is how Rashad translated it. In the Arabic it is closer to “without being a transgressor,” and one meaning of that word is “without going too far.”
Why is that word there? It means that if you are about to starve, you may take a bite of pork, but not too much. Be practical about it.
Another example: when an animal is slaughtered, there is usually no blood in the meat, but a few droplets may fall on it as it is cut, because no one does a perfect job every time. In theory, we should not ingest any blood at all. In practice, there might be a drop somewhere that you swallowed with the meat without knowing it. The Quran says that if you did not do it deliberately, it is fine. God is Forgiver, Most Merciful.
I am not bringing these as rules. My point is that when you are practical, you know when it is fine not to apply a rule fully. I am not saying don’t apply the rule; if you can, do it. I am only saying that sometimes you have to be practical.
The muddy prayer
New submitters, whatever their age, often try to implement religion in a way that is not practical. Young people especially do this.
Say you are 15 and your mother still washes your clothes. You are walking home from school through nature, where you have done the contact prayer before. It is raining, everything is muddy, and your shoes are full of mud. Then it is prayer time. A young person who has just become religious will think, “Prayer time, I have to pray,” and kneel in the mud. Now his clothes are covered in mud, and who washes them? His mother.
Compare the benefit with the harm. Washing those clothes by hand might take her 20 minutes; the prayer took five. He caused 20 minutes of a bad thing to do five minutes of a good thing. In those 20 minutes, she could have done the prayer four times. So he kept his mother from four prayers so that he could do one.
If he were practical, he would think: maybe I can make it home and pray there without being late. Or maybe today I will do part of the prayer mentally as I walk, without putting my knees in the mud.
The Quran has foreseen many of these situations, such as shortening the contact prayer. But even when you do not see a clear exception, you should be practical, because otherwise you can do more harm than good. Some people focus on the exact minute of a prayer, even though in Muhammad’s time they had no minutes or seconds; the smallest unit was the hour. New believers often do not know how to put theory into practice without causing additional harm.
Before I explain why, God willing, let us repent.
A sense of amounts
Praise be to God; there is no other god except God. So why do young people, and people who are new in religion, fail to be practical enough? Because they do not have a good sense of amounts. Yes, there are laws and rules in the Quran, and they are all important. But the amounts matter.
For some reason I keep my vitamin D next to where I give the Friday sermons. My doctor told me my vitamin D was low, and I bought it in gummy form because it tastes better and I don’t forget it. There is already a practical choice here: I try not to eat too much sugar, but getting the vitamin D is worth a little sugar. More importantly, any good doctor knows the amount matters. If I thought “more vitamin D is better,” taking too much could kill me. The doctor says one pill a day, or two, or three; the amount matters. In the same way, the Quran has rules, obligations and rituals, but how important each one is matters too. Stealing is not as bad as killing someone. Some amounts are implied by how much the Quran mentions a thing, but the most practical way to learn them is through practice.
The snake. Tell a child that a snakebite will kill him, and that is the rule everyone knows. Someone who has lived in nature knows a baby snake will probably not kill you; maybe he was bitten by one once and only got a skin problem. When he sees a small snake, he does not panic. He walks around it, and, more importantly, he knows that where there are baby snakes there may be a big one, so he slows down and watches more carefully everywhere else. A child either runs from every snake or makes the mistake of not running at all. He may avoid the small snake, keep walking just as fast, and get bitten by the big one. Both know the rule; one knows how to be practical, and that comes from practice. The longer you stay in religion, the more practical you become, and that helps you stay in it longer.
Brushing your teeth. We teach children to brush their teeth, and some get into the habit of doing it every day. Then one day the family is late for the airport and might miss the plane, and the child says, “No, I haven’t brushed my teeth today.” Catching the plane is more important. The child sees it only as a rule; he does not know how important it is. Someone with experience knows that skipping it for another half day will not make a big difference. You can buy chewing gum at the airport. It is better to brush every day, but sometimes something else is more important, and knowing the weight of a rule gives you a feeling for when to skip it.
The berry. This has happened to me twice. There is a fruit in nature that looks very much like a blueberry, but it is poisonous. I learned in biology class, from people without experience, that you must never eat it. If you live in nature long enough, you learn that a tiny bit of most poisonous plants will not kill you. Tasting one will not kill you; eating a lot of them will. A blueberry tastes sweet and the other one tastes bitter, so I wanted to taste it to find out. Someone without experience said, “What if it’s poisonous?” But the amount matters.
Spoiled milk. Nobody wants to drink spoiled milk. If you have only a little and you are not sure, you just throw it away. If you have five gallons, why throw it all away over a doubt? You might taste a little to check. Children, please don’t do dangerous things at home. But experienced people learn which amounts matter.
First aid. Everyone is told to apply pressure to a cut. A doctor with experience knows how much pressure. Someone without experience may apply too much or not enough.
The head of the fish
Sometimes being practical looks counterintuitive, as if you are breaking a law of the Quran. Here is a religious example. The Quran tells us not to waste food. I don’t have the verse in front of me, but you can find it: eat from the provisions and do not waste. That is the rule in theory.
I have been cooking fish a lot recently. Probably half the world throws away the head of the fish, even though it is edible; the eyes have oils that are good for your body. Most people don’t eat them, and that goes against the Quran. But when you cook, you have to be practical.
When I say practical, I don’t mean I am compromising because I don’t want to apply the full law. Sometimes applying the full law adds very little compared to applying 80% of it. Our pan at home is a bit smaller than the fish we buy at the market. If I’m busy, frying is quicker, but the fish will only fit and cook well if I remove the head. Or I can bake it in the oven and keep the head, with its extra nutrients. But the oven takes more of my time and uses much more energy, because you have to heat it first. I’m quite sure there is a verse that also tells us not to waste energy; nobody wants to waste electricity or water unnecessarily. So saving the head while wasting more electricity might be just as wasteful.
So most of the time I remove the head, and sometimes I keep it. It depends on who is eating, whether it fits in the pan, and whether I feel like turning the oven on.
Organized religion is like cooking
This is also a good example for organized religion. Jesus said it first, and Rashad repeated it often: the worship rituals are food for the soul. That is a very good basis for understanding religion.
If religion is like food, then organized religion is like cooking. Some foods you can eat raw or cooked, like tomatoes; that is like an individual good deed. Other foods must be cooked. I asked an AI which foods are most dangerous uncooked, and the answer was chicken and flour. You can get diseases from them, and even fine flour can get into your lungs. In the same way, some things simply have to be organized, like the contact prayer and the zakat. You could take them “raw,” but it is dangerous.
There are different ways to cook. As with the fish, some cooks remove the head and others leave it, and the result is very similar, because what you gain in one way you lose in another. If you keep the head, you keep the extra food, as the Quran recommends. But many people can’t stand the sight of a fish head, especially children, and they may refuse to eat the whole fish. Then you end up throwing away the whole fish instead of just the head. So you are practical, and you apply most of what you can.
Being practical in organizing the zakat
One of my main duties as a messenger has been to organize the religion. In doing so, I, Alban the human being, have sometimes “removed the head of the fish.” In theory, the videos are there and they are complete; that is all you need. In practice, even knowing the videos, I have sometimes cooked it slightly differently, because there are cases where applying a rule costs more than not applying it.
Small amounts. Say someone’s penalty zakat is to donate 2 kilograms of lamb, and he lives in another town. It makes no sense for him to slaughter a whole sheep just to bring 2 kilograms; he would waste the rest. You would be making him do more harm than good. There is a minimum amount below which it stops being worthwhile, so you don’t deal with very small amounts.
I try not to laugh when people report their zakat down to the cents. The energy you spend typing the comma and the cents is probably worth more than the cents. You did anti-charity instead of charity.
The sheep. I know how the zakat should be done perfectly, but I was practical about the forms. Because we are organized online, I didn’t include anywhere to report livestock. Does anyone here have more than 40 sheep, cows, camels or goats? Please write in the chat. I don’t think anyone does; even most farms probably don’t have that many. A farm or business would not register as a submitter anyway; submitters are people. Maybe one in a thousand or two thousand submitters has 40 sheep. I don’t want to waste the time of 2,000 submitters asking, “Do you have 40 sheep?” just so that one person can apply the law. So I skipped it. If you still want to do it, do it individually or donate through our PayPal account.
The tax rule. I worked in the tax department of the Ministry of Finance for about eight years. One rule of taxation is that collecting a tax should always cost less than the tax itself. If a $10 tax costs more than $10 in bank transfers, paperwork and staff to collect, you have gained nothing. In the same way, I tried to estimate where collecting the zakat would cost more than what we collect, and I left those parts out.
People often ask me, “I made this mistake; should I donate $10?” Talking to me about it cost us $300. Or: “My brother poked my eye today; let me ask the messenger.” Here is a real example. An Albanian man living in Sweden, before he was a submitter, asked me what he should do about a single gray hair in his beard. He knew I was educated and had translated the Quran into Albanian. Whatever correct answer I gave him would be worth less than the harm of involving me in it.
Write-offs. In history, some caliphs did not collect zakat from areas suffering poverty, because those people needed it. Imagine a flood. Are you going to go to the flood area and say, “You have to pay zakat,” and then, “Who needs the zakat? The people of the flood,” and give it back to them? You gained nothing and wasted their time. So you write it off for that situation, a flood or a fire. We are still applying it, indirectly: we imagine we took it and gave it back.
Gifts from non-submitters
Another part I left out of the zakat reporting form is gifts from non-submitters. Let me give the rule first, and then why I left it out.
People already pay a penalty for being friends with non-submitters: about one sheep, or 4 grams of gold, which is a little over $300 today. That is in the form, and it covers the basic relationship, like small gifts such as a cake. But sometimes the gift is bigger than that, and that was not accounted for. A relationship with a non-submitter is usually a working relationship, based on mutual interest rather than love; maybe you have a business together.
I already covered this in the video about atoning for mixed deeds through penalty zakat. We pay 2.5% zakat because it used to be 10%. Those who believe in the Quran pay half as much because they are rewarded twice, and those who believe in all of God’s messengers pay half again, because their reward is doubled once more. So 2.5% is the same as 10%, and God multiplies every deed by ten, which makes 100%. Christians and Jews, who do not believe in the Quran and all the messengers, have to pay 10% if they want to go to heaven. When you act like them, for example in a gender-mixed setting they are fine with, you owe the remaining 7.5% on top of the 2.5% you already paid. A gift involves no work at all, so the full 7.5% applies.
So the rule is:
- If your net gifts from a non-submitter for the year are $350 or less, they are already covered by the penalty.
- Net means the gifts you received minus the gifts you gave them. If you gave $100 and received $200, the net is $100.
- On anything above $350, you pay 7.5%. If the net comes to $500, you pay 7.5% of $150.
In practice, I skipped it entirely. We have had about 69 registered submitters, and in four or five years this has happened only once, to the person who asked me about it. I don’t want to ask 70 people every single year how much they received, whether it was more than $350, how much they gave back, and then to calculate 7.5%. The work it would take all of us would be more than what the community gains from it in the cause of God.
If you are still concerned, God willing, I may add a way to make ad hoc individual payments on the website in the future. For now we only have PayPal, and not everyone has PayPal. Then people ask whether they can pay with Bitcoin or by card. It would cost more than it benefits.
When it is too complicated, guilt will tell you
When something is too complicated to calculate and not worth explaining, here is the best rule: you will know in your heart whether you feel guilty about it, and how much you feel like giving away. Some things cannot be measured, like love. It is very hard to calculate whether someone has done you more favors than you have done them. That is why some relationships fail: people think they can calculate it, but how do you put all the tiny details into numbers?
I don’t mean follow your desires; the Quran prohibits that. I mean you will know in your heart. Maybe that gift was a little too much and you didn’t deserve it, so pass something on: give something to your family, or give some extra food to someone. Maybe you haven’t done many good deeds recently, and you should do some. Guilt and shame will tell you. They are the totality of all the numbers you didn’t calculate.
Closing
Does anyone have a question? Quickly, because we are almost at an hour. I don’t think anyone has a question. Good.
By the way, someone sent us a photo of having done the contact prayer; that was a really good photo. For those who want to, do the contact prayer now. To the rest of you, peace be upon you.