Category: Sermons

Sermon Introduction

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

What a beautiful melody, a good way to praise God.

Quite often, we hear people say, “You know what I mean?” or “Do you know what I mean?” And they say it because people are aware that when people say something, or when they say something, they might mean something else, or when someone else says something, they might mean something else. So we have two things: what people say, and what people actually mean. So these are two things.

The Speech vs. Intent Matrix

And then we can create a cross-tabulation, what’s called a cross-table, from these. So basically, we can have what people say and what people don’t say. And then we can also have what people mean and what people don’t mean. And when we combine these from these two-by-two situations, we get four. Let’s go through these examples, and then we’ll use that, God willing, to understand something deeper.

Basically, in this table, I’m showing in this row what you say. So we can have what you say or what you don’t say. These are the two options. And then we have what you intend to say and what you don’t intend to say. So basically, what you say and what you don’t say, and also what you intend to say and what you don’t intend to say.

Now we combine these to see what we get:

1. What you say, and you intended it. This is one example. Basically, for those who know how to read tables, if you combine what you say with what you intended, then it’s what you say and you intended it.

2. What you don’t say, but you intended it. Next is if you combine what you don’t say with what you intended to say, then the combination is what you don’t say, but you intended it.

3. What you say, but you did not intend it.

4. What you don’t say, and you didn’t intend it.

Explaining the Four Communication Categories

Maybe I should give some examples from these. Now, these are all four situations. What is the situation when what you say and you intended it? Before I go there, let’s label these. What is the situation when you say it and you intended to say it? That is what I would call an explicit expression, meaning you explicitly said what you intended.

Then, the next example is what you don’t say, but you intended it. That would be implicit. Basically, you are not saying it, but even though you don’t say it, you mean it. I’ll give you examples later, or maybe let’s go with examples here.

What’s an example of explicitly saying something—saying something and intending it? For example, let’s say someone asks you, “Someone told me that he likes a Porsche, a yellow Porsche,” and you’re like, “Did he actually say it?” You say, “Yeah, he explicitly said it.” He said it and he intended it.

Let’s take another example—an implicit case where the saying is implicit. If you’ve seen movies, you can see some movies where there’s a mafia boss—a leader of a criminal organization—and he talks to someone and he’s not happy with him. And then he tells his people, after he’s gone, “Take care of him.” He didn’t say to kill him, but he intended it implicitly. He didn’t explicitly say “kill him,” but what he meant when he said “take care of him” was kill him. Basically, implicitly he said kill, but he didn’t explicitly say it. So you can see these two situations are different: he meant it, but he did not say it.

Then we have another situation: what you say, but you did not intend it, which is the reverse. This is confessing falsely. Let me give you an example. For example, you go and buy a car, and you manage to negotiate really well, and you buy the car really cheap. So then your friend asks you, “How much did you buy it for?” You’re like, “Oh, it was a steal.” You didn’t actually steal the car. What you mean is it was really cheap, or “I bought it really cheap.” But you’re confessing falsely that you stole it. Everyone knows that you did not steal it, or people are aware that very likely you did not steal it, but you’re saying it as though you stole it: “Oh, I stole it. It was a steal.” Or let’s say when a lot of people will say something—let’s say they eat some cake from someone’s plate and they’re like, “Can I steal your cake?” That’s false confession, confessing falsely. Someone is claiming to steal, but they did not actually really, really steal. So this is another case when you say something, but you did not intend it that way.

And then the last situation is what you don’t say and you didn’t intend it, and this is simply not confessing. You’re not saying anything, so you’re not confessing to anything. This doesn’t mean that you’re hiding something bad; you’re just not confessing, you’re indifferent.

So we have these four situations:

• We have explicit claims or confessions.

• We have implicit claims or confessions.

• We have confessing falsely or claiming falsely.

• We have not confessing, or not claiming anything—not saying anything.

Applying the Matrix to Idol Worship

These are four different situations. And we can actually apply this logic, this table, into the situation of idol worship and understand it a little bit better. So let’s sort of use the same logic and make a table about idol worship.

Let me go through all these four examples:

1. Claiming idol worship and intending it: This is called explicit idol worship. What would be an example of that? Let’s say a Hindu says, “I worship whatever this god,” which is not the only God, and he says it and he means it.

2. Not claiming idol worship, but intending it: This is implicit idol worship. Pretty much a lot of the Jews, the traditional Muslims, and the Christians do this. They don’t say that they worship Muhammad, but implicitly they intend it. Because when you tell them, “So according to you, Muhammad in this hadith—which Muhammad didn’t even say—said this, but God in the Quran is saying this. Which one do you follow?” “I follow this.” Implicitly, that’s idol worship. Or if you ask a Jew, “God says in the Bible, ‘Don’t kill people,’ but your rabbi is telling you to kill the peaceful Palestinians. Which one do you follow?” They’re like, “Oh, of course, the rabbi.” So that’s implicit idol worship. And if you ask them, “Are you actually idol worshipping by doing that?” they’ll be like, “No, no, of course not.” So that’s implicit idol worship. With the Christians, if you ask them, “Do you actually worship Jesus? Do you know that that’s idol worship?” they’ll be like, “No, no, because technically Jesus is part of God, so we’re not worshipping another God, he’s part of God.” But then you ask them, “If Jesus says that, or if people tell you to do this for Jesus and this for God, which one would you do?” They’d probably do what they think Jesus would want them to do anyway. So we have this case of implicit idol worship.

3. Claiming idol worship, but not intending it: This is the case I want to focus on today.

4. Not claiming idol worship, and also not intending it: Basically, not confessing anything.

Focus Topic: Confessing Falsely to Idol Worship

Now, I want to focus on this third case because the fourth case, there’s really nothing to talk about unless in the future someone comes with an example where I really have to deal with it, but it doesn’t seem like an important case.

The first case and the second case—explicit idol worship and implicit idol worship—I’ve dealt with them in another video titled literally Explicit Idol Worship and Implicit Idol Worship. It’s a Friday sermon; you guys can find it on our website, on YouTube. I explained these two first cases in that video. However, what I sort of didn’t explain in that video is this third case, which is confessing falsely to idol worship. This is the case when someone is claiming idol worship—claiming to do idol worship—but he or she is not intending it. This is a third case, another situation. God willing, let me deal with it now.

This yellow area which I highlighted here is going to be the focus of our discussion today. Before we do that, though, let’s repent and pray.

(Pause for prayer and reflection)

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

So we know what we’re going to talk about today, and we know how it fits in the context of other things. We want to talk about claiming idol worship—people who claim idol worship, but they did not intend it. So basically, they are confessing falsely to idol worship.

Cultural Traditions vs. Real Intentions

Let me give you potential examples of confessing falsely to idol worship—where it might not necessarily be idol worship, it could or it could not be, but they are confessing it, probably likely falsely:

• Slaughtering an animal for the birth of your son or child (a tradition in some subgroups of Muslims).

• Celebrating birthdays.

• Celebrating the birthday of Prophet Muhammad.

• Celebrating Halloween.

• Christmas celebrations.

• Visiting the grave of a loved one.

• Building extremely decorated graves.

• Valentine’s Day.

• Mother’s Day.

• Father’s Day.

• Many different wedding customs (breaking a glass in some Jewish or other wedding celebrations for good luck).

Why would I say that these are confessions of idol worship, but they are not necessarily idol worship? Basically, people, when they do this, are saying that they are doing idol worship, even if they don’t know it. Why? All you have to do is to ask “why.”

For example, if they tell you, “Oh, I sacrificed an animal for my newborn son,” or if they say, “I sacrificed an animal,” you ask them why, and they say, “For my newborn son.” So, as you can see, they are doing it for someone else other than God. That’s what they claim, that’s what they are saying. Are they actually doing it like that? That’s another issue, but they are claiming that.

Or let’s say celebrating birthdays: they say, “We made a cake.” “Why did you make a cake?” “I made it for John, he’s four years old today.” So basically, why did you do it? “I did it for someone else, I didn’t do it for God.” That’s basically idol worship when you do things for others other than God.

Celebrating the birthday of Prophet Muhammad—same thing. Halloween—similar things. Christmas celebration—they say they do it for Jesus.

So these are situations that are not all equal; there are different levels of what could be confessing falsely to idol worship. But the way they say it, it almost always sounds like idol worship. But it’s not necessarily idol worship.

I want to talk about it in more detail. Why is this not necessarily idol worship? Because let’s go back to the example: someone can claim to worship an idol, but not intend it—basically, a false confession. How can that happen?

Let’s say someone says, “I slaughtered my animal for my newborn son.” It’s very likely that what he means is, “I’m slaughtering my animal for God as a way to thank Him for blessing me with a newborn son.” Now it’s not idol worship, but he just shortened the sentence, basically.

Or let’s say celebrating birthdays: when they say, “I did this birthday cake for John because he’s four years old,” what they really mean is, “I’m so happy John has grown up.” Very likely they could mean, “I’m so happy John has grown up, and I wanted to be charitable today to show my appreciation to God for the fact that John managed to be four years old and still healthy.” This is probably what they mean if they are good people, usually. But they can say it totally wrong; they can say it as though it’s idol worship.

So all of these cases, the way they say it, it sounds exactly like idol worship. But as you can see, it might not be idol worship; very likely it’s not. So then the situation is: wait a minute, we cannot know if it’s idol worship or not. How do we deal with this?

When someone does the birthday cake or slaughters an animal for a newborn child, they could be in the yellow square, which is claiming idol worship but not intending it. But they could also be in the situation where they claim idol worship and they intend it as idol worship. So how do you know which one it is?

Basically, trying to know which one it is is going to a person’s intentions. Here, the claim is the same in both cases: the claim is that they are doing something for other than God. However, in one case, the intention is good—they are actually doing it for God, but they just expressed it wrong. In the other case, the intention is bad—they are actually doing it for other than God.

How do we deal with this? I came up with this topic because someone wanted to know if those cases are prohibited. My response to that is that they are neither prohibited nor the other way, because we have to clarify before we decide for each individual case. So when someone says, “Are birthday celebrations prohibited?” I would say each individual case is different. Why? Because we don’t know the intentions. Every claim is idol worship, but the intention could be different.

What do we do when we don’t know the intention? How do we deal with those situations? Let’s take an example situation.

Example Situation: You meet your cousin, and he brings you some meat to eat and tells you that it’s from the animal sacrifice which he did for his newborn son. The way he said it is clearly idol worship, because he said that he did it for his newborn son—he sacrificed an animal for his newborn son. That’s the way he said it. However, we know that someone can claim something and not be it, and someone can claim something and truly be it.

So what do we do? We just clarify.

I came up with a three-step approach. It doesn’t have to be exactly like that every time, just to help you understand it:

The Three-Step Approach to Ambiguous Situations

Step 1: Evaluate what law from the Quran we could potentially go against.

The person has slaughtered meat and he’s claiming in front of you that he did it for his newborn son, for his baby. The first thing that comes to our mind is Surah 2, Verse 173:

“God only prohibits for you the eating of animals that die of themselves without human interference, blood, the meat of pigs, and animals dedicated to other than God…”

…which is what this person is claiming; he dedicated the animal to his son.

“…If one is forced to eat these without being malicious or deliberate, he incurs no sin. God is Forgiver, Most Merciful.”

So if it is true that it is idol worship in that particular case—as we said, in some cases it is, in some cases it’s not, every case is different—then what law are we breaking? We are breaking the law in the Quran which stops us from eating animals dedicated to other than God.

Now, the bigger question which we need to ask is: is eating animals dedicated to other than God, even though you did not dedicate them, idol worship? According to the Quran, that’s not idol worship. Because He’s also prohibiting the meat of pigs—that’s not idol worship if you eat them. If you eat blood, that’s not idol worship; it’s breaking a law in the Quran. It’s bad, but it’s not necessarily idol worship.

Why is this important? Because the rule which applies in this case versus if it was idol worship as well, the rule is a little bit different. I want to point out something which Rashad said which applies to the other case in one of the conferences he held, where he gave a very good philosophical argument. He said when something maybe is idol worship and maybe it’s not—it doesn’t apply to this case, but he said something maybe is idol worship, maybe it’s not—any intelligent human being, knowing that idol worship is the only unforgivable offense, would run away from that situation even if he was not sure. Meaning that even if we don’t know for sure that it’s idol worship, and we think maybe it is, maybe it’s not, in that case, we don’t do it because if it’s idol worship, it’s unforgivable. So that’s the case which Rashad presented.

Why is this case different? Because here, eating the animal which could potentially have been dedicated to other than God does not automatically make you an idol worshipper. It made the guy who dedicated it an idol worshipper, but to you, it only would mean that you break this law—just simply like drinking alcohol or drinking blood. That doesn’t automatically mean idol worship.

Which means that if it is true that what the guy is saying—that he sacrificed the animal for his son—if it is true that he intended it as idol worship, even if you eat it, you’re breaking a law in the Quran, but you’re not idol worshipping. Which means that now the rule which Rashad was applying doesn’t apply anymore, because he was talking about idol worship versus no idol worship. Here, we’re talking about eating an animal which has been dedicated to other than God by someone else versus not eating the animal. It’s one step removed from that; it doesn’t have to do with idol worship anymore, it has to do with breaking a law in the Quran.

Given that we’re dealing with breaking a law in the Quran versus not breaking it, in that case, we shouldn’t just run away from it even if we’re not sure. We should just clarify it, meaning that we just want to know if it’s idol worship or not. So, in Step 1, evaluate what law from the Quran we could potentially go against. Potentially, we could go against this law, and if we break this law, it’s not idol worship, so we don’t have to worry about it because it says if you’re forced without being malicious or deliberate, you incur no sin.

Step 2: Clarify their intentions creatively.

Why clarify the intentions? Again, let me go back to that table. Basically, we have two options here if the person claims that he’s doing idol worship: either he intended it (which means what he said is true), or it’s false what he said (which is the yellow case). We just want to clarify which one it is: did he actually mean it, or did he not mean it?

When he says, “I sacrificed an animal for my son,” is that what he actually meant, or did he mean something else? So we just clarify that.

Why do I say creatively? Because there are so many ways to do it. Some people are better at it, some people are not as good at it. People who are very rigid—I’m sort of one of those people—sometimes don’t know how to solve these situations. My mom, for example, is very good at these; she can actually navigate her way out of a bad situation with a discussion. So it does involve some creativity.

Here’s an example of how we clarify that situation: Your cousin comes and says, “Oh, here is some meat. I sacrificed the animal for my son.” What he’s claiming is clearly idol worship. You don’t want to eat the food which is dedicated to idols. And then you clarify, because you don’t know if he means it or not. You help him not claim that it’s idol worship. You say, “That’s so nice of you! I guess you are so happy and you want to thank God for giving you a beautiful baby, right?”

And they say, “Yeah, right!”

In this case, he didn’t mean it as idol worship; he said it as idol worship, but he didn’t mean it like that. So in this case, you can eat the meat.

Or if you try to clarify and the person insists on his idol worship, that’s different. For example, you say, “That’s so nice of you. I guess you wanted to thank God for giving you a beautiful baby, right?” And then he says, “Oh no, it’s an obligation.” Now it’s entering into the territory of idol worship because he actually thinks he has to do it; it’s not about God, it’s about his son. Or he says, “If not for my son, for who else?” He makes a statement which makes your case stronger that he’s idol worshipping. Or he might make a statement which makes the case stronger that it’s not idol worship.

Basically, you’re just clarifying, but with some creativity, not acting like a judge (“Is this idol worship or not?”). You kind of help him with that.

He says, “Oh, I sacrificed the meat for my newborn son.” You say, “That’s so nice of you! I guess you are so happy you want to thank God for giving you a beautiful baby.” Basically, you’re rephrasing it to make it sound like it’s not idol worship, and then you ask, “Right?” And the person says, “Right,” or “Yeah, that’s right,” or “I’m so happy.” In this case, it’s not idol worship; they are just appreciating God.

Step 3: Reduce the circumstances which usually lead you to those situations.

For example, next time when you go back to your country to visit your family, maybe don’t go to your cousin’s home. Maybe meet him outside, or maybe don’t meet him at all.

Why is this important? It’s important because if you don’t do this, you are going against the verse in the Quran. If you don’t reduce the circumstances which lead you to unclear situations—as we can see, we did not decide if it was idol worship or not for any of these circumstances (Christmas, any of those); the way they express it, it sounds like idol worship. However, we are in a situation where we have to clarify: “Oh, so you mean this, right? Or do you mean that, right?” in a creative way.

The fact that we end up in a situation where we constantly have to clarify means that we are not finding ourselves in the best circumstances. If you’re in a good circumstance, you wouldn’t need to clarify; the person would say the right thing. But a person who is saying something and meaning something else is confusing. That circumstance is not perfect, which means that you put yourself in such a situation.

Step 3 is to do better next time. You don’t go and think too much about, “Oh, did I eat the wrong meat?” No, just try to make the circumstances better next time so that you don’t end up in that situation.

Why do you need to do that? Because there’s a verse in the Quran, Surah 7, Verse 199:

“You shall resort to pardon, advocate tolerance, and disregard the ignorant.”

Basically, it’s an obligation to disregard the ignorant. And then it says:

“When the devil whispers to you any whisper, seek refuge in God; He is Hearer, Omniscient.”

What does it mean to disregard the ignorant? Of course, no person is totally ignorant; there are levels to it. Someone is 90% ignorant, someone is 30% ignorant, someone is 50% ignorant. According to that, you are obliged to disregard them—basically avoid them, not engage in deep discussions with them. It’s not like you have to run away from them because they are not totally ignorant, but you avoid those situations.

And that has to do with Step 3: reduce the circumstances which usually lead you to those situations. Usually, ignorant people will say something and mean something else because they don’t know how to express themselves very well.

If we go back to the example, someone who claims idol worship but did not intend it is usually an ignorant person. Because if he is a smart person and he’s an idol worshipper, he will actually make a very clear claim about it. And if he’s a smart person and he is not an idol worshipper, he will also know how to avoid stating it in the wrong way. It’s usually the ignorant people who say something and mean something else; they need help with clarification.

Basically, you help them clarify it. In this way, you know which case it is: is it prohibited or is it not for you? You don’t have to say it like that to them, you just clarify it by saying, “Oh, so you’re doing it for God, is that what you mean?”

Your cousin is probably not smart because he says that he did something for his son, but he actually meant that he’s thankful to God for giving him a son, and he doesn’t know how to express that. He’s at least partly ignorant. In which case, you try to avoid him mostly—maybe don’t meet him in his home, maybe not as often, maybe don’t meet him at all if he’s too ignorant. Basically, don’t waste your time with people who don’t know. We don’t have to actively avoid them, we just don’t go along with what they say. It’s not smart to follow stupid people or do whatever they tell you.

So we reduce the circumstances based on this verse. We just disregard the ignorant, and then next time we reduce it even more, and eventually we find ourselves in situations where we don’t have to decide between these two cases. We find ourselves in situations where when someone claims idol worship, it is idol worship, and when someone claims non-idol worship, it is not idol worship. So your life becomes more and more clear.

You don’t have to force it, though. Just try to do it better each time. That’s what I mean by “reduce.” I’m not saying “stop,” because no one is so totally ignorant that you have to stop communicating with them. Who could be totally ignorant? I don’t know, like a cow. You don’t try to talk to a cow; you don’t reason with a cow. You take care of it, but you don’t reason with it. You don’t think that the cow will understand you, do you?

So these are the three steps:

1. Evaluate what law could be broken (usually it’s eating something dedicated to other than God based on what they claim).

2. Clarify whether it’s true or not (this is the most important part).

3. Reduce those circumstances gradually.

When someone asks, “Are birthday cakes prohibited for me to eat?” you can never give a decisive answer. You can say, “It depends on their intentions.” If they say, “I did this birthday cake for this person,” you say, “Oh, you mean that you are so thankful to God, so you wanted to make a birthday cake to express your gratitude as charity?” That’s a better way to say it, and they might say, “Yeah, that’s it! That’s what I meant.”

Each individual case is different. We can never say that birthday cakes are prohibited; we can never say that birthday cakes are allowed. It depends on the intentions of that person. And because we don’t know the intentions, we need to clarify. We ask them, “What’s your intention?”—not directly, but in a creative way so that they don’t get insulted.

And then we try to reduce them gradually. Next time, you don’t have to go to every birthday. In some work environments or classrooms, there’s like 300 students—of course there’s going to be someone’s birthday pretty much every day. You don’t have to go to all of them. There should be a reduction, a limit.

So that was about how to disregard the ignorant people. Does anyone have any questions? Quick, though.

Questions & Answers

Question 1: If I find myself in a situation where they told me the meat is dedicated for their newborn son explicitly, but I witnessed the slaughter and I heard them say “In the name of God” upon slaughtering the animal, do I assume that they are confessing falsely to idol worship?

Answer: No, you don’t assume; you need to clarify. Here’s why: hearing them do it in the name of God does not exclude that they do it for idols as well. One can say “In the name of God” and kill the animal, but also do it for someone else as well. Doing it for God doesn’t exclude idol worship, because they can associate something else with God. Or basically, they can do it for God (which is true) and someone else. So you still need to clarify.

I think it’s kind of tough, especially for young people; they don’t know how to navigate outside of these situations, and young people usually find themselves in these situations more often. But eventually, with time, you learn how to creatively avoid these situations or clarify.

Question 2: Is it better the more explicit you are when asking?

Answer: Yeah, it’s better, but then there’s a level to whether it’s going to be insulting. You can find a way to do it nicely, because what if it’s not idol worship, and if you were too harsh with it, maybe you were unfair to them?

Question 3: Someone is bringing meat; they sacrifice animals for Eid, they claim it’s for God and Abraham did it. Is that second category of meat allowed?

Answer: Here’s the thing: I didn’t say that meat is allowed or prohibited. All I’m saying is it needs clarification in each individual case, including Eid. Sometimes it’s not good, sometimes it’s good.

Let me go to the example of the situation where they sacrifice an animal for a newborn son: that is a good deed if the baby is a believer, but it’s actually a bad deed if the baby is a disbeliever. And the person doesn’t know, and in most cases, it’s a disbeliever, so most cases it’s actually bad for them what they are doing. I’m talking beyond idol worship here; I’m only talking about whether it’s good or bad.

In the past, when people were one community—like when God chose a community of people like the Children of Israel in the past (not Jews today)—there might have been such a tradition where it made sense. But today it doesn’t make sense; we don’t know for sure whether babies are believers or not, because God doesn’t choose today based on your tribe or ethnicity.

Question 4: The days of the week have idol names, like Thursday. Is it idol worship?

Answer: This is a good example of people claiming idol worship. On the surface, it looks like idol worship, it sounds like idol worship, but from practice, we know it’s not. This has been clarified, because when you ask them what they mean, they just say it’s the next day. Most people don’t even know that Thursday comes from Thor’s day, or Friday comes from Freya’s day, or Saturday from Saturn (the day of Saturn), or Monday from Moon day (the day of the moon).

It’s a case where they are claiming idol worship, but we know for sure, or we can clarify it once and for all, that these are the days of the week—that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and the seventh was rest for Him. Everyone knows what a week is. This is actually a case where you don’t need much clarification.

Closing Remarks

I’m going to have to end the Friday sermon here. I hope this situation is clear. Basically, again, every case is different, and you clarify which case it is by being nice to the person and finding creative ways to ask about it.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. Or if you already did the new prayer, fine, that’s also good. 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. Today I want to talk about dowry calculations, limitations, assumptions, and agreements. It’s connected with a Friday sermon which I delivered two weeks ago.

It’s a really dense sermon in the sense that it has lots of information. Try to pay attention. Most of it you don’t have to really know, but I’d like that people sort of get exposed and informed about that information so that they know what’s going on, however they get a feeling of what’s going on. However, you don’t have to know everything. In the end, I’ll tell you what you actually need to remember. You don’t need to remember everything.

Inspiration Behind the Marriage System

Before I do that, maybe actually I should sort of congratulate myself. I don’t know if people have seen the Mark Zuckerberg movie. There’s many movies about him, like probably four by now, if not more. In some of those movies—I don’t remember, I haven’t seen all of them—at least in one of them, and I think it’s kind of a true story even though Mark Zuckerberg denied it later, the way Facebook started is that Mark Zuckerberg was trying not really to create Facebook. He tried—I’m assuming he was concerned about his looks, like whether women like him.

This is my own interpretation, like this is what I think was going on, but he will tell a different version, his friends will tell a different version, the movie tells a different version. This is my assumption of what I think was going on. He was in college, women didn’t really like him as much, I guess. So I think he was curious whether it was his looks or maybe he’s not charming enough. So he created an app, being a nerd that he was, where people would actually go and rate each other’s photos. He kind of stole the photos from—I think it was in Harvard or somewhere, I don’t know where he was in college. You know how students, when they go to college, they get an ID photo, and they take photos for all the students? So he stole them from the university database, and then he asked the students, of course unofficially, to rate each other’s photos, compare like: “Do you like this more or that? Do you like that or that? Do you like that or that?”

In this way, he could create some sort of rating and know pretty much how much women like him, how much they like other men, and how much other men like other women, so they have a better idea—pretty much to put people in their own place. Eventually, he kind of sort of got criticized for that, so he switched it into a social media. However, his initial idea probably was better, with the wrong motives though, because he was trying to do that so people can hook up.

My motive with this marriage system is that the ultimate motive is correct: we are trying to do it for marriage. By the way, it’s a similar system to what Mark Zuckerberg did, and I think it’s actually better in the sense that it calculates better, it makes certain sort of assumptions, it makes better assumptions about people. So I just want to sort of congratulate myself for doing what Mark Zuckerberg did years and years ago, but doing it better. I pray to God that God rewards me with more than what Mark Zuckerberg has, but I want it in the next world, not in this world. Whatever Mark Zuckerberg got in this world in wealth, I want that a million times more, because I think this will help more. This will help the people more than Facebook. This is better than Facebook.

Of course, when we create it in an app, however right now I’m just presenting it as a starting point.

How the System Operates: Making Dowry Offers

How does this work? How does the marriage system work? I’m going to explain it here in what I call the dowry calculations, limitations, assumptions, and agreements.

Imagine some of you guys have filled the questionnaire, or the marriage compatibility CV, or if we have an app, it’s going to be called probably a profile. You filled your profile: your photo, who you are, how well you know the Quran, and stuff like that. You fill the profile, and then let’s say John—let’s take John as an example. Let’s say John filled the profile. The next step he will do, he will receive another CV. John will receive another CV, and he will have now to make dowry offers.

Here’s how it sort of would look—an example of how John’s dowry offers look. This will happen soon; guys who have filled the CV, they will actually receive another questionnaire to actually make the offers or make the dowry requests if they are women.

Example of how John’s dowry offers look: John will get this sort of a page where it will say, “I read all the information in the marriage compatibility CV profiles, and after thinking about it, and while agreeing with the dowry calculations, limitations, assumptions, and agreements presented in the Friday sermon about it, here are my dowry offers for each woman.” This is from John’s perspective; he’s a man, so he’s going to make an offer for each woman. Let’s say there’s four women who put their CV out there through the system so that John can see it. Then he makes dowry offers.

I had to make two sections for each person, because in today’s world, unfortunately, we have to do that because it doesn’t measure it very well otherwise:

• My dowry offer to marry Emma and move to her country: Let’s say he puts a number, let’s say $10,000.

• My dowry offer to marry Emma and have her move to my country: Maybe John wants to stay in his country. “I’m going to offer Emma let me say $30,000 to move to my country, but $10,000 if I go there.”

Then:

• My dowry offer to marry Olivia and move to her country is this number.

• My dowry offer to marry Olivia and have her move to my country is this number.

For each female, he makes two different offers: one to move to her country, another one to have her move to his country. The reason I did two is because usually what people are willing to marry in one country versus if they move to another country is way different. It can be very different, so I really had to sort of go into that detail. I wish we didn’t have to have two, but unfortunately, we will have to have two, at least for the time being when people cannot travel easily from country to country. In the future, we might just have one if travel limitations become easy and when countries become more similar.

This is what John would fill. Now, how are the calculations, or let’s say what will go in the database? Let me present it here.

Database Structuring and Dowry Offers vs. Requests

These are the offers by men. These will not be seen by people. This is all John sees—he sees this. Then when he puts his numbers here, which are real offers, sincere offers, legally binding offers, then this will go into a database. In a database, it will look like this. Basically, I’m going to do it manually for a while until there’s enough people, so for a while I’m going to be able to see them. Eventually, the database will go in the app, and it will be secret—no one can see it of course, except God.

How does it work? Let’s say John had his offer. John is offering $0 for Emma; he just doesn’t want to marry her. $0 for Emma if she comes into his country. Zero again for Olivia. He kind of likes Ella; he would give her $5,000 if she married him, and he kind of likes her country, he probably wants to go to her country. But Ella, if she comes to his country—I don’t think he likes his country as much—so he’s going to offer Ella $30,000 if she comes to his country.

Then, apparently Aurora is the top woman there, according to this database. John is willing to offer Aurora—what do I mean by top woman? Not only by her looks, but because the CV asked other questions about her knowledge, about what she does, her belief as well. Aurora, I guess he prefers, he likes Aurora more, not just her looks, everything about her. If he likes her more, I guess he’s willing to pay way more for her to marry her—not to buy her, but to marry her. John is willing to offer $40,000 for Aurora if he has to move to her country, but he would rather stay in his country, so he’s willing to offer $100,000 if she moves to his country.

This is kind of the same for Nick; this is what Nick is offering, different numbers of course. Ryan is offering different numbers. Leo, I guess Leo thinks he’s attractive, so he’s not going to offer much. He’s like, “Oh, I can do better.” So Leo is not offering that much to women. He’s like, “Okay, if you want to marry for $0, fine, otherwise I’m not interested.”

Arthur is offering something to Emma, but he would rather move to her country. Then Arthur and Olivia: there’s an empty space here because Arthur and Olivia are brother and sister, so they don’t have to offer each other dowries. That’s why that is empty there. If someone is family, they don’t have to offer a dowry. In the questionnaire, they will tick a box which will say, “This is family, I don’t want to offer it.”

These are the offers from Arthur. Now let’s go to the requests by women, which are red.

Women are requesting usually more than what most men were offering, because they want to avoid—by the way, this is all free will; if they don’t like someone, they want to avoid him. There’s no way to avoid them unless she asks a lot. She cannot say no, all she can do is make it impossible.

Requests by women: we’ll deal with the limitation later. Women are not allowed to request less than $1,000.

Emma is asking from John $15,000 if she moves to his country, but Emma is asking from John $10,000 if he moves to her country. I guess she would like to go to his country. Whatever the motivations are, it doesn’t matter. Of course, the motivation should always be marriage, but people have preferences.

Emma is offering this for John, this for Nick, this for Leo. Women are asking less from Leo because I guess he’s the attractive guy. Look at John: maybe John is a 70-year-old, not very good-looking man who doesn’t have much money and doesn’t have any sort of future. Of course, they are going to request—Aurora definitely doesn’t want to marry him, she’s like, “$1,000,000 or nothing.” Or maybe Ella, she’s like, “$500,000 or nothing.” Olivia is probably okay with it.

They are making a request, but the request is made in a sincere way where you truly do it in a way where that’s how much money it would take for that man to convince you and to give it to you—not to just dangle it in your face and not give it, but to actually give it to you.

These are the requests by women from men. In this case, they will all be hidden. No one sees them except for the person who filled their own number, which they know, but they don’t see the database.

Calculating Dowry Proportions and Binding Engagements

Men are making dowry offers, women are making dowry requests, and then they get matched and compared. Let’s go now to dowry proportions. Instead of dowry differences, I did it as dowry proportions for a reason, so we can also measure the percentage differences, but here’s what it means:

We take each number in this table, divide it by each number in that table, and we get this table of proportions. What do these proportions mean? It’s John’s offer divided by Emma’s request, or John’s offer divided by Ella’s request, or Ryan’s offer divided by Ella’s request.

This number, 1.5, represents Ryan’s offer for Ella to go to his country and marry him divided by Ella’s request to go to Ryan’s country and marry him. Why are these numbers important? The most important part which that database does is, if anything is bigger than one, that means they can agree.

Basically, Ryan is offering—we have two numbers which are bigger than one here, but the biggest one is 2.5. Ryan is offering Aurora 2.5 times more than she asked from him. Basically, they can agree, because what she’s asking and what he’s offering is way more than what she’s asking. As long as this number is bigger than one, that means that they agree. If the numbers are smaller than one, they don’t agree.

What happens if there’s two numbers which are bigger than one? The bigger number matters, because the bigger number shows that Ryan likes Aurora much more than he likes Ella. Ella would agree to marry Ryan, Aurora would also agree to marry Ryan, but Ryan likes Aurora more. Can you see the difference? It matters what Ryan likes, but it also matters what they like. Unfortunately for Ella, Ryan likes Aurora more, so he’s going to marry Aurora. He could afford to marry both of them, he would agree with both of them, however in the database, he’s going to have to marry only one, because Ella made the request under the assumption that Ryan was not married. Now that he gets married to Aurora, Ella’s request is not applicable anymore.

If there’s a match, Ryan and Aurora are removed from the database, and the rest of the people now do the same thing over again. They don’t have to go through the whole process because the CVs are already there, but it’s going to be done in cycles. This is how the calculation happens. Basically, we’re trying to see who is agreeing. This is what we call an agreement about the dowry. If there’s more than one, they agree, and they actually are considered officially, according to the Quran, engaged. It goes straight to engagement, then they can do the official whatever they want to do extra. But if they agree, it’s an engagement.

Have that in mind, because you cannot say later, “Oh, wait a minute, I didn’t mean it.” No, if you use this database, you should be serious about it.

We found here a couple who would be the best match for each other and who would agree. These two here are because Arthur and Olivia are brother and sister, so you cannot divide by zero, by nothing, anyway.

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

Understanding Ranking, Percentiles, and Matchmaking Results

Now we have a method to match the dowry requests with dowry offers, and to see if they agree, if there’s an engagement. For the rest of the people, this is still useful even if it doesn’t happen in the first cycle. It might happen in the second cycle, third cycle, fourth cycle, because once these women see that men don’t like them as much, maybe they’ll lower the dowry request, if they’re smart, or the men will increase it or try to work harder to increase it, or to sort of think, “Oh, maybe they like someone more.” It’s a constant update. In the app, it’s going to be constant; here, I’m going to have to do it in cycles when there’s enough new people.

Now, what Nick sees at the end—let’s take Nick as an example. These will not be seen by anyone. It’s all in the background of the app. The thing which Nick will see—unfortunately this time around, Nick didn’t get married, there was no number which was bigger than one. What Nick sees in the end: Nick is going to see best matches according to your wishes and capabilities. Based on what Nick wanted, and based on how others liked him:

• Nick’s best match is Aurora in a woman’s country.

• Then Ella in a man’s country.

• Then Aurora again in a man’s country.

How did I come with these calculations? Basically, all the app does, we go to dowry proportions and check which numbers are the biggest. The biggest number here is Aurora in a woman’s country, at 0.4. Basically, this means that Nick offered 40% of what Aurora wanted, but that’s the biggest number he got. Aurora in a woman’s country is the top woman for him right now. Basically, he’s able to see who are the best matches according to his wishes and the women’s wishes. These numbers are just ordered from biggest to smallest, and then those names are put there.

What about this other information which Nick will receive: best match according to the other submitters?

• According to the other submitters, Ella would be the best match for Nick.

• Olivia would be the second best match.

• Emma would be the third best match.

• Aurora would be the fourth best match.

Basically, this will help Nick see what others think about him in relation to who he should marry. You know how sometimes people want to help a couple, they’re like, “Oh, I see this boy and this girl, I think they would be a match.” Basically, the app does that, except that it does it for everyone.

How does it do it? These numbers—it looks like, how could numbers reflect emotions and all? Actually, they do a great job at that.

We go back to these numbers in the database, and we see here that dowry offers by men which were made to these women: on average, Aurora received $36,000 as an offer. Basically, men are willing to offer her a lot for her to go to their country, or they are willing to offer her a little bit less for them to go to her country. Then, Ella is the second preferred woman for men. Then we have Olivia, who is the third preferred woman for men. Then we have—no one will know these, it’s all in the background in the app. No one will be insulted or put down if someone is last. Emma in this case is last, but she will not know that she’s last. No one will know that she’s last in the app. However, this number will be used to actually put them in a percentile.

Basically, it’s just ranking women from men’s perspective, and men from women’s perspective, but ranking them in a percentage. This person is the top 1%, that person is the top 15%, the other person is the 15th percent in a row. If there’s 100 women, Aurora would be 13th in a row in relation to how much men like her.

Then I did an average for both countries: Emma in a man’s country versus Emma in her own country, in a woman’s country. The average between these two numbers is 81%. Because there’s very few submitters right now, we can get a number which is similar or the same. In this case, we just order them in any order, but the more submitters there are, the more accurate this gets. At this point, it’s about 13% inaccuracy, but later it’s going to get better and better. If there’s five submitting men and four submitting women, then the accuracy of the app is 97%, but 30% can be wrong.

It’s important that others—let’s say there’s women or men who think, “Why should I even go here? I’m not that interested in marriage.” Maybe a woman thinks that she’s too old, maybe a man thinks that he doesn’t have enough money. However, you would actually do a very good service to the community by helping rank those people, even if you never get married. Basically, you would be doing a service to the other submitters so that they can get married with the right match instead of the wrong match. Through an app, you’re doing what in real life would be like trying to match two people which you think are a match. You’re using your influence, even if you never get married, to help the community have better marriages, better matches. That’s important.

If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for others. Even if you never think that you’ll get married or want to get married, go there. Because when you rate the man, if you’re a woman, what you’re telling the other women who might get married is: “Look, this is the best for you, then this guy is the next best for you, this guy is the next best for you. Based on my opinion, this would be the best guy for you.” You’re actually helping create better matches, even if you never get married, or even if you’re not interested. It’s charity to do this, even if you get nothing out of it.

I’d encourage every man and woman who’s eligible to actually go and fill the questionnaire, the CVs, because in this way, they actually help the system work better, and they help the couples who would be the best match actually find each other. They might not find each other if you guys don’t help. That’s why it’s important for people to do it, even if they are not that interested in marriage.

Now we have Emma who is at the 19th percentile in her country or in the man’s country, then we have Ella, Olivia, and Emma. These are the percentiles. This is where they would rank if we had 100 women: Emma would be 81st, Aurora would be 19th.

Now let me go to what the women requested. Here we have the ranking of the men. Unfortunately, here the accuracy drops because there’s only four women. It’s really hard—I don’t know if it drops, but it’s kind of not very high. It actually increases a little bit, but it’s within 10% of error. There’s 10% error because there’s not enough people. In statistics, by the time there’s 30 people, it really measures well. But even like this, it actually helps, it works. It’s better to be 90% accurate than not at all.

Let’s explain these other numbers here: these are calculations. Basically, this is the average of all these numbers in the woman’s country, and the average of all these numbers in the man’s country. Then we calculated the percentile from these, and again, it’s the same as previously.

Nick, in the end—look, this is the last number for Nick, taking Nick as an example. Nick is in the 55th percentile, meaning that if there’s 100 men, women would rank him 55th based on how much they like other men, how much they like him, and how much they like other men below him. Nick is an average guy. What this means is that Nick is an average guy.

What would be the best match according to other submitters for an average guy? An average girl! Of course, other submitters will never propose to Nick, “Oh, you should get the top girl, even though you’re average.” No one would say that if they’re reasonable. Nick might not think so—Nick probably thinks he deserves better or worse—but other submitters think he’s an average guy based on this.

We found that Nick is in the 55th percentile, so that means that Nick is average. When we tell Nick, we don’t tell Nick that he’s average. He will never know that he’s average. He might think that he’s a top guy, he can still think that, it’s okay. He will never know that he’s average. What the system does is that it finds the average girl in these numbers here. Which one is the closest to an average girl in these numbers here? It is number 44—44%. Ella! Ella is the average girl.

Now the app is telling Nick—here’s what Nick sees: “Best match according to the other submitters for Nick is Ella.” Why? Because Nick is average, Ella is average.

Who’s the next best one? The one who is closest to it. Let’s go to the numbers: remember, Nick is in the 55th percentile. The next closest number to 55th percent, I think it’s 81%. Olivia and Emma will be next, and Aurora will be the last one. Olivia is next, then Emma, then Aurora.

Nick will never be told that he’s average. However, Nick will be told who’s the best match for him, and that woman will be average. Then the next best match for him will be a little bit above him or a little bit below him, and then the next best match will be a little bit more above him. From the 55th percentile for the case of Nick, the system will propose him the 56th, then the 54th, then the 57th, then the 53rd. Without insulting anyone, without making them feel bad, the system will propose an average girl to an average guy, a top girl for a top guy, and a bottom girl for a bottom guy, if that makes sense—whatever that means. That probably sounded bad, but anyway, you guys get it.

This is how the system works, and this is why it’s important that people use this. Why is this important? Because there’s no way to help other submitters in marriage unless, in today’s world, you do it for all of them at the same time, otherwise you are unfair.

How is this different from the past? In the past, two people would meet, and no one else was there—let’s say one family with one family or something, and that was the whole pool of marriages, and then they would meet someone else later. Here, we all know each other at the same time because we do it online. Because it’s online today, the difference is like in the past, people would go and trade with people in the market. Today, we trade on Amazon, and on Amazon, the buyers and the sellers are matched all at the same time. There’s no way to match them unless there’s some kind of advanced, accurate, and fair system. This is the fair system, accurate, which is fair, accurate, and helpful for the submitters.

This is how the calculations work. I spoke about the calculations. The next thing I want to talk about is the limitations, then assumptions and agreements. Sorry guys, this is a long sermon.

Dowry Limitations: Rules for Men and Women

Let’s talk about the limitations: dowry limitations. I’m not going to go into detail, but I’m just going to sort of tell you what they are:

1. Men are not allowed to offer a dowry which is more than half of their net wealth plus two years of their net income. Why is this important? It’s important because we don’t want some man who doesn’t have the money to offer a big dowry just so he can get the girl. If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money. However, some people have just finished college, they don’t have the money yet, but they have promise, they have income. Eventually, they’ll get the money. For those people, they get a chance to actually offer up to two years of their net income—half of their net wealth plus two years of their net income. Why specifically this? There’s a verse in the Quran which says: “Would you elevate the subordinates to higher than yourself?” There’s a verse in the Quran which says that—basically saying that if you do that, you’re stupid, you’re stupid and you are immature if you do that. When the man offers a dowry, he’s actually also proposing to make the woman a subordinate. If he gives her more than he has, then he’s left with himself. Basically, he’s going to make the woman richer than himself; he’s elevating her more than himself. Actually, because of that, she will not respect him. Women don’t like the man who likes to be second; she likes him to be first, but she also wants to be second after him. She wants to be the best person in the world for him, but she wants him to be the best as well in front of her. What I’m saying is, it’s stupid for men to offer more than half of what they have, according to the Quran. It’s allowed, but it’s stupid. I’m just protecting stupid men here. Men are not allowed to offer a dowry which is more than half of their net wealth plus two years of their net income. Why the two years? This has to do with how it happened with Moses. I’ve calculated it years ago. It might be three years, but I just sort of remember it as two years, I don’t know why. The verses in the Quran which I used for this is that Moses worked to marry his wife for eight years. I did adjustments, because that was a different era: I did tax adjustments, I did life expectancy adjustments, I did the fact that Moses got free housing—we men don’t get free housing—and stuff like that. I did all those adjustments, and those eight years which Moses spent to work for his wife are now reduced to two years. Basically, you can only offer a dowry up to half of your wealth plus two years of your net income. If you don’t have any of those, unfortunately, just wait, get a job. Get a job, and then you can actually have a dowry. Either get a job or have money, unfortunately, otherwise I don’t think you are actually ready. Anyone can get a job if they try hard enough, even if they are not wealthy.

2. Women are not allowed to request a dowry which is less than two months of average world rent. Why is that? I relied on the verses in the Quran which say that women wait for three menstruations after they divorce. Basically, you don’t want a woman who requests less than $1,000, and then the man just uses her unfortunately as a prostitute and leaves her in the street. She has to have two guaranteed months of rent—by the way, this is actually more like four months, but it’s half of the rent, which means two months, because she would only pay half of the rent, not all the rent, because half of the rent would be paid by the man. That’s why I made it two months. Basically, if a woman is asking for less than $1,000 in today’s world—in the past it might have been different, in the future it’s different, it might be more—but basically two months of average world rent. If she asks for less than that, then she’s stupid. He’ll probably just use her and leave her.

These are dowry limitations. In the past, they didn’t exist because women had guaranteed living conditions. Today people rent, so it’s different.

Pre-Marriage Assumptions and System Agreements

All dowry offers are made under these assumptions and agreements. Why is this important? This is important because some women might get married and are also planning to get half of the wealth when they divorce. They want all the good sides of democracy including all the good sides of marrying a man in a religious marriage. You cannot get both: if you get one, you don’t get the other, or you have to adjust them. You cannot go, “Oh, I got a dowry, now I also want money after divorce.” No, you got the dowry. Basically, if women agree to this system to get a dowry, they also give up some of their rights, which is that they are not going to go to a judge and ask for more money.

Let’s go to all the issues which need to be agreed upon:

1. Daughters of submitters fill this dowry request together with their fathers because they need their father’s permission. Other submitting women, if their parents are not submitters, fill it themselves. Basically, if you’re a daughter of a submitter, you do the CV yourself—you don’t have to ask your father, it’s just a photo, information, all that—but when it comes to the dowry, you ask your father. You’re like, “Father, we did the CV. There’s these men who would be potentially interested to marry me, what do you think I should ask from them?” The father might be like, “You’re still in college, I think you should ask a lot, at least they should pay for your college,” or he will be like, “I think there’s nothing better you can do, how about whatever you want to ask.” If your father is also a submitter, you should ask your father for the dowry, like what it should be. He might actually help you to sort of be more realistic. He probably knows that men have more and you might not know that, or he knows that men actually don’t have enough and you might not know that, and it might be helpful. That’s the first assumption: that the daughter has filled the dowry requests together with her father.

2. The newly married couple will live in the city which corresponds to the dowry which they agreed. Basically, if they agree to a dowry which implies that the man will move to her country, that’s how they should stick to it. Or if they move to the other person’s city, they simply make up the difference between the two dowries. Basically, they have to adjust it. They’ll be like, “Wait a minute, I agreed to come to your country, but unfortunately I cannot move. Would you like to change the dowry so you can move to my country?” and stuff like that.

3. The wealth which one spouse had before marriage belongs only to him or her and will never become the other spouse’s wealth. Some people, typically women in the modern world, they even want wealth from what the husband had previously. Of course, don’t give that to them—even courts will protect from that, however they will try. The wealth which one spouse had before marriage belongs to him or her and will never become the other spouse’s wealth, of course unless they die, which is inheritance.

4. Any new income after taxes and expenses for going to work—this is key: expenses for going to work—which any spouse earns during marriage, 30% of it will be given to the other spouse. A woman gets a dowry, however if only the man works, she’s not going to get half of his salary; she gets only 30% of his salary. Or it can be the opposite: maybe the woman works, he shouldn’t get all of it or half of it, he gets 30%. I’ll explain this another time.

5. If one spouse immigrates to the other spouse’s country, the spouse in the home country is financially responsible for all his or her expenses for one year. Basically, if you are a woman let’s say, or a man, and you are offering or requesting a dowry, have in your mind that if they come to your country, you will take care of them for one year. Let’s say you’re a woman, you don’t have any money, and you know that if you marry a man, you’re going to have to take care of him if he comes to your country. You add that into the dowry: you be like, “Okay, I want $5,000 more, because who’s going to take care of him?” Or the opposite, whatever the case may be. Again, I can find support about this from the Quran. Basically, the person who moves to his country should get free expenses for one year. They cannot ruin their job, their career, the people they love, and all of that just for one spouse and then get nothing.

6. Both spouses plan to work with reasonable efforts and cooperation in their professions. If one of the spouses already plans not to work for some time or permanently, they should mention it before marriage and seek the agreement of the other potential spouse. If they both agree that one of the spouses will not be expected to work for some time or permanently, then the spouse who stays at home is expected to carry the main burden of the house chores which happen during the time when the other spouse is at work. Only when the other spouse is at work; the spouse at home should actually do something at home, not stay and waste time.

7. In case of divorce, no spouse will seek additional money. They already should have received their agreement money before and during marriage.

8. Both spouses will rent the space to live together, with rent and living expenses paid 50/50. Even if one of the spouses owns the place already, the other spouse will pay their portion of the rent. Some women, but also men these days, will get the dowry and then also want free living. The man can use that house to rent it to someone else, so you’re going to have to pay half of the rent if they decide to live together.

9. If they decide to live together with the parents of one of the spouses, the other spouse should live for free without having to pay rent. In today’s world, women don’t get free housing; however, they also typically don’t live with the parents of the spouse. In the past, the only reason why they got free housing is because they agreed to live with the parents of the spouse. If they decide to live together with the parents of one of the spouses, the other spouse should live for free. If a man says, “You know what, I want to marry you, but I’m still living with my parents. Unfortunately, I cannot move out, we will have to live with my parents,” in that case, she will say, “Okay, but I live for free.” No problem! If she wants to stay with his parents, no problem, but: “I’m going to have to live for free in the home, I don’t pay rent.” Now the opposite: if she wants to say, “You know what, I don’t like your parents, I want to move out,” fine, but you’re going to have to pay your rent, you have to pay 50% rent. The same thing if it’s a man and he has to live with a woman’s parents—it happens these days more often than we know. If he agrees, if the woman asks him to do that, she should offer him to stay for free. Why would he stay with your parents if he doesn’t get free housing? Otherwise, the reverse is also true: if he wants to move out, he better be ready to pay half of their rent. Basically, you pay with money; if you don’t like someone’s parents, have money, move out. Otherwise, you’re going to have to actually respect someone’s parents.

10. If the man is already married, the woman should make the dowry request under the assumption that he will continue to stay married with his current wife. This is just a case for men who are already married. If another woman wants to marry him, the woman should make the dowry request under the assumption that he will continue to stay married with his current wife, she will not try to separate them in any way. The husband should assume that the wives will naturally want to live in separate living spaces—he cannot assume, be like, “Oh, I want to marry another wife and I’m going to bring her in the same bedroom, same home.” No, you should assume that it’s going to be a different space, and assume that the wives will naturally want to live in separate living spaces with equal, separate time spent with him, unless one of them willingly makes tolerances for particular instances.

11. Any disagreements before, during, or after marriage will never be sent to court without the approval of the congregation director. If someone uses the court system despite not getting approval from the congregation director, then that person will be fined with the penalty zakat equal to the amount with which the other party got damaged. If the person does not pay the penalty zakat, then he stops being a submitter and is excluded from the community of submitters. Basically, if you use this dowry system and then years later you got $10,000 or $50,000, and years later you want to divorce and you want to go to court and get more, in that case, if you didn’t ask the congregation director to tell you if it’s okay or not, the congregation director will say, “No, you actually damaged this guy, you have to pay him a penalty zakat.” If she doesn’t pay it—the zakat basically takes the money from her and gives it to him—if she doesn’t pay it, she hasn’t paid zakat and she gets kicked out. It’s a risky business. Of course, if there’s something really bad which happened to her or him, like there’s a crime going on or there’s adultery and stuff like that, of course she might send him to court or he might send her to court. However, once they consult the congregation director, he will agree with it because he’ll see that there’s something wrong.

These are the rules and assumptions under which you request the dowry and under which you offer the dowry. Don’t assume something else. Basically, men are paying, but also they should get some privileges out of it, which is that they have priority in some issues and things like that because they are paying.

Summary of Essential Steps for Participants

Does anyone have any questions? Quick though, because—should I even go into questions? It was a long sermon, sorry guys, but it’s hard to cover all of these.

God willing, whoever has filled the questionnaires, the CVs, soon—I don’t know which day, soon when I have time, I will send you another questionnaire which will be visible only to you, where you can actually make dowry requests and offers for men and for women, like men for women and women for men. After that, we can go in another cycle.

Before I go into answering any questions, let’s actually summarize something very important. What do you need to remember? You don’t need to remember all the calculations; all you have to do is trust that it works.

What you need to remember:

1. Fill the marriage compatibility CV. You can do this on our website at any time, the sooner the better. If you go to the website, go to publications—it’s working slow this time—go to publications, and there’s somewhere where it says “Find a marriage partner” or something, and then you click there and fill the CV. You can fill it at any time, you don’t have to wait for the next cycle. However, because I’m doing it manually, I’m going to spend some time until a lot of people fill it. This time it’s just going to be the ones who filled it already, but you can fill it anytime. It’s going to take me some time until I do something about it.

2. When given access to the other gender’s CV profiles, make your sincere dowry offer as a man or dowry request as a woman.

3. Wait for the results.

All you have to remember is these three things. If you don’t want it complicated, just remember these. If you’re an eligible man or woman, do these three things. You will have helped the community find the best match for each other, and you might help yourself. Just in case, do it for others first and yourself second.

Q&A Session

Let’s go to the questions quick.

FAL is saying: “So what you said according to the Quran, if the number is higher than one, it’s engagement. However, what about the dating process, is that notified?”

Dating: I’m not going to prohibit it. You guys in the meantime sort of can talk to one another if there’s a close match or so. However, the reason people date is because they want to know if it’s the right person. What more do you want to know? If you know that she is a submitter, and she tells you how much she reads the Quran, she tells you how she looks, she tells you basically everything you need to know, why would you need to date? If you’re serious, you’ll just make an offer. It’s not easy to make an offer because you want to make sure that it’s the right person, but it’s mostly your problem, your doubts. I’m not stopping it; what I’m saying is I have given enough information, and the best information you have is that the person is a submitter. People who date outside of submitters basically want to know that the person is a good person. We already know by the fact that we’ve joined this community, we already know that.

Guom is saying: “Can the civil marriage be done also in addition of the rules you mentioned?”

We are doing this under the assumption that the civil marriage can be done, but it will not be considered valid in the sense that—you can do it for reasons of immigration and things like that. However, at the end of the day, when that contract says, “Oh, we will be equal partners,” all of that means nothing if you do it like this.

Adnan is saying: “If I’m correct, agreement is only and only if the number is higher than one, else there is no need to proceed.”

If men want to avoid a certain woman, they just offer less than $1,000, and she’s not allowed to request less than a thousand, so you kind of avoid her. Same thing for a woman: just ask a lot, whatever would actually make you change your mind, and in this way you can avoid him. In those cases, it’s going to be less than one.

Guom is saying: “What if the man and the woman decide to live to a third country, or if they want to move after the wedding?”

It depends how much after marriage. If it’s years and years after marriage, they’ll negotiate. They’ll be like, “Okay, kind of like this.” It depends who wants it. No, I didn’t go into all the details; this thing is not perfect. I thought of it, I just thought it’s something to be worried about later.

Closing Remarks

Yeah, so this is pretty much the dowry system. I think it solves the issue of keeping it fair, being helpful, and at the same time—this is hard—while not insulting anyone. People will not know where they rank; they will only know who’s their rank.

That’s it. God willing, whoever has filled the questionnaire, I will send you the dowry questionnaire to fill it. Whoever has not filled the questionnaire, please fill it, because the next cycle might be soon—it might be a week later, it might be two weeks later, it might be three months later, I don’t know, whenever enough people fill it. It might be a year later depending on how many people join the marriage system.

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

 

Sermon Introduction

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

As you guys know, a couple of weeks ago I created this questionnaire or a marriage system. Before I actually go into discussing it, I would like to talk about a topic and sort of get some ideas from the Bible. Not that we rely on the Bible, but I just want to show some examples.

What I want to talk about is that we as submitters—I mean believers—because as a submitter, you can actually believe; you don’t have to be perfect in this issue. But a perfect believer is open and intentional about marriage, yet very flexible at the same time. We don’t believe like the traditional Muslims that marriage is an obligation, or like the Christians who think that not being married is better or is more holy. That’s not the case. The case is in between. So we don’t judge people for not being married; we don’t judge people for being married. At the same time, we are intentional about marriage.

Defining Intentionality

What does it mean to be intentional? I’m going to take an example from the Bible to show what I mean by intentional. Basically, we don’t leave it completely to chance. We try to do something about it.

Let me give you an example of how intentional Abraham was in relation to the marriage of Isaac. So you can see—if some of you can see, because I’m a little bit disappointed actually about it, that’s why I’m talking about this topic. A lot of you actually—that’s why I’m disappointed—a lot of maybe most of you, I don’t know, can actually learn what it means to be intentional about marriage. You have to be intentional. What does it mean to be intentional? You have an intention.

Intentional vs. Non-Intentional (The Car Analogy)

Before I go to the example of Abraham, let me show you what I mean by intentional. Intentional versus let’s call it accidental or non-intentional. Let’s say you want to buy a car, and let me say you know what you want: you want an electric car. Being intentional means you go search online or you go to a dealer and you ask, “Do you guys have electric cars?” That’s intentional. Of course, we don’t have markets like that; unfortunately, we have dating apps, which I don’t think are good for submitters. But that’s being intentional: you go to a specific place to look for something, you know what you want, and you are not ashamed about it. That’s intentional.

Non-intentional is you wait until one of your friends accidentally, one of these days in passing while he or she is talking, tells you, “By the way, I’m selling my car,” and you’re like, “Oh, since you’re selling, I’ll buy it.” That’s non-intentional. It’s kind of like it just happens to be there, so you’re just going to buy it, even though all along you were interested and had no intention to do something about it.

So as you can see, there’s a difference: one of them is intentional, the other one is not. It’s really important as submitters to be intentional about marriage, even though we don’t judge people for not being married or for being married or anything. But we have to be intentional. If we are believers, we have to be intentional.

Now I’m going to show you an example. By the way, people can get discouraged; it’s hard to be intentional when you fail so many times. The world of the disbelievers has beaten us so much, it’s really hard to actually believe that you can get the car. But you have to be intentional about it.

The Example of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 24)

Now let me go to the verse to show you how it happened with Abraham and Isaac, his son. This is in Genesis Chapter 24. I’m just going to read some of it; I’m going to skip part of it because it’s just repetition. The same thing is repeated over and over, so let me actually share the screen.

I hope you guys are seeing it now. It’s Genesis, the Book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, Chapter 24. It has a subtitle which says “Finding a Bride for Isaac.” So there’s an intention there.

Now Abraham had grown old, was well advanced in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in every way. So Abraham instructed his servant, who was the oldest member of his household—servant meaning pretty much the slave—who was the oldest member of his household and in charge of everything he owned: “Make this solemn oath to me as a promise to the Lord, the God of heaven and the earth, that you won’t acquire a wife for my son from the Canaanite women among whom I’m living.”

By the way, just so people don’t think that Abraham was racist here, he didn’t want a wife from that region because in the past regions were different. Basically, they just didn’t have very good women and men as well. Sodom and Gomorrah were pretty much bad. Of course, it doesn’t make sense for Abraham to go to Sodom and Gomorrah to find a wife for his son, because they are just bad people. So in the past, you had communities which were bad and worse, and communities which were better in qualities, in culture, in whatever. In the past, there were drastic changes, and it was reasonable to look. If you want to go and get a good car, you’re not going to go to some country which produces some cheap car; you go to a country which produces a good car.

What I’m saying is that then let’s not take this example for today’s time. That’s why it’s not actually good to rely on the Bible for many things. But what we can learn here is the intentionality. He has an intention: he knows what he wants, and he’s doing something about it. Here he’s actually doing a lot; that’s what I’m trying to get at. He’s asking his servant: “Instead, you are to go to my country…”

By the way, Abraham lives at this time around Israel in that region, and this country is almost in Iraq. How far is that, 800 kilometers? Check ChatGPT, I don’t know exactly, but about that distance. How long did it take in the past to travel 800 kilometers? Two weeks. So Abraham is telling his servant, “Travel for two weeks and go find a wife for my son.” That’s intentional. It’s not like, “Oh, by the way, since you guys came around here, let me have a drink. Oh, by the way, I see this girl or this boy, let’s kind of like chat and see if it works.” No, you are intentional about it; you don’t leave it up to chance.

Balancing Intentionality and Flexibility

Of course, you have also to be flexible. You cannot control the whole situation, and we’ll see that even in this case you see that he doesn’t have full control of the situation. However, he has an intention.

Then the servant says, “What if the woman doesn’t want to come back with me to this land?” Basically, he’s saying, “What if it doesn’t work?” The servant asked, “Shouldn’t I have your son go to the land from which you came, Isaac with him as well, to go and sort of find a bride for him?”

And Abraham says, “Make sure not to take my son there.” Abraham replied—why? We know from the Quran that Abraham left that land of idol worshippers, however he still thought that they have good qualities for women’s behavior, I have no idea. “The Lord God of heaven, who brought me from my father’s land, who spoke to me and promised me ‘I will give this land to your descendants,’ will send His angel ahead of you, and you are to acquire a wife for my son from there. If the woman isn’t willing to follow you, then you’ll be free from this oath to me.”

So he’s also flexible. It’s intentional: this is what I want and this is what I’m doing. You’re free from the obligation; if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Okay? However, you can see the intention.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone should travel two weeks, because the difference is that the failure rate today—because people are picky—is much higher, so people get discouraged. You don’t want to travel for two weeks because the last time you traveled for two weeks, if you did, it didn’t work because the girl or the man was too picky. So now you’re like, “Oh, it doesn’t work these days, whatever.” So I can understand that. But you can see the intentionality, and that’s what I want you guys to understand, that there is an intentionality about it. Being left to just, “Oh, let’s go to a bar and see what happens”—no, you know what you want approximately, but you’re flexible about it. It’s not going to be fulfilled 100%; 50% could be good. Some intentionality even includes losing weight, looking better. “So I’m losing some weight, I want to look better.” Why? There’s an intention. Just an example, but that’s probably not the most important part, it’s not even that important, but that’s also part of the intention.

Identifying Qualities in a Partner

Anyway, so he goes there. The way they decide which woman to choose is that whichever says when the servant asks—I’m not going to read the whole thing—when the servant asks one of the women, “Can you please give me some water?”, if she says, “Let me also bring water for the camels,” that’s how they know she’s a good woman.

Anyway, even to this day, that’s actually a good quality for women, but it’s much more rare, and for men actually. Like that shows empathy; that shows intelligence. “Someone traveled two weeks, of course his camels are going to be thirsty, let me bring water also for their camels.” Maybe the person was shy to ask about water for the camels. So yeah, it shows some sort of awareness, empathy, and empathy is important in marriage.

So yeah, that’s how Abraham chose a wife for his son Isaac. As we can see, he was intentional about it. Let me stop sharing this.

Addressing Past Disappointments with Men

By the way, guys, I love you. I really think you’re good believers; I think you’re really special actually, because no other people could actually sort of go through what you guys and including me are going through, and sort of still stick to the same belief and keep improving and doing better. However, when it comes to this issue, I’ve been disappointed over and over again by so many, unfortunately. I have to say it, I’m just going to be honest, and I hope this doesn’t turn this into some kind of—I’d rather turn it into some kind of rant.

First of all, I was disappointed with men. This is years ago, from years ago it has been going on, and I was trying to fix it. Sorry for fixing it a little bit too late for some. I was disappointed by men who, while having women submitters available who would actually say yes because I know them, they went and married non-submitters in plain view. That was an insult to all the women submitters. It’s different if she doesn’t want to, if she doesn’t like—what was the intention? Abraham was intentional about it. If you think that she would say no, what about it? What did you go out to find out if it’s a no or if it’s a yes? Nothing. So there was no intentionality about it. Fine, maybe you just prefer the non-submitter. Okay, that’s already disappointing. So I was already disappointed about that part.

Low Participation from Women in the Marriage Questionnaire

Then, I don’t know, there’s a line of disappointments, but maybe I’m just going to mention two here. Now that we have a marriage app, I’m actually disappointed from the women’s side, and this is the situation. You guys had two weeks. You guys had two weeks, girls and women, whatever, two weeks to fill a simple questionnaire to show intentionality, basically to make yourself available.

By the way, if you were embarrassed—and this is because some people might have sort of been embarrassed, or maybe they thought, “Oh, I don’t want to be…” Because to be fair, in the Bible, Abraham is looking for a bride for his son, so it’s the father, the parent who is doing it, so it kind of makes more sense. When you do it yourself, it looks a little bit more like begging. So some people might hesitate. However, if you understand the issue correctly, you will not hesitate. The reason is that you don’t think about, “Oh, what do I get from this marriage, or what do I need?” If you’re embarrassed from that, think the other way: there’s lonely men out there, there’s lonely women out there. What can I do to help them? You can solve it the other way, now you’re not embarrassed anymore. Think of it as charity: there’s a lonely man, what can I do to help them? Maybe I could be their wife, or vice versa—not me, I’m a boy, but anyway, you get the point, I’m trying to think as a woman.

So yeah, if you think like that, then you’re not embarrassed anymore. But if you think, “Oh, what can I get from a man, how it would be,” things like that, then you’re embarrassed, of course.

Going back to the intentionality, this is the situation, the disappointing situation unfortunately. Before I go there actually, let’s repent.

Part 2 of the Sermon

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

Okay, so here’s the situation: you had two weeks to fill a questionnaire. Five men filled it, which is already too low, because I know there’s more men who are not married. And then only one woman—from I’m quite sure there’s many, many more, manyfold more women who are actually not married.

Anyone can find a reason, a justification. Maybe you had good intentions; maybe you don’t think you look good, you don’t want to disappoint the man. All of them don’t make sense, because the Quran says even… So what I’m saying is, the devil could trick you the other way around as well. Maybe you think you are too good for these men, which is bad already, but maybe you think you are not, you don’t deserve these men. Maybe you think these men are better than me. If that’s the case, you should actually believe the Quran, which tells the men: God knows that you men will like the women. So basically, if you think that men will not like you—I mean, there’s levels of liking—but if you’re convinced that they will not like you, if that’s what you believe and you are absolutely convinced about it, the problem is that you’re not agreeing with God. God is saying otherwise; God is saying they like you, you’re saying, “No, they don’t like me.”

Unfortunately, you might have been convinced based on circumstances: you are not married yet, you might be a certain age, or that’s different issues, I don’t want to go into that. However, not filling the questionnaire because you thought that is a disagreement with God.

Now, so what I’m saying is whatever reason you had, any of you—except for those who clearly knew that they didn’t want to get married—is not good enough, because you have to show intentionality. Just fill the questionnaire. And here’s the thing: filling the questionnaire would actually help others. Even if you never get married, it would help others to sort of rank each other better, because now you help with the ranking. God willing, you’ll see how that works. Sorry guys for these noises, there’s messages.

So yeah, what was I talking about? Yeah, the important thing is to be intentional about it, to make yourself available, to basically go in the market. You don’t find a car if you’re not going to go in the market. Go in the market! You don’t have to buy anything, no one is forcing you. Just check around, see what’s going on. But no, just one woman.

Feedback on Submitted Questionnaire Profiles

By the way, even that woman—and by the way, whoever filled it, you know who you are, you did a great job, I congratulate you. You could improve a little bit: one of the photos had makeup, so unfortunately even that is not going to be useful, because if I tolerate that… One photo was perfect, very good photo in the sense that it filled all the criteria; the other one had makeup. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can send that to men, because then it’s a slippery slope. Maybe the other women didn’t actually fill the questionnaire because they thought they would look better with makeup, and I’m not allowing makeup. So it’s kind of like an unfair game, I don’t want to allow unfair games. Now, if I change my mind in the future, I’m going to change this for all, not just for one. But for now, those were the rules of the market. The market can set the rules, and you didn’t fully follow them. Pretty much everything was perfect except for that photo which had makeup.

So please, can you actually… By the way, for people who hesitated to fill it, I already thought about it: I made it so that people can change them. So you can go change it, remove that photo, put another one, and it’s perfect. That’s the situation of the woman who filled it.

Now on the men’s side, pretty much four of them filled it correctly. One of them, the problem is he took a photo in the bathroom. I don’t think that should be acceptable. Plus, the criteria clearly stated show your face and your shoulders, kind of like me, maybe like this. But he showed pretty much his body all the way to maybe below his waist, which is not a big problem. However, it’s a slippery slope again, because the next day if that’s allowed, then the next day the other guy is going to wear a tight shirt because he knows he can show the body. Then the next day the other guy is going to show his abs, and then it turns into a thirst trap. Now we are evaluating who has a better body. There’s already a question in the questionnaire what your body type is; just say athletic. By the way, a lot of the men who filled it are young, and sometimes they said, “I have a normal body.” I think of them as having athletic bodies. Don’t be too modest about it, because you should compare yourself with all ages, not just with your age group. You definitely have a probably better body than me at my age. If I just got a little bit better, I’d say I’m athletic, I’m joking! But you get the point, it’s okay, don’t be modest about it. If you have a good body, you have a good body. However, those were not the rules, and the idea was not to show your body. I mean, you cannot avoid the shoulders, but…

So yeah, basically all we’re left with is four people, basically, and all of them are men, because those other two have to fix it, so they are not fully available right now. Please go fix those two photos for the man, and for the woman fix those two photos. You can change them, it’s possible. Just go back to the questionnaire and you can change it, and then it’s perfect for both of you.

Pledging Support for Poly-Marriage

The other four of you who did a very good job, I want to sort of encourage you by actually supporting you into something which I think you guys deserved. I think the reason why this happened—I was so disappointed, but at the same time I think the reason why this happened is because God wanted to distinguish you in this issue. You put yourself out there, available for the women, and what did the women tell you? “You’re not good enough,” or “We’re not even going to bother,” or “We can do better,” whatever they wanted to say implicitly, not directly.

So basically, you guys were vulnerable. You said, “Okay, well, we’re going to trust this system. We’re going to put our photos there to the embarrassment of me seeing them, and we’re going to do our job, we are going to be intentional about it,” which is what Abraham did in the Bible. Women didn’t even show up. They embarrassed you, they basically implicitly insulted you. According to them, they are not even going to bother, despite the fact that they were not only going to get marriage of probably one of the best men, plus money, but they still didn’t bother. I don’t know why. I kind of know why for each individual case, however I don’t care, there shouldn’t be a why here.

So what I think happened: I want to congratulate you guys, because I think you just earned my support, my full support for the rest of your life. I’m going to support you to have two wives. I’m going to support you. So if you get married, let me say for five or 10 years—five if you’re not a very good man, maybe 10 years if you’re really polite about that—when the time comes, you don’t need a reason, just get back to me, God willing. And then I’ll try to support you in the sense that together with you, we can talk to the first wife and we’ll be like, “You know, this guy is a good man. This guy deserves another wife. This guy, when he was there, nobody was there for him. When he showed up, no one showed up. He basically did more then, and he deserves more now.”

So I’m going to—for four of you… By the way, one of you is partly an exception, but for four of you I’m going to support you with two wives. Let me tell you about the exception first. For one of you, before we did the system, a few years ago I did actually offer to help with marriage, and there were cultural limitations on his mind, and he didn’t go with it, unfortunately. I think it was a mistake by him, but okay. Unfortunately, because of his cultural limitations, he didn’t take the chance. So now it’s just equalizing, meaning that I think he lost the chance for two wives. Basically, he was already in the negative, so now he’s at least in positive, which now I can use against him and say, “You know what, it’s not in your culture, it doesn’t really fit your culture.”

Am I still live? I guess I’m live. Yeah, okay.

So what I’m saying is for the three of you—so now it’s down to three—three of you, you know who you are. You guys are between, I think, in your 20s or whatever, I’m not sure exactly. You know who the three of you are. I’m going to support you to have two wives, God willing, in the future. And we will try—I will try to give a very good explanation, sort of a recommendation, why you guys should have two wives. You did your job right. Women have told you, “We can find better, we are not even going to bother.” So when you get married, I would understand if you say to those women eventually—not immediately, eventually—”You know what? We also think we can find better.”

Historical Perspectives on Marriage

And I’m going to bring the case of Muhammad in this issue. A lot of people actually judge Muhammad for having many wives. They judge him because they don’t understand what he went through. Where were those same people who judged him for having too many wives? Where were they when he married a woman who was old, who according to hadith again didn’t have her teeth? He married a woman without teeth and wrinkles. According to hadith, she had lots of wrinkles. Basically, in today’s society, that would be considered a 60, 70-year-old woman. Now, where were those people when he went through that?

Basically, what society told him: “You’re an orphan”—implicitly, not probably explicitly—”You’re an orphan, you cannot do better. Just stick with this, it’s fine. It’s fine for you, you can handle it.” And basically what society told him is, “This is how much you can handle.” Now, if that’s the criteria, then later on if Muhammad can handle more, then maybe he should get more if that’s the criteria.

So nobody felt sorry for him. Nobody felt, “Oh, wait a minute, I feel sorry for this guy. Let’s find a slightly better wife for him.” Nobody said that. Then later on, he would feel sorry for his wife, he’d be like, “You know what, I feel sorry, I’m just going to marry one, maybe two, I feel sorry for her.” Then the rules are the same: sorry for sorry, or ability for ability.

So these three men, boys or men, whatever they are, I’m going to support you to have a second wife, God willing, in the future, and without reason—meaning you already have a reason. The reason is women humiliated you, and when you get the chance, when you get powerful, when you get rich, I’m going to be on your side, God willing.

Final Remarks and Closing

So that’s all I have to say. Is there any questions?

By the way, there’s still time. You guys can still fill the questionnaire, whoever wants to, but that doesn’t mean this round is over. It was going to be in rounds, let me say in cycles. Now for the rest, don’t think that marrying two women—I’m going to support you, you have to sort of deserve it. You have to earn it. What battle did you win? Which life did you save? Where were you insulted? What good opportunity to make saber did you use? So it depends. But for most cases, almost all cases, one wife is the perfect way, the best way. But in this case, I think these guys have been insulted. You women have insulted them.

Okay, so any questions? If there’s no questions, it’s okay. And again, I’m not mad at anyone, it’s probably nobody’s fault. It could be just how you brought got brought up; it could be the parents’ mistake. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter, be intentional about it. And being intentional about it, unfortunately in today’s world because we don’t have markets, dealerships like for cars, for marriage, pretty much this is all we have. That means you kind of have to use this.

Okay, that’s it. For those who have to do the contact prayer, let’s do the contact prayer. For 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.

Um, today I want to talk about what I call cultural limitations. I kind of thought about bringing this topic up because I think it might be needed for the following Friday sermons when we deal with—let’s call it the marriage app. It’s not yet an app, but whatever, the marriage system we have. I realize there are quite a lot of cultural limitations which might be challenged by it. So I just wanted to bring examples about this issue: the cultural limitations which people have, which I’m not trying to change, I’m just trying to bring them up so that people can become a little bit more aware and hopefully someone can grow spiritually, culturally, so that there’s less limitations.

By the way, this is a sermon where I’m not trying to change anything. All I’m doing is raise awareness so that people can feel comfortable to look within themselves and within their own cultures to maybe realize that, “Oh, maybe they can be a little bit more open-minded.” Again, it’s not something which necessarily has to change, because I believe it’s part of the global force behavior. But some people actually might want to open their mind a little bit more, but they didn’t think about this before, and for those people it might be helpful.

Defining Cultural Limitations Through Personal Experience

What do I mean by cultural limitations? Like, I just played a music; it was rock. And in the past, probably for me, culturally it would give me a bad feeling and unacceptable feeling if I heard it in the context of a Friday sermon. But then eventually I outgrew that limitation, so I’m okay with rock music in a Friday sermon.

Another limitation I had for a while was I couldn’t understand jazz music. Jazz music was not something which I thought was good music; I thought it was tasteless music. I don’t think it’s tasteless music anymore.

And people have those limitations. Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m trying to say that all music is the same. All I’m saying is that it could be that it’s your limitations about cultural limitations. And by the way, they sometimes don’t have to be fully about your culture—the whole state, or the whole country, or your people. They could come from family relatives, the way you grew up, something you heard which your mom laughed at. All it takes when you’re five years old, seven years old, all it takes is for your mom to laugh at something or someone, and then it’s forever in your mind that that’s not acceptable. They didn’t even try to discourage you, they didn’t even tell you not to do it, but you probably heard your parents laugh at it, and now, forever in your mind, you just cannot imagine yourself doing that.

Now, what I’m trying to do is not change that, because I also have my cultural limitations. But at least be aware that we have our cultural limitations.

Scriptural Context: Human Weakness & Cultural Bans

Let me give you some examples. I’m going to start from my own culture and the things which are more—and by the way, I’m not trying to justify them, at the same time I’m not saying that those are good, because the Quran says… and here more specifically I’m talking about things which the Quran does not prohibit, but people culturally prohibit. The Quran says in—let me find the verse, I hope I can find it quick… okay, so I think it’s in Surah 5, verse 87, it says: “O you who believe, do not prohibit good things that are made lawful by God, and do not aggress. God dislikes the aggressors.”

So the Quran is telling us not to prohibit things which are lawful. However, many cultures will prohibit things. What I’m saying is that’s bad, it’s definitely bad. However, they have no other choice; it’s kind of like within the global force behavior. They technically have a choice, but it would take such big efforts. Let me put it like this: if all people, all they can do is only apply 70% of the Quran, and 30% is always left out by the nature of our weakness… The Quran says that people in the past were stronger, we are weaker, we have more limitations. Some people will limit some parts of the Quran, other people will limit other parts of the Quran, another culture will limit some other parts. So there will be differences in cultural limitations, however, it’s probably all of them will limit kind of a similar amount.

So what I’m saying is it’s bad, but it’s unavoidable given the strength which we have. Let me give you a perfect example: not fasting during Ramadan is bad, but there are limitations some people have. Like a child who is probably eight years old, I would understand if they don’t fast. It’s fine; I’m not saying it’s good, it’s just their limit, it’s just too much for them. So they have a limitation to how much they can do.

And limitations can even come from physical limitations. Someone might be so overweight, I don’t think—of course it’s bad if they don’t pray, but they might not be fully able to do the prayer in the perfect way. It’s a limitation; it comes from whatever weakness they had from their parents, their culture, whatever. But it is what it is. I’m not going to tell them it’s good what they’re doing, but also I’m not going to judge them for having that limitation.

So all I’m doing is raising awareness, not trying to change it, that there are limitations: physical limitations in some people, in some ages, and also limitations in total, like the whole culture in some cases for certain issues.

Cultural Case Studies: Marriage Practices & Dietary Habits

So I’m going to start with my own culture’s limitations and some limitations I have which the Quran does not limit, just so you guys can understand what I mean.

For example, for some reason, my background where I grew up… I grew up in Kosovo, and it’s about 95% traditional Muslims, something like that. For some reason, people in Kosovo inherited Islam from the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish people. They got Islam from the traditional Muslims, but for some reason, they never got cousin marriages. They could never accept it. And because of that, because I grew up in that culture, I grew up with the idea that it’s kind of unacceptable to have cousin marriages. I’m totally aware the Quran allows it, I accept that that’s the truth. I accept that cousin marriages are allowed in the Quran, but it’s really hard for me to imagine doing that myself.

And I’m not presenting it as some sort of, “Oh, I’m better than the Quran.” I’m presenting it as a shortcoming, as a limitation, as a flaw which my culture has. Probably if cousin marriages were allowed in Kosovo and in most of Europe, Europe wouldn’t suffer from a population decline. Maybe there would be some things which would be better if that limitation didn’t exist. Well, the limitation does exist, and I’m not trying to change it, because it’s their flaw, it’s their limitation. It would be better if they changed it, but I’m not going to try to change it.

Here’s the good thing about it: we as Submitters accept each other and each other’s cultures. We don’t approve it, we don’t say it’s good, but we sort of accept someone even with those cultural flaws as long as they do the contact prayer and the zakat. That is what unites us. Because we have something which unites us, we don’t have to agree on everything.

So basically, I have a flaw that comes from my culture: I cannot imagine myself marrying my cousins, it’s just hard. Let me give you another example. And by the way, I’m not going to judge any culture where they marry their cousins, because apparently the Quran actually is on their side. Now, it has advantages and disadvantages, I’m not going to go into details. Sometimes they bring up medical issues, like having more child defects, but they also have more social advantages, like the food is the same, it’s easier to communicate with people you know, and stuff like that. They’re kind of equal, which is why the Quran allows it. However, for some reason, Europeans could never wrap their minds around it, including Kosovo, which is a majority Sunni Muslim country, who could never accept this because of their culture. It was a cultural limitation.

Let me give you another example. There’s a verse in the Bible where it’s explained that John the Baptist, when he was baptizing people in the desert, lived by eating locusts—grasshoppers, pretty much. So he was eating grasshoppers and honey, that was his main diet while living in the desert. Now, I cannot imagine myself… I’ve never eaten a grasshopper, and I cannot imagine myself eating a grasshopper anytime in the future. I don’t think I should judge other people if they eat grasshoppers. Apparently in the Bible it’s allowed, the Quran also allows it, it doesn’t stop it. It’s apparently a good source of protein if you ask medical people, but I just could never overcome that cultural limitation, and I might never.

Now, in this case, what do we do? I’m not going to tell others what not to do, however, I just pray to God He doesn’t put me in that situation. Please, God, don’t put me in a situation where I have to eat grasshoppers. It’s kind of hard for me, that’s all. It’s a limitation. I guess I’m not as complete as John the Baptist, because the more complete a person is culturally and in life experience, the more they can overcome these cultural limitations.

What do I mean by complete? The more complete you are, the more experiences you have which are mentioned in the Quran. Let’s say the Quran mentions goats; many people have never seen a goat, or they’ve never lived close to a farm with goats. The Quran mentions dates, camels, cows. Some people have seen camels but not cows; some people have seen cows but not camels. They haven’t had a full life. Because my life was not complete, like even for people of the past it wasn’t complete, but it was closer to complete, they could overcome those cultural limitations. I guess I’m just more baby-like. Some babies cannot eat spicy foods, it’s just too much for them. So let’s imagine that we’re just babies in some areas and we cannot overcome that.

So yeah, I don’t want to even think… I think if I really tried hard, I could probably eat grasshoppers or locusts. It’s not beyond my mind, this is probably something which I could overcome, but that’s not an area where I think I can grow a lot. I could probably grow somewhere in some other area.

So yeah, I have a limitation, but I’m not going to tell other people, “Don’t eat grasshoppers.”

Now, in the same way, you guys and other people can be more aware about the cultural limitations that you have and accept them as limitations. If you accept them as limitations, we are not going to force you to change them, because again, as long as you’re Submitters, you do the contact prayer, you do the zakat, you’re a Submitter, it’s fine. You can have your cultural limitations. I’m not going to call them good—I might still do a Friday sermon where I call them bad—but it’s fine. You have a limitation, it’s okay; I have a limitation, it’s okay. We’re not complete people, we have flaws, and sometimes total cultures have flaws.

Polygamy and Relational Expectations

Let me mention some others which might help for the upcoming Friday sermon: some other cultural limitations.

Having two wives, for example, is just a cultural limitation. And I think this is kind of what brought me into this topic, because apparently one of the women was not happy about the two wives issue. I think she should just accept that it’s her cultural limitation rather than trying to prohibit what the Quran allows. Now, I have discouraged two wives in many videos. I found ways to discourage it because people abuse it. I totally support any woman when the husband abuses the idea of two wives. However, let me not try to prohibit it, let’s not try to stop it, because the Quran says, “Do not prohibit what is not prohibited,” and the Quran allows more than one wife.

However, if someone has a problem with it, first of all, before even talking about it, accept it as a cultural limitation instead of saying, “Oh, can we change this?” We can start from the position: “I didn’t grow up like this, this is a little bit too hard for me to accept.” And instead of telling people what to do, say, “I hope God never tests me with this.” Maybe you can just pray to God that God never tests you with this. And I’m quite sure if someone is a really, really good wife, God will not test her with that issue.

So yeah, let’s accept if a woman has a problem with it—sometimes even men might have a problem with that—it’s just a cultural limitation we have, and let’s accept it as a cultural limitation. It’s okay, someone cannot imagine themselves with two wives, they just cannot imagine. It’s okay, we accept you like that, it’s fine. I can see many reasons why today it doesn’t make practical sense, but I’m not going to stop it. Which is why in the last app questionnaire thing which I was trying to do, I allowed it. I sort of implied there that it’s allowed because it’s not prohibited in the Quran. But if you have a cultural limitation about it, it’s okay, it’s your cultural limitation. But let’s agree it’s your cultural limitation, it’s not prohibited in the Quran, and it’s okay if you cannot overcome it.

I might never overcome the grasshopper issue, I just maybe will never eat grasshoppers. And I’m quite sure I will never overcome the cousin issue, it’s just not in my mind. Maybe my mom, when I was five, might have laughed at someone who married their cousin. I don’t know where it came from, it’s just really hard to overcome it. I just cannot imagine myself doing it. And some people cannot imagine the two wives. We’re not going to try to change you, but hopefully it never happens to you. And it might happen to someone else, but hopefully it doesn’t happen to you.

So that’s the idea: let’s not try to make cultural limitations into religious laws. Let’s accept them as shortcomings, and it’s fine. We can all have our different shortcomings. For some people it’s hard to accept something, for other people it’s hard to accept something else.

Now, you can try to grow and try to understand how it would be different and find more growth from that. However, you don’t have to, it’s okay. We as Submitters accept—and especially me, I accept all people the way they are as long as they are Submitters, which includes doing the contact prayer, giving the zakat, that’s the minimum. The rest of it, we can be different. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t wrong and right. Yeah, some things are right and some things are wrong, and I’m going to say them, but I’m not going to force them, I’m not going to tell people what to do.

So yeah, let’s just try to be aware that there are cultural limitations among all of us, for sure among all of us.

Western Cultural Norms: Dating, Dowries, and Money

Let’s give another cultural limitation. I can see how I’m coming up with examples which are more from the Western world, because I’ve lived more in this world. This doesn’t mean that other cultures don’t have limitations, they probably have even more. But if you’re going to laugh, at least start from your own people, from yourself first, and then your own people. This doesn’t mean that I think they are worse, but it’s just what I know.

Okay, another example: especially in Western culture, they have a limitation about how marriage should happen. They think that they should have a girlfriend first. Unfortunately, it has affected a couple of Submitters among us. They think that they should have a girlfriend or a boyfriend first, and then get engaged maybe after a few years, and then have a big wedding—it’s a cultural limitation—and then get married. It’s kind of like a process of many years where they have to pass all these stages. It’s a limitation of people getting married. Now, I’m not saying don’t do them, but accept them as a shortcoming, accept them as your limitation, rather than as something you really have to do.

Now, if you cannot overcome the idea that you first have to do the engagement, the big wedding… if you cannot get over it, fine, it’s okay, it’s your limitation, I’m not going to change it. However, let’s first agree that it’s your limitation, and it’s okay. Maybe it will help you once you accept that it’s a limitation from your side, maybe from your culture, from your parents, from your relatives, then maybe you can overcome it easier. Some things you might never overcome—I might never overcome eating grasshoppers—but some things maybe you’re ready to overcome.

Maybe overcoming the idea that you have to make a big wedding might enable you to imagine marrying someone outside of your culture. Because part of the limitation of marrying someone outside of your culture comes from the idea that people in your culture will see them, and they will see them if you have a big wedding. Can you see the connection? If you cannot overcome the limitation of having a big wedding, or having a girlfriend or a boyfriend… and again, I’m not trying to stop the wedding, I’m against boyfriends and girlfriends, but what I’m saying is if you cannot overcome that limitation, then it’s going to limit other things. Now you cannot even imagine marrying someone outside of your race or culture, because you know that that’s going to involve a big wedding, and “Oh, how am I going to justify this to my parents, to my relatives?” It becomes a limitation.

Another limitation… this is actually also in Kosovo. Even despite the fact that they are traditional Muslims, the dowry… it’s mentioned in the Quran clearly. Some cultures, especially what they think are modern cultures, they just cannot understand the idea of a dowry. If you go to a girl in Kosovo or Albania or whatever, and you talk about the dowry, she’ll be insulted instead of being like, “Oh, actually I get something.” She’ll feel like, “Oh, are you trying to pay for me?” You know, it’s an insult to her. And a lot of people in the Western world might have that limitation. They’re like, “Oh, why are we even talking about money and stuff like that?”

This brings me to another cultural limitation: in the Western world, they don’t like to talk about money, about salaries. If you bring up, “Oh, how much is your salary?” of course in a very public situation it’s probably not a good idea, it’s a little bit naive to bring it up, but maybe someone is just curious: “What’s your salary?” In the Western world, it’s a cultural limitation, they just don’t talk about it in a lot of cases. They’re like, “None of your business,” things like that. It’s okay, the Quran doesn’t prohibit it. Actually, the Quran says express God’s blessings, show what God has blessed you with, but some people think it’s private. Anyway, it’s a cultural limitation, I’m not going to change it. It’s okay, you want to keep it private, fine. In some situations it might be required regarding zakat, but it’s not my business to change that limitation. If you someday grow and change it, I’d be happy, but if you don’t, it’s okay. You have a limitation, just like a baby cannot eat meat, they can only drink milk. That’s their capacity.

Social Expectations: Dress Codes, Housing, and Naming

Sometimes cultures will have—especially the women—cultural limitations about dressing. And unfortunately, they judge each other sometimes. The women in the Western world will judge the women in the Eastern world how they dress, and the women in the Eastern world will judge the women in the Western world how they dress. It’s just a cultural limitation, they cannot imagine themselves doing it the other way.

Another cultural limitation is if you cannot imagine living outside of your parents’ home even when you can afford it. In some cultures, they just never leave their parents’ home even if they have money. They are too shy, too afraid to ever mention it, it’s just a limitation. The Quran doesn’t stop it, especially if you get married, but they have that limitation.

Or it could be the other limitation where people never want to stay with someone’s parents. By the way, this brings me to an issue: God willing, when we talk about this, I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay with parents of a spouse if they are non-Submitters, because it doesn’t help you, you don’t want to add another non-Submitter to your family. But especially if they are Submitters, I think it can be fine. But it can also be fine not to. Let’s not let our cultural limitations limit our marriage possibilities because of these things.

I noticed a cultural difference—I wouldn’t call it a limitation, because in this case I don’t know where the limitation is, is it on this side or the other side… I’ve noticed that in the Western world, they tend to call people by their first name, by their name, and that’s fine. You can go to a doctor and call him by his name. For example, when people call me Alban in Canada, in Kosovo, in Europe, whatever, I feel like that’s natural. But in some cultures, when I went to India, they called me “Sir,” “Mr. Fesa.” And when they talk to each other, they refer to their last name or in a more honorary, respectful way, usually connected to their profession, like “Doctor this,” “Doctor that,” even when they talk in a friendly situation.

Now, in this case, I don’t know which one is the limitation, because I can see how it’s good to respect someone by mentioning their title, but I can also see how calling someone by their name is more true. So they are both good and bad in their own way. One of them is more respectful, the other one is more true, because someone is not a doctor always. Some people write me a message and they’re like, “Oh, dear messenger of God.” I’m not a messenger always, not when I’m writing emails and talking on group chats and stuff like that, but they still refer to me like that. I guess they try to respect me. It’s not true, but it’s respectful.

So yeah, in this case, I’m just presenting the cultural difference. I don’t know where the limitation is, is it in that culture or this? Probably both. Definitely, though, in some situations the limitation is on one side, on one culture, and not in the other, and they have different limitations.

Before we talk further about this, let me… let’s repent.

Reframing Culture: Human Defects vs. Religious Perfection

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

Now, another cultural limitation, for example, in some countries—probably in most countries, actually—is marrying outside of your country, or outside of your race, or outside of your ethnicity. For some, they just cannot overcome it. It would be nice, it would open more opportunities if you don’t think about that too much, but if it’s your limitation, it’s okay, I’ll accept it. We should respect it if people don’t want to marry outside of their culture. However, I’m going to call it your limitation. I’m not going to say, “Oh, you’re right.” I’m going to say it’s your limitation, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I guess you haven’t grown enough, and it’s okay, I’m not going to try to shame you, but it’s a limitation.

So yeah, that’s another… By the way, this is something I want to bring up because quite often in social studies in today’s world, in work culture, they try to say that all cultures are the same. I don’t think all cultures are the same; they have differences, and actually they are not equal. They don’t have the same total level of limitations. Typically, poorer people in poorer countries have more cultural limitations, people in richer countries have less cultural limitations. But that doesn’t make them better, because people in richer countries then break more prohibitions, and people in poorer countries break less prohibitions. So basically, one group is limiting more than the Quran is asking them to limit, and the other group is allowing more than the Quran allows them. So they fulfill the prophecies in the Quran about different aspects of what could go wrong.

Let me try to finalize this. This might sound controversial, but deep down, when we analyze it more deeply, actually all cultures are bad. Here’s why: because if there’s something good in a culture, it’s part of religion. Imagine that there’s religion in every culture and there’s some culture in every religion. If there’s something good in a culture, it’s part of religion, we can just call it religion. Whatever is left out of that religion which is part of that group of people, we can call it a culture, but whatever is left out is bad. Everything good is within what the Quran mentions, it’s within the religion.

So then the question is, if all cultures are bad… or we can say, “Oh yeah, part of the culture is within religion,” but in that case, I’m just going to choose to call it religion. Within my definition, the way I’m defining it, if everything religious is not culture, then all cultures are bad.

What this means, by the way… and why are they different? Because there’s so many different ways to be bad, and there’s only one way to be good. But let’s not judge each other’s cultures, even though pretty much it’s all bad, because all of us are bad in different ways. Some people will break some laws in the Quran, other people will break other laws in the Quran, and at least all of us break 30% of it. Now, maybe a certain culture might limit themselves not more than 30%, maybe 31%, but 31% is not that different from 30%. It’s not different enough for you to laugh at it to be like, “Oh, these people are worse,” because it’s not different enough in level, it’s different in type. Some people have some limitations, others have some other limitations.

Anyway, so this is kind of what I wanted to raise awareness about. It doesn’t mean that I’m trying to change it. It’s our limitation, it’s okay. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, I’m just saying it’s okay in the sense that let’s not let it bother us too much. If someone can grow a little bit more and be more open-minded and understand other cultures more, it will be nice. If they don’t, it’s okay as well.

Audience Q&A & Community Examples

Now, we can just end it here if you guys have to go, or maybe someone actually has some examples they want to bring. Please, let’s bring them in a respectful way, not in a laughing way: “Oh, these people do that.” And especially if you bring something from your own culture, that would be nice. Does anyone have any examples to bring? You don’t have to.

Can anyone think of any examples? By the way, it’s hard to bring them because the limitations in your own culture… it’s really hard to imagine how that could be a cultural limitation. But if it’s in another culture, then you’re probably polite enough not to say it. So let’s see if someone has something.

I might read this without names so people don’t… I’ll see depending on what you guys write. By the way, if anyone has to go, they can go and work or whatever. This part is really not that important, I’m just spending some time.

Individual Comments: Sexuality, Food, and Regional Practices

Okay, so Adam is saying… Oh, sorry Adam, I mentioned your name. Being okay with family members who are not heterosexual. Yeah, it’s a cultural difference. In Western culture, some people are okay with family members who are let’s say gay. But in some cultures, they are not okay with that. That’s another issue we can talk… We all know being gay is bad, but what do you do if you have a family member who’s gay? In some cultures they’ll accept it, they’ll tolerate it; in other cultures, they don’t. Is that… I hope that’s what you’re trying to mention, Adam. Yeah, I’m not going to go into detail about this whole new topic, I’m just mentioning it as an example. So yeah, Adam is saying yes. So yeah, that’s a cultural difference. I don’t know which way is the limitation: is the limitation by having to accept someone, or is the limitation by having to reject someone for being what they are? I can talk another day about this because it’s a sensitive topic.

Yeah, okay. Fasal is saying, “I really enjoy having my preferred cuisine in the kitchen.” Yeah, okay, I can see that. Actually, the food cultural limitation is probably in all countries, in probably all people, more than they realize. I’m glad you are aware about it, Fasal, that you accept it as a cultural limitation rather than as, “This is better food than your food.” It’s like, “Oh, it’s a cultural limitation I have, I cannot tolerate some food.” It’s kind of like I don’t eat grasshoppers, you might not like some other stuff.

Yeah, so Mad Bay is saying some cultures actually eat raw meat and others find it disgusting. Guys, this is a perfect example. So actually, I think the Lebanese culture eats a little bit of raw meat, and Mad—I think Mad is from Kazakhstan—he cannot understand eating raw meat. Let’s bring another example which is less extreme: some cultures cannot tolerate fully cooked steak, other cultures cannot tolerate rare or medium steak. They just cannot think about it, and it’s a cultural limitation on both sides, actually. They just cannot imagine eating steak which is not fully cooked, or they cannot imagine eating steak which is fully cooked. They’re like, “Okay, what is this?”

Okay, Jad is saying in more conservative cultures, being repulsed by some homosexuals… We kind of mentioned this. Okay.

Thanks… I guess you’re defending Lebanon now! So he says, “In Lebanon we eat raw meat, cooked meat, and burnt meat.” Okay, so all of them!

Yeah, okay. So another example which Medi is bringing is that the women have to be virgins in Algeria. So that’s a cultural limitation in Algeria, that’s not in the Quran, by the way. Now, I’m not going to say that women shouldn’t be virgins, I think losing your virginity before marriage is a bad thing. However, what happens in the past is in the past, people change, people make mistakes, and it’s a cultural limitation to sort of have that as a rule. It’s not a rule in the Quran.

Faisal is saying, “We’re not defending, just informing.” Yeah, okay, thank you, Fasal. I was joking.

Okay, by the way, there’s also cultural limitations about jokes, like some people understand jokes differently. And I think I’ve failed to understand Fasal’s jokes quite a few times. Maybe I have a cultural limitation of how jokes are done in some cultures, I don’t know.

Reflections on Diversity vs. Unity

Anyway, what I’m saying is, let’s accept these as cultural limitations. We don’t have to all be the same. By the way, this brings me to another issue: I don’t believe that there is strength… You know how they say, “There is strength in diversity”? In today’s modern world, they say there is strength in diversity. I don’t believe that’s true. Actually, the Quran says that there is strength in unity: if you are united, you can succeed. However, the only way, unfortunately, to be united today is to allow some diversity so that we can unite in more important things. So we allow diversity in less important things so that we can be united in more important things, and from unity brings strength. But we tolerate some diversity so we can emphasize the unity.

Further Audience Chat Contributions

Okay, someone is saying… Mad is saying, “In Ghana, people dance with graves.” You mean probably with coffins when people get buried? Yeah, I’ve seen videos about that. It’s a cultural limitation. There might be, by the way, another cultural limitation in Kazakhstan… I guess Mad is from Kazakhstan… about graves or funerals which you might not be aware of, or maybe you are aware.

Madvey is saying, “I’m from the Urals.” Okay, what does it mean, Urals? The mountains, or which state is that?

You’re from Russia! Okay, sorry, sorry Mad, I thought you were from Kazakhstan. Okay, thanks for clarifying that. So you’re from Russia, near Yekaterinburg, or whatever it is.

Okay, I’m not going to read all of them because some of them are a little bit too sensitive to read.

Okay, yeah, Natalie is saying some cultures eat food with their hands, others don’t. It’s a cultural limitation when people cannot understand how you can eat with your hand, but it’s also a cultural limitation when they cannot understand how you don’t eat with your hand. Both sides are a little bit limited. Some foods are probably better with hands, other foods are not as good with hands, whatever it is. Just accept it as your cultural limitation so you can be prepared, especially if you get married with someone who eats differently, so you don’t get shocked.

Adnan is saying in many parts of the world, you can only eat with the right hand. Yeah, that’s more about Hadith.

Some cultures prefer bathing versus showering and vice versa. I wasn’t aware of this. Okay, this is an interesting thing I learned.

Mad is saying some cultures probably tolerate stealing things which people left more. This seems like more than a cultural limitation, it seems more like just plain wrong. But I can see how that would be a limitation, because they tolerate it; it’s not that they are stealing it, they are tolerating the bad deeds. Yeah, that’s true, some cultures will tolerate bad deeds more than others.

Yeah, Guillaume is saying in France, people eat snails.

And Natalie is saying snails aren’t bad. Okay, so some people don’t have that limitation in their mind.

Abdul is saying in Ghana, they find it disrespectful if greeted or given something with the left hand. Okay, although… By the way, so yeah, we are presenting these while being aware that it’s just our culture, we don’t try to impose it on others, so that we can be united. But it’s okay if you cannot do it otherwise, we’re not going to try to change you.

Concluding Remarks & Closing

Okay, so maybe I should end it here, because it’s almost 50 minutes, I guess. Okay, I’m just going to wait one more minute because you guys seem to have many examples.

Yeah, Jad is saying beards might be one. Yeah, some cultures tolerate beards more, others will judge you for having a beard. Some don’t like it if you go in an office environment with a beard; in other cultures, they might actually judge you for not having a beard.

Gorgin is saying in France, we also eat frogs’ legs. But here’s the thing: the frogs and the snails is more like… it’s not a limitation, it’s another allowance. I’m talking about things which are not prohibited in the Quran, but people still cannot do them. This is another topic for another day.

Anyway, I’m not going to read everything, because it’s probably going to be lots of examples.

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

 
Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

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Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God, there is no other God except God. That was some country style of praising God.

By the way, I just noticed that there’s about 54 or now it’s 50 or something, 52 submitters in the group chat, which is a nice thing. Usually there’s a little bit like about 20, 10 to 20 percent more submitters than appear in the group chat. The reason is because sometimes people share the phone or the computer when they do the Friday sermon, or it might not work so they go to YouTube. So whatever the reason is, there’s usually more submitters than appear here in the group chat.

Background: The Marriage App Project

What do I want to talk about today? I want to talk about finding a marriage partner, a submitter as a marriage partner.

Let me tell you the backstory. A few months ago, as you all know, I promised that I was working on a marriage app. As they say, there’s a saying which says that it takes 20 percent of the efforts to finish 80 percent of the work, and then the last 20 percent of the work takes 80 percent of the efforts. That’s because usually the complications are left for the end.

Let me inform you what the situation is now. The issue which I encountered was that basically I had to pay a non-submitter who was coding the app, and I was in contact with him. The issue is that, first of all, I paid a very cheap person trying to save money, and then it was a little bit hard to believe that he could do some things which I was planning in the future. That’s one thing.

The other issue was that even if he did everything the way I wanted, I wasn’t sure myself that I could actually finish the app in a way which wouldn’t need updates. I wasn’t sure about some questions, some methods of doing it. So if I had the chance to update them later, then I would probably do it as an app like that.

However, the problem is—and we have some experience with this as people who have worked on the website know this—when you work with a non-submitter, even if they do the work perfectly, when you need them again later, let’s say 10 years, 5 years down the road, what happens is you cannot find them, or they have moved on, they found another job or whatever. So it’s kind of difficult to really rely on them more permanently. That was a risky decision to do the app and then hope that I’m never going to have to update it.

Transition to a Semi-Manual System

Because of that, I decided to do it manually for a while. It’s mostly automatic, but partly manually. This will mean that I’m going to actually see the data which you guys input. God willing, I’m not going to sort of share them or tell anyone about those, and also I’m not going to use them against you or for you or whatever. I’m not interested to use this marriage app, at least not right now, so that you guys can feel free to sort of do it as though I wasn’t seeing it.

What I did is I did pretty much everything that would be in the marriage app and did it more manually through Google Forms, and then God willing, through Excel sheets later. It’s going to be the same thing, except that I don’t have to commit to having it exactly like that forever. Then later on, when I figure out that it’s working, I can actually make the app, finish the app, God willing.

The Importance of Marrying a Submitter

At the same time, thanks for being patient, actually, because I delayed this for quite a while. The other reason why I decided to move ahead with this project even before finishing the app is because I don’t want some people to wait. Some people just want to get married. It’s fine, it’s normal. It’s kind of ironic, especially youngsters who have more time think that they have less time, and then the older people get, the more time they think they have.

Thanks for being patient. I think for whomever was patient, it’s really important that you guys were patient because it’s really important to marry a submitter, a believer. The problems which someone can have down the road if they marry a non-submitter, if they rush and marry a non-submitter or a non-believer, can be huge. So it’s really a great blessing.

Now, I know sometimes people are allowed to marry non-submitters. It depends a lot on the situation. I can understand some of them. I’m not going to make a rule here; I’m just going to pass my principle or my judgment of what I think of someone who marries a submitter and a non-submitter.

Of course, marrying a non-submitter is not a good idea. However, I can see excuses if the person had non-submitting parents, because it’s not easy to marry a submitter when you have non-submitting parents. They don’t support you, they don’t give you enough money. So that’s kind of harder.

However, for someone who also has parents as submitters, I totally don’t understand it. How could they marry a non-submitter? So if your parents are submitters, you are a submitter, if you end up marrying a non-submitter, it’s all on you. It’s all your problem. There’s something wrong with you.

Despite that, even the submitters who have non-submitting parents, I would still even for them recommend a submitter as a marriage partner. However, usually for them to get married, it would have to mean that they have to tolerate some things, maybe not go for the prettiest person or whatever, maybe not the best age. Sometimes they will have to compromise. So yeah, that’s the situation.

I just want to thank you for being patient, and God willing, I hope this system—I’m going to call it a system, not an app yet—this system is going to help people get married.

Frictional vs. Structural Unmarriage

By the way, before I go into that, it’s not going to solve everything. Let’s not have illusions about that.

There’s something which is called in employment, usually in economics, there’s something which is called frictional unemployment, and then there’s structural unemployment. Frictional means that people haven’t found the job, but it’s just in between jobs. They have the qualifications, and there are jobs somewhere, but there’s just friction. Like how do you match the perfect employee with a perfect employer? Then there’s structural unemployment, which means that the whole system doesn’t support employment. If you go to some country, there’s just not enough employment. There’s no way you can have a perfect CV, a perfect college, and if there is structural unemployment, there’s nothing you can do about it.

In the same way, what this is trying to solve is frictional unmarriage, meaning that if there’s guys who would match, it’s probably going to match them. But it’s not going to solve the structural unmarriage. Structural means that the system today just doesn’t support all the people to get married. It is the way it is, unfortunately.

It has to do with the end times, the democracies. Taxes can sort of distort the whole society, then people have to go to college and all of that, but it’s unavoidable. Usually it’s related to the tax level. If the taxes in the world are about 25 percent on average, 25 percent of every dollar you make goes to the government, what that will mean is that about half of that—that’s another issue for another time—about half of that are actually permanently not going to get married because of that, just because of that. Then there’s an additional group who don’t get married because they are not… So basically that will mean that about 15 percent of people just don’t get married, and that’s the government’s fault. You cannot fix that because it’s unavoidable, or if we want to reduce that, they’ll probably end up getting married much later or at the cost of poverty, whichever it is.

Then there’s another group who probably might be too choosy. Some people are too choosy, some people don’t realize how good-looking they are, there’s many reasons. Some people just didn’t get enough luck, like that frictional part.

What I’m saying is it’s not going to solve everything. However, for whatever way it could be solved in a natural way, God willing, it’s going to solve, I think.

Purifying Intentions in the Community

I think the good part about this is that when we have a marriage system, when we meet another time for other reasons, we don’t have this as a problem. What do I mean by this?

We went to Hajj, for example. We went to Hajj about a year ago, if I remember correctly. I don’t know if you guys and girls felt the same thing, but that’s what I felt. I felt like we were really thinking of each other, men and women, as brothers and sisters, and there was no sort of background motives about who could be a good partner for me, who could not be. That was probably really put at the back, and it really didn’t concern anyone. We could actually trust each other. A submitter brother could trust another submitter brother to sort of talk to his sister or something because they knew that there were good intentions and there were no background motives and things like that.

That really helps, because when you know that there’s another way, another place, another time when you have to talk about marriage, then you know that at this time, this specific place, you can focus on something else. Otherwise, if we don’t have some hope or some system, what happens is that people will actually find a way when we go to Hajj, or when we do that, or when we are doing something else, that’s when they will find sort of a way to flirt, if we can say that.

To avoid that, to avoid flirting and all of that, let’s just be direct, have a system. Whoever wants to get married gets married. I mean, whoever wants and is interested and has the possibilities, the capabilities, can get married, maybe later, maybe earlier, maybe never. It’s fine. 15 percent of people might end up not being married; it’s okay. It’s totally okay, by the way.

As I said in one of the days, by the time you get older, it’s kind of the same. Let’s say about 60, when you get about 60, whether you’re married or not married, it’s probably the same value. That’s what matters at the end of the day. The older we get, the closer we get to heaven, to going to heaven, and that’s when we realize what’s important really in life. The most important part is the next life.

How the Website Marriage System Works

Now let me just share how the marriage system, God willing, will work on our website. Let me share the screen.

Before I share it, this is a service which the website is providing. It’s not something which has to be like that; it’s just a service. We’re just trying to help. There’s a verse in the Quran which says to support those who want to get married.

Let me share the screen. Okay, I think you guys are seeing the screen. Can someone help me if the screen is being shown? Can someone write in the group chat? Oh yeah, okay, so people can see the screen.

If we go in our website, where it says Publications, and you scroll down here in the section “Other Publications,” you can find a section which is called “Find a Marriage Partner.” Then you have this, but before we go into the details of this, let me actually repent because I spent so much time talking. Let’s repent.

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

In this section which says “Find a Marriage Partner,” I’m going to repeat again where to find it so people can actually find it. If we go to The Submitters, you click Publications, and then you scroll down, you find a section here which says “Find a Marriage Partner.” You click there, and then this shows up. I’m just going to read what it says:

“Find a Marriage Partner. To find a marriage partner, you first have to fill the respective marriage compatibility CV.”

By the way, this is all what would have been in the app. It’s still in the app, but I’m not going to publish it as an app yet.

“To find a marriage partner, you first have to fill the respective marriage compatibility CV. If you’re a man, you click this one: Men’s Marriage Compatibility CV. If you’re a woman, you fill this: Woman’s Marriage Compatibility CV.”

For men, even if you’re married, if you want to fill it, it’s your choice. For women, if you are married, you are not allowed to fill it, of course. Women are not allowed to marry again if they are still married. It’s a man’s choice. I just want to let people know that they actually can do it, even men even if they are married. Now that comes at the cost; they might cause problems with their current marriage and all of that, but that’s their risk and their decision. They can lose the first marriage; it’s their risk.

Then it says:

“Then, God willing, usually in several months, all eligible men will receive access to the women’s responses, and all eligible women will receive access to men’s responses. Afterwards, they can evaluate each profile separately.”

Basically, they check each other’s profile, look at what they put there, input their offers—by offers, I mean dowry, or dowry requests from women—and in the end, through a database, God willing, we will calculate best matches, and the submitters will get access to a list of who their closest matches were, and also if there were any full matches.

Basically, it’s going to tell you, okay, this could be probably your best partner for marriage, but also if it’s not a full match, you haven’t reached an agreement.

This is kind of how this, God willing… I will explain the second part, how it calculates it, because I want people to actually know in another day.

Now, here it says “usually in several months.” Actually, this time we will do it in two weeks. That’s my plan, God willing, in two weeks after you fill this. I’m going to give everyone two weeks to fill the CVs, whoever is interested. Then after two weeks, I’m going to take those data and create another questionnaire which will actually help with calculations. But at this stage, you can just fill the CV, and in two weeks, God willing, I’ll do it. Why did I write here several months? Because after that, I’m not going to do it every two weeks; I’ll probably do it after several months or maybe a year. Basically, it’s only two weeks because I have delayed it for now, and it’s the first time, God willing, so you guys don’t have to wait too long.

The idea is that you fill this. If you’re a man, you fill the Men’s Marriage Compatibility CV; if you’re a woman, you fill this one. Then, God willing, I’m going to give access to the responses of women to the men, and of men to the women. You guys will see the responses, check out, “Oh, I like this female, I don’t like that as much, I like this.” But then what you’ll do is kind of offer a hypothetical dowry, which if it’s a full match, you will actually have to carry out, but if it’s not a full match, I’m just going to inform you that it was close.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that it’s going to be automatic—not fully auto; I’m going to input the data manually, but the system is going to calculate them automatically in this way. By the way, this is important: no one can blame me, “Oh, you chose the wrong person for me.” I’m not choosing anything. You guys will choose it yourself based on your capabilities and based on your interest. At the same time, I don’t want to be blamed for “Oh, this was a bad choice for me.” No, it’s going to be your choice, God willing.

Also, it’s really important to be honest, to fill it the way you truly feel about it.

System Management and Rules

Now let’s only talk about how to fill the marriage compatibility CV.

Because I’m a man, I would fill the men’s… actually, I don’t intend to fill it; I’m just going to show you guys. By the way, God willing, when someone gets married through this system, I might appoint them as the person to sort of manage this system, but I want someone who has already gotten married through this so that they know how it works, plus they don’t have interest to sort of change data or things like that. Because if they are still interested in marriage, they might actually manipulate it. I don’t believe anyone would do it as a submitter; however, we don’t want to leave the chance, we don’t even want to have that option.

So what I’m saying is, for as long as someone is the manager of this, they shouldn’t be allowed to get married through this because then it’s a conflict of interest. We don’t want conflict of interest. Now I’m going to manage this, so that means I’m not allowed to get married through this system for a while.

Men’s Marriage Compatibility CV Walkthrough

Let’s say I click here. If you’re a man, you can click here, and then it’s going to collect your email.

• Click here to collect your email.

The reason why it collects your email is because later on you guys might need each other’s emails to contact if there’s some sort of final touch-ups to conclude the marriage and things like that.

Here’s what you have to fill. It’s a really simple CV.

• You fill the first name here.

I’m going to fill some stuff, some stuff I’m going to leave unfilled.

• You fill your legal last name.
• Gender: let’s say I’m a male.

The system already knows that you’re in the male section; however, this is just to confirm.

• Then you add a photo here.

Let me go off-screen first so I can find a photo, because I don’t know what photos… I don’t want to share personal photos live. Let me reshare the screen again. I hope you guys are seeing it.

Here’s how the photo works: you have to add two photos. I added them just so it allows me to go forward.

• Add first photo: shoulders and above, kind of the way I’m being seen live right now, taken in the last 5 years. No Photoshop, no filters, no AI, and no makeup. This is really important, because it’s not fair if a woman wears makeup and another doesn’t; someone might think that she’s more good-looking. That’s not fair to the other woman who doesn’t wear makeup; it’s just not fair. We have to make a level playing field so that it’s fair to everyone. So no Photoshop, no filters, no AI, and no makeup. You can try to look your best in whatever other way—take a shower, comb your hair, whatever women and men do—but no Photoshop, no filters, no AI, and no makeup, so that the man or the woman can see who you truly are.
• Then you can add the second photo: from any time in your life when you think you looked the best, shoulders and above again, similar to the way I’m appearing right now. No Photoshop again, no filters, no AI, and no makeup. Just don’t change the photos; try to actually take a real photo without makeup. Or if you already have photos, the photos we have on our website, if someone wants to take them, they can use them for themselves; those are quite good.
  • Then for the second photo, you will have to explain in which year it was taken. Let’s say I want to post a photo from 10 years ago because I looked the best then. I’m just going to write here when was 10 years ago—2016. Second photo was taken in the year 2016.

Let me change the name to John Smith, which could be any person.

• Year of birth: let’s say he was born in 1970.
• Country of residence: let’s say Spain.
• City of residence: Madrid.
• Now John Smith is going to have to write here what family… to choose these are multiple choices, they can choose all of them, so they can click in more than one square. What does John Smith have as a family? Let’s say he lives with a father, with his mother, with his brother. Maybe he doesn’t have sisters; maybe his sister got married and she’s not there.
  • This is important: see, no one should be able to trick anyone. If John Smith has already a wife, and another woman is interested in him, they must know that he has a wife. So if he has a wife, he will select “I have a wife.” If not, then he doesn’t select it. Basically, John Smith selects whatever family he has, or “I have only one child,” “I have more than one child.” Some people want to know whether the person might be divorced and have children. Or “I have no family members.” Basically, you select whichever applies to you.
• Then you select who you currently live with: “I live with my father,” “I live with my mother,” “I live with my brother,” “I live with my sisters,” “I live with my wife,” “I live with my children,” “I live with my non-family members in a shared living space”—this happens more and more these days, especially in the Western world—”I live alone.” Let’s say John has a father, mother, and brother; let’s say he just lives with his mother.
• Native language: let’s say, of course, John is going to speak Spanish.
• English language: how well does John speak English? “I know only a few words or phrases,” “I can manage basic communication in English,” “I can hold everyday conversations in English,” “I can speak clearly in most situations in English,” “I am fully fluent in English.” Let’s say John can speak clearly in most situations in English; let’s select this for him.
• Height: let’s say John is 180 cm. You’ll have to write the full number in centimeters, not in inches or feet or anything else.
• Body type: what body type does John have? Slim body type, athletic body type, average body type, above average body type, full body type, heavy set body type. Above average means a little bit more overweight; it doesn’t mean above average that he’s better. So let’s say John is average body type.

Indicators of Intellect and Belief

Before I go further, let me actually explain the reason behind this questionnaire. What I’m trying to capture with this questionnaire is some basic information so people know where that person lives, who they are, really basic. At the same time, I want to capture a few factors: one is about their belief, but there’s no way to measure belief, and the other one is about their intellectual abilities, which is pretty much how smart they are. Those are important.

In one of the videos on our website, which is titled “How to Find Your Marriage Partner,” I say three things are important:

1. Belief,
2. how smart you are (or how smart the partner is),
3. and the looks, how they look.

The first two are really hard to measure. How do you measure a person’s belief? How do you measure a person’s smartness?

The only way to do it is you can take indicators. What I mean by indicators is that there are things which correlate with smartness, there are things which correlate with belief. They are not for sure; they might tell you only half of the story, they might tell you 40 percent of the story, but I put some of those there so people can know, “Oh wait a minute, this guy seems a little bit smart,” or “This guy seems like he really has strong belief.” So the people can have some clues. It’s just clues, it’s not for sure, because even people themselves don’t know how smart or how much belief they have.

One of the clues about smartness is this: in seventh grade, how well you did in school. Why did I choose seventh grade? Because later on, people get into puberty, or they might choose to get employed, or they just might have other interests. Maybe they are too smart and they kind of are not interested in college anymore or in school because they do better things. Quite often, if they are too young, the parents usually influence them too much, they help them with homework, the child maybe hasn’t developed quite yet, maybe he doesn’t have a good home. But usually, about seventh grade, how you did in school in seventh grade is about probably the best measure of how smart you are.

So I put this as a question. It’s not for sure, it’s not a guarantee that someone is going to be smart just because they were good students in seventh grade, but it’s a good indicator, a green flag for smartness.

• When I was in seventh grade at school, according to the grades which my teachers gave me—not according to you, according to what teachers gave you as grades—did you get straight A’s, did you get straight B’s? In a classroom of about 20 students: “I was a top student in seventh grade,” “I was among the top three students in seventh grade,” “I was among the top five students in seventh grade,” “I was among the top 10 students in seventh grade,” “I was among the top 15 students in seventh grade,” “I was among the top 20 students in seventh grade.” Let’s say John was among the top 10 students, so he was above average. Fill these honestly; of course, we as submitters don’t cheat here.
• Highest education level: let’s say John has a bachelor’s degree. Field of study: let’s say John studied business.
• I became a submitter in… This is an indicator about belief. If someone became a submitter quite early, especially at a young age, they are probably going to be submitters earlier rather than later. Again, a green flag about belief. It’s not going to guarantee that someone is a believer, also it’s not going to guarantee that someone is a disbeliever if they don’t have this quality. Let’s say John became a submitter in 2013.
• Here is a description of what I am currently doing for work/business/study. Let’s say John manages a restaurant. By the way, when you try to find a job or employment, try to present your best version without lying. Feel free to present your best version. So maybe John also owns the restaurant, or maybe part of the restaurant. If that’s true for John, he can say “Part owner and manager of a fancy restaurant.” This makes him look better if this is true. Try to present yourself in the best way without lying: part owner and manager of a fancy restaurant. This is probably what John is doing.
• Quran reading: this is a green flag about belief or a red flag about belief. It’s not for sure, again, it’s just green flags, red flags. It doesn’t mean that this is what actually makes them a good human being or a bad human being automatically. “I read the Quran less than once,” “I read the Quran one time,” “I read the Quran twice,” “I read the Quran about three to five times,” “I read the Quran about six to 10 times,” “I read the Quran about 10 to 20 times,” “I read the Quran more than 20 times.” Let’s say that John read the Quran twice, so he selects that.
• Preference about children: “I prefer to have children in the first two years of marriage,” “I prefer to have children between two and five years of marriage,” “I prefer to have children between five and 10 years of marriage,” “I do not want to have children,” “I have no preferences; I am fully open to both having or not having children.” Let me say that John expects to have children between two and five years of marriage.
• Plastic and cosmetic surgeries…

I was hesitant whether I should put it there, but actually I think it’s fair to make a level playing field for everyone. Why should someone who has cosmetic surgeries get an advantage in front of other women or men who don’t have cosmetic surgeries? I don’t think it’s fair to the others, so I think it’s good to put it there. Even when you buy a car, here in Canada there’s a system called Carfax. When you buy a car, you get a history of whether the car’s engine has been changed, whether the car’s windshield has been changed, whether the car’s wheels have been damaged and changed. When you buy a car, you get the history of that in Canada according to Canadian law, and it’s even more important for human beings. You want to know if they changed something: are they actually the real them, or have they changed something? By the way, this shouldn’t disqualify someone; however, people should have the right to know.

• Plastic/cosmetic surgeries: “I have never had plastic/cosmetic surgeries,” or “I have had plastic/cosmetic surgeries.” He has to be truthful about this. If you select “never,” it just moves on to the next question, but if you did, it’s going to ask you to explain or describe, because not all cosmetic surgeries are the same. Let’s say John has done Botox or lip filler—maybe he’s a man and just wanted to do that, I don’t know, it’s weird, but whatever. Fine, at least we know he hasn’t done the most extreme surgery. Someone who is interested in John can know that he has lip fillers. I’m going to select that he has never had plastic or cosmetic surgery.
• Health question: “I do not have any physical disabilities, serious debilitating diseases, or serious mental disabilities,” or “I have a physical disability or serious debilitating disease or serious mental disability.” Some people might ask which one qualifies as serious. The reason why you don’t really have to know for sure is because if you select it, it’s going to ask you to describe so people can know. Is autism a serious mental disability? It depends, because autism is a spectrum—very light autistic tendencies, or someone might have serious autism. I don’t know all the diseases, however, if you think it qualifies, the best way to know is if the doctor actually diagnosed you. However, diagnosis is not enough; it has to be something serious. A doctor can diagnose you with skin rashes; I’m not going to put skin rashes there, it doesn’t matter much. However, if it’s a physical disability, a serious debilitating disease—something which doesn’t allow you to function as a person in a marriage—or a serious mental disability, you put it there. Let’s say John doesn’t have any of those; most people don’t. Most people do not; some people might. I think it’s important to be honest so that people from the other side of the globe don’t think, because of your photo, that you have no problems. If you do actually have serious problems, I think they should know before they move on.

Then you click next, and then you submit. That’s it. I’m not going to submit it because I don’t want to mess up the database, but you click submit, and that’s it.

Next Steps and Anonymity

You fill this questionnaire. All the men fill the men’s questionnaires, all the women fill the women’s questionnaires, and then later on we put them in a database and you make offers. Of course, they are going to be anonymous, God willing. It’s going to help to be really transparent about what you really want, rather than be afraid that someone is going to judge you. So it’s going to be anonymous later, and then we will use the system to calculate who the best matches are.

God willing, it’s going to work. God designed it through the dowry system. You’ll see, I think it’s going to work well, but you have to fill the questionnaire first. It’s really important that you fill the questionnaire correctly in the best way possible, but correctly without lying.

Does anyone have any question? Important: you have two weeks, God willing, to fill the questionnaire. After two weeks, I’m going to start with the database and all of that. I’m just waiting for some questions.

Questions & Answers

Jad is asking: “What if we wish to go for civil marriage, wouldn’t that cancel the dowry requirement?”

Yeah, but you would have to do it outside of the system. Basically, we are trying here to… what I’m saying is if you want to use this system—and I think it’s the best way to get married in a group of submitters—basically in this system, we imagine that you’re going to give a dowry because this is a religious way of getting married. Of course, you can still add additional whatever ceremonies to the marriage with state and family, whatever that is; that’s on top of it. But we are trying to do it in a religious way. Doing it in a religious way is going to require a dowry, as the Quran says. What I’m saying is that, yes, if someone wants to avoid the dowry, yeah, go ahead, do it. But it’s really a bad idea because you’re going to have to marry a non-submitter very likely anyway.

Guillaume is saying: “Is family members those who are alive?”

Yeah, just put those who are alive. I didn’t specify it there, sorry, but yeah, those who are alive. If someone died, you don’t have to put them there, because what your situation is now is what matters.

This is why I put some issues there of the plastic surgery and all of that, because people do mistakes in the past. However, those are in the past, but some of those are still in the present. The person still looks that way in the present, or still has that disability. So if it’s something which is still in the present, I don’t think we should avoid it.

We try not to judge people’s past. People change, people become better. By the way, this brings me to one more thing: God willing, I’m going to remove anyone who I still think has a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You can fill it, I’m not going to expose anyone here, but if there’s someone who has a girlfriend or a boyfriend and I know about it, and they have not informed that they have changed and become better, they will be excluded. They can fill it, but I will exclude them, I will remove them, God willing.

Adan is asking: “Does an official marriage contract count as dowry?”

I’ve explained that in other videos, plus I’m going to explain it after we fill the questionnaire. The best thing you can do is do the questionnaire, believe that the system will work, and then when I explain it, if you don’t like it, you don’t do the next part. If you like it, you do the next part. I think you should like it if you’re a believer. There’s no reason to try… By the way, it’s a good way to actually guarantee… I’m not even going to go into the topic. It’s in the Quran, so why question it?

If something is unfair… I guess some people are not as good-looking, they think it’s unfair that they are not getting married. Unfairness happens in the world so often in so many different ways. It is what it is.

If anyone is afraid about whether they will not have enough dowry, don’t forget that it’s probably because you’re young and you don’t have enough money. But because you’re young, you have an advantage: you are probably better looking, you look better, and women might like you because you look better.

Anyway, any other question not about the dowry? The dowry I’m going to explain after two weeks, God willing.

Okay, that’s it. Don’t forget, if you’re interested in marriage, try to fill the questionnaire. It’s on the website. God willing, after two weeks, I’m going to move with the next phase about it, which will include this dowry and all of that.

That’s it. For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. The rest of you, peace be upon you.

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Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Update on Submitter’s Apartment Project

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

Someone just informed us a few minutes ago that Emin’s older sister has died. We send our condolences to Emin. I am not sure if his sister was officially a submitter, so unfortunately I do not want to do the Funeral Prayer if she was not officially a submitter. But if I find out that she was officially a submitter, then we can do the funeral prayer maybe next week in the next Friday Sermon.

By the way, my grandma died a few months ago, and she was not officially a submitter. I think she was a believer, but not a submitter; someone can be like that. But because she was not officially in our group, I did not want to do a funeral prayer for her. Let other people do their private prayers or whatever they want to do, but we do not have an official funeral prayer if they are not officially in our group.

God knows people’s souls, God knows who goes to heaven, God knows who goes to hell. God knows best, but we have to sort of play by our rules. If someone is officially a submitter, we do the funeral prayer. If someone is not, we do not do the funeral prayer, and we just send our condolences. In this case, I do not know, because someone just informed us a few minutes ago. If someone can tell me if she was officially a submitter, it is okay either way. God willing, if she was officially a submitter, then we can do the funeral prayer next week, God willing.

And by the way, this is why we should not start bringing new topics too quick before the Friday sermon, because now people are still chatting. 

Unfortunately, I have to continue without knowing what the situation is. 

Apartment Project Survey Results

I have to continue with the topic which I was planning. I want to give an update on the Submitters’ Apartment Project.

The reason why I wanted to do a questionnaire is because I wanted to know what the interest or the willingness of the submitters was to participate in such a project. I think it was actually helpful for me at least, God willing it is going to be helpful for all of us, so we kind of know where we stand with these ideas.

As you remember, I proposed a draft project about apartments for submitters which would include a sanctuary on top of it. Or we could have done it otherwise in a different case, maybe we do the sanctuary in the basement if it is in the US, because the building rules are different there. But I presented it as one version out of many versions because I wanted people to know what exactly I am proposing so that they could fill out the questionnaire in more detail and know exactly what we are talking about.

There is good news and bad news about it. The good news is that a lot of people were interested. The bad news is that they were interested only for investment, except for people who were already from Kosovo, almost none of the others were interested to actually go and live there.

Let me go into the details : 17 people filled out the questionnaire, but only 9 out of those 17 reported over a 60% chance of actually doing it or actually being interested. As you guys remember, I asked you how likely it is that the conditions are going to be fulfilled. I did not consider the ones which had less than a 60% chance of actually doing it, because it is not serious. It is okay if it is something that does not interest you, that is fine. However, I cannot move forward with a project with people who are less than 60% sure that they are actually going to do it. It is kind of like hiring someone for a job and asking him : “How sure are you that you are going to actually perform well?” and they say : “About 30%.” You probably would not hire him; it does not make sense to go forward with that. If they are not interested then they are not. Everyone has individual freedom but that depends also on his situation of course. Most people are not in a situation where they can afford to invest. What I am saying is that I could not seriously consider people who are not serious anyway.

Out of those 17, only 9 reported over a 60% chance of actually doing it, so I only considered those people seriously. Out of those 9 people, 5 of them wanted to use it as a primary home, and all 5 of them, except for one, were already from the same country, from Kosovo.

Feasibility and Regional Execution

What did I learn from this questionnaire?

I learned that the project which I proposed is a good project, but mostly only within countries for the most part. At least we know that the project is something people are interested in investing in and that it is doable. However, we know that it is probably a much better project within countries rather than across countries.

What do I mean by within countries? Let me explain. When there is about 50-60 submitters in France, then we can talk about it, so we can do the project only for French people in France. Or let me say there is about 50-60 submitters in the US; we can do it for people within the US. Or let’s say Canada, Lebanon, Bangladesh, or Turkey. By the way, what do I mean by 50 or 60 people? I do not mean children or submitters who are not independent or not officially in our group. I mean actually official submitters who can make their independent financial decisions.

If any of these countries have 50 people, they can just write me a message and, God willing, we will revisit the project if it makes sense, meaning that people are interested to invest and willing to move into that apartment building, then probably out of those 50, about 9-10 would be interested. The way we sort of imagined the building was to have about 9 apartments, and then another 9 in another building.

I will probably not remove the video from YouTube, but what I am going to say is that even though we might not do it exactly the way we planned it, at least we know there are options to do it within countries. If there are enough people within Kosovo, we can still do it in Kosovo.

Actually, people were more interested to invest than I thought, in the sense that they are not that willing to move, but they want to invest so that other submitters can rent the place and live there. Unfortunately, there are not enough people who are willing to move and rent the place, so I would not want to invest in a project where you guys would invest and then there is no one to live there. We do not want an empty building, because the main purpose was so we can have a full building that we can use, so that the people who live there can use the sanctuary to do the contact prayers together. That is the general idea.

Financial Logic of the Project (“Triple Win” Analysis)

Before talking about that, let me talk about why I even proposed the project in the first place :

First of all, the main solution which it could bring if we did it soon is that it would give us a proper place to do our contact prayers together as submitters, what I called a sanctuary. But the business reasons were that I thought it would actually earn much more than stocks. The reason why it would win much more than stocks is because it sort of has three ways of winning.

This reminds me of a Charlie Sheen meme or joke. Most people probably don’t know who Charlie Sheen is. A journalist asked him once if he is bipolar, and he said : “I’m bi-winning—winning here, winning there.” The idea of this project was to win here and win there: double win, triple win. What do I mean by triple win?

1. First Win (Standard Rental): The typical way people who buy apartments win is that they buy an apartment, the price of the apartment increases, and they rent it out to someone. On average, people win about 8% per year with this method. With stocks, you win about 9%. Only one reason to build the apartments is not good enough, it is probably better just to invest in stocks. So if it was just a typical project of buying an apartment and renting it out, I would not propose it, because it has a little bit less winning chances than stocks where you average 9% per year.

1. Second Win (Build & Markup Savings): The second win comes because we would build it ourselves. We would not buy it from a construction company, we would build it ourselves. Then we could win from the markup price, which is about 10% to 20%. Let’s say we cannot do it as well as construction companies, so let’s say 10%. Now it is 80% of the original price if we build it ourselves as a group of submitters.

1. Third Win (Geographic Savings): The additional win would come from buying cheaper apartments in a country where apartments are cheaper. This would enable people to invest and still have lots of money left over for stocks, for those who would have otherwise bought an apartment in their country.

So as you can see, this is a triple win. We could win in three different ways, and in total it would be an estimated 25% per year compared to stocks which is only 9%. We could win 25% per year, which is much more than 9% per year.

However, if we do it within countries, this third reason does not exist, which is winning from living in a cheaper place while investing your money somewhere else, this third reason would not exist. For example, if you live in France and you do this apartment project with other submitters in France, you still would have to buy an expensive apartment. You would run out of money basically if you only had money for one apartment, and you would not be able to invest elsewhere. So if we do it within countries, it’s only going to be an estimated 18% profit per year, and probably only within the first year because the markup price is not always there.

We can do it within countries, God willing. We can postpone this project to do it within each country. However, the win percentages are not going to be as big. They are still better than stocks, they are not going to as big as in a cheaper country. So do not expect big wins. At least the good part about it is that we can have sanctuaries in different parts of the world, in different countries.

Keep in mind that even though it looks hopeless sometimes, like : “How are we going to get together and build a place or mosques?” .This project is one very good option. Just by having 50 -60 people within a country, it is possible to do something about it and have a sanctuary where they can pray together. We will talk about the details when the time comes. If you are in Lebanon, and you work hard, and 50-60 people from Lebanon join us in our group, we have a plan for how to deal with that, how to move forward, and how to make it suitable for them so that they can worship God.

Future Options and Next Steps

How do we move forward from the actual project?

1. Option One: We can postpone the project, meaning we will wait until more people are interested.

1. Option Two: We can implement the project backwards : Initially, the idea was to build a building with a sanctuary on top, and then build another building when more people join. But we can do it backwards: build the building without the sanctuary first, and then build the building with the sanctuary later. Based on the questionnaire, there would be enough people interested to build the building without the sanctuary, because even if they do not live there, it is just a building and they can earn rent from it. However, that building would have to be rented to non-submitters.

1. Option Three: We can hand over the project and make it a private idea. In that case, I would not talk about the details of it in the Friday Sermons. The Quran says that the disbelievers, when there is a business deal during the Friday Sermon, they rush to the business deal and leave you standing. The Friday sermons are meant for community and remembering God; they are not meant to do private business within them.

For the third option, this is not a very likely option, but it could happen. I am just going to mention that it exists, but I do not want to go into details because that would be a private business. The idea for the third option is that I could take the list of about 9 people who already showed interest and send it to my sister. She has experience making money through buildings, rents, and Airbnb. She started with her husband from half an apartment and by now she has built 10 apartments through this method. She has experience. If anyone has more experience, I would be willing to let that person deal with it. It is likely that I might just hand over the project to my sister, and she can do private business with it if people are interested and if there are good chances of profit. If it goes like that, I am not going to deal with it anymore in the sense that I do not want to talk about private business in online Friday Sermons. That would be through private chats or whatever.

By the way, these three options are not mutually exclusive.

The most important part we should remember is that it is still a good project, but within countries, especially with reliable and serious submitters within a country, let’s say in France, Lebanon, Bangladesh, or Turkey. This should give you an idea of the path forward.

What I have to do is focus more on spreading the message within France, within Turkey, or wherever. If there are 50 people, we have a plan for what to do with that in a way that benefits them, benefits the community, benefits everyone, and ultimately allows us to worship God together in a sanctuary or in a mosque. So let’s just think of this project as something that is better executed within countries, it would be even better within cities, but that is still far down the road.

Let’s repent.

Second Sermon: Recitation of Surah 64

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

Recently, I feel like I have talked too much about specific details, community stuff, and even scientific stuff about Adam and Noah. I feel like we have not mentioned God enough in our Friday Sermons. The main reason why we do the Friday sermons is so that we can mention God. The Quran says commemorate God and remember God.

I just want to spend some time to commemorate God. I asked AI to give me an average Surah of average length which mentions God a lot, so it gave me Surah 64. I am just going to read Surah 64 so we can remind ourselves why we are here.

In this second sermon, I’m just going to read the Surah. The purpose is so we can remember God more and more.

Let me share it :

[64:0] In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

[64:1] Glorifying God is everything in the heavens and everything on earth. To Him belongs all kingship, and to Him belongs all praise, and He is Omnipotent.

[64:2] He is the One who created you, then among you there is the disbeliever, and the believer. God is fully Seer of everything you do.

[64:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose, designed you and perfected your design, then to Him is the final destiny.

[64:4] He knows everything in the heavens and the earth, and He knows everything you conceal and everything you declare. God is fully aware of the innermost thoughts.

[64:5] Have you noted those who disbelieved in the past, then suffered the consequences of their decision? They incurred a painful retribution.

[64:6] This is because their messengers went to them with clear proofs, but they said, “Shall we follow humans like us?” They disbelieved and turned away. God does not need them; God is in no need, Praiseworthy.

[64:7] Those who disbelieved claim that they will not be resurrected! Yes indeed, by my Lord, you will be resurrected, and you will be held accountable for everything you have done. This is easy for God to do.

[64:8] Therefore, you shall believe in God and His messenger, and the light that we have revealed herein. God is fully Cognizant of everything you do.

[64:9] The day will come when He summons you to the Day of Summoning. That is the Day of Mutual Blaming. Anyone who believes in God and leads a righteous life, He will remit his sins, and will admit him into gardens with flowing streams. They abide therein forever. This is the greatest triumph.

[64:10] As for those who disbelieve and reject our revelations, they are the dwellers of the Hellfire; they abide therein forever. What a miserable destiny!

[64:11] Nothing happens to you except in accordance with God’s will. Anyone who believes in God, He will guide his heart. God is fully aware of all things.

[64:12] You shall obey God and you shall obey the messenger. If you turn away, then the sole mission of our messenger is to deliver the message.

[64:13] God: there is no other god besides Him. In God the believers shall trust.

[64:14] O you who believe, your spouses and your children can be your enemies; beware. If you pardon, forget, and forgive, then God is Forgiver, Most Merciful.

[64:15] Your money and children are a test, and God possesses a great recompense.

[64:16] Therefore, you shall reverence God as much as you can, and listen, and obey, and give (to charity) for your own good. Anyone who is protected from his own stinginess, these are the successful ones.

[64:17] If you lend God a loan of righteousness, He will multiply the reward for you manifold, and forgive you. God is Appreciative, Clement.

[64:18] The Knower of all secrets and declarations; the Almighty, Most Wise.

 

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. To the rest of you, peace be upon you.
 
Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Smart Believers as the Best Investors

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

One of the things believers and submitters quite often forget to appreciate is the fact that the believers—especially the smart believers, let’s qualify the smart believers—are the best investors. Better than the smart disbelievers and better than the non-smart believers. So basically, smart believers are the best investors. And this is because the same brain which managed to realize—and I’m talking in the long run, even in this earth, in the long run on this earth and the next world—of course one day someone might be a better investor, another day someone else, but in the long run submitters, especially the smart submitters are the best investors.

It’s the same attitude, the same beliefs, the same way of thinking, the same logic which they have applied and realized that the best investment is doing things in this world for huge returns on investment for the next world. Even if they don’t constantly think about that, when they think into something similar, it’s going to be more towards that rather than towards a really bad investment.

I think this is important for especially the non-smart submitters, but also for submitters in general, to realize that the smart believers are the best investors in the long run. I just want to go quickly over what I think are the best investments, but that’s not the topic of the project. I want to introduce something practical today. God willing, we can talk about that in more detail another day.

Of course, the best investment is what God tells us in the Quran, like giving up this life for the next life. There’s no better investment than that for the next world and this world.

Why Believers Don’t Always Appear Wealthy

Before I go on to list some good investments, let me first say: why doesn’t it always look like the smart believers are the best investors?

It doesn’t look like that because people don’t all start in the same place. Especially the believers in a non-believing community, start either from zero, from a very low budget, or from negative, from a loan. Basically, if their parents were bad—probably the parents were alcoholics, or maybe their parents took too many loans, or whatever the situation in which they found themselves—it was not a good start. They don’t have a good start typically, which looks like they are not good investors.

However, if you look at what they got from their parents and what in the end they left for their children, you’ll realize that actually in the long run, during the whole life, they had a much better return on investment than the disbelievers for less work. So let’s keep that in mind. Wealth is not important; it has never been important in this world except for the fools who think that it is. And despite the fact that they are not the most wealthy, they have the best return on investment. Basically, they produce the most out of what they were given.

Unfortunately, a lot of people actually look like they’re not good business people or good investors, especially because they start with negative. First, they have to learn how not to lose, which is not to lose through loans, not to lose there, not to lose there. So they might start thinking too conservatively, meaning how not to lose or how to save the money. Then eventually, if a disbeliever had that habit, he would probably do it even worse if he had to learn how not to lose. By the time they get enough money to start to win, it’s probably towards the end of their life.

Owning Cows: One of the Best investments

So I’ve given myself the liberty to say what I think the best investments are. Of course the best investment is working in this world for the next world. There’s no better return on investment ever. Like that’s a million percent, 100,000 percent, whatever number you want to give, a very big number, one trillion percent; those are really big investments. It’s not 10 percent, 5 percent. It’s huge, huge return on investment. But the next investment in this world—and this might surprise people—is just owning cows. Just if someone just owns cows, that’s probably the next best return on investment in this world. Of course, actually having children is the next best one, but it’s not culturally correct or politically correct to say that children are an investment in this world. So let’s kind of forget about that. But the next, let’s say, the best investment within what they categorize as investments today is just owning cows. However, that’s sort of not fully true anymore in the modern world. It used to be for thousands of years. Whoever had more cows, was a better investor. Especially if they knew how to multiply them.

The best investment in this world after that, is simply owning cows. It’s a very good investment because they multiply. You can own cars, you can own apartments, they don’t multiply themselves. Cows just multiply themselves, and they can be eaten and they can be used for milk, and so they just multiply. However, because in today’s world you cannot really own cows legally, you have to have lots of land, and much has been taken by the governments or by whatever, it has not made it as good of an investment. It probably has brought it back to being as good as the other investments. So, owning cows is not necessarily the best investment anymore. It is still up there, it’s still a good investment, but I am not sure. But I think it is probably average, a little bit more than average.

The reason for that is too many diseases have been introduced, too many requirements about how you should manage them, and there are lots of laws about farming and all of that, so that kind of makes it not as good of an investment. But it is still a very good investment. I don’t think any of us are going to really own cows, maybe someone wants to do it, it is fine—but it is really hard. It looks like it is a very good investment until you introduce the diseases, which are a modern problem. The way they raise the cows today, because they live so close together, the diseases can spread much easier, so it is not as good of an investment anymore.

Beat the Stocks: Introducing a Practical Project

The best one, I would say after that, is just stocks—just buying stocks. And you don’t really have to think a lot. If you don’t know stocks, you can just buy the Dow Jones or NASDAQ (Stock Indexes). It is a group of stocks of some of the best stocks; you don’t have to analyze so much. Just buy stocks. By the way, the word ‘stock’ and ‘cow’ (i.e. stocks of cows) were kind of similar in the past, just owning lots of cows. And the word ‘stock’ and ‘cow’ kind of stem from a similar environment.

In today’s world, it is really hard to beat stocks. So typically, if I have any money, I will just keep them in stocks. Bitcoin was for a short while, maybe AI was for a short while. Probably not anymore. But in the long run, it is just owning stocks—that is the best investment. Now, I am talking about the investment in the modern world—this world. Of course, we spoke about the two better ones, which are not really the topic of this day.

Now recently, I think I came up with an idea which can beat stocks by a little bit, maybe by much. I think this idea can beat stocks if there is enough interest from The Submitters. Now, I am not going to give any guarantees that this is going to beat the stocks, but I think I myself would put the money in here because I think it can beat the stocks as an investment.

What I’m introducing today is an idea for an investment. Don’t think of it as some sort of very religious topic. Of course, it’s connected with religion, but I want you to see it from the perspective of, “How is this a good investment for me? How am I going to win from it?” Which is fine; it’s fine to look at it like that.

So, I want to introduce what I think in the near future—not for all cases, but for people who participate, if we do it right—of course, we can sort of beat the stocks by a little bit. I don’t know how much ‘little bit’ means; does it mean like a lot? Let us say I believe it is going to beat stocks if we invest right and if enough people are interested. And of course, the time might not be right. It might be too early. We don’t have to do it now, we can do it later, whenever the time comes, but I think it is an investment which beats the stocks.

The Submitter’s Apartment Project: Floor Plans & Structure

I want to introduce a project which I call the Submitter’s Apartment Project. The idea is that we could build an apartment building. I don’t want to go too much into detail why this type—anyone can have different ideas. I’ve thought about this a long time, and I came up with something which meets a lot of criteria.

• What is this project?

The idea is that we invest, or buy, or build—of course, we’re going to build them and then own them, but other submitters can buy them after they are built, depending on how they want to invest in it.

Let me introduce the starting idea, because it’s modifiable. We can change it a little bit. I’m open to that depending on how people are interested and things like that, but I’m just going to introduce the project as I see it right now. It’s probably going to change a little bit or maybe a lot, I don’t know.

Here’s the idea: we build an apartment building which submitters can share. Of course, we would have to employ architects and stuff like that to do the whole thing. I’m just representing it in its raw form, without engaging anyone else, just as I did it in Excel.

This is the plan, God willing, if people want to participate: we can build an apartment building which would be, in this case, about 15 meters by 14 meters. Here we have the stairs, and here we have one apartment which is 2+1. 2+1 means two bedrooms and a living room, and the living room includes the kitchen. Of course, every apartment has a bathroom.

Then we have another apartment here, which is 3+1, which means three bedrooms, one living room. Imagine this is the entrance area, stairs, one door, the other door.

Now, why did I come up with three floors versus four floors? Because the idea was to avoid elevators. Usually, once you build a building higher than that, you will have to build elevators, and that requires regulations, and it’s expensive and things like that. So I was trying to avoid elevators. Plus, it’s simple to manage; you don’t have to employ an external company and things like that.

This is the first floor. The second floor will be kind of similar. By the way, we can switch the floors. The first floor could have been the third floor. I’m flexible about this. Depending on the demand of what people want to do or what they are interested in, let’s say we can turn this 3+1 into a 2+1 and a studio; we can separate this. Of course, the architects would do this, but first I’m just presenting an initial draft.

Then here in the second floor, there’s another apartment. Once you climb to the third floor, we have some smaller apartments. These could also be on the first floor depending on how we decide in the end. Here’s another apartment, 1+1. Another apartment, 1+1. 1+1 means just one bedroom, which would be suitable for a couple who doesn’t have kids yet; they just have one bedroom and a living room. Here, another 0+1 is pretty much what they call a studio apartment, meaning that it’s all one area. It’s almost like a hotel room, a little bit bigger, but with a kitchen, and that’s it. And here’s another one like that.

Basically, this whole building has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8—if we split one more here, maybe 9—eight or nine apartments, depending on how we want to do it.

Community Benefits & Building the Sanctuary

Why would we—what’s the benefit of having apartments together? Being closer to other submitters is better; that’s one benefit out of it. Of course, the biggest benefit which I’m introducing is the return on investment, but it has other benefits as well: being closer to other submitters.

The other benefit is that on the rooftop, we could build what I call the Sanctuary. Let me—I don’t want to discuss it religiously too much, because God willing, I’ll do a topic about that another day. But why did I call this a sanctuary?

The reason why I’m calling this a sanctuary is because—by the way, it’s a term which I’m sort of inventing in English. It’s fine; Rashad used it. I don’t know if it has the same meaning in relation to where Mary stayed and prayed and stuff like that, but I’m just using this term. Let’s decide this is what the sanctuary is.

What’s the difference between a mosque and a sanctuary? The difference is that the land is not totally dedicated to God because it’s an apartment building, but the walls are dedicated to God. The walls and the internal space are dedicated to God. The reason why this cannot be fully a mosque is because if someone destroys it, it gets lost. If someone destroys the whole building, you don’t have a mosque anymore. But if someone destroys a mosque—let’s say the Kaaba or something—you still have a mosque because the place, the land there, is a mosque. Once a mosque, always a mosque. Here, it’s only a mosque as long as the building stands, which doesn’t really matter that much anymore because we’re close to the end of the world. What are the chances that a building, if it’s built correctly, is going to be destroyed before the end of the world, because the end of the world is not that far anyway? 200 years—what is it, like about 200 and something years? So basically, we’ve achieved a time where a sanctuary and a mosque practically are very similar, if not the same.

Here’s the idea: in the fourth floor, these people who live in this building can just climb to the fourth floor. Here’s an ablution area, another ablution area, two bathrooms, two washrooms, a shower area, a kitchen, and this is all what they call a terrace, whatever they call it. It’s basically an open area with a nice view, obviously. It’s similar—if anyone knows what a penthouse is, it’s kind of a building which has a yard on top, like a nice home on top of a building.

The idea is that the sanctuary is paid by the penalty zakat, but the rest of it is owned by the submitters who own this building collectively. Of course, they’ll own the apartments separately, but they can own these other areas collectively. I live right now in Canada in a similar type of building. We have a gym which is shared by everyone. Of course, it’s a big building, not small like this. So it’s kind of a shared area, and then everyone has their own apartments.

Imagine this terrace being just like a gym which everyone can use, but it’s not dedicated to God. However, this green area here would be the sanctuary. We’ll talk about the shape another day; I’m just introducing it as an investment.

Sanctuary Layout and Living in Harmony

The idea is we invest in it, and it’s usable. Basically, we dedicate it to God, and it’s usable by the submitters who live there.

Plus, the additional benefit of it is—by the way, this is if Qibla is in this direction. If Qibla is in the other direction, we can do it like this other case here. If Qibla is in the other direction, we can also make the building face the Qibla. But sometimes it’s not easy, because the road might be in a certain direction and things like that, so it might not be as easy.

This is the general idea: you go here, you could enter the sanctuary. It’s fine even if we use the word mosque, because again, in practice they are almost the same these days. They are not in theory the same, but in practice they’re almost the same. You can enter here, and then you can go through this door, go in the outside area, or you can go straight to the outside area.

Basically, the people who live here could set up tables here and have common meals, or they could drink coffee here and use it as a balcony or whatever, and an opportunity.

By the way, this enables the submitters to keep their privacy in the apartment, so they don’t have to go in each other’s apartment, knocking on the door, “Hey, how are you doing today? How are you feeling?” Submitters respect each other’s privacy. They just don’t go unannounced and things like that. Typically, of course, it depends on how close they are, but typically they respect the boundaries and the privacy of others. That’s why a shared area helps to be in contact and communicate with others in that shared area.

It’s partly a shared area, partly dedicated to God—let’s call it owned by God—and the other floors are private apartments. Let’s repent.

Legal Advantages of a Residential Sanctuary

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

Okay, so this is the idea of the Submitter’s Apartment Project. Oh, by the way, this is just one idea; we can do it differently. We can do it on the first floor. It has its advantages; it has disadvantages.

By the way, some advantages it has is we can avoid some legal problems, not loopholes. In countries like the US, quite often if you build—they don’t allow you to build a mosque in a residential area. If you build it in a commercial area, like they build the churches sometimes, it really doesn’t suit you, because people who live in a residential area cannot go to a commercial area five times a day. This is meant to be used five times a day typically, not like churches, which are used once a week; that’s different.

They have designed the cities in the US and Canada especially—partly in Europe as well, but not as much—where it kind of suits you to build a church, but not a mosque. Mosques are really supposed to be really close to the people where they can visit them often, not just once a week, but more than that. Of course, once a week is obligatory, but what I’m saying is not like the Christians, who kind of do it once a week and that’s it, and the rest of the time it’s closed.

Anyway, what I’m saying is this kind of avoids those problems, because you can build an apartment building, and it has a prayer area. No one can stop a prayer area; it’s just a gym. Legally, from the legal perspective, you can think of it as a gym.

Rental Affordability and Site Planning

Anyway, let me talk about the estimated prices. This is probably why I think it’s a good investment, part of why it’s a good investment.

I think we can build this apartment building. For people not to buy the apartment, they might be interested to rent the apartment. They might be interested to live there, but they don’t have the money, or they have other investments and they just want to live there. This is how cheap it would be to rent:

• Estimated monthly rent for the studio is €191.

• €315 for a one-bedroom apartment.

• €441 for a two-bedroom apartment.

• €483 for a three-bedroom apartment.

So even the rents are quite cheap.

Let me go to the next sheet. And this is how it would look, let’s say, in a lot. By the way, the idea is to buy two lots so that we can build another apartment, but without the mosque, without the sanctuary. Imagine having another apartment exactly like that or similar, and then we build it later. This enables us to sort of start even with a few submitters and then increase the number of apartments later. Plus, it allows us to sort of make it suitable to many types of lots.

This is an idealized way of thinking of it. Of course, not all lots look like this, but this lot, for example, the one I talked about, would be 650 square meters. And this other lot would be about 650 square meters, then we can build another apartment here. These are, let’s say, cars. If we have eight apartments, imagine eight cars here being parked outside. They can be parked outside to save money on not building garages.

Location Analysis: Why Kosovo?

Now, which location would enable us to do this? Because as you can see, it’s really cheap, cheap by both standards. Let me talk about location.

I went to ChatGPT, and I put pretty much the locations where submitters live, and I asked what a typical apartment price in euros per square meter is.

• If you build this apartment in Paris, it’s going to be $8,000 per square meter in Paris suburbs. Why suburbs? We don’t really want to be in the middle of people where we have to engage with disbelievers a lot. Plus, typically they might be cheaper in most regions of the world—suburbs are cheaper except for maybe some places in the US. So in Paris suburbs, we would have to have $8,000. This apartment, if we build it in Paris, it would cost eight times more.

• Accra is, as you can see, apartments are quite expensive: €1,800.

• Detroit: €1,600.

• Pristina, which is the capital of Kosovo: €1,500.

• Dhaka in Bangladesh: €1,300.

• Lipjan, which is a small city close to Pristina: 950 only.

Now, why is it that cheap? Again, it’s cheap only—there’s three factors.

1. There’s almost no immigrants because people don’t speak Albanian. But the submitters wouldn’t need to speak Albanian. We can live with one another, and if you want to go shopping once in a while, that’s probably all the English the other people need to know. So I think it’s doable. We’ve tried it with my wife; she came there for a few months. I think it’s doable. It requires some adjustment, but it’s doable.

2. The three reasons why it’s cheap—it’s not cheap because it’s bad. I’ve been all over the world. The quality of life—let me give an example. I’ve been, let’s say, north of UK. The apartments look worse than in Kosovo, like the building quality, the amount of windows, the space you have. But because it’s an English country, everyone wants to go there and they have better salaries, so that’s why they are more expensive. It’s not because they are better; it’s just because there’s higher demand. That’s one reason. The other reason is the language.

3. The third reason is the culture. In Kosovo, typically the dad will have a car, and the rest of the family doesn’t have a car—partly because they don’t have money, but partly the culture is just like that. Typically the head of the family, the dad, will have a car. Now, that pushes the rest of the family members to always want to live near the city where they can walk. So everyone wants to live, let’s say, in Pristina, in the capital, or in some big city, not in a smaller one.

However, living in a smaller city for submitters shouldn’t be a problem, because why? It’s not like we are going to meet non-submitters every day, or like we have to befriend them constantly or something like that. As long as we have each other, that’s kind of good enough. Yeah, we can befriend them for certain business things, but you get the point. Basically, what we want and what they want is different. So we can get more value for our money in a location where the disbelievers don’t want it as much.

Exploring Lipjan and Target Demographics

So who is this for? The idea is—let’s say this is a potential location. It’s just a thought; maybe I should go to Google Earth. Nothing special; I don’t have any memories from there. I don’t even know—I’ve been there once or twice, that’s all. Let’s go to Google Maps.

Okay, so the location is here, in Eastern Europe. It’s a place, by the way, there’s no wars right now, at least not right now. You can walk in the night and no one is going to say anything. It’s quite safe.

This is the capital of Kosovo; this is Lipjan. The airport is right here; it’s very close. That’s part of the idea, to have the airport close because people might want to travel back to their countries and things like that. The biggest mall in Kosovo is pretty much very close here: Pristina Mall. It has a few shops around, just a small town, a few apartment buildings.

If you visit it, I think you’ll see that life is reasonable. It’s not sanitary issues; I don’t think there’s big sanitary issues like sewage and stuff like that. Like in some countries, they have sewage, they have electricity, internet, all of that. So pretty much you get a Western life for a price which is three times cheaper, five times cheaper depending on where you live right now.

Who is it for? Who would be a suitable person to invest, or buy this apartment, or be part of constructing this apartment?

• Submitters who work online / Digital nomads: Any submitter who can afford to change the location without a significant detriment to himself or herself. If you have a job online, you can probably do this.

• Retired submitters: A lot of submitters today are young, but a lot of these people will eventually get old. They will quit their job, retire, have a pension. They can just go live with other submitters instead of staying alone somewhere where they have no real family.

• Submitters who already have a job nearby: This is typically for people in Kosovo. It’s a specific case; let’s not pay too much attention to it.

• Submitters buying a secondary vacation home: Some submitters actually do have money, a few of you, and they have more than one home. They can sell one of them and buy this.

• Submitters between jobs: Let’s say someone is bored of their job and they want to switch their job, and they want a few months or a year off where they want to reflect, or study for a new job, or something. They can use the opportunity to go and live there, and then they can probably rent instead of buying.

• Pure investors: Someone might buy it with their own money, likely build it, and then sell it to you 20% more expensive. It’s a good investment. Someone might want to invest like that. Let’s say someone cannot go and live there; they can build it for this price and sell it for that price if they have enough trust in the project.

Regarding payment: the second method is the post-construction payment method. You pay the post-construction price after the apartment is fully constructed and the keys are handed to you. Basically, you wait until it’s built and then you buy it, but again, it’s going to be more expensive like that.

Draft Ownership and Residency Rules

What else did I need to talk about? Okay, ownership. This is not that important at this stage, but I’m just going to go over so you sort of have an idea of how it’s going to happen.

Most apartments, especially in Western countries, have ownership rules because they want to know how the garbage rooms are going to be used, how the gym is going to be used. Here are the ownership rules for this apartment. This is a draft; it’s not the final version. We would have to do the final version with a lawyer.

1. Submitters and Spouses Only: Apartments are meant to be owned by submitters and potentially their spouses only. The reason why we will have to allow the spouses as well very likely is because in Kosovo, like in many Western countries, you cannot buy an apartment if you don’t involve your spouse as well. If you buy an apartment, it belongs to your spouse as well. Even when you go to buy, you have to have your spouse there if you’re married so that they can sign the deal when they buy it. Basically, you cannot buy it alone if you’re married; you have to have your spouse with you as well. Those are the rules in Kosovo, and it’s hard to avoid. It’s part of what we call the global forced behavior. Basically, you just cannot avoid it; it’s forced on you, and it is what it is. So we will, unfortunately, have to allow the spouses of non-submitters as well. But you can avoid other family members; that’s not forced. You don’t have to bring your dad or your mom if they’re non-submitters.

2. Reselling and Renting Constraints: You can sell or rent the apartment anytime you want, but you can sell or rent only to other submitters and their spouses. Basically, the apartment is dedicated to be used by submitters only and their spouses if they have a spouse, and it should stay like that for as long as almost all the people agree.

3. Minimum Rental Period: For safety reasons, you can only rent it out to people who are willing to rent for at least a year. Maybe six months—maybe we should change it to six months. The reason for that is that, unfortunately, not just with us, with most of religions online, what happens is it attracts mentally unstable people because people don’t see who they really are, how they live, what they do, how they dress, how they behave. You cannot see their real life. This really makes the mentally unstable people be attracted to online things which make them feel like they are part of a community, but they really are not. Because there’s a risk that online people will be like, “Oh, I want to go there, I just want to try it for a month,” typically if they have to pay for a year, they might change their mind. They’ll probably go there only if they are serious. So for safety reasons, we have to limit it to more serious people, not to anyone, so people don’t just come explore and then leave. It benefits the investors, of course; either you should be serious, or you cannot just go there, make all the furniture dirty, and then leave after two weeks.

4. Inheritance Procedures: If a submitter is open to non-submitters inheriting from them—let’s say someone dies or is about to die, and they are okay with their child who is not a submitter inheriting that apartment—the child cannot inherit the apartment, but they can inherit the money. The non-submitter can only get their inheritance in money after the sale of the apartment to a submitter. Now, because this is a forced sale, basically the person who owns the apartment says, “When I die, I want this apartment to be sold, and I want the money to be given to my son or daughter even if they are not submitters.” Some people might have that wish. It’s their wish. I probably wouldn’t do that, but some people might have that wish. It’s okay, it’s allowed, but I don’t think it’s a very good idea anyway. If people want to do that, what they can do is have it in their inheritance or in these rules when we buy it: where if someone inherits the apartment, they will have to sell it. Because it’s a forced sale, that means the price can be manipulated. People can be like, “Oh, if you want to buy it for this, otherwise I’m not going to sell it,” and things like that. That introduces an opportunity for unfairness. In that case, the price of the sale will be determined by an independent property evaluator who will try to estimate the market value of the apartment to the best of his or her ability—the market value at that time.

Exit Strategy, Voting Rules, and Selling the Property

Now, someone might say, “What if we build a building, we all go there, and we want to change our mind because the country is not as good as I thought? Maybe it’s kind of boring, we don’t want to live here anymore, I kind of want to leave. I’m still a submitter, but I want to go live in France or the UK.” It can happen like that.

Now, what if that happens? If there’s other submitters who can buy it, of course they would be interested to buy it. If there’s more submitters than today, they’d be very likely interested to buy it. However, let’s say we might build another building in another location, like Kazakhstan, or Canada, and maybe people don’t want to stay in Kosovo anymore. Whatever the reason is, there should be a solution for that.

In that case, if 85% of the people agree—let me explain why 85%. Submitters reach agreements with consensus, meaning everyone should agree. However, because of the global forced behavior, 30% of those decisions are basically just forced. Someone maybe is mentally not capable of deciding; someone is going to lose his job if he makes the right decision. About 30% of those decisions are forced. Because the democratic governments are always half good and half bad, that means that 30% is divided into 15% good and 15% bad, which means that we have to avoid that 15% which is bad. Basically, we don’t want that 15% of decisions to block all the other good decisions of the community. If we went with consensus, that all of us should agree, what could happen is one bad person can block the whole situation. They can say, “Oh, I don’t want to sell,” or maybe it doesn’t suit them, even though everyone is losing money. We want to avoid that situation. So with 85%, we can enable the rest of the people to move forward even if 15% of people don’t agree. It’s a practical way in today’s world of reaching consensus.

In the unlikely event that submitters want to sell the apartments to change location for any other reason and no other submitters are interested to buy them, they can sell all of them to non-submitters if 85% of the weighted votes agree.

What do I mean by weighted votes? Weighted votes means that if you own an apartment which is 100 square meters and the other person owns an apartment which is 50 square meters, your vote counts twice as much as the other vote. It’s not one person, one vote; the vote has as much value based on how much you own in that building. If you invested more, your vote should weigh more, like owning stocks in a company.

Voting should not be anonymous, first of all, because people should really speak their mind. If they don’t have the courage, then maybe they don’t deserve it. Voting should not be anonymous, and only the adult submitters have the right to vote, but not their non-submitter spouses or the children.

The submitters must follow the following procedure:

1. They must inform the congregation director of all the votes and what they voted for.

2. The congregation director sells the sanctuary and the terrace together. The sanctuary is the portion built by penalty zakat money—it was not built by the owners, it was built by the money which we collected as submitters. The terrace, however, is a shared area of the owners; it’s just a shared area. He would have to sell them together because no one would want to buy one without the other; they would want to build a restaurant there or make it a penthouse apartment.

3. The proportion of money from the sanctuary is rededicated again as penalty zakat. That’s why it’s a sanctuary: it can be sold. It’s not a masjid, which cannot be sold. The proportion of money from the sanctuary is rededicated again as penalty zakat in the cause of God to build other sanctuaries or masjids. It can only go there; it cannot be used for something else. The proportion of money from the terrace and the kitchen is distributed proportionally to the apartment owners depending on how big the apartment is. The value of the terrace and kitchen per square meter is 25% of that of the sanctuary—this is a standard building thing. Usually terraces cost 25% compared to the inside.

4. The submitters are then free to sell their own apartments to whomever they want at whatever price they can sell them for.

Basically, the idea is even if the idea doesn’t work, what we end up with is a building where we can sell apartments and we earn money. If it works, even better: people get a community, and then we can sort of replicate a similar idea in other places—in France, in the US, in Bangladesh.

One of the reasons why I thought we should continue with Kosovo is, first of all, it’s more in the saddle right now. However, the other reason is that actually that’s the only one we can afford to build. This sanctuary part here will cost about $50,000, which is going to be built by zakat money, God willing. We are approaching that amount of money the submitters have reported as a penalty zakat. That’s the only place we can afford; if we build it anywhere else, we cannot afford it. Either we build it soon and we can afford it, or we wait to do it in other places, which would mean we wait many more years.

Project Questionnaire and Closing Remarks

Now, to see whether people are interested, I prepared a questionnaire. I’m going to put this in the group chat, and only if you’re interested, you can go and fill it up at your own time.

If you’re interested in this idea to invest, or to rent, or to live, go and fill that questionnaire. Let me actually do mine first so that you know how it’s done.

Okay, so here’s the questionnaire: Submitters Apartment Project Questionnaire. If you’re not interested, don’t do it; you don’t have to do it.

• Name and Last Name: Vesa.

• Please choose which apartment type you are interested in: In this case, I’m interested in the two-bedroom or three-bedroom, because my wife is going to need an office to work online, and I might need an office as well.

• Please choose what is your intended use of the apartment: Use it as a primary home. (The other options are: use it as a secondary vacation home, use it as an investment property to rent to other submitters, or rent—meaning you become a tenant for at least a year.)

• What is your preferred method of payment? I would like to pay the pre-construction price. (Someone might like to pay the post-construction price; that’s also fine.)

• Please describe in detail the conditions which need to be fulfilled for you to fully commit in your purchase or rental of the apartment: Here, you’re just showing interest; you’re not committing or buying it. But what would it take for you to fully commit? Please explain here in lots of detail. For you, it’s really important to put this in detail so we don’t start building an apartment building with non-serious intentions. In my case, I would say my wife has to finalize her transfer of working from partial online work to fully online work. Once she does that, we are able to move.

• How likely is it that your conditions will be fulfilled before October 2027? Let’s set that as an ideal date. How likely is it that my wife will work fully online before this date? I would say 90%.

• Then I submit it.

This is all you have to fill if you’re interested. If you’re not interested, don’t do anything; it’s fine. You’re still a submitter, we love you, and all submitters are the same whether they have apartments together or not. That’s the most important part.

However, it’s a great opportunity for investment. I think people can win more money. How can they win money? If you have a cheaper apartment where you live with submitters, what you can do is take the rest of your money, which you would have used to buy an expensive house or an expensive apartment, and invest it in stocks. So you can earn more money.

If you live in Germany right now and you’re renting, you’ll save money on rent if you change your location. Or if you were intending to buy something in Germany that would be expensive, you’d rather live in Kosovo and then use all that money in stocks and earn more.

There are so many ways we can win from this. We can win from the sales, we can win from the initial price increase when others want to come there with the other apartment. We will have to buy both plots together; that’s also going to be an increase because everything has more value when there’s apartment buildings around.

Of course, the benefits of sharing a mosque together—we can have the retreats there, not paid hotels. Just the hotel money which we will have to pay for the retreat, God willing, next year is going to be 10,000–20,000. We can build with two or three of those retreats, talking just for the hotel. We can save a lot of money if we do it like this.

We’ll see. Initially, I’m just interested to see how much you are interested and what you’re interested in. If not enough people are interested, we can postpone it or modify it.

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: Reconciling Science and Faith

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

So last Friday’s sermon, from the scientific perspective, we talked about when Adam existed—when Adam lived. And we kind of gave lots of evidence. A lot of it is a little bit questionable. What I’m saying is that every bit of scientific evidence is always a little bit questionable. But when you compile all of them together, then that’s when it kind of gets strong. So that’s kind of how it works with science always. You have some studies which are a little bit questionable, some are more accurate and then they constantly improve. So like if let’s say many maybe I presented a list of caves, most of them are correct. A few of them might not be, but that still doesn’t disprove what I said because most of them still prove and still show when Adam should have lived.

But today I kind of want to take another approach and look at it from the Quran. And to look at it from the Quran we can actually achieve the same goal of finding it out. But if we do it for Noah and then we can figure it out. We can see that Noah and Adam didn’t live that far from each other. So when did Noah live? Let’s answer this question. When did Noah live?

I wrote some stuff here. Usually I don’t like to prepare them because they kind of force me to speak about this instead of what I want necessarily what I want. But this forces me to read it.

The Timeline of Noah and Adam: Geographic Evidence

Noah must have lived not too long after Adam because

• First reason: If he lived many thousands of years after Adam the people would spread throughout the world by then and only a worldwide flood would be able to destroy them. However, there is no evidence of a worldwide flood which happened from 55,000 years ago until 40,000 years ago.

And we’re looking at this range of years because already from the scientific evidence we sort of concluded that approximately Adam should have lived and Noah should have lived around that time.

But if we assume that Noah lived much later much let’s say 10,000 years later or 20,000 years later or 30,000 years later if we assume that, what would happen is that the people would have spread by then. Because as we saw from the previous example humans spread throughout the earth very quickly within 5,000 to 10,000 years they spread. Like the caves which I presented were in France in Indonesia in different countries. If you look at the oldest ones within 5 to 10,000 years so people spread very fast. And if Noah lived much later than Adam what that would mean, is that by that time pretty much most of the earth would have people and that means if this flood was to destroy all of them as the Quran suggests and as the Bible says, the flood had to destroy all of them. That would mean that the whole earth must have been covered in a flood and we have no evidence of it, literally no evidence.

I’ve looked for it for years initially before I became a submitter years ago. That was kind of let’s say one of my interests was to figure out if there was a worldwide flood. Most of it is pseudoscience meaning fake science. There’s no actual evidence. They present some examples and then when you see that, it doesn’t match and it doesn’t fit anywhere in what people know about archaeology. So it’s just whatever you hear about the global flood, unless it’s way in the past like during the time of dinosaurs and before that. That’s different. But here we’re talking about 50,000 years ago there is no evidence that the whole earth was covered in a flood so that means that Noah must have lived very close to Adam and the flood killed only those people who didn’t have time to spread much from that initial location.

The Timeline of Noah and Adam: Societal Evidence

That is one reason why Noah must have lived very close to the time of Adam. The second reason why Noah couldn’t be born too long after Adam is that

• Second reason: If Noah lived many thousands of years after Adam, given that people between Noah and Adam lived almost a thousand years (these are people who had lots of time to gain knowledge), that would give humans a vast advantage in accumulating knowledge, and within a few thousand years, the world would have a very advanced civilization comparable to ours. However, there is no archaeological evidence of very advanced civilizations during those ancient times.

Let me repeat: if Noah lived thousands of years—like 10,000 or 20,000 years—after Adam, (the people before Noah lived almost a thousand years. Adam lived almost a thousand years, Noah lived almost a thousand years according to the Bible, and the people in between lived almost a thousand year, or close to it), they would have had so much advantage in accumulating knowledge. They didn’t have the equipment, but they could have done it very quickly.

Yet, there’s no evidence that there was an advanced civilization. There’s no evidence that people invented electricity, for example, in those times. There’s no evidence that they had cars; there’s no evidence that they had the basic equipment which we have today. There’s no evidence for that. They had basic tools like maybe swords, bows, and arrows, stuff like that, and this is probably after Noah.

And by the way, if you hear about evidence about this, there are so many fake stories, fake science, and religious people trying to prove something which has nothing to do with science. There’s actually a few famous people—by famous I mean people who pretend to be famous historians but they’re actually not famous according to the other historians—who say that there must have been advanced civilizations. Like Atlantis, the civilizations mentioned by Plato and things like that. If what they mean by advanced is like the pyramids in Egypt and stuff like that, yeah, that happened very likely, because history didn’t go very smoothly; it was ups and downs. However, those ups never reached the level we have today; they never had cars until our times.

They would have reached the level of having cars and things like that if Noah came a long time after Adam, because those people again had a vast advantage in living long. When you live a thousand years, you have time to learn, and you can pass that knowledge to others, and you known more people to whom you can transmit that knowledge.

Scriptural Alignment: The Bible and the Quran

Because of these facts—given that there are no advanced civilizations in the past (meaning comparable to ours) and given that there’s no evidence of a worldwide flood during that time—that means that Noah must have lived very close to Adam. This means that people were just local people; they didn’t have time to spread throughout the earth and explore everything we know today.

Conclusion: So, Noah must have lived not too long after Adam. This is confirmed by the Bible, which says that Noah was born only 156 years after the creation of Adam, which is only 126 years after the death of Adam.

Context Note: Now, I didn’t use the Bible in the last sermon. In one of the chapters of the Bible, I said that it’s a fake chapter because we saw that that chapter had contradictions with the Quran. Now, this chapter does not have contradictions with the Quran—the chapter where we can find how much time there was between Noah and Adam.

In this chapter [Genesis 5], we can see the seven days of creation and things like that, which fit with what I concluded from the Quran regarding the seven days of creation. And there’s a video clarification online about the seven days of creation where I explain what they mean, but they match what the Bible says and what I said; they fit together.

Plus, the Quran says that Noah lived 950 years, and the Bible in this chapter also says that Noah lived 950 years, which means that they fit. This is a very strong indication that this chapter is in agreement with the Quran, which means that the data in this chapter are quite reliable. Not perfect, but quite reliable.

So if you go to the Bible, Chapter 5 [Genesis], we see the dates of when Adam had sons and how long he lived. Adam lived 930 years according to this. When Seth, one of his sons, had sons… basically, we can calculate from these numbers here, which we can find from Adam until Noah, how many years have passed. And if we do that addition—AI can do it for you—we end up with 156 years after the creation of Adam as the time when Noah was born, which is only 126 years after the death of Adam. So after Adam died, about 126 years passed, and then Noah was born. It is very close to one another.

Knowing that they are close to one another, if we figure out from the Quran at what time Noah lived, we can use that to know when Adam lived. Basically, all we have to do is find when Noah lived, and then we pretty much know when Adam lived, very close to it.

So, when did Noah live according to the Quran? Let’s repent first before we go into the details of this. Let’s repent.

Analyzing Surah 20 and the Meaning of ‘Remain’:

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

So let’s find out when Noah lived according to the Quran based on the verses of the Quran. So in Surah 20 verse 102 it says,

[20:102] The day when the horn will be blown, and we will gather the wrongdoers, with bruised eyes.

[20:103] They are murmuring among themselves, “You did not remain but ten (days).

And the key word here is remain and I’ll tell in this verse (2:259) what it means.

[20:104] We know best what they will say when their behavior models

The Quran says examples or models. Models of how to behave. I translated it as “Behavior models” as this is from Arabic if you look at English translations which are ready it might not help you much I’m going straight to the Arabic word for word.

[20:104] We know best what they will say when their behavior models will say, “You did not remain (dead) except a day”

Now a lot of these verses and quite often when people read them I understand that they understand them that you did not remain in the first life. That’s also a good understanding. But also the word remain also means that you did not remain dead. And how do we know this? We can go to this verse and see what it means. So let’s let’s click this verse and go there. Here’s what that word remain means. And it’s the same Arabic word, by the way. You can click on it and it’s going to send you to other verses and stuff like that.

So here’s an example of a person who died and then God tells him how long he remained. And the same word is used in Arabic, the same Arabic word. Which means that it’s talking about how long he remained dead, not how long he remained alive. Let’s see from the context here. And this is from Arabic again.

[2:259] Or like the one who passed by a township and it had overturned on its roof. He said how will bring to life…

I want to read word by word and it sometimes the flow doesn’t go very well, but you guys can understand it.

[2:259] … this town Allah (God) after its death then he was made to die…

So the person who asked how long before God resurrects this town God caused that person to die then he was made to die

[2:259] … by God by Allah for a hundred years…

So the person was put to death for 100 years. And this is a story in the Quran.

[2:259] … Then he raised him. (So then God raised him). And then (God) said, “How long you remained?”…

Meaning how long you remain dead, not how long you remained alive because the person was resurrected after 100 years.

[2:259] … He said, “I remained for a day or a part of a day.” He said, “No, you have remained 100 years.”

And it’s confirming here that God is talking about the how long he was dead. So how long you have remained dead.

 

 

And this is the same word by the way you guys can click here if you use this website and you can check that that word is the same word which is used in the other verse in the in verse in surah 20 verse 103. We can find here surah 20 verse 103. You see it’s the same words (labithtum). If we click there now, we’ll find this surah which we used. So it’s the same word. It’s used in a similar context. And that tells us that here when God says how long you remained, it has two meanings. First of all, how long you remained in the first life. But the more important meaning for our study is that this word is actually used by God to say how long you remained dead. From the time you died until the time you get resurrected. So the people will be talking about how long they remained in the grave, how long they were dead.

Identifying the “Behavior Models” of Transgression

So basically God resurrects them and the best like the best model I don’t mean best in the the best souls meaning that the people who are an example for bad people. And by the way, let me actually explain this part as well because this is a key word as well. This is in the Quran in surah 20 verse 104. It literally means example but example can be a good example or a bad example. And we see this exact word being used for the wife of Noah which was a bad example. The verse says something like and God gave an example for you the wife of Noah which is a bad bad example. The wife as a bad person. So the same word which is used as a behavior model for good people. The bad people also have their behavior models. Meaning that some people who behave so bad, it’s a pattern of how to behave badly. It’s a model of bad behavior.

So these people will say when they get resurrected, you did not remain and again we confirmed that the word remain is used about how long they stayed dead. You did not remain dead except a day. So basically when the people the worst people because they are a model for bad behavior they must be the worst people. When the worst people and who are the worst people? The Quran says in one of the verses that the past generations are better when it comes to believers are better than the later generations. But also we can infer it (the other way around) with some combination with some other verses. I explain it in another video that the past generations; the bad people, are worse than the generations of today. So basically they were more extreme. The people of the past were more extreme. They were models for people of the future. If they were bad, they were really bad. If they were good, they were really good.

Now, these people were really bad. And that means they must have been far in the past. And the first people to be bad—the first community to be truly bad, is the time of Noah. Because when Adam was created he taught his (people how to be good)—of course his two sons one of them was a bad person he was kicked out. But as a community they remained good until the time of Noah. And that’s the first time when God destroyed the first community of disbelievers. So that means that they are sort of at the edge of the bad people meaning that one of the worst people if not the worst. So this means that those people are included in this verse which means that they will say you did not remain dead except a day. So they will speak and they will say you did not remain dead except a day when they talk to one another. What does this mean? How how long is a day? And they will be saying that on the day of resurrection. How long is a day? Well, a day is there’s actually only two ways we can go about it. But I’m going with a meaning which serves our study. Of course, I can use the other meaning as well where we can conclude something else. We can conclude about the life of Noah. But here we’re talking about the death of disbelievers.

The Length of a Day and Chronology of Resurrection

According to the Quran

[Surah 70:4] Ascend the angels and the spirit to Him (to God) in a day which has a length of 50,000 years.

So here is a verse which says that a day at God is 50,000 years. Now there’s another verse in the Quran which says that a day is a thousand years. I know that but that refers to a day at your lord meaning that when we get resurrected on earth a day will be a thousand years. Basically a day when we get resurrected in the messianic age when Jesus will be the leader of the believers (The End Times). So that day will be a thousand years but here we’re talking about the day in the sky. Up there with God it’s 50,000 years and these people will be people who will be resurrected in the next world. So when they refer to a day they don’t know but God knows that it’s 50,000 years.

So here we have them saying that they did not remain dead except a day and then the verse tells us that a day is a length of 50,000 years. So basically we just replace this like whoever knows math knows when you know x you can replace it with the new value. So basically a day is 50,000 years that means that the people of Noah remained dead according to them for 50,000 years. So the behavior models the first generation of criminals meaning the people of Noah and a few people after them remained in the grave 50,000 lunar—by the way these are lunar years we can explain about that another day—50,000 lunar years until they get resurrected.

To know when they died, we first have to know when they will be resurrected. And 50,000 years before that is going to be when they died in this world. So when will the biggest criminals be resurrected? And this is there’s some nuances here. So as we know the end of the world is the year 2280. We know this. We have videos about this (The End of the World, Explaining Quranic Initials, Predicting the Future). We know that already. However, what I haven’t mentioned very specifically, I think it’s inferred in the video, The End Times, part of it is mentioned, but part of it is inferred is that there’s going to be a period of 40 years between when people die and between the when people start to get resurrected, between the first horn and the second horn. Meaning that imagine the world is going to be destroyed. Everyone will die in the year 2280. The Quran doesn’t mention these 40 years because it doesn’t make sense to mention them. The Quran counts the years according to the sun and the moon, but the sun and the moon will be destroyed. So, we’re just measuring what would have been years. I’m not saying that these are actual years. This is what would have been years. Like if someone was alive it would feel like 40 years. And during that time pretty much all people will be dead during these 40 years except for Jesus and someone else so that they can witness the resurrection of the people.

After these 40 years then there’s going to be a thousand years until the worst people get resurrected. In the video of the end times I explain how the best people get resurrected first starting from Adam. Of course Jesus was even before that but starting from Abraham (not Adam). Starting from Abraham, from the best people to the worst people and so as time passes those people go into the city of believers but the disbelievers will not be resurrected until the end of that period. The Quran says that’s when Gog and Magog will be returned. The Quran says it is prohibited for the bad people, the criminal communities of the past to be returned until Gog and Magog return. And Gog and Magog are the least bad people because they are similar to animals and animals are not that bad. Animals are between good and bad. So Gog and Magog are between good and bad. So when Gog and Magog get resurrected, that’s when others after them get resurrected which are worse people worse than them. The Quran says they are worse than animals. The bad people are worse than animals.

What this means is that the criminals from the time of Noah they will be resurrected definitely after this thousand-year period because they are the worst. And that would be the year. So, plus we add 40 years. We add 1,000 years and that would this would bring us to the year 3,320.

And this is a hypothetical year because the sun and the moon do not exist. So, really people will stop counting the years. We’re just talking about how long it will be. If we had a clock it would show or a clock with a calendar or you know how our phones had calendars (they will be destroyed). If they survived, it would count a thousand years plus 40 years from the time when the world gets destroyed until the bad people, the worst bad people get resurrected. So they will be resurrected in the year 3320.

So all we have to do is ask AI of course so we don’t calculate it ourselves. It’s easier. Ask AI how long from that year 50,000 lunar years ago?

So this is the question I asked AI. I said, “How many solar years before now is 50,000 lunar years before the solar year 3320?”

It’s kind of a long question, but AI is smart enough. It knows what I’m asking. And this is the answer. The answer which AI gave me. I did it myself as well. I calculated it myself and I got got the same answer. So this is what AI tells you. If you ask this question to AI, it’s going to give you this answer.

So the year is 47,217 years ago from now.

From now if we go in the past for about 40,000 years ago that’s when the worst people of the time of Noah died approximately. It’s a very nuanced thing to say that actually even before the flood came some of their fathers were bad and stuff like that. Anyway but it’s close time so approximately at this time not exactly necessarily, approximately.

Linguistic Analysis of Noah’s Lifespan in the Quran

So this is one method to figure out when Noah lived. Another method to figure out when Noah lived is to look more directly in the verses which talk about Noah. Verses which talk about Noah.

[Surah 29 Verse 14] Indeed we sent Noah to his people. So he remained …

again the same word same word and we learned from the previous verses that remained can refer to life but it more importantly it can refer to death as well or to the time spent in the grave.

[Surah 29 Verse 14] … So he remained with them a thousand (lunar) years, but fifty flows (or cycles)…

and this is the literal translation from the Quran

[Surah 29 Verse 14] … Then seizes them the deluge and they were the wrongdoers.

First of all, before I go into explaining the rest of it, let me explain this part. Why did I translate it like this? 50 flows instead of 50 years. Now, the thousand years which are given here, there’s a word in the Quran which means lunar year. I think it’s sina or something. Anyway, let’s go to this verse. Surah 29 verse 14. So he says, “And verily we sent Noah to his people and he remained again the same word as in the other verses he remained the same Arabic word I cannot pronounce it that’s why I’m not reading it but I can see it’s the same. And he remained among them a thousand years. Here’s a word which is used for year here, sanatin. So he remained with them a thousand years save and they translated it like this save but ila means but, except, more literally it means but. So he remained with them but fifty a’man. So it’s a different word now this is Sanatin but now it’s a’man. According to traditional scholars this word a’man means an easy years because it flows easy. This is the interpretation of that. What they don’t understand is that it wouldn’t make sense. Why would God use a sanat for a hard year and a’man for an easy year? And how do they know that these years were not actually easy as well? So they don’t have evidence that actually a’man means easy year and sanat means hard year. It makes no logical sense. Why would years be named differently?

What it means is that one of them is a lunar year, the other one is a solar year. And the reason why the people the Arabs misunderstood it, is because when they said a’man—their ancestors meant solar year—what they meant is the flow of time. Like let’s say in northern countries sometimes they will say a person lived fifty springs meaning fifty times there was a spring. And some old people will say that. I’ve heard I think my grandma like how many springs have you lived. Basically how many solar years; how many times the seasons have changed; how many times has the climate changed in your area. That’s how they kind of measured it. And now in Saudi Arabia, if the time changed from very hot into a little bit colder and more easy—because there it was generally hot if it became a little bit more easy, a little bit rain, and nice weather, they would count it as one a’man. Meaning one solar year because that was based on the the sun. Eventually that meant easy year, but originally it didn’t mean easy year, it originally meant solar year. Because it counted the flow of seasons. Let’s say from spring to spring or from winter to winter they don’t have spring there so it’s more from winter to winter.

So what this mean what this word here means solar year. However, there’s a deeper meaning to it. Anyone can search it online and just search etymology of the word a’man and you will see that it actually (literally) means flow or cycle. So the time flowing. So if we translate it literally, forget the context, forget what this Saudi scholars think about it. If we just forget about it and translate it literally, what the Quran actually says and trust the Quran. Because God wouldn’t use that word if he didn’t actually mean that. If we trust the Quran then we and we translate it literally, we would have to translate it:

• Ila means but
• Khamsina means 50.
• A’man means flow or cycle.

Now let’s translate it exactly in literal way in the exact way it was done in Arabic and see how we get a different meaning. It doesn’t mean that the previous meaning was wrong. It just means that we can get another meaning which is deeper than that.

So let’s see now what it’s telling us. And this is the literal translation.

[29:14] Indeed we sent Noah to his people. So he remained with them a thousand (lunar) years, but fifty flows (or cycles)…

Meaning fifty flows of a thousand lunar years and that’s why this verse is expressed weirdly like this because God could have said that Noah lived 950 years which is true however he didn’t say it like that. God said he lived with them a thousand lunar years but fifty flows. Fifty which we can understand today as cycles because we know that those flows are cycles.

[29:14] … Then seizes them the deluge and they were the wrongdoers

So fifty flows or cycles of a thousand lunar years, I hope you understand the way I’m understanding it. So he remained with them a thousand lunar years but we’re talking about fifty flows of those thousand lunar years. So fifty flows of a thousand lunar years is 50,000 lunar years. So from the year when Noah was born until Noah gets resurrected, there are fifty thousand lunar years.

Now by the way, now here I’m including also Noah’s life. Why? Because above here it says how long you have remained. But here it says how long Noah remained with them. The word here is with them. So Noah remained with them. What does this mean? This includes his life as well because Noah first was with his people when he was alive. Then when he died according to the Quran the believers go straight to heaven. His sons also went to heaven. So he remained with his people even after he died and until the end of the thousand years there. So this means that we’re counting both Noah’s life and death. So this means that from the year when Noah was born until Noah gets resurrected including his life after let’s say his earthly life in the next world when the basically one thousand years more, there are 50,000 lunar years.

So Noah will be resurrected around the year 2320. How I explained this already which is here in the plus 40 years. So the end of the world will come in the year 2280. We add 40 years to that. Here we don’t add a thousand another thousand years necessarily. However, we had to add them because it says how how long he remained with them with his people. It says his people and his people also includes his sons. Those are his people. So and his sons are in the next world will be in within those 10,000 years because they were believers. They believed with Noah. They got saved with Noah. So 50 50 so from the year when Noah was born until Noah gets resurrected there are 50,000 lunar years Noah will be resurrected around the year 2320 which is 40 years after after 2280 plus still stay among his believing people meaning his sons and whatever the people who believed with him for 1,000 years which makes it the year 3320. So again we came back to that same year in a different way from different verses.

And now all we have to do ask AI, “How many solar years before now is 50,000 lunar years before the solar year 3320.”

It looks like a long question but AI understands.

So Noah and the answer is the year is 47,217 solar years (because we asked about solar years) before now. So Noah was born about 47,000 years before now. And this is the answer.

And then the flood according to the Bible came when Noah was 600 lunar years old years years old. That’s in the Bible. That means that the flood came around 46,635 solar years before now. So about 46,000 years give or take approximately.

By the way, why approximately? And I hope it’s not going to be a long explanation. I’m saying approximately even though we found the exact year, because what the Quran does when the Quran mentions let’s say numbers of things, it always mentions whole numbers. So basically if there’s 12 months in a year in a solar year God is going to just say 12 but it could be 12.5 or 12.2 the Quran never mentions that point thing like a little bit more because God only counts the whole things. The Quran says that God perfected everything. God made complete literally we can in Arabic it means God made complete everything which means that if it’s not complete God is not going to count it. God never says in the Quran four and a half months. If it’s four and a half months, God is just going to say four months. He doesn’t count those. If God wants to be more accurate, he’s going to tell us in days. He’s going to say, let’s say, I don’t know how much is 4 and a half months, 135 days, let’s say. So if God wants to tell us that exact period and he wants to be that exact, he’s going to tell us 135 days. But he’s not going to say four and a half months. Never in the Quran you find half a month or half a year, never. The reason is that God counts only the complete things. Whatever is extra is not counted. Which means that when God says here 50 flows of a thousand years, it could have been 50.1 flows. It could have been 50.7 flows. It could have been 50.9 flows. And that’s a range of a thousand years. About a thousand years. So from 50 up up to 51, that’s about and all of those would have been counted 50 according to the way God counts things in the Quran. If you wanted to make it more exact, he could. But he said 50 flows of a thousand years, which means from 50,000 years up to 51,000 years. All of that is within that meaning. So that’s why I’m saying it approximately at this time because it could have been this time or up to a thousand years later or earlier whichever I don’t know. I think it’s earlier which whichever makes sense. You guys can figure it out.

Scientific Confirmation: Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) Cycles

Now is there scientific evidence that flood came around the year around this year around 46,000 or 47,000 years ago? And we can find that evidence in science. There’s this thing called Dansgaard-Oeschger or it’s easier to say DO. Usually scientists will use the the acronym DO cycles. What are they? They are abrupt rapid climate fluctuations that occur 25 times during the last glacier period. First discovered in Greenland ice cores. That’s why they are also known as as GI think Greenland interstadials because that’s where they were discovered. So they are also known as the GI cycles. But here we’re just using this DO cycles. So they were discovered in Greenland ice cores by these two guys. That’s how they got the name from their last names. And they feature a sudden spike in temperatures rising from about 5 degrees Celsius to 16 degrees Celsius in mere decade. So within let’s say a decade or two or three let’s say about 50,000 years whatever it doesn’t matter but it’s very short when it comes to climate changes followed by a gradual cooling over centuries. These cycles are among the most dramatic climate shifts in Earth’s history, highlighting how unstable the climate can be during ice ages.

Now, these cycles, as we can see, there’s 25 of those. And the one which is the DO12, the 12th in a row, DO12 started around 46 according to scientists. And by the way, this is approximate because they say that it could be about 500 years later or 500 years earlier like approximately at that time. But it’s quite accurate. It’s quite accurate within a within 500 years. So DO12 started around 46,900 years. Again, as you can see, it matches this this time year time period here. This is accurate down to a thousand years. This is accurate down to about 500 years. So DO12 started around 46,900 years ago (44,900 BC) and that’s kind of the start and it ended around 44,400 years ago (42,400 BC).

Now what do these DO cycles do? What is a DO cycle?

A DO cycle is basically the sudden heating it looks like they still don’t have an exact explanation. It was a sudden heating of the north here which is close to Greenland basically north of Norway. If you guys can see the world map here it’s the sudden heating and that comes usually from the Atlantic. Like the there’s some change in the flow of the Atlantic Ocean and there’s there’s sudden heating up to 12 degrees within a decade or so or a few decades. And that’s a big change. That’s bigger than what we see today. They make a big deal about the climate change. What they’re talking about is only one degree. Here, 12 degrees changed within about 50 years.

Now, what does that do for the rest of the earth? What that does for the rest of the earth, we have the map, the other map here, is if you look here at the south of Iraq, which is here, south of Iraq, and you can ask AI, by the way, ask AI, How does DO12 change the rain in the south of Iraq? I mean how does the DO12 the climate cycle the DO12 how did it change the the things in the south of Iraq it will tell you that it increased the rain and these blue regions are where the rain increased so it increased in Africa and south of Iraq in other places it made it more dry but here in south of Iraq which is where Noah and and Adam lived God willing I’ll deal with it another day so in that region south of Iraq it increased the rain flow.

The Heinrich Event Mechanics

Now what’s interesting is that yeah the rain the rain there were there was more rain even in Africa and even part of let’s say Asia here. However, why was there no flood there? The key difference here is that in that period of time south of Iraq was a desert meaning like very dry and everyone knows when it’s very dry like when the land is very dry not not everyone but like most people know that when the land is very dry it kind of becomes like cement and that’s when if the rain is sudden during that time there’s a flood like it happens even today there’s floods if you have a very dry region and there is a and there’s sudden rain, it’s going to cause a flood because why? Because the earth becomes so dry, it becomes like a cement and the the water doesn’t go inside like it the earth doesn’t suck the water. It’s just kind of it stays on top of the earth.

How do we know it was dry? Because this DO cycle came exactly or very soon after what’s called a Heinrich Heinrich event. What is a Heinrich event?

You guys can research this stuff. You don’t have to because I’m telling you, but you can. A Heinrich event is again one of those cycles which causes actually dry land in south of Iraq. It causes cooling in most of the earth but it also causes dry land in south of Iraq. What we have here this red graph is the DO cycle which measures the warming by the way this is the last 10,000 years you can see humans have kind of changed stuff but anyway so here we have a graph which is from zero up down to 60,000 years ago and here around 46,000 years ago we have DO cycle 12. If you guys can see it’s number 12. But also at this just at this time just before this the H5 Heinrich event happens so basically this is the closest they get. So these gray areas are Heinrich events. The gray areas are Heinrich events. The red graph is the DO cycles numbered. All of them are numbered.

And what we can see is that let’s say Heinrich event 6 and then DO cycle 17 are not as close. Heinrich event 5A and DO cycle 14 are not as close to one another. However, when it comes to Heinrich event 5 and DO cycle 12 are very close to one another. Basically, at the end of one, the other starts, which means that when it’s really dry in Iraq, that’s when a lot of rain happened at this time in human history. And that’s perfect conditions for a flood. Basically, if you have those conditions, that’s going to cause a flood in that area.

Now some sort of not as strong but similar floods might have happened later. We can see Heinrich events later but they are not as close to the DO cycles and people were more prepared and actually the I can show you another day why Iraq had changed by then it became like because the southern part of Iraq was actually not a sea in the past like this what they call the Persian Gulf it at that time it was actually not a sea it was land. So, but that’s another day another discussion when I explain about where where did Adam and Noah live. But here all I’m trying to say is that these are perfect conditions for a flood because it was a really dry cycle. Immediately after it rain came and this is let’s say scientifically we have strong evidence that very likely there was a flood in south of Iraq about 46,000 years ago which is about the time when Noah the Quran tells us that Noah lived. That’s it. And does anyone have any question quickly though because I spent too much time.

Q&A: Clarification on the Timeline Base Year

Oh, so Guillaume is asking, “Before now is before 2026 or before Jesus?

No, before now is before 2026. That’s how I wanted the AI to tell me the years. Typically they in science they will say when they say before now they mean before the year 2000 in when they measure these cycles. So they measure them from the year 2000 which is 26 years ago. Some scientists will measure it from 1950. It doesn’t matter a lot but they usually don’t measure it from the time of Jesus. If they measure it from the time of Jesus, they will represent it as before Christ BC. But here we we’re not talking with any BC numbers. None of these are in BC.

So see age here it says in this graph it says age ka means thousand years before present not before Christ before present meaning before 2000 or before 1950. So yeah, that introduces about 26 years of difference between what I found and what they found. So we’re talking about only 26 years difference, but not before Jesus. Everything I spoke here is not before Jesus. We’re talking before now or before the year 2000. I used it myself before the year 2026 because I wanted you guys to think really from your perspective. But usually scientists will say before 2000. One more question. So yeah, it’s important actually to distinguish that because when you do research, if you do research with AI and stuff like that, it might tell you a year and then that’s going to confuse you if you don’t know if you’re talking BC or BP. BP is before present.

Faisal is saying, “Very insightful. Thank you.”

So we know when Noah lived, which is around 47,000 solar years before now. That means let’s add about a thousand years because we already knew from the Bible that Adam lived about a thousand years before that.

Final Timeline Conclusion: Dating the Creation of Adam

So let’s make let’s say the final conclusion. So let’s add another conclusion here.

So Adam was created around 48,217 years about 1,000 years more so about 48,000 years ago from now (solar years) Adam was created.

Now if anyone finds paintings before that it’s because they haven’t done the study accurately. And scientists sometimes will compete to find the oldest painting. Or it probably might not be a painting. It might be just a hand sign or a or a line or something. But if we are going to use reliable scientists which unfortunately typically are western scientists you cannot find any painting which is older than that—human made painting; realistic painting or a statue.

For 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

 

Introduction: An Interconnected Historical Puzzle

Praise be to God. There is no other God.

What I want to talk about today is: when did Adam live? It’s kind of a heavy topic. To answer this question, it really connects with many other topics. To answer it, we also have to answer:

• When did Noah live?
• Where did Adam live?
• And where did Noah live?

They are all connected. I’m going to give an almost complete answer—almost complete, but not fully there—because to do all of those would probably take four Friday sermons. God willing, I’ll answer the others at other times, very likely in the following Friday sermons. But I think it’s still good enough to learn a lot just by tackling this issue alone.

The Clash Between Science and Direct Biblical Chronology

First of all there is a dispute between scientists and usually Christians. Muslims don’t go too much into this, but even Muslims will sort of lean towards the Christian perspective about when did Adam lived. Of course, scientists don’t believe in Adam at all. They say that humans—what they call the “Out of Africa” theory—evolved in Africa and then eventually, about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, moved out of Africa to other continents as well. This is what they call “Out of Africa” theory.

Then we have on the other side the Christians who, if they are honest with their Bible, believe that Adam was created about 6,000 years ago—about 4004 BC or something like that. That is also hard to believe, even though according to the Bible they can conclude that. Cities existed before that. Before that time, there were cities in today’s Iraq, in Sumeria.

There is a place called Göbekli Tepe; that’s a location where people gathered. Let me show it, I hope it shows. It is in Turkey. This is an ancient site where people gathered for whatever dances or worship they did. It’s a weird place, but it existed 10,000 years ago.

And by the way, these are accurate. Here’s the thing: the scientific story is one thing, but scientific data we cannot dispute. It’s a fact. This place exists. It’s in the southeast of Turkey. They did their scientific methods, which is usually called radiocarbon dating, and they found that it’s about 10,000 years ago—or 11,000, or whatever it says here. Yeah, 9,500 BC. So that’s at least 11,000 years ago, if not 12, depending on where you start to count it.

It exists. It’s there. Now, what story scientists will tell or the story religious people will tell around this, that’s a different thing. But it’s a fact. Therefore, we cannot deny this fact. It’s a fact that there were human settlements, there were people before 4000 BC.

Therefore, there should be something wrong with the Bible, or the part of the Bible which talks about this.

How the Biblical Timeline Was Calculated

To tell you what’s wrong about this—because Christians generally don’t know where it went wrong, and Jews don’t know where it went wrong, and as a result, Muslims also don’t know where it went wrong—for the first time, I want to pinpoint where it went wrong.

The way the Christians calculated when Adam lived is they pretty much relied on two chapters of the Bible:

1. Chapter 11, which gives a genealogy of who gave birth to whom.

2. Chapter 5, which goes from Adam to Noah.

They combine those two chapters together and try to figure out when Adam lived. Here’s how they do it:

They start from something which they know for sure. What do they know for sure? They know for sure when Jesus lived. But Jews don’t really like to start from Jesus because they hate him. So they might start from Daniel. Daniel lived during the time of Cyrus the Great. Historians know when Cyrus the Great lived. They see that Daniel and Cyrus the Great lived at the same time according to the Bible.

So they are like, “Okay, if Cyrus the Great lived at this time, Daniel must have been alive at that time.” Then they just check who was the father of Daniel, and how old he was when he gave birth to Daniel—was he 20 years, was he 50 years?—and so on.

They go backwards until they reach what they think is Adam, which turns out to be about 4,000 years ago BC. It’s ridiculous, but that’s what they conclude. It started with the Jews, the Christians copied it, and then some Muslims—not all, but some—also took that idea. It’s totally ridiculous. I just showed you stones which existed before that, made by humans.

Identifying the Flaw: Genesis Chapter 11

Where did it go wrong?

First of all, I want to introduce what’s called the Documentary Theory about Genesis. Most scholars who study this seriously—not religious people—have concluded that Genesis is just a bunch of documents put together. Different people wrote different documents at different times, and they were put together as chapters. Someone wrote one document, someone else wrote another, they existed in different part in historical and geographical contexts, and eventually someone put them together and created what we call Genesis today.

You can see this because:

• The name of God is mentioned differently.
• The styles are different.
• It’s not like the Quran, which is one unique, complete, consistent source.
• The stories restart many times.

Different people wrote this, and Chapter 11 is one of the most problematic ones because it’s easy to tell that it’s fake. I wouldn’t say fully fake, but a scribe tried to get it right and faked a lot of stuff. Some stuff might be true, but it’s pretty much a fake chapter. It’s not inspired; it’s not by a messenger; it’s just a fake chapter.

Comparing Chapter 5 and Chapter 11

How do we know? Chapter 11 is the chapter which connects the time of Abraham with the time of Noah.

In Chapter 5, we have all the years. Let’s go to Genesis 5. Here we have all the years: Adam lived 130 years, he fathered a son just like him, and then how long Adam lived.

How do we know this chapter is correct? Because it matches with the Quran. It says Noah lived 950 years, which is what the Quran says. There’s no big reason to believe this is not correct, because it matches with the Quran.

Now, Chapter 11 doesn’t match with the Quran at all. It contradicts it by a lot.

So from Adam up to Noah, we have the correct description of how people came to be. Then in Chapter 11, whoever wrote this chapter tried to fake it.

In Chapter 10, another author describes the people who lived after Noah, but he describes them as people. Even this guy—at least he got it right. I don’t think this is an inspired chapter from God either, but at least he got it right because his logic was: “Given that all people come from Noah, let’s look at the nations.”

He looked at who exists:

• The people of Sheba in today’s Yemen.
• People up north called Magog.
• A guy called Ashkenaz, where the Ashkenazi Jews get their name.

He logically went backwards and imagined these were names of people—which very likely they were, because even Israel gets its name from their father. Israel was a person, and all the people who came after him were his descendants—called Israel. So it’s kind of logical, but he doesn’t give any years.

See, Cush and Egypt are included. He’s actually giving nations. Eventually, that group of people became a nation. It’s totally logical. I can see how that’s right. He might have gotten something wrong. So we have names of countries here. I can see how this is very likely true, even though it’s not inspired by God.

The Chronological Absurdity of Chapter 11

Now, in the next chapter, Chapter 11, the author tries to do the same thing. He actually uses those names (from Chapter 10) of people from Noah to Abraham from the previous chapter, but he actually tries to add years to them.

Here’s what he says:

Shem lived 100 years and fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood; Shem lived 500 years and had other sons; when Arpachshad lived 35 years, he fathered Cainan.

He’s taking names that were nations in Chapter 10—which means a lot of time must have passed before we get these nations. There is a big distance from Noah all the way to Abraham. We have nations by then. But here this guy imagines that those are just people and forgets that they were nations. Then he tries to imagine how many years they lived with fake numbers, telling us how long they lived and how old they were when they had children. This is totally fake.

How do we know this is fake? First of all, it contradicts itself and the rest of the Bible. And by the way, Jewish and Christian scholars know this, they just don’t make a big deal out of it. If you add all the years from Noah all the way to Abraham (when Terah lived and fathered Abram), you know what happens? Abraham was born when Noah was still alive according to this.

If Abraham was born while Noah was still alive when he left his homeland to go to the chosen land, why didn’t he take Noah with him? Did Noah not agree with him? Was Noah not already a chosen prophet and messenger towards the end of his life? Why would Noah not go with him, or why would Abraham go against the community where Noah was the leader?

The Quran tells us that Abraham told his people not to worship idols, that they were wrong, and he left them. They tried to put him in the fire to kill him. But according to the Bible, Noah was the leader of that community because he was still alive. In those times, people respected their parents. So according to this, Noah would have been the leader of that idol-worshipping community, which would make Noah a bad person. That makes no sense. Both the Bible and the Quran tell us that Noah was a good person.

Historical Textual Manipulation

Scholars know that these don’t match. So what the Jews did secretly—that’s why there are two versions of the Bible—is they changed it. To remove that contradiction (they didn’t fix it at all, they were just trying to remove the contradiction), they added 100 years to all of these. That’s why today we have two versions:

• The Septuagint version
• The (Jewish version) Masoretic text

In that one, they added 100 years to all of them because they noticed the contradiction, just so that Abraham could live after Noah, not during Noah.

This shows that they manipulated it, which shows that even this could have been manipulated in the beginning. So this is totally fake, first of all. It’s taking some ideas from the previous chapter where it talks about nations, tries to imagine them as people, and then adds years thinking that it has to do what Genesis 5 does, which gives years all the way to Noah, but not later.

From Adam to Noah, Genesis does give us the years. But there are no correct years in the Bible from Noah to Abraham. These years we can see are fake because according to these years, Abraham and Noah lived at the same time, and it’s totally not possible. Because the Quran tells us Abraham lived in an idol-worshipping community. He preached to them, they rejected him, and they wanted to burn him. Lot left with him. In the meantime, what was Noah doing if he was alive? By the way, all of this Abraham did when he was young, which means Noah was still alive according to this, which is not correct.

Quranic Clarification on Abraham’s Father

Just to drive the point home, I think God mentioned in the Quran intentionally the name of the father of Abraham. Other than that, I don’t see a reason why we would have the name of the father of Abraham, just so that we know that this chapter is fake.

If we go to the Quran in Surah 6, Verse 74, it says:

“Recall that Abraham said to his father, Azar, ‘How could you worship statues as gods? I see that you and your people have gone far astray.'”

According to the Quran, the father of Abraham is a bad person and his name is Azar. Why would God tell us the name? God doesn’t tell us the name of the fathers of other messengers. God tells us the name because God knows that Jews have changed stuff.

Let me give you an example: God knew that Christians will call Jesus the Son of God. What does God say in the Quran? It almost always makes sure to say, “Jesus, the son of Mary.” Why does God say that? He doesn’t need to say that; He could have said just “Jesus.” But He repeats it and emphasizes the correct version so that we don’t fall prey or make the mistake of following the Bible in that issue. It’s sort of a correction of the Bible. If the Bible is correct, the Quran doesn’t necessarily have to correct it. But if it’s something wrong, the Quran makes sure to correct it.

That’s why we see the name of the father of Abraham, Azar, here. When you go to the fake chapter of Genesis here, you see that the father of Abraham is Terah. It’s a totally different name. It doesn’t have any connection linguistically; it doesn’t have the same meaning in the Jewish version versus the Arabic version. If you translate them, it still doesn’t make sense; they have different meanings. So it’s totally a fake name. This shows that this chapter is fake.

Once you exclude this chapter from the attempt to find out when Adam lived, then you are free to be objective and really find out when Adam lived. This is what’s wrong with why the Jews got it wrong about when Adam lived, along with a lot of Christians and some Muslims.

By the way, according to this, Terah is a good guy—Terah took Abraham to migrate and all of that. According to the Quran, we know that Abraham’s father is a bad guy. Even some Muslims were so duped by this that they thought, “Oh, maybe Azar is the uncle of Abraham,” because they couldn’t understand why the name is different. They said maybe Azar is the uncle, because sometimes people use the word “father” for uncle in today’s Arabic. But not in Quranic Arabic! The Quran is very clear: every time it uses the word “father” in the Quran, it’s always the father, never the uncle. Why would it be the uncle when it says father? God doesn’t switch words.

What I’m saying is, first of all, we should forget about this chapter—and this doesn’t mean that other chapters are wrong—we should forget about this chapter. What we are left with is to see what the scientists say: can we use scientific facts to find out when Adam lived? But before we go there, let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

The Scientific Narrative and Genetic Mixing

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

Okay. So, what about the scientific version?

Scientists do have the data and the facts correct. However, their story is not fully correct. I just want to say what the position of the scientists of today generally is—and when I say scientists, I mean people of this field, whoever studies evolution. According to them, people came out of Africa and then they went into other continents and evolved—like even in Africa, they evolved anyway.

The problem with this is that even before they knew there were problems with this—some of the guys already know, probably like 10 or 15 years ago I said that people are mixed with what I call sort of animal-like hominids or human-shaped animals, what today they call Neanderthals and Denisovans and some other ones. Before they had discovered this, I told the submitters back in Kosovo when I was preaching there that people have animal genes in them (before scientists discovered that). Then, within five or 10 years, they discovered it.

What they discovered is that the story which they believed is not fully correct, because humans had mixed:

• in Europe, they had mixed mostly with Neanderthals;
• in Asia, humans had mixed mostly with Denisovans.

Basically, they found genes of Neanderthals in Europeans, and they found genes of Denisovans in some very East Asian people. But the scientists still stuck to their story.

The “Ghost DNA” Contradiction

I thought, “Wait a minute, why do they stick to their story?” Because they still hadn’t found that even in Africa they are mixed with whatever animal was there—well, human-shaped animal—and recently they have actually found it. However, they still don’t admit it.

Here is their version of the story: according to them, people moved out of Africa and went to Europe and Asia (of course, some of them stayed in Africa), and there they got mixed with Neanderthals and Denisovans, with about 1 to 4% of animal genes. I’m calling them animals—whatever they are, like the Quran calls them later Gog and Magog once they are mixed.

So they got mixed, and their prediction came wrong. They predicted that if this story is correct, then we should not find animal genes in Africans, because Neanderthals only lived in Europe and Asia. So when people moved there and mixed with them, that means Africans didn’t get the chance to mix with them. They predicted that Africans shouldn’t have animal genes.

But recently, very recently, they found that even Africans have animal genes—not Neanderthal genes, not Denisovan genes, but some other sort of human-shaped animal. They haven’t informed the public yet, but they call it “ghost DNA.”

Scientists can be tricky: whenever they don’t understand something, they call it ghost, dark, hidden, stuff like that. They do the same thing in physics. Let me say, if they don’t understand why the universe is expanding faster than they expected, they call it dark energy. It’s just a made-up thing; it doesn’t exist. They just decided to call it like that, because they don’t understand. Basically, their model doesn’t fit with the data they found out. So they will invent a third thing to sort of make sense, but that third thing doesn’t even exist; it’s just a hidden variable. So they call it now ghost DNA, meaning: “Oh, wait a minute, there are genes—animal genes, human-shaped hominin genes—in Africans as well, but we’re just going to call it ghost DNA because we still don’t know what it is.”

Even before what they thought were monkeys—which they think we are descendants of—when people moved out of the Middle East, when Adam’s sons moved out of the Middle East and went to Africa, they mixed with that human-shaped animal a little bit. It’s not a lot; in all cases, it’s not a lot. We’re mostly human. We’re actually fully human, but we have some animal genes.

In my case, for example, this (arm) hair is unnecessary—it’s just for animals, but anyway, I have it. I got it from Neanderthals, I guess.

People get different diseases from that. Some people have diabetes, some people are not as smart, some people are not as pretty. We got all of these mostly from those animal genes. If it’s visible, actually, you’re more lucky, because if it’s not visible, you probably have it somewhere else—in some kind of immune deficiency or whatever it could be. It’s even more dangerous inside your body.

Reinterpreting the Data: Middle Eastern Origin

Back to the topic: the only story which makes sense with the data which the scientists are providing is that humans started in the Middle East. During that time, there were human-shaped animals in Africa, in Europe, and in Asia. As humans spread, they mixed with those, and that’s it.

However, the data also fits their story as long as they sort of call part of it ghost genes and don’t explain it. According to the data which the scientists have provided, for scientists and us, we can fit both stories into the data. Their story, though, doesn’t fully fit; there’s a part which they call the ghost part. Our story fits more. However, they don’t want to change their mind. I’m quite sure they will change it because there’s no other explanation.

Anyway, what I want to say is that the way I knew about this partly is through the Bible. The scientists cannot even say, “By the way, we found out that Neanderthals have mixed a little bit with humans, and that’s not in the Bible.” Actually, that’s in the Bible!

Biblical Narrative & Lifespan Shortening

If we go to Genesis 6 it says:

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God…”

And this is what they called the Neanderthals, and then later on they called Nephilim. Look at the name here: Nephilim are kind of called the sons of God because people didn’t understand what they were.

Imagine: we are sons of Adam, we are people, we’re living it, we’re kind of spreading through the earth, and we meet these new guys—we don’t even know where they come from. They cannot speak to us; they have basic language like dogs, or more like monkeys. They look almost exactly like humans, like stronger bones and stronger muscles, and you can see why the daughters of men would be attracted to them.

So the mixing happened both ways. One way is the daughters of men slept with them—not all of them—but that was enough to put the genes in the whole human society, because then the children would get married with someone else and stuff like that.

So what I’m saying is, here it’s explaining that the women, the daughters of Adam, got mixed. But the other side also happened, which is us. This kind of led to Gog and Magog— what the Quran calls later Gog and Magog.

I’m going to continue to read here:

“…that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose. And Jehovah (God) said: ‘My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for that he also is flesh; yet shall his days be 120 years.'”

Look, now God is even explaining why the life was shortened. Noah lived 950 years; now God is saying from now on your lifespan will be 120 years—much shorter. Why? Because they got animal genes, and those animals lived 20 or 30 years—like Neanderthals live 30 years. So you get those genes.

By the way, they got benefits from it. They got so much protection from certain things. I think white people use vitamin D a little bit better when they go to the sun; they probably got it from Neanderthals. So they got benefits from it. However, all those benefits came at the cost of shortening the life. Meaning that okay, now you have different genes, a better immune system, like you can get protected from mosquitoes and from that, which children of Adam didn’t have before because Adam was created in a perfect place where he didn’t need that. God says that He created Adam in the perfect form; he didn’t need protection from all of these very earthly things. But they got that protection by mixing a little bit with these animals. So it was a good thing in some ways, but it came at a cost: life became much shorter because when you have an immune system, it’s going to spend energy to protect you. So it’s going to shorten your life, protecting you now at the expense of shortening it later.

Then it says:

“The Nephilim were in the earth in those days…”

Nephilim in Hebrew means giants or strong people.

“…Nephilim were in the earth in those days and also after that, when the sons of God…”

meaning whatever creatures they couldn’t understand which looked like humans,

“…came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.”

And:

“…Jehovah saw the wickedness of men.”

Basically what happened: some females got attracted to the animalistic male behavior of those creatures and they had children. And those later became Gog and Magog. Even these can be called Gog and Magog. They become Gog and Magog in Europe and Asia, but like in in Africa, they don’t have a name. It’s something else.

The opposite also happened. The sons of man, meaning men, children of Adam, got mixed with some of them. Very small portion, probably like one in a thousand, one in a 100, whoever did it (the bad boys). It happened a little for slightly different reasons because the men were not really as strong. So I don’t think the females were as attracted to them, or they (sons of men) were not as attracted to the females of Neanderthals. Because they were not as good-looking. What happened there is they usually would take them for slaves and something would happen. So basically they would be like “Oh, here’s a woman I can kind of force her to wash my clothes, if they had clothes”. But eventually they might have had children so the reason was slightly different and we are the descendants of those people. So the mixing happened both ways.

Evaluating Science and Biblical History

Now, why am I bringing this up? Because as you can see, the Bible also tells us what scientists found much later.

Now, back to finding when Adam lived: what I’m saying is scientists cannot complain that the Bible got it wrong. Chapter 11 got it wrong by the way, that’s fair. But to say that the Bible got it wrong because we now discovered that they are mixed. Well, the Bible already knew this. We can already find it in the Bible. But also, religious people don’t have a very good argument to say that those facts are not true, because it’s a fact that people existed before that anyway.

Why weren’t they able to find when Adam lived until recently, until I found out? I’ve told a lot of you many times before, but today I’m making it the main topic.

Why can’t the scientists find out?

Because they are looking at the wrong data, the wrong evidence. When scientists try to figure out when was the first human, what they look for is bones. As we can see, bones can be misleading because people got mixed with animals.

In the early times, you can find a bone which is 30% hominin or 30% Neanderthal and 70% human. That’s going to look like, “Oh, there’s evolution!” No, there’s a mixing.

So the bones can be misleading, even though there is a clear distinction between Humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans. There are lots of similarities as well, so they will use that to still stick to their story. Eventually, I believe scientists will come to agree with this gradually—they are stubborn.

They are looking in the wrong evidence. They are looking for bones, and they are looking for tools usually: “Oh, did they use stone tools? Did they use knives?” They look for those things to distinguish when the first modern human evolve. Because they are looking at the wrong data, they will not be able to find it like that.

Now let me tell you what they should look for. First, they have to analyze what is the difference between Adam, or humans, and those human-shaped animals. I want to be more nice to Neanderthals because they are not really fully animals. They are kind of like human-shaped; they have a lot of human emotions. I think the name is hominin, meaning human-shaped. I like to use the word humanoid, but then they use it for robots in Japan and China. Is someone suggesting any name?

Bigfoot. No its not Bigfoot, Faisal. Bigfoot is another thing. And we don’t know if they have big feet. It doesn’t exist, by the way. You need a certain amount of population to have a Bigfoot; Bigfoot is a mythical creature which is supposed to exist in California or West America.

Homo Sapiens. Homo Sapiens includes humans as well as previous creatures, so it’s a very general term. I think they call them hominin, meaning human-like, creatures which look like humans, because Homo sapiens means smart humans, I think, and we’re not automatically agreeing that they are smart anyway. So I’m just going to stick to human-shaped animals. Sorry for being not nice to Neanderthals—part of that is us. I’m just going to call them human-shaped animals until we find a better name. They do deserve a better name, though, because I don’t think they are actually fully animals anyway.

It’s really hard to tell from the bones. Yeah, you can tell the differences, but there was mixing as well. So the scientists will say, “Oh, there was evolution,” because we can see some cases in between. While according to the Bible, we can tell them, “No, there was just mixing.”

Both stories fit the data. You can believe this and the data will fit, and you can believe the other story and the data will still fit. So you cannot tell the difference of what really happened if you look at the bones.

The Fundamental Difference: Language and Realistic Art

To understand that, we have first to understand what is the fundamental difference between Adam and those human-shaped animals, which are Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The basic difference, according to the Quran, is naming things. The Quran says God created Adam and He taught him how to name things. So Adam came up with names of things: “This is a tree, that’s a river, that’s a mountain, that’s the sky.” Adam came up with these. Neanderthals couldn’t name things; even angels couldn’t name things. Almost all of us know the story where God tells the angels to tell the names, and they don’t know the names. God says, “Okay, so Adam knows the names,” and animals don’t know the names (Quran 2:31-33).

The basic difference is language, but I’m talking about names. Can a dog name the eye? Could a Neanderthal say “I”? No. That’s the basic difference: Adam and the children of Adam, including us, can name things. We can give names to things; we can create an expression, a symbol, a sign which represents something else, a category of things. That’s naming.

The ability to name things is fundamentally the same thing as art. I’m talking about realistic art, not abstract art. Even a monkey can do abstract art—express anger, express emotions, express brighter colors, darker colors—that’s different. I’m talking about realistic art where you draw a human being, you draw a tree, you draw a car. You can never do that unless you name it.

Even with AI today, AI never knew how to draw new things until first they taught it how to speak, meaning the language model. After that, automatically we got those software which can create pictures and photos. That’s just an imitation, but that’s for another day.

The Theory of Forms

What I’m saying is it’s connected, because you cannot imagine the concept of “pens” unless you have the word “pen.” Once you think of all the pens of the world and you know what distinguishes a pen from a non-pen, and once you realize what it is that makes a pen a pen, that’s when you actually have the ability to name it. But also, because you know enough about it, you also have the ability to draw it and paint it.

The basic difference between Adam and the human-shaped animals is that the children of Adam can communicate names of things. And art is an expression of that. Because, if humans had tools, that tool could have been used because it just felt good. Neanderthals probably used stones to skin animals—they removed the skin from the animal, they used the stone. Neanderthals could do that. But could he draw a cat? He never could, because he was a human-shaped animal; he was not a child of Adam.

Only the children of Adam can name things, and as a result, only the children of Adam can make art—realistic art: like drawing a human being, drawing a cow, drawing a sheep. Only humans can do that. Angels wouldn’t want to do that—God created them for real—and animals don’t know how to. The only creatures which does it, are the children of Adam.

The conclusion is that to know when Adam was created and when Adam lived, all we have to do is look at until when did we have art. So that’s what I did. I asked AI to do it for me because it’s easier. To answer that question, we have to look at art. This will definitely answer the question: not looking at bones, not looking at tools—we have to look at art. When did we have art? When did Adam live?

Cave Painting Evidence Across Eras

I asked this question to AI:

“Going back to the past, during every 5,000 years, give me the two most reliable dated examples of cave paintings. Once you cannot find examples further into the past, stop. Give me a full list chronologically from the most recent ones to the most ancient ones. Do not include the ones which only have hand stencils.”

By the way, hand stencils are these. The reason why I excluded these as examples of art is because even Neanderthals potentially could have done this. All the way these were done is they had something in their mouth—probably it started with blood, but this is with paint—and they put their hand on the wall and blew into it. That’s how that was done. That’s kind of easy, and probably a monkey can do it.

Example of hand stencil “painting”

They might have learned it with blood, because in the past those creatures used to drink blood. Let’s say they had a mouthful of blood while eating, they put their hand on the wall, they sneezed, and they saw the wall: “Oh, that’s interesting, there’s a shape of a hand there.” So they kept doing it.

These are very likely human hands; however, what I’m saying is even Neanderthals can potentially do them very likely. So let’s exclude them; we don’t want to rely on things which are not reliable. So I told AI:

“Do not include the ones which only have hand stencils or abstract line figures…”

Because even a Neanderthal might have done some lines by accident, or he could have done an X by accident if he was angry and just scratched the wall.

“…so do not include hand stencils or abstract lines—only realistic pictures. Do not include the same examples twice if their date ranges overlap through many 5,000-year periods, unless there’s no other example.”

This is what I asked AI, and this is what AI gave me as an answer: a list of cave paintings—the list was produced by AI, but the cave paintings were produced by humans—which we definitely know must be by humans. They cannot be done by human-shaped animals; only humans can do these.

• 0 to 5,000 years ago: We have an example here in Somaliland of what looks like cows. Definitely human-made. A monkey cannot do this; only a human can do this. Why cave paintings? Because those were protected. People did these outside of caves too, but the rain would wash them away. In the caves, they were more protected.

• 5,000 to 10,000 years ago: We have this in Argentina: a human, a tree, what looks like the sun, some other humans, and these look like llamas or ostriches. Then in Peru, we have some other animals from 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.

What does this show? This means that until 10,000 years ago, there were children of Adam. It cannot be that Adam lived 4,000 years ago; he must be beyond 10,000 years ago.

Let’s continue and see where it stops. Basically, where it stops, probably a few years before that is when Adam existed.

• 10,000 to 15,000 years ago: We have this in France—a beautiful drawing. By the way, these are people who never trained in art; this was probably his first or second painting. He never went to school. Imagine sending a child today to school and asking him to draw a cow or a bull—could he do this good of a job? Probably not. This shows that these were actually fully developed humans; they were not evolving. They don’t look very good only because they are on a stone and drawn with fire, not with electricity. They started a fire, someone helped with the fire, and he drew a picture—and it was probably his first picture. Look how good it is.

• 15,000 to 20,000 years ago: Again, very advanced art in France. This looks like horses with some dots, or donkeys or whatever existed then in Europe. Picasso probably likes to do some of this stuff—look at Picasso photos and you’ll see similar things, or maybe he stole the ideas from here.

• 20,000 to 25,000 years ago: Again, a cave in France with shapes of heads of horses and lions.

• 25,000 to 35,000 years ago: Here we have animals again from 25,000 years ago. Some of the caves go over many years: someone drew something, and then 5,000 years later someone saw that and added something to it. But scientists can know exactly by carbon dating when each of them was done. Here we have a cave in Romania—look, the shape of the cow is amazing here. It’s really hard to do these shapes. You can see it’s sophisticated shapes; they didn’t forget the tail details.

• 35,000 to 40,000 years ago: We have these in Indonesia. This looks like a pig; this looks like a cow. Now, these are a little bit questionable because some say that these are even older, but some say that these are around this age.

We can see that until about 40,000 years ago, there were definitely humans. No one else could have done this except for humans—except for children of Adam—because they are the only ones who have the ability for art, and they are also the only ones who have the ability to name things.

The conclusion from this is that the children of Adam, or Adam, must have been created or existed before 40,000 years ago.

Archaeological Statue Data and Neanderthal Timeline

I wanted to do the same thing with ancient sculptures or statues. Here I had a bigger advantage because with paintings, some include different things done by different people, so it’s hard to classify them as one painting or two or three. But with sculptures, you can classify them: this is one sculpture, so basically you can count them.

I asked AI something slightly different to give me a better picture. Question to AI about the number of statues:

“Please tell me, to the best of your ability, how many human-made statues or sculptures have archaeologists found for each 5,000-year period from 5,000 years ago until 60,000 years ago…”

I excluded the first 5,000 years because there are millions of sculptures now; I just wanted to know about the past ones.

“…Include only the cases for which there is a scientific consensus?”

Because some of them are debatable: they found something which looks like a flute in Slovenia, and some say it’s just a bone which was bitten by a wolf, while some say it was used as a flute. So those are questionable. I wanted only the ones where scientists fully agree.

Here is the answer:

Age (years ago)	Estimated number of accepted human-made statues
5,000–10,000	500–1,500+
10,000–15,000	8–15
15,000–20,000	15–25
20,000–25,000	90–110
25,000–30,000	50–70
30,000–35,000	20–30
35,000–40,000	15–20
40,000–45,000	2–5
45,000–50,000	0
50,000–55,000	0
55,000–60,000	0

These are sculptures which people have found to exist from that time. How do they know that they were made in that time? Because they have carbon dating and also the layers of the ground and all of that; there are different methods.

And look where it ends: after 45,000 years ago, zero. Zero after that.

Now, I wouldn’t rush to conclude 45,000 exactly, because maybe those statues which were found were done at 39,000 years ago instead of 41,000, as there’s a slight range there. So, we cannot know the last one for sure. But based on the sculptures, we can conclude Adam must have lived before 40,000 years ago. Because definitely at 35,000 to 40,000 years ago there were sculptures, and we know these can only be done by humans. Which means that Adam must have existed by then.

So again, we’re reaching a similar conclusion: about 40,000 years ago, sculptures stop; about 40,000 years ago, cave paintings stop. Which means that Adam was probably soon before that—45,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago, something like that. It took some time for people to spread and start painting. Because a lot of those are in France; it took people time to get there.

This gives us the lower limit; now I want to know the upper limit.

The Recurring Pattern of Human Conquest

As scientists generally know, when humans came—what they used to call Cro-Magnon, but they don’t use that term anymore, though it was a more modern term—basically, the ancestors of humans, when Cro-Magnon came, they killed the Neanderthals. This is basically human behavior always.

What happened when Europeans went to America? What did they do? They killed pretty much all of them, even though they were not even Neanderthals—they were humans. But if a group of people finds another group which is a little bit weaker, they will kill them. How fast did they go extinct? About 200 or 300 years.

Same thing in Australia: they went there, there were people there—Aboriginals or whatever they call them, natives of that country—and what happened? They almost went extinct. If it wasn’t for the state, they would go extinct, they would vanish. It’s just that the state protects them, otherwise they would vanish. Why? Because that’s what humans do.

So the same thing happened to Neanderthals: humans came into existence, and they killed them all, pretty much. They also had reasons, like if your sister or daughter sleeps with a Neanderthal, of course you’re going to kill them. Whatever, I’m joking now. But what I’m saying is, they killed them anyway. They killed them anyway because they didn’t actually see them as humans—they saw them as animals. So one way to know when humans started to exist is just to check when Neanderthals stopped existing.

Question to AI about Neanderthals:

“Please tell me, to the best of your ability, how many Neanderthals lived for each 5,000-year period from 5,000 years ago until 100,000 years ago.”

Here we have a table produced by AI:

Years ago	Estimated living Neanderthals
5,000–10,000	0
10,000–15,000	0
15,000–20,000	0
20,000–25,000	0
25,000–30,000	0
30,000–35,000	0
35,000–40,000	500–3,000
40,000–45,000	3,000–10,000
45,000–50,000	8,000–20,000
50,000–55,000	10,000–30,000
55,000–60,000	15,000–40,000
60,000–65,000	20,000–50,000
65,000–70,000	20,000–60,000
70,000–75,000	15,000–50,000
75,000–80,000	15,000–45,000
80,000–85,000	15,000–40,000
85,000–90,000	10,000–35,000
90,000–95,000	10,000–30,000
95,000–100,000	10,000–25,000

The population didn’t change much over tens of thousands of years; depending on the climate and ice ages, sometimes they produced more, sometimes less. It didn’t change much. Then, when humans came into existence—which we already know from the paintings should be around this time—look, the Neanderthal population almost immediately starts to vanish. It goes to 8,000, then 3,000, 500, then zero. Within about 10,000 or 20,000 years, they go extinct. They vanish!

Why? Because humans killed them, or gave them diseases, or starved them by taking all the animals they hunted.

According to this, we can see that humans (Adam) must have existed before 55,000 years ago. In the other case, we found the lower limit; here, we are finding the upper limit, the more ancient time. Between those two limits, that’s where Adam was created. According to this table, Adam was probably created around 50,000 to 55,000 years ago. I know exactly when he was created, but I’m just kind of following the logic anyway.

Synthesis & Conclusion

What is the conclusion from all these tables?

• Based on ancient cave paintings, Adam must have lived before about 40,000 years ago.
• Based on ancient statues, Adam must have lived before about 40,000 years ago.
• Based on Neanderthal population estimates, Adam must have lived after about 55,000 years ago.

If we combine all these three facts, we reach the conclusion that Adam lived between about 40,000 years ago and 55,000 years ago. Between this time, Adam must have lived according to scientific facts.

God willing, in other Friday sermons I’ll tell you from the Quran exactly when Adam and Noah lived. The Quran tells us specifically—not a range, but the exact year. God willing, you’ll enjoy that even more. From science, we concluded approximately when Adam must have lived.

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

 

Sermon Introduction

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

In the last Friday sermon, we concluded that Dhul-Qarnayn is also the DNA. Before that, we concluded that it was Cyrus the Great. In the last sermon, we concluded that Dhul-Qarnayn, the one with two horns, is DNA. And then I said that there’s more than one meaning into what the one with two horns means. So the Quran mentions the one with two horns, and it has quite a few meanings.

The last meaning I want to talk about—because let me just say that there’s one more meaning which I’m just going to skip, is the DNA of the humans or human-shaped beings, and then there’s another meaning, the DNA of humans—for all of them you can actually learn something, but I’m going to skip because we can include them in the DNA in general.

The Magnetosphere: The One with Two Horns

But the one I want to talk about is more different. The one I want to talk about today is that the one with two horns—basically with horns, we concluded, are those like twisted shapes. In this case, another meaning is the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere is one with two horns. It has two poles.

Let me show the photo. So it’s this one.

So basically here we have a representation. It’s not a photo. You cannot take a photo of it. But it’s an illustration of the magnetosphere. What is the magnetosphere? It’s just basically a magnetic field which comes out of the earth, and it has a north pole, one horn, and then it has a south pole, another horn. And the further from the magnetic poles they are, they kind of bend more. So basically there are, there might be actually horns which are straight. As you can see, there’s two horns here. One in the south pole, one in the north pole. So we can understand that the one with two horns is the magnetosphere.

And let’s now read the verses of the Quran and see how it actually makes sense when we read all the verses and we can learn things from it. For those who like science, these sermons are fun in the sense that they learn both religion and science at the same time. Anyway, yeah, let’s read the verses which talk about the one with two horns while trying to understand them as the magnetosphere, the one with two horns.

Surah 18, Verse 83: Establishing the Path Downward

So it says—we’re going to read the same verses as last time, but now slightly differently translated. Again, all meanings are correct. Let’s not focus too much on why it was different last time. In the Arabic, it includes them; in English, we have to choose one specific meaning anyway. So let’s read now the verses in Surah 18, verse 83. It says:

[18:83] They ask you about the one with two poles (magnetosphere).—So it has two poles, magnetosphere—Say, I will tell you about it a lesson to remember. [18:84] We established it on earth—of course, the magnetosphere is established on earth. A lot of other planets don’t have it. Some of them do. We established it on Earth and gave it a path through everything. Why? Because it goes through everything. The magnetic field goes through everything on earth, including us. It goes through us. We established it on earth and gave it a path through everything. [18:85] So it followed a path, [18:86] until it reached the place where the sun disappears. It found the sun disappearing in a spring of black mud (Lava)…

Okay, let’s check how lava looks. Look, lava looks like black mud. So now in this case, we are going—actually, last time we went in the past and the future, one path, another path, but here now we’re going downward and upward. So as it followed one path, let’s say downward where the sun disappears. That’s where the sun disappears. It disappears downward. It found the sun disappearing in a spring of black mud. That’s basically the lowest layer that the sun reaches. I think lava comes from the mantle. I’m not sure, but I think it comes from the mantle of the earth. And the sun doesn’t go beyond the mantle, the sun rays beyond the lava.

…And it found a community of atoms. —In this case, we’re talking about non-organic communities— It found a community of atoms. We said, “O you with two poles (magnetosphere), you either punish (meaning repel them), or treat them good (attract them).” Because what do the magnets do? They either repel, they push away, or they attract, they bring towards you. So either you punish, meaning push it away, or attract it, bring it towards you. [18:87] It said: as for those in darkness, soon we will repel them—there’s magnets which are repelled, they are dark—then they will be returned to their lord and we will punish them with a terrible punishment. [18:88] As for those who believe (basically get attracted, and usually they are not dark like magnets) and did good, for them is a good reward. We will speak to them from our command gently.

And basically this pretty much includes pretty much all the other materials anyway.

Following the Path Upward Beyond the Atmosphere

[18:89] Then it pursued another way, [18:90] until it reached the place where the sun appears.

So now where does the sun appear? High, high, high above the sky. It found the sun appearing on a community of atoms. So basically in this case, let’s not forget we are following the path of the magnetosphere as it goes down through all the way to the earth’s core and then up all the way through the atmosphere and beyond. And then it’s going to follow another way all the way to the earth’s core. Where was I? Let’s continue reading. Okay, let me continue here:

[18:89] Then it pursued another way, [18:90] until it reached the place where the sun appears. It found the sun appearing on a community of atoms—Another way is now up—of atoms for whom we did not create any covering, (magnetic field), from it, (the sun).

So basically once you pass all the way through the atmosphere and beyond there, the magnetic field becomes less and less and there’s no protection from it. Because what does the magnetic field do of the earth? It protects us from the sun rays, from the sun radiation, the bad rays of the sun.

[18:91] Naturally we were aware of it.

Returning to the Middle Altitudes: Atmospheric Barriers

[18:92] It then followed another path, —now all the way down to the earth— [18:93] until it arrived between the two barriers.

Let me see if I actually got this right. Oh yeah, actually it is in the atmosphere still. So now it’s between the highest and the lava. Let me repeat it again, sorry. So first the path which it took was all the way down to the lava. Not all the way down to the core of the earth because it’s going to be mentioned later, you’ll see. And then it went all the way up, and now somewhere in between. Somewhere in between is the atmosphere, like neither too high, neither too low.

[18:93] Until it arrived between the two barriers, (the tropopause and the stratopause)…

Tropopause is basically the place where the troposphere ends, and the stratopause is the place where the stratosphere ends. These are actually important for us not to get UV rays. In the stratosphere, that’s where the ozone layer is and all of that.

… He found beside them a community (of atoms of oxygen) whose language it could barely understand (Paramagnetic).

Basically, oxygen is paramagnetic. What does paramagnetic mean? So as we concluded, there are materials which are non-magnetic, meaning that the magnets do not affect them, including the earth’s magnetic field. I don’t know, plastic—I’m not sure if plastic is non-magnetic, things like that. Because it gets attracted by the magnetosphere, oxygen is in between. It’s barely magnetic, so it’s neither magnetic nor completely non-magnetic, so it’s paramagnetic. But that’s why it’s “whose language could barely understand.” It’s mostly, almost completely non-magnetic, the oxygen, but there’s a tiny bit of pull. The magnets pull the oxygen a tiny bit, just a tiny bit. Anyone can check it with AI: “is oxygen paramagnetic?” and it will tell you, and it will tell you what paramagnetic means. It’s a tiny bit magnetic.

Gog and Magog: Radiation and Particle Threats

[18:94] They said—basically the oxygen atoms which are in the atmosphere—”O you with two poles, (magnetosphere), fast fires (radiation), And where the fast fires are placed (particle radiation)…

By the way, the radiation from the sun comes in two forms: one is in waves, which is let’s say UV rays—I don’t know what type of rays come from the sun, lots of different types of rays, different lengths—and particle radiation, like protons, electrons come from the sun shooting. And if there was no magnetosphere, they would actually reach all the way down to the earth and destroy the atmosphere, first of all. They would just kind of wash away all the atmosphere from the earth gradually, and then they would also destroy us. Those are dangerous radiations, especially the particle radiation, but all types of radiation. Basically, the only safe form of radiation is the one which we see and radio waves partly, but the one which we see is the safest form of radiation, which is the sunray the way we see it with our eyes. Everything we don’t see, including the phone radiation, all of that is a little bit dangerous, but not too much. I’m talking about the radio waves. But when it comes to waves with high energy like UV rays, X-rays, those are really dangerous, very dangerous. And particle radiation is even more dangerous, I’m guessing, it depends on how much there is. So yeah, the magnetosphere is supposed to protect us from that. So let’s go back to the verse.

[18:94] They said, “O you with two poles, (magnetosphere)—The magnetosphere protects the oxygen, meaning the atmosphere, from being washed away, being blown away by the sun radiation. “Fast fires, (in Arabic Gog and Magog), and the place where the fast fires are placed”, because where does the radiation come from? The radiation comes from the atoms. That’s where the radiation is placed. So it can come as radiation or as a particle. So the “fast fires, (meaning radiation), and where the fast fires are placed, (particle radiation), are causing damage on earth.” —And today scientists know that they do damage the earth, if they reach earth. “Can we give you something so that you can create between us and them a barrier?”

Cosmic Iron and Core Discontinuities

[18:95] It said, (The magnetosphere said) “What my lord established me on is better, but help me with strength. I will make between you and between them a barrier. Bring me layers of iron.” As we know, iron came from the cosmos, from up, and it went through the oxygen. And by the way, even in the stars, first it was from hydrogen, it was created into different types of metals, I think carbon and oxygen, and then through silicon, different types of other metals, it became iron. So basically iron was created in the stars, but through oxygen. So oxygen sort of brought the iron, or another way to look at it is that the iron came from space through the oxygen. So basically iron went down, oxygen went up.

[18:96] “Bring me layers of iron.” Once it filled the gap between the two barriers (that are called in science the Gutenberg discontinuity and Lehmann discontinuity)…

They should have called them barrier, but they call it discontinuity. What does it mean? Okay, let me explain. So, I hope you guys can see.

So, here between the inner core of the earth and the outer core of the earth, we have the Lehmann discontinuity. And here between the outer core and the mantle, we have the Gutenberg discontinuity. That’s basically how scientists know that there is an inner core and an outer core, because when the earthquake waves—or some other types of waves, but mainly earthquake waves—happen, when earthquakes happen, there are waves which spread through the earth from them. Scientists will go in different portions of the earth, different parts of the earth. They never reach down there, so they’ll probably go all the way to the other side of the earth. They have instruments which measure those waves, the waves from earthquakes. And what they noticed—and those waves will pretty much tell them what’s inside the earth with advanced models, of course, not just looking by detecting them—so what they detected is that there’s some discontinuity at this level and at this level, meaning that the waves bounce or they deflect or they go faster or whatever that means. So there’s a discontinuity there, which means there’s a barrier. You can think of it as a barrier where the waves bounce back or deflect or change direction.

So here, these discontinuities, we can call them barriers. Let’s continue reading them, which are down in the earth’s core. So basically now we are learning where the magnetosphere comes from. Where does the earth’s magnetic field come from? It comes from the earth’s core. And let’s see how it happens. So, I’m going to repeat some of the readings so I don’t skip anything.

[18:94] They said, “O you with two poles, (magnetosphere), fast fires (radiation) and where the fast fires are placed, (particle radiation), are causing damage on earth. Can we give you something so that you can create between us and them a barrier?” [18:95] It said, “What my lord established me on is better, but help me with strength. I will make between you and between them a barrier.

The Planetary Dynamo: Solid and Liquid Cores

[18:96] Bring me layers of iron.” Once it filled the gap between—by the way, layers again. In the earth’s core, the iron exists in what they call crystallized form, meaning that all the atoms are layered in exact specific rows. So they are layered—usually the iron which we find doesn’t have the exact layer in a crystallized core, they are kind of more disordered, but in the core, because of all that pressure, they have to be ordered in order to take minimum space. So they get sort of a perfect order which you can see as layers, either vertical layers or horizontal layers. [18:96] …“Bring me layers of iron.” Once it filled the gap between the two barriers, (which we saw what the barriers are), it said, “Blow until it made it fire.”…

So basically, what is it? Iron which is fire at the same time. We know that the earth’s core is iron, almost all iron and some other heavy metals, but mostly iron, and it’s in fire form because of all that pressure. The pressure heats it. “Bring me so that I can put on it molten metal.” And now we have—see,

…“bring me so that I can put on it, (meaning on top of it), molten metal”, —and that’s the outer core. The outer core is liquid metal. The inner core, ironically, someone would think because it’s hotter, it would be actually gas or liquid, but it’s actually solid. It’s even hotter, but it’s solid. That’s why they are distinguished. The inner core is solid metal. The outer core is liquid metal. And the difference between these two, as the outer core which is liquid rotates around the solid one, sort of moves—imagine them like rivers moving around it—that’s where the magnetic field comes from. That’s where the protection from radiation in the end comes from. Isn’t it interesting, at the depths of the earth we get our protection from the radiation from the sky?

[18:96] Then it said, “Bring me layers of fire. Once it filled the gap between the two barriers, it said, ‘Blow until it made it fire. Bring me so that I can put on it molten metal.’” (This is the outer core). [18:97] Thus they, (the radiation), could not go over it or penetrate it. We can understand this two ways: either it cannot go through the earth’s core, or it cannot go through the magnetosphere, because now the earth’s core is helping maintain the magnetosphere, and the magnetosphere is protecting us from radiation.

The End of the Protective Barrier

[18:98] It said, “This is mercy from my lord, but when the promise of my lord comes, he will cause it to crumble. The promise of my lord is inevitable.” [18:99] At that time, we will let them, (the two types of radiation), invade with one another. Then the horn will be blown. —Maybe invade here I think in Arabic it also says goes on top of each other because they are waves. We’ll let them go on top or through each other. The literal meaning in Arabic is wave, kind of like the wave goes on top. [18:99] …Go on top or through each other. Then the horn will be blown and we will summon them all together to create life again. [18:100] We will present hell on that day to the disbelievers. [18:101] They are the ones whose eyes were too blind to see my message, nor could they hear.

So basically, again, in this case we can understand it as the magnetosphere which has two poles, two horns. Let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

Understanding Multiple-Meaning Verses

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

I think what’s more important than what we’ve spoken so far in the last three days is to understand that all those meanings are correct. Honestly, it’s not that important that we’re talking about the magnetosphere or the DNA because all of them fit with those verses of the Quran, or Cyrus the Great. What’s more important is that the Quran says—let me say the verse first and then understand why it’s important. In the Quran, there’s a verse which says that the Quran has single-meaning verses, straightforward verses, and multiple-meaning verses. Those who believe, they say all the meanings come from God. As for those who disbelieve, they will try to choose one specific meaning.

Basically, what’s important, the most important part is that we don’t say, “Oh, it’s DNA and nothing else.” Well, if Dhul Qarnayn meant DNA and nothing else, God would say DNA. God would be straightforward. Or let say it’s legs and nothing else. Well, if God wanted to say legs, he would say legs. Legs are mentioned in the Quran. He didn’t use that word here. If God wanted to tell us legs, he would tell us legs. But here it’s a multiple-meaning verse. The one with two horns, which means many things, which means that we should be open-minded. And that’s what a believer is with multiple-meaning verses. So basically, believers are more open-minded with multiple-meaning verses. They say, “Okay, this meaning seems true, that also seems true. This seems a bit more true.” So all of them are correct. Now, not every—of course, the one with two horns doesn’t talk about legs because legs are mentioned in the Quran and they are specified what they are, but it does mean it does have more than one meaning. We sort of spoke about three meanings so far.

The Danger of Intellectual Dogma

And probably even more important than that is that we never fight over these, and especially especially when someone finds something themselves, if you’ve thought of this yourself. So, last time, kind of I helped a lot, but whatever. Last time when I asked you guys to guess, I think Adam guessed that it sort of had to do with chromosomes or whatever, the DNA. By the way, it was not a coincidence that he guessed it. I think Adam, just so you guys know, he studied in Harvard—is it Harvard or Oxford? Adam, can you tell us where you studied? Oxford or Harvard? Which one was it? Oh, Cambridge. Okay, sorry, Cambridge. One of those. One of those. Okay. So yeah, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he found it. We have nerds in our community who know this stuff. Anyway, I’m joking, Adam. I’m joking. So yeah, I think it’s good that he found it.

What I’m saying is, especially when someone finds it themselves—let’s say if you read something in the Quran and you’re like, “Oh, wait a minute. This could be DNA, or this could be that, or this could be that”—what happens is your opinion looks so much more in a better fit, a better opinion than the others. And then it can close your mind to other things. So it’s dangerous. It can close your mind to the idea that maybe it’s something else as well. And unfortunately, a lot of communities, including let’s say the Sunnis and the Shias, because Muhammad might have told them one meaning. So let say someone said, “Oh, what does this verse mean here? What does the middle prayer mean, for example?” and Muhammad probably said ‘Asr, like the afternoon prayer. So now they are stuck into it because that’s the first thing they knew. That’s the only way they want to understand it. The middle prayer in the Quran means more than one thing. It means the afternoon prayer if you measure it from let’s say from the first prayer when you wake up: dawn, noon, afternoon, that’s the middle prayer. Or it can also be—I think it’s more accurate, but both of them are correct—is the noon prayer, because the Quran mentions the night and the day, the night comes before the day, so the first should be the night prayer, then the dawn prayer, then the noon prayer. So now the middle prayer is the noon prayer. And both of them, by the way, are correct, and you can reach the conclusion about the five prayers, or four, or three, whatever is the situation in your location, with both understandings. You can reach the correct conclusion. That’s why God kind of mentioned it as the middle prayer.

And unfortunately, even let’s say the Quranists or whatever different communities, they only stick to one understanding. They just don’t want to change. It’s ideology rather than belief. When you just stick to one understanding, it’s ideology, it’s dogma. It’s not really belief. And this applies to verses with multiple meanings. When it comes to verses with one single meaning, which are the straightforward verses, of course we don’t keep our mind open to, “Oh, maybe this, maybe that.” There’s, for example, we know that there is only one god. There’s no other god except god. We’re not open to, “Oh, maybe there’s some half gods, maybe maybe Jesus is god, maybe he’s not.” We are not open to those ideas because it’s straightforward. The Quran is straightforward about that. But there other things, like Dhul Qarnayn. If you didn’t ask them probably they would, or if we didn’t inform them about this, they would probably never know. So it’s soft information. It’s information which has multiple meanings, and especially because it’s multiple meanings, that means that God put many meanings into one. So when you tell them one of the meanings, it’s never fully convincing. It’s quite convincing, but it’s never fully convincing because it’s only part of the meaning.

Partially Accepting the Text

Do you see the point? Like especially because it is multiple meanings, when I say Dhul-Qarnayn is Cyrus the Great, of course it’s not going to be 100% convincing. I know that. But it’s true. However, it’s not 100% convincing because it’s not 100% of the truth. It’s just whatever—if you whatever I don’t know divide it by 7, 12% whatever it is, 15% I have no idea, 15% maybe, something percent of the truth. So you’re just telling them part of the truth. Of course, it’s not going to be absolutely convincing. And by the way, for those who insist on only understanding one specific meaning, one specific way of understanding those verses or any other multiple-meaning verses, what they are actually doing is they are rejecting most of the Quran when it comes to those verses. Because let say you understood 1/7th of the Quran for those verses and you reject all the other meanings, what are you doing? You’re rejecting most of the Quran. And then there’s a verse in the Quran which says that the disbelievers are those who accept the Quran partially. So they accept part of it, but they reject the other parts. And that’s what people do. By sort of sticking to only one meaning, they accept one part but they reject the other one. And that’s a feature of disbelievers, not a feature of believers. Believers have it clear: straightforward verses, we are not open-minded to other meanings, there’s only one meaning; multiple-meaning verses, we are open to more than one meaning so that we can accept all the Quran, not only a part of the Quran. Someone might say, “Oh, which verses are multiple meaning verses, which are single meaning?” whatever, God willing I’ll make a video about it, but also it’s kind of very natural. You can understand. If the Quran says Dhul Qarnayn, the one with two horns, it’s not easy to understand, it probably has more than one meaning. God didn’t make it vague on purpose so that you don’t understand, it was because it has multiple meanings.

Q&A Section: Atoms as Communities

Anyway does anyone have any questions? And let’s keep it short today.

So, Faisal is saying, “Is 18:88 a prophecy of some sort? How does it attract believers only?” I’ll have to think about it. But where is 18:88? “As for those who believe, basically get attracted, and did good, for them is a good reward.” We are talking here about atoms, not really believers in this way of understanding it. It says, “how does it attract believers only?” So here we’re talking about—think of them as atoms, not humans, because all of these are the communities, are communities of atoms, not communities of humans. Does that answer your question? Okay, so yeah, it does answer your question. Anyway, because the whole time you were talking about atoms as communities or molecules, however you want to understand them.

One more question. I think Jad is about to ask something or say something, and then we’ll finish, God willing. So the Quran does mention the word community, but the word community doesn’t say community of people, any type of group of things. There’s a community of birds mentioned in the Quran, different communities.

Q&A Section: Translating for Multiple Meanings

So Jad is saying, “When understanding a specific meaning of a verse, should the rest of the Quran be translated to be related to that meaning, or it doesn’t need to be?” Okay, I would say yes. Generally yes. The answer is generally yes. That’s why we have to have many, many versions of the Quran translated, God willing. We don’t have to because we don’t have to understand the multiple meaning verses absolutely completely, but the more the better. That’s why, God willing, we’ll have many translations of the Quran. God willing, I’ll make more than one translation of the Quran. We’ve already done some Surahs. Because then now if we understand it in this meaning, as you can see, if we think of the communities as atoms rather than people, then we have to translate the next verse in a way where it makes sense, where we would have to say it or instead of he and things like that. So yeah, generally yes. In some cases, it might be the same—let say verses can fit, the same way of translating it can fit for both cases. So it depends, but for most cases, yes.

Closing Remarks

Okay, we have to go now. Sorry guys, because I don’t want to delay—whatever question you have, maybe we can talk another day. Because I’ve been holding very long Friday sermons recently, I want to sort of try to stick to approximately half an hour.

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