Category: Sermons

 

Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God. Some music for teenagers. When I was a teenager, I liked that music. I’m guessing teenagers like that music more. Now I’m not sure if I do like it anymore, but yeah, it’s okay. It made me smile. Today what I want to talk about, is the topic of over-religiosity. Typically, this would be a good topic, where with some topics I find that it’s useful to just be ironic or to sort of almost ridicule, which is always not a nice way to do it, but some things when you step back, they just look ridiculous. Really ridiculous. And I cannot help but take that approach. But this time I’m going to try not to do it. If I do it, sorry. And I’m going to try not to do it, not to be ironic with it or not to use sarcasm to drive the point home about this topic, because there could be reasons beyond our control. There are reasons beyond our control for some of us which make us over-religious.

There are different reasons why people are over-religious. And what do I mean by over-religious? When I say over-religious, I mean like unnecessarily religious or harmfully religious. Yeah, a person can be harmfully religious. Let’s distinguish between righteousness and religiousness. Righteousness is pretty much always good. Religiousness is not always good. Probably Pharaoh was religious. The Pope is very religious. Is it good? Not necessarily good. But still, because for some of us over-religiosity is a little bit beyond our control, I’m going to try to be nice about it and not laugh at it. But at the back of my mind, I’m always thinking, should I laugh at it? So yeah, but I’ll try to be nice. Let me try to be nice.

So yeah, there’s different reasons why people are over-religious. By over-religious again, I don’t mean over-righteous or over-sincere; what I mean is over-religious—the person looks more religious than he really is. There’s something off. And reasons for over-religiosity are a few, and some of them are beyond the people’s control and others are within their control. Because some of those reasons are beyond their control, basically they are not bad reasons. I don’t want to laugh at the over-religious people. Rashad, by the way, did laugh at over-religious people, which made sense, but there are some groups of people who don’t have things under their control, so it’s not good to laugh at them. Okay, so just keep that in mind.

Reasons Behind Over-Religiosity

1. Low Levels of Intelligence

What are the reasons why people become over-religious? One of the reasons is low levels of intelligence. Scientists have done studies; they simply ask people, “Do you believe in God or not?” And it turned out that people who are more intelligent were more likely to say that they don’t believe in God. And they use this as some sort of proof that dumb people believe in God. It’s not actually the case. The reality is that people who are not as intelligent are more over-religious. So basically, only about 10% of people really believe in God. But people who are a little bit dumber are afraid to admit it because they are afraid that society will judge them. And people who are smarter will be like, “Oh, there’s no God.” If they don’t believe there’s a God, they will say there’s no God, if that’s what they believe. So basically, in those tests, the people who are smarter told the truth of what they really believe, and people who are not as smart were trying to hide it because they thought that they were going to be judged. Because of that, you’ll get a slightly larger number of people among the smart people who say that they don’t believe in God. So yeah, one of the reasons for being over-religious, unnecessarily religious, or religious because you think society wants you to be religious, is low levels of intelligence. And a lot of you probably have noticed this. If you go into some cultures, you’ll see, “Oh, wait a minute, these people are really religious.”

Another reason why people—and this is beyond a person’s control, by the way; we never laugh at low levels of intelligence. We don’t laugh at it because intelligence is just mind beauty. Would you laugh at someone who’s not as beautiful? No, it’s not nice. It’s not fair. God created all of us, and God can make anyone ugly or pretty; it’s God’s choice. So, it’s beyond our control. And because of that, we don’t laugh at people who are not good-looking. But at the same time, for the same reason, we shouldn’t laugh at people who are not as smart. They are what they are. It’s okay. Everyone is their own person. It’s fine. Everyone is good-looking enough and everyone is smart enough for their own good. So yeah, we don’t laugh at that. However, it is true that people who are slightly less smart will tend to be slightly over-religious. And again, it doesn’t show anything about their true belief. It shows their level of religiosity; it doesn’t show their level of belief or their level of righteousness or their level of sincerity.

2. Poverty

Another reason why people might be over-religious is poverty. If you go to poor countries, you’ll notice that they are more religious, and they are forced by poverty. Because when you don’t have a job, when you’re poor, when there’s no other option, and there are people like that around you, yeah, you’ll kind of get into religious stuff unnecessarily. Like, for example, the bathroom needs to be fixed, you forget about it, you read the Quran or something. It’s a way to avoid the reality. Yeah, that might be over-religiosity. Yeah, fix the bathroom first, maybe. But whatever. But it’s okay. It’s okay, I’m trying not to laugh because, again, this is beyond people’s control. It’s beyond people’s control. No one can control how rich or poor they are. What does the Quran say? God makes people rich or poor. God gives and God takes. So if God wants to make someone rich, God will make someone rich. If God wants to make someone poor, God can make someone poor. It’s not in our control. And for that reason, if that causes a little bit of more religiosity, over-religiosity, it was beyond the person’s control. It doesn’t mean it’s good. Over-religiosity is first unnecessary and most of the time harmful. It confuses things. People who are not as good will seem better. People who are actually better will not seem as good. So it kind of confuses the situation. But it happens. It happens.

3. Overcompensation for the Past

The third reason of over-religiosity is overcompensation for the careless life of the past. So let’s say—and I’m going to use some really bad examples here—but let’s say someone lived as a prostitute in the past, and then when she becomes religious, she now totally has to wear the hijab. Like, good women do not actually remove the hijab, but her past is like a prostitute, probably. So it’s overcompensation. Or people who might have been, let’s say, really harsh in the past—they beat people, they bullied people—now they’re extra nice, they are the nicest person ever. It’s overcompensation. So some aspects of over-religiosity are caused by overcompensation, especially if the sinful life was too long. Let’s say until their 40s or 50s someone was a bad person—which is okay, anyone can change. I’m not saying it’s okay, but anyone can change. I truly believe people change. They really change. Like, someone really actually can be a prostitute and become a good person; it’s possible. And that’s probably one of the worst cases, but it’s possible. So people can truly change. However, staying in a sinful life for a long time, is going to cause you to overcompensate. Then you really want to be the best of the best, which is not really sort of in your range—it’s beyond your league, but you kind of are trying. That’s because you’re trying to overcompensate. You’re trying to overcompensate for past sins. And this is probably a little bit reasonable, to try to overcompensate, but it also causes over-religiosity, unnecessary religiosity.

4. Ego

Another reason—and this is probably a reason to ridicule—why people are over-religious is ego. They think that they are special. And this is probably the most dangerous form of over-religiosity. They become religious, they think—typically a Jew will do this. A Jew will be religious and be like, “Oh, we’re God’s chosen people. I’m the best. I’m better than others.” So typically, if a Jew is over-religious, it’s because of his ego. He thinks he’s special, he’s better than others, his life is more important than the life of others. So that could be one reason for over-religiosity. One of the most dangerous reasons is ego, thinking that you’re special, that there’s something special about you compared to other people.

5. Hypocrisy

Another reason for over-religiosity is hypocrisy. And this is actually probably not a good reason to mention because hypocrisy can cause both over-religiosity and under-religiosity depending on the circumstance. It will cause over-religiosity when someone reaches leadership positions—let’s say the Pope, some Imams, some leaders. They become over-religious because they are leaders, but it’s because of their hypocrisy. They don’t believe; they want other people to think that they are really special and really religious, so they’ll become over-religious. Even the stuff they wear, you can see the Pope—like, over-religiosity because of hypocrisy, but other religious leaders as well. But I don’t think we should really use hypocrisy as one of the main reasons for over-religiosity because hypocrisy can also cause under-religiosity. Some people want to stay in between; they kind of want to embrace religion, but they think it’s too much. So, let’s take the example of the prostitute again because it’s easier. If she’s a hypocrite, she might be under-religious. She’ll be like, “You know what, I’ll embrace this. I’m going to fix my life, but you know, maybe I’ll still keep my makeup. I’ll still keep my provoking dresses and all of that, and bad clothes. I’ll still keep the photos on my social media; they are there, they’re in the past, but I’ll keep them.” Kind of like under-religious. So, hypocrisy can also cause under-religiosity.

Typically, in our situation, hypocrisy causes under-religiosity. Because it’s very unlikely in the early generations of believers, to have hypocrites among the leaders. Usually, in the very late generations of believers, the hypocrites can become leaders. Fake believers can become leaders; that’s usually towards the end. But towards the beginning, a lot of leaders here know that you always have to give more than you take. It doesn’t benefit anyone to be a leader and a believer in this situation materially. It doesn’t benefit anyone; you always have to give more than you take. All the leaders know this—whoever is helping and whatever, you see that you have to give more than you take. And this keeps the hypocrites out. So this is not really our problem. When I’m speaking about over-religiosity, really, let’s not be concerned about it. Let’s not sort of think that, “Oh, this guy is over-religious because maybe he’s a hypocrite.” That’s actually not very likely until the end of the world. It can happen, but it’s very unlikely. Because hypocrisy typically, in the earlier generations, causes under-religiosity. People kind of want to be religious, but they are always looking for a loophole. “Oh, is it allowed maybe?” you tell them, “Oh, don’t eat pork,” they’ll be like, “Oh, is it allowed maybe a little bit?” or “Don’t drink alcohol,” hypocrites will typically be like, “But what if it’s a tiny bit? What if it’s during the night? What if it’s kind of like…” They seek loopholes. Anyway, so hypocrisy can be a reason for over-religiosity, but usually among the leaders. So let’s sort of forget about it.

6. Hyper-Religiosity as a Medical Condition

And another reason, unfortunately, of over-religiosity is what is called hyper-religiosity. And this is actually a psychological condition, a medical condition. If you search on chatgpt or whatever, what is hyper-religiosity in psychology, it’s a person who is acting really religious to the point of harming themselves and not being functional in society. Typically, this is caused by some types of epilepsy in the brain, or bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. So really, mental diseases can lead to over-religiosity, and these are easy to tell. They are really not that dangerous because you can tell, but they can be more dangerous online. Typically, these people cannot be—it’s harder to tell online when people are contacting us online, that the person has schizophrenia, or maybe he or she has bipolar disorder, or he or she has some kind of epilepsy which is causing them to be over-religious. So it can be a disease, but it’s not in their control. So it’s unfortunate. It’s unfortunate for them; probably the best thing to do is to just ignore it. But online it can happen more often. You might face some situation like that in your life where someone approaches you online and they want to talk about God or Jesus or whatever, and they are just bipolar or maybe they just have schizophrenia. It happens online more because you cannot tell their behavior—it’s harder to figure it out through typing. But yeah, once you kind of see that there’s something off, you just disregard them. The Quran says disregard the ignorant. By ignorant, that means also the people who don’t know much, but also people who might have a mental disease. Just disregard them. Don’t deal with them. It’s okay. They have their own problems. You can feel sorry for them and that’s it, but you don’t have to get them out of their situation. In many countries, there’s a medical system for that.

So yeah, these are typical reasons of over-religiosity. Some of them are bad—ego, hypocrisy potentially—but others are beyond people’s control. That’s why we should be careful not to laugh at over-religious people. However, over-religiosity is not a good thing. Typically, it’s not a good thing. Let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

Alhamdulillah. Ashhadu An la ilaha ila Allah Wahdahu la sharika Lah. Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

And all of us are victims of over-religiosity. I just did it right now. I didn’t need to say it in Arabic; I should have just said it in English. It’s not necessary online because you guys can say it, but whatever. Yeah, I just said alhamdulillah La ilaha ila Allah. I could have just said it in English, that would be enough. But I was a little bit over-religious, maybe out of habit. But it happens to all of us. I don’t know—am I overcompensating? Maybe I’m a little bit dumb, maybe I’m a little bit poor. I don’t know what’s causing it. But yeah, it can be caused.

Examples of Over-Religiosity

1. Using Expressions in Another Language

But let me now go to some examples of over-religiosity. One example is using expressions in another language. You ask someone, “How are you doing?” “I’m good. Alhamdulillah.” What? Okay, if the person has an Arabic background, fine. But quite often it’s over-religious, just the person trying to be more religious. Would he say it to himself? “Oh, today I feel good. Alhamdulillah.” They’d probably say, “Today I feel good, thanks to God,” when they think. But when someone else asks them, they are like, “Oh, I’m good. Alhamdulillah.” Whatever. And anyway, I’m trying not to laugh at it because it’s a good thing. But why would you say it in another language if that’s not your mother tongue, if that’s not your natural language? Why would you say it in another language? Does it just make it sound more religious? Like having expressions in other—or the Christians will be like, “Oh, praise Jesus, hallelujah, hallelujah.” Do they even know what it means? It’s kind of—it just sounds more religious. There’s some secret symbolism in there which they think is there. So yeah, it’s just over-religious. It’s just trying to act more religious than they truly are. When they exit that church or that mosque or that social gathering, they really are not those people. They are different; they feel different. But they are trying to be more religious than they truly can handle. So that’s one example of over-religiosity: just using expressions in another language which is not your language. Typically among the Muslims, it’s in Arabic. I can understand the Arabs, but not the other people. Why would you go to use an Arabic expression?

2. Naming Children After Prophets

Another example of over-religiosity is, for example, naming the kids after previous prophets. I mean, who would name their kid Jesus? Or naming kids in languages which are not their own. If none of the parents are Arabs, why would they name their kid in Arabic? Or if none of the parents are Italian, why would they name their kid in Italian? So yeah, one of the examples of over-religiosity is naming kids. “Oh, I’m going to name my kid…” Let’s say, what are some of the prophets? John, Jesus… John, why? It’s unnecessary. Or to go even beyond that, naming the kid according to the name of a prophet in Arabic—why not even John, like Yahya, or stuff like that? That’s over-religious. And how do we know it’s over-religious? The prophets themselves didn’t do that. You don’t see any prophet being like, “Oh, I’m going to…” Moses didn’t go like, “Oh, I’m going to name my kid Abraham.” Abraham existed before Moses. Moses never said, “I’m going to name my kid Isaac.” Isaac existed before Moses, and he was a prophet, and Moses had respect for Isaac, but you don’t see that example there. You don’t see that. You see the opposite. They try to name kids according to names which were not found before. I mean, some cultures have respect for their elders; yeah, that’s a little bit understandable. Even if, let’s say, some people named their kid Abraham, it’s because they were recent descendants of Abraham—people who came just after Abraham. So it was because Abraham was their father or grandfather or things like that, but not for religious reasons. So yeah, this is one—I don’t think it helps with anything. Naming your kid after a prophet or using words from the Quran which are actually in Arabic, if you’re not an Arab, it doesn’t make sense. That’s an example of over-religiosity.

And you can see it typically like so many Muslims—I mean Sunnis and Shia—so many of them will name their kid Muhammad. Muhammad. How many Muhammads are there in the world? Can someone help me? Probably a big—I think Muhammad is the most popular name in the UK, I’m not sure, because everyone names their kid Muhammad. Muhammad, what is it? It’s ridiculous. So imagine the kid walking around, “Oh, who are you?” “I’m Jesus.” Does it make sense? It doesn’t make sense. Plus, it’s a little bit against the Quran because the Quran says Jesus was the Messiah. Does it mean this guy is the Messiah? Or the Quran says that Aaron was a prophet, and if someone is named Aaron, does it mean this guy is a prophet? So it is a little bit against the Quran—not fully, but a tiny bit against the Quran. Now, if we have done it or we plan to do it—if we plan to do it, I’d encourage you not to, but if you do it, it’s fine. What I’m saying is, it’s probably because you are over-religious, and it’s probably because you’re trying to overcompensate for your past sins. You’re trying to be more religious than you can handle, and it’s because in the past you were not religious enough, so you’re overcompensating. So yeah, I myself am happy that, let’s say, my mom named me Alban, and my siblings all have Albanian names. Our mom named us; I think. It’s fine. Actually, typically in the Bible, if you look at examples, they had names which had meaning, like Jewish names which had meaning. I don’t know what Moses means; it probably means water or something like that, like the one who is found in water or something. So they had a reason why they named the kid in that way, but not some other people’s reason—their own reason. What’s the reason to name someone Jesus when you’re not living in the time of Jesus? So yeah, that’s an example of over-religiosity. However, it happens to all of us because it’s beyond our control. Some of us have lived different lives, so there could be reasons which are beyond our control which can cause over-religiosity. So I’m not going to judge it. However, I’m also not going to approve it. If you can fix your over-religiosity, fix it. It’s okay. I think it’s better if you’re not over-religious. You have to be practical.

3. Pushing each other for “Religiosity”

Another example of over-religiosity is pushing people. Like, some of us went to Hajj, and there were people pushing other people to go and kiss the Kaaba or touch the Kaaba, or be as close to the Kaaba as possible. That’s not in the Quran, but they try to do that. And why is that bad? Because by trying to be more religious than is possible, what they are doing is they’re pushing, for example, sometimes the opposite gender—men pushing women, women pushing men. How does that work? That’s against the Quran. Why would you touch a woman? Why would you touch a man if you’re a woman? It doesn’t make sense. But over-religiosity causes them to think that it’s okay. “Oh, in this case, it’s okay, we’ll push each other.” It’s never okay to push each other. I think probably in war, maybe in war there might be a reason, but in other cases, I don’t see a reason to push each other—or maybe jokingly, I don’t know if that’s a good reason. But what I’m saying is yeah, that’s an example of over-religiosity: pushing people to get closer to the Kaaba. Why would you push people?

4. Decorating Homes with Religious Symbols

Another example of over-religiosity is, for example—let me check my microphone if it’s on. Okay, it’s on. Another example of over-religiosity is decorating the home with religious symbols. I visited someone’s home once, a long time ago—not a submitter—and his house was full of religious symbols. Kaaba here, a verse there, a verse there, another verse there, another symbol there, the name of Muhammad there… what is it? It almost looked creepy. You know, if you go to a Buddhist home, there’s Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, Buddha. Or if you go to some kind of Hindu home, you have all these idols, symbols, different colors. What is that? That’s just over-religious. It doesn’t help with anything. Yeah, it can be even verses of the Quran. What? Yeah, this is probably an example of over-religiosity. Do you have a favorite verse from the Quran? If yes, then probably you’re over-religious. So if someone asks you, “What’s your favorite verse?” “Oh, this is my favorite verse, and I put it on the wall.” That’s over-religious. There’s no such thing as a favorite verse. All verses are equal in the Quran. God reveals all verses in the Quran; we shouldn’t separate them. But some people will take it, put it on the wall: “This is my favorite verse.” Yeah, we can do that for practical reasons. Rashad put up some papers of the mathematical miracle, kind of like investigating stuff, helping him to memorize stuff—that’s different. But I’m saying, like, people who now that we know the mathematical miracle, why would they even put like the number 19 here and there? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s over-religious. It has nothing to do with righteousness.

By the way, in the Quran, it says righteousness is not turning your faces towards the east or the west. Then it gives you a list of what is righteous. And putting stuff on the wall is kind of like—it’s religious, but it’s not righteous. Similar to how turning towards the Qibla is religious, not necessarily righteous. And by the way, a little bit of religiosity is okay. I’m here talking about over-religiosity. And what do I mean by a little bit of religiosity? Like Contact Prayers are religiosity. Yeah, we do The Contact Prayers, fasting, zakat, going to Hajj—that’s religiosity, but it’s also righteousness. But once you try to go beyond them, it’s probably over-religiosity. You’re just adding it on top; it doesn’t make sense.

5. Outward Appearance and Dress Codes

Another example of over-religiosity is how people look. Typically, women will wear a hijab—it’s just over-religiosity. They think that they are better than they actually are. Or a man will grow a beard. By the way, this beard which I have right now has nothing to do with religion. Let me just make this clear. The story of how this beard came to be is like this: basically, I found online that after I got married, some women—a little bit less than half of women—prefer beards, meaning they think that beards make men look better. And a little bit more than half of women think that if men remove the beard, it makes them look better. So I was wondering which group my wife was in. So I asked her, “Do you think beards make men look better or not?” She didn’t want to sort of admit it, but I extracted it from her—I pressured her. “Which one is it? Which one are you?” And she said, “No, I think beards make men look better.” So I’m like, “Okay, I’ll do this for my wife.” So the beard is just for my wife. There’s absolutely no religious reason for my beard. And the second reason probably is practicality, and in this case, it’s actually anti-religiosity. I heard once—and I’m not an atheist, as we know—I heard once Fidel Castro, I think he’s an atheist but also a non-religious person, they asked him, “Why did you grow the beard?” and he said, “Oh, it’s just easier, it’s more practical because I don’t have to shave.” Yeah. So I satisfied my wife’s desires while also doing something which is easier. It’s easier for me not to shave every day. But either choice is fine. What I’m trying to point out is my beard has no religious reason.

But some people will grow their beard for religious reasons. That’s over-religiosity. And the reason for that is even if it is good—which I don’t think it is—even if it is a good thing to grow your beard, it probably falls on that range of good deeds which is beyond 75%. Meaning that some of you guys probably remember a video which I published called The Global Forced Behavior. In that video, I said that for our generation, the maximum good we can do is 75%. We cannot be 100% good; we can only be 75% good. So anything beyond that is just fake; it’s not possible. And even if the beard or the hijab falls in that range, it’s beyond that, so you’re just faking it. It’s not you. There are so many other things you can fix before that. How about before you wear the hijab, first start with having less glitter in your dress? A lot of those women with the hijab will have lots of glitter. “Oh, I have this design, that design.” How about stop the glitter first, and then wear the hijab? But no, they wear the hijab while still maintaining all the glitter, all the fancy stuff. Yeah, remove the glitter first, and then wear the hijab. So what I think is, even if it’s any good, it’s beyond what would make sense for anyone today. So it’s over-religious. It’s not what they would have done; it’s just them ending up doing it for different reasons which have nothing to do with righteousness—reasons which either have to do with their low IQ, living in a poor country, overcompensating, or ego, or hyper-religiosity, which I don’t think is the case for most of them because diseases are rarer than we think anyway. So that’s another reason.

6. Praying for Sports and Games

Okay, let me give you actually a very good example of over-religiosity. How many of you—probably the younger men or boys will know this—have seen football players (but I’m going to call it the US version, soccer players) or even basketball players? I think with soccer players, they score a goal and then they prostrate, or if he’s Christian, he might actually do the cross before he starts the game or kiss the cross before he starts to play, or pray before the game. “Oh God, please help Arsenal defeat Real Madrid,” or something. “Please help Barcelona defeat Arsenal.” And why is this over-religious? Because even though it looks like it’s a good thing that the person is praying, what is he praying for? For a game. It’s a game. At the end of the day, it’s a game. Why would you pray to God for a game? It’s a game. First you have to realize that it’s a game. So what if one person from one team prays, and another person from the other team also prays, and they are both of the same religion? What’s going to happen? Which prayer is God going to answer? It doesn’t make sense. The only prayers where you pray to God to win is if the believers are fighting the disbelievers. But this is just two teams; it’s a game. Does it make sense to include prayer into the game?

By the way, I don’t agree with some institutions which try to prohibit it. They say, “Oh, sports should unite people, we shouldn’t pray.” Let them pray, whatever. But I’m saying it’s ridiculous. It’s over-religious. Yeah, they can do that, but it’s ridiculous. It’s over-religious. Why would you pray for a game? It’s a game. At the end of the day, you have to realize it’s a game. It doesn’t help the believers, it doesn’t help the disbelievers—it’s just a game. Since when did people start taking games seriously? Okay, has our life changed if Barcelona or Real Madrid won? It hasn’t. So, it’s just a game. And let’s say Ronaldo will go to Saudi Arabia to play, and then there, I think I saw a recent one, he’s like—oh, he says, Bismillah before he kicks the penalty. “Oh, I’m going to shoot the penalty. Bismillah.” Why? It’s a game. Why? So you’re afraid the penalty is going to go wrong. What if it goes wrong? It’s a game. Aren’t we playing to see who’s better? Not to kind of like include God into that. So yeah, that’s just over-religious. It has nothing to do with righteousness. It actually damages religion because it makes religion seem less important. It ridicules the religion by praying for a game. It’s a game.

7. Imposing Extra Dietary Prohibitions

Another example of over-religiosity is extra prohibitions. God, for example, prohibited pork. And they’ll try to be a little bit extra. “Oh, I don’t eat sugars. I don’t eat vegetables. I have a carnivore diet. I’m a vegetarian.” Okay, some of them might have medical reasons, but a lot of them are just over-religious thoughts interfering in your life. Unless the doctor tells you, “Oh, you shouldn’t eat meat,” why wouldn’t you eat meat? Or unless the doctor tells you, “Oh, you should only eat meat,” why wouldn’t you eat vegetables? It makes it difficult, let’s say, for your family. What are they going to cook? So yeah, that’s an example of over-religiosity, kind of those extra dietary prohibitions. “Oh, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.” It’s over-religious if you do it for a religious reason, if you do it thinking that it’s going to make you somehow better, function better, and it’s going to bring you closer to God. No, it’s not. God has laid down the laws which are in the Quran, and that’s it. You don’t have to go beyond that.

Conclusion: Be Real

To conclude, typically over-religiosity is when people go for more symbolical things which actually don’t change much, but they disregard the basics. They probably missed the prayer one day, but now they’re going to really focus on the night of destiny or stuff like that. That’s over-religious. God willing, I’ll deal with the night of destiny another day, where you’ll see that the conclusion is that, yeah, it makes sense to do something during the night of prayer, but typically when you have a mosque, not outside of a mosque. Still, what I’m saying is there’s these hints of over-religiosity, and all of us have them. I did it today, but they are not good. Let’s not fool ourselves with over-religiosity and thinking that it’s righteousness. A lot of it has nothing to do with righteousness.

And to conclude, I think we should be real. Be real. Black Americans have a very good saying, “be real.” Why don’t you be real? Let’s be real. And when you’re real, you don’t try to be who you are not. And that helps you prevent over-religiosity.

Anyway, I don’t know if I should conclude or should continue a little bit more. Does anyone have anything to say or some kind of example? Let’s try to keep it quick though. Let’s see if someone is typing. Faisal is saying, “I really like this sermon.” Yeah, I assume so, Faisal, you would like it. I don’t think Faisal is a person who’s over-religious. Some people can improve with over-religiosity. They can improve it a little bit. But again, a lot of that is beyond the people’s control, so let’s not judge it. It happens. It happens to everyone.

By the way, some of the stuff actually makes sense to be practical, to be over-religiously practical. For example, when we went to Hajj, the women had to wear the hijab, but it’s just for practical reasons. Just when you go to the border, you have to show the passport. It just makes it easier for you to do the other good things.

Trevor is saying also “Yes, great sermon.” Thank you very much.

Moneruzzaman is saying, “what about dhikr, some of the verses like last three ayats of Surah ‘Asr?” I don’t know which verses you’re referring to, but first of all, this is an example of over-religiosity. Surah ‘Asr—I don’t know, it’s Arabic. Can you tell me in English, or can you tell me the Surah number? But regardless, yeah, dhikr is good, but let’s not sort of try to package it into, “Oh, we do it during the night of destiny, we do it during this day.” Remembrance of God is good at any time; however, you don’t have to package it. I’m talking about the packaging. When you are over-religious, you package it. You give it a package: “oh, I’m going to package it into Arabic,” or “I’m going to package it into these circumstances,” or “I’m going to combine it with this night or that day. Maybe on Friday it’s better.” You know, remembrance of God is always good. That’s good. But once you package it into some certain forms—”I’m going to do it in Arabic, not English, not my language; I’m going to do this”—once you package it, it becomes over-religious.

Faisal is saying, “Would you say that hadith is over-religious or just as the wrong way to be religious?” It’s both, Faisal. Yeah, it’s both. Hadith is a good example of over-religiosity, but it’s also an example of fake religiosity and also an example of bad religiosity. So, it’s all of those. Also an example of good things gone wrong. You know, people with good intentions having led to the wrong conclusions, but maybe sometimes they were not smart enough sometimes. So, yeah, it’s an example of a lot of those.

Okay, so Adam Fraser is saying that his son’s name is Karim. Okay, it’s kind of a Quran Arabic name, but his wife is Palestinian, so it makes a little bit more sense. I myself wouldn’t probably recommend it, but it’s okay. May God protect your son, Adam. So his wife speaks Arabic, so it makes a little bit of sense to name his son in Arabic. It’s fine. Okay. Everyone is saying congratulations, Adam. Congratulations, Adam, for the son. I hope he’s healthy and I hope he has a good life, God willing.

Okay, so yeah, I’m going to end it here because I don’t want to—or maybe just a couple more minutes. Oh, everyone is saying congratulations, Adam. Okay, so I’m going to end it here and you guys can, if you want to continue to talk, feel free. 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.

I just want to do some administrative stuff : if anyone can check if it is possible get the translation live immediately. You should go somewhere on closed captions (CC) if it is there. I tried to change something so that we can enable it, but it did not work. If someone can inform me about that. Fannol is saying it is not available. Faisal also is confirming that captions are not available. God willing, someday we will be able to do that. I think there is a way to do it if I use some other software, but I do not want to learn a new software just for this.

Community Updates and Personal Notes

Maybe I have a short topic. So, does anyone have anything to share? I see quite a few people typing. I am just going to wait a little bit.

There is probably about a 10-second delay between the video and the chat because it’s only possible like that. Sometimes it takes time until I read something and then until you hear it. The delay is not on purpose, YouTube has it like this . It is not possible otherwise.

• Trevor is saying : “About one more month before my wife is due to give birth.” 
• Alban is saying : « Congratulations Trevor ahead of time, we we are excited to hear about it. Maybe you thought of a of a name of the baby ».
• Jad is saying : “Glory to God. May God make it easy and successful.”
• Trevor is saying : “Elijah.” 
• Alban is saying :  « The baby’s name is Elijah. I think it’s a boy’s name. »
• Captain is saying : « Alhamdulillah. »

I’m happy you are using the chat actually more often. I have received some more messages personally, even though most of them could have been sent here because others would like to know what me and some some other person talk about.

The Oral Reality of the Quran vs. “Fake” Writing Systems

Let me dive into what I want to talk about today, what I want to elaborate. I am not going to give sort of a final answer, I just want to elaborate a little bit more on the Quranic initials.

There are some doubts or disputes or disagreements among the different groups of people how we should count the Quranic initials. How we should write a specific initial, or things like that. And recently one of the submitters asked something about one of the Quranic initials : The N initial [68 :1], whether Rashad wrote it as as one N or two Ns. The simple answer is : it is not relevant. I want to dive deeper into why it is not relevant, why it does not matter, or why it can be written both ways.

To understand why it doesn’t matter how the Quranic initials are written in the Arabic Quran, probably the best video to start is the the video which I published which is titled : Explaining Quranic Initials, Predicting the Future. The idea is that the Arabic language as the spoken language is a very pure language. I would say it is the best language. I would say it is the closest to the perfect language today. But when it comes to how they write it, it is just human-made. It is just fake. So it really does not matter. It is not only my opinion, it’s probably the opinion of quite a few scholars of history, not religious scholars. This might sound a little bit biased, but it is actually not. 

What do I mean by « fake »?

And a lot of other languages are fake when it comes to writing. So basically, around the time of Abraham, there was a group of people called the Phoenicians. They lived where Lebanon is today. They discovered what we today call the alphabet. Even today it is called the Phoenician alphabet. And it is not only my opinion, it is the opinion of the scientists.

And what happened after that is that those Phoenicians who traveled from where Lebanon is today through the Mediterranean, they spread with them that alphabet. So they discovered the alphabet, and that alphabet had a meaning. What do I mean by a meaning? Like the letter A, for example, « alif », meant ox, and it was shaped like the head of the ox with two horns. Today we have flipped it upside down, and that’s why the latin « A » has that shape. So that is the original alphabet. There were alphabets before that, but they had no connection to anything real. For the cuneiform alphabet or the Egyptian hieroglyphs, I think they they just were fake alphabets because they had no connection to anything real. This alphabet had a connection to something real, which was, let’s say, the shape of the ox—that’s the name « alif », that is the letter « A ». So in that language, « alif » meant ox.

Phoenicians traveled around the Mediterranean and spread the alphabet. I would not say they went extinct because in today’s Lebanon, there is genes from those people. Probably today’s Lebanon is half Phoenician, half Arabic. Lebanese people today are probably half Phoenician, half Arabic, about that. But they did not go fully extinct, but they became less dominant, and they sort of lost it a little bit.

That alphabet was taken by other groups of people, specifically the Greeks, which are just across the sea. They took that alphabet and saved it and preserved it for the most part, not 100%, but for the most part. They did not do it on purpose. It is just that they had literature. They had philosophers who wrote, they had democracy where those could interact, and because a lot of more people wrote there than anywhere else on earth, it was preserved in Greek.

What happened with the Phoenician alphabet when it traveled to other regions?

It got heavily distorted to the point where it does not resemble anything anymore. Even the Arabic alphabet comes from that alphabet, but it does not resemble anything. Like the « A » is not an « A » anymore; it is just a line. Or the « L » is just a line and a partly twisted end at the end. What does it have to do with anything? What does the letter « A » mean? Does « alif » mean ox in Arabic? No. These letters do not have any meaning in the Arabic language. I am talking about the Arabic writing. Basically, they distorted the letters. They lost them to the point where we can just call them fake now because it has no connection. It is just a totally new shape, and pretty much all the letters are like that : a totally new shape, heavily distorted. And historians know how they got distorted gradually, but even that is not very clear because it is so heavily distorted.

By the way, when God revealed the scripture to Moses, soon after the Phoenicians had discovered the alphabet, God revealed the scripture in writing. As we know, God gave Moses The Tablets, and they were already written. Moses did not have to write the scripture; The tablets were already written. It was a scripture. It was revealed as a scripture, then they read it. And the reason why it was revealed as a scripture is because those letters had still not been changed enough. So it was still within the original authorized God’s alphabet, we call it like that. And why would God authorize that? Because it has a meaning. It had some reality to it. Probably it had to do with Abraham; maybe Abraham was part of the group who discovered it. I have no idea. But what I am saying is that is God’s approved alphabet, which is closer to the English alphabet today. The « A » is an A, the  « B » is a B, …

Of course we can choose to write in any way we want; it is fine. However, only one of them is accepted as the authorized alphabet, just like only one spoken language is the closest language to how God spoke to Moses, which is the Arabic of today. I know it was not exactly Arabic; it was proto-Arabic, proto-Hebrew, proto-Aramaic, but those languages were similar in the past.

When God revealed the scripture to Moses, he revealed it in writing because it made sense to reveal it in writing and not fall prey to the fakeness of anyone. Let me give an example : Let’s say God called Abraham, “Abraham.”  If eventually all the languages get distorted to the point where everyone now everyone decides to call Abraham, “John,” God is still going to call Abraham, “Abraham.” God does not fall to social pressure. He does not bend to social pressure to the point where he switches the terms or the words or the writing according to us. No, if we switch it, we lose it. Basically, we lose that connection.

So that is why after Moses, God did not reveal scripture anymore in writing when the alphabet was changed. The reason is that had God revealed it to the Greeks, they would not have the correct words because Greek is a different language. Had God revealed it to the Hebrews or to the Arabs in writing, like the way he revealed it to to Moses, they did not have the correct letters. So either way, it was not suitable anymore to reveal scripture in writing. And that is why all the scriptures after Moses were revealed through words, basically in speech, in oral form, then people wrote them.

Now, that writing is human-made; it is fine. I am not saying they should not do it, but it is human-made. Once we recognize that it is human-made, then we can see that people could have chosen to write it any way they want. Basically, what I am saying is if today I choose to write the Arabic Quran in another alphabet, let’s say in the English alphabet where each letter represents some certain sound, that would be just as valid as what they wrote in Arabic 14 centuries ago. They decided to write it like that. Fine, their decision. I am not saying they should not have done it. All I am saying is it is human-made. It is fake. That writing is human-made. Therefore, I am a human. They are humans. We both can choose how we want to write it.

Preserving the “Reminder” Over Human Script

This means that it is totally irrelevant how we write certain initials, whether we write « N-o-o-n »  with double N or with one N. What matters is the spelling, the pronunciation, the way we say it, is correct, because that is how God revealed it to Gabriel and then to Muhammad. So that is what matters. If in Surah 68 there is a letter which is « N-o-o-n » , and that is how the Arabs say it, so that is the preserved part. By the way, that is why the Quran says : « We have revealed this reminder and we will preserve it.”»  reminder means it is in the mind.

God never guaranteed that he is going to preserve the scripture. Of course, there is an original written scripture in heaven, but from all the books we have today, none of them are directly from God. The only Quran which has a connection to the original through Muhammad, is through the minds and the hearts of the believers. But what I am saying is that God guaranteed that he is going to preserve the reminder, meaning what is in our mind, but he has never guaranteed that he is going to preserve the written aspect.

So you can change it. You can go to any Arabic book scripture which represents the Quran and change it. It is a representation, it is a translation of the Quran. That is why probably the best way to call them is the translation. Does it even matter what how you write the translation? The original is still the original. And this is really important to understand : that the writing does not matter.

We can write it in English letters. We can write it now. How would we write Noon? So, this is how we are supposed to say Noon. How would we write Noon? In English, if I want, I can also write N-O-O-N like “noon”—like, you know, the time of the day. That’s still fine. N-O-O-N—that’s how is it written, how is it how do you pronounce it? Noon. If I want, I can write it, I don’t know, like some other way. In Arabic, both ways are read as Noon. If you write N whatever N-U-N, it’s Noon. If you just write one N, it’s, again, Noon. But let’s decide which which one should we do. We don’t have to decide; it’s all fake. It’s all human-made. It is a representation of the Quran.

What do I mean by « fake » or « representation »?

It is like a picture of a person. It is not the real person. If someone takes a photo of you and switches it, uses filters, does that change you? No, you’re still the original you. You still have not changed. So technically, discussing whether « N-o-o-n » should be written with two Ns or one N is just is the same as discussing whether I should right now in my video increase the brightness, or should I change a few pixels, use some kind of special effects. The video which you guys are seeing is a is a representation of me. It is not the real me. That would not change anything, and that is only a few pixels. Should I make the pixels where I point a little bit darker ? Would that change anything? No, it is just a photo. It is a human-made representation of the actual real thing.

So, as you can see, it does not matter. You can write it any way you want as long as there is a way to tell people that this is « N-o-o-n ». If you want, you can completely invent a new alphabet as long as there is a way for people to figure out that that letter there sounds as « N-o-o-n ». For example, in Surah 68, when you speak it, you say « N-o-o-n ».

The case where it might potentially matter is when it comes to the Mathematical Miracle of the Quran, because then, depending on how we write, we might get a multiple of 19 or not get a multiple of 19. Before we go into that, Let’s repent.

Implications for the Mathematical Miracle of 19

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

As we agree, it does not matter how we write the Quran. We can even write it with English letters. It does not matter because the Quran was revealed as a recitation. The « Quran » means recitation. But depending on how we write it, it might have some implications. It might have them, and it might not have them. It might have implications when it comes to the Mathematical Miracle of the Quran and what it means. Does it mean that Rashad made a mistake? Does it mean that Rashad did not make make a mistake? So there it might have an implication, but it might not.

Before I go there, first I want to say that a conclusion does not mean automatic implication. Usually when people write studies they will have an introduction, methods, results, conclusions. And most of the studies will just leave it like that with conclusions, because everyone knows that conclusion has a certain implication, and that is fine. But some studies will go into discussion of that conclusion or implication, they will discuss what does that conclusion mean, and how does that conclusion connect to the previous knowledge we had, and what does that conclusion mean for other things. And all I want to say here is : Let’s not rush with implications, because if we write the letter « N-o-o-n » with one N, it is not a multiple of 19. The total count of the letter N in the total surah is not a multiple of 19. But if we write it as double Ns, then it is a multiple of 19.

What I am saying is : Let’s rush with implications, because, God willing I will do a video clarification someday where I review the Mathematical Miracle of the Quran, because Rashad never told us the method. Rashad told us what he counted, what the results were, and what the implications were in the introduction as well, but he never explained the method. He never explained why he counted what he counted. Why count the letter « N » or why count the Bismillah, or why count the name of God. Intuitively we know why. But there is no specific method; he never explained that. And I will tell you why he never explained it. But what I am saying is : Because he never explained it, God willing, I will explain it someday. And when I explain that, then you will see that it does not have to have any implications to how we count the letter « N ». It does not have to have any implications. Basically, if it turns out that the letter « N » is not a multiple of 19 in Surah 68, there is a reason for it. There is a method for it. And if it turns out that the letter « N » should be a multiple of 19 in that surah, then again, there is a reason for it. There is a method for it.  I do not want to go into the details because it is going to be a specific video just for that : The method of how we count the mathematical things regarding the mathematical miracle.

Today, I just want to use an example to show that we should not rush and go into implications just because we have reached some conclusions. But let me explain something: There is generally a misunderstanding among the people about how they understand the Mathematical Miracle of the Quran. The mathematical miracle of the Quran is a miracle; it is not a code. Quite often, the people will say : “Oh, the 19 code, the mathematical code.” No, there is no code. It is a miracle. And the difference is that a code has to obey some specific rules, and based on that code, you can extract the scripture. But here we are talking about a a miracle, which is an exception to what would happen had certain mathematical principles been obeyed, had statistical principles been obeyed. So it is technically an exception rather than the rule when it comes to the mathematical miracle.

Complex Systems: Why the Quran Resembles Biology, Not Physics

Perhaps the best way to understand it is if I explained it with an example. But before I go to the example, let me just say that when we study the Quran, it should resemble more the studies which people do in medicine and biology, and not the studies which people do in math, or in physics, or in psychology, or in sports, and so on ; those studies where we are dealing with only simple exact sciences. They are only exact because they are very simple. Physics and math and chemistry are simple. People think they are hard, but they are really simple. They have simple rules :

That rule is always true. It is a simple rule. And then in some sciences, the rules are really not clear at all. But in biology and medicine, there are generally some rules, but there are so many complications that sometimes you get what look like exceptions. Elaborating on the Quran or studying the Quran resembles medical sciences, biology, and things like that, more than the other exact sciences. The reason for that is because the Quran is the most complicated thing on Earth. The most complicated thing on Earth after the Quran is human beings. So technically, we are dealing with systems which are highly complicated, highly intertwined, very complex. The most complex thing on Earth besides the Quran is the human being.

That is why it is really hard to to come up with rules of what does blood pressure do. Does it give a heart attack? Does it not? With some people it does, with some people it does not. But there are some rules, doctors know those rules, but no doctor can guarantee you that if you do a heart surgery you will not have complications or that you will not die, no doctor can guarantee you that. Because for most cases which they studied, where other factors are not affecting that situation, they can predict a certain result, but not always, because there is other factors affecting it. It is not that there is no rule to it; there is a rule, but there is so many other rules which affect it, it looks like it is not clear, or at least there is many interactions.

So what I am saying is that because the Quran is even more complicated and more complex than the human being, then studying the Quran should have some resemblance to studying biology. And in biology, we never have a code. Even DNA, it is kind of like a code a little bit. It is like we can call it the code of life, but is it really? Recently, lots of scientists have shown that it is not only the DNA which affects how a human being turns out to be. It is about 50% genetics and 50% the environment (Nature and Nurture). So you cannot pinpoint a specific thing where you can find the rules to all biology, to all life, because it is really complex.

In the same way, when we are studying the Quran, we can notice patterns, but one small breaking of a certain pattern does not mean that the pattern does not exist, just like in biology it does not mean that the pattern does not exist. For example, I can tell people that : “Oh, if you eat more, you you will gain weight.” That is pretty much true. But it is not always the case. You can eat more and train more; in that case, probably you will not gain weight. You can eat more, but maybe you are younger and you have a faster metabolism. So, in that case, you might not gain weight. Or you can eat more, but you are bigger or taller, so you need more energy anyway. Or you can eat more and you are less or more stressed. So, we know all of these how they affect the weight a little bit. But what I am saying is just because there is a principle that if you eat more you will gain weight, it does not mean that it is always going to be like that, because there is so many other rules and so many other factors.

In the same way, just because there is a principle that certain things which matter in the Quran should be in multiples of 19, it does not mean that it should always be like that. However, if it is not, there is a reason for it. There is a method to it, which I will explain in another time.

Analogy of the Real Dog and the “Fake Dog” : Spotting the Divine Signature

Here I want to represent with an example how Rashad did what he did, and and why we should not rush with what he did and and reach conclusions which he never reached. He might have rushed with some conclusions, but some people go beyond that to some other conclusions which he never concluded.  Let me go directly to the example :

The example, of course, has to be something biological, something living, because otherwise any other example would simplify it too much. Some of you guys might know that China and the US have created robots recently, and they have created some of them actually life-like. There is a robot which looks like a dog, a robot which looks like a puppy, some of them look like humans. But let’s take that the robot which looks like a dog. Imagine they dress it up with dog fur, dog skin, and all of that. Imagine it looks exactly like a dog, but it is a machine. But let’s imagine it looks on the outside exactly like a dog.

And then that machine dog, that non-living dog, or let’s call it « fake dog ». They put that fake dog in a cage, and then they put a real dog in a cage, and then they say it is too dangerous to go in the cage because the dogs are aggressive. In that case most people would think and say : “Oh, it is impossible to know which one is the real dog and which one is the fake dog,”  .Let’s say they both bark and they both look the same.

And Rashad is just like a kid who discovers how to tell the difference. How can we tell that that dog in that cage is the real dog, and this dog in the the other cage is a fake dog? How would we tell? How would we know? Imagine Rashad just took a piece of meat and threw it, one of the dogs ate it, the other dog did not eat it. He says: “Oh, wait a minute. That must be the real dog, the one who ate the meat, the one who ate the the food.” So there is some pattern there, some rule. So we established a rule: a real dog eats, a fake dog does not eat.

And this is also sort of in the Quran, it is not exactly like this, but in the Quran there is when the angels go to Abraham to tell him some good news. What happens is Abraham notices that they are not human beings when they do not eat. He prepares a calf so that they can eat as guests, and they do not touch the food. They do not eat. He thinks: “Oh, wait a minute, they probably are not human beings. Why? Because they are not eating.”  So there is similarities there.

What I am saying is that there is a way and a method through which we could tell which one is the real dog in the cage. We cannot touch them because they are in the cage, and they told us it is dangerous. So there is a way to to tell which dog is the real dog and which dog is the fake dog. In the same way, the Mathematical Miracle can tell us which book is real from God and which other books are fake, meaning human-made.

So we can tell the difference between human-made things and the things which God created. In this case, if you put them in a cage, the test which you would have to do is throw them food, and whichever dog eats the food, that is the real dog.

How does the “N-o-o-n” initial letters relate to all of this?

It does, because we should not now rush and say : “Wait a minute, this dog eats the food. The other dog doesn’t eat the food.” Then we throw a tomato: “Oh, this dog ate the tomato, the other dog did not eat the tomato.” Then we throw a green salad. Will the dog eat the green salad? Probably not; it does not like it. Now there is an exception to the rule. There is some food which the dog will not eat. So our principle which we created does not fully work for certain cases because dogs do not like salad. If it was a monkey, I think a monkey maybe would eat the salad.

Now, someone might say : “Oh, so now we have a new rule: the dog does not eat the salad.”  And even that rule is rushed, because if we mix the salad with some oil, maybe the dog will eat the salad because of the oil. So, it is complicated because it is a living system, it is a biological system, and there is so many principles to it.

However, just because the dog did not eat the salad, that does not mean that we did not prove that this is the real dog and that is the fake dog. Because we put the meat, we put a tomato, maybe we put an apple, maybe we threw a fish, or whatever we could throw, and we established that generally this creature will eat the food and that creature will not eat the food.

There might be some exceptions. Maybe this creature does not eat the salad. Maybe the “N-o-o-n” in the Quran should not be a multiple of 19. Maybe it is like the example of the salad. And God willing, I will explain just like with the dog. Because he does not eat the salad, you first understand that there is creatures they call carnivores, meaning that they only eat meat. There is creatures which do not eat meat; Dogs kind of mostly eat meat. But what I am saying is that we would have to explain that there is different creatures, and some of them prefer meat more than other foods, and this particular one prefers meat. it does not like salads.

Once you explain the method : There is differences but in general all creatures have some kind of food; Then you understand that you can tell the difference between a dog and a fake dog. Just like the Mathematical Miracle can help us tell the difference between a fake book and a book which was revealed by God.

Overlooking Minor Intricacies in the Greater Proof

However, just because there is some tiny details which do not seem to match, that does not change the fact that we have proven that the Quran is from God. Just like with the dog, if you throw the salad, it does not mean that it is not the real dog because it did not eat the salad. It is just an exception; dogs do not eat salad.

So that is the conclusion: dogs do not eat salad. The conclusion here is : “If we write ‘N-o-o-n’ as one N instead of two Ns, it’s not going to be a multiple of 19.”  But we have to know why. God willing, I will explain why : if it is not or if it is a multiple of 19, why is it ? Im not even going to go into that today, whether it should be or not, because I will explain the method for pretty much all the other things and how to count them.

What I am saying is we should understand the Mathematical Miracle as proof that the Quran is from God, but as proof which you would use for a biological system, because the Quran is a complicated system just like living creatures, more complicated than a human being. So in a complicated system, you will always have what look like exceptions. They are not really exceptions; what they are is other rules which you did not know before, other principles which when you combine them lead to another result. So just remember that example.

The Naivety of Pointing Out Unexplained Details

Until you have the answer why dogs do not eat a salad, it is a little bit not helpful to point it out. Let’s say one of you is a scientist—and you invite your kid to that presentation and say : “Oh, I have discovered how to distinguish a real dog from a fake dog.” And you take your kid with you to that presentation where you are presenting finally how to tell a fake dog from a real dog. So then you go, you say : “Okay, I’m going to show how that’s done.” That day you have a chicken salad, and you have some fish and some meat, and you put it in front of both dogs. One of them eats the chicken and the sauce in the salad, but leaves some of the salad. Imagine your kid says : “Hey Daddy, it did not eat the salad!” How would that help with anything? It would just point to something which does not necessarily disprove your theory; all it is going to do is cause some confusion or some doubt.

Now, if the kid already knew why the dog does not eat the salad, if the kid said : “Oh Daddy, it does not eat the salad, but dogs do not eat salad”  it is fine. If it was a monkey, maybe it would eat the salad. In that case, it is less naive. But it is a little bit naive to bring these issues unless you have an explanation, because most of the people in the world have not even heard about the Mathematical Miracle. To go into those details is really not helpful, because it is like that kid who points out that the dog who did not eat the salad. Now, some people have doubts and will say : “Oh, maybe that is the fake one because it did not eat the salad.”  We know the dog is not going to eat the salad, but it might eat it if you mix it with something else.

So, that is what Rashad did. Rashad just threw everything at the dog without any specific method : “Okay, I’m going to throw meat. I’m going to throw salad. I’m going to throw this.” And sometimes he might have thrown a salad mixed with cheese or something, and the dog maybe ate the salad. So, Rashad just put it in the conclusions. But maybe it is not exactly that. With cheese the dog will eat the salad, but without cheese, it might not eat the salad.

What I am saying is Rashad was just like a kid who for the first time discovered that you have to throw food to the dog so that you can know which one is the real one. However, he did not know exactly which food the dogs will eat and which food the dogs will not eat. That is my job. He did not know exactly, so he just threw everything at it. He tried any calculation : “Oh, let’s check this and let’s check that. Let’s check if this is a multiple of 19. Let’s check if that is a multiple of 19.”  He tried anything he could think of, he just counted it. If it was a multiple of 19, he presented it. If it was not, he did not present it.

Now, this does not mean that he was trying to fake it, because he discovered the principle. The principle is that the real dog will eat food, and the fake dog will not eat food. The principle is still there. There are some intricacies and some details where he might have “thrown a salad at the dog”, or maybe he reached the wrong conclusion for a tiny detail. So let’s say he threw the salad, the dog did not eat it, and he said : “No, I think the dog eats the salad, but today he is probably sick.” Maybe that is the case for the “N-o-o-n” initial letters, we might say  : “Yeah, the dog will eat the salad”  but later  : “I think it is sick because so far every food I have thrown to the dog, the dog has eaten it.”

Let’s not jump into implications about what does it mean or what does it imply whether we write the “N-o-o-n” initial letters with one N or with two Ns and what does it mean for the Mathematical Miracle. The principle is proven : The real dog does eat food; the fake dog does not eat food. The Quran as God’s scripture does have a Mathematical Miracle based on code 19 in it, and the other books do not. However, there is some details there. Just like some dogs do not eat salad; some things in the Quran do not have to be multiples of 19, but there has to be a reason.

Anyway, God willing, I will explain why a certain initial should not be a multiple of 19 and why another initial should be. I will explain that God willing in the future, but do not expect it in the near future. I already know the answer, but I do not think it is really that important. What is important at this stage is that everyone knows that there is a principle there and that there is a Mathematical Miracle. The details do not matter as much.

Analogy of the Swords and Stones: Broad Patterns vs. Minor Details

Let me take another example just to make sure that we understand.

Let’s say that we as scientists, we have established that certain objects which have the shape of swords were human-made, and other objects, let’s say stones, were not human-made. The scientist presents and says : “Oh look, this is a sword. How do we know that a human made it? Because it is really sharp, it is shiny, and it has a purpose.” Let’s say they discover in some ancient site that this long object, this sort of stone is a purified stone (metals are just like purified stones), looks clearly like a human made it. And this other stone, which looks a little bit like a sword but not exactly, it is kind of just a triangle or whatever, is probably not human-made.

The scientist presents that, and then points out : “Look at how genius the humans were; they even made the sword with two edges. Some swords have two edges. It can cut this way and the other way as well.” The scientist goes to present that conclusion, that finding, and again takes his kid with him. One of the swords doesn’t have two edges; one of the swords has only one edge. The scientist presents everything and says : “This is how we know these are swords. The humans made these, and these other stones are not human-made.” He presents everything, and then at the end, that kid says : “Yeah Daddy, but this sword has only one edge! And I heard you say that swords have two edges and they had a purpose.”

That does not defeat whatever was concluded. It is just a detail which does not matter much for the main conclusion, because some swords actually do have only one edge. I don’t know why, there is probably some deep science why some swords have two edges and others have one. Why would some societies build them differently? I am guessing because they did not want to hurt themselves; if it has two edges, if they hit something, it’s going to bounce, hit them back, and it might cut them. Maybe that is the reason. But maybe other people thought : “Oh, I am really good at it, so I do not think it is going to bounce back, so I will do both edges sharp.”

Pointing that out in a study where we are trying to distinguish between swords and stones does not help. It helps only after everyone has agreed that swords are swords, and now we are studying the details of swords. It does help. But even then, it helps only when you bring the conclusion along with the question; otherwise, it does not help. I am not saying we should not discuss this. I opened this for discussion, that is okay. But it does not help unless we give the method and give the reason. Implying that these details somehow do not prove the previous conclusion about the Mathematical Miracle is wrong. We can establish the difference between swords and stones, and the fake dog and the real dog. We can know the difference, and people recognize it.

Spiritual Maturity and Recognizing the Core Truth

The Quran says that the believers recognize the truth like they recognize their own children. We recognize that based on many different small factors. We know how their eyes look. How would someone recognize their own child ? He will say : “Oh, the eyes are like that, the nose is like that, the eyebrows are like that.”

A lot of you might have seen those videos online where the dad shaves his beard for the first time and appears in front of his own baby or very young child. Usually, the children will start to cry because they do not recognize their dad. To children, all you have to do is cut the beard. You are still the same human being, just cut the beard, change it a little bit, and they think you are a different person. They start to cry because they don’t recognize you, they think : “Oh, that is so different.”  They get confused because they are naïve children.

What I am saying is, even in this case, we recognize the truth that the Quran is true based on many small details, and changing one tiny, small detail does not matter. But if someone is spiritually a child, he is going to get confused, he will say : “Oh wait a minute, is it the same? Is it not?” But if someone is spiritually an adult, has been a submitter for a long time, has grown, and has realized what is important and what is not important, just changing a small detail will not confuse him. In the last Friday sermon, I had cut my hair. If some of you were too young, you might think : “Oh, is it Alban? Is it not?”  But most of you recognized me. I think Jad recognized me. He is like :  “Oh, you look good.” Thank you Jad for saying that. So Jad recognized that it is the same Alban, he just cut his hair.

What I’m saying that it is just acting spiritually like a child when we focus too much on those details unless we give the reasons as well, then it is different. Regardless, it is good that we talked about this subject. However, because it is not as important, God willing, I will not just do examples, I will actually give the details and the method of how we make the countings regarding the Mathematical Miracle in a future video. But I do not think it is as important, so I am going to leave it for the more distant future, God willing.

I do not think we should go to questions because it is almost one hour.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

Introduction and the Principle of Questioning Hadith

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

I want to connect I want to talk about today to the last Friday Sermon (An Alternative Approach to Dealing with Hadith). What we concluded in the last Friday sermon is that if someone brings us information from the Quran, we should not ask why that rule in the Quran is so. But if someone is bringing us information from hadith or any other human being, then we are allowed to ask why. If they say this rule should be like this, then we ask : “Why is that rule in such a way? What’s the reason behind it?” .There is other ways to deal with hadith, we spoke about them, but this is an alternative way. This is one of the ways, it does not have to be like this every time.

I want to use this principle and apply it to one of the hadiths which is quite well known. It’s the hadith based on which the Sunnis and the Shia (especially the Sunnis), have reached some conclusion that there are three «sacred» mosques, depending on how they express it. Some of them will actually just say it like this, but some of them will express it a little bit differently. But the basic idea according to them is that there are «sacred» mosques :

• The one in Mecca, the sacred masjid.
• The other one is in Medina, according to them.
• The other one is Masjid al-Aqsa, the one in Jerusalem.

And according to them : «All three of these are sacred, and and that’s a good thing to do some sort of pilgrimage in all three of them.»

By the way, this is not even a hadith. his is their conclusion based on a hadith. But let me talk about the hadith about what they call the three mosques.

The Hadith of the Three Mosques and Asking “Why”

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

And what’s our approach towards this hadith?

All we have to do is ask why. Why are we not allowed to travel to other mosques, but we are allowed to travel to these three mosques according to the hadith? The Muslim scholars cannot tell you why. They can tell you about the sacred mosque in Mecca, which is in the Quran because the Quran says so and God says so; that’s a good answer. But the Quran doesn’t mention the Medina mosque, and the Quran doesn’t mention the Jerusalem mosque as a sacred mosque which we should visit. So then if we ask why, they cannot tell you why.

But let me explain why and show you why those other two don’t apply :

Analyzing the Context of the Three Mosques

Let’s assume that Muhammed did say this : 

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

Then why did Muhammad also include the Medina mosque?

The reason is because Muhammad was there. There are some verses in the Quran which say you should emigrate to the messenger of God or you should follow the messenger of God. Because the Prophet Muhammad was living in Medina, people could be excused to travel to the mosque in Medina then, because they did not travel for the mosque, they traveled there to meet Muhammad. And that’s a good reason. In the past, they could not communicate online (there was no Internet). If they really wanted to get the message, they would have to travel there.

There are verses in the Quran which discourage the believers from meeting the messenger in his home. So it would be logical for them to meet him in the mosque yard, and then they would talk about the message or ask questions, or maybe they just wanted to hear what he had to say. So that is the reason why Muhammad might have told them that they are allowed to travel to Medina : because he was there. But he is not there anymore, so we do not travel to Medina; we are not allowed to travel to Medina.

(By the way, God willing, I will go to the idea of proving the concept of not traveling to other mosques except for the sacred mosque mentioned in the Quran, but here I am just tackling the hadith)

Then the other question is : Why did Muhammad also include the mosque in Jerusalem?

  The reason for that is because the Quran tells us that Muhammad traveled in one night from Mecca to the furthest place of prostration. So that means if Muhammad excluded that, he would have done a wrong thing to travel there. This doesn’t prove any rule; it just proves that Muhammad was careful not to exclude it for that specific saying because he himself had done it, and basically he did not want to exclude himself from the group of believers when he made a rule about it.

And it’s going to happen, God willing, also during the last days with The Mahdi when he travels from Mecca to the mosque in Jerusalem. That’s also sort of a prophecy. I’m guessing he’s going to travel via an airplane or high-speed train. (I don’t know what the exact method of travel will be then) But it’s going to be doable to travel during one night from Mecca to Jerusalem. But that’s an issue for another day.

What I’m saying here is that the reason to visit the Jerusalem mosque does not exist for us, at least. It existed only for Muhammad and the last messenger, Ahmed. So that reason doesn’t apply to us; therefore, we should not long-distance travel to visit that mosque as some sort of ritual or pilgrimage.

Conclusion

We are left with an excuse to travel to only one mosque, which is the sacred mosque in Mecca (the Kaaba basically). If Muhammad lived today, he would say that there is no reason to travel to visit any mosque except for the sacred masjid in Mecca. We narrowed it down to only the sacred masjid.

Scriptural Proofs Against Traveling to Distant Mosques

The main topic of today, the question is:

• Why are we not allowed to travel to visit mosques in distant places?

• Why shouldn’t we do that?

• Isn’t visiting a mosque a good thing?

Technically it is not efficient. That’s the main reason, but it also goes against some verses in the Quran. There are many verses, but I’m just going to bring two because I want to stick to the topic :

[2:187] :

“ Permitted for you is sexual intercourse with your wives during the nights of fasting. They are the keepers of your secrets, and you are the keepers of their secrets. God knew that you used to betray your souls, and He has redeemed you, and has pardoned you. Henceforth, you may have intercourse with them, seeking what God has permitted for you. You may eat and drink until the white thread of light becomes distinguishable from the dark thread of night at dawn. Then, you shall fast until sunset. Sexual intercourse is prohibited if you decide to retreat to the masjid (during the last ten days of Ramadan). These are God’s laws; you shall not transgress them. God thus clarifies His revelations for the people, that they may attain salvation. ”

It’s a good thing to retreat to any masjid during the last ten days of Ramadan while fasting. (They should be fasting, it is Ramadan)

(2:184-185) We should not fast when traveling.

Rashad translated it as we are allowed not to fast when traveling, but if you look it in Arabic, it says we should not fast when traveling. So basically, if you’re traveling long-distance (which includes traveling overnight) then you should not fast. This would create a contradiction.

Let’s say during Ramadan I want to travel to a famous mosque in Egypt because I want to spend ten days in that mosque as a retreat. In this way, I can apply the verse which talks about retreating in a masjid, but then that conflicts with the other verse which says if you travel, you should not fast. The whole idea of retreating to the masjid is an extra method of fasting : (Fasting + Retreating to the mosque). So there would be a conflict here: if you go to a distant masjid, you should stop fasting, but the verse says that if you go to a masjid for a retreat, you should be expected to fast because that is part of the Ramadan process if you decide to do that. Basically, one rule does not allow you to fast, and another rule says if you fast, you cannot travel.

Based on these two verses, this shows that it was never meant for the submitters to travel overnight to any mosque (overnight travel where you stay more than the night) except if you’re doing Hajj, and even then, it’s during the Umrah portion of the Hajj.

There are other ways we can conclude that we shouldn’t travel to distant mosques. One such case is that there would be a conflict during Hajj :

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

Some principles when establishing mosques with money from the community

Why am I specifying “with money from the community”?

If you want to establish a mosque alone with your own money, you don’t have to follow these principles. If you want to build a mosque in a triangle shape, feel free to do it with your own private money. That’s your choice. You can go to the North Pole, if you can, and establish there a mosque in a triangle shape. God will accept it if you do it with an honest heart. When you are using you own money, you can do whatever you want with it. But if you are using community money, you have to use it in the best way possible. Otherwise why would you be the person responsible ? The only reason someone is allowed to collect money and build a mosque is that he probably knows how to do it better. If he does not know how to do it better, then why should he collect it ? There will be no reason to collect the money. Let the people do it themselves.

What’s wrong with a triangle mosque? 

It has physical limitations. How are people in the sharp corners going to pray? When they try to bow down, they’ll hit the wall with their head. But with your private money, you have the freedom to do what you want. But if you are responsible to collect the money and then build the mosque and dedicate it to God on behalf of the community, then you should do it right, you should maximise the utility of that money.

These principles are only important if we are going to establish mosques with community money. If you do with it with your private money, then that’s your choice.

Rashad, for example, rented a place with his own money and did what he wanted. But when establishing a mosque with community money, we must make sure we do it the best way possible, because we do not want to spend other people’s money while we don’t know what we are doing. We should know what we are doing before we collect it, and where we will spend it.

Before I continue with the rest of the points, let’s repent.

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

Based on this, I want to establish some principles when establishing mosques using community money :

• Submitters cannot be expected to travel to there more than a reasonable walking distance

We are not expected to travel to distant mosques. Pretty much the rule is about a one-hour walking distance : if you have to walk more than an hour, it’s probably too distant for you to go to the Friday Gathering. That is the general concept from the Quran : we should not travel to any distant mosque unless it’s the sacred masjid in Mecca, and that’s only when we are visiting it as part of Umrah.

2. More than 40 submitters should live within walking distance

I think I have explained it but I did not record it. God willing I’ll explain it in the future because it’s a longer point regarding choosing a leader. But the second principle is that at least 40 submitters must live within walking distance.

3. The mosque should fit at least 100 people

It doesn’t make sense to build a mosque where people don’t fit, because those 40 initial people are going to become 100. That is easier to explain because there is a verse in the Quran which says that 100 steadfast believers can defeat 200. If would you establish a mosque which doesn’t fit 100 people, does that mean we are just going to lose? If you establish such a small mosque, if there is 70 people and the disbelievers come and attack us in the mosque, does that mean we are just going to lose ? We have to make sure when we establish a mosque that it is going to be protected, and that we are willing and that we can fight and win if we had to defend it.

4. The mosque cannot be a rented space from another owner

 (This is what Rashad did, but he did it with his own private money, that is different) 

We cannot rent a place from another owner and call it a mosque. This goes against the verse in the Quran which says that the mosques belong to God alone.

Let’s say we rent a property from someone named John. To whom that place belong ? That space belongs to John and God. But the Quran says it can only belong to God. If it does not belong to only God then it is not a mosque. It should be only God who owns it. The property owner must be God alone (It cannot even belong to us as a community, as a group). It should be to God alone. Meaning we dedicate it to God and no one can change it, and no one owns it. That’s it. Therefore, you cannot just pay rent for some building and call it a mosque. (at least it is not a mosque if you do it with community money)

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

(There is probably a few other principles but these are the key ones on which I want to focus)

Demographic and Geographic Calculations

Let’s do some calculations based on these principles :

• • The world has about 8 billion people.

• In a typical city, there are about 300,000 people living within a one-hour walking distance. (I am focusing on the one-hour radius because, as established, we are not allowed to travel to distant mosques)

• Out of those 300,000 people, at least 40 need to be submitters to make establishing a mosque feasible and logical.

If you combine these three facts, the math dictates that we would need to reach about one million submitters worldwide to begin establishing local mosques. Anyone who knows basic math can calculate this:

 

 

This sounds like terrible news (but it is not as you will see) because we are an online community that is currently very far away from a million members. However, that calculation is true only under the assumption that submitters are distributed perfectly evenly across the globe. The assumption here is that wherever you go, you would have the same proportion of submitters. But our distribution is not completely homogeneous. We have concentrated pockets of people; recently we have seen pockets of people in Turkey, earlier in Bangladesh, and before that in Kosovo. For example : there are quite a few submitters in Kosovo, but right next door in Bulgaria, there are no submitters who have joined us.

Accounting for this lack of homogeneity yields a more realistic number : 

So we need about 50,000 submitters worldwide to start having solutions through mosques for a meaningful proportion of submitters to worship God together as groups. According to this calculation, it is not very reasonable to expect mosques until we get about 50,000 submitters online. And that’s a lot.

There is a large gap. We are about 60 submitters now, and we need only about 50,000 more submitters to have meaningful solutions through mosques to be able to worship God together. There is a really large gap between where we are, and where we have to be to have meaningful solutions through mosques, because in the past, that is how people were expected to meet to be able to worship God together.

What we can do to solve this problem ?

• For about 25% of people, there is no problem to solve. (The problem is unsolvable)

In my video titled The Global Forced Behaviour, I explain that for our time, there is no solution for about 25% of the people or 25% of the cases. They might be in a village too far away or in a workplace where the manager does not allow them. I am not saying that is a good reason, what I am saying is that for 25% of them there is nothing you can do about it. They are just too far to reach. That is no problem because that is how people were meant to exist today. For example : In the past let’s say Muhammad did go to the mosque during Fridays, but he also probably met his cousins. When was the last time you met your cousin ? Probably a long time ago. So that means the world has changed. And there is no meaningful solutions for about 25% of the cases. It is what it is. It’s today’s world :we are not fully blessed, we cannot apply the Quran more than 75%. Even if we go crazy and try our hardest, it is not possible. But it’s fine. It is our destiny for today now.

That means we can now reduce that 50,000 to about 37,500, because for the rest of them we cannot even find a solution even if we want to. So now the updated calculation is that we have to reach 37,500 people to have meaningful solutions for a significant number of submitters to worship God together through mosques. So now we have come down from a million to 37,500.

Reducing the gap through Efforts

We have done lots of work to reduce it that even more, reducing the gap through effort. So basically the 37,500 is true only if we do nothing about it. If we just keep preaching like this and we do nothing about it then the 37,500 is true but we can reduce the gap if we make efforts.

Let’s see some efforts we have made :

• Focusing on English speakers to preach while young people improve their English can reduce the gap from 37,000 to about 8,000 : How?

Right now I am speaking in English. I think about 20% of people in the world understand English. Right now those who only speak Chinese but cannot speak English right now are not understanding us. So if we focus on that 20% instead of all the world, that reduces the number for us so we can focus on areas where there is more English speakers. That means it’s more likely to achieve the goal of establishing mosques for those people earlier. Let’s say we are focusing on the hot zones, the more important zones.

 If you’re young, (let’s say under 40 but especially if you’re under 35) and you are not understanding what I’m saying please learn English. You have time. Someday about 5-10 years down the road you will understand better and you will feel better about it, and you can communicate with other submitters and it’s going to be useful for everyday. If you’re under 35, please try to learn English. And so doing these two things : Focusing on English + Young people learning English, that reduces the 37,000 to 8,000 only. (Some people already know English, even the old people). So see, we are getting closer to achieving the goal. We are reducing the gap.

• Doing Friday Sermons online (8000 → 4000) :

Doing Friday Sermons online reduces the goal even more because that fulfills half of that expectation, pretty much we do half of what we are expected to do which is the Sermon part, but then we do the the contact prayer separately. So it fulfills half of the need to be together with other people. So basically when people in the past did the Friday Sermon in mosques in Muhammad’s time, they had this sense of fulfillment. They were doing it as a group, it was a celebration, it was nice. It was a good feeling as a group.

We get that feeling for only half of the time when we do it online because when we finish this we are not going to do the prayer together, we are just going to do it separately. So this reduces the goal to about 4,000 people.

By the way, I know these numbers don’t make much sense in this case, because I am using this logic : (I use this logic a lot by the way) 

Let’s say you had two boxes :

• One of one of them has $10.
• The other one has zero dollars.

and someone told you : “If I give you $6, would you take the $6 or choose one of the boxes?”  It could be zero or 10, but I would choose six because the average of zero and 10 is five. Six is better than five. I know there’s no $5 in the boxes. I know that one box either has zero or $10. But I can think of them as if though whichever box I choose is going to have $5. That’s the way to think about it : to turn probabilities into an actual expected result.

 So basically here I am turning the probability of 50% into an actual expected number, which makes sense only to answer our fulfillment of the need, it’s not some sort of a logical conclusion. What I am saying is that because of the Friday sermons, we are not in a very big emergency to reach 8,000, 4,000 would be enough because we have already a solution for half of the problem. Let’s say that biggest solution to our problem is doing the Friday Sermon online.

• Going to Hajj together every 5 years (4000 → 3000) :

 Now going to Hajj together every five years also reduces this problem , it reduces the goal from about 4,000 down to 3,000. By the way if we went to Hajj every year for seven days, the whole problem would be gone. How ? Because we do the Friday Sermons online, and during the year we are naturally expected to pray together 52 prayers, because the year has 52 weeks. So basically we would have to do the two rakaats of prayer 52 times within a year to reach that fulfillment of being part of a group, to be fully fulfilled as a group. But you can do that during Hajj if you stay for 10 days and you do five prayers each of those days, then you get 50 prayers together. So we would be fulfilling that during Hajj.

However, it is not a full solution even though technically we could fully solve the situation through Hajj and that’s it. That would be just enough if we went to Hajj every year. But I don’t want to propose that solution fully because it’s not fair to the people who cannot afford it. We went to during this year and it was about 20 out of 40 submitters then, so only half of the people managed to come to Hajj. But what about the other half ? We wouldn’t have a solution for them.

Even though this would solve the problem completely, it would only solve it if people could afford it or if people were rich enough. So because I care about the poor people as well, I don’t want to solve the gap fully through Hajj. Maybe we can just go every five years, it’s going to reduce the gap a little bit. And we know from the Quran it is obligatory only once in a in a lifetime, but if you do it every five years, it’s going to help solve this problem a little bit. It’s voluntary to go every five years. We just thought it’s sort of a nice middle ground.

 By doing it every five years how many prayers we do together ? You kind of calculate that and it comes to about 3,200. But because rich people are a little bit more important in the community, then the gap is reduced a little bit more than that. So that’s why I estimated it about 3,000.

• The Marriage App (3000 → 1500) :

 God willing, there’s going to be a Marriage App. And sorry for delaying it. I have promised this Marriage App quite a few months ago, I’ve started it. I have a first draft of it from the freelancer who is doing it, who is helping do it. But it just takes too much time to review, to edit, to propose changes, to make sure it works well and stuff like that. Sorry for the delay. It’s probably one of the solutions we’ll implement first. I don’t know exactly when, maybe in 1-3 months, God willing, but I’m not sure. It depends on how complicated it it gets. The Marriage App is going to reduce this from 3,000 to 1,500 because a lot of those people when they get married they move to to each other’s locations, focusing the community in certain zones.

By the way when you marry a non-submitter, that does not help. It divides the community a little bit more. If you marry a non-submitter, you are stuck in a location where you do not want to be, but It’s fine. Marrying a non-submitter is allowed under certain conditions, but it doesn’t help the community, it makes it more difficult for the community. But if you marry a submitter (God willing, there’s going to be a solution for that through a marriage app), then you actually help the community by focusing the community in certain locations because of that, and if you have children that is going to be focus it even more. So that helps the community reach that goal, and reduce that gap even more. So basically then, we would need to have only 1,500 people to start having meaningful solutions through mosques.

• An additional new solution coming soon, God willing (1500 → 750) :

 There is an additional new solution coming soon, God willing. I don’t want to go into detail because it’s going to be a long Friday sermon, but God willing I’ll propose this meaningful solution probably after The Marriage App (maybe in about six months, I don’t know exactly). I don’t want to mention it now because I really want to have the details laid down correctly and presentable and all of that, so that we can talk about it.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, we managed to reduce this gap from 1 million down to 750. I think this last solution is going reduce the gap by half, so from 1,500 to 750. What does this mean? This means that if we achieve 750 submitters online, we can have meaningful solutions to worship God together and feel fulfilled as a group similar to how the people used to worship in a mosque in the past and would meet during Friday gatherings and during prayers. So now it has been reduced to 750, and 750 is a realistic number. It’s within what we can achieve in my lifetime. It’s doable. I think you guys all believe that it’s doable. In the past you might think : « Oh this we’re too far from it » or whatever. But it we have been improving recently. Just a few months ago we were 40 submitters. Now we are 60. 750 is doable if we speed things up. So God willing, that new solution is going to reduce this gap even more. And that is good news.

For those who have to do the um contact prayer, 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.

I hope Ramadan went well for all of us. It is a month where most people eat less. Some people overeat after they break the fast, but most people eat less. Less food for the body but more food for the soul. So it is a nice package of good deeds which we fulfilled during the month that just passed, the month of Ramadan.

The Standard Approach : Looking at all verses mentioning Hadith

Let me get actually to the topic which I want to talk about today : I want to talk about an alternative approach to dealing with Hadith. As we know, the standard approach which we use to deal with Hadith is that we simply look at all the verses which talk about Hadith, and this approach is given in the Friday Sermon which I titled : “What does the Quran really say about Hadith ?” So if you find that video, you will see that the Quran actually does not tell us to follow Hadith. It actually speaks against Hadith except for cases when it can be used for historical sources, but not for religious purposes. It might be useful for historians, for scholars of history, for people maybe who want to study comparative history or things like that : It might be useful. But for religious purposes, for our religion, for us and for pretty much all the people, Hadith is not useful at all. It is actually against the Quran and in most cases it damages our life.

So for conclusion, our standard approach is that we do not follow Hadith for religious purposes. We do not obey Hadith for religious purposes. We do not believe that Hadith should be used for religious purposes.

The Alternative Approach: The Principle of Asking “Why”

There is another alternative approach which I want to introduce, especially because there is so many heated debates which lead to nothing. There is so many debates online : « Hadith or No Hadith ? Should we do Quran and Hadith ?… » .The debates are so heated sometimes. It is not even constructive. People will try to talk over each other and things like that. So a lot of times it is not even constructive. So an alternative approach would be, and it is not the only approach, but an alternative approach would be to just not deal with it, not try to answer the question. Instead of saying : “Oh, should we follow Hadith or should we not follow Hadith ?” , we use another verse in the Quran which can let us use another approach to Hadith and reach the same conclusions. And the verse I want to focus on today is :

[21:23] : “He cannot be questioned for His acts, but they will be questioned.”

The verse says God is never to be asked about anything He does, while all others are questioned. So basically, the conclusion is : If God says something, He should not be asked why He did it. He should not be asked why. But if others say or do something, they can be asked why. This is a principle. If God says it, you do not ask why. If someone else says it, you ask why. If someone else other than God says something, then you are allowed to ask why. And there is deep reasons for this.

Let’s say God tells us not to eat pork, it is really not useful to ask why anyway because there are billions of reasons why you should not eat pork, but all of them are small. It is only when you combine all of them together can we reach the conclusion that we shouldn’t eat pork. So asking God : “Why shouldn’t we eat pork ?”  does not really make sense :

• I can say : “Oh, maybe it has parasites.” 
  • And someone can say : « Oh, that’s not a good enough reason. Maybe cows sometimes have parasites. Maybe not as much, but they do »
• So if I say, “Oh, it’s good for the economy,” 
  • someone might say : “Oh yeah, but there are other things which are not that good for economy, we still do them.”
• If I say : “Oh, pork has much fat so you’ll get fat.”
  • Someone might say : « Oh, but other things have lots of fat. There are other foods with lots of fat like butter. Should we not eat butter as well? »

So as you can see, if I try to answer the question why we shouldn’t eat pork, none of the arguments I can give are enough.

There is billions of arguments because God can think about all of them at the same time, and only when you combine all of them together can you reach the conclusion that we should not eat pork. There is so many other reasons. I do not even want to go there because we shouldn’t ask God why. God says do not eat pork. If we ask why, the best answer is because God says so. If God says do not eat pork, then do not eat pork. So that is the answer. The answer is always : « God said so ». And there is infinite reasons for it. So when we are dealing with what God said,  the question why is really not useful at all. Plus, it questions God’s authority. You do not ask someone who is higher authority : “Why do you do this? Why did you say that?”  God should ask that to us. We should not ask God that.

So basically, when God says something or does something, we do not ask why. But when humans do or say something, we ask why. We can ask why, especially if it does not make sense, we should ask why. This is the basic idea and we can use this for Hadith, even if we do not decide about Hadith at all. Let’s say we don’t want to go into those debates because sometimes they are very heated debates. Heated debates sometimes don’t help. Another way not to have heated debates is that we use this principle in the Quran which says that God should never be asked why, while others can be asked why, or all others will be asked why. We use this principle and we say every time someone brings something from the Quran, we do not ask why, but every time someone brings something from the Hadith, we ask why. And that pretty much shuts the conversation because pretty much almost all the religious leaders cannot tell you why.

Example 1: The Night of Destiny (Laylat al-Qadr)

For example :

• According to one Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 27th night of Ramadan. 
• According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 25th.
• According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 19th.
• According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 21st.
• According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 23rd.
• According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the last 10 nights of Ramadan.
• According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the odd nights of the last 10 nights of Ramadan.
• Another Hadith says the prophet knew when the night of destiny was, but he forgot : Someone asked him a question while he was thinking about it; someone interrupted him and he forgot.
• Another Hadith says that the night of destiny changes constantly.
• Another Hadith says that we cannot know when.

So all of these Hadith say different things. If you ask the scholars : “Oh, how come there’s so much contradiction about this?” They will probably tell you something like : “Oh, you know, some Hadith are authentic, you know, verified, others are not authentic.”  But if you ask them specifically these 10 Hadith we mentioned, which have different answers for the same topic, if you ask them : “Are these actually the authentic ones, (what they call Sahih) the verified ones ?”  They consider all of them authentic or verified, according to them. So then how come they give you different answers?

And the way to deal with it is to ask them why. All you have to do is ask why, and they cannot give you an answer. You are allowed to ask why because humans are allowed to ask a human being why, because Hadith, at the end of the day, was spoken by a human. They say that it is the prophet’s word, so we can ask why, but we cannot ask God why. So all we have to do is ask why:

If they say the night of destiny according to Hadith is on the 27th, why? Why should it be on the 27th? Can you give me a logical reason why? Why not 28th? What is so special about 27? Why not 29? If Hadith says that it is on the odd nights of Ramadan, why? Why should it be that it changes? Why does it change? Why does not it always stay the same? Why? Just ask why. And it sort of shuts the conversation. They cannot give you an answer. If they give you an answer, then it is logical, then it makes sense. But all you have to do is ask why.

And honestly, it is so interesting how they do not ask why. Millions of Sunnis are told Hadith that the Night of Destiny is on the 27th; they never ask why. They do not have the guts, the courage to ask why : “Why is it on the 27th?”  and they cannot give you an answer. And someone might say to us : “Oh, but you do not even know some of the answers.”  Wait a minute. Let me give you an example, we say that Ramadan has sometimes 29 days, sometimes 30 days. If you ask me why, I can tell you. Anyone can tell you because it is correct. Why does Ramadan have sometimes 29 days and sometimes 30 days? Why is it that specific number of days? Because that is how long it takes the moon to go around the earth. It is from a new moon until a new moon. I give the definition of a new moon in another video (Ramadan Calendar). And it takes the moon about 29.5 days to do that rotation, to go around the earth. It takes the moon 29.5 days, and sometimes it happens to be on the side which is closer to 29, sometimes it happens to be closer to 30. But it’s about 29.5. So depending where we cut, depending on when the day happens, so it is either going to lean towards 30 or towards 29. So that is the reason. We can answer it. But if you ask them : “Why is it on the 27th? Why is the night of the destiny on the 27th?”  They cannot tell you why because they do not know. And they still follow it despite not knowing.

In the video where I speak about the night of destiny (When is the Night of Destiny ?), I tell people why is the night of destiny on that specific date. It happens to be most of the time on the 27th, but there is nothing special about number 27, or number 25, or number 23 for this matter, not even number 19. There is nothing special about that. But they do not ask why. So if we just ask them : “Why is this specific thing in the Hadith?” they cannot tell you why on the 27th. So all you have to do is ask why. Whenever they bring a Hadith, all you have to do is ask why. If they tell you : “Oh, you are supposed to spit when the devil tempts you or whatever.” Why? If they cannot tell you why, then it is not good enough. It has to be logical. Anything humans bring up has to be logical. But if God says it, even if it is not logical we have to follow it because God has billions of reasons. God can think about all the things at once. Humans cannot think about everything at once. So if there is some truth to it, they should be able to explain it.

All we have to do is ask why. That’s one example :The Night of Destiny. If we just ask them why, they cannot explain it. So therefore, we don’t have to follow it, you can say : “Oh, I would have followed that Hadith, but you did not tell me why. Sorry, you said 27th. Why? Oh, you do not know? Oh, so I do not follow it. Thank you for your suggestion.”

Let’s repent.

Example 2: Zakat-al-Fitr and Changing Societal Contexts

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

Let’s take another example where we just ask why when someone brings a Hadith, and this sort of solves the issue. Let me repeat again : We should not ask why when someone brings something from the Quran. We should not say why. We do not ask God why. But when someone brings Hadith, which is a human saying, then we ask why. All we have to do is ask why.

So millions of Sunnis and Shia believe in something which is called Zakat-al-Fitr. Basically, the idea of this is that during Ramadan, according to them, you are supposed to give about 3 kilograms of flour, of wheat, or maybe dates. So about 3 kilograms of wheat you are supposed to give to the poor. This is what they call Zakat-al-Fitr, and it should be done before the end of Ramadan so that your Ramadan is accepted. That is what they believe in. And all you have to do to tackle this is ask them why. Why? Why should I give 3 kilograms of flour during Ramadan? And no one can give you a reason. All the scholars had 14 centuries to think about this and they cannot tell you why. All you have to ask them is why : “Why should I give three kilograms?” They will tell you : “Oh, Muhammad says so.” But that is not good enough because we can ask human beings why. I would even Muhammad ask why:  « Why 3 kilograms ? Why during Ramadan ? Why wheat ? Why dates ? Why not rice? » So all you have to do is ask them why, and you will see that if they do not give you an answer, you do not have to follow it, you do not have to if they do not give you a logical answer.

So regarding Zakat-al-Fitr, unfortunately, I can give an answer and to show that it does not apply anymore. Let me just tell you the idea behind what they call Zakat-al-Fitr, which is the Zakat during Ramadan, and then let me demolish it, tell you why that idea does not apply anymore. I think probably there was a reason, or else I don’t think it would remain in history like that, but they cannot explain the reason to us now, so we do not have to follow it. Let me actually help them. See, I’m helping their side. Let me help them give a reason because none of the so-called Muslim scholars, the Sunnis and the Shia, can give a reason why Zakat-al-Fitr should be done like that or why should it exist. So let me help them first so then I can destroy it. Let me help them with their own arguments :

The idea of Zakat-al-Fitr is that in the past, during Muhammad’s time, unlike today, people would store the food. They would not go to shops to buy stuff. They had a market, but they would buy the material, the food, for the whole year. So basically, they bought the food when it was harvested. If you needed flour or something, you would buy it when it was harvested from whoever was selling it, if you did not harvest it yourself, and then you would store it for the whole year. You would have a depot in your home, and then you would have food for the whole year. That is how they did it typically. Even to this day in some poorer countries they still do it like that, but very rarely, almost never. Traditionally, that is how it was done. People would buy food for the whole year, and then what would happen is they would sort of try to estimate how much food they need for the whole year for the whole family.

Let’s just imagine we live in the past. Let’s say I have 20 family members and I am going to estimate that this year we need this many bags of flour, this many bags of meat (they will dry it because it would go bad), and this many bottles of oil or milk (they will make it into cheese so that it lasts longer). They would make sure that they had the basics. So they had these basics, staple foods. And they would make sure that they have it for the whole year. This was in the past. That estimation would be done by the family head, and he would make sure that everyone has food for the whole year. And they would go in the market and buy it, he will even estimate how many cows he needed to buy so they can slaughter them at a certain point. So that is what they did.

At the same time, they did not know exactly when Ramadan will start and end because they did not have calculation methods like us : computers and scientists and astronomers. They did not know exactly how to calculate it; they had approximations, but they were not very accurate. So they would rely on the moon. It was normal then to rely on the moon. Today we have really accurate methods, but back then it was not very accurate. So they would just rely on the moon. When the new moon of the ninth month happened, they would start Ramadan. And then when the new moon again happened, they would end Ramadan. And in that circumstance, imagine they had estimated the whole food for the year, but something which they had not estimated was that part of that food was not used because they had fasted. And because of the fasting, they ate a little bit less. And the Quran says : « [2:219] They tell you what to give : Give the excess. » Excess meaning what is left.

So basically, they just realized : “Oh, wait a minute, we have more food than we thought.”  It was like just a feeling. They did not go into specific calculations, but let’s say Muhammad said : “Oh, wait a minute, actually during this month we ate a little bit less, so technically we have more food, and that’s excess, that’s more than we needed, so let’s give it away.” And that’s pretty much how much less people eat, about three kilograms of wheat, is about 10,000 calories. And during a month, a person typically eats about 70,000 calories. And so that’s about one-seventh or one-eigth of the food which you would have eaten in other months, you ate about one-eighth less calories, which means that was left.

Why is that estimation approximate? It is approximate because let’s say you eat one less meal, which would be actually one-third less because you eat breakfast, you eat lunch, you eat dinner, typically someone might eat that. During Ramadan you don’t eat lunch, but you can eat the dinner and you can eat the breakfast earlier. Let’s say eat one-third less because whatever you don’t eat at lunch, you can kind of make up during dinner, but you cannot make up everything because the stomach doesn’t allow to eat two meals at once. So probably, when you break the fast, you probably eat one and a half meals. So that means that during Ramadan, you didn’t eat 70,000 calories if you estimate it, but you probably ate 60,000 calories. So 10,000 calories less, which means that you have 10,000 calories of food left, and typically that’s left in either wheat or dates or whatever. In that time it was left in that, so they gave it away, the excess. So that is the logical reason behind it.

So if someone asked me during that time why, I would explain why, and they would probably do it. But I can also tell them that these don’t apply as much. So in some ways it does not apply at all, but in some ways it applies very little. So it really doesn’t apply as much; it’s insignificant today. Why? The question is why now.

Why we should not even bother to think about Zakat-al-Fitr ? 

First of all, we don’t store the food for one year like in the past. So our estimation was not really thrown off. We don’t even have enough food for Ramadan stored; we go to buy pretty much every week or every other day. We do shopping every week, every two or three days, in some places every day, some places every two weeks, it depends. So there was no estimation in the first place at all, so there was no excess.

Second of all, let me kind of sort of tell you who should do Zakat-al-Fitr, maybe that is the better approach. If there was any excess, it was the food shops. Here in the US and Canada we have Walmart, Costco,… In other countries they have different shops. So the food shops did an estimation about the whole year, how much people need, and very likely because of Ramadan they sold a little bit less, so they should give. So my answer to Zakat-al-Fitr is we don’t have to give it; it applies to big food shops for the most part. So it’s a matter for businesses, for the food shops, if they want to give a sort of present with flour, it’s their problem. So Zakat-al-Fitr today for us is almost insignificant.

Plus in addition to that, in the past during Muhammad’s time, they had a really regular sleeping schedule. So the fact that they did not eat lunch during Ramadan meant that they ate less food. A lot of people today just sleep during the day, so they still eat the same amount of food. By the way, that is allowed, because then you pay through worse health. If you sleep during the day during Ramadan, that is because you do not have a good sleeping schedule, and because of that you will pay through health effects later on in life. You will be older faster, or not very healthy, because it is not a very healthy lifestyle to stay up during the night and sleep during the day. It’s not as healthy. It is allowed though, it is allowed, but it is not as healthy. So what I’m saying is Zakat-al-Fitr does not even apply today because you did not necessarily ate less food during Ramadan. For them during Muhammad’s time, they ate necessarly less food because that is how they lived. They did not use electricity like today. So pretty much Zakat-al-Fitr does not even apply for another reason, is because we do not necessarily eat less food.

And someone might say : “Oh, but does fasting count if we sleep during the day in Ramadan?”  Yes it does count, because even though you might not have eaten less food,  due to the fact that you slept during the day and stayed up during the night, you have worse health, and so you paid for it. You paid for it in another way through health instead of through food. So for you, it would be to give some health back or to have a better diet outside of Ramadan, a better sleeping schedule. That is Zakat-al-Fitr for today. That is our Zakat-al-Fitr. Who even uses that 3 Kilograms of flour they give? Very few people use it today. If you do what they say you should do, it would probably cost more because you do not have it at home. They had it at home. We would have to go to the shop, some people willspend probably more fuel than the actual deed. So do more bad than good by turning the car on or walking or taking the bus or whatever, having to go there, buying the flour. Who are you going to give it to? So it just does not apply.

And all we have to do to give an answer to this is when they say you have to do Zakat-al-Fitr, all you have to do is ask them why, and they cannot give you a reason. I gave you a reason, but as we can see, it only applies to the past, and today it might apply to the big food brands, big food companies, the companies who store the flour, the companies who store the oil. It does apply to them, but they are companies, they are not people. So who cares if they give it or not? Companies will not be judged during the last day; people will be judged, but not companies, not businesses. The people will be judged.

That is the answer. I gave you two reasons why Zakat-al-Fitr does not apply, there is more reasons, but even the parts which do apply are very insignificant, they are so small. So it is probably not 3 kilograms, it’s probably 3-10 grams. Who is going to calculate that? Does it even make sense to talk about it? We do so much worse things in other areas. So to all the Sunnis and the Shia who say : “Oh, you should do Zakat-al-Fitr …”  I think it would be better for them if they did not honk their cars when they drive. That would do better deeds that would be bigger than Zakat-al-Fitr which they give, which is kind of almost useless now.

I was to India in a heavily Sunni populated area, so-called «Muslim», and they were honking the horns all day long in traffic. Even inside homes you can hear it. There is so much traffic, of course, and everyone honks the car all day long. You can hear it all day long. Each individual doesn’t do it all day long, but you can hear it all day long. That is so stressful. If they just stopped that, that would be better than Zakat-al-Fitr. And exactly those people will actually bring the ideas of Zakat-al-Fitr and similar things. They are talking about 3 grams of flour because today three kilograms does not apply as we concluded. There is no reason for 3 kilograms anymore, let the shops do it. But 3 grams might apply. So they spend hours and hours talking about it, and even I am forced to talk about it today. I did not even want to talk about it, but I am forced to talk about it because they mention it so much. They talk about three grams of flour. That would be my estimation how important it is today: three grams of flour. So they talk about 10 cents while honking all year long, giving each other stress.

And by the way, that honking either does some psychological damage or, if it doesn’t, it makes the person more mean because the person has to learn how to how to cut off all the influence from the outside. So when someone tells them something important, they have learned how to how to block their ears. They can just block their mind. It is easier for them to block the mind because of all that honking. Or if they don’t, they have some psychological damage. There is too much pressure. So they would have been better off if they just did not honk and did not do Zakat-al-Fitr.

The Illustration of the Forest and Ridiculous Rules

What do I mean that Zakat-al-Fitr today has become very insignificant?

Let me just give an example : Let’s say you throw a wood branch on the ground, your mom will say : ‘Oh, don’t throw a wood branch on the ground at home.’” And that’s probably a good advice. Don’t throw the branch on the ground, like it is a clean home, why should you throw the branch? But maybe you’re walking in the forest, how significant is it to apply the same principle in the forest? “Oh, don’t throw a branch in the forest.” Why? There is so many branches in the forest! What is it going to do? It might do a little bit of bad, but it is insignificant. How bad can it be to throw a branch in the forest? It is full of branches! So that is how Zakat-al-Fitr is today. It is like they are trying to protect the environment from something in a place where it’s full of that. It is insignificant. It does not apply in so many ways. But even the part which applies is insignificant. The word insignificant means we should not even bother to deal with it.

These illogical things only survive in places where authorities interfere. Let me give you an example : In North Korea, they prohibit the officials from using the word « ice cream » or « hamburger » They are not allowed these words. In North Korea, if you’re an official, you cannot say « ice cream » or « hamburger » because that is too Western. And these ridiculous rules only can exist when there is authorities who will make them, because otherwise people have better logic than that. If they use logic, they would probably reach better conclusions.

Let me give you an example where authorities didn’t interfere : In the past, people did not wear shoes at home. It’s quite logical; you don’t want to make the home unclean. It’s quite logical. But if you go to an office, should you apply the same rule? It’s kind of a home, it’s a building, it’s inside at work. Should you remove your shoes as well, or is working with shoes just fine? I think it is just fine. So when authorities did not interfere, people just naturally realized that : “Oh, wait a minute, it does not apply anymore.”  So they told me at home not to wear shoes, that kind of makes sense. But Not always, people have pets at home these days, why should removing the shoes be a rule? Or the outside is sometimes clean. Some countries really have a very clean outside, so it’s kind of pretty much like walking inside as well. So in that case, it is not very important to remove shoes. In a lot of cases though, it is important to remove the shoes, probably in most cases. But when you go to an office, why should you remove the shoes? Do you want other people to smell your feet? Should you smell their feet in an office where you work and sweat all day long or sit at the desk? Why should you remove the shoes? So it does not make sense. If you let people use logic in that circumstance, they will reach the right conclusion.

They would have reached the right conclusion even about Zakat-al-Fitr if they used logic, but unfortunately, authorities tell them something else and people are too afraid to think for themselves. So it is only authorities which sort of keep the idea of Zakat-al-Fitr existing; other than that, people would use logic and they would reach a better conclusion, they would say : « Oh, three kilograms of flour, I have to go and buy it, that does not really make sense in today’s world ». They would reach the right conclusion if especially if they knew why would Muhammad say so.

All we have to do is ask them why, and I helped them with answering the why. And answering the why also tells us that for today Zakat-al-Fitr is not significant, and in some aspects it does not apply at all. I just gave two examples of dealing with Hadith in an alternative way by simply asking why. All you have to do is ask why. Why should we do that ? Why is that rule so? Why should we spit on our left? Why should we do this? If you just ask why, then you can resolve the issue of the Hadith. We should not ask why when it comes to the Quran; we should never ask God why, but we ask the people why.

Administrative Announcements : How to Join the Submitters

Just another small administrative thing before we leave. Thanks to God, a lot of people have recently sent me emails about that they wanted to join. But like my inbox is really full, so I have not replied to many emails. And as some of you who work know, when you don’t answer emails, they they just pile up, more and more emails. I figured that a lot of those emails were from a lot of people that wanted to join the Submitters. So I had delayed this for a while. So God willing, if you are listening and you are one of those people who wanted to join the Submitters and I have not answered your email, let me answer it through here. I have done it through the website now. You do not have to send an email.

So if you go to our website, to the main page here, in the end of the page, I added this part:

 

How do I join the Submitters?

To become a submitter, you have to:

1. Attend the Live Friday Gatherings.

and

2. Fill the Public Zakat Pledge Form

 

All you have to do is click this last link in the main page of our website, and then you fill the form. And then when I have time, I will check whether you filled it correctly, and if you did, God willing, when I have time I will add you to the group of Submitters. Whoever is listening to the live Friday Gathering, all you have to do is go to this link and fill the Zakat form, and God willing, when I have time I will check who did it, and then I will add you to the list of Submitters on our website. And that’s it.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. For the rest of you, peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

For more information:

When is the Night of Destiny?

What does the Quran Really Say About Hadith?

Quran: All You Need for Salvation

Join us to listen to our online Friday meetings every Friday.

 

 

Sermon Introduction

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

Today I would like to introduce the new chatting feature which we have added in our website : thesubmitters.org. Some of you might have already noticed it, others might not have noticed it yet. So I am just going to share the screen and tell you what’s new on in our website. So let me share the screen :

So this is our new chatting feature. It’s below the Friday Sermon. If you guys are watching the video, all you have to do is scroll down and here it says “Sign in with Google.”

By the way, let me just read what I wrote here. It says:

  “During Friday gatherings, being signed in is mandatory for the submitters (from 12:00 UTC until 12:30 UTC) so that we can witness who is online and attending the Friday gatherings and to communicate with each other when necessary.”

This is important so that you guys know among each other who is attending the Friday gatherings, and also so that I know who is watching. It’s important so that we know who is a Submitter. It’s not that we are trying to spy on one another, but we want to know who is a submitter and who is not. We know that doing the Friday gathering is obligatory for submitters and it is done in public. So we should be able to know who is doing it like us and who is not doing it like us.

So for those who haven’t signed yet, if you just go here to “Sign in with Google” it is going to ask you to choose an account:

By the way, we don’t have access to your Google accounts, so this is totally under Google’s control. We don’t have access to it. So when you sign in with Google, Google does not send us any information except your name, which is shown in the website, and your photo, which is taken from Google. But that is a standard signing procedure for most of the apps, it’s not different from other apps.

I kind of like the way it came out. It is a very simple app, but it has some unique features which I think are useful for the Submitters.

Guidelines for Chatting During the Gathering

One good thing about this is that you can both watch the video and see who is online at the same time. Plus, we can chat when necessary online. By the way, you should not chat during the Friday gathering unless the Congregation Director asks you specifically or in general, you should not do that because it distracts the viewers, the listeners.

So this chatting app is useful for outside of the Friday Sermon. You can talk at any time. But during the Friday Gathering, you can talk only if you are asked or if absolutely necessary. So unless you have something absolutely necessary to say or I ask you to say something, then there is no need to say anything during the Friday Gathering because during the Friday Gathering we’re supposed to pay attention to what is being said in the video.

I want to use the opportunity to mention the names because if people are embarrassed to be public about the fact that they are Submitters, I think they should not be Submitters.

So who do we have here right now online?

We have Sinan Abal, Adam Fraser—sorry for mispronouncing the names—Adnane Tidghi, Luna Thabet, Habiba Abdullahi, Seymur İsmayılov, Jad Abou karroum, Munira Sultana, Faisal Ayache, Nathalie Abou karroum,

Elhame Gashi, Matvej Loptev, Nikki Chavis, Başak Urhan, Mhamed Ait Lmaalem, Taliye Alan, Merazul Alam, Fannol Gashi, Gillaume Guy, Arafat Ahmed, Christopher Summers.

Sow Mamadou Oury, Marzia Sultana, Abdul Rasheed Ahmed, Shkronja Berisha, Fatih Alan, Gurgin Tehtap, Trevor Chavis, Ahmed Isa Hassan, Mehdi Akouche,

Fleta Berisha, Kevser Alan, Avdyl Berisha, Alban Fejza, Moneruzzaman Sikdar, Lavdije Berisha, Robert Szilagyi, Arjeta Fejza, Muhammad Rakibul Hasan,

Ruksana Yeasmin, Vlora Fejza, Abdul Hayat Piash, Arlind Fejza, Rayan—I don’t know the last name of this person—Habiba Abdullahi, and Nahida Mili.

So these are the names which are online right now. As we know, there is more Submitters. So others will eventually learn how to do this and they will do it in the next time.

For some of you, if you have signed already, it might show you the older version before the Friday Sermon. God willing, if you have any problems, you can contact Fannol and see how to fix that.

Group Transparency vs. Private Meetings

I want to focus on why is this chatting app different from a typical chatting app. It is different because, first of all, it’s a group chat, so if someone has to say something, it has to be fully transparent.

When I used to work in my previous jobs (most of them in Kosovo), quite often people would have informal meetings over coffee, and then someone would tell someone something and they would actually reach an agreement about what to do at work, and no one else would know. And then I would be surprised : “Oh, you guys reached an agreement already? Like, I was not in the meeting.” They say : “Oh, we spoke about it over coffee.” And that’s actually not the way Submitters do things. For example : we have done a lot of work with Fannol, but that was the only option we had. We had a lot of discussions which were just personal, just me and him. It would be much better if everyone knew. In this way, they would know how much work was put into this chatting app. They would know what the problems were. They would see if there’s something they can help with.

So this chatting app is different because it’s a group chat, so everyone sees everyone’s chat. That’s important, because sometimes people will say something else if it’s sending a message to only one person. But if it’s public, they will probably be more careful about it. So that’s one difference in this chatting app.

The Deletion Feature and Guarding Against Satan

The other difference is that unlike most of the chatting apps, this chatting app allows every Submitter to delete everyone’s message. So right now, even if I don’t like a message, I can just delete it, not just me, everyone. Every Submitter can delete a message.

And why is this important?

This is important to keep the peace within the community.

Let me just give you an example because there’s a verse in the Quran which says try to be with each other the nicest possible because Satan will always try to drive a wedge between you. Satan is always trying to make us fight each other. And one way to prevent that fighting is if we allow everyone to delete the message if he does not like it.

And because you can post here photos as well, let me just give you an example : Let’s say a woman has a new child, and she wants to show the group : “Oh, alhamdulillah, thanks to God, me and my husband have been blessed with a new child. We named the child like this name.” But in the photo, she is kind of not dressed very well. Yeah, it’s a good message in general that she’s telling everyone that there is a new submitter among us. That’s a good message, but the photo might not be very modest. In that case, instead of us telling her : “Oh, you have to change the photo, we don’t agree with this” anyone can just delete it. If you don’t agree with it, just delete it.

Now the question is : What if we delete all the messages? So what?

 It’s okay. We don’t write any message, it’s still fine. God willing, in the future I might change my mind, I might make it so that two submitters have to delete it so that the message can be deleted. But for now, I want to try it like this, and if it works, I will just leave it like this.

Let’s say someone says something which is partly right, partly wrong. Instead of arguing and saying : “Oh, by the way, you’re wrong about this, you’re wrong about that, I have a different opinion,…” In this way, only the positive messages remain. And when only the positive messages remain, there’s less chance for Satan to drive a wedge between us, to kind of make us hate each other. If you don’t like it, just delete it, and it’s not a problem, even my messages.

Only the submitters can delete messages. The non-submitters cannot delete messages : They can delete their own messages but not someone else’s messages.

So let’s say if I go here in any place, I can just delete it.

By the way, every submitter can also block a non-submitter, but not a submitter :

For example : Fannol here has signed it, with a non-submitter email at this «Fannol Public». I can block this account for example. So basically if an outsider comes and says something bad, and we think he had really clear bad intentions to fight our group or to hate our group, then we can just block that person.

So we cannot block submitters. No submitter can be blocked. I cannot even block a submitter, so you have a guarantee that you will not be blocked. However, anyone can delete your message if they don’t like it. And this goes in line with the idea in the Quran which says that submitters reach agreements with consensus. So everyone has to agree. If one person does not agree about the message, they can just delete it.

For example : someone might post a vacation photo which might be fine for most people. But maybe someone lives in a poor country, he thinks that’s bragging, that’s too much. They can just delete it. If they don’t like it, they can delete it. At the same time, no hard feelings. Someone can try and post it and see if it’s deleted, fine. If it’s not, it’s kind of like a way to see if other people are liking what you’re posting. So yeah, you can delete anyone’s message, and please, if you think it should be deleted, delete it, don’t think twice. If you think : “Okay, I don’t like this”, just delete it.

And why is this important again ? This is important for the peace in our group. Let’s say that someone’s message is correct, but it’s not full. So let’s say that someone says : «it’s not Ramadan which brings us closer to God, but it’s fasting». Which is true. It’s not complete, but it’s true. There’s more to it in the Quran, but it’s true if you say that : «It’s fasting, not Ramadan, which brings us closer to God». That is true. However, it’s not the complete truth. There’s some more to it.

What’s more to it is that during Ramadan, the Quran says those who witness the month : they fast. It’s the fasting which brings them closer to God, not just the fact that it is Ramadan. So that’s a more complete truth, it’s totally true but there is more to it, and someone might notice the part which is missing and they mention only the other statement which would complete it. Then they post just a verse to complete that statement.

What Satan can do here (even though both of them are correct), is make one submitter pay attention to one part of the truth, the other submitter to the other part of the truth, and then in this way, if they couldn’t delete the messages, they might start to have an ego discussion : “Oh no, you’re wrong. He’s wrong.” Especially as if other people are involved there is some ego there. The easier option is : if it bothers you, just delete it. So this app enables it, you just delete it, so there is no argument. If there is something you don’t like about the message, just delete it.

Submitter Verification and Zakat

So another feature in this app is that you can tell who is a submitter and who is not a submitter by this tick mark.

So if you have this tick mark, that means you are a submitter. If you don’t have this tick mark, that means you are not a submitter.

(By the way, Seymur İsmayılov, I think he has actually asked us to be a submitter. We haven’t enabled him to fill the zakat yet. There is a verse in the Quran which mentions those whose hearts have been inclined, meaning those who in their heart, they are submitters, but they haven’t officially joined us. Rashad translated this as converts. Because there’s different levels of people. There’s non-submitters, there’s people who are exploring, there’s people who think that maybe this is true, but then there’s people who have decided to join, but they haven’t gotten a chance yet, we didn’t let them report the zakat yet.)

And this is pretty much it. It’s a simple app.

Let’s repent.

Community Testing and Support Feedback

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

Maybe we can just test the app now. So I am asking you to chat and see how it works. By the way, all the chats disappear in seven days, so you don’t have to be embarrassed whether you’ll post something and it’s going to stay there. It’s just going to be deleted in seven days. But this video is public, just so you know, this video is public. So maybe we can just test it and see. A lot of people are writing. I want to test deleting a message.d

• • Faisal is writing in the chat : «I want to test deleting this message.»

• (The message was successfully deleted)

• Matvej Loptev writes in the chat : « Hello! »

• • Faisal writes in the chat : «hi»

• Alban says : «Maybe I don’t like this message, I can just delete it. There we go. » (Alban deletes the message successfully)

Let me give you an example of how this can be useful : So in the last Friday gathering, I introduced The New Call to the Friday Gathering online, and I said that anyone can do it and it’s better if anyone who can should do it and post it online.

• Is anyone willing to share where they posted the call to the Friday gathering?
• In which social media, what form?
• Was it a Facebook story or a Facebook post? 
• And how many people they think saw it? (Can be an estimate)

• Merazul Alam is saying : “I posted the photo to Facebook post, 1 people liked it.” 
• Guillaume posted it on Instagram at The Submitters.
• Abdul Rasheed made the call to the Friday gathering on WhatsApp.
• Arafat made it on WhatsApp status and Facebook stories.

I think Facebook stories is useful for this, like it’s probably the right place to do it.

By the way, those who are not submitters yet, who have asked to join, God willing, we’ll enable you to join at least by the end of the year, if not earlier.

(A lot of people from Turkey have joined us recently, so I see some messages from Turkey)

And one more thing, the non-submitters are supposed not to be able to message during the Friday Gathering. They cannot message because we don’t want them to interrupt us.

• • Tasim Ali is saying, “Praise be to God.”
  • Gurgin is showing us like what he posted.

• Trevor Chavis is saying : “I’m seeing people that don’t have the check mark but are submitters on the website.”

I can see a potential problem. The way the website knows if you’re a submitter or not is the email with which you filled the Zakat. If that email matches, then it considers you a submitter. If the email address doesn’t match, then it doesn’t consider you a submitter. So if someone is signed in with another email, it’s not going to know that you’re a submitter. So that’s probably the problem.

So let me check a name, for example : So Captain Md Nuruzzaman Sikdar is not recognized as a submitter here, but we know heis a submitter. He even came to Hajj with us. Captain, probably this doesn’t recognize you as a submitter because you have signed in with another email.

Taskin and Nuruzzaman. They are submitters, but if they have two Gmail accounts, please sign in with the one which we know, the official email with which you have joined as a submitter, because otherwise the website cannot know if you’re a submitter or not. I hope that answers the question.

Okay, just a few more messages and I’m going to end this stream, God willing.

• Jad Abou Karroum is saying : “God is great.” 
  • Alban says : «Yes, God is great, Jad.»

By the way, this brings me back to the idea of The Call to the Friday Gathering, which is in English. Some people like it because I have many different styles of it. Some people might like some of them, maybe not others. Some of them are cheesy, I know it. But I just wanted to capture many different versions of what people like. A lot of them I don’t even like myself, like the music style, but it’s okay. People like different styles of music.

• Erblina is saying : “Peace. After some time, my status becomes offline, but I’m still online, though.”

• • Alban says : « Okay, we need to double check why that is happening. »

• Faisal is saying : «this chat is available outside of the friday gathering ?»

• • Alban says : «Good question Faisal. This chat is available outside of the Friday Gathering. If you go the Group Chat here in our website, you can still chat within the same app. The only difference there is that you don’t see this video, but you still see the chatting app and you can chat at any time.»

• Trevor is saying : “[20:14] ‘I am God. There’s no other god beside me. You shall worship me alone and observe the contact prayers to remember me.’”
  • Alban says : « Okay, great point, Trevor.»

Okay guys, I just see that people are typing, that’s why I’m waiting, but I think we should finish it soon.

• Rakiba Khanom is saying : “Peace be upon you.”
• Katy Brahim is saying : “God is great.” 

Okay, I don’t want to waste too much time for all the rest of the people. I’m going to end it here. Let me stop sharing.

So that’s it. I hope you guys like the chatting app. You can use it outside the Friday Sermon as well, outside the Friday Gatherings for anything. Even if you have questions for me, please just post it there. If I don’t like the question, I’m just going to delete it, or someone else can delete it, whoever wants can delete it.

In this way, if someone can answer the question for you without me having to be involved, that would be even better. Whoever sees it first and knows the answer, they can answer, or we can have discussions even. You can post about let’s say where you went to vacation last week or things like that.

The most Important Rule on Social Media

This is most important rule. This is the principle on how to use social media. If you are going to post photos for any social media (not just this Group Chat), think about it: 

• Is this in a private space?
• Why would you put a private space in public? 
• What do I mean by private space?

Let’s start with the worst. A lot of girls these days, but even boys, will go and take a picture in the bathroom, even with clothes, and kind of like make a duck face or whatever in the bathroom mirror. Anyone can see that it is a bathroom. 

It’s a bathroom! That’s a private space. Why would you put the private space in your life into a public space?

So don’t mix private and public. Bathrooms are private. Even the bedroom is private. Even the living room is private. So don’t post something : “Oh guys, I want to share how lovely my family is” but you have a photo of you in your living room. So try to post only public spaces. We don’t want to know what your home inside looks like. You can post it from outside, like you can take a picture outside of your home from the outside.

Maybe you want to show your car, (some people like to brag). That’s public, but at least it’s within the rules. But do not post private photos in private spaces in public. And this is for any social media, (not just this Group Chat), any social media.

We should learn how to separate public versus private. What’s inside a home is private. God designed it so that others do not see it. So don’t post the living room, your bedroom, your bathroom, even your kitchen, unless there is an angle where you cannot tell what it is, that’s different. But always try to post only public things in a public internet space. That is the most important rule : I don’t care what your living room looks like. I don’t want to see it.

It’s different if you just send a message to a friend who has been to your home, or to just one person, or a brother or a sister, because it’s already kind of a private conversation, that’s different. This group Chat is a public space. Most social media are public. Don’t post private spaces into a public online space. This is probably the most important rule, and this fixes lots of issues.

You can take a photo while walking in the street, that’s fine, you can post it. But why would you post it from a private space?

The inside of cars are semi-private because the Quran says God has designed homes which move. So the car is partly private, partly public. So there is a gray area. I wouldn’t make a rule about it. If you post a picture from inside the car, that’s semi-private, partly private but also partly public. In that case, that’s the great feature, is that we can delete it. If someone thinks it’s a little bit too private, they can just delete it. If someone thinks : “Oh, this is fine for me”, they don’t delete it. So that’s it.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. 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 saw this sort of Adhan or Friday sermon intro, let me just tell the story about it. It’s mainly compiled of footage which we did from Hajj as some of you might have noticed. Some of us took some footage from Hajj. And I think it came out nicely, and the background music is taken from one of the movies which Rashad used as well.

I want to focus on today is because the words which are there are :

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

La Ilaha Illa Allah

So I want to focus on what is known as Adhan, which from now on I’m going to call it in English :The call to the Friday Gathering. And the reason for this is because I have what turns out to be good news. Because what you just heard here online was actually not the Adhan, it was just an intro video which I used to buy some time for the people who have technical difficulties to watch us live.

And the actual Adhan, or let’s call it in English : The Call to the Friday Gathering was actually done when you received the email from me. As you, the submitters, know that you received an email which said :

God is Great !

God is Great !

God is Great !

God is Great !

There is no other god except God.

That was the actual Call to the Friday Gathering.

What I showed here is just an intro to buy us some time. And God willing, during every Friday gathering I will have a slightly different one. And hopefully, this will motivate the people to join in time so that they can see the different intro. It’s going to be the same footage, or similar footage, but it’s going to have a different music every time. Same words, but kind of different music just to make it more festive. I did it with AI, so it wasn’t that much work. It’s not really my work, it’s AI work.

Understanding the Call to Prayer in the Quran

I want to focus now on the actual topic of this Friday Sermon. The actual topic is : 

• What is actually the call to the Friday prayer?

• How do we do the Call to the Friday Gathering online? 

The intro that you saw was not The Call to the Friday Gathering. It was the one which you received in the email.

How can we reach that conclusion? This is the key verse for it :

[62:9] “…Oh you who believe. When the call is made for the prayer on the day of Friday, then hasten to the remembrance (or the mentioning of God) and leave (the) business. That is better for you if you know.”

Now the key word in this verse which I want to focus on is the word “call”. Here in the Arabic Quran, it’s not actually using the word Adhan. And when you look in the whole Quran, you do not see the word Adhan at all mentioned for calls to prayer. It is not mentioned at all. Here the word «nudiya» is mentioned. So this word, which means call, is mentioned in another verse where it’s talking about how the disbelievers laugh at the call to prayer, but even there the word Adhan is not used. It’s the word «nudiya» which is used. You do not see the word Adhan used for the call to prayer at all in the Quran. What we see is this word being mentioned, which is «nudiya».

• Then why did God leave it for thousands of years for people to call it Adhan in Arabic ? (which is translated as the call or the announcement to prayer)

• Why did God leave the people use a word which is not even in the Quran for their call to prayer ?

That is because the word nudiya : “call”, is bigger than the word Adhan, it includes the word Adhan. I am not saying that the way people have done it traditionally is wrong (the way Rashad taught us : « Allahu Akbar,… ») .I am not saying that is wrong. All I am saying is that there is more to it, meaning the word nudiya  does not include just that version, it includes other versions as well.

And what do I mean by this ? Let me give an example : 

Let’s say that the Quran tells us to wear upper body clothes (it kind of says it anyway). And then imagine in the time of Muhammad that he is telling them : “Wear a shirt.” A shirt is upper body clothes for a warm weather. But in today’s world, someone in a colder weather might say : “Wear a jacket.”  Or “Wear a sweater.” That’s also upper body clothes. So as you can see, the word “upper body clothes” includes both the shirt and the jacket. In the same way, the word nudiya  here includes both the Adhan and what I’m going to call it in English : The Call to the Friday gathering.

And here, probably it’s important to specify something more : The Adhan, as we know, is the call to the « Salat », to the contact prayer. They’ve translated it here as prayer in this context, but actually, as we know, this word actually means connection. And it’s on purpose like that. It means connection with God. So there is another context as well.

Let me be clear, I’m not denying what we know so far. All I’m saying is that there is more knowledge which is included in the Quran compared to what we have known before. So I want to draw the attention to the fact that the word “prayer”, which here it has been translated as prayer, in Arabic it literally to connect. And here in this verse, we can understand the word “connect” in two ways: One way is to connect with God. But it’s also talking on the day of Friday, and jumaa’ in Arabic means gathering, when people gather ; So to connect on the day when people gather. 

What does it mean? 

The word « nudiya » also means to connect with people.

So, in this verse, the word connection is about connecting with God, but also about connecting with people. In our case, because we are doing it online, we have connected with each other. Basically, I am live streaming, and God willing we will add the chat function in the future. So basically, The verse is telling us to connect. It is not specifying what kind of connection. We definitely know that it’s connection with God when we do the contact prayer, but here it is talking about connecting on the day when people gather, so it must be also some sort of other connection, to connect with other people, to connect with God together with other people.

A Human-Made Decision Across History

So, given this additional meaning of the word « salat » in the Quran, then when we talk about the call to connection, it specifically means two things : First meaning is the Adhan which we know traditionally, and the other meaning is The Call to the Friday Gathering, which specifically has to do with the connection online. I think I have explained it partly (Can We Do Friday Sermons Online ?), and God willing I will explain again in future videos that Friday gatherings or Friday sermons are okay to be done online in specific circumstances, which are our circumstances.

It is on purpose that the word Adhan is not mentioned. Because if God used the word Adhan, we would have to assume that it is the traditional Adhan in the way it was done, which was in Arabic : « Allahu Akbar,… » and they do it in the mosques to this day. And by the way, if we have a local mosque, we should do it like that as well in Arabic. But we here we are talking about online, and the question is: 

• Why did I take the liberty to do it English online? 

• Who gave me the right to do it in English when we are doing it online? 

No one had to give me the liberty.

The reason is that the Adhan which Muhammad did, which also Rashad did, if we analyze it carefully, it’s actually a human decision. So it’s not that God said : “This should be the Adhan.” God told us about about Nudya, which is the call to prayer, which one version of it is the Adhan, but that version is a human-made decision. Let me go back again to to the same example : If God told us to wear upper body clothes, it is a human decision whether they wear a t-shirt and what type of t-shirt, or whether they will wear a jacket and how thick that jacket will have to be. It is a human decision.

And how do we know that it’s a human decision?

First of all, studying the Quran : If God wanted specifically to tell us that these words are the words of the Adhan, God would tell us, but he did not. And he did not because God knew that people will reach the correct decision about this, a specific decision for every time. During Muhammad’s time, they reached a specific decision and it was correct; it was correct for them in that specific place and time, in those specific circumstances, they reached the human decision. And by the way, if any Sunnis or Shia might think that I am changing something, I just want to remind them that even according to their hadith, this is how Adhan came to be. Their hadith proves that it was a human decision.

Before I tell the story of that Hadith, let me just say that the word nudya, which is the fifth word in 62:9, it actually includes even the human decisions which existed in the past. But of course, here it is talking about the Friday prayer. they did not do the gathering on Friday, they did it on Saturday before Muhammad. It includes even those because it is a human decision.

In the past, during the time of David, it was a human decision, they decided that they are going to use the horn to call the people to the congregational gathering. Then it was Saturday. And then the Christians, after Jesus, use the bell. What I am saying is that even those are legitimate as long as people agree that that is the correct thing to do, as long as they agree and it is a correct decision. It was correct for the time and place. And Muhammad never actually sort of said that they are wrong,  he never said : “Oh, if you call the people with a horn or if you call the people with a with a bell like they do it in the churches that is wrong”  He never said that it is wrong.

What Muhammad said, according to the Sunni hadith and the Shia hadith, is that he wanted to have it different, not that it was wrong. He just wanted a different version so that people can distinguish whether they are being called to a church, to a synagogue, or to a mosque, which shows that he was aware that it’s a human decision. He just wanted to have it different so that people know where they are being called now. So what I’m saying is this : The word nudya includes even the horns and the bells which the church has used (for the past of course) and the Adhan, the traditional Arabic Adhan for circumstances outside of online, but it also includes this word also includes what I have sent in the email earlier. It also includes that because God left it up to us to make a human decision. It does not have to be revealed by God whether we want to wear a t-shirt or whether we want to wear a jacket, God told us : “Wear upper body clothes” . Let’s say that is just an example.

So let me go back now to the hadith which the Sunnis and Shia use. By the way, we do not believe in hadith, we do not rely on them as a source of religion, we know that. However, the Sunnis might say : “Oh, you guys changed it online.” If they say we changed it, we tell them that their hadith, the Sunni hadith and the Shia hadith according to them, tells us about how the Adhan came to be like this. So Muhammad one day wanted to come up with a way to call people to prayer, but he did not want to mix it up with the bells which the churches use or the horns which the Jews use, so he wanted to have a different version, which shows that he was aware that it is a human decision and while he was discussing it with the believers, according to their hadith, a person from the group came, and he said : “I saw in a dream that someone was just saying aloud…  [the Adhan]… ”, and Muhammad said : “Oh, that’s a good idea, we should do that.” So basically, Adhan was not revealed by God to Muhammad. Adhan is a human decision which Muhammad made for that time in their circumstances. And the idea came in a dream to another person, it was not even Muhammad. And God did it like this so that we can have the liberty to do it in our way, not thinking that we are going against Muhammad, because it was not never revealed to Muhammad, it was never Muhammad’s idea, it was someone else’s idea. Anyone can go and search online how the Adhan came to be, and you can see that someone else proposed it by saying that : “Oh, I saw it in a dream,” and then Muhammad Muhammad liked it and he said : “Oh, let’s do it like that.”

Preserving Unity and Language Online

So they made a human decision how the nudiya, the call to prayer which is mentioned in the Quran, how the nudiya will be executed in Muhammad’s circumstances in the Arabic world in the seventh century. And that is what they called Adhan. We don’t need to call it Adhan. That is the Adhan, the Arabic one which was done in that specific form. But here in the Quran, there is more than that.

So then when Rashad came, he made again a human decision that we should still do the Adhan the same way in circumstances within mosques even in places where people don’t speak Arabic : (US, Canada, Europe,…) . Rashad thought that it’s a good idea if we still do it in Arabic so that we can keep the unity. If we today have a mosque, I would still do it in Arabic. And the purpose and the reason is not because that’s how God revealed it, but because I don’t want to break the unity, that’s how people have done it. 

First of all, there’s a verse in the Quran which says that the believers are united. So if you change it, you are kind of causing disunity. And second of all, there’s a verse in the Quran which says : “Do not betray those who trust you,” we should not betray those who trust us.  Rashad trusted that we will do it in Arabic in a mosque, but he never did it online. So what I’m saying is I do not want to go against the verses which tell us to not break the unity, to be united, and to not betray each other. I do not want to go against that verse. That’s why I still believe that’s how it should be done in mosques. It is not God’s decision, it is a human-made decision, but we respect it. I respect there is nothing wrong with the way Adhan was done during the time of Muhammad, the way Muhammad approved it. There’s nothing wrong with it for that circumstance. There is nothing wrong to do it still in Arabic in a mosque outside of the Arabic world.

But because we are in a circumstance which has never happened before, I would not cause disunity if we decide to do it the way we do it. I know it’s a human decision, just like during Muhammad’s time it was a human decision, just like during Rashad’s time it was a human decision. In our time, because it has never been done online. People publish it online, but they don’t believe in the online Friday Gathering, so it has never been done online.

That means that we get to decide, we have the privilege, we are the lucky ones. God gave us the opportunity to decide how the Adhan should be for the online circumstances. And for the online circumstances, I am deciding. It’s a human decision, but it’s binding, because why would you break the unity? By the way, I am not breaking the unity with the traditional Adhan because this is a totally different circumstance. I still want to do it the way they have done it in mosques. Let them do it in Saudi Arabia. But online they have never done it.  So that means that God gives us the privilege or the chance or the opportunity to decide how the Adhan should be so as long as it is within this nudiya idea, the call to prayer, in a similar way that God gave us the opportunity to decide what type of clothes we want to wear as long as they are within the Quran. 

The reason why I want to do it in English is because there is a verse in the Quran saying that all the messengers are sent in the language of the people, and the language online is English. So from now on, the Arabs are going to have to get used to the online idea of doing it in English, just like the rest of the world was used to the traditional idea of doing it in Arabic. So from now, we are going to do the call to connect for the Friday gathering in English. I am not talking about in mosques, I am talking about online.

The Online Call to Friday Gathering

Why did I decide on those specific words?

Because those specific words are here where it says : “When the call is made for prayer, hasten to the mentioning of God”. So basically, I wanted a call to prayer where God is mentioned, and when we say : “God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great !”  God is mentioned, so we Are fulfilling that commandment. And then we’re specifying which God: “There’s no other god except God.” So basically, that’s going to be the call to prayer in English now online. Now because online, people don’t hear it unless they go online already. They probably read it first, so it is going to be a written version.

God gives us the liberty to decide about this on our own. I am deciding for us because I happen to be the leader for our group. So as a human being, I am deciding that for our circumstances, the Adhan online, only online, is:

God is Great !

God is Great !

God is Great !

God is Great !

There is no other god except God.

Live Friday Gathering within minutes at :

TheSubmitters.org

Let’s not call it Adhan anymore, because Adhan is that specific Arabic version. Here I’m talking about the English version, which is still within what the Quran says, it’s still that word, the call, nudiya. And it’s easy also to remember, we know the words, so it’s: « God is great, God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! There is no other god except God ». And then every person can add in their own way where the person can connect. Here I said : “Live Friday gathering within minutes at TheSubmitters.org.” In the future, these specific words might be different.

Why did I say “within minutes” ?

• We are fulfilling the verse in the Quran which says the minimum unit of time is the hour. So the Quran doesn’t mention minutes or seconds, that means that as long as we do it within that hour when the time for the gathering is, as long as we do it within that hour, it’s specific enough.
• You can send this Adhan 10 to 40 minutes ahead of time, and it is still within that unit of time which the Quran mentions. So basically, it’s specific enough. Some people might have to wait a little bit, but as long as it is within that hour, then it’s specific enough, and that’s why I said : “within minutes,”  because minutes are within an hour, so it has to be within an hour.

It is a human decision, but that is what I am deciding. The call to the prayer for our circumstances online should be :  « God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! there is no other god except God ». And everyone can decide how they put the link there, you can decide on your own.

Let’s repent first.

Utilizing Social Media for Promotion

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

So we just included what the call to the Friday gathering should be for live online circumstances, which is our circumstance. We also came up with a photo version which can be posted on social media.

Let me share the photo version :

It is with a darker background. The reason is so that it can stand out a little bit more when you post it on social media. Again, it says : “God is great ! God is great ! God is great ! God is great ! there’s no other god except God.” And my words are : “Live Friday gathering within minutes at the submitters.org.” 

Why is this still within the Quran and kind of like is confirmed that it is within the Quran?

I am not saying that this is what the Quran tells us to do. What I am saying is that the Quran gives us the freedom to do things like this, and all of this is within the Quran. There’s a verse in the Quran which says : « Force yourself to be with those who call God ». And here, we are calling God. This is the best way to call people to us. We do not go there and say : “Oh, can you please join for the Friday sermon? Can you please  guys join in this group ?”  That is almost like begging. You know what they do, half-submitters and traditional religious people, they will go online and they will call people : “Oh, can you please join us?”  That is actually a sign that you should not join them, because God tells us : “Join those who call on God,” not who call you. So here, we are calling God. We are not necessarily calling people, we are calling God. We are saying : “God is great ! God is great ! God is great ! God is great ! there is no other god except God.”  And then there is a verse in the Quran which says to the believers : “Go after those who call God.” So this call to the Friday Gathering is within that verse, it confirms that verse.

And then the other reason why we should do it like this is because there’s another verse in the Quran which says : « If you support God, God will support you ». So basically, we should not go there and call people : “Oh, come here, let’s do this, let’s do that.” The verse says you support God. We support God, God supports us. So this is the best way to promote the message, to have more people join us in the cause of God. The best way is to support God, and then God will support us, God will let other people join us. This is the best way.

This solves one of the most long-standing problems which we’ve had as a community. We have talked about this a lot, especially with people who had marketing backgrounds about what is the best way to promote the message. And finally, I think we have found most of the answer. As you guys know, we have tried many methods, I compiled an email, we tried Facebook ads, we have tried many different things. And finally, I think this is the answer. This is the answer to how we should promote the message, and it is simple. It has been all along in the Quran. All we have to do is saying in front of others : “God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! There is no other god except God.”

And because it’s online, we tell them where the link is. In this case, I’m saying : “Live Gathering within minutes at TheSubmitters.org.” By the way, the reason why they did not add this part in the past (they actually added it in certain circumstances) but the reason why they did not add it because they would call it from the mosque, everyone would know where the sound is coming from, so they would go there. Here they would not know where the message is coming from, they have to know where the message is coming from, where they can join, so we had to add that.

And again, this is a human decision just like in the past it was a human decision. There is historical sources which say that Muhammad, when it was raining, he would say : « Allahu Akbar, … » and then he would say : “Pray in your homes.”  He would add that because the circumstances were different in that day. Let’s say it was raining too much, he didn’t want people to get all muddy, so he told them : “Pray in your homes” at the end. And in the same way, we are adding this because it is a necessary information where to join us. Today we are doing it in this website, which I do not think we will ever change it God willing. But if we ever change it, that link is going to be something else, some other information. But the actual Call to the Friday Gathering is : « God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! God is Great ! there’s no other god except God ».  This solves one of our biggest problems because we could not figure out how to promote the message to other people. We just could not come up with the best way to promote the message, to call the people to God’s cause, and finally I think this answers most of it. It solves one of the biggest problems we’ve had as a community.

The Role of the Community

• What is your role in this?

• Who is supposed to do the Call to the Friday Gathering ?

The answer to this is similar to the Funeral Prayer. Both the funeral prayer and the call to the Friday gathering, are mentioned in the Quran but not as an individual obligation. They are mentioned that they exist. For example the Quran says : “Do not do the funeral prayer for the disbelievers, for those who were believers once and now they are disbelievers, do not do the funeral prayer for them.” That is what the Quran says.

It is not giving a rule that every individual should do the funeral prayer, but it is mentioning it. The fact that the Quran is mentioning it assumes that at least someone is doing it. So basically, the rules of the funeral prayer are that at least someone in the community should do it. It could be one person, but more people is better. As long as one person does it, the obligation is fulfilled, but if more people do it, it is better. In the same way with the Call to the Friday Gathering : If one person does it, the obligation is fulfilled, but more is better. If other people do it as well, it is better.

And in the traditional circumstances, that is why many mosques have many minarets. If you go to so many mosques in the Middle East, you will see that some mosques, the big ones, have more than one minaret. Some of them have six minarets. Minarets are the places where they make the call to prayer. So why six minarets? The reason is that they understood that more than one person can do the call to prayer. When someone does the call to prayer, some other people don’t hear him, then another person does the call to prayer. This is even according to historical sources : Muhammad would tell someone to do the call to prayer, and if others did not hear it, someone else who heard that first person then would call the others. So it’s a way to call the people to the Friday Gathering.

Now in this case, I wrote it once and the computer sent it automatically, but God willing, it is going to be sent automatically by the computer. Once you received that call, let’s say you are on Facebook at that time or some other social media : Did the people to whom you are talking or socializing with hear the call? No, you heard it, they did not hear it. So in that case, the best thing you can actually do is to make that same call to other people, on Facebook, or Instagram, or other social media, or even direct messages.

Especially the ones where you can delete it later, because this is a call for a specific time. We are calling God, but indirectly the people are supposed to join at a specific time, which in our case is 12:00 UTC. It does not have to always be like this, but in our case, it is at 12:00 UTC. So it is for a specific time that we are calling them, let’s say 20-30 minutes ahead of time, so that they can see the message or the post. This is actually most suitable for social media, not emails, because emails you cannot delete them later. If you call them at a specific time and they see it later, what are they going to do? It is not very useful.

But it is very useful if you post it on social media, God willing. This is the best way you can help. You do not have to try with old methods we have done, or that others have done, or traditional Muslims and Christians do. God willing, you will see this will work the best. That is all we have to do.  You decide based on how fast people see the messages on social media : You decide whether it’s going to be 10 -40 minutes ahead of time, or 5 minutes if it is a direct message, etc.

• You take those words.

• You copy-paste them from the email.

• You post them where you want to post them.

Just post that, and you don’t have to engage. If they say : “What is this?”  you do not have to engage, because now we are doing the Friday sermon. You do not have to engage with them. When the Friday sermon is finished, you go and delete it, because it is not applicable anymore. Next Friday, you can do the same thing, call them again. In this way, they do not get bored as much, in the sense that the post is not going to stay there all the time. So this is how you can help.

So God willing, from now on, the way I am going to do the call to the Friday Gathering online is through an email with those words. That is the call to prayer, that is the call which is mentioned in the Quran. But because most people who are communicating with you do not hear it, it would be best if you share it. It’s not an obligation, because as long as one does it, it’s done, but it would be better just like in the funeral prayer. It is better if more people do it within practical reason. I would say it is actually an obligation within practical reason, meaning : Do it if it makes sense. In most cases, it makes sense.

Let’s say you know the Friday prayer is going to be 20-30 minutes later, if you have some time and you’re out of work and you receive the email, you copy-paste the message and post it on social media. You can post it as a photo or as text depending on the social media. In this way even the non-submitters can join and check what the message is.

The additional reason why this method is good is because you can also post it in groups of other religious groups. You can post this message at a specific time. The reason why this method is so good is because the administrators or leaders of those groups do not have time to delete it so quickly. So within minutes, some people might join and listen. And then after that, you delete it. The leader might not even see it. It’s fine; if two or three people see it, you’ve done a good job. It is okay as long as you do it.

Now, not everyone uses social media, and that’s okay. What I’m saying is within reason. Whatever social media you use, if you use it, why not use it to call God, which indirectly calls people to the cause of God?

I hope I did not forget something about this. It is quite an important Friday Sermon because I think it is going to resolve a lot of issues.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, you can do the contact prayer at this time if it is the due time. For the rest of you, peace be upon you, peace.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

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

In Sura 3, verse 130, God prohibits us to engage in what is called “riba”. Let me give you an example what “riba” is. Let’s say that I live in the 15^th century, in one of the medieval kingdoms, and I go to a friend, and I tell him that I need 100 gold coins as a loan for a year. He says, “Yes, you can have them, but at the end of the year you have to return 107 gold coins” Now, this is “riba”, prohibited interest – and it literarily means “increase”, and in this case we can see that my friend increased the number of gold coins which I have to return to him compared to what he gave me. And this is prohibited in the Quran.

Now, let’s take another example. Let’s say that I don’t live in the 15^th century, but I live today in a democratic country, in Canada for example, and instead of going to my friend, I go to the bank to get a loan of 100,000 dollars, and the bank tells me. “OK, but at the end of the year, you have to return 107,000 dollars.” Now, the question is, “Is this also riba?” Before we answer that, let’s first list the differences between these two examples:

 

Example 1	Example 2
In a kingdom	In a democracy
Loan from a human being	Loan from a bank (organisation)
Loan in gold coins	Loan in fiat money (paper money which is not backed by gold or silver)

Now, do these three differences mean that the second example is not an example of ribba (prohibited interest), or is it still prohibited interest (riba)? Let’s analyze it.

So, as we can see, the second example happens in a democracy. But what does it mean to live in a democracy. Democracy in Greek means, “people rule”. So, in a democracy, we do not serve the government, like you do in a kingdom (where you serve the king). In a democracy, the government serves us, which means that the decisions of the government are ultimately a shared responsibility of us, the people in that country. Now, in democracies of today, on behalf of the people, the parliament creates a central bank, which prints money. So, we the people, in a democracy have ordered our servants, the state, more specifically, the central bank, to print money. And guess what, the central bank, as ordered by the parliament, which represents us, distributes that money through other banks by giving it to them as a loan with interest. So, effectively, we the people in democracies have charged interest on the banks first, before they did it to us. And in addition, we the people, listening to our naive economists have authorized the states to print about 2, 3 or 4% of money more than it is needed every year, which they call “inflation”, and this additional printing of money out of thin air is technically stealing from those who have the money – the banks in this case- and giving it to those who borrowed the money, the borrowers. So, we have effectively charged interest on the banks, before they did it to us. You as an individual, and I might have not wanted to do it, but we live in a society which does it on our behalf, and when we use the money, we are implicitly agreeing to it. If you don’t like it, don’t use the money. Go to a country which doesn’t use money. There is no such country today. And if you use the money, you are part of the system, and you have effectively charged interest on the banks first. Maybe not intentionally, but that does not change the fact that it happened under your watch, being one of the rulers in a democracy. Of course, because for you as a submitter, it was unintentional and unavoidable, God will forgive you for this unwanted situation, as I explain in another video titled “The Global Forced Behaviour”. But the fact is, we effectively did charge interest on the banks first.

Now, when we go to get loans from banks, the banks make sure that they charge us a higher interest then we charged them so that they can make a profit. However, at least part of it, part of their interest, as you can see is just the cancelation of our interest on them. So, that part is not really true interest. It’s just the cancelation of your interest. So, because we unfairly took from them, if they also take from us up to that same amount, that is fair, and just. The Quran says, “an eye for an eye” and that’s allowed. But, as I said, the banks actually charge us more than what we charged them. So, what about that additional portion? Is that portion prohibited interest? Now that additional portion consists of two sub-portions:

The first sub-portion of the interest, even though it is called interest, it is effectively a fee which the bank charges, not for the loan, but for the services it provides connected with that loan. See, in the first example of how it worked in the past, where you went to a friend to get a loan, you would be doing all the work- you go to his home, you might or might not find him, so you might have to go to 5 friends before one of them actually has the gold coins, and maybe that money might be available, but maybe he needs it, so he can not give it to you. In that case, you are going through all the work, and the risk , and the inconvenience, and your friend is not providing you any additional service except for the loan. But, imagine if that friend said, let me actually open an office close to you, and hire some employees, and make sure that they stay there all day for you, only so that when you need a loan once in a while, we are there to serve you. That service would cost. You didn’t just get a loan, you got the loan and a service, the convenience of finding it whenever you need it, the technology involved to make it easier for you, through online services, cards and things like that. It’s the same when you order ice cream at a restaurant, for example. It is more expensive then when you buy it from the shop. It’s because you are not only getting the ice-cream. You are also getting the service. They put it nicely on the table for you. They’ll wash the ice cream bowl for you, afterwards. All of that service, of course, costs. People are staying away from their families, so they can be at your service. So, a portion of the interest which banks charge is not interest at all. It’s a service fee for the costs which they have to go through to serve you.

Now, the last portion of interest, the portion which is neither interest cancellation, neither a service fee, that portion is true prohibited interest – riba.

Now, the question is, how big of a portion is that? How much of the so-called interest which the bank charges you is actual prohibited interest, riba? And thankfully, it is easy to calculate, because banks get almost all their revenue from interest. Their total interest is pretty much their revenue, and their total expenses are all for services and the cancelation of interest which they had to do. So, this means that to calculate the remaining prohibited interest after service fees and cancelation of interest, all we have to do is calculate the remaining revenue after expenses. And if you are an accountant, you know that revenue minus expenses equals profit. So, the profit of the bank is exactly the prohibited portion of interest, the riba. So, when it comes to banks, not everything they charge you is riba (prohibited interest). Only their profit portion is “riba” (prohibited interest). And how much is that? Well, on average, the owners of banks have a profit margin of about 15% after taxes and inflation adjustments. So, only about 15% of the interest which the bank charges you is actually riba, the interest which is prohibited in the Quran. This means that  if someone says that bank interest is prohibited in the Quran, they are about 85% wrong. And in the future, they will be even more wrong, because true business profits will gradually go down close to 0% just before the End of the World, but that’s another issue. But today, in 2025, bank interest is about 85% allowed according to the Quran, and about 15% prohibited.

Now, the question is. Should we avoid bank loans completely, just because only 15% of that deal is prohibited? And we can not separate the allowed portion from the prohibited portion, because they come together within the same loan. Well, we have two choices here. We can avoid bank loans, or we can decide to use them, and then atone for the prohibited portion through Penalty Zakat. And this is an option which is allowed in the Quran. In Sura 9, verses 102 and 103 tell us that if someone engages in mixed deeds, which include both good and sin them, then we should compensate for the sinful portion with charity, which I have labeled “Penalty Zakat”, because it is obligatory charity as penalty for your sinful portion of the deed. Now, knowing that bank interest is about 15% sinful, in another video I explain the details why we have to pay 7.5% of the sinful portion. So, 7.5% of 15% is about 1%. So, if you work in a bank, you have to give 1% of your income as Penalty Zakat, unless the owner of the bank gave it, but that’s very unlikely, so you have to give it. And if you own stocks of a bank, you have to give 1% of the profit unless the employees of the ban gave it, but that’s very unlikely, so you have to give it. But, if you just take a loan from a bank, you were already financially penalized by the bank through the slightly higher interest rate than you deserved to be charged, so you don’t need to pay penalty zakat for loans which you get from a bank.

However, just because it is permissible to get a loan from a bank, that doesn’t mean that you should. Just because something is not a sin, that doesn’t make it a smart decision. So, let me give you a friendly tip on how to be smart with loans. There are two types of loans: Consumption loans and investment loans. Consumption loans are for example, a loan to cover your wedding expenses, or a loan to go on vacation, or a loan to refurnish your kitchen, or a loan to buy a bigger house, because it just looks better, or a loan to get the newest PlayStation, or a loan to buy the more expensive car than you have the money for because it just looks better. These are consumption loans. Investment loans are loans for a new business, materials for your business, or to buy a basic car because you need it for work, which makes it an investment in some ways, because it enables you to earn money at work. So, if you want to be smart about loans, avoid consumption loans, and take investment loans, when you have a very good investment idea, of course.

Mortgages are between consumption and investment loans, because they are essentially a consumption loan, where the investment component is just as big, because it enables you to escape out of the situation of paying rent.

Now, credit cards are generally consumption loans, so when you have to use them because they make transactions easier, always make sure to pay them as early as possible, before the interest kicks in. One of the best ways banks take advantage of greedy and financially stupid people is through credit cards, because they have among the highest interest rates.

Now, in a democratic country, with free markets, banks compete against each other to offer the lowest interest rates on investment loans, and the investors are only willing to take those loans, if their interest rates are lower than what the expected return on investment would be. This means that in in true democracies, average bank interest rates are forced to be lower than the average return on investment. And the economy of a truly democratic country has never grown more than about 20% per year. You can only get that rate of growth in a non-democratic country, or a country which just came out of devastating war, which is not a democracy either. So, because in practice, it has never happened for a truly democratic economy to grow faster than 20%, then having bank loans with a higher interest rate than about 20% can only happen in a country which is practically not a democracy. And in that environment the interest rates are prohibited, because as we said in the beginning, for interest rates not to be prohibited, they have to happen in a democracy, through banks (not through people), and with fiat money (not with gold and silver).

Now, if you get a loan from an actual person, not a bank, then all interest is riba (prohibited interest). However, because we use fiat money (paper money), which has an unfair inflation attached to it, because the government keeps stealing it’s value by about 2 to 3% every year on average, then you are allowed to adjust for that inflation during that period. And if there is deflation, which is very rare, you can also adjust for deflation. Think of it like this. If a person loaned 100 sheep to his friend. Of course, he should return 100 sheep back. Any other number would be prohibited interest, “riba”. However, if while he held the sheep, he starved the sheep so much so that now they are 10% thinner. He can not come and say that because he received 100 sheep and he returned 100 sheep, that is fair. No, it’s not fair. Look at the sheep. They look like goats. You either bring the sheep as healthy as they were, or if you returned them 10% thinner, then the fair thing to do is to return 110 sheep. And the same with money. Inflation makes the money thinner, with less value, just like in the case with thinner sheep. So, it’s unfair if you don’t take inflation into account, for any loan which extends one year or longer, where inflation matters. And this has nothing to do with ribba. You are just making it fair. The same real value for the same real value.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director