Video Transcript:

 
Introduction

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

I hope this jazz music doesn’t make anyone feel bad or non not serious about this. I just wanted to include all kinds of music. I don’t know, maybe it’s appropriate, maybe it’s not. I’m not sure. I’ll decide later, God willing.

Today I want to talk actually about professionalism. In the last Friday sermon, we talked about being humane, and I purposely talked about it first because I think being humane is more important than being professional. Unfortunately, most people are either more professional or more humane in different countries, different groups, different families. They tend to be a little bit more humane or professional, and it’s really hard to find both. So when I want to talk about professionalism, don’t forget that you also have to be humane.

Before I go to actually talking about professionalism, which is an important aspect for believers within their group, let me actually talk about what I call toxic professionalism. Professionalism can go both ways. That’s why I titled the video Professionalism is a Weapon. A weapon can be used for good or for bad. You can use a weapon to let’s say slaughter an animal and offer it to God, which is a good thing, but you can also use a weapon to kill someone, which is a bad thing. Professionalism is a weapon. In the right hands within the community of submitters, it’s a good thing. Within the wrong community, it’s a bad thing.

A lot of times, because in these days we live among the non-submitters and we have to deal with non-submitters, professionalism quite often is actually sort of used as a way to gain power rather than to actually be professional. So I call that toxic professionalism.

Examples of Toxic Professionalism

Let me just give you examples. Probably a perfect example of toxic professionalism is what they call double speak. Double speak is used pretty much by every business and every government agency. Most of the time they use double speak. Double speak means that they find a different way of saying something which is bad, which would actually be unacceptable otherwise.

For example, let’s say there’s a police task force, there’s a SWAT team, there’s an army or whatever, and they’re talking on the radio and you hear one of them say, “Go kinetic.” What it means is kill the guy, kill the person. But it’s double speak. They say something, but they mean something else. They say, “Oh, go kinetic.” It’s a way to make themselves feel better that they are actually not killing a person, they are just doing their job, they are being professional. “I’m so professional, I can hit the target anywhere.” No, you’re just being a bad person and you don’t want to admit it.

For example, there are cases when killing a person actually makes sense, but quite often it doesn’t quite make sense. Or let’s say there’s police who in their contract it will say—I don’t even know the police rules, but especially here in the US, in US and Canada, not this much, but in the US people are a little bit too aggressive—so sometimes they’ll be like, in the contract it says you are not allowed to point the gun at someone unless they use aggressive behavior towards you. Let’s say that’s what it says in the contract. What will the police do? They want to pull the gun and point it at you because they feel unsafe for whatever emotional reasons or whatever. So they will use professionalism to actually do what would not be the right thing to do at that time. They’ll be like, “Oh, you’re being aggressive,” and they’ll pull the gun even though you’re not aggressive. So as you can see, there’s a way to actually make professionalism, to use it for bad, and people use it for bad.

Or let’s say, as you guys, some of you might know, Kanye West, he’s kind of a little bit mentally not okay. It’s fine, I mean it’s his problem, but clearly he’s not okay mentally, but also he’s kind of right in so many other things. Using that against him to let’s say stop his bank accounts, like to pretty much leave him without money, I don’t think that’s actually right. That’s a way, that’s toxic professionalism. I’m quite sure the banks when they sort of blocked his bank accounts, whatever he said, it doesn’t matter what the guy says, that’s his money. Banks shouldn’t actually do what they call debanking. They shouldn’t debank him. I think they are not debanking him anymore, but when he said some things which some groups of people didn’t want to hear, what happened? Banks just used toxic professionalism to debank him, basically to steal his money. And I’m quite sure they used double speak. He probably received an email which said, “For your safety, your bank account has been paused for re-evaluation,” or something like that. “If you want to reactivate your account, you will have to fill this report.” No, I had the money, it was fully safe earlier, why do I have to refill it?

Or with PayPal actually, it’s quite concerning. Some of you guys, thank you for actually sending the chats to the PayPal account and it has worked so far, but sometimes I’m concerned about it because PayPal will quite often put stuff on hold. Some countries actually have rules about PayPal, so then PayPal, instead of taking that as their own problem, they’ll put the problem to you. So they’re like, “Okay, the money has been sent, but it’s on hold.” How long is it on hold? Sometimes it’s a month, sometimes it’s a week. I want to know how long is it on hold. Someone actually, one of you actually sent an email: “I sent the money, but did you actually receive it, because I’m not sure.” So kind of they keep it on hold. Yeah, I can see how they do it to prevent crime, but yeah, I’m not the criminal, why do I have to go through it?

So yeah, professionalism can be toxic. In my last job which I had, I didn’t like the IT guy. God is actually kind of compensating me for the struggle I had to go through there, because the work with Fenol is really fun, he is really a professional guy. So I’m really, it’s really going well with the website, the management of the website and all of that with Fenol. But with the previous IT guy I had to deal with in my last job, he was terrible. Let me just give you an example.

Basically, the job which I had to do, it all culminated, the research work which we had to do for pretty much six months, almost a year sometimes, we would present it in what we would call a scientific conference. I think, by the way, these scientific conferences are what gave Rashad Khalifa the idea to organize submitters’ conferences. It was just something he learned from being a scientist, it’s not necessarily a religious thing. Anyway, so in those scientific conferences, I was responsible for organizing it. So imagine there’s like about 40, 50, sometimes 100 scientists coming. They come to present their studies which they have done for a year. It’s pretty much their year’s work, they are presenting it now. Some of them have brought their work, let’s say they are going to present it in some sort of PowerPoint presentation or whatever, and some of them have sent it through email, some of them have brought it through USB. And the IT guy at the last moment finds a way to say, “You know what, I don’t think they can use their USBs because there might be a virus.” Okay, so you want to lose six months of work and sort of derail the whole situation because you’re afraid of a computer virus right now? So yeah, that can be toxic professionalism.

I’m quite sure that’s probably in some rules which he made himself. The IT guy made himself: “Oh, we don’t use USBs to put in our computers because they can have viruses.” I can see how he made that rule, but he made it. It’s not like it existed, he made it. I can see how that’s helpful not to have viruses, but in a situation where people didn’t know better and it’s going to destroy everything else just because you want to save one computer from a virus, that can be toxic. Anyway, I don’t know if this is the best example, but it’s an example which annoyed me. Maybe he was right, maybe someday people will think that he was right. To me, it seemed like a little bit too professional.

So I just want to point out that professionalism can be toxic, and unfortunately disbelievers use it for bad things. But in a group of submitters, within our group, professionalism is a good thing because it’s a weapon. A weapon can be used for good reasons and for bad reasons. Before we go into the good sides of professionalism—which is pretty much we should try to be as professional as possible with each other and within our group because it’s a good thing when used in the right context—let’s repent first, and then we’ll talk about it.

Let’s repent.

Professionalism Among Submitters

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

Let’s talk about professionalism within our group. How did I come to value or appreciate or learn that professionalism is important even for religious purposes within a group context, even within a personal context? It’s really important to be professional even in religion.

I came to realize this when I was going to the publishing company in Kosovo. I had translated Rashad’s translation of the Quran in Albanian with all the appendixes and all of that, that’s why I wanted to publish it. This was years ago, probably 15 years ago, more than that, probably more. As I’m going to the publishing company, I had put all the pages in a layout so they can publish it. As I’m going there, I realized that the margins were a little bit off, so they were kind of like too much on one side. Imagine you have a book, it’s all correct, but the whole text is a little bit off the margins. The margin on the left and the margin on the right don’t fit.

It was not easy to make it. You actually don’t want to make it fully equal because in a book, when you open the book, the middle of the book is harder to read. So usually what the publishing companies will do is they’ll push the text a little bit further from the center so that the text is more towards the edges of the book where the book is more flat. If you check any book, you’ll see it’s kind of like that. But what I had done is I had pushed it too much. Thinking about it, I had pushed it too much.

So I’m going to the publishing company. As I’m walking, I didn’t have a car, I think I was in a bus, and then I got out of the bus and I’m walking. I’m like, “Okay, I knew that it was a little bit off, but let me just do it today.” I was excited, let me just do it today, I don’t want to come back again here and stuff like that. Then it hit me. I’m like, “Wait a minute, if this was my own work, if this was my book, let’s say I was Tolstoy, a Russian writer, if I was Tolstoy and it was my book, would I allow this? No. Why do I allow it for the Quran? Why do I allow it for something which is even more important?”

People sometimes allow it because it doesn’t feel like it’s their own work, and it can trick us. A lot of times people will be like, “No, wait a minute, this is just a voluntary thing I’m doing.” Yeah, but do it right. For example, there’s a verse in the Quran which says why do you give, don’t take the bad thing to give to charity. Let’s say you have some apples and you’re like, “Okay, this is charity, I don’t have to do it anyway, so I’m just going to sort of pick a bad apple and give it to the poor people.” Well, that’s not professional. It’s not professional to do the bad thing just because it’s voluntary, because even the poor people don’t want it. Sometimes people will give bad clothes to poor people. These days, poor people don’t even want bad clothes, they want good clothes. There’s enough clothes in the world, so even they want to wear nice clothes. Why would you give them torn clothes and bad clothes? Sometimes we do, but what I’m saying is just because it’s voluntary—and that was my thought, just because I’m doing this voluntarily, I don’t gain anything from it, and I’m publishing a book—that doesn’t mean that I should not be professional. So I went back and fixed it, and then weeks later, because then we had to reschedule the meeting and all of that, it delayed the whole thing, but at least I did it right.

Since that moment, I decided, no, I’m going to be professional even in religion. This is something which a lot of us can improve on, and I’m going to mention some examples. Please don’t feel bad, because it’s probably not only you. Usually examples I mention, it’s more than one person who has done it, let me say some unprofessional approach, so don’t feel like, “Oh, I’m targeting you.” I’m not targeting anyone, I’m just bringing examples. If I mention something, if you think I’m talking about you, it’s probably someone else as well. So if it makes you feel better, it’s probably even more than two people who have done it, that’s why I’m bringing it up.

Scriptural Examples and Principles

So where do we find it in the Quran that professionalism is a good thing within a group of believers? Now, the Quran doesn’t mention professionalism directly, because the reason is because it can be a bad thing as well in different circumstances. But the circumstances I’m mentioning it, I’m trying to bring it within only within the circumstances when it’s good. So that’s why you don’t find it directly in the Quran, but you can sort of see verses which imply professionalism within a group of submitters.

Let’s go to Surah 8, verse 60. It says:

“You shall prepare for them all the power you can muster, and all the equipment you can mobilize—and as we agreed, professionalism is a weapon, and actually in Arabic I think it says not only equipment, all the weapons you can mobilize—that you may frighten the enemies of God, your enemies, as well as others who are not known to you; God knows them. Whatever you spend in the cause of God will be repaid to you generously, without the least injustice.”

So you don’t want to go to war and not take your sword or your gun. How does that work? Where are you going? Does anyone go to a professional basketball or soccer practice and not take the shoes with him, or the sportswear? No, they wouldn’t. The trainer will be like, “No, where are you going? Go back, come dressed back next time with your shoes.”

If you go to, let’s say, I would hate it sometimes, in some poorer countries, you call a person to fix the door or you have a problem, and they actually don’t bring the equipment. They come there, they don’t bring the equipment. They’re like, “Oh, can I borrow a screwdriver? Can I borrow this? Can I borrow that?” I thought you were doing this, I wouldn’t call you if I had to bring the screwdriver. So yeah, that’s not professional. What I’m saying is, as you can see, even in a religious context, you have to bring your equipment if you really want to be ready for whatever we have to do in a religious context. Let’s say when we went to Hajj, people had to bring whatever they had to bring. There’s a video about it where I tried to help you with what to bring, but imagine if you went unprepared.

Here’s another example of professionalism, actually an example of how Saul wanted to work with professionals, not non-professionals. It’s probably a perfect example because Saul, as we know from the Bible, is a person who used to be good, then he was bad. As you can see, professionalism can go both ways, but in this case, it was used mostly for a good thing.

In Surah 2, verse 249, it says when Saul, who was the king chosen by God for the Jews, not necessarily a good person—he didn’t end up to be the best person in the end because David was better—however, at that circumstance, they were ordered by God to listen to Saul because God chose him as a king for them.

Surah 2, verse 249 says:

“When Saul took command of the troops, he said, ‘God is putting you to the test by means of a stream. Anyone who drinks from it does not belong with me; only those who do not taste it belong with me, unless it is just a single sip.'”

It’s actually in the Bible, in the Quran it says one handful of water. They drank from it except a few. So as you can see, most were not professional, they drank from it. Most people actually didn’t listen except a few of them.

“When he crossed it with those who believed, they said, ‘Now we lack the strength to face Goliath and his troops.’ Those who were conscious of meeting God said, ‘Many a small army defeated a large army by God’s leave. God is with those who steadfastly persevere.'”

Now if you look at the story more carefully, in the Bible it’s a little bit mixed because sometimes part of the story is attributed to another person in the Bible. But you can see kind of Saul had this strategy. Even with food, he ordered at one moment actually people to fast before the war. He was just trying to distinguish the professionals from non-professionals. Pretty much the way I imagine this story, which is probably very close to being correct, is here’s this king, he can see a lot of unprofessional people. There’s a verse in the Quran, by the way, it says, “Had the weak people come with you in war, they would actually make you weaker.” It’s bad. Sometimes you’re stronger with 300 people if you go to war who are strong and professional, compared to a thousand people if weak people join, because they actually can cause panic. They can tell you, “Oh, let me fight for tomorrow,” like, “Oh, I didn’t bring my weapon.” Now you have to deal with that, what do I do, things like that.

So this was Saul’s strategy. Saul was again the king of Israel before David. The way I imagine the story is, here’s this guy, he wants to know who’s professional, who’s not. He knows that if an army of a thousand people start to drink from a stream, of course if you’re a professional, you’re not going to go and drink with your mouth because bacteria can spread. You have to put your feet and your hands within the river, then it kind of gets muddy. Let’s say the more professional way is to just take it with your hand. In this way, other people don’t feel gross about it, that’s more professional. In this way, the whole army can drink and not feel gross. Or you can put your two hands in the river and the feet and go in the river and drink like an animal, and in that case it becomes muddy. Yeah, for one person it works, but for an army of a thousand people it doesn’t work, it just makes it worse for everyone else.

So Saul, if you look back in the Bible, I’m sort of mixing two stories because I think they misread the stories. The way I’m imagining this, how it happened, taking an educated guess based on what I’ve seen in the Bible, here’s this guy, he wants to know who’s professional, who’s not. At the same time, he wanted them to fast so they can be spiritually ready. Both of these fit in this case.

This is an answer actually to fasting. Sometimes people ask, “Am I allowed to taste when I’m cooking something? Can I taste so that I don’t get it wrong?” Yeah, you’re allowed. In this case, it says, “Unless it is a single sip.” So even if you’re fasting, if you’re concerned that you cooked some food incorrectly and you want to make sure that it doesn’t have too much salt or too little salt, yeah, you might taste it because, as you can see here, a single sip is not counted as drinking. You might have to swallow a pill, I don’t know. So I’m not saying no. Some people can abuse it. Clearly in this case, most people abused it, but some of them were professional about it.

What Saul wanted to know is who’s going to be professional. Some people took it with their hand, one sip, crossed the river. He went to fight only with those people. He left all the others behind, and they won. David killed Goliath, and they won, because he wanted only the professionals. He didn’t want people who will cause problems unintentionally just because they’re not professional.

So in his mind, he’s like, “Okay, who is going to, I’m going to tell them drink only one sip. Whoever just uses his hand, one sip, passes the river, that guy looks like a professional. Whoever is going to go and drink like an animal, that doesn’t seem like a professional, and I’m just going to leave them behind.” It’s okay, probably later they joined, it’s okay, we don’t have to be fully professional. What I’m saying is, as you can see, here’s an example of a king who wanted to distinguish the professionals from the non-professionals.

Examples of Unprofessional Behaviors to Avoid

I’m going to bring some examples here. Of course, there’s many examples of unprofessionalism among the Sunni, Shia. Even when we went to Hajj, there’s so much pushing, it’s so unprofessional. The police look like a joke in the sense that they hit people in their hands. Put a sign there, put them in prison if they do something wrong, whatever, don’t deal with it in a very unprofessional way. Tell people ahead of Hajj, give them a guideline: “Okay, if you go and touch the stone and push other people, you might be put in prison, or you might be asked for your family to send extra money for the problems you’ve caused,” stuff like that. Do it professionally, not like hitting people, pushing women. So many women were being pushed by police, and the women were unprofessional. There’s clearly a line there, they put something there so you don’t go, and they kind of sneak in, jump on ropes, stuff like that. That’s not professional. So yeah, there’s many examples of non-professionalism among the Sunnis, the Shia, the other religious groups. So let’s not be like them, let’s be more professional.

What does it mean to be more professional in our group? I’m going to imagine examples of non-professionalism so we can learn from it.

Let me give an example. Sometimes people fill the form to become submitters, but they use two emails. A lot of people might have two emails: one for serious things, another one for whatever they might want to subscribe to, things which they are not sure if their information is going to be stolen or whatever. Anyway, I can understand that partly. But then some people will actually join the submitters with their non-important email, and then how am I going to know? So that email then is put into the group chat, and then they send me an email, they’re like, “Oh, why is there not a check mark in my email?” Well, why do you use two emails? How about you explain that first, why do you use two emails? Which one was not serious when you filled the report, when you declared the zakat, or is it now that you’re communicating? Because one of them is not serious. Either you were not serious when you became a submitter, or you’re not being serious now. That’s not professional. Why would you use the non-important email, the email which you don’t check often, the email which you have as a side email? Why would you use the side email to declare the zakat? Use the main email, use your hopefully only email address. But let’s say you might have to have two, okay fine, then the main email address. That’s professional. Do it professionally, so then we don’t have to go through, “Oh, my check mark is not here, who submitted, who’s not, it’s not showing, I cannot sign in, what’s going on?” You cause problems if you are not professional.

Then there’s people who actually fill the zakat form not properly. They leave things out or add extra things. Let’s say a very clear question, let me say, if they want to calculate the zakat, calculate how much money you have in the bank and cash on this and report it. It’s very clear. I actually wanted to make it the simplest possible, even to report it in their own currency. They don’t have to transfer it into US dollars, I made it very easy so that they can report it in their own dollars, which causes me to work, but anyway. And then what do they do? They’re like, “Okay, I have $5,000, but my uncle owes me three, and I’m expecting an additional salary, so do I include that?” Just put a number, please be professional, just put a number. It’s not helpful if you’re going to tell me a story. The field there I left is just for a number, I don’t want the story. You can tell me the story later, but be professional. It’s a form, you fill a form, don’t leave something out.

Let me give you an example. You might think people who don’t do it, they might think it’s impossible, but it happens. Let me tell you here’s what happens, and again, if you’ve done it, please don’t think that I’m targeting you or that I’m trying to make you feel bad, because a lot of people have done it, that’s why I’m mentioning it.

Part of reporting zakat, I’ve made it so that they submit an audio file if they don’t know anyone who has seen them do the contact prayer. They have to submit an audio file of me hearing their contact prayer, in this way that we know that they do the contact prayer exactly like us. It’s not the first time, it has happened many times that people will actually only recite Al-Fatiha. I’m like, is that the contact prayer? They will actually not do the full contact prayer, they just recite Al-Fatiha, the first Surah. I’m like, “Okay, how unprofessional can it be?” And then I say, “Oh, please—of course it’s going to cause extra work—please can you do the full contact prayer? You’re not supposed to do only half of it.” And they are like, “Oh, I wasn’t sure. I thought it should be like this.” It’s just not professional. You’re just not professional if you do that. If it says contact prayer, do the contact prayer. Some of them will actually, if it’s dawn prayer, they’ll do the other prayer, or let’s say it’s the noon prayer, they’ll do the other prayer just for me. No, do the actual prayer and record it if we don’t know that you have done the contact prayer, if we don’t know how you do the contact prayer. Now, for most people, they don’t have to do it, most people know somebody who has witnessed that, so you don’t have to submit that. See, I made it as easy as possible, but I want to know, do you recite the shahada? Someone might say, “Oh, what’s the problem? You can know from that that I recited the Fatiha correctly.” Imagine there is a problem, because what if you are hiding the fact that you have a different shahada, a different declaration of faith? What if in your shahada you mention Muhammad? I want to see that, I want to know that, because if you do, then you’re not a submitter, you’re not with us. So the fact that you’re not submitting the whole thing, it causes me problems.

And then there’s other people who add extra stuff in their own language. How do I know you’re not joking? The instructions are clear to record an audio of them doing the contact prayer, audio, no video, just audio, and put it in the form. What do they do? They add extra stuff. They’ll be like, in some other language, whatever the language is, they’ll give a speech. I don’t know what they’re saying. They’re probably saying, “I intend to do the prayer and this is for whatever.” How do I know you’re not saying, “Oh, I’m just going to do it for you, but I don’t believe in this”? How do I know you are not saying that when you speak in another language? So now what do I have to do? Go and turn that into text and then ask Google to translate what you said. It’s not professional. Just do what you have to do, no more, no less. It’s a simple form, just do it, be professional.

Another example: connecting to the Friday sermon on time. How many times do we see people joining the Friday sermon 5 minutes late, 2 minutes late? That’s not professional. You should connect on time. This time, actually, thanks to God, it was actually good, guys. As if you knew I would speak about this today, I was happy with how people, I check sometimes, “Oh, who’s connecting late today?” Today it was really good. In the past, there was room to improve, and thanks to God, we’ve improved a lot. Today people joined on time, amazing, amazing. We’re becoming professional.

Last time I asked people to send a chat. Someone might have said, “Oh, wait a minute, I didn’t have my phone in my hand.” Some people send the chat very late, 2 hours late, 3 hours late. All you have to do is tell us about yourself. I understand, by the way, I understand, let’s not use professionalism to put people down, because some people have kids, some people are, I can see someone might have had to go to the washroom emergency, bathroom emergency, whatever. It happens, it happens, I’m not trying to put anyone down. However, we know we can improve, and I think we’ve improved a lot. Even with the website, you can see we’ve become more professional, our website looks better, it looks more professional. I’ve become more professional, I’m improving, I’m trying to be even more professional. So there’s always room to improve there.

An example of not being professional: in the last chat, most people are professional, but then there’s some people who are not ready. If we’re going to do the Friday prayer and we’re in a group chat, you better be ready to type something if I ask. I don’t know where your phone is, what you’re doing. Are you sleeping? Are you taking a nap right now? I hope not, I’m quite sure you’re not taking a nap, I’m just joking. But here’s the thing though: if I ask someone, “Oh, what do you think about this?”, you better respond, because what are we doing right now? We’re doing the Friday sermon. Don’t respond three hours later to something which needed a five-minute response.

Then another case of non-professionalism: talking about things off topic. As I was typing my own response to teach you how to do the responses about introducing ourselves, some people were typing, “Peace, peace, peace.” Okay, so it doesn’t look professional, it just doesn’t sound professional. Yeah, we should be polite and all of that, yeah, “peace” makes sense, I can see how a lot of people say “peace,” I love that actually, by the way, but there’s a time for it. When the Friday sermon starts, you stop, we have to listen. You don’t say that when the Friday sermon starts. Before it starts, yeah, but you know it doesn’t make sense, you have to be professional.

Or let’s say we schedule a meeting and we have to decide to work on something, and you didn’t bring, you don’t have the computer on. So we start the meeting, and then halfway in the middle of the meeting, the person is, “Oh, let me go get my laptop.” I thought the meeting was so we work. I understand a lot of people don’t have laptops, in the future they might not even have laptops at all, with AI and all of this, people might even have just phones with AI doing all the work. So I’m not creating rules, all I’m saying is we can improve. Where are you going? Do you go to a soccer practice without your soccer boots? How can you play soccer without the ball? It doesn’t make sense. So yeah, you have to be ready. The Quran says you have to prepare all the equipment you can prepare before you go to war.

Now, this is me trying to encourage you and myself, because I’ve improved a lot. As you can see, the website has become more professional. So this is me trying to encourage you to be more professional, and myself also to be more professional.

Semi-Professionalism with Non-Submitters

However, now how do we deal with non-submitters? Unfortunately, some people then sometimes feel like it’s an obligation for non-submitters as well. We don’t have to be fully professional with non-submitters. We can be semi-professional, partly professional.

Let me give you an example. An example of professionalism is in the Quran, and I’m going to tell you how they kind of semi-applied it or broke it when it came to non-submitters.

Surah 2, verse 189 says:

“They ask you about the phases of the moon. Say, ‘They provide a timing device for the people and determine the time of Hajj.'”

Then it says:

“It is not righteous—if you read it in Arabic—it is not righteous to come to the houses from their back door.”

Why? Because it’s not professional. Why is it wrong to go to a home from a back door? Some people actually think it’s funny, they go as a guest, someone invites them as a guest, let’s say a family member or whatever, and they go, they think it’s funny: “I’m going to go and knock on the door and scare them, or on the window,” let’s say they go from the back window, “Hey, hey, I scared you.” Whatever, that’s not funny, it’s not professional. When you go somewhere, you enter through the front door, because the person might have not expected you to go from the back door. Maybe he just took a shower and he’s exiting, maybe that’s his habit or her habit, they just use a towel when they exit the bathroom. Some people do that, it’s their own home, they can do whatever they want. So you don’t want to go from the back door and surprise them. What if they think that you went there to steal, you’re a robber? It’s not good, you don’t want to create the situation where they pull a gun on you because they didn’t see you. How are you going to explain that to your wife back home? “Oh, I went to my neighbor’s, and his neighbor’s wife opened the door.” Which door did you enter through, the dog’s door? The back door is more for dogs. “Oh, and I saw her do this.” Well, maybe you should have knocked and waited on the front door. Do you see what I mean? It’s not professional to enter through the back door.

Now, knowing that it’s not professional, with non-submitters, you sometimes want to be semi-professional. You can see we know for sure that going through the back door is not good, but then we see here in Surah 12, Jacob giving instructions which are almost semi-professional on purpose, but this is only against non-submitters.

In Surah 12, verse 67, it says:

“And Jacob said, ‘O my sons, do not enter from one door; enter through separate doors. However, I cannot save you from anything that is predetermined by God. To God belongs all judgment; I trust in Him, and in Him shall all the trusters put their trust.'”

So basically, we know we should be professional with believers, enter through the front door. But Jacob, knowing that with non-believers you don’t have to be professional, he instructs his sons to actually enter through many doors, through separate doors, back doors, front doors, whatever doors they had, gates from the back gates of the town and things like that. It says when they went to Egypt, whatever, they entered in accordance with their father’s instructions, although this could not change anything decreed by God. Jacob had a private reason for asking them to do this, for he possessed certain knowledge that He taught him, but most people do not know.

So here we see, comparing these two cases, one of them tells us, “Do not enter from the back door,” the other one is telling us that Jacob told his sons to enter through many doors. You can see that submitters are supposed to be professional with each other as much as possible, and semi-professional only to what it suits them with non-submitters. Yeah, professional even with them is good sometimes, but you don’t have to do it always.

I call this with non-submitters Guerrilla tactics. Guerrillas are non-professional armies. When you’re not safe, sometimes you have to use guerrilla tactics. Let me give you an example. When we went to Hajj, I purposely did not create a WhatsApp account. Someone created a WhatsApp account, I purposely didn’t create it. It was semi-professional. Why? I didn’t want the police catching someone and then checking his messages and then catching all of us. So I didn’t create a WhatsApp. Someone created a WhatsApp, and it actually helped us a lot, by the way. It was professional, but it was professional with partly the wrong people, within the wrong context. It was good, I can see how it benefited us, creating a WhatsApp group for Hajj. But then someone said, “Oh, maybe let me go tomorrow.” There was some panic, there was some uncertainty because of that. I purposely was semi-professional during Hajj because people there are semi-professional.

Or let me give you an example of being semi-professional on purpose. I received an email from a bank. The bank sent me an email saying, “Oh, we would like to see, can we have a meeting? We would like to see how we can reduce your fees.” Clearly the guy who’s sending the email is some kind of mutual fund investment manager or whatever. I can clearly see that they want to call me to trick me through lower fees and making me invest in things which they want to invest. So I just didn’t respond. I was on purpose semi-professional, I just didn’t respond. It’s professional to respond to your emails, it’s professional to respond on time, but with non-submitters, you know they don’t always have good intentions, so you’re just semi-professional on purpose. So I didn’t respond. I’m not being professional on purpose with non-submitters. No response in that email, it’s not professional, but it is what it is. If it was a submitter sending me the same email, I’d probably respond.

Or if it’s a submitter sending me an email in another language, I haven’t responded, by the way, any email I’ve received in other languages, almost in all of them I’ve not responded. It’s not professional. You know I speak English, what are you doing sending me an email in another language? You want me to copy it and paste it and translate it? Just do it for me, do it for the other submitters, be professional.

Handling Workplace Situations

And let me bring something important, by the way, and this kind of is also an answer to one of the questions which one of the submitters asked a couple of weeks ago. One of the submitters asked, “What should we do in case, let me say, we want to go get a new job, and should we tell them ahead of time, before we sign the contract, that we do the Friday prayers and then within that half an hour or 1 hour we need time off or whatever, that we cannot work during that time? Do we tell them, the new employer, do we tell them before or after, or when is the right time?”

I think a lot of people gave good responses, and I’m glad that they were open-minded about it. I think all the responses were good. I just want to say that there’s sort of more variety which we can use there. I’ve used all methods in my life regarding telling the employer that I do the Friday prayer. I’ve done it after, I’ve done it before, I’ve done it at the time of signing the contract, I’ve done pretty much all. But in the last job, I was semi-professional on purpose.

Let me give you an example. It’s not professional when people push their opinion without asking you. For example, let’s say they sell you a car and they’re like, “I know you’ll like it.” They kind of make the decision for you, that’s not professional. However, in this case, the Friday sermon, we should assume as believers that the Friday sermon is obligatory and they should have known that it’s obligatory. So basically, we come from an approach which is not fully professional, however sometimes we have to take that approach, an approach where we don’t ask them. Because when they say no, what then? What are we going to do?

So in my last job, here’s what I did. I’m not saying it should always be done like this, I’m just giving it as an example of semi-professionalism with non-submitters. In my last job which I had, I went, signed the contract under the assumption that they should know that everyone should do the Friday prayer. The next day, when they called me after signing the contract for the introduction—sometimes they give trainings in jobs like, “Okay, so this is going to be your email, is there anything you need to know?” Most jobs have a welcoming day—on that day, without asking, I was like, “Oh, by the way, I do the Friday sermon, but I’m sure you’ll be fine about it, and don’t worry, it’s not going to cause any problem.” I made the decision for them. Now, if they don’t like it, they don’t like it. I had to do what I had to do. If they say, “Oh, you didn’t tell us,” okay, no, you didn’t tell me you don’t do the contact prayer. Why didn’t you tell me that you don’t do the contact prayer? Because I thought everyone is supposed to do the contact prayer. You should have told me that you don’t allow the Friday prayer. It wasn’t my responsibility, it was your responsibility to tell me that you don’t do the contact prayer. So it was semi-professional from my side. I sort of didn’t tell them on time, however they deserved it. So I just told them, “Yeah, it’s going to be fine, don’t worry,” kind of just sneaked the information in while we were talking about something else, and yeah, I didn’t even let them respond. It’s semi-professional, it’s not professional, however you have to be semi-professional with non-submitters sometimes. As you can see, Jacob told his sons, even though he knew that the right door is the front door, he told his sons, because the Egyptians were disbelievers, he told them, “Enter through the back doors.” Once in a while it’s safe, once in a while it helps you actually with non-submitters. I call this guerrilla tactics, because when you’re too weak and the disbelievers don’t care about your safety, you might have to use guerrilla tactics, meaning that you’re not a fully professional army.

Anyway, does anyone have any question? Let me try to keep it quick. By the way, regarding how what you should do with the Fridays, when you should tell the employer, all of them work. You decide your strategy. You know the potential employer, some of them Christian, some of them Muslim, some of them it seems like it’s going to be a problem, some of them it’s not. So yeah, all approaches are sort of okay. I just told you the last approach, which was semi-professional from my side on purpose. And I’ve done the other approaches as well. There are jobs where I’ve told my employer ahead of time, I’ve tried that as well, and I’ve tried another one where I didn’t tell them at all. They kind of all worked somehow.

Q&A

Q: Is the word professional in the sermon context meaning being efficient and considerate while working with a group?

A: Yeah, it’s included there, but mostly I meant prepared. By professional, I mostly meant prepared. Let me give you an example. God willing, I’ve told you like six months ago almost that we’ll have some sort of submitters’ retreat. Now of course, I cannot tell you exactly the details because it depends on governments, it depends on visas issues, whatever. So let’s say three months before we have it, or four months before we have it, I tell you guys we’re going to have the submitters’ retreat in this location, this time. And then imagine someone says, “Oh, I don’t have the passport yet.” That’s not professional. You have to have a passport, you want to have all the strength you can have so you can use it against the disbelievers and to help the believers. So if you know that there’s going to be, you might have to travel, maybe not, maybe we don’t do it, but maybe we do, and then you say, “I don’t have the passport,” that’s not professional. You knew I had mentioned that we might have a retreat, if you don’t have the passport, why didn’t you go to create the passport? So I’m talking more about preparation, being prepared rather than…

Q: Is it professional to propose some ideas that might be very useful in the long term, but from the surface they look like additional effort right now?

A: Well, the professional way is to introduce it when we are talking about it, like not out of topic. It’s not professional to bring things out of topic. You see someone is busy with something, you’re bringing something else, that’s not professional. It has to be within the context, like people are busy, people have to do, it has to do with that, it has to be connected to something they are trying to do.

Comment 1: Praise God, I should type in English when praising God.

Response: Yes, that’s a good example. Yeah, just type in English. It’s not professional to say, “I’m going to do this, inshallah.” It’s not professional in English, in another language it is, but in English it’s not.

Comment 2: Praise God is great.

Comment 3: The sermon was very good, peace be upon you all.

Okay, so I think I should end it here. Peace be to everyone, and 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