Tag: Friday Sermons

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains that Zakat means purification of wealth rather than only removing poverty, and describes how the community’s Zakat is arranged, reported and distributed.

Video Transcript:

Praise be to God, there is no other God except God. As we know, the word zakat in the Quran means purification. It’s about purifying your wealth. It’s not necessarily about removing the poverty from the poor. When God kept the children of Israel in the desert, he guaranteed them that he would provide for them food each day from the sky. Each morning they would get food from the sky, manna and quails. And they were guaranteed to not be poor. And also no one was rich because they were prohibited from being rich. The Bible tells us that if any of them would take more than one day’s amount of food, they would be punished. So they were all equally wealthy at that moment. And yet they still had to give zakat according to the Quran. How so? Well, it’s because zakat is about removing the wealth from you. The children of Israel gave it to the messenger Aaron. And do you know what he did with it? He burned it. There were no poor people there. He burned it and the Bible says that God accepted it. Also, the Quran tells us that one of the sons of Adam offered an offering to God. And there were no poor people then. Only four people in the world. And the lightning strike burned the animal and it was gone. God accepted it. He just removed it from his hands. So zakat is about getting rid of 1/40 of your extra wealth. It’s a way to show that you had more than what you need. Had you kept all the wealth which God gave you, there would be no way on the day of judgment to prove that you thought that God gave you enough. Because the disbelievers can claim that you only didn’t take more because God didn’t give you more, but you wanted more. But if you refrain from taking everything that you were given or give away that last portion of it, then this actually shows that you felt that you had enough and you are satisfied with what God gave you. And to this day in the Middle East, for example, when people want to show that they don’t want any more food as a guest, they will leave some of it on the plate so that the host knows that they are full and satisfied. Now, we don’t have to do this with people, but we have to do this with God. We should do this with our own wealth to show that we are pleased with what God gave us. So, as far as you are concerned, you should just make sure that you don’t take that last portion, that last 1/40. And what happens after it should not be your concern. Whether it reaches the poor people or not, God deals with it today through the authorized people. This is why you never find it in the Quran that zakat should be given to poor people. Look, these are all the verses in the Quran which mention the word zakat in all its grammatical forms. All of them are listed here without exception, and none of them mention the poor or needy people as recipients of zakat. Feel free to check them one by one, including the verses around them, and you will realize that none of them tell us that zakat is about giving money to poor people. Instead, five of these verses say that zakat purification is achieved through God’s messenger, and let me read them one by one. Verse 2:129 says, “Our Lord, and raise among them a messenger to recite to them your revelations, teach them the scripture and wisdom, and purify zakat them. You are the almighty, most wise.” Verse 2:151 says, “Blessings such as the sending of a messenger from among you to recite our revelations to you, purify zakat you, teach you the scripture and wisdom, and to teach you what you never knew.” Verse 3:164 says, “God has blessed the believers by raising in their midst a messenger from among them to recite for them his revelations, and to purify zakat them, and to teach them the scripture and wisdom. Before this, they had gone totally astray.” Verse 62:2 says, “He is the one who sent to the Gentiles a messenger from among them to recite to them his revelations, purify zakat them, and teach them the scripture and wisdom. Before this, they had gone far astray. Verse 9:103 says, “Take from their money a charity to purify them and sanctify zakat them, and encourage them, for your encouragement reassures them. God is Hearer, Omniscient.” So, I gave you all the numbers of the verses in the Quran which mention the zakat, and none of them mention any poor or needy people there. Instead, five of those verses mention God’s messenger as the process of purification or zakat. And one of those verses, verse 9:103, specifically is talking about financial purification, because it says, “Take from their wealth a charity.” So, they go through financial purification, zakat. And from this verse, we can also deduce that after the money has been taken, then it is called sadaqa, charity. So, according to this, a submitter passes a specific portion of his money through God’s messenger, which is called zakat, and then from that moment, it is called sadaqa. A sadaqa, a charity which God’s messenger should make sure that it reaches the poor, the needy, and so on. So, as you can see, this is the essential difference between sadaqa and zakat. Let me present this in a graph.

So, here we have the submitter who passes the money through God’s messenger, and up to that point, it is called zakat, purification. And from that point on, it is called sadaqa, charity. And then it reaches the receivers, the people who need it or deserve it. So, people have had it slightly wrong for centuries when they thought that the difference between zakat and sadaqa is that zakat is obligatory, while sadaqa is voluntary. The real difference is that zakat is always obligatory, while sadaqa is sometimes obligatory and sometimes not. It’s obligatory in cases when it comes from zakat, and voluntary in cases when it comes directly from wealth. But anyway, the Quran in verse 9:60 gives the eight categories to whom sadaqah should go, which includes of course also the sadaqah which came from zakat because it does not give us an exception. So, let’s split these receivers into those eight categories mentioned in the Quran. Here they are. So, we have the poor, fuqara in Arabic, which also includes those who are unemployed and do not receive unemployment benefits in their countries. Then we have the needy, miskin, which also includes the homeless or those who are stuck without options in a poor country. Then we have the workers, which also includes those who help collect and distribute the zakat, and also it includes any administrative work towards that, like money transfer fees and so on. If any company or institution or people help us distribute the zakat, like Visa cards and so on, they might take a fee for that, and that is included here in this category, the workers. You do not need to give an additional zakat amount for that. That is included inside the zakat amount which you give. They work to provide that service for us, and that category of workers is included here. The other category is those with inclined hearts, which I prefer to translate as those in psychological distress. Anyone who has recently gone or is now going through psychological distress. We might not always be able to notice that for them because some people hide it better than others, but usually it happens to people who are going through a rough time or those who overwork themselves. Someone who lost someone dear, either through an early death or unwilling separation, or it also includes seriously sick people. But in many cases, the sick people are not included in this category because they might have better support from the health care system. And the psychological distress happens most often to a person when he is caught simultaneously between lack of financial support, lack of social support, and lack of emotional support. If these three happen all at the same time, the chances increase drastically that a person is very likely going through psychological distress. And the crossings of these three factors at once is more likely to happen to people who live alone or those who feel unsupported in their own family. Now, psychological distress is interlinked very closely with new converts as well. They either went through it recently or are going through it when they convert or will go through it soon after they convert. This psychological distress is what made them re-evaluate their life and see an urgency to change. And if they are a believer, they will choose the right type of change, which is to become a submitter. Psychological distress is less likely to happen to a submitter later in their life, but it might happen from case to case if God wants to push someone from a lower level of belief to a higher level of belief. Anyway, the next category is the freeing of necks or the freeing of slaves. And since slavery is outlawed in today’s circumstances, the only form which is left is actually children under 18 who are good people and they are stuck with bad parents. Even in that case, there’s nothing much we can do as a community because if we interfere financially between parents and their children, even if it is for a good cause, one side of it is always wrong. But each of us individually can say kind words and show compassion to them because kind words and compassion are better than a charity which is followed with insult. The next category is those in debt. But we have to be careful about this. Debt today and debt in the past are quite different. In the past, there were no banks and if someone went to get a loan from another submitter, he would only do it if he was in deep financial trouble or if he had a really good investment idea and then if it failed, he couldn’t pay his debt. But today, banks will give you loans for anything, for luxury, for expensive cars, for expensive houses and things like that. So it does matter what kind of debt we are talking about today. Also, in the past, if you did not pay your debt, you would officially become a slave. That is the rule in the Bible and indirectly in the Quran, also. So, if you helped someone pay his debt, which he couldn’t pay, you would be helping him not to be enslaved. But today, if someone does not pay his debt, their last option is not slavery. It’s bankruptcy. So, what people called debt in the past and today are quite often two different things. This is why Rashad Khalifa did not translate it as debt at all in his English translation. But he translated it as those who are burdened by sudden expenses. The only two types of debt which I can imagine right now to be charitable to help someone pay them are one, if someone took a debt for his basic bills or to survive, or two, if he took it for a business investment and the business investment failed or went much worse than he expected. It’s hard for me to imagine another type of debt which would be charitable to pay on behalf of someone else. The next category is in the cause of God and you can learn more about it, God willing, in the next Friday sermon. And the last category is the traveler, which also includes the recent immigrants. I would guess anyone who changed his country within the last year, for example, if they speak the language of the country, or anyone who changed his country within the last two years, if they do not speak the language of the country. Also, this category includes the people who are on the road because they are homeless. And just like we split the receivers into eight categories, let’s also split the givers of zakat into different categories. Here they are. We have submitters who own wealth, who should give regular zakat. Submitters who earn money from jobs and businesses which contain both bad and good deeds, who should give penalty zakat. Then we have submitters who confessed other sins. Then we have submitters who consulted the messenger. And then we have submitters who live together with non-submitters. And by the way, one submitter can be in more than one of these categories. Just like someone can be both poor and the traveler at the same time. And each of these categories of zakat have their different specific rates, which are explained in other videos. Now, as you can see, the messenger is in the middle of this process. However, most people today communicate with a messenger online. So, here we are actually talking about what I call an online messenger. So, let’s modify this into online messenger. So, because our interaction being in different countries is mostly online, we can make some adjustments in this arrangement. Due to this, the online messenger arranges for you to give the regular zakat directly to the poor and the needy, as long as it is reported. This is more practical for an online community, because you might know who is poor and needy better than the messenger who is not there with you. But, you have to report or declare it, so that the community knows that you did it. By the way, zakat consists of more than what I presented in this graph, and you can find all the 19 categories in the video clarification titled penalty zakat. But, here we are only dealing with the public ones, the ones in which the messenger must be involved somehow in its arrangement. And the final category of public zakat or arranged zakat is the submitters who inherited from dead non-submitters. According to the Quran, this category should go directly to God and his messenger, and I explain in another video that this basically means that it should be spent for building and maintaining mosques and supporting the preaching of the message, like printing Qurans and things like that. So, let’s highlight this in yellow, because it is a separate line of penalty zakat and should not be mixed with the other budget lines. So, now we have a complete graph of how to arrange the reporting, collection, and distribution of zakat. And this graph does not guarantee a perfect distribution of zakat, but it doesn’t have to be perfect, because all charity is good charity. Here we are talking about good versus better, not good versus bad. So, all types of distributions are good. As a matter of fact, as I told you, Aaron burned the zakat which the children of Israel gave because there were no poor people there and it was still good. So there is no bad way of distributing the zakat and I just happen to choose one of the good ways from many different good ways. It’s one of the ways which makes more sense for today while still being within the categories which the Quran recommends. And if anyone does not like this method of distribution, God has an answer for them. Verses 9:58 and 9:59 say, “Some of them criticize your distribution of the charities. If they are given there from, they become satisfied, but if they are not given there from, they become objectors. They should be satisfied with what God and His Messenger have given them. They should have said, ‘God suffices us. God will provide for us from His reserves and so will His Messenger. We are seeking only God.'” And then the very next verse mentions the eight categories of receivers listed here. So as long as the zakat eventually ends up somehow in these eight categories of receivers, what happens in between is totally at the discretion of God’s Messenger, as long as all of it finally reaches there. Similarly, for example, God left it up to you whether you might use your debit or credit card to give the zakat, as long as you give it. And also when the number of submitters increases sufficiently, the Messenger can delegate this job to someone else, someone who would be responsible for directing this issue, called the congregation director, who technically is the messenger of the messenger. So this is the general arrangement for today on how to collect and distribute the zakat. And each of these zakat categories has a different rate or amount and some of them even have discounts which are explained in other videos. Also, God willing, you can learn more about one of the distribution projects in the cause of God, which is within this and the zakat distribution cycle in the next Friday sermons.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains from the Arabic Quran that believers may not take disbelievers as friends, clarifies that verse 60:8 only allows kindness and justice toward peaceful non-submitters, and presents a table of which relationships are allowed, often prohibited or prohibited, from acquaintances and business partners to close friends.

Video Transcript:

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

We cannot find any example in the Quran where a believer befriends a disbeliever, unless it is by force. For example, the wife of Pharaoh, as a wife, must have befriended him, but she was forced to do it, and regardless, she still ended up paying for it, by saving Moses from the river and paying for his feeding. Also, Joseph befriended the bad person in prison, but he was forced to stay in prison, and regardless, Joseph still ended up paying for befriending a bad person, which is one of the reasons why he ended up staying a few additional years in prison.

In all the cases in the Quran where the believers were free, you cannot find a single example of them befriending a disbeliever. For example, the sleepers of the cave even went and hid in the cave, so that they would not befriend the disbelievers. Verse 60:4 says that a good example has been set for you by Abraham and those with him. They said to their people, “We disown you,” basically, “We cut all ties of friendship between us and you, and the idols that you worship beside God. We denounce you, and you will see nothing from us except animosity and hatred until you believe in God alone.” So, nothing except animosity, which means no friendship at all.

Now, if anyone still thinks that these examples are not enough, let’s look at the list of verses which give us direct prohibitions and exclusions. But please make sure to check these verses directly in the Arabic Quran, not in English translations, for a final conclusion. Let me start with a key verse which sets the clear boundaries within which we should understand all the other verses. It’s verse 5:55. Again, please check the verse in the Arabic, because the English translations do not do it full justice. The Arabic uses a key word, which is “only,” so it excludes all other possibilities of friendship. Verse 5:55 says your only, I repeat, your only friends should be God and His messenger and those who have believed, those who observe the Contact Prayer, give the Zakat, and bow down. So we are only allowed to be friends with these, and anyone outside of them is prohibited as a friend, because the verse says “only.” This verse puts clear boundaries on our friendships, and all the other verses must be understood within what this verse says.

For example, verse 5:51 in the Arabic Quran says do not take the Jews and the Christians, any Jews and Christians, without exception, as friends. They are friends with one another, and whoever is friends with them is one of them. Verse 5:80 tells us that you can see many of them becoming friends with those who disbelieve, and then it says that what they are doing is definitely evil. This is from the Arabic Quran, not from translations. Verse 9:23 in the Arabic Quran says do not take as friends even your fathers and brothers, if they prefer disbelieving over believing, and whoever does this, they are wrongdoers. Verse 3:28 says that no believer is to be friends with a disbeliever instead of a believer, and whoever does that has nothing to do with God, except if they are forced. Verse 4:144 says, O you who believe, do not take the disbelievers as friends instead of the believers; do you wish to give God clear evidence against you?

So all these verses are clear that believers should not take any disbeliever as a friend, except if they are forced, and verse 5:55 tells us that the only friends we can have are God, His messenger, and the believers who do the Contact Prayer, give the Zakat, and bow down. This is very clear in the Arabic Quran. However, the word “friend” in modern English is a constantly evolving word. Sometimes people use it to refer to acquaintances, sometimes to co-workers, sometimes to teammates, sometimes to schoolmates with whom they might be doing a school project together, for example, or maybe to a trading partner. Therefore, we should not rush to express a clear-cut prohibition of “friendships” in modern English, because people mean many different things when they say “friend,” and a lot of those different definitions of the word “friend” are not necessarily prohibited by the Quran in times of peace.

But the word “friend” in the Arabic Quran is clearer and stronger. It does not refer to an acquaintance, for example, but to a friend for whom you would do a favor without asking for payment, and who would also do you a favor without asking for payment, and you would protect each other if necessary. But because the word “friend” in English is not clearly defined, most English translators of the Quran shied away from translating from the Arabic Quran the clear prohibition of being friends with disbelievers, because they were afraid that by doing so, they would indirectly also end up prohibiting other things which are not prohibited, like business partnerships and so on, because the Quran allows trade and business with disbelievers during times of peace. So, to prevent this misunderstanding, a lot of smart translators were forced to hide or soften the prohibition of friendship with disbelievers. But the Arabic Quran does contain clear prohibitions regarding clear situations of friendship with disbelievers.

However, in today’s English, because of the unclear definition of the word “friend,” when someone asks us whether we are allowed to be friends with disbelievers, if we don’t have time to explain, we should simply slightly downgrade the prohibition and say, “We are not allowed to be close friends with disbelievers.” It’s linguistically correct to use the phrase “close friend” instead of “friend,” because in the Arabic Quran the words “friend” and “close” come from the same root word: basically, someone who is close to you, a close friend. So that’s what we say if we don’t have time to explain. But if we have time to explain, we should say, “We are not allowed to be friends, any kind of friends, with disbelievers,” which is what the Quran says, but then explain what we mean when we say “friends,” and how that word does not include co-workers, sports teammates, schoolmates, business partners and so on, if you keep a reasonable professional distance from them, more like acquaintances, and not like drinking buddies, bonding and things like that.

So the Quran does prohibit us from being any kind of friends with disbelievers, if by “friends” we mean people with whom we are close enough to do and expect favors from one another without any expectation of payment, and to protect each other if need be. I’m using this definition of friendship because in the Arabic Quran the word “friend” also means protector, and also because, according to verses 18:77 and 24:61, a close friend is someone for whom you do a favor without expecting them to pay you, and from whom you receive a favor without them expecting you to pay them for it. So, to conclude, in more than 20 verses the Quran prohibits us from being close friends with non-submitters, or, if we define the word “friend” correctly, from being any kind of friends with non-submitters.

Despite this clear prohibition, there is a verse in the Quran which is almost always misunderstood, and people end up thinking that the Quran actually allows being friends, or close friends, with non-submitters. Let me tell you what the verse says, and then where the misunderstanding comes from. Verse 60:8 says that God does not prohibit you regarding those who do not fight you because of religion and do not drive you out of your homes. The first part of this verse seems to allow friendship with disbelievers, as long as they do not fight us because of religion and do not drive us out of our homes. However, once you read the verse further, it tells you what God allows you to do with those peaceful disbelievers. Let’s read the whole verse now. It says God does not prohibit you (it’s not mentioning friendship here, just the prohibition of general contact and crossing paths in the same spaces), so again, God does not prohibit you, regarding those who do not fight you because of religion and do not drive you out of your homes, from dealing with them with kindness and justice.

This is not allowing close friendship. It’s only allowing kindness and justice. Friendships with them are prohibited in verse 5:55. This verse is telling us to be just when we make a business deal with a peaceful disbeliever, for example, or to be kind to our co-workers at our job, or when we talk to a stranger on the road, but it is not allowing us to become close friends with them. Verse 5:55 is still there, which clearly prohibits close friendships with any people who do not do the Contact Prayer and the Zakat. Verse 60:8 does not nullify verse 5:55. It only tells us how to deal with peaceful non-submitters while not being friends with them. It says that you can deal with them with kindness and justice despite not being friends with them. In peaceful times, we are allowed to show kindness even to disbelievers while not being their friends, and we can also have them as sports teammates, classmates, co-workers, business partners, and in other defined activities which are in our interest, while not being their friends, if by “friends” we mean doing and receiving favors, or going to their houses for dinner and things like that, which usually have no purpose other than bonding and being friends.

Now, the first contact, the introduction to any person, is always excused. For example, when two guests came to Abraham, he prepared a meal for them, despite the fact that he did not know who they were, and they could potentially have been disbelievers. This is because, in any first contact with anyone, when we first get to know them, we should always assume that they are believers until they tell us otherwise. Once they tell us otherwise, or once we see that they did not join us in the Contact Prayer, then we distance ourselves from them, and the better way is to tell them why, which is an opportunity to preach and spread the message. We wouldn’t be able to spread the message if we never contacted disbelievers at any time. And the best way to have this first, introductory meeting or contact, in your home, in their home, or in a restaurant, is to have another submitter with you. In this way you are stronger against the influences of the devil, if they turn out to be representatives of the devil. And once you see that they showed no interest in ever learning the Contact Prayer when you had to do the Contact Prayer, then you stop inviting them into your home or going to their home.

By the way, inviting people into your home, or going to their homes, is one of the closest forms of friendship, which is why it is one of the most strongly prohibited forms of friendship once they have shown us that they are not submitters, and if you break this prohibition, the other submitters have the right to feel betrayed by you. Let me give you an example from the time of Rashad Khalifa, showing that he thought this was prohibited and that he considered it a betrayal.

[A short clip is played in which Rashad Khalifa reproaches a member of the community for having hosted, for dinner in her house, people who opposed God and His messenger.]

So staying and eating together with non-submitters in your house or their house is a serious issue. Another way to look at friendships is to ask yourself the question: “If I did the Contact Prayer right now, would this person join me?” If the answer is yes, then that person is very likely your friend. If the answer is no, then he’s very likely not your friend. And if the answer is, “Well, I wouldn’t be able to fully do the Contact Prayer right now anyway,” because maybe it’s forenoon, or maybe you are in a public place where it is dangerous to fully prostrate, which I explained in the video titled “Lessening and Shortening the Contact Prayers,” then, in situations where you yourself would be lessening or shortening the Contact Prayer, which in the Arabic Quran is technically not a Contact Prayer at all but a compensation for it, you are not sufficiently different from that other person, because you yourself wouldn’t have to do the actual Contact Prayer with its movements. This means that you are not that different from that person in that situation, which means that he or she is very likely your acquaintance, or maybe your schoolmate, or your co-worker, and so on, but very likely neither your enemy nor your friend.

Using this logic, of being joined in the Contact Prayer as a measure of friendship, we can also conclude that since children under 12 are not obliged to do the Contact Prayer, we should not prohibit friendships with them, regardless of what they think they believe. Really, there is no substantial difference between believing children and disbelieving children, and it’s okay if they are friends while they are children. Once they are between 12 and 18 years old, they should be gradually removed from friendships with disbelievers. Also, in addition to these rules, there’s an additional layer of prohibitions in friendships, which has to do with relations between males and females.

Now, taking all this into account, let’s summarize this issue. This table is a summary of the prohibited, often prohibited, and allowed friendships, depending on the level of friendship and the type of people you are dealing with. Here we have non-submitters and submitters. Among the non-submitters, we have the hostile ones, the opponents, and the peaceful ones. Among the submitters, we have the involuntary submitters, which are seriously sick people, the handicapped, the starving, children under 18, and so on, and then finally we have the voluntary submitters, which is us.

When it comes to the hostile non-submitters, who fight us because of religion, and the opponents, who actively oppose God and His messenger, they are completely prohibited for us. We should not live with them, have them as close friends, have them as friends, or have them as acquaintances. Even trading with them is prohibited. It’s a complete separation from them. But when it comes to the peaceful non-submitters, which is the majority of people today, it depends on whether they are from a different family or from the same family. If they are from a different family and of the opposite gender, then we are prohibited from living together, or being close friends or friends, with her if you’re a male, or with him if you’re a female. But sometimes it is okay to be their acquaintance, and sometimes not, depending on the situation, as long as we keep it professional.

By the way, this orange square here is not clearly defined on purpose. It is left as “often prohibited,” not because the Arabic Quran is not clear about this, but because the word “acquaintance” sometimes fits within the prohibited categories of the Arabic Quran, more towards friendship, and sometimes it fits within the allowed categories, like trading, doing business, having common projects for the benefit of humankind, and so on. Each case is different, or part of it can be prohibited and part of it not, simultaneously. The same applies to all these other orange squares. Even though they are well defined in the Arabic Quran, we do not have the clarity of words in English to prohibit them completely or allow them completely.

Next category: peaceful non-submitters from a different family but of the same gender as ours, or the ones from the same family as ours, of any gender. We are allowed to have them as acquaintances, trade with them, have them as sports teammates and so on, basically cooperating with them in righteous things, if it is in our own personal interest, and not cooperating in prohibited things. However, it is likely that some of the friendships with them might be prohibited, so we just try to minimize our friendships with them from time to time, to make sure that the professional side dominates over the warm, friendly side. Of course, we have to be kind and just to them, but that does not automatically imply a meaningful friendship. We are prohibited from living together with them or being close friends with them. You can analyze the rest of the table yourself.

But let me draw your attention to the prohibited parts only, the red squares. These four red squares do not happen in democracies. These other four red squares are rare, because very few people have heard about the modern messengers, and you encounter those people rarely, and if you go against these prohibitions, you will probably do it in a hidden way anyway, because you know that it will upset us. These ones have to do with cross-gender issues, and if anyone breaks those prohibitions, again, they probably do it without other people knowing. And these last two are probably private cases, and the community does not hear about them. Now we are left with these last three, which are the only ones which are both clear prohibitions and matters which you are not allowed to hide, or which we as a community will know about anyway, if you are truly a submitter. This is why, if you break these three red ones, you have to pay through the community of submitters, and you can learn how to pay for those sins in the videos titled “Living Together with Non-Submitters,” parts one and two.

As you can see, there is some wiggle room in today’s world in these orange areas, and if your parent or spouse is also a submitter, then, out of loyalty and respect for them, you should adjust your own friendships according to their interpretation of these wiggle rooms, regarding whom they want you to be friends with or not. This is a whole issue in itself, about how to respect our parents and spouses who are submitters.

Also, a percentage of your time spent being friendly with non-submitters is forced, and that forced behavior usually happens in these orange areas, or close to them. For example, you might have to laugh at the jokes of your manager at work, or have lunch with a potential business partner, which might then turn into several meetings because you still haven’t discussed all the details, or things like that. These are very likely partially forced friendship cases, and for these you will be neither punished nor rewarded in the next world. However, this forced behavior definitely does not happen in the first two rows of this table. We cannot say, for example, that the government forced us to oppose the messenger. Democracies are not concerned with who is and who is not a messenger, and democracies are also not fighting us because of religion. You can learn more about this in the Friday sermon titled “The Global Forced Behaviour.”

And finally, if you just have honest intentions and love God, you will get most of this issue right. Any small mistakes which you might make unintentionally regarding friendships are usually compensated for by being an active submitter, which means that you earn extra credit in these green ones, and also, simply by attending the Friday sermons, you earn extra credit for fulfilling these other green ones. They are one of the ways to deserve more blessings from God.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains that some questions in the Quran are not merely rhetorical, and projects how much of human behavior will be forced globally by democracies in the coming centuries.

Video Transcript:

Praise be to God there is no other God except God. There are many verses in the Quran where God, instead of making a statement, he asks a question. And a lot of people understand these as rhetorical questions because the answers to those questions seem so obvious. For example, in verse 2:140, God asks, “Who is more evil than one who conceals a testimony he has learned from God?” The general message which people get from this seemingly rhetorical question is that the most evil are those who conceal a testimony from God. However, if God wanted to say that, he would have said that, but he didn’t. He purposely put it as a question because there are cases, probabilistically, where the answer to that question might be different. And we can show that this question might have a different answer because in verse 2:114, God asks, “Who are more evil than those who boycott God’s masjids where His name is commemorated and contribute to their desertion?” So then, which people are more evil? The ones who boycott masjids or the ones who conceal testimonies? See, God intentionally put these as questions because had he put them as statements, there are cases where they would not be true. But since there are cases where those statements would not be true, God rephrased that statement as a question so that we can easily imply what the answer could be in most cases, but also be aware that there might be exceptions, which is why it is phrased as a question. Now, in the same way, God in verse 4:97 tells us that at the moment of death of a disbeliever, the disbeliever will claim that he was forced to be a disbeliever by the society. And the response comes as a question. He will be asked, “Was God’s earth not spacious enough for you to emigrate therein?” So this is asked as a question because even though almost always it is true that God’s earth is spacious to emigrate therein when we are forced by others to do things which we do not want to do, there are circumstances and times and proportions when this is actually not true. And this is given in verse 3:28, which says that the the believers never ally themselves with the disbelievers except for those who are forced to do this to avoid persecution. And actually, because today the world is dominated by democracies, this makes it possible to measure the amount or proportion of this forcing. Here is how. See, unlike true kingdoms where the king has a will, democracies have no will of their own. They are just the average of the will of every individual in that population.

Now, given that individuals have separate wills, they cannot be made to have a common will except where they have an average compromising interest. And since the average will of the population is actually a compromise, and not the idea of any particular individual, then no one is interested to force that will except through payment. So, basically, democracies will not force anything more than what happens through payment. And to make that payment, they have to collect taxes. So, in conclusion, democracies do not force anything more than what the collected taxes allow. And given that we can know what proportion of the economy passes through the tax system, this automatically also tells us how much the actions of the people are forced. So, basically, the proportion of taxes in any particular government compared to its economy is also the proportion of actions which are forced among the people. Now, let’s take this analysis one step further. It is true that the governments of the world today have different tax levels. However, the difference in tax levels is actually just an illusion. Here is why. Here is a map of different countries today and their different total tax levels, which range from almost zero in the poorer countries to about 50% in the very rich countries.

However, what happens in reality is that the people from the poorer countries are willing to immigrate to the richer countries. And as a result, the demand for buying property and products in richer countries increases faster than the demand for property and products in poorer countries, which pushes the property and product prices in richer countries to increase faster. And as a result, the people who paid higher taxes in richer countries get recompensate for it through a higher increase in their wealth compared to the people who live in poorer countries. Now, this compensates for most of the difference in tax levels. And whatever is left comes to equilibrium through additional means. Like for example, the richer governments will force the poorer governments to bend to their will, which makes those poorer countries less democratic because it’s not the will of their people, and therefore the amount of force with the poorer countries implement on their own people is higher than their actual taxes. So basically, the people in poorer countries are being ruled by their plus a percentage of richer countries. This means that even though a person in a poor country might pay only 15% in taxes, for example, there is an additional, let’s say 10% force outside of taxes, which comes from the fact that the richer country also implements the will on him by forcing the poorer country to bend its will. So in conclusion, even though tax levels in different countries are different, because of immigration pressures from poorer countries to rich countries, and because of power pressures from rich countries to poor countries, this brings the force which is felt by individuals from world governments in each country at an equilibrium, which means that people of the world feel the force of all governments of the world equally, provided that the dominant government style are democracies, which is the case today. So in reality, there is an average global force which forces people to bend to its will, and because this force ultimately can come only through taxes, then we can measure this global forced behavior of people by simply measuring the global tax proportion compared to the whole global economy. And the global economy is measured by the global GDP, which for the year 2024 was about 100 trillion dollars. Now, the total amount of revenue which governments of all the world collected through taxes was about 25 trillion dollars. So, the global revenue to GDP ratio in 2024 was about 25%. So, this means that globally 25% of all the actions of the world were forced by governments. And because democratic governments are always as much evil as they are good, equally good and evil, which I explained in another video, that means that 25% of global actions are forced to be equally good and evil, effectively neutral. And you know what? It has gotten to the level of 25% by gradually increasing from the previous years, which has been enabled with technological progress. So, technology, not politics, is the only driver of global economic growth. This is not true for non-democratic single states, but when we talk about the democratic countries, and especially the whole world dominated by democracies, then economic progress happens only through technological progress, not through politics, only through technological progress, which then enables bigger governments to exist. And because technological progress is unavoidable globally, as we know from history, and also indirectly implied from verse 41:53 and a few other verses, then this means that the increase of government size in the future is also unavoidable. So, the governments will continue to increase from the level of 25% where they are now until they reach 100% due to the unavoidable increase in technology. But when will the governments reach 100% power? Or when will governments reach the level to force 100% of people’s actions. Well, because the Quran says that this world is a test, had the governments reached 100% before the end of the world, then the world would not be a test for us because all our actions would be forced by governments, and that would not be a test. The governments would make the decisions for us. So, the governments cannot reach 100% before the end of the world. On the other hand, the world can only end according to verse 10:24 when the earth is fully adorned, fully civilized, fully human humanly controlled, which can only happen if governments reach 100%. So, governments cannot reach 100% control before the end of the world, and they cannot reach 100% control after the end of the world, which means that they must reach 100% control exactly at the time of the end of the world. So, the governments will reach that 100% at that moment when the world ends. And we know that the world will end in 2280, which means that the governments will reach 100% power in the year 2280. Now, because we are talking about the whole world, then growth of the world governments can only be endogenous, which means that statistically it would be safe to forecast that the total of the world governments will increase by an equal percentage year over year with minor exceptions in a few years. So, we know that it is about 25% now, and we know that it will reach 100% in 2280, and we know that in the years in between the increase will be by approximately a similar percentage increase each year, and these three facts enable us to predict approximately every year between 2024 and 2280. So, here’s a table which shows what percentage of human behavior is forced globally by democracy during each year. So, this is a projection of what will happen. What the governments might say is happening in the future, that is a different thing. For example, the governments right now are actually hiding some taxes by naming them as car insurance, for example. So, things will very likely take different names by then. For example, the government will even control internet, and it will make people pay for the internet and call it internet subscription, or have many subscriptions for different channels within the internet. And even though the government might call them subscriptions, or insurances, or fees, or memberships, if the government makes them mandatory, they are actually taxes. So, when I say that taxes will reach 100% in the end of the world, I mean things which are really taxes, not necessarily what the government might call taxes. So, by taxes, I mean mandatory payments enforced by government rules, or government rules which force people to buy or sell things, which effectively would be as if though you are self-imposing a tax on yourself, on behalf of the government. So, regardless if the governments will admit that the prediction in this table has happened, this projection about how much of our behavior is forced by the global democratic governments is quite reliable. If you look at what governments do instead of what they say they do. So, what are the implications of this realization that the behavior of people will increasingly be forced behavior as we move towards the future? Well, first of all, it should humble us and not make us think that we are that special. Because we, the believers right now in 2024, are about 25% the same as the disbelievers. In other words, in 2024, the disbelievers of the world are 75% our enemies, and 25% our acquaintances. And the believers and disbelievers will become more and more similar in the future, as this table suggests. And the question is, how does this affect our organized aspects of religion?

Well, it does not affect the regular 2.5% zakat, which we have to give, because that is given from excess wealth. In a world where governments collect more taxes, that also means less wealth for the people, which means that the person will end up paying less zakat anyway. So, there is no need to make any adjustments there. It also does not affect the additional zakat, because that is calculated from net income, which is done after government taxes. However, the congregational directors of the future should make sure to let the people know that they can count their net income as income not only after taxes, but also after other mandatory government insurances or subscriptions or memberships or mandatory pensions and so on. Anything which is made mandatory by the government. Now, on the other hand, the aspect of religion which is affected by this table is the charity which the submitters have to pay for living with non-submitters. First of all, let me remind you that there is a charity which submitters have to pay if they live together with non-submitters, which is equal to 4 g of gold per year. But, because of for this year, for example, for 2024, submitters and non-submitters are 24% the same according to this table, then there should be a 25% discount in that payment. And the discount becomes bigger and bigger with each passing year. And the amount of that discount is basically these percentages here. So, for example, in the year 2152, the submitters who live with non-submitters, they are 50% excused to do that or 50% forced or 50% living with an acquaintance rather than an enemy. So, they get a 50% discount from their normal charity of 4 g of gold. Now, the other aspect of religion which is affected by this table is the 20% penalty zakat which submitters have to give when inheriting wealth from non-submitters. I explained this 20% in my video titled penalty zakat. In that video, I basically explained that submitters should give 20% of the net inheritance which they get from the death of their enemies, which is any non-submitter. However, from this table, we can see that they are not 100% our enemies. In the year 2024, for example, they were only 75% enemies, but 25% acquaintances. This means that for the year 2024, anyone who has to give penalties a cat for inheriting wealth after the death of a non-submitter, they should actually reduce that amount by 25%. So, basically, they get a 25% discount for the year 2024. Or if the year is, let’s say, 2111, then they should get a 40% discount, and so on. This table does not affect the 2.5% zakat or the additional zakat or the contact prayer or the obligatory fasting or the Hajj. As a matter of fact, this table is a good way to approximately predict when the Mahdi will come or when he should start the resistance. Because we simply have to watch when does the 2.5% zakat, together with the additional zakat, come into conflict with the government power. So, when will the government not leave enough money to its people so that they can give their due zakat, their due charity? So, we know that the regular zakat is 2.5%. If people during those times, approximately, are engaged in 50% mixed deeds, then that means that they also have to give a 3.25% zakat for their mixed deeds, which means that it will be necessary for those people to be left alone to spend 5.75% of their money in the cause of God. This means that if the government forces more than 94.25% of the behavior of the people, then the global government has not left enough freedom for the submitters to be submitters. And this 94.25% is reached around the year 2270 or about 10 years before the end of the world, give or take a few years due to the fact that this these percentages are best approximations and not absolute facts, anyway. So, God will send the final messenger, or the guide messenger, or as it is known in Arabic, the Mahdi, which in Arabic simply means the guided one, to guide the believers into enough religious freedom from the global technocracy. We said that time will be around 94.25% forceful. That technocracy will not be all bad. It will be slightly more than 50% bad, while the submitters will only be slightly more than 50% good at that time. But still, the struggle will be to protect that approximate final 5.75% of religious financial freedom, so that it can be used in the cause of God. So, basically, we the submitters have no problem if governments take our money, because after all the democratic governments are neither good and neither bad. But we do have a problem if governments take God’s money, the portion of money which we are obliged to set aside for God to make it to heaven. And this is also why Moses never asked Pharaoh to release the children of Israel from slavery for the sake of freedom itself. If you read the Bible, you can see that Moses asked Pharaoh only to release them from slavery so that they can go in the desert and worship God. So, in other words, Moses was not fighting for the freedom of his people, but for freedom of religion, freedom to be a submitter. And in the same way, we do not fight for freedom from today’s governments. We only fight for freedom to be a submitter, which today we still have, so there’s no need to fight for it. Only in the end times, the global technocracy or government will attempt to take freedom of religion away from us, which will make the resistance of the believers, together with the final messenger, the Mahdi, necessary.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains why believers must not be involved in alcohol or drug businesses, and how those with mixed deeds can atone through an additional penalty Zakat.

Video Transcript:

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. As we know, drinking alcohol and taking recreational drugs are prohibited for the believers, according to verse 5:90 in the Quran. However, does this prohibition also include serving them to others, or buying them, or selling them, or producing them, or owning an alcohol related business, or carrying them or transporting them, or profiting from them, basically being involved in any way in alcohol or recreational drug related business. Is that prohibited? Well, yes, but with an exception. First, let me tell you why that is prohibited for the believers, and then I will tell you the exception to it. So, first why is getting involved in any way in alcohol related business or work, or recreational drugs related business or work prohibited. Doesn’t the Quran only prohibit taking them? Well, yes the Quran does declare them to be bad deeds if you drink them or take them, but at the same time, in verse, 4:85, the Quran says, “Whoever mediates a bad deed is also responsible for a portion of that deed.” So, when someone drinks alcohol, that is a bad deed, and if you serve it to him, or sell it to him, or produce it for him, or buy it for him, and so on, then you are mediating it, and therefore you are responsible for a portion of the sin of the person who is drinking it, and this makes it prohibited for you as well to get involved in alcohol or recreational drug related work or business, even if you don’t drink it yourself. However, most of the business today is mixed business. For example, no one works today simply as an alcohol server. People work as waiters for example in restaurants or coffee shops, and a portion of what they serve could be alcoholic drinks, and the other portion would be non-alcoholic things. So, this means that part of their job is allowed and the other part is not allowed, but you can not separate their job, it comes like that as a total offer by the business owner for example. You either agree to be a waiter or not. So, what should you do in that case? Well, the Quran provides a solution for it – for cases where we deal with mixed business, where a portion of it is allowed and a portion of it is prohibited. And in such cases, the Quran provides us with a way out of that sin through charity. Here is what verses 9:102 and 9:103 say about this. They say, “There are those who have confessed their sins; they have mixed good deeds with bad deeds.

God will redeem them, for God is Forgiver, Most Merciful. Take from their money a charity to purify them and sanctify them. And encourage them, for your encouragement reassures them. God is Hearer, Omniscient.” And I do list this type of charity under point 17 as a subcomponent of Penalty Zakat in the video clarification titled “Penalty Zakat”, but to keep that video reasonably short, I do not give the details there. But in this video, let me give you the details of the exact process of atonement or payment for mixed deeds, deeds which are both righteous and sinful at the same time. So, let’ say that you work as a flight attendant. In your job as a flight attendant, you spend about 40% of your efforts dealing with passenger safety and comfort, about 30% of your efforts preparing and serving food and the other 30% preparing and serving drinks. Now, in that 30% where you prepare and serve drinks, let’ say that 3% is preparing and serving alcoholic drinks. So, 3% of your job is prohibited, while the other 97% is allowed. And because this is a mixed deed (both good and bad) you probably do not want to throw away the 97% of the benefit just because 3% of it is prohibited.

As the saying goes, you might not want to throw away the baby together with the bath water. So, in that case, God obliges the congregation director to take a charity from you to purify you from your sin, from that 3% portion of your job. But, how much charity should be taken away from you to be given in the cause of God in order to purify exactly that 3%. And by the way, this is an obligation, not optional. The verse says ‘Take from their money a charity to purify the sinful portion of their mixed deed’. So it’s an order for the congregation director. It says, “take it”, and of course in verse 9:60, it tells us exactly where that charity should go after it has been taken. However, how much should the congregation director take to purify that 3% of dirty money of that specific flight attendant? Well, let’s imagine that actually you work in a job where 100% of your job is related to alcohol. Let’s say that you work in a liquor store in New York, for example, where all they might sell is alcohol and nothing else. In that case, you are just an employee there, but still 100% of your job would be related to alcohol. So, in that case in within your job you would be acting 100% like a so-called Christian who does not believe that alcohol is prohibited. And according to the Quran, even so-called Christians can go to heaven, if they give 10% Zakat to the submitters for charity. And this is because, God rewards every good deed 10 times, and if a so-called Christian earned his money 100% as an alcohol salesperson and gave 10% of it to the submitters for charity, then God would reward that 10 times, making it 100% which would wipe away all his sin as an alcohol salesman. So, the maximum that a person has to pay Zakat is 10%, if he earns all his money from business which is related to prohibited deeds, and the minimum is 2.5% if he completely earns his money in a pure form without incorporating any bad deeds into the good deeds. So, for example, a cashier in a store where no alcohol or pork, or gambling products are sold has to pay 2.5% Zakat, while a cashier in a store where all products are alcohol products has to pay 10% Zakat. Now, given that we require everyone to pay 2.5% at the beginning to join the submitters, that means that the cashier of the store where all products are alcohol he has to pay an additional 7.5% Zakat, additional zakat to stay with the submitters to reach the 10%. So, the additional Zakat which a person has to pay on top of the 2.5% should be anywhere between 0% and 7.5%. And this is one of the many reasons why the Quran does not directly mention 2.5% as the definitive absolute value of Zakat for all circumstances. It’s because it depends on circumstances. If you are an absolutely perfect submitter with no mixed deeds, it would be 2.5%, but it can be higher than that if you earned your money through mixed deeds. So, I calculated the values of Additional Zakat between 0 and 7.5% for each mixed deed, depending on what proportion of it is sinful, and you can see them in this table. So, in this table for example, you can see that if 20% of your business is related to the sale, or service or producing of things which are prohibited in the Quran, then the additional Zakat which you have to pay is 1.5%. This is on top of the regular 2.5%. And by the way, unlike the regular 2.5% Zakat which is calculated from excess wealth, this Zakat is directly calculated from net income or net profits. Yes, we know that the Quran does say that we should give Zakat from the excess wealth.

That’s true. However, all the money obtained through dirty methods is already excess money at the moment you get it, because God would not put you in a situation where you have to do dirty business in order to survive, unless you put yourself in it, which means that it was a choice, not a need, and therefore it automatically counts as excess wealth, and not as necessary wealth. Another difference between the additional Zakat and the regular 2.5% Zakat is that this Zakat definitely must be collected and then distributed. The congregation director can allow the submitters in the congregation to give their 2.5% regular Zakat directly to the final recipients in need because the submitters who do that can be trusted to do that. However, once we talk about the additional Zakat, that automatically implies that some of us as submitters were willing to bend the rules a little bit when it comes to how we deal with money, and this means that we have no guarantee that that same person would not also bend the rules when it comes to distributing the Zakat to the final recipient. So, in this case, you are obliged to give the additional zakat to the congregation director only who should be more trustworthy than you to redistribute it transparently to the final recipients which are mentioned in verse 9:60.

And because the collection of the additional zakat is mandatory before its distribution, that is why God says in verse 9:103, “take from their money”, while when it comes to the regular zakat, it leaves it up to the congregation director to collect it and distribute it or authorize the direct distribution to the final recipients by the submitters themselves.. So, now let me take a few examples of how this table can be used. Let’s say that you own a breakfast restaurant in United States, where a lot of people prefer to have their eggs with bacon, which comes from pigs. Now, let’s say that about 8% of the food which you sell in that restaurant is bacon. So, you look at this table, and you see that for 8%, you have to pay 0.60% additional Zakat. Now, let’s say that your annual net profits from that restaurant were 100,000 dollars, you multiply it by 0.60%, and it gives you 600 dollars. So, you must give 600 dollars to your congregation director as additional zakat to purify your dirty business practices of the last year. Now, let’ take another example. Let’s say that you work as a cleaner or IT, in a casino. These days, for example, for most of the casinos, gambling and intoxicants would probably be only about 60% of their business.

Most casinos these days are also hotels, and sometimes they sell other non-gambling and non-intoxicating products and services. So, let’s assume that you work as a cleaner or IT in a casino where 60% of its business is gambling and intoxicants. So, we check this table, and we see that 60% corresponds to 4.5% of additional zakat. So, let’s say that your annual net income last year from that job was 40,000 dollars. So, 4.5% of 40,000 dollars is 1,800 dollars. So you have to give 1,800 dollars to your congregation director as additional zakat to atone for the fact that you work in that casino. Or let’s take another example, let’s say that you are a male who works as a taxi driver where someone else does not monitor you with cameras or a microphone. Let’s say that during your job, 20% of the time, your passengers are females who are alone. Let’ say that you work 20% during the night, which means that 4% of all the passengers which you transport are females who are alone at night, and I would assume that being in a car is half private and half public. So we reduce that 4% down to 2%. So, 2% of the time while working as a taxi driver, you are very likely staying alone with females in privacy, and this is prohibited in the Quran according to verse 2:235 and a few other verses. So, we check this table, we look at the 2%, and the corresponding additional zakat for it is 0.15%. So, if that taxi driver earned 50,000 dollars net profit during last year, we multiply it by 0.15% and we get 75 dollars. So that taxi driver has to give 75 dollars to his congregation director as additional zakat. And by the way, usually these dirty business practices in today’s world are connected with alcohol, or pork products, or recreational drugs (if they are legal in that country), or some form of games of chance, or staying with the opposite gender alone in private spaces where other’s don’t have easy access. And someone, might say, aren’t you technically allowing those things by enabling the purification from them through payment through additional zakat. Well, I am not the first to say this. Listen to this: “God has prescribed for us laws to govern the important aspects of our lives, and He left a lot of freedom for many other aspects in our lives. And we are told that these laws are recommendations or commandments. They are commandments because we should do them, and they are recommendations because we have the freedom not to do them, as long as we are ready to pay the price.” So, as you can see, in this video, Rashad Khalifa said that we can understand the Quranic rules as recommendations as long as we are ready to pay the price, and the amount of that price is what I discussed in this video. And if you refuse to pay this price, there is a bigger price – Hell. Obviously, this method of atonement or payment is only for mixed sins, and not for direct sins. For example, you can not commit adultery and expect to pay for it through this method of additional zakat. Here we are talking only about mixed deeds, or being some kind of mediator for adultery. For example, working at the front desk of a hotel, where about 5% of the people who come there, you have good reason to believe that they came there to commit adultery in the rooms which they book, and you have to give them the key to their room, because they paid for their hotel room, or you can quit your job. Now, giving them the key is that mixed sin, you are acting as a mediator or a supporter for sin, and for that you earn a portion of that sin according to verse 4:85, and that is why you have to pay additional zakat to purify that portion.

But you can not use this method for the bigger or direct sins, like killing, adultery, mistreating parents, stealing, violence, gambling, drinking alcohol, eating pork, taking drugs, cheating during trade. For these sins, you end up paying more, and differently. But, here I am talking only about being a mediator for those sins while having a job or doing legal business for beneficial things, and that makes the total of that job or that business, a mixed deed – partly sinful and partly good. And sometimes, it is not easy to calculate how big of a portion is the sinful portion, but just try to do your best to separate your activities into smaller calculable portions, and then calculate them, and wherever you are not sure just try to roughly estimate. That’s good enough.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains how higher-dimensional creatures can appear in different shapes in our world, and why God let Satan appear as a snake: like a snakebite, sin harms us later, Satan sees us while we cannot see him, he sheds his skin with new names, and he lacks guidance.

Video Transcript:

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

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, Satan appears to Adam and Eve in the form of a snake, talks to them, convinces them to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree, and causes them to be evicted from Paradise. Obviously, we know that Satan and snakes are two different creatures. However, the creatures of the higher dimensions, like angels, jinns and Satan, if God allowed them to enter our three-dimensional world, which He doesn’t in our time, but did in a few instances in the past, could enter our world in different shapes. For example, the angels appeared to Abraham in the shape of human beings, Satan appeared to Adam and Eve in the shape of a snake, and the jinns appeared to Solomon in other shapes.

How could this be? Well, when higher-dimensional objects enter lower dimensions, they can appear in different forms, depending on the angle of entrance and which part of their body entered. For example, a cone is a three-dimensional object. If we cause the cone to enter a lower-dimensional world, let’s say a two-dimensional world, then depending on the angle at which it enters, it can appear in that world as a circle, an ellipse, a triangle, a hyperbola or a parabola. In a two-dimensional world, these are five different shapes, but in the higher, three-dimensional world, they are simply cross-sections of only one shape, which is the cone.

In the same way, because the higher-dimensional creatures, like angels, jinns and Satan, live in as many as 10 dimensions, the number of ways in which their up-to-10D shape can appear in a 3D world increases drastically. If they have even a slightly sophisticated shape in a 10D world, they can appear in thousands or millions of different, precise, sophisticated shapes, depending on the angle at which they are allowed to enter this world. This means that God could have allowed Satan to appear and speak to Adam and Eve in the form of a lion, a crocodile, a wolf, a spider, or any other animal form, so that Adam and Eve could interact with it before they got deceived.

But why did Satan appear to them in exactly the form of a snake? Is it because snakes kill people? Well, lions also kill people; crocodiles, wolves and bears also kill people, and in so many ways they are more dangerous than the snake if you encounter them. But still, God allowed Satan to appear to Adam and Eve at an angle shaped like a snake. So why exactly a snake? It’s because God wanted to teach us something from this. The snake has many characteristics which teach us about who Satan is.

There are many such characteristics, but the main difference between the snake, as an animal which kills people, and the other animals which kill people, is that in the case of the snake, the action and the consequence are separated in time. If a wolf eats you, the time when it eats you and the time when it hurts you, or when you die, are the same. The same goes for the lion: when the lion suffocates its prey, it is killing it in real time. The same goes for the crocodile, and so on. But not so with the snake. The snake gives you only a small bite, and then you die hours or even days later, if left untreated.

As you can see, there is a gap in time between when the snake bites you and when you end up dying, and this teaches us a key thing about Satan. There is a time gap between when Satan touches you and when you end up being hurt by it. For example, Satan might touch you with a sin, such as theft, lying or adultery, and there is a time gap between when Satan touched you and when you get hurt by it. You get hurt by those sins hours, days, months or years later, or even towards the end of your life, and even after this life if you’re a disbeliever. So, as in the case of the snake, there’s a time gap between when Satan touches you and when you get hurt, and this time gap, this postponement of consequences, is what makes it more dangerous, and what makes it a sin.

You see, there are two types of harm: direct harm, which is simply called harm, and postponed harm, which is called sin. A direct harm, for example, is putting your hand in the fire. In this case, the action and the harm happen at the same time, which is why God did not mention touching the fire as a sin, but as a punishment. But when it comes to lying, let’s say, it is a postponed harm. The action and the harm happen at different times, which is why God revealed in the Quran that we should not do it. Given that there is a time gap between the action and the harm, we as humans would not be able to know that it is harmful if God did not tell us. This is why God tells us to avoid postponed harms, or sins, especially because those harms can be postponed beyond this life, in which case we end up in Hell.

God gave us minds to protect ourselves from harms where the action and the harm both happen at the same time, and God gave us the Quran for harms where there is a time gap between the action and the harm. So, symbolically speaking, God gave us minds for protection against wolves, but He gave us the Quran for protection against snakes. Because if people did not tell us that the snake has venom, we wouldn’t know. Men would naturally think that they could defeat it with their bare hands. The snake looks so weak on the outside. You can outrun it, squash it, and even kill it with your bare hands, but hours or days later, you are very likely dead too. So this is one feature which the snake and Satan have in common: there is a time gap between when they touch you and when you get harmed.

The second aspect which the snake and Satan have in common is that the snake can see us at night, while we cannot see it. Snakes have an additional sense, a sixth sense: they can sense infrared light, which enables them to see our warm bodies during the night. But a snake would not be able to see a dead body at night, because it is cold. So snakes can sense living bodies but not dead bodies, just as Satan can touch living bodies in this world but has no power over dead bodies, or over the believers who have left their bodies and gone to the next world. In this world, the Quran, in verse 7:27, tells us that Satan can see us while we do not see him.

Another aspect which the snake and Satan have in common is that the snake sheds its skin about 17 times during its lifetime. In other words, Satan tries the same old tricks, but under a new skin. For example, those who used to be called fools are now called atheists; Satan rebranded them to make the idea more enticing. Those who used to be called pagans are now called Christians. Those who used to be called the people of the scripture are now called Quranists, or Protestants, depending on which scripture you’re talking about. Those who used to be called the Children of Israel are now called submitters. Those who used to be called the opposition to God’s system are now called Jews. The word “Jew” in Arabic means opponent, or someone who turned back from faith, and the word “Israel,” among other things, in Hebrew means one who fights against God. So Satan simply changed the skin, but his ways and essence, which is rebellion against God, remain the same.

Another reason why God allowed Satan to speak to Adam and Eve in the shape of a snake is that snakes move with their heads kept low to the ground. This makes them shortsighted. A small stone, some grass, or any small bump in the ground is enough to block their field of view, which makes it impossible for them to make good long-term plans. Basically, they do not have enough guidance to find their way towards a goal. They only get places through trial and error. This feature of the snake is mentioned in the Quran. The Quran, in verse 67:22, says, “Is one who walks with his face on the ground better guided,” which is the snake, “or one who walks straight on the right path?” That is the human, who can stand up straight on two feet, look far ahead, and choose ahead of time where he wants to go. So there is guidance in being able to stand up straight.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains that tattoos, plastic surgery and other cosmetic body modifications are essentially lies about one’s genes, that people who have them may join the submitters, and that once they have a child, they owe the community half the cost of the procedure as penalty Zakat.

Video Transcript:

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

According to verse 6:120, whoever commits a sin will have to pay for it, and to spare us from paying for those sins in Hell, God prescribes for us in the Quran the penalties, or payments, for those sins, to be executed here on Earth. For example, the penalty, or payment, for theft is returning the stolen item and marking the hand of the thief. The payment for adultery is a hundred lashes, and so on. But when it comes to the sin of lying, on the surface it seems that the Quran prescribes no payment or penalty. Actually, the payment for lying, according to the Quran, is that the person should not be trusted again, if the lie is big or if he lied often. If the lie is small, or the person does not lie as often, the penalty is that you trust that person less in the future. You trust them partially, but also with a dose of caution. So this is the payment for lies for which no direct negative consequences can be proven.

However, there are lies for which direct consequences can be proven. So we have two types of lies. By the way, all lies ultimately have negative consequences; no doubt about it. However, for some lies, the number of victims is so low that the amount by which each victim is hurt is large, which makes it worthwhile for those victims to pursue justice and prove how the lie hurt them. But there are lies where the number of victims is so large that the amount by which each victim is hurt is really low, to the point where it’s not worth it for any of those victims to pursue justice when they get hurt by it.

Let me give you an example of each of these two types of lies. First example: let’s say that you buy a used car from someone, and they tell you that it has four-wheel drive. You pay for the car thinking that it has four-wheel drive, and in the winter you realize that it doesn’t. In this case, even though the Quran does not prescribe a financial punishment for the lie, it prescribes a financial punishment for the harm which the lie caused, and because the harm is large for a single person, it is worthwhile for that person to seek compensation for it.

Now here is an example of the other type of lie. Let’s say that someone says that there are aliens on the dark side of the moon, the side which can never be seen from Earth, but the governments are hiding this fact from us. Even though this type of lie does as much harm as the lie about the four-wheel drive, the harm is spread in many smaller portions over a large number of people, so each of the victims is harmed much less. In this case, some youngsters and inexperienced people might believe the lie and trust science less, and as a result they might be less likely to make evidence-based decisions in their lives. But none of them could go and seek compensation from the liar about aliens on the other side of the moon, because the harm is so small for each victim that none of them individually thinks it’s worth seeking compensation. So for this type of lie, the punishment is that you just don’t trust that person again.

We have to keep in mind everything we have said so far about lies in order to decide how to approach the issue of cosmetic body modifications. But first, let’s see what the Hadith followers claim about cosmetic body modifications. One type of such modification is tattoos. According to Hadith 5,931 of Bukhari, Abdullah said that he heard God’s messenger say that God has cursed the woman who does tattoos and the one who has them done.

First of all, we have no definitive evidence that this statement was ever said by Muhammad, but for the purposes of this analysis, let’s assume that he really did say it. Well, by the same logic, we can find many other hadiths where Muhammad said that liars are cursed, and given that there’s no person speaking today who has not lied at least once in their lifetime, then, according to Hadith, everyone is cursed. These kinds of blanket statements, which do not mention sufficient nuances and details, do not help at all in resolving issues. So even if the Hadith about tattooed people being cursed is true, it does not help at all to tell us how to approach the issue of tattoos, except that it divides the Muslims into congregations which will accept tattooed people and congregations which will not. So what this Hadith, and all the people who use it, end up doing is simply using a peripheral issue to divide the Muslims.

But then, what is the answer to this question? Should we allow people with tattoos, plastic surgery and other cosmetic body modifications in our congregation, or not? As with all the other peripheral religious issues, the answer is very nuanced. We should take the whole Quran into consideration to reach the right conclusion about this issue. First of all, of course, there’s something wrong with tattoos and other cosmetic body modifications, because they all go against how God designed us. God tells us not to change God’s creation, in verse 4:119, and in verse 2:84, God tells us not to shed blood, and during tattoos, plastic surgeries and so on, unnecessary blood is shed and the body is modified.

However, these two verses cannot be used as definitive proof that tattoos and plastic surgery are prohibited, because ear piercing and circumcision both involve shedding blood and modifying the body, yet the Bible and the Quran do not prohibit ear piercing for girls, or circumcision for the descendants of Abraham. So then what is the difference between earrings for girls and circumcision for the male descendants of Abraham on one side, and tattoos and other cosmetic body modifications on the other? Well, the essential difference is that one of them is essentially not a lie, while the other essentially is a lie.

When a girl has earrings in her pierced ears, she is essentially claiming, according to the Bible, “I am a female who depends on society to survive,” and this is essentially true. And when a boy who is a descendant of Abraham, which includes almost all Middle Eastern-looking males, gets circumcised, according to the Bible he’s essentially claiming that he is a descendant of Abraham, which again is essentially true for all the people of the Middle East and people who look similar to them. On the other hand, when a person gets a tattoo or a cosmetic body modification, he is essentially saying, “Look how good my genes are.” Even though the change in the body is not a lie, because the body really did change, the genes are still the same. So the lie is about the genes.

So now we have gotten to the essence of the issue of tattoos, plastic surgery and other cosmetic body modifications. They are essentially lies about your genes, and this finally allows us to understand how to approach them, if we think of them as essentially lies. So if we want to know whether people with tattoos and other cosmetic body modifications should be allowed in our congregation, we should ask the same question about people who have told lies before. And because all of us have lied at least once in our lifetime, and we are already in the congregation of submitters, this means that tattooed people, and people with other cosmetic body modifications, should be allowed to join and stay in our congregation.

However, at the beginning of this sermon, we said that there are lies for which compensation for the harm caused can be pursued in practice, and lies for which it cannot. For example, if a person has lied that his car has four-wheel drive when it does not, then as long as he keeps the car to himself, it’s almost impossible to measure the harm caused by his lie. But if that person sells the car after lying about the four-wheel drive, then the harm from the lie becomes measurable. Basically, the damage caused is equal to the difference in price between a car with four-wheel drive and the same car without it, plus any damages from the lie. The same idea applies to cosmetic body modifications. As long as the person keeps his genes to himself, the cosmetic body modifications are not doing any practically measurable harm to anyone. But once that person has children, he has put his genes out there under the false pretense, created by the cosmetic body modification, that the genes are different from what they really are. So only after a submitter with cosmetic body modifications has children are we, as humans, actually able to measure the harm done by the genetic lie.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that a girl was born with wide ears, which is perfectly normal, but she felt the social pressure to undergo cosmetic plastic surgery on her ears, and eventually she fell victim to the pressure and did it. Now she wants to join us, the submitters. She is perfectly allowed to join us, just like anyone else, and she does not have to pay for her sin, because, first of all, she paid for a large portion of her sin by paying the doctor, and also through the pain which she felt during the procedure, and also perhaps through medical complications and undesired results, or she might have compensated for it with many other good deeds. However, in almost all cases there is some part of the sin for which she has not paid yet, but that part of the sin is immeasurable for us as humans, and therefore we are not allowed to demand that she pay for it before she joins, because we don’t even know how much it is, and we as humans don’t even know whether there is anything left of her sin to pay for by now.

However, if she has children while being a submitter with cosmetic body modifications, then she has released her genes into the public, and at this moment her lie becomes a lie for which the harm can be measured, and this enables us to demand compensation for the harm. Here is how to roughly calculate, or estimate, the harm. Let’s say that she has a child. The child will carry half of the genes from her and half from the father, and therefore she has lied about half of the genes which she has put into the world. This means that she has to correct for that by paying half of the cost of the surgery. So let’s say that her cosmetic ear surgery cost $6,000. Now she owes the community of submitters half of it, so she has to pay $3,000 for giving birth to a child after the ear surgery.

This now becomes obligatory to be paid to the community of submitters, according to verses 9:102 and 9:103, and because it is obligatory, it has now become part of the penalty Zakat, under point 17 of the penalty Zakat, which is explained in the video titled “Penalty Zakat.” And since it now enters the system of Zakat, the rules of Zakat apply to it as well, which means that the payment should be made within one year after the birth of the child, and if it is not made, she will be excluded from the community of submitters and will not be considered a submitter anymore. But if she does pay it, then she is purified from that sin, and her sin is forgiven, and this in turn gives additional protection to her child, and God will bless her and her child. And then, if she gives birth to another child, she should pay again half of what it cost her to undergo any cosmetic body modification, and so on, every time she has a child.

When I say cosmetic body modifications, I mean any type of modification, like liposuction, nose surgery, breast enlargement or reduction, tummy tucks, eye reshaping, ear surgery, tattoos, permanent makeup, Botox injections, hair implants, and so on. All these are lies about your genes, for which you should pay only if you have a child after having them done. If you don’t have a child after having them done, then it’s between you and God. But if you have a child after having them done, then you have harmed the community of submitters by half the cost of the procedure, and you should compensate the community of submitters for it.

So if you have ever undergone any cosmetic body modification and you then have a child, soon after you have the child, calculate half the cost of any cosmetic body modifications which you underwent, and then send an email to your congregation director and tell him that you owe that specific amount of money to the community of submitters. You do not need to tell him any details, only the amount of the debt which you owe. He then writes it down as a debt which you owe, and you have to pay it within one year if he requests it. But if he delays it for more than one year and does not ask for it, because he does not have a specific project planned to spend it in the cause of God, then you should wait until he requests that you pay the debt, but you should have it saved and ready. Once he requests it, you should pay it, and he is responsible for spending it in the cause of God, according to the rules which I mentioned about public penalty Zakat in the video clarification titled “Penalty Zakat.”

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza shows how today’s disbelievers and hypocrites use softer versions of the insults and excuses the Quran predicts, such as calling a messenger crazy, a fool or a magician, and warns us not to let the softness hide their disbelief.

Video Transcript:

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

A lot of times, during debates or arguments, or when we are verbally attacked by disbelievers, some of us fail to notice that those attacks have been prophesied in the Quran, but in a more extreme form. The Quran predicts what the most extreme disbeliever would say to the most extreme believer. However, because today the disbelievers are not the most extreme disbelievers, and the believers are not the most extreme believers, their verbal debates and disputes will fit the Quranic prophecies in a softer version. Because the disbelievers of today come up with slightly softer words compared to what the Quran predicts for extreme disbelievers, some of us might not always be aware that what they just said is an expression of disbelief, only in a softer version. Let’s examine some examples of the softer versions of what I have heard the disbelievers say about me, or about us in general, and then I’ll tell you the more extreme version predicted in the Quran.

For example, some of the things people have called us, or me specifically, are “brainwashed,” “indoctrinated,” “he has not gone to religious school,” “he does not speak Arabic,” “idiot.” This is the soft version, but the hard version is simply “fool.” The Quran predicts that. Verse 2:13 says that when the disbelievers are told to believe like the believers, they say, “Shall we believe like the fools who believed?” So the extreme disbelievers go directly to the word “fool,” but the less extreme disbelievers will use softer synonyms, or softer versions, of the word “fool.”

Here is another example. The disbelievers of today, being soft disbelievers, will dig up any mental disorder in the field of psychology and label me with it: “He has schizophrenia,” “he’s a psychopath,” “he has hallucinations,” “he’s bipolar,” “he has a multiple personality disorder.” Or they will come up with even softer psychological accusations, like, “Who abused you that you became like that?” “You need help.” “Have you visited a therapist?” “Are you sure that what you are saying does not stem from some psychological episode?” These are the softer versions, but the extreme version, which is predicted in the Quran, is that they say, “He is crazy.” In verses 15:6 and 23:25, God says that the extreme disbelievers will label the messenger as crazy, which means that softer disbelievers, being softer today, will label him with softer versions of the word “crazy.”

Here is another example. Even though I’m not that kind of messenger, when I write emails or chats, they said, “He’s making spelling mistakes in his emails or chats, so he cannot be a messenger,” or they say, “He has an accent.” This is simply a softer version of what Pharaoh said about Moses. Verse 43:52 reports that Pharaoh said to his people, “Which one is better, me or that one who is lowly and can hardly speak?” Pharaoh used this as an argument against Moses, since Moses had a slight speech defect.

Here is another example. When I told them about the smoke which the Quran predicts will come, they said, “Well, that’s a little bit too far. We don’t know if we will be alive then to witness it and verify that you’re telling the truth. Can you make another prediction of another retribution which will come earlier?” This statement is simply a softer version of what the extreme disbelievers said to the extreme believing messengers of the past. For example, they told Noah, “We challenge you to bring the doom you threaten us with.” Basically, they told him, “Do it now, if you are truthful.”

Here is another example. When I preach, they try to come up with softer versions of prohibiting my speech. For example, they said, “Advertisements are not allowed here, so please do not post links to your videos,” or, “This is spam,” or, “Remove us from your email list,” or, “You’re not welcome to speak at our conference,” or things like that, which are partial limitations on my ability to contact other people, just enough to the point where they think it will give them enough advantage. The extreme disbelievers of the past were more extreme. As reported in verse 15:70, they directly told Lot, “Did we not stop you from contacting anyone?”

Here is another example. The Catholics do not eat meat on Fridays. This is a very soft version of an invented dietary prohibition. A stronger version is that of the Hindus, who do not eat cow meat at all. The Quran mentions the more extreme version of a dietary prohibition in verse 6:138, where God tells us that the disbelievers of the past said, “These are livestock that are prohibited; no one shall eat them except whomever we permit,” and they even prohibited the riding of certain livestock, and so on.

Here is another example. They said, “Let him come here so we can expose him. He’s trying to mislead you. He’s the messenger of Satan. He’s trying to deceive you. He’s tricking you.” And the Quran mentions the most extreme version of what they will say, in verses 43:30 and 10:76: the disbelievers said, “This is magic; he’s a magician, a trickster.”

Here is one final example for today, and this one is not about what soft disbelievers say, but what soft hypocrites say. They might say, “I cannot leave my job to attend the live Friday sermons,” or, “I had to take care of my family,” or, “The monetary compensation which you are proposing is too much; it’s going to be a burden for the submitters, and others might not join us because of it,” or things like that. The Quran gives us the more extreme version of what the extreme hypocrites say. Verse 9:81 reports that they said, “Let us not mobilize in this heat.” Verse 5:22 reports that they said, “O Moses, there are powerful people in that city, and we will not enter it unless they get out of it.” Verse 28:57 reports that they said, “If we follow your guidance, we will be persecuted.”

So these are some examples of what the hypocrites within us and the disbelievers outside our group say. Today they come up with softer versions of those sayings, because they are softer disbelievers and softer hypocrites, just as we are softer believers. The future is full of in-between people, modern people, moderate people. “Moderate” means reduced, less extreme. So we are living in a more moderate environment compared to the past, which makes it easier for us to deal with the disbelievers. But let’s not let the softness of their disbelief fool us into not recognizing their disbelief. It’s still disbelief, but in a softer version.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza reads the invitation he sent to 34 websites and social media groups that follow the Quran alone, proposing a God Alone Alliance to promote the worship of God alone, and explains how the fact that only one group joined fulfills the prophecy in verse 72:19.

Video Transcript:

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

As some of you might be aware, there are currently about 30 to 40 websites or social media groups who outwardly say that they worship God alone and that they use the Quran alone as the only source of religious law. They exist as many different groups because they have divisions about other issues. For example, one group might believe that the Earth is flat according to the Quran, and another group might believe that the Earth is round according to the Quran, and they both claim to follow the Quran alone. So, to temporarily resolve these differences in theology, or at least to agree to disagree, I decided to invite all the biggest groups who believe in the Quran alone to co-create a God Alone Alliance, through which we would join forces to promote the worship of God alone. Here is the document which I sent them:

God Alone Alliance. Mission: to promote the worship of God alone, and the use of the Quran alone as the only source of religious law.

Background: During the past 14 centuries, traditions, customs, superstitions and innovations have crept into Islam, and they have reached the point where they have been vested with such religious solidity that anyone who questions them is regarded as a dangerous innovator and heretic. One of the most flagrant mistakes which has crept into Islam is the use of sources outside of the Quran for religious conclusions. Nevertheless, in the last centuries, a large number of people have rightly reached the conclusion that we should worship God alone, without associating any partner with Him, and that we should use the Quran as the only source of religious truth and law. These individuals, who have reached the right conclusion about the correct religious principles and methodology, God alone and Quran alone, have unfortunately developed a number of possible solutions to religious issues, which has led to considerable bickering, disunity and disarray.

This is not to say that one of the groups is not right in understanding the Quran, but despite that, it would still benefit any right group to cooperate with other, less righteous groups who agree in principle to worship God alone and to use the Quran alone as the only source of religious law, because what these groups agree about in principle, which is to worship God alone, is far more important than their differences. Therefore, an alliance of people who agree in principle that we should worship God alone and use the Quran alone as the only source of religious law is needed, as a united front against idol worshipers.

This alliance would not aim to resolve the other, peripheral issues of disagreement between the groups. The alliance would only aim to join forces for the purpose of promoting the worship of God alone and the use of the Quran alone as the only source of religious law, while each member of the alliance would be free to continue to hold their different religious beliefs on other issues. The purpose of the alliance is to emphasize the promotion of worshiping God alone, while de-emphasizing the other differences, and hopefully to increase the internal civilized dialogue between these groups, to at least open the door to a more cohesive understanding and application of the Quran. Each group which joins the alliance will continue to have full independence from the alliance and its members, while enjoying the opportunity for peace, better open communication, and coordination about shared goals with other alliance members.

Who can become a member: any group which fulfills the two following criteria: one, agrees to worship God alone and promotes it; and two, agrees to use the Quran alone as the source of religious law and promotes it. Group types and sizes: websites with more than 1,000 visits per month, or social media groups with more than 100 subscribers or members.

Process of membership in the alliance: any new member group can join unless there is an objection by one or more of the existing members. An objection can only be raised if there is evidence that the potential new member does not, in principle, agree to worship God alone or to use the Quran alone as the source of religious law. The objection cannot be an indirect conclusion by the existing members; it should come from what the group wishing to join the alliance directly states about what they believe.

Mode of operation: the alliance will be operated through an online meeting, held every six months, with one representative from each group. The meeting lasts exactly 4 hours and 19 minutes. The alliance will not have a leader. All members are equal and will have equal time to speak in the meeting. The members will rotate in hosting the meetings, and the host will hold the meeting in the main medium of communication which they use for their internal group meetings. The meeting host will make the introduction of the representatives of the member groups and the goodbye, without any connotation of which members he supports. Meeting agenda: introduction and welcome, 2 minutes; main speeches, 3 hours; break, 15 minutes; supporting or rebuttal speeches, 1 hour; and goodbye, 2 minutes.

Pledge: We agree that we shall not worship except God, that we never set up any idols besides Him, nor set up any human beings as lords besides God. We agree to use and promote the Quran as the only source of religious law. Member group link, full name of the representative of the member group, signature and date.

So I sent this document, this invitation to join the God Alone Alliance, to the owners of 27 websites and seven social media groups, the biggest ones which I could find online. In total, all of them together have about 1 million views each month, and they generally exist as different sites and social media groups because they do not agree with one another, and in general, they do not like one another. So here is the list of all the 34 groups to whom I sent the invitation to co-create the God Alone Alliance together. And do you know how many of those 34 websites joined? Only one.

This happened so that a prophecy in the Quran could be fulfilled once more. The prophecy in verse 72:19 says that when God’s servant advocated Him alone, almost all of them banded together to oppose him. And the response to them for their opposition is in the following verses. It says: “Say, ‘I worship only my Lord; I never set up any idols beside Him.’ Say, ‘I possess no power to harm you, nor to guide you.’ Say, ‘No one can protect me from God, nor can I find any other refuge beside Him. I deliver God’s proclamations and His messages.’ Those who disobey God and His messenger incur the fire of Hell, wherein they abide forever. Once they see what is awaiting them, they will find out who is really weaker in power and fewer in number.”

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains that hanging calligraphy of Muhammad’s name, like hanging crosses for Jesus, risks idol worship even when unintended, and goes against the Quran’s command not to make a distinction among God’s messengers.

Video Transcript:

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

According to verse 33:21, Muhammad is an example for the believers. However, he himself never put calligraphy of his name on the walls of his houses or the masjids. There is no evidence for it in the Quran, or even in Hadith. So to follow Muhammad means that we should do the same thing as him, which is not to put his name on the walls. Hanging calligraphy with the name of Muhammad on the walls is basically the same as when Christians put crosses on their walls. The only difference is that the Christians worship Jesus while being aware of it, while Muslims worship Muhammad without being aware of it.

However, whether someone is aware or not does not excuse him from idol worship, according to verses 6:22 through 6:24. The verses say: “On the day when we summon them all, we will ask those who set up partners: ‘Where are the idols you set up?’ Their disastrous response will be, ‘By God our Lord, we never set up partners.’ Note how they lied to themselves, and how the idols they had invented have abandoned them.” So according to these verses, the Muhammadans will be completely unaware that they worshiped Muhammad, but the verse does not excuse them. They were still idol worshipers, regardless of how aware of it they were.

When it comes to all the other sins, if people committed them unintentionally, they will be forgiven in the next world, because it was unintentional. But if it was unintentional idol worship, they will still have to pay for it, because you cannot claim that something happened unintentionally in relation to the very issue for which you were created in the first place. God says in verse 51:56, “I did not create the jinns and the humans except to worship Me alone.” Given that this is the main reason why we exist, you cannot claim that going against it was unintentional. That excuse does not count for the main reason for your existence.

We can claim that we killed someone unintentionally in a car accident, for example. We can claim that we ate pork unintentionally, thinking that it was beef. But we cannot claim that we worshiped or served others in partnership with God unintentionally, because that is our only true job in life. If someone hires you to feed his cat, for example, you can claim that you broke the bowl unintentionally, or that you left the lights on unintentionally when you fed the cat. But you cannot claim that you did not feed the cat unintentionally, because that’s what you were hired for in the first place. The owner of the cat might still pay you if you broke his bowl or left his lights on, but he will not pay you if you did not feed his cat, because that is what he hired you for.

In the same way, our only reason for existence in this world is to worship God alone and no one else, and if we fail in that, we cannot claim that we were not aware or that we did it unintentionally. That’s our only job in this life, and therefore it is the only issue where the excuse of unawareness is not justified. So it is possible for someone to worship Muhammad without being aware that he’s doing it, but that will not be a sufficient excuse on the Day of Judgment.

Now, given that idol worship is the only unforgivable offense, according to verse 4:48, even the slightest possibility that someone might be an idol worshiper without being aware of it should scare him, if he is honest. Even the slightest possibility that putting the calligraphy of the name of Muhammad alongside the calligraphy of the name of God is idol worship should scare a person so much that he completely avoids it. Again, even if he is not sure whether it is idol worship or not, the simple fact that it could be idol worship should be enough to decide against it. Since idol worship is the only offense which God does not forgive, and its punishment lasts forever, it is not reasonable to risk our entire eternity simply to put the calligraphy of Muhammad on the wall, or to hang a cross on the wall to symbolize Jesus.

Even more, doing that goes against many other verses in the Quran which tell us not to make a distinction among God’s messengers, because when we put up the calligraphy of one messenger and we do not do it for the others, we make a distinction between messengers. Verse 2:136 says, “We believe in God, and in what was sent down to us, and in what was sent down to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Patriarchs; and in what was given to Moses and Jesus, and all the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction among any of them. To Him alone we are submitters.” Verse 2:285 says, “The messenger has believed in what was sent down to him from his Lord, and so did the believers. They believe in God, His angels, His scripture, and His messengers: ‘We make no distinction among any of His messengers.’ They say, ‘We hear, and we obey. Forgive us, our Lord. To You is the ultimate destiny.'”

So if anyone puts the calligraphy of Muhammad on the wall without putting up the calligraphy of the other prophets, he or she is making a distinction between God’s messengers and is going against verses 2:136 and 2:285 in the Quran. And the same applies to putting up crosses and paintings of Jesus.

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains that the consultation commanded in verses 42:38 and 3:159 belongs within the Friday congregational meeting, the only official meeting of the submitters, shows how this prevents divisions, and announces the format of the first online Friday Consultation Meetings.

Video Transcript:

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

As you know from the video clarification titled “Limits of Organized Religion,” the Friday congregational meeting is the only official meeting through which submitters organize and strive in the cause of God. On the other hand, God mentions in verses 42:38 and 3:159 that the believers decide their affairs after due consultation, and that the messenger also consults the believers. This means that, since the Friday congregational meeting is the only official meeting of the submitters, the consultations mentioned in verses 42:38 and 3:159 must happen within the Friday congregational meeting.

This idea, that consultations and orderly two-way communication between submitters are best done within the Friday meeting rather than outside of it, seems like a new idea. But if we look carefully at history, we can see that it has been said before; we just failed to pay careful attention. For example, here is what Rashad Khalifa says in the video titled “Principles of Friday Prayer”: that the Friday congregational prayer is an obligatory duty upon every Muslim man and woman, a social function decreed by God for the Muslims to get together, to know each other, and to be familiar with each other’s problems and joys.

Also, here is one example where Rashad Khalifa engages the congregation in a discussion within the Friday sermon.

[A short clip is played in which Rashad Khalifa, during his sermon, asks a couple in the congregation how long they were engaged before their marriage, and they answer him.]

As you can see, Rashad Khalifa opened a discussion with members of the congregation. In this case, someone might say, “Well, that was allowed only for a short time.” Well, if it was allowed for a short time, then it is also allowed for a longer time within the allowable sermon time, because the Quran does not put a limit on that. The limit is what the congregation director finds reasonable to allow, to open this discussion within the Friday sermon, which in this case is better called a Friday meeting, because “Jumu’a,” which is mentioned in the Quran, translated from Arabic, means meeting, or congregational meeting.

Ironically, this idea is also supported by historians, regarding what happened in the past during the Friday congregational meetings. According to them, just before his death, Muhammad gave a final Friday sermon, known as the Farewell Sermon, and in Book 15, Hadith 159, the historian named Muslim reports that Muhammad said to his congregation in his last Friday sermon, “You will be asked about me on the Day of Resurrection; what will you say about me then?” And the people in the congregation responded, “We will say that you have delivered the message, fulfilled your prophethood, and given us wise advice.” So, as you can see, in this case Muhammad allowed the people in the congregation to speak, within reasonable limits, within the Friday meeting.

I know that we don’t believe in Hadith as a religious source, but I’m treating it here simply as a historical source, and it’s reliable in this case as a historical source because about 100,000 people were there when this happened. It was a public event, with about 100,000 people present. This is not a Hadith about a private event, where someone could make up a lie and others were not there to expose it. This is an event which was witnessed by about 100,000 people all at once, and had this statement about past events been wrong, at least some of those 100,000 people would have disputed that it happened. But there’s no dispute that this event happened, which makes it a reliable source from a historical perspective. Of course, we don’t use history for religious conclusions, and here I am not using it for religious purposes. I’m just showing what reliably happened in the past. It’s a historical event, but of course we have the Quran to make decisions about what we ourselves should do now. And the Quran does not prohibit consultations and internal discussions within what the congregation director finds reasonable. On the contrary, the Quran orders the leaders to consult with the congregation, and given that the Friday congregational meeting is the only official meeting between submitters, that consultation, or open discussion, should happen within the Friday congregational meeting.

Here is why this is important: it prevents divisions. Let me give you an example. My brother Arland and Robert were among a few others who gave Friday sermons at Masjid Tucson a few years ago. When they decided to preach at Masjid Tucson some of the things which I preach in my videos, here is the scheme which the other, half-submitters there came up with. The half-submitters held a meeting outside of the Friday congregational prayer, knowing that my brother and Robert were not obliged to attend and very likely would not be there, and then they unanimously decided, according to them, to exclude my brother and Robert, and effectively two other submitters, from preaching in that masjid. So they reached a conclusion while those four submitters were not present, and then claimed that they had made a unanimous decision. Well, you can always reach a unanimous decision if you decide to hold an alternative meeting with only the people who agree with you. Had they held that meeting within the Friday congregational prayer, which is obligatory for every submitter, they could not have reached a unanimous decision, because my brother and Robert, of course, would not have voted to exclude themselves from preaching.

As you can see, how we set the stage before we meet is crucial, and it is the biggest determinant of what decisions and conclusions are reached in those meetings. This is why we should stick strictly to Friday meetings as the only official group meetings, within the Friday sermons. And given that those meetings are the only official meetings authorized by God, in verse 62:9, God will make sure that we are eventually guided to reach the right conclusions about the things which we discuss within the Friday meetings. If we scheme and try to have alternative meetings, those meetings are not blessed by God, and as a result, God will gradually let what is spoken in those alternative, unauthorized meetings go astray in its conclusions.

Now, of course, the leader of the congregation decides the reasonable limits of how much open discussion happens within the Friday meeting, or how many open-discussion Friday meetings he wants to have within a year, and that decision should be strictly respected. It’s not absolute free speech within the Friday prayer. It’s free speech within what the congregation leader allows or asks for. He can choose to interrupt or mute anyone whenever he feels that what is being said is not beneficial, constructive or helpful. Then the question is: what if the congregation director is wrong, and interrupts someone when he’s about to say something true? Well, if we stick to Friday meetings as the only authorized meetings, and do the Zakat properly, then the group as a whole is blessed and authorized by God, and God will make sure to guide us to choose the right congregation director, who would in general be less wrong than the congregation in general.

But back to the issue of allowing open discussion during Friday sermons, or Friday meetings. Allowing occasional open discussion will especially help us today, when we are still forced to hold the Friday congregational meetings online. Because we have been doing them online so far, the reasonable social need for more open communication and getting to know each other has not been fully fulfilled. I was aware all along that there was not enough interaction between us while being in different parts of the world. So, God willing, this is one of the big steps to fix that. God willing, I plan to have open-interaction Friday prayers from time to time, which I will call Friday Consultation Meetings. However, the majority of Friday prayers in the future will still remain one-way communication sermons.

There could be many modalities through which Friday Consultation Meetings can be arranged, depending on the specific needs for open interaction, the situation, time zones, different interests and things like that. But, God willing, next Friday, on November 17, 2023, let’s try one of those modalities and see how it goes, and whether it is beneficial. This is how we are going to hold next Friday’s meeting. Next Friday, the 17th of November 2023, I will be online during your local noon time, for each of your locations, and, God willing, we can have a friendly chat. I would simply like to get to know each of you more, and see how things are going in your lives, whether you have questions or issues which you would like to discuss, or maybe suggestions, or things like that. Don’t worry about whether you have enough to talk about. God willing, let’s just talk. I will be talking with voice only, no video, and I would appreciate it if you could also join with voice only. If any of you cannot join with voice, you can also just send chats in text form, and we’ll try to integrate your chats into our voice discussion or respond to them, and nothing will be saved. Or you can choose to just listen online, keeping your microphone muted, without talking or texting.

Because of our different time zones, God willing, I will be online four times during that day, so that we can have a Friday meeting with all the submitters from the different regions who have joined us so far. The first Friday meeting will be for Bangladesh, at 12:00 p.m. Bangladesh time. The second Friday meeting will be for the UK, France, Germany, Ghana, Kosovo and Macedonia, held at 12:00 p.m. UK and Ghana time, which is 1:00 p.m. in France, Germany, Kosovo and Macedonia. The third Friday meeting will be for eastern America, at 12:00 p.m. Kansas time, which is 1:00 p.m. Toronto and Montreal time. The fourth Friday meeting will be for western America, at 12:00 p.m. California time, which is 1:00 p.m. in Arizona and Colorado.

Everyone is obliged to join within the first 20 minutes of the Friday meeting for their own time zone, after which you may stay longer and talk, or just listen, and you are free to leave at any time after the first 20 minutes and do the Contact Prayer. If you wish, you may also join and listen to the Friday meetings of the other time zones, but that is optional. However, it is obligatory to join when the Friday meeting time for your own region comes. I will not record our voice chats, so feel free to talk, express your opinion, or raise issues in a constructive manner, and so on.

Here is the meeting agenda for each of the four meetings. First, I make the call to prayer and say “Alhamdulillah.” Then I give a one-minute sermon, to allow time for you to speak in the second sermon. I say, “We repent,” for a few seconds; I say “Alhamdulillah,” and I open the conversation for the second sermon, where we can all have a friendly chat, primarily to get to know each other more, and we may discuss an issue if there is interest in it. At any time after 20 minutes, anyone is free to leave the online meeting, make their own call to prayer, and do the Contact Prayer in their own space. Since more than 90% of us already have Gmail accounts, we will be holding the Friday Consultation Meetings through Gmail. I have already sent you the link to where we will be holding the Friday Consultation Meetings in your emails.