Circles of Learning (Halaqas) · 18. March 2023
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl presents his Quranic commentary on Surah 91: Al Shams and Surah 104: Al Humazah as part of the ongoing Project Illumine: Light of the Quran series at The Usuli Institute (www.usuli.org). Recorded at The Usuli Institute on 18 March 2023. Project Illumine is a year-long intensive immersion into the unique moral messages in each of the 114 surahs (chapters) of the Quran, the fruit of this scholar's lifetime relationship with the Quran. Surah Al 'Adiyat is the 102nd surah in...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 17. March 2023
We are now in the countdown to Ramadan. By next jumu'a, we will have already begun the month of Ramadan. As I have noted for a number of years now, every Ramadan is an occasion for the Ummah to pause and reflect upon the past year, how that year compares to the years before it, and to think of the coming year, the challenges ahead, what must be achieved, and what must be accomplished. As we approach the month of Ramadan, the United Nations, acting through the offices of its Human Rights...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 26. August 2022
An interesting study has recently come out that has caught my attention. Although the sample of the study is not large and the methodology is not enough for us to build many conclusions, the preliminary indications of the study from at least the 1000 people sampled, pointed to some dangerous, painful facts in our lives as Muslims. In this study, people from different religions and backgrounds were sampled, including Jews, Protestants, Catholics, what the study categorized as “white...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 21. January 2022
God speaks to us, if only we would listen. God speaks to us through the unfolding of history and through the lessons that we learn within ourselves. God speaks to us through our triumphs, celebrations, tragedies and sorrows. God speaks to us, communicating the divine wisdom of creation and the supernal truth of God's being, if only we would listen. God talks to us through the Revelation, through the Qur'an, that has warned us of everything that we have experienced, are experiencing and will...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 14. January 2022
Every week, I ask people to send me writings with a view towards what would be appropriate to talk about at jumu’a. The articles that I end up reading in preparation for khutbahs are somewhat like getting a pulse on the ummah and what exists in our day and age. These days, getting to that pulse is often, if not always, a traumatizing endeavor. It is when we feel that sense of trauma that we are reminded of how much the ummah is connected. Imagine Muslims as a single unit, as parts of a single...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 07. January 2022
There is an interesting story receiving a modest amount of attention in the regular sources of media in the world; but if things were as they should be, this story would receive a great deal of attention. In the European Union, there is a system by which European countries have a revolving system of presidency over the European Union (EU). So, in six month periods, different countries have the opportunity to assume the official role of being the president of the European Union. Currently,...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 19. November 2021
One of the very basic, and perhaps even theoretically undeniable moral precepts, is the equal value ascribed to human life. That at least at an abstract level, human beings are obliged to agree with what constitutes in religious traditions generally, often an article of faith, that God is the maker of human beings and that God made human life equal in sanctity to one another; that the sanctity of human life is undifferentiated and invariable. Often, especially in the modern age, this preset has...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 12. November 2021
The Supreme Court of the United States is obviously one of the most influential institutions in this country, if not in the entire world. Each year, the Supreme Court hears arguments in a select number of cases. Eventually, it decides upon the cases it has selected to hear and issues an opinion. The opinions of the Supreme Court influence and affect the way that all people in the United States get to build their lives. The Supreme Court, the third branch of government in the US, yields a...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 05. November 2021
It is not an exaggeration to say that the biggest challenge that confronts us collectively as Muslims can be summed up as a challenge of the formation of Muslim consciousness. Week after week, day in and day out, what we are actually struggling for is the shape and the content and the nature of Muslimconsciousness. As much as we believe in Islam as an objective truth in our hearts and in our intellects, what we do with this objective truth that we believe in is between us and God. But what we...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 29. October 2021
God reminds us on many occasions in the Qur'an of basic, foundational truth - truths that are so foundational and so basic that that are like the elementary building blocks of consciousness. Among these basic foundations is that believers - both men and women – support each other (Q9:71). A wali (pl. awliyaa) is not just an ally or supporter, but someone who has a privity of relationship with you so that there is a reciprocal obligation of caretaking. In other words, they become responsible...