Circles of Learning (Halaqas) · 17. December 2022
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl presents his Quranic commentary on Surah 5: Al Ma'idah as part of the ongoing Project Illumine: Light of the Quran series at The Usuli Institute (www.usuli.org). Recorded at The Usuli Institute starting on 17 December 2022. 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. This is the 92nd surah in the series. This is not...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 19. March 2021
In the Project Illumine tafasir halaqas, the last surah we dealt with was Surah al-Najm, a surah that is profoundly eloquent, profoundly beautiful in its meter, music and in its descriptive power. Furthermore, the meaning of the surah is remarkably earth-shattering. For so long, Surah al-Najm has been considered a surah that relates to the Isra wa al-Miraj and the ascension of the Prophet to the Heavens to be in proximity to the Divine. It has unfortunately become the center point in a rather...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 12. March 2021
SubhanAllah, who has left us with the eternal message; the continuing, perpetual and eternal prophecy of the word of God until the Final Day. The Qur’an is like a living prophet, it speaks to us. But the prophecy does not have an impact in this world unless there is an audience that is willing to listen to the words of the Prophet and implement these words into an actual methodology, an actual way of life. The Prophet died and left with us the actual, eternal word of God. But where are the...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 10. July 2020
Life on this earth makes sense if and only if it is a temporary abode with consequences and results, a state that has been ordained by someone bigger than this life, that understands its objects and its purpose, and that decreed it. In life, it is tempting to lose sight of the fact that this is a purposeful existence. Either we exist in a world measured by justice - and in order for justice to be the premise of our existence, there must be a Creator and Owner - or we exist in a whimsical,...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 03. July 2020
Dr. Abou El Fadl recently watched a video that unsettled him so much that he found it very challenging to focus on anything else. The video was of a woman – a widow and orphan herself with one child - in Egypt, pleading for help because a police officer started harassing her six months ago, demanding that she submit to him sexually. When she refused, he arrested her younger sister – a divorcee with no children – and has kept the sister in detention without charges for several weeks. The...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 26. June 2020
It is not an exaggeration to say that we human beings – our intellects and our psyches – are a product of numerous cumulative narratives that we have received at different parts in our lives. The fabric of human consciousness is formed by stories from the past and present. They form what we define as our reality: the way we understand things, the way we associate and relate to values, and the way that we feel entitled to feel or not to feel. When we look at the present Muslim condition, we...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 19. June 2020
Islam should be the most important thing in the life of a Muslim, the very framework through which a Muslim sees and understands the world. It is critical that Muslims have a clear vision of what Islam represents to them, and a clear understanding of the moral role of the Islamic faith in the context of human history. Human history is marked with constant movements towards human dignity and self-determination, which are always met with resistance. This resistance takes the form of various...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 12. June 2020
The Prophet’s life and the way he translated the Islamic message into real life examples holds continuing and living lessons for us to internalize, as they have the ability to transform our lives into something other than what we have been mired in for a long time. The Quran is the accompanying text to this living example. Although it addressed many of the events unfolding in the life of the Prophet, the discourse of the Quran existed and continues to exist in perpetual relevance with the...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 05. June 2020
We cannot ignore what surrounds us all over the U.S.; what has become a plight of the nation – protests focusing on racism and its many different forms, but particularly police brutality and the unjust killings of many minorities, especially African Americans. There are several things to say from an Islamic point of view. What is the most remarkable is how everything is interlinked. With social laws, like physical laws, there are equations and rules for causation that make the current...
