Usuli Weekly Newsletter · 16. December 2022
Dear Friends, Greetings of Peace! I pray you are well and savoring the last moments of 2022. This week I received an email from a dear friend and supporter, which I share in part here: "...I wanted to reach out because we had an event with one of our local imams yesterday. It was a sisters only event that was advertised as being about how to balance all the realities of life (career, family, etc) with our spirituality. Instead, it was only about the role of women in the household, about how the...
Usuli Weekly Newsletter · 30. September 2022
Dear Friends, Greetings of Peace! I'm not sure what happens, but we have developed a mantra here at Usuli: "It is always Thursday!" The reason is that somehow, it feels like it is always Thursday! Thursdays are what are the beginning of our Usuli intensive work - prepping this weekly email, rolling into preparation for the Friday khutbah, and then prepping for the Saturday halaqa. After the Saturday halaqa, we have barely a day of rest, if at all, and then we are launched straight away into the...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 30. September 2022
Embedded within my conscience, and what should be embedded in the conscience of every Muslim who takes his or her religion seriously, is God's refrain in Surah Al Imran: “...and that there might grow out of you a community [of people] who invite unto all that is good, and enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong: and it is they, they who shall attain to a happy state!” (Q 3:104). This is further underscored in the same surah: “You are indeed the best...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 23. September 2022
Reflecting on the du‘a’s of the Prophet allows us to see how profound and remarkably tender, humane, and modest these supplications were. One of the Prophet’s supplications is so straightforward, but it says so much. God, grant us certitude in iman, certitude in who You are, and in what You want from us. Certitude about our faith in You, our faith in Your faith, and in the message of Islam, the power of Islam, and the instrumentality of Islam in delivering and embodying light unto...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 02. July 2021
God describes the faith that God gave to humankind as a light upon humanity. The faith of our father Abraham, and of all the prophets, one prophet after another, until the final articulation of this faith with the Prophet Muhammad, is a light upon humanity. What does light do? It forces darkness to retreat. When it shines, it enables visibility and clarity, it exposes the hidden and secret, and confronts those who look where the light shines to see the true nature of things. Light, by its...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 25. June 2021
The original khutbah that I had prepared for today included a heart-warming story from the sirah, but I saw a news item that changed the entire khutbah in an instant. The point of the khutbah is not to educate a lazy audience, nor is it to replace the mandate to pursue knowledge and an education in the affairs of faith. The point of the khutbah every jumu’a is to bring to the forefront what should be a primary issue of concern for Muslims within a certain place at a certain time. The jumu’a...