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) · 11. June 2021
The challenge for Muslims, as is perhaps for all human beings on the face of this earth, is to live a life anchored in divine values, in the values that God has taught human beings; our core to the moral existence. It is elementary but necessary to say that there is an existence. It is a biological fact that all beings are given consciousness, and because they are given consciousness, they exist and they live. Part of this consciousness is our nervous system, which responds to stimulus and...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 04. June 2021
I would like to return to a basic and, in many ways, rather simple paradigm and idea. This is the idea of the ‘Qur’anic impulse’. I will borrow from the philosophy of the Islamic thinker Malik Bennabi and the ways in which he summarized the basic components of social interaction and existence. Bennabi wrote of three basic facets to human existence. The first is the ‘material’. This refers to the tools, artifacts, and elements of consumption, such as food, water, and minerals, that are...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 28. May 2021
The Qur’an mentions specific historical events that involved the prophets of God - between the prophets and the people they are sent to. The Qur’an, time and time again, goes back to these same narratives: The people of Pharoah, the people of Hud, the people of Thamud, and so on. Time and time again, God mentions the same people, although the structure of the narrative is very basic: an invitation, a truth denied, and consequences to the truth denied. Why does God keep referring to the same...