Friday Khutbahs (Sermons)
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 07. June 2024
I begin in the name of God, the kind, the compassionate, the loving, the caring. The ultimate Creator, the singular Creator, the only Creator, the One who is indivisible. The Singular. The Singular Unity, the One. The One who has created many, the One who is the originator of multiplicity. The One who, by His hand, this creation turns. The One who, by His hand, the day rolls into night and the night rolls into day. By His hand, the summer rolls into the fall and the fall rolls into the winter,...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 24. May 2024
We are still, after eight months, stuck in a nightmare that will not cease and that we cannot wake up from. Somehow, it has become acceptable and legitimate in the eyes of most of the world that the people who suffered the Holocaust of six million dead—or at least the state of Israel that claims to represent those people, because I do not buy into the myth that the state of Israel represents all Jews in the world—can exterminate some two million people. It is as if the tragedy is somehow...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 17. May 2024
If rain falls on fertile land, then gorgeous things will grow. If rain falls on putrid land, nothing will grow and you will be left with ugliness and swamps, or nothing at all. If you are like me, who washes their shoes and then leaves them out to dry but forgets them and rain falls, then you will wake up and find that they are very wet, which is what I woke up to today and what I am thinking about. I laugh to myself because the parable of the rain is what I had been preparing yesterday. The...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 10. May 2024
I want to begin this first sermon by offering congratulations to this year's graduates. There are many graduates in my personal life that I am very proud of, and I am very proud of the work that they have put in. It is no small achievement to graduate school, whether it be from high school, undergraduate, or graduate school, although I do want to add that education and learning does not begin nor stop in our educational institutions. Our educational institutions are deeply flawed. Nonetheless,...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 03. May 2024
The pervasive issue all around us, overwhelming our senses, is the student protests that are taking place all over the country and the suppression of these protests by brute force. Universities all over the country are declaring the protesters to be “trespassers” and calling in the police to forcibly remove these so-called “trespassers.” There is much to say and reflect on. Some points are rather obvious, others are not so obvious. But let us start with the most straightforward issue of...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 26. April 2024
I want to start today with a story. Usually, giving khutbahs is scary both internally and externally. Any kind of public speaking is scary. You are scared of how you are going to look, you want to sound smart. You prepare, but with what I want to talk about, I do not think that there is any adequate way for me to prepare, because I need to tell a story. This past week, I got very bad poison ivy all over my body. Somewhere around 50-70%, it was serious. A friend of mine and I were cutting trees...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 19. April 2024
History is a deliberate and most sagacious teacher. It is no accident that throughout the Qur'an, time and time again, God calls upon us to reflect upon history, to study the past nations before us, and to reflect upon the patterns of human complexity. God calls upon us to study what makes people come together and what makes people follow a certain path and not another. God calls upon us to follow the pulse of sociological dynamics and the very record of human conduct. It is not simple jargon...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 12. April 2024
Congratulations to you all on completing the holy month of Ramadan and Eid mubarak. May God accept from you all your fasting, your prayers, your obedience, your kindness, your charity and your positive example in your micro-communities and in your greater community at large. This Eid was a particularly somber Eid, I think, for everyone. For those who are clued into what goes on in the Muslim world generally, most Eids tend to be somber, though this one in particular is more difficult to accept...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 05. April 2024
Today is the last Friday of Ramadan. Yesterday, I saw some news about a Palestinian Shaykh, Mahmoud Al Hasanat, who gave an exceedingly short khutbah. It essentially consisted of the Shaykh getting up and saying, "If 30,000 martyrs, 70,000 injured, and 2 million homeless Palestinians couldn’t awaken the Ummah, what impact will my words make? What more do I say, and to whom? Straighten your rows, let’s pray." He concluded the khutbah and that was it, they prayed. I have to admit that I have...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 29. March 2024
The last 10 days of Ramadan are upon us. Another Ramadan has gone by very quickly, they seem to go by faster and faster. This Ramadan has been very different, but also not different. Palestine is not something new, but what is new are our reactions to it. The amount of people and the spotlight that it is occupying in public discourse, both Muslim and non-Muslim. It is different because the grief and the shame are much heavier, perhaps as heavy as they always should have been. Today I want to...