Friday Khutbahs (Sermons)
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 25. November 2022
“Alhamdullilah” ["All praise be to God"] is an expression of gratitude to God. So much of what disciplines the soul of a human being is our relationship with this simple yet demanding core value of gratitude. Gratitude is the simple recognition by a human being that they are not an independent force in nature, but that everything about a human being is contingent upon everything else in creation. In gratitude, then, a human being is always mindful of what is owed to everyone and everything...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 18. November 2022
A short while ago, a young Muslim woman from Canada sent me a message about a news report she saw on television involving someone with a Muslim name, Amir. It looked like this person is ethnically Persian. The gist of the news story is that this person suffered from a spinal injury that caused him chronic pain, but there were new circumstances in the life of this person that meant that he faced the danger of becoming homeless. He was going to lose his rental residence and be forced to live on...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 11. November 2022
Let me start by saying what should be rather obvious: action follows intentionality. When an action has no intentionality, it is the type of action that we would describe as lacking any rational basis. It is not founded on anything rational, but is haphazard and whimsical. And when action is haphazard and whimsical, it often indicates a lack of intellectual determinism, meaning that this action, more often than not, is generated by an insane or otherwise mentally inept, handicapped, incapable...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 04. November 2022
Among what God tells us in the Qur’an, God's revealed book, is the following warning from Surah al-Ma'idah: O you who have attained to faith! Intoxicants, and games of chance, and idolatrous practices, and the divining of the future are but a loathsome evil of Satan's doing:105 shun it, then, so that you might attain to a happy state! (Q 5:90) In this warning, God mentions “intoxicants,” "gambling," and “idolatrous methods,” which includes games that would attempt to predict the...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 28. October 2022
The truth of the matter is that human ideas, concepts, understandings, and conceptualizations undergo the same phases and stages of progression as life itself. An original idea is born. Like any young life, it is full of potential and possibilities, and its impact reflects the fact that it triggers a set of unfulfilled potentialities. As ideas age, however, the potentialities are often exhausted and worn out. What sets in is habit and familiarity, and the same idea that what was once full of...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 21. October 2022
I am always struck by the obligation that all of us, as Muslims, are keenly aware of. It is the duty to bear witness. At the same time, I am always struck by the testimony that comes from this podium, week after week. What is the role of witnessing? What is the function of witnessing amid counter movements that are so massive, so overwhelming that you fear that all lonely voices will be submerged and overcome? Yet, in the same way that God created human beings and coded in their physical makeup...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 14. October 2022
Imagine the following scenario. Imagine that you have a neighbor that, through history and practice, through everything that this neighbor says and does, consistently communicates to you that they find you deeply offensive. They find much of what you do so deeply offensive that it is not an exaggeration to say that the message communicated by this neighbor is that your mere existence is offensive to them. And it is evident, with just a little bit of thought and reflection, that what is deeply...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 07. October 2022
How straightforward, intuitive and necessary what God has taught us in His revelation, the Qur'an; if we only listen and set aside dogma, farcical performances, ostentatious displays of religiosity and religious affectations, if we only humble our ego before God's message, if we only understand that God's message is meaningless without God's most spectacular creation: the intellect and the human heart. In Surah al-A’raf, God tells us quite simply, “Say: ‘Behold, never does God enjoin...
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...