"WHAT GOD EXPECTS FROM US" 15 November 2019 Dr. Abou El Fadl reminds that Allah gave humans the blessing and charge of caring for this earth until the Final Day, when we will be held accountable for how we discharged this obligation. Allah directed us to create divinity on this earth. Allah tells us it is impossible for the Divine to be unjust because God will never allow Godself to be unjust. Injustice, oppression, and tyranny (zulm) is forbidden for God and by God, and thus, apriori, justice...
Dr. Abou El Fadl reminds us that Muslims have been entrusted with a powerful and weighty word, one of the most repeated words in the Quran, Haqq. ‘Al Haqq’ yields the meaning of truth, rights, duties, belief (imaan), and justice all wrapped up in a singular word. It does not just describe a reality, it is an aspirational term. Allah repeatedly reminds that He created a nation that pursues al Haqq and the reality of justice; we must not make excuses to water down al Haqq, or intuitively know...
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl establishes the critical distinction between the remembrance of God (dhikr Allah) as an individual, one-on-one with God, versus as a community or congregation of worshippers, ie. as a society, vis a vis God. The difference in a moral accounting of an individual versus a community before God becomes especially important when evaluating the role of jumu'a, when the community is intended to come together to take a moral inventory of how they are performing as a collective,...