You guys like movies, I'll try to play it like a movie. The year is 1517, okay? Martin Luther was thrown out by the Roman Catholic Church
for two major reasons. One of them, he refused to accept the fact that the Pope can't make mistakes. He said, no, we have to read our Bible. Regardless of what the Pope says, we have to stick to the facts.
And the second reason, he objected to a concept called indulgences, where you go to the church and you buy from them real estate, land in paradise. And if you don't have money, you don't get paradise.
So of course the church was making a fortune out of this, and the historians even tell you that a wise man went and said, I don't want paradise, I want to buy the hellfire. They said, we're selling paradise, I want the hellfire. So they gave it to him for a cheap price.
And he went to the market and he said to the people, announcement, I own the hellfire, don't worry, nobody's going. Of course that ruined the business, so they forced him back and paid him heaps of money to buy it back from him.
So Martin Luther objected to these things and he called for the Protestant Reformation to the end of it. But that's when the crossroads began. Twenty years later, 1536, William Tyndale is executed. Why is he executed?
Because he translated the Bible for the first time in history into the English language. And he was executed for it. How dare you let the people know what exists in their book?
That was the implicit message, and then his body was burnt at the stake. The crossroads are becoming more of a reality.
Fast forward 100 years, 1642, Galileo. You guys studied Galileo in school? Sun is the center of the universe, not the earth.
He dies in 1642 after seven years of house arrest. Why was he under house arrest?
He said, sorry, science says, scientific revolution is bubbling now, science says the earth is not the center, which the church would say, but actually the sun.
So they invited him and they took him downstairs into the dungeon and they gave him a tour of the instruments of torture. And he pulled back his statements, but the statement already went out, it doesn't come back.
And he spent the last seven years of his life in that house of his and he died therein. That was the beginning of the enlightenment and more or less the crossroads. It was the death of the religion or the beginning of the death of the religion.
Fast forward 100 years, Denis Diderot, the French philosopher, basically told the world, listen,
man will never be free until the last king is strangled by the entrails, the intestines of the last priest. He said, listen, this religion thing was a hoax.
It was used by the governments to keep the monarchs in power, to keep the king's dictators, and they justified it religiously. This was all a scam. And though he died before it, it was said, the historians tell you that that statement,
man will never be free, was actually the chant of the people in the streets in the French Revolution. Fast forward 100 years, 1848, Karl Marx publishes his Communist Manifesto and he says, and I quote,
religion is the sigh of the suffering, meaning it's just some made up stuff to make you feel better. And it's the opium of the people. It's just a drug to sedate you. There's no real basis behind it. And that was European history for you.
That's where the rise of atheism came from. It was an overreaction. And that's human nature, by the way. When you feel betrayed, you overreact most of the time and you generalize. When you go on vacation, they steal your wallet, you come back, they say, how's that town?
Say, oh, they're all a bunch of thieves. And only one guy robbed you, right? So religion as a concept in its entirety was thrown out.
And they said, if we want to be the modern world, we have to let go of religion. And of course, overreactions also, they're usually unreasonable. They're over, right?
So the human being more or less was reduced to an intelligent animal in the perception of the West nowadays, aren't we? That explains that wild West, right?
That was spearheaded by a feeling of betrayal and angered that they were shackled by the concept of religion. And also not very scientific, not very factual either, but that was the West. What does it have to do with Islam?
Absolutely nothing. And that's exactly the point. You see, Islam disabled, deactivated this dilemma from day one.
There was never any crossroads in Islamic thoughts because Islam promoted knowledge. Islam promoted research. Islam promoted intellectuality. Islam promoted critical thinking.
Islam promoted the sciences from the inception. Our deen, our religion began with what Iqra, recite. Our deen came with, رَبِّ زِدْنِي عِلْمَا Oh my Lord, increase me in knowledge.
It's in our Quran 1400 years ago. Our Prophet ﷺ said, Whomever practices medicine without being known to be skillful in medicine, then he is liable. Here in court and there in the hereafter meaning. Meaning medicine is not a game.
Go and study it, become known for it, become skilled in it, then practice it. Our Prophet ﷺ he said, Allah did not send down a disease except that he sent down for it a cure. Whoever knows it, knows it. And whoever doesn't, doesn't.
Meaning go look for it. So the likes of this is what spearheaded Islamic civilization. Where their religion and their worldly life, they went hand in hand. And that's why you have for example in the 10th century,
Ibn Sina, who as William Osler says, The Qanun, the canon of Ibn Sina was the medical library in Europe for longer than any other book in history.
In the 9th century you have Al-Khawarizmi, the father of algebra. The Columbia history of the world says, That modern trigonometry, algebra and geometry are in considerable measure Arab creations. They mean Muslim creations.
The 10th century Al-Hasan, You may not know there's a crater on the moon that they call Al-Hasan. It was named after Al-Hasan, meaning Al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haytham, Who died in 965 common era. Why was it named after him?
Because of his contributions to optics and his discussions on luminosity. And he vanguarded, he started the discussions on the experimental method.
300 years later, 1295, Roger Bacon, who we learn in school as kids, Is the father of the scientific method. He would quote and depend on and adore the writings of Al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haytham
To be the father of the scientific method. The house of wisdom, Bayt Al-Hikmah in Baghdad, centuries ago, That was the world's largest repository of books. No one valued books the way we did.
And that's why even when the Mongols attacked the Muslims and they took over, They said, what is this? They burned down the library and they took the books and threw them in the Euphrates river. To such a degree that you could not drink from the river for days Because of how much ink contaminated the river.
That's how many books were there. There were more books in the street of Baghdad than there existed in cities in Europe. And then there's Cordoba. What do you know about Cordoba?
Cordoba is Muslim Spain, Southern Spain. Cordoba, just to give you a snapshot of what it looked like in the 10th century, And if you want to cry, cry, but not for pessimism.
28 boroughs, 10th century, a thousand years ago. 3,000 mosques, 18,000 properties, Meaning a house with the front and the back and the fencing and the properties.
500,000 cities, some perspective, that's the third most populated place on earth. Number one was Baghdad, 3 million. Number two was Cordoba, 500,000.
And number three was Seville, another city in Muslim Spain, 400,000. Cordoba was known as the jewel of the world. People would go there for vacation just to see the union in Cordoba,
To see the Grand Mosque in Cordoba, the great bridge of Cordoba. Markets galore. And you imagine markets for flowers, other entire markets for rare flowers,
Markets for fruits and vegetables, markets for rare animals, Markets for all different kinds of paper. All of this and then the streets.
The streets of Cordoba, can you imagine this Islamic civilization in the 10th century was paved in stone.
In Cordoba, the streets had street lights in the 10th century. You know, there's a famous letter even speaking of the University of Cordoba,
And the one that made university as well, from the English king of the time to Hisham ibn Abdur Rahman, Who was the governor of Cordoba at the time, asking him permission, the king,
That his daughter and the members from the royal court can go study in the University of Cordoba. You know what that means?
That means, number one, that this was an intellectual hub in the planet. And number two, that we were the ones that taught the world tolerance. He knew that the king's daughter could be safe there.
And the letter was signed, as the historians mention, your loyal subject, the king of England. And that's why Gustave Le Bon, who you may study in psychology in college, perhaps in university,
The French social psychologist, he said, if only the Muslims would have conquered Paris as well. This is a non-Muslim saying this. He said, because if they would have, it would have been like Cordoba.
He says, for 600 years we depended on the Muslims to translate for us Greek philosophy. He says, and you walk through the streets of Cordoba, you find that the people can read, and they can write,
And some of them even know poetry, in an age when the kings and princes of Europe Could not spell their names in their own languages. Say, Allahu Akbar.
This is what Islam provides. There was no crossroads. And then, speaking of Paris, very quickly before I leave Cordoba, and I only have 3-4 minutes left.
The first Islamic hospital in the world was in Damascus, Syria. May Allah send peace upon its people, and give them victory against their oppressors. Allahumma ameen.
900 years before there was the first hospital in Paris.
700 years later, 700 years meaning, before Paris had its first hospital, Cordoba had 50 hospitals.
All this is what, why am I mentioning all this? This is just a testimony that Islam can, and has, always, built industries and individuals.
Has been able to maintain economies and ethics.
Islam can, and has, balanced between materialism, this dunya, and spirituality, the spirit, and the religion.
Islam can, and has, ensured prosperity and happiness and peace in this world, and salvation in the hereafter. The wild west, in reality, are the ones at the crossroads.
They're the ones that should feel there's a clash of civilizations, that this religion is going to hold them back. And in reality, it wasn't the religion that holds you back. It's the false, fabricated, man-made religion that shackled them into the dark ages.
That has nothing to do with you. And even then, they began realizing it now, that it was an overreaction. But only Allah knows if they bounce back, will they bounce back to another extreme.
Because even now, the atheists say, no, we should tone down our narrative. And they call themselves humanists. The atheists now have atheist churches. Look it up. They're not talking about God yet, but they're on route to it.
And consider a world that is spiritually parched, refusing to believe in God and the unseen for the most part. They're addicted to movies about the unseen. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and all this magic.
Titans and Greek legends, superheroes. What is that? That's the internal conflict. That's the crossroads that happened in them. Because they couldn't balance between both.
And as the Muslim, the Muslim has no reason to believe that. Rather, the Muslim is the only one qualified to take the wild west by its hand. And gently pull them out of their confusion, because he is the one who's Islam.
Your Islam is the only one that has the solution to every problem that can ever arise. You know, many times we say Islam applies in every time and place. In reality, that could mean that something else could also apply, but Islam applies.
No. Islam, we should reword it. No time and no place can ever thrive properly without this Islam.
So, just to conclude, these crossroads are two extremes that the west is suffering from. And Islam is a straight path in the middle of them.
It's that straight, perfect path in the middle of them. And the Muslim only assumes that he's at the crossroads when he thinks his Islam is typical. Like everything else, has some merit, has some flaws as well.
And that's why we will not move forward once again like we did in the past, without realizing the perfection of your Islam. And without realizing the honor and privilege of having Islam, and realizing our responsibility within Islam.
And Allah Azza wa Jal pulled all of these three factors together.
In Surat Az-Zukhruf when he said,
So hold on to what we revealed to you. It is the perfectly straight path. And it's a mention for you and your people. A reason to be mentioned, an honoring, a privilege. And you will be questioned about it. It's a responsibility.
So this delusion of the crossroads, these challenges we face, a majority of them come from not realizing what our Islam is all about. And as Allah Azza wa Jal said,
How can you possibly persevere and hold on to something you're not acquainted with? And that's why all of these challenges, wallahi, it's as if it's a gift from Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. To press the reset button for this ummah.
So we can go back and check what's our Islam all about. To revive the true Islam of Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. As if, as if, don't kill me. As if we're winding all the way back to say,
Read, recite all over again from the very beginning. Because we live in an age now when being socially Muslim, I'm Muslim because my parents are Muslim, won't cut it anymore. Because there's no social benefit in being Muslim.
We're the minority that's picked on. But only when you know what your Islam is, and what it can do for you, and do for the world around you, will you love it more than life itself.
Oh Allah, teach us your deen, and fill our hearts with appreciation for your deen. Allahumma ameen. I have to stop here, forgive me. But we have, bi-idhnillah, another appointment about the actual freedom, and balancing that freedom, surviving that freedom tomorrow inshallah, Azza wa Jal.
And if you cannot be with us, I ask the youth especially, I love you from the bottom of my heart, and I hate that you go check outside Islam, and come all the way around. If Allah permits you the length of life, and find out that it was in your Islam all along,
perhaps if Allah has made of benefit in it, you can look up a video called, Survival of the Fittest, why Islam will survive, and whoever holds on to it will survive, regardless of what happens, because Allah, Azza wa Jal, told us how this movie is going to end,
how this history is going to be wrapped up. It's only a matter of whether it's going to be with us, or at the hands of someone else that was privileged with it.
