Lecture
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17
Social Justice
Islam, A Coherent Social Justice Tradition | Omar Suleiman | 16th MAS-ICNA Convention
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Appreciating Scholarship: Intro to Islamic Law - Tesneem Alkiek | Yaqeen in NY
26
Islamophobia
How Yaqeen Heals Internalized Islamophobia - Dalia Mogahed | Making Principled Progress
29
Education
How Yaqeen is a Resource for Our Community - Sh. Omar Suleiman | Making Principled Progress
34
General Psychology
Spiritual Personality - Zohair Abdul-Rahman | 2018 Yaqeen/MAS Academic Conference
35
Social Justice
Conflict Resolution: The Line Between Justice and Peace - Sh. Omar Suleiman | Lecture
47
Identity
Keeping Masculinity from Trending Toxic - Dr. Jonathan Brown | Reframing the Gender Question
Reclaiming the Narrative About Our Prophet ﷺ | Part 2
Sh. Omar Suleiman, Founder and President of Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, and Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy, Fellow at Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, speak about reclaiming the narrative about Prophet Muhammad ﷺ at the 2017 ICNA-MAS Convention in Baltimore, MD.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. I enjoyed that. As I always do any time when we hear about our Messenger, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and we get a chance to actually sort of live through those. Since I had the benefit of assisting Sheikh Muhammad on that compilation of 17 moments of moral greatness. And by the way, if you haven't looked it up, please look it up. It's being translated into many languages, including Arabic, inshallah. It's actually never been done in Arabic to that extent. So, 17 moments of the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, forgiving his enemies and responding to enmity and insults with grace and compassion. It's actually called 17 moments of moral greatness. It's on Yaqeen Institute.org. And it was an absolute pleasure to partake in that discussion. And there are a few things that I want to share, and I'll be very honest with you, that I try not to. Sometimes I try to insulate myself from the other lectures so that I don't forget what I want to say. But I was not able to do that this time. Because when we talk about the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, it's so hard not to fall in love with him when you actually talk about who he was and when you actually try to see things from his vantage point. I remember Dr. Cornel West saying something that really stuck with me about Jesus, alayhi salam, Isa, alayhi salam, Jesus peace be upon him. And he said, don't think that cultures only appropriated the image of Jesus when they saw fit to change his color and change the texture of his hair. But know that they also appropriated Jesus' theology, Jesus' politics, and Jesus' culture in accordance with their own culture to solidify and sanctify their own practices. We have a tendency as people to sanitize our figures, our beloved figures, when they pass away in a way that we see fits. And in a way that fits our own perceptions and our own vantage points.
For example, I had the immense pleasure, you know I'm a total dork when I go to places and visit places as a tourist, because I go to museums. And I know that's really, really unexciting and boring, but I really enjoy those. And by the way, Dallas, the first place I went to in Dallas, after the masjid of course, and I pray 20 rakat of qiyam, and worship Allah for 20 hours. The first place I went to in Dallas was the JFK Museum. And I just loved it, because it gives you a chance to actually sort of go through history in a holistic way and visualize things, beyond YouTube of course. When I went to South Africa, I had a chance to do a Mandela pilgrimage. So I went to Mandela's prison cell, Mandela's homes, and went through the Apartheid Museum, which is the most amazing museum I've ever seen in my life. Anyone here from South Africa? No? No? Where are you people? Why? There's always people from South Africa. Okay. And so, Pamela, one of the things that you realize over and over again, is that we sanitize our figures when they pass away, and sometimes over-sanitize to where we don't do justice to their legacy. In fact, more often than not. So somehow, Nelson Mandela is Santa Claus now. I don't understand how they managed to root out his legacy of striving for justice, and his boldness and his courage, but somehow, he's Santa. We do that here with Martin Luther King Jr. all the time. We sanitize Malcolm X sometimes, but right now, it's more beneficial to public interest to portray Malcolm X as a violent militant, because that's the way Muslims are being portrayed as a whole, so we do that. But the point is, we appropriate the images of people after they pass away. And that will be done to civil rights figures, that will be done to educators, that will be done to activists and celebrities, and it will certainly be done even to the prophets of God.
We will shift them and mold them in the way that we want to mold them. And so one of the things that's very important to understand is that 18th, 19th century scholars and historians saw this onslaught on the character of the Prophet Salem coming. They wrote about it. We actually mentioned that in the paper. That this was part of a colonial project. To portray the Prophet Salem as being a barbarian makes it easier to massacre the followers of the Prophet Salam without guilt and without consciousness. Makes imperialism easier to comprehend. And we see it being done now. To portray these people as a people worthy of being carpet bombed, not just because it's in their DNA because they're brown, but also because they have inherited a barbaric theology, and this is the only way we can rid the world of this cancer, is by removing it and eradicating the followers of Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. To portray the Prophet Salem in that light himself is exactly what they needed. And they successfully, to many people, were able to portray him in that light, and sadly we cannot insulate ourselves sometimes from the propaganda all around us. And subhanAllah when Sheikh Muhammad mentioned they have the money, boy do they have money. And boy do they have networks. And they have, I mean, think about Breitbart. Breitbart earned a presidency in eight years. That's significant. So are we going to be able to protect the image of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the image of Muslims all the time? No. Because they are deeply embedded within the cells of the internet. It sounds a lot like what they portray civilization jihad as, it's civilization Islamophobia, but even using the cultures of the internet and the networks of the internet, the cables of the internet, to implement this poison in so many places that you can't escape it.
And everything is about the first impression. Right? Isn't it always about the first impression? So what do they do with Muslim leaders and activists? They will bombard the internet, they will flood the internet. We've studied the networks, by the way. So we know who's behind each network and what their strategy is. But if I can put out a hundred baseless articles about this person, it's enough to create suspicion. And it's enough to put a barrier between you and that person, so that when you are finally introduced to that person, you already will undoubtedly, humanly, have these ill feelings towards them and be suspicious of them. You won't be able to trust them. And that's not necessarily because it's your fault. It's just there's so much that's out there. That's why for Muslims, make your friends before you need them. You need to network with people, you need to get out there and know people before they allow someone else to create a narrative about you, where you're not able to represent yourself or your faith properly. It's been the blind spot of our darwah and our masajid for the last 40 years. That we thought that we can isolate ourselves and have these fortress-looking masajid, hidden off and ducked off without proper signs. We can talk about whatever we wanted, we can do whatever we wanted, and when things got nasty, we can just bury ourselves deeper into isolation, and come out with our condemnations every once in a while, but not create a narrative about ourselves or about our religion before it's created for us. And that has left the character of the Prophet ﷺ in public discourse vulnerable, to where it has been assaulted in so many ways. And we feel utterly helpless, because it's all about a first impression. And subhanAllah, when you talk about a first impression with the Messenger ﷺ, the Prophet ﷺ had an enormous impact on everyone that he met for the first time.
And that's why the Islamophobes of the day, and the time of the Prophet ﷺ, tried to stop people from going and meeting him. And their Islamophobic attack was that he's a sorcerer and a magician, because if you come into contact with him, there's no way you won't be impressed by his character, and his dignity, and his morals, and his personality. No one attacked the personality of the Prophet ﷺ. That's the irony of the situation. His fiercest enemies could not but say positive things about his character. And all of the things they attacked him with, they said, we got nothing on his character. He is more noble than any of us. But he's a magician. He's a sorcerer. So because that which is seen is so amazing, we have to resort to attacking the unseen. And we have to try to stop you from meeting the Prophet ﷺ and hearing him represent himself, because we know that if you do that, you're gone. You're gone. You're going to join the Muslims. They understood that. That the Prophet ﷺ was able to make a great first impression on people. And if anyone was honest with themselves when they met him, even if they did not accept his faith, they came away in awe of him, and loving him, and absolutely enamored by his presence ﷺ. You know, we talk about the chief rabbi of Medina, Husayn ibn Salam, who would become Muslim and be named Abdullah ibn Salam. This is a very educated and knowledgeable man. He knows the scripture. He knows it very well. He knows the Old Testament. But he's a sincere human being. And he's convinced from an intellectual perspective that yes, there's another prophet that's coming. We're waiting for this prophet. We know it. And he wants to analyze the Prophet ﷺ. But what does he say? This man who is the scholar of Judaism in Medina, when he sees the Prophet ﷺ, he said, حَذَا وَجْدَ بَيْسَ مِنْ وَجْدَهُ That face is not the face of a liar.
He just saw him and said, yeah, it's him. There is no way... it's not that he wasn't smart. It's not that he hadn't done his homework or his research. The Prophet ﷺ made an incredible first impression on a Bedouin lady on the way to the Hidra ul-Ma'gad, or a Torah scholar in Abdullah ibn Salam. He had the ability to make that amazing first impression. And so they tried to create enough of suspicion to where you would not allow him to represent himself. And the goal of... the job of representing the Prophet ﷺ today does not rest on the Messenger ﷺ, it rests on us. And you cannot... you cannot get beyond the fact that whether you like it or not, you are his ambassador ﷺ by virtue of being a Muslim. You have to be. Everything you do will be scrutinized in light of what they've heard about your religion, and what they've heard about the one that you claim to follow. Everything that you do. And so yes, we can't get over the personal interactions. And to show people how the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ impacts us and shapes us. And to the point that when the Messenger ﷺ sent Mus'ab ibn Umair radhiAllahu ta'ala anhum to Medina, Mus'ab represented the Prophet ﷺ so well that they accepted it. They were going to put their lives on the line for the Prophet ﷺ, not even knowing how he looked. Because he was such an amazing ambassador. To the point that when the Prophet ﷺ made the Hidra with Abu Bakr to Quba, the people that have been waiting for him all day, every day, when they saw the Prophet ﷺ, they didn't know if it was him or Abu Bakr. They had no idea. Because they had seen the product of the da'wah of the Prophet ﷺ in Mus'ab, and that was enough to create a good first impression. And to show them that if this is what he is manufacturing, then he must be amazing.
If this is what he's putting out there, he must be amazing. So we can't get around that. We can write all the papers in the world, which inshaAllah we will. Actually, Sheikh Muhammad will. We can write all the papers in the world about the Prophet ﷺ, and all the books, and make all the videos. But at the end of the day, number one, you cannot escape your own responsibility in representing him well, alayhi salatu wassalam, in your personal interactions with people. Number two, how do we create the narrative? If you can't make a first impression, and in this situation, unfortunately, the Prophet ﷺ has been defined in such a negative way by people, and the narrative has been created about him for so many people, then you need to show people why their first impression was wrong, and why they need to step out of that frame, and reintroduce themselves to the Prophet ﷺ. I hope you guys are understanding this, why it's so important from a debate perspective, for argument's sake, and just for the purpose of da'wah, you cannot start with defending the Prophet ﷺ on a particular point. You have to show people how flawed their introduction to the Prophet ﷺ was, and reintroduce them to the Messenger ﷺ. I'll tell you all a story, and I hope it's not being recorded and put online, just like I said that last time, the last lecture, because we plan to make an actual story about this, inshaAllah ta'ala. So you guys, when you watch the beginning of the video, don't get mad when you already know the end of it. It's like a true spoiler that I'm about to give you, alright? I went to University of Florida, anyone here from UF? No? Alright. Burn the Qur'an guy, Terry Jones, the first guy to burn the Qur'an, that made that whole public thing, the guy with the ugly mustache, right? You guys know who I'm talking about? SubhanAllah. I had to give a lecture there, Gainesville, and literally he and his people were waiting in the parking lot for me to get out of my car,
and to shout me down with all these nasty things about the Prophet ﷺ, all the way from my car to the lecture. It was disgusting. And there were some people that were in that lecture, that wanted to, I mean, there were Muslims obviously, like every MSA lecture, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, okay? But there was more than that, there were some non-Muslims that were just, see, they wanted to hear our perspective. And subhanAllah, there was one sister that came after, and she knows that we're doing a story on it, inshaAllah ta'ala, with Yaqeen. She came afterwards, she was non-Muslim, and she said, look, everything you said makes sense. She said, in fact, the theology of Islam makes sense. I get the theology, I actually agree, it's common sense. Yes, one God, that's what was preached from Adam all the way to Jesus, and all these prophets were essentially calling to the same thing, we're doing the covenant with God. Jesus was the Messiah in accordance with the Abrahamic understanding of what a Messiah was supposed to... See, that all makes sense. She said the theology all lines up, and she said the message of the prophets, may Allah bless them, is congruent with the rest of the messages. I get that. She said, but the marriage to Aisha. She said, I can't, I can't get around that. I said to her, okay, have you ever read anything about Aisha, rabbi Allah? She said, no, except for all the debates about how young she was, which by the way, was not an issue that was brought up until now. Which shows you how insignificant her age was. Whatever that age would have been, how insignificant it was to the discussion, that the only possible narration we have about her age is actually from her. So no one else made any issue of it, because whatever her age was, it was the norm of the time. But now, huge deal. So she said, I can't, I said, have you read anything about Aisha, rabbi Allah, on her? Her personality, her marriage to the prophets, may Allah bless them, her psychology.
Because the impression that's created right away is that this was this young, exploited girl, just like the thing we see on the news with all those crazy Muslims overseas in child marriages, that was put into a house by this old man, and subjected to abuse, and had this destroyed psycho... I mean, it's a horrible image, right? Have you read about Aisha, the scholar, the muhadithah, the woman that was so proud in her leadership, and had such self-esteem that she was more eloquent than any of the male companions of the prophet, the woman who was more knowledgeable in jurisprudence and inheritance, and anything that any of the other sahaba were, this woman that loved the prophet, and spoke of him so glowingly, far from an abusive monster that he's being portrayed as, but instead this loving husband that treated her and respected her with so much respect that he listened to her when she was angry, and they had arguments. Have you read about her as a person? She said, no. I said, okay, so here's what we're going to do. Before I have any discussion with you about her age, I'm going to send you a bunch of material to read on Aisha. And I want you to just forget about anything that the Islamophobes have put in your head about this and this and that. So she did so. SubhanAllah, she was so amazed by it, and so blown away by it, that suddenly that discussion was not important anymore. And she took shahada, and she had a daughter, and she named her daughter? Aisha. SubhanAllah. So now this is a spoiler alert, so if you have any stories, don't watch it. Just press share. Share, share, share, share. I know what the ending is. Share, share, share. Alright? Because it has a good ending, a happy ending. But subhanAllah, that's the point. The framing was wrong in the first place. When someone attacks you and says, the Prophet's my son killed the Jews.
Right? And subhanAllah, this is the nature of the evolution of Islamophobia. That people used to be, you know, after 9-11, the Islamophobic arguments against Islam were actually quite elementary. Now they've moved on to being pre-K. They're even sillier. But, they're armed with, unfortunately, you know, some things that they've read online, and some supposed narrations, and they throw them out there. Rudy Giuliani sitting on John Hannity, and saying, well, Muhammad killed 700 Jews. Really? What did you read? And how did you just frame that? So the paper that we're actually working on now, inshallah, to be released, I believe May 1st, inshallah, last week, is to study all of the positive interactions the Prophet's, may Allah bless him, had with Jews in Medina. And what are they? How many incidents? Like 30? 30, 35? Good relations, you know, narrations of the Prophet's, may Allah bless him, dealing with the Jews in a beautiful way, in a beautiful fashion. Because at the end of the day, if you're going to take a moment of treason by a tribe, and then formulate through that a narrative that this is a normative relationship between the Prophet's, may Allah bless him, and an entire people, you're being dishonest. No matter what angle you're arguing it from, you're being dishonest to his character. You're being dishonest to his biography. So let's step out. Let's reframe this. And then study why the exceptions were the exceptions. That's our approach, intellectually, to shift the frame, and to show people how they have tarnished, and without, and we cannot say that this was with innocence. Again, this was part of a colonial project. This is, without a doubt, beneficial to people to portray the Prophet's, may Allah bless him, in this barbaric fashion. Let's create the narrative again. Who is he? Because you know what? Think about yourself right now.
If someone was to take a few incidents from your life that seem unfavorable, and to write a biography on you based on that, and ignore all of your good qualities, wouldn't you hate yourself? Someone took ten incidents from your life that seemingly are unfavorable, and portrayed that, and wrote a biography about you, and here is the Almar you're not reading about. And that's someone's introduction to you. Wouldn't they hate your guts? I know they'd hate me. They wouldn't even have to slander me. They would just hate me. Okay, because we're fallible. We make mistakes. And we do things that are out of character sometimes, and sometimes unfortunately in character and still unfavorable. But the point is, is that we have to demonstrate the hypocrisy in how the Prophet shall Allah bless him is being framed. And we will not resort to, or we will not be suffocated by their imposed narrative of the Prophet shall Allah bless him to constantly play defense. No, he didn't do this. No, he didn't do this. No, he didn't do this. No, no, no, no. No, wait a minute. How do you get to define the Prophet shall Allah bless him? He's my Prophet. How about we let two billion people define his narrative first, and you see how they see him, and then you understand why they love him. Because if I wanted to define, I'm telling you guys, if I wanted to define the Bible by evilbible.com, or define, if I wanted to portray Jesus as a political radical, which by the way is probably more true to his politics than the Santa Claus Jesus that we have today, alright, that's being portrayed today, I could do that with any holy book and with any holy figure in history. Anybody. You know, subhanAllah, in our modern day times, you can study one of the Firauns of our era, Edgar Hoover, John Edgar Hoover, and you can study how he dealt with these famous figures in our own American history.
How Hoover actually tried to portray Dr. King, and how he tried to delegitimize civil rights figures, how he tried to kick up all the dirt on them, and then let that infiltrate so that you could create enough of a barrier between you and their figures. With the Prophet, salAllahu alayhi wa sallam, we have details of his life, we have a rich sunnah, we have a rich seerah, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be worthy enough to be his ambassadors. And may Allah find us worthy enough to be joined with him in Jannatul Firdaus. May Allah allow him to be proud of us, alayhi salatu wassalam. Amin. JazakAllah khair.
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