Recition of Allhamd

Recitation of Qul ho Allah

Salawat

The topic that I have chosen for today's majalis is 'Islam, a superset of science and logic',  as I am not an experienced zakir so I apologize in advance for any mistakes that I may make during the course of this majalis and hope that you will excuse them. Due to the shortage of time and my full confidence in the intellectual abilities of the people present here I would go over quickly on a number of issues that I think needs to be addressed in today's majalis and that I think that these are the issues we are confronted with in our daily lives and majalis provide a very good forum for disscusing them..

For those who did not hear the previous majalis I discussed the objections of atheist against Islam and other theologies, we also discussed whether the Islamic women becomes oppressed by observing hijab, those of you who are interested in that majlis can view the text at my website.

Salawat.

Today I would like to address the issue of shirk from two different angles, during the start of my majlis I recited Surah-e-Alhamd, we recite this surah in our daily prayers a number of times, the verse 'iya ka nabadu wa iya ka nasteain' in this surah means that you are telling Allah that you worship him alone and that you seek help only from him, yet for shite Muslims its a common practice to say Ya Ali Madad, is it shirk ? When we say that we seek help only from Allah then why do we ask for help from Ali who is not Allah.  On the face of it there seems to be some logic to this argument, unfortunately that is the power of language,  Shitaan's argument of 'why should I bow down before something that is inferior to me' looks logical on the face of it, its only when we delve a bit deeper that we realize that we are supposed not only to worship Allah but also to obey him, do remember that shaitaan never refused to bow down before Allah, nevertheless he was cursed until calamity for not bowing down infront of the one that Allah wanted him to bow down, so while worshiping Allah we must also remember that we must obey His commands and bow our heads to the teachings of the ones that he has chosen. Coming back to our original discussion of why do we say ya ali madad when we say iya ka nabadu wa iya ka nastaein, I would try to explain this with the help of example.

Salawat

Lets go 2000 years back from now in hazrat esasas time, lets say that my friend dies, now as a believer I believe that only Allah is the one that can give life, yet I take my friend to Hazrat esa and he gets the person living again, have I performed shirk ? I should have prayed to Allah to get him living again ? lets say my friend has cancer today and I take him to a doctor, Quran is very clear about the fact that Allah is the one who gives shifa, am I doing shirk by taking my friend to the doctor and asking him to cure my friend ? I am sure that the scholars of Islam no matter which sect that they belong to will agree that I did not perform shirk when I took my friend to Hazrat esa or to the doctor inspite of the clear indication in Quran that Allah is the one who does the shifa and gives life. The conclusion my friends is that if anyone of us goes to hazrat esa, the doctor or says ya ali madad with the concept that these are worshipable entities and that they are the source of the powers they have, he is indeed committing shirk. However, if we go to the doctor for our medical needs or say ya ali madad for our spritual ones with the concept that Allah has assigned these people as his instruments and that He alone is the source and sustainers of all powers and we are asking these people for help due to the knowledge and power that Allah has granted to them, its not shirk, its ain-e-tauheed and this intercession is the way that Allah also uses for communicating to us. In our case He used Mohammad (PBUH) and Al-Mohammad (AS) to talk to us, and we do not become mushriks if we use the same medium as he has.

Salawat.

The second surah that I recited at the start of the majlis was surah-e-ahud, the second verse of this surah lum-ya-lid walum-you-lud means that Allah does not have any father neither does he have any sons. A few weeks back I met a young 16 year old ex-shite-muslim in the church at Kansas, who is actively and enthusiaticaly preaching otherwise. He has been converted to Christianity and I really felt a lot of disappointment, we are the people who draw their inspiration from Al-e-Mohammad, the personalities whom the Christians dared not to confront in mubahila. However today especially our young ones are confronted by the evangelist and due to the lack of knowledge of their own religion they are unable to defend and invite those. The parents are keen to make sure that there sons and daughters get the best education and become so-called succesful in life but let me tell you that the root cause for their success in life and hereafter would be if you are able to transfer the spiritual values to them.

Salawat

I would briefly like to go over this form of shirk as one of the purpose of these majalis is a transfer of Islamic knowledge amongst us. Christians belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God and he sacrificed his life so that the sins of the whole humanity can be washed away. Before I go any further, I would like to tell you that when I typed this statement of the majalis on my computer, Microsoft Word which is the program that I was typing this in, underlined the expression son of God as wrong as I had used a small s for son, it suggested that I change the s to capital S, as in English grammar all the words used for God start with capital letters. So you can imagine the extent of evangelism that these guys go to, by making S as capital I would be making Jesus divine, due to all this evangelism its very important that we are aware of how to defend our religion and invite them to us rather than vice versa.

Salawat.

In Quran Allah says about Jesus christ :

O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) a messenger of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His messengers. Do not say "Trinity" : desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah: Glory be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs.

And behold! Allah will say: "O Jesus the son of Mary! Did you tell the men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah'?" He will say: "Glory to Thee! never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, you would indeed have known it. You know what is in my heart, I do not know not what is in yours. For you know in full all that is hidden.

"I never said to them anything except what you commanded me to say, to wit, 'worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord'; and I was a witness over them whilst I dwelt amongst them; when you did take me up you are the Watcher over them, and you are a witness to all things.

Please keep these verses of Quran in mind, it wasn't until I read the bible that I realized how much it conforms to the Islamic version of Jesus, I would like to quote from the American standard bible, please note that the verses I am about to recite are part of the bible and are not taken from any Islamic books.

Jesus is quoted in the bible as saying :

"Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."
"The greatest commandment of all is to worship One God"
"I cannot  do nothing of my own authority"
"I do as the Father has commanded me."
"The Father is greater than I."
He who is my God and yours.
He refereed to himself as prophet.
About calamity he said
"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only
I have been sent by Him.
I do his will

I can go on and on there is a lot of evidence right inside the bible that Jesus himself treated God as an entity that was the creator. So the next time when an evangelist approaches us and our children they can reply that when Jesus himself is saying that my father is greater than I then who are they to say that he is equivalent to the father? If he is saying that he takes commands and do the will of God than nobody has the right to say that he is the form of god himself. This indeed is shirk and we need to make sure that our kids have enough spiritual material to prevent themselves from getting indulged into this shirk. In Christianity the sins are forgiven after the blood of Jesus Christ has been spilled and that we must accept him as the savior, they say that God cannot forgive the sins without some kind of punishment. While coming for this majlis I bumped into someone and he said sorry and I said that's okay, I did not punch him, I did not punch my son and I did not punish him in any way, I just forgave him. When a mere insignificant person like me can do it, why is it so hard to imagine that the one who created me and the compassion in me will not have the mercy to forgive someone who repents with a true heart. If one cannot enter heaven without accepting the blood of Christ then what about billions of people who died before him and what about the people who lived during and after his time and never heard about him, if God is capable of forgiving there sins without any punishment then why can't he forgive mine? the islamic way of repentence of sin hasn't changed from the time of Adam till today.

Salawat.
 

Before I move on to the next issue I would like to qoute New American Bible, in its introduction it tells us, I qoute :

     "It is difficult to know whether the words or sayings attributed to Jesus are written exactly as he spoke them. . . . The Church was so firmly convinced that . . . Jesus . . . taught through her, that she expressed her teaching in the form of Jesus' sayings."

This is the same church that preached that Mary was the literal mother of God, today half of the 2 billions Christians do not belief that. It took 1500 years, for half the Christians to realize that Mary is not the literal mother of God, I wonder how many more years will it take for them to realize that Jesus was a prophet of God, not the literal son. It was the same church that made galileleo apologize when he said that its the earth and not the sun that revolves, he had to bow down and say that i am sorry i will never say that again, its the sun that revolves and not earth, on the contrary we my friends are follower of a book that is full of scientific knowledge and logic.

Salawat

After the study of bible the greatness of quran became even more apparent to me. Today there are many of versions of bibles that differ from each other significantly, inside the bible you will find statements (for example in luke) that these eleven verses may or may not be part of the bible, I counted around 50+ foot notes only in the first four books saying that the verses are disputed. Today there are 1 billion muslims in 183 countries and we fight on almost on everything imaginable amongst ourselves, we do not have any consensus or any central body, yet all of us no matter where we are have just One Quran ! Isn't it amazing that we have one central book that has been the same for last 1400 hundred years, as we are gathered here today to talk about Quran-natiq, I would like to point out very briefly an aspect of Quran-e-samit also. Its a huge topic in itself and if i had the time than I would have liked to go through how biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy and other subjects conforms to Quran but for now I will give you a very brief glimpse of Quran statiscs.

In Quran Al-Dunya This world is mentioned 115 times and Al-Akhira the hereafter                   is also mentioned 115 times, Al-Hayat   Life is mentioned 145 times and Al-Maout   Death is mentioned 145 Al-Rajul  thais is  Man   is mentioned 24 Al-Mar'ha   Women                      is also metioned 24 times, the word Al-Shahr which means Month is mentioned                             12 times, Al-Yaom whics means day is mentioned exactly 365 times, I go on and on but I want to point out that Al-bahar Water is mentioned 32 times while Al-bar   Land                              is mentioned 13 times. If you see the ratio between the two thats 13/32+13 i.e. 13/45 it comes out to be 29 percent to 71 percent, read the scientific figures on this subject and they would tell you that the ratio between the water and land is 29 to 71, this fact was found a few hundred years back and a book written 1400 years back is using the words al-bar and al-bahar in the same ratio as they exist, subhan allah rabio ala wa bahamday, We are the given such a wonderful book, its so unfortunate that we do not follow it.

Salawat

I would also like to share with you today an incident that happened a few months back at our sprint dinner. Where we had us and another muslim family on the table along with a jewish couple, and a coupleof other indian hindus and Americans, one of them is an athesit whose name is george. When the food had been served, Georage noticed that the hindus hadn't touched the meat dishes, he asked the hindus why have they not done so, and one of the persons, who has been born in Kansas and was a non vegetarian before replied that eating of meat is not allowed in hindu religion and the other noded his head in agreement. I was really impressed by his religious fervor. I mean excuse my words but if you go through the ramayian and vedas and look at the concepts of gods that these guys have I really commend that they are still following it, I mean there religion is sooo illogical yet many of them have not forgotten the difference between halal and haram even when they are so much away from there homes. Today in every major restaurant in America you will find vegetarian dishes which is due to the fact that lots of hindus are vegetarian. The Jew person present there did not touch the meat and on inquiry answered that torah or the old testamont disallows a person to eat an animal that is tainted with blood and is not cut in a certain way so as to get the blood out of the body of the animal and to also purify it by the name of yewah. Unfortunately my Muslim brother and sister could not resist eating the chicken, on the inquiry they told the guy that those are the customs that they follow when they are in India and Pakistan but as soon as they come to USA they stop differentiating between halal and haram. I could feel that persons shame when George commented that it seems that your God has changed when you came from India and Pakistan to USA. Was he an Indian or Pakistani Allah that you were worshiping back there and that he is not present in Kansas. I met a health inspector in Singapore who told me that in Singapore even the pigs are cut the halal way, as they have found out that it is the best way for health. He thought that I am a Hindu and commented that it seems that some Arab doctors found this out and made it part of their religion. So my friends by the grace of Allah we have a religion that is extremely scientific and logical yet we suffer from such an inferiority complex that we are always enthusiastic to abandon our religious principles and call them orthodox and backward. If today we do not differentiate between the halal and haram in terms of food tomorrow our children will not differentiate between the right and wrong in other things as well. I am so amazed that the followers of illogical religions are following it so profoundly yet the followers of an extremely scientific and logical religion feel defensive at upholding their right principlse.

Salawat.

My friends today we are in a time and at a place where everything like elian gonazles is politicized overhyped and confusing. Islam is a religion of educated people, education is a must for men and women, however please note that the purpose of education is not to earn a few thousand dollars, education is a purpose in itself, the job that you get is a consequence. Please also note that today words like 'independent', 'freedom', rights' have been grossly misrepresented in the media that actually break downs the family structure, even in animals you will find that they have family structures and family members that are dependent on each other. Yet the American concept is that the man is independent of his wife and children the wife is an independent women and the children are independent children, as aresult, they live independently and lead separate lives and die independently in old homes. Islam does not prohibit either men or women from working and earning halal money, its absolutely allowed and infact its an ibadaat to earn rizq-e-halal whether by women or men. Yet let me also tell you that that should not be the focus of life, the reason you work is to support living and for your family, and not vice versa, both the man and the woman should remember that the primary focus is the institution of the family. A famous saying goes that if you want your children to be successful double the time and half the money. A woman who is a mother and spends her time to train her kids should not be looked down by either her husband or the society. She is following sunat-e-zehra and probably doing the hardest and the most afzal of all professions, and it is in no way inferior to someone who have their kids in a day care center while they do something at an xyz location. Please note that I am not against working women, what I am saying is that for both men and women working should be a secondary thing as compared to family and both of them should keep their work secondary to the time that they give to their children.

Salawat

According to the hindu philosophy we are passing through a time that is know kali-youg and one of the attributes of this time is that the concepts of good and bad has been confused and reversed. I am shocked to notice when people actually ask the people who are doing right about why are they doing so and actually look down upon them. I am amazed to see that today the muslim women who are not observing hijab are asking the ones who do why do they do it and that they are actually considered less modern or advance. Don't you think that it should be vice versa that the women observing pardah-e-zainab should feel confident and proud of what they are doing and those who are not doing so should strive for it.  The people who do eat haram look down on people who eat halal only and consider them rigid and backward. its amazing, doing a wrong thing is one thing and all of us do things that are wrong, we feel ashamed and strive for improving ourselves, thats human. But if you do not do the right thing yourself and actually condemn and look down upon someone who is doing it and try to stop him from doing so, that is not human and that is not being modern or advanced, that is satanic and we should make sure that we do not become instruments for the evil. Whether we like it or not or whether we talk about it or not but the factof the matter is that most of us has a maximum of 20-30 years left in this world, kul-e-nafsin-zaiqatul-moot is a fact that even the atheist cannot deny. If we do not do right the least we can do is actually look up to the people who are doing it and ask Allah to give us the strength to follow the path defined by Quran and lived by ahl-e-bait.

Salawat.

Before moving to masiab-e-husain I would like to say that Allah will inshAllah give the ajur to those who held the majalis, who took initiative to organize the programs and who participated and attended in them. I am hopeful that inshAllah each moharram in Kansas city will become better in terms of knowledge transfer than the previous one. Yet I would like to point out here that moharam and majalis are not about matam, its not about nohas, its not about whether somebody holds it in an apartment or a house and how big and well furnished the house is. Its not about whether they distributed tabaruk or offered dinner, majalis are about remembering the cause of sacrifice of Imam Husain and a way to gain and exchange knowledge and hold ourselves accountable. We have a choice and decision to make today, We can either just forget about Imam husain from today to the next moharram, many of us listened and agree with what the people like hasnain rajub ali has said yet we are unable to find the courage to stop our wrong doings or we can actually use the spirituality gained in these majalis to become better Muslims. Today we will feel very bad if our children do not speak English with the correct sentence structure, grammar and accent, yet we do not mind if they do not offer prayers or do not know about the religion, that's secondary for us. We do feel complexes if he is behind in any field of this worldly life yet we are least bothered if he is way behind in spiritual terms., please note that today if you allow this deterioration of religion to happen in your generation its going to get worse in the coming one and you will be held responsible for the destruction of the whole generation of Muslims. So please bear in mind and review what you have learned in this moharam, talk to your family and yourself and see if there is something that you need to repent about and correct yourself. Many of us do not offer prayers daily, yet look at the aijaz of husain's sacrifice that today after 1400 years thousands of miles away mahsAllah the momineen and mominaat offered the maghrib and isha prayers together regularly. We can either stop doing it from here onwards or we can actually make this a daily part or our life.

Salawat.

Azadaran-e-Husain today we talked about Jesus, when Jesus was put on the cross according to the bible he cried Oh my God, why have you forsaken me. The father of all prophets Abraham used a blind fold on his eyes as he could not bear to watch his young son die. However look at the sacrifice of Imam-e-Mazloom, he did not have any blind folds when he had to remove the spear from the shivering young body of his dying son. He did not have any blind folds when he had to pick the arms of Abbass which had been cut from the body. Today we are here to remember the sacrifice of the one who saw his six months old Ali Asghar in a pool of blood in his own arms. The one who heard the innocent children crying Al-atash Al-Aatash and could not doanything about it. The one who knew that his daughter who could not sleep anywhere except for his chest will have the blood flowing from her ears and will be slapped by the soldiers of yazidi laskar.Yet after all this what our imam did was not a complain but infact he ended his sacrifice with the sajda that is the source for keeping the sajood alive till the end of this world. Today we are also here to remember the son Imam Zain-ul-abedein who saw the slaughter of his whole family and the death of his young sister in the prison, yet in his own words the maximum point of sorrow for him was when Zainab and kulsoom were made to walk in front of the general public without observing the islamic pardah. We wish and pray that we were there at the time of karbala, so that we could have gained the ultimate blessing of dying with the shudaan-e-karbala. Although we were not there physically, we can still be part of the husaini lushker by remembering the great sacrifice and more importantly the cause of that sacrifice by upholding our religious principles whether we are in India or Pakistan, or in the United States of America. We understand that the effect of  your sacrifice is not limited to a particular geographical location and we pray to Allah to enable us to transfer the religious values in our coming generations also.

Total visitors till now :