Where Is Our Community

Ya ibadallah, usikum wa usi nafsibi taqwallah fis sarri wal alaniyya fa innama khafatallah rasul hikmah.

Alhamdulillah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, uh, sent our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and defined him in, in, in his book as a, a rahmah.

Wa ma arsalnaka illa rahmatan lil alamin.

And that's in Surah Anbiya.

Uh, all the prophets, they bring things and they have, uh, qualities, uh, that define them.

If you look at them, they, they have qualities that define them.

The, the quality that defines our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is rahmah.

Uh, and one of the things, uh, that is, is, uh, I think lost, um, uh, in a lot of the Muslim community now is, uh, this idea of just shafaqa for creation.

Shafaqa ala khalq.

You know, just having a kind of, um, empathy for, uh, human beings, not just themselves.

Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when he said, "Kuntum khaira ummatin ukhrijat lin nas." He said-- He didn't say, "Ukhrijat li anfusikum." He said, he, he said, "You're the best community that came out." And it's in the past tense.

There's a lot of debate on what that meant.

But Allah put conditions for that.

You know, ta'muruna bil ma'ruf tanhauna anil munkari wa tuminoona billah.

These are the conditions that you're people of virtue, because you can't call to virtue if you're vicious, if you're people of vice.

How do you call to virtue? Uh, well, like, uh, Emerson said, "I can't hear you because your actions are speaking too loudly." You know, because people tend to-- They look at you...

You know, if you think about how the Muslim community spread, like how did we spread all over? How-- I mean, just in this room, if you look where everybody's from, it's amazing.

You know, somebody from Germany, from, uh, sorry, Austria, um, from Austria, you know, becomes Muslim.

Somebody from California becomes Muslim.

But then you have people that have been Muslim for a thousand years, your ancestors from, from Bangladesh, you know, from, uh, from Iran, from Egypt, from Morocco, all these different places where people-- How did they become Muslim? Because they didn't become Muslim because they read the Quran.

'Cause they couldn't, they couldn't speak Arabic.

[laughs] How did they become Muslim? They become, bec-became Muslim because of the way people behaved.

They saw the Muslims and, and they said, "Who are these people?" Like, "Where did they get these, uh, these qualities that are so extraordinary?" I mean, I'll give you the best dawah that I've ever seen in America, and many people have seen this clip, you know, of that.

He-- I think he was from Bangladesh or one, one of the South Asian communities.

And somebody came in to rob him.