How To Raise Young Muslims in a Land Built Against Them | Khutbah by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy

0:00 Brothers and sisters, faith and family and fraternity, they sit at the heart of our strategic vision and our core programming, which basically means we try to intentionally infuse them into our attempt at creating a Quranic community, a prophetic community. But why these three? It's not just because they all start with the same letter.

0:27 And I often find myself pointing to an interaction a good friend of mine had years ago with an elderly woman, and she said to him at the end of the conversation, No matter what you tell me, I'll never stop being Christian, I'll never accept Islam, because Jesus speaks to me at night. So it was time for sort of retreat, regroup, restrategize.

0:48 He came back to her a few days later and said, You were right. Jesus spoke to me. And she got excited for a second. She said, I told you, if you just believe he would speak to you. He said, Yes, yes, yes, but there was just one thing that was off. He said he didn't know you. She said, Excuse me. He said, Yeah, he said he's never visited you, never spoke to you before in his life.

1:07 She, of course, got very upset. And she said, You weren't speaking to Jesus, you were speaking to the devil. He said to her, Lady, one of us was talking to the devil. How do you figure out which one? Like you can't possibly rationally base your beliefs on voices you hear in the dark. But the moral of the story is what she never became Muslim.

1:26 Still, and despite that. Why? Because she preferred to accept an imaginary experience over acknowledge the fact that she spent for a lifetime, all these years, believing something baseless. It's a very hard realization to acknowledge that I'm just the product of her defect. The only reason I actually believed what I believe is because those I associated with, my friends, my family happen to believe it.

1:54 It's a hard pill to swallow. And most people are like this. The Quran said every time a prophet comes to them with clear and glaring proofs to the truth that Allah sent them with, they say what? Inna wa jiddina aba' ana ala ummah. We found our ancestors following X and Y and Z, and there's no way we will accept to admit that they're all fools.

2:13 No. And the Quran tells us that Ibrahim called his people out on this very notion. He said to them, and you only accept these flimsy, pathetic statues as gods for the sake of the social cohesion, for the sake of the social bonds, the warm and fuzzy feelings of community. That's the only reason you actually do it.

2:40 You don't actually believe this stuff. And on the flip side, why did Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala praise Ibrahim for being the only believer on the face of the earth at one point in time? Why did Allah celebrate him for being an Ummah, as the Quran puts it? Because most people will never be able to be an Ummah by themselves.

3:00 We are fragile creatures. We are far more emotional than we realize. We are far less rational than we realize. By the way, even Muslims, you know, why do you think so many more Muslims will fast the month of Ramadan but not consistently pray their five year round? It's because Ramadan is a communal event.

3:22 It has emotional vibes attached to the camaraderie of doing it together. You think as many people would be fasting Ramadan if Ramadan or if fasting was every Muslim has to identify 30 days out of their year, sprinkle them throughout your year, you pick them. It wouldn't have been as easy, it wouldn't have been the same.

3:40 And so our duty, as we see it as a community, masjid community, is to strategically leverage that inborn desire in every human being to that wants to belong. We all want to belong. And to leverage that by creating an ecosystem that is supportive of living Islamically. That's the idea. You don't fight it, it's human nature.

4:01 You leverage it in the right way. You leverage it for the truth, for the right reasons, not for falsehood. You know, our kids, why do the statistics tell you that 23% of first generation Muslim Americans no longer identify as Muslims? I mean, they say my parents were Muslim. Why did we lose one in four in one generation?

4:22 Because their parents were migrants. They're the first born Muslim Americans, first generation born. Their parents had migrated here as economic migrants for financial opportunities. After they got here, Islam was an afterthought. Like, wait, how are we gonna do this Islam thing and ensure that our progeny becomes Muslim?

4:41 There was no systems in place to allow it to happen, conducive to faith growing. And so they continue to build systems and may Allah reward them immensely, but this work takes generations, right? We're playing catch-up constantly. And while we're playing catch-up, our children are roaming these godless, materialistic deserts, right?

5:06 That are totally lost without the revelation from Allah on how to hydrate their spirits, how to give life to their souls. Our children are sinking every single day further into the swamps of self-worship that's promoted all around us, celebrity worship that's promoted all around us, vices masked as virtues all around us.

5:30 They're surrounded by the idolatry they call it of ideologies. You know, that's basically the ideas that we treat as if they're godly, and so we glorify them today and then we crucify them tomorrow. They're just being tossed in this this and it's it's not easy. You know, for a Muslim to want to stay principled on his faith, child or adult, in that environment that's so resistant and averse to it, it's not sustainable to feel like I'm the weirdo, to feel like I'm the we uh stranger, to feel like a misfit day in and day out, year in and year out.

6:06 Not easy. You can say until the day of judgment, the Prophet, peace be upon him, told us Islam began as a stranger and will return to being a stranger just as it began. So glad tidings to the strangers. Yes, this is about if you happen to find yourself in that situation, Allah will make it worth your while.

6:23 Stand tall, stand your ground. It doesn't mean you should put your guard down and think it's harmless to just be the stranger for long because most of us will not last. That is the idea. And that is what brings us to family. Family is the first and most important line of defense. We want to be invested in strengthening the Muslim family because the Muslim family, the Muslim home is the Allah-centric refuge from those headwinds outside.

6:54 You know, like you don't even need statistics for this. Can you imagine? Just imagine a child growing up, seeing his parents whispering into their palms, so certain that Allah hears their prayers, jumping up from the dinner table saying, Oh, I almost missed the Asir prayer. Right? My parents really believe this stuff, right?

7:12 And especially in the early ages, faith is more caught than it is taught, as they say. And contrast it with someone who lives their life, never seeing their parents take their Islam seriously. The prayer time comes and goes. I open my wardrobe and I pick whatever I want, irrespective of what Allah said in his book and what his prophet has delineated for us in the Sunnah, right?

7:32 After a while, because you want to fit into wider society, you're gonna take that as your excuse to say, if it were really true, my parents would have sort of taken it more seriously. They must not really believe it either, deep down inside, right? And the Prophet, you all know the hadith of the one who remembers his Lord and doesn't remember his Lord is like the living and the dead.

7:52 He said in another wording, an important wording, in Bukhari and Muslim, Methalul Baytil, the example of the home in which Allah is remembered. Not just remembered, you know, in table talk. As one young child said to us, that the only verses of the Quran my parents know are the verses that say, Be good to your parents.

8:18 Right? No, it's infused truly, holistically. We believe in Allah's words and we talk about them. We believe in the Prophet's greatness and him being the gold standard, and we speak about it and we try to emulate it. The example of the home in which Allah is remembered, and the home in which Allah is not remembered is like the example of the living and the dead.

8:37 And he said, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, every child is born upon a pure state. And then his parents take him in this or that direction. You know, the Prophet's words are enough, but like the surveys are very clear, the data is very clear on this. The number one factor that influences faith transmission across generations is you guessed it, parental influence.

9:06 And you know, when we say an Allah-centric home, before I leave this point, how does Allah introduce Himself to us more than any other way in the Quran as a Rahman al-Rahheem? It's really important that your home is a Rahma-centric home. You know, the Yaqeh Institute has some great studies on this. You can look them up about God image.

9:24 Do you know where people get their image of God from? From their relationship with their parents. It can be rehabilitated. The Prophet saved a generation in their adulthood mostly from the superstitions and the negative God images they had and their awful assumptions of God, of course. But where it starts is they perceive God the way they used to perceive their parents.

9:46 So how stressful is the environment at home versus how considerate, sensitive, sympathetic, compassionate is the home? Does your child see you more so as this cold enforcer that doesn't care whether you sink or swim? I'm just there in case you mess up? Or do they see you as a loving caretaker? Because that will extend into how they feel at heart.

10:07 Not the theoretical exam sheet, what who is God, but how their affective memory, how they feel at heart about their Lord subhanahu wa ta'ala. And now, after throwing all this on the table, let me say that we need to have some mercy on parents too. Parents can't do it alone. They need a wider net to catch with them.

10:26 They need also support systems that can model for the children what may not even exist at home. Which brings us to faith from family now, fraternity. The idea of fraternity is to cultivate a community that can allow our faith to blossom in its shade. You know, the Quran speaks about faith a lot of times as the tree, for instance.

10:49 Shajaratin Tayyiba. What does a tree need? It needs the proper environment that is conducive to its blossoming. It needs a lot of things. It needs the sun from up top, it needs a like fertile ground to really move its roots into it and be able to soak up the nutrients from it. It needs the right climate, and that's why trees die in the winter, right?

11:06 It needs all of that. It needs the whole environment, the whole package to make it work. You all know that famous adage, the notion of it takes a village to raise a child. For adults as well, it takes an entire village, right? There has to be an Islamic spirit surrounding you for you to embody it, for you to inhale it.

11:23 And so that's what the masjid community is supposed to be for. It's supposed to be the extended family, if you will, that was destroyed by the Industrial Revolution, the surrogate extended family, where a sense of acceptance is there, right? But also where you can put your guard down from being a misfit in society, where you can find like-minded people and people with similar values that believe what you believe and live as you live.

11:51 To be attracted to a place like that is to be extra attracted to your sort of the ship, the Ark of Noah. The masjid is the Ark of Noah. Whoever doesn't get on it will eventually drown. You know, subhanAllah, I often challenge parents to ask their children, would you bring your friends from public school to the masjid?

12:12 Why not? A lot of times it is because the masjid are not upkept as they should. A masjid should not be decorative, by the way, because not it should be a place where you look inward, not outward. Elegant, clean. We hope we did a good proper job with this one, but not decorative. But it should be elegant.

12:30 Like when think about when you go to the government building and it's at a certain standard, the school building at a certain standard, then you come to the masjid and it's sort of falling apart and smells all awkward and weird. This reinforces an inferiority complex in you. The most physical, tangible symbol of Islam in your life, the vibes are vicious, they're horrible.

12:50 Think about why the Prophet said, No, Bilal will make the adan because he has a more beautiful voice. People are attracted to beauty. Why did he say, if you eat onion or garlic, stay away from the masjid? Because you're gonna push other people away. Why did Umar, when he became the Khalifa, create a an occupation?

13:07 He institutionalized the position for people to uh burn incense in the masjids because the now the community is getting bigger, influx, not everyone's sort of up to speed immediately, at least with the hygiene of Islam. The smell makes a difference, the look makes a difference. So people feel like they want to come through the doors.

13:27 How welcoming and accommodating is the masjid, a big deal. You know, uh ethnically, intergenerationally, all of that. You know, when they talk about branding and like an outside in the business world, brand your brand is not your logo. It's like when people see you, it's the confidence, right? I've had a good experience with this company.

13:46 It's the confidence that it reflects, the spirit, it you know, that the integrity of it. You want people to see this as a place I want to be in. Where else will they find lifelong friends, brothers and sisters? You know, you can you will not be able to choose your kids as friends. You just gotta accept it.

14:05 But you might be able to choose for them through the masjid, if it's thriving, a community that has a pool of options that are relatively better than the options outside. And who knows, perhaps they will be able to find their life partner through the community. You know how hard it is for our youth and our young adults to get married when we are a scattered 1% of the population across this vast continent?

14:30 It's very hard. I was flying back from Hajj before we left the airport. But there was a brother, I'm sitting on one side, his dad's on the other side. They're arguing about some girl that he wants to marry who's not Muslim. So he elbows me eventually and says to me, Shinawi, can you tell this guy, this guy, uh, that it's halal to marry a Jewish or Christian woman so long as she's chaste?

14:54 So I didn't want to sort of uh validate his simplistic thinking or his sort of inappropriate gesture with his dad. So I reframed the conversation for him. I said to him, Can I ask you a question? Do you pray fajr on your own without your father harassing you? So he sort of hung his head in embarrassment.

15:14 I said, Do you think your wife will wake you up for fajr when she doesn't believe she has to pray fajr? Do you think she will wake your children up for fajr when she doesn't believe she has to pray fajr? What is left of your Islam if you're not performing the five pillars? Right? And so look at how much hinges on setting this thing upright.

15:33 May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide us and our communities and our families to building those sanctuaries and refugees, refuges uh for our faith, Allahumir. Because it is the only religion that is rational, the only religion that doesn't make you choose between your mind and your heart. Right? And it also offers the social encouragement, the social support, seeing everyone do it like you.

16:29 Sometimes, I don't want to say try Islam, sometimes you will only love Islam after you live Islam. That's when you start tasting the sweetness of faith and taking ownership of your faith. That's another huge part of why we need to systematically professionalize our masajid, sophisticate the operations so we can have real fraternity and the multiplier effect that comes with that.

16:49 The last thing I'll say, brothers and sisters, is that here, when we say fraternity, we mean twofold. We mean the community of Muslims, but we also mean the wider fraternity of humanity. You know, we have a double duty and a double-layered relationship with our fellow Muslims. They're human and Muslim.

17:09 But you still, to your neighbors, wider society, your countrymen, you have a duty towards them. And part of that duty is not isolating yourself from them. Does that make sense? You know, when we, as they call it, self-secularize, Muslim just means sort of like pray and mind my business and move on with law.

17:26 You you this comes back to haunt you three ways. And I'll try to be brief. The first of them is that it deprives the world from being able to see visibly what makes Islam so valuable. To see that Islam actually offers healing to the world, common good and civic engagement and service projects. Islam is adds value to me as an individual and to wider society.

17:51 Think of people's economic anxieties, think of people's addictions, right? Think of people's broken families. Where can they find you if you're within these walls, right? The second way it comes back to haunt you is you deprive your youth of seeing why they should take pride in Islam in the wider world.

18:08 You know, look at what Ghaza activated, basically, right? So many people reconnected with their Islam, including our youth, not because anything a Shaykh said, right? Not because they saw, wow, my Islam calls me to stand up to tyrants. My Islam picks up and uplifts the downtrodden. The third way it comes back to haunt you is it deprives you of the support of your neighbors when the haters come after you and they will come after you.

18:37 You know, in 2024, just as an example, the Islamic Center of Rockland in upstate New York was under a fiery smear campaign about some streamed video of one of their guest imams making a dua, a supplication in Tarawih that was supposedly like hateful rhetoric, inflammatory, anti-Semitic, blah blah blah.

19:01 You know, these propagandists are like they lie more than they breed, so I didn't check, didn't seek to verify this, didn't investigate any of it because I don't care. Uh we know that our religion doesn't teach that, and you know Muslims don't do this, and but this was the accusation. What was extra beautiful about that incident is that in the very first news reports that came out, when the news station started visiting the masjid, the people from the synagogue are there, and the people from the local church are there, and the people from the local homeless shelter are there saying, No, no, no, there must be a misunderstanding here.

19:32 We know these people, right? They're good people. They're the first to be feeding the homeless, they're the first to be contributing to the civic good, right? And that's, by the way, exactly what happened with your Prophet. Banu Hashim, his tribe, said, You're not touching Muhammad, he's a good man, even those of them who aren't Muslim, right or wrong?

19:51 When Abu Bakr Saddiq was trying to leave Mecca from the persecution, Ibn Diginna, who's not a Muslim, says to him, Mithlu kela, Yahrujwala Yukhraj, people like you are not to be allowed to leave, let alone driven out. Like you're an asset to our community. We see your value. And even the Quran says, the people of Shu'aib, when they threatened him, they said to him, Wa inna, lana rahina ba'ifa, we see you as a nobody.

20:18 We see you vulnerable, like you're not tough on your own. And were it not for you having such a strong backing, his non-Muslim family, such a strong backing, uh, we would have stoned you to death, and you are worthless in our eyes. But they couldn't touch him. Why couldn't they touch him? Because they could see who he was and that he was a part of us.

20:43 Hence the fraternity of humanity, being that second layer after the necessity of healthy family, which all stands to support our nucleus, sort of our purpose in life, our faith. You see how they're interdependent? May Allah give us healthier families and make us help more helpful for humanity. May Allah Azza wa Jal guide us and guide with us and make us a reason for others to be guided.

21:05 Allah Ma'amin, Allah Machfillana Ulhamna, Waila Takilna, Iqfillana Ma'Kadamna, Wama'ah Karna, Wa Ma'asarna, Wa Ma'alana, Wama Anta Alambihimina, Allahuma Azza Islam Ansur Muslim, Wa Dilla Vala Mat Al Martadin, Idina Wahdibina, Wajalna Sabalima, Yahbelna Fihid Matidin, Sta Milna Wat is Tabdilna, Wajalha Khalisani Wajika Karim, or Salah Salamu Baraka Alas in Nabiina al-Musarim.