Pasha Hour International: Live from America! | December 08, 2007
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Dr. Pasha
Welcome to another edition of PASHA HOUR INTERNATIONAL: LIVE FROM AMERICA! A Program about Islam, Muslims and the World – Unlike Any. To listen to Pasha Hour International go to www.IslamicSolutions.Com and click on Pasha Hour International on the menu to the left
And those of you, in the media or anywhere else, for whatever reasons, want to call us “Mawzlems,” go ahead and say it.
Those of you who want to call our Deen “Izlam,” go ahead and say it.
Beat up on Islam and Muslims all you want. Distort the name. Distort the pronunciation. Distort the meaning and content. Call us all the names you want.
That has been our history. We have no complaints. But when you are done badmouthing us and twisting and distorting everything about us, do sit down for a second or two and listen to what we have to say.
Make some kind of an effort to find out who we really are and what we stand for. I am not saying you don’t know right now, but make an effort. You never know.
There was a time, people used to call us “Mohammedans.” Their logic was everybody worships their own man. Christians worship Christ, Buddhists maybe worship Buddha and so on.
And these fellows, who believe in Mohammed, must be worshipping him. So let us call them “Mohammedans.” That is how the logic went.
Some folks even called us “Mohametans.”
So there was a time when television people used to say “Mawzlems” and “Izlam.” Then they hired some instant “experts” – drive-by experts I call them – to look into it. Nowadays you can get these drive-by Islam experts dime a dozen.
Finally folks learned to say Islam and Muslims.
Our situation is that we did not happen to pick the name Muslims by ourselves. It was not decided upon by a committee. It is Allah, God Almighty, who actually named us Muslims.
You may not believe it, but that is what the Qur’an says.
Huwas sammaakumul Muslimeen, is how the Qur’an puts it.
Paraphrase: He named you Muslims.
Huwa – he. Who’s he now? I would say God, for that is what the context seems to suggest.
Or maybe Abraham, if you read the context somewhat differently.
I am speaking to all of you now – Jews, Christians, Hindus, Atheists, even the Muslims. That is who came up with this name: Muslims. God himself, I mean. Anybody got a problem with that name, take it up with God.
Are the Muslims going to Jannah – Paradise I mean?
Absolutely!
Once you die believing and saying La Ilaaha Illallah! – No god but God – then surely you are on your way to Jannat, Paradise that is.
And if you add to that Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, is God’s prophet; and if you die believing that firmly in your heart, then surely and absolutely you will enter paradise sooner or later.
And nothing and no one can stop you.
But the question is what about the status of Muslims in this world?
The problem is that the Muslims themselves are as clueless as the rest of humanity about Islam and Muslims.
Some of us Muslims might have read all kinds of books on Islam and worked with all kinds of Imams, leaders or Sheikhs, some white and some black, and some of them decked out in all kinds of fancy clothes and costumes.
But in spite of all that stuff, many of you my dear, beloved, respected, honored Muslims, sometimes are as pathetically, heartbreakingly, agonizingly clueless as the rest of humanity. You yourself know so little about Islam and Muslims.
You seem to know so little about who you really are and what your Deen really is.
Sometimes the sheer wealth of Islam seems to overwhelm you. It is a bit like that little fellow who found himself in the Ali Baba cave and didn’t know what to do. So you are in this granddaddy of all Ali Baba’s caves. You don’t know where to look.
There isn’t anybody telling you these things in a clear and coherent fashion. Fellows are giving you little nuggets on how to wash your hands; how to tie your turbans; what the women should be doing; how long your pajamas should be and all sorts of other stuff, some of it real, some of it fanciful.
But no one is giving you the real thing.
But you, my dear Muslims, often seem to miss the real story about Islam and Muslims in the midst of all this confusion of detail.
And when someone dares to bring it up with you, you pretend to be too busy with other things. It just does not come to you naturally to pay attention to some of these serious questions that get raised.
Yes, you are supposed to go to Paradise but that is not the issue now. Your responsibility now is to make this world a better place when you leave it.
You are born into this world and you live here and you die here, however you die, but you are supposed to leave it better than you found it. That is what God Almighty created you for.
And that’s Islam for you in a nutshell.
If that is what you are doing, I am tempted to say Hallelujah. Or Alhamdu lillah, if that is what you want me to say. But the tragedy is many of you don’t even know what Alhamdu lillah means.
We talk about Islam and Muslims. We beat up on Muslims. Nowadays everyone and their cat and dog seem to be in the game of Islam and Muslim bashing.
And that seems to feed a lot of mouths and put bread on the table for a lot of folks.
So much so that you turn off even a traditional critic of the Muslims like me. Some of these attacks have been so egregious and outlandish that I now find myself in the position of having to defend the Muslims, even though I would be happier pointing out their shortcomings to them, as I have been doing for so long in the past.
And right now this is what I have to say to the Muslims: You Muslims may be clueless about a lot of things in this world, but you are not all that bad. You are not half as bad as some of these drive-by mercenaries say you are.
“Muslim” is a name then given to Muslims by God Almighty himself.
Or by Prophet Abraham, Allah bless him. You may call him a Jewish or a Christian or a Biblical prophet. God bless him. I call him a Muslim prophet, because that is what the Qur’an calls him.
But why Abraham?
Here are people talking about how Muslims behave. And how bad or intolerant or narrow-minded the Muslims are. I am no custodian of the behavior and conduct of the Muslims, but I do have a bit of a sports and country background. In the country environment you can’t talk around things or beat about the bush.
That just doesn’t work. Country folks are usually direct and even blunt.
So, when you talk about Islam and Muslims, and you talk about Abraham in that context and claim Abraham to be our man, what the Muslims should have learnt a long time ago is, once they put out the Abraham card on the table, then you should be able to say to the folks at the other end of the table: Ok, what are you putting on the table in return?
I am giving you Abraham, God bless him, what are you giving me in return? I say “God bless him!” every time I mention his name. What honorific titles, for example, are you willing to confer on, let us say, my man, Muhammad, God bless him?
Allah bless the Muslims. They never got to that stage. Poor Muslims! They never got to the stage of picking the kind of leaders that will look their tormentors in the eye and make them blink.
But, you see, the greater tragedy is that Muslims are not in the business of picking their leaders. Many of them are still debating if elections are Halal or Haram? It is mostly those who lead them – dominate them, should I say? – who pick and co-opt them.
Like so many Muslims around the world, I too was born in a Muslim family. Allah bless them. And what a family it was. Allah gave them the best in this world and may he also give them the best in the next world.
But then I took a long walk and went round and round and finally ended up in Islam. I was driven and hounded by the realities of the world. And by my own thinking and measure of rationality and this persistent quest for knowledge and answers that God had placed in my bosom.
But ultimately, due to the Grace of God Almighty of course, I now know and realize, I ended up in Islam – deep and firm and fairly satisfied.
Alhamdulillah!
So I am a Muslim now. Not just because I have nowhere else to go but because God Almighty shows me everyday how absolutely brilliant and wonderful Islam really is.
The Prodigal never had a happier homecoming.
As a result, when I talk about Islam now, I am not just shooting breeze, I know exactly what I am talking about. And even though at every step I throw out the Pasha Challenge about this or that beautiful and spectacular teaching or tenet of Islam and say “Bring It On!” my tone is not triumphal or boastful but most humble and earnest.
But the point is this: We should be able to say to the world “We are not giving you anything till you give us something in return.”
How does that sound as a way of living? Isn’t it a fair exchange? This is reciprocity, as they call it.
I give you Abraham, God bless him, and nobody taught the Muslims how to make the most of that proposition. They should have asked, “What are you giving us reciprocally? What are you putting on the table in return?”
Therefore whether it was Abraham or it was God who called them Muslims, what matters is, the name Muslim didn’t grow on trees and it was not excavated in a cave.
And that makes a difference.
It came from the Qur’an which came from God Almighty, whether you believe it or not.
In that Qur’an, God Almighty said, Huwa sammaakumul Muslimeen - He it was who named you Muslims.
The world tied itself into knots trying to figure out what to do with the Muslims. But the answer is simple: They are Muslims and Islam is from God and it was he who called them Muslims.
Let us not forget the greetings from Paradise: Salaaman Salaamaa.
Don’t look for Trinidad on God’s beautiful earth but look for it on water. It is that little speck on God’s beautiful Atlantic Ocean, near the Venezuelan coast. That is Trinidad. And somewhere in the neighborhood is Tobago. Each one of them more wonderful than the other.
It is 9:00 A.M. in Trinidad and 8:00 A.M. in Miami, New York and Toronto. How does it feel in Trinidad and Tobago that America and Canada are trying to catch up with us as we are ahead of them? We are ahead of America and Canada and they are racing to catch up with us. Wow! And they will never be able to overtake us or even catch up with us. Not for all these months till the Daylight Saving Time changes.
World trying to catch up with Trinidad and Tobago is a wonderful feeling. And a wonderful feeling is what Islam is all about.
The more I know the more I seem to realize that I know absolutely nothing. That’s why this program is not a learned discourse about any particular topic. I am speaking about important things in my life and they continue to be important in my life. If there are parallels in your life, and I suspect there are, we must be able to connect.
Sometimes it took days, weeks, months, years, and sometimes even decades, to be able to resolve some things in my mind, but I was finally able to resolve some of them.
And it was God’s grace, nothing more, nothing less, that did it – that made it all happen.
And it is now by the grace of God Almighty that I want to sit around and talk about those things: about the breathtaking journey of my life and all the most amazing experiences along the way. Nursing all kinds of questions and searching for all kinds of answers.
That is what finally became Pasha Hour International. And it is a wonderful feeling.
You want to be around the camp fire. What a wonderful feeling it is. That is, if you have finally come to realize some of the following things:
I would say if somebody delivered that kind of a package to me, rang my doorbell and gave me that package as a gift – a Christmas gift, a Thanksgiving gift, a Divali gift, a Passover gift, a Hanukah gift, a Hajj gift, an Eidul Adha gift or an Eidul Fitr gift, I don’t care. A gift is a gift is a gift.
If you had that kind of package delivered to your front door, you would gladly open the door and then open the package. And if it had everything you ever wished for – all the food you ever wanted to eat and all the jewelry and clothes you always wanted to wear – what a wonderful feeling it would be to receive such a gift.
That is what Islam does to you and for you. It gives you the wonderful feeling of having received the most wonderful gift in your life.
The only thing which nobody can give you but only you can yourself is your belief – your Islam that is. No one can force Islam on you.
Not even God Almighty.
Not that God cannot or he is unable to, if he wanted to, but he has chosen not to push you in that direction. Even though you get the knowledge you need and you feel the pull or sense the push.
But then there is the drinking part once you get to the river – that will have to be done entirely by you. No matter what kind of a horse you are.
You can take the horse to water but you cannot force it to drink. Nor can you do the drinking for the horse. The horse will have to drink the water himself.
I keep thinking about these things all the time. Maybe I was born thinking. And how could it be different? Knowing the emphasis Allah places in the Qur’an on the importance and role of thinking in human life.
God Almighty says he created you. You believe that or you don’t believe that, that’s your business.
And he says in the Qur’an, Walaqad karamnaa bani Aadam: We have exalted and honored the off-spring of Adam. We have conferred on them great dignity.
That is what God says in the Qur’an. Whether you believe God did that or not, and whether or not God was not in the picture from the beginning or at any stage thereafter, that’s entirely your business.
No one can force or impose those kinds of beliefs on you. But nonetheless that is that is what the Qur’an says God did.
But then the fact remains that God Almighty created you and equipped you with the kind of things that he has. And he created the world for you the way he has, so that you can live in that world. And he did all this before you were even born.
Remember how Allah said in the Qur’an, Innee Jaa-ilun filardi khalifah, meaning, I shall place on this earth a representative?
His Khalifah, that is what God called us. That meant someone who will run the affairs of this earth the way he wants them to be run – with justice, honor, dignity for all; with freedom for everybody; and with opportunities not based on race, religion, creed or gender but based entirely on the striving and effort human beings would put forward.
That’s the way God wants us to run his world. That is why he created us and made us his representatives on earth.
That is what we call Islam.
Islam is not running around killing people in the name of God. Or in the name of anything or anyone else.
If someone does that, it is madness and perversity. Not Islam.
I know people who at one time ran around killing people in the name of “religion” and burning them and even raping women. I have read about them in books.
But they were not Muslim. They were something else. Ask me and I will tell you.
Whether you believe God Almighty created human beings or not, the fact still is that he conferred tremendous dignity upon you.
One of the most beautiful things that came through to me was God does not force you to believe that belief. He does not impose any particular belief upon you.
How could it be otherwise?
If there is a God; if he made this world; if he made you his favorite representative on earth; and if he wants you to run his affairs, what’s wrong with that?
God created the earth, then created human beings and placed them on earth and told them to go run the affairs of the world according to the laws, dictates and the wishes of God Almighty.
And that meant ensuring the dignity of every human being regardless of race, religion, creed, gender or this or that little territory on God’s earth where they might have been born or chosen to stay and ensuring opportunity to them all and providing them all the services which they need in order to survive.
What could be wrong with such a scenario? But could you forcefeed people that belief system? Islam came into this world to let you know that you cannot. That you should not.
Islam is all about choice. It is about the blessing of all the choices you have in your life.
That is the law of God. That’s the requirement from God. Give people choice and then leave it up to people to embrace the kind of belief they want, the kind of faith they choose to follow.
How could God have acted otherwise?
God Almighty is beautiful. He is the one in whom are all beautiful attributes find perfection.
As God said in the Qur’an: Walahul asmaaul husnaa.
Paraphrase: To God belong all beautiful names and attributes.
That’s why I tell people – Muslims and Non-Muslims alike – you have talked enough to Muslims, now talk to me. You want to know about Islam, sit down, let’s talk.
If you want to talk about God, let us sit down and talk about God.
For, God is most beautiful.
He is the one in whom all beautiful things inhere. They are all his by right. Then how can such a God force you to believe one thing as opposed to something else?
And if he does not do that himself, how can he make you an instrument of forcing that belief, of shoving that belief or what people call “religion” down the throats or spines of anybody on the face of the earth?
What kind of lunacy is that to think and believe like that?
God, therefore, cannot and does not force human beings to embrace one particular mode of thinking or believing as opposed to another.
Nor does he ask any human being to do that.
That is why I keep repeating that I didn’t learn democracy and freedom from propaganda brochures. I learnt it from my mother’s womb; it is in my mother’s genes. It courses through my veins and I saw it with my own eyes as a child first hand.
I saw how this world was created by God Almighty. That’s why it is useful to have a bit of country experience. If you want to learn how freedom is a part and parcel of life itself, you have to see a little chick break through the walls that surround it.
It breaks loose from the shell of the egg, beating, digging, pecking, finally rupturing and breaking it. And with one supreme effort it rolls over. Now the chick is free.
Life has found what rightfully belongs to it. Life has found freedom. All life is thus born free, as someone put it.
You want to know what freedom is? Now, that’s freedom for you, and I have seen it happen over and over again.
Allah bless my parents. God bless them. Allahu Akbar. How they provided me the opportunities to see first hand how Allah’s world works.
Part of my education included the kinds of gifts my parents made available to me – all kinds of animals and pets and other things.
So, if you are from an urban area you need to experience rural life a little bit: watching chicks hatching and observing lambs and cows giving birth.
Therefore, it became clear to me fairly early in life that life meant freedom. And life without freedom meant nothing.
American revolutionary Patrick Henry was not far off the mark when he said, Give me liberty or give me death. What a powerful cry of the human soul.
And the greatest freedom is the freedom to believe in what you want to believe. And that is why Islam is all about freedom.
So whether you want to believe something is from Allah, Subhaanahu wa-ta‘aalaa, or not, that is up to you.
You got a better deal somewhere else, go get it.
The last time I spoke about my journey towards the Qur’an, I mentioned the difficulties I encountered and how I finally fell in love with the Qur’an. And in that book – in the Qur’an I mean – I saw a passage which says, Laa ikraaha fiddeen.
Simple stuff, just four words. But when it comes to meaning, nothing can be more profound or earthshaking.
My paraphrase: No compulsion in Deen – want to call it “religion,” what can I say?
Allah bless the Muslims. Whatever the world tells them they believe it. They sometimes go to the lowest denominator people to be their leaders, spokespeople, representatives, mentors guides, comforters and consolers – and interpreters of their Deen.
Where is the surprise then if the darkness gets thicker and the troubles multiply and get compounded and their predicament gets worse?
Then the Muslims raise their hands and cry out: God Almighty, what hit us? Why are we feeling so miserable? Why is the world treating us in such an unfair and rotten way?
Poor Muslims!
They never opened their eyes. They never opened the doors of the cupboard or cabinet and pulled out the medicine the doctor had ordered for them. They never looked up the book that has all the answers.
They never went to the Qur’an.
The Qur’an, of course, being the book of God Almighty that came out, not only to Muslims, but to the entire creation as a solution to its problems. And as a guide and as a light.
So you read in that book, loud and clear: Laa ikraaha fiddeen.
Really two words – Ikraaha – coercion, force and Deen. The other two words, Laa means no and Fee means in.
So, Qur’an has separated coercion and belief for ever, and in just two words – or in four words if you count prepositions and all.
I know some people will sell their grandmothers for a price by going on air or writing in newspapers. Some of them might even call themselves “religious.”
Some of them claim to follow this religion or that religion. But what comes through is that many of them actually worship the dollar, the pound or the rupee. Basically all you have to do is just give them enough money and they will say anything you want them to say.
For a price they will sell anything, even their grandmothers.
That means truth is not of much value to them. Nor for that matter does God seem to matter much to them. For, God is truth.
If you are against truth then you are lying when you talk about being close to God. If you are a person dedicated to truth, then chances are you may some day come to God and then God and truth shall combine and reside jointly in your heart, because God is truth.
Then when you speak, you speak the truth and then there is no price the world can put on your soul. No amount of money can then make you lie through your teeth.
Your grandmother will no longer be for sale.
Then nothing in your life is for sale. Then the entire world together cannot come up with a price high enough to purchase one moment of bondage and servitude from you.
The world cannot enslave your mind or subjugate your soul because now you are a free person.
Didn’t someone somewhere say, way before our time, “Truth shall set you free”?
What I am saying now is nothing new. That is precisely what Jesus said, Moses said and Muhammad said – may God Almighty bless them all. Even though these great liberators of humanity came and went, Muslims and non-Muslims are still in bondage.
A great deal of bondage and mental slavery results from the fact that it is not truth that rules our lives. It is the opposite of truth. It is a panoply of lies.
We really don’t have truth readily available to us. So we are not free. And till we have truth, being free is just an empty dream. It is nothing but a slogan. It is another lie that our captors foist upon us.
Some of us are physically, socially, politically, morally and religiously enslaved. Some of us are prisoners and slaves of our own anger and prejudice, hate and contempt for others, and of our own sundry phobias and fears.
And we mount these mountains of propaganda to be able to rationalize some of our most perverted thinking. Just to make us feel for one fleeting moment that somehow we are right and good, while others are not.
The fact is that we are neither right, nor are we good, because somehow we have turned our backs on truth.
Islam, therefore, came to set humanity free from that kind of pathetic, disgusting predicament – from a life without truth.
Before Islam had spoken in Arabia, the Bible or any other book might have said: Adhere to truth and truth shall set you free. But the problem is that we turned away from the path of truth and allowed ourselves to become prey to a panorama of lies and propaganda.
Many of those who profess allegiance to the Bible, use up their God-given brain and intelligence figuring out ways to escape their responsibility and commitment to truth.
Islam came to teach people the truth, whether about God or about this world. Because that is part of the dignity that God conferred upon the people – their inalienable right to truth.
I am packaging a lot of things here in the form of answers that I give to all kinds of questions. Take them home, unwrap them, cut them open to see what’s inside and see if they make any sense at all.
If any of it makes sense then it is yours; if it doesn’t, then it is garbage, throw it out of the window. If anybody offers you a better, fairer, freer deal, embrace it; that person is your friend.
That is Islam for you in a nutshell.
If anybody hands you the nicest-looking package but it if filled with garbage inside, throw it away and stay away from such a person.
So there came a time when I read in the Qur’an these two words Ikraah and Deen together.
Laa ikraaha fiddeen – no coercion or compulsion in Deen – is what I read.
Ikraah is coercion, force and compulsion. You can even call it violence.
Now, Ikraah can take many different forms. There are several dimensions to it – physical, mental, spiritual.
And all the lies that are told and that are foisted upon you on a daily basis – and that are practiced – what do you think all that stuff is if not mental, psychological, physical and spiritual violence let lose upon you?
I learned from Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam, that there are people who not only tell lies, but who also practice them. People can not only speak a lie but they can also live a lie.
So Ikraah means coercion, compulsion, force, domination and subjugation. And it means taking control away from someone else. It means someone else taking control of your body, mind and spirit.
And you are beholden to that person. You are under the domination and under the thumb of that person.
You know how many different kinds of coercion can be practiced using language alone; using the various areas of communication techniques alone; and using the various forms of technology alone.
If we had the time, I could talk about some of them at some length and explain to you how they work.
The great human tragedy is that so many people take humanity for a ride and humanity goes along, often without a murmur of protest. So many people play con-games on us, a confidence tricks as they call it, and we let ourselves be sucked into that quagmire.
The world pushes us into the quicksand of lies and deception, but we never say, “Please Sir, Madam, stop! Please don’t do this to us!”
We spend our entire life and we are happy mouthing and repeating the clichés that are hammered into our brains by others – without one moment’s thought whether or not they make sense and whether or not they have a foundation in facts and reality.
A picture is not really worth a 1000 words, you know. Often a picture is not really worth anything other than the words that you can use to explain it.
So bring me your clichés and I will tell you what dark secrets they hide.
Give me the time and the opportunity. Be around and then pay attention and then analyze what we are talking about. Embrace what is right and what is good and reject what is wrong and what is nonsensical, naïve and foolish.
What could be wrong with that?
How beautiful is the saying of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam, which says that truth belongs to the believer – meaning anything that makes sense and is fact-based is the lost property of the believer.
Go get it wherever you can find it, says Prophet Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
The Hadith didn’t say Muslim. It used a broader expression “Believer.”
These are the teachings that come down from Prophet Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam, 1400 years ago. God bless him and all the other Prophets in any culture, in any society, wherever and whenever they may have come, till the time of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
There is no messenger or prophet after him.
That is part of the belief system that makes you a Muslim; or takes you out of the fold of Islam completely: There are no crypto or quasi or formal or informal or assistant or junior or also-ran divine prophets or messengers of any kind that came from God after Prophet Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
The whole process of prophethood ended with Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
Therefore a good word, a right statement – the truth – belongs to a believer. So, don’t sell yourself short.
If you are a believer, then demand truth and accept nothing less. Always insist on truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help us God, as they say.
That is Islam for you in a nutshell, as it were.
A picture is worth a 1000 words? What nonsense! Often it is a function of editing and cropping.
It is not the camera that sees. Some people might say the picture is a function of the camera or the lens, but I say it is a function of the eye and the brain behind the eye or of the finger that pulls the shutter.
That’s why we have the tripod, so your finger will not shake.
It is often the rapidity of the frames or the camera angle that make a difference.
And I am not even talking about the editing, developing and the processing part.
How clueless many of us are.
How violence can be perpetrated on our brain just by putting a picture in front of us or juxtaposing certain words in certain formations before us. If I had the time I will tell you all kinds of stories about these things.
And God Almighty in his book set us free by adding the word “Laa” before “Ikraaha” - No coercion. No compulsion. No violence is to be perpetrated by one human being on another.
How much clearer can it get?
The philosophers among you! The university professors among you, many suffering from a terminal educational condition, and all those who have caught the bug of thinking and rationality, go search and find another book, that is 1400 years old on this earth, and which comes out and makes a categorical statement like this, forbidding and outlawing all forms of violence and coercion the way the Qur’an does.
Go to the constitutions of the various countries of the world and see if you can find any statement like this – so broad, so categorical and so sweeping in its scope.
I am not saying there is no such book or constitution anywhere, all I am saying is I am not aware of its existence. If it does, Bring It On, as they say, and let us talk about it.
That is yet another Pasha Challenge for you.
The deeper I get into Islam the more things open up. In Trinidad, people celebrate Divali, the festival of lights. But the festival of lights is really us – the Muslims. We are the ones who should consider themselves the people of light.
Not the way Trinidadians or the local Hindus or Hindus in India celebrate it. We don’t worship Rama. We can’t, not because we don’t want to, or because we don’t like Ram or Lakshman or Sita or Hanuman, but because we just can’t.
We can’t, don’t and won’t worship another human being and we cannot accept the proposition that God came down into this world in the form of a human being.
That is where the line is drawn. We cannot cross the red line. That is what gives us our identity as Muslims and we cannot allow that identity to fade.
But light?
Allahu Akbar, that is us. Yes, light is us. Yes, festival of lights is us. Yes, triumph of light over darkness is us.
Ram’s, or Sri Rama’s, filial duty to and love for his parents, his respect and love for his brother and for his wife, and Sita’s love for her husband and her devotion to him, that’s us people. All that is us.
What’s wrong with any of that? That is Islam.
We don’t worship any of these individuals. We just can’t. But some of those principles, that is us.
Christmas, that’s us too. Not the madness that often goes with it. Not the booze on New Year’s Eve or the worship of the infant Jesus or his mother. Not Santa Claus or Father Christmas.
So many of us in Trinidad, we don’t even have a chimney for Santa Claus to come down from.
But if Christmas is a sober remembrance of the birth of a man called Jesus Christ, without a father, a miraculous virgin birth through a woman whom God blessed with a child just like God had created Adam without a father and a mother, then all of that stuff is us.
We believe in Jesus Christ and his virgin mother; we love and honor them both more than we love and honor our own parents or children; and we accept Jesus Christ as nothing less than a most exalted and beloved prophet of God.
If Jesus is our man so is Moses and so is also Abraham, and Noah, David and Solomon – God bless them all.
This is what we are offering the world. The question now is what are other people giving us in return? Christians, Jews, Hindus and Atheists, what are you giving us in exchange for what we are giving you?
I am giving you all this stuff.
What else can we give the Christians? What more has anyone else ever given them?
What are the Christians willing to give us Muslims in return? It is a fair question, don’t you think?
Are you, in return, willing to show some genuine respect to our Prophet Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam? That is a fair question don’t you think?
The American concept of Thanksgiving, turkey or no turkey, is the story of our life. Thanking God is our middle name. It is also our first and last name.
Alhamdu Lillah – Thank You, Almighty God; All Praise and Glory to God Almighty – is what we begin life with. That is what we end life with. That is the beginning and end of our life and of our every day and night and of our every activity on earth.
That’s what the Muslims do when they wake up in the morning. They say Alhamdu Lillah. Thank you God, Thank you!
If anyone else does that sort of thing as frequently and as routinely as the Muslims do it, then I want to see who those people are.
We would love to have company in thanking and praising God all the time – the way we Muslims do.
We thank God all the time. And we would like you to join us in thanking God all the time.
I hope you are paying attention. We at PASHA HOUR INTERNATIONAL are dedicated to saying nice things about whoever we can. About Hindus; about Christians; about America; about Divali; about Christmas; about Thanksgiving; about what have you.
Are you all going to say some nice things about us too – from now on maybe?
Islam is commerce. Let us make no mistake about that. Early Muslims were traders. Prophet Muhammad, Sallallaahu Alaihi wa Sallam, himself was a businessman.
And Islam is business.
I wish people will sign a contract with me for the next 10 to 50 years with the best facilities, arrangements, assistance, technological help and a research wing where I can sit down and talk to the whole world on the radio and television and over the Internet about the one or two little things that I know.
I could then hire all the good people who are helping us at present and double or triple their salaries. Maybe we will then be able to do a semblance of justice to some of the topics that we raise in our discussions on PASHA HOUR INTERNATIONAL: LIVE FROM AMERICA!
So, Bring It On! is what I say.
Let us have some of those facilities and resources and let us talk. This is a Pasha Challenge for you. I hope Muslims who listen to me will provide me those gadgets and facilities and so will the non-Muslims.
Because what we say here on PASHA HOUR INTERNATIONAL: LIVE FROM AMERICA! has relevance to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. It is useful to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. It is an investment well worth the investors, regardless of who they are.
So we are not against commerce. We are not anti-business. We cannot possibly be.
We are not against business. Business is in our bones. It is in our blood. We cut our teeth on business.
We are not even against Capitalism.
For, Islam is all about commerce. And it is about profit motive. And it is about free enterprise.
But Islam is free enterprise with fairness; with a heart; with a soul; with a conscience; and with strict accountability before man and God.
What could possibly be wrong with something like that?
So, capitalists of the world, don’t be alarmed when we talk about making things better for people in this world.
Take the cruelty and the greed out of Capitalism, and take out the heartlessness and ruthlessness out of free, competitive commercial enterprise, then you are us. You are knocking at the very heart of Islam.
So we are all for business. We are not against anybody.
You want me to tell you who we really are against? We are against the bad guys. We are against the Devil and his minions and progeny. No matter in what form or shape they come.
You Muslims are still a little bit clueless, messed up, don’t know what you are doing, aren’t doing what you should be doing, doing a lot of things you shouldn’t be doing, generally and widely disconnected from the Qur’an, but still you aren’t all that bad.
Don’t forget you are the Alhamdu-Lillah people. Maybe by thanking and praising God nonstop all the time you keep this world going. Maybe it is your non-top praising of the Lord that brings down rain from the heaven and makes earth yield its treasures.
Maybe it is your running tape of Alhamdu Lillah that heals the sick and feeds the hungry and helps the needy.
So, take heart Muslims, you are not half as bad as some people may say you are, even though you are nowhere near where you should be in terms of either your knowledge; or your belief; or your behavior; or your dedication to serving God’s creation.
We are on the side of anybody who was good then and is good now.
We wrote the bottom line on the question of violence and coercion and use of force in matters of belief and faith, not because we are that smart, but God himself put it in the Qur’an in his own words. And how simple and clear and definitive those words are: La ikraaha fiddeen.
No one dare introduce any violence in any matter that pertains to anyone’s belief or faith.
That means we can’t turn and twist the human mind one way or the other. All we can do is give human beings the information they need as truthfully and honestly as we can. That is all we can do.
That is called Haqq – full and clear truth; unvarnished truth; truth unmixed and untarnished with falsehood, spin and mendacity.
And then it is our job to allow human beings to make up their own mind. That is what Islam is. And that is what Islam came into this world to guarantee everyone.
If Muslims had known this, and if they had fully understood this, and if they had shared this with the rest of the world, what a beautiful world this would have been!
Wake up Muslims, start doing it at least now. It is never too late.
Muslims don’t practice elections, and when they do, they act as Muslims. They act the way they know how and the way they are.
If I have time I will explain to you why Muslims do what they do – the good and the beautiful as well as the bad and the ugly.
Look at the way Muslims perform the Hajj. One of my fondest and greatest dreams has been to put Hajj on television. Not in bits and pieces and 5-second flashes but all of it. All the hour after hour after hour of Hajj as its marvels and miracles unfold in real time.
That is the show that should be run twenty-four hours a day for a few weeks without end.
Will it bring in the kind of money like the present favorite shows? Will it beat hot topics like teen pregnancy, wayward heiresses, adult sexual perverts preying on defenseless minors in ratings, I don’t know. But it certainly is worth a try.
And where are all those billions upon billions of dollars – trillions of dollars – I am told Muslims have. Maybe some of that money could go into things like that.
Maybe Muslims can set up a permanent Hajj channel.
I am not trying to stop anybody from making an honest living. So, I am not trying to shut down any TV shows. All I am saying is this: Hajj should be seen by everyone around the world – in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Western Hemisphere and everywhere else.
The industry owes it to the world. And maybe so do the Muslims.
The Hajj is the greatest show – the single greatest spectacle – on earth. We all owe it to every man, woman and child on earth – to show them the Hajj. For, there is nothing like Hajj in this world.
People from all over the world go into this most amazing and mind-blowing routine in Makkah. And all we get to see is tiny little bits of it on television? It doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make sense from a purely professional point of view. It doesn’t make sense from a business point of view.
Are there some bad people in this world who are going to be uncomfortable at the spectacle of Hajj and wonder what would happen if the world comes to understand all that beauty that Islam really is? How Islam is a most beautiful thing and how Muslims aren’t all that bad after all, though they are pretty messed up in so many ways.
Sure, there will be. That is the nature of things. But we cannot let those fringe elements and extremists stop the world. We can’t let them stop humanity from going forward.
So, next time you see those rare few seconds of Hajj on your TV screen, pay attention. See how humanity goes into a blender of equality and comes out looking one.
See how the richest and the poorest men, each man wrapped in two white cotton sheets, and all those women, wearing what they want, they all do the same thing. Isn’t this the ultimate in democracy and freedom – in equality and choice?
Some Muslims don’t practice elections because we are so messed up but we do have the wherewithal. We do have the foundations in place.
We got the foundation for human equality and freedom in Hajj, and in Salaat that people call prayer, and in so many other things that Muslims do.
Look at men going around the Kaabah in two white cotton sheets and doing so for the past 1400 years.
All I am saying is this: It is worth something for a country fellow like me; it is worth something for Muslims in general; and it is worth something for the whole world, Muslim or non-Muslim.
So then, until next Saturday 9:00 A.M. Trinidad time – 8:00 A.M. Eastern Time; 6:30 P.M. Delhi Time – which is the new permanent home for PASHA HOUR INTERNATIONAL: LIVE FROM AMERICA! in an impermanent, intransient world, God bless.
END
© 2007 Syed Husain Pasha
Dr. Pasha is an educator and scholar of exceptional
talent, training and experience. He can be reached at DrSyedPasha [at]
AOL [dot] com or www.IslamicSolutions.com.