Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 10. March 2023
I normally start with a Qur’anic passage or verse, before dissecting a set of events and applying the Qur’anic revelation to the events analyzed. Recently, however, an event took place in Saudi Arabia that is profoundly telling on its own. It hardly needs any commentary for it to combust with all types of meanings and connotations. It is a very telling event that, in and of itself, calls upon us to engage in deep reflection about the state of Muslims and the moral situation in which we find...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 21. October 2022
I am always struck by the obligation that all of us, as Muslims, are keenly aware of. It is the duty to bear witness. At the same time, I am always struck by the testimony that comes from this podium, week after week. What is the role of witnessing? What is the function of witnessing amid counter movements that are so massive, so overwhelming that you fear that all lonely voices will be submerged and overcome? Yet, in the same way that God created human beings and coded in their physical makeup...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 30. September 2022
Embedded within my conscience, and what should be embedded in the conscience of every Muslim who takes his or her religion seriously, is God's refrain in Surah Al Imran: “...and that there might grow out of you a community [of people] who invite unto all that is good, and enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong: and it is they, they who shall attain to a happy state!” (Q 3:104). This is further underscored in the same surah: “You are indeed the best...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 24. June 2022
How easy it is for people to exist in moral confusion. Moral confusion often exists not so much because of incorrect thinking, but because we do not see what is right in front of us, presenting itself before our eyes; the human ability to distract itself so that it does not see the most obvious of points, the most clear of signs, and the most apparent of messages. Our entire age of consumption and commercialization, which is structured upon some trenchant, immoral truth that stares us in the...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 05. November 2021
It is not an exaggeration to say that the biggest challenge that confronts us collectively as Muslims can be summed up as a challenge of the formation of Muslim consciousness. Week after week, day in and day out, what we are actually struggling for is the shape and the content and the nature of Muslimconsciousness. As much as we believe in Islam as an objective truth in our hearts and in our intellects, what we do with this objective truth that we believe in is between us and God. But what we...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 13. August 2021
We begin another khutbah with the clarity that comes from illness. God grants human beings a sense of clarity when they are plagued by pain and forced to face the limitations and humility of their condition. Part of reflecting upon challenges is to go beyond yourself and think of how insignificant you are in relation to the universe that God created. If you are truthful with yourself, your own pains remind you of the pains of other human beings, and especially the pains of your ummah. Our ummah...