Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 19. November 2021
One of the very basic, and perhaps even theoretically undeniable moral precepts, is the equal value ascribed to human life. That at least at an abstract level, human beings are obliged to agree with what constitutes in religious traditions generally, often an article of faith, that God is the maker of human beings and that God made human life equal in sanctity to one another; that the sanctity of human life is undifferentiated and invariable. Often, especially in the modern age, this preset has...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 12. November 2021
The Supreme Court of the United States is obviously one of the most influential institutions in this country, if not in the entire world. Each year, the Supreme Court hears arguments in a select number of cases. Eventually, it decides upon the cases it has selected to hear and issues an opinion. The opinions of the Supreme Court influence and affect the way that all people in the United States get to build their lives. The Supreme Court, the third branch of government in the US, yields a...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 17. September 2021
God reminds us in Surah Al-Ra’d of a basic principle that is affirmed in different forms repeatedly throughout the Qur'an. After reminding us that nothing escapes God's knowledge and that nothing is beyond God's will, we find a very simple statement that holds the potential to have a truly transformative impact upon a human being: “Truly God alters not what is in a people until they alter what is in themselves” (Q13:11). In other words, God does not change a people until the people...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 07. May 2021
Amazingly, we are now in the last 10 days of Ramadan. Before we know it, this opportunity that only arrives once every year will come to a close. Only God knows who among us will be here for the next Ramadan, and, in fact, only God knows whether life on earth will be the same or will even exist next Ramadan. The nature of God's revelation is that we always have to act on the assumption that existence on earth is permanent, but at the same time, with the conviction that accountability is...
Friday Khutbahs (Sermons) · 19. February 2021
The Prophet, in so many of the lessons that he imparted to his ummah, taught a path of personal integrity, self-respect, dignity and honor; a way of existing in society that is aspirational in nature. It set as a moral objective a certain type of character and a certain type of ethical order that the individual must, as a Muslim, be endowed with and seek to fulfill. We witness one of these core lessons in the well-known hadith reported by Abu Sa'id al-Khudri. He heard the Prophet say, "Let no...