Imam Warithudeenm Mohammed

What will protect us from the tendency to be taken off course by emotionalism or sentimental influences?  When we identify in this religion and the Qur'an in this religion, when we identify what is proper behavior for a Muslim and we insist that all Muslims – I don't care if he is a person who just walked in the door, or if he's the one who sells eggs to us, who brings our eggs to the home, or the one who runs the school, who teaches our children, or the Imam of the Masjid, or a Council member – I don't care who he is, we should insist that all of us conform to what is proper for a Muslim in terms of behavior.  And we should insist.  I say, we should insist.  Insist means that we should use our collective voice to bring down any one that's destroying or hurting the image of this community.  That's right.  So actually we don't have a philosophy.  Our guidance is the teaching of the Qur'an.  But if we would select certain principles of behavior – understand that behavior covers more than just how you move physically or how you move morally.  Behavior also covers how you think.  Muslims have their own way of thinking.  And if you are behaving wrongly it's because you are thinking wrongly most likely.  So we have to establish what is proper Muslim behavior and it should begin with a rational that holds for us the belief and outlooks of Muslims.  The belief and outlook of the Muslims.  Because this world is writing philosophies for us.  This world is establishing principles for us to believe in, ideas for us to believe in.  And then this world is establishing viewpoints for us.  They have established a way that we are to look at reality, ourselves and the external world.  But we can't buy that from the world.  We can't introduce the philosophy of the western society into our school, we won't be Muslims anymore.  I wonder if we understand that?  I don't believe that many of us, our teachers understand that because in Chicago I see un-Islamic teachers wearing Muslim names, and pretending to be Muslim teachers, and they are not at all Muslim teachers because Muslim principles are not established in them in the first place, and they don't have a Muslim outlook, they don't have a Muslim viewpoint.  They don't have a Muslim outlook on the world.  They don't have that.  So the heavy responsibility of the Muslim educators in this community is the responsibility to extract from the Qur'an, and from the life of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) the proper idea, the proper ideology, the proper way to look at the external world of reality, and the proper way to approach whatever you have to approach.  So this is no small job, this is a big job.  And the average one of us, we want something quick and easy.  This is nothing new, this is no new discovery.  God said that when He offered a great responsibility to the creatures, the angels, man rushed up, "I'll take this responsibility, I'll do it God, I'll watch over the universe for You."  04/9/1982

© 2015 Masjid Warithuddeen Mohammed
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