 In this age of ad hominem attacks against our holy prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa ala ala wa sallam, I'd like to address a few issues that are quite prevalent in a popular discourse. And these are things that we've heard as a Muslim ummah for hundreds and hundreds of years, but because of our context in the contemporary society, these things are sort of mentioned again with a renewed sense of fervor and satanic influence. One of the things I wanted to mention is this idea of questioning the sincerity of the holy prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. A lot of people are making the argument that he was motivated by wealth and power and things like that. Now the first systematic sort of refutation, if you will, of the risala of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was done by a man named John Damascene or John of Damascus. He lived in the 8th century in Syria. And then after him you have a period of monk scholars who are attacking the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam during the medieval period. For example, the abbot of Clooney, Peter, the so-called venerable, he said, and most of these are just out and out lies or things taken out of context. He said, for example, the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he died in the year 666, which is a total lie, right? But you were accustomed to hearing these types of things. And then you come into the period of the classical Orientalist. Most of these people are military officers. Many of them are ethnographers or Europeans who go into the Middle East and into the Orient and they write these books about Muslim society and so on and so forth. This was also the time when the first translation of the Quran from Arabic into English was done by a man named Alexander Ross. A translation that is very, very terrible. And then we come to the modern period, the period of the Neo-Orientalists. Of course, the Neo-Orientalists don't like to be called Neo-Orientalists because the term Orientalism is quite pejorative in its connotation, so they prefer the title Mid-East Expert, right? So these people are quite disingenuous in the way they do hermeneutics of Muslim sources. They pick and choose. They ascribe the most evil of intentions to the holy prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And of course it's quite lucrative. Some of these people have made millions and millions of dollars since 2001 defaming and denigrating and assassinating the character of the holy prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So I just want to speak to this one in particular. Then we'll go to different issues as well. This issue of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam motivated by wealth, status and or power. So this hadith of Ahmad Abu Ya'ala al-Bazaar, which indicates that an angel descended to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and asked him, would you like to be a king prophet or a servant prophet? And he said sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, I would rather be a servant prophet. And the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he lived in a state, he lived in a self-imposed state of poverty. This is how we chose to live sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Of course we know in the Meccan period when the Quraish came to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and offered him all of these ephemeral things, gold and wealth and silver and leadership and kingdom and all of these things. And if he was in this for that reason then this would have been the perfect opportunity to seize upon it. But the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he says, He says, even if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left hand, which is impossible but he's using a hyperpolyic example, even if they give me everything, the heavens and the earth, if it was in their ability, I would never abandon this mission until Allah SWT, He makes it victorious or I'm destroyed in the process. He's willing to give his life and limb for this message, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We were told during the Medinan period that three months would go by. This hadith mentioned in the Shama'il An-Nabawiyah by Imam Abu Isa Tirmidi and many other sources that three months would go by when fire was not seen coming from his house, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, which means they weren't cooking any meals for three months and the Sahaba, they went to our mother, Aisha, radiAllah ta'ala anha and they said to her, What are you subsisting on? And she said, Al-Aswadain, dates in water, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam subsisted months on end on dates in water, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He used to tie rocks around his stomach to stave off hunger pains. This happened on two occasions when there was the Muqata'a, there was the boycott or sanctions on the Bani Hashim imposed by the Quraish and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, This is from the sifat of the Dajjal. The Dajjal, if you don't agree with his policy, you're not going to eat. Very, very interesting hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. This was one occasion. The other occasion was during the Khandak, Ghazbat Khandak, when they were digging the trench around the city because 10,000 Confederates were about to attack the city of Medina to Munawwara, the city of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And the hadith of Abu Talha, which is also mentioned in the Shama'il and Nabawiyah of Abu Isa Tirmidhi, r.a. He says, He says, He says, We complain to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam because of hunger. And we showed him that each one of us had a stone tied around our stomachs. And we showed him that each one of us had a stone tied around our stomachs. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he lifted up his shirt and we saw he had two rocks, two stones tied to his stomach sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Some of the muhadithin say this narration is weak, it's da'if, because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam used to fast days on end. And when Sahaba tried to emulate this practice, he said, Don't do that. My constitution is different than yours. My Lord gives me to eat and drink in the night. So you shouldn't do that. But other ulama say, No, the hadith is strong. But the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam simply chose not to eat or drink out of solidarity, out of empathy for his ummah. They mention a beautiful parable. They say, Imagine a mother who knows she has starving children in her house and she's out searching for food. And she finds some food. Can she eat the food? Knowing her children are starving back at home? Can she eat it? Of course she can't eat it. This is the state of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam who's like a father figure to us. The verse says, There's a reading that is shadda, that is unreliable in the Mus'haf of Ibn Mas'ud. But it has a strength of a hadith that says, He is their father. And his wives are their mothers. He is like a father to us sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So while he is given to eat and drink from Allah swt, he could not do it out of love for the ummah. Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam. Imam An-Nawawi relates a hadith in the Riyadh of the Salihin that once the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam led the Sahaba in Salat al-Asr. And immediately after the prayer he got up and left the masjid very quickly. He went to his house very quickly. And the Sahaba asked him, why did you leave so quickly? He said, There was a dirham, one dirham in my house that was bothering me. There was a silver coin in my house that was bothering me. And I had to go quickly and give it, he kept no money in his house. Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam. Does this sound like a man who is motivated by wealth and power? Astaghfirullah. He fed at least 70 people. Fed them, clothed them, give them shelter in the masjid at least 70 people inside the masjid for over 10 years in the masjid. And if you do the math, this comes out to over one million meals that he gave to these people. One million meals. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Yet he's tying two rocks around his own stomach. Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam. Ibn Mas'ud, he mentions a hadith in Tirmidhi ibn Maja. He says, That the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam he used to sleep on a strong mat. And then he says, And then he stood up and we saw that on his body were the markings of the mat. There's another hadith, this similar hadith related by Sayyidina Umar where the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he saw the markings on the jasad, a Sharif of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and Sayyidina Umar began to weep and he began to weep. And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam looked at him and smiled and said, Don't you know these things are for the people of dunya? Because he said, You know Kisra and Kaisar, you know the king of Persia and the Roman emperor, they have these lavish bedrooms. He said, Those are the people of dunya. Those are the people of dunya. Who is saying this? The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He's the one saying this. The best of creation. Khayr al-Khalqillah lived in these types of conditions. We should take this to heart. We should think about this. So this is one of the issues I wanted to raise. Another thing I wanted to talk about switching gears is this issue of women's rights. This is very quickly. I'm touching on a lot of topics here. But the Christian right, especially these neocon ideologues, they mention a lot of things about Islam with relation to women. I want to mention a few things by comparison with not a lot of commentary because we don't have a lot of time. But Islam gave women the right to vote and inherit and own property and businesses, initiate divorces, choose and refuse husbands, equal status with men in the eyes of Allah SWT. So many of these practices like FGM, mutilation of women and things like that, honor killings, preventing women to be educated. These things are cultural practices that have nothing to do with the Islamic tradition. These are things that are perpetrated by Muslims in Muslim majority societies. There was a brother one time who was in a habit of beating his wife and kids, not in this community. And we approached the brother and we said, why are you doing this? He said, that's part of my culture. That's how I was raised. My father did it to us. So I said, you know, brother, this part of your culture is complete garbage. We have to be frank with people. If it contradicts the religion, he didn't beat the Prophet SAW with anything and cut. The Prophet SAW did not strike anything with his hand, SAW, except if he was engaged in Jihad in SAW, neither a woman, nor a man, nor a son, did not strike a woman, not one time, nor a child, nor a servant, SAW. So we have to make these things clear to people. The Prophet SAW, he says in the final pilgrimage, Hajjatul Wada'a, and you can imagine one of his central themes of his final pilgrimage sermon, because he knows there's hundreds of thousands of people there. And this is what's going to be remembered and transmitted. The last words of a person are what's going to be transmitted. One of the central themes of the farewell pilgrimage sermon, the khutbah, was women. And he said, treat women well. Treat women well. SAW. He said, there are three things from the dunya, three things from the world that I like. A good smell, the prayer and women. And he's not talking about anything, licentious, or anything like that, like the Orientalists have said. He's talking about the feminine qualities that he himself, SAW, he embodies, these Jamali qualities. When the father of Zaid ibn Haritha came to claim him, Zaid who is the indentured servant, slave, whatever you want to call him, the adopted son of the Prophet SAW, he wanted to stay with the Prophet SAW. So the father of Zaid said, you choose slavery over freedom, I'm your father. I'm your father. And Zaid said, he is my father and my mother about the Prophet SAW, because he was nurturing, because he did not raise his voice. It is part of the mercy of Allah SWT that you have lean, that you have gentleness, SAW. He has rifq, he has gentleness, SAW. He has these feminine qualities. He has mercy. He is mercy. Rahmatan is a feminine noun. He is mercy. Allah SWT didn't say wa ma'a rasannaki illa an tarham al-alameen or something like that. He didn't say, I have not raised you except that you might show mercy and use a fi'il, use a verb. He says, you are mercy. You are rahmatan. Thatuhu rahma. His very essence is rahma. SAW. So this is very interesting. Because if we read the Tawrah, for example, the book of Genesis, the book of Bari Sheeth Chapter 3, the fall of man is very clearly blamed on the woman. It's very, very clear. So what does it say? When Adam is confronted by God, this is what he says to God in the Hebrew language. He says, This is because of the woman that you gave me. Right? This is because of the woman, and there's an emphasis on you. Atta. Anta. This is because of you. He's actually blaming God. This is the narrative in the Tawrah. It's very interesting. And then God goes to the woman and says, What did you do? What did you do? So then God punishes the woman with painful childbirth. And then he punishes the man. Why? He says, The lesson? Don't listen to your wife. According to the Tawrah. This is not the Quran. This is the book of Genesis. This is in the Tawrah. The book of Bari Sheeth. Because you heated the voice of your wife, cursed is the ground for your sake. Very interesting. What does the Quran say? That shaitan, this is an object pronoun. Right? It's dual. That shaitan, he deluded both of them. Both of them. Not one of them. Both of them. And they made Tawbah. When they made Tawbah, they made it in the plural. Rabbana. La lamna. Anfusana. La nakunana. This is in the plural. Both of them are making this Tawbah. And of course, we don't believe that Adam, because he's a prophet, willfully disobeyed Allah SWT. This is impossible for a prophet. The prophets are ma'asum. They're incapable of consciously disobeying Allah SWT. They were tricked. They were deceived. They were made to forget by the shaitan. That's how we understand the story. I want to quote something interesting. This is from Tertelian of Carthage. A second century Christian polemicist and heresiologist. This is what he says in his commentary on Genesis. He says, you, speaking to women directly, you are the devil's gateway. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him, Adam, whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your dessert, that is death, even the son of God had to die. Astaghfirullah. In other words, women are guilty of deicide. Do you understand? Deicide? God had to die because of women. This is a exegesis of a pre-Nicene major Christian scholar looking at Genesis chapter 3. Very, very interesting. There's other things we can talk about as well. But we're running short on time. It's a little too graphic. We'll look in the New Testament though, because that's Old Testament. Let's look in the Christian scriptures because Christians believe in the Old Testament, but everything's been abrogated. The Ahkam, all of the Ahkam in the Old Testament is Mansukh, according to Christian theology. So 1 Timothy chapter 2, this is Paul writing now. He says, A woman must learn in silence in an all-subjugation. She cannot teach men. It's a usurpation of authority for Adam was made before Eve. Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in transgression. Very interesting. Women cannot teach men anything. Of course, in our tradition, one of the foundations of the Dean of Islam, especially Ahlul Sunnah and Jama'ah, is on mother Aisha, radiAllahu ta'ala anha, who's one of the six Sahaba who related over 1,000 hadith. Our Dean is built upon her. RadiAllahu ta'ala anha. She's one of the seven Muftis. There are seven Muftis at the time of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Who gave fatwa, the only seven of them, not all of them. There were seven Muftis, six men and one woman. And she used to give fatwa behind the hijab to male Sahaba that are twice her age. RadiAllahu ta'ala anha. This was an amazing intellect. And then Paul says, this is the Greek. He says, Very interesting. Not translated well in the vast majority of English translations. He says she can become saved. She can go to heaven if she bears children. According to Paul, how does a woman go to paradise? You stay silent and pregnant. First Corinthians, chapter 11. The head of the woman is the man. The woman was created for the man. She must cover her head in church. If not, it should be shaved. Speaking in church is shameful. I'll tell you an interesting true story. I was in a church one time called St. Paul Methodist Church. And I was on stage with the pastor. And we were talking about prophecy, Old Testament prophecy. I think it was something Deuteronomy 18 or something. Is it the prophecy, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam? We're having a very congenial, friendly, academic debate. This woman in the back stands up and starts shouting at me. Shouting in the back of the church. And this is interesting because she's interrupting the entire event. And so she was shouting out at the top of her lungs. And I couldn't really make out what she was saying. When she had finished, I said, Do you know what the namesake of this church is? What is the namesake of this church? She says, St. Paul. And I found out later she was actually a physician. This is a highly educated woman. St. Paul Methodist. I said, Do you know what Paul says? What does Paul say? What you just did is shameful. You need to sit down. And if we catch you praying without your head covered, I'm going to order one of the presbyters to come shave your head. Because we're following St. Paul. That's what Paul says to do. And she was saying something. All I heard was the name of the prophecy a few times. And thank God I didn't hear what she was saying. Very, very interesting. The last thing I wanted to talk about, I know I'm kind of jumping all over the place here, but this is something to think about. Something that is important for Muslims to understand is this myth that America was founded as a Christian nation. I want to talk about this for a minute. This is a statement that is perpetuated primarily by the Christian right. And because it implies that non-Christians in America are not quite as American as Christian Americans. That's why they perpetuate it. That if you're non-Christian in America, you're not quite as American as a Christian American. So here's a fact. The fact is this country was founded upon the principle of separation of church and state. This is one of the founding principles of the country. One of the primary intentions of the founding fathers was to avoid what had happened in England. What was happening in England? King George, the Anglican church, ruled everything. There was massive, massive oppression of enlightened thinkers. They weren't allowed to express their opinions. You have a monarchy. So the founding fathers said, no monarchy, democracy. No church and government, separation of church and state. This is one of the founding principles of this country is to be the antithesis. The antithesis of what happened in Christendom. Of what happened in Christian Europe. To be the opposite of that. A founding principle. Sir Isaac Newton, who was a, you asked an atheist, who were the greatest scientists to ever live. They'll say Newton and Einstein. Both of them believed in God and were Unitarians, by the way. Believers in God and Unitarians. Sir Isaac Newton, he, history says he was a devout Christian. But in the 1920s, they found his personal journals. And he said that he completely rejected, repudiated the Trinity. But he couldn't voice this in 18th century England. Do you know why? Because there's no separation of church and state. And this is apostasy, which means that he's going to be killed for this belief. He would be killed. So he kept his, he was practicing taqiyah. He started to practice taqiyah. Because he was afraid of the Christian imperial powers. The monarchy. Very, very interesting. Here's another fact. During the colonial period in this country, only 15% of white people in this country, 1515, identified with a certain church. The vast, vast majority of them were deists. What does deist mean? A deist in the spirit of Plato and Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, is someone who believes in an architect of the universe, but that the creator of the universe, but that this creator does not have any personal relationship with his creation. He doesn't reveal scripture. He doesn't send messiahs. He doesn't send prophets. He has no relationship with his creation. This is deism. And it's really an outgrowth of the 18th century Enlightenment movement as a reaction against Christianity, specifically against Christianity. This is just a fact. They were anti-incarnation. They were anti-Trinitarian. They were anti-Vicarious atonement. Their theology was based on reason. So I don't know what these people are talking about when they say America was founded by a Christian nation. Here's another fact for you. None of the first six presidents of the United States was an Orthodox Christian. None of the first six presidents of the United States was an Orthodox Christian. You look at some of them. George Washington was a deist. He rejected the deity of Christ. He would not take Holy Communion. John Adams was a Unitarian. He did not believe in the Trinity, the deity of Christ, original sin, or vicarious atonement. Jefferson was a deist and a Unitarian, anti-Trinitarian. He once wrote a letter to Timothy Pickering on his cabinet complaining about the incomprehensible jargon of Trinitarian arithmetic. Those are his words. He was anti-Pauline. He said, Paul corrupted Christianity. He said, and I don't agree with this statement. I'm just giving you the facts. He said Christianity is the most perverted system ever shown on man. That's his words, not my words. I don't agree with it. I'm telling you what Thomas Jefferson said. Thomas Jefferson, who's on the $20 bill. No, the $2 bill, right? This was his belief about America, about Christianity. I certainly don't agree with it. But to those who say this country was founded as a Christian nation, implying that non-Christians in this country are somewhat less American than Christians is a total farce. We shouldn't buy into that. Thomas Paine in 1776, he wrote Common Sense, which paved the way for the Declaration of Independence. He says something similar to Thomas Jefferson. I don't have time to go into it. The US Constitution has no reference to God nor Jesus Christ. The US Constitution, when the founding documents of this country was transcribed or written upon the principle of separation of church and state. Article 6, Section 3. No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. So while God nor Jesus Christ peace be upon him are mentioned in the Constitution, religion is mentioned twice. That's one. And then the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of any type of religion. Declaration of Independence, three references to the deity. And in personal abstract, deist God, not the Christian God. He's called nature's God. He says we're endowed by our creator. He's called the supreme judge of the world. And finally, the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797. You can look up this stuff. You can check Sheikh Wikia for the meantime, but don't trust it too much. Sheikh Wikipedia, right? But be careful about that. But look this up. There's good information. The Treaty of Tripoli in 1797. This is very interesting. Signed into law by President John Adams in 1797. I'm sorry, 1797. June 10th, 1797. This is what it says in Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli. As the government of the US of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian nation as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslim men. Who are Muslim men? These are Muslim men. And as the said states never entered into any way or act of hostility against the Muhammadan nation, that's the Muslim Ummah, is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two nations. How far we have fallen from the words of the Founding Fathers. These are just things to kind of think about. Insha'Allah to Allah. We're out of time though. I'll say this and ask forgiveness from Allah. I ask forgiveness from Allah. He is the Most Forgiving, Merciful. Tubu ila Allah. Yatawab tuba anina.