 We begin with the praises of Allah, the Lord of the worlds And we praise Allah and we seek his aid. We ask for his forgiveness and we ask for his protection Whomever Allah guides, none can misguide and whomever he misguides, none can guide And we bear witness that there is no God but Allah and he has no like And we bear witness that Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam literally the man of praise Is a slave and final messenger Praise be to Allah as well with who has brought us together on this day of Juma on this day of gathering and This day of gathering has a purpose. Its purpose is as a reminder and as a warning It's a reminder of that first gathering on Yom Al-Est on the day before our creation When we were all brought together in a world of souls and when Allah asked us Al-Estubir al-Bikum Am I not your Lord? And we all bore witness because we all witnessed and we said balaa indeed you are And so this is a reminder It is a recollection of that previous event and a warning that we will be brought together once again on Yom Al-Qiyamah to ask to ask to be asked Whether we remain faithful and honest to that first covenant But in this reminder of Yom Al-Est, there is another reminder as well that We were all brought together on that day as Allah says out of the loins of our father Adam, alaihi salam And so in this sense, we are all brothers and sisters really and truly in blood We share one father in Adam, alaihi salam and we share one mother in Hawa brother We share one one tradition one milla that's the milla Ibrahimia We share one prophet That is our beloved Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and this unity that we have this brotherhood that that we have that we are one family this Character trait is a virtue of the Muslims has lasted despite the fact that for 1400 years The Muslims have not all been been together and living together in one city Still the brotherhood remains and if you ask converse to Islam What's what's one of the one of the main things that draws them to Islam? What's one of the main things that surprises them about the Muslims after they convert is this unity is a sense of brotherhood that they can't find elsewhere This is one of Nafim X's great reflections when he made his pilgrimage to Mecca when he made his Hajj That there are so many people of different colors and races that he had never seen Living together before that he never seen in raking together before eating from from from the same plate Sitting on the same floor all one all before as he said the oneness of God made made for the oneness of man That we were all equal before our Lord But then this trace of unity That is one of the key versions that is one of the key virtues of Islam Allah says about it Hold fast to the rope of Allah and do not separate do not become disparate Now What does this mean what what is a rope? Well, what does it mean to call something the rope of Allah? Well a rope as we all know a rope is something that is lowered It's lowered to someone who's below So that the person who is below can hold on to the rope and be pulled up Like being saved And so a rope is something that's lowered and this is how the Quran is described the crime is a tanzin It tanzin is something that's lowered Allah revealed he lowered onto a slave Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam the book and The fundamental message of the Quran as we all know being Muslims is again to heed. It is the oneness of Allah And So what does Allah say after telling us about this at the psalm about this cleanness to the rope of Allah? He says do not separate Do not become divided amongst yourselves based on something other than this rope Do not become divided Amongst yourselves based on anything other than to heed Again if you go back to the example of Malcolm X What he saw was that racism was not dividing the Muslims because they hung together or they hung to to heed They hung together to the oneness of Allah This meant that whatever differences they had reduced to nothing because before the infinite Something is nothing while we do have racism in the Muslim Community we have other Fights and divisions that we find in the Muslim community we find things that do divide us we find things where this divine command of Well, I thought Raku is not being adhered to You find people who fight over being Sufi or Salafi in which is legitimate You find people fight over being Diabani or being Barylvi in which is the right one You find people who take as their identity that I am an Ashari and this overtakes their identity as a Muslim Or I am an Atheri or I am a Salafi and this overtakes who they are as a Muslim these Identities that we cling to sometimes Oftentimes it's not based off of a long study of Islam. It's not based off of Years of meticulous scholarship to find what is in fact the truth. No, it's just what would our parents teach us? What version of Islam did did we grow up with and? And so we then seek to impose this on others and so we separate There be there becomes division amongst the hearts based on things that are legitimate points of difference There are legitimate points of ehtilat between the scholars Voila to follow up who do not separate over these points Yes, there are boundaries to this religion that you cannot cross Yes, there are places where if you step over the line you have left the full of this of this religion We are not talking about those points of disagreement No, there are differences that are legitimate and some people can follow one way and another people and another person can follow Another way and still remain Muslim This is what ehtilaf is ehtilafu ummati rahma the prophet Sallallahu alayhi as-salam said in a hadith the difference differences in my community are a blessing they are a mercy If we look historically as well, we find that this lack of unity Becomes a cause of division. It was the reason for for Muslims being conquered as a civilization There are many of us here who have roots in the subcontinent And so we should ask ourselves, how did the British colonize India in a way that forced us to leave our homeland and come here? What happened? How did the British convince the Muslims to adopt new administrative systems to adopt foreign educational models? How do they they're able to take economic control initially, but how do they conquer the minds? How do they conquer the heart? Initially what we see in the history is that they tried to push reforms onto Muslims But but the Muslims directly opposed these and they did not work The British built schools and the students were forced to go to the schools, but they didn't learn they refused to learn Instead they went back home and learned the traditional Muslim curriculum at home So what happened after that the British learned they learned divide and conquer they Decided to take advantage of existing tensions Between different groups and Muslims and so they went to some scholarly groups and said we'll support you materially We'll support you financially against your rivals and So those groups became welcoming of the British and welcoming of all these foreign institutions that would undermine the Islam in the region and the rivals They started saying these are scholars for dollars. These are sellouts And so oh, they antagonist they took advantage of these antagonism. They antagonize the Muslims. They separated Muslims based on these divisions and so the areas where the British were supporting financially that These in these areas the British were legitimized as being a Legitimate political authorities and so they gained material strength in the other areas declined into irrelevance And you see this this sort of example throughout history divide and conquer They've been a Haldun the great scholar of the great Muslim historian His grand thesis in his book was that the ass of this type of group unity is The fundamental driving force behind the rise of civilizations and it's the dissolution of that unity That's the fundamental reason behind the dissolution of civilizations But what does he mean by also? What does he mean? By group unity. He means that everyone in the community Must be of one mind when it comes to customs when it comes to beliefs ethics and traditions And then he says something else. That's really interesting and this is really the point. I want to touch on He says the group unity is based on imitation of a great leader You need my mesis. You need imitation This great leader then is the standard for those customs that everyone Believes in he is the standard for those beliefs for those ethics and for those values As Allah says Verily surely you do have in the messenger of Allah a most beautiful exemplar in most beautiful standard And so we are asked to imitate him we're asked to imitate that initial group Do it that initial group of a muslims Man tashabbah becomin fahu wa minhum. Whoever imitates a people becomes amongst them and this is the true meaning of it tiba of Emulation of following the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. It's to imitate him Is to treat his Sunnah as the Hablullah as this rope of Allah because He sallallahu alayhi wa sallam his words are revelation his actions are Revelation and you could say they are like a tanzee or there's something that are brought down from Allah And so it's a rope. It is a rope of Allah And so this Sunnah then is the identity that we cling to it is the unity of the Muslims And it is the strength of the Muslims We began speaking a little bit about the oneness of Allah and Malcolm X's reflections from this Hajj that it's Because of the oneness of Allah because of Tahed that people that mankind that the Muslims can come together as one And so that oneness is reflected in the oneness of mankind This spiritual insights is something that Scholars have written about and specifically one scholar in particular Sheikh Muhammad al-Hashimi Who is one of the great 20th century masters of this tradition He explains in detail What's that step-by-step process? Where does unity come from and how is it tied back to Tahed? And he says that we begin by We begin as Muslims believing in Allah believing in the oneness of Allah and This oneness of Allah leads us to realize that because Allah is all-powerful and Power only belongs to him. It is his it is solely his attributes that we are then all week And that when Allah is all-knowing then in comparison we are entirely ignorant And that when Allah is on a high when he is the living and he lives without any support He lives without meeting anyone else then we are effectively dead because we can only live based on the support of another that is him and That when Allah is all-perfect when Allah is all-beautiful Then any evil and ugliness in the world to blame for it must go to ourselves and To our own imperfections and deficiencies and that when we try to claim Self-sufficiency for ourselves. Allah says no Self-sufficiency is mine. Yeah, you have nas and to move for a lot. Oh, God Oh, God will get me a lot more. Oh people. Oh mankind You are all desperately in need of Allah and Allah is without me if he's praiseworthy And so the state of the believer then when he realizes this opposition between the aabd and the rub Is the do I say me use it? I do not absolve myself of my wrongdoing Verily the self its nature is to command to evil and When we recognize the evil of ourselves when we recognize this we realize That we are in a horrific state and we need self-correction. We need self-rectification and To help us in our in our self-correctification. We need others We need families to remind us we need communities to help us help us fulfill our worldly needs We have time to think of our other worldly needs This is the Hikmah. This is the wisdom of Allah creating families and communities and So this then is the purpose and so this then leads to unity This then leads to unity when a person realizes he has needs his ego cannot survive When he realizes that he is all he is utterly without anything without power without life without knowledge He had he cannot have an ego anymore and So he needs others and so they all come together Everyone who needs each other comes together as one without any ego So be unified around the rope of Allah and do not divide Allah says in his no-go-scripture I think I saw shit for us in the back if you could please lead the Salah