 We have among the recensions or the versions of the story of the Isra and the Mi'raj, one story, one recension of this epic monumental event, the Prophet ﷺ, after entering the direct presence of his Lord is descending the heavens and he encounters Musa ﷺ and Musa asked him about what he received from Allah and he explained that he had received the prayer but that the prayers were initially 50 in number that Muslims were responsible for completing 50 prayers every day and Musa ﷺ told the Prophet ﷺ to go back to Allah to request a reduction because 50 prayers a day would be far too many for the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ to manage and so the Prophet ﷺ went back to Allah and that number was reduced to 25 and Musa ﷺ said the same thing go back 25 is too many the number was reduced to 10 and then finally the number was reduced to five and they say that it was from the Hayat from the extreme modesty the ih-tisham of the Prophet ﷺ that he could not bring himself to go back to Allah to request a further reduction but at that point Allah revealed to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ that the number of the prayers that your Ummah is responsible for completing every day will remain five but if they complete those five prayers on time and with Khushua with reverence I will give them the reward of 50 and at this Sayyidina Musa ﷺ said I wish that I could return to be among the living so that I could be from your community ﷺ so this blessing that we enjoy being from the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ this is an extreme privilege of ours this is an expression of God's great favor this is something prophets and messengers Musa ﷺ was from those possessors of great resolution they wanted this blessing and it's one that we get to experience on a daily basis now the Prophet ﷺ speaking about himself in relation to the Nba who came before him he said that he was given five khusais he was given five special characteristics these are the things that make his Risala his mission distinct among the missions of all of the prophets and the messengers he said first that the entire earth has been made a place of prayer for him ﷺ then he mentioned that if followers of his Ummah are unable to find water with which to purify themselves for prayer they can use the earth then he mentioned the that the spoils of war had been made permissible for him the spoils of war were not permissible for prophets before him then he mentioned the intercession that the Prophet ﷺ had been given the right of intercession no prophet before him had been given that right and then he mentioned and this is the topic for today's khutba that every prophet before him was sent specifically to his nation when you read the Quran Allah talks about the ad he talks about the mood he says Jesus himself even in the gospel says I was only sent to reclaim the last sheep of the house of Israel the house of Israel but the Prophet ﷺ he was commanded to say I am the messenger of God unto all of you so the diversity that we see in our community is a part of what makes the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ distinct and we have to recognize this not only as a gift that God has given us but a great responsibility how will we manage this diversity how will we treat it we can treat it in a way that accentuates it highlights it we can benefit from its blessing or we can treat it in a way that takes it for granted or worse yet destroys it if you look at our community in our diversity in the nations that we represent the ethnicities that we represent the cultures that we represent the social economic classes that we represent maybe the ummah of Muhammad ﷺ has never seen a community as diverse as ours and as one sister said to me who works in a diversity and inclusion space diversity is just a euphemism for conflict whenever people have different histories different backgrounds different perspectives you can expect for there to be conflict but this is nothing new to our community even among the Sahaba may God be pleased with all of them there was some conflict there was some difficulty what makes them distinct in their virtue was not an absence of conflict but how they dealt with that conflict there's one story some people question is authenticity but my my review of the story and it's in the serial of the Prophet ﷺ suggests that this story is completely authentic that Bilal Ibn Rabah was in some kind of contentious exchange with Abudar Al-Ghifari with Abudar and in a fit of anger Abudar said to him ya Ibn As-Saudat you son of a black woman and if you look at Ijaluni's book al-i-saba fitameezah sahaba you see all of these very vivid descriptions of the companions of the Prophet ﷺ you learn that Abudar himself was gamik he was dark skinned himself so his his referencing Bilal's complexion might have been a reference to his former condition of enslavement you're the son of a slave woman how dare you speak to me like that and Bilal went to the Prophet ﷺ and said this man engaged in ta'anun fil ajdad he disrespected me and he disrespected my forefathers in this criticism he made of me publicly the Prophet ﷺ and this is something typical of his sunnah he did not say to Bilal be patient he did not say these are bad habits and perhaps they will die slowly he said tell Abudar that I want to speak to him and when Abudar arrived to the presence of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ he said I notice that you are a man that still has some of the traces of jahiliya in you how dare you disrespect in other words how dare you disrespect this man your brother and his mother on account either of his complexion or his former condition of enslavement and Abudar upon hearing this was so broken what makes them distinct from every other generation is they wanted kamalul iman they wanted a complete faith when Allah ﷺ said enter into Islam completely they wanted that they desired that they pursued that so hearing the Prophet tell him and of course it's very important to note this among the sahaba abudar was known for being a zahid he was known for his abstinence in the dunya he was known for being an abid he was known for being very intense in his worship and in spite of that because of his attitude toward Bilal the Prophet ﷺ informed him that his Islam had yet to be completed and abudar went back to Bilal and sought his forgiveness but he did not stop at simply apologizing he said to him Bilal I'm going to get on the ground and I am not going to get up until you take your foot and place it upon my head just to you know symbolize the atonement that I'm seeking in this moment and Bilal in his graciousness he said this is not necessary you apologized and that is enough for me but then abudar swore I'm not getting up from this place until you put your foot on my head and in the story Bilal just took his foot and lightly grazed the head of abudar and there is no indication in our sources that they had any issue after that why am I mentioning this because this is how good people this is how people who desire virtue atonement for past mistakes the hero of this story is really abudar because he recognized that he did something wrong he sought forgiveness for that wrong action and Bilal granted him that we are a divided community our community has many divisions some people separate our community by immigrant and indigenous some people by country of origin some people by social economic status we actually cannot afford any of this Allah says in the Qur'an this is an ayah all of us are familiar with it's on the the the program booklet of every conference we attend oh humanity we created you from one male and one female and we spread you intentionally into nations in tribes for the purpose of ta'aruf of getting to know one another the diversity in creation and that diversity being reflected in our community is a sign of God it's intentional we are not supposed to be limited to that which which which we are familiar we're supposed to have a healthy curiosity about people that are different than us and it should increase us in devotion it shouldn't increase us in narrow mindedness the most noble of you in the sight of God are those in possession of the greatest God consciousness and Allah is knowledgeable and informed about our differences one poet and i realized that i'm from chicago this analogy it probably resonates better in chicago than in the bay area but one poet said referencing diversity it is better to learn to appreciate the change in seasons than to fall hopelessly in love with summer you see difference this is God's step in creation learn to appreciate difference right once a man came into the message of the prophet withdrew to a corner and urinated and the prophet were moving to accost the man the prophet said no let him finish let him finish after the man finished the prophet looked at the magnanimity of his prophetic character he didn't even jump to a conclusion he didn't say why would you desecrate our sacred space he said what would compel you right literally what carried you to urinate in the mosque and the man said i didn't know that you couldn't urinate in the mosque right he was from the from the from the yeah i need from the bedouin right i didn't know that you couldn't urinate in the mosque the prophet alaisa wassalaam explained to him that this is the masjid it's a place of purity we use it for prayer we use it for remembrance it is not suitable to be used to relieve qadha al haja to relieve ourselves and then the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam called for a sigulum from the water a pail of water and he began to clean this man's urine with his own blessed hand sallallahu alaihi wa sallam christians boast often about a story in the gospel of Jesus cleaning the feet of his disciples and i said the prophet alaisa wassalaam cleaned the urine of one of his sahaba la ilaha ilallah then he said to the man no the man upon seeing this he turned to Allah and he said oh Allah forgive me have mercy on me have mercy on muhammad seeing this act of prophetic generosity then he turned to all of the other companions who he knew wanted to hurt him and he said but don't forgive anybody else don't forgive anybody else the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam looked to him and said luck had had jarat as shea an wassia truly you have made a vast thing constricted the mercy of God and you restrict that to just me and you i think that every person engaged in some self-serving other obliterating ideology philosophy world view is guilty of the same thing luck had had jarat as shea an wassia do you restrict dignity and respect for people of your ethnicity people of your social economic class people of your level of professional standing people of your geographic location people of your national uh you know wherever your citizenship is based why do be laugh luck had had jarat as shea an wassia you are restricting something that is vast God's creation is vast our appreciation for its vastness should be similarly vast you know i did my islamic training at al azhar university and i lived in kairu for about five years and one of the most difficult things about my time in kairu was finding a place to get my hair cut you're probably looking at my hair or lack thereof thinking anybody can do that but i'm still quite particular about the way it's done i'm mostly particular about how hygienic the barber is in his practice is he cleaning the clippers is he changing the razor blades etc so one day i walked into this barber shop and i'm observing this barber and i can tell he was really good you know he's changing the blades he's disinfecting the clippers and i knew that i wanted him to shave my hair so i started trying to disguise my heavily inflected classical arabic right because that's the the medium of instruction at al azhar with egyptian aamea which i can i can get around an aamea and i tried my best but after about two minutes he looked at me and said enter menfane where are you from and i said to myself well price of this haircut just increased so i said to him in completely classical arabic i said come in which means you guess you guess where i'm from he said i know where you're from i said you do where he said senegal i said he said enter senegal you're senegalese i said no i'm not from senegal i said yeah i'm a sheikh i'm from somewhere west of senegal he looked at me and said there's something west of senegal right and then i said and i'm in america i'm from america and he said america chicabica right and then he got really serious and he said if you're from america i have a very important question for you he said obama muslim is he muslim or not and i said obama is a christian man he said well i can listen with hussein his name is hussein there's no such thing as a christian with the name hussein and i thought to myself you're definitely not ready for african-american communities we have malix and maliks and jabars and jabaris not practicing islam he said how did he get that name i said i believe his father was born into a muslim family in kenya but even his father after some time at university his father became a communist and then his father became an atheist and he looked at me and said ish mullahed he said mullahed atheist what is an atheist this man had never heard the term mullahed and i explained to him as best i could in my classical eric what an atheist was and he looked at me and he said are there really people like that in ladonya are there really people like that that don't believe in any metaphysical dimension to life i said there are really people like that right and then he said to me what do they do when a baby is born how do they get married what i add what holidays do they celebrate he could not imagine life without the social cohesion given to life by religious practice then i said like this was like a thing he started looking around and then he said subhanallah in a very loud voice subhanallah ruby ahsen al khalin king he said my lord is the best of creators and i thought that's a strange pivot what caused you to say that he said if the law subhanahu wa ta'ala can create people and sustain them and bless them with provision and sustenance and they don't even believe in him my lord must be all mean and i said subhanallah this simple seemingly uneducated egyptian man with just a basic quranic view of the world could encounter something radically unlike anything he knew for which he had no analog in his frame of reference and he could appreciate that as a source of god's diversity in his creative power that is sophistication we live in a community that is heterogeneous it's diverse and we don't have and we're not and we're just talking about muslims and we don't have that man's level of appreciation for god's intentional variance in his creation may god give us that quranic worldview may god help us to see that our diversity is a source of our strength may god help us to end this silly segregation that goes on in our masajid and in our communities in the all upon him. Yes, the jiblakum will respond to you. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Ya Rabb al Alameen, we come before you on this blessed day of Juma'a. Begging for your mercy, Ya Rabb al Alameen. Ya Rabb al Alameen, we know that we might be the least deserving of your mercy, but we know that we're also most in need of it, Ya Rabb al Alameen. Ya Rabb al Alameen, you have given yourself the name el-Aafu. You are the partner and you love Afu. Ya Rabb al Alameen, wa afu anna, Ya Rabb al Alameen. Ya Rabb al Alameen, if there's any member of our congregation dealing with sickness or infirmity, we ask that you restore their health, Ya Rabb al Alameen. If there's any member of our congregation dealing with depression or sadness, we ask that you allow them to taste felicity in your remembrance, Ya Rabb al Alameen. If there's any member of our congregation dealing with debt or financial insecurity, we ask that you enrich him or her, Ya Rabb al Alameen. Ya Rabb al Alameen, we pray from the depths of our hearts for our brothers in Turkey and Syria, Ya Rabb al Alameen. The victims of the earthquake and the survivors of the earthquake, Ya Rabb al Alameen, help us to live to our duty to serve them, Ya Rabb al Alameen. We are a people in Na'ama and they are a people in Ibtila. They have the haqq on us, Ya Rabb al Alameen. Help us to recognize it and help us to discharge our responsibility toward them, Ya Rabb al Alameen, wa akhrat da'awana anal hamdu lillahi Rabb al Alameen wa aqeem us-salaam.