 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim So good afternoon. My name is Asad Tarsin. I am going to present to you a brief sort of five minute explanation of probably ten, I think, and then we'll get into a bit more of the very foundations of Islam. So this is going to be a brief overview. So I'm challenged with summarizing an entire religion, its civilization, its teachings, short amount of time. It should be easy, right? And there will be a quiz at the end, so pay close attention. So I'm going to start with definitions. The first is the word Islam. What does Islam mean? So taken as a term in the in the Arabic language, if you were to look it up, Islam is a term that means to turn oneself over to or to surrender or resign oneself to. Being a Semitic language, the Arabic language, that is, there is a cognate root. And so it shares the same root as words such as peace or wholeness. But it's the proper name of the religion itself. Parallel to that is the term Muslim. So a Muslim is the title for somebody who follows the religion of Islam. It is, let's jump in ahead, just a little bit here. Technology works with you and against you sometimes. So a Muslim is one who surrenders to God and by doing so is able to attain a peace within themselves, a wholeness spiritually, by surrendering to God. So when we surrender ourselves to God, we thereby attain an inner serenity and wholeness. So a Muslim can be from any walk of life, any ethnicity, any background. It is not particular to any part of the world. Once it starts to behave, I will share with you a couple of pictures and hopefully highlight that. So who is that right there? We've got a couple of faces. Are you guys able to make those out? Stevens, Muhammad Ali, Dr. Oz, people of very different ethnicities, very different walks of life, all share the fact that they follow the religion of Islam. So they would be called Muslims even though none of them are Arab or Indian or Pakistani, but from different ethnicities. The third definition that I'd like to cover is the term that you might hear often, which is Allah. Allah is simply the Arabic name for God. It's actually used by Arabic speaking Jews and Christians as well. In fact, this right here, this image I have is from an Arabic copy of the Bible. And that says right there, it says Genesis and it says, fil bedi khalaq Allahu, Allah created in the beginning, Allah created the heavens and the earth. So there you have what is very common in all of the churches in the Middle East that are Arabic speaking that they use Allah in their churches as well. So it's not a specific God, but it's the God of Abraham and we believe it's a God who sent Noah and Isaac and Jesus, etc. It's all the same Allah and it's not a different, it's a different language and a different name, but referring to the same deity. So what we believe as Muslims is that God sent an entire succession of prophets. We don't believe that religion began with the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. We believe that all of God's prophets were sent in a succession and they all had a purpose and they all helped to build towards the culmination of the message. Islam doesn't see itself as something new, but as a completion and a restoration of previous messages sent by God. So for example, we hold that all of God's prophets were in a state of submission to God. And so Muslims will sometimes say Islam with a lower case I, because if we think of Noah building the Ark and obeying God's commands to do so, he was in a state of surrender to God. And so in that sense, he was in a state of Islam, even though he wasn't following the religion Islam, which gets revealed several millennia later. There's a famous tradition from the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that I think summarizes all of this beautifully. He says that God's message to humanity is like a large, beautiful building that's been built. And people are walking around and admiring the beauty of the building. And they say what a wondrous structure, except it's just missing that one brick. And he says I am that final break. And so he sees himself as building upon what his brethren from the previous dispensations brought and not someone who comes to replace but rather to complete and to restore. And so part of the Muslim tradition is that God has sent over 124,000 prophets to humanity. We don't know them all. There are 25 that we know names in the Quran. And these are the household names. When we talk about Noah and Moses and Isaac and Ishmael and we name these names. But we don't know who else God sent God sent many. He we are told in the Quran that he did not leave a people except with someone who told them to worship God. And history sort of holds up to this every culture has a belief in a one great divine behind the creation of the universe. So whether it's a Native American tribe or the aboriginals in Australia, we would believe that some form of God's message reached them and that he would not have left them without a basic teaching. So there are three dimensions to the religion. And this all begins with is best told by a story. There's a famous event in the life of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, where he is sitting before the Kaaba, which is the sacred house and Mecca. How many of you have seen a picture of the sacred house, large black cubic structure. So that was actually built by Abraham. And it's there in the Bible, Becca with a B, instead of Mecca with an M, the B and the M are cognates in the Semitic language, right? In Becca, he and Ishmael build this temple to the to worship the one creator. And of course, as time goes on, it becomes overridden with polytheism and idols until the coming of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. But one day, he's sitting with his companions, and a man comes to him. And this is a stranger, none of his companions know of who this person is, but he asks them a series of questions. And these questions become the answers to them become what we call the three dimensions of the religion. So these three dimensions are what the quiz will be on. Just just just given good hints here. Alright. So the first, and they can be summarized in faith, conduct and character. These are the three basic building blocks of the faith. It's faith, conduct and character. So the first are actions to be formed to be performed. Our conduct has a basic set of devotions to God that serve as the basis for all other conduct in life. So the this is what is famously called the five pillars of Islam. Has anybody here heard that phrase before? So those are the only the pillars of conduct, we still have faith, and we have character. But so the first is the two testimonies of faith. This is the means by which a person formally becomes a Muslim. You simply testify and believe that there's nothing worthy of worship save God. And that Muhammad is the final messenger in this long succession that includes Jesus and Moses and Abraham, etc. And anybody who utters these two phrases, these two statements is by definition a Muslim. Once a person considers themselves a Muslim, they have to perform five daily prayers. These are devotions that serve as the foundation of our of our relationship with God. So five different points throughout the day, based on the position of the sun, there's one that's right at the crack of dawn. There's one right as the sun moves past its zenith. There's one right as sort of in the afternoon, one just after sunset, and one when it's complete night. And at those five points in the prayer, we wash in a particular way, ablution, and we face the house built by Abraham and we pray to God. We also pay what's called a purifying charity or a poor tax. Every Muslim who's above a certain poverty line is to give two and a half percent one 40th of our savings. So if you have unused wealth, which you know, many of us don't sometimes and that's fine. But if you have wealth that stays over from year to year unused, that's considered surplus beyond your needs. And 140th of that should be distributed to the poor and the needy. That's a minimum. And then fasting the month of Ramadan. This is a month. It's a lunar month. So it kind of moves throughout the year. It currently is about like Mayish. And this is from dawn until sunset. We abstain from food, drink and intimacy. These are the three most basic desires of a human being. They are part of the animal side, if you will, of what it means to be human being because we're part celestial, meaning our soul, but then we're very terrestrial. There's an animal side to us. And taming that side is part of the purification process. The final is a pilgrimage to Mecca, that house that we've talked about now a couple times built by Abraham, once in your life, if you are physically and financially able. The second dimension, faith, these are not actions that we perform. Rather, these are realities that we must affirm in our hearts. The first is obvious, you have to believe in one God. Islam has what's called radical monotheism, you don't simply believe in one God, you actively negate any other divinity beside him. So this is very almost Old Testament, like that there's nothing divine other than God. And we also believe that God has creatures that he's created in an unseen dimension that interact with us angels. And then we have to affirm that God communicates with his creation through messengers. And at times he even sends scripture with them. So there are four scriptures that minimum that Muslims must affirm the Torah, the Psalms of David, the Gospel of Jesus, and the Quran sent to Muhammad, peace be upon him. We also have to affirm that God sends messengers and we have to affirm particular messengers. This is a point of difference, I think, between Trinitarian Christians and Muslims and I'm sharing this more for education's sake. Muslims believe Jesus closer to early Unitarian belief so that that Jesus, you know, you had the monophysites, diversites, you had all these debates. Muslims hold that Jesus is the weighted Messiah. He was born of a virgin birth. He will return at the end of time there. They share all we share all of those things, except that he was not divine. So he was the son of God in a metaphorical sense, meaning a holy man or one who is completely in in in consonance with God, but not literally God the son or God incarnate. So Muslims would hold him to be a mortal creation of God, who was God Lee in his behavior and his mission. We also believe in a day of judgment that we are will all be resurrected to be judged before our Creator and that nobody gets away with anything truly in the end. And the final and sixth aspect of our divine belief in our beliefs, sorry, is a belief in what's called divine decree that nothing in the cosmos happens outside of God's direct will and guiding it. So our gathering here today, this collection of souls in this room is something that was decreed by God before the universe was a twinkle of dust. That this is something that God, we still have free will and there's a tension between that. We have free will, but we have to work within what God decrees. So when things happen to us, we know that it couldn't have been any other way. This is what God decreed for us, and that there is a great wisdom behind it. There's a famous poet of the Islamic tradition, Rumi, who tells a story of an ant that's crawling across a big Persian rug. Have you guys seen those magnificent Persian rugs? And as this ant is crawling, he says, he looks down, he notices it's red suddenly and then it just becomes green and then blue and seems very random to him. And he says, what kind of a carpet maker just has a bunch of different colors going on? And Rumi says, oh, little ant with your short sight, if only you could step out and see the magnificent design of the carpet maker, you would just stay in awe and wonder of his majesty. And that's about sort of the carpet of life. That sometimes we don't really see what's happening. And then when we're older, we look back and we say, you know, that was probably the best thing that happened to me, even if it seemed tragic at the time. The third dimension, faith, conduct and character. All right. People are awake. I like it. Before we get into character, I've got to touch just a little bit on the Islamic view of humankind, of humanity. So on the one hand, we believe that God created us with what's called a primary nature. This is our God given nature that every human being, if left to their natural state, and I mean, no trauma, people are abused and they go through difficult things and that can alter it. But we have an innate knowledge of right and wrong. And we have an innate inclination towards everything that is good and true and beautiful, that there is no healthy soul that doesn't look at a sunset and say like, wow, that's amazing. And that natural inclination of what we go towards will eventually guide us to God. All of us have this internal compass that's pointing towards the divine. In fact, we see causation behind things because we know we're always looking for the cause of the universe and the cause of our lives. So that's us on the one hand. On the other hand, we also have a selfish ego. We have a capacity, perhaps even a thirst for our carnal desires and to be utterly selfish. Right? This is the side of us that leads to road rage, which is such a strange phenomenon. Same people are just totally calm and, you know, and if you bump into them in the mall and then they get behind the wheel and there's just something about my lane and my speed and my destination, right? So that's, we have both of these realities to us. We're complex beings. We're composite beings. And so part of the development of character is the purification of the soul. It's a process by which we are to resist the urges of our carnal desires and our selfishness and our ego on the one hand. And then we are to augment and to embellish that primary nature. There's an aspect to children, if you see them, that can be incredibly giving. And then there's an aspect to children that when somebody touches their toy that they haven't even seen in two years, they suddenly want it, right? And so part of life is to learn to sort of trim away those aspects while enhancing and augmenting the other aspects. And when we do that, we have a purification of our souls that develops, where we will get over our anger, our jealousy, our envy, our, all of these things that contempt we have for people, the arrogance in our hearts, all of these things can be purged. And this is also attained on the one hand by a way of engaging in the world in which we do not become worldly. So the world is here as our sort of the battleground of the soul. And it's a temporary place. And this was actually one of the great messages of Jesus, peace be upon him, that he came to remind us that this is just but a bridge to the afterlife. And you don't make this your permanent home. And if you do, you sort of have lost a certain vision of the reality of life, right? That this is a fleeting world. And if you use it right, you can attain eternal salvation and an enlightened soul. But if used for selfish desires, it will bring you to peril. As one Muslim sage put it, it's to have the world in your hand, but not in your heart. And at the end of this story, so this is a series of three questions that was asked to the Prophet Muhammad. What is Islam, which is the pillars of conduct? What is faith? And then what is spiritual beauty? And he answers with those three sets of teachings. And at the end, this man who is asking the questions, he leaves. And the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, returns to his companions and he says, do you all know who that was? And they said, no, we don't know who that is. We've never seen him. And the Prophet Muhammad responds, that was Gabriel. He came to teach you your religion. So this phrase is why, in Muslim teaching, this has become the great summary of faith. That any faith that has conduct that focuses on the external, like the law without the spirit, will be imbalanced. If we focus on spirit without law, there's an imbalance. If we're all faith and there's no need for works, that's an imbalance. So all three have to harmonize in order to have a complete expression of the religion. So again, just to recap here, Islam sees itself as a culmination of previous religions. If one surrenders to God, one can attain peace and harmony within themselves, within their homes, within their communities and eventually with the world. And Islam sees itself, this phrase the middle road actually comes from the Qur'an, the holy book of the Muslims. Muslims see themselves as a middle road in which they merge the rich legal teachings of the Torah and the higher spiritual calling of the gospel. So again, faith, conduct, and character. And if you notice here, there's a body component with our acts. There's the mind, that which we believe and conceive. And then there's the soul. So it is a mind, body, soul surrender to God that is complete. And to do any two without the third or any one without the other two, again, results in imbalance. So these are the three core teachings of the religion. Thank you for listening and look forward to some questions. Hi, so my task today is to contribute to some of the myth-busting by addressing jihad and ISIS, what it is and what it is not. But before I do that, I think I want to share with you a bit about my personal journey because it relates to the subject matter. So I grew up here in the Bay Area throughout my years growing up here and at the US Naval Academy where I went. You know, like most Americans, I was ignorant of what Islam is. And particularly being in the military, the Muslims were generally seen as the enemy or the other. So Islam at face value 25 years ago was a very distant concept and something that I did not think I would ever embrace. There you go. I put the sailing thing up because I was on an offshore sailing team and I saw those pictures and I was like, I sailed on that boat braid. Anyways, and Navy lost today to Notre Dame so I'm kind of off. It would have been good if we beat them. Okay, so at my freshman year at the Naval Academy, I remember I was given an assignment. It was to summarize the biographies of the most eminent scientists, philosophers and mathematicians of the Western civilization. And I remember being in a library and I was flipping through the pages of these thick books and about to fall asleep and I read this passage and it literally jarred me. In effect of the passage described how some of the most renowned, you know, mathematicians and scientists in the Western civilization were all believers in a transcendental or universal, which is an academically neutral term for a God. So that really shook me because I was never told that that the most eminent scientists and philosophers and mathematicians that we all know, Renee Descartes, Isaac Newton, all of them, were trying to understand the created universe. So public high school doesn't teach our children that that was their primary motive. So it was really fascinating. So from that point on, it launched me on a quest throughout my remaining days at Annapolis and then subsequently why it was in the Navy to continue to read and study and debate and search out answers to concepts of God and religion. And throughout this quest, I developed a list of criteria, whether it was philosophical or social or scientific, certain standards that I would establish and I went kind of shopping as I went around the world in the Navy and learning about different religions and which one made sense and none of it really made sense. For example, in the category of science, I believe that scientific discovery can only serve to validate revelation, that it would be inappropriate for scientific discovery to debunk a religious tenant. Because after all, we're talking about the created universe and God should know it all. So Islam did that for me. There were a number of scientific stuff in the Quran that was written 1400 years ago that it could not have been written or known by an illiterate desert better one prophet who'd never saw the ocean, for example. And all these mysteries of the ocean and scientific stuff that we're discovering now. So anyways, it ticked off all of those things for me. But in particular, being a naval officer, I was really interested in the just war concept. Because war is perhaps the most brutal sanctioned human acts that we can engage in. And if you don't apply a certain moral code to your conduct during armed conflict, it would literally drive a person crazy. So PTSD, all of these symptoms and elements that we see in our veterans in some measure has to do with engaging in brutality without a certain code of conduct. So what's broadly referred to today as the just war concept. And in researching the major world religions and what they said about war and conflict, it was a particularly interest when I came across Islam and what they said. And this is one passage in the Qur'an that says permission to fight is given to those against whom war is made because they have been wronged. Those who have been driven out from their homes unjustly only because they said our Lord is God. And if God did not repel them by means of others, there would surely have been pulled temples and churches and synagogues and mosques. So definitively, Islam says that a war is sanctioned for defensive purposes only. And then it's not only for the purpose of protecting your religion, Islam, but also the religions of other people. So it's incumbent upon all Muslims to protect and defend against any oppression or aggression against any religious institutions, be they Christian, Jews, Muslims, or whatever. So as I, as I, I'll put it in my picture. So as I searched more, I discovered that not only was a concept of war addressed in the Qur'an, but the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, peace be upon him, also taught his followers about this as well. I also discovered that Muhammad was among many things a commander of armies. He was sent by God as a, in our belief, as a final messenger for all times, for all mankind. So he had to be a complete messenger. So there's examples for us on how to be a good parent, a husband, a son, a brother, a businessman, a student, a teacher, and yes as a warrior as well. So all of this was in addition to how we should worship God through prayer, fasting, and reflection. Conflict being an inescapable part of humanity, Islam came to put limits and controls on it. There are, of course, many things about conflict that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, taught, but I wanted to share with you these five, these 10 commands that he gave to his soldiers before engaging in combat. And he said, Do not harm women, children, elderly, or the sick. Do not commit treachery and never mutilate or disfigure. Do not uproot, cut down, or burn trees. Do not harm any livestock except for food. In combat, avoid striking the face, for God created all of us in the image of Prophet Adam. Do not kill monks and monasteries, and do not kill those sitting in places of worship. Do not destroy the villages and towns. Do not spoil the cultivated fields and gardens. Do not wish for an encounter with the enemy, but when you are forced to encounter them, exercise patience. No one may punish with fire except the Creator. So like weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, nuclear, all of those will be prohibited in Islam. And finally, accustomed yourselves to do good if people do good, and do not do wrong even if they commit wrongs. So the significance of these commands really are in my mind, are two. One is that because Muslims believe that the source of these commands through Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, were from God, they're non-negotiable. They're non-negotiable. So whereas any just war concepts that we've applied and learned through the Nuremberg trials, through the Geneva Conventions, in the history of combat, they're all negotiable, because they're within the domain of human intellect. Whereas stuff that's being told to us from our Prophet, they're not negotiable. The second important thing is that these rules laid out 1400 years ago, and others that I've read, are even more strict and more humane than the collective body of just war concepts that we've accumulated. Okay, so jihad. Jihad, the term jihad in Arabic, does not in and of itself have anything to do with war or conflict. The foundational meaning of jihad is to make an effort or exert oneself in the way of God. So for example, filiopiety, being good to your parents, that is jihad. It's such a noble concept that parents in the Muslim world name their children jihad. Military combat is not the primary aspect of jihad is the big point. It's important to note that jihad is not holy war, as commonly referred. Muslims do not regard war as holy. They rather they regard war as a means and not an end in itself. It's a means to durable and durable peace and stability. When war is necessary, of course, Islam puts severe limitations on how to conduct war. And there's a concept called the greater jihad and the lesser jihad. Greater jihad is, as I mentioned, the struggle to improve one's own character. So for example, the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said, the best jihad is to speak truth to a tyrannical leader. Another example is when a man came to him and asking permission to join the military. The Prophet Muhammad responded, perform jihad by serving your parents. Okay, so that's a greater jihad. The lesser jihad is defensive fighting. And religious conversion, territorial conquest, political power are not sanctioned reason for combat. It's for defensive purposes only, as I mentioned. All Muslims are required to engage in the greater jihad, the self-struggle to improve your character. But only some Muslims are required to participate in the lesser jihad, which is a military combat. And you have to be a certain age. You can't be the only child. There are certain criteria for you to be a part of an army. Okay, there you go, ISIS. So ISIS, they're basically vigilantes in the view of Muslims. When we invaded Iraq and then combined with the civil war in Syria, the invasion of Iraq by our military was one where we completely removed their military security, political, judicial apparatus. We left a massive power vacuum. And it was quickly filled by what we call terrorist groups, in this case, ISIS. It would be no different. It would be the functional equivalent if foreign power came to our country, invaded our country, got rid of our police and our military and our political system, and then left. Who do you think would fill that power vacuum? The Mississippi militia, because they would be armed and organized. And somebody overseas would call them terrorists. So they're vigilantes in our view. There's no, they're not religious and sanctioned. And if you study the mission or the goal of ISIS, they're political nature and surely not religious in nature. So the way to look at it is, it's kind of a jingoistic, but the KKK is the Christians what ISIS is to Muslims. Christians don't sanction what KKK, but they spout off religious reasons. Nobody pays attention to that, right? Similarly, same thing for ISIS. ISIS kills more Muslims than they do any other religious groups. All right, that's it. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm just going to jump right into my talk because I see the time is flying by. But before I begin, I did want to thank everyone for coming out today because we're really eager to share how we practice our faith, how we live it, what we teach our children. And there'd be no point in putting a panel together if nobody was interested in actually coming out and listening to what we have to say. So thank you for coming out on a Saturday afternoon. So my role today is to talk about some of the most common stereotypes that I get asked about when we do interfaith discussions. And there's a whole range of questions we get asked about, but there's two common ones that come up time and time again. During Q&A, if there are other questions that people are wondering about, we'll be more than happy to address those at that time. So I'm going to start out with sharing a little incident that happened in a church in Danville where we were taking questions from the audience and a little old lady stood up and came to the microphone and with a quavering voice, she said that she was really, really upset to know that Sharia had come to this country and that Sharia had taken over the land and the courts and that judges were now deciding cases based on the sacred law of another religious tradition and she wanted to know more about that. And it was obvious that her fear was very, very real and she needed to be appeased and that's probably a very common myth out there that Sharia is here and it's taking over America. So if you were to regularly watch certain evening news programs, it would be natural to believe the propaganda that Muslims who are today's bogeymen after all are here to take over the land with their different way of living and believing but actually nothing could be further from the truth. So to start off with what exactly is Sharia? The word Sharia means the way or the path to God. It refers to the very idea of God communicating with human beings through revelation and Sharia is simply put a moral code. Before it's a legal code, it's a moral code. It contains rules for behavior for Muslims similar to how rabbinical or Talmudic law derives kosher dietary rules and restrictions and it's not so much a codified rule book nor is it merely a set of higher principles Muslims actually see Sharia as the ongoing search for God's prescription for human action for human conduct. One of the three dimensions that Dr. Asad had told us about. So Sharia should first be understood by its goals and its values before any of its specific rules. Sharia is more concerned with sin than it is with crime. So for example, if I were to gossip and backbite with one of my friends about another friend there's no earthly law that's going to hold me accountable for that behavior but I do know that I will be held accountable by God on the day of judgment if I don't repent and change my ways and it's Sharia that tells me that I'm actually prohibited from slandering another person. So we worship God with our minds, our bodies and our souls faith, conduct and character and Sharia is concerned with everything to do with our conduct with the physical aspects of life. It defines all the aspects of a Muslim's actions and behavior and it dictates everything from what we eat to how we dress to how we worship to the rules of marriage and divorce the rules of financial transactions and inheritance the rules of what is required of us and what is forbidden and the entire Sharia is designed to protect human welfare which Muslims define through six core universal interests and next time I promise I'm going to have a PowerPoint presentation as well but just bear with me so the six core universal interests that all of Sharia protect so any Sharia rule that you hear about if you reflect it will be protecting one of these six rights the first one oh louder sorry the first one I keep thinking this is a mic that everyone can hear but okay so the first one is the right to religion you can't force anyone to convert to any other faith tradition the second is the right to life you can't kill anyone unjustly the third is the right to family and lineage everyone has the right to know where they come from the fact that Muslims are taught that sexual relations are confined to marriage isn't just because of some divine decree it's to protect family bonds the fourth is the right to honor and dignity we can't lie or slander or backbite about other people so tabloid journalism would be completely out for someone who follows Sharia the right to intellect and reason so practicing Muslims know that intoxicants are prohibited for them so we don't indulge in alcohol or recreational drugs but Sharia is nuanced it's not just black and white there are gray areas as well so for example anesthesia in times of surgery it affects our ability to reason and to make moral decisions but anesthesia has its own rules and exceptions and then the sixth core universal interest that Sharia protects is the right to property and wealth so we can't steal or usurp or cheat anyone out of what's rightfully theirs now Muslim jurists discovered these Sharia rules through four primary sources the first is the Holy Quran which is our revealed book our scripture the second are the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him the third is universal agreement amongst Muslim scholars or the Muslim community on any given issue and the fourth is careful use of analogy now one thing people may not realize is that Islam does not allow for anarchy or chaos we have to have some form of government in place and we have to live under it even if it's not a Muslim one and we are required to respect and obey the laws of the land in fact I once learned from a Muslim scholar that if we deliberately if we ever deliberately run a red light while driving we need to ask God for his forgiveness because we broke a law that we had promised to follow and that's just one example of how religion informs our day to day actions now Sharia tells us that if we can't practice our religion in peace and safety and if we aren't happy with the laws of the land then we need to migrate from that land and the highest law of the land in the United States is the constitution so according to the Muslims own Sharia we are required to respect the constitution and if we don't we're supposed to leave and believe you me with everything that's going on and the political landscape right now there's probably no one more concerned about protecting the constitution than your fellow Muslim Americans so what about penal code punishments that's the elephant in the room that's what people think about when they hear the word Sharia beheadings cutting off of hands whippings stonings yes there is a penal code within the Sharia just like the United States law has capital punishment for certain offenses Sharia law also includes a form of capital punishment but the important differences between capital punishment in American law and capital punishment in Sharia law are two first the penal code is first and foremost meant as a deterrent it's not actually meant to be implemented and the second is that the evidence required to establish proof of a punishable crime makes the punishment almost impossible to implement for example the penal code for adultery is death however the evidence required to prove adultery is for witnesses who actually witness the act so as you can see the punishment is there but it is first and foremost meant as a deterrent it is meant to illustrate to human beings the enormity of the sin in God's eyes and it is meant to ensure that these types of crimes or sins that affect society at large are not being done out in the open and are not becoming the norm now if we want to look at how Sharia is implemented we can look at the Ottoman Empire which was the last legitimate Muslim government that ruled a large portion of the world for almost 700 years the punishment for adultery during that time all 700 years was only implemented once and even after that one time the scholars protested it and so it ended up never being repeated again the other very important fact for people to understand is that according to Sharia itself the laws of Sharia can only be applied and upheld when there is a legitimate Muslim government in power and a majority of Muslim scholars today are in agreement that no such government currently exists in the world today and therefore there is no official body which has the authority to implement the penal code punishments which by the way only make up 0.1 percent of the body of Sharia law unfortunately when one hears the word Sharia they just only imagine the grizzly capital punishments and when you see those horrific images on the internet or hear stories of those types of punishments you should know that Muslims consider that to be vigilantism it's in no way sanctioned in Islam and it's actually forbidden by our scholars and our jurists and when you see isolated rulings being implemented by certain governments around the world you should know that they don't represent the meaning and the spirit of Sharia itself and just like any other community you're going to find the whole spectrum of practice and adherence to the rules of the faith even amongst Muslims and so you'll find people who out of personal conviction here in the United States will stick with the rules of Sharia in their lives and then you'll find people who don't even know much about what the basic rulings are but they still consider themselves to be Muslims and they are as long as they believe in the testimony of faith which Dr. Asad told us about believing in one God and believing in the authenticity of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him okay so moving on to the second myth women are oppressed in Islam yes just like anywhere else in the world there are some Muslim women who are oppressed and some Muslim majority countries do have a culture that is favorable to men and there are stories of domestic abuse in some Muslim households but the real question we should be asking ourselves is does Islam teach condone or in any way support the oppression of women and the answer is absolutely not the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said the best of you are the ones who are the best to their women the majority of the focus of his last sermon was on the rights of women Muslims believe in the story of Adam and Eve but in Islam Eve is not held accountable for Adam's mistakes they are both held equally responsible she is not the one to blame she isn't considered to be a temptress nor is she viewed as the reason mankind lost paradise so there seem to be a few reasons that Islam gets this bad rap the first one is probably the hijab the head covering it gets translated as head scarf but hijab actually doesn't mean head scarf it's fine however to use that as a shorthand now hijab actually means barrier and it sets up boundaries for interactions between men and women it's the first thing people see and they don't understand it and they don't necessarily think of the virgin Mary when they see the head scarf they usually wonder why do men have to wear it why do women have to wear it and men don't Muslim men also have parts of their bodies that they have to cover according to Sharia they must cover from navel to the knee so they can't show their kneecaps or their belly buttons not allowed to wear speedos so why the different rules well we have different rules here in America as well if a man and a woman were out jogging in the park on a hot day and they got sweaty and uncomfortable the man could take off his top and continue running bare-chested if the woman did the same thing she'd be arrested for public indecency why? why the different standards why the different rules? we believe that the rules for how we dress are divinely inspired and that God understands what is best for us since he is our creator after all the second thing people see visually is if they were to visit one of our mosques or if they saw the Muslims praying in a congregation they would see that the women are praying behind the men and oftentimes people bring to mind the framework of Rosa Parks and they think you know the way Rosa Parks was pushed to the back of the bus because she was considered a second-class citizen so must must be the case with the Muslim women as well the truth is that where you pray in the congregation doesn't give any indication of your closeness to God Islam gives both men and women equal access to getting to God to getting to paradise to getting to His divine pleasure if you were to see us in our congregational prayers you would see that our prayer is actually very intimate we stand close together shoulder to shoulder we stand we bow we prostrate on the ground with our foreheads on the floor and our bottoms up in the air and most women especially Muslim women would not be comfortable being in that kind of vulnerable position with a man behind them so really where the women are praying in the congregation has to do more about privacy and modesty and being able to focus on our relationship with God and not worrying about whom we're standing next to or in front of or behind okay and the third is reason that people often think that women must be oppressed in Islam is people often confuse how women are treated in countries like Saudi Arabia with how Islam treats women in general so the two holiest cities in Islam Makkah and Medina happen to be in the land that is currently called Saudi Arabia however Saudi Arabia does not hold religious authority over the world's population of Muslims Saudi Arabia is not for Muslims what the Vatican is for the Catholics their government can make whatever laws they want to but that doesn't give them legitimacy over the world's population of Muslims the fact that women only just started driving in 2018 is due to a Saudi law I've had people ask me how can you be part of a religion that doesn't allow you to drive I'm not part of a religion that doesn't allow me to drive Muslim women have been heads of state in Muslim majority countries one of the current vice presidents of Iran is a woman even in America women have not managed to shatter that glass ceiling yet but who knows things might be changing soon there's hope and so those are the two myths I wanted to cover and if there are any others we can tackle them during Q&A thank you so much for your time