 I usually start soft, so I'll get louder, inshallah ta'ala. I have to build my confidence a little bit. In my lecture yesterday, we talked about the problems and dangers posed by discursive imperialism, a discourse which, according to Edward Said, attempts to define our terminology and tell our narrative, in this case, as Muslims living in the West. So here's the bottom line. If the West really wants to understand Islam, and when I say the West, I'm not just talking about non-Muslims living in the West. The West in Islam is not an absolute economy. We have to stop being so binary. We are the West. One of my teachers is an American convert. He was in a Starbucks and he was wearing a kufi and the man in front of him turned around and said, are you wearing that thing on your head because you're a mazlam? He said, yes. The man said, you're a traitor. Walked out. Since when is Muslim the opposite of American? What is it American? What is a Muslim? If the West really wants to understand this deen, this way of being in the world, then it must, we must, acquaint ourselves. We must acquaint ourselves with our Master Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. If you don't know the Prophet, then you don't know the Islamic tradition. That's the bottom line. If you don't know the Prophet, you don't know the Quran. And anti-Muslim bigots, they know this really well. You can call them Islamophobes, if you like. They know this well. That's why they're constantly trying to assassinate the Prophet's character, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. It's an age old tactic. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. And if you knew the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, you would know that his message is universal. I'm the master of the children of Adam and I do not boast. He's a messenger of everyone. He said there is nothing in the heavens and the earth that does not know I'm the messenger of God except the rebels from the jinn and inns. And oftentimes this cosmopolitan aspect of his message is misrepresented and termed as Islam's global agenda. This is to create fear. Who threatens you with fear according to the Quran is Satan. That's from Satan. So this rhetoric of Muslims are going to take over the planet. It's going to be planet of the apes. They're secretly planning on usurping power from western nations. It makes for a good mini-series on Fox, I guess. We're talking about this yesterday, the effective media pedagogy. If television is your main source of religious education, then you have a problem and you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself. I promised a brother yesterday I'd quote ice cube again in my talks of I had to do it early, get it out of the way. The Muslims, you know, we're not the ones meeting once a year at the Bohemian Grove, the Bilderberg Hotel. We meet at at risk here and our doors are open. We have nothing to hide. It's complete transparency. We say marhaban ahlan musahlan. You don't need a trust fund. You just need an open heart and an open mind. And if they weren't so loud outside, I'd actually invite the Christians inside and listen, but masha'Allah the man has a voice like a megaphone. I don't know if it's going to be prudent at this juncture. I made a mistake one time of actually approaching one of these hardcore evangelical Christians. It was at a church one time and we were having an interfaith dialogue. And when I walked out, a group of them kind of just ambushed me, right? So I approached one of them and she said, you know, as a woman, so I thought you'd be more reasonable. And so she says, your prophet went into Europe and slaughtered all of the Europeans. Wow. I don't know who you think my prophet is, Napoleon or someone, to know it's very well documented. I said, oh, he never left the Arabian Peninsula in the 23 years of his prophecy. And then she proceeded to quote a verse to me from the Quran that ostensibly or apparently advocates violence. So I quoted a verse to her from the Bible, which apparently advocates violence out of context, right? In order to demonstrate her erroneous methodology. So I quoted from Luke chapter 19 verse 27 in which Jesus has reported to us that those enemies that do not accept me as their king, bring them hither and slay them before me, right? And another translation cut their throats in my very presence. And I expected her to say, well, you're not looking at the context, right? And then I would say, of course, that was my point. But she didn't say that. She said, that verse is nowhere in my Bible. But I said, can I see your Bible? And then I just kind of flipped it open. And it was right there. And she closed the book and she looked at me, looked down back at the Bible, looked at me again and said, I know who you are Satan. Sometimes you have to put the fun and fundamentalism. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes the universal aspect of the prophet's message when he says, Well, ma arsanna ka illa rahmatil il'alameen, global mercy, not domination, hearts and minds, not lands and resources, universal in the sense that this tradition recognizes and accepts our distinctiveness with respect to ethnicity, country, culture, language, clan, tribe. It also transcends these designations and distinctions by offering us a unifying spiritual identity called Muslim. And there's no country called Islamistan, right? I assure you, there's no Christendom either, right? I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, are you Islam or are you from Islam? So what is a Muslim, a follower of Muhammad but he himself was a Muslim. So how do we deal with that? The Quran says that the sons of Jacob, the Bani Israel, they were Muslim. The Quran says that the disciples of Isa, were Muslim. This is a transcendental spiritual identity. So here's what I'm saying. There's always going to be a level of hybridity in our identities. We're all hybrids and we should embrace that. Don't fight it. Embrace it. Don't think that you have to put yourself into a box. Am I Afghan or American? Am I Indian or Canadian? Am I Muslim or American? No, we should forsake this black and white binary framework. We find it annoying when people do it to us. Why do we do it to ourselves? Our sisters know about this. People slowing down their speech because they assume you're an idiot because you wear a hijab or you don't understand English. It's very annoying. Or someone's forcing you so they have pity for you. Some husband, some father, some brothers forcing you because no one in the right mind would wear a hijab. So they're trying to fit you nicely inside of a box but you're not so easily definable. You're highly nuanced and non-Muslims as well. We have to be careful in our interactions with people. Zayn al-A'bideen said that Allah has hidden His awliya amongst His creation, not in Muslimeen or between al-Muslimeen. In His creation, Allah has hidden or concealed His friends, His awliya. So we have to be very vigilant as to how we interact with people, whether they're Muslim or not. This is common sense. So embrace your hybridity, explore it. There's nothing wrong with being hyphenated. You can be a Muslim hyphen American or a American hyphen Muslim wherever you want to put your emphasis. And what does it mean to give precedence to your faith over your country? What does that entail? Is that a bad thing? I asked five Christian professors at a Christian seminary. I said, which of these two takes precedence in your life? The fact that you're American or the fact that you're Christian, which takes precedence in five out of five times with no hesitation? They said the fact that I'm Christian. It's obvious. And what's wrong with that? Nothing because they know that their national identity, their nationalism, will ultimately die with their bodies, right? But the soul will endure. The angels in your grave will not ask you whether you're from the east or the west, whether you were a Democrat or Republican, whether you prefer Coke or Pepsi, or whether you were on Team Jacob or Team whatever. I don't even know. I just exposed myself. Some of these designations are important for the dunya, but ultimately they will die with your body. Who is your lord? What is your religion? Who is your prophet? That's it. Embrace your hybridity, but know that above all you are a Muslim. I am an Iranian born American Sunni Muslim Hanafi Ash-Ari, whose language is English? Anyone else? I'm usually the only one in the room. I've never had, because I've heard a lot of theories out there. Is he half Jewish? He's occurred. I've never had an identity crisis. You wanted to find me, you could just call me Muslim. So let's look at some of the best of exemplars. The prophet Musa, he was an Israelite from Bani Israel. That was his ethnic distinction. In Exodus chapter six, we are told that he's from the Bani Levi, which means a Levite. That was his tribal distinction. He was born in Mitzrayim or Missa in Egypt. That's his national distinction. He spoke ancient Egyptian and ancient Hebrew. That's his linguistic distinction. His wife was Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest. His children were half Arab. Look at the hybridity. Look at the diversity. But what was his spiritual distinction? His spiritual distinction. What was his transcendental identity? I hope I don't offend anyone with this. But if we can travel back in time, 1400 years before the common era, some 3400 years ago, and we can ask the prophet Musa, I asked him, are you a Jew? He would say, no, I'm a Levite. Because in his day, the word Jew meant a descendant of Yehuda, of Judah, like David was from Judah, but Moses is from Levite. In other words, he would think that I was referring to a tribal distinction, not the name of a faith. If I asked him, are you a practitioner of Judaism? He would not know what I was talking about, because this word Judaism as a concept wasn't coined until the eighth century before the common era after the Assyrians attacked the northern kingdom of Israel in 722, and apparently 10 of the 12 tribes were wiped out. The only two tribes that remained were Benjamin and Judah, and Judah is the older brothers, so they call themselves the Jews. Our contention is that the spiritual identity, the spiritual identity of the prophet Musa, was Muslim, one who peacefully submitted to God. The word Muslim is transcendental. It's anachronistic to call Musa, a Jew. The prophet Isa, Jesus Christ, who was born in Beit Lechem in Judea, the Roman occupation, he was raised in Galilee, Nazareth in northern Palestine. He spoke Syriac, which is the language that the Israelites adopted when they were in captivity in Babylon. He also spoke Hebrew, the language of the synagogue liturgy, and probably spoke Koine Greek, which was the language of the Roman occupiers. So there's a lot of hybridity. Now, obviously, the prophet Jesus wasn't a Christian. The book of Acts tells us that believers in Jesus were first called Christian when they were being expelled from the synagogues in Antioch. It was originally a derogatory term. The earliest Semitic Christians called themselves Nazareans or Evionim, and they considered themselves actually a sect of Judaism. Our contention is that his spiritual identity, the spiritual identity, which is overriding everything, was Muslim. And he says in the Beatitudes, in his mother tongue, and this is obviously from a fourth century translation of the Greek manuscripts called the Peshita, in his mother tongue, he says, Blessed are those who, make peace. If you were to translate that into Hebrew, it would be Baruch HaMashlimim, Blessed are the Mashlimim, which is the exact cognate of the word Muslim in the accusative case. In Judaism, the Nessab or the lineage is taken from the mother. It's matrilineal. And all of the tribes are set for one, a tribe of Levi, and Maryam is Uftaharun. She's a Levite. She's the descendant of Aaron of Harun, Ares Salam, who was the first high priest. The Gospel of Luke also says that she was a Levite. So in that tribe, tribal distinction is taken from the father, only in that tribe. So Issa alaihi salam's tribal distinction would be whatever his father's was, but Issa alaihi salam doesn't have a father. Therefore, Issa alaihi salam, when you think about it, it's not really from Bani Israel. He was a messenger sent to the children of Israel. This is why he's never voted in the Quran, he's saying, Ya qawmi, like every other prophet says, oh my people, because their father is from that people. But Issa alaihi salam says, Ya Bani Israel. So usually when I make this next comment and there's a mixed crowd of Christians and Jews and whatnot, I say, hold on to your hats and your hijabs and your hairpieces. When I tell you that Issa alaihi salam, Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, was essentially a Muslim and in the nation of the prophet, sallallahu alaihi alaihi salam. The prophet, sallallahu alaihi salam, he was from a tribe called Quresh. His clan was Bani Hashem, Arabic, but he was in reality a citizen of the world. And I believe that he advocated what philosophers today call a rooted cosmopolitanism. In other words, to act locally, but think globally, to think of something outside of yourself. Like when he said, ʿUtlubu al-ʿIrm al-Opissin, seek knowledge even to China, sticking outside the box. But many of us will say, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to look weird, right? You know, weird and the kufi and hijab, it just seems weird to me. You know what's weird to me? When I was in junior high, it was a fad, apparently, a trend where you would wear your clothes backwards. You guys remember that? I guess there were some guys, some artists who were doing that, were their clothes backwards. That seems really weird, you know. I don't know if I'm coming or going, I guess. I don't know. Or wearing jeans so tight that you can tell off a quarter in your back pocket as heads or tails. This young brother was, you know, 18, 19 years old. He started growing his beard and he came to me and he was in tears and he said, you know, my friends at school, they made fun of me and so on and so forth. I said, you know, brother, one day you're going to look back at this and you're going to laugh. I'm laughing at you already. You have to put some humor into it. So weird is actually a matter of perspective. I mean, there are Christians in the Muslim world. You go to some churches in the Muslim world, you're thinking walking into a musket. You see people standing and bowing and prostrating. They're reciting litanies in Arabic. You take some of those Christians that are in contemporary Middle East and you bring them into like a Joel Austin convention at the Staple Center, you know, this idea of the prosperity gospel. And those Christians will say, this is so weird. What are they doing here? What are they talking about? And those are also Christians. So it's not a Muslim Christian thing. It's this postmodern, opulent lifestyle thing. That's weird. The people of faith being weird to the postmodern world is actually a good thing. And I'll end with this. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Inna dina bada'a ghariban. This religion began as something strange, as something weird. And then it'll return to be something strange. Glad tidings to the strangers or glad tidings to the weirdos. So it's loving Allah and his messenger is weird and I don't want to be normal. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.