Knowing God is impossible without love and without loving God. Strict obedience, if unthinking and unfeeling, is a form of hypocrisy towards God. That obedience is a form of deception and lying; you are obeying because you are calculating the costs and benefits for entirely selfish, idiosyncratic and narcissistic purposes. While that obedience is better than disobedience, it is not a lofty objective on the moral plane. If you do not learn to be truthful towards your Lord, you do not learn to be a truthful human being. A person who obeys solely out of fear is someone who lacks truthfulness and honesty, and who will not come to know the Lord.

To have a loving relationship with God, you must first commit yourself to transparency and honesty about your relationship with God; you must commit to something other than simple, blind, unthinking, unfeeling obedience. As an Ummah, that is supposed to be our aspiration. If we are diligently working towards that aspiration, we learn to be truthful human beings and the bonds between the Ummah itself grow to become sincere and truthful bonds. The Ummah becomes accustomed to being truthful about itself and with itself.

One cannot engage in self-determination without being honest with oneself about themselves, others, and God. One of the most often-quoted and misrepresented Quranic verses that disempowers Muslims and robs them of their sense of self-determination is taken from Surah An-Nisa (58-59) and states in part, “All believers, obey Allah, obey the Prophet, and obey your rulers…”. The implication is that obedience to rulers is the equivalent or equal to obeying God and the Prophet, and basically conveys that the way you practice your faith should be subservient to those in power; that those in charge should decide all material matters that affect your life, and that your job is to simply do rituals without turning the rituals into a means of empowerment; that self-determinative autonomy is left to those in power, not you.

This is a complete and total corruption of God’s revelation. Every imam that cites this Quranic passage to justify injustice, suffering, inhumanity, narcissism, self-interest or the destruction and deconstruction of the Muslim Ummah is corrupting God’s word.

First, God gives us a penultimate statement: your guide and objective is justice. Second, in principle, you should aspire to obey God, the Prophet, and whoever is in charge. However, if there are disagreements – not disagreements with God or with the Prophet, but disagreements among the people, which includes the rulers, then there must be a method, procedure, or instrumentality to resolve such disputes so that taghut (injustice, despotism, oppression, corruption, lies and deception) will not prevail.

Rulers are considered to be among the people and must represent the will of the people. God made it clear in Surah An-Nisa that those who rule over you must in fact represent you, but beyond that, your compass in life must be justice.

Ours is the religion that 1400 years ago, the Prophet said, “If you are in a place, in a town, in a city that becomes afflicted by the plague, neither enter nor leave.” In other words, quarantine. This if not remarkable for our day and age, but it is remarkable that the Prophet was teaching the procedure for quarantine 1400 years ago. When the Prophet was asked, “But if we stay in the city, we might die,” his response was, “Yes, you might die. But then you are sacrificing yourself for the good of others and you die a martyr.” This religion taught the ethics of humanity before philosophical ethics matured to what it claims to be today.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl gives his original Quranic Commentary (tafsir) on Surah 106 Al Quraish. Originally recorded on audio cassette and digitized.

Part 2 of 2: Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl gives his original Quranic Commentary (tafsir) on Surah 105 Al Fil. Originally recorded on audio cassette and digitized.

Part 1 of 2: Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl gives his original Quranic Commentary (tafsir) on Surah 105 Al Fil. Originally recorded on audio cassette and digitized.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl gives more detail about the importance and validity of virtual khutbahs given certain conditions in Muslim minority countries in light of the pandemic. Further, he discusses the steps that Muslims should take in understanding both the universal and personal nature of a pandemic with regard to the relationship with God.

Dr. Abou El Fadl begins with the reason for the previous jumu'a’s cancellation - the loss of his hearing. He sees it as both a challenge and a blessing, as we should view everything we are dealt in life. If we reflect upon ourselves, we will see that everything that we enjoy, even the most minor coordination, the simplest thought, the way that we interpret every desire is a clear indication of God’s existence. However, the nature of human beings often is to not reflect until we experience loss, taking blessings for granted. Our ability to speak, to see, to perceive the world around us are experiences we engage in constantly but never pause to reflect upon the miraculousness of the act.

It is immoral to take God out of our lives to enjoy our existence as if we owe nothing, as if we are not interconnectedly an extension of God. Seeing, hearing, thinking, and tasting are all divine marvels, but what is critical is how we choose to navigate those marvels, whether we navigate towards a fulfillment of the Divine or navigate away, towards the ungodly. Humans are masters of distraction, diverting our attention to avoid reflecting upon the constant marvels of divinity that we are intimately involved in.

Your hearing stops, the world goes silent, and suddenly you notice what has been taken away from your life. The sound of the adhan is missed, and you reflect upon the times you were busy, so you turned off the adhan. You ponder, if your hearing returns, will you be more attentive to the adhan? Will it be given priority, or will old habits return and the adhan will once again be taken for granted? You miss your family calling for you. If your hearing returns, will you be more attentive to your family?

When something is taken from us, we are willing to promise God the world, if only God would give us back what has been taken. But we must be honest with ourselves to avoid being liars, as many of us will fail to uphold our promises, ultimately breaching whatever commitments were expressed at a time of need. A wise person does not need to experience loss to reflect upon their relationship with Allah, but much of humanity exists in a state of oblivion.

Every challenge is a blessing, because every blessing is an opportunity to think, reflect, reform, change and grow. Many people when struck by a challenge ask God, ‘Why?’. Instead of asking 'why', we should use the opportunity to reflect upon the ways that we may have failed ourselves and consider that loss as a moment to grow before time runs out and we have no more opportunities to work with. We should ask God to grant us the strength of consistency and to steer us away from hypocrisy, because our own hubris gives us a false strength of immunity. Sincerity reminds us that there are losses that we may be unable to bear, but God will stand by us as we persevere through any challenge or loss. We are in a constant state of grace and blessings, yet we are often not cognizant of it until something is drastically taken away from us.

Dr. Abou El Fadl begins with the reminder that because humans are often oblivious and forgetful, we take much for granted. The Prophet Muhammad was a moral example of how we should live our lives, and those who fail to understand this guidance lose so much because they cannot truly be guided to the path of Islam.

Last week, Dr. Abou El Fadl shared the news that he had become functionally deaf and reflected upon his thoughts as he coped with this life change. Like most humans, he did not reflect upon the blessing of hearing until he lost it. The nature of human beings is to take blessings like our senses, safety and stability for granted until these blessings are threatened. Loss educates and humbles. Upon loss, some become angry and ask the question that will never be answered, “Why me?”. This is a selfish question, why does someone else deserve the loss? What truly matters is what one chooses to do with their loss.

An interesting thing happens when the world becomes eerily silent. There is a voice that cannot be shut off, that continues to speak in one’s head, a voice that must be listened to, and that is the voice of the self. There are no longer distractions, so one must confront this voice. When you confront the self, you start reflecting upon what you are made of. That is the blessing of what God gives and takes; it becomes an amazing educational opportunity. In this case, it is an opportunity to listen to what is going to testify against you or for you in the Hereafter before it does. If the world going silent opened the door for the voice of God to come through more purely, then there is no loss or loneliness, only beauty. Do not wait until blessings are lost to appreciate, reflect and be grateful now. Think about every sense that God has given you and how you are using it. When it testifies in the Hereafter, will it elevate or degrade you?

That is the power of religion. Those who think everything is by chance, when diagnosed with an affliction, will question, “Why me?” and often attempt to spread their misery. Religion teaches us that nothing is by happenstance and that there is an entity who sees us and holds us accountable. We cannot allow ourselves to devolve to barbaric behavior, we are elevated by the reality of the Divine. If a religion fails to elevate one into beauty and make loss an opportunity for elevation, not degradation, then it is not religion.

Thank God for what God has given and taken. Repeat “Alhamdulillah” constantly because when you acknowledge your gratitude, you become cognizant of your own faults and aspire to be better, and that is what God wants for us.

Reminding ourselves of the essence of what Islam is – a mercy unto humankind - is so critical, particularly now, as Islam has been demonized around the world and Muslims have become confused about the message of Islam. The threat of “Islamic jihadis,” “political Islam” and terrorism has become a common defense to justify the murder of Muslims in numerous territories. The problem is not just these governments, but that they are served by an army of imams that justify their murderous, Islamophobic behavior. Colonialism confronted an ideology of resistance within the Islamic civilization, and this ideology of resistance was often called jihad. Colonialism’s propaganda said, ‘resistance is wrong’, even if the resistance was for a just cause. Any despot is a corrupter of the earth because despotism is shirk (associating partners with God). When a despot says, "Listen to me and me alone," they negate divinity. Two types of Islam emerged from colonialism: a non-confrontational, pacifist Islam; and a resistant, justice-based Islam. The first logics that obeying the ruler is obeying God, making this Islam favorable among despots. God has given us a brain, so we do not fall victim to following these despots. Dr. Abou El Fadl concludes by praying Allah puts us in the Hereafter with those whom we love, whether it be the Prophet or the despots.

Dr. Abou El Fadl begins with the reminder that if God truly allowed humans to suffer the consequences of their own actions, nothing would remain on earth. Divine grace intervenes in our lives constantly, saving us from our own follies and giving humanity infinite opportunities in the hope that we will do good. God has also blessed humanity with a beautiful, true moral example: The Prophet Muhammad. Yet, no prophet has been vilified throughout history as much as the Final Prophet. The Prophet was a man of great ethics, making him fit to bear the enormous task of carrying the Quran to humanity. His moral character was the Quran. He was sent as a mercy unto mankind and is dearly loved by God. God told the Prophet, "You are in Our eyes”, an Arabic expression that means, "I love you to the point that it is as if you are the core of my heart”. We should pray to be among those who would be included in that statement, to be like the Prophet in God’s eyes.

The same man who was so dearly loved by God also experienced much tragedy, losing his beloved wife, his paternalistic uncle, and witnessing two of his sons die. This shows that it is not an indication of God's love if God spoils us on this earth. One could have terrible losses in life, but the way that these losses are handled is what will determine if one is close to God. What is remarkable about the Prophet is that this is a man who experienced one loss after another throughout his life, but always remained free of bitterness and hate. It is not that the Prophet did not experience heartbreak or grief, but what is key is how he dealt with hardship. It would have been very easy for him to think, "God does not love or care about me”, a thought many people feel after loss. The Prophet went through all of this to provide us with a moral education. We may go through a great deal of hardship, but we must strive to keep our hearts pure. What brings tranquility and comfort to one’s heart and keeps it truly pure is dhikr (remembrance of God). We must continue doing dhikr until God sends the strength to be a solid human being that does not turn tragedy into an excuse for evil.

Dr. Abou El Fadl regularly receives emails from Muslims inquiring about negative reports about the Prophet Muhammad. Because Islam spread very quickly, there were many people who entered Islam for purely political or opportunistic reasons, who did not understand Islam or remained hostile to Islam. A great deal of hadith traditions were invented by people who pretended to be Muslim but were hostile to Islam. Over the centuries, such anti-Muhammad traditions were recognized by scholars and put into a cultural quarantine. Islamophobia, Wahhabism, Puritan Islam, extremist Islam, Daesh Islam and ISIS Islam took these hadiths out of quarantine and circulated them among Muslims again. But there is a big difference: in the past, Muslim institutions were strong and could keep such traditions in quarantine.

Without the moral example of the Prophet, Muslims have very little. Today, our Muslim institutions are so weak, that we no longer control the discourse on Islam. We do not have the ability to quarantine things that should be quarantined. However, what we do have is our mind and conscience. When you find that God describes the Prophet as a man of great ethics; that God tells him, "You are a mercy unto humankind"; that God tells him “You are so beautiful that you are in God’s heart”, then that should be the yardstick as to what to believe – or what not to believe – about your Prophet.

The coronavirus pandemic teaches us a great deal about ourselves and the morality and immorality of our modern condition. It is a book of philosophical wisdom for those who reflect on it. Whether it is through direct intervention or through the laws of nature, there will be hardship. But the response to this hardship is what truly matters. www.usuli.org

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl further explains the jurisprudence of the virtual khutbah. He discusses the many lessons of the Coronavirus and their implications on understanding God's love. Detailed summary description forthcoming.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl gives his original Quranic Commentary (tafsir) on Surah 108 Al Kauthar. Originally recorded on audio cassette and digitized.