Imam Suhaib: The Heart of the Matter for Individuals and Communities

Notes: The Heart of the Matter

Imam Suhaib Webb

MCA Santa Clara, CA

12/19/14

Part 1: The Heart of the Matter - Individuals

Strengthen your Faith

• How can someone leave the haram for something they can’t see? They can when faith touches their hearts. 
• So in order for faith to function in the modern age it has to impact you. 
• It has to invoke passion, commitment, intelligence, connect you to Allah, give you ethics, self accountability, and introspection.
• Look at how the Sahaba were affected by faith. Look at the passion of the Prophets. 
• Musa (AS) had a passion for the truth. Having passion is a sign of faith. And as his faith grew, his ethics grew. Before he became a Prophet his passion led him to lose his cool and hit the man. After Prophethood he went to Pharaoh and was able to speak gently to him. 
• Islam is powerful. It impacts you and touches people. The Qur’an has powerful marketing techniques. 
• Faith brings you to life. “And is one who was dead and We gave him life and made for him light by which to walk among the people like one who is in darkness, never to emerge therefrom?” Surat al An’am (6:122)
• From time to time, you need to change your routine in order for it to keep it’s meaning and to revitalize your faith. Like clothes, the first time you wear something it’s like ‘ma sha Allah!’ but by next Eid it’s not much.
• Your strength of faith can touch and inspire others. There is a Muslimah chaplain for a hospital in Boston named Mary she asked me 'Do Muslims fake it? I have never seen a religious community deal with tragedy and bear hardship as Muslims do.' I told her because we have the six beliefs in Iman and we believe in predestination. The community touched her and inspired her.

Strengthen your passion

• Learn with the goal of practice. Commit to learn to BE, not simply learning to learn.
• Hold yourself accountable to Allah.
• Don’t be afraid to think about issues that make you uncomfortable. 

Don’t lose yourself 

• Some try to become anti-american in order to fit into the community and even distance themselves from family and friends.
• Find people in the community that you feel socially comfortable with.

Get involved

• Understand that there is a community of complainers. 
• So get involved and be the change you want to see - throw yourself into things.

Find the good

• Find the good qualities of the people around you. The Prophet (S) knew how to engage the worst of the worst.
• In his time, the arabs were ignorant, crazy, and pagan arabs. But the books of seerah teach about the life of the Prophet (SAW) by pointing out the good qualities of the arabs - bravery, generosity, fidelity... 
• He found ways to use these qualities to spread the message of Islam. 

Speak American

• I was wondering why I was in Boston... then the Boston bombings happened and I realized... This is why I am here! I did some interviews and I killed it for the sake of Allah. 
• Then the lady from CNN shadowed me the rest of the day. She was very Texan, with a hard accent, and smacking gum. Then she said, I need to talk to you: 'I like the Muslim community, I like your community, I like Muslims. I’ve been dealing with them for 20 years, you guys do great work. But there’s one problem... I have never had a guest until tonight who speaks American. I can’t understand what they are talking about. The media is not necessarily biased against you, we just don’t understand you.' 
• If we don’t make sense to them and speak to them in a way that is meaningful, then others will continue to define who we are.

Part 2: The Heart of the Matter - Communities

1. Be relevant

• As institutions, we need to take a strong step back and ask ourselves: Are we relevant? Are we talking about the problems that people are facing: converts, youth, sisters, elderly, disabled… ?
• The Prophet (SAW) took on the challenges in the community and many became Muslim because of his social reforms in social justice, marriage, inheritance and economy.
• We need to tie our message to the society that we live in and use it to touch people’s hearts. 
• People these days love cars, it’s a car culture. In the arab time camels was their car. So the Prophet (SAW) would use camels when speaking to them, like the hadith ‘If one person becomes Muslim it’s like 1000 camels.’ He uses something popular to relate to them. Just like I am using the word ‘poppin’ to get those laughs.
• When Ibrahim (AS) used the moon, stars, sun to talk to his people about Allah, he did that because that’s what was popular in his time. He wasn’t really invoking false gods, but using it to open people’s understanding.
• In Surat al Quraysh the first ayah is ‘li ilaafi quraysh’ - the security of Quraish - that’s what everyone was wondering in Makkah, so starting a surah with this title caught their attention.
• In Boston we titled one khutba ‘Breaking Bad’, we even had non Muslims calling asking for the time and we had to have non-Muslim seating area in the masjid.
• We need to think about what are the dominant issues in America? What are the spiritual issues that are on American people’s minds right now? For example the issue why do difficult things happen to good people.
• Some of these issues make people uncomfortable, but we have to start thinking about things that make us uncomfortable. If you don’t rock the boat it will capsize. If you keep pushing things under the rug you’re going to trip. 
• Here in ISBCC, we took on homosexuality, participation in the military, gun control, economy, terrorism, organ donation - we took it on. We took a position and we got hit for it. Because the head of the boat is the one that gets hit. 
• We need to push our religious leadership to speak to things that matter.

2. Identify & Create leaders 

• We need to identify charismatic leadership from all ethnicities. A city councilman came to speak to me, he said ‘You have 93 ethnicities. That means power!’ It is a powerful message to the society when we say ‘We are the most ethnically diverse institution in the area.’ 
• We need institutions that can create charismatic leaders that can speak at different levels. Not necessarily Shaykhs, because we can’t talk to the society through the language of theology. We need popular intellectuals. Charisma can be taught to people. Like Bayan Institution, Zaytuna College, Al Maghrib Institute, Ella Collins. 

3. Give leaders freedom of scholarship and freedom to make mistakes

• We need to allow imams to speak about issues. 
• Allow them to make mistakes and not punish them for it.
• We need to start putting women up, artists, politicians etc, and we need to give these people the space to make mistakes.

4. Speak to the Community

• It is very important to speak to our community. That is why we are beginning to see the hijrah from the masajid.
• The masjid needs to switch to being a learning mosque instead of an event based mosque. 
• People are stuck on the event based Islam… where one event changes your life… like workshops, conferences.. the Umar moment of sudden change. But that doesn’t happen. Looking for those quick fixes is a sign of spiritual illness. 
• Curriculum developed by the community: I believe that every masjid in American needs to gather people with degrees in education and local scholars, and then ask the community what they want to learn. Then create a curriculum based on the feedback. You can also send out surveys to youth, sisters and ask them what do you want to learn. Then inviting guest speakers is like what Imam Qurtubi says, ‘It’s like salt on the food.’ 
• Sit with people and ask them what they need: We gathered the converts and asked them what you you want, they said they want programs led by converts. We gathered the sisters, half wanted a wall, the other half didn’t, so we designated one area without a wall, and one area with a wall, then the phone calls stopped. 
• Town hall meetings to make decisions: gather the people and have an open vote. One time some brothers wanted to expand the masjid, so we gathered the people and talked about it, and the people said they would rather have a Youth Director. This motivates people to donate. 
• Re-think the yearly election process: Is it good to have elections every year? I believe the process should be changed. Where is the maqasid shari’ah? (The Goals and Objectives of Islamic Law)

5. Be a pastoral community

• A pastoral community is where people feel safe, love, empathy and a sense of belonging. 
• Instead of thinking about how to teach people, think about ministering to people. Like Mentor programs, full time paid guidance counselor, non profits that visit the sick people in the community, helping the disabled, visiting the elderly…. giving empathy to others. 
• In ISBCC - Free Hugs Friday. We made signs for men to hold up - Free Hug, Men Only. And signs for women to hold - Free Hug, women only. If you can create that family feeling of love and care you will be able to touch people more than any class. A sister who works in the financial district came into my office and said ‘I was contemplating suicide, but someone hugged me, now I feel loved.’

I sincerely express my gratitude to you throughout the years. You are the community that sent me to Egypt, you supported me. May Allah bless all of you. Alhamduillah. I’m very happy to see you. I ask Allah to gather us under his shade and to be pleased with us.