Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

dīn
and 
fiqh
and Shariah, I’m talking about basic
morality, people. Basic, basic morality.
We have 
masājid
in the United States—and across the world even—where
fund raising is taking place and they’re going to collect money. Once they
collect the money they are going to say, ‘Yeah, we should put this money
towards this thing or the other’. No, you advertised that you are going to raise
these funds for this project but now you’re putting it in another. ‘No, it’s okay,
it’s okay. We have a fatwa.’ You have a fatwa to be dishonest? Where did you
get that from? But that’s okay for us, we can do that! We could lie even in the
name of religion—
subḥān Allāh
! How can that be, how does it get to that point?
How does it get to the point where you have to argue in your home, you have to
argue with your parents, ‘Dad, seriously, I really think we should give zakat’.
‘No, no. It’s okay’; and there is an argument happening inside a Muslim home
whether they should give zakat or not. This is happening inside the Muslim
family. Why would Allah’s help come to a people like that; that have been given
the most beautiful 
dīn
, that have been given the most perfect teachings and they
don’t even look in the mirror for one minute, for one day just: ‘What am I doing
wrong?’
Many of you are not ulama, you’re not 
fuqahā’
, you’re not muftis, you don’t
have to be. But you know what you do wrong, I know what I do wrong, and we
keep overlooking it. Allah will not change the state of this people, Allah will not
change the state of this ummah. Nope, He will not do it. Allah Himself says this.
People say: ‘Oh, you just quote the 
āyāt
’. The 
āyāt
are the ultimate reality. There
is no greater reality than the 
āyāt
. There is no reality you will find in physics and
chemistry and biology that you won’t find in the 
āyāt
of the Qur’an. 
Inna Allāh
lā yughayyir mā bi-qawmin ḥattā yughayyirū mā bi-anfusihim
—Allah will not
change the state of a people until they transform what is within their own selves
(
al-Raʿd
13: 11). 
Mā bi-anfusihim
—there is something wrong inside of us,
Allah’s answer to what is wrong with the ummah is, something is wrong inside
people. That is Allah’s answer to what is wrong with this ummah today. When
He says—
wa-antum al-aʿlawn in kuntum mu’minīn
—you are going to be in the
supreme position, if in fact you have true 
īmān
, if you are true believers (
Āl
ʿImrān
3: 139). Now, clearly we are not in the supreme position so something
must be wrong with our 
īmān
because Allah is never wrong. Allah is never

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wrong.
This is a tragedy. One after another, after another, after another; and it’s not
going to stop and we know it’s not going to stop. The only thing we can do,
instead of being overwhelmed by this flood of tragedy and constantly just
figuring out a way to justify to people that we are not crazy, because, by the
way, they are going to think we are crazy no matter what. You can’t impress
them, you can try, messengers tried too. If messengers weren’t good enough for
them, we’re definitely not good enough for them, let me tell you. There is no
way to impress them. No matter how we do right, the people who hate will
always hate. The people who make fun will always make fun. But we better give
them the right reasons to make fun of us.
The right reasons are we stand by Islam. We are the people of reason. We are
the people of intelligence. The greatest threat of Islam was not its force, was not
the sword, was not the weapon. The greatest threat of Islam was the power of its
ideas; how it challenged injustice head on and how it questioned the integrity of
other philosophies, other ideas. How can you think like that? How can you act
like that? How can you judge like that?