Religion is here to unite us. It’s not to divide us. If it’s dividing us, it’s not God’s religion. It’s something else. It’s a great to be in a place where you feel comfortable. You don’t have to worry about somebody telling you,” You’re not doing this right.” If somebody did correct you, it would be out of love and out of arrogant, pious, self-righteous attitude of superiority. So this type of religion, we really have to fight it. Because it’s killing the soul of the muslims. It’s all over the place now.
Those are like viruses, intellectual viruses. We have got these intellectual viruses that are making our community sick. We really need to wash our hands in order not to get sick. We really have to purify ourselves.
Allah swt said that to his prophet, “We didn’t reveal this Qur’an for you to be miserable.”
The understanding is this book is revealed to make you happy. So if Islam is not making you happy, something is wrong with your understanding of Islam. And if you’re making other people unhappy, woe unto you, for driving people out of Islam.
So this is a time for people to have a lot of “rahab”, expansiveness in their hearts for people.
I quote Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi’s kasida. He has beautiful kasida, which is in the entrance to his maqam.
“Come, come again.”
“Whatever you’ve done.”
“This isn’t a caravan of despair.”
“Sinner, if you’ve broken your wow a thousand times.”
“Just come back.”
The door is open. Anybody that closes it is a shaytan. There are people closing that door on people that need to hear that message. Because this world can defile you, but no matter how defile you are, Allah’s door is open. No matter what happened to you, Allah’s door is open. I mean, we have testimony in the hadith to a mass murderer who was given tawbah even though he killed a hundred people.
Hudhaifa Yamani said, “The end of time won’t come until the Muslims are like a big rock in a river. They don’t drink form it and they don’t let other people drink from it.” And he continued, “And the one seeing it, is not like the one telling it.”
So don’t be like that rock that doesn’t let the river flow and let people drink from it. These people need it. They are dying of thirst (spiritual thirst) out there.
The door is open. We need to open it up and let people come in with all their faults, flaws, disfunctionalities and problems.
Just open the door and let people come in.*
*Quoted from Syaikh Hamza Yusuf’s speech, Co-founder of Zaituna College, California, United States.