Rabbi Picks Fight With Prophet Muhammad

It was by a learned scholar of that time.

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and I said, Look, this man, he had

put the dots together. And he was expecting a messenger like they were to come. And he came. And he was looking at his life and everything fit except one thing that he had read in the Torah talking about the forbearance that this messenger would have. So he wanted to test the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So I'm telling my kids is

that we're extracting guidance. We have a blueprint for how we need to live our lives, that's a blessing.

And he had found that the Muslims were in desperation, they needed some money. So he put up he said, Look, I'm going to give you a loan for one year, he came back after three months, grabbed the messenger of a law by his neck. Started to insult him. Can you imagine? Someone put their hands on you? Go back home and I was born here you Baba bbbb. What do we do? What are you about to do? standing in front of the machines with guns? What are you gonna snap? Unfortunately, you have some Muslims, getting out of line getting ghetto. That doesn't help the dour. Look at the forbearance of the messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Amazing, the guy's got his hands on him. Omar rhodiola

he's got he's like, let me get him.

So he insults him. You guys. You don't pay your dad's he's doing he's setting it up. Look. He promised a year came back after three months. He wants to test him. So the profitsystem says go pay him and give him some more because you frightened him you should. You should advise him in a nice way, Alma. So for

scaring him, give him more, make a long story short, he ends up paying it back. The man says Do you know who I am asking him Why? He said no. Why? Why do you snap like you're acting.

In this way to the Messenger of Allah, I was testing him. They were just one thing I had connected the dots. And I saw that indeed, this was the messenger. But there was one thing holding me back. It was this thing that

I needed to test his forbearance and forbearance means when you're in a position that someone's oppressing you, someone's bringing harm upon you and you're able to punish them back. Like the prophet SAW some you could have just said Go get them right now is finished done.

But he didn't. And the man after that, he said, this is a learned man of that time a Jewish scholar. This isn't wasn't a layman, and he accepted Islam. Take that to the streets.

We have to be forbearing

to a whole nother level, because there's a lot of heat coming on people. They don't understand the beauty of Islam, the message of Islam, and they've fallen victim to the Islamophobia machine. So forbearance. Remember this? Patience. Sorry.

I was planning to actually start my lecture with this, but I think he already spoiled it, Eddie. He's always ahead of everyone. I don't know how many of you guys know that Eddie is actually a qualified martial artists. Anyone know that?

You guys just learned that.

I'll tell you one thing because I've rolled with him I sparred with him. He's a teacher of mine. Not only is he a mixed martial artist, but he's actually one of the best I've ever met in my life. If this guy wanted to hurt someone, he can literally probably snap every joint in your body before you can even say Ouch. I'm not exaggerating. I've trained with him for three, four years. And this is as me training in competition. And I've seen other great fighters fight with him. He's fought with so he's trained under the founders of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So many Muslim people from the community don't know but he is a national gym. Like people from across the country. They they take pride in

studying and training and sparring with him. I've seen UFC fighters who have actually taken time from their career to come and train with Eddie as a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. instructor. So if any of you guys are ever interested in learning,

Eddie is and that's what amazes me a lot. That's one thing I enjoy a lot about him is because where he had a career and he still does, he still trains he has, I think three four gyms across the city, where people from all over the country come all over the city or within the US, hundreds of fighters in Chicago that train underneath him. Not Muslim, but everyone from all fields I find with an his gym with police officers, with firefighters with

federal agents, they all come there and they train there. So one thing cool that I like

about him is that where he Mashallah is so successful in his in his art and as a master in it. He's so passionate about his Deen about his religion. And I think that's beautiful. Where he excels in one. He takes his belief system and it takes his what make what makes him feel very proud and what makes him feel very great. When I when I was training at his gym. I remember that one on wallet set something I don't remember the exact words of it, but it was it was him saying that he had on the main wall. It was it was in bold. And I read the saying and I was like, Oh my God, that's a hadith right there. Right, right. He had on the wall there on the main wall. There was something written

there regarding anger. I'm not sure what it was. And it was about it was a it was a statement of the prophets of aloha it was set them and that is shows us how when you're doing that law, or when you have something that you're passionate about, you can always use that as a platform to convey your work to others. So with that, I just wanted to step into the the session that I haven't had to spend a lot of men Rahim Al hamdu, lillah, Allahu Akbar, Saddam

Hussein Allah say University of Milan via Allah, Allah heliski. I was happy. Luckily, I'm about

earlier today I had a session. And I kind of use that session to go off another session that I had yesterday. And another question.

And all these talks are kind of linked together with the same theme the importance of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam in our life, what does the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him mean to us? What does it mean to love him? Why do we love him? Why is loving him so important? And I asked myself this question quite regularly.

Though, why do I need to love this man who lived 1400 years ago? And why is his life so relevant and so important to my times? How does his life make me a better citizen? How does his life make me a better son? How do I become a better teacher? By studying his life? There could be there are millions of people who've passed before us billions of people that have passed before us, why him

and I then turned to the Quran, which is the book that we read in the revelation of Allah subhanho wa Taala. And in there, I find God Almighty Allah azza wa jal saying that you will find your best example in the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, follow Him, you will be guided. Whoever has obeyed him has obeyed God Almighty, Allah subhanho wa Taala himself. And, you know, I'll give you an example. A few years back, I had a spinal injury, which ended my time with Edie. It was just an injury that I had. So after that injury, I went through a lot of pain, I ended up going through surgery. After that, I was still in a lot of pain. And actually, I'm in a lot of pain, as I'm

talking to you right now. And I had this constant, you know, this phase of just being heard and being injured and being an excruciating amount of pain. Doctors are giving me a medicine that I'm not interested in looking at, let alone taking it. And I kept asking myself,

you know, this, there's this balance that every human being is trying to figure out the elements of pain and difficulty we face as human beings, in relation to the mercy of Allah subhanho wa Taala at the mercy of God Almighty. How does this settle in with my life? And I gave it some thought.

Difficulty and trials are a part of our life. These are things that we actually can never ignore. There'll always be with us, no matter what phase in life you're in right now. There will be difficulty that will follow you there. I was born in Elizabeth town, Kentucky, and the public school that I went to, there weren't too many people of color there. I was one of the few people, maybe five, six of us all together.

So when I went to kindergarten, I remember some of the kids there, they mocked me, they made fun of me. I had to introduce myself in school, the teacher asked me, what's your name? And I said, Hussein, and one of the kids in the back of the class said, He's not Hussein, he's insane. And everyone's sort of laughing. Hahaha. And I was like, Man, that's so mean. Why would that guy say that to me? And then, lo and behold, I was called insane for the rest of the year. Everyone's Hey, insane. Get over here. Hey, insane, go do this. Hey, insane, go do that. So I thought to myself, you know what life's gonna get better when I get to first grade.

I'm just telling you, that's what I thought, okay, I get to first grade. And I realized that I don't get to sit in the back of the bus until I get to fifth grade. I get to fifth grade. Now I'm going to middle school, life's not getting better. I thought, you know what, when I get to high school, life will get better. When I get to high school life doesn't get better. I know. It's all about getting into college, when I get to college. Now you have these loans that you have to start worrying to pay off. And as soon as you graduate college not so by getting a job, you get a job. Every Uncle and Auntie in the community is asking you metastatic every year when you're getting married, and it's

kind of like Mind your own business, please.

I'll figure that out when I'm ready, but leave me alone. And then when you're married, then everyone asked you know

when you're having a boy or you're having a girl, you're like, no, no boy, no girl and trying to figure out life. When you have your child then you got to figure out a home then you got to get a car then you got to get a seanna or Odyssey

After you figure out which one you're going to do, then you got to buy a house and you start paying off that house, you have to start preparing for a college fund. And then you start preparing for your business. And once you pay off one house, a second house and third house, you guys know the drill. And a point comes in your life where you ask yourself, when is my life gonna be peaceful? When is this all just gonna end? And then you tell yourself, you know what, my life has to get peaceful when I retire. Then you realize by the time you retire, half of the limbs in your body aren't working anymore.

And I reflected over this and I came to a solution I came to not a solution. I came to this understanding that our messenger Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam taught us this lesson 1400 years ago, he taught us a lesson, which is a dunya, Masato era, that the world is actually the field for you to put your seeds in the ground. But you will not see the fruit in this world, you'll find your fruit in the hereafter. This world is a struggle, it's a constant struggle, there's some struggle or the other. Sometimes you struggle is emotional. Other times it's financial. Sometimes it's physical. At times, it's intellectual, but there's always a constant struggle that goes on and

on and on. And I think to myself that as a Muslim, shouldn't I be the one who actually never goes through any problems? I mean, I believe I, that I, I believe in Allah subhanaw taala. God, I believe in His Messenger, I read the Quran, I'm regular in my prayer, hopefully. So my desire is that I mean, I tell myself that I shouldn't be the one who faces difficulty, it should be the one who doesn't obey God, he should be the one whose lives is miserable, not mine.

But there are lots of then I turned back to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. And he actually says the exact opposite. The Prophet Muhammad is talking to me 1400 years ago, and he's telling me that out of all of the creation, those who are most beloved to God are the ones who are tested most by Allah subhanho wa Taala. And out of all of the people, the prophets were most beloved to Allah. So they were tested by Allah subhanho wa, taala, the most. And then after that, the people who follow them, the people who follow them, the people who follow.

And I sat there in my house, there was a time after the surgery where I wasn't able to move at all, I was bound to a chair, it was exactly a year ago, I had my surgery on December 23, almost a year ago. So two years ago, actually, in 2014, I was sitting on the chair, and my doctor told me not to move from there not to move around too much unless I had family members that would help me. So I sat there and I thought and thought and thought, is there a time when the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him his life, where he went through difficulty, where he went through a situation where it felt like the world was crumbling down, where a person feels hopeless, because we feel like that at times,

sometimes our challenges in life become so great that we don't know how to deal with them, we're not sure how to look at them in the face and say, I'm not afraid of you. Because they're there in our heart. They're really bothering us. We have this facade, this face in front of us, in front of the people where we show how tough and strong we are, and how emotions don't faze us, but inside we know our weakness. So I'm thinking to myself, was there a time in the Prophet Slifer, he was really going through a lot. And if there was a time in his life, where he was emotionally struggling, struggling, how did he deal with it, because I want to know, I'm really struggling right now myself. And then I

went back and I found one incident in the Prophet's life, where he was struggling a lot. He was struggling so much, and the people of the community,

his townsmen, they came and they said to him, the reason why you're struggling, is because God is because God hates you.

And this is a common

language that we use in our communities, when someone's struggling, rather than saying, everything will be okay, your beloved by God, well, we end up saying stuff like, your Lord hates you, your Creator hates you. That's why you're going through this. There was a lady who came to me who told me that she was expecting a child. And the doctor said that her child will be born with severe disabilities. When the child was born, the child had disabilities, people in the community came and told her that she was being punished by God. That's why she had this child. This is the language we use. Because in our mind, the image of our Creator is of a devil. Unfortunately, we think that God

is constantly angry, he wants to punish and how God is waiting to throw us into an inferno, that it's eternal. When on the other hand, when you open the Koran, that's that that's not the primary description of Allah subhana wa Tada. The primary description of Allah subhanho wa Taala is one that is merciful. Your Lord loves you more than your mother can ever dream of loving you. All the love that your mother can express and she can give to you. Your Lord loves you 99 more fools than that. You know, your Lord is our rough man, the Most Merciful your Lord is our Rahim, the ever Merciful, he will always be there for you. His mercy will not only engulf you in the world, but also in the

hereafter. And there are so many examples where the Quran says what it was. He the God says, My Mercy encompasses all any person who believes in me will find my mercy. Any person who follows his Deen will find and I'm not saying that the punishment doesn't exist. I'm not ignoring that. But that's not the that's not the primary interaction.

of who Allah subhanho wa Taala is that punishment is there, and it's a reality we find the Quran talking about paradise and it also talks about the fire of hell, but it always mentions paradise. It focuses on gender, it focuses on the prize. That's what Allah subhana wa, tada constantly reminds us of. So when I'm thinking about this, I asked myself, what happened. So the Prophet was going through this very tough part of his life, the community people came in, they said, Your Lord hates you. Your Lord is angry on you, he's abandoned you. When a marriage break, when a marriage breaks in our community, this is the first thing people say, they were crushed. When a business fails, the first

thing they say that person was cursed. When someone has some sort of a mental disability or some psychological conflict or problem they're dealing with. The first thing everyone says, there's a jinn they're, they're cursed, when we don't understand the value of a natural difficulty that a human being faces. And we as Muslims, don't view them as as curses. Rather, we view them as a blessing. And this is where the prophets biography really helps you out. This is where knowing who the Prophet Muhammad, Muhammad was, just as brother Eddie was saying a moment ago, that we live in a time where, you know, people, they don't understand our religion. They don't know what Islam is. You

have people sitting on Fox News, commentating on telling us who Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was when they've never read a Muslim biography of his, you know, they've only read critique of him. They've only read the story of him that actually was written by people who never liked him in the first place. Why don't you read a critique of his from a Muslim? Why don't you read his life from a Muslims perspective? You want to know what the prophet Muhammad was? come and talk to me? Let me tell you who he was actually scrapped the talk, let me show you who he was. You know, he was a person that smiled. He was a lovable person. His family loved him to bits it showed him love them to

bits. For those of you who think that the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was an abusive man, I swear by God, you can never provide me with a single case, a single scenario in his entire life where he ever raised his hand on any of his family members even once. Is that true or false? Is that an exaggeration? not an exaggeration, this is an academic claim. By the way, I instruct at a seminary, I'm an instructor at a seminary, I teach on an academic level, this is actually a factual claim. This is not true. It's not possible. All these claims that the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was out there to murder everyone that wasn't a Muslim, absolutely false. Think about this. He

lived in a city called Medina, before he arrives, they're all non Muslim. When he comes there, a fraction of society accepts Islam, and the other fraction remains as non Muslim until he passes away and even after that, so I asked you a question. If Muslims were supposed to annihilate everyone on the face of this earth who weren't Muslims, there was only one of two possibilities that would remain in his city, either everyone would be Muslim and forced into Islam, or they would be non Muslim, and all the Muslims would have been killed. symbol. Yes, no. simple logic, right.

But 10 years later, what happens?