LARI HAYAT DAWAN: As-Salaam-Alaikum Brother Imam. As always, my prayers and the prayers of your supporters are for your continued aid, protection and guidance by Allah, The One Best to Aid, Protect and Guide.
The Community of Imam W. Deen Mohammed (May Allah grant him The Mercy) is a rapidly aging body. We have lost a significant number of our young to the attractions that the world offers as well as to streams of knowledge not in keeping with Imam Mohammed’s focus. When I look at this condition, I am attracted to the story of The Sleepers in The Cave.
Does this story from the Qur’an have relevance to the situation I described above? Can you share your understanding regarding its relevance?
IMAM EARL ABDULMALIK MOHAMMED: As-Salaam Alaikum and thank you for your question Sister Lari Hayat Dawan.
This is really a question to be answered in a classroom setting with students on your level of interest and understanding. Not everyone reading this will know how to appreciate the implications, subtleties, and sensitivities in your question. I am always striving for use of the greatest economy of words to answer the questions in the interest of preserving precious time. Time is something we must respect. This is mentioned in our Holy Book and in many of Prophet Muhammed's, the prayers and the peace be on him, teachings. Even in this question you are asking issues related to the logic of time are implied.
Praise be to Allah. We turn to Him. He is our Lord, which is to say He Evolves us to our intended and promised existence with the Highest and Greatest Care and Concern.
We cannot have anything good except that Allah intends it for us. The Prophet has said that Allah is Good and accepts only the good. If we experience some difficulty or hardship then it is in the context of Allah's Plan. It is in the context of realizing or reaching the good. This reasoning is a preserved logic in the People of Faith. As conscientious, dutiful parents we desire to teach our young people to preserve the logic of our best life and understanding. We expose them to the best circumstances that we can manage to preserve this logic in them and for them. If they separate from us then G'd is preserving the logic in them. If they separate from us, from the parents of society, then there is some measure of trouble in the society. It is not the nature of children to want to separate from their parents until they are at a certain point of development. They may venture out, but they return to continue to feed on what is necessary for their development.
It is a harsh reality, but our children in too many places have been abandoned. Many of us have lost touch with our best life and have not given our children what they are deserving of from us. Their nature that Allah gave them has compelled them to seek refuge away from circumstances that do not support their wholesome development. In too many cities the concern for our future has not been in correct focus. The logic of what we should be emphasizing in the 'time' that we have in our existence has been and is being squandered. I am speaking of the Muslim-African-American community.
If anyone wants to challenge this then let them first answer the question of how much time have they invested in educational institutions. Where you see our People devoting themselves, their resources, their 'time', to developing and/or strengthening our education systems, you see a picture of Islamic community that has good health, good life, and the fullness of life. Where you see this fundamental concern neglected, you see the blighted minds and hearts of a group dead to its purpose. And every excuse and distraction are given for the decadence and decline.
A person reading this will have to know something about the Holy Qur'an to understand our language here. This is why a classroom setting is a better environment for this discussion. Serious minded people who are devoted to these kinds of issues will find answers that satisfy them.
The youth in this story in the Holy Qur'an are preserving a way of thinking, a line of thinking, a straight consistent logic. They are the embodiment of that process, and the trouble in the society in which they find themselves threatens them and cannot secure them because of its wasteful 'time' habits. Their parents are way off the mark. So, in order for this precious logic to be preserved and not destroyed, their nature compels them to separate from their society with that logic intact. And when they emerge from the Cave they are in a pristine state.
Allah reminds us that it matters not what their number or the number of years they have been in the Cave, no need to even speculate about it. It is referring to a 'time' in society when there is an undeniable disconnect between those responsible for society and those who stand to inherit that responsibility. Yet, in spite of that disconnect the logic has been preserved in a special few. This is what the learned people in Islam are doing when they issue a 'fatwa.' I say the learned and authentic scholars.
Not all of the so-called 'muftis' are doing that, and the ones in our association who think of themselves in this way are following their lost slave masters. They have lost the connection. The 'fatwa' is in purity and in principle, a preservation of the Islamic logic injected into the society for a situation of important need. An ignorant trouble-maker who does not belong in this or any classroom of real learning will say, "What is he talking about?" These types haven't respected the Holy Qur'an enough to familiarize themselves with any of its plain teachings, nor subject themselves to its authority in their lives, and so Allah has barred them from benefitting from its beauty and purity. The security brothers should remove such disrupters. They mean nothing but mischief and discord.
The word that says 'youth' in the Qur'an language, is the same word that forms the basis of understanding for the term 'fatwa.' This is why Imam W. Deen Mohammed never issued or delivered 'fatwas.' For him and his devoted students and following, the need was never there. His logic was always exact and on time. His connection to the preserved logic was secure and sound. His reasoning was air-tight, no area for interference, no need for re-interpretation. There was no appetite for a foreign interjection. His public was feeding on a steady diet of his reasoning. In his lifetime it was preserved in them by him.
And what is this preserved logic? What is Ar-Raqeem? It is the teaching and understanding of the honorable line of human dignity that begins with Adam and is completed in Muhammed. This is the true teaching of al-Islam. This is the true emphasis of the Holy Qur'an. This is the mainstay of Islamic life in the teaching of Muhammed. This is where all Islamic reasoning must conclude. This is where the youth want to go by the demand in their nature. And if the society they are born into has abandoned it, then their nature compels them to dis-associate and go to sleep. Their potential will not serve, refuses to serve, the corruption. And they lose consciousness in that society.
Modern societies and its moral teachings want to shame Adam and say that he and all of his descendants are of sinful nature. May Allah strengthen us against the schemes. If we teach and preserve in our children our Islamic reasoning that Adam was acting on his nature and that human nature is good, then we have preserved the honor of Adam that eventually establishes itself in Muhammed's completed human excellence. Shouldn't this be what we are after?
If our children are abandoning us but striving to keep the Islamic identity it means that they have identified an interference in the purity of the logic of this understanding; their nature will not accept it, and their good minds cannot support it. Their nature that originates with our noble father Adam, is to value what is essential and good, and by separating into these many Caves they are preserving that nature for the 'time' that favors and respects the fundamental concern, the central matter, that they recognize in the innocence of their youthful energy, as missing.
The Holy Qur'an teaching wants us to identify the 'time' of the sun shining on them. The sun is rising again and its light is stirring them, awakening them. They are not asleep in the normal understanding of sleep, as the Qur'an suggests. It is that the 'time' is not favoring the growth of what has been preserved in them. The 'time' is favoring them now. Share with them Imam Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed's representation of Imam W. Deen Mohammed's Dawah, his Guided Tradition, and they will say "Let us come out of these Caves of Disassociation and give our productive years to the logic of this teacher who does not alter or corrupt the sacred logic, but invites us to embrace it and build with it."