Khutbah #2 - 27/02/98

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim

Alhamdulillahi rabbil'alamin wa salaatu wa salaamu ala Rasulihi

This week it will be different. My apologies to those upset by my not standing for the Khutbah last week. It was not meant to shock - in fact the intention was quite the opposite, to put people at their ease. It just goes to show the difficulties of intercultural communications. But I said that this was not my Jummah but ours. So as promised, I am endeavouring to change my behaviour to suit the feelings of the group - and if you keep telling me how you feel about it, the group may or may not learn something from me, but I will certainly learn something from the group.

Are you a group? Are you one family? Are you friends? Are you an ummah? 

When I lived in California (Marin County, north of San Francisco) there was a wonderful huge wooden building that was once a boy scout centre, now owned by California Shi'a muslims, and where on Fridays their Imam would lead the Jumma prayer. Now in San Francisco there was a Sunni Egyptian scholar from Al-Azhar, who would make the journey every Friday to join the prayer. He and the Imam were great friends, and would wander in the woods discussing theology (or whatever), and sit and laugh over coffee in the evening in a way that would have been unthinkable in either's home. When my friend asked the Egyptian what he thought about that, he said that with so few muslims let alone muslim scholars in the local community, their differences seemed so few in number compared to their agreements.

Are you friends? What do we mean by Friendship? I'm not sure, but I think it must have something to do with letting someone share in the truth of your condition. I'm sure it is something to do with telling the Truth. But then, truth should be at the centre of everything we do. Qur'an constantly advises us to tell the truth - Wa tawassaw bil Haqq wa tawassaw bi Sabr. Why does it seem so hard to tell the Truth? In fact, that's one of Shaitan's distortions (about which more some other time), because telling the truth actually, in truth makes things easier.

For instance, if you can get people to function telling the truth it makes a huge improvement in your Business Efficiency. Say you are in business and supplying a client with something you have ordered from somewhere else. It doesn't arrive - You phone your supplier - It's in the post - OK, you tell your client it will be with him tomorrow. - Tomorrow it doesn't come - nor the next day - You phone your supplier - It was lost in the mailroom - It's sitting in the corner of the office - I'll put it on a delivery truck myself this afternoon - Except, of course they're still waiting for it to arrive at their place from a factory in Belgium, which could take six weeks. And if you knew the truth you could have come up with an alternative solution, but your client gets angry at you, and you at your suppliers, and all the plans and verbal transactions are just time wasted by someone trying to avoid facing the truth.

Lies don't even make your life better when they are told for Politeness - Let me tell you the story of the Eclair and the Doughnut. It's really a children's story, but that's OK. Mr. Evans loved eclairs, and really hated doughnuts, while Mr. Davis loved doughnuts and couldn't stand eclairs. They were both very nice men, and when they met they were always on their best behaviour. And one day they met by chance in a coffee bar, and on the table between them was a plate containing the very last doughnut and the very last eclair. Which would you like? Said Mr. Evans (hoping against hope that Mr Davis would want the Doughnut). Oh dear thought Mr Davis (I know what I would like, but it would seem rather selfish of me to take it). I'm not sure - what about you? Oh dear thought Mr. Evans - he obviously would rather have the éclair, but doesn't want to deprive me of it. So Mr Evans said "Why don't I eat the doughnut" thinking (how I hate these stodgy things - but at least Mr Davis will enjoy that delicious looking éclair) - while Mr Davis, was thinking "Ugh! How I hate eclairs - they're like cardboard", but, of course, what he said was "Umm - delicious".

*****

Truth leads you to paradise - and whatever you want is there - and yet with God there is still more. You remember last week's description of the Prophet? He joked but he only spoke the truth. You did not lie in his presence - he spoke only the truth. He said: "I come with the religion of truth and tolerance". Truth - what you need for understanding, and one of the few principles worthy of your courage. He said: "The most excellent jihad is to speak the truth in the face of a tyrannical ruler." (Of course, that doesn't mean you have to be offensive. He was always polite.)

The religion of Truth and Tolerance.

Truth, which must be searched for inside - you cannot find it anywhere else. Can you trust your judgement of anything else, if what is going on inside you (before you look out at the world) is a tangle of lies and self-deceptions? But then, even when you are sure of your truth, your truth is not necessarily the same as my truth - we are basing our judgements on information drawn from completely different sets of life experiences. We may disagree - and how do you live alongside someone with whom you completely disagree? Tolerance.

Truth for the health of the individual soul, and hence the group - and Tolerance for the health of the group, and hence the individual. "You will see the faithful in their having mercy for one another, and in their love for one another, and in their kindness to one another, like the body - when one member of it ails, so does the entire body, one part calling out to the other with sleeplessness and fever."

May God bless the Prophet for showing us the Way