Goals of the Shariah
Channel: Ismail Kamdar
In this Jumah Khutbah, Sh Ismail discusses the reasons and wisdom for the revelation of Shariah, as well as the goals of the Shariah.
hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa salatu salam wa rahmatullah al Ameen. We begin by creating lasota hana with Allah and asking Allah to send his peace and blessings upon the final prophet, Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa salam and all those who follow his way with righteousness and to the end of time.
They there were many topics which I considered speaking about today.
Because over the past few weeks in my interactions with many of the young Muslims in our community, I found there's a lot of questions about Islam.
And I could have made perhaps made the Juma lecture on each question one by one. What I decided instead is to go back to the root of all these issues. Now the the central theme between every question that young people ask, and that question, we all the other questions come from is, what is the Sharia? Why is the Sharia know, why do we have to follow a Sharia? Why is the Sharia the way it is? Right? Because we look at the Christians, young people ask questions like why does Islam have so harsh punishments for crime?
Why do women have to cover the hair? Why do I have to pray five times a day? Why can't I do it? Why can't I do this? Why can't I do that? It all comes down to one question it Why do we have a Sharia? Why did Allah send us laws? That's just a real question. Because if you understand why Allah sent us laws, you wouldn't really need to go into each law and try and figure out what, because the central reason is enough. And so I've decided that today inshallah, I'm going to speak about this topic. And this topic is quite long. So I mean, split this over several Juma lectures in short, today, I just want to focus on the main reason. So what I'm going to focus on today is number one, what is Sharia?
Number two, why is there Sharia? And number three, what is the main goal or the main purpose of the Sharia? Now, this word Sharia, nowadays is like a scary word. People don't use it anymore. People are afraid of it. You know, the Sharia is barbaric. They say, it's horrific. It's harsh. It's violent. You know, the islamophobes. They say things like Muslims want to force Sharia upon us. are they bringing Sharia to non Muslim countries? No, it's used as a scary word similar to the word jihad. These are what people don't want to mention anymore, because they are afraid, you know, of the connotations that come with using these words.
But as Muslims, we shouldn't be embarrassed by the word. Chevy is actually a very beautiful word with a very beautiful meaning. And it really is that the central part of our religion is the Sharia. So what is it?
The word Sharia means a way, a way of doing things. And in terms of Islam, it means the way of life revealed by God for humans to live. That's all it is. When you say you follow the Sharia, it simply means you are following the way of life that Allah has revealed. That's all it is.
It's nothing. Scary, it's nothing harsh. It's nothing. Strange. It simply means choosing to live your life the way Allah wants you to live it. That's called following the Sharia, by some people think the word Sharia is limited to criminal law. So when they talk about Sharia, they talk about, for example, how you deal with thieves, or how we deal with murderers. And that's surely but actually, when you study the books of Sharia, that's like five or 10%, of what's found in the books, that's actually called Voodoo. It's called Voodoo. In Arabic, it means the fixed criminal laws. It's like 10%, or 5%, of the Sharia. When you actually study Sharia, you study how to pray, how to fast,
how to dress, what to eat, what not to eat, how to deal with people, how to how to run your business, in an ethical manner. All of this is Sharia. So this is a comprehensive term about the complete way of life and Muslims should not be afraid or ashamed of using this word. It is what we do we follow the Sharia, we follow the way of life that Allah has revealed. Now, why is there Sharia?
According to modern understandings of the world, and you find this even amongst secular Muslims, and these people believe that God created us and left us to do what we want. And they believe that we too insignificant for a lot to worry about our lives. And that's not correct. I this is a modern mindset that has been developed in the past 20 or 30 years. It didn't exist before that. Rather, if you actually look at Revelation, whether it's revelation sent to the previous prophets, or the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu wasallam. All of the revelation shows us that Allah cares about human beings.
Allah didn't just trade us and leave us he cares about us. We are the creation that Allah cares about. He wants humanity to go to China. He wants you to
Humanity to have a good life. He wants humans to be successful in this world and an x. And it is for this reason that he has revealed to us a way of life to show us how to do that. And that way of life is called the Sharia. So we believe that Allah has sent differentiy areas to different prophets. So Prophet Musa alayhis salam came with laws that were suitable to his time. those laws are called the sherea sherea husar Islam as found in the Torah. Right, then Prophet Isa Lee's route came with a slightly easier Sharia, he surely there was more flexible and suitable to his time. And the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam the final prophet, he came with the perfect show to a Sharia
that can be applied from his time until the end of times. Sharia is a comprehensive system of loving, that Allah has revealed Why? Because Allah cares about the human beings. Allah wants us to stay away from things that are harmful for us. Allah wants us to live our lives in a way that is best. And Allah knows we can't figure this out on our own. We can't. It's about time, humanity admits that. For the past 100 years, human beings have been trying to figure out how to live on their own without religion. And it has been a complete disaster, from capitalism, to communism, to all these other isms that popped up in the past 100 years feminism, all of these things, they have
brought more and more problems to the world. Every time humans come up with a new idea, I think this is how humanity should be. It just creates more problems. People thought communism is going to solve problems. He created new problems. They thought capitalism will solve problems, he created new problems. They thought feminism's going to solve problems, he created new problems, there is only one thing that solves problems. And that is Allah, because Allah made us, Allah knows what's best for us. And so Allah revealed a way of life that shows us how to live in a way that's best for us. So when somebody lives their life the way Allah wants him to live, then you will see a reduction in
problems for humanity.
Now this, does this mean that there won't be any problems? No, it's not gender? Is it Junior? Junior is a place of testing, there will always be problems. That's just the nature of what the sherea does is he makes it easier in reduces the problems. Simple example, compare the stats for crime, in a Muslim country, to a non Muslim country, especially to South Africa, you can automatically see the difference, right, that there is a reduction in crime in Muslim countries. Is there no crime is crime. Right? But it's a reduction of crime. It's much less people feel safer in a Muslim country from criminals than they do in this country. Why? Because even if it's only part of the Sharia, they
are applying those parts of it are very effective. Right? So the Sharia is there to protect us. Now there are entire books written about what the sherea sherea is, and why it exists is the entire science in fact, called mikaze. To Sharia the goals of the Sharia. And this science is very vast, and we cover it over a few weeks to help you understand it generally in the past, this science was only taught to Allah. Right in the past the science of the goals of the Sharia was only taught to the Allah so they could understand the Sharia apply to their times come up with fatwas. They're suitable the times and approach the text intellectually. But we live in a time where the average
Muslim has access to internet. And because of the access to the internet, they have new questions. And most of these questions are about the Sharia. So I believe in our times, we need to bring this knowledge down to the average person's level. So we can answer the questions so people can understand what is the Sharia why we have it, and what are the goals and the purposes of Allah did not reveal anything which does not have a goal or a purpose. If Allah revealed the Lord is the reason behind it. So there is a reason behind the Sharia existing. And all the focus today on the main reason. This reason was mentioned by a sharpie and by even assure, and many other scholars of
the science in their books, and all of them see, that is one reason why the show exists. What are the two reasons why these two reasons are to make life easy for humanity and to protect human beings from harm? That's it. The whole of the Sharia, every single law found in the Quran and in the Hadees revolves around one of these two or both of these principles. It's either there to make life easy for us, or it's there to protect us from harm or it's there for both. How, how does the Sharia make life easy for us? For example, the Sharia encourages marriage. Right, which makes life easy for people in Sharia allows divorce which makes life easy for people compared to some religions where to
be pious, you can't get married. Then he difficult. Some religions where you get married.
never allowed to get divorced no matter how terrible the marriages, makes life very difficult. sherea came to make life easy for us, you can get married, you should get married. And if there's too many problems which are manageable, you can get divorced. A Practical system, which makes life easy for people. The scenario came to make life easy for us by showing us you know, things to do that make life better. So for example, the Sheree a large portion of it is good manners. Right? If everybody implements this good manners, we have a more peaceful society, we have a happier society, life is easier. When people ignore the madness part of the show via we end up with what we have
today, you know, Muslims always angry and fighting with each other. Right? So the Sharia came to make life easy for us. The second thing the Sharia came for is to protect us from harm. And this is really what the Haram is about. Allah has only made her arm things which are harmful to humanity. And I previously gave an entire Juma lecture about the same topic. So I'm not going to go into too much details about that. But in the previous lecture, I mentioned that one of the primary principles of the Sharia is the protection of humanity from harm. Why can't we drink alcohol? Because it's harmful, not just to us, but to those around us. Right? Why can't Muslims get involved in Zina?
Because it is one of the most harmful lifestyles in the world today. You don't believe in look at countries that have a zener culture and see how they're falling apart. Look at how the society is falling apart, how families are falling apart, how even economies are falling apart because of the spread of immorality. Allah wants to make things easy for us and protect us from harm. Now, where do we get this from? That this is the purpose of the Sharia. We get this from the Quran and from the Hadees.
very beautifully in Surah Baqarah when Allah subhanaw taala speaks about Ramadan, right and about fasting. Now on the outside, especially to non Muslims. Look at this Ramadan looks hard. Fasting looks hard. He said something hard. But he called beautifully Allah explains it in the Quran in verse 185, sudo Baqarah, Allah subhanaw taala says that you must pass in the month of Ramadan. And he explains why. And he explains that if you are sick or champion, you can make it up later. And then Allah says, you read the law because all you saw was are you ready to become a Muslim? Allah wants life to be easy for you. He doesn't want things to be hard for you.
This is a two principles of the Sharia, to make things easy for people to make life easy for people and to protect them from harm. In this one verse about Ramadan. Why did Allah want us to pass the Ramadan, but if you are traveling a sick, you don't have to fast you can make it up later. Because Allah wants to make life easy for you. He does not want life to be difficult for you. And so one of the fundamental concepts of the Sharia is that the Sharia is useful. It is practical, it is something that can be applied anywhere to anybody's life. It is simple. I know the most common translation for user is easy. But I don't like using that translation because people misunderstand
the modern context. So the principles of the Sharia that we're speaking about today, the Sharia is meant to be a means of making life easy for us and protecting us from harm. I want to speak about four ways in which following Islamic law makes life easy for you. Number one, it gives you purpose. If you follow Islam, your life has a purpose, your life has a meaning. And this solves a problem that the majority of humans have today. There are people out there who cannot sleep at night because they don't know why they exist. There are people out there wanting depression because they don't know why they exist. There are people out there who know that they're going to die one day, and they
don't know what to do between now in depth because they have no idea why they exist, then life has no purpose. And when your life has no purpose, you are in a constant state of anxiety. You are constantly worried you worried about death. You worried about life, you worried about your legacy, you worry about what am I supposed to do while I'm here? You worried about all these things? The sherea takes away this worry. Allah tells us why we are here. What holds us we are souls that Allah has created a long time ago, he has put us in these bodies for just a few decades, just a few decades for what to prepare for the next world. Right? Where are you going to be much longer, you're
going to be there forever. Right? This is just a temporarily stopped in our actual lives. Our existence on earth is a temporary stop in our actual lives. Our souls existed before this, it will exist long after this. This is a temporary stop to prepare for the next slide. So what do Muslims do? They spend their lives preparing for the next life. How does this make life easy for you? You don't have that anxiety. You're not worried about the purpose of life. And most importantly, when somebody you know dies upon a man, it's much easier to deal with than it is for somebody who doesn't believe in afterlife because you know you're going to see them again. You know, this is not the end
you know, this is inevitable. You
Know that the soul has left the body but the soul is still alive in the bowels? Are you still gonna see it in Africa? And this makes it easy for us. So the Islam came to make things easy for us. It gives us purpose. Number two, Islam makes life easy for us. Because the Sharia has a firm moral foundation. If you follow the Sharia, you know what your morals are, you know what is right and wrong? If you don't have a Sharia, you are confused about these topics. And you will always be confused about these topics. Why? Why do I say this? Again? Look at the modern world, the modern world is completely confused about what's right and wrong. They can't figure it out. Every year they
change the laws. And what happens in America, in Hollywood, an actor does something in 1995, that's considered acceptable. And in 2018, there's a court case about it, because it's no longer considered acceptable. Or the opposite happens. Somebody hide something in 1995, because it's considered unacceptable. In 2018, they become open because now it's acceptable. Why? Because they have no moral foundations, they have no basis for what's right and wrong. So every year, they are changing their laws. Every year they are changing the understanding of right and wrong.
They are so confused about what's right and wrong and and what should be more or what should be immoral, that I've been following this past few weeks on our online, many of the atheist philosophers in the West, and now saying there's nothing wrong with a mother and her son, and our father and the daughter to be with each other intimately. Because why they don't believe in a Sharia law. They don't believe in God don't believe in afterlife, they don't believe in consequences. They don't believe in morality. Put it this way there's no Sharia it there's no god there's no afterlife, what's morality?
What is right What is wrong? It doesn't exist. And so this is the state that the world is headed towards the only thing that can stop us from falling down that dangerous road that humanity is heading down is the Chevy. When you have a Chevy or when you have Allah Sharia when you have Islam, you know right from wrong, you know, certain things are off limits. And no matter how the society changes that will never change. Islam has stated that fornication and adultery are sins. In the modern world, it is everywhere. But we will always consider it a sin.
We will always consider a sin. Alcohol has been declared Haram in the sherea sherea considers it to be the mother of all evil, no matter how common alcohol consumption becomes in the world, a true Muslim will forever consider it to be the mother of all evils. We will not budge around morality you have a firm moral compass, love your life. And again, this makes life easy for you. Why does it make life easy for you, because you are not in a constant state of state of worry about what's right and wrong. You know what's right or wrong. Instead of having to worry about the laws changing tomorrow and right and wrong changing tomorrow. You know, this is what Allah says like, that's what I'm gonna
love by finish. There's no more reason to think about that. Number three, Islam makes life easy for us by giving us principles for dealing with the problems of this world. And this is unique to Islam. One of the reasons why many people from other religions have become atheist. And I don't say this to speak bad about other religions, but just based on my experience with people who converted, they all say the same thing that Indian religion, they were taught that if you obey God, if you love God, nothing bad will ever happen to you. This is what they were taught. And so when something bad happened to them, they lost faith in their religion. Now this is not what Islam teaches. Islam is
unique. Islam is unique in that Islam says, The closer you are to Allah, the tougher the test of life is going to be.
This is a big difference. Other religions say, the more God loves you, the easier life's gonna get. Islam says the closer you are to allow, the tougher life's going to get. Why? Because this is the testing ground genda is really the easiest, in this world you will be tested. So you may be wondering if life gets harder when you get more pious, how does this make life easy for people? Right the test of life are going to come whether you are religious or not. For example, if a family member is meant to pass away, whether you are a religious Muslim, or not a family member is going to pass away. But Islam makes life easier for you in that if you are religious, if you are practicing,
you have the tools to deal with that yet. You have the tools to handle that debt and move on with your life without falling into all kinds of insanity that comes with, you know, with debt and with these kinds of problems. You have the ability to handle it. So Islam prepares us for life. This is how it makes life easier for us. It prepares us for the test of life. And so you will find that people who don't have Islam, the smallest problem happens and you kill themselves. And the person who has a man will be sitting in prison being tortured and he still has inner peace.
We still bring this up. He's still reciting Quran is still doing that what are the prisoners? Why? Because Islam has given him the tools to be at peace on the inside, no matter what's going on around him on the outside. And only Islam can do this to you. Only Islam and Sharia can create this sense of inner peace in a person, that no matter how much the world has fallen apart around him, he still remains focused on the effect.
The fourth way that Islam makes life easy for us is he has created a Sharia, where the law changes based on circumstances. Meaning what if you cannot pray when standing up when sitting? You can't pray when sitting you pray while lying down. You can't make what do you make the yamo you to seek to fast you can pass later. This is the beauty of the Sharia. Right that Allah has treated as Sharia, we honor cares about us. And I want you to consider you know what, it doesn't matter. You find what what what and you make will do there's no such thing as valuable, and will never ever
reveal it. Allah revealed out of his first Allah made his religion a religion of ease. And this is why this is one of the principles of Fiq that the religion is practical. And when it gets too hot, then the law actually gets easier. Meaning if a certain law of Islam gets too hard to apply in a specific place or time, then the law changes for that particular time. I just will give you a practical example from dealing with my own students. When one of the Muslim countries that a coup happened, and decided targeting Muslims with big beards, and locking them up in prison. So my students were living there, they asked me they said that, you know, we all got big beards, who
escaped to leave our homes. So I told him in this circumstance that y'all are living under your can shave your beard.
in that circumstance for us, Africa, grow your beard, no one's gonna have me to Africa for growing a beard. But the Sharia says the preservation of human life takes precedence over all the other laws. If you can eat pork to save your life, you can shave your beard to save your life. So the law changes for that situation because they are in a tough situation. Islam is no is not so harsh and unflexible that you have to die for your beard. It's not like that. Rather, when we have the ease that we have inside Africa, we follow this. But when there is oppression, that will American consider it they can look at the level of oppression how bad it is, and they can for temporary
change the law accordingly. Why? Because Islam came to make life easy for people, Islam came to protect us from harm. And so when something becomes harmful to our market, you can say Hold on, in this situation, don't do it. Right. Even though it may be a part of the religion, this is part of the DC This is part of Islam, making life easy for people, Allah does not want us to be in unnecessary difficulty. Right? Allah does not want us to be unnecessarily difficulty. Rather, a certain level of difficulty is expected. Because making up for failure is difficult. But it's a good difficulty. Because it makes you more responsible. It makes you more mature, it makes you more
religious, it gives you more time in your day. It's a good difficulty. But when it becomes a bad difficulty, you know making we do is going to kill you because you are only cold water and minus 10 degrees. Allah doesn't say go for that difficulties and make the ammonia.
Right. So this is levels of the seal in our religion.
The other side of the goals of the Sharia is protecting us from harm. As I said, I spoke about this before. But just to summarize this four ways, or rather, this mobile will speak about four ways in which Islam and the Sharia are there to protect us from harm. And a lot of people can't understand this. You know, why does Islam make so many things haram? Well, firstly, this may surprise you Islam does not make so many things.
You can actually list the Haram but you can't miss the holiday. The holiday is endless. You really cannot make a list of what is holiday there are so many things that you cannot write down. The Haram is limited to lists. You can write a book on what is haram. You could even write an article and what is the problem today is that we are surrounded by those few things that are Haram. So it looks like everything's Haram. We surrounded by alcohol, drugs, Zina everything related to Xena. And so we see this and we see oh Islam makes everything Haram. No, this culture is made everything a lot. Right. But Islam actually only makes a few things haram and those few things are haram because they are bad
for society. That's all it is. If something is bad for society, ultimately,
society will be better off without it. society will be better off without fornication and adultery. society will be better off without homosexuality. society will be better off without alcohol and drugs. A society will be more peaceful, more stable, more normal without these things.
In the modern world, let me give you one example of how all these things are destroying the modern world. And what Islam protects us from. And I'll talk about this in a later lecture inshallah, that one of the goals of the Sharia is the protection of the family. All of these things are mentioned, destroy the family. And today in the Western world, there is a danger of there being no such thing as family anymore.
Right families don't exist. Women are having children out of marriage. The children don't know who their fathers are. They resent their mothers for the rest of their life, because they don't know who the father is. And they never had access to their fathers. And to make it worse, they're growing up with to mothers and fathers because of this modern lifestyle, and maybe one or both mothers are alcoholics or ones on drugs. What do you think happens to that child, he grew up even worse, and he creates a cycle, a cycle, they get worse and worse with each generation. You see, the effects of sin don't just affect you to affect your family and society. When a man or a woman commits Zina, they're
not just harming their own souls, they are harming their spouses, their families, honor the future offspring, their future grandchildren, they are harming all of them.
And so we see this in the modern world, that family, it almost doesn't exist in some places. People don't want to get married. People don't want to have children. People don't want to have commitments. They just want to do whatever the industry wants them to do whenever they want to do it. What will happen to that kind of society, no one's getting married and no one's having children. And no one's raising children, probably what's going to happen. It won't exist in a few decades. It won't exist will fall apart, to protect us from this alarming all these things are up. Allah makes things haram to protect us to protect society. Stay away from Haram, you're doing yourself a favor,
you don't do a lot of people, you're protecting yourself from harm, you're protecting your family. So Allah made sin, He made the sinful things haram to protect us, not just to protect society, but to more aspects I want to mention before we close off, Allah made certain things haram to protect us from ourselves. And many people don't think about this. And this may be a toy that might scare you. But each and every one of us have within us the capability of great evil.
Every human being has within them the capability of great good and great evil, every one of us. And when you follow Islam, you are nurturing that good and you are suppressing that evil. Part of our knifes is a matter of issue. It commands us to do evil. But there is another part of our enough studies. My inner eating a state of inner peace is connected to Allah. And so Islam, it focuses on developing the natural good my inner and stopping an absolute rubbish. It focuses on getting us to get into a state of inner peace and put aside those evil thoughts. If we don't follow the Sharia, we are capable of great evil. Anybody. From the biggest of Molas to the greatest of presidents to this
most average person in the street, everyone is capable of evil. As sometimes we are shocking. This Maulana did this in the shepherd that is because in a moment of weakness, he didn't follow the Sharia and it led him down the path of evil, evil. It shows what each of us are capable of doing. All of us have this within us. Social media protects us from ourselves, follow the Sharia, you will be your best self and you will stop yourself from becoming your worst self. Right? Number three. Number four, the final point about Sharia protecting us from harm. And this goes back to the criminal law aspect. Sharia is there to protect us from criminals, even if it is at the expense of
the criminals life. Right. And this I think is the most easiest one for us to understand. If you're living in a safe country. Maybe you can find it easy to understand. But we live in a country where we can see what the disaster modern law is when it comes to criminal law. We're not safe. Nobody feels safe. But in a Muslim society, even those that don't have 100% Sharia which is I think all of them even there, you still feel safer. You still feel safer in a Muslim country, every Muslim country I visited is safer than this country. Right? That is less crime, or the crimes are less severe in nature. People are not invading your homes with guns at the most emit pickpocket to steal
a handbag. Right? It's less severe levels of crime. Why? Because the Islamic law is such it's there to protect society from criminals. Well, people think it's barbaric, that Islam amputate the hands of a thief. I can't go into details about it literally take half an hour to explain. But pretty simply, Islam does not amputate the hands of a thief just like that. It has to be a professional thief who stole something from a secure location above a certain value and it shouldn't have an excuse. Meaning if you're dying of hunger or something, you're not gonna chop his head off. He has to have all these coins.
And it has to be proven. And then only his hand is empty. And you know what, I truly believe this is a better punishment than 10 years in jail.
Your hands chopped off, you go back to your family, you carry on with your life. 10 years in jail, you spent 10 years living with other criminals becoming a worse criminal? And what happens to your family?
Who don't see you for 10 years? What was going to prison or a punishment that takes a few seconds? Think about it. In fact, in the Sharia, there is no there is no prison system. Because Islam doesn't want to separate families, or put all the criminals in one place together, to hang on to each other for 10 years or 20 years. Right. So you actually don't have a prison system in Australia. Rather, we have these punishments, someone who is the mother, chop his head off, you'll see society, right from the individual people and to be safer, you chop up the head of one murderer 1000s of people who decide never to come back model, you just saved millions of lives. Right? So the Sharia protects us
from criminals. If we have to live in a society that applies even a part of it, you will immediately see an increase in peace and a decrease in crime. If you have to live in a society that implements all of it, then kind may even altogether disappear from their society, except small nuggets here and there, because this was not perfect, and you'll never have a perfect society. So whether we come to the end of this presentation and inshallah next time, I will continue talking about more ways in which the Sharia benefits us ensure next time I'll speak about the five fundamental things that Islam came to protect, and how the Sharia protects, predicts these five aspects of human life. May
Allah help us to understand this religion properly, to live by to practice it, to value it, to love it, and to be proud of it and to represent it. And not to be from those who are ashamed of Islam or embarrassed by Islam, or who are running away from Islamic love with the level of him and his prophets love Islam and religion into our hearts and makers from those who are the foremost followers of it. Walk with