Focus on the Fundamentals – Part 1

حُرِّمَتْ عَلَيْكُمُ ٱلْمَيْتَةُ وَٱلدَّمُ وَلَحْمُ ٱلْخِنزِيرِ وَمَآ أُهِلَّ لِغَيْرِ ٱللَّهِ بِهِۦ وَٱلْمُنْخَنِقَةُ وَٱلْمَوْقُوذَةُ وَٱلْمُتَرَدِّيَةُ وَٱلنَّطِيحَةُ وَمَآ أَكَلَ ٱلسَّبُعُ إِلَّا مَا ذَكَّيْتُمْ وَمَا ذُبِحَ عَلَى ٱلنُّصُبِ وَأَن تَسْتَقْسِمُوا۟ بِٱلْأَزْلَـٰمِ ذَٰلِكُمْ فِسْقٌ ٱلْيَوْمَ يَئِسَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ مِن دِينِكُمْ فَلَا تَخْشَوْهُمْ وَٱخْشَوْنِ ٱلْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِى وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ ٱلْإِسْلَـٰمَ دِينًا فَمَنِ ٱضْطُرَّ فِى مَخْمَصَةٍ غَيْرَ مُتَجَانِفٍ لِّإِثْمٍ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ Ma’aida 5: 3    Forbidden to you are carrion, blood, and swine; what is slaughtered in the name of any other than Allah; what is killed by strangling, beating, a fall, or by being gored to death; what is partly eaten by a predator unless you slaughter it; and what is sacrificed on altars. You are also forbidden to draw lots for decisions. This is all evil. Today the disbelievers have given up all hope of ˹undermining˺ your faith. So do not fear them; fear Me! Today I have perfected your faith for you, completed My favor upon you, and chosen Islam as your way. But whoever is compelled by extreme hunger—not intending to sin—then surely Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful. I have a friend who used to train pilots of fighter jets. I asked him what happens when a pilot has serious engine or other problems in flight. He said, ‘We tell them to go back to the Manual.’ I asked, ‘You mean while he is in a tailspin, he is going to read the flight manual?’ He replied, ‘No. Go back to the manual means go to the basic instructions which begin with an instrument check. Very often you find a solution when you go back to the basics.’ In business consulting we give the same advice when we diagnose a problem with a business and are looking to solve it. We use a tool called ‘Root-Cause Analysis’. We ask, ‘Why’, 5 – times. Say, there has been a drop in sales. We ask, ‘Why?’ Because we have too few salespeople. Why? Because they leave. Why? Because they are dissatisfied with the job. Why? Because they are not paid according to merit. Why? Because our managers don’t go to the market and so don’t know what the salespeople must face. Try this with any problem that you face, and you will get to the root cause. Today we are living in a society which is in a tailspin, headed for a major catastrophe. The magnitude of our crisis can be seen in what we are most famous for. In what we spend the most money, time, energy, technology, effort, brainpower, and mindshare on. And that is in building ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction. As a society, our maximum investment in every way is in massive death. Not in life. Our markers and symbols are ICBMs, highly sophisticated planes, and ships to carry highly complex scientific marvels created for the sole purpose of destroying life in the most massive way possible. Imagine how the world would look if instead, we spent the same, or even half that amount, on providing free education, free health care, cancer research, poverty eradication, housing for the homeless, clean water supply, and to fight global warming and climate change. I can add to this list, but this will suffice. People in the future will marvel and say, ‘They had all that knowledge, all that wealth and yet they did nothing to solve real problems of their society, but instead spent it on creating ways of killing each other. What kind of people were they?’ That is how sick we are. Alhamdulillah for Islam because that is the marker of the Muslims. Not the scientific discoveries and inventions and whatnot. But the ideology of Tawheed and focus on the Aakhira. That is the solution. So, my topic today and for a couple of weeks is Focus on the Fundamentals. Islam is a religion based on a Book, the Qur’an, which is the actual revealed speech of Allah, our Creator, to Whom is our return as explained, taught, and demonstrated by the Messenger of Allah who was...