BismillahirRahmanirRahim

THE SECOND JAHILIYYA

Sohbet given by Sheykh Abdul Kerim el-Kibrisi

Manhattan Dergah, New York City.

Selamun aleykum. Meded Ya Sayiddi, Ya Sultan Evliya, Mevlana Sheykh Nazim al-Hakkani. Meded.

When you put honey in the middle, the bees are going to come. But the mosquitoes, flies and all kinds of other harmful creatures will also come to the honey. Everyone has to take their share from it. The bees are not going to fight with the mosquitoes, because they will take what is for them, elhamdulillah. The mosquitoes are going to take what is for them, and the flies.

There is Haqq and Batil, the Truth and false. Either we are on the side of Truth or we are on the side of false. The people who are on the side of Truth have to be on the same road. They have to understand each other. They have to respect their ways. The people who are representing false, they are all together anyway. They are eating each other but they are all together in front of us.

This is the worst time that happened to Muslims about which Holy Prophet (saw) is saying, "The second Jahiliyya is going to be worst than the first one." And this is what we are facing today. The second Jahiliyya time. He said that it is because people in the second Jahiliyya time will know certain knowledge and they are not going to accept anything from anyone.

In the first Jahiliyya time people were ignorant. When someone from the Sahabi spoke to them, they were sitting and listening and comparing it with what they know. And so many were accepting. That was a Jahiliyya time, the first Jahiliyya, where Holy Prophet (saw) came only one person and then hundreds and thousands of people started following. Those people were against the Holy Prophet (saw) because they did not have any knowledge of what he brought. They were holding on to their traditions only. They were ignorant people. They did not know any better. When the other ones went and approached them properly and they showed them what Holy Prophet (saw) brought to them, they accepted. They did not argue about it. They did not feel threatened. The only ones who felt threatened were those people who were the knowledgeable people for that time. Like Abu Jahil and all the other ones. They were the people who knew how to read and write. They were the people who knew the activities of the world. They were the people who knew what was happening in the business world. They could not accept what Holy Prophet (saw) brought to them because it would not be good for their political and economical matters. What Prophet (saw) brought to them required them to change what they were doing. Not so for the ignorant. They did not fight. They sat and they listened. And sometimes later they accepted it.

Holy Prophet (saw) is saying that the Ahir Zaman, the End of Times, the second Jahiliyya time is going to be worse than the first because people are going to study the religion, they will know how to read and write but they are not going to accept anything, they are not going to accept anybody. They are just going to accept what is only for them, what is their understanding from what they read and write. So in this time people read and write. Millions read and write. So many people are reading and writing but they are ignorant. Holy Prophet (saw) is saying, "They are going to be ignorant with what they read and write. They are going to become ignorant with the knowledge that they know."

As everyone of you know, by the law of the government today you have to send your children to school. They have to learn how to read and write. But learning how to read and write is not giving them any knowledge or wisdom. However they are programming them, that is the only thing they know. Today's people became more ignorant than the people fourteen hundred years ago. They became ignorant with the knowledge of reading and writing. Not being able to read and write is not the sole problem. The secret is to know, that you need to read and write to understand. Everyone who reads and writes does not understand. They say, "Take the Quran and read." If you take the Quran and read and understand only according to your own understanding most likely you will become a terrorist. That is what most of them are doing. You cannot even understand the newspaper. Take a part from the newspaper and read. Then I am going to ask you "Give me the summary" and you are not going to be able to put it together. To be able to write and read is to learn. To know what? To know your self. Not to know other things but first you have to study you, your self, you have to know yourself, who you are, what you are and what is your position in this world. What is your secret, what is your duty, what is your mission, why have you been created, why are you occupying this space, why are you leaving this space and where are you going? That is the most important matter.

The schools are only teaching people lying and cheating these days. They know that the theory of evolution, Darwinism is finished. It is bankrupt. But they are still teaching. Everything is on that. The foundations of schools are on that theory. All those children that are studying and coming out of the schools, now their foundation is evolution which is completely against creation. So they are going to become ignorant. So ignorant that they are not going to know that they are ignorant. Taking one man's word, ordinary man. Who is this man? Who is this Darwin? Why are you accepting him? (I am saying to the Chrisitan world) You are accepting Darwin and putting his books in the schools and universities. You say you are accepting Jesus but you are not using his book in the schools. What kind of nonsense is this? (Shaykh smiling). You are saying, "Jesus is the Lord. We are the creatures, he is the creator." But you are not teaching in the schools to these people about that and you are teaching about Darwinism, about Sheytan. The same thing is with the Muslims and the same thing is with the Jews. In the Muslims countries they say, "We are Muslims. We are accepting Allah and His Prophet." But no school is teaching anything about Holy Prophet (alayhi salatu wa salam). With the Jews it is the same thing. They are not teaching about Moses or the Tewrat. So everywhere in the world they are concentrating to teach people Darwinism. Evolution.

So Prophet (saw) is saying, "The second Jahiliyya is going to be worse than the first one." That is what we see. Not by individual ignorance but by general ignorance. You are sending your children to school and this is what they are going to teach them. When they are growing up if you want to plant something in them by saying to them, "Allah created you", they are going to say to you, "You are crazy. This is what they teach us in the school." If you say to them, "They are wrong", they say, "Then why are you sending us to school?" So you are stuck between those two things and you cannot even touch your children in this time. Did Holy Prophet (saw) say that? Yes, he said this too. He said, "A time is going to come when you are not even going to be able to reach to your own children, your own families. Nobody is going to listen to you. There is not going to be one house left in the world where the confusion will not enter." This is the time. Of course, we are pretty happy that we reached to these days. And we reached to the end of this time too because every activity in the world that is shown to us (when you know the life of Holy Prophet alayhi salatu wa salam and when you know the teachings and the hadith that he pointed with, that when this comes this is going to happen and when this comes this is going to happen) we are watching that everything is moving towards the direction that Holy Prophet (alayhi salatu wa salam) has pointed to us.

Holy Prophet (saw) is saying, "The nation of Bani Israil is going to deviate into seventy-one different divisions. One is going to be on the Siratul Mustakim, in the straight path and seventy is going to be wrong." He says, "The Christians, people who say they are following Jesus is going to divide into seventy-two different divisions. One will be on straight path and seventy-one will be wrong." He says, "My nation is going to divide into seventy-three different divisions. Only one will be in Siratul Mustakim and seventy-two of them will be in the wrong ways. And if they stay in that wrong road they will be punished before they enter Paradise." He says, "Those ones who stay on Siratul Mustakim will live clean lives and they will go out from this world clean." And when they asked him, "Who are those Ya Rasulullah?" He says, "Those are the ones who hold on very tightly to my traditions, to my sunnat." He says, "Although my sunnat is going to be forgotten in that time by my nation, by the ummat of Muhammad (salatu wa sallam). People are not going to follow my sunnats. If they keep one of them they will be rewarded the equal of a hundred martyrs in the Judgment Day."

So these are the days. And as you said, you went to one place and you were surprised. I want you to go around and see what is it that they are giving. What is it they have and what is it that they are concentrating on. Are they concentrating on other than what other groups are doing? So many people today, Friday, are making certain activities. Different celebrations. They are coming together, eating together, enjoying together, doing so many activities. They have so many social gatherings under the name of religions gatherings. But when you look at the lifestyle they are living, there is no familiarity with the lifestyle of the Prophet (saw) and his Sahaba-e Ikram. But you will find familiarity with what the Christians are celebrating or the Jews are celebrating. As a matter of fact, so many are celebrating with liquor, but they are Muslims.

There was a time, when I was working with the United Nations, the Palestinians one night made a Palestinian Night, celebrating and trying to express and show their rights to other nations, and they were making a big cocktail party. Of course I had to be there. And I went and I looked. I saw all these Palestinians under the name of religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict were celebrating, they were trying to say their rights to others saying, "This is our problem, this is what had happened to us." But they had liquor in their hands, they were drinking and the time of the prayer was passing. So I said to the top official whom I know, "I have to go now."

He said, "But we did not begin yet."

I said, "Well, I know. Before you began you failed. So I have no business here."

"What do you mean?"

"I thought you were Muslims."

"Of course we are Muslims."

"But you are celebrating with liquor that Allah and His Prophet forbade you."

"But all these people are Christians and we have to show them that we have familiarity with them."

"Good, you are becoming one of them. They are not becoming one of you. So you lost. The beginning is lost. So I have no business here."

I left elhamdulillah. What I am trying to say is, when you are trying to get your rights you cannot get them from the way that Allah has forbidden you. Allah banned those things for you. You cannot say, "I do these things to be better looking to those ones in order to ask my rights". Your rights are going to be given to you by your Lord. By this one's hand or that one's hand but He is going to approve. If you are trying to please them you are never going to get your rights. The story that I told you happened maybe in 1979 and now we see that they did not get their rights and they are not going to get their rights and the worst is coming.

Everyone is saying, "What is our fault? What have we done?" What we have done is we have deviated into seventy-three different ways and we have left the one way, we left the Holy Prophet's way. All other ways are claiming, "We are following Allah's orders" and this and that. Everyone is claiming that. If the claim is right then you have to follow what Holy Prophet (saw) is teaching. Because Allah is saying to you, "Follow that one." He is giving order. He says, "Follow! Say to them: If they love Me they must follow you." It is an ayat-e kerim. Allah is saying, "IF they love me", they are claiming that they love Allah. He says, "If they love Me, they must follow you. Because you are the one whom I love and you are the one whom I showed the way and they must follow you for Me to love them."

Anyone who is dismissing the Holy Prophet (alayhi salatu wa salam) one way or the other, it is impossible for them to reach Allah. You can only claim. But Allah is not a little creature like you. You have not understood the Creator. If you did, then definitely you are going to look for a Wesil (means of approach) between Him and you, someone who is going to represent you. Otherwise, the ego is always representing itself and the ego is always seeing itself above anybody. That is wrong because no matter who we are and what we are, we are creatures. Allah is the Creator and we are creatures. That is what we have to know.

Time is up for Maghrib.

Wa min Allahu taufiq

Bihurmatil habib

Bihurmatil Fatiha.