Can Muslims trust Obama?
Question-Answer Session
[Abdul-Rehman speaks]
I’m going to take three questions and then we’ll hand back to Imam Johari. I’ll go to Riaz and then the sister in the pink foll
owed by Safraz and then we’ll go back.
Question:
What would you say to those groups and elements within Muslim Communities that use Scripture to justify an argument to other Muslims, to not participate in elections because it’s not Islamic?
Answer:
I hope that what we are as a Muslim Community is that we are guided by our scholarship. I enjoyed being part of the effort of the Radical Middle Way around the whole hip hop thing that they were doing because we brought the person who is an Asari graduate to produce the evidence and the proofs for why we do what we do. So a scholar, Dr. Munisa, provides the inside guidance for that effort. I’m a person who believes that subhān Allah, as Muslims we’ve got difference of opinion. If you have scholarship and I have scholarship – Ja’far Idris who I believe is an eminent scholar, and I take lessons from him – he says ‘engage in it because this is an engagement in which we are trying to enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil, mitigate harm.’ I could take the examples and say subhān Allah, how can you do that, it’s a Christian system and it’s unlawful. The Nagashi of Ethiopia, he was secretly a Muslim and head of State – that’s permissible.
The Prophet (saw) engaged in helf Al-Fadūr - being involved in the Congress of the people of Mecca while he was not a Prophet. He was asked later ‘would you engage in that political discourse with them as a Prophet?’ He said, ‘even as a Prophet I would have engaged.’ So I’m in that group. There are other groups that say they have proofs and evidence, then let them do what they do, and we do what we do, and in shā’ Allah, one of us is right. This is the attitude of the scholars; not that ‘both of us are wrong. Maybe if I’m making a mistake may Allah forgive me and let the other person who stays away from it, build an alternative to the political arrangement and Alhamdulillah.’ Subhān Allah, that’s how I take it and I encourage the ones who are saying ‘politics is harām’ let them go about the work that they do to build the society in a way they can make it better and not stop the ones who are trying to improve the society in the way that they think is correct to their understanding from the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet (saw).
Question:
I appreciate the point that you have made that in America and perhaps elsewhere as well, that minorities are increasing in times of crisis and you yourself said that America is in a war, difficulties with the economy, he may not be able to get out of the mire but he can restore hope. So number one, who will be the restored hope for and secondly, and I say this with some trepidation, that if I was American, I would also vote for Barak Obama. However, I do have in the back of my mind why does he feel it so necessary to insist that he is not a Muslim?
Answer:
Let me explain something to you. I grew up in the Episcopal Church. I was a choir boy, right. I was in church every Sunday. If I was running for office some place – I’m in Indonesia, I’m running for President in Indonesia – then there are going to be some people who say ‘ah ha! He was a Christian!’ I’d say, yes that’s true, I was. But when I was old enough to choose on my own I chose Islam. People who wanted to make that equation as if somehow or another, being a Muslim has something to do with what your parents were, that’s not the dīn that I am part of. Islam is not that you’re born, we make some du’a, we cut your hair, we give you some tahnīq and Alhamdulillah, and you’re a Muslim all your life. Islam is something that the Prophet (saw) is ‘light on the tongue, but heavy on the heart.’ So for me, people who want to retro-Muslim him... [Audience laugh].
For the first part of the question: what we’ve seen in his fundraising dollars, he is raising small numbers of dollars from the broadest cross-section of Americans in the history of collecting data about campaign contributions. Therefore, for the people to whom he owes his Presidency to, for the people who are looking toward him for engendering this attitude, and by the way, if you want to make fundamental change, fundamental change requires four elements and Munira knows what they are: knowledge, attitude, skills and habits. Our big problem in America is that we need a big attitude adjustment. The American attitude is killing us. We even have the attitude that, notwithstanding the knowledge that global warming is happening, we want to deny that it’s happening because we have an attitude that ‘it can’t be happening because if that’s happening we have to change the way we do business.’
I don’t know if you know much about the Presidency of the United States, the President has very little in the way of real power. I met with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office with a few other Muslims, and we had discussions with him, and subhān Allah I can tell you that meeting with him, he has sense enough to know that ‘there are some things that I can do as President, to change the attitude, tenor, tone but it’s Congress that legislates.’ It’s the President that provides a kind of leadership and direction. And if that can be picked up by the nation, it can move in different ways that it hasn’t moved before. So the hope that this is going to happen is really not coming from the top down, it’s coming from the bottom up.
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