11 QUOTES FROM SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF

As you may know my favourite scholar is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, and I have quoted him many times before in previous blog posts. Below are 11 quotes directly transcribed or adapted from various lectures by him. Enjoy!

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1. I never heard the adhaan except that I was yearning for prayer. (quoting another Islamic scholar)
2. If Islam is not making you happy, then something is wrong with your Islam. And woe unto you if your Islam is not making others happy.
3. No one increases in his akhirah except that it harms his dunya, and no one increases in his dunya except that it harms his akhirah. This is because, by their nature, they are two opposites, so increase in one is a decrease in the other.
4. Now we have demons teaching our children. We have demons. If anybody came to your house and knocked on the door, and you opened it up, and they looked like Madonna, or Britney Spears, or any of these people, Russell Brand…you know these people, because we’re in a global civilisation, but if any of them knocked on your door and said “Excuse me, do you mind if I come inside and just entertain you children for a few hours?” Which mad person would say “Oh! Of course, tafadul (please)”? Even with the wonderful Malay hospitality you wouldn’t do that. You’d say “Get the hell out of here” and you’d slam the door on them. You know, who does he think is, or who does she think she is? And yet so many of us simply turn on the television and plop these little children in front of this mindless box, and literally allow strangers from a whole other civilisation with a whole other set of agendas to raise our children…So this is a major problem that we have is that we’re not thinking about what our young people are growing up with. (speaking in Malaysia)
5. The highest form of knowledge in the Islamic tradition is to know your Lord.
6. The human condition in Islam is made up of three things: imaan, Islam, and ihsaan. Imaan is our truth, there is no God but Allah. Islam is the way that we behave with goodness in the world. Ihsaan is the profound need for the human being to make things beautiful and also to recognise beauty. This is the human condition.
7. The Prophet (S) said in a hadith that “Islam began as an alien thing, and it will return to being an alien thing, so blessed are the alienated ones.” And the world is an alienating place.
8. The ultimate abstraction is to recognise that this diverse creation has a Source…when you abstract the essence of existence you realise that this essence is God…this world is an extraordinary theatre of manifestation created by God to come to know Him in the short time that we tarry here.
9. The worst state for a Muslim to be in is not just to be ignorant, but to be ignorant of your ignorance.
10. The yearly corruption indices that are calculated, usually in Scandinavian countries, usually show Nigeria as the most corrupt country in the world, followed closely in second place by Pakistan, but, as any good Pakistani will tell you, or indeed any bad Pakistani will tell you, Pakistan bribed Nigeria to take first place.
11. When you look at the vastness of creation, you see behind it something that we simply cannot comprehend, something that we can only comprehend in our incomprehensibility of it, and this is our Lord.