Summary: Assalaamu’ alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu,<br> Alhamdulillaahi rabb’il a’laameen, wassalaatu wassalaam ‘ala ashrafil ambiyaa’ee wal<br> mursaleen, wa ‘ala aalihi wa sah’bihi ajmaa’een.<br> Thumma ‘amma ba’ad, fa’aa’uudhubillaahimin-ash-shaaytaanirajeem, “Surah Isra’ Ayah 8”,<br> Allahumma la taj’alna minhum. Rabb-ishrah-lee sadree, wayassir-lee amri, wah’lul uq’da’tam<br> mil-lee-saani yaf-qa-hu-qowli. Allahumma thabit-na ‘endal mawti bi laa ilaha illa Allah,<br> wAllahumma aj’ja’lna minalaadheena aamanu wa ‘amilus saalihaat, watawaaso bil haqq,<br> watawaaso bis-sabr. Ameen ya rabb’al a’laameen.<br> I wanted to make this first session insha’Allahu ta’ala, and dedicate this one session to what I<br> feel is one of the most pressing issues in the lives of Muslim youth, one that I have come to<br> experience myself personally at one point in my life, and I’ve- as I’ve had the opportunity to<br> travel more recently and interact with many, many young people across the country, I’m<br> noticing it’s not a program localized to one community or limited to one specific kind of<br> person, but rather it’s happening pretty much almost universally and I guess I want to term it<br> a crisis of faith, and a crisis of confidence in the religion.<br> You know, Alhamdulillah, many of you that are sitting here are Muslims that are eager to learn<br> something more about their religion and they want to advance further, and insha’Allahu ta’ala<br> you guys are the hope for becoming the ambassadors of religion not just to non-Muslims but<br> even to your struggling Muslims friends and family that are Muslim but they’re barely holding<br> on to their faith, and they’re barely holding on to any semblance of Islam in their lives, and<br> you are, at this point, the only connection Allah has provided for them to Islam. So the fact<br> that you are here is already speaking volumes for the kind of commitment you have and you<br> might not think very highly of yourselves, but actually, I do- and perhaps Allah (‘azza wa jall)<br> holds you in very high regard and may Allah accept this gathering and gatherings like this one,<br> and make us sincere in them.<br> Now what I wanted to talk about, this crisis of faith, I’ll share a couple of stories with you and<br> then I’ll talk about it in general. The first story is from a couple of years ago, I gave a khutbahs<br> in a city that I don’t want to name… and at the end of the khutbah, a father came up to me and<br> said “I’d really like you to have lunch at our house, I want you to talk to my daughter.” I said<br> okay, I guess, I have time. So he was right next door to the masjid, too, so he took me to his<br> house, and he said “If you’re okay with it, my daughter has some questions about Islam, etc etc,<br> if you don’t mind could you help her answer some of them?” So his daughter comes out- (by<br> the way, this is a Muslim family, born and raised Muslims, parents are born and raised<br> Muslims, you know, children are raised Muslims) – and she comes out and she has piercings in<br> strange places on her face, like on the side of her eye, and like… a couple on her forehead –<br> weird places –places you look at and you go “ouch!”. But anyway. So she sits down, I’m kind of<br> weirded out at this point, but okay, you know what, let’s have her ask her questions… and she<br> had about 30 of those. She had about 30 questions. And I didn’t answer any of them, I just said<br> “So what else?” I kept saying “What else?” and she kept adding stuff, and she had questions<br> like “Well, you know, I have some friends in high school, and they’re gay, and they’re not bad<br> people, they haven’t killed anyone- so why do we hate them so much? And why did God make a<br> hell, why did He have to do that, like… what’s the point? And if He wanted to make a Hell, then<br>
