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I was thinking long and hard today about giving the hoodba in response to what has occurred,

the tragedy that's occurred in Belgium, that I'm sure all of you are very familiar with and the first thought

that ran in my mind is that our immediate reaction is problematic. Our

immediate reaction typically in these kinds of situations is to rationalize

that Islam and Muslims are not the problem.

That this is a product of extreme behavior.

This has nothing to do with our religion and we have to

understand and remind ourselves that our religion is free and innocent of

promoting any kind of senseless violence and crimes like these are the furthest thing from what Islam

itself says and I don't want to dedicate this hoodba to that subject even though

just as a reminder I will say one thing. As a reminder I will say that when the Quran was first revealed and when it first came down

when it talked about the oneness of God when it told people that they should

only worship one God and be mindful that there is such a thing as heaven and hell that's coming,

there's a judgment day that's coming, and that previous nations that disregarded messengers have

been destroyed.

So the Qraish, the original audience of the Prophet,

so Allah who al-A-Sallem, they better take this seriously

because that same punishment might come to them.

When that conversation was happening, Muslims were in fact over time starting to get tortured and Muslims were being persecuted.

But in the middle of all of that, the focus of the Quran remained something else.

And this is where we lose sight.

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