Assalamualaikum, guys, and welcome to another episode of "Smile to Jannah,"
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In the latest episode of Logan Paul's podcast "Impulsive," he invited Akon, the famous hip-hop
artist who also is a Muslim as well. Although they talked about many things, the one thing that
naturally caught my eye and the eye of many of you guys out there as well was the talk of religion.
But there is a clip in particular that is causing people to make some worrying kalam: Has Akon left
the religion? Wrong (x4) What is he talking about? Is he this or is he that? Let's have a look.
"Even if it's yourself, even if you believe that I'm God, it's okay because, in actuality,
we are Gods. Okay, now I know, I know it looks bad, yeah, but I can assure you things hopefully
are not as they seem when it comes to the fellow believer we're supposed to make 99 excuses, yeah,
like we've heard. So, I'm gonna do the same for Akon. We're going to take things into context."
The first clip that we saw before he made this comment was this:
"So, that's the conflict with Jesus. We don't believe that Jesus was God in man's
flesh. We don't. We just believe that he was a messenger of God."
So he has identified the main creedal difference between Islam
and Christianity by making it clear that a human being, no matter how good you are,
even if you're Jesus, you cannot become God. Okay, fantastic. Then he made this point:
"We just don't believe that there's no one or anything higher than the most high,
which is God, and no man should ever be looked at as God himself." I mean,
it doesn't get more clear than that, yeah. We can see that this is his default stance.
Then, when he made this point, he also went on to say the following:
"Even if you believe that I'm God, it's okay because, in actuality, we are Gods. We
create life, we whatever, and if you want to be better for yourself and do the right thing so
you can feel good about yourself, then so be it. But God is more of an energy, more of a spirit."
So, the only thing that I can think of if we see the dictionary definition of God:
"God is also used in a colloquial sense here in the West as well,
as you can see on the third definition. It seems like this is the one that he is referring to.
People that are pseudo-spiritualists, they take this definition by saying,
You know what? 'We are God.' I don't even want to say it, frankly, yeah, because I just don't
feel comfortable. That's not how I've been brought up. I was brought up in a generation
where you wouldn't even say 'pig.' We would say to each other, 'Hey, yo, my man's having P.I.G.'"
But I can understand that he's speaking to Logan Paul, who's an atheist. He's clearly
cognizant of the audience that he's speaking to—young guys not into religion and the likes
into enjoying themselves. So that's the angle that I can see him coming from,
especially when we look at the previous categorical comments that he's made,
reinforcing the fact that a human being cannot be God.
So if somebody goes, "Akon is a non-Muslim; he's left Islam; he said this; he said that,"
I don't think that there's enough evidence here to suggest clearly that he's left Islam
because that's nonsense or he holds like a deviant belief. Now what can be said about
this is the following: The way religion is seen nowadays is something that's abstract,
something that's all, you know, for you could do whatever you want, mate, you know,
it's all right, like it's all leading to the same thing, it doesn't really matter.
It does matter if God is saying that if you don't pray your five daily prayers,
then X will happen. If you don't fast in the month of Ramadan, then Y happens? If you don't make
pilgrimage when you can, then Z happens. So it's contradicting what God has said himself in
the revealed text of the Qur'aan. So this sort of Kalam, if he's saying it, personally, I think he
should avoid it because, and this goes on to the second point, due to the confusion it can cause.
Especially now with online videos, people from all parts of the world are watching it.
So the confusion that can occur when somebody hears something like this, they might be like,
"Yo," because they're not gonna understand the colloquial way that it's used. In fact,
they're not even gonna entertain that. So again, what I'm saying,
I'm not justifying it. I think that's clear. I wouldn't use that. I wouldn't recommend anybody
else using that. I'm not giving a religious ruling about it, but what I am saying is
people saying that he's an ex-Muslim or, you know, he's committed kuffar or, you know, excommunicating him,
that's the point that I'm drawing light to and saying I don't think the evidence is conclusive.
Of course, we leave it to the people of knowledge to go into this, but I don't like the fact that
some people would only see a clip and start making their conclusions, you know what I mean? That's
the only thing that I wanted to kind of put out there. So at least there's an honest discussion.
If you want to have an honest discussion, watch this whole thing, and you can see that he's
trying to kind of—it's a segment and, um, yeah, they were receptive and they were listening.
Personally, I think if you're unapologetic about the religion, if you make the points clear, people
appreciate that. People don't want to hear, "Oh, everything is all right, do whatever you want,"
yeah, as long as you're spiritual and this—what does that mean? It's not working. It doesn't
help. Just you thinking, "Oh, there is, you know, someone looking out for me." You gotta do
something as well. You gotta feed your spirit by praying, by fasting, by remembering Allah through
dhikr, through recitation of Qur'aan, and the likes, you know, ibadah (worship) is an integral part of
a person's Iman (faith) as well. A person's faith. Merely saying, "I believe," you really need to
back it up as well if you are to attain the true juice, the true benefit of religion, of Islam.
So hopefully that's clear, guys. Let's leave it there until next time. Assalamu alaikum.