On Friday, February 9, 2018, Imam Feisal delivered his first khutbah at the East End Temple (EET), which has begun hosting Cordoba House Jumu’ah prayers. Cordoba House is actively seeking new khatib participants for this weekly program. The February service followed a class the previous evening at the Temple, taught by Imam Feisal and EET’s spiritual leader Rabbi Josh Stanton, on Jewish-Muslim relations. The rabbi and other members of the synagogue community attended the Jumu’ah service.
Imam Feisal spoke from his vision of a new, multi-faith community of God-believers that promises to emerge from the EET Jumu’ah services. To start, it will be a community of Muslims and Jews. Accordingly, the khutbah embraced both Jews and Muslims in its address, and its call to assimilate into ourselves the presence of God. Cordoba would like to encourage members of the Interfaith community to participate in future Jumu’ah services.
Imam Feisal quoted a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad in which he analogized prayer to bathing in a clear stream: imagine how clean we would be if we bathed five times a day! Similarly, if we bring our full attention to our prayers, we rid ourselves of spiritual stain. Or rather, we make of our prayers a means for God to purify us.
In the end, Imam Feisal reflected, everything comes from God, even our acts. We select from a menu of acts that God supplies. Once we’ve chosen, God energizes those acts into being. It’s really a partnership. And it goes the other way, too. God states in the Quran that He and the angels perform salah on the Prophet, and commands us to also do salah on the Prophet. When we pray, we’re adding our prayer to theirs, since the salah on the Prophet is part of the five-time daily prayer. God also states in the Quran that when we hymn His praises, He does salah on us to exit us out of darkness into light.
Muhammad himself models for our new, multi-faith community. Beyond being Muslim, we’re called to be muminun—believers. That means we’re committed to having iman—faith—in our hearts. And out of faith, mercy, and compassion for each other naturally flow. Like Muhammad, we are to be a mercy to the worlds, beyond our own faith community, beyond even the human community, towards the animals who share the planet with us.
Imam Feisal concluded with thanks to God for the opportunity to begin forming a new multi-faith version of the Cordoba community, and with prayers for blessing on Rabbi Josh Stanton, spiritual leader of EET, and his community. Cordoba House invites more interfaith participants to take part in this weekly Jumu’ah prayer service.
Imam Feisal concluded with thanks to God for the opportunity to begin forming a new multi-faith version of the Cordoba community, and with prayers for blessing on Rabbi Josh Stanton, spiritual leader of EET, and his community.
