06/06/2026
FROM TODAY’S JUMU‘AH KHUTBAH
The Key Is in Our Hands
Abubakar As-Sadique Islamic Center
Minneapolis, MN
Dhul-Hijjah, 19 1447H
06/06/2026
Bismillah.
To my beloved community: this is what I shared with you from the minbar today. I am writing it down so that those who could not attend may benefit, and so that those who did may sit with it again. I ask you to consider these points with an open heart.
Allah tells us in the Qur’an: إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ [الرعد:11]
“Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves” (al-Ra‘d, 13:11).
This is not a verse of despair. It is a verse of power. Allah has placed the key in our own hands. Our condition is not our fate, and He has made us the ones to change it. So I did not stand before you only to name our wounds. I came with an agenda, a plan to change our condition, by the permission of Allah.
We carry three burdens we have the power to change: the struggles of our youth, the strain on our families, and the scattering of our community. To each, there is an answer.
Enter our youth.
A poison has entered among our young people, and too many are lost through two old gates: the doubts cast at their faith, and the desires that pull them toward the haraam, both pouring through the screen in every pocket.
Our answer is to guard both gates. We build certainty before doubt arrives, welcoming our children’s hard questions in the masjid so they need not carry them to a stranger online.
We replace, and do not only forbid, giving our youth belonging, purpose, and mentors who know them by name, so the masjid wins their hearts before the street does. And we act plainly against the poison: learning the signs, keeping the means to save a life on hand, and teaching our young that to ask for help is strength, not shame.
Enter our families.
Our homes are straining, and a distance has opened, between parents and children, and between spouses themselves. We close it deliberately. We protect the marriage with daily kindness and by settling disputes early, seeking counsel before resentment hardens rather than waiting for crisis.
We give our children unhurried time, sitting with them and letting them speak first, making the home a place a struggling child runs toward, not away from. And we bridge the two worlds our children live between, learning their language and their pressures so they never face them alone.
Enter our community.
We are scattered, each family and masjid and organization working alone, while our youth fall through the gaps between us. So we become one hand, as the Prophet ﷺ taught that the believers are like a single body. Our masajid and organizations will unite around a few shared goals for our youth and strengthen those already doing the work. Every masjid will be a doorway to help, not a place of judgment. And to those who slander us, our answer is not louder anger but, as Allah commanded, to repel evil with what is better: a generation raised so whole that the slander falls apart on its own.
In the end, notice where Allah begins, not with our circumstances, but with our souls: “what is within themselves.” The outer change follows the inner one. So let no one say, what can I alone do? You can do much.
A parent can sit with one child tonight.
A young person can carry one honest question to someone who loves them.
A husband can mend one word with his wife.
A neighbor can check on one family.
A community is nothing but its people, changed one by one.
No one outside our walls will raise our children for us, and no insult from outside can define them. They are our trust and our honor.
Allah has put the key in our hands and promised that when we move, He will change our state. Let us not stand still. Let the change begin in our homes, and in our hearts, today.
“O Allah, change our condition to the best of conditions, protect our youth, mend our families, and unite our community. Make us a people who move, so that You may change our state. Ameen.”
Please share these reflections with anyone they may benefit.
Imam Mowlid Ali
Dhul-Hijjah, 19 1447H
06/06/2026
