The Prophetic Resurrection of Society

Prophethood, Part 3 If the most powerful man in Egypt had simply said yes, Moses's revolution would have cost no one a single drop of blood. This evening argues that a prophet is not a wise man who rents a room and waits for people to visit him — he decides that an entire society's structure, from the foundations up, has to come down. The evening's own image: you cannot turn a mosque into a bank with a fresh coat of paint. You have to tear out walls, move foundations, change what the building is for. That, it argues, is what the Arabic word for revolution, inqilab, actually means applied to a society — and it need not be violent. Violence enters, the evening insists, only when those who benefit from the old order refuse to let it go. Two configurations of society are set against each other: one ruled by a minority who answer to no one, and one in which no single person — not even the prophet himself — has the right to demand another's obedience, because everyone answers only to God. Five prophets, the Ulu al-Azm ("those of firm resolve") — Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace be upon them — each brought an entirely new version of this second blueprint. What does it actually take to pull a society down to its foundations and rebuild it? What the evening covers Two blueprints for society. The class-based order and the God-centred one, and why converting one into the other is never cosmetic. Why violence is not the plan. It only enters when the ruling order refuses to say yes. The five Prophets of Firm Resolve. Who they were, and how their work was carried on by others after them. "Equal, like the teeth of a comb." The saying at the centre of what a classless society means in practice.

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Sermon: The Prophetic Resurrection of Society

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Nohe: Abaya of Tears

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Ziyarah: Ziyarat Sayyedah Zaynab

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