Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
Jumu'ah and relocation — 0:00
our first question from brother ahmed in malaysia he emails and he says that he has gotten a job offer but the place that he is going to according to his google research does not have any musa or any masjid and so he is asking is he allowed to take up a job offer and travel to a location where potentially it looks like there might not be any jummah and then he asks a broader question that okay if i travel for any location even not for the sake of a job for any reason and there's no jummah over there is that permissible or not so the question is with regards to traveling to a location that there is no uh jummah taking place m the response to this question is of course obligatory on every adult sane muslim male who doesn't have an excuse preventing him from attending the jumu'ah and jummah is obligatory if there is a jumu'ah that is being held in the place that you are at if there is no jumu'ah and there are not enough muslims to perform a jumu'ah then you are not obligated to have a jumu'ah by yourself there is no jumu'ah by yourself there must be the bare minimum now what is the bare minimum it depends on you know madhab tamadhab some say three some small minority even said two uh some said you have to have 40. so you have a different interpretations that's not the question here suppose that there is no jumba there's not enough muslims uh and there are no uh muslims where jummah is being undertaken should you go to such a location the response is very straightforward alhamdulillah allah has not obligated on us that which we cannot bear and the obligation of jumu'ah is binding only when there is a jumu'ah that is in your locality the sharia has not obligated you to not find sustenance unless there is a jummah being held over there allah's religion is easy to make things easy for you so do not put restrictions that the sharia has not put and there are no restrictions to moving to a locality uh where your sustenance is where you have a good job offer i'm assuming that because you're writing from a muslim majority country that the job offer is in some far away location in another land for example and you are not able to find online any musa there and so the assumption is that in this non-muslim land there is no jummah being performed so you are now wondering that because of the jummah issue should you travel or not and the response as i said is that there is no haraj there is no sin on you to travel for your job or even to travel for any permissible reason even if it is not a dire situation you may travel for any permissible reason and if during the travel jumma falls and you are still traveling or you're at a destination or a location where there is no jumu'ah then you are not obligated in fact many scholars and this is another controversy that what if you're musafir and there is a jumu'ah and you are in the state of safar are you obliged to attend or not even then there is a controversy and some fukah say the musa is not obliged to juma even though the position that i feel is more reasonable is that if the musafi temporarily has reached a spot where he is temporarily even if it's a day or two that he is residing there uh therefore then he and there is jummah being held in that city then he should attend juma but anyway my point is that the jumu'ah is not obligatory when there is no jummah being established and therefore do not make the absence of a jumu'ah a cause for you for you to to not take up this job offer and also realize that from the beginning of time people have been traveling the muslim world has had travelers and they traveled for reasons that sometimes you know were religious based and sometimes were worldly based and it is not recorded that they said i have to plan a route such that every city i stop in there must be over there no we have had travelers that have even traveled you know to the lands of europe there was a famous traveler by the name of ibn fablan and he traveled uh all the way into the lands of europe and he went uh they say even to norway and other places where he met the vikings and then he came back and he wrote about that of course ibn batuta as well as the famous traveler he went all the way across the world and he came back to his lands in morocco and so all of these uh from the time of the sahaba in fact it is even narrated that some of the sahaba they wanted to live away from society and civilization such as that for whatever reason he just felt that he was more at peace living alone and so he literally built a hut he built a small place literally in the middle of nowhere him and his family him and his wife actually they settled over there because he felt that he would rather be living away from society and it is not reported that he established jumma or he traveled far to get to juma's he would live where he is and he was content over there and he passed away in circumstances that again i've discussed in my lectures about the sahaba the point being that there is no obligation on you to find out or sorry or to choose your job based upon whether there's juma or not if there is if not then no no problems you may go to that location and you will pray instead of jumu'ah now this is in terms of obligation now i have to also point out here that if you are traveling to a land or a country where uh you know it's a very different circumstance where you're coming from a muslim majority to now you're going to become a minority that comes with other factors and you have to decide whether you feel confident enough strong enough in your faith to be able to venture out there is no question psychologically speaking not religiously psychologically speaking and they're not necessarily divorced from one another but i'm just saying that psychologically it is good to be with society with muslim communities there is a barrier of protection that comes when you're in a muslim land especially observant muslim land that might not happen when you travel other places and if you're not accustomed to the cultures and the uh and the um accessibilities of certain issues in other lands you have to think long and hard and then make a choice based upon that but that's a separate issue from what you asked me about in terms of jummah you weigh the pros and cons and there is no question that if you have a very good job lined up and you feel confident that inshallah you can be a practicing muslim you're going to observe the prayers there is no question that the sharia does not obligate upon you to find a locality where there is jumoa that having been said i also want to add here that on a personal anecdote that in fact my very first job uh when i was still doing my chemical engineering degree when i was based in houston texas it was actually in a small uh town called freeport and it is still you know there obviously uh there there's a dow chemical plant over there and when i accepted uh that job uh and this was back in the mid 90s early 90s i found out that there was no jumuah being established in freeport texas and i in fact as was i was a student at the time i asked my teacher the exact same question you are asking me and i said i asked him that you know i got a very good job offer from dow chemical can i go and work there uh but i'm worried that there is no juma and of course at that time i was not studying islam so i had to you know ask somebody who was studying islam who was obviously my first teacher and he told me the exact same thing i'm telling you which is that the the shadia is not obligating you to find such a location so i actually took up that job and subhanallah this is my my point of telling you the story that when i went to there uh i realized that the reason why there was no jumwa was because nobody had really gathered the muslims there and started one and so i literally found out you know the five seven muslims that were working in the plant and i contacted them and i said hey let's do a juma's together and alhamdulillah as a young you know teenager i was still 19 at the time i alhamdulillah helped establish jumaa in that small community and i heard that they continued after me and i think there's even a musa or a masjid close by where they can now go and pray so my point is that make it your niyyah that okay there is no jumaa there inshallah i'm gonna go there and insha allah for sure you will find five or ten you know muslims scattered around everywhere you just you know find them figure out how you can come together the best time and place location on joe on friday afternoon and then insha'allah you be the one who starts uh jumu'ah and then starts islamic activities and allah azza knows where that will lead you know years or decades from now so i hope that inshallah answers your question foreign