Praise be to God. There is no other god except God. As you know there is a difference between “the Shahadah” the witnessing which is proclaimed by the Sunni Muslims and the Shahadah which is found in the Quran. The witnessing according to the Sunnis goes “La ilahe ila Allah. Muhammad resulullah”. We do not find this witnessing anywhere in the Quran. Instead the witnessing in the Quran in verse 3:18 is found to only be “La ilahe ila Allah.” The question is historically where did this difference come from? Well, the difference comes from the fact that accepting God is mandatory at all times, and accepting a certain messenger from God is mandatory under certain circumstances only.
For example, it was not mandatory for people who lived before Muhammad to accept that he was God’s messenger, because they did not know who the next messenger will be. They can go to Heaven without ever having said that Muhammad will be God’s messenger. So, as you can see accepting God’s messenger comes with certain conditions, especially because we have the Quran now. So, what are the circumstances in which a person has to definitely accept God’s messenger, or otherwise he will go to hell?
The first condition is if he rejected him (the messenger) before. So, if a person said that prophet Muhammad was not God’s messenger, or maybe he said that Muhammad was a fake messenger, in that case it is mandatory for that person to accept Muhammad as God’s messenger. Otherwise he will go to Hell. He can not just say that I am just going to do the Contact Prayer and the Obligatory Charity, and this is a sign that I repent. Well, you have to correct the earlier mistake. So, if someone has said before that Muhammad is a fake messenger, he can join the believers without publicly stating now that Muhammad is God’s messenger. And this is where the misunderstanding in the difference of Shahada comes from. When people came to join the believers in the past and they met Muhammad, he would ask them to say the Shahada first which was, “La ilahe ila Allah.” However, there were groups of people in Arabia who had said that Muhammad is a fake messenger, and they fought, and Muhammad won, and so they were humbled and had to accept Islam with their tails under their legs, after having been defeated. In this case, when they brought them to Muhammad, he would ask them to say “La ilaha ila Allah, Muhammad resulullah.” in order to join. This is to correct their mistake. You can not go around telling people that Muhamamd or Alban is a fake messenger, and then want to join without correcting your mistake. So, whether people are required to accept Alban Fejza as God’s messenger, first depends on whether they have rejected him before, so it depends on the person’s personal circumstances. If he never rejected Alban Fejza, he only needs to give the Obligatory Charity and do the Contact Prayer and he has joined us (the submitters). However, if he rejected Alban Fejza before, he has to repent first for his mistake, as we are told in verse 9:11. Of course, repentance for crimes which can not be fixed is accepted, but repentance for crimes which can be fixed is not accepted unless the person fixes that crime. So, if you said before that Alban Fejza is not God’s messenger, this is a crime which can be fixed. All you have to do is publicly say now that Alban Fejza is God’s messenger, and the crime is fixed, and only then your repentance is accepted.
So, again when people join us, their only decision which they need to make is to do the Contact Prayer and give the Obligatory Charity correctly, and they don’t have to accept Alban Fejza’s messengership. However, if they rejected Alban Fejza before, they must decide to accept him now, in order to be allowed to join. When we say “rejected, we mean, if they said that Alban is a fake messenger, Alban is not God’s messenger, or Alban is trying to fool you, or things like that.” If that is the case, they can not join us, without correcting this mistake publicly. The arrogant ones must eat the humble pie before they join. You can not join while maintaining your old arrogance.
The second case when it becomes mandatory for a person to accept Alban Fejza as God’s messenger is if he is a religious leader. So, if anyone is a religious leader, he can not go to Heaven without accepting Alban Fejza as God’s messenger. Now, whether someone is a religious leader or not is debatable, because someone might claim that he is not, but he might be, or someone might say that he is, but he is not. So, who is truly a religious leader is debatable but there are signs which show that, like for example:
Who has registered a religious organization?
Who has the right to make modifications to the mosque?
Who owns the keys to the masjid?
Is the masjid open, or do people have to depend on someone to open it for them?
Do they speak only for themselves, or for the whole group?
Do they maintain webpages?
And other similar signs.
Someone might say. What do the keys of the mosque for example have to do with being a religious leader? Well, they show a person’s internal belief about who he thinks he is. Let us inform you of one of Alban Fejza’s personal stories. The government in his state and the religious leaders in his state had a legal dispute about the oldest mosque in his country, which is in the center of the capital, which is a preserved artistic masterpiece. They disputed who has the right to repair the artistic works inside, and so they locked it, and it went unused for several years, and the drug addicts broke the door of the mosque, and for years they would stay there doing drugs and prostitution and so on, and they would sleep there, and Alban Fejza heard about this from the news. That is God’s mosque and the believers should protect it, and no one should have the right to do that. So, during Ramadan nights Alban Fejza went and slept there while the door was broken. So, every night whenever the drug addicts would come, Alban Fejza would turn the lights on. They would go away. He would do that for several nights, and they (the drug addicts) realized that someone is staying at the mosque, and they stopped coming there. Alban Fejza fixed a new door, sent the key to the authorities, and they told him that they do not intend to use it. So, Alban Fejza invited all the submitters to do the Friday prayer there. On the first day when the submitters went there, because Alban Fejza did not consider himself a leader then (before Organized Religion was established), he made a copy of the key for everyone, and he gave everyone a copy of the key. So, anyone of the submitters could go there at any time, without Alban Fejza’s permission. Why would they need Alban Fejza to open God’s mosque for them? It’s not Alban Fejza’s own house. It’s God’s house. Masjids should be open for every submitter at all times. Now, if you have to lock it to protect it from thieves, you should guarantee that every submitter gets a copy of the key.
So, if someone is a leader, he is required to decide whether someone is God’s messenger or not. He can not stay undecided like the other people. Now, here is the irony. God has guaranteed it in the Quran that no religious leader ever will accept God’s messenger.
Verse 34:34 says, Every time we sent a warner to a community, the LEADERS of that community said, “We reject the message you are sent with.”
It says “every time”. So, all leaders are locked by God into a position which prevents them to accept God’s messenger. There has never been a religious leader who accepted God’s messenger, and there will never be. And it makes sense. If they were worthy to be chosen, God would have chosen them. But because there was something wrong with them, God chose someone else. Otherwise, the best thing to do would be to choose the leaders as God’s messengers. That would be more effective. They would spread the message more quickly. But because there is something wrong with them, God skipped them, and chose someone else. But not all hope is lost. If someone wants to be unlocked from this curse of not being able to accept God’s messenger, they can unlock themselves from this curse, by giving up their leadership. Which means that they make everyone else equal to them in the decision making, and the keys of the mosque, and the things like that. Only after they do that, they are unlocked from the curse. Then they can discuss and evaluate whether someone is God’s messenger or not. And if they do that, God will restore them to their position of honor, and even better, except if they are dumb or weak. Dumb or weak people should not be leaders, as it is said in verse 247 of chapter 2.
So, to conclude people do not need to make a decision about who is God’s messenger and who is not, except if they have rejected him already, or if they are religious leaders.
Let us also address the argument of some people who find it strange when we tell them that they do not have to make a definite decision about Alban Fejza’s messengership to be able to go to Heaven. Well, Alban Fejza was not the first messenger who says this. He is the third messenger who says this.
First, Muhammad himself said it. Verse 2:62 tells us that surely those who believe in God, and believe in the last day, and lead a righteous life, they have nothing to fear and nor will they grieve. So, these are the three minimum requirements for belief.
Second, Rashad Khalifa himself said that believing in a messenger is not required. He said: “I must mention here that the three minimum requirements in the Quran, in Sura 2, verse 62, and also the same thing is repeated in Sura 5, it says the minimum requirements are belief in God, belief in the Hereafter, lead a righteous life. These are the three minimum requirements, and you make it to Heaven. You believe in God alone, believe in the Hereafter, and lead a righteous life. There is nothing about Moses and Jesus, Muhammad. You don’t have to believe in them. There is nothing about the Quran or the Bible, or the Gospel. You don’t have to believe in them. There is nothing in there about anything, the angles. Do you believe in the angles? Of course, we believe in the angels, but it is not a requirement. It’s a piece of information. It’s an additional piece of information. There is a difference between the knowledgeable person and the ignorant person, and all of them if they satisfy these three requirements, they make it to Heaven. But to believe in the angles, the messengers, the scriptures, all these are additional pieces of information, valuable pieces of information…”
And, Alban Fejza is the third messenger who says this. He is the third messenger, because this is the situation after the Quran. It was slightly different before the Quran, but after the Quran, we have the Quran for all times, and therefore making a definite decision whether someone is a messenger or not is not a requirement, except in special circumstances, which is if you have rejected him already, or if you are a religious leader. In those two circumstances, it is a requirement to openly accept God’s messengers. Otherwise, it is optional. If you do accept the messenger, good for you. You are smart. By the way, if you make a decision, and you can if you want, because Alban Fejza gives sufficient proof, sufficient verses from the Quran about that, so if you are smart enough to understand that Alban Fejza is God’s messenger, and you want to tell the others, then please don’t tell Alban Fejza. Alban Fejza knows that he is God’s messenger. Tell the others. Alban Fejza does not need to hear that. Alban Fejza will consider you as one among us if you do the Contact Prayer correctly, and if you do the Obligatory Charity correctly. Because ultimately that is what matters. It’s not about whether you should accept God’s messenger. It’s about whether God accepts you in his purified congregation. If God accepts you, surely He is generous and will accept you with gifts waiting for you as soon as He accepts you. God’s gifts for us in this world are the Contact Prayer and the Obligatory Charity. So, the first things you should worry about is whether you are doing the Contact Prayer correctly, dedicated to God alone, and whether you are doing the Obligatory Charity correctly, according to how God prescribes it in the Quran, the whole Quran, not just one verse of the Quran.
And as it is partly indicated in verse 58:12, it is not God’s messenger who leads you to the correct obligatory charity, but it is the correct obligatory charity which leads you to God’s messenger, similar to the case of Joseph and his brothers. Did Joseph bring his brothers to poverty, or did poverty bring his brothers to Joseph? Did God talk to Moses, after Moses decided to bring some fire for warmth for his family, which is charity, or did Moses wait until God talked to him, and then decide to help his family? We don’t need to wait to decide about God’s messenger as a condition to do the right thing. Waiting to decide to do the right thing, only after you decide about God’s messenger, this idea has been said before by the Children of Israel when they disbelieved. Verse 91 in chapter 20, says that they said, “We will continue to worship the golden calf, until Moses comes back.”. See, they had a condition for that. When the two messengers went to Abraham, for example, to tell him about the future son, which he was going to have, did he serve them meat first, which is charity, or did he wait until his son is born, to see if that is true, and then call them back to serve them meat? See, doing the right thing, treating the guests correctly, should be done without waiting to decide whether someone is God’s messenger or not. Did the Obligatory Charity exist before Muhammad received the revelation or after Muhammad received the revelation?