BismillahirRahmanirRahim

Question: The world is watching the Olympic, and we have children that are watching it and they like it. In the days of the Ottomans, were there any such things as Olympic?

No, there isn’t . That came a little bit later I believe in the twenties, after the first World War, I believe the Olympic came. I mean we are talking about modern Olympic. Don’t call them Olympians. Olympians, if you say that word, they think that you are talking about the Greek Pantheons, those are the Olympians, you know, like Zeus, bla, bla…., these ones they are just Olympic Athletes. And the Greeks they had Olympic games for long long time. Original Olympic games, only men they attend of course and that is, the Olympic games is what originally in the Ancient Greek, what is it for? The original Olympic it was a religious rituals. It was a worship. It was an offering to their deities, whoever that they worship. Do you understand? It is a ritual.

All the men are there, of course all the men who are competing they cannot wear anything. They have to be Eh, how do we put it delicately, they have to be as they are born, physically. No women even come to watch, no slaves, no person who is other than Greek people da, da, da….So anyway, that is the sunnat. The sunnat of the Olympic games is that. Oh, we are going to be question for so many things. ‘Don’t be extreme Hoja Effendi. It’s just a game.’ Everything has an origin and what is the origin of this? You cannot run away from your origin. Still you are coming to bring the fire, running and to put the fire, isn’t it? Of course today it’s all about politics, it’s all about wasting, it’s all about boosting one country, putting another country down. This is all politics. It’s not even diplomacy, it’s politics. Especially making the third world country to be very very busy on this. They cannot do anything else, they cannot deal with the social problems, they cannot deal with the economic problems, ‘at least we can sent very good athletes and the whole country will have some pride,’ but what are they good for in reality? Millions, sometimes billions are spent in the Olympic games by the host country. And billions are wasted. They build all these giant stadiums, they build all these facilities, just for a few days, after that it just fall into ruin, they just become garbage. And people are still not waking up to look at the hypocrisy of this to say that there is something morally wrong with this. They say it’s good for the morale. What good is morale when you are wasting billions and denying help to the poor people who needs this help. What good is that kind of morale? That is not morale. That is immoral.

Were there sports in the time of the Holy Prophet (asws)? Of course. Were there sports in the time of the Ottomans? Of course. But it was never sports for sports sake too. It was not. Number one, the sports they are usually concentrating on, it is the Prophetic sports. Like what? Archery, horseback riding, wrestling, sword fighting, that has a purpose for something. You swim like a butterfly one hundred meters, for what? You think you are so strong? The fish can swim faster than you. You think you can run so fast? The donkey can run faster than you. What is it that you are saying that you can do? The animals they can do better than you. We are humans. We have a station. Fill the station of a human, of Hazreti Insan. But when the world is drunk and when the world is very bad, and they say, ‘now we have to have a distraction. Not on a national, international scale, to distract the people from their problems, have a game.’ Do you understand? ‘Have a sport.’

So many times we see countries they are fighting with each other, so many different groups, so many different political parties, especially third world, they never get along. Some saying we are like this, some saying we are like this, some saying we are like this, we are like this, but when it comes to football, soccer, the whole country shuts down and unite. SubhanaAllah. Football. What is that? Empty. That ball is empty. It’s filled with air. It’s empty and you are kicking it around. Breh, okay, when you are children, the children they play something. But what are you doing when you are surrounding yourself with people who are grown up, thousands of people, you get so emotional about an empty ball, what good is it doing to you? You understand? But who thinks about these things anyway. No one thinks. They say, it’s okay. Because the world says it’s okay we just say, ‘yeah, yeah, it’s okay.’ No, we are made to think.

Astaghfirullah al-azim wa atubu ilaih. InsyaAllah, we pull ourselves away from all of that. We are not hating it. We don’t say, ‘oh, we hate this.’ No, we are saying this is foolish. We are following the way of the Prophet and the Saints. They are not busy with these things. Which prophet was busy with these things? Which Saint is busy with these things? You want to be like a people of the dunya, then go ahead be busy with it. We are not going to stop you. We are not going to stop you. Go ahead. But pretty soon, everyone will come to a point in their life, usually it’s because of a tragedy, it’s not because something good happens to you that you wake up. Usually it’s something bad that happens to you then you wake up. Now you see, how it looks bad in our eyes but it’s actually good for us, because it makes us to wake up. It makes us to wake up and it makes us to question, what is this life for? What is the meaning of this life? Why am I doing this? Is this what life is?

Don’t wait until you are forty years old or fifty years old for this mid life crisis to hit. You should start thinking when maturity hits you, thirteen years old, sixteen years old for it to hit you, because that is the time when you have some maturity. Then when the time you reach forty years old, things are already set. It’s not things now starts to change at the age of forty. No. Things are already set. Everything else that leads up to forty years old is just laying the foundations and then for forty years old you can jump off and you can build something from it. You don’t lay the foundation at forty years old. It’s too late. You understand?

So the young ones that are growing up, if they are not given the proper understanding or a choice of understanding, a choice means you have this thing, this entity, now some people say it is good, some people say it is bad, now you have this thing for example, the Olympic, people are saying, ‘no, no, no, we are very educated, we are very liberal, we are very western people, but this thing call the Olympic if we start questioning it, majority of the people is going to say you are being a lunatic. Why are you questioning something that is understandably good for everyone.’ So you don’t give a choice to people now to make up their own minds. That is not wise. Thirteen years old, sixteen years old, you must train them to start to think. This is what Tasawwuf is supposed to be. Not to make you to become blind, to make you to become cultish, to make you to stop thinking. InsyaAllah, may Allah give us more intelligence. WaminAllahu Taufiq, al-Fatiha. Amin. SelamAleykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatu.

Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz,
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
OSMANLI DERGAHI- New York
9 Zul Qaida 1437
August 12, 2016.