You two are exceptions! You live and breathe the deen (religion) and duniya (world), and I connect with the two of you, both of you are open minded and respect the God-given life here now, equally with the Akhira. We have to take care of our life here on earth and be just to it, life is an Amana ( trust) God has endowed us with, and we cannot sacrifice it for the Akhira (hereafter). Our problem is we fail to live a life for the sake of hereafter, that is wrong.
Your concerns are legitimate, yes, many of the Khutbas (sermons) are irrelevant, and have nothing to do with my day to day life.
Some of them are downright stupid, as a Muslim, I don’t want to mince the words; A Khateeb was telling in a mosque that Aids is not a Muslim issue, because we are so pious we don’t get Aids – there were several medical doctors in the congregation… I don’t know if they dove into the cell phone or did not have the courage to speak up, but I went to read stuff in my cell phone instead of listening to the Imam. I communicated that in my note a few weeks later, and guess what happened – well of course, Imam is more believable.
Being Amin is the first requirement of being a Muslim that is the foundation model Prophet gave us – instead we chose the others Sunna’s for our brand recognition.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ghouse/american-muslim-agenda-a-_b_5528706.html
3. Fixing the Muslim Mistakes
http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2014/12/fixing-muslim-mistakes.html
4. Is Akhira the root of Muslim Problem?http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2014/07/religious-pluralism-versus-intolerance.html
I will be in DC on Friday January 16, please let me know if that will work for you.
World Muslim Congress, a think tank