Turning Anger into Action

Turning Anger into Action

Khutbah by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad

Opening Prayers

Khutbah al-Hajah (Opening Khutbah)

Main Body

The Nature of Our Times

That's how humanity used to be. We liked things the way they were. We knew that the past was probably better, and we thought that any substantial changes were likely to disturb our equilibrium - equilibrium in society, in government, and in our souls.

Nowadays, we live in a time where everything is the exact reverse of that. Nobody is particularly interested in truth or beauty any longer. Instead, the cutting edge of our culture is always what's new, what's innovative, what challenges our established perceptions.

As believers in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, we've always looked back to a golden age which we knew existed, which was the time of Sayyidina Muhammad. We know that perfection is possible because it has existed and it has walked this earth. Modernity says perfection is there somewhere in the future and we can't really imagine what it would look like.

So as believers who like to look back and who love what they see when they look back, we find the modern world very peculiar. Everything is challenging us, and many of those things that challenge us most are the things that seem to be about things that we were once most certain about.

The Challenge to Our Understanding of History

Current events seem to be coming closer and closer to our hearts. There is something elemental about the destruction of Baghdad, once the symbol of Muslim intellectual and political and economic leadership of the world. There is something elemental also about the situation in the Holy Land and in Palestine.

What is our image of history? Our image is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala vindicated, in perhaps the greatest surprise in history, the line of Sayyidina Ismail, alayhi salam, and made the outcast into the victors.

And from the Haram in Mecca, there was a spiritual victory which led to the Haram in Jerusalem, shortly to be followed in the time of the Khulafa by the physical victory, which united all three holy cities. There was something for our imagination profoundly right about the existence of the Dome of the Rock.

What could be more glorious as a culmination of the manifestly legible purposes of heaven in history than that beautiful golden crown? That's the place where the ancient prophets, alayhi salam, worshipped. That's the place where Sayyidina Isa, alayhi salam, taught and worshipped. That's the place where Sayyidina Muhammad went and worshipped, leading and affirming all of the earlier prophets in prayer before he went on that final unimaginable solo voyage.

The Meaning of Palestine

What does the situation in Palestine mean? If we take a step back from the immediate coverage of the humanitarian catastrophes and the political shenanigans, what does it actually mean?

Well, what it means is, firstly, the vindication of the outcast, Sayyidina Ismail, the outcast son, finally vindicated, showing where Allah is - in other words, with the broken-hearted, with the ethnically impure, with those who are rejected by a powerful narrative of centrality and exclusion. The rejected son turns out to be the one who is finally to be chosen.

The History of Gaza: A Sign

Let's wind the history back a little bit and consider the history of the city of Gaza, the city of Palestine that has been most in the news of late, a kind of icon of Ishmaelite suffering at the hands of unfeeling oppressors.

The history of Gaza turns out to be an interesting sign of what Islam has accomplished in the region. A city that was very slow to Christianize and that eventually had to be Christianized effectively by force. St. Porphyry, at the beginning of the 5th century, was so impatient with the reluctance of the population to accept baptism that he led his monks on a campaign to physically destroy the pagan temples and to rough up the pagan priests.

But that episode only lasted for less than 200 years because at the beginning of the 7th century, the Ishmaelites, the outcasts, the ethnically impure, the rejected, appear in order to overthrow the pretensions and the cruelties of Christianized Rome. It was one of the fastest episodes of conversion that the ancient world has ever seen. The same people who were so stubborn to accept Christianity became Muslim almost overnight.

The Greek Christian population went to Sayyidina Umar, and asked him for permission to transform the Eudoxiana church into a mosque. And it's a mosque to this day. It's the Jami Umar, mosque of Umar ibn al-Khattab. Has been ever since, except for the short crusader interlude when it was turned over to Catholic worship.

Imam al-Shafi'i, rahmatullahi alayh, was from the city of Gaza. It produced so many great ones in the history of this ummah. Under the Ottoman Empire, it flourished. And it flourished until the dawn of our current calamity and our current puzzlement.

The Great Treason

In 1917, the three battles of Gaza splashed across our headlines at the time, but we have profoundly forgotten them. What were the battles of Gaza? The first two were between the British forces and the Ottoman forces. The Ottoman forces fighting for the Khalifa of Rasulullah, and the British fighting for imperial glory. And the first two battles were won by the forces of the Khalifa and General Allenby were soundly defeated.

The third battle was different. The third battle introduced the principle that has characterized the tragedy of the region ever since. The tragedy of insincerity, double standards, hypocrisy, backstabbing and treason.

And what was that unprecedented event? Al-Qiyanat al-Kubra - The great treason. Who was it who was fighting alongside the British? The British Tommy with his solar helmet, with the machine gun, the Lewis gun, pointed at the distant Turkish lines. Who is feeding the bullets into the machine gun? It is the local Arab ally.

That's the great treason. The uprising of Arab nationalists against the Khalifa of Rasulullah for the sake of British promises and British gold and the opportunity to sack Damascus. If you look at the pages of history in any civilization, you will be hard put to find a comparable act of treason.

The Consequence of Division

That is why the third battle of Gaza did not go our way. And why the story of the city ever since has been a story not of prosperity under a united Islamic realm, but of division, partition, occupation, and now catastrophe at the hands of a merciless, powerful oppressor.

The obvious moral lesson for that is: be united. Hold fast all together to the rope of Allah. At that most critical point of the history of the Ummah, one section of the Ummah, the Arab nationalist cause decided to change sides, to cross the lines and to fight for Whitehall against Istanbul.

And perhaps that treachery, that insincerity, that hypocrisy, lies at the spiritual heart of this rotten situation. Maybe Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is still angry with those people. So colossal was that betrayal.

The Failure of Secular Alternatives

Each one of the national stories of those new nations that so bravely, in their nationalistic, Arab nationalistic way, arose following the decline of imperial rule has been more or less a shabby catastrophe. Scoundrels in uniforms, scoundrels with crowns, scoundrels wherever you look.

Look at the states of the modern Middle East. Each one of them is, by any standards, a failure. A political failure, an ethical failure, an economic failure, military failure, diplomatic failure. Completely helpless, the laughing stock of the world.

Remember the old slogans that one more or less laughs at now? (أُمَّةٌ عَرَبِيَّةٌ وَاحِدَةٌ ذَاتُ رِسَالَةٍ خَالِدَة - "One Arab nation possessed of an eternal message.") Well, they certainly didn't get the unity right. There's still not one Arab nation 50 years after Nasser and the others. And what is the Risalah? What really is the message?

There is a bankruptcy, and that bankruptcy is the image that we now see on our television screens.

The Path to True Victory

But the believer can see meaning. He knows that the Aqsa is one of the most important lightning rods for meaning in human history. And that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala means well for that holy place. And one day he will place it once again in the hands of a holy people.

But they must be a holy people. Not people with silly slogans. Not people with scores to settle. Not enraged armies of Islamists destroying the settlements. None of that. But people who enter the city with humility and respect and reverence.

People who enter the city as Sayyidina Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, entered the city with his donkey, humbly, refusing even to pray in the church of the Holy Sepulcher. Despite the extraordinary symbolic power of that moment, any other ruler in history would have said, this is how we can show that they're finished. Pray on the altar in their church.

But he doesn't do that because of his certainty. He prays next door and the place where he prays is still al-Jami al-Umar, the mosque of Umar. And the church of the Holy Sepulcher is still the church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The Secret of the Conquest

How was that conquest possible that gave the Muslims the right to be the kings of the city? Because there was a conquest in the souls. A conquest in the hearts. There was a sakinah there.

The same sakinah that had made the conquest of Mecca a spiritual, as well as a purely military and political victory:

"When those who disbelieved appointed in their hearts the rage, the fever - the feverishness of Jahiliyyah."

On the one side, the pagan principle: rage, tribalism, what we would call nationalism, the fever that desires to support one's own side, right or wrong, patriotism.

"Allah sent down his sakinah, his stillness, his calm, as a presence in the hearts of the believers, and he imposed upon them the word of taqwa. And they were the ones who had most right to it. They were the ones whose principle it was. And Allah is always knowing of all things."

That was the real fath makkah. Fath - an opening within, a new kind of humanity. From the chauvinistic bosoms of a primitive people sunk in rage and tribalism with no law and only the principle of vendetta and feuding comes this extraordinary ummah of angels.

The Test of Our Hearts

When we become ready in our hearts to approach the holy city of Jerusalem in that spirit which is the Quranic spirit and the spirit of the Sahaba and the real spirit of the Salaf, then the city's gates will be opened to us.

But there is no reason, if you look at history, to suppose that they will be opened to us if we are banging upon them with jahiliyyah in our hearts. With rage, desire for vengeance, a desire to settle scores. The tribal mafia mentality of an eye for an eye. We want revenge. These are pagan principles.

The city of Jerusalem - they say the golden gate is the gate that is closed and you can see it. It's bricked up and it will be opened when Imam al-Mahdi comes into the city. Perhaps the city is also closed to us and the land of Palestine is closed to us because our hearts are bricked up against what it really signifies. We don't deserve to be there.

The Historical Pattern

Do you really think that the Byzantine Empire, the great superpower of its day, was overcome because the Arab armies were really well organized and had better weapons? Not really. The Byzantine Empire had just thrashed the Persians and was pretty trained, pretty powerful.

What was the secret that enabled them to take the city? The reason why they were allowed into the city became clear on the day when they entered the city and Sayyidina Umar refused to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

He gave the Christians and the Jews their rights and he asked to be shown the place of the temple, al- haykal, the place which is the masrah of Rasulullah. And the Christians had covered it with garbage and sewage because for them, this was the relic of the old thing.

Sayyidina Umar, radhiallahu anhu, starts to clear the site with his own hands. He doesn't enslave the population and get them to clear it for him. He does it with his own hands. Here again we breathe something of the perfume of the extraordinary humility of the entrance of Rasulullah and his great pure-hearted, luminous Sahaba into the city of Makkah.

The Contemporary Situation

The reason why there is Zionism is not because of anything that happened in the Islamic world. The Zionist movement didn't arise among Jews in the Muslim world. They tagged along much, much later. Some of them, to this day, some of them still have not done so.

It arose in the heart of the West for a reason that we have to acknowledge as a good reason: 20 centuries of ferocious, unremitting, anti-Semitic persecution. What Dan Cohn-Scherbock calls "the oldest hatred." Almost from the word go, the parent religion is vilified and punished and crucified.

The solution was not for Europe to make amends, to give up part of Europe. Not Atalba, but instead the very strange idea that's present in St. Paul of the vicarious atonement. So great is the crime that you yourself can't atone for it.

Find an innocent victim. And who are the innocent victims? The Palestinians. The people who always allowed the Jewish people to go back to Jerusalem when the Crusaders and the Byzantines and others had persecuted them.

The nearest people you've ever had to friends make them into the sacrificial victim. The Palestinians are the paschal lamb slaughtered on the rock of Jerusalem to atone for 20 centuries of Christian anti- Semitism.

Our Response: Tawbah and Sakinah

What should we do who believe in justice rather than in a vicarious atonement and in the suffering of the innocent? Well, what we have to do is to remember the Islamic sense of tawbah. Which is first of all that it's a gift from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala but that it happens in certain times and certain places triggered by our tawbah towards Allah.

The oldest trick in the armory of the preacher is: repent and you'll be saved. And that means this world as well as the next world. The Ummah will get what it deserves or better than it deserves because of the generosity of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

At the moment, I don't think we deserve the key to that gate. I don't know how Fatah or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or any of those other groups would behave if they had the whip hand. And what we don't want is for the history of this Ummah to be stained by the kind of thing that the history of Christendom is stained by.

The True Path Forward

Repel an evil with something that is better. That's the Quranic commandment. Once you internalize that, then you will start to see the road that leads back.

And it may take decades. It may take centuries. Who knows? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the Lord of history. We can only dimly guess at the future in this situation. But the road is there. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wishes us to tread that road.

And it means: begin with yourself. Overcome that rage. Overcome that fury because it's from the jahiliyya. This fever, this gut reaction, this trauma, this rage is from the jahili principle which has guided so much of the nationalistic leadership and rhetoric, empty rhetoric of the region since then.

So we have to say no to Fatah, no to Hamas, no to the discourse of grievance and revenge, but no also to Zionism because we certainly don't believe in that, what Benny Morris calls ethnic cleansing. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not wish that for this Ard Muqaddasa, for this holy land.

Practical Guidance

We've heard the appeal for Gaza and insha'Allah every one of us should be generous as we leave and give to the people of Gaza because they need it desperately. No water in the taps, sewage overflowing, hungry children. It's very bad there.

As well as that, it's not an either or. As well as that, look into your hearts, improve your hearts, improve your relationship, improve your communities, improve your mosques, speak out for the truth of Islam and fearlessly reject the new Jahiliyyah of suicide bombing, of terrorism, of tit for tat, rage, because that has nothing to do with the Sakina that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala placed in the hearts of the Sahaba.

If we truly follow the Salaf, we will look for the Sakina, we will not look for the rage. Anybody who is yelling and shouting and screaming has nothing to do with the Sahaba of Sayyidina Muhammad and everything to do with Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab because that was their inward state.

Help them, campaign, go on the rallies, protest, write the letters, all of that is necessary and inshallah, if there's enough of it, it will make a difference. But the long term difference, the road to the golden gate

lies to the Muslim heart. When we deserve to be once again the custodians of the city, that's when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will open that gate for us.

"And He will heal the hearts of the believing people."

Conclusion

Once we see the Dome of the Rock once again in the hands of the people who are inclusive, who recognize not just one part of the prophetic story but Sayyidina Musa and Sayyidina Sulaiman and Sayyidina Dawud and Sayyidina Ismail and Sayyidina Ishaq and Sayyidina Isa and Sayyidina Muhammad , when this inclusivity of Islam becomes a reality, then the gate will open and then the world will look at us not with distaste but with amazement.

"That's not hard for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala."

Everything is equally easy for him.

But we need to take the first step. We need to say the road to that city, to that irreplaceable city which every Muslim in his heart knows can never be allowed not to be in the hands of this ummah. To tread that road we have to start within.

Overcome the rage, the frustration, the stupidity, the jahili practice. Turn away from that as the Sahaba turned away from that when they took their shahada. Say la ilaha illallah.

Recognize that he is the Lord of history, Muhammadur Rasulullah, the man of sakinah, on whose heart was sent down the sakinah and inshallah that road will not just be shown to you but you will have the honor of being one of those who tread it and who hold the key to open the city.

May Allah inshallah make that day soon and overcome the current sicknesses of this ummah and open to us all of the gates of the good things which he wishes for the people of Sayyidina Muhammad

Closing