Remembering the Days of Allah

Remembering the Days of Allah

Opening Praise and Personal Context

Alhamdulillah, praise be to Allah, the One, the Only, Supreme Lord of everything that is, was, and ever will be. Everything that is not, never was, and never will be. Lord of all good and all the blessings that we have in our lives.

Alhamdulillah, the trouble with talking right now for me at this hour is I'm still on Arabian time. And I don't know for people that have spent time over in the Middle East, when you come back here at about six o'clock in the afternoon, you just drop. So I've been three months in the Middle East and I just flew in from United Kingdom.

So my body clock is very messed up right now. But Alhamdulillah, I didn't see any volcanic ash while I was in England, but I did see the volcanic ash when I was in the Middle East, just on the news and watching what was happening there. And I was really struck by the fact that there's so many extraordinary things that are happening right now that people don't really give them enough thought and consideration.

Reading the Signs of Allah

We've got right now in the Gulf waters, we have a well that is spewing oil into the oceans of the world because this oil now will move into the streams and begin to disperse. It's really quite troubling. It's deeply troubling for people that think about these things because Muslims are people that read signs. We're people that read signs. Our book is a book of signs. It's a book of ayat.

And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives His Prophets ayats. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, when He sent:

"And We sent Musa with Our signs"

And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us to read the signs.

"Read in the name of your Lord who created". To read. It wasn't simply just the reading of a book, but the book of signs, which is in the universe as well. And natural disasters have always been a source of trouble.

Historical Reflection on Calamities

Dr. Omar Abdullah Farooq was telling me this morning about the volcano in Iceland that happened over 100 years ago that wiped out one-fifth of the population of Iceland. And he said at that time the central question of the Icelanders was, what have we done? He said that was what they were asking themselves. What have we done that is causing this trouble? And this is something that was true of peoples all over the world.

Whenever calamities confronted them, they would always ask themselves. These are people that are in touch with their fitrah, with their inherent nature. They would ask themselves, what have we done? And this is something that human beings have now completely forgotten.

Spiritual Alzheimer's Disease

We have spiritual Alzheimer's disease. That's what humanity is suffering from, a type of spiritual Alzheimer's disease. We've forgotten who we are, who we belong to, where we've come from, where we're going, what we should be doing in the meantime.

This is the state of humanity wherever you go. You see corruption in unbelievable, unprecedented manners, things that really we haven't seen at this level. And this is a global phenomenon. It's happening all over the globe. And it's something that should cause people of intelligence, it should cause them consternation. It should cause them trouble in their hearts.

Prophetic Signs of the Last Days

Because these are people that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says about them that the people who believe are concerned about the signs of the hour, the signs of the last days. They're concerned about it and they know that it's true from their Lord. The Prophet ﷺ in a hadith which is one of the most extraordinary in terms of purely prophetic vision, is one of the most extraordinary hadiths that we have in the literature that Ibn Abi Shaybah relates in which the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Source Name)

"When you see Mecca, when you see holes drilled into the mountains of Месса."

The Arabs say:

"That holes were dug into the earth."

The Prophet ﷺ predicted that holes would be drilled through the mountains of Mecca and he says:

(Source Name)

"And the buildings of Mecca reaching the level of mountains. You see the buildings of Mecca reaching the levels of mountains. He said, know that the shade of the hour has encompassed the planet" (Musnad Ibn Abi Shaybah).

And the believers, when they see these things, it concerns them. The Prophet ﷺ said:

(Source Name)

"The end of time won't come until you see mountains removed from their places." When I was in Mecca, there's mountains have been removed from Месса.

قُعَيْقِعَانُ - One of the mountains that's known as the أَحَدُ الْأَخْشَبَيْنِ - When the angels came to the Prophet ﷺ and they asked him if he wanted to see the mountains that they would يُطْبِقُهُمْ عَلَى قُرَيْشٍ - One of them was Abi Qubais and the other was قُعَيْقِعَانُ قُعَيْقِعَانُ has been removed. It's gone. It's no longer there.

The mountain is gone. A mountain that the Prophet ﷺ walked in its shade. A mountain that the Prophet ﷺ probably climbed as a boy. This mountain is now removed.

Signs of Moral Corruption

Then the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Source Name)

These are signs for people to reflect. The Prophet ﷺ, I was on the Arabian Peninsula with my family walking on the beach and I came upon people in a public beach having sexual intercourse in a public beach on the Arabian Peninsula.

I'm not making this up. This is the level of fasad that is happening on our planet. The Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih Muslim).

He said,, that one of the signs of the end of time is civilized people would walk with their thighs exposed in the marketplaces. (بَادِيَةُ الْأَفْخَاذِ فِي الْأَسْوَاقِ - bādiyat al-afkhādh fī al-aswāq) - People, he said, pens would be everywhere. He said that people out of their love of the world you would get two income families.

That people would be two income families. That he said, a woman will تُعِينُ زَوْجَهَا عَلَى الدُّنْيَا عَلَى حِرْصِهِمَا عَلَى التَّجَارَةِ - "Out of love for this world she'll work like her husband to earn livelihood," neglecting the children. Some people are forced to do that. And there's no blame on that. But there's people that just out of love of dunya they will abandon their children and go out. These are the things that are happening around us.

Remembering the Days of Allah

And these are things people have to wake up because this is a religion that calls people to wake up. To wake up to the opportunity of life. وَذَكِّرْهُم بِأَيَّامِ اللهِ - "And remind them of the Days of Allah" (Quran 14:5). When the Prophet ﷺ was commanded to do this, if you look in Surah Ibrahim, all of the verses after that talk about the great things of the past.

And Surah Ibrahim is really the essence of this surah is about reminding people to have patience, to have gratitude. وَإِن تَعُدُّوا نِعْمَةَ اللَّهِ لَا تُحْصُوهَا ۖ إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَظَلُومٌ كَفَّارٌ - "And if you would count the blessings of Allah, you will never come to the end of them. You will never come to the end of the blessings. But man, the human being" (Quran 14:34).

It's a - صيغة مبالغة - Oppressing themselves. And this is - ظَلُومٌ The human being is - وَالْإِنسَانَ يَشْمَلُ الذَّكَرُ وَالْأُنثَى - hyperbole form in rhetoric. Excessively oppressive. And كَفَّارٌ - Excessively ungrateful. Showing ingratitude towards the blessings of Allah. The prophets come to remind people to be in a state of gratitude.

The Promise of Gratitude

In Surah Ibrahim Musa says to his people وَإِذْ تَأَذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ لَأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ - "That Allah promises He has announced, declared to humanity: If you show gratitude I will give you more. I will give you more to be grateful for" )Quran 14:7(. وَلَئِن كَفَرْتُمْ إِنَّ عَذَابِي لَشَدِيدٌ - "But if you're ungrateful" (Quran 14:7). Because the mufassirun say the kufr here is كُفْرَانُ النِّعْمَةِ - It's being ungrateful for the blessings. This is for believers and disbelievers.

Lord.

"O human being, what has deluded you? What has deluded you concerning the generosity of your Lord, your generous Lord?"

Imam Asawi says he put his response in the question. It's the generosity of Allah. There's so much generosity that people forget because we take these things for granted. We take our blessings for granted. We take our religion for granted. We take our incomes for granted. We take our houses for granted. We take our spouses for granted. We take our children for granted. We take our health for granted. All of these things. This is what human beings do because the human being is kaffar. The human being is ungrateful. This is part of the human condition.

The Mission of the Prophet

But our religion is a religion about (تنبيه الغافل - tanbīh al-ghāfil) - reminding people that are in heedlessness. This is what our Prophet ﷺ did. He came and he reminded people. He reminded them they had a Lord. He reminded them that his Lord was worthy of worship. This is what Islam is about. It's about recognizing that you have a Lord and all that Lord asks is that you sincerely turn to that Lord and recognize that He is the giver of all of your blessings. All of your blessings come from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

He created us to know God. This is the greatest gift that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given us. And this was something that Muslims all over the world knew. There is a poem that almost every child in North Africa memorized for centuries. It's a didactic poem to teach them the three basic foundations of their religion: creed, the belief system, (عقيدة - 'aqīdah) what Muslims believe, basic fiqh, the five pillars of Islam, and then (إحسان - iḥsān) basic foundations of drawing near to Allah.

And in that he says (يُجَاهِدُ النَّفْسَ لِرَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ وَيَتَحَلَّىٰ بِمَقَامَاتِ الْيَقِينِ - yujāhidu al-nafs li-rabbi al-'ālamīn wa yataḥallā bi-maqāmāti al-yaqīn) - "This was for children. This was literally for little children. That he struggles against his soul or she struggles against her soul for the sake of God, a struggle against your soul, and ornaments the self with the stations of certainty."

The Struggle Against the Self

مجاهدة - This was an ummah of mujahidah, an ummah of mujahidah. ابن المنكدر the great teacher of Imam Malik رضي الله عنه said (جَاهَدْتُ نَفْسِي أَرْبَعِينَ سَنَةً حَتَّى اسْتَقَامَتْ - jāhadtu nafsī arba'īna sanatan ḥattā istaqāmat) - "I fought myself for 40 years until it was finally in a state of submission." I struggled against myself for 40 years until it was finally in a state of submission. This is not an easy journey.

There's Muslims that, they say, "Oh, I've been trying, I've been doing this, I can't get control of myself." This is a man who's one of the greatest muhaddithin, one of the greatest scholars, one of the greatest saints of Islam, and he's telling us that he struggled with himself for 40 years. Imam Malik said about him, "We used to go visit ابن المنكدر and (كُنَّا نَحْقِرُ أَنفُسَنَا أَيَّامًا - kunnā naḥqiru anfusanā ayyāman) - we would feel humiliated and humbled for days after that. We looked at ourselves in a contemptible manner. We saw ourselves as lowly after visiting this man."

For 40 years he struggled against himself. This is not easy. And there are people out there struggling. Muslims have no idea. Many of us have no idea the difficulties of people just for their livelihoods, just to earn their livelihoods.

The Disgrace of Homelessness

And this city has one of the biggest homeless populations in the United States of America. It's a disgrace for our country, a country, a cornucopia of plenitude, a country that spends billions upon billions of dollars to create massive armaments that are such an overkill. We have a navy. The amount that is spent on that navy is 11 times greater than all the other navies put together, the 14 major navies, 9 of which are NATO allies, 9 of which are NATO allies. America spends more on weapons today than it does on anything else. This is the majority, the bulk of the budget. All this deficit financing going to weapons.

And we have homeless people in this city that don't have a place to live, meals to eat. Many of them have mental problems but not all of them. Many of them are people that got sick and lost their jobs and found themselves without support systems, out on the street. My mother was on the homeless committee in Marin County for many years and as we were young she used to tell us these stories about how people ended up on the street, reminding us that this is something that could happen to anybody.

Depression and Mental Health

This is a city, the city of angels. This is a city that has one of the highest rates of suicide in this country. Look what's happening. We have depression, Prozac, all of these things. These are all indicative of an overall state because people have great difficulties in life. And this is the beauty of our religion, is to give us an ability to struggle in the world and keep our sanity, to maintain our sanity.

The Story of the Stewardess

Muslims are having a difficult time. Many Muslims are economic migrants. They move because they're forced to. I was on a plane, and don't anybody laugh about this story because you have to understand how powerful and meaningful this is. I was on a plane going to Kuwait and I sat next to a very famous Kuwaiti, Mohammed al-Awabi, a very brilliant man. The stewardess came and she was, I knew she was from West Africa because I spent time in West Africa.

People from West Africa are always surprised because I say, "You're Yoruba." They say, "How do you know?" Because people don't know that in this country. I was in a taxi and I heard a man start talking and I said, "Oh, you're from West Africa." He was really surprised. He said, "You're the first white American that ever knew where I was from." But I said to her, "Where are you from?" She said, "Senegal." And her name was Aisha.

She's a stewardess on an airline that serves alcohol. Mohammed al-Awabi asked her a question. He said, "How do you feel about serving wine?" She said, "It troubles me." She didn't have a hijab, so there was no outward

display of her religion. She said, "It really troubles me." And he said, but she said, "But I always serve it with my left hand."

See, people laugh. They think that was funny. I actually cried because what she was telling me then was she was connected to her religion because Muslims do foul things, they clean filth with their left hand, and that's what she was articulating by that. She said, "I always serve it with my left hand." That's a level of consciousness. That's a conscious connection with your Lord despite the fact that she knew that it was prohibited.

And then she said, "And I always ask the non-Muslim stewardesses in Ramadan to serve it for me." This is what people are going through out there. And there's people that can look at her and look down on her. That woman, I wanted to ask her to make dua for me. That's what people are out there struggling with, holding their religion together.

Holding onto Religion Like Hot Coal

That is the meaning of the hadith: towards the end of time, to hang on to this religion is like hanging on to a hot coal, like a hot coal in your hand. That's what that woman was articulating. Our Prophet ﷺ saw that coming. But she was connected to her Lord. She hadn't severed that tie with her Lord. And as long as that tie, however flimsy, if it's the hair of Muawiyah, however flimsy that tie is, if that tie is there with your Lord, that door is always open.

Exalting the Creation

Ahmed Bedouin, one of the great saints of Islam, said that the door that he came to his Lord through was (تعظيم المخلوقات - ta'ẓīm al-makhlūqāt) - exalting the creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. He said, "I never saw anybody from the family of the Prophet except (أعظمته لانتسابه إلى رسول الله - a'ẓamtuhu li-intisābihi ilā rasūli Allāh) - I saw him as something great because they were related to the Prophet. (ما رأيت عالمًا إلا أعظمته لعلمه الذي يحمله - mā ra'aytu 'āliman illā a'ẓamtuhu li-'ilmihi alladhī yaḥmiluhu) - I never saw a scholar except I exalted him because of the knowledge that he was carrying."

He said, "But it got to a point (ما رأيت مؤمنًا مسلمًا مهما كان حاله - mā ra'aytu mu'minan musliman mahmā kāna ḥāluhu) - no matter what his state was - إلا أعظمته لانتسابه لعبودية الله - but I saw because he was a servant of God, admittingly open that he was attempting to submit to Allah, that I gave him ta'zeem."

And then he said, "But then I didn't see anybody, even the non-Muslim (إلا أعظمته لأنهم محل إرادة الله - illā a'ẓamtuhu li-annahum maḥallu irādati Allāh) subhanahu wa ta'ala حيث أوجده الله subhanahu wa ta'ala بقوله كن فيكون - except that I saw that in that was the will, the divine will manifesting before my eyes." And he said, "I never saw a rock or a tree or anything except that I saw it as a manifestation of the divine will. It was God that put that thing there." That's what he was acknowledging.

And then he said, (وَمَن يُعَظِّمْ حُرُمَاتِ اللَّهِ فَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَّهُ عِندَ رَبِّهِ - wa man yu'aẓẓim ḥurumāti Allāhi fa-huwa khayrun lahu 'inda rabbihi) - "That the one who exalts the hurumat of Allah, the sanctified things of God, and what is more sanctified than the creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala?" (Quran 22:30). This thing that Allah has created as a tajalli of all of His divine attributes and then called us to marvel at it.

Standing Ovation for the Creator

If you look at people when they see people who can do something amazing, you see you had a beautiful singer who sings his song and people in the non-Muslim society, you know what they do? If people clap, they do these things. Ovation. They do an ovation, right? Which is to praise. That is because of what's happening in their hearts. They see something extraordinary and they want to praise that thing because they're seeing something that has affected their souls.

So when they see somebody who's mastered the piano and he gets up and plays some extraordinary piece by Rachmaninoff or Beethoven, they all stand up and they clap and clap to say, "What an extraordinary thing you've just done before our eyes. How extraordinary!" That's what they feel like doing because it's so amazing.

And yet we're in this incredible existence, this amazing creation. Stars in the heavens, galaxies. We've got Hubble telescopes that look at the far corners of the universe, the massive expansiveness. We have flowers that bloom before our eyes. We can watch flowers. We have rivers that move across as the sun moves across the sky. The flowers follow the sun. The Arabs call them (عباد الشمس - 'ibād al-shams)

We have animals that can do the most extraordinary things, elephants that can carry extraordinary weight on their backs, but ants even more extraordinary that can carry many times their own weight. All of these things happening before us. We have women right now in this room, there's a fetus, a baby developing in their wombs, mitotic cell division at rapid rates. All of these things are happening everywhere.

And we don't feel compelled to give God a standing ovation, to stand up before Allah and say Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, really to stand in ovation before our Lord, like people stand before some poor soul who's perfected some little trick on a musical instrument, who can pipe a tune out, and we're compelled to jump up and clap and say, "Bravo, bravo!" And we can't get up for the Lord of the worlds and say Allahu Akbar!

"What has deluded you? What has deluded you? What has taken you away from the praise of your Lord?" (Quran 82:6). This is what Muslims are meant to remind people to do, wherever they go, to tell people, to tell people you have a Lord.

Responding to Divine Signs

Our Prophet went into sajda out of gratitude. Our Prophet, when he saw an eclipse, he went and gave God an ovation. He prayed, he stood up and prayed and went into sajda as a testimony to what he was witnessing, a reminder. But those reminders are in every instant. These are just the great ones to pull even the most heedless of people back to attentiveness to their Lord. Things like eclipses, like volcanoes, like oil spewing out into the ocean should tell us, Ya Rabb, if Allah wanted, He could destroy all of the oceans.

"Corruption has revealed itself in the oceans and on the land because of what your own hands have been doing, because of what you have been doing" (Quran 30:41). Look at what's

happening around us.

The Story of Al-Aqra and Mercy

Have compassion for people out there. Al-Aqra Ibn Habis At-Tamimi, he was a gruff Bedouin man. He was sitting with the Prophet ﷺ and Hassan and Hussain were there and the Prophet kissed his two grandchildren.

And Al-Aqra said to the Prophet (أَتُقَبِّلُ الْأَوْلَادَ - atuqabbilu al-awlāda) - "You kissed children?" And the Prophet said, "Yes, (نعم - na'am)." And he said, (إِنَّ لِيَ عَشَرَةً مِنَ الْوَلَدِ مَا قَبَّلْتُ مِنْهُمْ أَحَدًا - inna lī 'asharatan mina al-waladi mā qabbaltu minhum aḥadan) - "I've got ten children, I never kissed one of them."

And the Prophet said, in one riwayah he said, "Mercy won't be shown to you." In another riwayah he said, أو أَمْلِكُ شَيْئًا إِنْ كَانَ اللَّهُ نَزَعَ الرَّحْمَةَ مِنْ قَلْبِكَ - "Do I have anything in my religion for somebody that God has removed mercy from their hearts?" (Sahih Bukhari 5997).

This religion, there has to be something already there. If you don't have basic humanity, this religion doesn't work. You have to have basic humanity.

(إِنَّمَا بُعِثْتُ لِأُتَمِّمَ مَكَارِمَ الْأَخْلَاقِ - innamā bu'ithtu li-utamima makārima al-akhlāq) - "I was sent to perfect noble character, to teach people how to treat one another" )Musnad Ahmad 8595( (أُمِرْتُ أَنْ أَتَوَاضَعَ حَتَّى لَا يَفْخَرَ أَحَدٌ عَلَى أَحَدٍ وَلَا يَبْغِيَ أَحَدٌ عَلَى أَحَدٍ - umirtu an atawāḍa'a ḥattā lā yafkhara aḥadun 'alā aḥadin wa lā yabghiya aḥadun 'alā aḥadin) - "That no one has arrogance over another."

Knowledge and Arrogance

What does Allah say about people once knowledge has been given to them? (وَمَا تَفَرَّقُوا إِلَّا مِن بَعْدِ مَا جَاءَهُمُ الْعِلْمُ بَغْيًا بَيْنَهُمْ - wa mā tafarraqū illā min ba'di mā jā'ahumu al-'ilmu baghyan baynahum) - "They didn't start splitting up into sects and groups until knowledge came, and then they get arrogant with their knowledge. And each one says, 'I know and he doesn't know''" (Quran 42:14).

يَعْلُو بَعْضُهُمْ عَلَى بَعْضٍ - Fakhruddin says that people say, "You don't have anything and I have the truth." Knowledge can lead people astray, because of not the knowledge itself, but the arrogance that comes with the attribute that Allah has described Himself with. Knowledge is an attribute of God. Wealth is an attribute of God. It's the attributes of God. When we take on some manifestation of those attributes in the world, we become arrogant if we're not careful.

The Path of Ubudiyah

And this is why the closest way to Allah is through ubudiyah, it's through those qualities that God does not have. Poverty. Poor people are always closer to God throughout the world. Wherever you go, the most religious continent on the planet is Africa. 99% of Africans believe in God, really.

You go to Africa, I lived in West Africa, they're humble people. You know they had a National Geographic and there was a group of Mauritanian fishermen and they went out to fish and they didn't catch any fish. And so you know what they said? "It's our sins." And they went to the Morabit, to the teacher, and they told him, "We went out, we used to go out and cast the net, now the fish are all gone."

If you want the sabab, the material reason, it's because the Japanese, the Russians, the Americans, they're fishing those waters like crazy. But still they understood, "How does this relate to us? You can blame the other, but it's still, it's happening to you." And he told them to make toba. This is on the documentary itself. He told them to make toba, to ask Allah. And they did that and then they went out, cast their nets, and fish came into the nets. That's fitrah people. Those are people of fitrah.

Corruption in the Sea

The United Nations announced last week that the fish are going. And this is Ibn Abbas in the tafsir of the verse (ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ - ḍhahara al-fasādu) in Surat Ar-Rum, that the corruption has revealed itself in the land and on the sea. He said, "In the sea, the diminishment of fish because of the sins of people."

Tuna is going to be extinct in 25 years. I would argue that we should have a moratorium on eating fish until the oceans can replenish themselves, that it's now become unethical to eat fish, because I want my children's children and everybody else's children's children to also be able to not only eat fish and sustain their bodies with the protein of the sea, but also to be able to marvel at what's in the sea, because we know that the fish actually ask forgiveness for those believing people. They ask forgiveness. And maybe the sins are getting so bad, those fish that were asking forgiveness are being removed from the planet.

Our Responsibility in America

There's a lot to do. This community is an important community. You're in the United States of America. This country is going through immense problems right now. We have two wars that were, they're worse than mistakes. A mistake is something that there's some redemption in mistakes. But when you have gross injustice, when the Pope tells you, the Pope, one out of every four Americans, 25% of Americans are Catholic, when the Pope tells you that this is an unjust war and you claim to be a Christian, and here's somebody who's working with traditional Christian ethics and he says the war in Iraq does not fit just war criterion in the Christian religion, that's a bad sign.

Because if you go against your own teaching, and many of these people are claimed to be Christians, if you go against your own teaching, you have no aid from God. And we believe, see, people get upset or get uneasy when you say these things, even though if you read the second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, he argued that much of the tribulation that was happening during the Civil War was a direct result of the sins of the American people that were perpetrated against African Americans, the sin of slavery, the sin of the injustices towards a minority population that were being treated as less than human.

If you said that now, you're laughed out, you're made fun of on television. But we have a religion. (لَا يَخَافُونَ لَوْمَةَ لَائِمٍ - lā yakhāfūna lawmata lā'im) - "We're told not to fear the blame that's heaped upon you by people that throw blame at you" (Quran 5:54).

We believe that when you do injustice, God does things to you. It's cause and effect. You can't change that.

Reassessing Our Actions

And Americans, we have to ask ourselves, all of these tribulations that have afflicted us, where are they coming from? Maybe we need to reassess, return to God, ask forgiveness, admit that we were wrong, admit that one million Iraqis did nothing to deserve death as a result of the American invasion of Iraq. Just admit that. It was wrong. People were killed that should have never been killed and it was wrong and unjust. Just admit that.

Admit that going in to Afghanistan to attack a whole nation because of the actions of a criminal gang inside that nation, no criminal justice system could do that. Now they're finally beginning to discuss this problem in foreign affairs. Foreign policy, they have an article about dealing with this as a criminal justice problem. It should have always been dealt with as a criminal justice problem.

You can't have a war with the biggest army in the world against a gang that is smaller and far less effective than the mafia. Far less effective than the mafia. Al-Qaeda has nothing on the mafia. And yet an entire nation has been moved towards these people. There have been, last year, 33 Americans died in terrorist attacks. Last year, 33. 15,000 died from low tire pressure in their cars. But we don't have a war on low tire pressure. Seriously.

Far more people die. You're more likely to get struck by lightning than killed in a terrorist attack. And yet this is the type of fear. We need to reassess. We need to remind people.

Dealing with Extremism

And I'm telling you, we've got nutcases, unfortunately, in our religion. But we're a large religion and it's just statistical fact that when you have large numbers of people, you will have people that aren't well. You'll have people that are not well. And then if you compound that with bombing those people, with aggressing against those people, then unfortunately people are going to get upset.

And we need to remind people. We do not justify terrorism, none of it. I don't think anybody in here believes in terrorism. And if you do, I hope that you stop believing in it because it's simply wrong, whether it's a state terrorizing a people or small groups of vigilantes terrorizing peoples within a state. Either way, terror is wrong. It's wrong to terrorize people.

We are people that believe in rules of engagement. We are people that believe in international law. We have law. International law was invented by the Muslims. There was no international law before the Hanafi Madhab. It didn't exist. Muslims invented international law.

But when you say international community, the international community, and you don't include one-fourth of the population which is Muslim, you exclude that part of the international community, and then the international community becomes the G7. And then you say, "Why can't these people just get on the program? Why can't we get on the program?" Because we're not on the program. They won't be pleased with you until you do exactly what they say. Well, unfortunately, that's not the way the world works. You might want to conquer the world, but the world might not want to be conquered by you.

Memorial Day and Sacrifice

We have to recognize, and we're here in the United States of America. You know, this is Memorial Day. This is Memorial Weekend, to remember. There are many people that sacrifice. Many of you are, we're living the fruits of sacrifice. That's real.

My father is a World War II veteran. My father got a special dispensation in his senior year of high school to get an early graduation at the age of 17 to join the United States Air Force because that's what young people were doing, to go and fight Hitler or to fight the Japanese in the South Pacific. One of my grandfathers was an officer in the Revolutionary War. My family goes all the way back. I have a grandfather, a direct grandfather on my mother's side, that was an officer in the Revolutionary War and we have a newspaper clipping of him marching on Independence Day in Georgia. He was given land in Georgia, probably Cherokee land, you know.

So I'm part of this country. I'm sorry, you can't tell us to go back where we came from. We've been here a while. We've been here a while. Seriously. So we're part of this country. And anybody that migrated legally to this country, you're part of this country because that's what this country is about. It's always had immigrants come to these shores. And that's what the Statue of Liberty, the famous poem by Emma Lazarus, calling, "Send all your refuse to me. We're the garbage of the world according to that poem. Send all your refuse to my shores and I'll embrace them. Welcome." That's America.

Welcome to America

And then boom, as you get off the boat, that's what happened. My great-grandfather, 1838, got off the boat and he was an Irish Catholic and he fell smack into the Irish Catholic riots where the Protestants went out and bashed the Irish and burnt all their churches down because he lived in Philadelphia. That's what was welcome to America for my great-grandfather.

So if you come here and they actually did say welcome to America to you guys, you're lucky. Seriously, you have to consider yourself lucky. But your legal immigrants here, people with green cards, your children are born in the United States of America. Like Bruce Springsteen said, "Born in the USA." That's what they are.

God swears by this land and you are a legal citizen of this city. The Prophet is (حِلّ - ḥill) in the city of Mecca. They had no right to chase him out. Everybody is here for right. We have to obey the laws, law-abiding citizens. We have to be productive citizens. Many of the Muslims are providing great services to this country.

Addressing Fear and Building Trust

And we have to let people that are afraid, there's people that have fears, you need to let them be aware that we're here for good. We have every once in a while somebody that is related to our religion is misguided, thinks they're doing a good deed. There's Christians that go and shoot abortion doctors thinking they're doing a good deed or blow up abortion clinics thinking they're doing a good deed. People in all religions go wrong.

But the only way that you can ensure that you're going to have the best conditions is by one, inculcating mercy in people's hearts, but also inculcating a sense of justice and honesty in people's hearts. If you don't have justice, you're going to have troubles. You can't have peace without justice.

Conclusion: Mercy and Justice

But you also, despite the injustices of the world, you need to have mercy because this is the essence of our Prophet's teaching.