Help the Oppressed and the Oppressor

Help the Oppressed and the Oppressor

Introduction: The Prophetic Command to Help

It's great to be here, here at ICNA, alhamdulillah, and I appreciate all of you coming to this important convention, you know, spending some time out to re-energize your faith and your relationship with Allah and the community. May Allah bless all of you inshallah, and bless your families this life and the next.

So the hadith of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) actually it's an authentic hadith from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim: (انْصُرْ أَخَاكَ ظَالِمًا أَوْ مَظْلُومًا - unṣur akhāka ẓāliman aw maẓlūman) - "Help your brother whether he is an oppressor or oppressed" (Sahih Bukhari 2444, Sahih Muslim 2584). The Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said help your brother, and in Arabic, it's like the classic case. If you say brother, it means brother and sister. In rhetoric, it's called Taghleeb, Taghleeb, but it means both. So, (انْصُرْ أَخَاكَ وَأُخْتَكَ - unṣur akhāka wa ukhtaka) - you know, help your brother or your sister, if they are oppressed (ظَالِمًا أَوْ مَظْلُومًا - ẓāliman aw maẓlūman) - if they are someone who is oppressing, or they are the object of oppression.

And all of you know that the companions of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) they responded to him, and said to him, O Messenger of Allah, how can we, we know, we understand, it's very easy to understand how to help the object of oppression, but how do you help the oppressor, and of course he said to stop them from that (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam)

The Framework: Four Key Points

So there's a few points that I would like to talk about. The first one is the idea of oppression, its importance, its danger, as mentioned in the Quran and the Sunnah of our beloved Messenger (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam). Secondly, how that played out politically, historically in the Muslim world, and how, the third point will be the tradition, is something that's not fixed, but the tradition is something that can change.

And that's very important, when we're talking about, for example, maybe you read some archaic opinions in some books, and you're like, wow, this is really hard on women, or this is really hard on children, or this is really difficult on a certain segment of society, understanding that that's not fixed, that those things can change.

And then the fourth thing that I'll talk about is working with others within the American context.

The Contemporary Context: America's Struggles

We see what's happening in Cleveland today, we are in the city of Baltimore, a city which has been suffering from structural, explicit, and implicit structural oppression really since its infancy. Black America is a community that Muslims should pray for, 50% of our community are black Americans, and we have to be invested in the local struggles, as well as the international struggles, in order to give ourselves any type of credibility in this country that we live in.

Three Categories of Oppression

So the first is oppression, and oppression actually, our scholars divided it into two, or three parts. The first one is oppression related to our relationship with Allah.

And that would mean that we disobey Him, or we worship partners with Him. That's why Luqman said, (إِنَّ الشَّرْكَ لَظُلْمٌ عَظِيمٌ - ʾinna al-širka laẓulmun ʿaẓīm) - "Indeed, association [with Allah] is great injustice" (Quran 31:13). He said that associating partners with Allah is a great oppression, a great sin, because it will come back to haunt a person in the hereafter, they are oppressing themselves.

The second is in our relationship with Muhammad (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) that we would choose another way over his way, or we would act counter to his teachings, this is a form of dhulm of Al-Habib (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam). The third is oppression of others, and that includes human and animals and the environment.

The Linguistic Power of Oppression in the Quran

Allah in the Quran shows us how dangerous oppression is by how it's used in the Quran, the word dhulm, (يَظْلِمُ - yaẓlimu) - the form (أَفْعَلَ يُفْعِلُ - ʾafʿala yufʿilu) is a transitive verb. What that means is it requires an object. It requires an object.

(أَظْلِمُ شَخْصًا - ʾaẓlimu šaḫṣan) - I'm oppressing someone. So there's the object, right? But you find something, this is the Quran, and one of the beautiful aspects of the Quran is that often times objects of verbs are not mentioned. And the reason that they're not mentioned is to show the effects and power of the verb, as if to say, avoid doing it at all costs.

Because if you mention like if I say, I am going to oppress Ahmed, it's like I've restricted oppression only to that person. But the Quran says, do not oppress. And it leaves the object of the verb gone to show you, as Abdul Qadir al-Jurjani, a great scholar of Quran says, that it's done to show you that any form of oppression, whether great or small, directed to anything, any object, is wrong.

So Allah said, (لَا تَظْلِمُونَ وَلَا تُظْلَمُونَ - lā taẓlimūna wa lā tuẓlamūn) - "You will not do wrong, nor will you be wronged" (Quran 2:279). Do not oppress, the object is mahdhufah, the object is not mentioned (لَا تَظْلِمُوا شَيْئًا - lā taẓlimū šayʾan) - Don't oppress anything, and you will not be oppressed.

The hadith of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) where Allah says it's a hadith Qudsi (إِنِّي حَرَّمْتُ الظُّلْمَ عَلَى نَفْسِي - ʾinnī ḥarramtu aẓ-ẓulma ʿalā nafsī) - "Indeed, I have forbidden oppression for Myself" (Sahih Muslim 2577). Allah says, I have made oppression forbidden to myself (فَلَا تَظَالَمُوا - fa-lā taẓālamū) - So you do not oppress one another. Again, he didn't say (لَا تَظْلِمُوا كُفَّارًا - lā taẓlimū kuffāran) or (لَا تَظْلِمُوا مُؤْمِنِينَ - lā taẓlimū muʾminīn). He says (لَا تَظْلِمُوا - lā taẓlimū) or (لَا تَظْلِمُوا شَيْئًا - lā taẓlimū šayʾan). So as I said now in Arabic, it says, don't oppress the non-Muslims, or don't oppress the Muslims, it just said, do not oppress.

As if to show you, that this sin is so great, and so dangerous, that you should avoid it, at all costs. Understood? It's very powerful.

Historical Application: The Prophet's Social Policy

Now, we're talking about ẓulm. Historically, we see that the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) looked and was instructed to

remove oppression from the following areas. And we just heard Sister Dalia's talk, and what you're hearing from Ja'far ibn Abi Talib, actually is a social policy, it's a position. And it touches on the following areas.

First: Faith (Iman)

Number one, it touches on faith. Iman. So he says in his statement to the Ethiopian king from Habesha, he says to him, we used to be idolaters, and now we are muwahhideen. Now we worship God alone. So the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) is worried about the spiritual well-being of people, the faith of people. You have to pay attention, this is kind of cool.

Second: The Intellect

The second thing is, he talks about how they were ignorant. They were ignorant. And the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) educated them. So here we see him removing the oppression of the mind.

Imam ibn al-Jawzi, he said, the greatest blessing after faith is the intellect. And Abu Hassan al-Nadwi, the great scholar from India, he said that the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) he encouraged thinking in his community. He encouraged creativity.

He encouraged people to think outside of the box. So for example, when he (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) will send armies out, he gives them very little instructions. Abu Hassan al-Nadwi says because he wants them to think for themselves.

When the man in salah, after the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said (سَمِعَ اللَّهُ لِمَنْ حَمِدَهُ - samiʿa Allāhu liman ḥamidah) - "Allah hears the one who praises Him," the man said (رَبَّنَا وَلَكَ الْحَمْدُ - Rabbanā wa laka al-ḥamd) - "Our Lord, and to You is the praise." The Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said The Lord has heard the one who praised Him. And then the man behind the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said to our Lord is the praise.

After the salah, the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said, who said that? And the guy, he got scared. And the Sahaba were like, ooh, you're in trouble? You know like, ah, it's on now. And then the man, he was so scared and he said, I was shy.

But then I told the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) it was me. And the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said you know, I'm envious of you because I saw so many angels flying to write down the hasanat for you. More than 30 of the Prophet's companions made fatwa in his lifetime.

There were only 33 or 34 people who were great scholars from the Sahaba. The vast majority of them were just like us. But out of those 30, Abu Bakr (أَفْتَى أَمَامَ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ - ʾaftā ʾamāma rasūli-llāh) - actually made fatwa in front of the Messenger of Allah (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) Meaning that the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) encouraged them to use their minds.

We know that in the battle of Badr, he freed in the battle of Badr the Quraysh on the condition that each of them would teach 10 children to read. So the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) removes the oppression of the mind. He (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) encourages people to think

Third: Family Unity

The third is that the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) removed family problems. It's indicative of how far we are from Islam. When we see the division amongst the Muslims, we are united, we study creed, we become divided. The Sahaba were divided, they studied creed, and they became what? They became (فَأَصْبَحْتُم بِنِعْمَتِهِ إِخْوَانًا - fa-ʾaṣbaḥtum bi-niʿmatihī ʾikhwānā) - "and you became, by His favor, brothers" (Quran 3:103). They became united.

And also it's indicative that we find some of the greatest problems in our community are found in families. Like families, we don't model love very well, some of us. We don't show our children how to love.

We don't show our children how to fight. Right? How to be human. Whereas Aisha said that the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) as narrated by Imam Abu Dawud rectified the problems of families.

So he removes the oppression. Women become inheritors in the time of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam). Women become property owners in the time of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam)

Fourth: Property and Economics

The fourth is property itself. And that's why we have this incredible axiom in Islam when it comes to Islamic finance and economics. And our brother Imam Joe Bradford in Houston I believe is the best at this in the country. Where he said (الأَصْلُ فِي الْأُمُورِ الإِبَاحَةُ - al-ʾaṣlu fī al-ʾumūri al-ʾibāḥah) - "The origin in matters is permissibility." The Hanafis have this axiom that says the origins of all business transactions is permissibility.

So we're empowered. And the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) gets rid of riba as a means of oppression. (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam). But he allows baye' al-salam to continue because if he implemented that it would create greater oppression.

So here we see the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) prohibiting and allowing certain types of transactions in order to release people from oppression and difficulties.

Fifth: Honor

The last is honor. And what I'm mentioning to you you find it in the statement of Ja'far or the Maqasid Shariah. These are the Maqasid Shariah in the statement of Ja'far that he took us from idolatry that he prohibited zina that he encouraged us to be good to the poor that he encouraged us to act on economic equality (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam)

Faith, intellect, family, property, honor. When you read the statement of Ja'far to the king of the Habashis you're seeing Maqasid Shariah as public policy.

Maqasid Shariah as Public Policy Today

This has to be the Maqasid, the public policy of our institutions. We preserve faith by offering classes and lessons. We preserve the intellect by for example in Boston we had ESL, Ja'far immigrant community we had more than 200 students studying English, Chechens from Somalia, Masha'Allah, who are learning English. The

third thing is that we dealt with families, we brought in professional counselors, I did no marriage counseling as an imam and we saved 32 marriages in 3 years by the grace of Allah. The fourth is property, halal investments, creating a co-pay system for people at that time who needed help buying homes, and the last is honor.

Honor and Dignity for All People

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) taught us to honor people not to look down on people because of their nation, their tribe, their language, their color, their weight, their height, anything, and this is very important because we are seeing oppression not only in America but even in the Muslim world, we see tremendous amount of oppression happening because of people's color or their tribe or the nation, and as long as we fail to speak to our own illnesses while pointing out the illnesses of other people, we are nothing but hypocrites.

So I will say this that the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) instituted something that no one ever heard of before that is that once someone is freed they can never become a slave again (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) and he actually encouraged his sahaba to free slaves and to buy slaves and free them because once they were freed under Islam they can never become slaves again.

Working With Others: The American Context

Now that takes us to the last issue and that is something that people ask me a lot in America because we are dealing with a tremendous amount of challenges as a community post 9-11, Islamophobia, but I believe our problem is rooted in the fact that we don't see our problems as part of the greater problem of the society. For example, I consider Islamophobia a form of white supremacy. If you look at it historically, if you look at its assumptions, if you look at its approaches, there are aspects of white supremacy found in Islamophobia.

Now we are in the city of Baltimore, we are close to Cleveland, and we cannot for any any second imagine that there's not synergy between Palestine and Baltimore, that there's not a synergy between what's happening in Cleveland and what's happening in Kashmir. To care about one of the oppressed and not to care about another aspect of the oppressed is to contribute to oppression.

The Question of Coalition Building

So that takes us to this question, working with others. MSA students ask me this a lot after Ferguson, what happened with Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, what's happening to Muslims in this country, our three young heroes who were killed in North Carolina, and to this day we still haven't heard what it really is that it was an attack on their religiosity, it was an attack on their ethnicity, it was an attack on their very essence. People ask me about working with others, other groups, well what if they're non-Muslims? That's a very silly question to ask but people ask it. Well what if they support certain things that we don't agree with?

The Need for Structure Against Structural Oppression

So I'll finish with this, you cannot and I cannot imagine to take on structural oppression without structure. The

amount of money that the Islamophobes have raised in the last six and a half years is hitting now almost 40 million dollars. It's incredible that someone like Pamela Geller, someone as ignorant as she is, someone as ignorant of Islam as Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, gets appointed to Harvard as a professor and we have really no collective response.

I'm going to say something that might make people angry but demonstrations and yelling and screaming in the streets are the kindergarten of activism. Our brother Mohammed Sultan who sits in prison in Egypt right, we are not able to collectively think in a way to address that to this day. Who is the spokesman for the American Muslims who takes Ayaan Hirsi Ali and spins her on her head? Our second graders in most of our Islamic schools could refute her but if we don't have the collective structural approach towards oppression that we see the oppressors have we will never be able to shut them down.

Go to the beltway, I live in DC, look at the average income that's reported by most think tanks and ask yourself, we don't have one think tank except maybe ISPU, the sophistication, the dedication and the erudition required to take on Islamophobia. I want you to be very careful, Islamophobia is not a bunch of hillbillies from Oklahoma who fry snickers and twinkies. I hate that image when Muslims show that oh they'll show some hillbillies with necks redder than cherries on a screen and everybody will laugh like you're laughing.

The Islamophobes want you not to take them seriously, they want you to dismiss them and they want you to laugh at them. I went to the holocaust museum with Yasir Qadhi, a sheikh, and I asked a survivor of the holocaust, a 90 year old man, how the heck did this happen? He said, we laughed at them in the beginning, we dismissed them.

The Islamic Basis for Working With Others

So the issue of working with others no matter what background, religious background, social background, to achieve the greater good, two things you need to remember. The vast majority of political rulings that came after the death of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) by the khulafa and those after them until the fall of the khilafa, the vast majority of those laws were not explicitly taken from the Quran and sunnah. So when you find groups running around saying we want a Quran and sunnah political opinion or political philosophy, we want a Quran and sunnah this, this, this, they have no idea what they're talking about.

90% of all rulings found under what was called khulafa al-Islamiyyah came from ijtihad, came from the minds of men and scholars and women, not directly from Quran and sunnah. They were rooted in the Quran and sunnah, so that takes us as I finish to the idea of working with others to remove oppression.

Coalition Building: A Prophetic Example

We have to coalition build in this country to be taken seriously, we have to work with other people outside of our own communities because let's be honest, 90% of the work we see in the Muslim community is mediocre, it's mediocre, it's not sophisticated, it lacks a charter, it lacks bylaws, it lacks proper governance. Most of our

masajid are ran like Tony Soprano, well you get like thrown in a river with a cement kufi if you say something people don't like, but those days are over because this young generation ain't gonna put up with it no more. This young generation is gonna change things by any means necessary and I'm with them in that.

But working with others, the Prophet on the way to Mecca his camel stops, in Sahih Bukhari (Sahih Bukhari 2731, 2732), this is the height of his problem with the people of Mecca, he points to Mecca and says those people in Mecca if they ask me to work with them I will work with them to do something good. Imam Ibn Qayyim said this is an evidence to show that the Muslim at a coalition level can work with anyone, sinners, ahlu bid'ah, the worst of the worst, to achieve the good.

Conclusion: Fighting Oppression in Our Own Lives

So may Allah help us to understand the danger of oppression in our own lives, in our homes, oppressing our children, not letting our children marry who they love and making them marry some creeps, this is a form of oppression, right? Abusing our spouses is a form of oppression. We can't denounce Fir'aun if Fir'aun is in our house. So may Allah help us understand the dangers of oppression, to tackle it structurally as it's attacking us structurally.

وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ