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Palestine Awakens the Ummah | Khutbah
Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy tells us about the ways in which the Ummah must respond to the genocide in Gaza. These events must awaken the inner spirit of our Imam, and guide us to steadfastness in our faith, for the sake of the Ummah.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. After praising Allah the Glorified and Exalted, the Mighty and Majestic, and testifying to His unique oneness, and to the finality of prophethood being in Muhammad ﷺ, and after welcoming my brothers and sisters to the house of Allah and reminding myself before you with the taqwa of Allah, to be conscious of Him, and dutiful to Him, and consistent in our love, and our loyalty, and our submission to Him, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Brothers and sisters, in the hadith of Thauban, it's authentically reported that the Prophet ﷺ said, يُوشِكُ أَن تَدَاعَ عَلَيْكُمُ الْأُمَمِ كَمَا تَدَاعَ الْأَكَلَةُ إِلَى قَصْعَتِهَا Very soon a time will come when the nations of the world invite one another to devour you, to consume you, the same way diners invite one another to a dish. Go ahead. No, no, you first. That simple. And interestingly, though it has manifested many times over, in the 1800s in particular, you can go into the British Museum today, or even just Google this, in 1802 there is a famous painting where the European powers are standing around a table. On this table is a huge turkey. They're carving up a turkey. The head of this turkey is literally the head of the Turkish Sultan, the head of the Ottoman Empire, the Khilafah, the Caliphate of the Muslims. And each of them is saying in light spirits, I want to carve a piece from the rump. My grandmother liked this piece of the turkey, and so on and so forth. But this was not coincidental. Even in 1891,
whenever in the newspapers, and you can easily look this up as well after the khutbah, the Berlin conference which was hosted by the King of Belgium, Leopold, it is always depicted in food terms. All of the caricatures, the cartoons are always food terms. They're always cutting up a cake. Because King Leopold used to always refer to the colonial project, the imperial project of dicing up the Ummah as splitting up the cake, cutting the cake of Africa, the cake of the Congo, and so on and so forth. Look at how precise the prophecy was by our Prophet ﷺ. But the hadith continues. And it says the Sahaba were like, Ya Rasulullah, is this going to happen because we're going to be so few on that day? Because like we understand, before we were a few and we were getting massacred everywhere. But now we've gained traction, we've gained numbers. Are we going to like trickle off, lessen in numbers later, and that is why? And he said, no, no, no. Rather you will be plenty on that day. You will have abundant numbers. Let's say two billion, for example. But the issue is going to be that you're going to be weightless, like the bubbles on top of the water. You just, in every wish, you're weightless. You have no significance, you have no influence. And may Allah rectify our condition. Two billion Muslims today, for example, cannot get a bottle of water, cannot get a loaf of bread into Gaza. And he continued to say ﷺ, and Allah will snatch, remove out of the hearts of your enemies any fear of you, any intimidation of you. They will pay no regard to you whatsoever. And he will place in your hearts weakness. So they said, what is this
weakness, Ya Rasulullah? They know what the word weakness means. They're saying, what's the source of it? Where is it coming from? He said, you will be obsessed with the life of this world, and you will be too fearful of death. We all hate death. We're all afraid of death. Too fearful of death. Meaning you will be paralyzed by these two issues, these two factors, these two diseases, that will cause you to be a pushover no matter how many numbers you have. You know, there were hundreds of years ago manifestations of this as well. Without downplaying the severity of what the ummah is going through today, it actually is a fraction compared to what happened, for example, during the Mongol scourge, when the Mongols overran this ummah. And they had almost essentially finished off the ummah and conquered this ummah. And then Islam conquered their hearts, and they became the new ummah. But in Baghdad alone, during that scourge, during the massacres of the Mongols, 800,000 Muslims were slaughtered. Not just slaughtered, but slaughtered by hand, right? There's no bombs, with blades. 800,000. But what was the picture, the iconic picture of the Muslim in that era? The historians tell you it was so bad that the Mongol soldier would have a Muslim on his knees and tell him, don't move. And he'll go and grab a rock to come back and smash it on top of his head to kill him, and he didn't go anywhere. So the weakness was, get up and run. So afraid for your life that it costs you your life. So paralyzed by our fears that we are not able to do anything but sit around while we are being killed. It costs us our lives sometimes. As he said, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, to be too concerned about our lives and our livelihoods. And that is why
the very first thing we have to always keep talking about is to not get blurry, not get fatigued, not get defeatist. Strengthening your heart to trust Allah, no matter what happens, is your primary duty here. And that is the toughest responsibility you have, to be honest. Islam is not, you know, a test of life because you need to pray, you know, five minutes every few hours with your five prayers, right? It's not because a fraction of a fraction of what you haven't used, your savings, you got to pay it in zakah. The most difficult test is what? I'm not allowed to know when this is going to end, and why this is happening, this atrocity, and still trust Allah Azza wa Jal. That's the hardest one. To keep my heart reined in on, He knows better. And He will make it worth our while. And what Allah says is true, and He never breaks His promises. You know, often many people say, or they think, when will the victory come? The person who's locked in on a Quranic worldview does not have that question, because that question is wrong. If you mean for the people of Gaza, the victory of Allah has already come. Being killed does not mean you failed. There were prophets of God that have been killed. Do we not read the Quran? There are the people of the trench who held on to their belief in Allah despite being burned alive, and Allah called them successful. In Surah al-Buruj, inna allatheena aamanu waAAamilu assalihaat. Those who believed, held on to their faith and their good deeds, for them are gardens underneath which rivers flow. Ulaika thalika alfawzul kabir. This is the true success. They've succeeded. The Quran says they succeeded. Why? Because they accepted death over disbelief. They opted to be martyred than to sway in their faith. They've succeeded. The question just evaporates with the Quranic lens. You know, a few verses earlier about these
people of the trench, this huge trench was dug for them, turned into an inferno. They're being tossed into it for refusing to believe the King is God. Allah says, wama naqamu minhum illa an yu'minu billahi al-aziz al-hamid. They held nothing against these believers except that they believed in Allah, but then they said what? Al-aziz al-hamid, the Almighty. They never swayed in believing that Allah can change this in a second. He is the Almighty. Al-hamid, never swayed in believing that he is, trusting that he is praiseworthy, whether he's praised or not, whether he does what we think is the best outcome or not. He is al-aziz, he is al-hamid, regardless of what happens, those are the people that have succeeded, according to the Quran. And so whoever does not tap into the Quran and stay close enough to the Quran, you will have a weakened heart. And if you have a weakened heart, one of two things is going to happen. Worst case scenario is that you will lose faith in Allah. May Allah protect us from ever falling into that. The second is to lose faith in the process, that it's going to be a slow uphill battle that is already gaining traction, but you're going to sign yourself out of it. You lose hope in trying. You know, I'll give you a few examples. When the conflict, the war on Gaza, framed as a two-way conflict, started, some of the first people to be penalized for raising their voice for the innocent were students at Harvard University. They got doxed and to the end of it. What did they do? Did they say there's no point in trying? They kept pushing until the campus of Harvard was flooded with protests. And their resilience brought about an immediate result. Yes, in a small corner of the world, but it does make a difference. Until a trustee of Harvard University, a billionaire Zionist, a supporter and donor to Harvard and to the racist terrorist state of Israel, he resigned from the
board of Harvard when this kept going. You know, we have in New Jersey here that physician who lost his job for supporting the cause online, bringing awareness to the loss of lives and the innocent, and the massacres taking place. He lost his job. And then petitions started going around and many people said, what's the point? You know, they own the politicians, they own the lobbies, they're the biggest donors to the corporate. What's the point? They lost faith in trying. Alhamdulillah, it wasn't everyone. Enough people said, let me at least do what's in my power and sign this petition. His job was restored. He was reinstated the next day. We have a brother in this masjid who walked up to me, I shared it with some of you, after the Jumu'ah, before I could move and said, you know, Shaykh, my co-workers, like everyone else, saw a one-sided statement from upper management and we put our signatures together and said, you don't know the full story. And immediately, just like that, harmlessly, they got a response that we don't know. Thank you for educating us. We are now matching our donation. We are also selling now 1.5 million dollars through the Red Crescent for the people of Gaza and matching up to 200,000 dollars for any of you that want to donate in that direction. But if you don't believe at heart, you see the whole world shutting its doors unless you are absolutely certain that Allah rewards for effort and supports those that support His cause, if you drift from that fountain of faith, you will give up on Allah or at least give up on the cause. There's nothing like the Qur'an to provide you with that. To know for certain, to remember, recall, reinforce, وَمَا يَعْلَمُ جُنُودَ رَبِّكَ إِلَّا هُوَ He said in the Qur'an, no one knows the soldiers, the armies of Allah but Him. You read in the Qur'an that Fir'aun that was slaughtering babies,
raised in his own lap unwittingly the baby that would end his tyranny. We have a Nimrud, another king in the time of Abraham who claimed to be God like Fir'aun, was destroyed by what? By a mosquito or a fly that crawled up his nose and drove him insane. We have Al-Ahzab, the whole Surah of Al-Ahzab, the 33rd chapter of the Qur'an. The Ahzab were the confederates, confederated, united against the Prophet ﷺ was an army that was unprecedented, never before seen that 10,000 people were in Arabia on one army at one time. And the Muslims couldn't fight them so they did what was in their power. They dug a trench and they tried to hold out hoping they would not die of starvation because they couldn't actually come out and confront this army. Nobody could. But without their faith in Allah wavering and soon enough Allah sends a sandstorm to put out their fires, the campfires of this massive unprecedented army and to uproot their tents and cause suspicions about each other in fighting to happen in that army and they march away without a fight in humiliation. We get this from the Qur'an, where else will we find this? That's why you know the Qur'an is called a dhikr. Allah says dhikr. This is an ultimate reminder because it's not that you don't know, it's that it gets eroded what you know. Your strength and certainty in what you know could begin to deteriorate so you need to be reminded about it. You know dhikr, whether it's the Qur'an which is the greatest dhikr or the words of dhikr, Subhanallah, Alhamdulillah, Hasbuna Allah wa ni'ma alwakeel, Allahu Akbar, la ilaha illallah, la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah. These words are meant to do what? You're not trying to remember, it's not like acrobatics you're doing up here, you're not trying to remember a God that is absent. You're trying to revive yourself, you're trying to bring yourself back,
resuscitate yourself from being absent-minded, from being heedless, from losing that certainty and confidence. And you know like look at the people of Gaza. I want you to to understand something very clearly. This city, it is clear that they are uniquely resilient. And where does it come from? It is crystal clear that it comes from the Qur'an. You can look this up yourself. In August of 2023, there was a huge festival of sorts where 1,471 hufadh memorized of the Qur'an had gotten together, the videos are online, in a camp, a one-day camp to recite the Qur'an to each other in review form from cover to cover. The youngest of them was seven years old, the oldest of them were nearing 80 years old, 1,500 of them. They say there are over 50,000 people in Gaza who commit this Qur'an to their hearts. Do you understand now why? You see a video of a mother in Gaza able to bid all of her children farewell at once. It is very vivid the recall of Jannah being the place of reunions. Do you understand why now there are viral videos out there of a man standing over his slaughtered son and telling everyone else, keep it together, be patient, we all belong to Allah, we come from him, we go back to him, the rest is details. Allah honored some of us here and some of us are wondering if we'll be honored. Who can speak like this? Someone that has internalized reality. That is reality. So the dhikr is supposed to bring you back from the imaginary, illusory fantasy that anyone else has power or that this world is good for anybody or will remain for anyone. And on the opposite end, if we drift from the Qur'anic worldview,
if the deen is an afterthought, if getting to the masjid regularly is extracurricular, if our relationship with the Qur'an is superficial, let me just read a few verses or read it once cover to cover my entire life and make a dua and then we're good, we're done, ameen. It's as if the Qur'an itself did not warn against this and say about Banu Israel which we have been studying for weeks, among them are those oblivious to our scripture, they know nothing about this book except reciting it. It's just lip service, drone mode, that's it. And they can do nothing but speculate. Where did the faith fall apart? Why are you speculating? Why are you doubting about God? Because all you're doing is just what? Superficially reciting. You have no choice to get your certainty from speculation when you have not tapped in enough, gotten past the surface of the fountain of certainty which is the Qur'an. And so I invite myself and every single one of you to pause and consider some radical changes in your life. Because the Prophet ﷺ feared for us above all else. He said it is not poverty I fear for you, it is the opportunities of this world becoming available to you. In other words, then they cause you blurriness. In other words, and they deceive you as if Allah had deceived the nations before you. I say this saying and I ask Allah's forgiveness for me and for you. All praise is due to Allah alone. And peace and blessings be upon those who have no prophet after him. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone, with no partner. And I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant, His Prophet, and His Messenger.
In Sahih Muslim, my brothers and sisters, there is a hadith that makes it very clear that this ummah will never die, will never be broken, will never remain asleep forever. Yes, they will invite one another time and time again on this ummah like diners to a dish, but they will never fully succeed. The hadith says, and this is known as hadith al-ijabah, the hadith of response. And there is a masjid in Medina across the street from the Prophet's masjid called masjid al-ijabah. Because that is where Allah responded to this very special du'a of the Prophet ﷺ that we continue to benefit from until this very moment. He came into the masjid and prayed two rak'ahs and raised his hands to the skies and made lengthy du'a and then turned to the Muslims and said, I ask my Lord for three things. And He granted me two and withheld one. One of those two He granted, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, the Prophet says, وَمِنْ سِوَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ يَسْتَبِيحُوا بَيْضَتَهُمْ And I asked Him to never enable against my ummah an external enemy that will be empowered enough to annihilate them, to cause the ummah to go extinct. فَأَعْطَنِيهَا وَقَالَ وَلَوْ اجْتَمَعْ عَلَيْهِمْ مَنْ بِأَقْطَارِهَا And so He granted me that and He said, even if the whole world from its farthest corners were to unite against your ummah. You know in 1914, when sort of the Khilafah was officially cancelled, the Ottoman Empire was officially demolished. Arabic was essentially outlawed. The masajid were, some of the largest masajid are turned into museums.
People are made to wear deliberately these front cap hats so that they don't make sujood properly. And yet fast forward a hundred years, is Islam dead in Turkey? This is not a political statement. President Erdogan got re-elected because he is perceived as being less hostile to the religion, to Islam, than the other candidate. It wasn't economic. The economics right now are nose diving in Turkey. Because the whole world is seeing them get strong, and so they're trying to strong arm them, their final chance. Why did he get re-elected if the economy is going like this? Because the people want deen all over again. You know in Algeria and so many parts of North Africa in the past hundred years of the colonial project, Arabic was systematically replaced with French, so you can't understand your Qur'an. The hijab was a crime to wear in public, not in France, but by French imperialists in North Africa. And they kept pushing, and they kept believing, and they kept reviving people's belief in this book. And then of course there's much rebuild left to be done. But in 1962, as one of the brothers recently reminded us, when Algeria earned its independence, the chant in the street was what? Ya Muhammad, O Muhammad, mabrook alayk. Congratulations, al-Jaza'ir raja'at ilayk. Al-Jaza'ir has been returned to you. They couldn't get you out of our hearts. And if you want to understand why a hundred years later they are still failing at erasing Palestine off the face of the earth, perhaps a hint as to why is because on one of the walls of Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa today, in graffiti, they have it written لَن تَرْكَعَ أُمَّةٌ قَائِدُهَا مُحَمَّدٌ An ummah, a nation, whose commander and leader is Muhammad does not bow. And this is the reality. We are still benefiting from his dua, and to the extent that we align with his tradition, and his values, and his certainty, we will reap more and more of it.
إِن تَنْصُرُوا اللَّهَ يَنْصُرْكُمْ If you support the cause of Allah, He will support you. But I want to close out, the khutbah time is over, by reiterating this point. This issue is a personal decision. We know how it's gonna end. Don't be a front-runner. Don't wait to see it happen and then say, I was with you guys. Because he also told us ﷺ that the heat will get turned up so much at the end of time, that many people will be locked out of that wagon, that caravan. He said, يُغَرْبَلُ النَّاسُ فِيهِ غَرْبَلَةٌ People will be shaken so much to be filtered through. Like you sift through flour, you sift through a filter, people will be filtered through. Other hadith say, until people become one of two camps. فُسْطَتَيْنِ A camp of faith, iman, without any hypocrisy, no doubts involved. And a camp of hypocrisy consumed by their doubts, in which there is no more faith whatsoever. And then when that happens, he said at the end of the hadith, when it's like this, فَانْتَظِرُ الدَّجَّالَ مِنْ يَوْمِهِ أَوْ غَدِهِ Then awaits the rise of a dajjal, the greatest trial ever. Either that day or at max the very next day following it. May Allah grant us all faith that doesn't waver. And protect us from doubt and every behavior that would drill doubt into us. May Allah عز و جل give us support in this world. And make us of those who prosper on the Day of Judgment by meeting Him with our faith. May Allah عز و جل help us rebuild and awaken this ummah that has already begun. Make us an asset for it and not against it. Make us of those who propel it forward and not hold it back. Allahumma ameen. وصلى الله وسلم وبارك على نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين
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