Palestine
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Palestinians Are Murdered Twice
Rage. Anger. Hurt. The horrific images, the appalling injustices, and the exposure to propaganda have taken us on an emotional roller coaster. There is a genocide happening before our very eyes, and yet the media is working in full force to uphold lies. We’re waging a battle on multiple fronts: infuriated at the Zionist atrocities and misinformation campaign, enraged at the lack of support for our brothers and sisters, and furious at the feeling of being robbed of a voice. What do we do with this anger?
Join Dr. Osman Umarji and Imam Tom Facchine as we discuss how to understand our rage and how to express it in a way pleasing to Allah.
For more on this topic, read the blog: How to Channel Your Anger For Palestine
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. My dear brothers and sisters, all of us have been glued to the news and social media around the clock for the past week and a half. We are bombarded every single day with horrific images of murder and destruction. Perhaps most painfully, those images of our martyrs from the hospital in Gaza last night. Additionally, we are hearing and reading blatant lies from the Zionist controlled media every single day. My dear brothers and sisters, Palestinians are being murdered twice. Once by the bombs of the Zionist Israelis and once more by the lies of the Western media. All of this adds insult to injury. My dear brothers and sisters, I think the emotion that captures that really how we're all feeling collectively is rage. We are infuriated at the Zionist atrocities and the misinformation campaign. We are enraged at the lack of global support for our brothers and sisters in Palestine. What do we do with this anger? Is it okay to be this angry? And tonight we want to discuss our rage and anger tonight and inshallah find ways to channel it for our brothers and sisters in Gaza and in Palestine and in a way that is pleasing to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. I am joined tonight by my beloved brother and friend and colleague Imam Tom Fasheen. Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Wa alaikum assalam warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Imam Tom, subhanAllah, you know we think about the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam and I want to always begin our conversation there because whatever we're feeling we got to go back to how did he respond in the situations he was in. And we know when we read his seerah and we listen to the lectures that he was a man of forbearance alayhi salatu wasallam. He was a man of the most beautiful character. He was a man who was forgiving. He was a man who was cheerful, a man who was easygoing. And we also know that he never got angry on behalf of his own self, right? Even if people did things that come and pulled him by his shirt and get angry at him, he would not allow that to overpower him. But at the same time we know the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam wasn't just passive, right? And he
wasn't just, you know, devoid of emotions. Rather, we know he would get angry for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, especially and pretty much only when the limits of Allah had been transgressed. And this is what Aisha radiallahu anha she mentioned about him that whenever he would only get angry for the sake of Allah. And there's a beautiful hadith where the Prophet is actually even talking about how not being angry for his sake is blameworthy when he mentioned that there was a town at the angels were told by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to destroy. And the angels told Allah that there was like a righteous person in that town. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, actually turn the town over and include that man for his face was never showed displeasure for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So my dear brother, Imam Tom, can you please walk us through a little bit? What does it mean to be angry for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? What does it look like? When is it praiseworthy? Bismillah alhamdulillah as-salatu wasalam wa rasoolillah. So it's important to realize that anger like anything else that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives us is a gift. And it shows something. It's a litmus test. It's a way to test yourself and to check yourself to see where you're at in life. If you're not enraged, if you're not angered by the things that you're seeing going on to your brothers and sisters in Gaza, in Philistine, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, then your heart is sick, then you have a disease, then you have a serious problem that you need to check and you need to remedy. Because these things, the prophet alayhis salatu wasalam said that the ummah is like one body. And if one part of the body is ailing, the rest responds with sleeplessness and with fever. That this is a sign that you're alive. So the fact that you get angry at the news and have to throw your phone down and you can't believe what somebody came up to and said to you in a supermarket or a cafe, and that you're just seething with anger, that this shows that your heart is alive. And so we shouldn't turn away from it and we shouldn't minimize it and we shouldn't
belittle it. Islam is not just about turn the other cheek. It's not just about looking the other way. However, we have a duty to wield that rage in a responsible way. Because every single action can become worship if it has two things. If it has intentionality behind it, the proper intentions. And then secondly, it comports to the guidance that was brought by the prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam. Which is why many, many hadith books, they start with two hadith. They start with innama a'malu binniyyat, that actions are all according to their intentions. And then man ahd fi amrina hadha ma laisa minhu fahuwa rad. That if you do something that's an act of worship in the deen that's outside of it, that it's going to be rejected. And so many scholars, they reflect on these two hadith and they say that this is yin and yang. These are two halves of the same coin. If you want to act, if you want to be righteous, if you want to do the right thing, then you're going to need these two components. You have to have the proper intention. Anger for Allah not anger for yourself, not anger for your little group, not anger for your ego, not anger for your, whatever it is that you think your pride, your fame, et cetera. It has to be anger for Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and it has to be in comportment with the guidance of the messenger salallahu alayhi wasalam. Even if you have your righteous anger and you go and act out and do something that is against the guidance of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, then you're not going to have that thing accepted from you, even if you do well. And so we have to be very, very careful. One of the classical scholars, he said in one of his books, he said that anger is essential, but it has to be developed. Why is it essential? Because if there's two extremes, right? If you have no anger at all, what the absence of anger is cowardice because you have to have anger to establish justice. If you want to have the motivation to establish justice, some things have to make you mad, right? So
on one side, if you're completely devoid of anger, then you're not capable of justice in the first place. But on the other extreme is tyranny. If you're only dominated and controlled by your anger, if it's not kept in check by the Sharia or by your proper intentions, then it's going to actually hurt other people and oppress other people in a way that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la does not support and does not reward and does not accept. But that's not enough. It's not just about avoiding the two extremes. You also have to harness and develop it and wield it into something. So if you're to think, do a thought experiment. If Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la gave you this thing, anger, what does he want you to develop it into? What's the end goal or the maqsad of this gift that he gave you? It is justice. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la wants you to take it and develop it and wield it and use it and apply it in a restrained and responsible way so that justice will reign on earth because Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is just and he loves justice and he wants justice to be done on earth. That was absolutely beautiful. So Alhamdulillah, what I'm grabbing from there is just something that's very validating to me is that like, when I feel this anger, that it can be praiseworthy if done correctly, and I shouldn't just suppress it and just never respond. I think about Imam Al-Shafi'i when he said his famous statement, he said man istaghdaba falam yaqdab fahuwa himar. Right? If someone is genuinely provoked to be angry, like in the right, in a right way, and he doesn't express any anger, he's like a donkey, right? And I think of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, right? Even when he saw Umar ibn Khattab with the Torah, thinking that he could get guidance from it, right? Early days of Islam. It's like he got angry at that. He's like, no, like, you know, even if Musa was here today, you have no choice but to follow me. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would get on top of the minbar and the companions would report his face would turn red with anger and he would shout and he would raise his voice to try to shake the people awake, you know, the famous story of Barira, right? And, you know, and he gets on the minbar and he says, mabara qawmin, right? Like what's wrong with people that they make conditions that aren't in the book of Allah, right? So this is something that is a, actually it's
a sunnah. It's a prophetic practice to not only feel anger, but to express it, but it has to be wielded responsibly. Okay. So what I want to do now is that we've been talking a lot about so far, we're all feeling this anger and there's a lot of stuff we've been seeing. We've been seeing these horrific attacks. We've been seeing all this propaganda. I want to show the audience, just let's just, let's look at some of that stuff to get an idea about what's really driving some of this, right? Israel this morning says it's attacking the Gaza Strip more intensely than ever before. We're in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself, level the place. Gaza has never seen anything like this. It's not them, it's not their mother, it's not their daughter, it's not their children. With bombardments coming around the clock. No electricity, no food, no water, no electricity. Everything is closed. We are being warned by human beings and we are acting in secret. The Gaza Strip is cut off with no way in or out. Adi, adi, adi, adi, adi, adi, adi, adi, adi. The Gaza Strip is cut off. We are being warned by human beings and we are acting in secret. The Gaza Strip is cut off. The Gaza Strip is cut off. We have weapons. There's a lot of them. If you have an Arab neighbor, don't wait for him to come to your house. I love my home. If you watch those clips and you're not angry, your heart is dead. I'm sorry.
And if you see these clips and you say, well, where were they when it was my issue? Then you have a disease. I'm sorry. This is something that calls us to action and calls us to be smart and calls us to really think about how Allah ﷻ is going to hold us accountable for what we do or even what we don't do. Yeah, Allah. I mean, that stuff is infuriating. So I want to separate two things now. There's a difference between being angry for the sake of Allah ﷻ and then acting in a state of anger that is probably inappropriate. And the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ gave us so much guidance actually about controlling this anger. A man came to him and said, Ya Rasulullah, give me some advice. We've been told not to be angry, don't get angry, don't get angry. He also said that when you're angry, to go and make wudu. And he said that he saw two men fighting and he said, man, if one of them, I know something if he said, because he was boiling with rage, it would cool him down. He said he should say, So we know that anger, although it can be praiseworthy, also needs to be reined in. So can you help us think through how do we ensure that we have the right anger that motivates us to do righteous things, but also able to control it with clarity of mind? So that way it does not overtake us and make us do things that are un-Islamic. Definitely. Well, it comes back to the two things that we mentioned earlier, intention and comportment. So the first thing is that your actions have to be coming from the right place and directed towards the right means. You have to be, if you're angry for Allah ﷻ, it has to be that you're trying to please Allah ﷻ. You're concerned about what he's going to say about your action that you're about to do. Is he going to approve of it or not? And you have to ultimately be moving towards justice with whatever you're about to do.
This isn't about vengeance. It's not about just sort of expressing your rage. A lot of times in Western society we're kind of caught up with this idea of just expression. Oh, that's not enough. You can't just merely express your anger and then say, Oh, well, I'm sorry. Well, I was angry. No, you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to wield it intelligently because it's going to hurt you and it's going to hurt other people around you in this life and the next if you're not really careful with this. It's a very, very sort of, it's an amanah. And the second component is the limits of Allah, right? Like the limits of Allah can never be transgressed. And if you look at those clips that we just showed you and we look at what people are doing, that's the difference between other people and us. That's the difference between Islam and other ideologies like Zionism or other ideologies that people believe in is that we have limits. Other people don't, right? We believe that, you know, there are red lines that cannot be crossed. Even in warfare, like let alone, you know, hear what we're doing with activism and organization and social media and the information war and these sorts of things, right? So we have limits and we have principles and we cannot ever compromise on our principles. That is where we go out of bounds. That's where we displease Allah subhana wa ta'ala. That's where we lose the barakah and the success from Allah subhana wa ta'ala. And, you know, the tricky thing is that the shaitan is always going to, the devil will give you rationale. He will want to convince you that it's justified. Look at what they're doing to us. You have the famous story of, who was it, Omar al-Muqtada, right, in Libya, fighting the resistance against the Italians. And then they were asking him, well, they massacred our prisoners of war. Why don't we do the same to them? And he said, they're not our teachers. They're not our teachers, right? This is the thing. Everything that you see on the media, let it make you angry. Let it drive you to action. Let it inspire you. But they're not our teachers, right? They don't take the same, you know, ends justify the means, do absolutely anything, right? You saw some of the more famous interviews that were going on,
and people are literally saying in front of millions of people, you know, do whatever it takes. Do whatever it takes. That's literally what their manhaj is. That's what their approach is. That's not a prophetic manhaj. That's not a methodology that's going to please Allah subhana wa ta'ala, and it's not an Islamic methodology. We have our red lines. We have our principles, and everything at the end of the day has to be tied back to justice. Can we get specific with that? So let's say that I see this stuff that's infuriating me online, and I want to shoot back with like a tweet, right? Or I'm at a protest, right? And some Zionist, right, is really agitating me. How do I, in that moment, what are some things I can do to kind of rein in my anger and then make sure I act appropriately? Yeah, I mean, like, let's take this example. So we have the Battle of Uhud, right? It was difficult on the Muslims, and you have even a retreat where the Prophet ﷺ and the companions, they had to kind of go up into the mountain a little bit. And you have the situation where the enemies of Allah are gloating openly, right? They're saying, you know, like, where is Umar? Where is Abu Bakr? Where is these sorts of things? And they're gloating in their victory. But the second they say something about Allah subhana wa ta'ala, and they say something about they're dead, they say something about the idols, the Prophet ﷺ tells them to respond, right? He didn't tell them to go throw themselves down and commit some sort of, you know, hasty or rash act that was going to hurt the movement, right? He told them to respond in an intelligent and witty way, and that's when the response came, when they said that, no, no, we're not the same. We're not the same. First of all, they responded that, you know, no, Allah is greatest. And then, no, we're not the same. Our dead are in Jannah, and your dead are in the fire, right? So there's a time and a place, and there's a way to respond. But it has to serve the movement. It has to serve the goals of justice. It can't be just, again, to satisfy your vengeance, okay? Somebody comes up, and they say something nasty to you at a protest.
Sometimes the most damaging thing you can do to somebody is just to smile and be nice to them. You know, like there's a role for that too, and that's not to support cowardice, right? But there are times when people are attempting to provoke you, and provocations are actually an intentional tactic of your opposition. So if we were to jump and bite on every single provocation, we would cease to exist, first of all, and we would also not meet our goals. We would not establish the justice that we're capable for, right? Or that we're capable of. So we have to be very, very careful. It reminds me of when some of the enemies of Allah, right? They came to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and they were trying to be sly. Instead of saying, As-salamu alaykum, right? They would say, As-salamu alaykum, like poison upon you, right? And like Aisha and like other companions, they want to jump back and be like, poison upon you, and like death be to you, and they kind of really escalate that. And the Prophet is saying, As-salamu alaykum, right? And to you. Like it's dealt with, right? You know, and so that it's that Hilm, it's that ability to like not transgress those limits. So this reminds me, SubhanAllah, like I was in undergrad during the second intifada, and that was really a time of awakening for my faith, just like I'm seeing what was happening, and I felt the necessity of being involved in this. But when you're young, you are often quick to make decisions, often rashly. And sometimes I remember looking back saying, Hey, you know what people are doing? It's not aggressive enough. You know, it's too soft. And now I look back in hindsight, you know, 20 years later, and I say, You know what? I wish I had a little bit more wisdom. And it reminds me of the story of Umar bin Khattab, right? When he's at the treaty in Hudaybiyyah, right? Muslims are about to make Umrah, right? And they're all excited. And they're, like, super, you know, all ready to go. And then the Prophet, peace be upon him, is stopped, right, by the mushrikeen, and they have to contract the treaty of Hudaybiyyah. What does Umar bin Khattab do? He's upset. He's angry because he goes to the Prophet and says, Are we not on the truth? Right? Like, are our dead not in paradise, and their dead are in hellfire? And the Prophet's saying, Yes, yes.
He goes, Then why are we going to accept humiliation in our faith? And the Prophet is saying, I'm the messenger of God, right? And I will not, like, you know, like, like things are going to be fine. And Umar heard that, and he went, He's like, he got it, but he's like, Ah, I'm still so angry. And he goes to Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, and he tries the same thing again. Like, you know, are we going to allow this to happen? And then, ultimately, this ended with the surah coming down, you know, surah al-Fatihah. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, is saying to Umar, Read this. And now Umar is kind of like, he's like, Is this victory? And the Prophet is saying, Yes. And so Umar was so remorseful of that, that he would even, like, fast and do kafarah, like, for years and years and years, because he recognized that his anger was a little bit overboard. So I don't know if you could just talk us through, kind of, how we can maybe, maybe from your own life experience, like, how can we make sure that, like, there's going to be differences of opinion as we try to do the best possible thing? How do we make sure that we don't go rogue in any way? Yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful story, and it's very rich and appropriate to our times. I mean, the first thing is that there's this temptation, and our opposition wants us to fall into infighting and mutual blame, right? And so we have to realize that there's many tactics, okay, that need to be utilized when it comes to, and some of those are short-term and long-term. Like, a short-term tactic is getting on social media and sharing to expose the lies of the Zionist propaganda machine that's targeting all of us at this point, and to make the truth be heard, right? There's long-term tactics that have to do with institution building and capacity building, and I think we're going to touch on that later in a bit. There's protests in person. There's things doing online. You know, sometimes we poo-poo each other, right? And we say, it's like, oh, well, you're just, you know, online keyboard activism, or you're only doing this, or protests are no good, and we have a very negative mentality towards it, and we should realize that, you know, every tool belt has several tools in it, and there's multiple different sorts of things going on, and we actually need to work towards coordination, and this is the real answer to your question,
is that we need coordination and cooperation with each other. Like, when you have a collective mentality and collective action, then this is really what makes significant and long-lasting change. I was in the Twin Cities, and I was talking to one of the elders of the community, and he asked me, and I have a degree in political theory. He's like, what is power? And I was like, well, you know, there's a lot of ways to answer that question, and he kind of smiled, and he said, power is the ability to get a lot of people to do the same thing at once, right? And so that takes capacity building, right? That takes this sort of communal thought, communal feeling, and communal action. So, you know, nobody should, and the Prophet ﷺ warned against going off by yourself, that shaitan is, you know, will pick off, like, the lone sheep, right? Like, making it an analogy between a wolf picking off the lone sheep, or a person who, for example, the shaitan is closer to two than three, right, if there's only two people, versus if there's three people. We have other ahadith of the Prophet ﷺ talking about the jama'ah, and how important the jama'ah is, right? Is that having this gravity, right? The mass of Muslims gives you a gravity to make sure that nobody strays too far, and goes out and does something foolish, or does something, because we're so good at fooling ourselves, and we're so good at deluding ourselves, and sort of just like, you know, giving ourselves rationales, and why we should be able to do this, and should be able to do that. But sticking to the jama'ah is a really, really important feature of our deen, that we need to keep in mind in these times, and because there's accountability in it. There's accountability in it, there's shura in it, right, where we take sort of counsel with other people. Like, when you're in your 20s, I mean, especially as a young man, it's like, you really, you know, you can have some hot blood. So, to speak to someone in their 30s, or to speak to someone in their 40s, that's seen a lot, that's known a lot, that's had a lot of experiences. You're going to benefit tremendously, right? One of the things that the Prophet ﷺ did at the Battle of Badr, it's a famous story, where they
had kind of set up shop, right, their tents at a certain place in relation to the wells of Badr. It was basically giving the enemy open access to the wells, and then one of the companions came, and he said, Ya Rasulullah, is this like something that you got from revelation, or is this something that is just like from your own sort of preference? He said, it's just my own preference, and so then the companion said, okay, well, we should really put our camp over there to cut off the access to the enemy army. And so, this was something where even the Prophet ﷺ benefited from this sort of mutual accountability. Even the Battle of Uhud, the Prophet ﷺ had a dream, and we know that the dreams of the prophets are wahi, they're revelation, and the dream instructed the Prophet ﷺ to basically fight in the city from the rooftops, or whatever, in more of a guerrilla-like situation. And then he took Shura with his companions, and some of the companions, they felt so, they had FOMO, they had missed out on Badr, and they wanted to go out and meet the enemy outside the city, and he went with it, even though it was against what he wanted to do, and he's a Prophet ﷺ, so what about you and me? You know, if you run your tweet by somebody, if you run your protest by somebody, you run, you know, hey, these are the slogans for our protest, what do you think about these? These are the signs that we have, what do you think about those? Like, what do you think about this type of action, or that type of action, is there anything that we're missing here, right? This is the type of accountability and cohesion that we're going to need, that we should have had for a long time, okay, but late's better than never, we need to develop it to each other. There's a wonderful ayah I was, you know, reading through Surah Al-Ma'idah this week, and Allah ﷻ, He says, إِنَّمَا وَلِيُّكُمُ اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ وَلَذِينَ آمَنُوا Okay, so it's interesting that Allah ﷻ says that your protector is only Allah, and His messenger, and the people who believe. Now interestingly, He doesn't just leave it as people who believe, He then goes on to define it, أَلَّذِينَ يُقِيمُونَ الصَّلَاةَ وَيُطُونَ زَكَاةً وَهُمْ رَاقِعُونَ That those people who, they're really believers, right, they're not just fake believers or pretend
believers, they're people who establish the prayer and they give zakah. And then Allah ﷻ says in the next verse, وَمَن يَتَوَلَّ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا فَإِنَّ حِزْبَ اللَّهِ هُمُ الْغَالِبُونَ So Allah ﷻ ties success to not just following Allah ﷻ and not just following the messenger ﷺ, we all know that, but also the people who are the believers, right, is that this is our tribe, if you will, this is our group. And so we have to stick together, there's going to be so many, I see them already and I see them all the time in person and social media that are going to try to break us up. They want so badly to break us up and to have us starting to fight and this group versus that group in this verse and this settle this score, take this opportunity to prove, well, where were you for this issue? Well, what are you doing over here? Our enemies want us like that, right? We have to stick to the believers, we have to try to improve every day and then that's the way forward. So consultation, you know, collectivity, right, really just having a collective team spirit is what's going to keep people in line, it's going to temper sort of any elements that would want to do something that's rash and hasty and inappropriate. And so every single one of us has, we need each other. Alaa Ibrahim, man, that is going, where was that 20 years ago when I was in the middle of my early activism with Philistinum? But no, I love this idea about like making sure that everybody runs their ideas through someone else, like if you got your WhatsApp groups, right, whatever it might be, before you, you know, send off a tweet, before you plan something, right, making that shoot up with scholars, with activists, with other people who have more experience. Alaa Ibrahim. I want to switch gears a little bit, actually, you know, before we do that, we've been talking a lot, really want the audience to get involved, please send your questions, please give your comments, things that you're feeling when it comes to your anger, your rage, and your concerns about how to channel it, so we can have Imam Tom address those, inshallah, in the coming moments. As those questions are rolling in, I wanted to switch gears and really I want us to turn inward a little bit,
because, you know, SubhanAllah, sometimes I think that people think that the victory, it comes from outside, it comes simply from these different behaviors that we do, right, we think the victory is because, right, just because of the tweet, or because of the protest, right, or because of some worldly action, but Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us in the Quran, O you who believe, if you give victory to Allah, if you are in the support of Allah, Allah will support you, and He will make you steadfast and firm, and so I want to ask you a bit about how do we take this kind of awakening that the whole ummah has right now, as a way that we kind of say, look, is this not the time to obey Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, should we not take our anger as a motivator to say, Ya Allah, I want to change my life, because I know that if I change my life and I do what is pleasing to you, then victory is going to get closer and closer and closer, so please elaborate for us on the role of transforming our lifestyle for this cause. Yeah, absolutely, and there's two extremes, and we need to call them out, right, so one extreme, they only rely on the external means, all right, secular activists, people who are just going to say it's like, it's only going to be in political action, it's only going to be, you know, in this type of tactic, or that type of tactic, and as believers, we just can't clap to that, we can't believe in that yet, but at the same time, we also know that there's another extreme, where people, there are people who are quietists, and apolitical, and people who weaponize these verses and ahadith as an excuse for cowardice, and so we're also not saying that it's a false dilemma, we absolutely need both, okay, we're not hiding behind the need to transform yourself, when we're saying that you need to transform yourself, that this is something that is part and parcel of our Dean and our success, right, because at the end of the day, I mean, anybody who knows history of
social movements in the United States knows that the end of most social movements, they get infiltrated, they get bribed, they get bought out, and it's their own actual moral indiscipline, that ends up doing them in, in the end, or at least making them, exposing them to danger, to being sort of sabotaged, right, from within or from outside, and so how are you going to refuse a bribe? How are you going to not be bought, or not be a shill, or not be a sellout, or not do these sorts of things? There's no way you're going to do it, unless you have a strong relationship with Allah ﷻ, and then there's also barakah, right, there's blessing, we believe in يؤمنون بالغيب is the first description of the people of faith and of taqwa, right, we believe in things that are unseen, we don't believe that one person is the same as one person, or else we would just give up on ghaza, because ghaza is outnumbered, they're outgunned, they have, you know, every single disadvantage possible, but we don't believe in that math, we believe in a math that comes from, that is more divine, or takes the divine into account, where Allah ﷻ can put barakah in something, Allah can bless something, Allah can help something, Allah can make something go further than it seems like it should, all the miracles we have from the Prophet ﷺ when he made food, or yogurt, or water go farther than it should, right, so how are you going to get that barakah, if you don't wake up for fajr? How are you going to get that barakah, if you're a jerk to your parents, right, and that's where we really need to go with this, it's like, there's implications on the rest of the ummah, if you don't do these things, if you can't, you know, unfortunately, if you can't get motivated just because of who Allah is, and your relationship, and knowing who Allah is, then do it for the people of ghaza, right, stop smoking for the people of ghaza, stop lying for the people of ghaza, stop drinking alcohol, stop having girlfriends and boyfriends for the sake of ghaza, right, every single time that you step out, you should think, like, I'm going to stop looking at something for the sake of ghaza, because I want Allah ﷻ to accept my dua, so that he helps our brothers and sisters, and he makes them victorious, that's what we have to bridge that gap,
okay, so we have to make absolutely sure this is what it's about, right, and so when we're, when that's how we're thinking, when that's how we're thinking, we start to see the significance of everything, and this is how Allah wants us to live, okay, the loftiest intention is always, of course, to please Allah ﷻ, but everything that we do, think, and say, and look at, and listen to, has consequences, it has consequences for our afterlife, it has consequences on our, our viability as a community in the west, or a community in ghaza, or palestine, it's all connected, and so we can't separate that, we have to bring it back together, that's the first thing, and so that's just taking care of the internal, but Allah ﷻ also says that you have to, you have to build capacity, right, Allah ﷻ says, وَاعِدُوا لَهُمْ نَسْتَطَعْتُمْ مِنْ قُوَّةٍ Right, prepare for them what you're able to of strength, and Allah ﷻ doesn't word things عَبَثًا, He doesn't word things like arbitrarily, the words that He uses are very, very specific, and very important, قوة, strength, has to do with capacity in general, right, like, yes, of course, you know, for the time of the Prophet ﷺ, in that situation, we're talking about a military capacity, but it's also the capacity to act, the capacity to respond, the capacity to shape the terms of the debate, right, the capacity to let the truth shine forth when it comes to the fake media and the censorship and things like that, so we also have to take the means, we're not telling anybody, nobody can confuse what we're saying with just sit back and just, you know, sit in your room and pray, and then, you know, Allah's going to send down the angels, though He can, though He can, and we will also do that, we're not going to leave that or neglect that, but we're also going to take the precautions and prepare our capacity the way that Allah ﷻ commanded us, that we're going to, if we need to build new media organizations, if we need to build new social media organizations, if we need to, you know, whatever we have to do to increase
our capacity, our ability to move and act together as an ummah, then we should be doing that both short-term and long-term, there's no contradiction between the two. Well, that was beautiful, and I think about that issue of du'a as well, like, you know, it's not, it's, you mentioned all those behaviors, but with people everywhere in the world, every Muslim is making du'a, but sometimes, when we talk about that, everyone make du'a, make du'a, but often we don't talk about the conditions for our du'a to be accepted, would you mind elaborating a little bit on the things that we could do to increase the chances of Allah accepting our prayers? Of course, I mean, the Prophet ﷺ told us, he said, he gave us the example of a man who was dirty and disheveled, because he had just gotten, he was traveling, right, he had, he was hungry, he was doing all these things that would normally make his du'a accepted, would normally make the things that he was asking for happen with acceptance in whatever way Allah wanted that to be granted, but he said, his food was haram, right, and his clothes were haram, and he was living in a haram lifestyle, and then the Prophet ﷺ said explicitly, how is this person possibly going to have his du'a answered, right, so the distance between us and having our prayers answered, for all of you, and inshallah, that's all of us, staying up at night, praying, keeping ghaza in our hearts, philistine in our hearts, and tahajjud, and in our prayers, and our extra prayers, and our du'a throughout different times of the day, the thing that's separating us from having our prayers answered is our own lack of obedience to Allah ﷻ, our own lack of caring about what he even wants from us in the first place, let alone going and doing it, and staying away from the things that he tells us to stay away from, right, so it's all connected, right, we, when we say tawheed, like, we mean that it's all connected, right, like, our obedience is intricately connected to our ability to act, to our brothers and sisters' ability to, to be victorious, Allah ﷻ, so in essence, the biggest form of resistance that we
can do is obey Allah ﷻ, because in the world where no one wants to obey Allah ﷻ, secular world, that act of obedience is the biggest kind of act of rebellion, so Allah ﷻ, okay, there's a question from the audience I want to get to, Sister Ruqayya Umil is asking that she was told by her father to not post about what is happening, so would she be sinful if she was to post anything? SubhanAllah, that's a tough question, I mean, I don't know the answer to that question, I think that you have to realize that your parents always want what's best for you, and your parents always want you to be safe, but sometimes there are things that, there are things that need to be done, right, and if no one can do them, then somebody needs to step up, now maybe, I don't know, would you like to weigh in on this before I, I don't want to wage into iftah territory? Yeah, I mean, my advice would be that number one is to whoever is dealing with this, all of our parents, you know, I have kids, we're all worried for our kids' well-being, we think about, you know, their jobs and everything else, it's important for us, for children, to speak to our parents directly and let them know why we want to do this, sometimes our parents don't understand, I know my parents, you know, who are immigrants to this country, didn't really understand what it meant to be active, and because that's not what they did back home, so just have a heart-to-heart with our moms and our dads and say, look mom, look dad, I love you, I respect you, I really, really want to do this for the sake of my brothers and sisters, right, there's a lot of righteous people I consulted, you know, I'm gonna do this the right way, so if you, if you go down that path, I expect that most families will understand, and inshallah, open the door for that khair for their, for their kids. Okay, we'll take another question from Fariha Nazneen, she says, what are those who can't protest as they are embraced, what are those who can't protest because they're in places where protests are banned, what can they do apart from du'a and doing an effort of spreading the truth on social media to support their brothers and sisters in
Philistine? So you can't protest, what can you do? Yeah, I mean, that's why the Prophet ﷺ said that, you know, if you see an evil, you change it with your hand, and if you can't do that, then you change it with your tongue, and you can't do that, then you change it with, you know, your heart, and that's the lowest of faith. So already, and this was a point that was brought up Monday, you know, by Sami, he said, you know, if, if you're, if you're sharing things on social media, you're already above the lowest level, right? You're already trying to change things with your tongue, you're trying to show people the truth, right? And so the political climates and political traditions and political situations are very different across the Muslim world and across the world in general. So protests mean different things, right? And protests are more or less effective in different situations. And so if you, if it's going to set the movement back, and it's going to be, you know, not the most strategic use of your energy and time, then you have to shift, you have to be flexible, and you have to go to another avenue of action that's going to be, that's going to be sustainable, and it's going to be impactful, right? So in addition to everything that we've mentioned, obviously purifying your intention, obeying Allah ﷻ as much as you possibly can, and your du'a, and whatever you're able to do on social media to break the narrative, to change the game, to change the way that things are talked about, even if you can just change one person, what if that one person that you change their mind, they go and they change somebody else's mind, and then there's a chain reaction, something really, really important could happen. Okay, wonderful. I'll do one more question and then we'll get back to some of our stuff. There's a question from Susu Du. You feel there is a need to take extra caution, especially for Muslim women when they're interacting in the public sphere. Well, certainly there should be extra caution from our women folk, and this is where men need to step up, because men are supposed to be the protectors of women, as Allah ﷻ said in the Qur'an, and we have a duty to, that's our role,
is to put ourselves out there and to take on more risks, and we've already covered in this conversation how we don't want to take stupid risks with poor intentions or hastily, but we also shouldn't kid ourselves in the fact that there are significant risks to be taken, right? At any point, false charges could be brought against you, you could lose your job, somebody could be imprisoned unjustly, right? These are things that happen, and they can happen, and we're gonna have to prepare ourselves as a community to make those sacrifices. If we're really serious about trying to change the game, then we have to realize that some people are gonna, maybe it's me, who knows, maybe it's you, maybe it's somebody watching, right? That there are sacrifices that some of us are gonna have to make, but inshallah, we hope that if it's done sincerely, that it will be accepted from Allah ﷻ, and will have, be actually a cause to achieving his plan, right? Now, when we talk about sort of, you know, men versus women, and taking extra precaution, yes, I mean, women are, they're more vulnerable, they're more vulnerable to certain physical attacks, and men should be protecting them, right? Especially in these times where we know the cowards that target Muslim women, you know, are, maybe feel emboldened in this particular moment, every Muslim man has to have his head on a swivel. Every Muslim man has to, has to always be aware of his surroundings, aware of what's going on in grocery stores, and out in public, that if you see something, right, they tell us on the subway, you see something, say something. Well, if you see something, do something, right? If you see somebody messing with one of your Muslim sisters, then that becomes your obligation to stop, to stop it, right? And so, this is something that definitely falls on the men in a very particular way, to try to protect our women, so that we can all not be afraid, or at least trust each other, that we have each other's backs. Jazakumullah khair. That's, that's beautiful. I know, I remember one of the things we used to do, actually, post 9-11 in the university, was we had, like, a protocol. Once it got dark,
if there was any sister who needed to get to a class, needed to get to her car in the parking lot, it's like, you could call on a couple of brothers, right, and a couple of brothers would escort that sister, and this way, would maintain, like, you know, that, that protection for her. So, I love this point. Brothers, step up. I'll also add to that, also, that for our sisters to be mindful, I was speaking to my daughter about this yesterday, the exact same question that was asked, where it's, like, just be aware of your environment, and what they typically talk about in even self-defense, it's not being in a position where you have to defend yourself. It's trying to make sure that, like, if anything looks odd, to be aware of it, and kind of try to quickly get out of that situation before it could get to a point where you need someone to intervene on your behalf. I mean, I love to protect all of our sisters and all of our brothers. All right, so, I want to come back to something else, which is, come back to our anger a little bit, again, and our rage. I think that everybody who watched yesterday, the news about the bombing of the hospital, I mean, our blood was boiling, right, you know, and, and, you know, Spandau, just as we were trying to grieve, right, and, like, even shed some tears and just kind of step away for a moment, it's, like, the propaganda was coming out, right, and it's, like, oh, wait, no, this is actually, you know, not from, you know, the Israeli military, it's coming from other places, and so now it's, like, we can't even grieve, like, we actually have to go on this campaign to, like, make sure that we debunk this false information. So, is there any advice you can give, like, how do we balance, like, again, like, this desire, like, we're angry for the sake of our brothers and sisters who are being killed, we're angry at the misinformation, like, how can we kind of keep ourselves, like, grounded and not kind of, like, just, just get lost in all of this? Definitely, I mean, everybody has to do things that are sustainable, right, and so we have to play the long game. We have to realize that, you know, especially for those of us who are, sort of, fighting on social media for the narrative, right, you can't let any one particular, sort of, instance or tweet, sort of, burn you out to the point where now
you're just going to go silent, you can't do it anymore, etc., like, we need people, and so everybody has to take a break, and so, Panola, this is something that I was talking about with some other Imams that I went to school in Medina with, you know, we've all had the experience of, you know, sort of, the anger that we feel bleeding over into other areas of our lives, and I know that you wanted to talk about that as well, right, whether it's our wives or our children or somebody who doesn't deserve it, that we see something and we are so enraged by it that it ends up actually, sort of, ruining our day and affecting, sort of, you know, the way that we're treating people who are really on our same side and don't deserve that sort of treatment, so it has to be paced, right, it has to be paced, you have to, sort of, think about strategically for yourself and in your day. Is this going to be an all-day thing, right, is it going to be strategic for you to spend all day on social media to the point where you're behind in your deadlines and you're not doing what you should be doing at work and you're falling behind in school and then, and then, you know, you get fired from your job or you fail a class or something like that, that's not a good strategy, right, you need to, you need to have that, even just for longevity, you need to have that balance, so you need to organize your time and you need to organize your, sort of, emotional capacity. There were things that I saw this week that I had to just put it down and I had to go do something else, I had to go outside and, you know, go to, you know, a park or go for a walk, things that were just so despicable, right, that disturbed me, that just disturbed me like to my core. So you have to have, you know, you have to have that for yourself, you have to know when enough is enough, you have to put it down, you have to unplug, you have to go do something else, take your mind off of it, don't feel like a traitor, you're not a traitor, you're just like how if you're trying to say, Bismillah, before you go to sleep so that you can rest and then worship Allah ﷻ better when you're awake, when you're stepping away, you say Bismillah and you're trying to buy yourself time so that you can rejuvenate yourself so
you can come back stronger, right, that's something that, and if you need a buddy system, right, sometimes it's hard to manage your social media consumption by yourself, maybe you need a buddy system where there's somebody else that they're gonna check in on you, how are you doing, it's like, did you take your breaks today, it's like, you know, so that you're able to be sustainable, right, that's the thing, it's like we, like this is, this isn't going anywhere, right, like this is, this is here to stay until we fight our way out of it with, you know, with the information war and the things that we're trying to do with organization, with activism, right, so we need everybody, we need everybody for the long haul, so don't go burn yourself out right away, do whatever you have to do to make sure that you're in it for the long haul. Okay, all right, switching one more time, maybe to something a little bit more, something I think a lot of us grapple with, which is that when you're so angry, and when you have so much rage in you, it's usually directed towards somebody, right, it's directed towards, you know, the person who is, you know, who is saying these horrific things, even the idea of soldiers, or in Benjamin Netanyahu, right, may Allah destroy him, right, you know, it's like this type of stuff that's like, it's, you are hurting so much, like your anger now makes you hate somebody, right, or makes you hate a cause, and sometimes, you know, I think people feel really guilty about this, is that making me like a bad person, right, if I hate someone? How does, from a faith perspective, like, how do we balance this? Like, is it good to hate things for the sake of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala? What does Allah say about, I mean, I know when the Palestinians are struggling, and they're resisting, and they're happy with martyrdom, right, and Muslims are fighting on social media, like, kind of against the narrative and the propaganda, like, this makes the Zionists seethe with anger, so like, is that good that we're able to make them angry about this stuff? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that's actually, you know, I have a couple thoughts, so I mean, so definitely, I mean, like, we can take satisfaction in the humiliation and the sort of embarrassment
and the foiling of the plots, right, of our enemies, definitely, but it also has to be kept in check, right, when it comes to, and I think, you know, I was talking with one of the sheikhs before the program, and they were reminding me about the spiritual dimension of trusting Allah's plan when it comes to managing your anger, right, is that at a certain point, if you are consumed by your anger, it shows that you maybe lack some trust when it comes to Allah's plan, that Allah has a plan for this, okay, we don't know it, we're bumbling along, we don't see it, right, all we have is our intentions and our actions and our, you know, putting our heads together, thinking collectively, doing everything that we can think of to do that's just and moral to try to change things, right, but at the end of the day, it's going to be Allah's plan, and so we have to be, still maintain that submission, sometimes when our anger sort of gets pushed over the edge, we've stopped believing in Allah's plan, and we almost want to take matters into our own hands, but the principle in general about, yes, about, you know, you know, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said, right, like, you die in your rage, right, it's like, this is the ultimate mic drop, right, to say to somebody who, you know, hey, we want guidance for you, but if you don't want justice, then we have a problem with you, definitely, absolutely, and that's why some people, and I think this is true too, and we don't want to get necessarily into too many specifics, but people get upset, and rightfully so, at people who pursue normalization, or people who are going to, you know, turn a blind eye, I know we've had some questions about being apathetic, you know, that should bother you too, right, that should bother you, and so this is a very, very righteous anger, we believe in anger, anger is not a negative emotion, anger is, can be a righteous anger, if it's properly wielded and properly managed. So that anger that we're feeling, and I want to come back to this again, like, there's one side of, I'm angry because of this nonsense that these people are saying, and they're doing, and there's
anger over, like, I'm mad that so many people have been killed, right, innocents who have been murdered, how can I, give me some strategies, like, to cope with some of this stuff, like, what do you draw from in the Qur'an, what is the inspiration that takes that anger, and maybe replaces it, right, with something else that's more healthy for me at that moment? Right, well, there's definitely the ultimate justice of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and again, this is another thing that's been abused, and weaponized by apolitical apologists, right, and we don't, we have to draw a clear distinction between this, when we say that Allah is going to give everybody what they deserve in the end, we mean it, and we take solace in it, and we, it cools our, our blood, and it eases our, it softens our eyes, and it softens our hearts, right, and that's not an excuse to not do anything, right, and that's not a pie in the sky sort of promise, like, Islam is not a pie in the sky sort of religion, we're not just shooing people and directing their attention to the afterlife because you might as well give up on this one, that's not what we're saying, and unfortunately, there are people saying that, and they're wrong, like, no, we believe in action, we believe in doing the right thing, we believe in exhausting the means that are, that are valid means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala approves of, that are just means to pursue our goals, but, but, but we have to trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's plan, and we have to realize that in the end, justice will be done, in the end, justice will be done, and we can take a solace also from the story of Musa and Fir'aun, right, you had, you know, it's playing out all over again, and it's very ironic, obviously, as, as a group of people, you know, you know, Israel, who, who may be sort of, as a nation, you know, not every single individual, but we're talking the government, who its founding, legitimizing myth, you know, is taken, is tied up with the story of Musa alayhis salaam, and then who are they in this story, right, who is the Israeli government in, in this story, they're Fir'aun, they're not Musa alayhis salaam, right, the people of Gaza are Musa, the people of, of
Palestine are Musa, and so, you know, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will help his, his cause, and then, you know, with Fir'aun, no matter how much he had over Musa and Bani Israel, that he couldn't escape Allah's plan, in fact, in fact, the very steps that he took to evade Allah's plan, were the steps that led to his destruction, that's one of the most miraculous parts, and why we have to ultimately trust Allah in the end, because in any other circumstance, right, surrendering your baby to your oppressor, or even putting your baby in the river, is going to be sure death, and then letting your baby be raised by the one who's trying to kill him, is going to be sure death, but because of the tawakkul upon Allah, because of the belief and the reliance and trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala flipped the equation, and actually made that not just the means of survival, but actually the means of toppling Fir'aun, and Fir'aun, who knew, had the dream, and who had it interpreted, and knew that his time was coming to an end, the very choices and decisions that he made to try to avoid it, were the steps of the trap that Allah had set for him, and we will see that, look at, I honestly, when I look at the bombing of the hospital, which was clearly the responsibility of the Israeli government, I think about that, look at how everybody, the blowback, and the backlash, and their lies, and their stupid fake propaganda, that's so horrible, that recording of the supposed Arabic, like so, like anybody who speaks a lick of Arabic knows that that's fake, right, like these, they're not just propagandists, they're bad at it, right, and so every single thing that we do, if we take care of our end, if we have sincerity, if we have the right intention, if we exhaust the means that Allah approves of, Allah will make every step that they take a trap, and a trap, and a trap that they fall into, to achieve Allah's plan, and to bring justice.
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. All right, let's take one other audience question, and then we'll go from there. Okay, so we got a question from Fazliana Ibrahim, she said, Assalamu Alaikum, how do we help family members, right, who may not be as interested in this cause, right, you know, how do we awaken their spirit, maybe get them to realize the gravity of the situation? Yeah, we need to think collectively, and we need to think umatically, and unfortunately, Muslims, we are a colonized people, we are subject to the forces, the ideological forces of colonization. Many of us who, whether we're born and bred in the United States of America, or we come from elsewhere, we have bought, we have invested our self-worth into other ideologies and other identities that are outside of Islam, whether it's a nationalism, or whether it's my ethnicity, or whether it's even my my gender, or whether it's this, or whether it's that, right, and this is an obstacle. If you don't feel anything for Palestine, it's because your heart is elsewhere, your heart and your self of your sense of self is tied up with something else, and you have to dislodge it, and help to dislodge it from that other person, the person that you love, in order to make room for this type of ummah-wide solidarity, right, so you know best as to what it is, but I mean, at the end of the day, our ultimate allegiance, our primary love is for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and what it, what was the ayah that we said, right, the people, like Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and the Prophet, alayhi salatu wa salam, and the believers, right, this is our, this is our group, this is our nation, yes, we're all in dispersed nations, nation-states throughout the world, we didn't necessarily choose that for ourselves, or even if you did, but our ultimate, our ultimate sort of heart goes out to the nation of believers the world over, yeah, all right, we got another question from Dekal coming up, he says, should we be happy or sad for the martyrs in Gaza, because they
are in Jannah now, yeah, both, yeah, you can be both, I mean, obviously, we're, we're happy they've attained the ultimate success, we're sad for ourselves that we couldn't stop it, we're sad for ourselves that we fell short, or that we neglected building our own organizational capacity to do anything about their slaughter, we're sad for their loss, that it is tragic, but in the ultimate otherworldly sense, then, then we're happy that they met the, the, the ultimate end that they met, so these things, they go together, I don't think that they're really separable, yeah, I think about the same way, where it's like your heart feels a lot of pain and sadness, but up here, when you take a minute, and you stop, and you say, well, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, like, dying for the sake of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in such a fashion is the ultimate reward to die on Iman, right, like, that is what we all want in this life, right, that is what everything is, so, yeah, I think I fully agree with you, it is both, you feel sad in your heart, but in your mind, you're like, Allahu Akbar, they're in a better place, they're in a better place than any of us are right now, uh, and may Allah allow us to join with them in the highest gardens of paradise. I mean, I don't know if you saw the one video, it really, it really destroyed me, it was these two boys in the hospital, and the one was younger, and he was lying on his back, and he, his, his shirt was soaked in blood, he had bandages on his head, and I don't know if it was his older brother, it was somebody else, but it was a boy, not, not very much older than him, his boys couldn't be but six and eight, and he's having him recite the Shahada, and you look at that, and you, you feel all those emotions at once, because he's saying it, he's, he's, he's made it, you know, when it comes to, to his end and where he's going, but at the same time, you know, you don't want, you see your own children, you know that that's part of the ummah, and you feel a certain way that you, you wouldn't wish that on
anybody, you don't want, you know, them to have to go through that, but at the end of the day, you know, Allah has a plan, and he gave them the ultimate success. You know, SubhanAllah, on that point, like, I think the thing I draw the most, I think, uh, inspiration from is when I see the videos of the parents, right, and those parents who have lost their children, and of course they're sad, and they're crying, but you see that there is that, where they say that, you know, we have given our kids for the sake of Allah, and if we had more kids, right, you know, we will happily sacrifice them for his sake. They don't want their kids to go, but if they go in this fashion, like, they take pride in it, right, this is like this, uh, you know, the love of, uh, the love of akhira, right, which is what this ummah needs, right, and this is what, you know, we spoke about, you know, even yesterday, Sheikh Omar spoke about it, right, where the, the world is going to unite against us when we love dunya and we hate akhira, that's right, so there's really this, this, this, this, this desire, I mean, just, they are inspiration for this, right, you know, yeah, yeah, there's the one viral sort of clip, I think, uh, a woman, you know, lost her husband, and, and she's sort of, you know, saying that, you know, even if he came back, like, send him back again to, to die in the same way, that this is, you know, this is what we signed up for, in a sense, uh, teaching us, yeah, teaching the world about, about resolve and the right priorities. Yeah, it reminds me of that story about beloved Abu Dhafi said to me, right, same thing, it's like, you know, when he's, like, Sahabi, he's imprisoned, right, and, you know, he's seeing, he's seeing, you know, another Muslim being tortured, right, and the king is, like, trying to get him to convert, you know, trying to get him to do all these things, he's like, no, no, no, he's steadfast, and finally, like, he sees Abu Dhafi said to me, like, start crying, because he sees the Muslim dipped in the oil and pulled out with nothing but bones, yeah, and the king is like, are you ready to convert, ready to come to Christianity, and he's like, it's like, man, these tears, because I wish that was my soul that could have gone and died 50 times for the sake of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, right, like, this is, this is the, this is what we need to get out of these stories, right, we need to get from these stories that type of inspiration, I think that will propel us to be willing to speak up,
even if there are consequences in this life, right, you know, you speak out, and maybe your teacher gets upset at you, it's funny, I just heard that, um, you know, that some of the lawyers, right, who graduated from Harvard Law School, right, some of those companies rescinded their offers, because they came out as being pro-Palestinian, right, that's something we should give up for the sake of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, and may Allah give them something better, right, and no Muslim wants to be in that situation, right, when you want to work for an employer that's going to be like that, so, you know, as the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, you don't give anything up for Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, He gives you something better in return, right. All right, we're going to go with one last question as we begin to wrap it up, inshallah, uh, this is a big one, all right, we have a good question from Earl uh, Bilbray, he says, why don't we see more support overall for the Ummah from capable Islamic countries? I like the way that question is phrased, because it shows the propaganda trick that's going on in that question, is that what are, what is a country, is a country the people that make it up, or is the country the government that lives in the palace, and the, what is a country, is the people that make it up, and so if you look at the people, you see tremendous support for Palestine, for the people of Gaza, that they are willing to risk their own lives, they are willing to risk their livelihoods, they're willing to, you know, break army barricades and go march right to the border and do whatever they possibly can. When you look at, if you think that a nation or a country is a government, then that's another matter entirely, and that's another discussion entirely, but it's a trick to divide us, to get us to think that the people or the people of a nation are the same as its government. The people are united. If there's one thing that we've seen, and we went over it Monday with the different images of millions of people throughout the world, in the streets, it's still going on, in support of Gaza, we have, you know, now the Israeli embassies, I believe, of Morocco and Egypt have abandoned the embassies, and, you know, people are turning out,
they're voicing, they're doing whatever they can, they're showing that this is a red line. We saw people in Idlib, in Syria, that were protesting, and they live in tents, they've been displaced from their homes. The one brother was asked, what would you give your home up to someone from Gaza? He says, of course, a thousand times, I'd do it right now, right? The ummah is alive, and the people are together, even if our governments are separate and are holding us back in certain ways. Now, that's a separate question, and we need to think about judiciously, and responsibly, and maturely, right? What is the right way to get what we want, okay? I think that one of the things that Sami highlighted when he was on Monday, was how public opinion does still matter, despite what people tell you, despite the sort of discourse that makes it seem like there's nothing that we can do. Public opinion can force the hands of people in power, it already has. Look at how the White House is backpedaling, look at how even Israel itself is backpedaling, look at how the different Arab nations are backpedaling, and they're changing the tune, you know, three weeks, four weeks ago, it was all about normalization, now it's completely different. So, if we continue to go, if we continue to push forward, we continue to build our capacity, take the means that are available to us, organize, stay together, make our voices louder, amplify the things that we're doing, right? Protect each other. If somebody loses their job because their boss is a Zionist, who's going to hire them, right? If somebody gets into legal trouble because somebody tries to take them to court with some, you know, empty case, who's going to come to their defense, right? This is the type of action that's required now. If we keep on going, and we stay together, and we're sincere, and we shore up what we can, then we believe in Allah subhana wa ta'ala, and he can make us victorious. So we trust Allah subhana wa ta'ala, but we believe that, yes, the people are together. Don't ever think,
this is one of the many tricks to try to separate us, don't ever think that the governments represent the people, that's a lie, it's phony, it's fake, it's fake news, right? The countries are the people, and the people are together. Beautiful, subhanAllah. It reminds me exactly of this idea, Allah says in the Quran, يَا أُولِذِنَ آمَنُوا إِسْتَجِيبُوا لِلَّهِ وَلَا رَسُولِهِ إِذَا دَعَاكُمْ لِمَا يَحْيِيكُمْ Like, this is an opportunity, like Allah is calling us to something great. We might have been preoccupied with like, with watching TV shows, and all kinds of lahoo and lahoo, like random things in life, we had no cause for so many of us, right? We just work, school, watch TV, entertain ourselves, watch sports, follow our influencers, and now here's a chance that Allah is saying, there's a cause to live for, right? There is a cause, of course we live, you know, of course for the sake of Allah subhanAllah, but even for this cause of Palestine, that's something to awaken our spirit and say, now I'm going to change my lifestyle, right? I'm going to give things up for Raza's sake, like you just mentioned, even something little, it's like, you know what, that cup of coffee I drink every day, am I willing to donate, you know, five dollars a day to Raza, right? You know, whatever little thing that I was engaged in, like you said, like big or small, can I increase that, right, for the people of Raza? And again, that's going to drive the Zionists crazy. It's like, man, we're trying to kill their spirit, and they're just getting stronger and stronger and stronger, right? They're helping each other, and this again gets at, you know, this individualistic mentality that so many of us in the West have been kind of absorbing, and a chance to be collective, right, one more time, right? So, all right, we're getting towards our end. I want to just kind of ask you maybe one final question, which is part of that anger, again, that we get is wanting justice in this life, and when you don't see it, right, sometimes it hurts. I get a lot of solace when I read the ayat of the Qur'an, where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talks about, and the Prophet Muhammad and the hadith talk about, look, oppressors will be held accountable. Do you have any guidance about how we can kind of draw from that prophetic message, or from the Qur'an, to kind of give us solace that those criminals who are doing these things,
even if it looks like they're going to get away with it in this life, they're not going to get away with it in the afterlife? Yeah, definitely. Well, you know, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, He talks, you know, one of these many sort of future conversations. That he kind of gives us a window into in the Qur'an. And when he asks the people, right, how long did you spend on this earth? And then the responses are varied, like a day or part of a day or an hour or not quite an hour. Right. And again, that's not to minimize. That's not to minimize the responsibility that we have to act righteously and to fix ourselves and to do whatever we can for justice in this life. But it is sending us a signal that we what awaits us is even better no matter what we can achieve in this life. And we should try to achieve it and do everything that we can. That when it comes to the afterlife, we will truly get to see all of those criminals punished in a final and ultimate way and that we should, because we this is about truth and falsehood. This is not just about Muslims versus Jews. A lot of that's part of also the Zionist propaganda. Right. There are Jews that are with us. We saw them at the Capitol building today taking over the Capitol building, shouting not in our name. Right. Even there's ultra orthodox Jews that are against, you know, what the Zionist government is doing and their barbarity. Right. So it's not it's not about that. It's about truth and it's about justice. And knowing that Allah subhana wa ta'ala will give everybody what they deserves in the final analysis at the very end is exactly what should temper that anger and that rage that we have and we experience in this life, that we don't push it too far, that it doesn't become about vengeance, that it doesn't that we don't become listen. I mean, take this, take this as a historical sort of thing. Obviously, the Jews of Europe experienced a horrible thing in the Holocaust. OK, now the children and grandchildren of those same people are turning around and doing something horrible. OK, how are they not able to learn the lesson and apply it? Right.
Perhaps they didn't trust Allah's justice in the afterlife. We have to trust Allah's justice in the afterlife so that we don't turn into monsters. We have to have guidelines. We have to have principles that we can't we can't contradict them. Red lines that we don't cross. Right. Things that we don't compromise on. And that if we do that, then we will meet our maker at the end of everything. And we'll see that everything that we did was mashkoora, that it was actually it was a sa'ayakum mashkoora. It was something that was effort that was rewarded, effort that was appreciated, effort that was thanked and justly compensated. And those who tried to thwart that are going to get what they deserve as well. Jazakumullahu khair. Jazakumullahu khair, Imam Tom, for your profound insights. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to give victory to the people of Gaza, to give victory to the people of Palestine. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to hold those criminals to account. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to allow us to be in the aid of our brothers and sisters in Gaza and that all of us from the martyrs and the shuhada of Gaza are reunited in Jantar al-Fardaws with the prophets and the righteous. Subhana rabbika rabbal a'izat yahum yasifoon wa salamun ala al mursaleen walhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Jazakumullahu khair, everyone, for joining in. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
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