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What Does Islam Say About War and Justice? | Khutbah
In this khutbah, Imam Tom discusses the strict parameters that Allah sets down for Muslims in justice and warfare.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Islam stands for justice, not aggression nor transgression. If there is to be warfare in Islam, then it has to be justified. It has to be purposeful, and it has to serve the purpose of justice. Allah says in every instance when he mentions warfare in the Qur'an, the reason why it is permitted, it is not a good thing in and of itself. He says, Subhana, Permission to fight, permission to go to war has been granted to those who are being fought themselves. Allah pairs the permission to go to war with the condition that they are being fought themselves. Why? Because they are wronged. And indeed, Allah is able to give them victory, how he ends the ayah. Who are these people who are wronged? Allah answers that question that the reader might have in the very next verse. Allah says in the next verse, They are those who have been evicted, kicked out of their homes without any right, only because they say our Lord is Allah. Allah clarifies that fighting is not something that is to be taken lightly. It's not something that is romantic. It's not something like what you see in the movies. It's hard, and it is distasteful, and terrible things happen. Which is why every time Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives the permission, it is always tied to purpose.
It has to serve the purpose of justice. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in another verse, يُذْكَرُ فِيهَا اسْمُ اللَّهِ كَثِيرًا وَلَيَنْصُرَنَّ اللَّهُ مَنْ يَنْصُرُهُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَقَوِيٌ عَزِيزٌ And were it not that Allah permitted this thing, which is fighting, which is warfare, just warfare, if Allah had not permitted it, what would have happened? He tells us that there would be no monastery left on earth. No church left on earth. No synagogue left on earth. No mosque, no masjid left on earth in which the name of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is mentioned or remembered. And then he says, and Allah will surely support those who support him. Indeed, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is powerful and exalted in might. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala always pairs the permission for this thing, which is warfare and fighting, with a just purpose. But that's not all. Because purpose explains how you get into it in the first place. It also has to be done properly and within limits. It must not transgress the bounds. Warfare has to be righteous from the beginning to the end. And it cannot stray from the guidance of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala or his messenger salallahu alayhi wa sallam. Allah azawajal says, وَقَاتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ الَّذِينَ يُقَاتِلُونَكُمْ وَلَا تَعْتَدُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ الْمُعْتَدِينَ Fight, he says. In the cause of Allah, who are we supposed to fight?
Those who are fighting you. See the purpose. And do not transgress the limits. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala puts immediately after, and do not cross the limits. For Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not love the people who cross the limits. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala also says, فَإِنْ انْتَهَوْا فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَحِيمٌ وَقَاتِلُوهُمْ حَتَّى لَا تَكُونَ فِتْنَةٌ وَيَكُونَ الدِّينُ لِلَّهِ فَإِنْ انْتَهَوْا فَلَا عُدُوَانَ إِلَّا عَلَى الظَّالِمِينَ If they stop fighting, if after you've checked all your boxes, you've marked all the conditions, this is a just war, you're fighting it righteously. If your opponent stops fighting, then Allah is forgiving and most merciful. Meaning that, you stop too. And fight them until there's no more tumult or oppression. Again, purpose. Again, just warfare. And that justice and faith prevail. But if they stop fighting, then let there be no hostility towards anyone except those who practice oppression. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala also says, and this is very very important because it gets to situations that happen to the Prophet ﷺ that are more dire than the situations that perhaps you and I have lived through. Allah says, وَلَا يَجْرِمَنَّكُمْ شَنَآنُ قَوْمٍ أَنْ صَدُّوكُمْ عَنِ الْمَشْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ أَنْ تَعْتَدُوا Don't let the hatred of a people because they stopped you and obstructed you and prevented you from visiting the masjid al-haram in Mecca, the Kaaba. Don't let that lead you to transgress. What's going on here? At the time of the Prophet ﷺ, they were prevented.
They went after they had to leave and flee Mecca for Medina and make their hijrah. The Prophet ﷺ received a dream from Allah, commanding him to go make Umrah. This was crazy if you think about it. They're in an active state of war with the Quraysh, with the people in Mecca. And he wants to go for visiting. It doesn't make any sense, but because it came from Allah ﷻ, he trusted Allah, he picked up his things, he gathered the people, and they went. They were prevented from performing their pilgrim rights. And this was something that was very embarrassing to the Quraysh. Because if you understand the history, the Quraysh's legitimacy as a power was predicated on their facilitation of visiting the Kaaba. So now for the first time in anyone's lifetime, they stop a group of people and say, hold on, we're not going to let you go to the Kaaba. Think about how that made the Prophet ﷺ feel. This is his home. Many of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, we know about the lack of a right to return. This is the Prophet ﷺ being denied a right of return, even for the holy sites. Think of how he must have felt. Think of how the companions must have felt. Imagine the next time they're probably hoping for the next time they get to meet these transgressive people in the battlefield. But Allah ﷻ warns them. He says, do not let your hatred for a people, even if they prevented you from getting to the sacred mosque, don't let that tempt you to transgress the limits. And Allah ﷻ says shortly after in the same verse, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ لِلَّهِ شُهَدَاءَ بِالْقِسْطِ وَلَا يَجْرِمَنَّكُمْ شَنَآنُوا قَوْمِنَا عَلَىٰ أَلَّا تَعَدِلُوا إِعْدِلُوا
هُوَ أَقْرَبُ لِلتَّقْوَى وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ خَبِيرٌ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm for Allah ﷻ. Witnesses for justice. And don't let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. And fear Allah. Excuse me, first, be just. It's a command that is nearer to righteousness. And fear Allah. Indeed, Allah is acquainted with what you do. So when Allah ﷻ gave the Muslims the permission to fight, it always was purposeful. It was always just. It was always tied to establishing justice. And it had to be righteous from beginning to end. There is no use for fighting, for warfare, if it is not going to establish justice. If it is not going to be just every step of the way. Now why are we bringing this up? Many of your children probably have a TikTok account. And anybody who has been on TikTok this week, surprise, surprise, one of the things that has gone viral this week on TikTok, nobody saw it coming, was the letter supposedly written by Osama Bin Laden, called Letter to America. This relic from 20 years ago. You have non-Muslims reading it, recording their reactions, and telling other people to go read it. And the only reason we talk about it here is to educate. Because you're either going to hear about it here, maybe you weren't aware. Maybe your kids are on TikTok looking at this stuff, and you had no idea. So we talk about it here to educate the people, and hopefully the people will understand. That being said, people have to be crystal clear
that Bin Laden makes two, at least two, crucial, crucial, horrible mistakes in this letter. That every single one of us, and especially the youth, has to be aware of. So again, we're here to educate. One of the things that he says, he says that he uses an ayah from the Qur'an to justify attacking innocent people. He uses the ayah as, الشهر الحرام بالشهر الحرام والحرمات قصاص فَمَنِ اعْتَدَىٰ عَلَيْكُمْ فَاعْتَدُوا عَلَيْهِ بِمِثْلِ مَا اعْتَدَىٰ عَلَيْكُمْ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَا اللَّهَ مَعَ الْمُتَّقِينَ The translation of the verse. Fighting in the sacred month is for aggression committed in the sacred month. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. And for all violations is legal retribution. So whoever has assaulted you, then assault him in the same way that he has assaulted you and fear Allah and know that Allah is with those who fear him. The horrible mistake that bin Laden made when he used this verse is that he is taking something general out of context and ignoring every specific instruction and prohibition we have in our deen that prohibits the targeting of innocent people and the killing of civilians. Imam al-Qurtubi, rahimahullah, said specifically about this ayah in his tafsir, and it is not permissible for us to retaliate in the same manner even if they kill our women and children and cause sorrow to befall us. It is not permissible for us to act likewise with the intention of making them feel grief and sorrow. That's point number one. Point number two. Bin Laden says in his letter
that he is holding all of America collectively responsible for the actions of the American government. And this is completely against Islam. That we never hold an entire people responsible for the actions of a few, especially the actions of its military or the actions of its government. In fact, if you've been paying attention to the news for the last six weeks, who are the people that use this argument? The people such as Netanyahu use this argument. The people such as the military commanders of the Israeli government use this argument to slaughter people in Gaza and the West Bank. We do not in Islam believe in collective punishment. That there is a military for a reason and the government is one thing, and the people are another thing. The people want to, most of them, they want to live in peace and they want to have a normal life. There's a brief story before we close the first khutba that I will tell to illustrate the importance of understanding how un-Islamic this interpretation is and how everybody has to be aware. Many of you know there was a Libyan scholar named Omar al-Muqtada. He was the leader of the Libyan resistance against the Italian colonial administration. Now, when Omar al-Muqtada took some of the Italian soldiers as prisoners, some of his own soldiers said, when they take us as prisoners, they treat us horribly. They mutilate us, they kill us, they torture us. Why don't we do the same to them? And Omar al-Muqtada said, because they are not our teachers. These people are not our teachers. We don't take our lessons from them. We don't take our behavior from them. We take our behavior and our limits from the deen of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, from divine guidance, and we don't give it up for anything.
We have our own way, we have our own rules, and we stick to them. Our loyalty belongs to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala first. أقول قولي هذا وأستغفر الله لي ولكم ورسالة المسلمين من كل ذنب فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرحيم الحمد لله على إحسانه والشكر له وتوفيقه وامتنانه وأشاره أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له تعظيم لشأن واشار أن نبينا وسيدنا محمد عبده ورسوله والداعي رضوان صلى الله عليه وعلى آله وأصحابه وإخوانه وسلموا تسليم كثيرا One of the takeaways that we see and we have to tell the youth because unfortunately the youth can be sucked into bad ways and we have to correct them. We have to nip it in the bud and teach them the right ways. Most people, they abandon their principles either when they have power or they're afraid. So people will speak about this principle and that principle and this value and that value but then once they're in power then all those principles go out the window. They speak tolerance for example until they get power and now all of a sudden it's exclusion. We've seen that. We've seen the moral authority of the western nations crumble in the last few weeks. Democracy, human rights, freedom of speech. These are things that the western governments have been telling the world for decades that they are championing and now we see where have they gone. When you're in the position of power, what are you going to do? Are you going to apply that evenly and equally to all people or are you going to apply it selectively to the people that you support, the people you like and you're going to throw it out the window with all others.
That's not our way. One of the things that we have to teach the world as Muslims is that we hold on to our principles no matter what. If we're high, if we are in power or if we are low and we are oppressed. There is never an excuse to abandon our principles. There is never an excuse to abandon our deen and to abandon fair treatment of people according to our principles. When Umar ibn al-Khattab radiyallahu anhu, when he conquered or he was the head of the military that conquered Philistine. One of the first things that he did was make sure that the Christians had protection. In fact, he chose not to pray in a particular place. It was a church. Because he was afraid that his followers would want to convert it into a masjid after he was gone. That was how careful he was. Now he's in power. If he wants to, he can knock down all the churches. If he wants to, he can kick everybody out. But he follows a principle that's bigger than him or his tribe or his group of people. He follows guidance from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So he protects the churches. And at the same time, previously when the Christians had been in charge they had kicked out the Jews. Always when the Christians were in charge of Palestine they kicked out the Jews. One of the first things that Umar ibn al-Khattab did was he welcomed back the Jews and told them to come back into Jerusalem, into Palestine under his protection. Umar radiallahu anhu was following divine guidance and he was following his principles consistently whether he was in power or not. This is what we have to teach the world as Muslims. That principle comes first. A life that is dedicated to principles. No matter if you're on top or if you're on bottom there's nothing more sacred than following your principles and nothing that will give you integrity like following your principles and applying them evenly.
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