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Will Gaza be Israel's Downfall? | Khutbah

May 31, 2024Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy

The Qur'an has a strong message to tyrants of the past, present and future. Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy describes how tyrants rise and fall, and how that relates to the current racist colonial state of Israel in this khutbah delivered in Pennsylvania.

Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
We begin praising Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, while recognizing we never fully can, and testifying to His unique oneness and perfection, and to Muhammad, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, being His final prophet and servant and messenger, and the best of His creation, and the seal of His revelation, and the most beloved of the slaves of Allah to Allah, after welcoming my brothers and sisters to the house of Allah, azza wa jal, the Mighty and Majestic, and reminding myself and you with our ultimate duty of taqwa, to be conscious of Him, and doing our level best to keep our duty to Him, and our love for Him paramount in our lives. Brothers and sisters, over the last seven months, despite the incredible pain, I have never felt prouder of this ummah. The ummah that has begun to stop feeling helpless. The ummah that has begun to stop projecting the entirety of the blame on governments. The ummah that has begun to own part of the solution. And I have also never felt, as far as I can recall, closer to the Qur'an. You see, you read in the Qur'an that Allah raised up Moses, pbuh, in the palace of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh has no idea what's in store for him. And likewise, today we are seeing the call, the demand, to free Palestine, roaring and raging from where people least expect it, at the very heart of the empires that oppress the Palestinian people. You read in the Qur'an that when Moses, pbuh, reached a dead end, Allah opened up for him, split open the ocean and created a new path. And when all efforts seem to not be working or not working fast enough,
Allah opens up the empires, called universities, in Europe and in America, for the sake of Gaza and its people. From there I want to say that we must also sober up a little bit, and be honest and recognize that nothing will come full circle. No full, meaningful, lasting change will happen overnight. So we have a long road ahead of us. And on that road, power matters, for many reasons, the most important of which is the Qur'an said so. You know when Allah, Azza wa Jal, spoke about how He created this world, and the nature and the order upon which He structured this universe, He said, We created the heavens and the earth over the span of days, وقدر فيها أقواتها, and He embedded into this earth its provisions, its resources, its means of leverage, its resources, over the span of four days. He could have done it instantly, subhanahu wa ta'ala, but perhaps the wisdom here is that He wants us to recognize that the way this world functions is that nothing happens overnight. I put it into here, over the span of four days, and it will take you probably longer than that to extract it from this world. I embedded it inside this world over the span of four days, but then He said, سواءً لسائلين And I have made it equally accessible to whoever seeks it. So you must seek it, but anyone who seeks it will get a share of it. So whether you seek it, resource, power, for oppression and injustice, you'll get it. And if you seek it for pushing back against injustice, to make this world a better place for everyone that lives in it, you will get it.
But whoever seeks it, gets it. And this is also why, and I've mentioned this before, when the early Muslims were asked, what happened? Where did the hiccup happen in the momentum of this ummah? They said, this world, leverage, worldly leverage, was secured in our hands, so we were able to use it, meaning. And it did not get into our hearts. And then later on, it seeped into the hearts. You know, people are infected with the ills of prosperity. People often say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It usually does. But then they said, when it seeped into our hearts, Allah pulled it from our hands. And so we have an obligation to master leverage in this world, while protecting that heart from making this world the buy-all-end-all, while still prioritizing the next world above all else. You know, Subhanallah, when you speak about the story of Firaun throughout the Qur'an, Allah Azza wa Jalla didn't just tell us there was a monster called Firaun, and he was ruthless, and he was heartless, and he killed babies. He showed us, elaborately, illustrated for us in detail, that his tyranny was a system, a powerful system, that made it possible. And this is what some of the scholars call the five pillars of tyranny in the Qur'an, all found in the story of Firaun. What are they? The first of them is the ruthless tyrant. They're represented in Firaun. He believes he's God, he believes he owns this world, he believes the world is disposable for his sake. But that's not just Firaun, right? The Zionist project today, they believe they are God's favorites,
and that anything is a measly cost for their vain, deranged, genocidal, supremacist, racist objectives. It's that simple. But that wasn't all. Then there is always the spineless minister, the one who grovels at the feet of the tyrant, and justifies for them their every delusion, and does not bat an eye at living at the highest, or should I say the lowest pit of hypocrisy and double standards. Pharaoh tells Haman, his minister, build for me a tower so I can go up and see the Lord of Moses. Absolutely, you can go up there, I'll build it for you. Right? And in the world of the Zionist regime today, these people, they hate us because they're Jewish. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's because you're Jewish. Right? They are absolutely anti-Semitic. Has nothing to do with the actual crimes you happen to be committing. Right? It has nothing to do with the fact that these people are Arabs, which means they're also Semitic. We're going to forget the fact that all throughout history, the Arab world, and the Muslim world at large, was a safe haven for Jews from every other people under which they were persecuted. Right? Yeah, yeah, we're going to just keep batting just to what? To get my bone that gets thrown my way, my kickback for living for someone else's glory. The glory of the tyrant gets me a bone thrown my way, and I'm a lowlife like this, I'm a soulless devil, so I'll accept it, I'll accept scraps. But then there's a third pillar to tyranny. That third pillar are the wealthy tycoons of the world, the corrupt juggernauts of economy and commerce, that will spend out of pocket, whatever will maintain the status quo of tyranny and oppression. Why? Because it serves them. In the story of Moses and Pharaoh, this is Qarun.
And what is daunting, so painful about the story of Qarun, is that Qarun was from the people of Moses. إِنَّ قَارُونَ كَانَ مِنْ قَوْمِ مُوسَى فَبَغَ عَلَيْهِمْ He was from them, and then he became tyrannical against them. He sided with Pharaoh against his own people. Right? Why? Because there's money involved, and that is his God. Right? And in this day and age, by the way, and in this context and parallel I'm drawing in the khutbah, the politicians, the spineless ministers, and the tycoons many a times are running the same. We have no problem perpetuating the most unethical wars, because the more we validate these wars, and sign off on them, and spend money on them, that money is being spent on weapons from companies that we are invested in. There's the bribery that happens on the political level over the table, it's legalized under the name of lobbying, but under the table they are stakeholders in the military-industrial complex, and the arms sales, so the money is coming from me to me in much higher numbers. That's in addition to the corporations, and the stakeholders, and the donors, the endowers of the endowments, and the entertainers. Someone brought to my attention a Palestinian rapper, who has not said a word in seven months. And the fourth of the pillars of tyranny are the corrupt clergy, the people who manipulate religious language to strike fear in the people, or to justify for them the tyranny, either by what they say, or by their criminal silence, what they refuse to say. In the story of Musa and Firaun, this is embodied, represented in the sorcerers, of course before they became Muslim, before they believed and repented.
And nowadays it is in every corrupt religious leader that echoes, parrots the wrong things, or gags themselves from saying the right things, for the sake of the regime, for the sake of the injustice and oppression. And the fifth and final pillar of tyranny are the biased media. Who will give coverage to whatever will support the tyrant and his aims, and give no coverage to anything else. Think about this, it's not random. The Qur'an gave us all of that for a reason. Why did it tell us all of this? So we may learn from it. It's not just to point out blame on others. The Qur'an is for those who believe in it. In the story of Musa and Firaun, these are the announcers. The Qur'an says that before the challenge took place, between Moses and the sorcerers, announcers basically were flooding the streets, saying to the people, هل أنتم مجتمعون؟ You gotta see this, come see this. Aren't you gonna gather? Aren't you coming to the stadium? لعلنا نتبع السحرات إن كانوا هم الغالبين So why? Why gather? So that we can follow the sorcerers, pharaohs guys, if they win, if they are the ones that are triumphant. In other words what? In case they win, let's go watch. But if they don't win, just turn a blind eye, nothing happening here, let's keep it moving. Nobody was killed here, no one was lost here, no crime committed here, there was no cheating involved here, right? And this is the biased media, in every time and every place. And so every time and in every place, a person wants to wonder now, through this Quranic lens, why is tyranny possible? This is why. There was a system of power that was built,
that bore fruits. Atrocious fruits, but fruits. Why is it taking so long? Because the formula hasn't been understood yet. Once you understand and respect and engage this formula, then things will change for you. Don't think it has to follow your logic. Not everyone has your logic. You have a logic of morality. You have a logic of being principled. You have a logic of conscience. Not everyone has that logic. You know, Muslims in the past, any concerned person, in the past few months, they say, how can it be? How can it be that in the United States of America, how can it be logical that you cannot critique any Jew and the bill is being passed, they went from the House, now going to the Senate, even if that Jew is committing a crime. How can that be? It's automatically a hate crime. How can you identify an actual crime simply because it was committed by a Jew? By the way, this would outlaw, technically, logically, this should outlaw the Bible. Right? Because the Bible casts some Jews as murderers of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. Right? How can this be? In a Christian majority country, how is that logical? It doesn't have to be logical. It's called the logic of power. It's called leverage. How can it be that the Israeli state can go on a killing spree and critiquing that government is not allowed? Like, you live in a country that in its founding documents, in the Constitution, you have free speech. That free speech allows you to critique even this government. But you're not allowed to critique a foreign government about an act of genocide, about agreed upon war crimes. Forget you can't even do it. The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, is being threatened right now by U.S. politicians for doing it. How is that logical? It doesn't have to be logical. We have to understand the Qur'an. The logic of power. Power dynamics.
How is it logical that not just are our tax dollars being forced against our will to another country where they are not just funding the killing of innocent men, women, and children, and more children than anyone, but it's providing them with free healthcare everyone in Israel gets, and free education, while in this country, the number one reason for bankruptcy is medical expenses. And students year over year are being buried in student debts for their tuitions. How can that be? How is that logical? It doesn't have to be logical. It's called leverage. Whoever seeks leverage will find it. Allah has said that. Equally accessible to those who seek it. Brothers and sisters, you know a few short years ago, and it's ongoing, up until now, there are 38 states in this country, including the state in which you're in, either because bills were passed or due to executive orders, where there are what are known as anti-BDS laws. Boycotting, divestment, sanctioned calls are illegal. You sign off on that, and many of you sitting in front of me on certain health networks and otherwise have actually signed on this, whether you read the fine print or not. That you could get in trouble, you could lose your job, if you suggest in your private life, on social media somewhere, that we should not use our money in a certain direction. Do you know why? Because the Zionist project
saw that power was leaning away from governments and towards corporations, so they built leverage within corporate America. 40 years before that, they noticed that they needed to get into the minds of politicians. There's no secrets here. AIPAC is known as the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. It is basically the bribery commission for the genocide project. That's what it is. What do they do? They ensure that whoever is in politics, the right or the left, they will still prioritize the interests of the Zionists over the interests of those who voted them in, over their own people. They noticed this. They clocked it. And so I'm going to spend a billion dollars in lobbying. I'm going to get every few months if a war breaks out, another 14 billion dollars, another 14 billion dollars. They saw it, right? Pointing blame is not going to do anything. I'm telling you almost for a second, respect that they respect the process. Do you know what happened 40 years before 1963? In 1924, brothers and sisters, 100 years ago as we stand here in 2024, they established the World Union of Jewish Students, Zionist Jewish students, and they picked the intellectuals of the world to lead it. The first president was Albert Einstein. The vice president was a man by the name of Chaim Weizmann, who was a world-renowned chemist that the whole world respected because he was a contributor to the chemicals needed for World War I. And he becomes the first ever president in the state of Israel in 1948. They put together this World Union of Jewish... Do you understand why now? Do you understand why they are losing their mind and scrambling like chickens without their heads today when Allah, without us, Allah gave us a free gift, some leverage that we didn't even do by coordination.
And now it's collapsing from within the university space? Rewind another 30 years. In 1896, the State of Israel, the White Paper, was a publication by a man who made headway in the world of media. His name was Theodor Herzl. He was a journalist but a diplomat. And so, do you understand why now their 130 years of investment in mainstream media, journalism, and mainstream channels is driving them crazy? That Allah caught them off guard, right? The way he caught Fir'aun off guard. And social media has ruined this whole thing for them. They no longer control the monopoly on mainstream media they've been building for 130 years. That is why social media made a difference. And so, Allah sent us a few gifts. Allah, Azza wa Jal, sent us a few fruits. Allah, Azza wa Jal, moved us forward. But there's a long road ahead of us. I simply say, understand the Qur'an to engage that playing field. And only after we respect this process and accept that it's a long road and we start the walk on that road, only then can we say that there is no barakah in their efforts. That we don't even need to do as much as them because we have justice on our side. And we have the ultimate good on our side. And if we have Allah, we have all we need. But Allah told us respect this process. May Allah, Azza wa Jal, grant us knowledge that benefits us. And benefit us with that which He has taught us. And propel us forward as people of the Qur'an. That understand the dynamics of the world through the Qur'an. And understand the priority of the hereafter through the Qur'an. And understand the blessing of being part of this Ummah through the Qur'an. And may Allah, Azza wa Jal, gather us upon good with the people of Gaza and the people of Palestine. And the people of Sudan and the people of Turkmenistan. And the people suffering everywhere. And have us meet them on the Day of Judgment
and say, we did our part, we tried our best. For more information visit www.fema.org
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