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The Du'a of Yunus Under the Rubble | Gaza Diaries
Dr. Omar Suleiman meets with Dr. Farhan Abdul Azeez, an Emergency Medicine physician, who has visited Gaza numerous times on medical missions during the current Genocide there. Dr. Farhan shares story after story of the resilience and steadfastness of the people of Gaza, as well as many heartbreaking accounts of the bottomless depravity and cruelty of the Israeli forces who are committing these abhorrent war crimes.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Alhamdulillah, wasalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. We have with us today Dr. Farhan Abdulaziz, who would not be an exaggeration to say is one of my best friends in the world, one of the closest brothers to me in the world. JazakAllah khair for doing this. I know how hard it is for you to do this. SubhanAllah, I think just to put in perspective before you start, one thing that I've heard from quite a few of the doctors is it's really hard to talk about this. It's not easy, right? I'm sure you guys have seen a lot. InshaAllah ta'ala, this is a means by which you're exposing many more people to the depth of faith, the depth of Yaqeen in these people, in Ahlul Ghaza. And I know that's something that's near and dear to your heart. So before I even ask you a single question, I'm just going to let you open up inshaAllah ta'ala. Just take it from where you want to take it. What should people know about the Yaqeen of Ahlul Gaza, about the certainty of the people of Gaza? As-Salaamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah Wa Barakatuhu. As-Salaamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah Wa Barakatuhu. The, you know, James Elder, the UNICEF spokesperson, he said that Gaza is a graveyard for children and is a living hell for the people who are left. But he hasn't seen that. It's also filled with people of paradise. That's the feeling you get. You walk in and it's, the situation is beyond what you would think is tolerable by human beings. You know, it's beyond the capacity of human beings to live for a short period of time, let alone seven, eight months now. There's a, you know, ilm al-yaqeen, ayn al-yaqeen. We read the Qur'an, we read a hadith and we believe, but then to actually literally live it and see things with your own eyes, experience things with your own eyes, that, you know, faith sets in their heart in a way that, khalas, something can shake them. It doesn't matter what you do. That's why I don't think there are people that can ever be defeated because their yaqeen is just, khalas, they reached, they reached a point.
You know, the beginning of the war, there was a, there was an audio clip I heard of a woman who had received a, it was a voice note she sent on WhatsApp and it was somebody sending her a WhatsApp note saying, you know, trying to, you know, comfort her and give her strength and whatnot. And then she responded by saying that, you know, I'm getting from the message that you're trying to strengthen me, but really we need to be strengthening you because we've reached, we have zero doubt that Allah's promise is true. And she gave the story of her young child, a few years old, who had asked her, you know, about death and that, and she told her, the child told the mom, don't worry, if we die, we'll be with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. And she was like, as if the angels are talking through the children to us. So these kinds of experiences that people have there, parents have, children have, the like, and it's, these are shared experiences by the community. It's beautiful to see on the screen, but it's another level when you're amongst the people. Some people would say, how do you come up with the word beauty? What's beautiful about it, right? So it's atrocity, it's terrible, it's tragedy. How do you balance those emotions when you go there? Like tell me about sort of when you first got there on the first trip. What's the first moment where you heard airstrikes or you saw people in pieces and it really sunk in? The first trip, the moment you enter, as you're probably aware, you know, the drones, you always hear the drones constantly. But then the moment we got in, you know, it was just, I almost compare it to like seeing the Kaaba for the first time, and everybody has different experiences with that too. But for me, when I saw the Kaaba for the first time in my life, standing there, and honestly, every time we still go, Allah gives us the opportunity to go to Hajar Amran, we see the Kaaba and I stand there, there is a sense of that, what have I done to deserve the honor of being here? And entering Gaza, even though it's a war zone, even though the people are suffering, there's famine and there's widespread illnesses, you say, what did I do to deserve to be here? What a blessing from Allah.
Because again, the people there are amazing, the Hadith of the land, being blessed land that the ribat there, you know, it could be the best ribat, you know, the ribat of this area's will come a time will be the best ribat. These kind of, you know, concepts you go in and you're like, wow, you're here. And so when you see the injuries, you see the atrocities, yes, it's horrible, and you're working in very difficult conditions, meaning limited supplies, limited electricity, like the power goes out. It was one night when a blast had gone off, and we go down to the ER, and there's three children who are born and three siblings in one another, roughly maybe eight, seven and five years old. And one of them pretty much was dead on arrival. We pronounced them, we went to the second one, that was the oldest, the second one was the youngest. And then the team there kind of made the decision that, you know, the chance of survival is so low, it's not worth putting the resources to try and save him. He's a savable life, you know, the resources are there, the chances are low, but we can do it. But the local doctor, you know, kind of made the decision that, you know, we're not going to pursue further, and so he eventually died. And as we're tending to the third one, the middle age of the three, the power goes out. And so he has, in terms of severity of injuries, he was the least severe, and so we kind of went from, you know, highest to least. But he had, and I'm saying least severe, but he had second degree burns to his whole face, and upper body and stuff had burns from the blast. And then we're trying to assess what other injuries he has, either like organ injuries or muscular and whatnot. And as we're doing that, literally the power goes out, and this is the middle of the night, because bombing isn't most intense in the nighttime. People don't skip a beat. The phones just immediately come out, their cell phones, and they turn on the cell phone light, and we just continue working. So the nurse is trying to get an IV, and then we're working on, you know, his airway and different things that we're doing, assessing him. And we're just doing it under the light of cell phones until the power comes back on.
So the circumstances are different. The other thing that's different when you're there, you know, it's one thing to see the injuries, but when you see this child in front of you, and you could smell the burned flesh, you know, there's a difference, a sense of smell that you don't get on the screens. And the smell of the bombs and the residue of the bombs, it hits you different. You know, I wouldn't describe that experience as beautiful, of course. It's tragic, it's painful, it's horrific. It's something that the world should be ashamed of a million times over to allow this to happen. But the overall experience of the people there, like I took care of a mother who, and I didn't realize that at the moment until I found out later, but subhanAllah, three of her kids were killed in a blast. I saw two of them at the morgue, because I would go to the morgue semi-frequently to visit the brothers running the morgue, as well as visit the shuhadaat, pray in the shuhadaat and the like. And the two of the three children, I saw, they were both in one body bag, young, very young children. And then I go to the ER, this is immediately after saat al-fajr, and I go to the ER afterwards, and they tell me there's a patient that needs to be taken care of who has a big scalp wound. And so I said, sure, you know, I happen to see her, and then eventually, she wasn't there, I couldn't find her. Eventually, a couple hours later, I found her. And it was the mother of these three children. So she lost three kids that night. It had been 12 hours. By the time I'm seeing her, both her arms, both her bones and her forearm were broken, and so she needs surgery for that. Because it's one thing to break your bone, but it's another thing when the bone protrudes from the skin and is now exposed to the environment. It needs a different kind of surgery, and it needs multiple surgeries to prevent infection. So her arms in this cast that they splinted, she's lost three children. She's very young, probably in her mid-20s, if that, maybe early 20s. And she has this wound to her scalp that's going across her whole scalp.
And so I'm cleaning it out, I'm assessing it, it's full of debris from the blast, so there's dust and dirt and all that stuff in there. And then as I'm feeling the skull, I could feel the fracture, so her skull is broken, it's depressed and down. And as I'm doing this, she and her family are making vikada. It's just like, what is going on here? That's what I mean by the beauty. This concept of halawatul iman, and that iman has a taste. They taste it, they literally taste it. And so you're there witnessing that, you're trying to experience it yourself, you're trying to be of service to these people. If you could, the way I look at it is if I have the honor of being in service of these people, then inshallah, maybe you get some ajr. But this is what I mean by the beauty of it. There is the horror, but there's also the faith, and the faith outshines everything. People come back from hajj, they go through difficulties, but when they come back, they're like, wow, it was an amazing experience. Like, what would you want to do going to hajj, sitting in a desert for five days in a cramped minna tent, in one bathroom, for a hundred people? But they say it's beautiful. Ghazda was like that, where it's like the overcrowding, the illness, the lack of resources and all that. But you look back and you're like, wow, what an experience, because the people just make it something beyond what you can imagine. The hadith of the Prophet, how amazing is the affair of the believer. Something good happens, he thanks Allah, he praises Allah, and that is better for him. And if he's struck with adversity, he praises Allah, he's patient, and that is better for him. So, subhanAllah, the ugliness of the situation does not take away from the beauty of the spirit of the people.
Right? And that's something that, and you know, it's interesting because like I think of the hadith of the Prophet, because I can, I've not been in your situation, but like when I'm trying to talk about this to groups of non-Muslims and in university settings or in forums and stuff like that, I can tell that there's kind of this look like you're crazy, like you people are crazy. But when the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, says that this is not for anyone except for the believer, I think it also cannot be understood by anyone except the believer. Like we can't understand it unless we ourselves are seeking what they are seeking and want what they want, even if we don't have the same sincerity or dedication to what they are sincere and dedicated to. But we can at least understand and appreciate and admire it. Right? And I think that that's something that, subhanAllah, you captured. I mean, even the idea of, you know, the tests that they're going through and how like, I mean, you think like level of tests, you know, like this is something beyond, I mean, to give you an idea, like someone who went north, so my second trip I went north, I love cats, right? You're kind of famous for that. My first trip though, I didn't take cat food. I thought about it, but I didn't. I filled up my suitcases with, you know, medical supplies and food for people. And then there was a lot of cats there that you meet that are obviously just like, just like everybody, everybody, there's a level of malnourishment. SubhanAllah, the temples, they speak, you know, like you're, one of the first things you see in malnutrition is the temples sink in, you know, muscular wasting. And so almost every physician, not just the patients, of course, but physicians, nurses, EMS, everybody, they have that. Their faces are sunken in. They're all, there's a level of malnourishment, but the cats are also skin and bones and skin and fur, I guess, or fur and bones. I made some friends. They're following me around wherever I go. This one though is special.
Super friendly. This one's pregnant. This one's really nice too. Anyways, the second trip, I said, Khalas, I'm taking two Ziploc bags. That's it. Small bags. I fit it in my bag. I'm taking cat food, dry cat food. And so the first night in the north, I met like a six month old cat, skin and, you know, fur and bones. And I wanted to give him food, but I didn't want to do it in front of people, you know, because, you know, people are, obviously there's hunger for everybody. And of course I took food for humans too. My suitcases were full of that, but I took two Ziploc bags for cats. And so the next morning after Fajr, I went to the roof. That's where I saw the cat, looking for the cat. And I didn't find him. But a brother came up on the roof, one of the locals. And he sees me. And so he asked me, he sees his bag in my hands. So he asked, what is that? And so, you know, I kind of told him, you know, it's cat food. And he gave me this look, like, it wasn't a look of anger, but it was almost like, just like bewilderment. Like what in the world? Like, what are you doing? Why did he bring cat food? Like what went through your mind to bring cat food? But then he told me, he says, he's like that for three months straight, we lived off animal food. That was his response. And then there was this like awkward silence. And we became friends. You know, when Allah says, وَلَنَبْدُ وَأَنَّكُمْ بَيْشَيْءٍ خَوْفِ وَالْجُوعِ We will certainly test you with things of fear and hunger, like hunger to that level, you know, that you're living off animal feed for three months. He hadn't eaten meat since the war began. Alhamdulillah, he ate meat that night. This concept of the difficulty of the test, إِنَّ عَظُمَ الْجِزَاءِ مَعَظُمَ الْبَلَاءِ That your level of reward is in accordance with the level of your test. وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ إِذَا حَبَّ قَوْمًا إِبْتَلَاهُمْ And when Allah loves the people, He tests them. And so the people of Gaza, they see, subhanAllah, حديث القرآن, there isn't just theory. It's like internalized.
So they've internalized this حديث, that خلاص. When Allah loves the people, He tests them. And so the level of tests they're going through, they know that Allah chose them because the level of love for Allah for them is at such a level that they're going through such a difficult test. And so the last part of the hadith is where they really emphasize on فَمَنْ رَضِيَ فَرَهُ الرِّضَاءِ Whoever is content with the decree of Allah, Allah will be pleased with him. And content with him. And whoever is displeased, فَمَنْ سَخَطْ فَنَهُ السَّخَطْ And whoever is displeased, Allah will find displeasure. It's ingrained in them. That خلاص, no matter what comes our way, we'll be pleased with the decree of Allah. And so that's how you see it translating in mothers losing their children and saying, إِنَّا لَنَا نِرَجِعُونَ And the ayah, what it says, نَمْلُونَكُمْ بِشِيءٍ مِّنْ خَوْفٍ وَالْجُوعِ Fear and hunger and loss of crops and lives and wealth, lives and crops. All five, they've not just experienced, but experienced beyond what maybe the whole, you know, like so much of us, we've never even tasted a fraction of. SubhanAllah. In November, we went to Umrah in November. When did you go to Gaza the first time? Was it December or January? No, February. February. SubhanAllah. Yeah. What were the lessons of the seerah that immediately hit you when you got there? I mean, you come from a unique perspective. You go to Hajj and Umrah all the time. You teach seerah. You lecture about it. When you got there, what did you see from the seerah of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم? Obviously, miracles happen to the Prophets, but then you have karamat that happened to the sahaba and the waliya and the like. Dreams, we know dreams are part of wahi. There was a young kid, I mean, this is, subhanAllah, we have children and adults alike, but the experience, khalas, they have yaqeen. Eight years old, the same zakariyah. At the beginning of the war, in the first few days, he had a dream that the war would last 74 days. He told his dad this. I had a dream that the war will end on the 74th day. SubhanAllah.
And we know it's obviously day 200 and something now, right? So it's well beyond that. But on the 73rd day of the war, he asked his dad, and he said that, Baba, if I die, when we die, will we be with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم? This is the eight-year-old asking this question. So you see the maturity and then the thought, what eight-year-old asks that question, will I be with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم? And so, subhanAllah, that was the 73rd day. On the 74th day, inshaAllah, he's with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. He was martyred. And so the war ended on the 74th day for him. But he had a dream the war would end on the 74th day. We met his father. He showed us a picture of him, and we showed a picture of his child, and also of him with his martyred child. The paramedics are heroes. The physicians are heroes. The nurses, everybody there is a hero. But the paramedics specifically, every time they go out, they're putting their life on the line because ambulances are targeted. So every time we would go with the ambulance driver, it doesn't matter who, they have a story. Either their brother has been killed, or their ambulance has been bombed. Brother meaning another paramedic who's with them. All volunteers, by the way. Nobody's going to pay it anymore. They've been targeted. And so subhanAllah, in the north, the paramedics live at the hospital. Just like in many situations, the staff live at the hospital. So the paramedics who are based out of the hospital live there. We were there in the last 10 nights in the north. And so we would pray Salat. The five Salat, they pray in the parking lot of where the ambulances are. And that morning, Salatul Fajr, it was the 25th day of Ramadan. I met some of them, shook their hands, and said, as we were leaving after Salat. Just a couple nights before, subhanAllah, we spent over an hour together. One of the brothers, Abu Musab, talking and just kind of sharing their experiences, what's been happening and whatnot.
And that was after Salatul Fajr. And then after Salatul Dhuhr, I was with Sassiri and Abu Musab. Because he and two, there were five others total, EMS paramedics who went out to a missile strike. They took two ambulances. Two of the five were a little behind, and the three went forward to get the injured. So when the three who went forward reached the injured, they were struck. Like literally the moment they reached the injured, they were struck. One died on the spot, and the two were brought back. The two who survived were brought back. So I'm in the ER. I'm taking care of somebody who's actually critical, about to die. He ended up dying, subhanAllah. My attention was now divided into two because Abu Musab came in, and I know him personally. And so when he brought in, and everybody knows him because he lives at the hospitals. All the hospital staff know him. They all love him. And so our attention turned to him. And then we start trying to resuscitate him and the like, and subhanAllah. And as we're doing these different procedures to him to stabilize him, I'm telling him to say the shahada. And he's in shock. So shock is a medical term that we use for when people are, they're in shock. Their body's in shock. So your mind's not working right. You're not able to think. You're not able to say things. You're not able. But subhanAllah, despite being, and he actually coded, to give you an idea, to a level of shock, what we call hemorrhagic shock. He's bleeding out. His heart stopped. So that's the level of illness. I mean, he literally died on the table. Alhamdulillah, we were able to resuscitate and bring him back. He's saying the shahada at this moment as he's going through this. Alhamdulillah, he survived. The third one, he went to surgery and then he died maybe like four or five days later. And it was kind of, his injuries were massive brain injuries and it wasn't expected he would survive. And subhanAllah, he returned to the mercy of Allah as well. But the one who died on the spot,
his name was Hussain Matar. Rahmatullah, rahmatullah alayhi. Wissam, one of the five paramedics, who's actually a cousin of one of our local Dallas community members. He told me, and this was known, but he told me, I heard it from him directly, that Hussain told Wissam about seven, 10 days before this happened, that I had a dream that I'm gonna die on the 25th of Ramadan. And subhanAllah, it was the 25th of Ramadan when the missile struck him. And he showed me his picture. I mean, you can imagine the mangled body of somebody who was struck by a missile. But his face just went over. His face is just nur. And he's smiling. He's a hafidh of the Quran. He's fasted every day since October 7th until the day he died. He would lead salah sometimes. He would call it an iqama sometimes. And subhanAllah, his dream came true. These kind of things you see, you know, when you think of like stories of the prophets and you think of people like this who are from the seerah, like things that you show, that shows Allah, Allah is with them despite what we see of the apparent. We see hunger, we see illness, we see this destruction that like, but then there's this hidden level. Yeah, it's something to think about, subhanAllah, that eight-year-old with the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and the man who fasts every day, right, and hafidh of the Quran, stuff like that. It also gives an extra layer to the complaint of the people of Gaza about the rest of the ummah, right? Yeah. Allah forgive us. In the story of Abu Bakr al-Anhu and Ibn Masud, in the early days of seerah, how they were beaten so severely when they're defending the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and we're reading the Quran and they say you couldn't recognize his face, you couldn't recognize his eyes from his nose, it was just so bad. You know, I literally saw somebody like that, but his story is amazing, like
he was in a home that was struck under the rubble for eight days, eight days. On day four, the soldiers came into the home looking for people alive, and anybody who was alive, they killed. He made a dua. He's telling us this, so rewind for a second. When you're in the emergency room, it's full. There's no space, there's no beds, there's people everywhere. There's patients who are waiting to go upstairs, patients who are living there because they have nowhere to go, patients who are waiting to go to the operating room. This is overwhelming, right? So this family comes to get me. They say, can you come see our family member? So I go to see him. He's in the triage area. What was the triage area? The ER. He's waiting to go to surgery. His face from here up is wrapped, so I can't see his face. I'm talking to him, but I can't. All I see is part of his lip that's ripped open hanging down. So this is what I'm seeing as I'm hearing this, and so he's telling me his story, and his nephews and nieces are around him, and they're telling, they're all telling me, he, the patient, and then they're telling me what happened. So he's like, we were struck in a home, eight days under the rubble. Day four, the Israeli soldiers come in, look for people who are alive, and if they were, they killed them, and at that moment, when the soldiers came in, he made a du'a, and he said, Before you say that du'a, just pause and let people sort of understand how, when you say these people are Nazis, and like worse, subhanAllah, in so many ways, like they walk into a home, they murder whoever's left alive on purpose. He says, oh Allah, like You saved Yusuf alaihi salam from the bottom of the well, and like You saved Yunus alaihi salam from the belly of the whale, and like You saved Ibrahim alaihi salam from the fire, save me. And so they either thought he was dead, or they didn't see him, and they left him. Why would they think he's dead? Sheikh, his face was covered,
wrapped up. I didn't see his face. When I saw his face later, when he went to the operating room, when I saw him, his face was unrecognizable. It was ripped open. There was no, you couldn't see his eyes. You couldn't tell his eyes from his nose, from his mouth. There was nothing left. It was just his face ripped open, and he's telling me the story, and he's saying, subhanAllah. I mean, just imagine like something on your face, like a pillow on your face. You feel uncomfortable after something, because it's hard to breathe, and like his face is blasted open, and he's under the rubble for eight days until his family found him, and he made this du'a, and he said, Allah saved me. He's saying, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, and he's making dhikr. Actually, I have his masbaha. This is his masbaha that he gave me. He's literally, as he's telling me the story, he's making dhikr, and then, and so I'm just, I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what I said to him, but I said, I said whatever words of encouragement, whatever I could say, and then I walked away. When I walked away, I said, I have to go back and ask, talk to him more, so I go back, even though the ER's guy said I needed to hear more from him, so I go back, and I just, I had one question. I said, because you think about this, right, the people who are under the rubble for this long, so I just, I just had that one question for him. I said, you know, what were you doing was going through your mind, and of course, he said he's making dhikr of Allah, but he said the hadith that was going through my mind, as the hadith Qudsi, where Allah says, I swear by my honor and magnificence, I will not cause my, I will not allow my slave to have two senses of fear, or two senses of security, and so if he feels secure from me in this world, I will cause him fear on the Day of Judgment, and if he has fear of me in this world, I will give him security on the Day of Judgment. So he's saying this, this is a hadith, for eight
days, that kept him going, that ya Allah, I am under the rubble, I am alone, massive injuries, pain, everything you can imagine, no food, no water, whatever it is, but I fear you, oh Allah just give me security on the Day of Judgment. I mean, it's just strange, like where does this taufiya come from, where does this ilham come from, this like inspiration from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that's why, that's why when he was telling me this, and I, again, then he said here, he drew me close to him, and he gave me this as a gift, so I will hold on to this, subhanAllah, and then I gave him a misbah I had, I gave it to him, I said you make dhikr on that, maybe I get some reward, I want your reward. How do you survive eight days under the rubble? How do you, that's, that's what's amazing, he's like subhanAllah, he made, I tell Allah, save me, what I would expect medically, if somebody's under the rubble for eight days, that they would have, you know, kidney failure, their potassium would go high, that would stop their heart, and they could die, just from that alone, they could die, and subhanAllah, his kidney function was normal, it's like, it's like, to me, it's like, it's like a miracle, like I don't understand how he should be alive in that situation under the rubble for eight days, but he made a dua to Allah, saying, oh Allah save me, and Allah saved him, he took away his eyesight, one eye was completely just destroyed from the, from the injury, and the other one had shrapnel through the eye, I'm going to tell you the level of pain, his face ripped open, shrapnel through the eye, that was the one fear the surgeons had, was, was, you know, alhamdulillah, subhanAllah, they, they put his face back together, it's amazing, his post-surgery picture, I was like, wow, because before, it's unrecognizable, didn't look like a face, it didn't look like a face, but afterwards, people, people, that, that image of, like, the kid that was run over by the tank, handcuffed, and like, it's like, it's hard to describe, like, open flesh, like, just complete open flesh, it looks like a can of something, yeah, and plus, it's like, flesh is now dying, so you see, like, the open flesh, plus, like, you know, necrosis, like, black tissues, like, it's just a lot, you know, you can't, you can't make out what's what, you can't tell it's a face, subhanAllah, yeah, he's, I mean, subhanAllah, he, Allah tested him, subhanAllah, look at, look at
this, Allah gave him, tested him with eyesight, and what does the hadith of the Prophet, the one who Allah tests with, his two eyes, you know, and he's patient, right, that I will compensate him, as a result of his patience for losing his eyesight, paradise, that's, that's blindness under normal circumstances, subhanAllah, eyes, face, family, safety, security, everything, the experience of those criminals walking into the home, and knowing that they kill everyone that's left alive, yeah, and then, of course, we see them parading the insides of the homes, after they murder every single occupant, and not only that, so what came to my mind, when you mentioned that, there was one case we saw, to give you an idea of the level of depravity, there was a man who came in with an explosive, explosive injury to his hand, what these soldiers do, is they leave behind small things in the home, that are explosives, this guy, he picked it up, and it blew his hand off, well, his, his fingers, his five fingers were partly blown off, his hand had fractures and stuff, the orthopedic surgeon who came with us to the north, from northwestern Chicago, he said, this is the third case I've seen of this exact injury, of this explosive being left behind, but the first two were children, it was a three-year-old and an eight-year-old, he's gone three times now, and each of his missions, he's seen one of these, the three-year-old's hand was completely blown off, the eight-year-old's hand was completely blown off, they just go back to their home, when they can go back, pick up something, whatever it is, later, when I came back here, I saw a post on IIN Palestine, and I don't know if it's the same device or not, but they showed pictures of cans, so what you think might be canned food, you pick it up, you try and open it, or whatever sets it off, and it explodes, he was saying that the surgeon he was working with broke down crying, and he had to leave the operating room, he had to leave scrub, and get out of sterility, and leave, because he was like, what level of inhumanity do you leave behind these devices to blow off kids' hands, so not going to kill them,
but it's to maim them, and we saw that when we were there, like a transition, so my first trip, I saw people with sniper wounds right to the head, but then now, what we were seeing on the second trip was a lot of proximal limb injuries, high-powered rifle shots that go through the upper arm, or upper leg, so this is a strange place to get injured, when you have amputations, usually, it's the weakest part of the limb, so your joints, your knee, or your elbow, or you know, this, you're going to have to do, you have to remove the whole leg, pull the ball out of the socket of the hip joint, and then they lose the whole leg, you can't put a prosthesis on, you know, if they have like the stump of their thigh, you could put a prosthesis on that, but what they're doing is, they're, okay, we're going to injure you in such a way that you lose your whole leg, you lose your whole arm, you become a burden on the medical system, and a burden on the family, you know, that the family's now bogged down taking care of this person, I mean, this is what you see, like in the north, we saw 10 people who were paralyzed from neck down, or legs, eight of them were kids, eight were kids, a 15-year-old, he was out playing soccer, a wound this big in his back, he's 15 years old, one night, we got two transfers, both paralyzed, a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old, there was a 40-year-old man, his youngest child is six months old, he went out to get aid, there's a whole idea of aid to the north, you know, it's these food drops and the trucks, both are death sentences, the food, this man, 40 years old, this aid package fell on him, I can show you his x-ray, his lower back is like this, his upper back is like this, it's supposed to be, you know, one continuous, it's like this, completely separated, just shattered his back, and his ribs, so he has multiple fractures through both of his ribs, he has something what we call flail chest, so when, you know, your rib expands when you breathe, the segments of the rib that are broken don't, and so you have this like
paradoxical movement of the ribs, extremely painful, and he's sitting there, paralyzed back, broken back, and broken ribs, no pain medicine, 10 people, we said, the reason I know 10, because we were going around the hospital and collecting the information on these people, so we could try and get them transferred out of Rwanda, again to the south, and then eventually to a country where they can get care, we took care of people drowning in the sea, you know, like one kid, he's literally, he's saying, can you do anything, he's, his father drowned, trying to swim out to see, to get the, to get the aid packages, because Iraq is a rough. The waves that are coming in, the wind and whatnot, and you have to go a decent way, you can't go, well, a few people have boats, it's illegal, of course, to have a motorized boat, if you do, you'll get gunned down, in Gaza, you can't, so the fishermen, they have to paddle out to sea, and then, and then you can't go too far out, if they go beyond whatever is deemed, you know, acceptable, they're open fire upon, and so these people are, when the aid drops are going to the sea, they're swimming out to sea in rough waters, going a far distance to try and get these packages, some of them drowned, so that day, that man who came in, he drowned, his son comes in, young, mid-teens, and he's like, he's bawling, and he's saying, do anything to bring my father back, do anything, shock him, do whatever, save my father, save my father, and then the day we left the north, we prayed janazah on a man who came in, who had drowned, and he was missing in the sea for one week, and they said there were 13 others who drowned, his body just washed up a week, the week, the day we left, they washed up in the shore, they brought him, we prayed janazah on him that day, and then we left after that, but subhanAllah, like the idea of like food packages, you're dropping it upon people, in the water, people are drowning to get it, I mean, the trucks, the few trucks that are coming north, they have to go through the checkpoint from the south, and
they come north, the drivers, the Nepalese drivers, they're told, if you stop anywhere along the way until your final destination, you will be blown up, so they can't stop, now you have to understand, the road has rubble, has debris, has destroyed cars, and the like, but not just that, craters from missiles, but the road has people, there's people waiting after the border for these trucks to come to get aid, because they're starving, so this truck driver cannot stop, even if there's somebody in the way, so we would get blunt trauma, people getting hit by trucks, every night, the one night we didn't have a case, it was a quiet night, trauma, there was no mass, what we call mass casualty incident, there wasn't one, so after Salat al-Fajr, I tell the nurses, I'm like, tonight was a good night, Alhamdulillah, there wasn't injuries, you know what they said in response, said because no food came, no trucks came, because every time, whether they stop or not, or wherever it comes, whenever the trucks reaches, these quadcopters they have, these drones that are armed with machine guns, they open fire on the people, so we have mass casualties every night, people coming in, of limb injuries, chest, arms, whatever it is, head, just open fire upon, this is, it's excluding the blasts, and whatever, the missiles, and the tank shells, and the blasts, the bombs, this is just quadcopters opening fire on people, starving people, trying to get food, you know, like every night, that was what was bringing us our volume, was food trucks, and we see the videos now of like these depraved people, you can't even call them human beings, destroying the, burning the food trucks, before they could even cross into Raza, and then taking the food off, and smashing it, I mean, I mean, again, the level of just depravity, but SubhanAllah, this whole idea of like, oh yeah, may Allah make them the fuel of Jahannam, may Allah make them the fuel of Jahannam, they feel good, oh we sent, we sent aid, you know, they justify it, America is sending aid, we're sending food drops, we saw with our own eyes, I mean, Jordanian food drop, then we saw people
swimming out to rough sea, and it's just like, what is, first you were like, oh Alhamdulillah, they're getting food, but then you realize like, wait a minute, what are we witnessing here, witnessing people risking their lives, the resilience, ultimately, SubhanAllah, despite what they're going through, the resilience that people have, the Iman they have, let me ask you though, you went to Shifa, right after that mass grave was discovered, can you talk about that, so every hospital in the north, has been destroyed, or sieged, and when we say siege, what it means is, they're surrounded by tanks, surrounded by snipers, being opened fire upon, hospitals, I mean, just, it's so crazy how seven months ago, within seven months, we're talking about this like it's normal, every hospital in Gaza, even, we were at Kamal Adwan, which is a pediatric hospital, they were sieged for six days, electricity, the first day they came, they destroyed the power generator, and so there's kids, infants, neonates, dying, dead, on incubators, because they lost power, at the hospital we were at, so Shifa hospital is no different, but Shifa hospital is like the heart of Gaza, it's like the biggest hospital in all of Gaza, it's people, when they talk about it, they talk about it like the level of love, unlike any other hospital that's there, and so, when we were there, they had sieged Shifa, it was under siege, while we were there, they withdrew, this is the second time, this is late in March, into April, and last, and last time, SubhanAllah, so we are walking into the surgical building, and you can see the destruction,
so this is the office building, and where the lab was, there's still the smell of smoke, as you enter, it was burned, destroyed, as you can see, just destruction everywhere, imagine the horrors, the people being here for two weeks, under siege, no food, no water, very few staff left to take care of them, very few physicians or nurses, most were captured, killed, or forced to leave, and they were here alone, starving, with the sounds of bombs and bullets raining down upon them, non-stop, so they withdrew from Shifa, and the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza, Palestine and Gaza, they are so amazing, the night they withdrew, within hours, people are going to the hospital, it's very risky, this is night time, they're going in the middle of the night, and it's not safe to travel at night, if we needed a specialist, a doctor who's not living at the hospital, there's no way to communicate with him, we would have to send somebody to get him, to bring him back, and they're risking their lives doing that, so people went in the middle of the night, journalists went, and when I say journalists, I did a Jazeera interview when I was there, it's a 16 year old kid, he's got a camera, and he's sending this up the Jazeera, right, he went that night, others went that night, they showed me pictures Sheikh, of the dead along the way, I mean, I'm shy to even describe to you what I saw, let alone show you the picture, because it's
just horrendous, people with all their limbs blown off, and injuries to their chest, and the like, and that's the road to Shifa, they get to Shifa hospital, and then they just try and document what they can, there's patients that were still there, we took care of patients who came, but when we went, we went two days after they withdrew, so, and we went with the leadership of the hospital, and when we get there, all we see is, and again, before what we see, what you smell, you smell the rotting bodies, and we walked into the, the one of the buildings, and there's there, subhanAllah, in the middle of all the rubble, there's a young child's backpack, with like, I think it was a unicorn on it, or something like, a black backpack with pink, I'm just thinking, what horror did she live through, leaving her backpack behind, the smoke still, the embers, because they set fire to these buildings, people that were inside them also, we heard these stories, they set fire to them, so when we got, two days later, we're still seeing the embers coming up from the buildings, they pointed out to us, where one of the mass graves was, from the first visit, from the, sorry, the first siege, where it was, which is right in front of the hospital, which is next to like, destroyed ambulances, like again, destroying hospital, destroying ambulances, any means of life, any means of life for these people, they're trying to destroy, after we left, is when they found these, another mass grave of 300 and something plus people they found, and even in our hospital, again, Kemal Adwan, a pediatric hospital, it was sieged from December 12th to 17th, the day before we reached north, they pulled out five bodies, from under where, next to the generator where they destroyed, in that front courtyard of the hospital, there's 180 people they said, between those who were injured, who were taking shelter, who, some of them buried alive, 180 that were there, five they pulled out the day before we
arrived, yeah, when we were there, subhanAllah, a woman showed up, and subhanAllah, she said, I could smell my husband, I mean, Shaykh, what's the smell in the air, is the smell of rotting bodies, but she said, I could smell my husband, it's almost like the story of Yusuf Alayhi Salaam with the kameez, the shirt, because she looks, this shirt keeps coming up throughout the story, and then, I could smell the smell of Yusuf Alayhi Salaam, when he had their shirt, and he looks maybe like a couple yards away from her, she found the shirt of her husband, amidst the sand and the dirt and the rubble, and she pulls it out, she says, this is the shirt of my husband, and she says, her husband and her son were both there, at Shifa Hospital, is he alive there, is he dead, we don't know, but she just kept saying, like, she found the shirt of her husband after smelling it, amidst that, SubhanAllah, what they, people of Gaza are going through is beyond anything, but their faith is also beyond anything we've ever seen, we, we got, so the morning they left, they withdrew, our hospital was on standby for transfers now, because there were patients still there, so patients that are gonna be evacuated now from Shifa, because it's completely destroyed, to other hospitals, so right after Fajr, the team is ready, because there's no communication, like, normally in the US, if there's a sick patient coming in, a heart attack, a stroke, a gunshot, they call and tell you, hey, we got a priority one coming in, get ready, it's super sick, whatever, and we have five minutes to prepare, I mean, there's no such thing, you just, you're always on standby for this, but that morning, we knew they left, we said, there's a chance we're getting patients, so we were ready, SubhanAllah, one of the patients that comes, 16 years old, his mother was with him, but when they seized the hospital, they forced her out, so for, for 15 days, the 16 year old kid is alone, no food, no water, what, unless of whatever cracker day they were giving him to survive, and he comes to us, Sheikh, we walk into the room, the room that we
put him in, and there's this overwhelming smell, and those who are in the medical field, you could appreciate it, you know what that smell is of this bacteria, when you have, like, infected wounds, if they're festering for a while, you get this really strong smell of, it's not a pleasant smell, so he's, he's essentially skin and bones, he's 16 years old, he had collapsed lungs on both sides, so he had tubes in his chest, one of them was still in there, one was out, both, the one that was in is pouring out pus, so he has infection inside of his lungs, the other one around the wound is pus, he had wounds on his abdomen that are pus, but then his leg, we undressed his leg, that's where the smell was coming from, it's just completely dead, his foot's completely dead, full of infection, there's maggots, Sheikh, we unwrapped the things, and there's maggots coming out of his leg, and I never did amputation in my life until that day, or a couple days later, we did, I don't remember what day it was, that day or the next day, but I helped an orthopedic surgeon, we amputated the 16-year-old kid's leg, alone for 15 days in a hospital, you know, under siege, this is, this is when, when we say people are attacking hospitals, and this, I mean, you don't have to imagine this lived experience of these people, there's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who've been through this, when they say it, we're attacking a hospital, these hospitals are places of refuge, now have become in Gaza, because the one thing you would think, humanity, we're not gonna target, okay, maybe a masjid, even though places of worship should be safe, but we know every masjid's been destroyed, hospitals, they target every hospital, so if you attack a hospital, you're talking about, not just the patients, not just the staff, but thousands of people seeking refuge, the European Gaza Hospital has 25,000 people within its compound, not just patients, but families and the like, so when these hospitals were sieged, Shifa Hospital, like, there's another guy who came, also in his 40s, he, the day we left, my last case I took care of, in the north, was a five-year-old kid, there was a house that
was bombed, that was empty, but the two homes on either side of it were full of people, and so a whole family came in, from grandparents, parents, and kids, all injured, the five-year-old we were taking care of, she had her skull on both sides were fractured, fractured, but there's no CT scan to diagnose it, but once you assess the wound, she had wounds to her face, and we were stitching up in the leg, we realized she had, she has a broken, she has a broken skull, and who knows what was bleeding in the brain, we can't tell, because we can't do a CAT scan, the basics of medicine, a CAT scan, or let alone in a war, in a situation of trauma, you absolutely need it, there was one left, that was at Shifa, in the north, that which they destroyed in the second siege, they had two initially, they destroyed one in the first siege, they destroyed one in the second siege, as I'm finishing stitching up her wounds, this five-year-old, I was called by one of the residents there at the hospital to go check on somebody, we go, and it was the one of the other transfers from Shifa Hospital, same thing, Sheikh, maggots coming out of his leg, wound, from infection, he already had one leg amputated, and the other one that was left, it was so severe, and he had been there for a few days then, and SubhanAllah, he, he, he died that morning, we found him dead, there's no monitors to warn us, we just, when you check on patients, you find them, so he passed away, but Shifa Hospital was, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a stain on the collective humanity, of how do we let this happen, every hospital there, but Shifa being like the, the pinnacle of it. You spent the last ten nights of Ramadan there, tell me about last ten nights of Ramadan there, versus last ten nights of Ramadan here. We were together, Hajj 2019, one of the greatest experiences ever, Arafah, when it rained for like three hours on the day of Arafah, and the level of sakinah, the level of, I mean, how do you describe the greatest day of the year, when Allah descends to the lowest heaven, and boasts of the people to the angels, and sends Jibreel, peace be upon him, the Prophet, peace be upon him, and tells him that, you
know, good news, that the people have been forgiven, so I'm Khattab, I'm a messenger of Allah, I'm a messenger of Allah, is this for us? This, this year only, like, we have the special thing, you know, whoever comes after you until the Day of Judgment, like, this level of mercy of Allah, right, more people freed from the Hellfire on this day than any other day. So, on that day of Arafah, 2019, we were standing in Hajj, outside, in the sun, and then the rain starts pouring, for three hours, and the level of sakinah and faith that people had there, there's only a couple times in my life I've experienced something similar to that, or close, and the last ten nights in Gaza were one of them, Sheikh. I mean, despite, despite the hunger, despite the thirst, I lost, I myself lost 20 pounds in two trips, and that's in four weeks. Imagine the people there, what they're going through, they're starving, right? And so, hunger, fear, all of that, but SubhanAllah, Sheikh, there is a lot, there was peace and tranquility you felt there, was, was beyond, it was equivalent to, if not greater than, standing on the Day of Arafah, with the rain of Allah's mercy pouring down upon you in mercy. SubhanAllah. I mean, the qiyam, the tahajjud, the salah with the imams, young people all leading, and every ayah, every, every, like how they choose, they choose ayah that are, like, very relevant to their situation, like that you could feel the emotion in every ayat they recite. It was just an experience I wouldn't trade for the world, SubhanAllah. I mean, that's why people go, they want to come back. I want to go back, I wanted to be there right now, like, if there's any place I'd be, I'd want to be there. I got one more question for you to kind of maybe bring it all back. Look, even just doing this, it feels like someone just turned you into a punching bag and beat up on you for, for five hours, right? I mean, like, it's emotionally a beat down to get a second-hand testimony. I can't imagine the trauma of someone who got a first-hand testimony, and then, of course, someone who first-hand experiences this,
being the people of Gaza. Where's the hope, then? Where is the hope? What's, what's a story that you saw? Because we have to kind of ground ourselves, and our hope is in Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, but sometimes, I mean, personally, like, I'll, I'll wait for kind of going through the videos, and I've only been able to experience it through videos like most of us, right? You wait for that one video where you see someone just with full quwwah, with full strength, insist that we are going to win, that we believe in victory, not just shahadah for the hamaat, not just shahadah for the dead. That's a given, bi-idhnillahi ta'ala. Qatlana fil-jannah wa qatlahum fil-naar. Our dead are in paradise, their dead are in the fire. We believe that, and we know it, and it is our comfort. It's what consoles us when we see the mangled bodies, is that those same mangled bodies, housed souls, that have now ascended to the heavens. That's our comfort. Bira nassr, victory. Where do you see victory? Was there one person, one story that you said, we're going to win, insha'Allah ta'ala, and I can tell it through the strength of this person? I don't know if I could say one, because it's like, As many as you want to share. A lot, because it's like, generally, of course there's exceptions, but generally speaking, the level of the people, it's like, everybody has that belief. Everybody does. It's not like, just, I can tell you one story, one person who says something. Like, literally, everybody you meet, they have, like, a conversation with, my last day in Gaza, last night, before we left the next day, we had a ta'ala with a family in the European Gaza Hospital, and they just found the generosity is so amazing. And so, the younger daughter was, you know, talking while having a meal, you know, saying, like, we should leave Gaza. We should leave, because everything is
destroyed. And so, her 16-year-old brother, 16, I'm just, I'm trying to think, as I'm watching this, listening to this, I'm thinking in my head, what would I say in response if my sister or daughter, somebody said that we should leave Gaza, and and every right to say it, you know, from a worldly perspective, everything is destroyed, you know, where is the hope? But then, his 16-year-old son, not the father, not the mother, not the older sister, the 16-year-old son, responds to her and tells her, before October 7, before the war, who was feeding us? She said, Allah. He's like, well, after, who's feeding us? Allah. Who was giving us shelter before? Who's giving us shelter after? Who's taking care of us before? And despite being in a siege, in an open-air prison, all these things that we hear, and she kept saying, Allah, Allah, and he's like, so Allah is not going to, Allah is not going to abandon us? It's like, Hudaybiyyah, Imam Khattab is saying, you know, like, أَلَسَىٰنَ مُسْلِمِينَ أَلَيْسُوا كَافِرِينَ أَلَسَىٰنَ حَقُّهُمْ عَلَى الْبَاطِلِ You know, all these questions he asked Prophet Salaam, when they agreed to terms that were, on the appearance, seemed to be unfair, you know, and then, and then Prophet Salaam tells him in response, that Allah is, Allah Nasiri, you know, وَلَيْضِعِنِ اللَّهِ Like, Abu Bakr says the same thing that, إِنَّهُ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ You know, he is a messenger of Allah, and Allah is not going to abandon him. So the people have that faith, subhanAllah, like, you know, that Allah will not abandon us. And again, from the apparent, what you see from hunger, and injury, and famine, and destruction, it looks like, maybe somebody will say, Allah abandoned them, but when you go to the people, you see what they see, you experience what they experience, how they're eating, how they're surviving, how they're drinking, and how they're living, how they're tolerating what no human being can tolerate. Say, خلاص, these people are not a people who can be defeated. خلاص, period, end of statement. They are not a people who are going to be defeated. Their spirit, their iman is too strong. They're just, there is a resilience in them, there is a strength in them that,
and they all carry that, that you know what, Allah's help is going to come. And I think that, maybe one of the message, you know, like, and he said a message of hope, and part of the story is sad, but I learned from it. One of the volunteers at European Hospital asked me to check on a patient. Well, she wasn't a patient. Her family was killed. Her home was destroyed. She was a patient, but she was discharged from the hospital two weeks prior. But she has nowhere to go. So part of the challenge of the hospitals is that they're overcrowded. Part of the overcrowding is because patients who were discharged, who survived, they don't have anywhere to go, so they stay in the hospital. So she pulls me into the triage room, actually close to where I met the brother with the bandages, and she asked me to check on her. So I go to check on her, and it's this elderly lady, late 60s, Hamdi is her name, and she is, she looks to be pretty sick. She's very short of breath. She's breathing about 50, 55 times a minute. So like, like that level of, you know, her heart rate's pretty high. Her oxygen level is like 80 percent, 83 percent. And so I quickly do a physical exam and assessment. I have an ultrasound with me. I do an ultrasound of her leg, and I realize she has a big blood clot in her leg. And because her oxygen level is low, I'm thinking it's in her lungs too. So I tell her, like, you know, me, we need to, my mother, we need to give you oxygen. And so she, she says, no, I'm not leaving here. I'm not leaving. This spot right here in this hospital, I'm not leaving. I'm like, well, you need oxygen. We'll take you to another room. Just around the corner. Let's take you there, give you oxygen. She's like, no. She said, because this is, this is my home. This is where she's lived for the last two weeks. If I leave this spot, somebody's going to take it. So she's afraid, she's afraid she's going to lose her spot. So subhanAllah, then I spent the next few hours trying to, like, get her oxygen. Because there's no portable oxygen tank. I found, in the room, there's a device on the wall that gives out oxygen. But you need, there's this connector. You have to, it's like a small little piece of plastic. You have to connect to the device so the tubing can connect to that.
It's a little funnel that brings in oxygen. And I couldn't find one. And so I looked everywhere. So the whole time she's sitting there with low oxygen, I finally found one. I attached her to the oxygen, put a mask on her. And it's where her bed is. It's stretched all the way, the tubing, just to reach her. And subhanAllah, I talked to the team, you know, to get her admitted to the hospital. She needs ICU, to be honest. But there's no ICU beds, there's no ventilators. And so we started treatment, at the very least, I told them. But as I walked away, I told the ER doc that I was with. He's from the UK. I told him, like, I think we're going to be doing a code blue on her tomorrow. And I said that because you can imagine, you can't, nobody can maintain that work of breathing. You can't breathe 50 times a minute without tiring out. Your body will eventually tire, even if you're an athlete. Eventually you tire out. You play this game, you know, whatever it is, sports, whatever you play for an hour, two hours. You're breathing fast, but then you get into recovery. But to continuously breathe like that, you can't. The body will tire out. And so normally what happens in a situation like that, if they can't intubate somebody, then put them on a ventilator. We have them on the monitor. We see their vital signs changing. We know we need to act. If we don't already act. So he said, no, inshallah khair, inshallah she won't, you know. So I said, you know what, I need to go back and talk to her. So I go back because I'm afraid for her. I'm like, look, like, there is no monitor for her. So I don't think she'll survive. So I go back and what do I tell her? I don't want to tell her, look, I think you're going to die. You know, I don't want to say that. So I just tell her, look, like, you know, I called her my mother. I said, look, like, you're, you're, you're, you're pretty sick. So I just want you to make a lot of dhikr. So she starts saying the shahadah. She's lying there, her ROH beating her eyes. She's breathing fast, but she's saying shahadah, shahadah, shahadah. The next day I go back, I check on her around dhuhr time. She's still the same situation, breathing real hard. Oxygen's okay because she's on the oxygen. And then that night I saw the volunteer around, the same one who asked me to check on her. She's a young sister, probably in her early 20s.
Munaqaba, of course, like, just spending her time in the hospital taking care. She was a family to this lady. And so, you know, she said, JazakAllah khair for helping her in this and that, whatever. That night after I met her, I met with the residents and we had shahadah together and then they told me, oh, that sister you talked to us about yesterday, she, she, she died. She died at Maghrib and I didn't know that. Neither did the volunteer. But that's what I thought, that she might die. And so I don't want to end with a negative, but the next morning I went to the morgue to pray janazah on her. So I led her salah and I saw the volunteer that was there. But what she told me is what, what really stuck with me. You know, she said that, ushidullah, annaka qad adayta haqqa. She said, I make Allah witness that you fulfilled her right. I think, what did I do? What right did I fulfill? Like, I couldn't get her on a ventilator. I couldn't get an ICU bed. She died. I gave her oxygen for, for what, 24 hours, 36 hours, whatever it was. Like, what did I do? But what she was saying is, she was saying, subhanAllah, like, adayta haqqa, you, you did the best you could. You did what you could. And maybe that's what we have to do. Like, you know what, instead of, yeah, we want victory, of course. We want relief. But you know what, what Allah asks of us is, everybody does their part. Everyone do what you can, what's in your capacity, right? The people of Gaza, the children of Gaza don't have fear. The children of Gaza don't have fear. I posted on my social media, you might have saw, like, the young girl reciting Quran. Gunfire going out behind her. She just keeps reciting. And all, I had like 50 kids, I had 50 kids in front of me, listening to the Quran. And then we're doing a story, a Sahaba story. And nobody, they're just, gunfire is going off. So just know, if their lives are at stake and they're not afraid, what, what, what are we afraid for? What are we afraid to lose? And that's the message from the people of Gaza. They tell us, like, look, raise our cause.
Just do what you can to raise our cause. And so whether it's the protests, whether it's the encampments, whether it's the letters, whether it's speaking to your neighbor, speaking to your colleague, whatever it is to raise their awareness, we have that responsibility. And that's what they tell us. Like, and then maybe we, if we do that, what's in our capacity, maybe we fulfilled their right. As sad as it is to say that, you know, the level of suffering, we wish we could do more. But, but the people, they're convinced. They're, and honestly, after leaving there, I'm convinced. They cannot be defeated. They won't. They know victory is coming from Allah. Allah promised it. You, we just have to fulfill the rights that Allah wants, the conditions Allah wants upon us to give us victory. SubhanAllah, what I witnessed from the people of Gaza. There are people of the Quran. There are people of dhikr. There are people of salah. There, you don't find any woman, Sheikh. You don't see anybody not wearing hijab or jilbab. Not just hijab, jilbab. Any adult woman. I never saw one. SubhanAllah. Or niqab. Like, they're just, the salah, Sheikh, there's an old man. He's got the external fixators, the rods sticking out of his legs. He's sitting on the bed like this. The rods are sticking out of his legs, sticking out of his legs here. No pain medicine. Old man, malnourished. The whole temple wasting his muscles or wasting away. Salatul Asr, he's sitting on the bed and he's praying. And then I recorded him and I watched, SubhanAllah. And then he's, he comes up. And then SubhanAllah, what's stuck in my mind is the image of saying this. It's ingrained in them, Sheikh. They believe it. Allah has decreed he's going to give victory to himself and his messenger. SubhanAllah. I don't think there are people that can be defeated. But I think that we have a lot to learn from their faith. And we have to do the best we can to fulfill their rights upon us. JazakAllah khair. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala give them victory in their lives. May Allah Azawajal allow us to be a means by which they're given victory. May Allah forgive us for our shortcomings. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala reward and protect all the doctors that have gone as well. May Allah Azawajal reunite them with their families and reunite the people of Gaza with their families. And all of us with our beloved Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
like that eight-year-old boy. May Allah allow us to be reunited with our Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. See a free Palestine here and see Firdos and paradise there. Allahumma ameen. JazakAllah khair for all of that. I know that was hard for you to do that. And I ask Allah to reward you for the times you've gone, the times you've wanted to go. For every human that you treated, for every cat that you fed. May Allah reward you, man. JazakAllah khair. I think our desire is all the same. We don't want to be there, so I don't know. JazakAllah khair, man.
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