# What Eid Was Like in Gaza | Gaza Diaries

**Author:** Dr. Omar Suleiman
**Series:** Gaza Diaries with Dr. Omar Suleiman
**Published:** 2025-04-12
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/R9LigjbII4Y
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/what-eid-was-like-in-gaza-gaza-diaries
**Topics:** Politics & Practical Theology, Psychology & Mental Health, Social Justice, Trauma

## Description
Dr. Farhan Abdul Azeez just returned from Gaza—again. He went during Ramadan, prayed Eid with children in new clothes, and hours later saw their bodies in the morgue. He stood beside men who were martyred moments after smiling with him. In this conversation with Dr. Omar Suleiman, he shares what he...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Dr. Farhan Abdul Azeez & Dr. Omar Suleiman

**[0:30]** May Allah accept it from you. May Allah accept it from your family and reward them as well for the sacrifice. May Allah reward all of the doctors who have gone, all of the doctors who intended to go, and all of their families. Allahumma ameen.

**[0:45]** I know, subhanAllah, on this trip in particular, with how tricky the situation was, you were very uncertain about whether or not you'd be able to get in. And some of the doctors from this community, may Allah reward them, went out and were not able to get in. But we ask Allah to reward them for their intention as well.

**[1:03]** Farhan, I'm going to start with this text that you sent on the day of Eid. I woke up here in Valley Ranch Islamic Center. You sent it at 7:20 a.m. So, subhanAllah, just as we were getting ready to walk out for Salat al-Eid here,

**[1:22]** you're sending this message from Gaza, and it reads, Today's been the worst day by far. Bombing most intense at Fajr when people were getting ready for Eid. Children in their Eid clothes and jewelry are in the morgues.

**[1:38]** One brother who I said salam to after Eid was assassinated. I greeted him after Salat al-Eid, and then I prayed janazah upon him after Salat al-Dhuhr. Tell us about the last 10 nights and Eid in Gaza. Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim.

**[1:54]** Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu. So, the plan was to enter on Thursday, March 20th, which would have gotten us to Gaza at the start of the 21st night of Ramadan.

**[2:10]** That was the intention. That was the plan we had made for months in advance. As you mentioned, many of the brothers from the community here were a part of this mission. SubhanAllah, one of the things that's been happening is the Israelis have been denying entry for physicians,

**[2:25]** but you don't get that denial until the night before you enter. So, you have to leave here. You have to go to Amman. You have to prepare as if you're going to enter, and then only Wednesday late night, you will find out whether you are granted clearance to enter or not.

**[2:43]** And, subhanAllah, the majority of the team was denied. Alhamdulillah, I was allowed in, but I was the only one allowed in from both the mission that entered and then the next following mission that had been to Gaza before.

**[3:01]** Everyone else from our team and the next team coming in were all first timers. Dr. Atar Haqq, who just stepped out so I can mention his name when he's not here, was among the people that was with us that was denied and turned away.

**[3:16]** And before I even answer your question, just to speak to the emotional toll that can take on someone. Obviously, all our hearts are in Gaza. All of us want to be in Gaza. All of you have said multiple times, including Shaykh, that you wish you could be a doctor right now, so you can go to Gaza and, you know, to see the devastation and the physicians who left.

**[3:37]** Atar was literally crying, literally crying that he couldn't go in. And, subhanAllah, in the battle of Tabuk, there were amongst the believers,

**[3:52]** those who could not go out. They didn't have the financial capability to go out, the means to go out. And so when they went to the Prophet (ﷺ) and asked him, asked the Messenger of Allah, can you give us something so that we can, anything that we can go out with you, the Prophet (ﷺ) did not have anything to give them.

**[4:08]** And Allah recorded their response in the Quran, تَوَلَّوْا وَأَعْيُنُهُمْ تَفِيضُ مِنَ الدَّمْعِ حَزَنًا أَلَّا يَجِدُوا مَا يُنفِقُونَ That they turned away with their eyes flowing with tears that they couldn't find what they had to support themselves on this journey. But it's a journey that it's risky. I mentioned, Shaykh mentioned that I met someone and 90 minutes later he was killed.

**[4:26]** Had I been him with, had I been with him at that moment, I may have been killed too. It's not something where, it's a journey that's not easy. And so just to see that level of, of, of faith from the people who were trying to go,

**[4:41]** Atar being one of them, someone I was hoping to be with and be a close companion with throughout the journey. SubhanAllah, he was denied. And just, just if I may, previously on my, one of my other missions, there was a Syrian doctor from Germany,

**[4:56]** a neurosurgeon who had been to Gaza on that mission that we went with was his 37th time in his life going to Gaza. The first during the war, but 37 times. At this point, he's 68 years old or late 60s, 68 or 69.

**[5:15]** A man of shorter stature. If you were to see him, you wouldn't think much. An older man, you know, doesn't have a big beard or anything like this. But subhanAllah, 37 times to Gaza. Every time he's gone in, every day he's there, he fasts.

**[5:30]** He's never been to Gaza except that he's fasted every day when he's in Gaza. And he would wake up at night and pray qiyam al-layl. At his age, 68 years old, one of the brothers in Gaza who, because the senior members of the hospitals all know him because he's been there going for years.

**[5:47]** They would say that they would see him just kind of dozing off in between conversations or after salah and the like. When he's not in the operating room, he would break his fast, voluntary fast, but he wouldn't break his fast until maybe midnight or 1 a.m. Because he's in the operating room doing surgery. And I'm mentioning that because the khair that you see in the Ummah and the people that want to go and help,

**[6:07]** it's really incredibly motivating to see that. People, someone of his age, still with that spirit and that strength of faith, even though his body is weakened. The strength of faith to be there to fast every day while he's there. He even made it a sunnah, like something that he would do.

**[6:22]** He would shave his hair before he would leave Gaza, almost like his umrah. I want to leave something behind of me in Gaza. So he would shave his hair before he would leave. And he did that the time we were there. Now, kind of building that into the question about Ramadan and Eid. Maybe before I talk about Ramadan, I'll just jump into Eid.

**[6:38]** So Eid salah, well, as you know, physicians are not to leave the hospital. We are supposed to be based at the hospital, stay at the hospital and not leave because it's not safe.

**[6:53]** Now, the hospital itself isn't safe, but it's safer. And I say that because we were supposed to enter Thursday, March 20th, and we were denied. The people who were approved, the eight of us out of the 18 that showed up Thursday morning to go to Gaza, got to the border at the Jordanian border, sat on the bus across to the Israeli side.

**[7:10]** And after waiting a total of about six hours, they took us off the bus and they returned us back to Jordan and said, you're not being allowed to enter. And so we had to wait five days until Tuesday to enter into Gaza. And so we missed the 21st and 23rd night of Ramadan there in Gaza.

**[7:30]** And subhanAllah, when we entered eventually on Tuesday, you know, we're supposed to stay at the hospital. Alhamdulillah, you know, I had a chance to go out with a friend for Eid salah. And I wanted to pray in the community. I didn't want to be in the hospital.

**[7:46]** I didn't want to, there was Eid salah at the hospital, there's a musalla at the hospital, but I wanted to be with the people because the hospital, it's a protected quote unquote area. Though we didn't enter on Thursday, subhanAllah, that Saturday night was a strike on Nasser Hospital, the hospital we were based at.

**[8:02]** So when we showed up on Tuesday, we could see the hole in the wall from the missile strike directly at the hospital on Saturday night that killed two people and injured six. A 15-year-old boy, an older man, were killed, and then six others were injured. And so when I say safety at the hospital, we say that with the caveat that the hospital was literally just bombed

**[8:20]** three days before I entered. After I exited, just now, many of you probably have seen the video of the journalists that were struck at Nasser Hospital. One of them, a scene that's unfortunately becoming all too familiar, of being burned while still alive.

**[8:36]** Struck and injured so he can't get up and flee, but his body is burning alive, and the video shows the body being burned. This is at the hospital grounds. So the hospital is not safe, but it's safer. Going out in the community, of course, there's more risk, there's no guarantee.

**[8:51]** Nevertheless, I wanted to go out and pray in the community, and so I did so, and it was beautiful to see. You see people walking from different areas, going towards what are now the musallas. Every masjid has been destroyed and bombed. So what the people of Gaza have done is they've built tents right next to the masjid.

**[9:11]** And so they pray taraweeh there, even post-breaking of the ceasefire, they were still gathering to pray taraweeh in numbers, because I—maybe we can talk about it later if you remind me. I went to the masjid for taraweeh as well.

**[9:27]** So I went for a prayer. I saw people going in different musallas, somewhere out in the open, just on the street. Kids with their parents walking to the musalla as well as tents. So I prayed inside of a tent. The musalla was packed. It was immediately next to or across from a destroyed masjid.

**[9:45]** The masjid, the crater that the missile left at that masjid went 18 meters deep. That's the level, the strength of the bomb they used to attack that masjid in Khan Yunus. And subhanAllah, the khateeb, it was a short khutbah.

**[10:00]** It was six minutes, and he reminded the people of the same things that— See, the religion of Islam is universal to everyone. So the same messages that you're being shared with here, they're being shared with there. They're a reminder of taqwa, that Ramadan is meant to build in us things that carry on with us throughout the year.

**[10:17]** But one thing he emphasized to the people is that all of you have suffered. All of you have lost something, your homes, your family, your loved ones, your limbs. But Allah wants us to be happy on this day, so we will be happy on this day. And so that's the spirit of the Palestinian people,

**[10:32]** that despite their family members being in prisons, being tortured, and their family members being martyred, and they themselves having suffered, all of them are living out of tents or destroyed homes. I visited some people after Eid, and we sat in destroyed homes.

**[10:47]** And literally, subhanAllah, they had things like this, you know, to decorate the home and put some, you know, decorations up, whatever, so the kids feel the spirit of Eid. And that's what the khateeb emphasized. Make sure that you bring happiness to your children, even despite the pain that you are suffering.

**[11:03]** So it was beautiful to see, and it was beautiful to experience. And then after Eid salah, we visited some of the homes and sat with different people. And all of that, it's kind of like this tradition we have here, you know, the open houses. We did something similar, it's a much smaller scale.

**[11:19]** Because of the danger of being out in the open in groups and the like, people didn't gather much. But there were small gatherings, people going to different tents or destroyed homes that people are living out of. And subhanAllah, I had a chance to do that and sit with different people as well.

**[11:37]** Actually, just to tie it back to Atar and Dr. Sameer, the two people who I was mentioning in the beginning, Dr. Sameer, the Syrian doctor, who have gone 37 times, one of the people we sat with was a 79-year-old man who lives in Egypt.

**[11:55]** And he entered into Gaza a month before the war started to visit his family. He's from Gaza, but he's living in Egypt now. And subhanAllah, I didn't know any of this about him until he later told me. But when I sat with him, I mean, the picture, you know, in Gaza and in Palestine, there are many lions.

**[12:19]** When you see the elderly men, particularly, they, to me, are like the lions of Allah. In Quds, you see it, and Masjid al-Aqsa, those of you who've been before, you know what I'm talking about. And in Gaza, this man, subhanAllah, old man, 79 years old, but the picture of sakinah.

**[12:39]** He had black dress shoes, black dress pants, a suit jacket on, looked very well-presented, well-composed and the like. And when he told me he lives in Egypt and he entered in, you know, a month before the war, I asked him, why are you still here?

**[12:54]** Because he could have left back to Egypt. He could have left because he's from Egypt. He didn't have to pay the $5,000 that the Egyptians were charging, minimum $5,000 or $10,000 or up to $12,000 to leave before May 7th when Israel took over the Rafah crossing. So prior to that, people could go in and you could exit Gaza, but you have to pay this fee of $5,000 at minimum.

**[13:14]** And so he could have left. And so I asked him that question, why didn't you leave? And his response was so telling. He said that, he quoted the hadith of the Prophet (ﷺ), in which the Prophet (ﷺ) said that the best ribat, the best form of keeping, you know,

**[13:34]** keeping your ground on a Muslim territory that's being under attack, there will come a time when the best ribat will be the ribat of Asqalan, which is the ribat of Gaza. Gaza is Asqalan, present-day Asqalan. And so he quoted that hadith. And so he said, why would I leave?

**[13:51]** 79 years old. And he said, why would I leave when I can have this reward? Prophet (ﷺ) said that one day in ribat is better than this whole world and everything that's in it. And he wanted that despite, again, the dangers, the hunger, the starvation, everything you can imagine. In the home that we were sitting in were three prisoners who were released,

**[14:10]** who had been taken prisoners and released. Two of them were kids. Two of them were not adult yet. They were teenagers. And subhanAllah, so he's literally, he's seen it, he's witnessed it, he's lived it. But his spirit is that I will be here with the people.

**[14:25]** You know, Abdullah bin Umm Maktoum (رضي الله عنه), one of the blind companions who, you know, the mu'adhin of the Prophet (ﷺ), later in the khilafah of Umar al-Khattab, he wanted to go out with the Muslims for battle. And Umar al-Khattab had told him, you know, where are you going? You know, what are you doing? You're blind. And he told him,

**[14:41]** Ya Ibn Khattab, are you going to come between me and martyrdom? And so Umar said, but what would you do with them? You're blind. And so he said in response, At the very least, I will be with them in number. You know, when the enemy sees us from far away,

**[14:56]** they will see that there's one more person there. I will increase the numbers. So that spirit is one of the things you learn from the people of Gaza is that that spirit of the connectedness of the Ummah, even though the Ummah has abandoned them, they still feel that spirit amongst themselves.

**[15:12]** That was the message on Eid salah, the khutbah was make sure you keep the ties of kinship, make sure you greet one another and the like. So subhanAllah, there's so many lessons to learn from the people of Gaza, but that was one of them from that visit on Eid day and the khutbah and the people that you meet there,

**[15:27]** the spirit that they have. When Allah says, اصْبِرُوا وَصَابِرُوا, Allah says be patient and then outpatient your enemy. Sabiru means be more patient than your enemy. So subhanAllah, they have the spirit of not only will be patient,

**[15:42]** but no matter what you put us through, our patience will wear out your oppression. SubhanAllah. Before we get back to Salat al-Eid and what happened at the rest of Eid day, to really hone in on that, you know, people turning away and their eyes filled with tears.

**[16:03]** I think that that's something that one of those lessons from the seerah that we struggle with, even with the Prophet (ﷺ) himself and Abu Bakr (رضي الله عنه) was told that he would accompany the Prophet (ﷺ) and he cried out of joy, even though knowing that as-suhbah Ya Rasulullah meant that he's probably going to be killed

**[16:19]** because the Prophet (ﷺ) is the most hunted man right now in the region, but to be with the Prophet (ﷺ) gave him a great amount of joy. These people that were turned away. It's actually subhanAllah something stunning that I don't know a single doctor who went to Gaza

**[16:35]** that hasn't said that they wouldn't go back. It's actually stunning. Like it's counterintuitive. You would think that someone would say, all right, I did my service and the amount of trauma that I saw there because everyone who's been there says that I saw what I've never seen anywhere else.

**[16:53]** Even people that have been to war zones say this is the worst that I've ever seen. I've never seen a nightmare scenario like this one, but still they want to go back. Dr. Muhammad Tahir subhanAllah visited us, was there for what seven months and he was turned away and he was deeply emotional that he couldn't go back

**[17:09]** and be in the midst of that. You would think that someone like At-Tahir may Allah bless him and his family would you know, if they deny you it's like, oh, well, I guess I did my part now. It's lifted from me, but they wanted to be there. People want to be there.

**[17:24]** And I literally saw the what you just mentioned of when I saw and I said, I never saw someone cry out of happiness. Except when I saw my father, Abu Bakr crying out of happiness when he was given the glad tidings of being with the Prophet (ﷺ) in Hijrah. I saw that as well because when Alhamdulillah earlier in the war

**[17:43]** in Ramadan of last year 2024, I was part of a team of four people that went north. That was the first team to go north since the war started. And so nobody had done it yet. There was concerns for safety and all these a lot of logistical things and whatever. But Alhamdulillah Allah honored me to be among those four people

**[18:01]** and I saw the same thing because again, like they told us you have to have a satellite phone. We didn't have a satellite phone. The UN, they said you have to have a Garmin SMS, you know, GPS tracking device. We didn't have that. You need food for a month. We didn't have that. We didn't have any of the things they said you have to have.

**[18:16]** And so they were actually trying to cancel the trip on us. And then we insisted Alhamdulillah, they agreed and we went. And again, the idea of safety not being able to go north or going north where, you know, people hadn't gone yet and the concern and the like. I literally saw people crying out of joy that Allah chose them to go north

**[18:34]** even despite the dangers upon them. So you see both sides of it, subhanAllah. If you don't mind, I'm going to ask you like psychologically, you've seen, I don't think you performed amputations before this, right? Before you started going to Gaza.

**[18:50]** You've seen the most horrific physical injuries. You've shown me pictures of people without faces that I mean are a nightmare to just see on a phone. Psychologically, mentally,

**[19:05]** how does that not get to you? When it comes to your own fate and your own state? You know, the first day we were there, we got there Tuesday night, but we stayed at a safe house,

**[19:21]** which is the first time I've ever done that. And then Wednesday morning we went to the hospital. And so Wednesday morning we stopped by European Hospital before going to Nasser Hospital. And so I went to visit one of the brothers. The morgue at these hospitals is on campus.

**[19:36]** It's like right next to the hospital. It's a separate building, but right there. So I went to visit one of my friends there who reminds me a lot of Khalid Nabhan, Ruh al-Ruh. His name is Abu Sajid, may Allah protect him. And when I went in, one of the three scenes from this trip that I will never forget

**[19:53]** was the body of a young man. And forgive me, I don't mean to be too graphic, but obviously martyred in the freezer at the morgue. He showed me him, but half his face was eaten away by the cats and the dogs

**[20:14]** from the streets because there's no food for the animals. And so literally half his face was normal and half his face was completely gone. All the musculature, forgive me, I don't want to be but so I asked this exact same question to the brothers at the morgue, right?

**[20:33]** People I would spend evenings with every time and break fasts with them. And so they're seeing this on a daily basis for a year and a half. The most horrific scenes, things that don't make it to

**[20:49]** Instagram or Facebook and the like because of how horrific they are. With every journalist that's killed, with every physician that's killed, there is a lot of documented war crimes that are also buried because if you look at anybody's phone in Gaza, you will see the most horrific things.

**[21:04]** And so I asked him that question, the same question he just asked me, how do you keep your heart strong? How do you keep your sanity psychologically? And again, his answer was very telling. How do I do it?

**[21:19]** I don't think, I don't know if I do. I try to follow their lead, but I'm obviously nowhere near where they are. But what he said was, what he said was, he quoted the hadith of the Prophet (ﷺ). I don't know the exact Arabic text, but

**[21:35]** he mentioned the hadith that the Prophet (ﷺ) said, whoever, whoever, you know, washes the body of their brother and prepares his kafan, and they cover him properly. So they do the, they honor the dead with a proper washing and wrapping with the kafan.

**[21:53]** He'll be forgiven for 40. And he said the hadith is left generic. It's not known whether it was 40 years, 40 days, 40 weeks, 40 months, 40 major sins, 40 minor sins. It's left generic, but we know as a principle in Islamic studies in the Arabic language, when things are left general like that, it's meant to maximize the amount of potential reward.

**[22:12]** Rather than limiting the reward to something specific, it's meant to leave it open to, to let your mind wander to the most generous reward that Allah will give you. And so what he said is he quoted the hadith and he said that there is a sweetness of iman that we taste in the ta'a of Allah,

**[22:31]** in the obedience of Allah (ﷻ). That Allah puts a, it's as if Allah puts a shield on our minds and our hearts so that what we are seeing of the most horrific of things, doesn't break us.

**[22:46]** And rather we have, we find a level of contentment and joy that Allah puts in our heart that we are worshipping Allah in a unique way. They're all volunteers, by the way. Every one of them is a volunteer. No one gets paid a penny. They don't take a penny from the people who are bearing their debt or their loved ones.

**[23:03]** And subhanAllah, you think of the hadith of, of, you know, the conversation between Abu Sufyan and Hercules. When Hercules asked him a series of questions about the Muslims and about the Prophet (ﷺ), you know, are their numbers going up or going down? Who follows them? Are they the poor or the rich? Did he ever claim, did he ever claim kingdom, you know, from his past?

**[23:19]** All these questions about the Prophet (ﷺ). Then one of the questions that Abu Sufyan was asked by Hercules was, does anyone leave the religion after embracing it? Hercules asked him, Abu Sufyan,

**[23:34]** remember the story, Abu Sufyan's in the front and his people are behind him, you know, and he said that don't, tell me the truth of it. And if he lies and you people behind him tell me he's lying, this is this hadith. So one of the questions that was asked in this interview with Abu Sufyan was,

**[23:49]** does anyone leave Islam after entering it? And he said no, Abu Sufyan said no. And so when Hercules was done asking all the questions, he then explained to him why he asked everything that he asked.

**[24:04]** And when it came to this question, he said, you know, I asked you about iman and people, I asked you about people embracing Islam, do they leave Islam? And you said no. And he said, And that's what faith does.

**[24:21]** That when it enters into the heart, the heart embraces it with this level of joy and strength that it will never want to leave it again. And so when you see people leaving Islam now, you question have they ever have tasted Islam to begin with?

**[24:38]** Because the Sahaba went through things far beyond what we could imagine. You know, it's hard to see. It's hard to see that, you know, the, Alhamdulillah, one of the brothers who did make it in from the US, the only other brother who made it in this trip was Shaykh Hatim Al-Hajj, hafizahullah ta'ala, one of the scholars of our community, of the Muslim Ummah in the West.

**[24:58]** And so I asked him the same question. I said, Shaykh, you know, how do we, how do you, you know, process all of what we're seeing? And, you know, he mentioned that, you know, the Ummah before us, the hadith process, and when he talked about how they would, people would be brought and cut in half, their skin would be, you know,

**[25:17]** taken off of them and the like, but it didn't make them leave their Islam. So when you see, you see the tests that they're going through, you see what they're seeing, you would think the typical person, this would break them, a day, two days of this. I was there, this trip was only one week because they cut our trip short in the beginning

**[25:34]** and in the end, they made us leave early. I was literally there for eight days or nine days, but two, which are travel. So really only seven days there. And the things that I saw, I will never forget, but they're living this. But subhanAllah, there's a,

**[25:50]** this is what, this is their answer, that there is a level of, of sitr Allah places upon them, that Allah prevents their heart from breaking, and a level of strength Allah gives them, and a level of enjoyment of worshipping Allah, that Allah puts in their heart, that makes this,

**[26:08]** what they see easy upon them. SubhanAllah. Shaykh Hatem, for those of you that don't know, is one of my teachers, and Shaykh Hatem is a PhD in Fiqh, and also a doctor, medical doctor. And subhanAllah, quietly, he reached out last year,

**[26:24]** and he asked me, he asked me if I could put him in touch with Dr. Farhan, so he could quietly go to Gaza. The definition of an 'alim, who is an 'amil, who, a scholar who put his, his knowledge into action.

**[26:40]** Didn't post online, no social media about it, just went quietly. I haven't had the chance to talk to him yet, because he's not back yet. He left Gaza, but he's not back in the States yet, from what I know. But subhanAllah, I was vividly, like I could recall,

**[26:56]** Shaykh Hatem crying in 2014, sitting with him. I remember it very vivid, while we were sitting and just eating, and someone told him something about Gaza, something that had happened. I remember him breaking down and having to leave the table. No pictures, nothing on the screen, just sharing the news of, of some of the

**[27:14]** istishhad of the people. I, like, can't begin to fathom what it's like for a man, and may Allah forgive me. I know he'll be upset with me, so I'm trying to be very careful here.

**[27:29]** But someone who, has that much of a soft heart, I can't imagine what it's like for him to see that stuff and still function. Can you tell us a bit about those conversations? I mean, you shared like the khutbah that he gave in the hospital, khutbah al-jumu'ah,

**[27:45]** with us. What was that like, seeing it through his eyes, being with a scholar of Islam, who teaches the people, and also is a medical doctor, who's in that situation for the first time? Obviously, it was an honor and a privilege to be able to be with him.

**[28:00]** During the days, he's a pediatric hospitalist, so I wouldn't be with him during working hours. His working hours were typically, you know, morning until late afternoon. The ER, obviously, he's in the ER. I'm an ER physician, so I may be in the ER day or night.

**[28:18]** So I didn't work with him ever during any, like, on patients. But, and again, kind of like you, I know he wouldn't want me to share much. I would say, you know, may Allah bless him and reward him.

**[28:33]** He is a very soft-hearted man, and many times was moved to tears throughout our journey. The moment we got there, we haven't even gone to the hospital yet. We were just in the guest house, the safe house, quote-unquote, and and he was already in tears.

**[28:49]** SubhanAllah. SubhanAllah. And he, yes, Allah, Allah, and I was thinking what an honor for him that Allah honored him to give Jumu'ah khutbah at the hospital, at Nasser Hospital, and lead on the 27th night of Ramadan. He led part of the taraweeh.

**[29:05]** And he gave Eid khutbah at one of the musallas next to the safe house. I didn't know he was giving Eid khutbah, but I was, obviously, I was not there for the khutbah itself. I was at another masjid, but Allah honored him to, to not only lead on the 27th night of Ramadan,

**[29:21]** including the witr, but also lead Jumu'ah khutbah and lead Eid salah in Gaza. May Allah preserve him and accept him from the Lord. I mean, I wasn't going to tell anybody that he went until someone put a clip on him.

**[29:36]** I interviewed with him in Gaza. Anyway, I said, khalas, the cat is out the bag, right? But may Allah reward him as well and increase him and fortify his heart and elevate him and forgive him for any shortcomings in the process

**[29:51]** and continue to preserve him for us. Allahumma ameen. Back to the day of Eid. I want to move to that text that you sent. So Eid started off a certain way to end it a certain way. Yes, so Alhamdulillah, so the days prior to Eid,

**[30:06]** so when Israel broke the ceasefire and just did a mass bombing campaign, I mean, literally just numbers in the hundreds coming into the hospitals at once between the dead and the injured, that lasted for about a week. And so when I entered Gaza, it had calmed down some.

**[30:23]** And so Alhamdulillah, up until Eid day, it was relatively, relatively quiet. Probably from my previous trips, this one I would say was the least, those up until Eid was the least amount of work that I had done.

**[30:38]** This whole trip definitely was the least amount of work I had to do in the ER. And the ER was well staffed as well. Alhamdulillah, foreign doctors were there as well as their own local teams. But then Eid day, I prayed Salat al-Fajr at European Hospital. And from before Fajr, from qiyam, late qiyam,

**[30:55]** until Fajr, through Fajr, until Eid salah, it was almost nonstop bombing. You're just hearing the bombs go off and off and off every few minutes. And so subhanAllah, when I went back to the hospital,

**[31:10]** that's when we saw what we saw, honestly, mainly at the morgue, just families, a family of seven, three children, the two parents and the two grandparents wiped out. And the imam of the masjid, hafidh al-Qur'an,

**[31:26]** leaving masjid Salat al-Dhuhr from Masjid al-Shafi'i, which is very close to Nasser Hospital, walking out of the masjid. He had just recited two weeks prior in the month of Ramadan, he recited Surah Al-Fatihah to Surah An-Nas in one sitting. And this is a practice of the people of Gaza that they do.

**[31:42]** Last Ramadan, on the 29th day of Ramadan, there were four women huffaz who did that on the 29th day of Ramadan, from Fatihah to An-Nas in one sitting. From Salat al-Fajr, they start and they finish by Salat al-Maghrib, or they try to finish by Salat al-Maghrib. He had just done that two weeks prior. 10 huffaz had finished their memorization with him.

**[32:00]** Young man, 25 years old, and he was martyred. And then of course, the children. When you see the children in the morgue, it hits you differently when you see children, especially in their new clothes, their Eid clothes, they're wearing their Eid jewelry.

**[32:16]** Two of the kids that I saw online, the videos went viral. They were at Nasser Hospital. I was there when they were in the morgue. They had a younger sibling as well, who was also in a body bag, but wasn't shown online.

**[32:32]** So that was a very difficult day because it's a day of happiness. It's a day of celebration. It's a day to remember Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Wa li tukabbiru Allaha ala ma hadakum To declare the greatness of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala for guiding us to Islam. And of course, that was the day they chose

**[32:48]** to make one of the most brutal days. It says everything you need to know about who they are. I mean, that they did that. And then it continued like that afterwards. The days after Eid, it picked up. It's the level of trauma we were seeing,

**[33:04]** the level of the number of casualties coming in. You were there when the ambulance... We saw the image of the 15 paramedics. Yeah.

**[33:20]** So you were there when they came to the hospital, when they brought their remains? Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that. So they had gone missing March 23rd. I didn't know about this. I was kind of cut off from the media and news and whatnot. So I had no idea until I saw all the people.

**[33:38]** There were so many people gathering outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital. And many of them were paramedics, both from the PCRF, the Palestine Red Crescent, as well as the Civil Defense.

**[33:53]** And so the Civil Defense, they wear green uniforms. And then the paramedics who go for medical care wear red uniforms. And so both were there in large numbers. And so when I inquired what's going on, they said that there was 15 of our colleagues

**[34:10]** and one UN worker, or 14 and one UN worker, I'm forgetting now, who had gone missing and they were killed and buried in a mass grave. And we are hoping that Israelis will give clearance

**[34:25]** to now move them to Nasser Hospital. We're not sure if they're gonna come tonight. And so they needed permission to move them. And so eventually they came that night and it was quite the scene. It was chaos. They had their pictures printed already

**[34:40]** because they knew who was missing, who was killed. And so they had pictures printed of the individuals, the shuhada. And when the body bags were brought in, they were opening the bags and identifying, trying to identify who was who.

**[34:57]** But you have to understand, these are bodies that were killed eight days ago. So bodies who have been exposed for eight days, they were buried. So they're all covered in dirt.

**[35:14]** Bodies begin to decompose within hours of death. So the smell was obviously overwhelming. The sight was overwhelming. The scene was overwhelming. The image of the bodies themselves was overwhelming.

**[35:30]** It was chaotic. Everybody was trying to come in. Obviously there was reporters there trying to capture what they can. We prayed janazah upon them. And then five of them were taken to civil defense. Five of the civil defense were taken to be buried

**[35:47]** that night. The PCRF shuhada, the nine of them were kept in the freezer until the next morning. And we prayed janazah upon them the next morning. And then they were taken in a procession with all the ambulances.

**[36:02]** And then they got permission from a few of, some of the families to perform autopsies on some of them. And so a few of the bodies were then taken out of the grave and brought back to the hospital the following day. And I was there for two of the four autopsies

**[36:21]** that were done on that day. One of them was shot six times, six different wounds to his chest and back. And the other one had a single gunshot wound entering his left chest with the bullet

**[36:36]** still inside of his right chest. An autopsy, I've never seen one before until that day in Gaza. Obviously we know it involves dissecting the body. And so it was a very difficult scene.

**[36:51]** And that's the third picture that I'll never forget. Before they even dissected the body, just seeing the body now nine, 10 days post being killed and just thinking, subhanAllah, what the body becomes,

**[37:06]** you know, a'udhubillah, forgive me. But as it begins to decompose, the smell, the swelling, the discoloration of the skin and the face and this becomes unrecognizable.

**[37:21]** And I was just thinking that, subhanAllah, we live our lives with so much emphasis on our image. So much emphasis on our image. What do people think of us

**[37:36]** and how we present ourselves to the world? But this is the end. Within hours after you die, you'll be nothing. Your body will begin to decompose. Within a few days, your body will be swollen and discolored.

**[37:53]** And seeing that from someone who was honored with shahada and what a way to go, you know, to be serving the people for 18 months, to save someone's, to save people's lives. Because what happened on March 23rd

**[38:09]** was one PCRF ambulance had gone to a strike and they found, they took three bodies, three people that were injured to European Hospital, two of whom had died and the third survived. And as they were going back to the blast site,

**[38:25]** they called for help. And so PCRF dispatched two more ambulances and they also dispatched two of the civil defense ambulances. So there were five now who went back, five vehicles, the team of 15. And that's when we saw the video

**[38:40]** that they were for five minutes straight, just open fire upon and massacred. We heard the audio of one of the paramedics, how he was asking Allah for forgiveness and sending a message to his mother that, oh, my mother, forgive me. I chose a path to serve the people

**[38:56]** until my last moment. And how Allah preserved his phone. SubhanAllah, the first vehicle, the original one that went, when they went back, there were three in that vehicle, two were killed, open fire upon, killed and the third was kept alive. The third one who was alive in the back,

**[39:11]** he called and left his phone on in his pocket. And so that's how the staff knew what was happening. Something was going down with them because his phone was on until the Israelis discovered it and shut it off. But again, going back to that scene of the paramedics,

**[39:28]** it's a reminder of so many things. A spiritual reminder I took from it was, again, how we put so much into our appearances and our dunya. We just put so much into this world, not knowing that at any moment, this could be our last.

**[39:44]** Why? Why do we invest so much into this dunya and forget about the akhirah? When this is the end that we will all face, no matter how amazing you are, no matter how righteous you are, no matter how evil you are, at the end of the day, we'll all be the same. Within a few hours, within a few days,

**[39:59]** our bodies will all look the same. But the other thing I took obviously was the brutality and the insanity of the Israeli regime to open fire indiscriminately upon 15 paramedics, people who were literally going to save people's lives. But this is a recurring theme.

**[40:15]** This is something that we've seen happen again and again with attack on the hospital, with attack on the physicians, with attack on nurses. Just yesterday, just yesterday, one of the surgeons in Ahly Hospital was killed on his way to work.

**[40:31]** He left his home going to work and he was bombed and killed. There are still, Dr. Hussam Moussafiya, may Allah preserve him and free him. Who I had a chance to work with last Ramadan in Kamal Adwan, he's still in prison, but he's not the only prisoner from the physicians.

**[40:48]** There are countless physicians and nurses who are still, and paramedics, including the cousin of Sister Iman, who's in our community here. We say, may Allah free him and preserve him. He is all, they're all still in prison. And I had, I don't know if we have time to talk about it,

**[41:03]** but I had a chance to sit with some of the prisoners and the conditions in the prisons and what they went through. It's beyond what you can imagine in terms of the brutality and the suffering. And I don't mean to paint a picture of doom and gloom,

**[41:22]** but you also need to know the reality. But at the same time, I wanted to hopefully, again, highlight the strength of faith that we see from the people there. I mean, the audio of that man, how Allah preserved it for the world to hear, who was murdered from the paramedics.

**[41:37]** That this is our job to serve the people and save the people until our last breath. I mean, what a remarkable way to go for the sake of Allah. The strength of the old man to be there, when he could have left, but he willingly chose to stay to face an unknown future

**[41:53]** because he wants the reward. The strength of the people. In the prisons, one of the things I asked them was how, again, the same question of, just like I asked the people in the morgue, how do you keep your sanity? I asked the same question to the prisoners. How do you keep your sanity

**[42:09]** despite what you were going through? And one of the things they said, subhanAllah, and it reminded me of something that Muhammad Sharif Abdullah Ali, he said, the founder of Al-Maghrib Institute, who passed away a few years ago. He was talking about how Allah tests us. And when Allah tests us, the purpose of a test is to push us back to Allah.

**[42:26]** Right, when we're tested with something, you find that your khushu' is maximized when you're going under a test. Whatever it is, if you have a big exam, a big interview, a big, whatever it may be, a court appearance, or whatever it is, a prospect for marriage, whatever, you're making a lot of du'a.

**[42:41]** You feel connected to Allah in those moments. And one of the things Shaykh Muhammad said that stuck with me was, he said that what I realized is that when Allah would test me, I would go back to worshipping Allah more intensely.

**[42:58]** My du'a, my dhikr, my qiyam, my salah, everything had a higher level of urgency, a higher level of concentration, and a higher level of humility to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. And then I realized that when the test would pass, those same qualities would begin to drop down.

**[43:14]** And so I realized when Allah says, wa nablukum bish shari wal khairi fitnah, that we will test you with difficulty and with ease, with evil and with goodness. You know, the idea that when Allah tests us with evil, if that's what's gonna push us back to Allah,

**[43:31]** then that's what we'll be tested with. So he said, imagine being tested by Allah with something, let's say, la samah Allah, all Muslims are put in a concentration camp. What would be your level of ibadah? And so when I asked the brother this question in the prison, he said that one of the things

**[43:46]** we would try and do in the prison is we would try to, as a group, as all the prisoners, make, for example, salawat upon the Prophet, a million times between all of us. Everybody takes a thousand, 10,000, 5,000 in a day.

**[44:02]** Now you're not allowed, if they would see your lips even moving, they would come into the room and beat you. You're not allowed to speak to one another. There was no speaking to any other prisoner. They spent the day and night, 24 hours, seven, when they were in the prisons next to Gaza, before some of them eventually would get transferred

**[44:18]** to prisons in Israel, like Ofer and the like. But before being transferred there, when they would be in these prisons outside of Gaza in Israel, they would be, they would kept blindfolded and zip tied or handcuffed the whole time, 24, seven, not allowed to talk, not allowed to see each other,

**[44:34]** not allowed to do anything, except when they would be taken for interrogation, then it would be far worse. But even during then, they would still come up with a way that we as a group, however many people are here, we'll make dhikr of Allah. So they said the dhikr of Allah kept us strong and the du'a kept us strong.

**[44:49]** You know, one of the brothers, a volunteer at the morgue, who was in prison for four months, I asked him, how do you keep strong? And he said, he said that, you know, I felt that Allah was with me, despite the horrors of the prison. The horrors that he described to me. I sat with him for 40 minutes during the second autopsy, actually. I sat with him and heard his story.

**[45:06]** And he said, I felt that Allah is with us, despite what we were going through and the dhikr of Allah. And why would he say that? Because he said, literally, I would make du'a. And literally, before I would lower my hands, the du'a would be answered. Like one time, he was put in a solitary confinement in an area where he was kept alone. And of course, the torture and what was going on there.

**[45:24]** And he said, ya Allah, please, I cannot take anymore. Ya Allah, please remove me. And he said, literally, before my hands went down, there was a banging on the door and they took him out. So subhanAllah, like what Shaykh Muhammad Sharif said was, why don't we worship Allah, like we are being tested with difficulty, when we're in times of ease?

**[45:44]** And Allah won't test us with difficulty then, because the point of the test is to push us back to Allah. And then when I heard what they were doing in the prisons to keep their iman strong, the dhikr of Allah and the like, I thought to myself, well, you and I, what should we take away from this? We're not in Gaza, we're not living what they're living, the nightmare that they're living. But the test is just as much as it is for them as it is for us.

**[46:05]** And so pushing yourself to a level of worship, that would bring the help of Allah to the Ummah of Muhammad (ﷺ). One of the du'a we should be making is, O Allah, return us to your religion, such that we will become a people that will be deserving of the victory of Allah that you promised us.

**[46:23]** That's the du'a we should be making, O Allah, allow us to become believers who will be worthy of the victory of Allah that you promised us. And so subhanAllah, that was one of the other things I took from the people of Gaza, that they are being tested in the most horrific of ways.

**[46:39]** But we are also facing a test, not only in the test of how we can support them, but in our day to day iman, our day to day struggle against shaitan, and our day to day abandoning, you know, leaving off sin and improving ourselves as believers. It's something that I think is one of the lessons I took from this trip as well.

**[46:55]** Just, I want to ask, I think, some messages for people in different categories. Three groups of people I'm going to give you, and I want you to address them inshAllah, at your pace.

**[47:10]** Number one is the Ummah as a whole. It's very clear that there is a sense of abandonment. One of the worst clips that I saw was the man who said, Muslimin wa Arab, batalti ahki maakum, ana bahki lil kuffar.

**[47:28]** Like, I couldn't believe what I was listening to. So I'm not even talking to Arabs and Muslims anymore, I'm talking to the non-Muslims. What are you going to do to help us? Forget about them, they abandoned us a long time ago. Sorry. Did you feel that that sense of abandonment is elevated now?

**[47:53]** The du'a I would hear people make at the morgue, because again, I would spend time there, it was never against Israel. It was never against Israel. The du'a they would make was against the Arab. Their neighbours who abandoned them.

**[48:09]** I would hear that again and again. Especially the countries that share borders with Gaza. Their du'a, they expect, from your enemies you expect what you expect. But from your own brothers,

**[48:26]** the level of betrayal that they feel definitely runs deep. So yes, there is, unfortunately, there is that sense, but it's the reality, it's true. The Ummah is to blame as a whole for allowing this to happen.

**[48:46]** But having said that, I will also share with you, Abu Sajid, the brother from European Hospital, hafizahullah, you know, he told me this himself. I asked him at Hajj actually, last year at Hajj, I asked him,

**[49:02]** give me a message I can share with the hujjaj. And so he sent me a voice note. And one of the things he said was, you know, we used to specify our brothers in our du'a before we would specify Israel. We would make du'a against those who abandoned us, before we would make du'a against our enemies.

**[49:18]** But then he said, but then, but then, he said, we asked Allah for forgiveness when we saw people coming like you, who would, meaning people who were, you know, teams that were coming in, standing with them, leaving their homes, leaving their families behind to be with them. And we saw what the people were going through to stand with us,

**[49:35]** whatever it may be, you know, the, the, he didn't mention it specifically, but, but something that certainly they've seen that, that they saw was the, the university protests, things that made it to the headlines enough for them to see as well. And he said that he, and what he said was,

**[49:52]** he said that the du'a that now, now that I make, I used to make the du'a, but now the du'a that I make is, oh Allah, whoever stood with us, whoever supported us, that oh Allah, on the day of judgment, when I stand before you, I ask you, oh Allah, to allow me to intercede for them.

**[50:13]** He said, oh Allah, allow me to intercede, allow us the people of Gaza to intercede for those who stood with us. And when Allah says in the end of Surah Al-Anfal, وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَهَاجَرُوا وَجَاهَدُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ

**[50:28]** Those who believe and make hijrah and fight in the path of Allah. وَالَّذِينَ آوَوْا وَنَصَرُوا And those who give aid and those who help. أُولَٰئِكَ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ حَقًّا They are those who are true believers. لَهُم مَّغْفِرَةٌ وَرِزْقٌ كَرِيمٌ They have forgiveness from Allah and a generous provision.

**[50:45]** So we ask Allah to make us amongst those, those who are, if not amongst those there in Gaza, those who at least offered aid and offered support. It is, there is this, among some people in the Ummah, there is this undercurrent. I literally had this conversation with someone in Medina,

**[51:01]** after Gaza, a physician there in Medina, who works in Medina, who was saying, why? Why go there? Why would you do that? Why don't you go somewhere else? Why are you going to Gaza? Why are you so passionate about Gaza? Why would you risk yourself? And all these, these, these thoughts,

**[51:16]** and sometimes these thoughts will come to our minds. But subhanAllah, you know, if, if, if we do whatever we can, what's, you know, Allah says in the Quran, قُلْ كُلٌّ يَعْمَلُ عَلَىٰ شَاكِلَتِهِ Let everyone work towards what's within his capacity to do. And that's what we'll be asked about.

**[51:31]** What we can do. And if we can do, if we can fulfill what we're able to do, then we ask Allah to at least pardon us for our shortcomings and write us amongst those who helped and gave assistance. You know, subhanAllah, I remember,

**[51:46]** like when the encampments first started, that's when I had the chance to visit Fumama in Qatar. You had about, at that time it was about a thousand amputees. Now it's over 3000 that are there in Fumama. And that's when the encampments were first starting.

**[52:01]** The only time like people's, people would have these big smiles on their faces, like, Oh, you know what's happening. You know, they're saying in Arabic, but it's like, what's happening in America? These young people that are taking to the lawns, like that's the bar, that's the bar.

**[52:17]** Like I'll get videos from people from Gaza, like sending thank you videos. Like what's the, the bar has been lowered so much in terms of what that support looks like. But it's very palatable when you're lit, when, I mean, again,

**[52:35]** we're, we're from a distance, you're watching the videos, the anger towards the Ummah is very palatable right now. Like you said, particularly towards the bordering nations. And that's a wake up call for all of us to be very careful to not end up

**[52:51]** on the other side of their du'a. And I know that, you know, we're not all doctors like you. We can't, we can't go even some of the doctors who wanted to go, but that's a wake up call that, you know, if you're treating this like another moment in our history, you know,

**[53:08]** this is just another one of the flare ups in history. And you're making calculations in your head that are not taking into consideration, like these, you know, these people will witness on the day of judgment for and against everyone.

**[53:26]** You know, Imam Ibn al-Qayyim rahimahullah mentions, as he was commenting on the hadith of, Antum shuhada Allahi fil ard, you are the witnesses of Allah on this earth. The word shuhada is a witness.

**[53:41]** They are shuhada because they're witnessing Allah's glory, Allah's generosity towards them. They're witnesses of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, like the ultimate reward, ash-hadahum, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, Allah caused them to bear witness to his throne, to just the incredible reward that he promises the believers.

**[53:58]** We are witnesses to them becoming witnesses. We're the shuhada of the shuhada in that sense. That essentially every single person that you interact with is going to, something's been established by virtue of that interaction. The people of Gaza have interacted with the rest of us.

**[54:14]** And, you know, I'm in a situation where, you know, a lot of you have come up to me and asked, you know, well, what do we do now? And I have to say, I don't know. I'm struggling for answers just like the rest of you in many ways.

**[54:30]** We're trying a door here, trying a door there, knocking a door here, knocking a door there. And I pray that Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala forgive us for those shortcomings and accept it. But the point is, is to be engaged in that effort and to be engaged in that thought, to be engaged in that himmah, that, you know,

**[54:47]** let your mind be preoccupied with Gaza. Let your heart be preoccupied with Gaza. Because Allah may test you with a moment in your profession. Allah may test you with a moment where you're called in a certain way and you're tested, you're put in a position.

**[55:03]** So let your mind and heart be occupied. And I know some of us, like we want to ward off the depressive thoughts. It is very overwhelming. I don't know what the right answer is in terms of finding a balance as to how much you look at, at what point you stop looking at the screen for a moment,

**[55:20]** take a break to be able to function again. But it is, this is a time for many of us, it may be the most consequential time of our lives. Allahu alam from what's coming. But suffice it to say that those that lived through 1948 and 1967,

**[55:39]** look to 2023, 2024 as more disastrous than that, right? Than the original Nakba. One of them is my father. And that dawned upon me quite a bit when he said that, that this is way worse than what we encountered back then.

**[55:54]** So this is a turning point in the history of the Ummah. Allahu alam with what's coming. This, you know, when your life is put on display on the day of judgment, Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala asks you and I about, you know, how your years spread out, how you live them.

**[56:10]** This is going to be a big blip of it. Huge blip. What did you do? May Allah reward you Farhan. May Allah reward you Atar. May Allah reward all the doctors that have gone. May Allah reward your families.

**[56:26]** You did your part and I know that that's not enough for you to hear and you want to do more. You know, I just interviewed Ibtihal from Microsoft, sister that put her whole career on the line, fired. May Allah reward her and those that are like them.

**[56:41]** There are people that are standing up in tech. There are people that have lost their jobs as lawyers, you know, in New York, sister Fatima and that group of young sisters and brothers that haven't been able to find jobs as lawyers anymore

**[56:57]** because they stood up that have been doxed by these Zionists. May Allah reward them and protect them. Every single one of us has to really ask like in my career space right now with what Allah has given me, what's my role?

**[57:12]** What am I doing? It's not enough for us to just to just say, oh, well, we're not doctors. Just throw our hands up and say, well, we can't go to Gaza because we're not doctors. I mean, ask yourself. It's a serious intention. If you were a doctor, would you go?

**[57:28]** That's a question. If you had it, would you go? Would you have been in that caravan to be at the doors? Because that matters too. Like that niyyah matters as well. In any case, I'm going to ask you two more audiences really quick. InshaAllah, I know we're over time.

**[57:44]** The doctors, I want you to give a message to doctors. Some that may have been on the fence about going. I remember in the early days of the genocide, like I'd have to be on the phone with some of the doctors and their spouses because their spouses were begging them not to go. And I thought, what a fitnah.

**[58:00]** You know, your parents are telling you not to go. Your wife's telling you not to go. What's your message to doctors and to their families? Sort of the medical responsibility in the long term because that is your profession. And then the last audience I want you to talk to are the kids. What you saw from the kids of Gaza.

**[58:15]** And just some nasiha for the youth here as well. JazakAllah. For the physicians, I think one thing I would say, just kind of touching upon what you said, what can we do if you're not a doctor? I feel like I am a physician and I feel like I haven't done anything for the people of Gaza either.

**[58:34]** Going there is being there for a few days, coming back. I feel like I've, every time I leave, I feel like I failed. Like why would you leave when Allah let you go there, you know? One of my friends who's a physician who I met on my first trip is still there.

**[58:53]** He stayed. His family lives in the UK. His wife and kids are in the UK. He's from Gaza originally and he said, I'm not leaving my people. SubhanAllah, for the last year and a half, he's been there. On my last trip, I gave him my leftover food,

**[59:09]** which was a Ziploc bag of tuna, three dates or four dates and a protein bar. And he messaged me after saying, thank you for the amazing food. This is the best food I've had in a long time.

**[59:25]** And it was a tuna and a protein bar. And he's willingly put himself there. I look at him and I look like I look at a hero. But for the physicians who are, who have the capability to go, particularly if you are a specialty of need, plastic surgery, vascular surgery, orthopedic surgery,

**[59:43]** wound care, skin grafting, you know, ER, there's a need, but not, I wouldn't say, I would definitely say the surgical specialties are higher, anesthesia, all these specialties. And you have the ability to go, you have the ability to go,

**[59:59]** The ability to go, you know, I would just, I would just tell you that, look, the opportunity to go is a blessing from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And you almost look at it like hajj, an invitation from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And if you haven't gone yet, you should be questioning what is it in your life that you've done that Allah's deprived you of this honor of being able to go to Gaza.

**[1:00:22]** The, there's a lot to say in terms of, you know, the typical fears that are brought up from family or from ourselves, maybe individuals about, about, you know, the worry of what's there and what to expect.

**[1:00:38]** Look, at the end of the day, we can, Dr. Salman, rahmatullah alayh, cardiologist from our community, who dropped dead from a heart attack, young and healthy in New York at an airport. Who's to say I'm not going to walk out here and die? And Allah, these are principles in the Quran that the people of Gaza, they don't just read, but they live by.

**[1:00:57]** You know, when Allah says, وَمَا كَانَ لِنَفْسٍ أَن تَمُوتَ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ كِتَابًا مُّؤَجَّلًا No one's going to die except at a written time, right? This is your time, it's going to be your time no matter what. Allah says in the Quran, وَقَالُوا لِإِخْوَانِهِمْ إِذَا ضَرَبُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ أَوْ كَانُوا غُزًّى لَوْ كَانُوا عِندَنَا مَا مَاتُوا وَمَا قُتِلُوا

**[1:01:12]** Allah says, O you who believe, do not be like those who disbelieve, and who said to their brothers, if you travel about in the land or you go out in battle, that if you stayed with us, you wouldn't have died or been killed. Right? These are principles that Allah mentions in the Quran. So, if we truly say we're Muslim and we believe what the Quran says,

**[1:01:31]** then this concern shouldn't be there. The companions, when they came back from Mu'tah, and Khalid bin Waleed kind of made the strategic retreat of the believers. He changed the sides and the like, and they were facing an army of 20 to 1 was the ratio that they're fighting against.

**[1:01:52]** And after six days and all leaders had been killed, Khalid bin Waleed takes over. And the Prophet (ﷺ) said that now the flags in the hand of a sword from the swords of Allah. When the people came back, their wives didn't welcome them home.

**[1:02:09]** Their wives didn't welcome them home. And so a message to the wives of physicians, they greeted them with stones and said, you're running away from battle. They said, you're running away from battle. Tafirun, I mean, you're running away. They greeted them with stones, go back. Right? And so if our wives are telling us don't go,

**[1:02:26]** I mean, we have to look to the example of the companions and the Salaf and the righteous before us and say, look, we have a responsibility to the Ummah, even if all it is like Shaykh Hatim al-Hajj,

**[1:02:41]** he's a pediatric hospitalist. He said the only reason why I didn't go up until now was because I felt my specialty is not needed to be a pediatrician, not trauma or surgery or anything, just a practicing pediatrician in the hospital. I felt like I wouldn't be able to offer anything. And he did.

**[1:02:57]** Alhamdulillah, he did serve. He served the people well. But he said, that's what held me back. But at the very least, when I mentioned this at the start of the talk, you know, the statement of Abdullah bin Umm Maktoum, just the fact that as a Western physician, you can be there or a physician wherever you are in the world, that you are there at the hospital,

**[1:03:15]** it gives the people comfort. When they made us leave a day early, they made Israel made the groups leave a day early. We were supposed to leave Thursday. We were supposed to leave Thursday. We left Wednesday. And the people of Gaza, they became scared. They were like, why are they making you leave a day early?

**[1:03:30]** What they thought was that that's a sign that they're going to attack. They want the Western doctors out. So your presence there gives the people strength. Your presence there gives them comfort. And I reassured them that even though we were leaving, other teams were still coming in the day we were leaving.

**[1:03:46]** So but but you're the spirit of being connected to the Ummah, the responsibility, the answer that you can prepare for Allah on the day of judgment, all of that. I mean, there's so many principles that I think we could talk about, but I hope I touched on some of them. It's a responsibility. Allah honored you with that specialty, the training to do, to help.

**[1:04:03]** And now, now, now is your chance to go. You know, we've spent years, years training and earning money and building up our, our, our, our lives in this world. But what have we built for the hereafter? It's the question we have to ask ourselves.

**[1:04:19]** The final audience for the youth. I will say this for the youth here, you know, post 9-11, which many of you now who are in your 20s or younger, your teens or your, you know, preteen years,

**[1:04:35]** you've grown up in a community that was definitely affected by 9-11. The pressure that we're seeing on the Muslim community right now is akin to what we were seeing post 9-11. And what we saw post 9-11 was a, a, unfortunately, a change in the, in the upbringing of our youth

**[1:04:59]** and the teaching of the people that we kind of started cowering and becoming scared from the pressure. So standing up for relief organizations that were being targeted. Muslims were being put in prisons left and right after 9-11 on trumped up charges, fake charges.

**[1:05:14]** There was not one, there was only one case post 9-11 that was tried up, at least up until a few years ago. I don't know if that's changed now, that did not succeed any charge of terrorism. And that was the wife of the, of the, the, the, the, the club in Florida.

**[1:05:31]** That was some guy shot up, some gay club, some Muslim guy shot up there. They went after his wife also. And that case did not succeed. Every other case against the Muslim, they just throw the terrorism charge on and then, and then just show pictures of 9-11

**[1:05:46]** and the juries would find them guilty, find them guilty, find them guilty, no matter what. Trumped up charges, make-believe charges. But so there was fear in the community. And so what happened was the Muslim community began abandoning these people. But you see in the people, the people of Gaza, they don't abandon the people that are marked for death.

**[1:06:02]** You know, there's journalists who are marked for death. Anas Sharif is marked for death. Israel put out a flyer, these six journalists we want dead. And you know what, Anas Sharif was at Ahly Hospital in the north in November when I was there.

**[1:06:17]** His tent was there. I would sit with him, people would sit with him. The administration of the hospital didn't kick him out and say you have to leave because we're afraid that your presence here will harm us. They're a community, they're a brotherhood. They live by that. And so the people of Gaza, they stick together despite being singled out and being, you know,

**[1:06:37]** trying to break the fabric of the community, they still stick together. And what we saw post 9-11 was a fraying of the community bonds that we had. Those same principles standing up for one another, Muslims started saying, you know what, I need to worry about myself. And it's unfortunate, but it happened. And so we're seeing this again now.

**[1:06:53]** And so what I would say to you, to the young people, is that do not let that happen. And I think there's a responsibility upon us, meaning the imams of the masajid and the leaders in the communities and the khatibs and the like, to teach the community these principles, that we aren't to cower.

**[1:07:11]** We're not a community that cowers in the face of pressure. We aren't a community that becomes silent in the face of pressure, right? And that's something that we have to teach our kids. Don't teach your kids to be cowards. Teach your kids to be brave. Teach your kids to stand up, to speak up.

**[1:07:28]** This is the generation that we have hope in, inshallah ta'ala, that will bring Islam back to a position of respect, a position of honour. And that's not going to come by being cowards. And so I think, you know, just like the people of Gaza invest in their tarbiyah,

**[1:07:47]** we have to do the same. The Qur'an not just being words that we recite, but words that we live by. The things I mentioned for the doctors apply to us as well. The tarbiyah of our children is so important because they're the next generation. And I'm afraid what will happen post, what happened post 9-11 will happen again now.

**[1:08:07]** And my message to the parents and those involved in youth work and those involved and the youth themselves, don't cower, you know, stand up, be strong, be brave. You know, I'll tell you this and I'll forget, I know that Salat al-Isha has entered. But look, when the Prophet (ﷺ) told Ibn Abbas, the famous hadith,

**[1:08:24]** that if the whole nation, the whole world were to gather to harm you with something that Allah has not written for you to be harmed with, you will not be harmed by that. This is something you have to understand. And the people of Gaza, Mahmoud Basr, the leader of the civil defense, he's been marked for death by Israel and multiple times they've tried to kill him.

**[1:08:42]** He was driving his ambulance, the bomb went off right next to him, but he survived. Second time he was bombed and he was told, we're going to kill your family, just like they do to the prisoners. They said, we will, they literally killed the wives of the prisoners to force them to confess to crimes they didn't commit.

**[1:08:57]** I'm going to get a chance to talk about the prisoners of this gathering, maybe another time. Mahmoud Basr, he said, literally one time I was standing there, you've all seen him, if you don't know his name, you've seen his videos. He's saying that I was standing in a place and literally the bomb landed right in front of me,

**[1:09:12]** but it didn't explode. It buried itself into the ground and it didn't blow up. Because if Allah doesn't want for you harm, no matter what all the nations in the world will do, they cannot harm you if Allah doesn't will for it to happen. And so having that belief, these are principles we learn about.

**[1:09:29]** This is, everybody know, right? All of you studied this hadith before, but do we believe it? Do we internalize it? Do we live by it? These are things we have to teach our children. We have to implement ourselves that look, Allah is ultimately in charge. And even if you are afflicted with something of difficulty, your reward with Allah is raised, your rank is raised.

**[1:09:47]** Right? And ultimately the plan of Allah is the best. So may Allah give us strength. May Allah give us tawfiq. May Allah allow us to learn from the people of Gaza the strength of iman. May Allah protect our communities, protect our families, and allow us to be amongst those who are written at the end of the day of those who stood up

**[1:10:02]** and helped the people of Gaza and not of those who abandoned them. Allahumma ameen.

## Other Episodes in "Gaza Diaries with Dr. Omar Suleiman"
- [I Was The Biggest Atheist Until Gaza | Gaza Diaries | Dr. Omar Suleiman and Robert Martin](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/i-was-the-biggest-atheist-until-gaza-gaza-diaries-dr-omar-suleiman-and-robert-martin.md)
- [He Found His Wife in Gaza | Gaza Diaries | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Dr. Mohamed Mustafa](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/he-found-his-wife-in-gaza-gaza-diaries-dr-omar-suleiman-dr-mohamed-mustafa.md)
- [Oct 7th | Why Doctors Beg to Return to Gaza | Gaza Diaries with Dr. Omar Suleiman](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/oct-7th-why-doctors-beg-to-return-to-gaza-gaza-diaries-with-dr-omar-suleiman.md)
- [Injustice Won't Stop Us: Mahmoud Khalil with Dr. Omar Suleiman | Gaza Diaries](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/injustice-wont-stop-us-mahmoud-khalil-with-dr-omar-suleiman-gaza-diaries.md)
- [The South African Minister Who Took on Israel | Dr. Naledi Pandor | Gaza Diaries with Dr. Omar Suleiman](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/the-south-african-minister-who-took-on-israel-naledi-pandor-gaza-diaries.md)
- [Reverend Munther Isaac Calls Out Christian Zionists | Gaza Diaries](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/reverand-calls-out-christian-zionists-munther-isaac-gaza-diaries.md)
- [Microsoft Fired Her For Defending Palestine | Gaza Diaries | Ibtihal Aboussad and Dr. Omar Suleiman](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/microsoft-fired-her-for-defending-palestine-ibtihal-aboussad-gaza-diaries.md)
- [How Your Tech Is Being Used for Genocide | Gaza Diaries](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/how-your-tech-is-being-used-for-genocide-gaza-diaries.md)
- [The Du'a of Yunus Under the Rubble | Gaza Diaries](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/the-dua-of-yunus-under-the-rubble-gaza-diaries.md)
- ["If You Hear Bombing, Say Alhamdulilah" | Gaza Diaries](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/if-you-hear-bombing-say-alhamdulilah-gaza-diaries.md)
- [Nasser Hospital to Biden Walkout | Gaza Diaries](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/nasser-hospital-to-biden-walkout-gaza-diaries.md)