MakeHeadline.com: [kanoshia] ACTIVE MUSLIM V MUTE MUSLIM -CONSOLIDATING THE MUSLIM RANK AND FILE PART 52

THE STREET MIMBAR Khutbah (13 April 2007)

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It is in such a manner that We make plain our signs so that the course of the

criminals may become clear.

Bismillah Ar-Rahmaan Ar-Raheem.

Alhumdulillah. Peace and blessings on Muhammad (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam), his Noble Companions and Family.

Brothers and Sisters, Muslims whose relationship with Allah Azza Wa Jall is one of responsibilities and duties and one of tasks and obligations....

audio on http://www.islamiccenterdc.com/khutbassermons.htm?archived=1&page=5 (01-09-2006)

CONSOLIDATING THE MUSLIM RANK AND FILE PART 52- (CONCLUSION)

MUTE MUSLIM V ACTIVE MUSLIM

Remember, what we speak about in developing the meanings of the ayaat and the ahadith are meant to be relevant to the world, the people and the issues that are around us. Allah says- the lesson from Surah An-Nahl is very pertinent to us, the Muslims, today. What does this ayah say?

Allah has coined a parable pertaining to two men, one of them is dumb, he can't talk, and he cannot do anything and he is a burden to those whom he belongs to or upon his guardian, in whichever direction he is placed, oriented or given, he does not produce any satisfactory result. Can we equate him with a person who demands justice while pursuing a straightforward course? (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

Here, we have a picture of two individuals.

Allah has coined a parable pertaining to two men (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

These are full fledged, grown-up and mature individuals, rajulayn- two men.

one of them is speechless; he can't express himself (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

Why? Is it because of a natural defect in him? If it was because of a natural defect in him, this man would not have been included in this ayah, but the reason why this person does not speak out is not because he has a speech deficiency, he doesn't speak out because he doesn't want to speak the truth. He doesn't want to express what is right and just in the particular place when it is needed or when we need a person to express what is right and just. So, this person chooses as a matter of his own will to be silent, speechless and dumb. It's as if Allah is saying to him what's wrong with you? that I have given you the ability and wherewithal to speak out and you choose to remain silent.

He's not able to do anything (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

Notice that Allah is saying that a person that is unable to say the truth at a time and a place when the truth it is needed to be said is not able to do anything.

This person is a burden on his own people, superiors, sponsors and guardians. (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

This is the type of person who is dead weight. These are not our contrived words and fabricated ideas, these are the words of Allah.

Where ever he goes, he cannot bring prosperity or do what is good- he is not productive (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

You tell him to go left, forward or right and he's a lost course. In any direction that you place this type of individual, nothing is going to come out of him. Why? Because to begin with, he chose to be silent when he should have been speaking out.

Can we equate this type of person or character with the other person in this parable- a person who demands justice? (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

Can we compare these two individuals? One of them chooses to be a silent, speechless, see nothing, say nothing and hear nothing type of person with the other who is exerting himself, not only speaking up for justice, but doing whatever it takes to demand that justice be done

while he pursuing a course that is unwavering and has no zigzags to it (Surah An-Nahl verse 76)

He's not looking to cut corners or for which is the easiest way out of this- he is pursuing the end and the aim of justice while he is on a direct and straight forward path. These are two individuals who Allah says, in his own words, they cannot be compared to each other, it's as if they are in two different universes or worlds. As we said, these guiding words of Allah are meant for us not just to look at two imaginatory personalities, but to take this standard and apply them to the people around us. How many people or individuals do you know that are supposed to be in positions to speak to the public? How many people do you know that say "we rather be silent about the vital issues; or we don't want to breach the most important issues; or don't tell us to speak about political or military issues?" They want to hide behind their silence- these are the people or the type of individual that Allah says is abkam, and not capable of doing anything, because if you want something to be done, the 1^st thing that you do is you talk about it. If you are not able to speak about it, it's not going to be done- because you haven't met the 1^st requisite of doing something.

Take todays issues- let's begin with the soft issues or the easy ones- some of you may not remember as you may be a little younger than your brother speaker- but during the 1950's and 1960's when there was this non-alignment movement, there were scores of nation states in the world who said "we want to take a neutral position in the fight between Washington and Moscow." Two of these countries began industrial military industry and civilian industries to build up their economies. One of them was Egypt and the other one was India. Look at all these years that have lapsed, almost a half a century has gone by- and look at Egypt, it doesn't have a military industry and an industrial structure to speak about and look at India, it has its military industry, (we're speaking about a very poor nation) and it has an industrial infrastructure, atomic weapons and its even beginning to think about having its own satellites. What happened? They began on an equal footing- one of them is a Muslim country and that is Egypt and the other is a non-Muslim country, and that is India. Why did something develop in one of these countries but did not develop in the other? No-one can come to the average thinking person and say to him that the Indian individual or people have more brains in them than the Muslims in Egypt. No one's going to accept that? Muslims are equally as brainy as everyone else, nothing more and nothing less, but why haven't we developed this capability? Because we are not trained every week in our Jum'ahs, and everyday in our Jama'ahs and we are not trained every season in our Ramadaans and in our Ashhur Al-hurum and on different occasions and every year during our Hajj and Umrah to work in this direction. We are trained to un-think ourselves! We are not supposed to think about our larger responsibilities in life. What's wrong? Why can't these people in these Masaajid, Islamic Centres and Islamic conferences speak about these issues? The type of Islam that they express is the type that will tell you, (we are just going through our internal minds), "it is forbidden by Allah for a Muslim women to become a Head of State." They give a blank statement like that, and then, they come and tell you that "it is permissible or rather it is the duty of a Muslim man to become a Head of State." But what happens if we have a Muslim man who is a butcher and a war criminal who becomes a Head of State and then we have a woman, a lady who becomes a Head of State but operates or administers that State in fairness? Which one is preferable? Of course, because of the 14 centuries of layered traditions that we have burdened ourselves with, we come and automatically give the answer that a man should be a head of state regardless of how he behaves politically and socially- he can kill his own people, but still a man is better than a woman and a woman may be able to run state affairs better than a man. Allah says in the Qur'an pertaining to a woman before she became a Muslimah, in recognition of the justice in the way she ran the affairs of State. Bilqis says to the decision makers around her

You know that I will not make a final decision before I consult with you (Surah An-Naml verse 32)

If there was no merit in a woman running the affairs of State in that way, Allah wouldn't have put down these words in a Qur'an Yutla, until the end of time. The deficiency is not in the words that we read from the Qur'an, the deficiency is in the mind that refuses to think about the words and meanings that it is reading.

Once again, we go inside our internal mind and encounters. To give you an example- you see two Muslims, one of them is a Salafi and the other is a Hanafi, and they will argue in a heated debate whether shaking hands with a Muslimah, a women, or not even shaking hands, but a Muslim man touching a woman is going to undo or invalidate his wudhu or not. Imagine, in the world that we are living in, we find this type of heated debate and where do we find these types of heated arguments? In places that are supposed to be our study groups, halaqaat and our meeting of minds and here's the level that we are at. We get worked up and steamed up in an argument about whether when a Muslim man touches a Muslim woman, is his wudhu going to become invalidated? The Salafi in 95% of the cases, is a follower, in the fiqhi sense, of Ahmed ibn Hanbal (radi Allahu anhu) and this Hanafi is a follower of Abi Hanifah (radi Allahu anhu)- none of them will ever open up the subject of why Ahmed ibn Hanbal was thrown into prison and was tortured behind bars. Ask this Salafi- even the enlightened one- who was ruling during the time of Ahmad ibn Hanbal; where was that jurisdiction and why did that happen? The same thing with the other person who's a Hanafi- he doesn't ask himself why was Abu Hanifah thrown into prison? Why was he tortured in prison and according to one account of it, why did he die because of that imprisonment and torture? This is the type of issue that is absent from our current thoughts and because these types of issues are absent, we have this type of world that we are in. No one is willing to speak about the political, ideological and active absence that we are guilty of. Why? What's wrong? You, as an individual make mistakes- all of us are error prone. Every son of Adam is error prone or commits mistakes. You take a look at yourself and say "wait a minute, I've done something wrong, let me ask Allah for forgiveness. If you can see this in your own life, and your own life is what?- 70 or 80 years- and you can't wee that in the Muslim life of 1,400 years?! We have become a Ma'soom political administration?! Look at the rulers that are ruling today- they rule in a way that they get away with murder, war crimes and everything that they're not supposed to get away with and you can't express your objection to them. It is against the man-made laws that are clamped down on the Muslims in Arabia to express opposition in the form of a rally. Let 50, 500 or 5,000 of us leave the Masjid and go to the emirs palace and say we object to the way that you are ruling- you can't do that- you're not carrying arms, you don't have machine guns or explosives- nothing, the only thing you have is your heart and the word of truth and you can't go and say to that dictator and despot who rules in Arabia "we disagree with your policies." Where did this come from? When Muslims disagreed with the khulafa', they would tell them in their faces- if we see a mistake in you, we'll chop off your head, so what happened from those times and days to these times and days? We no longer have what it takes to express our opposition to those who are ruling with iron and fire? What's wrong? What happened to these characters around? You ask yourself and you remember this ayah if you are tuned in to Allah. This is where we are today. Allah is distilling the polarisation in these two individuals, now, instead of one individual who can't speak his conscience and mind, we have hundreds and millions of people who are bukm, and on the other side, a person who demands justice and does everything to achieve that goal while he is on a straight path to Allah has become an endangered species. You don't encounter them very often. We don't find them plentiful around. We can take this imbalance if 50% were bukm and 50% were ya'muruna bil adl, but when we have this imbalance, with 99,99% of the people who are satisfied with a suspicious silence… We are supposed to speak the truth, especially from the Mimbar and especially on Fridays. You are free, brothers and sisters, you can go to these Masaajid and see if you can find the pertinent, effectual and waiting truth around, and if you can't, then you are encountering these bukm, dumb individuals, who refuse to express the truth when Allah wants them to speak out. We have an accumulation of this psychology that keeps on adding more layers- they will come to you and try to sit down with you and convince you that it is smarter for you to be silent. If we were living in a world in which our blood is not flowing and where there were not populations and continents that have gone under because of this silence and if there was a semblance of justice, they may have a point and you may want to listen to them, but when there are babies crying and millions of people who don't have homes and when there are wars against oppressed people and they come to you and say you have to be silent, we wonder where they are living and whether they can face Allah with their argument and attitude

on a day in which no amount of money or no numbers of progeny or forces are going to be of any advantage to any one. The only advantage is going to be for one who approaches Allah with a sound heart (Surah Shu'ara verse 88-89)

not a heart that has been polluted and diseased by these politics and politicians who want to play ball and play games with Ash-Shaytaan.

Brothers and sisters Committed Muslims…

You may not know this because some of this information is not meant for public attention, but there are governments in Muslim countries that are and have been writing laws telling the imams, the preachers on Fridays the subjects that you shall speak about shall be and then they give them a list of seven or eight topics, something like keeping the public areas clean as a subject of one of the khutbahs, and one of these imams can find a hadith to try to explain his khutbah. One of these hadiths says that the least expression of Imaan is to take a stumbling object from a pathway. He'll take that and he'll spin a full khutbah about keeping the streets clean. They want us to become civil servant slaves of the government that be and they institutionalise this from the mimbar. They don't want our minds to expand to see the larger picture- the picture of these governments who are responsible for not having enough pathways in the country, they're not distributing the wealth of the Muslims among the Muslims. Take another incident that also is not meant for public attention and that is the yearly voyage, rihlat as-saif, of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Every summer time, they have this royal voyage that they go on and they have this fleet of planes that fly them to summer resorts. This time, they snuck out of their country and went to a summer resort in Spain where they had built their summer mansions. The late king Fahd built something like a duplicate of the white house there. They take this entourage of thousands of maids and servants and this time there are only 14 princes or emirs and (we kid you not) some of these individuals go on one shopping spree and they buy these glittery items from boutiques or malls or shopping centres and just one shopping excursion and the bill (if we have our numbers correct) is $678,000. Then, they go into the Mediterranean with their yachts while two things are happening: they claim that they are representatives of Islam and many other Muslims around them are going under because of natural and man made causes and they are contributing to these catastrophes and disasters because of their behaviour and they are supposed to be off our mental radar screen. No one is supposed to speak about this and no one has been speaking about this and look at where we are!

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