THE STREET MIMBAR Khutbah (29 December 2006) e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] webpage: www.geocities.com/khutbahs http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_street_mimbar/ Suggestions & Criticisms: PLEASE E-MAIL 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, 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=6 (6-2-2006) CONSOLIDATING THE MUSLIM RANK AND FILE PART 36 AL-HAJJAJ AL-THAQAFI: EARLY WAR CRIMINAL Sometimes people fail at expressing the truth and Allah says Be on guard concerning Allahs power presence and express whatever you have to say with accuracy (Surah Al Ahzaab verse 70) The 1st portion of this Qur'anic sentence fixes our attention on Allah and His power influence in every aspect of life, thereby there's no excuse for anyone, no justification for scholars and no alibi for people who know the truth and then will not want to say it. If we are all in agreement that Allah is the power and Allah does and decrees whatever is final in this life, then who are we to say that the circumstances are not right to express the truth or the audience is not mature enough to understand the truth or our personalities are not strong enough to verbalize the truth. If in this human vessel of ours- our thinking minds, pulsating hearts and stirring emotions- there was a living fact that occupies our notions, propels our will and defines our conscience, we would not come and say "well, we have to factor in some type of superpowers or we have to take notice of some type of security agents" and the other continuing line of apologetics that are strewn in our way as we encounter people who fail to express the truth. We have been on a trail for almost a year- seeking out buried facts, looking for hidden information and trying to locate the truth of the matter wherever we may find it and we will continue, especially when we have no choice except to pursue this line. We're not cowards- we will say the truth whenever we come across it and to whoever will listen, unlike those who give legitimacy to the status quo by there Shaytaani silence on these issues of destiny. The Muslim mind has developed a shell where it dwells and this Muslim mind has justified its position in this shell as a matter of culture. This is not just an academic statement that is current for a few months or years and then it fades away. This is not a legal procedure that is part of an establishment or government so that when that government or establishment ceases to exist, along with it goes this legal procedure. This is much more than governments and think tanks; this is a culture that justifies the status quo- as suffocating as it has become. Because this culture that we share has its vulnerabilities, which has nothing to do with the Qur'an or the Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam)- when we speak about the issues that we have been speaking about, this culture invites wars or occupation and aggression. The Qur'an and the Prophet stand for a political orientation that repels, retards, destroys and defeats aggression and occupation. The mind teaser is "why do we belong to a culture that brings upon us what it has brought and at the same time claim that we belong to Allah and His Prophet who do not tolerate the circumstances and conditions that we have at the same time?" We tried our best to take a piercing look at the issue- with all the sincerity, understanding and insight that comes from being a Muslim who tries as much as possible to be solidly located in Allah and His Prophet- all the way down to its roots. We will continue and pursue this when almost everyone else in the world is hiding behind their silence or taking cover in their culture. This may not be the case in the future, but up until now, there's been a deafening silence concerning these matters of life and death. We don't say this rhetorically- we say that these are matters of life and death in every practical shred and fiber of the word. The political oppression that we have today and everything that goes with it all the way down to the erosion of the values and morals of people who want to be moral and who want to have values- this climate of political and military suffocation that people are in just didn't snap overnight. It has a background to it and it is exactly this background that we have been trying to put in the rays and beams of our minds and thoughts. We will add yet another increment in this process, and only Allah knows how far these increments will go. In our beginning chapters of Islamic history, we reached the point and the extent in which Muslims were inflicted with a form of government that doesn't belong to Allah and His Prophet. We may call it Mulk, Mulukiyyah, a monarchy, kingship, the rule of a dynastic class of people, family rule, ruling by royal decree- none of these have any trace of justification in the Qur'an or the Sunnah, yet it became well established and it thrived throughout hundreds of years until it bred the political systems that we have over our head today. Some people just don't get it when Allah says Be on guard concerning Allahs power presence and express whatever you have to say with accuracy (Surah Al Ahzaab verse 70) Ok- if we are to be on guard against Allah and His power influence in our lives, then how come people are silent when He is saying And say the truth as accurate as you are able to do so (Surah Al Ahzaab verse 70) If there is an issue in which the truth needs to be expressed, it is on this decay that has eroded the Muslim collective will throughout these centuries. When we begin to become specific, some Muslims or some listeners begin to become nervous. There's no need for anyone to become nervous when the truth is spoken or when there is a human attempt to approximate the verbalization of this truth. Why should anyone get nervous?! More than that, some people turn fanatical. If this is the psychological beginning of what needs to be done, then we welcome these developments. We are not going to succumb or cave in to them. We have our ears to Allah and the other noise around is just that- noise in our surroundings! Brothers and sisters committed Muslims- at the dawn of our Islamic history, the 1st hundred years or so, when this political waywardness happened, we had kings. In this particular instance, we will take a look at a time period in the Umawi dynasty during the rule of Abdul Malik ibn Marwan. 1st of all, we are not just going back to history just for the sake of enumerating some events. You've probably heard these events mentioned before- that's number one. Number two- when we relocate our mind, what we say is meant for your mind and it's not meant for someones emotionalism, it's not meant to feed someones sectarianism and its not meant to contribute to someones nationalism- we don't mean any of that. We need Muslims who can step out of this shell and look at these events that we are reconstructing so that be can begin to do the business of correction that has been long abandoned by you and I- the average or mediocre Muslim in this world. When we go back to the reign of one of these kings who usurped power, we realize that this king, unlike his peers- the kings before and after him- was a scholar. Abdul Malik ibn Marwan was on par with the scholars of his time. He attended the halaqaat, study groups and sessions, of the scholars in Al-Hejaz, but then he becomes the king. This brings to mind at least a couple of the rulers in Muslim countries nowadays who claim to be very well educated and then they want to get away with violating the Qur'an and the instructions of Allahs Prophet. He gives orders to a governor in Iraq by the name of Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf Al-Thaqafi, to go to Makkah and finish the resistance and the opposition there. In Makkah, there was the grandson of Az-Zubair (radi Allahu anhu) who was a thorn in the back of this monarchy. In their own minds, they had finished off other portions of Islamic political opposition and now, they want to turn their guns on what is left of this opposition in Makkah. Some of you have gone to Makkah and you may have also gone to a mount called Jabl Abi Qubais, but the question is, when you went to or seen Jabl Abi Qubais when you were in Makkah, how many of you were aware that this governor, Hajjaj had placed what is called Al-Manjaneek- these were very primitive and cruel weaponry on this hill- today, their equivalent would be tanks- and he aimed them towards the Ka'ba and people were at the Hajj. This wasn't a time when Makkah was empty. Of all the months of the year, this ruling government decides to attack Makkah when all the Muslims were at Hajj. This weapon would lob considerably large rocks towards the Ka'ba. Remember, you had tens of thousands of people who were in that area and you have to realize that you had a government that was more than willing to rein death upon Muslims who were in and around the Ka'ba. If you begin to realize this, you will begin to realize that we had criminals who were ruling that go back 1,300 years. So, does it surprise anyone that we have the types of criminals who are ruling today? The Ka'ba was ransacked during the time of Yazid, his last weeks on earth, and once again it was ransacked during this reign of corrupt, war criminal rulers over the Muslims. This is the truth that many people are trying to avoid. Why? What purpose does it serve? These are facts and if you want more facts- we don't know of any other attack on the Ka'ba. Even in the times of Al-Jahiliyyah, Shirk and "non-Islam" before the Qur'an and the Prophet, the Ka'ba and Al-Bayt Al-Haram were considered inviolable. These were sanctuaries and you couldn't violate them the way was done by these war criminals. When is the Muslim mind going to wake up and realize that we had war criminal rulers early in our history? What does it mean? If we identify with Allah and His Prophet, does that mean that we are going to automatically also identify with these types of war criminals?! There's nothing that says that, therefore we pass on our concern to those who speak to the Muslim public today and say "why don't you express the truth?" It was Abdullah ibn Umar (radi Allahu anhu) that pleaded with Al-Hajjaj on the outskirts of Makkah "to seize this at least till the pilgrims leave." There was an interruption of a couple of days or so and then the bombardment began again. Brothers and Sisters- what type of rulers do we have here is what we ask ourselves in a manner that will bypass the cultural shell that we are located in. What purpose does it serve to be silent about these crimes that have catapulted into todays wars of aggression and occupation that are inflicted upon us? Do you want to know more about this ruler? Let us take it from some people who were living during that time. There's a person by the name of Aasim ibn Abi Nujuud. Most of you have probably heard his name before the recitation of some ayaat of the Qur'an. Sometimes, you will listen to the expression "bi riwayati hassin an Aasim"- that is the current riwayah that most of the Muslims read of the Qur'an. Of the seven authentic recitations of the Qur'an, one of them is "bi riwayati hassin an Aasim". This is the Aasim who spoke about Al-Hajjaj, the same war criminal who ruled in Iraq during that time. He said "there was not one sanctity that Al-Hajjaj did not violate." Al-Hajjaj, himself, referred to Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (radi Allahu anhu)- we hope you have enough information about who Abdullah ibn Mas'ud is- as "the head of the munafiqin". These are Al-Hajjaj's words when he speaks about a Sahabi like Abdullah ibn Mas'ud. Then, he says "If I were to have an access to Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, I would have let the earth drink his blood." Do you want more? The same war criminal, Hajjaj, who ruled over Muslims- remember, he ransacked and bombarded the Ka'ba- we haven't had kaafirs or Mushriks who bombarded the Ka'ba. The only occasion we know of is the attempt to do so in the year Allahs Prophet was born- Aam al-Fil- designated in our history as "The year of the Elephant", when there was this caravan of elephants belonging to a military that was instigated by its own interests and revenge to try to destroy Bait Allah Al-Haram, Allahs sanctuary in Makkah. After that, you hear the enemies around who say "Nuke Makkah"- when tensions rise, you hear these imperialists and Zionists come out with the way they feel. We're not talking about an imperialist or a Zionist, we're talking about an internal war criminal who was imposed as a governor on a sensitive area of the Muslim Ummah. He didn't have nuclear weapons- only Allah knows what would have happened if he had access to nuclear weapons with that psychology coming to finish off the Islamic legitimate resistance in Makkah. Hajjaj said- listen to this because it speaks volumes- these are his words "if I were to tell the Muslims to leave the Masjid from a certain door and they left it from another door then I will plunder their lives and their possessions or I will liquidate them and what belongs to them." Brothers and sisters of understanding- there's a lot of moral talk around- OK, take that morality that you understand from Allah and His Prophet and try to fit it on a person like this- you can't! No-one can! So why do we still have people, up until this very day, trying to squeeze war criminals into the mould of Islam? When now, there is a worldwide policy to bleed the Muslims- almost practically in the same geographical area that we are speaking about- and still we have stony expressions of silence on the faces of those who are expected to say the truth within these conditions and circumstances. Do you want more about an example of wayward rulers who are in their own right war criminals? He reigned for about 20 years in Iraq, and it is said that during those 20 years, 120,000 people were arrested without due process- as if Islamic judiciary, courts and judges do not exist. We're going to have to repeat this for we don't know how many times because when we begin to step into this sensitive domain of "silent information", then people say "where did you get that information from?" So, as a reminder for we don't know how many times this information comes from "mainstream" Islamic references, sources and citations and they don't come from the fringe groups, fanatical extremists and imbalanced minds. It's all there if you only care to look for it. 120,000, people were imprisoned without access to a fair legal process. What does this say? You can read this in many ways, but one of the ways that not many people care to read it in is "there was a lot of opposition to that type of government." 120,000 people who were arrested in 20 years meant that the Muslim population didn't agree with that government and these types of rulers. This is also a blank area in the individual Muslim mind. We have opposition and rulers today, but because the iron is still hot, some people say "spare us public presentation of what is happening today." OK- this has happened over 1,300 years ago- do you still not have enough time and buffer to speak about something like this?! It is also reported in these same reliable sources that 80,000 bodies disintegrated behind bars on the watch of Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf Al-Thaqafi. This war criminal ruler or governor of Southern Iraq, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf Al-Thaqafi, once spoke to the Muslim crowd to instill fear in them. What did he say? This sentence that we are going to quote to you might as well be said by todays rulers from the way they behave- but it all began many many centuries before todays rulers. If you talk about someone who is trying to instill terror in his own people, this sentence has it, he said "I can see that there are heads out there that are ripe for picking." This person didn't have a conscience in him. When, Abdul Malik, the Umawi king who gave him this position was on his dying mat or bed, he turns to his son Waleed, and he tells him "Take note of Al-Hajjaj because he has cleared the land for you, he has defeated the enemy and he has made it possible for you to rule." We ask- if we wanted to compare this statement with the Shura, equality and participatory politics. Brothers and sisters- we tried to dig the dictionary so that you will not fall into your cultural shell. Words have a way of drawing you into your traditions and customs that have accumulated in a way that have shut down your mind. In the days of Allahs Prophet, those who were his closest affiliates had their homes around his Masjid in Al-Medinah- the doors used to open up to the Masjid of the Prophet, so when they wanted to decide on an affair that concerned the Muslim public and citizens, they did so as if they were living with the ultimate decision maker and in his life. Now, you have a king who is telling his crown prince, his own son, and advising him concerning this ruthless and bloodthirsty war criminal that ruled early in Islamic history. All of this is oppression. Some of you still may have a better sense if we speak about the corruption that they caused inside just the rituals of Islam. Before them, As-Salaah was performed on time in Al-Masjid Al-Jaamiah in Al-Medinah, Makkah and the other areas. When they became the rulers, they delayed the Salaah by one or two or three hours. Is it any surprise that they began to have opposition against them? They used to deliver the 1st khutbah of the Jum'ah while they were sitting down. Khutbah Al-Eidayn- Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha that is given after the Salaah, they gave it before the Salaah and they were getting away with all of this. We ask- "where are the conscientious, sacrificing and struggling Muslims to see through these gaps and to plug them so that todays war machines find no inch of territory that will accommodate them in our lands?" Brothers and sisters Committed Muslims If we build relevant information, as truthfully as we can obtain it and as truthfully as we can consolidate it, we will begin to realize that from early in our Islamic history, we had regimes that were oppressive, authoritarian, and unjust and we had a political opposition that was sincere, sacrificing and continuing. This has been the case from there and then to now and here. The difficulty we encounter is Muslims are not being permitted to connect these lines. Just a couple of weeks ago, the son of the president of Egypt was in Washington DC. What was he doing? He was trying his best to win over American support for the transition of power from father to son. This would force us to think. Were there any connections during the times periods that we are talking about in which there were emissaries traveling between Makkah, Al-Medinah, Damascus, Baghdad and other main centers in the Muslim Ummah to enemy territory and trying to secure the support that they need against the Islamic opposition that they encountered? This area seems to be absent from Muslim history, but it is not absent from our current affairs and events. There is a policy that is in the making in which the imperialists Zionist interests is recruiting the rulers in Arabia, the Gulf and North Africa against what they see as a line of opposition that extends from Iran to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. Are we going to speak about these events when they become history?! When they become history, we'll be six feet under and we can't speak about them or, are we to preempt them with the insight and the knowledge that comes to us from Allah!? The same thing is happening with the Islamic resistance in the Holy land. There is this movement to contain or starve it- don't give them money, don't offer them loans, close the banks when they come to it, literally, this is what they are saying. If these Palestinians try to withdraw from their own accounts, don't give them their own money. Are we going to remain in this 1,300 year shell, being unable to think outside of this shell so that we can take pro-active measures that are in high gear today? The truth must be said, and we will say (as a matter of record), that Al-Imam Al-Khomeini was the one who was able to collect this assortment of information, make out of it practical sense and put into motion for the Muslims a tomorrow that belongs to Allah and His Prophet. What happened to those who were around at the time? Look around you- they are hiding in their silence or disguising themselves in what they call "diplomacy". When Allah, His Prophet and the legitimate leaders and revolutionaries come out and say the truth, the fashion is to accuse them of being reckless, impulsive and reactionary. To qualify to become one of them, we are going to have to turn to silence or become the diplomatic types. This silence and these diplomatic types have had 1,300 years to prove themselves and they haven't presented us with one success, rather, they have burdened us with all of this reversal that we are in. --------------------------------- TV dinner still cooling? Check out "Tonight's Picks" on Yahoo! TV. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
