We spoke previously and we will continue to explain currently a particular attitude, a holier than thou psychology that breeds intolerance and generates bigotry and displays prejudice and is defined by narrow mindedness and cramped ideas. This type of psychology and mentality that doesn't accommodate a variation of legitimate ijtihad can no longer be exempt from our criticism and exposing it for what it is. We know that we are speaking about people or individuals who are closed minded. Some of them are verbally literal. We know that they refer to texts in a shallow way that almost excludes the minds interpretation of that text in a way that may not necessarily agree with them. We know this. We also know that these types of individuals and groups suspect the mind itself. Any thought that is generated by an ayah or a surah or a hadith or the seerah of the Prophet that is not their thoughts and their ideas become fuel for their antagonism and ammunition for their hostilities. We also know that it would be impossible to have a generation or a society that does not have its fanatics (and) the type of attitude that we are speaking about. There's not going to be a society and a generation that is free of that! They are always going to be around. If we can learn something from history and if we can learn something from the Qur'an and the Prophet then we should realize that you can't put an end to this type of psychology and mentality; what can be done though is to limit their numbers- not physically; no one wants to eliminate any of them physically. That's nonsense- but curtail their fanaticism and their blood lust via conviction and convincing them of their wrong ways. This can be done. To take this general introduction and to come to the continuation of trying to bring taqwa (i.e.) the power presence and the authority dominance of Allah into this scenario we said previously that there are two words right now in our world, i.e. the re-awakening of Muslims- some of them waking up kicking and screaming and shooting and killing which is not the way things are done but this is a general characterization of what's going around in our world. There are two words which they cling to without even understanding what they are doing! One of these words is al haakimiyah which means ruling or governorship and the other word is jahiliyyah which most of the times is simply stated or translated as the word itself- jahiliyyah.
In the previous khutbahs we tried our best to shed light on the background of these two words. We said these are Qur'anic terms and this is a Qur'anic vocabulary that we are speaking about. Just to help you out when you read the ayaat of the Qur'an we mentioned previously that there are two Qur'anic words that are not been given a proper definition in today's world- and this is what happens when Muslims don't think; these two Qur'anic words are al hukm and al wilayah. To help you out in some of the ayaat in which these two words are mentioned- obviously this requires thought. (For) people who don't think these words are going to go beyond them or they will automatically shut down in their minds because for one reason or the other, and there are a million reasons out there, they've been programmed early in life to close their minds when they hear the ayaat or the ahadith- that's the way they function. You bring them to a khutbah (or) you bring them to a lecture and if there is some intellectual effort that is expected they don't partake in it. Notice, in some ayaat in the Qur'an Allah says
… and he who prioritizes as his authority and ally Allah and His Messenger and the committed Muslims... (Surah verse 59)
Notices that there's no ayah in the Qur'an that says wa man yuhakkimi Allaha wa rasullahu wa alladhina aamanu. Here is an aromatic and a DNA difference between hukm and walayah. On the flip side of this, (please continue thinking; if you're not thinking then you're not understanding what's being said), Allah says
Is it the statecraft of jahiliyyah that they seek… (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 53)
There's no wording in the Qur'an that links jahiliyyah and walayah. There is no ayah such as afa walayati al jahiliyati yabghun. We can't exhaust the ayaat of the Qur'an in which there is the word hukm and its derivative.
… that you judge or govern among them with what Allah has brought down to you in scripture and revelation… (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 52)
Another ayah in the Qur'an
… they want to refer their decisions or their judgments or their policies to At Taghut when they were ordered to take issue with At Taghut. (Surah An Nisa' verse 60)
Yet another ayah in which this particular word and its derivatives is used.
Then, on the other hand
… over there, al wilayah, belongs to Allah, Al Haqq… (Surah Al Kahf verse 44)
Another ayah that has the word walayah in it.
… your ally is Allah and His Messenger … (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 55)
Another ayah that has the word walayah or its derivative in it. These are not the same. Brothers and sisters- if we bring these ayaat to our mental faculty (and) if we give these ayaat the thought that they deserve (and) the ideas that they generate then we should not be living in the type of ambiguity that feeds the fanaticism that we are privy to in today's world by individuals who may in their hearts of hearts have good intentions. They may mean well but that doesn't carry much weight if they don't understand what Allah and his Prophet are saying to them. This is where we are. We don't think- however the ignorance of these two key words that factor into today's general Islamic revivalism, as much as that is the case- there is no Muslim as ignorant as he or she may be will come and attribute the sources of al hukm or al walayah to others besides Allah. Thank Allah that as much ignorance that has settled into Islamic societies and as much lack of knowledge as there is in the Islamic public mind, there still is a general understanding that al hukm and al walayah don't belong as sources of values or legislations to human beings in an exclusivist monopolistic sense. What do we mean by this? To try to maybe reference this in an ayah in the Qur'an, there is no Muslim that believes what
The Pharaoh said I don't know of any Ilah that you have besides me… (Surah Al Qassas verse 38)
Ilah here in the vocabulary and the literature of many who think or try to think through this Islamic reinstatement is equivalent to Haakim. Some of these scholars in explaining this ayah
The Pharaoh is saying to his people or to his citizens I know no other authority that belongs to you besides me… (Surah Al Qassas verse 38)
In another statement recorded in this eternal Qur'an, the same Pharaoh says
… The Pharaoh is saying to his people or to his citizens I do not show you except what I see and I do not guide you except to the right way. (Surah Al Ghafir verse 29)
You see, he's attributing to himself the position of guiding people to what is right, to what is prosperous, to what is progressive, etc. etc. Even though we are inflicted with a large dose of ignorance, still no Muslim will attribute this position of Ilah knowingly with whatever amount of information that he or she has to a ruler- whoever that ruler is.
Then we come to the ayah that is quoted by many of today's young and enthusiastic (who) unfortunately thereafter turn into the fanatical types in Surah Al Maa'idah that says
… Whoever does not govern … (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 47)
This is the other word- hukm. Of course the word hukm has a much broader meaning than this but this is the mainstream interpretation here.
… those who do not govern in accordance to what Allah has revealed, then they are Kafirs. (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 47)
Because we, the Muslims, have a vacuum when it comes to governance- there is no one out there in the position of governing who is a Wali of Allah or an Imam from Allah in the general mind that has that position so therefore
… whoever is out there governing with the instruments of government that are not revealed by Allah than they are Kafirs. (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 47)
Our rethinking of this- Hukm has the meaning of also whoever decides. One of the meanings of hukm is
… whoever decides something that is not in accordance with what Allah has revealed is a Kafir. (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 47)
So if you are a decision maker- you could be a decision maker in the family; you don't have to necessarily be head of state- and you decide on something (or) you rule on something in your family that is contrary of what Allah has revealed then you are a Kafir. But in today's world of built up enthusiasm with a lack of thinking people right now are focusing their attention on the head of state and everything between the locale, your neighborhood, your residence and the highest office in the land is left unnoticed or it's a blank area that no one has thought through. As we said some of these Muslim thinkers trace the burst of jahiliyyah to the last years of the reign of Uthman ibn Affan (radi Allahu anhu) and much of this depends on how you and I or how those who are qualified are going to define and explain the word jahiliyyah. Jahilliyah is obviously taken from the root jahila which means has no information about or is ignorant of. So if we were to blend in the language component of the word with the activist extension of the word- if we were to mesh these together we'd come out with a public mind that is absent minded concerning Allah's power and authority; that is when we have an individual's jahilliyah or we have a societies' jahilliyah. The Prophet said to one of the sahabis you are a person in which there are traces of jahilliyah. The Qur'an says
Is it the statecraft of jahiliyyah that they seek… (Surah Al Maa'idah verse 53)
This is in reference to the social meaning of jahilliyah and it fluctuates between here to there. So if there is- and we do have, this is not a time to go into the particular names of Islamic thinkers and ideologues and philosophers and the rest who dealt with these issues with their minds, (something that is expected of us all not only of a class of people), when they come and say "we can trace the beginning of this jahilliyah to the last years of the reign of Uthman ibn Affan" there's a validity to that. That doesn't mean that all of the Muslims are Kafirs. No one is saying that; but once again when you have the fanatical psychology kick in there's no longer any fine lines between society and state. The whole issue becomes blurred and so right now in this unbecoming generalization we have a fringe group that is very well connected to finances and now to weapons that can go out there and rationalize the killing of the other Muslim who happens not to agree with their understanding of Islam. If we take a look at our understanding of history. We spoke a plenty about the ruling classes in those first centuries of Islam but let's look at the whole Islamic civilization when it interacted with the Greeks, with the Romans, with the Byzantines, with the Persians, with the Indians- there were interactions that was going on. There was a very strong translation effort to bring in the ideas of previous modernity's- some may call them civilizations, technological advances of those times; that was going on in a very serious way. Are we to call that a jahilliyah? If Muslims seek to obtain knowledge from those who may have it anywhere in the world are we going to call that jahilliyah? Some Muslims who do not think- that's what they exactly do; they call all of this jahilliyah. The fine arts like music itself, some people will say "music itself is a jahili or a kafir influence upon the Muslims." Here they don't even know what music is. They can't even tell you there's good music and there's bad music, there's uplifting music and there's depressing music, there are shades and there are levels of this music. But no, here we come again. When this type of mentality kicks in you can't communicate with it because when it closes its mind how are we going to communicate? So if we can't communicate with them it doesn't mean the whole world right now is closed (and) there's no one in the world to speak to?! There's a large world out there that we can speak to corner and to limit their type of fanaticism. We are going to make a transition here from this area to… Because if we speak about today if we mention one or five or however many rulers who are ruling today for reasons that are very complex some of our emotionalism will cloud our ability to think straight on this issue. Even when we're going to speak, (like we did last week), about the nature or the character of the Umawis who ruled way back a thousand and three hundred plus years ago still there is that aspect of some Muslims who take umbrage (and) who feel offended- "how dare you speak about these types of Sahabis or Khulafa'." We don't think that the rulers of Bani Umayyah or Bani Al Abbas are Khulafa' (i.e.) that they are successors of the Prophet in their responsibilities (and) in their ruling. That ended with Al Imam Ali or Al Imam Al Hassan (radi Allahu anhuma). Mu'awiyah was not a Khalifah. We're going to repeat this because still we don't have neither Sunnis nor Shi'is who have given this enough thought just to state the facts as they are and to say to us "Mu'awiyah is not a Khalifah." Both of them say "he is a Khalifah" for different purposes but both of them are wrong on this count! We're not saying that there's no exceptions here and there. There's always exceptions. We're looking at those who are considered mainstream Sunnis and those who are considered mainstream Shi'is. None of them, as far as yours truly is able to know and detect have come out and said without any ambiguity, without playing on words, without being diplomatic about it (and) to just state it as a fact- Mu'awiyah was not a Khalifah and the government that he was running was not an Islamic government in the full and wholesome and healthy sense of the word. So even when we open these pages of mainstream Islamic history- something that the status quo Masajid of today that are financed by the same types of people that have different names, the people that have power and the people that have money in today's Muslim crowd have different names but they have the same characters- so we think it's a little easier because of the span of time between us and the Umawis who were in the first years of ruling to deal with this subject especially knowing that we are taking this information not from those who are considered in history as being in the political opposition. These come from history and fiqhi and seerah and biography books that are from the Sunni mainstream. In Musnad Ahmad ibn Hambal, written by Ahmad ibn Hambal- now who is going to say this person is not qualified to speak on this issue?! He mentions Mu'awiyah used to trade or make money out of selling khamr, that means intoxicants, whiskey, liquor, hard stuff, and the idol figurines of the Hindu or the Buddhists. This we're adding to what we said last week so that the Muslim mind can have a breather and not be suffocated by the absence of information or the lack of information that is deliberate in these types of Masajid from those types of pulpeteers on the Mimbar. There's a historian that is also considered very mainstream- his name is Hafiz Ibn Kathir. In his book Al Bidayah wa An Nihayah he says before Mu'awiyah the diyah across the board was the same whether the victim was a Muslim or a non-Muslim. Diyah is an Islamic word for blood money; if someone in an Islamic society kills someone else, one of the legal consequences of that is to pay the blood money from this person who did the act of killing or murder to the family (or) the first of kin of the person who was murdered or killed. When Mu'awiyah came, he changed that. He kept the diyah for a Muslim at the level it was at but if it was a non-Muslim that was killed in an Islamic society then the diyah that had to be paid for the non-Muslim was cut in half. This means a non-Muslims life was cheaper than a Muslim's life in such a society.
Then we have the spoils of war. We know that there are very clear ayaat in the Qur'an that speak about al khums, that speak about al anfal, that speak about the treasures or the assets that because of war have become an Islamic possession or territory. So when Mu'awiyah came, he did this by himself- he said whatever spoils of war that are gold or silver belong to me and the rest you can distribute according to the rules that you have. Where did that come from? How does a person do something like that. Once again, this is in the mainstream history books of Ibn Kathir and Ibn Asakir- two historians and two authors that all things considered are ranked as pro-Umawis and you find this information in them.
Then there is the issue of Ziyad. There is a person by the name of Ziyad. He is considered, before Mu'awiyah became the king of the Muslims, to be of an unknown father. No one knew who his father was. Then, when Mu'awiyah became the big ruler of the Islamic domain- he's the king now, he's the ultimate decision maker; he brought witnesses in front of the public (and) made it official that Ziyad is the son of Abi Sufyan, meaning Ziyad is Mu'awiyahs brother. Because no one knew this before, how did this come about? He told these witnesses, because they're in a court of law, they have to testify that Abu Sufyan… By the way, they used to call this Ziyad- because they knew his mother; they can't hide this because his mother gave birth to him; his mother's name was Sumayyah- Ziyad ibn Sumayyah, Ziyad the son of Sumayyah. So when he brought in these witnesses and they testified that Ziyad is the son of Abu Sufyan, now they know who his father was. His father committed adultery and he had this son so now he gave him a legitimacy and a status because Abu Sufyan and the Sufyanis and the Umawis were people who were running the government. Now he had not only a father- everyone knew who Abu Sufyan was- but he also now had a clan that was in power. The Prophet's hadith says, (this is the rough translation), am new born is attributed to the matrimony that he comes from, his mother and father obviously, and he who breeds an illegitimate son, meaning a child comes into being because of prostitution, his punishment is the stone. We don't want to go off on a tangent and bring in the issue of rajm and all of this, that's another issue. What we are trying to say here is that Mu'awiyah brought in Ziyad to fulfill a purpose, (i.e.) a governor in Southern Iraq. We have some people who don't read their history correctly. We're speaking here to those who come from a Sunni background. They say well, Rasulullah was married to Umm Habibah (radi Allahu anha)- that's the daughter of Abu Sufyan, the sister of Mu'awiyah. That's a fact. The Prophet was married to her but did anyone look further at our history and realize that Umm Habibah, Mu'awiyah's sister in the words of these historians took issue with him and placed herself at a distance from him. She would not want to face him- brother and sister- because of what he did and what he is doing. We're looking at people here in their official capacities- this Ziyad was given the governorship by king Mu'awiyah, (we have to drill it in), of Southern Iraq. So he went to the Masjid there and began by saying Ayyuha An Naas. People there knew who this guy was so they pelted some stones at him. He said OK- this is what you're doing. He ordered the police, (of course at that time they didn't call them police, but in our time today security forces), to surround the Masjid and to detain those, (depending on the history books), between thirty and eighty individuals who were in the Masjid. What did he do? You think what today's rulers do is something new? Because they threw (and) when you throw something you do it with your hand so he ordered that their hands be cut off. Where did that come from? This arbitrariness, this kangaroo court, this iron fisted ruler- where did you get all of this from? How come all of this information now… Because, you know, when it is brought to the attention of the public basically it's done by some Shi'i scholars but the problem with many of these Shi'is scholars is there is a mental block between them and the larger Muslim audience that they are speaking to. They carry a baggage with them that doesn't make it possible for facts like this to… They don't even quote for you Ibn Kathir said this, Ibn Asaakir said this, Ibn Athir said this, etc. etc. Mainstream! They don't say that but no one is listening. Their minds are shut off and because the people who are supposed to be listening have shut their mind off because of their traditionalism and the people who are speaking the truth are incarcerated in their own traditionalism no one gets anywhere! All of this news went to Mu'awiyah. If you think he's a person of justice he would have done something about this- he didn't do anything about this.
There is another incident in which this same Ziyad gets on the Mimbar and he wants to delay salat Adh Dhur until Asr time deliberately. Then a very popular person, Hujr ibn Adi (radi Allahu anhu), he is known. He one of these high ranking Sahabis said, (and it sounds like this in English), what do you think you are doing? Time doesn't wait for you. You can't do this. You can't play arbitrary timing with the salah. So with his popularity, he and twelve others were convicted of speaking truth to power and they were dragged to Mu'awiyah from Southern Iraq to Ash Shaam and when people were seeing this person leaving they were out like in today's world in something like public appearances- another word for demonstrations. They were chanting Hujr, Hujr, Hujr- meaning release him, release him, release him to Ziyad and to the rulers of that time. Even Aa'isha, (radi Allahu anha), Ummul Mu'mineen wrote to Mu'awiyah concerning this affair. So when they appear in front of Mu'awiyah, the security forces to speak to them. Of course, they're speaking the royal will here and they say we give you a choice you condemn Ali… Look at this. Just like we said in the last khutbah, this was an official obsession. People had to condemn that legitimate leader and ruler and Imam of the Muslims … and you have to distance yourself from him and then you have to curse him and if you do so we will let you go and if you don't we're going to execute you. Hujr and those who were with him said no we're not doing that. We are not going to be saying any of that kind of stuff that you want us to say. Hujr said I will not say anything that will be unsatisfactory to Allah. Then Hujr and seven others were executed. Before Hujr was executed he said I don't want anyone to take any strap away from me. Obviously he was strapped, he was tied. I don't want anyone to untie anything that was placed upon me and the blood that comes out of me I don't want anyone to wash it. I want to return the way I was killed on the day of judgement to take issue with Mu'awiyah. For those who think with sectarianism in their mind, there's no Sunni-Shi'i issue here. No one said Hujr is a Shi'i. no one said Mu'awiyah is a Sunni. Can we outgrow this and see the facts as they are?!
Then there is another opponent of Mu'awiyah- AbdurRahman ibn Hassaan. Look how they send opponents to each other. Once Ziyad sends them to Mu'awiyah, another time Mu'awiyah sends this person to Ziyad. Mu'awiyah says to Ziyad kill this person in the worst possible way. Is this a Khalifah? This is Khalifatu Rasulillah? Is this a leader who would say something like that?! Of course he had obliged. How did he kill him? He buried him alive. Read history. Don't be silly. Don't be sectarian. State the facts and the facts will speak for themselves. Then Aa'isha objects in the strongest words for what Mu'awiyah did to Hujr. He says to her with his diplomatic words, because the Prophet's wives are Ummahaat Al Mu'mineen, Mother- leave me alone. I will take issue with him on the day of resurrection. We said Ammaar ibn Yaser (radi Allahu anhu), a Sahabi, was killed by another Sahabi. Look brothers and sisters- if these words go to your emotions and do not go to your mind then you should not be listening to them. These words were meant for your mind and your mind only. This other Sahabi- his name was Abul Ghazi Al Juhani- was so particular, he wouldn't accept drinking water from a utensil that was made out of silver. Some people call that taqwa- that's not the right word for it. Then he has what it takes to kill a prominent person like Ammaar ibn Yaser.
Then Mu'awiyah sends a person by the name of Busr ibn Arta'a and says you take care of Al Hejaz and Yemen. So he goes to Al Yemen where Ubaidullah ibn Abbas was the ruler there on behalf of Ali and he goes to his house and he finds that Ubaidullah is not in the house but his wife and a five year old son and a son between six and seven years old were in the home. So what does he do? He asks where is Ubaidullah? They say we don't know where Ubaidullah is. So he threatens. What's the mother and her two sons going to do? So what he does? Remember Muslims- the rot did not set into our governments today; it can be traced al the way back to those times and these establishments don't want you to see this. These Masajid want to keep these issues away from your minds. They love to put these issues in your emotions and have you repeat this sorry history. So what does he do? He takes these two sons- the five and six year old- and he slaughters them in front of their mother. He cuts their heads off in front of their mother. These mainstream history books tell us the mother went crazy. She lost her mind. She was not the person she was after this. She couldn't think. She was not in control of her faculties and because we don't know these facts we have people who are not Muslims and we have cheap Muslims who want to be paid who know these issues and want to implant them in a public frenzy out there so that when we look at each other we see enemies and we don't see our ownselves. We're talking about today's Muslims! Then, Mu'awiyah sends this same person to Hamidan, a city that's in Persia and for the first time in history we have Muslim women who are saraya, Muslim women who are prisoners of war, i.e. not prisoners of war taken by Mushriks, these are prisoners of war taken by Muslims. Where did this come from? How did this happen? There's a fair minded Umawi that ruled, Umar ibn Abdul Aziz (radi Allahu anhu). By all accounts this person wanted to set the record straight and get out of this monarchy that was institutionalized by king Mu'awiyah onwards and he said Ziyad in Iraq, Al Walid in Ash Shaam, Ibn Qurra in Egypt, Uthman ibn Hayyaan in Al Madinah, Khalid Al Qisri in Makkah- injustice is everywhere.
Then we have the Salafis today who come out with a book called Batalu Al Islam Al Adheem Al Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, A Great hero of Islam- Al Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. In these same history books, eighty thousand disintegrated corpses were found in the dungeons and in the prisons of Al Hajjaj. They rotted to death! Eighty thousand! A hundred and ten thousand were killed by this Hajjaj. He has a famous statement, (and for those of you who understand a standard of Arabic), I see heads that are ripe and its time to pick these heads, meaning its time to decapitate them. Then we have Salafis coming up with a book like this?! Batalu Al Islam Al Adheem Al Hajjaj ibn Yusuf?! Everyone heard of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (radi Allahu anhu). The Prophet himself says read (and) understand the Qur'an from ibn Ummi Abd, that's in reference to ibn Mas'ud. Ibn Mas'ud died years and years before Al Hajjaj was in power. Hajjaj says of him the head of the munafiqs. You know how you brand cows. You bring an iron that has a particular image on it and then you brand the skin and the leather or cows and cattle; Al Hajjaj ibn Yusuf did that to Malik ibn Anas and Sahl ibn Saeed on their necks- branding them so people can't miss who they are. Now you tell us- does this history with these mainstream details not deserve our thinking, our minds? Put aside the fanaticism and the bigotry, the prejudice and the discrimination that is built into sectarianism which has become right now the rationalization for Muslims killing themselves.
Dear brothers and sisters, committed Muslims…
If we move our focus of attention from that earlier generation with the rulers behaving the way they did- only some of the information which has been brought to your attention and there's other chapters of this sordid history at the level of those who rule and when we point out rulers that doesn't necessarily apply to the people. We are here- do you agree with the way governments behave around here? Obviously not! You're going to condemn Muslims all over the world because of what criminals did when they occupied the seats of power. Let's have a little consciousness here, let's have more little understanding here; but it's easy to point blank generalize the crime and say we are all responsible for that. In toady's world we have the Saudi regime and its obvious that it withholds this type of information from the average Muslim out there because if this type of information was to settle in the public mind of the Muslim they will not survive. They are living on borrowed time because this ignorance that has occupied our Masajid and our societies is on its way out! There will be people who will have the moral courage to enunciate (and) express the truth without being sectarians, without being holier than thou and without being fanatics. Its just a matter of time and in the meantime we ask and we beg Allah to forgive us the sins of the generations of rulers who preceded us and to give us the certainty and the certitude of the facts that are stated from Him from on high and exemplified by the Prophet and that can be detected in today's world if we just decided to use are our God-given minds.
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