Shia Strength: Muslim Unite Sunni and Shia KHUTBAH : THE SECOND DAWN OF ISLAM

THE STREET MIMBAR

JUM'AH KHUTBAH (28 December 2012)

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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, Respected Ulema', those of you who are organizing, coordinating, carrying what has to be carried, driving the distance that has to be driven, all of you who made an effort to be here this evening- I greet you with the greetings of peace and equality, justice and the Islamic way : Assalaamualaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh

Audio on http://www.islamiccenterdc.com/apps/videos/videos/show/17482247-second-dawn-of-islam-by-imam-muhammad-al-asi-06-22-2008 (06-22-2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpYPt_Jw0fw

THE SECOND DAWN OF ISLAM

I will have to make some regards at the beginning. I'd like to say, first of all, sometimes inaccurate information circulates and given the type of world we live in, we are keen observers of those who are makers and shakers of public opinion (and) it's not a surprise to have skewed information about yours truly here before my arrival, during the day that I was here and it's probably going to linger on for some time for those of you who fall victims to the propaganda and the mouthpieces that are busy trying to malign or distort the image of those whose only task is to try to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. That's remark number one. Remark number two- we, (let's face it), as a whole, I'm not speaking about every individual, but as a whole suffer from the inability to first of all express the facts as they should be expressed, which is a very severe problem that we have, and the second problem that we have is that we don't even have the ability to listen to the facts if and when they are presented. This is a sad comment on us but it is a fact and the sooner we put this behind us the better it will be for ourselves and for the coming generations of Muslims. The third remark that I'd like to make is that there seems to be certain Islamic Centers, (many of them as a matter of accuracy), who more-or-less have yours truly here barred from access and they can administer their Islamic Centers the way they want to; but we pray for the day when Islamic Centers are opened to all sincere Muslims, especially those who have spent a lifetime or just about a lifetime in the service of the Muslims. People in this position either report to you, the Muslim- the common Muslim, the normal Muslim, the grass-root Muslim- or they report to the paymasters whoever they may be. You can evaluate your administrations in Islamic Centers accordingly. These are the remarks I wanted to clear the air of because I found out it's very necessary to mention that.

The subject that we try to concentrate on- and I know from experience that sometimes we have a selective way of tuning in and then tuning out; may I request that I have your undivided attention for this time period and then later on you can day-dream and do whatever you want to do. I will begin this presentation, and I'm going to try as much as possible to remain within the context of the Qur'an and the Sunnah- that's something we all agree upon and that's something we all refer to. There's an ayah in the Qur'an in which Allah says

Of a certainty, Ash Shaytaan is an enemy of yours, therefore designate him as an enemy… (Surah Fatir verse 6)

This is an ayah that is crystal clear in its meaning. There's no word that tolerates a range of give-and-take. There are ayaat bayyinaat and there are ayaat mutashaabihaat. This is not one of those ayaat mutashaabihaat. This is an ayah that delivers its meaning directly and straight-forwardly. When we look at our condition today- the observation was made during the course of these presentations that Muslims are lagging behind. We don't have an industrial base to be proud of, we don't have a scientific legacy that we can refer others to, we don't have an Islamic civilization in the accurate sense of the word. Of course, I have to be short, (this is not a time to go into much details), but the short and answer the reason for that is we don't have an Islamic public mind. We run around with individual ideas. Some of them may be great ideas and some of them may be much less than that but when we take a look at ourselves, (around two-billion Muslims- I know you seldomly heard that number because everyone wants to undercut or to diminish or to decrease our numbers in the world, feel comfortable that we are approaching two-billion Muslims in the world; now that makes the contrast even worse. There's two-billion of you Muslims out there in the world and you're not able to put together some type of unity and unity of purpose?! You don't have any political solidarity, you don't have an Islamic common wealth or economic market, you don't have any type of coordination in your defence policies, you don't have a common currency- what do you have?! The short answer that we're giving you is that we don't have a public mind. When the day approaches when we do have a public mind, that will be the first day on a course in the right direction towards re-establishing our Islamic civilization as it was meant to be. Of course, the reason here that begs a question is: why don't we Muslims have a public mind? You'll have multiple answers to this and most of these multiple answers will be correct. You can rethink and bethink this question and you'll come up with an assortment of answers. We can beat around the bush but we're not rather do that! The reason why we don't have a public mind can be attributable to the fact that there's a disconnect between our understanding of Islam today and the understanding of Islam when it changed a civilization. Let me remind some of the hasty individuals around that a civilization you cannot build in a year or a decade or a generation; a civilization is in the making for generations and centuries. An Islamic civilization when we had the universities of the world in our domain when we had students coming from all parts of the world to those outposts of knowledge, whether they were in today's Iraq or whether they are in today's Iberia, that's a cumulative effect of the building block years of who we are and those building block years are the years in which the Prophet of Allah anchored not a defeatist understanding but a forward moving understanding of Islam. When we take a look at Allah's Prophet, (I hope no one is going to argue, unless we have some stray individuals here and there, but I don't think any of them are around here), no one will argue that Allah's Prophet is our reference and our recourse, our prototype and our model and Allah's Prophet, of course, had this Qur'an that was being revealed to him throughout the course of twenty-three consecutive years. Listen- we're speaking about Allah's Prophet, we're not speaking here about me and you- we're speaking about a person way ahead of all of us. When he was in his own society, did he or did he not have enemies? Someone is going to have to think. If we are going to accomplish something tonight, hopefully it's going to be that we begin to think. If Allah's Prophet, and he is who he is, (i.e.) he's the beloved of Allah, he's the most honorable of Allah, he's the closest to Allah; he is all of what we know of him and yet he couldn't help it- he had enemies. Anyone as primitive as you are in understanding his seerah, you still know he had enemies and because of those enemies we had in our seerah (and) in our study of his lifetime we had ghazawaat and we had saraya. These were military campaigns (and) these were wars and battles that he either attended or supervised. This is our beloved Prophet. Now, because of the damage that has been done to our psychology we had people who walk around with the appearance of Muslims, (i.e.) those who say "they are keen on following Allah's Prophet" but they don't want to have enemies?! How can anyone understand this? How can you square this? How can you have leaders in today's world who want to be enemy free? You can't do this! If you are following Allah's Prophet, you're going to have enemies. That's a first fact that has to go into the making of our public mind and if you choose something else, be advised that you have stepped out of the parameters of Allah's Book and Allah's Prophet.

The second issue that goes into the building of an Islamic public mind is that we have to define our relationships with each other. We have the type of Muslims who cannot make way for differences of opinion. We don't know- is this going to be a lot of studying to get down to the nitty-gritty of where this comes from (and) why Muslims cannot tolerate another valid opinion. This is a type of disease that we have! We're not going to put together a Muslim public mind before we treat this disease. Once again, we refer to Allah's Prophet and I'm going to refer to a couple of incidents that are very well known in Islamic history. The first one had to do with the Muslims after they were doing war with one of the factions of Yahud in Al Madinah. The Yahud took the side of the grand Arabian alliance that had besieged Al Madinah. I'm referring to what is known in Islamic history as Al Ahzaab, the Confederates or Al Khandaq, the Trench. This is the well known battle in which the Muslims were under tremendous pressure and their very existential life was threatened by the convergence of all the hostile forces in Arabia at the time. After these confederate of allied forces receded away from Al Madinah the Prophet of Allah wanted to pursue this faction of Yahud who had written an agreement with him- they signed on to the document of Al Madinah that they will not side with the military enemies of the Islamic state in Al Madinah, but they did. So in this context Allah's Prophet said to the listening Muslims none of you shall pray Al Asr except at Bani Quraydah. Everyone heard that. There was no dispute about this. In any Islamic history book you go to, you're going to find that quote. All of us agree to it, but how did the Muslims interpret this? How did they understand it? Some of them understood the Prophet to have meant what he said literally, (i.e.) we're not going to perform our Asr prayer until we reach the stronghold of Bani Quraydah which was at a small distance from Al Madinah. They may have taken in the atmospherics of war with an educated guess from forty-five minutes to an hour to get there. The other Muslims who listened to this same statement from Allah's Prophet understood something else. They understood the Prophet to have said make haste (or) go to Bani Quraydah as soon as you can but he didn't mean we cannot pray Al Asr on our way there. So some of them prayed Al Asr prayer on their way to Bani Quraydah and when they arrived all the Muslims were now encamped in the vicinity of Bani Quraydah and it appeared that when it came to pray Al Asr some of them had already prayed. Remember, these are people around Allah's Prophet who were brought up with him, who knew exactly what he said. So when this issue was brought to Allah's Prophet, he didn't say one side is wrong and the other side is right. As a matter of fact he endorsed both sides which means that there is room for we, the Muslims, to understand- whether it's hadith or whether it's an ayah- within a style that doesn't conflict with each other. We don't have this understanding within us today. We find that Muslims want to be holier than thou; meaning that if someone understands something in a certain way, (then) that is absolutely the only way of understanding it (and) there's no room for any other way of understanding it. This does not have a basis in the conduct of Muslims who are committed to Allah and committed to His Prophet. The other incident that I will draw on from the history of that building generation of Muslims is the following… These same mature, sacrificing (and) struggling Muslims around the Prophet went to draw water. There's a well of water and they wanted to throw their pales down into this well and draw water. Then two individuals got into a dispute because someone wanted to draw water before the other and they got into a skirmish and then one of them said Yaa Lal Muhajireen and the other one said Yaa Lal Ansaar, which means I'm calling you, Muhajireen, for help and the other one said I'm calling you, the Ansaar for help. Now, Al Muhajireen and Al Ansaar are Qur'anic terms and they are also a Prophetic designation of these two camps that supported Allah's Prophet meaning these are honorific words but the mentality that one of these persons said wanted to "tribalise" the Muhajireen and the other one wanted to "tribalise" the Ansaar. Then, the rest of the Muslims sensed this is not right (and) this is a violation of our togetherness and they took the affair to Allah's Prophet and he said don't return to a state of kufr after me by striking each other's necks. He understood that this is the beginning of a slope into antagonism and he was surprised. How are you doing this (and) I'm still among you (or) I'm still here. I brought you out of tribalism and you were given this distinction and this honorific and now you're falling back into that tribalism and taking with you that honorific title that was given to you?! We are doing it. I mean, I can be very specific, (but) I just don't want to upset some sensitive individuals. I can be very specific about this and this tribalism is being done to ourselves. We are doing this to ourselves. We are Muslims- if you're a Sunni, you want to make or give it a tribalistic definition (and) if you're a Shi'i you want to give it a tribalistic definition. Let's be frank- we do have those elements among us. Allah says

Say: O People of scripture… (Surah Aal Imran verse 64)

This is an ayah, in fact there's a few of them in the Qur'an. This is in reference to those who had received Divine scripture before the Prophet of Allah, viz. the Jews and the Christians. Allah is telling his Prophet and by extension telling us to say to them

Say: O People of scripture, come to a common understanding (or) a common word between us and you… (Surah verse)

If there is the type of tolerance built-in to the Book of Allah that we are commanded to approach people of scripture with trying to find some common ground (yet) we have some Muslims who cannot approach their own counterparts with this same understanding?! It's as if someone has to stand up and say Yaa Ahl Al Qur'an, come to a common understanding (or) a common word between us and you… Some of them have made the distance so far that it seems like the distance between us an Ahl Al Kitab is shorter than the distance between us and ourselves?! This is the public mind that we are going to have to reconstruct. We're not going to be able to do that and I've just given some examples of what I mean. Now I'm going to make a transition from the time of Allah's Prophet to our time…

This khutbah was presented by Imam Muhammad Asi on the occasion of Jum'ah on 22 June 2008 on the sidewalk of Embassy Row in Washington D.C. The Imam previously led the daily and Jum'ah prayers inside the Masjid. His speeches were revolutionary and thought provoking, and eventually irritated and threatened the Middle-East Ambassadors who control the Masjid. Finally, the Imam, his family, and /other Muslims faithful to the course of Islam were forced out, into the streets. This khutbah originates from the sidewalk across the street from the Islamic Center, currently under seige.

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