| THE STREET MIMBAR JUM'AH KHUTBAH (19 September 2014) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_street_mimbar/ https://www.youtube.com/user/TheStreetMimbar/videos PLEASE e-mail Suggestions & Criticisms to khutbahs@yahoo.com 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, committed Muslims…
Audio on http://www.islamiccenterdc.com/apps/podcast/podcast/342561 (05-23-2014)
REACTIONARY MUSLIMS PERPETUATE THE STATUS QUO
Extolled and exalted is He who has taken His conforming subject on a night journey from Al Masjid Al Haram to Al Masjid Al Aqsa the environs of which we have blessed so that We may demonstrate some of Our ayaat to him for He, meaning Allah, is All Hearing and All Seeing (or) nothing escapes His attention nothing escapes His detection. (Surah Al Isra' verse 1)
This is the first ayah from Surah Al Isra' or Surah Bani Isra'eel. It describes the night journey of Allah's Messenger from Makkah to Al Quds and then from there to the heavenly company of Allah. ? This event is marked by Muslims at the end of the 7th Islamic month of Rajab and it will coincide with the first part of next week. This was a strategic journey. It was strategic because Allah's Messenger unified revelation and he unified history. He unified revelation in the sense that he is the eternal link between the past of scripture and the future of scripture. He came to confirm and to corroborate what was correct of previous scripture and to rectify what human beings had done to previous scripture to corrupt it and all of this confirmation, corroboration and rectification was captured in the permanent, the incontrovertible and the incorruptible message that is contained in the Qur'an. He also came to unify history. From the place of historic scripture which is Al Quds to the birth place of scripture which is Makkah. This unification took place because Allah's final Prophet was the seal of all the Messengers. We don't distinguish between any of them. The message that they all brought to humanity was consistent and it was unchanging from its first dispensation to Adam (alayhi as salaam) to its final dispensation to Muhammad. So we said that this journey was strategic. So what do we mean by strategic? What is the connection between leadership and power? How do Muslim leaders acquire power and what is it that connects power with the level of activities on the ground and leadership at the level of activities in the mind? In order to get our hands and our minds around these questions we turn to a slogan that has been making its rounds for the past several decades amongst Muslims who have the desire to be active (and) to be involved in what is happening to them and (in) what is happening in the world around them. This slogan as it applies to Muslims goes like this "act, don't react." But what does it mean to act? Certainly, because we, Muslims, have been cowed by oppression for the past two or three centuries we know what it means to react. Certainly our reaction is the response to an initiative taken by someone else. Reaction is based on the activities of another and we, Muslims, are very comfortable in existing in the domain of reactions. We are comfortable with it, we rely on it (and) we count on it. That domain is our comfort zone and when we are forcibly expelled from that domain we panic and we act in all sorts of desperate ways. A primary characteristic of those who exist in the domain of reaction is behavior on impulse, behavior on emotion, behavior on instinct rather than a thoughtful exercise of the mind to construct a cogent and a structured approach to the problems that we have to deal with and answer to the needs of our communities. We have become comfortable without thinking on our own. We have become comfortable without thinking to respond to our problems. Or to put it another way, we have become comfortable with relying on somebody else's thinking to respond to our problems and to our needs. This is very nice for the Taghuti power culture of the world. They want Muslims who exist but do not live! They want Muslims who see but do not think! For when you exist you are dormant and when you live you are growing and in order to grow you have to think. So our enemies are very comfortable with the posture where we Muslims do not think especially where we do not think with the medium of the Qur'an and the example of Allah's Prophet. For it just goes to show you that when we become robots for Islam we are the foot soldiers for the expansion of the Taghuti territories and for the normalization of Taghut in our minds and in our consciences. Brothers and sisters- Muslim leaders can ill afford to reside in the domain of reaction, in fact they can't even be called Muslim and they definitely cannot be called leaders if they reside in the domain of reaction. So how should Muslim leaders behave? In a word- a Muslim leader is strategic. Here we go back to that word once more. Strategy is the counter position (and) the counter posture to reaction. Strategy is the set of key decisions (and) core decisions you make which shape all of your future and lesser decisions. Brothers and sisters, (this is something to keep in mind), Strategy answers the question of what we want to do, is it not concerned exclusively with what the enemy is doing? It addresses what we want to do, how we want to achieve it and what it looks like in the very end. A fundamental function of leaders, especially Muslim leaders, is to conceptualize and to develop and implement strategy. To implement the fact that we can look at our surroundings, make a set of core decisions that help our people shape all of their other decisions. It is leaders who implement strategy and their followers who implement tactics. It is strategy that gives shape to your tactical considerations and this is why we say it is leaders who have the capacity to shape the behavior of their followers or of their flock. To this end Umar ibn Al Khattab (radi Allahu anhu), the second successor to Allah's Messenger, said when the leaders are immoderate then the people quickly follow suit. So the leaders have the greatest impact on their followers, on their flock, on their people (and) on their societies. In the talks of times passed we indicated that important function of leaders (or) the primary function of leaders is to set a directional course and that setting a directional course is composed of creating a sense of urgency, identifying the important constituencies and more importantly identifying their needs and then lastly to help these constituencies to understand what their struggle and their effort is going to lead to (and what) its going to look like in the end, basically a vision. So an important part of direction setting is to create a vision that the people (and) the constituencies can aspire to. But how do we go from where we are to where we have to be? How do we achieve our vision? This is where strategy comes in. It defines a program and a process to help you understand how you're going to go from where you are to where you have to be. So this means that the strategic exercise of power is more valuable than the reactionary exercise of power for when you are in the domain of reaction you have to count by definition (and) by necessity on the vision and direction of somebody else. When you put yourself on somebody else's direction and when you are trying to achieve somebody else's direction then that is what is shaping your behavior and you end up accomplishing the goals of somebody else's vision and somebody else's direction. Then with regard to your own problems and your own needs you find yourself back at square one after committing all of that effort. What gets lost in all academic discussions and theoretical ones, (such as this one is beginning but not in a way that this discussion is going to end), is that strategy is a deliberative activity. It requires the participation of important constituencies who are going to be assigned the task of achieving a vision and thus their ownership or whatever this strategy or process is going to look like to help you get from where you are to where you have to be is important. Within Islamic terminology we call this kind of a process where we discuss what our strategy is going to look like a shura and to the extent that we continuously engage in this kind of a process- this deliberate engagement to come up with the best strategy- is what becomes an institutional shura. When we talk about strategy shura ought to be a matter of fact (and) it ought not to be something new. Part of the reason that strategy is a deliberative effort is because leadership itself is a social activity. Leaders are assigned the task of managing human relationships to the end of achieving a common goal. Leaders also have the task or the mission to manage the relationship between a constituencies commitments and the discharge of those responsibilities. So the stakeholders who participate in developing a strategy and coming up with a vision have to understand that they own the problem from which they are producing a strategy and a vision. When they say to themselves "we own this problem" what they are saying is that we are going to rely on our own thinking (and) our own creativity to solve this problem- that is ownership of a problem. When you own the problem you own the solution and when you own the problem and the solution you own everything in-between which is the process and the strategy. Leadership is the glue that holds all of this together. So there is a relationship between leadership, strategy and power. So what does all this have to do with power? If we want to make changes on the ground we have to have power. There's no way around this. If you want to change your current situation its fine to have a strategy, its fine to have leaders, its fine to have a vision but if you don't have any power you can't make any changes; but critical to acquiring any power is the necessity of leadership and strategy. You can't have independent power without having leadership and without having a strategy that tells you how to get from where you are to where you ought to be. So for Muslim leaders the key to the acquisition of political power is the implementation of strategy. Notice, brothers and sisters, we're not talking about any kind of power. There're many kinds of power. There's economic power, there's commercial power, there's military power, there's emotional power, there's inspirational power, motivational power (and) all kinds of power but in this instance we're talking about political power. Economic power for instance is the ability to leverage markets, resources, services (and) labor in order to acquire an advantage. We all understand what military power is but political power, brothers and sisters, is more fundamental. Political power is the ability to leverage the force of ideas, to excite tendencies inside the human being for achievement, to do something that other people have never done, to do things for which the reward is delayed satisfaction, to do things that are greater than oneself or one's community and this is why political power is more fundamental. Political power requires no material fuel for activation. It doesn't require resources, it doesn't require markets, it doesn't require resources and militaries; all it requires is the activation of the human mind to understand what is right and what is wrong, between what is better and what is not so good. In order to have political power you have to think and it is common knowledge that in the Muslim world one of the greatest problems that we have is the lack of stable political institutions but you can't have political institutions without political power! And you can't have political power unless you think! And that is the reason that we don't have political power and there-by political institutions and that is because we have ceded the ability to think and the desire to solve our problems to somebody else's philosophical approaches.
Again, in times past on this forum we have talked about the power equation of Muslims, (i.e.) that it is legitimacy that confers authority that leads to power. But legitimacy is not simply espousing what is right. Legitimacy is about showing the oppressed how what is right works in their favor (and) showing those who have no representation how the right things work in their favor is the same as making a key set of decisions that enable the oppressed to make a subsequent set of decisions that enable their liberation. Liberation activities are related to a strategic exercise of power not to a reactionary exercise of political power. OK- what does this all mean in practicality?
We've gone through a theoretical academic development of power, leadership and strategy but what does this mean on the ground. In order to understand that let us look at certain aspects of the Sunnah of Allah's Prophet. When he was forced to flee to Al Madinah his immediate strategic gals and his future strategic goals did not change. His immediate strategic goal was the liberation of Makkah and there-by the strategic liberation of the rest of humanity. The more transcendental goal, which again did not change, was to leave behind a set of demonstrable principles that any oppressed people any where in the world at any time (and)at any place can utilize for their self-liberation. So in order to accomplish these goals he did not employ a strategy that he had to borrow. There were many other power cultures around at the time. There was an indigenous power culture in Makkah, there was a power culture in Persia (and) there was a power culture in Rome Peninsula , a characteristic that was known in their history to Byzantine historians and to Persian historians that these people are bound to their oaths. This was something that was known the Arabian (or) the Arab, (i.e.) that when he takes an oath he will go to the death before breaking his oath. This is not true of the Arabians today but it was true of the Arabians at the time of Allah's Messenger. So he used this quality in order to accomplish the Islamic mission. So while going for armed combat in Makkah it presented not even a challenge in Al Madinah. They didn't have a problem going to war. Yes, they didn't have the equipment, they didn't have the armaments but the idea to go to war to defend the city wasn't a problem for them because they already committed their lives in the contract. So to go to war in Badr (and) to go to war in Uhud (was) a matter of fact. They didn't have an argument with the Prophet about it. They didn't have an argument with each other about it. They knew they had to go to war to defend the city. When it came to the expulsion of the Jewish tribes that was also a fait accompli. The decision made itself. Everyone knew that they backed out of their obligation to the agreement. Everyone knew that they violated the contract. The Prophet knew, the Muslims around him knew and even the treacherous Yahudis knew that they violated the contract and even the escalating punishments from the first tribe to the last tribe was not in question. These Yahudis knew and expected every kind of punishment that came to them. Brothers and sisters, the point that we are making here is that this is the value of being strategic, this is the value of making a key set of decisions that shapes and informs all of your decisions. Your easy decisions ought to be easy. You ought not to go through a constitutional deliberation for each easy decision but in our world today our easy decisions are not easy because we don't spend the time to think about the difficult decisions. So now let's bring this into the contemporary world.
We know how Allah's Messenger bound together his leadership with the acquisition of power through strategy. But how does this apply in our contemporary world? Let us take a look at the Islamic Republic in Iran Palestine Iran and the people of the Islamic Republic in Iran with the government of Syria
Finally we come to the example of the Ikhwan in Egypt Egypt
To the level of strategy we are ceding our key decisions to somebody else whether that strategy is ours or somebody else's doesn't matter. Tactics are subsumed to strategy. A tactician follows the lead of a leader (or) an Imam. An Imam may listen to the counsel of a tactician but it is the leader that makes a set of key decisions that shapes the view of a tactician and so it is the Imam or leader that wields power not the tactician; but the fact of the matter is in the vast majority of the Muslim world today our leaders are glorified tacticians because the follow somebody else's orders (and) they obey somebody else's thinking. A case in point is the Ikhwan in Egypt Egypt
… whoever rejects At Taghut- the excessive concentration of excessive power, (that's the practical meaning of Taghut) is on firm grounds... Allah is the Wali of those who are committed to Him, He takes them out of darkness and into the light; and those who are in denial of Him, their Awliya' are these concentrated and disproportionate powers of Taghut- they take people out of light and throw them out in obscurity; and they will dwell in An Naar forever (Surah Al Baqarah verse 256-257)
Dear committed brothers and dear committed sisters…
We've been talking about the relationship between strategy and how it connects leadership and the acquisition of political power. Our enemies are working overtime in so far as this power equation is concerned. Strategy to them is second nature. It hasn't become second nature to us yet because you will find very few people (and) very few Imams who stand up and talk about these issues. Very few of them talk about why we should have power, how we ought to acquire power, why we need to acquire power and why the Muslims especially need to acquire power. We are confronted with the strategic execution of an evil vision and one view of that vision is what we see with regard to the "bring our girls back campaign"; (i.e.) the kidnapping of these young girls in Nigeria Nigeria Libya and Nigeria Libya Libya Libya Washington Washington five miles from Langley Libya Libya and Nigeria Washington
This khutbah was presented by Imam Afeef Khan on the occasion of Jum'ah on 9 May 2014 on the sidewalk of Embassy Row in Washington D.C.
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Posted by: stop evil <stop_evil123@yahoo.co.uk>
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