Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Riyd alSlihn the Mandate of Sovereignty and Sicily Ribat 11202022
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AI: Transcript ©
We're back at Darce.
I was gone for
2 weeks to Italy,
and, I should say to
Sicily.
And we missed Darce because of travel.
And,
last week,
my father came home from the hospital, so,
I don't think we could have
taken care of him properly,
while,
you know, holding theirs. So that is what
that is.
I wanted to
speak a little bit about the trip to
Sicily,
but also
not interrupt our soul. Read a little bit
from the book today,
and
then we'll speak about Sicily. It's not entirely
irrelevant one topic to the other as you'll
see.
And so,
even though
some people will freak out about it, today,
we get to start in
real
This is a chapter regarding the virtue of
jihad in the path of Allah
In case you think I'm just making this
up in order to, like, sound whatever,
ibn Allan, he was a Muhadith Makamukarama
in the middle ages,
student of,
Hafiz ibn Hajar Hatami,
and he writes,
This is not like, you know, my jihad
is like waking up in the morning and
getting my kids ready for school. That's wonderful.
That is a struggle,
and, you'll be rewarded for that. So no
one's gonna discount that. But, when the Quran,
in certain places, it does use the word
jihad in a more general meaning.
If anyone says that it doesn't, that's obviously
not a correct reading.
But in many places, it,
it means what?
The,
military
the military
conflict
with hostile non believers,
for the sake of,
raising the the
honor of the deen. So this definition is
a pretty standard definition.
This idea that jihad is only defensive. This
is a
improper and incorrect reading of the kitab and
sunnah.
If you wish to subscribe to that, you
have to at least
admit that this is not what the prophet
taught,
and this is not what, from the context
of ground, seems to mean.
If you wish to have some sort of
radical reinterpretation,
some sort of protestant revolution for Islam or
whatever, people should be,
open about that, and, people should be honest
intellectually about that. This is what we're trying
to do. We don't actually agree with actual
Quran itself. We're trying to, like, jerry rig
it to mean what we want it to
mean. You'll probably get laughed out by the,
and,
your ideas will not really go very far
except for in some sort of new age,
fruity, like, $12 cup of coffee,
type circles, and, it will die over there.
I promise you.
It will not go anywhere useful, which is
one of the reasons people lie about these
things
is, because
they want to somehow
do good intention or bad intention,
garner some sort of something or another that
they think is going to work out better
either for themselves or for
the, by changing,
what's there in the kitab and the sunnah.
And it's always a failure. It's always a
complete failure. It never really goes anywhere. It
never really works.
And so this is, you know, this is
not like a recruitment seminar.
There's not gonna I'm not gonna tell you
to go fight in this place or that
place or to,
join this group or that group or comment
about whether this group is right or that
group is right. And, feel free not to
ask questions about that. And if you do,
I'll feel free not to answer your question
until you, you know, that we said we're
not gonna talk about that right now. This
is what this is an intellectual exercise for
right now, what we're doing right now.
Islam is more than that. But this right
now, what we're doing is an intellectual
exercise. And
it's based on what? It's not a cop
out. It's based on what? It's based on
the idea that
right thinking
precedes right speech,
and right speech precedes right action.
That right thinking
precedes right speech,
and right speech precedes right action.
We don't subscribe to the idea that, oh,
this is just all talk, or this is
all just intellectual *, or all this is
all just, like, a bunch of nonsense, and
you people are all talk.
Why?
Because the deen that was revealed to the
Rasul
is the deen of
All deeds are going to be judged according
to their intentions.
That the intention of a believer is better
than the, than the act of the believer
themselves. Even though there's in both of them,
but you'll receive more reward for having good
intention than you will even for the good
act no matter how amazing the act is.
And we believe in the tradition of what
that what's what's inside of a person is
more important and more beloved to than what's
outside.
And
we're not the deen of what's outside is
not
important. Mouth closed. Nose breathe. Thank you.
But,
worthy
were the ummah of what? Were the ummah
of right,
having understanding them correctly, first of all, and
then
doing things later.
If you do first and then you say,
I'm gonna learn on the job, especially with
something like Jihad, you end up with all
these nut headed groups like, you know, ISIS
and whatever. If you
are,
I don't wanna say naive, but if you
wanna say, if you have
enough goodwill toward people that's unearned
and enough,
almost naive level of
trust in other human beings and their goodness
to believe that this is actually something that
was started through good intentions and not just
some sort of weird, like,
you know, plant driven by
people who have bad intentions toward Islam,
then at the very best at the very
best, all these Najdab groups like ISIS and,
like, Al Qaeda and whatever that, like, you
know, do stupid things that are basically haram
in order to serve the deen,
and that are actually very harmful to Muslims
and end up racking up body counts with
Muslims through their own violence. Not not talking
about the consequences of their poor decision making
because when we enter that into it, then
it becomes, like, even more. But just through
their own violence, just end up killing more
Muslims and harming Muslims more than they really
harm anybody else, whether that person is an
enemy or or not an enemy, which is
another discussion to have. So the idea is
let's understand things first. Let's read things first.
Let's not be so excited about the Quran
and sunnah that we're willing to kill other
people, but we're not actually willing to read
it ourselves.
Let's not be so excited about,
about that we're
willing to,
establish Sharia that we don't even wanna learn
much less practice ourselves.
All of these things, they should go together.
They should go together. And rationally
rationally, understanding should precede,
should precede speech, and speech should precede action.
Rationally, meaning what? Not chronologically. They all happen
at the same time.
But one will lead to one being corrected
will lead to the correction of the other,
and the second being corrected will lead to
the correction of the 3rd. And without this
understanding,
you know, you're you're you're not really doing
things the way that the prophet
taught. So today, we're gonna talk about we're
gonna focus on we're gonna make an exercise
in over the coming weeks, we're gonna make
an exercise in understanding what is jihad and
how is it supposed to correctly be,
conceptualized.
Right? So the first thing we said is
what? Is that it is the the military
conflict with the hostile,
non non believers in order to raise the
honor of Din.
So this idea of it being purely defensive,
it can be defensive for sure. But the
idea of it being purely defensive is,
itself a, kind of a modern,
a modern, invention,
in order to make people feel better in
front of hostile unbelievers
who wish nothing good for them.
Right? Who are the people who call Muslims
violent? The most violent people in the world.
The Israelis that stole the land of people
literally have, like, people from Brooklyn and from
New Jersey living in the houses of people
that they've their ancestral houses that they lived
in for centuries.
They're the ones who call you call you
terrorists.
Right? Who the neo cons that literally bombed,
Afghanistan and Iraq into the stone age. They're
the ones who call you terrorists. Why? Because
when you're trying to kill somebody and they
fight back, it's annoying. Right?
So if you can do something to restrain
them from that, that's like obviously, it's a
no brainer you're gonna do it. And, I
don't advocate,
you know, any sort of violent
means against
our government.
But at the same time, when they do
bogus stuff and they do wrong stuff, first
of all, we should accept that they do
do really bogus and really wrong things.
That that
it's really transparent how, like, how bad it
is.
And And even though I, as an American
citizen, don't advocate those things because we live
here and whatever,
in a universal sense, anybody who's gonna tell
somebody that you don't have the right to
defend yourself or that you don't have the
right to defend your own interests against somebody
who's willing to, through violent means and hostile
means, harm you.
That's kind of BS. That's kind of nonsense.
Right? This whole, like, just pray it away,
like,
this is great. Prayer is very powerful. There
are some people, Allah loves them so much
that they can make dua and then, like,
you know, things change.
It's it's true. We believe that.
The reading of the indicate that that's the
case. The one who had that power the
most through his prayers was the prophet
yet
his is what? You stand up and defend
yourself. You have to defend your deen. You
have to defend your ummah. You have to
defend your honor. You have to defend your
property. You have to do all of that.
And you also have to defend your interests,
which means that sometimes defense
is not defense in the sense that you
have to wait for somebody. You know they're
planning to harm you.
You don't have to wait for them to
show up at your door with a gun,
you know, in order to take care of
what you need to take care of.
And so that's that's what that is.
So the first ayah that
brings
says,
fight the the the polytheists
completely,
totally, like they fight you totally.
Meaning what? There's a recognition that on the
level of sovereignty,
sovereign nations,
there's only one rule, which is there's no
rules.
This is what the whole idea of sovereign
immunity is. This is why you cannot
prosecute a sitting head of state for any
crime,
nor can they
prosecute our sitting head of state for a
crime.
The idea is that sovereignty, what does that
mean? What does it mean to be your
own country? Right? Why is Illinois not a
country?
Even though it has a full functioning government,
if the
United States, like,
cease to exist,
has enough,
institutional
power that it could continue as a,
as an entity, and it could really provide
most,
if not all, the needs of its citizens.
But it doesn't have legal sovereignty.
The city legislature as it currently is in
Illinois cannot make a law
that overrules
constitution or overrules federal law.
It's
what? Subordinate to
a higher entity.
Right?
In
the idea of world politics,
sovereignty is the highest level that you're not
really subordinate to anybody.
You can have these kind of political theories
where if it's a theocracy, you're sub subordinate
to whatever religion you follow. If it's a
democracy, you're theoretically supported to to the will
of the people or whatever. Right? If it's
a monarchy, it's to the will of the
the the the monarch or to the ruling
family or to whatever. Right? Those things are
political. And then in reality, you know, different
things are different. You know, like,
reality may or may not have, you know,
reflect people's
claimed,
claimed allegiances or whatever.
But the idea is what is that a
country is sovereign.
The head of one state cannot dictate through
legal means what the head of another state
should do.
A country can only hold itself accountable and
responsible to itself.
It's not accountable to anybody else. Right? So
this this what does this mean?
There's a context to it. It doesn't mean
that every single mushrik could kill him, and
everything is lawful in what you do with
every that's not what it is. Why? Because
jihad is not prosecuted
on a an individual level.
Jihad is prosecuted how? It's prosecuted on a
sovereign level. That one sovereign state prosecuted against
another sovereign state. This is why there's no
jihad in Makkum Karama while the Muslims lived
as a minority.
Once they go to Madinah Munawara, then they
have an army,
their limits, borders,
there's property, there's, you know, political,
interest, etcetera, etcetera, that's when you see battle
start to happen.
Otherwise, none of it happens within.
We don't have this thing that, like, the
the Muslims lived as a a minority, so
they subordinated this. They what you call,
that they were just kind of, like,
leeching off the society that they lived in
or that they were,
you know, internally
somehow, like, destabilizing the society that they lived
in. There are some there are
some heterodox claimants to Islam
that subscribe to this model of living, but
a view of how the prophet
operated
in shows that that's not really what they
were doing. And common sense dictates that in
Munawwara, there is no need to do that
anymore either because the Rasul
was the sovereign of Madinah. There was nobody
really who could, like, stop him from doing
anything within
the the territory that they controlled.
Right? That was the original the original Dara
of Islam is what?
Is the area between the the
and between the mountains and between the
the the the, you know,
that that area, nobody could really tell them
what to do or what not to do.
And so
that was the area of his sovereignty. There's
no need to lie to anybody anymore. There's
no need to sub subordinate anybody anymore or
subvert anybody. The word subvert is the one
I wanted, not subordinate. To subvert anyone anymore.
There's no need to do any that anymore.
And in,
they they weren't subversive. You know, they weren't,
like, lying, cheating to people. They were
saying what they needed to say at times
strategically in the sense that they would preach
to some people and not preach to others,
but there was no, like,
you know, oh, I don't know where the
money went, but it's like secretly we took
all the money. Like, That that did never
exist.
Right? There's this concept of taqiyah amongst certain
heterodox groups that claim Islam. We don't believe
in that.
We don't believe in that. Despite all of
our
differences of opinion
in terms of in terms of all sorts
of other things, we don't believe in that.
We don't subscribe to that. That's a that's
a that's a thing. The only time a
person is allowed to lie is, like, when
presented with a grievous bodily injury or death.
And then it's only permissible to lie in
order to save yourself until you need to
save yourself.
It's not something that we think is a
a positive or a tool for, like, political,
you know, for for political
advancement.
Yes. There's the hadith of the prophet
right, that the that war is deception.
But that's after you declare war with people.
That's not before. You're already at war with
a group of people. They should not expect
anything from you. You should not expect anything
from them. Right? And telling somebody, you know,
oh, like, yeah. I don't know what's going
on when you know what's going on. That's
not worse than, like, killing them.
So the fact that war has started means
that and killing is, like, the worst thing
that you can do to another human being
by some at guess, at least from some
measure, right, from some worldly measure.
You know, it's just
a rational entailment that a person should expect
whatever from there until that war ends. And
then when that war ends, you're not allowed
to give a person false,
Aman. You're not allowed to give a person,
like you say, say, oh, we negotiated a
treaty, but I don't really mean it. Like,
you can't do that anymore. It's only during
the the, operation of warfare. So we don't
believe in that. We don't believe in that.
And so this idea of
it
doesn't mean total war. It doesn't mean kill
women and children and livestock. It doesn't mean
that every Muslim is to kill every kafir.
Right? This is a very popular thing from
people who learn about Islam from reputed sources
like Glenn Beck, in America is what, like,
oh, you know, like, doesn't the Quran say
to kill all the infidels? I'm like,
not really. Like, in that sense, no.
And and, like, I don't know, man. Maybe
you're just doing the same as to be
nice. Like, I had these discussions with people.
You know? God bless them. They may not
be intelligent people, but at least they're honest
about what it is so you can get
to the point quicker. And I just say,
go look.
I go, do you think, like, Iraq in
the Middle Ages and some Egypt in the
Middle Ages and Syria in the middle ages?
They have huge Christian population. Syria is, like,
a 35%
Christian population or whatever. Palestine looks same 30,
35%,
45%
Christian population.
Lebanon is, like, half Christian population.
You know, Egypt is, like, 10%. I said,
did you think you think it was we
we lack the means to, like, do a
genocide like they used to do in Europe?
Or do you think that we're just too
weak willed or we don't take our religion
seriously?
Oh, you kind of point there. You know?
Like, yeah. And we are crazy. We are
fanatics. Right? If that was what our dean
taught us, we would have killed every last
single person, but we didn't. It's not what
our dean teaches us. And to be very
frank with you because this is why this
ties in with what? This ties in with
the discussion about Sicily is what?
There's not a Muslim left over there.
There's not a Muslim left in southern Spain.
I mean, they're like Moroccans and Tunisians and
Mongalis that came afterward or whatever. Right?
But the original populations, there's not there's not
anybody left. There's not any Masjid left, nothing
left,
despite having a majority of population in all
of those places.
How how how weird
of a majority was it? How overwhelming was
it? Malta,
which is like a small archipelago south or
actually 2 islands south of Sicily, very close
to Sicily.
But it was a backwater,
and northern rule was not interrupted there,
unlike where the Spanish came and opened another
office of the inquisition when they took control
of Sicily and Sardinia.
They still speak Arabic.
In which dialect of Arabic do they speak?
They They speak Sicilian Arabic.
They literally they say, oh, we speak Maltese.
Right? I'm like, you don't what what is
Maltese? It's all Arabic.
They say Arabic, but instead of Shukran, they
say Grazi and they count in Italian or
whatever.
But
that's how thoroughly Muslim
Islamicized the entire place was.
So
look. And on the flip side, right, what's
the only I was talking to by, Yusuf.
What's the only
city in Europe that from, like, premodern era
has in the same block
a Catholic church and a Orthodox church and
a synagogue and a Masjid?
Sorry,
I mean, to be fair, Belgrade used to
have it as well before the Austrians took
it over and, like and the Serbs took
it over and basically destroyed everything. Right? We're
the only people who, wherever we have continuous
rule, people live side by side.
Otherwise,
the kind of post Roman,
Europe
that, adopted the teachings of of either of
the 2 churches,
or of protestantism.
They don't have that. I mean, the the
look.
You you know, they they don't have any
of that. The only reason now, you know,
they can have different religious living side by
side over there
is because what? Because they don't believe in
religion anymore.
So it's a completely different model that they're
operating on right now.
Otherwise, this idea that somehow Islam is especially
violent no. Actually,
it's especially
not violent. And coming back to the idea,
what is this idea of
What does it mean? It means when you're
when you have sovereign
rule in a place,
you're obliged to
behave in a certain way that as an
odious.
Right? If you were only thinking about yourself,
you'd be a bad person. Right? But at
the level of sovereignty, you have to think
only about yourself.
You have to think about the well-being of
your own citizens. You have to prepare yourself
against threats from the outside.
Why? Because at the sovereign level, this is
the only way this is the only way
any sort of successful polity works.
Right? This kind of sucks to think about
for a moment, by the way.
Why? Because when Trump's bans Muslims from coming
into the country, we're like, yo. That's kinda
that kinda sucks. Right?
That's horrible.
The idea is what?
Is if you're thinking about America only, you
should probably ban not just Muslims, you should
ban a whole bunch of other people.
You should only allow people that benefit you.
This idea of feeding, you you know, masses
hungry masses, yearning to be free or whatever,
this is a kind of a fiction that
we made up in America. We did it
as long as it was in our benefit.
He has this huge
land with, you know, with with all this,
like, arable, like, farms and things like that,
and nobody to live there.
It means what? A foreign
army can come, occupy invade and occupy very
easily because we don't have people to defend
ourselves.
We don't have a means to run an
economy. We don't have any of that stuff.
So what were they doing? They're saying, okay.
You know, bring people bring your people over
from Scotland, from England, you know, and, they
can work our farms. Okay. As many people
as wanted to come came from
there. Now what? Bring the Germans. Okay. They
came. Now what?
Bring, like, North Scandinavians, etcetera.
Now what?
We still need, like, more people because the
country is not, like, viable. Oh. Alright. Damn
it. Bring the Catholics too. Let the Irish
come. Let the Italians come. Let the Polish
come. Let the whatever. Right? The same guys
right now who are at white supremacist rallies.
Now who are at white supremacist rallies
just 30, 40 years ago. They weren't even
really white. People used to call them, like,
racist slurs that make people's feelings hurt.
Right?
Okay. Let them in because we need them.
Why is it that there are brown people
in, like, England and in
France or whatever? Right? Now there are people
who are coming. They don't wanna say, stay
out. We don't want you. Right? But there
was a time they needed people to work
factories.
They needed people to work farms. They need
same thing in America. Right? Why is it
that everything is one of the big reasons
everything is more expensive here is that we
basically shut the door on our own cheap
labor.
Was it an economically wise decision or not?
I'll let the politicians decide that.
Right? Because there's some benefits and there's some
drawbacks. Right? If you have this huge portion
of your population
that doesn't believe in the viability of your
state and is not, you know, really
contributing anything to its progress,
It's a political liability.
On the flip side, if nobody wants to
do work, this also then detracts from your
viability.
Coming back, walking all of these things back,
how is this how is this relevant to
this idea of, you know,
The idea is that every sovereign polity is
obliged
to look after its own welfare and not
look after anybody else's. This is the reason
why the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
there is a limit to how much he
would protect those Muslims that accepted Islam but
didn't make hijra.
Make hijra. Join the the, you know, join
the Muslims where they are.
If not, we'll help you to a degree.
But if it's going to compromise the
the the
sovereign policy of the Muslims, then, like,
how much can we help you? What sense
does it make? That there are people who
are completely invested in the project, and you're
not
maybe not out of your own choosing, your
inability to be invested completely in the project,
you know, or maybe stopping or whatever. But
it's one of those hard choices that need
to be be
made. Right? It's it's important to understand the
serum. Why is the serum work the way
it does? Right? Of course, these are,
again, it's an intellectual discussion, but these then
bring up for us some very harsh,
and distasteful realities, which is what
sometimes people in Muslim countries do stuff.
And we're like, * it. You guys hang
hang us out to dry now in front
of, like, you know, Bill at work. And,
like, how come they never think about minority
population?
That's not how sovereignty works.
That's not how sovereignty works. They have sovereign
nations. They have to look after them. Maybe
the decision that hung us out to drive
is a bad one. I'll accept that possibility.
In fact, people in the Muslim world seem
to be making really they may seem to
be on a roll of making bad decisions
lately, but that's a separate
idea. But just the idea that they are
supposed to consider, how we will look in
front of, like, Bill at work as some
sort of guiding principle
of how they prosecute their internal or their
their foreign policies,
it's complete fail. It's complete disaster.
This also brings up another interesting truth, though,
for our ourselves as a community, which is
what?
We may not actually be super beholden to
what their interest and needs are as well
in other places.
And I'm not necessarily advocating, like, completely saying,
like, to * with all of you,
because, again, the Rasool,
he didn't he didn't cut off those people
who didn't make Hijra,
but he just put them in the 2nd
tier that if we're able to help you
without
compromising
our own viability,
then we'll do so. We'll expend a, you
know, great deal of effort. It just should
not jeopardize
this main module of the project.
The same thing with us, that our first
our first
objective is to survive.
Based on that survival, we'll be able to
help our neighbors and friends in our country
that we live in, that we should we're
good for. We shouldn't be parasites. We shouldn't
live like a like a 5th column in
this
land or in any land that we go
on. The Muslims never were like that. And
the Muslims in, the prophet even amongst the
hostile mushrike in the Quraysh, they weren't like
that,
as we mentioned before.
But at the same time, you cannot be
out there trying to help Qatar and the
Emirates and Egypt and Pakistan and India and
this place and that place and the Palestine
and this time and the other thing. And
you're you don't have any
preparation for yourself, for your children, for your
families, for your community, for your din, for
iman, the iman of your children, for their
children, their children's children, etcetera.
Someone can raise a finger against us, say,
how come you're doing all of this and
you're
you are yourself a type of resource,
and you're extracting them away from the sovereign
Muslim nations and then bringing them over to
a non Muslim country, this is a political
discussion you can have with people. This is,
again, an uncomfortable discussion to have because it's
like, oh, what you know, know, like, I
might have to consider that I might be
doing something that's not the in the greatest,
benefit of the ummah.
That's a separate discussion. It's an interesting discussion.
We should have those discussions. We never have
those discussions. There are people right now they're
right now salivating
to watch, like, out there play Ecuador in
a soccer match. And I'm like, you know
what? If you wanted the ball so badly,
why'd you kick it?
And if you you know, I don't know.
The only species I think that's really suited
to chasing after stuff that's like kicked or
thrown is, like,
is is is a dog. But at any
rate, whatever. To each their own. Let's talk
about serious. So we're grown grown grown men.
Let's talk about serious things. You know? We're
grown ups. Our sisters also, some of them
have that that capacity in them. Some of
our brothers have this capacity in them. Discuss
important things, serious things, rather than making your
life about, like, all that other stuff. Right?
But coming back to this, the kaphatan means
what?
It means that every sovereign
every sovereign
polity
has the
has the
obligation and duty to look after its own
people.
And in as much as part of the
mandate of Islam
is that its
full implementation
can only
be possible
in a sovereign polity.
Islam also has to do these things, and
Allah gave the mandate for this. This.
Meaning what? You're a Muslim. I'm a Muslim.
If we were exiled to, like, Mars,
we can still, as an individual,
fulfill our duties, you know, as long as
the oxygen is enough or whatever. Right? You
still say
Even if you don't have, you know, enough
oxygen to breathe for the next 30 seconds,
you'll still be Muslim for the 30 seconds
you're alive there. Right? No other Muslim in
sight.
If you have oxygen and water, you can
still pray your prayers. You can still fast
Ramadan, your food, and all this other stuff.
You know, maybe you have a greenhouse out
there. I don't know. Right? Whatever.
But when I say that Islam cannot fully
be practiced, meaning what? Islam is not just
an individual thing. There's some there's a level
at which is practiced in a family, right,
between husband and wife, children, parents. Right? Familiar
relations. It's practices of community that we have
to get together. The men have their congregational
prayer. We have we have
a city. It has to have a judge.
It has to have an emir, it has
to have all of these things, you know,
a country, whatever. That at the level,
it's mandated for,
it's a mandate of Islam that an Ummawide
level that there should be
at least one sovereign polity that is that
it rules by the its mandate of rule
and the right by which it rules is
what? The implementation
of
the the order of Allah and His Rasool,
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. This is part of
our deen,
people market
in 2 ways.
1 is
by mocking it the normal way. 1 is
by claiming that they, are, you know, they
this is a really important thing, but they
don't bother to make like, learn how to
make wudu or they, literally undermine everybody who's
actually
supporting any of the the foundations or pillars
on which that state is built. Right? Because
the idea is what? Can you have a
Muslim family if you if the members of
the family are not Muslims themselves? No. Right?
1st, the individual,
then the family. They're not chronologically separated. All
of it happens at the same time. But
rationally, one is built on the other. One
cannot happen without the other. Right? So you
can have a a family that doesn't have
a Muslim Islamic dynamic in it, but the
individuals are Muslims.
Some or all of them. Right? But you
can't have it the other way around, where
it's a Islamic family, but the individuals are
not Muslims. Right?
Like that, if you're constantly undermining your masjid,
if you don't pray 5 times a day,
if you don't know how to make wudu,
you didn't learn the sharia that that the
state is supposed to be implementing,
you know, if you're not invested in producing
those people who know it or those people
who implement it or those people who teach
it or preserve it or the people who,
you know, learn the hif of the Quran
or all these things are the pillars on
which that's that's built.
These are the foundations.
And then what the jihad is described in
the hadith of the prophet is the
Like, as if Islam, right, in a very
Arab Bedouin
metaphor, as if Islam was a camel, then
jihad is what? It's like the top of
the hump of the camel. There's so many
other things that
that happens on the back of.
So the second type of people who make
a mockery of the mandate to make a
sovereign Islamic policy are those people who talk
about it, talk about it, talk about it.
They're talking about the hump without
having ever, like, seen what a camel is
in real life,
and that's kind of bogus as well. But
this is what this means,
that this is
a recognition that that between sovereign bodies, there's
no law.
There's only one rule that there's no rules.
Even with us, at least, we have the
Sharia
prohibits us from doing certain things.
But
that
list of prohibitions is drastically reduced when it
comes to
from dealing with one sovereign policy to another.
Still,
you're not allowed to kill innocent people. You're
not allowed to kill noncombatants.
You're not allowed to kill women and children.
You're not allowed to, you know, etcetera, burn
crops for no reason, etcetera. So we still
have some rules, but those are, like, self
imposed. They're autonomic. They're not it's not that
at that at that level, there's some sort
of fair you you can reasonably expect some
sort of fair conduct. It doesn't work that
way.
Rather, it's understood,
amongst all human beings that that level when
you get to that level, the only rule
is what is cage match, and the only
rule is that there's no
rules. And,
this is, inshallah,
where we,
inshallah,
go to the next part of what I
wanna discuss, which is our.
The trip to Sicily.
And,
you know, as
everyone knows right now, Sicily is not
currently
inhabited by the majority Muslim population.
All the Muslims that are there are
have a different pedigree than the ones who
built it
because they were all wiped off the map
at some point or another.
And
there's a lot of lessons to be learned
for what happened and why it happened and
how it happened.
But it's good to think about, talk about,
remember it, for a little while,
because there are brothers in in in Islam.
Right? That one of the signs of Iman
is that the the description of the believers
is as
Allah said in,
The
people
come
after
the
the
ones
who
say,
Our lord, forgive us and forgive our brothers
who came before us in faith.
Don't place in our hearts
rancor for the people who believe. So you
should
have love for the people who came before
you.
Despite the shortcomings of our forefathers, in general,
we have a good opinion of them.
Not every specific individual maybe, but, like, in
general, they were good people.
And we ask Allah,
don't make us from the haters that we
hate each other, which is a sickness of
religious people is that they start to hate
one another over, like, small things, but those
small things become
aggrandized inside the hearts.
Oh, our lord,
you are
most forgiving and most merciful.
And so the story of Islam in Sicily,
it starts with
it starts with Tunis.
Tunis, what's now the modern state state of
Tunis, Tunisia, what they call in English.
The original metropolis of
of Tunisia
is a city called Perawan. It was built
by the companions
of
the who it's there are a couple of
very special cities like that. They're actually built
and founded by the companions of the messenger
of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. So Tehran
is one of those one of those cities.
And,
from it, the rule of the Caliphil
province of Africa,
of Efreetia, was based.
The Caliphil province of Efreeti
excludes what the modern state of Morocco is.
The modern state of Morocco is actually conquered
by, Saidna,
Mulla Idris, who was a great grandson of
Saidna al Hassan
and it never,
it never,
was
part of the sovereign,
authority. It was never under the sovereign authority
of any other state,
other than it that claimed the caliphate.
So to this day, the Moroccan king claims
he's the murel mubbinin.
If you wanna have a Khalifa there, you
can go take Bey'ah with him if he'll
if he'll have you. I don't think he
will, though.
I may not be interested, but, I don't
know. I don't know. You have to talk
to him about that. But the point is
is that that, so that's the the Calafil
Africa. It doesn't include Morocco
and what's south of it.
It also doesn't include Egypt, which was which
was considered to be Egypt, Sudan, like, what's
south of that, the Horn of Africa, all
of that. So it's basically what we consider
North Africa, all the Malachy, non Morocco,
and
West African countries, so Libya,
Algeria,
and Tunis.
And from it was governed,
all of those provinces.
And so if you look on the map,
Sicily is actually really close to Tunis. It's,
like, really close to Tunis.
It's closer to
the toe of Italy, of the peninsula in
Italy, what's called Calabria,
but it it doesn't mean it's not really,
really close to Tunis.
Geologically, it's actually part of Africa.
And when you arrive there, you realize it's
geologically, it's not part of Europe. It's not
part of even Italy, to be honest with
you. You see palm trees all over the
place. You see,
you see really
a lot of things that you see in
Tunis and that you see in in Libya
and that you see in in in Algeria,
Morocco, etcetera.
The weather is very similar to those places.
The land is very similar to those places.
And, you know, part of the part of
the thing when discussing Sicily is, like, there's
this idea in
in, because obviously. Right?
Someone's like, oh, no, man. Like, the West
embraces us or whatever. No. Allah says that
they fight you, Just think about it for
a moment. You think, do I want to
agree with him or not?
Okay. Here's here's here's, here's, you
know, for your consideration while we're all wondering
whether we wanna agree with Allah or not.
Right?
There's this idea and Muslims themselves ask these
questions. They're like, well,
if our forefathers came there with the army
and conquered their way in, you know, like,
what right do we have to, like, say
bad to somebody else who, like, took the
army and kicked them out? And I'm like,
okay.
Think about this.
The western part of
Sicily
is the part that's close to Tunis.
The eastern part of Sicily is the part
that's close
to Italy.
Okay? From before the Roman times,
the
inhabitants of the western part Sicily were primarily
Carthaginian.
They spoke a Semitic language.
They're probably genetically related to you 2 gentlemen.
Right? Because the Carthaginians, where is their homeland?
Carthage used to be a province of, what,
Phoenicia,
the capital which is a tire. It's in
in in in,
modern day Lebanon. What's the Arabic word for
Sur? Right?
Sur, at some point or another, gets clobbered
by the Babylonians then by the Persians, and
it becomes a vassal state of
those other empires.
However, neither of them did their arm ever
extend to Carthage, so Carthage becomes free and
it starts to become a sovereign state. It's
no longer a tributary province of
of the center.
And how big were they? Well, they took
on the Roman Empire, and Rome
basically considered them to be a big enough
threat that they fought, like, 3 very expensive
and massive wars. And they
thought they you know, their planning was if
we cannot, you know, if we can't subdue
them completely,
our empire is gonna, like,
be at threat of loss.
And so, you know,
there's
legendary wars. The military stratagem of which is
still studied to this day in, like, officer,
academies.
One of the best and most talented commanders
to ever take the field of battle, Hannibal,
you
know,
took elephants through the Alps from Africa
through the Alps and then came down from
the northern part of, Italy and wrought havoc
and almost like trash a room.
Like,
it's interesting history. You can read about it
later. But fun fact, they all spoke Semitic
language, meaning
probably a semi intelligible,
dialect of Arabic. And so
they
they preferred the climate
and the the area in the
western part of the island,
whereas the eastern part was
largely Greek. And then there were some people
who were there from before the Carthaginians and
from before the Greeks came to
Sicily, and they were driven by them kind
of closer to the center of the island.
So what happens?
The Muslims, they they
during the reign of Ziyad Tawal al Aghalabi,
who is a,
who is a ruler of of of Abbasid
Ifriqiya,
of the the the province of Africa and
the Abbasid caliphate.
And he has basically
an agreement with the Khalifa in in Baghdad
who's, you know, significantly getting weaker and weaker.
Doesn't really have direct rule that, hey, rule
in my name, and, don't butt heads with
me so much. And, other than that, we'll
leave you alone. He says, okay.
We can do that.
And so his investiture is,
for all intents and purposes, autonomous.
And so he has a Qadi. His Qadi
that he appoints is a scholar by the
name of Ibn Muhariz,
and he appoints a second Qadi, which is
an abnormal.
It's an abnormal thing to do. Which is
what? That he appoints a second qadi who
is Asad bin Furat. Asad bin Furat, we
talked about him before. You probably have heard
about him.
He's worth, you know, mentioning that he's a
direct student of Imam Malik and Hadith, and
in fact, he's a direct student of,
Imam Mohammed bin Hassan Shaibani.
So
he goes and he studies,
a fifth from the Iraqis. He comes back.
He studies, you know, some with,
and the 2,
most important students of Malek as well. And,
he's just a very charismatic and dynamic personality.
People love him, except for they're more interested
in his than they are in his Hanafish.
And, what ends up happening is that because
he studied with Malik and because he has
this great amount of knowledge and he has
he also transmits the wata directly from him,
etcetera, etcetera,
he becomes judge but as kind of like
a proxy proxy malachy, you know, because he
because of his vast knowledge.
It's said that his personality was completely the
opposite of Ibn Muhariz. Ibn Muhariz was not
an outgoing man, and he was not a
man of many words, and he was not
a
charismatic
leader.
But he spoke little. He thought about things
a lot, and and when he spoke, it
was usually right.
And, it said about Asim Al Forat that
he was a man who knew what was
going on around him. He knew how to
deal with people. He knew how to talk
to people. He had a great amount of
knowledge, a vast amount of knowledge,
and his knowledge
outstripped the knowledge of Ibn Muiriz in terms
of, like, what he knew, what he could
produce in terms of his ilm.
However,
Ibn Muiriz was right more more often than
than than, his co co judge was.
And so what happens is that,
there was a
Byzantine
commander by the name
of Euphemius
who
had some gripe against the the the Byzantine
Empire. Byzantine Empire is what? It's Rome. It's
the Roman Empire. Roman Empire had 2 halves.
The western half was ruled from Rome and
the eastern half was ruled from Constantinople,
but they're one state.
What ends up happening is we start to
refer to something as the Byzantine Empire, not
because it's not Rome. It is Rome. But
the western half at some point gets sacked,
and is unable to keep its own, sovereignty
intact. It gets sacked by,
basically, Germanic tribes, serially after 400 or whatever.
Right? So the only part
of the Roman state it's still it is
Rome, but the only part of the Roman
state that that's still functional and has sovereignty
intact is what's ruled from Constantinople, not from
the from the west.
And so what happens is that they actually
will,
conquer. Although Sicily was part of the jurisdiction
of the western state, they'll actually conquer it
and just run it and administer it themselves.
So Euphemia,
Euphemius basically comes to, the court in Erdogan,
and he he says, hey. Look. You know,
I have
this gripe with the Byzantine Empire, and why
don't you send me an army,
to rule? And I'll give you tribute in
this amount every year, and, like, I promise
we won't make war with you and this
and that. And one of the inducements he
says is that, by the way, they're breaking
their treaty with you. You have the treaty
that you won't keep, Byzantine prisoners without telling
them they won't keep Muslim prisoners without telling
without telling them. They won't keep Muslim prisoners
without telling you. They have a bunch of
Muslim prisoners, and they basically nab them on
the sea, and they're not telling you about
it.
And so what happens is that the, the
emirs,
he asked his 2 judges. The 2 judges
are the, like, whatever the top
ulama in in in in the government. Right?
So Yasin, what are we supposed to do?
Is this something jayas or not?
One might hope that it's because
of piety,
But also there's a very practical political
element at play, which is what that the
people won't follow if the Qadhi say that
it's not legitimate.
Lucky for today's rulers, that's not a problem
anymore.
Anyhow,
that was sarcastic comment. Not everyone picks up
on my sarcasm.
The sarcastic comment.
But,
so what happens is that ibn Muqdas is
like, you know what? Getting into war is
like a big deal.
Let's just wait and see.
And Assad al Farah says no. Strike while
iron's hot.
They broke the treaty. It's right there. This
guy is giving us all this information, etcetera.
Let's
let's take an army and let's do this.
And,
again,
in the context of
it makes sense actually. It was a very
wise move
that they already breached the the treaty,
and it's right there.
And, it's better for the Muslims, and it's
better for them as well for Sicily as
history will show that the Muslims should do
this. And so what happens is Asad al
Furat,
his father came as one of the who
conquered
Tunis,
for the sake of Allah.
He came as a child with his father.
And now as the judge of the of
the state,
he oversaw,
the the fleets that were being readied to
sail.
And, he said that I've never seen anything
like this in my life.
And one of the one of the interesting
things is because he bought in so wholesale
to be the the plan of conquest,
a great amount of the army that
set sail
and went to Sicily that first time. They're
actually the Maktab teachers. They're actually the stew
his students. They're actually father of the Quran.
They're the students of knowledge. They're the they're
the.
And because of that,
actually made him the commander of that army.
And this is a unique
honor
that he had,
that
very rarely will have will have been repeated
in the history of Islam,
and to my knowledge never happened before him,
which is that he was both the Qadi
of the state and also the commander of
the army, the the commander of the the
military at the same time.
And,
you know, if it was the other way
around that we made the a general, like,
some battle hardened rough riding general into,
that's convenient.
That's very expedient, in fact, and usually will
not result in any sort of, like,
real respect for the laws of Islam.
But this is
the who was made into the
commander. It's the other way around.
And Asad bin Farat was an inner student
of knowledge, And this was his idea is
that we're gonna go and, like, we're gonna
carry this ill it's an idealistic,
an idealistic,
you know,
foray that they had. That they were gonna
go and they're gonna spread the deen of
Allah Ta'ala, and they're going to spread the
makatib, and they're gonna spread the madaris. They're
the,
They're
gonna spread all of these things. And so
they make landfall in a city called,
Mazar.
The Italian name of it is Mazzara del
Valo,
actually, I guess, because it's not Spanish even
though it's very Spanish y. But,
they made landfall there. They conquered that. That's
where Imam Masary is from,
who wrote the commentary on
on the on Sahih Muslim and who,
was of the Maliki school.
His that he wrote
on
the of,
is
a book that's one of the 4 main
sources that the Khalil takes Fatwa from.
At any rate, they make landfall over there,
and
then they
attempt to siege Syracuse. Syracuse is like, the
Syracuse, New York is named after.
They, siege it. Why? Because it was the
capital of the Greek side of the,
of the island in the old days, and
the Byzantines made it their capital of the,
of the island, of their province.
Interestingly enough, they actually once they arrived at
the island, they actually had, Euphemia,
imprisoned because they didn't trust him because you
never trust a traitor.
Just like w didn't learn from,
this,
Tel Aviv guy.
Right?
But that's so they went they went for
Syracuse. There was a great battle outside of
this, the city of Syracuse. Asad bin Farah
himself carried the flag in that battle.
And,
he caught plague, and he was shaheed in
the path of Allah. He's buried somewhere outside
of Syracuse.
After he passes, that army appoints because they're
like
they're like in the middle of, like just
like some island in the middle of the
Mediterranean they've never been to before. You have
to admire, even if you don't accept, like,
oh, look. You know, I don't believe in
all this fighting. It's like, good for you.
You have to admire at least
medieval people, whether they're on your team or
not.
You have to admire the gall that these
people had,
which is that we're gonna get on the
ship, and we're gonna walk up to this
place we've never been before. We don't speak
any of the language. We don't speak any
of these things. And, like, we're gonna do
this thing because this is what we believe
is right, whether you agree with it or
not.
So they weren't able to take Syracuse,
and so they turned. And after Asad bin
Farhad passed amongst themselves, because you can't just
email Pleroe and say, okay. What should we
do now? They appointed a commander among themselves,
and then they turned their siege to they
turned their their attack to Palermo,
which is not an it's not it's not
an important it's not a very important city.
The metropolis of Sicily is what?
It is
Syracuse,
Sulphur.
Right?
So they turn their attention to Palermo, and
they conquer it.
And they're like, this is a really nice
place.
And they made it into the their capital,
and it has been the metropolis
of Sicily from that time until this. The
reason this is important to mention is what?
Is the Muslims wherever they went, people can
be salty about conquest all they want. You
can be salty, but the conquest of Constantinople
you know, Serbs can be salty about, you
know, the Muslims conquering Central Europe
and Hungary
and, you know, the siege of Vienna. You
know, the span the Spaniards can be salty
about the whatever, like, foreign invasion of Spain.
You know, people in the Muslim world, you
know, they're like, oh, look. You know, these,
Muslims came and were actually, you know, Berbers
or were Phoenicians or were,
Amalekites or God knows whatever the * people
wanna call themselves nowadays, how what pronoun they
wanna identify by or whatever. Right? You say
all of those things. Right? India, same thing.
India, Pakistan is the same thing. Oh, look.
They came and they, like, massacred 9,000,000 Hindus
or whatever, which is, like, mathematically not impossible.
Like,
Hitler with German efficiency and modern technology wasn't
able to kill that many people, like, within
his lifetime. Like, it does even the math
doesn't add up. Right?
All of these things, you can say all
of them. But one thing that's a proof
in the face of these,
claims, which is what? Wherever the Muslims went,
like,
we
became part of the land that we lived
in.
We made it better in ways that the
locals have to admit, because nobody wants to
see anything when they come to India. But
what is it they wanna see? They wanna
see the Taj Mahal. They wanna see the
Red Fort. Right? Because it's nice.
You don't do that if you're there to
rob and loot things and send them back
to England. Right? What is it the British
made over that the people wanna see? Nothing.
They say, oh, look. We built, like, railroads.
Yeah. So you could steal stuff and then
ship it back to England. Right? Muslims didn't
do that.
Palermo to this day is the jewel of
of of Sicily.
They never
they never moved the capital back to Syracuse.
In fact, Syracuse is
importance nowadays in in Sicily. It still exists.
It wasn't, like, demolished or anything, but it's
minor importance. Why? Because the Muslims, wherever they
went, they set up their own things, and
those things were more,
they were more viable. So in even in
the part of Sicily Sicily is kinda like
a triangle. Right?
The Muslim
geographers basically
made a survey of Sicily that would be
used for government purposes. They divided it into
provinces and things like that. Right? So it's
kinda like a triangle. It has 3 points.
Right? So 3 main provinces of Sicily, Sicily,
were divided like that, that there's the province
of Mazar, which is the west where the
Muslims first made themselves at home.
And it's climatically,
geographically,
it's very
unique.
The crops the same types of crops grown
in that area, etcetera, etcetera.
Then there's the the province of Messina, which
is the part that the triangle tip that
touches or comes close to touching Italy. And
then there's one in the south,
which is,
which is called Noto. Right? And Sarkusa is
Noto. What's the big hub of trade and
governance now? It's Qatania,
which is what? It's Arabic.
It's actually you know, the name is Arabic.
It's a city built up by the Muslims.
Muslims went there and they made it better.
This is one of the most amazing things
about because we can't, like, you know, like,
I have, like, 5 more minutes till my
hour's up or whatever. Right? But
one of the most amazing things about going
to Sicily is what?
Is that the locals were like, yeah. When
the Arabs came, they did this for us,
they did that for us, they did this
for us, they did that for us. They
actually acknowledged it and they were actually they
were actually proud of it.
One of the most impressive things that I
thought about them saying,
you know, from all the the many things
they they boasted about, this is, you know,
what we benefited from Muslim rule or from
Arab rule,
is that they said that before the Muslims
came, we we didn't have any
irrigation systems.
And so the word in Sicilian because Sicilian
is a different language than Italian is. There's
actually I took a picture of it. I'll
show it to you. There's a Sicilian Italian
dictionary. They're intelligible for people with some background
in linguistics, but if you don't have a
background in linguistics, they're not intelligible. Like a
person, for example, like, you know Urdu. Right?
Something in. Right? There's some similarities between Urdu
and Bangla. Right? But, like, at first glance,
you don't really they're not intelligible. Right? You
have to kinda think about it a little
bit. Right? Also, a Bangla speaker? Yeah. Yeah.
Right? So do you understand Urdu at all?
No. Right. It's like that.
They have to learn Italian as a separate
language.
Sicilian is a different language than Italian is.
Or, like, for example, if anyone knows a
little bit of Spanish then you hear someone
speak Portuguese, you're like, what in the world
is that? Like, even though they're actually quite
similar languages, but they're actually not,
like, intelligible with one another.
So
in Sicilian,
the word for canal is what?
It's Kanat,
like in Arabic, like Panatun. Right? It's the
same word for channel and it's the same
word for canal. Someone might make the argument
that this is originally not an Arabic word,
but the word is not borrowed in into
Sicilian from
Greek or Latin. It's borrowed into Sicilian from
what?
From Arabic.
Why? Because the Muslims are the ones you
literally see, like, there are caves, their stones,
everywhere. They're literally ways that they they have
ingenious ways. Both the Arabs and the Berbers
had ingenious ways of somehow, like, extracting every
drop of water out of very arid arid
climates
and using that for irrigation.
Right? The hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam,
right, that the best sadaqa is water.
So that's the sadaqa that they receive
the reward for to this day.
The people still eat and drink. The crops
still eat and drink. The animals still eat
and drink from that from those those canals.
They say in this in certain places, we
still use the traditional irrigation systems. The
that
Sicily
is
the
most famous for that the that Sicily is
the most famous for, lemons, oranges,
pistachios.
They very freely say that the Muslims were
the ones who brought them here.
Interestingly enough, Sicilians have a separate language. Right?
This whole idea of what a nation state
is or whatever. Right?
Sicily has its own language. It has its
own people. It has its own customs. You
know? It has its own humor. It has
its own they're separate separate from from Italy.
Italy as a country, has only existed for,
like, 200 years. It's basically
a a weird thing that happened because Napoleon
conquered
the peninsula of Italy.
He made it into one
subordinate
puppet state of
France, and then Napoleon
got his backside, like, handed to him by
the the allies.
And so they have to do something with,
like,
Europe politically afterwards. So they're like, oh, here.
You know? And so they just basically
you're a country now. You all rule, live
together, and rule together or whatever. So Sicily
is by Italy, so it gets given to
it's not actually part of Italy.
Right? If you don't believe me, if you
think all this, you know you know, whatever,
this Muslim guy, he looks like a terrier.
He talks like a terrier. He, you know,
he's making this up. One of the funniest
things is I saw a,
graffiti.
And what was written on it?
Sicily is not Italy.
Where was it? In Rome.
Where?
In Rome. Why? Because the people from the
south of Italy in general, they resent this.
Because the train from
the train from Milan, which is, like, up,
like, by the border Switzerland and whatever, right,
to Rome, which is halfway in the middle
of the peninsula, is 3 hours, 3 and
a half hours or so.
The train from
Rome to Sicily,
which is geographically about the same distance, it's
10 hours, 10 and a half hours. Why?
The southern the southern part of the country
is completely
The people who live in the south are
treated like crap, and they look at them
like they're you guys are just a bunch
of Arabs anyway,
to this day.
And there's resentment between them.
This is why the Sicilians in or the
Italians in America are all Sicilians or Calabrians.
Calabria
Apulia
is the heel of the boot.
Calabria is the toe of the boot, and
Sicily is Sicily.
To this day, all of them, if they
wanna get an education, they have to move
north. If they wanna get a job that
pays well, they have to move north.
They have their own languages. They're not Italian.
It's a different language.
And so a lot of the converts in
Italy there are a lot number of converts
that I met. They're actually people who are
originally from the South,
so their mind is a little bit opened
already because of that.
The reason I mentioned this is what? Is
that this idea that, oh, look. Muslims were
foreigners, and then they kicked them out. Right?
Who who who conquered,
Sicily from the Muslims?
The Normans, they're from Norway.
They're from where?
If Italians are foreigners in Sicily,
you know, it's not they
speak a different language. What the * people
are coming here? What are you gonna, like,
eat? Like, pickled cod or herring or what?
You know, like, what is that? How is
that somehow, like, liberating it from a foreign
invader? Right?
But you know what? The Normans were cool.
Their hadith
Tanasur.
They
were only like 1 or 2 generations, 3
generations at max, like, many of the many
of them in Christianity.
And they're like, hey. This Muslim stuff is
really cool. So they had churches built with
Arabic inscriptions all over the place. I'll show
them to you.
Many of them are actually destroyed by who?
By the later Christians who took over, and
they're like, what the * is all of
this muzzy looking stuff? They destroyed they literally
destroyed the palaces. They destroyed gardens. They destroy
why? Because but still, they had huge churches
sponsored. They look like they're drop shipped out
of Tunisia. It's not like they couldn't have
hired an Italian or
hired a French Frenchman or something like that
to build them, but they actually thought this
is actually way cooler.
They were enchanted by it. Roger the second,
the the son of the the the Norman
conqueror who conquered
Sicily,
he actually loved Arabic so much that they
say that he used to keep court poets
in his in his court and he used
to himself write shayr,
which is a big deal. Right? You're an
Arab, aren't you?
You have a Diwan of poetry you ever
wrote?
Do you know like which was in, which
thing is in, like,
which was in is it in? Do you
know? No. Because that's like kind of hard.
You have to know like a lot of
Arabic. We're like,
oh, oh my god. Someone,
and
this and that. Brother, we don't need this
one.
You know, like, I have uncles at the
Masjid when I would, like, talk about the
Quran. He said, brother, we don't need you
to say this and this and that. I'm
like, why not? It's Arabic.
People like her. Her. So he he liked
Arabic so much. You know, he actually used
to keep his posse where, like, Arabic
the literary crowd, and he used to what?
He used to himself say say.
Right? His inscriptions start with,
For all of your heeha,
boys
out out in,
you know,
where we live,
you know, that say, oh, Ollo is the
moon god. Well, guess what? You know, your
great great grandfather who, like, you know, was
a rough writing like Norsemen who, like,
actually remembers seeing, like, temples where Thor and
Odin were worshiped, like, literally.
The name he used for,
god is what Allah
I mean, there are other proofs that are
even greater than that. But the thing is
that that that's their inscriptions began.
And they were baptized. I mean, they were
they were Catholics. They were not Muslims.
But they saw great in the the the
the culture and in the,
economy
and in the,
the rule of the of the of the
Muslims. And they're like, why in our mind
would we ever wanna, like, subvert this? Because
way better than anything else that's there in
in in Italy. So what they did is
that the court the hookahum of the court
would be recorded in Greek, but all the
mid tier and the low tier administrators were
all Arabic. It was all Arabic.
And there was a fair amount of,
of, of patronage of Arabic art Arab arts
and culture. There were masajid that were still
calling the adhan, that still people were still
praying in, etcetera.
There were some tension because they were trying
to bring in immigrants from
the Catholic part Lombardi the Catholic part of,
like, Lombard, Illinois. You know what Lombard means?
It means long beard. It's one of the
early Latinized Germanic tribes that, like, basically overruns
Rome. Right? But, it's you know? And so
the Lombards, they they try to force settle
them, you know, to be kind of like
the brute squad that's there to back up
the norm in case the Arabs get out
of hand. Right? So there's some tension between
them. But by and large, there is a
Muslim community there, and they are the majority
inhabitants of the island. It's just that they're
disenfranchised at this point to some degree. But
there's some lip service, and they're they're still
making a living. They're still getting along.
What ends up happening, Roger the first, Roger
the second, William the first, William the second.
Roger the first, by
the way, his wife was the first cousin
of the the wife of William the conqueror
in England. Right? It's the same Norman dynasty
that rules England.
Right?
So what what happens is that William the
second,
he doesn't have any heir. And in order
to end the fight with the you know,
internally amongst the Normans, he says, okay. If
I die without an air like, I'll have
a kid. Right? How hard is that? It's
maybe interesting, the process to having a kid.
Right? So how hard is that? So he
he says, okay. If I die without an
heir, what ends up what what I'll give
the kingship to,
my cousin, who is a nun in an
abbey. Like, what could go wrong? Well, he
died before he could have a kid.
There was a German prince
of the Hohenstaufen
family,
which was which were
from the Holy Roman Empire. If you're not
familiar with history, the Holy Roman Empire, there's
only 3 things you need to remember about
it. It was neither holy nor was it
Roman nor was it an empire, meaning it
wasn't a theocratic state.
They're mostly German Germanic kings. They're not Roman,
and it wasn't an empire. They mostly ruled
like their own land. It wasn't like super
expansionist or whatever,
nor did it have one direct imperial rule,
but there were, like, a bunch of, like,
little pieces of it that they it was
more like a confederation. But they called themselves
that. The pope gave them whatever titles and
things like
that. So when the Hohenstaufens
come, the pope says, you gotta kick all
these Muslims out. They're making me feel uncomfortable.
And so what does he do? He enslaves
them and brings them to southern Italy,
where they teach people how to farm the
land and make a whole bunch of money
and build massages and madrasas and things like
that. And then later on, pope's like, okay.
You gotta kill them all because they're gonna
take over this whole place.
The Germans, their rule is
followed by the French, the house of of
Anjou, which actually rules also the the British
crown at some point, and then it's followed
by the Spanish. When the Spanish get there,
they open a branch of the inquisition. So
what happens, the Germans will kick all the
Muslims out,
enslave them, and then kill them, but on
the mainland, not in Sicily in general. I
mean, they'll kill them as well, but
the the last
order is on the mainland.
The Spanish, what they do is they open
a branch of the inquisition. If there's any
stragglers left that are, like, keeping their Islam
deal
or that have some sort of memory of
Islam or there's a building with an inscription
inscription, or there's some any sort of memory
of Islam anywhere. They're the ones who methodically
go, like, street to street, basically, ferreting everything
out and killing people and this and that
and the other thing.
But, again, think about this. The and that
and the other thing. But, again, think about
this.
The Sicilians, we're talking about kicking out foreign
invaders and Sicily being free. Right?
Who lived there before? Phoenicians and Greeks.
Phoenicians and then some Greeks.
Then the Romans came. They're not Romans. The
Sicilians were not Latin speaking people.
Then after them, the Byzantine Greeks.
Then after them, the Muslims. Right? So the
Greeks had claimed the half of the island
at some point, and then the Muslims are
Semitic speaking people from Tunis.
They have some claim to the other half
of the island. Right?
After they're gone, who is there? Germans,
French,
Spanish,
and now Italy.
It's still under foreign rule by that standard,
by that metric.
You see a bunch of churches that look
like Tunisian Masajid
that are oriented not to the Tiblah. Interestingly
enough, not to the Qibla. Has anyone here
been to the Maghrib before? You've been to,
like, Morocco? You haven't? All of the Masajid
in Morocco are off from the by a
certain amount. So you'll see if even if
you go into the in the in the
in and fast,
the lines are crooked. The the in some
massages, the lines are crooked. In the the
lines are straight. Everyone takes a quarter turn
to the right and prays
because the is off. There's
incorrect calculation that happens in many of the
Masajid
many of the old Masajid most of the
old Masajid in Morocco.
And so all of the Sicilian churches are
facing the incorrect
good law of the mind.
Even some of the buildings, to be honest
with you, that are that are, that were
built by the Normans,
there's a possibility they actually weren't built by
the Normans. They were just appropriated Masajid. And
why is that? It's because, like, our tour
guide was like, oh, look. Islamic water art.
What is the? Like, there's
I showed pictures on if whoever follows on
Facebook. Right?
It's not
I took pictures and showed the place from
Cefalu where there's, like, these all these spigots
about this high off the ground that water
is coming out of it.
Islamic water art. Right? You know?
And so, like, we're like, oh, cool. It's
like, we gotta make wulu. So, like, our
group made wulu from that place and
and moved on. We went to eat pizza
in Catania in the in the in the
eastern part of the the island.
And so the manager of of the pizza
place is Moroccan who, you know, actually gave
chutba in in patania.
And so he's like, you know, we were
we we were like, we didn't know we're
gonna eat. So, oh, just come eat at
my place. No problem. So we had pizza
at his place. It's the only place in
the world I've ever had pistachio pizza because
pistachio is special in Sicily.
Right? So, anyway
so I was telling him, like, yeah, it's
wild, man. Like, this whole place is, like,
so, like,
like, ghost Muslimed out, you know?
And, I explained this, like, they're, like, Islamic
water art, and it's, like, apparently a place
for making wudu. He's like, yeah. There's one
right there.
From his restaurant, he says. Literally, just walk
right there. He goes, this used to be
the old Masjid. There's still the are still
there. The river runs through the central square
of the of the city, And they're you
know, like, why would they make central square
the city there? Like, literally, the whole river
is canaled and it runs through the city
and they divert the water for their own
usage and they
you don't see that. You don't see in
a church, do you? Right?
So it's really interesting.
So many like, the word mesquite they still
use in their language.
They, the word for the old city is
Medina. Right? There's a in the city of
Enna, Kasrul Gevani, Kasrian in Arabic,
there's still
a neighborhood called Irubato,
which was a rebat of the city,
and they still call it that.
And so it looks so much
that even the the the inquisition wasn't able
to expunge and expel.
And because the locals have this idea in
them that
we have our own language, we have our
own culture, we have our own traditions,
and these foreigners who came and conquered didn't
do anything for them. You understand what I'm
saying?
They didn't enrich the place. It was a
tributary for somebody else. They didn't actually make
life better over there by and large, or
at least the locals didn't feel that they
made life better over there. This whole idea
of, like, why the mafia exists is because
it was a I island that's, like, ruled
by foreigners, you know. People now are sick
of the the criminal activity, murder, and violence,
and things like that. But the idea is,
at some point, even the locals who don't
like the mafia,
because there's all these, like, anti mafia, like,
flags and things like that in places, they'll
say there was a time where people looked
up to and respected the mafia. Why? Because
the rulers of the government didn't care about
us. You know, these guys used to care
for us. They used to take care of,
like, things they would rob from the rich
and give to the poor and this and
that. They at least had this idea. The
concept only could
it could it could only do well
when the local population is completely neglected. Right?
Otherwise, Sicily has been an economic backwater since
the Muslims
were expelled in the Norman time.
Otherwise, it was opulently and wildly the most
wealthy,
you know, piece of land in all of
Europe.
Palermo,
I've read in some accounts, was the 2nd
most populous city in all of Europe after
Rome itself.
And the Muslims ruled for less than 300
years over there. That when they left Palermo
Palermo is still the metropolis. It's still the
capital.
It's still the jewel of Sicily,
even though there's, like, all sorts of awesome
other places all over the island. But, you
know, the Muslims did something that that that
they can be proud of and that the
locals still appreciate, and they appreciate the fact
that nobody else did that for them. Nobody
else treated them that way as well. It's
my hope that we visit more often
and that we foster and cultivate the ties.
There was a sister who actually accepted Islam,
at the
at the, last Jummah that we, that we
went to. And there are all kinds of
people, you know, whenever we'd pray in a
place,
you know, and you think that, oh, that's
it. You know, the crusades are starting up
again. You know, like, these guys are gonna
shut us down inquisition style. What happens? It
was not that at all, in fact. In
fact, the, you know, the comment that we
would get when we would pray in a
place, like an old masjid or whatever,
We'd pray in congregation always. It's like, you
know,
there was a time when there used to
be, you know, Muslims used to live here
with us side by side, and used to
have masjids, and they used to do whatever,
and people got along. That was a better
time. So we're happy we gotta see that
again.
You know? I'm sure there's some haters out
there
for sure. But in general, this is the
sentiment that we got from people.
And,
this is the, you know, this is the
fruit of the
when it's done with a good intention and
that people did it properly.
And,
it's also
the the sad
of what happens when the Ummah abandons it,
that they were basically cast out to their
enemies and left to the dogs basically to
be killed,
enslaved and killed in genocide.
And, you know,
the story of how how the Muslims
lost Sicily
is a very, twisted and messed up story,
actually, to be honest with you. Maybe we
can talk about it some other time.
It's actually a good plug for the because,
a large amount of,
the story of why
Sicily was lost is because of the heterodox
reign of the Orbedia of the the
the Fatima
rule in Egypt.
It's why it was basically ignored, and it
basically,
was
leached for as much money as could have
been gotten out of it and then not
protected or defended when it was under threat,
which, you know, the
history, we should read history. All kind of
weird things have happened in our history. Some
of them are really not good.
And,
things only were made better when people got
together and, like, made an effort, and that's
kinda still how it is. That as long
as we keep acting like yahoos,
we're gonna keep going from 1, catastrophe to
another and from one calamity to another and
from one massacre to another and from one
genocide to another. And when people get together
and decide, hey. You know,
we will protect ourselves and look after our
own interests, both in this world and the
hereafter,
the madad of Allah comes, and good things
can happen. You know? It's not like people
are, like, waiting for the Dajjal to come
and then, you know, whatever. No. That might
happen for sure. But, you know, good things
can still happen if people get together and,
like, act like human beings. Otherwise, the Ummah
is not in the situation it is because
Islam is a certain way versus Christianity or
because,
like,
brown people are inferior to white people or
because, you know, the weather is too hot
over there to do anything or any of
these things. It's very plainly,
and easily,
can be chalked up to very bad decisions
that have been made for very long amounts
of time
across very large numbers of people, people choosing
to live,
lives that are individualistic
and don't have any sort of outlook,
and, you know,
thinking that if I have this penny wise
and pound foolish mentality,
that somehow, even though everybody else burns and
goes to *, I'm gonna make it. And
the fact is that we know
it can't work. You know, if a person
thinks through it, you know it can't work.
Rather, the Rasool taught us that it's like
we're on a
we're all in the same ship. You know?
If we sink, we sink together.
And if we make it, we make it
together. If you're, you know, if you're just
like, oh, I'm some mouse over here that's,
like, chewing away at this plank in the
deck or whatever. Keep chewing. Keep chewing. You'll
sink the whole damn shit.
You know? One person that can make that
difference.
And on the flip side, you know, when
the hole is coming, if they plug it,
they can make the whole difference as well.
It's a different mode of thinking.
And, out of large frustrations in life, I've
come to the idea that
Rial Salihin is my
attempt to be part of the plugging the
hole, you know, and I hope that it
counts for that for for for myself and
for you as well. So
for coming and listening,
to this and my other rants as well.
Accept
and give something better for the Ummah Sayed
Muhammad
Those people who are there, some of them,
they're the descendants of the Sadaat. Some of
them are the descendants of the companions or
the.
They're the descendants of the the the father
of Quran and and
And they're the descendants
of the armies of.
You know, they're the descendants of good people,
maybe better people than you and me and
better people than our forefathers.
And so may
Allah return Islam to those lands as well
and, iman to those people as well and,
make it a means also for our salvation
as well.