2017 Year In Review

shaytani r rajim Bismillah R Rahman Rahim al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa salatu salam ala COVID mursaleen Sayidina Muhammad Ali he was

a beloved brothers and sisters in Islam as salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu.

operation to Allah subhanho wa Taala, the Most Merciful, the most kind, I should have a la ilaha illa la with a witness that none has the right to be worshipped except Allah subhanaw taala who was not taken, he has not taken a partner nor a son. He is one of the absolute To Him belongs the beginning and the end. And to him is our final return. We send our love our greetings and salutations to beloved Nabil Mohammed sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, I will guide I will lead our Imam and to his pure and pious family to the Sahaba and all those who finally soon until the end of time, we ask Allah subhanaw taala to bless us to follow the Sunnah of Nabil Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam to

bless us in this walk of Juma to forgive us for the sins of last week. And to guide us in the weeks to come and the year to come to Delhi be better than the previous years. I mean, well hamdulillah Al Hamdulillah today is the final Juma of 2017. Final Juma of 2017. And next time we meet in sha Allah, if Allah grants us to meet once again, it would be a new year. And it's important for us as believers to take stock as time goes by. Because we learn that Allah Subhana Allah is well answered in an insanity hustle that by that Allah says by time, all insane, insane, you're always in a state of loss, there is one resource that we can never ever get more often, that is time, we all have a

limited number of days in this dunya. And we can never get it back when a day is lost when a moment is lost wealth, power, strength, whatever it might be, can come and go, but time never comes back. And therefore we need to be cognizant that we only have a number of years on this dunya a number of hours. And as one goes by, that's it we never going to get it back. And we definitely take stock of our life, where we are and what we've achieved this year, every person should take stock of his life in the Sahaba used to take stock of themselves daily. What did I do today? Am I closer to Allah? on further away? What sins did I do? So I make the step far? What good did I do so I increase in that

good? Allah Subhana Allah forgive us the sins that we've done, may Allah grant us blessings in what is remaining of our life. Just something to think about. The average I save is the average life expectancy of a person is around 65 years old. That's the average life expectancy globally. Some countries it's more some countries is less. But if you are about, you know close to you, if you're 65 or 70, you're 30 years old, for example, you close to the halfway mark of your life before, it's important for us not to want to make anyone despondent. But it's important for us to look at our life. It's not forever, it's gonna run up. And therefore we need to make the most of it. As one year

has passed, we need to look as a community, this 2017 How has it been for us as a year, we get sometimes so engrossed in our daily life, going to school, going to work, looking after the kids putting food on the table, paying the bills, and we forget about the big picture. And when you read this quote by insha, Allah is a review of the major events that occurred in 2017. So many things happen. And life is so busy, that we forget about what things happened. We just continue on. And we don't take a moment to pause. So let's take a moment and have a flashback of the last 12 months. What were the major highlights, there are many, many highlights in terms of globally, in terms of

just the oma in terms of here in Cape Town, there are many things to take note of and just some of the things that I have inshallah listed. One of the big things that is happening globally. Alhamdulillah. For now, we in South Africa are saved from this, we're not as exposed to this. But globally, there is a rise of Western nationalism, and anti Islamic anti Islamic rhetoric. If you go outside of South Africa to a non Muslim country, you would feel maybe if you went 10 years ago, the mood against Muslims has become a lot more severe. People have become have become very aggressive towards Islam and Muslims in particular, Europe, America, Australia, the Western world has become

very aggressive towards Islam. And we see this they were a number of elections, a lot a number of elections that happened over the past year. And if you look at those parties that have either been voted into government or made strong gains, that the people that the masses in the West, the people that are supporting AI people that have an anti Islamic agenda, the words, the speeches, the rhetoric is against Islam, for example, and this is perhaps the man that has made most headlines. Trump in America

was elected this year as the 45th American president, and of the things that made him popular. Even though the people know his own people know that he's a corrupt, immoral person, they chose him. Why? Because he has said that he's the defender against a much bigger enemy, much bigger threats as Muslim Muslims, he has made Islam. The scapegoat Islam is the big danger, Islam is the big thing. And therefore, you need to support him and support these policies to protect you against Islam. This is one of the major campaign policies that he has put in place and we see it happening, he has actually fulfilled some of those, those promises that he made banning Muslims from certain countries

from entering America, asking that a list of Muslims should be put down. Now we need to take note when Western secular free countries start putting policies in place to keep keep track of Muslims, put the names down in the register, how long before Muslims are rounded up, before people will go into their homes and take them out? We think this might be far fetched, not possible. This is what happened to the Jews in in Nazi Germany, it started off with a government speaking out against them, calling them outsiders, foreigners calling them a danger to society, we need to watch them, we need to keep track of them, then they had to weigh certain emblems to make known this is Muslim. So we

know who they are, their businesses were was surveillance. Not long after that, within a few years, maybe 20 years after that, the society turned against them. And we know what happened. 6 million of them were killed. And we against the Holocaust, as muslimeen were against the Holocaust, completely against it. But we see, you don't just kill 6 million people overnight. It's a process of dehumanizing another group of people, Muslims only make up about 1% of America,

the number of people that are killed from terrorism, you find more people die, for example, from being struck by lightning, or be falling off the bed, or from children shooting one another through gun control. Muslims have such a small impact on the western society, because they're so small in number, but they've become an issue. Why not because the politicians themselves truly hate Islam, they just using it, you need an enemy. Now, this is a very, very common policy, if you want to get the message to support you. You make them afraid of some Boogeyman. And you tell them, I'm the one that's going to defend you. You make someone an enemy. In the past, it was the communists, the

Soviets, before that it was the Jews, whatever it might be. Now, the enemy for these politicians is Muslim and Islam. And therefore, it's easy to take a punch at us because we can't fight back. And this is not just in America. We see in Germany, for example, right wing Nazi parties, they never ever were able to get seats in parliament since World War Two, they were never able to get seats in parliament. They are so

hateful in their speech. They speak about how evil Islam is. And and before it was the Jews. Now when they speak about anti immigrants, or nationalism, we need to protect our own people from the outsiders who are the foreigners, they're talking about black people, or, or Jewish people, they're talking about Muslim people, that they have policies in place, we need to limit the number of Muslims in our country, we need to watch them. So a party for example, they call the alternative party in Germany, they never ever got seats in parliament, because they really come from the Nazi ideology, no one ever would support them. This year, they got about 15% of the votes in, in the

German pilot in the German parliament, the numbers are growing, never had they seen such big growth. Why? Because the people are being the real terrorists, or those who are causing the message to be afraid, afraid of what Islam and Muslim mean. And it's not long before this fear turns into hatred, and that hatred turns into violence. We see a similar thing in Europe, where Europe, we know in the UK, they had another elections. I don't know if you know there was an election to just confirm that Europe will pull away from the rich England will pull away from the rest of Europe, BRICS it again, what is it all about? We don't want to be part of a bigger community. Why? One of the reasons why we

don't want outsiders to come into our country, outsiders, meaning Muslim immigrants, mostly Muslim immigrants. In France. Again, there was another election this year. And even though a liberal person a person Macron won the elections, the be his biggest rival was again a right wing party, a party that would not have gotten any votes a few years ago. And what we're seeing is a trend that these it's for example, to make us understand. It's as if though an apartheid party started today.

So we want to bring back apartheid. And they get votes and they get voted they get bigger and bigger in number. It would be scary to see people going and supporting a party like that a policy was based on the racism. A party was based on.

Anti another group. But we see this happening. And in fact, something like a country like Austria, small country, not very important to us. They elected the youngest president on 31 years old. He's the president of Austria. How did he win it? How did he win the policy? The his party, also a right wing party, anti Islamic, his basis of winning the campaign was an anti Islamic message. He was for time the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and it was this man that stopped Muslims coming from Syria into Europe. Austria is like a gateway for Muslims coming out of study out of war. They want to leave the Middle East. So they want to get to Germany, or they want to get to know where to get to a

country where it's safe. They need to go through the Balkans through Austria. This man he brought into the party he brought a he managed to get the rest of the countries around the area to block off the immigrants from getting in there. So he did that last year. This year. He's the president of Austria youngest prison on Earth. How did he get there? What was his role called? What was his Trump called? anti Islamic message, very, very stern. message. We don't want Muslims in our country. We don't want Islam in this country. And if they are Muslims in India, we need to monitor them, watch them what they do what they preaching, we need to censor them, what only things we agree upon, they

can talk about it. Now this is Western, the free world where everything is free. You can weigh what you want, you can dress what you want, if you want to be a Satanist, you can be a Satanist, if you want to. If you many of these countries, for example, they allow insist if you want to marry your mother You can do so. If you want to marry your sister, you can do so. But if you want to be a Muslim, and practice Islam, then you are a threat, the danger. And again Muslims make up not even 1% of some of these countries. You have Parliament's debating hijab, women cannot wear hijab, yet. The only like 400 women wearing Hijab in the country is really a threat to your condition.

In England, they are about to bring a law that any girl that wears hijab, she covers her hair, they will interview her and ask her is your Are your parents forcing you to waiters, but if she comes with a miniskirt, no one's gonna ask her. Why are you doing that?

In Switzerland, this former's jets, get the ban with minarets, they ban any mosques from having the nares Why? Why would you ban a Masjid a place to have an architecture of a monastic? No, we don't want symbols of Islam to be shown. It's a threat against us. Now, where does this fear come from?

We're not a threat to them. And Islam is not a threat to the society and their way of life. We are too small in number in those countries to make a real impact. But we are being used as a tool by politicians to get into power.

We saw it here, for example, when a group of people used white monopoly capital to justify certain wrongs. So when I commit a certain I say, Don't look at me, look at that person, what he's doing, focus the attention on someone else. And therefore, rather take the devil You know, when this, these Islamic devils were going to come, they're going to marry your women, they're going to make your Muslim children terrorists, they're going to bomb you up. So behind Allah, we know this is far from the truth. But it's easy. It's a reality. So we need to be aware that this is happening in the Western world. And it's on the increase and on the rise. Meaning was in the villa, if the trend

continues within 10 or so years, Muslims already from certain Muslim countries can't go to America. There'll be a time when Muslims might not enter Europe just being Muslim. Now it's not going to be any more national where you come from to be if you got if you if you've got a Muslim name, no Muhammad's no Fatima's can come to these countries. We don't want you. It will. It might get even worse for the Muslims lovingly. It happened. Not so long ago, people of Japanese or Chinese origin were rounded up for four years in America. Why? Just because the Japanese and we are at war with Japan. So every Japanese person was in a concentration camp in America. This is a few decades ago.

used to be called the yellow, the yellow three used to be afraid that the yellow man is dangerous. So this is happening. And it's scary.

We can't stop the preachers of hatred, the real terrorists, the ones who are in the news, and we see daily with every time you see a Muslim, it's something negative. They won't show a Muslim who saved the life. A Muslim doctor was working to saving people of all different colors and races, giving them cures Muslims building a charity works orphanages deliver show that only Muslims who do wrong, they are shown and they call Islamic terrorists and also talk about the double standards. So these are campaign to make us

Look in human, to make us look evil to make our religion look evil. And the masses unfortunately for them, they are force fed this, they have no other other impact, they have no other area to know the truth. The only ones that really the only way we can counter this is that each and every one of us are ambassadors about Islam.

So understand that your colleague at work, the non Muslim colleague, when he puts on the TV, when he logs onto a certain website, and he sees everything he sees about Islam is negative. The only way he's going to get a different story is through you, through you and me, each and every one of us or do I don't say I'm not I'm not qualified to give the hour. Each and every one of you must give our I'm not saying you go preach to them. Tao is through Allah through your character.

So that when he sees and someone sees all Muslims are evil, he will say no, no, no, hold on. My colleague, who I work with for the past five years, I haven't seen anyone more hardworking, more dedicated, more responsible, more honest, more. a nicer guy. I've never met anyone better than him. They should tell you and Subhanallah this was the secret to our forefathers. Why do we live in such a lovely protected environment is that our forefathers were known. They went on to these Muslims, they never compromise on the deen. They don't drink, they don't eat pork. They dress a certain way they foster certain months. But we know when it comes to work, that if I if he says he's going to

fix the roof, he's going to do a good job. He's not going to cheat me. I don't have to worry. He can be left alone. These are going to steal from me that if he's my neighbor is always going to give a burqa. My kids can go next door. I know his kids are not doing any drugs or stuff like that. Muslims were known for the high moral conduct and they were respected and they were loved. And therefore our Deen was it flourished here therefore we have what we living. But unfortunately that is not that's changing. Muslims are seen as shady dodgy even Muslims now don't want to do business with Muslims. Why? We contrast the Muslim is gonna give me a canal Joby and he's going to overcharge me, I'd

rather go to the to the the company, the white man to do it. That's the reality. So understand that you're not only harming yourself, by having bad conduct or character, you're harming Islam. It's just reality. When you cut someone off in the road, and you've got a beard in the face, what's the man going to say? They slumps is not going to say hamato that guy, dice lamps, they all like that. When a Muslim does something wrong, and his name is in the newspaper, something wrong? Yeah, that's how they will. It's reality. You can't, we can't be angry about it. Therefore each and every one of us, we must make extra effort that what's happening in Europe, it's happening in America doesn't

happen here. That hamdulillah our kids will still be allowed to come to madrasa we will still be allowed to build our massage it will still be allowed to, to live our Islam freely. But the only way to do that is to be part of the society and be productive members of the society. We need to look at what's happening. Not just at the schools, the Muslim school. What's happening in Khayelitsha, not only Muslim kids, what's happening to non Muslim kids. We speak out against corruption even if it's against us. We look at the poor, even if it's non Muslim people, when we start helping and building the society, society will help us as well. It's just natural. And therefore it's something for us to

think about. This is the reality of the world we living in.

We have we know a few, a few big events that occurred in terms of terrorism. And this is of course, one of the the people that benefit the most from terrorism are the same white supremists, nationalists, the same people that are anti Islam. They are the ones that love ISIS the most every time a Muslim, and yes, we 1.6 billion of us, there's always going to be rotten apples, they're always going to be misguided people, whenever one of us makes a mistake, I'm sure they jump up for joy. They're not angry, they're not upset. They enjoy it. Why? Because this further gives them ammunition to show that we are evil, that we are a threat. So terrorism is something that affects us

the most. We are the people that are hurt the most by terrorists when in fact, if you look at the

terrorist acts in Europe, there'll be a few incidences. 10 people 20 people die and I'm not cheapening anyone's life. But if you look at what happens in Muslim countries, hundreds of people are killed. For example, the biggest one of the biggest terrorist attacks we had, and most of us might not even know and if you ask what terrorist attacks happen, they will say there was a concert in England with some teenagers were killed, but they won't know that 500 500 people were killed in Mogadishu in Somalia. Why could Somali lives not important to anti British people is more important than 500 Somalis people going to in the market just in the in the marketplace, children being

bombed.

A whole marketplace of people 500 people being killed 300 of them injured. And just recently last month or so, there was an attack on a gyptian Masjid, it was mo Lu time. And a group of terrorists came in and they in Juma they came in with a guns and they just opened fire on people sitting in the masjid children and old people, ladies 300 of them being killed, this is in Egypt. Now as the reality is, this is the and these people, you know, they ascribe to Islam, Allah will judge venia we cannot, we cannot say with Muslim or non Muslim, but the reality is they. And there's a number of reasons why Muslims will do this. We are against it, and we don't and we completely condemn it

because we said the most people that are killed through terrorism is Muslims. And the effect on the rest of us is that we are all painted with that brush. So we are the first people that are against terrorism.

We are the first people against it. And but once again shows, that is a mindset of extremism. We are not in a room of extremes, you will always find in your budget, someone who has a different method ideology to you a different method to you, someone who practice Islam differently to you. We don't resort to violence. We don't solve our problems without fists. This is not the way of the prophet SAW Salem. He had monastics living in Medina, he knew who they were when the Sahaba asked him, Why don't you just execute them. So he said, I don't want people to say look at Mohammed, he kills his people, he kills his companions. I don't want people to pay me with a brush, I execute those people

will disagree with me. Now we've become a very angry, angry kind of way if I manage it goes up that we disagree with religious bomb that Masjid if a group of people practice Islam differently to us, the easy way out, let's just destroy them, kill them, shoot them fight with him, we'll just don't have them. That's not the way of Islam. We have logic of reason, oma of knowledge. If you cannot justify your views, from a from a Quran and Sunnah point of view, when it's an easy way to say we will just beat them up. We live in a time where you need to learn, you know, we can't run away from difference of opinions anymore. We can't have a little cocoon, we only cape Malay Muslim Shafi is

will love you and they won't be anyone else will ever Christians on Sunday, there'll be no other other other groups anymore. Now you must open our doors now. Now you're gonna have all kinds of different views, all kinds of different opinions. The only way to survive, is to educate yourself and to educate your kids. The only way to protect yourself is through knowledge, can't run away from it anymore. We can't use violence. And this is the problem that we see in our own bodies, our problem, and we need to fix this internally. And you find the wildlife, you'd find the people that perpetrate these acts are usually youngsters with themselves and nothing about Islam, with

themselves when through difficulty, hardship, you know, they're not doing well at school, they don't have a bright future. And so some person with a beard, tells you just push this button, walk in that house that magazine, press this button, and you'll go straight to all your problems will disappear. Easy, easy way out, you will never find these people who themselves have the shakes of this group. And you'll find these groups that preach hatred, there is no orlimar from amongst them. There are no scholars that you could say, support these views. Rather, it's an agenda for power. It's an agenda for political gains. It's a agenda for certain groups to monopolize, and will lie we know we said

the same people that benefit from terrorism are the same people that are in power. They're the ones that benefit from it.

And then we see the double standards again. And we look at this double standard in America. We know in Las Vegas, there was a guy he shocked he killed about 50 people. Right? But look at how they describe him. They will say that a lone gunman is a man alone, right? When you say Muslim, when it's a muslim terrorist, all of them. It's an Islamic terrorist and Islamic terrorists. Islam is the problem. But there's a lone gunman. They don't say a white gunman a Christian gunman No, no, he's alone. crazy, insane person, we have nothing to do with him. Now this is the this is the double standards. Again. You can't we can't we can't do anything about that. All we need to do is work

harder to show that this is hypocrisy. We need to show the reality.

So we're going through a list of the major events that occurred this year. And if you look once again, we said in terms of terrorism, we have a problem we have we have extremist ideologies that need to work extra hard. You need to speak to your kids about this. What do you think about terrorism? What do you think about violence? What do you think about non Muslims, you need to ask them about this so that we find logic we find a reasonable way out, but also understand there will always be a group that will use that will have this double standard that we live in as Muslims double standards.

We also know that while

Everyone is using the killing of a few people say minor terrorism, the major terrorists are not being held to account, major terrorist monologue, do you know that we are at risk for the first time in like 50 years of nuclear war? Now, people are talking about bombing each other with nuclear bombs. Now, if one can see that all of us are going to be affected, the whole world will suffer. And these are the same educated, the same advanced nations that are making these threats. And we need to be away. That's vanilla, we know, I'm not here to preach doom and gloom, where we have hope we have of positivity, but understand that we live in a very, very dangerous time. We have very

irrational, very corrupt, very bad leaders ruling this world. And they will make decisions, even if it means to sacrifice 1000s millions of lives to further their own personal agenda, they will do so we live in a time where we cannot say for sure. I mean, as be prepared, the unthinkable might happen.

Remember, it wasn't was like 100, less than 100 years ago when nuclear bombs were dropped on a country.

And history repeats itself. So we need to be aware that at the moment is a crisis between the West Western World War America, North Korea. What's happening in North Korea, we don't and again, as Muslims, we don't always have to take aside as Muslims we feel while we don't like America and Trump, so I need to support North Korea. No, both sides are on both sides have their own political and personal gain nothing to do with it. We speak out against these kind of things. We shouldn't have weapons like this on Earth. No country should have a nuclear bomb. No country should have the ability to wipe out millions of people with one button that shouldn't happen.

No matter how bad our enemies are, you cannot bomb an entire city and kill women and children in that it's a crime against humanity to have these weapons Alhamdulillah once again, we say we're the only country on earth that had nuclear weapons and the voluntarily gave it up we gave it away we had the technology and we said we don't want this technology. There are certain things that mankind should not have. Because we're so irresponsible. A time might come when these things are used it as it happened before we make do our we don't love to see that. We teach we should teach our kids we do not solve our problems even as bad as the enemy is never ever will our Deen our models allow us to

bomb an entire city, entire country like that? Never.

Yet, when we look at our own own lands, we see we are at war. Every year. We know that list of names of Muslim countries at war with itself we don't have to look outside. We don't have to blame outside threats and enemies. We need to our to fix our oma we need to fix ourselves. Sometimes we look at our problem and say what's the problem with the Muslim world? We say we point to Israel, we pointing to Washington. Yes, that's an external problem. But the biggest problem is internally our house we are we need to fix our own house first. What's happening in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq and Afghanistan in Libya? Yes, they were external influences. But now those influences are gone. And we are still

killing one another Muslim killing Muslim. And sometimes in the name of Islam. how disappointed salatu salam would be if he was here today. If we looked at the state of Alabama,

every one of these countries they spend so much on killing fellow Muslims. These countries are in disaster, why

for powerful gain for the dunia

you find for example in Cydia, how long has it been six, seven years, seven years of civil war seven years of kids not going to school, seven years no hospitals being built seven years, a whole generation of kids imagine you were born when the cutaneous opener was started. What kind of person are you when you're now 18? When all you knew day in day out bombs falling? If you haven't gone to school, what kind of person are you? What can that what is going to happen to that child? They will just perpetuate the cycle of violence. We are dean of peace Edina rahama it we don't find this in our in the heart of Muslim lands in the heart of Muslim lands. And we don't blame you can't blame

anyone else besides ourselves. This oma needs to fix itself. Alhamdulillah I said we are not inside this thing. We our kids can go to school. We can learn our Deen we can practice it freely. And therefore we have a responsibility. When you look at this list, and you realize Subhanallah what country and and really ask yourself, What country would you rather live in as a Muslim? You wouldn't want to live in any of the Muslim countries. Sadly, you wouldn't want to live in the Middle East. You wouldn't want to live in the Western world anymore as a Muslim. You would you would struggle to find a better place for you Islam than here locally. But the question is, what are you doing? Many

times

We look at a situation and we feel what we don't have. We look at look at what other people have. But seldom do we ask look at what we have what Allah has given us. And remember, every blessing is a taste. every blessing is a taste. I was going to ask you and me, what did you do with this blessing? You've been here for 300 years. You could practice your deen freely. Why is your deen not increased? Why is your numbers are increased? What have you done with that?

The people of Syria the people of Yemen, they know we're not better than them that they go through this hardship, good, pious people even better than us. It was testing them. We are being tested with something else blessings, we are being tested with ease and comfort. What are we going to do with it?

We need to look at these problems. These are our problems. This is our children. We are one mama one brother, would you need to look at this as your What are we going to do to fix it? Maybe we can't fix it tomorrow. But we can work towards it. We need to work towards fixing the oma. And many of these things. If you as I said, step number one, at least get to know what's happening on the ground, at least learn so in this holiday period. Ask yourself, why is the fighting in Yemen? Why are the Saudis bombing Yemen? Why is Iran involved in Yemen? What? It's got nothing to do with the people of Yemen? We didn't start Why is it there? What's the agenda? What's going to happen

tomorrow? Why are 20 you know, hundreds of 1000s of people Yemen starving, and no one is sending them food? Why not? Just around the corner of Dubai? We as you know spine? Allah, it's the it's the most luxurious country on Earth. It's just around the corner people are starving. Why? Why is this happening? We are the Muslim leaders, what's wrong with us? Why are we going that way? And how do we protect ourselves from following that?

It's been a bad year in terms of humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations actually said that. This year, the UN warned that the world is facing the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War Two, with over 20 million people at the risk of starving and the countries that they they highlighted the worst of them Yemen because this war Muslims, Muslims are allowing people to eat, they stopping food from coming in Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria is a Muslim country, South Sudan, not a Muslim country. But since World War Two, this year has been the worst year in terms of people starving, more people are dying of starvation this year than ever before. Not because we don't have food. Do you know that we have more food than there are people to eat?

millions of tons of food is destroyed every year, because it's excess. So why are people still starving? Because we insan humans people stop others from getting it. They are relief agencies. There are people that says you know what I will give the people of Yemen food I will give the people of Somalia food, I will give the people of Hazzard food. But there will be some tyrant who says we will not allow you to feed the people. It's a tool starvation is a tool, we will make sure that they will either starve to death or they will do what we want them to do. Now, when people do that, a lot of response. And therefore it's no surprise that you found this year was of the worst years in terms

of natural disasters. For the first time in history. There's you know, 50 years, 100 years, you had two storms of category five magnitude. You don't find this twice a year. Yet it happened one after the other. Hurricane Harvey hurricane Irma hurricane Maria

it devastated so many countries. So we knew we start doing operation. Allah subhanho wa Taala taxes Rama and mercy away and you start seeing this we know the profit zones is close to piano, you would find strange weather patterns coming close to the time of the gel will be drought a global drought, famine. Why? Because of the sins that we are doing the sins of inside not against Allah against one another. Because we cause others to starve. We cause others to struggle. So Allah Rama goes away. And we are in Cape Town we are feeling a drought, the worst drought in 100 years. We need to ask ourselves why we don't one of the reasons why Allah withholds The rain is when we are corrupt in our

dealings financially, when we don't pay Zakah what is really what is Zakah is feeding the poor Zakah is giving the poor their rights. So when the rich oppress the poor, Allah subhanho wa Taala punishes by withholding his reign. When you do not fulfill your duty to humanity, then a law responds by withholding is a hammer is a B has to be a counterbalance here. Allah says in the Quran, if I were to really hold insaan accountable for what they did, they will not be a single living creature left on earth, if I truly gave you what you deserved. It's in the Quran. So when we look at natural disasters, it goes hand in hand with the human disasters. And in fact, it's because of our

corruption, our sin, our

immorality that Allah subhanho wa Taala is all this drama. And of course when we return to giving and being kind, that's when the rains will come. That's when the Rama will come, that's when the blessings will come. So if you want to do something against for the drought, we living in a drought right now is the farm and give charity, pay us aka and give charity. That's the best thing to bring the reins back. Allah grant that this is routings.

And hand in hand with that we find drought. What do we find corruption in our country. That's a local issue. And I'm sure it's even worse nationally or globally. But we find this year. A big theme this year in local politics is local corruption. We found and we know for a fact that a certain group of elite people in government have captured government, way government industries, government departments are used for personal gain. National Treasury, National Intelligence Agency is not used to protect the people or to feed the people to help the people, but used to serve the agenda of a few people.

When a group of people get to this level, where they're able to steal, not millions, we're talking billions. That's billions of rands to build schools built hospitals, to to uplift entire communities. For a handful of people we ask when is enough, when have you stolen enough? When we talk about billions, you've stolen, you know, billions of rands, you know, if you put a just hypothetically, just to give you some idea, if you put a billion Rand in the bank, and you earn interest, which is haram on that, you will get 100 million Rand back in interest every year, that is over 7 million Rand a month, the bank will give you free of charge. So why do you need to steal 10

billion? Why do you need to steal 100 billion?

Why the answer behind Allah it's being stolen from the poorest of the poor. It's being stolen from people that need it, if that's why in Islam, we have xhaka, because Allah has made it that there'll be rich people, and there'll be old and weak and orphans, people that can't help themselves. So the rich need to support them, as Allah gives you, you need to support those around you. So what corruption that is the worst kind of stealing, it's not stealing from the rich, it's stealing from the poor taking food out of the mouths of the poor. There are whole generations of youngsters, who could have become doctors, lawyers, scientists, but because money isn't going to the education of

the university, they fall in the wayside to drugs. This is the reality. So on a government level, we know we have a corrupt government, we know that and more and more comes out the extent of the corruption. How much of it is for working hard working people, your taxes increase, you pay more for electricity you pay more for, for for government services? Why? So that further corruption continues. That's the reality of it. And Allah subhanho wa Taala we see it, you will see it on the ground. Everyone else now to make a buck you cut corners as well. You cheat in your own business dealing, criminality increases, as the Allah will always say, the people are reflections of the

leaders. When they lead as a pious you'll find the people are pious, when the leaders are corrupt, the people become corrupt. When a leader steals from you, now everyone needs to steal. Now if you go to a certain country way, corruption is part of reality. You cannot even get a document stamped, a photocopy made at the police station, where the oma face without putting a tender and on the table for the man. It's just part of life. Corruption becomes part of life from the top if the guy on top is stealing, so for me to survive, I need to steal and so on It continues. You go to the doctor? Yes, you want treatment while you need to put something in my back pocket. So behind Allah,

we need to stop an sp What do we do? How do we stop it? Is people becoming part of your local communities, civil society holds government accountable. When the people are the at the end of the day, the power lies with the people. We need to speak out against this. I'm not saying we burned down things. That's not how we do things. We don't go and and and, you know, destroy government and Parliament? No, but we should show we will not allow this to continue. We support civil society. People need to stand up, make their voices heard. And when we allow it to continue, it will just get worse. And it's not only on government level recently, we found private companies, companies, big

branded name companies are complicit in the some of the names of the bell pottenger KPMG. Stein off sign off, for example, there's something you might have heard in the background style of big corruption doesn't affect me billionaires lost their money. No, no, no billionaires didn't lose the money. If you have 40 billion and you lost 20 billion. That's bad, but you still have 20 billion. What really the people that got got hurt the most in Stein of our government pensions. If you work for the government, you lost billions.

The biggest investors in these companies are the government pension, the teachers, the doctors, the engineers, the police, the army.

Obviously the government takes the pension puts in the company invested. So when you're 60 years old years and income for you, this money was put in a company like Steinhoff. So a elite group of people that lied, that cheated, caused a company that was it's the second biggest furniture company on Earth, to basically almost collapse 90% of his wealth gone. government workers have lost big chunks of the pension. So this isn't something that doesn't concern you. It's something that concerns you. If you work for government, you've lost money. And again, how the government allow this to happen, and why do we allow this to continue to happen, but once again, it shows there's an elite group of

people, some of them in government, some of them sitting in offices, and they live their life that they can exploit the masses. They live their life, they can steal without any limit, there's no limit to say we're talking billions, hundreds of billions of we ask when is enough, and will lie to sickness, Allah subhana wa Tada, once you start stealing, Allah will not put Baraka in that meaning you can still move and more and more, it'll never be enough. Where's the man who does his business, honestly, 10,000 and will be enough for you. Some of you.

Many of us here, in fact, enjoy greater happiness than some of these people that are living through this massive corruption. looking over their shoulder every minute, they can't get out. My nephew asked me Can you imagine how much these people will enjoy? You know how happy they are with the billions that they've stolen, so they're not happy? Every day, you know, time is gonna come and a lot more expose the Titans. I was gonna show him and he's gonna lose everything. And he always has to look over your shoulder. But the prophet SAW Selim sees that little bit that you've earned halaal. Allah puts Baraka in it, you'll find happiness in that that meal that you eat will be more

enjoyable to you, then whatever that person is having in his palace, because there's earned of haraam. There'll be no joy in this dunya or the architect something to learn. Yes, you're not on that level. But you all are running businesses, you're part of a company. Don't cut corners, don't cheat your boss, don't cheat your customers. Don't cheat the domestic workers working for you don't cheat the government don't cheat anyone. So that one day when we stand before a law, we can say yeah, I didn't make much tahajjud I didn't fast much. But everybody ran and was halaal. No one can make a claim against me and piano, I earned something in the Haram means it was little but it was

Helen Allah Baraka in that

of the major events that occurred. And as we see, a lot of our data has caused changes. And throughout the world leaders are changing. The old leaders, new young faces are coming in, because people are tired of the old faces. People are tired of the same status quo. So you had for example, Robert Mugabe was deposed as a leader. And we found the ANC national conference just a few weeks ago, that's a new leader has come into play, we ask Allah to replace them with better leaders. Will Allah grant that if there are bad leaders guide them and if they're bad, then replace them with someone better. And we support new leaders. We don't and we don't say only the Muslim leaders, our

leaders know, we live in a non Muslim country, these leaders are leaders, and we don't work against the leader, we support him in good and we advised him when he could mix it wrong. And we every chapter, as it shows you, no matter how bad things are, Allah will bring someone new, with patience with time we work towards it, Allah Subhana will change and then replace them just moving on and we're running out of time here. We know also in a local in a local since a Shia mosque, there was a grand opening of a Shia mosque in Cape Town. And while the actual event is not that significant is how we responded as a community. You found certain groups that were extreme, you know, we must burn

this mystery down. We hate them that far. That's one extremist view. There's another extreme view that says if we all the same, there's no differences. reality, this is reality. Now, understand, we cannot as I said before, you can't hide away from fitna, you can't hide away from differences of opinion. You have only the only way for you is to educate yourself, to learn evidences to prepare your kids. Your kids are going to ask you now what's the Shia what's the Salafi? What's our hobby? What's the Hanafi what's the Shafi? You know? What are the differences? Why do my feet pick my friends celebrate Christmas? I don't we can't we live beyond the time we we just don't don't listen

to what the Imam says and keep quiet makes my job easier but it's not the reality anymore can't do that. We need to educate our kids that there are different groups out there and we live in a society that we wouldn't have it any other way we different groups are allowed if if if the government only allowed one way one method one religion, the Islam wouldn't be allowed to be practiced here everyone be Christian. Right so we we are happy Alhamdulillah we live in a society we must can open up way madrasahs can open up Yes This means that across the road, Satan's temple can open up across the road.

You can't do anything about that. Around the corner shebeen will open up everyone is given equal rights. So therefore, we need to work harder to educate our kids to learn with regards to Shiism specifically,

don't get involved in debates. It's not for you and me to get involved in debates, but educate yourself and how you educate yourself. Learn about the Sahaba if you know who the Sahaba are, you know who abubaker is Omar is worth man Raja washer is how much the prophet SAW several of these people that will be enough for you, you'll never be able to really fall into any group that curses and insults them never be able to do that. So your job people have asked me all the time, speak out against Shiism as we can have a lecture on that. But before I can speak about those things if you don't know who Mohamed Salah Salam is any Sahaba then you have not learned the basics. One of the

sicknesses of this is we jump into the controversy and we don't know the basics. We don't know how to make solder properly to take we do properly but we want to know about terrorism. We want to speak out against government. When is the controversial stuff we want to get into? How many times you ask me is Bitcoin hollow? Is Bitcoin hollow? Awesome is is your basic finance of interest? How long is your basic job hold on? I don't the extreme stuff we focus on but the basics we don't focus on. That's one of the reasons why we fall into fitna. So learn the basics.

Then, of course, and I'm getting close to the India, one of the worst events perhaps the worst even for us as Omar was what happened in Burma, the Rohingya, we saw a million plus Muslims being brutalized by a serb by the Burmese government. And we saw a genocide that even a weak government, a weak organized like the United Nations came out and said, this is textbook genocide. This is exactly what genocide is. We saw what happened.

Hundreds of 1000s of Muslims being expelled from Burma into Bangladesh. Now that's bad on itself. What's worse than that is the response of the Muslim ummah. Was there any Muslim country that really did anything besides woods? was a Muslim country that came in that boats, you know, humanity gave humanitarian aid. The people that really did the the humanitarian aid are Muslim groups on the ground, gift of the givers sense of the Islamic Relief. These are the people really going in this room on the ground, but the people on top was entrusted with power. If you cannot protect the weakest of society, then you have no right to be in power, really, as Abubakar Rajan said, when he

stood and he became in his own inauguration speech, he said, I'm only years standing as the halifa. So long as I protect the rights of the weak and the poor, that I take from the rich, and I give back the rights of the poor. That's my job. That's the job of the government as the Amir, so Subhanallah we find Muslim countries turning away these people, they come in the boats to Indonesia to Malaysia, send them back. Similarly, back to what genocide, so we shouldn't forget. And while we might think we don't have much to do, there's a lot you can do. You can write we have the Burmese Government, yeah, we should expel them, our country should expel them. We have all people know the evil of, you

know, ethnic genocide at a group because of the color of the skin. Right, we should say, we will allow a government like that to operate in our country, we are getting to that, if you're that backwards, you shouldn't be, we should demand our government to expel the Burmese government from South Africa. And we should cut relations with them. And we should support organizations that are feeding and helping these people and makes us think, again, this holiday period how much we spend on clothing and enjoyment. 100 Rand could be used to buy whatever, but it could feed entire family for a week. So it's not haram for you to enjoy your money. But it's something to think about when you

when a pair of shoes of 3000 Rand, and that's enough to put a roof on a family's head, you need to just ask yourself, is that right in my eyes, so don't forget what's happening in Burma is the worst. And it again shows the weakness of the Muslim world, the weakness of the oma that we in. And then the last perhaps thing that was that just recently happened. You heard about Jerusalem. So for the last 5060 years or so, the world knows what Israel is doing is illegal. And the robbery of a country they stole a country but because they have political power. All people have done is speak out against it. So there was an understanding that Okay, you've stolen most of Palestine, at least

Jerusalem, we won't allow you to claim that on paper, you can't claim it. And it was an understanding for the last 60 years. And in the last month or so, the American government gave legitimacy to the Israeli government to Jerusalem. They basically said, You know what, Jerusalem belongs to Israel.

So this is what was said. And

they moving the embassy as we said, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Now, again, for us, it's like, well, no one was killed. There's no fighting. That's the real that's the sad thing. It's like a thief living in your house. The government says

You know what we need to go through a procedure to find out who this house belongs to. In the meantime, the thief, this house doesn't belong to you. Now the government comes in and says we're going to give a new title deed to the thief. It belongs to him. Now, that's exactly what happened. They've legitimize the crime. They've made it legal. And hamdulillah. We found that a week later, the United Nations basically unanimously 128 countries against nine have all said that this is illegal. And in 28 countries around the world sit to America, and only nine countries support America, this thing is illegal. But again, what are we going to do about it? I think 28 countries,

you're only going to talk about it. Don't expect favors from outside the outside world. Don't expect favors from people outside this room. If we as Muslims can fix our own problems. Don't think someone's going to come and support you. So as we approach 2018, we learn from the mistakes of 2017. We go back and we think long and hard we part of a bigger oma. We need to educate ourselves, educate our kids, learn about the fitna speak to kids about what's happening in the world. Because Subhanallah we are writing the chapters of our history. We are writing the chapters our history. We need to make the world better when we leave this dunya We can't leave it worse than when we found

it. So I was honored Allah bless you bless us. May Allah forgive us for this 2017 so much bad has happened in it. Allah forgive us for for our negligence, our mistakes, and May Allah grant us that a new year be better which will be better for you and your family and for me, and for all of us in this room. Allah help the oppressed people of this dunya May Allah remove the tyrants amin sola Zina, Mohammed received an announcement here

the annual cape HTML Okay, so this announcement of the annual cape HTML will start on Friday the 29th which is today after answer till Sunday at the Annenberg High School

in to get out men and Berg all are invited to the HTML inshallah we'll begin of the assets today will continue till Sunday. It's all welcome inshallah. Just like last night, we will continue with our if you have any questions or comments, you can email me with [email protected]. We'll continue with our classes in the New Year Zack Lefevre Solomonic marble America