Muhammad West – The Rise, Fall and Revival of the Muslim Ummah
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Beloved brothers and sisters, Assalamu alaikum. Warahmatullahi
WABA wabarakatuh,
Alhamdulillah, Rameen, always, forever begin by praising Allah
ilaha illAllah. We testify there is none worthy of worship besides
Allah subhanahu. WA and we send our love and our greetings, our
salutations of beloved Nabi Muhammad, sallAllahu Sallam to
inspire his pure family to his companions and all those who
follow his son until the end of time, may Allah subhanahu wa bless
us to be amongst them. Ameen. Ameen, Alhamdulillah.
Alhamdulillah. Over the last few yesterday and today and over the
weekend, majbu al Islam with the you know, in collaboration with
our QUT Foundation, we're doing a number of programs
to conscientize us about and remind us about the plight of our
brothers and sisters in Raza and Allah, make it easy for them and
to do our small little bit, tiny bit for for the cause.
Alhamdulillah, for those who fasted yesterday, I'll accept your
fasting, and for those who participated in the Iftar
yesterday, that was was wonderful. Alhamdulillah, we have the Jummah,
which we'll be focusing on
around the issue of, really the ummah. And then inshallah
tomorrow, well, tomorrow evening, there's a keawel program, and then
Saturday, Sunday, Alhamdulillah, there's going to be a breakfast
for those. I mean, all the proceeds go to Palestine
Inshallah, and a barber. You can come get your akat, and Inshallah,
the proceeds go to Palestine. So today's khutbah is really, you
know, we've spoken so much about Palestine, so much about the
situation in ghaza, and I don't think anybody I'm looking at the
age. There's no one here, like over 100 Alhamdulillah, uncle's
mom, mashallah, who reached 100 but for all of us, we only know an
ummah that is weak,
growing up our entire lives. We know of an ummah under threat, an
ummah that is beset by war. We know that list that the Imam used
to make, oh Allah on Surah, one and AFI, Philistine. Then it's
Kashmir, then Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Burma. It just keeps
getting longer and longer and longer. And we ask, and for us, we
might think that is this how it's always been? Has our Ummah always
been a weak Ummah, a divided Ummah, an ummah that is
struggling? And today, I want to take us and do almost a 1400 year,
zoom out and look at the ups and downs of the Ummah, the rise, the
fall and Inshallah, we are through the phase of revival of this
ummah. And what, and more importantly, than history, what
gave us that is what gave us strength, and where did we lose
it, and how do we regain it? Inshallah, Allah gives us the
answer. Allah says, In the Quran ya Rana ama Kum, Allah says, I
will elevate. I will rise up. The people of iman, wala, Dina, utul,
il Ma, da, Rajat and the people of knowledge in many, many darajat is
in the sight of Allah, is spiritual. Isa, as we know, you
can be a very modest person, but if you are a mukmin, this is what
matters in Allah's eyes. And then in the dunya, what will give you
is what will give you power, strength, political, military is
the people of knowledge. The more intellectual wealth that you have,
you will be the dominant force in the world, whether you're Muslim
or not. Allah makes a promise, the civilizations that have the most
libraries, the most technology, the most advanced medicines and
equipment, they will be the ones that rule the world. This is a
principle Allah. And now, if we look at our history, we can see
this in in effect,
our deen is synonymous with knowledge and learning.
The time before the coming of Nabi Islam is called the age of
jahiliyyah. It's not called the age of kufr, the age of disbelief,
or the age pre Islam. It is called the Age of Ignorance, meaning that
the time without Islam, without this Deen, you're ignorant, and
therefore this deen is liked this Deen brings knowledge, and so the
Navi sun comes to a civilization, or rather a people who had no
civilization, a people who had no government, a people who had no
laws, a.
People who are so backwards, so ignorant, so Jahi that they killed
their own children. No civilized, no group, no country on earth, no
matter how bad it is. If you go to even the prisoners in Paul's one
death row, they may kill other people, but they won't kill their
own children. This is something ajib Yet this is the caliber, the
type of people that nabisim comes to. And within 23 years,
subhanAllah, he converts, he transforms those people into the
Sahaba, and he unites all of Arabia under one single
government. There's laws, there's systems.
He brings Subhanallah guidance to a people who knew no guidance, and
then this group of people who were less than human in the eyes of the
rest of the world, they were animals in the in the eyes of
other civilizations, they go and they embark on one of the greatest
expansionary drives in human history till today, scientists,
historians, can't understand how a group of Bedouins come together.
Have a new religion. They have no equipment, no money, no
government. But they come together and they challenge the superpowers
of their time and within Subhanallah, if you look at the
dates here, we're not going to go through all the dates, but the
Prophet bosses away. 632,
by 711, 70 years later, the Muslims have conquered Spain.
They're in France.
At the same time, while they conquering France and Spain, they
have reached the borders of China. This is unbelievable expansion.
Civilizations that stood for 1000s of years were absorbed within the
Muslim ummah. And when we talk about conquest, not about
conquests and colonizing and subdue subjugating people, that's
not the purpose of our deen, in fact. And we digress a small bit.
A young prince comes to the Nabil Salam,
Adi,
Rabbi Allah Adi ATA. He comes to the Nabis Salam, and he wants to
convert to Islam. He's thinking about Islam, so he comes, he's
invited to Medina, and the rabbi so tells him how great Islam is
and how great Islam is going to become. And when he comes to the
rabbi's house, he sees, but you're talking about conquering the one
this, this Deen will overpower the world and all but your house
doesn't have furniture in it, and he says, oh, Adi, when you if you
live long enough, and you see this Deen becoming firm, then you would
witness for yourself, when this deen is in place, there is and the
strength a lady will come from Yemen all alone. She'll walk
through the desert for Hajj, and she will have no fear complete
security and safety. I mean, today, we would not allow our
ladies to walk in the Karoo alone on Hajj, to walk for Hajj alone.
You know, in their time, it was even more ajib. And he says,
walai, I've lived a few years now as a Muslim, and I've seen this
happening when Islam is in power and Isa is there, its safety and
security for all of humanity. This is the concept. So Islam has an
unbelievable expansion within 70 years, within 100 years or so, it
becomes the this largest empire in the world. But it's not a
civilization. We
still haven't contributed much in terms of technology and
civilization and learning, and in a small battle, really, a battle
that is a footnote in history, didn't matter much between the
Muslims and the Chinese, called the Battle of Talas, the Muslims
win. This battle doesn't change anything in terms of borders or
countries. The border stays the same. But in that battle, the
Muslims capture a group of Chinese scientists. And these scientists
had a unique technology, a very secret technology, the technology
to make paper. This was reserved only for very elite. I mean, they
would make paper only for ceremonial reasons, for religious
reasons of the Emperor. This was not technology which they shared.
But now that the Muslims acquired it, the Muslims understood what
this means for the first time. We could now collect all of human
knowledge into a book. We could we have a hard drive now where all of
human civilization learning for the last 10,000 years can be
translated and collected. And now we go on an expansion and drive to
learn everything that there was to learn. We took numbers from India
and Pakistan. We took Greek philosophy, the good and the bad
of it. We took poetry, we took all different languages, and we now
housed it within our in our books. In fact, a word Reem arim is an
Arabic name. The many girls, their names are Reem, Reem of paper, a
ream of paper. It's an Arabic term. So we produce now paper on
mass, and we produce books on mass, and we are translating books
that were thought to be extinct, languages that had died. The
reason why Latin is still alive is because Muslims took this language
and brought it back to life. And so now begins, as we said, A we
all know the golden age of Islamic civilization for what 500 years we
are the leaders in terms of technology and learning. We are
the leaders in terms of answering the problems of the universe.
Entire fields of learning. Chemistry is an Arabic name. You
look at astronomy, the names of most of the stars are Arabic
names.
Us because we discovered new planets and new stars. We
discovered new things deep in the ocean. We discovered cures for
diseases, and so, Alhamdulillah, we become the leaders in terms of
civilization. Arabic is now the lingua franca. Linga Franca means
that if you are a scientist, wherever you are in the world, you
want to write a book or a paper, you must do it in Arabic. Arabic
is the language of learning. This is the language of learning, and
you would go to Baghdad. Baghdad is our capital, the biggest city
in the world in terms of human population. Has the biggest
liability in the world. It has something called the House of
Hikmah, the House of Wisdom, where we say, it doesn't matter what
religion you follow, doesn't we don't care about your beliefs. If
you have something to contribute in terms of science and
technology, come bring it here. And we have a wonderful
understanding between the ulama and the scientists. We never had a
situation where ulama executed scientists, or scientists
overthrew ulama. We understood the ulamas around is that of Islam,
and the scientist is the realm of the dunya, and each one needs to
discover and learn and understand the respective fields where there
is a contradiction, then either the Ulama did not understand the
text properly, or the scientists do not have the full picture. And
we said, then go out and learn more, because both science and
theology comes from the same source. Comes from ALLAH SubhanA
wa taala, and one of the great, I mean, I mentioned the stats so
many times the jamaiah would know, the oldest university in the world
is established in North Africa by a lady.
A lady, a Muslim lady, establishes a university in 859,
1000 years later, 1869
ladies are allowed to attend university in Europe, a 4000 years
later, can ladies go and study until today? I mean, I work at the
university. You see, when they graduate, they get a Juba like me.
See, he got a jubba. This is from where, from us. He gets a cap, a
turban. The head of the department is called the chair the kursi. All
these are from our he gets a diploma. Is a sanad. You now have
tazkiah from your Alim that you can now teach this book. This is
all from our tradition, because we were a legacy of learning, and
while we're learning. But of course, we became lax. The dean
part started to fade a little bit. We became disunited. Our nations
fought with one another, and then, out of nowhere, unexpectedly, a
group of barbarians, a people come from a country we didn't even know
about or cared about, France and England. What are these people?
They came all the way from Europe, and they conquer Palestine, the
Crusaders. While they're coming through they have to travel
through Turkey, through Jordan, through Palestine. We look at them
entering our lands, but we're too busy fighting with one another to
even stop them. And they managed to conquer Jerusalem and the
massacre they commit at Jerusalem, they killed every man, woman and
child, Muslim Christian and Jew Christians who were not their type
of Christians were killed. And this shocked the Ummah for 100
years, we could not take Palestine back Jerusalem back. We were
shocked, but it caused us to revive ourselves. And
Alhamdulillah, the Ummah picked itself up and ejected them and
kicked them out. We all know the Salahuddin and the Ummah, but the
Ummah first had to fix its internal problems, and then it
kicked them out. And Alhamdulillah Palestine, Jerusalem Mazal aksar
returned to the Ummah for another 1000 years until, of course, the
Zionist entity formed, you know, 78 years ago.
But the Ummah was not the same. And in fact, in spite of learning
from that experience, we went back to our ways of focusing more on
the dunya and losing our spirituality, losing the unity.
Baghdad was our center, but the Khalifa had no power. And so now
other groups begin to rise up against us. One of the 13th
century. And data are important but interesting to know 12 at the
1200s or the 13th century was a bad century for us. Was a bad
century for us. The Europeans realized when they when the
Europeans conquered Jerusalem, they also got to see firsthand
civilization. And while they were expelled, they took that
civilization with them, and they said to themselves, why are we
sending armies all the way to Palestine, when we have a Muslim
country here in Spain, should we not deal with them first? And so
the Crusades now attack. Al Andalus is one of our our
technological Heartlands, kurtuba, the most advanced city in the
world in terms of in Europe. In fact, we can do a whole thing on
Spain, but we all know, you've all studied in algebra. You solve for
which, which letter you solve for. You solve for x, y, x, who decided
x is the the unknown. Because in Arabic, when they wrote the books,
it was she the sheen. You solved for sheen. But in Spanish, they
don't have a SHA, they have a CHA, and in Spanish is a x. So they
took our books and the first universities in Europe were the
universities in Spain that they conquered. Now, instead of burning
the books and burning the universities, this group of
conquerors kept the Andalus.
Technology. And that's why the first European colonial
superpower, the first explorers, Vasco de Gama, are Spanish and
Portuguese, not the French, not the British, not the Americans.
Why them? Because they had, now Masha Allah, a whole hard drive of
technology that they just incorporated instead of burning
it, like the church told them they kept it. And so now we have a
rising power in Europe, in Spain, then SubhanAllah. And this is the
ups and downs of Allah. Allah would send a scourge upon our
Ummah, which none of us could have expected. No alim, no scientists
could have expected a group that were also in there basically were
barbarians backwards, a group of people who are basically sub sub
human animals. They are united under one manjuskan, the
Mongolians, and they ride out of East Asia.
The Muslims don't take them seriously. The world doesn't take
them seriously. But then they are unleashed like a scourge upon all
of humanity, not only Muslims, Chinese Russians. And they attack
Muslims city by city. And subhanAllah shows you, we have
cities from Spain to China, but when each one gets attacked, no
one comes and helps that city. Each man for himself part of the
problem. And so the Mongolians come and they destroy completely
level cities to the ground. They are not looking to acquire or
conquer. They're looking to destroy. They enter and they kill
every not only every person, every cat, dog, donkey, and they pile
their bodies up like a pyramid of skulls. They burn the city to the
ground. And then they move on to the next city. If you resist us,
we do to what you did to nature poor. And finally, they arrive at
Baghdad, the center of our civilization. Our biggest
libraries and universities are
there. The Khalifa was still in his arrogance. Believe there's no
way these guys are going to conquer Baghdad. But of course,
with internal politics, a betrayal here, and the governor, a
minister, opening the gates, the Mongolians enter Baghdad and one
of the worst moments in our history, 1258 so it was, what's
the worst moment in our history? 1258 is perhaps one of the worst
moments, the top three worst moments in the history of the
ummah. Baghdad is destroyed. Our capital, our Khalifa, is trampled
to death. His whole family is trampled to death. The library,
which stood for the biggest library in the world for 500
years, is thrown in the Tigris River. 1 million people are killed
by hand. I mean, we're talking with Razan man, not make it easy
with 40,000 it's tragic. Can you imagine 1 million people killed by
hand within one month, lining them up, chopping their heads off like
this. Then they moved to Damascus, the capital of the Muslim ummah.
Go on Baghdad, the next capital. Damascus basically taken over as
well. They moved to Jerusalem Palestine. They take it over.
Every Muslim ruler either is defeated or surrenders, and the
Mongolians write and said this, we are a punishment from Allah upon
new people. They enter the masjid Khan on a horse, and he says, I
was sent by your God to punish you for your sins. And the Ulama at
that time, if you read their books, they believe this was
qiyama. They said, this is Qiyamah. This is Yajur jamajuj. We
can't fight them. Just surrender. Just make dua
every Muslim ruler surrenders. The last remaining country is Egypt.
They don't have a ruler. The ruler is that has died, and the people
who take over are slaves. The slaves take over the government.
The Khalifa did not recognize them as a government. They called the
Mamluks, and they were the last group still unconquered, the
Mongolian says to the Egyptian surrender. Let us take over Egypt.
Otherwise you saw what we did to your Khalifa, your armies, you are
a bunch of slaves. But these were Muslims, and they said, We will
not surrender. And they fought back, and they stopped the
Mongolians at a place where Nabi Dawood killed Goliath in jalut,
same place,
a turning point in history. The Mongolians, they first defeat, and
with that, they retreat, and the Ummah picks itself up. We rebuild
again. We start anew. We have to rebuild our cities. We have to
start after collapsing, after many believe this was the end of the
ummah. We lost Spain, we lost Baghdad, but now we begin anew.
And subhanAllah in our rebuilding Allah gave us Isa, once again, a
group of people, again, who were not our were not the leaders of
the Muslim ummah, a group of Bedouin Turks, Turks, they managed
to conquer the city of Constantinople, something which
even the Sahaba failed to achieve. Allah did not give it to them, but
Allah gives it to a Turkish Bedouin group. They conquer
Constantinople, the oldest one of the major cities in the world till
today, those who travel to Istanbul, you see the Hagia
Sophia. Hagia Sophia has been there longer than Nabi Salam, 2000
years old, and we now have an Ottoman Empire. Allah has given
isa once again to us. But we're not the same like we were before.
The Ottomans are not as the khalifas of old. The Caliphate
shifts to Turkey and something which we take from history, if the
Arabs, if the if this deen is not a Saudi religion and doesn't
belong to the Arabs, if the Arabs failed, then the Persians pick it
up, the Muslim Persians. If the Persians fail, then the Egyptians,
if they fail, Allah, will give it to the Turks or to the ulama of
India. And even though.
Lama here in South Africa, the deen, the flag will always be
raised up by somebody. And this is what we learn from our history.
The ummah will never, ever, in totality, be defeated, somewhere,
somehow will raise the banner of the ummah. So now we have a new
group. The Khalifa is a Turkish person. And so we have a a
caliphate in in in Istanbul.
But now this is where we're not the same. We have a kleefi in
Turkey, but we also have the rising power of Europe. Europe now
has developed. They have come out of their dark ages. They have
learned that the learnings from us acquired our universities, our
books, and they are going through their Renaissance.
And so there's a race between us and the Turks, the Muslim ummah,
and the Europeans. And the Europeans then come and they
invent a new technology which will put them ahead. What technology is
this?
You know, you've been here. I asked, I gave the same khutbah at
UCT last week. I said, which thing? I said, bombs, missiles, we
always think about izza in terms of weapons. The purpose of the
khutbah is Isa in terms of knowledge. You want to fix the
Ummah, learn, read a book. That's where ISA is the Europeans invent
the printing press before you had to write books by hand. Now they
have a machine that can print hundreds of books. And by the more
books you print, the more people are reading. And the more people
are eating, the more scientists you developing. The Europeans
developed this before us. But instead of acquiring it by this
technology, the Muslims refuse to take it for 300 years. It is
banned. No printing press allowed in the Muslim ummah, we will write
books by hand. This conflict between the ulama and the
scientists, ulamas, Abu dhabila, how can you print the Quran like
this? We leave this, this kufr, this kufr technology. He won't
take it. And while they are sending printing presses to
Hawaii, they're reading Charles Darwin, Shakespeare, we are still
stuck 1000 years in the past, and that is why the Europeans then
unleash their ingenuity. Now the Europeans get the technology that
we had, and they surpass us, and they unleash this in the most
brutal form. They travel the world and subjugate the whole world,
committing genocide in Australia, committing genocide in North
America, destroying the entire South American population Africa,
enslaving it. They use this technology in a very predatorial
way. When we colonize, we can't colonize conquered or whatever it
said, we did not bring all your slaves and money to Medina, and
made Medina Great. Medina remained small. We developed Spain. We
developed Turkey. We developed India. Wherever we went, we
developed that civilization. When the English conquer England,
India. India is the biggest economy in the world. 25% of the
wealth is produced in India. When the English leave, the British
leave, India can't even feed its people. It's a impoverished people
die of starvation. So this is Europe's legacy, and now the
European powers begin to dominate, and as we fall further and further
behind, it was just a matter of time. And when World War One came
along, we couldn't fight back. And we know, as we said, the rest is
history. 100 years ago, they entered Turkey and they abolished
the caliphate. They broke the Muslim ummah up into pieces. They
divided our land into pieces, as the Naismith time will come, where
they will draw up your land like animals eating birds eating from a
pot. This is exactly what they gave this to the French. They gave
this piece. They split up and they gave Palestine to an outside group
of people, Zionists, who had no connection to the land they gave
it and just by decree. And so that is why we are where we are. But we
don't stay here forever, and we will not stay here forever, as we
show the ups and downs of the Ummah, we are in a bit of a
downer, but we've already arrived Inshallah, the navisa Sultan said,
I made a dua Ya Allah, let my ummah not be destroyed completely
by outside forces. And he said, Allah had accepted this. Dua. Then
he said, Ya Allah, let my ummah not be destroyed by one natural
calamity, one flood. And Allah accepted it's never gonna happen.
And then he said, Ya Allah, I make dua that my ummah does not fight
with itself. And then Allah did not accept this. Our problems are
internal. The enemies will come and go and change.
The Persians, the Mongolians, the Crusaders, the Romans, they came,
they went. We are still here. The Ummah is still here. They are
gone. And the Zionists will come and they will go. The ummah will
already made. It's up to us to fix our Ummah, and we fix it by what
we see in our history, unity, perseverance to our deen working
together and being an ummah of learning every single one of us
here. If you really, really, really want to do something for
Palestine, yes, rands and cents make a difference. Dua makes a
difference. But sign up for a class. Your contribution to the
ummah. Some of us, Allah has made Mujahideen, but that's not the
bulk of us. Most people here, Allah has given you an Akka and
intellect. Use it for more. Use your skill, your accounting, your
engineering, your legal skill, for more than getting a promotion in a
job and getting the next holiday. Use it to fix the ummah. Fix the
ummah. What I mean the Masjid. We need accountants here. We
literally need an accountant for this Masjid. You.
We need lawyers, we need engineers. Give those skills, that
knowledge Allah has given you to build the Ummah, and that will be
our contribution. And Allah, except from us, and forgive us, as
I mentioned, Inshallah, there's a cameo program tomorrow evening,
from four o'clock in the morning, we'll have a, you know, a little
bit of a break, and then Fajr, and then at the hub, Sunday morning,
there is a breakfast and a Baba was, you know, coming, giving
service free of charge. Come for a he cut, he not the beard. Now,
leave the beard, don't you're not helping Palestine by cutting your
beard. And then whatever contributions will be going to Al
Quds foundation for the for our brothers and sisters, med Allah
grants, izzah, success. May we live to see the revival? May we
live to see Palestine being liberated? Amin was Allah Muhammad
walam, Lamin Asmaa.