Mustafa Khattab – Abu Talibs & Abu Lahabs
AI: Summary ©
The history of events like this is discussed, including the recent terrorist attack on a restaurant and the need for unity among Muslims. The importance of protecting against attacks, learning religion, and being strong is emphasized. The need for peace and unity for any city or country is also emphasized. The importance of education and being strong as a Muslim community is emphasized, and the need to speak out and be strong is also emphasized. The history of Islam is highlighted, including its cultural and political significance, the use of media outlets, and the influence of media outlets like Fox News. The importance of unity and being strong as a Muslim community is emphasized, and the need to open doors and speak out is also emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
So
you probably heard about the incident that happened
in Quebec City on Sunday
that left 6 victims,
6 brothers,
became shahid on that day and many became,
were injured in this,
evil incident.
Yesterday
they did salatul Jahnazah for them in the
city
and Justice Rota was there and a lot
of dignitaries
and politicians and the Muslim community came together.
So
I feel it is important for us to
understand
who
might have caused
this incident to happen. So we try insha
Allah to stop things like this from ever
happening in the future again. We ask Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to keep us and our
children and the Muslim community safe.
Of course there is a history
of bias
and fear and mistrust
between the West and the Muslim community. It
is not something that happened last week,
or today, or yesterday, it is something that
has been going on for centuries.
And incidents happen all the time to the
Muslim communities,
like Masjid being attacked, especially in the US.
A few days before that incident, a masjid
in Texas was burned down,
and the community came together,
Muslims and non Muslims, and they raised,
from what I heard, 100 of 1,000 of
dollars to build the masjid again.
To sisters with hijab being attacked,
to brothers with beards being
bullied, to our students in schools being attacked
verbally and physically.
So again,
this thing has been going on for a
long time.
And the fact of the matter is, this
is not only targeted at Muslims,
but also some minority groups have been through
the same thing.
If you read about history of some minority
groups in this country,
blacks and First Nation and even Jews,
back in the 19 twenties thirties and even
forties, they were also targeted.
In Toronto,
15, 20 minutes from here, there were some
restaurants that put a sign that says no
no dogs, no Jews, and you still can
go to Google and see the signs in
Toronto.
The Chinese people have also been abused,
the Sikh, the Hindu community,
so minority groups are always subject to these
things.
Islam is no different and the Muslim community
is no different, although the severity of the
actions are worse than any of these groups.
So InshaAllah we're gonna go through some slides
based on my studies on the image of
Islam and Muslims in the American media, and
this is based on, my dissertation,
and I got the degree from Al Azhar.
So this is based on the writings of
Muslims and non Muslims. It is not based
on,
you know,
some of those theories, conspiracy theories. These are
facts that are supported by evidence. So if
you can get someone inshaAllah to turn up
the lights in the front so everyone can
see inshaAllah.
And please, if you can move up because
some people are waiting outside, jazaqulahaher.
If you see a space in the front,
move up a little bit, please. So we
can go to the first line insha'Allah.
From the beginning of Islam,
the people of Mecca and the people of
Arabia were against the Prophet SAW and
some of the attacks and some of the
abuses are mentioned in the Quran. The Prophet
SAW is called
sahir wa kaveh, wa sha'ir wa this and
that. He's called a liar, a magician, a
poet in the Quran. And the Muslims are
called fools.
And the people of Mecca stood in the
way,
just like Fox News, whenever someone came to
Makkah for Hajj, from among the Kufar, they
would tell them Muhammad is a liar, don't
listen to him, he's not good, and so
on and so forth. So these media images
existed
back then.
Islam
was perceived from the beginning as an enemy
to Europe and the Christian world.
Why? Because they saw Islam as a strong
opponent,
and because of the close vicinity of Islam
to Europe. The green area, this is what
Islam, and Europe is over there. So they
didn't care too much about China because it
was distant, and Europe,
and South Africa because they were far away,
but Islam was very close to Europe, and
this is why we had this this attitude
that Islam is is here, Islam is here
to attack us, and so on and so
forth. They didn't realize
that they had so many things in common.
Like if you look, you compare Christianity and
Judaism to Islam, they have so much in
common.
Like Christianity for example has so much in
common,
than much more than Hinduism and Buddhism for
example.
If you take for example the figure of
Risa alaihis salam, I cannot think of any
book,
or any religion, or any scripture that speaks
highly of Risa alaihis salam and his mother,
like the Quran. In the last
Tafaaq, you cannot find passages like this even
in the Bible. Speaking highly of Isa alaihis
salam, speaking highly of his mother that she
has been purified, and she is respected in
the Muslim community. She is the only woman
mentioned by name in the Quran.
There are hundreds of thousands of Muslim women
who are called Mariam to honor the legacy
of Mariam alaihis salam. So many rizas in
the Muslim community because we love them and
we honor them. We are probably
the only faith outside Christianity that believes in
Isa alaihis salam, and honor and respect him.
The only faith.
But still,
there is this fear,
and there is this,
this distrust or mistrust between Islam and the
West.
And this is why the Crusaders came, so
many conflicts took place in the Middle Ages
and so on and so forth. So the
conflict has some historical roots. We can go
to the next one.
Some in the West, especially in, the new
conservatives,
Fox News and many other news organizations,
new conservatives
in in the West in general, they believe
that Islam is there to dominate the world.
And if you listen to some of the
people who always appear on Fox News and
some of these media outlets,
and some of them are now consultants and
aids
to,
Donald Trump.
And they say always the same thing, when
they come on the media, they say the
same thing. That Muslims are trying to dominate
and take over the West, and this is
why they are coming all the time to
our countries, and they try to dominate us
through different types of jihad.
The military jihad when someone takes up arms
to attack the West, this is the obvious
one.
Then there's the stealth jihad. How do Muslims
do it? By building masajid, by building Islamic
schools, by immigrating to the West, this is
what they call the stealth Jihad.
Even a 2 year old can,
you know, can, can be a threat because
he or she is part of this stealth
jihad. And this is why you will always
find whenever a masjid is being built,
Miluviel and in many other places, you will
find the people in the in the in
the town or the city they are protesting.
We don't need a masjid here, because once
they are here they will take over. This
is the mentality of the people, that Muslims
are there to dominate and and take over.
Next one.
Also the vital enemy factor,
and
this idea has always existed since the Roman
Empire.
They believe that any empire or any any
superpower has to have enemies to survive. For
two reasons,
If you have an enemy, if you if
you don't have 1, you just make 1,
because having a foreign enemy,
either inside like some minority groups, or outside
like all these evil countries, evil religions, they
are here to attack us and take over.
This will keep us united.
Conservatives,
liberals, blacks, whites,
Christians, Jews, they will be united because we
have this enemy who is after us all,
so we have to be united to protect
ourselves from this enemy.
And number 2,
it's a distractive
mechanism
because
if you always have this enemy,
it's a threat, so you forget about the
economic problems, you forget about the political corruption,
you forget about the social problem, all these
problems you forget about, take everything,
remove all the freedoms and all the liberties
from us just to protect us from the
enemy, we don't care. So this is how
it happens,
and this is why, these superpowers and these
empires, if they don't have enemies outside,
peace with everyone, they turn on each other
and they collapse. Same thing happened with the
Roman Empire, same thing happened with the Muslims
in Al Andalus. No enemies outside, peace with
everyone, they turned on each other, and they
started to fight internally.
So this idea is very important, and if
you read the writings of some political strategists
in the US, some of them worked for
the US Department of State, they say exactly
the same thing.
The, existence of a foreign enemy is important
for the,
Empire or the superpower to survive.
It's also important to note
that super world leaders and empires, they change
enemies every this is the good news. They
change enemies every 30 years. They cannot have
the same enemy
forever.
Why? Because you cannot use the same
excuses to attack people and go after them
and dominate them. So this is why they
change enemies all the time. In the last
century,
for example, the enemy in the West was
the Japanese,
the Italians,
and the Germans. The Nazis
and,
the fascists.
20 years later, the Vietnamese in the 19
sixties. 20 years later,
the Russians, the Soviets
in the 19 eighties.
20 years later, it's the Muslims. Another 10,
15 years, it could be the Chinese or
someone else, Allahu Alam. But it seems that
the enemy
is different every 20, 30 years. It is
different all the time because you cannot
keep the same enemy and keep attacking them
all the time. So this is why they
change enemies all the time. So it is
our turn today.
It was the Japanese and the Germans a
long time ago, maybe tomorrow is gonna be
someone else. This is a good news. It
would happen when Allahu'ala.
The next one.
We cannot
deny the impact of September 11th.
It has damaged the Dawah effort, the image
of Islam and Muslims probably for many years
to come.
People will never be able to,
to forget about what happened on that day.
The criminal attack, the terrorist act that took
place in the name of Islam. And a
lot of people in the West, they equate
911 with Islam.
And they say whatever I want to learn
about Islam, I learned on that day. Although
it has nothing to do with Islam, but
people always confuse Islam with Muslims. 2 different
things.
I keep telling people you should not judge
Islam, but what, by what Muslims do. Some
people claim to be Muslim, but their actions
are not Islamic.
You should judge Muslims
by what Islam teaches, because Islam is perfect,
Muslims are not. So don't confuse both.
If we say for example that Raisa alaihis
salam was teaching about love and respect,
they see how much atrocities,
and wars, and
massacres have been taking place in the name
of Raisa, the Ku Klux Klan, and many
other,
you know, fanatical groups within within Christianity.
And even within the Christian faith some groups,
if you heard about the, Ireland
20 years ago, 25 years ago,
the Irish army and and all these groups
they were fighting, Protestants and Catholics, they were
killing each other.
Because of the same the same mentality and
the same ideology,
at the end of the day religion whether
it's Islam, Christianity, or any other faith is
just used as an excuse
to attack people.
So we always
this is something that humanity has done for
a long time. You know that killing other
people and attacking them and dominating them is
not an easy thing because you will always
have
people in your community who stand up and
say this is wrong. So you have to
come up with an excuse
to attack other people. This excuse can be
the difference of religion,
they worship a different God, or difference of
race,
blacks and whites, agents,
or difference of races, the Aryan race in
the case of Hitler and other races and
so on and so forth. These are just
excuses
to attack and dominate people.
And believe
me, even if Islam never existed, there is
a beautiful book
that is called A World Without Islam.
It was written by the director of the
FBI.
First it was an article, then it became
a book. In that book he said, even
if Islam never existed,
conflicts would have still taken place. World War
1, World War 2, Islam has nothing to
do with them.
The enslavement
of Africans and bringing millions of them over
here, Islam has nothing to do with that.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Islam has nothing to do with
that. The abuse of first nation, Islam has
nothing to do with that.
The killing of 100 of 1000 of Protestants
and Catholics in the Middle Ages, Islam has
nothing to do with that, and so on
and so forth. He said that even if
Islam never existed,
the West would have still invaded the East
even if
the, the East was predominantly Christian. European countries
would have come and invaded them,
because of resources and and and interests and
so on and so forth. So it is
not about religion, Islam has nothing to do
with it. And he said that Islam is
a a good source,
Islam is a good force in the world,
it it making people good and peaceful and
so on and so forth, but it is
sometimes abused by some in the community
for different reasons, political and so on and
so forth. Next one.
Taliban we cannot deny the oil factor.
This cartoon is very popular from back in
the,
2003,
when the US divide decided to invade Iraq.
Here is in the first slide George Bush
is saying there is 710
reasons why we should invade Iraq, then his
assistant said no, sir sorry, sir. The sign
is upside down, and when he put it
up, you know,
right, upright it says oil.
We cannot deny this factor, many wars have
been launched.
Sometimes when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala privileges you
with something like money, resources, oil,
then
some people
attack
you.
But if you don't have some anything, like
some African nations, they don't have nothing, they
fight all the time,
nobody cares about them because they don't have
anything. Forget about,
democracy, the spreading democracy here, because some countries
in Latin America and South in Africa,
they are fighting,
there are so many violations against human rights,
but no one cares about them because they
don't have oil and they don't have resources.
No one cares about them. This democracy thing
is just an excuse to interfere in the
lives of others.
Another example.
Of course, the new conservatism
factor,
They see Islam as a threat, and they
use their media outlets like Fox News to
always talk about Jihad, about Sharia, and so
on and so forth, and they always invite
bigots,
people who have absolutely no knowledge of Islam,
they claim to be experts, and some of
them claim to be former Muslims, so they
invite them all the time. And because they
have written a book
attacking Islam, they always call them experts.
Experts on Islam. So they always invite them
all the time, and none of them they
can't even read Fata'a correctly.
No knowledge, no academic degrees, nothing.
But they invite them, and they provide a
platform for them to come and attack Islam
just because they have a Muslim name or
ahabi name. They call them experts, and they
attack Islam
all the time.
They never invite a scholar in Islam to
balance out the discussion.
So when I did the study, it turned
out that 85%
of the people who speak about Islam in,
these news channels are bigots,
Islamophobes.
They they hardly invite a Muslim to speak,
and when they invite a Muslim to speak,
they don't give him or her a time
to to say anything. As soon as they
open their mouth, wrong wrong. Stop. Yeah. They
don't give them time. Although they give the
bigots all the time to speak and attack
Islam, and they don't give the Muslims the
opportunity to respond.
Next one.
Of course we have to agree
that not everyone in the West
has knowledge about Islam,
because for them Islam is a foreign religion.
Islam is not new. This is how people
think. Although Islam existed for a long time,
Muslims are minority, and many cases we are
to blame for this ignorance because we don't
reach out, and we don't talk to our
neighbors, and we don't explain Islam. We don't
open our masages and invite people to learn
about us.
A lot of people when we go to
churches,
and they ask questions about Isa alaihis salam,
and we tell them that Isa alaihis salam
is mentioned by name in the Quran
about 24 times.
Maryam Alaihi Salam is mentioned by name 34
times, twice the number she is mentioned in
the Bible. She's mentioned in the Bible 18
times. She is mentioned in the Quran 32
times,
34 times.
Double the number.
And it talks about Isa alayhis salam, and
it talks about the Marjiza, the miracles of
Isa alayhis salam in the Quran, and you
tell them when the Quran
gives more miracles about Isa than the Bible.
For example, the Bible doesn't talk about the
Marjiza of when Isa Alaihi Salam made birds
out of clay and breathe into it and
it became birds. In Surah Maidah
and, in Surah Alaihi Salam.
That Isa Alaihi Salam spoke when he was
a few days old. They don't have this
in their book. The miracle of the table
coming down full of food from heaven for
the,
for the Hawariyah, for the Disciples of Isa.
This doesn't exist in the Bible. So when
you tell them this, people are shocked
because they think the Quran talks only about
Muhammad,
it's a biography of Muhammad,
you tell them that the Bible talks about
Musa,
about Isa and other prophets just like it
talks about Muhammad,
and it mentions them by name
far
more times than it talks about Muhammad salallahu
alayhi wa sallam. Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam
is mentioned by name only 4 times.
So when they see this people are shocked,
and they say we have a lot of
common in you, you have respect for our
religion, we never knew these things. So we
need to open up and teach people about
their religion, and insha Allah the fear and
and the hatred will be gone.
Top on the ratings factor. There is in
journalism there is this,
statement they say if it bleeds it bleeds,
or in other words blood cells.
Say for example there are 2 channels in
front of you. One of them talks about,
the polar
polar bear,
or it talks about salmon migration,
and the other one has
a movie for example like, mission accomplished,
or is there's news about a bomb attack
somewhere. Which one will you watch?
So people like
drama, they like,
you know, accidents and interesting things, and this
is why the news channels focus on these
things because this is what sells. This is
why the ratings go up, and this is
why they get sponsorships.
That if they talk about a bow a
polar bear or they talk about salmon migration,
no one cares. So people always focus on
this, and this is why they always focus
on conflict,
and this is why they talk about Islam
and Muslims because most of the conflicts in
our world today happen in the Muslim world.
Mhmm.
The last thing I want to say inshallah
before I let you go, the action plan.
Now we know the problem, we agree on
the problem, it has existed for a long
time, what is the solution?
Solution number 1, we need to look for
a in
this country. There are so many,
and there are so many Abu Lahabs and
Abu Jahal.
Justin Trudeau is Abu Talib.
Donald Trump is Abu Jahal.
So they exist all the time. You try
to explain to people about Islam, and haters
will always hate. But if someone doesn't know,
like, they don't have the facts, when you
once you tell them the facts, they will
change their mind,
and they will hate you less, and they
will open up and listen to you. This
is what we're looking for, Abu Talib,
for example,
who was always protecting the Prophet
and caring about him.
Al Mutaim ibn Adi.
Another Abu Talib at the time of the
Prophet
when the Prophet
came from Al Taif, and Al Mutaib ibn
Adi said,
Muhammad is with me. And he took his
kids out with with their swords, and and
he said whoever puts lays a finger on
Muhammad,
you will have a fight with me. He
was not Muslim.
This man was not Muslim, and he died
as Kafir before the battle of Badr, and
the Prophet
said, wallahi,
if Al Muhtaim ibn Adi was alive,
not Muslim. If he was still alive, and
he spoke to me about
the Asra, the captives of Badr, I would
have given them all of them to him,
free, Khalas.
Because he was a good man, non Muslim.
You talk about Ufmar ibn Talha, a Kafir
before the hijrah,
Umu Salaam
her husband was in Madinah, she was migrating
to him, and, Uthman ibn Talha, non Muslim,
he saw her and he said, where are
you going? She said, I'm going to Madinah.
Walking on your foot,
450
kilometers, with your daughter on your hands, no
camel, no horse, nothing. Wallahi, this cannot be.
And he took her on his camel, and
he walked all the way to Madinah, 450
kilometers, before Islam.
And he said there is no dignity if
you walk all this distance by yourself, and
we are alive. None Muslim. And he took
all her all the way to Madinah, to
the door of Madinah, and he left, he
went back. None Muslim.
Because he had this humanity, disrespect for a
human life. So we need to look for
Abu Talib all the time,
and form alliances with these people, open our
doors, and try to bring them closer.
We cannot overemphasize
the importance of unity in the Muslim community.
Because we always have this issue. We have
the,
this Bosnian community, this Somali community, this Sudanic
community,
and Masajid, like different Masajid, and you hardly
see anyone from another race in in that
Mas'id. And I think the best way is
to open up our doors. Everyone is welcome.
We pray together. We have one hand. Oh,
he is Sufi. He is Salafi.
He is Efwan.
He is Tablir Jamah. He is Shia. He
is Sunnah.
Believe me, when the bomb is dropped on
people in Yemen or Iraq,
they don't make a distinction between a Sunni
and Shia. The bomb just comes down because
everyone.
So you need to be united as a
community.
All these differences,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will judge them on
the Day of Judgment. We need to be
united as a Muslim community. Forget about all
these issues. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will take
care of them on the Day of Judgment.
Stand up and speak out. I know some
of us come from countries
where we didn't have a voice.
If you speak out,
or you talk to the police, or something,
you'll be in trouble. Canada is different. You
have rights, you are a human being, so
if someone
abuses you in any way, physically, verbally, don't
be afraid.
Go and talk to them. We had a
meeting at Sayida Khadija Center a few days
ago. The chief of the police came, the
fire department, we had a minister from the
Toronto government. They came and they told us,
if if you see any suspicious activity where
someone is abusing you in a way, don't
be shy. You come forward, and we will
deal with them. We are here to protect
you.
And they come to Masajid, and they drive
around Masajid just to show solidarity and support
with us.
You can't imagine the amount of support we
have received from neighbors,
from faith communities,
Catholic community, the Jewish community, the Hindu,
Buddhist community, all said supporting messages to us,
and from the government, and so on and
so forth, we have the support of people.
So this is a good opportunity for us
to reach out and open doors InshaAllah.
The last thing I want to say InshaAllah,
because I don't want to keep you for
for a long time.
As individuals,
we need to open up to our neighbors
and talk to them. Because some of us,
we don't talk to our neighbors. Hi, bye,
You
need to talk to them. Invite them over
for barbecue in the summer. In Ramadan, invite
them, talk to them. Wallahi this will remove
all barriers.
Because the thing is, in Arabic Al Insana
Adoo May Yashal. Man is the enemy of
the unknown. If you don't know someone, you'll
always be afraid of them.
They're good people, but they don't talk. So
how can you know that they're good people?
There's a sister in this masjid, she's a
teacher with the school downstairs.
When she came from her country 3 4
years ago, she had a white,
Canadian, Christian,
and that neighbor was giving her a hard
time.
So she was calling the police all the
time.
The sister said, Wallahi, sometimes the lady called
the police to complain,
sometimes we were not even in the house.
She called the police to complain about noise,
we were not in the house.
So the sisters said, we decided to make
a change, to make a difference. So I
invited my neighbor, we started to speak, I
visited them for tea, and so on and
so forth. Now the sisters said, we became
very good friends,
even if I'm not in the house and
my kids come late come from the school.
The lady picks them up, she takes them
from the bus and they stay in her
house, they became very good friends. And now
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says this in the
Quran.
Respond to evil with good, then the one
between whom,
and you there is enmity will become like
a good friend. We ask Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala to give us the best in this
life and the best in love to come,
so long and long.
We're gonna kindly ask you to move forward
a little bit please, people are waiting outside
and
Allah
to forgive our sins and accept our good
deeds and give us the best in this
life and the best in the life to
come. And we ask Allah
to accept the victims of Quebec attack as
shahid, and to give shifa those who were
injured, and we ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
to give shifa to their family, and to,
suffer to their families.
Wassallallahu wa'ala said Muhammadu alayhi wa sallam.