Mustafa Khattab – Why Muslims Do Not Vote

All praise is due to Allah Subhanahu Wa

Ta'ala. We praise him and we seek his

forgiveness

and assistance.

And we may witness that there is none

worthy of our worship except Allah Subhanahu Wa

Ta'ala.

And we may witness that Muhammad

is the seal of the prophets and the

final messenger

to all humanity.

Whomever Allah guides,

there is none to misguide. And whomever Allah

leaves to go astray, there is none to

guide.

It is known to everyone that Muslims were

some of the earliest people to come to

Canada. We came as early

as the 1800s.

Defer business and all that stuff.

There are 1,500,000

Muslims in Canada. Islam is the second religion

in Canada, and Muslims are the second group

in Canada. Alhamdulillah, we have a lot of

doctors and a lot of engineers,

but in the political life, in the general

So if you look at the weight of

the Muslim,

community, at least politically,

Muslims are 3 times

the number of the seed community.

But still, they have 5 employees in Alberta,

and they have 2 funeral hippies.

What about Muslims? We have just 1

in Cali. And as I said, we are

3 times their number. So something is wrong.

We can vote people in, and we can

vote people out. But the thing is, we

don't exercise

our political right to to participate in elections,

and this is a weak point for the

Muslim community.

At the end of the day, we always

complain

that this,

this member of the parliament or this minister

said so and so about the Muslim community.

Or they tried to cut down the immigration

from Muslim countries.

Or they are not supporting us, or they

are not supporting our brothers and sisters in

Palestine

or in Syria and other places.

So the scholars of Islam say that it's

an obligation to vote in elections.

And, say, for example, we're talking about Muslim

countries. Okay. We're not talking about Canada yet.

So to vote in Muslim countries, it's an

obligation.

Because they say voting is a witness.

If you know that this politician is a

good man, vote for him.

If you think that this politician is corrupt,

vote him out or vote her out.

As simple as that. So it's a witness.

And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, oh, you

who believe, stand out for justice as witnesses

to Allah

and don't hide

the witness, the shahada, and whoever hides the

witness, his heart is saying.

Well,

it is known the story of, Umar ibn

Khattabah alayhi wa'amu that the first elections in

Islam or in the whole world

took place at the time of Omar Ibn

Kathab Abdallaham. You can read that in the

book of Bidayah and Nihayat ibn Kathir. He

said when Omar Ibn Kathab Abdallaham

was about to die,

he elected or selected 6 of the sahab,

Ali ibn Abdul Talib, Osman, and Abdul Ummain

ibn A'aww. So Abdul Ummain ibn A'aww

moved from one house to the other. He

knocked on doors. He spoke to men and

women and asked them, whom do you vote

for?

And most people voted for Usman Abdullah Hanif.

So Muslim women,

according to this, got the right to vote

1500 years ago. Women in Canada and America

got the right to vote in the first

half of the twentyth century, less than a

100 years ago.

So the first reason why many Muslims don't

vote in elections in Canada, number 1,

because we we take or we look at

Canada as a hotel,

not as our home.

And we look at ourselves as guests and

not citizens. Although some of us have been

living here for a 100 years or 70

years. Some came in

1979 at the time of Joe Clark, some

people came in the 1930s

at the time of, Richard Bennett, but still,

they look at themselves as guests, and Canada

as a hotel.

You have to change your attitude.

You live here, you die here, your kids

were born here, and they die here, but

some people live in Denali.

They live here physically

for tens tens of years, but mentally, they

live back home. They still live in Vietnam.

They still live in Egypt. They live in

Pakistan.

And they always talk about politics in their

own countries,

but they didn't talk about politics here, as

if they lived there.

The second reason is our tribalism

and our disunity.

If you ask someone

from a certain place,

why don't you vote for someone who will

say, MashaAllah, Falaam is a good guy. He's

Kabir al Khujali. But the reason I don't

vote for him, he is from Nala and

I'm from Khirbetuha, 2 different cities in Lebanon.

Or he is from Somalia and I'm from

Egypt. And I quite frankly,

I can't vote for him. You have to

can't. If someone is from Egypt and someone

from Somalia or Pakistan,

Why is the problem? We are all Muslims.

We're all in the same boat.

And the Somali brothers, they say,

There's no problem. If someone is from another

place, we are all Muslims.

We have the Islamic blood dwelling in our

veins.

We are one big fan.

Love a country or leave it? If you

don't like these people, they're kuffar. They're not

Muslims. Go home. Okay? Go home.

So reason number 4, and this is the

last one for today, I don't vote

for politicians because they are non Muslims. This

is what some people say.

Okay.

The scholars of Islam of our kind, like

the sheikh of Azar of Egypt, Jad Al

Haqq Aja, the late, or the Mufti of

Egypt. And salaat al salaw, everybody knows him.

Doctor. Al Khallabahu Faiz al Layawi. They will

be a council for if that they say

some of them say it's a must.

Some of them say it should

vote for people who lift hard for Muslims

and bring about good for Muslims.

And they say,

vote for the lesser of the 2 evils

or what I call the best of the

worst.

Those who work for the rights of Muslims,

not just because

we're Muslims

or because we are better than anyone. We

are not better than anyone. Okay?

Because we're Canadians, and we have rights in

this country. Okay?

So they say you should vote in elections.

Okay.

If you say I won't vote for non

Muslims maybe you have a point and I

believe you don't. But what about Muslim candidates?

There are 5 of them running

this year, this week in. There are 5

Muslims running in.

Vote for them. Okay? You don't have an

excuse.

What do we get from participation

in elections? Number 1, if we participate like

Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs and and the

Jews,

we will get our rights. We'll have political

weight. You will never find a politician

who says something bad about Muslims.

You will always find politicians coming to Muslims

and offering their services,

trying to help

provide services for you and your kids, take

care of the Muslim community, and they will

never allow

injustices in the Muslim community as they do

with other people. And this is what we

need.

This is the last thing today.

What do we need to do? Number 1,

you have to look at Canada as your

home

because this is the fact, Canada is not

a hotel.

Number 2, you have to look at yourself

as a dead citizen. If you have been

here for 70 years, you were born here,

your grand your parents died here, you are

a citizen. Don't tell me you are a

guest or you are a child. Okay?

Number 3, you have some rights in this

country just like everybody else, like Buddhists, like

Hindus, like Jews, and everybody else. So you

have to stand out and you have to

ask for your right.

Our biggest problem in the West in general

is we don't have representation

in the media. We don't have representation

in politics.

We have more doctors than patients.

We have more engineers than cars, but we

don't have politicians to speak for us.

The reason why our word is not heard

is not is because we don't speak for

ourselves,

and this is the problem.

We have to speak for ourselves,

we have to vote, and if you want

to vote for Muslims, may Allah reward

you for this, but you have to be

an active citizen and you have to exercise

your life in this country as a citizen.

You are not a guest anymore.