Nadim Ali – Pray For Gaza!
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AI: Transcript ©
Indeed.
Our praise belongs to Allah, the most high.
We thank him and we seek his aid
and we seek his forgiveness.
And we seek refuge with him from the
evil of ourselves and from our bad actions.
Whoever Allah guides, then there's no one who
can mislead him.
And whoever Allah causes to go astray,
then there's no one to guide him.
I bear witness, or we bear witness, that
there's no deity except Allah who is unique
and without partners. And I bear witness that
Muhammad is his worshipper and his messenger. May
the peace and blessings of Allah be upon
him and his family and his companions and
those who follow them with good intentions
until the day of judgment.
O you who believe, fear Allah as he
should be feared and don't die except as
Muslims. Again, o you who believe, fear Allah
as he should be feared and don't die
except as Muslims. And, oh mankind, be careful
of your duty to your Rabb who created
you from a single soul and from it
created its maiden from the 2 of them
spread forth many men and women.
Be careful of your duty to Allah whom
you demand your mutual rights and be careful
of your duty to the wounds that bore
you. Indeed,
Allah is our Ruqib over you.
All you who believe, fear Allah, and always
speak the truth. He will cause your deeds
to be beneficial and he will forgive for
you your sins and whoever obeys Allah and
his messenger then he has truly achieved
a tremendous accomplishment.
For indeed the best speech is
the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad
and
the most evil of all affairs,
a newly invented matters which has no precedence
in Islam.
And, indeed,
all innovations are astray and each astray is
in the hellfire.
Oh Allah, save us from it. Oh Allah,
accept our du'a.
Oh you who have believed,
be persistent, be persistently standing firm in justice,
witnesses for Allah,
even if it be against yourselves
or parents
or relatives.
Again,
be persistently
standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even
if it be against yourselves, your parents, and
relatives.
And most of us are aware of the
events that have been happening
in Gaza.
And again, may Allah bring relief
to the people there, the Muslims as well
as the not yet Muslims.
And
when we view
what was happening over there, again, it saddens
us.
And again,
not because
most of the people there are Muslim,
but because they're human beings.
Because they're human beings.
And
we should
be considerate of of human beings.
Whether they're Muslims again or whether they're not
yet Muslim. And I always use the term
not yet Muslim because as long as a
person has breath in their body, they have
the ability to come to Islam.
And what we have to look at is
that the media in this country
are justifying war crimes, justifying war crimes. They
use the the concept or Israel has a
right
to defend itself. Nation states, again, are supposed
to operate under certain rules of engagement, certain
rules of engagement, but we see mass carpet
bombing
going on,
in the country of Palestine.
And it's a response to an attack.
And the the response,
in my opinion,
is disproportionate to the attack.
Again, it's like
killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
You know, you have Israel. It makes it
ranks
as one of the, what, the 10 most
powerful countries
annually.
The 4th
strongest military in the world.
And so we have to look at the
fact that they have
the the power, you know, to do certain
things over there. But the bottom line is
the the response
and the
killing of civilians and the the basically the
collective punishment that's been going on. You know,
we have to be conscious and be considerate
of all those people who are dying.
Hospitals being bombed. So we have to, you
know, be of those who are
praying
for the relief
for the people of Gaza.
I want to thank Sheikh Abdul Malik Mujahid
of Sound Vision. He coalesced a lot of
the material that I wanted to present today
about the information
on Palestine.
What is said that there's 6,800,000
Jewish Israelis and 6,800,000
Palestinians. They live now in an occupied Palestine.
In what some people call Israel today.
And again,
everybody has a right
human rights, you know, of justice
and dignity and to live and prosperity and
freedom. They all have the right. And, the
Palestinian struggle has been going on for many
years.
It's been going on for several decades since
around 1948,
47.
And again, it's not an issue that's weeks
old
or months old or years old. You're talking
about several decades old. And we have to
educate ourselves
on this struggle. It's important.
It's important
that
we have to recognize
the issue of Jerusalem
and the mosque that we have there and
that's where the prophet, peace be upon him,
ascended to the heavens. And so
it is important to all of the major
faiths, the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews.
And so there has to be some type
of negotiated
settlement so that everyone can live there in
peace. And again, I was talking to
USA Today last week and they didn't put
this in the paper, but I'd said there
needs to be a pluralistic response similar to
what happened in South Africa.
South Africans
and Afrikaners were killing each other for years.
But, again, it's not perfect, but they created
a truth and reconciliation
council and towards the end they made one
country.
And the fear although they say that Israel
is the only democracy in that part of
the world, but democracy just means the majority
rule. The bottom line.
So if they can develop some type of
proportional representation
based on the percentages there and they can
develop leadership and so they have to sit
down the scholars
you know, of Islam and the scholars of
Judaism and the diplomats, they have to sit
down because
to me, I don't believe that there will
be a military solution.
Because
every time you kill
Palestinian
families,
you can and who was that? Malcolm said
that, you know, when they asked him aren't
you making militants? When he was talking about
our struggle here in this country. He said,
you know, based on the actions of European
Americans,
that they will create more more militants than
I will ever create.
And so it's the same soup just a
different bowl.
And so we have to recognize that they
will create more resistance fighters in Israel as
long as they basically continue this military option.
There has to be a negotiated settlement in
my opinion.
The prophet, peace be upon him, he prohibited
the killing of civilians and non combatants in
war. You know you can look at the
hadith as what are the rules of war
for the Muslims?
You know that principle became part of Islamic
law and it has never changed.
You know that that's something that we have
to basically honor if we're in the struggle.
It does not require
that the enemy abides by that.
You know, they don't have to follow our
rules for the most part but we have
to follow our rules. If Hamas is
fighting under the banner of Islam they have
to follow the rules of Islam.
And again,
based on these principles, if
non combatants and civilians are being killed, they
again, that's
haram. That's un Islamic.
I always like to quote the Sheikh Umar
Mokhtar,
Rahim Allah of the Libyan Mujahid,
in the resistance against the Italians. When what
happened,
you know, they captured some Italian prisoners
and fascist prisoners. And they said, well, they
do this and they do that to us.
You know, they wanted to basically harm them.
They wanted to torture them and and basically
do what what,
what they, had been done the occupier had
done to to their prisoners.
And
Umar Mookhtah
famously said they are not our teachers.
And as Muslims we have to show restraint
even in the midst of war.
You know we are all familiar with the
story about Ali
when he was basically in the midst of
a battle and he he had subdued the
man.
And then the man spit in his face
and then Ali put his sword away and
walked away. And this man said, surely if
I had had you in a similar position,
I would have killed you. And then Ali
said, basically, I didn't know if I was
killing you, faisa be Allah, or because you
spit in my face because of anger. And
that's the discipline he showed.
That's the difference. That that's the difference between
the Muslim warrior and the not yet Muslim
warrior. And so we, in the midst of
battle, we have to follow the rules of
engagement.
And that's for us over here because Allah
knows best where we will be in the
next few years. Because the way this country
is going, you know, there will possibly be
certain times where we will have to basically
engage in active resistance.
We don't,
you know, we don't hope for it. But
we need to be not only mentally, but
physically and spiritually prepared for it. Don't sleep
on these people.
Killed a 66 year old boy,
6 year old young Palestinian,
stabbed him to death.
This one insane man
stabbed him to death.
And so because he was being fueled by
right wing media.
And so, again, we have to stay prayed
up, but we will be prayed on brothers
and sisters.
It's important, you know, for us to arm
ourselves,
you know, with this Deen. And for those
of you who are just coming to the
Deen, read the Quran, read the Hadith, read
the series of the prophet and his companions,
alayhis salaam.
Know your religion.
Because again, these people are burning books.
They're going in front of the Turkish Embassy
burning Qurans.
And what's the, the philosopher said, when people
start burning books, it's just one step away
from them starting to burn people.
And so, these are the times that we
are living in.
And the Islam prepares us for this.
And so, if people are inclined towards peace,
then we need to be peaceful.
But, we, we don't need to basically be
of those who be caught sleeping on the
job.
And that means preparation.
That means whatever we need to do,
spiritually, whatever we need to do materially to
be able to deal with any resistance that
come our way.
Because we can look at how
the people
are fighting. I mean, we looked at what
happened
in in in in Algiers. We look at
what's happening in Palestine. We look at what's
what's what happens in different parts of the
world and how the oppressive will deal with
the oppressed.
So as Muslims we have to be of
those
who
will exercise a level of discipline.
You know, we we should not be labeled
anti
Semitic if we're asking people
to save lives in Gaza, asking for a
ceasefire.
We should not be harassed for basically showing
solidarity with the Palestinian and their resistance. Again,
it's been going on for 75 years,
75 years.
Because of the crimes of Europe,
the people of Palestine having to pay for
it. It was cooking people in gas ovens.
And after the World War 2, because of
the the dissolution of the caliphate, the Turkish
caliphate,
then that land was was taken and given
to the European yahoo.
And so we have to recognize and know
what what is the history of this. We
should not be unapologetic
about our commitment to peace and justice for
Palestine.
It's estimated that by now thousands of Palestinian
children have been killed by Israeli bombing
since the start of the escalation on the
morning of October 7th.
Thousands of Palestinians have been injured.
About 60% of the injuries occurred by the
Israeli air strikes
were among women and children in the Gaza
Strip.
1000 are internally displaced. They told people to
go from this from the the the one
part of the country to the other part
of the country and they still bombed them.
People still were being killed.
300,000
Israeli troops are preparing for a ground invasion.
70 years. 75 years it's been happening. Israel
has facilitated
Israeli Jewish settlers who attack the Palestinians all
the time.
The U. S. Government
and the UN consider the settlements illegal, but
nobody is is is giving Israel
Israel consequences for their own actions.
Israel has displaced 5,900,000
Palestinians
while Palestinians have not displaced any Israelis.
Israel is occupying Palestine and not the other
way around.
UN Human Rights experts, Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, and Israel's own B'Tselem
called it an apartheid state. An apartheid
basically is what was happening in South Africa
where they separated the people based on how
you look.
Israel has killed and injured a 150,000
Palestinians
including 33,000
children since 2008.
1 in every 5 Palestinians
have been arrested and charged under the 1600
1600 military orders that control every aspect of
Palestinian lives. The number of Palestinians behind Israeli
bars right now is 52100
including 33 women and a 170 children.
Meanwhile, in the US,
secretary of state, he demonizes Hamas.
President Biden, he said, I'm gonna send more
arms to Israel. And the media does not
condemn
the actions.
And so we have to show
basically solidarity with Palestine brothers and sisters.
As Allah says, indeed,
we sent our messengers with clear signs and
sent down sent them down with the book
and the balance that people may uphold justice.
We have to stand up for justice. That
was the mission of all the prophets
from Adam to Muhammad alayhi salam.
It's our religious responsibility to stand with indigenous
people
in their fight for justice, truth and reconciliation.
Even the indigenous people in this country, because
we have to look at who is that
Arafat said that if the Israelis are going
to play cowboys, we're not going to play
Indians.
Because
again, it's a similar situation. If they feel
as though they have a religious right to
the land,
similarly, the Native Americans can make that same
claim. They have a religious right to the
land if they wanted to you know basically
communicate that.
And so we have to stand for justice
as Muslims.
Abu
Abuja said that the prophet said
whoever of you sees an evil, let him
change it with his hands. If he is
not able to do so, then let him
change it with his tongue. And if he
is not able to do so, then with
his heart. And that is the
weakest of faith. That is the weakest of
faith. Ibu
ibn Umar
reported that the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
said, beware of the oppression,
for the oppression will be a darkness on
the day of resurrection.
We have a responsibility.
We have a responsibility
to fight against oppression.
Beware of sub the supplication of the oppressed
as the prophet
said, because there's no barrier
between the oppressed and Allah, and it's a
Bukhari Hadid.
And I pray that the law allows us
to become educated on this issue and not
just sit and be lackadaisical
about what's going on and just clicking on
the the likes and dislikes.
But do what you can do, whether you're
involved in a protest, whether you do something
through social media.
Do what you can do to make it
known that we,
in this part of the world, do not
support the actions of this country.
Because what happens is
everybody gonna make money. They gonna bomb
Gaza into the stone age and then what
will happen
is then they will control all the construction.
They will control all the construction and the
money that's made from the construction.
And the people, the fat cats in this
country, they're sitting around, they make money on
both sides. They sell guns to both sides.
They basically make money in destruction and they
make money in construction and always quote Gil
Scott Herron, the famous poet says that ask
them what they're fighting for and they'll never
mention the economics of war. There's a book
said that war
basically
is is is basically a, it's just a
racket.
It's a racket.
And Allah says that fighting is prescribed for
you even though you may dislike it, for
you may like a thing which is bad
for you and dislike a thing which is
good for you. And so
but we have to
use the rules of engagement
based on how the prophet, peace be upon
him, dealt with his adversaries.
If they inclined towards peace, then we should
incline towards peace. If they incline towards other
wise, then we should do otherwise. If I've
said anything which is inconsistent with what Allah
has given us and the prophet, peace be
upon him, has real modeled for us, I
take responsibility for that. And if I've said
anything in which you have gained some new
insight, as always, all praise belongs to Allah.
Allah.
Some of the things
we can look at in again, based on
what the prophet
says that the parable of the believer
in their affection and mercy and compassion
for each other is that of a whole
body.
When any limb aches, the whole body reacts
with sleeplessness
and fever,
with sleeplessness
and fever. So, you know, we,
you know, we have the fever.
We have the symptoms
of a sickness. We're sick to our stomach
based on what we're seeing.
But what we're viewing in our devices and
on television is just a small amount of
what's really happening.
I'm getting words that people are drinking toilet
water, having to boil toilet water.
You know you know how important water to
us
as Muslims who are making will do it,
you know, although we can make the time
moon.
But that's what's going on
in this this country. That's what's going on
in in that country. And so we have
to basically
call our representatives.
We of course, we can make doer,
but call the representatives, people that we've given
money to and elected. Call them.
Make special doers. You stand in the night
prayers, stand for them.
Educate yourself about Al Aqsa
in Palestine
and also the magnitude of human suffering.
Challenge the TV networks, all the talk
shows, write the newspapers,
you know, do whatever is necessary that you
can do at whatever level you can,
you know, and demand fair coverage,
balanced, balanced voices. So one of the first
things the right wing did during the Reagan
era is they got rid of what's called
the fairness doctrine, and y'all could look that
up. And the fairness doctrine meant that you
if you give one side opinion, you have
the other side have to have to have
an opinion. And so after
the fairness doctrine was eliminated, then what happened?
That's when you got the rise of the
Fox News and the right wing media. Because
now they don't have to give the other
side,
you know, to to to an issue. And
so we have to recognize that this thing
has been happening,
you know, for for several years,
and we've been asleep at the wheel. So
as law has allowed the Islam to grow
steadily in this country, and then Islam is
not a religion, it is a way of
life. As a part of that way of
life is that we have to stand for
the oppressed.
We have to be of those who are,
you know, at foremost, no matter who they
are. These are some of the things that
we have to look at. There's, website justice
for all dot org, and you can just
look at that and you can get some
some marching orders.
You know, again,
people have a right to resist occupation.
And occupation is this, if you're sitting in
your house
and somebody
comes in and just put their feet up
on the couch and say, this is mine.
That's what they did 75 years ago. They're
occupying the land,
and the people are resisting. What would you
do if someone came and just tried to
take your house?
I know what I would do.
And so what we have to look at
is they have the right to resist.
You know,
and
we have a privileged position in this country.
We're on the bench.
And so let us use our privileged position
in our voices to let it be known
that that we don't accept this. There needs
to be an immediate ceasefire.
Humanitarian
aid needs to be be put in. And
again, everybody gonna make money.
People who are supplying the humanitarian aid as
well as the people who gonna be involved
in the construction.
We have to
be of those who
recognize
who's at Ho Chi Minh said that we
have to resist to exist.
Resist to exist. And they went against the
United States, one of the most powerful armies
in the world.
These little people, Vietnamese,
and they won
because they had that attitude.
But as Muslims, we have the attitude, victory
of paradise.
Victory of paradise. So when you see people
struggling
and and recognizing
as as the law says that don't say
that the the martyrs are dead. They they
live though you perceive it not.
Though you perceive it not.
So again, let's not sleep on this brothers
and sisters.
It's better to sacrifice
everything
than to live in slavery.
Oh, Allah, help him protect the people of
Palestine.
Oh, Allah,
ease their pain and suffering in Gaza.
Oh, Allah,
bestow your mercy on them
and open the doors of sustenance and provide
relief to the besieged.
And, oh, Allah, heal the wounded men and
children of Gaza. And, oh, Allah, bring peace
to Gaza and end the persecution.
Our lord, take us not to task if
we forget or fall into error. Our lord,
lay not on us a burden such as
you did lay on those who have gone
before us. Our lord, lay not on us
a burden which we don't have the power
to bear and overlook our faults and forgive
us and have mercy on us. You are
our protector and grant us a victory over
the disbelieving people. I mean, become a man.