Omar Suleiman – Do Not Move – Gaza Encampment At Northwestern University
AI: Summary ©
The speakers stress the importance of planting feet on the right side of history, rather than just on the wrong side, to achieve spiritual fortitude and avoiding Yo Accounts Act. They also reference a story of David and Goliath, emphasizing the importance of planting feet on the right side of history for achieving spiritual fortitude and avoiding Yo Accounts Act. The speakers stress the need to make it clear that one should plant their feet on the right side of history, rather than on the wrong side, and emphasize the importance of strong moral clarity.
AI: Summary ©
Dear brothers and sisters,
my message to you from the very beginning
is don't move.
Don't move.
And when I say don't move,
there's a very specific implication of don't
move.
Don't move from the side of truth.
Don't move from the side of justice.
Don't move from the side of your lord.
Plant your feet firm
and ask him to pour into your heart
what is necessary
to achieve the internal condition so that you
can have the faith and the resilience that
is necessary
to stay the full course.
I want you to appreciate in this encampment
that we are in right now
and in this place where so many of
you have courageously come
and many are taking to the lawns across
the country and hopefully soon across the world
of university campuses
that what makes this so significant is not
just the cause,
but also the fact that we are not
memorializing
something of the past.
We're not talking about something that happened 10,
20 years ago.
We're not talking about
a catastrophe that we only read about in
our books.
We're not talking about people
that have long gone before us. We're not
even talking about 2 weeks ago.
In the very moment that you are camped
out on this lawn,
there are camps
throughout
Gaza,
specifically
Rafah right now,
where millions of people
facing
the worst forms of brutality that we have
ever seen play out on our screens,
are planting their feet firm in the ground
despite all of the psychological
and physical
and mental torture and saying, we will not
move.
And it bewilders the enemy,
why
are these people
so stubborn?
Why won't they just cross over?
Why not just make space for them and
send them elsewhere?
And we have made their lives a living
* in Gaza, so they should all want
to leave. It's all counterintuitive.
And while the bombs are still falling and
there isn't a moment where the drones are
not heard in Gaza,
and there isn't
a new piece of news that someone else
that is beloved to you has died,
and people with their missing limbs and fresh
blood
and empty stomachs
still say
We will stay.
We will rebuild.
Try talking to people in Gaza and telling
them that, well, the infrastructure is destroyed.
The entirety of Gaza is gone.
This genocide is complete.
The water
is gone. The food is gone. What was
left of your homes is gone. Your family
is gone.
Tens of thousands of people literally missing limbs.
Children who have no one
but their lord and the people around them.
And they still say,
We will stay here.
We will not move.
We will stay here until the pain goes
away.
We will live here.
Things will change.
The song will change.
The mood will change. Whether it takes 10
years or 20 years or 30 years, we
have a responsibility.
We will not move.
One of the doctors
that went to Gaza
came back with this,
and it's dated a piece of Gaza.
And it reads, bin Gaza,
ma'alhubbi
rahmalalam,
With
love despite
the pain.
With love despite the pain,
here we will stay.
And while the world marvels at these people,
while also finding complete disgust
at the treatment of these people and the
lack of global accountability from the powers that
be, they wonder where that power comes from.
Where is that faith from?
And in the Quran,
we have this constant
notion
of feet that are planted firm.
We ask our Lord constantly
to make our hearts firm
and to make our feet firm, to allow
us to achieve the internal condition
that is necessary to give us the fortitude
to face any obstacle ahead of us and
to not cower in front of any tyrant.
The way that we see best manifested right
now in our brothers and sisters in Gaza.
And in every
single
portion of the Quran in which this idea
of
feet planted firm,
you have
a mention of the internal condition that was
achieved first.
Oh, you who believe if you stand up
for your Lord, he will give you victory,
and he will make your feet firm.
If you're standing up for Him,
He will descend into your hearts what is
necessary to make your feet firm.
When Allah
speaks to us about a story that is
known to so many of us, Muslims
and people of other faiths,
some of you whom are here,
The story of David and Goliath.
And before anybody else tries to fill your
head or your heart with any baseless propaganda
and tries to convince you that somehow
the 40,000
massacred people
under the most sophisticated
bombing
and weaponry
that we know in our modern day
with all the structures of power and oppression
against them that somehow those people are Goliath
against David,
then come back to your common sense.
We too have David and Goliath,
and it's best manifested in the boy that
stands in front of the tank with his
stone, absolutely unafraid and unintimidated.
And we have the story of David and
Goliath in the Quran.
And when those righteous people stand up
against Goliath
and they make the following supplication,
Before they asked for their feet to be
planted firm,
they say pour upon us patience.
So once again, something that precedes the feet
being planted firm pour upon us patience, but
here's the thing.
It's one thing to plant your feet firm.
It's another thing to know why you're planting
your feet firm, and to know that you're
planting your feet firm on the right side
of history.
There was no doubt in the hearts and
minds of those that were standing
on that side that they were on the
right side of history. And that too distinguishes
us today.
That we know we're on the right side
of history.
And no propaganda
is going to rupture that fitra, that natural
recognition
of oppression.
No one can color a genocide and make
it acceptable
to a sound heart.
And so before you plant your feet firm,
you need to make sure that you're planting
your feet on the right side.
And today we're on the right side,
and we ask our Lord to pour upon
us patience as well.
And when he tells us about the story
of Badr,
when our prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be
upon him,
was facing a mighty army
of oppressors.
And Allah mentions
That he would fortify your hearts
and plant your feet firm.
There's something that perceives that feet
or that set of feet being planted firm.
It's the moral clarity. It is the spiritual
fortitude.
It is knowing that you are upon the
truth
that allows you to know today and beyond
that you should not move
because of an obstacle ahead of you.
And the greater that obstacle ahead of you,
the more that you remember
that there is a Lord that is greater
than that obstacle,
that there is a cause that is greater
than that obstacle that will keep you firm.
And even when the blood is fresh,
you chant out the way that Omar Khabab
did on the day of Uhud, when the
blood was flowing and when the losses were
abundance.
God has caused to remain
that which causes you disgrace.
And to the oppressors today,
we say that what has caused you disgrace
still remains and it is not going away.
The wonder of the Palestinian people and the
Palestinian cause, and specifically the people of Gaza,
is that they just won't go away and
that frightens
the structures
of power there, and it frightens the structures
of power here that despite all of the
money that goes into the weaponry,
despite all of the money that goes into
the propaganda,
despite all of the structures of power,
it only continues to reveal their hypocrisy
and your courage
and your refusal to back down.
And it's being seen across the country today
and across the world, that no suppression
will do away with the people
that act on the basis of conviction,
that no structure of power
can take away
from spiritual clarity. And what they fear most
is how little you fear them. And what
intimidates them most is how unintimidated
you are,
and what will break them is how unbreakable
you have been.
And this is the way it will remain
because so long as the people of Gaza
plant their feet firm, we have an example
of a people that can plant their feet
firm. Don't move.
Don't move.
That's my lesson.
That's all I want you to remember.
No matter how intimidating it gets, no matter
what they put in front of you, no
matter what they threaten us with, we will
not endure what the people of Gaza have
endured for their livelihood, and they deserve to
live as much as we deserve to live.
Don't move.
Stay the course.
You know who sustains you.
You know who gives you victory. You know
who gives you courage. You know who gives
you meaning. You know why you're here. Don't
move.
Plant your feet firm.
And we ask Allah to plant our feet
firm, and to put in our hearts
what is necessary
to be fortified
so that we are never
intimidated,
never scared,
never broken,
never in a state of despair,
even when we feel pain.
That our pain and our joy are always
in righteousness.
And that what we plant our feet in
is always the truth.
And we ask him to protect us from
falsehood
and the structures of falsehood,
and we ask him to grant us what
is necessary
to be on the side of our brothers
and sisters in Palestine
and beyond.