Yaser Birjas – Muslims In Spain – History Repeats Itself
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The history of the European Union law established the concept of Muslim versus Catholicism, which was eventually replaced by the Mor draft. The law addressed issues such as the spread of Islam in Iran and the use of olive oil in cooking. The speakers emphasized the importance of not being abused by the Westerners and the need for strong community influence. The history of the Spanish-criptions of the Islam, including the influence of the Eastern European community, was lost throughout generations due to the men being forced to be out for labor and not women being confined. The woman who preserved the Muslim culture was the only woman who kept it.
AI: Summary ©
To link few things from history inshallah.
First I wanna thank brother Arsalan, sister Zumrath,
and, all,
the royal community for the really, for bravery
and courage
to come out and speak and educate us,
the Muslim community,
in regard to the plight of our brothers
and sisters in an East Turkish time. Allah
subhanahu wa'ala make it easy for them.
So, Halah, personally, my personal experience at least,
I would say, first encounter of the Uyghur
community.
When I was in Medina at the time,
still sitting in the University of Medina,
one of my, close friends who was sitting
behind me in the classroom,
his name is the Muslim name was Mansoor,
but he was from there and he was
telling me about what was going on there.
And that's when I heard about the 1990
massacre that happens there. And also some of
the graduates from Madinah
at that time were also unfortunately been taken,
and and eventually they perished,
during that time. I've taken the ulama and
the students of knowledge and kinda like remove
them from the society, from the community.
We had another brother at the time. He
goes by the name Abbas.
He was studying, the graduate school to finish
to become the
PhD. But SubhanAllah, when his program finished, he
was so worried about going back again to
East Turkestan.
And the reason for that because while he
was living in Medina, he had 5 kids.
So he was just like, oh man.
And that was when the restriction was still
having 1 child, 2 only for for the
minority. So subhanallah, it was for him a
difficult time. So that's something we got to
know, but never really understand the the depth
of it. Just like brother Arslan said, you
know, the information that people get is just
very little really. You don't you don't hear
it from firsthand,
experience and witnesses, not like what you guys
have experienced today.
So, to link that our history as an
Ummah, this is not new, like the Muslims
to be targeted and to be removed completely
from their culture, from their deen. If anything,
I was, when I was listening to the
stories of how I couldn't help it, but
linking it to,
the history of the Muslims in Spain.
If you guys are not familiar with the
history of Muslims in Spain, I know a
lot of people, Hamdullah, they like to go
and visit Spain. Masha Allah. They go and
see the, the Granada Masjid,
the Cordoba is beautiful,
orchard,
Cathedral of Masjid at the time as well
too. Somehow we all enjoy these beautiful sites
and so forth, but we don't really know
what happened exactly.
I highly
recommend and encourage you to read about the
history of Muslim Spain
from, the 19 from the 14 92 when
the,
the, the, the signage of the,
basically,
removal of the last Muslim state in, in,
in, in Spain at the time all the
way until the Swiss in time. Just really
what happened then because at the time when
they signed the treaty or at least at
that time when they signed
the,
the agreement that the last Muslim
ruler in Spain, Granada, he will give up
the state.
Part of the part of the treaty was
that they will preserve the Muslim identity. They're
allowed to have their massages and which is
everything on paper like you said. Everyone was
very sweet and beautiful. Yeah. You guys are
gonna still be Muslims. We're not gonna be
harassing you. You live your life. You keep
your culture. You keep everything and so and
so, but you give up the the the
rule and
the state. That was the kind of agreement.
That didn't last long.
If you read history, you will see that
in few years right after that, 7 years
to be said maximum.
Until the 1500, that's 8 years maximum.
All of those provisions of that agreement
were gone
and then they start forcefully,
forcefully converting the Muslims into Catholicism.
At least they create certain scenarios or to
situations
where people have to be forced to be
catholics or christians at the time. There was
a revolt that happened in that time where
people barricaded themselves in their quarters, Muslim quarters,
Muslim neighborhood,
until, unfortunately, they were obviously defeated because
because they could not stand against the army.
So eventually
because of that,
the the government of Spain at the time,
they realized, you know what? This is it.
They're no longer gonna keep your the whole
agreement is gone, and now they're gonna be
forced into becoming candidates.
And that's when the whole,
title that was given to the Muslims at
that time, the Moriscos
and the Moriscos.
So
they call them Moriscos
or Moriscas, which is the converts basically, you
could say to, to Catholicism. So Muslims were
forced
as a result of that with first papal
agreement that came from the from Rome
that they cannot speak the Arabic language. They
have to abandon, of course, their, Arabic,
tongue and also the writings
and many, many things they have to abandon.
And then they start another revolt happened in
15/20.
So that's about,
28 years later from the, that signing of
that treaty.
Another revolt almost so could happen. And another
papa,
bullet came out and
and even made put more restriction on these
people and now they start dispersing them out
of Granada all over the place, like distributing
all over the place, away from the center.
So that's when the Muslims now they're completely
no one was allowed to be a Muslim
anymore.
No one.
And the sad part, they were not even
allowed to leave.
Why? Because they were very good artisans.
Like imagine here all the IT people leave,
the country is in mind. What happened to
the economy?
Like, there were people in Spain. Those are
zealous, and you could say those are religious
zeal for the identity of the Spain and
so on. They want all these Moriscos and
Moriscos and even the Jewish actually could to
be expelled.
But those were sensible.
Those are politicians. They said if we if
we kick them all out, the whole, economy
collapses. At that time, Spain was a big
strong empire, which has led to
the founding of this of this land that
we call America today. Right?
But they didn't want to expel them out
because they're the the artisan. These are the
doctors, the engineers, the tailors, the the bakers.
Everything you need for the society is to
flourish. So they wanna keep them there.
So they kind of forced them to stay.
So the muslims
now went into clandestine culture. So they were
underground,
trying to keep their tradition, their culture. SubhanAllah.
So some of the, some of the inquisition
rules that came at that time
is that those inquisitors,
the inspectors,
they check Muslim neighborhoods to see if they're
still practicing Islam or not.
If they smell olive oil
is being used in cooking,
they will come at you.
If on a Friday they hear water trickling,
they will come after you because you make
you take a shower for Friday.
If they see anything
related to Islamic rituals, the same thing you're
gone completely.
So the Muslims sent a letter to, at
that time, the Muslim state in North Africa,
and, in Iran, Algeria today
or Wuhan. So they sent the letter to
those scholars over there to the Muftis about
their plight and their circumstances.
If you read, it's the very famous actually,
Fatwa quote, the Fatwa of Wuhan,
and it's written in in, books of history
and fiqh as well too.
If you read the fatwa, the questions and
the nature of the questions and the fatwa
the ulama gave at that time. You will
see these are bitter answers really.
I mean what are you talking about? Like
what? The question says
we can't pray Juman.
Can we go on on Sunday because they
forced him to attend Sunday mass. Can we
go on Sunday with the intention of jama'am?
And the ulemaq said, yes, you can.
Like you go attend,
you know, Sunday's ceremony
or sermons
and with your intention that you are attending
Juman.
Okay. We can't make wudu.
Is it okay if we we can't even
tayamun. You can't even do drive the wood.
It's not even allowed.
Can we look at the walls
or at the ground
with the intention of making the imam? I
said yes you can.
And by the way even that was banned
afterwards. Like if they see you standing at
the wall, standing at the ground you're in
trouble.
To that level.
Even they were they were asked subhanAllah.
They asked how do you pray? Say pray
while you're walking.
Just in whichever capacity you can and there
were few muslims were able of course to
congregate and gather and subhanallah for a long
long time
Muslim tradition that's a message to the brothers
and the oil or community.
Muslim tradition in Spain survived throughout generations,
believe it or not, because of the women,
not because of the men.
Because the men were forced to be out
for labor
and never women were confined basically to housework
and so on. So it is the women
who preserved
the Muslim tradition. That's a message to our
sisters today.
So you read about it. There's a book
called actually the the,
the Hamlet's maiden speaks about the role of
the Muslim and Muslim Spain at that time
and how they were able to preserve,
the tradition of child childbirth, for example,
funerals,
the, the use of certain recipes,
heat, even the, the, the chanting
and lullabies where kids go to sleep.
All these little things.
These little things were back then major threat.
If ever comes out and people realize that
you said, listen, do this in SubhanAllah.
Thinking of going to Hajj then, back then,
that's like a suicide.
Couldn't even imagine yourself to get to that
that suicide over there. Until 15/70,
that's when was the major revolt that took
place. You know, some of the, Muslims
took advantage in that moment because at that
time,
the the arnaments became a strong power,
and they were dominated the mediate military. And
as a matter of fact, I'm gonna take
you back a little bit few few decades
before that. Just right before that end, be
between 15/20
and 15/70,
during those 50 years,
some of the interesting that happened, it's some
of the Muslims
and that's goes back to the role of
the Muslim society. We think that we are
weak
lamestan. So some of the Muslim scholars of
that time and leaders,
they sent a secret, a secret
envoy and emissaries to go and visit 1
of the, one of the closest
strong Muslim strongholds
in the Mediterranean, which was Egypt.
And Egypt at the time was ruled by
the Mamluk state.
So they went and they sent to them
an envoy asking for the for the for
the Amir and the leader of the Muslim
Ummah in Egypt
to help us. I mean, do something. You
guys have influence in the Mediterranean. You can
do something about this.
And, so they have a conversation with them.
Guess what happened?
That the Spanish government that time, they found
out about that, that envoy because they received
some communication with them. So what do they
do? They send their own invoice to the
government of Egypt,
making a business deal with them that made
the Egyptian actually government
drop their request to assist and sell help
the Moriscos
for the favor, of course, of the business
deal they got with the Spanish government. And
part of that deal was what? They will
assist them against the rival.
Who was the rival at the time of
jama?
The the the the the rising araman,
state in Turkey.
Because the Mamluks and the aramans were fighting,
you know, for dominance in that area.
So basically, yeah, that time, the sujuk from
that time.
But again, the Mamluks at some point they
lost to the arlamas at some point and
then when the arlamas became the dominant that's
when the 15/70
uprising happened in an area called al Busarat.
If anyone visits Spain today, there's the mountains
are still there. You can still see the
sign of the Muslim presence in these mountains.
It lasted for about 2 years or so
with some assistance from the Ottoman Empire at
that time, which unfortunately would not last long.
They it failed.
And because of that, the the call to
expel the moriscos from Spain started becoming a
very strong voice in the society over there.
But it took another,
another 45
years or actually about 40 years, I would
say, in,
1609
through 16
15 or 14. So about 5 years
since they make actually expelling of the Muslims
from Spain that they ship shipped them out
to Turkey.
Of of course, at that time was a
Ottoman empire,
send them to Morocco.
They're an area in Morocco called Shefshawn and
it's predominantly,
Muslims. So the lineage goes back again to
Spain actually. Algeria, Tunisia, all these areas hosted
the Muslims and the Jewish community, the ironies
of Hanallah
and the Jewish that were expelled
out as well because they always felt safe
being around the Muslims
than being with the Europeans
in, in Europe, Allah, I must stand.
So
when you look at our history, that weakness
existed from before and still existing today, unfortunately.
But Alhamdulillah, I'm very hopeful
Because the prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam informed us
that there will be a time when the
ummah will be so weak that everybody will
be taking
a piece from here and there, from the
Ummah.
But that is not gonna last long.
And the day insha'Allah is gonna come when
the Ummah will come strong. It's up to
you to be part of this or not.
You need to be, you know, vocal about
it, speak about it, go out there, bring
justice those who are oppressed,
let us not repeat the history of, of
the Muslim of the passage of the. And
we are registered as being complicit with this
genocide and that weakness of the Ummah. We
need be among those who are reviving Insha'Allah
Tabarakawwala.
We become too comfortable
in our Alhamdulillah our own homes,
our own
convenience and luxury that we live,
that we just there's so much we, we
worry about losing if we take that stance.
That's why the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam when
he was asked about this,
and he was said, you Rasool Allah, are
we gonna be few in numbers? He said,
no, no, no.
You're gonna be so many.
We just but your numbers don't count.
Nothing. He said, salallahu alayhi salam. And then
he were asked why is that? God, because
you will see that you will fear your
enemies and the enemy will have no fear
of you.
And he said, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, because
you will have in your heart the love
for this
dunya. Basically
like
being afraid to die and for the love
of this dunya.
And that's unfortunately
the case of the Ummah everywhere you go
now. In many of these Muslim kadis that
we're talking about today, people
overfed with so much luxury. There is so
much at stake for them to lose, and
therefore they keep quiet just to enjoy their
privilege.
Instead of standing for justice, not just for
our brothers and sisters in the all our
community,
the Rohingya
in in Burma, Kashmir,
in Yemen, in Syria,
everywhere around the world, Allah must stand. There's
always a case for the Muslim that they
need to stand for. May Allah subhanahu wa'ala
make us some of those who stand for
justice
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to protect
our brothers and sisters, the oppressed all over
the world. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to deliver our brothers to the oil world
community
and bring justice to them, You Allah. We
ask Allah
to give them to give them peace and
tranquility in their hearts and their land,
Give them support again their
oppressors We ask Allah to protect our brothers,
our brothers,
We ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to protect
them. You
Rabbi, we ask you to to help those
who are oppressed around the world, You
You Rabbi, You Allah, we ask to be
there for them, You Rabbi Alamin. Give them
aid and protection against the oppressors, You Allah,
everywhere around the world, You rahman, You Raheem.
Restore peace and tranquillity their hearts into their
lives in this dunya and the akhirah. You
Allah, we ask to protect our jama'a in
this community.
Protect our Masjid, our community, our Muslim community
around the country.
We ask to keep us firm in our
iman. Keep
our iman firm in the hearts of our
children, our families for generations to come.