Yasir Qadhi – Bangles Of Persia
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Literally, right before coming to your audience, I
was in my room. Literally before coming to
the stage, I was in my room, scrolling
over the news.
BBC,
A Hamas rocket
has attacked
Tel Aviv, and they had a picture
of some broken glass in a house, and
they had a picture of a man pointing
to the broken glass, saying, this is what
the rocket did. And then the headline went
on,
Israel Retaliates 35
Dead in Rafa Refugee Camp.
The picture was of broken glass.
The picture was of a house that had
been rattled.
And in the fine print,
35
dead in the refugee camp of Rafa. No
pictures of the dead babies over there. No
pictures of the people of Hazza.
No pictures of the reality of what is
taking place.
Wallahi brothers and sisters,
wallahi,
we are so tired.
We are so
frustrated, we are so angry, we are so
enraged.
I am somebody who speaks a lot, as
you all know, but I am speechless.
Words fail me. I have never in my
adult life been so exasperated
and frustrated.
Wallahi we are at a loss even to
describe
how we feel. How can all of this
be happening?
How can we make sense of this inhumanity,
this sheer callousness,
the depravity,
the evil of what we are seeing over
and over and over again.
The cruelty
does not have enough synonyms
to describe what we are seeing. Wallahi brothers
and sisters, the fact of the matter is
that it's not just the Palestinians and the
Arabs and the Muslims that our politicians don't
care about. It's their own
American Muslim citizens
that couldn't care less about us. They couldn't
care less about a significant percentage of their
own country. You know what really, really astounds
me? And I've lived through so many crises.
I was an adult already when 9/11 happened.
I was in my twenties. Even after the
horrific events of 9:11,
President Bush
visited a mosque,
and at least in a token gesture,
no matter how angry we were at him,
at least a token
gesture. He said, We care about the American
Muslims, the American Muslims are not our enemy.
It was a token gesture, but at least
it showed something about real politics. You bring
your people together, you show some leadership.
For some bizarre reason, when it comes to
Gaza, and when it comes to Israel, it's
as if our government doesn't make any sense
whatsoever.
What exactly are they gaining by this policy?
What exactly are they gaining?
Which side of the world are they on?
Who are they really supporting?
Their own interests or the interests of another
country?
Our politicians are well aware that they're gonna
lose elections,
and they're still catering and pandering to the
foreign government outside.
How does one explain this?
I don't know. I honestly don't know. How
does one explain
the sheer insanity?
It is absolutely
irrational,
illogical,
what we see.
And the fact of the matter, all Muslims,
is that
we as American Muslims, Muslims, not only do
we have every right to be angry,
not only do we have every right to
feel the way that we do, but the
media, the government, politicians
have gone on the offensive.
Look at what's happening in every single talk
show. Do you condemn October 7th? Do you
condemn that political organization? Do you condemn? Do
you condemn?
All Muslims,
it is high time
that we claim the narrative, and we shift
the conversation.
Don't be intimidated
by such tactics.
Don't fall prey
to these types of tactics. Be brave, learn
your facts, and push back. You want me
to condemn?
Yes wallahi, I will condemn.
I will begin by condemning the debacle
of the Balfour Declaration where all of this
began. The Balfour Declaration,
and the Sykes Picot Agreement.
Let's begin by condemning World War 1. Let's
begin by condemning Great Britain, handing over a
piece of land that it had nothing to
do with, to a people that have nothing
to do with it. Let's begin by condemning
that.
You want me to condemn?
You want me to condemn? Let us begin
by condemning the 1st and the second Nakba,
in which 1,500,000 people were displaced.
You want me to condemn? You want me
to condemn genocides and massacres?
Let us begin by condemning the massacres that
Israel perpetrated against Palestine,
beginning with Deir Yassin in 1947,
where hundreds of bodies were filled up in
the well of Deir Yassin. You want me
to condemn? You want me to condemn hostages?
Let's begin by condemning
15,000
Palestinians
held without trial, without any fair representation
in Israeli prisons. Let's begin by condemning them.
You want me to condemn
killing of people, let us begin by the
carpet bombings that Israel constantly does for the
last 25
years.
And as for, and I'm gonna go there
today brothers and sisters, because enough is enough,
and if we're all cowered into silence, if
we're all too scared to speak the truth,
they're gonna get away with it. But if
every one of us raises our voices, is
if every one of us is brave enough
to push back, well then insha Allahu ta'ala,
we will achieve a level of social credibility.
We will push back at the narrative. When
too many people speak the truth, that is
what is gonna break down falsehood, and that's
what we need to do. So let's go
to the very events you want us to
condemn.
You want us to condemn October 7th, I
have plenty to condemn,
even on that day. How about we begin
by condemning
the lies that you perpetrated
about what happened on that day? Lies that
went all the way from CNN, from BBC,
from New York Times, from every single newspaper.
Even our president lied straight to us and
he looked at the camera and he said,
I saw pictures of 40 decapitated
babies.
Pure
lies, Israeli propaganda.
I will condemn, and this is my condemnation.
How dare you lie to us? You're supposed
to be our president. You're supposed to speak
the truth, and you lied to the world.
And because of that lie, people were enraged,
and 1,000 lost their lives. We all know
it was a lie. Even the New York
Times had to withdraw and retract the story.
You want me to condemn? How about the
condemnation of your lies, of the mass rapes
that you said occurred? Not a single *
has been has been attested to that day.
I will condemn because you're the ones who
created a narrative, You're the ones who falsely
construed a narrative that was then used to
bomb, to kill, to maim, to rampage. You're
the ones who falsely created a narrative.
This October 7th did not come out of
a vacuum. You want me to condemn? I
will condemn
75 years of brutal occupation
before October 7th. That's what I'm going to
condemn.
Enough is enough, brothers and sisters. Enough is
enough.
And
what razzah has done,
what Gaza has done
is that it has
shown the world
the hypocrisy
of those who claim to champion
human rights and freedom.
Gaza has shown
the hypocrisy
of those who said we are the world's
leaders because we are the best. We are
the world's leaders because we are for democracy.
We are for human rights. We are for
liberties.
And what a small group of people in
Gaza have done is to shown the world
those were blatant
lies.
Absolute
lies.
The mask has fallen.
The mask of deceit has fallen,
and the truth has been laid bare,
and the myth
of the moral superiority
of Western civilization
has been shattered
and that is a fact.
What we are seeing brothers and sisters,
there's no doubt that even after this war
is over, there's a long way ahead.
There's a long way ahead. Wallai, there's no
way to mince my words here. Even if
the bombing were to stop today,
600,000
people have no place to live.
There is not a single
hospital remaining in Gaza. Not a single university.
Not a single school.
Not a single
intact infrastructure in half of the city, of
the places of Gaza.
It will take 1,000,000,000 of dollars
and decades
of building
to at least bring it back to a
place where people can live semi normal lives.
So there's no easy victory. There's no simple
end to this game. The fact is we're
in for the long run.
But I predict, oh Muslims,
I predict
that from the ashes of Gaza,
from the rubble
that has been caused by our bombs, American
We're also seeing the rise of a new
power in our own lands.
We're seeing the rise of those
who actually want to fight for truth. They
actually want to have a better world.
As we see around us, look at the
thousands of students that are protesting
across this country. Students that are not Palestinian,
students that are not Muslim, for the last
2 weeks I've been crisscrossing
this country, speaking at student protest. I went
to the Harvard protest, I spoke at the
Yale protest, I spoke at the MIT protest,
I spoke at Northwestern at UTD. Go look
at those videos.
And every protest I went to,
every single protest I went to, wallahi,
90%
of them were people of other backgrounds and
faiths. Only 5, 10 percent were people from
our background or faith. The world is changing,
the tide is shifting,
the narrative has now been changed,
And there is no going back, O Muslims.
There's no going back.
The fact of the matter,
even if Gaza is in shambles,
the people of Palestine have won on the
global battlefield.
Never in 75 years has the Palestinian cause
garnered
so much support.
Never in 75 years has the entire globe
other than a few countries come behind Palestine.
South Africa.
South Africa, the land of Nelson Mandela.
South Africa,
that knows what apartheid is.
South Africa
that's lived through the only official apartheid before
Israel,
South Africa
sued Israel,
because it does not and cannot afford to
see another apartheid regime.
And not only, I don't know if you
know this, but Nelson Mandela's grandson
accepted Islam. He's a Muslim. He's named himself
Mohammad, Nelson Mandela's grandson.
And Nelson Mandela's grandson
visited
Palestine and Israel, and he lived through apartheid,
and his grandson said,
as somebody who's lived through apartheid,
I want to say that what I've seen
in Palestine
is worse than the apartheid I experienced in
South Africa. This is coming from somebody who
is the grandson of Nelson Mandela.
SubhanAllah,
the world really is changing. Ireland,
and Ireland is another country
that has lived through subjugation.
It has lived through oppression.
Ireland
Ireland
has been constantly
under state terrorism of England, and they know
this for the last 100 of years. The
way that the British treated them, the way
that they've been treated, the number of people
killed, the policies against them, the starvation that
took place a 100 years ago, the Irish
remember all of these things, and they remember
that when they were going through their crises,
when they were being mistreated,
when they were being massacred, when innocents were
killed constantly,
they remember
the world turned a blind eye towards them.
The world always placated the superpower that was
England. And so Ireland said, enough is enough.
We will not allow this to happen again.
And so Ireland stood up and said, we're
going to recognize Palestine as a state.
And Norway and Sweden and other countries and
Spain, and they are all countries that are
trying to be on the right side of
history. They've learned from the past, and they
don't want to make the mistakes of previous
generations.
They are all standing up in support of
a free Palestine.
Never before
have we seen the tide change so much.
So the future, brothers and sisters, wallahi, it
is bright. The future really is bright, and
insha Allah victory is imminent. There's no question
about that.
But here, we have to ask ourselves,
what exactly
is our role in all of this? What
exactly is our responsibilities?
And if you listen to my talks and
lectures I've been giving, literally since this whole
issue began 8, 9 months ago, I've been
constantly hammering the same point over and over
again.
Oh, Muslims, this isn't just about Gaza.
This isn't just about one place, one time,
one peoples. No.
It is as if Allah
is using Gaza as a beautiful catalyst for
the rest of us all.
Gaza is sparking iman in all of our
hearts.
Gaza is rekindling
a love of the ummah, and a love
of Allah
and a love of our ideals. That's what
is happening, because you know what? Even if
ghazah were to be solved tomorrow,
we still have duties and responsibilities,
we still have a higher purpose of living,
we still have to excel in achieving our
purpose in this life, And what is our
purpose? Our purpose is very clear,
So that you may bear witness unto mankind.
You may preach the truth, you may live
the truth, you may embody the truth, you
may invite others to the true message of
our faith. That's what our role is. And
so, gazza, and let's go on. It's not
just about gazza, what's happening in Sudan, what's
happening amongst the Uighurs, what's happening in Burma,
what's happening in Kashmir.
All of these causes, and even more.
I stand here today, and 25 years have
gone, and Guantanamo
is still open as we speak.
24 years have gone, and Guantanamo is still
open. It's not a matter of one cause
and that's it. No. What these causes do
is they remind us, they provoke us, they
force us out of our comfort zones. Allah
did not create us to live like animals,
to eat, to drink, to be merry, and
to die. No, We have a higher purpose,
and these causes, they remind us of that
higher purpose. They remind us of nobility.
They remind us that we have a mission
to accomplish, and that mission is to be
role models to the rest of mankind, to
show people what it means to be a
believer in
What happens when you believe in the Quran?
What happens when you walk in the path
of the prophets? Our lives
have to embody those values, and the people
around us, they need to see what that
implies. They need to see the changes that
happen. Our mission, therefore,
will not stop even if one problem is
solved, even if another problem is solved, because
problems will continue to arise.
Believe you me. Ask anybody older than you.
Do you really think problems will stop after
we solve one of them? No.
Constantly issues will happen around the globe, in
our personal lives, domestically,
and such is this world, such is this
dunya. This dunya is meant to be full
of problems so that we continue to solve
them. We continue to try to make the
world a better place, but our ultimate destination
is not this world. This world is not
the ultimate abode of peace that's ahead of
us. That's in jannah.
We try to make this world as peaceful
as possible,
but the actual peace will come in the
next. And the better job we do in
this world,
the better we will achieve peace in the
next. That's our goal. Once you understand this,
all Muslims,
don't be disheartened
if you don't see an impact in your
own efforts of what you do, because that's
not how Allah will judge you. Don't become
disheartened,
disillusioned.
Don't lose your hope or your spirit if
you keep on trying and trying and trying,
and you don't see any change.
Maybe, just maybe, we might not see change
for weeks or months or years.
We still have to continue putting in the
effort. We still have to continue
persevering,
pushing on, doing whatever we can do, and
there's so much we can do. There's so
much we can do. I've said here before,
and I'll say it again.
In the entire globe of 1.7
Muslims, 1,700,000,000
Muslims.
We as American Muslims,
us 5,000,000
American Muslims, we are the only
American Muslim community. We're the only global
Muslim community that can effect change from within
the American superpower.
We have to effect that change.
We have to effect that change.
We have to understand
we are worth 100, if not 1000 of
other Muslims around the world in this one
aspect, and that is the impact we can
cause.
Allah has tested us, Allah has blessed us,
Allah has chosen us that this is our
land. And our land is involved in a
heinous crime. Our land is involved in a
genocide.
Our president is enabling that genocide.
Our tax dollars are being spent to kill
innocent people.
You cannot and you should not be silent.
You must stand up, you must do your
best to fight against that. You must raise
your voice. You must protest. You must impact.
This is what we must do. There are
no two opinions about this. O Muslims,
make sure that you make it your priority,
you make it your priority
that people know that you are not gonna
tolerate this, not under my watch. We're not
gonna let this administration
get away with what it has done. We're
not gonna let our country
continue to kowtow to another regime, another apartheid
state. And you know what? You can even
ignore all of the politics and all of
the religious
and just tell your fellow Americans,
our tax dollars should be spent within our
country. Simple as that. Let's take care of
our own healthcare.
Let's take care of our own crises.
You know, somebody calculated somebody calculated
that if we were to take just 1
or 2 years of our foreign aid to
Israel, and we were to solve our homelessness
problem, we would not have a single
homeless person in all of America.
Even if somebody doesn't know anything about foreign
politics, just say to them, would you rather
solve homelessness
or continue giving aid to a foreign country?
It's that simple.
Wallahi, it's not complicated.
Keep
on persevering,
raising these points. And you know the irony
is, subhanallah,
sometimes
those whom we don't like, they hand us
talking points. They hand us what we should
do. You know, our president and others lied
about the 40 babies that were decapitated. They
said there's video footage of that. There's not
a single video footage, but you know what
there is video footage of?
IDF soldiers
themselves videotaping
themselves
as they manhandle Palestinians, as they make fun
of dead Palestinian children, as they play with
the toys of the children they just killed,
as they look at the private garments of
the women that they've expelled from their houses,
they have video footage of that. They're showing
it to us and for the world to
see. It's our job to amplify those voices.
It's our job to keep on retweeting and
showing the reality. Do you understand
that how terrified our country must be when
it wants to ban TikTok?
Do you understand
the level of depravity that they've reached? They're
terrified of the truth.
They're terrified of the videos,
and because of this they want to ban
a social app. I mean I would have
wanted to ban it for other reasons a
few weeks ago, right? But now all of
a sudden, I'm a big fan of TikTok
too, because if TikTok is gonna help us,
if TikTok is gonna help us spread the
word, well then so be it, but there's
a level of frustration,
a level of narrow mindedness,
a level of fear,
a paranoia
that is being displayed over here, and even
fellow Americans are picking it up, and so
our job is to act like catalysts, and
to continue to push the narrative, to continue
to bring that change from within, and I
said this yesterday, and I'll say it again
today, the exact same thing. Just in case
somebody wants to misinterpret
what we're trying to do, and somebody believes
that we are a type of 5th column,
a type of traitorous group of people who
want to change the system, somebody says, we're
preaching a stealth jihad and a secret jihad.
We say to them, no, this isn't secret
jihad, this is the essence of American democracy.
This is the essence of what it means
to be an American.
This is the essence of standing up for
your civil rights, of causing an influence in
your own politicians.
We have every right to influence our country,
just like other people have the influence of
their own. This is the reality of our
constitution.
In fact, we are wanting to influence our
country. What is APAC doing?
Israel is trying to influence our country, and
APAC boasts about this. Unbelievably,
the Israeli lobby posted
on their own website
that every single candidate
we financed and supported won. APAC is a
foreign lobby,
and they're boasting that their foreign money has
influenced our politics.
All we gotta do is retweet APAC, and
say look, that's exactly what these people are
doing. They are witnesses against themselves, oh Muslims.
They are showing the world who they really
are. So my advice to you is very
simple.
Follow the Qur'anic message, Surat Al Anfal verse
45.
Allah
says, O you who believe, when you're engaged
in an altercation,
then be firm.
Be firm. Do not waver. Do not give
up. And
continue to remember Allah frequently
so that you so that you are aided.
So be firm in what you're doing. Be
firm in your worship of Allah
And then Allah says,
Do not fight amongst yourselves.
Unite, O Muslims, as one. Allah says while
talking about engaging with the enemy, while talking
about strategy and tactics, Allah says what
you cannot do is divide amongst yourselves.
Make sure you are
united as one. Umma, suma message and call
to all of you.
Let Palestine
be the catalyst that unites each and every
one of us upon the truth.
Let us understand,
when it comes to ghazah,
when it comes to farsdine,
we don't care what our backgrounds and ethnicities
are, we don't care what the color of
our skin are, we don't care about abstract
issues of theology, fiqh, and aqeedah. We are
all people of the kalima, la ilaha illallah
Muhammadur Rasulullah.
We all come under one banner, and we
are going to be united
against the people who are wanting to kill
and massacre
innocent people. O Muslims,
remain firm, remain persevering,
Persist in all that you're doing. Raise your
voice. Be an influence to your family and
friends, and understand we're in this battle for
the long run, and we might not
see political victory immediately.
We might not. But I say to you
loudly and clearly,
we have already won the moral victory, we
have already won the moral battle. Palestine
has won, the people of Gaza have won,
The world has seen the hypocrisy
of our administration.
The hypocrisy of the alleged superpowers.
The rest of the world
has seen this reality,
and in the end,
truth has been made clear from falsehood, and
this is the promise of
Allah In barely 8 months,
every single statistic has shown that the next
generation of Americans,
the bulk of them, the majority of them
are sympathetic to the people of Gaza. That
next generation,
it's only a matter of a few years
before they become the CEOs, they become the
congressmen and congresswomen, they become the senators, and
yes, they become the presidents.
So we have won, oh Muslims.
The battle has been won in the long
run,
and that has only happened because of the
iman of the people of Gaza, and then
other people around the world. Inshallah, all of
us, we played our part in doing what
is the right thing. So, O Muslim,
stand up for the sake of Allah, stand
up for the people of ghazah, stand up
for truth, and bear testimony
to truth, and do not bear testimony to
falsehood.
Fight your own small battles, don't let anybody
try to over win you with the wrong
information.
Learn the truth. Fight back with statistics and
knowledge. Change the narrative at your local level.
Make
sure none of your family, and none of
your friends, and none of your colleagues has
an incorrect picture. And if you continue to
do so,
then within our own lifetimes, we will see
to be free. All Muslims, I want to
conclude as I always do, and that is
with that loud takbir that is gonna signify
how much we love Allah
But today, I'm gonna ask you all to
literally stand up as we do this. We
wanna do a takbir that is coming straight
from the depths of our souls, straight from
the bottom of our hearts. I want this
takbir to be so loud that the palaces
of Netanyahu
is gonna hear this taghbir. I want us
all to demonstrate the,
the strength of our iman. I want that
taghbir to resonate
every single bone in our body. I want
this to be the loudest taghbir that has
ever been heard in all of America.