Christians and Muslims: the other story

Arshad Gamiet/Royal Holloway University of London/16^th March 2012

(to listen to this khutbah, or to download the audio version, please click here)  

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh,  is truly guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – be aware of Allah, with correct awareness, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

In the verse I just quoted, the Holy Quran reminds us that we are all descended from common ancestors, we are all children of Adam and Eve, peace be on them. Yet there are still people who forget this, and who treat others with unbelievable hatred and contempt. In recent days, some Christians have been burning Qurans and some Muslims have been bombing churches and committing acts of mindless terror. They claim they are defending their religion and serving God. But each group is equally misguided. They’re just massaging their own bruised egos. Senseless violence between followers of one great religion and another has nothing to do with real faith.

Wars between Crusaders and Caliphates tell us more about the political rivalry for wealth and power between two civilizations. It tells us nothing about the spiritual connection that has always existed, very strongly, between believing Christians and believing Muslims.

In today’s khutbah I want to focus on this topic. Let’s look at three remarkable Christians to illustrate the intimate connection between the followers of Jesus and Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be on both of them. We can learn some important lessons from their stories.

They are Bahira, Waraqa and Najashi, the king, the Negus of Abyssinia.

Let’s begin with Bahira the Monk. As we know, Prophet Muhammad was an orphan. His father died before he was born, and his mother died just a few years later. So he was left in the care of his uncle Abu Talib. One day Abu Talib decided to take him along with a caravan to Syria. Along this route was a monastery. Bahira, a Christian monk lived there.

As the caravan approached, Bahira noticed a small cloud was shading it from the sun, in an otherwise cloudless sky. When the caravan stopped by a tree, the cloud also stopped. This tree, by the way, is still alive, subhanallah! It’s still there. It’s the only tree, in fact the only vegetation of any kind, for more than 100 miles in any direction, between Jordan and Syria. This tree stands all alone in the empty desert, the last living sahaba, the last living entity still connected with our beloved Prophet, sws

Bahira invited the travellers to a meal, and after examining the boy Muhammad closely he recognised the mark of prophet-hood on his back. He advised Abu Talib to take good care of him, because his own people would seek to harm him.

Our story goes fast-forward to a mountain cave near Makka and Muhammad is now a man of 40. He often comes here to meditate, but tonight, one of the last 10 nights of Ramadan, a strange thing happens. Suddenly, the Angel Gabriel appears, and hugs Muhammad in a tight embrace, almost squeezing the life out of him, commanding him to read. He protests: I cannot read! I’m illiterate! But again and again he is commanded: Read! Until the first verses of the Holy Quran come forth from his lips:

“Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem! Iqra! Bismi Rabbikal lathee khalaq! Khalaqal insaana min ‘alaq. Iqra wa rabbukal akram; Al-lathee ‘al lama bil qalam, ‘alamal insaana ma lam ya’alam”

In the name of Allah, the All- Merciful, the All-Compassionate.
READ! In the name of thy Lord Who created, (1) Created man from a clot of blood. (2) Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous, (3) Who teaches by the pen, (4) Teaches man that which he knew not

This was the beginning of Muhammad’s assignment as God’s last Prophet. Gripped by fear and dread, he rushed home to his wife, Khadija, pleading, “Cover me, cover me!” He feared that he was losing his mind. But Khadija reassured him, saying “You always maintain family ties, always feed the poor and you stand by the downtrodden. Allah would never humiliate you or forsake you.” And where do you think she took him to find advice and consolation? To the rich and powerful, the grandees of Makka? No! She was rich and powerful herself. But she took him to her cousin, Waraqa,  a poor man in failing health who was a Christian. He was old and losing his sight, but he reassured Muhammad that this event was foretold in earlier scripture. “If I lived long enough I would stand by you, even when your people turn against you,” said Waraqa. “Will my people turn against me?” asked Prophet Muhammad. Waraqa replied: “Never has a prophet brought what your will bring without his people turning against him.”

We are reminded here, that Abraham, Noah, Moses and Jesus all met with ingratitude and violent rebellion from their own people, the very people who needed to be saved from themselves. Doesn’t that sound familiar? People of faith are always resisted by their own people who prefer to worship the false idols of power, greed and vanity.

Here’s another example of a great Christian of the time,The king, the Negus of Abyssinia, who protected a small group of Muslims from persecution from their own tribe, the Qureish of Makka.

As soon as Prophet Muhammad started preaching his message, he made enemies, lethal enemies. He called on people to worship the One God of Abraham and Moses and Jesus, not the many idols, 360 idols of wood and stone adorning the kaaba. This was bad for business. Imagine someone preaching against capitalism and consumerism in Trafalgar Square! Not quite the same earth-shaking message, but imagine! Prophet Muhammad urged people to stop burying alive their baby daughters, for the strong to stop oppressing the weak, for the tribes to stop genocidal warfare. He was calling for change, radical change, and his enemies, sensing a threat to their power and authority, started torturing and killing his followers.

Islam was now in mortal danger.

So as a precaution, Prophet Muhammad sent a small group to Abyssinia/ Ethiopia. “There you will find a just and tolerant Christian ruler who will protect you,” he assured them.  These were the world’s first Muslim Asylum seekers, given protection by a Christian king in Africa, 1,400 years ago! Today, Good Christians in Britain and Europe are still following this noble tradition, taking care of asylum seekers who fear persecution in their own countries!

What about Muslim hospitality towards Christians?

While he was the Governor of Madinah, Prophet Muhammad received a delegation of Christians from Najran in Southern Arabia. When it was time to pray, they had no place to pray, so he invited them into his mosque and allowed them to pray in there.

My dear brothers and sisters! How many of us Muslims will do that today? How many mosques anywhere in the Muslim world, will offer their Christian neighbours that courtesy exemplified by our own Prophet?

Here at Royal Holloway University, in a few weeks time when students write their exams, we’ll have to do our Friday prayers in another hall. For years, we’ve used the Jurgens Centre at exam time. The Jurgens Centre belongs to the local Catholic Church. Remember that. We Muslims do our Friday prayers in a hall owned by the Catholic Church. 1400 years after the Najran Christians prayed in Prophet Muhammad’s mosque, Christians in Englefield Green are returning the favour!

When believers of any faith treat believers of another faith with kindness and respect, they are also showing a courtesy to God, to Allah.

My dear sisters and brothers, let’s remember the Golden Rule, the Ethic of Reciprocity: Nabi Isa, Jesus saidl “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 600 years later, Prophet Muhammad expressed the same message in different words. He said that we are not believers until we desire for others what we desire for ourselves.

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim.Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Allah and His angels send greetings on Prophet Muhammad, O you who believe, send greetings on him, and salute him with a worthy salutation! O Allah, send peace on Muhammad and his family, just as you sent peace on Abraham and his family. O Allah, send blessings on Muhammad and his family, just as you sent blessings on Abraham and his family. In both worlds, You are Praiseworthy and Exalted.

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My dear sisters and brothers,

The Islamic Calendar, the Hegira, began when Prophet Muhammad evaded assassination in Makka and migrated to Madinah. Jews, Christians and Muslims welcomed him as their new leader. They eagerly awaited his first speech, his first sermon, khutbah. It was short, eloquent, and powerful.

He summed up the entire teaching of Islam in one short sentence:

“Spread salaam (peace), feed the hungry; pray for a part of the night and you will enter paradise.” (Hadith)

That’s all…   That’s what Islam is all about: Spreading peace between people, feeding the poor, thanking our generous Provider every night, and hoping for his good pleasure.

A few years ago my wife and I visited the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. In the middle of the Sinai desert we found Mount Sinai, where Moses received the 10 Commandments. At the foot of the mountain is the ancient St Catherine’s Monastery. We were amazed to find a mosque inside this monastery. We were also amazed to find that local Muslim Arabs have been coming to the monastery every day, for over 1,400 years, to knead the dough and bake the bread there, side by side, with Coptic Christian monks.

But the monks showed us something even more amazing. High up on a wall is a gold-framed Charter of Privileges to the Christians. It is written in Arabic, and it is signed by Prophet Muhammad, with the seal of his ring imprinted in red wax. The one we read was a copy, as the original Charter is in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. It reads:

This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them.
Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.
No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight.
The Muslims are to fight for them.
If a female Christian is married to a Muslim it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.
Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.
No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).

This charter of privileges has been honoured and faithfully applied by many Muslim regimes throughout the centuries. Imagine that! Despite wars between Crusaders and Caliphates, Christians were safe here, making bread and breaking bread with local Muslims. There’s a powerful message for our troubled world today.

Those who ‘spoil God’s Covenant’ and disobey clear instructions from Prophet Muhammad will have to answer to Almighty Allah. Let us therefore show respect and love for fellow believers among the ‘People of the earlier Scriptures.’ This is what Allah commands us to do, and for more than 14 centuries, Prophet Muhammad’s letter has reminded us of this Covenant.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah

Watch the Youtube video of this khutbah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QNd9kL4pGk

Courtesy of Adamslist

“There is none amongst the believers who plants a tree, or sows a seed, and then a bird, or a person, or an animal eats thereof, but it is regarded as having given a charitable gift [for which there is great recompense].” [Al-Bukhari, III:513].

The idea of the Prophet Mohammed as a pioneer of environmentalism will initially strike many as strange: indeed, the term “environment” and related concepts like “ecology”, “environmental awareness” and “sustainability”, are modern-day inventions, terms that were formulated in the face of the growing concerns about the contemporary state of the natural world around us.

And yet a closer reading of the hadith, the body of work that recounts significant events in the Prophet’s life, reveals that he was a staunch advocate of environmental protection. One could say he was an “environmentalist avant la lettre”, a pioneer in the domain of conservation, sustainable development and resource management, and one who constantly sought to maintain a harmonious balance between man and nature. From all accounts of his life and deeds, we read that the Prophet had a profound respect for fauna and flora, as well as an almost visceral connection to the four elements, earth, water, fire and air.

He was a strong proponent of the sustainable use and cultivation of land and water, proper treatment of animals, plants and birds, and the equal rights of users. In this context the modernity of the Prophet’s view of the environment and the concepts he introduced to his followers is particularly striking; certain passages of the hadith could easily be mistaken for discussions about contemporary environmental issues.

Three Principles

The Prophet’s environmental philosophy is first of all holistic: it assumes a fundamental link and interdependency between all natural elements and bases its teachings on the premise that if man abuses or exhausts one element, the natural world as a whole will suffer direct consequences. This belief is nowhere formulated in one concise phrase; it is rather an underlying principle that forms the foundation of all the Prophet’s actions and words, a life philosophy that defined him as a person.

The three most important principles of the Prophet’s philosophy of nature are based on the Qur’anic teachings and the concepts of tawhid (unity), khalifa(stewardship) and amana (trust).

Tawhid, the oneness of God, is a cornerstone of the Islamic faith. It recognizes the fact that there is one absolute Creator and that man is responsible to Him for all his actions: “To God belongs all that is in the heavens and in the earth, for God encompasses everything [4:126].”  The Prophet acknowledges that God’s knowledge and power covers everything. Therefore abusing one of his creations, whether it is a living being or a natural resource, is a sin. The Prophet considered all of God’s creations to be equal before God and he believed animals, but also land, forests and watercourses should have rights.

The concepts of khalifa, stewardship, and amana, trust, emerge from the principle of tawhid. The Qur’an explains that mankind holds a privileged position among God’s creations on earth: he is chosen as khalifa, “vice-regent” and carries the responsibility of caring for God’s earthly creations. Each individual is given this task and privilege in the form of God’s trust. But the Qur’an repeatedly warns believers against arrogance: they are no better than other creatures.  “No creature is there on earth nor a bird flying with its wings but they are nations like you [6:38]”; “Surely the creation of the heavens and the earth is greater than the creation of man; but most people know not [40:57]”.

The Prophet believed that the universe and the creations in it – animals, plants, water, land – were not created for mankind. Man is allowed to use the resources but he can never own them. Thus while Islam allows land ownership, it has limitations: an owner can, for example, only own land if he uses it; once he ceases to use it, he has to part with his possession.

The Prophet recognized man’s responsibility to God but always maintained humility. Thus he said: “When doomsday comes, if someone has a palm shoot in his hand, he should plant it,” suggesting that even when all hope is lost for mankind, one should sustain nature’s growth. He believed that nature remains a good in itself, even if man does not benefit from it.

Similarly, the Prophet incited believers to share the earth’s resources. He said: “Muslims share alike in three things – water, herbage and fire,” and he considered it a sin to withhold water from the thirsty. “No one can refuse surplus water without sinning against Allah and against man” [Mishkat al Masabih].

The Prophet’s attitude towards sustainable use of land, conservation of water and the treatment of animals is a further illustration of the humility of his environmental philosophy.

Sustainable Use of Land

“The earth has been created for me as a mosque and as a means of purification.” [Al-Bukhari I:331] With these words the Prophet emphasizes the sacred nature of earth or soil, not only as a pure entity but also as a purifying agent. This reverence towards soil is also demonstrated in the ritual of tayammum, or “dry wudu” which permits the use of dust in the performance of ritual purification before prayer when water is not available.

The Prophet saw earth as subservient to man, but recognised that it should not be overexploited or abused, and that it had rights, like the trees and wildlife living on it. In order to protect land, forests and wildlife, the Prophet created inviolable zones known as hima and haram, in which resources were to be left untouched. Both are still in use today: haram areas are often drawn up around wells and water sources to protect the groundwater table from over-pumping. Hima applies particularly to wildlife and forestry and usually designates an area of land where grazing and woodcutting are restricted, or where certain animal species are protected.

The Prophet not only encouraged the sustainable use of fertile lands, he also told his followers of the benefits of making unused land productive: planting a tree, sowing a seed and irrigating dry land were all regarded as charitable deeds.“Whoever brings dead land to life, that is, cultivates wasteland, for him is a reward therein.” Thus any person who irrigates a plot of “dead”, or desert land becomes its rightful owner.

Conservation of Water

In the harsh desert environment where the Prophet lived, water was synonymous to life. Water was a gift from God, the source of all life on earth as is testified in the Qur’an:  “We made from water every living thing” [21:30].  The Qur’an constantly reminds believers that they are but the guardians of God’s creation on earth and that they should never take this creation for granted: “Consider the water which you drink. Was it you that brought it down from the rain cloud or We? If We had pleased, We could make it bitter” [56:68-70].

Saving water and safeguarding its purity were two important issues for the Prophet: we have seen that his concern about the sustainable use of water led to the creation of haram zones in the vicinity of water sources. But even when water was abundant, he advocated thriftiness: thus he recommended that believers perform wudu no more than three times, even if they were near to a flowing spring or river. The theologian El-Bukhari added: “ The men of science disapprove of exaggeration and also of exceeding the number of ablutions of the Prophet.” The Prophet also warned against water pollution by forbidding urination in stagnant water.

The Treatment of Animals:

“If anyone wrongfully kills even a sparrow, let alone anything greater, he will face God’s interrogation” [Mishkat al Masabih]. These words reflect the great reverence, respect and love that the Prophet always showed towards animals. He believed that as part of God’s creation, animals should be treated with dignity, and the hadith contains a large collection of traditions, admonitions and stories about his relationship to animals. It shows that he had particular consideration for horses and camels: to him they were valiant companions during journey and battle, and he found great solace and wisdom in their presence as the following tradition reveals: “In the forehead of horses are tied up welfare and bliss until the Day of Resurrection.”

Even in the slaughter of animals, the Prophet showed great gentleness and sensitivity. While he did not practice vegetarianism, the hadiths clearly show that the Prophet was extremely sensitive to the suffering of animals, almost as though he shared their pain viscerally. Thus he recommends using sharp knives and a good method so that the animal can die a quick death with as little pain as possible. He also warned against slaughtering an animal in the presence of other animals, or letting the animal witness the sharpening of blades: to him that was equal to “slaughtering the animal twice” and he emphatically condemned such practices as “abominable”.

Conclusion

It is impossible to do justice to the full scope and significance of Prophet Mohammed’s environmental philosophy in this short article. His holistic view of nature and his understanding of man’s place within the natural world pioneered environmental awareness within the Muslim community.

Sadly, the harmony that the Prophet advocated between man and his environment has today all too often been lost. As we face the effects of pollution and overexploitation, desertification and water scarcity in some parts of the world and floods and violent storms elsewhere, it is perhaps time for the world community as a whole, Muslims, Christians and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, atheists and agnostics, to take a leaf out of the Prophet’s book and address the current environmental crisis seriously and wisely.

http://kalkhausar.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/prophet-muhammed-a-pioneer-of-the-environment/

Khutbah delivered in Orange County, USA,

27th January 2011

http://vimeo.com/19291892

by Irshad Hussain

(reproduced, with his kind permission, from his blog; www.islamfrominside.com )

Man and Ecology: An Islamic Perspective

Added October 20, 2004

Environmental Crisis

“When the earth is shaken with a (violent) shaking,
And the earth reveals what burdens her,
And man says: What has befallen her?
On that day she shall tell her story….” (Qur’an 99:1-4)
In light of today’s environmental crises, many secular and religious  scholars have begun to look into underlying philosophical causes for man’s rapacious attitude towards his environment. Part of this search involves a look at root philosophies affecting the human outlook and interaction with the world and the responsibility religion shares in creating the attitudes and philosophies that have led to the desecration of nature that has occurred in the past few centuries and which seems to be accelerating in our times. As Ziauddin Sardar writes;

“The roots of our ecological crises are axiomatic: they lie in our belief and value structures which shape our relationship with nature, with each other and the lifestyles we lead.” (Sardar, Ziauddin. Islamic Futures. New York; Mensell Publishing Limited. 1985. pg.218)
For this reason traditional religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam are held accountable as they supposedly espouse an anthropocentric (human-centered) reality. Writers like Lynn White Jr. see this as being the root cause for the ecological/environmental problems of today. He decries not only the dualistic nature of man’s relationship with nature but also the idea “that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper end…” as “Man shares, in great measure, God’s transcendence over nature.” (White, Lynn. The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crises. Science, 155. 1967)

Note: Lynn White refers specifically to the problem inherent in the Christian tradition, but in a general sense extends it to all the monotheistic religions, as opposed to the pantheistic ones. About blaming Christianity, Parvez Manzoor, in The Touch Of Midas, writes: “…Christianity does not bear the blame for our environmental problems. It is the divorce of Christian ethics from the pursuit of knowledge, in fact what is known to be the age of ‘rationalism’ that ushered us into the era of environmental degradation.”

This short essay is a sincere effort to investigate the validity of White’s view that the disrespect for nature is inherent in the very nature of these religions. Dealing only with the Islamic tradition, it will take into consideration the nature of man, his place in relation to God, his rights and responsibilities before God, and his relationship to the rest of the world with regard to his rights over it. In other words the world-view of Islam is to be the starting point for the examination of man’s relation to the world of external nature.

“All religions, customs, schools of thought, and social philosophies rest on a world view. A school’s aims, methods, musts and must nots all result necessarily from its world view… A world view can become the basis of an ideology when it has attained the firmness and breadth of philosophical thought as well as the…sanctity of religious principles.” (Mutahhari, M. Fundamentals of Islamic Thought. Berkeley; Mizan Press. 1985)

The primary basis of an Islamic world view is the idea of Tauhid, or the oneness of God. A world view based on tauhid  sees this universe as originating from God, returning to Him, and centered around Him. It is a world created and sustained by God with a purpose, and a design. As this entire universe is a product of His divine wish, it is a universe unfolding with a divine purpose. The reference point, the center of all things is God.
“…Tauhid  is the matrix for human thought and action, it is all pervasive and penetrates every aspect of our endeavour.” (Sardar, Ziauddin. Islamic Futures. New York; Mensell Publishing Limited. 1985. pg.225)

The essential prerequisite, in Islam, is the belief in this absolute oneness and unity of God.

“God the Ultimate reality is One, and everything other than God comes from God and is related to Him. No true understanding of anything is possible unless  the object in view is defined in relationship to the divine. All things are centered on God.” (Chittick, William. Article, ‘The Concept of Human Perfection.’ from, The World & I. New York; News World Communications. Feb. 1991. pg. 500)

Tauhid  is the point of origin of a theological doctrine of ecology. All things seen or unseen are God’s signs (ayat) and act as witnesses to His existence. All things in the universe are manifestations of Him, all are from Him.

Human nature is the other key facet of the world-view of Islam. Man fulfills a very important role in this cosmos. Although all things are made by God and identified with God in as much as their being created by Him, man enjoys a role as God’s vicegerent (his representative) having a freedom and far-reaching power latent within him. In the Qur’an God says He has breathed His spirit into man.

“When thy Lord said unto the angels: lo! I am about to create a mortal out of mire, And when I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My Spirit, then fall down before him prostrate.” (Qur’an. Ch 38- vrs 72, 73)

This verse provides essential insights into man’s position and nature in this universe. Although he is a creation of God he is superior to the rest of God’s creation as he has within him the Spirit of God. In this way he is unique among the creations of God. It is only man to whom the angels  are commanded to prostrate themselves.
Another aspect that separates him from the rest of creation is his acceptance of the trust offered by God. This trust was offered to all of creation and man was the only one who accepted it.

“We did indeed offer the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof. But man undertook it (the trust);…” (  Qur’an. Ch.33 vr.72)

In a matter of trust and trusteeship, the giver of the trust is giving a responsibility to the trustee. In other words the guardian of the trust has a high degree of freedom and accompanying responsibility in the use (or misuse) of the given trust.

The trustee is expected to fulfill the trust in the manner that the giver of the trust would expect of him.  If man did not have the power to either use or misuse this trust given to him by God, then the whole idea of offering the trust, in the first place, would be futile. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, a commentator of the Qur’an says of this verse;

“There is no trust if the trustee has no power, and the trust implies that the giver of the trust believes and expects that the trustee would use it according to the wish of the creator of the trust, and not otherwise.” (Ali, A.Y. The Holy Qur’an; Text, Translation and Commentary. Maryland; Amana Corporation. 1989. pg. 1080)

Note: This is not an attitude that is unique to Islam as can be seen in the following quote from the Bible “When a man has had a great deal given him, a great deal will be demanded of him; when a man has had a great deal given him on trust, even more will be expected of him.” (Luke: 12:48). It is, however, an attitude that is all pervasive in the Islamic world-view.

Thus man has the freedom to do what he wills with the power invested in him through these two means. One is his closeness to God in spirit and second is his acceptance of the trust. Man’s superiority, control and power over nature and the rest of creation was thus a part of this trust. After having taken the responsibility man had to show that he was indeed worthy of keeping it. If he forgets about the responsibility of the trust and instead takes full and destructive advantage of the power conferred upon him, the other side of his  superiority takes over. Because he has the spirit of God within him, he now deems to set himself up in rivalry to God. He wishes to take control of the destiny of the world not as a trustee but as a demi god.

“…He was indeed unjust and foolish. “ (Qur’an. Ch.33 vr.75 & 76)
When the power of his relationship to God is applied without the temperance of the responsibility of the trust, man misuses and abuses the abilities, potentials, and rights given to him by God. Nature has been given to man as a trust and nothing more. His right of domination over it (is) only by virtue of his theomorphic make up, not as a rebel against nature.’ (Nasr. S.H. The Encounter of Man and Nature. London; George Allen and Unwin Ltd. 1968. pg.96) God has given revelation, and the law (shariah) derived from the revelation to assist and guide man in fulfilling this trust. Ziauddin Sardar writes:

“The ultimate consequence of man’s acceptance of  trusteeship is the arbitration of his conduct by divine  judgment. To be a Muslim is to accept and practice the  injunctions of the Shariah. Thus the Shariah is both a consequence of one’s acceptance of Tauhid and it is a path.”(Sardar, Ziauddin. Islamic Futures. New York; Mensell Publishing Limited. 1985. pg.228)

The Shariah gives practical shape to the ethical norms in Islam. No moral or ethical issue is only an abstract idea in Islam. They are codified in the Shariah to be preached, practiced and incorporated into the laws of the land. The Shariah seeks to provide a framework, an environment within which men as individuals and as a society can fulfill the role of trustee. This Shariah sets the limits and parameters and the practical guidelines for giving shape to an ethical principle and when ignored causes the kind of disruption in human life, which can now be seen in the form of severe ecological crises. This is because that part of the Shariah pertaining to nature has been completely ignored. Instead of working in subservience to God as his vicegerent, man has developed an axiology that invites him to dominate nature rather than act as a protector over this aspect of God’s trust. Rather than fulfill a trust, man elevates himself to the status of dominator – deciding the fate of nature without reference to revelation. He has set himself on par with God and about this type of an action the Qur’an says:

“Indeed you have put forth a thing most monstrous! As if the skies are ready to burst, the earth to split asunder and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin.” (Qur’an. Ch.19. vr.88-89. This verse actually deals with the attribution of Jesus, son of Mary, to be the son of God. In this context it is being used to demonstrate the abhorrence of any equal being set up with God.)

In the Islamic world-view the relationship of man with nature should be like that of a just ruler with his subjects. Although the ruler has power over his subjects, his subjects are a trust over which he stands guards. He is expected to act in a responsible way (as defined by the revelation) toward them. Misuse and abuse of his power would shift him from being a leader to being a tyrant. The end result of tyranny is nothing but a revolt against the tyrant. This is precisely what is happening between man the tyrant and nature the tyrannized. Tyranny is effective only in the short term.

Among the works of Zain-al-Abideen (the fourth Imam of the Shi’ites), is his “Treatise on Rights”. Among the many  types of rights described he puts forward the rights of the subjects over their ruler. In this context they can be extended to form a value system for the formation of an ethic toward the environment or any other aspect of the world over which man has power or dominion.

All acts towards the ruled should be imbued with mercy and justice; the ruler’s disposition should be like a father toward his child.

“The right of your subjects through authority is that you should know that they have been made subjects through their weakness and your strength. Hence it is incumbent on you to act with justice toward them and to be like a compassionate father toward them….” (Zain al Abideen.  The Psalms of Islam. London; Mohammadi Trust. 1988. pg.286.)

Man, being above material nature due to his theomorphic make-up and the burden of the trust, must deal in a similar way with the environment. The “Treatise on Rights” also describes the rights a subject enjoys over his ruler through the aspect of the ruler’s knowledge. Taking knowledge to be synonymous with intelligence, man is endowed with a higher intelligence than the rest of creation. Because of this he must assume a role of guardianship over the rest of creation and interact with nature in a way that is worthy of this intelligence. If man does what is befitting of his high station, then God will increase His bounties toward man. If he does not, then whatever he was blessed with is withheld or taken back. Imam Zain-al-Abideen states it as follows:

“The right of your subjects through knowledge is that you should know that God has made you a caretaker over them only through the knowledge He has given you and His storehouses which He has opened up to you. If you do well…, not treating them roughly or annoying them, then God will increase His bounty toward you. But if you … treat them roughly…, then it will be God’s right to deprive you of knowledge and its splendor and make you fall from your place…” (Zain al Abideen. The Psalms of Islam. London; Mohammadi Trust. 1988. pg.286.)

Zain-al-Abideen then goes on to talk of the rights of those over whom you are in a position of mastership, such as a servant.

“…you should know that he is the creature of your Lord….You did not create any of his limbs, nor do you provide him with his sustenance; on the contrary, God gave you the sufficiency for that…and deposited him with you so that you may be safeguarded by the good you give to him. So act well toward him, just as God has acted well toward you.” (Zain al Abideen. The Psalms of Islam. London; Mohammadi Trust. 1988. pg.286.)

Nature has been made subservient to man, but it is as much a creature of God as man is. Neither has man created nature nor is he in any way able to sustain it. It is only because God has given him the sufficiency and capacity can he in any way do so. If he is able to plant a tree and administer its growth or manipulate its genetic characteristics, it is only because of the intelligence placed within him by God. Just as God has been good to man so also man must act with the same beneficence toward nature so that he may safeguard  himself when facing God.

Another key aspect of the Islamic world view is its immense stress on eschatology. Belief in a day of judgment is essential to the faith of an adherent. It creates an action guide arising from an awareness that actions have consequences far beyond their immediately apparent effects. Since man will be called to account for how he looked after the trust bestowed upon him, he is forced to not only consider present gains but to plan for the future in order to fulfill the responsibility with which he has been invested. His acts have repurcussions that ripple out horizontally from himself affecting what surrounds him in this world as well as vertically since his substance has a presence in the higher worlds. So the consequences of his actions accumulate within his substance and after his death he faces the reality of what he has done and what he has become.

“Then on that Day, Not a soul will be wronged in the least, And ye shall but be repaid the meeds of your past deeds” (Qur’an. Ch.36 vr.54)

Eschatology is the policing force within Islam which guides the believer to fulfill the trust that he had taken on. The thought of an impending judgment stops him from taking actions according to his own whims and fancies. It puts a brake on self-centered aspirations.

Man’s role of vicegerency, his mantle of superiority and his responsibility of trust are laid bare before him in the Qur’an, it is then his decision to choose which path to take. On the one hand he has before him all the treasures of nature to use and exploit as he wishes through the fulcrum of his knowledge. On the other hand is the temperance of the responsibility which coexists with the trust and intelligence given to him by God. The world-view of man and the conceptual foundations which underlie that world-view decide which course man will take.

“Can we…check this threat to our planet simply by introducing stricter legislation against pollution, industrial waste and nuclear spill? Can we reverse the degradation of our environment by adopting conservationist policies on both national and international levels? Or could it be that the whole ecological imbalance betokens the spiritual and teleological crisis of modern civilization itself? Does it require fundamental revision of our own way of life, our cherished goals, indeed our very conception of ourselves and the world?” (Parvez Manzoor, Touch of Midas)

It has been the contention of this brief essay that the roots of the man made environmental crises, and therefore their resolution, lie in man’s conception of his role in the overall scheme of creation. The crises that are being faced today are approaching a point of critical mass such that man is forced to confront certain basic questions about his relationship to the environment. These are not questions of technology, but questions about the fundamental nature of man, the nature of the universe he exists in, and of the ultimate nature of Reality.

- Atiya and Irshaad Hussain (1991)

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

There has been an appalling rise in violence against Christians in some Muslim countries. Churches have been set on fire, some Christians have been accused of blasphemy and some have been attacked in the most brutal manner. This violence must stop. It is cruel, inhumane, unjust and it is totally against the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad sws. If you look to our prophetic role model, you will see that he not only treated followers of the earlier scriptures, the ahle kitaab, [people of the Book] with the utmost respect, but he also urged his followers to do the same. Prophet Muhammad sws guaranteed the protection of other religions under Muslim rule. In a well known Hadith he said that anyone who kills a dhimmi, that is, a non-Muslim living in a Muslim land, he will not even smell the fragrance of paradise. The bigot and the zealot are deluded, believing they are doing a service to Islam by harming others, when in fact they do the work of Shaitaan. The true believer, the servant of the All Merciful, suffers from no such delusions. The true believer knows that Allah chooses to guide whom He pleases, and He leaves to stray whom He pleases. The true believer enjoys inner peace, emotional maturity and spiritual generosity. The true believer respects others, cares for others’ wellbeing. The true believer is the one in whom all of mankind will find a sanctuary, a safe haven, for their lives and property. In another hadith Prophet Muhammad said that

“A Muslim is one from whose tongue and hands other Muslims are safe. A Mu’min (true believer) is one in whom all mankind has a sanctuary for life and property”

Let us then try to be servants of the All Merciful. Let us follow the true path of the Prophetic Sunnah, and stay away from the crooked path of Shaitaan, who will constantly urge us to harm others in the name of Islam.

Prophet Muhammad had so much respect for Christians that he once offered a delegation from Najran to do their prayers in his mosque! How many of us Muslims today will follow that Sunnah? How many mosques anywhere in the Muslim world will allow Christians to pray there? Yet there are so many good examples of Christians showing Muslims kindness and hospitality. So many Jumu’ah prayers would not be possible, here and elsewhere, without the help of a local church or church hall. Right here at Royal Holloway University, we often use the Jurgens Centre, which belongs to the local Catholic Church. They have never refused us a Jumuah, or Eid prayer, whenever the hall was available. Should we then not at least speak out firmly against any injustice that is done to Christians in Muslim lands? I hope that Muslims everywhere will do their best to stop violence against Christians and other faith communities. We should utterly condemn any atrocities committed in the name of Islam, and we should offer no excuses for these criminal acts.

We must remember that when we protect people of other faiths we are not just doing an optional act of generosity or demonstrating so called ‘religious tolerance’ on our part. It’s really an Islamic duty, a clear imperative supported by the Quran and the Prophetic Sunnah.

Let us examine what the Quran has to say about respecting Christians and followers of the Jewish faith:

“La ikraha fid deen”

“Let there be no compulsion in matters of faith.” Al Baqara (2:256)

“Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allāh and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.” Al Baqara [2:62]

“And do not argue with the People of the Book unless it be in a way that is better, except with those of them who do wrong. But say, ‘We believe in the Revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you. Our God and your God is One; and it is to Him we submit (in Islam).’” Al Ankaboot (29:46)

“Allah forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) Faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: for Allah loves those who are just.” Quran Al Mumtahina 60:08

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My dear sisters and brothers,

During the early years of Prophet Muhammad’s preaching in Makka, the Muslims suffered so much hatred and violence that a delegation was sent to Ethiopia. These were Islam’s first asylum seekers. They were welcomed by a just and generous Christian king, the Negus of Abyssinia who took care of them at a time when Islam faced mortal danger. Differences in faith did not matter. The king later became a Muslim.

An amazing document still exists today, signed by the Prophet’s own hand. This document is known as the ‘Charter of Privileges to the Christians’ and a facsimile is held in St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai desert, in Egypt. The original document is in the Topkapi Museum, in Istanbul.

Here is a translation of the Charter of Privileges:

This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them.
Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.
No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight.
The Muslims are to fight for them.
If a female Christian is married to a Muslim it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.
Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.
No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).

This charter of privileges has been honoured and faithfully applied by many Muslim regimes throughout the centuries. Those who ‘spoil God’s Covenant’ and disobey clear instructions from Prophet Muhammad will have to answer to Almighty Allah. Let us therefore show respect and love for fellow believers among the ‘People of the earlier Scriptures.’ This is what Allah commands us to do, and for more than 14 centuries, Prophet Muhammad’s letter has reminded us all of this Covenant.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah

This Friday khutbah was authored and delivered by Arshad Gamiet at the Royal Holloway University of London on 3rd Dec 2010

More than 4000 years ago, in the then city of Ur, a young man by the name of Abram or Ibrahim stole in the temple of Nanna, when the high priests were away attending a town festival and broke all the idols, the false objects of worship and submission, as he thought to himself. This was perhaps, the first act of ideological revolution in a civilized settlement of humans and the first ever expression of the rejection of false gods.

In so far as the archeologists have excavated, explored and unrivalled the history of civilization, the first ever civilization, which has revealed itself was in Mesopotamia (that is in present day Iraq). There were those Sumerian cities on the banks of the river Euphrates. Then some time in the third millennium B.C. a strong man by the name of Sargon conquered the various cities and established the Akkadian empire centered in the city of Akkad or Agade. Then after a few hundred years, when the Akkadian empire was waning, there was a short Sumerian revival and a third Sumerian dynasty came to power in Ur. At the time of Ibrahim (A), there was a king by the name of Ur-Nammu. The Judaic traditions mention his name as Nimrod, although the Qur’an doesn’t give the king any name: simply talks about him as malik (king). This king was very powerful. He gave the world the first ever legal code, 300 years before the code of Hammurabi. He erected Ziggurat (Zaqqarat), the tall structures like the pyramids. This king, also, probably for the first time in human history institutionalized polytheism, idol worship, in violation of what was engrained in human consciousness from day one. There were temples dedicated to sun, the moon and various other objects. The temple of Nanaa was the temple dedicated to moon. This was the temple where the young Ibrahim (A) carried out his act of idol breaking. With this historic act began the battle between Towheed and Shirk in human history. The legends associated with this battle have come to us through the Bible but the Qur’an gives us a wonderful narrative of a dialogue which ensued between the king, who ruled at the time and Ibrahim (A), one, an idol maker and the other, an idol breaker. This dialogue is a masterpiece of logic ever to be found in any literature.

Alam tara ila al-ladhi hajja Ibrahima fi rabbihi an atahullahul mulk.

Have you not seen the one, who argued with Ibrahim about his lord, the one whom Allah had given the kingdom?

Idh qala Ibrahimu rabbi al-ladhi yuhi wa yumit

When Ibrahim said that my Lord is the one who gives life and takes it away

Qala ana uhi wa umit

He replied: “I give life and I take life.”

(Legend has it that the king ordered two prisoners, who were condemned to death, to be brought in. He ordered one prisoner to be executed and pardoned the other one.)

Qala Ibrahimu fa innallaha yati bisshamsi min al-mashriq fati biha min al-maghrib fa buhitat al-ladhi kafar.

Ibrahim said: “ But surely Allah makes the sun rise from the east. You make it rise from the west. The one who talked kufr was thus confounded.”

No discussion, no debate and argument between the greatest philosophers of the world could be as clear and conclusive as in this dialogue given in the Qur’an. It’s beauty and simplicity is astounding.

As we can see, this conflict between the truth and falsehood, monotheism and polytheism, Towheed and Shirk started right at the dawn of civilization and is with us ever since. The Qur’an says that Ibrahim (A) was the imam (the leader) of the mankind. A leader is the one, who sets out to articulate his message; in this case inviting people to believe in one god and to reject false gods. As the history has told us, Ibrahim (A) left Mesopotamia; went to Kan’an, Syria and Egypt (the so called Fertile Crescent), before settling in Kan’an, the present day Palestine. This was the whole world of civilization at that time. Wherever he went, he invited people to Towheed (belief in One God, the creator, the one who gives life and takes life, the one who makes the sun rise from the east, acts which no one else in the universe can emulate, nor have any share in such action. Thus the essence of the kalmia: La ilaha illa Allah, the first element of the Islamic faith was institutionalized and which permeated the consciousness of every human being for all times to come.

Inviting people to Allah, which we call Da’wah is the most important Abrahamic tradition. Also, the breaking of idols as we have seen is another tradition of Ibrahim (A). The battle began with the smashing of idols in the temple of Nanna. You can take it as the manifestation of the first political action. History suggests that Ur-Nammu was the first to establish a kingdom. This action, this battle is never a one-time battle. The conflict is ongoing and eternal. Once you have broken some idols you cannot sit on your laurels, as the idols have a tendency to pop up again and again, at one place or another. Ibrahim’s (A) Sunnah had to be repeated by Prophet Mohammad (S) after he conquered Mekka. He smashed the heads of Lat wa Manat with his own hands. There is a symbolism here. Idols may not be made of stone. The icons of falsehood come in various shapes and forms. Sometimes the idols are ideas of falsehood. Sometimes, they are abstract like tyranny, oppression and injustice. With the smashing of their heads at one time and place in history, they do not disappear forever. They germinate again in suitable circumstance. It is therefore of absolute necessity that the revolutions made by Ibrahim (A) and by Mohammad (S) are kept alive, active and continuous. This continuous revolution is named in the Qur’an: amr bil maroof wa nahi an al-munkar enjoining good and forbidding evil..

In the context of our own history the conquest of Ka’ba did not solve the problem for ever. There was only a respite for a period; then the idols came back and set themselves up in Arabia, in Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus and in all the other cities of the Crescent. For centuries, it looked as though the Sunnah of breaking the idols was in abeyance. The hands which are made to break the idols were paralyzed. It is only now, it seems that a ray of hope has penetrated the darkness of despair and we have witnessed the so-called Arab Spring, in Tunisia and in Egypt. The struggle continues in other countries. Time and again, year after year, we stood here as khateebs and decried the subjugation, which Muslims suffered and cursed the tyrants, who had terrorized the Muslim Ummah. We had given up hope and thought that the moment of liberation would not arrive at least in our life time but we had underestimated the spirit of our young people. They rose up, first in Tunisia, then in Egypt, in Libya, in Yemen and in Bahrain. However, the biggest challenge we are facing today is how to keep the Spring free from infiltration and contamination. The enemies of Revolution have joined the ranks of the revolutionaries, looking for opportunities to sabotage and subvert. There are ex-colonialists and neo-colonialists. There are demons coming forward wearing the faces of angels. History shows that any gold they have touched has turned into dust. The revolutionaries need not rejoice too soon. They need to be forever vigilant.

Our generation is living through one of the most tumultuous times in history. Only two decades ago, the world was divided into two camps: communism and capitalism. The protagonists of each camp believed in the absolute validity of their beliefs. They believed that their own system was the answer to all the problems of mankind. Then all of a sudden one camp tumbled and disintegrated, making the other camp the master of the whole world, allowing it to be arrogant to the extreme, hitting out in all directions and proclaiming a “new world order”. Soon the surviving camp realized that it was witnessing the second phase of a new world disorder. Communism was gone and capitalism is tattering at the edge of a disaster. It is committing suicide. People have woken up and a world revolution has begun, in New York, in Oakland and in almost every capitol in the world. While the communist system suffered from a lack of incentive and ownership, resulting in low productivity, capitalism gave incentive and utmost freedom to a few people to exploit and plunder. The vulnerability and the misery of the people was a commodity sold for exploitation. The gap between the rich and the poor kept widening and now it has reached a danger point. As we now well know 1% of the people own 40% of the wealth in this country (USA). A recent study has shown that one in fifteen people in America is suffering from extreme poverty. Who is to blame? A presidential candidate, who is a billionaire and happens to be black, has said that if you are not rich it is your own fault!

So, how did this gap between the rich and the poor develop and is widening every day? The answer is not as complicated as some people may think. It lies in the phrase: “redistribution of wealth”. This phrase is associated with socialism i.e. take from the rich and give to the poor. In fact it works both ways. What has happened during the past few decades is that the wealth has flown in the wrong direction: from the poor to the rich. Wages have been stagnant; benefits reduced, unions busted. Globalization has brought extremely competitive labor market. Jobs have been exported. All this has caused the income of the poor and the middle class to drop and the profits to increase, which the employers have refused to share with the employees. There was a time, when they used to share it with the workers and the wages were linked to productivity; not any more. Many corporations, including the pharmaceutical companies do not pay a penny in tax. The GE has paid zero income tax in America. At this time of widespread unemployment, the corporations are sitting on three trillion dollars of cash, which they could invest but are not investing and yet there is a lie being spread that if you give the rich a tax break they would invest that money and the economy would improve.

The oil companies wait for a small upheaval in the Middle East. As soon as it happens they jack up the gas prices. Each increase in the gas prices, while making windfall profits for the gas companies, increases food prices worldwide. As a result, people who are living on the edge of poverty fall off the edge. This is the grand larceny, which goes unpunished, even rewarded under Capitalism. Why are they unpunished? It is because they share some of their loot with the lawmakers.

We are only too aware of how the whole world economy was brought to a ruin by the greed of a few people recently, making scores of people homeless and throwing millions of people into misery, hunger and poverty. As it happened they first sold the so-called subprime mortgages to the unsuspecting, uneducated and vulnerable people; then packaged those toxic assets and sold them to unsuspecting investors. Knowing that these assets were going to fail, they bet against them and made enormous amounts of money. We all know what happened since. The banking system crashed, the whole world economy collapsed, making millions of people unemployed and homeless. What happened to these criminals? Did they go to prison? No. Our government again took our money and gave it to them under the pretext of stabilizing the system, which they used to give themselves bonuses. Goldman-Sachs has set aside $292,000/ per staff member as bonus this year, while millions of people in this country are struggling to make ends meet as a result of their criminal acts.

They threw the Patriot Act at us, setting themselves up as the symbols of patriotism. In fact it is the 1% elite, who are anything but patriotic, the antithesis of patriotism. They include the politicians, legislators, the incumbent presidents and the prospective presidents, who come to you for votes but serve the special interest groups after being elected. They have nobody’s interests in mind except their own. Marx and Engels had declared: “workers of the world unite”. They did not but the capitalists of the world did.

They start wars so that the businesses associated with the war industry may prosper, appealing to your patriotic instinct, designing and fashioning enemies for you, whom you are expected to hate in the darkness of your prejudiced minds, which they have crafted for you. This country of ours sent our sons and daughters to two world wars, the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, two Gulf wars and the Afghan War. What were your interests in those wars? The WWI started because a crackpot Serbian assassinated the crown prince of Austria: Archduke Ferdinand and the major European monarchs declared war against each other. The WWII started as Germany was economically oppressed as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and the German territories were taken from Germany and were given to the adjacent countries, forcing a resurrected Germany under Hitler to go to war to regain those territories. Wars in Korea and Vietnam were fought to stop the Domino Effect, whatever it meant! Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were fought on behalf of an unjust and unlawful state in the Middle East. Can any man in the street say that he benefitted from these wars? Those who benefitted were in the top one percent of the population, the capitalists and the industrialists, who paid the politicians to carry out these operations on their behalf. And of course like the elite members of the Roman Senate they claimed the crown of patriotism for themselves.

This country of ours, founded on the noblest principles of freedom and justice is now flouting justice domestically and internationally. Our prison population is one of the highest in the world. The poor are more likely to be convicted and executed than the rich. The black people, who are only 7% of the population, have a 32% share in the prison population. Our present administration, drunk with unchallenged power has broken every international law. Extrajudicial killing is its favorite pastime. Once in the middle ages there was this Old Man of the Mountains called Hassan Ibn Sabah, who created the act of assassination on the world stage. Centuries later, our government, equipped with drones instead of daggers is staging the same act in a grand finale.

In 2012, the circus of elections begins again. In 2008 the young people in this country were very optimistic. Today, that optimism has evaporated. They are on the streets now to occupy Wall Street and close down Oakland. They do not have any trust in the system or in the politicians. This may be the beginning of a revolution, at least in the thinking.

We as Muslims, have a greater reason to be skeptical. We know that both Communism and Capitalism are not the solutions to the ills of the society. We knew at the outset that these systems would fail. We have a better system, economic, social and political but we do not have a model of this system anywhere in the world today because of the dark ages which have interrupted our civilization.

The big question however is whether we should partake in the political circus of elections which is to come shortly while many honest non-Muslim citizens are rejecting it. I think that we should do well by keeping our distance from this ugly drama of treachery and deceit.

“We should always entertain the hope, the possibility that our worst enemies today could become our beloved brothers and sisters tomorrow…”

Arshad Gamiet/Royal Holloway University of London/Date 19 August 2011

(You can listen to this khutbah here: )

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sal-lal-laahu ‘alayhi wa sal-lam, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Yaa ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, with correct awareness, and die not except as Muslims.

Yaa ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

In recent days, we’ve seen horrific scenes of arson, looting and mayhem on the streets of Britain. But out of the same chaos and confusion there has emerged some extraordinary examples of courage, generosity and wisdom. The mass media, which has become so accustomed to presenting Muslims in a bad light, could not ignore the huge public admiration for 2 Muslims in particular.

There was the Malaysian student who arrived in London only a month ago. He was attacked by thugs, left with a broken jaw and his belongings stolen by those very same people who pretended to help him. Despite his painful ordeal that was filmed and shared around the world, he wasn’t bitter, his admiration for this country was undiminished and he certainly didn’t want to go home yet. Interviewed in his hospital bed, he just said he felt very ‘sorry’ for his attackers, who were “so young,” He wasn’t thinking of himself, of his own pain. He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He didn’t wish his attackers any harm. This gentleness and generosity of spirit touched the hearts of millions. Within a few days, Facebook and Twitter raised £20,000 to help him fly his mother over to see him.

Meanwhile in Birmingham a very serious racial conflict was defused by a grieving father. Some of you may have followed this story. Tariq Jahan’s son was killed along with 2 brothers who were defending their property from rioters. A car was deliberately driven over them, killing all three. Muslims were very angry, and if  Tariq Jahan gave way to his emotions at this crucial time then who knows what terrible violence would have followed. Anger and revenge between black and Asian neighbours was near breaking point. But Tariq Jahan is no ordinary man. He must have learnt from Prophet Muhammad’s sws advice:

“Do not become angry. Do not become angry. Do not become angry.” (Hadith)

In a time of unspeakable grief, he knew that his reaction would have far reaching consequences, immediately and in the long term, here and elsewhere. So this is what he said:

“Blacks, Asians, whites — we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this? I’ve just lost my son. Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home — please!”

This heartfelt plea from a grieving father took everyone by surprise, especially people who feed on a diet of bad news about Muslims. Thousands responded on the internet and in newspapers. One person wrote: “I used to hate Muslims, but this grieving father’s words were so dignified, so persuasive and generous hearted, it moved me to tears. Now I’m ashamed of my hatred for them. I shall never hate Muslims again.”

Brothers and sisters, these words are as inspiring as they are humbling. They show us in a simple, practical way what we can achieve by not giving way to our anger, by not seeking revenge. Indeed, when we accept all the pain and loss that we suffer, simply as another test from Allah, then we are truly following the Straight Way, the siraat al mustaqeem.

What can we learn from the momentous events that swept Britain last week? Here are a few suggestions:

Don’t just give way to your anger in a crisis. It may be human to do so, but a real Muslim follows the Prophetic Sunnah, like Tariq Jehan did. Don’t get angry, don’t lash out. That only massages your bruised ego, your lower nafs. Do turn to your inner core, your pure heart, your qalb saleem, that you’ve trained so hard. Remember that Allah loves those who are patient and who persevere in times of hardship and distress. We know this from reading the Holy Quran in : Sura Al Baqara 2:153-6

“Ya ay yuhal latheena aamanus ta’eenu bis sabari was salaah. Innal laaha ma’as saabireen.”

“O you who believe! Seek help with patient perseverance and prayer; for Allah is with those who patiently persevere…”

Then the following verses continue:

“And say not of those who are slain in the way of Allah: ‘They are dead.’ No, they are living, although you cannot perceive them.”

Be sure We shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits of your hard work, but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere,

Who say, when they are afflicted with a calamity: “Inna lil laahi wa inna ilayhir raaji oon! To Allah we belong, and to Him is our return”

“Ulaa ika ‘alayhim salawaatun min Rabbikum, wa Rahmah, wa ulaa ika humul muhtadoon.”

“They are those on whome [descend] blessings from Allah, and Mercy, and they are the ones that receive guidance.”

Brothers and sisters, if you ponder over these verses, you might think that they were written especially for the grieving families in Birmingham. But such is the majesty and beauty of Allah’s Book, revealed over 14 centuries ago, that its guidance and its healing and mercy will nourish the souls of Believers everywhere and always, until the end of time. SubhaanAllah!

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My dear sisters and brothers,

When we restrain our anger, when we wrestle with our lower nafs and we throw ourselves at the feet of Allah’s Mercy, some amazing things happen. The reward for showing our utter reliance on Allah has many unexpected consequences. One of the most surprising reports I read last week (UK Sunday Times 14^th August 2011) was that the racist (EDL) English Defence League’s leader was so moved by Tariq Jehan’s dignified example that he was going to ask all his members at their next meeting to hold a minute’s silence out of respect. Imagine that! At the beginning of the riots, reports were circulating that the EDL was planning arson attacks on mosques. We don’t know whether this is true or not. But a few days later, there’s a newspaper report that the EDL leader wants his followers to show some respect for the fallen Muslims in Birmingham. Allahu ‘alam! Allah knows best! Let us also remind ourselves that no matter how dire the situation, Allah can intervene in ways that we could never have hoped. Allah can change a heart from hatred to love in an instant. Allah has the key to all our hearts. Sura Al Anfal 8:24 reminds us that “Allah comes between a man and his heart…”

There are many who hate Muslims and who wish us harm. We should of course take sensible precautions to defend ourselves. But we should never forget that our enemies could one day become our brothers and sisters in faith. Never forget that Khaled ibn Walid, who bitterly fought the Muslims in the Battle of Badr, became the most famous military commander after Allah came between him and his heart. He conquered the Roman and Persian armies for Islam. Don’t forget Amr ibn al As, who led the Quraish delegation to Abyssinia. He tried unsuccessfully to persuade the King Najashi to return the first Muslim asylum seekers and to hand them over to their oppressors. Soon afterwards, Allah came between Amr and his heart. Amr conquered Egypt for Islam and built the fist mosque on the African continent in Al Fustat. And who can forget Sayyidna Omar, who hated Prophet Muhammad so bitterly that he unsheathed his sword and set out to kill our Nabi. But Allah came between him and his heart, and when he heard his sister reciting the opening verses of Sura Ta-Ha, his hard heart melted and this big, fearsome warrior was moved to tears. He actually took shahadah in front of Prophet Muhammad, still holding his sword in his hand, the same sword that was meant to kill our beloved Prophet!

What does all this mean, brothers and sisters? We all plan, but Allah is the best of planners. Don’t ever think that things out there are really as bad as they seem. Things could be a lot worse. Allah is completely in control of his entire creation. Slowly but surely, in ways we cannot always appreciate, Allah is fulfilling His Plan. We should never despair of Allah’s Mercy. Who knows… perhaps next Ramadan, some of those gangsters, rioters and former members of the EDL will be praying alongside us as our new brothers, for the taraweeh prayers! Who knows? Anything is possible for Allah. He has the key to unlock any heart! We should always entertain the hope, the possibility that our worst enemies today could become our beloved brothers and sisters tomorrow. This reminder is clearly given in Sura Al ‘Imran 3:103:

“Wa’tasimu bi hablil laahi jamee-aah…”

“And hold fast,  all together, by the Rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and do not be divided among yourselves; and remember with gratitude Allah’s favour on you; for you were enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His Grace, you became brothers; and you were on the brink of the pit of Fire, and He saved you from it. This is how Allah makes His Signs clear to you: That you may be guided.”

My dear sisters and brothers, as we enter the last 10 days of Ramadan, the days of ‘freedom from hellfire,’ and the nights of laylatul Qadr, the Night of Power, let us reflect on the momentous events in our community. This is a crucial time for Muslims. There is some danger but there is also immense potential for good. This is no time for bruised egos, for settling old scores or for racial and tribal vendettas. Islam is too noble for such behaviour. Let us reach out to those who used to hate us and who now have doubts, so that we can share with them Allah’s beautiful message. The world is watching us. Let us become living examples of discipline, self control, humanity, mercy and Allah’s love. Let us pray that our three martyrs from Birmingham would not have died in vain. Let their example, and their fathers’ dignity at a time of unspeakable pain and grief, be an inspiration to Muslims and their neighbours all around the world. Great things happen in Ramadan. O Allah, let the tragedy in Birmingham become the key that unlocks the hearts of Islam-haters everywhere, so that their breasts can be opened Islam. Ameen!

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”      

Ameen.    Aqeemus salaah

The Observer, Sunday 10^th July 2011

John Phillip Walker Lindh, my son, was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. He has an older brother and a younger sister. John is scholarly and devout, devoted to his family, and blessed with a powerful intellect, a curious mind, and a wry sense of humour.

Labelled by the American government as “Detainee 001″ in the “war on terror”, John occupies a prison cell in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been a prisoner of the American government since 1 December 2001, less than three months after the terror attacks of 9/11.

John is entirely innocent of any involvement in the terror attacks, or any allegiance to terrorism. That is not disputed by the American government. Indeed, all accusations of terrorism against John were dropped by the government in a plea bargain, which in turn was approved by the US district court in which the case was brought.

Despite its proud history as a stable constitutional democracy, the US has, for 10 years, been affected by post-traumatic shock, following the horrific events of 11 September 2001. I can find no other explanation for the barbaric mistreatment and continued detention of a gentle young man like John Lindh.

John is blessed with a calm and curious nature. As a child, he was more sceptical than our other two children about such things as Santa Claus. When he was 12 years old, he saw the film Malcolm X, and was moved by its depiction of the pilgrims in Mecca. He began to explore Islam and, four years later, decided to convert.

What attracted John to Islam, I think, was the simplicity of its beliefs, and the authenticity of its source documents – the Qur’an and Hadith. It appealed to his intellect as well as his heart. To me and to John’s mother, his conversion was a positive development and certainly not a source of worry. I once told him I felt he had always been a Muslim, and only needed to find Islam in order to discover this in himself. He remained the loving son and brother he had always been. There was never a breach of any kind between us.

John had always been a good student, but his study habits improved after his conversion. He immersed himself in Islamic literature, and quickly came to the conclusion that he needed to learn Arabic in order to continue his studies.

In 1998, at the age of 17, John left home in California and travelled to Sana’a, the ancient capital of Yemen, where he embarked on a rigorous course of study. He was determined not only to become fluent in Arabic, but also to pursue an education in the old traditions of Islam. He returned home briefly in 1999, and then returned to Yemen in February 2000, just before his 19th birthday. John’s mother and I supported him, emotionally and financially. He remained in close contact with us and with his sister and brother while overseas.

In September 2000, John told me he intended to continue his studies in Pakistan, focusing on Arabic grammar and Qur’an memorisation. I wrote back: “I trust your judgment and hope you have a wonderful adventure.” He arrived in Pakistan in November 2000 and enrolled in a Qur’an memorisation programme in a madrasa.

John’s letters home showed passionate enthusiasm for both Yemen and Pakistan. He loved the cultures he discovered in both countries. He was a Muslim in a Muslim world.

In late April 2001, John wrote to me and his mother, saying he planned to go into the mountains to escape the oppressive summer heat. We had no further contact from him for seven months. Unbeknown to us, he crossed the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, with the intent of volunteering for service in the Afghan army under the control of the Taliban government.

John’s mother and I grew increasingly worried as the summer passed. John had warned us that there might be gaps in his contact with us, as there were no internet cafes in the mountains of Pakistan from which to send emails. But we did not anticipate such a complete lapse in correspondence from him. We also never guessed he was in Afghanistan rather than Pakistan. John’s mother, especially, was frantic with worry as the months passed with no word from him.

At that time, the Taliban governed most of Afghanistan, and were engaged in a long-running civil war against a Russian-backed insurgency known euphemistically as the Northern Alliance. John was quickly accepted as a volunteer soldier, and received two months of infantry training in a Taliban military camp before being dispatched to the front lines.

Rohan Gunaratna, an international terrorism expert and author of the book Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, conducted a lengthy interview with John, and prepared a written report for the American court to which John was brought for trial. Gunaratna is an expert consultant to the US government itself on terrorism matters. “Those who, like Mr Lindh, merely fought the Northern Alliance,” he wrote, “cannot be deemed terrorists. Their motivation was to serve and to protect suffering Muslims in Afghanistan, not to kill civilians.”

John described his motivation in similar terms. “I felt,” he later explained to the court, “that I had an obligation to assist what I perceived to be an Islamic liberation movement against the warlords who were occupying several provinces in northern Afghanistan. I had learned from books, articles and individuals with first-hand experience of numerous atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance against civilians. I had heard reports of massacres, child rape, torture and castration.”

To the western world, and to me as John’s father after I learned where he had been, this was misplaced idealism. John’s decision to volunteer for the army of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban was rash, and failed to take into account the Taliban’s mistreatment of its own citizens. But his assessment of the Northern Alliance warlords was neither exaggerated nor inaccurate. The brutal human rights violations committed by the Northern Alliance were thoroughly documented in the US department of state’s annual human rights reports throughout the 90s. They did indeed include massacres, rape (of both women and children), torture and castration.

John’s impulse was to help. In doing so, he was responding not only to his own conscience, but to a central tenet of the Islamic faith, which calls upon able-bodied young men to defend innocent Muslim civilians from attack, through military service if necessary. This is not “terrorism” at all, but precisely its opposite.

From the time of the Soviet invasion in 1979, tens of thousands of young Muslim men from all over the world had volunteered, as John did, for military service in Afghanistan. It was comparable to the influx of young volunteer soldiers in support of the republic of Spain during the Spanish civil war.

These young soldiers performed heroically in the defeat of the Soviet Union. Their cause was openly supported by the American government itself, particularly during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who took office two weeks before John’s birth in early 1981.

In March 1982, President Reagan declared: “Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.” In March 1983, he cited “the Afghan freedom fighters” as “an example to all the world of the invincibility of the ideals we in this country hold most dear, the ideals of freedom and independence”. In a March 1985 speech, he said: “They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help… They are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French resistance. We cannot turn away from them.”

Given the history of US involvement in Afghanistan, it would seem absurd to suggest that John Lindh was being disloyal to America when he went into Afghanistan in 2001 and joined the army there. If the march of history could be arrested in the spring or summer of 2001, John’s odyssey might be regarded as quixotic and unusual for a young American, but not in the least bit sinister, and certainly not criminal in nature. In fact, John’s concern about the suffering of people in Afghanistan was shared by his own government. On 21 July 2000, for example, the US department of state issued a “fact sheet” that reported that the US was “the largest single donor of humanitarian aid to the Afghan people”.

The US also provided substantial economic assistance directly to the Taliban government. In May 2001, for example, the American government under President George W Bush announced a grant of $43m to the Taliban government for opium eradication. Secretary of State Colin Powell personally announced the grant himself in a press release and pledged: “We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans.” The New York Times called this “a first, cautious step toward reducing the isolation of the Taliban” by the new Bush administration.

This is not to suggest the US was entirely friendly with the Taliban. In 1999, President Clinton placed the Taliban government under economic sanctions as a consequence of its human rights violations, particularly against women. But there were no hostilities between the US and the Taliban, and by 2001 relations were improving.

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a nightmarish world of perpetual war, in which two massive nations, Oceania and Eastasia, are aligned against a third nation state known as Eurasia. The alliance between Oceania and Eastasia ends, and Eastasia then begins fighting alongside Eurasia against Oceania. In what Orwell famously called “doublethink”, the population of Oceania then is taught to believe “we have always been at war with Eastasia”.

Something eerily similar happened in the US after 9/11. Thirty years of American policy abruptly changed and America swung to the opposite side. The Taliban became our enemy. “They have always been our enemy” is what people in America came to believe.

In October 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan and aligned itself with the Northern Alliance in order to oust the Taliban government. Colin Powell’s April press release was quietly removed from the state department’s website.

In early September 2001, days before the 9/11 attacks, John arrived at his military post in the province of Takhar in the far north-eastern corner of Afghanistan, near the border of Tajikistan. This was the frontline in the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. John was issued with a rifle and two hand grenades – standard issue for an infantry soldier. He performed sentry duty and did some cooking for the Taliban troops. He never used his weapons. He served with a number of other foreign volunteer soldiers. They were called Ansar, an Arabic term meaning “helpers”.

The training camp in Afghanistan where the Ansar received their infantry training was funded by Osama bin Laden, who also visited the camp on a regular basis. He was regarded by the volunteer soldiers as a hero in the struggle against the Soviet Union. These soldiers did not suspect Bin Laden’s involvement in planning the 9/11 attacks, which were carried out in secret. John himself sat through speeches by Bin Laden in the camp on two occasions, and actually met Bin Laden on the second such occasion. John has said he found him unimpressive.

After 9/11, America’s intelligence agencies came under intense scrutiny for their failure to anticipate and prevent the attacks, and their apparent inability to track down Osama bin Laden. It is a curious fact of history that John Lindh, an idealistic 20-year-old Californian, suspecting nothing of bin Laden’s connections to terrorism, was able without difficulty to meet this notorious figure in the summer of 2001. Why American intelligence agents were unable to do so remains unexplained. John himself did not believe he was encountering a terrorist. John knew only that bin Laden had been generous in funding the military camp, and he was able to discern that Bin Laden was not a legitimate scholar or leader in the traditions of Islam.

The American invasion of Afghanistan commenced in October 2001. Few American troops were deployed in the northern reaches of Afghanistan. The Americans relied on Northern Alliance forces as their proxy, combined with aerial bombing, to displace the Taliban forces.

The front between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance in Takhar where John was stationed quickly dissolved after the bombing commenced. Taliban troops fled in panicked retreat to Kunduz. They marched without stop for two days, covering a distance of 50 miles of harsh, desert terrain. The conditions were hellish. The Northern Alliance troops killed all stragglers who fell behind, often castrating them before killing them.

The soldiers at Kunduz who wished to surrender faced a terrible dilemma. For years it had been the practice of the Northern Alliance to torture and murder prisoners of war. These crimes were legendary and well known to both the Taliban soldiers and the US government.

John’s lawyers later obtained from the American government an unclassified cable sent from the US embassy in Kunduz on 20 November 2001, to Colin Powell and the joint chiefs of staff. The cable was labelled “priority”. It bore the subject line: “Kunduz representatives appeal for a bombing halt during surrender negotiations.” It said that, according to local authorities in Kunduz, Taliban soldiers trapped in Kunduz “wanted to surrender to someone who would not kill them”. This was described as a “sticking point” in the surrender negotiations. The Taliban, according to the cable, had “proposed surrendering to the US or the UN”. The cable confirmed that the American authorities had informed their counterparts in Kunduz that “neither was a realistic option and suggested that they seek the [Red Cross's] involvement if they had not done so already”.

On 21 November 2001, the regional Taliban military leader, Mullah Fazel Mazloom, entered into face-to-face surrender negotiations with General Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance. The pact was destined not to end well. Dostum was a notorious figure who had served as an officer in the Soviet occupation government. Troops under Dostum’s command were believed responsible for the mass execution of an alleged 2,000 Taliban prisoners captured near Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997. The New Yorker magazine has referred to Dostum as “perhaps Afghanistan’s most notorious warlord”, a man who is “viewed by most human rights organisations as among the worst war criminals in the country”.

Nonetheless, a bargain was reached in which Dostum demanded and received a large cash payment, then agreed to grant approximately 400 disarmed Taliban soldiers safe passage through Dostum-controlled territory to the city of Herat. John, in haggard condition after the march through Takhar, was among those 400 troops.

The Taliban soldiers had no sooner laid down their arms when Dostum breached the agreement. Instead of the safe passage they had been promised, the soldiers were loaded into trucks and diverted to the ancient Qala-i-Jangi fortress on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif. As the prisoners were being unloaded in the courtyard, John heard a loud explosion when one of the prisoners detonated a grenade that he had concealed. Two of Dostum’s men were killed in the blast.

Dostum’s soldiers quickly regained control, but they were infuriated. The prisoners were crowded into the basement of a sturdy, pink Soviet-built classroom building adjacent to a horse pasture. The “pink building”, as it became known, was at the centre of the events that unfolded over the next seven days. It was dark in the basement rooms into which the 400 men were crowded. To retaliate for the earlier attack, Dostum’s men dropped a grenade down an air duct that wounded or killed several prisoners, narrowly missing John, who spent the night crouched in a corner unable to sleep.

The next morning, Sunday 25 November, was sunny and warm at the Qala-i-Jangi fortress. Video footage shows a seemingly calm scene as the prisoners, with arms tied behind backs, are led out of the basement and made to kneel in rows in the horse pasture beside the pink building. The main sound on the film is the chirping of hundreds of birds. Dostum’s men were rough. Some prisoners were kicked and beaten with sticks. John was hit in the back of the head and nearly knocked unconscious. Nonetheless, he hoped they would be released for the agreed upon journey to Herat.

Although there were no US or British troops at the fortress that morning, two American intelligence agents were present, dressed in civilian clothes. They circulated among the prisoners, occasionally giving instructions to Dostum’s guards. One of them, Dave Tyson, was dressed in a long Afghan shirt and carried a large gun and a video camera. The other, Johnny “Mike” Spann, a former marine, was dressed in a black shirt and jeans. He was also armed. As they moved among the prisoners, they singled out captives for interrogation. They never identified themselves as American agents, and so they appeared to John and the other prisoners to be mercenaries working directly for General Dostum.

John was spotted and removed from the body of prisoners for questioning. The moment was recorded on video and later seen by millions on television.

In the video, John sits mutely on the ground as he is questioned about his nationality.

“Irish? Ireland?” Spann asks.

John remains silent.

“Who brought you here?… You believe in what you are doing that much, you’re willing to be killed here?”

Still no reply.

Tyson to Spann [for John's benefit]: “The problem is, he’s got to decide if he wants to live or die, and die here. We’re just going to leave him, and he’s going to [expletive] sit in prison the rest of his [expletive] short life. It’s his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys.”

I think it was apparent that Spann and Tyson were American agents, but because they were in the company of Dostum’s forces, unaccompanied by American troops, it clearly was not safe for John to talk to them. They meant business when they said John might be killed by Dostum, and that the Red Cross could only “help so many guys”. John was in extreme peril at that moment, and he knew it.

John was then returned to the main body of prisoners, while others were still being brought out of the basement and forced to kneel in the horse pasture. Then, suddenly, there was an explosion at the entrance to the basement, shouts were heard, and two prisoners grabbed the guards’ weapons. According to Guardian journalist Luke Harding’s account: “It was then… that Spann ‘did a Rambo’. As the remaining guards ran away, Spann flung himself to the ground and began raking the courtyard and its prisoners with automatic fire. Five or six prisoners jumped on him, and he disappeared beneath a heap of bodies.”

Spann’s body was later recovered by US special forces troops. He was the first American to die in combat in the American–Afghan war. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington.

As soon as the uprising began, the Northern Alliance guards turned their weapons on the 400 bound prisoners, killing or severely wounding scores of them. Some prisoners tried to stand and run; they were gunned down. It was a slaughter. John tried to run, but he was shot in the right thigh and fell to the ground. For the next 12 hours he lay motionless, pretending to be dead.

There were two groups of Taliban prisoners in the fortress: those who chose to fight and those who hunkered down in the basement of the pink building and tried to survive. John was in the latter group. The prisoners who fought put up a fierce resistance, looting buildings for weapons and ammunition, firing from windows, rooftops, and ditches. Using a satellite phone, Dave Tyson, who had just seen his colleague killed, telephoned the US embassy in Tashkent, shouting: “We have lost control. Send in helicopters and troops.” US air controllers stationed outside the fortress walls called in air strikes, which struck with devastating impact inside the fortress.

More air raids were staged the next day, Monday, when a massive 2,000lb bomb was dropped. It missed its intended target, the pink building, and hit Dostum’s soldiers. This “friendly fire” incident brought an end to the air strikes. For John and the other Taliban soldiers holed up in the basement of the pink building, the percussive effect of the bomb shook them to their bones and left them trembling.

By Wednesday, the last of the resisting Taliban fighters had been killed, and Dostum’s soldiers were once again in full control of the fortress. Luke Harding was allowed into the compound along with some other journalists, and he found a horrific scene: “We had expected slaughter, but I was unprepared for its hellish scale… It was hard to take it all in. The dead and various parts of the dead… turned up wherever you looked: in thickets of willows and poplars; in waterlogged ditches; in storage rooms piled with ammunition boxes.” Harding observed that many of the Taliban prisoners had died with their hands tied behind their backs.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Dostum’s troops engaged in a sustained effort to kill the Taliban survivors who remained in the basement of the pink building, which they were afraid to enter themselves. More grenades were dropped down the air ducts and RPGs were fired directly into the basement. John received shrapnel wounds in his shoulder, back, ankle and calf, in addition to the bullet still lodged in his thigh. At one point, fuel was poured down the air ducts and a fire was ignited in which some fuel-drenched prisoners were burned to death. John, choking on the black smoke, lost consciousness. He awoke with the taste of gasoline in his mouth and loud explosions in the hall, as more rockets and grenades ricocheted through the basement.

On Friday, Dostum’s troops tried yet another tactic. They flooded the basement with cold water. Unable to stand on his own, John braced himself on a stick and a fellow soldier for the next 24 hours to avoid drowning in the waist-deep water, which was full of blood and waste. The next morning no one inside the fortress thought it possible that anyone was still alive in the pink building, but 86 of the prisoners had managed to survive the week-long ordeal. One of them was John Lindh.

On Saturday 1 December, the Red Cross arrived at the fortress and the survivors, who for several days had been trying to surrender, were finally allowed to exit the basement. When they emerged into the bright sunlight, they encountered a confusing horde of journalists, Red Cross workers, Dostum’s soldiers, and British and American troops.

That evening John and the other survivors were taken to a prison hospital in Sheberghan. Although wet and cold from the flooding of the basement, they were transported in open bed trucks in the frigid night air. At Sheberghan, John was carried on a stretcher and set down in a small room with approximately 15 other prisoners. CNN correspondent Robert Pelton came in accompanied by a US special forces soldier and a cameraman. Despite John’s protests, Pelton persisted in filming John and asking questions as an American medical officer administered morphine intravenously. By the time he departed a short time later, Pelton had captured on videotape an interview in which John said that his “heart had become attached” to the Taliban, that every Muslim aspired to become a shahid, or martyr, and that he had attended a training camp funded by Osama bin Laden.

The CNN interview became a sensation in the US. By mid-December, virtually every newspaper in America was running front-page stories about the American Taliban, and the broadcast media were saturated with features and commentary about John. Here was a “traitor” who had “fought against America” and aligned himself with the 11 September terrorists. Newsweek magazine published an issue with John’s photograph on the cover, under the caption “American Taliban”.

Beginning in early December, President Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, members of the cabinet and other officials then embarked on a series of truly extraordinary public statements about John, referring to him repeatedly as an “al-Qaida fighter”, a terrorist and a traitor. I think it fair to say there has never been a case quite like this in the history of the US, in which officials at the highest levels of the government made such prejudicial statements about an individual citizen who had not yet been charged with any crime.

I will offer only a small sample of these statements. In an interview at the White House on 21 December 2001, President Bush said John was “the first American al-Qaida fighter that we have captured”.Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence, told reporters at a press briefing that John had been “captured by US forces with an AK-47 in his hands”. Colin Powell, secretary of state, said John had “brought shame upon his family”. Rudy Giuliani, New York mayor, remarked: “I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider.”

John Ashcroft, the US attorney general, staged two televised press conferences in which he accused John of attacking the US. “Americans who love their country do not dedicate themselves to killing Americans,” he declared.

A federal judge took the unusual step of writing to the New York Timescriticising the attorney general for violating “Justice Department guidelines on the release of information related to criminal proceedings that are intended to ensure that a defendant is not prejudiced when such an announcement is made”.

Even the ultra-conservative National Review thought Ashcroft had gone too far in making such prejudicial comments about a pending prosecution. It criticised the comments as “inappropriate” and “gratuitous”, stating that in the future “it would be better for the attorney general simply to announce the facts of the indictments, and to avoid extra comments which might unintentionally imperil successful prosecutions”.

I am a lawyer, trained in the law, with more than 25 years of experience. Never have I seen or read about a case in which a person accused of a crime was so conspicuously deprived of what we call “the presumption of innocence”. On the contrary, my son was presumed guilty, not only by government officials but by the entire mainstream journalism and media establishment in America. It was – and still is – widely reported in America that John Lindh is a “terrorist” who fought against the US.

Our lives back home were completely upturned by the sudden and pervasive notoriety of John’s case. We found ourselves dodging television cameras and reporters. In the first couple of days after John’s capture, I appeared on several news programmes in an effort to explain who John was and to ask for mercy. My sense of privacy and anonymity were at least temporarily destroyed.

All of us in John’s family also were wracked with anxiety about John’s own physical and emotional wellbeing. We had no source of information about John from within the government itself. They were holding our son incommunicado, even as President Bush and other officials made repeated statements about him. Anything we were able to learn about John came from the news media, not from the government.

Happily, our neighbours, friends, co-workers and even strangers in California were uniformly warm and supportive towards me, John’s mother and our other children. One Sunday, on my way to church, a friendly stranger stopped his car and shouted to me: “How’s John?”

Another enormous source of comfort to us came from James Brosnahan, a distinguished and courageous trial lawyer in San Francisco who agreed to represent John. On 3 December, Brosnahan took up his case, and from that day forward we had a valiant defender in him and the other lawyers who worked on the defence team. It felt as if a protective shield had been constructed around John and all of us in the family.

Once John was in the custody of the US military, the US government had to decide what to do with him. The FBI has estimated that during the 90s as many as 2,000 American citizens travelled to Muslim lands to take up arms voluntarily, and that as many as 400 American Muslims received training in military camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. None of these American citizens was indicted, or labelled as traitor and terrorist. They were simply ignored by their government, which made no attempt to interfere with their travel. But the 9/11 attacks changed everything, and it was the timing of John’s capture that contributed to his fate. It soon became apparent to me that, rather than simply repatriate my wounded son, the government was intent on prosecuting him as a “terrorist”.

In the days and weeks that followed, John endured abuse from the US military that exceeded the bounds of what any civilised nation should tolerate, even in time of war. Donald Rumsfeld directly ordered the military to “take the gloves off” in questioning John

On 7 December, wounded and still suffering from the effects of the trauma at Qala-i-Jangi, John was flown to Camp Rhino, a US marine base approximately 70 miles south of Kandahar. There he was taunted and threatened, stripped of his clothing, and bound naked to a stretcher with duct tape wrapped around his chest, arms, and ankles. Even before he got to Camp Rhino, John’s wrists and ankles were bound with plastic restraints that caused severe pain and left permanent scars – sure proof of torture. Still blindfolded, he was locked in an unheated metal shipping container that sat on the desert floor. He shivered uncontrollably in the bitter cold. Soldiers outside pounded on the sides, threatening to kill him.

After two days in these circumstances, John was removed from the shipping container and taken into a building at Camp Rhino. When his blindfold was removed, John found himself in front of a man who identified himself as an FBI agent and then read from an advice-of-rights form. When the agent reached the part that concerned right to counsel, he said: “Of course, there are no lawyers here.” John was not told his mother and I had retained an attorney for him who was ready and willing to travel to Afghanistan. Worried that he would be returned to the shipping container if he did not sign the form, John signed the waiver.

A lengthy interrogation followed, after which US military personnel put John back in the metal shipping container, although this time his leg restraints were loosened and he was no longer bound by duct tape or blindfolded. On 14 December, he was placed on board the USS Peleliu, where navy physicians observed that he was suffering from dehydration, hypothermia, and frostbite, and that he could not walk. On 15 December, the bullet was finally removed from his leg in a surgical procedure – more than two weeks after he had been transferred to the custody of the US military. The doctor who removed the bullet later told John’s lawyers there had been little or no healing of the wound, which he attributed to malnutrition and cold.

In June 2002, Newsweek obtained copies of internal email messages from the justice department’s ethics office commenting on the Lindh case as the events were unfolding in December 2001. The office specifically warned in advance against the interrogation tactics the FBI used at Camp Rhino, and concluded that the interrogation of John without his lawyer present would be unlawful and unethical. This advice was ignored by the FBI agent who conducted the interrogation.

Interestingly, in an 10 December email, one of the justice department ethics lawyers noted: “At present, we have no knowledge that he did anything other than join the Taliban.”

The government brought 10 counts against John in its overblown indictment. “If convicted of these charges,” attorney general Ashcroft boasted, “Walker Lindh could receive multiple life sentences, six additional 10-year sentences, plus 30 years.” The most serious count was a charge of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the death of Mike Spann. The charge was groundless: the prisoner uprising at the Qala-i-Jangi fortress had been spontaneous and John was also a victim, not a participant.

John arrived back in the US on 23 January 2002 in chains aboard a military plane that landed at Washington Dulles International airport. The government selected Dulles so they could bring charges against John in northern Virginia, near the Pentagon (one of the 9/11 targets), where hostility against John was assured. He was flown by helicopter to the Alexandria City Jail. John’s mother and I tried to visit him that night, along with the lawyers we had retained for him, but we were turned away. We finally were able to see our son the next morning in a holding cell on the first floor of the US courthouse. His lawyers met him only briefly before his first appearance in the court that morning.

The case of United States of America v John Philip Walker Lindh was set for trial before Judge T S Ellis III. On 24 January, the judge announced he was setting a trial date for late August. We were horrified, as this would ensure that John would be on trial on the first anniversary of 9/11. It would be hard to conceive of a more prejudicial circumstance for a criminal defendant, especially in the wake of the intemperate statements attorney general Ashcroft had made in his two press conferences.

John’s lawyers filed a motion to “suppress” the statements that had been extracted him under duress at Camp Rhino. A hearing was scheduled in July 2001, which would have included testimony by John and others about the brutality he had suffered at the hands of US soldiers. On the eve of the hearing, the government prosecutors approached John’s attorneys and negotiated a plea agreement. It was apparent they did not want evidence of John’s torture to be introduced in court.

In the plea agreement John acknowledged that by serving as a soldier in Afghanistan he had violated the anti-Taliban economic sanctions imposed by President Clinton and extended by President Bush. This was, as John’s lawyer pointed out, a “regulatory infraction”. John also agreed to a “weapons charge”, which was used to enhance his prison sentence. In particular, he acknowledged that he had carried a rifle and two grenades while serving as a soldier in the Taliban army. All of the other counts in the indictment were dropped by the government, including the terrorism charges the attorney general had so strongly emphasised and the charge of conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Mike Spann.

At the insistence of defence secretary Rumsfeld, the plea agreement also included a clause in which John relinquished his claims of torture.

The punishment in the plea agreement was by any measure harsh: 20 years of imprisonment, commencing on 1 December 2001, the day John came into the hands of US forces in Afghanistan. The prosecutors told John’s attorneys that the White House insisted on the lengthy sentence, and that they could not negotiate downward.

On 4 October 2002, the judge approved the plea agreement as “just and reasonable” and sentenced John to prison. Before the sentence was pronounced, John was allowed to read a prepared statement, which provided a moment of intense drama in the crowded courtroom. He spoke with strong emotion. He explained why he had gone to Afghanistan to help the Taliban in their fight with the Northern Alliance, saying it arose from his compassion for the suffering of ordinary people who had been subjected to atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance. He explained that when he went to Afghanistan he “saw the war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance as a continuation of the war between the mujahideen and the Soviets”.

John strongly condemned terrorism. “I went to Afghanistan with the intention of fighting against terrorism and oppression.” He had acted, he said, out of a sense of religious duty and he condemned terrorism as being “completely against Islam”. He said: “I have never supported terrorism in any form and never would.”

After a brief recess, the judge granted a request by John Spann, the father of Mike Spann, to address the court and express his dissatisfaction with the plea agreement. He began by saying that he, his family, and many other people believed that John had played a role in the killing of Mike Spann. Judge Ellis interrupted and said: “Let me be clear about that. The government has no evidence of that.” Spann responded: “I understand.” The judge politely explained that the “suspicions, the inferences you draw from the facts are not enough to warrant a jury conviction”. He said that Mike Spann had died a hero, and that among the things he died for was the principle that “we don’t convict people in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Osama bin Laden is dead. John Lindh, now 30 years old, remains in prison. He spends most of his time pursuing his study of the Qur’an and Islamic scholarship. He also reads widely in a variety of nonfiction subjects, especially history and politics. He remains a devout Muslim.

As a father, I am grateful that John survived his ordeal, and I am pleased that he maintains his good-natured disposition. I am especially proud of the dignity he displayed throughout his ordeal overseas and in court.

Other than his lawyers, the only visitors John has been permitted during all his years in prison are those of us in his immediate family. We treasure these visits. We are not allowed any sort of physical contact with John, and are kept separated from him by a glass partition. We must speak via telephones, and everything we say is monitored and recorded by a government agent who sits in an adjoining room. Despite these constraints, our conversations are free-flowing and punctuated with humour.

A commentator at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University called this “a petty prosecution” that was “unworthy of a great country”. But it was more than petty, in my view; it was brutally inhumane.

My hope and prayer is that at some point rational, fair-minded officials in the American government will see the wisdom in releasing John from prison, rather than making him serve the entire 20-year sentence. His continued incarceration serves no good purpose. Releasing John from prison would help restore America’s image in the world, and particularly among Muslim people, as a humane country committed to the rule of law.

The author has donated the fee for this article to charity.

Khutbah

Empowering New Muslims

Arshad Gamiet/Royal Holloway University of London/Date 2010

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, with correct awareness, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Every day, more and more people are taking Shahaadah. Some reports say that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. These studies don’t tell us how many actually stay Muslim for more than a year, or how many leave Islam feeling somewhat disillusioned.

What can we who are born into Islam, do to help those who have chosen Islam as their faith? What can we do to empower new Muslims? How can remove the obstacles from their path to Allah? How can we facilitate our new brothers and sisters’ journey to become full and productive members of the Ummah?

Firstly, let’s not rush things. Too often we try to be too helpful. You can’t teach someone in a few days, what took you a lifetime to learn. You have to do things step by step, Priorities first. Allah urges us in Sura 16:125:

“Ud’oo ila sabeeli Rabbiki, wa mow-‘idatul hasanah…”

“Invite (others) to the Way of your Lord, with wisdom and beautiful speech.” The key here is wisdom, and beautiful speech…

What does this mean in practice? Here are some of my thoughts, based on my own humble observations and experience:

• Keep things simple. Islam is not a complicated religion with confusing dogmas and practices. The kalima shahadah can literally be summarised on the 5 fingers of one hand. It’s putting those universal principles into practice that’s the hard part. And the most important thing to remember is there’s a big difference between Islam and Culture. Islam and our ethnic, national or tribal culture is not one and the same thing.
• Islam is a universal set of moral and ethical principles that fit into every time and place. Muslim cultures reflect ethnic, geographical and historical influences at different times and places. Don’t confuse the two. For example, forced marriages, the oppression of women, so-called ‘honour killings’ have nothing to do with Islam. These are pre-Islamic tribal practices that Islam came to destroy. Don’t impose your own cultural excess baggage on your new brother or sister.
• New Muslims want to know how best to serve Allah within their own capacity and limitations. Make it easy, keep it simple. Our new sisters and brothers can keep their original names. They shouldn’t alienate their family and friends. On the contrary, ties of blood and friendship must strengthen and rise to a higher, more meaningful level, illuminated by love of Allah.
• A word about our dress code. There’s no such thing as ‘Islamic’ clothing. Any modest, clean, attractive, unostentatious clothing will do. Again, don’t confuse Islam with Muslim cultures. Becoming a Muslim is not like coming to a fancy-dress party. Tell them it’s perfectly halaal for them to continue to wear their usual Western clothing, as long as the clothes aren’t showy or provocative. Ethnic dress code is an option, not an obligation. Remember that. To dress yourself up like a wannabe Arab or wannabe Pakistani doesn’t make you a better Muslim..
• A good Muslim personality is constructed from the inside, not from the outside. It begins with the right attitude, the right disposition of the heart… When the attitude is right and the qalb, the spiritual heart is sound, everything else, including the Hijabs, niqabs, burqas, beards, thobes and turbans may (or may not) take care of themselves later… Let’s always keep our sense of perspective, and remember our priorities.
• From cultural baggage to ideological baggage. Don’t try to make new Muslims into loyal Salafis or Sufis. Don’t try to turn them into pukka Deobandis, Barelwis, Wahhabis, Hisbut Tahriris, Militant Jihadis or Tablighi Jamaatis, Shia-hating Sunnis or Sunni-hating Shias. Islam a simple, universal faith with an inclusive ethos. Diversity is celebrated and not feared. Being a Muslim means to be at peace with oneself and one’s Creator, to be at peace with all of Allah’s creation both inwardly and outwardly.
• Sow an action, reap a habit, sow a habit, reap a character, sow a character and reap a destiny. Remind yourself and your new Muslim sister and brother, that Prophet Muhammad (sws) preferred small, repeated acts of kindness to the grand gestures that are done occasionally. Grand gestures are often just for show. Small, repeated good deeds build real sound character and help to polish the heart, cleaning it and removing moral and spiritual pollution.
• Teach your new Muslim sister and brother to be inclusive, not exclusive. Don’t become judgemental. Allah is the best of judges. He alone knows the secrets of all hearts. Urge new Muslims to be merciful, with themselves and with others. Allah is Ar-Rahmaan, The All-Merciful, first and foremost. His last Prophet (sws) was sent as a Mercy to all the Worlds: “Wa maa arsal naaka il-laa Rahma tul-lil-Aalameen, (We have not sent you [O Muhammad] but as a Mercy to all the Worlds.”
• Any manifestation of Islam that lacks mercy becomes a serious danger, as Allah warns us in Sura 43: Al Zukhruf, The Inner Apartments: “And whoever turns himself away from the remembrance (dhikr) of al-Rahman (The Compassionate), We appoint for him a shaitan (a satan), so he becomes his close companion (and associate). And most surely they (the satans) turn them away from the path, though they (the people) persistently imagine that they are rightly guided….” (Qur’an 43:36-37)…” Let us all try to become the friends, the awliyaa of Allah, not the awliyaa of Shaitaan.
• This leads to the next point: If anyone became ‘Muslim’ in order to ‘wage a war on the kufaar’ they’ve made the wrong decision and you can’t help them at all. They’ve come to Islam for the wrong reason, or they’ve come to the wrong religion. Tell them that the world is like it is because of human failings, brought on by ignorance of Allah’s message or in defiance of Allah’s will. Yet everything happens with Allah’s permission. We can only put things right with hard work, justice tempered with mercy, and at all times showing patient perseverance, “Innal-laaha ma’as saabireen.” Allah is with those who patiently persevere. Whatever we do, we have to work strictly within the moral and ethical limits decreed by the Quran and the Prophetic Sunnah. We’ve heard the saying, “Desperate times calls for desperate measures.” This reaction belongs to the realm of secularists and Hollywood movies, not for God-fearing Muslims. Islam is not a religion for desperados. A Muslim who relies totally on Allah will be rewarded by a heart filled with ridhaa’, a serene acceptance of whatever Allah has decreed, good or bad. When we cultivate a sense of utter reliance on Allah, we will realize with absolute certainty, yaqeen, that Allah’s help is always near. “Innal-laaha nasral-laahi Qareeb.” In time, this inward struggle will be rewarded with sakeena, a deep sense of inner peace, serenity, confident that despite the chaotic and confusing appearance of the world outside, we must remain calm on the inside. Allah is in complete control. Sakina is the prize for trusting Allah completely.

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My dear sisters and brothers,

We are talking about empowering new Muslims. One final point I’d like to discuss is about Da’wah: calling others to Islam. There are many individuals and groups up and down the country feverishly working on this project.

One of my main worries about the current pervasive enthusiasm for da’wah is that some Muslims get carried away and they apply too much pressure on people to ‘take the Shahaadah’ too soon. We sometimes forget that it’s Allah who guides people, we cannot guide. At the beginning of the khutbah we hear that “Those whom Allah guides, no one can lead astray, and those whom Allah leaves to stray, no one can guide.” We also know that “Those whom Allah loves, He opens their heart to Islam.” We mustn’t mislead ourselves into thinking that the pressure is on us to pressurise others into Islam. Islam isn’t about numbers. It’s about quality, the quality and calibre of individual Muslims. That’s what really matters. That’s where the real work awaits us.

None of Allah’s Prophets used emotional blackmail or clever marketing tricks to find followers. They simply conveyed the Divine Message, and left Allah to do the rest. We should do the same. The results are not in our hands, and we should give people time to reflect on what we have told them about Islam. The Shahadah is too important to be treated lightly. Becoming a Muslim is a big responsibility. When we do the work of Allah, let’s make things easy. Be truthful, be generous and above all, be patient.

• There are some practical lessons for new Muslims, like Tahaarah (Cleanliness), good manners and behaviour (Adab), how and when to do the prayers, fasting, paying Zakaat and so on. These topics need to be taught gradually and simply.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.” Ameen.    Aqeemus salaah

The second cause is the global political conflicts in which Muslims are seen as occupying the center stage. Incessant news and events depicting individuals committing terrorist acts, with their religion specifically highlighted in the media if they are Muslims, constantly plays on the minds and emotions of the American people. The worst act of terrorism in its history occurred in New York on September 11, 2001. It was carried out by a few foreign miscreants from the Middle East with Muslim names and had roots in the Arab-Israeli conflict. While it shook the world, it sent chills down the spines of the Muslim inhabitants of America. They were hit the hardest just by name association. They walked the streets under suspicious and disdainful eyes and are still struggling to reclaim their rightful place in the American society.

We are living in an era sequential to global communism. The phobia which dominated that era was the fear of the great Bolshevik conspiracy, which would undermine our freedoms and individual liberties. The product of that phobia was the Cold War, generating thousands of nuclear weapons, sufficient to obliterate human race many times over and which gave birth to scores of dictators all over the world, who subjected their countrymen to tyranny and humiliation. The succeeding era would not pass without a phobia to decorate it with.  Islamophobia readily served the purpose. The bogey of the worldwide Islamic khilafa replaced that of the Communist conspiracy and is beginning to inflict the psyche of the American public. If there are any people, who are unaware of this khilafa “conspiracy”, it is the Muslim people themselves.

The Phobia and its Profile: The Mosque Controversies:

Proposals to build mosques to serve the religious needs of Muslims countrywide have brought out deep-rooted prejudices even from the members of the clergy, from California to Wisconsin to New York. Acts of vandalism against the Muslim places of worship such as in Tennessee proliferated. In Sheboygan, Wisconsin a Muslim doctor who owned a store type building proposed to convert the property into a place of worship for hundred or so of Muslims. The place was close to the hospital he worked in. A public hearing brought out some of the patients he had treated and had faith in, who spilled out venom against Islam, a faith they had no knowledge of. It shook the wits out of him and many of the citizens. In Manhattan, Muslims had been praying at Burlington Factory House at Park51 a makeshift mosque for a year before the Cordoba House proposal. On Fridays the congregation at Farah Mosque nearby would spill over on the street for want of sufficient accommodation. It was not a matter of “desecrating” Ground Zero but a matter of dire necessity and equal rights under the constitution. The proposal became such a big controversy that everybody from the president to the governor to the archbishop to the Jewish Defense League weighed in. It was made to look as though the proposed Cordoba House was a monument of Muslim “triumphalism” at Ground Zero.

Ban the Sharia Legislations:

The campaign against the Cordoba House project was started in a blog “Stop Islamization of America”, a xenophobic campaign, playing on the aforementioned fears of people, of the perceived impending transformation of the country’s religious face and its cultural profile. This is an outrageous presumption and a wildly imaginary scenario. Exact statistics are lacking but according to a study conducted by the American Jewish Committee there are 2.8million Muslims in America, while many Muslim organizations have been claiming that the total number stood at about six million. This makes the range of percent population to be from 0.9 to 1.9%. The true number may be closer to the lower figure than the higher one. Of the total population, the practicing Muslims may be less than half that number, scattered over a continent and among the population of 308.7 million. What a force for the Islamization of the United States of America!

The force behind this anti-Sharia tirade is an Arizona lawyer: David Yerushalmi, a White supremacist, an anti-Islam hate monger and the founder of the “Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE)”. He argues that whites are genetically superior to Blacks.  He wrote: “Some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones.” He urged that the United States must declare war on Islam and all Muslim faithful. This puts him in the same category in hate mongering, as the likes of Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz and Peter Emerson. He had pushed legislation in 2007 to make adherence to Sharia a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Sadly, it is him and the likes of him, who are driving the conservative legislative agenda in this country. He is either the author of or the consultant for most of the anti-Sharia bills, which have been introduced. The American legislators, who have been led onto this path by people like Yerushalmi, in the name of patriotism, should realize that their actions are mutilating the values and the principles on which this country was founded.

A majority of the anti-Sharia bills is considered to be, in the main, innocuous and inconsequential, emotive rather than practical, save SB1028, the State of Tennessee bill as originally proposed, which would have dangerously violated the basic human rights of Muslims, guaranteed in the constitution, by criminalizing the day to day acts of worship. The other acts of legislation have been rightly branded as: “A Solution in Search of Problem”. However, there are some very complex legal implications, which cannot be overlooked.

Sharia, meaning “the way” or “the path” encompasses many disciplines such as ritual worship, moral principles, trade, charity, dietary rules, monetary transactions, matrimony, inheritance as well as criminal law. Many of the Sharia rules have been absorbed into cultural norms and adherence to them is almost subconscious, such as the dietary rules. Although ritual worship is an essential part of religion, some Muslims pray and some don’t and those who pray would do so even under the shadow of a guillotine. The criminal law (the Sharia penal code) is in abeyance in a majority of the Muslim countries, as secular criminal laws have taken its place. The laws of marriages, divorce and inheritance are in general followed, except that polygamy is now obsolescent among the common people. Most of the laws of Sharia, including the penal code, bear striking similarity to the laws of the Old Testament (Halacha) and those followed in early Christian communities. Reformist movements in Judaism and the Church in Christianity have amended those laws but since in Islam there is no Church, Pope or “reform” authority, the Sharia has remained immutable, except where the rules are amenable to ijtehad (dialectical derivation).There is a corpus of exegesis in Sharia law but its implementation however, has been effected with a varying degree of laxity.

As for the criminal law, it must be noted that Muslims have lived under secular laws for ages without protestations. There are only two countries where Sharia law is applied, albeit selectively: Saudi Arabia and Iran.  American Muslims have therefore no qualms about living under the law of the land. Civil laws however are a different matter. Let us take the example of India, home to 161 million Muslims (13.4%) among a total population of 1.2 billion. The criminal law is the law of the land and is applicable to every resident. Muslims are not clamoring for the imposition of hudud, qisas or ta’dhir (elements of religious criminal law).  In civil matters, Muslims are allowed to follow their own “personal law” or opt for the secular law. Western countries would do well to consider this precedence.

The Archbishop of Canterbury had proposed a similar procedure for the British courts, where arbitration, with the consent of the contestants, would amiably settle disputes without burdening the courts with costly trials and litigations. In any case, in the matters of divorce, inheritance, child custody and child support, the parties would have an option between the Sharia and the secular laws, whichever they think serves their interests best. This kind of arrangement, if mutually agreed upon by the parties and allowed by the courts, does in no way threaten the integrity and the tranquility of the society; it may on the other hand enhance them. Nevertheless, we must ensure that the women’s rights and the children’s welfare are safeguarded by the courts in the best way possible. There will be times when the Sharia will serve women better than the states’ laws. In California recently a court ruled that meher payment (a contractual sum payable to a woman by her husband on divorce under the Sharia) violated the state law prohibiting spouses from “profiteering” from divorce. Loss to the woman in this case is obvious. In general the interests of the citizens as well as of the state would be best served when the courts are independent and have discretion — not obligation — in when to reference religious laws and when not to do so.

“Foreign” Law and the U.S. Courts:

In many states legislation prohibiting the courts from considering “foreign” law or international law is being pushed with a vengeance. This raises a number of very complex legal issues, involving international treaties and trade. Compliance with international treaties, when ratified, is vouchsafed in the U.S. constitution and may be outside the jurisdiction of any one state. However, there may be areas of trade and labor laws, where complications may arise and hamper businesses of American companies.

In the U.S. courts presently marriages contracted abroad and under the Sharia are recognized, so are divorces executed abroad. The integration of many immigrant families is based on this provision. In the matters of matrimony, parenthood, inheritance and execution of wills disputes do arise in courts and could not be settled without reference to “foreign” laws. There is a serious concern that the ramifications of ban on foreign law now or in the future may put strains on the justice system and adversely affect the social structure of the American society.

Islamophobia, the Underlying Reason:

It is hard to believe that the proponents of the ant-Sharia bill of Tennessee, as it was originally written, were unaware of its unconstitutionality. Clearly, their intent was provocation and their motive was historic religious prejudice. It is not uncommon in the American history and in the history of many other countries for hate groups to arise in certain political and economic circumstances and by their actions and rhetoric malign the very society whose wellbeing they claim to protect.

It was said after 9/11 that “history begins now” or words to that effect. How true! Muslim Americans have been living in the full glare of history ever since, with their faces lit with bewilderment, although some governmental agencies, the top political leadership of both the parties, the law enforcement agencies and the leadership of almost every faith have helped to take the attention away from them. We still remember with gratitude the president of the United States’ visit to a mosque in the aftermath of the tragic event and the kind words uttered. This brought out what was good in the American people and averted a possible catastrophe. We appeal to the same good nature of the American people not to heed to bigotry, prejudice and electoral polemics. America will lose its soul if it succumbs to religious intolerance. It will lose its reason for being.

Muslims in America are a highly diverse community, consisting of almost every race, ethnicity and culture, including a large indigenous section. Among them are doctors, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and workers, enriching the economy with their contributions. There are Nobel laureates such as Ahmed Zewail news anchors such as Fareed zakaria and many sports celebrities. There are highly regarded congressmen and mayors in many cities.

Muslim contribution in highlighting the moral values is an asset to the society, which should not be ignored. The mosques are not a threat to anybody but beacons of light. They are centers of spiritual uplift as well as of education, social activism, moral reformation and charity.  Most mosques have prison visit programs, which have resulted in transforming many individuals into productive and law-abiding citizens. Many mosques in the inner cities have food pantries, counseling and crisis management programs.  Above all they curtail social ills. Consider a man who comes to the mosque to pray early morning, early afternoon, late-afternoon, at sunset and at night, five times in Twenty-four hours, to renew his commitment to God. What are his chances of committing unsocial acts in between his prayers? If two million people do this in a society, is the society better off or worse?

Arshad Gamiet/Stoke Poges Lane Mosque/Sat 23^rd April 2011

(This talk was arranged by the UK Islamic Mission, Slough Branch)

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.`

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Before I begin my talk, I must tell you that I am not a scholar from some great Islamic university. I’m a rather ordinary Muslim who reads widely and who tries to understand his faith. I try to make sense of the world out there, and I’m here to share some personal thoughts and reflections with you. So, please take that for what it’s worth.

Who is my neighbour? What are my neighbour’s rights over me? What are my responsibilities as a Muslim neighbour?

These are very important questions, given the challenging times that we face as Muslims in Britain today. But I think we must first understand our topic clearly. Before we discuss our neighbours, let’s take a step back and first ask who am I? That seems obvious, I’m sure you’re bound to say: I’m a Muslim, but what does that really mean in practice?

Well, you might say, I recite my kalima shahadah, I pray and I pay zakaat and I fast during Ramadan and I go on Hajj and that makes me a Muslim. Fair enough. But is that all? Is it enough? Is it really enough to do these things to be a Muslim? If that is so, then why is it that despite having so many good Muslims around, we still have so many serious problems in our communities? We have problems of domestic violence, gambling, drug and alcohol abuse, theft, burglary, fraud,… you name it, we Muslims have it. I know this is rather unpleasant stuff and maybe some of us don’t want to talk about it. But I opened my talk with a verse from the Holy Quran which tells us to speak a straightforward word, wa quooloo qawlan sadeedaa..” Anyone who still thinks that these problems don’t concern Muslims is either misinformed or in denial.

I’ll give you some details about that in a moment. Ask yourself, if we’re doing enough, then why do so many of our non-Muslim neighbours regard us with fear and suspicion? Why are we Muslims 3% of the UK population, but 10% of the prison population? Did you know that? We’re only 3% of the total population of Britain, but a whopping 10% of the prison population! True Muslims should be zero % in prison, but there you are! We have 3 times more criminals than the average for British society. And just in case you think these are mostly young men wrongly convicted of political or terrorist offences, think again! These are cases of drug dealing, theft, burglary, gang violence, robbery and fraud. Brothers and sisters, we Muslims do have a problem!

According to Abu Shuraih: The Prophet sws said, “By Allah, he does not believe! By Allah, he does not believe! By Allah, he does not believe!” This was repeated 3 times. The companions asked:, “Who is that, Ya Rasool Allah?” and he answered, “The person whose neighbour does not feel safe from his mischief” - Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Number 45

Remember that: We Muslims cannot be true believers if our neighbours live in fear of us, in fear of our evil deeds.

So what does it mean to be a Muslim, beyond praying, paying zakaat, fasting and going on Hajj? At least 17 times a day, when we pray, we say:

“Innas salaatee, wanusukee, wamahiyaayaa, wama-ma’tee, lil-Laahi Rabbil aalameen. La shareekala, wabithaalika umirtu wa ana aw-walil Muslimeen.”

“Surely my prayer, my sacrifice, my life and my death is for Allah, Lord of all the worlds. No partners has He, and I am the first of the Muslims.”

Wow! That’s heavy stuff, brothers and sisters! Did you know that’s what we say every time we stand up to pray? That’s a huge commitment! To be a Muslim is much more than just saying shahadah with the tongue. We must also feel the shahadah in our hearts, and show it in our actions! Many times a day, we repeat the words of Prophet Ibrahim, alayhis salaam. We declare that our whole life and death is for Allah alone. Therefore, every waking and sleeping moment should actually be filled with an awe-inspired awareness of His presence. In everything we do, we must remember that Allah is watching, constantly. We cannot see Allah, but He sees us.

“Laa tudrikuhul absaar, wahuwa yudrikul absaar”

“No vision can grasp Him, yet His grasp is over all vision.” (Sura An-‘Am 6:103)

Allah knows and sees everything, and he holds us all to account. He will not excuse us for turning a blind eye to the problems around us. We cannot live in a bubble of our own imagined purity and piety.

A Muslim cannot go from home to the mosque, ignoring the problems of his neighbours who are in need. He cannot ignore the homeless, the drug addicts, the pregnant teenagers, the gang warfare and crime in his or her neighbourhood. He or she cannot go back home from the mosque, ignoring the poor, the hungry, the widow and orphan. We cannot say this is not my business. The poor have a right over us. The widows and orphans have rights over us. Our neighbours have rights over us. They are so important that during the Farewell Pilgrimage some companions like Abu Umama said, they thought the Prophet sws would tell us to include our neighbours in our inheritance. Islam describes neighbours as being from near and far, and in one way or another, every human being on earth is a neighbour. Here is Sura An-Nisaa in verse 36:

“Serve Allah and do not join any partners with Him: and do good― to your parents, to relatives, orphans, those in need, neighbours who are near and neighbours who are strangers, the Companion by your side, the travellers and those whom your right hands possess: for Allah loves not the arrogant, those who are boastful and vain.”

The verse refers to neighbours who are near and neighbours who are strangers. It doesn’t say your Muslim neighbours only. We must do good to all neighbours, whether they are Christians, Jews, Sikhs or Hindus, or whether they have no religion. We are all human beings, bani Adam, children of Adam and Eve, created by Allah. If we truly love Allah, we must show respect and reverence to all His creatures. The differences between us are only small. We have many important beliefs in common.

One important belief in every major religion is the Golden Rule, which is also known as the Ethic of Reciprocity. Prophet Muhammad sws said that “A Believer is not a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” Most scholars interpret ‘brother’ in its widest sense, meaning all human beings, not just family brothers or Muslim brothers. Your Christian neighbour will tell you that Jesus, Nabi Isa, alayhis salaam, said “Do unto others as you would love them to do unto you. Love thy neighbour.” Your Chinese neighbours will tell you that Confucius said: “Hurt not others in ways that you would find hurtful.” Your Jewish neighbour would tell you that a student asked Rabbi Hillel to explain the whole Torah while standing on one leg. The Rabbi balanced himself on one leg, and said: “Love your neighbour as you love yourself. What is hateful to you, do not do to anyone else. That is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary. Now go on and finish your studies!”

My dear sisters and brothers, we Muslims have so much in common with our neighbours’ faiths that we can build excellent community relations with them, if only we had the will, the desire to do so.

One of the great lessons Prophet Muhammad taught us is to treat others with kindness, even if they are not friendly towards us. We must be proactive, not reactive. We must set the peace agenda. We must not allow the hostility of others to draw us into conflict and transgression and to behave unjustly towards them. Again read Sura Al Ma-idah v. 8:

5:8 O ye who believe! stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others towards you, make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to taqwa [piety]: and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do.

Our Prophet Muhammad sws was uswatul hasanah, an excellent role model throughout his life.

We all know the story of his neighbour who dropped rubbish on his doorstep every day. Did he get angry and lose his temper? Did he throw rubbish on her doorstep? Did he smash her windows, throw temper tantrums and call her kufaar? No, he did not. He simply cleaned up the mess without complaining, and carried on his daily business. One morning he found no rubbish there, so he went to visit his neighbour and found she was not well. Did he just walk away, or insult her or mock her and take revenge? No! He took care of her until she recovered. He was being a good neighbour. He had no time for bruised egos. He was setting an example for others. Allah softened her heart and she became a Muslim.

How many of us would treat a bad neighbour in this way?

When a silly cartoonist draws pictures of our prophet in Denmark, our ego, our lower nafs, al nafs al ammara bis sow, goes beserk. In our rage we lose our sense of reason. We take revenge on all Danish people, boycotting their products and burning their flag. Islam’s enemies know just which buttons to press to show Muslims in a bad light. When one deluded American preacher burns a few Qurans, some Muslims attack and kill aid workers in Afghanistan. We blame all Americans and all Danish people for insulting Islam. How crazy can we get? We forget that Denmark has always been one of the leading European countries campaigning for human rights. They supported the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa when other western countries were doing the opposite. We forget amazing Americans like Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while she protected Palestinian homes from destruction. When we burn American flags we also insult Rachel Corrie, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many other great Americans who inspired millions around the world. Where’s our hikma, our wisdom?

Brothers and sisters, in many ways we have confused ancient codes of tribal honour with the core values of Islam. Islam has nothing to do with our misguided sense of tribal behaviour. Islam came to liberate us from tribal warfare and ignorance. Sadly, some of us still have a long way to go. We must be honest with ourselves. We must hold up a mirror and take the advice of Caliph Sayyidna Omar, who advised us hold ourselves to account, before Allah brings us to account. We complain when some people hold all Muslims responsible for the 9/11 and 7/7 terror attacks. How can we then do exactly the same, by blaming all Americans and all Danish people for the actions of one or two misguided individuals? Are we really following the Prophetic Sunnah? Please, my dear brothers and sisters, let’s not be so hypocritical!

These days, we and our faith are constantly in the media spotlight, and mostly for the wrong reasons. But we shouldn’t worry too much about this. This is how it’s meant to be. Allah is fully in control of all His creation. History is still in good hands, it always has been: biyadikal khair. This is the challenge that Allah has decreed for us. We shouldn’t be afraid or defensive. We mustn’t behave like victims and adopt a victim mentality. This is Allah’s test for us. We shouldn’t panic. If we really want a slogan, we could say, “Don’t Panic, be Islamic.” Follow the Sunnah. Ignore the bad behaviour and temper tantrums. Seize the opportunity to show what Islam really is, by talking to our neighbours, explaining what the Quran teaches. This is a chance of real da’wah, calling others to Islam. Give them an English translation. Invite our neighbours to our homes, mosques and functions. Let them see Islam in practice. Let us be good living examples. We claim to be Muslims. We worship Ar-Rahman, the All Merciful. We begin everything we do in His glorious Names: Bismillahir-Rahmaanir-Raheem! In the Name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.” We follow his final Prophet Muhammad sws whom Allah Himself describes in the Holy Quran as Rahmatul-lil-Aalameen, a “Mercy to all the Worlds.”  Surely, if we are to be true to Allah and true to His Prophet, something of that Mercy, something of that radiance, that light, that luminosity of spirit, that golden afterglow will rub off on us? Surely, if we are sincere, truthful and generous-hearted Muslims, we can become guiding lights and good role models for our neighbours?

Brothers and sisters, I hope this explains a bit more clearly what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today.

Now, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to say a few words about our neighbours. We need to understand something of their background, their way of thinking, their hopes and fears so that we can relate to them in a positive and fruitful way.

Our British neighbours have memories of a great empire that ruled many Muslim lands. For 200 years, they were the white masters, and we were their brown-skinned subjects. Now we are equals, ex-colonial cousins living side by side. This takes time to accept. They also thought they were simply British, but then there was the European Union, so we all became Europeans. But some felt uneasy, so they looked for a comfort zone and became Scottish, Welsh, Irish and so forth. On top of this the EU expanded and we now have a huge influx of Polish and other East Europeans. There is something of an identity crisis.

We Muslims also have our own identity crisis. Are we British, Pakistani, Moroccan, Somali, Muslim or what? We don’t have time for a deep discussion on this topic. But it’s quite enough to say there is no real conflict in having many identities at once. Just as I can try to be a good husband, a father, a son, and uncle and grandfather, all at once, there is no contradiction. In the same way I can be a South African by birth, British by nationality, and Muslim by religion. No problem. No contradiction. The problem is only in someone else’s mind, if by British they mean you have to be a white Anglo Saxon Protestant or WASP. For short. We Muslims have to help our neighbours, take them gently by the hand, show them the common links between our identities. Being British and being Muslim also means being fair, being truthful, trustworthy, law-abiding citizens and helpful neighbours, being stoical, patient and dignified in times of hardship. What’s so different or difficult about that? In many ways, many British neighbours are closer to Islam than they or we realize. Many of them are more than 80% Muslim. All that’s missing is the shahadah. Sadly, many Muslims fall far short. That’s why we have so many more in prison than other communities.

Let us also understand that the wave of Islamophobia we see today is a merely a passing phase. It’s just another test from Allah. Islam always had enemies, right from the beginning, and probably right until the end, Yawmal quiyyaamah. Don’t worry. In hard times people look for scapegoats. Some politicians in shaky coalitions find easy votes by pandering to fear and prejudice. We must understand this and work hard to dispel the myths, to de-mystify Islam. We must show others what a beautiful way of life we are blessed with.

We have to step outside of our own prejudices, step out of our self imposed ghetto mindset. We have to understand that Allah has a reason for putting us here in this country at this time. We are to take responsibility for our neighbours, as good Muslims should. Our neighbours feel insecure, uncertain about themselves and their future. They wonder what part we Muslims have to play in their lives. It’s time for us to reassure them that we are not after political power or world domination. We have no hidden agendas. We may have come here for political asylum or for economic advancement. No problem with that. But we also have a duty to make our neighbourhoods safe and secure for everyone. That’s what being a complete Muslim, a true Believer, is all about.

Finally, I want to share with you one of my favourite verses from the Holy Quran, and one of my favourite Hadith from the life of Prophet Muhammad, sws.

Sura Al Hujuraat verse 13 says:

“O Mankind, We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know and respect each other (not that you should despise one another). Truly the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most best in good deeds”

What an eloquent explanation for the differences between us and our neighbours! We are all like flowers in Allah’s garden, each with its own distinctive colour and fragrance, each one beautiful in its own right. Our differences are not a sign of weakness or division, but a sign of Allah’s infinite creativity, His artistry is there for all of us to witness with a sense of reverence and wonder.

As a teenager I remember reading a Hadith that had an immediate impact on my heart, so that I never forgot it. I still repeat it to my children and grandchildren. It’s one of my favourite Hadith:

Prophet Muhammad sws once said that a Muslim is one from whose tongue and hands other Muslims are safe; and a Mu’min, [a true Believer] is one in whom all of mankind has an asylum, a safe haven, for life and property.

Imagine that, my dear Sisters and Brothers. We Muslims mustn’t only be safe from each other’s harmful words and actions. If we want to become true Believers, we have to become the truthful, trustworthy, safe pair of hands that every human being can turn towards in times of need. What an honour! What an awesome responsibility!

I pray that Allah will help you and me in our lifelong quest to become not merely good Muslims, but true Believers, good neighbours, primordially upright human beings and people who can inspire others to be better citizens of this great country.

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to relatives and to others [including neighbours]; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Thank you all for listening so patiently. If there is anything useful in what I have said, all good things come from Allah. If there are any mistakes, the fault is mine entirely, and I seek Allah’s forgiveness.

I will try to answer your questions, and if I cannot, I ask those who know better than I do, to help us with the answers

As-salaamu ‘alaikum.

TwoCircles.net, 5 May 2010

Most present-day ‘revolutionary’ Islamic movements have as their foremost priority the enforcement of the shariah as state law. Based on an extremely simplistic and romanticized vision, these movements believe that the cause for the decline of the Muslims, and, indeed, for all the manifold problems is the fact that Muslim societies and countries are presently not ruled by the shariah. Hence, they regard the imposition of the shariah as state law is the master-key, as it were, to solve all their problems. They take it as something that must at once be implemented by order of the state. They believe that when this happens, the Muslim ummah will once again walk on the path of progress, strength and glory and would, in fact, establish its domination all across the world.

It is undoubtedly true that the shariah exists in order to be implemented. It is also true that Islam is a way of life, and not simply a bundle of rituals to be followed by individuals in their personal lives. Islamic life must, indeed, be regulated by Islamic law and morality. If, for some reason, it is not possible for Muslims to abide by all shariah rules, or if some Muslims themselves choose not to do so, at the very least they ought to believe in them.

It cannot be denied that these very same ‘revolutionary’ Islamist groups are primarily to blame, through their words and deeds, for creating an image of Islam as a tyrannical or oppressive system, rather than as the source of mercy that it is, if it is interpreted properly. A good example in this regard is of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the name of enforcing the shariah, they sought to impose, using brute force, inflexible medieval fiqh rules on the hapless people of their land, both Muslims and others.. In contrast to what some simple-minded Islamists, swayed by emotionally-driven sloganeering, might think, the enforcement of the shariah in all spheres of society is far from being a simple matter. After all, this effort must deal with the fact of modern society being very complex and highly plural, consisting of people with different mentalities, outlooks and worldviews. For people to accept to be ruled by the shariah requires a long and gradual process of training and nurturing that will need to pass through various stages. Without going through these stages, trying to enforce the shariah would be like trying to produce a chick without an egg.

For any such movement to succeed it is, clearly, not enough that its leaders be motivated by sincerity and firm faith in God. After all, there have always existed such movements consisting of sincere believers, but most of them have not been able to succeed one bit in achieving their goals. The fact remains that efforts to establish the shariah must take cognizance of various factors, particularly various Islamic principles. One of these is the principle of gradualism. It was in reference to this point that Ayesha, the youngest wife of the Prophet, noted that in the beginning of the Prophet’s mission, those verses of the Quran were revealed to him that spoke of heaven and hell. After people repented of their ways and accepted Islam, and their capacity to follow divine commandments was strengthened, verses dealing with rules regarding forbidden (haram) and permissible (halal) things began to be revealed. Ayesha added that if, for instance, the commandment to abstain from alcohol had been revealed in the first stage itself, people would have refused to ever abide by it. Likewise, she said, if in the first stage the Quran had forbidden them from engaging in adultery, they would have insisted that they would never abandon it.

The Quran did not ban the consumption of alcohol in one go. Rather, this commandment was a gradual one, which passed through several stages. This point, and the statement of Ayesha mentioned above, well illustrates the principle of gradualism in seeking to establish the shariah. This principle is also clearly evident from the fact that when the son of the Caliph Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz asked him why he did not openly and directly crush strife and oppression and immediately impose shariah rules in this regard, he replied, ‘Son! Do not be in a hurry because God condemned the consumption of alcohol twice in the Quran and [only] on the third occasion declared it forbidden. I fear that if I try to make people follow the right path fully they might abandon the true path, leading to terrible strife.’

Another important Islamic principle that must be kept in mind when seeking to establish the shariah is that of properly choosing priorities. This is to say, one should be clear as to which issues need to be taken up and worked on first and which later. This principle is well illustrated in the life of the Prophet. Thus, in Mecca he focused only on inviting people to Islam and on spiritually nurturing his disciples. When some of his followers wanted to go to the Ka‘abah to pray, he advised them against it because, he said, the Muslims were still small in number. When he shifted to Medina, the Prophet focused all his energies on peaceful missionary work and on the moral, intellectual and spiritual training of new converts to Islam so that a community of Muslims could be formed qualified to fulfill the personal and collective responsibilities required of them by Islam. In this way, the Prophet exemplified the principle of setting priorities in his effort to establish the shariah.

A third key principle in this regard is to create ease when seeking to engage in some effort. This applies to efforts to establish the shariah as well. In this regard, the Prophet said, ‘Islam [din] is easy, and you [Muslims] have been sent as people who create ease, not those who create harshness and difficulties.’ This is why, for instance, the Prophet brought into the fold of Islam some people who insisted that they would not pay the zakat.

A fourth principle to be followed with regard to social reformation and the establishment of the shariah in society is to tolerate a lesser evil in place of a larger one. This principle was well exemplified by the Prophet, who did not reconstruct the Ka ‘abah on its original lines as laid down by the prophet Abraham, even though he could have done so after he returned to Mecca in victory and had gained full control over the town. When Ayesha asked him why he chose not to reconstruct the Ka‘abah on the pattern established by Abraham, he replied that her people (by which he meant the Meccan Quraish) had only recently become Muslims, and so they might resent it if he did so.

To bring a single wayward individual to the right path needs much time, tolerance, patience, and determination. How much more of all these is needed to reform an entire society or country can only be imagined.. Social change can come about only through the transformation of individuals, not through imposition of laws by the state on people against their will. This is what the Quran teaches us when it says:

‘Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change what is in their hearts’ (13: 11).

The conditions of today’s Muslims are such that even though they might believe in the shariah laws and in the need for their enforcement in political and collective affairs, their minds are not ready to accept this enforcement in practical terms. They do not want their entire lives to be guided and controlled by the shariah. That is why if an effort is made for this purpose they will be the first to revolt against it. The fate that met the movement launched by Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Shah Ismail is ample testimony to this—it was violently opposed by the very Muslims they sought to rule according to the shariah.

A crucial point that needs to be noted here is that many aspects of the available corpus of fiqh are in urgent need of review in the light of ijtihad. Without reviewing and suitably reformulating these prescriptions, efforts to establish the shariah (which is mistakenly seen by some as synonymous with traditional fiqh) are bound to fail. This, in turn, will give the shariah itself a bad name. To make the issue of establishing the shariah as state law even more complicated is the existence of different, sometimes competing, interpretations of the shariah that are upheld by different Muslim sects and schools of law. This is an issue that is yet to be resolved. Another crucial matter is to convince non-Muslims, not just through our claims but also in practice, that establishing theshariah will indeed lead to justice. The noted classical Islamic scholar Allah Ibn Taimiyah rightly remarked, ‘An infidel government that practices justice can survive, but a Muslim government cannot survive if it practices oppression.’ The pathetic state of various Muslim governments in power throughout the world today can be properly understood in the light of this assertion.

In today’s context, it is imperative that Islamic movements place the matter of the formal enforcement of the shariah at the end of their list of priorities, and, instead, focus on solving the various social ills that are so widespread and deeply-rooted in Muslim communities and countries—issues such as illiteracy, economic exploitation, mounting inequalities, corruption, gender injustice, gross violation of human rights, and so on. Among their foremost priorities should also be raising the awareness and intellectual standards of the people so as to enable them to think about issues rationally instead of being driven simply by emotions and empty sloganeering. In this way they will be able to make a major contribution in addressing and removing widespread misunderstandings about Islam and the Islamic shariah, and will also help pave the way for a meaningful establishment of the shariah in their societies.

Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based monthly Tarjuman Dar ul-Uloom, the official organ of the Graduates’ Association of the Deoband madrasa. He can be contacted onw.mazhari@gmail.com

Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.

This is abridged version of the article ‘Enforcing the Shariah: Some critical considerations’ by Maulana Waris Mazhari. The complete article can be accessed at:

http://www.twocircles.net/2010may05/enforcing_shariah_some_critical_considerations.html

The methods we use in sharing Islam are crucially important. Every gift deserves to be wrapped in the way that signifies its value. Our speech, our manner of sharing Islam is the wrapping. We cannot just preach Islam in a careless, clumsy or undignified way. Allah’s Word deserves the best presentation. This is what the Holy Quran has to say:

“Ud’oo ilaa sabeeli Rabbika bil hikmati wa maw idatul hasanah..”

(Sura An-Nahl 16:125)

“Invite to the Way of your Lord, with wisdom and beautiful speech.”

Wisdom and beautiful speech: What a combination! Wisdom and beautiful speech means, to be truthful, sincere and articulate, and always to be sensitive to the psychology of your audience. We must understand their prejudices, their fears and anxieties. We must take an audience-centred approach, not a speaker-centred approach. In other words, we must be less concerned with what we want to say, than with what our audience needs to know.

Being wise in spreading Islam does not mean trying to be ‘clever,’ using tricks and deception, making exaggerated claims or statements that cannot be verified. We should never use pressure tactics, or try to rush anyone to accept Islam. Islam does not need media makeovers or slick marketing strategies. … Islam is not a product to be sold or bargained with. Muslims who do the work of Da’wah are inviting people to make the most important decision of their lives. That’s a big responsibility. We should never behave like dodgy insurance salesmen, eager to sign up new business, whatever it takes…. Islam isn’t a sales commodity and we’re not running a ‘Shahadah factory.’ Taking Shahada is a serious business. It’s a life-changing decision that must be taken thoughtfully, with due consideration for the responsibility of becoming a Muslim. Don’t take it lightly and don’t expect others to take Islam lightly.

Instead of working so hard to convert others to Islam, perhaps we can spend more time helping the new Muslims to stay in Islam! One da’wah worker told me that his group had a 40% failure rate. That is, 40% of those who take shahadah actually leave Islam again between 6 to 12 months later. I was shocked! One might say, OK, at least 60% are still Muslims! But what about the remaining 40%? Are they still well disposed to Islam? Or do they tell others that they’ve tried Islam and it doesn’t work? It’s too difficult, or the Muslims talk beautifully about their religion, but they don’t practice what they preach. They don’t welcome others into their homes. They eagerly persuade you to take Shahadah then they forget about you. They might even say that they found Muslims can be very exclusive and racist. They don’t mix with people outside their own tribal or ethnic group…

If this is the price for clumsy da’wah work, then we must seriously reconsider whether we’re doing more harm than good.

Certainly, we should never pressurise anyone to take shahadah. That’s the wrong kind of da’wah. Remember, Allah’s Prophets were constantly reminded that their duty is only to convey the message. The Prophets had no say in who accepts and who rejects the message. They never used pressure, or emotional blackmail. We too must realize that Allah chooses whom He pleases to guide. We should not step beyond what Allah’s prophets were called on to do.

Even Prophet Muhammad sws was constantly reminded by Allah, not to be distressed if people refused Islam. His job was only to convey the message. Guidance comes from Allah alone, from no-one else. In every Jumu’ah the imam declares:

May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. (Sura Al Kahf 18:17)

“Those whom Allah chooses to guide, no one can lead astray; Those whom Allah leaves to stray, no one can guide…”

So remember, it’s not about numbers. It’s about quality. Throughout history, the great achievements of Islam had nothing to do with the size of the Muslim population. It had everything to do with the quality and calibre of individual people. Sincerity, Ikhlaas, is what really matters. We Muslims must be sincere in everything we do. We must be consistent in our thoughts, words and actions. Inwardly and outwardly, Zahir and Batin, we must be made of the same substance. There should be no difference between our private views and our public pronouncements.

Even if modern politics and diplomacy is rife with double-speak, this is not good enough for Muslims who follow the prophetic Sunnah. We should never be guilty of speaking with a ‘forked tongue.’ That’s hypocrisy. Hypocrites are fuel for the hottest parts of hellfire. Sura Al Baqara warns us to “Beware of the fire whose fuel is men and stones,” (Quran 2:24)

Those who take on the responsibility of persuading others to enter Islam should also keep regular contact with their new brothers and sisters. You can’t just urge someone to make a life changing decision, then simply walk away and forget about them…

If we want to spread the message of Islam, we must be critically aware of the consequences of our actions. We must realize that while Islam has the power to transform a society from the outside, it must also improve us from the inside. We must be willing to hold up a mirror, to see our own faults and to have the courage to tackle them and to purify ourselves, inwardly and outwardly. This is how we can acquire a qalb saleem, a sound heart that is pleasing to Allah, and inspiring to others around us.

The most eloquent proof of Islam is to be a good living example. More powerful than the best planned da’wah effort is the behaviour of an individual Muslim whose good conduct inspires others in a life-changing way. This is unplanned da’wah, just being yourself; being true to yourself, being true to your beliefs and values, being true to Allah, and not trying so hard to impress people.

I’ve heard of many beautiful stories about this kind of unintentional da’wah but we have time for only one or two examples.

Some years ago a BBC reporter was covering the floods in Bangladesh. He hired a ‘river taxi’ in other words, a man with a boat, who took him from one flooded village to another. Around midday, this poor boatman tied his boat to a jetty and said: “Sir, I have another appointment. It will only take 10 minutes. I can’t miss it. Just wait here, please. I’ll be back in 10 minutes. I promise!”

The journalist was irate. “No, you’re not going anywhere! I paid you for a full day’s work. I’m not letting you run off to do other things in my time!” The more the boatman pleaded, the more determinedly the reporter held his ground. Finally, the poor fellow opened his bag, took out his customer’s money and said, “Sir, I really cannot miss this appointment. If you like, you can take your money and find yourself another taxi.”

To find another taxi would involve so much hassle. With a sigh of resignation, the reporter said: “Oh, go on, but hurry up and get back here in 15 minutes!” He watched the boatman walk along the riverbank and enter a nearby mosque… Only then did he realise that the man simply wanted to do his midday prayers!

When he had completed his prayers, the boatman returned with a cheerful “OK Sir, I’m all yours now.” They continued down the river, filming from village to village until the reporter’s work was done.

The BBC reporter returned home but somehow he could never forget that boatman in Bangladesh. How many people would risk losing a whole day’s cash earnings, perhaps his only earnings for several days, just in order to do his prayers on time? What tenacity, what sincerity, what faith! The memory lingered on. Its impact was unforgettable and ultimately life-changing.

Years later, this BBC reporter embraced Islam. He took shahadah directly as a result of his experience in Bangladesh. A simple river taxi, a poor boatman whose appointment with Allah was more important than the money for his daily bread…

Talking of bread, I have another inspiring story of unintentional dawah.

On a recent visit to South Africa, I was listening to a talk show on the car radio. One man called in to give his story. It went something like this…

“Some years ago I had a serious problem with gambling and drinking. I lost my home, my wife and my family. Homeless, down and out, I started begging and wandering the streets. It was unusual for a white person like me, because Apartheid made things so easy for white people.

One night I met a Coloured [mixed race] guy who had the same sad story. We shared our last bottle of brandy. We were both very hungry. So we turned out our pockets to see what money we had left, just enough to buy one sandwich. He said: “There’s a white restaurant  over there. You go and buy a sandwich. We can share it. They won’t let me in.” . So, I bought a sandwich and came back to share it with him. I gave him his half and started eating mine. We were both famished. He sat there, opened his half sandwich and asked me, what’s in it? I said, “bacon.” He closed the sandwich and handed it back to me. “No thanks, you have it,” he said. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I can’t eat that,” he replied, “it’s not halaal for me. I’m a Muslim.  Then he just stood up and walked away. I never saw him again.

I was puzzled. But I was also hungry so I ate his half sandwich. As time passed, I slowly rebuilt my life, but somehow I could never forget this incident. For years this memory haunted me. Imagine, a man loses everything, his home, his family, his whole life is messed up because of his addiction to alcohol and gambling. He hasn’t eaten for days, and when he finally gets something to eat he refuses it because he’s a Muslim and he won’t touch a  bacon sandwich! This man was such a contradiction, and yet I admired his integrity. Gambling and alcohol were his weakness, but that bacon sandwich was just one step too far. He wouldn’t cross that line!

I started to wonder about his religion. It had a powerful influence on him. I had to find out more about Islam.  Soon I got some books and I started reading…

Today, ten years after that fateful encounter, I am a Muslim. Alhamdulillah. My name is Yusuf, and I just phoned in to your program to tell you my story. If this man is still alive, if he’s listening, I don’t even know his name, I just want to say thank you for not eating that bacon sandwich. You faith, you iman, touched my heart that day. Remembering that simple act is what brought me to Islam.  Allah has opened my heart to Islam through a homeless, drunken, vagrant gambler like me. I pray that Allah will forgive us both. I pray that Allah  will help you find your way back to the safety of your religion. Jazakalallah kharan. As-salaamu’alaykum.

I hope that we can all learn from these two real-life examples. We have no power to guide anyone. Allah chooses whom he pleases. If Allah considers us worthy, He may use us as instruments through whom others may be guided. That will be the greatest honour. We should simply focus on our main task: explaining simply and showing by our own living example, what it means to be a Muslim.

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.`

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

What can we learn from the momentous events that are now unfolding across North Africa and the Middle East? The full impact of what is happening there has yet to be assessed. In the meantime, some important lessons are emerging: Firstly, our rulers should serve their people; People should not be expected to serve their rulers. Sadly, some Muslim rulers see themselves as modern Pharaohs, running their countries like a greedy family business. They have modest beginnings and end up as multi-billionaires, This is absolutely wrong. If you read the Quran and follow the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad, you will see what an enormous responsibility lies on the shoulders of a ruler.

The Quran does not tell us in detail what a Halal government should look like: whether it should be a monarchy, a republic or a parliamentary democracy. After the death of Prophet Muhammad sws his pious Companions, the sahaaba, established a system of leadership known as the Caliphate. The leader or Caliph was responsible for the well being of all Muslims all over the world, as well as for the wellbeing of non-Muslims who live in Muslim lands. The Caliph has to be elected, and has to refer to the Quran and the prophetic examples for guidance. He has no right to appoint his own family as his successors. Muslim rulers should remember that they are there to serve the greater good of human society, not to serve their own personal whims and caprices. They must always guarantee freedom and justice for everyone.

At the end of every khutbah we hear these words: “Innal-laaha ya’muru bil ‘adl” “Allah commands justice…” It’s not an option or an afterthought. Justice is imperative: it’s the absolutely irreducible minimum, non-negotiable element of society. A civilized human society is built on Justice. Later the Quran also says:

“Obey Allah, and obey His Messenger, and those charged with authority over you.”[Quran chapter 4:v53]

Hence first Caliph, Sayiddna Abu Bakr, when he was appointed Ameerul Mu’mineen, Commander of the Faithful, he famously declared:

“O Muslims, follow me as long as I follow Allah and His Prophet. If I should deviate from that, I no longer have any right to your obedience.”

Leadership is all about accountability. A Muslim leader is accountable not only to those he leads, but also to Allah. It is with Allah’s permission that we achieve anything. We must realise that He will hold us to account. The 2^nd Caliph, Sayyidna Omar, gave this wise advice:

“Take account of yourself, before you are brought to account.” Caliph Omar was so diligent in his responsibilities. He once said that while he was ruling in Madinah, he was so worried that if a donkey trips and injures itself in Baghdad because of a pothole in the road, Allah will hold him accountable for negligence. Imagine that! How many leaders, Muslim or otherwise, could match Sayyidna Omar’s sense of responsibility? No wonder he and the other 3 original Caliphs will always be known as the Khilaafat ar-raashidun, the rightly-guided Caliphate.

In Islam, good rulers never seek power and authority. A good ruler is someone who is chosen by his people, and who accepts it humbly and reluctantly. The worst rulers are those who crave power, who are too eager to get the top job. They usually want to rule for the wrong reasons.

Another clear lesson from the events in North Africa: Allah’s decree is swift and decisive. In human terms we sometimes feel we are waiting almost to the point of despair, for relief from oppression. The Egyptians and Libyans have waited for 30-40 years, ruled by tyrants using brute force, and the end of their suffering is not yet clearly in sight. But Allah is fully in control over every detail in His creation. If we endure the test that Allah has presented before us, if we show determination, untiring effort, patience and reliance on His Mercy, then He will reward us. That we must believe for certain.

“Or do you think that you will enter Heaven without being tested like those who were tested before you? They endured suffering and adversity, and were so shaken in spirit that even the Prophet and those of faith who were with him cried: ‘When will the help of Allah come?’ Ah! Truly, Allah’s help is always near!”

“Ala! Inna nasral-Laahi qareeb!” (Quran 2:214)

Never forget that Allah is constantly watchful over His creation, and that nothing escapes his attention, even our most secret, unspoken thoughts. “’Aalimul ghayb wash-shahaadah,” He knows all things, both secret and open, and everything is perfectly under His control, under His authority. People rise from obscurity to power and fame by Allah’s permission, and they fall from power and grace into humiliation, by Allah’s permission. His decree is irresistible, His power is absolute, yet, Allah’s intentions for His creation are always, unfailingly good. Read Sura Al-Imraan, verses 26-29:

“Qulil-laah humma maalikal mulki tu’til mulka man-tashaa’u watanzi-ul mulka mim-man-tashaa’, Wa tu’izzu man-tashaa’ watuzillu man-tashaa’ Biyadikal khair. Innaka ‘alaa kulli shay-in qadeer! [Sura Al-‘Imraan 3:27]

“Say: ‘O Allah, Sovereign of all dominion, You grant dominion to whom You will and take dominion away from whom You will. You exalt whom You will and abase whom You will. In Your hand is all that is good. You are able to do all things”. (Al-Imran, Verse 26)…”

We Muslims must have faith that ultimately everything is safe in Allah’s loving care. When Allah decrees a thing, he only has to say:

“Kun! Faya kuun..” Be! And it is!

Once people have broken through the fear barrier, nothing can stop them. When people no longer fear injury or death, they become a force to be reckoned with. Victor Hugo wrote, a hundred years ago, that: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”  Today in North Africa and the Middle East, Freedom is the idea. The desire for freedom can defeat the mightiest armies. Let us pray that our brothers and sisters, who have suffered so hard for so long, will soon enjoy the freedoms that we in this country enjoy and sometimes take for granted. Ameen.

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My dear sisters and brothers,

We are all leaders of one kind or another. In our families, in our business or workplace, in our sports and social circles, we are called upon to lead others at some time in our lives. How do we exercise that authority, so that we promote the greater good, in a way that pleases Allah? We have seen clearly on the news these days, how bad things can get when leaders lose sight of their role as servants of their people, and they delude themselves into thinking that by some divine right, they have become the masters, to be served by others.

If we always hold ourselves to account, if we constantly monitor our inward state, the state of the heart, we can keep our greed, our ego and vanity, our lower passions in check. No person is born evil. The path from innocence to evil is a slippery one that begins with a little forgetfulness and distraction.

Only Dhikr, constant, loving, passionate remembrance of Allah is what polishes the heart and keeps it free of evil inclinations. Dhikr removes the rust of forgetfulness and distraction that can lead us to do wrong. That’s the secret. That’s the way we keep our hearts pure. That’s how we can prevent ourselves from sliding down the slippery slope that leads us away from Allah’s protecting Mercy and Grace. That’s what ultimately will protect us from hellfire: Dhikr, remembering Allah.

A scholar once said that the jihad-al-nafs, the struggle for inward purification, is what takes the spearhead out of the hands of a madman. That metaphor of course applied to bygone times. Nowadays we could say that constant Dhikr is what takes the gun or the bomb out of the hands of a madman. Without this crucial inward struggle, as leaders we risk simply becoming fools, tyrants and mass murderers.

Let us all remember Prophet Muhammad’s advice to his soldiers when they returned from a battle:

“You have now returned from the lesser Jihad. Now you must battle with the greater Jihad.”

He was of course, referring to the battle with one’s own demons, deep within our hearts: the battle to subdue our own greed, our envy, anger, lust and all the inclinations of the lower nafs, the nafs-al-ammara bis sow. That’s the nafs that inclines towards evil.

If the Muslim world of the future to be spared the corruption and tyranny we have seen for so long, then we must prepare ourselves for a different kind of leadership. Who knows, perhaps a future Muslim leader may well be right here today amongst us in this Jumuah! Allah alone knows! Let us therefore be prepared. Let us also remember that:

Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves, (i.e. what is withing their hearts). (Sura Al Anfaal 8:53)

And, ultimately, no one shall enter Allah’s garden, except those with a sound heart, qalb saleem. Let us constantly purify our hearts, by remembering Allah constantly, lovingly, in Dhikr.

Let  us take our leadership roles seriously, whether we lead a student group, a family, a big business or a nation. Big or small, we are all Caliphs, trustees of whatever Allah has placed in our trust. We must hold ourselves accountable, before we are brought to account.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.

by Arshad Gamiet

Slough Town Hall, Slough, Berkshire, UK  Sunday 18^th April 2010

“Should we look up to the Government for everything or can strong family ties resolve our problems? How does faith in God, accountability and the life to come affect our relationships?”

A-oothu bilLaahi minash shaytaanir rajeem. Bismil-Laahir Rahmanir Rahim!

My dear friends, As-salaamu’alaykum, I greet you in the traditional Islamic way, which in Arabic means, Peace be with you!

Let me begin by saying that every major world faith promotes the Golden Rule, the ethic of reciprocity, of “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Islam is no exception, and Prophet Muhammad taught us that “a Believer is not a Believer until he desires for others what he desires for himself.” Good, healthy human relationships begin with our attitude. Where do we place ourselves in relation to others, and in the wider scheme of things?

In the modern world, we live in a ‘me’ centred universe, where the Ego is king. We seem to have lost the balance between our personal self-interest and our communal wellbeing. Powerful economic forces are at work here. Media moguls spend millions pandering to our lowest instincts in order to sell their tabloids and to promote their political agenda. Politicians are more concerned with the next election that with the next generation. The advertisers, those hidden persuaders, deploy every trick they know, to massage our fragile egos. From billboards and TV to radio and print media, our senses are under constant bombardment: “It’s your life. It’s your choice, go on, spoil yourself, indulge yourself, because you’re worth it….” The adverts urge us to “unlock the equity in your home…” as if the equity is trapped in there, struggling to get out and so we can spend, spend spend… Billion-dollar industries exploit our greed, our human insecurities and our vanity. We’re constantly urged to buy things we don’t need, at a price we can’t afford, with money we don’t even have. We treat Planet Earth, the only home we and our future generations will ever know, as if it’s just a giant shopping mall orbiting the sun.

Our credit card debts in the UK are now over £1 trillion. We spend, spend, spend but somehow real, lasting happiness is as elusive as ever. Family life as we used to know it in more frugal times has become an endangered species. Teenage pregnancies, single parent families, high divorce rates, loneliness, poor mental health, alcohol and drug abuse, knife crimes and gang warfare tell us a sad story. No wonder our human relationships are in disarray. How can we mend our society?

Islam teaches me, as a Muslim, to put things into perspective. I cannot live in a ‘me’ centred way. Nothing really belongs to me, not even my own body. I came into this world with nothing and I will leave it with nothing except the result of my actions, good and bad. My life, my health, my family and all my material possessions have been loaned to me as a Trust. I am a trustee, and I must take good care of everything under my control. My generous Creator will hold me to account. This life is not all that there is. Death is not the final curtain. It’s only a transitional stage to another state of being. When I die, my body will turn to dust, decomposing into its constituent elements, the gases and liquids, the calcium and magnesium and carbon, returning to the earth whence it came. But my soul will not die. My soul is the real ‘me,’ that indestructible ‘breath of God’ that was inspired into my body when I was born. That soul will endure, and it will bear witness to what I did in this life. My lifelong struggle is to rise above my ego in order to purify my soul and to return it to its rightful owner in a pristine, factory-perfect condition.

If I look around me and if I reflect deeply on my life, I will find that I have so much to be thankful for. And that’s really all that my Benefactor wants from me: To say thank you; to acknowledge Him and to show my gratitude through big and small acts of kindness to others.  This is what ‘worship’ actually means in Islam. It’s not about growing a long beard and wearing holy robes, praying in the mosque all day. Worship is about translating God’s love into actions that benefit others. Muslims call their benefactor Allah, but you may call Him God, or Deus, or Yahweh, or whatever Holy Name you choose. Allah is not the god of Muslims only. It’s the Arabic name for God and it’s important to know that if you read the Arabic Bible, you’ll find that Christian Arabs also worship Allah.

Muslims are told that life is a gift, that everything we have is a gift, on loan, on trust. We have an awesome responsibility to discharge that trust faithfully. So, instead living in a ‘me’ centred universe, instead of banging on about our rights and demanding more and more, we should be taking responsibility: taking responsibility for ourselves, for our families, taking responsibility for our communities. We should be eagerly serving others and adding value to our society and we should work hard also to protect our natural environment.

To put it simply, Islam teaches me to look at the world in 3 dimensions. There’s a lot of hype about 3D films and 3D TV these days, but that’s something else. As a Muslim, I do not just see myself and the world out there in a 2-dimensional way, me and everything around me. That’s not all that there is. I must be constantly aware of a Reality that lies beyond the threshold of our five senses. I must be constantly aware of God, aware of Allah’s watchful, loving and merciful presence. It’s me and everything out there, AND Allah watching over all his creatures. It’s a kind of triangulation, a 3-dimensional relationship. Even though I cannot see Allah, I know Allah sees me. He observes my interaction with others. This is the essence of my faith. And this is the bedrock of all my relationships: with people, with animals and plants, with the earth that nourishes us, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Islam promotes a strong environmental ethic.

A caring attitude will earn me my Lord’s good pleasure, and it will improve and add value to all my relationships.

At the human level Islam teaches me not to fear diversity but to accept it as a sign of God’s infinite creativity and artistry. We are all like flowers in God’s garden. We are beautiful each in our own way. We must learn to accept our differences and celebrate our common humanity.

To show kindness to other people and to respect other religions is a way of showing courtesy to God. This is the essence of inter-personal relationships in Islam. The Holy Quran tells us in a very inspiring verse:

“O mankind, I have created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and I made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know and respect one another, not that you should despise one another. Surely, the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah are those who are best in good conduct. And Allah is well aware of all things.”  [sura Al Hujurat Ch49v13]

To sum up, remember the universal ethic of reciprocity, the bedrock of all true faith, of desiring for others what we desire for ourselves. Let us be the first to take responsibility, be the first to love and the fist to forgive. We owe it to our children and to future generations.

Thank you all for listening so patiently.

By: Waheeduddin Ahmed Ph.D.

It all began with these words “— falyablighi al-shahidu al-ghaiba — It is incumbent on those who are present to convey this to those who are absent” (The prophet’s sermon in Hajjatul Wida, the last Hajj, Bukhari: II, 132:795). Then those who were present got up, pulled their cloaks and blankets about them and spread out to distant lands. His message was neither about conquests, nor about Rome and Persia but a social message for the purification of souls and the reformation of mankind. The Quran and the Sunnah, such as the one quoted, illumined their path. Some ended up in the land of Caesar Heraclius, some in Malabar and some in even China. Armies, which were perhaps marching along the same routes did not necessarily have the same motivation, synchronous but not synergetic. The armies were the forces of history and the pioneers of a civilization, they, the emissaries of the Prophet and the forbearers of a universal brotherhood. The Quran had given them clear instructions about their mission: “kuntum khaira ummatin ukhrijat linnasi, tamuroona bilmarufi wa tanhouna anilmunkari wa tuminoona bi-Allah — You are the best of nations sent out to people, (because) you enjoin good and forbid evil and you believe in Allah” (Quran 3:110). They were told not only what to do but how to do it: “Ud’u ila sabeeli Rabbika bi al-hikmati wa al-mouizati al-hasanah — Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching” (Quran 16:125). “Wa man ahsana qaulan min man da’a ila- Allahi, amila salihan wa qala innani min al-muslimeen — And who is better in speech than the one who invited (people) to Allah, did good deeds and declared: ‘Indeed I am from those who have submitted to Allah?” (Quran 41:33). As anyone can see, the sword is not mentioned in any of these instructions from Allah, nor from the Messenger. The sword and the Quran have an obvious disconnect here.

The conquests had their own momentum. They proceeded with a lightning speed and enveloped three continents. Uqba Ibn Nafi, reaching the west shore of Africa plunged his horse into the Atlantic Ocean with glee thinking that he had reached the end of the world, an act, which Iqbal alluded to in his Shikwah:

[Dasht to dasht hain darya bhi na chore hamne. Bahre Zulmat men dauradie ghore ham ne]

(Deserts are but deserts, waters stopped us not. In the Sea of Darkness did our horses trot.)

However, conversions lagged centuries behind because their dynamics were far too different. Let us consider some statistics as illustration: The battle of Yarmuk took place in 637 A.D. opening up Syria for Muslims but the country had a Christian majority until the Mongol invasion (1244-1323A.D.). Likewise, the battle of al-Qadisiya, which took place in the same year, laid the vast territories of the Sasanian empire open to Muslims. No mass conversions immediately followed. In fact, the Muslim population in Iran reached only 40% in the mid-Ninth century and not until the end of the Eleventh century did it reach about 80%. In Egypt, it took Muslims four centuries to attain a majority. In the Malay Archipelago, Arab traders had started settling from the time of Khalifa Othman (646-656 A.D.) en route to China, as evidenced by the tombstones that have been excavated. However, when Marco Polo visited the region in 1292 A.D., he found only one Muslim kingdom out of many non-Muslim ones. Ibn Battuta’s visit a few years later has also confirmed this. In fact there was a gradual process of social intercourse in which Islam supplanted Hinduism and Buddhism, becoming a dominant religion by the end of Eighteenth century. It still left the island of Bali predominantly Hindu. Thus Malaysia and Indonesia are the shining examples of non-coercion in the propagation of Islam as a religion. In India, Muslim rule spanned twelve centuries and yet by the end of that period, the Muslim population stood at only 25%.

The process of conversion is complex and is not amenable to rational analysis using simple historiography as a tool. It needs the genius of Ibn Khaldun, rather than the narrative skill of Al-Tabari to unravel history in its true colors hidden under the debris of wars and conflicts. Among the various factors involved in conversion, we may consider: theology, ritual practices, ethics, law, economic incentives, societal mores, intellectual prowess and occasionally political pressure too. If theological discourse was the only factor, Islam could have easily prevailed over the Trinitarian concepts of the Christians, the Dualism of the Zoroastrians, the Atheism of the Buddhists and the Polytheism of the Hindus but intellectual debates and documents rarely engage a lay person’s mind. It is the totality of the religious practices, the faith and the morality manifest in actions, which attract people’s attention. History records some very odd reasons too. When the Portuguese conquered Goa, it was not the promise of salvation, which made Christianity triumph but the spectacle of pomp and glamour, the colorful costumes of the priests, their liturgy and the whiteness of their skin, which caught people’s fascination and made them submit to the Lord Savior.

In the Byzantine Empire, dogmatic conflicts within Christianity, persecution of sects, which were out of favor with the Popes or the emperors were largely responsible for opening up the countries for Muslims. The populations accorded the invaders, in most cases, a warm welcome, who in turn demonstrated good governance, religious tolerance, justice and fair play to win the people’s approval.

In India, low caste Hindus saw their chance of emancipation in converting to Islam. On the other hand, the high caste Hindus found that they could lose their social privileges in the egalitarian community of Muslims if they converted; so they largely abstained. However, some of them like the Kaests and the Khatris adopted the Islamic culture, while steadfastly adhering to the Hindu Dharma. Raja Todar Mal of Akbar’s court and Maharaja Kishen Pershad, a wazir of the Nizam are examples. The first president of independent India Dr. Rajendra Prasad’s primary education had taken place in a madrasa, where, he had learned Persian among other things.

In the final analysis, it was not the scholar but the saint, who was instrumental in inculcating the faith. It was not the articulation of dogmas but the luminescence of virtue, which brought light into the lives of the people. In other words, it was not the rhetoric but action which met with success. Those who shared the burden of survival, the daily pains of living and the routine trials and tribulations with their neighbors were the ones, who by demonstrating the strength of their character as Muslims exerted influence on others.  Khaja Moinuddin Chishti is reported to have urged upon his disciples “to develop river-like generosity, sun-like affection and earth-like hospitality”. “The highest form of devotion”, he said “is to redress the misery of those who are in distress — to fulfill the needs of the helpless and to feed the hungry.” This is a formula, which worked in the past and will work in the present circumstance.

In America, black people were attracted to Islam, basically for two reasons: to find a group identity, based on pride, which would help them fight against oppression and secondly to extricate themselves from what they saw as Christian hypocrisy in “love thy neighbor” (as long as he is of the same race). On the other hand, they saw in Islam a strong message of universal brotherhood and a chance to draw solidarity and moral prowess from it, which could energize them in their fight against injustice. How far the Muslims of America, the immigrants in particular, have been able to live up to this expectation is the burning question of the day!

To sum up, we can say that Islam spread, because it had to. The river flows down the slope and in doing so, creates its own contours and landscapes. We can also describe the process in Huntington’s words as “clash of civilizations”. The Islamic civilization in its heyday collided with various other civilizations, overpowering, sometimes overwhelming the weaker of them but finding stubborn resistance from those with strong intellectual and cultural traditions. However, the conversion of Persia seems to be an anomaly. This very fertile and vitriolic civilization transformed itself by first dissipating and then coalescing within Islam to impact it in all its intellectual avenues and cultural manifestations as no other civilization has done.

Today, the Islamic civilization is at its lowest point in history, while progress is erupting all around the Muslim world with unprecedented vehemence. Muslims now stand in the wilderness, distraught and destitute, leaderless, oppressed from within and pressured from without. They are lashing out in frustration, throwing bombs in every direction and upon themselves. In Western Europe and North America where Islam was making great inroads only a decade ago, Muslims have been put on the defensive. Islam and terrorism is an exercise in word association, an addendum for psychologists.

We cannot counter these defamatory tactics unless we correctly read the enemy’s mind and then choose the right strategy. The root of the conflicts is in the occupation of lands and subjugation and exploitation of people by the western neo-imperialist powers, using as they always do, the rulers of those lands as their agents. It is not too difficult to see that any people under these circumstances, Muslims or non-Muslims, Jews or Gentiles would rise up in revolt. Hit by armies, navies and air forces they would hit back with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on. The conflicts always have a geographical context and a specificity of human groupings. Unfortunately, in the times that we are living; almost all the people at the receiving end of oppression happen to be Muslims. They are the ones who are fighting back. The enemy has found it enormously useful and profitable to put a label on them: “Islamic militants” to prejudice the minds of those who might otherwise support a just cause. The “militants” failed to see how cleverly they were being manipulated and willingly became stereotypes. The Islamic leadership, from the scholars to the politicians failed to counter the move and went along with it. Voices raised in protest were feeble and drowned in the drumbeat of “jihad”. We had no answer to the cunning; such a pity that Muslims do not have a Machiavelli or a Chankia of their own.

I suggest that in order to regain the initiative in the Islamic movement, particularly in the area of dissemination, we must do two things: First, disengage Islam from the so-called “jihad”— Remember jihad was also used by the C.I.A. as a weapon in Afghanistan. The conflicts involving Muslims and the West are in the nature of “just wars”. Let us bring them back in that category, where they belong. People who are fighting these wars have a duty to their cause. Their weapons are their options. Others may support or oppose them, depending upon their political orientations. They may condone or condemn the choice of weapons according to their conscience but let the Islamists most emphatically disengage from this conflict and pay attention to the articulation and propagation of Islam. Let us change the posters at the storefront!

Secondly, in the perspective of the post-nine-eleven America and the negative unmitigated propaganda unleashed against Islam, the efficacy of articulation has greatly diminished. People must now see Islam in action, not hear or read about it. Great effort and resources need to be put in the humanitarian side of Islam, as Khaja Moinuddin Chishti has urged upon Muslims to do. He succeeded against tremendous odds and Insha-Allah we will too.

There is another very serious problem we are seeing today. In America, when Islam was first introduced, it was a pristine religion, pure and simple like in the days of the Sahaba. It did not have time to undergo centuries of pollution, schisms and diversions as in the Old World. Immigrants from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent are now working to drag the New Muslims into their courtyard, where everyone is either: Sufi, Salafi, Devbandi or Barelwi and where people are vociferously slandering each other and where Muslims without labels are unwanted guests. The New Muslims caught in this melee are nowhere to turn. The clannishness of the Arabs and the class consciousness of the Indo-Pakistanis are posing another problem. The images of Sunnis and the Shias blowing each other up in Iraq and Pakistan are ubiquitous and cannot be hidden from those who are invited to the party. They are at the back of their minds when they are gazing at our Da’is giving them lectures. If Muslims cannot rise to this emergency, they will be doomed to eternal ignominy.

One World

Arshad Gamiet/Royal Holloway University of London/4th March 2011

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Royal Holloway is participating in One World Week. This week promotes the idea of mutual respect and appreciation of people from different cultures and ethnicities. Our khutbah today will briefly touch on this theme. It’s a big topic and we only have about 20 minutes.

Muslims are probably more aware than most people of how dangerously polarized the world has become. High technology and global economics has broken down national barriers. The wide world has shrunken to a global village, but it has also thrown people into a crisis of identity. Now that we’re all Europeans, for example, some of us aren’t quite sure if we’re still British, or Welsh or Scottish or English, and in which order of priority? What’s more important? What comes first? And, does it really matter? Politicians in shaky alliances are looking for easy support by stoking these deep rooted fears, targeting immigrants, Muslims and other people of colour. Racism and xenophobia often go hand in hand. People are hated just because they are different. Older Jewish people who remember Germany in the 1930s will know that the distance between hating others and throwing them into a holocaust of gas chambers is a very short road.

Unscrupulous politicians, helped by unprincipled journalists, may win a few more votes at the next election but they risk creating a dangerously fragmented society that might take generations to heal. This I know from personal experience. I grew up in South Africa under the evil Apartheid system. The brutality of legalised racism took a few short years to implement, but the damage is still with us.

What does Islam have to say on the subject? I will take just two examples, one from the Holy Quran, and the other from the life of Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be on him.

There is a very beautiful verse in Sura Al Hujuraat, which sums up Islam’s view on multiculturalism in a poetic and succinct way. It says:

“O Mankind, We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know (and respect) each other, not that you should despise one another. Truly the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah are those who are foremost in good deeds.”

(Quran 49:13).

Note the Quran does not say, O Muslims, or O Arabs, or O Pakistanis or O British people. It says, O Mankind, O Human beings!. It addresses us as a species, the human family. It reminds us that we have descended from common parents, Adam and Eve, the primordial human ancestors. Our differences of culture, race and language are superficial. They are there simply to let us wonder in sheer amazement at God’s infinite artistry and creativity. Our differences must be celebrated, enjoyed. They are not an excuse for Pride or arrogance. All over Europe and even here in Britain we face serious problems of violent xenophobia and racism, where differences are exploited to promote fear and hate. We Muslims have become the main targets of this destructive process.

Islam stresses our common humanity, and appeals to our higher instincts of love, truth and justice.

The Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be on him, was the living Quran. His life example illustrated how people of different backgrounds can live peacefully together. In the last days of his life, he delivered a sermon, his final sermon, in which he set out Islam’s own view of human rights. This is an extract from his sermon:

“O People, your life and property is a sacred trust. Remember that you will indeed appear before God and answer for your actions… “

“O people, your wives have rights over you and you have rights over them. Treat them well and be kind to them for they are your partners and helpers….”

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor does a non-Arab have any superiority over an Arab. A white person  has no superiority over a black person, nor does a black person have any superiority over a white person, except by God-consciousness and good actions…”

“Know that every Muslim is a brother and sister to every other Muslim . You are now one brotherhood, one family of believers. ..”

This sermon is Islam’s declaration of Human Rights, delivered in 7^th Century Arabia. Nothing comparable was produced until the United Nations Declaration of Human rights in 1948…. over 1,300 years later!

We Muslims are very fortunate, to have such clear guidance from our primary sources, the Quran and the Prophetic Sunnah, on this crucial way in which people should regard human diversity.

Despite our many superficial differences, beneath the skin we are all basically the same. Did you know that if the whitest Caucasian patient lies desperately in need of a blood transfusion in hospital, his family, his friends and neighbours might be powerless to help him if they had the wrong blood type? Yet this very same white patient could be saved by the blood of the blackest African on the planet, if their blood types matched! Amazing! Our physical differences are only skin deep! We are more deeply and closely connected to one another than we think!

Imagine that you’re standing beside a flooded river. The strong current is sweeping down and you hear someone shouting for help, desperately struggling and reaching out to you. You have a rope and a lifebelt lying at your feet. What do you do? Do you first ask him whether he’s Muslim, Jewish, British, Christian, whether he’s a legal or illegal immigrant? For God’s sake, NO! You don’t ask questions. You just throw him a lifeline. You save a life! That could be you or one of your loved ones waiting to be saved! No time for silly questions, just throw the rope and save a life!

That’s really how the Holy Quran addresses its readers. It’s a lifeline to misguided humanity. On some matters it says, O Believers (Ya ay yuhal latheena aamanu!), but  on really crucial matters, it addresses all people, all humankind, saying “Ya ay yuhan-naas,” or “Ya Bani Aadam!” O Mankind! O Children of Adam!

For example, in the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

“Yaa ay yuhan-naasut-taqoo Rabbukumul lathee khalaqakum min nafseew waahidah…”

“O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.”

So, really, we should see the message of Islam as a kind of lifeline, a firm handhold for people to hold onto, who would otherwise be swept away by the powerful currents of distraction and heedlessness. Islam came to save human beings from themselves. Left without divine guidance, we are prone to self-indulgence, and ever conflicting, expanding areas of self-interest. Islam is not some cultural heirloom to be preserved in a library or museum. It is a gift from Allah, to be lived and share with everyone. Islam offers us a way of living beautifully, virtuously, serving others out of love and gratitude to the One who created us all.

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My dear sisters and brothers,

We have to make a very important distinction. On the one hand, we have Islam, a universal belief system applicable to all times and places, based on high moral and ethical values, and on the other hand we have the Muslims, who comprise many cultures, languages and traditions which predate the Islamic era. Forced marriages, so-called ‘honour killings’ and the poor treatment of women in some Muslim societies have nothing at all to do with Islam. These are pre-Islamic practices that are totally forbidden to Muslims.

It’s very important to make this clear distinction between what Islam teaches and what some Muslims do, that their religion forbids. Please don’t judge Islam by the worst things that Muslims do. In the same way we shouldn’t judge any faith by the misbehaviour of some of its followers.

We Muslims have a big challenge. We have to put our own cultural house in order. We have to get rid of the cultural baggage that undermines our faith and gives Islam a bad name. We have to treat our womenfolk with respect and we must honour all our obligations. Once we have unravelled the tangled web of our misguided tribal traditions from true Islam, we can help others to understand how Islam works through our own beautiful living example.

Many people in the West are attracted to Islam. Despite all the prejudice and Islamophobia, many curious, educated and articulate men and women are discovering, or rather, re-discovering Islam. Large numbers of new Muslims take Shahaadah every day, and over 70% of them are women! Imagine that, in spite of all the vicious propaganda that says Islam oppresses women, for every new brother that joins our family, there are 2 new sisters! Allahu Akbar! Allah is Great! There’s definitely some food for thought!

Itha jaa anasral-Laahi wal fat-h, wara aytan naasa yad khuloona fee deenil laahi afwaa jaa. Fasab bih, bihamdi Rabbika wastagh fir innahu kaanat taw-waabaa.

“When God’s help arrives and victory (is achieved), and when you see people entering God’s way of life in crowds, glorify your Lord and seek His forgiveness.”

Sura al-Nasr

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah.

By: Waheeduddin Ahmed, Ph.D.

Muslim citizens in the U.S.A., as well as in Western Europe are facing an unpredictable future because of the ever-increasing xenophobia which pervades these societies. Among the various causes is the compulsion of imperialist wars, started by the Bush administration and zealously expanded by its successor. Such wars are necessitated by the bulging unchallenged military power of any country as history has repeatedly shown. The socio-political dynamics in such a situation do not work in any ethical or moral framework. The military machine has momentum in accordance with its weight. Bush or Obama at the wheel make no difference. It is no accident of history that as the USA, finding itself the supreme unchallenged military power feels to flex its muscles, Muslims happen to be its choicest target. Weak, fragmented, non-nuanced, fratricidal and estranged from rationality, they are ready to be preyed upon.

At present, the American military machine has rolled into Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Other countries will follow, which offer suitable political landscape for such channelization. The wanton destruction of life and property and established institutions in their homelands has radicalized hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth worldwide. Nowhere will this effect be more prominent than in Europe and North America, which are home to millions of Muslim youth, native-born or immigrant, who will be angry to the point of committing irrational acts. Here lies the potential danger. It will be a fallacy to believe that they are controlled by Al-Qaeda or governmental or non-governmental agencies in their homelands. They are the products of the socio-political environment in vogue in the countries of their residence.

The Department of Homeland Security and its counterparts in the European countries are doing a good job in trying to prevent terrorist acts from happening, although there have been some clear cases of enticement to commit crimes and entrapment of gullible youth by the law enforcement agencies. However, we cannot expect these efforts to be 100% effective. Things will happen, which will change the dynamics of community relations and harden the attitudes of the people. The more our military destabilizes the Muslim countries, more will be the number of youth joining the terrorist groups and greater their chances of success. To make matters worse, the American government has put itself in a straitjacket by declaring that any act of terrorism on the American soil by ex-patriots such as the people of Pakistani origin will provoke a strong response against that country. This will close the loop of mutual destruction and usher in a terrible period of turmoil for the entire world. Unfortunately, nobody is looking at the obvious solution nor is the White House amenable to any suggestion from our side.

So, here is the question. What are we, the Muslims of America, to do in terms of self-preservation? Shall we resign to our fate and wait for the doomsday or shall we be stirred to action and at least develop a strategy to avert the impending disaster?  I suggest we opt for the latter.

There is no doubt that we have to treat this matter as a national emergency. It must be the fulcrum of all our activities. If we can learn  The meaningless and wasteful annual conventions should give way to focused debates and discfrom the Jews how to survive, we must. We should put “Islamophobia” at par with “anti-Semitism”. The meaningless and wasteful annual conventions should give way to focused debates and discussions. Strategies must be developed and solutions must be found. The urgency with which we are confronted, demands, first of all, that we obliterate commercialism, sectarianism, egotism, oligarchy and other negative traits from our institutions.

Secondly, we should stop looking towards our Old countries and detach ourselves sentimentally from them. They have created an unbelievable mess. For example, individuals and institutions in Pakistan are immersed in corruption from top to toe. It is only a matter of time before providence deals them a final blow. The Arab world, it seems, is peeping out from the dustbin of history. Events in Palestine, which is the epicenter of all the turmoil in the Arab and Muslim world, now presents a scene, which makes us think that we are hallucinating. Having told us a million times that Israel was theirs and our arch enemy, the Palestinian leadership is now aligned with the same enemy in exchange for peace and comfort and plots to use the Israeli gunships against their poor relations in Gaza. The most powerful Arab states tell the Israelis to attack other Arabs and finish them off quickly before the UN Security Council could intervene. It seems that we must exit from this world of madness, if we want to keep our own sanity intact.

After retrieving our sanity, we should look inwards and see if there is something we should or should not be doing. For one thing, it should not be difficult to surmise that while our actions have been quite benign; our mouths have been on a mission of quixotic self-infliction. We have killed hundreds and thousands of Kuffar in our verbose hallucinations invoking, falsely and stupidly, the injunctions from the Quran and Hadith. Many of our khateebs test their indiscreet verbosity at the pulpit. We must put an end to this.

Our opiate self-indulgence in irrational gossip and conspiracy theories is another problem, which keeps us sterile. The problem we have been discussing above has been solved and resolved as our detective masterminds have discovered that the Jews done it! We are now free to sit down for another round of dope. We must free the minds of our young men and women from lazy thinking and intellectualize them — Don’t take my word for it; see the various exhortations in the Quran. Teaching rituals is fine but rituals are not the end; they are a means to the end. We must broaden the scope of our teachings, in schools as well as in the masjids, to include religious as well as secular topics — Remember Dar-al Hikmah?  Anger is justified and anger against injustice is sacrosanct but we should sublime this anger into the spirit of competitiveness.

Friday khutbas are the greatest means of mass communication that our religion has bestowed upon us. People gather in numbers unachievable in other gatherings, captive in one place and attentive to a word. At no other time and at no other place can an educator get an opportunity to disseminate information with such ease. We should fully utilize this opportunity to fill the gap in knowledge and awareness, instead of sprinkling on the congregations, words which are fragrant but of no consequence. Inspirational speech must be occasional, not perpetual. Putting people in a trance does not translate into actions.

Interfaith dialogue is a significant part of our activities these days. No one can deny the usefulness of this public relations exercise. However, what is more urgently needed in the present circumstance is building bridges across communities and groups: rainbow coalition, as Rev. Jesse Jackson would call it. Traditionally, the first generation immigrants are inward looking and self-centered and very resistant to social intercourse with other communities. This is very prominently manifest among the first generation Palestinians, a majority of which owns businesses in inner cities. In many cases the nature of their relationship with their clientele borders on hostility. Experience has shown that this situation is not likely to change any time soon but the second and the successive generations must be malleable as the cultural orthodoxy gets diluted. It is this generation of immigrants which must be coaxed into being outward looking and to sever adhesion to parental attitudes.

There have been a number of incidents in which the converted Muslims are accused of committing or attempting to commit terrorist acts. We must recognize that New Muslims are our greatest asset. Since docility is not one of their characteristics, inappropriate militancy can be very easily induced and used by special interest groups to serve their ends. These special interests themselves do not proselytize. They attract people who are already in the fold of Islam but are looking for explanations and directions which the masjids have failed to provide them with. They are also looking for social adoption having been estranged from their non-Muslim families. The solution to this problem is obvious but not easy. Here again insular attitudes are the main culprit. A focused and concerted effort to meet their educational, spiritual and social needs is an absolute requirement for the security and the integrity of the community.

I am not a legal expert but I am baffled by the fact that the law allows a government agent to spend months and years with a gullible young person, slowly working up his emotions and wearing down his resistance to commit a violent act, whereupon the courts step in and commit him to life imprisonment. To me this is a travesty. Since there does not seem to be a legal recourse, we must have our own “counterespionage”. Also, the parents, the guardians, friends and companions and community leaders must keep a watchful eye on our vulnerable youth and their questionable associates in order to prevent things from getting out of hand. Our young men and women should be strictly forbidden to discuss politics with anyone except in large groups.

Lastly but not less importantly, I want to touch upon a complex issue: stereotypes. In France, they have legislated against women wearing veils. As is obvious, this is only a propaganda issue. The number of resident women wearing veils is miniscule. In the United States, one will have to wait for years, if one wants to catch a woman in veils and in a majority of the Muslim countries, veiled women in public places are a rarity and yet we have allowed our enemies to create controversy over a non-issue. However, the Islamic requirement of modesty is another matter. There is extraordinary leniency with regard to men as compared to women.

Men can dress in tuxedos or in beachwear.  They don’t have to wear a kufi at work and they don’t. Women, on the other hand are required to dress modestly, which is defined in the Quran and Sunnah. We must remember that hijab is a mode of clothing, not a style. This is where we have plenty of flexibility. Instead of wearing a uniform let our women diversify the “hijab” and be creative. Let us camouflage and offer multiple stereotypes rather than one. A case may be made that we must insist on our fundamental rights but the realities are often very ugly. There are various ways in which a woman wearing hijab could be discriminated against in hiring and in promotions, without a reasonable chance of successful litigation. We should not believe that we are living in a society of benevolent and compassionate angels.

To read my articles, you may refer to my website www.mjournal.org .