The Ugliness in Iraq

Khutba given on 2/23/2007

• Recently, more so that before, there has been a talked about topic that I wanted to touch upon in my khutba but didn’t really know how to convey it because there are so many different aspects to it: the war in ‘Iraq
• Every time you turn the news on or listen to the radio, or read a newspaper, there is a story about how many people have died in ‘Iraq by a roadside bomb, a suicide bomber and many other ways; and in this regard, I can speak about many different facets of the war and draw lessons from it for our perspective
• Today I will focus on a few, and insha Allah, in future lessons, focus on other aspects as they come to mind; so the first thing I would like to touch upon is based on the hadith of the Prophet, “Allah is beautiful and he loves beauty” and the concept that everything in Islam that is encouraged is beautiful, that is acceptable is tolerable, but everything that is rejected is ugly;
• Superficiously, one can play the relativity game and talk about something ugly to one person is beautiful to another, but here I am not speaking of simply the material; a sense of rejecting ugliness is something that is born within us, one can say it is part of our fitra, like belief in God; Fakhruddin Al-Razi one time gave an anecdote about the belief in God being a part of our fitra and said that if you place a child in an open area, hide behind something, and then throw a stone or rock, the child will automatically start looking for the source of where the rock came from; it will never just assume that it just appeared out of nowhere;
• Similarly, I child has an innate sense of things that are ugly vs. things that are beautiful; for example, when a child is ready to be potty trained, a parent knows because the child automatically goes into hiding to go to the bathroom; the parents didn’t teach the child that? And this ability of distinction stays with us throughout our life and it is never forced out; like belief is just covered with unbelief, beauty is just covered with ugliness, but we never lose the sense of what is beautiful
• So throughout the ages, Muslims have been trying to create beauty and not destroy; so if you look at architecture, art, calligraphy, they are all pleasing to the eye because Muslims, through beauty have been trying to find a sense of Allah through it; likewise, when faced with a situation of choosing right vs. wrong, all we need to do is look inside ourselves to find the truth; that is also why the Prophet once said something to the effect of “A Mumin who follows his heart will never do anything wrong”.
• When looked at through this background of beauty, one needs to ask oneself, what is beautiful about the situation in ‘Iraq? Or even in general, what is beautiful about war? What is beautiful about killing other people? Other Muslims? Nothing and as such it is haraam
• But you do find people in the Muslim world, so called scholars, and even some in America (although on the down low) that will say what is happening in ‘Iraq is justified and more so now than before, people are being recruited to go to ‘Iraq and fight alongside the Sunnis; I for one, say, we need to reject any talk like this, and more importantly, speak out against; these people remind me of an ayah in the Qur’an where Allah is describing the hypocrites:

“and it is said to them: do not cause mischief of the earth; they say: verily we are only the righteous does. Verily, they are the ones that make mischief, but perceive it not”

• And I want to be very clear when saying this, that I am relating these people to hypocrites, because I can’t find any justification for blowing up a car in a marketplace, beheading people by the hundreds, etc. Maybe the followers are misguided, but the so called scholars who do the recruitment, the justification, they are definitely to blame and they remind me of another hadith of the Prophet wherein he said “beware of the hypocrite with an eloquent tongue”
• And insha Allah, in the next khutba I will discuss what we can do regarding this situation
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• I need to clarify myself in saying that in no way am I justifying what we, as Americans, have done in ‘Iraq and I have been against it from the beginning; but I also want to be clear in that the insueing sectarian violence that came about after the war is nothing better and arguably much worse; because as mentioned in my earlier khutba, there is no beauty that can be found in these violent acts against other Muslims and since there is no beauty in it, I cannot accept it and must reject;
• Even if the most eloquent and most knowledge person came to me and tried to convince me it is right, made arguments that I had no rebuttal for, I would still reject it because my heart is drawn away from it in disgust, and Allah would not make something so disgusting so righteous; becaue He has put into the heart of human beings goodness and beauty and the ability to move towards goodness and away from ugliness;
• But to reject ugliness and stay away from it is one thing, and to do something about it is something better; for a hadith of the Prophet says: “if you find something wrong, change it with your hands, if you can’t, then speak against it, and if you can’t do that, then at least reject it in your heart, and that is the weakest of faith;
• So in this situation that we find ourselves in, in ‘Iraq, it is not likely that we can change anything with our hands and I don’t think that Allah will hold us to account for not doing so; Steven Covey in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” wrote about the Sphere of Influence and Sphere of Control. What he said was that people should focus on their Sphere of Control and only marginally worry about their Sphere of Influence; however when the focus more and more on their Sphere of Control, it grows bigger and encroaches into the Sphere of Influence
• The lesson here is that Allah, on the Day of Judgment, will only ask us about our Sphere of Control and what we did about it and so with the situation in ‘Iraq, we need to ask ourselves, what is our Sphere of Control; speaking with Sunnis and Shias in ‘Iraq and telling them to stop is unrealistic; but speaking to the people around us, letting our disgust be known, is something we can do; within your circle of friends, your neighborhood, and your community, no person should be left saying or thinking that you as a Muslim would be for this type of violence or in any way would Islam condone it; and we should pray for the people ‘Iraq that Allah delivers them from this trial and gives victory to those that are fighting for justice
• One last thing we can do is to let our voice be heard to our government; we have to admit that our tax dollars are going towards the ongoing violence so the least we should do is voice our objection; what do we say? Well, historically, we have to keep in mind that Muslims have been always against the destablization of governments; Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal put it best when he said that a tyrant who drinks, fornicates, and does other things but allows the people to carry out their Islamic duties is better than an unknown future that could result in anarchy and cause the people not to be able to practice Islam;
• When I look at the invasion of ‘Iraq, no words ring more true and as such, I, for one, would call my congressman and tell him to vote for a troop escalation; you might not agree with me, and that is fine, but since we as Americans caused this mess, and we know that if we leave it will get messier, it is our duty to not leave and finish off what we started;
• Like most experts said before we invaded that this would be a disaster, most experts are now saying that if we pull out, it will be a disaster; a situation of ethnic violence not seen since the Bosnian War; and so the blood of those who died in the invasion and the resulting violence is on our hands, do we also want the blood of those that die after we leave on our hands as well?
• In closing, as mentioned earlier, you might not agree with my conclusion of what to do for ‘Iraq, but it is clear that something must be done; so do something; and as mentioned, not to diminish its importance, but we at least need to pray for the people in ‘Iraq and pray for the violence to end

Importance of Salah

• Today, I would like to speak about a basic in Islam but people will be surprised how many people take it for granted
• when the Prophet was on his death bed, he called his close companions into where he was lieing on Aisha’s lap, and right before he passed away, he said 2 words. Do you know what they were?
• Imagine a very high person of influence that you are in contact with and any time they want to communicate with you, they either call you or send a messenger to tell you what it is; so if you were the President of the MSA and the President of the University wanted to tell you something, they might send you an email, call you, or tell someone else to tell you: do this, don’t do that, do it this way, not that way; but if it was really important, something that needed to be conveyed in detail, or they wanted you to realize its importance, they would ask you to come see them in person
• So in the same regard, when our beloved Prophet became a messenger, Allah used a messenger to convey to the Prophet the do’s and don’ts of Islam; in every occasion, whether to cheer him up, tell him if he could do something better, teach him about the laws of Islam, Jibreel would come down and reveal to the Prophet what needed to be revealed;
• But again on one topic, no messenger was used; Allah asked the Prophet to come directly and speak to him in what is known as the Isra’a and Mairaj; and so when the Prophet crossed the Sidratal Muntaha, the point where no creation had ever crossed before, what did Allah say to him?
• Similarly, on the day of Judgment, when we are standing before Allah about to be judged, what will be the first question that Allah will ask us about? He will ask us about our Salah and if it is complete, then he will not move on from there
• In the mairaj, Allah spoke to the Prophet about Salah, and the last words of the Prophet were Salah!!!!
• A very important act that we must perform and we must live up to; it is the second pillar of Islam and the four schools of thought are unanimous in stating that if you leave salah, you are no longer a muslim; Abu Hanifa is the most lenient wherein he says if you have to not just leave it, but deny it as a part of Islam
• So if it is so important, why do people neglect it so much? During the mairaj, initially the order was given that to the Prophet Muhammad that we should pray 50/day; it was Musa that told the Prophet to try to reduce it; Musa even asked him to reduce it from 5 to something lower, but the Prophet said he was too embarrassed to go back and ask
• So now we know how important it is, let us define it and then see how much of a benefit it is; then in the next khutba, lets look at how we can implement it in our loves; So Salah, means contact in Arabic, so it is not merely a prayer, although that is how it is most commonly translated; when you look at it from the perspective of “contact” then you know the seriousness of it, because it is a state in which you are in contact with Allah; not just in prayer, or talking to him, in which it could be a one way conversation; my wife often complains that she is talking to me and I am not listening; but if I make ‘contact’ with her, then she knows I am; and this is also why the Prophet said: Salah is the Meraaj of a Momin.
• And as for the benefits, there are many that one can think of; let me start by saying that salah is mentioned over 500x in the Qur’an and it is a means of shedding sins; the Prophet said that the in-between sins of a person who makes two salats are forgiven; also the Prophet one time picked up a dry branch and shook it until all the leaves fell off, and then said: The sins of those who pray Salah, drop off as the leaves of this branch fell off.
• And another benefit is that a person is constantly in contact with Allah; one of the greatest forms of remembrance of which Allah says “O you who believe, remember Allah often, so that you may become successful”; and this remembrance will keep you away from sins because I have never met a person that right after finishing to pray, says “lets go ….”; or for example, people are sitting around and backbiting, and then get up for prayer, finish, and then go back to backbiting;
• So not only will prayer shed your sins, but it will keep you away from them all together

• Bros and sisters, over and over again, Allah mentions in the Quran, “wa yu qeemas salaat” which translates as “establish salah” and as we mentioned in the earlier khuba, the better translation is “contact” rather then “prayer”
• And so we have looked at the importance of it and the benefits; but still we find that many people around the world, Muslims, neglect it altogether; so what can we do to establish it within our lives?
• The Qur’an says: “And truly Salah is hard save for the humble minded”
• So today we have to make a commitment and intention to begin to establish prayer within our lives; the biggest way to do this is to be humble about it by putting Allah back in our lives; and this humbleness is a humility of the intellect because intellect in the human brain lies on the forehead, and most human beings are not willing to put their intellect on the ground; which means that there is a higher being and our intellect is nothing compared to that;
• So if you are a person that never prays, then just begin by doing one, and if you are only occasional in your prayer, then begin by focusing on the ones you do and then work on increasing them
• One thing to keep in mind is that the a believer revolves his life around prayer, not prayer around his life; and this is a fundamental shift in attitude; that you don’t schedule something in conflict with prayer, and if it is unavoidable, then you make the prayer in advance of the time, or make it up afterward, knowing that the best is to make it on time
• And one place to begin the establishment of prayer is the Jumma prayer as we are here today; make it something you do every week no matter what happens; remember that the jumma is something that should motivate you for the following week and is also where sins are forgiven; and some people might have this idea that it is not a requirement but only a strong recommendation; this is a myth; in fact there is a sura named after this: Surat al-Jumaa and in it Allah tells us that when the call to prayer is made, leave whatever you are doing and come to it;
• When I was in college, many people used to skip jumma because there was a scheduling conflict; I had many opportunities to do this but decided against it, and Allah found a way for me to finish my BA on time; when I got to the workforce, many people didn’t go to jumma because they were afraid to ask their employer for a break or their employer said no to taking one; alhamdulillah, I have never missed a jumma for that reason and if fact, I always mentioned it in my interviews that this is not negotiable;
• So if you make Salah, and in this case, jumma a priority, then Allah will make it easy for you to attend
• And the last thing on jumma prayer is that there is nothing wrong with going back to work after jumma, in fact this is what is the sunna of Allah; in the verses where Allah mentions to stop what you are doing and come to prayer when the adhaan is made, he follows up by saying that when you are done, then go out and seek the bounties of Allah, and Allah is the one to give bounties; so if you have to go back to work, go back to class, or go back to whatever it is that you were doing, then go, and know that Allah will not make the break that you took bad for you;