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