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I seek refuge in the accursed Satan, In the name of God the Beneficent the
Merciful.
The Holy Quran says: "And if you turn away (from Islam and the obedience of Allah), He will
substitute you for some other people, and they will not be like you." Quran 47:38
Mr. chairman and brothers: While we are looking skeptically of the miracle of
a nation reborn. Allah's inexorable decree is finding its fulfillment in the
rise and fall of nations which is mentioned in the verse I have just read to
you from Surah Muhammad. In the last section of the last verse
Allah(swt) reminds us, and warns us that if ye turn back from your duties and responsibilities
if you do not fulfill your obligations then he will replace you with another
nation.
Our Urdu speaking brethren use these words so beautifully when they describe
some mishap that occurs in the community in talking about that other nation
that can replace them. It is actually Qur'anic. And this really has been
happening throughout history again and again. Allah (swt) first chose the Jews, the
Bani Israel as he tells it in the holy Quran: "O children of Israel! call to
mind My favor which I bestowed on you and that I preferred you to all other
nations. "(Quran 2:47). That favor was that they should become the torchbearers of
the knowledge of God to the world. This was the honor, this was the privilege
that was at first given to the Jews But because they did not
fulfill their end of the obligation, a Jew amongst the Jews Hadhrat Isa (A.S.) as recorded in the
Christian gospels told them "That the kingdom of God shall be taken away from
you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits
thereof. "(The Bible, Matthew 21:43). And that nation, we
will happily own up is the Islamic ummah. It was taken away from the Jews and
given to the Muslims. The Muslims then, among them who were the Arabs at first,
were given by Allah (SWT) the privilege that they became the torchbearers of
light and learning to the world , but when they relaxed and failed to bring forth
the fruits, Allah(swt) replaced them with another nation. In history, we
remember the Turks and Mongols destroyed the Muslim empire and when they accepted
Islam they became the torchbearers of light and learning to the world.
As Iqbal beautifully describes this situation: "O' you Muslims, you will not
perish if Iran or the Arabs perish, that the spirit of the wine is not
dependent on the nature of it's container." The container is our nations, our
boundaries and the spirit of Islam is not dependent on our geographical boundaries or
national limitations. So this is what Allah (swt) does again and again, he
chose the Jews then he chose the Arabs then when they became lax he chose the
Turks and when they became lax another people and so on and this is a continuous
process. If you don't do the job, Allah(swt) will chose another people who
will. In the world today there are a thousand million Muslim, that is ,one
billion we boast! And 90 percent of this one billion happens to be the Sunni
branch. We have stopped delivering the goods so Allah(swt) chooses a nation that we
have all been looking down upon. The Iranians! The Shias! History has been very unkind to our brethren in Iran
that the shah happened to be the ruler, and his name happened to be Muhammad.
Imagine, that this mans name happened to be Muhammad and he really wasn't a
believer. It's hard for us to imagine today, but once you go to that country and
you go into the details and find out what was going on. That this Iranian the
shah it seems to be, that he was a foreigner. If Hitler conquered this land and
oppressed them, then we could understand. If the Russians conquered the people,
we can understand. But here is a man who is an Iranian, speaking Persian,
whose name was Muhammad, and look at what he was stooping to. For sixteen years
he had forbidden Jummah prayers. Sixteen years. We had been equating Iran with
the shah and the shah with Iran. To us they were synonymous terms. But when
you go into details we learn that the shah and the Iranian people were both
apart. They were in reality foreigners to one another.
Now about this visit of mine to Iran and my impression. Let me begin with the
place where I had the first fragrance of this Iranian brotherhood of ours and
it happened to be in Rome. First I smelled it, and then some of my companions
had smelled it in the Rome airport. We were waiting to get on the plane, and
we had some problems with visas and one of our men was given the
responsibility of overcoming these problems. So he goes to the Iran air office and he tells
our problem to a young lady wearing full Islamic attire with her body well
covered. It was Beautiful, Just beautiful to look at. And I mean that when you
look at these people in this attire you see that they are beautiful people. So
there was a lady in Rome and you brothers should have seen the way she handled
these problems. And someone came to me and told me, man if you want to see a
real Iranian Muslim girl you should come
over and I went and some others went and we saw. And that was the first whiff
we had of the Iranian ummah in Rome.
When we landed in Iran, we were taken to a five star hotel which was there
before the revolution known as the Hilton hotel but is now known as Hotel
Istiqlal. And we were taken around. to places of interest and I will relate to you
some of the things we saw and I will try to describe the feelings one has. If I
remember correctly, the first thing we visited was the Behesht Zahra
cemetery. Behesht means paradise in Persian and Zahra is the title of Fatima
Al-Zahra (AS) who was the daughter of Prophet Muhammad (saw). And Zahra means the
radiant one. So it was called Radiant paradise. And before arriving in Iran, I had
read about the Behesht Zahra cemetery. And I remember when Imam Khomeini had
arrived in Tehran he made a trip to the cemetery. And I'm thinking why does one
go to the cemetery? To make du'a? Yes. For the departed souls? Yes. And when
you think of cemeteries here in South Africa you think of Brookstreet and Riverside. You cant imagine that this
cemetery is square kilometers by square kilometers. You Just cant imagine. It is
a big open ground where about a million or two million people can be
accommodated. And people gathered here because it is the easiest place where people can
release their emotional and spiritual baggage because there you have the
martyrs. Their were 70,000 or so people who were martyred in this revolution and
100,000 maimed. Unarmed people with only the slogan "Allahu Akbar" as their
weapons had toppled the mightiest military force in the middle east. So we went
to this cemetery There were about a million people there. There were men and
women and children and we were greatly inspired by the enthusiasm and the
feeling of our brothers and sisters there. It was mid winter there, and the men and
women and children were sitting on the cold
ground for hours on end. In mid-winter on the ground with no carpets or
chairs! A nation that could endure that discipline for hours on end , you can only
imagine what destiny Allah(swt) has planned for them. A day or 2 later on my
program I read Behesht Zahra cemetery, again. The first time we went for a
lecture, but we had seen the graves people reciting poems of sorrow and reciting
dua' and I thought this second visit would be redundant. Why should one go a
second time? I've seen what a cemetery is. But all my companions were going and
I thought if everyone else was going, it wouldn't be good for me to stay in
the hotel relaxing when all my companions are going in these buses to a
cemetery. But I went and I became very happy. And the second time I went it was a
Thursday afternoon and Thursdays in Iran is like Saturdays for us. And tens of
thousands of people were in the cemetery. This
was a custom. It was like Eid. Tens of thousands are there, for what else,
but to charge their spiritual batteries. It was a constant reminder to not
forget. "My son gave his life for Islam" or "my father gave is life for Islam "
that they gave their life for Islam. With that kind of system, Every Thursday is
a spiritual injection and reminder that they are willing to give their life
for Islam.
There was a town hall that accommodated 16,000 people, compared to the
biggest town hall in South Africa which is the Good Hope Center in
Cape town for 8,000. This was built by the shah to boast his own "Aryan myth". He was boasting
not only that he was the shahanshah or king of kings, but also that he was the
aryamehr, light of the Aryans. What is this Aryan sickness? Remember Hitler
bragging about being Aryan because the Germans are Aryans. And the Hindus
boasting we are Aryans. If my people, the Gujarati people, weren't Muslims we'd be
boasting about being Aryans as well. The ex shah claimed to be the light of
Aryans and he built this monument as a tribute. He built another monument
spending millions to commemorate his ancestor Cyrus the great, a pagan, a mushrik and
squandering the wealth of this nation for this project. In 1984 he was
supposed to have the world Olympics in Tehran to boost his ego even further. In this town hall we saw athletics,
gymnastics, acrobatics. Unfortunately we Muslims here in South Africa are like
jellyfish, that is we have made ourselves into jellyfish. Our young men do not
participate in that kind of activity. Who here does athletics, gymnastics, acrobatics
we do not do that here. It's not for us. Who does jogging, You know the young
people here, when I meet them I shake hands with them and they are like
jellyfish. Almost every young man you meet in Iran appears to be an athlete. They
are doing sports on a world standard and it makes one feel so happy because
there they are not projecting Iran. They are not talking about Iran "we are
Iranians, we are Aryans" instead they are talking about Islam, about Islam, about
Islam. There was not one semi-naked girl, not a single girl who was half naked
there. If the shah had his way, if he was alive and organized it, there would have been semi-naked girls for everyone
to stare at and feast upon.
In Iran everything is Islamic to strengthen the morality of the people,
boosting the men and women by the thousands. We were thrilled , we were thrilled to
see our children, we felt as if theses were our children, our own brothers
and sisters, we were really thrilled. We saw these as things that our children
can do. Then we went through a military parade with different groups of Iranian
men and there was no shortage of man power. You know, some people want to go
and help our Iranian brethren. Alhamdulilah there is no shortage of man power
they only want the tools, and the weapons. If the Iranians had the military
weapons that the Israelis had, the whole of the middle-east would be free from
every kind foreign intervention in no time. This is a nation that can do it.
The spirit is there, the spirit of Jihad is there in each and every man and
woman in the nation. It seems that the whole
nation is involved in promoting Islam. We are talking about 20 million people
that they can put into the field. If they had the weapons and the materials,
every man woman and child would can go and do jihad.
Then we visited the Iraqi prisoners of war. As you know when this war started
Iraq attacked Iran. The whole country was in turmoil. Iraq felt that the Jews
did it to the Arabs in 6 days, then they will do it to the Iranians in 3 days
and the whole world thought that in one weeks time, Iran would crumble to
pieces. And do you know how long it has been now? It's been a year and a half,
and even more. And in the beginning there were twenty to one odds against them
in men and materials and the Iranians turned the tables and brought the odds to
3 to one still against them. And they were able to push them back. They
recaptured all their land and a hill that was named Allahu Akbar. Before I went to
Iran Dr . Kalim Siddiqui from the UK jokingly remarked that "you guys have
half a chance of becoming martyrs (shahid).." It was a joke and it nearly became
true. While we were coming out of a city
on the war front there was a field of tanks. And our young men came out of
the buses and started to climb onto the tanks taking pictures to show people
back home. Then one of the tanks in the courtyard came out for a training
demonstration on how it works and suddenly we hear gunfire and in the distance we saw
smoke coming from a few places and some of our young men got scared and
started hiding behind bushes., and it turns out that we were under attack from the
Iraqis. And there were bombs exploding all around us and Allah (swt) saved us.
And remember Khaled had said that was half a chance that we would become
martyrs, well it almost became a full chance. (laughter). We visited those wounded in the war and no one was complaining about what had
happened to them. One man had his leg amputated, and there were no tears, I
never saw a single tear from anyone, and they were asking if it was possible to
go back to the front. Their regrets were not about their injuries but why
they can't go back to the front to fight and become shahid, this is the ambition
of each and every Muslim there. When we visited the prisoners of war the
Iranians had captured 7000 prisoners of war and they looked healthy, well clothed,
well fed. One of my friends was interested in finding out what the Iraqi
prisoners felt about their condition first hand. And anyone he asked said that they
were being looked after very well. Then I had an idea. Some were here for
over a year and others for a few months and I was wondering how many people had
committed suicide. And I asked each group of the prisoners of war and asked each group how many people committed
suicide. They said not one. I then asked the next group and so on. Not one single
person committed suicide amongst the 7800 prisoners of war. And if we look at
our so called civilized western country of South Africa, 46 people committed
suicide in our prisons this year alone and they are well fed well clothed have
their own cells and 46 committed suicide so far. And if people are not well
treated some are going to want to find an easy way out but there was not one
single person who committed suicide amongst the 7800 prisoners of war.
We went to visit the Imam, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini. There were
about forty of us who waited for the Imam and the Imam came in and was about ten
meters away from where I was, and I saw the Imam. He delivered the Lecture to
us for about half an hour, and it was nothing but the Quran, the man is like a
computerized Quran. And the electric effect he had on everybody, his
charisma, was amazing . You just look at the man and tears come down your cheek. You
just look at him and you get tears. I never saw a more handsome old man in my
life, no picture, no video, no TV could do justice to this man, the handsomest
old man I ever saw in my life was this man. There is something unique to his
name, too. First he is called Imam Khomeini. The word Imam is to us a every
cheap word. Wherever we go somewhere we ask who is the Imam of the Masjid here.
To the Shia there is only one Imam in the world and he is the Twelfth Imam , they believe in the concept of Imamate and
that the Imam is the spiritual leader of the ummah. And the first Imam
according to the school of Imamate is Hazrat Ali (A). Then comes Imam Hassan who is
the second Imam, Imam Hussein the third Imam all the way until the twelve
Imam, Imam Mohammad who disappeared at the age of 5 and they are expecting his
return. They use the term "occultation" something like a spiritual hibernation
like the Ashab Al-cahf. And that he is expected to come back and he is the only
one in the world who can be called Imam. Most of their scholars are called
mullah, and Ayatollah means Allamah And Ayatollah Khomeini is called Imam out of
respect but they are waiting for the real Imam to come. Ruhollah is the name
his father gave him and do you know what it means? Ruhollah means the 'word of
God' and this is the title of Hazrat
Isa(as) in the Quran. Then he is Ayatollah which is another title of Hazrat
Isa(as) in the Quran. Al-Musawi is from the family Musa and from the city of
Khomein which is where his last name Khomeini comes from. ...(break in audio at
41: 05 seconds). But they are waiting for the Mahdi, and not Khomeini. They
want to clean the stables and make preparations for the Mahdi to come. In the
Sunni world we are also waiting for the Mahdi to come but we want him to clean
the stables for us, make us masters of the world and to make us sit on the
thrones. The Sunni world is just passively waiting. Until then we can carry on
with all our petty little squabbles, whatever we are
carrying on now. And it is only the Imam Mahdi which can
clean the world for us. This is the Sunni line of thinking. Khomeini on the other hand tells his followers that we must help
prepare the way so that when he does come everything is already set up for him to act on. While we, the Sunni world are
waiting for Imam Mahdi to pull the chestnut out of the fire for us, the Shias
are preparing the world for his arrival. Part
- 2 (continued)
You know there were many people with us from all over the world. And I found
types and types and types of sick people, a mental sickness that is. I came
across an alim from Pakistan Mauna Sahib and he thought that there was something
wrong with our Shia brothers. You see in Iran when someone is lecturing and
the name Khomeini is mentioned people stop and everyone says durood on the
Prophet(pbuh) three times. But when the name Mohammad is mentioned they send durood
once. And this alim from Pakistan says " look at these people just look at
them. What kind of Muslims are these people. When the name Mohammad is mentioned
they send durood on the Prophet (pbuh) once but when the name Khomeini is mentioned
they send Durood on KHOMEINI three times."
I said " What do they say , what do they say in this so called 'durood on
Khomeini'. "
He said: Peace be upon Mohammad and the family of Mohammad.
I said " Who is Mohammad? Khomeini? Who named Khomeini as Mohammad. Their
durood is on Prophet Mohammad(s) and you say it is on Khomeini."
You know it's a sickness. There are many learned men but their minds are so
prejudiced. They are just looking for faults. [1]
Another example is that the Shia brothers when they make salat, they have a
piece of clay (turbah) that they do sajjdah on. And he says "see what they are
doing here. This is shirk. They are worshipping a piece of clay. " I said why
don't you ask them why they place their foreheads on a piece of clay and learn
the logic behind this. You see, the first time I experienced this was in
Washington D.C., the Iranian students there had invited me to give a lecture there
at the university where they were studying in America. At that time, it was
time for Isha and we made salat. And everyone was given a piece of clay. I at
the time thought it was so funny, so I put it aside and I made my salat with
the Iranian students. And after salat I wanted to know about this and I asked
them. Why do you carry this clay tablet everywhere you go in your pocket. They
said " we are supposed to do sujood on Allah's earth with our foreheads touching the earth. We say "subhanna rabia
Allah" three times with our foreheads touching the earth." So the Shia want to
actually touch the earth with their foreheads and not a manmade carpet. They
want to be true to the expression of praying with the forehead actually
touching Allah's earth. You see they don't worship the clay tablet as many wrongly
think. And this is always something that we Sunnis are always making fun of and
mock the Shia, but on my way out from Tehran across the plane in the aisle
were two Shias and when prayer time came one of them took his clay tablet out of
his pocket and, Allahu Akbar, performed salat right there on the plane in his
seat, and when he finished he gave this to his neighbor and he performed
salat. And this may seem like a joke to us. Isn't it? And there were dozens of
Sunnis on the plane and out of those dozens of Sunnis only one young man did the salat, and I tell you that young man wasn't
me. But we are laughing at the other Guy. He is sitting there and doing
something better than we are and we make fun of them and sit in
judgment. He may not as polished and refined as we are in South Africa. You know we Muslims in
South Africa are very polished and refined in our salat. The Arabs are no match
for us, the Iranians are no match for us, the Americans bilalans, the Negroes
they are no match to us. With the Arabs you are bowing down in ruku and the
guy next to you pushes you aside to make space.(laughter) Who knows brothers,
maybe it is valid, we don't know. You know, between the four Sunni mazhabs the
Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafei there are over two hundred differences in
salat alone. Did you know that? Two hundred. But we take it for granted. The
Shafei says amin loudly and we say it silently, they say bismillah loudly we say it silently and there is there is
no problem. A s a child my father would repeat the famous formula that he in
turn learned from his father. : "all the mazhabs are equally valid and the
truth for them is in the hadith and the Quran." And so we accept it. When it comes
to the Shafei, Hanbali, Hanafi and Maliki we are tolerant but when it comes
to the Shia you see he is not in the formula that we are taught as a child, so
what ever little idiosyncrasies there exists between us and them we cant
tolerate and reject we say that he is out because we are programmed to believe in
only the four. But we accept the idiosyncrasies between the four.
I say why cant you accept the Shia brothers as a fifth madhab. And the
astonishing thing is that he is telling you that he wants to be one with you. He is
not talking about being Shia. He is shouting "there is no Sunni nor Shia there
is one thing, Islam." But we say to them "no you are different you are Shia."
This attitude is a sickness of the devil. He wants to divide us. Can you
imagine we Sunnis are 90% of the Muslim world and the ten percent who are Shias
want to be partners and brothers with you in faith and the 90% are terrified. I
cant understand why should you the 90% be so terrified. They should be the
ones terrified. And if you just knew the feelings that they have for you. During
Jummah prayers in Iran, there are a million people. And you should see the way
they look at you when you pass by, they recognize that you are a foreigner
and not one of them and tears start rolling down their cheeks. This is the feeling that they have for you, but
you say no, you want to keep they out, afraid that they will absolve you. You
can only be absolved if there is something better than what you have. I don't
know, maybe some of you think I am a Shia, but I'm still with you all here. What
is all this Shia-Sunni tensions? It is all politics. These antagonisms we
have are all politics now. If a Sunni brother somewhere does something wrong you
say oh the individual is not being very Islamic, he is a kaffir, But if a Shia
does something wrong you want to condemn the whole Shia community, the whole
nation of millions, and say they are all rubbish just because one Shias
actions are not very Islamic. At the same time where we look the other way if one of
your relatives does something serious because he is your father or your
uncle. One group of Sunnis says to another "you are not a Muslim" another group of Sunnis says "you are not a Muslim you are
a kaffir" look that's among us, and we fight among ourselves. And some of us
do funny things.
I met one brother who told me when you go to Newcastle go visit Mr. So and so
and inshallah everything will be taken care of for you. So I went to the man
and exactly as I was told he took me home for lunch and when I'm sitting at
the table I see on the wall 'burat' you know what burat is? A donkey like animal
with the face of a woman its supposed to provide electrical force. I told him
this is not right. Allah(swt) created electrical force, you can not create it
with a statue of a donkey with a woman's face. Oh and he was so upset. But
he's a Sunni, he was a brother and is still my brother. This Sunni-Shia tensions
is the work of the devil to divide us.
Let me say something about Iran. What I found was that everything is
islamically oriented. The whole nation is geared towards Islam. And they are talking
about nothing but the Quran. I have never had a single experience with an
Iranian when the man contradicted me when I'm talking about the Quran. Whereas our
Arab brethren again and again you quote them the Quran and they try to
contradict you with the Quran. They are Arabs, they are supposed to know the Quran
better than us, but the Iranians seem to be on the wavelength of the Quran. Everything he is doing everything he is thinking about is the Quran. You remember
Tabas[2] when the American people wanted to free the hostages. The mightiest
most technologically advanced nation on earth, a nation that can land a man on
the moon and bring him back, a nation which tells you which part of the moon
they will land and bring them back, they send mars and Jupiter probes. A nation that warned Pakistan about the tidal
wave tragedy and they didn't heed the warning. They warned the Israelis in 1973
that the Arabs were on the move, they didn't heed the warning. That nation
couldn't land in Iran. Imagine they went there with their helicopters and
crashed them selves and got themselves killed. Imagine. A nation that lands on the
moon and comes back cant land in Iran. And the Iranian people were not in any
position to do anything to them. The Americans could have gone and done what
they wanted to do. I went and saw the American embassy and you think that its
just a big building, but man its acres and acres right in the center of Tehran.
They could have easily gone in and gotten these people out, even if they lost
a few men. They could have achieved their goals. It was very well planned. But
you know what happened? Fiasco, retreat failure, the Imam Khomeini is told what has happened. He doesn't say
Subhananla, he doesn't say Alhamdulilah, you know what he said. He quotes the Quran :
"Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the companions of the
elephant?" 105:1 These are the words that came out of him. I tell you he is a
Qur'anic computer.
You know what they call those huge helicopters? Jumbo helicopters, and those
big planes are called jumbo planes. You know what jumbo means in Swahili,
Elephant. It's a Swahili word. That's where they got the name. So these elephant
sized helicopters go and the Imam says: "Have you not considered how your Lord
dealt with the possessors of the elephant? Did He not cause their war to end
in confusion," Quran 105:1-2
But we are so skeptical, the Muslim world has become so skeptical we don't
believe in the Quran anymore. You don't really believe in the Quran, for most
people it is all for entertainment, for the good spiritual feelings that you get
when reciting the Holy Quran. But the directives that Allah(swt) gives,
nobody seems to care. May Allah (swt) make these brothers of ours, the torchbearers
and light of learning today to the Muslim world . And here is a nation geared
to do the Job. When you look at them the earnestness that is in them, a
nation that is not afraid, when you look at them with the enthusiasm they have. They are not afraid to say "marg bar amrika" death to America.. Then say
"marg bar shuravi " death to USSR. Imagine that! (laughter from the audience). And
death to Israel." Can you imagine a nation doing that and not in the least
afraid. This is not the Islamic spirit that is in us here, but the Iranians are all heart and mind. They don't say "this is
an Iranian revolution "or "we are Iranians". They are talking about Islam, an
Islamic Revolution. This is not an Iranian revolution but that this is an
Islamic revolution. It's a revolution for Islam and little wonder why the nations
of the world cant stomach it because it is Islam that they cant stomach. So my
dear brothers and sisters I have taken so much of your valuable time already.
And with these words I take leave of you to sit down and to take your
Questions.
[1] " O ye who believe! if any from among you turn back from his Faith, soon
will Allah produce a people whom He will love as they will love Him,- lowly
with the believers, mighty against the rejecters, fighting in the way of Allah,
and never afraid of the reproaches of such as FIND FAULT. That is the grace of
Allah, which He will bestow on whom He pleaseth. And Allah encompasseth all,
and He knoweth all things." Quran 5:54
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