Khutba on Extremism
الحمد لله، الحمد لله الذي جعل الدينَ الحنيف بين التفريط والإفراط، وجعل خيرَ الأمور هي التي وقع في الأوساط، نحمده تعالى ونستعينه، ونشكره تعالى ونستغفره ونستغيثه، نعوذ بالله من شرور أنفسنا ومن سيئات أعمالنا، من يهد الله فهو المهتد ومن يضلل فلن تجد له وليا مرشدا، ونشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له، له الملك و له الحمد، يحيي ويميت، بيده الخير، وهو على كل شيء قدير، ونشهد أن سيدنا و مولانا محمداً عبده ورسوله، وحبيبه وصفيه، بلغ الرسالة وأدى الأمانة ونصح الأمة، النبي الأمي الذي أرسله الله بالهدى والدين الحق، بشيرا ونذيرا بين يدي الساعة، صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلى آله وأصحابه ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.أما بعد! فيا عباد الله اتقوا الله حق تقاته ولا تموتن إلا وأنتم مسلمون. يأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويغفر لكم ذنوبكم. ومن يطع الله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما. اتقوا الله فيما أمر وانتهوا عما نها عنه وزجر. قال الله عز وجل في كتابه الكريم: وَكَذَلِكَ جَعَلْنَاكُمْ أُمَّةً وَسَطًا
Allah says in His mighty Book, the translation of which is, “In this way We have made you a middlemost community.” One of the main lessons we can learn from this mess that we see in Syria and Iraq, and indeed in other parts of the Muslim world such as Nigeria or Mali, is that extremism is not the answer and rarely/ in fact never produces anything worthwhile or good. For the forms of Islam that have come to the fore in all of these places are extreme, excessive in their interpretation of what the deen is and what is acceptable or necessary in it. They limit the scope of the deen and and place it inside the narrowest of parameters. They turn the deen from something organic and alive and make it into something black and white, something not found in the communities of men, but rather in the pages of their books and the rigid contours of their inflexible minds. Everything and anything they learn of the deen is divorced from circumstance and excised from its historical context and the global and social realities of the day, and simply transplanted into their own lives and own environments. But the problem is they lack the knowledge and the expertise to do that. They are like an untrained heart surgeon who cuts the heart from one body, but has no concept of how to keep it alive and insert it and attach it to the body of a man whose heart is failing him. So all he ends doing is killing him completely.
And that is what we see with ISIS and Boko Haram and their ilk. They claim to be defenders of Islam and the Muslim people, but all they end up doing is harming it and killing them. Yes, Allah says,
وَاقْتُلُوهُمْ حَيْثُ ثَقِفْتُمُوهُمْ وَأَخْرِجُوهُمْ مِنْ حَيْثُ أَخْرَجُوكُمْ
the translation of which is, “Kill them wherever you come across them and expel them from where they expelled you.” But the explanation of that is found in the actions of the Prophet, not in the confines of our minds. What did the Prophet do when he entered Makka? Did he kill all those idolaters who had fought against him and opposed him for the previous twenty years? No, instead he granted nearly all of them amnesty – only a select poisonous few did he command to be killed. He knew that Allah’s words in this aya were to be read and understood in conjunction with the aya that preceded it:
وَقَاتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ الَّذِينَ يُقَاتِلُونَكُمْ وَلَا تَعْتَدُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ الْمُعْتَدِينَ
the translation of which is, “Fight in the Way of Allah against those who fight you, but do not go beyond the limits. Allah does not love those who go beyond the limits.” There are limits and those limits are known from the example of the Prophet and his Companions. It is to them that the Muslim must look for guidance rather than directly to the Book of Allah. And from them what do we learn? That even when the people against whom you are fighting are non-Muslim, there are many categories of people who, when they are not directly involved in the fighting, are not to be killed. Qurtubi lists six: women, children, the old, the infirm, monks and menial workers, especially those who are working the land. The Prophet said,
الحق بخالد بن الوليد فلا يقتلنّ ذرّية ولا عَسيفاً
“Khalid ibn al-Walid has it right for he does not kill children or menial labourers.” When Sayyidina Abu Bakr sent Yazid ibn abi Sufyan to Syria, the centre of the current problems besetting the Muslim world, he took him aside before he left and counseled him to not kill anyone in any of these categories.” And yet we find ISIS regularly killing people from every one of these categories even when they are Muslim. They have read ayats like the one we mentioned and have insisted upon their literal unrestricted understanding of them, exactly as their forebears did with Allah’s Words,
إِنِ الْحُكْمُ إِلاَّ للهِ
the translation of which is, “Judgement over it belongs to Allah,” as we discussed last week. This mindset is not an uncommon one in this age of plentiful information and limited knowledge. There are a whole plethora of internet alims whose studies of the deen have been limited to reading lots of books and papers. While at the same time, the values and truths of the deen are continually being attacked and criticised by the neo-liberal and neo-conservative media. It is difficult to know what Islam is and where we stand, so many of the youth are seduced by excessive nihilism and hedonism on the one hand, and extremist religious practice and ideology on the other. They scurry in both directions leaving the middle way unoccupied. But it is that middle way that is Islam, and that middle way that has the most to offer them. Both of the extremes are from Shaytan. Ibn al-Qayyim said,
ما أمر الله بأمر إلا وللشيطان فيه نزغتان: إما إلى تفريط وإضاعة، وإما إلى إفراط وغلو، ودين الله وسط بين الجافي عنه والغالي فيه، كالوادي بين الجبلين، والهدى بين الضلالتين، والوسط بين طرفين ذميمين
“There is nothing that Allah has commanded us to do except that Shaytan comes to us in one of two ways – either by encouraging us to fall short and abandon it, or encouraging us to go to excess. The deen of Allah lies in the middle between those abandon action and those who are extreme and excessive – it is like a valley between two mountains, guidance between two sources of misguidance, a praiseworthy way between two ways that are blameworthy.” One time when the Prophet was among his Companions, he drew a line in the sand, and then drew two lines to the right of it and two lines to the left of it. And then he placed his hand on the middle line and said,
هَذَا سَبِيلُ اللَّهِ
“This is the path of Allah.” Then he recited the aya,
وَأَنَّ هَذَا صِرَاطِي مُسْتَقِيمًا فَاتَّبِعُوهُ وَلاَ تَتَّبِعُوا السُّبُلَ فَتَفَرَّقَ بِكُمْ عَنْ سَبِيلِهِ
the translation of which is, “This is My Path and it is straight, so follow it. Do not follow other ways or you will become cut off from His Way.” Extremism is just as much ‘another way’ as laxity and abandonment of the pillars of the deen. For what starts off as an excess of a particular form of action becomes a mindset. And that particular mindset is extremely dangerous as once you acquire it, you keep on becoming more and more extreme and going more and more into excess until you almost completely leave the deen behind. In essence, you create a new deen with new parameters, and you start to judge others according to that new sabil and not the sabil al-mustaqim, the sirat al-mustaqim. That is why when the Prophet was approached by the three men, one who had gone to excess in his prayer by praying the whole night every night, one who had gone to excess in his fasting by fasting every day without exception and one who gone to excess in denying his sexual appetite by forswearing women completely, he said,
أما أنا والله إني لأخشاكم لله وأتقاكم له لكنى أصوم وأفطر، وأصلى وأرقد، وأتزوج النساء، فمن رغب عن سنتي فليس منى
“As for me, I have more fear and taqwa of Allah than any of you, and yet I both fast and do not fast, pray and sleep, and marry women. Whoever turns aside from my sunna is not from me.” By going to excess in the way that they had, even though it was only in one form of action in each of the men’s cases, they had stepped off and turned aside from the straight path and ventured into areas that were not part of the Sunna of the Prophet. It is his sunna that represents the middle way. Those are the boundaries of the deen that we would do well to heed and make sure we do not exceed. Those are are the boundaries that have been preserved and kept alive for us by the great awliya and ulama and each succeeding generation.
Keeping to that sunna is what is meant by moderation in the deen, not what today is being sold to us by hollywood and the media as moderation. For they have moved the goalposts and redefined the terms as part of their goal to destroy the deen. What they term as moderation is nothing but the opposite extreme, tafrit, abandonment of action and deen, Islam as a name without a reality, a set of principles and not a set of laws, the Muslim who differs from his fellow citizens only in terms of name and certain cultural practices. As for the Muslim who mentions Islamic law or prays five times a day, he is a fundamentalist and extremist, and is lumped into the same category as terrorists and misogynists. We must ignore their definitions and forget trying to please them – they will never be pleased with us until we have completely abandoned our deen. And we must instead focus on pleasing our Lord and look to His parameters. That is our middle way. And therein lies our success and the success of this umma. As Imam Malik said,
ولا يُصلح آخر هذه الأمة إلا ما أصلحَ أولها
“The end of this umma will not be set aright by anything except that which set it right at the beginning.” The way of the Prophet and his Companions, a broad highway, allowing great diversity and difference of opinion, from the strict adherence to the letter of the sunna of Ibn Umar, to the ijtihad and broad interpretation of Ibn Abbas, from the sternness of Umar ibn al-Khattab to the gentleness of Abu Bakr. All of them fell within the middle way that is Islam. So we ask Allah to make us people of the middle way, and keep us well clear of the two extremes.
أقول قولي هذا وأستغفر الله لي ولكم ولسائر المسلمين من كل ذنب فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرَّحيم.
الحمد لله الحمد لله رب العالمين، وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له وأشهد أن محمداً عبده ورسوله، صلى الله وسلم وبارك عليه وعلى آله وصحبه، والتابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
أما بعد! فيأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله ما استطعتم واسمعوا وأطيعوا وأنفقوا خيرا لأنفسكم. يا عباد الله أوصيكم وإياي بتقوى الله وطاعته وأحذركم وإياي عن معصيته ومخالفته. قال الله عز وجل في كتابه الكريم: قُلْ يَا أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ لَا تَغْلُوا فِي دِينِكُمْ غَيْرَ الْحَقِّ وَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا أَهْوَاءَ قَوْمٍ قَدْ ضَلُّوا مِنْ قَبْلُ وَأَضَلُّوا كَثِيرًا وَضَلُّوا عَنْ سَوَاءِ السَّبِيلِ
Allah says in His Noble Book, the translation of which is, “Say: ‘People of the Book! do not go to excess in your deen, asserting other than the truth, and do not follow the whims and desires of people who were misguided previously and have misguided many others, and are far from the right way.’” We have talked about the dangers of excess in the deen, but how does such an excess develop? And what sort of people are most prone to it. Or to put it another way, how can we protect ourselves against it?
The answer to that is with knowledge and good company. In the trial of two young English Muslim extremists last month, it came to light that the books they bought prior to attempting to go forth to join ISIS in Syria were ‘Islam for Dummies’ and ‘the Koran for Dummies’. In other words, they knew almost nothing about their deen, and it was that lack of knowledge that made them susceptible to the warped ideas of these kharijite, terrorist groups. This was not just true of these two, but is true of nearly all the recruits to these organisations.
And, equally, it is true of many who go around criticising their fellow Muslims on a daily basis. We know their type. Those who have found religion – have gone from partying one day to sporting a long beard and wearing trousers to a particular length the next. They are not scholars of the deen and have not sat for any length of time with the people of knowledge. Rather, they have read a hadith or an ayat of Quran and attached to it their own limited, literal interpretation, and then sought to use that interpretation to browbeat and upbraid people with much greater knowledge than their own.
The second protection against extremism is company, and by that I mean good company, knowledgeable company, the company of people who know the Sunna and endeavour to follow it and put it into practice. As we mentioned before, extremism is one of the tools Shaytan uses to lead us astray, and those who are most susceptible to the wiles and whisperings of Shaytan are those who are alone, those who are isolated. The Prophet said,
إن الشيطان ذئب الإنسان كذئب الغنم يأخذ الشاة القاصية
“Shaytan is mankind’s wolf, and like the wolves that hunt sheep, he takes down those that stray far from the pack.” The lonely and disaffected, those who do not feel part of their communities, are in grave danger. They reject or feel rejected by the everyday and mundane, and so look for something as far away from it as possible. Often they turn to drugs or to extreme sports in their search for meaning, but extremist Islam is just as enticing and attractive. It makes them feel like someone special and allows them to feel superior to the society they feel discarded them and gives solidity and a sense of purpose to their existence. But if they had kept good company and been brought up in a vibrant community, they would never have felt the need to step down that path.
So to protect our community against these currents that are destroying the Muslim lands, we must maintain strong communities by restoring the Sunna of amirate, for it is only when a body has a head that it can function, and we must hold on to and disseminate a correct knowledge of the deen. It is incumbent upon the people of knowledge, the ulama, to pass on their knowledge and teach the youth, thereby inoculating against extremist tendencies and ideologies. The people of knowledge have a tremendous responsibility. The boundaries and limits of this deen must be made clear for all to see. We mentioned last week how Sayyidina Ali managed to persuade a huge segment of the khawarij to come back to the sirat al-mustaqim simply by passing on to them a small amount of knowledge of the deen. And Umar ibn Abdal-Aziz did the same in his time when the khawarij were at their most numerous. He invited thousands of them to a majlis, and in one session during which he passed on some of his knowledge of the deen, he persuaded more than two thousand of them to return to the middle way.
We ask Allah to enable our ulama to come to the fore, to step forward and call people to the deenun hanif, the deen practised by the Prophet and his Companions in Madinat al-Munawarra. We ask Him to give them the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, to stand up and be counted and not compromise on aspect of what they themselves have learnt and been taught by their own teachers, and their teachers and their teachers right back to the Prophet. We ask Allah to protect this umma from excess and extremism, and make us once again that middlemost community that lives and breathes the sunna of the Messenger of Allah. And we ask Him to protect it from those who find nothing better to do than speak badly their Muslim brothers and spread lies and slander about them.
إِنَّ اللهَ وَمَلَائِكَتَهُ يُصَلُّونَ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ، يَا أَيُهَا الذِينَ آمَنُواْ صَلُّواْ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلِّمُواْ تَسْلِيماً.
اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ وَسَلِّمْ وَبَارِكْ عَلَيْهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ. وَارْضَ اللَّهُمَّ عَنِ الْخُلَفَاءِ الرَّاشِدِينَ أَبِي بَكْرٍ وَعُمَرَ وَعُثْمَانَ وَعَلِيٍّ، وعن أم المومنين عائشة التي أمرنا الله في سورة النور أن ندافع عنها، وَعَنْ سَائِرِ الصَّحَابَةِ أَجْمَعِينَ، خُصُوصاً اِلأَنْصَارَ مِنْهُمْ وَالمُهَاجِرِينَ، وَعَنِ التَّابِعِينَ وَتَابِعِي التَّابِعِينَ وَمَنْ تَبِعَهُمْ بِإِحْسَانٍ إِلَى يَوْمِ الدِّينِ.
اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِ وُلَاةَ أُمُورِ المُسْلِمِينَ لِمَا يُرْضِيكَ وَلِاتِّبَاعِ سُنَّةِ نَبِيِّكَ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ، وَثَبِّتْ أَقْدَامَهُمْ عَلَى الصِّرَاطِ المُسْتَقِيمِ، وَأَصْلِحْهُمْ يَا رَبَّ الْعَالَمِينَ.
اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ عَلَى شَيْخِنَا، وَعَلَى أَمِيرِنَا، وَعَلَى جَمِيعِ أُمَرَاءِ وَزُعَمَاءِ المُسْلِمِينَ.
اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ عَلَى المُسْلِمِينَ فِي هَذِهِ المَدِينَةِ، وَوَفِّقْهُمْ لِمَا تُحِبُّهُ وَتَرْضَاهُ يَا أَكْرَمَ الأَكْرَمِينَ.
اللَّهُمَّ أَعِزَّ الإِسْلَامَ وَالمُسِْلمِينَ، وَاخْذُلِ الْكُفْرَ وَالْكَافِرِينَ، وَانْصُرِ المُجَاهِدِينَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللهِ. وَاجْعَلْ كَلِمََتَكَ هِيَ العُلْيَا وَكَلِمَةَ الْكُفْرِ هِيَ السُّفْلَى.
رَبَّنَا ءَاتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقَِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ.
إِنَّ اللهَ يَامُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالإِحْسَانِ وَإِيتَاءِ ذِي الْقُرْبَى، وَيَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالمُنكَرِ وَالْبَغْيِ، يَعِظُكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَّكَّرُونَ، وَلَذِكْرُ اللهِ أَكْبَرُ وَاللهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَصْنَعُونَ. وَقُومُواْ إِلَى صَلاتِكُمْ يَرْحَمُكُمُ اللهُ.