Judge between them by what Allah has sent down and do not follow their whims and desires.

And beware of them lest they lure you away from some of what Allah has sent down to you.

If they turn their backs, then know that Allah wants to afflict them with some of their wrong actions.

Many of mankind are deviators.

Do they then seek the judgement of the Time of Ignorance?

Who could be better at giving judgement than Allah for people with certainty?

You who have iman! do not take the Jews and Christians as your friends;

they are the friends of one another.

Any of you who takes them as friends is one of them. Allah does not guide wrongdoing people.

Yet you see those with sickness in their hearts rushing to them,

saying, ‘We fear the wheel of fate may turn against us.’

But it may well be that Allah will bring about victory some other contingency from Him.

Then they will deeply regret their secret thoughts.

Those who have iman say, ‘Are these the people who swore by Allah,

with their most earnest oaths, that they were with you?’

Their actions have come to nothing and they now are losers. (5:49-53)

If anyone wants to know the reason for the humiliating and entirely inappropriate situation in which the Muslims find themselves today they need look no further than these ayats in Surat al-Ma’ida. In them Allah tabaraka wa ta’ala outlines with devastating clarity what turns dominant Muslims into humiliated losers. In brief it happens when Muslims cease making Allah and His Messenger their reference point and the measure of their actions and give authority to other sources of legislation and political power in their lives. This has been the story of the Muslims over the last 200 years. The wisdom, strength and firm guidance of the deen of Allah have been abandoned step by step in favour of the arrogant ignorance of a most unholy judeo/christian alliance – or we should rather say post judeo/christian alliance – which has succeeded since the Renaissance in imposing itself by means of its usury fuelled, technological superiority onto every part of the globe.

Up until 200 years ago the integrity of Dar al-Islam remained basically intact. There was some erosion at the edges but, largely due to the protective presence of the Khalifa in Istanbul, the body of Islam was able to withstand the malignant virus of Western imperialism. This protective shield was pierced when Napoleon sailed up the Nile and penetrated the soft belly of Egypt, inflicting a wound which rapidly infected the whole umma. Within a very few years there were for the first time Muslim students at the Sorbonne and Jamalu’d-din Afghani and Muhammad Abduh were also in Paris publishing and distributing their infamous newspaper, which proved to be a highway into the lands of Islam for much of the European inspired nihilistic thinking that has resulted in the pointless suicide of so many young Muslims in our own time.

And as we know, when Muhammad ‘Abduh returned to Egypt, he became the Shaykh al-Azhar. This happened with the connivance of the British Resident Lord Cromer, scion of the Baring banking family, who saw him as a man he could do business with, and in the teeth of spirited resistance on the part of the great Shaykh ‘Alish who did everything he could to save the Muslims from something which he knew would be fatally destructive to the deen of Islam. In that position Abduh passed two crucial fatwas, crucial that is to the devastation of Islam. Firstly he allowed alcohol to be sold openly in Egypt for the first time since the defeat of the Romans which gave a green light for the entry of the haram into Muslim lands throughout the world. The second fatwa, which was even more catastrophic in its consequences, was his fatwa allowing Muslims to take interest on their savings in the British run Egyptian post office. By that one act he opened the floodgates of usury into Dar al-Islam. Within no time at all there were banks in all Muslim lands and the Khalifa himself had been persuaded to borrow huge sums from the bankers to build a railway which he did not need. We know what disastrous results that was to have and the part it played in the eventual downfall of the Khalifate.

Step by step the colonial powers gained more and more hold on Muslim territory, helped immeasurably by the Arab rebels who betrayed the whole Umma of Islam for the sake of a share in a few oil wells. Truly they sold the signs of Allah for a paltry price. Before long, for the first time since the death of the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, there was nowhere left in the whole Muslim world where the shari’a was still in place. Every government was secular. Every legal system was based on man-made kafir models. Education of the Muslims was put altogether in the hands of those whose open goal was the destruction of Islam. To all intents and purposes Islam in its entirety had disappeared off the face of the earth. How true were the words of the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, related by Abu Sa’id al-Khudri, radiya’llahu ‘anhu, and which are found in both Bukhari and Muslim, when he said:

“You will follow the ways of those before you inch by inch and yard by yard to the point that if they were to go down a lizard hole, you would follow them into it.” We asked, “Do you mean the Jews and the Christians, Messenger of Allah?” He replied, “Who else?”

This is the situation which confronts us as Muslims in the world in which we now live, but what many Muslims forget is that it is a new situation, unique in the history of the umma. Never before, since the death of the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, has there been nowhere for the Muslims to go, nowhere that Allah’s deen was established in its entirety. This fact imposes on the Muslims a responsibility we have not faced since the first days of Islam. But most Muslims seem to totally ignore this. They act as if they were living 200 years ago and the deen was still completely in place as it was then. They are obsessed with intricate details of the shari’a and are seemingly oblivious of the fact that even its bare essentials are in many cases completely missing.

The deen of Islam as it was left to us by the Messenger of Allah, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is now nowhere to be found and for this reason it has become an individual and collective obligation for every Muslim to devote their lives to seeing it re-established in all its fullness and splendour. This responsibility will not have been fulfilled until the khilafa has been restored, a territory which can properly be called Dar al-Islam has been resecured, the dinar and the dirham are in circulation as the normal currency of the Muslims, zakat is being collected and distributed correctly according to the dictates of the Shari’a, the justice and mercy of Allah’s deen is being re-applied in every area of the life of the Muslim umma, and the worship of Allah in its fullest sense is once again safely re-established on the surface of the earth.

Second khutba Friday 10^th November 2006

You who have iman! if any of you renounce your deen,

Allah will bring forward a people whom He loves and who love Him,

humble to the muminun, fierce to the kafirun,

who do jihad in the Way of Allah and do not fear the blame of any censurer.

That is the unbounded favour of Allah which He gives to whoever He wills.

Allah is Boundless, All-Knowing.

Your friend is only Allah and His Messenger and those who have iman:

those who establish salat and pay zakat, and bow.

As for those who make Allah their friend, and His Messenger and those who have iman:

it is the party of Allah who are victorious! (5:54-56)

It is in the nature of the Qur’an that Allah ta’ala never issues a warning without balancing it out with some good news and in these ayats, which directly follow on from those quoted in the first khutba, He prescribes the exact remedy for the sickness he has described in the preceding passage. In them He tells us exactly what is necessary if the situation which confronts us as Muslims in the world today is to be put right. Allah outlines four qualities which must be embodied by the people who undertake the task of re-establishing His deen. To start with it is evident that fresh blood is needed, a brand new and vital energy. The old guard have abdicated their responsibility and proved unequal to the task. Allah makes it clear that a new generation of Muslims is required who are free of the shackles and restraints of those who came before.

The first quality of those whom Allah has chosen to take on this tremendous task – and we ask Allah that we may be among them – is that Allah loves them and they love Him. Love, then, is the driving force in this work. But what is the nature of that love? Allah ta’ala says to His Messenger in Surat Ali ‘Imran:

Say: ‘If you love Allah, follow me. Allah will love you.’ (3:31)

So we know from this that our love for Allah and His for us is inextricably bound up with following His Messenger, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. What a wonderful thing! The most delightful duty possible, that of following the Beloved of Allah, brings the love of Allah in its wake. The primary way in which we must follow him, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is by truly understanding and inwardly digesting the core teaching of the Message he brought us from his Lord: true tawhid. Not just the theoretical tawhid of the mutakallimun but the active tawhid of the Companions, radiya’llahu ‘anhum ajma’in, and all those who have truly followed in their footsteps. They knew that no one and nothing in existence had any power to help or harm them except Allah and they lived by that knowledge. And because of that they knew that victory would be theirs because they were human beings truly worshipping and recognising the One who had created them for precisely that purpose, the One whose power nothing else in existence is able to withstand.

   The other aspect of following the Messenger is the taking on of his Sunna, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. It is vital for us to remember here that, contrary to what many Muslims think, the Sunna is not the same as the hadith. The Sunna is a matter of action and the hadiths are recorded sayings. In its broadest sense the Sunna is nothing other than the putting into practise by the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, of the guidance which Allah revealed to him in the Qur’an so that it can be said that the Sunna is in fact nothing other than the deen itself as it was realised in action in Madina al-Munawarra by the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and those with him, radiya’llahu ajma’in. That is when and where it happened. That is where we must look for it. And it is there, and there alone, in the recorded actions of the People of Madina, that we will find it. Following the Messenger and gaining the love of Allah inevitably means returning to the actions of the People of the city of the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

“Humble to the muminun, fierce to the kafirun.” How different from the way so many Muslims behave. They are servile towards the kafirun, hoping for a few crumbs from their overloaded tables, and look down on their brother Muslims, considering the kuffar superior to them in so many different ways. In the eyes of a believer, however, nothing in existence could be more noble than another person who believes in Allah and his Messenger and nothing more worthy of contempt than a human being who refuses to acknowledge his Creator and Lord. The hallmark of the believer is that he will do everything in his power to uplift the Muslims and give them pride in their Islam and be absolutely uncompromising in his refusal to kowtow to the kuffar in any way. Implicit in this is the brotherhood of Islam, the source of that indispensible ‘asabiyya, which is at once the binding force and political strength of the Muslim umma.

The third quality of these people is that they “do jihad in the way of Allah.” This means that nothing in their lives has more importance for them than their struggle to see the deen of Allah established again. All their other activities are subordinated to this goal and are only pursued in as far as they really aid in its fulfillment. There are no time-servers among these people, no part-time Muslims, giving up some of their spare time to serve the cause. No, they are people whose lives are dedicated inwardly and outwardly to Allah and His Messenger, people who are able and prepared, as were the Companions, radiya’llahu ‘anhum, and all who have followed in their footsteps, to drop everything and respond to the call of Allah and His Messenger, if necessary at a moment’s notice, and enjoy doing it!

The last quality Allah mentions is that these people who are going to gain the victory are afraid of no one’s disapproval. This is a rare quality. Most of us are desperately concerned about what other people think of us and it too often causes us to betray our deen in many everyday ways. Nearly all of us have known situations when it was almost as if we were embarassed or ashamed to be Muslims, when we have been afraid of what people will say or feel or do if they know we are Muslims, when we are nervous that our being known to be Muslims may affect a situation to our disadvantage in one way or another. Many of us also know, however, what a positive effect a frank admission of Islam, in spite of our fears, has in such circumstances and the surprising benefits which sometimes come from it. It is on this kind of everyday terrain that many of our battles to establish the deen are won and lost. We should arm ourselves with the ayat from Surat al-Ahzab which says:

You were fearing people when Allah has more right to your fear. (33:37)

These then are the qualities Allah ascribes to those He says will be victorious and we ask Allah to make us people who are imbued with them so that we may be among those who successfully take on the task to which Allah and His Messenger have called the Muslims of this time. So that we ensure that true Islamic leadership is re-established among us once more; so that we ensure that zakat is once again collected and distributed as the shari‘a demands; so that we ensure that the gold dinar and silver dirham are re-introduced as the currency of the Muslims; so that we ensure that correct business transactions are re-instituted among us to deliver us from the usurious oppression of kafir economic control; so that we ensure that proper awqaf are set up to set us free from the tyranny of the kafir state machinery. In other words we ask Allah that we may be among those people who set out on the glorious adventure of ensuring that Allah’s deen is once more re-established on the earth in all its majesty and generosity and We ask Allah that may this happen within the lifetime of many of those present in this mosque today.