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Don't Let them Steal your Revolution | Khutbah
Dr. Omar Suleiman draws parallels between the struggles in Bangladesh and Palestine, and reminds us of the importance of unity and perseverance in the face of oppression. Don’t let them steal your revolution—stand firm, and stand together.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
Dear brothers and sisters, alhamdulillahi rabbil 'alameen.
As we stand here in this moment, there's been this overwhelming spirit of victory and joy
for what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given to our brothers and sisters in Bangladesh. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala... Allahu Akbar!
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept all of the dead as shuhada. And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow this revolution to not be hijacked by those who want for Islam and the Muslims what is not good for it.
And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow the people, the freedom fighters of Bangladesh and around the world to persevere.
And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to celebrate victory in Palestine the way that we are celebrating victory in Bangladesh. Allahumma ameen.
Dear brothers and sisters, I want to walk back to a moment where the Prophet ﷺ arrives in Mecca.
After Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grants him the victory of the fatḥ, the victory of the conquest.
And I want you to imagine that you are watching the Prophet ﷺ as someone who has only known the Prophet ﷺ for a few years.
And you don't know the history of that moment. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ sets up his tent in an area known as Hujoon.
And if you've been to Mecca, Hujoon is where you have the famous cemetery of Jannatul Mualla, the cemetery of Al Mualla. Where Khadija (رضي الله عنها) is buried.
Where Abu Talib is buried. Where many of the early Meccans and Muslims are buried. And if you saw the Prophet ﷺ setting up his tent there and you weren't aware of the history,
you wouldn't know that in that very same place, about a decade prior,
the elders of Mecca had come together and they had signed the pact to boycott Banu Hashim and to boycott Banu Mutalib.
And to put them in the valley where the Prophet ﷺ and his family would be starved for three years. And sanctioned for three years.
Eventually out of that sanction and out of that starvation, the death of Khadija (رضي الله عنها) and the death of Abu Talib. But if you were watching the Prophet ﷺ and you didn't know,
all you would think is that the Prophet ﷺ is setting up a tent in an area nearby the Kaaba. Because nothing of his demeanor ﷺ gave off this idea that he was vengeful.
Nothing of the demeanor of the Prophet ﷺ gave off anything but grace. But if you knew the history, you knew the history that in that same area where the Prophet ﷺ pitched that tent,
as a leader who was returning back to his homeland,
the Prophet ﷺ was once banished and put through some of the deepest pain of his life ﷺ.
If you watch the Prophet ﷺ then proceed into Mecca with his nose to the back of his camel.
Not as a man boasting about returning victorious over those who once harmed him ﷺ,
but as a man who was humble to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and understood that victory only comes from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Perhaps you wouldn't be able to appreciate the pain that he had been put through.
Because the Prophet ﷺ did not march into Mecca calling out the names of those who caused him great harm and once banished him from Mecca.
The Prophet ﷺ had no interest in crucifying anyone, in mutilating anyone. The Prophet ﷺ did not say to the people of Mecca,
here I am now, now what do you say of me? Instead the messenger of Allah ﷺ is putting his head to his camel, think of the sight.
And saying la tathreeba alaykum al yawm, there is no blame upon you today. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgive you.
Dear brothers and sisters, if you were to see the Prophet ﷺ and how he dealt with the prisoners after Badr,
perhaps you wouldn't know the pain that those prisoners put him through.
Perhaps you wouldn't know of the torment that those Meccans had put him through because of the grace of the messenger of Allah ﷺ.
And I want you to compare and contrast how they dealt with the Muslims in Uhud.
How Quraish was unrestrained in its brutality in tearing up the body of Hamza (رضي الله عنه). In seeking to pour alcohol and wine on the corpses of the Muslims.
In singing the songs of revenge against the Muslims. All of that because they said a day for a day. Uhud is for Badr.
And if you think about it, what they had done to the Prophet ﷺ and the Muslims before Badr
was far greater than anything that had been inflicted upon them in Badr. If the Prophet ﷺ dealt with them with the same attitude
for the catalogue of atrocities that they committed against him and the Muslims ﷺ for that decade prior to Badr.
Wouldn't Abu Jahl's corpse be dealt with in the same way that he dealt with Sumayya (رضي الله عنها)?
Wouldn't the Prophet ﷺ shout out to them and say the day of Badr for the torture of Mecca? But he didn't do that ﷺ.
Immediately the Prophet ﷺ turned his attention to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and sought the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in that situation
and how to build on that moment of victory. How to take that material victory and turn it into a longer lasting victory.
How to unify the hearts and to turn those hearts collectively to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
The Prophet ﷺ was not beating his chest in some display of human superiority.
Instead the Prophet ﷺ was prostrating to the ground in a display of vulnerability to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and seeking the greater blessings from that victory.
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ had taught the Muslims how to restrain their nafs. How to restrain their selves for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So that when you saw them in victory and when you saw them in defeat it materialized in the exact same behavior which was فَسَبِّحْ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّكَ وَاسْتَغْفِرْهُ
سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ وَبِحَمْدِهِ سُبْحَانَ رَبِّيَ الْأَعْلَىٰ أَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ وَأَتُوبُ إِلَيْهِ سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ أَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهِ سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ أَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهِ
Just like how on a personal level the Messenger of Allah ﷺ he fell in sujood. Likewise, the nose of the Prophet ﷺ
would be to the back of his riding animal in victory and in quote-unquote defeat because he was always a humble servant to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and seeking something else.
You see to the Meccans, the only thing they had to hang their hats on was this idea of revenge. They didn't believe in victory beyond this world
because they didn't believe in resurrection beyond this world. They didn't believe in any type of solace and comfort and compensation outside of this world because they didn't believe in a Lord
who owns both the realm of this world and the realm of the hereafter. The Muslims had something different in their hearts. They sought something greater from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. وَتَرْجُونَ مِنَ اللَّهِ مَا لَا يَرْجُونَ
You want from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala what they do not want. And the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was able to keep the Muslims calibrated
in such a way that if you were to see them after Badr, you might think that this was after Uhud. And if you were to see them after Uhud, you might think that this was after Badr.
They were constantly turning towards Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and looking to Him for that next step. Dear brothers and sisters, one of the things that I want us to take with us deeply,
and I want you to listen to me very very carefully as we insist that your revolution in Bangladesh not be stolen, that the revolution in any place not be stolen
as revolutions before had been stolen. Listen to me very carefully. It is just as important to see through the euphoria and victory
as it is to see through the despair under the darkness of oppression. It is just as important to connect to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when you're on top as it is to connect to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
when you're under the boot of the oppressor. It is just as important to think about how to convert this into a gain in the hereafter and to be patient with yourself and to be patient with the moment
when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has gifted you a palace in this world as it is to see the potential of a palace in the hereafter when you are under the crushing tyranny of a Fir'aun like Asiya (رضي الله عنها).
You have to see in this moment what comes next. And you must not allow yourselves,
we must not allow ourselves to be intoxicated by the moment so that we forget what we're supposed to be building. When the messenger of Allah ﷺ arrives in Al-Madinah al-Munawwara,
I want you to think about this. The messenger of Allah ﷺ was engaged in building a society in Madinah, engaged in building a state in Madinah,
engaged in implementing ethics in Madinah, already executing covenants with the various tribes in Madinah, already executing covenants with the Jews in Madinah, already building mu'akha, building the ties of brotherhood
between the muhajireen and the ansar of Al-Madinah, already conceiving of system after system and building and building and building while a neighboring state sought his annihilation.
While his people in Mecca were plotting day and night against him ﷺ. If the story of Madinah was merely to defend ourselves against the plots of Mecca,
then Madinah would not have been established as the model state that we look to every single year of the existence of this ummah to see how we can model what the prophet ﷺ modeled for us.
But the messenger of Allah ﷺ had something to build. He had a message to put forward.
And sometimes we get so caught up in fighting a system that we forget that we have an alternative system. Sometimes we get so caught up in tearing down the walls of oppression
that we forget that we're also supposed to be building the walls of truth and justice. Sometimes we get so caught up in this country in fighting Islamophobia
that we forget that we're also supposed to be teaching the people the beauty of Islam and offering them Islam as a way of life for them as well.
Sometimes we're so busy in the work of decolonization that we forget that there's a community that we're supposed to build as well.
And that's where the test comes in. Once you throw off the shackles, and alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, I want you to ask yourselves, a month ago,
how many of you would have believed the news that you're seeing out of Bangladesh today? How many of you would have thought that this was possible? The same people tell us about Palestine, that it's impossible,
that the genocidal state of Israel is inevitable, that they've demolished Gaza and that they're going to take over the West Bank.
Wallahi, wallahi, wallahi, Gaza will be free and all of Palestine will be free and we, bi'ithnillah ta'ala, as a community,
as a community, if it's not us, our kids will pray in Masjid al-Aqsa and it will be free, bi'ithnillah ta'ala.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us, يُرِيدُونَ لِيُطْفِئُوا نُورَ اللَّهِ بِأَفْوَاهِهِمْ وَاللَّهُ مُتِمُّ نُورِهِ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْكَافِرُونَ
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, that they wish to extinguish the light of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with their mouths, and bi'afwahihim is different from bi'suyufihim,
it's different from their whips and from their swords and from their government structures. It's what they tell you through those structures and the messages they give you through those whips and through those police batons,
that you will never overcome them, that Islam will be crushed and suppressed. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells you they will run their mouths, and they will say, إِنَّ النَّاسَ قَدْ جَمَعُوا لَكُمْ
that the people have gathered against you. And sometimes even Muslims will inherit that type of behavior and rhetoric, and start to say, إِنَّ النَّاسَ قَدْ جَمَعُوا لَنَا that people have gathered against us.
It's one thing when they say it to us, it's another thing when we start to say it to ourselves. And Allah says, and He will preserve His light, even if the disbelievers hate it. Allah azza wa jal turns your attention.
هُوَ الَّذِي أَرْسَلَ رَسُولَهُ بِالْهُدَىٰ وَدِينِ الْحَقِّ لِيُظْهِرَهُ عَلَى الدِّينِ كُلِّهِ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْمُشْرِكُونَ And Allah azza wa jal goes on to say,
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا هَلْ أَدُلُّكُمْ عَلَىٰ تِجَارَةٍ تُنْجِيكُمْ مِنْ عَذَابٍ أَلِيمٍ Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala turns the attention
from the fact that He will preserve His light and He will not allow it to be suppressed to calling upon you to saying, how are you going to sacrifice for this religion?
What are you going to do with the opportunity that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala puts in front of you?
Isa (عليه السلام), Allah mentions to us, and it's the last mention of Isa (عليه السلام) chronologically in the Quran, powerful. When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا أَنصَارَ اللَّهِ O you who believe, be helpers of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. كَمَا قَالَ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ لِلْحَوَارِيِّينَ مَنْ أَنصَارِي إِلَى اللَّهِ
Like Isa (عليه السلام) said to his disciples, who will be my supporters for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Who will be our helpers besides Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Who will support the cause of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala?
Isa passing the baton, (عليه السلام). That's the last mention we have of him in the Quran, as we're reading from start to finish. And you know what dear brothers and sisters?
What's so powerful about that? Isa (عليه السلام) was speaking to a people living under Roman occupation.
And Isa (عليه السلام) was not just dealing with the corruption of the Roman occupation, he was dealing with the internal corruption of Bani Israel.
And saying that it's not just about lifting the Roman boots off of our necks, it's about lifting the poisons and the shackles from our hearts as Bani Israel. The same thing is true for us as an Ummah.
The same thing is true for the Ummah of Muhammad ﷺ. If you don't have to fight the kuffar in Mecca, you have to fight the munafiqeen in Medina. And you have to remove from your hearts,
and remove from your thoughts, this idea that only an external enemy exists. And only a wall needs to be torn down that has been imposed against us,
not the ones that we build amongst ourselves. If you look at the body of a hadith, and one of my teachers subhanallah he shared this, he said that if you were to study the narrations in hadith,
where the Prophet ﷺ talks about the rights of the brother, the rights of the sister, لا يؤمن أحدكم حتى يحب لأخيه ما يحب لنفسه No one of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.
Or he is not a believer who sleeps full while his neighbor is hungry. And all of these hadith about the values of society, if you study the narrators and when these narrations were, they were in early Medina.
Because these are the values that give life to a society. These are the values that you build structures with. It wasn't just the ahkam, the rulings,
and the scriptural and textual technicalities that came in Al-Madinah al-Munawarah. It was the values that the Prophet ﷺ brought forth
that you build societies upon. You can't just focus on not being like Mecca, not being like Quraysh. Who are you, oh Muslims? Who are you, oh Ansar?
What are you going to build with the opportunity? What are you going to do in this moment? And we need to turn inwards and look in our own communities.
Subhanallah, as we witness in this world full of oppression and tyranny, Umar ibn Abdulaziz (رحمه الله), as he assumed the khilafah,
and he had his moments, he looked out, and instead of puffing his chest out, like a man who had just conquered the world,
even though he had just been given the most powerful post in the world, he put his head down and he cried. Because he said, I swear by Allah that this world has been filled with injustice.
And I have so much on my plate. There's so much injustice that I have to remove. So much that we have to work towards.
And we have to shift our mindsets as Muslims about what it really means to usher in an Islamic alternative, an Islamic lifestyle, an Islamic way of justice,
an Islamic way of governance, an Islamic way of being. Because I tell you what, if the only thing you do is you take corruption, and you throw some ayat of Quran on it,
and put Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim on it, not only have you not ushered in an Islamic alternative, you have insulted the deen that you claim to stand for.
If the only thing that you've done is replaced a tyrant, who is openly hostile to Islam, with a tyrant who wears the cloth of al-Islam,
but acts in the exact same way, you have insulted the religion that you claim to stand for. We are not a people of exteriors. We're not a people of empty slogans.
We're not a people of banners. If I was to ask you to show me a banner that the Prophet ﷺ carried in Badr or in Uhud or in Khandaq or in Fath Makkah,
no one of us would be able to actually reconstruct what that banner looked like. We don't memorize the slogans, but we remember the ethics of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ,
and the fundamental change in society. A non-Muslim who lived in Yathrib, and then lived in Medina, Medina to Nabi ﷺ,
would be able without knowing anything else to tell you about the tangible differences of that society. Not just that instead of Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, we have Muhammad ibn Abdullah, Rasulullah ﷺ.
If a non-Muslim were to walk into Mecca, not caring about idol worship versus tawheed, and witness the interactions of the people before and after Fath Makkah,
they would be able to tell you tangibly something has changed about the society. Something is different. That's what we have to work towards.
That's what we have to strive towards. I repeat again, it is just as important to see through the euphoria of victory as it is to see through the despair
under the darkness of oppression. The people of Gaza have clear eyes, clear vision. The people of Bangladesh, bi-idhnillahi ta'ala, many of them who sacrificed themselves for the moment that we are in,
had clear vision. Our Prophet ﷺ had basira, had clear vision. Let's not lose sight
of what the vision of American Muslims is as well. I leave you with this thought. And I asked a few people recently in a retreat. I said, who remembers that great speech
of the Prophet ﷺ, where he talked about, why I am not a sahir, why I am not a fortune teller or a soothsayer, why I am not a kaddhab, why I am not a liar,
why I am not this, why I am not that, why I am not a majnoon, why I am not a crazy man. No one. Because the Prophet ﷺ
refused to reinforce the discourse against him, refused to play into the narrative against him. The Prophet ﷺ always knew how to bring it back to message.
And instead of talking to them on their terms, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ focused on his message and his mission. I'm not just here to fight Islamophobia.
I'm here to demonstrate the beauty of Islam. I'm not just here so that you can start to believe that Islam and Muslims are acceptable, that Islam is not the regressive,
barbaric religion that it has been made out to be. I am here to show you that Islam is special and that the value that it brings to society is greater than the value of anything else.
May Allah ﷻ allow us to pursue Him in victory and in hardship. May Allah ﷻ allow us to remain grateful and patient and praising Him in all circumstances. Allahumma ameen. Barakallahu feekum.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

































































































































































































































































































