God says in Surah Al-Imran (Q 3:166-168),
"That which befell you on the day when the two armies met was by the permission of Allah that he might know the true believers; And that might he know the hypocrites unto whom it was said, 'Come, fight in the way of Allah or defend yourselves.' They answered, 'If we knew aught of fighting, we would follow you.' On that day, they were nearer disbelief than faith. They utter with their mouths a thing which is not in their hearts. Allah is best aware of what they hide. Those who while they sat at home said to their brethren who were fighting for the cause of Allah, 'If they had been guided by us, they would not have been slain,' say unto them, 'Then avert death from yourselves if you are truthful.'"
Today is October 4th, 2024. Nearly 365 days have passed since the fateful day of October 7th, 2023. An entire year of genocide, what feels like it was always inevitable. Who could have predicted that in one year's time, all of the major events that have taken place over the last year, through the summer and even perhaps the last few weeks would have come to pass? Not many could have foreseen it. Not many could have foreseen the frightful and terrifying terrorist attack that took place a few weeks ago at the hands of Israel on the Lebanese civilians. Not many could have foreseen so many commanders and high-ranking officers in the Lebanese resistance being eliminated. Certainly not the murder of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, or that Iran would respond militarily and legally. There are a lot of things to cover, so let us hope that we can cover some of them in this khutbah.
Let us begin with the death of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. The verses that I recited to you at the beginning talk about the feelings that are deep in our hearts. Ones that we do not let on in our speech, that we perhaps let on in our action, and though we hide the truth from ourselves, we cannot hide the truth from God. It has been high time for us to listen to these verses and think very carefully as to whether we fall into this classification of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. What happened in Syria during the revolution and ensuing civil war, it is possibly one of the greatest fitnas that the Muslims have encountered as an Ummah and maybe the worst that we have ever encountered. It was a fitna that cost the lives of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, but it also gave us severe cognitive dissonance, and I will return to this idea of cognitive dissonance a few more times so that we can really think about why it is so important and why it has been so damaging.
The reactions to the death of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah have been mostly in two camps. There were those who mourned and there were those who expressed utter joy. It makes sense, this was a man that was involved in the fitna. The mourning and the joy, two very separate emotions that Muslims are caught between, but we have to think deep down, as we are told in the verses of Al Imran that we cited, what was the feeling that we were all truly feeling in our hearts? The mourners mourned at first, they could not believe that it was true. They wanted to deny the reality and then when enough time had passed and had set in, they wanted to resort back to our normal psychological oft-repeated dogmas. I understand them, because we do not want to lose heart, we want to hold the attitude that if you kill one of us, 10 of us will stand up. That if you kill one Haniyeh, a new Haniyeh will rise and if you kill one Nasrallah, a new Nasrallah will rise. If you kill one Salah ad-Din, another Salah ad-Din will rise.
Now, are the people who say that usually the ones that rise and take the place of them? Usually not. It takes a great deal of effort to produce a leader and produce a movement, but maybe we are beyond the time of single leaders and large looming figures. Maybe it is time that we need to take responsibility as individuals. Deep down, what did we really feel? Let's tell the truth, what did we really feel deep down? I have complicated feelings about the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is no secret. I have come on this pulpit and I have criticized them to death. I have criticisms over all of the parties involved in the fitna and essentially any government or movement in the Middle East because as I have stated before, my loyalty is to God and my loyalty is to the truth. So what is the truth?
The truth is, like me, if you were honest as a Muslim, when you saw that Hassan Nasrallah was dead, whether you mourned or whether you puffed out your chest and said, "We are going to stand up and fight back," or whether you bought treats for your friends who hate Nasrallah and you jumped up and down and danced and showed joy, deep down, every single one of you felt terror. You may not want to admit it, and perhaps in your mind you are disagreeing with me, I don't really care, I am still going to tell you the truth. Deep down, you felt terror, and deep down, you felt defeat. Deep down, every single one of us hoped that whether it was Hezbollah, Iran, Ansarullah or whoever else, one of them would figure out a way to defeat the enemy and to end the plight of the Palestinians. It’s the truth.
We thought, "Well, we are not the main characters in the story. We are unfortunately side characters, we are unfortunately extras." Maybe if you have enough extras in the scene, you can change things, but not really. Really, it comes down to the major powers in the region: The satellite Arab dictators and the hateful Shi'a who hate all the Sunnis. Then you come up with this weird theological misunderstanding, "Oh, this is perfect. I, the neutral person, will sit in the middle and let the tyrants beat each other up, and then when they simply fall over and die, I will then walk in, having done nothing but eat cookies and relish in the joy of the murder of other people. I will just show up with no plan, no government, no culture, no trajectory, no belief system, and I will take over."
We were terrified, all of us were. Then when that horror set in, we thought the really ugly thought, "Oh my God, this might end. There might be no resistance left to the colonization of Palestine, perhaps to the colonization of Lebanon, to the genocide of these two peoples, to possibly the colonization of Syria and the further killing of those peoples." There is nothing, no obstacle left, no tyrant left to hit the other tyrant with, so they would have a clear path. Be honest with yourselves, you all felt that horror. You know how I know you felt that horror? The same people who were cheering on the death of Nasrallah, less than a week later when Iran decided to respond militarily, they decided to sit on the fence a little bit.
I watched them very closely. They decided to sit on the fence a little bit. They sat on the sidelines and they said, "Iran’s strong against us puny Arabs. Poor us. But when they are against the real powers in the region, they are a paper tiger, they run away." Then they respond and everyone shuts up for about 30 minutes, but then they start talking again. Why? Because the hope was reinstated. You went back to talking because you felt that glimmer of hope, did you not? You felt that glimmer of hope, "Oh, well, hopefully we can go back to the paradigm of tyrant fighting tyrant. Then, I’ll get to sit on the side and cut a cookie for my friend, saying, ‘Look, now so-and-so dies and so-and-so dies, and I hate both of them, so this is great. Let us just let them hit each other.'" You begin to feel hope again. When you are asked, "Why do you not join?" what do you respond with? "Come." Does Hezbollah, Iran and the entire axis not say to the rest of the world, "Join us. Stand unified"?
I am not an apologist. I want to make this very clear, I am not an apologist for any actor in this region. I am not an apologist for this country, the United States. I am not an apologist for Israel, I am not an apologist for Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, or anyone else. Listen carefully. Have some courage, put aside your hatred for a moment and listen to what I am saying. Listen, my friends. Sami Hamdi, the Muslim analyst whom we have all come to love and appreciate, who seems to be prepared to tell the truth at nearly any cost, who sticks it to the Arab dictatorships, who tells the truth, whom with I agree personally— and this is my personal opinion, it does not reflect the opinions of the Usuli Institute—that we should not vote for the Democrats nor the Republicans in this upcoming election. And Sami Hamdi makes brilliant points, listen to him when he says this.
But before Nasrallah's death and before the military response, directly after the pager attack, Sami Hamdi told us that, "Israel is not a priority for Iran. Conquering Sunni lands is the priority. Israel is a distraction. Israel is only sufficient insofar as a few rockets make the Muslim world clap in that there is some sort of resistance, but you, Iran, are more focused on Saudi Arabia and the Arab states. You are more focused on entrenching the Shi'a ideology in these areas where you can find support." This is the brilliant analyst, Sami Hamdi, whose mind works really well in analysis but then when it comes to Iran, immediately his brain turns off and he goes full conspiratorial.
It is not just Sami Hamdi. Let us pause here for a moment. This type of rhetoric is abundant, it is a dime a dozen in Arab media, Middle Eastern media, Muslim media, non-English speaking media. It is everywhere, whether it be from native informants or the hardcore Salafis, it does not matter. There have always been the Shi'a who wear the turban and the whole look, who will go on Al Arabiya and do their whole native informant gig, but it is now increasing in the English language world and there is a reason why this matters, please bear with me.
There is another individual that many have come to listen to and respect, CJ Werleman. I have listened to a few things that he has said in these last few weeks. He has been saying them now for quite some time and I have been quite upset, but listen at this current juncture to what he has been saying. He said, "Morally consistent people are mad at Iran for deliberately inflicting zero damage on Israel. Moral frauds, however, are celebrating Iran's pyrotechnic display which was meant only to further whitewash its occupation, colonization and cleansing of Arab lands," essentially a restatement of what Sami Hamdi said. Another tweet from CJ reads, "Iran's missile attack killed zero Israelis and one Palestinian in occupied Jericho. This is right on brand for Iran, kill Sunni Arabs, spare Israeli Jews." If you thought that was dumb, listen to this last one. "If after all this time, you don’t believe that Iran cooperated with Israel and the US in the assassination of the Hamas leader and in exchange for sanctions relief and/or a promise of normalization, then you are hopelessly lost in the woods."
CJ Werleman's double whammy of racism and sectarianism is so stupid that he has to make you feel stupid for not agreeing with him. He is essentially saying, "You are so dumb, so stupid, so cognitively impoverished. If you do not understand that this grand conspiracy theory that I am shoving down your throat is not true, you are beyond rehabilitation. You are lost in the woods. You have to be smart like me." To be smart like him means accepting the reality that the nation state of Iran, the Islamic Republic, since its inception in 1979, had this whole plan all along with Persian Ayatollahs saying, "Now we can finally do what we have been wanting to do since 14 centuries ago: Kill Sunni Arabs ostensibly because they are not Persian and because they're not Shi'a," as if being Iranian and Shi'a is the same thing. Even just explaining this feels really dumb.
One would think that people like CJ Werleman and Sami Hamdi would not be affected by the exact same talking points that America, Israel and its Arab satellite states have been propagating since 1979. They are so smart and investigative when it comes to matters in the Muslim world outside of the context, but their brains come to a screeching halt and go full conspiratorial when it comes to Iran and the Shi'a resistance.
I have a question for Sami Hamdi and for these people in the Muslim world that clap as if there is some sort of resistance. I ask you, are you mocking the Palestinian children in Gaza who, for two seconds, had the coolness of their eyes that they had been looking for an entire year, the thought that they had not been forgotten? The hundreds of millions of dollars that it took an impoverished nation like Iran to send that pyrotechnic display, do you really think that was a show? I would like to be friends with you, dear Sami. Set aside your foolishness. I drove two hours to respect you and come down to where you were speaking because I have an extended hand. But do you not care? Are you so impoverished in confidence that you can tell the truth about some things and lie about others?
For one whole year, CJ, you have watched Israel murder and rampage with impunity. Are you not tired of seeing dead bodies? Do you think this is some sort of video game where the main priority is to run up the score? If that was the case, how many hundreds of thousands of Israelis would you like to see dead to even up the score? All year, you have been wagging your finger at everybody else and saying, "Look, Israel does not follow international war laws, they do not follow humanitarian laws, they do not follow any laws, and they engage in horrible genocidal ways. There is another way to engage with an enemy other than killing everybody."
Then Iran comes and proves that it is possible to stand up for the dignity of the sovereignty of one’s nation and for the axis that is resisting without purposefully causing any death. Mind you, the Palestinian that was killed was killed because of the satellite Arab union with Israel. America shot the missiles down and that killed that fellow. Why are you lying? Are you telling me that like the Israelis, the Iranians went and wrote the name of the person they would like to kill most, "One Sunni Palestinian in occupied Jericho, please"?
CJ, despite taking anti-Iran positions, your Twitter feed reads nearly identical in style to the propagandist Jackson Hinkle, a paid propagandist by conservative factions in Iran. It’s obvious that he is a propagandist. What does the man know about Iranian politics? He can barely speak his own native language. What does he know about the internal politics of Iran for him to start claiming, “If the conservative candidate Jalili had been voted into office, none of this would have ever happened. Iran would have responded to Israel and we would have been strong.” Your Twitter feed and articles read exactly like that propagandist. What do you want me to wonder about you, Mr. CJ? Should I wonder where your money is coming from? Should I wonder if it is coming from Turkey? Qatar? I am not going to do what you do, I am not going to go conspiratorial. I have another question. If you are so invested in our future, do you think it is time to say your Shahada? What’s stopping you? You are happy to take our money, take our time, you stir the pot for us, you are happy to continue to stir the pot of sectarian divide. No problem, join, come on in, the water is just fine. But no, you're a dedicated atheist. Fine, CJ, be an atheist, but be an atheist with integrity.
People, racist sectarianism rots the brain, it rots the brain. It replaces rational thinking with conspiratorial thinking. It is beyond distracting. This rhetoric is so powerful. How do I know that it is powerful? Who relies on this rhetoric above all other rhetoric? The American-Israeli satellite Arab axis. You saw Netanyahu, he showed you a map. He showed you who is on the team. Indians are also on the team, by the way.
The cognitive dissonance of the one who celebrates the death of Israel's most fearsome enemy and feels anger at Iran's military engagement and support for resistance against Israel is so damaging, it leaves them confused and ineffective to provide any meaningful strategy. You are not providing any meaningful strategy as to how to end the American-Israeli satellite Arab axis. CJ and Sami, you are, I hope, unwittingly strengthening the Arab despots that you claim to hate and oppose. Cognitive dissonance is destroying your rational capacity. There is but one enemy. I do not apologize for this. The spear has different parts and different horns, but Israel is the enemy of the entire world, of humans, of creation. The way that they behave is disgusting. It must end. I will say this again later, it must end. There will be no progress in our region otherwise. Dearest ones, dearest Muslims, dearest brothers and sisters, dearest to my heart, those who say, “la ilaha illa Allah, wa Muhammadan Rasulu-Allah,” I love you for that sake, that you say those words.
Please, Muslims will suffer in America, in Mexico, in China, in Australia, everywhere in the world for as long as you allow Israel, the United States and their proxies to choke the life out of us. In our sacred sites, even if we manage democracy in our Muslim lands, things will always fall apart. Even those who oppose Israel are still affected by despotism. You cannot get rid of despotism without getting rid of the intervention of this disgusting axis. They must go. Cognitive dissonance is making you stop yourself from making this realization. Think about the cognitive dissonance regarding the fitna in Syria. All the Arab nations opposed the Arab Spring in all the other countries. What was the single country where they made an exception and they supported the revolution? Syria. They love the Syrians more than the Tunisians, more than the Egyptians, more than the Bahrainis, more than the Jordanians, more than the Iranians? Why?
Because of a really obvious point, Syria was the root in which Iran connects to Hezbollah. That was it, it was that simple. Then they sent hijackers to hijack a noble cause. I know this is a complicated geopolitical historical narrative. Spend some time reading and looking into it, please. Listen to what the Qatari prime minister said just recently. He said, "At the onset of the Syrian crisis, there was complete coordination between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Shaykh Hamad sent me to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the King began by stating, 'Bashar is a criminal with blood on his hands and after what happened during the Arab Spring, we cannot support something like it,’" it being the Arab Spring. "’However, we want to support the Syrian people and would like Qatar to take the lead while we stay in the background,’" we being Saudi Arabia.
"'You should determine what is needed and inform us.' I told him that we need to coordinate with the Americans, Jordan and Turkey. We began discussions with these parties and established two operations rooms, one in Jordan and the other in Turkey. The goal was to support the resistance," the Syrian resistance. "Since the flow of refugees had already begun and the Turks warned us that if the numbers exceed a certain limit, they would enter Syria and occupy part of it. These operations rooms were set up with representatives from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and the Americans and everything passed through these two centers." How, my friends, do you explain this willingness to help the Syrian resistance but the complete lack of help to any of the other revolutions or, in fact, the Palestinians? Why should it be that Palestine is only supported by Iran?
I am not talking about financial help, like the building of a hospital. Any dunce can do that, especially dunces with lots of money. The only reason why Palestine still lives, still breathes, and still has hope, I do not care what you think of Iran, is the fact [of Iran’s support]. If there was not the money going there to resist, to give them the ability to resist by legal force, Israel would be able to overrun Palestine. And that is not to say anything about the heroism of Palestinians. I believe that down to the last man, woman and child, Palestinians will resist in any way, but I am talking about the pragmatics and logistics of war and self-defense. People, what do we need to understand about Muslim Arab despotism? What do we need to understand about it? First and foremost, as long as America and Israel are in their current political iteration and dominate our region, we will not be able to truly cure our despotic illness.
That includes every country. Iran, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, it does not matter, and the Arab despots all know this. These are satellite states. What are satellite states? Satellite states are the ones who are dominated by influence financially, culturally, militarily, and so on. This is where their feeling of security comes from. They are terrified of democracy because it means that they will have to go. They are terrified of Iran because it means that Iran will export revolution, a fervor for democracy and they will have to go. So what are they going to do? They are going to go to the other occupying force in the region and say, "We will be with you guys. What do you want to do?" What is that? You want to talk about Iran's proxies, what is Saudi Arabia if not an American proxy? What is Jordan that shoots down the weapons that are flying over their skies? What happened when the tyrants tried to hit each other? You got involved, you intercepted. You did not even let the tyrants hit each.
I do not want to talk about the fitna, and I am so sorry to say this dear friends, but please Google the Free Syrian Army’s relationship with Israel, and the coordination of attacks on Hezbollah post October 7th in drone strikes with Israel. I know it is hard to look at. Do you want to read the hundreds of articles of when Israel took in Free Syrian Army, Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda, all of the things, when they were hurt and injured in war, they went into Israel for medical care and were sent back to Syria and when Israel was asked point-blank, "Would they do the same for Hezbollah?" they said, "Hell no"? I know it hurts, but you want to redeem the blood that was lost in this fitna, the Syrian blood that was lost in this fitna, dust yourselves off, look in the mirror and tell yourselves the truth. Israel is the priority, Sami Hamdi. Israel is the priority and Iran is the only nation state in the region making it the priority.
You want to see how stupid this argument is? I can flatten it in 10 seconds and so can you. Today, all of Iran's problems will go away immediately if they stop supporting Palestine. That would be the end of it, Iran's problems would all be gone. Khamenei can pick up the phone and say, "We are with you. The writing is on the wall. We will put down the arms, we will normalize relations, it is all done," and Iran would flourish and the dissidents would be happy, they would have American hotels, that is what they really want. Gucci stores, vacations, no visa problems, tourism, flowing alcohol, these are the things that we really care about. What is the function of the Arab satellite states? My dear loved ones, what is the function of the Arab satellite states?
On August 16th of this year, Qatar's top intelligence official was awarded a medal from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for his role in strengthening intelligence cooperation with the United States. "State Security Agency chief Abdullah bin Mohammed Al-Khulaifi received the George Tenet medal from CIA elect director, Bill Burns. Burns gave Al-Khulaifi the award in quote, 'Appreciation of his role in maintaining national and regional security between two allies in the Gulf region.' Al-Khulaifi was also honored for his exceptional support given to the US agency in preserving the interest and security of US and Qatar," the report said. Dearest ones, Qatar was the supposed co-negotiator in the ceasefire talks that we all thought were supposed to happen, but all of us deep down knew were not going to happen. How can they happen with things the way they are?
Is it not embarrassing that I have to read this? How can they happen when each [year], Egypt is given billions of dollars in military aid? Who is Egypt fighting? I ask you, American Muslims, what are you doing? Have any of you done anything to stop this? I am not an activist, I am not an organizer, I am just the delivery man of the news really. Have any of you done anything to stop the military aid? Perhaps some Egyptians are dedicated to the cause, but Muslims as a whole, I ask you, how is it that the money is still going to Egypt? They are getting paid, they are getting awards and they are involved in the ceasefire. Do you not feel the shame that I feel? And yet you want to talk about Iran? Do you know how stupid we look to them, how weak we look? How embarrassing for us!
Syria was despotic and it was not strengthening Israel, it was hurting it, same with Iran, Lebanon, and so on. I have said this before and I am saying it to you again, even if we achieve democratic states…and I think we have to do all things all at once, by the way, we cannot put all our eggs in one basket. But even if we achieve democratic states; Iran is a democratic state, it has elections, its president dies and they elect a new one and a reformist comes in, then a conservative comes in, and then a reformist comes, we still have this problem of despotism because we are still colonized. Not even mentally, we are colonized physically. Our region is colonized. You cannot separate Iran and Palestine, you cannot separate Iran and the Hejaz, you cannot separate Jordan and the Levant from Egypt. We are one. For God's sake, for all those who identify as ahl al-Hadith, you believe in hadith, don’t you? The Prophet told us that we are one nation, that if one part hurts, everything hurts. We have to get right. It is like we have one of our own hands wrapped around our own throat, and meanwhile we are trying to achieve “democracy” with our other “free” hand. It is not possible, not fully. Treat the illness where it is, eradicate this illness. I do not have a problem with individual Israelis or individual Americans, and I do not want to see them dead. I repeat, I do not want to see Israelis harmed, I do not want to see Americans harmed, and I want to limit the amount of death, doom and destruction that it would take to defend ourselves. That should be our mentality. We are better than them, we are more moral than them, we come from a more moral education than them. We are not out for vengeance, we are out for setting God's balance back, being better. Idfa’ bi-lati hiya ahsan is our call. CJ, maybe if you join us, you would realize we are not trying to kill people, we are trying to achieve liberation and that means more than just killing people and causing doom and destruction.
Above all else, dear friends, sectarian hatred for Iran and the anti-Israel Shi'a axis does what? Above all else, it provides cover for the Arab satellites and Israel who are the true "destabilizing forces in the Middle East." How many times have you heard it in America, in Saudi Arabia, in Lebanon, and in Iran itself, the dissonance that the most destabilizing nation in the entire region, in the entire world is Iran? Antarctica should be afraid of Iran, they are the most destabilizing force in the world. No. You allowed sectarian hatred and racism to give you the cognitive dissonance to truly believe the total conspiracy theory that it is Iran that is the destabilizing force. Iran is from the region. It has been there for thousands of years and it will be there for thousands of years, God willing, unless He destroys us for our lunacy and lack of initiative. It is the Americans that do not belong there.
Americans barely belong here. They belong here because they genocided everyone and then said, "Maybe we will do a ceasefire now," then they will change their mind and shoot you again. "Another treaty? Just kidding," and then they will shoot you again. Let us tell the truth, this is the truth. We are so committed to being anti-genocide, have we reached out to the natives of this country to ask them if it is okay with them that we are on their territory? We are laughing, smoking, drinking, eating, and having a great old time. Did we ask them if they need anything? No. We are too busy with cognitive dissonance, our rational capacities are fried. We only have time to think tribal and say, "Oh, who is the enemy? I cannot think for myself. I have cognitive dissonance. Let me look to the enemy to tell me, 'Enemy, who is the enemy?'" "It is not us, it is those guys. These Iranians, for thousands of years, all they have wanted to do is crush you Arabs."
You know how I know this old trick? I am an Iranian, I grew up an Iranian. I have done this for decades, I heard all of the same arguments flipped around. They told me growing up that the Arabs are occupying my country. Islam is not Iranian, Islam is Arab. They told me that Arabs are trying so hard to occupy my country, and if it was not for our hero, Ferdowsi, we would have all been speaking Arabic like the other loser Arab countries that used to speak a different language, but have now changed to Arabic. I was pumped full of this propaganda for years and I resisted it and I resisted it, and I believe that God intervened in my life and said, "No, that is racist. Go and learn Arabic, go and learn their culture, eat their food, sit with them, laugh with them, cry with them."
I feel no difference between myself and my Arab brethren, and I can feel that way with all of you everywhere if we unite in God's cause. What is God's cause? God's cause is for everyone. I do not care what you think, I do not care if you doubt whether He exists, I do not care. God's cause is righteousness, morality, fairness, setting it right and destroying this turning wheel of despotism. You just keep spinning the wheel and a new despot comes on top. If you hate that, then I am with you and you are with me. If you are willing to change that and bleed for that and in our context, sit in a room and think and read for that, to vacuum the floor for that, to pick up heavy boxes for that, to sacrifice salary for that, to sacrifice social status for that, to sacrifice your romantic life for that, then you are with me and I am with you, but we cannot do it if we do not know where to direct our attention.
Our opposition is not each other. Oh, people who have suffered under colonization all over the world, our opposition is with the racist, sectarian, tribal, hateful ideology and if you are against that, you are with me and I am with you. You teach me the wisdom that you have in resisting and I will teach you.
If there was one point to take from the previous sermon, it was this single point. We now know that whether the Arab world or the Muslim world reforms towards democracy or not, the Israeli ethnostate, America and its proxies cannot continue to dominate us. They must be driven out. They must be told to leave, they must be shown the door. That is not genocidal rhetoric, that is a simple fact. The inhabitants of these states, if you are American, you are Jewish or whatever be you, stay. It is the ideology, the government, and the weapons that must go. This is the same thing you are telling us while genociding us. Maybe that is what makes you feel uncomfortable.
"Well, we do not have a problem with you, Arab Shi'a. You Iranian Shi'a, we kind of have a problem. We do not really have a problem with you, Sunni, Druze, Kurd, Yazidi, whatever you are, as long as you do not support the people who are trying to drive out our hegemony in the region. Then it is fine, you can stay. But hey, you do not want to die in indiscriminate shelling and bombing, you have to somehow have better intelligence than the Israelis, the CIA and the Shin Bet, and go find Hassan Nasrallah and drag him by the ear out of his bunker and throw him on the street and say, 'Israel, we found him. Please take him.' Then you will not get hit by indiscriminate bombing. But until that day, I am so sorry, you should leave the area. You should move, you should be a refugee, you should be displaced from your home, all because I am colonizing this land, whether you like it or not."
I am not advocating for that rhetoric, dear friends. You want to be a Jew and live in Palestine, live in Palestine, you want to call it Israel, knock yourself out. But not under your genocidal ethnostate, no, with reasonable humane standards. We also have international standards, these standards exist, we have just all decided that we do not care about the rules anymore because for the ethnostate, the rules do not apply to them. No, it is not a lack of jurisprudence, it is not a lack of wisdom, it is not a lack of good jurists. We have been left with no other choice. So many smart people have dedicated their entire lives to finally be sat at a podium for 30 seconds only but to be ignored. That is devastating, that is debilitating, that is humiliating. Hayhat minna ad-dhilla; far be it from us Muslims, humiliation.
That is in the Middle East, the Arab world, and the Muslim world, but we said that the axis is what? It is American, it is Israeli and it is Arab satellite. Where do we American Muslims live? My apologies to our viewers who are not American Muslims, but I am sure that this will also apply to you in some way because it also applies to Muslims around the world. Who is the weakest point on this axis? The Americans, the Israelis or the satellite Arabs? Who is the weakest? Who is the odd man out? Which one of these three do not belong? By American white standards, which of these three do not belong? The Arab satellite state. It is weak. It has come there for weakness, it has come there because of its weakness. It has no strength, and it is so weak that it does not know what to do. It is scrambling.
With the missiles that flew over its airspace, the moment they heard that Iran said to Israel, "If you shoot at our nuclear sites, we will light up all of your Arab proxy oil refineries," the next day, Saudi Arabia met with Iran and what did they say? "We will not get involved. We will be neutral." Now, I do not believe them for as far as I can throw them, but it is fear and weakness. They are even getting abandoned by their weak alliance to the racist ethnostate, Judeo-Christian extremist evangelist, khabith. The weakest part first. We have found what is our enemy. Our enemy is this axis and this ethnostate ideology and upholding the ethnostate ideology in our Muslim lands and in our world. The weak points are the Arab states. How are the Arab states empowered? Jordan's economy is in the dumps, Egypt's economy is in the dumps. If you go to Jordan and Egypt, these people are starving and their leaders are starving them.
I am not talking about them. I am talking about the genocidal United Arab Emirates who genocided the Yemeni people and had to gall to then go into the air and blame it all on Iran, the genocidal Saudi regime who genocided hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. Until today, if you ask a Muslim, "What happened in Yemen?" Nobody knows the story. It is embarrassing. You do not even know the basics of why these people were killed and starved en masse, why cholera and diphtheria have overtaken their communities and became one of the worst humanitarian crises. Keep in mind, this is old news, this is 10 years ago. And then another worse humanitarian crisis comes. The worst displacement, Sudan, [in part because of the] United Arab Emirates. The worst humanitarian crisis in Palestine, [because of the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and America.] Just breaking the records. A million dead in Afghanistan, a million dead in Iraq, and you have the gall to talk to me about Shi'a. Millions dead.
For all the time that you have spent in the last two years fighting your righteous war against bi, gay, and trans folk, and let us use CJ Werleman's logic, how many Muslims have been killed by bi, gay and trans folk? Millions? Cognitive dissonance has destroyed your rational capacity. I do not care whether you theologically disagree, you are distracted by hatred. It is clear demonic interference and you are saying, "Yes, give me more. More demonic please, more hatred please. Ugh, they gross me out, they do not do things the way I do." No one asked you to know. The satellite states, the United Arab Emirates is 80% expatriate. Their entire system works because the Muslim world diaspora moves there, builds it, gives it infrastructure, gives it taxis, gives it food, gives it doctors, gives it everything. They do not know how to do anything on their own.
You know it to be true, but you live with the cognitive dissonance of, “I will just blame Iran as the destabilizing factor in the entire Middle East, and I will close my eyes to the fact that the UAE has perpetuated genocide in Sudan, in Syria, in Yemen and everywhere else, and has normalized relations with Israel and said, "Please genocide the Palestinians," to the point that they go out of their way to not allow people to wear anything in support of Palestine. I know you all saw it, the video of the lady that had a shirt that said Palestine on it, and they told her that she must remove her shirt. But you still live there and work there and it is normal to you. This is the weakest point of the axis. Pack up your bags, take your passport because you do not have a UAE passport, move back to your country of residence and I will tell you what to do when you get back to the country of residence.
I know most of you are from America, I will tell you what to do when you get back here. “Whoa, hold on,” you may say, "but if I do that, then I am going to take my money and build infrastructure here, and I am going to be an engineer in America and America is the number one purveyor of terrorism." Okay, weaken the axis first. Weaken the axis first at its weakest point, come back here and then we will have a discussion. I will tell you, here, right now. Saudi Arabia, if it is an axis, a satellite Arab state that essentially belongs to the United States and Israel, what does that mean if it is the one that is the purveyor and the caretaker of your holy sites of Mecca and Medina? Your Hajj and Umrah is under whose control? Simple math, right? Is it not the simple math that you all used? "Hezbollah is terrible because it upheld Bashar al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad is my murderer, therefore Hezbollah is my murderer, therefore Iran is my murderer," right? That was the argument, correct?
Who is the proxy of America and Israel? Saudi Arabia. Who controls Mecca and Medina? America and Israel. This is not news to us, especially not to people who check into this pulpit, but it bears mentioning on a year into an expanding, unhalting genocide. Yes, these khutbahs are too long, you are right. I do not like giving long khutbahs, I am tired too, but we must review the mess that we have made with our cognitive dissonance and look at it all in a row, or else our cognitive dissonance is going to make us feel as if we cannot do anything. Let us just stay home and let the tyrant hit the tyrant and when they say to us, those who are fighting, "Oh, brothers, if you had but listened to us, you would not have gotten killed," this is what the verse says, Saudi Arabia says to Iran and Hezbollah, "Oh, brothers, we should join them. Why so much death and destruction? We should just join them. Let them do what they do."
Mohammed bin Salman, is telling you with his own words, though they’ll claim that he did not say it, "I do not care about the Palestinian issue. Personally, for me, I do not care about the Palestinian issue. It is these young kids in Saudi Arabia who have seen this for the first time, they are just being introduced to this conflict and for them, I have no choice but to ask you for normalization, okay? I need a high return on investment." He says, "I need a high return on investment because of what I am afraid of," and listen to what he says, he is afraid of being Anwar el Sadat-ed, he is afraid of being executed and chased down by his own people for normalization. He is telling you he is afraid of you, the masses. He is worried you would hold him accountable, or even kill him, therefore he is using that leverage. He wants nuclear power and he wants whatever else he wants, Saudi and Arab hegemony in the region and in return, what he will do is he will normalize, he will follow American interests and he will empower the US dollar.
Regarding Mecca and Medina, he has also said he is aiming for $30 billion a year from Hajj and Umrah every single year. Okay, are we at war or are we not at war? Did Palestinians get to go to Hajj this year? Did they just stop everything and say, "Oh, it's very important for the Palestinians to go to Hajj and Umrah this year. Stop, let them go perform Hajj and Umrah, and then they can come back”? Did they get to go on Hajj and Umrah this year? No. Did you go on Hajj and Umrah this year? A gajillion times? What is good for me is okay, and what is happening to them is regrettable, but someone has got to go on Hajj and Umrah. Where? Where is it written? Show me the verse. In times of war when people are being genocided, it is okay, let the people get genocided. Do not get involved, continue empowering the countries, do not do much, hope that the tyrants hit each other and then spend your money on Hajj and Umrah. Cognitive dissonance has destroyed your rational capacity.
You say Masjid al-Aqsa under occupation, but Saudi Arabia, part of the satellite Arab-Israeli-American axis, is occupying Mecca and you cannot see it. You cannot see it as occupied. Why? Because you can spend your money there and you can go and it is fun and it is a good time, but if you go to Masjid al-Aqsa, you may not be allowed to go in, you may get beat up, you may get killed and it is terrifying. It is an act of actual resistance to go to Jerusalem and say, "No, we Muslims care about Masjid al-Aqsa.” The least I can do is go there and risk my life, my time, my money, and everything to just go there. I know Muslims that tell their children, the children that want to go, "Do not go to Masjid al-Aqsa," I know. It is an act of ultimate resistance. I know because I felt it and I did it and those who have know that feeling.
Right now, the other occupied sacred site is as clear, as akin, as analogous to normalizing. It is normalization. When I go to Masjid al-Aqsa, I do not put a cent in the pocket of the Israeli axis. When you go to Masjid al-Haram, Al-Aziz, I would die for Masjid al-Haram if I could. May I die for Masjid al-Haram. May my father, my mother, my sister, my brother be sacrificed for Masjid al-Haram. [Arabic 01:12:49], is that good? That Masjid al-Haram, you give $30 billion without a thought. Why? Cognitive dissonance has destroyed your rational capacity. Cognitive dissonance, my dear friends, my brothers and sisters, my loved ones, has destroyed your rational capacity. All you can do is blame it on the Shi'a, but you have nothing to do with it? These are the clear and obvious, immediate, impactful, mass, biomass movements that we can do. It is easy, we have that privilege. It will not even cause the sweat to roll off our backs to go back to the other privileges that exist in the United States of America and leave the satellites and let them fall apart and support that money.
"Oh, I have to be in America and I have to work so I can support the poor people of Palestine and Lebanon," Great. Keep the same attitude towards the Saudis. The poor people of Saudi Arabia, I want to see you all line up to give them the money. I want to see you line up to give all the poor Emiratis money. I want to see the line. Come back to America. "What to do in America?" you ask. You may ask, isn’t it just like us paying tax dollars? Well, first of all, I do not go to jail if I do not go on Hajj. If I do not pay my taxes in America, I go to jail. I have to pay. I do not have to pay Bin Salman, I do not have to pay Israel, I do not have to give them more money.
Let us come back to the United States. Have you talked to the Native Americans? Do you know what they are doing in this country? Do you know what their movement is? Do you know that we can morally get behind them and at least in a moral show of solidarity, try to support them? Are you interested in the Land Back movement? Have you ever heard of it? No, you likely have not. Let us be honest: We are okay with this lifestyle, but we cannot be okay with it. Cognitive dissonance destroys our rational and moral capacities. Come back to the United States, dear friends.
Final point, this one regarding the Democrats and the Republicans. We thought that if the Democrats were not in office, the Republicans would come and slaughter our people, so therefore we thought we must vote for the Democrats so that there was less of a chance that our people would be slaughtered. So then we voted for the Democrats, and they came in and they slaughtered our people. Cognitive dissonance.
They can disagree, Republicans and Democrats, on any issue, but they have total agreement over this one: A dead Arab and a dead Muslim is a good one. They do not care, they do not care. If they felt that Joe Biden was going to lose because he had to protect Israel, they do not care, they will sacrifice Joe Biden and bring a new face. And they think we are so stupid, and maybe we are, but I hope to God we are not, that they can just do a “switcheroo” and we will think, "Well, Trump is so much scarier here, therefore we will go with this other person.” I’m sorry, what makes you think that you should not suffer, but Palestine and Lebanon should suffer? Are you in it together or are you not? Are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to put up with difficulty? Are you willing to do the hard thing?
Well, part of the problem is that you are so reliant on the system, you are so stuck in individualism that you want them to handle all of the bureaucratic and the city stuff, and you do not want to get involved in any of it. You do not want to build organizations that actually do something outside of petty fights of “who has more power over the other one in a boardroom of five people.” They are blowing us out of the water. I do not know, let us have the conversation. Instead of pouring money into the Democratic Party and throwing our votes away, what if we think about the long game? I ask you, think of the resistance movements. Just look at Iranians as human beings for a second, throw away all the labels that you have in your head of “terrorist,” “Shi'a” and “nation state,” and just throw it away for a second. These are human beings, the average amongst them, and what unites all of them is they recognized who the true enemy was.
Israel is a colonizing cancer that is destroying us fast, then slow, fast again, then slow again, fast again, forever. It will keep going that way until there is nothing left of us, until we are totally assimilated, until they rob us of our languages, which they already have, until they rob us of our dignity, which they already have, until they rob us of our culture, which they already have, until they rob us of our religious tradition, which they already have, just like they did to the Native Americans in this country. Then they think, "That is good enough. There are barely any of them left, they have no support, the Muslims do not care about them, nobody else cares about them, moving on." Maybe instead of trying to get power in the Democratic Party, which is clearly completely on board with the Israeli project, maybe we should work on our own party. Let us take that money and, instead of wasting it, let us bring our resources together and build a political party. It is just a thought.
The people in the tunnels in Gaza, all they saw in front of them was dirt, a shovel and darkness, that is all. This guy did not know, "What am I doing here? I am just digging and digging," He was not thinking about voting for Democrat or Republican, he was not thinking about the Palestinian Authority. He said, "I know who the enemy is and I need find in my current immediate moment, what is the most direct way where I can effectuate change as I have tried all of these other things," because Palestinians did try other things, Gazans did try other things and they were left with no choice. You think people want to be underground, suffocating to death? You know how many people died in those tunnels just to try to be able to build a structure to be able to survive the onslaught of genocidal maniacs? Do you know how many people died to even have the chance to resist?
Those families were willing to pay the cost. What are our families willing to do? Are we willing to play a long game? I am not hiding the strategy here, I am telling you openly that this is the possible strategy. We have no power. Those parties are dedicated to our elimination, they are dedicated to our elimination. Now, if you want to strategically continue to support some of our own candidates and some of our own Muslim voices to go in there to learn how it works, to gain some power, and to gain some experience on the lowest levels all the way up, do it. But there, ultimately you can move them into your new Green Party, for example, or like Bernie Sanders, an independent, then he joins over to the Democratic Party when he wants. Do that. Build a party that is for the people of the United States of America.
That is the difference, build the party. Do not try to maneuver the party, "Oh, here is a million dollars, Chuck Schumer, even though I know you are a die-hard Zionist." The problem is that we have not even tried that part, but I do not know that we have time to do that plan anymore. The time ran out. We spent too long not doing anything, I think the window is closed. We need to talk about it. Maybe we can organize our resources where we do both at the same time, but I am telling you, I believe, this is my personal opinion and this is not the opinion of the Usuli Institute, it is my opinion that we need to build social structures and political structures here in this country to serve Americans, American Muslims, American atheists, American Jews, American Indians, what have you.
They are human beings and they do not deserve to be ruled by psychopaths that steal their money and beat them down into complicity in genocide and when they all die, they do not have to answer for this thing that they got fooled into. They just did the religious thing of standing up and applauding in a stadium full of people like I do every time I go to the Columbus Crew stadium. Hometown hero has the medal of honor, the medal of Purple Heart, the medal that just means you killed somebody that looked like me. That is what that means, and they have convinced these people that they are the heroes. I feel bad for them, Wallahi. They are going to wake up on the day of judgment and think, "Oh my God, I am in the wrong line. What is this? I sacrificed for my country,” I feel sorry for them and I feel sorry for us.
Stop giving $30 billion. You all knew that figure already, this is not news. Take $2 billion of that and put it into the Green Party. $1 billion, $500 million, something. Build a structure, oppose this axis from where you stand in the most direct way, the most sophisticated way, the most humane way, and the most ethical way possible. That is my message to you one year after the genocide. Please talk to us about it, let us talk about it.
The American Israeli Arab satellite axis has used sectarianism, luxury and comfort to impose cognitive dissonance onto you so they can produce spiritual and physical death. Please, let us revive each other back to life again. Let us work together. Sami Hamdi, please, let us be brothers. No hard feelings, let us work together. Let us drive out this cognitive dissonance. Let us fix this together, or let us die trying. Let us try. You told the ummah to move and I agree. Let us move, Sami. Let us move together.