When do movements, governments, laws have the most meaning and impact? The modern mind may still appreciate a strong leader and perhaps some level of cultural trajectory to some degree, but the modern psyche does not appreciate the feeling of being dictated to. The moment the modern human being feels the pressure of what it senses is aggressive imposition, especially from laws and government, the need to resist and rebel—emphasis on rebel—swells rapidly from within. Does this rebellion mean that people then choose the appropriate alternative? Not necessarily. It depends a great deal on their education, their social context and psychological baggage.
In Justice Breyer's book on democracy, he said that public acceptance is not automatic and cannot be taken for granted. The court itself must help maintain the public's trust in the court, the public's confidence in the Constitution and the public's commitment to the rule of law. It is not automatic public acceptance, and it cannot be taken for granted. The court must help to maintain the public's trust in the court, the public's confidence in the Constitution and the public's commitment to the rule of law.
This is coming from one of the great jurists in modern American history, Justice Breyer, and look at how he begins the framing of the understanding of how the government owes the duty. The government holds the burden. Public acceptance is not automatic and it cannot be taken for granted. Public acceptance is based upon the burden in which the government must fulfill for its citizens to gain their trust and confidence.
Now in the year of 2024, we stand at the doorstep of yet another American election, an election like all the previous elections, at least in the last few decades, that will affect the lives of people not only in the United States of America, but also people all over the world, as the United States of America is the primary hegemony in our world. The decisions that the United States makes, its culture, its institutions, its finances, its dollar dictates to a large degree the daily lives of people all over the world. So what does that mean? A seemingly massive responsibility falls upon the people of the United States of America as they are not only responsible for their country and the policies that dictate and govern life in the United States of America, but by extension, because of the hegemony, they are also then responsible for the rest of the world.
But Justice Breyer reminds us who the burden of public trust and public acceptance truly belongs to. The jurist is the one that has to determine the burden. Anyone who has studied American law knows that the burden of proof is something that comes up over and over again in criminal law and tort law, with whom lies the burden. Justice Breyer tells us it is the government and the institutions that regulate and uphold the rule of law.
Let us for a moment look at American culture. Comparing the American culture and the feelings towards the government of 2024 to several decades ago, what has happened to American culture? Is American culture more trusting and more accepting of the idea of government? Look at the right wing. The right has moved on from political niceties, political correctness, public acceptance, unity, unification, and unfortunately by definition, it has moved towards fascism. It makes me sad to say that.
I have some friends that identify as right wing, and when I coexist with them and live amongst them, I try to move these matters aside and focus on the human being, because I still try really hard to connect with human beings in a hope that that human connection can help cast doubt into rising fascism. But what is it about the American culture? Why has it headed in this direction? American culture used to pride itself as being moral and upright. Even when they made mistakes, American culture has tried its best to justify or explain why what America was doing was not meant to cause harm, was not meant to cause division and was not meant to lose public acceptance. But we have come this way nonetheless, and I will share the conclusion of this khutbah at the outset so that you can follow the thinking.
Oftentimes when we want to think about democracy in Islamic terms, the word “shura” and the surah of shura is invoked to suggest that there is a collaboration, cohesion or connection between the concept of shura and democracy. I ask you, in 2024, is this a country of shura any longer? I am not asking you about whether countries in Europe or other Western democracies are shura. They matter, but they do not dominate the world the way the United States does.
Shura. What is shura? The word comes from and is related to the process of bees which gather pollen and produce honey in their hive. They use that honey to store up food for the winter and from when bees are not active. This may sound familiar to you if you have listened to the halaqas on Surah Al Shura (Q 42). It is also related thus to the word of extracting the honey from the hive. That process, [shar 00:12:48], is also related to shura.
In this entire dynamic, the vision and the visual experience that one has when hearing the word shura is this Qur'anic reality, this amazing reality where God is all encompassing in His dominion, His planning and His creative ability and expression. He creates human beings and for example, cattle, as the surah talks about. And through you, He multiplies you. [00:13:43]. Immediately, He reminds you that God is unlike anything but He likens you to cattle. He puts you on the same plane as cattle and He shows the similarity between you, human beings, and cattle who multiply, multiply, multiply. It is part of the process of creation, but what sets you apart from cattle?
Back to our honey and the bees, please review the surah. This is an advertisement really for the Project Illumine tafsir of the surah. The bees are instructed by God. They have been given a command, an amr, and they fulfill that command and they do not allow any sort of division to overtake their single-minded effort. They fly out from the nest and they collect the pollen. They cross-pollinate. They perform all kinds of biological wonders and then they return and they communicate through dance and they store, and in the process they produce something pure and lovely.
You know the difference between human-affected honey from pure honey. You can taste the difference, it is a world of difference. It is a world of difference, and it is quite hard to ask someone to go back to human-manufactured honey when they have had the taste of pure honey. Nothing compares to it. Look at the communal nature. Every person, every individual in that hive acts individually in concert and produces something beautiful and sweet, not only for their hive, but also for humanity and other creatures. I am sharing this conclusion with you so that we can review it at the end. The psychology of the lack of shura. I see the right wing’s abandonment of morality as a result of lack of shura. Human beings have been neglected by this government and by this system. They have not been given dignity and now they have been preyed upon by political wolves who are taking advantage of the average American citizen’s feeling of disempowerment and casting their ire towards the other out of fear and out of hope.
Out of fear because they need to recast the direction in which the human being is looking at their disempowerment. They need to cast it away from the right wing and from the government as a whole, and instead cast it towards the rival party and towards others. Those others are formed as an enemy on the basis of their otherness to whiteness. Even when they let in the brown man, they denigrate them on camera, and the brown man, being totally disempowered, laps it up and does not defend himself. Remember Ann Coulter who destroyed Vivek Ramaswamy and said, "I would never let somebody like you, a brown Indian man, take control of my life"? Despite all of the concessions that Vivek has made to achieve proximity to power, she absolutely ruined his dignity and his self-worth, if he had any of it to begin with. He did not even stand up for himself as an Indian American, really. I do not know if Indian Americans stood up for Vivek Ramaswamy after that. Obviously, it is probably pretty difficult given the fact that a lot of people do not like Vivek Ramaswamy and his principles.
So now we have spoken about the culture of the right wing and how the right wing has preyed upon human beings through their fear, their disempowerment, and their lost dignity and has given them a sense of not direction, [but perhaps reason or ideology]. There is no real policy, no real philosophy, it is just anger. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. If you had a good education, you know what I am talking about. That is the right wing, but what is the left wing?
The American liberal was supposed to be the bastion of freedom and morality in this country, the one that did not allow for private corporatization to involve itself in the process and stir up trouble and division so that it could make more money. But that is now long gone and it is an old story that everybody has now learned about ad nauseum.
Now what about us other people in the United States, us Muslims? When you become Muslim, you enter this sphere of otherness and brownness. For years, we have been desensitized to images of humiliation, trauma and death inflicted upon Black and Brown bodies by the American government through its military and other hegemonic apparatuses. Muslims in America have thus borne the burden of strategic voting, balancing the needs of Muslims in America and internationally, as well as what is best for the United States and its most vulnerable citizens. But now after a year of witnessing a brazen genocide virtually with our own eyes, Muslim Americans are at a terrible crossroads. We are at a terrible crossroads, and you all know what I am talking about. On the 5th, a decision needs to be made about voting, and it is problematic that I am up here now speaking to you the Friday before.
It is also problematic that in order to prepare for that, I had to listen to hours upon hours of arguments from Muslims and non-Muslims on the right wing, people on the left wing and people voting third party. I am sure many of you have also done the same. But let us look at this reality for a second, let us just zoom back out. Let us do what the Qur'an does; it pans in and then it pans out, then it centers on something personal, then it pans out from God's view, then it pans out to see God's view, and then it zooms back in. Whichever angle you choose to look at our circumstances on November 5 and indeed before November 5, somehow or another we Muslims are viewed as blameworthy. Think of 9/11. That was our fault, and we were denied any semblance of innocence.
Bill Clinton today tells us that the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza is our fault too, because Palestinians dare resist. He spoke to American Muslims who are upset, essentially saying, "I know you are upset, but you supported Palestinians rights to resist." Yes, Bill Clinton wants us to understand that Palestinian resistance is both responsible for dead Israelis, as well as death and destruction in the Gaza Strip. Both simultaneously. Meanwhile, Israel is responsible for nothing. That is what the Democratic Party believes, that is mainstream Democrat thinking: Israel is ultimately responsible for nothing.
How many times have you seen that press secretary? "Well, we would like to see a little bit less damage. Well, we do not want to see any deaths. Well, we do not want to see any destruction. Well, we do not want to see any disease or famine. In fact, we will just not see it at all, and we will assign all of the blame to you Muslims, just like we have done since September 11, 2001 and before then. Since then, we have just been blaming you for anything and everything any time we want."
You can run to the right wing and do your little dance, but it does not work. You can run to the left wing and do your little dance, and they will cloak it in some sort of weird and pathetic, "No, no, let him speak. No, let him speak," after arresting the hell out of us for months on end when it got too bad. "Oh, now it is getting too close to election season. We have to show that, somehow, we are not as fascist as the Republican Party." It is almost funny, I cannot even really make the argument for you. I do not know how they are making the argument, they just trail off. "I am speaking now," is the way that they are dealing with you, "I am speaking now."
Meanwhile, Israel is responsible for nothing despite this. The Democratic Party and liberals in this country also expect us to be responsible for saving this country from Donald Trump. Should I review what I said? It is our fault September 11th happened. It is our fault we did not get our extremists into order. It is our fault that October 7th happened. It is our fault that Gaza is happening. It is our fault that genocide is happening, though they will not say it is a genocide. It is our fault that death and destruction is happening. So we have to take responsibility for al-Qaeda, for Salafi Islam, for Saudi Arabia, for Iran, for racist tropes from frightened racist America. We are responsible for all of that. We are responsible for not making you feel comfortable enough. We are responsible for being so impressive as lawyers, doctors, engineers and performers, dancing and making jokes and making movies. We are responsible for all of that. Still, after all of these decades, it is still our fault. October 7th is still our fault. The suffering of the Palestinians is still our fault.
We are talking about the Democrats here who want your vote. The right wing does not really expect your vote. We are one of the others, but they will have a laugh anyways when they bring us on stage, the same way they have an open laugh at Latinos in this country. They are mocking you to your faces. We Brown folk, we other folk in this country are being openly mocked and we have no power. How many times has CNN repeated the claims of rapes, beheaded babies and babies in ovens? The lies that for one Israeli, an eye was pulled out and for another one of them, a tooth was pulled out. The lie that for one Israeli, their breast was removed and for another, their finger was cut off. It is like a weird Aesop's Fable. "No, sir, I promise we did not do it! I promise. I promise I do not like that." We are being openly mocked.
I told myself I would not shout, but how else am I supposed to deliver this sermon? I did not ask to deliver this sermon. Wallah al-Azim, I do not want to deliver this sermon. I have to hold back my vomit for the hours leading up to the sermon in order to deliver it. No, we are responsible for all of that and we are responsible for saving democracy for everyone who is openly mocking us and ignoring us to our faces. I told some of my friends here recently, I went to breakfast with a Muslim family and the waitress asked us, "Are there any dietary restrictions?" We told her, "Yes, please no pork in our food." "We can definitely take care of that, no problem." And what happened when they brought the small child at the table her pancakes? Bacon, lots and lots of bacon. You may think to yourself, "Ah, man, come off it. Why are you overreacting about every last thing?" Because we have not reacted to anything.
We have no bark and we have no bite. They are ignoring us to our face. They go through the protocol of mocking you by pretending that they see you, and then they throw the bacon on the thing, and that is just people who are being absent-minded. What about the people who are thinking? The people who are thinking are Bill Clinton and Kamala Harris. "I know that you have a restriction of not wanting bacon, but you are going to have to eat it anyways, because if you do not eat the bacon, then Donald Trump is going to do ‘X.’ Therefore, you are responsible for saving American democracy."
Oh okay, so can I ask a question? Let us save American democracy, folks. We go and vote for Kamala Harris and we save American democracy. Are we going to get a pat on the back? Are we going to be invited to the White House? Is anybody going to thank us? What is the reward for being a good boy? What is the bone that they are going to throw? You cannot say it, right? It is not an arms embargo. It is not a phone call to Netanyahu. It is not an end to the war. Every time she talks about ending the war, Harris says, "Bring the hostages back." Every single time, "And it has to end, bring the hostages back." For a second, there was a, "Oh, maybe now that Sinwar is dead, the war can end." But then [the Democrats] were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that is the wrong messaging." The right messaging is, "Bring the hostages back," which it seems that Netanyahu does not want to do.
I do not want this to be an Al Jazeera political analysis sermon. No, America will not thank Muslims. They will not do anything meaningful for our cause. Rather, we only carry a negative responsibility, folks. "Vote for Harris or else we will blame the collective failure of American culture, American society, and the American nation on you Muslims, as we have been doing since at least September 11th, 2001. And when the right wing administration comes after you, we will patronizingly tell you, 'We told you so. We told you so.'"
Will they lift a finger to help, despite having the lion's share of the power and influence in this country? No. They will say that we had the lion's share of the power and influence in this country and we burned it up by not voting for the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, a vote for Harris carries another risk: The ire of the Muslim community in the United States and around the world, and I do not need to explain why. A lot of it is evident in what I am saying. I know that our followers are very well-read and stay up to date with the news, they know the arguments. But Muslims who vote third party have been constantly and consistently attacked by other Muslims who are firm in their conviction that it is political naïveté or reckless abandon that is driving this logic. This is a picture of very serious division and animosity both from within and without even further fracturing and alienating an already deeply battered people.
Mehdi Hasan has been a journalist for over a decade, and he has done a lot of good. I have admired him for his courage, his speaking ability, his prowess, his not backing down, his rigor in his research, as well as his example of excellence and being a trailblazer within the media reality that is extremely hard to break into, especially as a brown Muslim man. Though I have disagreed a lot with his posturing in this last year, especially over the summer and his support with a lowercase “S” for the Democrats, because we have to be fair to Mehdi. He is not supporting the Democrats because he likes them, not when you really listen to him. He has been very critical of the Biden and Harris Administration and of Democrats generally. In fact, Mehdi is not afraid to take nearly any guest he has and put their feet to the fire. He does not typically play softball with them, with the exception of maybe AOC or Ilhan Omar recently, but again, it is because of what I assume is a fear that under Trump, we will suffer.
Now, I do not align with Mehdi on this and I have been very frustrated with him, but I noticed something the other night. When he got attacked on CNN, to me, it was tantamount to a hate crime. When he got attacked, racially abused, Islamophobically abused by that disgusting man who said, "Well, I hope your beeper doesn't go off," I gasped. I did not think that I would be shocked by this sort of thing anymore, but I gasped and I felt a pang of pain in my chest. I felt a deep violation and it disgusted me to my core. It shocked me. It scared me. It frightened me that we can be mocked to our faces, even on national television. At that point, Mehdi Hasan was me and I was Mehdi Hasan.
I was very sad to see that people, commentators in the world, mostly on social media, laughed at him, mocked him a little bit and said, "See, that's what you get." You know, I am not really sure that other minority groups do that to each other. The Israelis and Jews in this country, and I use the word Jews respectfully, have each other's backs. Even when they politically do not align, even when they religiously do not align, even when they socially do not align, an attack on a Jew is an attack on Judaism and all Jews in the world.
Only the really brave Jews still have the decency and the moral courage to stand up for what is right. But we are talking in general. No, this made me very, very bothered. This frightened me, and it made me think more about Surah Al Shura and about the bees who work in concert in unified action.
Maybe they do not have anything other than what God has encoded in them, but there has to be a reason that there is an entire surah named after them. There has to be a reason why this word in particular is used by God Almighty. Look at our fractured state. We have pro-Stein, pro-third party Muslims. We have pro-Harris Muslims. We have pro-Trump Muslims. We also have the age-old apathetic Muslim anarchist who never really cared about anything because they were so disenfranchised that this continued in their disassociative states. Look at the fractures, and look at how the fractures have become inflamed and enraged at one another. Are we going to survive this election as Muslim Americans? Let us hope for the best.
So I mentioned Surah Al Shura and we talked about the word shura and its meanings. Let us have a quick overlook at shura and some important signposts to stop at very briefly.
Shura acknowledges God's plan for diversity and creation but tells us that ultimately after judgment is meted out, there will only be two camps. There will be two firqas, there will be two sects, so to speak. One will be in heaven and one will be in the fire. The people of heaven will be those who heeded the Divine guidance through the prophets, and the people of hell will be the misguided who rejected the message of guidance. But the core of the message has always been the same. So what caused the people of Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus to reject or stray away from pure guidance? I am of course summarizing verses and repeating them in English in a way that is intelligible. Obviously, there are specific words in here that are very important, shara’ lakum–that God has ordained upon you as a Shari'ah what had been enjoined upon Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus
They did not become firqa (42:13). They did not split, they did not disagree and become parties or opposing sects until after the time that the revelation had come to them, baghyan baynahum. Many translate baghyan as “rivalry,” that rivalry came amongst them and split them apart. Before it, they were joined on the message of pure Divine guidance of morality. But what is the baghy that came and caused the fracture? It was because of their egos and own immoralities that major fracturing disagreements ensued and resulted in sects and major divisions. Thus, the purity of the original message became compromised and is, for the most part, lost. What then follows is a form of inherited tribalism. I am essentializing Islamic history and the development of sects and theologies schools of thought. One simply believes what they believe because they inherited it from their parents and their community. Oftentimes, what they do not do is return to the ethical core to judge the truth for themselves within the context of diversity.
This is a clear warning to Muslims, beware of infighting and tafraqa, and tafaraqa on the point and the purpose of falling astray and deviating from what was dictated to the great prophets like Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, because it is the same core message that repeats itself over and over. And it must do that so that it becomes obvious what the core message is. But if it is not obvious to you what the core message is and everyone is giving a different answer, what do you think that means? That means that the honey has been corrupted. That means that the bees are not working in concert. That means that the hive that they were given to protect has been recklessly abandoned and neglected, if we want to be nice about what has ensued. Maybe if we want to continue to be nice about it, some of the truth got diverted, segmented, and fractured into small slices upon which certain schools of thought in Islamic theology, history, and law have held on to.
As a result, nobody really knows where to go for the right answers. Even when it comes to the Qur'an, they cannot read the Qur'an and extract the right answers. Why? Because we are stuck in the state of fractured tribalism, and we simply take what our fathers told us. It makes sense, because you do not want to be disrespectful to the previous generation. You do not want to be an egotistical young person who shows up all of a sudden and has all the answers, therefore you listen to the previous generation, but God is at the top of this. We cannot override our relationship and our duty to uphold the command, ma wassa bihi Noah and Abraham. They cannot override that duty for the sake of a tribal thinking and reality of their people, or even of the people that they are warning]. Therefore it says, [00:50:56], do not give in to their hawa. Do not give in to their whims. Do not give into their thinking and their logic. You are responsible to God.
So God puts up with this very serious division out of His benevolence and His incredible mercy because as He says in the surah, "If I wanted to make you one ummah, I could."(42:8) And He says this verse directly after the verse in which He says there are two camps, fariqun fil-jannati wa fariqun fi-s-sa’ir, the group that belongs to heavenly guidance and the group that belongs to fiery misguidance and hell. (42:7). And if He wanted, He could put all of you into hell. Yes, it is not only about diversity, but God is saying, "If it was not for My benevolence, if it was not for the fact that I hold on to My promises, to give you a chance to think and to make a few mistakes, to give you a chance to crawl, fall, stand up and fall again, then take a few steps, then fall, then push each other, then fall, then rip the plants as you walk around [like] a child and fall and spit on the ant hill and kill the bee and kill the ant until maybe when you hit 40 years old, you start to realize, "Oh, my God, I was so destructive. God forgive me, I was so destructive. Why did I incline to so much destruction?"
God puts up with all of that; murdering His creation left and right without thinking about it. He puts up with all of that. If He wanted to make you one ummah, He could wipe you all out right now. Do not think that it is your pragmatic thinking regarding this election that is going to save this country. No. God has prevented this country from destroying itself yet. Do not get it twisted. In the surah itself, it will tell you Allahu-ladhi anzala-l-kitaba bi-l-haqqi wa-l-mizan wa ma yudrika la’alla-s-sa’ata qarib. [42:17]. God says God is the one who has revealed and has sent down unto you the kitab, the revelation…bi-l-haqqi wa-l-mizan.
Those of you who have listened to my previous khutbahs may remember that I think, for me, the letters ha-mim (surahs 40-46 begin with ha-mim) stand for haqq and mizan–responsibility and balance. “You do not know, perhaps the hour is near!” You may wonder why I am reacting so [strongly] to this verse. All of these calculations that you think you can put off the responsibility for enacting justice and institutions of justice, to put it on layaway…”we will get around to it later. But for now, we must survive.”
Why did you think you had that right? You thought your responsibility is to survive? God is the one that is multiplying you like cattle, and if you are concerned with multiplication, you are no different than cattle, respectfully. You are no different to the logic of cattlehood, of chattelhood! You are not on the level of Ulul Azm (the five Arch-Prophets). You do not come close to the dust on their sandals to then call yourself a Muslim if your thinking is like that of cattle. No, the Muslim is bee-like, it thinks and it works in concert, and it has courage to leave the hive and to travel and to risk personal sacrifice for the fact that if it does not bring back what is necessary for the hive to survive, they have failed. And guess what? They will die trying. And if you get in their way, they will sting you. They do not wait around for a group to come.
They do not wait around for CNN to say, "We have taken him off. We really do not like this kind of language." The same anchor empowered these lies and never apologized. They sting because they have dignity from God and they have been sent by God to do this holy task. Look at the difference. Look at how your theological outlook matters. Yes, in the arguments you can say, "Oh, all of these imams are invoking Islamic principles to shame us because of our thinking." Well, if their invocation of thought is not strong enough, then yes, you win. But I challenge you not with my thought, but with this thought: Is this religious manipulation? I look forward to your response, my brother.
Yes, know that confusing people about God and His values is an extremely grievous harm and it is incredibly destructive for the succeeding generations. Oh, Muslims, what is it that you are leaving behind for your generation that follows you as an irth? What is it that they are receiving as an inheritance, an inherited legacy? Deviation, misguidance and fracturing, or an insistence on returning back to the ethical core? Reverse engineering is destroying us. You come to a conclusion first based on your whims, based on what feels right to you, based on what makes you feel most safe. But that logic belongs to the cattle-like thinking, because cattle simply want to survive to multiply. That is not your job. God says at the end of the surah, "Some of you, I arrange for you to reproduce, and some of you, I arrange for you to not be able to reproduce. It is up to Me whether or not you can even do it." (42:49-50). Meanwhile, all you are consumed with is this reality of, "I just sprouted out another one, yay!” “I am going to focus all of our time and thinking on who I am going to marry,” or “Let me spend all of my time thinking about this kind of thing."
I am not trying to downplay the difficulty of being lonely. I know it is a very serious problem for our community, but I also want us to think about how we are being distracted. And perhaps if we lived in a society of shura, the honey that would be produced or the offspring that would be produced from these relationships could at least lead to further relationships and further reproduction of a pure message, not further destruction and tafraqa (fracturing).
"And therefore, call people to this faith, stand firm by the moral code which God has decreed, and do not follow whims and say that I believe in the revelations that God has sent. The Prophet's charge is to treat human beings with justice. He is not a warden over them. God is my god and your god is Allah. I have my deeds and you have yours. There are no arguments between us and ultimately, we will all be gathered and judged by God." We must balance our friendship and our responsibility; our friendship to one another, but also our responsibility to the purity of this message.
Qul la asalukum ‘alayhi ajran illa-l-mawadata fi-l-qurba (42:23). The Prophet is instructed to say, I ask you for nothing other than nearness of kin, kinship amongst you, amongst your families, a loving relationship, a caring relationship. And a caring relationship sets us straight when we're going astray.
I would be remiss to not comment on verses 36-39, "God will greatly reward those who believe and put their trust in their Lord, who shun major immoralities and forgive when they are angry. Those who answer to God's call and prayer consistently, whose matters and affairs are subject to shura, who spend their money and those who when they are wronged, defend themselves." Defend themselves! They are not brutally mocked in front of an entire nation for one night or twenty years. Eventually, they sting.
My friends, I am sorry for taking up so much of your time, but this is really important. Shura is a dynamic that produces goodness, honey, and sweetness. Bees produce this honey by this meticulous mutual cooperation. But on a societal level, we are angry at each other. How do you help control this anger at a social level through the mechanisms of shura? By feeling heard, feeling that one matters, feeling protected, and feeling part of a group. If shura is neglected, what we receive on a societal level will be the fracturing of God's message and the breaking of communities into divided sects full of anger and blame for one another. But if we have shura, suddenly we will have equitable spending to the benefit of all.
Look at verse 39, the word baghi again shows up: “wa-l-ladhina idha asabahumu-l-baghyu-hum yantasirun.”
Remember what it was that split off the generations that were unified together by the message of God, baghiyan baynahum; baghi took shape against each other. Baghi, as we said, is immorality or injustice, a departure from the pure message of morality. It causes fractures, divisions, and rivalry amongst one another, such that it cracks open and breaks into pieces the pure truth of guidance. “If injustice befalls them, they have the means to address the injustice.” When the moment of the infraction, the laceration, the damage, and the musibah comes, they have what it takes, they have the structures necessary to address the injustice. If you build a society in which one can suffer injustice and there is no means of redress, then you have violated the Qur'anic command for shura! Thus, we have tafraqa, division. Shura is necessary for addressing injustice, and spending equitably is also necessary. They go hand in hand.
As the Shaykh says, weak and undeveloped institutions of law are blasphemous! Perhaps we lose the institutions, but as long as we do not lose the crucial principle, we can hold on to hope and the verses that follow. “The recompense for an ill deed is another deed proportional to it. But the one who forgives and repairs, their reward is with God. The way of blame is only with those who oppress humanity.” (42:40-42).
So I ask you now, by the Qur'anic standard, what did Bill Clinton and the Democrats want you to think? “It is all your fault. If you resist and you take the right step and you take something that hurts, you do the horrible thing of standing up and resisting and risking your life and risking your safety and your community's safety, you are to blame for the outcome. You are to blame for the oppression. You are to blame for the genocide.” That is what they want you to think. But God tells us the way of blame is only with those who do the oppression. So if I vote according to wa-staqim kama umirt (42:15) and thus I steadfastly stand up for the moral code in which I was ordered to uphold by God, and do not give in and follow the caprice of the unjust and their whimsical logic…is the blame on me if Trump destroys this nation? Answer the question for yourselves.
Al-Razi says this is a great principle in jurisprudence (42:40-41), this proportionality. This is also in the tafsir, and it is too good not to repeat it, “This is a great principle in jurisprudence. This recompense for an ill deed is with an ill deed like it, proportional. When you organize society, every offense must be addressed in proportion to the offense. If there is no ability to address the offenses in the first place, justice would be lost and thus aggression and injustice would spread. Similarly, if you punish offenses in disproportional excess, that is injustice and is unacceptable to Shari'a.” Wow, what a tradition to be broken apart from!
In these last few weeks, all of these videos that Muslim leaders and influencers have published–good on them, they are trying to take the right side, but they are not applying the proper equipment. The equipment is here, in the Qur’an. A lot of them cited this maxim: al-dhararu al-ashadu yuzalu bi al-dhararu al-akhaf (The greater harm is removed by the lesser harm.) But they did not cite that example because they went to the tradition to think about it that way. What that essentially means is the greater harm is removed by the lesser harm. So what happened to the modern Muslim psyche? The modern Muslim psyche only thinks through the lens that is imposed on it, and the lens that is imposed on it is the lesser of two evils. The Democrats ultimately are saying, "We are the lesser of the two evils. Yes, maybe we have our faults, but ultimately, Trump is the akbar shaytan, the greater devil, that is going to destroy us all. But we are the asghar shaytan, we are the lesser devil, so it is fine."
Well, this framework, whether we want to say it is a good maxim to use or a bad maxim to use, let us just assume that it is a good maxim that works. The framing of the lesser of the two evils, removing the greater evil by choosing the smaller evil, is wrong. If your framing is that the greater evil to be removed is Donald Trump and that he must be replaced with Kamala Harris, this is the wrong framing. That is the framing that belongs to a fractured people who do not have a relationship to their scripture, who do not staqim kama umirtuhum-ullah (take the moral stand as God commanded them). No. The one that goes back and reads al-Razi realizes that, if you must use this maxim, the real framing is that the great harm is not only genocide, but the inability to address genocide.
In Surah Al Baqarah (Q 2:191,217), God says that fitna is worse than killing. Fitna is the refusal and the failure to address injustices that have occurred, and it compiles and compounds. And if you do not go to task with that injustice, then you cannot talk to me about the lesser or the greater of two evils. Your framework is off. In this case, the lesser evil comes at the price of the pain and the suffering in solidarity with other human beings that will be necessary to investigate the possibility to address harms, musibah like genocide, occupation, and colonization, and those are the worst of things. We can be forced to put up with a lot, but we cannot move past genocide. If you live with genocide…what is lower than genocide? You are now accepting lower than the lowest level goes.
In my previous khutbah, “the American, Israeli, Arab Axis,” I was sharply critical of sectarian irrationality, precisely because it destroys the purity of God's guidance and allows external asab al-baghy to lead to baghiyan baynahum. Asab al-baghy is the external trauma of injustice that comes to you from the external, hits you in the mouth, and then you start fighting amongst each other and you do not have the instruments.
You do not have the instruments to respond and address and defeat that baghi, that rebellious, disgusting attack of injustice upon you. Instead, we break each other down, thus violating shura and destroying our ability to address and defend against oppression external and internal. Perhaps you may have even noticed a common thread – in most of my sermons, I repeatedly speak about the need for unification and for mass action driven by moral unison in order to gain God's favor and support. Concerted action and effort are rewarded in our realm of existence. This is simply one of God's sunnahs in creation. But concerted effort and action based on belief and dedication to morality has the potential to fell despots and raise civilizations in their place.
We are constantly working backward, dear Muslims. We begin with the conclusion and then use clever arguments to bolster the conclusion. However, the process of shura protects us from the pitfalls of reverse engineering. Instead, we begin with the moral principles, which God has gifted to us through revelation. It is up to us to protect the purity of the honey that drips from revelation. If we fracture based on choosing anxiety over moral unison, the process is poisoned. Think back to the word “shura.” If the bees are fractured into opposing rivaled sects, they will not be able to work together to produce honey, which is when extracted benefits the hive and all of creation. So do what you will; to us, our deeds, and unto you, your deeds. God will gather us on the final day, the day in which there is no doubt any longer; and unto Him is the path and our return.