In so many khutbahs, I emphasize what is, in my view, a critical theme. We all know, or should know, that God has created us as trustees on this earth. God has literally made us khulafa’, which is the plural of “caliph,” and the obligation that God has given us, as caliphs or trustees, is that we worship God. That is our affirmative command. That is our duty, our function, and our purpose. God has also taught us that this charge of the caliphate (khilafah) and the obligation of worship (‘ibada) cannot be attained solely through prayers and fasting and supplications. Rather, God makes it abundantly clear—and those who are not clear should study the Qur’anic commentary in Project Illumine—that the trust of the khilafah and the obligation of ‘ibada can only be achieved through service and sacrifice.
As God puts it: “They prefer others over themselves, even if they are impoverished” (Q 59:9). Sacrifice involves putting others ahead of yourself and serving others, even if the cost entails preferring others over yourself. That is basic theology. It is “Theology 101.” Regardless of how often people become confused, how often people try to ignore this message, how often people are not attuned to it, or how often people try to philosophize it or rationalize it away, this is the ABCs of Islam. It also sums up the life of the Prophet. Anyone who studies the life of the Prophet will be struck by his constant acts of service and how he taught his followers to do the same. The stories of service and dedication are so numerous that to us, to people in this age, they often read as if fairy tales, for our consciousness often cannot comprehend this type of attitude toward life on this earth.
Yet there is a painful and paralyzing cognitive dissonance when you sit for a moment, situate yourself, and think of the inescapable realities around Islam and Muslims today. Before I go on to discuss these realities, I want to take a moment to say something about the importance of being fully grounded in the world in which we live.
The temptation is indeed great for a human being, let alone a Muslim, to not ground him or herself in the world in which we exist, and to instead create an artificial and fictional world that serves as a constant distraction from the world in which we live. But how can you then perform the obligation that is critical to both the duties of khilafah and to ibadah? That obligation is the obligation of witnessing. How can you then be a witness for God if you are not grounded in the reality in which you exist? If you “witness” a fiction that you have created through your own delusions, whims, and weaknesses—an alternative reality created because of your sensitivities and vulnerabilities—then you have not discharged the obligation of being a witness for God. This, again, is elementary. In order to witness, you must be grounded in reality. You must have consciousness and awareness.
So, if we are indeed grounded, the inescapable reality that we have all witnessed concerns the recent developments in Syria. As I have said in so many khutbahs, everything that happens in this world is a constant and never-ending education from God. This world is a madrassa, and God is the teacher. Such is the case with Syria. If you are alert and aware, the most striking thing about Syria is the flood of testimonials that have been coming out about more than fifty years of indescribable, unimaginable human suffering. Thousands upon thousands of people are being released from prisons, and what they are describing is the stuff of one’s worst nightmares. Indeed, even our worst nightmares cannot conceive of what these people are describing.
We are hearing countless stories that point to a systematic process of dehumanization. We are hearing stories about endless streams of abuses, degradation, and humiliation that often end with the victim’s death, whether through execution or mistreatment and torture. In many cases, death is a welcome reprieve. It is a way out for so many. What survivors are left to live with for the rest of their lives is, indeed, much worse than death. The stories and testimonials are so horrific that I cannot address it all in this or in any other khutbah. The utter dehumanization, the degradation, the abuse reaches levels unimaginable to the human mind. It includes everything that your worst imagination could possibly conjure up. Beatings. Breaking bones. Hangings. Rape. Everything you can imagine.
You then pause for a second, and you tell yourself a truth. It is undeniable that the people who have gone through this human-made hell are not only forever changed, but forever injured. Nothing will heal those who survived the hell of the political prisons of Syria. We may like to think that we have the means for healing, but the truth of the matter is that there is no healing. The human mind and nervous system, once it sees a level of ugliness that is beyond the demonic, is forever rewired in ways that cannot be undone. What is seen cannot be unseen. What is experienced cannot be un-experienced.
But you pause again, and another truth settles within you. Not only are those who have gone through this hell forever changed, forever affected, and forever injured. But those in the orbit of these people—everyone who ever loved them, everyone who ever cared for them, and everyone who has ever dealt with them—are also forever changed and forever injured, because the injured injure others. The injured affect others, whether they want to or not.
But then a third truth settles within you. It is not just that the people around those who have been tortured are, in turn, injured. Indeed, it is society at large that must come to terms with the fact that just because a person is born human, there is no guarantee that such a person will remain human. Society at large must come to terms with the fact that it has learned the lesson that you must watch what you say, watch what you do, and watch what you think, lest your fate be like those who disappeared, those who were raped, those who were abused, those who were humiliated, and those who were degraded.
In fact, there is something remarkable about the reigns of terror throughout history. No matter how many they kill, they always leave a percentage alive to go out into society and spread the stories of terror and horror so that the rest of society will learn the lessons of fear, panic, and anxiety. The more anxious the society, the more delusional the society becomes. The more fearful the society, the less grounded in reality that society wants to be. Fear is a very natural element in delusions, hallucinations, and dissociation. Fear and trauma are the natural products of a society that learns that being grounded in reality, taking seriously your role as a khalifah, taking seriously the obligation to witness for God, and taking seriously your role as a person of service and sacrifice is dangerous indeed.
Another striking element coming out of Syria is how thoroughly corrupt the society is: how those with money bribed judges and torturers in order to survive; how those without money were the ones who died under torture or were executed. There are numerous stories of the families of survivors paying bribes in the hundreds of thousands to judges and to the torturers of their sons and daughters. Everyone has their hands in the pockets of everyone else.
But you then pause and remember that Syria is full of religious scholars (shuyukh) who put their own hands in the pockets of Bashar al-Assad, the Butcher of Syria. There are scholars who, on camera, praised al-Assad as a genius, a man of God, and a great leader, making du'a’ for him and his family. And you know very well that those scholars who were not willing to do that were either forced into exile, disappeared into prison, or murdered. So the official representation of religion in Syria, these remaining scholars, were those who showered praise on the Butcher of Syria.
Of course, delusion tempts us to stop right there and say, "Well, maybe these poor scholars did not have a choice.” But being grounded in reality means that we must bring up yet another factor. There are many religious scholars who were not in Syria, not under the threat of Bashar al-Assad, and yet who lived for decades at peace with al-Assad’s rule. They may pretend today to be happy about the overthrow of this dictator, but until the end, in one way or another, they were largely untroubled and unoffended.
The truth is that we cannot feign ignorance. If you are grounded in reality, you will know about the Syrian photographer, “Caesar,” who escaped from Syria in 2013 and published the images of more than fifty thousand people who had been murdered and butchered, who testified before Congress, and who had exhibits shown all around the world. As far back as 2013, everyone knew the truth about the Butcher of Syria.
But how could that be when we know the Prophet once became very upset after seeing a donkey branded on its face, so much so that he said, "May God curse whoever did this.” We know that most jurists in Islamic jurisprudence have outlawed the practice of branding animals with a hot iron. Islamically, that is considered to be torturing the animal, and the Prophet said that if you torture an animal, God curses you. There is also the well-known narrative of a Companion who saw people being detained in the hot sun. The Companion asked why, and there are two versions of the story. One version is that they were non-Muslims who were being detained because they failed to pay the poll tax (jizya). The second version of the story is that they were Muslims detained because they failed to pay their taxes (kharaj). Upon seeing this, this Companion said, "I heard the Prophet say, ‘He who tortures people will be tortured by God.'"
This is deeply ingrained in our tradition, and many Muslims will also cite a report from Ibn Mas'ud, the famous Companion and early jurist, who taught that previous nations before us were destroyed precisely because they no longer pursued what is good and prohibited what is bad. Upon further elaboration, Ibn Mas’ud explains that before you can pursue what is good and resist what is evil, your heart must first know what is right from what is wrong, immoral, and unethical. Ibn Mas'ud is saying, in effect, that if you cannot do even this, then you are not grounded in reality. To be grounded in reality is to recognize what is good, ethical, and moral, and to recognize what is unethical and immoral. And according to Ibn Mas'ud, people are ruined (halaka) if they are no longer sufficiently grounded to know the difference.
Put all these elements together: being grounded in reality, the obligation of khilafah, the obligation of ‘ibada, the prohibition of torture—even of an aminal, let alone a human being. The Companion of the Prophet condemned forcing people to stand in the hot sun. What, then, of the means by which the Butcher of Syria tortured his victims? What of the methods of torture that centered on humiliating and degrading all Islamic symbolisms and Islamic affiliations among his victims? We have cumulative stories of torture aimed at breaking down the religiosity of people in their hearts, to the extent that victims were forced to prostrate to a picture of Bashar al-Assad and to denounce God and the Prophet.
This is where your entire being takes a pause. Unless you are delusional and live in a fictitious world, if you are fully grounded in reality, then you realize that what happened in Syria is not an exception. You know that when it comes to the Muslim world, it is, in fact, the rule. You know that the only reason we are witnessing what we are in Syria is because al-Assad fled and people are coming out of the prisons and testifying. We know that the same brutality, the same dehumanization, the same grotesqueness is today happening in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, Morocco, Sudan, Libya, and Egypt. I am sure that if people were to come out of Egyptian prisons tomorrow, we would hear testimonials that are no less traumatizing or shocking.
This is where a conscientious pause is required. A new Trump administration is coming to power, and a very good article that every Muslim should read has recently come out by Spencer Ackerman, titled: “2025 Will Be the Year of Trump's Crackdown on Islam.” Ackerman wrote a very good book about the aftermath of 9/11 in the U.S., exploring how Islamophobia played a direct role in the deterioration of U.S. democracy. If you want to be a Muslim grounded in reality, read that book and then read this article. Why bring up this article by Ackerman? Ackerman says that many of the people Trump is appointing to his administration believe in a “Clash of Civilizations” thesis. They believe that Israel is part of the light of the West vis-à-vis the darkness of Islam. They see Muslims as the “other,” the forces of darkness.
My issue is when we turn to almost every other Muslim country. When those grounded in reality know that what we are hearing about in Syria is happening everywhere in the Muslim world. When we know this is the way Muslims treat other Muslims. When we know that the average Muslim and the average Muslim religious figure, the average imam and shaykh, co-exists with the realities of brutalization and dehumanization and is not troubled. Of course, there are exceptions who defy and pay the price. But one of the most troubling narratives I have read is that the U.S. would send its Muslim prisoners to Muslim countries like Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria to be tortured there and to obtain the information from these prisoners. The U.S. would pay the Syrian regime, the Egyptian regime, the Jordanian regime, and the Tunisian regime to torture whoever they wanted on their behalf.
What, then, is my issue? My issue is about being grounded in reality so as to be a witness for God in fairness and in truth. As Ibn Mas'ud said, you must first know what is ma'ruf (ethical) and what is munkar (unethical). The ABC of khilafah and ‘ibada is to be aware. As I read so many voices on Syria, I am full of hurt and resentment because so many of these same voices are entirely silent about what is happening, this very minute, in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I have one word for that: hypocrisy. Read Surah al-Hadid. God tells us that these hypocrites will be in darkness in the Hereafter (Q 57:13). Do you really want to pretend that Syria is an exception? You are delusional, and you live in a delusional world. Being grounded in reality forces us to come to terms with the reconstruction of our theology.
I end with this. Why is it that Muslims care so much more about whether the hair of a woman is covered or not than about whether people are tortured or not tortured? The Prophet said that those who torture are cursed (malaun). No salvation, no forgiveness. But how many Muslims in the world today, if you ask them about the Sunna of the Prophet, will say that a core part of the Sunna is to never torture in any shape or form: “The Prophet cursed torture. The Prophet never tortured anyone, and never allowed for the torture of anyone”?
And it was him, our Prophet, who built an entire civilization.