Muslims' Two Complexes Umar and Mu'Awiyah, Friday Prayer with Imam Asi 7-26-2019
Jan 2, 2020
Story
The following are some excerpts from Imam Asi's Khutbah/sermon yesterday titled \"Muslims' Two Complexes Umar and Mu'Awiyah\":
https://soundcloud.com/user-874547054/muslims-two-complexes-umar-and-mua...
\"We are living in killing times. We wish the circumstances of the world are not what they are but the facts are looking us straight in the face. And sometimes we contribute to our own weakness and to our own vulnerabilities; WE OURSELVES.\"
\"We expect an enemy to be an enemy. We expect an imperialist to be an imperialist. A Zionist to be a Zionist. But we don't expect ourselves to be our own enemies. That is unexpected but when we look at the real world, we find out part of our geography - WE HAVE MUSLIMS KILLING MUSLIMS and it seems like it will continue for the foreseeable future. We hope and we pray that is not the case. But as long as we are deficient in our minds; as long as our ideas are not what they are suppose to be; as long as we are not listening to Allah closely enough and understanding our Prophet properly enough, these are the results.\"
\"An Ayat that all of us are familiar with, Surati Ali 'Imran, Allah Subhana wa ta'ala
يٰۤـاَيُّهَا الَّذِيۡنَ اٰمَنُوۡا اتَّقُوا اللّٰهَ حَقَّ تُقٰتِهٖ وَلَا تَمُوۡتُنَّ اِلَّا وَاَنۡـتُمۡ مُّسۡلِمُوۡنَ وَاعتَصِموا بِحَبلِ اللَّهِ جَميعًا وَلا تَفَرَّقوا ۚ وَاذكُروا نِعمَتَ اللَّهِ عَلَيكُم إِذ كُنتُم أَعداءً فَأَلَّفَ بَينَ قُلوبِكُم فَأَصبَحتُم بِنِعمَتِهِ إِخوانًا وَكُنتُم عَلىٰ شَفا حُفرَةٍ مِنَ النّارِ فَأَنقَذَكُم مِنها ۗ كَذٰلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ اللَّهُ لَكُم آياتِهِ لَعَلَّكُم تَهتَدونَ This command from Allah Subhanna seems to be a very difficult thing for Muslims to do! Al itisam bihab lilla - To hold on to the means of Allah. There's some very primitive translations of this that says to the rope of Allah. No. It's to the means. Allah has given us an extension of how to do and what to do. If we hold on to that, then we'll find ourselves in positions of togetherness. But and I think you are aware that there are no holds barred in this Khutbah! We try to say the truth and if it's gonna get on someone's nerves, that's not our problem. If we express the truth and some people are going to be upset about it, if they want our help, by all means.\"
\"A DIAGNOSIS OF OUR OWN SELVES IS LONG OVERDUE. And we've been trying to do this as you are, if you are tuned in to this Khutbah, as you are aware for the years that we have been here. And to begin with...we Muslims, we have two complexes that we carry inside of us. One of them is the MU'AWIYAH COMPLEX and the other one is the UMAR COMPLEX. Some Muslims they live with a misunderstanding of who Mu'Awiyah was and other Muslims live with a misunderstanding of who Umar was. That's our problem! In a couple of sentences, this is our problem. If we could just dig deeper into the facts, then we can qualify ourselves to lock hands and to proceed forward as a united and a solid Ummah.\"
\"I want to first of all deal with the mentality that says you cannot criticize a Sahabi. There's no Ayah in the Quran that says that; not one Ayah. There's no authentic Hadith from Allah's Prophet that says that; not one Hadith. If someone is wrong, they are wrong. If someone is right, they are right whoever they may be. Even if it is the Prophets of Allah. Who can be more dignified and more in rank than the Prophets of Allah? When they stepped out of course just a little, Allah corrected them. These are Allah's Prophets. Even the most beloved of Allah's Prophets, who is the final Prophet, Muhammad alahi wa alahis salatu wa salam; in Ayah 75 of Sura Al-Isra says to him اِذًا لَّاَذَقۡنٰكَ ضِعۡفَ الۡحَيٰوةِ وَضِعۡفَ الۡمَمَاتِ ثُمَّ لَا تَجِدُ لَـكَ عَلَيۡنَا نَصِيۡرًا If you (Allah Ja lla wa ala is saying to his most beloved); If you incur the punishment, it will be doled out to you twice, in this world, in this life, and twice in the life to come. That's Allah's Prophet. We're not talking about a Sahabi, we're not talking about an Imam; we're talking about Allah's Prophet. The wives of Allah's Prophet -- Ayah 33 in Suratul Ahzab وَقَرۡنَ فِىۡ بُيُوۡتِكُنَّ وَلَا تَبَـرَّجۡنَ تَبَرُّجَ الۡجَاهِلِيَّةِ الۡاُوۡلٰى وَاَقِمۡنَ الصَّلٰوةَ وَاٰتِيۡنَ الزَّكٰوةَ وَاَطِعۡنَ اللّٰهَ وَرَسُوۡلَهٗ ؕ اِنَّمَا يُرِيۡدُ اللّٰهُ لِيُذۡهِبَ عَنۡكُمُ الرِّجۡسَ اَهۡلَ الۡبَيۡتِ وَيُطَهِّرَكُمۡ تَطۡهِيۡرًا
Any one of you (Prophets' wives) who is guilty, who comes forth with the sin of immorality, Faheesha, her punishment shall be doubled. This is where we take our standards; we acquire our standards from Allah directly from His Book. This is what is being said to us. Can we not learn?! So now if a person from the Prophet's generation, forget about titles; If any person from the Prophet's generation (around the Prophet) does something wrong, we say he did something wrong. If he did something right, we say he did something right and if there are degrees, there may be a person who is fair, there may be another who is good, there may be a third one among them who is excellent and we have to identify this.\"
(10:45-23:05 of 51:50) \"Now let us come to the UMAR COMPLEX. Some Muslims they carry inside themselves an UMAR COMPLEX. They don't like Umar! I'm using a polite word. They don't like Umar! It's ingrained in them. Ok. Fine. That's...that's part of life. We have to face this. It's a fact of life. And this is where ignorance feeds on ignorance.\"
\"Now I want to refer to some of these books of Hadith from where this type of attitude comes from and the books of Hadith whether they are Sunni books or Shia books, you can omit a Hadith in them, you can add a Hadith in them; Who's gonna know? These are not Quran. The books of Hadith are not books as The Quran is. (Arabic spoken) ...Batil cannot even approach The Quran from any direction; from front or from back; from future or from past. The books of Hadith are not like that because they were written by human beings who did their best to try to collect these Hadiths but they are human beings; they are subject...Anyways...\" (The UMAR COMPLEX continued...)
(23:05-35:30 of 51:50) \"Now we come to the MU'AWIYAH COMPLEX. Some Muslims, obviously Sunnis they live with a Mu'Awiyah complex. And they say he is a Sahabi and you cannot criticize Mu'Awiyah. If there is anyone who lived during that time period who qualifies for criticism, it is Mu'Awiyah. Mu'Awiyah was a person who was a power monger! He would do anything to gain power and to hold onto power even if that means killing whoever it is! He wasn't asking. No morals. Nothing. Mu'Awiyah for some of you who may not know comes from a family, Abu Sufiyan, his father was stingy man, stingy in every sense of the word; affluent but stingy and his mother was a very ambitious lady and he grew up in this type of setting. And he bidded his time. All of his life he was against Allah's Prophet until Islam became the order of the day and when Islam became the wave of the future, Mu'Awiyah became a Muslim; very late in those 23 years of the Prophet's sustained struggle. Mu'Awiyah was the one who came up with (some Muslims call this a bid'ah); he came up with the bid'ah of someone after As-Salah giving a Mouwedtha, giving a moral lesson to the prayer attendees, to the Musaleen. That wasn't there before. It was instituted during the time of Mu'Awiyah after the prayers were performed, Mu'Awiyah would have a retinue. He would have a list of employees who would speak to the public after As Salah. So if we want to speak about court Ulamah or Scholars for Dollars, that was institutionalized with Mu'Awiyah.\"
\"...But we are still living with the misinformation that was institutionalized beginning with King Mu'Awiyah and still has its effect; we're still paying the bill today!! Mu'Awiyah's bill...We are still paying it today!! And therefore we have these fanatic Muslims going around killing other Muslims because of this false information they have of their own history.\"
\"Who was the major opponent of Mu'Awiyah...in Mu'Awiyah's mind? There were two types of threats he considered. One of them was a direct military threat and the other one was an indirect ideological threat. His direct military threat he dealt with ruthlessly KILLED THOUSANDS OF MUSLIMS!! You know, no one says Mu'Awiyah killed hundreds of Sahabis. Ah! No one...No THOUSANDS OF SAHABIS!! No one says that; all the other Sahabis are Chief, cheap, and then all of the sudden, Mu'Awiyah is the valued Sahabi in some of these cobweb minds. Al-Hajjaj who was like Mu'Awiyah's Chief of Staff, he KILLED 3,000 MUSLIMS IN ONE DAY!! IN ONE DAY!!! Remember the world at that time didn't have 7.5 billion people in it, so that's a large number. In today's world it's probably speaking like maybe 300,000 people. In one day!!! That's like an ATOMIC BOMB being dropped on a society!!! And who is responsible for that? MU'AWIYAH. Why can't you see that?!! What happened?! What happened to your common sense?! What happened to the information that you have from Allah and His Prophet? To look the other way as if he didn't do anything?!\"
\"Mu'Awiyah used to be a merchant. He used to buy and sell. What did he used to buy and sell? He used to buy and sell LIQUOR!!! He used to buy and sell FIGURINES OF THE BUDDHA!!! Muslims were going eastward and some of the Muslims came across these types of small figures of the Buddha; Mu'Awiyah would repossess them and sale them!!! Where is our sense of justice? And that type of ruler continues until today. Who do you think? We have CONTEMPORARY MU'AWIYAH'S all around the place! And they get away with it! They steal the budgets! They're killing Muslims! Massacres! Wars! All of this! The same attitude and the same behavior! THEN! And NOW! But we have some Muslims, they have the complex of Mu'Awiyah; they can't see through the LIES and the FABRICATIONS that are 14 hundred years old! They can't see through that. I don't know? I don't know when are we? When can we wake up? When will we wake up? Brothers and sisters, one of the worst persons you will encounter is the person who has deified his own ego.\"
\"And Britian that mother of all evils. BRITIAN! Six months after the assassination of Khashoggi, it signed on a military contract to sell 800 million dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia. And they speak about human rights; they speak about liberal minds; they speak about equality; all of this stuff. That's, cheap verbiage. That's all it is. NEVER consider people by what they say! ALWAYS consider people by what they do!\"
\"...And our speakers on Friday...our Khutaba, our Imams, our Shuyukh - Where are you when all of this is happening especially when we are in the season of Hajj?! But this is how weak we are. We are not weak because we don't have brains. We have brains but we don't have them work! We are not weak because we don't have resources. We have plenty of resources but we virtually give them out to our enemies! That's why we are weak. And at the core of this weakness is our inability to be with each other. We carry this negative attitude towards the other Muslim that culminates in wars and mayhem.\"
Imam Asi, Friday prayer 7-26-2019, \"Muslims' Two Complexes Umar and Mu'Awiyah\"
