Tears of the Muslim Ummah

   

In his Friday Sermon of 12 April 2024~ 02 Shawwal 1445 AH, Imam- Jamaat Ul Sahih Al Islam International, Hazrat Muhyiuddin Al Khalifatullah Al Mahdi Munir Ahmad Azim (aba) of Mauritius, spoke movingly about the plight of several Muslim communities around the world. In China, the communist regime is applying repressive methods to eradicate the cultural memory, social practices, and religious consciousness of the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang. Likewise, in Myanmar, the Rohingya Muslims are facing worst forms of violence and ethnic-cleansing at the hands of the Buddhist extremists and the military junta. Elsewhere, several Muslim minority communities are facing the onslaughts of anti-Islam forces. Majoritarian, ethnic-nationalist parties in some countries, as well as the secular fascists in other lands, are equally united in their hatred of Islam, and they scheme to restrict the basic human rights and cultural identity of the Muslims in their midst. It seems as though other religious groups, dominant as they are today in their lands,  are mortally afraid of what the future holds for them as Islam gradually spreads in these lands incrementally. On the other hand, in Muslim nations such as Yemen, Syria and the Sudan, civic conflicts and internecine warfare have taken a toll on entire Muslim communities, with unending violence devastating every day life in these societies for years altogether, leading to large scale forced displacement and migration. 

In the killing fields of Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied territories of the Palestinian people, Israel's relentless bombing campaigns over the last six-months have murdered more than thirty five thousand persons- a large majority of them children and women; hundreds of thousands more became displaced in the land, with thousands critically injured while entire hospitals and housing buildings stand destroyed, making human life virtually intolerable in the land. And yet, the people of Palestine patiently awaits the dawn of their liberation from the clutches of their racist oppressors. Hazrat Khalifatullah's speech concludes with a long, heart-felt prayer to the Almighty God for the destruction of the forces of evil, and for the alleviation and edification of the suffering Muslims of the world, Insha Allah, Aameen.    

Read the Friday Sermon Below:

The Suffering of the Body of Islam Worldwide (Pt. 1)

 

While Eid-ul-Fitr is a blessed time meant to be spent in charity and spirituality as well as time with family in goodwill, prayer and celebration, we need to realise that Islam, as a single body of believers is suffering in the different parts of the world. Many of us are deprived of our basic human rights, and prevented from practicing our religion (Deen) and are victims of harassment, humiliation and massacre on a daily basis.

 

This situation is aggravated by war, conflict, population displacement, mass exodus and movement restrictions, which make daily life more miserable for persecuted people, refugees and vulnerable families in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, Xinjiang, Myanmar and Kashmir.

 

CHINA AND ITS SURROUNDINGS: The detention and murder of the Uyghur minority by Chinese authorities is unfortunately not news to the world. This has been happening intensively, apparently since 2017. And it is reported that around 10 million Uyghurs and other Muslim groups in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have been facing a brutal crackdown that made fasting almost impossible. They have been the target of intense surveillance, forced labour, and involuntary sterilizations, and forced abortions, among other violations of their rights. The Uyghurs’ travel documents were also confiscated from them and their children, forcing them to remain in Chinese territory, deprived of any rights, being prisoners in state camps, more like open prisons.

 

In the context of their Islamic rights like fasting the month of Ramadan, China’s aggressive policies have intensified in recent years and cultural, religious and economic discrimination has become widespread in the area. The observance of Ramadan has reportedly been banned in 2019 in East Turkistan. In China, the ruling communist party considers religious displays a sign of ‘extremism’, even when practiced in the private sphere. That not only includes obvious practices, such as growing a beard, wearing a head cover or praying, but also extends to things people may not do, out of religious conviction, such as abstaining from eating during Ramadan or refraining from drinking alcohol. During the month of Ramadan, all Uyghur students are monitored by the school management and asked to prove that they’re not fasting. If they dare to fast, they are sent to detention centres that Chinese officials call ‘re-education camps’ for ‘assimilation’, or ‘hard learning’.

 

About 1 million to 2 million Muslims, mainly Uyghurs are being held in those mass concentration camps in China today. Almost every Uyghur family will have at least one of its members taken into the camps at one point. Former detainees have described being tortured and forced into falsely confessing that they are extremists. While China brands the camps ‘Vocational Centres’ in which Muslims are ‘taught’ a profession, reports say detainees live in crowded cells and are subjected to a daily regimen of party indoctrination, which unfortunately led to some suicides.

 

Former detainees also say they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Mosques are razed to ground. China has systematically destroyed Islamic sites in the region between 2016 and 2018. It is reported that 31 mosques were either completely or partially destroyed after activists brought the destruction to their attention. While mosques are destroyed in the region, many Muslims say they fear going to the ones that are left for fear of persecution.

 

Here, we see the painful plight of one part of the body of Islam, our body. Many parts like this from our own body, and it feels that the body of Islam has become numb, not feeling the pain from [the parts/ members of] its own body.

 

SYRIA: Ramadan in Syria is spent also in fear. It has been so for centuries. They have seen so many deaths that most Syrians simply wanted to see the holy month pass through with a minimum of loss of lives. There have been radical changes to people’s lives as a result of the Syrian crisis. In time past, the capital of Damascus did not sleep during the month of Ramadan. It was home to centuries-old Ramadan rituals and customs. Today, many Syrians during the blessed month are simply trying to recall their old way of life during Ramadan without being able to practice it. Syria and its people have been subject to the worst killing, destruction, and displacement seen anywhere in the world over the past 50 years.

 

Although material losses cannot be compared to the tragedy of human casualties, the loss of Syria’s history in the shape of its heritage, customs and traditions is a loss to humanity as a whole because it is a loss of 6,000 years of history and civilization. 

YEMEN: The country, war-torn, is home to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, precipitated by a war that began in 2014, and which may be drifting toward a deeper disaster. The war had thrown many Yemeni families into poverty and despair. To make ends meet has become very difficult in Yemen, and especially in the blessed month of Ramadan, where the holy rituals have been tarnished as millions of people face deprivation of basic necessities of life.

 

The war left more than 3 million people displaced and more than two-thirds of the population in need of aid in a country that has long been the Arab world’s most impoverished. And in the year 2019, the month of Ramadan had fallen at a time when Yemen was facing a severe cholera epidemic.

 

PALESTINE: For Palestinians in Gaza, everything is upside down. The incessant fire, the destruction of hospitals and all facilities have left the Palestinian people, Muslims and non-Muslims in utter despair. But what marks the Muslims are the faith they carry in their breast. They may know that their end is coming but they are not renouncing to their faith and their rights. Allahu Akbar. Though many Muslims may despair, stumble and fall, but I can say that the majority of the Palestinians are ready to defend their faith, land, their Mosques and their rights with their lives. Despite the poverty which has installed in the wake of the decades-long war and the now incessant bombings, life in Palestine is that of a scene of desolation, but yet within that desolation, there is the budding and display of faith. This Ramadan was spent after struggles through police controls to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound. They only want that the intense bloodshed of the last six months to end, and the decades old overall war to bring about hope for a new generations of Palestinian Muslims in the land. It is quite understandable that they are not in the mood to celebrate Eid and be happy as true happiness will come when they will be free of the war which is hanging over their heads [and are crushing their heads] each and every day of their lives. The new generations have known only war in their lives. A peaceful and free Palestine is what they dream of; and this is what we also, as one community of Muslims, must strive to make so that this dream may come true. Insha-Allah, Ameen.

 

May Allah capsize the armies of the enemies of Islam and Muslims and render them powerless against the true and sincere Muslims. May Islam and the Muslims win the battle of faith and may the Mosques of Islam be returned to the Muslims, free to worship therein. May Allah show His Might and bring about the inhuman heads of the China and Israel to their destruction. May Allah destroy all those who are taking Islam as a pretext for terrorism to voice out their hatred against it. May Allah secure the Muslims against their oppressors and give them freedom after captivity. May we, all the Muslims in the world join in prayers and all kinds of help to help those helpless brothers, sisters and children of ours so that through our meagre help, Allah may put therein His blessings and save them from killed or deprived of their land, the Holy Land, and their legitimate places of residence. Insha-Allah, Ameen.