Shaykh Hamza Yusuf - Love Even Those Who Revile You

i knooooooow it's long (took me like 3 sittings to read it as well) and i knoooooow my highlights are long as well but man, this is TOTALLY worth the read. check it out, if you get the chance.

i do reeeeeally want to discuss this article with anyone, so if you do read it, holla.

and yes i'm on this kick of extending my vowels. it happens when i'm tired

EEEEEEEEEEE

salaam wrt,
f

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf - Love Even Those Who Revile You [or you can read the original PDF version of the magazinehere on page 41]

(Extended) Highlights:

Allah says in the Quran: ‘Isbiru was-sabiru.' “Have patience and enjoin each other to patience.” The beauty of patience is that ‘inallaha ma'assabirin’ Allah is with the patient ones. If God is on your side you will always be victorious. Allah says in the Quran "Ista`inu bi-sabiri was-salat.'" Isti'aana is a reflexive of the Arabic verb `aana which is “to help oneself.” Allah is telling us to help ourselves with patience and prayer.

Forgiveness, `afwa, pardon, is not a quality of authority. A court is not set up to forgive. It’s the plaintiff that’s required to forgive if there is going to be any forgiveness at all. Forgiveness will not come from the Qadi or the judge. The court is set up to give justice but Islam cautions us not to go there in the first place because ‘by the standard which you judge so too shall you be judged.’ That's the point. If you want justice, if you want God, the Supreme Judge of all affairs, to be just to others on your behalf, then you should know that your Lord will use the same standard with you. Nobody on the ‘Day of Arafat’ will pray: “Oh God, be just with me.” Instead you will hear them crying: O Allah, forgive me, have mercy on me, have compassion on me, overlook my wrongs. Yet, these same people are not willing to forgive, have compassion and mercy on other creatures of God.

We are not a people that are required to love wrong-doers. We must loath wrong actions, but at the same time we should love for the wrong-doers guidance because they are creatures of God and they were put here by the same God that put us here. And Allah says in the Quran “we made some of you a tribulation for others, will you then not show patience.” In other words, God set up the scenario, and then asked the question: ‘will you then not show patience?’ Will you subdue the inordinate desire for vengeance to achieve a higher station that is based on a conviction that you will be forgiven by God if only you can bring yourself to forgive others?

When the human being is in a state of submission - wa huwa muhsinun - everything that comes from him is beautiful and virtuous. Ihsan - ethics, virtuous, beauty, excellence - indicates that a human being will have his reward from his Lord. This is not from the God of a religion, but the God of the individual in a state of absolute submission. “Upon them there is no fear nor will they grieve.” To me, this is the greatest testimony that Islam is not about identity politics. Some among us want to reduce Islam to identity politics. They label themselves and point accusing fingers at each other. Allah says “indeed the one who has resigned his entire being to God and is virtuous, that is the one whose reward is with his Lord and upon them shall come no fear nor will they grieve. "

I’m not talking about being pleased with injustice because that's prohibited. At the same time we accept the world our Lord has put us into and we see everything as being here purposefully, not without purpose, whether we understand it or not. We believe evil is from the Qadr (decree) of Allah and it's for a purpose, but there are two sides to choose from - the side of good and the side of evil. In order for you not to fall into the Manichean fallacy, God reminds you that not only is the struggle an external struggle but evil is an internal struggle as well. Therefore, those very things that you see on the outside they are also on the inside and to make it even clearer, the struggle inside is the greater Jihad because if you are not involved in the internal struggle you are not going to be able to fight the external one. Maulana Rumi said whenever you read Pharaoh in the Quran don’t think that he is some character that lived in the past, but seek him out in your own heart.

Love is eternal because love is the reason you were created. You were created to adore God. That’s why in Latin the word adore which is used for worship in English is also a word for love, adoration. You were created to worship God, in other words, to love Him because you can't truly adore something or worship something that you don't love. If you are worshipping out of fear, like Imam al Ghazali says, it's not the highest level of worship, but its lowest.

In other words, if you are worshipping God out of fear, if the reason that you are doings things is because you are afraid of Him, that he is going to punish you, that’s the lowest level of worship. That’s why it was said about the Prophet’s companion Suhaib al Rumi that had there been no fire or paradise he still would have worshipped Allah.

In other words get angry but don’t let that anger get the best of you, don’t allow it to overcome you to the point where you want vengeance because vengeance is God’s alone. Allah is al-Muntaqim, The Avenger of wrongs. Human beings are not here to avenge wrongs they are here to redress wrong, not to avenge them.

He is the paragon who said: “None of you truly believes until he loves for his fellow man what he loves for himself.” And the reason why I say fellow man is that I think it’s a very accurate translation because Imam an Nawawi said that he is your brother because we are all children of Adam and Eve. So we should want for our fellow man guidance, a good life, and a good afterlife. None of you truly believes, in other words our Iman is not complete until we love for others what we love for ourselves and that includes the Jews, Christians, Buddhists and the Hindus.

Many Muslims have divided the world into two groups - us and them. They will support Saddam Hussein because he’s a Muslim. In other words, they will support a man who may have killed more Muslims than any Muslim leader in the history of Islam or perhaps all of them put together. The argument from this segment of our Muslim community is that “I will back a mass murderer and go to a demonstration with his picture because he’s a Muslim and other people are Kuffar.” On the other hand, many Americans will back unjust American intervention simply because they believe “my country right or wrong.” Both sentiments is a form of tribalism and we are people of faith in God Almighty, not people of tribal allegiance.