Foreword to The Palestine Sermons
My Foreword to Professor Abou El-Fadl's Timely New Book on Islam, Justice and the Palestinian Struggle for Liberation
“Gaza is a watershed moment. Everything has to change. Our approach to reading our sources has to change. What books we use must change. The way we read the Qur’an has to change. The way we relate to one another has to change. What is happening in Gaza and our powerlessness is a direct lesson from God... After Gaza, everything has to change, and nothing else matters."
- Khaled Abou El- Fadl, the Palestine Sermons, Chapter 24: After Gaza, Everything Must Change
In these dreadful times of living through a live-streamed Palestinian holocaust, very little matters that does not seek to actively dismantle and resist the system that enabled this atrocity to happen in the first place.
That is why, educating oneself on the Palestinian struggle is imperative. It is even more important to seek knowledge from scholars who are not compromised by nefarious agendas and politically compromised commitments. I was recently honored by an invitation from the Usuli Institute to write the Foreword to Professor Khaled Abou El-Fadl’s new volume, The Palestine Sermons. Very few scholars “tell it like it is” on questions of injustice and our condition as human beings and as Muslims. A classically trained jurist and UCLA Law Professor, Khaled Abou El-Fadl does not mince his words to “keep the peace” or to retain the status quo in fear for his own self-interest or upward mobility. In fact, he has long deployed his privilege in service of the oppressed and the “preferably unheard.” His voice and scholarship is truly a lighthouse for this age of rampant moral rot.
Edited by visionary ethicist and talented wordsmith, Dr. Josef Linnhoff, this newly released collection of twenty-five sermons (khutbas) responds to some of the major developments in the contemporary struggle for Palestinian liberation. Centered on a Qur’anic ethos and deeply rooted Prophetic commentary, this volume represents the highest ideal of “Sermons at the Court:” ones that take seriously the brokenness of our condition, but illuminate a path forward for all people of conscience by taking a courageous approach to resisting oppression in our world. I hope the book becomes a part of your library.
Foreword
Picture the scene. A massive army of eighty thousand men under the command of the righteous King Saul approach the Jordan River from the east, thirsty and exhausted from days of traveling under the hot sun. As they arrive at the clear, fresh water, they are told that God has “tested you with a river” and are forbidden to drink from it except a mere sip (Q 2:249). Thousands fail the test. Unable to control their urges, most drink their fill without restraint, with only three hundred and thirteen men remaining steadfast and true to the command of God. In the Qur’anic narrative, this test of the river occurred right before the Prophet David undertook the unexpected victory over Goliath (Q 2:251).
The passage in Surah al-Baqarah tells us how those who guzzled the water doubted the possibility of Divine aid and victory. They wavered, believing themselves no match for Goliath and his warriors. But the true believers were different, for they reassured themselves, “How many times has a small force vanquished a mighty army by the Will of God! And God is with the steadfast” (Q 2:249). Before victory came to pass, the parable of the forbidden river distinguished the sincere believers from the stragglers, the weak of faith, the hypocrites. Only the finest stood firm in that decisive hour. It is significant that the story of the forbidden river and the army took place in the Holy Land—more specifically, at the site of the baptism of Jesus. Today, humanity is being tested with its own river in the same land of Palestine.
It is a river of blood.
As I write this Foreword, we have just entered the tenth month of a harrowing genocide in Gaza and over seventy-five years of stolen homes, uprooted olive trees, and weeping, ancient stones. The powers-that-be have declared that this is the new normal, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Gaza is changing the course of history by unmasking the farce of our global system. The so-called “rules-based-order” has been exposed as a ruse-based order. Just like the test of the river, the “river” of Gaza is sorting the hypocrites from the sincere. The pretenders from the true. The tyrants from the justice-seekers. Those who sow corruption from those who strive against it. The currents of this river are so strong that any traces of ambiguity have long been washed away.
Few words can capture the scale of human suffering in Gaza, the biggest slaughterhouse of children in modern history. The horror is livestreamed daily on our phones. The Palestinian people—brutalized, starving, exhausted, limbless, and orphaned under bombs in makeshift tents—are resisting with every breath, standing in the face of a nuclear superpower alone.
But what is Palestine if not a mirror to the state of the Islamic world today? The river of blood gushes from Gaza through to Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond, snaking its way across the Muslim world. Palestine may represent the Ummah’s darkest hour, but it is not a random event. This river of blood is a result of what hardened hearts, minds, and hands have sown. It is what happens when a community abandons its core, foundational principles in exchange for expedient, worldly, foundational falsehoods. Disunity, arrogance, greed, and pride: these are some of the falsehoods plaguing the Muslim condition today.
The roadmap to identifying these maladies is laid out in the Qur’an. The stories of the prophets offer a mirror to our current affairs—if we only reflect. The people of Palestine are often—and rightly so—invoked as a modern-day David, small but mighty, fighting the fierce enemy, Israel. The story of David and Goliath is a timeless heroic narrative. The tale of a smaller and weaker party, blessed and aided by God, gaining victory over a stronger tyrannical army offers a message of hope and inspiration for the oppressed.
But we seldom pay attention to the precursor events to these unlikely victories. What preceded David’s triumph over Goliath was much chaos, betrayal, disarray, and failure. In the Qur’anic narrative of the forbidden river, when the Children of Israel asked God for the best figure to lead them, God sent them Saul because of his righteousness, knowledge, and physical strength. But they rejected him on account of his lowly status; Saul was said to be from the poorer and weaker tribes, so he was spurned because of his community’s arrogance, supremacy, and pride. This failure to accept Saul as a Divinely appointed king was because their hearts were not firm on the truth and the command of God. They were focused on the wrong things: class, wealth, and racial purity rather than knowledge, righteousness, and suitability for leadership. They failed the test of the river before it even began.
This is exactly our current condition as Muslims. The Muslim world has been tested with the weakest, most corrupt, and most hypocritical scholars and rulers because, as a community, our priorities have long been in the wrong place. After being ravaged by colonialism, we no longer rallied behind the core characteristics of true leadership: Prophetic knowledge, principle, and integrity. We no longer valued what is just and true. We chased after the fickle mirages of autocratic power, wealth, charisma, and status. Thus was our downfall.
As a result, we today see tightlipped, impotent Muslim rulers idly watch the river of blood as it flows from Gaza. We see compromised scholars betray the Qur’anic command for justice and bend their heads in humiliation and fear of worldly powers. Save for a few, most Muslim rulers and scholarly elites have chosen self-preservation and silence. The river of blood in Gaza is also a river of treachery and collusion. With leaders like these, it is no wonder the Muslim world is in the sorry state that it is in today.
But it is not only the Qur’an that points us to the reasons behind the collapse of Muslim leadership. History teaches us, too. The loss of Palestine was the grandest heist of the twentieth century, stolen in broad daylight and handed over to Zionists under the guise of a new, progressive age of “civilization,” “progress,” and “modernity.” How else to explain that the same year—1948—saw both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Nakba, the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine?
Palestinians could see from the very beginning that there is nothing “post” about the postcolonial world order. They have ever since got less and less of their rights, lands, and dignity with each passing day. In the same era, the opium of nationalism spread like wildfire as the Muslim world was carved into colonially constructed nation states. The rest of the Muslim world enjoyed its false sense of “sovereignty” and accepted its bridle, divorced from the lonesome plight of the Palestinian people, fooled into believing that the same system that gave birth to their “sovereign” states could guarantee their safety and protection. The neo-liberal “ruse-based-order” deluded Muslims into abandoning God’s command to be truly united (Q 3:103) and ignoring the words of the Prophet Muhammad: “Muslims are like one body; if the eye is sore, the whole body aches, and if the head aches, the whole body aches.” What is the Muslim body today if not diseased, aching, and wounded?
It is no wonder, then, that Palestinians are left to fend for themselves. What is happening today in Gaza is a clarion call to introspect and observe our own prejudices and tyranny as Muslims. Do our mosques and communities reflect the Qur’anic ideals of respect and equality of all humankind? The Qur’an warns us that supremacist arrogance was the primordial sin of Satan, who decried, “I am better than him!” (Q 38:77).
Can we say that we are wholly innocent of this scourge as a community? When we are finally free from tyranny, will we dehumanize and discard others based on their status, race, or ethnicity? Will we adopt a “chosen people” Islam based on an inherent sense of superiority, or will we derive our honor from embodying the characteristics that God and His Prophet love? Do we, as Muslims, represent the three hundred and thirteen, faithful and resolute, or do we better resemble the thousands guzzling on the banks of the river?
The Palestine Sermons by Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl is a powerful tribute to the Palestinian people. This precious collection of sermons reminds us that Islam is, at heart, an ethical revolution and that we cannot be mere spectators in this fight for the soul of humanity. Professor Abou El Fadl calls upon us to draw strength and solace from the timeless message of the Qur’an and to deepen our role as active moral agents in this world. We learn in the following pages that a liberated Palestine is the key to a liberated Ummah; the road to a free Palestine passes through a free Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Jakarta, and Dakar. We see how Palestine is a means of restoring what has been lost of Muslim unity and integrity. In an age of darkness when so many are failing the test and rushing to drink from the river, Abou El Fadl reminds us that it is our duty to hold firm, reject despair, and continue working toward justice—in short, to be modern-day descendants of the three hundred and thirteen. If Palestine alone suffices to explain the plight of modern Islam, then ThePalestine Sermons points to the unrealized potential of Islam to be a source of “mercy to all humankind” (Q 21:107).
For what is Palestine if not the starkest rallying cry against a disunited, arrogant, and prideful Ummah? A forsaken Palestine is a forsaking of Islam, and a free Palestine is a freeing of Islam from the chokehold of tyranny.
May that vision finally come to be. May our children inherit a better, more just world.
Amin.