In the Crucible of the Wicked
The oppressor's fire and brimstone can never consume the souls of the righteous
We have all been watching with horror the continued nightmare in Gaza. The Zionist genocidal bloodlust is at an alarming high, with the complacent “free world” cheering them on. There is a collective knot in our stomachs knowing that this time, the carnage will be worse than ever before.
Since I posted the abominable story of the shameless mawlid greetings from the holy lands, unsurprisingly, very few “scholars” have spoken out about the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. But every now and then, God sends the examples of those who remind us that not all hope is lost. In comes the likes of the principled Ba’alawi Shaykh Habib Umar ibn Hafiz of Tarim, Yemen, who declared fittingly in a viral video: “the resistance [that occurred in Gaza] is the most elegant form of celebration of the mawlid.” This is the kind of rhetoric the ummah needs the most, the kind that actually weds Qur’anic principles with Islamic ritual practice. This is the type of authentic, anti-hypocritical Prophetic love that actually befits the mawlid season, a time which should not only be for singing songs, but hearing the cries of the lowly, one of living mercy, activated love and justice in action.
It hurts on a visceral level, that with all their privilege, the anointed ‘ulama’ of our time cannot even lend a measly word or empty condemnations to the lament of the mothers and the cries of the babies being scorched under the bombs and rubble of their homes. If you wanted to see how it feels like to be in early Muslim in hostile Mecca, then look the Palestinians. Their persecution cannot even provoke a kind word from “the guardians of Islam.” I am reminded of MLK when he so poignantly said, “in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” But God hears their silence loud and clear and I shudder to think what kind of testimony will stand against them on judgement day.
This is why, in this age, we must draw strength and find empowerment from the voices of the oppressed themselves, not those who do “da’wah” then lend their tacit support to the oppressor. On a personal level, it has been very hard to function knowing that my Palestinian brethren and sisters are currently being subjected to one of the most harrowing genocides in human history.
But I have read enough history and enough scripture to know that God sides with the weakest, most oppressed, and that He is All Aware. The Knower who is in full control of this affair and is the Animator behind all.
If you a person of conscience witnessing all the usual media lies and propaganda, it feels unbearable. It feels like our insides are being consumed by fire.
I walk around my picturesque suburban American neighborhood, and I see Halloween decorations of witches, ghouls and ghosts. What little do they know of the real life house of horror happening in Gaza and elsewhere in colonized Palestine? How can they glorify gore and screams when there is nothing more scary than a real life genocide, happening in real time, wrought upon a defenseless people in an open air concentration camp, as the world turns a blind eye and continue to cheer for Isra-Hell?
How many of them have seen images of terrified young Gazan boys with burning flesh being raced to a hospital? Of the crisp burnt corpses piling in the streets? Of burning homes, memories, schools, reduced to nothing but rubble?
The wicked’s fire power and disproportionate brimstone seems immortal, but in its reality, it is nothing but mere shadows, nothing but smoke. In reality, the fire of the cruel is coolness to the believer. It is nothing but a universal symbol of the primordial battle between evil and the just.
Recall the story of the hairdresser of pharaoh’s wife. When know that during the night of the heavenly ascension, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ smelt a pleasant smell like that of musk and when he asked Angel Gibril about it, he answered that it is the smell coming from the comber who worked in the Pharaoh’s palace during Musa’s time. She was a secret believer in One God, but one day her faith was revealed when the comb fell from her hand and she said “Bismillah”. When Pharaoh heard of this he burnt her and her children in a hot oil cauldron. It is said that her infant son spoke to her at that moment and asked her to remain calm and steady in her faith.
Similarly, in Algeria in 1957, an anti-colonial scholar and a Maliki legal jurist by the name Al-Arabi al-Tibsi was burned to death by boiling in hot oil by the French colonial forces
More than a century prior, a young Azhari student by the name of Suleiman al-Halabi suffered a similar fate, after he assassinated the brutal colonizer Jean Baptise Kleber, who was the Governor of Alexandria and Napoleon’s commander of the French colonial forces in Egypt at the turn of the 19th century in 1800.
Not only did Kleber lead a bloody campaign in which he took Arish, Yafa and Gaza in 1799, a year later he was responsible for the death of 60,000 Muslims at the Battle of Heliopolis in March 1800. Moved by the unjust killings of this brutal colonizer, Suleiman stabbed Kleber in his fortress, only to have his right arm was burned off, and he was impaled in a public square in Cairo and left for several hours to die. Not only that, Suleiman's skull was shipped to France and used to teach medical students being trained as phrenologists (pseudoscience eugenics brain doctors) and claimed there were cranial features indicating "crime" and "fanaticism" inherent to Muslims. Sound familiar, doesn’t it?
Make no mistake: the mass-scale dehumanization campaigns, calling Muslims “terrorists” and “radicals” is centuries old. Do not be fooled by these misinformation wars, they have been brewing and cooking for decades now, and we have arguably reached the zenith of this age-old propaganda war against Islam and Muslims.
Therefore, now is not the time to waver, and it is not the time to lose hope. Too many martyrs have fallen to this devilish campaign, and it is humanity’s final fight. We owe it to them to stay fortified and informed.
Keep steadfast and strengthen your spiritual weaponry of belief and prayer. Remember that you are on the side of the Prophets, the martyrs and the Siddiqin before you who suffered similar pangs and pains, not on the side of the wretched Pharaohs, Goliaths and Yazids.
Remember that out of the ashes of the umma’s burning, agonized heart will rise a Phoenix of God’s promise to bring victory to the oppressed, in a way so powerful, beautiful and pure.
Draw strength and inhale into your heart the musk emanating from the cauldron of the wicked, for no fire, bomb or bullet can ever kill the bodies of the martyrs.
Remember that their worldly fire is a mirage and cannot compare to the internal hell that awaits them.
May the fire raining down on Palestinians be akin to the fire of Ibrahim: "O fire! Be a coolness and safety" for them. Amin.
