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Shaykh Ahmad Deedat I seek refuge in the accursed Satan, In the name of God the Beneficent the Merciful.
The Holy Quran says:
Sunni-Shia Unity
A lecture by
Shaykh Ahmad Deedat
( The lecture by Shaykh Ahmad Deedat, a world renowned Sunni scholar from South Africa was made, following his visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran on March 3 , 1982 ).
"And if you turn away (from Islam and the obedience of Allah), He will substitute you for some other people, and they will not be like you." Quran 47:38
Mr. chairman and brothers: While we are looking skeptically of the miracle of a nation reborn. Allah's inexorable decree is finding its fulfillment in the rise and fall of nations which is mentioned in the verse I have just read to you from Surah Muhammad. In the last section of the last verse Allah(swt) reminds us, and warns us that if ye turn back from your duties and responsibilities if you do not fulfill your obligations then he will replace you with another nation.
Our urdu speaking brethren use these words so beautifully when they describe some mishap that occurs in the community in talking about that other nation that can replace them. It is actually Quranic. And this really has been happening throughout history again and again. Allah (swt) first chose the Jews, the Bani Israel as he tells it in the holy Quran: "O children of Israel! call to mind My favor which I bestowed on you and that I preferred you to all other nations."(Quran 2:47). That favor was that they should become the torchbearers of the knowledge of God to the world. This was the honor, this was the privilege that was at first given to the Jews But because they did not fulfill their end of the obligation, a Jew amongst the Jews Hadhrat Isa (A.S.) as recorded in the Christian gospels told them "That the kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."(The Bible, Matthew 21:43). And that nation, we will happily own up is the Islamic ummah. It was taken away from the Jews and given to the Muslims. The Muslims then, among them who were the Arabs at first, were given by Allah (SWT)the privilege that they became the torchbearers of light and learning to the world , but when they relaxed and failed to bring forth the fruits, Allah(swt) replaced them with another nation. In history, we remember the Turks and Mongols destroyed the Muslim empire and when they accepted Islam they became the torchbearers of light and learning to the world.
As Iqbal beautifully describes this situation: "O' you Muslims, you will not perish if Iran or the Arabs perish, that the spirit of the wine is not dependent on the nature of it's container." The container is our nations, our boundaries and the spirit of Islam is not dependent on our geographical boundaries or national limitations. So this is what Allah (swt) does again and again, he chose the Jews then he chose the Arabs then when they became lax he chose the Turks and when they became lax another people and so on and this is a continuous process. If you don't do the job, Allah(swt) will chose another people who will. In the world today there are a thousand million Muslim, that is ,one billion we boast! And 90 percent of this one billion happens to be the Sunni branch. We have stopped delivering the goods so Allah(swt) chooses a nation that we have all been looking down upon. The Iranians! The Shias! History has been very unkind to our brethren in Iran that the shah happened to be the ruler, and his name happened to be Muhammad. Imagine, that this mans name happened to be Muhammad and he really wasn't a believer. It's hard for us to imagine today, but once you go to that country and you go into the details and find out what was going on. That this Iranian the shah it seems to be,that he was a foreigner. If Hitler conquered this land and oppressed them, then we could understand. If the Russians conquered the people, we can understand. But here is a man who is an Iranian, speaking Persian, whose name was Muhammad, and look at what he was stooping to. For sixteen years he had forbidden Jummah prayers. Sixteen years. We had been equating Iran with the shah and the shah with Iran. To us they were synonymous terms. But when you go into details we learn that the shah and the Iranian people were both apart. They were in reality foreigners to one another.
Now about this visit of mine to Iran and my impression. Let me begin with the place where I had the first fragrance of this Iranian brotherhood of ours and it happened to be in Rome. First I smelled it, and then some of my companions had smelled it in the Rome airport. We were waiting to get on the plane, and we had some problems with visas and one of our men was given the responsibility of overcoming these problems. So he goes to the Iran air office and he tells our problem to a young lady wearing full Islamic attire with her body well covered. It was Beautiful, Just beautiful to look at. And I mean that when you look at these people in this attire you see that they are beautiful people. So there was a lady in Rome and you brothers should have seen the way she handled these problems. And someone came to me and told me, man if you want to see a real Iranian Muslim girl you should come over and I went and some others went and we saw. And that was the first whiff we had of the Iranian ummah in Rome.
When we landed in Iran, we were taken to a five star hotel which was there before the revolution known as the Hilton hotel but is now known as Hotel Istiqlal. And we were taken around. to places of interest and I will relate to you some of the things we saw and I will try to describe the feelings one has. If I remember correctly, the first thing we visited was the Behesht Zahra cemetery. Behesht means paradise in Persian and Zahra is the title of Fatima Al-Zahra (AS) who was the daughter of Prophet Muhammad (saw). And Zahra means the radiant one. So it was called Radiant paradise. And before arriving in Iran, I had read about the Behesht Zahra cemetery. And I remember when Imam Khomeini had arrived in Tehran he made a trip to the cemetery. And I'm thinking why does one go to the cemetery? To make du'a? Yes. For the departed souls? Yes. And when you think of cemeteries here in South Africa you think of Brookstreet and Riverside. You cant imagine that this cemetery is square kilometers by square kilometers. You Just cant imagine. It is a big open ground where about a million or two million people can be accommodated. And people gathered here because it is the easiest place where people can release their emotional and spiritual baggage because there you have the martyrs. Their were 70,000 or so people who were martyred in this revolution and 100,000 maimed. Unarmed people with only the slogan "Allahu Akbar" as their weapons had toppled the mightiest military force in the middle east. So we went to this cemetery There were about a million people there. There were men and women and children and we were greatly inspired by the enthusiasm and the feeling of our brothers and sisters there. It was mid winter there, and the men and women and children were sitting on the cold ground for hours on end. In mid-winter on the ground with no carpets or chairs! A nation that could endure that discipline for hours on end , you can only imagine what destiny Allah(swt) has planned for them. A day or 2 later on my program I read Behesht Zahra cemetery, again. The first time we went for a lecture, but we had seen the graves people reciting poems of sorrow and reciting dua' and I thought this second visit would be redundant. Why should one go a second time? I've seen what a cemetery is. But all my companions were going and I thought if everyone else was going, it wouldn't be good for me to stay in the hotel relaxing when all my companions are going in these buses to a cemetery. But I went and I became very happy. And the second time I went it was a Thursday afternoon and Thursdays in Iran is like Saturdays for us. And tens of thousands of people were in the cemetery. This was a custom. It was like Eid. Tens of thousands are there, for what else, but to charge their spiritual batteries. It was a constant reminder to not forget. "My son gave his life for Islam" or "my father gave is life for Islam " that they gave their life for Islam. With that kind of system, Every Thursday is a spiritual injection and reminder that they are willing to give their life for Islam.
There was a town hall that accommodated 16,000 people, compared to the biggest town hall in South Africa which is the Good Hope Center in Cape town for 8,000. This was built by the shah to boast his own "Aryan myth". He was boasting not only that he was the shahanshah or king of kings, but also that he was the aryamehr, light of the Aryans. What is this Aryan sickness? Remember Hitler bragging about being Aryan because the Germans are Aryans. And the Hindus boasting we are Aryans. If my people, the Gujarati people, weren't Muslims we'd be boasting about being Aryans as well. The ex shah claimed to be the light of Aryans and he built this monument as a tribute. He built another monument spending millions to commemorate his ancestor Cyrus the great, a pagan, a mushrik and squandering the wealth of this nation for this project. In 1984 he was supposed to have the world Olympics in Tehran to boost his ego even further. In this town hall we saw athletics, gymnastics, acrobatics. Unfortunately we Muslims here in South Africa are like jellyfish, that is we have made ourselves into jellyfish. Our young men do not participate in that kind of activity. Who here does athletics, gymnastics, acrobatics we do not do that here. It's not for us. Who does jogging, You know the young people here, when I meet them I shake hands with them and they are like jellyfish. Almost every young man you meet in Iran appears to be an athlete. They are doing sports on a world standard and it makes one feel so happy because there they are not projecting Iran. They are not talking about Iran "we are Iranians, we are Aryans" instead they are talking about Islam, about Islam, about Islam. There was not one semi-naked girl, not a single girl who was half naked there. If the shah had his way, if he was alive and organized it, there would have been semi-naked girls for everyone to stare at and feast upon.
(Continued in i/60 Article 7)
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