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On
Sunni-Shia Unity
A Speech by Ahmad Deedat
( Part 1 & 2)
I seek refuge in
the accursed Satan, In the name of God the Beneficent the
Merciful.
The Holy Quran says: "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 Qur'anic. 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.
In Iran everything is Islamic to strengthen the morality of the
people, boosting the men and women by the thousands. We were
thrilled , we were thrilled to see our children, we felt as if
theses were our children, our own brothers and sisters, we were
really thrilled. We saw these as things that our children can
do. Then we went through a military parade with different groups
of Iranian
men and there was no shortage of man power. You know, some
people want to go and help our Iranian brethren. Alhamdulilah
there is no shortage of man power they only want the tools, and
the weapons. If the Iranians had the military weapons that the
Israelis had, the whole of the middle-east would be free from
every kind foreign intervention in no time. This is a nation
that can do it. The spirit is there, the spirit of Jihad is
there in each and every man and woman in the nation. It seems
that the whole
nation is involved in promoting Islam. We are talking about 20
million people that they can put into the field. If they had the
weapons and the materials, every man woman and child would can
go and do jihad.
Then we visited the Iraqi prisoners of war. As you know when
this war started Iraq attacked Iran. The whole country was in
turmoil. Iraq felt that the Jews did it to the Arabs in 6 days,
then they will do it to the Iranians in 3 days and the whole
world thought that in one weeks time, Iran would crumble to
pieces. And do you know how long it has been now? It's been a
year and a half, and even more. And in the beginning there were
twenty to one odds against them in men and materials and the
Iranians turned the tables and brought the odds to 3 to one
still against them. And they were able to push them back. They
recaptured all their land and a hill that was named Allahu
Akbar. Before I went to Iran Dr . Kalim Siddiqui from the UK
jokingly remarked that "you guys have
half a chance of becoming martyrs (shahid).." It was a joke and
it nearly became true. While we were coming out of a city
on the war front there was a field of tanks. And our young men
came out of the buses and started to climb onto the tanks taking
pictures to show people back home. Then one of the tanks in the
courtyard came out for a training demonstration on how it works
and suddenly we hear gunfire and in the distance we saw smoke
coming from a few places and some of our young men got scared
and started hiding behind bushes., and it turns out that we were
under attack from the Iraqis. And there were bombs exploding all
around us and Allah (swt) saved us. And remember Khaled had said
that was half a chance that we would become
martyrs, well it almost became a full chance. (laughter).
We visited those
wounded in the war and no one was complaining about what had
happened to them. One man had his leg amputated, and there were
no tears, I never saw a single tear from anyone, and they were
asking if it was possible to go back to the front. Their regrets
were not about their injuries but why they can't go back to the
front to fight and become shahid, this is the ambition of each
and every Muslim there. When we visited the prisoners of war the
Iranians had captured 7000 prisoners of war and they looked
healthy, well clothed, well fed. One of my friends was
interested in finding out what the Iraqi prisoners felt about
their condition first hand. And anyone he asked said that they
were being looked after very well. Then I had an idea. Some were
here for over a year and others for a few months and I was
wondering how many people had committed suicide. And I asked
each group of the prisoners of war and asked each group how many
people committed suicide. They said not one. I then asked the
next group and so on. Not one single person committed suicide
amongst the 7800 prisoners of war. And if we look at our so
called civilized western country of South Africa, 46 people
committed suicide in our prisons this year alone and they are
well fed well clothed have their own cells and 46 committed
suicide so far. And if people are not well treated some are
going to want to find an easy way out but there was not one
single person who committed suicide amongst the 7800 prisoners
of war.
We went to visit the Imam, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini.
There were about forty of us who waited for the Imam and the
Imam came in and was about ten meters away from where I was, and
I saw the Imam. He delivered the Lecture to us for about half an
hour, and it was nothing but the Quran, the man is like a
computerized Quran. And the electric effect he had on everybody,
his
charisma, was amazing . You just look at the man and tears come
down your cheek. You just look at him and you get tears. I never
saw a more handsome old man in my life, no picture, no video, no
TV could do justice to this man, the handsomest old man I ever
saw in my life was this man. There is something unique to his
name, too. First he is called Imam Khomeini. The word Imam is to
us a every cheap word. Wherever we go somewhere we ask who is
the Imam of the Masjid here. To the Shia there is only one Imam
in the world and he is the Twelfth Imam , they believe in the
concept of Imamate and that the Imam is the spiritual leader of
the ummah. And the first Imam according to the school of Imamate
is Hazrat Ali (A). Then comes Imam Hassan who is the second
Imam, Imam Hussein the third Imam all the way until the twelve
Imam, Imam Mohammad who disappeared at the age of 5 and they are
expecting his return. They use the term "occultation" something
like a spiritual hibernation like the Ashab Al-cahf. And that he
is expected to come back and he is the only one in the world who
can be called Imam. Most of their scholars are called mullah,
and Ayatollah means Allamah And Ayatollah Khomeini is called
Imam out of respect but they are waiting for the real Imam to
come. Ruhollah is the name his father gave him and do you know
what it means? Ruhollah means the 'word of God' and this is the
title of Hazrat
Isa(as) in the Quran. Then he is Ayatollah which is another
title of Hazrat Isa(as) in the Quran. Al-Musawi is from the
family Musa and from the city of Khomein which is where his last
name Khomeini comes from. ...(break in audio at 41: 05 seconds).
But they are waiting for the Mahdi, and not Khomeini. They want
to clean the stables and make preparations for the Mahdi to
come. In the
Sunni world we are also waiting for the Mahdi to come but we
want him to clean the stables for us, make us masters of the
world and to make us sit on the thrones. The Sunni world is just
passively waiting. Until then we can carry on with all our petty
little squabbles, whatever we are carrying on now. And it is
only the Imam Mahdi which can clean the world for us. This is
the Sunni line of thinking. Khomeini on the other hand tells his
followers that we must help prepare the way so that when he does
come everything is already set up for him to act on. While we,
the Sunni world are waiting for Imam Mahdi to pull the chestnut
out of the fire for us, the Shias are preparing the world for
his arrival.
Part - 2
(continued)
You know there were many people with us from all over the world.
And I found types and types and types of sick people, a mental
sickness that is. I came across an alim from Pakistan Mauna
Sahib and he thought that there was something wrong with our
Shia brothers. You see in Iran when someone is lecturing and the
name Khomeini is mentioned people stop and everyone says durood
on the Prophet(pbuh) three times. But when the name Mohammad is
mentioned they send durood once. And this alim from Pakistan
says " look at these people just look at them. What kind of
Muslims are these people. When the name Mohammad is mentioned
they send durood on the Prophet (pbuh) once but when the name
Khomeini is mentioned they send Durood on KHOMEINI three times."
I said " What do they say , what do they say in this so called
'durood on Khomeini'. "
He said: Peace be upon Mohammad and the family of Mohammad.
I said " Who is Mohammad? Khomeini? Who named Khomeini as
Mohammad. Their durood is on Prophet Mohammad(s) and you say it
is on Khomeini."
You know it's a sickness. There are many learned men but their
minds are so prejudiced. They are just looking for faults. [1]
Another example is that the Shia brothers when they make salat,
they have a piece of clay (turbah) that they do sajjdah on. And
he says "see what they are doing here. This is shirk. They are
worshipping a piece of clay. " I said why don't you ask them why
they place their foreheads on a piece of clay and learn the
logic behind this. You see, the first time I experienced this
was in
Washington D.C., the Iranian students there had invited me to
give a lecture there at the university where they were studying
in America. At that time, it was time for Isha and we made
salat. And everyone was given a piece of clay. I at the time
thought it was so funny, so I put it aside and I made my salat
with the Iranian students. And after salat I wanted to know
about this and I asked them. Why do you carry this clay tablet
everywhere you go in your pocket. They said " we are supposed to
do sujood on Allah's earth with our foreheads touching the
earth. We say "subhanna rabia Allah" three times with our
foreheads touching the earth." So the Shia want to actually
touch the earth with their foreheads and not a manmade carpet.
They want to be true to the expression of praying with the
forehead actually touching Allah's earth. You see they don't
worship the clay tablet as many wrongly
think. And this is always something that we Sunnis are always
making fun of and mock the Shia, but on my way out from Tehran
across the plane in the aisle were two Shias and when prayer
time came one of them took his clay tablet out of
his pocket and, Allahu Akbar, performed salat right there on the
plane in his seat, and when he finished he gave this to his
neighbor and he performed salat. And this may seem like a joke
to us. Isn't it? And there were dozens of Sunnis on the plane
and out of those dozens of Sunnis only one young man did the
salat, and I tell you that young man wasn't me. But we are
laughing at the other Guy.
He is sitting there and doing
something better than we are and we make fun of them and sit in
judgment. He may not as polished and refined as we are in South
Africa. You know we Muslims in South Africa are very polished
and refined in our salat. The Arabs are no match for us, the
Iranians are no match for us, the Americans bilalans, the
Negroes they are no match to us. With the Arabs you are bowing
down in ruku and the guy next to you pushes you aside to make
space.(laughter) Who knows brothers, maybe it is valid, we don't
know. You know, between the four Sunni mazhabs the Hanafi,
Hanbali, Maliki and Shafei there are over two hundred
differences in salat alone. Did you know that? Two hundred. But
we take it for granted. The Shafei says amin loudly and we say
it silently, they say bismillah loudly we say it silently and
there is there is no problem. A s a child my father would repeat
the famous formula that he in turn learned from his father. :
"all the mazhabs are equally valid and the truth for them is in
the hadith and the Quran." And so we accept it. When it comes to
the Shafei, Hanbali, Hanafi and Maliki we are tolerant but when
it comes
to the Shia you see he is not in the formula that we are taught
as a child, so what ever little idiosyncrasies there exists
between us and them we cant tolerate and reject we say that he
is out because we are programmed to believe in only the four.
But we accept the idiosyncrasies between the four.
I say why cant you accept the Shia brothers as a fifth madhab.
And the astonishing thing is that he is telling you that he
wants to be one with you. He is not talking about being Shia. He
is shouting "there is no Sunni nor Shia there is one thing,
Islam." But we say to them "no you are different you are Shia."
This attitude is a sickness of the devil. He wants to divide us.
Can you imagine we Sunnis are 90% of the Muslim world and the
ten percent who are Shias want to be partners and brothers with
you in faith and the 90% are terrified. I cant understand why
should you the 90% be so terrified. They should be the ones
terrified. And if you just knew the feelings that they have for
you. During Jummah prayers in Iran, there are a million people.
And you should see the way they look at you when you pass by,
they recognize that you are a foreigner and not one of them and
tears start rolling down their cheeks. This is the feeling that
they have for you, but you say no, you want to keep they out,
afraid that they will absolve you. You can only be absolved if
there is something better than what you have. I don't know,
maybe some of you think I am a Shia, but I'm still with you all
here. What is all this Shia-Sunni tensions? It is all politics.
These antagonisms we have are all politics now. If a Sunni
brother somewhere does something wrong you say oh the individual
is not being very Islamic, he is a kaffir, But if a Shia does
something wrong you want to condemn the whole Shia community,
the whole nation of millions, and say they are all rubbish just
because one Shias actions are not very Islamic. At the same time
where we look the other way if one of your relatives does
something serious because he is your father or your uncle. One
group of Sunnis says to another "you are not a Muslim" another
group of Sunnis says "you are not a Muslim you are a kaffir"
look that's among us, and we fight among ourselves. And some of
us do funny things.
I met one brother who told me when you go to Newcastle go visit
Mr. So and so and inshallah everything will be taken care of for
you. So I went to the man and exactly as I was told he took me
home for lunch and when I'm sitting at the table I see on the
wall 'burat' you know what burat is? A donkey like animal with
the face of a woman its supposed to provide electrical force. I
told him this is not right. Allah(swt) created electrical force,
you can not create it with a statue of a donkey with a woman's
face. Oh and he was so upset. But he's a Sunni, he was a brother
and is still my brother. This Sunni-Shia tensions is the work of
the devil to divide us.
Let me say something about Iran. What I found was that
everything is islamically oriented. The whole nation is geared
towards Islam. And they are talking about nothing but the Quran.
I have never had a single experience with an Iranian when the
man contradicted me when I'm talking about the Quran. Whereas
our Arab brethren again and again you quote them the Quran and
they try to contradict you with the Quran. They are Arabs, they
are supposed to know the Quran better than us, but the Iranians
seem to be on the wavelength of the Quran.
Everything he is doing everything
he is thinking about is the Quran. You remember Tabas[2] when
the American people wanted to free the hostages. The mightiest
most technologically advanced nation on earth, a nation that can
land a man on the moon and bring him back, a nation which tells
you which part of the moon they will land and bring them back,
they send mars and Jupiter probes. A nation that warned Pakistan
about the tidal wave tragedy and they didn't heed the warning.
They warned the Israelis in 1973 that the Arabs were on the
move, they didn't heed the warning. That nation couldn't land in
Iran. Imagine they went there with their helicopters and crashed
them selves and got themselves killed. Imagine. A nation that
lands on the moon and comes back cant land in Iran. And the
Iranian people were not in any position to do anything to them.
The Americans could have gone and done what they wanted to do. I
went and saw the American embassy and you think that its just a
big building, but man its acres and acres right in the center of
Tehran. They could have easily gone in and gotten these people
out, even if they lost a few men. They could have achieved their
goals. It was very well planned. But you know what happened?
Fiasco, retreat failure, the Imam Khomeini is told what has
happened. He doesn't say Subhananla, he doesn't say Alhamdulilah,
you know what he said. He quotes the Quran : "Have you not
considered how your Lord dealt with the companions of the
elephant?" 105:1 These are the words that came out of him. I
tell you he is a Qur'anic computer.
You know what they call those huge helicopters? Jumbo
helicopters, and those big planes are called jumbo planes. You
know what jumbo means in Swahili, Elephant. It's a Swahili word.
That's where they got the name. So these elephant sized
helicopters go and the Imam says: "Have you not considered how
your Lord dealt with the possessors of the elephant? Did He not
cause their war to end in confusion," Quran 105:1-2
But we are so skeptical, the Muslim world has become so
skeptical we don't believe in the Quran anymore. You don't
really believe in the Quran, for most people it is all for
entertainment, for the good spiritual feelings that you get when
reciting the Holy Quran. But the directives that Allah(swt)
gives, nobody seems to care. May Allah (swt) make these brothers
of ours, the torchbearers and light of learning today to the
Muslim world . And here is a nation geared to do the Job. When
you look at them the earnestness that is in them, a nation that
is not afraid, when you look at them with the enthusiasm they
have.
They are not afraid to say "marg
bar amrika" death to America.. Then say "marg bar shuravi "
death to USSR. Imagine that! (laughter from the audience). And
death to Israel." Can you imagine a nation doing that and not in
the least afraid. This is not the Islamic spirit that is in us
here, but the Iranians are all heart and mind. They don't say
"this is an Iranian revolution "or "we are Iranians". They are
talking about Islam, an Islamic Revolution. This is not an
Iranian revolution but that this is an Islamic revolution. It's
a revolution for Islam and little wonder why the nations of the
world cant stomach it because it is Islam that they cant
stomach. So my dear brothers and sisters I have taken so much of
your valuable time already. And with these words I take leave of
you to sit down and to take your
Questions.
[1] " O ye who believe! if any from among you turn back from his
Faith, soon will Allah produce a people whom He will love as
they will love Him,- lowly with the believers, mighty against
the rejecters, fighting in the way of Allah, and never afraid of
the reproaches of such as FIND FAULT. That is the grace of
Allah, which He will bestow on whom He pleaseth. And Allah
encompasseth all, and He knoweth all things." Quran 5:54
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