 Justice spread with Islam. Justice and rights. And this is true not only in the founding scriptures of our religion, but it's true in historical practice as well. Islam offered basic protection of rights, basic due process, something that is important to keep in mind today. And it didn't matter if you were nasty or nice, if you were pious or impious. You had rights, you had the right to present your evidence, or the right to defend yourself. You had the right to demand that person making accusation present proof if they were going to, if you were going to be convicted. And just some examples from the life of the prophet, alaihi salam. In the Sunnah of Awu Dawood there's a beautiful story about a man from Hadramout and a man from the Kinda tribe. And they were in a dispute over land. And the Hadrami man accuses the Kindi man of taking his land. The prophet says to him, to the Hadrami man, alaihi salam, he says, ala ka bayinah, do you have some direct evidence? Do you have witnesses that this man took your land? The Hadrami man said, no I don't. But this Kindi person, he's a bad person. So the prophet turns to the man from the Kinda tribe and he says, this man has no direct evidence, he has no bayinah. And we all know that in Islam if the person who's making accusation has to have direct evidence, has to have bayinah, if not the person who's accused just has to swear an oath that they're innocent. And the Kinda man swears an oath that he's innocent. The man from the Hadrami tribe says, this person is, this person is a sinful person, he's openly sinful, he doesn't care what he swears about. Of course he's going to swear he's innocent. And the prophet says, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. This is all you're going to get from him. If he's telling a lie then God will punish him on the day of judgment. But just because this person is a sinful person, just because he's a nasty person, doesn't mean that somehow you get to come and make an accusation against him and you get to get your way. No, he has a right to defend himself. And if no one can bring evidence to prove that he's committed a crime, then he swears an oath that he's innocent. It doesn't matter if he's a nasty person or not. So it doesn't matter if you're naughty or nice. In Islam you have rights. It doesn't matter if you're Muslim or non-Muslim. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or Jewish. You have rights. And again we see this in the life of the prophet. In one famous case in Sahih al-Bukhari, the companion, Ashat bin Qais, is in a dispute with a Jewish person in Medina about land. And the prophet asks Ashat bin Qais, again, alakabayinah, do you have direct evidence? The man says no. Ashat bin Qais says no. And the prophet rules in favor of the Jewish person. And Ashat says, how can you rule in the favor of this unbeliever against me, a Muslim? And the prophet says you didn't have bayanah. You didn't have evidence. In Islam it doesn't matter if you're Muslim or Christian. It matters what the evidence is. You have rights. No one can take away as great scholars like Abu Yusuf in his Kitab al-Kharaj. Like many other Muslim scholars have said over and over again. No right, no property can be taken. No blood can be shed without direct strong proof. Without haq ma'lum, without a right that is known. This is sort of hard to imagine because today, especially as Muslims live in the United States, we live in a country that has already a robust system of rights and laws, from which we benefit and which I want to talk about. But from much of human history where Muslims went, there were not robust legal systems. There were not notions of protection of rights. So for example, when the Mongols converted to Islam, they had these courts called Yahruhu courts. Don't even worry about how to spell that. It's a Mongol word. There's no notion of evidence. People just came in and said this guy did this, this guy that. The judge hears them, decides what he wants to do, kills someone right there, executes someone right there, takes someone's property right there. No notion of rights. When Mongols converted to Islam, they adopted sharia law. And the famous traveler Ibn Battuta is traveling in, now it's part of Sudan, right, on the Red Sea coast. He comes across the people who, they're not really Muslim. They serve a little bit, they know about Islam, but they're not really Muslim. And he notes they didn't give their daughters any inheritance. They didn't give their daughters any inheritance. And Islam daughters always received their rights, always received their rights. As a parent, all you Muslim parents know this, you might not like your child, you might love one of your child and hate the other kid, but they both have their rights. They always will have their rights. Muslim scholars, as judges and as Muftis, were always pushing rulers not to use excessive force, not to deny people due process. And I can give you so many examples of this. Muslims scholars who lost their careers, who lost their lives speaking out on the behalf of people who were accused unfairly, people who were the victim of some vendetta on a part of the ruler.