 Praise Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and we send blessings and prayers upon his noble Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam who was sent as a bearer of glad tidings and a warning to all of mankind before the day of judgment. And I enjoy you and I enjoy myself to have tapwa of Allah, to have God consciousness and fear of Allah, obeying all of the commands outwardly and inwardly and staying away from the prohibitions outwardly and inwardly. The Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam described us, his ummah, us, the nation of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam as one body. And when one part of the body hurts aches, is in pain, is hurting, the entire body is in pain. And day in and day out we are seeing our body in pain. We're watching on the news right now as our fellow Muslims, brothers and sisters are slaughtering each other and fighting each other and shedding each other's precious blood on the streets of Muslim countries. And we ask ourselves, what can we do about this? We ask ourselves, what is our duty in this situation? When we see our Muslim brothers and sisters doing this to each other, we know that we have to speak the word of truth and we have to stand up for justice. And the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said to speak the truth even if it is bitter. But the question is, what is the truth? And who is just and who is on the side of justice? If we see a clear injustice, then we stand on the side of justice, whether even if it's against our own brothers and sisters. The Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said that even if his daughter Fatima, radiallahu anha, who he described her as being a portion of him, if she were to commit theft to steal, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said he would implement the hudud on her. Nothing personal, but this is the justice of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. So when we see our brothers and sisters at each other's throats fighting, whose side do we stand on? If it's a clear injustice, we stand on the side of the just person, the side of the oppressed person. But when it becomes confused as it is now, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam described the end of times as a time of mass confusion, where people will shed each other's blood and the person being killed doesn't even know what they were killed for. So in that situation, where do we stand? We know in principle that we stand on the side of the oppressed, but when it comes to practical implementation, whose side do we stand on? A beautiful example is in Imam Malik, may Allah be pleased with him. When he was asked about a person to a rebellious group fighting a ruler, and he said da'ahu fa innahu zalimun, yanta'imu Allahumina zalimi bi zalimi, thumma yanta'imu minhumaa. Leave it be. Don't concern yourself with it. That is an oppressor, fighting an oppressor, and Allah will use one oppressor to establish justice on another oppressor, and then he will establish justice on them both. We don't know who's the just and who's the oppressed. We stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters, whether they're dressed or whether they're impressed, in the sense that we will hold the hand back of the oppressor and support the oppressed. But we don't know who that is. But we know that there's oppression out there, and we are against it. But again, what can we do? What can we do when we see this oppression? One of the things that we have to do, one of the things that we have to do, is take a lesson from it, and relate that lesson to our own personal lives. And remember that they are part of the ummah, and we are part of the ummah. And if there's a cancer in the toe, it's affecting the brain. It affects the heart. It affects the whole body. So if we have a cancer in a part of our ummah, it's affecting us. And we might be part of that cancer, the cause of that cancer. Allah says in the Qur'an, Fear a test and a tribulation that will not only affect those people that were oppressors. Meaning that certain people in certain lands might be disobeying Allah and the backlash of the punishment of that oppression affects people that were not even involved in that. So we don't know why it's happening in the Muslim lands. We might be out here in America disobeying Allah and part of that is affecting them. That disobedience, that spiritual pollution, we're always hearing about the global warming and this and the pollution. What about the spiritual pollution that we put out? What about the spiritual pollution that's put out around the world? And then it comes down and it creates a hole in the spiritual ozone in a certain land. It's not just their fault. We all have to take responsibility. So we can't just say things happening on the other side of the world are over there. It is our business. It's our spiritual business to reflect on why that's happening and how that affects us. Now, how can we relate that to our lives? We know that every single disobedience of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, every single instance of a person disobeying Allah is caused by a disease in the heart and the root diseases of all disobedience, the all of disobedience according to many of the scholars of the science of purification of the heart is arrogance, kibiru. Now, many of us, we hear about the muta kibirin. We hear about the arrogant people. When you hear arrogant, you automatically you have some images in your mind. If you, if I say, think of the arrogant people in the Quran, you think Pharaoh, the Pharaoh, you think Haaman, his great architect, you think Qaroon, his treasurer, you think Abu Lahab, arrogant, Abu Jahl, arrogant, the Quraysh that refused to follow the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, arrogant. That's arrogance. But do we ever ask ourselves, when are we arrogant? When are, when is arrogance in our heart? According to the ulama of the purification of the heart of Tasawwuf of Tezquia, they said that the last disease that leaves the heart of the person who's trying to purify their hearts, the last disease is arrogance. So that means unless we feel, unless we can say that we have completely purified our hearts, if we can't say that, if we can't, if we can say, I know I have diseases in my heart, then you can be certain that there's arrogance in your heart, that there's arrogance in our hearts for sure. Unless a person can say, I've completely wiped it out. And according to Imam al-Razadi, that can actually never happen. You can never completely wipe out the diseases from your heart. You can just prevent them from showing up. But let's reflect on arrogance. It's arrogance that causes what's happening in Syria. It's kibir and arrogance that's what's happening in Egypt. And it's arrogance what happens in our masjids and the disobedience that's caused in our household. It all has a root in arrogance, in kibir. We just see the massive effect of arrogance on the front pages of the news in Egypt, in Syria. That's the massive effect. That's the end result when it causes people to shed their each other's blood. But let's look back at the nature of arrogance. Who is the first person that disobeyed Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with arrogance? It was Iblis, the father of all shayateen, the first shaytan. He refused to prostrate to our father, Adam alayhi salam. And when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala asked him why he refused, he said, I'm better than him. You made me from fire and you made him from mud. And in his arrogance, he wasn't able to see how wrong he was because there's actually more benefit in dirt than there is in fire. We can live without fire. You can live without fire. You can't live without dirt because dirt is the source of our food. It creates the plants that the animals eat, and then we eat the animals or we eat the plants that come from the dirt. Dirt creates the wood that we can make our houses from. Dirt creates the cotton that we can make our clothes from or feed the sheep that we can make our wool from to close us and to shelter us. We can't live without dirt. We can live without fire. You can eat raw food. You can eat raw meat, and you can survive that way. So we can live without fire. And so he didn't see that Iblis because of the blinding effect of the kibbet, of the arrogance. And so he refused to prostrate to Adam alayhi salam. Now, when we hear that story or when we read that story, do we just say, oh, that's Iblis, that happened thousands and thousands or however Allah alayhim how many years ago? Do we ever relate? When does the Iblis and me come out? When does the Iblis and me come out and say, I'm better than you? We see it now on the news. We see people killing each other unjustly in Syria, in Egypt, in Afghanistan, all over the world, in the Muslim lands, in the non-Muslim lands, because they say, I'm better than you. My political party is better than yours. My race is better than yours. My denomination of Islam is better than yours. My religion is better than yours. And so I shed your blood in the name of this arrogance. But they justify to themselves what they're doing. So now we can read about them and we can criticize what they're doing. But our criticisms should not just stop there. We should say that's the end result of kibir, of arrogance. But how does it relate to me? How does it come back to me? Umar ibn al-Khattab, that every single verse in the Quran that was revealed about the kufar, about the disbelievers, the tail end of that ayah is dragged across the disobedient believers. So when we read about Firaun, we have to say, where's the Firaun in me? When we read about Abu Lahab, where's Abu Lahab in me? And then when we see the current state of affairs in the Muslim ummah, we say, where's the Syria in me happening? Where am I doing what those oppressors are doing there? And I'm saying on both sides, on all sides, there's oppression on all sides. There's no 100% just war that we can stand, we can choose sides. We have to stay back and we'll just say we stand on the side of justice wherever it is. But where is the Egypt in me? What am I doing that on principle is the same thing that's happening over there? It's the same exact result. Where that occurs in our lives is whenever we interact with somebody based on kibir. As soon as we have kibir in our interactions with other people, with our siblings, with our parents, with our children, with our fellow community members, with our fellow citizens, as soon as we have arrogance, then we won't give them their rights. We won't give them their haqq. Because Allah had given Adam a haqq. He gave him a right. He said everybody prostrate to Adam. The angels, it bleeds, prostrate to Adam. That's his right. Not because I'm making him a God. Sometimes people say well why did they prostrate to Adam? The response is that the prostrating to Adam is the same reason. Why do we face Mecca when we pray? Are we prostrating to the Ka'ba? We are prostrating to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, but he just gave us a direction to point ourselves to. And in the same way, Allah gave the angels a direction to make their sajdah to Allah too. Adam was their qiblah. So he refused to prostrate to Adam. He said, I'm better than him. And he took away Adam, alaihi salam's right. And then from that time on, he's our sworn enemy. He hates us. He hates every single one of us because of who our father is. And he'll try every single trick to get us away from the obedience of Allah and the obedience of the Messenger of Allah, alaihi salam. And one of the main ways is his signature disease, which is arrogance. So he'll come to us when we have an interaction with somebody and we'll say, no, you have the right. Go ahead, yell at that person, cheat that person, say something bad about that person, mock that person, make fun of that person, call him a name. Why? Because you're better than him. And just look at the psychology of mocking. And then we'll just take those two, mocking and name calling. One of the things that causes people to be able to oppress other people is they have to put a name on them, name tag. They have to. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam did not call other people names. And he did not mock people. The Quraysh mocked him. He never mocked anybody. We mock people. We mock people in our daily lives. We mock our children. We mock our siblings. We mock our parents. We mock people's accents. We mock people's mannerisms. We mock people. We do that. And that's out of arrogance. So we mocked people. The Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi salam didn't mock anybody. And the mustehizeen, the mockers, amongst the Quraysh, there were people that refused the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi salam. But some did it in a respectful manner. Abu Talib is a prime example. There were other people that refused the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi salam. But they mocked him in the process. And all of the mustehizeen were killed at Badr. One by one. All of the mustehizeen at Badr. 17th day of Ramadan on a Juma. So we mock people. We name call people. And Allah says in the Qur'an, don't name call. And if you look at what happens in wars, when people go and they fight each other, what is one of the first things they do? They create derogatory names for their enemies. As soon as the boots hit the ground, they're creating names. They have names for the Arabs. The soldiers in Iraq, they have names for the Arabs. And I'm sure the Iraqis have names for the Americans. To make it easier for what they do. And then the Afghanis have names for the Americans. The Americans have names for Afghanis. Just to say, oh, I'm not hurting another human being. I'm not oppressing a son of my grandfather, our common grandfather, Adam alaihi salam. I'm oppressing such and such. And then out comes the derogatory name, to dehumanize them. And we do that. We do that in our personal lives. We'll create these names for things that we do, people that we do them to. If we take away our children's rights, our parents' rights, our community members' rights, we'll put a name. We'll say, no, no, I'm not taking the right. He's a, and they'll fill in the blank with some name they come up with to justify what they're doing. It's happening in Egypt right now. That's the end result. You're on this side. We're on this side. Therefore, no holds barred. And we can do whatever we want. And then it leads to indiscriminate killing. Why did you shoot that person? Because he's on that side of the political party, because he's a Morsi supporter, or because he's a pro-government supporter, or because he's a alawi, or because he supports the rebels, or whatever it is, they just put them in the category and then no more sharia, no more laws that hold us back. But our sharia holds us back from those things. We stand with justice. If there's a murder, we don't stand with somebody because he's from our culture or our tribe. We stand on the side of justice. So when something, when we're faced with an interaction, again, let's relate those world events to our personal lives. When we're faced with a business dealing, when we look at the person, we don't say, I'm going to side with this person because he's a Muslim, and I'm going to side with this person, I'm not going to side with this person because he's a whatever. And then they fill in the blank with something. Oh, he's this, we can do this to him. I can take his right. That's, we can't do that. We can't even as parents take the rights of our children and say, oh, just my kid, I can do whatever I want to him. One person told me in a message that somebody came up to him and started yelling at him. And the kid walked away from him. It's not his father that was yelling at him. The kid walked away, walked to somebody else to complain. That man's yelling at me. They said, he's your elder. Who gave him the right to yell at somebody? The Haqq of of reprimanding, even a verbal reprimand is to yell at somebody in a way that's a verbal reprimand is with the father of the child. That's it. You want to get into that process of reprimanding the child, go speak to the father. He has the Haqq, and if he gives you the permission to yell at the child, then you can. But that person had defined his Haqq, his right by his culture. I'm older than him. I can yell at him. These are just children. These are just children. Or sometimes people, and we've all been put into a category. We've all been put into being called a name. They'll say, oh, you don't understand this because you studied overseas. Or you don't understand this because you never went overseas. And then boom, there now, they have the names. We can easily place you in a category because we have a name for you. So we have to be very careful of these names. And realize that in name calling and placing people in these categories is helping us disobey Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. The messenger of Allah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, said, describes sin. He says, what irritates your heart, literally, what irritates your heart, even if people give you fetwa. You'll see people do foolish things, and you'll say, why did you do that? Because I have a fetwa from a mufti. Mufti, fetwa, two names you have now justified, the haram. The messenger of Allah taught us how to deal with that. He said, don't look at the name of what you're doing. Look at what's in your heart. We have to look at if our heart, if it hurts us, if it bothers us, then there's something wrong. Even if people give you fetwa. So when people run out into the streets and say, why are you doing this? Oh, because it's our political party and we have the right to do this. No, look into your heart. And Allah has given you a heart that can discern right from wrong. In Arabic, right is called ma'roof. It's not called khayr. The messenger of Allah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and in the Quran, doesn't describe the believers as those who enjoin khayr, good and forbid evil, shahr. That's not the way it's mentioned. It's mentioned those that enjoin ma'roof and yannahuna anil munkar, and they reject munkar or they forbid munkar. What does ma'roof mean in Arabic? Something that's known. What does munkar mean in Arabic? Something that's unknown. So our hearts know the good and our hearts reject what's evil. And it's just once we pollute our hearts that we stop being able to discern that. But we can discern that. So when we feel something's wrong, don't look at the name. Don't look at what people have said it. And the hadith says, even if people have given you fatwa, fatwa doesn't just mean that the mufti or the sheikh gave you an answer. Fatwa means any type of labeling, any type of labeling. If you say this is a microphone in language, that would be a language fatwa. I have now assigned this a name. So once people assign a name to something, don't look at what they've assigned to it. Look at your heart. And then that prophets in your heart, weigh it on the scales of shari'a. Weigh it on the scales of shari'a, on the scales of the shari'a, on the Qur'an and the sunnah. Not on our culture, not on our language, not on our personal experience, not on our education. We weigh it on the Qur'an and the sunnah. And if we were just to do that, we would see this oppression run away, whether it's in those other countries that we're watching on the news day in or day out, or whether it's in our own personal lives. If we weighed things on the scale of shari'a and stopped before we did something, irregardless of what we assigned a name to that thing, or people have called it, or our community has called it, we say, what would Allah and His Messenger say about this? And we go to the scholars and we see what they have said, and then once we place our thoughts on the scales of shari'a, then we can prevent oppression from happening in our houses and happening in our communities. One of the other things that we should be careful of when we watch this, because some of us watch the news a lot, one of the things that we should be careful of is watching too much of the haram. And I'm not talking about when people think about lowering the gaze. If I say lowering the gaze, what comes into your mind? Something comes into your mind. Say to the believing men to lower their gaze. Immediately people think men lowering their gaze from women and women lowering their gaze from men. That's not the only thing. We are also commanded to lower our gaze from people engaging in the haram. If somebody is out there disobeying Allah and His Messenger, we should look away. Why is this? Again, because the heart, we can pollute it with things. We can pollute it with things and sometimes by getting used to something, then that becomes ma'ruf to us. It's no longer munqar. Just think of something that has become normalized to you and think of the first time you saw it and you saw it and you rejected it. Even if it wasn't disobedience of Allah. Say you went to a new country, you saw something, you rejected it. Your heart said, that's munqar. I reject it. It's unknown to me. Once we get used to that thing, then it becomes ma'ruf, then it becomes known. So if we constantly watch those things on the news and we constantly watch those police beating demonstrators or we see the army shoot people, if we watch that disobedience, it affects our heart. And we know from our tradition that we have to lower our gaze from people that are engaged in disobedience. Modern research has shown that in the brain, there's something called a mirror neuron. Mirror neuron. Just like you have a mirror that you look into, it reflects you. It's a mirror neuron. The person that stumbled across this was running some tests on a monkey. He had the brain of the monkey hooked up to the computer to watch the brain activity and he came into the lab on a hot day and was eating an ice cream. When he was eating the ice cream, he noticed that the monkey's brain started having some activity. When he looked at that activity, it's the same portion of the brain that would begin having activity if the monkey himself was eating the ice cream. And so they kept running more tests and they said, this is called mirror neurons. That means when you see somebody drinking a soda, if you watch them drinking a soda, your brain starts processing in a way as if you're drinking the soda, the same neurological effects. So that's, now we see, 1400 years later, the wisdom that the messenger of Allah, the Muslim was teaching us, don't look at people in disobedience of Allah because now your brain is going to start acting as if you're disobeying Allah and doing that same act and then your heart, it becomes normalized to your heart and then it becomes, then the next step is to actually do that once it's become normalized. So as we watch things going on in the world, we shouldn't watch too much. We watch enough just to be aware of what's going on in the world. But we can't watch too much because if you watch too much of that, you will see people disobeying Allah by oppressing their brothers and sisters. And then your heart and your mind will start acting like that and it will become easier for us to disobey Allah because we see other people disobeying Allah. That's why it's so important for us to be around the believers and to be around those people who obey Allah and obey his messenger. And we ask Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, and we praise him for bringing us together as believers and we ask him to bring our hearts together. Allahumma illif bayna kulubina wa strutu uyubana and veil our thoughts and bring our hearts together. And may Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, remove the harm that's afflicting the our brothers and sisters around the world. Send blessings and peace upon the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And I enjoin you and I enjoin myself to have taqwa of Allah, ya ibad Allah, taqwa of Allah. Have taqwa of Allah, avoiding the prohibitions outwardly and inwardly and fulfilling the commands outwardly and inwardly. wa tubu ilallahi tuba tan nasuhah and turn to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala in a sincere tauba. As we go through our daily lives, one of the things that we have to be constantly doing is thinking about others, thinking about others and thinking about their rights. If we look at the nature of oppression, we find that one of the core causes of that is that you disassociate yourself emotionally from that person that you're oppressing. And when I say oppressing, it doesn't mean don't think, don't get the images of what's on the front pages of the news. Oppression is whenever you put something where it's not supposed to be. If Allah says it's vuhur time, it's time to pray, He's given you this health and this ability to pray, and you let vuhur time pass by, you've oppressed yourself. If Allah has said don't speak ill about other people and we're in a gathering and we say something about our brother or sister, we have oppressed them. Oppression is whenever we do anything haram. We either do it just to ourselves or we do it to our fellow community members. It's easier for Allah to forgive what you've done in His rights. If you've left the prayer and you make tauba and you repent to Allah and you come back to Him and say, I seek forgiveness ya Allah for missing that prayer. Allah will forgive you if He wants. But when our sin includes another person, Allah will hold back the forgiveness until that person forgives. So that's why it's very, very, very dangerous to trust pass on the rights of another person. And one of the ways that we trust pass is by just discounting them. We discount a person just walking by us. We say, we don't pay him any attention and then we insult him because we just discounted him. But as soon as we give that person, as soon as we have a feeling with that person and we say, this is a person, this is a human being with a heart, with a right over me and I can't oppress them. How many people oppress their animals? And we know that on the day of judgment, even the animals will come back and ask for their rights from those people. And so those animals are going to come on the day of judgment and we'll see them. There's one of the righteous men in Mauritania who all he does, what his what his walking through the world to enjoying righteousness and to forbid evil, he walks through the marketplace and tells the people who have donkey carts, take it easy with the donkeys. Stop hitting them so hard. That's his daily word that he goes through the marketplace to tell people, remind people, don't take the right of that donkey, of that Hima. And another person said, how wretched would it be for a person to be on the day of judgment? And the one who comes to take his right is a donkey. What a humiliation that would be. But we have to reflect on that and how we may have taken the rights of an animal, how we may have taken the rights of our neighbor. If you look at the people that do that, the people that take the rights of animals, they take away all emotional contact with that. They disassociate with themselves with that animal. The same thing with families. So we have to build up this feeling of obligation to uphold another person's just rights, their rights, their God-given rights to feel good, to have a good feeling, a God-endowed good feeling. And what I mean by that is that we can never harm the feelings of another person without just reason. If we, in our families, we say something to our siblings or to our parents, and we just think it's an offhanded comment or just, it's not, we don't pay it any attention, but it could come back to us on the day of judgment. And the Messenger of Allah, SAW, said that sometimes a person will speak a word, will say something, that he doesn't even think about it. He thinks, oh, this is no big deal. But in the sight of Allah, it's heavy. And it's so heavy that it will drive him into the hellfire at the distance of 500 years. 500 years for one comment, one thing that they said to this person. But if we have a feeling for that person, if we recognize this as a human being that has a right over us, then we'll work to fulfill those rights. And I'll leave with this. One of the epidemics that we're seeing in the world, whether it's in the U.S. or on the other side of the world, in our countries, in the Muslim countries, in Egypt, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, where people have gone to the extreme injustice to their brothers and sisters by taking their lives, where does that start? That starts by not even thinking about their feelings. And one of the reasons that's been discovered for the epidemic of abuse in America and this society is so much focus on cognitive learning in schools, in public education. The last time they teach us about altruism and thinking about our neighbors and thinking about other people is in kindergarten, in a serious way, in a curriculum-based way. The rest of the education is math, science, history, and maybe in language, arts, and English, you'll get some exposure to thinking about the feelings of other people and worrying about other people. Otherwise, it's based on us as parents to teach our children, the society, the schools aren't doing it. So we have to take these lessons from the Quran. The Quran teaches this. It teaches us how to think about other people before ourselves and how to give people their rights even if it hurts us. And so we have to be the people taking those messages first and foremost to ourselves and then to our families and then to our communities. And so I'll end on this brothers and sisters. As we witness the horrendous oppression that is happening in the Muslim lands, Muslims against Muslims, it all goes back to taking the rights of other people. And all of that goes back to arrogance and feeling that they have the just cause to be able to take that right. And how do we relate that to ourselves? We relate that by working on rooting out ignorance and arrogance from our hearts and making sure that we give every single person their right. We ask Allah SWT to give us the Tawfiq. Allahumma wa fiqna li-qiyam bi bihoquqika. Oh Allah, give us the Tawfiq and the success to fulfill your rights upon us. Wa ya Allah wa fiqna li-qiyam bihoquqi ibadik. And oh Allah, give us the success to fulfill the rights of your creatures and the rights of the earth that we walk upon.