Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

āyah
in 
Āl ʿImrān
is after the Battle of
Uhud; and you are going to hear horrible things coming from them—you’re
going to hear inciteful, hateful, ugly, disgusting speech coming from them. And
what is Allah’s response? What should you do? Kill anyone who speaks out?
No! 
Wa-la-in taṣbirū wa-tattaqū
—if you could respond with 
ṣabr
and you
could have 
taqwā
. So it’s easy to ignore the entire Qur’an, the entire legacy of
all prophets (
ʿalayhim al-salām
) including our own Messenger (
ṣallā Allāh
ʿalayhi wa-sallam
), who was insulted and cursed to his face on multiple
occasions, with him not losing the smile on his face (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-
sallam
). Let’s forget all of that, all of that is 
munsūkh
(abrogated) because I want
to kill someone. This is stupidity and it’s an insult against Islam. I’m not
addressing non-Muslims here, I’m only addressing Muslims—if you have the
bug in your head that somehow what they did was Islamic, please get it out of
your system and maybe spend some time learning the Book of Allah. Spend
some time learning the 
sīrah
of this Messenger (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
)
on whose behalf you speak. Because you clearly don’t know who this man is,
that you are standing to defend, and you don’t know what it means to defend him
(
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
). The first point was criminals are just criminals,
no matter what. And even if they pretend to come up with religious justification,
it changes nothing. It changes nothing. This is not a debate in Islamic studies.
There is no argument to be had.
The third point that I want to make is that in fact hateful speech,
condescending speech, insulting speech, speech made against our Prophet (
ṣallā
Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
), cartoons made about him, or videos made about him,
or things said about the Qur’an; these things are offensive. And any people, any
people including Muslims when they are insulted, when things that they hold
sacred are insulted, they have a right to be offended. We have a right to be
insulted that is part of our dignity. If it didn’t hurt our feelings it would mean we
have no dignity. That somebody could say something about my mother,
someone can say something about my father, someone can say something about
my Messenger (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) and it doesn’t affect me at all!?
No, it affects me; it offends me; it angers me. I have a right to be angry but those

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are two separate issues. What’s happening in the media now is these two are
being made into one issue. In other words, we are against those people being
killed unjustifiably and therefore we are for free speech; all of it should be
celebrated. We are with them no matter what. No, no, no; for the Muslim it’s not
that simple.
These are two separate things; we are against people who are killed
unjustifiably and we stand against those who killed them unjustifiably.
Absolutely, there is no doubt about that, but at the same time we have a right and
we will continue to have the right to be offended by that kind of ignorant and
hateful speech; and we will speak out against it and we will stand against it. But
there’s a way to do it. We are not going to pretend that all free speech is lovely
and we are supposed to be able to accept it. No; is Allah angered by the words of
people, in the Qur’an? Absolutely. I just mentioned the 
āyah
to you—the
believers are going to be hurt by the words of other people. The issue isn’t
whether we have a right to be offended or not—we do—the issue is how do we
respond? How do you react? And that reaction determines everything because
our reaction to all things has to submit to the guidance of Allah and His
Messenger (