Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
). It is not those feelings themselves;
those feelings are justifiable, but what happens after those feelings that may not
be justifiable. That’s where the problem lies.
The final point that I want to bring to your attention in this reminder is
actually something that I personally feel we don’t talk about enough, and I think
that’s the real problem. That’s the real point. The real point is why do people
make fun of Islam? Why do they make fun of it anyway? Why do they insult it?
Why are these cartoons being made? Why is there so much propaganda and so
much hate speech towards Muslims, even justified as journalism nowadays,
masked as editorial columns. The framing has become more and more
interesting. It used to be radical Islam; so they talked about radical Islam and
they talked about the Islam that these fanatics believed in; some crazy militant
version of Islam where they just want to kill everyone, and they want to put
women in garbage bags, and all this nonsense. But further down the line the
definition of radical has loosened up to the point where, if you pray five times,
now you’re pretty radical. Radical used to be really crazy but now they are
saying, if you even look too Muslim. If a woman is wearing a hijab she must be
a radical Muslim; if a guy’s got a beard he must be a radical Muslim. We don’t
have it that bad in the United States but in Europe it is pretty bad; and I’ve been
to Europe and I can tell you it is pretty bad. It is seen as very radical, but the

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question is why?
We have this mentality, the Muslims have developed this mindset: ‘They’re
out to get us man. These 
kuffār
, they hate us. They keep making these cartoons
against us, they keep doing this propaganda against us, they hate everything
about Islam, they’re coming after this, that and the other’. ‘They’, ‘they’,
‘they’—we don’t have any time to look in the mirror. The prophets (
ʿalayhim al-
salām
) were also made fun of, as I told you. The 
Ṣaḥābah
were also made fun of
—
wa-yaskharūna min alladhīna amanū
(
al-Baqarah
2: 212)—it’s in the Qur’an:
the 
kuffār
made fun of those who believed
.
It’s in the Qur’an, but the
fundamental question is, why were they made fun of and why are we being made
fun of? Is it the same thing? And I argue it is not. Those people were made fun
of because that was one of the ways to shut down the work of Islam. One of the
ways to stop Islam from spreading because they didn’t know what else to do.
Islam was so thought-provoking, Islam was so eye-opening, Islam called for
justice, it questioned injustices happening in that society and people were
gravitating—young people, old people—were gravitating towards Islam and
they didn’t know how to stop it. So they came out with the tactic of calling the
Messenger (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) a liar; and that didn’t work. Maybe
we can mock these people and just laugh them off so nobody thinks they are a
big deal; that was one of their tactics; and when that didn’t work they resorted to
other tactics. All of these tactics were there to stop Islam from spreading because
it was too powerful.
I don’t argue that’s the case with us. I argue Islam is being ridiculed because
of how Muslims appear, what Muslims have become, how we carry ourselves,
what our societies look like, what the streets look like in our neighbourhoods,
what our homes look like, what our business practices are like, what our
governments are like. If you want to look at examples of corruption, if you want
to look at the exact opposite of a civilized society travel through the Muslim
world—much of it. It’s hard for us to even be civilized in the parking lot of a
masjid for God’s sake. The only time we are organized is when we have to be
organized in