Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

Lahā mā kasabat wa-lakum mā
kasabtum
—they have what they earned and you have what you earned. That is
the first point that I wanted to make.
The second is that these people are in fact an embarrassment. When Muslims
—in the name of Islam—when they commit heinous acts then they are an
embarrassment to the Muslim community but they are more than that. We are
embarrassed and we are humiliated by what’s happened, there’s no way around
it. Yes, I am not a criminal; I haven’t done anything, but I do share something
with them: these people are Muslim—or at least they claim to be—and
apparently the things are done in the name of Islam. So long as that claim is
there I have something in common with them, at least the word, and that enough
is a humiliation. So now I want to address what does that mean for you and me?
First and foremost, we need to understand something. We have to take
collective responsibility. That will be the last part that I discuss in my reminder.
What does it mean to take collective responsibility? The ummah is in chaos and
every single member—every single citizen of this ummah—his or her
responsibility is to do something to undo that chaos. We have to do whatever we
can in whatever capacity. Yes, we cannot get rid of chaos in the world, and we
cannot get rid of fanaticism and craziness, we can’t get rid of it; but we at least
have the responsibility to do our part, at least our part. Know one thing for sure;
one of the things that is spreading the chaos and helping further this craziness is
that in the minds of some Muslims these people are actually somehow justified.

---

Somehow what they did must be, in some sense, Islamic. And I want to just tell
you unequivocally, without any confusion or any shadow of doubt—I’ve been
trying to understand this 
dīn
for well over a decade now and I have no doubts or
no confusion in my mind—there’s nothing Islamic about any of this. There is
nothing even close to Islamic about any of this.
As a matter of fact, I personally give you the advice, I give my children the
advice, and I give my friends the advice: don’t watch those cartoons or those
YouTube videos or those disparaging comments or read those books. I ask you
not to read that stuff, I don’t even want you to look at it because it’s not worth
your time. It’s not worth it. But I will tell you one thing: as offensive as those
cartoons may be it is equally offensive to do something in the Prophet’s name, in
Islam’s name, in Allah’s name (
subḥānahū wa-taʿālā
), that is against the
teachings of Islam. It is equally offensive. When they are spreading filthy
propaganda against Islam by insulting the religion; you’re spreading another
kind of propaganda against Islam by spreading hate and killing and injustice and
calling that the 
dīn
of Allah. That is also a crime, and we are equally offended by
that too. That is a crime in itself.
This is the second point that I wanted to bring to your attention. They have
no justification. Some people like to quote the example of Kaʿb ibn Ashraf, who
was a famous poet at the time of the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
), a
Jewish Arab. He had extreme animosity towards the Prophet of Allah (
ṣallā
Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
). As a matter of fact, there are a number of occasions
where he tried to corner Muslims and convince them to do exactly the opposite
of what Allah would want them to do, or what the Messenger (
ṣallā Allāh
ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) would want them to do; and 
āyāt
came specifically about his
conversations; on multiple occasions. This guy is so bad that his poison drew the
attention of Allah (