In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
The Religious Authority, Grand Ayatullah H.E. Sayyed M. H. Fadlullah delivered the two Friday prayer sermons at the Imamain Al-Hassanain Mosque on Rabi' al-Thani 19, 1429 AH/ April 25, 2008, AD. Several prominent religious scholars, dignitaries, officials, and thousands of believers attended the Jumu’a prayer. (Edited version of the Sermons)
The First Sermon
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Allah's Call to Muslims:
Hold Fast to the Book, United as Brothers
The Islamic Code
Allah, the Most Exalted, says in His Holy Book:
"O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims [in submission to Him]. And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided. And remember the favor of Allah upon you - when you were enemies and He brought your hearts together and you became, by His favor, brothers. And you were on the edge of a pit of the Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus does Allah make clear to you His verses that you may be guided. And let there be [arising] from you a nation inviting to [all that is] good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and those will be the successful. And do not be like the ones who became divided and differed after the clear proofs had come to them. And those will have a great punishment." Surat Al 'Imran (3:102-105)
In these Holy Ayahs, Allah, the Most Exalted wants to show the Muslims what they should abide by, in order to adhere to Islam. They should stand with Muslim unity, and call for good and forbid what is wrong. They should reject any dissent and fragmentation, having been guided to what they should follow through Allah's Book and the Sunnah of His Prophet.
Allah, the Most Exalted, tells us that we should "fear Allah as He should be feared." How do we do that? By feeling that Allah is watching us everywhere we go: in our houses, the market, in society at large, in peace and war, and in adhering to any political or social principles or platforms.
Some traditions have relayed to us that we ought to "fear Allah as if you see Him, and if you do not, then He sees you." If you know that Allah sees you and you disobey Him, then you are making Allah the least significant of those who see you. Meaning that if you know that Allah is watching you in all that you do in private or in public and that He knows "the fraud of the eyes, and what the breasts conceal." (Surat Ghafir, 40:19), how can you disobey Him? It has been related in the traditions that piety is that Allah should not find you where He told you not to be and, conversely, He should find you where He ordered you to be.
Allah's Will in the Universe
We ought to know that just as our existence in life was through Allah's will, who put the secret of life in the sperm, then the clot, then the bones which He clothed with flesh, thus, the continuity of our existence in life is a grace He bestowed on us. When it will end, there will be nothing but Allah and we all have to stand before Him on the Day of Judgment, the Day we will be held accountable. It is the day on which Allah will say: "[It will be said], 'Read your record. Sufficient is yourself against you this Day as accountant.'" (Surat al-Isra', 17:14) And he will find that everything is written in it.
That is why Allah says that the person might start as a Muslim, but bad company might deviate him, as well as certain societal complications, or some political parties that deny the existence of Allah or the Islamic Shariah. Thus, he might be a Muslim in name, but he has joined an atheist party or he might have yielded to international intelligence. How could he be considered as a Muslim?
Islam is the Rope of Allah
Thus, people should keep their faith, and not die unless they are Muslims. It is as Prophet Yusuf (a.s.) said when he wanted to thank Allah for His graces: "My Lord, You have given me [something] of sovereignty and taught me of the interpretation of dreams. Creator of the heavens and earth, You are my protector in this world and in the Hereafter. Cause me to die a Muslim and join me with the righteous." (Surat Yusuf, 12:101) And what Imam Ali bin al-Hussein (a.s.) said in one of his supplications, as he asked Allah to keep him alive as long as he obeys Him, but he asked Him to end his life before Satan could control it. Thus, we have to keep our Islam until we die and meet Allah as Muslims.
The second point: Allah, the Most Exalted, wanted all Muslims in the entire world to hold fast to the rope of Allah, which is the Glorious Quran, which "falsehood cannot approach it from before it or from behind it." (Surat Fussilat, 41:42) Islam is the rope of Allah. And He commanded us to hold fast to it in times of earthquakes, being a strong rope that will save all of us. "And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided" as the Muslims are doing now, with the sects turning into religions, and Muslims accusing each other of unbelief and even killing one another. The Prophet (p.) has told us that all of the Muslim is sacred to other Muslims, whether his blood, money or honour.
That is why Allah has commanded us to hold fast to His rope to become the power that intimidates the arrogant enemies of Allah that seek to destroy any Islamic force. If any Muslim country tries to acquire certain means of strength, they will quickly hinder its attempts, since they do not want the Muslim world to gain power and technological know-how. "And remember the favor of Allah upon you - when you were enemies and He brought your hearts together and you became, by His favor, brothers. And you were on the edge of a pit of the Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus does Allah make clear to you His verses that you may be guided." Surat Al 'Imran (3:103)
The Responsibility of the Call
Then Allah holds all believers responsible for calling to Islam. This call is not the responsibility of religious scholars only, although many scholars, nowadays, do not uphold this responsibility: "And do not be like the ones who became divided and differed after the clear proofs had come to them. And those will have a great punishment." Surat Al 'Imran (3:105)
This is the Islamic course Allah wants us to follow: to be the Muslim nation that abides by all of Islam, and not believe in some of the Book and deny other parts. The nation should promote and strengthen Islamic unity; even if we differ in sects or policy, we should enjoin good and forbid evil, but we should remain united, since any dispersion will make the enemy stronger. Are we going to answer the call of Allah, the Most Exalted?
The Second Sermon
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
America's Strategy in Iraq
The American Administration continues to increase its pressures on the so-called moderate countries to implement its strategy in the region, in an attempt to compensate for its political and security failure in Iraq, after the occupation has suffered from the killing of more than a thousand troops and the wounding of more than 20 thousand, not to mention those who suffered from shocks and the like.
Thus, what America wants from others is to help it implement its strategy in Iraq and help it to stay long in Iraq, enabling it to dominate its natural wealth, especially oil, and further implement its policy of creative anarchy that turned the life of the Iraqi people into a hell that burns all Iraqi people, especially the innocent: children, women, elderly and youth who are hit by American rockets, then it will be said that the planes mistook their targets. But everybody knows that the bombs and rockets only hit innocent families in their houses, especially in the city of as-Sadr, whose people have lived the worst forms of deprivation, losing even the basic means of life.
In this context, we fear that the summit of Iraq's neighbouring countries that was held in Kuwait aims at obtaining a supporting stand from the European and Arab countries, as well as international organizations, to save the American occupation from the dilemma it has put itself in, and which left its impact on the American public opinion that lost its trust in its administration, as we started to hear American popular voices calling for a complete withdrawal from Iraq.
We would have hoped that the Kuwaiti summit could have been an occasion to demand the withdrawal from Iraq, and to call on certain Arab countries to prevent the entry of extremists and terrorists to Iraq where they would commit horrible massacres all in the name of Islam, as well as to refrain from inciting any historical debate that refuels the sectarian strife, and to exploit certain religious issues for political purposes, especially since the American plan intended to weaken Iraq – regardless of our opinion of its previous tyrannical regime – so as not to keep any strong Arab force that might counterbalance Israel, threatening with sectarian and ethnic division that might turn, we are afraid, into a constitutional one, which was not opposed by any of the states of the so-called moderate Arab countries.
At the same time, the Americans seek to normalize Arab-Israeli relations in the name of the peace project that talks about the two-state solution, in an attempt to continue along the lines of the Annapolis conference that did not yield any positive results for the Arabs and the Palestinians. What America wants is only to present Israel as a state that is looking for peace.
Therefore, we believe that America is lying when it talks about a just peace for the Palestinians, or a viable Palestinian state, since it has been, throughout its history, selling the Arabs some vague statements that are meaningless.
In the end, all America cares for is to preserve Israel's military and political supremacy on the basis of the Jewish state's rights, while opposing the international resolutions that have observed the Palestinian people's right of return to their lands.
In this atmosphere, the American Secretary of State’s visits to the region aim at emphasizing the Israeli interests at the expense of those of the Arabs, since the American Administration is not ready to pressure Israel even to reduce its barbaric killing of the Palestinian innocent civilians, as well as confiscating their lands, building the settlements and the separation wall, especially in this stage of the presidential elections when both parties, the Democratic and the Republican, compete in a hysterical manner to win the support of the Jewish Lobby without caring at all for the Arabs, since they were not able to transform their presence into an effective force that the American successive administrations would take into consideration.
The Manama Declaration
The Manama declaration has talked about concern towards the Iranian nuclear armament, which Iran has denied, without talking – not even briefly, about the Israeli barbaric massacres or its huge nuclear arsenal, knowing that Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed.
Incidentally, the American Secretary of State has recently declared that Hamas should renounce violence to prove that it is ready for peace. She is actually justifying any new Israeli massacre. But she did not ask Israel to stop its killings, even in the West Bank where no rockets were launched. She did not also ask Israel to stop the kind of violence represented by the medical and food blockade or the humiliation of the Palestinians at the checkpoints.
Saving the Palestinians
Faced by this tragic reality, we plead to the Arabs and Muslims to shoulder their responsibility of protecting the Palestinians against the American and Israeli threats. They have to fear Allah and not to refrain from aiding the Palestinian people who suffer from the occupation and from a war that moves from one place to another, so that they will not be in harmony with the Zionist's position. They have, therefore, to rebel against the American instructions that forbid its party from helping the Palestinian people, leaving them alone to be burnt by the Zionist Nazi holocaust.
American Visits to the Region
The American officials' visits to the region aim at keeping the internal crises in the Arab countries a hostage to US strategic regional interests. It pressures by creating dissension among Lebanese or by complicating the relations with Syria and Iran, accusing them of being the party responsible for the problems in Lebanon and Iraq. The visit of the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, to Lebanon, was one of the American attempts to further the dissent and showed that there seems to be an organic relationship between some of the Lebanese leaders and the American Administration, who promised them of making every possible effort to make them as strong as their political opponents. This made the Lebanese feel that this Administration has become a Lebanese party that involves itself in the tiniest details. And this was evident from his prediction that Lebanon will face a hot summer due to the impasse it has reached and the failure of various initiatives, including the Arab one, which America did not actually recognize. That is why it pressured many Arab countries to boycott the Arab summit, or reduce the level of their representation, in addition to the Lebanese boycott of the summit that was supposed to study the Arab initiative and try to reach an objective mechanism for its implementation.
An Internal Dissension
In Lebanon, the political division between the majority and the opposition has reached a stage that no longer allows any meeting and discussion of the controversial issues, suggesting that Lebanon is no longer united on the basis of citizenry. Many of the political parties have surrendered to the mentality of Arab weakness and succumbed to the American policies which push them towards more dissension and opening up to the Arab trend to befriend Israel, especially with all these statements that escalate strife, violence and sectarian hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, the people continue to suffer from hunger, deprivation and lack of basic services.
When will the sun shine again on this country? Is this long night doomed to persist? Is there no dawn in sight?