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From 9/11 to San Diego: The Cost of Looking Away | Khutbah by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy
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From the events of 9/11 to San Diego: this past Monday, three Muslim men stood between two armed gunmen and the lives of 140 children.
Sh. Mohammed Elshinawy delivers this khutbah the Friday after. He reflects on the brevity of life, the honor of these three men, and the Islamophobia that has been building since 9/11.
He calls on the Muslim communities in America to respond not just with grief, but with the kind of strategic, long-term resolve that actually changes things.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
After praising Allah, the glorified and exalted, and testifying to His unique oneness, and to Muhammad ﷺ being his final prophet and messenger, and after welcoming my brothers and
sisters to the house of Allah, the mighty and majestic, and reminding myself and you with our ultimate purpose in life, the taqwa of Allah, to be conscious of Him, and dutiful to Him,
and consistent in our love, in our adoration, in our trust, in our commitment to Him. Brothers and sisters, have you ever thought about how it is customary for Muslims to call the adhan
into the ear of the newborn baby, and then there is actually no prayer that is performed. And then after a person passes away, we perform the janazah salah on them, and there is no adhan
for the janazah salah. As if to remind us that the entirety of life is as brief as the moments
between adhan and prayer. Life is truly an illusion, and Muslims are uniquely favored by
Allah by being given lenses to see through the illusion. I'm sure this is top of mind for many
of us. As we're hearing about the San Diego attack on the masjid, our brother Amin Abdullah,
who was the slain security guard, his very last social media post, in case you haven't seen it,
on May 5th, he wrote, "What is success? To many people, success is the illusion, right? It is the financial stability, the good reputation, the beauty, etc. As for me,
it is returning back to Allah, our creator, with the same pure soul He loaned me at birth. Having the angels of Allah saying to me at death, 'Don't fear and don't grieve, but receive
the glad tidings of Jannah, which you were promised by the Most Forgiving, the Most Merciful.' This is a passage from the Qur'an. And may Allah grant us all Husn al-Khatimah. Ameen. These are our
brother's last words online. And if you are unfamiliar, it serves us well, not just to grieve their deaths, but also to celebrate their lives. And the very final moments of the lives of
our three heroes are an indication enough. You know, on Monday morning,
two deranged teenagers entered the masjid, ready to kill. And without their body armor, without
their rifles, our brother Ameen, with all he had in his hand, with his basic pistol, he engaged them without hesitating. And he had them on their heels. I was hearing the police
chief of San Diego this morning say from the footage he was reviewing, he had them on their heels, backing out, engaging him, backing out of the masjid in a way that caused them to completely
overlook that just 15 feet to their right were all the children of the school at the playground. They didn't even see them. And yes, our brother Ameen did not have enough bullets and could not
match their superior firepower, but he did not fall without first distracting them, without first calling in that we have an active shooter situation and being the hero that Allah
destined for him to be and the hero that Allah wishes here and now that the world hear about him. And there were two other brothers, our brother Nadir and our brother Mansoor.
May Allah accept them among the shuhada as well. They came to the sound of the gunshots.
They responded unarmed without even a pistol and were able to distract and delay the shooters just
enough at the expense of their lives, just enough for the 140 kids in the building and the teachers
along with them. A wife of one of those two brothers being among those to be able to get into a safe shelter and a lockdown where they would not be able to access them.
It reminded me among the many things it reminded me of was Abdullah ibn Haram at the Battle of Uhud. He was the head of the archers at the hill and you know, it seemingly,
it seems as if he failed to keep the archers on the hill. They came down and the massacre ensued. The enemies caught sight of it and came around the mountain because the Muslims no longer had
the high ground. They prematurely came off the mountain. He failed to keep them on the mountain no matter how much he tried. He failed to prevent the massacre and the near killing of our Prophet ﷺ, but he actually didn't fail at all.
He won and he won big. His son Jabir ibn Abdullah says, "I fell upon the body of my father and I uncovered his face and I kept kissing his face and they would try to stop me and I would tell
them I will never stop unless the Messenger of Allah ﷺ tells me to stop." And the Messenger of Allah came to me ﷺ and he said to me, "O Jabir, consoling me, do you not know that nobody
gets to speak to Allah except from behind a barrier? But your Lord has spoken to your father
openly, directly." And he said to him, "Make a wish. Wish for whatever you want." He said, "O Allah,
I wish that you return me back to this world so I can be killed for your sake another time."
Allah said to him, "I have already decreed that nobody goes back to it after having left it." He said, "O Allah, then here's my plan B wish, my secondary wish, at least inform those that are yet
to come here what this life is about, the life that's not an illusion." And so Allah sent down the ayat in Surah Ali Imran at the request of the father of Jabir,
at the request of Abdullah ibn Haram. Allah's statement: "Don't ever write off those killed in the way of Allah as simply dead, just as anyone else dies.
Rather, they are alive. They've been upgraded in their life, in their quality of life by going as
martyrs. Rather, they are alive with their Lord being provided for. Rejoicing at what Allah has
granted them from His bounty. And sending good news and reassurances to those yet to
catch up with them. That's why the verse says that. Yet to catch up with them that there is no fear for us, nor is there any grief for us." You know, in Bukhari and Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ told us
in another hadith that nobody that is Jannah-bound will ever wish to come back to this world,
except for the shaheed, except for the martyr, due to what he recognizes of karamah, of unique honoring that Allah grants the shaheed. And Allah says,
"He selects from you shuhada, martyrs. Allah selects them like roses are selected from a garden." We ask Allah to accept our three brothers among the martyrs. The martyrs of Dhu al-Hijjah,
the greatest days of the year. We ask Allah to give their family and their community patience. And wallahi, brothers and sisters, I am so hopeful that they are already enjoying
the rewards that Allah promised right now. Because Allah does not delay in compensating. Only this world is built with delays by design. Only this world. You know, we began with the
notion of a baby being born and you know what else happens with babies? Have you ever thought about this too? That when the baby comes out, it's crying and everyone's celebrating, right? Sort
of the nature of life. And the moment a believer dies, everyone around them, their loved ones are
what? Are crying. And that person at that moment is celebrating. And that is why we need to remember
with Allah in mind, every tragedy we see in life, every tragedy we see is in reality a gift from Allah 'Azza wa Jal Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. Yes, they were slain, but they were martyrs of Dhu al-Hijjah.
Yes, the community is shell-shocked, but they will emerge from it stronger. We all remember 10/7 like it was yesterday. There has been a huge surge in converts to Islam since
those moments. And because of those moments, as tragic as they were, right or wrong. And so every tragedy we see, we put on the lenses Allah gave us. They are gifts from our Lord if we choose to accept them as such.
Alhamdulillahi wahda wa salatu wa salamu ala man la nabiya ba'dahu. Ashadu an la ilaha illallah wahdahu la sharika lahu. Ashadu anna muhammadan abduhu wa nabiyyuhu wa rasuluhu. And of course, brothers and sisters, there is the other side of this
incident, right? The side that makes our blood boil. However, I do want to say before stepping
off of this minbar, that there are different kinds of anger, right? It's often not enough to just get angry. It depends on what kind of anger you're allowing inside of yourself. There is the anger
that is hot and volatile, and maybe a little bit therapeutic for you, but it doesn't serve
much function beyond that. It is short-sighted and short-lived and low-value anger. There is another
kind of anger where it is cold and calculated. Where a person is bent on changing their reality, but they can stop and say, "But what's going to give me the result I want? How do I get even
more calculated? Is push and yell the best strategy?" And I want you to think about that very carefully, brothers and sisters.
There is a type of anger that will actually be assistive, helpful to the Islam-haters out there.
The racist bigots and the blind nationalists that are thinking very calculated steps,
thorough planning about how they can look back in 50 years and say, "Mission accomplished.
The mosques, like their churches, are all for sale now, right? The Muslims no longer exist here, except as cultural Muslims, the Muslim atheists, those exist by the way. That's what they want to
do in 50 years." Or you can have an anger, brothers and sisters, that can be assistive, helpful
towards disappointing those haters. An anger that drives you to build stronger communities, that protect the faith of the faithful. An anger that allows you to think long-term
about how do we reclaim the voice of our Ummah. And I say Ummah, I don't even say community. Because fortunately for us, it's one decision to make. It's all or none. The San Diego shooting
was the result of Islamophobic rhetoric, lies that are brought about that cause people to vilify Islam and Muslims, hate them. This is crafted by Zionists to help them wanting to
occupy the Muslim world. That's what it's for. And it just so happens that locally, it's being peddled by these white nationalists who don't want us here either.
So this is actually our moment, brothers and sisters. We will invest in institutions, invest in our voice, invest in reasons for people to take us seriously. So 50 years from now, we can
say they tried their final attempts like rabid dogs and it failed miserably. And here we are stronger than ever. And I just want to double click, brothers and sisters, before I get off
on the narrative issue, the war of narratives. It's a big deal. What causes someone to see you as less than human, therefore no big deal
if you die? It is the narrative, the propaganda machine. This is not just in 2026. Why did the Prophet ﷺ employ and deploy, send in different directions, poets?
Because it builds narrative, right? It sets things right. It counteracts lies. Why did the Satan, Yahudi, say our biggest war front right now is social media,
and they're trying to buy out the platforms and buy out Warner Brothers? Narrative. It all starts there. This is the real war. This is the real work. Not just likes, not just shares, not just
hot-blooded anger. You know, when the Muslims were becoming strong, and so Quraysh kept them out of Mecca because they didn't want the world to see their strength. Eventually, they got to
Mecca to perform their 'Umrah peacefully. As they were entering into Mecca, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, here's Abdullah ibn Rawaha, one of the Prophet's poets, saying satire, basically shaming Quraysh
for not being able, right, to put an end to them when they had a chance. And so 'Umar says to ibn Rawaha, "What in the world are you doing? Poetry at the Ka'bah, in the presence of God's messenger?"
The Prophet ﷺ said to him, "'Umar, khallih 'anhu, let him speak. For I swear by the One in Whose
hand is my soul. That narrative is more difficult on them than arrows piercing them."
It is of the weapons. It is the first weapon. So this is our moment, brothers and sisters. It's the khutbah will not do much. It is the decision that you make in these days of Dhu al-Hijjah
to see this tragedy as another leap for our community. To see this tragedy as a gift from Allah to get more serious about our strength, our resilience, our sophistication, our ummati
thinking, because it's what affects us even here at home. May Allah ﷻ make us Generation Aqsa. May Allah allow us and everything that is happening to us be a reason for us to see its liberation
within our lifetime. May Allah ﷻ protect the Muslim community everywhere. And may Allah return us to His glorious Book and to the golden radiant path the Prophet ﷺ charted for us. May Allah grant us life so long as He knows that life is good for us.
And put us to death whenever He knows that death is better for us.


































































































































































































































































































