Khutba: About the extremists. (25.08.17) – Shaykh Ahmed Bermejo

Muslims, I urge you to have Taqwa of Allah, for Taqwa of Allah is the only path that leads to success and triumph in this life and in the next.
Servants of Allah, the truth is that today we should talk about the noble pillar of Hajj and its meanings, about the importance of sacrifice on the day of Eid, about the sunnah of fasting on the day of ‘Arafah, but we are not going to do it, because we are living in hard and difficult times, times when realities are confused. Dark times in which we see atrocious acts being perpetrated in all corners of the planet, times in which extremes are overcoming sanity and the middle way and, unfortunately, we live in times in which we are immersed in the most absolute ignorance and ignorance.
Ignorance is the origin of fear and fear is the origin of hatred, since the unknown is feared and that ignorance causes extremism that leads to hatred and resentment.
We, as Muslims of this time and place, have the obligation and responsibility to make known the true message of Islam, to remove the veils that surround the name of Islam today, and that is a responsibility that rests on the shoulders of each of us.
But in order to do so, the first step is for us as Muslims to know our reality, a reality that is distorted, because there are too many groups of those who call themselves Muslims who, being deviant as they are, stain the name of Islam; And not only do they not stop there, but they consider themselves the only Muslims and based on their deviant belief they allow themselves the audacity to declare the vast majority of Muslims around the world non-Muslims.
That vast majority whom they forget and despise are those who have been considered for centuries as Ahlu Sunna wa’l Jama’ah, people of the Sunna and the Jama’ah.
And these are the ones who, as far as belief is concerned, follow the Ash’ari and Maturidi teachings and among whom are also the people of the preservation of Hadith.
As far as fiqh is concerned, they are those who belong to the four juridical schools: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali.
And as far as the knowledge, qualities of character and purification of nafs are concerned, they are the people of pure Sufism according to the method of the sayyid of this group, Imam al-Yuna’id, and that of the well-guided imams who have followed him.
Those described so far are, by consensus of the ulamas, the people of Ahlu sunna wal yaha’ah; And this is our protection.
Everyone who stays on this path will be safe from extremism, fanaticism, deviation and from committing heinous and condemnable acts, such as those we have witnessed in the last few days, for they will know that none of this is permitted in the Deen of Islam.
This is the Islam of Ahlu sunna wal jama’ah, of the great, of the vast majority of Muslims of the east and west of the earth.
What happens is that there is a minority, which unfortunately is spreading more and more, who consider themselves the possessors of the truth and who advocate eliminating all this, to extinguish the light of Islam, to hide the message of Islam, and they do so on the basis of a discourse of hatred and darkness, a discourse of resentment that is totally removed from the heart. of the soul, of the light of Islam. These movements, which have unlimited amounts of funding, are really dangerous; and they are so for Muslims as well as for all humanity, since they attack all human beings, regardless of their religion or belief.
These movements, which we can call Wahhabism or Salafism, or other existing ones, far from the true understanding of Islam, are tremendously dangerous and all of us must protect ourselves from them, because they bring nothing good, there is nothing good in them, even if the ignorant are attracted and dazzled by their speeches and their beautiful words.
The way to oppose them is through knowledge, knowledge of our Deen, knowledge of what traditional Islam is; That is our salvation, we fight them with knowledge and balance, never with hatred and irrationality, because that is what they want, that is what they intend, that is their field, to seek confrontation, hatred and enmity, that is where they want to take us, that confrontation is where they intend to take all of humanity, and in that field none of us must enter, for then corruption and evil will spread over the earth.
Today it is very painful for us that because of the actions of a handful of deviants and hypocrites we have to go around asking forgiveness for what the great, the immense, majority of Muslims do not do.
We are grieved and hurt our hearts by the amount of suffering that a handful of despicable people are causing, the enormous evil that a few are doing in the image of Islam and Muslims; and worst of all, these people, these deviant beings, proclaim to act in the name of Islam.
I repeat it to you once again, and I say it to them too, Islam does not interest you, you do not know what Islam is, Islam is free from what these people do, Islam is innocent of what these despicable beings do.
These people take advantage of the lack of knowledge, they take advantage of the ignorance in which we are immersed.
They approach you with a pleasant smile on their face and with a “dear brother” on their lips, they invite you to their homes very friendly, or they come to you through the internet and social networks, always with a friendly face, and then they poison you little by little, repeating over and over again that you are a bad Muslim. that Allah is not happy with you, that to be a good Muslim you have to do this and that, that look at what this verse of the Qur’an or such a hadith of the Messenger of Allah says.
That is the first step, to devalue you as a Muslim, to make you feel that you are a weak Muslim and that only if you follow them will you be a strong Muslim and Allah will be pleased with you.
And this is a first step that can only be overcome with knowledge of the Deen, with the knowledge of what it is, what it implies, what the great lifeline that is Ahlu As-Sunna wal Jama’a means, the importance of knowing it and strengthening it with it, because if you do not have the knowledge to refute it and you are ignorant and impressionable, you will fall into their nets, you will be an easy prey for them and they will manipulate you, until they do with you what they want. And then the next step will come, which is to make you see as enemies those who are not like you; and you will believe them because you will believe in them, you will trust them, you will like their speech, they will embellish their words with verses and hadiths, they will make you feel mistreated by society, they will make you believe that we are at war, that they are the enemy, that you must go against them wherever they are, they will make you feel like an outcast rejected and mistreated, and they will say to you: “but if you do this, the doors of the Garden, with dozens of houris at your service, will open for you…”.
Do not believe them, for look at what Allah says about them in His Book: “When you see them, you like the way they look, and if they speak, their words catch your attention. They are like logs that hold nothing. They believe that any shout is directed against them. They are the enemy, be careful. May Allah kill them! How they lie!” (Munafiqun, 3).
Shaykh Ahmed Bermejo Khutba, Great Mosque of Granada, August 25, 2017.