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Join Dr. Omar Suleiman as he reflects on the current events surrounding the murder of #GeorgeFloyd while providing a spiritual framing and Qur’anic view on how to deal with situations like this.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
Asalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu Abdullahi wa Assalamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen Wa la Udwana illa allah wa al-Zalimeen Wa la Aqibatu bil Mutaqeem Allahumma Salli wa Sallim wa Baraka
Ala abdika wa rasulika Muhammadin Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim tasliman katira So inshallah ta'ala today I wanted to reflect a bit on obviously what many people are seeing coming out of Minnesota but I wanted to sort of step back and give this
a Qur'anic framing and really help us understand through the lens of the Qur'an the way that we deal with these types of situations beyond just, you know, the general statements about justice
and the sin of racism and murder and brutality and all that comes from that, but really trying to understand deeply how the Qur'an teaches us to deal with a situation
like this where we see murder and when we see particularly state-sanctioned murder or murder that is repetitive coming out of a singular system and what are some things that we can take
from the Qur'an to understand this, and before I go any further speaking about this inshallah I know that Islah LA is doing something today inshallah, so I shared it on Instagram I know that they're doing something in a few
hours and I think it would be important for all of us to tune in and to hear what our imams and various activists have to say about the current situation and how we can deal with the situation but it is
important for us to really have a spiritual framing beyond just the devastating impact of watching yet another video of a modern-day lynching, police lynching, the way that we see with George Floyd, and it's unacceptable
for us to simply once again say you know, it's unfortunate, it's a mistake, it shouldn't have happened, but you know, these are the types of things that happen in this line of work and there's nothing that we can do about it I think that it's also
extremely faulty for a person to step in and to express a greater sense of outrage over property damage and looting and things that happened in the wake of this or you know, the extreme forms of the reaction
because to paint the entire protest as rioting has implications and then to speak about just one element of it has implications, I think that it's also unjust to the situation and so I wanted us to just pull back and to reflect
on five verses of the Quran that speak about you know, justice and particularly the darkness of the injustice that covers a society when
murder of this regard at the hands of the state is glossed over and is not dealt with properly and so the first thing is just to speak about how the gravity of one murder can really shift
a current, both in terms of its laws and in terms of its society if people deal with it in a proper way and this is something that we even find from the Quran, you'll see that there is a frequent quote from the
Quran that whoever saves one life it is as if he has saved all of mankind and that is taken from Surah Al-Ma'idah and Surah Al-Ma'idah does not just introduce this ayah, does not just introduce this verse out of nowhere, it actually introduces it coming out of
the story of Cain and Abel, the story of Qabir and Habib, where Allah tells us about how one brother murders another brother the first murder in the history of mankind and he murders his brother not because
of not because of something that the brother did wrong but because of an insecurity within himself because his sacrifice was not accepted and the only way that he felt like he could assert his power
was to take his brother's life, was to murder his brother not to say to Allah, why was my sacrifice not accepted in that, what can I do to make my sacrifice accepted, but instead to kill his brother and that is something
that I'll probably elaborate on in a future time, but usually when a person commits these types of acts, they have problems with themselves more than they have with the world around them and so they project their own insecurities on the world around
them and in this situation where you have one brother, the first murder in mankind, one brother who murders his brother, who did no wrong doing who did nothing to deserve to be killed Allah then introduces
it was because of that that we prescribed on Bani Israel that whoever kills one person not in retaliation of murder or injustice but or to spread mischief in the land it would be as if he killed all of mankind
and whoever saves one life it is as if he saves all of mankind so or in Arabic in Arabic in Arabic
in Arabic that whoever kills one person not in retaliation of murder or the spreading of mischief in land but it would be as if that person killed all of mankind and whoever saves one life, it would be as if
he saves the life of all of mankind and subhanAllah what you see here is an entire law that entire laws can come out of one murder that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says he prescribed this on the children of Israel arising out
of this incident, arising out of what happened here, that murder of one person in injustice is like the murder of all of mankind is like killing all of mankind and to save one life is like saving all
of mankind, so the gravity of one murder here is able to dictate or transitions in the discourse of the Quran from just the murder of one person to how an entire nation
is then given a law of justice on how to deal with murder, particularly when it comes to unjust the unjust killing of someone who had nothing, you know, who did not do anything that was
deserving of such a crime Allah azza wa jal also teaches us through the tongue of our Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam that the gravity of one murder is such that it can shift
societies and in that case the one who sets the trend is responsible for everything that arises out of that trend and that's why the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam peace be upon him, he said that no one commits murder except that the first
murderer being the brother in Qabeel and Habeel has a share of that evil because of again because of how because he's the first one to normalize murder and so anytime anyone kills a
share of that evil goes to the first killer because there's a trend that is set then, it sets off something that ends up becoming much larger than its initial occurrence and so there's this
idea subhanAllah of the gravity of one murder, the sanctity of one life and the gravity of one murder and how that should cause a society to pause and to reflect on where
we have come. Now in the case of police brutality of course this isn't just one murder there are thousands of hashtags at this point and before hashtags were a thing there were thousands of victims of the same nature, the same type of murder. So
you know how does the Quran talk about this idea of justice and this idea of the presence of justice for the victim, not just dealing with obviously the spiritual disease of racism and then
what that manifests itself in in terms of the systemic oppression of a people on the basis of their color and everything that comes out of that but you know life that exists
or life that comes out of a presence of justice what happens in a society when justice is there. A frequent statement from Ibn Taymiyyah rahimAllah, innaAllaha layuqeem wa dawlat alAAadila wa inkanat kafira wa yahdim wa dawlat alzaalima wa inkanat muslima
that Allah would uphold a just nation even if that nation was a disbelieving nation and Allah would destroy an oppressive nation even if that nation was a Muslim nation there's something to
be said about the presence of justice in a society and what that does to a society and particularly one element of justice which is empowering the victims of injustice empowering the victims of injustice which
sends a clear message to future aggressors and oppressors, current and future aggressors and oppressors and also establishes a system where people who have been
wronged consistently people that have been wronged consistently have a legal mechanism to be able to go forth and to attain justice now in Islam that was called
qissas, that's called qissas which is retribution, the legal retribution that exists when when a life is taken and so in the case of qissas the plaintiff, the victim is the plaintiff
and of course, or the family of the victim is the plaintiff and the plaintiff is actually the one that has the authority of retribution, right? to decide what to do with the one that has taken the life of their loved one and to choose
without being pressured in a way that you know, or it cannot be a superficial choice right, we see this happen all the time where in the name of qissas, you know you have a state that would pressure a family to forgive the killers to forgive the murderers because
that would cover the state, right? No, this is a pure idea of qissas that exists in the Quran where the family actually has the right to decide the fate of the one that took their loved one and
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says about this وَلَكُمْ فِى الْقِصَاصِ حَيَاتٌ يَأْوُ لِلْأَلْبَابِ وَلَكُمْ فِى الْقِصَاصِ حَيَاتٌ يَأْوُ لِلْأَلْبَابِ and this is what I want to focus on, the spiritual part of this, that you have life in legal retribution, that there is
that there is hayat, that there is life in the presence of justice a mechanism of justice for the family of those that have been wronged, يَأْوُ لِلْأَلْبَابِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ
that you may become righteous, now this is a very specific wording that we find in this verse, لَكُمْ فِى الْقِصَاصِ حَيَاتٌ that you have in the presence of a system that would allow for a person to, that would allow
for the family of the victims to actually have rights, to have the legal rights to pursue justice that there is life in that and the way that scholars traditionally dealt with this, so you read the tafasir of this ayah, one tafasir of it
which the scholars mention is that if a killer knows that there would be retribution for their killing, then that person would think before they murder and so they would hold back, they would hold themselves back from killing and in the case of
that, الحياة here, you know, life that's preserved, the traditional scholars or traditionally you'll find in the tafasir they'll say that hayat in that the life of the murdered and the one the potential murderer, the potential murderer and the potential murdered
is saved because the presence of justice the presence of a system that would deter someone from killing, that would hold someone back from killing, gives life to the
one that was going to be killed and the person who would have taken that life and then suffered the consequences of that and so qisas prevents, right, the empowering of the plaintiff, the empowering of the victim's family prevents that
and qisas would be applied not in a way that if a person, you know, one of the things that Islam came to do away with was tribalism right, so it didn't matter if you belonged to Ben-Makhzum, which was one of the more powerful tribes of Mecca or if you belonged to
no tribe at all, right the idea was that qisas would be established in a way that it would deter a person from killing because they knew that there was going to be a system of accountability and in the process of that, that's why you'll find
in the statement of Imam Hassan Bassi, rahim Allah the life of the potential murderer and the life of the potential murdered one is saved, but there's a societal element to this as well that goes beyond just the case of that person because we said there's the gravity of one
murder and the sanctity of one life and subhanAllah there's a very beautiful discourse Sheikh Yasser Fahmi had shared this quote from Muhammad Abu Zahra rahim Allah ta'ala where he talked about a dignified existence that life here is not just
talking about the presence of people being able to live and to breathe but it's speaking about the idea of a dignified existence that a society in which lives are sanctified
in which there is proper recourse when murder takes place that gives that society a sense of a noble life, a dignified existence, a dignified societal life and when those
mechanisms are not there then they die as a society due to injustice the presence of dhulm, the cloud of dhulm and injustice that ends up covering that entire society and so it's not just
the life of one person that's saved but it is what ends up taking place of the of murder that spreads throughout the land because there is no recourse because there are clear double standards and particularly the worst
example here is when the state itself when the authority which is supposed to be in a place of holding accountable is what needs to be held accountable because of the constant murder that's coming from that singular place
and so Muhammad Abu Zuhra Rahim Allah spoke about this from a societal perspective that there is life in society, that there is hayaa in society when there is a legal recourse for
these types of actions because it doesn't allow murder to go unchecked and toghian, dhulm, oppression and these types of things to go unchecked and I want us to think about this because it's very important for us to be self-critical
about where we are right now and to just think about where we're at in terms of of history you know when you have George Zimmerman and I don't know where I was reading this earlier today but just about the money
that George Zimmerman has made after murdering Trayvon Martin and not being held accountable right so I'm not going to rehash the details of the murder of Trayvon Martin but obviously it was instrumental in the
starting of the Black Lives Matter movement and George Zimmerman you know has accumulated, he not only got away with murder but he has accumulated hundreds of
thousands of dollars maybe over a million dollars right but hundreds of thousands of dollars for sure being celebrated for that murder and I want you to think about what this is like right and it should sicken you right when George Zimmerman
who took the life of that young Trayvon Martin is able to walk around and be and you know go to conventions around the country and be treated like a celebrity, sign autographs for money, sold
his gun, the gun that he used to kill Trayvon Martin, he was able to auction it off for over a hundred thousand dollars and then sue the parents for defamation right and make money off of that what type of message
does that send to society right to other racists in society oh and by the way he also did a commercial with a gun store owner in Florida I believe who had the no Muslims allowed
sign on his store you know some cheap marketing tactic I guess he put no Muslims allowed on his gun shop and George Zimmerman went and did a commercial with him Allah knows how much he got paid to do that but like what type of a society right what type of a message
does that send to society where is the life in our society in that sense right and then you see these videos of the murder of Ahmed Arbery and the lynching of Ahmed Arbery and what that leads to
right and there was something about that video the lynching of Arbery Ahmed Arbery that that was particularly gross because you just you could tell that the people that were committing this murder
had no fear whatsoever of the repercussions of their murder right and had the outrage not been there they probably would have never been charged because the videos were shown to those that could have taken legal action in their hands but all of that was brushed
under the rug and nothing happened as a result of that and so due to the outrage eventually and you know we'll see where that goes because justice has not actually yet been served in that case but the point is that there was no fear of accountability there is an understanding that
we're going to get away with this and then you see what happens in Minnesota with George Floyd and the arrogance the arrogance in the eyes of that cop as he puts his knee on the neck of
George Floyd a man pleading for his life calling for his mother right in his last moments his mother who died two years ago and you see the arrogance and the sense of invincibility in the eyes of that person and the eyes
of the officers that are standing around and you wonder well you know those officers probably knew the officer that murdered Philando Castile in his car in front of his you know in front of his four year old daughter you know who for not doing
for doing absolutely nothing right Philando Castile who you know who was driving pulled over was following instructions and shot seven times in front of his four year old daughter that's coming out of the same police department
what message does that send to other officers in terms of the the ability to get away with these types of things I'm not going to go through all of the incidents because there are too many to name there are too many to name
but you know we have to start to think about this idea of this idea of what the the presence or the absence in this situation
of justice does to the murderer to the psyche of potential murderers to the psyche of a person that does have a uniform and a gun and doesn't feel like they're going to be held accountable if they murder
people because there's always a way right I mean and we have a history of planting evidence we have a history of all sorts of ways where people are able to get out of these things what is the message that's being sent right and from a
societal perspective to those in authority as well so it's not just the George Zimmerman's of the world but it's also for us to think about what this means in terms of society as a whole and then I want to end with one verse here where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
says Arabic Arabic Arabic Arabic Arabic this is a verse in surat al-isra
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says and I'm going to read it again very slowly Arabic and do not kill the soul that God has forbidden except injustice
Arabic and so whoever is killed unjustly then we have given
Arabic we have given to the family or to the inheritor or to whoever is left to represent that person that's been killed we have given them sultanah, subhanAllah
we've given them authority we've given them authority they're in a place of power they're in a place of power they are fully empowered to demand
retribution or justice or to show mercy the mercy should not be weaponized the way that it was here in Dallas the the weaponizing of the forgiveness of the brother of Botham John against the mother of Botham John the family of
Botham John right a beautiful act of mercy and forgiveness was weaponized against the family that was still calling for justice okay here Allah is saying we have given to the Wali Sultanah we've given them authority
we've given them power they're in a place of power they're in a place of authority and then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says Arabic and do not exceed the limits in the matter of taking justice
Arabic and verily that person has been supported that person has been helped now I'm gonna break this down for a bit first of all before Allah gets to
the injustice in the response Allah affirms the the complete authority of the victim the right of the victim and in this case when a victim has been
killed the family of the victim the rights of them you know using the word Sultana is not easy that they have authority they are in a place where they
have authority the state is to carry out what the what the family wants due to the injustice that they have incurred okay and then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says
Arabic and do not exceed bounds and just look at the order of the verse okay look at the order of the verse if you only talk about
Arabic if you talk about the excessiveness in the response without talking about the glaring void of the presence of justice and how that has
been compounded over time and what you have with a community that is fed up that is sick of being treated this way that is that has been beaten over the
head by this so-called justice system for as many years as it's existed and you know and you think about you know going back to that verse Arabic
Arabic that there is life in the presence of justice and death there I mean it's just society suffocates when there's injustice it's absolutely heartbreaking and and you know I've seen many mothers of the
victims of police brutality and the pain and despair in their eyes and it's it's it's it's beyond devastating to watch the mother of a child that's been killed
unjustly and and they have absolutely no way to make sense of what has happened right and you know they're you know in the spotlight for a few weeks a few months and then usually the case is dropped there is no justice and the
family just disappears into despair and no one is around the family anymore you know no one really asks about the families of the victims of police brutality months after years after once the case has sort of moved on and people
have moved on no one really asks about them anymore in this situation though I do want us to think about this right like every time you're watching another
black political commentator a mother or a father break down into tears on TV all right and you ask yourself you know what what is it that is making people so
fed up right and and just the the compounded sense of injustice which is valid right we have to ask ourselves where are we as a society and then Allah
says for a useful pattern do not exceed in the response so yes but I use the cotton is there do not exceed in the response that's there do not exceed in
the responses there but before do not exceed in the responses they're affirming the full right of the victim and the families of the victim is also there and you can't just jump that so you have to take the eye as a whole and the way that
it ends in the who can I'm on Sora indeed he will be supported now indeed he will be supported here according to the majority of the Mufasa Dean if not all of them is not talking about divine aid here it's talking about the state
supporting the family of the victim that the and you know so you'll find definitely mom the Imam the authority supporting the family of the victim fully without any holding back so you know the way the scholars spoke about
this they said you know even if the person who justice is being exacted against is a friend of the authority if that wouldn't excuse that person because of conflict of interest or whatever it may be but whatever it is that that
there is a way forward that the Imam that the authority is to exact justice in the who can I'm on Sura and Allah comforting the family of the victim by
saying that the authority will have your back right the authority will have your back that the state will have your back the governor will have your back the Imam will have your back whoever it is but the point is that you will be
Mansoura you are to be helped you are to be supported in your cause there's so much to unpack here but just taking the three critical components from this a
lot first starts off with this the the sanctity or for critical components just of this ayah Allah starts off with the sanctity of one person the sanctity of
one human life and then secondly and by the way that's important because as I said you know in the immediate wake of this and we saw this with Stephon Clark you know particularly and and so many of these different cases right the
character assassination that takes place after the murder of a person at the hands of the police the character assassination is to desensitize us is to impress upon us that this person is not worth your love and outrage they're not
worth you fighting for them they're not worth you know what was that person's value to society in the first place so why should black death matter if black life doesn't matter why should we care about this person so the the barrage of
character assassinations that happen against the victim after they're dead and can't speak for themselves is meant to neutralize our response neutralize our anger neutralize our outrage and just say well is it really that sacred
of a person is that really that sacred of a life right Allah subhana wa ta'ala says here that that the nafs haram Allah that Allah has sanctified the soul Allah
has sanctified that life you don't have a right to to say that this life has more value than another based on anything based on race based on record based on anything you don't have that right to say that this life does not
matter so Allah subhana wa ta'ala starts off with that and then wa man qutil madrooman Allah starts with the second component the one who is killed unjustly then their family should have complete authority sultana their
family should have the complete right the third thing and then the family or then the rightful heirs those that are angered by the injustice should not become unjust themselves or exceed the bounds in seeking justice and then
in who can amon surah that that person is supposed to be helped by the authority in their cause here instead we find these layers of systemic injustice
these layers of systemic injustice where you have you know the DA's office and the police department and a racist president and you know also all of these elements working hand in hand with one another to suffocate the calls for
justice and to suffocate the families of those victims and it's it's a terrible combination that we have now where do we leave off from all of this and again I'm
gonna recommend to everyone to pay attention to you know I think a list la la has a has a program I believe in an hour or so inshallah you can find it
on their page on Instagram it's important for us to recognize the the aggregates societal impact of this and what it means for us and to really help
our entire society to be more introspective as we are also calling for for reform for justice for those victims we're calling for you know the reform of
a system that that continues to render injustice and we're calling for the rights of those victims and the families of those victims of this injustice but we also need to be introspective and to ask ourselves you know what is it
about our society and how do we work through all of these layers the spiritual diseases that exist here the the legal the enshrined legal
injustices that exist here and the constant negligence of the families of these victims and that's probably the last thing that I'll end on because it's the most human of it all you know in terms of the the inequity of pain right
that when when these families you know the family of Botham John who was murdered you know by an officer sitting on his couch watching Thursday night football eating ice cream watching Thursday night football because the
officer walked in the wrong apartment and the murder of a Tatiana Jefferson just a few miles away from here in Fort Worth a woman who shared a
driveway with the masjid in Fort Worth while she was playing a video game with her nephew and was shot through the window by an officer and so how much you
know the pain of that by the way both her mom and her dad have since died both her mother and her father have since died and there's something to be said
about the pain that it caused that family to lose to lose a Tatiana Jefferson and the fact that there still has not been justice served in that case by the way so it's important for us to not relinquish these things when the
media moves on just as when we talk about any cause any global cause our brothers and sisters that languish as political prisoners in places around the world whether that's here in the United States or whether that is overseas our
Masha'i our teachers our scholars our brothers our sisters that are wrongfully accused and that languishes political prisoners the the constant murder and
rampage that takes place in in different parts of the world the drones that were dropped that drop on our brothers and sisters around the world the oilers the
the Palestinians the Syrians Afghanistan which is constantly being hit over and over and over again by horrible attacks and things that are happening there just as we don't turn a blind eye we cannot turn a blind eye to those things just
because the media has moved on or just because it's no longer popular let's also not turn a blind eye inshallah to the families of these victims and to the calls for justice and then wait for another hashtag to say something else
and they're gonna be plenty of hashtags all the time you know unfortunately until we're able to actually lend our voices towards this and we pray that a
lot allow us to be used for good and we pray that Allah make things easy for those that are suffering in multiple ways as a result of this every every
family of a victim and every black parent in America that has to have a conversation with their kids right now about this about what they're seeing unfold we pray for them and and we lend our support to them in any way that we
possibly can be in the light on if I've said anything wrong it is from myself from the Shaitaan I seek Allah's forgiveness and I seek refuge from him or in him from the Shaitaan and if I've said anything right then it's from Allah
subhana wa ta'ala was allahumma salam on a beaner Muhammad wala alihi wasah be
with this a man to fear of a slam I recognized
