Speech at the
In the name
of Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful
Thank you
very much Geraldine
…
Geraldine
asked me to cut a third of my speech, if I could do that with my body weight, I
would be as fit as a fiddle.
It might appear that as a Muslim
speaker, some of you might think that I am here to just promote Islam, because
there are so many misnomers, misapprehensions, stereotypes and
misunderstandings that are being perpetuated all the time about Islam
I speak about politics quite often,
I made a conscious decision to try tonight and avoid doing this.
I have to say that I am very
grateful to the previous speakers, a few weeks ago, if it was not for the
courageous stand that Archbishop Aspinall and others
in relation to the Assault on Industrial relations, we would not have had such
a healthy debate on the topic, and what Rabbi Uri said about the assault on our
civil liberties, again, I could not have said it better myself, and Bishop Finnigan, a wonderful speech, I could just sit down and
leave it at that.
However, there are so many
misunderstandings about Islam, as such; it would be unfair for you coming here,
especially as I have been advertised as the keynote speaker not to speak.
An important thing that Islam does is
that it celebrates the lives, the missions and the achievements of all the
great men of God. God is referred to as
Allah by Arab Muslims and Christians and people of other faiths. Allah is not an alien different God; He is
the same God for all. You may have a
different understanding of God if you are a member of a different faith, we
believe God to be Compassionate, Merciful, Loving, Caring, All-Knowing,
All-Seeing, Almighty, that this God is the One who created every single one of
us and He provides for every single one of us whether we acknowledge His
beneficence or not.
This God sent a messenger to every
human society no matter where in the world this society had lived. Why did He do that? Because He created us and He loves those whom
He created. Allah is a God of Love and
Compassion, this Compassion is manifested in many of the stories that you read
in the Qur`an. It may surprise you that
the book of Islam mentions stories of greats such as Moses and Christ more than
it mentions Muhammad; it even has a chapter that is named after Mary the mother
of Christ. It says that God had chosen
Mary ahead of the women of all the worlds, past and present. She was chosen in her time but she was the
greatest woman who ever lived. You do
not see that being said about the mother of Prophet Muhammad, you see this
being said about Mary the mother of Christ.
Islam has a great deal to offer, as
a result, it is being maligned, just like Christianity in the early stages, as
Judaism even as Abraham were persecuted because of their message of
egalitarianism, social reform, their message to the powers in every society
that people are not commodities, they are human beings, there is no difference
between rich and poor, if you are wealthy, God trusted you with wealth, you are
accountable for how you use it, you are not to use it to exploit others or to
deprive others of their rights.
Everybody has a right to a decent standard of living. If I am a wealthy entrepreneur I have no
right to hoard this wealth. The churches
have been saying for weeks after they saw the proposed Industrial Relations
Reforms that man does not live by bread alone.
Of course he doesn’t, we all value principles, that if we do not have
the time, we do not think or reflect on the greatness of God.
I am not here to just promote Islam,
I am here to remove some of the misconceptions, I am also here to celebrate
faith in general because faith is very enriching to each and every one of us, and
we are here to celebrate the grace of God.
When I first started promoting this idea, it was to bring people of
different faiths together, to show people, that whoever said that religion
causes division, such a person is disingenuously exploiting religion for his
own political ends. In fact religion is
a source of compassion, love, respect and tolerance; it has a great capacity to
bring people together.
God tells us in the Qur`an, that if
He had willed, He would have made humanity one community, that is, following
one system, one faith, however, He did not, in order to stress the value of a
very important gift that he gave us, the gift of conscience, the gift of
freewill, the gift of freedom of expression.
Then He told us that there are universal limitations regardless of what
system we live by. These limitations
guarantee your own freedom and safety, whatever I use to respect the rights of
others, I am guaranteed that through it my rights will also be respected.
When the prophet Muhammad referred
to his predecessors, he referred to them as brothers, they have different
mothers, but their religion is the same.
His example and that of his predecessors was like one who built a
structure and beautified it and decorated it except for one brick in one of its
corners, people would walk around it and marvel at its beauty and say only if
that brick would be put in place. He
said: I am that brick and I am the final messenger.
Muhammad is a brother to Abraham,
Noah, Jacob, Isaac, Job, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Zachariah, John the Baptist and
Christ. All these greats together
represent God’s love to us and for us, that they came to this world and they
suffered and lived with persecution in order to save us. Who does not know about the greatness of the
persecution that Christ suffered, he was maligned, ridiculed, tried, people
wanted to kill him. How can they justify
killing him unless they misrepresented him to the society in which he
lived. When Abraham was catapulted into
the fire, how could society have accepted that if he had not been demonised?
Likewise, the Jews were being persecuted at the hands of Pharaoh, the
first persecution such a long time ago when Moses had to save them. How could society accept that persecution
unless they had been demonised and misrepresented? It is through
these very simple examples, I can give you an idea that there are some people
out there who put their conscience aside for expedient reasons. I do not know who they are and I am not going
to point fingers at individuals.
Islam tells me that I am a human
being with different traits and attributes, if faced with persecution and I
become angry, Islam tells me to restrain the anger and hate confine them within
limits. I must channel them towards the
actions and not the person, to condemn the action not the man. I must reach out with love and compassion
because my persecutor may also be a victim, either a victim of himself or Satan
or something else. God has shown me the
way to rise up above personal and material considerations. I know, hearing this you won’t be surprised,
many of you will tell me that this is what you learnt through Christ in
Christianity, or through Moses in Judaism.
Like I said, it is a universal message and its values are
universal. The difference is that most
of you do not know enough about the Qur`an or about the prophet Muhammad or
what his mission was.
Muhammad told us as the people who
celebrate his mission and his life that he was the successor to Christ, Moses
and Abraham. His mission was to bring
together the people of all the faiths, every single person regardless of their
background or culture. Islam did not
come to wipe out any culture. If you
look at Muslims in
As a simple humble servant of God,
as a person who is erratic and who falls from grace regularly, I try to do a
little bit of His will, to do that, I feel the need to join with people of
other faiths and work together because the challenges are too great. There are so many different elements in
society that try to divide us and focus too much on the differences. Yes, there are differences and they are
important differences, but what we have in common is greater. Our love for the fellow creatures or children
of God transcends all these differences dramatically.
I do not believe that there is one
single person here who would not risk his own safety or his own life to save
that of his neighbour if
he saw his neighbour in
danger or his neighbour’s house on fire. We are doing this
together to save society, we stand up for your rights as people of God, for the
rights of everyone and your most essential right that as many of us get
distracted through feeding the body is to also give you a little bit of time
out to nurture the spirit or nurture the soul, because the soul is greater than
the body. Who is teaching us how to nurture
or feed the soul? It is these great men
of God. We through our erratic fallible
manner are trying our best to bring the message of God to you. We are trying to show you that we can stand
united and transcend everything else.
I gave you an example about your neighbour, if I take this example a little
further, if you saw another person attacking your neighbour; this person is not attacking
you, so there is not the option to turn the other cheek. I can only turn the other cheek when I am
being attacked. However, when my neighbour
is under attack, is it right
to just turn the other cheek and just overlook it? If I do, then I am hurting both the
perpetrator and the victim, the perpetrator would be tainting his soul by
hurting a fellow human being and the victim would also be hurt. I must try to save both of them; it would be
a dereliction of duty for me to turn the other cheek. This is why you will see verses in the Qur`an
that talk about violence, or that the men of God have engaged in acts violence,
such as when the great Christ went into the temple and overturned the tables of
the money changers, that is anger, a violent act, he was doing it to save his
people. When Abraham went and chopped
down the idols, this is anger, a violent act; he did it to save his
people. When a person defends himself or
others against attack, this is a violent act being done to save someone. The Qur`an says that if the antagonist
desists and gives any indication that he wants to stop his attack, then embrace
him and opt for peace.
I could stand here and talk to you
about family values in Islam, but why should I, my learned friends do that in
church all the time in relation to Christianity or Judaism and there is hardly
a difference. I could talk to you about
principles or values, but why should I, you hear about these all the time and
there is hardly a difference. However,
it would be remiss of me not to introduce you to another great man of God, a
man whose mission and life were described by God as a mercy to the worlds, the
human, animal and vegetable worlds and the environment. There are so many verses in the Qur`an that
deal with each and every aspect of these.
We are taught through the name of the faith, the greeting: Salam, peace
etc. that you have to first and foremost, through your devotion to God, learn
to be at peace with yourself, through that emanates peace with your fellow
human beings and through that emanates peace with everything around you. These comments would not surprise you as I
could be standing here talking about other religions. I must tell you a little about the final
messenger of God as he came and celebrated his predecessors, the final
messengers of God.*
His life epitomised all the positives of his predecessors and was
a life full of humility, sacrifice and service to God and to fellow man. We cannot do his life justice today other
than to say that he served God faithfully and delivered to us the final message
of God and left behind not only a book, but also a community of believers to
teach, preserve and champion the teachings of God for eternity.
* This speech was not read, I had put
the written speech aside and delivered another speech, these notes were typed
from the recorded speech which ended at the point marked in the final paragraph
when the Chairperson alerted me to the time remaining. The final two sentences have been added for
completion. Naturally, the notes reflect
the speech but are not a verbatim account as they eliminate some repetitions
and grammatical issues.
* This is where the speech had
stopped.