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Back You are here: Home Eternal Words Nahj al-Balaghah Sermons SERMON 27 - Exhorting People for Jihad

SERMON 27 - Exhorting People for Jihad


Now then, surely Jihad is one of the doors to Paradise, which Allah has opened for His chief friends. It is the outfit of piety and the protective armor of Allah and His trustworthy shield. Whoever abandons it Allah covers him with the outfit of disgrace and the clothe s of distress. He is kicked with contempt and scorn and his heart is veiled with screens (of neglect). Truth is taken away from him because of missing jihad. He has to suffer ignominy and justice is denied to him.
Beware! I called you (insistently) to fight these people night and day, secretly and openly and exhorted you to attack them before they attacked you because by Allah, no people have been attacked in the hearts of their houses but they suffered disgrace. But you put it off for others and forsook it till destruction befell you and your cities were occupied. The horsemen of Banu Ghamid have reached al-Anbar and killed Hassan ibn Hassan al-Bakri. They have removed your horsemen from the garrison. I have come to know that everyone of them entered upon Muslim women and other women under the protection of Islam and took away their ornaments from their legs, arms, necks and ears. No woman could resist it except by pronouncing the verse, “We are from Allah and to Him we shall return.” (Holy Qur’an, 2:156) Then they returned, laden with wealth, without any wound or loss of life. If any Muslim dies of grief after all this he is not to be blamed but rather there is justification for him before me.
How strange! How strange! By Allah! My heart sinks to see the unity of these people in their wrong-doings and your dispersion from the right. May woe and grief befall you. You have become the target at which arrows are shot. You are being killed and you do not kill. You are being attacked but you do not attack. Allah is being disobeyed and you remain agreeable to it. When I ask you to move against them in the summer you say it is hot weather, spare us until the heat subsides from us. When I order you to march in winter you say it is severely cold; give us time until the cold clears from us. These are just excuses of evading heat or cold because if you run away from heat and cold, you would be, by Allah, running away (in a greater degree) from the sword (war).
O you semblance of men, not men, your intelligence is that of children and your wit is that of the occupants of the curtained canopies (women kept in seclusion from the outside world). I wish I had not seen you nor known you. By Allah, this acquaintance has brought about shame and resulted in repentance. May Allah fight you! You have filled my heart with puss and loaded my bosom with rage. You made me drink mouthful after mouthful of grief. You shattered my counsel by disobeying and leaving me so much so that Quraish started saying that the son of Aba Talib is brave but does not know (tactics of) war. Allah bless them! Is any one of them more fierce in war and more older in it than I am? I rose for it although yet within my twenties and here I am, have crossed over sixty, but one who is not obeyed can have no opinion.

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