The dead live by their words, and what their fingertips have written. They live by the truth of their words and the steadfastness of their attitudes despite the demise of their bodies and the ascension of their souls.
The words written by their white hands will endure and revive and awaken hope after they have sacrificed themselves, their wealth, their blood and their worldly life for the sake of what they wrote, (which emanated) from their firm values and deep seated principles in the cause of the Deen. On that day, although they are dead, Islam and the Muslims shall triumph through them. The people of faith will be glorified and the people of shirk and idolatry will be debased and life will be honorable and dignified. Their blood and their sacrifices are the fuel and the fire that will eliminate injustice and take away sorrow and pain. Justice will prevail and the oppressed will be victorious. The prisons will be emptied and the afflicted set free. Their will not be any loss of rights, and neither tax nor toll.
When the living are dead, although their bodies are still walking on the earth, they have no life. Their hearts are dead because they exist only for their own whims, comforts and cravings. They have collected the wages of their employment, the wages given for their sermons and fatwas, for their insolence against Islam and the defenders of the Deen. They were abstemious and the price was cheap: a few dirham or fame mixed with the blood of the noble and the free. They fall before the Lord of all creation in their councils and on their satellite networks while they are drowning in error from the soles of their feet to the crowns of the heads. They remove (people from Islam), mislead them and make them jahili. From their own mouths all who oppose them are foolish-minded or young. They speak of the good qualities of those who demolish the Deen, while maintaining silence over their wicked deeds and the tools used in their work of destruction. This is no surprise when they themselves are the subversive tools in the hands of those wreckers. Among them, the people of truth and conviction are people of deviation and clear error. When the cowardly has left the land forsaken…only discredit and conflict will be sought when they are the ones who speak of the condition of the Ummah and the state of the Muslims. Islam and the Muslims will be humiliated and life will be one of ignominy and abuse. It will become nothing but submission, subjection and servility.
Countries will be occupied and the Quran defiled. That which is sacred will be sullied, the pure maidens will be raped and honor will be ravaged in order to revive from death Laka’ Ibn Laka’ upon the skulls of the innocent, the blood of the noble and the deaths of the guiltless. At their hands will come the day in which Islam will be washed away as a garment iswashed awayand neither fasting nor charity; nor piety will be understood. But they (will) meet a poor fate and come to a bad end, with the permission of the One, the Benefactor, as their wages for what they have done to the Ummah, for the blood they have spilled with their fatwas, for their silence about the truth and for the assistance they have rendered to falsehood. Yet, they will think that they have done well: “Is he, then, to whom the evil of his conduct is made alluring, so that he looks upon it as good…” Ibn Abu Dawud (he of the fitna of the creation of the Quran) lived on the blood of al-Bawayti (a student of Imam al-Shafa’i, may Allah Almighty have mercy on him) and although he was famed for his learning, eloquence and munificence, he was nonetheless of wicked intention and corrupt creed so none of that benefitted him and he came to a bad end because of how he criticized, harmed and slandered the people of truth and faith.
Sayyid Qutb was one of whom it was believed that his words would be killed and their letters erased from hearts and minds. Yet, his words have endured as if they were carved in rock and stone. The words of those who attempted to destroy his honor and his writings, however, have died, even though they were seduced by his writings and his books. They stole from them and pretended that they came from their own thoughts. Allah has exposed them, disgraced them and sullied their houses. They are dead even though they are still alive, while Sayyid Qutb lives even though he is dead.
Sayyid Qutb paid the price of his words with his own blood. As for those who received their wages for their speeches, books and articles criticizing Sayyid, and those who stole his words and collected their salaries from the publishing houses, or promoted themselves and earned a reputation on the satellite networks by criticizing him: Sayyid Qutb is living even though he is dead and they have died even though some of them are still living.
Many of the sons of this Da’wa lived, and their words lived with them, when they revived among people the glory of the Deen, and it was accepted and resonated. The righteous and the truthful gathered about them and on that day purity was not mingled with the defects of this world and it was not polluted with disturbances caused by whims or fancies or patchwork fatwas of favoritism. The Word of Truth and sincerity in counsel were the intent of the faithful. They lived and their words lived as beacons of light and guidance, and the people of piety and faith followed in their footsteps.
Other followers of this Da’wa lived, and they were held with affection and esteem in people’s hearts. When suddenly (this affection) it declined and receded and was taken by death and they suffered and sighed the moans of death. Perhaps someone will rescue or pay attention to it. Suddenly it becomes nothing more than a memory killed by its masters after they chose the life of their bodies over the life of their words and after they chose to live by principles and ideas of the West, the logic of the mind and the pretext of rationalism. They claim, to show favoritism for and to flatter the people of innovation and error, that they had changed their paths and turned their ideologies and ideas upside down. They shed their values and principles; and the secularists gathered around them. They became the boon companions of the secularists and the liberals and, by their words, became secularists themselves. Their pulpits were the MBC and IBC networks and they became jurists of beggary (fuqaha’ al-tasawwul) so that the righteous and true abandoned them. None remain in their life except some of the duped, the seduced; the secularists, the liberals and the democrats. So they have died while they are still alive. Their fatwas are circulated by the soldiers of the marines, by the vulgar; the men of surrender and treachery, and the people of defeat. They meet on the satellite networks and criticize those whose field is the arena of Jihad and martyrdom. Birds of a feather flock together.
Ahmed Ibn Hanbal (Imam of the Ahlus Sunnah) has died and the head of fitna Ibn Abu Dawud (of the fitnah of the creation of the Quran) has died and Bishr Mirisi (a Mu’tazalite sheikh) have died. Yet, what Ahmed bin Hanbal wrote lives and is redeemed by the truth of what his fingertips wrote and his tongue spoke. His words have been redeemed by his body when he was flogged, imprisoned and tortured by the executioners and his memory lives.
Ibn Abu Dawud and those with him died after they spent their lives in the palace of the sultan living on the screams and pain of Ibn Hanbal while they themselves dwelt in comfort. Their ideas and beliefs died with them and they have no worth except begging, injustice, subjugation to slavery and love of passions. How can such a worth bear any remnant of the truth? Ibn Abu Dawud died imprisoned inside his own paralyzed body which for four years did not possess the power to move.
As for Ibn Taymiyya, his memory is immortal, Allah permitting, until Allah inherits the earth and those upon it. He composed his message of astightaha,but the people of innovation and whim were not impressed, as is indeed the case with them always and everywhere. So Ali bin Yaqub al-Bakari attacked him; Ibn Taymiyya, declared him kaffir and demanded his death. But the rulers joined forces and incited the people, stirring them against (al-Bakari). He was reviled, cursed and imprisoned. They went to great lengths to harm him until they gathered with the mob against him. They struck him and did him harm until he was exposed and fled. When the earth pressed around him he could find none but Ibn Taymiyya, in whose house he hid. Allah has exalted the memory of Ibn Taymiyya and his message lives. His enemies have died and their ideas have died with them.
Those ones sacrificed for the sake of their words and their writings. They did not eat by them and they did not beg through the ink of their books. They avoided uncertain (shibh) and forbidden (muharramat) areas. They did not find their nourishment in the efforts of others or from reviling harming or slandering them. They did not accept a price from the depravity and pleasures of this world. They threw all of that behind them, as opposed to their opponents who – because they cursed, reviled and criticized the people of truth, faith and Jihad and because they favored the people of falsehood, error and deviation – are consigned to oblivion.
