Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon by Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, aired on Qatar TV on
February 3, 2006.
Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi: The nation must rage in anger.
It is told that
Imam Al-Shafi' said:
"Whoever was angered
and did not rage is a jackass."
We are not a nation of jackasses.
We are not jackasses for riding,
but lions that roar.
We are lions that zealously
protect their dens,
and avenge affronts
to their sanctities.
We are not a nation of jackasses.
We are a nation that should
rage for the sake of Allah,
His Prophet,
and His book.
We are the nation
of Muhammad,
and we must never accept
the degradation of our religion.
[...]
We must rage, and show our rage to the world.
[...]
The governments must
be pressured to demand
that the UN adopt
a clear resolution or law
that categorically prohibits
affronts to prophets –
to the prophets of the Lord
and His messengers,
to His holy books,
and the religious holy places.
This is so that nobody
could cause them harm.
They enacted such laws in order
to protect the Jews and Judaism.
Like some Danes
have said:
"We can mock Jesus
and his mother."
They were asked:
"Can you mock the Jews?"
Here they stopped.
The Jews are
protected by laws -
the laws that
protect Semitism,
and nobody can say
even one word
about the number [of victims]
in the alleged Holocaust.
Nobody can do so, even if he is writing an M.A. or Ph.D. thesis,
and discussing it
scientifically.
Such claims are not acceptable.
When Roger Garaudy talked about it,
he was sentenced to jail,
according to the laws.
We want laws protecting the holy places,
the prophets, and
Allah's messengers.
[...]
Before ending my sermon, I would
like to issue several warnings.
The first warning is directed at our feeble governments,
which are trying to gauge
America's position:
Will America be pleased with us or not if we rage about this?
They fear the Creator more than they fear His creation [sic],
and try to please people
more than they try to please Allah.
To those feeble governments
we say: Take a courageous stand.
Stand up and prove
that you are Muslim,
and that you protect this religion with zeal.
We want our governments not to split from their peoples.
The masses throughout the Islamic
world have made their position clear,
They have displayed their rage. The governments must not split away from these masses. The second warning I direct at the Westerners, the Americans, and the Europeans who follow them,
who claim to be fighting terrorism, and struggling against violence throughout the world.
I say to them: Your silence
over such crimes,
which offend the Prophet of Islam
and insult his great nation,
is what begets violence,
generates terrorism,
and makes
the terrorists say:
Our governments are doing nothing,
and we must avenge our Prophet ourselves.
This is what creates terrorism
and begets violence.
[...]
We say to
those Europeans:
We can get by without you,
but you cannot get by without us.
We can get by
without your products.
We will buy from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, from the Asian countries.
We will say what King Faysal – may
he rest in peace – said
in 1973, in the days
of the petroleum war.
He said to them: We can
get by without the petrol,
and return to
our days of yore.
We will make do
with milk and dates.
We will drink the milk of our camels,
and eat the dates from our palm trees.
King Faysal said this when
there was a threat to Arab honor.
It is all the more true when there is a threat
to our Islamic honor,
to our prophets,
and our religion.
