New York Imam Abul Baraa Muhammad Abdullah Amreeki delivered a sermon in which he quoted verses in the Quran that said that Muslims should not take Jews and Christians as allies. He said that it is very common today for Muslims to spy on, covertly monitor, and "entrap" other Muslims because the government or police threatened them or offered them some incentive, and that it is a known fact that the FBI and police in New York City and elsewhere in the U.S. have spies in every mosque that are paid to deceitfully bait Muslims into making inflammatory statements. He said that Islam forbids spying in this fashion, and that it is prohibited to report on the prayer and donation activities of mosque members. Imam Amreeki said that people who do this receive a worse punishment than infidels on Judgement Day. He elaborated that some scholars have said that those who spy on Muslims for non-Muslims should be punished by death, while other scholars have said that only non-Muslim informants should be punished by death.
The sermon was delivered at the Rockaway Islamic Center in Queens, NY, where Amreeki is the imam. The video was uploaded to the center's Facebook page and to Amreeki's YouTube channel on January 25, 2019. Amreeki was born and raised Christian in Jamaica, Queens, NY. He was incarcerated at the age of 19 for robbery and spent time at Rikers Island. He converted to Islam when he was 20 after becoming familiar with Islam in prison. According to the bio on his website, islamsfinest.com, Amreeki is an Arabic-to-English translator, who studied at the Qortoba Institute for Arabic Studies in Cairo. He also attended CUNY Medgar Evers College. The bio further says that Amreeki was previously the imam of the Islamic Center of SC in Conway, South Carolina.
To view the clip of Abul Baraa Muhammad Abdullah Amreeki on MEMRI TV, click here or below.
"Taking The Disbelievers As Friends, Meaning Giving Them Support And Assistance Against Fighting Muslims... This Is An Act Of Disbelief In Islam"
Imam Abul Baraa Muhammad Abdullah Amreeki: "Taking the disbelievers as friends, meaning giving them support and assistance against fighting Muslims... This is an act of disbelief in Islam.
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"[The Quran says:] 'Oh you who believe, do not take the Jew and the Christian as your supporter and helper, for they are the helpers of each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them.'
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"Muslims spying on Muslims, to assist the non-Muslims against Muslims... [This is] something that is very common in today's times. Allah said in the Quran: 'Oh, you who believe, do not take My enemy and yours as your allies, showing them friendship when they have rejected the truth you have received.'
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"The spy is the one who spies on the Muslims and transmits information to their enemies, which includes covert monitoring or entrapment of Muslims, working with the disbelievers...
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"Either the spy or informant is doing this to save himself from crimes or threats from the police or the government, or in fear of the government threatening him with imprisonment, or kicking him out of the country, or even helping them get out of some legal problem or financial crisis, or some broken promise to help his immigration status... It is clear from many court cases, particularly in New York City and other places in the U.S., that every mosque has a spy or a few spies – informants."
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"The Hypocrites Will Get The Worst Punishment – Worse Than The Infidels – On Judgement Day"
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"It is well-known in New York that many police [departments] and FBI are doing this in many mosques and many places, where informants were paid to bait Muslims into making inflammatory statements – making crazy statements, sitting down with them, talking about what is going on in the Muslim world, talking about how the Muslims are getting slaughtered... The Muslim, he feels it in his heart. 'Man, our people are dying and being killed...' And that person traps him: 'Yeah, maybe we should do something about it, maybe something should happen to these people.' Entrapment. Recording this conversation while the informant or the spy is the one [being] deceitful and working the plan to entrap Muslims...
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"These actions are prohibited in Islam.
"This includes actions [such] as taking pictures, snapping pictures of the Muslims inside the mosque, [and reporting] who comes to the mosque and prays, who are its members, who gives donations, how much money the mosque collects, who was giving out the money, who was receiving the money, how much money they got, who are the people who gave the money, who comes to the classes inside the mosque, who comes to Friday prayers, who gives the sermon, what the sermon was about, recording them... And vice versa... People think that the informant comes and does this, but in some cases, it is the mosque – the administration – that gives this information voluntarily to the police.
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"They want to be comfortable in America. They want to be comfortable living with the infidels, so they do these things.
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"The hypocrites will get the worst punishment – worse than the infidels – on Judgement Day."
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"[According To Some Scholars,] The Muslim Who Was Spying For The Enemies Of Islam – The Ruling For Him Is Death"
"All the informants encouraging crimes such as killing people, destroying property, and attacking other Muslims and non-Muslims...
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"[According to some scholars,] the Muslim who was spying for the enemies of Islam – the ruling for him is death.
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"Abu Hanifa and Imam Shafi'i [say that] he goes without killing.
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"[In their opinion,] his punishment is that he gets beaten.
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"But if he is pretending to be a Muslim and he is not Muslim, then his punishment is death.
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"Many people don't know that even the government here spied on them. The same tactics they use on the Muslims now are the same tactics they use on the black people in the past. Those people in the civil right movements... [They] put them in prison and locked them up, [both] the ones who were violent and the ones who were passive. [They] spied on them all and even destroyed some of their movements. Don't think it won't happen to the Muslims. Don't think it isn't happening to the Muslims now."
