His Eminence Sheikh Abdurrahman As-Sudais –may Allah protect him– delivered this Khutbah entitled “The Importance of Muslim Unity” in which he dealt with the schisms sneakily disrupting their otherwise unified ranks. He also mentioned that concord and unity of ranks represent the most urgent obligations at this extremely critical moment. Therefore, he appealed to both the Islamic world and the international community to remedy for the sufferings inflicted on Muslims in Syria and elsewhere in the Muslim World and to support them in a unified front so that they can cross to a safe haven.

Praise is exclusively due to Allah! We praise Him, ask His pardon, and return unto Him in repentance. O Allah, it is to You that we address our praise voiced through our expressions of gratitude and glorification which befit Your Majestic Existence!

(The Sheikh cites two lines of poetry):

Praise is sent to you in succession,
Incessantly and devotedly offered to the Lord of the Worlds.
Gratitude is unremittingly extended to You infinitely,
Regardless of occasion or time.   
    
I bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship save Allah alone without associate, a testimony whereby we seek to attain lucidity in identifying truth and   holding fast to it. I equally bear witness that our Master and Prophet Muhammad (Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) is Allah’s Servant and Messenger, who has been sent as grace and peace to the whole universe fragranced with his Message which spreads love and harmony. O Allah, send Your Salat (Graces, Honours, Mercy) and Blessing onto him, onto his family who valiantly pioneered the pursuit of truth, his blessed Companions (?) who persevered despite fits of prevailing misguidance, the tabi'în (the contemporaries of the Companions of the Prophet [Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Sallam] after his death), and all those who have righteously followed their footsteps, seeking to be granted by Allah, the Compassionate, high status and blissful residence in Paradise. May Allah’s bountiful Salat and Grace be unceasingly bestowed on them all till Doomsday!

To start with, O Servants of Allah, observe Taqwa (fear of disobeying Allah’s commands). Indeed, taqwa has numerous and magnificent traits and merits. First, it is pivotal to expiating sins and faults. Second, it epitomises the individual’s moral rectitude in both the herein and the hereafter. Third, it is coterminous with the nation’s glory which has competed with the heaven’s lustrous stars in brilliance: "… and whosoever fears Allâh and keeps his duty to Him, He will expiate from him his sins, and will enlarge his reward." [At-Talaq: 5]

(The Sheikh again cites two lines of poetry):

Cling to taqwa and fear Allah in public and in private alike,
And proceed to cleanse your tainted heart from sins and impurities;
Heed warnings! Our eternal residence will be either in paradise for observing Taqwa,
Or else in hellfire for whoever repudiates taqwa in defiance of Allah.  
 
O Muslims! It is commonplace knowledge to wise and equitable people, together with well-established civilisations, that our superb Islamic Sharia has enlightened their once murky features with the radiance of Islamic justice. As a result, it eradicated their previous injustices and wrongs, neutralised their mutual hostility, refined their sensitivity, and implanted its Islamic benevolence and good ethics in human souls. Subsequently, our outstanding Islamic Sharia guided humanity through an ocean of tormented existence so as to finally reach the safe haven of peaceful and adorable coexistence and a bright future full of ideal hopes.

Eventually, it has currently cast anchor in a harbour whose waves are so tempestuous that a series of devastating predicaments have gained momentum and opposed conflicting sects, factions, and ideologies. The latter have deviated from the Straight Path. Unfortunately, they have induced people into flagrant error and have been in turn imbued with the hideous fountain of lethal oppression.
   
This group of people claim that they are engaged in a constructive process of reform. This is definitely misleading. In fact, they have shed too much blood, scattered mutilated bodies, demolished colossal buildings, and distorted the encompassing values of religion.
 
Brothers and sisters in faith!

Those painful disasters which have targeted the very essence of Islam through disrupting its texture are but an inevitable result of these people’s reductionist view of Islam. They have reduced the majestic truths of Islam, its sublime significance, and its values –which are the manifestation of ultimate justice, wisdom, and rationality– into sheer pseudo-labels, newly-coined deceptive concepts, and illusory imported titles and slogans which seek shelter in the stronghold of intellectual extremism and scientific aberration, thus departing from moderation and poised judgement which they virtually disposed of and cast behind their backs.

The obvious outcome has been armed terrorism, exclusion of the other, unimaginable calamities, over-stringent and hesitant reception of otherwise multifaceted and tolerant truth, and exclusive reliance on a single prescribed school of thought which must be strictly embraced. These are simply alien terrorist ideas. Their poisoned quivers –as it were– have been zealously charged with the arrows of separation and the rifts of disruption. They have also spoiled the unity of the Ummah (Islamic nation) by means of fatal and incisive spearheads, immersing its territory in the quagmire of corrupt speech and wicked conspiracies: "And when it is said to them: "Make not mischief on the earth," they say: "We are only peace-makers."" (11) "Verily! They are the ones who make mischief, but they perceive not." [Al-Baqarah: 11-12]

(The Sheikh recites two lines of poetry):

What have we reaped from the imbecility of a gang,
Who wore the outfit of religion while stabbing it to death?
Theirs are acts of frivolity whose poison is injected into the soil,
Quite remote from the path of right guidance, stumbling and full of woe!   

 O Muslim Ummah!

 Enthusiastic believers really feel surprised by such people who –like their peers everywhere– are ideology-driven and pretentious fellows enslaved by erroneous interpretations, since they distort the words of Allah (?), being misled by certain fanatical drives, partisan whims, and agenda-bound interests characterised by dependency. Therefore, they tend to focus on particulars where generalisation is required, or misinterpret them.

When they voice certain interpretations and get involved in forms of activism,  their manipulation of otherwise straightforward texts in our unblemished Sharia is often expressed under the guise of religion. It is characterised by an extremely audacious approach to text interpretation motivated by the intention of advocates of intellectual terrorism to legitimise bloodshed, murder innocent people, terrorise safe populations, violate the sanctity of human life, demolish property, and ruin acquired benefits in total negligence of the horror attendant upon homicide targeting the lives of believers: "And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell to abide therein; and the Wrath and the Curse of Allâh are upon him, and a great punishment is prepared for him" [An-Nissa’: 93]. In an authentic hadith reported by Imam Bukhari –may Allah have mercy on his soul– the Prophet (Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) was quoted to have said: “He who kills a mu’?hid (a non-Muslim signatory of a non-aggression or peace treaty) with the Muslim community will never sense the smell of Paradise.”  
 
It goes without saying that Allah’s religion is innocent of such practices which are arrogant audacity, undue presumption, and false allegations against religion. Haven’t such vacuous advocacies been previously identified with arrogance, violence, terrorism, barbarism, injustice, and corruption? Haven’t they occasioned the most serious damage to both country and people? Haven’t they perpetrated grave blunders and unforgivable acts after keeping up the masquerade of virtue and kindness? They did all that without showing the least sign of observing taqwa in their discourse and action or being aware of the implications and repercussions of their deeds. Thus, they remain indifferent to people’s predicaments –whether numerous or a few– and pay no attention to the Ummah’s disasters –whether serious or trivial. Moreover, they ignore crises –whether frequent or intermittent– and turn their back to the suffering of weeping eyes.  

(The Sheikh quotes two lines of poetry):

Of incidents we have witnessed so many,
We have grown heartbroken with the horrors thereof;
They have betrayed loss, scepticism, frivolity, and affliction,
Added to aberration and miserable mentality.

Brothers and sisters in faith!

These small groups pretend to be reformers, but they turned to be sheer liars. They have duped naive people and underestimated their intelligence, misleading themselves as well as others. They pretend that they abide by the rules of our noble religion and avoid its proscriptions. Their wicked and immoral actions as well as their adorned but corrupted speech constantly echo their inner selves and betray their hidden intentions, because they have used religion as a springboard and a pretext for realising their mundane goals, concretising their indescribably ravenous caprices, and inducing people into error and loss: "And those who do wrong will come to know by what overturning they will be overturned." [Ash-Shu’ar?’: 227]
 
(The Sheikh further cites two lines of poetry):

You, who have disengaged yourselves from the ideal creed,
Disintegrating into loss and deception, what on earth will be your excuse?
You have thus turned into a universal calamitous curse,
And navigated the unfathomable oceans of terrorism worldwide!    

O Muslims, followers of the Master of humankind (Prophet Muhammad [Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Sallam]), servants of Allah everywhere!

Vicious terrorism has tormented numerous people around the world. It is nourished by support from the powers of evil, envy, extremism, and criminality; that is to say, all the enemies of compassion, humaneness, and noble peace principles, whether they are individuals or groups in many countries.

The most horrible and preoccupying form of such terrorism has been recently recorded in the savage massacre perpetrated by the oppressors in Syria against our brothers and sisters in East Ghuta, located in the cherished Sham region. Chemical weapons were used, along with internationally banned poison gas (equally interdicted by religion). The missile attack, reinforced by air raids, caused heinous disaster and a catastrophic crime against humanity. Reported casualty tolls have reached more than one thousand and four hundred victims, and more than six thousand were wounded, a terrible crime with no parallel in modern human history!
 
It is terrorism in its most barbaric manifestation and with its most hideous methods. O Lord! Send your mercy on us! O Lord! Send your mercy on us! O Lord! Send your mercy on our brothers and sisters! O Lord! Make the ending secure for them! They have shown no mercy for the elderly lying prostrate, babies in cradles, mothers bereaved of their children, widowers, orphans, and grieved innocents.

We call upon the Islamic and international conscience to take serious and prompt action to deter this tyrant regime and take appropriate decisions to dissuade it from perpetrating further oppressive and terrorist actions against our innocent brothers and sisters there (in Syria). In this respect, the government and the people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have taken the initiative to denounce such a massacre –an attitude that deserves our gratitude as well as Allah’s recompense. In so doing, the Kingdom is motivated by its firm belief, fixed principles, and historic stands in such issues. It has equally called on international agencies and organisations to assume their responsibility in this respect.

Hence –O servants of Allah– this imposes on us the obligation to join efforts and keep all sorts of promises and covenants to eradicate the legion of turmoil, tyranny, and chaos. Such enterprise aims at eliminating the ailment caused by those who harbour injustice and terrorism, at remedying for the evildoing they may have perpetrated, and at forcing out all types of felony they may have committed. The main objective is to help the Muslim World, in particular, and the whole human community, in general, to resume their peaceful life undisturbed, safe, happy, and secure in their homeland, enjoying peaceful co-existence, reciprocated solidarity, mutual cooperation, and durable justice.
   
Muslims are now expected to take the initiative to protect the creed of Allah, the True Sovereign and the All-Knowing, and preserve the real meaning of right guidance and religious commitment. This is only feasible when uncompromising advocates of truth take firm positions on its proper reinforcement equipped with the wonderful aesthetics of Islam, starting from reforming oneself and one’s family. A spirit of consensus and mutual compromise has to reign over. Such agreement on a common objective is the main guarantee for the accomplishment of a glorious future where the community occupies a lofty position.   
 
At the same time, Muslims should call on the international community not to walk out on this issue and not to let political interests overpower its moral values. They should also realize the importance of Islamic as well as humanitarian cooperation and coordination in order to face up to those Fitan  that are emerging in some countries and societies.

O believers!
The entire world indeed acknowledges the efforts of our leaders –may Allah protect them and grant them assistance of His own– and commend their vigilance and perseverance in defeating violence and terrorism and laying to rest all fitan and their advocates. Part of such efforts include their honorable striving in this regard and their generous support for the International Centre for the Fight against Terrorism whose purpose is to eradicate terrorism, oppression and tyranny in order to ensure world security and safety, compassion and coalescence among people.

These efforts are but a manifestation of our leaders’ commitment to carry out their great religious obligations vis-à-vis our Ummah and humanity at large. In this, they show no discrimination in colour or race, but face the challenges, fitan, and tragedies afflicting the Ummah, shove away foreign thought and address the causes leading to the distortion of the noble values, laws and principles of Islam. Our faith calls for tolerance and peaceful coexistence in a world of truth, justice and peace. Such efforts also include: the determination to face up with firmness to the advocates of fitan, misguidance and intellectual perversity who seek to denigrate Islam, the drawing of  inspiration from the bright Islamic culture which has been the most important tributary for human civilization and creativity, and the calling on the Ummah leaders, scholars and thinkers to find common ground on which to set up a road map towards saving the Ummah from fitan, addressing its problems and stopping the bloodshed of its people. This may be achieved through the extirpation of those causes leading to conflict in some of its parts, such as hateful partisan and sectarian intolerance which resulted in a great deal of fitan, much antagonism and warring.

 "And verily, this (i.e. Allâh’s Commandments mentioned in the above two Verses 151 and 152) is My Straight Path, so follow it, and follow not (other) paths, for they will separate you away from His Path. This He has ordained for you that you may become Al-Muttaqûn (the pious)."   [Al An’?m: 153]

May Allah protect our Muslim Ummah everywhere from the plotting of enemies who are lying in wait for it to stumble! May Allah keep it strong and steadfast, glorious, leading and prevalent in truth; my Lord is All-Hearing, All-Responding!

This is what we wish and hope for, and it is by our Lord we are inspired to say truthful words and carry out straightforward deeds. Having said this, I ask Almighty Allah to forgive me, you and all Muslims for all our wrongdoings; so ask Him for forgiveness and repentance; indeed my Lord is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful! knows what you do." [Al-‘Ankabut: 45]