Chapters
Second: Defensive Striving
Striving - The Door to Paradise · Ahmed Alhasan
Second: Defensive Striving
Defensive striving refers to believers fighting to defend the land of a people who follow the true religion when disbelievers or polytheists attack it. All the divine religions not only permit defensive striving but also make it obligatory for believers. It is a matter of nature and natural instinct, even among animals, which defend their nests, dens, and burrows.
People do not differ over the legitimacy of fighting in defense of one’s land. Even secular laws, including those recognized today by the United Nations, regard resistance to occupation by a land’s native inhabitants as a legitimate right. What is truly astonishing is that [despite this broad agreement], the [religious] leaders of misguidance in our own age have forced us to defend this very right, though it is ordained by God, rooted in human nature and instinct, and widely acknowledged. They are traitors who have betrayed God. They were content with the life of this world and found reassurance in it, and they purchased it and the approval of America and the materialist West at the price of God’s wrath. God said: “The Jews and the Christians will never be pleased with you until you follow their religion. Say: ‘God’s guidance alone is true guidance. If you were to follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, you would have from God neither protector nor helper.’”[61]
Among the noble traits found in the Messenger of God’s counsel to Ibn Masud is this:
O Ibn Masud, Islam began as something strange and will return to being strange once again, so glad tidings to the strangers. Anyone who comes after you and lives to see that time should not greet them in their gatherings, follow their funerals, or visit their sick. They appear to follow your traditions and present themselves under your religion, but act contrary to your actions, so they will die upon a different religion. They are not with me, and I am not with them.…
Ibn Masud, a time will come upon the people when remaining steadfast in one’s religion will be like clutching a live coal in the palm of one’s hand. In that time, if a man is not a wolf, the wolves will devour him.
Ibn Masud, their scholars and jurists are treacherous sinners. Indeed, they are the worst of God’s creation. The same is true of their followers, and of those who go to them, take from them, love them, sit with them, and consult them. They too are the worst of God’s creation. “God will cast them into the Fire of Hell, deaf, dumb, and blind, and they will not return” [Quran 2:18]. “We shall gather them on the Day of Resurrection on their faces, blind, dumb, and deaf. Their refuge will be Hell. Whenever it dies down, We shall intensify it for them in flame” [Quran 17:97]. “Whenever their skins are burned through, We shall replace them with other skins so that they may taste the punishment” [Quran 4:56]. “When they are cast into it, they will hear it drawing in its breath as it boils, almost bursting with rage” [Quran 67:7–8]. “Whenever they wish to escape from its anguish, they will be returned to it, and it will be said to them, ‘Taste the punishment of the burning’” [Quran 22:22]. “In it they will have only wailing, and in it they will hear nothing” [Quran 21:100].
Ibn Masud, they claim to follow my religion, my traditions, my practices, and my laws, but they have nothing to do with me, and I have nothing to do with them.
Ibn Masud, do not sit with them in public assemblies, nor trade with them in the markets, nor point them to the road, nor give them water to drink.
God said: “Whoever desires the life of this world and its adornment-We will repay them fully for their deeds therein, and they will not be deprived therein” [Quran 11:15]. God also said: “Whoever desires the harvest of the Hereafter, We increase his harvest for him; and whoever desires the harvest of this world, We grant him from it, but he will have no share in the Hereafter” [Quran 42:20].
Ibn Masud, how much enmity, hatred, and disputation my community will suffer from them. They are the lowliest of this community in matters of religion. By Him who sent me with the truth, God will surely cause the earth to swallow them up and turn them into apes and pigs.
Then the Messenger of God wept, and we wept with him. We said, “Messenger of God, what is making you weep?” He said, “Mercy for the wretched. God said: ‘If only you could see when they are struck with terror, with no escape, and are seized from a nearby place’ [Quran 34:51], meaning the scholars and the jurists…”[62]
Such is the state of the jurists of the End Times, as described by the Messenger of God. Those who follow them have no excuse for abandoning the obligation of defensive striving.
The question remains: if defending one’s land and homeland accords with the human nature God created in mankind, as He says, “So set your face toward the religion, inclining to truth: the nature of God upon which He created mankind. There is no altering the creation of God. That is the upright religion, but most people do not know,”[63] and if this principle is true, are polytheists and disbelievers truly justified in defending their land and fighting against the guardian and vicegerent of God on the earth when the believers attack it?
The answer is that love of one’s land and homeland arises from the material aspect of human nature, namely the instincts. A person must direct this love properly, or it will become a source of ruin. He should love goodness, righteousness, and justice for his land, not evil, corruption, and oppression. It is certain that God's vicegerent on the earth seeks to spread the word "There is no god but God" throughout the earth and seeks goodness, righteousness, and justice for its people. He seeks to fill the earth with equity and justice. Thus, to truly love one’s land and homeland, and to defend one’s country, is to stand with God’s guardian and vicegerent on the earth, facilitating his entry so that he may spread goodness, righteousness, justice, and the religion of truth. Whoever fights God’s guardian and vicegerent does not desire goodness and righteousness for his land or homeland. Rather, he wants oppression, corruption, and tyranny to remain on the earth, the people of falsehood to dominate this land, and the rule of the tyrants to endure.
Answer to the Central Question
By now, the answer to the question "Why Striving?” should be clear: it is to uphold the word of God.
God said: “Those who believe fight in the path of God, while those who disbelieve fight in the path of falsehood. So fight the allies of Satan; indeed, the plot of Satan is weak.”[64] Also: “Indeed, God has purchased from the believers their lives and their wealth in exchange for Paradise. They fight in the path of God, kill, and are killed. It is a true promise binding upon Him in the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran. Who is truer to his promise than God? So rejoice in the bargain you have struck. That is the great triumph.”[65]
Therefore, striving is for upholding the word of God, not for personal gain, spoils, or national or ethnic interest. The divine religion stands above all such considerations. What unites the believers is the worship of God and obedience to Him, regardless of tribal, national, or ethnic affiliations, all of which ultimately come back to one thing: the ego and love of self.
Whether offensive or defensive, striving must be undertaken to uphold the word of God, not for the defense of homeland or land, so that the believer has no personal interest in it apart from upholding God’s word. That is how divine civilization, divine culture, and divine freedom are established, and all of them stand in complete opposition to the civilization, culture, and freedom championed by the materialist world today. For the banner raised today is nothing but the banner of Satan. Satan’s armies among humans and jinn are doing everything they can to establish it on this earth. By force and by appealing to people’s desires, they seek to persuade them that the Great Imposter’s two mountains (the mountain of fire and the mountain of food)[66] are what serve their interests.
In reality, Satan’s armies have declared war on God's armies and on divine culture, which rests upon the presence of God’s vicegerent on the earth. According to their democratic creed, they see and declare that the rule of Imam al-Mahdi, Jesus, and Elijah is no different from the rule of Saddam (may God curse him), because in their view they are all forms of dictatorship. Therefore, there is no way to establish God’s sovereignty except by first awakening the divine community and then through force.
Just as the armies of Satan established the sovereignty of the people, democracy, and overturned the sovereignty of God through deception and force: “Fight those among the People of the Book who do not believe in God or the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden, and who do not follow the religion of truth, until they pay the tax while subdued.”[67]
Footnotes
- ↩ Quran 2:120.
- ↩ Al-Nuri, Mustadrak al-Wasail [The Supplement to Wasail al-Shia], vol. 12, 327; Ali ibn Zayn al-Abidin al-Hairi, Ilzam al-Nasib fi Ithbat al-Hujjah al-Ghaaib [Compelling the Opponent Through Establishing the Absent Proof], vol. 2, 131.
- ↩ Quran 30:30.
- ↩ Quran 4:76.
- ↩ Quran 9:111.
- ↩ He refers here to the narrative of the Imposter (Antichrist) entering Iraq from Mount Sanam, located between Basra and Kuwait, accompanied by a mountain of fire and a mountain of food. Al-Asbagh ibn Nubatah asked the Commander of the Faithful: “O Commander of the Faithful, what of the Great Deceiver?” He replied: “The Great Deceiver is Saeed ibn al-Sayd. Wretched is the one who believes him, and fortunate is the one who rejects him. He will emerge from Isfahan, from a village called al-Yahudiyyah. His right eye will be effaced, while the other, set in the middle of his forehead, will shine like the morning star. In it will be something like a clot, as though mixed with blood. Between his eyes will be written ‘Disbeliever,’ which every literate and illiterate person will be able to read. He will traverse the seas, and the sun will move with him. Before him will be a mountain of smoke, and behind him, a white mountain that people will believe to be food. He will appear during a severe drought, mounted on a pale donkey whose every stride covers a mile. The earth will be folded up for him from one watering place to the next, and he will pass by no body of water without it sinking into the earth until the Day of Resurrection. He will cry out at the top of his voice so that all between east and west, among the jinn, humans, and devils, will hear him. He will say: ‘Come to me, my friends. I am the one who created and proportioned, ordained and guided. I am your lord most high.’ The enemy of God lies. He is one-eyed, eats food, and walks in the marketplaces, whereas your Lord, Mighty and Majestic, is not one-eyed, does not eat, does not walk, and does not pass away. Exalted is God far above such things. Most of his followers will be the children of fornication and those who wear green cloaks. Then God, Mighty and Majestic, will kill him in Syria, at a pass known as the Pass of Afiq, three hours into Friday, at the hands of the one behind whom the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, will pray. After that will come the Great Calamity.” We asked: “What is that, O Commander of the Faithful?” He said: “The emergence of the Beast from the earth near Safa. With it will be the ring of Solomon son of David and the staff of Moses. It will place the ring on the face of every believer and mark him: ‘This is truly a believer,’ and it will place it on the face of every disbeliever and mark him: ‘This is truly a disbeliever.’ Then the believer will cry out: ‘Woe to you, disbeliever!’ and the disbeliever will say: ‘Glad tidings to you, believer. I wish that today I were like you, so that I might attain a great triumph.’” Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Babawayh al-Sadooq, Kamal al-Din wa Tamam al-Nima [The Perfection of Religion and the Completion of Blessing], 526.
- ↩ Quran 9:29.