From Flotillas to Yajuj & Majuj: How Gaza's Siege Will End | Jumu'ah Khutbah | Dr. Omar Suleiman

From Flotillas to Ya'juj & Ma'juj: How Gaza's Siege Will End

When we bear witness that Muhammad ﷺ is his final messenger, we ask Allah to send his peace and blessings upon him, the prophets and messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him, and those that follow this blessed path until the Day of Judgment. We ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen.

The Story of Dhul Qarnayn and the Wall

Dear brothers and sisters, I was thinking about a very particular portion of Surah Al-Kahf that might seem so distant from the reality that we witness today. But there was something, subhanAllah, that caught my attention — something I was thinking about in the very end of Surah Al-Kahf, which of course it is the sunnah to read on the night and day of Friday — that actually connects quite beautifully to the situation that we see today: the attempts to break the siege on Gaza, the attempts to bring down the wall of oppression. May Allah free our brothers and sisters in Gaza, in Palestine, in Sudan, and all over the world where they are suffering. Allahumma ameen.

I was thinking about this moment where the people complained to Dhul Qarnayn about Ya'juj and Ma'juj. And you have a transformative leader that comes to a people that feel utterly overwhelmed by this group of transgressing people who physically, and from a place of resource, are completely overwhelming their victims. And so they come to him, and they say:

They said to Dhul Qarnayn: "Indeed, Ya'juj and Ma'juj are causing great corruption on this earth. So is it possible that something can be done — that a barrier can be placed between us and them — so that they no longer bother us?"

Now at that point where Allah is telling us the story of Dhul Qarnayn, Allah does not tell us that he simply sends down some blanket from the heavens that covers these people and puts them into a hole to where he will not let them out until the day that He decrees. Allah goes on to tell us about this conversation.

I want to be mindful of time and paraphrase, because it's Surah Al-Kahf and obviously people are going to be reading it. But this point where they're asking him for support — recognizing that he has something to give to them — but the onus of actually building the structure that is going to put these people in a place where they can no longer wreak this havoc is back on the people themselves. Dhul Qarnayn responds to them and he says:

"Then come to me and support me. I need strength, I need manpower. So each one of you is going to have to be a part of putting between us and them some sort of barrier and wall to where they can no longer create this type of havoc and wreak this type of oppression on earth. Bring me these blocks of iron."

And you can imagine — just as Allah does not tell us how many years this happened, or for how many days this took place — you can imagine the lengthy process of each one of them bringing forth and fashioning these blocks of iron, to then put them together, and then having the molten poured between them, and then the architecture and the engineering and the thought and the process and the labor of building what they built, until finally they put them away. We don't take into consideration that Allah tasked each and every single one of them with some sort of participation in that process of overcoming this incredible enemy.

And at the end of it, it is what?

"This is a mercy from your Lord." This is a mercy from your Lord. This wasn't "great job guys, you did this." This wasn't Dhul Qarnayn saying "I had this great amount of strength that Allah bestowed upon me." This is the mercy of your Lord — and when Allah wants this to be undone, Allah will cause it to be undone. How? Where? Who? All of that is to Allah. We take the lessons; we don't ask those types of questions.

But the point is that each one of them was brought into that participation, and the small acts of each one of them caused this mighty army to be put away.

Ya'juj & Ma'juj and the Wall That Is Renewed

Then you look at the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ where he talks about the flip side of that. He said, alayhi al-salatu wa al-salam:

(Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith 4080; also reported in Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2881)

That Ya'juj and Ma'juj dig away at that wall every single day, until they are just about to see the sun — chipping away at that wall, until they are just about to see the sun every single day — and then Allah brings it back to where it is even stronger, where the wall is more strengthened than the day before. And so they say to each other, "We'll come back and we'll do this tomorrow." And then the next day they come and they chip away at this wall, and Allah does the same thing over and over and over again — until one day, they will say "In sha'Allah, we'll come back tomorrow and we'll be able to open this," and Allah will allow it to be opened.

SubhanAllah — you think about this. Was it really the brilliance of the structure that was built that put them away in the first place? And is it the strength of what they have that's going to one day undo them from what they are in? All of this comes back to Allah allowing for what He wants to be strengthened in the moment, and for what He wants to be weakened in the moment — and when Allah wills, just like that, it's broken, it comes apart.

The Flotillas and the Siege of Gaza

Now you might be thinking — what does this have to do with the current situation? SubhanAllah, as I was watching, like many of you, what was happening with these flotillas as they were passing into the waters — and the people of Gaza going out there, and subhanAllah, a small thing they had was the ability to collect some fish while the occupation was busy trying to push off these flotillas.

As I was watching it all go through — and may Allah protect those people — I mean, subhanAllah, some of them I know, and they're really going from a place of iman, some of them reading Qur'an the whole way there; and some of them are going from a place of just human indignation, righteous indignation, of seeing this and their conscience is driving them. And you can see them overwhelming the system. And you watch those flotillas one by one start to overwhelm the system, and you think to yourself: when it was one flotilla it was a nuisance, then it's 10 and we have a crisis, then it's 40, and now it's 400 — and you have some that just left Malaysia and Turkey — again now we have a full-blown crisis on our hands of how we're going to deal with this, the optics of it, the international relations that are at hand. And it was one act that was followed by another act, that was followed by another act, and slowly, slowly it gains momentum and it becomes something.

SubhanAllah, as Allah mentions:

That days come and days go, and things change. You know, if you read back in the 1840s, when the British were imposing the Irish famine upon the Irish — who are now, of course, largely representing a huge contingent of those that are trying to break the siege — it was the Ottoman Empire that was sending ships through in the 1840s to try to break through and reach the Irish because of that famine. History flips. And again: one ship, one crack here, and something starts to come apart.

The Siege of Shi'b Abi Talib: A Prophetic Parallel

And then I started thinking about the siege of the Prophet ﷺ — the boycott in Shi'b Abi Talib, the valley of Abu Talib — and when you actually read about how that siege came undone. Right now we're two years into this genocide — may Allah allow it to end soon and fully, and give victory to our brothers and sisters. The boycott was for three years on the Prophet ﷺ and his family.

And now that you've been watching this for two years, you have a frame of reference to think about what it must have felt like for three years — where you don't see momentum coming from the outside, where you're not receiving the moral and psychological support of someone saying "hey, we're coming" and seeing some sort of worldwide momentum on the outside. You live alone in that valley, and you see the pain of each other, and you don't see anything on the outside. You hear some murmurs of conversation, but given the nature of media back then — three years they were starving in that valley, three years they were being blocked, three years they were being boycotted, three years they were being psychologically tortured and tormented.

And it wasn't like one miracle came down that broke the siege. It actually is a culmination of small acts. So you have different people playing different roles: you have those that are trying to get the food in; you have Hakim ibn Hizam, who wasn't a Muslim at the time, trying to get things to his aunt Khadijah and by extension to the Muslims — trying to sneak camels in, sneak horses in. You think of the process of hiding some food: what's it going to do to solve the entire hunger crisis? Let me hide something and try to get it through. You have Abu Jahl standing in the way, blocking it. You have Abu al-Bakhtari coming and fighting on behalf of Hakim ibn Hizam. You have Mut'im ibn 'Adi — non-Muslims that are taking a stand against the pact that's hanging up in the Ka'bah and demanding that the Quraysh abide by its so-called own principles.

But it wasn't like this major thing came down and ended it all. There are miracles along the process — like the pact being consumed — but it's small acts that multiplied that eventually brought it all down.

Rethinking How Walls of Oppression Fall

Wallahi, I was thinking about this and how we need to probably rethink history a bit, and rethink the way that these things happen. Because all of us are praying for a miracle and waiting for something major to happen. And by the way — in no way am I suggesting that any of this that is being done excuses the pathetic response of Arab and Muslim governments to not be able to actually muster up the power that they have collectively to do what they can, nor our own complicity with what we do here. But to come back to the individuals, and to come back to those small acts — this idea of small acts that multiply.

When you think of a wall — and you think of that wall of apartheid right now that boxes in the Palestinians — I want you to think about how you would want that wall to come down, and how walls of oppression often show cracks. They don't come down with a single blow. They often show cracks.

The believer believes that Allah, when He wills — whether it's through a culmination of small acts, or whether Allah decides like He did with Surah Al-Fil and the army of Abraha — Allah decides and Allah does. But oftentimes when you read history, it's not like these major structures of oppression come down through a single significant event. It's a culmination of small things. And those acts start to multiply, and they start to distract and deflect and scatter the minds and the efforts of the oppressors.

I heard one person from the people of Gaza say: "You know what? If this just gives us a chance to breathe for a day because our enemies are busy —

Every one of these acts is followed by another act, and that act gets bigger and better — and maybe more sincere and more creative — and eventually you start to see these so-called impossible structures start to come down.

That's when you're taking something away. And that's why, as we're now heading into two years of this, as we're feeling deflated with what we're seeing, I want us to take a step back and remind ourselves that it is Allah who allows for His siege to tighten or allows for it to loosen up. And it's the small acts that multiply that often become the asbab — one wave at a time, one du'a at a time, one donation at a time, one stone at a time — to where something gives and it all comes down

Building Up: The Hadith of the House and the Last Brick

But what about building it up? I was also thinking about this hadith of the Prophet ﷺ — it's actually one of my favorite hadiths that describe nubuwwah, that describe prophethood. Whether you're talking to someone who's Muslim or not Muslim, it's a beautiful hadith where the Prophet ﷺ mentioned his example and the example of the prophets that came before him:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 3535; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2286)

It's like someone that's building a house — he builds a beautiful house, brick by brick. And the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said in one narration: 124,000 prophets. So think of 123,999 prophets, brick by brick. It's beautiful, it has a beautiful polished structure now. At every point of the construction you could literally look out the window and see construction. At every point of a construction when it starts to develop, then the previous phase makes a bit more sense. You see four bricks — why are the four bricks there? Why does it look like this? You start to see one side being built, you start to see things being uneven, you start to see things coming together, and you look at it and it doesn't really make sense until the very end.

As the Prophet ﷺ said: people walk by that house and they look at it — and whether the hadith's mention of 124,000 prophets is literal, or it signifies a great number, or there are a few more or a few less — you look at it and you see one brick that's missing from the corner of the structure, and you go: "If only there was a brick in that place." And the Prophet ﷺ said: "I am that labinah — I am that last brick." The Prophet ﷺ is that last missing brick that goes into the structure and completes it and makes it so beautiful. But he is the last brick ﷺ.

I want you to imagine, of those anbiya, of those prophets themselves — if you were a prophet, let's say you were the 30th or the 40th brick of the whole structure, and let's say your people completely rejected you, let's say you had 10 followers, let's say you had 0 followers — and you're looking around and maybe thinking — of course the prophets don't think this because they have wahy — but I'm saying from a human limitation: if I'm in an analogous situation, the human limitation would be: "What was the point? Why am I here, what am I doing here? I came here to get rejected and have no one with me."

Maybe Allah wanted to give this person an individual rank — it's a bestowal of favor on this person so that they stand in the rank of the anbiya on the Day of Judgment. Or, maybe you were just the brick for another brick after you. Maybe through you, a climate was being nurtured. Maybe through you, a stage was being set. Maybe it actually wasn't about anything that would happen in your lifetime, anything that you would see that's observable. Maybe you weren't the point — but it was what was going to be built on top of you, and after you, and around you.

SubhanAllah — these images of slowly chipping away at something, or slowly building something. If you were to take the amthal in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, the parables in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, they are many, they are many for us to reflect upon. But it's that one brick at a time. We have to stop thinking about our Islamic history as some major thing happening. There is a generation, there is a culture, there are multiplied acts, there are people in the background — there is so much that goes into it.

And at the end of the day, the thing is: we don't have to see it here. We just want Allah to see it and accept it. And we know that one day it will all make sense in His plan. Because before the house is built, before the wall is constructed, before the wall comes down — Allah sees it all. It belonged to Allah before, and it belongs to Allah after.

Conclusion: Be the Chip, Be the Brick

So, dear brothers and sisters, as we see these acts, ask yourself: how are you chipping away at the wall of oppression? That small act that you're doing — what are you contributing to that? And then, as you reflect upon that — and in the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ of the beautiful house that's being built — we have an opportunity here as a community to build something that's long-lasting, in sha'Allah, that will be of immediate benefit to us in our lifetimes, but also to generations to come. And we don't know the potential of what will come after.

Ask yourself how you contribute to that next brick,

And how Allah rewards you — if you are sincere with the intention — of either an entire structure of oppression coming down, or a structure of righteousness coming up, because you decided to be that one chip, or to be that one brick.

May Allah use us in ways that are pleasing to Him. May Allah allow us to see the entire structure of that zulm that is suffocating our brothers and sisters come down. May Allah allow us to be a part of it. And may Allah allow us to be a part of building those things which are pleasing to Him. And may Allah use us, and not replace us with those whom He deems more worthy. Allahumma ameen.