The One Child Pharoah Didn't Kill

The One Child Pharaoh Didn't Kill

We bear witness that none are unconditionally obeyed except for Allah, and 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 in his blessed path until the Day of Judgment. We ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen.

A Supplication for Times of Fear

حم، لا يُنصَرون — Hameem, they will not be victorious.

These are not verses from the Quran that you have heard recited, and you may have never recited these words yourself. But I want to actually start with the most practical thing that I can give you from this khutbah before I tell a single story. And that is what is authentically narrated from the Prophet ﷺ — that the companions of the Messenger of Allah said that he said to them:

(Sunan Abi Dawud, Hadith 2597; also reported by al-Tirmidhi)

That if you go out on an expedition and you are taken by a surprise attack, say: حم، لا يُنصَرون — Hameem, they will not be victorious. Hameem, they will not be victorious.

SubhanAllah. It is a profound statement that the Prophet ﷺ is giving — one that clearly has a material manifestation in real time when a people are suffering a frightening situation. And there is an equivalent to this on a personal level — that the Prophet ﷺ taught us that when we experience a moment of doubt, when the Shaytan comes to us and takes us from a journey of admiring the creation of Allah to then questioning whether or not there is a Creator in the first place, he said at that moment say: آمنتُ بالله — I believe in Allah. I believe in Allah. And it will repel the Shaytan. Affirm your belief in Allah at the moment that doubt hits, and you will not allow it to settle in your heart.

And in this situation, the Prophet ﷺ gives us another affirmation: حم، لا يُنصَرون. And I want you to think about it — every single time you turn on the news, every single time you follow the cycle and you feel like another devastating twist has happened and it feels like there is no path to victory — they will not be victorious.

It emanates from the same spirit that the Prophet ﷺ acted upon — as found in the Quran — that when they see the opposing army and it appears to be very large, and when the numbers seem not to be in their favor, they say:

Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best protector. The same words that Ibrahim (peace be upon him) said as he was being thrown into the fire.

But I want to stay with this one for a moment. حم، لا يُنصَرون — they will not be victorious. How will we be victorious? They will not be victorious. When will we be victorious? They will not be victorious. And it's one thing to say it from here — and another thing to say it from here. La yunsaroon. They will not be victorious.

Gaza and the Original Fir'aun

Now I take you to a story. We are 300 days into a genocide in Gaza. The death toll is enormous. There have been more children killed in Gaza in the last ten months than there have been in all combat zones put together over the last five years around the entire world. There are more child amputees in Gaza than child amputees in any place in the world. And there is a Pharaoh that gloats and laughs in front of a TV screen — and you see it.

And like every human being, and any person who has an ounce of empathy in their heart, it hurts for a moment. And then that moment carries on and becomes a day. And you can choose at that point to either become indifferent, deflated, and despondent — or to renew your trust in Allah.

I want to take you back to the story of the original Fir'aun — not the Fir'aun in Benjamin Netanyahu, the original Fir'aun — and how Allah foiled his plan in the wake of his own genocide, his child genocide.

The Dream and the Massacre

When we look at the story of Fir'aun, we find that there are two moments in which he carries out this massacre of children. The first one he does as a precaution. As the mufassireen mentioned, Fir'aun saw a dream. In one narration of that dream, he saw a fire that came from al-Bayt al-Maqdis — from Jerusalem — and that overtook every single home in Egypt except for Bani Israel. In another narration, he saw a child from Bani Israel rising to take his throne. On top of that, some of the mufassireen mentioned that Ibrahim (peace be upon him) had prophesied that a child from his descendants would overthrow a Fir'aun.

And Fir'aun gathers at his time — as we all know — the sahara, the sorcerers, the fortune tellers, the magicians, and he tells them about this dream. And to a tyrant, all children are disposable. There is no regard for human life. He says to his advisors from the soothsayers, the fortune tellers, and the magicians: what am I to do with this dream? And they say to him: the safest way to deal with this is to murder each and every single child from Bani Israel. Kill all the boys that were born this year and spare only the girls.

So I want you to think about the operation as it takes place. Imagine the horror of every mother — who already went through the pain of childbirth — when the soldiers of Fir'aun show up at her house and are completely stone cold to any type of plea from the mother to please spare this child of mine. And one by one, they murdered each and every single boy that they could find. Some mothers tried to hide their children, but these soldiers were ruthless. And subhanAllah, some of the narrations say 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 boys were killed.

The Child Allah Dressed in His Love

And as they go through, Allah mentions the inspiration that He gives to the mother of Musa (peace be upon him) to take her son and to put him in the Nile River. But that's not all that Allah says happens. Allah says:

And I placed upon you a special love from Me, and kept you under My watchful eye.

SubhanAllah. In this situation, let's take a step back. As the mother puts the one child that survives this genocide into the Nile River — what are the chances of the survival of that child going into the Nile River? Allah says two things: other than the promise to bring him back, other than the promise to let that child be the source of victory and that child actually be the nightmare that Fir'aun had — other than all of that — Allah says: I dressed you with My love.

And there's something very beautiful about this expression in particular. And I want you to think about the children of Gaza and the people of Gaza. With all of the propaganda, with all of the Islamophobia, with all the anti-Arab racism and xenophobia that we've seen fester over decades in movies and in press — with all of that — a decent human being looks at these people in Gaza and says: that doesn't look like a terrorist to me. A decent human being looks at the people that are being martyred and says: that's not the type of person that I can find justified — even with all of your propaganda — to dismember into pieces the way that you have. They look at the children of Gaza, and some people's hearts have been brought back to life, and some people are starting to find a connection to a cause that they either had no idea about all these years, or that they used to stand on the opposite side of.

And I placed upon you love. Ibn Abbas (radiallahu ta'ala anhu) says — meaning Allah loved him and Allah made him beloved to the creation. Meaning what? As Qatada (rahimahullah ta'ala) and Ikrimah (radiallahu ta'ala anhu) say — no one would look at Musa (peace be upon him), not knowing anything about where he was from, not knowing anything about the propaganda surrounding the children that would be born — no one looked at Musa (peace be upon him) except that they immediately fell in love with him. Allah dressed him with love, and immediately everyone loved him. You could say everything you wanted about Musa (peace be upon him), but even when the magicians of Fir'aun saw him for the first time, something was already in their hearts — because Allah dressed him in a certain way, and that's nothing that a tyrant could interfere with.

And Allah said: and I kept you under My watchful eye this entire time. He remained under the protection and the sight of Allah even when no one else could watch him.

I see some of these children from Gaza that walk through the ruins of their camps and have had every single member of their family taken away from them. And I remind myself when I look at that — as much as I want to pick that child up — that Allah is watching that child, and that Allah has a plan for that child. What about all the other children that Fir'aun killed? That one? Or this one? All of them were sent to their Jannah. They were sent to their paradise.

And that's what makes the believer different. We can see the ugliness of murder and the beauty of martyrdom in the exact same scene. We can see how nasty it is on this side, and we have certainty in how beautiful it is on the other side — without in any way diminishing our outrage over what has happened here, nor losing trust in what is happening there. Allah had a plan for them. And Allah had a plan for Musa (peace be upon him).

The Makar of Allah — The Divine Plan Against the Tyrant

And of the makar of Allah — the plotting of Allah against the Fir'aun — is that not only would one child survive his genocide, but that that child would grow up in his palace, under his eye, on his watch, and overthrow him, and drown him in the sea by the permission of Allah.

The Fir'aun actually tried this again. And this is what the scholars mention — that there is a second incident where Allah speaks about it in Surah al-A'raf, where Fir'aun mentions that: we are going to kill all of their boys and we are going to spare their girls, and we will usher in an era of complete dominance over them. And this was after Musa (peace be upon him) had believers with him. Fir'aun said: I know how to deal with this — I'll just kill all of their children. I have the playbook — murder their children.

But the one child he couldn't murder — the one child he missed — became the reason for his complete downfall. Because Allah does not miss. They will not be victorious. Say it from the heart — the same heart that is heartbroken over the murder and that has faith in what comes after martyrdom. They will not be victorious, because Allah will not miss.

Is it one of the amputees that has been thrown away into a bordering country where he or she is not wanted? Is it one of the children who is growing up in the refugee camp and who now has a sense of purpose — when their childhood was stolen away from them — as to what they want to live the rest of their life doing, and what they want to meet after death? What is it? Allah has a plan. And the tyrant always misses someone. The tyrant always misses a detail. Allah never misses. And Allah never loses sight of the details.

Leaning on the Promise of Allah

Dear brothers and sisters — it's hot outside, so I'm going to wrap this khutbah up inshAllah ta'ala to spare the people that are sitting outside.

There are times where we are going to get hit hard. We are going to cry a lot. We are going to feel a lot of pain and we are going to wonder: now what? And those are the times that it becomes that much more important for you to lean back on the promise of Allah and to remember that it was not your victory to start with. And also — that true victory is found in the willingness to sacrifice for Allah and the willingness to stand up. And that idea of sacrifice, that idea of freedom, that idea of standing up is resonating now around the world — not just in the Gaza Strip — in ways that it never has before.

Al-Bara' (radiallahu ta'ala anhu) said: you people consider the victory, the conquest, to be the conquest of Mecca — and indeed the conquest of Mecca was a victory. As for us, we see the true victory having come under the tree when we pledged with the Prophet ﷺ in the midst of negotiations that some people saw as a humiliation for the Muslims and a sign of weakness. It was in that — that there was a willingness to sacrifice — that Allah rewarded, and doors were opened that they could not see, even if it wasn't the ultimate door that they wanted to be opened.

You Can Kill a Man, But You Can't Kill an Idea

There's something I want to remind you of with the death and destruction. SubhanAllah — the man who said this quote: a man by the name of Medgar Evers, a famous civil rights icon in the 1960s. He has a famous quote that says: "You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea." It's actually a quote that was on the funeral program of al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz (rahimahullah) — who was murdered at the age of 39, who we are still talking about today, who would have been a hundred years old next year.

If you go to the driveway of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the blood from when he was shot still stains the driveway. You actually stand in the blood of a man. You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea. And that is the mistake — the miscalculation — of every single tyrant, of every single Pharaoh. You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

Alhamdulillah for an idea that is so potent, that is so pervasive, that it has spread throughout the world — and that we are, bi'idhnillahi ta'ala, nurturing in the hearts of our next generations. Alhamdulillah for that.

The Du'a of Badr — A Prayer for Our People

And when we see the pain, I leave you with this du'a of the Prophet ﷺ, as Abdullah ibn Umar (radiallahu ta'ala anhuma) mentioned. He said: we went out on the day of Badr — the Prophet ﷺ had 315 people with him — and he made the following du'a:

(Sunan Abi Dawud, Hadith 2747)

O Allah, they are barefoot — so provide for them mounts. O Allah, they are naked — so clothe them. O Allah, they are hungry — so feed them.

He said that the Prophet ﷺ left the battle of Badr and not a single person that was with him came out of that battle except that he had a camel or two camels, that he was fully clothed and had extra, and that they had something to fill their stomachs with.

And so we complain to Allah:

O Allah, our people are hungry — so feed them.
O Allah, our people are naked — so clothe them.
O Allah, our people do not have clean water — so provide them clean water.
O Allah, our people are under the most mischievous and evil tyrant that we have known in our lifetime — so grant them victory.
O Allah, our people are desperate — so give them hope.
O Allah, our people are feeling neglected — so O Allah, be with them.
O Allah, our people are sad — O Allah, grant them happiness.
O Allah, our people have been betrayed — so O Allah, be their guardian.
O Allah, our people have been cut off — O Allah, place us in solidarity with them.
O Allah, grant our people in Gaza and the oppressed all over the world — victory.