In the Name of Allah. All praise is due to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah, and upon all his family and companions, and those who followed him.
“Permission is given (to fight) to those against whom war is made, because they are wronged; and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid."
Peace be upon you, O champions and heroes! Indeed you have presented a great example, teaching your Arab and Islamic Ummah lessons about sacrifice, resilience and fighting injustice.
“I advise my family to fear Allah the Exalted, and have patience, and to consider me a martyr in the cause of Allah the All-Exalted. They then should practice patience and consider me a martyr in Allah’s—the All-Exalted—paradise; and the highest levels of paradise is our gathering place, at our Prophet’s (peace and prayers are upon him).
I say to my brethren, the Mujahideen: practice perseverance in that way, and stand firm on it, fight in the way of one who wants to meet death; it has been proved true that the Prophet (peace and prayers are upon him) said, The best among the martyrs are those who if in the line, they don’t turn away their faces until they get killed; those roll in luxury in the topmost levels of Paradise, and Allah smiles at them, and if your Lord smiles to a servant in life, then there is no calling to account for him.
Then, they are to combat the enemies of Allah, and know that victory comes with patience, and that after every affliction there is easiness.
I ask Allah the Great, the Lord of the great Throne, to accept this deed that relates to us and make it pure for His Bountiful Face.
I ask Allah to render this religion victorious, and render victorious those who support the religion.
It is Allah Who is the All-Knowledgeable and the All-Wise; and peace and prayers are upon our Prophet, upon his family and all of his Companions.
I say to my brethren, the Mujahideen: practice perseverance in that way, and stand firm on it, fight in the way of one who wants to meet death; it has been proved true that the Prophet (peace and prayers are upon him) said, The best among the martyrs are those who if in the line, they don’t turn away their faces until they get killed; those roll in luxury in the topmost levels of Paradise, and Allah smiles at them, and if your Lord smiles to a servant in life, then there is no calling to account for him.
Then, they are to combat the enemies of Allah, and know that victory comes with patience, and that after every affliction there is easiness.
I ask Allah the Great, the Lord of the great Throne, to accept this deed that relates to us and make it pure for His Bountiful Face.
I ask Allah to render this religion victorious, and render victorious those who support the religion.
It is Allah Who is the All-Knowledgeable and the All-Wise; and peace and prayers are upon our Prophet, upon his family and all of his Companions.
Our final prayer is that all praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all that exists, and may peace and blessings be upon our leader, Muhammad, and upon all his family and companions.
Allah is the greatest, and the religion of Allah is the victorious.
Your brother in Islam
Your brother in Islam
History tells us that when Sultan Salahuddin regained Jerusalem from the invading and ruthless Crusaders, who had ninety years earlier massacred and savagely treated its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, he met a group of Latin Christian women who addressed him, "O Sultan! You see that we are leaving. Among us are mothers, wives, daughters or sisters to the soldiers in captivity with you. These men are our support in life, and if we lose them we will lose everything. But if you leave them for our sake, you will be giving us back our lives."
At this our hero Salahuddin smiled and he gave orders that the sons and husbands of those women were to be set free. He went even further and gave money to the women whose supporters were killed in the battle.
An irate French girl came up to the Sultan and said, "You murderer, you have killed my father, and captured both of my brothers, so there remains no one to support me!" Our hero calmly ordered that her brother be set free and then addressed her: "As for your father, he was killed in a war which he started himself and in which many innocent people were killed." The French girl looked down full of shame and regret for her insolence with such an honourable man and with tears in her eyes, she said "Forgive me, sir! It was the bitterness of grief and the description given to us of your people and their cruelty in our country(that caused my insolence). But now I see that you are honourable enemies and I have not despaired of your forgiveness. May God curse the liars in our homeland who decieved us and depicted you as savage assassins who had desecrated our holy places. They exploited emotions (and sent us here i.e.) But when we came to know you, we could not see the truth in any of their claims."
Sultan Salahuddin worked on three following principles in his rule which are extracted from above verse:
1-Aggression is to be met by equal resistance.
2-One should not exceed the limits in punishment.
3-To forgive and treat well the weakened or defeated enemy is better than revenge.
In fact, we are told that Salahuddin used to say, "It is better for one to err in forgiveness than be right in punishment."
However, we should not forget that this was only one of many special qualities that adorned our hero's character. For, he was a real embodiment of Islamic heroism. A well known writer (Abul Hasan Al-Nadvi) puts in the following words.
"A devout Muslim he was, the dominant notes of his character were an acute sense of justice, charitableness, tenderheartedness, patience and courage. Salahuddin's secretary reports that our hero kept himself busy in the recollection of God."
His achievements are miraculous. The times, when he was born were one of the worst times of Muslim era.
He was born of Kurdish parents in Takreet(in Iraq) in 1137 AD, Islamic world was at its worst state, politically and even morally. The sixth century of the Islamic era witnessed the impotence of Abbaside Caliphate and the Saljukide kingdom in the East and the collapse of the Fatimide Dynasty in the Western part. In the fertile Crescent(Today's Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq) the ruler of almost every small town made an independent state of his own and tried to expand his authority through fighting with the other neighbouring city states. Besides almost all the major coastal towns on the East Mediterranean were captured and ruled by the Crusader invaders. Jerusalem (the claimed target of Crusaders) was of course already under foreign ruthless domination.
In brief, the picture was very dark indeed. It called for tremendous courage and selfless soul to take it out of its miserable state and take it to the old heights of forgotten Legacy. For, he was of an unflinching faith. He knew that through the application of Islam and its principles, miracles could be made. For, had not the early Muslims gone out of the deserts and captured the two greatest Empires on earth in their time? What were their arms with which they faced fighters, who were much superior in number, training and equipment? It was certainly their faith in Allaah, devotion to justice and unity. These three things were then the goals which our hero tried to achieve in order to liberate Muslim lands from the Crusaders.
To Salahuddin, Jihad started from inside. He had to watch himself and his aides and soldiers to make sure that they behaved in compliance with Divine commandments in all spheres of life, spiritual, moral, and material. It is reported that prayers and devotion to Allaah were the constant companions of our hero. Once an advisor of his suggested "Why do you not save the money you give in the charity to the poor and religious teachers and spend it in your war efforts?" He answered he could not do that because the prayers of those poors were sure source of his strength in wars.
Ibn Shaddad (an intimate companion of our hero) reports:
"In faith and practise the Sultan was a devout Muslim, ever conforming to the tenets of the orthodox school of faith."Our hero's attitude to material luxury and gains is revealed in the fact that when he died he left nothing except one dinaar and 47 dirhams. Nothing else did he leave by way of houses or goods, or villages or gardens or any personal property. He had not left even as much as that could suffice to defray his burial expenses. All this when he was the indisputable Sultan who ruled from Syria to Lybia (including Paliestine and Egypt) and when the smallest ruler of the time built himself the finest of palaces and possessed hundreds of slaves and heaps of jewels.
