stand today in front of military tanks to bow down to their Creator. Only days before the uprising, the
tensions between Egyptian Muslims and Christians had grown to an all-time high. Today the
Christians and Muslims stand side by side in defense of each other and their country. The same
people who did not trust each other the day before their ‘heating’, have come together as brothers and
sisters, as one body, to defend their streets, their homes, and their neighborhoods. And through this
hardship, a person who only days before lived for his cell phone, sheesha, and cigarettes, has become
willing to sacrifice his own life to give freedom to his people.
Allah tells us in the Qur’an:
“Say: ‘Who is it that sustains you (in life) from the sky and from the earth? Or who is it that has power
over hearing and sight? And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the dead from the
living? And who is it that rules and regulates all affairs?’ They will soon say, ‘(Allah)’. Say, ‘Will
you not then show piety (to Him)?’” (Qur’an, 10:31)
It is Allah who brings the living out of the dead. He has brought us back from the dead. Don’t think for
a moment that a single moment of this is not happening with a purpose—a deep, profound and
beautiful, liberating purpose. For decades the Egyptian people have lived a life of fear. But when you
let fear control you, you are a slave. Allah has liberated the Egyptian people from this slavery, by
making them face–and overcome–their greatest fear. Allah has liberated the Egyptian people by
allowing them to look their oppressor in the eye and tell him, and the whole world, that they will no
longer live in fear. And so whether Mubarak stays or goes, lives or dies—it doesn’t really matter.
The Egyptian people have already been liberated.
They have been liberated.
Hosni Mubarak is irrelevant. He is nothing but a tool—a tool by which God carries out His plan for
the Egyptian people and for the entire Ummah. A tool to carry out His plan to purify, beatify and
liberate the Egyptian people and the Ummah. And whether we are in Egypt today or not is
unimportant. Egypt is just one limb of our body. The purification of Egypt is a purification of the
whole body of our Ummah. It is the purification of you and me. It is our chance to ask ourselves to
what are we attached. What are we afraid of? What are we striving for? What do we stand for? And
where are we going?
When a body is in a deep, deep slumber—a coma—it is only out of His infinite mercy that He sends
us a wakeup call. It is only from His infinite mercy that He sends to us life where there was once only
death. We were heedless, so He sent us a sign. We were asleep, so he woke us up. We worshiped this
life, and preferred our material possessions to the liberation of a soul attached to, and afraid of
nothing but Him—so He freed us.
How many people will experience something like this in their lifetime? How many people will
experience the opening of a Sea, the humbling of a tyrant? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves why we were