1. Advice for the youth of the awakening in Tunisia in particular and the world in general. 2. Praise for the call that started from zero in Tunisia and flourished in a short period, preserving its purity
Brothers and sisters in Islam in Tunisia, peace be upon you and the mercy of God. This is a message from your brother who is no better than you, but rather, it is an eagerness to communicate what God, the Almighty, has placed between us in terms of affection.
I say, dear ones: what you have done in Tunisia is a pride that we set as an example for those who doubt the existence of an alternative to the democratic path. What you have accomplished is by the grace of God alone. Tunisia did not have an open call during the days of "the fugitive" Ben Ali, and it lived for decades in ignorance and the suppression of identity. Then, after the revolution - which started from zero - and in a short period in the life of nations (only two and a half years), its lands are filled with Islamic manifestations, tents, activities, and religious gatherings, and charitable works by the common people, through which you win their hearts and make them love the law of their Lord.
The number of brothers working in the call has become very large, and you have become a difficult number in the Tunisian equation that cannot be overlooked. Your call, by the permission of God, has come out of the bottleneck, so there is no room for suppressing it, eradicating it, and erasing its traces. Rather, by the permission of God, it is growing, standing on its own feet, surprising the farmers, and enraging the disbelievers and hypocrites with it.
May God have mercy on him, perhaps God, the Almighty, has answered the supplication of Uqba bin Nafi when he supplicated for Kairouan, saying: "O God, fill it with knowledge and guidance, and populate it with the obedient and the worshippers, and make it a source of strength for Your religion and humiliation for those who disbelieve in You, and honor Islam through it, and protect it from the tyrants of the earth."
This success of yours, brothers, is a shining model and a contemporary example that we set for those who insist on political participation under the existing systems. Egypt was more qualified than you for the revival of the call after the revolutions, with its thousands of scholars and callers, but it fell into the trap of false democracy, which greatly harmed the Islamic project there and caused a decline in the call. We ask God to be merciful to the Muslims in Egypt and make their awakening from their calamity swift rather than delayed.
Although the callers of what is called "moderate Islam" in Tunisia have fallen into the same trap, God has protected you by His mercy from such participation, and you have remained distant from the conflict between them and the secularists. This conflict, although you may be affected by its results, the most important thing is that you have remained with God and then with your people, distinct from the falsehood of both sides, and your cause has remained pure in the eyes of the people.
Among the blessings of God upon you, dear ones in Tunisia, is that He has granted you patience in the face of the severe blows directed at you by the clear enemies of Islam at times, and by those who appease the disbelievers with the wrath of God at other times. These blows could have led you astray, but it is the support of the Merciful that He has granted you great patience in the face of the temptations of this world. We see young bachelors storming the fields of temptations and desires that teem in Tunisian society, influencing them without being influenced. The message they carry has taken over their hearts until it silenced the whispers of the devil. Among the blessings of God upon you is that He has made you black people who sacrifice for the support of their brothers in Syria, and may God have mercy on them and their oppressed people.
"If you count the blessings of God, you will not be able to enumerate them." "Say, by the grace of God and His mercy, so let them rejoice in that, which is better than what they accumulate." Therefore, dear ones, and out of my envy for you regarding what God has blessed you with, allow your brother to remind you of what will sustain these blessings: "That is because God does not change the blessing He has bestowed upon a people until they change what is within themselves."
Brothers, understand your role in this sensitive historical stage. People have seen the tragic outcome of the path of democracy, so they are now asking: What is the alternative?
The genuine alternative that we call for is steadfastness in the call of the Prophet (peace be upon him); a pure, comprehensive call distinct from falsehood, a call for which all religion is for God, a call that raises the banner of supporting the oppressed.
And you, by the grace of God alone, have been leaders and examples in this. So understand that you are among the arguments of God against His creation in this time, and a manifestation of His mercy and support for those who rely on Him, and a refuge for the perplexed seeking a way to empowerment; those who have strayed between those who were elected for Islam but did not fulfill the right of Islam for which they were elected, and secularists who compete with the former for worldly gains, not for the interest of the people.
So win the hearts of your people, the common people in Tunisia and elsewhere, to your path with your success, and may God protect you from failure, lest you kill hope and be a cause of people's bad opinion of their Lord and the call in the way of their Prophet. Understand your role, know your status and the impact of your success, and the magnitude of the crime if you - God forbid - fail.
How do we avoid failure? God, the Almighty, says: "And do not dispute lest you fail and your strength departs from you." Let us overcome, dear ones, the aspect of mercy among ourselves and with the Muslims, and let us seek excuses for each other. How wretched is he who seeks his share in these days or triumphs for it at the expense of the interest of the nation.
And if some of you, O callers of Tunisia, see that our call is sometimes mixed with harshness, let us remember that God's companionship and support for our call is not achieved by realizing monotheism and salvation from polytheism alone, but it is also necessary to pay attention to etiquette and good morals.
In the agreed-upon hadith of the beginning of revelation, our mother Khadijah, may God be pleased with her, said to the beloved Prophet (peace be upon him): "Nay, rejoice, for by God He will never disgrace you; for by God you join the ties of kinship, you speak the truth, you bear the burden, you help the poor, you honor the guest, and you help in the causes of truth." And all of these are morals whose result was that God, the Almighty, would never disgrace His Prophet (peace be upon him), and this is what we need today; that God does not disgrace us or abandon us.
So it is not appropriate for us to underestimate the importance of paying attention to the study of morals, no matter how severe the circumstances of the Muslims are, for the defect in morals is one of the causes of defeat, just as the defect in creed and methodology is. Therefore, Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak said: "They used to seek etiquette, then knowledge." So, brothers, the study of the doors of etiquette is not from the supererogatory acts, but rather, acting upon them is obligatory, and it requires knowledge of them and studying them, until some scholars like Ibn Muflih in "The Legal Etiquettes" and Ghazali in "The Revival of the Religious Sciences" indicated the obligation of learning Islamic etiquettes.
I advise myself and you, dear ones, to exert our efforts in explaining the truth that we carry to the people more than criticizing the positions of our enemies and opponents. How do we know that we have succeeded in this mission or not?
For example: If a new visitor from the general public enters one of our da'wah pages on the internet, will he find a call that addresses his innate nature and satisfies his instinct for religiosity from subtle explanations, interpretation, and the biography of the beloved (peace be upon him) and an understanding of his role towards his religion and his ummah? Or are our da'wah platforms filled with exposing the shame of the enemies of the Sharia and criticizing their positions?
I do not diminish the importance of declaring disassociation from falsehood and its people, but the question here, brothers, is about "focus." Personally, I sometimes think I need someone to remind me to pay more attention to explaining the truth that I call for than the falsehood that I detest.
I remember an article published during the Tunisian parliamentary elections, in which the author stated: The propaganda launched by the secularists in Tunisia had a counter-effect by making people sympathize with the Ennahda Party, which appeared, as a result of this propaganda, to be oppressed, and at the same time, preoccupied with the bickering with those who oppress it. Let our people, whom we want to call, know that our level is above personal conflicts, but even this methodological discussion should not preoccupy us from explaining the methodology that we carry to the people and claim is the truth. Its explanation makes it easy for them to know the truth from what is beneath it, and by its opposite, things become clear.
Brothers, I advise myself and you to be patient in seeking knowledge, just as we have been patient in facing trials and injustice. Let us be patient in seeking knowledge; for often we find ourselves carried away by the developments of events, reactions to them, and people's stances on them, and this is also important, but oh brothers, it never replaces building a systematic culture with perseverance and patience in acquiring knowledge.
Otherwise, our opinions and stances will differ, and the truth will be lost with the scarcity of scientific goods, leading to division and dispute. Therefore, the scholars said: "If those who do not know were silent, the dispute would be lifted." Many of our disputes may stem from emotional bias towards a group or a preacher, so we defend his opinion, support it, and advocate for it without understanding the evidence of the other party.
The scarcity of scientific goods can threaten the call in Tunisia as it can threaten any other arena. Therefore, there must be a daily dose of knowledge, and we should not reach a stage where we search for something exciting to entertain us, so we watch video clips or articles and share them, thinking that we have thereby served the call, while in reality, we are distracting ourselves from seeking knowledge and being patient with it.
The pleasure you gain from systematic cultural building with long-term perseverance, and the fulfillment you feel in your heart at the end of a beneficial series or a beneficial lecture in Islamic sciences (whether in exegesis, hadith, principles, jurisprudence of reality, or refuting doubts); this pleasure and fulfillment are greater than the pleasure of navigating between short, exciting clips and varied paragraphs.
Dear ones, I advise you to utilize the human momentum that your call has gained by dedicating each art to those who care for it. For the call, as it needs Islamic sciences, also needs brothers to specialize in the sciences of administration, media, politics, the arts of influence, dialogue, and others.
Our battle with falsehood is long, brothers. Facing these sciences is not a distraction or a waste of time from confrontation, as some may think, but an acquisition of what is necessary for the maturity and completeness of our call.
These are quick pieces of advice for myself first, then for brothers I love for the sake of Allah, despite the distances between us. I ask Allah the Almighty to benefit us all with what He teaches us. Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah.