"Everyone is watching the World Cup while Gaza bleeds! No one stands up for us, no one stands up for Gaza... for how long? The whole world is asleep, all the Arabs are asleep, and Gaza bleeds... God is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs."
My brothers and sisters, I do not like stirring emotions without action, guidance, or reinforcing meaning behind them, because emotions left alone may turn into oppression, despair, then escape and forgetting. That is why we do not often share details of what is happening in Gaza—not because the wound has healed, but because if pain is not translated into awareness or action, it becomes a burden on the souls rather than nourishment for them.
Nor am I here to talk about football or its role in numbing people’s minds and distracting them from their greater causes, glorifying its players while the nation needs heroes in other fields.
We share such a clip to tell every living-hearted Muslim: do not make your brothers and sisters in Gaza feel they are left alone. Do not make them feel complete abandonment and crushing forgetfulness. Do not let them see match highlights shared with warmth, analyses written with care, and unrestrained joy announced, while their news, their pain, their siege, their hunger, their blood pass by as if they are distant matters that do not concern us—this is deeply painful for them.
And if we truly cannot do much in terms of immediate support—though this inability does not absolve us of the responsibility to build long-term means of aid—then the least we can do is keep in our hearts and in our reality a visible space of empathy, care, remembrance, and shared feeling, like one body: if one part suffers, the rest of the body responds with sleeplessness and fever.
If someone says, "We have sympathized until our tears dried, we have grieved until our hearts grew weary," that is not what is required. What is required is not grief that drains you and pushes you to flee, but a grief that makes your brothers and sisters feel you still see them, remember them, carry their burdens, and support them as much as you can—even with a word, even with a reminder, even by not participating in a scene that suggests the nation has forgotten them.
The matter, my brothers and sisters, is not a "hobby of pessimism"—it is the life of the heart and belonging to the nation of Islam, without which life is not sweetened nor does it regain meaning. It is not a matter of chivalry to flood the world with posts when Gaza is trending and then forget it when its posts no longer generate enough engagement.
Imagine those of other faiths who still raise their voices in support of Gaza, imagine them seeing Muslims themselves lowering their voices, turning away from their brothers and sisters! What message do we send to the people of Gaza? What message do we send to the world? What remains of the meaning of one body if the wounded limb screams while the rest of the body celebrates?
And peace.