As-Sahab: Shaykh Abu Layth al-Libbi: “Confronting the War of Prisons”
All praise is due to Allah as He commanded, and prayers and peace be upon the best among humans. O Allah, nothing is easy except what You have made easy, and You, if You so desire, make sorrow easy, O Lord. O Allah, make our affairs easy for us, and make our scattered remains, blood and wounds a sacrifice for the Caliphate of establishment, and make our deeds sincerely for Your Noble Face, for us to meet You, O Lord, with them on the Day of the Transaction. Ameen, ameen, ameen. It is not hidden from a Muslim who understands his religion that the war of prisons and captivity and policy of compulsion and repression is one of the things which infidelity has never stopped committing against the people of creed and people of faith. This is due to the failure of its masters in the field of argument, debate and elucidation, and it is an ancient Pharaonic tradition, with which Pharoah the tyrant confronted the Prophet of Allah, Moses (on whom be peace), as related in the Book of Allah (the Glorious, the Great): “He said, ‘If you take any god other than me, I will make you of the prisoners!’” (26:29) And it is a method which their successors take from their predecessors, and their last copy from their first. “Is this the legacy they have transmitted, one to another? Nay, they are a transgressing people!” (51:53) And Allah (the Glorious, the Great) said, relating the threat of the infidels of Quraysh to the Prophet (peace be upon him), revealing their plotting and exposing their secret conspiracies to harm him: “Remember how the unbelievers plotted against you, to keep you in bonds, or slay you, or expel you. They plot and plan, and Allah too plans, and the best of planners is Allah.” (8:30) So the enemies of Allah have continued to hand down this approach nation to nation, and make use of it century after century, until we have seen in this age of ours – the “age of civilization,” as those enthralled by it call it – a mastery and diversification in the use of this method, as the tyrants of the time and their parties have become experts in the development of this Pharaonic tradition and with it have abandoned the civilization, progress and advancement to which they pretend.
So here is the bearer of the standard of the Cross and commander of the hordes of infidelity, America – which has become accustomed to persecuting the weak and oppressed – showing in its Crusade against Islam and Muslims all types and categories of this which their plotting minds innovated, their latent hatred produced and their so-called civilization gifted, and thus it has filled its public and secret prisons with the people of faith from all around the world: “And they punished them for no other reason than that they believed in Allah, the Strong, the Praiseworthy.” (85:8) And the entire world has seen those disgraceful acts which make the brow sweat and which are perpetrated inside their jails and in the middle of their prisons against the pure and good, and the pictures of our captives in Abu Ghrayb, Guantanamo and Bagram continue to be present in the mind of every Muslim in whose limbs the spirit of faith creeps, and what was hidden was even bitterer. “They respect in a believer neither [ties of] kinship nor covenant! Those are the transgressors.” (9:10) And their degeneracy didn’t stop at the arrest and capture of men. No, they exceeded it with every sordid and vile thing, and it encompassed even pure and chaste women, and if you wish, ask the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan and Jordan about them. And the prisons of the children of Zion are not far from us.
Oh Ummah of Islam, oh people of jealousy and aid: here are your brothers and sisters who have disowned infidelity and its people and only submit to and obey the Lord of the worlds, in the prisons of the Cross-worshippers and their hirelings which are choked with them as they supplicate to Allah and complain to Him about the torture and humiliation they are experiencing, their hearts connected to their Lord, their souls eager for the mobilization of their brothers, as they await their aid hour by hour and moment by moment, and as the Book of Allah (the Glorious, the Great) calls out to us day and night, “And what is the matter with you, that you do not fight in the path of Allah and of the weak and oppressed men, women, and children whose cry is, ‘Our Lord! Rescue us from this village whose people are oppressors, and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help.’” (4:75) Oh believers: until when shall we abandon our brothers to our enemies and betray them as they cry out to us for help? And why are we slow to mobilize for their aid and strive promptly to free them from captivity? Where is our jealousy? Where is our loyalty? Where is our feeling of responsibility?
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “Release the ‘Aani [subject].” And the ‘Aani is the captive. So until when will we leave them in their agony and allow them to twist and turn in their severity, as if their affair doesn’t concern us and as if there are no ties of faith between us? Woe to us, woe to us for our condition. And our Prophet, peace be upon him, says, “The Muslim is the brother of the Muslim: he does not wrong him nor does he extradite him, and whoever fulfils the need of his brother, Allah fulfils his need, and whoever releases a Muslim from anguish, Allah releases him from an anguish of the Day of Resurrection, and whoever protects a Muslim, Allah protects him on the Day of Resurrection.” And he (peace be upon him) would not concern himself with anything as he would concern himself with the matter of his Companions who fell as captives into the hands of their enemies and the matter of the weak and oppressed Muslims who have no means in their power, nor can they find a way, and he would exert himself for them in his supplication and pray for them while standing in his Salat, mentioning them by name: “O Allah, rescue Ayyash bin Abu Rabiah; O Allah, rescue Salamah bin Hisham; O Allah, rescue al-Walid bin al-Walid; O Allah, rescue the weak and oppressed believers.” And he would sometimes ransom them with money, and sometimes with those infidels who would fall into his hands, whether those who he captured on the battlefield, or those who were picked up from a road or a valley or a mountain pass. Moreover, he would send some of his Companions to slip in secretly to rescue those of them who could be rescued. And that was also the tradition of the rightly-guided Caliphs (with whom Allah was pleased), and the compulsory nature of rescuing the captives is the consensus of the Muslim scholars, and it is one of the reasons for Jihad becoming an individual duty. And how numerous are our captives in our era, which we might call “the era of prisons.”
For this reason, Qaida al-Jihad Organization in the Land of Khorasan announces its readiness to receive any Muslim captive exchanged with any party by any party, whether he is from those with whom the prisons of the states of the Cross are choked, or one of those imprisoned in other states of infidelity and apostasy, and foremost among these captives is the virtuous Shaykh and caller Abu Qatada al-Filistini, who is being kept in one of the prisons of Britain. The right of aiding him and all his captive brothers obligates us to stand by their side and find and prepare the place that will shelter them, after the entire earth has shunned them and there only remains the fields of Jihad, among which is perseverant Afghanistan, where Mulla Baradar (may Allah protect him), the deputy of its Emirate, declared this principle in an interview with al-Somood magazine, saying, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is the trench of every Mujahid, whatever his nationality, and preserving this trench is a trust on the shoulders of every Muslim. And at the same time, it is a refuge for the Muslims of the world.” O Allah, rescue Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman; O Allah, rescue Shaykh Abu Qatada; O Allah, rescue Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi; O Allah, rescue Shaykh Sulayman al-Alwaan; O Allah, rescue Shaykh Abu Mundhir al-Saa’idi; O Allah, rescue the captives of the Muslims and their oppressed, and grant them from you a rapid deliverance, noble exit and secure refuge. Verily, You hear all things, and are always near. “Verily, Allah defends those who believe. Verily, Allah does not love every unfaithful, ungrateful one.” (22:38) And our final prayer is that all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds.