In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Betrayal Is the Worst Immoral Trait

 

The First Sermon

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Allah says in His Glorious Book, in the context of detailing the traits of believers: Allah doth command you to render back your Trusts to those to whom they are due.

Trustworthiness is an Islamic and humanistic moral virtue that emerges from a mutual trust between the owner of the trust and the one entrusted with it who will promise that he will keep it and won’t betray it.

Trusts are not confined to money; they invoke everything that one takes on himself to be responsible of. In a marriage contract for example, both the wife and the husband have to commit themselves to all the commitments of the contract. The contract defines the rights of the two parties which is a trust that each has to keep and preserve.

Trustworthiness in this sense includes the responsibilities of the employees, towards their work, through the commitment by doing everything that his job implies.

The employer is also committed to give the worker all what the contract stipulates.

Trustworthiness also includes one’s responsibility towards the society. The society is the big responsibility of all its members. It is Allah’s trust to all of them, which they have to keep a way from fragmentation, collapse or strife and maintain its welfare and development.

The issue of Trustworthiness also extends to the motherland which is Allah’s trust to its citizens, which they ought to safeguard from those who wish to undermine it, impose the arrogant domination over it or create strife among its citizens.

In this respect, the governments are also a trust, the ruler holds the responsibility of keeping the trust of the people invested in him when they accepted him as a ruler, and he has to be trustworthy in taking care of their interests and affairs and in preserving their freedoms. The same thing applies to the elected persons whether in the Parliament or in the various institutions, the votes they get represent a trust whom they should not betray, leading to anything that might negatively effect the nation and the homeland.

The Holy Quran says: Ye that believe! Betray not the trust of Allah and the Messenger, nor misappropriate knowingly things entrusted to you.

The betrayal of the trust is not confined to the persons it has to do with the entire nation and the entire motherland.

In the context of teaching us about the real criterion by which we judge a person if he is a believer: If he is truthful and trustworthy, then he is a real believer whom Allah loves and is satisfied with.

Imam Ali (a.s.) says: The best act of belief is trustworthiness while the worst morals is betrayal.

Imam Al-Baqir says: “There are three things which Allah, the Mighty and the Glorious has not permitted anyone to forsake: returning a trust to its owner, irrespective of whether he is a good person or an evil one; fulfilling one’s promises and covenants, irrespective of whether it has been made to a good person or an evil one; being good and kind towards one’s parents, irrespective of whether they are good or evil.”

Imam As-Sadiq says: Fear Allah and return the trusts to those who have entrusted you with.

If the murderer of the commander of the faithful had entrusted me with a trust I would have returned it to him. What could be bigger than the crime of Ibin Malgam who killed Imam Ali (a.s.), yet As-Sadiq says that he would return his trust to him. This is what we say to those who find it permissible to take the money of non-Muslims, as stealing the money of the banks in foreign countries: This is Haram all in all.

Imam Ali (a.s.) says: “Do not betray the trust of he who trusts you even if he betrays you”. The Messenger (p) says: “He who is not trustworthy is void of belief Allah. He does not consider a person to be a believing one, even if he pronounces the two testimonies unless he is trustworthy. Otherwise, he would be a believer only verbally, while his actions will be those of an unbeliever.

He also says: “whoever betrays a trust in this world and does not return it to its owners, he would die not embracing my religion and he will be met with Allah’s anger.

Allah says: We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but man undertook it; He was indeed unjust and foolish

Imam Ali (a.s.) comments on this Holy verse by saying: Then, as regards to fulfillment of trust, whoever does not pay attention to it will be disappointed. It was placed before the strong skies, vast earths and high mountains but none of them was found to be stronger, vaster, or higher than it. If anything could be unapproachable because of height, vastness, power or strength they would have been unapproachable, but they felt afraid of the evil consequences (of failure in fulfilling a trust) and noticed what a weaker being did not realize it, and this was man.

This Ayah was interpreted as meaning the trust of the commitments that Allah has entrusted us with, with respect to what he ordered us to do and what he prevented us from doing.

We have to rise to the level of commitment to the moral values which preserve us and our societies and draw us close to Allah.

Although the enemy’s leaders have distributed the roles among them, they are still engaged in internal political struggles regarding their positions in the future. However, this contention does not affect the game of conceit with the Palestinian Authority, in which the enemy tries to buy time, undermine the Palestinian demands, and delay the discussion about Jerusalem with the ultimate aim of ruling it out of any future negotiations. The Zionists want to contain this city on all levels, so that it will open for them the sacred doors that open on history, and enable them to demolish the Aqsa Mosque and build instead the Temple of Sulaiman.

On another level, the enemy is trying to convince the Palestinian negotiator with exchanging territories, so that it could keep the settlements and the separating wall which is intended to be the border line that will end the viable Palestinian state. Nevertheless, the Enemy’s Prime Minister is trying to calm the Zionists and assure them that any such agreement will not be executed except after 10 years.

In the light of this, the American and Israeli Satanic goals become clear. They are using the negotiations to further pressurize the Palestinians and make them despair of the dream of a state.

At the same time, they are providing the American Administration with a political card that can be used by the Republican presidential candidate, through the signing of a general declaration of principles that will further undermine the Palestinian cause, while giving the Arabs additional political illusions regarding their critical issues.

We warn the Palestinian Authority from following this line of negotiations, and call on it to support the active resistance that can deter the Israeli project, renew the Arab with an active political and jihadi (militant) movement that raises realistic slogans that asserts that what is taken by force cannot be retrieved expect by force.

Moreover, the successive threats that the Enemy’s war minister is making, that coincide with the extensive maneuvers of the Israeli army, in addition to talk about the ready made plans to attack Iran, might be a part of the internal Israeli political struggle, but also a part of the Israel continuous planning to penetrate the Arab and Muslim internal fronts as well as the opposition forces, once it feels that the circumstances are right and the vigilance has eased.

It is regretful that the Arab world – and the Muslim one, has not taken these threats seriously, and their rulers continue to yield to the Americans by opening up on Israel and closing on the resistance and liberation movement.

It is unfortunate in these circumstance that the reactions between the Arab countries is not established on the basis of vital relations and confronting major challenges, due to certain personal regional and international complications. We even notice that it is difficult for some Arab leaders to meet while they open up on Israel despite its occupation of Palestinian, its besiege of the Palestinian people, its brutal bombing of civilian areas, its daily definition of Palestinian youth, its confiscation of occupied lands to build the settlements and the separating wall and its rejection of the rightful demands of the Palestinian people.

All this suggests that most Arab countries so longer care about Palestine, and find it sufficient to issue lip service resolutions that do not provide any solution to the Palestinians.

Some of these countries even participles in besieging Gaza, on the pretense of the existing diplomatic agreements with Israel and may be even with America. This is what makes the other countries in the West and the East despise the Arab World, especially with regard to its major cases such as that of Iraq which America occupied and destroyed its infrastructure incited strife among its people and pressurized them to forego its sovereignty, since America wishes to stay in Iraq for a long time and perhaps establish military bases. Furthermore, we did not notice any voicing of rejection to the American occupation by the Arab League or even relieving the pains of Iraqi people and cooperating with officials to solve its problems.

Lebanon still lives in the same political whirlpool of being a ball that is kicked by the various players to score points against one another, without returning to any fair and just expert. Thus, each issue became a subject of arbitrary rulings and mutual accusations of betrayal even inside the government institutions. This rhetoric in the political struggle grew more dangerous because it became the language of the street. Love is no longer rooted in the people’s hearts, mercy is no longer the means that express internal relations, and institutions are no longer a place to exchange ideas in an objective and rational way.

We believe that we in Lebanon are in a dire need to enter in a dialogue between those who put the interests of their country before their own, in a rational and objective manner that finds its way to the institutions in a planed and scientific manner.

On another level, the unstable security in several Lebanese regions have begun to worry the people who do not know how the strives find their way, even in the same neighborhood.

Moreover, the media is talking about political money that attracts the people, especially the poor, and pushes them to take tense and sectarian positions to execute certain plans that serve the regional interests by complicating the internal situation… There are several parties that encourage extremism, help terrorism and incite strife, since Lebanon is still the laboratory of foreign experiments that are prepared by the external powers that try to attract the citizens to their own projects, exploiting their poverty.

Thus, people would be killed and wounded and have to leave their homes, for dubious reasons that have nothing to do with the citizens and the homeland, especially with the current international atmosphere that reminds us of the cold war, which make the citizens worry of a hot regional war. This is what we want the Lebanese the Arab and the Muslims to be aware of so that they will not be a scapegoat for the super powers.

Finally, the people receive this month with a soar in the prices of commodities, complete darkness, hunger and thirst; they only find empty promises from this or that minister in the government.

We warn of making the living of the people a part of the political game that could make the temple fall on the heads of everybody. We have to keep in mind that the situation in Lebanon is limited with that of the tense struggle in the region which Lebanon is meant to be a front for, and not a state whose officials and citizens join hands to secure the unity of the Lebanese and build the future.