I want to remind everyone about what our job is as Muslims. We’re not in America, Australia or Europe to simply live our lives and get the best of education, and get the best jobs and make the most money that we can. All of that is good, but it’s not our major job and our major responsibilities as Muslims. Our major responsibility is, yes, to live the good life that we can, to obey Allah as much as we can, but to establish this wonderful life and to share it with our neighbours. Hopefully the neighbours could look at the wonderful message of Islam and they can also see the good practice of the Muslims. Many of them might want to become Muslims or at least understand Islam. And I think that is our job, to at least help our neighbours get a good picture of Islam, whether they want to become Muslim or not, that’s another discussion.

Why do we need to talk about negative stereotypes against Muslims? It hinders our work. I want you to think about Islam as a business, lets put aside for the moment that it is a religion and lets call it a business and as a business we want to get customers. We want people to buy our product like any other business. We live in a very competitive market with a lot of other people with businesses and likewise they’re trying to get people to buy their product. We have Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism and a host of others, each trying to convince people that their way is the best, and rightfully so they should. I think a good Christian would want to share the message as he understands it with his neighbours. I think those with different religions would want to share their religious philosophies with their neighbours and schoolmates. At least you should say that we as Muslims live in a very competitive society where people of different faiths are trying to encourage people to accept their faith.

For example, Macdonalds, I assume that you have Macdonalds in Australia because there are 59,000 outlets around the world in 121 different countries. This company serves 45 million people a day, last year they got revenue of over 40 billion dollars. So it is in their best interests if they want to keep their customers that they are going to advertise their products and try to get people to buy their products. At the same time their competitor is Burger King. Burger King doesn’t want people to buy Macdonalds. Now you don’t expect Macdonalds to advertise for Burger King, it doesn’t make sense. Likewise if you say that we live in this competitive society you don’t expect the Christians and the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists to say: "Oh check out those Muslims, they have a very good religion". It doesn’t happen that way!

Let’s take this competitive nature a step further. I don’t want us to ever be naïve and think that everyone is our friend, they’re not. Reflect on Q60:1 "O you who believe! Take not My enemies and your enemies (i.e. disbelievers and polytheists, etc) as friends, showing affection towards them…" The reality is that we should never be naïve, and realise that we have enemies. Let’s be honest, the great prophet Moosa (Moses) had enemies, Pharaoh was not the friend of Moses and the Children of Israel. The great prophet Jesus had enemies, Noah had enemies, Muhammad (s) had enemies. Their enemies wanted to kill these great noble prophets. The people from Quraish wanted to kill the noble Prophet (s), likewise we too have enemies. It’s not a conspiracy theory, it is a fact that we have enemies. Some of these enemies hide behind the media sometimes. We may not necessarily know them, therefore sometimes when people write negative things about Islam it could be (a) from our enemies, (b) from our competitors (c) it could be from people who mean well but are ignorant and afraid of Islam because they heard something negative against Islam. So we have, historically, a man like Umar ibn al Khattab (ra) who became the second khalifah, a great Muslim, but at first he was an enemy to Islam. Khalid ibn Walid fought against the Muslims in the great Battle of Uhud, he became a Muslim and became a general for the Muslims fighting with the Muslims. So once they understood, Umar and Khalid (ra), as a lot of people understand Islam, they were first enemies but after understanding Islam they become friends of Islam. These are the people who were ignorant about Islam, who didn’t really know about Islam but having been given the correct information they become Muslims themselves.

Now what about the enemies of Islam, what about those people who want to discredit Islam for their own purposes, and who might that be?

Let me show you the awesome power of the media. I recommend a book to the audience, it is a wonderful book everyone should read it. The title of the book is "Unreliable sources: a guide to detecting bias in news media". This book is co-authored by Martin A Lee and Norman Solomon. This book is great. It was not written by Muslims yet it shows the bias in the news media against Muslims, Arabs, black people, women and other minority groups in society. It is a very in-depth book that I recommend.

Let me mention the effect on our business of any news items or any kind of advertisement. There are a number of people who might suggest that they are not affected by advertisements, "I’m different to everyone else". This is what advertisers want you to think….

For example, if we are not affected by advertisements how come last year American businesses spent 200 billion dollars advertising their products? These people are not fools, they know that if they say the right word, a TV ad, or magazine ad etc, they could affect people. They can encourage people to buy their product. Two hundred billion dollars — more that the gross national product of many nations! Why would a company spend 200,000 dollars to produce the average television advertisement and another 250,000 dollars just to "air" the ad?

Another example, in the Super Bowl, a day when so many millions of Americans and people around the world are tuned in to their TV sets for the big game. Why is it that a company would spend 1 million dollars to produce an advertisement and another 1.5 million to air it? Why would they do that, because they know the affect of the media, they know the effect of advertisement. In 1999 in the super bowl a company called Victoria’s Secrets took a 30 second ad in the super bowl. In this ad they paraded half naked women, models, across the screen. They advertised their website in that 30 seconds. After that ad 1 million viewers turned off the TV, turned on their computers and turned on the website that was promoted in those 30 seconds. The media does not affect us? I think not, we are very much so affected!

The people that write against Islam, who are they and what do they want to do? I make a distinction between the masses of the people, the media and the government. The masses of the people are not the government, neither the media. Masses of the people are affected by the media. And the media often can set the tone on what people think about a product, or a politician and what people think about a religion or religious group. Historically we’ve had negative images about Muslims in America, but not every case. The wonderful thing about America and the wonderful thing about Australia is that we have freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. We as Muslims value these freedoms. So those people who would write against Islam they have the right, but we would hope that they would be responsible, that they would only speak the truth and not be biased, but we know that that’s not the case. So the question is what do we do?

Why should we be surprised if someone would paint the picture of Muslims as terrorists, fanatics? Pick up the Quran and study it, from the very beginning, the chapter of surat Al-Fatiha to the very end and you will see that those prophets who came before, the people of their time, their enemies and some of the ignorant people who wrote against the prophets. And made charges against the prophets and those who followed them. They were called majnoon (crazy), insane, magicians — every kind of conceivable name was given to the prophets by the people who were their enemies at the time. So we would be foolish to think that in the year 2001 that there would not be some people who would be against Islam, the Muslims, even other religious, god fearing groups, Christians and Jews. So I don’t want us to think that we’re the only ones that people are writing negative things against, that’s not the truth. It’s not just us, its others as well. Having said that, what are we going to do about it. We can sit back and cry and complain, but what are we going to do about it.

Last year there was a movie that screened in the US called "Scary movie". The sequel to this was released last week called "Scary movie II". I want you to notice something about these movies, if you were to read the reviews to these movies you wouldn’t go to watch it. The critics said it was nothing, know one should watch it. You know what happened? The opposite happened, people started watching it and it grossed 200 million dollars, this is amazing for a movie that critics destroyed. Usually when critics destroy a movie it is destroyed in the box office, people don’t go see it, it’s a commercial failure. But with this movie the opposite happened. Why is that? How come so many went to see it when the critics destroyed it? Because of one secret, a thing called word of mouth. Some people went to see, they spread the word that it was a good movie and people went to see it proving the critics wrong. My challenge to the Muslims in Australia is this, whoever are saying the negative things about Islam, against Islam, let us go show the people, let our neighbours see us and know who we are. Let our classmates see us. Let those who do business with us say by word of mouth that these Muslims are great people, I want to live next to a Muslim, these Muslims are the nicest people I want to work with them, for them, I want a Muslim to work for me, I want to go to school with Muslims, I want to be with Muslims because they are the nicest people in the world — word of mouth. Let the world know who we are, if the media do not write about us in a favourable way, let us at least have the people who we come into contact with say "these Muslims are wonderful people". That is our job.

I came to the conclusion that we as Muslims have to step up and do a better job than what we’ve been doing. I quote a hadith, and I want us to focus on this hadith because this statement of the Prophet Muhammad (s) gives us a great focus on what we should be about as Muslims. He (s) said, "Verily Allah (swt) has prescribed proficiency in everything," and I want you to notice that the prophet (s) said, "everything" not "some things". This is my message to the Muslims in Australia, let us be proficient in everything we do. What do I mean by this?

There is a beautiful verse in the Quran, "Allah did help you when you were a very small force in this battle Badr, therefore fear Allah that you may be thankful." The Battle of Badr, this great battle when the pagan Quraish attacked the Prophet (s) and the handful of believers that were with him. I want you to notice something, in Bukhari hadith volume 5 talks about the great battles that the Prophet participated in. In fact someone asked the question how may battles did the prophet (s) himself participate in? The answer to that is "19". Think about that, here was the beloved of Allah, the Messenger of Allah and last Prophet who was establishing this great religion of Islam, who was protecting the faith and after the Muslims were attacked and ran out of Makkah into Madinah and finally Allah gives permission to fight back those who fight against you because your are oppressed. I want you to know that the Muslims are peaceful by nature, but Allah finally, after13 years, gave the Muslims permission to fight against the enemies. Allah revealed: "And fight in the way of Allah those who fight against you but even then don’t go beyond the boundaries for Allah loves not those who go beyond the boundaries."

After 13 years of being patient and even migrating to get away from the enemies, Allah gives the right to the Muslims to fight back. This shows that the Muslims are those who are servants of Allah, only moving by the direction of Allah (swt). No matter what the enemies did to the Muslims earlier they did not fight back because Allah did not give them the permission yet to fight back. When Allah granted them the right to fight back they did. I want you to check Bukhari under the section on these battles, I want you to read up about the Prophet (s) right before the battle of Badr. It said that he raised his hands making supplication to Allah, asking Allah for victory, talking to Allah. I want you to notice something, Abu Bakr (ra) took the prophet (s) by the hand and said "hasbuka" (enough). Think about that… "hasbuka", the Prophet was praying, he was making supplication and after making supplication Abu Bakr grabbed him and said "Hasbuka", meaning what, we have prayed, now it is time to fight. This is beautiful because Muslims in many instances have become a bit spooky. By this I mean… every Friday at the congregational prayer the imam gives a sermon and at the end of it he makes supplication. In making supplication he asks Allah’s help for the Muslims everywhere, Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, everywhere on the earth where Muslims suffer. Sometimes these imams can make some very thought provoking, emotional supplications. I had the opportunity last week to pray behind the imam of the Masjidul Haram, sheikh AbdurRahman Sudais, a very wonderful reciter of Quran who performed the Jumuah prayers in Cleveland Ohio. He made this wonderful supplication in the end.

Now you could think, if you make a mistake, that supplication is a substitute for work, it’s not! Supplication is within our tradition. The Prophet (s) always made supplication for everything, when he went to bed, putting on his clothes, taking it off, etc. Everywhere he (s) depended on Allah, he made supplication asking Allah to grant him food, but after making the supplication the Prophet (s) did not sit down. The second part of the supplication is to do the work. So prayer is not a substitution for action, we have to pray, that is our tradition, but after pray we must do battle, we have to put in the effort. Think about it, think about the messenger of Allah, the beloved last messenger. Go to the battle of Uhud, here the Prophet was bleeding, fighting the enemies, his tooth knocked out, his helmet bashed in, this was the beloved of Allah. Go to the verse: "Allah did help you in the Battle of Badr…" so what does this mean. If you studied the hadith from Bukhari you will find out that when the Muslims were fighting the enemies Allah sent angels to help them in the Battle. That was a miracle, but the miracle was in the working of the Muslims, not the Muslims sitting down waiting for Allah to do something.

I want you to think about prophet Moses and the children of Israel and I want you to recount with me the miracles that Allah showed them. Think about Moses in the wilderness in the intense heat of the desert, what does Allah do? He gives them shade, as a miracle from Allah He gives them shade and they are able to walk in the desert with no heat of the sun. The children of Israel had no food, they’re in the desert and Allah sends them manna and salwa from the heavens, feeding Moses and the Children of Israel — a miracle from Allah. Not only that, as they approach the sea they are chased by Pharaoh, they are about to be annihilated. Allah splits open the sea and Moses and his followers are able to go through the sea and when Pharaoh chases them Allah turns the sea against Pharaoh and his army and they are drowned. Think about that, all of these miracles witnessed by the children of Israel. What happened? Now Moses gives them the commandment, you want the Holy land, there’s the holy land - go in the holy land and take it, it belongs to you. What do they do, they say no Moses we can’t go there, there’s some people there and we can’t fight them, you Moses go and your god, you go and fight them and we will sit here. All of the miracles Allah showed them, and what was the response… people saying go and fight and we will sit.

Why did I mention this and what does it have to do with us? Look at Prophet Muhammad (s) when they went on the great campaign of Tabuk in the desert. I did not read that Allah sent them the miracle of clouds, there was intense heat and they had to endure the intense heat. I recall when the Quraish were boycotting the Muslims and the Muslims had no food, Allah did not send them manna and salwa (quail), but I read that the Prophet (s) and the great companions had to eat leaves from the trees. They suffered from hunger. When the Muslims were attacked Allah did not open up the sea for them and drown the Quraish. I read that the Prophet and his companions had to fight against their enemies. And some of the Muslims had to die defending the faith of Islam. I remember reading one of the companions saying to the Prophet (s) we will not say to you what the children of Israel said to Moses, we will fight with you, we will be on your right and left, we will surround you.

What does all this have to do with negative stereotypes? Muslims! We cannot afford to sit down and merely pray that Allah will change the condition we are in. Yes make prayers, yes depend on Allah, but remember after the prayer we must go to work, with excellence we must go and deliver the message of Islam and let the people see what Islam is all about.

I conclude with this, I believe that Muslims are good people, we have hypocrites among us like the Prophet (s) had hypocrites among him (s). We have some people who because of weakness do bad things so sometimes when a Muslim is a hypocrite or a Muslim spreads bad things unfortunately then that spreads the light in a negative way against other Muslims and people believe that all Muslims are like that negative image. I believe that Muslims are good and nice people, but I am saying to you today in this city of Sydney that we have to be more than just good people, more than just nice people.

I remember that there was an old coach of the then Brooklyn Dodges named Leo Derosha. He became famous with one of his sayings, he said: "Nice guys finish last." Well, I want to be a nice guy, a want to be a good guy, but I don’t just want to be a nice guy or good Muslim, I want to be a good Muslim who is a competent Muslim who is able to get jobs done. If you had to make a choice about what type of doctor you wanted to be? I would want to be a nice, good and competent doctor. I don’t just want to be a good imam and leader, I want to be competent as well. To be competent Muslim leaders means that we have to do our homework. We have to develop strategies to fight the negative stereotypes.

We can do it, but we have to stop being on the defensive and start going on the offensive. I used to play basketball and my coach use to teach us that a good defense is a good offense. Go on the offense, don’t always be on the defense. Stop always talking about the negative stereotypes against the Muslims and start putting together some positive stereotypes. Remember I said in the beginning that we are like a business, and businesses spend a lot of money on public relations. And I’m saying that we don’t have to have a public relations ploy in order to convince people who we are, we just need to be who we are and then use our own media to show who we are. Use advertisements, spend money and if the American businesses can spend 200 billion dollars advertising their products how much money will we spend? How much money would the Muslims spend in order to put forth the true image of Islam?

If the people of Australia knew Prophet Muhammad (s) they would love him. But they don’t know him because of all of the negative press. I’m saying to you spend money, and I don’t mean a couple of hundred dollars or a couple of thousand dollars, I mean let us spend millions of dollars and let us compete because after all, it is competition. We can do it. We can get on the internet, write books, magazines, and newspapers second to non! I have confidence that we can.

I ask Allah (swt) to help us, to forgive us our sins and to help us to be good Muslims and good examples so that the world in Australia, in Sydney, Melbourne can take the word of mouth and say: "I know the Muslims, I know one in my neighbourhood, they are very nice people, they are good people and you know what, my doctor is a Muslim and not only is he good but he is competent, he gets the job done." "I like these people I don’t believe what they say about them because I know them to be something different, something better, decent." This is the charge that you have in Sydney and the rest of Australia. Take the word to the people. May Allah (swt) bless you and have mercy upon all of you. Ameen.