Congratulations to you all on completing the holy month of Ramadan and Eid mubarak. May God accept from you all your fasting, your prayers, your obedience, your kindness, your charity and your positive example in your micro-communities and in your greater community at large. This Eid was a particularly somber Eid, I think, for everyone. For those who are clued into what goes on in the Muslim world generally, most Eids tend to be somber, though this one in particular is more difficult to accept in a more unanimous fashion. For the most part, people have agreed that perhaps this Eid was not the time to show off and be so extravagant in their celebration, and to be mindful of the terrifying reality that exists in the world, be it in Palestine, Sudan, India, China, the list goes on and on.
A few things to consider at the start. Most of us have seen what Eid looks like for Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. It is very difficult to listen to these children explain how they do not have money for new clothes. In fact, the clothes that you see them wearing is essentially the same clothing that they had on when they were forced to leave their homes and have since been living in camps. Rain has flooded the camps, and they do not have shoes, so their legs and feet are covered in mud that has hardened over. It is almost as if they have natural shoes, made of mud. These children are carrying things and performing really difficult, extraordinary tasks in order to do something as basic as keeping water outside of their living space for their families. A number of children that they interviewed said, "What Eid is there? What part of this is Eid? We do not have Eid this year, we have war." That is what many children said, not just one. If that does not bite at you, then there is something deeply wrong.
It was not just the lack of the ability to celebrate in a material sense, but as we can recall in the weeks leading up to the month of Ramadan, there were talks from Biden and his camp that they ought to tell Israel to ease up during the month of Ramadan. “We do not want really bad press during this month. Perhaps we should have a six-week ceasefire, slow things down, stop pushing ahead with the invasion of Rafah, and pretend to at least show some level of humanity.” Not only did this not come to fruition, but Israel bombed all the way through the month. Israel starved all the way through the month. Israel killed at rates that are shocking. The day of Eid was no exception. Imagine, a bombing campaign is the kind of gift you receive on one of two celebratory days of the year.
One such individual and family that was on the receiving end of the bombing campaign on Eid was that of the family of Ismail Haniyeh, one of the spokesmen and a leader of the resistance movement in Gaza, who, of course, was in Gaza for the longest time. He acted almost as an imam of some of the masajid that were there, and he also tried to sort through people's disputes and difficulties. This dehumanization of figures in the resistance movement is very targeted in particular and with intention. All the film, video, talk and speech from a man like Ismail Haniyeh seems to suggest that he is a deeply spiritual, well educated man who genuinely has concern for the well-being of his fellow Muslims and fellow Palestinians. He is a reasonable man who has even spoken at length about what peace with Israel might look like and that if Israel is truly interested in peace, they need to come speak and act in good faith. It is quite a different narrative than what is usually pushed and suggested regarding people who are involved with the resistance movement.
An interesting fact about Ismail Haniyeh, one that I am not sure if many people know, but his father was the head of a Sufi tariqa in Gaza, and he was raised within that context. Again, he is a deeply spiritual man. I am sure that every single day of his life, at least since October 7th, is filmed as he receives practically the worst news of his entire life. The news is that his entire generations of offspring were cut off in a single strike and they were murdered in cold blood. Several of his sons and amongst them, his grandchildren, all murdered, gone in an instant. Gone, finished. Then the Israeli media and those who express hate towards Palestinians could not help but mock this man in his darkest hour and say, "What a psychopath. Look at how he received the dark news of the death of his children and his grandchildren." They mocked that there will be no successors and no inheritance for him to pass on to the next generation.
Look how he reacts. He simply says, "Alhamdulillah, may God bless them and accept them as martyrs," and he moves on. As simple as that. The response to his reaction was that he is a deeply psychotic man and that this is the type of psychotic mind frame and behavior that leads to a “barbaric action,” as they bill it, such as October 7th. Mind you, we have no idea what happened on October 7th. Let there be an investigation and then we can talk about whether to label one as a barbarian or not. What little evidence that existed was immediately taken off of the internet and no one has access to it, but we do have access to the barbaric nature of the Israeli occupation forces. It is all out there to see, and so I do not hesitate in calling them barbarians. The evidence is clear. But if we review the evidence of October 7th and find that there were heinous crimes committed, let us then come and meet our accountability, but only if and when Israel is prepared to also accept accountability.
Until then, I will not accept Israel’s narrative of October 7th. They will not be the ones who will choose what historically happened on that day. That man took on the hardest moment of his life in front of a camera knowing well that his enemies would be watching, his friends would be watching, and those who he is trying to serve would be watching. In fact, later when they kept pushing him on it, he was mostly silent at first—and this is the point of this khutbah, which thematically I hope to develop—he was measured, he was quiet. Even if he felt pain, it could not be seen on his face. He resorted to calm silence, to remembering his Lord and to remembering his mission.
On a personal note, for the last three days of the month of Ramadan, I decided to try to limit my own speech for that time period. I just wanted to do my best to see if I can have a little bit of self-control and not engage so much on a social level and with so much speaking, and to see if I can focus on mindfulness and God-consciousness in the meantime. I chose to do that instead of doing a seclusion, as was often practiced by the Prophet and his companions, so as to not be so disruptive in my life and my family's lives. During the month of Ramadan, we get used to abstaining from eating and drinking; but there is an old conversation that many of the scholars and mystics have brought up, and there is many ahadith that talk about trying your best not to allow for your fasting to simply become the source of your hunger and thirst, but that you bring something out of it as well. So people like Imam al-Ghazali will go on and on at length about the etiquettes of fasting, how to improve your fasting and particularly the fasting of the tongue.
I noticed a great many things about myself in those three days. I wanted to talk a lot, which is strange because I always thought that I was not much of a talker, but you get to know yourself a little bit more during an experience such as this. I felt the need to talk. I felt the need to interject quite often, and I felt the need to correct. Somehow, I could not perceive that if a conversation was to take place and I was not there to correct it, what would have happened. These urges became very apparent and were quite strange to observe directly, and I cannot even say that I was successful in controlling those urges in that three day period. I was not monk-like in terms of not letting out any words, but the point is that I was trying to limit.
I noticed a few other things. I noticed that we as a generation are not as careful as generations past regarding showing due reverence to our parents and to those who have come before us, those who are older than us and have more experience, those who have put a lot of time and effort into themselves and towards sacrificing for the community. We tend to just skate past their effort, their beauty and their contributions and instead zero in on what we deem to be shortcomings, and we project those shortcomings that we have onto them and blame them secretly. In our hearts, we blame them for our own shortcomings. These are very bitter truths that I have witnessed and felt quite badly about. But that is the way of growth, you have to feel some pain and you have to be honest.
There were some people that I told that I was trying to abstain from talking and there were others that I did not. There were some that had to be told, or else it would cause a problem for them. There were different camps. There were people who really did not care, there were people who struggled not to be able to talk to me, and there were those who I could tell were judgmental, and that is okay. I even became aware of judgment on the level of this seems to be an innovation of sorts, and so I became curious about the practice of silence as a type of fast. I did some reading and found that in all of the modern fatwas, the modern folk were concerned with imitating Jews, and so they strictly forbade speaking or pushed to refrain from speaking. Some were strange in that they said one must at least speak once during the day in order to make sure that a full silence was not met.
A very strange fatwa, but I found it interesting, so I hit the books to see what the tradition says about fasting from speech and I found a lot. I will share a bit of my findings with you. This is from the Musnad of Ahmad. Simak asks Jabir Ibn Samah, "Have you sat with Rasulullah?" Jabir replies, "Yes. He would observe silence for long periods and seldom laugh. His companions would mention poetry in his presence and some affairs, and he would laugh and smile at times." Interesting. Here is Ghazali quoting one of the successors, the Tabis. He says that he who has been given silence and asceticism has been given all knowledge. Or again in the Ihiya Ulum al-Din, he says, "We were told that wisdom has 10 parts and nine of them are silence."
Or from Rabia Ibn Khutaym, who was a pupil of Abdullah Ibn Masood and was one of the reporters that is listed in al-Bukhari. He used to have a paper on which he would write every word that he uttered during the day, and he would then take account of himself at night to see if what he said was to his benefit or to his detriment. Upon review, he would exclaim, "Alas, alas, the silent ones were saved while we still remain behind." So much wisdom just summarily thrown out with a single stroke of a pen of the fatwa. But during that time as I was reflecting on these things, I wanted to return to the Qur'an and I thought, what chapter of the Qur'an may provide me with some proper reflection over the concept of silence? You have probably guessed correctly, I chose Surah Maryam to reflect on. My goodness, what a surah. I highly suggest that everyone return back to the Project Illumine tafsir session on Surah Maryam. It is profound, but not only is it profound, the amount of diligent research that went into understanding the nuances of Jewish law and the historical sources to provide the contexts necessary to understand the thematic logic and the kernels of moral value and treasure that is in that surah [is amazing].
I did not find anything else like it as I continued to search. I read several tafsirs to see if, in fact, anyone else does this work? And I have to say that they did not. Please review the surah, there are many major motifs, and clearly one of them is silence. Given the fact that at the very beginning, the first two stories that are mentioned are that of the narrative of Zechariah and his son, John, as well as the narrative of Mary and her son, Jesus. Both Zechariah and Mary observed a fast of silence, and in terms of Zechariah, it seemed that it was a sign upon him that his wife would bear a child. The majority opinion seems to be that it was enjoined upon him such that he could not speak, and he could only communicate through signs.
Whereas Mary, after giving birth to Jesus, was instructed not to speak, at least for a day. I found that very interesting, and I thought again to myself, with these examples in the Qur'an, how could it be that in the modern age, we jump to have an aggressive reaction to something that we assume is new, but is in fact very, very old? If we return to the tafsir in Project Illumine, Shaykh Khaled Abou El Fadl talks at length about how fasting during the ancient times for the Jews included fasting from food, drink and speech. So among the several motifs is silence, but another motif that is worth considering is what I call to myself the concept of tajdeed versus takhrib. Tajdeed, in essence, means “renewal” or “to make new again.” Takhrib is “to destroy,” “or deconstruct,” or “to bring apart.” Tajdeed and takhrib. In the surah, I saw tensions or at least a relationship between the previous generations and the generations that were to come. I saw concepts and motifs of isolation, withdrawal and disassociation.
I saw parents, some of them righteous and some of them not so righteous, and the relationship between them and their righteous offspring. I saw a motif of vindication and support through those pious children and their successors in an attempt to redeem their parents, their community, and those who are near and dear to their hearts, of evil. I also saw, which comes up in tafsir, the motif of the push and pull between the concept of mercy from ar-Rahman and the concept of kadhalik, as such, it just is this way. Surah Maryam is really densely packed with several motifs.
I want to jump into this because I think that it helps to reflect on this moving forward from this Ramadan in particular. In the early stage of the surah, in verses 1 through 15, Surah Maryam zeros in on Zechariah, who seems to be a priest in the Jewish temple, and thus he is a figure of authority within a traditional institution, and this traditional institution was the representative of monotheism.
What was he tasked with? Whether he was a prophet or not, what was he tasked with? He was tasked with negotiating and reconciling between the powers of tradition and pure, unadulterated devotion to God. That is why, though there is much disagreement in the tafsir, it seems to me that Zechariah was concerned that at his old age and despite his authority within the temple, he was unable to have produced a successor for himself. Wali, he was unable to produce a successor. He saw the other individuals who would succeed him after his death or after his authority dried up, and that the temple would head in a direction of deviance and that it would lose its connection with pure monotheism and would instead rely on the powers of the institution of tradition of establishment. Thus, his prayer was made that he be granted a successor, a son, which was, of course, answered by God. Naturally, Zechariah was confused and wondered, "How could it be, when my wife is at an age where she cannot have children?" God answered, [00:31:32]. “Because I said it is possible.” It is an initial act of mercy.
So he has this fear that his people will fall into misguidance, and he has been granted a son whose name is John, which, of course, means that his role in the temple would live on and continue. But it also seems that John, who was a mercy not only onto his parents as he was very kind, genuine, not rebellious and was wise and loving toward his parents, was also sent by God as a mercy onto the temple and onto those who were monotheists at the time to try to wrestle themselves away from falling into the pitfalls of the power of the institution of tradition.
A small pause here. Zechariah was part of that institution, he was not separate from it. When John was born, he spoke to and did his best to engage that institution in an attempt to help them maintain a tradition of monotheism and purity. God here is indicating that these institutions of tradition do hold power and that they are effective. God is not unaware of the sociology in which He created. He created the concept of institutions of tradition, such that human beings would be able to pass on their moral values and maintain the limits, the ethics and the etiquette of monotheism. However, that does not mean that He chose to control the individual members that made up the collective of that traditional establishment. Tajdeed versus takhrib. Renewal versus destruction.
Did John simply come, say, “this place is terrible,” and just knock down all of the walls in the temple ? Maybe there was a time for that, and I think that there are, in fact, stages; that is why I mentioned at the beginning that there are stages of silence, isolation, withdrawal and disassociation, but not without first making sure that you have done your due diligence. Ultimately for his trouble, John was executed by the tyrant of his time and beheaded, and it seems likely that Zechariah was witness to that. It makes me think of a father who has built a movement and has produced children with the intention that his children would be the bearers of the ethic and the moral value of a monotheistic tradition that is centered around and based on justice and truthfulness, and to then see his successors wiped out and forced to return to God in silence.
The next narrative belongs to that of Mary. Mary is quite different from Zechariah, as she was not an authoritative figure. In fact, she was a professional devotee, all of her time was spent in devotion. Interestingly, she was thrust upon the temple by her mother. The narrative goes that Mary's mother wanted to devote a son to the temple as was commonly customary, and when Mary came to be a woman, her mother thought to herself, "Why should my daughter not also be a devotee? That does not make sense, so let us push back on the tradition and see what comes of it." She had a measured response. She did not just give into the tradition, but she also did not attack it, instead she challenged it by putting her daughter in the devotee role. Her child, seeing the moral value of her mother's position, joined her in that mission, the way that John joined his father, Zechariah, in his mission.
Mary devoted herself fully as if it was her idea. We know, of course, that Mary had a very hard time in the temple. The priests there ridiculed her, mocked her, isolated her and did everything that they possibly could to make her life miserable in order to get her to leave the temple.
She was steadfast and she did not leave; she instead resorted to isolation and reliance on God, such that even her food and drink was provided by God. Mary pushed against orthodoxy within the temple itself until it became untenable to remain. She was isolated, she was withdrawn, but she was still part of the environment in which God had tasked her to be in and challenge. Then when it became untenable, when it was clear that the priests would not follow in challenging themselves and challenging their own establishment, challenging the power of establishment in the name of tradition, it was time for her to go, and she then bore Jesus. There is the very famous instance in which, beforehand, when she received her food and drink, it was given kadhalik. Again, Mary asked, “How could it be that I would have a child without a father?” and God said, kadhalik. “Just because I am telling you, you will.” An active direct mercy.
Again when we go back to the tafsir, we hear at length about how this is an integral moment in the tafsir, that when Mary is giving birth to Jesus under the shade of the palm tree, dates appear above her and she is instructed that she should shake the palm tree and the dates should fall, and she should find her reprieve and sustenance in this way. A two-way relationship. The first part is given by God, and in the second part, God is wishing and hoping for you as a devotee, a servant, to return in terms of juhd (exertion). Then you will begin to see that full possibility of the power of God, and the full rahma (mercy) that is available to you. Now that she has had a child, rather than having to answer the toxic questions and allegations that she is an unchaste woman, Mary was instructed simply not to speak. She was instructed to observe a fast, to not defend herself, and to not defend her honor and her dignity.
It can be a very difficult thing to ask someone to do, but it is not difficult for the one who is purely devoted and has full trust, full patience, full discipline, and is willing to take on a challenging, symbolic act of submission like the act of silence, something that is so total. So she gives birth to Jesus and she raises him to be kind to the poor, to have an extreme amount of empathy with the indigent and those who are ill, and to be a service oriented man. And it is he who spoke for her. In the Study Quran, Maria Dakake makes a very brilliant insight and says it was Jesus who spoke for his mother, and it was John that spoke for Zechariah. I thought that was a very poignant, correct insight and it continues, in fact, throughout the rest of [the surah]. The surah is not just limited to their two stories, there are other prophets that are mentioned.
So of course, everyone knows that the story of Jesus is ultimately that he takes on the powers and the institutions of tradition of his time. He takes on the Roman Empire and he takes on the Jewish priestly class, and ultimately, yet again, the same outcome comes to fruition. The parent outlives the child, they raise their child with the instruments of etiquette, kindness and beauty, but also with a firm diligence towards ensuring that the sources of power maintain the dignity of monotheism by maintaining the moral structure that was instructed to the monotheists, and ultimately he was martyred and killed. Once again, Mary has no choice but to return to silence, not out of weakness, but out of trust and devotion. See how we start with silence, we go through stages of disassociation, withdrawal, isolation and challenging power, and when it becomes untenable, there is no reprieve. Then we go back to withdrawal, isolation, and ultimately silence.
The surah continues verses 41 through 50. It goes into the conversations between the Prophet Abraham with his father, quoting Abraham. It is very clear that Abraham loves his father and is deeply concerned for his father. His father, of course, was a polytheist, and he was deeply upset that his son had become a monotheist. In fact, it seems that his father enjoyed a level of traditional power in the polytheistic community, and that it was a great shock that his son would make a 180° turn to go in the other direction and oppose his father in a theological sense that enjoined the community towards monotheism. This was a great embarrassment for his father, and so he was overcome with anger and disappointment in Abraham. He shunned Abraham and was disgusted by him, telling him, “I will stone you, I will disassociate myself from you,” and Abraham did everything in his power to plead with his father for him to see reason and truth.
When it became clear that his life was in danger and that he would no longer be able to remain in this community after he had delivered the message as he had been enjoined to do, Abraham took his leave, but only after telling his father, “I will ask for your forgiveness from God, who has been merciful towards me.” Yet again, a really amazing relationship between father and son, between child and the one that came before him. In the previous occasions, there was the relationship between Zechariah, the institution, and trying to manage. There was the relationship between Mary, the institution and managing by recognizing the importance of those who have come before you, but also having the kind courage to oppose and challenge. There were also the kind, merciful relationships between John and his father, and Jesus and his mother.
This carried over in the way that they engaged the people who came before them, trying their best to relay the mercy of the message of guidance of monotheism, not one of hate in terms of the way that Terah, the father, was responding to Abraham. So Terah is telling Abraham that he cannot deal with him anymore, and Abraham says, “Fine, I will take my leave, but ultimately I pray for your forgiveness,” and he moves on, then becoming the father of the prophets. His line is granted the light of guidance on both sides, from Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob, and then of course all the way down to Amram and then to our Prophet Muhammad.
Moving on to the verses of 50 through 52. The Prophet Moses was born to a righteous mother. Clearly she must have been righteous, as she was given a revelation to save Moses in a time when the Pharaoh was killing the children of the Israelites every other year in order to do population control. Moses’ brother Aaron was born in one of those years in which they were not killing children, but Moses was born in a year in which they were killing sons and so they famously put him in the basket and he went down the Nile. Then the wife of Pharaoh, Asiya, as it is reported, took in Moses in an act of kindness. Again, God begins the action of kindness, and then in order to unlock the next steps in the kindness, the actors have to have truth, devotion, solace and silence.
Moses’s biological mother was forced to endure silence. She had to face the bitter reality that she could not advocate for her child, and she had to let her child go. How many children have been forced to separate from their mothers in Gaza, in cases where they can only afford to send the children into Egypt, but the mother remains behind? I have watched those mothers say, "At least tonight my child will get a full night's sleep." This is a daily occurrence.
Moses was raised in the palace by an amazingly pious woman, Asiya, who was the wife of Pharaoh. The story is quite long, but ultimately, Moses withdraws from Pharaoh's palace, he receives an education, he lives in isolation, and his isolation brings him close to God and God then tasks him with the very difficult challenge of speaking truth and ending the silence of the Israelites, including his mother’s, towards Pharaoh.
Keep in mind that Asiya, his adoptive mother, also lived in silence. She had no choice but to maintain her belief in a silent way, or else that she would be killed or tortured. In fact, it seems that that may have happened anyway eventually. So Moses was given the task of speaking for the silent devotees of God, but Moses also struggled with something regarding silence, that is, he had an impediment in speech. So Moses asked God for help in order to be eloquent and to speak properly, and so within his family, he was given a brother who would help him in this task, Aaron, who would carry this burden with him.
On a related note, there is a famous hadith in which when the Prophet mentions to Imam Ali his position in comparison to all others, he says, "You hold to me the nearness and the position that Aaron held to Moses." That is a hadith that cannot be rejected, it is mutawatir across all schools of thought in all books. Hadith al-Manzilah.
“You hold this position. The only difference between you and Aaron is that there are no prophets after me, but the task remains the same. The task of John inheriting and keeping alive Zechariah's message, Jesus inheriting and keeping alive Mary's message, of all of the prophets that come from the original father of monotheism, Abraham, to carry the role of guarding pure monotheism came through his line. Of course, I am not saying that as it has to be a genetic, biological thing, but this is a common theme that is impossible to ignore. In this situation, yet again, the Prophet is telling his closest companion that he has this position and his children will need to be brought up to preserve this message.
It is ironic that that man and his children, Hassan and Hussein, would be slaughtered after doing their best to maintain the purity of the monotheistic message. Their daughters would be chained and forced to walk all the way from Iraq to Damascus, humiliated, and for all of their descendants to continue to be persecuted by the Umayyads and the Abbasids for years and years to come, until finally orthodoxy crystallized, and we all decided to accept that indeed, Imam Ali has at least a position within Islam. Ultimately, he was vindicated, but to get there, his family was sacrificed over and over again.
So Moses returned from his isolation and his withdrawal with the help of his brother, and they disassociated from Pharaoh's tyranny once again. Pharaoh clearly is not going to change his mind, but they still take action and approach the institution of tradition once more. They challenge it and they speak truth to it, and they speak truth to it gently.
Not gently as in the sense of, "Do not give me advice unless you're going to give it to me gently." Really, what is being said there is “I do not want to be told the truth, therefore I am trying to find a verse to throw onto you to say, ‘You are being too mean.’ Sometimes, being mean is important, especially when we have told this story over and over again. I am being a little bit loose with my language, but my point is sometimes advocating passionately is an important method in order to deliver the message in a way that the institution of power has no choice but to take seriously. Nonetheless, Moses and Aaron were so secure in their truth that their silent, reserved demeanor held more power than the theatrics of Pharaoh. When that did not work, they returned back to isolation and silence, which would have been a very important thing for Moses to do given the fact that he would then have to continue to face the tyranny of the traditional way of living that had been instilled within Banu Israil (the children of Israel) as they returned right back to idolatry, as was taught to them by the tradition of power of Moses.
It is hard to ignore these themes. Again, I think back to the loss of Ismail Haniyeh's children and his grandchildren, and I wonder if it crossed his mind, "God, who will be my successor?" But in his silence, I wonder if he will answer his own question: “It is you who must succeed.” Not only him, but all of the martyrs in Gaza. It is you who must find the way to grapple with the power of the establishment of tradition. Mary represents a phase in this revolutionary process. At the time in which the surah was revealed in Mecca, Muslims, and the Prophet in particular, had faced severe and horrible persecution. Despite the Prophet's piety and reputation for honesty, he had been accused of being a liar, and thus he was abused verbally, physically, financially, and in every other way that you can possibly imagine. So the only choice that he and Muslims had in that time was that they would apply a discipline of general silence. They were forced to endure silently in a personal sense. They were not to necessarily advocate for themselves, but they were there to advocate for monotheism.
That was the main point, especially that early on in the stage where you, like myself, are still getting used to not just constantly talking and thinking about things from your own perspective. You are focused instead on the task at hand, so you have to have the discipline of silence and trust that God will use you if you open yourself up to be utilized as a tool for purifying your space by challenging that tradition, by changing and reforming tajdeed. Returning Yahya, yahya, to bring back and renew, to bring again life to the tradition that was meant to preserve and protect the values of monotheism, not to deviate and pollute. After the death of Jesus, 600 years passed in which no one was speaking for the saints or prophets, until the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
Now their speech and their actions, through the prophet’s tongue, tell of stories of the martyrdom, the sacrifice of Zechariah, John, Mary and Jesus; the pain of Abraham and losing his father; and the struggles of Moses are all memorialized eternally in a speech that is miraculously protected. They were not silenced. They were told to wait, to be patient and to do what task was there for them to do at the moment. So I ask you, what is your relationship towards your parents? If your parent is a believing parent and a truthful parent? Are you very careful about the way that you speak to them? Are you careful to revere them? Are you careful to not look down upon them even within your own heart? Instead, do you show mercy? And if your parent is not righteous and has, in fact, been very hurtful, have you gone through the steps of trying to speak power to the institution of parenthood?
That is a traditional institution, an establishment. Did you challenge it? Ultimately, when that did not work, did you withdraw and return back to your silence and trust that you have discharged your obligation properly? The final verse in Surah Maryam ends by saying, "How many a generation before them have we destroyed? Dost thou perceive even one of them or hear from them a murmur, they have been silenced." Those generations have been silenced. But when you speak, will you choose to give voice to that of Maryam or will you choose to give voice to the temporal authority? Choose wisely, lest you join the ranks of the generations who chose their own destruction and were ultimately silenced.