Egyptian American Imam Shaker Elsayed of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Fairfax County, Va., where Anwar Al-Awlaki served as imam in September 2001, criticized Arab regimes in a Friday sermon earlier this month for imitating the West and “scavenging” like an “unwanted dog at the dinner table.”
The Arab regimes were working with Israel to erase Palestine, he said, and were weak—fighting over trivial issues like borders and resources.
Elsayed went on to say that all powers that interfere with the Arabs’ aspirations for glory must be removed by any means possible, and added: “We cannot continue to have peace with repressive regimes. ... We have to remove the source of our misery, [which is] these governments.”
He cited an Arab poem that says that the door to freedom is stained with the blood of the hands that have knocked on it, and he said that the Arabs need people who are willing to “take initiative” and be “ingenious” like the Palestinians in Gaza and like the Afghans in the 1980s.
Imam Elsayed concluded with a prayer asking Allah to grant victory to the mujahideen throughout the world.
The sermon was uploaded to the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center’s YouTube channel. It was the ninth installment of a series of talks titled “The Crisis of Our Ummah.”
In the past, Imam Elsayed has been the subject of criticism and censure for anti-Semitic statements and for statements that have been in support of jihad and female genital mutilation (see MEMRI TV Clips No. 5989, No. 6043, No. 6057 and No. 6378).
According to the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center’s website, Imam Elsayed is the secretary-general of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which has also recently been the subject of criticism surrounding a pro-jihad children’s event at a MAS-affiliated school in Philadelphia (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 7194).
