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Michigan-based Islamic scholar Imam Ameer Mustapha Elturk, who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon in 1976 during the Lebanese civil war, said in a lecture that was uploaded to YouTube on October 12, 2019 that Allah revealed Islam to the Prophet Muhammad so that it could be made to prevail over all man-made non-Islamic systems of law and government, including liberal democracy, Communism, socialism, and the laws of "We, the People" that are currently in countries such as the United States. He said that Muslims must not abide by any law that contradicts shari'a law, that they must struggle in order to restore the glory of Islam and the Muslims, and that he chose to immigrate to the United States instead of Communist Romania because he had no desire to be a Communist and because the liberty and freedom of speech in the United States enable people to freely preach Islam and propagate Islamic ideology. Imam Elturk said that the Jihad of the Quran and of the heart is the biggest Jihad Muslims can do and that in pursuit of justice, he sometimes has to "deal with" non-Muslims, LGBTQ people, and atheists. The lecture was delivered at the Evergreen Islamic Center in San Jose, California. Imam Elturk is the Imam of the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA) Masjid in Warren, Michigan and on March 8, 2020, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) retweeted a video of Imam Elturk endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for President. The video was uploaded to a Youtube channel run by Hafiz Khan, who is a scholar based in Santa Clara, CA.
Imam Ameer Mustapha Elturk: "Sending Muhammad was not only to establish justice in one small area of the globe, in Arabia. It was to make this system, Islam, prevail over the entire globe.
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"There can be only two ways people can follow: Either the law of the king...
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"Or the law of Allah. We have these two ways. Either... Now, we don't have kingship anymore. We have the law of the people. It is now, 'We, the People', right? We live in America, right? 'We, the People!' It is not the way of the people, as opposed to the way of Allah, Islam. When Allah said [in the Quran:] 'He may make it prevail over all other religions'... To make it prevail over the whole religion is to make it prevail over the entirety of man-made systems and ways of life – all put together... Whether it is liberal democracy, whether it is Communism, whether it is socialism, whatever way of life was invented by Man – Allah's way should prevail over that. Allah's way should prevail over that.
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"Here we are today, in a condition of total misery and humiliation, would you not agree? Where is the glory of Islam? Where is the glory of the believers today? So we need to struggle to bring back the glory of Allah, the glory of Islam.
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"Anything that contravenes the shari'a – we will not listen, we will not obey.
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"Now, in some countries, you cannot... Yeah, you may be able to worship in mosques, but you cannot preach justice or criticize the president – in some parts of the world, whether it is in Syria, Egypt, or maybe other places in the world – so you look for a place where you can at least practice your religion and have the freedom to preach, propagate, and spread the ideology of our faith. That is why we are here.
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"I had a choice to either go to Romania, and become a Communist – because I had a scholarship – or come to America and have to struggle on my own to make it and study. I chose to come to America simply because I am not inclined, nor have I any desire, to become a Communist.
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"We have an opportunity here to practice our religion. Nobody tells us what to do. You can pray 50 times a day, nobody tells you what to do. We have an opportunity here because of the freedom of speech in this country, to propagate our religion freely, without the threat or intimidation of anyone.
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"That is the biggest Jihad we can do – Jihad of the Quran, Jihad of the heart. Faith is an ideology. It manifests itself in Islam. Islam is a complete political, social, and economic system. They boast that their economic system is better than the Islamic economic system. They boast that their social structures are better than our social structure. No! We are way superior to them.
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"I am part of that [social justice] movement of non-Muslims and sometimes I have to deal with LGBTQ people, atheists, and the like – but justice is justice."
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