I say: These truths and peerless gems from the knowledge of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him, are wholly unknown to those preachers, writers, and academics who reject the law of Allah—“while they think that they are doing good.” They instructed the Palestinians to remain in their land and forbade them from emigrating from it, even though they know that this entails the ruin of their religion and worldly affairs, the destruction of their men, the dishonouring of their women, and the corruption of their young men and women—as recurrent reports concerning them have established—because of the Jews’ tyranny over them, their raids upon their homes, and upon women in their beds, besides other tragedies and disgraces which they know full well, yet deliberately ignore like a foolish ostrich ignoring the hunter!
How I pity them! They are ignorant, and they are ignorant that they are ignorant. How could it be otherwise, when they read in the Quran: “Had We decreed for them, ‘Kill yourselves’ or ‘Leave your homes,’ they would not have done so, except for a few of them”?! I wonder: what do they say about those Palestinians who left their homeland, sometimes as refugees and sometimes as displaced persons? Do they say that they were sinners, claiming that they had vacated their land for the Jews?! Indeed. And what do they say about the millions of Afghans who emigrated from their country to Peshawar, even though their land was not occupied by the Russians in the way that the Jews have occupied Palestine?!
Finally, what do they say about the Bosnians who, in these days, have sought refuge in certain Muslim countries, including Jordan? Do they likewise forbid them from leaving, while the chief instigator of discord says of them as well: “They are coming to us? What are they doing here?!” He too is ignorant of Allah’s saying: “And those who had settled in the land and embraced faith before them love those who emigrated to them, finding no desire in their hearts for what they were given; rather, they give them preference over themselves, even though they are in need.” Or are they, as Allah said of some of them, those who “make it lawful one year and forbid it another”?!
The days will reveal to you what you did not know,
and bring you news from one for whom you made no provision.