Peak of Eloquence Nahjul Balagha By Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib - English Translation - Sermon 27

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Exhorting People for Jihad
Now then, surely Jihad is one of the doors to Paradise, which
Allah has opened for His chief friends. It is the outfit of piety and the
protective armor of Allah and His trustworthy shield. Whoever abandons
it Allah covers him with the outfit of disgrace and the clothe s of distress.
He is kicked with contempt and scorn and his heart is veiled with screens
(of neglect). Truth is taken away from him because of missing jihad. He
has to suffer ignominy and justice is denied to him.
Beware! I called you (insistently) to fight these people night and
day, secretly and openly and exhorted you to attack them before they
attacked you because by Allah, no people have been attacked in the hearts
of their houses but they suffered disgrace. But you put it off for others and
forsook it till destruction befell you and your cities were occupied. The
horsemen of Banu Ghamid 1 have reached al-Anbar and killed Hassan ibn
Hassan al-Bakri. They have removed your horsemen from the garrison.
I have come to know that everyone of them entered upon Muslim
women and other women under the protection of Islam and took away
their ornaments from their legs, arms, necks and ears. No woman could
resist it except by pronouncing the verse, AWe are from Allah and to Him
we shall return. (Holy Quran, 2: 156) Then they returned, laden with
wealth, without any wound or loss of life. If any Muslim dies of grief
after all this he is not to be blamed but rather there is justification for him
before me.
How strange! How strange! By Allah! My heart sinks to see the
unity of these people in their wrong-doings and your dispersion from the
right. May woe and grief befall you. You have become the target at which
arrows are shot. You are being killed and you do not kill. You are being
attacked but you do not attack. Allah is being disobeyed and you remain
agreeable to it. When I ask you to move against them in the summer you
say it is hot weather, spare us until the heat subsides from us. When I
order you to march in winter you say it is severely cold; give us time until
the cold clears from us. These are just excuses of evading heat or cold
because if you run away from heat and cold, you would be, by Allah,
running away (in a greater degree) from the sword (war).
O you semblance of men, not men, your intelligence is that of
children and your wit is that of the occupants of the curtained canopies
(women kept in seclusion from the outside world). I wish I had not seen
you nor known you. By Allah, this acquaintance has brought about shame
and resulted in repentance. May Allah fight you! You have filled my heart
with puss and loaded my bosom with rage. You made me drink mouthful
after mouthful of grief. You shattered my counsel by disobeying and
leaving me so much so that Quraish started saying that the son of Abu
Talib is brave but does not know (tactics of) war. Allah bless them! Is any
one of them more fierce in war and more older in it than I am? I rose for it
although yet within my twenties and here I am, have crossed over sixty,
but one who is not obeyed can have no opinion.