Peak of Eloquence Nahjul Balagha By Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib - English Translation - Sermon 13

#suntv
Peak of Eloquence Nahjul Balagha By Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib - English Translation - Sermon 13
Sermon 13
Condemning the People of Basra
You were the army of a woman and in the command of a
quadruped. When it grumbled you responded and when it was wounded
(hamstrung) you fled away. Your character is low and your pledge is
broken. Your faith is hypocrisy. Your water is brackish. He who stays
with you is laden with sins and he who forsakes you secures Allah’s
mercy. As though I see your mosque prominent, resembling the surface of
a boat, while Allah has sent chastisement from above and from below it
and everyone who is on it is drowned.
Another version of the same sermon:
By Allah! Your city would certainly be drowned so much so that
as though I see its mosque like the upper part of a boat or a sitting ostrich
(or, in another version of his statement) like the bosom of a bird in the
deep sea.
Yet Another Version States the Following:
Your city is the most stinking of all the cities as regarding its
clay, the nearest to water and remotest from the sky. It contains nine
tenths of evil. He who enters it is surrounded with his sins and he who is
out of it enjoys Allah’s forgiveness. It seems as though I look at this
habitation of yours that water has so engulfed it that nothing can be seen
of it except the highest part of the mosque appearing like the bosom of a
bird in the deep sea.