This article is a transcript of a video on Sheikh Hamza Yusuf’s reflections on Saladin’s justice.

I’m proud to be in a community that one of the greatest leaders, who his counterpart is King Richard is honored at the parliament with a statue

And I hope one day the British erect a statue of Salahuddin al Ayyubi to be next to him at that parliament.

Because Salahuddin al Ayyubi is a universal man, he is a man not just the property of the Muslims.

He is the property of everyone who believes what is true and what is right.

Because this is a man who lead an army to Jerusalem after decades of persecution and oppression at the hand of Christian Europeans.

Who in their own records admit, blood flowed in the streets of Jerusalem up until the ankles of their horses.

One day alone 70.000 men, women, children were killed and this is a man who entered that city.

Not only did he give general amnesty but he gave them a right to go back to their countries in Europe with their property.

And demanded that Sunday church be held the next day in their churches.

Not only that, but he reinstated the divine right of every Jew in this planet to go to Jerusalem and celebrate the place that they hold sacred.

The divine right, that is a right from God and the issue of Palestine is not an issue of religion, it’s an issue of sovereignty.

We are not the people who are hateful of the Jews and if you are, then you’re misinterpreting your religion because we have testimony time and again of the honor of the Muslims of the letter sent out by the Ottomans to their embassies in Europe telling them to encourage the Jews, who are persecuted in the lands of Christians to migrate to the Ottoman lands.

We have Jewish Rabbis recorded in works by Bernard Lewis in the “Jews of Islam” where he clearly states that Rabbis in the Ottoman empire sent letter to their co-religionist leave the oppression of the Christians and come to the lands of Muslims, where you will flourish, and this is why I’m proud to be a member of a religion that over a thousand years ago was teaching pluralism, was teaching tolerance, was rejecting the discourse of racism.

I’m proud of the fact say my Prophet said and I know of no other historical prophet that actually condemned racism in no uncertain terms when he said:

“There is no preference of a black man over a white man, and a white man over a black man except in consciousness of God and that is known to only God.”