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Is Revenge Worth it? It Hurts You More Than You Think | Khutbah
In the process of seeking revenge, you might just become the person you hate. A look at how we can lose ourselves especially in the process of divorce or dispute, and end up on the wrong side of the equation of justice.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
We begin by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and bearing witness that none has the right to be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for Him. And we bear witness that Muhammad (ﷺ) is His final messenger.
We ask Allah to send His peace and blessings upon him, the prophets and messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him and those that follow in his blessed path until the Day of Judgment. We ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen.
Dear brothers and sisters, 'Alqamah ibn Wa'il (رضي الله عنه) narrates an extremely interesting incident with the Prophet (ﷺ).
And I remember the very first time that I read or actually heard someone speaking about this incident. I thought to myself, this can't be authentic until I actually went and found its authenticity.
So he says from his father that he was sitting with the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) annahu kana qa'idan 'inda rasoolillahi (ﷺ) idh ja'a rajulun yaqoodu akhara binisa'a
He said at that point another man came to the Prophet (ﷺ) while he was sitting and he had another man tied up. So two men come to the Prophet (ﷺ), one of them holding the other and he's got him tied up.
And he says ya rasoolallah, qatala hatha akhi This man killed my brother. So the Prophet (ﷺ) looked at the man that was tied up
and he said to him, aqataltahu, did you really kill him? And before the other man could answer, the one who had him tied up who was full of anger over what had happened to his brother,
he said ya rasoolallah, if he doesn't admit to it then I have all the evidence that he did it anyway. So if he says no, he's in trouble and if he says yes, he's in trouble. The evidence is very clear.
So the man says, na'am qataltahu, yes, I killed him. qataltahu. So the Prophet (ﷺ) said, kayfa qataltahu, tell me what happened?
So he said, kuntu ana wahuwa nahtatibu min shajaratin fasabbani faaghdabani fadarabtu bilfaasi 'ala qarnihi He said to the Prophet (ﷺ)
that we were chopping wood together. Fasabbani, so he insulted me and we got into a heated argument and in the middle of that argument I hit him with my faas, I hit him with my axe and I killed him.
So it was a heated argument that took place. Apparently they were co-workers or they worked together, maybe even relatives, but in the middle of that argument I ended up killing him. So the Prophet (ﷺ)
said to him, hal laka min maal? Do you have any money or any wealth that you can avail yourself of today that perhaps you can offer something to the family because of what you have done?
Qala ya Rasool Allah I have no money illa faasi wa kisa'i I have absolutely no wealth except for my axe and the clothes that are on my back. So the Prophet (ﷺ)
said to him, atura qawmaka yashtaroonak Do you think that your people, your family would come forth or your tribe would come forth and they would offer something on your behalf?
Qala ana ahwanu 'ala qawmi min thalik He said, I don't mean that much to my people. So I have nothing to give, I have nothing to offer. It was a bad argument and the man is resigned
to death. He knows that execution is coming his way because at the end of the day, though he didn't intend to kill the man it happened and he doesn't feel like he has any way to get himself out of the situation. The Prophet (ﷺ)
himself gathers and you go to another narration that explains this a little bit longer the Prophet (ﷺ) himself wants to intercede on behalf of the man with wealth and with prompting the man who has the right to kill him
because of him killing his brother so the Prophet (ﷺ) looks towards the man whose brother was killed and he says forgive him forgive him pardon him and the man refuses
the Prophet (ﷺ) said khudh arshaka take your rope that will pay you will give you something but let it go forgive him, pardon him fa aba and the man refused again
and the Prophet (ﷺ) said in that case idhab faqtulhu fa innaka mithluhu in that case go ahead carry out the death penalty essentially
but know that you are no better than him innaka mithluhu you're just like him and so the man took him and he walked away from the Prophet (ﷺ) alayhi wa sallam so someone goes and runs
behind him and says to him didn't you hear that the Prophet (ﷺ) said to you fa innaka mithluhu you might kill him but if you do so you're just like him don't you see what the Prophet (ﷺ)
is trying to tell you and the man as he's being prompted in that regard and realizing that the Prophet (ﷺ) is telling him something deeper he lets him go and he starts to walk the rest of the way dragging
the rope and the people see him walking in silence through the city with his rope dragging on the ground SubhanAllah this narration is so deep and I remember the very first time
I heard it I thought to myself well that man has the right to do what he's going to do and the Prophet (ﷺ) was sent to establish justice but there's something deeper here that the Prophet (ﷺ)
while he was sent to establish the right to justice the Prophet (ﷺ) also was seeking to bring about the best spiritual potential of those that he was sent to he wasn't condemning the man if he did
what he was going to do but he was telling the man that if you go forth and do this you're going to be just like him and there is so much that cannot translate through a text what did the Prophet (ﷺ) see
of regret perhaps in the man that committed the murder what did the Prophet (ﷺ) see of a rage that would consume that person in the future there is so much that can come through the text which is why the scholars say only the Prophet (ﷺ)
had the right to say to that person do it but you are just like him that a qadi cannot say a judge cannot say to a person fa innaka mithluhu that you'll be just like him because the Prophet (ﷺ) clearly was reading a
situation and only the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) has that right however the lesson that we can still take from it is deeply profound why do I start with this story last week we talked about
the famous conversation between Abu Sufyan and Umar ibn Al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه) after the battle of Uhud and there is so much to take from that conversation qatlana fil jannah wa qatlakum
fil nar our dead are in paradise your dead are in hellfire until the end of it a very famous conversation that we've reflected on quite a bit after Gaza but SubhanAllah there is something else that I want
to extract from that hadith that relates to us in a deeply personal way which is that if you were from the mushrikeen all you had was a day for a day all you had was worldly
victory and worldly defeat because there was absolutely nothing else to encourage you to act in a different way as far as outside or hereafter conceptions were concerned you don't believe in anything deeper
you don't believe in a hereafter you don't believe in divine justice and so what this means as the scholars say if you were to be in Mecca after the battle of Badr put aside the context that indeed they were wrong
and they brought Badr upon themselves as the people of Mecca as the Quraysh in Mecca that they deserve to be fought because of all the fighting that they had done but see it just as a worldly loss from their perspective they don't have
the ability to comfort each other and say our dead are shuhada bi-idhnillahi ta'ala our dead are now with Allah and with the angels and they're roaming through the heavens they don't have any conception of you know nasbir wa nahtasib
we'll be patient and we'll seek the reward in the hereafter they have absolutely nothing they have the full bitterness of the defeat in this dunya without any idea of the sweetness of a hereafter it's gone and that's a miserable existence
they can't comfort themselves with anything and so they were literally boiling in their anger with revenge as the only driver that they had and they said to each other and there are multiple
conversations that you can find between Abu Sufyan and Safwan ibn Umayyah and others that life has no sweetness anymore they had absolutely no way to move past Badr except for seeing blood in their hands
because they had nothing else to drive them the Muslims on the other hand recovered from Uhud again take away right from wrong just the idea of seeing your loved ones killed in battle they had something to comfort themselves with after
Uhud they knew that their dead were in paradise they believed in a concept of shuhada they believed in a concept of a higher reward they knew that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would not let those moments of bitterness go in waste and that's why
they were different you see if you think about what drove Abu Sufyan of a day for a day and then the mutilation of the bodies in Uhud just to feel extra it's not enough for us to kill
because some of ours were killed but we have to cut off noses and cut out the stomachs and chew the livers and dump wine on their bodies we have to go extra to really ensure that we won when the Prophet (ﷺ)
came back and Fath Makkah and had all of these people at his mercy you didn't see them like going and branding some of the disbelievers who carried out the worst atrocities around them you didn't see them
respond in kind because they were fighting for Allah they were forgiving for Allah they were driven by revelation not by revenge there was something else that was moving them and it was
deeper than anything that those people could have understood in the moment and that's the beauty of what we have that justice had to be served Bilal (رضي الله عنه) who was once dragged in the streets in Makkah had to be standing
on top of the Ka'bah saying Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar that indeed what was wrong had to be put in its rightful place but the driver was entirely different and SubhanAllah to take this back to the people of Gaza
I remember when Dr. Farhan when he came back from Gaza one of the things that he mentioned SubhanAllah that surprised him and I asked him what surprised you and a lot of doctors and I know MashaAllah we have many of them here may Allah bless you all and reward you many of them if you ask them what surprised them
they'll give you a similar answer and he said that the people of Gaza are remarkably not bitter like they don't talk that much about revenge as much as they are directing their pain
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and they're seeking the reward from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and seeking that greater victory with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that doesn't mean that in any way the genocide and
atrocity around them or upon them should be excused that doesn't mean in any way that the evil that we see that's being inflicted on them is indeed evil that doesn't mean in any way that we shouldn't stop fighting against
that evil on their behalf that doesn't lessen the betrayal of the Arab and Muslim leaders around them that they complain about but their posture their hearts are directed towards taking this
tragedy and lessening the tragedy of the hereafter they're more driven by that than anything else as people at the spiritual level with what they are encountering and that's this perfect balance that while we
fight for justice we seek the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and at no point do we allow ourselves to be relegated to exclusively a worldly plane now bring it back to our individual
affairs there are lowly goals there are lowly motives and SubhanAllah there is a narration about Ali (رضي الله عنه) we couldn't find a source for it so just take it for its wisdom that many of us have heard that Sayyidina Ali (رضي الله عنه)
one time he was in the battlefield and he overcame a man and as he got that man down the man spit on him and Ali (رضي الله عنه) leaves him and says that I was going to kill you for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala but once you
spit on me it became about something else the ego takes over right we become overpowered by something else the motivation is not the same when we come to our own personal relationships and
zulm that can happen in the capacity of a relationship and it is very very normal that two people can claim to be mazlum can both claim to be oppressed while they're both oppressors in their own right
this is very normal because we interpret the world through our experiences and when we don't have revelation to guide us then we end up creating that world or
reinforcing that world over and over and over again and one of the things SubhanAllah that one of my teachers had told me years ago and I mentioned to him a situation of zulm and he said the first
advice that I would give to you is don't do anything that would take you from being a mazlum to a zalim don't do anything that would take you from being a wronged person to a wronging person don't do anything that would take you out of the category
with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala of being oppressed to being an oppressor and I'm thinking to myself how is that even possible and it is possible because you could start off in a situation indeed being one who is mazlum one who is wrong but then
the course of action that you decide to take as a result of that driven by revenge could put you in the category of being a zalim and you know where this is most true and I want to strike directly at it
without any sugar coating divorce talaq in our community yes in the beginning you often see that one party has wronged another party more
there is a zalim and a mazlum and it's let's say 75% 25% in the beginning or it's 60-40 but there is some sort of clear assignment of wrong doing when someone is analyzing the situation from a little bit
of a distance and says yeah this person took it a little bit too far if I was to assign blame blame is usually on both sides but usually there is a 70-30 there or a 60-40 or something there
where either to the man or the woman you can see that the blame goes a little bit more on one side but then the course of action that's taken afterwards renders the mazlum or the mazluma, the zalim or the zalima
the one who was wrong male or female the wronging party why? because in the capacity of seeking justice you become unjust sometimes
you take it too far and so it could be that indeed you were wronged and no one disputes that but then what you did over the next three months no justification for that and you can't keep milking that I was wronged
initially card because this doesn't work with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that someone wronged me first therefore I can keep this list going and going and going and there is no sanctity anymore to that other human being, to that other person it doesn't work that way in Islam
Allah 'azza wa jal establishes the rights if rights were taken rights should be given back as much as they possibly can but sometimes you go too far and you think it's gonna heal you and it doesn't heal you and if
you take more than what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given you in the capacity of justice on the Day of Judgment what does it benefit you? that you took yourself out of a category from being mazlum to being zalim, from being wronged to being
wronging and that extra property that you took chokes you on the Day of Judgment, those extra sins that you committed in the capacity the extra the extra of the tongue the extra of the hand, the extra of the harm that was done after the divorce
sinks your mizan on the Day of Judgment and causes you to be bankrupt on the Day of Judgment what did you actually benefit? did it heal you here nor did it heal you there? it seemed like it would be sweet it wasn't sweet because one of the greatest lies that
shaytan has ever sold is that revenge is sweet it's not sweet again that doesn't mean don't pursue your huqooq, that doesn't mean relinquish all of your rights that doesn't mean that we have to do better as communities in terms of
establishing weights of justice but at the end of the day the Prophet (ﷺ) warned us from becoming so caught up in this that we no longer see the ability to seek Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's mercy
and to seek Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's pardon and to seek Allah's forgiveness and just like ihsan in a marriage, ihsan in a marriage is giving more than what you demand there's ihsan in divorce as well
as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions to separate in excellence as well ihsan exists in every single domain of our lives even the ugliest scenarios in our lives but it takes you to step back and to say what do I actually
want and SubhanAllah because we are out of time, I don't have time to go into the details of what Allah 'azza wa jal has at the end of Surat Ash-Shura but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says وَلَمَنْ صَبَرَ وَغَفَرَ إِنَّ ذَلِكَ لَمِنْ عَزْمِ الْأُمُورِ for the one who is
patient and forgives then verily that is of the affairs that requires the greatest determination, you have to be really determined, really driven for the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to still be able to show mercy
and forgiveness and patience when you were the initial wronged party however the verses before that Allah 'azza wa jal is distinguishing وَجَزَاءُ سَيِّئَةٍ سَيِّئَةٌ مِثْلُهَا that an evil is repaid with an evil just like it
that there are consequences that we do establish justice in our deen but then it comes to you as a person to say what do I really want I end with the hadith of the Prophet (ﷺ) because of that time and the words of the Prophet (ﷺ)
are comprehensive and they give us so much to reflect upon Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman (رضي الله عنه) narrates that the Prophet (ﷺ) لَا تَكُونُوا إِمَّعًا do not be people without a will of your own and this word imma'a means
you go with the flow and it has different meanings and different connotations and different usages but here the Prophet (ﷺ) says don't be that person who has no will of their own who says إِنْ أَحْسَنَ النَّاسُ أَحْسَنَّا وَإِنْ ظَلَمُوا ظَلَمْنَا
if people treat us well with ihsan we will treat them with ihsan and if they oppress us we will oppress them وَلَكِنْ وَطِّنُوا أَنْفُسَكُمْ إِنْ أَحْسَنَ النَّاسُ أَنْ تُحْسِنُوا وَإِنْ أَسَاءُوا فَلَا تَظْلِمُوا وَإِنْ أَسَاءُوا فَلَا تَظْلِمُوا
the Prophet (ﷺ) said instead relegate yourself train yourself to where if the people show you excellence show them greater excellence show them excellence in return and if they wronged you the Prophet (ﷺ) said
don't wrong them back don't become an oppressor yourself dear brothers and sisters the message is clear don't become what you hate this has a political connotation that all of the dhulm that's done against
us politically does not allow us to become people of dhulm ourselves because why? they are not our teachers Benjamin Netanyahu is not our teacher these people are not our teachers on a personal level because all
of us are going to have moments where we are stung or we feel like we're stung and some of those relationships are going to be more consequential than others be driven by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and what you seek from Him
may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us a people of higher aspirations and higher manners and who seek higher rewards even in the most devastating situations in our lives Allahumma ameen
