Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. We begin by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala by bearing witness that none has the right to be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for him. And we bear witness that Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam 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. And we ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahuma ameen. Dear brothers and sisters, this morning I had extreme sadness over what many of you probably witnessed of the shamelessness of the Zionist occupation of Palestine in attacking the funeral of a Palestinian-American Christian journalist in fact, and probably facing no consequences for it whatsoever from the powers that be. But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala of course is greater and bigger, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is swift in his accountability. And then before Jum'ah, intense joy with two sisters bi-idhnillahi ta'ala that will be embracing Islam today with us after a very long journey, after having tuned into much of what has happened from this masjid for a very long time, and now being able to physically be present with us and to officially come into this religion and to come into this family. And it's sort of like that on a daily basis now, isn't it? You have this roller coaster of emotions, and the feelings are certainly intense, that you see intense injustice and then moments of intense joy. And in many ways when we spoke about the life of the Prophet ﷺ, they were between moments of intense sadness and intense joy. There wasn't a dull moment in the seerah of the Prophet ﷺ. And all of them force us to take a step back and to ask ourselves, what should our priorities be as Muslims? And this is a deep question, a very deep question that has multiple facets to it.
One of them is what cause of the Muslims should take our energy most? There are so many causes, so many areas of oppression. If I start to mention them, I will inevitably leave some of them out and hence offend somebody. And I don't want to do that, but it's just that many people, it's that many causes. And the reality is that the blood of your brothers and sisters is sacred everywhere, it's sanctified everywhere. And Allah ﷻ is not driven by the trends, by the media, by the proportionality of exposure. But rather whoever saves one life, it is as if they have saved all of mankind. And whoever kills one person, it is as if they have killed all of mankind. If it is done in injustice, and we see murder, murder, murder, injustice, injustice, injustice. And all of that can really hurt and pull. And it's natural that the causes that perhaps we can relate to, due to some sort of personal experience or connection, are the ones that are going to pull at our hearts more. And of course when it comes to al-Aqsa, al-Aqsa, the first Qibla of Islam, Jerusalem, Palestine, pulls more at the heart of the believer. And that is part of Iman, that's part of faith. That's one layer of this. Which cause? How do we do a proper assessment of the needs of the ummah, and then have specialized efforts that we can support? And the other part of this is of course, what parts of the religion should we be focused on right now? Should we even be talking about this or that? Should we have khatirahs and spiritual reflections when so much is happening of oppression? Should we be talking about fiqh? Should we be talking about jurisprudence and getting into some details? Some people find that deeply offensive. You bring up certain issues that might be deemed minor. And people say, you're talking about this when this is happening. Is there any truth to that, any way to actually peel that back and evaluate it? And the answer is, actually yes, to an extent.
I start with a very powerful narration, because you can actually hear the emotional outrage in this narration. From Abdullah ibn Umar, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma. It's narrated by a man by the name, he's a tabi'i, Abdurrahman ibn Nu'man, rahimahullah. He says, كنت شاهداً لابن عمر رضي الله تعالى عنه وسأله رجل عن دم البعود He said, I was with Ibn Umar, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma, and someone asked him about the blood of a mosquito. What does he mean by that? When you go into the story, a man came to him and asked him about the ruling, if you kill a mosquito on your clothes or something of that sort, is it going to nullify your wudu? Is it going to nullify your purification for the prayer? And this is happening in a very charged environment. And Ibn Umar, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma, said to him, ممن أنت؟ As if he was bothered by the man, he said, where are you from? قال من أهل العراق He said, I'm from Iraq. This is not an indictment of the people of Iraq, but a very particular situation, by the way. Ibn Umar, radiyaAllahu anhuma, recognized something in this person that was in front of him. قال أنظروا إلى هذا يسألني عن دم البعود وقد قتلوا ابن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم. Look at this man asking me about the blood of a mosquito, and he is from those that killed the son of the Prophet, sallAllahu alaihi wasallam, al-Husayn, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma. You are amongst those that spilled the blood of al-Husayn, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma, ibn al-Nabi, sallAllahu alaihi wasallam, in that he's his grandson. And you're here asking me about the blood of a mosquito on your clothes? And he said, and I heard, وسمعت النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم يقول, هما ريحانتا من الدنيا. They are my two sweet plants. ريحان is a plant, a basil that gives off a certain aroma.
The Prophet sallAllahu alaihi wasallam said about al-Husayn, may Allah be pleased with them, that they are like my two sweet plants of this world. By the way, before anyone says where did you get this from, it's actually in al-Bukhari. Because this is the end of the narration, a narration from the Prophet, sallAllahu alaihi wasallam. So ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhuma is looking at this man like, where is this cognitive dissonance of yours? You could spill the blood of someone so beloved to the Prophet sallAllahu alaihi wasallam, and that's what you're worried about? And of course this was a trait at the time. The extremism of the time, the خوارج, these people would read Qur'an until their eyes would go dark. I mean, they would weep, they would not sleep, they would fast on a daily basis. And these same people were reading virtues of the family and companions of the Prophet sallAllahu alaihi wasallam in that same Qur'an, and they were killing them in the day. And the sahaba were perplexed by these people. How is it that you consider yourselves to be so religious, but you're so corrupt, like how are you missing the bigger picture here? And indeed, there was a problem. The scholars say that there are two types of misprioritization here that ends up ruining the faith of a people. Number one is the most common one, which is, الذين في قلوبهم زيغن فيتبعون ما تشابه منه بطغاء الفتنة وبطغاء تأويل. Those who actually dig into the ambiguous, the things that aren't as clear cut, and they go into these minor details to divert and to delude. To divert and to delude. What does that mean? They divert other people and they delude themselves. How? These are the people that say, well the Qur'an is not very clear on this. The sunnah, I haven't read anything in the Qur'an and sunnah. It's not very clear here, so I think this and this and that. MashaAllah giving fatwas on major issues of faith and creed, changing the religion right and left, violating every principle of interpretation.
Forget about any of Islam's scholarly thought, forget about ajma' forget about consensus, forget about المعلوم من الدين بالضرورة, forget about the things that are known by necessity, forget about the sunnah, forget about all of it. Just like, well I read this ayah and this is how it speaks to me and this is how it's going to be, because that's what I feel like right now. في قلوبهم زيخ. Like you're messing up yourself and you're messing up other people here. And you're starting to assign priorities to the religion and ahkam to make haram halal, in a way that suits you. That's one way, right? Have it your way, customize the religion the way that you want to have it, so that you can assign priorities as you see fit, base upon your own reading of the translation of the Quran and you're done. Right? That's one way. So it is to divert and to delude. And of course Allah mentions that these people would end up ruining communities. Right? Plug it in a WhatsApp group. And now you got a bunch of people that follow your fatwa. Even if you didn't call it a fatwa, that's essentially what it was. Divert and delude. The second group are those who get into minor details to distract and divide. This is a very interesting group of people. They distract from major character flaws on an individual level, and major corruption on the individual and societal level, by focusing on some of the more minor points of the religion, until they even get to the point of making the halal haram. It's so religious. So religious, right? An individual, this is again, this quality, this characteristic. Someone who's talking about the shortness of the thawb but has a long tongue. Someone who's talking about rituals and talking about things that are part of the deen. Everything of the Quran and Sunnah is part of the religion. We don't negate any of it. That's an extreme. Anything, qal Allah and qal Rasulullah ﷺ is part of the deen. Don't negate a moment of it, an atom's worth of it. It's part of the religion. But you see someone living a very strict lifestyle,
and they're ignoring just major character flaws and corruption. You sit with people that are super religious, and they backbite and gossip all day. They lie, they slander, they're arrogant, they have ego, and you're like, what deen is this? You're talking about the Sunnah, and your character resembles nothing of the Prophet ﷺ. What religion is this? And people don't check them because it's a religious group. So it's like the circle grows, the religious group grows. They're talking about things that are part of the deen, but they are elevating them to a point that they're distracting from major, major creedal things, major character things, and excusing major corruption. To the point that what? They even get to the point of making the halal haram. Allah criticized people of the book in this regard. That they even took things that were halal and made them haram. Why? By focusing on these things, they were able to distract from major things, excuse their own corruption, and excuse the corruption of others around them, as it was convenient, and divided the people along those issues that were not prioritized that way by the Prophet ﷺ and his community, but divide the community so that they don't focus on the major corruption amongst them, the major corruption amongst them, and solving major issues amongst them. So how do you actually find a middle ground? Number one, the threshold of what is part of this religion is what comes from Allah and his Messenger ﷺ, divine revelation. Number two, the proportionality we should assign to these things is what the Prophet ﷺ used to assign to them and the early communities used to assign to them. Number three, when religion becomes a tool for corruption, that is nifaq, that's hypocrisy. That actually is at the core of hypocrisy, at the core of nifaq,
when people start to use the religion to escape and divert. And so brother, sister, I don't care what elements of the sunnah you're practicing, the sahaba saw a woman, who they said she used to pray all night, she used to fast every day, but what a nasty tongue she had. What a nasty tongue she had, but people excuse that, right? Because this is the lady that prays qiyam, this is the lady that fasts. And the Prophet ﷺ, the one whose sunnah she was claiming to follow, says, لَا خَيْرَ فِيهَا هِيَ فِي النَّارِ There is no good in that woman whatsoever. Completely devoid of good. May Allah protect us. She's only deluding herself and she's deluding the community. This is gaslighting, right? Gaslighting with the religion to a point that you have no religion inside of you. Nasty character, nasty corruption. You know, people that can talk about these things, small things within the religion, and even exceed in spirituality, but then they have nothing to say about oppression and corruption and in fact become parts of it as well. You come into this masjid, if you come five times a day, but your neighbors can't stand you, you're abusive to your family, you're someone who can't be trusted in your business, you're someone who has absolutely no moral consistency when it comes to the situation of oppression around you, wherever it may be. What makes you different from the religious hypocrisy that we see in other religions that's present around us so often? It's not part of our deen. Now I want to end with a good example. A good example. Imam Ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi, rahimahullah ta'ala, very unique scholar in Islam. One of the greatest scholars in Islamic history. Ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi. Al-Maqdisi meaning from Al-Bayt al-Maqdis. He was actually from Palestine, from the area of Nablus, so from the Holy Land. One of the greatest scholars that this religion has ever seen. A person who wrote books in the school of Imam Ahmad, rahimahullah ta'ala,
al-Umda, al-Kafi, al-Muqni, al-Muhni, some of the most amazing books, and books on Islamic law that other schools of thought used because of his fairness. His fairness in how he represented other schools in the ummah, other scholars in the ummah. A person who was loved across the tradition because he was such a noble man. He did not do what other people would do with their schools of thought and with their teachers. He actually did not impugn other scholars and other teachers and other schools of thought. He admired them to the point that something unprecedented happened with him, which is that scholars from other schools used his books to explain their schools. Which was never, I mean that was unheard of in Islamic history because of how fair he was, what a noble man he was. Great character. Possibly the most knowledgeable scholar of his time. And subhanallah, this was a man that wrote in the details of fiqh, the details of Islamic law and legal theory. But you know whose time he lived in? Salahuddin al-Ayubi, rahimahullah ta'ala, the great reviver, the great leader, Salahuddin. And Ibn Qudama, rahimahullah, at that point was in Damascus when he was in Al-Sham. Legalistically has differences with Salahuddin, by the way. Salahuddin is a shafi'i, a shari'i, he is a hambali, athari. There are schools of thought there, different schools of thought, but they're Muslims. And Jerusalem is under occupation. Palestine is under occupation. Muslim blood is being spilled right and left. What does he do when that innocent blood is being spilled right and left? He goes and he joins him, fights under him, follows his lead, writes in praise of him. And he happened to be there with him on the day that Salahuddin liberated Jerusalem. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala liberate it once again. Allahumma ameen. He was with him. And this was a site for people like, wait, what? Here you have a man that's writing about the fiqh of wudu, tahara, the small details, not in a way that he makes haram, halal or halal haram,
but in a way that gives us a legacy of Islamic legalistic work, spirituality. And at the same time, he recognized that there was a priority at the time, that I can't ignore everything in lieu of these books. Dear brothers and sisters, when we see what's happening around us, it is all part of our faith and spirituality. You don't say, well, we're in the masjid now, let's just talk about, you know, qiyam al-layl and salah and siyam, and ignore the fact that this humiliation is happening to our brothers and sisters around the world, that there's oppression all around us, even at our own border over here. That's hypocrisy. What type of deen is that? And at the same time, we don't use the issues around us to excuse neglect of the deen, neglect of the religion, and say none of that is important right now. How could you be giving a khutbah about qiyam al-layl? How could you be talking about spirituality? Because you know what? The sahaba understood that it could be that man in the corner, that woman in the corner that's making dua, that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives us victory through. It could be that person who is chipping away relentlessly with a good effort to end some sort of oppression, championing a cause, keeping it on the radar of people, organizing people in a way that is righteous. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala opens up things on their hand. You don't know where the khayr is going to come. As we talked about Ibn al-Jawzi rahimallah, when he said, you know, a great Muslim general was asking about his troops, and he asked about a particular man, and he said he's in the corner, and he said as long as his finger is up going la ilaha illallah, as long as he's making dua, that's what I need from him. You go do that. We don't impugn the efforts of deen. We don't impugn the efforts of people and collective work for the deen. We bring it all together, and we keep what Allah and the Messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam kept ahead of us at all times, and we do not become divided along small issues to excuse the corruption, the corruption that is apparent
within our own ummah that continues to allow for these transgressions to happen from within and from without. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide us, guide our hearts, guide our thinking, guide our efforts, unite us for that which is pleasing to Him, and forgive us when we indulge in that which is displeasing to Him, even when we delude ourselves into thinking that it is pleasing to Him. Allahumma ameen. Jordan Allahumma annaka a'fuwa an tuhibbu al-'afwa fa'afu anna. Allahumma ghafir liwalidina. Rabbir hamwama kamar abuwuna sigara. Rabbana hablana min azwajina wa dhriyatina qurratu a'yun. Wa ja'anna lilmuttaqina imama. Allahumma unsur ikhwanan al-mustad'afina fee masharika al-adim wa ghara biha. Allahumma i'zal al-Islam wa al-Muslimin wa adhila al-shirk wa al-kadhibin. Wa damr a'daa ad-din. Allahumma ahlik al-dhalimina bil-dhalimin. Wa akhrijna wa ikhwanan min baynihim salimin. Ibadullah anallahi ya'mru bil-adli wal-ihsan wa ita'idhi al-qurba.
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