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Social Media, Misinformation, And The Assassination of Uthman (ra) | Khutbah
When deception grows, many good people fall for false narratives and end up harming the innocent.
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Transcript
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 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. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us amongst them. Allahuma ameen. Dear brothers and sisters, if it was the end of a plot and the beginning of a movie which shows you something that truly disturbs you and moves you, I want to actually go to a scene from one of the saddest moments in our Islamic history. Obviously, you know, we are constantly seeing the news events unfold in front of us, what happened in Buffalo and then what happened once again here in Texas, another school shooting. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make it easy for the families of those that are dealing with these things and we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to protect us. Allahuma ameen. But we've been talking about fitna and we've been talking about dissension and trial. Obviously, you know, the hadith of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam where he's asked man najat, how do I save myself? And he said, amsik alayka al-isana, hold your tongue, wa li-asaka baytuk, let your home suffice you, wa-bki ala khati'atik, and cry about your own sins, worry about your own sins. You know, keep yourself to yourself in this regard. But we all know that in the practical world that doesn't always happen. And so there's a scene I want to start with here and it is one of the hardest scenes to read about in the original fitna, the original trials and tribulations faced within this ummah. It's a scene of Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu about to be killed. And Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu, this old noble man who the prophets loved so much,
who the companions loved so much, who the angels loved so much and were shy from, is sitting in his chair reading Quran while a group of young people are seeking to assassinate him in the name of religion and truth because they have been riled up and because they have been motivated by what they think is righteousness and justice. And while it's instigated from the outside, it is now permeated on the inside. And a young man walks up to him and grabs his beard and puts up his sword and is about to kill him. And that young man is Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, the son of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu. It is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in what takes place of this fitan, of the trials and tribulations and dissension and just all of the horrible things that we start to see arise in our Islamic history, which shows you subhanAllah, even when you have divine revelation, human tendencies lead us to very, very bad scenes. And this is a hard one. Who is Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr? Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr was born on the day that the Prophet ﷺ and his companions were on their way to the farewell hajj, hajjat al-wada' and they were at the miqat. They were about to go forth. And so he was only three years old when his father passed away. And he got caught up with the wrong crowd that thought that they were doing something that is righteous in going after Sayyidina Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu. And he didn't have the tarbiyah of Abu Bakr radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu. He didn't see the way that his father loved Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu. The moments they were together were much of the bishara, much of the glad tidings that were given to a person of Jannah. They were given to them together. Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman together, Ali all together, may Allah be pleased with them.
He didn't see all that. But he got caught up with the wrong crowd, started to hear rumors and then was charged with a certain type of zeal against Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu. And he's in front of him and he grabs his beard and Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu just saw a dream of the Prophet ﷺ comforting him saying that tonight you're going to break your fast with I, Abu Bakr and Umar, with your companions who have preceded you. And Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu has already come to terms, and we talked about this in the first, in some detail with his life, but he's come to terms with the idea that he's going to be killed and he refuses to let anyone spill blood in his name to fight back and kill people in his name. Uthman radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anhu looks up at him and he says, Ya ibn akhi, oh my nephew, you're my nephew, the son of my brother, da'an ka lahyati, let go of my beard. Faqad kaana abuka yukrimuha. Your father used to love this, he used to honor this beard. I'm going to be killed now and I'm going to be made into a martyr and I'm going to meet your father and I don't want to tell your father that the one who sent me here is you, the son, it would disappoint him. What are you doing? What happened to you? How did you get to this place? And at that moment, he comes to his senses. He drops his sword and he runs away and realizes that he's been taken on a ride, that he's joined a group of people that were fueled with lies and that they were killing a righteous man, assassinating a righteous man. SubhanAllah, when you talk about the echo chambers of today and you talk about the algorithms of today and the way that people live in their own worlds and they hear things over and over and over and over again and they become regurgitated. There were righteous people that killed companions of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in the name of Allah. Righteous when I say they thought they were righteous, they thought they were acting upon
something that was good and they pulled their swords against companions of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And you say, how does that even happen? How do people become nourished with this nonsense? How do people get into this? And there's a difference between the slander of Aisha radiAllahu anha to an extent and the slander of Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. Those that slandered Aisha radiAllahu ta'ala anha and started to pass rumors, most of them were either hypocrites or people that got loose and reckless with gossip. They weren't doing it in the name of any type of righteousness. They didn't think they were doing anything noble by slandering Aisha radiAllahu ta'ala anha. It was something that is low. It's like the gossip and backbiting when we talk about people's honor in different ways, you know, recklessly. Talk about people and forward things and say things that we shouldn't be saying and fall into major sins without realizing it. With Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, people that actually thought they were doing something good, the culture around these people that killed the likes of Uthman radiAllahu anhu and Ali radiAllahu ta'ala anhu and Hussain radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, we talked about a few weeks ago. These were people that thought they were doing something good. They were zealots. They thought that this was a religious call, a righteous call. It's a different culture altogether and that's what makes it all the more dangerous. And subhanAllah, this is before the mechanisms that exist. When you talk about that young man that does something crazy, walks into a supermarket or does something crazy and you think, what was this person being fed over and over and over and over again for three, four, five years? That doesn't excuse it in any way. But you think about how the world is becoming divided into these chambers. How do we heed these lessons? There are few things that we can take particularly from the murder of a righteous man in Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. And by the way, any time you read any of these stories, don't assume you're Uthman.
Assume you might be the guy holding the sword that doesn't realize that you are harming someone and tu'asibu qawman bi jahala. All of us can be susceptible to that, that you're hurting someone, not realizing that you're harming an innocent person. Forwarding a picture, forwarding a rumor, forwarding this, forwarding that, your WhatsApp group, your group chat, your social media, whatever it is. Don't assume you're the Uthman. Assume you might be the guy on the other side not realizing it because all of those people or a lot of them that killed companions of the Prophet ﷺ thought that maybe they were doing good things and that they were nourished upon righteousness and taking up a noble cause. Don't assume that. But look at how it played out. And there are few things to take from this. Ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhum as in Hajj and he is Abdullah ibn Umar, the son of the Khalifa that precedes Uthman, sitting in Hajj and there's a man that was from Egypt and I didn't just put that in there, it's in Sahih Muslim that a man from Egypt came to visit so he's not from that area in Hajj. And he sees people sitting around Ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhum. And he says, who's that old man? Man is Shaykh. He doesn't mean it in a nice way. Who's that old man that everyone's sitting around? He doesn't know who he is. He said that's Abdullah ibn Umar, like you gotta calm down a bit, right? So he walks up to Ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhum and he says, do you know that Uthman fled the day of Uhud? He fled from the battle of Uhud? Ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhum said, na'am, yes. Do you know that he wasn't present on Bay'at al-Ridwan? I know some of this terminology is not known, I'll go through it in a bit. Do you know that he wasn't there the day that companions took a pledge with the Prophet salAllahu alaihi wa sallam to go out under the tree and Allah mentions that he was pleased with them? You know that he wasn't there? He said, yeah, that's true, na'am. Qala ata'lamu anahu taghayyaba yawma badr? Do you know that he missed the battle of Badr?
He said, yeah. He said, Allahu akbar, in frustration. How do you people support this man? And this happened and this happened and this happened. And listen to what Ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhum said to him. He said, ta'al ubayyin laka maa sa'alta anhu. Before you go off and start saying I went and I confirmed everything, let me verify to you everything that you just said. Literally three half-truths that are more dangerous than full lies. Because a half-truth is more dangerous than a full lie. Uhud, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgave all of those because again, people fled, most people fled the battlefield once the other side took over it. Allah azawajal afa'anhum. He said the second thing, bay'at al-ridwan, if you read the history of that pledge, and this is a man still within a generation where companions are alive, he says, what are you talking about? People took a pledge with the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam to go to Mecca to rescue Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala anhum. And the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam took his hand and said, this is for Uthman and this is me because they thought Uthman was killed. So you had a group of companions that were ready to go risk their lives to save this person's life. And you're saying, but he wasn't there. Of course he wasn't there. The whole thing was about him. But that's what, I mean, it settled in his head. Hey, that's two things. There must be something to it. Then the third thing, he wasn't there on Badr. He said to him, are you crazy? I mean, what's, well, he didn't say to him, are you crazy? But the reasoning he said, the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam told him to stay home because the daughter of the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam, the wife of Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala anhum, Ruqayya radiAllahu anhu was sick. And the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam gave him permission to stay back. And on the day of Badr, when the Muslims won the battle of Badr, Ruqayya died. That's why they called it the day of great joy and the day of great sadness. And the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam went to Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala anhum and he told him that you have the ajr, you have the reward of having attended Badr.
Because he would have been there if he wasn't caring for the daughter of the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam. But three things that built up, that charged this person and made him think that he was upon righteousness, running with the rumors, right, and hurting someone. And Ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhum, he says, now go back and tell all those other people what I told you. Like, go undo the damage that you've done now. Because you thought that you were upon truth. This is a method that the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam mentioned, because subhanAllah, it's what we call, you know, when we talk about ghish, deception, whoever deceives is not one of us. The Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam mentioned putting the good grain on the top, which is actual grain, and then putting the rotten stuff in the bottom, right. So you don't show the rotten stuff, you show that thin layer on the top. So that people will think it's good, but under it, it's nothing but rotten goods. And that's what the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam said, whoever deceives is not from us. The sahaba asked the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam about soothsayers, kahin, right. One of the accusations they made about the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam was they said he was a kahin, a soothsayer. And one of the things they said about these fortune tellers and these soothsayers, right, and they didn't have social media back then, they said, ya Rasulallah, fa innahum yuhaddithuna ahyaanaan bis shay yakoonu haqqa. Ya Rasulallah, sometimes they say stuff and they get it right. Sometimes they tell us something, these people that work with the jinn and the shayateen and fortune tellers and soothsayers, how is it that sometimes they get it right? They say something that's true, a part of it is true. And the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam says, tilkal kalima minal haqq, they take one word of truth, yaziduna ma'aha mi'ata kadhiba, and then they add a hundred lies to it. So they lead with the one word of truth that they hear, right, and they pass on to each other, but then they put a hundred lies on it, but you see the one word of truth, which
makes it more potent, which makes it more viral. And this is something subhanAllah that happened to the sahaba of the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam, and children of the sahaba fell into it, they fell into the harm, and it's a different type of thing. So what does this mean for us in terms of al-fitn, the rise of deep fakes? SubhanAllah I was just at a conference this morning, SMU Law, and they were talking about, you know, is free speech going to cover deep fakes or not? You know, when people start to spread around things that are obviously off, and they don't know what they're going to do because the world becomes more and more deceptive, the technology becomes more and more deceptive, what do you do at that point? That's where you really have to take a step back because the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam warns us of this, and Allah azzawajal says, Think about the regret you have on the day of judgment. The regret you have when you realize, I really, really got this wrong. I really messed up. By the way, it happens with families, happens in communities, happens on a small scale, don't just think about the big things. But that quick thing that you pass, that quick word, that quick thing that you forward, that could be very, very devastating. And in the world that we live in today, bringing forth some of those Islamic ethics and thinking about the algorithms, thinking about the echo chambers, and this is what I want to leave with inshaAllah ta'ala for all of us, is we're thinking about this world around us where everyone is being fed something and then you come into this masjid or you go into the supermarket and people are rising from this world that they've created for themselves. And some of them convinced of their world views, and some of them, you know, even have a self-righteousness and a zeal to them. How do we bring some sort of intervention to this all? Number one, be the one that is killed, not the one that is killing. Be the one that is wrong, not the one that is wronging.
If you're unsure, don't participate. Be careful. It's better to be wrong than to be one who's wronging. Practice safety, practice restraint, right, when you get involved in these types of things. Number two, number two, when it comes to your brothers and sisters, you always start from a place of husn adlan. We used to have 70 excuses to excuse someone, now you have 70 excuses to blame someone, right, and to spin people's words and spin things in the worst possible interpretation and way. Number three, verify, verify. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions this, in ja'akum fasikun binaba'in fatabayyanu, you have to verify what comes to you. Number four, ask yourself if it's even worth verifying. Do I even need to verify this or is it nonsense in the first place? Number five, and this is going to be the hardest one, this is going to be the hardest one, talking to someone who is deep in it and trying to pull them out is one of the greatest forms of sadaqa that you can give. And this is subhanAllah in all of this, I end with the story that's happening with these people, right, people have been in charge against companions, you have this group of people growing in number who are reading the Quran and they're just throwing rumor after rumor after rumor after rumor until they can delegitimize the companions of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam. Abdullah bin Abbas radiyallahu ta'ala anhuma, he says to Ali radiyallahu ta'ala anhum, he says listen, let me go talk to these people, let me go talk to these people. There were 6,000 of them gathered, buzzing like bees reading the Quran and circulating some of the most toxic stuff about the companions of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam. And they thought they were doing good. Ibn Abbas says let me go talk to these people. Ali radiyallahu ta'ala anhum says I'm afraid they'll kill you, these people don't have any restraint, right, quick, takfir qatil, they'll quickly call you a kafir and they'll kill you. Ibn Abbas radiyallahu ta'ala anhuma says let me try.
He goes to a valley of 6,000 khawarij, 6,000 of these people that have been filled with this stuff. And he talks to them and they were shocked to see him coming to talk to them. They were shocked. And you know what, to make a long story short, after a short conversation with them, he left with 2,000 of the 6,000. He left with 2,000 of the 6,000. Look, you have to understand some people have good intentions and get caught up in some really bad stuff with the algorithms as they work today and that's always been the case. Someone has to take the Ibn Abbas role. Someone has to take the Ibn Abbas role and it's probably the hardest role of them all to try to pull people out. So we're going to have to exercise patience with each other also when people interpret and hear and ingest certain things that have no benefit to them whatsoever. May Allah protect us from harming with our tongues. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us from wronging. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us from al-kadhib. May Allah protect us from the lying, wherever it may be. May Allah purify us of it. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect our communities. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us in a world of deception and count us amongst the truthful and the sincere. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us from al-sadiqeen. We ask Allah to make us from al-mukhluseen, from those who are sincere. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us amongst those who are steadfast. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to protect our societies in this day and age and for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to guide through us, people, to this way of al-Islam and to all that it comes with in a way that will grow insha'Allah ta'ala all of us closer towards Him and in a way that will give us safety in this life and in the next. Allahuma ameen. Aqoolu qawli hadha wa astaghfirullah wa li'llahu wa barakatu. Wa yas'al al-muslimin fa-astaghfiru anna wa al-wafoori wa al-raheem. Alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ala al-Fatiha. Alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ala Rasulullah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala. Allahumma khfirl al-mu'minin wa al-mu'minat wa al-muslimin wa al-muslimat, al-ahya'i minhum
wa al-amwati. Innaka sami'un qareebun wa jiibu al-da'awat. Allahumma khfirlana wa arhamna wa a'fu anna wa la tu'adhibna. Rabbana dhalamna anfusana wa in lam takhfirlana wa tarhamna. Lanakoonana min al-khasireen. Allahumma innaka a'fuwuna wa a'fuwuna wa a'fuwuna wa tarhamna. Allahumma khfirli waleedina. Rabbir hamd wa ma kamal khalifat. Rabbuna sigara. Rabbana hablana min azwajina wa dhriyatina al-qurra ta'ayun. Wa ja'alna lil-muttaqina imama. Allahumma utsir ikhwanina al-mustad'afina. Fima shariq al-ir'ad wa magharibiha. Allahumma i'izzal al-islam wa al-muslimin. Wa dhillal shirk wa al-kathibin. Wa damr al-a'da al-din. Allahumma ahliki al-dhalimina bil-dhalimin. Wa akhrijna wa ikhwanina min baynihim salimin. Ibadallahana allaha ya'mu bil-alwi al-ihsan wa ita'idh al-qurba. Wa yanha a'ni al-fahsha'i wa al-munkari wa al-baghli. Ya'idhukum la'alukum tadhakkarun. Fathkuru Allahi yathkurukum. Washkuruhu a'ni ni'ma yizid lakum. Wala dhikru Allahi akbar. Wallahu ya'lamu ma tasna'un.
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