Khutbahs
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Dear brothers and sisters, if you looked at the title of the khutbah, you're probably already confused. What's your smell? And the khutbah is not about the a'ud or cologne or lack of cologne or a'ud that you use before coming to the jum'ah or the sunnah of a smell. It's actually about this entire concept of an odor and what spiritual implications that has. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given us different senses, has given us different ways in which we connect with the world around us, in different ways in which we perceive things. And one of those strongest senses is this concept of odor, this concept of a smell. Because odor has a persuasion that is stronger than appearance, stronger than touch, stronger than a feeling. It's a very strong sense that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given to us. And there's a physical dimension to that and a spiritual dimension. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam would never turn down a gift of perfume. And in our language of course, in our common terminology, perfume usually refers to the scent of women and cologne to the scent of men. But it's actually to the composition of oil. They had very strong oils that they would use. And the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam used to love a tleeb. It was well known that he would never turn down a gift of a tleeb. And if you wanted to make the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam happy with a gift, then your sure shot was to give the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam a gift of perfume. And the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam would enjoy it. Umar bin al-Khattab radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, who is usually not associated with the luxuries of this world or the goodness of this world, he said that if I was to spend half of my money on tleeb, I would not consider it israf. I wouldn't consider it a form of extravagance. Some of the great imams like Imam Abu Hanifa rahimahullah, they said about Abu Hanifa that you could smell when he was approaching you from miles away,
and you could smell after days if he was in a gathering after he had left it from the goodness of his tleeb. So there is that element of it and the sahaba and the righteous having this love of a good sense. And I assume inshallah the masjid is gonna smell a lot better next week after these first narrations, because you'll take that sunnah inshallah ta'ala seriously. But please don't overdo it because the person next to you might not like that particular smell. But it's a goodness, right? Tleeb. And it falls under the athar, the different types of traces and steps and senses that Allah has given to us. And it's most often likened to sight, to al-basr. But smell does things that sight does not do. And now we start to segue into the spiritual of this. The power of smell is that it invokes memories in many ways. And so it's able to bring back a memory or to bring back something that is missing to the immediate detection of a person when they smell it. And you usually don't know it until it's been gone for some time. And the greatest example of that is the story of Ya'qub, Jacob and Yusuf alayhi salam and Joseph. Inni la ajidu riha Yusuf. I can smell Yusuf. His shirt was coming and before the shirt was placed on his face there's a smell. I can smell the scent of Yusuf alayhi salam after all of these years. There's something about it, something that really moved me. There was a mother that lost her child. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant her jannah and comfort. And allow her to be reunited, her entire family in jannat al-firdaws. And she said that one thing she never did was she never washed the blanket of her deceased child
because she smells it and every day it's like she has that scent, she has that memory. And it was very touching because I remember the story of Yusuf alayhi salam. So smell has a very powerful effect of bringing back something from the past. The second most powerful element of smell is that it can invoke imagination. The way that no other sense can. And so when a person, a believer is passing away and leaving this world and the angels say to the believer wa abashree bi rawhin wa rayhan wa rabbin ghayri ghadban, that receive the glad tidings of the mercy and the forgiveness and the pleasure and the good fragrance and sustenance of your Lord. A Lord that is not angry with you, a Lord that is not displeased with you. And what do the angels carry? They carry a kafan that is scented with the musk of jannah to comfort the soul as it comes out. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam said that when you are placed in your grave that Allah scents the grave with the scent of jannah. And he said salallahu alayhi wasalam that the scent, wa inna reehaha layujadoo min masirati khamsimi'ati aam. That you could smell the scent of paradise from a journey of 500 years away. Imagine being on a journey and your entire life is that journey and you're proceeding to a singular destination for 500 years. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam said the scent of jannah is so strong, the scent of paradise is so strong that you could smell it from 500 years away if you were proceeding towards it, doing nothing but proceeding towards it for 500 years. And subhanAllah, Imam al-Nawawi rahimahullah, he commented that the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam often when he invoked punishments, he mentioned the deprivation of the smell of jannah. So all of the authentic ahadith, the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam talked about the oppressor.
He said that whoever oppresses a dhimmi from one of ahlul dhimma, a Christian or a Jew that is living under the protection of the Muslims, whoever oppresses or breaks the covenants with or kills a Christian or a Jew living in the land of the Muslims under the protection of ahlul dhimma, that they would not smell the scent of paradise. There are many ahadith where the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam mentioned the punishment that you would not smell the scent of paradise. And the Messenger salallahu alayhi wasalam is hinting towards how incredible that smell is. And so imagine as you're leaving this world and what is that smell? Because the smell of jannah is unlike the smell of any other scent. So it can invoke an imagination or tell you about something that you otherwise would not know. Now what's the point of smell? And why are we talking about smell? Because most of the ahadith that bring up the analogy of smell bring it up in the capacity of influence. In the capacity of the mark that you leave on a gathering or the mark that a gathering leaves on you. The athar of it. The trace of it is in the smell. And that's where some of the more powerful implications of this sense come in because out of all of the things that are in a gathering the smell cannot be detected at its source. It's very hard to detect the source of a smell. Right? You can detect with your sight, you can detect with touch, but the source of a smell is hardest to find. And so if there is a rotten smell it's not always possible to detect the source of that rotten smell. And if there's a good smell it's not always possible to detect its source. And so it's an interesting analogy that we find here in its presence in a gathering and the way the Prophet ﷺ referred to its presence amongst a group of people.
We also know about smell is that you often miss it when it's gone. And so you often don't know that you actually are detecting a smell until it's missing from you. Before Allah gives the baby the blessing of sight, Allah gives the baby the blessing of smell. And when the baby cannot smell the mother then the baby starts to feel a great sense of distress. Right? So sometimes you don't know until it's gone and then you start to miss it. And that's also one of the things that Al-Hafidh ibn Rajab brought up in this discussion of influence. You also, as ibn Rajab said beautifully, you know fake flowers from real flowers by the smell. So you can create flowers or you can make flowers and mold them and they can look beautiful as plastic. And they can look extremely beautiful and they can look real depending on if you use a certain type of cloth. But you know it from its smell whether it's authentic or it's not. And the believer is the same way that you know the authenticity of the believer from the smell that emanates over time as opposed to the appearance of that person. So how did the Prophet ﷺ conceive of this and how do we actually take this into a practical consideration or into practical consideration for ourselves? The first thing is the Prophet ﷺ referred to smell in the way that we interact with the Qur'an. Ourselves and our interaction with divine revelation and what that means for the world around us. He said ﷺ, مَثَلُ الْمُؤْمِنِ الَّذِي يَقْرَأُ الْقُرْآنِ مَثَلُ الْأُتْرُجَّةِ رِيحُهَا طَيِّبٌ وَطَعْمُهَا حُلٌّ The Prophet ﷺ said that the example of the believer who recites the Qur'an and acts upon it is like a citrus fruit. ريحها طيّب, it smells good. وطعمها حلوًّ, and it tastes good too. So it's not deceiving you with its smell. If you bite into it, it tastes good.
If any of you are familiar with durian in Malaysia, the king of the fruits. It smells horrible but if you can get past that smell and take a bite into it, it tastes good. So the Prophet ﷺ is saying the smell doesn't deceive you with good. It's a good smell and if you bite into a citrus fruit, then its sweetness is there as well. And then he said ﷺ, وَمَثَلُ الْمُؤْمِنِ الَّذِي لَا يَقْرَأُ الْقُرْآنِ مَثَلُ التَّمْرَةِ لَا رِيحَ لَهَا وَطَعْمُهَا حُلُونً And he said that the example of the believer who does not recite the Qur'an is like a date which has no fragrance but a sweet taste. What the Prophet ﷺ is talking about here in the recitation of the Qur'an is not its recitation on an individual level but its teaching. Its teaching and its lesson. Its teaching either in teaching people through the recitation or acting it. Basically influencing with the Qur'an. So this believer has iman, they have practice on an individual level, but they're not giving the Qur'an to the world around them. And so it's like a date. It has no smell but if you bite into it, it's still sweet. At least it's not a hypocrite. And then he said ﷺ that the example of the hypocrite, المنافق الذي يقرأ القرآن مثل الريحانة ريحها طيب وطعمها مر And he said ﷺ the example of a hypocrite that recites the Qur'an, so gives to the world around but is deprived on the inside, is like basil whose fragrance is sweet but if you bite into it, it's bitter. So it's the opposite in this situation. Its fragrance is sweet but if you bite into it, it's bitter. And he said ﷺ that the example, مثل المنافق الذي لا يقرأ القرآن كمثل الحنضرة ليس لها ريح وطعمها مر And the example of the hypocrite who does not even give of the Qur'an, recite of the Qur'an is like the colicin.
It has no fragrance and it has a bitter taste as well. It gives off no scent and it has a bitter taste as well. Now notice here that the taste is omitted because no one knows the actual inside except for who? Except for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But the influence is restricted to the smell. What are you actually putting into the environment around you? And that should be an analogy for what you bring to the environment around you and from what the environment brings to you. Because the Prophet ﷺ said about choosing friends, he said about the good friend what? That the good friend is like the one who actually sells perfume. And so if you're around someone who is selling perfume, then even if you don't purchase the product, it rubs off on you and you smell good when you leave that place. Right? So you smell good when you leave that person's company. If you have a righteous friend, that person's influence naturally will rub off on you. You might not be able to detect exactly how, you might not even apply the things that made that righteous friend as good as they are. وَحِبُّوا صَالِحِينَ وَلَسْتُ مِنْهُمْ I love the righteous though I don't consider myself amongst them. لَعَلِّي أَنَا نَالَ بِهِمْ شَفَاعًا Maybe, maybe I'll just get their intercession on the day of judgment. Maybe I'll get some of their qualities. Maybe something will rub off on me of a standard of a goodness from that person. So you might not have got the actual product. And the way that Anawi rahimahullah described is that you might not actually start to practice the good deed that made that person a righteous person. But the influence of that person rubbed off on you positively. And so you start to smell good. Whereas the influence of a bad friend is like a blacksmith. Even if you don't purchase anything of it, you're still going to smell like smoke. And anyone that doesn't smoke but that has friends that smoke, and that came home one day and got in trouble with their parents
because their parents thought they were smoking can tell you about this. The Prophet ﷺ said, المرء على دين خليلي You're on the religion of your friends. If you're around people that stink, if you're around people that have bad manners, if you're around people that don't have standards of worship or purpose, if you're around people that waste themselves and things that are of no benefit, even if you commit none of those sins, you will inevitably be influenced by them. You cannot continue to hang around a dumpster and not expect to smell like garbage at some point yourself. It's not about actually picking up a piece or putting it on you. It's not about actually picking up the cigarette and smoking it. If you're around someone that acts in that, their character will rub off on you. You know what the scary thing about this is? You might not even know how bad you stink until someone else smells you. Say, what is that smell? You go, oh. Because sometimes Ibn Qudamah said that a bad character is like a scorpion that's on your back. Someone has to point it out to you, a bad characteristic. Someone has to point it out to you before it bites you, but it's there. Right? So you don't even know how bad you smell until you're around people that don't have that same stench. And then they realize that you stink. And then you start to wonder, hmm, you're in a gathering where backbiting has been normalized, ghiba. Everybody else is doing it. And then you start to hang around people that don't backbite as much and they look at you funny when you say something about someone. And you realize you smell bad. Something's wrong. Because you've changed the environment. And so it's about how you smell and the smell of the people that you interact with. And there can be a good sense of this as well because there's a societal implication to this also. Umar ibn al-Khattab radiAllahu ta'ala anhu,
when he saw a group of people coming from Iraq in the middle of the night and the people were wondering in Medina, who are these people traveling through Medina in the middle of the night in Iraq? So he called out to them and he said, where are you people coming from? And they said, min fajjin ameek, from a deep valley. Said, where to? ila al-bayti al-ateeq, to the Kaaba. Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu said to the people around him, he said, these people know Quran. There's someone around them. There's the sense of Quran. They answer with Quran. Something is up with these people. So he starts asking them questions about the Quran. Which ayah is the best of the Quran? They recite ayatul kursi immediately. They all know ayatul kursi. ayyu ayah arjaa fil quran Which ayah gives most hope in the Quran? They recite, qul yaa ibadiyallatheena asrafoo alaa anfusihim laa taqnatoo min rahmatillaa Say, O my servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. ayyul qurani ahkam What's the most decisive verse in the Quran? faman ya'mal mithqala dharratin khayran yara wa man ya'mal mithqala dharratin sharran yara Whoever does an atom's worth of evil, of good, will see it. And whoever does an atom's worth of evil will see it. So he's asking these questions of the Quran. He's like, these people have an influence on them. That's there. I don't know who it is, but someone's there. And at the end of it, he goes, afikam abdullah bin mas'ud? Is ibn mas'ud amongst you? They said, yeah, he's back here. He knew it. He said, these people have been hanging out with an extraordinary scholar of Quran. Because their literacy of the Quran, the way that it naturally comes out of them, the way that it flows, something is up with these people. Something about them. And to the point that he zoned in, he said, I wonder if abdullah bin mas'ud radiyaAllahu anhu is amongst them. And they said, Allahumma na'am, he's right back there. And Umar radiyaAllahu anhu goes to him and embraces him and sits at his feet
to absorb the Quran from ibn mas'ud radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, whose entire life is dictated by the Quran. So the societal impact, and you know what? Sometimes, sometimes in fitna, usually a fitna, a tribulation or dissension is started by one or two people. But the stink spreads so much that you don't even know where it started in the first place. If you walk into a community that's been embroiled in fitna for many years, and you just see chaos and everybody's fighting each other. You're like, where did this start? Who is the fatan? Who is the one who started this all? Who's the one that dropped the stink bomb in here? And started this dissension and tribulation. But it's hard to detect the source. I don't know who did it. It's just, I just see a bunch of people fighting at this point. And that's why Ali ibn Abi Talib radiyaAllahu anhu said, يعمل النمام من ساعة فتنة أشهر That an imam, someone who quotes people's words to each other, not a liar, someone who quotes people's words to each other, sits in one gathering, listens to someone being spoken about, goes to another person and says, hey man, he said this about you. And then these people start to form cliques and groups and start to argue and fight. And he said that a person, an imam, this person would cause in one hour a fitna that would drag for months and months and months. Forwarding an email starts a fitna that drags for months and months and months and months. And then everyone hates each other. And you don't know where the source of that stink is at some point. But that's the power of one person to induce stink into a community. May Allah protect us. May Allah protect us from being people of fitna ourselves. Or from the outcome of fitna. Allahuma ameen. Because it just takes one person to start that stink and then it covers everybody. And you don't know where the source of it is anymore. It's just a bunch of people fighting at some point. So who is the source of this khair that has touched all of this community?
That made everyone come together like this? Or that brought some good to them? And who is the source of this evilness, ugliness, that leaves a stench behind that someone else walks in and says, this smells like a dumpster, this place stinks. May Allah always give Valley Ranch Islamic Center a sweet smell. Allahuma ameen. But this place, where did it come from? You can't detect the source. And this is why the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam speaks of it in this way. SubhanAllah, there's a quote on the good side of things because Imam Al-Shafi'i says that, I wish that my knowledge would be spread. I wish that everyone would benefit from my knowledge, but no one would say my name. I wish my knowledge would spread all over the world, but no one would say my name. I wish that the people would benefit from it, but they would not ascribe it to me. And that's why Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala made him the person that he was and elevated him to the place that he was because his interest was in spreading that goodness, not in being named the source of that goodness. He wanted to leave behind that sweet scent that covered the people, that spread all over the world. But his interest was in that. And there's a saying that you can be much more influential if people are not aware of your influence. You can be much more influential if people are not aware of your influence. Often the architects of good and the architects of evil are not known, and that makes them more effective at being architects of good or architects of evil. Sometimes you have a person, of course the most influential man in history, in the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, who's both publicly and privately influential. But the majority of that influence is generated privately, not publicly. And you can be much more influential if people are not aware of your influence. Now just like with the mother, whose child misses her when she goes away, often times
the good influence is not recognized until that sweet smell, the source of that sweet smell is no longer there. I'm going back to Southern California tomorrow to be with our brothers at the Institute of Knowledge. One of the greatest Muslim Americans that ever walked in this land, Dr. Ahmad Saqar Rahimahullah Ta'ala, who would not be recognizable in the years before he passed away if he walked into this masjid and prayed dhuhr and asr, but has started and built institutions all throughout this country and went around and built communities, but used to go and pray dhuhr with the school children at IOK in those last few years of his death. And when he passed away, subhanAllah, this last year at the banquet we honored him and I actually talked about this similar idea of scent and I said this place smells like Dr. Ahmad Saqar Rahimahullah, bringing all of these people together. It smells like him, subhanAllah, that's what he did. He brought a bunch of people together for khair and then he left the sweet smell and then he went away and then when he died, you miss that void, you miss that person because of the goodness that they had. And lastly, dear brothers and sisters, on an individual level, on an individual level, Muhammad Ibn Al-Muqandir Rahimahullah said, if my sins smelled, no one would sit next to me. If my sins had a stench, no one would sit next to me. Sufyanat Thawri Rahimahullah, he was asked, how do the angels know that a person is about to commit a good deed or a bad deed? Sufyanat Thawri Rahimahullah said that when a person is about to commit a good deed, they emit a good smell, a scent of musk and so the angels naturally start to congregate around that person before the good deed even happens. But even when you're about to commit a sin, that you emit a rotten stench and so the angels start to go away from you and feel an aversion towards you even before you commit that sin, SubhanAllah.
Dear brothers and sisters, if you could assign a smell to yourself and your influence, what you leave in a gathering of dhikr or goodness or remembrance, beneficial, beneficial action or speech or the opposite. Do you stink or do you smell good? Do you rub off good on people or do people rub off evil on you? This is why this is all here for us to consider in the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the saying of the Salaf. Because eventually it all comes out. Because as they say, you can dress up greed but you can't stop the stench of it. You can dress something up only for some time but the true influence of it, the true influence of it, eventually comes out and it rears its head in good or in evil. And the last thing I'll mention here from Imam Al-Shafi'i, he talked about when the environment around you gets tough and when people are aggressive with you and abusive of you because usually you stink because other people stink with you. When the world stinks, you're more likely to stink too, right? He said, Rahimahullah Ta'ala, yukhatibun ishtafeehu bikulli qubhin faakrahu an akuna lahumujeeba yazeedu safahatan faazeedu hilma ka'oodin zadahu al-ihraqu teeba. He said, Rahimahullah Ta'ala, that the foolish one addresses me with words of disgrace but I hate to respond to him in like manner. The more ignorant he proves, the more patient I become. Just like the incense, the more you burn it, the more its fragrance is released. SubhanAllah, may Allah make us those people that the more negative the world becomes around us, the more negative people become towards us, the more pessimistic people around us become, the more people decline into disobedience, the more that we shine in character and obedience and worship and dhikr and extend ourselves in the sight of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala in goodness.
May Allah make us amongst those that are pure on the inside and that emit good influence on the outside, that bring goodness and good smells to our homes, to our communities, wherever we may be. May Allah protect us from being rotten at the core or putting a stench in our homes or a stench in our communities or influencing people in evil or being influenced in evil. Allahuma ameen. Aqooloo qawlihaadha wastaqoo alayhu alaykum wa risaalil muslimeen. Fastaqfiru anna huwa ghafur raheem.
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