Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. We begin by praising Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and bearing witness that none has the right to be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for him. And we bear witness that Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi 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 their blessed path until the day of judgment. And we ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahuma Ameen. Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to imagine with me the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in Ghar Hira. Standing at the top of Jabal An-Nur and looking out to the world as he saw it at that time. Now keep in mind there was no noise pollution at the time. You didn't have cars. You didn't have the streetlights. The distance from which you could hear and perceive certain things was probably a lot greater. And we know that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would go out there, and he would actually look at what was happening. And if you've ever been up to Jabal An-Nur, you can actually go out there and look out, and you can even see the Haram from there. And he was observing this Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, but he was observing it from a distance because while he was deeply familiar with what was happening there, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was not actually talking to anyone for an entire month. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is looking at the world from a distance that he's very familiar with. He's lived with his people for 40 years, and he's experienced all sides of society. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam has experienced what it means to be the most vulnerable person in society, being an orphan. He's experienced what it means to be overlooked. He's experienced what it means to be poor. He's experienced what it means to be wealthy and self-sufficient. He has experienced both the outside of the royal courts and the inside now, as he's married to Khadija radiyaAllahu ta'ala Anha, and he's in those legions. He's seen it all Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
but he's watching from the mountain and looking at the idol worship, looking at the dhulm, looking at the things that are happening. One of the most beautiful things about that pursuit of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is that he technically didn't have to do anything for them from a purely worldly perspective. He was at the most comfortable point in his life, and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam could have simply said, this is a world that I no longer have to interact with. Alhamdulillah allatheena jaani mink. I'm done with this. I'm already self-sufficient. But he was deeply involved in people's affairs from a place of concern even before the wahi comes to his capable heart. Now, imagine the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam up there now in 2023 looking out at the world. Imagine if the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is receiving videos and going through what is happening around the world simultaneously right now. Imagine if the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was seeing the disasters, and I'm not just talking about physical disasters, the spiritual disasters, the emptiness, the moral depravity, all of these things in front of him Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and what emotion would that elicit from him Alaihi Salatu Wasalam? So I want to actually address just the singular question. Who do I really have to care about right now? What should I really be concerned with? And there's this beautiful way that you build out a paradigm from the Quran and sometimes you can dig your heels into one layer and forget that the rest of it exists. And even a generation after the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam could take an ayah, and they could perhaps disproportionately apply it to themselves and fall short of their overall responsibilities. What do I mean by that? Abu Bakr As-Siddiq radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, he was upset with the way that he heard people were using the ayah
عليكم أنفسكم لا يضركم من ضل إذا اهتديتم. Worry about yourselves. You should not be harmed by those who choose to go astray. Abu Bakr radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu is still alive, and that means that this necessarily took place within two years of the death of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and he's saying I'm seeing people misinterpret this ayah. I'm seeing people taking this ayah and using it as an excuse to withdraw and to say I just have to worry about myself. This is before the slogans and of course the slogans now have much more loaded meanings of do you and worry about yourself than they did at that time. But even Abu Bakr radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu is noticing that there is a discrepancy, that there is a parting away from what Allah Azawajal intended by this ayah for us and what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam taught us to do. So عليكم أنفسكم worry about yourselves does not mean only worry about yourselves. It means don't lose yourself trying to save someone else. There is a meaning here. It doesn't mean ignore the rest of the world. It means don't ignore yourself. Don't be like those people who enjoying good with others. وَتَنْسَوْنَ أَنفُسَكُمْ And you forget yourselves either from a place of hypocrisy or from a place of negligence. This doesn't mean apathy. It doesn't mean that you withdraw. It means that you focus on yourself first, spiritually, that you'll never let anyone else take you to hellfire. That you'll never let anyone else insha'Allah ta'ala misguide you and you'll never let shaitan exploit your empathy to say well I've got to stay with this person. I've got to be in their company, and I've got to bend so that I can maintain this and be deluded into thinking you're saving them while they're actually corrupting you. That's what the ayah means. Then you have another layer. Allah Azawajal says, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا قُوْا أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِكُمْ نَارًا Oh you who believe, protect yourselves and your families from a fire.
Protect yourselves and your families. And one of the ways that the ulema mentioned this is that if you're not fixing what's in your house, then you're not going to be able to fix anybody else's house. If you're not building that taqwa amongst your own, how are you going to build it in anyone else? And so Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala once again reminding. Now that experiment's not always going to go perfectly, which is why on the very next page of surah Tahreem Allah Azawajal gives the example of امرأة نوح وامرأة لوط Of the wife of Nuh alayhis salam and the wife of Lut alayhis salam, and how they went astray. But for you when you're reading that ayah, you take it upon yourself and you say I've got to care about my flock. كُلُّكُمْ رَاعٍ وَكُلُّكُمْ مَسْؤُونٌ عَنْ رَعِيَّةِ I've got to worry about my family and keep my family upon the way of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and his messenger salallahu alayhi wa sallam. And the very particular connotation of protection here is protect them from spiritual decay. Protect them from spiritual harm. Protect them from falling apart on the outside. Then you start to build. And you know, it's very interesting here because Allah uses the language in the Quran of don't forget. Don't forget. And it's similar to how Allah Azawajal says وَلَا تَنْسَى نَصِيبَكَ مِنَ الدُّنْيَا Focus on the hereafter. Don't forget. Don't become negligent in regards to your worldly affairs. So expand your care, but don't forget. Expand your concern. Don't forget. Anchor yourself in this Quran and Sunnah. Anchor your family in this Quran and Sunnah. Now move on to your community. Don't forget your local community. Don't forget your neighbors. Don't forget the people that are right around the corner from you. Then don't forget your ummah. And we come from a prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam who would cry, أُمَّتِي أُمَّتِي أُمَّتِي And the same prophet who would cry, my ummah, my ummah, my ummah,
had enough concern to say, اللهم اغفر لقومي فإنهم لا يعلمون Oh Allah forgive my people. My people on the other side. Quraish who's trying to kill me because they don't know any better. So he's crying for us, but he's still concerned for them. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He expands that circle. At no point does he neglect himself sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. At no point does he neglect his family. At no point does he neglect the community in Medina. At no point does he neglect his ummah. But he still has his heart for the people in Ta'if and the people in Mecca even as they've run him out of those places. He still has concern for them. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And I want us to just address this for a moment. You know a lot of times when there's a lot of fitna outside, when there's so much that's happening, we go into hyper-preservation mode, self-preservation, individuals and as communities. And it's all about protecting ourselves. Whether it's the mass physical violence or the mass spiritual decay. And I understand that sentiment and it's natural. Right? You hear about a mass shooting? Or you hear about the corruption of the school system? Whatever it is, like I've got to protect my own. I've got to get my own kids out of there. We've got to protect our own community and our ability to make sure that we don't fall. And you see the videos that keep coming on your phone of how sunken the society has become. Of how morally deprived and depraved it is and what's happening to the world. And I want you to ask yourself if your response when you see these things is one of prophetic concern or one of satanic mockery. And if it's neither of those two, where do you fall on the spectrum? Your Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would not laugh at people when they're failing. Your Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would cry when he saw failure. Your Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
had empathy even for the people that were trying to kill him. Your Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam hated to see people get taken into hellfire. Shaitan wants to take as many people to hellfire as possible. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam describes himself as a man who's standing in front of a fire and trying to catch people by the waistbelts to make sure they don't fall into a fire. Where are you on the spectrum? Of caring for not just your own, but for the people around you as well. For your societies as well. And yes, that has a spiritual component. And this is not a place where we can break down with an expanded explanation of the rights of each one of those layers in your life. This is Salat al-Jumu'ah, a sister reminder. But I want you to think about this as we're seeing spiritual, moral decline around us in our American society, physical violence, the complete, utter loss of coherence and just common sense in what a human being is supposed to be, all of that. I want you to ask yourself, what's my responsibility as a Muslim to all of this? You know how many people we've seen, alhamdulillah, become Muslim in this masjid? How many people came through this Ramadan? Do you ever remember a Ramadan where that many people embraced Islam? People are hungry, people are thirsty. This is not just protecting ourselves here. This is offering something now for people, bi'idhnillahi ta'ala, that can anchor them in something real. They need tawheed, they need Islam just like you need Islam. And they need to know that you're presenting it to them with all of its uncomfortable truths, challenging the evil that they're engaged in as well, just like the prophets did, from a place of concern for them, fi'l-dunya wa'l-akhirah. This isn't good for your dunya, this isn't good for your hereafter. Anchor yourself in something real. Anchor yourself, come back to Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala. And don't mock what you're seeing around you. Ask yourself,
what is prophetic concern here? And I want to end subhanAllah with two narrations, not of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam himself, but just of the hearts of the Salaf as-Saleh, the hearts of the righteous ones that came before you. One of them is narrated by Imam Hassan al-Basri rahimullah and others, that there was once a group of young people, I'm talking about the Muslims as well, by the way, that were partying on a ship. So think about a yacht party, right? They're completely lost, and as the ship is about to take off from the dock, some of the students of that alim, again in one narration, Imam Hassan al-Basri, they say, make dua against these fools. Like, may the ship sink. And you see them laughing and in joy, and like careless, as if nothing is wrong in life. But he knows that they're empty on the inside, because there's a void of Allah Azawajal in the hearts. The laughter is a disguise. And he looks at them, and he says, اللهم كما أضحكتهم في الدنيا فأضحكهم في الآخرة في جنتك. Oh Allah, as you gave them something to laugh about in this dunya, or as you allow them to laugh in this dunya, let them laugh in the hereafter in Jannah as well. No, may Allah guide them, may Allah fix them. Those are our kids. And by the way, how many people mock someone else's kids before it happens to their kids? How many people destroy other people's families before it comes back to their family? No, no, that's not who we are. It's not who we are as Muslims. That's not who we are as people of da'wah, people with a mission. اللهم كما أضحكتهم في الدنيا فأضحكهم في الآخرة في جنتك. Oh Allah, let them laugh in the hereafter by guiding them. Imam Ahmed, رحمه الله, one of my favorite narrations about him. Because yes, in a time of fitna, there's delusion, and people can get lost. His son says, I used to hear my father make du'a in his sujood frequently. Listen to this du'a that he used to make. He used to say, اللهم من كان على غير الحق وهو يظن أنه على الحق فرده إليه حتى يكون على الحق حقه. He said, Oh Allah,
whoever is not upon truth, but thinks they're upon truth, then return them to the truth until they are truthfully on the truth. So even the people that are deluded and that think that they're on the truth and they're lost, Oh Allah, guide them so that they're actually on the truth. That's the heart of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. That's the heart of the mission of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. Be concerned for yourself, be concerned for your family, be concerned for your community, be concerned for your ummah, be concerned for your society, for your humanity, first and foremost with their salvation in the akhirah, as well as their well-being in this dunya as well. May Allah سبحانه وتعالى activate us towards that and not let us lose ourselves in the process. We ask Allah to guide us and guide through us, to rectify us and rectify through us. Allahumma ameen. Allahumma ameen. Translated by Dima Kamal Masri
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