Virtual Khutbahs
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Consuming Too Much Bad News and the Danger of Despair | Virtual Khutbah
Sh. Omar Suleiman talks about our consuming too much bad news can affect our well being and lead us to a sense of despair. Tune in to learn what the Qur’an and Sunnah mention on guarding against it.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh everyone. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon you. Allah is the true guider of the righteous and you do not die except as Muslims. O you people, fear your Lord Who created you from one soul, and from it He created her husband, and from them He spread many men and women. And fear Allah with whom you ask for mercy. Verily, Allah is a Watcher over you. O you who believe, fear Allah and say a firm word. He will rectify your deeds and fill your hearts. Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has won a great victory. I want to welcome you all to this Friday message. We begin with the praise of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We ask Him to send His peace and blessings upon His Messengers and Prophets, His Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam, his family, his companions, and those that follow until the Day of Judgment. And we ask Allah to allow us to follow in their blessed path. Allahumma ameen. So I've been doing a lot of reflection on what to talk about this Friday in particular.
And I thought about, you know, how much bad news there has been, how much despair there is, and how we're dealing with all of this news that's coming our way. But at the same time, unfortunately, one of the things that's happening is that in the process of all of that bad news and despair, it's not just making us more attentive. It's causing us to shut off and not really do anything with the circumstances, not feeling like we have any power. There is this feeling of Judgment Day, you know, resurrection in the background. And the thing is, is that you have to find this balance where you process all of that, because it's good to be reminded of our mortality. It's good to be reminded of the Day of Judgment. It's good to be reminded of our vulnerabilities. It's good to be reminded about our health. All of these things are positive. But at the same time, it's important for us to stay activated and to feel like we still have a way forward, right? And so what Allah warns about of despair is very important. And one of the things that was really interesting, this hadith that I was reflecting on and how it would apply to our circumstances now, even Allah protects us from some bad news and some gloom, not protecting us in the sense of protecting us from knowing about what's out there. So we have mentions of punishment. We have mentions of doom and we have mentions of the punishment of the grave and the punishment of the hereafter. We have these things in the Quran. We have them in the Sunnah and it's a balance. You have reward and then you have punishment. You have hope and then you have fear. And the believer lives between hope and fear. And you have to have a healthy balance between the two. Your hope cannot become delusion to where you're complacent and heedless.
Your fear cannot become despair to where you're shut off and you don't do anything because you feel like you have no chance at salvation and no chance of good. Or you're not deserving of any type of salvation or any type of good. So that balance is there and there's this one hadith about how even Allah protects us in a way. And that is where the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam, he was talking about the punishment of the grave, right? And the things that happen in the grave. Now, obviously the grave is the first station of the station of the hereafter. And that's why Uthman alaihi wasalam used to weep at the grave because he said that if this station is good, then everything after it will be good. If you are living in a mini Jannah in your grave, then that is a sign of the Jannah to come. If you are in a mini Jahannam in the grave, it's a sign of a mini Jahannam to come. So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow our station in the grave to be ease and to be a part of Jannah only to lead us to the ultimate Jannah, the ultimate reward of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, right? So we know about the reward and the punishment. We're sought to seek refuge or we're taught to seek refuge from the punishment of the grave in every one of our prayers. We are taught extensively about the importance of death and how it is Hadim al-Ladhat, how it's the destroyer of pleasures. All of these things are there. But can you imagine how difficult our lives would be if we could hear the punishment of the grave, if we could actually see those things? And I remember, you know, when Google Video first came out before YouTube was a thing and before social media had taken off and there were a lot of these videos that were circulating. This is before WhatsApp. It seems ancient now. And I remember these videos about the punishment of the grave where someone was testifying to what they heard or a body was dug up or in the process of burial. The grave was not accepting the person or they saw snakes in the grave or python, you know, all of these these different types of videos that would come out.
And the Prophet ﷺ spoke to how horrified we would be or shut off we would be if we saw the graves of everyone, if we actually had that glimpse into the hereafter and how it would stop us from being able to function properly. He said ﷺ as he passed by a group of graves, he says So I'm going to say that again. The Prophet ﷺ says The Prophet ﷺ said that this group of people are being tested in their graves. They are being tested in their graves. And had I not feared that you would not even bury your dead, if you could hear the punishment of the grave, then I would have asked Allah ﷻ to allow you to hear what I'm hearing right now. Meaning the Prophet ﷺ could handle hearing what he was hearing ﷺ and seeing of the unseen what Allah had allowed him to see. But the Prophet ﷺ was saying that he had a fear that as an ummah, as a people, we would not be able to handle hearing or seeing those things that he was seeing ﷺ because our capacity does not allow it. And it would actually stop us from carrying out the sunan, the traditions, the important rituals that surround death. There's another incident where the Prophet ﷺ recognizing his capacity versus the capacity of other people. And some of you have heard the first part of this hadith, this incident, where the Prophet ﷺ walked by a group of people and they were laughing obnoxiously. Now the Prophet ﷺ was one who used to smile and who used to laugh.
The Prophet ﷺ was bas-saman bahakan. He would smile and he would laugh. Though his laughter was very noble and dignified ﷺ, but not only would he smile and laugh, he would bring joy to the people around him. So you would smile and laugh from the smiling and laughter of the Prophet ﷺ. But there is a type of laughter that is obnoxious and that veers into the impermissible and that denotes some sort of ignorance of the world and of our purpose in life. And so the Prophet ﷺ walked by a group of people and he saw them laughing heavily and he said ﷺ that, By the one in whose hand is my soul, had you seen what I have seen and known what I know, you would laugh little and weep much. Had you seen what I've seen and known what I've known, you would laugh little and you would weep much. When the Prophet ﷺ left those people, and this is an authentic hadith, Allah ﷻ revealed to him, فَأَوْحَ اللَّهَ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ إِلَيْهِ يَا مُحَمَّدْ لِمَا تُقَنِّطُ عِبَادِهِ Allah says to the Prophet ﷺ, O Muhammad, why are you causing my servants to despair? Why are you causing my servants to despair? Now nothing that the Prophet ﷺ said was wrong. We should think about the hereafter. And indeed the Prophet ﷺ has seen things that we did not see. And he was giving that advice not in the capacity of dismissing them, but he was giving that advice in a way to let them know that, Hey look, think about your purpose. You need to think about your purpose. And this is indeed in the books of Tazkiyah, in the books of spirituality, that there's a good type of laughter and then there's a type of laughter that goes a little too far and denotes a form of ignorance and delusion. But the fact that Allah ﷻ says to the Prophet ﷺ, Why did you cause my servants to despair?
And the Prophet ﷺ goes back to them and he says, أَبْشِرُوا وَسَدِّدُوا وَقَارِبُوا So give good news. أَبْشِرُوا وَسَدِّدُوا And guide people. وَقَارِبُوا And bring them as close as possible. Meaning you want to give them the proper doses, the proper messaging of hope and fear, of mercy and punishment that would cause them to ultimately drive themselves towards Allah's mercy and not find themselves in the category of punishment. Now all of us are inherently imbalanced and the Prophet ﷺ was the most balanced of all. All of us have to find that balance and sometimes we risk in talking so much about mercy, we risk leading people to complacency and sometimes we risk in talking so much about punishment even out of love for people and consequences. Worldly consequences and consequences in the hereafter. We risk people becoming to, you know, or despairing from Allah ﷻ and feeling like they have no path back to Allah and they have no path to good and that everything is going to fall apart for them. But the fact that Allah ﷻ revealed that to the Prophet ﷺ and the Prophet ﷺ went back and the Prophet ﷺ said, give good news and guide the people and bring them as close to perfection as possible. They can't be perfect but bring them as close to perfection as possible is very important here. It's an important lesson. Even Allah has spared us from some bad news. Not in making us ignorant of it. We know of it but there would have been an overload of it had we been able to hear what was taking place in the graves and some of the things that were taking place in the hereafter. If we were able to actually hear it and witness it, it would debilitate us and it would not be productive in bringing us closer to Allah ﷻ causing us to prepare. It would cause us to probably shut off. And so even Allah ﷻ protected us from that.
But Allah did not make us ignorant of it. And that's the key here. We have knowledge of it. We know about it. We need to know about it. We need to strive to be amongst those that are rewarded in the hereafter and that do rewardable deeds in this life. But sometimes seeing or hearing too much can shut you off. And it's important for us to know what that lever is for ourselves. And I was thinking about as you see the imagery, the videos of the Kaaba Empty, and you see the pictures and the videos that are coming out of just horrible things that are happening in the world. And obviously horrible things were happening in the world before the coronavirus. The ER in Italy was already the ER in Gaza and Idlib. These ERs, but it was different because it was people dropping bombs and it was people shredded to pieces. And seeing those can be very, very debilitating. I need to know what's happening so that I can activate myself towards it. But if you consume too much of it, then you might shut off. And sometimes I think to myself, what if in the 10th century, where people are asking, was there no Hajj? There was, I believe it was the year 919 or 918, the Qaramita, a group that attacked the Kaaba, that attacked Mecca. And they killed all of the Hujjaj that were coming to Mecca that day. They filled Zamzam with blood. They threw dead Hujjaj, dead pilgrims into Zamzam. And they even stole the black stone. And there was no Hajj that year. And if you were to live in that time, would you really be able to function? If you were to live in that time and you were to see the images coming out from Mecca, if they had news reports and social media at the time, and you saw the images of the people in Mecca going to Hajj,
being thrown into Zamzam, slaughtered and massacred, and there was no Hajj, would anyone living at that time would have really been able to function? Would they have been able to actually come to terms with the things that they were seeing? And the answer is probably not. It was a mercy from Allah SWT to them that they didn't see it. However, it was important for people to know about that. The crusades that were taking place, the massacre of Mu'arra by the crusaders, the barbaric treatment of the people in Syria at the time, and may Allah SWT make it easy for the people of Syria as they're being treated in like manner now by their new oppressor. And by the way, it was actually 930, the year 930 that there was no Hajj and that the Qaramita had massacred the Hujjaj. If you saw what happened in Jerusalem, in the years that followed Mu'arra, all of this happened, the massacre of the people in Mu'arra, the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders, the pillaging of the Hujjaj that were going to Hajj, all that happened within 100 years. Imagine if they had social media back then. It would have likely debilitated everyone to where they couldn't do anything anymore. So it's important for us to keep some sort of hope, to make ourselves aware of things, but to always know that Allah SWT has pulled people out of difficulty before and Allah SWT can pull us out of difficulty now. That whatever circumstances we are encountering right now, though they may be new to us, they're not new to Allah SWT. And Allah was powerful then and Allah is powerful now. Allah is the healer then and Allah is the healer now.
Allah is the most merciful then and Allah is the most merciful now and He always will be. So we need to know that though these circumstances are unprecedented in our lifetimes, they're not unprecedented. They've happened before, people have been through these things before and they've gotten through it. Now some of them passed away and if they were righteous, if they were upon the truth and they were righteous and they were people who sought the mercy of Allah SWT, then they gained shahada, they gained the best thing that you could possibly want. Your purpose in life is to do what will grant you felicity in the hereafter. What more could you want? And so people made it through before, people will make it through now. The question is how much do we keep ourselves engaged? How much doom and gloom is good or bad? How much should we make ourselves aware of the bad circumstances, of the bad news around us without being debilitated by it? And so just a few things here and I'll actually share a personal story. One time I had given a khutbah and this was right after, it was right after the beginning of the massacre of the Syrian people. And someone said to me, how can you smile at a time like this? How can you even smile? It's offensive to the people of Syria that you would smile right now. Now granted the khutbah was about the people of Syria. We fundraised for the people of Syria. We made dua for the people of Syria. We connected people. We advocated for the people of Syria. I think we had a protest that weekend for the people of Syria. So we've done all of these things and it's not enough. We have not done enough for the people of Syria or for the people that are being oppressed in Yemen or anywhere else. We haven't done enough. But what I'm saying is the khutbah was about the people of Syria. We had action items for the people of Syria. And afterwards I was just saying salam and this brother, very sincerely by the way, he wasn't, I'm not condemning him at all.
Actually I get the place where his disapproval and his discomfort came from and I acknowledge it came from a good place. How can you smile at a time like this? Why are you saying salam and smiling at the people after you just talked about what's happening to the people of Syria? And all I could think about was how is it that the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam smiled through the burial of six of seven of his children, through oppression, persecution, being run out of his home, run out of his city, having his teeth knocked out through the trauma of Ta'if, through the trauma of losing Khadija radiallahu anha. How could he still smile salallahu alaihi wasalam? And the realization subhanAllah is that it's a mercy from Allah that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala still allows us that. Why? Because the reality is not smiling is not going to change the situation of the people of Syria. Being ignorant of the people of Syria and of their plight is sinful. And neglecting people in hardship is sinful. But not smiling wouldn't change anything, it wouldn't make anything better for anybody. So the balance is in the person of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam and the balance is what we learn from the Quran and from the sunnah of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam about how to be knowledgeable, be acquainted, be engaged without being dejected, debilitated and in despair. On a personal level, I am never complacent with sin nor should I make anyone else complacent with their sin. Sin is not okay. And I should not make myself complacent with sin nor should I make others complacent with sin. However, what I'm confident in is not that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will forgive me despite my insistence on sin. What I'm confident in is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will forgive me if I turn away from that sin.
That's the difference between despair and a healthy consciousness and fear of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So the confidence is not, yeah Allah is going to forgive me anyway. That would be taking the mercy part of this too far, right? The confidence is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will forgive me. I have a good expectation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that he will forgive me if I turn back to him. And that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's mercy will overwhelm the generality of my sinfulness. يتعالى يتعالى يتعالى يتعال causes them to turn off from mercy and they don't find a path back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So what's the fine line? The fine line is that you have some good that is redeeming. Use that good to overcome that sinfulness and you will find Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala always willing to accept you. So that's the difference between despair and taqwa. Taqwa and la taqnatu min rahmatillah. Fear of Allah being God conscious, being pious. You know, that's the difference. And so how do we transfer that to these aspects of our lives with everything that's going on? All of this that's happening reminds me of the power of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and my vulnerability. My view of the world right now with everything that's happening is not that it's all done and not that in any way that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is incapable of changing the situation.
It's how do I place on myself a sense of urgency that I am on the side of the favor of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with everything that's unfolding while still believing that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala can change everything that's unfolding with one of my duas despite my sinfulness. Despite my sinfulness. Don't belittle your dua, don't belittle your supplication. And so make yourself aware of the world around you. Know about the world around you. Know about the bad news. But don't over consume it to a point that you don't do any good. Okay? Avail yourself of the good that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has put in front of you. And don't lose sight of the fact that his mercy overwhelms his punishment. That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's power is there and that we can appeal to that and that we have the power of dua. We have open access to supplication, to a direct line of supplication at all times. So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to never despair but at the same time to never be deluded. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to live healthily between the fear of not doing enough or the fear of displeasing him and hope that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala could forgive us and will forgive us no matter what so long as we turn back to him. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be driven by our love of him and to have a healthy balance and a healthy flight back to him between the hope and the fear of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, those two wings. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be a source of hope for people around us but not to shut them off from the things that they should be doing. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide us and guide through us. May Allah rectify us and rectify through us. May Allah heal us and heal through us. Allahumma ameen. Jazakum Allah khayran to all of you for tuning in. Don't forget to pray Salatul Dhuhr, four rak'ahs.
Even if you did ghusl, even if you're dressed nicely, even if you're in your living room and you've got a musalla looking room, please pray your Salatul Dhuhr, your four rak'ahs. And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala return us to his homes soon where we can pray Jum'ah together. And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to reap the benefits of this blessed month of Shahban and prepare us for the most blessed month of Ramadan. Wa salallahu alayhi wa sallam ala nabiyyina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salam wa tasallimu ala ala alihi wa sallam. Alhamdulillah.
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