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Hadith #21 - The Characteristics of a Pious Employee

November 15, 2017Dr. Omar Suleiman

It was narrated by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ that when someone is appointed to an administrative post and provide him with an allowance, anything he takes beyond that is unfaithful dealing. Omar Suleiman dives into this hadith and talks about the importance of being a faithful employee -- and not only faithful in actions but faithful with money and goods.

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Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
Alright, Salamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Bismillahir rahmanir raheem. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Wassalatu wassalamu ala rasulihi al kareem. Wa ala anihi wa sahbihi wa salamu taslimin kathira. So, what hadith number are we on? 21, very good. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Now, we've made it past the halfway mark, alhamdulillah. Who can remind me what we spoke of last week? What about employees? What about employees? Any hadith, any recollection? Okay, so we talked about the hadith to make sure that you pay a person before the sweat dries, before his sweat dries. And as we said, that is an indication of the necessity of being extremely diligent. And as we said, it's ihsan to even pay a person if you ask them to do something for you, before they even complete the job, unless there's some sort of a risk that they're not going to complete the job, which happens sometimes if you pay someone all the way up front, and then they take advantage of that payment. But we talked about this idea of labor conditions and how the employee is to be treated, how a contractor is to be treated, how workers are to be treated, some of the conditions that the Prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam mentioned. And of course, if you notice, when we talk about the power dynamic, especially the Islamic conception of social justice, the Prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam places far more weight on the person that's in a position of power. However, the Prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam, in teaching us a comprehensive model for social justice, he places responsibility upon each and every single person. So as much as you find a hadith about the violations of government and the warnings to those that have been placed in charge of the people,
you will also find a hadith about how to be a better citizen, how to be a loyal citizen in a place. Likewise, when it comes to this worker and employer relationship that the Prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam mentions here, you find narrations on both sides. However, I had a very difficult time preparing for this halaqa, honestly, because of two things. Number one, the vast majority of the ahadith in this regard go to the person that is in a position of power. The second thing is the differences that we find in contracts that existed in the time of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam and as they are today. So you have to really extract the values from these lessons, from these ahadith, but it's very difficult to get into the very specific things because the way that contracts functioned back then is very different, especially in Mecca, right? And even Mecca and Medina, there are differences between the way that people used to go about their business. Why? Because one society largely functions on trade, the other society largely functions on agriculture. So even the ahadith relating to how the dealings are in Medina are different from those in Mecca. So you can extract values, you can extract lessons, but it's very difficult to get into the nitty-gritty. The values that you can extract obviously are some that we've already alluded to in some of the previous halaqas, the greatest of them being the sense of amanah, the sense of trust. When you're entrusted with something, you do well by it. And amanah, trust in Islam, is a very encompassing concept. It does not just represent a trust as in you've been given something to secure until you return it back to its rightful owner. And amanah is a conversation that you have. The Prophet ﷺ mentioned that gatherings are by amanah. And amanah is in friendship. And amanah is in leadership.
The Prophet ﷺ, when he referred to the loss of trust, the loss of amanah, he referred to people being put in positions of power that don't deserve to be put in positions of power. There's a loss of trust, a loss of amanah. So you can extract some of those general values from these ahadith, and then you can apply them to these situations. When it comes to trade in particular, the traders, the merchants, we know that when we talk about the spread of Islam throughout the world, it's something common that you will hear, but it's very valuable and it's quite profound, that the largest Muslim country in the world today, which is Indonesia, the largest population of Muslims reside in Indonesia, or the largest country of Muslims is Indonesia. And when did Islam reach Indonesia? It reached Indonesia in the 14th century through traders. And Muslim merchants distinguished themselves so well that they were able to spread Islam not just by their ethics and their values, but because they were also active in their da'wah. So there was an active da'wah component where they preached about the religion that they professed, but at the same time, their ethics and their values really won the hearts and minds of people over there. So there's something to be said about that, just that general value. And of course we'll get to some incidents, inshallah, some stories towards the end that will hopefully drive the point home in regards to how this speaks to the pious employee. So when I say employee here in the context of the sunnah, let me clarify this, there are very few employer-employee relationships that exist in the Islamic models of finance, especially at the time of the Prophet ﷺ. What's very common is to have an agent, someone that's a contractor, a mudarib, a person who acts on your behalf, you have someone that finances, and then you have someone that acts as an agent on your behalf.
To have someone who's a ajeer, a ajeer is like a temporary employee, you hire someone to do a service for you, so a contractor. But the employer-employee relationship as we understand it today is virtually unfound in the model of the prophetic society, in the Prophet's ﷺ society. You have, of course, at that time, you have slave owners and slaves, right? So you have those types of relationships, and those often involve labor and things of that sort. But again, the idea of a hired employee rather than an agent of sorts is very difficult to find in that madani concept, in the concept of the society of the Prophet ﷺ. So let's go through some of these ahadith. The first hadith is narrated by Buraidah radiallahu ta'ala anhu. He says that the Prophet ﷺ, this is a hadith in Abu Dawud, an authentic hadith, manasta'amalnaahu ala'amalin farazaqnaahu rizqan thama akhaza ba'da thalik fahuwa ghulool. The Prophet ﷺ said, manasta'amalnaahu ala'amalin, whoever we hire to do a job. The context of the hadith is referring to an administrative post. So I want to make that very clear. So this is the context. Manasta'amalnaahu, who we hire, means the state in regards to the Prophet ﷺ. The government contractor, if you will, an administrative post. And we give him the proper amount that he is owed, the money that he is owed. Meaning there is no dhul, there is no transgression from the side of the one who is appointing or commissioning this post or this work. farazaqnaahu thama akhaza ba'da thalik fahuwa ghulool. Whatever he takes after that is a form of ghulool. And the word ghulool is really difficult to translate.
The closest translation I'll give is embezzlement. It's a form of embezzlement, ghulool. But let me define ghulool in the Arabic language. Alghulool in the Arabic language means al-khiyanatu fil-amwal. It's a sense of treachery regarding finances. It's a sense of treachery regarding finances. It means to take something unlawfully. Who can tell me alghul where it's used in the Quran? Sounds familiar? Anyone? Any hifadha in here? No? No, al-aghlal, so you're talking about the chains on the Day of Judgment. Okay, that's true. Good job. Barakallahu fiki. Surah Ali Imran, the verse number? You don't know the verse number? Neither do I. So, Surah Ali Imran, it's towards the end of Surah Ali Imran. maa kana li nabiyyin an yaghul. It is not befitting to a prophet an yaghul. Okay, to perform ghulool. waman yaghlul ya'ti bima ghalla yawm al-qiyamah. And whoever does so, whoever does so, he will show up on the Day of Judgment with what he took unlawfully. Now, what was this referring to in regards to the Prophet and the Prophets in general? The spoils of war. So, a very common form of ghulool, or the way that you usually find it being used in the sunnah, is that a person who's entrusted with the spoils of war or entrusted with some of the money of the state, takes from it before its distribution. So, puts some on the side for himself. Or takes a bribe to give some more to allot the portions in a way that's not permissible. So, to stray away from the divine equation and to take a little bit or to mismanage what is given to him in that regard. And this is a hadith, the context where it's used in this way,
it's a hadith from Abdullah bin Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. And he came to visit another man, Abdullah bin Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu went to visit another man and he asked him, the man asked Ibn Umar to make dua for him and to pray for him. So, Ibn Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, he said to Ibn Amir, so Ibn Umar and Ibn Amir, he said that, I heard the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam say, laa tuqbalu salatun bi ghayri tuhoor, that no prayer is accepted without purification, walaa sadaqatun min ghulool, and no charity is accepted from ghulool, from money that's been taken unlawfully. No charity is accepted from money that's been taken unlawfully. So, the word ghulool here, this would refer to in this context, in this hadith, a person taking more than what he actually was due. More than what he actually was owed unlawfully. And so, the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam is saying that anything beyond what he was owed lawfully becomes a form of ghulool. So, you honor whatever it is, and it also goes to the, just as usually the employer is able to put pressure on the employee to take less, sometimes the employee can hold the employer hostage as well, for whatever it may be, and take more than what is actually owed to him. So, the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam condemns that. There's another hadith, and it's a chapter in Al-Bukhari, Baab Hadaayil Ummaal. The chapter of gifts to those who have been appointed to do work. Gifts, extra gifts that have been appointed to those to do work. And this is a long hadith, and the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam appoints a man from the tribe of Banu Asad. Banu Asad, which is also the tribe of who? Khadijah radiAllahu anhu.
So, the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa sallam appoints a man from the tribe of Banu Asad to go and collect the zakah. So, he's hired to go and collect the zakah. Now, recognize that that job of collecting zakah was indeed a profession. And it's not like the zakah collector got to determine how much he was going to take. The zakah collector was given a stipend by the state. So, it's not like, you know what, I did well with my zakah collection today, I'm going to take a little bit more. walAAamireena AAalayhaa. This is how we abuse text. So, he takes his percentage, he takes a higher percentage. It doesn't work that way. It's something that's given by the state. It's a set, fixed amount that's given by the state to do a job. Now, one of the things that used to happen sometimes is trying to bribe the zakah collector. Sounds counterintuitive because you're trying to hold back money, so why would you bribe the guy coming to take money from you? But the idea was that if you bribed the zakah collector, he'd overlook some things in doing a proper analysis of your wealth. Because realize back then, people had to pay the account on their sheep, on their livestock, on different things. So, he'd be a little bit more generous and purposely overlook some things. So, there was this idea of gifting the zakah collector, bribing the zakah collector. So, this man came back to the Prophet ﷺ and he said, this is for you and this has been given to me as a gift. There was some extra money that was given to him as a gift as a zakah collector. And the Prophet ﷺ, he stood up on the manbar and he said, what is wrong with the employee whom we sent to collect zakah from the public? And then he returns to say, this is for you and that is for me. And the Prophet ﷺ said, he should have sat in his home and seen if he got any gifts then. Meaning, you should recognize that these gifts are not because somebody liked you
or somebody saw you and said, hey, let me give you a gift. That you received that gift because someone was trying to get you to compromise the integrity of your position. Or someone was compromising the integrity of your position. So, it's not like if you were sitting in your home, sitting in your mother or father's house, you would have received that gift. So, the Prophet ﷺ says, what is wrong with that person? And he said, waladhi nafsi biyadi. He said, by him in whose hand is my soul, whoever takes anything illegally will bring it on the day of judgment carrying it over his neck. So, this is a person that took more than what was due to him. The Prophet ﷺ said, it will come on the day of judgment on top of his neck. He will come carrying it on his neck. He said, if it is a camel, it will be grunting. If it is a cow, it will be mooing. And if it is a sheep, it will be crying. I can't think of the proper translation. So, the hiwar. So, these different animals would be complaining. And the Prophet ﷺ is giving us a very vivid sight or scene here. Like imagine on the day of judgment people showing up with that extra burden on their necks. So, the Prophet ﷺ said, the one who took more than what was due to him will have it on his neck on the day of judgment. And the Prophet ﷺ then raised both of his hands to the sky. And he said, have I delivered the message? Have I delivered the message? Ala halbalakht, ala halbalakht. Have I given the message properly? Have I given the message properly? This hadith is narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari. So, Imam al-Baghawi, rahimahullah ta'ala, he comments on this hadith. And he says, this refers to anything extra. Anything extra that is taken by an employee, that is taken by a governor, that is taken by a judge. So, a person who is appointed to do something and takes more, essentially uses their position to take more than what was due to them.
So, he said this is suhb, this is haram money. Because these gifts or this money is only given to excuse someone of their duties or to entitle a certain other group of people. Or to sway a verdict in one favor or whatever it may be. So, this is something that the Prophet ﷺ forbade in every single way. So, this hadith applies by fias, by analogy to all forms of favoritism, bribery, people that use their position to abuse others. Use their position to abuse others. And this is something that is very, very common in the Muslim world. People that use their position, they might be a low-level employee, but at the same time they are connected to this person who is connected to that person and you know that that person is connected to that person. So, there are gifts that are given to that person or some form of favoritism to that employee because of their position. So, the Prophet ﷺ, he warned about that as well. So, you speak to this amanah, a person who is given an amanah, entrusted with something, entrusted with something. And it is too beautiful of a story for me not to mention this. And then we can draw its analogies, inshaAllah ta'ala. Umar ibn al-Khattab, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, when he sent the Muslims into battle with the Persians. So, when the Persian Empire and the Muslim Empire engaged in their battles, in the Battle of Qadisiyyah, and the conquest of the Palace of Kisra took place. And this was the most lavish palace in the world, where Madain, in Al-Madain, where Kisra's palace was full of all sorts of treasures. And when the Sahaba went to the Palace of Kisra, and they collected that which was in it as the spoils of war, and they brought it back, you know, they're literally heaping piles of gold and jewels
and all these fancy carpets and silk and all this stuff. And subhanAllah, you know, not a single coin disappeared. I mean, they did like a count, a hisab when they were there. And then when they arrived at Umar ibn al-Khattab, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, they're carrying it for thousands of miles, nothing was missing. Nothing. And that was something that was shocking. Right? Recognize that this is a culture of highway robbers before Islam. And highway robbers continue to exist afterwards. The fact that each and every single thing was maintained in its place, and those Sahaba were not tempted, not a single one of them was tempted to steal at some point, was something that was profound. So when Umar, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, saw this stuff in front of him, and recognized that not a single person stole, not a single person violated the amanah that was given to them, he commented and he said that a people that deliver all of this are a people of integrity. They're a people of profound integrity. So he praised their integrity. And he was proud. He was proud of the ummah. And Ali, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, said to Umar ibn al-Khattab, radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, and this is beautiful, he said, you restrain your hands from the wealth of the Muslims, so your subjects restrain themselves from the wealth of the Muslims. Because of your ifta, because of your dignity, your integrity, your subjects also followed suit. And many of the scholars, they commented on that incident, and they talked about a culture of integrity. And this is something that transfers to all of our contracts, that transfers to all of our dealings, and all of our interactions, that there's a culture of that integrity. That when it's sound at the top, it should become sound throughout. But once someone starts to play these types of games, then it sets a culture of khyana, a culture of treachery, rather than a culture of amanah.
So it's just too beautiful not to mention that, that Umar radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu was able to instill that sense of amanah, that sense of trust in all of these people, these loyal subjects. Again, people that are in an inferior position, and we can draw from that the sense of amanah. Two more hadith and we'll close. We'll go to some of the stories and some of the lessons we can take insha'Allah ta'ala. They both involve the same companion. He's not a companion you hear about much. He's not a companion you hear about much, but he's an interesting companion. I did some research on him a few years ago. His name is Urwa ibn al-Ja'ad. Urwa ibn al-Ja'ad. Anyone ever heard of him? No, he's not a companion you typically hear about. This is a man that the Prophet ﷺ used to send for some of the transactions, the tijara. He's a competent worker. He's a very competent worker. He's someone that can go to the marketplace and that can carry himself competently. That's not going to abuse the trust of the Muslims. And some of the scholars mentioned that from the Prophet ﷺ's amanah to the ummah is that he only put competent people in a place of dealing with these things. He didn't just choose people of taqwa, people of piety, but also competent people. When he managed the bayt al-maal, the treasury of the ummah, the Prophet ﷺ put the right people with the right expertise to deal with things. So the Prophet ﷺ gave him a dinar to go buy a sheep. Okay? To go buy a sheep. So he wasn't satisfied with buying one sheep with a dinar. So instead he bought two. He found a way, he bargained his way, and then he bought two. Then what he did was he sold one of those sheep for a dinar. So he came back to the Prophet ﷺ and he gave the Prophet ﷺ a dinar and a sheep. SubhanAllah, I mean look at the amanah of this man. Look at the beautiful nature of this man. So the Prophet ﷺ, he smiled and he made dua for him
for Allah ﷻ to bless him in his wealth. And they said about him, and this is narrated by the way in al-Bukhari, that this was a man that if he purchased dust, if he purchased turab, he would find a way to make ribh, he would find a way to profit from it because of the dua of the Prophet ﷺ. And then the Prophet ﷺ, he said, sacrifice the sheep and give the dinar in charity. And some of the scholars, they mentioned, this is a separate narration, it seems to be referring to the same incident, that some of the, al-Imam al-Shawkani, rahimahullah, he said that this was a principle of the Prophet ﷺ. It could mean a few things. One of them is that maybe the Prophet ﷺ felt like that extra dinar was doubtful. But the way you did that was kind of, you know, he appreciated, he appreciated what he did, but at the same time, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't what the Prophet ﷺ was looking for. So the Prophet ﷺ is sort of teaching us a principle that if you receive income through doubtful means, it's better to give it away in sadaqah. And that's why as an employee, especially in a day and age where almost every single form of trade involves some haram, some form of haram. There are very clear, explicit haram professions, but then there are the professions where somehow you're connected to some sort of haram transaction, some sort of impermissible transaction, something's touched by riba, by interest, some sort of company that has some haram dealings, whatever it is, you're going to be affected by that. And so the scholars will say what? That you should give as much of your income into charity, you know, especially when you have a job that involves some doubtful dealings, it's okay for you to work in there if that's not the majority of your work, but at the same time increase in your sadaqah. So this is one of the hadith where we take that principle that if you work in a job, in a profession, where you're getting some income and it's doubtful, it's better to give it away in sadaqah, it's better to give it away in charity. Well, how do we reconcile that with the earlier hadith from Ibn Umar radiyallahu ta'ala anhu, that there is no sadaqah from ghulul,
there's no charity from money that's been taken wrongfully. Anyone know? You guys see a contradiction? You guys ever heard the question of, well, can I give haram money in charity? What's the answer to that question? No? You can, but you won't get a reward. Okay. There are two types of haram money. There's haram money that is seized, stolen, taken unlawfully, and then there's haram money that is haram in the nature of the transaction. So you earned it through selling something impermissible or through dealing with some product that's impermissible, whatever it may be. The first type of money, that which is taken unlawfully and seized, you can't give that in sadaqah. You can't give that in charity. You need to find a way to try to return it to its rightful owner. The second form is given in sadaqah, and that's a means of purifying yourself from the wealth that was earned in a haram way or something that was earned and had some sort of dealing with that which was impermissible. So it's a means of purification, but you may or may not be rewarded for it. But that's a way of purifying yourself of it. Okay, so the answer is yes, you can give that money in sadaqah as long as it's not money that's stolen or seized, taken through ghulool, what the Prophet ﷺ mentioned here. Then it becomes something different. Imam al-Shuqani ﷺ, he also said that the Prophet ﷺ, it could have been that the Prophet ﷺ, there's a hadith by the way that the animal the Prophet ﷺ was talking about was the udhiyah. So he wasn't permitted, urwa was not permitted to sell the udhiyah, so he made a mistake. So the Prophet ﷺ was doing expiation for the mistake of urwa. Another possibility, he said that the Prophet ﷺ may have given it up as a means of charity because he already was giving this money as a form of qurb, coming close to Allah.
You know they call it qurbani, right? It brings you nearer to Allah. Qurb is to bring you nearer to Allah. The Prophet ﷺ already intended that that dinar was to be given as a means of nearness to Allah ﷻ. So just because it came back with the animal, the Prophet ﷺ still wanted to hold to his original commitment. So that's a form of amanah, a form of trust with Allah ﷻ, right? When you intend something as charity and then you get something back, give it away, right? Give it away because you already intended that to be a means of charity. So the Prophet ﷺ sticking to, if you will, that contract with Allah ﷻ and not to go off on too much of a tangent but the Prophet ﷺ forbade a person from taking back something they already intended as charity. Can't be like, I changed my mind. Go to a fundraiser, raise your hand and say, I thought about it on the way home and 5,000 was too much. Let's make it 2,500. Can't do that. Once you announce something as charity, intend something as charity, it should be used for its purpose. That's a means of maintaining that trust with Allah ﷻ as well. So there are many lessons that we can take from these ahadith. Now let's go to some incidents where we can also extract some lessons. One of them is from Abdullah ibn Mas'ud ﷺ. Ibn Mas'ud ﷺ was one of the first people to accept Islam. One of the first ten people to accept Islam. He was one of the earliest companions to accept Islam. And his story of how he accepted Islam is that he was a shepherd for Rukba ibn Abu Mu'ith. Rukba ibn Abu Mu'ith would of course go on to become one of the greatest enemies of the Messenger ﷺ. Someone who put guts on the back of the Prophet ﷺ, camel guts on the back of the Prophet ﷺ, humiliated him, and was one of the staunchest enemies of the Prophet ﷺ. And one of the people who received the dua of the Prophet ﷺ against him. Doesn't happen in too many people. So Rukba ibn Abu Mu'ith is a really evil person,
a very arrogant person, a very powerful man. And Ibn Mas'ud was one of his shepherds and he was only 13 years old when he was sent to be a shepherd for Rukba ibn Abu Mu'ith. Alright? So look at this incident. The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ﷺ, they pass by Abdullah ibn Mas'ud. He doesn't know who they are. And they don't know who he is. They just see this young man that's a shepherd of sheep on the outskirts of Mecca. So the Prophet ﷺ, he asks Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, he says to him, Oh young man, ya ibn Amm, my nephew, he says, would you mind giving us some milk from one of these goats? We're travelers. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud said, I can't, I've been entrusted. These aren't my goats, I can't give you any milk. Not knowing it's the Prophet ﷺ. Do you think the Prophet ﷺ was upset with him? No. The Prophet ﷺ was impressed. So he said to him, هل لكم من شات لا لبن فيه? He says, Well, do you have a goat that doesn't produce milk? So he said, Sure, but what are you going to do with it? He said, Just bring it over. So Abdullah ibn Mas'ud brought it. So he said the Prophet ﷺ وضع النبي ﷺ يده على ضرع الشات He put it on the udders of that goat. And the Prophet ﷺ said, بسم الله And so it suddenly started to produce milk, plentiful milk. So he said the Prophet ﷺ gave a cup to Abu Bakr, he gave me some, and then he drank from it too. So we all ended up drinking from this goat that wasn't producing milk. So he said, you know, after that, عادت كما كانت the goat went back to not producing any milk. So Abdullah ibn Mas'ud has no idea what's going on. So he says to the Prophet ﷺ, يا عم يا عم Oh my uncle, oh my uncle. علمني من هذا القول الذي قلت He thought it was in the words.
He said, what were those words you said? Teach me the words that you said. Because he heard بسم الله, he thought, okay, if I say the same words, maybe I can start doing this too. So he says, the Prophet ﷺ smiled, فمسح على صدري and he wiped his hand on my chest like he was praising me. And he says, إنك العلام المعلم You're a learned, trustworthy young man. You're a good young man. Then he left him. Ibn Mas'ud of course went to Mecca and started trying to find him and asked about him until he found him and accepted Islam right away. When he found out that the Prophet ﷺ was calling to this new message. That's one incident where you found a person who was praised for their trustworthiness even though he was working for an evil man. For an evil man. So you can't say, for example, I'm an employee for an evil person so that means I can mess around a little bit. It doesn't work that way. Another incident is a very famous incident with Abdullah bin Umar رضي الله تعالى عنه. I've given a khutbah about it here so I won't spend too much time on it. But when Ibn Umar رضي الله عنه noticed a shepherd one day and a lot of these involve shepherds because again that's their society. That's the context, amanah for them. Especially in Meccan society in particular. There are a lot of shepherds. So he noticed a shepherd and it was a hot day and the man was fasting. So Ibn Umar رضي الله عنه told him, why are you fasting? Hot. He was testing him. So the man told him, I want to use whatever days Allah ﷻ gave me on this earth, whatever is left of it to fast as a means of coming close to Allah ﷻ and there is sweetness in the struggle. So Ibn Umar رضي الله عنه liked this young man. So he said to him, why don't you give me, why don't you sell me one of those sheep so that we can cook it and we can all eat it together. He was trying to tempt him away from fasting just to see if he'll fall for it and to betray his master and to say that I gave it away
or I lost it. So the man says to him, he says, you know, this isn't mine. I don't own these sheep. I'm just watching them for someone else, the person who owns them. So Ibn Umar رضي الله عنه says, قل للمالك أكلها الذب He said, just tell the guy who owns the sheep that one of them got ate by a wolf or something or you lost it. Like one sheep was lost. Maybe he won't notice and, you know, I'll pay you a lot of money. This is Abdullah Ibn Umar رضي الله عنه testing this man and the man doesn't know who he is. And the man responded so beautifully. He says, وماذا أقول لله What am I supposed to say to God? SubhanAllah. Like that's so beautiful. Like, okay, fine, if I tell the owner that I lost the sheep or it was eaten by a wolf, what am I supposed to say to Allah? Abdullah Ibn Umar رضي الله عنه was so impressed by this man. He purchased his freedom. And he said to him, this is a word that you said that freed you in this world from slavery. And I ask Allah that it frees you from hellfire on the day of judgment. He didn't stop there. He went and he bought the entire flock from the owner and gave it to that man to reward him for his honesty. SubhanAllah. I mean, this is so beautiful, this idea that, you know what, even if I can go under the radar, Allah still sees me. Allah still sees me. And the best way to end this discussion of a person that is mu'taman, a person that's been entrusted as a contractor, as an employee, and whatever it may be, the greatest employee of all time was who? Rasulullah ﷺ. The story of the Prophet ﷺ really goes to that, right? Because someone very wealthy asked the Prophet ﷺ or hired the Prophet ﷺ to do a job. Who was that wealthy person? Khadijah ﷺ.
The Prophet ﷺ, at the age of 18, he started to work as a broker, meaning he would be a mudarib. He'd take commission off of basically connecting buyers and sellers, transferring goods and things of that sort. Before the age of 18, the Prophet ﷺ was a shepherd. He was a shepherd. But now he worked as a broker for Abu Talib. And he used to be a shepherd for Hala, the sister of Khadijah ﷺ. So he has some experience with the family of Khadijah because he worked as a shepherd for Hala. And he was a shepherd for six years. He was a shepherd for a very long time, alayhi salatu wa salam. And she hired the Prophet ﷺ. And she already, there was a frame of reference of the Prophet ﷺ being ameen. He was a trustworthy person, someone that would always do good. But the Prophet ﷺ never had a real big job. So he's trading in his early 20s. He's taking people's goods in different ways, really working under the wing of Abu Talib. And then the Prophet ﷺ is approached by Khadijah ﷺ to take her caravan to Syria. Khadijah always used to get cheated, always. And she had so much money that she could absorb the hits. Her caravan, when they used to go to Syria, because they go to Syria in the summer and they go to Yemen in the winter. Okay? So Khadijah's caravan was always bigger than everybody else's caravan put together from Mecca. You can imagine the amount of wealth that Khadijah ﷺ would send to these places. Her caravan always was bigger than everybody else's combined. And her workers would always cheat her. She always got cheated. But she could absorb it because she was so wealthy. RadhiAllahu ta'ala alayhi wa sallam. So she heard of the Prophet ﷺ. She has a reference from Hala. She's heard about him and she decides to hire the Prophet ﷺ. And again, this contract is mudaraba.
It's called the mudaraba contract. It's where you have a person who's a silent partner, an investor, and you have a working partner. So you have someone who's got the money and someone that works with that money. And if there is a loss, it's purely absorbed by who? By the investor, by the silent partner. Okay? So the Prophet ﷺ is... His reputation is so sound that Khadija radhiAllahu ta'ala alayhi wa sallam she told the Prophet ﷺ she's gonna pay him twice the amount that she used to pay everybody else just because she wants that honesty. Right? And the Prophet ﷺ he took that amanah and the Prophet ﷺ wanted to get her twice the profit that she was used to. Because she gave him twice the salary the Prophet ﷺ felt like he had to do the best with what was given to him and she sent with him of course the man by the name of Maysala. She sent Maysala, her servant, to go with the Prophet ﷺ who of course observed the Prophet ﷺ throughout this journey and fell in love with his character. I mean, there are so many miracles that he witnessed and the character of the Prophet ﷺ, the way he conducted himself, not just in the marketplace or with her caravan but the way he conducted himself when he was alone, the way he conducted himself with people that were passing by, the way he conducted himself with Maysala. Maysala fell in love with the Prophet ﷺ and couldn't stop bragging about the Prophet ﷺ when they got back to Mecca. But when they got to Sham, when they got to Syria, the Prophet ﷺ was so diligent with the caravan that he made twice the profit. Twice the profit that Khadijah ﷺ expected or was used to because Khadijah ﷺ paid the Prophet ﷺ twice the salary. So this is, subhanAllah,
this speaks to ihsan to the employer if the employer shows you ihsan, responding to ihsan, responding to excellence with excellence as well. But if a person showed that to you then you should respond in like manner and the Prophet ﷺ felt that amanah to go beyond expectations of him because the Prophet ﷺ was showing that type of goodness as well, that type of generosity. So it's upon that person to go above and beyond if you are given that sort of trust and the Messenger ﷺ of course did that and that makes him, you know, of course, the rest is history as they say, right, between Khadijah and the Prophet ﷺ. When Maysala came back and told Khadijah everything he saw of the Prophet ﷺ, Khadijah ﷺ, truly developed an attachment to the Prophet ﷺ, developed an admiration and a love for the Prophet ﷺ because of his noble manners and the amanah, the sense of trustworthiness of the Prophet ﷺ. So the same thing that won the heart of Khadijah ﷺ won the hearts of millions of people to come in Indonesia and, you know, through the traders, the Muslim merchants who observed this amanah that's given to us. Finally, of course, we find there's a saying from one of the early books of Fiqh that the mudarib, that this worker, is an amin, a ajir, a wakil and a shariq. He is an amin, which means he's a trustee. He is an ajir, an employee. He is a wakil, which is a representative and he's a shariq and he's a partner. The reason why I'm mentioning this statement, by the way, is to show that we can extract so many lessons from this type of a contract that this person really gives us lessons in all four of these things. So, he's an amin when he took hold of the money. So he has amanah with the assets that have been given to him. This isn't someone that works with invisible assets. This is a person that's given
a set of assets and the Prophet ﷺ was that person. So he's an amin at that point. He's someone that's entrusted at that point when he took hold of the money. And he also has to serve as a ajir, okay, which is someone that is, you know, that is, that is, I don't want to use the word run it out, but that's really what it means, right? Someone that's, whose time is being placed on it right now, whose time is being valued and who has to serve. As an employee, okay? So ajir is someone that's now employed. And he has to serve as a wakil, a representative. So he has to represent the one who hired him well. When he goes to the marketplace, he represents his employer. And he's also a sharik. He is a partner once a profit surfaces from the money, once a profit surfaces from the money. So truly by looking at the way the Prophet ﷺ and these people carried themselves in these types of contracts, we can derive lessons in our own lives, right? How well do I represent my employer, okay, or the person that's given me this job to do? How much of the, you know, if I've been given something to handle in amana, how am I handling that amana? All right? All of these different things come into play, of course. But again, Allah ﷻ knows best. These are all values that we do our best to extract. We ask Allah ﷻ to make us a people of amana in whatever capacity we may be, whether we be in a position of power or whether we be in a position of vulnerability. May Allah ﷻ allow us to always place the fear of Him above all things and to always be conscious of Him and to always worry about what we will say to Him rather than what we would say to the people and to recognize that accountability. Allahumma ameen.
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