Guidebook to God
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Ep. 9: Love For Others What You Love For Yourself | Guidebook to God
What is the significance of sacrifice as an act of worship? Sacrificing for others is a crucial part of our faith, and what better way to understand sacrifice than looking to the story of Prophet Ibrahim (AS). Watch today’s episode to explore the connection between love and sacrifice and our supplemental content to dive further into what sacrifice means in Islam.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. To sacrifice of yourself for the betterment of others is one of the greatest ideals that we have as a Muslim. And this is an internal struggle that Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala has set for us in our way of thinking about other people in our life. See, being self-centered or putting yourself at the center of your life is actually a praiseworthy thing. And it's a really important ideal for you and I to learn what are the things we love so that we can share those things with other people. And that's a secret of the Prophet's hadith which is an authentically reported hadith in Bukhari where he says, لا يؤمن أحدكم حتى يحب لأخيه ما يحبه لنفسه. You cannot complete your faithfulness in God until you love for others what you first have loved for yourself. And that becomes a really important thought. What are the things that I love? What are the things that I hold true? What are the things that are important to me? Are really important ways of me being able to assist others and provide others comforts that I have learned are important for me. In fact, Al-Imam An-Nawawi in explaining this hadith in Sahih Muslim, he says that this thing that we love for others, it is that we love even for the unbeliever. That we're willing to sacrifice of our time and energy for the unbeliever to have the things that we love in terms of our faithfulness in Allah, that we want them to know what is good, that we want them to experience righteousness. We have in Islam this beautiful, beautiful concept of giving Al-Udhiyah. So in the day of Eid Al-Adha, which gets its name from Udhiyah of sacrifice, we sacrifice an animal so that other people will be able to have meat and have a good amount of food and sustenance.
And in fact, for all of our households as Muslims who have been blessed, we give and share food with other people, hoping that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will increase us in our prosperity and forgive us our sins. And that's one of the aspects of the Hajj as well. We make the Udhiyah and the sacrifice. But I want you to think about that word, Dhaha and Udhiyah, that we are giving from ourselves to other people. And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, لن ينال الله دماؤها ولا لحمها. In the day of Hajj or whether you're making the sacrifice, Allah is not going to benefit from the blood or from the meat. و لكن يناله التقوى منكم. But it shows that you have a piety of heart and sincerity in your care for other people. What does it mean to care for other people? What does it mean to sacrifice yourself? What does it mean to sacrifice from your time and your energy and your knowledge and your ability and even from your wealth and even from your own existence? The Prophet ﷺ, Allah encourages us through him to recite these verses in Surat Al-An'am. قُلْ إِنَّ صَلَاتِي وَنُسُكِي وَمَحْيَا يَوْمَمَاتِي لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ Say to them, O Muhammad, that my life and my rites of sacrifice and my sacrifice that I made, وَمَحْيَا يَوْمَمَاتِي, my very totality of life and my prayers and my end of life, all of it is for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. That to Allah I pray and for Allah I sacrifice and I give to others from my wealth that I have enjoyed and my whole existence and my death, all of it is towards that very purpose of pleasing Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Sacrifice of myself may at times be different than what it is for other people. Some of the things that I cherish the most, for example, might be my time or my free time and therefore to give from my time for somebody else is a greater sacrifice maybe for me than to give from my wealth.
For somebody else they might not have a lot of wealth and to give from the charitableness in it is a greater sacrifice than to give from the freedom of their time. And therefore I want you to look into your life. What have you done with your life for the betterment of others? What have you given from your spheres of influence, from your power, from your knowledge, from your time? What good do you possess in your life that you can share with other people knowing that that is the quickest way to attaining righteousness? Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tells us in the Quran in Surah Ali Imran, لَن تَنَالُ الْبِرَّ حَتَى تُنفِقُ مِمَّا تُحِبُّونَ You will never attain that level of righteousness where you are closer and ever closer to Allah until you can separate and give freely from the things you adhere to and love the most. The things that are most dear to you and I in my life become things that we must be willing also to share and to partake and to part with when it is necessary for the betterment of others. And therefore you see the Prophet ﷺ was selfless. He was a person who gave from his time, from his honor, from his knowledge, from his effort, from his wealth. He gave so much of everything in his life that there was this one moment where as he was walking down the street, a man came to him and he said, Oh messenger of Allah ﷺ, I love this garment that you're wearing. I want to have it. And the Prophet ﷺ at that time, it was a time of poverty in Medina. He had no other fully clothed garment, no other qamees. He had other things to wear but nothing that was elegant like this. So he went into the house of a person and he borrowed clothing from them and he gave it to this man. And when the sahaba saw this, they got upset with him. And they said, how dare you ask the Prophet ﷺ for that one nice shirt that he has.
It's the one thing, you took the clothing off his back. And this man, he said, it does not harm me in the fact that I know that I want to be buried and enshrouded in it. I want to have something that I can possess nearness to the Prophet ﷺ in this life and also when I'm entombed in my grave. SubhanAllah, it shows you how much they love the Prophet ﷺ but it shows you even more how much he was willing to give from himself. Anas ibn Malik radiAllahu anhu, companion of the Prophet ﷺ, he said, lam asma'an nabiya sa'i salama yaqulu laa qat illa fee laa ilaha illa Allah. Never did I ever hear the Prophet ﷺ say laa meaning no, except when he said laa ilaha illa Allah. There is no God except Allah ﷻ. That's how willing and giving he was. That's how able he was to leverage himself and to sacrifice of his time, of his energy, of his giving in pursuit of faithfulness, of his energy and his ability to help others ﷺ. Sacrificing of yourself is one of the great ideals that we have as Muslims. And therefore we look at the concept of the martyr, the one who was given his life up for defense of his land, for defense of his people, for defense of his family, for defense of his wealth, for defense of his honor, for defense of the weak and the needy. That's why we see those type of vocations where a person is assisting others and it results in them at times maybe losing their own life or losing some of their wealth but it was pursuant to fulfilling the needs of others that this can arrive to them at the station of a martyr. The Prophet ﷺ says that a shaheed is not just somebody who died in battle but from the shaheed man mata doona mali is the one who died defending his wealth or his land.
Wa ahlihi, wa baytihi, wa ardihi, his land, his wealth, his family, his people, his tradition, his faith. All of those are things that are important ideals that you and I hold. May Allah ﷻ allow us to be able to sacrifice from the things that we love so that the betterment of others are provided for their needs and we may be deprived of something that we have as a want. May our wants in our heart come secondary to the needs of other people. May Allah ﷻ give us a charitable experience so that on the day of judgment we can proudly say inna salati, wa nusuki, wa mahyaaya, wa mamati lillah that my prayers and my sacrifices, my life and my death were all for Allah, Rabbil Alameen. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Wa sallillahumma wa sallim. Wa zid wa barik ala sayyidina wa habibina wa nabiyyina Muhammad ﷺ. Your brother Yahya Ibrahim. Wasalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
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