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When Your Lowest Point Is The Turning Point | Khutbah by Dr. Omar Suleiman
In this khutbah, Dr. Omar Suleiman reflects on a striking observation from Ibn al-Qayyim (rh): a sin can produce a brokenness before Allah that even a good deed cannot, until Shaytan himself says, “I wish I never made him fall.” Shaytan’s aim in every sin is despair. When repentance carries a believer past regret into real growth, the fall becomes the very thing that raised him.
The same pattern runs through human relationships. A crisis in a marriage or a friendship can force a repair deeper than anything that came before it.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to imagine this scenario where you have a conversation with your shaytan, with your devil on the Day of Judgment, and this is after you won,
00:12you've conquered. You are on your way to paradise, and the shaytan is on his way to his punishment, and there is a moment here where you have a conversation between the one who was victorious
00:26over the one who tried to lead him astray. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us amongst those who are victorious over the evil devils and the evil of our own selves. Allahumma ameen. And you go back to a point in your life where you committed a particular sin, or you messed
00:41up really, really badly, and that became the catalyst of you coming back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and shaytan says, I wish I never even made you commit that sin. I wish I never
00:52made you commit that sin. Because that sin changed your trajectory as a form of regret. How incredible would it be for you to hear your shaytan say, I wish I never caused you
01:05to sin because of what came out of that sin. Now there's a backdrop to this, and I'll give you a few real-life scenarios that could take place, not necessarily always with shayateen
01:17al-jinn, sometimes with shayateen al-ins, sometimes with human devils. Someone tries really, really, really hard to ruin your relationship. A relationship between two brothers, a relationship
01:28between two sisters, a relationship between spouses, and plants the seeds of dissension and makes something explode between you that seems like it's going to be an irreparable
01:41form of damage that's been caused to that relationship, and you'll never recover from this. But what ends up happening instead is that you have a heart-to-heart after it, and you end up being closer than ever before, and the person who tried to cause that dissension
01:56goes back and says, man, I wish I never caused that problem in the first place. It made things worse for me because it made things better for him. It made things better for them. Now,
02:06the reason why I give you this type of a scenario is I was reading through al-Wabil al-Sayyib by Ibn al-Qayyim rahimahullah ta'ala, a beautiful book. We actually studied it together in the last ten nights of Ramadan in this masjid. I can't remember if it was this year
02:19or the year before, but al-Wabil al-Sayyib is a book that Ibn al-Qayyim rahimahullah wrote as advice to a brother of his. He doesn't name that brother, but it was very
02:30common for him to write these letters that ended up becoming entire books of nasiha, advice, spiritual counsel, to sometimes his family members, sometimes his students, sometimes
02:41his friends. And so this is a book that he writes, a letter that he writes to his brother, giving him advice. And there is this one sentence that I came across today, and I'll read the
02:52paragraph preceding that sentence, that I want you to remember from this khutbah, bi-idhnillahi ta'ala. He says, rahimahullah ta'ala,
03:01فَإِذَا أَرَادَ اللَّهُ بِعَبْدِهِ خَيْرًا فَتَحَ لَهُ مِنْ أَبْوَابِ التَّوْبَةِ وَالنَّدَمِ وَالإِنكِسَارِ وَالذُّلِّ وَالإِفْتِقَارِ وَالإِسْتِعَانَةِ بِهِ
03:11He says that when Allah intends good for His servant, He opens for him the doors of repentance and remorse and brokenness and humility and utter dependence upon Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
03:27وَدَوَامَ التَّضَرُّعِ وَالدُّعَاءِ وَالتَّقَرُّبِ إِلَيْهِ He says, and this constant need to call upon Him and to draw near to Him and to do as many
03:40good deeds, وَالتَّقَرُّبُ إِلَيْهِ بِمَا أَمْكَنَ مِنَ الْحَسَنَاتِ Whatever He could do of good deeds to get close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, He keeps on doing these things. And He says, all of that, ما تَكُونُ
03:54He says, all of that is because of that one سَيِّئة, one of those sins that He committed. And as a result of that, He ended up receiving the mercy of His Lord, حَتَّى يَقُولَ
04:06عَدُوُّ اللهِ يَا لَيْتَنِي تَرَكْتُهُ وَلَمْ أُوقِعْهُ He said that He keeps on doing these good deeds and coming close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as a result of a sin that He committed, and turning close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
04:20And the sin became a cause of Allah's mercy upon Him until the enemy of Allah says, يَا لَيْتَنِي تَرَكْتُهُ وَلَمْ أُوقِعْهُ I wish I would have left Him alone and never caused Him to fall.
04:32This is the sentence I want you to remember from this khutbah, bi-idhnillahi ta'ala. How do I make my shaytan say, I wish I never caused Him to commit that mistake in the first place? I wish I never made Him fall in the first place?
04:45Because this completely turned around on me. This completely went the opposite direction. And it takes you back to what the shaytan intends when he causes you to commit a sin. He intends to sever you from your Lord and to take what might be a good feeling of guilt and to turn it into despair.
04:59What he seeks for you is destruction and distance from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's the goal of the sin. It's not the committing of the sin.
05:11It's the effect of that sin that he intends that makes you feel like you never have a path back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So you don't even bother trying to repair that relationship. Now obviously that didn't work too well for him with our father Adam a.s.
05:24Because while he succeeded in his whispering to Adam a.s. and caused Adam a.s. to fall, as Ibn al-Qayyim rahimahullah said, Adam a.s. is like a diver who collected the pearls at the bottom of the ocean and then rose once again.
05:36Because of his tawbah he was in a better situation than he was prior to his sin.
05:46Because of his repentance to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala his return became even more beautiful. But that's not just something that's specific to Adam a.s. where I wish I never did that to him in the first place.
05:57I wish I never caused him to fall in the first place. That's something for each and every single one of us. How does that work? And this is true both in our individual relationships with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as well as our relationships with each other.
06:08And I want you to pay attention to the coherence in how relationships work. How repentance and righteousness and repair and return work in relationships starting with your relationship with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
06:21and your relationships with everybody else in your life. Let's take an incident of Sayyidina Umar radiyallahu ta'ala anhu.
06:33Umar bin al-Khattab radiyallahu ta'ala anhu in the treaty of Hudaybiyyah argued with the Prophet ﷺ that we should go forward. Because we are upon the truth.
06:47أَلَسْنَا عَلَى الْحَقِّ Aren't we upon the truth? Aren't they upon falsehood? Shouldn't we go forward? And he challenged the Prophet ﷺ not from ego but out of a sense of righteousness and a sense of sticking it to the enemy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and not what he perceived as backing down.
07:01Now of course that was the majority of the sentiment of the companions of the Prophet ﷺ. They did not want to turn around after having made it that far.
07:12They wanted to complete their Umrah and challenge the enemy of Allah. But the Prophet ﷺ saw the wisdom. Abu Bakr radiyallahu anhu saw the wisdom. Allah azzawajal revealed the wisdom.
07:25Umar radiyallahu ta'ala anhu mentions of the regret that he had when he challenged the Prophet ﷺ just for his raising his voice and just for his being in that state of objection to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
07:35He says that because of that one mistake in my life. He's saying this later on in his life.
07:48لَقَدْ أَعْتَقْتُ رِقَابًا I've freed many, many, many slaves. وَصُمْتُ دَهْرًا And I haven't stopped fasting because of that one instance with the Prophet ﷺ.
07:56Can you imagine the happiness of the shaytan who flees from Umar radiyallahu anhu because he can never get Umar down. But in that moment he got Umar radiyallahu anhu to raise his voice in the presence of the Prophet ﷺ.
08:10Oh wow, I finally got him. And can you imagine how small the devil felt every single day that Umar radiyallahu anhu woke up and fasted and freed a slave
08:18and prayed extra salawat and gave extra sadaqa because he kept on mentioning that one time that I found myself in opposition,
08:26in argumentation with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
08:37You can imagine that the shaytan of Umar radiyallahu anhu would say, I wish I never made him make that mistake in the first place. I wish I never caused him to fall in the first place because as a result of that fall, look where he keeps on elevating himself.
08:49See the mechanism that the Prophet ﷺ gives to us, the method is, وَأَتْبِعِ السَّيِّئَةَ الْحَسَنَةَ تَمْحُهَا Follow up a sin with a good deed and it will wipe it out.
09:02But what happens when you don't just follow up the sin with one good deed, but as a result of that one sin that you committed you keep on doing good deed after good deed after good deed after good deed so that you can completely remove the effect of that sin from your life and fill in wherever the weakness might have been.
09:16يَا لَيْتَنِي تَرَكْتُهُ I wish I left him alone and I never caused him to sin in the first place. This is the beauty of the redemption arc of the believer.
09:30When you can see the believer come all the way full circle and Allah عز و جل in His mercy can make all of the sins go away, the effect of the sins go away, polish the place on his heart where the sin once left a stain,
09:44but also make it the very reason by which he becomes the fullest in terms of his potential righteousness. Now here's the thing, what is the wisdom of this in the first place?
09:57And I want to offer this disclaimer from now that this doesn't mean you stop regretting the sin. You can regret the sin and be grateful to Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى for the rebound after the sin at the same time.
10:08You still regret the sin, but you just don't believe that Allah عز و جل has severed the connection because of that sin. You can hold these two things at the same time, regret for the sin,
10:20grateful to Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى for allowing me to rebound after the sin. That's the first thing that I'll say when it comes to this. The second thing that I will say in terms of the wisdoms, the hikm of these sins,
10:29one of them the most obvious is that Allah عز و جل has said that if you were not to sin, or rather the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم says that had you not been of those who sin,
10:42that Allah عز و جل would replace you with people who would sin and then seek His forgiveness and they would be forgiven. That this is a function of the rahmah of Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى. You were meant to commit these sins and Allah عز و جل in His names and His attributes
10:54has the function of constantly forgiving you and showing His mercy to you. So this is part of the display of His mercy and His grace. But then the wisdoms as they start to get deeper and deeper in your own life.
11:06This makes you humble, keeps you away from ujb, keeps you away from being conceited. It keeps you away from ever thinking that you've reached a place of perfection. Sins humble you, mistakes humble you.
11:19They remind you that you're human, they remind you that you are never safe from the whispers of the shaytan and that you have to always stay vigilant. And in that humbling you, the other wisdom that the ulama mention is not just that it makes you a better person in regards to your own relationship with Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى
11:33but it also makes you better in your da'wah as well. Because you don't look down on people that commit that same sin because you can see them at a point in their journey where you once were as well.
11:44Otherwise you'll develop an arrogance towards people also where you'll start to look down on them. But how can I look down on that person when I know exactly what it's like to be in that same position?
11:55And so I can be a vehicle by which that person can come back to Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى and not feel deprived of the mercy of Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى
12:06and not feel suffered from the mercy of Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى because I was once there. I was once there. These are the wisdoms in your relationship with Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى.
12:17And there is one more that the ulema mention that's deeply profound. That sometimes there are things that if left unaddressed they will undo your relationship with Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى.
12:31Spiritual diseases you're not paying attention to because there is a complacency with your day to day and there is no crisis to force the issue. So there is an arrogance inside. There is a pride inside. There is a weakness that exists inside of you.
12:45But you're not being forced to confront it. You're leaving it dormant and unaddressed. And sometimes when Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى allows you to act upon that weakness and to fall then it gives you the alert that something is wrong. It's just like someone has chest pain.
12:59This doesn't feel right. And you go to the hospital and the doctor tells you what? If you would have waited 30 minutes you would have been dead. If you would have waited 30 minutes you would have been dead.
13:10And this is one of the meanings of the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ that a person will be on the path of Jannah until there is nothing between him and Jannah except for a dhira'ah. He could reach out and he could touch it.
13:22But then he will do one of the actions of the people of hellfire and he will enter into hellfire. That there is something that you left unaddressed. A spiritual disease that you left unaddressed and you didn't confront it. And because you left it unaddressed it undid you.
13:36You became complacent with it. And Allah in His mercy allowed you to commit that sin so that you could wake up and feel an alertness and say wait a minute I have something I need to work on here. There is a desire here. There is a weakness here. There is a vulnerability here that exists.
13:50I need to work on this so I can get to my relationship with Allah ﷻ in the way that it needs to be. Think about that when it comes to people as well. Sometimes there are things that remain unaddressed in our relationships with each other. And if they are not dealt with
14:04then they will undo those relationships. And the greatest gift that Allah ﷻ can give you is He forces a crisis because if you handle that crisis right then that crisis becomes the best thing that ever happened to your relationship.
14:17How many times, go back to the initial scenario, two brothers couldn't stand each other. And every time they walked into the masjid you walk in from that side of the door, you walk in from that side of the door, right? Keep a distance. And now that rift is expanding,
14:31which I'll talk about after the salah, right? I can keep even further away from that person. I don't have to address that person. I don't have to talk to that person. Shaytan is like, yeah, don't do it, don't do it. Hey, take that route. I think that's his car that just pulled up. Go that way, go that way. Further, further, further, further away. Your heart hardens towards each other.
14:45But you know what? I can get away with this. It's worked for the last two, three years. It's okay. It's going just fine. But what happens if a crisis is actually forced and you deal with it like believers and you sit with each other,
14:59you apologize, you hug it out. You can become closer after that than you were even before. That's with two brothers, right? What about the relationships between parents and children? What about the relationships between husband and wife?
15:13What about the relationship between communities? Sometimes the crisis is the greatest mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because it forces the issue. It forces the issue. It forces the regret to be dealt with. It forces what was unaddressed
15:27to be handled. Because if it remains unaddressed, then it's a disaster. But if it's dealt with, then it's your redemption story. It's your coming back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It's your repairing your relationship with Him subhanahu wa ta'ala.
15:41And you're raising to a rank that otherwise you could not have been. So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us amongst those people who put our shaytan in such a place that he says, لَيْتَنِي تَرَكْتُهُ وَلَمْ أُغْوِهِ
15:55I wish I left him alone and I never caused him to fall. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow our sins to become good deeds. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow our sins to become good deeds. May Allah azza wa jal allow for the things that took us away from Him to be the reasons for which we come back to Him. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
16:09allow the things that caused us to fall in His sight to be the reasons by which we are elevated in His sight. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to take those deeds that could have landed us in the depths of hellfire and turn them into ranks
16:22by which we achieve degrees in paradise that otherwise we would not have been capable of. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala repair our relationship with Him, repair our relationships with each other. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to move from repentance to growth. May Allah azza wa jal
16:35allow us to take the sins that we commit and to turn them into reasons for good habits. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow our shaytan to despair in us and not us to despair in Allah azza wa jal. Allahumma ameen. أستغفر الله لي ولكم، أقول قولي هذا
16:49ولسائر المسلمين فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرحيم
17:10الحمد لله، والصلاة والسلام على رسول الله، وعلى آله وصحبه ومن والاه اللهم اغفر المؤمنين والمؤمنات والمسلمين والمسلمات الأحياء منهم والأموات إنك سميع قريب ومجيب الدعوات اللهم اغفر لنا وارحمنا واعف عنا ولا تعذبنا
17:24ربنا ظلمنا أنفسنا وإن لم تغفر لنا وترحمنا لنكونن من الخاسرين اللهم إنك عفو كريم تحب العفو فاعف عنا اللهم اغفر لوالدينا رب ارحمهما كما ربياني صغيرا ربنا هب لنا من أزواجنا وذرياتنا قرة أعين
17:38وجعلنا للمتقين إماما اللهم انصر إخواننا المستضعفين في مشارق الأرض ومغاربها اللهم انصرهم في فلسطين وفي السودان وفي كل مكان اللهم عليك بأعدائك أعداء الدين اللهم أرنا بالظالمين عجائب قدرتك اللهم أهلك الظالمين بالظالمين
17:52وأخرجنا إخوانا من بينهم سالمين عباد الله إن الله يأمر بالعدل والإحسان وإيتاء ذي القربى وينهى عن الفحشاء والمنكر والبغي يعظكم لعلكم تذكرون فاذكروا الله يذكركم واشكروه على النعماء يزدكم ولذكر الله أكبر والله أكبر والله يعلم ما تصنعون وأقيم الصلاة


























































































































































































































































































































