# The Biggest Losers | Ramadan Reflections

**Author:** Dr. Omar Suleiman
**Series:** Ramadan Reflections (2025)
**Published:** 2025-03-16
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/L5bY0-a9WT4
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/ramadan-reflections-2025/the-biggest-losers-ramadan-reflections
**Topics:** Acts of Worship, Sharia

## Description
Your friends will shape your afterlife. On the Day of Judgment, those who followed the wrong people will bite their fists in regret. ’Uqbah ibn Abi Mu’ait and Ubayy ibn Khalaf had the chance to be companions of the Prophet ﷺ, but they chose the company of Shaytan instead. Peer pressure dragged them...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** SubhanAllah, the Qur'an gives us so many visuals of the Day of Judgment and when you can actually point that visual to an incident in the seerah of the Prophet ﷺ, then it carries so much more weight. As we come into this juz where we go through Surah Al-Mu'minun and we come

**[0:20]** into Surah Al-Furqan, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala gives us a visual of people that are eating their fists. So I want you to imagine on the Day of Judgment if as you're looking around, you see men that are so nervous that they're not biting their fingernails, but they have

**[0:39]** their whole hands in their mouths and they're biting off their hands. SubhanAllah, this is of course a representation of anxiety, an extreme anxiety. As the scholars mentioned, when the women saw the beauty of Yusuf alayhi as-salam, they cut their fingers without recognizing

**[0:57]** it and that was being lost in the beauty of Yusuf alayhi as-salam. What about being lost in the terror of your own state to where you're biting your entire hands? And Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says, they will speak and one of them will say,

**[1:14]** يَا لَيْتَنِي اتَّخَذْتُ مَعَ الرَّسُولِ سَبِيلًا I wish I would have taken the path of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. يَا وَيْلَتَ لَيْتَنِي لَمْ أَتَّخِذْ فُلَانًا خَلِيلًا This is compounding self-grief. Woe to me, how much of a loser am I to have taken that

**[1:36]** person as a friend. Oh how I wish, woe to me, that I had not taken that person as a friend. لَقَدْ أَضَلَّنِي عَنِ الذِّكْرِ بَعْدَ إِذْ جَاءَنِي He caused me to sway away from the truth after it came to me.

**[1:54]** Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, وَكَانَ الشَّيْطَانُ لِلْإِنْسَانِ خَذُولًا And then suddenly this other character comes into this entire equation that wasn't being discussed. Verily the Shaytan is ever deceptive towards men. And SubhanAllah this is actually

**[2:11]** very powerful because as I was speaking in the khutbah on Friday, the human devils sometimes are not the actual physical manifestation of a Shaytan for a moment. But الجليس السوء الجليس السوء, an evil companion, can become more persuasive to you than a jinni

**[2:28]** devil. And here the Shaytan was playing the entire time, playing these people against each other. And at the end of the day turning people away from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. There is a context to this. Can you imagine how dumb someone would feel on the Day of

**[2:44]** Judgment when they could have been a صحابي, a companion, and could have been one of the elite companions of the Prophet ﷺ in Paradise but ended up instead being in the lowest pits of the fire? There is a man like that. This set of verses is referring to two people that

**[3:03]** lived in the time of the Prophet ﷺ and sometimes because the name of an enemy, at least the first name, is the same name as a صحابي, it gets confusing. So we know Ubayy ibn Ka'b رضي الله عنه, one of the greatest companions, one of the masters of the Qur'an. And then there is another evil man named Ubayy ibn Khalaf. We know Uqba ibn Amir رضي الله عنه

**[3:22]** and then you have Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt, an evil man. So let's talk about these two evil men, Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt and Ubayy ibn Khalaf. Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt was a powerful man in Mecca,

**[3:37]** one of the chieftains. And he used to have this habit where when he would come back from a journey, he would invite some of his neighbors and some of the nobles of Quraysh to a meal to his home. And because the Prophet ﷺ, especially after his marriage to Khadijah

**[3:54]** رضي الله عنها, had been elevated to some of those circles in terms of worldly perspective, right, because Khadijah رضي الله عنها belonged to a certain class and the Prophet ﷺ of course is a man of noble lineage, Uqba invited the Prophet ﷺ

**[4:12]** and it's assumed that this is earlier on in the seerah, right, so this isn't yet at the period of maximum hostility in Mecca, this is still in the days when the hostility was increasing. So the Prophet ﷺ comes and he tells the Prophet ﷺ to eat and the Prophet ﷺ says

**[4:29]** Wallahi I will not eat until you bear witness that there is only one God and that I am the messenger of Allah حتى تشهد, until you bear witness, لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله I'm not going to eat your food, يا محمد eat, and the Prophet ﷺ says not until you

**[4:46]** take the testimony of faith and Uqba responds, he becomes a Muslim, then he goes out and after he becomes a Muslim he meets this friend of his, this friend is Ubayy ibn Khalaf, who is Ubayy ibn Khalaf? A man of filthy character, a man of terrible morals, in fact in Hilf

**[5:08]** al-Fudul where the people joined, the different tribes joined to take an oath of protection of the weakest amongst men, they were protecting people from the likes of Ubayy ibn Khalaf, Ubayy ibn Khalaf after Al-As, the father of Amr رضي الله عنه was known to cheat

**[5:28]** the pilgrims, was known to take advantage of people, was known to exploit those who didn't have a powerful tribe to protect them, so he was impacted deeply by that Hilf al-Fudul because he had to pay a bunch of people back, so he was a man who was known for being filthy, a man who was known for being rough, didn't have the right disposition, so Ubayy ibn Khalaf

**[5:47]** sees Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt and he says, is it true? He said, what are you talking about? Did you believe in Muhammad ﷺ? And he said, yeah yeah but you know it was in the heat of a moment, he was at my house and I was trying to serve him food and then you know

**[6:02]** as I was serving him food I don't want to know what happened, he told me you know until you say la ilaha illallah Muhammadun Rasulullah and I buckled under pressure, you see when you have that type of a friend that's so nasty, talk about peer pressure and he feels like he has to justify his Islam and then he says you know but it was a mistake, I just did

**[6:20]** it in the heat of the moment, Ubayy ibn Khalaf says no but you need to prove it was a mistake, you can't have people thinking you're a Muslim, so what does he tell him to do? He tells him go to Muhammad ﷺ and spit in his face, imagine you just achieved sahabi status and

**[6:41]** then you walk up to the Prophet ﷺ and spit in his face to prove something to that evil friend of yours, what a shaitan and what a loser, right? To fall back there, there are lessons here, there is a reason why Allah Azza wa Jal is telling us, bi-idhnillah ta'ala

**[6:56]** we will see them on the day of judgment not in their company but amongst those that are laughing at people like that and pointing at people like that and saying alhamdulillah we weren't like them, when you see these two men biting on their fists, so he spit on the Prophet ﷺ, look at the weakness of his personality, another incident happens, Abu Jahl says to

**[7:15]** some of the leaders of Quraysh as the Prophet ﷺ is praying in front of the Ka'bah not disturbing anyone, he says who's going to go and take the guts of a camel and splash them all over, squash the Prophet ﷺ under the intestines and the guts and the filth

**[7:31]** of a camel while he's making sujood, while he's in prostration, the Uqba wants to prove himself, you see there's a mentality here, you can see the weakness of the mentality here like I want to show that I'm one of those guys, I want to be included, see where peer pressure can take you, so he says I've got it and he goes and he collects all the

**[7:50]** nastiness of a camel, the intestines, the guts, the filth, he wheels it in and waits for the Prophet ﷺ to go into sujood and then he puts it all on the back of the Prophet ﷺ until he crushes the Prophet ﷺ under the weight of all of the filth that he's putting on top of him and imagine the scene, everyone in Mecca laughing, pointing at the

**[8:12]** Prophet ﷺ, Uqba felt pretty good about himself, right, they're laughing because of me, what a weak loser, I made them all laugh, everyone's happy, look at everyone laughing, ha ha ha, Abdullah ibn Masood رضي الله عنه is a man who almost died for reciting the Qur'an in public

**[8:31]** and this is at the lowest point of the Prophet ﷺ in Mecca, so he has no one to go to, he can't go to Abu Talib, Abu Talib is dead, he can't go to anyone of power so he goes rushing towards the quarter of Bani Hashim and the first person he finds is Fatima bint

**[8:48]** Rasulullah ﷺ, Fatima, Fatima your father, your dad, he's being crushed right now under the guts of the camel in the courtyard of the Ka'bah, Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet ﷺ comes running to him, starts cleaning the guts off of his back, you know how hard

**[9:08]** that is on the Prophet ﷺ as a father, to have to have his daughter be the only one to clean the guts off of his back and crying and crying and crying in that moment, can you imagine the Prophet ﷺ holding Fatima رضي الله عنها and when they say, ittaqi ghadab al-haleem,

**[9:26]** beware of the anger of a person who's usually forbearing, beware of the du'a against you of a man who usually makes du'a for you, beware of meeting that threshold, this is one of the few times in Mecca in particular where the Prophet ﷺ really had hope with his people

**[9:45]** and was trying with them, one of the few times that the Prophet ﷺ raises his hands in du'a and he starts to make du'a against all of those people, Allahumma alayka bi-Uqba, Allahumma alayka bi-Abi Jahl, Allahumma alayka bi-Shaybah, the Prophet ﷺ starts to name them one by

**[10:02]** one in his du'a, as he comforts his daughter and says, don't cry oh my daughter, Allah will give victory to your father, but the anger, seeing his daughter have to go through that, that humiliation and Uqba thinks he's having a great time, everyone thinks I'm cool

**[10:19]** look, I created this whole scene and the Prophet ﷺ is naming them with du'a, fast forward to the battle of Badr, battle of Badr comes and every single person the Prophet ﷺ named in his du'a that day was dead in the same spot that the Prophet ﷺ pointed

**[10:42]** to the night before, you know what that means? The night before the Prophet ﷺ was walking around and he said this is where Abu Jahl will die, this is where Uqba will die, this is where Shaybah will die, he's walking around and pointing to the spot and the Sahaba said

**[10:59]** that the people that the Prophet ﷺ named and pointed to a spot, they did not die even a hand span away from the exact spot that the Prophet ﷺ pointed to and their bodies all ended up in a single filthy ditch, you talk about Adhab al-Qabr on the other side,

**[11:18]** Allah can you imagine their Adhab al-Qabr, can you imagine if Allah could let us hear the screaming of that group of people in these unmarked graves on the side of Badr, can you imagine what it would sound like to hear their pain, can you imagine the cries of Uqba day

**[11:35]** and night for the moment that he thought he could make everybody laugh at the expense of the honor of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, so Uqba dies in Badr, Ubayy ibn Khalaf he says to the Prophet ﷺ in Mecca, he said I'm going to kill you and the Prophet ﷺ

**[11:54]** says, بل أنا قاتلك, rather I will kill you, tough, وما أرسلناك إلا رحمة للعالمين, we've only sent you as a mercy to the world, imagine the state of this person, Ubayy ibn Khalaf comes after the Prophet ﷺ on the day of Uhud,

**[12:13]** while the Prophet ﷺ cannot even lift himself because of how wounded he is, and as the Prophet ﷺ sees him coming and Ubayy is killing people and Ubayy is feeling empowered, emboldened at the moment, the Prophet ﷺ says hand me a spear, he takes it, he throws it and

**[12:31]** it strikes Ubayy right here, and the blood starts to come out from right here, and Ubayy grabs his neck and he says قتلني محمد, قتلني محمد, he starts screaming قتلني محمد, محمد killed me, محمد killed me, and the chieftains of Quraish are like

**[12:46]** what are you talking about, that's a wound that can easily be solved, he said no he promised he would kill me, I said I would kill him but instead he said that he would kill me. SubhanAllah the man that he convinced to leave the Prophet ﷺ and spit in his face and then

**[13:01]** put camel intestines on his back, he was killed in Badr, and now Ubayy ibn Khalaf becomes the one man, talk about a distinction of evil, the one man who was killed by the hand of

**[13:17]** the Prophet ﷺ, the most merciful of Allah's creation, and you're killed by his hand, what a loser you are, ya Allah what a loser, the Prophet ﷺ says in an authentic hadith, أشد الناس عذاباً يوم القيامة رجلاً قتل نبياً أو قتله نبياً

**[13:35]** The Prophet ﷺ said the worst person to be punished on the Day of Judgment is someone who killed a Prophet or was killed by a Prophet, imagine being the one man on the Day of Judgment killed by the hand of the Prophet ﷺ, by the way that's not because the Prophet ﷺ

**[13:50]** used to shy away from battle, the Prophet ﷺ would be in the middle of the battlefield but the Prophet ﷺ would knock down swords, he would disarm, he would plunge forward but he wouldn't kill ﷺ with his hands, that's our messenger ﷺ, but that man is a loser,

**[14:06]** imagine the sight of these two people on the Day of Judgment, one killed in Badr, the other killed in Uhud and they both had the chance to become Muslim, one of them could have died a Sahabi of the Prophet ﷺ if he just didn't buckle to the peer pressure and Allah ﷻ

**[14:24]** says in conclusion of all of this, وَكَانَ الشَّيْطَانُ لِلْإِنسَانِ خَذُولًا Man, does Shaytan take people on a ride, ya Allah, Shaytan takes you on a ride, what a deceptive being he is, Shaytan had Uqba bin Abi Mu'ayt feeling good about himself,

**[14:43]** Shaytan is ever deceiving towards man and every single person who has the rahmah of Allah ﷻ taken away from them on the Day of Judgment and the barrier is placed in front of them, it will be said to them, وَلَكِنَّكُمْ فَتَنْتُمْ أَنفُسَكُمْ

**[14:58]** وَتَرَبَّصْتُمْ وَارْتَبْتُمْ وَغَرَّتْكُمُ الْأَمَانِيُّ حَتَّىٰ جَاءَ أَمْرُ اللَّهِ وَغَرَّكُم بِاللَّهِ الْغَرُورُ After you hesitated, you doubted, you held back and then you exerted yourself in evil and then you were overtaken by your false desires, by your false wishes,

**[15:17]** your wishful thinking was that the Day of Judgment wouldn't come, وَغَرَّكُم بِاللَّهِ الْغَرُورُ But the one who is the chief deluder, being Shaytan, truly deluded you in regards to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And so I want you every

**[15:33]** time you come across these verses in Surah Al-Furqan to think about those two men and then think about our manifestation. Do you buckle to the peer pressure and then end up disobeying Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala? And if so on the Day of Judgment when you look

**[15:48]** around and you look for that person that caused you to do something in disobedience to Allah, that person will not protect you in any way. You're not going to say, Ya Allah it was culture, Ya Allah it's what everybody used to do, Ya Allah but that person said it would be okay. It does not matter.

**[16:03]** وَقَالَ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُوا لَوْ أَنَّ لَنَا كَرَّةً فَنَتَبَرَّأَ مِنْهُمْ كَمَا تَبَرَّءُوا مِنَّا كَذَٰلِكَ يُرِيهِمُ اللَّهُ أَعْمَالَهُمْ حَسَرَاتٍ عَلَيْهِمْ وَمَا هُم بِخَارِجِينَ مِنَ النَّارِ

**[16:33]** You're not going to get yourself out of the fire by doing this. There's no point to your appeals. Dear brothers and sisters, two lessons in 30 seconds. Number one, number one. When you have an impulse towards good, act upon that impulse right away and don't second

**[16:50]** guess it. When Allah opens your heart towards khayr, towards doing the right thing, whether that's embarking on the obedience of Allah Azza wa Jal or leaving off a disobedience or doing something in regards to people that's good or whatever it may be.

**[17:06]** When you have an impulse towards khayr, that impulse towards good, that's your pulse from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, fitrah of good. Listen to it right away. Lean into it right away. Don't second guess because if you do, then you'll end up giving up the good deed and you'll end up hardening your heart.

**[17:22]** So that's number one. Listen to the impulse of good right away. Number two, recognize the people in your life that are taking you away from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. It's as simple as that. Who are the people in my life that are taking me away from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala?

**[17:38]** And cut those people off and instead, take the Prophet ﷺ as a friend. Be a friend to the Prophet ﷺ. Take the messenger of Allah ﷺ as your leader and forget those people that take you away from him ﷺ. We ask Allah Azza wa Jal to keep us steadfast on the straight path together and to forgive

**[17:56]** us for our shortcomings and we ask Allah to protect us from the deception of shaytan. Shayateen al-ins wa al-jinn. Allahumma ameen. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

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