# Living Up to the Prophet’s ﷺ Final Speech | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine
**Published:** 2025-09-17
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/-Cehp4HEOxc
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/the-last-sermon-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine
**Topics:** History, Politics & Practical Theology

## Description
Are we honoring the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ Farewell Sermon or falling short? Imam Tom Facchine revisits the Prophet’s last sermon at Hajj, highlighting timeless mandates that uphold core Islamic principles. How are we measuring up as an ummah today? From family life to community institutions, it’s...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Towards the end of his life, the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) gathered together everybody during Hajj and he made a very very famous speech that's known as the Farewell Sermon. If you look

**[0:16]** at the Farewell Sermon, there's a couple things that stand out in particular. One of them is how we treat our women. The Prophet (ﷺ) he said, women have rights over you and men have rights over women as well. But because men are responsible for women, that is particularly

**[0:32]** stressed that men take care of the rights of women. That we take our wives only under Allah's trust and by His permission and if they abide by the right and they take care of their trust, then there is supposed to be a reciprocity of trust and grace and good

**[0:48]** treatment. So how are we doing this with this particular thing? Are we honoring our women? I would say that certainly, to put it mildly, there's room to improve and one of the areas in which we have to improve, speaking for Western Muslims especially, in the status of women as mothers and the status of women, especially the women who they might not have

**[1:06]** a career, they quote unquote stay at home, they take care of the children, they're the first educators, they are informal therapists, they do all of this work that in a modern capitalist economy we have commodified and they become their own industries. They do all of that work for us and for the rest of the household. They are the unsung heroes.

**[1:26]** They are the presence that anchors us. But because the society that we live in, it's certainly true that society is not neutral. Okay, society favors women with careers over women that stay at home to be homemakers. And unfortunately, the reality is, at least

**[1:44]** in the circles that I'm exposed to, that if a woman doesn't have a career, sometimes she is shamed. Sometimes people say that she just stays at home. In general, there's sensitivity on both sides. There are women that they do have careers and they do have full-time jobs and feeling like they're being made to seem less because they're not spending time at

**[2:02]** home with the children. And so, we're not saying that this is haram or this is halal or you have to do this or you have to do that. All we're trying to point out is that society is not neutral, right? The government is not neutral. They have a preference. If you were

**[2:18]** to ask Mr. Government, if there was one person that represented the whole government, hey, would you like women to stay at home and to take care of the home front or would you like them in the workforce? They would say workforce every single time. Give me that money. I want that income tax. And so, the thing that we're trying to stress here is that the Prophet

**[2:38]** (ﷺ) particularly singled out women here as your partners, meaning he's talking about in the home, okay, and committed helpers. And certainly, that help, it comes not just from bringing in income, but it also has to do with child rearing. It has to do

**[2:53]** with everything that happens in the home. Larger point being, we can't denigrate it. We can't minimize it. That the things that go on in the home are very, very important. And so, we have to make sure that we honor our women and give sufficient praise and gratitude

**[3:08]** for our women who take care of those things. Let's look at just two other categories that we can judge ourselves on. Another one is, has to do with supremacy or supremacist thinking, racism, tribalism, ethno-supremacism. When the Prophet (ﷺ) said that all of us are from Adam and Eve and Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab. And a

**[3:29]** non-Arab has no superiority over an Arab. Also, white has no superiority over black and black has no superiority over white except by piety and good action. Do we live up to this standard? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no. We have a lot of room to improve

**[3:46]** on this, especially when it comes to marriage, especially when it comes to who you're seen with. That sometimes we talk a very good game about being anti-racist in the Muslim community until it's time for our sons and daughters to get married. And then all of a sudden it has to be a certain color. That color can't be darker. It has to be lighter. That's a

**[4:04]** big problem. It also comes in with certain stereotypes, viewing this group or that group as either lazy or they're unintelligent or they're this or they're that. These things are completely un-Islamic and we have to make sure to do better when it comes to meeting the prophetic standard when it comes to these issues. And the final thing, the Prophet (ﷺ)

**[4:23]** explicitly warned against usury. Allah has forbidden you to take usury. Therefore, all interest obligation is henceforth waived. Your capital is yours to keep and you will neither inflict nor suffer any inequality. So there's an economic dimension of the prophetic

**[4:39]** mandate as well. And how are we doing in retrospect to the prophetic mandate when it comes to economy and to money? Unfortunately, we see that we are drowning in interest. We are drowning in the riba all across the Muslim world. The challenge I think is for Muslims to take control

**[4:58]** of their dollars and take control of their economic organizations. Just to give an example from the United States, there are other ethnic communities that do not have Sharia. They do not have sacred law such as the Chinese or the Amish or others. And they have their own economies. They have their own internal economies. They don't rely on typical insurance

**[5:17]** or they don't rely on banks to give them loans for houses. They take care of it themselves. And so we really, I think, should be ashamed that there are other communities that are without divine guidance that are doing it better than we are. And so we should rather

**[5:33]** than just look, oh well, is this permissible if I squint in hardship? Well, yeah, I mean, if you look at it from a fiqhi fatwa lens, you could say, well, we want to make things easy, et cetera. But this is missing a larger question of how do we move as a community

**[5:49]** and what sort of infrastructure and institutions are we building wherever we go. That Islam is not just about your individual piety and your individual haram and halal. It's also about building an institution and building institutions wherever you go to facilitate

**[6:05]** your worship of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So wherever you go, especially if you have the freedom and the ability to make your own banks and your own type of insurance and your own type of home ownership loan system, whatever it is, then we should be the first people

**[6:23]** to do that. So let the prophetic mandate, especially that which is found in the farewell sermon be a challenge, a respectful challenge to all of us to do better and to make the Prophet (ﷺ) proud of us.

## Other Episodes in "Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine"
- [Are You Sincere? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/watch-series-imam-tom-live-are-you-sincere.md)
- [Epstein and the Double Standard of Justice | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/epstein-and-the-double-standard-of-justice-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Who's Your Real Enemy? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/who-is-your-real-enemy-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How ‘Taqiyya’ Became an Islamophobic Talking Point | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/how-taqiyya-became-an-islamophobic-talking-point-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Does Islam Actually Oppose Science? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/does-islam-actually-oppose-science-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What Sharia Law Actually Means | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/what-sharia-law-actually-means-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Debunking the Myth of the ‘Oppressed Muslim Woman’ | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/debunking-the-myth-of-the-oppressed-muslim-woman-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What ‘Allahu Akbar’ Really Means (And Why It Scares Them) | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/what-allahu-akbar-really-means-and-why-it-scares-them-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How Does the Qur’an View the Bible? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/how-does-the-quran-view-the-bible-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What the Qur’an Says About Christianity | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/what-the-quran-says-about-christianity-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [The Truth About AI’s Intelligence | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/the-truth-about-ai-intelligence-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What Real Masculinity Looks Like | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/what-real-masculinity-looks-like-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Kings Chased Thrones. He ﷺ Chased This Instead | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/kings-chased-thrones-he-chased-this-instead-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Why You Can’t Escape Organized Religion | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/why-you-cant-escape-organized-religion-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How to Stop Falling for Fake Mahdis | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/how-to-stop-falling-for-fake-mahdis-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How Should We View Gaza’s Celebrity Support? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/gaza-celebrity-support-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Will Recognition Help Palestine? | Snapshots by Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine/will-recognition-help-palestine-snapshots-by-imam-tom.md)