2015-04-02 - Friday Prayer - Brother Abdul Hadi Khan

Adhān

اللهُ أَكْبَر، اللهُ أَكْبَر، اللهُ أَكْبَر، اللهُ أَكْبَر
أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا الله، أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا الله
أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ الله، أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ الله
حَيَّ عَلَى الصَّلَاة، حَيَّ عَلَى الصَّلَاة
حَيَّ عَلَى الْفَلَاح، حَيَّ عَلَى الْفَلَاح
اللهُ أَكْبَر، اللهُ أَكْبَر
لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا الله

Du'ā After the Adhān

Khuṭbah Opening

Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. We praise Him, we ask His help, we ask His forgiveness. We believe in Him, we put our trust in Him. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and from the evil of our deeds. Whom Allah guides, none can misguide him, and whom He misguides, none can guide him. We bear witness that there is no god but Allah, He is alone, there is no partner. We bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.

Allah said in His noble book:

"O you who believe, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims."

"O you people, fear your Lord, Who created you from one soul and created her husband and gave birth to many men and women, and fear Allah, Whom you ask for His mercy. Allah is watching over you."

"O you who believe, fear Allah and say a firm word. Your deeds will be corrected and your sins will be forgiven. Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger, he has achieved great success."

Introduction

My dear brothers and sisters in Islam, I am very pleased to be here today to avail this opportunity. I am representing the Islamic Center of Frisco. We have a very important event coming tomorrow — our fundraiser, which will be, inshallah, a final fundraiser that will lead us to our brand new masjid by the end of this year. So this has a special significance. We do have fundraisers everywhere going on, but this fundraiser is special in this particular regard: our masjid has reached a point where we just need a big push, and it will go across. So inshallah, we are hoping that tomorrow evening that push will be given to us by all of you and we will achieve our goal.

There are a few things that I wanted to touch on, but given the sensitivity of the occasion and relevance to it, I am going to talk about what is called seizing the opportunities.

Seizing the Opportunities Allah Gives Us

Allah gives us opportunities every time during our lifetime. It is unfortunate that we do not seize them, we do not recognize them, and we let them pass — that's very unfortunate. So the message here is that you need to be looking around, and when an opportunity is presented to you, you need to grab it, because it is very possible that the next moment it will be gone.

Therefore, there is a hadith in which the Prophet, peace be upon him, said:

"Seize five things before five others: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your preoccupation, and your life before your death."
(Reported by al-Ḥākim in al-Mustadrak, and others; authenticated by al-Albānī — Shu'ab al-Īmān of al-Bayhaqī, Ḥadīth 9767)

I am not specifically talking about recognizing a fundraiser as an opportunity to earn goodness — that's just a part of it. I am talking about something much broader than that.

1. Youth

If you look at your life — let's take youth for example. When you are a young man, you have opportunities to do more goodness than you will when you are an old man who has lost all that energy, that drive, that motivation to do good things, to do community service.

I remember in my younger days, about 20–25 years ago, when I got involved in community service, my feeling was that there is nothing that I cannot do. I could take on any challenge that came my way, and I did. Alhamdulillah, Allah gave me the tawfīq to recognize those opportunities and I used them to my benefit — hopefully Allah will accept them and give me reward in the ākhirah. But now, when that period of younger days has passed, I don't feel that kind of energy. People come to me — I am involved with the Frisco Masjid these days — and they say, "Ali bhai, can you please do this for me?" and I am like, "Do I really have to? Can somebody else not do it?" I just don't have that motivation. I will do things that are needful in my capacity as the Amīr, but I don't have that kind of drive. If it comes to me, I'll do it, I'll take it on.

So it is very important that when you are a young man — and I see a lot of young men here — use that youth to do good things in life, to serve the community, to take on any project. Your good deeds, your volunteer work, are not specifically tied to the masjid. There are hundreds of volunteer opportunities that you can take on. Pick something that your heart is in, and then do it. Make sure that before you become an old man, you make good use of your youth.

2. Health

The second thing that the Prophet, peace be upon him, mentioned is health — another very critical thing. Brothers, you have no idea. We see it and experience it in our life every day. We walk around, somebody is walking around healthy, just carrying on, laughing and enjoying his life, and suddenly he goes for a full-out physical and finds that there is something terribly wrong with him. His life goes to pieces immediately. He was not prepared that such a calamity would befall him. He suddenly finds himself in a very depressing and distressing situation.

That is what the Prophet, peace be upon him, means here — use your health before illness takes over, because you never know. It could happen to anybody. May Allah save us from all illnesses and all tragedies — this is my du'ā here at the minbar, because this is a very serious thing. But while we have our health, it behooves us to use it to do good work, so that — may Allah forbid — if something bad happens, at least we can look back and say, "Well, when I was healthy I used my time wisely." And may Allah accept that.

3. Leisure / Free Time

The third thing is also very important, and something we experience every day — leisure and free time. Time is very, very important. Even in Islam, we know that Allah has sworn by time, which means that man is inherently at a loss because he has limited time in this world to make his ākhirah.

So if you do not use your free time wisely — students who go to college, for example, their preoccupation is limited to their college and school activities, and after that they don't have wives or children to take care of. They have free time. It is their opportunity. When they come out of college, when they are finished with their studies and homework, they need to spend some time in the community and do some work that would make them a better person. That is what is called seizing the opportunity of leisure, of free time. Because once you are married, you have children, you have so many other things going on in life — you just cannot have that kind of luxury or leisure to devote your time to activities that would help other people in the community. So leisure is extremely important, my dear brothers and sisters.

4. Wealth

Fourthly — wealth. Allah has blessed all of us with means of livelihood. Some people are blessed more than others, but it is very important that when we have that freedom, when we have some discretionary income in our hand, we use it wisely. We use it to earn some goodness. We don't use all of it to feed our nafs — buying cars, houses, clothes, and all kinds of things. I am not trying to demean them; they are not totally useless. But in the wider scheme of things, they give you some excitement for a time being, and then that excitement is gone and you are out of thousands of dollars.

So use your wealth in such a way that it gives you some inner satisfaction and brings you closer to Allah. Because there is a likelihood that a time will come when you will lose that wealth — it happens to so many people. Especially in the 90s, many people lost thousands and thousands of dollars in the stock market. Don't let that happen to you. Use your wealth while you have it.

It reminds me of a brother I remember from when we were in Plano — we didn't have this building yet and I was doing what I am doing now, encouraging people to donate so we could have a masjid in Plano. This brother came to me one time with tears almost in his eyes. He said, "Brother Abdul Hadi, I wish you had come to me some 20 years ago when I was in Detroit, Michigan. I was a wealthy man — I had stores, I had businesses. But now I am retired and all that wealth is gone. I will help you, but I wish you had come to me earlier so that I would have earned some goodness and not squandered all that wealth." That moved me so much — that man was filled with remorse, wishing that somebody would have come to him and motivated him back then so that he would have taken that wealth and earned the pleasure of Allah.

So use your wealth to earn the pleasure of Allah, to make your own ākhirah. And the beauty about spending in the path of Allah is that Allah considers it a loan to Him, and He said that He is going to pay it back many folds — and Allah never reneges on His promise.

And this happens in many ways. When you write, let's say, a check for a thousand dollars to the masjid, all you see is money going out of your bank account — your bank account is a thousand dollars less. But what you don't see is the barakah that Allah has put in your rizq. That comes from your Īmān — you know that this money is going to come back to you many times, so you spend it with some excitement, not resentment.

Allah also repays that money in many ways — not just by giving you more wealth. For example, if there was an illness that you were going to suffer from, which would take you to doctors and hospitals and cost you thousands of dollars, Allah will remove that illness from you. That is another way in which Allah's repayment manifests itself. So don't just think that you are going to get more money in your bank account — there could be a lot of things that are not visible to you, but they happen.

5. Life Before Death

And lastly, brothers and sisters — the ultimate reality: death. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: use your life before death takes over. It's all over when you are on your death bed. There is not very much you can do — all you can do is look back and either feel good or feel bad.

I wish for myself and for all of you that when that time comes, we will feel good. This is the time to ensure that when you are dying, you look back and say, "O Allah, I think — at least this is what I think — that in my capacity I have done everything that You said would give me success in the hereafter. Now it is up to You whether You accept it or not." That is the kind of feeling you should have — that you spent your time wisely. Yes, you made mistakes, as a human being you slipped up every now and then, but on the balance you feel good: "Yes, I have achieved some pleasure of Allah. I have done a few things that are important and that will give me success in the hereafter."

Closing Advice

Brothers and sisters, these are the five things that our beloved Prophet, peace be upon him, advised us to recognize and to use. Now it is up to you whether you use them or just blow them off as another khutbah in a Plano masjid and go about your ways. I wish that you would not do that. I wish that you would take this as a warning, heed these words, and make necessary changes in your lives so that you are fully covered when your last hour comes. I give that advice first to myself and then to all of you — that when that time comes, you will be in a good position with Allah.

I say this and ask forgiveness from Allah, the Lord of the worlds. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon His messenger, the trustworthy.

Second Khuṭbah

Again, brothers and sisters, as I mentioned, I am here on behalf of Frisco Masjid. We have a fundraiser tomorrow which is very, very important — much more important than all the fundraisers we have had in the past — and we feel that this is the last fundraiser before we move into our new masjid, inshallah. I need your prayers, I need your support, I need your donations, and I need your commitment that we will stay together as one coherent community and not look at each other as the one who lives in Frisco or Plano, but as one community that has two masjids in it. Look at it that way, and help us.

I am very grateful to the Shura and administration of this masjid. The support they have shown us is something I had not imagined they would go that far — embarrassing almost, because I think that brothers in Frisco should be doing this, not brothers in Plano. But at that little gathering at Crystal Banquet Hall just to motivate people, right then and there we raised like a hundred thousand dollars. The support of the Plano community has been unmatched and I am very grateful to them. May Allah bless them and may Allah give increase in their rizq, inshallah.

Please make time to come to our fundraiser tomorrow. It is at MBC Suites in Frisco. Time is six o'clock, and I hope to see you all there.

أَعُوذُ بِاللهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ

Iqāmah

اللهُ أَكْبَر، اللهُ أَكْبَر
أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا الله
أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ الله
حَيَّ عَلَى الصَّلَاة
حَيَّ عَلَى الْفَلَاح
قَدْ قَامَتِ الصَّلَاة، قَدْ قَامَتِ الصَّلَاة
اللهُ أَكْبَر، اللهُ أَكْبَر
لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا الله

Ṣalāt al-Jumu'ah — Sūrah al-Fātiḥah

After the Prayer

As-salāmu 'alaykum wa raḥmatullāh. As-salāmu 'alaykum wa raḥmatullāh.

Astaghfirullāh, Astaghfirullāh, Astaghfirullāh.

Brothers and sisters, we have some brothers selling tickets outside for the fundraiser tomorrow. If you don't have the money, take the tickets. The important thing is that you should come to the fundraiser — that's more important.