End of the Tyrants | Jumu'ah Khutbah | Br. Omar Malik

Opening Du'a and Introduction

I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger. 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 from it a wife, and spread from it many men and women. And fear Allah, to whom you ask for help and mercy. Verily, Allah watches over you. O you who believe! Fear Allah and say the righteous word. He will set right your deeds and forgive you your sins. And whosoever fears Allah and His Messenger has won a great triumph.

Verily, the truest hadith is the Book of Allah. And the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. And the worst of things is its misguidance. And every misguidance is a creation, and every creation is a misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire.

My dear brothers and sisters in Islam, all praise and gratitude is for the sake of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. May Allah make us of those who are accepted by Him, and to have a good end in our life, and to go back to Him while He is pleased with us. Ameen, O Rabbul Alameen.

I bear witness that there is no one worthy of worship except for Allah, and that He has no partners in His worship, and that the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, is His final Messenger and His slave. May Allah make us of His true slaves. Ameen, O Rabbul Alameen.

The Importance of Taqwa and Family Bonds

My dear brothers and sisters, as Allah reminds us in every khutbah, we mention these ayat. O you who believe! Fear Allah. Have taqwa of Allah, consciousness of Allah. Always have Allah in your mind, and understand everything that's happening around you, from the perspective of the fact that there is someone controlling everything that you see, which is Allah, and to not die except in a state of submission. Die in a way that Allah is pleased with us. May Allah make us of those. Ameen, O Rabbul Alameen.

And then Allah reminds mankind that there is a brotherhood among us as well when it comes to us being human beings, and reminds us that the most important is the ties of kinship, and to fear Allah through whom you demand our mutual rights, and do not cut the relationships of the wombs. Surely Allah watches everything that you do.

So even in that, you see that every khutbah, we are reminding humanity to start from the nucleus, which is the family, and to build upon that a society that is conscious of Allah, spreading the message of truth, of Islam, because that is what is going to bring humanity out of its darkness. And let alone killing people, but we are about family, and that's why we remind mankind, after Allah talks about the believers, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ حَقَّ تُقَاتِهِ وَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنتُم مُّسْلِمُونَ then we went on to talk about يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ.

The End of the Tyrants

So brothers and sisters, with everything that's happening around us, the reason for this khutbah which motivated me is a question that came to my mind, and I wondered that how many others are also having the same question, especially our youth. And it is a very valid question, and it needs to be addressed, and that is, why are the tyrants getting away with what they're doing, and when is there going to be an end to all of this?

SubhanAllah, question is fine, but it's the doubts that shaitan puts in your heart and our mind, and the last thing we want is to lose our faith in the process because we're not addressing this question that's going on in our mind deep down in our soul that's bothering us, and we start to question Allah. So this khutbah inshaAllah is titled, The End of the Tyrants and Their Propaganda, directly from seerah, because Quran and seerah are hand to hand, and this is the bread and butter, or the most important part of our existence as believers is the Quran and the sunnah of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

So going back to the seerah is critical, going back to the Quran is critical to find the answers, and there is an end to the tyrants and all of the propaganda. If we are staying patient, we will see that Allah has a divine plan, but we have to go step by step.

The Private Da'wah Period

So we go back to the seerah, let's start from the time when the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is giving da'wah, which is called the private da'wah, the first three years of his prophethood. This is when he is not publicly talking about Islam, but he is going to his kith and kin, starting from the nucleus, the family, the loved ones, and telling them about the message of Islam, where even one of the biggest opponents for him was his own uncle Abu Lahab.

And we'll talk about him as one of the tyrants, and what happened to this man's legacy, what did he leave behind, even though he was a relative of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, but that did not save him from the agony and the punishment of Allah.

The Quraysh's Propaganda Campaign

And so what happens is, first they go to Abu Talib. It's a step-by-step process. They go to the head of the state, Abu Talib, and they say that, look, your nephew is saying certain things, just make sure that he stops doing this. And Abu Talib actually goes and talks to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and he sees the response of the Prophet that Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is genuine, he is not going to give up on the message of Islam, on the truth, and he believes in what he's doing.

So then these men go to the second step, the leaders of the Quraysh, and they created a propaganda. And they said to Abu Talib, to this, even Abu Talib was shocked that what kind of propaganda is this? They said, what about we give you one of our best youth, and then you give us one of your youth, i.e. the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and then we do whatever we want with him. And to this, even Abu Talib was shocked.

And this, my brothers and sisters, let's connect it step-by-step, as I mentioned the seerah, to what is happening around us in the world today. This is where people say, we are simply liberating the land. We are freeing people who are barbaric and backward. This is all we're doing. We are proposing a beautiful solution to take over the land for the betterment of humanity. Let's continue.

The Public Recitation and Opposition

Ibn Abbas reported that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was the first person of course to recite the Quran in public. When he did that, they started doing concerts, music, you know, today music has taken a different form, but it's the same tool of the Shaytan to distract the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and the people from listening to the message of Islam wholeheartedly, to actually listen to the Quran.

Brothers and sisters, you'll be surprised how many people have heard the Quran, but it actually was not wholeheartedly listened to. It was just words, but it never really was heard and listened to from the heart. And you will see an example of that later in the seerah.

And so the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is being mocked in the public. They're creating a lot of noise, propaganda, saying all kinds of terminologies to distract the people. This is what we call today, we are the victims. We are the victims. We're simply trying to defend ourselves. So, you know, using all of these distractions and ways to make sure that people don't hear the true message of Islam.

Abdullah ibn Mas'ud's Courage

Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, may Allah be pleased with him, who didn't have a good strong tribal backing to understand and remember, if you want to do a homework, my brothers and sisters, our youth, about who Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, may Allah be pleased with him, is. He was the first person to recite the Quran after the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in public. But he didn't have a tribal backing. And you have to understand the Quraysh were people with tribes and chieftains to protect each other.

So the Sahaba told Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, if you go out there and recite the Quran in public, you are going to be severely impacted in a negative way. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud said that this is the truth. I'm going to say what I have to say. In today's time, if you want to make the connection, this is the journalists. These are the journalists.

And so Abdullah ibn Mas'ud goes out and he starts to recite Surah Ar-Rahman. Beautiful Surah. All of us love one of the hearts of the beautiful heart of the Quran. Amazing Surah. Touches the heart. He starts to recite it. And amazingly people are mesmerized and they start to gather around Abdullah ibn Mas'ud because that's the impact of the Quran. This is what I meant by their wholeheartedly listening to the message of the Quran.

But what happens? People say they realize the impact. So they start telling another propaganda that this is exactly what Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, is claiming to have brought and has been revealed upon him. Make sure he doesn't get to recite. And so they pound and start beating him up.

Abdullah ibn Mas'ud goes back to the companions and they said we told you you're going to have this kind of backlash. He said after what happened today, I have more content towards Quraysh and more determination to spread the message of Islam. If I have to I will go do it again tomorrow. This is the dedication of the youth. When they see that the truth is being pounded upon and systematically ignored, then the youth wake up.

The Bribery Attempt

And so then the next step brothers and sisters is the bribery. And we're just touching the seerah right now. It has to be of course discussed in multiple halaqas and khutbas. But this is the bribery of a man by the name of Utbah ibn Rabi'ah.

Now listen to this. He comes to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. He does have, he's not the direct uncle of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, but he is someone connected to him through blood. So he says, oh nephew, here are the peacemakers. The peacemakers who try to come with you and negotiate supposedly.

Oh my nephew, you know your status and lineage but now you have come forth with a matter that has caused havoc in our society. Oh Muhammad, are you better than your father Abdullah? Are you better than your grandfather Abdul Muttalib?

So here my brothers and sisters, let's pause. How is this related to what we see today? First of all, the response of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was amazing. And the response was, no response. This is what we call a trick question. Because of course the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is better than his father Abdullah and his grandfather Abdul Muttalib. But it was blasphemy in the Quraysh to claim that someone is better than Abdul Muttalib especially who was the chieftain of the Quraysh and someone they looked up for decades.

So for someone to come and say I'm better than Abdul Muttalib, so they are using a trick question. And the response was, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, picked up on their ignorance and he knows as we all learn from beautiful ayah in the Quran:

And the servants of the Most Merciful, may Allah make us of those, Ameen Rabbul Alameen, may Allah make us of عِبَادُ الرَّحْمَنِ are those who walk upon this earth humbly. And when ignorant people address them harshly, they say peace i.e. we got nothing to say about this one. Don't try to bring us into your propaganda. In this matter, silence is the best thing.

So the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was resilient and in our seerah today, we would call this the terminology that the oppressor has a right to defend itself. Using this kind of terminology, every interview when we saw in the beginning, they would do the same thing to the Muslims, speakers or Palestinians and say that does not the oppressor have and I'm going to call them oppressors for the sake of not getting in trouble but we know who we're talking about and the oppressors are those who have been doing this but do they not have the right to defend themselves just like this man Utbah ibn Rabi'ah were saying.

So subhanAllah, we go on and look what he says.

The False Promises of the Oppressors

He now starts to use what we call guilt trip against the Prophet ﷺ and he says that you are such a good young man and you have such potential but what a failure you are. What are you doing with your life? He said what a desolate failure you have become. You've broken our society. Have you not seen any young man bring, we have not seen any young man bring more harm to the society than you have. The Arabs are making fun of you. They're calling you and they're mocking you and you have split us up and you're causing a civil war.

So they started to use this against the youth and this in our times is what we call the encampments, the effort of the youth to speak up against the truth and they are put down by calling them failures that you are just wasting your life for speaking the truth and now comes a proposal.

Utbah's Proposal to the Prophet ﷺ

Here is Utbah's proposal to the Prophet ﷺ. If you wish money, I have the right invested upon me by the Quraysh that I will make you the richest person among the Arabs. Number two, if you want power, we will make you a king among us. Pause for a second. There were no kings among the Quraysh. So even there you can see the falsehood and the lies. There used to be Dar al-Nadwa, there used to be chieftains of the Quraysh, but there was no concept of kings. So what is he promising the Prophet ﷺ, even that is fake. In his own wordings, you can tell that these are fake lies. He said that we'll make you a king. Number three, if you want woman, then choose the best woman among us and we'll make sure that she's married to you. And if you think that you're mentally unstable, which we all think you are because you're just a soothsayer, you're a magician, you're going crazy, then we will hire the best doctors to cure you. This is his proposal.

The Prophet's Response with the Quran

So what does the Prophet ﷺ do? Once again, be patient brothers and sisters. Listen to the seerah and understand the prophetic wisdom. The Prophet ﷺ said, are you done Utbah? Let him speak. Let him speak what he has to until he himself said, you know what, I got nothing else. No more lies. So the Prophet ﷺ lets him finish his speech and then he says, can I speak now? So that he makes sure that he will have his full attention. And Utbah said, yeah, go ahead.

And at this, the Prophet ﷺ uses what many of us forget to use in these situations. We use our intellect. We use our own human items that we think are to our disposal but we forget about the Quran. So what does the Prophet ﷺ do? He goes to Surah Fussilat and he starts reciting:

It didn't take him more than 13 verses. And this man Utbah, for the first time, is actually listening to the Quran wholeheartedly. The noise is gone. The propaganda is gone. But he's having to listen to it wholeheartedly. On the 13th verse, he's trembling. And what does the 13th verse talk about as we end the first part of our khutbah?

"But if they turn away, then say, I have warned you of a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt that struck the people before, the oppressors, Aad and Thamud."

At this, Utbah takes his hand and puts it on the blessed mouth of the Prophet ﷺ and he says, I beg you by Allah, by the rights that I have over you, as your blood relative, please stop. Please stop and make sure that this punishment doesn't come upon us. SubhanAllah, the impact, he realized this is the truth. And he was trembling to the point that he felt the punishment is coming right now. And he closed the mouth of the Prophet ﷺ to make sure that he doesn't continue to recite because he was worried about the punishment of Allah coming down upon him.

The People's Rejection

So then he goes back to his people, brothers and sisters, and he says, Listen to me, O people, the same people who have sent this man as a representative to do this bribery, and he says, leave this man alone because I have heard a speech like I've never heard before. This is the time when Utbah, for the first time, actually heard the message of Islam by his heart and not with all of the noise going around.

And he said, and what was he told by his people, the ignorant, and this is what they would always do. They said that that man has bewitched you just like he was trying to bewitch all of us. You have just become part of his, another one of his victims. SubhanAllah.

We ask Allah to guide us to the truth, to always go back to the Quran and to find our strength from the seerah.

When Will the Tyrants End?

So dear brothers and sisters, my youth, my young ones, the older gentlemen, brothers and sisters, all of us, we probably had this question. And if you didn't, don't be shy to say it to people. It doesn't make you less of a believer that when are these tyrants going to be destroyed? How are they getting away with this? And also with everything that has been exposed. Which inflicted one of the greatest massacres against the Muslims. And you go to Spain today and they're waving the flag of Palestine. What happened in Australia? Things are so upfront and clear now for the people. Then why are these oppressors still doing what they're doing?

Remember the ayah:

Allah has set upon their hearts and upon their hearing and over their vision a veil. And for them is a torment, a great punishment waiting for them. May Allah save us from being among those. Ameen. May Allah free the brothers and sisters who are being oppressed and let their legacy be the ones that bring the truth of Islam to the whole world. Ameen.

The End of Pharaoh

So brothers and sisters, it is coming. The punishment is coming. And let's start very quickly because this will require a whole separate khutbah. The end of the tyrants. I start with Fir'aun. Did we forget?

So Allah seized him an exemplary punishment. When you think of the name Fir'aun, you don't think of a person who was in control. You think of a miserable man cursed by millions. You think of a miserable man that would have the most severe punishment in the hereafter as well. And Allah says that He seized him from the last and the first of his transgression. Indeed, this is a warning for those who fear Allah.

The End of Abu Lahab

Let's go to Abu Lahab.

I see some of our beautiful young children here. May Allah preserve our masajid and bring the youth closer to the masajid. Ameen. A five-year-old here could have Surah Masad memorized and he could be reciting and mashaAllah beautifully reciting and not realizing that the whole surah is simply about a curse of Allah upon Abu Lahab. There's nothing else going on in the surah except for the blame on Abu Lahab and his final destination in hellfire. That's what the whole surah is about. What a unique surah.

You know, if you go to Surah Fajr, you'll hear about Aad and Thamud and Fir'aun, but it's packaged with beautiful other messages like وَالْفَجْرِ, the time of Fajr, وَلَيَالٍ عَشْرٍ, the ten days of Dhul-Hijjah and all of the other messages. And then you have the mention of the people who were destroyed. But Surah Masad is completely about destruction of a man and his wife because of their opposition against Islam and what they did, even though he was the uncle of the Prophet ﷺ.

The Last 13 Days of Abu Lahab

So, I want to end the khutbah by some of you who might not have realized that even at the individual level, and inshallah, in the next time we meet, we'll do a khutbah regarding the nations, people at a systematic level when they oppress people, what happens to them. I want to simply take you to the end of the days of Abu Lahab if that brings some comfort for those who wonder why are these tyrants getting away with this.

A lot of people might not realize the way Abu Lahab died. Some of you might know that he died of a very horrible disease, an embarrassing disease where nobody wanted to be around him. But let's recall the last 13 days of Abu Lahab and what happens to this man, the one who opposed the Prophet ﷺ.

First of all, he went through a death by disease. Within about two years of the Battle of Badr, he had a disease called Adasa, a type of painful contagious disease. From day one and two, suddenly he's afflicted by this disease. From three to five, day number three to five, isolation and stench coming out of his body. Day six to seven, social abandonment. Nobody wants nothing to do with this man. Day eight to nine, death and disgrace. He dies. Ten to twelve, the corpse is left unburied and it's rotting. Day thirteen, the sons are like, we gotta take care of this body. So they hire workers to remove the body. They use wooden poles to push his body down to the edge of Makkah in a pit. And they threw stones and dirt upon this from a distance. Want nothing to do with it.

And this man, he died with no funeral prayer, no proper grave, and just a heap of earth with rotting body underneath it. This was the end of Abu Lahab. Who are we to think that Allah doesn't have a plan? That these tyrants would just get away with what they did? And subhanAllah for this, it requires a lot of further discussion inshallah. When we come back, we ask Allah to end with these lessons and to take upon these lessons and to never be among the oppressors.

Seven Lessons from the End of Tyrants

The few lessons that we end with here, brothers and sisters, number one, your family ties do not guarantee guidance. Guidance is in the hands of each one of us to put the effort and try to come close to Allah, find the right mentors, whatever you have to do, but don't let there be an excuse on the day of judgment. They, oh Allah, because of this person, I wasn't a good Muslim.

Number two, your wealth and status are completely worthless without faith. And we saw that clearly. What did the wealth and status of Abu Lahab do for him?

Number three, public mockery of truth, which is how we see today, will result in public disgrace. Public mockery always results in public disgrace.

Arrogance seals the fate of a person. When you wonder, why is this person not guided? After everything he's seen, because there's arrogance. Arrogance seals the deal for the person. He will never find guidance.

Spouses, just a side topic on the topic of Abu Lahab. Spouses can either push themselves to become closer to Allah or destroy each other spiritually. His wife supported him against his oppression towards the Muslim and both of them were destroyed.

Number six, the Quranic prophecies are not just stories, they're precise and they will be fulfilled at all times. History repeats itself. Whenever there's oppression, the plan of Allah will always take place.

And number seven, harm to the Prophet ﷺ and his ummah will always bring divine justice because Allah says in Surah Hijr:

We are sufficient against the mockers for you, O Prophet of Allah ﷺ.

May Allah allow us to be on the right side of history, to never be among the oppressors. A personal dua that everyone should continuously make is:

O my Lord, save me from the wrongdoing people.

O our Lord, make us not the object of the fitna of the disbelievers and the oppressors and forgive us, our Lord, indeed it is You who are the Exalted in Might and the Most Wise.

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