Are All Deaths Equal? How the Prophet Would've Responded | Jumu'ah Khutbah | Dr. Omar Suleiman

We ask Allah to send his peace and blessings upon him, the prophets and messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him, and those that follow in his blessed path until the Day of Judgment. We ask Allah to make us amongst them. Ameen.

Opening: A Violent Political Assassination

Dear brothers and sisters, over the last 48 hours, the amount of times I have typed up something to say and then left it in my draft folder and deleted it, I can't tell you. I've probably written about three books in the last 48 hours and decided to delete, delete, delete, delete. And I basically came down to two simple sentences in the wake of a violent political assassination that has been on the screens of every American, that the algorithm mysteriously seems to be boosting rather than censoring: that I don't condone his killing, I won't participate in his mourning.

I tried to think of the shortest way to express what I think the Prophet ﷺ taught us in regards to how we deal with certain types of deaths. In the wake of that, obviously, there is a lot of badgering from Islamophobes, which is to be expected, but there is also a lot of questioning that comes from Muslims. Aren't we supposed to be merciful? Aren't we supposed to show the moral high ground? Aren't we supposed to be different? And the answer to all of those questions is of course.

However, sometimes the misapplication of the seerah of the Prophet ﷺ not only misrepresents him ﷺ, but it actually blurs the clarity that we're supposed to have in this moment.

Proximity and Perspective: From Christchurch to Gaza

So let's start with one thing before talking about the specific incident. I remember a few years ago when Christchurch, New Zealand had the horrible terrorist attack on 50 plus Muslims in their masajid over there. And many Muslims expressed that it felt more real to them because it's New Zealand and this looks like a masjid in America — and this is not one of those Muslim countries where you have masajid getting blown up routinely in Iraq and in Syria and in Yemen. No, this is different, it felt too close. And that was fitri, that was natural, that something felt too close.

And because of the natural human component that rocks you a bit more when it feels closer, that can be used as an opportunity to open up your eyes to a reality that maybe you weren't paying too much attention to. And so in general when America looks at itself — and hopefully looks at itself and recognizes the horrible state that we're in right now — the mass shootings that are daily, the victims are getting younger, the shooters are getting younger, and the constant gun violence and the constant innocent death and the lack of safety on a subway or on a street or in a school or in a church or in a masjid or whatever it may be, all of that should be used to say that all of this is terrible. All of this is something to mourn as a state of the country, but also to open up our eyes to the reality that as America has fostered a culture of violence domestically, this is what America is creating abroad as well.

We put into elements the worst forms of political violence everywhere all the time as a country. And so you can't diagnose and solve what's near without paying attention to what's seemingly far. Open your eyes to a greater reality and that will help you gain more perspective.

If anything, that will broaden your empathy, not lessen it. That will make your mercy more well-rounded and allow you to have a deeper and better perspective rather than a narrow perspective that's limited to something that feels too close to home for you. SubhanAllah, think about how problematic those words are for us as an ummah. Humanity as an ummah of Muhammad ﷺ — too close to home.

So here's the thing. There is something to say that when people see a violent death, it's hard not to feel a fitri, a human sense of devastation — that this is terrible when you see something like that. And again, for the proper disclaimer, I don't condone that type of violence here or anywhere. But for people to say or feel a sense that this is terrible, no matter how terrible the person was, it feels terrible because from a fitri perspective, we're human beings. We've been created that way — that when we see blood spill, we're supposed to feel a natural sense of repulsion. That's who we've been created to be.

But I want to offer the following two things. That fitri will have us respond both in regards to our proximity to someone's life or our proximity to their death. What do I mean by that? Remember when Kobe Bryant died? There were other people in the helicopter, too. No one remembers their names. Why? Because our kids and those of us who were watching basketball, or who knew Kobe Bryant from afar — we felt like, especially any cultural icon, you felt like you knew someone in life. Therefore, their death rocks you in a different way. And so proximity to someone's life allows you to magnify the tragedy that happens to them, or proximity to the circumstances of their death, even if you didn't know them.

The fitri — when you see a human being bleeding out on the side of the road, I would expect you to have the mercy and to say, this is terrible, and want to do something. Not to go up to that person and ask them about anything else except: how can I help you, how can I save your life, let me call 911, and do what I can to stop you from bleeding out.

The thing about Palestinians is they've been robbed of both in the American imagination. They've been robbed of proximity to life and dehumanized in their existence and in their living — and their stories may distance, just as all of America's victims of political violence — and they're dehumanized in death. And so it should be said that those who have the nerve to talk about political violence today, after two years of being deniers of the worst manifestation of political violence — which is genocide — should be called out and condemned for their hypocrisy. They're the ones that should be on the defense. Where have you been?

And you have to be able to put this forward: what if people knew the stories of the people of Palestine before the genocide? And then even if they didn't know that, what if people watched on loop — they've been talking about the average time that people are replaying the video of the assassination — can you imagine if people watched on loop the beheaded Palestinians from Gaza that show up on our screens every single day and kept pressing play, and play, and play, and that's what filled your social media feed? And that young boy who just four days ago walked up to his father who was beheaded by an American bomb, and a pregnant mother that's laying dead on the pavement — can you imagine if we watched that on loop all the time?

And so that's the thing. There is a natural type of fitra. What if they were to hear the call of Hind Rajab over and over and over again? What if they watched the videos of starving Palestinian children in a famine being sniped in line for food by American snipers? Would that change the political calculus? Would that change the conversation? And so an appeal to empathy is to broaden the perspective and to say: you really have not been paying attention. You really have not been paying attention.

And it is not for those who are selective with their condemnation to shame and to look back at others and to say that you lack mercy or that something else was there. On top of that, imagine if the headline read this way: "Charlie Kirk dies by a stray bullet." Imagine if it read that way. Or imagine if a news anchor said that maybe the bullet was shot in celebration. That actually did happen. You know what happened? The news anchor was fired by the end of the night and completely removed. Imagine if there was assassination denial constantly, all the time. How enraging that would be to those that attach themselves to the said figure.

And come back to what we have been living: people who not only justify a genocide but then deny it and enable it with their seemingly innocent words of dehumanization — and then come back to you and tell you that you are crazy for being enraged by this. You are crazy for your grief over this. That you are the one that has the problem. And in fact denying it does not cost you your job. It actually promotes you to a podcaster with more views or to a president. It doesn't cost you anything. You get fired for actually protesting the genocide in this country.

We Frame Our Mercy by the Mercy of the Prophet ﷺ

And so we take that step back. Then someone says, "Sheikh, but we are not like our enemies. We shouldn't be like them. We should have mercy. We should have clarity." And my answer to that is true. But we frame our mercy by the mercy of the Prophet ﷺ. So allow me, dear brothers and sisters, with the few minutes I have, to just survey how the Prophet ﷺ used to deal with different deaths and different circumstances, and then what we can take from that.

Because the Prophet ﷺ did not treat all deaths the same. And he did not speak about all people the same way while they were alive or when they passed away. He did not treat all deaths the same amongst Muslims or amongst non-Muslims. He had wisdom ﷺ that was practiced — none of it out of a depletion or out of a lack of mercy, but rather understanding the bigger picture ﷺ.

The Default: Respect for Every Human Soul

And yes, the default is respect for the events of the dead and rahmah, mercy, on the living relatives of the deceased. That's the default. That's what we take from the Prophet ﷺ sitting down amongst his companions, and the funeral of an unknown Jewish man passes by, and the Prophet ﷺ stands up and says, أَلَيْسَتْ نَفْسًا؟ — isn't it a human being? — either out of the greatness of death and the event of death, or the respect for the basic sanctity of a human soul. That's actually the default that we take.

And yes, we show kindness to the family members, especially of those who were righteous or even neutral as non-Muslims.

The Death of Mut'im ibn Adi: Honouring a Noble Non-Muslim

And you look at how the Prophet ﷺ treated, for example, the death of Mut'im ibn Adi. He was a non-Muslim, but he was what you would call a true ally. He was someone who was enraged by the treatment of the Prophet ﷺ and the boycott, and when the Prophet ﷺ was under siege. And what did the Messenger of Allah ﷺ do? He honoured him, but in a way that did not cross any boundaries. He said ﷺ after Badr that if Mut'im ibn Adi was alive and he would have interceded on behalf of these people, I would have freed them all for his sake — honouring the nobility of a man.

So it is something when a non-Muslim passes away that yes, you can't invoke maghfirah and things of that sort, or descend into — rather practice any of those ibadat that they themselves did not used to practice — but you can honour the good qualities that they used to have. And the Prophet ﷺ is saying that that would have had an impact on how I would treat his people as well. That I remember what he did. And so there is something to say about someone that was righteous and noble as a non-Muslim.

Anger Over Non-Combatant Deaths

And yes, there is something to say even about anger and sadness for the death of non-combatants, of civilians. This is our bigger platform. This is our bigger heart as Muslims. This is the moral high ground that Ibn Mas'ud radiyallahu anhu mentioned — that when the Prophet ﷺ saw a woman from the women of the enemy in the battlefield that was killed, he was enraged ﷺ. His face turned red. He said, "Who killed her?" He didn't allow that ﷺ. Yes, that's prophetic. She had nothing to do with it — even if she was married to an enemy of Islam, that did not justify that she herself would be killed.

And so yes, you can absolutely feel sympathy even for the children of even someone who was wicked — that would grow up, that had nothing to do with the evil or what was spewed by their parents, but they're innocent. You should have rahmah for that. And that's the same rahmah that you have for children all over. That's something that you act out of from a prophetic perspective.

Abu Dujanah and Restraint at Uhud

And the Prophet ﷺ taught the companions to restrain their anger with principle, always, even in the most heated of moments. Abu Dujanah radiyallahu anhu — when he mentions in the battle of Uhud that as he fought through the enemy combatants and he got to the back where some of the women were actually beating the drums of war and calling for the death of the sahaba — he got all the way through, and then he saw himself right in front of Hind bint Utbah, and she shrieked. And she was one of the main instigators. And he stopped himself. And al-Zubayr radiyallahu anhu asked him what happened. He said, "I honoured the sword of the Prophet ﷺ too much to strike a woman with it." No — no matter what she was saying, no matter what was happening, I'm restraining myself. This is different.

So the Prophet ﷺ treated noble non-Muslims in a certain way. He extended that courtesy that he would have had to them — that payback of loyalty to their relatives. And the Prophet ﷺ treated the family members even of the most hostile people with respect, with mercy ﷺ.

How the Prophet ﷺ Spoke of the Deceased

Abu Jahl: The Fir'aun of This Ummah

But how did the Prophet ﷺ frame the discussion of the deceased in this process? Pay attention to these two. When Abu Jahl was killed — the fir'aun of this ummah — the Prophet ﷺ said, after all the terror that he wreaked on the Muslims, that this is the fir'aun of this ummah. And he called out to Abu Jahl and to those people on the Day of Badr. He said: "Ya fulan ibn fulan" — oh so and so, oh so and so:

"Have you found the promise of your Lord to be true? For verily I have found the promise of my Lord to be true." So he is establishing the premise ﷺ — that all of that mockery, all of that hatred, all of that enmity, all of that evil — have you now found it to be true? Because we have found the promise of our Lord to be true. That's establishing something.

But SubhanAllah, look at the hikmah of the Prophet ﷺ. He said that to Abu Jahl. Khalas — it's done. Abu Jahl was actually someone that was deserving of death; he killed Muslims, he chased them out, he tried to kill the Prophet ﷺ and ultimately died on a battlefield as well.

But even with Abu Jahl, how did the Prophet ﷺ balance it out? When Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahl became Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ got word that some of the people were cursing Abu Jahl in the presence of Ikrimah, and that hurt Ikrimah's feelings. No one hurt the Prophet ﷺ more than Abu Jahl — or no one suffered more at his hands in the holistic sense than the Prophet ﷺ. But the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1393)

"Don't curse the dead. It has no use. They have found what they have put forth. Let them be at this point. It's done." And he said, it causes grief to the living and it's not going to actually reach the dead. Khalas — they're done. Why am I going to hurt Ikrimah? There is wisdom here to how I talk about this in this situation. That's not out of mercy to Abu Jahl — it's out of mercy to Ikrimah, and that's out of wisdom as to how to build ﷺ, as he always would.

So yes, there are judgment calls to be made of how you speak of the passing even of a wicked man, and how you elaborate on that, and the effect that it is to have.

The Death of Major Sinners Among the Muslims

Now, that's with non-Muslims. What about with Muslims? Even with Muslims, the Prophet ﷺ differentiated his behavior at death. Do you think that those people have more mercy on that man than the Prophet ﷺ has in his heart for that person that passed away? Absolutely not. The Prophet ﷺ wants to discourage a behavior, because how you speak about the dead and what you do with the dead is actually relevant to how the living are going to carry on. There is hikmah, there is wisdom there. No one feels more mercy.

Some of the ulama even mentioned in the sharh of the hadith that it might be that the Prophet ﷺ — I mean, if on the Day of Judgment his shafa'ah, his intercession, is for the major sinners of the ummah — it might be that in private ﷺ he was seeking forgiveness for them. But in public, the Prophet ﷺ wanted to send a message: that they're still your brother, that's a Muslim, honor them to the extent that the Muslim has from a bare right, but the behavior has to be discouraged. I don't want people to think that this behavior is okay. And so there's a judgment call that's to be made even in how you speak about the death of a major sinner amongst the Muslims and how that person is eulogized.

The Forgotten Believers

And then you have the second category, and this one hurts the heart — because we're all guilty in this, or most of us, and I don't exclude myself. And you know who these are? These are the forgotten believers. It's not just Kobe and the others in the helicopter. The forgotten believers — the people who aren't known in the community, and when the janazah announcement is made at the local level, seven or eight people show up. And beyond that, there is an extension of that within the ummah as well.

Those are the people who — when the Prophet ﷺ comes to the masjid and he doesn't see the woman that was cleaning the masjid — she wasn't some valiant warrior or someone that was doing something of notoriety in the community. She used to clean the masjid. And the Prophet ﷺ says, "Where is she?" "Ya Rasulullah, she passed away. We didn't want to bother you with her janazah. It was at night, we just did it ourselves." The Prophet ﷺ was upset. "Take me to her. I want to honor her. These graves are given light by my du'a." He made du'a for her ﷺ. He made her known.

Likewise, there is Julaibib radiyallahu anhu, the companion that's forgotten. And for the sake of time, I go straight to the end of this, where people are claiming their tribesmen at the end of a battle. And he said, "As for me, I'm missing Julaibib." And he goes to Julaibib, the forgotten man. He says:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2472)

"He's from me and I'm from him." This, wallahi, could not be a more accurate and fitting description to our brothers and sisters in Sudan right now, and our brothers and sisters in Yemen, and in the Congo, and in different places. May Allah console their hearts and give them victory. It is horrible that the attention to those crimes has been subdued even amongst us, and we have to take responsibility for that and change the way that we talk about that.

So there is how you talk about the forgotten believers, and finding the forgotten believers, and the Prophet ﷺ making them known, and making it a point to say that their deaths are not insignificant. Just as he would avoid ﷺ — sometimes, not always, sometimes — the funeral of someone that was distinguished, a Muslim distinguished by a major sin, he would look ﷺ for the Muslim that was forgotten — not because of a major sin, but because their status did not make them worthy to the algorithm. They didn't get inserted into your algorithm. And we're human beings — remember, distant in life or distant in death. That's unfortunately what the human response is going to be.

The Shuhada: Those Who Must Never Be Forgotten

But you know who the Prophet ﷺ completely acted differently with? The shuhada, the martyrs. The people who you could say are least in need — least in need of our remembering them in death. I mean, they're shuhada.

نَحْسَبُهُمْ كَذَلِكَ عِنْدَ اللهِ — we assume them to be as such with Allah. Like, I catch myself making du'a sometimes and I'm like, what is my du'a going to benefit that person? They're shuhada. They're people who, in the calculation, least need the du'as. But look at what the Prophet ﷺ did.

The very last people that he went to visit ﷺ, outside of the vicinity of his masjid — al-Baqi' he went to — were the shuhada of Uhud. Who is greater than Hamza radiyallahu ta'ala anhu? Does Hamza need a du'a? Does Mus'ab need a du'a? Do they need to be remembered? The Prophet ﷺ is honoring them, but he's also sending a message to the community: these are the people you can't forget. These are the people that you name your children after. These are the people that you keep their stories alive. Who cares if western media doesn't talk about them? Do we continue to keep their memories alive, or will we move on when it's all said and done?

Not All Deaths Are the Same

Dear brothers and sisters, not all deaths are the same. And the Prophet ﷺ definitely taught us that mercy is our instinct. He even stood ﷺ to pray for Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, the chief of the hypocrites, until Allah prohibited him from doing so. So mercy is the default, but Allah taught him the boundaries ﷺ, and Allah taught us the boundaries as well.

So let me just say this in no ambiguous terms:

Don't glorify the oppressor because that dishonors the oppressed. Don't falsely eulogize those who harmed, because then you harm those that were already harmed by them. Honor the forgotten ones and the righteous ones because those are the ones that Allah raises. Show dignity, show respect, show mercy, show restraint. Elevate the forgotten models of sincerity and frequently remember those who are being erased out of our memory and erased from our algorithms.

We don't curse the dead, we don't falsely eulogize, we show condolences where appropriate, but at the end of the day how we talk about the dead matters for us as the living. What examples we want to elevate. And the Prophet ﷺ had a way for dealing with each and every single one of these things.

The Awe of Death

And the last thing, dear brothers and sisters — there is the haybah of death, the awe of death. That one moment you're talking and the next moment you're done. We have to recognize that at every single moment — that you're walking and then you're out. A millisecond and you're gone.

"He is closer to you than your jugular vein." Is there anything that shows that to you more than this? One moment and we're all unplugged and we have to face Allah with our deeds. So let it always be that with any death, we take heed for ourselves, and we ask Allah to grant us a good ending, and we ask Allah to have mercy on the righteous ones.