20161021-2nd Khutba - Imam Arsalan

Opening – Praise and Testimony

Alhamdulillah, we praise Him, we ask for His help, we ask for His forgiveness and we ask for His guidance. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and from the evil of our deeds. Whomsoever Allah guides, none can misguide him, and whomsoever He misguides, none can guide him.

And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone, with no partner. And I bear witness that our master, Muhammad, peace be upon him, his servant and his messenger, delivered the message, fulfilled the trust, and advised the Ummah, and strived in the cause of Allah for the truth of Jihad, until the certainty came to him. O Allah, send blessings and peace upon our master, Muhammad, and upon his pure, good people, and upon his righteous companions, and upon those who followed them with good till the Day of Recompense.

Indeed, the most truthful hadith is the Book of Allah, and the best guidance is the guidance of our master, Muhammad, peace be upon him. And the worst of all affairs are its innovations, and every innovation is an invention, and every invention is a misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire.

O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared, and do not die except when you have submitted to Him.

O you people, fear your Lord, Who created you from one soul, and from her He created her husband, and from them He spread out many men and women. And fear Allah, whom you ask about, and His mercy. Indeed, Allah is ever watching over you.

What is Taqwa?

Brothers and sisters, following the tradition of Rasulullah ﷺ, it is customary and sunnah, and even required according to some of the ulema, to begin the Jum'ah khutbah with the reminder of the taqwa of Allah. And therefore, every Jum'ah you hear the khateeb reminding you and reminding himself to have the taqwa of Allah.

But what is taqwa? And what are the signs of a person who has the taqwa of Allah? Often times when we think about a person who has the taqwa of Allah, we have a certain image in our minds, a certain picture in our minds, of a person who looks a certain way, who worships a certain way, who prays a certain way, who fasts a certain way, and so on and so forth.

Allah describes the people of taqwa in the Qur'an with many beautiful qualities. In one place in the Qur'an, in particular in Surah Ali Imran, Allah describes the people of taqwa in this way:

Here Allah is describing the people of taqwa — that taqwa that every Friday we are reminded to attain and improve upon. The people of taqwa are described in this passage as those, number one, who spend in prosperity or adversity — who spend for the sake of Allah, regardless of whether the times are difficult or times are easy and comfortable.

The second quality is وَالْكَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ — that they are those who control their anger. وَالْعَافِينَ عَنِ النَّاسِ — and they forgive people. وَاللَّهُ يُحِبُّ الْمُحْسِنِينَ — and Allah loves those who treat others with ihsan, who do good to others, who behave in the most excellent possible way at all times.

These are some qualities of the people of taqwa mentioned in this ayah. And I just want to focus on the second one, for the purpose of today's khutbah, as a reminder for myself and for you brothers and sisters.

The Command to Control Anger

وَالْكَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ — the people of taqwa are those who control their anger. If we are truly people who come to Jum'ah to benefit from the reminder during the khutbah, then this is a recurring reminder. To control our anger is a recurring reminder, because it is enveloped in the command to attain the taqwa of Allah.

I cannot claim to be someone who has attained the taqwa of Allah, if I do not control my anger, at least try to control my anger. Anger, brothers and sisters, is something that we have all felt at one point in life or another. In fact, most of us feel anger at something or someone every day of our lives. And so dealing with anger is something that is very close to home, or should be, for all of us. And controlling anger is not just something that is recommended, it's not just something that is a secondary matter of our deen, it is something crucial to our deen.

The Hadith of "Do Not Get Angry"

To the extent that when a companion of the Prophet ﷺ went to him and asked him for advice — open-ended advice — he said, Ya Rasulullah, give me a wasiyah, give me something that I can hold on to, that will help me attain my salvation in the afterlife, and help me attain happiness and success in this life. Rasulullah ﷺ gave him this advice:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 6116)

Do not get angry. And so the man repeated the request thinking that this is something not very significant — I want something more — and the Prophet ﷺ repeated the advice saying لَا تَغْضَبْ, do not get angry. And a third time he repeated the request, and the third time he said لَا تَغْضَبْ, do not get angry.

This hadith shows us the importance of controlling our anger, to the extent that this was the only advice that the Prophet ﷺ repeatedly gave to this man who was asking him for any advice. لَا تَغْضَبْ — do not get angry.

Controlling our anger is not just something that we need to do to have peace in our lives, but it is something that we need to do if we want to get closer to Allah, if we want to attain the taqwa of Allah. This is something that is a matter of our deen. When we get angry at someone and lash out at someone and lose our temper at someone, we are not just harming that person, we are not just being unfair and unreasonable to that person, we are displeasing Allah.

This hadith, لَا تَغْضَبْ, that I just mentioned to you — this hadith is so important, brothers and sisters, that Imam al-Nawawi included it in his collection of 40 hadith, the famous Al-Arba'een al-Nawawiyyah. Imam al-Nawawi chose only 42 hadith out of thousands of hadith for this collection. Do you know what his criteria was to choose these hadith? He mentioned it in the introduction of the book. He says that I am selecting only those hadith that are central and foundational in our deen. These are hadith that are the cornerstones of our faith. He said many of these hadith comprise of a fourth of Islam or a third of Islam or half of Islam. So the hadith that are contained in the 40 hadith collection are hadith that tell us about the most fundamental teachings of our deen. And among those hadith is this one, لَا تَغْضَبْ — do not get angry.

Distancing Oneself from the Wrath of Allah

Another man came to the Prophet ﷺ according to a text in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad. And he asked the Prophet ﷺ saying:

(Musnad of Imam Ahmad)

Tell me something that will take me far away, far removed from the wrath of Allah. And the Prophet ﷺ said to him: لَا تَغْضَبْ — you want to be distanced from the anger of Allah? Don't be angry yourself. Don't show anger to others and Allah will not show anger to you. لأَنَّ الْجَزَاءَ مِنْ جِنْسِ الْعَمَلِ وَكَمَا تَدِينُ تُدَانُ — the recompense is of the same kind as the deed; as you treat others, so you shall be treated.

The Source of Anger

The Prophet ﷺ talked about anger in so many ahadith. And in some ahadith he even indicated to us the source of anger. Anger is often expressed in the way that we talk to somebody, or in the way that we show with our facial expressions — through our face, through an email that we write or a text message or a tweet or a status or whatever. Anger is often expressed externally in these ways, in the way that we use our hands, in the way that we use our tongue and so on. But the source of anger — where is it?

(Jami' al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2191)

He says ﷺ — as part of a longer speech he gave — that indeed anger is a burning coal inside the qalb of the child of Adam. It is a burning piece of coal inside the heart of human beings. Anger is a state of the heart that is expressed, as the Prophet ﷺ says, in the redness of one's eyes, in the swelling of one's veins and so on. But it resides and originates inside the heart.

And therefore, in order to treat this problem of anger, we have to turn to our hearts. We have to treat the heart — that's where it resides. And if we get angry very frequently, then that tells us about the state of our qalb. We may have a very righteous appearance externally, but the internal image is expressed through moments like that, brothers and sisters.

When somebody says something to me — whether it's my sister or brother or wife or child or a friend — when somebody says something to me that offends me, that rubs me the wrong way, that I find insulting, I want to lash out. And sometimes people get into fights. And people think that if they can pin down their opponent, whether physically or in an argument, if they can defeat their opponent, then they shall be the stronger one. So I want to win the argument by defeating my opponent. I want to win the fight by pinning down my adversary. But what I forget, brothers and sisters, is the real enemy, the real opponent is not outside of me, it is inside of me. I need to pin down that opponent because that's the harder opponent.

And that's why the Prophet ﷺ said:

The strong and powerful and mighty person is not the one who can pin down the opponent. The strong and mighty is the one who can control his or her anger — who can control himself, his own self, his own nafs, when he or she feels angry. It's easy to pin down an opponent physically. It's harder to pin down my own nafs. If I can do that, then I have truly won. If I can pin down my opponent, I may have won a fight — that is an external worldly fight or argument — but inside of me, I have lost. I've lost to my own nafs, النَّفْسُ الْأَمَّارَةُ بِالسُّوءِ — that nafs that encourages me to do things that are evil.

Anger According to Imam al-Ghazali

What is anger, brothers and sisters? And where does it originate from? As we already saw in the hadith, it originates from the qalb. Imam al-Ghazali expounding on this further said that ghadab or anger is:

It's when a person's blood is boiling because of the desire to seek revenge. The blood inside the heart is boiling because of the desire to seek revenge from someone. That's what anger is. Again, it's inside the heart, boiling inside.

Now, what's interesting — as Imam al-Ghazali also mentions — is that when somebody does something to me or you that I dislike, I will react usually in one of two ways, depending on how I view myself with respect to my opponent. So if my opponent is someone whom I consider to be inferior to me, and I consider myself to be superior — like my child for example, or my servant for example, or any human being whom I consider myself to be superior to — and they do something to me that I dislike, I will usually react with anger. But if the other person is someone whom I consider to be superior to me — like a boss, like someone in authority, like a police officer — I will usually react with grief. I may even begin to cry.

So when I deal with someone with anger and lash out at them, that tells me how I view myself with regards to that person. I view myself as superior and better. "You said that to me — how dare you say that to me? Don't you know who I am? How dare you talk to me like that." And when you consider yourself to be better than someone else, there's a word for that in the Arabic language and the English language, and that word is kibr — arrogance.

The Disease of Arrogance

Kibr — which is the satanic disease, the satanic sin. Because it was Iblis who was the first one to say:

I am better than him — about Adam, alayhi salam. This satanic disease of arrogance is so serious, brothers and sisters, that the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 91)

That the one who has even an atom's worth of arrogance in his or her heart shall not enter paradise. And Allah says:

That Allah puts a seal on the heart of every arrogant person. It's very serious. And when I view somebody as inferior to myself and I lash out at them, then that is telling me that this anger is originating from an arrogant heart — a heart that has at least elements and traces of arrogance. It teaches me something about myself, brothers and sisters.

Causes of Anger

This teaches us one of the causes of anger — this is one of the reasons why we get angry, because we are arrogant. And therefore we need to go back to our ulama and ask them how to treat this disease of arrogance, and they have written a lot about that in the light of Quran and Sunnah. But there are other causes as well of anger.

Excessive Joking

Another cause of it, which is completely different from this one, is joking around excessively. When we tend to be funny all the time, we might think that we are laughing with others, but then we all of a sudden start laughing at others. Or the other person is just retorting to our jokes and all of a sudden we feel that they are laughing at me. And a joking session turns into an argument and a fight, and grudges and conflict. Excessive joking often times leads to anger, brothers and sisters. So that is another cause of anger.

Unnecessary and Prolonged Argumentation

Another cause of anger is unnecessary and prolonged argumentation. I am discussing something at home with my wife. We are planning to decorate our living room, maybe renovate a part of our home, and we are having a discussion about what the color of the paint should be, what kind of furniture we should bring. And we are having a discussion and then I am disagreeing with her, and then that discussion turns into an argument where I want to make sure that I convince her to bring my taste of paint color and my taste of furniture to the home. And if that argument is prolonged, brothers and sisters, somebody will get angry. So the cause of anger is prolonged and unnecessary argumentation, and therefore to stop or to prevent anger we need to cut the argument. As soon as argumentation begins, we need to stop.

Stubbornness

Another cause of anger is stubbornness — stubbornness when we don't want to listen to somebody else. The Prophet ﷺ was not a stubborn person. The Prophet ﷺ was a soft person. Allah says about him:

That it is by the grace of Allah that you are a soft person — you deal with others with gentleness and softness, not with so much rigidity and stubbornness.

Excessive Desire for Wealth and Reputation

And yet another cause of anger, brothers and sisters, is an excessive desire for wealth and reputation. An excessive desire for wealth and reputation — I want to be considered as someone who has a high status in society, and therefore anytime something comes in the way of that, or jeopardizes my reputation in society, I will get angry. These are some of the causes of anger that are mentioned by Imam al-Ghazali in his works.

The Cure for Anger

So what is the cure of anger? How can we begin to treat this disease? Rasulullah ﷺ has left us with some pieces of advice. But before I get into those, an advice from Allah in the Qur'an — in a surah that we recite on every Friday, Surah al-Kahf — where Allah says:

Remember your Lord when you forget. Some of the Tabi'een like Ikrimah said that here what Allah means is: remember Allah when you get angry. So when we are feeling that temper boiling inside, if we remember Allah at that moment, using any form of remembrance that we know, that insha'Allah will help calm us down and protect us from uncontrollable anger. It will help us control that anger.

Practical Advice from the Prophet ﷺ

A few pieces of advice from Rasulullah ﷺ about how to control our anger:

Number one: A man was fighting with another man in the presence of the Prophet ﷺ and he began to use bad language during the argument and his face was red with anger. So the Prophet ﷺ said to his companions, "I know a statement — if he were to say it, that feeling that he has will go away. If only he were to say:"

Say that, brothers and sisters, when you feel angry. Try it — أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ — and repeat it. And believe in the truth of the Messenger ﷺ and you will see that you will begin to cool down.

He also said ﷺ: When one of you feels angry and you're standing, sit down. And if it still doesn't go away, lay down on your side.

He also said ﷺ — in the hadith that we mentioned in the first khutbah — that when you feel angry, فَلْيَلْصَقْ بِالْأَرْضِ — attach yourself to the earth, get close to the earth. If you're standing up, sit down on the earth. If sitting down, lay down on the earth. Get close to the earth. Because anger is from shaytan, and shaytan is made from smoke, and we are made from the earth. So in order to get away from anger, we need to get away from shaytan and get back to our humble origins, which is the earth. So get close to the earth. That's another piece of advice from the Prophet ﷺ.

And he also said that anger is from shaytan, and shaytan is made of fire, and fire can only be put out with water. So when you are angry, perform wudu.

And he also said ﷺ that when you're angry, be quiet. Stop talking. Don't write an email when you're angry. Don't write a reply when you're angry. Be quiet when you're angry. Don't write anything. Don't say anything until you calm down. And then write a response. Being quiet does not mean giving a silent treatment to my wife for days — that's not what it means, because that's another form of abuse. But be quiet until you calm down. Don't speak while you are feeling angry. That's another piece of advice from the Prophet ﷺ.

Closing Du'a

May Allah make us among those who control our anger. May Allah cure our hearts from various diseases — from the disease of arrogance and anger, from the disease of vanity and delusion, from the disease of envy, from the disease of the love for this world, from the disease of ignorance, and from all the diseases.

Indeed, Allah commands justice, and the doing of good, and giving to relatives, and He forbids immorality and bad conduct and oppression. He admonishes you that perhaps you will be reminded. Rise for your prayer — may Allah have mercy on you.