From This World to the Hereafter | Mufti Abdul Rahman Waheed

From This World to the Hereafter

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

نَحْمَدُهُ وَنُصَلِّي عَلَى رَسُولِهِ الْكَرِيمِ، أَمَّا بَعْدُ

Allah says in His noble Book, after seeking refuge from Shaytan:

And the Prophet ﷺ said:

Three things are saving and three things are destroying. As for the saving things: taqwa of Allah in private and public, speaking the truth in anger and in contentment, and moderation in wealth and poverty. As for the destroying things: following one's desires, obeying greed, and a person's self-admiration. (al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman)

The Human Need to Be Acknowledged and Remembered

Brothers and sisters, alhamdulillah we're having a great evening so far, and we're going to come back to a few of the lectures and inshallah we'll conclude our evening with some nasiha. May Allah bless brother Mu'adh and Firas and Hafidh Hamadullah — they uplifted our spirits and made the evening more memorable. And I'm sorry if I'm going to make you more somber, but we have to speak about a few important topics.

Brothers and sisters, every human being — in their very nature — Allah has put the feeling and the natural attitude to be acknowledged and remembered. Everybody sitting here, it doesn't matter if you're a shaykh or not a shaykh, you're Mu'adh or you're Hafidh Hamadullah — Allah has put this in our nature: that when we're in someone's presence, we like to be acknowledged, and when we leave and are in their absence, we love to be remembered.

Look at a child. The moment a child becomes mature — 5, 6 years old — he comes to his dad: "Abuji, Abuji, look what I just drew for you!" And he wants you to say, "Oh mashallah, beautiful!" He just wants to be acknowledged, he wants you to appreciate him. As you get older, you're a teenager — sisters understand this more than men — but then you start wearing nice clothes, a fancy hijab, and you're actually waiting for someone, expecting someone.

I remember when I got married. Two weeks after I got married, my wife said, "I'm angry at you." I said, "That's no problem, I heard you're going to be angry every day, it's not a big deal." I didn't have sisters, so I don't know the anatomy of women until I got married. So she said, "I'm angry with you." I said, "Okay, I'm sorry. What are you angry about?" And she said that on the wedding day, every single person that came to see her acknowledged her wedding dress — but I didn't. I didn't say anything about it. And I didn't know I had to! By the way, if you're not married, that's part of the role — you have to acknowledge. If she wears new clothes one day and you don't realize it, it's a problem. A huge problem. So this is not a sin — this is the nature of a human being.

What happens when — one brother just met me in the car today — sometimes it happens to people, they look at you and say, "You know, I met you in Toronto. Do you remember me?" And what happens when you say, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I don't remember you" — the person doesn't feel too good. It happens to me all the time. People are like, "Oh, do you remember me? I met you, Sheikh, in Toronto, you did this, we did this." And I say, "I'm so sorry, that wasn't me, that was my brother — I'm the more handsome one, by the way."

So it happens where you don't remember somebody and how do you feel when they don't remember you? Allah has put this in every single person's nature. And I'll tell you something — not only Muslims, even non-Muslims. I know many of my dad's friends who are physicians. Towards the end of their lives, their only concern — with their millions of dollars — is to donate it to a hospital or a university where their name will be placed on the wall, so that after they leave this world, someone can still walk by that wall and see their name. Even after they die, they want to be remembered and acknowledged.

So this gap that we have in our heart, brothers and sisters — welcome to the world — can never be filled with anyone's acknowledgement or anyone's remembrance. It can't be. The only way this void gets filled in our heart is when Allah acknowledges us and Allah remembers us. That's it. Otherwise it will never get filled.

A Scene in Jannah

Let me take you to a scene in Jannah. We're talking about Jannah right now — this is my favorite scene in Jannah. The Prophet ﷺ was reciting a verse:

I want you to pay attention. وَإِذَا رَأَيْتَ — رَأَيْتَ is singular and it is مُخَاطَب — you, one person. وَإِذَا رَأَيْتَ — Oh Muhammad ﷺ, when you see — ثَمَّ رَأَيْتَ — and then you will see again. You know what that means? It's like when you're just walking by and you see a car — you look at it, and you look at it again. So when you go to Jannah, you're going to look at something and look at it again; you're going to keep doing that because it's so beautiful. وَإِذَا رَأَيْتَ — you look at it — ثَمَّ رَأَيْتَ — and you look at it again, over and over again. What are you going to see? نَعِيم — you're going to see so much luxury. مُلْكًا كَبِيرًا — you're going to see a huge dominion, what you own. You know, people come home and they look at their house and they feel good about a 3–4 thousand square foot house. How about Jannah? The lowest place in Jannah — a person will see 2,000 years away. مُلْكًا كَبِيرًا.

The Three Questions

So when the Prophet ﷺ said this — because the verse is addressed to the Prophet — a man was sitting in front of him and asked three questions. At the end of this whole gathering, if you can just remember these three questions and answers, you have achieved something.

The First Question: Will I Be with You in Jannah?

His first question was:

"O Prophet of Allah, what is your opinion — if I believe in you and I do what Allah wants me to do, am I going to be with you in Jannah?" Because the verse speaks about the Prophet. So the Prophet ﷺ said, بَلَى — of course you're going to be with me in Jannah. And that is the goal that we all have — to be with the Prophet in Jannah.

Al-Qa'qa' ibn Aws, rahmatullahi 'alayh, was walking once and he asked his friend: دُلَّنِي بِشَيْءٍ يُرَغِّبُنِي فِي الجَنَّةِ — "Tell me something that will motivate me to get to Jannah." He said three words. That's it. Three words: فِيهَا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ — "In Jannah is the Prophet of Allah ﷺ."

It's personal. I'll tell you something. When my youngest brother Abdur Rahim passed away — as Mu'adh introduced me, we're from Michigan, from Detroit, from the ghetto of Detroit, and we're proud of that. One of those youngsters who is not that religious, who doesn't know how to even speak in a very fluent way — he comes to my brother's grave. I saw him walking. He doesn't know what du'a to read, he doesn't know any of these formalities of religion that most of us alhamdulillah know. He stands next to my brother's grave, looks at his grave, and says something so powerful. He said: "Jannah just got personal." Jannah just got personal — because that was his friend. And it's personal. I have to get there now, because if I don't get there, I'll never see my friend again.

For many of us, Jannah is personal. My mother is there. My father is there. Inshallah the shuhada of Gaza are there — we never met them in this world. Don't you want to meet them? Don't you want to meet those people you see on your screens that you'll never see in this world? I want to meet them. It's very personal for me. If I'm donating for them, helping them, making du'a for them — I would love to see them. I would love to be with them.

The Second Question: Will My Eyes See What Your Eyes See?

The second question he asks: "Ya Rasulullah, are my eyes going to see the same thing your eyes see?" The Prophet ﷺ said: yes, you are going to see the same thing I see.

The Third Question: How Will I Get There?

He said, "Ya Rasulullah, but you are a Prophet of Allah — you're making so much effort, you're sacrificing, you tied stones to your stomach. How will I get the same Jannah? How will I get there?"

For brothers and sisters who are struggling with their deen — let me tell you something. There are seven doors to Jahannam and eight doors to Jannah, and I have my own reason why there are eight doors to Jannah. You know, in a house there's like five doors — front door, garage door, side door — and there's also one of those back sliding doors that sometimes gets left open, and you can go from there. Well, there's a back door to Jannah, and inshallah we are going to go from there. We're going to shortcut our way in. And when we get in there, we might pray less, we might make du'a less, we might sin more — but Allah has carved out a path for us as well, and inshallah we will get there even if it's from the back door.

And when I walk into Jannah, I'm going to see Umar ibn al-Khattab and he's going to say, "How'd you get here?" I'll say, "Hey, from the back door! What's the big deal? We got to the same place. You came from the front door, I came from the back door — same thing." So inshallah that's going to happen. Should I tell you how? Simple, very simple — just keep coming to these gatherings and make an effort. That's all.

The Reward of Effort

Let me tell you something. I was sitting in a masjid in I'tikaf this year. One of my friends — his name is Mushtaq — he was looking at this envelope and he was crying. This man is like 40 years old, he's an alpha male, literally works out, never emotional — you know, one of those guys who even has muscles on his neck. I asked him, "Mushtaq, why are you crying? Is everything okay?" And he gave me the envelope. He just handed it to me.

I took it and looked at it. It was an envelope that had some drawing on it because it was his birthday — his 7-year-old daughter had written a birthday card for her father. On the envelope she drew a house and a family. You open the envelope, it was a letter. Brothers and sisters, every single word of the letter was spelled wrong: "Happy" — H-A-P-I — "birthday" — B-A-R-D — every word was spelled wrong. But that's why it was so cute, because she made the effort to present it to her father. And that's why he was crying.

If she had gone to her mother and said, "Mom, could you please go on ChatGPT and put a happy birthday card for my dad" — do you think it would have affected him the same way? This affected him differently. That's why in deen, even if you make an effort and you fall short, you still get the reward. So never feel bad — there's a back door to Jannah.

I'll tell you one more thing. One time this Ramadan I came home and my wife was upstairs. It was Ramadan. I called her. She comes downstairs about 10 minutes later, and I said, "Where were you?" She said, "I was finishing my Qur'an. I just finished my Qur'an."

I'll give you a disclaimer — this is not ghibah. I have been teaching Qur'an all my life. I have never seen anyone who reads slower than her. She literally reads like: الم — very slow. It was the 14th or 15th night of Ramadan. How did she finish the entire Qur'an? It's unbelievable. So I said to her, "No way." She said, "Yeah, I just finished the Qur'an." After an awkward moment of silence, she said, "Yeah, this is the Qur'an I started three years ago."

Let me ask you something — who do you think is getting more reward, her or me? The Prophet ﷺ said:

A person who recites the Qur'an and struggles with it gets double the reward. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 4937; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 798)

A person who recites Qur'an and struggles with it — struggles, takes time, can't do it, tries to memorize, starts a schedule then it doesn't work, makes tawbah, starts again — the Prophet ﷺ said this person gets double the reward versus somebody who can just read it. So Islam and Shari'ah does not speak about perfection — it speaks about effort. And your shortcomings are cute; they are beloved in the eyes of Allah.

So this is the third question he asks the Prophet ﷺ: "Ya Rasulullah, how will I get to the same place as you? How will I get there?" The Prophet ﷺ said:

"Oh my friend, don't you know — a person who says: repeat after me —"

He said a person who says this one time gets 124,000 rewards. One time — سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ وَبِحَمْدِهِ — 124,000 rewards.

So the first question was: will I be with you in Jannah? Yes. Will my eyes see the same thing your eyes see? Yes. How will I get there? Through this one dhikr — Allah will give you that reward. Then he asks the third question: "Ya Rasulullah, if that's the case, then how will any of us be destroyed? How? If we're going to get rewarded 124,000 rewards for every time we say سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ وَبِحَمْدِهِ, then how can any of us be destroyed?"

The Prophet ﷺ said: on the Day of Judgement, a person will come in front of Allah and his deeds will be like a mountain — he will have no sins — this will be his good deeds. And then on top of these good deeds, Allah will place His ni'mahs: the ni'mah to see, the ni'mah to hear, the ni'mah to walk — and it will crush all the good deeds. The Prophet ﷺ said: the way you get to Jannah is through the mercy of Allah, not even through your own good deeds.

He Died Out of Yearning for Jannah

When this person heard these answers — I'm not done with the scene of Jannah, this is just the first verse — when he heard these answers, he literally could not tolerate it. His heart could not fathom the excitement. He passed away right away. He died on the spot. The Prophet ﷺ said to the Sahaba: "Your friend just died out of yearning for Jannah."

Habibi, I'm telling you something. There are people — Abdullah ibn Zayd, he is the one who saw the Adhan in his dream and told the Prophet ﷺ that we should give the Adhan to call people towards Salah — he used to come to see the Prophet ﷺ hundreds of times a day. The Prophet ﷺ asked him, "What's wrong with you? Why do you keep coming and going?" He said, "Ya Rasulullah, the moment your image leaves my eyes, I have to come and capture it again."

The Monday morning the Prophet ﷺ passed away — Monday morning after Fajr — this man saw the Prophet ﷺ right at that time. The Prophet ﷺ never came out to pray Salah; he just opened the curtain. Then this man's son walked in and said, "Dad, did you hear — the Prophet ﷺ just passed away." He raised his hands and said, "Oh Allah, make me blind so I can never see anything after the Prophet ﷺ — the last image I have in front of my eyes is the Prophet ﷺ." And he became blind on the spot. That's how much love they had. This person died out of shock toward Jannah.

The Garments of Jannah

So Allah is saying:

Then when we get to Jannah — inshallah we're all going to get there — before we get to Jannah, Allah will give us a garment. When we get out of our graves and then get to Jannah, Allah is speaking about a scene:

All of a sudden the angel is going to say, "You have a very important meeting." So what do you do, sisters? When you have a very important wedding to go to, you wear nice clothes. You have a very important interview, you put the best clothes on. So in Jannah, inshallah, we will start getting dressed. We are going to wear two layers of silk clothes. سُنْدُسٌ is the inner layer — thin silk that a person will wear. Then إِسْتَبْرَق is something he or she will wear on top, which is also silk — beautiful, better than anything in this world. You'll have an inner layer and an outer layer.

You know, when you're going to a very important gathering, you put your good watch on as well. We are going to be wearing bracelets — silver bracelets — and then we will end up in the most important meeting of our life: the meeting with Allah. So we're wearing all these beautiful garments and then we are going to go to Allah. And what happens when you go to someone's house? They give you something to drink right when you walk in:

We'll be presented with this pure, pure drink, and we are going to be drinking it, waiting for Allah to speak to us.

Allah Will Acknowledge You

Remember how I started this speech? Everyone in their nature wants to be acknowledged and appreciated and remembered. That's their nature. Allah — the first thing He is going to say to us:

"O Muslims, O brother, O sister — all of us sitting here today — O human beings, all the effort you made, I always used to acknowledge it, and today I remember you." مَشْكُورًا — مَشْكُورًا. This is the reward for the one who remembers Allah in this world.

So an anchored heart is the heart that has the remembrance of Allah. The greatest reward of remembering Allah in this world is that Allah will remember us in Jannah.

Don't you want that? Nobody else can acknowledge us the way that only Allah can. That's what the Prophet ﷺ said:

Gather despair from what is in the hands of people (do not expect anything from people). (Musnad Ahmad; al-Tabarani, al-Mu'jam al-Kabir)

Don't expect anything from anyone. You remember Allah, you serve Allah, you work for Allah — Allah will acknowledge you and Allah will remember you.

May Allah make us among those whom Allah acknowledges and Allah remembers. JazakAllah Khair.

وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ