Journey to Jannah: A Story of Unwavering Faith | Mufti Abdul Rahman Waheed

The Story of Asiya and the Lesson of Spiritual Vision

Brothers and elders and sisters in Islam, when Asiya (alayhas-salam) was being dragged out of the house — the palace that she meticulously built, designed, decorated. A house is very dear to the homemaker — the living room, the flowers, the plants, are very dear. We play hockey in my house and my wife has a plant, and every time the ball hits the plant, it's as if someone stole money from her. It's just a plant, but for her, it's very dear.

And so Asiya (alayhas-salam) is being dragged out of that palace — that same palace it took Musa (alayhis-salam) and Harun (alayhis-salam) how many years to finally get into to give da'wah? It took them two years. They kept coming, kept coming, kept coming. And finally, a comedian who used to make Firaun laugh told him, "Should I tell you the greatest joke of the day?" He said, "Yes, tell me." He said, "The greatest joke of the day is that there are two people at the door who are saying that they have a lord other than you." And that is how they came in — they are saying that they have a lord other than you.

Asiya (alayhas-salam) is being dragged out of this palace and she is now being taken to a mountaintop to be killed, martyred in the path of Allah. Firaun decides to make her a lesson for everybody else — because if this is what is going to happen to somebody in my house, then imagine what I am going to do to you. So first he puts her on a plank of wood and pegs her limbs to the plank of wood.

That is why, according to Imam Razi, regarding the verse:

This has many tafsirs, but one of the reasons why it is called Awtad — Firaun, the one of the peg — is because he was the first one to persecute and punish people by pegging their bodies onto wood. So he pegs her body on a plank of wood. Very, very painful.

A Du'a Made in the Middle of Pain

As she is going through this pain, she makes a du'a in the middle of the pain. This will give us perspective — on how the pain and suffering of the people in Gaza puts things in perspective. A person loses a job and loses sleep. A person gets into a small disagreement with their spouse and they become restless. The thought that there is a recession and there are job cuts — at GM, I'm from Michigan — it brings people into the masjid and makes them restless. They haven't even lost their job yet. And these are people who are burying their own children with their own hands. These are people who are seeing this all around them.

I remember when my brother — Rahim rahmatullahi alayh — my youngest brother. He was 22 years old. He passed away as a shaheed just teaching Qur'an in our school. He was leaving and someone came on the other side of the road and ran into him, and he passed away immediately, three years ago. I remember the first person who told my father that your son has passed away. His words were — and he was from Palestine, and that is why he could say something like that, because he is from Gaza — he says, "Dr. Khan, I'm not sure if I should give you condolences or congratulate you. لا أعزّيك، أهنّيك — Should I congratulate you or should I give you condolences? I'll just do both. You are the father of a shaheed." It changes everything, the way you look at things. Changes everything.

Spiritual Myopia

Today, that is what I want to talk to us all about. Myopia is a disease in which you can see something that is in front of you very clearly, but something at a far distance you cannot see. That is why you wear glasses, because you cannot see far away. There is also something called spiritual myopia. What you see in front of you, you can see — but something at a little distance, you become blinded, or it is hard to see.

The Akhira is not that far away. The reward is not that you are standing next to a grave. What you can see is the dirt. That is what you can see. But that is nearsightedness. Under the dirt is a garden of Jannah. And we believe that. Under that dirt, for a person who is a believer, is a garden of Jannah.

The Example of Abu Dharr al-Ghifari

Abu Dharr al-Ghifari — every child of his would pass away. Someone loses one son, my mother lost one son — she has four other sons — and they cannot live a normal life anymore. Doesn't matter how righteous you are, they always remember the son. Abu Dharr al-Ghifari lost one son, one daughter, one after the other. Someone comes to him and says, "How do you cope with it? How are you okay with this? How do you keep living?" He says:

He never suffered from myopia — spiritual myopia. He says, "All praises to Allah, the One who takes them from me in this temporary world, and preserves my children for me in the everlasting world."

The Wisdom of Imam Masroor

Imam Masroor rahmatullahi alayhi was, metaphorically, on a hospital bed in the last moments of his life. He was at home. And when someone is sick — even if it is stage four cancer — you always make the du'a: may Allah give you shifa, may Allah give you strength. And in our minds, "better" means come back home, live a normal life. So someone comes to Imam Masroor and says:

"May Allah make you better." He responds:

"Meeting Allah, whose mercy and forgiveness I am extremely confident of, is better than remaining here always looking over my shoulder — who is the next person who is going to backbite about me, who is the next person who is going to make me suffer? No — it is better that I meet Allah."

Like the elders, the salafus-saliheen, used to make du'a and speak to Allah. They had a friendly relationship with Allah, the way they spoke to Him:

"O Allah, if You present my sins to me, I will open the whole Qur'an and present Your forgiveness — look where You say You are going to forgive everyone. And if You say, 'I will forgive those who do tawbah,' I will present to You Your generosity — You are so generous, Allah. The generous one, when he has the power, he forgives. You are the most generous being, so why do You even need my tawbah? And O Allah, if You decide to punish me and throw me into the fire of Jahannam, I am going to tell everybody there — I love Allah."

I believe that is our sentiment too. I believe every single person sitting here — it doesn't matter if we obey Allah, miss salah, pray salah, read Qur'an — at the end of the day, at the core, at the core... I remember I was a child and Shaykh Musa, Shaykh Hussam's father, mentioned this. I was maybe nine or ten years old. He mentioned a statement of Shaykh Kishk. He said that he once said in his talk that it doesn't matter how bad the Muslims of Egypt are — even if they were sitting in a bar committing a sin, if someone walked in and said something about the Prophet of Allah, they would stop everything and go after him. "How dare you?" That is their level of iman. It needs to be stirred up a bit. But that core is still there.

Asiya's Du'a: The View from the Window

So here is Asiya (alayhas-salam), pegged to the plank of wood. At this point, she makes a du'a — because she never suffered from myopia. In front of her was a plank of wood. The pain she could very well feel, and she knew she was going to be thrown off the cliff of this mountain. She says:

And the word choice is beautiful. She could have just said رَبِّ ٱبْنِ لِى بَيْتًا فِى ٱلْجَنَّةِ — she could have said, "O Allah, just give me Jannah," or "give me a palace in Jannah." There is no taqdim and ta'khir that is coincidental in the Qur'an. If a word comes first and something comes second, it is not a coincidence — it is the words of Allah. There is a reason why it comes first, and a reason why it comes second.

رَبِّ ٱبْنِ لِى عِندَكَ بَيْتًا فِى ٱلْجَنَّةِ — "O Allah, build for me near You a house in Jannah." Because beyond this pain, she could see that there is a palace not just waiting for her somewhere in the middle of Jannah, but next to Allah.

And I will give you an example. You go for Umrah and everyone gets hotel cards. They give you the hotel cards. I took my family for the first time last year. And when you get the hotel cards, everyone goes into the same hotel to different rooms. One of the first things you do in the hotel is move the curtains to see the view. Some people get a Makkah view — they get mad at the travel agent. Some people get a partial Haram view. Some people get a full Haram view. Partial Kaaba view. Some people get the full Kaaba view. The expression on the face of the one who gets the full Kaaba view is priceless — a huge smile.

Just take that as an example. And that was the expression on the face of Asiya (alayhas-salam) — not because she saw her house, but because she saw the view from the window of her house, and that was next to Allah. And so she smiled.

Firaun says, "Look at this crazy woman —

"We are punishing her, but she is smiling." Like the children of Gaza. There is no loss. It is only a victory — a taste of victory now, and a victory forever in the Hereafter. For a person who believes in Allah, there is no such thing as loss if it is in the path of Allah. It is about whether we are fortunate enough to be among those people. Are we fortunate enough to make du'a for those people? Because this is the reality of life.

What Motivates a Person to Strive for Jannah?

Someone was asked — and this is from the Salafus-Saliheen:

"Tell me something that will motivate me to get to Jannah. I want to be motivated so I can get to Jannah." This is something that people of Gaza are thinking about all the time. It is not just about getting to Aqsa and liberating it — at the end of the day, it is much more than that. It is way beyond that.

The answer was three words. And that is all this person needed to hear. And I think that is all we need to hear:

You want to know about Jannah? The Prophet of Allah ﷺ is there. We were not chosen to even be a cloud over his head, dirt under his feet, the spider that protected him, the tree that shaded him, a Sahabi at his time. We were not fortunate enough — Allah chose for us to be born in this era. And if we want to see the Prophet ﷺ again, if we want to be with him, the only way to see him is to be with him in Jannah. Because that is where he is.

When my brother passed away, one youngster — he doesn't pray salah, he was in our school for two or three years, not a very righteous child at that time, he couldn't last there, you could tell he was a little slang, he's from the hood — I love him so much. He came as my brother's friend. He came to my brother's grave. For the first time, he didn't even know what du'a to make. He just looked at the grave and said: "Jannah just got personal."

Jannah just got personal. Because now, if you want to be with your friend again, you have to get there. Otherwise, you can never meet your friend again. It is personal. For the Sahaba, it was personal. That is why Umar ibn al-Khattab, whenever he was told, "Why don't you wear some better clothes? Why don't you eat a little better? Why don't you make your house nicer?" — all things which are permissible — he said, "But I saw the Prophet ﷺ a certain way, and I am afraid that if I do anything different, I will never see him again." Because he had heard that the Prophet ﷺ said:

"There are people who are seeing me and are with me today, but they will never see me in the Akhira." He was afraid he was one of them — even though the Prophet's wife ﷺ told him he was not. But still, that is your motivation.

Correcting Our Vision: The Real Deal

So brothers and sisters in Islam — taking out time for salah, don't look at it nearsighted. If I take out half an hour, one hour, the masjid is 15 minutes away. But if you look at it with the sight of iman, then:

You have deposited those 20 or 30 minutes in the bank of Allah, which will always increase and never decrease. If you look at a child passing away, the reminder is:

All along, the child belonged to Allah. He or she was just there with you temporarily. It always belonged to Allah.

What Truly Remains

When the Prophet ﷺ came back home and asked Aisha (radiyallahu anha), "How much of the meat of the animal remains?" she said:

"O Prophet of Allah, nothing remains except for the shoulder — everything else I gave out." The Prophet of Allah ﷺ then clarified the stance on this, because what you see is not actually the reality. He said:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2470)

"Everything you gave out actually remains, and what you have kept — that is what you have lost." Think about that.

The Upper Hand and the Lower Hand

So when someone is giving sadaqah or charity, it is not that you are doing anyone a favor. Do you know the sunnah? We know the hadith:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1429; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1033)

The upper hand is better than the lower hand. The upper hand is the giving hand, and the lower hand is the receiving hand. But the sunnah of giving is with the lower hand — so it automatically makes the one who is giving extend the lower hand, and the one who is taking receives with the upper hand. But the hadith says the one who gives has the upper hand. Do you know why? Because even in the gesture of the Prophet ﷺ, there was this hidden message — that the person taking is doing me a favor. I am not doing him a favor.

Allah blessed me with some ni'mah — resources, health, time, money, whatever it is — and Allah allowed me, of all the people in the world, to be the one through whom this reaches His creation. He didn't need me for this. And He gave me this opportunity to do sajdah in front of Him, to pray in front of Him, to call His name, to believe in Him, to give something. So the one receiving is the one who deserves the thank-you — just in the gesture of the way you give.

If we put this angle on and just clean the lens a little bit, then sacrificing, giving, being generous, spending, praying all become easier. Because we are human beings — we are always motivated by that which benefits us, always motivated by discounts, always motivated by the better deal. And brothers and sisters, the better deal is always the deal with Allah.

May Allah make us among those who act upon whatever was said and bring it to our lives.

وَاللهُ أَعْلَمُ، وَالحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ