The Source of Our Existence | Mufti Abdul Rahman Waheed

The Source of Our Existence

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. First of all, it's my first public speech since my brother's shahada in Michigan. I've traveled throughout the country, and the topic is to speak about the soul, so I'll try to get through this without breaking down too much, so let's give it a shot.

At the end of the day, I'll be honest with you, you realize that words don't matter much. Books, they're good, but it's where these words come from. The Prophet ﷺ had some very bitter things to say about great speakers. He said, on the Day of Judgment, "I saw in Jahannam people with angels cutting the lips of people, and these scissors were made from fire. And I asked, why are these people's lips getting cut with these scissors of fire? And I was told, these people are khutaba ummatik — these are the eloquent speakers of your ummah. They would speak, but they would not act upon what they say." So Allah save us from that.

The Prophet ﷺ was a person who would speak, but his words came straight from his heart. And that's why words that come from the heart rest in the heart. And the only knowledge that benefits is the one that rests in the heart, not in the mind, not just what comes to the ear.

Remember Where You Came From

If anyone's gone for Hajj before, when you go to Mina, there are thousands of tents. And in Mina, they usually give you a little pass or a card or badge, you put it on your neck, and you're not required to memorize the number of all the tents — what tent this is, what tent that is — but you're required to memorize the number of your tent. Not the thousands of tents, just the tent that you're staying in and the group that you're a part of. Just know where that is.

Similarly, if you went for Umrah, you're not required to know where all the hotels are, but just know where your hotel is. Because if a person gets lost in Mina, so long as you know where your original place is, even if you get lost, you're okay.

And that's true with life. As long as we know where we came from, even if we make mistakes, we commit sins, we do wrong things, as long as we know where to go back to. And where did we come from? We came from Allah. And how did we come? We came from the hukm and the command of Allah.

The greatest fool is the one who forgets where they came from and where they're going.
(Referenced by the speaker as a saying of the Prophet ﷺ)

The Story of Sultan Mahmood and Ayaz

Have you ever heard the story of Mahmood and Ayaz? Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi — may Allah have mercy on him — had this servant, or you can say treasurer, whose name was Ayaz. This Ayaz was not from the royal family, so he was an outsider. The people from the royal family, the ones who were close to the king, they tried their best to climb the corporate ladder, to get close to the king. And this man comes from nowhere — he's just a regular guy — and now he gets very close to the king. So everyone became envious and jealous of him.

They started to complain and say, "Oh king, this treasurer of yours, Ayaz, I'm sure he steals — because every single day he locks himself in his room. He goes into his room, locks the door, and in the room he has a safe which no one can access, and he goes into this room and looks in the safe twice a day." So that was suspicious — why would he go into this room, lock himself in, and go to this safe twice a day?

One time, some fruits were presented and everyone was sitting around the king. The fruits were given to everybody, everyone took a bite and spat it out — no one could eat the fruit, it was so bitter. And Ayaz — he took a bite and kept on eating until he finished the fruit. Everybody around thought that was really strange, how can this man eat such a bitter fruit?

So the king asked Ayaz, "Was the fruit not bitter?" He said, "It was extremely bitter." He said, "Then why didn't you react and spit it out like everybody else?" He says, "Oh king, you have always fed me sweet fruits. One day you give me a bitter fruit — why would I show lack of gratitude? You have always given me sweet fruits."

Our elders give these examples so we can take example from Allah. Allah gave us so much. We're five brothers, we lived so long together, we always had a great time, never fought — well, He took one of us. That's what He wanted. Yeah, we cry, we're in pain, but at the end of the day, no one belongs to us, no one is our personal property. And if He — Allah, the one who showered us with so much good times, good moments, good memories — if one moment you had grief and agony, so what's the big deal? This does not allow you to be ungrateful to Allah. This does not allow you to turn away from Allah. Rather, it should push you to get closer to Allah, so you show Allah that I'm not the one who's going to spit the bitter fruit out — I'm the one who's going to eat that bitter fruit like Ayaz.

So Ayaz was then presented in front of everybody and the king asked him, "Do you have a safe in your room?" He said yes. "Has anyone ever seen this safe?" — and remember, this is a person who's always touching and accessing all the money. He said, "No, only me." "So no one has a key to it?" "Nobody." He said, "Alright, that's suspicious — you have access to all the money in the treasury and you have a safe in your room that no one can access. What's going on?"

He said, "If you really want to know, you can come see it." In this safe I have three things: one is my slippers, second is a pair of clothes, and the third is a topi — a cap. He said, "The day I came into this palace, I was wearing that — torn clothes, very simple slippers, a very simple cap on my head. And now I have become part of the royal family, next to you, treated with so much royalty, luxury, sleeping in beautiful places, eating delicate food — everything is amazing and good. So I go back twice a day, morning and evening, open this little safe I have, to remind myself: Oh Ayaz, this is who you truly were. This is your beginning. Don't forget that. Because if you forget that, you will become arrogant, you will feel entitled. Remind yourself. I remind myself every day by looking at my slippers — Oh Ayaz, this is who you were, be loyal to the king, he gave you everything. Oh Ayaz, these were your clothes, be loyal to the king, he gave you everything."

Today we need to remind ourselves about where we came from. Allah says:

How ungrateful is a human being — does he actually forget how his beginning was, how he was non-existent, there was nothing there, you were never there?

Your name was not even mentioned. And then Allah says in the Hadith Qudsi:

O son of Adam, you did not do justice with Me. I created you while you were nothing.
(Hadith Qudsi)

Imagine Allah saying that to us. I created you while you were nothing. I did all this for you. Then Allah says in the long Hadith Qudsi, He speaks about:

Then I made you a drop, then a clot, then I created the clot into a lump, then I created the lump into bones, then I clothed the bones with flesh, then I produced you as another creation — so can anyone other than Me accomplish this?
(Hadith Qudsi)

The stages of a child's formation — from just the dirt, to a drop, to the formation in the womb of the mother, and the skin, the bones, the flesh — Allah explains all this, and then says: I gave you the soul and I brought you to this world, and now you're this child, this baby. Can anyone in the world do this?

The Womb, This Life, and the Hereafter

Brothers and sisters, this is a very, very important aspect of our life. One of my friends — and it's important when you meet people who go through difficulties. We talk about meeting people who go through difficulties and it helps you, right? But we actually never meet them. We just see them online, a YouTube ad or something, but we never actually sit with them. If you sit with them, it makes your agony, your worries, your concerns feel light. It helped me a lot.

I met one of my friends after so long. He's a scholar in LA. When he was young, his father passed away. Two brothers. Then his mother got married again to a person from overseas. This man came after a few years of getting the paperwork — the mother was very wealthy — he takes all of her money and leaves. And she's still young, still in her 30s. Because of this trauma, she literally loses her senses. She cannot function on her own anymore. She loses mental stability. From that age, she had to be fed, had to be taken care of, because she just lost it.

A few years later, fast forward maybe 5 years, his older brother gets shot in an accidental shooting. He was just walking by on the street. Someone was going by and he got shot. He got murdered. He passed away. So now it's only him and his mother. He's taken care of his mother all his life — she could not do anything on her own. Then after so many years of taking care of her, she passes away. Then he finally gets married.

The day he got married, I was so excited — I went all over New York for his nikah. 8 years later, I see him when I went to LA. The first question I asked him: "How many kids do you have?" He said, "Mufti Saab, I don't have any kids. The first time my wife was expecting, she had a miscarriage right away. Second time, miscarriage again. Third time, miscarriage again. Fourth time, miscarriage again. She has a blood disorder. Every time the doctor says, don't try to have children, you can die. She doesn't listen. Now we can't have any more kids. We're in the process of adopting a child now."

Imagine — lost a mother, lost a father, lost a brother, and lost 4 potential children. And the man's heart is so tender, so soft.

If Allah decided that we were not going to be born, no one's going to give us life. And we were born. Allah says in the Hadith Qudsi:

And I looked upon you and you were a weak creation — you had no teeth to bite, no hands with strength to grasp, no feet with strength to walk, no jaws with power to chew.
(Hadith Qudsi)

You had nothing. Basically. You were completely dependent. You were nobody. Look at these children when they're born. I have in my own personal diary what a child teaches me. Every time I see a child, I write it down. They teach you so much. Just look at them. My brother's daughter, she's almost three and a half months now. Just pay attention — they're so dependent. So weak. Can't do anything on their own.

And Allah says, when you were first born, I saw that. So then what did I say?

I inspired the chest of your mother to flow with milk.
(Hadith Qudsi)

Because you couldn't eat anything else. And that milk was a means of sustenance for you. This is an entire process that nobody can fully understand, but it's happening from Allah. And after that, Allah says:

Then after your arms grew strong and your back became firm, you challenged Me with your sins. Is this the way someone should repay one who did favors upon you?
(Hadith Qudsi)

From that process, from the beginning, slowly, slowly you start walking, moving, grasping, driving, doing everything on your own. What did you do? You started challenging Allah with your sins. Allah is asking us.

We don't remember that early stage of our lives. But Allah always tells us, Allah reminds us:

Allah reminds us to keep circling back to that point in your life. Look at these children. Look at that woman who's pregnant. Look at that father who just had that baby. Look at that life, look at that moment. And from that, you can learn so much.

This World Is the Womb of the Hereafter

The formation, the time of formation of a child is in the womb of the mother. That's where the eyes come into place, the sight, the hearing ability — everything happens in the womb of the mother. And the slightest complication — for example, when my son was born, the doctor, right when my son Yusuf was born, said, "We need to take him right away to the room," because they suspected he was born with a dimple in his spine, which means he'd be paralyzed for the rest of his life. My father collapsed right there. But alhamdulillah he didn't have one. He was fine. Because there's no recovery from that point.

I have a friend whose son was born with his heart a little bit towards the right — just a little bit, out of place — and the inner lining of his stomach was the opposite direction. You can't do anything about it. The father said, "I've seen my son months after, and when I first saw him, they had a transparent thing between his chest because they kept it open after surgery, and I collapsed right away." This child — his father calls him a miracle baby — this child will never in his life be able to eat from his mouth. He has to eat from a tube for the rest of his life, because every time he eats, he throws up.

So, a child born with complications — the stage of formation and perfection is the womb of the mother. Now let me fast forward to the end of your life. The stage of formation for a human being is dunya. And if we don't perfect our heart, our actions, our life in this world, and we leave the womb of this dunya into the realm of akhira with any imperfections — just like that baby cannot be returned back to the womb of the mother — we will never be allowed to come back to perfect it. We will say, "Oh Allah, please let me go back."

"Maybe I can go back and correct something." No — you will never be allowed to come back. So just like the child who comes out of the womb with complications cannot be returned to the stage of formation, similarly, a human being who has any complications — whether it's iman or a'mal, whether it's their akhlaq — will only have the opportunity to fix themselves until they leave this world. If we leave this world with any imperfections, it will be a real big problem, because we're never going to be allowed to come back.

And even — forget coming back — we will ask:

"Oh Allah, just give me a few more minutes. A few more moments." This could not have been more true in the case of my brother who just left the madrasa and was a few seconds away from his mom's house. Not even half a mile away from my mother's house. And he could have said, "Oh Allah, just give me one minute more, so I could just meet my mom for the last time."

The biggest stress and agony is when you can't say goodbye properly. That's the most difficult thing. When you don't say goodbye, when you don't know, when you couldn't say. And I'm horrible at saying goodbye — all my life. For example, I'll be somewhere in the other part of the world like New Zealand, and I'm coming back to America. I won't say bye to the guy. "I'll be back in a few months, man. I'll see you in a few months." So when we're leaving, we never have a moment of real separation. I always make the mood seem as if we're going to see each other soon.

My brother went two years overseas to study. Every time I dropped him off at the airport, I'd say, "29 days, I'll be in Pakistan. I'll be there in March, don't worry about it." So I always set the mood like there's really no real farewell over here. And since I'm so bad at it, it was so difficult for me to actually say bye to somebody because I never did it before.

My brother could have asked, "Oh Allah, just give me a few more seconds so I could see my mom for one last time." He didn't. And believe it or not, that morning when he passed away, I never came to teach in the morning because I had things to do. I had stopped drinking Tim Hortons coffee — stopped completely. But that morning I was so tired, I dropped my son off at Munir at 11:30. I pulled up to the Tim Hortons next to Munir — I know which ones are better — that one wasn't good, plus my class was finished so I had till 12:30 to get to the school. So I said forget it, I went two miles out of my way.

I was about to pull up to the one on 12 and Shainer — it had a huge line. I said forget it, I'm not going to wait in line even if they give me free coffee. So I pass by Imperial Drive. When you come on 12 Mile from Shainer, you pass by Imperial, which is where Miftah and Madrasa is. I was going to pull up but it came to my mind: let me just go to the 12 Mile and Van Dyke Tim Hortons, the one I hadn't been to in over a year. I get coffee from there, I get out — by this time it's like 12:05, 12:10 — and then I pull up to the madrasa. We missed each other by this much. Literally, if I had taken that left and never went to 12 Mile Van Dyke, I would have seen him. He would have gotten out of his car, I would have hugged him, 100%. Because he never would leave without meeting me. Every single day he would come meet me before he would leave. And he would ask me, "Do you want coffee?" I said, "No, I stopped drinking coffee. I'm good." The last thing I told him to do was figure out how to make a bonfire pit at the school. The last person he called from his phone was the fireplace guy — that's the last person we saw on his phone.

So we missed each other by a few seconds. That's it. And he passed away right there, right away, on the same road I was coming back on. The officer said, "If it brings you any relief, he didn't have pain for too long — maybe maximum 6 seconds." When I heard that, I said, 6 seconds seems like a very short span, but it's a long time if you know you're dying. Think about it. 6 seconds — you can think of a lot of things when you know you're leaving: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. That's a long time when you know you're going and you can do nothing.

But if you leave and you have perfected your actions, there's not a greater gift that can be handed to you.

Death is a gift for the believer.
(Referenced by the speaker)

A sudden death is a means of comfort for a believer, and a means of extreme grief for a disbeliever — because he doesn't have a chance to do tawbah.
(Referenced by the speaker)

The Prophet ﷺ said there is not a place that gives more comfort to a believer than the grave itself, because that is where Allah then showers you — if you have perfected yourself and there are no complications in your iman and your taqwa. You're good. So I say to you: before I mention that one thing that children teach me, remember these three stages — the womb, the life, and the afterlife. We only have an opportunity to fix ourselves until we leave this world.

There's no shame in meeting Allah. This is great — we should yearn to meet Allah. It's like when someone gets married: the groom loves his family, loves his brothers, sisters, mother, father. The bride loves her parents. But sometimes the bride has to come — my mother came all the way from Pakistan, she left her entire family — because now there's someone else she loves, someone she loves even more. Her love is now directed to her husband, her own children. So she's ready to sacrifice the love of her family for that next stage of her life. No one really questions that. We love our family, but we also love Allah and Rasool ﷺ. So if we have to move from here to there, it's not a big deal. We love them, and our family knows that you love them. "Go ahead — they'll give you much more than I can give you."

The Greatest Lesson from a Child: Crying Before Allah

So remember these three stages: the womb, this life, and the afterlife. And the one thing the child teaches me — which I want to explain to all of you — is this:

When a child is in need of anything — whether the child wants to be fed, whether the child is feeling constipated, whether the child is feeling annoyed — any emotion the child is feeling, the first expression the child learns, before any language, before any Arabic, anything — the only thing a child knows how to do is: cry.

And that's the first thing physicians look for when the child is born, right? The baby's cry. And that's the first gift you get after pain — is crying, tears. And it is the most powerful thing. Because the child doesn't know how to speak any language. But wallahi, it's interesting — the mother can decipher between the cry of her child: "Oh, my baby is hungry." While everyone is sitting there, "Okay, maybe the baby is sick, the stomach is hurting." "How do you know?" He never said that. But just the way the baby cries, the mother — not the parent, not the father — the mother can decipher it, because the mother has such love for the child that the tears, the cry of the child, speak to the mother in a different way.

So our elders say: when the ummah, when generally we forgot how to cry — that's when the help of Allah stopped. It doesn't require much. Allah needs people who can cry in front of Him. That's it. In any moment of your life, if you have seen yourself — look in your own life — if you don't have the cry of that baby, then you don't have anything. Trust me. The most comforting, the most enjoyable moments of your life are when you wipe your tears after 15-20 minutes of just crying in front of Allah.

Today we talk to everybody. Our life is all over the place — all over social media, WhatsApp messages — but the conversations with Allah, with tears, are no longer there. And that's what a child teaches you. When that child cries, the entire house goes upside down — the grandmother, mother, aunt, everyone is serving that child. When a human being cries in front of Allah, Allah switches off everything in this universe for that person.

The Battle of Yarmouk: The Quality Khalid ibn Walid Sought

In the Battle of Yarmouk, Khalid ibn al-Walid took 60 people with him to face an opposition of 60,000. Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah was the ameer of this battle, and Khalid ibn al-Walid asked the ameer: "Let me decide who will come with me." Imagine — you're going to be 60 people shoulder to shoulder against such a massive opposition. He says, "Let me decide which people I want to ride and die with. Let me decide that." Abu Ubaidah had no problem with that. He said, "Okay, go ahead. But let me ask you a question — what qualities are you looking for in these people? What is that deciding factor? What do you want in those who have the honor to stand next to Khalid ibn al-Walid as the first battalion of Muslims against the Romans? The best sword fighters? The fastest horse riders? People of good lineages? The best accuracy in shooting arrows? What are you looking for?"

You know what he said? This line right here is a lesson for all of us:

I am searching for men such that if any one of them were to make an oath to Allah, Allah would fulfill it for them.

I'm searching for people who have cried so much in front of Allah that their cry is recognized by Allah. Allah recognizes the sound of their cry, the tears — so that if these people ask Allah for something, boom, Allah will give it right away. That's what I want. They've mastered the art of asking Allah, speaking to Allah, crying in front of Allah. They've mastered that.

Can we say that about ourselves? Wallahi, I have been teaching for so long and I'm still going to say I'm a rookie. But before my brother passed away, I was not even a beginner. And we don't know what we're missing out on. Trust me.

My brother saw me — completely out of it. I hadn't come on Miftah Live anymore, no videos, no teaching. I was out for a month and a half, two months. And I'm not a person who, when someone comes or we sit down, has any dull moment — we're always having a good time. When my brother saw me, he said, "Hey Mufti, you're being too selfish." And if someone wants to really hurt my feelings, they call me selfish. I don't like that, because I always aspire to be the most generous one in the room. So when someone says the opposite, it's a real problem. I said, "What are you talking about, being selfish?" He said, "Listen — the Prophet ﷺ went through way more than what you're going through. Every year of his life after he became a Prophet, there was someone close to him being buried. But yet, he was da'im al-tabassum, da'im al-bashashah — he was always smiling, always making sure those around him had a good time. Because he channeled that pain in his heart only for the nights, not for the people around him."

Every time the Sahaba would say, "Wallahi, every single time I saw the Prophet ﷺ, he smiled at me. Every single time I saw him, he smiled at me. And he used to make us laugh, he used to make us have a good time." And what was going through this man's heart? What was going through his heart — only Allah knows. But that pain was channeled at night, when Aisha said that after his session of tahajjud in front of Allah — after a long night — the aftermath of his crying was such as if a pot was boiling on the stove, huffing and puffing.

So we have to start somewhere. And that's what we learn from the baby. Forget the long logical questions, the mantiq, the different sciences and books and all that — just get this down. And the question is, how can I get this down? Ask Allah: "Oh Allah, let me enjoy shedding tears for You. Let me enjoy this." Ask Him for this. This is a ni'mah. Allah only gives to those whom He loves.

Every time I raise my hands now — and you guys are close to me, a lot of you, we know each other from the same city — these are some things I would never even say in a city outside of Michigan. If I raise my hands and I see that I'm not at that state, I put my hands down and start again. And it's not about asking Allah for something — it's just having a conversation. We have so many things going on in our life. And if we learn this from the child, from that first stage of the child's life — this child just knows how to cry — if we can master the art of crying, we have mastered the art of taking from Allah. There's nothing a person can do that's greater than that.

The Sahaba — all of them — had this treasure. And today that treasure is missing. Sheikh Ilyas — when he was asked about the effort that he started, the effort of da'wah and madrasas — "What's the purpose of this effort?" You know what he said? He said: "Imagine a lady who lost her husband, has no family, is in a foreign land, and all of her hopes and expectations rest with one child that she is raising. She has no money, nothing. She's raising this child to be her support. And all of a sudden, the child passes away." The cry that would be in the heart of this mother — that is the cry that needs to be in the heart of every person from the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ.

Yes, you can have moments of laughter and joy — the Sahaba used to laugh and joke throughout the day — but they learned from that baby that the only way to take from Allah is to cry in front of Him.

Closing: The Gifts That Come From Pain

So I say: the first stage of our life, when we came from the womb of the mother, we were completely dependent. And that dependent child had only one characteristic — crying. And that dependent child was able to make the entire house move for him. We are still dependent in the eyes of Allah. We are not independent. Does anyone of us think we're independent? We cannot do anything on our own.

My brother — 99% sure he passed away due to an aneurysm. Just a vein in his head burst. Not the accident. One million times you go through that same accident, that crash at that low speed — 25 miles an hour — you will not die. He already passed away before the accident. Just a normal 22-year-old kid, perfectly fine, and a vein in the brain just burst. No one can do anything about that. Two months before, he had a headache, he already had scans, everything was perfect. We are not independent. Every vessel of our body is controlled by Allah.

And since we're still dependent, we better have the cry of that child. Otherwise we're in for a long, long run and it will not be easy. We will be pushed from pole to pole if we don't know how to do this.

I leave you with these words: may Allah make us among those who truly know how to cry in front of Him. We don't even have to raise our hands. We don't have to cry in front of each other — just in front of Allah. Remember that first stage of the baby: when the baby comes out of the womb, so dependent, and all the baby does is cry. Every time you see the cry of a child, ask Allah: "Like this baby is crying, let me have the same tears. Let me have the same cry."

And once you do that, the Salaf al-Salihin would say: "Wallahi, if the kings of the world knew the enjoyment that we're feeling in our sajdah while we're crying, they would give up their entire kingdom for this." It's truly enjoyable. If you felt the enjoyment and pleasure of listening to music, watching movies, watching your best dramas — you have not felt anything yet until you feel the pleasure of this.

And that's why I always make du'a: "Oh Allah, you can remove my pain, but don't remove the gifts." Because there are certain gifts that come from pain, and without that it's hard to attain those gifts. They're ni'mahs, and they're on the other side of the door of grief and pain and loss. So okay, remove the pain so I can live a normal life — but please, Oh Allah, don't remove those gifts. Many times those gifts go away as well, and that's a sad stage if that happens to any of us.

So I ask all of you to make du'a for me that the gifts that came to me and my family after we lost a brother — those gifts stay with us, so we can benefit ourselves and be a source of benefit for others. And I'll make du'a for all of you.

You young people — we have such a good thing going on over here in IGD, in Michigan. We have something. I've traveled all across the country. What we have going on over here is really dynamic. It's really Allah's help and mercy descending upon this community. InshAllah you'll be part of those people whom Allah will use for the spreading of this deen. May Allah make you among those who can truly act upon whatever was said and bring it to our lives, and make you keep coming to these sessions inshAllah.