The Two Causes of Decline | Mufti Abdul Rahman Waheed | Miftaah Circle

The Two Causes of Decline

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ، مُحَمَّدٌ ابْنُ صَالِحٍ عَلَى رَسُولِ الْكَرِيمِ، أَمَّا بَعْدُ

Allah, mighty and majestic, says in His noble Book. I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Shaytan.

Brothers and sisters, one of the most concerning things that are always on our minds is: are we going to be united with our loved ones in Jannah? One of the most therapeutic things to say to somebody who has lost a loved one — when my brother left this world, you tell the father, you tell the mother, you tell the brothers — inshallah you will see him again in Jannah. And that's the way of therapy. That there is this promise that inshallah we will be reunited in Jannah again.

And for that to happen, the only way that's going to happen is if Islam and Iman remain in our potency, in our generations, and we're always making an effort for our children — whether it's for their academics, whether it's for their deen, whether it's for a beautiful masjid like this one. We're always making an effort for our children to preserve their deen so that we can have this everlasting life in Jannah, because we're not going to have it in Dunya.

Now let me tell you something that is hard to believe, but it's true. These people that you see — the ones behind this genocide and the Zionist regime — if I tell you that these people, for the most part, are actually descendants of prophets. We can say this is Mufti Asim's son, this is Mufti Rabbani's son, recently we had one of our teacher's son come, Shaykh Sulayman ibn Uri — this is the Shaykh's son — and there's a different aura to that, and there's this respect you have for these children, that these are children of ulama. But on the other hand, you have the children of prophets — children of Ya'qub ﷺ, children of Ishaq ﷺ — and then you look at them now and we ask ourselves sometimes: if the prophet was alive today, would he be able to recognize us as Muslims? If their forefathers were alive today, do you think they'd be able to recognize their children? Do you think they'd be proud of their children?

So the question now is: what went wrong? How did these children that have the bloodline of such amazing people begin to do some of the most horrible things that this planet has ever seen? How? What happened?

What the Quran Says About Their Decline

Allah talks about this in the Qur'an. Allah speaks about it in Surah Maryam, after mentioning the most noble people who walked on the face of the earth — from Zakariyya ﷺ, Yahya, to Isa ﷺ, Maryam ﷺ, Ibrahim, Ishaq, Ya'qub, Ismail, Musa, Harun, Idris, and Nuh ﷺ. Twelve different individuals Allah mentions who are great prophets of Allah. Right after mentioning these great people, He says:

Allah says: let me tell you where they went wrong, so that you as the Muslim ummah don't fall into the same trap. So here is how they started slipping, so that you as the Muslim ummah don't do the same thing.

After these great prophets, a generation came — and the mufassireen say خَلْف refers to a period after 60 years. So imagine 60 years from today, in Troy, Rochester Hills, Warren, Miftah — 60 years later. Our children, our grandchildren — what will happen with them? What guarantee do we have that they will remain as Muslims? What are we doing in order to protect them?

So Allah is telling us this is how nobody just overnight becomes such a person. It didn't start from the Balfour Declaration. It started thousands of years ago. That people become so inhumane that they cannot differentiate between children and women. They feel good when they do these things. They feel happy and proud of these things. And we look at them and say, how can you live like this? Celebrating these things?

Shaytan is very slick. Shaytan is a genius. He's not going to overnight make you do something horrible. But there's a gradual process to get to that level. And you know what Shaytan loves doing? He loves the long game. He has all the time in the world.

One of my teachers used to say: if Muslims, du'at and ulama, can take this quality from Shaytan — which is to make an effort and wait it out for good — a lot of good can happen in the world. Shaytan, he plants the seed. He says, you know, one sister didn't say salam to another sister. Shaytan's like: why did she not say salam to you? That's a seed now. She never picked up my call — that's just a seed. And animosity might develop 20 years later. That's when Shaytan celebrates. He's willing to wait 20 years. He's willing to wait a whole generation.

Our teacher used to say: if we adopt this quality — this long game — when we do something good, it's okay if it takes some time, and then we'll see the fruits of it.

The First Cause: Wasting the Prayer

So the first thing Shaytan did with these people — the first thing he convinced them of — Allah does not say تَرَكُوا الصَّلَاةَ, that they left the prayer. Allah used the word أَضَاعُوا الصَّلَاةَ — they wasted their prayer.

The mufassireen say: what does wasting prayer mean? The first meaning is that they don't pray on time — meaning other things became more important than the obligation to Allah Himself. This is how it went wrong to the point where they are right now. There was a starting point. There was a gradual deviation, and it started with أَضَاعُوا الصَّلَاةَ.

What does it mean to not be conscious about the timing of prayer? Salat comes in at 1:30. "It's okay, we have till 7 to pray." Habibi, I'll tell you something. If parents do this — if as a father I am not particular about praying immediately when the time comes in — my children will wait till the end time to pray. It's just the way it works. If as parents our children are seeing us pray right before salah becomes qadha, that is the message being passed on.

The second meaning of أَضَاعُوا الصَّلَاةَ is that they don't pray properly. You have an important meeting, so you quickly rush through the prayer for that meeting. It should have been the other way around. The Prophet ﷺ rushed towards salah, not rushed out of salah. Something happened, and he would rush towards salah. So this ideology — this lifestyle of living by prayer — started leaving the community.

Let me ask you a question. Is it 20 rak'ahs or 8 rak'ahs in Ramadan? That's not the real question. The real question is: how many rak'ahs of nafl did you pray the entire year? Was it 8 or 20? For the entire year, count how many extra salah you prayed from one Ramadan to the other Ramadan. We should debate over that. That's the real question.

And Allah in Hadith al-Qudsi says:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 6502)

My servant continues to draw near to Me through voluntary worship until I love him. To become beloved to Allah, you have to pray the extra prayers. What is it going to take to pray two more rak'ahs of nafl — of Salatul Hajah, of Salatul Shukr — asking Allah, being grateful to Allah?

The third meaning of أَضَاعُوا الصَّلَاةَ — and this is very, very important — Imam Mujahid said: عَطَّلُوا الْمَسَاجِدَ — they abandoned their masjids.

Shaykh Shinawi was speaking to me earlier today, and he said that from a survey he conducted, 80% of the Muslim ummah in America does not come for Eid salah. 80% of the ummah that doesn't even pray Eid. Wallahi, I was in Hajj recently, and I spoke to people there and I was shocked. I would ask them, "What masjid do you go to for Jumu'ah?" And they said, "Shaykh, I don't pray Jumu'ah." It happened so many times.

Alhamdulillah, we have a masjid here. But this is a huge population. This is how the first generation went wrong — عَطَّلُوا الْمَسَاجِدَ — they left the masjids and started praying at home.

So أَضَاعُوا الصَّلَاةَ means these three things: not praying on time, not praying properly, and abandoning the masjid. This is the first thing this generation did that set them on the path to where they are today.

The Second Cause: Following Their Desires

The second thing Allah says — and I conclude with this:

And they started following their desires. What does that mean? It means two things.

The first thing it means, in very layman's language, is that they started looking to compromise in their religion. You compromise one inch today, you will compromise one mile tomorrow. There are certain things that are non-negotiable, and that is Islam. We don't have to use our collective intellectual brain power to figure out how little of the Sunnah we should follow, or how much compromise we should make. No — the Prophet ﷺ already did that for us. Allah already did that for us. These people started saying, "Oh, that's not important, this is not important, that's not important." Compromise, compromise, compromise. A few generations down, we don't even know what deen is. That's the first meaning.

We should never treat the Sunnah as optional. Sunnah means: what an honor it would be if I could follow this. Not "oh, it's just a sunnah." You don't compromise.

The second meaning of وَاتَّبَعُوا الشَّهَوَاتِ — it's all about me. Let me share something I witnessed in Hajj. There was an old man sitting in a wheelchair. There were people in front of him and behind him waiting in the bathroom line. Hajj is such a chaotic environment — you just want to get on the bus, get to your place, get your bed, get your food. It's about you.

That's why it makes it easier to understand:

On the Day of Judgment, how is that going to happen — that you would flee from your own brother? It's easier to understand when you see Hajj. I saw three people standing in front of this old man in a wheelchair. When the first person came out of the bathroom, the person behind the man in the wheelchair went around him. Then the next person went around him. Then the next person went around him. Muslims in Ihram.

And habibi, I'll tell you something. You know why people died in Hajj? Of course Allah accepted them. But they died because of ittiba' ul-shahwat — following desires, being all about yourself. This year at Jamarat, there were no arrangements to get back to Makkah. No buses, no taxis. People had to walk a mile, a mile and a half to get to a taxi stand. And then when they got there, a taxi that would normally cost 30 or 40 riyals was being charged at 3,000 riyals. Wallahi, one person in our group — a lady — was charged 3,200 riyals for a wheelchair ride on the sa'i. That's normally 10 riyals from downstairs. These are Muslims.

This is what اتَّبَعُوا الشَّهَوَاتِ means: all you care about is yourself. It's all about me. It's about my pocket. It's about my stomach. It's about my children. It's about my house. It's about my career. When you become people like that — then you become settlers in Palestine. Then you take over people's homes because it's about you, at the expense of everyone else.

This ummah was founded on you sacrificing yourself so that others can benefit — not you making people go through sacrifice and struggle so you can benefit. That's why the Prophet ﷺ was asked: "If I want to become the best of all people, what should I do?" He said:

(Al-Mu'jam al-Awsat of al-Tabarani, Hadith 5787; also reported in other collections)

The best of people is the one who is most beneficial to people. So this is how it went wrong — when it became all about me. How am I going to benefit from this? What do I get out of this? What's my stake in this?

The Selfless Character of the Prophet ﷺ

Wallahi, even Islamic organizations — when they're speaking about working together — sometimes the question becomes: what do I get out of it? Habibi, you get Jannah. What else do you need? You get the pleasure of Allah. How much would it take for you to push that old man's wheelchair? No one would have seen you — but Allah would have seen you.

This ummah is a selfless nation. I remember one of our elders coming back from Hajj in Pakistan. I heard him speak after Hajj and I was blown away by his statement. He said: "I went for Hajj, and by the time I got to Jeddah, I realized that I had not even made dua for myself." You know what that means? It doesn't mean they never made dua — it means they were so concerned about others that they forgot about themselves in the most important place on this earth, in the most important days on this earth. How do you get to that level?

The Prophet ﷺ was not a person who ate in his house while the sahaba were hungry outside. Rather, he was hungry inside while feeding people outside. The Prophet ﷺ was not someone sitting in his house while people were building his masjid. Rather, he was the one building the masjid with his own hands. The Prophet ﷺ was always looking for opportunities for other people to benefit from him. It was never about me. It was always about others.

Conclusion: Protecting This Generation

Brothers and sisters, this is where this progeny started going downhill — when they started wasting their prayer, and when they started following their desires. So if we're doing the same things, this ummah might look very different in the generations to come. Our own children might be different if we are teaching them correctly.

I remember when we were kids, my father hated this statement: "my room," "my toys," "this is mine." He would say: nothing belongs to you. Nothing belongs to anyone. It's Allah's, and everyone has a share in it. Now when we're raising a generation that's thinking about me and not thinking about others — well, it's not that difficult to then see people who are committing this genocide, because they're not thinking about anyone else. They're not thinking: if my child dies, what will happen in my house? They don't ask themselves that when someone else's child is dying.

And I'll conclude with this. Wallahi, the ummah was once so connected that you look at janazahs at the time of the sahaba — it was very common that you would walk into a cemetery when someone was being buried and you would not even know who to give condolences to. Because they shared the pain collectively, in the same manner. They wouldn't eat because they knew someone else was suffering. How can I eat? They wouldn't laugh because they knew someone else was crying. How can I laugh?

Brothers and sisters, this was the journey that led to them being the way they are today. We just have to understand the Qur'an — Allah has already outlined it for us — and avoid those pitfalls. And Allah is merciful. Those of us who understand the pitfalls and avoid them, Allah will grab our hands and make it easy for us.