Eid Reminder: The Two Moments of Happiness | Mufti Abdul Wahab Waheed

Eid Reminder: The Two Moments of Happiness

May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon the most honoured of the Prophets and Messengers, our Master Muhammad, the Prophet of the worlds, whose name is written in the Bible and the Torah. Allah, the Exalted, said in His Noble Book:

And that you may complete the preparation and that you may glorify Allah for what He has guided you, and that you may be grateful.

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1904; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1151)

Dear brothers, youngsters, sisters, families and friends, it is from the gracious blessings of Allah that He has allowed us to reach this beautiful day after spending 30 days in His blessed worship and His obedience.

The Two Moments of Happiness

The Prophet ﷺ on these blessed occasions would remind the companions about this blessed and beautiful hadith where he would say:

And for the fasting person that finishes their fast, there are two moments of happiness. There are two moments of happiness. Two times of rejoicing and celebrating.

The First Happiness: Breaking the Fast

One of those moments is عِنْدَ فِطْرِهِ — when they break their fast. Some scholars refer that to Eid, as in now we cannot fast on this day and after this day it becomes optional. So the first happiness is when we break our fast. When we rejoice on Eid. Because we celebrated and worshipped Allah for 30 days and now Allah wants us to celebrate that moment with our family members and our friends. This is a happiness. Allah is rewarding us for the worship that we committed to.

The Second Happiness: Meeting Our Lord

And the second moment of happiness is عِنْدَ لِقَاءِ رَبِّهِ — when we finally meet our Lord. For a fasting person, this is also an Eid. For a person that obeys Allah, the day that they leave this world is also a day of rejoicing. It is also a day of celebrating.

If our gracious Lord Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allows us to celebrate and rejoice 30 days of worship with the beautiful day of Eid like this — what do we think this generous Lord of ours has prepared for us when we leave this world?

This is an Eid where we celebrate mashallah with all of our families and friends and everyone sitting here. You go back home in your own communities, you visit your family members, your relatives, and you feel so happy and content. This is the moment of happiness. And indeed it is a moment that we should make sure that our children and family members enjoy.

But the Prophet ﷺ reminds us that this is just a sign of what is waiting for us when we finally leave this world — if we continue to obey Allah the same way throughout our entire life. The journey is not to celebrate today. The journey is to understand that today's celebration is a snippet of what is to come to us in the Akhirah. It is a snippet. Today we enjoy with family members that are alive, relatives that are alive, friends that are alive. But when we leave this world, Allah allows us to celebrate a day of Eid with the Prophet ﷺ.

Imagine enjoying sweets and food and drinking water from the hands of the Prophet ﷺ, from the Hawdh al-Kawthar. Imagine enjoying drinks and food directly from Allah ﷻ.

Allah will say: now you eat, you drink, you enjoy, you chill. Have a good time with your family members. The time of effort is finished. And now is the time of celebrating. A day of Eid for us. We will enjoy.

Allah Himself, directly, will give us water, will give us drinks, will give us a moment of celebration with Him.

The Ultimate Eid: Seeing Allah in Jannah

On the Day of Judgment, when Allah ﷻ blesses all of us believers with Jannah — say, inshallah — and we enter into our palaces and we are relaxing with our family members, Allah ﷻ will say to us: is there anything else that I can give you? Is there anything else that I can give you? And we will respond by saying:

O Allah! You have granted us the bliss of paradise. And You have protected us from the excruciating pain of the fire of Jahannam. You have reunited us with our family members. What else could there be? What else is left for You to give us? And Allah ﷻ will order وَيُكْشَفُ الْحِجَابُ — and the curtains will be lifted and they will be removed. And He Himself will appear in front of the inhabitants and residents of Jannah with His blessed presence, His face. And every single jannati will look up and say: Ya Allah! What a beautiful blessing this is. There is nothing that we have been given that can equate to the blessing of seeing Allah ﷻ.

We will be blessed on that day of Eid not to see only our relatives, but we will be blessed to see Allah ﷻ. And every other blessing will be forgotten when the blessing of Allah is exposed to us, when Allah is showing Himself to us.

It will be a day of Eid because the loved ones that are not with us today will also be rejoicing with us together. Ibn al-Qayyim says: لا تحزن — don't be sad and don't grieve, because indeed the loved ones that have left you are also enjoying the blessed day of Eid in the heavens with much better people than you and I. They are also enjoying this blessed day of Eid with people like the angels, with people like the Sahabah, with people like the Prophets.

فَرْحَةٌ عِنْدَ لِقَاءِ رَبِّهِ — the second happiness is the more important one. And that is to make Allah happy when we see Him and when we finally meet Allah ﷻ. And that Eid will be with our family members that have left us.

Imagine when we leave this world and it is a day of Eid and all of our family members are sitting together in the Akhirah and we are celebrating Eid and looking down upon our loved ones and saying: I'm alright over here. You guys celebrate your own Eid. You still have to go to work after. I'm just relaxing over here. I'm just chilling. This is what we call an Eid.

So it is a reminder for all of us that if this is what Allah has allowed us to celebrate after worshipping Him for 30 days, what do we think Allah — the generous Lord that we have — has stored for us when we celebrate and worship Him for our entire life? Allah has something in store for us:

Allah ﷻ has something in store for us that no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard about, no mind can ever fathom or imagine — the greatness of the blessings that are awaiting for us the moment that we leave this world.

The greatest blessing will be given when the angels say:

Peace be upon you, dear people. You have left this world but entered this beautiful paradise that has been waiting for you your entire life. This is the Eid that we truly want to celebrate.

Celebrating Eid in This World

But while we live in this world, we do not take these moments for granted. We do not take these moments with any less importance than how other people take their moments and how they encourage their family members to enjoy those moments. We dress in our blessed clothes. We bless our children with whatever is within our capacity. We take our families out to wherever we can. We make sure that these days are enjoyed.

It is not a sign of righteousness or piety to always be stiff and rough with our children and family members. It is a sign of righteousness to be soft when it is the right time to be soft. And these are moments to be soft. It is a sign of righteousness to make people smile. It is a sign of righteousness to make people happy. It is a sign of righteousness to celebrate these beautiful days — to celebrate them with your entire family.

If there are grandchildren sitting here, do not finish your day of Eid until you visit your grandparents. And if they are not here, call them wherever they are. And if there are children sitting here, the most important people that you have to spend your day of Eid with is not your friends that you spend every night doing things with. Today's day is dedicated to your parents, your wife, your children.

All of us are children of someone. We have parents. Make sure our parents receive some happiness from us. Because wallahi, we are not sure that we will be here next year together. We are not sure if our parents will be able to enjoy our smile again.

I have pictures of my brother that I was looking at this entire morning from last Eid — how we were celebrating together and enjoying together and rejoicing on that blessed day. And today, we will be celebrating alongside his resting place, where his address will never change. And I encourage everyone on these blessed days to also visit your loved ones that have left.

Everyone has loved ones that have left. If they are not living in America, then make sure to send some salawat and isal of thawab by reading Surah al-Fatihah for them, so they can also receive more reward.

Imagine the happiness that a child gets when you buy him a gift on Eid. Even adults get happy when they get gifts. And we are still living in this world. Can you fathom? Can you just imagine the level of joy and happiness our loved ones will receive when we send them gifts on the day of Eid? No gift is equal to the gift of Quran. No gift is equal to the gift of charity in their name. No gift is equal to the gift of du'a for them. No gift is equal to the gift of reward for them.

These temporary things will soon end, as this temporal world will also soon end. The only thing that will remain is فَرْحَةٌ عِنْدَ لِقَاءِ رَبِّهِ — the happiness that we will experience on the day of Eid when we meet Allah.

Concluding Reminders

So I end this short reminder with the following. Number one: remind ourselves that this is the day of Eid that we are told to enjoy. We are ordered to enjoy by the Prophet ﷺ — ordered to have a good time within permissible means. We do not break the commandments of Allah because of happiness. And we do not break the commandments of Allah because of sadness. Our level of happiness and sadness will not leave the dimensions and the parameters that have been set by our Lord.

This is the day of Eid. But there will also be a day of happiness and a day of Eid when we leave this world after worshipping Allah for our entire life. And that day will be more of a day of happiness if we continue worshipping Allah in this life. So we continue doing what we were doing in the month of Ramadan.

If we fail to do what we wanted to do, that same Allah that was there in Ramadan is still there. He has not left. He has not gone away. He is still around. We turn to Allah and we please Allah. We spend time with our elders. We spend time with our parents.

Remember the Orphans and the Widowed

If there are homes in our community that we know about where there are orphans — yateems — living in, go to them. Invite them. Be with them. Spend some time with them. If we know there are families and women that are widowed, send your women to their homes, or go with your women. Give them gifts. Invite them to your home. Do not only invite people that you enjoy being around. Invite people that perhaps will enjoy the companionship that you will provide for them as well.

The Prophet ﷺ and the Orphan on Eid

The Prophet ﷺ on the day of Eid saw a child all alone. And this is a narration that is mentioned in many books of tarikh. He left the masjid and he saw a child crying on the side of the road. And he went to this kid and said to him: why are you crying? And the child said:

Because I have nowhere to go on this blessed day. My parents have passed away. I have no parents. They became shuhadah. My mother left this world. I am alone.

The Prophet ﷺ took this child by his hand and took him to the house of his blessed daughter Fatimah. And he said to her:

O my dear daughter, make sure this child is also clothed in the same way that your children are clothed in. Make sure this child is also fed the same way Hasan and Husayn are fed. And he walked into the masjid with Hasan on one side, Husayn on the other side, and this child on his shoulders. And he said: today I have three grandchildren.

Everyone knew on the day of Eid: if you are an orphan, you turn to the house of the Prophet ﷺ and the Prophet will bring you in.

Closing Du'a

May Allah make this day a day of enjoyment for us, a day of rejoicing in what we have done. And we enjoy and celebrate because we have done something. What have we done? We are hoping that we have pleased Allah in these 30 days and sought His forgiveness. And we will continue doing that because we want the bigger Eid.

The bigger Eid is not Eid al-Fitr and you want Eid al-Adha. The bigger Eid is the Eid in which we meet Allah with our loved ones and the Prophets and the Sahabah.

I know perhaps this khutbah was more emotional than a normal Eid khutbah, but I hope everyone can understand the circumstances behind that. I encourage everyone to have a happy day. Encourage everyone to make sure that their children are also happy. Today is not the day to scream at anyone. Today is the day to show love.

Even the Prophet ﷺ on these days would race with children. There is a narration that on these days he would go into the streets and he would race with young kids. Can you imagine the greatest person the world has ever seen running alongside young kids? And we do not have the time in our day to sit with them. Giving them money is not enough. Show them love, be happy, and vice versa.

The children should understand — even though they are older and they realize they have friends — spend your day with your parents. Spend your day with people that you do not spend your day with throughout the entire year. Not with those same people that you spend your day with the entire year as it goes by.

May Allah make us amongst those people that are able to enjoy this day the way our Prophet has taught us. May we be able to enjoy this day with our family members, our friends, our children, our relatives, the orphans in our community, the women that are widowed, the husbands that have nowhere to go. May Allah make us amongst those that are inclusive in our community and not exclusive to the people that look like us, sound like us, earn like us — but rather open to everyone.

I hope inshallah this blessed day of Eid is better than any other Eid that we have experienced, because we know that this is a smaller Eid. The bigger Eid is yet to come.

May Allah bless all of you. Our community is blessed to have all of you, blessed to have all the teachers. May Allah bless you, continue to shower His mercy and His blessings upon all of your families, and allow this day to be a day of nothing but enjoyment. Allow this year that is to come upon us to be a year of happiness and peace, a removal of difficulties, a source of healing our hearts and our homes. May Allah accept from all of us.