The Purpose of Our Blessings | Mufti Abdul Wahab Waheed

The Purpose of Our Blessings

Every single blessing that Allah has endowed us with, it serves a purpose. And that purpose is not subjective. Normally the benefit or the purpose of a blessing is quite objective.

We have eyes, it serves a purpose. Everyone knows the purpose that it serves. We have ears, it serves a purpose. And everyone realizes the purpose that it serves. We have family, and family serves a purpose. The purpose of family is to see love, it's to feel compassion, it's to feel a sense of ease and sakina and sukoon.

We have jobs and we have careers. And all of these are blessings. Because if we didn't have it, our life would be a little harder.

Ibn al-Qayyim was a great scholar, and this is also mentioned by al-Ghazali. He says, the sign that something is a blessing is that if it wasn't there, our life would be a little harder. So these are all blessings. And all of these blessings serve a very unique purpose. And that purpose is something that we all require and need. And the moment the blessing does not serve that purpose, we try to substitute it with something else.

So if our job serves us a purpose, and that purpose is that it feeds our family, and it fulfills our passion of work, and it gives us a sense of fulfillment and belonging — if that job or that career does not serve that purpose, we will go into a different career. Because it doesn't serve the purpose anymore. If the car's purpose is to take us from place A to place B, and now it doesn't serve that purpose, we gotta buy a new car.

So every blessing has an objective purpose that it serves. And we all require it, we need it, and we use it.

The Greatest Blessing: Iman and the Ummah

The greatest blessing that Allah has blessed us with is the blessing of Iman. The blessing of being able to say that we are from the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ. We are from amongst those people who on the Day of Judgment can say that we are also your Ummati.

That's why Allama Iqbal, he used to have this beautiful poem in which he would say:

And this connects to the verse of the Quran:

O mankind, you are those in need of Allah, while Allah is the Free of need, the Praiseworthy. Allah, you are very rich, you have everything and we have nothing. You control everything and we control nothing. You have the world in your grasp. If you wish to give us, you can give us. If you wish to take from us, you can take from us. And if you take from us, we can't question your decision. And if you give us, we thank you.

Ya Allah, you are very rich and we are very, very faqeer. On the Day of Judgment, Ya Allah, do us a favor. Because of your richness and wealth — it's like a person, for example, takes a loan. A wealthy person has a lot of money and he gives someone a loan of $500 or $1000. Generally, if the person doesn't give it back over some time, it won't really affect that wealthy person. Because Allah has given that person so much.

Ya Allah, you have so much. So on the Day of Judgment, when I come for my hisab, and I come in front of you, do me a favor. Don't open up my Book of Deeds. Because if you were to open my Book of Deeds, you will not be happy. We lived a life of sins. A life of not being grateful to you. A life in which other things took priority and preference. And that's the way that we lived our life, Ya Allah. So please, don't open up my Book of Deeds.

But Ya Allah, if you do choose to open up my Book of Deeds, and you choose to nitpick the things that I did — what I saw and what I heard, and how I lived my life, and how I chose to use the blessings and talents that you gave me — if you truly want to open up my Book of Deeds and expose me:

Do me a favor — don't expose me to the Prophet ﷺ. Don't let the Prophet know about it. Because I want him to be happy with me. I want him to be at ease with me. I don't want him to think of me as a person who made you unhappy. I want to be able to drink from the Hawd-e-Kawthar, in which he serves his Ummah with water. Don't expose me in front of him. And allow me to enjoy that sacred bond with our Habib, that he doesn't know about what I did.

Who Are the Prophet's ﷺ Brothers and Sisters?

So the idea and the blessing of being in the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ is one of the greatest blessings. When the Prophet ﷺ one day was sitting with his companions, he said:

(Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 228)

He says, "I wish that I could meet my brothers and sisters." And the Sahabas are sitting around him. And this is just for the sake of context — it's one of the last narrations that were narrated from the Prophet ﷺ. He left this world on the 12th of Rabi' al-Awwal. This was around the 8th of Rabi' al-Awwal. And this was the last time he spoke to the Sahabas.

Imagine — this is the last time he speaks to them. And he says, "I wish I could meet my brothers and sisters." The Sahabas said, that's pretty surprising. They said:

"Are we not your brothers?" We're right in front of you. We gave our life for you. In front of you, you have Abu Bakr, who literally spent every diamond and nickel that he had. In front of him, you have Umar. In front of him, you have Aisha and his wives and his daughters. You have all these people in front of him.

And he said, "No, you are not my brothers. And you are not my sisters. You are my companions." So, "Ya Rasulullah, who are your brothers and sisters then? Who has the honor of being given the affiliation of being the Prophet's brothers and sisters?"

The Blessing of Affiliation

I remember my father when growing up. He was affiliated to a hospital in Michigan — a DMC hospital. My parents were in Pakistan. He studied in KE. He came to America. We have five brothers, Alhamdulillah. And they chose to put us on this path of learning knowledge. But nonetheless, I remember he would always tell us that people think that I am someone that should be respected because of my badge, because of my affiliation with a hospital.

And he would remind us that our affiliations in this world — if I work for Tesla, work for Google, work for whichever place I work for, or I study in a prestigious university — that affiliation gives me a lot of prestige. It gives me a badge. It gives me what we call a swagger. But the greatest affiliation that I have is that I am from the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ. That is the affiliation that will save us on the Day of Judgment. That is an affiliation that will make Allah happy with us.

So he says, "Who are my brothers and sisters? People that came much, much later." And how blessed are we? As I was sitting here, I was reflecting. I said, how blessed are we that Allah has given us dunya and akhirah? In the morning, I had some friends that came with me from Michigan. This is their first time in California. So I said, you know what, go jet skiing. Water is my weakness — boating and jet skiing is a weakness. So we went in the morning. And everyone else that's there is also enjoying dunya. But we're also enjoying dunya. But the beauty of it is that we also have akhirah. They don't have akhirah. Allah has given us iman. He has given us the ability to enjoy dunya and also enjoy akhirah.

He says, "The believers, my brothers and sisters, are those people that come much later:"

(Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 228)

"They believe in me, though they've never seen me. They've never watched me. They've never seen me embody miracles. They've never seen me recite Quran. But they believe in me."

Love for the Prophet ﷺ

Every single person, regardless of how religious or non-religious we think we are, every single person has this deep innate love for the Prophet ﷺ. And it's just something that burns inside of us. In the moment, for those of us that have gone to Medina Munawwara — and insha'Allah we can go back again and again — the moment you see the green dome, that love, it just reignites. Like, wow, I'm back in Medina.

There's a beautiful Urdu poem — it's actually become a naat, which is recited by Qari Wahid Zafar, you can watch it online. It was written by Professor Iqbal — not Allama Iqbal. Professor Iqbal was a blind professor. He couldn't see. And he wrote this poem:

For those who don't understand Urdu, he says: "The moment that I see the green dome, the purpose of my life will be redetermined. It will be realigned." And then at that point, "Sar jhukane ki fursat milegi kise" — who will have the time in the thought process to put their head down and cry? As you're looking, tears will stream down your face because you realize that laying over here is the man that put his life on the line for us — not knowing who we are, when we will come, what our names will be, which year we will live in — but he had such deep love for us.

The Prophet's ﷺ Concern for His Ummah at Night

Such deep love that one day, in the middle of the night, the Prophet ﷺ wakes up. Aisha says that the Prophet ﷺ was laying next to her and as he was laying next to her, he gets up and he says, "O my wife, do you allow me to go pray tahajjud?" This is also something that the Prophet ﷺ would do — he wouldn't just get up and leave. He would ask. She said, "Yeah, of course, you can go ahead."

She says in the narration that there was nothing more beloved to her at that moment than being close to the Prophet ﷺ. And for us that have gone to Medina, one of the hardest things is to leave Medina because you are close to the Prophet ﷺ — you have a sense of attachment, a sense of physical connection. She said, "Go ahead, Ya Rasulullah."

And he goes and he starts praying and he continues to pray all night. And he falls into sajdah and he starts to cry. And after some time, after he finishes this entire sunnah of his, she says, "Ya Rasulullah, what were you asking for this entire time?"

He said, "I realized that my Ummah will be the largest Ummah, and they will live the longest — in the sense that we will have the longest duration, not age-wise. And I thought to myself: what if some of them don't go to Jannah? What if some of them are not blessed with Paradise? And that bothered me and I started to cry."

"And Allah sent down Jibreel, and until Jibreel came down, I continued to weep in front of Allah. And Jibreel came down and said: 'Ya Rasulullah, Allah has given you this sense of bara'a — this sense of a clear path — that anyone that recites the kalimah of لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ, Allah will forgive them.' You have that stamp and seal of approval from Allah."

The Prophet's ﷺ Du'a for His Ummah After Every Salah

One day the Prophet ﷺ was sitting with Aisha and as he was sitting with her, he made a du'a for her. He made a du'a for his wife — which is something that we don't know how to do, right? Making du'a for our spouses. So he's sitting with Aisha and he makes this du'a for her:

"Oh Allah, forgive the sins of Aisha — the ones she did in the past, the ones that she will do in the future, the ones she did openly, the ones she did in secret. Forgive all of her sins."

And Aisha was laying down and she sat up and her face was beaming with happiness. She was so happy. So the Prophet ﷺ said to her, "Did my du'a make you happy, O Aisha?" She said, "Ya Rasulullah, why would I not become happy from this du'a? You made such a beautiful du'a for me — 'O Allah, forgive my sins.' That's such a beautiful du'a. It made me so happy."

The Prophet ﷺ said, "O Aisha, can I tell you something?" She said, "Yes, please do." He said, "I make this exact same du'a for my Ummah after every Salah. I make this exact same du'a for my Ummah after every Salah. Though I don't know them, I have not built a relationship with them, I make this du'a for them."

The Honor of Being the Last Ummah

So we are blessed to be in this Ummah. In an Ummah in which:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 896; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 855)

We are the last Ummah to come, but we will be the first to enjoy the blessings of Jannah. So this is a blessing.