20180209 - Friday Khutbah - Mufti Azeemuddin

The Gift of Reflection and the Danger of Spiritual Blindness

They have hearts that others don't have. They have eyes that maybe many of the creations of Allah don't have such eyes. Yet they still remain blind. They have such beautiful ears that many of the creations of Allah don't have. However, they are not able to hear.

Allah says:

Indeed, it is not the eyes that go blind but rather it is the hearts that go blind because of which people lead a misled life.

So we understand that the human being when he chooses and she chooses to leave behind the honor that Allah has blessed them with and the abilities that Allah has blessed them with, then there is no limit to how low a person can fall.

The Importance of Modesty and Shame

The Prophet ﷺ mentioned:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 3484)

That when you lose the gift of modesty and bashfulness and حياء, then do as you wish. There will be no limit to how low a human can fall. When the concept of modesty and bashfulness is stripped away from a person and he or she has willingly chosen to lead a life that is far away from a life of bashfulness and modesty - not only from Allah but from the angels, from parents, teachers and the general creation - a sense of bashfulness, a sense of shame. When a person chooses to take that out of their lifestyle, then definitely they end up committing things that even the animal would never do.

The Blessing of Reflection and Intelligence

So this human, what blessing did Allah give this individual by the virtue of which they can reach such high levels? And that blessing is تَفَكُّر وَتَدَبُّر. It is the ability to use the intelligence in a positive manner.

Allah throughout the Quran when He speaks about how the verses of the Quran and the signs that surround us are amazing ways that will guide a person to paradise, but He always qualifies this and He says:

Allah says that indeed there are signs in everything - whether it's the creation of the heavens and the earth, whether it's اخْتِلَافُ أَلْسِنَتِكُمْ وَأَلْوَانِكُمْ - the varied languages and the colors that exist within the human race, or whether it is about the changing of the seasons, or whether it is the rain, the clouds, the cycle of water that exists within the atmosphere. Allah says there are signs and signs and signs, but He says it's for people who ponder, it's for people who think, it's for people who reflect.

So we realize that the human has been blessed with this gift of reflection. The inner mind that works - that is what's so powerful and that is what allows us to reach heights that others are not able to reach.

Learning from Others' Mistakes

That's why the Prophet ﷺ said:

The lucky individual, the lucky one is the one who takes heed and a lesson from the mistakes of others.

And Allah asks us that when you pass by the nations of the past and you look at the ruins of the previous nations, I don't want you to simply pass by at the relics of the previous nations and marvel at what they did or how they were destroyed, but instead, take a lesson.

Allah says, how many nations were there previously. He addresses the people of Mecca and us as well - that they had beautiful massive palaces, fortified palaces, and they had beautiful gardens. But today Allah says خَاوِيَةٌ عَلَىٰ عُرُوشِهَا - you simply see that the roofs have fallen in and the walls have collapsed over the roofs. You see بِئْرٍ مُّعَطَّلَةٍ - you see the source of all life which is water, which was found in the wells, you see those wells completely abandoned and dried up. When the source of life is abandoned and dried up, then you can imagine that there's no population and civilization that exists there.

Allah's Mercy and Ultimate Justice

How many nations were such that I gave them respite, I gave them a chance to reflect, I gave them a chance to obey the call of their messengers, but they refused to do so. And then eventually when the time came and the time was up, أَخَذْتُهَا - I grabbed them, I grasped them. وَإِلَيَّ الْمَصِيرُ - and to me is the ultimate return.

As the Messenger of Allah ﷺ says:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 4686)

Indeed Allah gives chances to the oppressor. My friends, this is very true. Like how many of us have sped once in our life and got caught? Every time you speed you get caught? It never happens. You get caught after the 10th time and the 15th time and what not. Allah is even more merciful. He will never expose us in front of the community, He will never expose us in front of our families on the first try.

When do people get exposed? When does their sins come out? When does their identity become really known? After leading a life of sin, leading a dual life for decades, for years, for months, for days, for weeks - do those things come to light?

The Prophet ﷺ says Allah gives respite to the oppressor. He allows him to turn to Him. I let this day go by, another night go by. However when a person doesn't take heed from Allah's mercy and Allah is letting him go, حَتَّى إِذَا أَخَذَهُ - when He chooses to grab him, لَمْ يُفْلِتْهُ - then He won't let him go after that.

Once we come inside the noose of Allah that He throws out at the people, then there is no chance of wiggling ourselves out of that. May Allah protect us all. Say Ameen.

Using Our Intelligence to Learn

Respected friends, this تَدَبُّر، تَفَكُّر، عَقل - using our intelligence is what allows us to learn from the mistakes of the past, the present, learn from the verses of the Quran, learn from the signs of Allah that surround us in the universe, and turn ourselves towards Allah, make a commitment to lead a life of righteousness.

What is the difference between a human and any other creation of Allah who sees that people are being punished for their sins, difficulties are coming upon the ummah, and he looks and reads the newspaper, reads on his phone, and then goes back to his own life or her own life missing their prayer, not even to say let me at least turn to Allah and pray for myself and pray for them?

The Parable of the Animals

I remember going as a child with my father to a slaughterhouse on Eid al-Adha. And I remember that scene till now. When the slaughter man would grab a sheep or a goat from the back of the slaughterhouse and bring him up front, and the scene would be such that when he would pick up the animal, there was such fear within the animals that they would start defecating and urinating because they knew something was going on, because they could hear the sound on the other side of the wall and they could smell possibly the blood even though it was in a different room. And they would bring him - of course we would see what would happen.

And then when I go look back again, five minutes later - everyone goes back to grazing. Two minutes later - five minutes is too much - two minutes later all the sheep and the goats start grazing. And then the butcher comes and takes another one and there's this fear there, defecating and urinating - that's how afraid they are. And after two minutes they forget what happened and they go back to munching, chewing away.

There will be a day when you will regret what you didn't do. Allah says there will be a day when you will regret - a day will definitely come when the disbelievers will wish that they had accepted the message of the Prophets.

Allah says: O Prophet of Allah, ذَرْهُمْ - leave them. You've done your job. Let them - what did they do good? يَأْكُلُوا - let them eat. وَيَتَمَتَّعُوا - let them enjoy life. وَيُلْهِهِمُ الْأَمَلُ - and let their long drawn out plans of the future put them into deception, let it deceive them about the imminent hereafter. فَسَوْفَ يَعْلَمُونَ - soon they shall come to realize.

When the dust shall settle, very soon you shall come to realize whether you were riding a horse or a donkey.

Allah says to the disbelievers, and for that matter for anyone who leads their path: do what you want to do. What do you do best? You eat, you enjoy life, and you plan for the future. This may not be specific to the disbelievers - anyone who walks on those footsteps.

A Call to Reflection

Allah wants us to reflect. Let us not be like the sheep and goats and those lambs. When we see things happening around us, let us take heed. Let us take a lesson from calamities that have befallen the previous nations and calamities that befall the nations of today, whether they be Muslim or non-Muslim, whether it be a death in the family, whether it be a sudden sickness, an occurrence of a cancer to a 15-year-old, a 20-year-old. How many incidents of cancer within our communities now?

Reflection on Life and Death

SubhanAllah, just last week, just at the time of Jumu'ah at 12:30, a 16-year-old girl in our community passed away from bone cancer. May Allah grant her Jannah al-Firdaws and patience to her family. SubhanAllah, there are so many instances within this community as well, I'm sure. These are lessons for us to take heed from, my brothers and sisters.

That is the number one reason, or rather one of the greatest reasons I would say, that we are allowed to reach the levels beyond angels by using our aql, fikr, and tadabbur properly.

The Power of Internal Thoughts

Let us take us to another point. This internal tafakkur and pondering is pretty much our internal speech, our internal talking. How we all watch, or we should be watching, how we speak. We don't hopefully swear, lie, insult someone, backbite someone, carry tales and say whatever we feel like.

And as the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 6475; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 47)

"Whoever believes in Allah and in the last day should say something good, and if you got nothing good to say, then remain silent. Don't give your trash to the community." The Prophet ﷺ says say something good or remain silent.

Applying the Hadith to Our Internal Speech

But what is a very interesting point - although you have heard this hadith before and you've thought about this before - what you and I may not have considered is our internal thoughts are our internal speech. It's your كلام نفسي. It's your one-on-one talking amongst yourself, your subconscious speech. And this hadith we should apply it to there as well.

That if there are positive thoughts that you have, yalla, good, bring it on! But if there are bad thoughts, then don't even think about it. Don't even - forget about uttering - don't even allow those thoughts, that negativity, to overtake your mind.

Because our actions and our interactions and our attitudes are to a great extent judged by and motivated by our internal thoughts. If our internal thoughts are positive and are good, then insha'Allah ta'ala our approach to people will be nice. We'll always be looking for the silver lining even in the most difficult times.

But if internally we are depressed, upset, angry, full of hatred, then you'll see even in the brightest days we will find something to pout about, to be upset about. We'll always find reasons to be negative.

The Parable of the Pig in the Rose Garden

Where I studied in South Africa, they had a saying. When one of the students would complain about something, they said, "Don't be a pig." And I said, "What's that supposed to mean?"

So what it means is that when a pig goes to even a road - you know, we know swine and pigs, they eat feces, they eat dirt and filth. I've seen that, you've seen that probably if you've traveled abroad. That's what they love to eat. They're not eating healthy food - that's what, feces and leftovers, stuff of that, that's what they eat.

He says, even a pig - you bring him to a rose garden, a botanical garden - he doesn't say, "Oh I'm in a park today, let me enjoy the roses and smell this, or let me eat a fruit or two." Instead it will always look for the filth even in the garden.

That is the attitude of an individual who has negative thoughts within himself - that even in the happiest moments will find some reason to complain, will find some reason to find fault. Maybe we're sitting here, maybe you know someone like that. And Allah forbid, maybe we're one of those people who are suffering like this ourselves - that we can't happen to smile even on a day of someone's wedding, a day of someone's graduation. We can't even force a smile on our faces because we've got so much going on internally.

The Ripple Effect of Negativity

My brothers and sisters, this ruins a person's life. Not only ruins their life, but makes them a means of ruining their wives', their husbands', their children's, their parents', their siblings', and their co-workers' lives. Let us not allow these negative thoughts to take over ourselves.

There are so many instances where I'm working with youth as well as adults in the capacity as an imam and a community leader, where they share with me an incident - a divorce, being fired from their job, not passing their step 2 or step 1 exams, or something of that sort, being evicted. And you see the approaches that certain people don't allow this to bog them down. They say Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has been so kind to us - this one small issue, what's the big deal?

The Story of the King and the Ninety-Nine Coins

Their attitude is like the one - a story comes to mind where a king one day asked one of his workers in the palace... Oh, he asked one of his viziers, ministers, "Why is it that I have everything you can imagine, but yet I am full of anxiety and worry? While I see the peasants work in my palace - they have very little, meager means - yet they are able to sleep comfortably and lead very nice lives. What is the difference?"

So the vizier said, "I will tell you my master what the reason behind it. Let me do an experiment for you." He said, "Give me a bag of a hundred gold coins, a hundred dinars, and write on there 'a hundred.'" And he said, "Give it to me." And he took one out. And he said, "Take this, and I'm going to keep how many? How many? Ninety-nine. You're awake, right? Ninety-nine."

He says, "Let me take this and I'll take it to one of the peasants who work in the palace." In the night he went and he knocked on the peasant's door and left it over there. And it says "a hundred dinars," period.

The night was gone. The next morning, the vizier tells the king, "That peasant who's walking in - that's the one I went to his house last night and dropped off the bag of ninety-nine coins." So he said, "Okay, let's see how he reacts today."

He sees that he comes into the palace grumpy, tired, depressed, worried, not wanting to do anything. He says, "SubhanAllah, what's going on? This is the one you gave a hundred coins, a bag of..." "What is that? That is an amount of money that this poor peasant wouldn't earn in five years of working." He said, "That's the one?" He said, "Yes."

The Peasant's Response

So he said, "Call him over." He said, "My friend, what's wrong? You look very depressed, very sad. What happened today?"

He said, "Don't even get me started. Well, where does it start from? He said, well, everything was going nice last night until there was a knock on the door, and I opened the door, and there was a bag of coins." "Oh masha'Allah, then you're about to be happy." He says, "No, no, he didn't hear."

"The bag, it said a hundred coins. So I took it inside the home very excited and happy - this gift came from Allah - opened it up and I counted, and it was only ninety-nine. So I got my kids out of bed, my wife out of the bed, and we spent the rest of the night searching all around the house for that one last coin. It's a gold coin, mind you - one gold coin which was missing. And I got upset my children and my wife that they were not doing a good enough job of searching, because the whole night got spent and we weren't able to find it. So the night got spent without sleep and while being upset and my wife and my kids, and this is how my night has spent."

The Lesson of the Story

So the vizier turned towards the king and said, "This is exactly your life. That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given you ninety-nine blessings, and He has chosen to take one away one day or the other. But instead of rejoicing over those ninety-nine blessings, you're always worried about scratching your head and pulling out your hair over that one blessing that He willingly decided not to give you."

My friends, that is the life of a pessimistic, materialistic individual who uses his mind not to appreciate and be thankful to Allah and the people around him, but to ponder and think about negativity. And that harms themselves.

The Story of the Bitter Cantaloupe

And the other person is the one who, no matter what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala puts his way... like a king one day, he asked his minister to bring him a cantaloupe, and he brought him a cantaloupe. He says, "Here, go cut it yourself." He cut it and he said, "Have a piece yourself first." He had a piece and he acted as though it was very enjoyable.

Then after that, he cut another piece and presented it to the master, to the king. The master could barely put it in his mouth and spat it out, and his face showed signs of upset and anger. And he said, "This is such a bitter fruit, and how did you just end up eating all of it, that piece?"

And subhanAllah, the answer the servant gave to the king: "Oh my master, that hand which has fed me such nice food and such nice fruits every single day, if from that one hand one day something bitter comes, how dare I show displeasure on my face? Is it only right that I also show appreciation and thankfulness for that even bitter fruit that has come from the very same hand that has given me such nice things every day and every night?"

Finding the Light Within

My brothers, my sisters, my elders, my youngsters, we need to figure out and think that our master Allah azza wa jal has always been kind, will always be kind with us. He is showering us with blessings. There is no way but to be optimistic. There is no way but to be happy. Allah says I want you to be rejoiced, I want you to be happy over the blessings and the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

Let us not allow events that happen within our lives to overtake them. Instead, always search not for the light at the end of the tunnel, but the light that is with us at the very moment that we are walking.

And what greater light than the light of iman? What greater light than the light of Quran? What greater light than being an Ummati of Rasulullah ﷺ? What greater light than the ma'rifah of Allah and knowing لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله ﷺ?

Let us use this point here insha'Allah to become a means of bringing happiness within our own lives and within the lives of those around us. The Prophet ﷺ...

The Virtue of Bringing Joy to Others

One of the most virtuous forms of sadaqa and charity is to allow happiness to enter into your brother's heart. Even those days when you and I are sad, let us try to become a means of someone else becoming happy. And due to that action, إن شاء الله (inshallah) Allah will definitely not only keep us happy here, but most importantly will make us from amongst those that there will be faces that will be bright, full of radiance, and will be blessed with seeing the countenance of Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala).

Gratitude to the Community

Before we end today, I would like to thank this community for giving me the opportunity, thanking Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) who allowed me to come in 2008 and 2009 when Imam Yasin was here originally, and then allowed me to come here on the Christmas weekend which was the last weekend that Imam Yasin was here, and have allowed me to come here as well today. We appreciate the community, the members of the Imam Shaykh Abdullah Salal and all those, الحمد لله (Alhamdulillah) who facilitated this. And we hope Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) allows our communities to grow together.

Darussalam Institution in Chicago

I am visiting from Chicago and from an institution called Darussalam. Some of you may have heard of that. In 2008, الحمد لله (Alhamdulillah), we came here and we were raising funds to build a masjid. الحمد لله (Alhamdulillah), today we have a vibrant community and an institution of over 300 students from about 24 states of this country. And الحمد لله (Alhamdulillah), we are continuing to expand, offering our one year program, our summer intensive, and our seven year Takmeel Alimah and Alim program.

Educational Programs and Opportunities

These programs are available - the details on our website. So I would like you brothers and sisters to go visit our website at masjiddarussalam.org or darussalamfoundation.org and benefit from those programs, the live streaming etc. that are offered from our programs online.

Our yearly retreat on the weekend of May 3rd, that's free and open to the entire community. And for those young men and women who are sitting here, after Ramadan, our one month summer intensive which we've been offering, الحمد لله (Alhamdulillah), for the past 10 years. These are great programs for members of this community and their children to benefit from.

Training Future Leaders

We hope Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) allows the efforts of this community and that community as well. And we hope Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) fulfills the need of all the masjids that are looking for imams. What we're doing at Darussalam in Chicago for the past seven years is preparing a generation of imams, of scholars, of leaders, both men and women, to serve the needs of communities throughout the entire country.

And I know one of some of the most major masjids in Dallas have contacted me looking for imams. And this is a dire, dire need within our community to have people who can serve the community - young and old, Muslim and non-Muslim - educational, spiritual, all sorts of needs. And that is a joint effort that all of us need to do, not only monetarily but most importantly with our biggest investment and our biggest gift. Which is what? Our children.

The Greatest Investment

The best and the brightest minds, some of us have to present to Allah and say: "Allah, this is waqf for the community. I dedicate my son and my daughter to serve the community, إن شاء الله تعالى (insha Allah ta'ala)." Because buildings is not what the community is about. It is the human resources, especially the scholars, that will allow these communities to grow internally as well.

I ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) that He allows those students of knowledge who are present here to continue their path and their studies. Our graduating class for the next Ramadan, I pray and I ask you to pray for them that Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) allows them to serve throughout the country as well.

Quranic Reminders

Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) said:

"O you who believe! Fear Allah as He should be feared, and you will not die except when you are Muslims."

And He said تعالى (ta'ala):

"And if you count the blessings of Allah, you do not count them. Indeed, man is unjust and ungrateful."

Closing Du'a and Khutbah

I say this and ask forgiveness of Allah for me and for you and for the rest of the Muslims from every sin. So ask forgiveness of Him. Indeed, He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.

All praise is due to Allah and sufficient is the prayer and peace be upon the Messenger of Allah.

Allah سبحانه وتعالى (subhanahu wa ta'ala) said:

"Indeed, Allah and His angels pray for the Prophet. O you who believe! Send prayers upon him and give him greetings of peace."

And Allah will answer you, and the remembrance of Allah is the greatest, and Allah knows what you do. And establish prayer.

"Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. Come to prayer, come to success. Prayer has been established, prayer has been established. Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest. There is no god but Allah."

Make sure your heels are on the line. Stand shoulder to shoulder. Ensure that there are no gaps in between. جزاكم الله خيرا (JazakumAllahu Khayran).