5 Principles from the Death of the Queen - Shaykh Ahsan Hanif

Introduction

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. We praise Him and ask His help and forgiveness. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and from the evil of our deeds.

Whom Allah guides, none can misguide him, and whom He misguides, none can guide him. And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone, with no partner. And I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.

Principle One: Strengthening Our Tawheed in Allah

One of those points — and the greatest and most important of them — is that whenever anyone passes away, especially someone who passes away after having lived for nearly a century, one of the greatest lessons that we can take is that it should fortify and strengthen our tawheed in Allah. Because from the greatest names of Allah and from His greatest attributes is that He is ever-living, Al-Hayy.

And when the Prophet ﷺ mentioned to us the greatest verse of the Quran, Ayatul Kursi, Allah begins that very verse with this name of Al-Hayy:

It comes back to this name of Al-Hayy — that Allah is ever-living. Because that God cannot be all-knowing and all-seeing and all-hearing and all-powerful and all-merciful except if He is ever-living. And that is why Allah in the Quran, when He speaks to us and tells us and commands us to have tawheed in Him, to call upon Him, to make du'a to Him, to have ikhlas and sincerity in our worship of Him — this is the name that He uses in the Quran:

He is Al-Hayy, the ever-living — none has the right to be worshipped except Him. So worship Him alone and make your religion sincerely for Him. Allah says elsewhere in the Quran:

Place your trust in Al-Hayy, the ever-living, the one who never dies, and glorify and praise Him. And that is why the Prophet ﷺ would say in the du'a that he would make:

"You are Allah, the ever-living, the one who never dies, and every other human and every jinn will die." Allah says to us in the Quran:

Everything in this world, everything in this universe, will cease to exist — but the face of your Lord, full of nobility and honor, will remain. Allah is all-powerful, and no matter how long or short a person's life is — no matter if you live for ten years or for a hundred years — you will certainly die at one point or another; your time will come to an end. But the Lord that we worship, the Lord upon whom we trust, the Lord that we devote our whole lives to, is the Lord that never dies.

And from the meanings of the name of Allah, Al-Hayy, is that His life is perfect and complete in every way, shape and form. Me and you, we may live for over a hundred years, but many of those years will be years of illness, years of pain, years where we can't go about in our daily lives in the way that we want. But when Allah is Al-Hayy, His life is perfect — perfect. It is complete in every way. Allah doesn't become tired. Allah doesn't feel pain. Allah doesn't become sick or weak. Allah is perfection in every way.

So when you hear of someone who lived for nearly a century, one of the things that it should always make us do is to remember the completeness and the perfection of our Lord and Creator. We should strengthen and fortify our tawheed in Allah — that each and every single one of us will stand before Him, and that each and every single one of us will be held to account. That's the first point that I wanted to mention before you today.

Principle Two: Only the People of Iman Enter Jannah

The second point that I wanted to mention to you is that it is from the aqeedah of Islam, from the aqeedah of every Muslim, that only the people of iman enter into Jannah, and everyone who doesn't accept iman goes into the fire. That is a principle that is established in the Quran and in the Sunnah and in multiple narrations, and it is one of the cornerstones of our religion. Me and you, we worship Allah and we try our utmost to obey Him because of this principle.

Allah says:

Allah doesn't forgive any type of shirk that is associated with Him, but He forgives everything else to whomsoever He wills. The person who has iman and sins and does evil — there is hope for that person, because they have iman. But the person who doesn't have iman, the person who doesn't believe in Allah — Allah gives to them in this life the reward that they would have received from their good character and from the good that they did and the help that they offered to others, but they have no portion of the hereafter.

That is part of our iman. And part of that principle is therefore that it is not permissible to seek forgiveness for those who do not die upon Islam. It's not allowed for you to seek forgiveness for someone who died upon other than Islam. Allah says:

Allah says there is not befitting for the Prophet or for the believers that they should seek forgiveness for the disbelievers, after it has become clear and apparent to them that they are from the people of the fire.

And were it to have been allowed for anyone to seek forgiveness for someone who died upon other than iman, then it would have been allowed for our Prophet ﷺ. In the hadith of Abu Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him, collected in Sahih Muslim, he said:

(Sahih Muslim, Book 11, Hadith 2130)

"I sought permission from my Lord that I should go and visit the grave of my mother, and I sought permission from my Lord that I should seek forgiveness for her. So as for visiting her grave, He gave me permission to do so — but as for seeking forgiveness for her, He refused."

So if anyone would have been allowed to do so, it would have been the Prophet ﷺ — and not just for any and every person, but for his own mother, the person who gave birth to him. But that is the principle that Allah has established upon this religion.

Principle Three: We Do Not Assign Individuals to Jannah or the Fire Without a Text

The third point, which is also an extension of the second point, is that once we've established that principle — that the people of Jannah are the people of iman, and the people of the fire are the people of other than iman — then it is also not befitting, or proper, or correct, according to many of the scholars, that we say about any individual that they are from the people of Jannah or from the people of the fire, unless there is an explicit text in the Book of Allah or the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

Me and you, we can say that Abu Bakr is in Jannah, Umar is in Jannah, Uthman is in Jannah, Ali is in Jannah — may Allah be pleased with them all — and others from amongst the companions, because there are explicit texts in the Quran and Sunnah that testify to that. Me and you can stand and say Abu Lahab is in the fire, Abu Jahl is in the fire, Fir'awn is in the fire — because there are texts in the Quran and the Sunnah that specifically say that very thing.

Perhaps for everyone else, it's not befitting for me or you to stand here and say about myself or yourself that we are from the people of Jannah. We hope good for the people of iman. Someone dies upon Islam — we ask Allah to forgive them and have mercy upon them, and we hope and pray that they will be from the people of Jannah. But to name someone and say so-and-so is from the people of Jannah — that's not from the position of the Muslim.

And there are a number of ahadith of our Prophet ﷺ where some of the companions would make such a testimony, and the Prophet ﷺ would say: no, rather he is from the people of the fire. You only need to open up the books of hadith — Bukhari and Muslim — and look at the chapters of maghazi, of battles and war, where some of the companions would say someone — because of his courage and bravery — is from the people of Jannah, and the Prophet ﷺ would say: no, he is not. And it shows you that you can't make that declaration even based upon someone's apparent actions.

You can't make that declaration — and just as you can't make that declaration for a Muslim, then you shouldn't make that declaration for a specific person from the non-Muslims. You make the general ruling. As for someone specifically by name — those affairs are with Allah. Allah is the one who judges, and Allah didn't make it incumbent upon me or upon you. It's not my responsibility or yours to name people and place them either into the fire or into paradise. That is Allah's providence alone. We make the general rule because that is what Allah has mentioned to us in the Quran and the Sunnah. Specifically, that is for Allah to do.

Principle Four: Acknowledging the Good That Non-Muslims Did

The fourth point is that just because someone may be a non-Muslim, it doesn't mean that you can't acknowledge the good that they did. Someone stood up for the rights of the poor; someone stood up and helped the oppressed; someone stood up and did good for the general community and for the general people. It is from good character and from justice in our religion that you acknowledge those people — even if those people were not Muslim.

To say that someone did good, that they did a lot of good, and they died upon that — that's something which you can testify to, something which you can speak about and acknowledge. Because it's something which all of the people have acknowledged besides you as well. And the Prophet ﷺ did the same. In the hadith in the Musnad of Imam Ahmed, the Prophet ﷺ spoke about some of the good characteristics that the Byzantine Romans used to have. He would say about them that they have four characteristics that are praiseworthy. From amongst those characteristics was that they would help the poor and the needy in their community. And from those characteristics is that if from amongst their nobility and their powerful someone wanted to commit oppression, they would stop that oppression from taking place. The Prophet ﷺ praised them for those characteristics — and they were non-Muslims.

In the time of the Prophet ﷺ there lived a man by the name of Al-Mut'im ibn Adi. His son, Jubayr ibn Mut'im, was one of the companions of our Prophet ﷺ. But his father, Al-Mut'im ibn Adi, was from the leaders of the Arabs — and he died as a non-Muslim. But the Prophet ﷺ honored him and acknowledged the good that he did for Islam and the Muslims, just as he acknowledged the good that his own uncle Abu Talib did, even though he also died upon other than Islam.

Al-Mut'im ibn Adi — when the Prophet ﷺ returned from Ta'if, when the people of Ta'if had stoned him and driven him out with those pebbles and stones, and the Prophet ﷺ had blood flowing from his body — it was Al-Mut'im ibn Adi who came and ensured safety for the Prophet ﷺ returning into Mecca. He said: "I will be your guarantor; I will be the one who will give you safety as you return into the city of Mecca."

And when the people of Quraysh carried out that social and economic boycott against the Muslims and against the tribe of the Prophet ﷺ, Banu Hashim and Banu Muttalib — they said that they wouldn't marry them, they couldn't have business with them, they couldn't live with them — and they had to go and live in the desert on the outskirts of Mecca. They wrote up a pact that they placed inside of the Ka'bah to show that they weren't going to have anything to do with those people who were Muslims. When some of the people of Quraysh saw the oppression that was being committed, they stood up against it. It took a while, it took time — but eventually they stood up against that oppression, and Al-Mut'im ibn Adi was one of those people who went and tore up that pact that was written in the Ka'bah.

The Prophet ﷺ, a number of years later — and this hadith is in Sahih al-Bukhari — in the Battle of Badr, after the battle had finished and the Prophet ﷺ had all of these prisoners of war — Meccans who were enemy combatants and now prisoners — the Prophet ﷺ said:

"If Mut'im ibn Adi was still alive today and he spoke to me and told me to free these people, I would free them for him." Acknowledging the good that he did. Acknowledging the favor that he had upon the Muslims. Acknowledging that he stood up against the oppression that was being committed against the Muslims.

So to acknowledge someone's good — to acknowledge that someone did something which is beneficial — it is something which is from justice, and it is something which is from good character.

Principle Five: Remembering Death

The fifth and final point that I want to mention as we conclude this khutbah is the importance of remembering death. Death is something which will approach each and every single one of us. Someone may live for a hundred years — but as we know, as our Prophet ﷺ told us, from the moment that the angel came and breathed life into us as we were in the womb of our mother, he was commanded to write four things. And from amongst those four things, the angel was commanded to write the ajal — the lifespan of each and every single one of us.

And when that lifespan comes to an end — whether it be short or whether it be long, whether it be a life full of ease or a life full of difficulty, whether you live a life of riches or a life of poverty — when that moment and that time comes, it is not advanced nor delayed by a single moment. Allah says:

When their appointed time comes, it is not brought forth by a moment, nor is it delayed by a single moment.

Each and every single one of us is upon a journey towards our grave and towards what is inevitable in terms of death. How well you prepare for that journey — that is something which Allah wants from each and every single one of us. What Allah commands us to do is to prepare for that time to the best of our ability: by worshipping Allah and having iman in Him, by doing as many good deeds as you can do and by staying away from the haram, by helping those who are in need, and by staying away from all types and forms of oppression.

Closing Du'a

Ask Allah on this blessed day of Jumu'ah that He blesses us with iman, and that Allah makes us steadfast upon His religion — us and our families and our children — and that Allah honors us with iman. Ask Allah that He blesses us all with iman, us and our families and our children, and that Allah makes us from amongst those people who live upon iman and die upon iman and are resurrected with the people of iman.