2014-09-05 - Friday Prayer - Sheikh Mokhtar Maghroui

Adhan

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah. 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 prayer. Come to success, come to success. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah.

Khutbah: Deen as Liberation in the Journey Through Dunya

Says Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in his divine call to us: O you who have attained faith, be Allah-conscious. Have awe and reverence in your hearts for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And do that in a way that is worthy of who He is — worthy of His essence, worthy of His names and attributes, worthy of His grace and bounties and favours. And with that, make sure you do not die except in a state of Islam.

Make sure you do not die except in a state of Islam, in a state of loving surrender of our souls and innermost recesses of our hearts and our minds and our words and our deeds — all in loving compliance and in loving surrender to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

Allah who created us in this world, in this dunya, with all the challenges of this world and of this dunya — of which He has always known before He even created time and space — and He created all of that for a divine reason subhanahu wa ta'ala and a divine wisdom. As He created dunya as:

A home of trials and challenges, not a home of full prosperity and ease and facility. He subhanahu wa ta'ala with that dunya sent us the gift of Deen.

Dunya is built upon hardships — that's its nature — upon trials, upon tribulations, upon challenges. And the nature of Deen that He offers to us subhanahu wa ta'ala is to help us navigate in dunya freely and wisely and in a way to maximize the noble happiness that He subhanahu wa ta'ala intends for us. Deen therefore is a means by which we are relieved, we are released, we are liberated from the hardships of dunya, from the عُسْر of dunya:

And that is of His رَحْمَة subhanahu wa ta'ala and of the means that He subhanahu wa ta'ala instituted for us in order to navigate freely and to maximize our noble freedom, our noble happiness — and I underline the word noble freedom and noble happiness.

Tawheed: The Declaration of Witnessing

Of the means for that is, first of all, the declaration with our own tongue — after it resides in our hearts and minds — of Tawheed:

There is no deity, no god worthy of worship, no god but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And the statement is a shahādah — shahādah means also literally to witness. And therefore when we say لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ, we are meant to reach a level — hopefully sooner than later, hopefully some indeed faster than others — we reach a level where that declaration is a witness in our hearts. In other words, we declare it as though we see God, we see Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and we say أَشْهَدُ — I bear witness, my heart sees, my heart knows — not only a declaration of tongue. The ultimate purpose for which we are here is to gradually be one who witnesses with his or her heart Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 50; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 8 — the Hadith of Jibril)

That you serve and worship Allah as though you were to see Him, and then you say: I witness, I bear witness.

Salah: Liberation from the Attachments of Dunya

And to facilitate that for us subhanahu wa ta'ala — as this is the ultimate purpose for which we were created — He subhanahu wa ta'ala instituted many beautiful aspects and values of Deen to help us in that: performing salah, the mandatory salah and the supererogatory salah, in order to help us liberate ourselves more and more from the hardships and difficulties and the addictions — the negative ones — of this dunya. And therefore when the caller for salah calls, he says حَيَّ عَلَى الْفَلَاح — come to happiness, come to — some translate it as — success, come to falah. Whatever you're doing — even though it is fine, hopefully nothing haram — break from that and come to salah, so that you are liberated from the attachments and the addictions, unnecessary and often excessive, to this dunya, which then becomes a struggle of calamitous proportions. Allah frees you with that call:

Verily salah forbids and keeps us away and prevents us from falling into excesses — fahsha'. Excesses: zina is an excess. Zina is called fahisha because it's an excess — it's not within the bounds of the norms of morality and decency and noble humanity, let alone awareness of the beauty of the divine subhanahu wa ta'ala; let alone the misuse and the abuse of the ni'ma of the sexual drive — abusing it and misusing it through zina, and therefore being ungrateful to the Giver of that ni'ma, ungrateful to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

But in general, salah helps us avoid all excesses when we perform salah properly and consciously and with awareness: excesses in eating, excesses in drinking, in sleeping, excesses in speaking, excesses in social behavior — in all sorts of behavior — excesses in religiosity. All excesses: تَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ. And munkar is that which is despised, that which is strange — unknown but negatively strange and negatively unknown — to keep away from it. And therefore the things that are not beautiful are munkar, because those who are beautiful don't know it. The mala'ika don't have it as their habit, as their knowledge of good. It is munkar. نَكَرْتُ الشَّيْءَ means: I found it strange, I didn't recognize it.

So Allah's salah is a means of liberating us also from the excesses of dunya in which we are navigating — to go back home, where we first originated. Home is jannah and we want to go back home. And Allah azza wa jal sent us to this dunya. After we were meant and made to leave home — jannah — because of a mistake, He tells us azza wa jal: you can come back home, but now follow my instructions of my deen in your dunya to come back home. And when we come back home, this time it would be insha'Allah forever — no return — بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى.

Zakah: Purification of the Heart from the Love of Wealth

Second: al-Zakah. Allah teaches us zakah and zakah is a means of liberation also in this dunya — to navigate freely in loving freedom in this dunya — so that we are detached and disengaged from the excesses of attachments that we have to wealth and consequently to power. Wealth is often used for power: power at home, power in the community, power in the state — power, power, power — and then excesses and excesses. And zakah is to let go, to let go of that internal attachment that we have for wealth, to liberate our hearts and minds from that attachment, so that the liberated energy is used for connecting with Allah azza wa jal.

You would like your energy to be used properly — your spiritual, intellectual energies — you would like them to be used properly for the purpose for which you were created. And thus when you remove the attachments that we have inside of us, especially the excesses like this one of wealth, then that energy is available for our use in our relationship with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

You know how much we have sometimes attachments — even some of them normal, regular, even legitimate attachments — how they bind us, how they enslave us sometimes, how they make us sometimes excessively scared to lose them, excessively scared to have ourselves deal with competition for them. And the thought of that, the worries about that — all of that is pain, and all of that is servitude and slavehood to other than Allah azza wa jal. So Allah wants us to be liberated — not by taking it all from you — but by wisely and divinely allowing you and instructing you and me to detach from that and to give to the needy and the poor in ways that are very moral and very beautiful and very constructive to society itself and to dunya itself, in the good sense of the word of dunya.

That's why zakah is called zakah — and zakah is from: to purify and to purge and to polish. And thus to purge our wealth, to purge our hearts from the attachments we have — that greed. You all know the word greed, and I think everybody here knows that greed is very derogatory of an attribute and you don't want to be greedy. But many of us are greedy, though we don't want to be greedy. But we are greedy. Many of us don't want to lie, but we lie. Many of us don't want to commit some haram, but we do. And that's why Allah azza wa jal has ways by which to help us do this and strive. No striving, no gain. No pain, no gain — that's the nature of the creation of Allah azza wa jal. At work, at home, wherever: no work, no gain. No striving, no gain. No striving internally, no gain spiritually with Allah azza wa jal.

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2822)

Jannah is surrounded — as Rasulullah ﷺ said — imagine a separation, a wall, and that wall is called makarih: things we don't like, things our nafs, our self, doesn't like to do or doesn't like not to do — doesn't like to commit and doesn't like to omit. So we have to strive to go beyond that barrier.

Some of you perhaps understand this in the other way: entropy — the law of entropy in nature. This physics law, this universal law of entropy says: if you don't bring work from outside into an internal system, that system will spoil and will be disorganized, and with time will weaken and evanesce. So entropy requires that I and you do work from outside of our nafs, inside, so that we arrange those attachments inside and we strive against them to produce order inside of us. And order is what Allah azza wa jal loves.

Moral entropy: if we don't do that, with time we shall become immoral whether we like it or not. That's why sometimes we know something is wrong but we do it — because we have weakened, and we have allowed entropy, moral entropy, to take over. We need to do work from outside of us, inside of us, to produce moral order inside of us and in our lives.

Siyam: Noble Happiness and Noble Freedom

Allah azza wa jal instituted Siyam, and Siyam is for the purpose also of liberation, of maximizing our happiness, of ennobling the concept of pursuit of our happiness — not any happiness, not any freedom — noble happiness, noble freedom. Not the happiness of a cow, nor the freedom of a cow. A cow is also very happy when you give it what it wants: to eat and to drink and to sleep and to copulate and to run. The cow is very happy because that's its nature, and Allah created the cow that way. That's the happiness of a cow.

But if I as a human being pursue my kind of happiness in that way, then in essence I'm not different than a cow. I strive and work hard to eat and drink and sleep and copulate and play — then what's in essence the difference between me and the cow, except the physical appearance? And physical appearances owe only to the way, as you know, atoms are arranged in molecules, and the organizations of those molecules make the difference between you and me and a cow. That's simple, because we're all made from the same stuff — electrons and protons — the same thing. And those, when arranged differently by Allah azza wa jal's hikmah, then you have a cow and you have a human being, physically speaking.

But we're not only physical things. We're not different from cows simply because of the way the molecules are arranged in our organisms — but because of the Deen factor, because of the nature of happiness we pursue and the nature of freedom we pursue — the quality of it, what kind of it. Not the cow-like happiness, not the cow-like freedom. And in that way, if we are no different than cattle, then Allah azza wa jal instituted Siyam to help us control the attachments we have for even legitimate things — eating, drinking, sleeping, copulating — so that we have control over that; we're not just cows. But there is something else, and Allah is teaching us to liberate us from those excesses.

Hajj: The Physical and Spiritual Journey to Allah

And Allah has — finally, my point briefly today — also instituted for us Hajj: the duty of Hajj, the journey of Hajj, the trip of Hajj to the house of Allah azza wa jal. That journey which actually also superimposes in a spiritual way the journey of our hearts to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It's actually a means by which Allah makes us more aware of our journey — of our hearts to Him azza wa jal. And we shall be in this weekend elaborate more on these concepts.

Therefore, the Hajj to the house of Allah azza wa jal with your physical body is intended to remind you and me of the Hajj of your heart to the Lord of the house. One of the salihun said: during my first Hajjah, I saw the people — I saw an-nas, I saw creation. In my second Hajjah, I saw finally the house of the Lord — meaning my qalb began to appreciate. And then in my other Hajjah — I don't know how many Hajjah — until he got to the point when he said: then in that Hajjah, my heart saw the Lord of the house. رَأَى قَلْبِي رَبَّ الْبَيْت — in that beautiful spiritual sense that the Hajj is intended to make me aware of my journey every day, every second, through my soul and heart to Him azza wa jal.

And He offered me in that journey — depending on where I am in my journey of Hajj — gifts and gifts and gifts. Just like the journey of our hearts to Him azza wa jal: on the way, depending how much we have crossed, there will be gifts and gifts and gifts and challenges.

Al-Wuquf bi-Arafat: Standing Before Allah

And of the most beautiful expressions of Hajj — and they are all very beautiful — is al-wuquf bi-Arafat, to be in Arafat. To be in Arafat, preferably from after the sun is away from the center of the sky — that is, after dhuhr — until after the sun sets. From when the heat of the sun is very intense, you in Arafat should be there — head uncovered for the man — standing or sitting or laying, preferably standing, in du'a and in dhikr and in istighfar and in talbiyah and in tahleel. All of which are intended to convey the following meaning:

When we enter Arafat under the heat of the day, physically I and you are entering Arafat with the heat and the flame of the demons inside of me and you — the flames of the demons inside of you and me — of nafs, of ego, of arrogance, of delusion, of lying, of cheating, of sinning, of disobeying, of voluntarily violating the beautiful norms of Allah azza wa jal, of hurting each other. This dhunub — we come with this dhunub that burn our souls from our nufus and shaytan inside of us.

So we are there under the heat of the day, when it is scorching heat — representing the heat of the dhunub inside of us — and we are there in istighfar and confession and istighfar and tawbah and tahleel and witnessing our own faults and deficiencies and acknowledging them to Allah azza wa jal, until after the sun sets. Physically, the sun sets — what happens when the sun sets? It cools off. The land cools off, the place cools off.

Until — when we are in Arafat in that ibadah — ibadah: not smoking, not backbiting, not idle talking, not eating more than you would outside of Arafat, not disobeying Allah azza wa jal, not throwing garbage everywhere. لَا لَا لَا يَا عِبَادَ اللَّه — to be aware of that meaning of what you are there for, pleading to Allah azza wa jal about minute violations in my life in my relationship with Him, and major ones. As I am there and my heart — let alone my eyes — are overwhelmed and flooded with tears of sincerity, by the time the sun sets, the burning heat of the dhunub inside — of the past and of now — finally cools off. Allah has accepted.

And that's why, until after the sun sets, it cools off — and inside of you it cools off as well. As a gift from Allah to you on that day:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1348)

As Rasulullah ﷺ taught us in the hadith: that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala on that day celebrates the hujjaj who are there, in the presence of the angels, and He forgives them — those who came there with hearts devoted to liberate their hearts from their dhunub and to pledge to Allah azza wa jal to return back home — this home of this dunya — with a new resolve for His obedience subhanahu wa ta'ala.

قُولُوا قَوْلِي هَذَا أَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ الْعَظِيمَ لِي وَلَكُمْ, seek Allah's forgiveness — فَاسْتَغْفِرُوهُ، تُوبُوا لِلْمُسْتَغْفِرِين — what an excellent abode awaits those who seek His forgiveness.

Second Khutbah

And yes — Hajj is a means of liberation. It is a means of reminding us in this parallel journey — physically reminding us of our journey for which we were created in this dunya: the journey of our hearts to Him azza wa jal. So that we learn to do everything we do — at home, at work, in the masjid, administratively, politically, socially, religiously, morally, spiritually, at all levels — we learn to be conscious of these facts, because we are on a journey. And when you are on a journey to a destination, you must not forget where you're going, lest you will end up somewhere you don't want to be. True or false? We must not forget our destination lest we shall end up somewhere we don't want to be.

How often have you driven, and when you are driving, something happened — I know it has happened to some of us here, adults especially — and you're driving and you don't know how you ended up somewhere you don't know: for five minutes, a minute, ten minutes — how did I get here? SubhanAllah. Spiritually it teaches you and me: be always aware of your destination, lest you shall end up somewhere you don't want to be, and it is very harmful to be there perhaps, and very dangerous and very treacherous.

So we are to remember this through the journey of Hajj to the house of Allah — we are reminded of the journey of our hearts to the Lord of the house subhanahu wa ta'ala.

And Hajj therefore, out of the rahmah of Allah azza wa jal, is made mandatory upon those who are able to perform it. And now ability depends on many factors — not only financially and health-wise, but also if you can get a visa. In the United States we are very, very lucky. Alhamdulillah, we can go to Hajj every year so far. Remember this is a ni'mah to be asked about on the Day of Judgment.

Have you, my dear brother and sister, performed your Hajj when you were able to — immediately when you were able to? In accordance to the majority of the ulama — three schools of thought out of four — they say that Hajj is an obligation immediately as one is able to: meaning financially, physically, and now administratively — visas and passports. Once you have that ability, then you must perform Hajj.

If I die within that year having been able to and did not intend to perform Hajj that year, I die as a person who has disobeyed Allah azza wa jal — I would die as a disobedient abd of Allah azza wa jal, having not complied with the order of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when able to. And usually what prevents you and me from doing that when we are able to are matters of dunya — and that is an excess of attachment to dunya. And Allah wants to free you and me from the excesses that we have for dunya — not dunya itself, but the excesses that we have for dunya — for He created us in dunya to live in dunya, but not with excess, so that we can come back home freely and happily and forever.

My dear brothers and sisters, بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى, the remaining two days — tomorrow and the day after tomorrow — we'll have more opportunity to say a lot more about the external fiqh of Hajj as well as the internal, spiritual, dimensional fiqh of Hajj as well, insha'Allah ta'ala.

Ya Allah, please heal those who are sick amongst us — physical sickness, moral sickness, psychological sickness, mental sickness, all sorts of sickness. Please grant us relief, grant us shifa — بِرَحْمَتِكَ يَا أَرْحَمَ الرَّاحِمِينَ.

And grant rahmat to those who have passed away from amongst us — grant them Your merciful love and Your loving mercy, يَا أَرْحَمَ الرَّاحِمِينَ يَا رَبَّ الْعَالَمِينَ. And our parents especially — those who have passed away — please grant them Your loving mercy, let them be with You and amongst Your angels, of the happy ones, the happiness of akhira.

And let us be after them — behind them — children and offspring who are righteous, who honor them where they are, not who dishonor them where they are. Because if I or you do wrong things in this dunya, that will dishonor those who are with Allah already, of my parents and yours and my beloved and yours. Ya Allah, don't cause them to be shameful about what we do in this dunya — بِرَحْمَتِكَ يَا أَرْحَمَ الرَّاحِمِينَ يَا رَبَّ الْعَالَمِينَ.

قُومُوا إِلَى صَلَاتِكُمْ يَرْحَمْكُمُ اللَّهُ

Iqamah and Salah

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Ashhadu an la ilaha illallah. Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah. Hayya ala al-salati. Hayya ala al-falah. Qad qamat al-salat, qad qamat al-salat. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. La ilaha illallah.

اسْتَوُوا يَرْحَمْنِي يَرْحَمْكُمُ اللَّهُ — Please fill in the gaps and straighten the lines. May Allah bless you. لَا تَخْتَلِفُوا فَتَخْتَلِفَ — Do not allow our lines to be crooked, as Rasulullah ﷺ taught, lest our hearts will become crooked.

Recitation During Salah

After the Prayer — Du'a Requests

Brothers and sisters, a request for a few du'as.

Du'a for our brother Habib Wali Muhammad Tabani — he is the uncle of Mansur Tabani, our brother Mansur Tabani. May Allah forgive his shortcomings and reward him with Jannah.