Calling towards Allah (S)

Opening — Hamd and Salawat

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.

Opening Quranic Verses

Amma ba'd. Allah says:

And Allah says:

And Allah says:

And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said:

The Greatest Blessing: Islam

My dear respected brothers and sisters, Allah has blessed us and gave us so many bounties and blessings. We cannot count the blessings of Allah. But the most great blessing is that He made us Muslims. Because of this Islam, we will be getting success in this world and in the Hereafter.

They are very losers — those who die without Islam. May Allah save us. This Islam and Iman — it is only a blessing from Allah. Nobody of us asked Allah to make us Muslims. It is only His blessing. So we should be very thankful to Him that He has chosen us and made us as Muslims and as believers. Because this is a sign of love. There are so many people like us, but they were not given this chance.

With this Islam and this Iman, a person lives a different life. So many people don't know what is their purpose of life. They might be very rich, very knowledgeable — scholars, professors, doctors, businessmen — but when you ask them, "What is your purpose of life?" they say, "I just want to enjoy life." That's it.

But for the Muslim and the believer — Allahu Akbar! Because of the Iman and Islam, our objective of life has been set for us. So we are living a purposeful life. We know what we are supposed to do. And we have belief in Allah that this life is going to be comfortable, and when we leave this life, we will live even more comfortably in the other life. This is the belief of a Muslim.

Coming to Salah and Jumu'ah

We come to Salah because we are responding to the call of Allah. We are coming to the prayer and we are leaving our job, our occupation, our things. And we have belief that Allah is so happy with us. It is a sign of love when Allah allows us to enter His house. Allahu Akbar! If you love somebody, you allow him to come to your house and you welcome him. Allah likes that we come and leave all other things behind.

You come to Jumu'ah and believe that your coming is very fruitful. What you leave behind is nothing. But here — coming to Jumu'ah, performing Salah, making dhikr of Allah — this is something that you are investing. You are investing your time. When we leave this world, then we will see the ajr of a'mal, the rewards of a'mal. The whole dunya is not enough to be the reward of even one Amal Salih.

The Weight of a Single Dhikr

As the hadith I was mentioning — Rasulullah, peace be upon him, said: if you say one سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ, it will fill up the distance between the Heaven and the Earth. All of this that we see — it will fill up with those rewards by saying one SubhanAllah.

In another hadith, Rasulullah, peace be upon him, said: if you perform the two Sunnahs of Fajr, the Sunnah of Fajr is better than the whole universe and what it contains. This is only the Sunnah — not the Fard. The Fard is something else. Imagine what Allah will give you if you perform only the Sunnah and it is better than the whole universe. The Fard is much, much greater than the Nafl. So Allah wants us to live in this world and always put in our minds the Akhirah.

Never Forget Allah and the Akhirah

Akhirah is something that we need to work for. Never forget. The elders said: two things, never forget at all — Allah and the Akhirah. Allah is the most generous to us, and He wants us to remember Him, because every blessing is from Him. We should be thankful to Allah every moment. That is why, if we want to increase the bounties of Allah, we should be thankful to Him. The more we are thankful to Allah, Allah will keep the blessings and will increase them.

While Shaytan — what does he do? He tries to make this less, so that we are not thankful to Allah and we do not appreciate His blessings. That is why you have to always remind each other — our family, everybody — that anything good is from Allah.

Nobody came to this world as a scholar, a professor, or a rich man. No — everybody came helpless. He cannot do anything. He cries if he wants something. Then Allah puts into his mother's heart that he needs something. But then Allah gave him ni'mat al-'aql — the blessing of the intellect. Allah helped him, grew him up, and then he became such and such.

The Story of Qarun: A Warning

The people before us — Allah told us their stories. Qarun — Allah gave him so much wealth, but he forgot that the wealth was from Allah. So he did not surrender to the order of Allah. He was told: "You obey Allah, and what Allah gave you — Allah gave you so much — you have to use it properly." He said, "No, no, no. I earned it on my own knowledge. I did everything because of my intelligence." So Allah gave him some time, but after that, this attitude was a cause for his loss. This is a story in the Quran that shows us that any blessing, if it is not used properly, becomes a punishment.

Anything — any blessing, even the family, the children, the car — anything that is a blessing: when it is used for Allah, it remains a blessing. If it is not used for Allah, it becomes a punishment, an 'adhab. Allah said about the kuffar that Allah wants to punish them through those very things that He gave them — because they did not obey Allah and they did not care about their duties towards Him. May Allah save us.

Working for the Akhirah While Living in This World

Brothers, we must remind each other always of this feeling — that this life is short, and Allah is testing us in this life, and we need to make more mujahada, more effort towards the everlasting life, because that life is endless. And I am saying this — I am most in need of this. You know, we love each other, we are one body. We should care for each other the most. We should care for every Muslim — that he dies with full Iman, with full Islam, because then he will get total success. Total success means he will live an enjoyable life that he never even thought of.

Brothers, now we can see America and all the nice things here. But this is only temporary. When we leave this world, Allah will open the realities for us. We will see the reality. That is why the believer is building the reality from here. Every day we read Quran, and Allah is telling us about what is going to happen and what we are going to get. Allahu Akbar!

The minute that we leave this world, all the problems are finished — there is no problem for the believers. Maybe he is sick now, maybe he is poor, maybe he has so many things that bother him. But it is finished. No more. It will be said to him: "Now you sleep, relax, finished. You have done a lot. You obeyed Allah. You made so many sacrifices — you made Salah, you made Sadaqah, you made so many things. Now you will get the return." Allah will open a door for him towards Jannah, and he will see his place and say, "Ya Allah, I want to go to my house!" And he will be told, "No, relax for now. And when the time comes, you will be resurrected." And this is only the first station. The others — the Hashr will be easy, and he will be called and enter Jannah with so much welcoming.

So this is what we have to always remember. Because we have so many things in this dunya to take us away from it. Dunya is beautiful. It has so many things that attract a person. But we cannot escape the dunya — we have to live in it. The case is that we live in dunya with our attention towards the Akhirah. Then Allah will make this dunya a means to reach the Akhirah. That is what happened with the Sahabah — when they realized this and made the effort towards the Akhirah, Allah made the dunya very, very comfortable for them.

This is the promise of Allah:

Arada al-Akhirah — his attention is towards the Akhirah. And he believed in it. He believed that the Akhirah is coming very soon. We don't know when is our Akhirah — maybe today, maybe tomorrow, Allah knows best. But we have to think about it and pray to Allah that He gives us this attention and this fikr every moment.

Because once the Akhirah is not there — Allahu Akbar — a person is different. He will do injustice. He will do haram. There is no brake. The only brake that holds him is fear of Allah and the fikr of Akhirah. Fikr of Akhirah is not something easy — it is great. When somebody tells you there is something very harmful outside, nobody will leave the masjid, especially if we trust that person. Rasulullah, peace be upon him — how much he warned us! He would tell the Sahabah every time about this and tell them that the Akhirah is something that we need to work for and get ready for.

Living the Fikr of the Sahabah

As I said, it is very easy for the believer when he makes this his target, because Allah is very generous and very merciful. We cannot be like the Sahabah, but if we talk about their lives and discuss always how they spent their time, and we manage to always make ta'lim and read about their stories and their lives, then insha'Allah slowly, slowly we will live the fikr of the Sahabah. The fikr of the Sahabah — what did they say? "We are for Islam and Islam is for us." This is great.

Allah is rich. If a person always wants to be close to Allah, Allah will make the path very easy. We always tell Allah: "Ya Allah, we want to worship You alone. We want to love You alone. We want to devote everything for You alone." Every rak'ah we ask Allah this — now this is du'a, and it is accepted. Allah said in the hadith: "I will guarantee for him — if he wants, I will give him, I will make it easy for him to reach the path."

So we, alhamdulillah, Allah has guided us and we are believers and we come to the masjid. Now we want to also work to complete this Iman and put the ruh into the amal as much as we can. Because once the ruh is in the amal, it will affect us when we go outside. We will always be conscious of Allah and will always be doing the amal that pleases Allah.

Part Two: The Responsibility of Da'wah

And the most important thing, brothers, is that we should think that our responsibility does not lie only in being a religious person. It is not enough — MashaAllah — being one who prays, one who makes dhikr, reads Quran, and takes care of his family. This is good, but that is Part One.

Part Two is that I have to work as much as I can to propagate the deen, to ensure that insha'Allah, through my effort and my fikr, Allah will spread the deen. Because our Rasul is the last Prophet. His mission was for 23 years — his life of prophethood. But his mission was for the entire mankind. He was not for the Quraysh or the Arabs or the people of Mecca — he was for the entire mankind until the Day of Judgement. Allahu Akbar!

And the beauty is that he gave the honour to every member of his Ummah — every member of his Ummah, regardless of where he is living, what language he speaks, what occupation he has. He gave him this opportunity that he can take the responsibility, and the result he will receive will be so great he cannot even imagine.

The Sahabah Who Spread the Deen

That is why the Sahabah — they were about 124,000 in number, and they knew what was the purpose of his mission. So after he passed away, the Sahabah did not stay in Mecca or Medina. Six months after the Hijrah. The Sahabah who received Rasulullah and stayed in his house — he died in Istanbul. The one who was like Rasulullah in appearance — he died in Samarkand. So many Sahabah died in Egypt, in Jordan, and other places.

It is said that more than 90,000 Sahabah — their graves are scattered everywhere. They did not go for business, or for pleasure, or for any other thing. They went to spread the deen. Now we are here, alhamdulillah — we don't have to go far. What we do is we make fikr together and do the a'mal of hidayah.

A'mal of Hidayah

A'mal of hidayah will bring hidayah. What is the a'mal of hidayah? First: we always make da'wah among each other. We always talk about Allah as much as we can, so that we don't forget Him. And we talk to people in a very simple way — that Allah is the Creator, He gave everything, we should thank Him, we should get close to Him — and make it easy for the people. Because hidayah is not in our hand. Hidayah is in the hand of Allah. But we can do the means and the asbab of hidayah, and Allah will use our effort and bring the people towards Him.

This is seen everywhere — you can see that Allah is using people, and many people are accepting the deen, and many people are coming back to Allah. This is great. Because after we leave this world, those people who did da'wah — the book of deeds will not be closed. The book of deeds will continue and continue. Allah knows to what extent. But all the other worship that we do — it will finish. Salah, Zakah, Hajj — finished, you get that, and you cannot do more. But with da'wah — no.

Da'wah Saves and Spreads the Deen

The last thing I want to say is that da'wah saves the deen. Brothers, when we do not do da'wah, the deen will decrease and it will die. Believe me. Rasulullah, peace be upon him — when he was making ibadah in the cave, nobody accepted Islam. Even Sayyidah Khadijah did not become Muslim then. But when he started da'wah, Allah changed everything. The 360 idols around the Ka'bah were removed. Mecca became — Allahu Akbar — a place of nur. The Sahabah became awliya. So this da'wah is something that we need like rain.

And everybody is eligible. Everybody has so much ability he can use. And Allah will use him. Sayyidina Khalid, may Allah be pleased with him — he was the enemy of Islam. When he came to the field of da'wah, he became — may Allah accept all of us.

Closing Du'a