Umm Sulaym's Wisdom: Prioritizing Deen Secures Dunya and Akhira

The Light of the Prophet ﷺ and the Legacy of Sayyidina Anas

Here, on the horizon, looking for him, waiting for him, not seeing him, and then retiring back at the end of the day only to get up the next morning and do it again. And then finally he came. Finally he came. And Sayyidina Anas mentions about that day:

The day when the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ entered Medina, أَضَاءَ مِنْهَا كُلُّ شَيْءٍ — everything in Medina lit up. Everything gained a nur to it.

If you ever wondered why we call it Medina Munawwarah — الْمَدِينَةُ الْمُنَوَّرَةُ — this is why. This hadith is the proof of it. That the nur of Medina is from the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ.

The Wisdom of Umm Sulaym

At the time, Sayyidina Anas was only 10 years old. His mother, Umm Sulaym, was a very intelligent person. And I hope that today we can learn from her intelligence.

She brought her son to the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ, and she said, "Take him in your service and make dua for him." And what we see, what we do today, we want our children to have certain things. And for them to accomplish those things, what we do is we place dunya first, and we put the deen later. We as parents, we tell ourselves that right now let them concentrate on the dunya. And then later when they're older, they can come back to the deen. Right now is not the time for deen, they need to excel.

But Umm Sulaym was smarter than this. She came to the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ, she gave her son in his service, and said, "Ya Rasulullah, make dua for him."

And the dua of the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ was no less amazing. He made dua for him: "Ya Allah, give him wealth, give him children, and give him a long life." She brought him with the intention of placing deen before dunya, and the Prophet made the dua of dunya.

The Prophet asked for him to have these things that we all want for our children. We put dunya first for our children thinking that I want my child, my daughter, my son to have a long life, to have wealth and be comfortable, to have children. And we'll put the deen secondary — they can get to that one later.

But Umm Sulaym was more intelligent. She did the reverse, and in doing so, by placing deen first, she secured his dunya and his akhira. Allah mentions:

Whoever wants the fruits of this world, whoever wants the reward of this world — then look to Allah, because with Allah is the dunya and the akhira. When you look towards Allah, when you place the deen of yourself and your children before all else, then you'll get both — dunya and akhira. But if you place the dunya first, then you run the risk of losing the akhira. And Allah warns us:

Understand, have yaqeen, don't have any doubt in this fact — that your wealth and your children are a fitna for you, if they are not in the service of deen. If the deen is not placed first, but rather the dunya is placed first. If your children and your wealth are a means of fulfilling your deen and your akhira, then you'll have both. But if they are a means of fulfilling your dunya alone, and deen is secondary, then know that it is a fitna for you. It will come back as a trial and a tribulation for you.

The Legacy of Sayyidina Anas

Sayyidina Anas, from the time the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ entered Medina till the time that he passed away, spent his time in the service of deen, in the service of the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ. After he صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ passed away, he then spent his time with Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Mu'adh, Abu Talha, and other senior companions, رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ.

And because of that time spent in the company of those type of people, in the service of deen, he became the imam, the qari, the muhaddith, the mufti of this ummah. Such that even today we take his name, and we take his example. It was mentioned about him — meaning Anas رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ — that he was the most resembling of the Prophet in his salah, in his ibadah, and in his akhlaq. Most resembling of Nabi صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ in his akhlaq. The one about whom Allah said:

"O Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ, you are the one with the greatest akhlaq." And because of his time spent, Sayyidina Anas رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ was most resembling of this akhlaq.

The akhlaq, the manners, the character of the Prophet صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ was given by Allah. His tarbiyah was done by Allah. He was his Rabb. And his tarbiyah was such that he would meet people, and he would give them a reason to connect with Allah. He would give them desire to connect with Allah. His were habits that turned people's hearts towards Allah. That turned people towards the obedience of Rabbul Alameen.

Nine Years in His Service

Sayyidina Anas mentioned that I served him for nine years. Nine years I stayed in his company. And during that time, there is not one time, one instance, in which the Prophet said, "Why did you do this?" or "Why didn't you do this?" Because he صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ understood one very important thing — oftentimes we overlook this. We might overlook this with our wives. We might overlook this with our children. We might overlook this with our family, our friends, maybe our co-workers, Muslim or not — it doesn't matter. The Prophet understood people, and he understood their situations.

Everyone has a different situation. Everyone varies throughout generations.

Transformation Through the Quran and Sunnah

We see people — hundreds, if not thousands, if not hundreds of thousands — who through the effect of the Quran and Sunnah, they were transformed. So why not us? Why not us? When we look to the generation after the companions, we see the likes of Abu Hanifa and Hassan al-Basri. And afterwards we see other people in each and every single generation, people standing up and changing their lives, and changing the situation around them. Just as Allah creates living things from non-living things — just as He created Adam from dirt and clay — He gives life to those hearts that are completely dead and hard.

People like Sayyidina Umar, who had huge intrinsic value and potential. Had he never met the Prophet ﷺ, who would he have been? Would we even know him? Of course not. But through that interaction, through accepting the deen of Allah and the company of the Prophet ﷺ, he went from someone who was nobody to someone who is one of the greatest of creation, one of the greatest of rulers, one of the greatest role models for all of mankind.

So again, why not us? We see throughout Islamic history, people who were renaissance men, polymaths — they excelled in science and engineering, in tafsir and Quran, in all of these things at once. This was the effect of deen, raising the hearts and the intellects to a level that could not have been reached had it not been for the effect of deen.

A Generation Disconnected from the Prophet ﷺ

But I have a concern. I'm not from this area, but I imagine it's really not that much different here. That we are raising a generation who hears the name Muhammad ﷺ and they know about him. They might attend a talk on the weekend, or maybe once a month, something that is highly commercialized — banners and flyers, and it'll be a matter of time before we see commercials. Money and fees and big name speakers and big honorariums, entirely commercialized. Where they go and they listen and they hear of the Prophet ﷺ, they know he is the Prophet, they know that Islam is their deen. But they are not connected with the Prophet ﷺ. They are not connected with deen.

They respect him — much like a non-Muslim may respect the Prophet when they hear about the good traits that he ﷺ had. But the love is not there. The attachment is not there. This is not the way of the companions. This is not the way of the predecessors. And this is not a way that's going to continue if we don't do something about it. It is unsustainable.

Our youth, our children — and I would say now, we've been saying "youth" for so many years that when we started saying that, those youth are now adults with their own children. They're grown. We still talk about the youth. But the youth, when I was younger, 20 years ago, and they referred to me as a youth — I'm now married with a job and four children. There are people of my generation who missed out during their youth, and they didn't get it when they became older. We are still walking around, just with a few more decades to our life. So our youth and our adults are becoming alienated from the Prophet ﷺ in large numbers. And they do this without even being immersed in the Sunnah of the Prophet, without even knowing what it feels like to be immersed in the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

We as fathers, we as mothers, we have failed in a sense that we haven't dedicated them to deen. We haven't placed deen first so that they could get their dunya through that.

The Connection of Sayyidina Anas

Sayyidina Anas's dedication to the Prophet ﷺ and to the deen was so strong that later on in his life he would say:

Not a single night goes by except that I see my beloved ﷺ in my dreams.

This is connection. This is love. This is well beyond just respect. This is well beyond just knowing about somebody.

A Du'a for Our Generation

My dua to Allah ﷻ is that He make our country a generation of people like Sayyidina Anas who are immersed in the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ — that they revive the legacy, the prophetic legacy, in this country.

We saw throughout the generations that the knowledge of the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ moved as the years went by. It started in Medina. And then it moved out to Kufa. And then from there eventually went to the southern Russian states, the Caucasus. From there we saw it move further. My hope is that one day it finds its way to this area, and that institutions like this revive the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. So that one day, maybe people after us will look around and say something to the effect of:

That this Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ has lit up and has brought nur to this country. May Allah ﷻ accept this from us. May Allah ﷻ give us tawfiq.