Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Today's khutbah, it might be a little bit hard for some of us to consume. Maybe it's even hard for some of us to comprehend. Maybe it's hard for some of us to believe in. And you might need to be objective, neutral, and to be able to just detach yourself from your own reality, to be able to see what you're going to see in this khutbah. Numbers don't lie.

As people who live in modern society, where things are based on data, based on information, based on numbers, and calculated and scientific methods, we know that numbers don't lie. They say, "In God we trust, but everybody else must bring their data."

The Example of Ibn Jarir al-Tabari

So let me start with Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, rahimahullah, who died 310 Hijri. Once he told his students, "I would like you to write with me the history of humanity from Adam all the way to our time." So they said to Imam Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, "And how big of a book will that be, that will cover the history of humanity from Adam all the way to our time?" He said, "About 30,000 pages." They said, "We will die before we finish it." He said, "Okay," and he summarized it, and he was able to write it in a little bit over 3,000 pages.

Later on, he said, "I am interested to write the tafsir of the Qur'an, the interpretation of the Qur'an." They said, "And how big of a book will that be?" — knowing that Ibn Jarir al-Tabari is encyclopedic in knowledge. He said, "About the same — 30,000 pages." They said, "We will die before we finish this book." He was upset, disappointed, and he said something that became a very famous statement. He said, "There is nobody anymore who has commitment." Just realize that he had just written with them 3,000 pages of a book about history. And he said, "What kind of people, what kind of students are you? Where is the commitment? Where is the high achievement? Where is the commitment to excellency and to hard work?" And he wrote his tafsir in around 3,000 pages as well.

A Fast-Paced Generation

One of the things that we notice in our time is that we are a fast-paced people. We want everything to be done quickly, fast, with a little bit of effort. To the extent that certain professions are suffering. I was talking to a brother, a professor who is in the medical field, and he is in the business of building medical schools — he helped build about 50 medical schools around the world. This gentleman was telling me, "There is something noticeable now in America: there are not many people who want to be doctors. Not like before." He said, "We have a huge shortage, actually, in the coming doctors versus the outgoing doctors." He said, "That's why we have all these new positions — physician assistants, nurse practitioners — because we have less and less doctors, especially general doctors." Why? Because many of the young people don't have that commitment to stay all these years to study hard to be doctors. It is not an easy thing to achieve. And even those who are willing to do that, they want to be specialists, because they make more money than just being a general doctor. So we have a crisis and a problem actually coming very soon to us.

In any case, it is very clear that we are living in a time when we want things fast, quickly, easy — with the least amount of effort, we want to gain the most amount of reward. And unfortunately, that attitude has affected our relationship with the religion, with Allah, and with Al-Jannah. We think that Al-Jannah too — we want the highest level of Jannah with the lowest amount of effort that we can put in. But that's not how it works in dunya or in the akhirah.

You achieve the highest level when you go beyond what is comfortable, beyond what is easy. That is what distinguishes people. And no doubt the people who deserve Jannah, the people who deserve high levels in Jannah, are the people who are considered distinguished.

Allah told us:

Allah said to us: to race to all that is good. And in another verse, about the believers in Surah Al-Mu'minun, He said:

"And they who give what they give while their hearts are fearful because they will be returned to their Lord — and it is those who hasten to good deeds." يُسَارِعُونَ فِي الْخَيْرَاتِ — that's what made the sahaba understand that concept: that I have to put in an effort.

That's why Al-Hasan al-Basri said, "Whoever competes with you in the dunya, compete with them in the akhirah." Wahb ibn al-Ward said, "If you are able to not let anyone beat you to Allah, then do it. Don't ever let someone beat you when it comes to racing to Allah."

I don't think it ever crossed the mind of anyone of the early generations — imagine if one of them were resurrected and came to our time and saw how we are behaving and acting. They would be in huge shock — not because of technology — I'm talking about the attitude and the culture that we have developed, of laziness, of not caring. And that's scary, because ahead of us are the ten days of Dhul Hijjah. And more important than the ten days of Dhul Hijjah, ahead of you is death, and going to your grave. Doesn't matter how old you are, how healthy you are. Don't deceive yourself with these kinds of excuses.

The Numbers of the Early Generation

What I want to share with you in this khutbah is just a little taste of numbers that reflect what kind of people the sahaba and the early generation used to be — to see their commitment. One time I was talking to someone about this and he said, "Sheikh, what's important is the quality, not the quantity." I said, "Ya Habibi, the reality is there is no quality, there is no quantity — there is nothing. It's just a slogan that we deceive ourselves with."

This is not to make you think less of yourself — as much as it is to make you think that you are capable of so much. The One who created them created you. The One who gave them the abilities has given you abilities. But all it takes is for you to make a determination.

When you read some of these numbers about the early generation — these big numbers that reflect their commitment to the ibadah, commitment to goodness, commitment to righteous deeds and righteousness in general — it is so clear in their life. And I know some people when they hear this kind of thing say, "Oh, is it really true? Is it possible? How can someone pray 300 raka'ah every day? How can someone read the whole Qur'an every night?" And they say, "That's not true, that cannot be possible." Maybe not possible for you. But it is possible.

There is not one, not two, not hundreds — thousands of narrations documenting things of that nature from generations after generations in the early time, and also in our time as well. It is not logically impossible.

Yes, I agree that some of these narrations you will not find in the books of Ahlus Sunnah. You mainly read them in the books of some of the mutasawwifah, the Sufis, the extreme Sufis. They bring things which are unbelievable — things that we can reject just by reading them. "Oh, somebody traveled to Mecca one night and came back." All these kinds of things — yes, we reject them, we don't accept them. "He memorized the Qur'an in one night" — things like this, we don't accept.

But other narrations are true. And other narrations may have a little bit of exaggeration, because numbers in the Arabic language many times do not come to be precise in the way you might think. For example, if somebody said Imam Ahmad used to pray 300 raka'ah — it doesn't mean someone was counting exactly 300, but it means it was a huge, large number of salah. It's not 20, not 30, not 100, not 200. It means a large, large number — it could be 250, 260, 310, around that number. The point is not the actual number. The point of the narration is not the 300. The point is that he prayed a lot.

He for 40 years never missed the first takbirah in the masjid — that doesn't mean he literally never ever got sick or never ever was traveling. The point is that for most of his life, you would always find him in the masjid early. It's like when someone has an employee and at the end of his career says, "For 40 years this employee never let me down." Maybe it happened once or twice, but you don't think of it — you think of the whole.

My brothers and sisters, so many of these things have become hard for us to imagine or even relate to — because it is something that we are not used to. And unfortunately, we're not used to it when it comes to the deen. But when it comes to the dunya, you see around us people who are putting in unbelievable numbers. I know people who work 12 to 13 hours a day, every day, including weekends. Have you heard about these athletes — how much commitment they dedicate to their dunya? If you bring one of the early generations and tell them, "Hey, by the way, do you know that we have today people who spend four hours every day in the gym?" — What? Four hours every day in the gym, religiously.

People will work in very deep holes in the earth digging for minerals, for months and months. People will spend all this time just for the worldly reward. People won't eat and won't sleep just because they want to lose weight. But as Allah said:

"Some of you do things for the dunya, but others do things for the akhirah." And what a big difference.

And I want to tell you — in our modern days, there are a lot of examples that reflect what we read in history. I know personally people, I have known them for the last 30 years of my life, who fast every single day except the Eid. I know people who for more than 20 years have never missed fasting Thursday and Monday — never missed it in their life, for at least 20–25 years. Traveling, not traveling, hot summer, winter, long day, short day — doesn't matter.

A friend of mine — his grandfather, since he retired for 20 years, used to make khatm al-Qur'an every single day. He said, "I testify to that." Some of my teachers used to teach 50 classes a week — some of them 10 classes a day. My own teachers, I witnessed that.

Shaykh Ibn Baz was asked once, "Do you memorize the Qur'an?" He said, "Absolutely. I memorize the Qur'an the same way I memorize Al-Fatihah — every single surah of it." I can tell you, I know friends and teachers and mentors, people older and younger than me, who memorize the six books of hadith — thousands of narrations — the same way they memorize your names or their family's names, every hadith including the isnad.

I asked one of the scholars once — he had memorized a lot of poetry — he said, "I memorized this when I was 8 years old. It's 14,000 lines. When I was 8 years old." So we do have examples. Those who deny the reality of these things that we read about the early generation are completely not in touch with reality.

May Allah give us the determination to do what is good.

Examples from the Early Generations

Obviously, I don't have time to go over all the examples. But for example, when you read about Bilal ibn Sa'd — Al-Awza'i, rahimahullah, said, "I never heard a person, a wa'iz, who moved the hearts when he speaks like Bilal ibn Sa'd." Then Al-Awza'i said:

He used to be so dedicated to the ibadah that nobody can be compared to him. He used to pray a thousand raka'ah every day, between the day and the night.

Imam Ahmad prayed 300 raka'ah every day. And when he was beaten by the government in his time, and his health deteriorated and he became very sick:

He would still pray 150 raka'ah every day.

Then when he became more ill, Abu Ishaq al-Sabi'i, rahimahullah, two years before his death, became so pale and weak. And he used to complain, saying, "I don't have the strength of the old good days." Yet:

He would still read one thousand verses from the Qur'an in the night prayer — right before he died, two years before his death.

Al-Karabisi said, "I prayed with Imam al-Shafi'i, rahimahullah. He used to pray one third of the night — fifty ayat, a hundred ayat — and it would occupy one third of the night. Making beautiful du'a — every verse speaking about Jannah, he would ask Allah to enter him into Jannah, and he prayed for the believing men and women."

Sa'id al-Musayyib said:

"I never missed Takbirat al-Ihram for forty years. I have never seen the back of the neck of the people — I was always behind the Imam in the front row."

Muhammad ibn Sama'ah al-Tamimi said, "For forty years I never missed the first takbirah, except the day my mother died. So I prayed twenty-five extra raka'ah just to make up what I missed in salah."

Umar gave half of his wealth. Abu Bakr gave all of his wealth. Uthman came and:

He poured a thousand dinars — a thousand pieces of gold — in front of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

I checked today what that is equal to in dollars — it is approximately two hundred and forty-three thousand dollars. Almost a quarter of a million dollars. He just poured it in front of the Prophet, peace be upon him. The Prophet turned the gold over and over in amazement — he had never seen that amount of gold. And the Prophet said:

"Nothing will harm Uthman for what he does after this day."

Al-Husayn ibn 'Ali said, "I walked to Hajj twenty times in my life — on my feet." Sa'id ibn Jubayr, who lived in Iraq, made Hajj and 'Umrah every year. Tawus, who lived in Mecca, made Hajj forty times in his lifetime. But what's interesting — Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani, who lived in Damascus, also made Hajj forty times in his lifetime.

Abu Hurayrah used to make 100,000 or 120,000 tasbih every day. Sa'id ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz said, "I said to him — 'Umair ibn Hani:'

"'Umair, your tongue never ceases from the remembrance of Allah."

"How many tasbih do you do every day and night?" He said, "About a hundred thousand."

I can keep going on and on and on — there are tons of examples. Numbers don't lie. That is the type of life, that is the type of commitment.

Closing Reminder

Let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.

May Allah give us the encouragement and the commitment to do what is good, to do what is righteous. May Allah help us to worship Him in the best of manners and to be consistent in it. As the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, the best of deeds is the one that you are consistent in, even if it is small, even if it is little. But don't make even this an excuse for you to do less and less and less.

May Allah grant us freedom from weakness and oppression in every place. May He protect our religion, our life, our security, our safety, and may He protect our families. O Lord of the worlds, correct our offspring, forgive our parents and the believers — the living and the dead. O Allah, grant the Muslims their choice, and grant us our choice. And correct those whom You have chosen, O Lord of Glory and Honor. And may Allah send peace and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon his family and his companions. May Allah have mercy on you.