The Good Deed That Ruins You

The Good Deed That Ruins You

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

We bear witness that Muhammad ﷺ is his final Messenger. We ask Allah to send his peace and blessings upon him, the Prophets and Messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him, and those that follow in his blessed path until the Day of Judgement. We ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahuma ameen.

The Story of Al-Imam Al-Shirazi and His Father

Dear brothers and sisters, Al-Imam al-Shirazi رَحِمَهُ اللَّه has this profound story with his father. And you can see the way that these scholars were raised with both ilm and adab — they were raised with both knowledge and manners, and they took so much more than the textual inheritance that came to them.

He says that one night my father and I were awake and we were praying qiyam al-layl. How beautiful when a father and son stand up and pray qiyam together — everything you'd want in terms of a righteous household: a parent and a child standing up and praying at night.

He said that he was a young man and he looked around and recognized that they were amongst the few that were up and praying. The people in the neighborhood, the people around, were all sleeping. So he said to his father:

"None of these people wanted to even wake up and pray two rak'ahs" — as if to say, look at us and look at them. Alhamdulillah, we're awake and we're praying and look at all of these people. None of them are up to pray two rak'ahs at night.

And his father said to him:

"Oh my son, if you would have slept, it would have been better than you waking up." He said: "I would have preferred that you stayed sleeping and not fall into وُقُوعِكَ فِي الْخَلْق — not fall into this disrespect and this disregard of the creation of Allah — than for you to wake up and develop this pride."

It is a powerful narration, a powerful story. It would have been better for you to stay asleep and not pray than to wake up with pride in the way that you look at those around you.

The Two Sides of Pride

The last khutbah that I gave was about refusing advice out of pride — the opposite side of that. The sinner who is open with their sinning, and someone points out the obvious in regards to their sin.

Pride stops them from disregarding that sin — not because they question whether the sin is sinful, but because they don't like the person giving the advice or they don't like the way the advice was given to them. And so their pride doesn't allow them to forsake that sin. They insist upon that sin. أَخَذَتْهُ الْعِزَّةُ بِالْإِثْمِ.

But what about the worshipper or the religious person who takes pride in their religiosity and loses themselves in that pride?

SubhanAllah, when you're talking about open sin becoming prominent, obviously the greatest risk of that is the normalization of that sin. And then if the sin is normalized, the propagators of evil become emboldened in their propagation of evil, and then the ignorant at some point get lost in between — they don't even know anymore what the standard of sin is.

But just as we have to protect ourselves from becoming desensitized to those sins, we have to protect ourselves from discarding the sinners. And subhanAllah, when you look back in the early books, it's always interesting to me how innocent the examples that are given are. Back then, what was open sinning? In those societies — especially the societies of the Tabi'een and the generation that followed — open sin was not a thing. The idea of open lewdness was not a thing. What they saw as open sinning was a person who doesn't come to the masjid, or a person who doesn't frequent the halaqat al-dhikr — the circles of knowledge and the circles of the remembrance of Allah — and who was seen to be more prominent in the marketplace, and maybe their tongue used to slip a bit more. That was their idea of the open sinner.

And so now that exposure — people exposing themselves and people becoming exposed — becomes so much more frequent. We have to have this heightened sense of protection for ourselves, for our own hearts.

I'm going to stop you from cutting me off right now by thinking, "Well, I'm not the perfect worshipper myself," because we don't really have these molds anymore. There isn't simply "the religious person" and "the non-religious person." You could develop pride because of one deed that you have. And the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 265)

Whoever has one atom's worth of kibr in their hearts — one atom's worth of pride — will not enter into Jannah. So it might be just the idea that you pray Jum'ah and someone else doesn't pray Jum'ah, that you've developed this disease of kibr in one regard, and an atom's worth of that pride is enough to ruin a person. You comparing yourself in the relative sense — your good deeds to someone's sins, your concealed sin versus someone's open sin.

It doesn't have to be the perfect mold of the student of knowledge, mashAllah, the person who comes to the halaqas and the masjid, versus the person who's going wild on social media. There are a lot of layers in between those two things. It also affects every age. The older person could be looking at some of the gatherings and thinking of this person that does this and that person that does that. So it doesn't fit a particular mold when it comes to this condemnation we can carry in our hearts — this disease in our hearts that could lead us to start looking down upon people in some regard. There are many layers of that.

Imam Ibn al-Qayyim on the Spiritual Disease of Pride

I wanted to read a portion from Imam Ibn al-Qayyim رَحِمَهُ اللَّه on the spiritual disease. He says, starting off:

Any sin that you taunt your brother for, know that it will come back to you. And he mentions that the Prophet ﷺ was narrated to have said:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2505)

Whoever taunts his brother with a sin will not die until Allah tests them with committing that exact same sin. So beware of taunting your brother or sister.

And he went on to say — an important clarification — that Imam Ahmad رَحِمَهُ اللَّه said regarding the interpretation of this hadith:

This means a sin that that person had already repented from. Especially when you're talking about the repenter who has forsaken a sin — you may be taunting them for a sin that Allah has already forgiven them for, or may forgive them for later when they repent, or through His mercy forgives them anyway. But Allah does not forgive you for your mockery of that person in that regard.

The Sin of Gloating Over Another's Sin

He also speaks about الشَّمَاتَة — this idea of insulting, of putting someone down — when they are in the state of that sin, even if you're not taunting them directly. And he says, as was also narrated from the Prophet ﷺ:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2506)

Do not show that disgrace, that insult towards your brother, because it may be that Allah will have mercy upon them and Allah will test you instead.

And he continues to say:

Your mocking of your brother or your taunting of your brother or sister when they are in that sin is worse than the sin that they are committing in the first place. Meaning the sin of your mockery, the sin of your backbiting — and we're not even talking about slander, things that are untrue — but the sin of putting someone down, making fun of someone, taunting someone, mocking them for a sin they are committing is greater than their sin. The sin of your اسْتِهْزَاء, the sin of your mockery, is far worse.

The Broken Sinner Versus the Arrogant Worshipper

And he goes on to say — because the scholars spoke about our spiritual beings, not just our outward outputs:

He said: It may be that that person's brokenness — and what has come to them of humiliation that caused them to relinquish any feeling of pride, that affects the people of worship — they feel low, and in their lowness that led them to bow their heads and regret before Allah, broken-hearted, flowing tears — that is far better and more beneficial than your proud worship that you repeat habitually, that you boast about before Allah and His creation, as if you are owed some sort of position and some sort of rank.

فَمَا أَقْرَبَ هَذَا الْعَاصِيَ مِنْ رَحْمَةِ اللَّهِ وَمَا أَقْرَبَ هَذَا الْمُدِلَّ مِنْ مَقْتِ اللَّهِ — So how close is this sinner to the mercy of Allah, and how close is this worshipper — this arrogant worshipper — to the anger and the punishment of Allah.

SubhanAllah. Beautiful words. And he says:

The meaning of which is: a sin that humbles you and brings you closer to Allah is far better than a good deed that takes you away from Allah and yields arrogance, or causes you to humiliate someone else.

For you to go to sleep at night and not wake up and pray a single rak'ah, but wake up with regret in the morning, is far more beloved to Allah than for you to wake up and pray at night, and then when the morning comes you are filled with pride.

And he says something so beautiful:

The groaning of the sinner — the tears, the weeping, the groaning — is far more precious to Allah than the humming of the arrogant worshippers. That emotional outpouring of regret is so much more beloved to Allah than the worshipper who hums in congregation with a sense of arrogance and pride and does not come back to Allah.

And it might be that through this thing that Allah has tested this person with, it was a medicine. That sin was a medicine by which Allah removed a disease from that person — a disease that is still present within you and you just don't know it. That sin could have been a medicine for that person; that Allah removed a fatal spiritual disease — and that spiritual disease is in you and it just has not been diagnosed yet.

There are secrets — between the worshipper and the open sinner, the student of knowledge and the person who is openly ignorant and heedless — secrets that we all have that no one knows except Allah. The only difference between their sin and yours is that their sin is open and your sin is concealed. But the ranks are only known to Allah. The good deeds of that person — that sinner — are only known to Allah.

The Story of the Alcoholic Neighbour

There is a powerful story of one of the Salihin, and I'll end with this because it is so profound when you talk about not knowing what the other person has. You're in this masjid right now looking around — who's here, who's not. Start looking and scrolling through people's social media feeds: "Oh, there they go again." This is a very powerful story.

One of the Salihin — one of the righteous scholars, and it is attributed to Abu Hanifa رَحِمَهُ اللَّه, though there is no verified chain to him — had a neighbour who was known for being an alcoholic. When that neighbour passed away, the wife of that neighbour asked this scholar to come and pray the janazah. The scholar abstained — because the man was an alcoholic. And we have some guidance and some legislation for this, by the way; the spirit of which is that when you want to discourage people from a major sin, sometimes the imam or someone of importance could respectfully abstain from the janazah just to dissuade people from the sin that person was known for — while the janazah is still prayed and forgiveness is still sought. There is some basis for this, of course.

But the moral of the story is that the scholar abstains, and then he sees a dream at night. He sees this man walking in Jannah and enjoying the fruits of al-Jannah. And the man is saying:

"Say to him: Alhamdulillah — Jannah is not in his hands. Tell that man that Jannah is not in his hands. The keys of Jannah are not in his hands."

So the scholar goes to the wife of this person and he asks her — sharing this dream — what is it about this man, her husband who passed away, that he was missing? And she says:

"He is as you saw him." He was an alcoholic. He had this problem. He was indeed struggling with this sin.

"The only thing is that on Fridays — every Friday — he would go and feed the orphans of his neighbourhood. He would accompany them, spend time with them, and he would cry and say: 'Make du'a for your uncle. Make du'a for your sinful uncle.'" And it may be that Allah answered the du'a of one of those orphans.

The Lesson: Guard Your Own Heart

We do not know the ranks of people, and you have to actively protect your eyes. It all goes back to: focus on yourself. Focus on your flaws. Hear everything in the capacity of: how can I better myself?

This is not "don't judge the sin." This is: don't pass final judgment on the sinner. We don't lose the status of the sin in Islam. We know what a major sin is. We know what open fahisha is, open wickedness is, and open lewdness is, and it is condemnable. And the Prophet ﷺ indeed said that Allah will forgive all of the sins except the ones that are boasted about.

But be careful when you let your eye wander and come across your brother or sister whom you think is deficient in relation to you in one regard — and internally, even in a private conversation with yourself, you think: "I'm better than that person." It takes one atom's worth, dear brothers and sisters. One atom's worth. And in order to make sure that one atom's worth does not settle in the heart, it takes an entire intentionality every single day of focusing on your own sinfulness and your own station with Allah.

May Allah forgive our brothers and sisters and forgive us for the sins that are open and the sins that are concealed — the major and the minor sins. May Allah allow us all to collectively be pleasing to Him. May Allah purify from us the sins that create a barrier between us and Him, and protect us from the delusion that causes even our good deeds to become a barrier between us and Him. Allahumma ameen.

Second Part of the Khutbah — Du'a

وَعَلَيْكُمُ السَّلَام