IslamNewcastle

Jumu’ah Khutbah 25th July 2008 @ Masjid At-Tawheed

The Reality of Taqwa

Jumu’ah Khutbah 25th July 2008 @ Masjid At-Tawheed

Muhammad Tim Humble

[Arabic removed]

All praise is for Allah alone. We praise Him, we seek His help, and we ask His forgiveness. We seek refuge with Allah from the evil of ourselves and our bad actions. Whoever Allah guides, there is none who can misguide him, and whoever Allah misguides, there is none who can guide him. And I bear witness that there is no god worthy of worship except Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is his slave and final messenger.

O you who believe! Fear Allah as he should be feared and do not die, except as Muslims.

O mankind! Fear your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah , through whom you demand your mutual rights. Indeed Allah is ever watchful over you.

O you who believe! Fear Allah, and speak a word that is true. He will correct your actions, and forgive you your sins, and whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger, has indeed achieved a great success.

Indeed, the best speech is the speech of Allah, and the best guidance, is the guidance of Muhammad, and the worst of things, are those things which are newly invented [in the religion], and every newly invented matter is an innovation, and every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in the hellfire.

To continue, O servants of Allah! Have taqwaa of Allah The Most High, for indeed taqwaa is the best provision that you can take on your journey of life.

Allah The Exalted says: “And take a provision, and the best provision is taqwaa, so have taqwaa of Me, O people of understanding”

And taqwaa is the key which will get you away from all of your problems. Allah The Mighty and Majestic says: “and whoever has taqwaa of Allah, He will make for him a way out of every difficulty, and provide for him, from where he could never imagine”

And we see every day what people do to get barakah in their lives. Some of them travel to the corners of the earth, some of them pay huge amounts of money, some of them perform rituals for which Allah has sent down no authority. And yet if they only knew that taqwaa is the source of all barakah. Allah The Exalted says:

“And if only the people of the cities had believed and had taqwaa of Allah , We would have opened upon them blessings from the heaven and the earth…”

And taqwaa is the source of knowledge. Allah The Exalted says:

“And have taqwaa of Allah, and Allah teaches you, and Allah knows all things”

And taqwaa is a source of guidance in this world, and a reason for your sins to be forgiven.

“O you believe, if you have taqwaa of Allah , He will grant you a furqaan [something which judges between right and wrong] and will remove from you your misdeeds and forgive you. And Allah is the possessor of great bounty.”

And taqwaa is a source of guidance and in the next world as well, and it is the reason the believers will be saved. Allah says about the siraat, the path over the hellfire, which all of us must walk over:

“And there is none of you except he will come to it. This is upon your Lord an inevitability decreed. Then We will save those who had taqwaa of Allah and leave the wrongdoers within it, on their knees.”

And there are many, many more ayaat in the Qur’aan, which tell us the great virtues and status of taqwaa.

But what is taqwaa?

The scholars have many different definitions of taqwaa, but all of them have a similar meaning.

Taqwaa in the Arabic language means to put a barrier between you and something that you fear.

In Islaam, taqwaa means to put a barrier between you, and Allah’s anger, punishment, and the hellfire.

As we see in the hadith:

“Have taqwaa of the Fire, even with half a date” – meaning, put a barrier between yourself and the fire, even if the only thing you can do is to give half a date in charity”

And from the best explanations of taqwaa, is to say that taqwaa is:

“To act in obedience to Allah, upon a light [of guidance] from Allah, seeking Allah’s mercy. And to leave disobedience to Allah, upon a light [of guidance] from Allah, fearing Allah’s punishment.”

So in effect, taqwaa, has two branches. You do everything that Allah tells you, and you keep away from everything that Allah forbids you, and you do all of this in the way that Allah tells you. This is taqwaa.

And so, we can see that the greatest form of taqwaa, is the most important thing that we have been told to do, and the first command in the Qur’aan:

“O you people! Worship your Lord who created you, and created those before you, so that you may become from those people who have taqwaa.”

And so worshipping Allah alone, is the greatest form of taqwaa, because it is the greatest form of obedience to Allah The Most High.

Just as we find in the hadith of mu’aadh bin jabal – may Allah be pleased with him – which can be found in both Bukhari and Muslim, when he said:

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“I was riding behind the Prophet (peace be upon him) on a donkey, when he said to me: ‘O Mu’aadh!’ Do you know what Allah’s right is upon his servants, and what his servant’s right is upon Him?’ He said:’ I said: Allah and His Messenger know best’ The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Allah’s right upon is servant is that you worship Him and do not commit shirk – do not make any partner with Him -, and the servant’s right upon Allah, is that Allah won’t punish anyone who doesn’t make a partner with Him’. Mu’aadh said: ‘I said: Shouldn’t I give the people the good news?’ The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) replied: ‘Don’t inform them, in case they rely upon it’” – i.e. Become lazy by relying upon this hadith and not acting.

And this hadith introduces us to the second branch of taqwaa – the greatest thing that we have to avoid – shirk. And this is the first prohibition in the Qur’aan. As Allah says:

“So do not make partners with Allah, when you know” – meaning that you know that Allah is the One who created you, and provides for you”

And so we must ask ourselves, having heard these two things, which are the basis of taqwaa, and which opens up for us the door to success and barakah, in this world and the next – we must ask:

What is worshipping Allah? And what does it mean to make partners with Him?

Worship is everything that Allah loves and is pleased with; from statement and action – those things which are hidden (ie in the heart) and those things which are apparent. All of that is worship.

So the things that Allah loves us to say and is pleased with…

Like du’aa

“And your Lord says: Call on me, I will answer you. Indeed, those who are too proud to worship Me will enter hellfire, disgraced”

So in this ayah, Allah calls du’aa worship.

And Allah says:

“And the mosques are for Allah, so do not make du’aa to anyone besides Allah”

And the things that Allah loves us to do and is pleased with…

Like the actions that we do in Salaah, Like Hajj, Like giving charity

And the things that Allah loves us to have in our hearts,

Like fear and hope. As Allah says:

“And do not do mischief on the earth, after it has been set in order, and make du’aa to Him with fear and hope; Surely, Allah’s Mercy is (ever) near unto the good­doers.”

And like love of Allah, and love of those people who Allah loves. As Allah says:

“And of mankind are some who take (for worship) others besides Allah as rivals (to Allah). They love them as they love Allah. But those who believe, love Allah more (than anything else).”

All of these things are forms of worship, as we have seen.

And so we move on to the second question. What is making partners with Allah? Making partners with Allah, is to give anything from Allah’s rights to someone or something else.

Any of those forms of worship that we just talked about. If you make du’aa to someone else, if you pray to someone else, if you fear and love someone else in the way that you should fear and love Allah – such as if you fear someone so much that you think they can harm you, besides Allah, or you love someone so much, you put them ahead of Allah. All of this is giving Allah’s right to someone else, and all of this is shirk.

And so what is the punishment of the person who does this?

If they don’t repent – if they don’t make tawbah before they die…they will never be forgiven, and their punishment is guaranteed. If it is a major form of shirk, that person leaves Islaam, and will reside in the hellfire forever.

Allah says in two places in surah an-Nisaa’

“Indeed, Allah does not forgive you to commit shirk but he forgives less than that for whoever He wills” –

Alcohol, Zinaa, Stealing, Murder – all of these things Allah may forgive if He wills. But Shirk Allah will never ever forgive, unless a person truly repents for it, in this lifetime. And none of us know when we are going to die.

Shirk is so serious – that Allah even said to His beloved Prophet (peace be upon him)

“And Indeed we have revealed to you, and to those before you, if you had committed shirk, we would have destroyed all of your deeds and you would be from the losers”

And this was said to the noble Prophet (peace be upon him), who has good deeds that we could never imagine, so how about us!

All praise is for Allah, and He is deserving of all praise, and peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, and his family, and his companions.

In the first khutbah, we talked about taqwaa, and that taqwaa is to put a barrier between you and Allah’s punishment and anger.

We said that we do this, by doing everything that Allah tells us to do, in the way Allah tells us to do it, and avoid everything that Allah forbids us from doing, in the way that Allah tells us to avoid it.

We said that the greatest thing that we can do to put a barrier between us and Allah’s punishment and anger, is to worship Him alone, and to avoid giving any of his rights to anyone else.

In the final part of this khutbah, I wanted to talk about a very important point relating to taqwaa, if Allah wills.

There is a famous saying:

“How can you fear something you don’t know”

If you don’t know what Allah wants you to keep away from, then how can you keep away from it? And so it is obligatory upon every Muslim to learn about Islam, to learn the limits that Allah has set, to learn what Allah has made halaal and what Allah has made haraam, so that they can do those things that Allah has encouraged, and avoid those things that Allah has made haraam.

And this is the danger of bid’ah – innovation. The innovator, may never ever repent from what he is doing – because he thinks what he is doing is correct!

And we can find a perfect example of this in what Al-Imaam Ad-Daarimee narrated in his Sunan (hadith no. 210, in the chapter: “kiraahiyyatu akhdh-ir-Ra’iy”) with a fair chain of narrators.

The narrator said: “we were sitting at the door of Abdullah ibn Mas’ood – may Allah be pleased with him – before dhuhr prayer, so that when he came out we could walk with him to the masjid, when Abu Musaa Al-Ash’aree – may Allah be pleased with him – came and he said: “Has Abu Abdur-Rahman come out yet?” We said: “No”, so he sat with us until Ibn Mas’ood came out. When he came out we all stood up towards him. Abu Musaa said to him: “O Abu Abdur-Rahman! I have just seen something in masjid I disliked but I didn’t see – and all praise is due to Allah – anything but good.” He replied: “What was it?” Abu Musaa said: “If you live you will see it”. Then he said: “I saw in the masjid a group of people sitting in circles waiting for the prayer. In every circle there was a man, in his hands were stones. He would say: “say Allahu Akbar a hundred times” then the people would say it one hundred times. Then he would say “say laa ilaha illa Allah a hundred times” so they would say it one hundred times. Then he would say “say subhaan Allah a hundred times” and they would say it one hundred times”. Ibn Mas’ood said: “What did you say to them?” Abu Musaa replied: “I didn’t say anything to them until I asked your opinion – or he said: until you told me what to do –“. Ibn Mas’ood said: “Would you not tell them to count their evil deeds and promise them that none of their good deeds would be lost!? Then he went and we went with him until he came to one of the circles when he stopped and said to them: “What is this that I see you doing?”

They said: “O Abu Abdur-Rahman! These are stones that we count our takbeer and tahleel and tasbeeh. Ibn Mas’ood replied: “Count your evil deeds for I promise you that nothing of your good deeds will be lost! Woe to you O ummah of Muhammad! How quick you are to drift into the way of destruction even though the companions of your Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) are present amongst you, and his clothes have not yet worn out, and his vessels have not yet broken. By the One who my soul is in His hand, are you upon a religion more guided than the religion of Muhammad or opening the door of misguidance! They said: “By Allah O Abu Abdur-Rahman we only wanted to do good!” He replied: “How many people who wanted to do good ended up not achieving what they wanted.

Indeed the Messenger of Allah – peace and blessings of Allah be upon him – told us that there will come a group of people who will recite the Qur’aan but it will not go past their throats . By Allah! I don’t know, perhaps most them are from you.” Then he turned away from them.

‘Amr bin Salamah said: “We saw most of the people in those circles fighting against us on the day of An-Nahrawaan with the Khawaarij.”

Allahu Akbar! If this was the only narration that we had on this topic it would be enough for us. These people were doing dhikr, from the highest of actions in the sight of Allah and look what the noble companion Ibn Mas’ood said to them, simply because they were doing it in a different way to the Prophet – peace and blessings of Allah be upon him –. They thought they were getting close to Allah – but they didn’t know they were earning the anger of Allah.

Because they didn’t know how to have taqwaa.

O Allah! We call upon you by Your Perfect Names and Attributes! Grant us the tawfeeq to understand the reality of taqwaa and the tawfeeq to implement it.

O Allah! Guide us and make us guides for the righteous. And grant us the highest place in Jannah, Jannat-ul-firdaws al-‘alaa, and save us from your punishment!

O Allah! Help our Muslim brothers & sisters all over the world! O Allah help our Muslim brothers and sisters in Palestine, and in Iraaq, and in every place. O Allah! Help them and give them patience and make them firm upon the truth.

O Allah! Guide the Muslim rulers to that which you love and are pleased with. O Allah! Give them the tawfeeq to rule by Your book and the sunnah of your Messenger (peace be upon him).

O Allah! You are sufficient for us against our enemies and they cannot escape you. O Allah, turn their plots against them and destroy them, like you destroyed the people who came before them.

O Allah! We have oppressed ourselves, and if You don’t forgive us and have mercy on us, we will be from the losers!

Note: Whatever is in this khutbah from the truth, it is by the grace of Allah, The Exalted. Whatever mistakes are in it are from me. And Allah knows best, and peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his companions.

Muhammad Tim Humble

July 28, 2008 - Posted by abuabdirrahmanhumble | Knowledge Based Articles | friday, khutbah