Selective Islam - A Khutbah by Nouman Ali Khan

today's khutbah is about a few ayats that belong to bani israel but before i discuss some of the lessons that i'd like to share with you and remind myself of with you of those ayat i wanted to go over something that belongs to a different surah this is in surat al-baqarah but the ayah that i wanted to start off with today is in surah al-hadid the 57th surah of the quran poses a question to the believing community and it's a very hard question he says isn't it time yet for those who've believed that their hearts should tremble and their heart should be filled with awe with the remembrance of allah and they should not become like those who were given the book from a long time ago meaning the israelites the jewish community the torah and the christians they shouldn't become like those who were given the book a long time ago a long period passed over them their hearts became hard and most of them or a huge number of them are corrupt or they've become corrupt i wanted to share with you that allah azzawajal mentions that those who have received the book a believing community something can happen to them after a long period passes they can deteriorate and they can become rusty literally allah describes that your heart should be filled with the remembrance of allah not like those who were given a book and they had the book for thousands of years they had them for they had it for a long long time their hearts became hard and there's something that there's a relationship between the remembrance of allah and the hearts becoming hard but there's also a reality that people who claim to believe people who have received revelation from allah like us today we have received revelation from allah that we are in a very real danger that our hearts will become hard even though the quran is in our hands and it's being recited by our tongues and we're hearing it in the prayer and we're engaged in the ritual worship of islam and yet at the same time our hearts have become disconnected from this deen and our hearts have disconnected themselves from allah we feel nothing inside and take isn't it yet time that you started feeling something basically the question that's being asked is why isn't something inside you rattled when you remember allah and why and he's warning you and me that we don't become like those who came before us who the same thing happened too what i want to start off with today is one of those people the israelites who allah talks a lot about and allah describes what he gave them what is it that he gave them and in baqra allah describes that their hearts became hard even more he says he compares them to rocks or even stiffer than rock right so there allah described the essence of what they were given in their book the summary of their entire book and the remarkable sunnah of allah is in many ways that the summary that was given to the israelites the torah the essential teachings of torah are no different than the essential essential teachings of the quran the fundamental message is the same which is why when allah gave his messengers he said it's confirming what's already there ahead of him in the torah it's not something new it's a reaffirmation of what was already taught but since so many of the fundamental teachings were lost allah decided to bring it back to the basics now some things about jewish law if you don't know which is similar to araf in many ways is that it's got thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fatawa you know like every single issue how should you sit how should you stand when should you eat when should what should you pray you know the dietary laws the clothing laws the marriage laws the divorce laws and every law with lots and lots and lots and lots of details so there's literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands of issues in their fit just like there are in ours i mean it's an exhaustive volume of stuff so allah is going to do in his eloquence he's going to take one or two ayat in this case one ayah and essentially mention the heart of the matter and i want to compare this for you the human body is made up of many things there and every one of them is very intricate just studying how the finger works is an intricate thing there are lots of joints inside blood vessels inside veins inside muscles inside and each one of them is extremely intricate but if you want to talk about the essence of life that's the heart or maybe the heart and the brain these are the essential components other parts are there they're valuable but they're only alive because these things are functioning you understand so really the heart and soul of the matter is going to be discussed by allah which gives everything else life now a person whose heart stops working that's on the inside the heart stopped working and they're lying from a distance you can't tell if they're dead or sleeping the hands are still there the body's still there the face is still everything is still there from the outside it looks exactly like any other person but on the inside because this is gone everything is gone and because the mind isn't there the brain stopped functioning everything is dead it's no longer functioning this is not a functional human being so what i'm trying to get at when allah says the hearts became hard when he says for the people before us that their hearts became hard that means everything else in the religion even though it looked like they're practicing the religion is dead is of no value that's just artificial it's just like a corpse they're literally like a corpse and so if that happens to you and me that we're muslim that we say allah's name that we pray that we make dua that we make zikr that we recite the quran but the heart inside dies then everything else outside becomes an artificial corpse that others might see as alive but allah knows better what's going on inside the hearts so we beg allah not to make us of those whose hearts have become hard so now allah this when he's going to describe the fundamental religion in this ayah for the israelites what he's basically teaching us is what are the things that keep you your heart from dying because if you hold on to these fundamentals then your heart will not die and if your heart will not die everything else in islam everything else that allah and his messenger want from you is going to fall into place but if this isn't there everything else is pointless everything else is just superfluous so what is this essential thing he says he says he took a contract from the israelites an agreement you're not going to be enslaving yourselves worshiping anyone other than allah you've heard this a million times but let's dig into this a little bit what does it mean to worship allah what does it mean to enslave yourself to allah the more you get to know allah the more it should change you and me the more you learn about him the more it changes me and i want to give you some practical you know how does that work when you get to truly appreciate that allah is worthy of all praise then you no longer seek praise yourself you're no longer interested in praise anymore it changed you because you internalize that alhamdulillah it belongs to him so i don't need validation by people's praise now it's his entire his giving when you understand allah is al-aziz is the owner of all dignity and all authority then you're not looking for respect from anywhere else if it comes it comes but it only came because allah wanted it to but what allah has given you nobody can take away when you and i internalize deeply internalize allahu akbar that he is greater than you and you and i internalize that we're not so great that we're not we don't need to prove ourselves to anybody it's a it's a check in on our own humility it brings us to puts us in our place when you and i realize allah is maliki o madin he's the master of judgment day every time you learn something about allah he's the owner of all justice then you get really scared of his justice and you start act if he's so just and he's let me then i'm not free rome i could i can't just do however i please when you recognize that allah is loving caring merciful kind and then he's given so much love care and mercy to you then how is it that allah can be al-rahman to me and i can be vladim to someone else that i could i could be oppressive to somebody else i could be you know cold towards somebody else this is going it's every time you you and i learn something about allah our relationship with allah evolves our ibadah to allah evolves so it is this constantly growing and by the way these things they become rusty just because you know hammond belongs to allah you learned that in this khutba or you hurt you thought about it for a few seconds that doesn't mean that eight hours from now you're going to be thinking that i don't need validation that i don't need praise you and i need reminder we need to review these teachings that needs to come back and hit us again and again and again and the most effective way that that will hit us is actually allah's words themselves which is why he says isn't it yet time that their hearts and that their hearts became filled with ah by the remembrance of allah and so many of the sahabah commented the remembrance of allah is the quran itself when every few hours i stand in prayer i stand up there and i say alhamdulillah everything that i'm saying every one of those ayat that i'm saying has a reaction it does something to my ibadah i'm he's going to be the one that's worthy of praise and by the way that also means whatever i'm going through doesn't take anything away from his praise no matter how many problems i have you see somebody you know we ask each other hey how's it going you're like yeah alhamdulillah but you know like we say alhamdulillah like i got problems what can i say i'm supposed to say alhamdulillah but i don't really feel it i feel the problems i don't feel the hum when i'm standing in front of allah leaving everything behind and i sin and i say with full conviction all praise and gratitude belongs to allah then what i'm saying is no matter what problems i'm going through i know one thing for sure this could have been way worse and i'm praising allah that it's not this could have been way way worse and allah is not putting me through something that's a that's a punishment it's always a trial it's always a test and the test is only there for my improvement just like in any any training when you're put through a test it's just there to make you stronger that's all it's there for and so you stand in front of allah and you praise him and he decides the test you're not the authority you don't decide why am i being tested this way why couldn't it be a different kind of test why couldn't it be he is and why is he being so harsh to me no he's not he's and i don't care anymore i don't care about this test maliki omideen do you not care you're going to stand in front of him he's going to judge what you did well i don't know how to do this on my own fine i'll try my best but i can't do it on my own what do you say help i can't do it myself it's an entire conversation with allah about my daily struggle just in the fatiha allah says to the israelites the first thing you must do is fix that bond with allah that conversation with allah when that happens then it affects all the other relationships around you and all the other relationships around me so when the relationships around me are there's something wrong with them then there's first something wrong between me and allah and that's creating something wrong around me now there's two kinds of things people do wrong to you and sometimes you do wrong to people and i've given you plenty of talks about when other people do wrong to you this is about myself when i am doing wrong to somebody else how am i supposed to think about this because you know always always we are programmed to think about what somebody else did to us and they may have done things to us not taking that away but we have to now become people of introspection also somebody else doing wrong to you doesn't justify you doing wrong to somebody else those are two separate things and allah addresses both of those things the problem however is when we become people of extremes when we discuss one thing and not the other and you know for example every time i'll give a talk about the rights of parents children will get upset and say you didn't you never said anything about abusive parents who abuse the rights of their kids how come where's our rights and if i talk about children whose rights are being ignored parents say you know you keep putting parents down what about our respect how about some respect everybody's looking for self-service and we're going to come to that in a second allah says he says be the very best you can be make the best of what you can with the relationship with both your parents close relatives orphans masaki and then those who can't help themselves in other words not be perfect not everybody's situation is the same but whatever situation you find yourself try to do the best you possibly can if you at the end of the day can say this is the best i could possibly do you did so even though that's not my khutba i want to give you that qualifier because that's an important you know a disclaimer that's necessary allah is not expecting everyone to be exactly the same with all of their parents my parents are a blessing to me alhamdulillah somebody else's parents are a huge trial for them they're not the same it's not the same somebody's siblings are the best thing that ever happened to them and somebody else's siblings is like it happens not every family is the same allah is not expecting the same exact behavior from everyone what allah is expecting though is you know what that means it means what's the very best you can do in your situation i'll tell you something i may have mentioned before a friend of mine had a terrible relationship with his mother and you know in islam how much allah talks about the mother how good you have to be to your mother how we can never thank our mother how she gave us birth and how she you know she almost died giving and and the the favors of her and the acknowledgement of her in the quran is remarkable and in the sunnah of the prophet saw it's so remarkable the status of the mother everybody here knows if you know nothing else about islam you know how how high up mom is you know that you know and then he had a terrible relationship with his mother not because of him because she was extremely abusive and she tortured him mentally psychologically even physically sometimes to the point where he developed like a major anxiety and started having panic attacks and even started developing seizures so if when he would be in the company of his mom he'd literally start foaming at the mouth and pass out like that happened multiple times to him because of the things his mother says and the way she abuses him verbally and he feels that he has to keep going back to go talk to his mom because he doesn't want to burn in hell because you know if i go if i don't go back to mom then allah will be angry at me because you you don't have to be the best to your mom you know and so what what am i supposed to do and i told him and i say this with a clean conscience in his case the best he can do is stay away from his mom take care of her rights take care of her needs but you cannot do that at the expense of you being abused yourself if that was the case ibrahim is in an abusive environment where his father is committing shirk he's not there to just stay at home and i'm just going to be with you no matter what when he kicks him out he leaves he's he's gone not everybody's circumstance is the same but anyway that's a side note with your relatives with you know the the need the orphans the needy you do the very best that you can given your circumstances you have to do a full assessment of what your circumstances maybe even get some outside help but to expect that we all have to be perfect in every relationship and everybody's expected the same standard that is just not our deen that's just not islam okay in any case after having said this allah describes the next step for the israelites and by the way this was it if you have your relationship with allah good and as a relationship and as a result you're trying to do the best you can within the close family that's the next item right so first you're deeply connected with allah and you're trying to do the very best you can within close family then what's next then what's next is then speak to people in good the best way you can say good and beautiful things to people if you don't have something good to say in public don't say it if you don't have something beneficial to offer then don't just keep your mouth shut only say beautiful things lin nas actually by the way means two things in the arabic language say good things to people and also means say good things about people that's that became a fundamental by the way you know what that means every time you don't your heart gets harder every time you don't it affects you not someone else you would think your words are affecting somebody else they're affecting you they're affecting me when we're talking about somebody else when we're talking to somebody else in other than nice or kind ways you know now and then he says establish the prayer give zakah you would think when allah says worship only me the number one item should be pray number two item should be give zakat he says no first item take fix your relationship with me and before you understand what that truly means know that when your heart becomes soft towards allah it will naturally become soft towards the people around you and then and true and to make sure it stays that way establish the prayer meaning the salah is a means by which your ibada to allah will be reinforced and your goodness to others will be reinforced if you're standing there in prayer and you're annoyed with your wife because she's there's too much noise coming from the kitchen and ruin your salat or something or if you're standing in salah and kids are running around you're like as soon as i'm done i'm gonna you know how is your heart become soft what is that what did you just do the outside of the prayer was all there but the heart hasn't softened what is that compared to the messenger of allah who can stop in the middle of a khudba for a crying child what islam is this this is the islam where the heart is hard and only the outside is left and when that happens when the heart becomes hard not only will the ummah become harsh you'll become harsh towards close relationships then the harshness then the harshness of the tongue will come you'll speak harshly to other people or about other people and eventually the heart becomes so hard that even what happened to the israelites it became so hard that they were willing muslim was willing to kill another muslim allah had to reveal you will not be killing each other you will not be killing your own people you will not be kicking them out from your own homes unimaginable a believer would kill another believer it's not so unimaginable for us today so much of the violence that's happening in the ummah is not happening at the hands of outside forces some other invading force so much of the killing that's happening in the umma today's two people both of them who claim allah and what's even wild while all of this is happening the people who speak harshly like they hate this group this group is they're not even muslim they're kafir and this one says no they're not muslim they're you're both praying you're taking the same prayer break and after prayer break and then going to kill each other again and while you're both doing this you're quoting the same reciting the same quran praying to the same allah you're doing all of that and we say how come there's such crazy violence in the ummah and i'll take a step back it doesn't just come out of nowhere first is the heart that becomes hard then it's the close relationships that become stiff then the tongue becomes harsh and all of that evolves eventually into bloodshed that evolves into bloodshed it doesn't just come out of nowhere so when we don't soften when our tongues don't soften when our relationship with allah and our close relationship doesn't fix when we don't do that stuff then we don't get to complain that there are some people killing each other because we're part of that cycle we're part of that same chain of process they're just the most extreme end of it but there's a lighter version that we're culprits of that's the progression in this ayat and in the in the midst of those ayat allah said do you believe in some parts of the book and deny other parts of the book so this is the part that i really wanted to talk to you about and conclude with one of the indications that the heart has become truly hard and that religion is now only artificial i told you know the core of our religion is ibadah and ibadah means everything you learn about allah impacts you and some your personality your thinking your feelings in some way that's ibadah at the end of the day allah is the most giving you become the most grateful that's how that works allah is the provider then you you're careful with what he provided allah is the judge you're not going to cross his lines when that relationship is not there anymore then what happens there there are lots of crazy extremes that happen allah says you believe in some parts of the book and you believe other disbelieve other parts of the book how does somebody do that nobody comes and says by the way i love this surah i believe in this next surah no i'm a kafir of that surah nobody does that nobody does that nobody said i like ayah number 35 i believe aye number 36 though nah not happening nobody does that and what this what is this kufr you know what this is then you decide what parts of the religion are suited for you and what parts of the religion i can just ignore they're not um it's not my thing that's just not my thing and so people do this in different ways for some people the outside of the religion the length of the beard is really important the head cover is really important that you have to wear a shavarkamis or a thobe or something and those are those are islamic clothes and i'm wearing kafir clothes right now and i'm you know because i'm not covering my head according to and there's a behind it that's not i'm not discussing it but because of this i'm not as islamic as some other people or somebody else or this guy doesn't even have a beard la hola or that one doesn't wear hijab you know what kind of hijab is that look there's a hair sticking out in your own you know the outside the appearance and where did you when you go to somebody's house where did you get the chicken did you guys from zabiha place how's the biz does it we have place did you do an exhaustive background check of the butcher did you find out where he was born and how many animals he's killed so far and does he pronounce bismillah properly or not because if not i'm not eating here i'll just have the salad and i'll go this is the this is their islam checking the ingredients on every ice cream packet so make sure you're not eating haram but when it comes to giving mahar to the wife when it comes to giving the inheritance these same same same long beard same hijab same super halalified everything else when it comes to money i don't know where that islam went where did it go it just disappeared all of a sudden when it comes to speaking kindly to people when it comes to not backbiting against others when it comes to not putting someone down when it comes to not slandering somebody it just disappeared so in some things extremely islamic looking and other things that's worse than any kafir would ever do whatever justice kindness mercy forgiveness softness and speech they only come when a heart is soft but the outside appearance and impressing somebody with your religious you know you can quote stuff you even know arabic you could quote that stuff and look religious that stuff anybody can do anybody can do that abu jahl spoke really good arabic he was really good the the leader of the munafi queen abdullah ibn away he gave epic speeches man his arabic was way better than mine way better so you want to just quote arabic and you feel like you're more religious that's not what makes somebody religious knowledge doesn't make you more religious appearance doesn't make you more religious it doesn't make you a better person but for some people that's essentially islam and everything else is and if somebody doesn't look that way then you judge them and you you don't even judge yourself over the wrong things you're doing in your life in the way you're dealing with people even in the way that the prayers have become you know you're praying perfectly you're like according to my school of thought the hand should be here or here or wherever they are and the entire prayer you're looking at the guy's hands next to you whose hands are a little bit lower like and as soon as salah is done bro your roku was just not 90 degrees it was more like you know you need to fix your where where was your heart your heart was not in rakuwa your heart was not why are you checking somebody else's prayer what's wrong with you when did that happen this is a heart that is not overwhelmed by the remembrance of allah on the other side is the other extreme people that say no no no i'm not that religious i don't want to be like these people they all look religious but you know really they're just just they're just scum and they they're cheaters and liars and all of that i don't want to deal with them et cetera et cetera i know what they're all like et cetera fine you're not islamic you call yourself normal i don't want to be the i don't want to be the religious type cool good for you except when it's to your advantage so when your son is acting up you start quoting you know in islam you have to be good to your mom what when did islam just mom just got religious no mom didn't get religious just religion served her purpose right now so she quoted it or the husband who doesn't even pray drinks whatever else you know abusive and the wife speaks up you know in islam women are supposed to be obedient islam really you islam when do you quote islam when it's going to when you can slap somebody with it this is there will be people that are have lived a completely non-religious life and then they're going they're going through a divorce and i've seen cases like that are going through a divorce and uh you know in the in the western courts it's like the women and men they get 50 50 right but sharia court is going to give you more money so he becomes religious during the divorce and says i'm going to go to sharia court because i don't want her to have masha'allah now this this part of the shadiyara is very beloved to me everything else who cares who cares this is but let's take a deeper look let's take a take a look at ourselves what have we become if i am truly if i truly acknowledge this about myself and you acknowledge this about yourselves if we don't become people that when we pray when we stop and pray and we recite allah's words that we don't give up our own pride ego insistence addiction you and i have certain sins we're doing some things wrong and we don't want to let go of that wrong we're afraid of letting it go it's too dear to us it's too sweet to us it's too too compelling to us and when we're standing in front of allah we're telling ya allah i'm willing to pray for you i'm willing to recite quran i'm willing to do all this other good but let me just hold on to this sin i don't want to let go of this okay i'll make up for it with all this other good stuff somebody who earned a single sin but and that mistake took a hold of him it surrounded him like you start negotiating with allah i'll give you all this other ibadah but this one two three haram things let me just hold on to them okay i'm not dealing with that i'm not i'm not even you know at first you maybe even make a stefan for it eventually you stop even making a stepfather for it allah knows how i am at least i do all this other good stuff this is believing in some parts of the book rejecting denying ignoring other parts of the book and so i conclude with the scary conclusion that allah himself gives may allah protect all of us he says he says what should be the conference compensation for somebody who does that among you accept humiliation in this worldly life and on the day of resurrection they will be taken rejected and taken back to the most intense of all punishment in other words there's jahannam and there's the worst of jahannam this is the worst of jahannam and allah is not at all unaware of the things that you do why is allah making such a harsh punishment punishment for these people there's quran attacking the prophet saw islam they're making war against the muslims why don't they get a shaddullah why are these people getting the worst of all punishment why because these people are supposed to be believers they're supposed to be ambassadors of allah's deen when they take part of the book and they reject other parts of the book they make the book itself look ugly they make islam look ugly and for so many other people who could have come to islam when they see their behavior they walk away from islam as a matter of fact even their own young their own younger generation says my parents acted in this way my uncles acted in this way they were religious in this this but look at how they behaved in this this and this i want nothing to do with islam you were the reason to push shaitaan's agenda onto your own to spread kufr within your own what bigger crime is there and so allah says allah and allah is not at all unaware of what you people do you know you i i am compelled to give this because as i speak to people people write to me they reach out to me via social media about whatever problems they're going through and i cannot begin to tell you how many times people have said because of how my family behaved towards me because of how my in-laws behave towards me because of how my siblings behave towards me my parents behave towards me my children behave towards me i don't even want anything to do with islam i don't even know what god's doing mahalo like they start questioning deen itself because of how they were these are religious people they treated me like this how can that be so allah says people like that deserve the worst punishment you know radhoon allah not make us from those people i know i've taken over my time within a minute i'll be done i just want to share with you how allah himself concludes this passage he says those are the people that have purchased worldly life and given away the afterlife why did he say that because when people do that when people take some parts of the religion and ignore other parts of their religion for whatever reason i've mentioned a variety of reasons in this khutbah when people do that then they do that because they want something to gain in this world whether it's control whether it's their own agenda whether it's some greed whether it's some lust only quote parts of the religion that serve your cause in this life well then that's all you want from the religion is you want something to be served in this life you do not come to the quran and the sunnah of the prophet sallam so that you can earn allah's favor in the next life you're only coming to it because it serves you in some way in this life then allah says fine that's all you're going to get then that's all that's all you want that's all you'll get may allah azzawajal make us of those that are at the service of this deen and do not force the deen of allah to be at the service to us

Channel: Bayyinah Institute

Views: 215,013

Rating: 4.9127769 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 8ebg4aM58So

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 22 2018