Abdal Hakim Murad – Allahu Akbar Eid alAdha Sermon
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This day, this joyful day, this day of
Eid,
this festival time
is for us
the commemoration
of what is the essence
of
the freedom that religion brings.
The world today is all about freedoms of
various kinds,
rights
of all sorts.
But what is the true freedom?
The real horeah.
It is the hariyah that recognizes
that we are Ibad,
slaves to Allah alone.
That his command alone
binds
us. That his command alone
is trustworthy.
On this great
day, we hear the takabir,
from this side and from that.
The Hajjis,
a hoarse with crying,
the Takbir.
The Takbir
is the joyful chant
of the 'id.
The Takbir
predominates in the prayer of the Eid
and in the Khutba of the Eid.
Allahu Akbar.
Two simple words,
but the meaning is total.
Islam is the religion of Takbir.
Now normally,
with a word
that is in the comparative mode, as the
grammarians say, we need it to be compared
to something.
I am smarter than you.
This building is nicer than that building. Allahu
Akbar
is greater than what?
The believer
doesn't need to complete that sentence.
Greater than all things.
Greater than me, greater than you, greater than
this spinning planet,
greater than the cosmic symphony of galaxies and
nebulas,
greater,
unimaginably
greater,
beyond outside creator, master of time and space,
Allahu Akbar.
And the Hajj and this aid are the
time when we remember this.
When Allah
in his infinite mercy,
Artem al Rahimin,
is telling us, say this
and mean it.
Let it be in your heart.
Let it be in your heart.
Allah is greater,
but in our lives,
there are so many other things that seem
to distract us from his
due.
We are neglectful in our prayers.
We are neglectful in the rights of others.
We are neglectful in what should be the
most joyful concerning thing, which is remembering him
at all times
because something in our heart, the Iblis within
us, is saying other things are great as
well.
And this is the source of our unhappiness.
This is what the shaytan promises us.
The shaytan promises you only
misguidance, a trick, vainglory,
deceit.
And it's not a very good trick.
In the Qaeda,
the sheytan's kaid, his plot,
his conspiracy,
those games that he plays with our brains
that make us do what we know is
wrong
are not very strong.
His arguments are weak because he is weak
compared to the majesty of the one of
whom we say Allahu Akbar,
but still
we listen
because we are weak.
Man is created weak.
Allah
says,
when this whole matter of the Hajj
begins to unfold
in its Abrahamic
simplicity
and in its
incomparable majesty.
Allah commands him in this place.
And remember the servitude and the beauty of
this Abdr, the one who always says Allahu
Akbar.
One who sees all of the things that
might be the creator of the world as
a child.
His father, according to the commentators, a maker
of idols,
he looks for something greater,
and Allah guides him to that which is
greater. But he pays the price.
He becomes a refugee, an outcast, an asylum
seeker on his own. No social services, no
UNHCR,
no organization to support him absolutely on his
own. But why? Because Allahu Akbar.
And he's protected from his father,
and he's protected from Nimrood.
So he's protected from those ties of family,
which are sometimes bad
ties when the parents are tyrants,
and he is
ruler is bad, when the ruler is a
tyrant because he says, Allahu Akbar.
And Allah sends him to this very, very
remote place,
a valley with nothing growing in it,
uncultivable.
And at that time, there was not even
the well,
this extraordinary situation.
Hajj al Ismail
alayhis salaam
sent away
into this furthest place.
And the lesson here is that Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala, does not look at the circumstances
of the world.
He does not look at
the car that you drive
or the letters after your name, or the
greatness
in which the world holds you. None of
that matters.
The one in whose heart is his name
is the one who is great.
At Qaqqum,
the noblest of you in Allah's sight,
is the one who fears him.
So the driver
of the tyrant
is likely to be better than the tyrant
himself, although the world doesn't know his name
and doesn't care to know who he is.
But if in his heart there is Allahu
Akbar,
then that man is great.
So religion turns the world upside down.
That which the Iblis within us envies
is usually
that which brings about our destruction
in this world and the next.
And that which the world despises,
which is remembering truth and being humble and
preserving the virtues
is that which makes us truly Allah's Khulafa.
This is something far, far, far greater than
just
democracy.
Democracy doesn't care about who is good and
who is bad, but this does and it's
got nothing to do with
who your parents were, or what passport you
carry,
or whether you've got money in your bank
or not. It is only the taqwa
that makes us great.
So this verse says, and when we prepared
for Ibrahim, the the place of the house,
commanding, do not associate any other than me,
and purify my house
for those who go around it and those
who stand and worship there and those who
bow and those who make sujood,
this commandment.
Allah says purify
my house.
The purity
of Al Masjid al Haram,
who can doubt it?
The mere majesty
of the Kaaba, as the Hajjis see it
probably for the first time, brings awe and
love and humility to their hearts because it
is a sign of the eternity and the
infinity of the one.
The world continued
undiminished in his majesty and beauty and power
and justice
long after their bones are turned to just
to dust.
The house,
Hebert or Beit,
the majesty of the house,
and this is a place
which we are commanded to purify.
Purify it in the case of Sayedid Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
that in a sense represents that which we
do in our own hearts
when we say something other than Allah might
be Akbar.
This is the great ship,
and he passes around on his final Hajj,
the Kaaba itself,
and he points
to the idols one after the other,
and they fall down
acknowledging their own emptiness
and meaninglessness.
And thus too,
should religion be in our hearts.
So this purity, this tahir,
what does it mean?
Allah says,
A mosque which is established from the 1st
day on the basis of taqwa
is the one in which it is most
right that you should stand in prayer.
In it, amen
who love
to purify themselves,
and Allah loves those who purify themselves. So
again, this idea of tahara.
And as we start to move into Allah's
house here in Cambridge, let's bear this in
mind.
It is the commandment to Ibrahim
alayhis salaam that keeps Allah's greatest house pure.
That is the commandment to the Sahaba of
Sayna Muhammad
that they keep the masjid
in Madinah
pure.
This is a commandment
to us as well, a sunnah of all
of the NBIF.
But what does it mean?
What is this tahara,
this purity?
The hollomat say
that it refers to 4 things in its
completeness.
Obviously, it refers the first the most basic
outward level
to
at Tahara, purity,
from al akhdeh wal akbeeth.
This is kind of a fiqh term.
Al akhdeeth
is the things that break your wudu.
So you make your wudu before you enter
the masjid.
This is out of adab for Allah's house.
And it prepares you psychologically
for worship
because Wabot helps you to do away with
all of your thoughts and your pure occupations
and takes you into a different space,
washes away
those shawadin,
those distractions,
and makes you ready to face the 1.
So the akhdeaf and the akhbaath,
physical impurity.
Don't enter the Masjid if there's something on
your clothes that is not right, you can't
pray with.
So if you have a baby
in a nappy,
the baby can come, but make sure that
the nappy will not yield any kind of
purity in impurity in Allah's house.
This is essential and required in the fiqh,
hygiene, cleanliness
cleanliness. This is part of the beauty of
Islam,
but it's also part of the psychological wisdom
of a house that has no impurity
unlike anywhere else on earth.
So this is the first,
and the second of these forms of purification
means totihirorjawarimin
al ethem.
To purify your outward limbs,
which includes the tongue,
from sins.
In other words, you don't take your bad
moral habits into the mosque.
You don't start cursing people or using bad
language
or raising a fist to somebody
or even sitting in an
mosque. Don't get distracted with talking to somebody
unnecessarily in the mosque. There are other places
to talk.
Remember the adab in Allah's house.
Otherwise, you haven't understood
the majesty of the one whose house it
is.
So no
sins.
And then the third degree of purification,
this ancient Abrahamic
commandment,
is that we purify the heart
from al akhlaqin
and maith mumah.
We purify the heart from
ugly traits of character.
There must not be in us, however outwardly
well we behave,
any envy,
any suspiciousness,
any greed,
any rancor,
any tendency to manipulate,
all of these things must go.
The 7 deadly sins,
why do we throw the stones
7 times?
It's all enacted for us very plainly,
because the sheitan wants to get us through
laziness,
through pride,
through hatred,
through
lust,
through all of these qualities,
which bring us down.
That bring us down from our natural condition
higher than the angels and turn us into
something lower than any animal on earth.
From Maradineh or Esfir al Sethidim,
we made him the lowest of the low.
So this too is a purification,
a hygienic procedure which we need to take
before we dare to enter Allah's house. Don't
let those vices we know what they are,
and they're universal in all cultures and religions.
Nobody admires these things. Don't let them bring
blackness into our heart, even if nobody can
see in Allah's house.
And then finally,
to
purify the heart from everything that is other
than Allah.
That's the highest.
That's the hardest.
That's the degree of true dhikr.
In other words, in the mosque,
the various jumping monkeys in your subconscious that
are telling you to think about this and
to remember that and to plan this, and
all of those other useless things, Adith and
Nafs, they are chained and subjugated so that
your only concern
is the creator.
So that your qibla
is 1.
So that you become
something unusual.
A person of inward discipline.
So many of us discipline ourselves to pass
exams or to get jobs or to impress
our bosses. We are capable of discipline,
this inward discipline,
so that everything in this class
is for Allah alone.
That is the tricky thing.
So this is the meaning of purifying Allah's
house.
It means purifying
ourselves
from all of these ugly things,
and it means also the path of happiness
because Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, is calling us
to happiness.
He's not created us to make us miserable.
He's not created us to go to *.
He's calling us to daras sa'ada,
abode of felicity,
the abode of peace.
And the holy prophet at the will
be interceding
for his former, saying,
oh, lord, save, save.
They are on our side.
Religion is on our side.
But on the other side are those little
specks of dirt within our soul
that we
think are going to make us happy.
We think that this vice is going to
bring us some kind of happiness,
that this laziness,
that this inappropriate
gaze,
that this inappropriate
game, that this lie, that this word that
brings
hurt to somebody's heart is gonna bring us
some kind of happiness, but it doesn't.
Truly, Allah is.
There is no fear on them. Neither do
they grieve.
Wouldn't we love to be like that?
Fearful of nothing,
sad about nothing.
How did they get
The wali is the one whose good actions,
whose pure actions
come one after another
in compliance with with with the sunnah,
inwardly
as well as outwardly.
So our good actions are not interrupted by
episodes
of bad actions,
but instead come naturally.
This is the wadi,
and if we are in that state,
then we will face happiness.
When we do our work well and honestly,
then we will be happy.
When we are decent with other people, with
our neighbours, with family,
then we will be happy.
When we are respectful of the Masjid and
of our prayers,
then we will be happy.
This is the secret of religion.
It's not calling you to a mountain of
difficult actions.
It's just calling you to happiness
and protecting you
from everything that is reluctant to say Allahu
Akbar,
but we must. With all of these things,
however precious they might seem,
grab them.
Saidna Ibrahim,
alayhis salaam,
grabbed his own son
to say, Allahu Akbar,
sharpening the knife,
being prepared to obey the divine
commandment,
going against all of our own personal preferences.
Why?
Because when we
obey, the doors
of Ra'ul, of Allah's acceptance
are opened to us, and an unimaginable
future
entails.
Look at the Hajj.
Imagine the age today in Makkah.
Imagine the hearts of the believers around the
world as they celebrate this. Why?
Because of that active obedience.
Ibrahim Khalilullah,
alaihis salaam,
remembered
Allahu Akbar,
and so did his son. And because of
that obedience,
because of preferring ruach over nafs,
because of preferring akhilah over dunya,
because of preferring the command of heaven over
one's own personal preferences.
Look at this extraordinary outcome.
All of those prayers,
all of those sacrifices, all of those
all of those righteous deeds,
their reward is attributed in one sense to
him, alayhis salam, and to his obedient and
faithful son.
So may Allah
help us to learn this lesson,
which is the lesson of the Hajj
and the lesson of the 'id
that is,
out of hardship
comes ease.
Out of hardship
comes ease. And help us and give us
the niyyah and the strength and the remembrance
to avoid sin,
to remember that it never makes us happy,
and the inward strength
and
the remembrance
that makes us naturally gravitate
towards whatever is right in every situation. And
may this be for us and this congregation
and the entire Ummah, Insha'Allah.