AbdelRahman Murphy – Jumuah Khutbah 02-08-2024
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Now.
The purpose of the Quran,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us is to
be a book of guidance.
That Allah ta'ala said that this book was
sent down,
and the function of the revelation
was to provide an opportunity for enlightenment and
for guidance for those
who are conscious of him.
But it's not as simple as a person
picking up a book and looking like they
would into an instruction manual and being able
to extrapolate
or derive
guidance.
There are conditions,
there are states that a person should be
in, just like if a person has a
recipe book but they don't have the ingredients,
then the recipe book can't help them.
So beginning to understand that in order for
a person to become guided to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, in order for a person to
take that path
on the straight path to Allah,
they must first have the requisite ingredients
to be successful,
to be able to understand the book of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Now when most people talk about understanding the
message of the Quran,
we speak rightfully so about things like Arabic
language, grammar, vocabulary,
the context, the history, the seerah of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the stories within
the books.
But when you're reading the Quran in any
language translated into whatever you can understand best,
you'll find that the Quran,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, he beautifully
wove into the message,
integrated lessons,
stories, and then in between those stories,
reflections
that are worth their weight in gold.
And when you look into these moments as
quickly as they pass by in the text,
you find that Allah provides for us the
ingredients for guidance in those moments.
That after the story has completed, after the
the narrative is done,
a person then receives
the summary from none other than Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
When we look at the power of the
Quran and what it can do when we
engage with it in this way,
we find in the wording of the prophet
himself,
the strength that the Quran provides
In a dua that was narrated
to us and preserved for us in the
Muslim of Imam Ahmed,
we find a famous dua which the prophet
said, if anybody is experiencing
any difficulty or any,
hardship,
that if they recite this dua, this dua
will be a means of Allah relieving them
of that hardship.
And the dua begins beautifully by the person
identifying themselves as the servant of Allah
and that Allah is the one who is
completely in control.
And this humility is a requirement.
And the dua continues to praise and extol
upon the praises of Allah But
the end of the dua
is really the climax and the thesis.
And one would think
that if a person is seeking relief from
Allah Let's say you're going through the most
difficult moment in your life.
Let's say that you've experienced
a loss that is unspeakable.
Let's say that you are being tested and
it's not a quick test. It is one
that is ongoing,
weeks, months, even years of your life. And
the uncertainty of when this test will conclude
is the only thing that occupies your mind
and heart.
You would think that this duress relief
would offer
what we would think a concrete solution. Oh,
Allah. I am in need. Give me money.
Oh, Allah. I am lonely. Give me a
companion. Oh, Allah. I am sick. Give me
health. Right? We think that it's gonna be
a concrete solution.
But look at what the prophet, alaihis salam,
look at how this dua is structured and
where the relief is found.
After praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and extolling
his praises,
the relief is found in which he says,
Oh Allah,
my life is very difficult.
I can't explain to you how tough it
is.
I cannot even put into words how challenged
I am right now. Oh, Allah, please make
the Quran the spring of my heart.
It seems to not make sense.
If something is difficult, why don't you just
seek the the thing that's going to resolve
the difficulty?
But to the one who is shortsighted in
their
they understand
that
and allowing the Quran to water and to
fertilize and to nurture the heart of a
person is in fact the solution to their
problem.
And so when the
prophet is seeking relief in his life, he
doesn't only say, oh, Allah, give me relief
by the means of the concrete solution.
He says, Oh Allah, give me relief by
the means of the eternal solution.
Oh Allah
Make it the spring of my heart.
Allow the Quran when we think of springtime,
I know right now we're baking and the
air fryer is known as Dallas.
But But when we think of springtime,
you think of life.
It comes after the cold, harsh
death of winter.
When you look at the earth during the
time when the earth has frozen over, you
see no sign of life or growth.
And only when
the variables and the circumstances come together in
perfect harmony do you start to see the
brown turn to green, do you start to
hear the silence turn into chirps, Do you
start to witness the flowers that once died
in November December start to bloom and blossom
in March April?
That spring, that effect
of revival
is exactly the same effect, if not more,
that the Quran can give to the dead
heart of a person.
And when we see the life of people
like
when we talk about the transformation
of, when we speak about,
when we speak about, when we speak about,
when we speak about Hind and
and Abu Sufyan and these people,
when you read the Sira, it's so interesting
because in the beginning part of the Sira,
you read these names
and they are
in always in the context of the enemy
of the prophet
So you're in the Meccan era, and you
read the name Abu Sufyan,
and you've never heard the full story before,
and you're like, wait. I'm used to saying,
may Allah be pleased with him.
Why am I reading that he was in
this battle against the prophet
Wait, Omar? My friend's name is Omar. Why
was he going to kill the prophet aam?
I play basketball with the am. Khaled?
That's my brother. Why are these names anti
the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? But then
as you go on throughout the narrative,
and you reach the stage of Medina and
you see what the Quran was able to
do to their dead hearts,
you witness the birth and the revivification
of a dead heart into
a spring that the Quran allowed it to
be. May Allah give us that.
And, oh, Allah, make it the light of
my chest.
The the motif of light
is always
constantly used in the Quran.
Nur, there's an a chapter.
You see this concept that Allah again weaves
so beautifully into the message
that light is something that is absolutely required.
Without light, a person is scared. You know?
I hope he's not here, but my son,
you know, when the upstairs of our house
that he's so used to, that he prefers
to relax and that he prefers to when
the lights are off, all of a sudden,
that very same comforting space becomes frightening. The
absence of light changes everyone's life. It changes
your perspective. Places where you're otherwise very comfortable,
when they're illuminated,
can become very uncomfortable when they're dark.
So the Quran, by giving you light, grants
you comfort in this dunya. This dunya is
a scary place.
It can be a very overwhelming place when
you come into situations that you don't know
how to handle.
So in those moments when we are immersed
in the darkness that the dunya is throwing
upon us, we say, oh, Allah, make the
Quran the nur of my chest.
Make my light be illuminated
from myself, from my being so that no
matter where I go, you Allah, I'm not
afraid because I have you with me.
And, oh Allah,
make it this Quran
the remover
of the things that make me sad.
Instead of me being overwhelmed and burdened by
these things that weigh me down and that
give me no hope,
And in fact, they drain me of any
idea of optimism.
Oh, Allah. Allow this book to be the
thing that takes those things away.
And, oh, Allah, allow it to be the
thing that takes all of my grief and
sadness, and it expunges it and extricates
it and allows me to be free of
all these things.
So in the moments where the prophet
was the most challenged,
he would repeat this dua,
and he instructed us that if you find
yourself in those moments, read this dua, and
Allah will take away your difficulties too. But
it's not simply a dua that we read
and that we don't act upon. See, the
the secondary aspect of every dua is that
you have to move forward and do something.
You pray and then you move forward. You
ask Allah for guidance, and then you start
to walk. You have to walk the straight
path. So when we seek this from Allah,
now the second aspect of the answer of
this dua is we have to start integrating
the Quran into our life.
I wanna share with everybody
how this can be done, And this isn't
something special to me. Everybody has the ability
to do this because we
all have access to the translation of the
Quran in our lives.
Surat Al Kahf, in which Allah
revealed and the prophet
prescribed to be read every week from Friday
to Friday,
has an abundance of wisdom in it. And
normally, when people talk about this chapter, it's
the 18th chapter, there are 4 stories, and
typically we focus on the lessons from those
4 stories.
But I wanna share with you
in between the first and the second story,
Allah ta'ala has a passage of a few
verses
in which he instructs
not only us, but the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasalam himself
on how to handle these moments of difficulty.
Surat Al Kahf was a very interesting revelation.
It was one of those revelations
that
in time was contextually
catalyzed
by
a challenge of some of the disbelievers.
So the Quraysh, in their desperation in Mecca
to try to disprove the messengership of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
in their desperation,
they sought out the aid and the assistance
of Bani Israel, the tribe the Jewish tribes
that were in the area.
And they went, and they asked them. They
said, we have this man. He's from amongst
us. His name is Mohammed,
and he is claiming to be a messenger.
Give us something.
Give us something
from the scripture, from revelation,
that if he were truly a messenger, he
would have to know about it. What to
challenge him with.
But because you people are people of the
book and you're people who know the scripture,
give us a challenge that we can go
back to him and say, oh, yeah. You're
a messenger. Tell us this.
What is this case with this? So that
we can try to disprove him in his
own arena, in his own sphere.
So
some of these rabbis, they said, okay. If
he's truly a messenger of God,
put before him 3 questions.
And if he answers them correctly,
then they said,
you have to submit and you have to
concede he's a messenger of god
if he answers them correctly.
But if he fails to do that, if
he can't get these three questions,
then know
that he is
not a messenger. And in fact, he's a
liar. They said, firstly,
ask him about the young men
who are known to have left their city
and what happened to them. Secondly,
ask him about the person who traveled through
the east and the west and what happened
to him. And 3rd,
ask him about the soul and what it
is, and how it came to be, and
what the function of it is. So three
questions.
When they came to the prophet
they came and they said, Okay. You say
that you're a messenger of God? He said,
This is what Allah has done to me.
He's revealed to me. They said, okay. We
have 3 questions.
They listed out the 3 questions. Tell us
about the young men who left their city.
Tell us about the man who conquered and
traveled from east to west, and tell us
about the soul.
The prophet, alaihis salaam,
in that moment,
he did something that many of us do.
He did something very human.
He said,
I don't know,
but I will tell you tomorrow.
I don't know, but I'll tell you tomorrow.
And in that statement, many of us probably
felt a little bit of hesitation or anxiety
because we did not hear the phrase, inshallah.
We didn't hear it. Now, normally, when we
want something to happen, we say, inshallah.
And if somebody forgets to say it, we
remind them, say inshallah.
That entire culture of reminding people and being
so critical about making sure that you say,
Insha Allah, which means, if Allah indeed wills
it, actually came from this moment in history.
Because when the prophet said, I will tell
you tomorrow, and he in a moment of
humanness,
because he was the best of human beings,
He forgot to say,
meaning, it was implicitly understood, but he did
not verbalize it.
The answer in the revelation that he was
expecting did not come tomorrow,
nor the next day,
nor the next day,
nor the next day. Ibn Abbas says,
2 weeks went by.
Now, I want you to imagine the state
that he's sitting in. Feeling. Every day, these
people And after the 1st day, the 2nd
day, the 3rd day, what do you think
the energy in the room feels
like? It goes from a feeling of confidence,
from a feeling of trust, and every day,
that trust is being tested 1 by 1.
You see, when we look at Surat Al
Kahf, we think about the 4 stories, but
this is a story in and of itself.
When Allah
tells the prophet
in Surat Al Kahf, when finally it gets
revealed to him and he tells him, if
you ever say that I will do something
tomorrow, don't say it except that you say
the phrase
insha'allah.
That Allah wills it. This moment, subhanAllah,
frozen in time.
And the
in this time, we're convinced. This is proof
that he's what? Not a messenger. He's got
to be a liar.
If he doesn't have the answer, it's just
like the rabbis told us. But look at
the wisdom of Allah
and see how you can apply this to
your own life.
How many times has Allah made you wait
for something you wanted tomorrow?
How many times have you desperately prayed for
something you wanted at that moment, and it
didn't come then? It didn't even come later.
It came way later. Or perhaps you're still
waiting right now, and you're wondering, does Allah
even hear me? What's going on? The khatib
gets up every Friday and says, make dua.
Make dua. I've been making dua. What's the
deal?
The prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam himself,
the most beloved to Allah, the best of
creation,
the one who is closer to Allah than
anyone in this room, he himself was put
in a moment of patience
by Allah
Lesson number 1 that we find in the
Quran,
being made to wait is not punishment.
Being made to wait is not a bad
thing. In fact,
the tafsir
and look at the minds of these scholars.
The tafsir says something very powerful.
When the people came to him and said,
prove you're a messenger. Give us the answer.
And the prophet said, I'll give it to
you tomorrow.
Had he given it to them tomorrow, someone
could have argued, well, he just made it
up. Like,
someone could have argued,
well, he just made it up.
Like, if you give me enough time, I
can write an essay. We have chat gpt
now.
If you give me enough, I can I
can come up with an answer?
But instead,
look at his commitment to Allah and not
to his own self. Uncomfortableness and the uncertainty
is growing, but he does not
force an answer.
Because he realizes that this deen is Allah's.
It's not mine.
And so by being made to wait, his
prophethood was actually proven, which was the point
of the test in the first place.
The 3 questions came to prove what? Whether
or not he's a prophet.
Had he answered immediately
out of rushing, out of haste
to please their curiosity,
it would have disproven his prophethood because Allah
did not reveal it.
But because he was committed to Allah you
see the lesson here? When we stay committed
to Allah, we ultimately end up winning regardless
if that win is soon or later. Shortcuts.
We don't
need
to really commit to this. Sooner is better.
Let's take some shortcuts
Sooner is better. Let's take some shortcuts. We
don't need to really commit to this.
If the minute you abandon Allah, you've abandoned
success.
The moment that you decide and commit to
staying committed to Allah, whether it is giving
up on a job offer,
that the money in which is questionable,
engaging in a partnership,
or doing something unethical,
because it's expedient, it's quick, but you know
that if the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam were
right there, you would question it and you
would be embarrassed to tell him, alaihi wasallam,
that this was what you did or what
you do.
That's a moment where your heart is begging
you to stay committed to Allah
Always stay the course even if it takes
time. May Allah give us this and more.
So in this moment, Allah reveals
Do not say about any single thing
Oh, dear messenger of Allah,
that you will do something
tomorrow.
Except that you say the phrase, if Allah
wills. And then Allah beautifully, look at the
mercy of Allah. He says,
And you know what? Part of being human,
because this is not a flaw, it's part
of who you are.
Remember Allah, remember your Lord when you forget.
You see, sometimes when we forget Allah,
we are either very hard on ourselves or
very hard on people who forget.
Somebody makes a mistake and we come clamped
down on them. How could you have forgotten?
How could you have done this?
Tried
to do a lot of work? Did you
pray? Not yet. How could you have not
You're human. I'm human. It's easy to forget.
Weaker opinion, but in the scholars of they
say that the
word and share some relationship.
Meaning human beings and meaning forgetfulness because we
are in in part defined by our ability
to forget.
We become enamored by people who have great
memories.
Allah ta'ala is so merciful.
Even to the one whose job it is
to give the message. He says what?
When you forget Allah,
that's not the problem. The problem is if
you forget and when you remember that you
forgot, you forget to remember that you remember
that you forgot.
To summarize,
don't ever extensively forget Allah.
Remind yourself.
You know, something as simple as saying
before eating.
It's it's it's true
for a 7 year old.
Did you say?
Oh, I forgot.
Right? You ask children, you do youth camps,
and you say, did you guys say?
Everybody lowers their head like they forgot to
file their taxes.
They lost all hope in themselves, and they
even start to feel I'm a failure. This
No. Just say it now.
Say it now because Allah allowed you. Think
about salah. If you forgot a rakka or
you forgot something, you don't have to redo
the whole thing oftentimes. Oftentimes, if it's within
reason, you can
to make will do. It's okay. You're not
a cathode. You can go and make will
do. Come back in. -Ah, is not a
fire and brimstone rub.
Don't If Allah
is allowing us to take time to remember,
then how can we as human beings be
so harsh on people for forgetting?
We have to be merciful like Allah is
merciful.
If somebody made a mistake
out of forgetfulness,
not out of evil, out of forgetfulness, genuinely,
it was unintentional,
then as Muslims, we take from this moment
that our lord instructed the best of creation,
it's okay.
Just remember when you forget.
So we should have this with each other.
May Allah make us gentle with each other.
That he says, and at the end of
it, no matter what, no matter what your
aspirations are, you say about Allah
that I trust that Allah will guide me
to what is better than this and what
is in fact more rightly guided than this.
Brothers and sisters,
part of the difficulty of being a human
being
and being in the age of information is
that we really do believe that we know
best.
Allah
in this life will constantly send reminders to
us that we, in fact, do not know
best.
We will plan for something.
We will plan meticulously
for that thing.
We will be so prepared
for the perfection and the execution of that
thing. And then
will introduce a variable that goes completely sideways
on us.
We plan the vacation for the family.
We're ready. Bags are packed. You even did
the you know, people buy the scales at
home now. And they weigh it at home,
so there's no anxiety when you're checking in
the bag. They walk up confident.
And you're getting ready, but
the person driving you to the airport's late,
or the Uber cancels,
or you get to the airport, and there
is an emergency, and the lane is blocked.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is testing whether or not we can remain
faithful, not only in times that we prepared,
but times that we're unprepared.
The prophet, aisrael,
in that moment, was very prepared.
Come back tomorrow. I'll tell you the answer.
And then for 24,
48,
72, 96, and I can't keep going.
Had
2 weeks, the prophet
did not have an answer,
but he still
knew that Allah ta'ala was executing the plan.
We, when our plans go sideways,
we get panicked.
We start to get chaotic.
We start to break down on our morals
and principles.
We start to doubt the plan of Allah.
It's easy to be faithful when things are
going according to plan.
But can we be faithful when things are
completely
out of whack? That is the sign of
a person who has taqwa and that is
the example that our prophet gave
us in that very moment. May Allah ta'ala
give us the character of our messenger sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. May Allah allow us to
be those that can extract as many lessons
as valuable lessons from the Quran. May Allah
allow us to be people that live this
book and not just read it. May Allah
allow us to have this Quran be the
spring of our heart, the light of our
chest, and the thing that extricates and removes
all difficulty and all grief.
Brothers and sisters,
this Quran,
Allah in
other places, he refers to it in different
ways. In one verse, he mentions it
as
as a cure.
He says that this Quran has healing properties.
Now we know that when somebody gets sick
or when somebody feels like they've
experienced nazar or something I'm not laughing at
I'm laughing at how often we defer to
that. But
when people experience ailments,
we understand that
these things they can help cure.
But the lesser
sought cure of the Quran
is the cure that it does to the
person themself.
We we we prescribe it to others. So
we say, oh, you have a headache? Come
here. Let me read on your head.
Oh, you feel like life is not going
well because of some envy? Come here. I'll
do some rakir. Come this, this. But how
many of us say, you know what? I'm
not really on top of my prayers. Let
me go read some Quran.
Or my mind is wandering.
My desires are running rampant. My laziness is
taking over. Let me listen to some let
me sit down and give myself
10 minutes of the book of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Ramadan is a month. May Allah grant us
the next month of Ramadan, the next year
that we have and endless Ramadans. Ramadan is
a month where Allah gives us an annual
free membership to become
akhirahquran.
Every night, we come to the masjid and
hear something.
Every day, we walk throughout the Muslim spaces,
even the grocery stores, and we hear the
Quran playing.
And that recitation,
that presence of the revelation of Allah,
we all attest is life changing.
But then something weird happens,
and that is that we feel like and
this happens too when people take antibiotics.
As soon as the symptoms start to go
away,
they get off of their course of medicine.
And every doctor who's prescribed a course of
medicine in this room will tell their patients,
please make sure that you take this until
the end.
Because if you don't finish this course,
the bug that caused you so much pain
and ailment, not only will it come back,
it'll come back stronger.
With us,
the Quran has to be something that is
regimented
every single day.
The prophet, alaihis salam, when he didn't receive
revelation
for a couple days, felt that it was
very tough on him, subhanallah.
Almost sometimes that he had done something wrong,
If the prophet
felt that when revelation didn't come to him,
but we have the entire revealed book in
our hands
and we don't access the Quran my mother
one time told me, if you don't access
the Quran on a daily basis, don't think
that you're doing anything to remove it from
your life. Maybe wonder if Allah is removing
you from it.
Maybe wonder that you've done something
that is holding you back from accessing this
book.
It's only guidance for those who have taqwa.
And so maybe I am giving away my
taqwa,
and by giving away my taqwa, I'm handing
away my keys to access this beautiful book.
We need to commit,
not in a dramatic way. Nobody posts this
on Instagram.
We need to commit to making the Quran
something that we live with every single day.
5 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in
the evening, replace one of your phone calls
with it, replace one of your podcasts with
it, pause the music for a second, turn
off the TV for a few moments, and
listen to the book of Allah
And when that listening grows, the understanding will
grow, the effect will grow, and the shifa
that Allah calls the Quran will start to
take its place in your life. May Allah
ta'ala cure us by this book. May Allah
ta'ala allow us to practice everything we've said
and heard. May Allah Allah give those who
are struggling ease by means of the Quran.
Straighten your rows, fill in the gaps in
front of you, and pray this prayer as
if it's your last prayer.
May Allah accept from us, sir, Jumay prayer.