Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Khutbah Choosing Your Deeds.mp4
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Allah
said in his book,
The likeness of the one who
spends in the path of Allah ta'ala from
their wealth is the likeness of a seed
of grain which is planted
from which
7 ears of grain spring forth
and each ear is 100
grains.
And Allah
multiplies for whoever he wishes
and Allah
is expansive and all knowing.
So we spoke about this,
aya and wadeep.
Meaning of this aya was.
The meaning of this ayah was not that
700 is the limit for
the amount of recompense,
the multiplication of recompense that a person will
receive from Allah for their good deeds rather
it is a metaphor
for something that has no cap, something that
theoretically could go on,
higher and higher. It all depends on what
you put into that good deed. What Allah
gives you out of a good deed, all
depends on what you put into that good
deed. So we talked about the Imam Porto
be with the other Bufassidin, they talked about
Allah uses the metaphor of
of
agriculture, of of growing crops
in order to
teach the umma,
teach the people
how does the reward process work for a
good deed that you planted.
And
like agriculture, you plant a few seeds and
you get a lot of crops in return.
Just like that your deeds are something that
you sow like crops and that you'll harvest
one day. And so in the the the
paradigm and inside the model of
agriculture,
that there are 3 things that affect the
yield of your crop as a farmer. Right?
The first one we talked about is the
skill of the farmer.
Metaphor for knowledge. We talked about that already.
And the second the second thing we talked
about is what? The quality of the seed.
The quality of the seed which is
the, metaphor for the purity of means. How
halal are your means of living. How halal
is what you eat and drink. How halal
is the the the the risk and the
the,
the the wages that you earn and that
the living that you make, how halal is
it. And finally, the third the third factor
that we wanted to talk about to end
this series of tutu baat is what?
Is the land.
The land, because not all land is equal,
not all land is equal.
The most fertile and productive land in America
is the Central Valley of California.
The Central Valley of California.
Actually, the land in the Central Valley of
California,
feeds the entire, America. It's not a land
in which grain is grown, because it would
be a waste to grow grain there. Rather,
it can grow a a number of different
types of
fruits and vegetables, nuts, things like that that
won't grow anywhere else. They grow in that
place. And you eat and drink from the
entire country, you eat and drink from the
produce of that place. And in fact, that
place right now, there is a drought going
on over there. It's shooting up the prices
of produce. Not just in America, rather it's
affecting the prices of produce all over the
world, that's how productive of a land that
is. I have a personal
connection with that land. Why? Because I was
born and raised in California, first of all.
And second of all, the weather the weather
patterns and the quality of the land in
the Central Valley of California are very similar
to the weather patterns and the quality of
land in Northern India, in Punjab, where my
forefathers came from.
So similar
that actually,
in the, early 1800 when the agriculture industry
of California was being ramped up, they actually
brought farmers from Punjab
to the Central Valley of California,
in order to show the the, the locals
how to work the land and get the
most effective and most efficient yields,
for crops grown,
in that land because they were experts in
it. They say that there were certain farmers
that would come from Punjab. They could literally
taste the dirt of the the the land,
and they'll tell you what crops will grow
here well, which ones won't have a cycle
between one set of crops and the other.
And for that reason, you see actually one
of the the oldest masjid in all of
America that's still a masjid. There's massages that
were built before that, that went into disuse,
but the oldest masjid that's, still in use
in America is actually in,
it's actually in, Sacramento in the central valley
in California.
And and it's mostly they see people over
there. And so you ask them, is it
Pakistanis or Indians? The masjid is from before
the partition of Pakistan and India. That's how
old it is. Okay?
So what is it that that the land
that you use
if you crop and plant the orange tree
in in in the back of m a
g r, it's gonna die because forget about
the winter and the polar vortex, but October,
it's gonna get so cold that it's gonna
die. But perhaps you could grow corn over
here, perhaps you could grow wheat over here,
perhaps you can grow soy over here, and
the plant will be hardy and it will
survive.
Survive. You can't plant every single,
crop in every single field. And not every
field is
equal one to the other. There are certain
parts of the for example, the desert. There's
desert in Mauritania, and there's desert in the
Arabian Peninsula.
Okay? Other than Yemen, in the Arabian Peninsula,
the the sand is it's it's salty. It's
it doesn't sustain life.
If you try to grow something in and
you try to it's not even sand, it's
a rock. If you you plant a seed
over there, it's just gonna die. Nothing's gonna
happen. Nothing's gonna happen with it at all.
Even if you go to the, eastern part
of the Arabian Peninsula where it's sand, if
you put put something in the ground, other
than the hardiest of desert plants, almost nothing
will grow. This is one of the reasons
dates are something that they grow in the
Arabian Peninsula, because one of the only
things that will survive. But if you go
further into Iraq, you go further into Syria,
if you go into Egypt, you if you
go into Sudan, in any direction if you
go, you'll find that there are there are
places that will sustain,
life in terms of plant life, and will
sustain
agriculture, and will sustain crops. Now if you're
a expert farmer, you hire the most expert
farmer in the world, and you get the
best seed in the world, and then you
go and plant your best seed, and you
hire expert farmer, agricultural specialist, PhD in agriculture,
you know. And and you you you put
that entire system into play, and you put
it on a piece of land that doesn't
sustain life. What's what's gonna happen? If you
put it into if you try to plant
the field of,
you know, whatever mango trees, you know, outside
of Makkah Mukarana. What's gonna happen? Your seeds
are gonna die, your money is gonna be
completely wasted.
Go to Mecca and do Hajj inshallah.
Go do umra over there. Don't try to
don't try to grow mangoes. Don't try to
grow like you know, it's not gonna work.
Right? What? You have to choose the the
field
properly.
Otherwise, it's going to be a waste of
all the other preparations that you have. And
there are certain pieces of land, for example,
Mauritania. I went to Madras in Mauritania, or
to study in Mauritania as well. It's also
a very barren, and dry, and inhospitable desert.
Right? It's a very inhospitable desert.
However, if you make in the same place
2, 3 days in a row, you'll see
something starts growing there, just because a little
bit of water is all all that's
missing. It's all that's missing. In fact, the
the students have knowledge themselves with the little
water they have, they grow all sorts of
all sorts of carrots, and different just different
types of crops, potatoes. You can grow whatever
you want to if you can find a
small source of water over there.
It's a very different it's a very different
type of land, even though it may seem
like the same type of land from an
untrained eye.
The metaphor of the land, the quality of
the land when it comes to
receiving receiving and harvesting
the reward
for the investment of a good deed. The
metaphor for the land is what? The deed
that you choose to do. And not all
good deeds are equal.
There are many things in Islam that are
good deeds. It's a hadith of the Prophet
Right?
Don't don't ever belittle any any good deed.
Don't ever belittle any good deed. Okay? Someone
is doing something good for the sake of
Allah ta'ala. Right? Somebody just invented a vaccine
that will save like a million people from
dying.
What a great reward there is in that.
Right? And another person,
what did they do? They took a bowl
of water and gave it to a dog
that was thirsty.
You'll see, if you have a if you
have a sound intellect, you can understand why
one good deed is much more important and
much higher and much better,
than the other.
Right? Because if the person who was inventing
the vaccine was to
was to do what? Was to, feed the
the dog water,
then the 1,000,000 people will die. There will
be no one there to help them. Them.
This is something a side a side. We
should understand this, realize this. Okay?
The vaccine example by the way, we have
dozens of doctors in this community.
There are certain so many diseases, there's still
no vaccine for them that is free from
pork or from some other najasa, some other
haram
element in it. And so every child that's
born, the parents have to agonize between, should
I inject my child with something that's haram,
and save them from a certain disease, or
should I, subject them to the possibility of
them catching that disease in order to save
them from the haram inside? This is why
we should have ulama giving hutabaat, and doctors
should be making
vaccines. Right? Now the doctors are giving the
and they're they're giving fatwa about what's the
deen is and what isn't. It isn't. And
it's just as much of a disaster as
if it would be if you hired myself
and hired Ahmed Mubarak and Sheikh Hakif to
go and design a new vaccine. It doesn't
work that way. Right? But coming back to
the coming back to the issue, you can
see how someone who saves a 1000000 lives,
their deed is much better than the deed
of a person who,
does something small, like feeding water to a
thirsty dog.
The Prophet
said, Don't ever belittle any good deed. So
even the person who's giving water to the
thirsty dog, Allah is pleased with that person.
It's appropriate for a person who cannot do
anything better than that, to do that. And
if a person has no other avenue of
helping anybody else, all the human beings are
taken care of, you know, they they have
no ability to do anything. At that moment,
all they can do is help this dog.
If they do it sincerity,
they will go to Jannah for it. This
is not me saying it because my idea
it's actually a hadith of the prophet
that there's a prostitute. Right? Imagine of all
the sins, a woman who commits for money.
Right? That even her, she gave water to
a thirsty dog in her shoe.
And it was an act of sincerity so
beloved to Allah ta'ala. Allah forgave her her
sins and entered her into Jannah.
But don't be like don't hear that hadith
and say, yeah. Yeah. Let's make the foundation
for
dog watering in shoes. We'll buy nice shoes
and we'll No. Why? Because that was what
she could do in that circumstances, the time,
and the place she was in. Imagine if
a, you know, a woman is forced, she
has no other choice in life than to
do something like this, that no person who
has a sound, sound disposition would wanna do.
She doesn't have a lot of options in
life, so she she she's forced to do
something, and she did whatever she could in
terms of good. Allah accepted it from her.
You and me, Allah gave us many more
means and a much stronger intellect, and many
more doors open for us in order to
do something good. We have to do what
we can do. And we are commanded to
what? To find the best thing to invest
our time, and the best thing to invest
our energies in, even though we admit that
there are many good deeds, and the good
deeds that we're doing aren't the only ones
in the world. And if someone else is
doing good deed that we see as inferior,
we don't say bad about them, we make
dua for them for acceptance. But for ourselves,
we always have to choose what's best. We
always have to choose what's best. You have
a limited amount of time, you have a
limited amount of money, you have a limited
amount of options in this world, so you
have to choose what's best. So the question
comes up, okay. From the good deeds, what
is the best good deeds I can do?
The answer to that is that this is
very clearly delineated in the
The best good deed that any person can
do.
The best thing that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
wa Salam said,
The best thing that anyone any anyone has
said, myself or any of the prophets, is
what?
That there is no god except for Allah.
Well, guess what? You don't have to be
a nabi to say,
All of us can say it It's a
hadith of the prophet Renew
again and again your iman by saying
The time that a person says
and enters into Islam, that is the best
deed anyone could do, or
That's the best deed that anyone could do,
and all of us are equal in that,
in that sense. So first is to enter
into Islam. The second is what? Those things
Allah made
upon you,
which is what? Your 5 times daily prayer
for everybody.
And then after that is what? Your siyam,
your zakat, your Hajj. And there are more
things that are far above a person than
just the 5 pillars. The 5 pillars are
the highlights, like the prominent, especially prominent amongst
those. If you're a husband, it's also far
above you to earn money and provide a
place to live, food to eat,
clothing, and shelter for your wife and for
your dependents,
whether it's your children or your elderly parents
who are not able to earn money, or
whether it's, you know, whoever your dependents are,
that's also a It
doesn't have to be opulent. You don't have
to have, you know, a sauna and jacuzzi
in the house that you provides your wife
and kids. You know, if you cannot afford
to, if you can't afford to, you know,
eat sushi everyday, you can eat Taco Bell
or you can go and let, you know,
eat vegetables instead of meat, or whatever. But
you have to provide that basic minimum standard
of living. These things are far down everybody.
Individual obligations.
If you're a person who makes enough money
that you have something left over at the
end of the year, you have to you
have to pay your zakat. The zakat that
you pay, the money that you pay to
raise your family, the money that you pay
for your individual obligations,
the time you spent in your in your
in your salat for your 5 daily prayers,
the time the time and money you spend
in in making and
and doing all of those things that are
individual obligations on you,
that time, money, resources that you spent, there's
no other deed you will do in this
life that will receive as much reward with
Allah
other than those.
Someone may have given $1,000,000,000
to eradicate world poverty.
Someone may be a simple person who prays
their 5 daily prayers and takes care of
their family.
The person who prays their 5 daily prayers
and takes care of their family, that act
is greater with Allah than giving a $1,000,000,000
to eradicate poverty.
Even the person who gives the $1,000,000,000 to
eradicate poverty,
that person, the 5 daily prayers that they
do, and what they spend on their family
will receive more reward with Allah than eradicating
the property.
Everyone's individual obligations are the most important thing
that they have to do. There are many
things. For example, if a person has trouble
lowering his gaze and keeping himself chased, then
it may be fine for him to get
married. You know, a person if a person
has whatever your obligations, your needs are, they
may vary from person to person. Everybody has
to pray their salat.
Everybody in Saudi body has to fast. Everybody
who has the money has to give
give their zakah. Right? Everybody at means has
to go on Hajj. Whatever your circumstances
are, your individual obligations will be different. Ask
the if you have any doubt about it,
about or any question about what those things
are, what they entail, what they don't entail.
But your individual obligations are the most important
thing. We shouldn't be a community of people
saying that, oh, so and so, he may
not he or she may not pray, but
they're a good person.
But they're a good person. Why is this
subjective? This is subjective standard.
This is subjective statement. First of all, it's
not your job or my job to judge
who's a good person anyway.
Secondly, you got everything you do at at
work or at business, you have objective criteria
upon which you choose those things. Right? When
you have you're gonna paint a wall at
work, if there's a statistical study saying that
painting the wall blue makes you more money
and makes more conversions for sales than painting
the wall red, you're gonna paint the wall
blue even. If you don't like blue, right?
There's an objective standard for it. What is
the objective standard in the sharia? The objective
standard in the sharia is the one who
obeys Allah ta'ala, that person is a Muslim.
That's literally what the word Muslim means in
fact. That the person is submitted to Allah
ta'ala.
Don't make decisions about other stuff or have
your own idea or your own map, imaginary
map in your head. Look at what Allah
is Rasool Allah subhanahu wa sallam said.
So you take your shahada, you say your
prayers. It doesn't mean someone who says their
prayers, they're perfect, or their deed is necessarily
better than that of somebody else. But you'll
get through saying your prayers what we know
for a fact that you won't get without
saying them. Okay? So your individual obligations, whether
they're the 5 pillars or other personal obligations
that you have, this is the best that
you can do. This is the best that
feel that you can spend your your time,
energy, resources,
sowing your good deeds in. There's nothing else
better than these things.
Okay. Fine. If you're able to, do those
things. If you pray, you're sought to serve
on time every morning you wake up. You
pray it on time. You don't sleep through
it and waste it. And you pray your
5 daily prayers on time. You're paying your
zakat. You're fasting your Ramadan properly, you're doing
you know, you did your Hajj validly, you're
taking care of your wife and kids, you're
doing all of this stuff.
Afterward, the next tier of things that are,
that will receive the most reward are what?
The
communal obligations.
So from amongst the communal obligations are what?
Every community of people that has enough people
to read.
Right?
Which there are different opinions of different but
you know, we by all of those standards,
we meet those standards. You know, you have
according to some opinion, 3 people plus an
imam, 12 people plus an imam, 40 people
including the imam, all of those we meet
all of those standards. So you have to
have a place, a masjid,
and have to have if you standards. So
you have to have a place, a masjid,
and have to have if you have children
and they need to be educated, you need
to make the arrangement in order for them
to learn the the how to read the
Quran and what the basics of deen
are, things like that, who the prophet
was, etcetera etcetera. You know, as a community,
as a Rockford, we have a set of
communal obligations, and then there's a bigger set
of communal
obligations
as a country,
right? And there's a bigger set of communal
obligations as a Muslim world.
All of those things that are
that are communal obligations,
those things receive more reward, they receive more
reward than optional things. All the optional things
are below. What the communal
are if you know about them or don't
know about them, ask their alama, they'll tell
you what they are. Those are a higher
source of reward. For example, someone went on
hajj,
you know, 50 times.
When he makes hajj the 51st time, right?
The ulema say he should make the of
what? That he's making
make participating in the of the iqamah, of
the sha'a'a of Hajj. Right? If imagine someone
made Hajj 50 times already,
next year? Probably not, but it might be
imagine if he's the only person who's able
to make it to Hajj then Hajj becomes.
Why? Because the ummah someone has to be
doing Hajj every year. These things have happened.
There have been like times in the history
of Islam where the
has been sieged, the paths and the roads
to it have been closed, and the local
people have had to,
take up the entire,
manassik of Hajj because the communal obligation on
the Ummah of Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam to uphold the right of Hajj in
good times and in difficult times. There have
been times the,
a heretical sect of Ismaili Shias, they they
destroyed the Kaaba stone from stone, and they
took the black stone with them to Bahrain.
16 years, there's no Kaaba. Right? This is
in the 1500.
16 years, there's even no Kaaba. There's still
Hajj.
They made an announcement to catch anyone making
Hajj,
we will kill you.
So what? The Bedouins know the roads that
the that the the the the army don't
know, so they would slip in the just
for an instant. You can make your later
if you if you need to. Right? But
they would keep the
minimal minimal standard that that was needed even
if the didn't exist. Right? What are those
communal obligations? Sit and learn from the ulama
what they are. They will give you more
reward. They'll give you more reward than any
of the and any of the other things
will will do.
Okay? After the after the,
communal obligations, what is the next tier
lower of reward?
The next tier lower of reward are those
things that a person does that benefits another
human being. This is a hadith of the
prophet
that the best of you the best of
you are what? The best of you are
the ones who are most beneficial to other
people.
The best of you are who? The ones
who are beneficial to other people. This is
why, you know, you had you hear the
hadith of even a smileless charity and
etcetera etcetera. What does that mean? That means
if you enter into a into a building,
and people are annoyed with you, or scared
of you, or you know, they they they
wish you wouldn't come. Right? It's one of
the signs of
That a person people will show them honor
just because they're afraid of the evil that
that person,
you know, could perpetrate on them. If that's
the type of person you are, you could
be, hatching it up big time
every year. You could be fasting every other
day. You could be doing all of these
other wonderful things otherwise. But it's a sign
that you're, you know, something is so fundamentally
wrong that you're doing a little bit of
good and you're trashing a whole lot of
khair. Right? Because the also
works the other way too. Right? The biggest
sin is the the one that prevents a
person from entering Islam, which is kufr, and
then the second biggest sin is the one
that prevents a person from fulfilling their personal
obligations. Then the next biggest one is the
one that works against the fulfillment of communal
obligations. Then the next biggest one is the
one that harms other people.
Right? If we're remedial, if we're not, you
know, way up here in, there's still a
lesson for those of us like myself who
are in the low right now. Okay. If
I have 10 sins in front of me,
choose the one that has the least harm.
Right?
Okay. If I have 10 sins in front
of me, choose the one that has the
least harm.
Right? So after after what the the communal
obligations are what? Those deeds that help other
people, giving charity,
giving,
a good word, giving
advice to other people, teaching people. Now teaching
people certain amount of teaching is what? Is
a,
in the sense that someone is is a
actually. I wouldn't say, but
a certain amount of learning is certain amount
of teaching is if children don't know how
to say
or they don't know, you know, what we
believe about Jannah and Jahannam and all of
these things. You have to teach them. You
have to teach them. It's a it's a
communal obligation.
After after the obligatory matters, then afterward, the
teaching becomes what? The next tier. Those optional
things that benefit other people. And then the
bottom tier is those deeds through which you
benefit yourself
through which you benefit yourself. Now a caveat,
a little asterisk. Right? This doesn't mean that
like your sunnah prayers,
or your, you know, obligatory
your optional fasting,
or your, or
your adhkar or your nafal hedges or anything
like that are not important. They're still very
important and they're great means that a person
will enter also.
And if that's all you can do, then
you should do those things. And even if
you have the opportunity to do other stuff,
you should still do those things. Why? The
the power of the heart to do other
good deeds. They they make the heart more,
firm and more protected from
shaitan. Right? That a person has their with
Allah to Allah. What what is the first
hadith of?
Actions are to be judged by nothing other
than the intentions with which they're done.
The heart by shoring up the heart through
these other acts of worship, what do they
do? They increase the yield of your other
good deeds that you do because they increase
and deepen and strengthen the tie that you
have to Allah
So once you've taken from them what you
need, and different people need different levels of
things depending on the severity and difficulty work
that they're doing. Once you've taken from them
what you need, then for certain people who
have no other options, it's good for them
to sit in seclusion
and just say Allah, Allah for the rest
of their life for them if they have
no other options. If you're poor, you have
no means, every time you try to do
something and end up in a fight anyway,
then separate yourself from the community.
You know, say Allah Allah and make dua
for them. That's also something that benefits other
people. Right? Don't mix with them because it's
just gonna cause them problems. But for the
rest of us, which is majority of us,
overwhelming majority of us who have like the
most basic amount of ability to function socially,
right? We should take from those nafil salats,
take from those nafil fasts, take from that
zikr, take from that that that that those
optional,
acts of worship. Right, that may not ostensibly
benefit other people, take from them enough to
show off our heart, and show off the
iman in our heart, and show off the
state of iman inside of our heart. And
then after that, with the strength that we
get from it, go and help other people,
help the ummah, sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. And that also is an act of
worship. That also is an act of worship.
But all of them are like different tools
in your in your in your kit, right?
So if you're like a doctor or a
dentist, you're a dentist, right? Masha'Allah.
You're a dentist. Right? You don't you have
all these different tools. You use you don't
use a drill for everything. If you use
a drill for everything, people will come out
of your office without any teeth. You'll use
a drill when you need it. This is
also a tool that is to be used
when it's needed, and it's needed a lot.
It's really needed a lot. People are not
using it. So the point of my saying
this is not to say, oh,
no big deal. It's needed a lot, but
just understand what the place of that tool
is, may Allah
make all of those people
Choose what you do, choose what you do
as a good deed, and where you choose
to invest your time and your money,
wisely.
And based on the the the soundness of
your choice, you will receive more or less,
ajer with Allah
May Allah make us people who invest our
deeds wisely, and may Allah make us people
whose small amount of deeds are enough for
them on the day of judgment, and make
us people whose small amount of deeds are
given barakah and multiplied over and over again
in reward.