Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Khutbah Islm Starts in the Heart ICC 08162019
AI: Summary ©
The importance of love is discussed, emphasizing that it is a movement of the heart and not physical action. The heart is the rational animal that determines love, and people should be mindful of what is inside the heart. The heart is crucial to shaping one's life and bringing their lives back to life. It is also important to be honest with oneself and share one's thoughts. The heart is not a legal issue and individuals should not be afraid of their deeds.
AI: Summary ©
My brothers and sisters,
the messenger of Allah
Allah said
in a hadith narrated by Saydna Anas bin
Malik
that there are 3 people
if they have these characteristics or 3 characteristics
people have them inside of them, those people
will taste the sweetness of iman inside of
their heart.
1 is that Allah and His Messenger sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam is more beloved to them
than anything other than them. And the second
is that a person should love another for
the sake of Allah ta'ala. They don't love
them for any other reason. Not because of
job, not because of work, not because you
have the same favorite team in the NBA
or the NHL or the NFL or whatever,
other combination of 3 levels, CBS and CIA
and FBI and,
you know, American Airlines or whatever it is.
Whatever combination of letters you wanna put together.
The only reason they love each other is
for the sake of Allah ta'ala.
And the third is the person who hates
that they should return to disbelief after Allah
ta'ala has given them faith just like a
person would hate to be physically thrown into
a fire, like a person would hate to
be burned alive.
And the second hadith is from Sayna Anas
bin Malik radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu he says that,
one of you will not perfect his belief
until I am more beloved to them than
their parents, and then their children, and then
all other people. Now obviously, you have to
give a little bit of a cultural disclaimer
because otherwise this hadith may not be relevant.
There was a time when people used to
really love their parents and there's a time
that people used to really love their children.
They used to love them more than anything
else. Now, masha'Allah,
you know, people go to work and school
and, my dad's stupid. You know, I hate
my parents. You know, my my children, I'm
just waiting for them to become 18 so
I can kick them out of the house
and all this other stuff. And,
you know, without going delving off into a
tangent too deeply, that wasn't the case for
most of human history,
whether you can relate to it or not.
But in order to understand the hadith, when
the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam says that
until I become more beloved to them than
their parents and children and all other people,
they really mean than all other people.
Now,
the issue is that these hadith,
probably you've heard them before. You said, what's
the point of getting,
you know, this, this guy from out of
town,
who prays in a strange way and, you
know, looks like a extra from, you know,
the Lord of the Rings or from Star
Wars or something
like that? Why why do we need him
to tell us this hadith that we've already
heard so many times before?
The issue is that brothers and sisters, we've
heard them but didn't we understand them?
What is mentioned here is love.
Love is not a physical action. Like if
I tell you to pray, you can do
4 raka'as, you can do 2 rak'ahs, you
can raise your hands, you can do all
of this stuff. If I tell you to
make Hajj, you can walk around the Kaaba
7 times, 9 times, 20 times. You know,
some of you are in shape. You could
probably walk around the Kaaba a 100 times
if you wanted to in the day, and
you'd still get it done. You go back
and forth between like a pro.
If I told you to give zakat that
the deen says that you have to give
$20, all of you can give 20 some
of you can give 200, 2,000, 200,000.
However, this action is not an action of
the outward limbs. It's an action of the
heart. It's an action of not the physical
heart, the spiritual heart.
The likeness of the spiritual heart between all
of the all the faculties, spiritual faculties faculties
Allah has given a person. He is the
likeness of the king amongst his court.
All of the other spiritual faculties a person
has, like their logic, their reasoning,
All of them are subordinate to the heart.
The reasoning
that a person has is a very important
faculty.
It is what makes a human being a
human being.
The old
rationalist
from amongst the Arabs,
even in their tradition, they used to define
a human being as what? As a rational
animal.
You have the head like other animals have
heads. You have arms and limbs like other
animals have limbs. You you know, the heart
between all mammals is 4 chambered, etcetera, etcetera.
It's not a biology lesson.
But, you know, there there there are a
number
of similarities between a human being and between
other animals. And I'm not saying that, like,
the theory of evolution and all this other
stuff, so don't get sidetracked by it. You
can come to Darce afterward if you wanna
talk about those things. But I'm saying that
a person would be remiss if they didn't
notice that.
What's the difference between a human being and
between the other animals?
It's
the rational animal. It's the animal that's able
to use its rational faculties.
However, despite that, despite the the rationality being
the thing that's different between us and between
the different animals that that defines us and
that gives us
humanity,
Still, what's the king in the court is
the heart.
And all the heart does is it decides
one very simple thing. Do I like this
thing? Do I not like this thing?
Once the heart is given its decision, then
all of the courtiers in the court of
the king will then start to implement that
order.
So the heart will say, I love Allah.
And then the ac of the mind will
start to start to find ways to love
Allah, and then it will command the other
limbs and the other parts of the the
the soul and the spirit to conform to
that command. It will explain how to do
it. But the command doesn't come from the
apple, it doesn't come from the logic. It
comes from what? It comes from the heart.
If the heart says we don't love Allah,
we love money, Then the mind will start
to the the mind will start to make
up reasons to love money and how how
can we get money. If the heart says,
we love so and so, woman. We love
so and so, man.
But mind will start to say, okay. Then
buy her flowers,
send her a nice text message, compliment her
about what she's wearing, etcetera, etcetera.
It's not the aqd that's in control, it's
the heart that's in control. We've missed that.
We don't talk about the heart anymore. Even
though if you read in the Quran itself,
it's not a modern thing to do. So,
you don't talk about it in your school
and you don't talk about it at work.
And the effect of a tradition which is
has
affected us so much that we don't talk
about it even in the masajid anymore.
Except for very little.
However,
that heart is so important. How important is
it? How important is it that I'm talking
about it right now? Am I just here
for shock value in order to tell you
something that you may not have heard from
before so that I can be known to
be a novel preacher? That people can say,
Oh, this guy said something new. It's not
new at all. Allah ta'ala in His own
book, He says He describes
the day that neither wealth nor progeny will
benefit a person. Nothing will benefit a person
except for the one who brings a pure
heart, a heart free of blemish
to him on that day.
So this heart makes a very important decision.
If we don't look at what's inside of
the heart, we're going to lose the benefit
of deen. We're gonna lose the benefit of
iman. We're gonna be those people who pray,
and we're going to be those people who
fast, and those people who give sadaqa, and
all of us are gonna protest about, freeing
Palestine, and about Kashmir, and about Burma, and
about all of the other causes that a
Muslim should be, justly and rightly concerned concerned
about. We're gonna do all of the things
that a Muslim is supposed to do, but
inside, it's gonna be like the the the
lights are on but nobody's home.
Sometimes the lights are not even on.
And what happens?
All of these realities inside the heart, they
well up when a person is about to
die.
The way a person dies, that's how their
judgment will be.
All things will be judged according to the
way they end. It's a
What is it?
That the person will The the person will
be judged according to the way they end.
You can fake it for a day, you
can fake it for a year, you can
fake it for 2 years, 10 years,
20 years. You can fake it for a
lifetime. At the end at the end of
the line,
when the the curtains are about to close,
what's inside? That's the only thing that's gonna
come out.
You're not gonna be able to fake it
at that time. And from then on, you'll
never be able to fake it again. You
won't fake it in your grave, you won't
fake it,
A person will wish to lie to Allah
or make an excuse to Allah ta'ala when
they realize they made the wrong choices in
life, and their own skin, their own limbs
will bear witness against them.
Their own limbs
will
Their own limbs will bear witness against them.
It's mentioned in the Quran, and it's something
that all of us should take very seriously.
Where does the iman start from? It starts
from inside of the heart.
If a person loves Allah and His Rasool
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, forget about waking up and
praying 5 times a day. Sacrifices
and difficulties that a person who doesn't love
them, they become possible, they become easy.
The companions of the messenger of Allah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, the ones that Allah described
as the ones that he's pleased with and
they were pleased with him. The ones that
the messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam described them
as, The
The ones that love them, it's because they
love me that they love them. And the
ones that hate them, it's because they hate
me that they hate them. From amongst them,
there were those who even when the spear
was going inside of them,
when the death blow was coming down on
them, when the lights were going on, the
only reaction that they had was to say,
Fustuwala bil Kaaba.
I've been successful. I swore an oath by
the Lord of the Kaaba I have been
successful.
That a man should hold his life, that
a man should hold his body and his
limbs as a as a as a cheap
gift in order to give to the one
that he loves, jaa Allahu'ala. That a person
should feel like I'm accepted.
That Allah who gave me everything from my
opening breath until my dying breath. That Allah
who gave me a mother and a father
who gave me clothes to wear and food
to eat. That Allah gave me iman so
that my heart could be beautiful.
That Allah, he gave me the opportunity to
give something back to him on this day.
This is a great
honor.
The one from Surat Yaseen, the shahid of
Surat Yaseen. He's mentioned that that without skipping
a beat that they killed him. And the
first thing that he said after his ruh
leaves his body is,
I really wish my people knew. I really
wish my people knew. How much my Lord
has forgiven me, and how much my Lord
has made me among the honored ones, how
generous he is, how generous his gift upon
me has been.
A person who has no love inside of
their heart, you can say this in English
with no accent,
and still it's like you're speaking chinese to
them. They won't have any idea what the
heck you're talking about. They have no idea
whatsoever.
If you haven't worked on your heart, and
the thing is that you don't just walk
up wake up one day like, yeah, I
love Allah. There are people like that. They
try to fake it like that. It doesn't
work.
The heart itself can be affected, but the
heart is affected
how? Just like it has outputs, it has
inputs as well. It's affected how? It's affected
through your deeds.
The one who struggles against his own nafs,
against his own ego and his own desires
to wake up for fajr for 40 years
in a row, one day he'll love to
wake up for fajr. One day he'll feel
horrible if he doesn't.
Sometimes, you know, when you first start waking
up for fajr, you feel horrible when you
wake up? One day will come, you'll feel
horrible if you don't.
The person who struggles against his own cheapness
and gives for the sake of Allah ta'ala,
you bet that person will love the poor.
You bet that person will be concerned that
that money should have good effect in it.
You bet that person will love to give
one day. A day will come when they
love to give. Why? Because they sacrificed as
a meaning and value to them.
You bet that that person who struggled to
say his
prayers, struggled in order to raise a child,
struggled in order to,
raise a family, struggled in order to serve
one another. That those people are going to
love that deed. But in the beginning, it's
bitter. It's not easy.
Just like the heart has an effect on
the on the,
mind, on the rationality, and on the rest
of the limbs of the body, and and
the rest of the spiritual organs. Just like
that, those limbs and those, spiritual organs and
apparatus
apparatuses that a person have, they also give
back and put
effect back on the heart.
So if you want to have your heart
to be clean, if you want it to
be purged of evil,
if you want it to be filled with
the love of Allah and His Rasulullah
alaihi wa sallam, then do the deeds of
the the commandments of Allah, and the deeds
of the sunnah of the Rasool Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam. Brothers and sisters, this is not a
legal issue. You can do everything that's far
in in the in the sharia and still
not have this. This is also a separate
farth in the sharia that you have to
look at your heart, and what's more important
in the shara of Allah ta'ala?
That you grow a beard or that you
wear a hijab? Now look, if somebody else
said something like that, you might say this
person is just being a hater. Look at
me, masha'Allah. I have an award winning beard.
I love my beard. It's the sunnah of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Sometimes I
fear I was put in a situation where
someone said, like, you know, shave your beard
or I'll kill you. I just said, go
ahead and kill me. I'm not really interested
anymore.
If someone else said it, you'd say they're
just being a hater. I love it. It's
the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam.
I'm telling you, this is more important than
that.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
This is why the beard that's why I
love it. That's why we love that our
sisters wear hijab.
This is why we love the salat. This
is why we love the Kaaba and Maqamukkalama
and Madinah Munawwala, and we love the poor.
We love all of you. Why? Because of
the love of Allah
And if it's not for that reason, all
of your deeds, you'll just find find, like,
yourself lethargic in doing them. And a day
will come you'll get tired and you'll stop
doing them. And if a person leaves this
world on that, on that day, that person
has,
pushed himself and pushed herself, corralled themselves into
a manifest loss.
This is something we need to look at
inside of ourselves, and be honest with ourselves.
Imagine that, that a person,
1 of you will not perfect your belief
in Talm more beloved to them than
their parents, and their children, and then all
other people. There's a narration of this
hadith,
That the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said
that, You won't perfect your belief until I'm
more beloved to to to to you, until
I'm more beloved to you than your own
nafs, your own
self that is between your two sides.
That is between your two sides. And from
the sahaba radhiyallahu anhu, there are people who
are like that. They're the ones who were
executed by the mushrikeen of Quraysh.
They're captured,
and the sentence was given to them inside
of Makkah, and then they were taken out
of the haram.
Out of the haram. 10'aim, the sacred boundary
around Makkah Bukhara. They're actually taken out of
the city because even the mushrike considered it
a sacrilege to kill somebody within the haram.
And before they're about to die, mockingly ask,
now look, you're going to die.
Your Prophet and his and your companions, all
of them are going to enjoy their life
and your life is going to end right
now.
They're all going to enjoy, your life is
going to end right now. Now don't you
wish that Muhammad was in your place?
What did he say?
He said, wallahi.
Bye, Allah.
I would rather give my life than even
a thorn go inside of his foot
The problem is the problem is what it
makes me afraid, it should make all of
us afraid.
Whoever has a heart left inside of their
body, that these hadith
no longer move people.
Our children, they no longer move them. They
no longer understand what we're saying. It's like
we just said a sentence to them in
Chinese. Why? Because they haven't seen a struggle.
They've seen a struggle for so many years
in school.
I myself, mashallah, I have
many years of schooling. I have a degree
in biochemistry.
I have my degree from madrasah.
I have all you know, alhamdulillah, masha'Allah.
I'm not saying it's not important.
They've seen a struggle for money.
I'm not saying it's not important.
I also have to pay rent. It's not
like I'm sheikh, and I say like, Ayatul
kursi 70 times and my rent gets paid.
It doesn't work that way, not for anybody.
But they see us struggle for those things,
they never see us struggle in order to
implement the sunnah of the Messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. They never see us
struggle in order to gain knowledge of Allah
and His Rasool salallahu alayhi wa sallam. They
never see us struggle for the deen of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and sacrifice so much
that it becomes beloved to us one day.
Had they seen that, it would have become
beloved to them as well.
Even if it doesn't happen in front of
your eyes, even if your child is a
profligate until the day that that that you
died, after your death, trust me, we'll catch
up with them. What do you think is
more powerful? Iman or kufr? That a person
should see this love and that they should
be able to think about anything else after
that until they die.
Brothers and sisters, this love is the life
of our hearts and this love is our
salvation. Allah ta'ala give us from this love.