Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Khutbah Maximizing Rewards For Deeds Performed
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AI: Transcript ©
Alhamdulillah
Allah
in his book has revealed to us
the way of the Ambia, alayhi mus salatu
wa salam.
The first of the prophets, alayhi mus salatu
wa salam is Sayna Adam alayhi salam.
The last person of this ummah
will be the last person who knows the
holy and sacred name of Allah
And when that person passes from this world,
the reason for its existence will end.
The point of mentioning this is what?
Is that the nabi is a nabi
literally meaning from a
from a morphological
point of view, a person born of a
mother.
That this path of Islam and this deen
of Islam
is something that everybody is equal in, in
the sense that it's for everybody.
It's the same human condition. It's the same
Islam that's going to give najat to the
rich amongst us. It's the same Islam that
will give najat and salvation to the poor
amongst us. It's the same Islam that's going
to give najat and salvation to Americans and
to
people from other than America and for people
born here and people born somewhere else, people
who carry a certain type of document or
carry another type of document for the rich
and for the poor, for the,
black and for the white and for the
brown and for whatever other permutation
or combination of human genes there are for
men, for women,
for pious people and for impious people, for
everybody. The the the the the common factor
that's
universal amongst all human beings is what? Is
Islam.
And there is oftentimes
a
clamor that's raised amongst people, especially in the
time and the place that we live in,
that we need things that are relevant to
us, We need things that are contextual for
us. We need things that are specific for
us. We need to talk about what's going
on in the news today. We need to
talk about what's going on in our community
today. We need to talk about things that
are specifically relevant to us as,
as Americans,
as people who live in the 21st century,
as people who, you know, live in a
life of having iPhone and Facebook and Twitter
and all of these other things. And, yes,
we say these details and having a
a a package or understanding of Islam that's
relevant to these details is important,
but it is of secondary importance.
What is of primary importance is what?
The
universality of Islam's message.
The particulars are of secondary importance to the
universality.
The particulars are of secondary importance to the
universality.
Whether you have water in its liquid form,
whether it is ice,
whether it is,
steam, whether you can get something in a
high pressure temperature regime and make it into
a plasma, although water will not be stable
at that regime. But at any rate, if
you could do something like that,
you know, if it's physically possible,
the thing is this, that there are certain
common things that are important that are common
between all of these different states. Just like
that, a person, it's important for them to
know their context that they're in and the
particulars,
but the context in particular shouldn't morph into
this huge monster
that overtake universality and universal principles.
Right?
Universal and unrestricted principles
that are universally valid because those are the
most important things. There's no place in this
universe you're going to go in which
isn't the beginning and end of every field
of knowledge and every field of understanding, of
every matter abstract or practical.
There is no place in this universe where
you're going to go, where
you will be able to enter into jannah
by something other than the salat, and by
reading something other than the Quran, and by
a Nabi other than the Prophet Muhammad
If you understand universals properly,
you will have the tools in your brain
to be able to understand particulars on your
own by and large.
But if you don't have
universal set in your mind
properly, particulars are just confusion.
It's the difference between
having
a 1,000 puzzle pieces scattered and disarrayed,
and not knowing what the final picture looks
like, versus knowing what the final picture looks
like. If you know what the final picture
should look like, you'll know which pieces to
look for to put in what place. If
you don't know specifically
what you're looking for, you'll at least know
that the blue sky should be on the
top, and the
brown dust should be on the bottom, The
green grass should be in the middle, the
tree should be in the middle somewhere. You
have somewhere to start with. You can look
and see that like a person who's put
a puzzle together, that the corner piece is
going to be different than all the other
pieces, so you can at least look for
the 4 pieces that go in the corners.
You can at least look for the pieces
that go on the edge. You have somewhere
you can start to work from.
Whereas, if you just have a lot of
pieces, say give me a lot of individual
pieces, and divorce it from context, you're not
gonna understand what's going on. The reason I
mentioned this right now, and the irony is
possibly that the people who need to hear
it the most are not even in the
room right in the room yet, but the
reason for mentioning this is what? Is that
oftentimes I get feedback from people that say,
oh, Sheikh, you know, like, this one particular
thing, you know, happened this week, we should
talk about this. This other particular thing happened
this week, we should talk about that. Or
because of this thing, we should delay talking
about this issue until 2 weeks from now
or a month from now or next year
or God knows what. And the fact of
the matter is what? The way this world
works the way this world works is nothing
stops. Nothing stops down here. Nothing stops up
there. Everything is constantly,
going through its cycles. Every day turns into
night, every night turns into day. You will
have particulars thrown at you at a million
per hour. And in fact, you have particulars
thrown at you at even greater speed just
because we have so much,
convenience
and so much access to rapid communication,
so much access to mass media, to 24
hour news cycles, etcetera, etcetera.
That things that are important, quote unquote, and
they are important in a particular sense. But
things that are important will happen every 24
hours, there'll be a new crisis.
Something will happen in this country, something will
happen in another country, something good will happen,
something bad will happen, something grotesque will happen.
Unfortunately, the bad seems to be happening more
than the good, or at least we find
out about about the bad more than we
find out about the good. If all you
do is keep chasing particulars your entire life,
and and your heart is always chasing particulars,
you will never get a chance
to learn about universals. I mean, one of
the good things about human existence before,
you know, even just 20 years,
even just 30 years. Right? Before we had
internet, before we had cell phones in our
pockets, is that you at least had a
good 10, 15, 20, 30, 60, a 100
minutes in the day where you have to
just walk places and think about things.
Right? There's no, you know, the radio find
the radios in the car, but there are
sometimes that you're free from having to constantly
talk to someone or think about something.
And that time to think about things is
completely gone now. The mind has no way
of digesting things. And
the types of news that come to us,
the types of stories that come to us,
they're very interesting. It's really it's inexhaustible. A
person can sit in front of YouTube for
hours. A person can sit in front of
Twitter for hours. A person can sit in
front of,
you know, Google News or BBC News for
hours and digest things, you know, to no
end. In fact,
in the old days, there used to be
some restriction in the media, in the sense
that every country had a major news outlet
that they could,
that that that you could get news from.
And then after that, you have to be
like a reporter and, like, go find out
what's the scoop on the street, what's the
word on the street. Now
everybody reads their own news source. So if
you're republican, you have your own newspapers. If
you're democrat, you have your own newspapers. If
you're from this country, you have your own
newspapers. If from that country, you have your
own newspaper. Within that country, if you're from
this party, you have your own newspaper. If
you're from that party, you have your own
newspaper. If your entire agenda in life is
that you think that there's aliens and the
government's trying to cover up,
the existence of aliens and the conspiracy about
aliens, you'll find something that talks about Palestine
in the context of aliens. They'll talk about
something that talks about global warning
warming in the context of aliens. You'll find
something that talks about domestic news in the
context of aliens, and you'll find something that
talk that's in, you know, international news that
talks about aliens. That's all you'll see, all
you'll hear. Some of us smirk,
but the fact of the matter of it
is that a lot of us are actually
stuck in webs like that. We just hear
people who agree with us constantly more and
more and more, and we cocoon ourselves,
intellectually,
to the point where we've lost the ability
to think about anything ourselves, and we've lost
the ability to understand anything ourselves, and we
have lost the ability to understand the perspective
of somebody
that's different than our own.
What do we need? We need universal, the
messenger of
Allah his his his path in the way
that he taught, deemed to people was a
path based on universals.
It's based on a training
of people that forces them to separate themselves
from their context. It says, if you're black,
if you're white, if you're
if
you're if you're rich, if you're for poor,
if you're from this clan, or from that
clan, from this tribe, or from that tribe,
think of these things that are universal
between all of us, and that will put
all of your particularities into some sort of
context.
So this is something I want people to
understand. This is not something that's because I
don't have the ability to speak about what's
in the news. I know what happened in
Chattanooga. I know what happened today in Palestine.
Palestine. The the Israeli settlers burned,
the house of,
a family,
and there's a small child, 5 year old
child, who is critically
injured and has a 18 month old's little
brother who was burned to death. And I
know the fact that, like, you know, someone
killed a lion in Zimbabwe, and that's probably
going to receive more media attention. I know
all of these things. We can talk about
them and digest them,
to no end.
We feel sorry about them. We feel sad
about them. When you hear something from bad
news, right?
Say,
make dua to Allah that he changed the
condition of the ummah. But the fact of
the matter is a person can either choose
to make their their
daily dhikr of Allah Ta'ala.
They can choose to replace it with just
reading news all day and all night, and
talking about things that we don't have any
direct control over.
Or you can try to be part of
the solution. You can try to be part
of the solution. How are you gonna be
part of the solution? Okay? I promise you
getting a gun and shooting someone is not
gonna help you be part of the solution,
from where you are and from where I
am. It doesn't work that way. It really
doesn't work that way at all. If someone
says, okay, Khalas, Fulan Fulan politician,
full on leader, full on this person, that
person, even full on nation or full on
race, we have to fight them. Okay? You
fight fought and killed all of them. How
are you gonna solve the problem that nobody
reads their
salat? How are you gonna solve the problem
that lying, cheating is rife amongst our communities?
How are you gonna solve the problem that
people don't wake up for salatul fajr? How
are you gonna solve the problem that nobody
wants to learn to read the Quran? Nobody
wants to learn to understand what's in the
book of Allah ta'ala? If you had you
know, there are people who protest, we wanna
have Islamic system today. We wanna have Islamic
system. We're gonna put up the caliphate. How
do you how do you reconcile the fact
that, okay, here's caliphate is there tomorrow. Right?
We have nobody who could be a judge,
we have nobody who can be a government
functionary, we don't even have people who can
be imams and masajid.
We don't even have an ability to gather
together
in a place without arguing, yelling, and screaming
at each other, and without giving less than
a quarter of the respect that we give
to a judge in a non Muslim court,
or to a government official or functionary in
a non Muslim context. Those things are not
gonna be reconciled by talking about the news.
Those things are gonna be reconciled by
working on teaching universals, and building ourselves up
from the ground
up. If this masjid prepares itself, and the
individuals of this masjid prepare itself for a
better tomorrow, for a better future,
for a better future, 2 things will happen.
1 is the individuals of this masjid will
all go to jannah. And eventually,
whether Muslims are in a good condition in
the world or a bad condition in the
world, it means absolutely nothing if you enter
into Jannah. No one will remember the dunya
and say, Oh look, we are downtrodden, and
my existence is bad, and now I'm in
Jannah, and we're, you know,
toasting chalices of of wine in Jannah. We're
not gonna have any depression about what happened
before. We're gonna say, it was a test
Allah gave alhamdulillah, by his father we passed,
and we're doing good now.
We're doing good now. And if a person
is victorious
over here, but everybody loves them, and everything
is good, the only one small caveat is
Allah doesn't love us. If Allah doesn't love
us, then what's the point of all of
it? It's going to be completely pointless in
the That's that's one point, is that your
will be made if we part if we
if we start with ourselves, and we start
with our own understanding, and start with our
own word.
The second benefit is what?
Is that then we will be ready to
to participate with other people in positive change
in the future. There are so many problems.
The rich exploit the poor in this country.
You don't have to go far to see
things like payday lending
facilities in Rockford. Okay? Riba is haram for
Muslims, and you know what the best thing
is? The Christians know it's haram as well.
The Christians know it's haram. I remember I
went to lobby the, Washington state legislature with
care
one one one time, and that was on
our agenda that, like, you know, to restrict
payday lending places. And so what happened was
that the the state senator that we went
to speak to, he says we said we
wanna talk to you about payday lending. So
I know I know that you guys consider
usury to be, impermissible.
Says, you know what? We consider usury to
be impermissible as well.
He says, in the bible, there's a there's
a story. It's a well known story that
said
that Jesus once went into the temple. And
in front of the temple, in the courtyard,
there was all the tables of the money
changers.
Right? All the tables of the money changers
that used to transact in in in usury.
And he threw them all upside down. He
threw them upside down. He literally,
violently
overturned their tables. He said that this is
one of the things that I'm most ashamed
of in our state that we allow these
these people to transact in usury. They know,
you know, If you wanted to change this,
I wanted to change this. It's a very
simple change. Right? We're dreaming about big changes.
Big changes happen to the people. You know,
you go things happen step by step. You
cannot have every other week like Sayedna Musa
snapping his fingers and the
is getting drowned again and again. The niram
doesn't work that way. The system doesn't work
that way. That's not the of Allah Ta'ala.
You start with small things. How can we
get to that point? If we cannot do
small things as a community, then big things
are a a a.
Umia is that type of
Right? Those are those hopes that are completely
vain. It's like a person sitting at home,
watching the Simpsons on the couch, eating potato
chips, saying, one day I'll be in the
NBA. Well, it's theoretically possible, but you're not
really doing anything to prepare for it. It's
not gonna you know, it's it's Yeah. It's
possible, but it's not it's not gonna happen.
Right?
If you can do those small things,
right, you will have that small talking
about
talking about big things is what? It's like
that person sitting on the sofa, eating chips,
and drinking a Coke, and,
you know, not even sitting up slouching in
in in the in the couch and saying
that, yeah, one day I'm gonna become a
NBA superstar. One day I'm gonna be, you
know, whatever, NFL hockey player. One day I'm
going to go to the Olympics and win
the 100 meter dash. You know? It's it's
it's it's
improbable enough if you're in tip top shape,
the best physical shape in your life that
you've ever been.
But at least the person can say, you
know, it's your dream. Keep practicing for it.
You're working hard.
You'll get it one day. Someone sitting in
the couch, it's completely despicable. That person either
has a mental illness or that person has
something very wrong, very wrong, and is in
severe delusion about what their state is.
So I wanted to take the occasion of
the next 3 kutbas,
to talk about something. Allah says in his
book what?
He says,
He says, Allah says in surahul Baqarah,
the likeness or the analogy of the person
who spends in the path of Allah
And here spending there's 2 relevances to spending
in the path of Allah to us. 1
is that, this is a general principle that's
being talked about in the context of charitable
giving, but this principle is valid for every
other act of obedience.
Whether it be salat, whether it be for
siam, for whatever. Okay? Every good deed that
you do. Right? The principle is valid for
all of them. The second is what?
Very few of us are people of the
disposition to be zuhad, to cut ourselves off
and worship for the rest of our lives.
Very few of us are the disposition of
Right? There are a couple of people of
knowledge in the community, but it's not like
a culture that we've developed for ourselves. And
the fact is that we would be most
of us would be happier if our children
become doctors than if our children become So
it's a path that that that some people
may take up, but in general it's a
path that very few of us are interested
in. But what Allah has given us is
what? Money. And we can spend. And even
if you're not the guy who says, who's
gonna give a $100,000?
And you're not the one who reached for
the sky at that point because you wish
you could, but you don't have the money.
Even if you give a $1,000, even if
you give $500, the fact of the matter
is the majority of the world, people don't
have enough money If they were gonna say,
who's gonna spend $10 today to feed their
family? They would love to raise their hand,
but they may not be able to. Allah
gave us a lot. Allah gave us a
lot. So this is a path that's something
very open for most of us. Right? It's
very open for most of us. That's the
relevance of this to us. So he says,
the likeness of the person who spends in
the path of Allah
is like what? It's like a
kernel or a seed,
like for a ear of corn
that you plant it in the ground, and
from it, 7 other ears of corn come
out. Every ear of corn has in it
a 100 seeds.
And Allah
will multiply the reward for whoever he wills,
and Allah
is all expansive, all knowing.
What does this mean? This means one good
deed, whether it be in the specific context
of the aya, meaning spending in the path
of Allah
or whether it be any other good deed
that a person does well.
The general rule that's mentioned in other places
in the Quran and in the sunnah of
the Prophet
are what?
They are that a person who does one
good deed, they'll receive 10 times the reward
back.
So in this this ayah, 700 is mentioned.
7
7 ears of corn, each of them have
100 seeds in them.
700 is mentioned. Why is this? Is this
because there's a mistake in the Quran?
No. This is a unique mentioning that is
there to teach all of us a universal
lesson, and that is what?
The sincerity, the with which a deed is
done,
it will make that deed even higher with
Allah
or it can make that deed lower with
Allah
The properness and the expertise with which that
deed is done, it can make that deed
of a higher value
in front of Allah or the lower value
in front of
Allah This is a very practical lesson
we need to learn if we're going to
do the good deed anyway. If you're gonna
end up praying your 5 prayers everyday anyway,
if you're going to end up giving zakat
anyway, if you're going to end up fasting
in Ramadan anyway, if you're going to end
up, you know, paying a consolidator and and
airlines
and, you know, paying for buffets and for
hotels and for buses and, you know, buying
tasbis and and and and and and and
and kufis for people from
is. Right? So the summary is what? Is
that the with which a person does a
deed can take that deed that's going to
be $1 given $10 of reward, it can
make it $1 given $700
of reward. And if you look in the
tafasir of this ayah,
Imam Khourtubi and many other mufasirim, the dominant
opinion of them is that not that 700
is a roof or a limit.
Rather 700 is a really big number, and
it is a it is
a metaphor for something that there's no limit
to it. And this is not just
literary acrobatics.
Right? It comes in the hadith Qudsi which
is that Allah says
the the the prophet
narrates that Allah says that every deed a
person does or sorry, every deed a person
does will be rewarded from 10 times its
worth all the way until 700 times its
worth.
Except for what? Except for fasting.
That fasting is for me, and I'm the
one who rewards for it. Meaning what? It's
an exception to the rule.
And it's not an exception to the rule,
rather it's something that it's very easy for
a person even to break that 700
limit, the barrier of the 700 limit. So
this is there's very clear
textual proof for this. It's not something that
we're making up in order to encourage people.
It's something that's very clear textual proof for
it that the sky is the limit. There
are certain people, they're $1, Allahu Adam, if
we know how to write it up zeros
after the 1, or after after whatever number
that we see for the amount of reward
that they'll receive back from it. Right? The
prophet
said what? That the sahabah radiyaaa ta'ala anhu
if they gave a for the sake of
Allah, 2 mubarak cupped hands of the prophet
in volume, in grain for the sake of
Allah
It would would be more valuable to Allah
than the entire mountain of Uhrd if one
of you that comes afterward were to give
it in gold.
That's much more than 700 times value. It's
much more than if it was 1 of
grain for 1 of gold, it would still
be more than 700 times the value. This
is something that's beyond any calculation. This is
something you need to learn, I need to
learn. If Allah is pleased with us, big
things happen. This is how sayna
feed Palestine from the Crusaders, if you want
to feed Palestine.
This is how our forefathers
made
victory in their intellectual pursuits,
in their political pursuits, in their economic pursuits,
in their spiritual pursuits. But we cannot be
a person who thinks about the NBA while
we're still sitting on the couch eating potato
chips. We have to be people who build
up step by step and be real, be
realistic with ourselves,
and be,
you know, accountable to Allah to Allah and
to ourselves, and we have to go step
by step. Because if you think you're special
and the system doesn't apply to you, then
you're, 10 steps before even this this position
that we're talking about.
The person who humbles himself for the sake
of Allah, who thinks I'm special not because
I'm better than other people, I'm special because
I'm the most defective of Allah Ta'ala's slaves.
That person Allah takes takes tell Allah Ta'ala
sees that in a person and takes pity
on them, and picks them up, and gives
them a great matam. The person who says,
yes, I'm this, I'm that, I know this,
I know that, and if you ask me
the solution to this problem is x y
z, all these other things, that person, Allah
is not pleased with that. Allah is not
pleased with that. Allah is not pleased with
the person being smug and arrogant with themselves.
So the next 3 Khutubaat we want to
talk about is 3 things.
Khortubi mentions that the general concept is there,
that a person, the more iqlas, and the
better way that they do their good deeds,
the more reward that they're going to receive.
And then he mentions
a very simple,
analogy.
He says that the person who's doing a
good deed is like a farmer.
A farmer, the crop yield that they're going
to get, you know there are people in
here that may may say that like the
analogy of a farmer is not so relevant
because I'm a doctor, I'm an engineer.
Drive up Mulford for a couple of blocks,
or drive in the other down Mulford for
a couple of blocks. There's like soy and
corn everywhere. It's not that of an analogy.
It's not that far off of analogy. Right?
The yield, right, if you have the same
amount of land, you can get different crop
yields. Your crop can be a failure. You
get nothing that that's worthy of taking to
market, or you can get a bumper crop
from that one acre of land. You might
get a better quality, and a better price,
and a better volume of of of harvest
than another person does in their 10 acres
or more.
So
mentions that what? That your good deeds are
like like like agriculture.
And the amount of crop yield that your
agriculture will give you is based on 3
things.
The quality of the seed,
the skill of the farmer, and the quality
of the land in which you're
you're, investing your,
investing your, your your your your harvesting skills,
your agricultural skills.
Okay? And so he says that the analogy
is what? The analogy of the seed is
what?
How pure the money that you spend is.
Just like a good seed, like for you
know, crops like apples, for example. There may
be 1 nestle or one lineage of apples
that is not resistant to
infection, to fungus, to
worms, and to insects and whatnot. And there
may be another one that's more resistant. There
may be one type of apple that's bigger
than the other. There may be one that's
sweet and another one that's not sweet. It's
very,
it's very sour when you bite into it.
There may be one that's even poisonous if
you eat it. Right? So you have to
pick the right seed. The analogy of the
seed is what when you do something good
for the sake of Allah what are the
resources that you use in order to do
that how halal are they how pure are
they
That's one one hutbaah I want to talk
about. The second is what? Is the the
the,
the skill of the farmer.
If the farmer knows what time to water
the crops, if he waters it too much,
he could kill the crops. If he waters
it a little bit less than that, but
still too much, he's wasting his money
on on the water.
If he knows what type of we could
use one pesticide that will kill the person
who eats the eats the crop, or he
could use another pesticide that's
organic, and that will break down, and it's
not harmful for people. All of these choices,
the more skilled the far farmer is, the
better they're going to do in order to,
raise the yield of the crop. And the
third is the land, the land that they
plant the seed in. And the land the
analogy of the land is what? The cause.
Because not all causes are equal,
right? A person will receive reward if they
go outside to the field, and you know,
bring food for an insect.
You feed an insect, you'll receive some reward.
And although it's something very difficult for people
to understand in the time and place that
we live in, that values the life of
a jungle animal more than the life of
a human being. But yes, you will receive
more reward for feeding a hungry person than
you will for feeding an animal.
Even though we say there's reward in all
of them. And some people they do things
and they think they're receiving a reward, and
all they're receiving is punishment.
So these are all 3 things inshaAllah. 1
week after the other, we'll talk about them.
Allah
give all of us so much tawfiq to
be people of understanding. Allah give us tawfiq
that whatever effort
and and resource we spend for his sake
in this in this world, it's something that's
accepted and it's something that gets a high
yield and a high value and a high
return from him. And that we not be
from amongst those who Allah
throws our deeds in our face, and we
receive nothing from them but punishment and for
regret.