Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Khutbah The Rights of Youth and Elders.mp4
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All praises to Allah who guided us to
this,
who guided us to Islam and to iman,
and to his Mubarak house on this Mubarak
hour on this Mubarak day. And we were
not to be guided, was it not that
Allah had guided us?
Oh, Allah, to you is praised as his
commensurate with the majesty of your countenance and
the greatness of your authority.
Oh, Allah, we do not limit you with
any praise we can come up with ourselves,
rather we admit that you are the only
one who knows the true extent of your
praise worthiness.
And may the peace and blessings of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala be upon his servant and
messenger,
our master, Sayna Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
May the peace and blessings of Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala, be upon him and upon his
noble companions and upon his pure wives, and
upon his Mubarak and blessed family and progeny,
and upon all of those who follow all
of their way until the day of judgment.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in his book
in Suratul Hashar after praising thee, muhajirin
and the Ansar, the rank of whom doesn't
require
recounting, it is known to everybody who keeps
sound faith in their heart.
He says, as for the people who come
after them, Yani after the Muhajidim and the
Ansar.
As for the people who come after them,
they say, oh our lord,
forgive
us, Forgive us and forgive our brothers and
sisters who came before us in faith.
And
do not place in our hearts
rill,
ill will
toward those who believe.
Oh, our lord, indeed, you are kind and
you are merciful.
So you see 2 things. These are the
sifat of the believers. Right? Who are you?
You're either from the Muhajinin,
which none of us are, or you're from
the Ansar, which none of us are. Was
there anybody here there to meet the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and say that Abu Bakr,
welcome to Madinah.
No. There was none of us. None of
us had the opportunity to be there, and
even if we did, it would have been
very difficult.
And many people say, oh, I wish I
was in the time of the Sahaba
radiAllahu anhu, I would have held the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And we have a
hard time just coming to the masjid for
fajr.
We have a hard time imagining the sacrifices
those people have to make. Allah taught everybody
where they are and when they are for
a purpose and for a reason. So it's
good to, instead of fantasizing about things, it's
better to try to get in where you
fit in because
What happens, what is, what what the reality
is, is better than any of the other
possibilities,
this is part of our aqidah.
So if we're not part of the Muhajineen,
and we're not part of the Ansar, and
we want to be one of the people
of belief, one of the mumineen, then we
have to fit into this third category. Otherwise,
we're outside of the pill altogether. May Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala be our protection.
When did Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describe the
rest of the believers will come after these,
2 groups, these 2 auspicious and and and
and and and Mubarak and blessed groups.
What did he say? He says, those are
the people who say, oh, our Lord, forgive
us, and forgive those who came before us.
Meaning, the people who came before them in
the ummah, they have love for them. They
don't hate them or despise them or say,
these people ruined it for us, or these
people were backwards, or they made backwards countries,
or they, you know, had backwards customs, or
if they'd only done this, that, and the
other thing like the other people had, we
would have had this, that, and the other
thing. The fact that you're in the Masjid
right now, the fact that you say la
ilaha illallah means that those people who came
before us did something right, didn't they? They
did something right. They did something to benefit
you. In fact, the most important thing in
the world that they could have done, they
did that right. Such a thing, everything afterward
pales in comparison.
Are you not in the masjid right now?
Are you not a person who says La
ilaha illallah?
And are you not aware that Allah doesn't
give La ilaha illallah to somebody except for
if they love you, He loves them?
So those people, they made dua for them.
They They prayed for them, this third group
of people. May Allah make us amongst them.
They made dua for the people who came
before them. They say,
Forgive us, oh our lord. Waladhinasabakura
bil imam and those people who came before
us in imam.
Walatajaanfiqulu
binathilal ladheenaamanu.
Don't put in our hearts ill will to
those people who believe.
Oh, our lord, verily you are kind and
you are merciful.
You are kind and you are merciful.
This is the sifa. This is the description
of the believers.
The description of the non believers is what?
When Yo Muqiyama is done and they enter
jahannam,
Every time a group of people from the
people of disbelief and from the people of
wickedness,
from the people who didn't care in this
world about neither Allah nor his Rasool sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam nor the rights of others.
When they enter Jahannam,
every time one group of them enters Jahannam,
they will curse their,
sisters, meaning those who the the the ummah
will curse the other ummah that came before
them and the ummah that came after them.
The ummah that came before them for teaching
them the wrong way and the wrong path,
and the ummah that came after for following
them in their wrong teachings so as to
increase them in their in their in their
punishment in the * fire.
So if we find ourselves cursing people, if
we find ourselves cursing our elders, and we
find ourselves cursing our youngers, we find ourselves
cursing our brothers and sisters, and having a
bad opinion about the ummah of Sayna Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, then no, this is
not from the signs of us being from
the people of Jannah. This is not from
us of a sign of us being from
the people of of of of the of
the of the mujahideen,
the ansar. This is not a sign of
us being their righteous successors and their, followers
in their path that Allah
tracked down for them and for us. This
is a sign of us going down another
path. May
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala be our protection.
It's a hadith that's narrated in the musnat
of Imam Ahmad. It's narrated by Abu Dawud
and by Timidi
with slightly different words, but the meaning of
which is the same. Imam Ahmed narrates it.
The Messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam
said,
The rewai of Timothy has the word, You
wakir badla,
You alif.
The Nabi narrates
it's narrated from him that he
that person isn't from amongst us. That person
isn't from amongst us who doesn't have mercy
on
their younger,
brothers and sisters from this ummah,
on young people, on younger people, and who
doesn't know the right of elders, of those
who are,
are greater than us, both in sin and
in sha'en,
both in sin and in sha'en, both in
age and in affair. Somebody can be greater
than you, someone could be kabir,
Maybe they could be greater than you, not
just in age. The only the only
meaning of the word kabeer as an adjective
for a human being, it can be either
in size, which is obviously not what's meant
by the Hadith.
Okay? It can be in size,
or it can be in age, or it
can be in It can either be in
size, it can be in age, which is
what's meant by the hadith, and it can
be in It can be in a person's
overall affair. Who is a kabeer person? A
person who is generous, a person who is
righteous, and most importantly, a person who has
knowledge. All of these people, the nabi salallahu
alaihi wa sallam says what? He says that
that person is not from amongst us who
doesn't have mercy on those who are younger
than us and doesn't know the right and
the rank of those who are older than
older and and and greater in in in
rank. These are the sifat of the believers,
meaning what? It's an entire ecosystem, and a
person needs to get in where they fit
in. A person needs to understand where they
fit in that system and give every person
their right, give every person their hat. And
to speak about the youth, it's something that
people give a lot of lip service.
People give a lot of lip service. We
have to do this for the youth. We
have to do that for the youth. The
youth is the youth is important.
The youth is our future. The youth is
this, that, and the other thing. Brothers and
sisters, how are we going to implement that?
Is having concern with the youth only to
say that, okay, we're gonna hire imam, he's
gonna take care of the youth?
It doesn't work that way. It doesn't it
requires
rama. It requires what? Mercy. Mercy means what?
That you give somebody something that you wouldn't
give to other people. That certain people will
behave in a certain way, and they're going
to irk you, and they're going to give
you a hard time, and they're going to
make you upset,
and you still tolerate that from them. You
tolerate that from them without retaliating,
and without having anger, and without getting upset.
This is rahma. You have rahma for them.
You invest in them what you wouldn't invest
in other people. You invest in them in
such a way that that it doesn't make
sense. You invest in them in a way
that doesn't make sense from the logic of
dollars and cents and from the logic of
economy.
But you invest in them in the same
way that a mother invests in her children
without
worrying concern about return, and without
counting, what am I gonna get back from
this?
And this is what this is something that's
very important. And having Rahma on the kids
is something that needs to be done holistically.
It doesn't mean that every time a child
cries and says candy, you go and buy
them candy. That's not rahma. That's just a
good way of of making the child obese
and destroying their teeth. It's not going to
help them. Rahma means what? It means you
think for this child. You make decisions of
how you behave with the child or how
you behave with the youth, and how you
behave with your youngers? And some people, there
are people, Muammar, people with their beards have
turned white in this,
very
for whom perhaps even a man of 40
years old and 50 years old is like
a child in front of them. Right? Making
decisions for those people, giving advice for those
people, and and and acting for those people,
not in the way that will make them
happy necessarily,
but in the way that's best for them,
in the way that's best for them. And
this is something that's known about the psychology
of of of of of of of children
and even of adolescents.
It's what? It's that the mind is still
developing, and psychologically,
younger people look toward older people
to see an example of how to behave.
And in fact, even though
people are very scared to say anything to
children, and people are very scared to discipline
children because we seem to live right, you
know, nowadays today, in an environment where it's
fashionable to let children do whatever they want
to and not to say anything to them,
to only use positive reinforcement, never to use
negative reinforcement.
And the fact of the matter is that
some people are too negative, and the fact
of the matter is some people are
only positive to the extent that they don't
negatively reinforce any sort of norms or or
social behavior,
norms or limits in,
in in younger people, and that's also imbalanced.
It's imbalanced. There needs to be a balance
between them. Yes. A person should always stay
a little bit on the side of positivity,
but without negative enforcement, the mind is
designed to accept both positive and negative reinforcement.
If that wasn't the case, there would be
no I act in the Quran promising punishment
for sinners. There would be no verses in
the Quran. There would be no punishments at
all, in fact, in this world at all,
if negative reinforcement doesn't benefit. If you didn't
punish thieves and murderers, and if you didn't
punish criminals,
the crime would go and blow through the
roof. This is a rahma for all of
us. This is something also when we want
to have mercy on young people, we need
to show them what limits are. We need
to show them with what limits are. And
a person, you know, may say, it's funny
because some people, they become, like, over
over engrossed in in reading books,
and they
are undertrained and underdeveloped in terms of experience.
And so they read books
about the kindness and the mercy of the
Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and
his Sahaba radiAllahu anhu to the point that
they think that any sort of negative reinforcement
is somehow contrary to contrary to the prophetic
sunnah, and that's not the case at all.
The Nabi salallahu alaihi wa sallam, one of
his wasaya to parents and to
fathers, to heads of households,
is never to raise the stick of adab
over from over your the
the the head of your children. The stick
of Adam. It's a metaphor. It doesn't mean
that you constantly hold a stick and beat
people or whatever, or that you even beat
them at all. But it's a metaphor for
what? For negative reinforcement.
This is also part of the mercy that
we give to our youngers.
Make them tough. Make them, you know,
you know, do without for a time. Let
them sleep on the floor for a day.
Let them spend the day in the masjid
in silence. Let them go travel, do something
for the sake of Allah. Let them sacrifice
and go through a little bit of suffering,
not a lot of it, but a little
bit of it for the sake of Allah.
Toughen them up. Show them how to be.
Show them how to behave in the world.
Don't leave them like a a a defenseless
animal. The mother leaves the animal defenseless that
now you've turned 18. Go to college now.
You have no idea how to deal with
people, you have no idea to try to
control yourself, you have no idea how to
do anything at all whatsoever,
don't leave them like that. Rather, train them
to be adults. Train them to take the
sacrifices of adults, and train them to take
to make the,
the the effort of adults as well.
I received an email from one of the
young people in the ICRA school. I wanted
to share,
some of it without sharing,
you know, who who sent it. It could
have been any of the kids really that
sent it. And sometimes the kids, we underestimate
them and we think of them as kids.
Sometimes they're not kids. They're grown they're they're
grown up
They need experience and they need guidance and
they need encouragement. But for every time
people talk about how
horrible the youth is, and how astray the
youth is, and how the youth is like
when we were kids, we would have never
done this and we would have never done
that. It's a saying attributed to Imam Malik
that the person who claims and get and
complains that look how destroyed the people are,
meaning look how bad the people have become.
Look how horrible their akhlaq have become, look
how far away from deen they've become. Then
they say to them, Imam Malik said,
whoever complains about how destroyed the people are,
that person is the most destroyed of them.
That person is the most destroyed of them.
Meaning what? If you complain about everything is,
you know,
so horrible, then you're the most horrible of
them. And the context of the saying is
not for the person who
who is analyzing what the situation is in
order to make it right or to do
something about it, or at least to make
dua for people.
But the context is what? That person who
wants to complain about how bad the situation
is, and they don't have any intention whatsoever.
They never had an intention for the blink
of an eye. From the beginning until the
end, they had no intention whatsoever to do
anything to help anybody. The only point of
them complaining was for them to complain.
Imam Al Makar
said that that person is the most destroyed
of all of them.
Right? So look,
you see that. And this is just one
example. There are examples to the left and
right, you just have to look for them.
This is so and so from the student
council. I'm emailing you to reminding remind you
if possible, can you talk about donating or
buying from us? They're having this desserts cafe
sale. Right? The kids at the school are
having it. Right? What are they what are
they they cook the desserts themselves, or they
solicited
them themselves. They said remind people if they
can donate or buy something if possible because
all the money is going to Iqra Renovation
to help Iqra be accredited again inshallah.
Please tell them if everyone just gave $5
and presume 200 people show up for jawa,
which eventually more than that will show up,
we'd have a 1,000 right there. Please, imam,
do not forget to announce this. It means
a lot to us. We've gone to this
school all our lives, and want to and
we know that this school deserves to be
accredited.
What does what does that mean? That means
there's a child that's
not a child. I mean, they're young people
They have what? They have, a, pride for
the school that they go to. Why? Because
it's a it's a Muslim school, it has
to do with iman.
B,
they're doing something to make the world a
better place. This is one
serious illness that we have, that we've trained
our children to become consumers,
leeches.
Right? We've trained them. Obviously, a child, a
baby, you're not gonna yell at a 6
month old child or a 6 year old
child and say, you never do anything for
anybody. You're just elites, you just eat food,
and okay, fine. That's fine. Small children, some
of them, they're not able to give back
yet. This is your time to give to
them.
But what happens? A child is 7 years
old, 8 years old, 9, and you can
teach them that you don't have to take
all the time, you can give also.
You can give them a dollar, tell them
to go put it in the sadaqa box.
It's not their dollar, but at least you're
giving them the habit. You can teach them
that instead of after a dinner at the
masjid is done, or after an event is
done, instead of going home with everybody else,
teach them stay behind for 10 minutes and
help them take the take the you know,
sat down or clean up.
Why? Why, Baba? Everybody else is going. Why
are we doing it? Why? Because, Sayyidun Qomni
yukhadimuhum.
The Messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said
that, the leader of a people is the
one who serves them. You can teach them
that, can't you? They may not run the
entire masjid personally out of their own finances,
but you can teach them to give something
back.
Right? And as they get older, you can
teach them to give more and more back
instead of having a situation which we have
right now. When
you have people, a grown men, a people
23, 25, people tell me this is shirk.
My son doesn't listen. My wife tells him
to clean his room and to do this
and to do that, and he doesn't listen.
Can you talk to him? I said, okay.
Yeah. No problem. I'm thinking they're gonna bring
an 8th grader in, 7th grader in. I'm
gonna talk to him about being a man.
You bring a 23 year old child in,
you bring a 20 year old child in,
and I have to tell him about, like,
why you have to
help your mother with chores?
You don't realize the fact fact that your
father is paying you rent for free, and
that you don't realize all of these things?
You're too busy playing PlayStation to study and
to do any of these things? This is
what this at this point, this is not
a 100% the child's fault anymore.
Not to remove responsibility. It's all of the
child's responsibility. They're not a child anymore, it's
an adult. Right? This is their responsibility.
They're responsible for it. But if you look
at the root cause of how you got
to this point, it's it's not completely the
fault
of the young person also,
because they also need to be pushed forward
a little bit. They also need to do
things. In the sharia,
a man is a man
when? When they hit the age of puberty,
14 years old, 15 years old, 16 years
old,
according to the different opinions
of
the a person you're a legally you're a.
At that point, if you do something and
you die,
the tape will be replayed,
and
you will be asked why did you do
this? Nobody's gonna call your mama and your
baba anymore.
We need to be careful about this. We
just read this morning. It's a hadith narrated
by Imam Behati in his,
Sunan.
It was read this morning,
after Salat al Fajr that the the person,
the child has a haq, a right on
his father, that when he's born, he should
give him a good name, and he should
raise him in a good way. And when
he's ready to get married, he should get
married. And whichever
a young man then is not helped to
get married by his father, and then afterward
ends up going and doing something haram because
of that. Then the father has a portion
of the sin with the son. I heard
that.
We we read in
the Madars, we read
near a 100000 hadith, who's gonna remember all
of them? Sometimes you hear a hadith again,
it makes your ears perk up. You said,
oh my god. This is something that's serious.
This is something that's deadly serious.
This is not just only having to do
with this one issue, this has to do
with all of these things. So coming back
to what we were talking about, the flip
side is what? When you see someone who's
thoughtful I mean, this is thoughtful. Whoever wrote
this email, and it's not one person, it's
the tongue for a group of young people
who are, have that same feeling, who are,
supporting the same project. And, if
you look for them, it's not the only
project going on in the world. There are
so many young people are doing so many
things for the sake of Allah
with sincerity and with energy.
And what are we supposed to do? What's
the hack of the younger people? Is that
when we see them, instead of walking by
and say, well, I'm on a diet, and
I don't, you know, eat cake, and I
don't have time for this, and it's cute.
My children don't go to the Iqra school
anyway. I don't have time for this, blah
blah blah. You know, they always screw up
the renovations anyway, and they this and they
that. A 100 things Shaitan puts in the
in the mind of a person,
instead of doing that, why don't you, you
know, why don't we look at them and
say,
you know, here, I you know, I'm on
a diet. I'm I'll give you $5 anyway.
I'm on a diet. I'll give you the
$5 anyway. You know, I have to go
right now, but I'll write you a check
next time, next July.
Or if you don't even have the money,
or you think that you don't want to
orphan somewhere else, or whatever,
at least make for them. At least tell
them, you guys are doing something so wonderful,
Allah help you. You'll be rewarded for this
in
the You'll be rewarded for this, Allah Ta'ala
will put Baraka in your life, in this
world. Allah will put Barakah in your life
with the everlasting in the hereafter.
If we can't do that, then why should
we expect that the the the there should
be anything but anyone destroyed. This is what
the meaning of rahma is, is that we
push them forward along the path of goodness
even though they're naive. Because with their naivety
comes an energy to do things that elders
can't do. This is something very thoughtful.
There are many people in this crowd that
may have even beards and and and
and white beards, and this is more thoughtful
than anything they did until the age of
40.
Right? There are kids doing things like that.
All we need to do is help them
to push them forward, to encourage them rather
than discourage them. To discourage a a young
person from an act of righteousness
is to sub in for shaytan. That's shaytan's
shaytan's job. There's already there's already someone in
the universe who is created for that. It's
not you and me. Let them do their
work. You and I should be busy doing
our work, which is what? Encouraging people to
do something better and to be someone better
instead of discouraging them. And finally, what is
the second part of the hadith?
Right?
What does that mean that that that that
a person must know the right of our
elders
and must
venerate and honor our elders. What does that
mean? For those of us who come from
many different parts of the world or from
a different time, even in this country,
it's automatically known that someone who's older than
you deserves your respect.
Very few people understand why. It's like autopilot
to the point where what? If someone is
born a day older than you,
an hour
sooner than you, even twins, they're born within
minutes of each other. It's known for the
whole life of those 2 twins. They may
be identical twins. They know who's the elder
and who's the younger.
Why is this? Is this just some sort
of oddity of the east? Some extravagant,
you know, thing left over from a different
time and a different age, which because we've
moved to America, we can shrug off now.
It's a hadith of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. But why?
It was something that we have very little
time, but we'll summarize what the what the
point is. The point is that the Messenger
of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says in
a number of hadiths, and a number of
hadiths specifically,
that every day hour breath Allah gives to
a person, and that person spends that in
righteousness and piety.
Every salat a person reads, every Allahu Akbar,
every La Illaha Illallah, every time they even
take the name of Allah
that increases them one rank with Allah in
Jannah, and the ranks of Jannah last forever.
They last forever
to the point where there is a a
a hadith narrated in the sunan
that there were 2, brothers, 1 from the
Muhajid, 1 from the Ansar. You know how
they had Moaha when they did a hijra?
The Nabi
paired an immigrant with a a helper so
that they could, you know, get integrated into
the life of Medina.
The 2 of them, subhanAllah, Adhim, in battle,
both of them
were were were were shaheed. One of them
was killed on the battlefield.
The other one just survived for another day
for another day or for a small amount
of time at any rate,
after his brother died, shahid.
And then when he dies when he finally
also succumbs to his wounds, he was wounded
mortally, they come to the messenger of Allah
salallahu alayhi wasalam to deliver the news. They
said he finally caught up with his brother.
He finally caught up with his brother. May
Allah have mercy on both of them. The
Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam said no.
He didn't catch up with him. He said,
just that that extra day or that extra
small amount of time that he was alive,
those extra salats that he did, he's already
surpassed the maqam of his brother
because both of them were shahid. This one
shahid with that many more prayers, with that
much more zikr, with that much more patience,
with that much more obedience to Allah ta'ala,
with asking Allah's forgiveness that many more times.
This is very beautiful because in it are
a number of lessons we don't have time
to go through.
One of the most important of which is
that there's still there's always goodness. There's still
some reason to keep living. There's always some
good in life.
Life is never pointless. Even if you're stuck
in a cage and you're being tortured, may
Allah
protect us from ever having to get near
anything like that. There's still khair in life
as long as a person does what Allah
commands them to do, as long as a
person is patient, and as long as a
person says their prayers and remembers Allah
But coming back to the issue of elders,
what is it? What is it? The reason
that we venerate those people who are older
than us is that they've spent that much
more time in la ilaha illallah.
Do you know or do I know if
we're going to be able to have that
tawfiq what they have? That we're going to
have that time that they had? That we're
going to have that
that, pleasure that they had. Even if a
person isn't a particularly
good Muslim,
the fact that they held on to iman
and we don't know tomorrow what's going to
happen to our hearts, this is a reason
to respect those people. Allah commands us to
respect those people for this very reason, that
they have some rank over you and over
me that that that we don't have. We
hope to have from Allah
but we don't have vouchsafed or guaranteed by
any means.
So we are to we are to respect
them as well. And when a person sees
the scale of Sahir and Kabir, of younger
and elder,
then they see where they fit in, they
will feel a peace in their heart. Why?
Because the fish will be back in water.
They're not going to be a person who's
out of place in this world. Rather, they'll
know where their place is, where they fit
in, and that in and of itself gives
a person a type of peace that refusing
to accept order, or refusing to accept any
system, will never allow a person to have
in their hearts. It doesn't mean that everything
young people do is wonderful, or everything old
people do is wonderful.
But it does mean that you need to
understand where you fit in, and how you
can help, and how you can speak to
people, and how they'll speak to you. May
Allah
give all of us so much.
Our young people, whichever one of them has
a pious and righteous
intention in their heart to do something, and
the zeal to carry it out that comes
with youth, may Allah
give them more and more tawfiq.
Our elders, may Allah
keep their shadows over our heads, and keep
us benefiting from the of us being here.
And may Allah give us the tawfiq of
also
serving and surviving a life in
so that we can have what they had
or have something better. May Allah
make us people who love one another, and
make us people who are comfortable with what
our place is in the society,
not people who carry around grudges in our
hearts, phantom grudges
for nobody and for nothing. May Allah give
us all so much tawfeeq.