Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Khutbah Value Character Over Rhetoric ICC 12062019
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All praises to Allah, and may his peace
and blessing be upon his servant and messenger,
Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
There's a hadith in
the Jamir ibn Tirdi, which Saydna Jabir Abdul
Mahindilahi radhiallahu ta'ala anhuma
narrates that the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam said,
that the most beloved of you the most
beloved of you and the ones who will
sit nearest to me on the day of
judgment are the ones who are the most
beautiful in your character.
This is the most beloved of you, and
those who sit nearest to me on the
day of judgment
will be the ones who are the most
beautiful in character. And what does it mean
on the day of judgment to sit nearest
to the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam? The one who is near him, will
be from the people of Tannah, and the
one who's near him will not be from
the people of fire.
So he says that the most beloved of
you and the nearest of you to me,
seated will be, on the day of judgment
will be those who are most beautiful in
character. And the most hateful hated,
people to me and those who are furthest
from me on the day of judgment
will be who? And he mentions 3 words.
They're not common words in the usage of,
of Arabs,
not in that time nor, in this time.
But he mentions 3 very specific adjectives
descriptors.
He says that the 3 people who will
be the most hated by me and the
furthest from me on the day of judgment
will be the
and the and the. And so the
there was someone who asked from amongst them
that the tarthar and mutashaddib, we understand what
they mean, but what is the mutafayhi?
And the prophet
mentions that the mutafayhi, he's the arrogant one.
He's the Mutakabeh, he's the arrogant one. And
so there's a little bit of explanation
with regards to the language of this hadith,
that's necessary.
The first thing that,
Naul mentions
in his explanation of this hadith is that
the is the one who speaks a lot,
out of the kind of out of affectation.
The is the one who speaks a lot
out of affectation.
And this is something that we,
you know, we consider this to be
a positive sign. We consider this to be
a sign of intelligence. And really, it's not.
It really isn't. And this is one of
the the the basic of the deen is
that the deen values quality over quantity.
Couple of deeds, a few deeds, but do
them with perfect with perfect ikhlas, perfect sincerity.
This means something with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That deed which is done with grossness.
Grossness in the classical sense of the word.
What does gross mean? The Germanic,
root of the word gross in the English
language means something that's just huge.
The the meaning of, of gross that we
use nowadays
to be something that's disgusting,
it comes along,
a similar usage which is an interestingly
made in the Quran,
which is the the the meaning of
Allah says that the pure and the filthy
are not the same even if you are
amazed by how great in size and an
amount of quantum the filth is.
Just because you have a lot of filth,
it doesn't replace the goodness that comes with
what with with being good even though it's
a small amount.
And so this is one of the the
great musul and one of the great,
universal principles of Islam, which is that a
little bit that's done with quality is much
better with Allah
It actually means something,
good with Allah
when compared to,
something that's,
of bad quality, but it's done with huge
quantity. The $1 given for the sake of
with
is better
with Allah Ta'ala than the $1,000,000 that are
given while showing off. And some people give
a $1,000,000 with the and that's the fable
of Allah, that's the grace of Allah Ta'ala,
he gives to whoever he wills. But to
teach somebody
who is sincere in small deeds to do
big deeds with sincerity is far easier than
to teach somebody
who is insincere in big deeds,
to do a small deed with sincerity. That's
a much more difficult lesson,
to learn, and that's the lesson that was
ingrained into the companions of the Allahu Muhammad,
in particular the Muhamjad, who spent such a
long time with the Messenger of Allah sallallahu
alaihi wasallam when he was in, Maqamukharama.
So the,
is the one who
speaks a lot.
Is who the one who
gives long speeches.
And in particular,
he uses a part a particular,
type of language or a particular
mode of
expression, which shows his, eloquence and,
self aggrandizement
and the greatness of his speech, quote unquote,
the supposed greatness of his speech. This is
something also that's
it's very unique to human culture that people
who use certain buzzwords, they somehow become smart
all of a sudden. So somebody who is
saying something,
if they say the same thing, for example,
it's talking about medicine,
some concept in medicine. If you give that
same talk in Urdu, if you give that
same talk in, you know,
Wolof, the language of, Senegal, the main language
of Senegal or something like that, people won't
take what you have to say seriously whereas
if you say the,
that, you know, whatever you have to say
with regards to medicine in English or in
French, people will take it seriously.
Now tell me something. Do ideas have a
particular language that they live in? Absolutely not.
That speech which is in Urdu or that
speech which is in Urdu
may actually contain within it within it knowledge
and wisdom,
and some understanding of the speech in English
or the speak speech in French may not
contain.
But what is it we, you know, we
have this idea that,
that how a person is saying something, some
somehow substitutes for what they're saying. And that's
completely not the case at all. If someone
is saying something, somehow substitutes for what they're
saying.
Substitutes for what they're saying. And that's completely
not the case at all. If somebody is
speaking the truth, even if they speak it
in simple words, it's the truth and it's
known by its own.
And if somebody is saying something that's wrong,
it doesn't matter how fluently or how eloquently
that person is speaking.
It doesn't matter what language that person is
speaking in, only a fool will aggrandize it
based on those,
on those metrics, and only a wise person
will listen to the content of somebody's speech
and evaluate it based on its content. Does
it make sense or not?
Is it rationally coherent or not? Is the
argument cogent or not? Regardless of how it's
being spoken.
How it's being spoken. But listen, you know,
the Asafashadeen, forget about forget about the the
language that people are speaking and even the
hey even the the clothing a person is
wearing, what a person's beard looks like, what
a person's
car that they're driving looks like. All of
these things oftentimes amongst small minded people, people
who are not,
people who are not rationally trained, people who
are not intellectually trained, we oftentimes will let
those things affect what we think about what
a person has to say more than the
actual thing that they have to say. And
the messenger of Prophet
knew that there are people
who will
force their way on other people based on
these
external,
indicators.
Based on external and irrelevant indicators like how
a person speaks, how long a person speaks,
how arrogant they are when they speak, how
eloquent they are when they speak, that they
will use the force of their eloquence and
their arrogance,
in order
to posit and forward, an argument that has
no substance in it whatsoever.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was
not pleased with was not pleased with it,
rather he said that this is a reason
that these people are the most hateful on
the day of judgment and the furthest from
me on the day of judgment. So the
companions,
they said that, well, we understand what this
is, we understand what this is, what this
is, which we that defined for you. But
what's the last one,
and the messenger of Allah
says that that is the person who's, an
arrogant one.
Imam in,
further detail with regards to what the word
means, he says that it comes from the
root,
from the root
word which means,
to fill one's mouth
with,
words. You know, some people speak,
they speak like radio announcers.
This is something that oftentimes speakers are trained
with.
I, you know, I don't have any speaker
training from a professional speaker standpoint. There are
many things to be, objective
to based on how I speak. A person
should speak well, especially when they're speaking the
know,
that they may not have a point. Like,
if you go to a church,
oftentimes, many of the mainline protestant
denominations in this country I should say mainline,
evangelical and charismatic
denominations in this country, you'll have the pastor
while they're speaking,
the organ and the band will be playing
in the back while they're speaking.
And what will happen is that they will
start playing
very softly.
And as time goes on, it will get
louder and louder and louder and louder To
give the indication what? To give the indication
that the speaker has some sort of a
point, whether they have a point or not,
whether they have a point or not.
And this is a playbook. This is not
something that they learned from the church elders.
It's not like Saint Augustine taught them this.
You know, this is not something that they
that that was codified in the council of,
NICEF.
Rather these are all from, like, the Nazi
propaganda playbooks. Like, Goebbels is basically the one
who taught them how to do these types
of things.
First thing you do is congratulate everyone for
being here and
make them feel like they're better than everybody
else in
the world.
The second thing that you do is tell
a story which seems hopeless, and then you
make some sort of, like, hopeful appeal pitch
out of the middle of it, and then
you just pull up. There's, like, a whole
predictable set of things that a person doesn't
order in order to pull at the strings
of a person's heart, so that you can
emotionally connect with them as a distraction from
not being able to rationally connect with them.
This is something that
a person may do,
you know,
in
in a way that's true. So if there
is a story like that and someone wants
to share it and make a good point,
that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But
to do it as a can stage,
show that a person does just in order
to emotionally manipulate people. There are people who
are
Muslims, and they call themselves Muslims. Some of
them from,
heterodox
groups, and some of them also who claim
that they're from only in order to make
themselves
seem bigger than others. They do these types
of, silly tricks. And some of them even
they're not they're not saying anything wrong, but
why are they saying what they're saying and
doing the things the way they're doing them?
Just in order to aggrandize themselves.
And brothers and sisters, this is something very
dangerous. This is not from the the the
methodology of our aslaf. I studied in Mauritania.
In Muretania, you rarely have a speaker which
will get up and speak for more than
3 minutes, continuously.
And if you think about it if if
you think about it, this is the way
the companions were there.
It's very rare that you have a speech
from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that's
all that long. The longest hadith in the,
Sahih Mufari, the longest hadith with the same
thing, the longest hadith in the
in the real the sali thing is the
hadith of Tawba. It's just a couple of
pages. It's not really all that long, and
there are very few hadith that come anywhere
near it in terms of their length. The
majority of the hadith of the prophet salallahu
alaihi wa sallam are short and sweet.
Right? Where Hamid ripped off the prophet salallahu
alaihi wa sallam when he said, remedy is
the soul of wit. Right? The best of
speech is what he he ripped off the
Arabs. The best of speech is what? That
which is short and that which gets to
the point. That which is short and that
which gets to the point. And so these
long winded speeches in which very little information
is conveyed, and it's all just this emotional
manipulation.
The messenger of Allah salallahu alaihi wa sallam
knew about it. He described it very accurately,
and he said that this is something that
which will take a person away from
a praiseworthy station on the day of judgment.
What will take a person to a praiseworthy
station on the day of judgment? The Messenger
of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, Beautiful character.
And how is that beautiful character described by
Aslaf? Sinanbul Abin Mubarikar lillahu
alaihi wa ta'ala,
one of the narrators whose hadith come and
all of the sihasifta,
and one of the great beloved,
individuals
and personalities of the history of this Ummah
from the, from the salaf, he mentions 3
things. He says that
you should smile. Whatever difficulties you have, whatever
problems you're carrying, you shouldn't burden other people
with them rather you should meet other people
with a smile. And the second is that
a person should
should should should
give for what they have in a reasonable
way, to other people that you shouldn't be
cheap, you shouldn't know, you should, buy things
for other people. You should feed other people.
You should help people out, with your time,
with your money, with your wealth. And that
a person, if they can't do any of
those things, then the best thing that a
person can do, if it's a bad day,
you're completely broke, hard to hard to bring
a smile out, you're just not feeling very
well, etcetera etcetera,
then that at that point the struggle is
what? Just not to harm another person, not
to harm anybody else. Don't harm the people
in the masjid, don't harm the people in
your family, don't take it out on somebody
else. If you're feeling pain, then deal with
your pain. Don't take it out on anybody
else. These are very simple things. Brothers and
sisters, you will not get a a a
1000 and 1,000 followers on Facebook and, Instagram
and Snapchat and Twitter for doing these things.
You will not get an award. Nobody is
going to put your name on a plaque
in the front of the masjid or name
the masjid after you because of this. But
these things, they may not mean anything with
the board or they may not mean anything
with the people sitting to the left and
right of you, but I give you glad
tidings if they mean something with Allah Ta'ala,
who created the heavens and the earth from
nothing. And And if he loves you, you
don't need to worry about what other people
think about you anymore, brothers and sisters. And
imagine if the masjid was filled with those
who Allah Ta'ala love,
what what type of tawfiq, we would have
as a community. And as Allah
give us,
preserve it for us. It's my imam that
that is the case. Allah preserve it for
us and clean it and make it more
pure, and more beautiful, and more powerful.