Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Seeking Increase Through Gratitude in the Lives of Aleppo Khutbah Decatur IL 12302016.mp4
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
He conveyed
some teachings,
and it was one of the last things
that he said.
It's narrated in the
when
he was
ill the mortal illness from which he would
pass away.
Visited him and he was in a state
of fever
and
he had a blanket over him. One can
imagine
the Arabian Peninsula, although it does get cold
for a very few,
fleeting days of the year, most of the
time it's very hot. So a person who's
in fever will feel cold and hot as
well. He had a thick blanket over him.
He put his hand
over the blanket, through the thick blanket. He
said that,
he he said that that
how intense is your fever,
May the peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him.
And
he responded.
He says,
says, in such a way, he says, yes,
you're right. The fever is very intense. And
in such a way, the the test or
the tribulation
is severe with us. And in such a
way, our rewards are multiplied.
Our rewards are multiplied.
This is the method of
teaching. It's a prophetic methodology when you teach
somebody something whether it has to do with
deen or whether it has to do with
something else as well. Which is not only
to teach the correct conduct but also to
teach what the benefit of that conduct is
because a person has a difficulty
in doing something even if that thing is
right. A person has difficulty in doing something
if they don't see what the benefit or
what the point is. So he says, this
is how
the tribulation is severe with us and this
is also how our reward is multiplied with
Allah
And then he asked Abu Sayedul Khudr
asked the prophet who
are the people who go through the most
tribulation?
Now there
are multiple variations or multiple narrations
of
the saying,
who who goes through Hamish tribulation? The one
that most people are familiar with is the
narration of Sadna.
And which is narrated that the prophet
says that, that the MBR,
they are the ones who the prophet
are the ones who are the ones who
go through the most
harsh and most difficult of tribulations.
And then afterward,
the people who are most like them and
the people who are most like them, then
he said that whoever in their
whoever their their is hard, it's firm.
That person, their tribulation becomes even more severe.
And whoever their is weak, there's Allah
will lift some of the tribulation
off from them.
And this process will continue more and more
and more until a person is left without
any sins. Meaning, they meet Allah
with a clean slate. Don't think that a
person don't think that I'm a Muslim. I
go pray 5 times a day. I make
I watch what I eat. I watch what
I say. I watch what I do. I
watch where I consume my wealth,
and I watch where I earn my wealth
from. I do all of these things. I
give to the Masjid. Why is it that
I'm the one who is out of everybody
on the road stuck with a flat tire?
Why is it I'm the one who has
difficulty
at school? Why is it I'm the one
who has difficulty finding a job? Why this?
Why that? Why the other thing? Why? Because
you're going to Jannah. Allah
picked you to be one of his
through the word of Allah picked you to
be one of the ones that he loves
forever in this world and in the hereafter.
He made the entire
for you.
Is better. It's more intense than this world
and it lasts forever.
And what happens to these tribulations Allah
is wiping clean your slate, and he's stacking
the deck in with your rewards.
So coming back to the narration that we
started with,
again, when asked who are the people who
go through the most tribulation, he said, what?
So the people who go through the most
tribulation are who? They are the the the
then
the
and in reality, these two narrations are the
same.
These two narrations are the same. In one
narration, it's the the people who go through
the most tribulation are who, the then those
like them, then those like them in order.
And this is the tafsir, one hadith is
the tafsir of the other. Why? Because the
are the
Whoever Allah puts an ill inside of their
heart, those people are by the explicit pronouncement
of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam the heir and
the representatives of Nabuah in this Ummah.
Then after them are the salihin, who are
the ones who are people of
piety and righteousness. Everything that's on them, they
discharge it dutifully.
Everything that's haram on them, they, they avoid
it scrupulously. And if they make a mistake,
they make tawba quickly and Allah accepts that
tawba from them. Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam
continues. What does he say? He continues, he
says
that one of them in the past before
before you before this,
one of them was in such a situation
that they were eaten alive by ticks.
You know what a tick is. Right? Is
one tick enough to kill a person?
No. So imagine how horrible
how horrible a person has to be infested
in order to die, in order to be
eaten alive by what? By ticks. So one
of them was eaten alive by ticks, or
one of them would be
so,
so afflicted with poverty that they would find
nothing to clothe their nakedness with except for,
like, an overcoat, except for,
except for an abba, except for an overcoat.
Imagine that, like, you have like a trench
coat or something like that. You maybe someone
found it at the goodwill or what. They
cannot I mean, they cannot afford anything even
to cover their nakedness with. This is the
type of poverty, we don't have it over
here, alhamdulillah, by
Allah In this country, there is poverty, this
type of poverty we don't have. This is
the poverty of the ancients.
Says regarding Jannah that in it you will
have you will have for you that you'll
never be hungry and you'll never be naked.
You'll always be clothed. This is a type
of Jannah that we live in.
We don't even see anybody who's that poor.
Allah
protect us and keep us in a state
of. He said that there were amongst them
the people who would be eaten alive by
ticks and amongst them, there are the people
who couldn't find anything to clothe their nakedness
with except for an overcoat. And indeed prophet
said, one of them was happier with that
tribulation that they were afflicted with than one
of you would be if someone gave them
a gift.
Now why would they be happy? Are they
mentally ill? Do we need to book them,
you know, to go see the psychiatrist?
Right? This is this is a type of
masochism. The dean doesn't teach this. The dean
their
is not they should go around and and
and be a person who enjoys pain and
enjoys suffering.
In fact, the deen much of the deen
is dedicated to preserve the the original state
of a human being, and a normal human
being doesn't enjoy pain and suffering.
The reason that the people before us were
happy with their tribulation was not because the
tribulation itself,
rather the eyes weren't on the tribulation. The
eyes were with the one who was giving
the tribulation.
And when that
how, when that condition becomes valid, it becomes,
it becomes overwhelming
over a person,
then it will do what? It will cause
a person to behave in ways that another
person may not understand or may not sympathize
with. And this is the meaning of the
hadith of Rasulullah salallahu alayhi wa sallam, that
you should remember Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala until
the people think that you've gone mad. And
the idea is not that you've gone mad,
rather you know something, you have a superior
and a deeper level of knowledge
than they do. You know something that they
don't know which is what gives you and
I happiness by Allah
and that's the bashasha of imam, that's the
happiness
of faith. Now
coming to the situation that we're in right
now,
it is not a secret to anybody that
the Ummah is going through severe tribulation.
Severe tribulation. Now when you have a 1000000000
people, something is going to be going on
that's good on one side and something is
gonna be going on that's,
you know, not so enjoyable on the other
side. That's something that's given. But even even
if a person accepts that,
the the images that we've had to see
in the last month, in the last year,
you know, with the different parts of the
ummah, the severe decay and breakdown of humanity
that people in this ummah have had to
witness. It's something that even people are consciously
and actively trying to ignore or try to
push trying to push those realities away. They've
had to come to terms with them.
So what's what's happening in Burma, for example,
that those people were kicked out of their
homes and they're in refugee camps. Now even
the refugee camps are being raided by the
army and the people are being driven out,
and their massages are being burned, their villages
are being burned, and they're being literally treated
like cattle. This is something we don't hear
or see on the media a whole
lot. What's happening in Halab, which is something
that's gotten a lot of media attention
in Aleppo. Let me tell you something about
Aleppo. He said it's halfway around the world,
brother. How come you know? Let's talk about
some of these relevant to us. You know
the the that every masjid has?
Right? The the the the the written copy
of the Quran
that every masjid has. Mostly the the ones
that are proliferated through not just America, but
throughout the entire world. They're printed in the
king Fahd,
print complex
in Madinah Munawah, and they're distributed either at
cost or or for free. Who's the? Does
anyone know? It's not typed up. It's not
that someone typed the Quran up. Right? The
orthography and the of the Quran is such
that the diacritics,
and the the mode of writing it properly,
even the word processors cannot do it properly.
They have to be written by hand into
this day by Allah's father.
The whether they come from one country or
the other, they're all written by hand. And
they're all written by hand with a,
there there there's
a a a hereditary,
and sunnah, the unbroken chain of this, this
orthography of the Quran that goes
back to the Sahaba And there are people
who study the the the the the calligraphy,
the handwriting. It's not as much of an
art as it is a science. People don't
know it because they just read and they
don't think about it. But there's a lot.
There's a lot that goes into it. There's
a lot of tradition. The the
the who wrote this that's in your as
well. He's a.
You probably didn't know that. Okay? Our that
we learned hadith from, their
they also go through halal. Some of the
greatest
of this age,
Sheikh
who is buried in the in Madina Munawala.
He is one of the most prolific of
this age. His student who is still alive,
Sheikh Mohammed Awama, and he's still in Madina
Munawala.
Sheikh Abdul Razaq Al Hala bi Nur Dinah
Itter,
the Sheikh,
Abdullah Sirajuddin.
These people are are literally like the who's
who in the ilm of hadith in this
time. They're people of halab. Why? Because halab
has large seats of learning. There's a madrasa,
called madrasa Khusrofia.
It was built by Khusro Pasha, a Ottoman
general in the late 1600.
And he was a very pious man. He
looked, he searched through the countryside. He says,
I'm not just building a head
of the head of the masjid of Rasulullah
His masjid was a masjid of iman.
Inshallah, this one is too. But what do
we do first? We think about the building
because we think about material things.
That's part of the of the world we
live in is that material things are more
important than than spiritual things. There's something there's
a there's something inside the heart of every
believer. Even the beggars and people riffraff that
a person looks down upon and say, I
hope I never become like that, a drunkard
or a drug addict or whatever. There's something
inside of him that even if your building
is a $100,000,000
Trump Tower, it's not going to be it's
it's never going to be anything compared to
the wonder Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala put inside
the heart of every human being, much less
the person of imam.
Much less the person of imam. Sayna Abdullah
bin Umar
He looked at the Kaaba and he says,
how how great you are and how much
honor do you have in the eyes of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And indeed every believer,
Not just the sali'in and the uliya and
the ulema and the ambia and the mursaleen.
Every believer. Everyone who says la ilaha illallah.
Even the one who's not super good at
their Islam either. Everyone who says,
is more
great in the eyes of Allah and has
more honor in the eyes of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. You know, when people make tawaf
around the Kaaba, They touch it with great
reverence.
They they make with great reverence. They kiss
the black stone. They they they act in
a certain way. They behave in a certain
way when in the presence of the holy
house that they don't act and behave in
other places.
This sacredness and this blessing that comes from
that house is something undeniable to all those
who visited it. And this is part of
our undeniable to all those who visited it.
And this is part of our that is
not a difference of opinion that every person
who has has a secret that's more that's
that's
that's greater and that is more magnificent
and that is more
holy and sacred in the eyes of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala than the secret that's hidden
inside of that house.
So we believe that what these material things
are worthwhile, where the reality is, where is
the worth come from?
It's something that
created inside the heart of every believer. It
comes from iman.
So
Razi fusro Pasha wanted to make a madrasa.
He was extremely wealthy person. Nowadays, who's rich?
Right? So doctor doctor is rich. Right? Doctors
have they have they have some good money
Right? When you're actually like the governor of
an entire, like, province,
right, you have types of money and you
have types of wealth that we cannot imagine.
That we cannot imagine nowadays.
We're we're small fry, at least $1,000,000. Oh,
that's a lot of money. It's not a
lot of money. We're talking about super wealthy
people. What did he look for? He could
have made the building,
but he understood this is the secret that's
transmitted to us through revelation.
People who don't know
don't know revelation, don't know this. They're blind
and ignorant to this fact, which is what
the the the acceptance from Allah will not
come in the beauty of the building. It
comes in what?
It comes in what? It comes in the
in the in the beauty of iman. So
he looked, he said, I want to give
the money to one of the I'm not
gonna put my foot in and be a
board here. I'm gonna give one of the
the the money to the Let them run
it there.
They're the heirs of the prophets. But I
want to find such an who if since
the time he was since the time he
became an adult
in the Sharia, the time of puberty,
he never missed a further prayer in Jannah.
It literally took him years to find somebody
like that. What does that mean? What does
that mean? That means that these people were
concerned with what? Acceptance from Allah.
And guess what? He found that he found
that person. He gave him the money. He
says here,
make a and teach the dean of Allah
to Allah teach the that came down on
the heart of saying Muhammad
teach the Quran and the Hadith, teach the
and
all of these other things.
And that
to this day, they're actually in Illinois. There
are people who are graduates of that.
And all of these names I've said, Abdul
Fataha, Abu Hoda, and Abdul Razaq Halabi, and,
Abdullah Sirajuddin, Uradina Eta, all of these. They're
they're what? They're people who graduated from this
Madrasah.
Guess what?
The Madrasah has been bombed into rubble.
The is bombed into rubble. You know what?
Still, the people what did we say? The
building is nothing. Right? It's all it's all
about the iman. The and the students of
the still kept meeting.
Still kept meeting. You know, the people who
evacuated from Halab. You know, some people say,
they asked, are you working Halab? There's nothing
to work in anymore over there. The place
has been bombed out and evacuated. It's completely
empty. The only the only people there are
just bodies. That's all that's left.
So no one's really working there anymore anyway.
Even those people, what they would do, they
would have class move it from building to
building so that they can keep teaching and
keep studying, even that's done.
This is a catastrophe. Brothers and sisters, this
is a catastrophe.
Because the building you can make it again,
the building you can make it again, where
are you gonna find those pious people? Where
are you going to find that that ill?
Where are you gonna find that nur? Where
are you gonna find that acceptance? That those
people with such sincerity they built in the
1st place?
Where are you going to how are you
going to build that again? Are you going
to do it in Decatur? You can do
it if you wanted to. Who here wants
to, really wants to do it, is gonna
stand up and do it. That's the catastrophe
that that that we lost at. But on
the flip side, there's also hope. Why?
Because those Asanid, they're still alive. Those people,
they still have that tradition. There's some of
them that survived.
Within just a matter of days,
okay, within a matter of days, we had
to move 70,000 people
to a 150,000 people. The counts are not
at who knows how many people? There's tens
of thousands, if not over a 100000 people.
There's already 7,000,000 people displaced from the entire
country of Syria. I went and studied there
as well. It was a beautiful place, a
beautiful people. They hosted us in as as
we were the guests of Allah and his
Rasool sallallahu alaihi wa sallam because we came
there to study ill. And this is a
tradition they have from centuries.
70,000 people from Halab at the bare minimum,
they have to be evacuated in buses.
This is a war crime. This is this
is utterly a war crime. They didn't leave
because they wanted to go somewhere else and
make money.
Right? These are people, this is it. The
women are asking,
is it permissible to commit suicide if you
fear that the enemy soldiers are going to
* you?
We have people asking the questions like this.
It came down to the point where even
the white helmets, the volunteers that would dig
by hand because they have no equipment, dig
by hand through rubble of bombed buildings in
order to pull people out that survived. You
can hear their screams, even they they couldn't
work anymore because snipers were hitting them as
well. This is how bad the situation
became. After this, you cannot do anything but
leave. But you know what? Still
Why?
Why
Because at least those 70,000, a 100,000 people,
they still survived.
And by Allah, by Allah, they're more valuable
than the the buildings that they left behind.
They're
more valuable than the money and
the valuables they left behind, and they're more
valuable even than the land that they left
behind.
And this is our duty as the Ummah
of Sayna Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam to
show Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Shukr that you
saved these people for several reasons. One, because
it's a great nihmah that Allah preserved and
protected those people. They still carry that lure
inside of their hearts. From amongst them are
the and from amongst them are the and
from amongst them are the progeny of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And from amongst
them are the progeny of the Sahaba and
the progeny of the the the the the
great masha'if of the past. And from amongst
them are people who still retain that knowledge
and will still spread it and teach it
wherever they go and will stay still retain
the dhikr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and
spread it wherever they go. That's one reason
we should be thankful. What's another reason we
should be thankful? What does Allah ta'ala say
in his book?
Indeed, if you are thankful, I will increase
you.
If you wish that this if you wish
that this tribulation be lifted from the heads
of the the the the beloved people of
the Ummah of Sayna Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam,
when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives us something
that he saved these people's lives for us.
They were not massacred as it looked like
they were going to be massacred.
People have written you know, with some it's
a we live in a contemporary age. People
on Twitter, on Facebook, Instagram, Khalas, they said
their salam to their loved ones and say,
I don't know. I'm gonna see you again.
Many of those people by Allah's father are
still alive.
The thankfulness for Allah giving us this much
help, if we show thanks to him,
Allah
will give us more help. You know, this
is not the only time that this type
of tribulation has happened to the ummah.
It's not the first time this type of
tribulation has happened to the ummah, and it's
not the worst time this type of tribulation
has happened to the Ummah.
Great cities, great metropoli have been massacred to
the last man. The Mongol invasion, the Crusader
invasion,
the Reconquista.
Right? You have heard of the Spanish inquisition.
It wasn't something that only happened in Spain.
Spain and Portugal had fleets and armies that
literally went everywhere in the world. Their express
express,
goal was to eradicate Islam.
The Philippines used to be a Muslim country.
They still have Arabic words in their in
their in their language. Literally, they open an
office of inquisition over there, and they they
killed everybody who refused to convert to Catholicism.
Right? This is one example we have so
little time, otherwise, you you should know what
the history of the is. But what happens?
Allah
sent all these scourges and all these difficulties
on the like one of the who survived
the Mongol invasion.
He said just like what? Like
a a flock of sheep. Right? We have
some some people from the Arabian Peninsula here,
some people from Palestine here. I lived in
the Badia for a while as well, so
you'll appreciate
Badu
metaphors.
Right? So you have Hanam. You have, like,
your flock of sheep. Right?
One shepherd, so many sheep, sometimes hundreds of
sheep in the flock.
What happens when you take them to Graves,
it's not like you're gonna go buy them
food from Walmart. You have to take them
to Graves, and and the water is in
one place, and the grass is in another
place, and the pen is in another place.
So when they're grazing, they get further and
further and further apart.
Now if the shepherd goes
goes after the sheep on one side, the
ones on the other are gonna get even
further apart. You may lose them.
There's wolves. There's all sorts of dangers and
perils out there. So what happens? Shepherds, they
keep dogs.
They keep sheep dogs. This is one of
the permissible people ask me sometimes, they say,
Shaykh, can I keep a dog as a
pet? There's certain permissible
reasons to have a dog. It's permissible to
have a guard dog. It's it's permissible to
have a a dog for for for, herding,
a herding dog. So what happens, they let
1 or 2, 3 dogs go and the
dogs will run-in a circle around the the
the flock, and they'll start barking very violently
at the sheep. And the sheep are gonna
get scared. What are they gonna do? They'll
come back in together, which is for what?
It's for their own good.
So Allah
did this for the.
The that was made for the remembrance of.
The that was made for the establishment of
justice. The ummah that was made to give
hope to the fuqara and the masakin,
the poor people and the destitute.
The ummah that was made to give hope
to those people who have no justice, that
there's some justice. The that was supposed to
give people a hope that your life has
meaning and that what happens after you die
is something to look forward to. And that
has become concerned with what? Money, my house,
my car, my this, my that, to the
point where we every one of us, 2
brothers are sitting together at a table. 1
of them is thinking, how is this guy
trying to trying to, you know, trying to
pull a fast one on me, and how
am I gonna protect myself? We've become like
that, and what we have to understand is
all we have is what? All we have
is
Allah And the thing is this realization should
have happened from before. Otherwise, we wouldn't be
in the mess we're in right now. Someone
might say, isn't this too little too late?
I tell you by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
it's never too late.
He's a He's already inside the belly of
the whale. Now tell me who's gonna save
him? What's gonna save him? But this is
also a prophetic sunnah Allah gave us from
revelation. This is something none of us could
think of on our own. From revelation, Allah
even showed us the sunnah. When you're in
such a bad situation, what do you do?
Which is what? That he cried out from
the belly of the whale.
That there's no god except for you. There's
no god except for you.
Glory be to you, indeed I was a.
What does mean? The only is not the
person who's like a dictator and who passes
bad laws.
A person can be a Valim sitting inside
of his own house by not giving Allah
his rights, by not giving oneself their rights,
by not giving one's family their rights, by
not giving one's neighbor their rights, by not
giving one's deen their rights. And in this
sense, this is something all of us carry
with us. So instead of worrying about if
the Ummah was has
people so smart, all of you are intelligent
people, good looking people, you're wealthy people. Allah
to Al Gazprom, every different type of wealth
to the point where a white man in
Decatur, Illinois cannot fill up his gas tank
without having something to do with something that
happens in the lands of the Muslims.
Allah to argue us from every single type
of wealth. Our account is low, not in
US dollars and euros.
Our account is a little bit low in
klass.
So if what we can do is what?
Redeem a little bit of
Don't worry about what the person on the
right and the left is doing. Just sit
sit alone when you go home. Face the
and say to Allah
a few
times.
So that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala can come
back to us with his help. That help
that he gave the ones he loved. That
help that he gave to his and
his this is a prophetic path. We're here
to learn. If we knew in the first
place, there would be no need for there
would be no need for
Allah
He sent the prophet
to to teach the the the in in
Sam, to teach mankind.
It's it's
for for the entire everything of the jinns
of insan. To teach every human being that
thing that they didn't know and that thing
that they would never know had Allah never
revealed it to them. May
Allah give all of us so much tawfiq.
Allah help our brothers and sisters overseas and
abroad. Don't think for a second that this
is punishment on them for their sins.
The ones who have the most difficult tribulation,
oftentimes, those are the most pious, those are
the most righteous ones. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
gave that to them as a as a
means for their purification. We are the ones
who should fear that it should come to
us as a matter of punishment. Allah protect
us. Allah ta' save us. Allah ta' protect
iman in our in our in our families
and in our households and with the ones
that we love. Allah
protect our community from the threats that it
faces whether they're real or whether they're imagined.
Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, give us the tafir
to show shukr to him,
for those precious
precious people, men, women, children,
the the pies amongst them and everyone else
amongst them as well. Allah gave us tafir
to show him shukr
and and and and and thankfulness and gratitude
for those people he saved. And give us
the tawfiq to give something also to help
them as well. So that Allah, subhanahu wa
ta'ala, may increase us in his help and
lift this,
bala and lift this tribulation from the heads
of the of Sayna
Muhammad