Husain Sattar – Serving Others
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
If you look at the life of the
Folsom,
you can basically divide it into 2 main
categories.
So
there are the deeds of the Folsom and
those can be divided into 2 main categories.
The first are the Ibadat
and the second are the Muammarat.
Those Ibadat means those acts which the Prophet
did between him and his Lord.
And
the Muammarat are those acts in which the
Prophet interacts with mankind.
And if you want to divide up the
or if you want to look at the
gist
of
the prophet's
interaction with mankind,
you'll see
that much of it was centered around the
concept of khidma
or serving.
So the prophet
was someone who regularly
served
the people around him. And that's fairly unique,
because you would think that he's the prophet
so people should be serving him.
But actually he would seek opportunities
to serve other people.
And in fact, if you can understand this
from the sunnah of the Prophet
then you'll be able to understand a very,
very central
means by which we gain closest to Allah
and that is serving other people.
And in this society, it's so strange, because
in this society, we're taught that we should
be served.
So you go to a store
and you think about how was the service.
And when you pay for your oil change,
they want to know how was the service,
how can we serve you better.
Anytime we interact in this society with this
consumer society
with these various outlets, they're always talking about
how they can serve you better. How can
we make your experience more pleasurable?
But actually, if you look at the sum
of the pulsation on them, it's not about
being served, it's about serving others.
So on Friday, I was speaking at
Wassa's
wedding
and I raised some of the ahadith, which
deal with the Pulsar Shlomo how he was
in his house.
And Aisha
says that
the Pulsar Shlomo when he was at home,
he was always busy.
He was always up doing something.
He was cleaning the house,
washing the dishes,
doing something in the house
in order to serve his family. He would
never be sitting and waiting to be served.
That was his sunnah that he would constantly
be
serving the people in his family.
And then you look at how the was
when he was outside of his family. He
would be visiting the sick. He would be
looking for ways to donate to people
or to give share his wealth with people
to the extent that we know from several
Hadid that the folks who will take loans
using his own property as collateral in order
to make donations to other people.
That's how much the population would serve. One
thing is, okay, I've got $5
$50 in a bank account. So let me
empty my bank account and give you that
$50 as a donation. Now people would say,
wow, what a great man. He emptied out
his entire bank account so that he so
that I could be fed.
But it's another thing when you have nothing
in your account and then you start mortgaging
your assets
and saying, okay,
my house is collateral, let me borrow $500
so I could give it to this person.
That's how the Fosterschendlens
generosity was.
And if you look at even just there
anything that would come in the house to
Fosterschendlens, it would be given away
to the poor. That was the Fosterschendlens'
concept of serving. He was constantly looking for
ways in which he could serve people.
So one is he served humanity.
And the second is that the prophet Shalam
would serve Allah
So when it came time
to decide between serving humanity and serving Allah,
then it was clear cut that the service
would be for Allah
So take for example,
the same Aisha
who says that when the popsicle was in
the house, he would not stop serving the
family is the same Aisha
who says that when it was time for
prayer, the prophetessian would not even recognize us
as members of his family.
Meaning, when it was time for salah, the
adhan was called, the prophetessian would not even
recognize that this is my wife, Aisha
He will be so caught up in his
service to Allah
So there are levels of service and each
degree has its place.
Now in this day and age, you find
such a variation in people's thinking,
which is so much away from the sunnah.
So for example, some people, they don't want
to serve at all. They don't want to
serve anybody they're waiting to be served. They
want their wife to serve them. They want
their parents to serve them, which is ridiculous.
They wait for their parents to serve them.
They want the members of their society to
serve them. They want to be praised. They
want to be raised.
So there's that group of people that don't
even understand the need to serve. And then
there's a second group of people, they've taken
serving to an extreme. They think they have
to serve humanity, but they don't have to
serve Allah.
So they don't want to pray, but they
want to donate all their wealth. They're ready
to donate
different amounts of wealth, but they won't show
up for prayer. Or they'll say, well, I'm
not going to pray because I'm busy getting
a good job and using my job and
serving people. So that's much more important. I
don't need to come to the masjid to
pray. So then they've taken service to the
other extreme. They think that serving humanity is
more important than prayer.
And then there's a third group of people
that don't serve humanity, don't serve humanity and
they just want to serve Allah. So they
want to sit in the masjid the whole
time and they don't want to serve
humanity. They think that that's part, that's they
think that they've achieved complete Islam by doing
that. And that's not the case either. The
prophet Mohammed was the best of examples.
If he left the masjid in order to
serve people,
then that's exactly what the best means of
progress will be towards Allah
So the best example of services is in
the life example of the Prophet
And you have to understand these limits,
because this is the way that we should
get close to Allah
So when did the Prophet served and how
did he serve? Well, the general
principle is that the Prophet would serve Allah
at 2 times during the day. 1 is
during the night.
Always the night was devoted to Allah
to the extent that the Pope Paysanmen would
tell people after the Isha prayer, you should
not speak to anyone.
You should not speak to anyone.
And the debate among the ulama arises
as to should you speak with your wife
before you go to bed, when they study
this hadith. And then they come up with
the answer that, yes, the postulshanon did so,
but not in excess.
So once the night came, the Prophet esshemim
reserved it for 2 things, rest
and ebadah, serve meaning service, but service
alone.
And then when the day came, the day
was devoted for the sake of serving humanity,
except when the prayer times come. So when
it's time for obviously, the day begins with
the Farsher, but when it's time for Ruhr,
when it's time for Usid, when it's time
for Mabhrim, those are the times in which
the Prophet Shalam would return back to the
service of Allah
and it was as if humanity didn't exist.
But all the times in between, the Popesarena
would be serving humanity. Now you look at
examples during the life of the Popesarena
where
people would
extend their Ibadan beyond the night. So for
example, on one occasion, the Tolstoye Selim's wife
was sitting and after the pagan prayer and
she spent all her time right before the
Zohal, right up to the time of Zohal
and Ibadan. And the Folsom on the other
hand without serving people, doing the things that
he did, visiting the sick, etcetera, when he
returned home, he asked his wife, what have
you been doing?
And she said, I've been sitting here ever
since the the time of pleasure
in this e dada. And the prophet told
me that I said
4 I said a few lines three times
and those are more valuable than anything that
you did this morning, because the prophet said
those lines in praising Allah
and then used the whole morning to serve
people.
So putting service in its right place is
also very important.
So there's 3. One is you've got to
get the general schedule of the Prophet down.
That's the first point,
That the serving of Allah is at night
and at the times of prayer and that
the serving of humanity comes at all times
in between.
And the second is, and you've got to
understand
where the levels of service fall. So it's
not that we say you should only serve
Allah and you shouldn't serve humanity. And it's
not that we say you should only serve
humanity and you shouldn't serve Allah.
Everything has its tougher time and its proper
place. And then the 3rd and most important
point is, in this day and age, especially
in this day and age, we should not
seek to be served.
We every one of us does this. We
seek to be served. We want our parents
to serve us. We want our brothers and
sisters to serve us. We definitely want our
wives to serve us. If they don't serve
us, then we wonder what's wrong with this
marriage. What kind of what kind of wife
did I find that she's not gonna serve
me? And then we start quoting 50 headwinds.
Look, the post settlement said this about serving
me and that about serving me. That's completely
missed the point.
Any opportunity that you can get to serve
another person, you should take it and run
with it because that's your opportunity to get
closer to Allah
And you should shun away from opportunities
where people will serve you because anytime you
lower yourself, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will raise
you. So it's very, very important that we
understand
when the professional would serve, who he would
serve and we put the proper emphasis on
service and not being served. So these are
the 3 important things that you should pick
up from the sunnah of the folks at
Southern's life and the counts of the quidnah.