Ismail Kamdar – Rasulullah The Greatest
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AI: Transcript ©
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
We praise Him, we ask for His help,
we ask for His forgiveness, and we believe
in Him and trust in Him.
We seek refuge in Allah from the evil
of our souls and from the evil of
our deeds.
Whomsoever Allah guides, none can misguide him, and
whosoever He declares misled, none can guide him
to the right path.
Allah has said in the Holy Qur'an,
after I seek refuge with Allah from Satan,
the accursed, In the name of Allah, the
Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
One thousand four hundred years ago, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala sent His final messenger, the
Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, to this
world.
And it is a point of aqeedah for
us, a point of theology for us, that
Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is the greatest
human being to ever live.
It's not something that there can be any
two opinions about.
To even doubt it would be a matter
of blasphemy.
The very fact that Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala chose him to be the final prophet,
to be the recipient of the perfect sharia,
is proof enough that he was the greatest
of human beings.
In Islam, there is a ranking of piety,
of greatness.
Not everyone is equal when it comes to
righteousness, when it comes to their status in
front of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And even amongst the prophets, there are different
ranks.
Not every prophet is of the same rank.
And so for example, we have the difference
between the Nabi and the Rasul.
A Nabi is a prophet, someone who had
revelation, they spoke to the angel Jibreel, right?
And a Rasul was someone who came with
a specific revelation, the Torah, the Gospel, the
Quran, someone who came with a message.
So for example, Musa and Harun.
Musa alaihissalam was both a Nabi and a
Rasul.
He spoke to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
and he had a specific message, the Torah.
Harun alaihissalam was a Nabi.
He did not have a specific message.
He received revelation but it was to support
Musa alaihissalam.
It was not something different or new, right?
It was a supportive position to that of
Musa alaihissalam.
And so the scholars of Aqidah say that
the Rasul is a higher status than the
Nabi.
But even amongst the Rasul, amongst the Prophets,
there is a higher status.
The Ulul Azam are not Rasul.
The Ulul Azam, they are the greatest, the
most strongest of the Rasuls.
The five greatest men in the history of
this world.
The five greatest Rasuls.
Noah alaihissalam, Abraham alaihissalam, Moses alaihissalam, Jesus alaihissalam
and the Prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wasalam.
And even between the five of them, number
one, the greatest human being in the history
of this planet.
The ever was, the ever will be is
Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasalam.
But what makes Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasalam such
an amazing role model, such a great human
being?
There are so many angles from which we
can discuss this.
I want to talk about his accomplishments, which
is a miracle in of itself.
A few decades ago, a group of researchers,
non-Muslim researchers, they had one, a Christian
by the name of Michael Hart.
They put together a project to try and
figure out who were the most influential people
in human history.
And Michael Hart said he wanted to put
Jesus at number one.
But he couldn't honestly put Jesus at number
one.
After analyzing every great person in human history
in terms of the influence and the accomplishments,
he said we have no choice.
And this group of non-Muslim researchers put
the Prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wasalam as the
number one most successful and influential man in
the history of this world.
Why?
They gave a very simple reason.
Every other successful person succeeded in one or
two aspects of life.
Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasalam succeeded in every possible
measurement of success.
He succeeded from the smallest of things.
He succeeded as a father.
He succeeded as a stepfather.
He succeeded as a husband.
But bigger than that, he was successful in
war.
He was successful in politics.
He was successful in establishing a religion.
He was successful in establishing civilizations.
No man in history has had this level
of success besides Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasalam.
And his success is a miracle.
Because when you put it in the context
of where he lived and what resources he
was given and how much time he was
given, it is a mu'ajiza.
It is a miracle that he accomplished everything
that he did in such a short period
of time.
To put it in context, Rasulullah salallahu alaihi
wasalam is born into Makkah 1,400 years
ago.
And often, in the sense that his father
dies before he is born and his mother
dies when he is at a very young
age, he does not have access to a
lot of wealth.
He does not have access to a lot
of resources.
At that time, the two superpowers of the
world are the Romans and the Persians on
either side of Arabia.
Arabia is a small desert land with a
few tribes, a few villages, a few towns.
There is no real civilization and power there.
He does not have a power base, right?
He does not know how to read and
write.
He is given the message at the age
of 40.
And for the first 13 years of preaching
the message, he is part of a minority
that is oppressed by the idol worshippers.
It is only after he makes migration from
Makkah to Medina that he actually has a
power base.
He actually has a base of operations.
He has a leadership position in the community.
He has an army.
And he can now actually do this.
He can now actually make a difference.
He can now actually spread his message.
And he accomplishes everything that he accomplished in
9 years.
Think about this.
Rasulullah ﷺ.
All of his accomplishments.
Accomplishments that even one of which would take
us 50 to 100 years to do.
He accomplishes all of it within a period
of 9 years.
From the time he makes hijrah to Medina
until he passes away.
In that 9 to 10 years, Rasulullah ﷺ
accomplishes the likes of which would take people
multiple lifetimes.
He establishes Islam.
Both on the religious level and the political
level.
He eradicates idol worship from the Arabian Peninsula.
He leaves behind a generation of followers the
likes of which no other leader had ever
left behind.
If you have to measure a leader by
the quality of their followers.
No leader in history produced a quality of
following the way Rasulullah ﷺ produced the sahaba.
The sahaba were the greatest followers in the
history of this world.
That they took the message of Rasulullah ﷺ.
And they built a civilization out of it.
And they took it throughout the world especially
across the globe.
No other leader had following like that.
Rasulullah ﷺ.
His life is a miracle.
His seerah is a miracle.
When you think about the fact that in
those 9 years in Medina.
He had to take care of all of
his wives.
All of his children.
All of his step children.
He had to teach in the masjid.
He had to receive revelation.
He had to teach the revelation.
He had to advise people.
He had to deal with delegations.
He had to fight wars.
He had to fight battles.
He had to sign peace treaties.
He had to do all of this.
And yet he was still able to accomplish
every single one of his goals.
He was still able to accomplish more than
we can ever imagine.
Rasulullah ﷺ's greatness can be measured by every
possible measure.
When it comes to his accomplishments in this
world.
No human being comes even close.
To having accomplished in a short period of
time.
What he did.
I want us to think in our own
lives.
If we have a goal.
If we have a project.
If we're looking to change something.
We know it's going to take 30, 40,
50 years.
Sometimes even 100 years.
For it to actually have any fruit in
the community.
Right?
But when Rasulullah ﷺ.
Everything.
Everything transforms within this 9 year period.
Everything completely transforms in a short period of
time.
Another angle from which he was the greatest
of human beings.
Was his akhlaq.
His character.
His personality.
Who he was as a person.
When we study the seerah.
When we study hadith.
When we study any science to do with
spirituality.
We have to study the life and the
teachings and the personality of Rasulullah ﷺ.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala called him in
the Quran.
The perfect role model.
The perfect role model.
If you want to be generous.
There was no man in history more generous
than him.
You learn generosity from him.
If you want to learn humility.
There was no leader in history more humble
than him.
You learn your humility from him.
For any good quality you can take off.
Rasulullah ﷺ was the apex of good character.
Think about his generosity.
Rasulullah ﷺ.
We know we have the same.
We have the same nowadays.
That he is so generous he gave the
shirt off his back.
The only person I know historically who actually
did that was Rasulullah ﷺ.
He was walking and he was wearing a
very nice looking shirt.
And a Bedouin man grabbed it and said
I want that.
I like that.
And the Prophet ﷺ gave it to him.
Just like that he gave it to him.
Rasulullah ﷺ was so generous.
That his generosity caused people to accept Islam
and to recognize him as the true Prophet.
A good example of this was Safwan ibn
Umayyah.
Safwan ibn Umayyah was the son of the
same Umayyah that tortured Bilal and was killed
by Bilal.
So he hated Islam and hated Muslims.
And when the Prophet ﷺ went to Mecca.
He had a kind of a peace treaty
with the Prophet ﷺ.
And he accompanied him on the Jihad.
But he wasn't a Muslim yet.
When the Prophet ﷺ won the battle of
Hunayn.
Against the people of Tawheed.
And they received more war booty than they
received ever in their lives.
Right.
Anyone at that time could be king or
a false prophet or anyone about themselves.
They take the most of it for himself.
Rasulullah ﷺ did not take anything for himself.
And he gave Safwan who wasn't even a
Muslim.
Who was antagonistic towards Islam.
He gave him so much.
That Safwan realized.
This man has to be a true prophet.
He's got no worldly objective.
He has no worldly desires.
He's interested not in this world.
It was the generosity of Rasulullah ﷺ that
convinced him that indeed this is the true
prophet of Allah.
Rasulullah ﷺ was so humble.
That if a man had to walk into
a gathering and look for him.
He could not recognize him from the crowd.
He did not sit on a special chair
or have a special clothing.
Or sit in a special status.
He was a man of the people.
The most humble of people with the most
humble of clothing.
The most humble of homes.
Or Rajaullah would go to the house of
Rasulullah ﷺ.
And he would see him sitting on a
mattress that would leave lines on his body.
And he would feel sad for him.
Like, how can we get you a better
bed?
And the Prophet ﷺ said, I don't want
anything of this world.
I only want a nice bed.
And again, at this point in time, Rasulullah
ﷺ had access to the resources to give
himself a good life.
He chose not to.
He chose not to because he didn't want
anything of this world.
His life was for Allah.
His life was for Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose the Prophet
Muhammad ﷺ to be the final messenger.
Because he was the best of creation.
He was the best of creation.
He is the role model in every aspect
of life.
You want to be a good husband, you
look at him.
You want to be a good father, you
look at him.
You want to be generous, you look at
him.
You want to be brave, you look at
him.
At the end of one incident that proves
that he was the bravest of the brave.
One of the Sahaba narrates that one of
the nights, we heard a loud noise from
the forest nearby.
So we all woke up.
The men woke up to go and check
what's that noise.
And so by the time you went outside
to check what's that noise, the Prophet ﷺ
was riding his horse back from the forest
telling everyone it's okay, it's okay.
I went to check.
There's nothing there.
Meaning before any other man in the middle
of the night could wake up and go
into the forest to see if there's any
danger, the Prophet ﷺ was the first one
there.
On his own, he went straight to the
forest, searched for danger, came back and reported
to his people.
Shows his courage, also shows his humility.
He didn't think of himself as someone special.
He thought of himself as a man of
the people.
Rasulullah ﷺ taught us true leadership.
True leadership is humble.
True leadership is service.
True leadership is generous.
True leadership is genuinely caring about your people.
And so he was the best of leaders.
He was the best of human beings.
He was the man who accomplished more than
seemed humanly possible.
Think about this point.
When the Prophet ﷺ becomes a prophet, In
Makkah, maybe after the first few years, there's
like 80 Muslims in the world.
Just in Makkah.
And they are an oppressed minority.
When he passes away, the entire Arabian Peninsula
is Muslim.
Right?
Idol worship has been eradicated.
Within 20 years of him passing away, all
of the Middle East as we know it
today, is under the authority of Islam.
Within 90 years of him passing away, from
Spain all the way to India, is under
the authority of Islam.
This is a miracle.
No one in history has accomplished this.
From him came the religion of truth, Islam,
that today a quarter of the world follows.
From him came many great civilizations that changed
the world, like the Khulafa Rashidun and the
Umayyads and the Abbasids and the Safavids and
the Mughals and the Ottomans and many many
others, the Mamluks, all claimed to follow him.
Many civilizations from one leader following his teachings.
And so we have the greatest of role
models.
Let us celebrate his life.
Let us follow his example.
Let us study his seerah and his hadith.
Let us make him our role model.
And let us be from those who continuously
send salat and salam upon the Prophet ﷺ,
and make da'wah for Alhamdulillah and all
the worlds.
One of the signs of a great leader
is the kind of people they leave behind.
Who are their followers?
What kind of transformational effect did they have
on their followers?
And no one in history has had a
stronger and better following than Rasulullah ﷺ.
He is followed by the Sahaba.
And the Sahaba were the greatest generation to
ever live.
He was the greatest Prophet, the greatest human
being.
He is followed by the greatest generation of
followers.
And to show you an example of how
loyal the Sahaba were to him.
How much the Sahaba loved him.
How much they were willing to die for
him and do anything for him.
We go back to the Treaty of Hudaybiyah.
Now normally when we talk about the Treaty
of Hudaybiyah, we talk about Ibn Suhail ibn
Amr and Rasulullah ﷺ negotiating the treaty.
But let us go back a little bit
further.
The people of Makkah actually sent multiple people
to delegate.
Right?
They sent multiple people as delegations to speak
to the Prophet ﷺ and try and negotiate
the treaty.
One of the people they sent was the
leader of Ta'if.
Urwah.
Astaghfirullah.
And the leader of Ta'if, remember Ta
'if and Muslims had a very antagonistic relationship.
The worst thing, when the Prophet ﷺ would
ask what is the worst thing to happen
to him.
It was when he went to Ta'if
and they stoned him and chased him out
of the city.
So this man comes to negotiate with the
Prophet ﷺ and the leader of this community.
And he is coming in with very big
misperceptions and very wrong ideas about the Prophet
ﷺ and about Islam.
He is coming in with this idea that
this is a false prophet and his followers
are just cowards who are just there for
the money and for the fame.
He has all these wrong ideas.
He comes in and he starts talking to
the Prophet ﷺ and he talks to him
very roughly, very harshly.
And Abu Bakr interjects.
And this man, this leader of Ta'if,
to try and cause some friction between the
Prophet ﷺ and his companions, he tells the
Prophet ﷺ, these companions of yours, they are
going to abandon you.
As soon as they find something better, they
are going to abandon you.
At that moment, Abu Bakr rakes it out
and he gets so angry.
He literally swears at this man.
He utters such a vulgar swearing phrase.
I can't mention it on the memoir.
But it is found in Sahih Al-Bukhari.
It is the only time Abu Bakr ever
used such language.
He swears this man to his face.
And this man is shocked because he knows
Abu Bakr.
He knows Abu Bakr's personality.
He knows Abu Bakr's level of character.
He knows Abu Bakr doesn't use words like
this.
So he is shocked.
Why is Abu Bakr talking to me like
this?
And he realizes it is because of the
love and loyalty that Abu Bakr had to
Rasulullah ﷺ.
That he was so upset at the very
idea of any man to assume that he
would ever abandon him.
That's why he used such language.
It was a sign that how dare you
even think that we would ever do something
like that.
So this man, the leader of the tribe,
goes back to Makkah, a changed man.
He goes back to the people of Makkah
and he tells them, I have met with
the Caesars of Rome.
I have met with the Khazus of Persia.
I have met many things.
I have never seen a leader whose followers
love him and respect him the way these
prophets' followers love and respect him.
I have never seen this in my life.
He says when he tells them to do
something, they do it immediately.
When he is washing up for his prayers,
they go to catch the water.
And they all die for him.
They literally die for him.
He ends up eventually converting to Islam.
But what does this incident show us?
The quality of following that Rasulullah ﷺ produced
with his Sahaba.
This is the impact of his message.
This is the impact of his personality.
This is the impact of his character.
People who met him and believed him were
forever transformed to a level that after he
passed away, his message did not stop.
It spread and it spread and today it
continues to spread all over the world.
Wherever you go in the world today, there
are people who believe in la ilaha illallah
Muhammadur Rasulullah ﷺ, who follow his lifestyle, who
follow his footsteps, who send salawat upon him,
who are from those who take him as
their role model everywhere on earth.
And to think he started as an orphan
in Makkah, in a land that wasn't part
of any major civilization.
And he wondered, who's going to follow?
If I go and preach to the people
of Makkah, it's a huge joke.
How many people are going to follow this?
But Allah took his message and spread it
across the world.
Allah took the love for him and spread
it across the world.
And so we too need to have that
love and that loyalty to Rasulullah ﷺ and
his Sahaba, the way the Sahaba had to
be.
And we too need to be from those
who we do not tolerate people disrespecting our
Prophet.
We do not tolerate people blaspheming our Prophet.
We will let them know the way Abu
Bakr let that man know.
That we don't talk about our beloved like
that.
This is a red line for us.
And so we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala to allow us to do justice to
this deen.
To be from people who represent this deen
properly.
To be from people who take this deen
seriously.
We ask Allah to put into our hearts
and the hearts of our descendants, the love
of Rasulullah ﷺ and his Sahaba.
And to make Rasulullah ﷺ our role model
and the role model of our children and
our descendants.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to allow us to benefit from being part
of the Ummah of Rasulullah ﷺ.
We ask Allah to grant victory to the
Ummah of Rasulullah ﷺ.
Especially to those in Gaza who they are
suffering what they are suffering.
And we ask Allah to grant them patience,
to grant them victory and to grant them
success and to revive Islam.
Fatiha.