Johari Abdul-Malik – Forgiveness Is About Resilience
AI: Summary ©
The importance of forgiveness in Islam is discussed, with emphasis on the Prophet's actions that allow individuals to live their lives and achieve their dreams. The speaker also highlights the history and importance of forgiveness, including the forgiveness of mistakes and finding one's own success. forgiveness is a priority for human beings, and a program to help people attend missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed missed
AI: Summary ©
Praising Allah and thanking Allah
for having gathered us
on this
day, the last Jumuah
before
the month of Ramadan.
And, walhamdulillah,
that Allah has lived,
allowed us to live,
to see the dawn of Ramadan.
We thank Allah
for having
sent to us
a way of life,
that if we follow it,
we will be the most successful.
We will be successful, be it nila, in
this life
and in the hereafter.
If you were
to think, walhamdulillah,
about the mechanisms,
the system
that Allah has laid out for us.
The Prophet
describes to us
that in this way of life, this
this siraat,
that we're on this this path,
that there are
periods of time
in which Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala,
forgives.
Forgiveness, walhamdulillah,
from one salah to the next salah.
Now, I want you to think about it
for a minute. There are people, walhamdulillah,
struggling with difficult
aspects of their lives.
Some of them, they commit crimes. Some of
them, they use drugs. Some of them, they
have inappropriate,
actions or relationships.
And they're trying to beat
their addiction to these problems. But if they
can go from one salah,
just ask Allah, get me to the next
salah.
And if I make some mistake,
let me ask for forgiveness.
Allah will forgive me.
From 1 Jumuah to the next Jumuah,
forgiveness.
So
whatever we did from last week to this
week,
We ask Allah to accept our prayer,
our request for Allah's
on this day in the so
that Allah can wipe away
the sins that we had since the last
Jumuah.
And by the way, if you don't think
you had any sins since the last Jumuah,
ask Allah to forgive you for saying that.
And from 1 Ramadan
to the next Ramadan.
And so maybe
some of us have
the kinds
of sins or disobedience to Allah that
the regular
washing,
the prophet he said,
when the person makes and they come out
and the water is dripping,
it's like the sins are dripping off of
them.
But maybe some of us, we have more
industrial
type dirt.
We want to get it off of us.
Shaharamadan.
Seeking in the month of Ramadan,
the forgiveness from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And you know that this narration ends that
and from the beginning to Hajj.
Some people,
maybe they have something they did.
They want Allah to forgive it and it's
big.
Satan won't leave him alone.
So they go for Hajj. That
Allah can give them the gift
of his Makfira.
I want to say a few words about
this because I
if you look in
Christianity or Judaism or others,
you will find
them concerned about the issue of how do
they get rid of
their sins.
And they have different rituals or beliefs.
The crucifixion, they believe this is going to,
absolve them from their sin. Everybody is concerned
about how do you get rid of
their sins.
The Jews have Yom Kippur,
day of atonement, where they try to get
the the the dirt off of them.
Everybody has it.
But there's something unique in Islam
about
the kind of
forgiveness
that Allah offers us.
Rafara
is like I want you to think maybe
like if you commit a crime.
You commit a crime and you go in
and you say,
the lawyer is going to get me off.
I plead guilty,
but I'm going to get off with no
no time served.
I won't go to jail.
But still,
you have a criminal record
because you plead guilty.
Maybe there are some people, they have a
political connection.
They're incarcerated,
but they can get a pardon
from the governor or the president.
They're pardoned.
But if you look in their record,
there's going to be the charge of that
crime on their record.
The Rasul
they said he used to make istighfar.
Some some rewire say
70 times, others say a 100 times a
day,
even though
he doesn't commit sins like us.
So for us, we're trying to think about
what is
this thing
that Allah is offering us something better
than having,
our sentence dropped
or having,
our pardon.
This is not what Allah is offering us.
Allah is offering us
the kind of forgiveness
where your record is expunged.
When they look in the record, they say,
what about such and such that you did?
They can't find any record
because Allah has expunged the record of your
sins.
In the month of Ramadan, this is what
is at stake for us in this
particular
unit
of time for us to go through a
process by which,
if Allah accepts our prayers and our fasting
and our standing in the night and our
spending in Allah's cause, that Allah will bring
us out
of the month of Ramadan, alhamdulillah,
with the reward of his ghafarah.
That Allah,
before Rahim,
Allah's
mercy
is
followed.
What's leading is Allah's forgiveness, his ghafarah.
That's what we want.
In this month, walhamdulillah,
this upon us.
If we
set ourselves aright and say, subhanallah,
I'm going to get out of the month
of Ramadan.
What Allah has promised people.
That you will be in a state of
taqwa.
And that state, insha'Allah,
should then guide you and protect you after
Allah has forgiven you.
There are many people
who think they assume that we will make
it into the month of Ramadan.
I hope they're right.
Because,
the reward of this forgiveness,
and to live through it,
even to find in the last 10 days,
has a whole lifetime of forgiveness.
There's something about forgiveness, and we're gonna talk
about it in the second half of the
khutba,
that should be amazing for us as an
ummah.
Because it's not just enough
to say, okay, I've been forgiven.
Allah forgave me.
But it should give us an extra gift
when we come out of this process
to make us better.
We ask Allah
to accept us,
that we might live into the month of
Ramadan,
that we might taste the sweetness, is prayer.
That we might, in the month of Ramadan,
enjoy,
the guidance and the shefa of the Quran,
that Allah
would forgive us of our sins and
enter
us
in
his.
Brothers and sisters,
I I used to to to really wonder
about something.
I used to wonder
I hear, you know,
Allah talk about in the Quran,
Adam alaihis salam.
And the Malaika look,
and they say to Allah, you're creating Adam?
I mean,
you know, we
we worship you. We we obey you. We
we don't deviate from you.
And and you're gonna create Adam, and you
told us something about Adam,
that Adam
has free will.
Adam has free will.
And
if Adam has free will,
we already know from seeing the jinn
that if they have free will, some of
them are gonna obey, some of them are
gonna disobey.
And Allah informs in Malaika, I know something
about Adam that you don't know.
That you're gonna be amazed
at
Adam alaihis salaam
and Adam and Hawa's descendants
are going to amaze you.
They say he's gonna he's gonna shed blood.
Yeah. But Allah is telling them, but there's
something else.
Then the hadith of the prophet
tells us,
if
we,
human beings,
did not
disobey Allah
and then ask Allah for forgiveness,
Allah would destroy us
and create a people
who
they would make mistakes.
They would sin.
And then they would turn to Allah for
forgiveness.
This always seemed like a paradox to me.
I don't understand.
I began reflecting from the words of one
of my teachers and said, subhanallah,
how do human beings
get better?
How do you get better?
They said, show me someone who has never
made a mistake,
and I'll show you someone who has never
done anything.
When they invented the incandescent light bulb,
they failed
999
times.
I I don't believe it was 999.
It seemed too perfect for me. But, you
know, that's how they write history, you know.
It's not the Quran.
But on the thousandth time,
they get it right.
This is the lesson that we're learning from
this. Allah created us knowing we're gonna go
out. We're gonna try things. We're gonna make
mistakes.
But how do you get better?
They said the year that Babe Ruth I
don't know if you know who Babe Ruth
is, famous baseball player. The year that he
made the most home runs in baseball,
that's the year he struck out the most.
Human beings have to go out and try
and struggle
and fail.
You want to start a business?
Be prepared to fail
and fail again.
And every time you fail, what do you
do?
You sit down, you reflect, you look at
what you have done wrong,
you try to correct
the mistakes that you made.
You make restitution if you have to.
Creditors or people that you already had faith
in you, you let them down.
You make a recommitment, and
then you come out again.
But with Allah, it's even better.
That when you go through that process with
Allah,
Allah wipes your debt clean.
Allah doesn't hold it against you.
Because Allah knows that by nature,
you're going to make mistakes.
My challenge to you today, walhamdulillah,
to think about leveraging the month of Ramadan,
to expiate you from the sins of those
mistakes,
that when you come back out,
you come back out stronger,
better,
improved.
And if we were not a people who
had the capacity of, what some call Tahsin,
Tahsin, the ability
to to to have accent, to improve yourself.
What's the point?
I know that shaitan
comes to you after you have made a
mistake, after you make tawba.
Shaitan comes to you and says,
don't believe Allah forgave you.
I know you.
I know you.
I know when you I was there when
you were lying.
Now you're trying to act like
a lover forgives you for the stuff that
you do. Not gonna happen.
You're going to *
along with me.
I promised the law on the day of
judgment. That's what Shaitan, I'm telling you the
truth. Shaitan said, I'm telling you the truth.
I'm going to *
and I'm taking you with me
because you're worthless.
You have all those sins
and you're a hypocrite.
You go back and you fail again.
He says, Isn't that one of the signs
of hypocrisy?
A person who they ask for forgiveness
and then they go back and they do
it again.
Now we take Shaitan as our teacher.
You have to tell Shaitan, excuse me.
I know that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgives
sins.
That's the that's Allah's business.
Allah can forgive sins up to the heavens.
And guess what?
I believe in Allah,
and I believe that Allah forgave me.
I believe that we went through the month
of Ramadan
over a 1000000000 Muslims,
and we ask Allah for forgiveness,
and Allah is forgiving us,
so we don't come out depressed.
Man, I got all these mistakes. Man. I
ain't never gonna I ain't never gonna I
keep failing all the time. Get up.
Ask the Lord to forgive you.
Fast, pray,
feed the hungry,
and say to yourself, You Allah, I know
what I did is wrong. I hate it.
I'm not going back. I'm going to try.
Ask you to forgive me, You Allah.
And don't take anything for granted.
Allah
can forgive us.
Brothers and sisters, I just wanna close by
saying to you that I'm always reminded of
a man from this community,
not not Dar Hijra, but in Northern Virginia,
who died
days
before the month of Ramadan.
And when they investigated his death, the police
said no,
we don't know how he died.
They said it must be suicide.
The Muslim said it can't be suicide. This
is a brother, he's a very faithful brother
in the community. He's a leader, he knows
Allah, he knows the Quran.
No way.
Police said, well, that's all we have.
This is why how how do how do
you know?
His family said because he went to Costco
that day to buy his favorite cereal for
suhoor.
Not their favorite, his favorite.
He was organizing
his affairs to prepare for Ramadan,
but he didn't make it.
Well, alhamdulillah,
We believe Allah rewarded
him
from his intentions.
After salal, I'm going to ask you,
don't assume that you will live into the
month of Ramadan.
Help us, alhamdulillah,
to support those who are fasting. We have
a program,
one of the greatest
iftar programs in America,
where every night we feed
almost a 1000 people
every night.
Families, women, children, everybody.
I I can think of a few ways
that it's easier
to get the benefit of this month,
besides your prayer and your fasting,
than to feed those who are fasting and
those who are in need.
And I know some of the families, some
of them,
when I see them
you're not going to believe this, you see
some of them. And I go over to
the family and say, assalamu alaykum, and the
brothers say, Islam.
I said, okay.
His walaikum salaam is not right.
He's here with his family because he needs
food.
In this county, 1 out of 5 children
go to bed with their stomachs empty every
night in Fairfax County.
So you don't we don't know who we're
feeding in Ramadan. Some who are fasting and
some who are starving.
And so we ask you, alhamdulillah,
after the salah, I'm going to ask you
to raise your hand. It costs a
$195 to feed
1 person
per night in the month of Ramadan.
I'm gonna ask you after the salah
if you will join us
to be, walhamdulillah,
part of the army
that will provide, walhamdulillah,
for those who are fasting and those without
food.
Oh, god, guide us among those whom you
have guided. Oh, god, protect us among those
whom you have protected.
You Allah, help us
that our prayer might be accepted, that you
might cause us to live into the month
of forgiveness,
the month of shahar Ramadan.
Oh Allah, we pray, walhamdulillah,
those who are suffering with difficulties, You Allah,
whether around the corner or around the world.
Walhamdulillah,
that you might help them and help us,
to be emissaries of your peace.
Oh Allah, we ask
for your mercy and your peace on the
prophet Muhammad
and upon his family and companions,
and upon all of the Ambia, you Allah,
and those who follow the way of your
Haqq, you Allah, until the day of judgment,
Amin.