Johari Abdul-Malik – Thanks Giving & Forgiving
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
First, beginning
praising Allah,
seeking Allah's guidance and Allah's forgiveness,
and bearing witness that there is nothing worthy
of worship except Allah and Allah alone,
and bearing witness that Muhammad ibn Abdullah is
the last of his prophets
and messengers,
He said, don't worry about it. Right?
First, I want to begin the khutbahatuljumah
by asking
something from you.
Usually
the second khutbah in Dar al Hijra
is almost always given by our imam, Sheikh
Shakir.
And until just a few minutes ago,
I was praying
he would show up
because he had a surgery a few days
ago,
and he's recovering, but sometimes
you get a kind of feeling that you
know that it's the day of Jum'ah and
you're gonna get yourself
together.
And so I was hoping if the imam
felt strong enough that he would walk in,
and subhanallah, even if he had to sit
down,
that he would give the khutbah today.
So while I'm grateful to Allah
to be your khatib for today,
really I was making dua that I would
not be your khatib for today.
But I want to give you, alhamdulillah,
just a very, very short reminder.
Yesterday
in America,
in the United States of America,
the day was called
Thanksgiving.
And I want to remind everyone, subhanAllah,
that even though they call this day Thanksgiving,
I like to rename it.
I like to rename it.
But, alhamdulillah,
I want to first give thanks to Allah,
subhanahu wa ta'ala,
for Sheikh Shakir to have a full recovery,
the inalah.
With that, I want
perhaps, subhanAllah,
to remind you and to remind myself
that although yesterday was the National
Day of Family Dinner in America,
and subhanallah,
we know the power and the effect of
families
having dinner together.
For many of us who grew up in
another age where families
got together for
dinner every day,
Now we have left that family dinner tradition,
and so the mom eats one time and
the dad eats another time, and the children,
they just get their food on the run.
And they've talked about, in society,
the negative effects
of not having family time.
And so, alhamdulillah,
I want to remind you
about a day I'm going to call it,
thanks
gathering
for giving.
Well, alhamdulillah,
thanks gathering for giving,
because
I want to let you in on a
secret, subhanallah,
that you have because you are blessed to
be a Muslim.
You're blessed to be a Muslim.
You're blessed to be someone who says,
I take my guidance
by submitting my will to the will of
the one who created me,
so that I might be successful in this
life and in the hereafter.
There are many people who are looking for
this.
It's called happiness.
We might say salaam.
Salaam more than peace,
tranquility,
health,
to be, alhamdulillah,
in in a state where your relationship with
your creator
causes you to be relaxed.
You have hope when other people have despair
because you have acquired
this something
that comes from Allah
Allah reminds us in Surat Arun that those
who believe
and whose hearts are filled with the satisfaction
of their remembrance
to Allah,
then without any doubt,
these people signed in the remembrance of Allah,
zakinah,
tranquility,
happiness.
You find it.
If you are in that relationship with Allah,
and when nothing is breaking that relationship, you
begin to feel at peace.
I want to remind you about
this day,
and I invite you over this weekend, bayidnila,
to to have some family time and some
time to give thanks to Allah.
The real hamdan, the real shukr is for
Allah, not for the turkey.
By reminding you of something as I remind
myself,
let us not forget on this day that
there is a celebration
of
the victory
of the survival of settler colonialists.
They survived because of the generosity
of their host,
And America has repaid that hospitality
by taking over the entire country.
I always remember the native people when I
think about Thanksgiving, I always think about the
native people.
The remnants of them are
either in the reservation,
and many of them are now called undocumented
immigrants, they were here first.
When you see the Latino
brother and sister
from Mexico, Mexico used to go all the
way up
until they had the the purchase. They negotiated
and purchased
part of it and took over part of
it, the western territory.
And so I never forget the day
of the
sacrifice.
And I want you to know that some
of the poorest people in America
live on reservations,
not in the ghetto.
They live on reservations.
But I still say that even with the
phenomenon of stolen
land,
a nation built by stolen labor,
my descendants who were brought from Africa
built this nation.
After
centuries of slavery
and of colonial occupation,
I still believe
that this is a great country.
It has become a great country.
Despite
all of the negative circumstances,
we still have a lot to be thankful
for in this country. Alhamdulillah, in Virginia, I'm
not a slave anymore.
I can eat and drink wherever I want
to go.
It is a nation that has come to
welcome immigrants freely, not the way they used
to.
And so, alhamdulillah,
notwithstanding
that history and whatever personal
family stories that we have, we have, alhamdulillah,
much to be thankful to Allah for.
But today, alhamdulillah,
in that thanks, in that hamdulillah,
I want to share
something with you
that I learned
out of this gratitude
and thanks for Allah.
Some months ago I watched a movie. I
know some of you don't think I I
watch movies.
I watched the movie.
I'm I'm gonna have it I didn't go
to the movie. I watched it on Netflix.
My wife said, let's watch a movie.
So, alhamdulillah,
after the show we sat down, we watched
this movie.
Called, alhamdulillah,
happiness.
Happy, the movie.
Happy,
the movie.
And wallahi,
I learned in the movie
something that I knew from the Quran
and the sunnah of the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, but they put it together in a
very nice way.
In a way it made it easy for
you to understand the big picture about Islam.
And all Muslims, I wish I had more
time, but
time is time is short, always.
The prophet he
said, People marry for four reasons.
1,
for beauty.
2,
for wealth,
3
for status.
But he said the best reason to marry?
Deen.
I'm gonna show you something from the movies.
They said, alhamdulillah, look at this.
They said that
when people
are looking to become happy, whether it's in
America or in other countries, everyone that they
surveyed for the movie said,
I would be happy, I would be in
tranquility, I would be at peace if I
could be
richer.
If I had more wealth, I'd be happy.
They say, okay, well
if you had that, what else would make
you happy?
They say, I'd like to be more beautiful.
2.
Person said, well if I had wealth and
I had beauty, I'd wanna have status.
If I'm the employee, I wanna be the
manager. If I'm the manager, I wanna be
the vice president. If I'm the vice president,
I want to be the president. If I'm
the president, I want to be the CEO.
They're always running
after something to try to make them happier,
more satisfied.
And all of them are
extrinsic.
Outside of themselves,
all of it is external.
The movie said, you know what
really contributes significantly
to happiness?
If you have this
right,
this
muscle
of flesh in your body, then if it's
right, your whole body is right.
Kulbun Salim. How do you get it?
They said, how do you get it? They
studied people around the world. They found people
are significantly
happier,
who are regularly
having gratitude
for what they have.
That if you say, Subhanallah,
Allahu Akbar, La Illa Allah,
looking at what you have,
you are likely
to be more happy. The more time you
spend thinking about Allah's blessing on you, the
more happy you will be.
Gratitude.
So wow. And by the way, that means
it doesn't matter how much you have,
but having gratitude for what you've got
makes a difference.
I don't mean to be complacent, I don't
want you to think, Imam Johari said, Just
be complacent, I'm not saying that.
The second thing that they found,
Subhanallah.
1st, shukr.
2nd,
I'm letting your mind think now. Are you
thinking? What could be the most second thing?
Jannah!
If you spend time in jannah,
people who have good relationships,
their families meet, they get together with their
friends.
The subhanallah,
people who get together, they have community,
they tend to be happier than people who
go it alone.
Look at all the shooters they have now.
They talk about the shooting in school, the
teenager, whatever. Most of them,
they're all their friends on Facebook.
But real human relationships,
lacking.
Alhamdulillah,
to have
time to spend
with friends and family,
even if you don't get along with them
all the time,
increases your happiness.
So when the prophet
says that salah and jamaat is 25 or
7 times better,
What's it about? It's about jamaat.
There's more barakah in the food with more
hands.
Right? If you're eating and you eat with
somebody else in the hand, you feel happier.
I know sometimes you go to
some of these restaurants
Alain?
No, after. Okay okay okay.
You go to some restaurants, you just get
a fancy restaurant, you get so little food
you can't even share it with nobody.
But with hamdilar, the family style, there's more
barakah when there's more hands.
The third thing that they found after saying
hamdan shukr,
the second being in July,
the third thing that they found,
doing something
Doing something for others, expecting nothing in return.
Volunteering.
Going to help somebody,
you say, I don't want anything, this is
I'm gonna give sadaqah, somebody has a problem,
I hear about it, subhanAllah,
I rush to do it.
And the hadith says, in the way that
your right hand
doesn't know what your left hand is doing.
We don't want anybody to know.
They said this, SubhanAllah,
statistically
increases
people's
happiness.
I'm going to invite you, alhamdulillah,
as a lover of Allah,
make yourself happy
by regularly
engaging
in acts of praising and thanking
Allah for what you have. My mother used
to say before she passed away,
as you go through life in search of
your goal,
keep your eye on the doughnut
and not the whole.
Think about what you have,
not thinking about what the other person has
and what you don't have.
The prophet
said, if you wanna have gratitude for where
you are, don't look at people who have
more than you, look down at people who
have less than you. When you look there,
you say, oh, subhanAllah,
Allah blessed me with so much.
Gratitude, alhamdulillah.
Stay in jama'ah. Get together.
Just do the drop in. Go by
Fulan Fulan's house. Not going to sala alaykum,
I just came by just to give you
a salaam. I don't want anything from you
just to be together with you. SubhanAllah.
And the third,
make it a habit, to
do acts of of charity, of goodness.
Whether you have money or don't have money,
but go out for
Do something
that Allah might make your way easy
and add to your happiness.
So Allah
gives and forgives, and man gets and forgets.
Hamdan Shukar,
staying in jama'a, please brothers, come forward.
You know, I love the day after thanksgiving
because there are many Come forward, brothers. I
ask you, come forward. I'm looking at you.
Well I, my son, when he was little,
he used to cover his eyes and think
that if if he if I couldn't if
he couldn't see me,
that he became invisible.
I'm looking at you, come forward, brother stand
up, they need to sit down.
Hamdan Shukar,
staying in JAMA,
doing things.
Today,
there is a great
tragedy going on now
in the Philippines,
and I know always there's something going on
somewhere in the world.
We have been asked today by Islamic Relief
to provide some Islamic
relief
to the people in the Philippines.
And I want you to understand that this
is a part of your zakah.
It is an obligation upon you
to find people in the categories, and one
of those categories
are the people who are in the Philippines
now, whether they are Muslim or otherwise.
That when you will hand the Ilah say,
we, the Muslims, we did something to help
you.
We didn't say you have to take this
book and read it at all, and we'll
give you food. No.
Then, well, hamdi'ilah,
it is our obligation to our fellow human
being,
and it will be, the, a tremendous dawah.
How do I know?
Because I'm the product of someone else's dawah.
That I met Muslims who, they extended themselves
to me, feisa billillah.
I always observe their akhlaq,
praying and fasting,
spending in Allah's cause,
alhamdulillah, coming in jama'ah and praying being together.
I said, man, what is that?
They said, oh, this is Islam.
And finally, well, alhamdulillah,
Allah guided me like he guided many of
us.
Today I want to ask you after the
salah
to look for a moment down at the
people.
100 of 1,000 have no home.
They have no food.
They're looking for
resources.
They're crying out why the world has so
much,
but they're slow
to give us relief.
I'm going to ask you after salah just
to stay with us for 5 minutes. And
according to the statistics
that are supported by the Quran,
you will become happier.
Maybe you'll say, did I do anything today
of benefit?
What did I do today?
What did I do yesterday?
I don't remember if I did any Did
I do anything yesterday?
But subhanallah,
today I'm going to do something,
and when I do it, alhamdulillah,
Allah will make my way easy.
There will be a tranquility in my heart
when I look on the television, in the
news, I see people are begging.
They're drinking rotten water.
And you say, subhanallah, today,
I did something to make a difference.
We ask Allah
to have mercy on us.
For us
to have gratitude for what Allah has provided.
We ask Allah
to provide from us a benefit to others.
Oh, Allah, we ask that you keep us,
constantly in your remembrance, you Allah, as we
remember you, you Allah, that you would remember
us. Oh, Allah, keep us steadfast in our
prayers, you Allah. Oh, Allah, sometimes we forget
where the source of our risk comes from.
We are busy running, you Allah. Oh Allah,
help us that we might 5 times a
day focus our attention and thank you, you
Allah, for what you have done for us.
Oh Allah, we ask you for a blessing
on our families, you Allah. Oh, Allah, on
our children, alhamdulillah.
On our wives and husbands, you Allah. Oh,
I gather our families together, you Allah, in
security, you Allah. Oh, Allah, provide for us
rizkuntayubun,
you Allah. Provide us a righteous risk, you
Allah. Righteous income, a righteous wealth, and preserve
it, you Allah. That we might spend from
it in your cause.
Oh, Allah, we ask that you might answer
our prayer.
Those who are having difficulties, you Allah. Oh,
Allah, if you would answer our prayer,
oh, Allah, make our way easy in this
life. Oh, Allah, give us tranquility in our
hearts. Forgive us of our sins, oh, Allah,
and enter us
after this life into your paradise.
Oh, Allah, we ask for your mercy and
your peace on the prophet
and on his family and on his companions
and all of the MBI, you Allah, and
those who follow the way of Haqq, you
Allah, of truth until the day of judgment.
Amin.