Mirza Yawar Baig – Rasoolullah The Guide to Jannah
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of learning and practicing learning in achieving success in learning. They emphasize the importance of learning and practicing learning in order to achieve success in learning. They also encourage students to practice learning in their life and become an expert in their field. The importance of learning and practicing learning in order to achieve success in learning is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
We praise Him, we seek His help and
we seek His forgiveness.
We believe in Him and we put our
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 leads astray, none can guide him.
And we bear witness that there is none
worthy of worship except Allah, the One and
Only.
We bear witness that Muhammad is His servant
and Messenger.
And I bear witness that Muhammad is His
servant and Messenger.
My dear respected brothers and sisters and elders,
the title of my khutbah today is Rasulullah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the guide to Jannah.
The guide to Jannah.
There are two ways to guide anybody, to
show anybody the way.
One is to give them a map and
leave it to them to follow the map.
The other one is to send a guide
with the map.
Who knows the way, who teaches them how
to read the map, and who guides them
on the right paths, course correcting as necessary
so that they can never be lost.
In corporate consulting, when we recommend a course
of action, we run a pilot program as
what we call proof of concept, to demonstrate
the benefits of what we have recommended.
That not only builds credibility in our way,
in the new way, but also prevents costly
mistakes from being made.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala chose that method
when He decided to give the world a
new way of life for the last time.
And that is why Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta
'ala taught us to make dua for guidance
to the path, Siratul Mustaqeem, not to Jannah,
not to the restoration.
I mean we can make dua for Jannah,
but the ayat of the Quran is, Ihdinas
Siratul Mustaqeem, the path of steadfastness, Siratul Mustaqeem,
Ihdinas Siratul Mustaqeem, the path of those He
blessed, and not those who incurred His anger,
or became misguided, Siratul Lazeena, An'amta Alayhim,
Ghairul Naqdubi Alayhim, Wa Anabdalil.
And that is a dua which we make
at least 17 times a day, and I
say at least because those are the 17
rak'aat of Fars Salah, but of course
when we pray the Sunnah Mu'akkadah, we
pray Tawafil and so on, we make this
dua more and more and more.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala accepted this dua.
And then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said,
He told us, He is the One who
sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion
of Haqq, so that He may manifest it
over the whole religion.
And sufficient is Allah as a Witness.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said, He is
the One who sent His Messenger with the
right guidance and the religion of truth, making
it prevail over all others, and sufficient is
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala as a Witness.
The question to ask is, Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala accepted my dua and sent His
Messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, but am I following
Him or someone else?
Let's ask this question to ourselves and correct
ourselves before we are asked.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, as I mentioned
to you, not only accepted our dua, but
He also told us what the result of
following His Messenger would be.
He said that the way of Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, Islam, would become the most preferred
and the most prevalent way of life on
earth.
Today, we wonder at how certain negative and
harmful lifestyles and life choices have become so
prevalent and so powerful, when just a few
years ago they were despised and kept hidden.
That is the power of living your choice
with confidence.
No matter what that might be, if you
do it with confidence, the world will follow
you.
If this is possible with negative things, ask
yourself how much more possible this is with
positive things.
But when the ignorant are confident and the
knowledgeable are diffident and apologetic, that ignorance will
prevail.
Remember that when the truth must be spoken,
silence is culpable and punishable.
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and all those who
followed him in excellence, Bil Ihsan, demonstrated this
and will be our witnesses.
Everything we have in this world, from the
air we breathe, produced by trees we cut,
to gravity which cancels the centrifugal force of
the spinning of the earth and saves us
from flying off into space, to water which
came from outer space and is the most
ancient substance on earth, essential to survival of
all living things, locked into a perpetual cycle
of self-purification and renewal, to the Northern
Lights, Aurora Borealis, evidence of the shield of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the electromagnetic shield
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala placed on
the earth to protect us from solar flares,
a single one of which would be enough
to reduce us and our arrogance to ash.
From love in the heart, to courage, to
Iman, which makes those who have lost limbs
and families in Gaza ask questions related to
the fiqh of wudu and the permissibility of
adopting an orphan who not only doesn't have
parents but who has nobody in the world.
From the food we eat, to our health
and wealth, families and friends, power and authority,
to happiness and equanimity, to face grief.
From tahajjud and His, Jalla Jalaluhu, descent to
the lowest heaven and offer to accept our
du'a and even more for the tawfiq
to get up and pray and ask Him
to forgive us.
And most of all, for His mercy and
His forgiveness, His generosity, His grace, His glory
and His majesty and the faculty to recognize
all of this as such and fall in
sujood and say, Subhanallah and Allahu Akbar, instead
of saying, wow!
Every single one of them I mentioned and
all those I cannot possibly mention or even
count are the blessings of Allah.
Every one of them.
And that is why He said, Jalla Jalaluhu,
Allah said, and He has granted you all
that you asked Him for.
If you try to count, just count, Allah's
blessings, you would never be able to number
them.
Indeed, humankind is totally unfair and totally ungrateful.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us all
of this and more.
Yet, the only blessing that He, Jalla Jalaluhu,
drew our attention to and the only blessing
that He specifically called His blessing, His ni'mah
on us is the presence of Rasulullah salallahu
alayhi wa sallam among us.
It is very important to reflect on the
Quran al-karim, on the meaning and import
of the words used and the way they
are used to emphasize certain things.
This is because when Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala emphasizes something, it makes it essential for
us to acknowledge that and to ensure that
we express our shukr, our gratitude for that.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said in the
case of Rasulullah salallahu alayhi wa sallam, an
emphasized statement.
Allah said, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala could
have simply said, same meaning, but without the
emphasis.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Again,
emphasis.
Allah said, Indeed, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
has done the believers a great favor.
He has bestowed upon them a great ni'mah,
a great blessing by raising a messenger from
among them, reciting to them His ayat, purifying
them and teaching them the book and wisdom
and hikmah.
For indeed, indeed, they had previously been clearly
astray, clearly misguided.
In this ayat al-karima, Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala emphasized two things.
The fact that sending of His messenger, salallahu
alayhi wa sallam, who was human, he was
like us, in terms of his humanity alone.
He is unlike us in everything else.
That he was a human being.
That he was human is a double blessing
because we got the Rasul and the Rasul
is one of us, alayhi salam.
And He emphasized, jalla jalaluhu, that before the
coming of the messenger, the believers had been
misguided.
This is the most certain evidence that guidance
is only and only in the way of
and through Muhammad, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and
that all other ways that do not come
from him or bypass him are misguidance.
I ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
help us to understand this.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala jalla jalaluhu said,
He sent Rasulullah, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, with
four connected duties.
Four connected duties.
Four things.
Another way of understanding this is to see
these as four progressive steps of a staircase
of learning and guidance.
At the top of that is Jannah.
And these four are recite, yathru alayhim ayati,
bayu zakkihim, purify, bayu alimumul kitab, teach them,
wal hikmah, demonstrate the wisdom of these teachings.
From the perspective of the audience, from our
perspective, these four steps should be, when he
is reciting, to listen.
When he is purifying, to submit.
When he is teaching, to learn.
And when he is demonstrating, to understand that
and to practice it.
So recite, purify, teach, demonstrate.
For us, listen, submit, learn, and practice.
These four things are not independent of each
other, but they are a continuum, like a
staircase which I said before, which takes you
to the top, inshallah, Jannah.
We must experience every single one of them.
You can't bypass them.
You have to go through them to benefit.
If we leave out a stage, we will
fail.
Aqoolu qawli aaza astaghfirullaha li walakum wa li
sa'iril muslimeen fa astaghfiruhu.
Innahu huwal ghafurul zaheem.
Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen wa salatu wa salamu ala
ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen Muhammadun Rasulullahi sallallahu alaihi
wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salam tasliman
kathiran kathira.
Fama ba'du.
My brothers and sisters, Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala tells us that Ibrahim alayhi salam made
this du'a when he built the Ka
'bah.
He said, Rabbana wa ba'ath fihim rasulan
minhum.
Yatlu alayhim ayatika wa yu'allimuhumul kitaba wal
hikmata wa yuzakkihim.
Innaka anta la'azizul hakeem.
Ibrahim alayhi salam asked Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala for four things.
He said, O Allah, O our Rabb, raise
from among them a messenger who will recite
to them Your ayat, Your revelation, teach them
the Book and wisdom and purify them.
Indeed, You alone are the Almighty, the All
-Wise.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala granted Ibrahim alayhi
salam his du'a, but he changed the
order of what was asked, which underlines for
us the importance of the sequence of learning.
Today, this is our biggest problem.
Out of the four steps or stages, we
focused on two and almost completely discarded the
other two.
Mostly playing lip service to them, we say
these are important but we do nothing.
We focused on the recitation of the Quran
and what comes associated with that, which is
hif and tajweed.
Great focus on that.
Alhamdulillah, we have beautiful Quran, we have hufadh,
hundreds of thousands and millions of them, alhamdulillah.
But we completely ignored taskiyatun nafs wa tarbiyatul
aqlaaq, purification of the soul and adab and
manners.
We ignored taskiyatun nafs wa tarbiyatul aqlaaq to
the extent that today we don't even have
teachers who know how to teach that.
Illa mashallah, even the teachers have no aqlaaq
and they have no taskiyat.
You can see from the way they teach,
from what they say, how they teach, this
is visible.
Then we focused on the Urdu Sharia.
We have great madaris and jamiat and so
on and so forth.
We teach this kitab, this kitab, this kitab,
this syllabus, this and produce a lot of
muftis and most of them today focus almost
exclusively on Islamic finance because they get jobs
in the Sharia boards of banks, including Islamic
banking windows in commercial interest based banks.
And we forgot and ignored the practice of
the sunnah.
Think about this.
The sahabah practiced the sunnah because it was
sunnah.
Today we leave the sunnah because it is
sunnah.
How shameful is that?
People ask you, Sheikh is it further or
only sunnah?
Innal illahi wa innal awliya.
Is it further or only sunnah?
You say the beard is a sunnah.
Oh no, no, but Abu Jahl also had.
La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah.
How shameful is that?
The sahabah practiced the sunnah because it was
sunnah.
We leave the sunnah because it is sunnah.
Innal illahi wa innal awliya.
And we expect to stand with them.
We expect the shade of the arsh with
them.
Well, as they say, wishes were horses, beggars
would ride.
Wishing is not enough.
My brothers, sisters, the biggest tragedy of this
is that when we separated taskiya from ta
'aleem and ta'aleem from amal, the nur
left the air and only dry words remained.
When we separated purification from teaching and we
separated teaching from action, from practice, the light
of knowledge disappeared.
Only dry words remained.
That is how we can recite beautifully the
ayat about the glory and majesty of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala, but the fear of
makhluq remains in our hearts.
Hope from makhluq remains in our hearts.
However, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala doesn't go
by our standards.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentioned the condition
and responsiveness of the heart, to His kalam,
to His word, as the criteria of true
believers.
Not how much Quran you know or how
well you can recite the Quran.
We are talking about what is the maqsad
of the nuzul of the kalam of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It is not to make you recite beautifully,
it is to practice it in your life.
This shows how skewed our focus is.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, The true
believers are those who, when Allah is mentioned,
their hearts tremble.
And when His verses are recited to them,
their faith increases.
And they put their trust in their Lord.
Those who perform the prayer and spend from
what We have provided them.
Those are the true believers.
They have degrees with their Lord and forgiveness
and generous provision.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, The true
believers are only those whose hearts tremble with
the remembrance of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And whose faith increases when His revelations are
recited to them.
And who have tawakkul on Allah alone.
And who put their trust in their Lord.
And then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, these
are three things inside, internal.
Then Allah mentioned two external.
They are those who establish the salah.
And who spend from what We have given
them.
And then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala emphasized,
Allah said, They are the true believers.
And they will have elevated ranks.
They will have elevated ranks with their Lord.
And they will have forgiveness and they will
have an honorable provision from their Lord.
Honorable provision, one interpretation of that is Jannah.
But the other interpretation of that is honorable
provision in this life.
Not running around like animals.
No time for anything.
Just money, money, money, money, money.
And at the end of all that you
say, how much money did you make?
Did you make a billion dollars?
You won't make a billion dollars even in
twenty lifetimes.
Forget about this one lifetime.
And that's why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
called the whole life of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam, not only his words, as an
excellent example for those who look forward to
meeting Allah.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, لَقَدْ كَانَذَكُمْ
فِي رَسُولِ اللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ لِمَنْ كَانَ يَرُضُ
اللَّهَ وَالْيَوْمَ الْآخِرَ وَذَكَرَ اللَّهَ كَثِيرًا For whom?
Allah said, Indeed in the Messenger of Allah,
meaning in his life, every aspect of his
life, you have an excellent example for whoever
has hope in Allah.
Meaning hope to meet Allah.
And the last day on the Day of
Judgment.
And remembers Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala a
great deal.
The path to Jannah is his whole life.
Not selective obedience, picking and choosing what suits
us.
I gave the example of how we teach
Ulood Deen, but this applies even more powerfully
or should I say more destructively to how
we teach secular knowledge and lead our lives.
And that is why when we study the
life of Rasulullah ﷺ and his Sahaba, it
sounds like a fairy tale or like a
legend.
Not real.
To get results, we need to use the
entire recipe in the right order.
If somebody gives you a recipe to cook
something, you have to use the recipe, use
all the ingredients and in that order.
Otherwise you get spicy dog food.
To help you understand this process of learning,
yathru alihim ayatihi wa yuzaqqihim wa yuwalimumul kitabu
adhikma Think agriculture, think planting.
If you are a farmer and you get
a consignment of the best seeds in the
world and you want to plant them and
get the best and highest harvest anybody ever
got, what is the first thing you would
do?
Take the seeds and scatter them?
If you are a farmer, if you know
agriculture, the first thing you would do is
put the seeds aside.
You will prepare the soil.
You will prepare the field.
You will ensure that the field, the soil
is of the right quality, the right pH
value, right acidity, right alkalinity, right organic matter
content.
You will see all toxic things, pathogens and
so on removed from the soil.
You will treat the soil.
You will make it conducive to growth.
Then you will set up an irrigation system.
If the field needs fencing, you will fence
the field.
Once all of this is over, only then
will you plant the seed.
And even that, you will plant the seed
the way that particular seed is to be
planted.
If you take grass seeds and plant them
deep, nothing will happen.
They will die.
If you take corn seeds and scatter them,
again nothing will happen.
Birds will eat them.
Each seed has a way of planting.
Islam is a practice.
Islam is agriculture.
And that is why Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala even give us an example of charity
as a an ear of corn which has
100 seeds each.
Planting one grain is like a grain which
plants, which grows and produces seven ears.
Each ear has 100, meaning the deed is
multiplied 700 times.
And then Allah said, Allah will give more
as He wishes.
But that will happen only if we follow
the sequence and ensure that all the conditions
are satisfied.
I advise myself and you to change our
ways and ensure that when we read or
teach the Quran, we focus not only on
the pronunciation and the meaning and this tafseer
and that tafseer.
Much more importantly, focus on what is happening
to the heart.
Ask this question.
You are teaching Quran.
Did you ask your students?
I recited this ayah.
It's not a matter of you two.
What happened to your heart just now?
You read this ayah.
What happened to your heart just now?
If you are not doing that, you are
not doing justice to the Kalam of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And before you ask the teacher, the student
that question, ask yourself that question.
What happens to my heart when I read
the Kalam of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala?
If nothing is happening to your heart, stop
teaching.
Because when you teach, you become culpable before
Allah.
A student has excuses, teachers have no excuses.
Be very careful.
Then look to the one who received the
Quran and practiced it in his life and
what he taught.
And then practice that in our lives to
the best of our ability.
That would be the whole sequence.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made the life
of His Messenger ﷺ and his time a
pilot programme to prove that Islam works.
I teach a two-day course called Seerah
is the Answer, which focuses on all of
these things.
Rasulullah ﷺ did not come to tell us
about Islam.
He came to teach us how to do
Islam.
The Sahaba did not learn about Islam.
They learned to do Islam.
Like any martial art, you can become an
expert in two ways.
You can become an expert in that martial
art by reading about it and knowing everything
to do with it, or you can become
an expert by joining a dojo and learning
to fall 10,000 times.
Both are experts, but only one will remain
standing if they get attacked in the street.
Islam prepares us not only to remain standing,
but to teach others how to fight and
win the great battle between good and evil,
between virtue and vice, between shaitan and his
agents and ourselves.
That is the way of Muhammad ﷺ.
It was the Sunnah, the way of Muhammad
ﷺ, which took his Sahaba from being the
most oppressed and the weakest and the most
despised and victimized people to become the role
models and rulers of their world in a
period of 23 years.
The Qur'an is the blueprint.
The Sunnah is the method, the manual, the
field book.
Without that, the blueprint cannot be used.
The teacher ﷺ did his job to perfection
and Allah is his witness.
It is for us to learn and practice
if we want to succeed.
Allahumma ahdina fiman hadayt, wa'afina fiman afayt,
wa tawallana fiman tawallayt, wa barik lana fiman
atayt, wa qina wasrifanna sharra ma khadayt.
Fa innaka taqdi wa la yuqda alayk, fa
innahu la yazillu ma waalayt, wa la ya
'iz man a'adayt, tamarakta rabbana wa ta
'alayt.
Nastaghfiruka Allahumma wa natuwwu ilayk.
Amin.
O servants of Allah, may Allah bless you.
Verily, Allah commands to do good and to
do good, and to give to those near
to Him, and to forbid to do evil
and to do evil.
He wants you so that you may remember.
Remember Allah so that He may remember you.
Return and He will be pleased with you.
And Allah's remembrance is the greatest.
And Allah knows best what you do.