Mohammad Elshinawy – Finding Our Lost Bravery
AI: Summary ©
The importance of good character, bravery, and avoiding fear in marriage and relationships is emphasized. Bravery is a muscle that can be grown and used to overcome fear and suppress it, and is essential for building a foundation for good character. The decline in physical activity, which reduces the ability to act as bravery, is also highlighted. The importance of physical activity for replenishment of testosterone levels and personal and professional reasons, including Allah's benefit, is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
Brothers and sisters, when the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam says
that righteousness
boils down to good character.
What this means is that whomever exceeds
you in good character has exceeded you, surpassed
you in righteousness,
has surpassed you in deen.
But how does a person know if they
truly have good character?
The great scholar of Al Qayyim Rahimahullah, he
says
that good character stands on 4 foundational
pillars.
There are 4 fundamental
qualities
that are the bedrock of good character.
Inspect those.
Look for those because if you don't have
a stable foundation, if you have a rocky
foundation to your character, you will not actually
be building on it even if you may
assume so. Even if you may assume that
you've in fact gotten somewhere.
The first of them and perhaps each deserves
its own khutba in the coming weeks if
Allah permits is
patience and perseverance.
A second of them is
a a sense of self respect and self
restraint that is born out of self respect.
The third is
a sense of justice
where you are repulsed
by unfairness,
even if it's at your own expense or
the expense of your loved ones.
Your parents, your spouses, your children.
And the 4th of them
is
bravery.
And I want to begin in today's khutba
with bravery
as
a foundational
part of good character.
Because you know, it already takes bravery to
begin with to inspect
whether or not I have good character. You
know, most people don't do that. Most people
on do you have good character, do you
truly have good character,
knowingly or not they settle for their reputation
and don't actually dig deeper to their reality.
They basically accept what people know about them,
not what they're actually like even if behind
closed doors. There's a huge difference between your
reputation and your reality. And to move past
the first to the second requires bravery. That
is the idea.
And then at Al Qayyim Rahimahullah,
he actually does something very interesting.
When he's using
symbol symbolic personalities,
like symbols of these qualities,
he says the symbol, the icon of bravery
is who among the sahaba? If we were
to quiz the Muslims,
hands down everyone would say, Umar.
But actually he says
Abu Bakr. May Allah be pleased with them
all. He says Abu Bakr
is the icon of bravery.
How so?
He says bravery for instance,
is the ability
to withstand
bad news. When everyone falls apart, you rise
to the moment.
To be able to embark on uncertainties.
When the prophet
died, no one was able to envision the
world after him. That's why even Umar, they
were in denial that he died initially.
Despite Abu Bakr as Siddiq radiaallahu an loving
him more than anyone, he was the one
that stabilized the ummah.
He said, listen. This is
it. We have to move forward. He was
the 1st person brave enough
to accept
that we have to move on in life
as hard as it is, as scary as
it is without the prophet salallahu alaihi wa
sallam. Another example, when he has then assumed
leadership over this ummah, many
tribes rebelled. They said, We respect Muhammad. We
will not respect any other leader but Muhammad.
And so so much of this happened so
fast
that Umar
came and he said to Abu Bakr, don't
do it. Too many fish to fry right
now. Let's sort of,
stabilize the state first.
Too many fights on too many fronts. We
can't pull it off.
And Abu Bakr was the only one
that said, we're gonna do it.
If we don't squash And he was right.
In hindsight, he was right. If we don't
squash this one rebellion,
there will never be another chance. It is
now or never.
And that takes a lot of bravery.
Because even especially, not even, especially if you
fear Allah, you you you're you're second guessing
yourself like, I'm making this decision and I
have to make it all alone and nobody
agrees with me. That means if it doesn't
go right,
all the blame is on me.
And yet he stood there after, for sure,
seeking guidance from Allah. He said to Omar,
what is the matter with you?
Islam. You're you're you're a tough guy before
Islam and now you're a coward. What happened
to you?
And then ultimately they all realized that Allah
had
inspired Abu Bakr.
He was not a hard headed person. He
was not stubborn. They realized Allah must be
inspiring him to do this right now, and
they all got on board. And so he
was the first, the courageous, the valiant and
he became contagious
after him. And then what is the hallmark
of Abu Bakr
You're gonna tell me generosity.
Generosity is actually bravery.
Right? To be able to let go of
money,
confident
that you'll come across some more money. That
is bravery.
Once again, even Umar, may Allah be pleased
with him. Umar is second to none, by
the way, after Abu Bakr though.
This is not any sort of detraction from
Umar. But Umar, when the prophet called to
charity, he had such bravery. He brought half
of it All of his money.
And he said if ever I'm going to
beat Abu Bakr, it's gonna be today. But
it wasn't even today.
Abu Bakr brought all of his money. Fearless
in a sense.
And the prophet alaihis salatu wasallam asked, Umrah,
what did you leave behind for your family?
He said an equal amount, half half.
Oh Abu Bakr, who What did you leave
behind for your family? He said, Allah and
his messenger.
I left behind Allah and his messenger.
This idea
of courage and bravery
being a foundational element
to our character
means that every righteous person for their righteousness
needs it.
We need it on every level.
You know,
when when the world
is making investments in every direction,
It takes bravery to limit your pool of
resources to make the ethical investment, not the
unethical that the world is making. It takes
bravery.
It's the risk
that no one else wants to take.
And so they'll justify the other path.
Or when you make a decision
to want to marry a woman,
it takes a certain kind of bravery to
man up and call her father
or knock on his door,
and not just message her on the side
or slip into the d m's as they
say nowadays. Right?
When you get into marriage
and you face problems, it takes a certain
kind of bravery
to engage the problems, get to the bottom
of them, put them past you and move
on. I remember one of
my mentors,
friends but a bit older, when I was
getting married, he said to me, listen. I
wanna tell you something. I struggled a lot
in my first few years of marriage because
every time there would be a misunderstanding,
we would shut down.
Me and we wouldn't speak to each other.
And then after a while, I'm trying to
speak and she's still shutting down until I
said to her, listen to me.
I'm not going anywhere.
You're not going anywhere. We gotta figure this
out.
He said it was almost like I unlocked
a a code.
Whether she knew it or not, she was
afraid
to say something wrong, to do something wrong,
to sort of feel guilty for the rest
of her life that she ruined the marriage.
But when he told her, listen, we're gonna
do this. We're just gonna work through it.
All of a sudden, things became way better.
And even if there is no misunderstanding in
the marriage, a lot of times,
it is upon you brothers in particular to
make the last decision.
And you you should never abuse that. You
should never overuse that. Too much pressure causes
eruptions. But sometimes the the tie breaker is
going to be on you
and the questioning ultimately from Allah will be
on you. So those major decisions, you're going
to make shura but you may also need
to make a tough,
courageous
decision
regarding where our kids are going to school
or where they're going to live. And just
because you made sure you consulted others doesn't
mean they're all gonna agree with you. You
were just making sure you're covering the blind
spots that were available
with Through other people's advice and perspective. But
still, it takes a certain kind of bravery
that the rest of the family is looking
at you like, why'd you do it?
It's gonna require bravery.
And so,
that is in dunya.
But also in deen, you know, subhanAllah, the,
the prophet
has this beautiful hadith narrated by Imam Ahmed
Rahimahullah
about when a person wants to become Muslim,
shaitan blitzes them. And he starts throwing all
these scenarios in front of them about what's
gonna happen. You're gonna become Muslim, you're gonna
humiliate your family, they're gonna disown you. Right?
All of this. Right?
And then he disobeys him,
he defies him, that's the the courage. Right?
And he becomes Muslim. Then it's time to
migrate
and
the the shaitan blitzes him and he says,
you're gonna leave basically everything you've ever known,
your earth and your sky. You're gonna start
all over from scratch, A stranger. Nobody knows
you. Nothing.
And then he defies him and he migrates.
And then he stands in front of him
on the path to jihad, the hadith says.
And he says to him, you're gonna get
killed. Your kids are gonna become orphans. Your
wife's gonna forget you and remarry. She's gonna
marry another man.
And then he defies him and performs jihad.
And so for din as well, this is
indispensable.
You know, the idea of being afraid is
not the problem.
Like we're we are not calling people The
Quran and Sunnah are not calling people to
eliminate their fears. The mightiest messengers of God
were so afraid at times. The prophet salaam
musa alayhi wa sallam fears there throughout their
biographies that Allah immortalize in the Quran for
us and in the sunnah. It's about the
bravery not to eliminate but to overcome the
fear. You know it's almost like, superstitions.
Like the
when you have a building and then there's
a 13th floor, or Friday lands on 13th,
or you saw a black cat, or whatever
people take bad omens from. Abdullah Mas'ud
he says everyone experiences that. The
believer just chooses to ignore it, to suppress
it, to move past it using his tawakkul,
using his confidence in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And when you do that brothers and sisters,
I want you also to know that it
enables you to do it on higher levels
in the future.
Or to put that differently,
bravery is a muscle that can be grown.
You know, sometimes forget even in the charity
on the charity front, Entrepreneurs,
many a times, they take very risky actions.
Why?
Because they failed so many times and gotten
up from the failure. Right? And so it
actually builds in them a resilience that I
I can imagine
climbing out of this if it goes south
because I've climbed out of it in the
past.
Even you think of our sisters, you know
the encampments that have been happening around the
country and all these confrontations that have been
happening.
I I find myself reflecting on
the the amount, the apparently, not to say
our brothers aren't there, but the apparently
disproportionately
high number of sisters in hijab
out there.
And I said to myself, perhaps the reason
is because they have grown that muscle simply
by wearing the hijab and choosing
to be brave as visibly Muslim year in
year out that they're actually able to activate
it when the when the when the need
is there.
Yeah. I I recall also one scholar, he
was speaking about a man in Islamic history
that
joined the Muslim army
but he was horrified. Like, it was like
peer pressure or guilting or whatever, the shaming.
He just, alright, I'm in. And he's like
losing sleep every night praying to Allah that
the war doesn't happen.
Because if it starts, I'm gonna run.
And so as soon as the enemy lines
get near enough,
the opposing army sends a volley of arrows
at them, Like 100 of arrows at once.
And so this man, he doesn't block. He
doesn't have time to sort of Nothing.
The next thing he knows, an arrow skins
his face
and lands in the ground under him and
strikes dead a snake that was camouflaged under
the sand.
He said, and that changed everything for me.
Bravery is a muscle like you see, wait
a minute. Like it was his time, not
mine.
Truly, what was going to hit you wasn't
gonna miss you.
What hit you wasn't gonna miss you. And
what missed you was never going to hit
you in the first place.
The pens have truly been lifted. The pages
have truly dried.
And so you you grow this muscle
by using it.
And on the other side of this, what
weakens the bravery muscle?
Shying away too much.
Right? Giving
yourself
too much security.
Not enough struggle.
Not enough stretching yourself.
You know Ibn Khaldun, Rahim Allah, the greatest
historian, he says and you'll notice a pattern
in human history which is that there is
always far more bravery in the villages than
in the cities.
You know the cities, like there's more accountability,
there's more
So like people There's more safety a lot
of times. Right? And also there's more systems
of security,
at least in theory. Right? There's a police
force and so, like, if nowadays you see
someone
being taken advantage of on the street, none
of my business.
I don't need to be a brave man
here. I just said, dial 911.
Right? And I'm not saying don't dial 911,
but notice the tendency that people will drift
to in certain environments.
And we are certainly atop that list of
environments.
Even you know, there's a good book if
you're into reading it called King of the
Castle. It speaks about how the industrial revolution
pushed everyone to the big cities,
and knowingly or not, it stripped people of
this whole sense of moral duty. I have
to do something.
And so if you don't ever feel like
you have to do something, you'll never actually
be challenged and produce and get become brave.
In fact, let me take this one step
further, brothers and sisters.
The fact that we don't do something
frightening or not, challenging or not, even physically,
reduces
your capacity for bravery.
You know, there's so much research in the
last 50 years. In the seventies onwards, when
they first started clocking this or measuring these
things, that
the the testosterone
hormone you know, I was just reading this
morning something very briefly from the the American
Urology Association.
Testosterone, of course, is a hormone that makes
someone more willing to take risks.
Right? Among other things, of course. And it's
more prevalent in males than in females but
it exists in us both.
That
there has been a steady, consistent decline in
testosterone
for the past
50 years.
Why?
Because people aren't doing anything.
They're just sitting around.
And so the more you use your physical
muscles,
the more that testosterone is replenished.
But when we have a sedentary lifestyle from
the couch to the chair, to the car,
to the couch, to the chair, right,
this lessens it which means you don't have
as much in the tank that you need
to activate when it's time to be brave.
And this is not an issue of, like,
from the 19 eighties to 2020.
A person is getting older so they're becoming
more inactive, so their testosterone is going down.
Of course, that's normal. No. We're saying intergenerationally.
The 20 year old in the eighties is
not the 20 year old
in the 20 twenties because they're less physically
active. They don't have as much in it
which would activate. Allah put this inside you
to activate for you what you need to
be embracing about yourself. And so physical activity,
whether it is sports, whether it is martial
arts, whether it's anything basically but the keyboard,
phone and controllers.
Right?
Get up and do things.
This this will replenish what Allah pre created
inside you for this duty that is one
of the 4 foundational pieces of good character.
Brothers and sisters,
when Musa alayhi salaam
saved Banu Israel from slavery,
he could not save them, that generation,
from the mindset of enslavement, the mindset of
inferiority,
the mindset of being subjugated,
being powerless.
And that is why when he took them
out of Egypt
to the promised land, they said
Go you and your lord and fight. We're
not fighting.
It's because of the environment they were in.
Likewise, in the time of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, none of the Muslims that
came from Mecca and the inferno
of persecution they experienced in Mecca
were 1 foot in, 1 foot out.
It was some of them people who pretended
to be Muslim
in Madinah when it was comfortable to be
Muslim. Convenient to be Muslim that when an
unexpected
battle took place,
they
said, if only we wouldn't have listened to
Muhammad, our friends wouldn't have died. And Allah
azza wa Jal said to them
Say to them, if you would've stayed home
the way you would've loved to stay home,
those destined to die would've died anyway. They
would have emerged to their place of death.
They would have went there anyway.
And so notice where it comes from. And
finally when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
says to everyone
That the strong believer is superior and more
beloved to Allah than the weak believer.
And there is good in all of them.
Remember
that bravery is a form of strength.
The strong believer.
And that bravery is most brave, most powerful
when it is coupled with Al Mu'min, coupled
with Iman.
The the conviction and destiny. You know Khaled
al Walid
When he was dying, the celebrated warrior,
he said I pursue death where you would
expect it most. Meaning my line
of,
of work. I'm always in the battlefield. He
doesn't mean he is suicidal or any I
pursued it, meaning I've placed myself
in environments where you would expect to die,
most likely.
And yet here I am,
there is not a spot left on my
body that doesn't have a scar, a wound
from either a sword or a spear or
an arrow, and yet I'm dying on my
bed the way a lamb dies in its
pen.
So may the cowards never find any sleep.
Meaning these guys who who lost sleep over
their lives and their livelihood,
and I didn't, here I am
dying a normal death, a peaceful death, and
they
and they may have died before me. So
what is the point? Notice how he grounds
it in his faith.
And finally,
this bravery
grounded in iman, if it is not used
for iman, meaning for the pleasure of Allah,
even if you have it, it's worthless.
As the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said,
the first three to be punished on the
day of judgement, one of them will be
a man who fought so that people would
say he was brave. And it was said,
you used one of the 4 greatest gifts
of God for human excellence, for human character.
Courage
for self promotion
instead of the pleasure of the one who
gave it to you in the 1st place.
Think about that when people flaunt it. They
token it nowadays to post about their bravery.
Ask yourself what your intentions are. We need
you to be brave because of the climate
today and for every aspect of dunya and
deen. And when you do it, make sure
you do it for Allah.