Mufti Menk – The Achievements Of Umar bin al-Khattab

I'm going to go through a list of

what he did because he is our hero,

really.

He is a champion of note. We know

of so many stories of his, I'm sure.

But I want to mention what he achieved

in the 10 years that he ruled.

Remember I told you he was 13 years

younger than Muhammad

approximately.

And he ruled for 10 years. So he

too was murdered when he was at the

age of 63 approximately.

62 to 63.

Here is what he did, he was the

person

who started the use of the hijri calendar.

Today we have the calendar hijrah, 1435

hijrah. That was Umar ibn Khattab radiAllahu anhu.

He is the one who started that calendar

off. And he said, from now on, the

Muslims, whenever we talk about the years, we

should relate them to the hijrah. And he

made it compulsory, and that is what we

are using to this day. He is the

one who gathered the people in tarawih

in Ramadan. So the tarawih we read today

in a gathering of this nature, Umar ibn

Khattab

was the one who started that off because

before him they used to read in small

groups,

and the smaller groups later on became larger

groups. He said, Let us read in 1

group in the masjid, and inshaAllah we will

follow 1 imam. Even though there were so

many reciters amongst them. But he put bayib

nukab in the front

and he said, We will all read behind

you.

May Allah grant us an understanding.

He was the first person who created a

proper army.

An army that had a job, and that

was only to defend the Muslims. And he

was the first person who had actually sent

his army to the borders in order to

protect them full time, the borders of the

Muslim nation.

And he was the first person who created

the police department amongst the Muslims, where he

had people who would walk around at night.

And he did too himself,

Finding out what happened, and maintaining law and

order, and seeing that everyone was okay. There

are so many incidents. In fact, I can

mention to you one very touching incident.

One day,

Umar ibn Kathtab

who decided to walk through.

He decided to walk through the gullies of

Madinah Munawar at night. And he was followed

by Talha

And

he walked into one home,

quietly when no one was watching.

And he came out after a little while,

and he went back. And he had a

home that no one would distinguish because when

he became the khalif, he did not change

his house. He remained where he was all

along.

So Talha

decided to go the following day to that

house to see who there was and what

happened. And he found there was a very

old blind woman there. So he asked her,

Who came to you last night, and why

did he come here? She said, I don't

know.

But it's a man who told me that

he will come every so often. He brings

me some food stuffs, and he cleans my

whole house in a little while, and then

he goes back.

Tal Har says, Subhanallah, this is amirul mumineen.

This is the leader of the mumineen. And

he goes himself at night to clean the

house of this blind woman, and to bring

her some food once in a while. This

was Umar ibn Khattab

The same man Muhammad

says, If Umar walks down the gully, shaitan

would never walk down the same gully. Shaitan

would walk down the other gully. Because even

shaitan feared Umar Bil Khattar

This was a man, the hero. He was

the first man who maintained

the roads, and built roads between cities and

towns.

He actually employed his men

to service the cities by creating drainage and

so many other facilities for the people of

the cities and the towns. He was the

man. He was the first man who

developed

what we know today as the registrar

general. You know, everything is recorded. The births,

the deaths, everything.

Who is a civil servant? What do they

get? And so on. Everything recorded. That was

Umar ibn al Sattab