Muhammad West – The Last Khutbah of the Year – How Many Do We Have Left
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And we send our love and our greetings,
our salutations to beloved Nabi Muhammad
to his pious and his pure family, to
his companions, and all those who follow his
sun until the end of time. May Allah
bless us to be amongst them. Ameen. Alhamdulillah.
SubhanAllah, today is the last shumuah
of the Hijari calendar.
Next week, it will be a new Islamic
year.
And,
at the end of every year,
1 must
ask, how many do we have left?
There will come a time where you will
attend your final jimua.
And before the next week, your janaza would
have been my janaza would have been performed.
We don't know. Could be this jumuah.
Could be next week. Could be many years
from now. But we only x amount of
time
on this dunya.
Unavoidable,
as Hassan al Basri mentions.
Every moment that is taken every moment that
goes by, a portion of you disappears to
never return, can never get time
back. It's the blessing that can never come
back. And therefore, the Muslim
is someone who understands I have a limited
amount of time,
I have an objective on this dunya,
I have to achieve something,
and then I go to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala and I will stand before him where
I will be held accountable.
And therefore,
the hadith that says bring yourself to account,
hold yourself accountable,
look into your own affairs
before you are brought to account in the
day of Kiama.
Powerful hadith, bring yourself to account
before Allah brings you to account.
And weigh your deeds,
assess your own deeds before Allah weighs them
for you.
We are many people here, most of you
here are from a corporate environment. And you
know very well things like
monthly KPIs,
year end budgets, targets,
everything we assess,
everything we compare. We look at, am I
on track? Am I achieving it? We do
this not even this is not even our
money. It's not even our money that we're
doing this, for someone else's money, someone else's
dunya.
But we are so meticulous. Whenever we deviate
off the budget, we have to write a
report. We need to explain. Again, not our
money, someone else's money. When it comes to
our life, our time, our dunya, our akhira,
we don't take accountability.
And so the Nabi Muslim also says the
wise person is the 1 who reproaches himself
and acts in preparation for death, acts in
preparation
of that time
when your janazah will come about. And so
at the end of the year,
this being the last khutbah of the year,
if I were to ask myself,
so how closer am I? I am closer
to my death. Definitely, I'm a year closer
to my Janaza. I know that. But how
close am I to my objective of Jannah?
My objective, your objective is to get to
Jannah. Ultimately, that's it.
Anything in between is immaterial. So long as
we enter Jannah, alhamdulillah,
we've succeeded.
And so
this past year, alhamdulillah,
if I look at myself, you look at
yourself,
if you've made your salah, that's 365,
360 days of salah times 5. How many
sajiras? Well, alhamdulillah.
We had another month of Ramadan this year.
How can we quantify
the reward of Ramadan?
How much charity
have you given?
What have you learned? What have we recited
of the Quran? Alhamdulillah.
There are many good things that we've acquired
during the year. At the same time, we
look at the sin that we've acquired and
accumulated this year.
What have we looked at, watched, listened to,
spoken about? How many people have we hurt?
How much of the the the
haram have we done that nobody knows besides
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala? And that is what
muhasaba, that is what accountability
in fact, in in for the accountants here,
muhasib is an accountant.
The day of hisab, the day of accounting,
the day of judgment.
And,
this is where you
hold yourself accountable and you look at your
state of accounts. You know, like everyone at
the end of the year, you ask, what
is my account with you? How much do
I owe? How much do you owe? With
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, we have an account
with Allah Wa Ta'ala. And so we should
think about
this past 52 weeks,
this past year that we went by,
what did I achieve? Where did I fail?
And what do I do now?
And when we look at it from a
personal perspective, we also know this year was
not a normal year.
It was
a very difficult year for the Ummah.
This year is a year where we will
be asked about Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. A
genocide occurred is is occurring.
And
unlike any other genocide in the history of
mankind,
this 1 was live streamed to your phone,
to my phone.
We saw children of Wayadabulla being bombed to
pieces
on our phones.
Wasn't something we read about, like the Holocaust.
We read about it many, many decades ago.
What could I do? Yeah. Allah wasn't there.
I only got to find out about the
Bosnian genocide when they've discovered the graves, but
now we see it happening in lifetime.
And so Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will ask
us, what did you do? What was your
response?
Allah help us answer that question. It's going
to be a difficult 1.
So now this is the end of the
year, end of a very difficult year.
When we get to the
end of things,
how do we approach the end?
If this was our last day on earth,
our last jumwa,
what exactly should go through our minds? What
should we feel?
And SubhanAllah,
a few days before the prophet passed away,
3 days before he died, he gave this
hadith.
He said to the Sahaba,
let none of you die.
None of you should die except
thinking well of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. When
everything is said and done, the good, the
bad, and ugly of your life, my life.
For the believer,
in spite of how little we've done of
good deeds and how much sin we've done
and how inefficient and how in insignificant our
efforts
are. Do not leave the dunya. Your final
final closing thoughts
must feel positive about Allah. Hope in Allah's
mercy. Hope in Allah's kindness. Hope in Allah's
forgiveness.
And as Allah says, I am as my
slave thinks of me. I am as my
slave thinks of me. And so the sunnah
way of ending the year,
ending
the chapter is to say, walhamdulillahi
Allah,
I am still a Muslim.
I have preserved my Islam through 1 year.
I started the year, alhamdulillah, as a Muslim.
Wali is I know 1 person, the Masjid,
didn't start as a Muslim but easy as
a Muslim today, alhamdulillah.
I end the year as a Muslim. And
we make dua, we die as a Muslim.
Every Khutba, we give that ayah.
Allah says in the Quran,
do not die.
Stop yourself from dying except in the state
of Islam.
That is your most important priority.
Priority. That if I die, I'm a die
Muslim. And Alhamdulillah, may Allah except from us,
we've
achieved that.
We hope Allah that we are still Muslims.
And that is
what gives us hope. And Allah
reminds us that at the end of things,
At the end of the day, oh my
Allah says, oh my servants who have sinned,
oh the bad ones, oh sinful servants, do
not lose hope in the mercy of Allah.
Do not despair in Allah's kindness. Indeed, Allah
forgives all sins and indeed He is of
forgiving. He loves to forgive and He's Most
Merciful.
And therefore, we end the sunnah way of
ending things. And if you know, SubhanAllah, if
you knew you only had a few hours
left on the dunya, what do I do?
You will not care about your bank account.
You will not care about
your your your deadlines at work. You will
not care about that project. You will not
care about anything. How would you spend swan
life if you really had 1 hour left?
What did you do? You'd most
there's nothing else you could do is you
would possibly take the most beautiful wudu you
can take.
You'll perform salah. You would sit in sujood,
and you'll just make Istifar.
We don't have to wait for death.
We don't have to wait until molecular mode
comes or when the doctor gives us that
terrible diagnosis, it's terminal.
Istighfar,
take it now. I speak to myself first.
Take it now today.
That we make Istighfar for everything.
That we get our account clean. No matter
how bad the record is, Istighfar
wipes all of it. Allah the Nabi Muslim
says in a beautiful hadith,
on the authority of Abu Hurairah, the Nabi
Muslim said something about Allah. He wants to
tell the Sahaba something about Allah, the way
Allah speaks. And he says that Allah has
this conversation with everybody. Allah has this conversation
with you and me.
A servant of Allah commits a sin. A
person, a sinful person. He made a sin,
looked at haram, ate haram, dressed haram, committed
whatever the sin is, big or small.
Then
that person came to his senses. He came
to the Masjid, he listened to khutba and
he said, oh Allah, I committed that sin
You Allah. I sinned for the last 12
months, the last year I committed a sin.
And he glorified and he praised Allah.
Then Allah
says, my servant has committed a sin,
and he acknowledges
that he has a Rab.
He committed the zina, but he also came
back and he acknowledged he has an Allah.
And he acknowledges that this Rab can punish
sins and forgive sins.
So I forgive him.
You acknowledge that I'm your rab and you
asked for me to forgive you, so I
forgive you.
Then the man went and sinned again. Same
sin. That same thing he asked, you Allah
forgive me Jum'ah, Saturday night he did the
same sin.
Then you Allah, Sunday morning he sobers up
whatever it might be. May Allah protect us.
And he says, our Lord, my Lord, forgive
me, Allah, I sinned. And Allah says, my
servant has committed a sin and he knows
that he has a Lord who forgives sins
and punish
for them. Allah forgives him again. And then
the man sins again and he makes tawbah
again. And Allah again says, I forgive you.
Eventually the hadith continues like this on and
on and on until Allah says
to the servant, Allah says to this man,
do what wish what you wish of so
long as you ask forgiveness, you are forgiven.
I don't get tired.
I don't get frustrated.
1 of Allah's names, Al Halim, means I
don't get tired whenever you ask. You Allah,
I'm repeating this this sin over and over.
I said, it's okay. It's not okay to
commit sin.
But the istighfar
is sufficient for the sin. Allah does not
ask perfection from you and me. He asks
only that we
return to him when we leave him left
him.
And for many of us, when we look
at our lives, there is when we want
to move forward, 1 of
of the tricks of shaitan is to paralyze
you with with guilt.
Look at your life. Look at what you've
you really think now you wanna come to
Allah? You've you've lost you've lost so much.
It's too late. Banabi Muslim says there is
no believing servant,
but that he has a look at this.
He says,
amazing hadith. He says that there is not
a single person in the dunya except that
he has a sin which he habitually commits.
Allah protect, we all have that favorite sin.
Everybody knows that's between you and Allah. That
we sin from time to time
and we abide that sin over and over
and we don't abandon that sin. And some
of us will not abandon until we leave
the dunya.
But for the believer,
if he repents, fairly the believer was created
to be tested and then he repents and
then he's forgetful and then he reminded, he
comes back, then a business says this is
part of being human. This is part of
being human. So long as you return to
Allah every time you made that mistake.
Allah
created us weak.
We don't fight we fight that weakness as
best we can but when we fall, we
return back into
repentance. Another hadith. And again, we don't belittle
sin,
but these hadith are to give us motivation
to make Istifar,
not to encourage us. Okay. The sun is
not big. Allah is gonna forgive. No. The
encouragement is to make Istighfar. A man,
he he he kissed a woman,
a Sahabi, radiAllahu, Allah.
Be pleased with him. He was alone with
woman, he kissed her. And then he felt
bad and came to the Nabi salalam and
he said, you Rasulullah,
I come I was alone with a lady
and we did things.
And before he could respond, Allah revealed ayaat.
Allah says,
make salah, establish salah at the 2 ends
of the day, in the morning and the
evening and in the first hours of the
night.
That really your good deeds without you knowing
removes your sins.
Your sins that you are doing, yes. But
every time you make salah, every time you
come to masjid, every time you give charity,
every time you put that 5 rand in
that towel, Allah removes that sin that you
didn't even think about. And and the man
said, you Rasool Allah, is it just for
me? Allah is only giving me this gift.
And I said, no. It is for every
person of my ummah who acts accordingly. And
so when you quantify
5 salawat
times 17 rakaas
times 34 sajidas
times 360
days of the year,
year. That sujood counts for something. Alhamdulillah.
And
it is in that that we have hope
and faith in Allah and we make repentance
because we believe we have a Lord that
forgives.
The Nabi Muslim says, Allah says in the
Quran,
that the retribution for an evil act is
an evil 1 like it. But whoever pardons
and makes reconciliation, he's a reward from Allah.
And indeed Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not
like wrongdoing. So Allah says to us,
this is for us, that if someone harmed
you, you have the right to take retribution.
But it's better for you to let go
of your retribution. Now if this is for
us, what do we think of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala?
If Allah is telling us let go of
retribution.
Allah is Allah is most
haleem. He is the most
merciful in letting go of retribution. We do
not have a Rabb who who wants to
punish. He punishes and unpunishes like Allah, but
he's also the most merciful, and he's the
most reluctant to punish.
As the Rabbi Islam says to that that
that Sahaba when he saw that lady holding
her son after she thought he had died.
Look at that lady.
She just thought she lost her son. Looking
in the rubble, the house collapsed
on the child, and she is pulling the
rubble away. And out of the fire, she
pulls that child. And the Nabi who sees
that lady and he says to her, oh,
Sahaba, do you really think this mother could
throw this child in a fire? Throw him
off a cliff. I say, yeah, it was
never. Impossible. This lady can never do that.
So he says, oh my Sahaba, Allah is
more reluctant to cast any of us in
jannah than our own mothers are to put
us in jannah.
As bad as we are, as sinful as
we are, as messed up as the year
was,
when you raise your hands today, Insha'Allah,
it is this is who Allah is that
we speak to.
And so when we this year,
the best way to end and the best
way to start is with Istighfar.
It is
when we talk about Tawba, the word Tawba,
if you ask they'll say Tawba means to
ask forgiveness. Tawba doesn't mean literally ask for
forgiveness. It means to return.
Means to return.
You and I, we've gone off course. We've
lost our way.
We the dunya
confused us, deluded us. Then when we come
to our senses, we realize, subhanAllah,
I'm far off where I need to be.
So when you make tawba, you're coming back
to Allah. And Allah says, Huat Tawab. He
is the 1 that returns to you when
you return back.
But if you come back walking, he comes
to you running.
When you've left him for years and then
you want to open your hands to make
Istighfar, Allah returns to
you. This is who our Rabb is. The
only thing he requires and he asks, come
back to me. Oh my Ibad, come back
to me. But if you
ask, you come to me with a world
filled of sin, I will give you a
forgiveness bigger than your sin. His forgiveness
is greater than he sinned. And therefore, as
difficult and as miserable maybe this year might
have been from a Ummah perspective and whatever
whatever individual struggles that we have,
it is also very difficult to end the
year not to be positive and to give
gratitude that, Alhamdulillah, we are Muslims.
Alhamdulillah,
we are in the Masjid. Alhamdulillah, while everything
is going wrong,
Islam is still in our hearts and Allah
has gifted you and me with it.
And part of ending of this year, we
end off with Istighfar
and Shukr and gratitude.
We
give Shukr to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala for
what He has given us,
for what mercy has shown us.
And when we see how difficult things are
in the world, it's very it's very,
you know, simple
It's it's human for us to only think
about our own problems, our financial problems, the
holidays we didn't get to go on, the
things we couldn't buy, the opportunities we've missed,
the job promotion we didn't get.
Remember, we are seeing people
dying,
people's homes being destroyed, people starving. And therefore,
the Nabisom says that if any of you
wakes up in the morning
and you feel safe in your house
and you have health you are healthy in
your body,
how many people sitting,
they have terminal illness,
they have incurable disease.
Nothing you can give them, 1, 000, 000
and 1, 000, 000, 000, but they will
gladly trade that for their health. They'll say,
I'll spend the dunya
to get my health back. So if you
have security, you don't have bombs falling on
your head, you are healthy, Alhamdulillah, you can
wake up and you feel healthy, and you're
not starving, you have enough food for the
day, then Allah has given you the world.
Then Nabi says Allah has really given you
the world. Allah has made you. You won
the lottery. You won the jack pot. On
top of that, walhamdulillah,
most importantly
you have the kalimah on your tongue.
You're here in the Masjid.
You have made your salah. While the rest
of the world is out doing whatever they're
doing. Allah says, Hayya Alsalah, Hayya Al Falah.
You've responded to Allah.
You put your head on the floor in
Sajidah
with all our imperfections, alhamdulillah.
That is what happens, that is what counts.
And so we end the year as well
to say, You Allah, Jazakalahu Khay for what
you've given us.
You
Allah, we thank You, we praise You, we
glorify You for what You have given us.
And we ask You to forgive us for
our shortcomings,
for our great ingratitude.
And we return to you after we have
left.
And the beautiful thing of Shukr,
and every time I do a a Khutba
and I find a hadith, it's like a
little gem. This hadith, I can't be I
mean, I I hadn't seen it before. The
Nabi Sun says,
the 1 who eats,
you feast, you have a fabulous meal,
but you are grateful to Allah that you
say shukar, Alhamdulillahi Allah. Then it is similar
to the reward to the 1 who fasted
patiently.
What a beautiful hadith.
The person who enjoys the dunya in halal
way,
have that holiday, have the blessings Allah gives
you, but then give shukr to him. You
will get the same reward like the guy
who gave all that money in charity, like
the guy who fasted.
Our Rabb when I say these hadith and
these ayaat, it is really to hit 1
message
is to say Allah has not set the
bar
impossible for you to reach for us to
get to Jannah.
He has made the bar so low so
that everybody
can enter Jannah.
Our Rabb wants us to enter Jannah.
And so we ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
to allow us to end off this year
with His mercy and His forgiveness.
His Mercy can forgive the whole 12 months
of sin and reward us for the little
that we do. May Allah accept all our
ibadat, our fasting, our salah, our charity. Pardon
all our sins. May Allah make easy for
this ummah and all those who are struggling
and suffering. We give shukr to Allah for
what he has given us, and then we
make du'aia Allah next week for a new
beginning. May next year be a better year.
May next year be a much better year
than this year that passed for us as
individuals
and the Ummah at large, and we'll talk
about that Insha'Allah next week. So a few
announcements.
We have as is a as is customary,
we have the Muharram March
and that is happening Sunday 14th July. That's
next week Sunday. And,
Muharram March is something which has happened, I
don't know, more than a 100 years already,
already. And it's important, you know, 1 of
the things that we do
it's not just for the book of Quran,
It's for the Cape Town community. Every year
that we survive it's really a commemoration of
our survival.
I say this many many times over that
it is against all odds that we are
still Muslim and that we as a community
survive.
Every year, it is an achievement. We are
are going against the tide.
2, 3 percent,
an ocean of disbelief,
an ocean of, you know, pushing our kids
away from Islam. And therefore, when your kids,
my kids
can recite Surah Fatihah,
they come and make salah with us. They
fast in Ramadan.
That gives us hope that Islam continues to
survive and thrive in this Umma, in this
part of the world. And that's why we
have that Muharram march. That is really the
essence of it, that we are still Yahya
Allah.
And so for those us who can attend,
it's obviously for the it's a celebration that
our community is still Yahya and Shukr to
Allah. And all our kids, inshallah, all your
kids, my kids are invited to come.
It's really about them, but also a special,
obviously, commemoration for the children of Palestine
who are not able
to enjoy what we have in this country.
So Insha'Allah, that is going to happen next
week. There's also a series on on wills,
lost wills and testaments. Part of preparing for
the end is, of course, to be,
to make sure that your financial affairs are
in order. That's the 9th July, and that
will be at the Buickup Cultural Hub.
And then
our AGM,
so not next week, sun the the Sunday
after the the Sunday after the Muhara, March
21st July, it is the AGM of the
Masjid and, the entire organization, the nursery school
as well. And so we hope that all
of you are Musalis. You're all stakeholders in
this organization. You all participate. You come here,
you make your salah, your jumayah. It's important
that we hear from you, so we hope
all of you will attend as well.