Muhammad West – The Ummah – The Next Chapter
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We testify that he's none worthy of worship
besides Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Always in 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.
It is a new Islamic year.
May Allah bless us in this Islamic year,
and
may one may 1,446
be a bigger year than
previous year. May Allah grant the Ummah Izzah.
May Allah grant the Ummah greatness. May Allah
forgive us and pardon us for the sins
of the past. Ameen, Alhamdulillah.
The New Year.
Let's talk a little bit about time.
Talk about time.
Wherever you go,
you'd find that the calendars of the world
have 12 months, whether it's the Chinese calendar,
the year of the tiger, whatever it might
be, the Gregorian calendar, Islamic
calendar. Somewhere across society throughout civil and these
are different civilizations,
they came up with an idea that the
world that the calendar must be 12 months.
Where does this come from? Allah subhanahu says
in the Quran,
Allah says, with Allah,
The number of months are 12,
and he ordained it
the day
he The moment He created the universe, He
ordained
that we would have a cycle of 12
months.
And in that 12 months, you would have
30 29 or 30 days. The moon is
your daily calendar, whereas the sun is your
monthly calendar.
And
had decreed, and that is why you see
this commonality
throughout
throughout the world.
We also find
that
Allah
mentions of these 12 months, 4 of them
are sacred.
4 of them are sanctified.
Now what are the 4 sacred
months?
Muharram is the first,
then Rajab
Rajab, and then Dhul Qada and Dhul Hijjah.
3 are together and one of its own.
The last 2 months of the Hijjah,
month number 11 12 and month number 1,
Haram. They 3 are together as the 3
sacred months, and then you have Rajab
that is on its own. Why? Why are
these sacred? Why not Ramadan? We would have
said Ramadan should be first on the list.
The purpose of the sacred months,
from an Islamic perspective, is that these are
the months in which Hajj and Umrah occurs.
Hajj happened just now. And when Hajj happened,
people and so people are traveling. When there's
war and fighting, people can't travel. And so
Allah decreed that 4 months in the year,
there should be no fighting so that the
hujaj
are able to move freely. 1 month for
Hajj and 1 month for Umrah, which is
Rajab.
And Allah
said this is how it should be. He
ordained it as such. Now there are many
calendars.
Also the Chinese calendar.
It is the year 1446.
The world didn't start 1,400 years ago. The
world has been around for many 1000000000 of
years.
What happened
1400
ago when we began our calendar? Every calendar
is based on
a monumentous event,
and it is every year, it's a commemoration
of that event and a celebration that we
have survived
one one more year. And in fact, the
the purpose of this Khutba is to remember
that the event that signifies this calendar, our
calendar. We call it the Hijri calendar.
Why the Hijri calendar? It's not that the
Hijriah was
why not the the Qadri calendar? We take
battle of Badr or the birth of the
Nabi or the death of the Nabi Why
is the Hijri taken as this amazing event
from where we have the Hijri calendar?
Well,
when the Nabi sun when the Nabi sun
passed away,
the calendar of the Muslims was not yet
finalized.
There wasn't a Islamic calendar. The
Sahaba knew that Nabi Islam as the Quran
mentions they are 12. We have 12 months.
And we know the new month when we
see the moon, it's Ramadan, it's the Hijjah,
they knew this, but they didn't have a
start and an end to the calendar.
When the Islamic Ummah became
more advanced and it became the civilization of
the world,
they had to determine
what is day 0 of our calendar?
When do we begin?
And the Sahaba came together and they discussed
what event, what moment should signify
the first day of our Islamic calendar. Some
said, let's take the birth of the Rabi'i
Salam. Like the Gregorian calendar,
it is the birth of the Rabi'i
Islamifies.
And the Sahaba said, no. We don't want
to emulate the Christians in their calendar.
And the decision amongst the Sahaba was we
will take the Hijra as the beginning of
our calendar. Why the Hijra? Because
it is the birth day of the Ummah.
Islam was there. Islam is the universal religion.
Islam existed before mankind, and the Ummah of
Nabi salallam existed many years before the Hijra.
The Nabi salal was in Madina was in
Makkah for 13 years preaching,
but they were not an Ummah. They were
not a nation.
When the Hijra occurred and the and Islam
established its state in Madinah,
we as a people were established.
And
every single Muslim
is part of this nation.
You have a nationality as your part was
South African, but above that you have a
nationality with Allah that you belong to the
Ummah of Mabi Nabi Muhammad salawahu alaihi wa
sallam. And that Ummah, that state was born
1,446
years ago. And every year,
we get to Muharram,
it is like an it is to say
to the world we have survived.
We are still here. We are still
a nation. We are still a country. Ups
and downs. We've had catastrophes over these
1,400 years. Khalifas that were killed,
capitals that were destroyed,
but the Umma remained and the calendar continues.
And now a new chapter begins. It is
also beautiful that the Sahaba, when they decided
on this event, that it's the day that
we came together as a nation, they also
mentioned that as Hajj
ends, many of the Hajjis when they come
back their life, they are being born again.
Literally, when you leave Arafa, you are born
anew. And so the whole whole Ummah,
we've been through Hajj. Even those who didn't
go on Hajj, the whole Ummah, InshaAllah fasted
on the day of Arafah, and so the
year ends with Istighfar.
The the day which Allah forgives the most
is Arafah. And so imagine what a great
year. The biggest bonus Allah gives you is
at the end of the year to fix
that. And then you begin Muharram, a brand
new year. This was the opinion of Sayna
Uthman. Let us take Muharram as day 1
because everyone almost starts off Muharram brand new.
And that is the symbolism of
this event. And if we talk about the
event
a little bit before the Hijra, the context
is so beautiful. The Nabi is in is
he's in Makkah. As we said, for 13
years, he's preaching. He's giving dawah. He's calling
people to Islam.
Eventually, after after about 10 years,
the Rabiismar realizes
my people in Makkah are not really accepting
my message, and Islam needs to find a
new home to be established.
He goes to the city next door Taif,
and he's given even worse treatment than the
Quraysh. And we know this was the lowest
point in his life. The Rabi Islam was
very clear.
There were many bad moments in his life,
many people that he lost. He himself died
almost died many multiple times. But when he
was asked, what was the lowest point in
your life? He said, after I went to
Taif, I presented my case, and they treated
me so brutally. It was that they stoned
him, it wasn't the stoning that was painful.
It was that moment of the Taif when
he's on his way back to Makkah.
Makkah is abusing me. I'm just
how can we give analogy? You are in
the most miserable job of your life. You
are in a place where you just wanna
leave your job. Your boss is the worst.
Now you go for an interview and that
interview is so terrible that you're going back
to that boss. Now you're on your way
back to work and you're sitting in traffic
and you're thinking where am I going? This
is the lowest point of gonna be salam.
He's thinking to himself,
You Allah, where do I go from here?
You Allah, have you left me? You Allah,
I'm a failure. I'm supposed to be khatumal
nabiyeen. I'm the last nabiyeen.
But there's no I see no light at
the end of this tunnel.
And then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala would show
the Nabi Salam that there's a plan ahead
that you cannot see. The Nabi Salam after
Taif, he goes now, and really how how
belittling must it be for him? On the
days of Hajj, he goes to the Hajjis
that are coming from different tribes. So like
we have Hujaj from different countries, at that
time, we have Hujaj from this tribe and
that tribe. And he would go and ask
for an appointment. Can I speak to you?
I wanna tell you about Islam. Just an
abhisam and say, Namu Bakr. And they would
go and he would pitch and he would
present. Some of you are perhaps in sales.
Perhaps one of the most demoralizing. You give
your best pitch, your best kind of,
sales,
and you get complete rejection. And one by
1, he is rejected. He's turned out. Throughout
Hajj, he's going day in, day out, through
the days of Hajj, trying to pitch, trying
to and he has an itinerary. These are
the big guys. I need to go and
speak to the this tribe and that tribe
and this chief.
And each one bangs the door in his
face. You're a madman. You're crazy. What nonsense
you're talking? And he's on his way back
home after a long day when he sees
6
random Buddhas sitting at the Jamarath.
And he asked them,
do you mind if I speak to you?
And they said, okay. No problem. It's the
days of tasharikh, Hajj is finished. The guys
are relaxing,
and he asked, where are you from? And
they said, we're from a little town called
Yathrib, which we know to be Madinah. The
Rabbi even asked, asked, Yathrib there in that
north little village, Dorpi, no one really knows
much about. So he said, yeah. We're from
there. And so the Nabi says, can I
give you my my pitch? Can I tell
you about my about Islam? And the Nabi
Muslim starts speaking to them with the same
kind of
vigor, the same kind of enthusiasm as he
gave to the Chiefs. Imagine again,
put yourself in your shoes. You got a
list. You need to sell whatever it is.
And you're meeting all these CEOs, CFOs, and
all of them are banging the door in
your face. And now you're sitting at the,
I don't know, at the shop,
you know, ordering some food at KFC, ordering
some whatever not not KFC, whatever other
at the ticket shop. You're waiting in the
queue, and you see these random guys sitting
there. And you say, can I talk to
you? I'm selling whatever. And they said, fine.
And he's talking to them, and he's giving
them the same attention as he had given
the CEO. And these guys, their eyes go
big because they've heard this before.
They've heard this story before
in their town from a community of Jews
that were living there. The Jews told them,
a prophet will come. He will look like
this. He will do this. He'll be the
final prophet. He's gonna change the world. And
the Jew and they the Arabs thought,
Ugh, you mad people, man? These are crazy
people. Now they're hearing the same story on
Hajj
by someone else, by an Arab,
and they embrace Islam then and there. And
they said, can we go back and tell
our people in madams? You can go and
tell your people.
Little did the Nabi'in Nabi Eden himself know
that this would be those 6 people
would cause the whole world to change. You
and I are Muslim because of that chance
meeting.
5 minutes earlier than others would have missed
them. 5 minutes later, you would have missed
them. That little conversation
was that moment that you change the world.
We take from us. We are planning our
route and our strategy. Allah's plan is very
different.
You have to go out, you have to
do the work, you have to do the
effort. But where Allah has put your risk,
where Allah has put your solution, where Allah
has given that cure, you don't know, but
you have to go out and plant the
seed.
And no matter how many times you are
beaten down, you are let down, you are
you are failure, you don't have the luxury
to give up. And that's what the Nabi
said to do. And so he meets these
6 brothers. They embrace Islam, they said to
the Rabbi, son, we promise you we'll tell
our people about you, and we'll come back
here next year. We'll make an appointment.
Next year, we'll get you here at
the Jamarat after Hajj, the days of Tasharikh,
we'll get you here. And they were truthful.
They came back, this time 12.
Then they asked for a teacher, Yeah Rasulullah,
we are alone in Madinah. Send us a
teacher. Nabi's mum sends 1 of the Sahaba
Musa'ab to be their teacher.
They said we'll come back a 3rd year.
The 3rd year they returned. This is the
3rd meeting. Now it's 70 plus people. And
they said, You Rasulullah, we are just a
fraction. The whole of Madinah is ready for
you. Leave
these people here with Quraysh. We are ready
for you to make hijrah. And not just
you, all the Muslims of Makkah make hijrah
to us. And this is the beginning of
our ummah.
That is how our Ummah began. That is
where our calendar
begins. It was an idea.
It was a notion that in the middle
of the in this little village, this little
town in the depths of Arabia, in the
desert,
would become the home of the religion of
Allah and will be that place that will
change the world. Many people said, You're crazy.
You're telling me you're going to have a
little town in the middle of the Karoo
at Dorpi, and this town will rule
the United States of America, would conquer Russia.
Are you guys crazy?
And, O Allah, those same six people, those
same Sahaba,
they would live to see that. They would
see this come true.
And so every Muharram,
every Hijri date is a new chapter of
that meeting
and the fruition of it. Every Muslim on
earth is a product of that of that,
of that meeting, and we are part of
that Umma. And so that is an introduction
to where we started.
We are now
the book continued. There are many chapters, ups
and downs, but we are writing the new
chapter. This chapter is our chapter.
And maybe a 100 years from now, people
will tell
what did we do with our chapter.
Every nation, every time we've got our own
problems and issues, our own catastrophes, our own
opportunities.
And it is for us
to find our solution. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
does not make it easy. He gives every
every group of people their challenges, but their
solution, every sickness has its cure. And so
inshallah, we will continue next week to talk
about a bit of more about how what
did Anabism do when he established his
city of Madinah, what do we learn? And
how do we plan for the next chapter
of this of this wonderful story? It's a
lot of announcements, and so we have to
shift quickly to some announcements.
So inshallah will continue and we we ask
Allah to bless us that we continue this
wonderful story of this Ummah until the death
of Qiyamah.
That this year will be a great year
for the Ummah.
For us as a Ummah and for you
personally as well. May Allah bless you and
your family. Ameen, a few announcements. We make
dua for uncle, Asan Asmal.
Oh, he's not so well today. And we
ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'alaam Shifa, and he's
he's always mistyah,
in the Masjid.
We also remind everybody that on Tuesday is
10th of Muharram. 10th of Muharram,
it's important we all fast.
In fact, it was ordained
fasting of 10th of Muharram was ordained before
Ramadan. The Nabi salallam in the Sahaba, the
first fasting that was legislated was the 10th
Muharram. And the 10th Muharram I know Karabala
happened and Imam Hussain's death happened, but that's
not the reason why we commemorated. The commemoration
is like our 10th of like our Muharram,
it is the day that Allah saved Bani
Israel as a nation.
The day that Allah defeated Fir'aun. The day
that Allah shows for the whole and this
is because it's symbolic. That every
every year you will have a tyrant, every
time you'll have a genocide that's that's not
going to change. But Allah will always intervene
and He will support His people. And so
as Allah says, Bani Israel, we fast and
we we commemorate Allah's mercy for us as
well. And so whoever of you can fast
the 10th of Muharram, which is on
Tuesday,
fast the day before or the day after,
the reward is a year of forgiveness. Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala forgives you for the year.
So it is an opportunity not to be
missed.
Then,
in commemoration of Muharram,
where I mentioned this last week, that just
as improbable as it was that the Nabi
salalam and these six people would change the
world,
when Islam came to our country here,
there was a genuine belief that Islam comes
here to be extinct. The colonizers took the
ulama, the oliya from different parts of the
colonial empire, and they dumped them here in
Cape Town with the idea nothing can survive
in this land. Cape Town, even Toang Guru
wrote that it's a cursed land when he
was very heartbroken when he came here, that
nothing grows in this land. There's no Islam
cannot survive in a hostile environment like this.
And And in fact, there are many many
examples of Islam thriving and being strong in
better countries disappearing, becoming extinct.
We should not have been here.
Against all odds,
this Umma has survived here at the tip
of Africa,
disconnected from the rest of the Ummah. We
did not have an access to the Khalifa.
We did not have ulama, oliya. We only
had what was sent to us and that
was it. We didn't have Qurans.
SubhanAllah,
a Quran was not singed to us. It
was the ulama who had to write it
from memory. So having all that against
us, it was not it's a it's a
miracle and a gift by Allah that we
are still here.
And we are, as I say many times,
a very privileged
Muslim minority. And so every time we march
our tent of Muharram, it is amazing that
Allah it is a great wonderful blessing that
us as Muslims, we survive here. And therefore,
it's a setup something for us to celebrate,
to be proud and happy of. And so,
I know the weather is is is is
is against us. And may Allah make easy
for all those who are struggling in these
times.
But we have plans that we will have
the march on Sunday,
this Sunday coming. And if you and if
the rain is still is is is if
it's raining, then we'll have an indoor or,
under the at the Buran Al Centre. But
what we want is we've has, like, we
have, like, over a 1,000 goody bags for
kids.
It is celebration for you and my kids.
Tell them that you are part of this
legacy. So if you're not coming for the
march, buy some of the goody bags, give
it to your kids or sponsor a few,
and we can distribute it to madrasas and
tell that you must be proud. But we
as a Muslim community here in South Africa,
and we hit well above our weight. The
Muslims of the the the rest of the
world, they know. The Muslims of Cape Town
in particular are a formidable Muslim community. As
small as we are,
we are a catalyst for change and for
good. And so we should take this is
your celebration as well. For those of you
who can can
contribute, please, assist us.
And then lastly, but by no means, least,
the following Sunday,
this is where the work comes to it.
It's not just about fancy talks. The AGM.
The first thing that Nabi Muslim did when
he established his city of Madinah. Before he
built his own house, he built the Masjid.
You are not a community. You can have
hundreds of Muslims in an area. Until you
build that Masjid, you are not a Muslim
community. And so the Masjid is the symbol
of a Muslim community.
This is a Masjid. This Masjid, our AGM,
is on the Sunday 21st July.
It's at the half past 10
in the morning.
We need good people to assist and be
on our committee.
There's a great Allah mentions in the Quran
that those who are the trustees, the mutawalis,
those who take care of the masjid are
special group of people. And so what a
great thing to have on your CV with
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that, yeah, Allah, I
was part of taking care of one of
your houses.
I was part of taking care of a
symbol, a sha'ir of of Islam. The masjid
is the symbol of Islam in in in,
in your community.
And before we can, you know, think about
protecting the harams and Masjid Al Aqsa, we
need to take care of our masjids here
around the corner. You're all you're all Musalis.
You're all stakeholders of Masjid. You come here.
We we are very appreciative of you being
here. So please, those of you who can
contribute and assist, join us at the AGM.
We want to hear positive and negative feedback
that can make us us do better. But
more importantly, we want your time. We don't
want donations are welcome, but we don't need
the donations.
We need your time. We need your support.
We need you to take us. As we
said, we go forward as a community. That's
you. That's us. So we hope to see
all of you there inshallah next week.