Nouman Ali Khan – Forgiveness
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AI: Transcript ©
It's the final
Friday of Ramadan,
and we're all thinking about
making this last portion of Ramadan count,
and to get the most out of this
Ramadan. And I know one of the concepts
and concerns that is on the mind of
pretty much every Muslim is forgiveness.
It's a big subject
and it's something that we're all thinking about
all the time. First of all, we seek
Allah's forgiveness,
and we ask Allah to forgive our mistakes
and our sins and all of our piles
of misdeeds,
and we're hoping that our worship in this
month of Ramadan, our fasting,
our coming to the masjid,
our recitation of Quran,
has been a means by which Allah azzawajal
will do away some of our or maybe
hopefully all of our misdeeds, all of our
sins.
Allah himself has promised
good deeds, remove bad deeds. That's a promise
Allah has made.
So this is one of the ways in
which Allah has given us an opportunity every
year to cleanse ourselves,
detox ourselves.
But there's another dimension of forgiveness. There's the
forgiveness we seek from Allah
and though a lot can be said about
that, just one thing that I want to
share with you about seeking a less forgiveness
is that you should never confuse
it with forgiveness
being sought from anybody else.
The way Allah forgives is not the way
people forgive.
So if you have turned to Allah and
asked Allah for forgiveness
but somebody who used to be your friend
and is no longer your friend,
calls you and says, I don't care how
much Quran you recited,
I don't care how much prayer you did,
Allah will never forgive you.
And you might have people like that in
your life who's who say that. Well, the
first problem with that is nobody can speak
on behalf of Allah.
So nobody can come and tell you whether
Allah will forgive you or not.
That's the first problem with that. The second
problem with that is Allah's forgiveness does not
depend on any human being's mood.
So
whether they're happy with you, or they're angry
with you, or they never forgive you, or
they're upset with you, that Allah does not
look at their mood on judgement day and
say, Well that person is still upset with
you, therefore you cannot be forgiven.
That's not how forgiveness works. And if that
is how forgiveness works, that none of us
would be forgiven
because we are all upset with someone.
So And this becomes a problem for some
people, even becomes an existential crisis
for some people and the reason this becomes
a crisis for them is because well this
person did a lot of wrong they stole
money from me This person did a lot
of wrong. They didn't give me my share.
My my older brother didn't give me my
share in the inheritance.
Or this person did a lot of wrong.
When I was married to them, they did
a lot of wrong. We're not married anymore
but I don't forgive this person. Or my
father did a lot of wrong, or my
mother did a lot of wrong, or somebody
else. My my business partner did a lot
of wrong. And you have these people that
you didn't forgive,
and whatever happened, maybe you went to court,
it's big problem happened.
But even after the judge decided, you know,
sometimes they have these shows,
or the judge has decided and outside they
interview the guy who lost the case.
I say, it wasn't fair, the judge, you
know. So even though the judge has made
a decision, it's still you're still carrying it.
Right? You haven't let it go.
And now you see that same person is
worshiping Allah, is going for Umrah in Ramadan,
especially last 10 days. They're in Atikaf and
they're doing all this stuff and you're like,
Man, I didn't forgive him This guy is
going to get forgiven
This is a problem
because I don't want him to be forgiven
I don't forgive
him And so now you start seeing that
as a This person standing in front of
Allah you start seeing as a problem So
let me help you solve that small problem
first before I get to the subject, the
primary subject of today's khutbah.
And that small problem can be solved by
one simple thing,
the things that we love
in this life,
when we stand in front of Allah on
judgement day, we will no longer love them.
Allah describes.
Allah describes a day on which we will
run away from our spouse, our child, our
father, our mother, our brother, our entire extended
family. In fact, we will offer all of
humanity and say, you Allah, let them go
to *, just save me.
That's gonna be a person on judgment day
too.
The day on which every mother who was
carrying a baby
will drop whatever she was carrying. Allah didn't
even say her baby, he said,
as if she doesn't even recognize this child.
Some people don't love people, some people love
money.
Allah says about them, When
camels that used to be the Ferrari of
the time,
when their line of Ferrari are being let
go, and they're rolling down the hill crashing
into poles, they don't care.
They don't care nobody cares on judgement day,
you know.
And if if he were to give
if he could provide if he could find
that human being, the greedy human being that
loved money, that loved wealth, if if they
could find
the weight of the world in gold,
and they could give that as a ransom
so they can save themselves on judgment day,
they would do it.
They'd do it. They wouldn't have no love
of money left. Well, the same way we
have no love of money left,
we have no other emotions left.
We have no anger left towards anybody. When
judgment day starts and you see that guy
who cheated you in business, you're not going
to look at him and say, I know
the mountains are melting but come here.
Man, I hate you Allah this guy.
You're not going to do that.
Nobody's going to care. It won't matter.
We're thinking that the way we think about
things in this life is the way we're
going to wake up in the next life,
it's not it doesn't work that way. That
day is much bigger than our problems,
It's much much bigger than our problems.
I'll give you another example to understand the
change in perspective we're going to experience on
judgement day and so the way we think
about You Allah, I don't want this person
forgiven on judgment day, this is our limited
thinking because we're thinking only in terms of
dunya, we're not thinking in terms of the
akhirah. The akhirah is a different world, the
next life is a different world, we will
be different, we are not going to be
the same as we are now. But even
in this life, if you have a problem
with somebody,
let's say you had a fight with your
brother you didn't speak to your brother for
a whole year
not since last Ramadan and he called you
and you
press the red button,
and he text you and you block the
number, you don't wanna deal with the guy.
Right?
And now you you don't even know that
one time you got invited to some house
somewhere, and he's over there,
and you're about to leave, but there's a
fire in the house.
There's a fire in the house. You're like,
I'm not talking to him. I don't think
I should tell him about the fire.
Let him burn. You're not gonna do that.
For that for that During that fire, during
the emergency, whatever problem you had disappeared.
You could pull him out of the fire,
be outside.
Once he's safe, you can go back to
being angry again.
But in that moment, the the problem that
is in front of you is much bigger
than the problem you had.
So for those moments you suspended your problem,
you understand?
So the same way we have to one
of the things that we have to acknowledge
is that our grudges or our anger or
our frustration
or our disagreement with somebody,
these these things will disappear, and of course,
one of the things that we believe about
judgment day and about especially about Jannah, may
Allah grant all of us his
Jannah, is Allah
will remove any bad feelings you had towards
anybody Allah will get rid of it.
So that's one part of forgiveness that I
wanted to just share a quick reminder with
you about but there's another part of forgiveness
that is often not very well understood
that I want to bring to your attention.
The ayat I recited to you belong to
Surat Ashura,
and in Surat Ashura, Allah has given us
a perspective
also on the concept of forgiveness,
And he says
about certain kind of people,
when they get angry they forgive.
Whenever they get angry they forgive.
Now, Allah is going to make a distinction
between
and
so let me put that in simple English.
Sometimes something makes you upset,
some sometimes something makes me angry,
that's a different situation,
and somebody has actually done some serious wrong
to me, that's a different situation.
So for example, you're at an iftar
and somebody's making some stupid comments
and it made you upset.
Somebody made some kind of a joke, and
it made you upset.
You were talking to somebody, somebody else cut
you off. They annoyed you.
They were acting not very respectfully
and it made you upset.
This is not a high crime. This is
just somebody not behaving in very with with
very good manners.
And that kind of situation happens all the
time. There are people that act in ways
they don't realize they're being rude, they don't
be like realize they're being disrespectful,
they don't realize that they're upsetting somebody else,
or they think they're making just they're just
making a joke, or some people enjoy making
a joke and making other people upset,
people, you know, get a kick out of
it
Right? And people like that, Allah describes that
for those who understand that they are you
know, this life is temporary, and they have
to work towards the akhira. These are just
temporary enjoyments and temporary annoyances.
These are the people that are able to
not let those kinds of situations make them
very upset.
Just let it go. It's okay. It's not
worth it. It's not worth it.
Whenever the anger occurs, whenever the agitation occurs,
they just let it go, they just forgive.
But then there's another
scenario, and the other scenario is not just
somebody annoyed you or somebody said something agitating,
somebody actually did something serious. They they fake
documents in your name, they stole your money,
they, you know,
they slandered you. They did something very very
serious.
It actually impacted your life in some significant
way. That's a different situation.
And what happens in these situations is, you
start getting calls, hey, it's Ramadan, forgive this
person.
I know they did what they did, but
just your brothers, it's okay.
You shouldn't
be angry anymore. Allah will forgive you if
you just forgive them.
Right?
Which sounds like really good advice, but you're
having a hard time with that advice.
And the reason you're having a hard time
with that advice is not because you have
That's not the reason.
Allah says in the Quran, he says,
Surah
again. Same passage.
He says, whoever
sought to take
help for themselves, and in can also mean
revenge,
in can also mean seeking justice.
So for example, if you got a lawyer
to protect yourself,
let's just say,
let's just say you sought somebody else's help
to solve this problem
because you were being wronged and you sought
help. And then people come, No no no.
Why are you getting a lawyer? You should
forgive.
What are you doing?
Allah says in this situation,
Whoever sought to help themselves after they were
wronged,
Those are the people you cannot make any.
There's no case to be made against them.
They have done nothing wrong.
If you are responding to wrong that was
done to you in order to help yourself,
then you're not committing a crime and you
should not be given elect If somebody's try
to give you a lecture, no brother, Islam
says you should forgive, then they should reach
Surah more carefully.
Allah says, nobody can be criticized
for helping themselves.
That's not the opposite of forgiveness. That's just
you helping yourself.
Islam does not teach us this religion, this
revelation did not teach us that when somebody
is doing wrong to you, whether they're Muslim
or non Muslim that you just lie down
and let them walk all over you. That's
not this religion.
That simply isn't this religion. You're confused with
Christianity would turn the other cheek. This is
not Christianity. This is not turn the other
cheek.
But even then, Allah says later on,
But before he says that he said,
So let's understand that and that's my agenda
for the next few minutes before I end
this reminder with you.
Whoever could forgive,
whoever could forgive,
and then Allah says and reconcile.
Now the word comes from the word
And in Arabic is to take something broken
and to fix it.
So if your tire was flat and you
fixed it, you did of the tire.
If there was a piece of wood that
was cracked and you tried to mend it
and tie it up, etc, you did
So the idea of is fixing something. Allah
said whoever forgave and fixed.
2 things together, forgave and fixed.
Now the problem is I'll give you a
scenario. Problem is somebody calls you,
somebody who stole your money,
somebody who lied,
somebody who cheated you,
somebody who did something actually wrong to you,
and they send you a little text message
or they send you a call make you
a call. And they say, hey, if I
did anything wrong, it's Ramadan.
Then please forgive me. Also, I forgive you.
Okay. That's what they send you.
This this is, this is Islamic hijacking.
Right? Now you're supposed to say, of course,
of course.
But no no no.
And you and you're reading that, and you're
going, what do you mean if?
What do you mean if I did something?
You don't know what you did?
You
don't know
you stole? You don't know you lied? You
don't know you violated a trust? You don't
know that? You're saying if? So when it
comes to you, when it comes to themselves,
they say, if I did something, may Allah
forgive us all.
But when it comes to you, they say,
and everything you did is forgiven.
Not if you did something, you definitely did
something, but I I don't know, there's a
possibility I didn't do anything.
Right? That's the that's the that's the Ramadan
message.
What's the Ramadan forgiveness? That's not that's not
asking for forgiveness, that's not Islam, that's not
fixing anything.
That doesn't fix anything.
And you know what fixes something? Hey, here's
and this is not this is not something
that you have to post online for the
world, but if you wronged somebody, and you
know you wronged somebody,
the very least thing you can do is,
hey, this I wronged you,
and this is how I wronged you, and
I shouldn't have done that. Even if you
don't want to write that down,
at least call it at least, hey, here's
how I wronged you, and I know I
did that and that was wrong of me.
I want to fix it. You can't fix
something if you don't address it.
If you if you don't address it, if
you say, something happened.
Then you're then it's still carried in your
heart. What what does he mean something happened?
Oh, you know that one time you were
in the car and it was cold and
I rolled the window down, that's what I'm
referring to. Really? That that that was what
was in your head.
So you know, when you hide behind generalities,
and when you use
covered language,
and then you say, well this is actually
making reconciliation This is forgiveness.
Allah didn't just
give us the mandate for forgiveness.
He said the mandate of forgiveness comes together
with aslaha,
with fixing it. And
you cannot, again, you cannot fix something
until you identify the exact problem.
Just like when something is broken,
it's not broken everywhere, it's broken in one
place. And if you don't find out what
that one place is and how to fix
that one place and how to fix that
one problem,
then you can't fix it.
Long time ago in my life somebody had
stolen some money,
never gave it back,
called me a few Ramadans later.
You know, it's a month of Ramadan, may
Allah forgive all of us.
And if I did anything wrong, I was
like, yeah, I can I can forgive if
you can just pay back what you stole?
Then we can we can talk about forgiveness.
He didn't call back.
Because it was there's free forgiveness, you know,
like
so the the idea behind that, the idea
behind,
you know,
first of all, you shouldn't think if you
refuse to, you know, let go of an
issue because it hasn't been resolved,
for you it hasn't been resolved,
that doesn't mean that Allah will not forgive
you. You shouldn't be confused about that. Allah
didn't say someone who's seeking to help themselves
or somebody who's seeking justice should not seek
justice anymore. They should just forgive. And if
they don't forgive, then how will Allah forgive
them? No. That's not the case.
And the final final reminder I'll give you
on this is coming from the example of
Sayyidina Abu Bakr
In Madinah,
there was a rumor made about our mother
Aisha
And one of the people that spread that
rumor,
he didn't spread it directly, but he didn't
stop it either. So he heard it and
he kind of got influenced by it and
said, oh, what a terrible thing. And, you
know, and that was mista, somebody who was
a relative of Abu Bakr Siddiq,
who was also from Mecca.
So he left everything he owned in Mecca
and moved to Medina. He was very poor.
So Abu Bakr Siddiq
used to financially support him.
So now the person you are financially supporting
and is your own relative is speaking badly
about your own daughter.
That's the situation.
And Abu Bakr who
stopped giving him he couldn't he couldn't get
himself to financially support him anymore after he
spoke about his daughter in that way. And
she's not just his daughter. In Islam, she's
also his mother because they're umaha.
Right? So she's his beloved daughter, and she's
the beloved wife of the prophet and she's
a mother to the believers. It's three things
at the same time. And you're speaking about
her, you know, instead of beating him up,
he just said, I can't get myself to
give him anymore.
But
Misbah was actually sorry.
He actually felt bad for what he did.
He actually apologized for what he did. He
was he had nadama. He was ashamed of
what he had done,
and Allah made an offer to Abu Bakr
And he said, Allah, you know,
You know, that those people who have, you
know,
those that have great favor from Allah,
those who have great expanded chest that Allah
has given them, a big heart that Allah
has given them, They should not hold back
from forgiving.
They should not hold back from And then
Allah said, wouldn't wouldn't you love that Allah
would forgive you too?
There is a situation in which even though
Allah is not forcing Abu Bakr as Siddiq
to forgive,
But the person who wronged you is actually
sorry.
They're actually sorry.
And still you can't do it. You're having
a hard time. Then Allah gives you an
incentive.
And that incentive is,
look, if you can do this now, I'll
guarantee that I'll forgive you.
Allah is not saying, if you don't forgive,
Allah will not forgive you. That's not what
Allah is saying. But he's offering an extra
guarantee of forgiveness, if there's an opportunity to
forgive,
and no wrong has and the person has
acknowledged they're wrong,
and now you can forgive them, now Allah
is offering this extra guarantee.
And that's a that's a rahmah from Allah.
Don't confuse this with forgiving someone who's not
even sorry.
You know, because you forgive someone who's not
even sorry, and they turn around and say,
What do you mean forgive?
I didn't do anything wrong.
In fact, if I had a chance, I'd
do it again.
I didn't do enough.
Those people,
there's no point in even having a conversation
about forgiveness because no has been done. So
I hope these concepts become clear because often
times I find, especially as Ramadan comes to
a close,
a lot of you are having these conversations
about forgiveness,
but some of those conversations are going in
a direction other than the book of Allah,
other than the teachings of the messenger
So Allah may Allah guide our understanding of
forgiveness,
and allow us to give forgiveness to others
in the right way. And if there is
something in the way of forgiveness,
like correcting and reconciling and clearing the air,
that we're able to do isla so that
the door to forgiveness can be opened.
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