Zia Sheikh – Jumuah Value of Time 112016
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You thought that we created you in vain
and that you will not be returned to
us.
And the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings
be upon him, said in what was narrated
about Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with
him, The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings
be upon him, said, My two blessings are
accepted by many people.
Health and freedom.
And he said, take care of yourself five
before five.
Your youth before your pilgrimage.
Your health before your illness.
Your wealth before your poverty.
And your freedom before your work.
And your life before your death.
Narrated by al-Hakim.
May Allah be pleased with him and His
Messenger be pleased with him.
My dear respected elders, brothers and sisters.
As we are fully aware, this is the
start of a new calendar year.
And this is a time where many people,
they kind of reflect upon the last year
that they have spent.
And focus on the next year that is
about to come.
In terms of making new resolutions and things
like that.
So, as a Muslim, we should not be
just waiting specifically for these times and these
milestones in our lives.
Like birthdays and new years and so on.
To kind of focus on the important things
in our life.
As a Muslim, we should be focusing on
these things at all times.
That how day by day, the time is
passing us by.
And day by day, we are getting close
to our graves.
The time that has gone by, it is
never going to come back.
So, when we say that time is priceless,
we can say that it truly is priceless.
You cannot put a price on it.
You cannot buy it.
If somebody was to offer you, if they
had the whole world and whatever it contains,
to give you back their life that has
passed.
Forget about the life.
Forget if they ask you for five years
of their life.
Or if they ask you for one year
of their life.
Or if they ask you for a month
of their life.
Or a week of their life.
Or a day of their life.
Or an hour of their life.
Or a minute of their life.
Or a second of their life.
And they would give you the whole world
and whatever it contains, you would not be
able to do it.
We would not be able to return that
time back to them.
This shows that time is actually more valuable
than anything else in this whole wide world.
Even more valuable than the whole world and
its contents.
So we should value this time.
We should not waste this time.
And each time these certain milestones come in
our life, like these new years or birthdays
and things of that nature.
We should think and reflect upon how the
previous year has gone by.
How I am spending my time.
Am I this year closer to Allah SWT
than I was last year?
Or have I become further away?
How are my deeds?
Am I more obedient to Allah SWT now?
Or am I more disobedient than I was
a year ago?
And that is why there is a saying
of Ibn Umar R.A. He said, Evaluate
yourselves.
Evaluate yourselves before you are evaluated.
Meaning on the Day of Judgment, before that
evaluation takes place, we should be constantly evaluating
ourselves.
A very famous surah of the Quran that
we have learnt since childhood is Surah Al
-Asr.
Allah SWT, He swears at the beginning of
this surah by the time.
It says, Allah SWT is taking an oath.
And when He is taking an oath, that
means the thing that He is taking an
oath with is a very important thing.
And then there is a connection between the
oath, the Qasam and the Jawab Al-Qasam
which comes after that.
The Jawab Al-Qasam is, I swear by
the time, indeed all humanity is at a
loss.
All humanity is at a loss.
Meaning that the humanity that does not value
the time that has been allotted to it.
The human being that does not value the
years and the months and the weeks and
the days that have been given to the
human being.
If he does not value them, if he
does not use them well, then truly he
is in a loss.
And then the rest of the surah goes
into mentioning how a person can get out
of that loss and become successful.
These are the things that we have to
have in our lives so that that life
that Allah SWT has given us is not
wasted.
So that's not the focus of this khutbah,
the surah is not the focus of the
khutbah.
The focus is generally that how we should
value the time that Allah SWT has given
us and realize that slowly, slowly time is
passing us by.
Go back home and look at pictures from
five years ago.
You will find today that you have more
grey hair.
You will find today that you have more
wrinkles in your face.
And you will feel that man, I've changed
over these past five years.
I've aged.
But these past five years, where have they
gone?
They've just disappeared.
And I haven't even noticed, just like a
flash before my eyes.
The Prophet SAW, he says, There are two
blessings in which people are at a severe
loss.
Maghboon means a person who is the victim
of ghaban.
What is ghaban?
Ghaban means that a person, he buys something
at a high price and he sells it
at a lower price.
He is taking a loss when he is
doing his business.
Can this business sustain itself?
Can this business succeed?
It can never succeed.
So the Prophet SAW said that there are
two blessings in which people are at a
severe loss.
What are they?
Health and free time.
What is sihah?
Health, a person he has been given the
ability to walk, talk, to pray, go to
the masjid fast, get up for tahajjud, get
up for fajr, pray his five times daily
salat, go to work, and then giving charity
from the wealth that Allah SWT gives him.
But then suddenly, a time comes when that
health is snatched away from him.
A person gets a stroke.
A person has an accident.
A person has a heart attack.
A person is afflicted with cancer.
So many times we hear of these incidents
that take place when seemingly a perfectly healthy
person loses the health that Allah SWT has
given him and the things that he used
to do or he could be able to
do with that health, he cannot do anymore.
So this is the first thing that people
lose out on and that is good health.
And the second thing is al-faraf, free
time.
Allah SWT gives a person time and instead
of utilizing that time to prepare for his
hereafter or to make that time more productive,
a person wastes it away in browsing the
internet or on social media and in chatting
with people.
Things that have no value for this world
or the hereafter.
So we should question ourselves, the health that
Allah SWT has given me and the free
time that Allah SWT has given me, how
much am I using it productively?
How much am I wasting it?
And based upon the answer that we truly
and sincerely give ourselves, we should change our
lives for the better.
And the year that we are about to
start, we should try to change it in
such a way that we become more productive
in terms of our deeds, in terms of
our connection with Allah SWT and in terms
of even the worldly life.
To be more productive, we have to basically
guard our time.
There is another hadith which also highlights these
same points.
The Prophet SAW, he said, Take advantage of
five things before five things happen.
Take advantage of five things before five things
happen.
What are those five things?
Take advantage of your youth before you become
aged.
Before you become old.
Youth means basically younger years in which you
are active.
Doesn't necessarily mean a person in his twenties
or thirties.
Take advantage of the fact that you can
move, you can walk, you can talk, you
are healthy.
Take advantage of this.
Take advantage of Take advantage of your health
before you become sick.
The point that we have just already mentioned.
Take advantage of your wealth before you become
poor.
If Allah has given you wealth, give in
charity, give in sadaqa, give your zakat, make
sure that what Allah SWT has given you,
you benefit others with it so that it
becomes an investment for you in the hereafter.
Take advantage of your wealth before you become
poor.
And take advantage of your free time before
you become busy.
And again, many people, they have time on
their hands, and then suddenly they get a
new job.
They have to move out of town, they
have to commute.
And then they look back and they say
to themselves, well, if I had that free
time, I had a job in which I
wasn't working too many hours, I wish I
had taken advantage of that time and memorized
some verses from the Quran.
I wish I had learned something.
I wish I had done something at that
time that I had free.
Now I'm so busy, I cannot do anything.
So, take advantage of your free time before
you become busy.
And finally, this is the key thing that
we should always be thinking about.
Taking advantage of the life that Allah SWT
has given us before we leave this world.
And how do we take advantage of it?
We make sure that each and every action
of ours is according to the command of
Allah SWT, according to the Sunnah of the
Prophet SAW.
That is the taking advantage of the life
before we pass away.
To a point where the angel of death
comes to us, we are ready to leave
this world.
We are ready to meet Allah SWT.
We are ready to go along with Malakul
Maut.
And we do not ask for more time,
as is mentioned in the verses of the
Quran that talk about a person who is
not ready to leave this world, that he
will ask the angel of death to give
him more time.
Allah SWT says no.
When the time comes, there is no moving
forward or back.
That time is set and that time is
the time that we must leave this world.
So, these five things, again I'll recap, take
advantage of five things before five things happen.
What are they again?
Those five things are the youth before old
age, health before illness, wealth before poverty, free
time before becoming busy, and life before death
overtakes us.
These are the five things that the Prophet
SAW told us that we should make sure
that we are taking advantage of.
The Prophet SAW, he also told us that
during the last days, what's going to happen,
there's something that we need to reflect upon
and think about.
Many people, they say, and we've heard this
so many times, the month of Ramadan comes
and immediately the month of Ramadan goes.
And they say, well, it just looked like
we started the month of Ramadan yesterday and
now it's gone.
2015 came and it finished.
It seems like we started the year of
2015 just a month ago and it seems
like it's finished already.
So, this is one of the signs of
the Day of Judgment.
The Prophet SAW said, يتقارب الزمان that the
time will become close to each other, meaning
that the longer time will seem like a
shorter time.
So, this is one of the events of
the Day of Judgment, or the signs.
وينقص العمل عمل, good deeds, will decrease.
ويلقى الشح and greediness will increase.
شح is actually a combination of greediness and
stinginess.
A person is not only greedy, he's also
stingy.
This is what شح means.
So, شح will come into the hearts of
people.
They'll become greedy and they'll become stingy.
ويكثر الهرج and هرج will increase.
The Sahaba said, what is هرج, Ya Rasulullah?
مالهرج?
قال القتل القتل Killing, killing.
Killing will increase.
And we see that all the time.
Whether that's state-sponsored killing in forms of
wars and invasions or terrorism or individuals taking
it upon themselves to kill other people for
no reason whatsoever this is a sign of
the closeness of the Day of Judgment.
There's another hadith in which the Prophet said
that there will come a time when the
killer will not know why he's killing the
person that he's killing.
And the one who's being killed, the one
who's being murdered he will not know why
he's being murdered.
And this is again what we are seeing
on a day-to-day basis with these
gun rampages and massive shootings this is something
that we are seeing with our own eyes
the Prophet, peace be upon him, foretold this
a long time ago.
The closeness of the time let's just focus
on that for one minute.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said لا
تقوم الساعة حتى يتقارب الزمان The Day of
Judgment will not take place until the time
becomes close.
Meaning it becomes, it shrinks.
And how is it going to be?
فتكون السنة كالشهر فتكون السنة كالشهر The year
will become like a month.
ويكون الشهر كالجمعة And the month will become
like a Juma, meaning like a week.
وتكون الجمعة كاليوم And a week will become
like a day.
ويكون اليوم كالساعة And the day will become
like an hour.
وتكون الساعة كاحتراق السعفة And one hour will
become like the burning of a nest.
How long does it take to light a
dry nest of a bird?
And how long will it take for it
to finish?
And just become burnt completely?
A few minutes, a couple of minutes.
So an hour will become like the burning
of a nest.
So are we seeing these things or not
with our own eyes?
We are seeing that the time has shrunk
and we do not have barakah in the
time anymore.
We look at our pious predecessors like Imam
Nawawi, rahimahullah.
By the age of 45, he had written
so many books.
He left this world at the age of
45, Imam Nawawi.
If you can imagine.
Yet he has left so many books that
he wrote for us that we benefit from
to this day.
We look at the works of Hafiz Ibn
Hajar, rahimahullah.
He wrote two of his great works at
the Sharah of Bukhari, the explanation of Bukhari,
called Fathul Bari.
That's in about 15 volumes.
If you put it on a shelf, it's
about that thick.
And he wrote another book, very prominent work,
called Al-Isabah, which talks about all of
the sahaba and the tabi'een in alphabetical
order.
The riwayat, the people that brought the riwayat
to us, the hadith to us, each and
every single rawi, each and every single narrator
has been described, their life, and where they
were born, where they died, how long they
lived for.
Again, this is in about 22 volumes.
Just imagine the research that he had to
do to get all that information to us.
Before the days of computers, before the age
of jet travel, before the age of telephone
communication, how did he get this information all
together in the life that he had, which
couldn't have been more than the average that
we have of 50 or 60 years.
We cannot do that with the technology that
we have in this day and age.
How do you think he did it at
that time?
Nothing more than the barakah in time that
we are lacking today.
So we really need to make sure that
the time that Allah SWT has given us,
we try to use it to our advantage.
Allah SWT says in the Quran, وَلَوْ أَنَّ
أَهْلَ الْقُرَىٰ آمَنُوا وَاتَّقَوْا لَفَتَحْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ بَرَكَاتٍ مِّنَ
السَّمَاءِ If we want barakah in our wealth,
in our time, in our children, then what
is the way to get that barakah?
Iman and taqwa.
This is what Allah SWT says very clearly
in the Quran.
If the dwellers of the villages, if they
had iman and if they had taqwa, then
most certainly we would open up for them
the barakah from the skies.
وَلَكِنْ كَذَّبُوا فَأَخَذْنَاهُمْ Allah SWT says they denied,
so we punish them.
But the ayah is very clear.
If we are lacking barakah in our lives,
it is because of the lack of iman.
It is because of the lack of taqwa.
It is because of the lack of our
connection with Allah SWT.
It is because of the lack of good
deeds and the increase in bad deeds.
It is because of that that we are
lacking barakah.
So how then should we take advantage of
the time that Allah SWT has given us?
A key thing that we should always keep
in mind is that the work that I'm
doing right now, the action that I'm doing
now or about to undertake, does it have
the benefit of the world or the benefit
of the hereafter or both?
If it doesn't have the benefit of the
world, if it doesn't have a worldly benefit
and if it doesn't have a benefit of
the hereafter, then that thing is a waste
of time.
That thing is a waste of time and
we are wasting that time with no benefit
whatsoever.
We can count down hundreds of things that
we do on a day-to-day basis
that can come under this criteria of no
benefit of this world, no benefit of the
hereafter.
So if we are doing that and if
we are victims of this kind of attitude,
then that thing that we are doing, that
is not beneficial for us, so therefore we
need to stop it.
We are wasting time with it.
The social media that is so prevalent now,
we should try to use it for productive
things, not for time wasting.
We need to use it for productive things.
We have so many benefits that we can
derive from social media, so many things we
can learn, so much convenience there is in
sending messages.
Before we had to write letters back home
to our countries and that letter used to
take 10 or 12 days to reach and
then the people used to respond by sending
letters back and then that used to take
10 or 12 days, which after email came
into existence, people started calling that mail snail
mail, because of the slowness of how those
letters reach us.
So Allah SWT gave us these conveniences and
we should use those conveniences in a productive
way, not in an unproductive way.
We should try to increase our taqwa, our
iman, our good deeds, and inshallah Allah SWT
through that, He will give us barakah in
our rizq.
Allah SWT says, وَمَنْ يَتَّقِ اللَّهَ يَجْعَلْ لَهُ
مَخْرَجًا وَيَرْزُقْهُ مِنْ حَيْتُ لَا يَحْتَسِبْ وَمَنْ يَتَوَكَّلْ
عَلَى اللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسْبُهُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ بَارِغُ أَمْرِهِ
قَدْ جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدْرًا Whoever has
the taqwa of Allah SWT, Allah SWT will
make a way for him.
And He will give him sustenance from where
he cannot even imagine.
And whoever has the tawakkul of Allah SWT,
Allah SWT is enough for him.
So taqwa, tawakkul of Allah SWT, trust in
Allah SWT, we will see a barakah increasing
in our lives.
In addition to this, we should try to
at least come to the masjid for one
salat per day.
At the very minimum, very minimum, our connection
with the masjid should be established on a
daily basis.
Yes, we may be praying at home, we
may be doing our salat at home, but
the connection with the masjid is something completely
different.
In addition to the multiplied reward that we
get for the salat, there is a connection
that a community has with each other.
The masjid is a place of angels.
When we make dua amongst the angels, the
duas are likely to be accepted much more.
And the a'mal that we do, they have
a different and distinct flavor to them, a
distinct sweetness to them, different to how we
perceive at home.
So you can say, yes, I'm praying my
five times salat at home, but are you
actually getting that same sweetness that you would
get while praying in the masjid, standing shoulder
to shoulder with your fellow brothers and sisters?
You will not get that sweetness.
And that's of course in addition to the
multiplied reward that Allah SWT has promised of
27 times greater.
The worldly example of that would be if
somebody is giving you $10 an hour at
your workplace and somebody tells you, you know
what, the same job that you're doing, if
you drive a mile or so, a couple
of miles, and you just go to this
other place, they are offering you $270 for
the same job.
Who would not take that job?
Who would not run to put in an
application and give his resume for the same
job?
The only thing is that he has to
drive for a couple of miles.
Because we are not aware of the value
of this multiplied reward of the jama'ah,
we kind of neglect coming to the masjid.
So we have to make the masjid a
part of our daily life in addition to
the other things that we mentioned.
What happens is, also the shaitan tries to
take you away from masjid for minor reasons.
Okay, and I'll finish with this.
What he tries to tell you is that
person who you don't like, he will be
in the masjid today.
You have a difference of opinion with him,
you had an argument with him.
So the shaitan says, rather than going to
the masjid and having to face that brother,
I'd rather just stay at home.
I've seen so many incidents like this.
There is politics in the board taking place.
Or there's, you know, they sideline me.
Or they focus on, people are focusing on
their own racial background and they don't pay
any attention to me.
The shaitan, he plays tricks with us all
the time.
Just imagine that we have that same attitude
about our job.
Nobody is going to work because he has
a disagreement with a co-worker.
Unless he finds another job and then he
leaves his job.
But nobody is going to leave his job
simply for the reason that he has a
disagreement with a co-worker.
Why is that?
Because we value the worldly things, we have
value for money, we have value for our
paycheck, and we don't have value because we
don't see that value with our own eyes
yet.
That's why these small reasons shaitan puts in
our mind and it's very easy for us
to let go of the masjid and to
let go of the increased reward.
So each time the shaitan comes to us
and tries to make us slip up like
that, we should think about that same kind
of scenario from a worldly perspective and would
we go through with it and act the
same when it comes to our job or
making money and so on.
We probably would not.
So the summary is, my dear brothers and
sisters, that Allah SWT has given us time.
He has given us a new year that
is about to start.
We should try to take advantage of this
time that Allah SWT has given us, not
to waste it.
I pray that Allah SWT gives us tawfiq
to understand and practice what has been said
and heard.
I say this and ask Allah SWT to
forgive me and the rest of the Muslims.
So ask Him for forgiveness.
He is the Most Forgiving and Merciful.