 Once the messengers of Allah was along with a group of his Sahaba his companions were returning from an expedition He had gone up for a battle and then they were returning back home So remember this would take many days to get back home and most of it was just by foot So as they are as they are traveling They're overcome with tiredness and so they decided to take a small break Tired to take a rest so the Prophet's on the law I was sitting this is a Sunnah by the way is sick a midday nap Not like for five hours, but just for a short nap So Nami alaihi salatu was salam is takes the siesta and he sleeps underneath a tree and his companions are sleeping around him before he does So Salam he takes his sword and he hangs it over a branch on the tree And then he lays down so I send him he goes to sleep as The Sahaba are there and everyone is sleeping a man sneaks into the camp No one is aware. He's undetected. He comes in Comes to the Prophet salam. He knows who he is salam and he grabs the sword and he unsheaths Then and then he wakes up and he sees the man standing over him with the sword in his hand pointed at him So the law how he was on so he stands up the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam and He addresses the man so the man asked him a question. The first question he asked him is at the coffee The man asked him, are you afraid of me? What do you think your Prophet's response is salallahu alaihi wasallam? La looks him right in the eyes dead in the eyes. No Imagine the courage of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam the bravery in today's parlance It would be like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun and the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam looks at him straight and says no And so the man obviously, you know has a question that immediately comes to mind. Why is any afraid? It's a lot of honey wasallam. So he asked him Many of them in me who will defend you from me right now? Why aren't you afraid? I have a knife right here a sword right in front of your face and you're not afraid and the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam What do you think his response is? He doesn't say hey, man, try me. I'm the Prophet of God. Try me. See what happens doesn't say that He doesn't say that. Why don't you look around got hundreds of companions here? You try anything see what they do to you. He doesn't say that either What is this response of Allah? He said who will defend you who will protect you? He said Allah That's it. The moment he says the name of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the man's sword drops from his hand Look at the conviction the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam had just in that one word the strength of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam's faith and his Eman his Yaqeen his certainty that if Allah went to subhanahu wa ta'ala He could suspend cause and effect right there. This guy's got a sword in his hand Allah can turn it into a drop of water right then and there And so the man drops the sword the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam reaches over and he grabs him the man is paralyzed He can't move Can't move the problem grows. He grabs a sword and he points it at the man now and he says to him the same thing My name now come in me. Okay, who's gonna protect you from me now? The man has like what do you think he's gonna say right? He has no one around him to defend himself Don't want around him. So he looks at the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam and he ignores the question He ignores a question. He says something totally irrelevant. He says Listen like just be the better of the two guys, you know be the better of both of us like please And so the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam looks at him and he says, okay He doesn't strike him salallahu alaihi wasallam and then he asked him a question He says I touch it. Oh, I love it. No, no, no, he doesn't accept Islam. He's like, yeah, you think man Oh, this is you know, this is the Prophet of war, right? He should be striking the guy down right now What is the Nabi alaihi wasallam do looks at him. This is okay The man says what I can however, however, okay, I won't accept Islam. However, I'll tell you one thing What I can you are hidduk and nila will cut you look what I can do if you come and you cut your own neck I will never fight you. I will never wage war against you Nor will I ever support any group of people that ever fights against you I promise you have my word and the Prophet's awesome takes him at his word and he says, okay No problem, but let's go home. The man goes back to his people and he comes to them and he says man You're not gonna believe this. What happened? He said jiddukum min ndi khayyidin nas I have come to you from the presence of the greatest human being I've ever met In this hadith there's so much to be taken and so much to be learned But we'll light two things number one You see how to behave how to act when you are in a position of supposed inferiority When someone else has power over you when you feel like man, what am I gonna do and Then on the flip side when the power comes into your hands, what do you then do then? How do you deal with it and not just with any other person, but the same one who is threatening you who made you feel inferior and Ostensibly weaker. How do you deal with that person? Our Prophet's awesome showed us exactly and today in light of everything that is happening We have to think how can we bring that into our own heart? Because the Prophet's awesome didn't look at the means he didn't look at the asbab He didn't look at the world around him. He looked beyond that which is Allah He says yeah, I have a lot of strength. I have a lot of power, but at the end of the day That's nothing. Yeah, my companions are here, but at the end of the day, that's nothing What can they do? It's only Allah who can do anything and everything And when we see what is happening in the world today, especially in Gaza and Palestine This is a reminder for ourselves That it is only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala who can do anything and everything and that whatever means that you and I have At the end of the day, Allah will only ask us what we did with those things You know, there is an eye of Quran Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says What a yansura nallahu man yansuru, innallahu na qawiyoon azeez. Allah will help those who help him So I remember there's a hadith of Abdullah ibn Abbas, the cousin of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And he which he says One day I was sitting on a conveyance with the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam So he, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is in the front seat. I'm in the back seat And he says This is that my son and though they were cousins he was very very very young compared to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam So he addressed him as he would a child. I will teach you something So what is he going to teach him sallallahu alayhi wa sallam He says that protect Allah Allah will protect you Protect Allah wherever you look wherever you turn Allah will be in front of you If I read this hadith it's from one of the first hadith that I learned I asked my teacher and I was like man This got my scratching my beard over here trying to figure this out. What does this mean? And so then he told me He says this doesn't mean you protect Allah Allahu wallahu khairun hafizan Allah is your best protector. Allah is your helper. It means that you protect the deen of islam And you help the deen of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's what it means Allah deena immakannahum fil arda Aqamu s-salatu wa aatu zakaatu wa amaru bil ma'ruf wa nahahu anil munka Those people when Allah takes care of all of your needs And not even the children here today. Allah has taken care of all of our needs. If you have food in your stomach and you have clothes on your back and you have a roof over your head We are in this ayah That Allah has given you a place Allah is taking care of all of our needs. So now he will ask what did you do with it? After I took care of all of these things Especially in light of recent events we can see people who don't have any of these things Nor clothes on their back nor food in their stomach or a roof over their heads But for us Allah swt will ask us did you do what I told you to do which is what number one aqamu s-salatu established the prayer It's not just establishing prayer as in oh, they prayed sometimes It's not just praying sometimes. It is making it a consistent part of your life Why because it connects you to Allah So that every single thing you do in your life, whatever it might be you do it for the right reason You do it for the right reason. That's why you pray five times a day Exactly five. Why it's a constant reminder That i'm going to work. Why i'm going to school. Why i'm doing this. Why i'm not doing this. Why All of that is because of Allah swt Secondly, what I tell is that god these people they give charity What is money today by the way money is basically an exchange of your life That's all it is you give a part of your life a part of your time and your effort and worry and you get a little bit of money in return And so if you sincerely care about any cause any person Then you give a part of your life to that person in the form of charity And this is one of the wisdoms of why Allah swt allows calamities to occur be it man made or natural Why so that people who have can take care of those who do not have And so now you and I in positions where we do have are we taking care of those who no longer have Third he says subhan Allah will amarubil ma'ruf. They command one another to do good They command the good Every one of us has some form of platform whatever it might be for me It might be standing here for you. It might be somewhere else be it at work be it at school be it online Whatever it is It is your responsibility and mine to speak up or that which is true and right You know in the science of hadith there is a type of Hadith which is called ikhrar or taqreer Which is when the messengers on the wahari was that I saw something happen in front of him The prophet saw something and someone did or said something and then he didn't stop them He didn't stop them Which means what it means that he saw the one is approved of it Or he didn't think that it was so bad that he should stop it Which means that he saw something was okay with it. So it's not haram. It's allowed to do Now you and I when things happen in front of us Things happen in front of us if we don't speak up that is a type of approval If you know that it's wrong, why are we speaking up? That's the question If I know that something is wrong and I don't speak up, you know, this is like a pop quiz That's how we should look at it You immediately something happens in front of you and you know that this is wrong. Why don't we say anything? Allah is testing you instantly like okay, let me see. Let me see. Are you a Muslim or not right there? Are you going to do amr bil ma'ruf nahi'an in munqa? Are you going to command the good and forbid the evil right when it happens right in front of you? You know, I'll tell you a story to get the point across. Okay It's a very embarrassing story, but you know what sometimes it's necessary. I remember back in college once I was sitting in a lecture I'm sitting in the lecture and the teacher is bringing up some kind of random topic and a person a few rows ahead of me He says oh, yeah, like how Islam oppresses women and subjugates women You know and he says this and the teacher immediately butts in he's like, uh, okay Yeah, so let's change the topic and I'm sitting several rows back And I felt a type of anger as you rightfully should a person is insulting your dean And a person is insulting Muslim women as if they have no agency of their own So I heard this and I got really upset and I was gonna say something, but I didn't And now this has been years. It's been years and I still feel ashamed And I'm like man, that was my pop quiz Allah tested me at that moment right there. Am I going to speak up and say something in defensive Islam? And to be honest, I got an f I should have said something and now every time I remember this and I think I'm not going to let that happen again And in today's day and age when we see what is happening to our brothers and sisters And people are making it literally illegal to even use the words pro-palestine or free palestine Which is how you stand in support of palestine a place that Allah swt has selected for the believers Just that sacred as Makkah and Medina Allah swt has selected Palestine. He has selected Jerusalem. He has selected that entire area That place We are not speaking up in defense of it. This is our obligation Do it with wisdom use your platform with wisdom Howsoever it might be and Allah swt will give us that help that he has promised You want help in your personal life forget on a umatic scale Obviously, we should be worrying about the global umma But people sometimes, you know, you tell them that if you do this Allah will help you in your personal affairs The thing that you are dealing with that you really want taking care of take care of other people. Well, Allah will take care of you That's it Take care of other people and Allah will take care of you May Allah swt give us to do this and increase us in our yakin in our certainty in his words From the greatest Of islamic, you know academics and intellectuals that have ever graced this earth Is Muhammad ibn Idrisa Shafi'i rahimahullah Imam Shafi'i rahimahullah, and he was born a few generation a couple generations after the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And he was born in the city of ghaza Today the Shafi'i madhab is built upon him the Shafi'i madhab is built upon him And he was an illustrious and eminent scholar He was an absolute polymath and he was the genius of the highest caliber and degree So he excelled in every field including in the field of poetry. So he had a few lines of poetry and I thought you know Why don't we share them especially in light of what's going on? Because every time you turn on the news you open your phone whatever you see it just fills you with all kinds of emotions And so he says rahimahullah Sahirat uyunun wa naamat a'uyunun fi umurin takunu awla takunu fadra ilhamma mas tataata fa innahimla nuka lhumuma jununu innahabbin kafaka bil'ams ma kana siyaka fee ghadin ma yakunu He says rahimahullah He says and this is again as an explanation He says some people they can't sleep all night They're up every single night They take pill after pill after pill after pill and they can't fall asleep Meanwhile other people never want to get out of bed Why? He says because these people are worried about if The word if if if if what if this happens? What if that happens hypothetical after hypothetical and there are so plagued with worries and anxieties. They can't face the world They can't face life So after he makes his observation he says that you know try and leave off as much of these worries as you can Because if you're going to keep carrying these worries all these possibilities and hypotheticals you're going to drive yourself crazy Is what he says now you might say Imam that's that's wonderful advice, but it's a lot easier said than done right I'll just stop worrying. So he gives us a reminder. Why you should stop worrying? He says Ma kana siyaka fee ghadin ma yakunu The same Allah who took care of you yesterday. Do you think he's going to abandon you tomorrow? You didn't get where you are today magically You didn't become 30 40 50 years old with a house and a car and a family and a job by yourself magically Allah took care of you every single day of your life until you got to where you are So do you think that same Allah is going to abandon you answers? Absolutely not We have to remind ourselves of that constantly Allah took care of me at my lowest point at my difficult most difficult point in my life That same Allah will help me through the same Allah that helped Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam When he was there in khandak and the ahzab are in front of him the army is 10,000 people stronger in front of him They haven't eaten for four weeks. Allah took care of him. Didn't he Allah subhan Allah took care of musa alaihi sallam when he's walking through the ocean and the rivers and the water is there A mountain high Kataulid aadim Allah took care of musa. I didn't he Allah took care of Of the Rahim when he threw when he was thrown into the fire He took care of him took care of use of when he's left at the bottom of a well Allah swt took care of each and every single one of these prophets And he will use any and every means that he wishes Allah swt divinely lifted Jesus to the heavens where right now Where they are bombing right now in that same place Allah swt lifted isa alaihi sallam Jesus to the heavens So Allah took care of them Don't think that Allah will not take care of you and don't think that Allah will not take care of them Those people who are there still today And so when we see these things, you know in these moments of darkness and confusion Moments of what is it manufactured consent? That's what it is or moments of You know disinformation and misinformation Moments of atrocity propaganda. It's darkness after darkness. I will not bother about how do we perceive? How do we look to see beyond all of this look at the light of the Quran and the sunnah The light of the Quran and the words of our prophets And Allah swt tells us how we should look at our brothers and sisters And sometimes it can become desensitizing to see video after picture after video And it really gets you down. So Allah swt tells us how we should look at it. What does he say? You know today when a person passes away, they're just another tally add it to the death toll to add it to the death count Allah swt says stop counting Literally he says stop counting. What do you think means counting? Don't count them amongst the dead Those who have been killed They're not dead, but they're alive with their lord We believe each and every one of them is alive with Allah swt And not only that but today they are being starved and they're being you know The electricity has been cut all of these things. They're going through Allah swt That says Allah swt is taking care of them. This is our faith. This is our belief That Allah swt has taken care of our brothers and sisters Or those who have passed away in Afghanistan or those who have passed away in Morocco and many other places in the world Allah swt has taken that affair upon himself. He will deal with it So this should be a moment of happiness as sad as we are to see this We know that Allah is rewarding them in ways that we could never give it to them Ways we could never do And then finally I want to make a little point about aqeela Okay, it's a little small aqeela lesson. Allah swt is aqeela to ahles, tunna thi wal jama'a This is the belief of every single muslim and as it should be that each and every prophet of Allah swt is alive in his grave Each and every prophet of Allah is alive in their graves, right? And so how is it that we should look at those brothers and sisters of ours who are going through a great struggle Who are going through a great difficulty right now at this very moment as I give this khutba Can you imagine at this very moment as we are listening to me here? How should we look at them? Allah swt says Do not think that Allah will break the promise that he made to his messengers Don't ever think that Allah will break that promise he made to his prophets So what is that promise Allah made to them? What does he say? We will help we will assist give victory to our prophets and those who have believed Allah swt says this with absolute emphasis And those prophets now, why did I make that point of aqeela because those prophets of Allah swt They are alive in their graves the hadith of the prophets In which he specifically says That Allah has made it a haram for the earth to decompose or decay the bodies of the prophets They are alive in their graves the prophets When he went from Makkah to Jerusalem the only time he went there When he went he says I passed by musa and he was praying at the red sand where his grave is in the red sand dune And I saw him in his grave He was praying in his grave And the prophets there on the aqsa compound where today they limited the access to it So there's only a very few amount small amount of people who are able to pray juma are there today That same place our prophet was there and he led over a hundred thousand Prophets of Allah swt in salah Can you imagine there's only one place on earth where every prophet of Allah was gathered only one Not in Makkah not in Medina nowhere else but in Jerusalem Allah gathered each and every single prophet there And they prayed behind our messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Imagine how sacred and blessed that land is that every prophet of Allah stood there and they all prayed there And not only that but today how many of them are buried there today There's a place there in Jerusalem. It's called Khalil. It's named after Khalilullah ibrahim alayhi sallam the friend of Allah And that place is today where it's being under constant, you know bombardment cluster munitions white phosphorus It's being used on innocent men women and children and Allah swt specifically says We will help the the prophets and the believers And the day when all the witnesses will be made to stand so who are the witnesses if not the prophets of Allah swt And Allah will bring them all in testimony and say okay, you tell me what happened We talk about other side of the story and in today's day and age Unfortunately, it's just one side that is being plastered all over the news. We only see one side Don't worry. Allah will have the day swt When we will hear the other side and the prophets of Allah will be the witnesses And they will tell Allah swt because hadith of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he says When you come to my grave and you say salam to me, I will respond to your salam The prophets are alive and they know exactly what happens around them in their midst And so the prophets of Allah in their graves in germany in hazzat in philistine all these areas They know exactly what is happening and they will stand in front of Allah swt and tell them In explicit detail exactly what happened and Allah swt will be there No excuse will suffice for the person who has committed bun and oppression in the world No excuse will be enough So as sad as it is and as obsessing as it is to see this We have to remind ourselves in light of the Quran and the sunnah that Allah swt is in charge He is in control. The bombs may be over our brothers and sisters But Allah is over that. Allah is in total control and absolute control And justice will be meted out one day By him swt May Allah swt give us tawfiq And may Allah swt increase us in our yakeen in our certainty Of his words and the words of our prophets In the name of Allah