 All praise is due to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. We seek His forgiveness, His guidance, and His assistance. And we take refuge with Him from the evil within our souls, from the consequence of our misdeeds. Whoever Allah gives guidance to, and I can mislead, and whoever misleads and I can guide. I bear witness that there's nothing in a one worthy worship besides Allah alone. He has no partners. And I bear witness that Muhammad Ibn Abdullah is his servant and messenger. We ask Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, to grant him peace, mercy, and to extend him our salutations on this blessed and special day, during this blessed and special month. Just as we ask him to grant peace to his family members, his companions, and all those who follow in goodness and practice goodwill into the meeting and the reckoning of Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Alhamdulillah, Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, has brought us to two-thirds of the month of Ramadan in our fasts. Fasts on these long days, hot days. And I would say that Alhamdulillah, it has been relatively easy, at least for me, and hopefully has been the same for the rest of you up to this point. A sign of the mercy of Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, on this ummah, that this has been the case. The month of Ramadan has many different designations, many different names. The month of Ramadan is known as the month of endurance, or shahruh sabr, the month of patience, perseverance. It is known as the month of gratitude, shahruh shukr, the month of gratitude. It is known as the month of consolation, it is the time when Muslims themselves try to console the poor in the community during this month. And it is also known as the month of altruism, shahruh ithar. And it has many different names, many different designations. But this month, this month Ramadan, shahruh Ramadan is a month of the commemoration and the celebration of the Quran. As Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, tells us in his holy book, shahruh Ramadan, the month of Ramadan is the month wherein the Quran was revealed, who delin us as a guidance for humanity, will be yunatim min al-huda, and clarifications of the guidance for Quran. And the criterion, the criterion of determining truth from falsehood, good from bad, what is more from that which is immoral. That the Quran is that furaqan for the believer. And so this is a month of commemoration of this event, wherein during the night of power, known as laidat al-qadr, Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, he sent the book down from the lo'a ma'fool, the preserved tablet, into the lowest heaven, into bayt al-izza, the house of honor, which is found in the lowest heaven. And then after that over a period of 23 years, he continued to send down different verses and chapters of it to the Prophet Muhammad, A.S. So we're celebrating guidance from Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. But I do think that during this blessed month, it is important as well to call our attention at times to some things that were very special that happened during the life of the Prophet, A.S. And then even during the lives of some other great sages of his, amongst his companions and others. The month of Ramadan is not only these things that has been mentioned, but a number of important events happened during the month of Ramadan. Two days ago, if my calculations are correct on the 17th day of Ramadan, is what we call the Ghazwat Badr, the Baru of Badr, which it is termed. And it happened on the 17th of the month of Ramadan. Today, the 19th of the month of Ramadan was the day when Ibn al-Muljam stabbed Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib, Rajallah Huan. And among the lessons we learned from that is that a Muslim, even a Muslim at times will stab you in the back, not only metaphorically, but even physically. And this can happen when we have an ideological or philosophical difference. And so we see this Ibn al-Muljam himself being a Muslim was led to an extreme, and then did what he did on this particular day. And then tomorrow, tomorrow will be a commemoration of the conquest of Makkah, because the conquest of Makkah happened on the 20th of the month of Ramadan. Now, see the things we keep in mind as we go through this month. And we should take the opportunity during these days to reflect and return to these stories, to try to see what lesson we can extract from them, what lessons are there during these days. And we know that the last 10 days of the month of Ramadan are months of days of istihad, days of due diligence that the Prophet ﷺ encouraged us to do our utmost during these nights in order to seek out the night of power. And hopefully that Allah SWT grants us the blessing, the great blessing of that night, the reward of which is like the reward of an entire lifetime of a human being. But I do want to come back, even though today would be the commemoration of the assassination on Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib's life, Rajallah Huan. But rather I actually want to go back to reflect upon lessons from the battle of Bada. And one of the reasons is that when we think about the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and especially in light of current events and the type of pressures that Muslims find themselves under, that there is the tendency, there is the tendency to I guess you would say to perhaps whitewash even the prophetic ethos. In the same way that some people would like to whitewash the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., or the legacy of Malcolm X, and then some recently are most recent departed Muhammad Ali, that some would like to as well, just to simply portray him as the individual who was not concerned with the struggles of his own people to begin with, but struggles for injustice in society overall. But there's the tendency, I would say, that Muslims have developed is to emphasize the compassion and the mercy and the softness of the Prophet ﷺ. And there is definitely, he was definitely soft and compassionate and gentle individual. That was his norm. But there also was a very firm side, sometimes in the abrasive side, to the Prophet ﷺ, that he is described in the books of Seerah as a person who did not seek vengeance for himself, unless the sanctities of God were then violated, then he found to be firm and abrasive and stern. As a matter of fact, in the Qur'an, when Allah ﷺ talks about the Prophet ﷺ with regard to his being challenged by the Mushrikīn, those who actually tried to kill him and kill his companions and succeeded in doing so in certain cases, that he says to him, that wage struggle against the rejectives of faith and the hypocrites and the rejectives of faith and show them sternness, show them some abrasiveness. Let them feel some abrasiveness in you. So we have to remember that when we talk about the Prophet ﷺ, that we want to give the entire, the whole picture of the Prophet ﷺ, that there are certain instances where he himself did show a certain type of abrasiveness and rightfully so, when certain types of sanctities were being challenged. And so the battle above is an extremely, an important event in the life of or the history of Islam, that we should reflect upon down these blessed days, down these blessed months. As I said, that his ethos was that of one of a very gentle and kind person overall, but his ethos was also one of a man of justice and courage and even a warrior. The Prophet ﷺ was even a warrior. And actually there's a hadith where the Prophet ﷺ said, he said, the worst traits in any person, and in particular a man, the worst traits to be found in a man are worried stinginess and petrifying cowardice. Worrying stinginess, like some people, you know, you're asking for, they're asking for money, you know, they don't want to give, they give anyway, but some people that they're always on edge, sure, haven't had it, they don't want to give anything at all. But the worst thing that can be in a person of those two characteristics. And then a type of petrifying cowardice where a person is led to the point that he would not even defend himself or his own family. And so why are these the important, these characteristics important? Because when it comes to the defense of the community, that sometimes you have to go into your pocket. If anything, much of it, you have to, you have to go into your pocket in order to preserve the community. When we look in the Quran, when Allah ﷺ, he actually talks about that those people who Allah would replace if they turned their backs, that those verses are typically in the context of people who refuse to spend, in Feasibility Allah, in Feasibility Allah meant those who defend for the defense of the community, that Allah ﷺ, he talks about He said, and spin in the way of Allah and do not throw your cash yourselves into the destruction with your own hands. A verse which is often quoted as evidence that is haram to smoke cigarettes. But when we look at the context, Allah ﷺ is actually talking about spending in the way of the defense of the community. And so you have to be an individual who overcomes your stinginess. And then you can't be a person of cowardice because sometimes you may be required to defend yourself or defend your family or defend your community physically, that it may happen at times. And one thing we learn when we look at the different expeditions of the Prophet ﷺ, going back to emphasizing, yes, that his norm was one of being a gentle person. And even when we look at the different expeditions, that it actually comes out when you look at the very fact that the Prophet ﷺ actually throughout his career as the messenger of Allah ﷺ had only 29 military expeditions. And of those 29, 11, there was fighting in only 11 of them. So about one third of those. And over the period of his life, and when we look at the wars between the Muslims and the non-Muslims at times at less than 1700, about 1700 casualties actually happened in these particular battles. So he wasn't a good thirsty person that he preferred peace over war. But it is something we need to reflect upon. And cowardice is something which is blameworthy. Even certain Sahaba that we find that the Prophet ﷺ super policy was a policy of voluntary service. Not all the men had to even serve. Those men who had the physical capacity to fight, they were encouraged to fight. Those who had the arms to fight, they were encouraged to fight. But those who even if they had the arms in the physical capacity to fight, that they felt so fearful to do so, the Prophet didn't force them to come to the battle. And one of those people was Hassan ibn Thabit, Rasulullah ﷺ, the famous poet for defending, known for his poetry for defending the Prophet ﷺ. His biographer described him of a person of extreme cowardice that, you know, and this is not meant to denigrate him, but it just basically is one of the highlighting the fact that the Prophet ﷺ, the service was voluntary. And so that is one thing because the Prophet ﷺ wanted people to be rewarded for the decisions they made. And he knew that Allah ﷺ only rewards you if you do something willfully. It's one of the same reasons why certain things continue to be lawful in Islam and the Prophet didn't prohibit them. It's because he wanted people to willfully abandon certain types of things. All throughout the Qur'an, it's Allah is reminding us that the Messenger, Zulia, is only to give a clear proclamation. Well, let's ta'alayhim bimufsaitir. You are not an overlord over them, among other things. But this battle of brother, as mentioned before, it was in what some ways it was the first major battle of what we can call the Muslim Revolutionary War. We have an American revolution, right? But as you said, the first major battle of it is called the major battle of brother because it wasn't the first time that Muslims actually had some type of confrontation with the Mushri Qun in brother. And that same year, year two after the hijrah to Medina, there was a some type of confrontation, but no one was killed. But this was the first major battle of this Revolutionary War. And so before even getting into some of the details of this, it's important just to remind ourselves of the very fact that the Prophet ﷺ and his companions leading up to this particular battle, 13 years in Makkah suffered persecution. They suffered sometimes even murder that we know of the story of Bilal Ibn Rabah, Rajallah Anha, and his courage. And we also know of the story of the very first martyr in Islam, Sumayah bint Khayyat, Rajallah Anha, that she was killed because she didn't have the protection of the clans being an African woman, the wife of an Arab man from Yemen who himself also did not have the protection because he himself was from Yemen. About 13 years of persecution. And the persecution for what? Persecution because they just wanted to worship Allah alone, that they wanted to have the freedom to practice their religion, to believe whatever they wanted, to practice whatever they wanted. But the Meccans did not allow it, they did not want that to happen. So they underwent boycotts where their people tried to starve them. They had to make hijrah to Abyssinia, as we know, that their wealth was usurped by their neighbors, that they were denied religious freedom. And during this period it was considered to be Allah for Haram, for the Muslims to actually fight. It was Haram for them to fight back, even though sometimes they wanted to. So they had to practice restraint during this period for 13 years. And then on the tail end of this, after this period of time, a group of men from Yathrib, they visit Mecca and they offer the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam fealty, a pledge of allegiance and allegiance, and an opportunity to take up asylum in Medina, called the fealty of Atabah, as we know. About 81 men were in this, and they gave fealty to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, that if he came to, then the companions come to Medina, that they will have their protection. And so this was now the first opportunity that Muslims had at statehood. They formed a strategic alliance with the tribes of Medina, including the Jewish tribes in this city. And they were part of this Ummah Rahida, this one nation, talking about in the Mithaqah of Medina, the Medinan document, as we know. And the immigrants, the Mohajireen themselves, they come to Medina impoverished, where their lands have been taken from them, their wealth have been taken from them, they come there impoverished. So what did the Prophet do, Ali SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam? He pairs them up with one another, sometimes Mohajir with Mohajir, sometimes Mohajir with Ansari, as a type of spiritual brotherhood, as a way to ensure that people, one another's needs were taken care of, that you become responsible for this brother, that if he needs something, you have to make sure he gets it. And so the Ansari, the beautiful people they were, they opened up their hearts and opened up their homes, and they shared their wealth with Mohajirin. But on one particular occasion, and this year, the second year after the Hezbollah in Ramadan, on this particular day, we find that word had reached the Prophet, As SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, that there was a caravan with a number of goods coming from Syria, coming back down to Mecca, being led by Abu Sufyan, and about 40 other Meccans to protect the caravan. The Prophet, As SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, saw this as an opportunity to go and retrieve some of what they had, what had been taken from them, or at least to, to also take, to do similar to what had been done to them. And so about 314 of his Sahaba and SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, Mohajirin, they joined him, they set out to try to intercept the caravan. Somehow words reached, she reaches the caravan of Abu Sufyan, he's leading, and he decides that he's going to take a different path back to Mecca. And he sends a warrant before him to Mecca, asking them to inform the Meccans that, that the Muslims are coming to try to take your goods, take this caravan. The words reached Mecca, the, the little chiefs among the Meccans, they start to mobilize their forces and they head out eventually. And of course, I'm cutting out a lot of details. They mobilize their forces, they head out to, to meet the Muslims. The Muslims only want to get the spores, that's all they want. We want the property, that's all we're looking for, right? But once they, this word comes to them, realizes that, you know what, now this is army coming to kill us. Some of the Sahabah, they don't want to fight. So Yadusulullah, we just came to get the goods. We don't want to fight, right? Others say Yadusulullah, we're with you. Do whatever you want. He consults them. There's a consultation that happens. The Prophet ﷺ gives people an opportunity to express themselves and to make a decision. Do you want to fight or not fight? So again, voluntary service, but he also wants to make sure that if you do this, that you're doing it willfully, not because someone's forcing you to do it. And so, Alhamdulillah, the Muslims, they decide that they'll be ready. So they, they come to this place called Bada, which has a number of wells. An idea is given to one companion, Habab Ibn Mu'munza, after observing that the Prophet ﷺ had positioned the Muslims in a place where he thought wasn't strategically appropriate. And he asked them, Yadusulullah, is this a place that Allah has told you to put us or is this just simply your own strategy, part of your own strategy? And so he said, Yadusulullah, this is just my own idea, my own strategy. It's not revelation. And so Habab Ibn Mu'munza says it, well, I don't believe that this is a good way to station our troops. Rather, what we should do is station our troops near the water and we will go to those other wells and we fill up those wells with rocks, with stones. So, and we'll create, we'll leave our wells open and create a basin so that, and we place our own cups in it so we can drink from it. So while we fight, we can drink and they can't drink. And so the Prophet ﷺ accepted his advice. So the Prophet ﷺ, we learned lessons of leadership done from Bada. We learned lessons of courage from Bada. We learned lessons of sacrifice from Bada. So the Prophet ﷺ was showing people how to appropriately lead, especially when the decisions that have been made are going to affect not only the leader but others as well. So this becomes the case. And so eventually the armies of the Meccans, the army of the Meccans, they reach Bada. They turned out to be almost a thousand. The Muslims are a little more than 300. But Allah, upon our side of Allah, is blessing. He doesn't allow the Muslims to see the numbers of the Mushri Qeen as three times their numbers. But it also does another thing. He allows for the Mushri Qeen to see and observe that the Muslims' numbers are less fewer than theirs in order to increase their arrogance and their confidence. They become overconfident as well. And so while the battle is preparing, the Prophet ﷺ has turned to Allah and he's praying, he's praying, he's praying. And upon completion of his consultation, he actually says to Sahabah, have good tidings because Allah has promised me either one of the two factions. Either he will give us the spoils of the property we were looking for or he will give us victory of our enemies on this day. And the victory actually was the better of the two things that had been offered to the Prophet ﷺ. But he continues to pray, asking Allah and said to him, if you destroy, allow this small faction to be destroyed that you won't be worshipped in the land. You won't be worshipped again in this land. And so the fighting begins and Allah hits the very first casualty, Mehya, the Mola of Umrah al-Khattab, the first casualty of this revolutionary war. And it turns out that he himself was a black man in the same way that Christmas addicts were the first casualty of the revolutionary war of the American period. And so it begins with dueling three people who come up to do the Muslims. They overcome those on the side of the Mishri king. And then the affray begins. And so then Allah sends the angels to support the believers. And so the angels are chopping and killing and chopping off heads as well in support of the believers in this particular situation. But at the end of all of this, in spite of what appeared to be a very gruesome scene, that when we look at the number of casualties on the side of the Muslims, there are 14 casualties. And on the side of the Mishri king, there's 70. 70 people died, or 1,014 on the side of the Mishri king. And 70 of the Mishri king are taken as captives. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he gave authority and permission to the believers in this case to fight after telling them not to fight. And in one verse he described this in the following fashion. He says, Allah has been granted to those who are fought against in light of them being oppressed. And Allah is really capable of supporting them. Those who have been expelled from their homes without right, without justice, for no other reason except for saying that our Lord is Allah. What does it make you think about today? I mean, it sounds somewhat familiar to certain things that have been happening in the world. There are some people who, you know, in this country who want to keep immigrants out, keep refugees out. Some people are forcing people to enter refugee status through wars, among other things. But remember that when we look at the reasons why these wars oftentimes in the past at least were fought was because of a religious threat. Because people just couldn't deal with the very fact that certain people believe differently than they did. And there's not much difference today. There are people who really, they don't like the fact that Muslims believe in God to begin with or they believe in a certain type of morality that others don't agree with. The Quran teaches us that they will continue to fight against you until they turn you back from your religion if they're able to. That these are realities and I believe in being in this type of times is important for Muslims to return to Surahs, chapters like Surah 8, Surah Anfal, Surah Toba, Surah 9. It's important for us to read. This is all part of the Quran. We may not like the fact that we have to defend our book at times. But if we believe in the book, we believe as revealed by Allah, there's no need for embarrassment. The fact we may not have the right interpretation at times through a certain passage should not make us doubt or question the wisdom of the creator subhanahu wa ta'ala. And this is one thing we look at the Sahaba and there have been thoughts. There have been thoughts because of what they believe in, because of the morality that they accepted. Which means that if people are fighting you, that they are fighting you because there's something valuable that you have. There is something of value that you have and they may want it for themselves but feel that they can't have it or they can't bear it. But there's something value about Islam. There's something about a value about a traditional morality, traditional marriage, and so many different things you can think of that there's so many things value about what we are. But we cannot allow the fact that people are pressuring us or even killing us at times to to recant our religion, to in our hearts. It's okay if some of you are compelled to say something with your tongue, like under torture, under torture, how many under pressure, under torture if they ask you to say something. That's one thing but but sometimes some of us we give it up even just under a little bit of pressure. We want to change our religion. We want to like give it all up, change everything about what we believe and what we practice because we want to be accepted in a particular type of situation, a certain type of society. And we have the very conscious of this of what is considered to be a worthy sacrifice and what is not. In the meantime, our children are watching us, they're observing us, and if we have any hope of them being Muslims in the future, then you might as well give up that hope. If you are going to compromise your religion on very crucial issues, non-negotiable matters. I'm not saying not be compassionate of other people and understand that other people they have issues and we have issues as well. But we cannot make haram halal. We cannot normalize sinful type of actions. And so there is an aspect to the prophetic ethos which is somewhat very firm and at some times it was abrasive with regard to those who actually meant us harm and meant the Muslims harms. Harm, Ramadan is a good opportunity for us to reconnect with this history. And one of the, in my opinion, now in with this, in my opinion one of the main reasons that Muslims really suffer so much when it comes to grasping and being able to defend their religion publicly when we're challenged on a number of different issues is because because we have failed to to study our religion. And many of our leaders as well is actually have unfortunately made the mistake of shielding us from certain challenging things that in the Quran. Because even if you're a person who say you say that you don't believe in the hadith, there's enough in the Quran that troubles are now Muslims. Yeah, I mean you're still going to have to contend with blashing for fornication or cutting off your hands for theft or the hitting verse or concubines. You're going to have to solve many different things you're going to have to be confronted with. Islam is not meant for everybody. It's not. But we can't try to change it so that we can appease someone else. If you don't like it and you think go ahead free to go and do what you want to do. We don't want you to do that. But we have to understand that this is Allah's deen and we have to put our trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala increase us in our sincerity and in our faith and in our firmness and the defense of this tradition. So but in closing I'd just like to say one more once again that that when we want to talk about the prophetic ethos let's make sure that we're giving the entire picture of what he was and what he stood for that we have things this religion is called Islam and it means submission to the world of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala which fundamentally means that there are going to be certain things that are challenging. Doesn't mean that everything's going to be easy. It means that some things are going to be challenging. You know you think that it's easy for a woman who is involved with polygyny to accept that her husband is married to another woman. I mean it's not easy for her to do that and certain things even for a man at times to give up your life if you need to in defense of your family it's not an easy thing to do. But Islam is about challenges. It's about challenging yourself to become a better person to become a better person and hopefully you do those things briefly as opposed to doing so out of some threat that someone has given to you and made to you and when we look at the prophetic ethos we see that the Prophet sallallahu wa sallam was not a person who threatened people and a person who forced people to do things that he did things because he did things for people in hopes that there will be in good status standing with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala if he got into an argument with his wife he walked out why because he knew understood that if you get angry with me then Allah is going to get angry with you right so you know what rather than allow the wrath of Allah to descend upon you i'm going to leave this home right now right the Prophet sallallahu wa sallam i'm not going to force you to fight because if i force you to fight you're going to die and you're not going to die and get the reward for fighting for the right cause right the Prophet that was his way of doing things that was his way of doing things but it is Islam it's about an internal struggle more than anything else and so we ask Allah subhanahu wa sallam to help us to live upon Islam and to die upon Islam