 This Obudiyah is our reason for existence as Allah says and it's in this capacity of being God's slave That Allah most praises his Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he says Subhan Allah Subhan Allah the asra bi abdihi Laylam min al masjid al harami al masjid al aqsa glory be to he who took a slave One night on a journey from the sacred mosque to the far mosque And also at the beginning of certain calf, which we recite on Friday every week Alhamdulillah, lady and Zala a la abdihi the kitab Praise be to God who revealed unto his slave the scripture Therefore it also follows that the reason for the very existence of each and every one of us here today That is to become slaves unto Allah that is to become Muhammad in our character and in our actions As Allah also tells us cool In Kuntum Tehibbun Allah Fatta be on me. You have been come a lot. We are going to come to know about them say oh Muhammad If you love Allah follow me Allah will love you and forgive you your sins and also in a hadith Narrated in in Bukhari the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam repeats the same meaning. He says Kullu umati yadkul jannah illa man aba Every one of my community will enter the paradise except those who refuse So the Sahaba asked who would refuse? Yeah, Rasulullah who would refuse entrance into paradise? And so he said man a ta'ani dahal al jannah woman asani faqad aba He's Allah some said whoever obeys me enters paradise and he who defies me has indeed refused This emulation of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in every detail of our lives in all that he commands and all that he prohibits lies at the very core of what it means to be a religious person But we should be clear here I don't mean by emulating the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam That we emulate him just in the obvious ways of praying and fasting and making Hajj This every Muslim does and in fact to be Muslim you must do these No, what emulation means what it deba really means is following the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam also In that in every takbir that we do in the prayer that is done with a focused heart Aware that we are doing as the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam did in his takbir That in every ruku and every bow and position in the prayer that we do it with a flat back because he sallallahu alayhi wa sallam did with a flat back And that every sujud that we do is with humility and with the knowledge that there's no position in which a person is closer to his Lord Than in prostration for this is what the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam informed us on his blessed tongue And so this is emulation, but this is just emulation in the acts of worship. What about emulation of him sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in our character? What about emulation of him in our social interactions? Do we follow the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in being satisfied and being content with what Allah has allotted for us in this world? And if we are content, are we content with Allah's provision because this was a way of our beloved Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Or is there an ulterior motive here that maybe because studies have shown that maintaining a stoic calm in the face of adversity guarantees a happier lifestyle than greed? Do we detach ourselves from the world because this was the way of our beloved Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Or are we doing it because it's trendy to be a minimalist now? We should know that there's no such thing as doing the right thing for the wrong reasons Because to do anything for the wrong reasons is to do the wrong thing Because this secretly chips away at our religiosity, it's chips away at the core of the prophetic message And this is something that we need to be careful of for it's subtle Because like we said in the beginning, what's the core of the prophetic message? To be a slave unto Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala Therefore, there's no path to God, there's no path to slave unto God, there's no path to fulfilling this primordial covenant that we all took Except by saying to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, I hear and I obey As the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam also tells us None of you truly believe until his passions come to follow what I have brought No one will find God by following their own path No one will find God by their own desires And this is a trait that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam warned his ummah that we would see in the latter days He said You would see greed obeyed, you would see whims followed, and you would see every opinionated person impressed with his own opinion And we definitely see this today, you find all sorts of groups advocating to perform in this religion You find groups of Muslims today advocating social justice, but they don't have to faint as clue what prophetic justice looks like You find groups today claiming that the whole legal tradition of the sharia effect of this religion needs reform because apparently in this modern age of enlightenment we can move beyond this But they haven't even bothered to open the books of the great legal scholars of the past of this 1400 year tradition that we have Because if they were to, they would find that all of the thick rulings that had been brought to us and the methodologies of the four schools that led us to them All of this is grounded in the practice of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and in nothing else You find groups of Muslims today also advocating that we should throw out all of the hadith collections and the hadith corpus Based on the claim that some of the narrators I guess were chauvinistic or something like that And yet, how is it that they have access to a perfect conception of this religion that they know what to keep and what to throw out As if anyone can have a perfect conception of this religion without the hadith and the words of our beloved Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Where does this all come from? Obey and greed, following personal whims and every opinionated person being impressed with his own opinion Allah says Allah says, no by your Lord, by your Lord, he swears They do not believe until they give you, O Muhammad, authority over what happens between them, he decides And then they do not find discomfort by what you, O Muhammad, decide and until they submit completely This then is what itibaa truly means I say to you this and I ask Allah to forgive me and you and the women of the Muslims So please forgive me and I will forgive you There are two verses of interest here that speak about itibaa, about following and what comes of following Allah tells us when quoting the dua of Sayyidina Ibrahim sallallahu alayhi wa sallam For his people, he says Whoever follows me, then he is of me And then in contrast, Allah says to Sayyidina Nuh, alayhi sallam He is speaking about the defined son of Sayyidina Nuh Saying that he is not from his family because of his impious actions, Allah says Allah says O Noah, he, meaning your defined son, is not from your family Rather, he is performing unrighteous, impious actions And so what we gather from the juxtaposition of these two verses Is that to follow and emulate someone means that the follower becomes part of the one who has followed And likewise, by breaking off the tie of following, the tie of emulation Even kinship bonds are severed The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says Salman is of us, the people of the house This is Sayyidina Salman, the Persian, who wandered in his life from slave master to slave master Searching for the true Prophet until he saw the blessed seal of prophecy on the back of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam His sincere pursuit of the final Prophet and his emulation of him sallallahu alayhi wa sallam After reaching him is what made him part of the prophetic family of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And so too is the cage for each of us To enter the family, to enter the house of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam We need the key to open that house that is emulating and following the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam In every detail of our lives We see this in the example of Sayyidina Umar, Rabi Allahu Anhu Who is known to frequently come to the black stone and kiss it But when he would kiss it, he would say I know that you are a stone that can neither hurt nor benefit And were it not for the fact that I saw the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam kissing you I would not kiss you It's narrated by Sayyidin Ibn Aslam, Rabi Allahu Anhu That he was once traveling with the companion of Ibn Umar, Rabi Allahu Anhu And as they were passing close by to some place Ibn Umar turned his camel away from it, diverting their natural path of travel When asked why he said I saw the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam do this And so I did it Another story Once the father of Muawiyah Ibn Qura Said that he met the Ghazmasri Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam While he was in a group And he pledged allegiance to him And at the time the buttons of the shirt of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam were unbuttoned And Orwa Ibn Abdullah said I never saw Muawiyah or his son after that day Except they were whether in the winter or in the summer Both they were always had an unbuttoned shirt It's also related of Ibn Umar, Rabi Allahu Anhu That when traveling between Mecca and Medina on the road There was a tree And he would always stop by at that tree and take a nap underneath it And when asked why he did this He would explain that he saw the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam doing this And that's it No questions, no explanation I saw the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam do it And so I did it Stories like these of the companions and the followers are numerous And what we see in their examples is that They did not question why They just saw what the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam did And emulated it in their own practice Now someone may hear these stories and think That's a little bit irrational right To do something without knowing why No, this isn't irrational But what this is, is love It's like the poet said I pass by the houses, the homes of my beloved This wall I would kiss and that wall I would kiss It's not out of love of the house that has captured my heart But love of the one who would live in the house The pious early generations Their pure ittiba, their detailed careful ittiba Was only out of love of the messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And nothing but love of the messenger A love so intense That they were entirely engrossed in the minutia Of his words, his deeds, and his states And blind and deaf to anyone other than the beloved And so my advice to myself and to everyone here today Is ittiba But ittiba in the way of following the example Of these great lovers In that however each of us is struggling To get better, struggling to get over Some poor habit that we may have That we root this improvement in the love Of the messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Because that is where Allah's pleasure is found And that's where paradise is found, inshallah Ta'ala Allah says in his noble scripture Allahumma sallim anasaydena wa kurrat ya'yunina Muhammad Wa ala aarihi wa sahbihi wa mad tabi'ahum bi ihsan ila yawm ad-din Allahumma inna nna salluka al mutab'a Di rasurika sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Fi jami'il aqwari wal af'ali wal ahwal Allahumma gfiril l-mukminina wal mu'mina Wal muslimina wal hubul muslimat Al-ahya'im min hamdina wa l-mukminina Wa l-mukminina wa l-mukminina Wa l-mukminina wa l-mukminina Wa l-mukminina wa l-mukminina Al-ahya'im min hamdina wal amwad Inna kaya maulana sami'un gharibun mujibu d-da'waat Allahumma nsuru l-islam wa l-muslimin Wa dillil shirk wa l-mushrikin Allahumma ya'a haiw ya'a qayyum Bi rahmatika nastaqith Aslihinana sh'anana kullah Wa la takilna ila anfusina tarfa ta'ain Allahumma jaalil Quran al-rabi'a kulubina Wa n'ura sudorina Wa rizuknatilawatahu anaa Al-dayl wa atraaf al-nahar Al-fahad hi'il ummat al-muhammadiyya Fi jami'i biladiha Inna ka'ala kulli shayin qadeer Wa bil'ijabat jadeer Qalurasulgh allahi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam Arhamu ummati bi ummati abubaka Wa ashaduhum fi dinilahi umar Wa astaquhum haiaan othman Wa qadahum ali Wa fa'atimatu sayyidatunisa yahul jannah Wa l-hasnuh wa l-hussain Sayyidah shabab i ahlal jannah Wa hamzatuh asad allahi wa asad rasulah Khairul Quranikarni Asad al-Kurabah We seek refuge with Allah from the작وكة Wa l-Madinah yu'ijadunahum Wa ibadah allah We seek refuge with Allah from the작وكة Wa l-Husain Wa ibadah al-Kurabah Wa ibadah al-Fahshahi Wa al-Munukri Wa l-Baghih We seek refuge with Allah from the작وكة Wa l-Baghih We seek refuge with Allah from the작وكة Wa l-Baghih