Avoiding
Alláh’s wrath
Khalid Mustafa Abdul Kader/Royal Holloway College/Univ. of London /UK.
A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bisilláhir rahmánir raheem.
Bismillahi
Ar-Rahmaani Ar-Raheem
My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Islam,
In
a previous khutbah, I explained why Allah, the Most High ended surat Al-Fatiha
with the supplication not to follow the path of those who earned His wrath
(anger) nor of those who have gone astray.
We saw how those who earned his anger were punished and why.
Today we shall, by the Grace of Allah, continue.
‘And
when Moses said unto his people: Lo! Allah commands you that you sacrifice a
cow, they said: Do you make fun of us? He answered: Allah forbids that I should be among
the ignorant (fool)’
To
put it bluntly, what they said to Moses, upon our prophet and upon him be peace,
in today’s terminology: ‘You must be joking. What do you take us for?’
What language to use with a prophet and messenger of Allah but the Holy
Qur’aan puts it as politely as possible.
But let us see why Allah commanded them to sacrifice a cow.
The tafseer relates a long story but briefly: a man who was very poor had a very rich uncle who had no
family to inherit him. The former
was not only materially poor but also morally bankrupt.
He therefore killed his uncle so that he may get the inheritance.
He then carried the body and placed it near someone’s house and accused
them of murdering his uncle. There
were arguments and counter accusations and tempers were high until someone
suggested that they ask Moses to judge in the dispute.
And that is when he told them:
‘ Allah commands you to sacrifice a cow’
The
command was simple and straightforward: sacrifice a cow.
Did they obey the command? Certainly not.
After accusing Moses of making fun of them, they started asking
questions; needless questions and the more questions they asked the more
difficult Allah, Most High, made it for them as we shall see.
Now
do as you are commanded.’
Notice again they refer to
Allah as ‘your Lord’ as if He, Glorified be He,
is only the Lord of Moses and not theirs as well.
Anyway, they persisted.
‘They
said: ask your Lord to make plain to us what she is: to us all heifers are
alike.
We
wish indeed for guidance if Allah wills’
Now
as they were not seeking information to clarify an issue because the issue
itself was simple, Allah confused their minds, now they are seeking guidance.
‘He
said: ‘He says: a heifer not trained to till the soil or water the fields;
sound and without a blemish’. They
said: ‘now you have brought the truth’.
They
did not want to obey a command to sacrifice a cow; any cow.
Where are they going to find a heifer that will meet all these
specifications? According to the tafseer, they searched far and wide before
finding the required heifer. Its
owner refused to sell it insisting on a very high price.
So they brought him before Moses (pbuh) who ordered them to pay him the
price he wanted – its weight in gold or its skin filled with gold.
It
is also out of the mercy of His Most Beloved Messenger (pbuh) for the Ummah that
he kept reminding them not to ask useless and needless questions about matters
that Allah, Blessed be His Name, did not wish to burden the Ummah with details
thereof.
Arabic
dua to close
Second Khutbah:
Bismillahi
Ar-Rahmaani Ar-Raheem
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Islam,
‘Then
they offered her in sacrifice and scarcely they did’
‘Remember you slew man and fell into a dispute among yourselves as to the crime.
But Allah was to bring forth what you did hide’
‘So We said: ‘Strike the body of the dead man with a piece of the
sacrificed heifer. Thus Allah
brings the dead to life and shows you His signs. Perchance you may understand.’
And that was the purpose of the Command.
When they struck the body of the dead person with a piece of heifer, by
the Grace of Allah, he was brought back to life for a short while.
He was asked: who killed you? He
said, my nephew. And he died again. Justice
was done and the nephew was punished in accordance with the Law. And praise be
to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.
But we, the Muslim Ummah, whose land was usurped, whose some of its most
holy places have been defiled, whose old men, women and children were savagely
murdered, who offered thousands of martyrs and whose young men and women in
their thousands are still imprisoned in We are still waiting for justice.
We neither seek nor want for the justice of man but pray for Divine
justice from the Most Just, the Wise. A
small step in that direction has been achieved by the Grace of Allah….but we
pray to Allah, Subhanu, to aid the
Ummah and return all our land to the Muslims.
Ammen.
Ameen! Aqeemus salaah!
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