Struggle Against Your Own Tyrant Sultan!

Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani

9 March 2012   Chicago, Illinois

Jumu`ah Khutbah at Private Residence

O Muslims and Believers! I was noticing after coming back from Hajj that we were always thinking about Madinat al-Munawarrah and the Ka`bah. Alhamdulillah, today we have an instrument through which we can see the Ka`bah live 24 hours a day. With it you can see hundreds of thousands of people making tawaaf non-stop, whether you open it at Fajr, Zhuhr, `Asr, Maghrib or even at midnight, at any time you will see the people moving around and you all their movements. You will be happy to see the Holy Ka`bah and the Holy Shrine of the Prophet (s), the Rawdah.

This gives us an understanding that those people making tawaaf or visiting the Prophet (s) cannot hide themselves, and if they stay there for 24 hours, they will be under the camera for 24 hours, Allah is seeing them. If we are under a dunya camera this way, what do you think about akhirah--is Allah seeing us or not? We know we sin and make mistakes, but Allah is asking us to repent. Yes, we do make sins, but we are not happy with that and we are regretting that and asking for Allah's forgiveness!

We can sin in any way, even if you break the heart of a person, if it is not in a just way (it will be considered a sin). If you are oppressing someone you are committing a sin, and if someone is oppressing you he is committing a sin, but Allah will reward the one who forgives.

The Prophet (s) said in his hadith something that will make you tremble and worry! Hudhayfa (r) related that the Prophet (s) said, “By the One in Whose Hands is my soul,” giving an oath by Allah, “people will call for good.” But what kind of good, something you think is good, or good that the general people are accepting? Something might be good for you, but not for them. “And you are going to forbid what to keep away from and that which is not good.” It means, you are going to practice amr bi ’l-ma`roof wan-nahiyy`ani ’l-munkar, everyone is trying to do as much as they can. “Even though it is so near that Allah might send punishment on you.”

It means you are calling for good and prohibiting bad, so then why is Allah sending punishment? So to take the punishment away, what do you have to do? The hadith continues, "So then you will ask, ‘Yaa Rabbee! We are calling for good and prohibiting bad,’” but that good and bad is where the problem is because that is where your imagination comes in, so it might be bad in Allah's understanding and opposite in yours. So even if you make du`a it is not going to be accepted, and even if you ask for Allah's punishment to be taken away, it is not taken!

And today there are too many people calling for good and prohibiting what is bad, and too much punishment is coming today, which is a Sign of the Last Days! So many groups knock on your door and call you to good and prohibit bad, and yet still punishment is coming down.

Look at so many Arab countries; were they not calling for good and prohibiting bad? Look today in the last Arab country, where they are under too much punishment (Syria) and there children are being killed! But they raise their hands to ask Allah to take it away and no answer is coming. The punishment is due to too much evil all around in the environment. So the best thing is to hide, to disappear, to be nothing!

Mawlana Shaykh pulled back for forty days, from the first day of Rabi` al-Awwal to the tenth day of Rabi`u ’th-Thani. We spoke to him three days ago, and he said, “Tonight is the first night I slept well, and today I slept well.” He said, “For forty days I was carrying `aja’ib yok,” a mysterious heaviness that cannot be described. This is not just for those forty days, this is the summit of the mountain, the peak! But for many, many years he was carrying that heaviness, `aja'ib yok, which means “astonishing, strange, stunning, without description.”

“I am carrying that responsibility,” Mawlana Shaykh said. It means he is carrying the responsibility of the ummah, because he inherits from the Prophet (s), so he is of the type mentioned:

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Alaa inna awliyaaullaahi laa khawfun `alayhim wa laa hum yahzanoon.

Behold! Verily on the friends of Allah there is no fear, nor shall they grieve. (Surat al-Yunus, 10:62)

Grandshaykh `AbdAllah (q) used to say, “The Prophet (s) is calling me to him from Madinatu ’l-Munawwarah, but the condition is to get an eye operation, and he said, ‘Don’t come to me until you do the eye operation.’” And he used to say, “I am going to a place that no one knows.” He completed seclusion and said, “Take me to Damascus, and for the sixteenth day of Sha`baan we took him to Sham, then in October during Ramadan he passed away.

Now awliyaullah cannot carry what is going on; every wali is pushing on the other wali because it is too heavy, there is too much fear, ru`b, too many scary situations and they cannot take it. No wali can take it! It is not easy because they make du`a and it is not answered. So in such a situation, what is best?

As narrated by Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud that the Prophet (s) asked the Sahaabah (r), “What is the best jihad?” He (s) said, “The best jihad is the word of truth.” Today they say the best jihad is to go and fight, but the Prophet (s) said, “The best jihad is to stand up to a tyrant.” The hadith has two different words: kalimat al-haqq, “the word of truth,” and kalimat al-`adl,  “the word of justice.” It means you have to say these best of words to a tyrant leader, and today too many leaders are tyrants! Can you say to them a word of truth or justice? They will not listen to you!

But the interpretation of this is, “The nearest person to you whom you know perfectly well is a tyrant sultan, and yet you are keeping quiet.” Who is that tyrant you are all afraid of and you cannot say one word to it? It is your self: your ego, your arrogance, your pride and your stubbornness. That arrogant tyrant is in you!

And also Allah (swt) said:

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Fa alhamahaa fujoorahaa wa taqwaahaa.

He inspired the self of its good and its bad. (Surat ash-Shams, 91:8) 

Iblees came and told Sayyidina Adam (a), “Eat from this tree and you will live forever!” and Sayyidina Adam (a) listened to what Iblees said, not to what Allah (swt) said. (This means now) there is no one who can say they are not in it! “My nafs, nafsee” is that tyrant, about whom the Prophet (s) said, “Say to it, ‘You are stubborn and ignorant--you, my ego!--and don’t raise your head!’”

The Prophet (s) also said, “No one was able to ride on his ego except me.”

We must know that we cannot reach that point, but we must struggle against that and do our best, at least to build ourself back up, because we see how our ego is sultan; you see it in how people speak, they are rude to each other and so angry, trying to blame everyone else as if they alone are pure, perfect angels coming from Heaven! No! Everyone has a deficiency, nuqsaniyya, so let us throw away that deficiency and fight our own ego, the tyrant within ourselves!

(Du`a)

(End)

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