The Resolve of Abū Hurayra: Resolve Precedes Action

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 22 September 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

O Allah, set right for us our religion, our worldly life and our Hereafter, grant us right guidance in our affairs, bless us in what You have provided for us, protect us from the punishment of the Fire, and turn away from us the causes of punishment in this world and the Hereafter, by Your mercy and good pleasure, Your kindness and generosity, O Lord of the worlds.

Glory be to Allah, the All-Powerful! Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ does not only tell us the stories of those who came before; it tells us the stories of souls, so that we too may take a stance toward them, by the permission of our Lord, glory be to Him, exalted is He. And it is as though I sense from what we recite that a person's resolve is purer than his deed; it is the kindler, it is the mover, and were it not for resolve, a person would not move.

A Man from the Depths of the Peninsula

Yesterday we were speaking about Abū Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, and I recall that simple man who came from the depths of the Peninsula, from Daws in Yemen, hearing of the existence of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and hearing about him from a man who stayed with the Prophet no more than a single sitting. The narrations say that the tribe of Daws accepted Islam at the hands of al-Ṭufayl ibn ʿAmr al-Dawsī, may Allah be pleased with him, who had entered Mecca and they began warning him about the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: Beware of listening to this man, for he separates a man from his wife! And the narration says that his caution reached the point that he put in his ears kursuf (cotton) so as not to hear what Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was saying.

Yet the will of the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, attains its end, and the words of the Prophet ﷺ, as he recited the Qur'an, reached the ears of al-Ṭufayl while he was circling the Kaaba. Imagine the scene: Ṭufayl circling in his pre-Islamic state, the Prophet ﷺ reciting the Qur'an, the man with cotton in his ears so as not to hear anything, and suddenly the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, brings this Qur'an to his hearing! So he says to himself in his famous phrase: "Woe to you, Ṭufayl! You are a man of intellect, so why do you not listen to the man and see what he has?" And imagine that in the matter there is one who hears about you and one who hears from you.

The point is that he sat before the Prophet ﷺ, who recited to him the beginning of Sūrat Fuṣṣilat (and we have spoken about this matter before), and he accepted Islam in his presence. Then he said: O Messenger of Allah, Daws are a people among whom adultery has spread, and he asked to return to them, so the Prophet ﷺ sent him to them, and he set out.

Look: he did not sit with the Prophet ﷺ for three years or four or five studying knowledge, taking the university degree and then the master's; he did not sit that long period, but he set out with sincere words in his heart and soul. And I want to imagine what it was that he was explaining to the tribe of Daws all this time until the tribe accepted Islam and the people accepted Islam. And this happened perhaps in the sixth or seventh year of the mission, while the Prophet ﷺ remained in Mecca thirteen years calling, and then moved to Medina.

Longing Without Means of Communication

And Abū Hurayra's longing for the Prophet ﷺ grew time after time. Based on what? And what was the mechanism of knowing that existed at that time? There was no one sending one another messages on "Snapchat," nor "Messenger" with voice and picture, so what were the means of communication? Nothing but that faith stirs in souls and awakens hearts, so he set out with a group of his people from Daws in Yemen straight to Medina, and they reached Medina approximately after Khaybar, in the sixth or seventh year of the Prophet's ﷺ Hijra.^[1] And he entered Medina and kept constant company with the person of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

Put a hundred lines under the phrase "kept constant company with the person of the Prophet ﷺ," because you have here a very important matter, which is the matter of constant companionship and what it requires. For when we mention the stories narrated of Abū Hurayra's situations with the Prophet ﷺ, you see what he used to laugh at, what he used to weep at, what his heart's passion intensified toward, and the like.

The People of the Ṣuffa

Abū Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, kept constant company with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ until he was one of the People of the Ṣuffa. And who are the People of the Ṣuffa? A group who owned nothing; one of them would come and sit in this place, and Allah, glory be to Him, is the Provider, the All-Knowing. Imagine people coming in around ʿAṣr or Maghrib, and one who has a morsel in his hand, and one who has something left with him, and one who knows that there are people in the place and so leaves them something; he sits owning of his day's sustenance only what Allah guides hearts to bring him, so someone whose heart Allah guides comes and brings what he has, and our companion awaits the bounty of the Lord of Might, glory be to Him.

In return for what was that? Pay attention: when we speak about people's coming to Medina we find that each of them found his goal. The merchant gifted in his trade, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf for example, when he came to Medina said: Show me the market. And likewise ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq and others, may Allah be pleased with all the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ: they came to Medina with nothing, yet each of them attained his aim until he became among the richest of people. And each time the Messenger of Allah ﷺ called to spending, as if it were a donation campaign, people would come saying: This is what we have, O Messenger of Allah! And they would put down everything they had. And you remember perfectly the narration of Abū Bakr when he left Mecca: what did he take with him? He took all his wealth to spend on the call of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

The point is that everyone who came to Medina attained his aim through the blessing of the Prophet's ﷺ presence in it, and through the resolve Allah had blessed him with. So Abū Hurayra entered among those who entered, at different times, so what was his aim? He had no aim but the Messenger of Allah. If people came to be around the Prophet so as to take from him, then it was as though Abū Hurayra intended to take the Prophet himself ﷺ, so he sat around him and learned from him.

The Vessel from Which Nothing Leaks

And you imagine someone keeping constant company who wants to record everything, so tasks and information crowd his mind and head, so he came to the Prophet ﷺ complaining to him of his poor memory, saying: O Messenger of Allah, I cannot keep up. So the Prophet ﷺ commanded him to spread out his cloak, and prayed for him, and he became one of the vessels of knowledge.

Reflect on the word "vessel"; a word indicating a place where something is put and nothing leaks from it: nothing comes out, neither from above nor from below. So he was one of the vessels of knowledge. And the stock of Abū Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, of ḥadīths he narrates from the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is very great.

Abū Hurayra's Mother

And among the famous situations of his, to indicate that feeling, is that he came once and said: O Messenger of Allah, my mother, my mother! This good lady who came from the farthest part of the world does not want to accept Islam. And I wonder: this lady saw the condition of her son, and saw the Prophetic community. And I do not describe it as the best community nor the most intelligent nor the purest nor the cleanest, for the phrase "the virtuous community" is too small for the community of the Prophet ﷺ. She saw all that in goodness, she saw people praying behind the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and saw the Messenger of Allah reciting the Qur'an in people's hearing in the prayers, and saw this grandeur, and yet she does not accept Islam! Allahu akbar! This matter needs study: what prevents her? Perhaps it was that she wished for her son a better future, and wanted him to be a doctor or an engineer, and found him poor, sitting beside this religion, as if she were saying: What have you brought us to, to beg here? And this is merely a guess that we are thinking over together, and I have nothing to establish it.

So he said: O Messenger of Allah, my mother, my mother! So the Prophet ﷺ prayed for her. The Prophet ﷺ prayed for her, and our companion was overjoyed, and flew to his mother's land to give her the good news that the Prophet ﷺ had prayed for her, and as soon as he reached his homeland he found that she had washed and testified that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

The supplication came first. So to those who complain: My son is disobedient, and I do not know what to do! Just supplicate to Allah, blessed and exalted.

Resolve Before Action

The point is that this journey left us Abū Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him. The man's resolve preceded his action; were it not that we have resolve, no goals would be achieved in our hands. A person who lives without resolve lives without spirit, lives without life. What is your aim? What do you want from this world? What do you want to come out with? And at the same time, a person who says "enough" in any field begins the stages of early death; the first thing that halts his ambitions and purposes and goals begins early death. And no doubt we are human, weariness afflicts us at times, especially with the abundance of events and their circulation, and the abundance of disputes and problems and conditions, so we say: That's it, we have grown weary.

The point is that Abū Hurayra said to the Prophet ﷺ one day: Pray to Allah for me and for my mother that He make us among the most beloved of people to the Ummah. So he prayed for him, and he became among the most beloved of Allah's creation to the Ummah. And the question I always ask is: if any of you hears the name of Abū Hurayra, does he find anything in himself other than acceptance? We have not found in the whole world a believer objecting to the existence of Abū Hurayra, neither in remembrance nor in biography. Just imagine that he devoted his entire life after the death of the Prophet ﷺ to giving people what he had absorbed, making himself a vessel, until, when the years passed and the days elapsed and the Prophet ﷺ died, he remained with the Sunna of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

The Question That Poses Itself

And the question that always poses itself: what resolve do we carry in our hearts, especially the resolve to seek knowledge? Where is it? I ask Allah to realize it in our hearts and souls, to make us among the bearers of this trust and help us to convey it, and that we be an example of it. We ask Allah, mighty and majestic, that we not be put to shame in our character, nor in our religion, nor in our trustworthiness, and that we be granted from Him an understanding by which we live and for which we die. And I ask Him, blessed and exalted, to bestow upon us the blessing of sincerity, and to grant us truthfulness in what we claim, and that we not be tried with lying, neither against ourselves nor against people. O Allah, amen.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The events of al-Ṭufayl ibn ʿAmr and Abū Hurayra were mentioned according to the speaker's context and narration, and no attribution was added to them. The speaker gave the date of the arrival, after Khaybar, as the sixth or seventh year, and it is well known that Khaybar was in the seventh. The ḥadīth of spreading out the cloak was narrated by al-Bukhārī, and the ḥadīth of the Prophet's ﷺ prayer for Abū Hurayra's mother and for him was narrated by Muslim, and the speaker cited them by meaning, not by their wording.