The Conditions of the Faith That Brings Supremacy

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on July 25, 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

In the verses in which our Lord, glory be to Him and exalted, says: ﴿وَلَا تَهِنُوا وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا وَأَنتُمُ الْأَعْلَوْنَ إِنْ كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ﴾ ("So do not weaken and do not grieve, for you will be superior if you are [true] believers")^[1] there is a divine promise for which Allah made a principal condition, which is faith: ﴿إِنْ كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ﴾ ("if you are [true] believers"). And the regulations of this faith fall within two contexts: a near context that revolves around this promise, and a longer context that surrounds it.

So what are the requirements of this faith that makes the community of Islam the highest? And when we say "the highest," what is meant is not supremacy in authority so much as supremacy in standing, dominance, managing situations, moving matters, and directing the affairs of the world; you are the highest because this directing is in your hand. For authority here is not a psychological rank by which one rises over others and says: I am better than you, but is the authority of responsibility.

The Circle of Conditions Around the Condition

Around this near condition is a circle of other conditions. The first of them in the sūrah are the calls of ﴿يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا﴾ ("O you who have believed"), a group about which the talk is long, but here He says: ﴿لَا تَأْكُلُوا الرِّبَا أَضْعَافًا مُّضَاعَفَةً﴾ ("Do not consume usury, doubled and multiplied").^[2] So what is the relation of usury to the questions of wars with which this blessed sūrah deals? The sūrah treats the conditions of the believing society at the Battle of Badr and after it, and prepares the community for more advancement. And the Battle of Uhud was a middle stage between two great battles: Badr and al-Aḥzāb.

Badr, Uhud, and al-Aḥzāb

At Badr, Allah, blessed and exalted, made all the means available to a small believing group who had nothing in their hands. Imagine: three horsemen in an army of three hundred, and before them a thousand, quite simply. They owned nothing except that Allah empowered them to the extent that made us comprehend: ﴿إِذْ يُوحِي رَبُّكَ إِلَى الْمَلَائِكَةِ أَنِّي مَعَكُمْ فَثَبِّتُوا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا﴾ ("[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, 'I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed'"), and the casting of terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved works on two scopes: the scope of the people with us, and the scope of the other side into whose hearts terror is cast. The Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, steadied them up to a stage of which it was said: ﴿وَمَا رَمَيْتَ إِذْ رَمَيْتَ وَلَكِنَّ اللَّهَ رَمَى﴾ ("And you threw not, [O Muhammad], when you threw, but it was Allah who threw");^[3] that is, the work was not our work at all.

Then came the Battle of Uhud with more empowerment in the means for the Muslim community; the people had a little more strength, but a very slight gap remained: ﴿مِنكُم مَّن يُرِيدُ الدُّنْيَا وَمِنكُم مَّن يُرِيدُ الْآخِرَةَ﴾ ("Among you are some who desire this world, and among you are some who desire the Hereafter").^[8] Do you see a flaw in that? Yes; in faith-based work, daʿwah work, and Islamic work, whatever you call it, this point must not exist in any way. If the world seeps into the hearts, works are corrupted. Hence these tasks require a "complete certificate"; the physician-engineer works in another field, but the surgeon who enters to perform an operation needs special skills. And you are the owner of "special operations," so you must have a special certificate, which is pure faith with nothing mixing it. And that is why we saw wonders at Badr, and saw mixing at Uhud.

Then when the Battle of al-Aḥzāb came and the Arabs gathered, with all their multitudes and all they possessed, the people of faith gathered, owning nothing of their religion or their worldly affairs except clinging to Allah. So Allah inspired them to dig the trench around Madīnah. And imagine the state of the society, with the Prophet ﷺ tying two stones on his belly from the severity of hunger, and the working soldiers who would defend this community and this land, protect the borders, and close the gaps, finding nothing to eat.

And there comes to us an interesting story, the story of Jābir, when he saw the state of the Prophet ﷺ with two stones tied on his belly, so he asked his wife, and she confided to him that he should bring the Prophet ﷺ with one or two others, for they had a small something that would barely fill a dish. So he called the Prophet ﷺ, or words to that effect, that the family of Jābir had made food for them. The story has its corroborations and the discussion of it has another place,^[4] but what fed all of this army and this society was what was in the dish of Jābir's wife, something simple by which Allah is able to meet the needs of the community if it does without anyone else for His sake. But we hung on the hems of the great, and left our Lord, and hung on humans on the horizontal level. ﴿إِنْ كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ﴾ ("if you are [true] believers").

Other Calls in the Sūrah

He says, glory be to Him, before that: ﴿لَا تَتَّخِذُوا بِطَانَةً مِّن دُونِكُمْ﴾ ("Do not take as intimates those other than yourselves"), and in the middle: ﴿اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ … وَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنتُم مُّسْلِمُونَ﴾ ("Fear Allah … and do not die except as Muslims"), and all these are other calls in the same sūrah. And here He says: ﴿لَا تَأْكُلُوا الرِّبَا أَضْعَافًا مُّضَاعَفَةً وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ﴾ ("Do not consume usury, doubled and multiplied, and fear Allah that you may be successful"), then after the command to obey: ﴿وَسَارِعُوا إِلَىٰ مَغْفِرَةٍ مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ وَجَنَّةٍ عَرْضُهَا السَّمَاوَاتُ وَالْأَرْضُ أُعِدَّتْ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ﴾ ("And hasten to forgiveness from your Lord and a garden as wide as the heavens and earth, prepared for the righteous").^[5]

Spending: Material and Moral

﴿الَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي السَّرَّاءِ وَالضَّرَّاءِ وَالْكَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ وَالْعَافِينَ عَنِ النَّاسِ﴾ ("Who spend [in the cause of Allah] during ease and hardship and who restrain anger and who pardon the people"). He began with material spending because it is easier than moral spending. And look at this small point: pardoning people, is it material spending or moral? And people do not see it as spending at all. But it is among the highest peaks of spending: that you spend from yourself by pardoning someone.

One person was told: Pardon your brother, and he said: By Allah, I pardon him in this world because I do not even want to see him in the Hereafter; I do not want him to stand before our Lord to be asked and reckoned with, so from now on "go, may Allah ease it for you," and I will not see you even in Paradise. Imagine the amount of pain that wrings such a person as he speaks of his brother like this: "I won't see you even in front of our Lord on the Day of Resurrection." My brother, did Allah command you this? This pardon that our Lord wants is spending at a higher level. Then the Lord of the worlds says: ﴿وَالْكَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ وَالْعَافِينَ عَنِ النَّاسِ ۗ وَاللَّهُ يُحِبُّ الْمُحْسِنِينَ﴾ ("and who restrain anger and who pardon the people; and Allah loves the doers of good").

Then He describes the people of awareness and alert consciousness, as though their "radars" are running: if they commit an immorality or wrong themselves, they take notice immediately: ﴿ذَكَرُوا اللَّهَ فَاسْتَغْفَرُوا لِذُنُوبِهِمْ﴾ ("they remember Allah and seek forgiveness for their sins").^[6] These are people pure, with no murkiness in their souls or hearts, carrying no evil in their souls; pure, clean, God-fearing, who know the starting point and the finishing point, unlike a society that does not know where it is.

Patience Is Required of Everyone

And imagine His saying, the Exalted: ﴿أَمْ حَسِبْتُمْ أَن تَدْخُلُوا الْجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَعْلَمِ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا مِنكُمْ وَيَعْلَمَ الصَّابِرِينَ﴾ ("Or did you think that you would enter Paradise while Allah has not yet made evident those of you who fought in His cause and made evident those who are steadfast?").^[7] Patient over what? We imagine that managing wars and the people on the fronts is hard work, and it is one kind of work among the kinds of work. You enter the operating room and leave it happy, praise be to Allah, Allah, glory be to Him, saved a person through you; and you rejoice in your accomplishment, and you may remain in the operating room an hour or two or more, depending on the specialty and the operation. And likewise the one who stands on the pulpit to speak to people with talk like this, and when he finishes his sermon he rejoices in the blessing of Allah that He accomplished for him a task for which he may have sat preparing for a week. And the one on the battlefield and in the field, this is his work too, and every work has its peril; but the brave soldier fights, and this for him is natural, he is accustomed to it, he finishes it and says: Wonderful, I am happy. And this joy and moral delight indicate that it is a skill and a very natural work. So the competencies within societies, each works in his own field, and the man of the battle does not outdo the man of the operating room.

And one of our dear loved ones works as a police officer, and we say to him: This job of yours is very charming, wearing the uniform and the jacket and going back and forth looking like that. He says to me: No, you do not see the dangers of this profession; you stop people at night and then they come out with weapons and beat… By Allah the matter is wrong, we used to see it from afar and it looked nice. So this has its for and against, and every work has its for and against.

And my point in this sentence is that the matter of patience required for the victory of the community is required of all its individuals. So if there is combined with sincerity: ﴿وَيَعْلَمَ الصَّابِرِينَ﴾ ("and made evident those who are steadfast"), this sincerity and this patience and this material and moral spending and this spiritual fortitude, they are among the requirements of that faith which is a requirement for the supremacy which is the indicator of victory.

So who responds? Each according to his capacity and ability; look at what you are able to do and do it. And know that empowerment for the community may come from spending a little money, or from pardoning a person, or from maintaining kinship ties, or from kindness to parents, or from doing good to a weak person or a neighbor, or from feeding a widow or a poor person.

I ask Allah, glory be to Him and exalted, for me and for you for safety, well-being, gentleness, and mercy. O Allah, mend the fracture of our community, and prepare for it a right course in which the people of obedience to You are honored, the people of disobedience to You are guided, and the people of faith are made firm in their faith. O Allah, we ask You for what none other than You gives, we ask You for sincerity, and we ask You, our Lord, to set right our hearts and to set right what our hands have corrupted, and to prepare for us right guidance in our affair. O Lord, take us by our forelocks to what pleases You, make us firm upon obedience to You, and keep away from us the causes of misery in this world and the Hereafter. O Allah, amen, O Lord of the worlds.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Āl ʿImrān: 139 — the verse as the speaker quoted it, and the sūrah is Āl ʿImrān by the indication of the context (Uhud, Badr, al-Aḥzāb). ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Āl ʿImrān: 130. And the calls he mentioned (﴿لَا تَتَّخِذُوا بِطَانَةً﴾, and the command to fear Allah and not to die except as Muslims) in the same sūrah: 118 and 102, which the speaker cited by meaning, in summary, and did not complete in the body. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: al-Anfāl: 17, and the verse of the angels' strengthening in al-Anfāl: 12. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The story of Jābir and his wife at the Battle of the Trench is well known in the books of ḥadīth and sīrah, and the speaker related it by its meaning, noting that it has corroborations and that the discussion of it has another place. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: Āl ʿImrān: 130–133, then 134 for what follows it. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: Āl ʿImrān: 135, and the speaker alluded to it by saying "if they commit an immorality or wrong themselves." ^[7]: Editor's documentation: Āl ʿImrān: 142. ^[8]: Editor's documentation: Āl ʿImrān: 152.