Hijrah: Then & Now

Occasion: Summary of a Jumuʿah khutbah delivered at Dar Alhadith USA on July 3, 2026Source: transcription of a recorded khutbah by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

When I think about the Hijrah, the first question that comes to mind is a strange one. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ left Makkah for Madīnah to escape the struggle over the religion. But Madīnah was there from the very beginning. Why did Allah not send him there directly, without all the hardship in Makkah? Why did He give His Prophet thirteen years of difficulty first?

Thirteen years is not a small number. When we speak about the lifespan of people, thirteen years is a very big number.

All praise is due to Allah. We praise Him, seek His help and His forgiveness, and ask Him to increase the īmān and barakah in our hearts. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad ﷺ is His servant and final Messenger. Today I want to speak about the Hijrah, between the past and today.

Thirteen years

Picture what those years held. The disbelievers put a great rock on the chest of Bilāl and demanded that he say a few words against the Prophet ﷺ, and he refused. In another narration, a believer is held down with fire beneath his body, and the fire does not die until what runs from his body puts it out. Imagine being literally burned. Another family endured, and the Prophet ﷺ went to them again and again saying: be patient, we will meet in Jannah. A woman among the believers was killed in a shameful way, and she died for the sake of Allah.

Then the hardship became a community matter. The disbelievers isolated the Muslims for three years: nobody spoke to them, nobody sold to them or bought from them, no marriage, no dealings of any kind.

So I ask myself: why does Allah give human beings such hard times? The same question comes to every one of us in smaller form. Why did Allah not give me enough money to be rich like other people? And it echoes the questions we ask about the prophets. Why was Ibrāhīm cast into the fire? Why did Allah allow Yūsuf to be put in prison for so long? Why did Mūsā have to face the sea with Pharaoh behind him?

What hardship earns

The answer begins with how life already works. We are giving Allah's mercy a chance to find us deserving of it. I could not move from high school to college without passing the hardship of high school. I could not have my doctorate without the hardship of the doctorate. I eat because I work, and I spend my whole day, for a whole month, to earn my salary. Without that work, there is no salary.

One of my students once asked me why Allah rewards people in Jannah and not in this world. To make a long story short, I told him: when a great company hires you, they pay you after fifteen or thirty days, depending on their system. But do you think they are paying you for those fifteen days? You are being paid for the four years of college, and for the high school, the middle school and the elementary school behind it. You were paid after twenty years, not after thirty days. That is the system of our life. We accept it between ourselves and cannot accept it with Allah.

Or imagine someone says, "I see potential in this man, and I will sponsor him." That is what a scholarship means: whatever he needs, they cover it. In truth Allah sponsored us from the very beginning, before we even came to this world.

Now take two students in medical college. One works hard, the other plays around. Both graduate on the same day. Then there is a crash on the street and the injured are brought to the hospital. Which of them runs to help? The one who struggled, because he feels the power inside him. He does not merely hold a paper or carry a title. Without hardship in our lives, we cannot feel that we deserve what we ask Allah for.

That is the difference between then and now. The Companions then felt the responsibility of the religion. Today, and I speak of myself before anybody else, everybody wants things easy. We want AI to do it for us. This is the mentality of getting everything the easy way, and it is not the attitude with which Islam began.

Read your position

Consider the first āyah revealed to the Prophet ﷺ:

﴿اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ﴾ [العلق: 1]

"Read in the name of your Lord who created."^[1] Do you imagine the Prophet ﷺ opened pages and read from the beginning of a book to its end? That is not what was meant. To read here is not only to read letters and words. It is to read what lies behind the sentences, to read the environment around you, and to read your own position.

So what is my position? I lead the prayer, I give talks, I call to Allah. I am an imam. Please listen, I am speaking to myself first. Let me go to the Qurʾān and ask what my position is.

The first person Allah mentions in the Qurʾān, when you open Sūrat al-Baqarah, is Ādam ﷺ:

﴿إِنِّي جَاعِلٌ فِي الْأَرْضِ خَلِيفَةً﴾ [البقرة: 30]

"I am placing upon the earth a khalīfah." That is the highest position we know. And yet what did Allah command Ādam to do? Almost nothing: only to avoid eating from the tree. There are no five daily prayers, no Hajj, no fasting through a long day in this heat. This position of khilāfah is common to every human being.

Then, in the same sūrah, we meet another person: Ibrāhīm ﷺ.

﴿وَإِذِ ابْتَلَىٰ إِبْرَاهِيمَ رَبُّهُ بِكَلِمَاتٍ فَأَتَمَّهُنَّ ۖ قَالَ إِنِّي جَاعِلُكَ لِلنَّاسِ إِمَامًا﴾ [البقرة: 124]

"And when his Lord tested Ibrāhīm with words and he fulfilled them, He said: I will make you a leader (imām) for the people." Look at what Ibrāhīm was commanded: to ask about his offspring, to raise the walls of the House of Allah, to stand firm in his place, to raise his son. Adam had little to do, and Ibrāhīm had all of this. So which position is higher, to be a khalīfah or to be an imām? And the imām here is not the one who leads the prayer. He is a leader for the whole world.

That is the position for which Allah prepared the Companions for thirteen years in Makkah. Once they reached Madīnah, they stood up and said: we are here. They began to build the state and its constitution, and to lead humanity. They were the leaders of the nation, not a people who came to stay in a corner.

Dignity and what we leave behind

Do we carry that? Some of us are shy of our names. "My name is Ahmed. Let me call myself Mike, or something easier, because of the community around me." I am afraid of being identified as a Muslim. Now imagine standing before Allah on the Day of Resurrection, and He asks: what did you do, Ahmed? And I answer: sorry, I forgot, I was Mike. I am talking about our dignity.

Allah built the dignity of the Muslim community during those thirteen years. When we hear the names of the Prophet's ﷺ enemies, we remember what they did against the Muslim community. When we hear the name of Abū Bakr, we remember how he trusted the Prophet ﷺ when he told him what had been revealed to him.^[2] So what is our position? What legacy will we leave behind us? In a little while we will be under the grave, in a different world. Unless I leave something behind me, there will be nothing.

That is how we should understand the Hijrah. It was not a drama. It was a real test, so that you can be proud of yourself when you say: I have my doctorate, I have my own store. I did not inherit it from my father. I cannot be proud of a beautiful car if my mother simply handed it to me. Today everybody looks at the easy lifestyle. This is our issue with our youth.

But the main problem is that they are stealing our consciousness from our minds. Tools of artificial intelligence now do the work on my behalf, and I have no control even over the small actions. What will be left in me? What do we need to do to feel our dignity? We need to feel that we are doing something in our present, so that when we come to stand before Allah we can say: I am here. I am standing, my head is up, not down. I used to be the first to raise my hand whenever I was called to help Islam and the Muslims. Be proud of your religion, your actions, and your record when you come to Allah.

When you lose yourself, you lose everything. When you keep your dignity, you have everything. It will not be about money or position. It will be about you and me: my position at home, how my wife would answer if someone called her and asked what she thought of me, and how my children and neighbors see me. And before all of them, what Allah would say about you. You know that reports go up to Allah twice a day, fresh reports, and nobody can change anything there, unless you come with a good deed to remove a bad one and rewrite it.^[3]

So let us stop for a few minutes, you and nobody else, and think about your position in this world, what you have done, what you are doing, and how you will meet Allah one time.

Where the Academy stands

I am here on behalf of the American Imams Academy, in Dallas, Texas. We are preparing students to be imams who will lead the prayer, give lectures and lead workshops with youth in different states. Alhamdulillah, you will never find our masjid empty: any hour of day or night you will find somebody studying or working.

My mission in coming from Dallas is that you review your position in this world and prepare yourself to stand before Allah one time and say: I am here. This is my dignity. This is what I left behind me.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: the preacher alluded to al-ʿAlaq 1, al-Baqarah 30 and al-Baqarah 124 without reciting them (the first revealed word, Ādam as khalīfah, Ibrāhīm as imām); the verses are given here in full for the reader. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, may Allah be pleased with him, the Prophet's closest Companion. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: the preacher did not give the wording. Compare the ḥadīth reported by Muslim from Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī, may Allah be pleased with him: «يُرْفَعُ إِلَيْهِ عَمَلُ اللَّيْلِ قَبْلَ عَمَلِ النَّهَارِ، وَعَمَلُ النَّهَارِ قَبْلَ عَمَلِ اللَّيْلِ» — "The deeds of the night are raised to Him before the deeds of the day, and the deeds of the day before the deeds of the night."