So Hold Fast to What Has Been Revealed to You

Occasion: A summary of a Friday khutbah delivered at the AIA Masjid on September 11, 2026Source: A transcription of a video khutbah by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTubeEditor's note: This text summarizes what could be established from the lecture and is not a verbatim transcript; no explanation that was not in the lecture has been added.

﴿فَاسْتَمْسِكْ بِالَّذِي أُوحِيَ إِلَيْكَ ۖ إِنَّكَ عَلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ ۝ وَإِنَّهُ لَذِكْرٌ لَّكَ وَلِقَوْمِكَ ۖ وَسَوْفَ تُسْأَلُونَ﴾ (“So hold fast to that which has been revealed to you; indeed, you are on a straight path. And indeed, it is a remembrance for you and your people, and you are going to be questioned”) [al-Zukhruf: 43-44]. On this verse the khaṭīb built his khutbah: a command to hold fast, a promise of being upright, and a reminder that behind all of this a question is coming. So about what will the Muslim be asked on the day he stands before his Lord?

The Muslim's place in this land

People have multiplied their displays of hostility toward Islam; and from here the khaṭīb began by setting out the Muslim's place in this land. The Muslim who has spent his days and years and decades of his work in it, who has paid his taxes in it, and who has benefited from it as much as he has, and does not deny that, is part of its soil, and his interest lies in its well-being. Abandoning it in one's feelings is a betrayal of the very basis of religiosity, which commands the cultivation of the earth. And he said that whoever wishes to disown this belonging, that is his affair, within a philosophy that is respected; but matters are measured by their measures: even one who is not a citizen, Islam is his first priority and the utmost of his hopes, and he will not be asked before Allah about anything before it.

He gave two examples of this from the lives of the prophets. Joseph (peace be upon him), when he moved to Egypt, became part of it; he did not return to the homeland of his father Jacob, but brought Jacob and his sons to the new homeland. And our Prophet ﷺ, for whom Allah opened Makkah, to which he had once said that it was the most beloved of Allah's lands to him, and that had his people not driven him out of it he would not have left^[1]; and even so Madinah became his homeland, which he protected and whose people he shielded from evil. In Madinah and around it plots were laid against him and snares were set, and his killing was plotted with a rock to be dropped from a rooftop and with poison put in food,^[3] yet he did not take it as a passing stop. And when Makkah came under his authority, he did not choose to die in it or to be buried there. The internal affairs here are our affairs, not affairs external to us.

A question from which no one is excused

The khaṭīb holds that the things people fear, poverty, want, arrest, imprisonment and death, are matters that at their furthest extent lie in the hand of the King, glorified is He, and not in the hand of any created being. Therefore a person's inability to express his religion or give his opinion, his shrinking back and hiding, has no justification in creed, and the one who does so is suspect in his creed. And the verse is explicit: «وسوف تُسألون» (“and you are going to be questioned”), about the method, the path, the message and Islam.

Al-Zukhruf: the glitter of this world and the logic of the affluent

The verse is from Sūrat al-Zukhruf, and this is a word that denotes an outer ornament that attaches to things for a while and then falls away with time. In meaning it is the glitter of this world: the comfortable life, soft furnishings, luxurious cars and spacious houses, which is what people are deceived by when they move to a new life. As for the reality, it is the message.

And the sūrah, as he said, addresses the Prophet ﷺ directly and lays before him two logics side by side. The first is the logic of one who repels the cause in itself and fights it because it is a cause. The second is a tongue that despises persons: ﴿وَقَالُوا لَوْلَا نُزِّلَ هَٰذَا الْقُرْآنُ عَلَىٰ رَجُلٍ مِّنَ الْقَرْيَتَيْنِ عَظِيمٍ﴾ (“And they said, ‘Why was this Qur'an not sent down upon a great man from one of the two cities?’”) [al-Zukhruf: 31]. That is: this man is poor and humble, so it does not befit him to stand among us. And it is, as he said, a mentality that never ceases and never stops repeating the same empty claims since that time.

And the Qur'an's answer comes in the next verse: ﴿أَهُمْ يَقْسِمُونَ رَحْمَتَ رَبِّكَ ۚ نَحْنُ قَسَمْنَا بَيْنَهُم مَّعِيشَتَهُمْ فِي الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا وَرَفَعْنَا بَعْضَهُمْ فَوْقَ بَعْضٍ دَرَجَاتٍ لِّيَتَّخِذَ بَعْضُهُم بَعْضًا سُخْرِيًّا ۗ وَرَحْمَتُ رَبِّكَ خَيْرٌ مِّمَّا يَجْمَعُونَ﴾ (“Is it they who distribute the mercy of your Lord? It is We who have distributed among them their livelihood in the life of this world and raised some of them above others in degrees, so that some may take others into service. And the mercy of your Lord is better than what they accumulate”) [al-Zukhruf: 32]. And it, in the khaṭīb's view, addresses the people of Islam, when they are in a state of poverty or need, in a gentle tongue. Then come the verses: ﴿وَلَوْلَا أَن يَكُونَ النَّاسُ أُمَّةً وَاحِدَةً لَّجَعَلْنَا لِمَن يَكْفُرُ بِالرَّحْمَٰنِ لِبُيُوتِهِمْ سُقُفًا مِّن فِضَّةٍ وَمَعَارِجَ عَلَيْهَا يَظْهَرُونَ ۝ وَلِبُيُوتِهِمْ أَبْوَابًا وَسُرُرًا عَلَيْهَا يَتَّكِئُونَ ۝ وَزُخْرُفًا ۚ وَإِن كُلُّ ذَٰلِكَ لَمَّا مَتَاعُ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا﴾ (“And were it not that the people would become one community, We would have made for those who disbelieve in the Most Merciful, for their houses, ceilings of silver and stairways upon which to mount, and for their houses doors and couches upon which to recline, and ornament (zukhruf). But all that is nothing but the enjoyment of worldly life”) [al-Zukhruf: 33-35]. We do not attach ourselves to ornament, for we are the people of value.

Then the picture becomes clear when we see Pharaoh calling out to his people: ﴿أَلَيْسَ لِي مُلْكُ مِصْرَ وَهَٰذِهِ الْأَنْهَارُ تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِي﴾ (“Is not the kingdom of Egypt mine, and these rivers flowing beneath me?”) [al-Zukhruf: 51], promising people wealth and leaning on the rivers and the kingdom. It is the same logic, and the result was: ﴿فَاسْتَخَفَّ قَوْمَهُ فَأَطَاعُوهُ ۚ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا قَوْمًا فَاسِقِينَ﴾ (“So he made light of his people, and they obeyed him. Indeed, they were a defiantly disobedient people”) [al-Zukhruf: 54].

A sūrah that inspires callers

In the second khutbah he returned to the same sūrah and said that it inspires callers to Islam, and that Shaykh al-Khūlī (may Allah have mercy on him) wrote a book he named «تذكرة الدعاة» (Tadhkirat al-Duʿāh, “A Reminder for Callers”) in which he mentions this sūrah^[2]. For in it are the realities of people's psychology, the struggle over this world, the sincerity of belonging to this religion, what every tyrant builds his delusions on in order to make light of people, and mentalities that deny persons and realities. And in it is the method of calling to Allah through logic and reality, as in the words of the Exalted: ﴿قُلْ إِن كَانَ لِلرَّحْمَٰنِ وَلَدٌ فَأَنَا أَوَّلُ الْعَابِدِينَ﴾ (“Say: If the Most Merciful had a son, then I would be the first of worshippers”) [al-Zukhruf: 81]. And he called for rereading it in this way and deriving from it one's stance toward religiosity.

How to hold fast

So what does it mean that we hold fast to what has been revealed to us? The khaṭīb set this out in practical matters: that you keep your children safe from the hardship in which people live; that you hold fast to your prayer so that it is not broken even once in your day and night; that you hold fast to the firmness and strength of your home, leaving Satan no opportunity to break into it, defile it and pollute its calm; and that you hold fast to lawful food, truthful speech and soundness of conscience. And he repeated this last one three times.

And he joined that to spending: whoever gives in charity, it is for himself; and whoever holds back his hand, let him look at what he is holding it back for and where its end will be. When we spend, we are not giving to people; rather we are granting ourselves more credit with which to meet Allah; so whoever is careful about his credit record in this world, let him be careful about his record before Allah. ﴿وَمَن يَبْخَلْ فَإِنَّمَا يَبْخَلُ عَن نَّفْسِهِ﴾ (“And whoever withholds only withholds from himself”) [Muḥammad: 38].

Steadfastness, then the question

The khaṭīb summed up the stance in a short counsel: Hold fast to your religion, and let Islam not slip away from you in any moment of life, and let this world not deceive you, for it passes away with our passing or with its own. The grave awaits people, and when we die, creation will not turn to us; we will be the object of the Creator's questioning.

And he closed with a supplication: O Allah, we ask You for Your pleasure and Paradise, and we seek refuge in You from Your anger and the Fire; make us firm with the firm word in the life of this world and in the Hereafter, and protect us from the disgrace of this world and the punishment of the Hereafter.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Something similar came in the ḥadīth of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAdī ibn al-Ḥamrāʾ (may Allah be pleased with him), that the Prophet ﷺ said to Makkah: «وَاللهِ إِنَّكِ لَخَيْرُ أَرْضِ اللهِ وَأَحَبُّ أَرْضِ اللهِ إِلَى اللهِ، وَلَوْلَا أَنِّي أُخْرِجْتُ مِنْكِ مَا خَرَجْتُ» (“By Allah, you are the best of Allah's land and the most beloved of Allah's land to Allah, and had I not been driven out of you, I would not have left”). Al-Tirmidhī reported it (3925) and said: “ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ gharīb”, and Ibn Mājah (3108). The khaṭīb cited it by its meaning, not its wording. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: «تذكرة الدعاة» (Tadhkirat al-Duʿāh) is by al-Bahī al-Khūlī (Egypt: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1952, according to the New York University Libraries catalogue). The editor did not find the place in it where he speaks about Sūrat al-Zukhruf. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: The khaṭīb did not name the context of the two incidents; the report of the poisoned sheep is in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from the ḥadīth of Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) (al-Bukhārī 2617, Muslim 2190), and in al-Bukhārī (3169), from the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), that this was when Khaybar was conquered. As for the report of the rock, Ibn Isḥāq mentioned it in connection with Banū al-Naḍīr, and that ʿAmr ibn Jiḥāsh climbed up to drop it on the Prophet ﷺ.