Khatira [ The Imam's Choice of a Friday Khutbah Topic ] | Dr. Ahmed Abouseif | 4 September 2020

Occasion: Transcription of a khatira delivered on 4 September 2020 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

All praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and upon his family and companions, and abundant peace. To proceed:

On the way to the Friday prayer, the hardest thing facing the khatīb or imam is his choice of the topic. This is an old matter, known to everyone who works in this field. But as the days go by and the number of times the imam meets the minbar increases, he discovers that the difficulty of choosing the topic is not only because topics repeat and Fridays are many, but because he faces a community in which he does not know what people expect from him. And the hardest thing in facing people is that you do not realize, as a khatīb, whether you are speaking to people who came to listen or people who came to doze off. The one who came to sleep is a given; we know him. But as for the one who came to listen, you also do not realize which of them came to listen truly and to take it in, and has a plan, and expects a certain talk from the imam, and has some familiarity with reality and experience of what goes on around him, so he expects the khatīb to speak about a certain issue or topic. And there is the one who came to listen because he admires the khatīb, or because he expects to hear sweet language, or because he expects to see his friends and hear a topic they can toss back and forth after the prayer. Then, topics do not stay in minds for long. So the difficulty of having a community that is not keen to learn places many obstacles before the imam or khatīb or caller to Allah during his address or dialogue.

The Advisers

For this reason I advise myself, and I advise the rest of my dear brothers and colleagues and our honorable shaykhs, that each one of them have a number of advisers, who represent for him a support, not, I say, a scholarly support, but a consultative support in choosing the topic he can take up on his minbar, and also in choosing the important points.

The Danger of Generalizing

Among the problems of da'wah discourse, as you know, is the issue of generalizing. For example, I intend today to speak about taqwā, so I say: ﴿وَاتَّقُونِ يَا أُولِي الْأَلْبَابِ﴾ (And fear Me, O people of understanding),^[1] this is a proof text. But how do the people of understanding fear Allah, glorified and exalted be He? And how do they recognize the places of taqwā? And how can details be in their hands that define for them the features of listening and attending to this speech, and the ability to apply it after they leave the mosque? If we give people more details, they will be able to address their problems through religious discourse to a greater degree.

The problem is that generalizing the discourse on the minbar leaves people in a kind of mental wandering, a rational and cognitive wandering; he has gathered a set of landmarks, and begins to measure, without knowing where the analogues lie. So if I say to him: fear Allah, he looks at his clothes and finds them clean, and thinks that by this he has feared Allah, glorified and exalted be He, whereas he has so many wrongs against others that his scales will be weighed down by them on the Day of Resurrection. And when I say: fear Allah in a general way, he thinks he fears Allah, glorified and exalted be He, because he is good at being courteous to people on the road, or good at answering them, or smiles in the faces of others, whereas he has what he has of problems between him and his wife.

The Listeners and Their Evaluation

And once again: the hardest thing facing khatībs in delivering their discourse is the quality of the listeners, the manner of listening, and the evaluation that comes from people after the khatīb has finished his khutbah. One of my dear colleagues, may Allah, exalted be He, honor him, mentioned to me last week that one of the listeners came to him and said: whenever I missed a word and said to myself, "If only he had said it," I found you had said it at a more fitting place than the one I had imagined. So I said to him: By Allah, I envy you this kind of attentive listeners, who are good at listening, who treat the khatīb well, and who are fair to themselves.

And I ask Allah, glorified and exalted be He, to make our tongues speak what pleases Him, to mend our hearts, and to keep us safe from every harm, O Allah, amen. May Allah be pleased with you, and peace be upon you.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Baqarah [197]; the speaker quoted no more of the verse than this portion.