After the Hijrah

Occasion: A summary of a Friday khutbah delivered at AIA Masjid on June 19, 2026.Source: A transcription of a video khutbah by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

With every new Hijri year, Muslims exchange a single phrase: «كل عامٍ وأنتم بخير» ("May you be well every year"). It runs on the tongues and echoes in the hearts, and with it in the hearts there is something of hope. Yet among the thoughtful, another question ought to accompany the greeting: what comes after the Hijrah? What follows these prayers and congratulations?

Praise be to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help and ask His forgiveness, and we bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, without partner, and that our master Muhammad is His servant, His Prophet and His Messenger ﷺ. To proceed: come, let us take our memory back a little. Our history clings together, one part to another, and the station and state of the Prophet ﷺ are present in the memory of the people of faith as present as the Fajr prayer we prayed this morning.

The Warrior's Rest

Many think that the Hijrah was the rest of a warrior whose effort in Makkah had reached its limit, so that he finally arrived in Madinah and breathed a sigh of relief. It is a notion that resembles our own when we left our countries, for one reason or another, and settled in this land. We said: praise be to Allah, we have made it to America. We thought we had reached a space free of strain, peace of mind and bodily rest, and that here was the land of opportunities and pleasures. I am not speaking of those who think ill of Allah, nor of those who wanted to go astray, but of the believers who thought that moving from one homeland to another was the key that opens the door of rest.

The truth is that the Hijrah was a turn in the road. A turn does not mean that the road has ended; it means that you have moved from one direction to another, from ascent to descent.

The Ladder of Escalation in Makkah

Let us take a quick look at Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ had hardly begun calling to reform before those in charge rose up, the ones who always stand in the way of every reform: Abū Jahl, Abū Lahab, al-Walīd, ʿUtbah and whoever was of their kind. These were the elite, or "the establishment" as people say today, and they saw that this man threatened their standing and was changing the features of their society, so he had to be silenced.

The silencing proceeded in stages. It began with a horrifying scene that cannot be forgotten: a woman killed at the hands of Abū Jahl in a humiliating way. It was not passing anger or a reaction; it was a message of warning to the men before the women: whoever dares to take this path, his wives, daughters and sisters are threatened with the like of this, so silence is better and walking beside the wall is safer. Then another scene: Khabbāb laid out with embers lit beneath him, and the fire is put out only by what flows from his body. This was another banner for terrorizing the rest of the people. And the message is one: anyone whose soul tempts him to break with the general order and raise any banner of reform, this is his fate.

After that they moved on to casting doubt on the man himself, accusing him of sorcery, charlatanry and soothsaying. When these attempts were of no use, they sat down to negotiate: we will give you wealth, position, standing and luxurious cars, on condition only that you keep quiet. The answer of the Prophet ﷺ came decisively, as the books of the Sīrah relate: if they placed the sun in his right hand and the moon in his left on condition that he abandon this matter, he would not abandon it until Allah made it prevail or he perished in its cause.^[1]

Then began the stage of collective persecution, and then the siege of the Shiʿb of Abū Ṭālib. Thoughtful people understand this escalation: one person is sacrificed, a woman is killed, so the people become afraid, fall silent, and the matter is over. But faith is a wondrous thing in the souls: the more the challenges grow, the more it blazes in the depths, and the harder the pressures, the bolder its people become against their opponents. It is the same faith that reminded us of Pharaoh's sorcerers when they faced him with the very same logic: you only kill bodies, and the souls have come to know their place with the Lord of Might.

Three years passed, and I say "years" (aʿwām) and not "years" (sinīn), because they were filled with material hardship, with depth of faith and with firm certainty in what is with Allah. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was at the front of the people, suffering the hunger and thirst they suffered. Then he took his first steps toward leaving this society when he knocked on the doors of al-Ṭāʾif, and you know what happened, until his state reached the point that he said in his supplication, as the Sīrah relates: «إن لم يكن بك غضب عليَّ فلا أبالي» ("If You are not angry with me, I do not care").^[2] And that is the watchword of the people of faith in every age.

Madinah: Building, Not Resting

Then came the Hijrah. It was not the rest of a fighter after a long battle, nor the victory of a man who had reached his goal and whose agitation had subsided. It was the move of a man of reason who knew that one kind of challenge had passed and another kind had arrived, that one stage had ended and another had begun.

And so he ﷺ began by building a mosque in which the people's wounds would heal and their feelings would settle, where they would meet upon «الله أكبر» ("Allah is the Greatest") and part upon «السلام عليكم ورحمة الله» ("Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah"). His talk to them after the prayer soothed the souls, gathered them together, and drew back what had scattered of feelings and thoughts. He strove to make the environment that would make that generation. Then came the stage of brotherhood (al-muʾākhāh), a renewed covenant: it is not the prayer alone that gathers us so that we disperse after it; rather, between us is a pact that the Messenger of Allah made for us, so that a man never separates from his brotherhood with his brother, guarding it even if he sacrifices for its sake what he owns.

Then he ﷺ looked to the stability of the whole society, so he made the Charter of Madinah and its constitution, bringing together in it the people of Islam, the Jews and others. But the first lurkers did not leave this new entity to extend its roots in the earth and bring forth its fruit; they wanted to uproot it another way. So came Badr, Uḥud and the Trench, and aggressions surrounding the Muslim society from every border and side. A new enemy appeared under a new name, hypocrisy (al-nifāq), which the people of Makkah had not known, for they were people of boldness: either a believer or a disbeliever, and the matter was clear to them. The Prophet ﷺ and those with him were tried by Jews who declared war, and by hypocrites planted in the midst of society to light the fuse of internal strife from time to time. And from time to time the Prophet ﷺ would stand and say of the call of Jāhiliyyah: «دَعُوهَا فَإِنَّهَا مُنْتِنَةٌ» ("Leave it, for it is foul"),^[3] gathering the people and mending the rift as best he could.

In a quick pass over this history a simple truth appears: you, O Muslim, are not alone in this land. Around you are those who do not like your presence, and those whom your presence does not concern. As for the one whom your presence does not concern, to whom you are like anyone else, he is a subject of your daʿwah. As for the one who does not like your presence at all and fights you, know that you are required to surround yourself with a fence of security and reassurance.

Being Abroad Is Not a Vacation

Those who rushed to America or Europe or the West in its various forms, or who moved from one homeland to another, thought they had settled and grown used to life and its comforts: used to roads prepared for every kind of car, used to traffic lights that no one runs, used to stability and calm of mind. And some of them were heedless of a generation going out into life swallowed by this environment and preyed upon by the behavioral deviations that surround it.

So what do we want in order to preserve the future of Islam in the lands of the West and the East? We address a husband who is required to guard his home and its very being from beginning to end. We address a father who is required to give psychological and intellectual care to this rising generation in his hands. We address the imam of the mosque, that he respect himself and respect the minds of those who sit before him, giving them speech suited to the subject and the occasion. And we address the president of the mosque or the Islamic organization: fear Allah, do not claim that you are alone in the field, open the doors of dialogue with those around you, and cooperate in righteousness and piety, for the purpose of our presence here is not worldly gain in the name of religion; otherwise we lose both this world and the Hereafter.

Whom else do we address? We address ourselves before anyone else. We recently went through an utterly simple experience: a disagreement over the logo to be placed on an announcement, whether we put our logo or yours, or put both, or remove one of them. This gives you an indication of the level we are at. We are very far behind; we are still living in the old times, and we have not moved past these crises that represent a sickness of the soul in people's hearts. And I say to the reasonable every time: look at the highway and you will find a Toyota and a Honda side by side; neither quarrels with the other to tell it, get out of here, you are crowding me. And American banks stand next to each other; you pass by and choose this bank or that one. As for us, our greatest concern is the position of the hands at «الله أكبر»: do they rise up to here? If they go a little higher, you are told your prayer is deficient, and if they go lower or higher, there is a quarrel. We quarrel over the wording of the call to prayer and the manner of establishing it, as though our whole affair ended at the rulings of the lavatory, never going beyond them to speak of taking the lead and of the courage to enter into these societies.

The Hijrah of the Prophet ﷺ was not a move to a society in which Muslims live safely, so that we might say: that's it, we have settled, let us build mosques and raise banners. It was a move from one striving to another. And I ask you by Allah: was the striving of the Companions as individuals in Makkah harder, or the striving of the Prophet and his Companions in the society of Madinah as he dealt with the world, where no one wanted it to survive, but all were gathered to remove it from existence? Yet the steadfastness of the people of faith was the means by which Allah made faith and Islam firm, and made us inherit the earth after those who went to their Lord. And today we express Islam with turbans on heads, clothes that express identity, slogans that are raised and slogans that are spread. So where is your mark on your children, and on the generation rising toward the future carrying the same banner?

Sūrat al-Naṣr and What Follows It

Servants of Allah, the sum of the matter is that we are not on vacation here, nor in a spot that gives rest to souls and minds; rather, we are in a place that demands more faith and more work.

I was speaking to your brothers recently about Sūrat al-Naṣr: ﴿إِذَا جَاءَ نَصْرُ اللَّهِ وَالْفَتْحُ ۝ وَرَأَيْتَ النَّاسَ يَدْخُلُونَ فِي دِينِ اللَّهِ أَفْوَاجًا ۝ فَسَبِّحْ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّكَ وَاسْتَغْفِرْهُ إِنَّهُ كَانَ تَوَّابًا﴾ [al-Naṣr: 1-3] ("When the help of Allah and the victory come, and you see the people entering the religion of Allah in multitudes, then glorify the praise of your Lord and ask His forgiveness; indeed, He is ever accepting of repentance"). Think with me for half a minute: would it not befit this sūrah, with all its tranquility, calm, glorification and seeking of forgiveness, to be the last sūrah of the Muṣḥaf? Yet the Lord of the Worlds placed after it Sūrat al-Masad, which speaks of Abū Lahab, to tell us that the journey has not ended merely because the help of Allah has come, that people entering Islam is not the final indicator, and that there are those who lie in wait for you, of the likes of Abū Lahab. So hold fast to the One, the Unique, the Single, the Self-Sufficient, who neither begets nor is begotten, and seek refuge in Him from those who breach you from the outside: ﴿قُلْ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ الْفَلَقِ ۝ مِن شَرِّ مَا خَلَقَ ۝ وَمِن شَرِّ غَاسِقٍ إِذَا وَقَبَ ۝ وَمِن شَرِّ النَّفَّاثَاتِ فِي الْعُقَدِ ۝ وَمِن شَرِّ حَاسِدٍ إِذَا حَسَدَ﴾ [al-Falaq: 1-5] ("Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of daybreak, from the evil of what He has created, and from the evil of darkness when it settles, and from the evil of those who blow on knots, and from the evil of an envier when he envies"). And seek refuge in Him from those who breach you from the inside, the whisperers among mankind and jinn.^[4]

We are on a road that has not yet ended and is not complete, so look at the place where Allah has deposited you, and be mindful of your station, for you are responsible. And look at the outcome of your affair if you act and the outcome of your affair if you fall short, for the reckoning is in the hand of the One from whom nothing escapes, neither in secret nor in the open.

O Allah, return us and the Muslims to Your religion with a beautiful return, and make us understand the responsibility entrusted to us. O Allah, we seek refuge in You from Islam being a proof against us before You on the Day of Resurrection. O Allah, we brought our children to these lands by choice, so do not make them a proof against us on the day we meet You, and do not make them chains of torment around our necks; make them among those who obey and turn toward Your religion, carrying the trust of Your Islam.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: This saying is related in the books of the Sīrah in the context of Quraysh's negotiation with his uncle Abū Ṭālib, through Ibn Isḥāq from Yaʿqūb ibn ʿUtbah ibn al-Mughīrah ibn al-Akhnas, in the wording: «يا عمّ، والله لو وضعوا الشمس في يميني والقمر في يساري على أن أترك هذا الأمر حتى يُظهره الله أو أهلك فيه ما تركته» ("O uncle, by Allah, if they placed the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this matter, until Allah makes it prevail or I perish in it, I would not abandon it"); al-Albānī said in «السلسلة الضعيفة» (al-Silsilah al-Ḍaʿīfah, no. 909): "This chain is weak and muʿḍal," and in «السلسلة الصحيحة» (al-Silsilah al-Ṣaḥīḥah, no. 92) he graded as ḥasan another report of the story, from the ḥadīth of ʿAqīl ibn Abī Ṭālib, in a different wording. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: It is related in the books of the Sīrah as part of his ﷺ supplication on returning from al-Ṭāʾif; al-Albānī said in his takhrīj of «فقه السيرة» (Fiqh al-Sīrah, p. 126), regarding the report of Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẓī: "So the ḥadīth is weak" (ḍaʿīf). Al-Ṭabarānī reported it from the ḥadīth of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar, and al-Haythamī said in «مجمع الزوائد» (Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid): "Al-Ṭabarānī reported it, and in it is Ibn Isḥāq, who is a trustworthy mudallis, and the rest of its narrators are trustworthy." ^[3]: Editor's documentation: Reported by al-Bukhārī and Muslim from the ḥadīth of Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh (may Allah be pleased with him and his father), in the story of the Muhājir and the Anṣārī. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: A reference to Sūrat al-Nās: ﴿مِن شَرِّ الْوَسْوَاسِ الْخَنَّاسِ ۝ الَّذِي يُوَسْوِسُ فِي صُدُورِ النَّاسِ ۝ مِنَ الْجِنَّةِ وَالنَّاسِ﴾ [al-Nās: 4-6] ("From the evil of the retreating whisperer, who whispers in the breasts of mankind, from among the jinn and mankind").