Hurricanes in America

Occasion: Summary of a Friday sermon delivered on September 15, 2017Source: A transcription of a video sermon by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Praise be to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, seek His guidance and seek His forgiveness, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls and from our bad deeds. Whomever Allah guides, none can lead astray, and whomever He leaves astray, none can guide. We bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner, and that our master and Prophet Muhammad is His servant and Messenger; he conveyed the message, fulfilled the trust and gave sincere counsel to the community, so may Allah reward him on our behalf and on behalf of the community of Islam with the best of rewards. To proceed: I counsel you and myself to have taqwā of Allah and to prepare for meeting Him.

When the water in the street rises until it covers the car, many tongues rise with it, repeating one sentence: "This is Allah's revenge on this unjust state." We have heard it in recent days from people around us. So what really happened? And how does a Muslim read the events that take place in the country on whose land he lives, to which he belongs, and whose citizenship many of us hold?

A Sign Sent to Instill Fear

We have gone through events in which no human being had any hand; they are simply the decree of Allah, who created the heavens and the earth, set the winds in motion, drove the clouds and spread out the earth. ﴿الَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ الْأَرْضَ فِرَاشًا وَالسَّمَاءَ بِنَاءً وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَخْرَجَ بِهِ مِنَ الثَّمَرَاتِ رِزْقًا لَّكُمْ﴾ [al-Baqarah: 22] ("Who made the earth a resting place for you and the sky a canopy, and sent down water from the sky and brought forth thereby fruits as provision for you"). The One who sends down water as provision is able to send it upon people as a trial.

It is regrettable to see someone disown a country whose bounty he eats, on whose land he lives and under whose protection he shelters, and then raise his voice with accusations that have no basis. But let us understand the matter from the standpoint of our own field: why does Allah send events such as these?

Allah the Exalted says: ﴿وَمَا نُرْسِلُ بِالْآيَاتِ إِلَّا تَخْوِيفًا﴾ [al-Isrāʾ: 59] ("And We send not the signs except as a warning"). Merely to instill fear. Let us ask: fear for whom? You frighten your child at home about touching electricity or going near the fire; do you do that out of dislike for him? You do it only for his safety. And the Qur'an has made clear that this warning is directed at His servants: ﴿ذَٰلِكَ يُخَوِّفُ اللَّهُ بِهِ عِبَادَهُ ۚ يَا عِبَادِ فَاتَّقُونِ﴾ [al-Zumar: 16] ("By that Allah strikes fear into His servants. O My servants, then fear Me"), and then He says after it: ﴿وَالَّذِينَ اجْتَنَبُوا الطَّاغُوتَ أَن يَعْبُدُوهَا وَأَنَابُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ لَهُمُ الْبُشْرَىٰ ۚ فَبَشِّرْ عِبَادِ ۝ الَّذِينَ يَسْتَمِعُونَ الْقَوْلَ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ أَحْسَنَهُ ۚ أُولَٰئِكَ الَّذِينَ هَدَاهُمُ اللَّهُ ۖ وَأُولَٰئِكَ هُمْ أُولُو الْأَلْبَابِ﴾ [al-Zumar: 17–18] ("And those who avoid ṭāghūt, lest they worship it, and turn back to Allah, for them are good tidings. So give good tidings to My servants, who listen to speech and follow the best of it. Those are the ones whom Allah has guided, and those are the people of understanding"). These are the ones who are warned, and there is nothing wrong with such warning if it carries some way of sparing them from error: the child who was warned about electricity before touching it was saved.

And in Sūrat al-Raʿd there is the same expression: ﴿وَيُرْسِلُ الصَّوَاعِقَ فَيُصِيبُ بِهَا مَن يَشَاءُ وَهُمْ يُجَادِلُونَ فِي اللَّهِ وَهُوَ شَدِيدُ الْمِحَالِ﴾ [al-Raʿd: 13] ("And He sends thunderbolts and strikes therewith whom He wills while they dispute about Allah; and He is severe in might").^[1] So if Allah displays some manifestations of His power and might, it is for a wisdom by which He makes the believers fear before He makes the disbelievers fear.

And in the same context Allah tells us about Himself: ﴿اللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَحْمِلُ كُلُّ أُنثَىٰ وَمَا تَغِيضُ الْأَرْحَامُ وَمَا تَزْدَادُ ۖ وَكُلُّ شَيْءٍ عِندَهُ بِمِقْدَارٍ ۝ عَالِمُ الْغَيْبِ وَالشَّهَادَةِ الْكَبِيرُ الْمُتَعَالِ﴾ [al-Raʿd: 8–9] ("Allah knows what every female carries and what the wombs fall short of and what they exceed, and everything with Him is in due measure. Knower of the unseen and the witnessed, the Grand, the Exalted"). Everything is in due measure: the motion of the universe, the movement of the winds, the steps of the water. ﴿هُوَ الَّذِي يُرِيكُمُ الْبَرْقَ خَوْفًا وَطَمَعًا وَيُنشِئُ السَّحَابَ الثِّقَالَ ۝ وَيُسَبِّحُ الرَّعْدُ بِحَمْدِهِ وَالْمَلَائِكَةُ مِنْ خِيفَتِهِ﴾ [al-Raʿd: 12–13] ("It is He who shows you the lightning, causing fear and hope, and generates the heavy clouds. And the thunder glorifies Him with His praise, and the angels too, out of awe of Him"). All of that is by Allah's command; so who can interfere with His decree? Who can outrun His command? No one.

What We Have Grasped Is Little Out of Much

Then there is a matter of great importance: what have we grasped so far of the secrets of the universe? ﴿وَفَوْقَ كُلِّ ذِي عِلْمٍ عَلِيمٌ﴾ [Yūsuf: 76] ("And above every possessor of knowledge is one more knowing"), ﴿وَمَا أُوتِيتُم مِّنَ الْعِلْمِ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا﴾ [al-Isrāʾ: 85] ("And you have not been given of knowledge except a little"). To this moment no one can know all the secrets of the seas, the volcanoes, the hurricanes and the winds, nor the true nature of their effect on the universe, in building it up and in laying it waste. We look at the side our eyes can see: the water moved and drowned the car, and for us that is the premise and the conclusion. As for the secrets in Allah's knowledge that we do not know, we remain ignorant of them. The scholars of geology and other sciences are still discovering some of the secrets of the universe, and what is hidden from them is millions of times more than what is in their hands. These are the decrees of the Lord of the worlds in His universe and His creation.

Who Are Those Struck by the Disaster?

It is not necessary, every time an event occurs, for our tongues to set off with criticism and vilification. Let us remember that those harmed are not all decision-makers or politicians; they are simple citizens, striving for their livelihood, going to their work and returning to their homes. Someone may say: but they are disbelievers; they drink wine and do this and that. My answer: perhaps they are as close as can be to those who were around the Prophet ﷺ in Mecca. The Prophet ﷺ went out calling people who drank wine, who attacked one another and who consumed people's wealth unjustly, people whose morals could be summed up in a single word: jāhiliyyah (ignorance). But what if the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had not gone out to them? The jāhiliyyah would have remained in its ignorance and then grown worse. It was the presence of the Prophet ﷺ that transformed that picture into trustworthiness, justice, equality and respect for appointments and laws, and that turned souls from the worship of stone and idol to the worship of the Lord of Might, until there came to be one who would say: we have come to bring people out of the worship of servants to the worship of the Lord of the servants.^[2]

So where are the followers of Muhammad ﷺ in the midst of modern jāhiliyyah? If it were not for you, matters would have grown worse.

In What Language Did the Prophet ﷺ Speak to His People?

With what discourse and in what language did the Messenger of Allah ﷺ speak to his people? How many times has it come down to us in the Sīrah that he insulted them, cursed them, challenged them, or reminded them of the afflictions that would befall them, of drought in the land or of the rain being cut off? He ﷺ did none of that. He was a hand helping people in what they were doing. One day he entered the Kaʿbah and saw people from among the nobles of the tribe, that is, from among the heads of disbelief. He did not leave them and go away; rather they called him and said: we have a problem; we disagree over who should put the Black Stone in its place. So he advised them that each of them should hold one of the ends of the cloak and then they would put it in place together.^[3] He took part with them in what they were doing in a way that did not contradict any of the foundations of his religion or any of the fixed points of his creed, his hand in their hands as they cooperated so that society would advance, closing the circle of dispute even if only for a moment.

And at the time when his affairs were at their hardest, when his blood flowed and boys were set upon him to strike him with stones, he raised his hands to the sky with a supplication directed to those who had persecuted him, as has been narrated from him: «اللهم اهدِ قومي فإنهم لا يعلمون» ("O Allah, guide my people, for they do not know").^[4] And the divine address came teaching His Prophet: ﴿ادْعُ إِلَىٰ سَبِيلِ رَبِّكَ بِالْحِكْمَةِ وَالْمَوْعِظَةِ الْحَسَنَةِ وَجَادِلْهُم بِالَّتِي هِيَ أَحْسَنُ﴾ [al-Naḥl: 125] ("Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best"). That is our logic, those are our words, and this is our way.

Moreover, those who spoke of "divine revenge on America" did not speak of the Muslims being tortured in Myanmar and its surroundings. And those who gloat over us here did not move their hands with a donation for people being killed across time and in more than one country, nor did their tongues set off in supplication for them, asking for pardon and deliverance.

Are Disasters Always a Punishment?

The question remains in its place: if disasters come as a punishment from the Lord of the worlds, that is not correct in the fullest sense. Do you know why? Because Allah used to punish earlier nations with a general punishment: some had the earth swallow them, some were drowned, and some were seized by the blast.^[5] This stopped with the sending of Muhammad ﷺ. The scholars say: that is part of Allah's mercy to humanity, and its cause is the existence of this man, Muhammad son of ʿAbd Allāh. Indeed you can say with utmost certainty: the Prophet of mercy, not the prophet of gloating, nor of revenge, nor of reproach. ﴿وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً لِّلْعَالَمِينَ﴾ [al-Anbiyāʾ: 107] ("And We have not sent you except as a mercy to the worlds"). That is his mission ﷺ.

Then reflect: if torment and changes in the state of the universe were punishment, how do we explain what happened to the Prophet ﷺ the day the mountain moved under him and he said: «اثبت أُحُد، فإنما عليك نبيٌّ وصدّيق وشهيدان» ("Be firm, Uḥud, for upon you are only a prophet, a ṣiddīq and two martyrs")?^[6] Did Allah want to torment His Prophet and those with him? And what crime had they committed? Then you see that the cycle of events turns against the Muslims as it turns against the disbelievers: just as the disbelievers were defeated at Badr, the tide turned against the Muslims at Uḥud; and circumstances changed at the Battle of Ḥunayn until the Prophet ﷺ stood alone, with a group of his Companions with him, while the people scattered from him, and he was calling out: «أنا النبي لا كذب، أنا ابن عبد المطلب» ("I am the Prophet, no lie; I am the son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib").^[7] Then the people came back and matters settled. These are the vicissitudes of life, by the judgment of the Lord of the worlds and the secrets in His universe.

Discipline, Punishment and Revenge

And in the second sermon: we must distinguish between three terms: discipline, punishment and revenge. You discipline your children at home, and you may punish one of them if he makes an unseemly mistake, but does any of us take revenge on his son or his daughter? No one does that. The bounds of discipline are wider, the bounds of punishment a little narrower, and as for revenge, it has no place between parents and their children.

So look in the Qur'an: the owner of the two gardens was disciplined by Allah, who sent upon him what struck his fruit: ﴿وَأُحِيطَ بِثَمَرِهِ فَأَصْبَحَ يُقَلِّبُ كَفَّيْهِ عَلَىٰ مَا أَنفَقَ فِيهَا وَهِيَ خَاوِيَةٌ عَلَىٰ عُرُوشِهَا وَيَقُولُ يَا لَيْتَنِي لَمْ أُشْرِكْ بِرَبِّي أَحَدًا﴾ [al-Kahf: 42] ("And his fruits were encompassed, and he began to turn his hands about over what he had spent on it, while it had collapsed upon its trellises, and he said: Oh, I wish I had not associated anyone with my Lord"). He raised his hands and surrendered the banner; he had been disciplined. And as a kind of punishment you read the story of the owners of the garden: ﴿فَطَافَ عَلَيْهَا طَائِفٌ مِّن رَّبِّكَ وَهُمْ نَائِمُونَ ۝ فَأَصْبَحَتْ كَالصَّرِيمِ ۝ فَتَنَادَوْا مُصْبِحِينَ ۝ أَنِ اغْدُوا عَلَىٰ حَرْثِكُمْ إِن كُنتُمْ صَارِمِينَ﴾ [al-Qalam: 19–22] ("So there came upon it an affliction from your Lord while they were asleep, and it became as though reaped. And they called one another at morning: Go early to your crop if you would cut the fruit"), then ﴿فَانطَلَقُوا وَهُمْ يَتَخَافَتُونَ ۝ أَن لَّا يَدْخُلَنَّهَا الْيَوْمَ عَلَيْكُم مِّسْكِينٌ ۝ وَغَدَوْا عَلَىٰ حَرْدٍ قَادِرِينَ ۝ فَلَمَّا رَأَوْهَا قَالُوا إِنَّا لَضَالُّونَ ۝ بَلْ نَحْنُ مَحْرُومُونَ﴾ [al-Qalam: 23–27] ("So they set out, whispering to one another: There will surely not enter it today upon you any poor person. And they went early, determined, thinking themselves able. But when they saw it, they said: Indeed, we are lost; rather, we have been deprived").

And you hear in other stories: ﴿فَجَعَلْنَا عَالِيَهَا سَافِلَهَا وَأَمْطَرْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ حِجَارَةً مِّن سِجِّيلٍ﴾ [al-Ḥijr: 74] ("And We made its highest part its lowest and rained upon them stones of baked clay").^[8] Why this? Because the crime was general and the disease had spread through the whole body, so there was no place left for reform. And when does the general punishment, which is in effect revenge, come? When the whole society defies the Divine Being: ﴿فَأَمَّا عَادٌ فَاسْتَكْبَرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ بِغَيْرِ الْحَقِّ وَقَالُوا مَنْ أَشَدُّ مِنَّا قُوَّةً﴾ [Fuṣṣilat: 15] ("As for ʿĀd, they were arrogant upon the earth without right and said: Who is greater than us in strength?"). Here is the dividing line: ﴿أَنَا رَبُّكُمُ الْأَعْلَىٰ ۝ فَأَخَذَهُ اللَّهُ نَكَالَ الْآخِرَةِ وَالْأُولَىٰ﴾ [al-Nāziʿāt: 24–25] ("I am your most exalted lord. So Allah seized him in exemplary punishment for the last and the first"). There is no time; there is no room for reconsideration.

But as long as someone is in doubt about his religion, does not understand the matter, sees the Muslims as people unfit to be an example, with no distinguishing features, while others may be much better than them, more advanced and deeper in knowledge; those are doubts present in people's heads, and as long as things are like that, they are the field of your daʿwah. So do not deprive people of the good that is brought forth on your tongue. Let your smile reach people's hearts before your words. Look at people as hearts that need the seedling of faith planted in them, and minds that need to be opened onto the carpet of knowledge so that you can enter them. Stretch out your hand to help, not to rise above others or to insult, for that is not among the fixed tenets of faith nor among the traits of its people. This is my message to myself and to my brothers and sisters.

Action, Not Words

Whoever among you can find time or effort to help those afflicted here, let him do so. And before that, a call regarding the Muslims who are being tormented in many parts of the earth: what appears in the media is far less than what is happening on the ground, and Allah will ask us about minds that did not take in the problems of the ummah and did not search out its places of pain. And He will ask us about this safety in which we live, even if we live on a land that some call by names I do not want to say, for ﴿إِنَّ الْأَرْضَ لِلَّهِ يُورِثُهَا مَن يَشَاءُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ﴾ [al-Aʿrāf: 128] ("Indeed, the earth belongs to Allah; He causes to inherit it whom He wills of His servants").

Our Children

And finally: the generation you leave behind you. Your son will either have religion or be lost; there is no third option. And I excuse myself before Allah that I have presented this to this community; if you do not respond, that is your affair, and we are doing what is upon us.

I sent for my son to be brought from school a quarter of an hour before dismissal. He will lose nothing of his learning if he comes a quarter of an hour early, and he will attend the sermon here and learn that there is something called the Friday sermon. For the school year begins and stretches for months, and if the boy does not attend the Friday prayer during them, he will know nothing about it; then if you come afterwards and tell him: pray Jumuʿah with me, he will not respond, because he is not used to it and does not grasp it, and he wants to sleep and feel that it is a holiday. But if it is in his mind that there is something called the Friday prayer, he will get up for it, prepare for it and go to benefit from it. We strive as much as we can, and the only role left is yours: speak to the school and tell them: we have the Friday prayer, a religious matter; every Friday at such-and-such an hour we will take our children. And you will find the boy waiting for you in the office, because the person in charge there, or whoever is at the front desk, will call for him. They are organized, respectful people; they call the boy out of class and inform the school, and the whole system moves for the sake of your son or your daughter. We need to complement one another so that we cooperate in righteousness and taqwā, and help one another.

Supplication

O Allah, return us and the Muslims to Your religion in a beautiful return. O Allah, pardon us; O Allah, keep us safe; O Allah, make our religion sincere for us. O Allah, pardon our shortcomings toward our ummah. O Allah, have mercy on our oppressed brothers in every part of the earth, help us to support them, and make us firm upon the truth with which You are pleased.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: In the transcript the speaker attributed this meaning to Sūrat al-Zumar "and others"; the verse is in Sūrat al-Raʿd (13), so it has been given with its correct attribution. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: The phrase occurs in the transcript without attribution to a speaker. It is narrated in the books of history on the tongue of Ribʿī ibn ʿĀmir (may Allah be pleased with him) in his words to Rustam, the Persian commander, before al-Qādisiyyah, in the wording: «الله ابتعثنا لنخرج من شاء من عبادة العباد إلى عبادة الله» ("Allah has sent us to bring out whomever He wills from the worship of servants to the worship of Allah"). ^[3]: Editor's documentation: This incident was before the prophetic mission, when Quraysh disagreed over who would put the Black Stone in place when the Kaʿbah was being rebuilt; they made the first person to enter upon them the arbiter, and it was the Prophet ﷺ, who placed the stone in a cloth, each tribe took hold of one end of it, and then he set it in place with his own hand. Aḥmad reported it (15504), and al-Haythamī said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (3/294): "Hilāl ibn Khabbāb is in it; he is trustworthy but has been criticized, and the rest of its narrators are those of the Ṣaḥīḥ"; al-Ḥākim reported it (1683) from the ḥadīth of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Sāʾib, and al-Wādiʿī included it in al-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Musnad (578). ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The ḥadīth is in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (al-Bukhārī 3477 and Muslim 1792) from Ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him), that the Prophet ﷺ was relating the story of one of the prophets whose people struck him and made him bleed, and he wiped the blood from his face, saying: «اللهم اغفر لقومي فإنهم لا يعلمون» ("O Allah, forgive my people, for they do not know"). And al-Ṭabarānī reported in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (5694) from Sahl ibn Saʿd (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet ﷺ said: «اللهم اغفر لقومي فإنهم لا يعلمون», and al-Haythamī said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (6/120): "Its narrators are those of the Ṣaḥīḥ," and in some of its routes this was on the day of Uḥud. The editor did not find the wording «اهدِ قومي» ("guide my people") with a chain of narration, nor this supplication in the context of his ﷺ being pelted with stones. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: The meaning is taken from the words of Allah the Exalted: ﴿فَكُلًّا أَخَذْنَا بِذَنبِهِ فَمِنْهُم مَّنْ أَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِ حَاصِبًا وَمِنْهُم مَّنْ أَخَذَتْهُ الصَّيْحَةُ وَمِنْهُم مَّنْ خَسَفْنَا بِهِ الْأَرْضَ وَمِنْهُم مَّنْ أَغْرَقْنَا﴾ [al-ʿAnkabūt: 40] ("So each We seized for his sin: among them were those upon whom We sent a storm of stones, among them were those seized by the blast, among them were those whom We caused the earth to swallow, and among them were those whom We drowned"). ^[6]: Editor's documentation: Al-Bukhārī reported it (3675) from the ḥadīth of Anas (may Allah be pleased with him), when the Prophet ﷺ climbed Uḥud with Abū Bakr, ʿUmar and ʿUthmān, and it shook with them. ^[7]: Editor's documentation: Agreed upon, from the ḥadīth of al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib (may Allah be pleased with him) (al-Bukhārī 2864 and Muslim 1776), and it was on the day of Ḥunayn. ^[8]: Editor's documentation: And similarly in Sūrat Hūd (82).