Friday Sermon 24 January 1997

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Say 'Come and I will rehearse to you what your Lord has made inviolable for you; that you may not associate anything with Him as a partner and that you must treat parents with exceeding kindness, and that you kill not your children for fear of poverty - It is We who provide for you and for them - And that you approach not obscenities of any kind whether openly or in secret; and that you kill not the life which Allah has sanctified save by right.  That is what He has enjoined upon you that you may reason.

('The Holy Quran'.  al-An'am [The Livestock]: 152).

Here Allah the Almighty has stated that it is forbidden to you to associate partners with God or associate partners with your parents.  You should do with إِحْسَانًا ['exceeding kindness'].  That is because the favour of Allah is such that has no co-party.  Similarly your parents have given you birth.  There is a mutuality in the creation of God and of that of parents creating offspring.  The exceeding kindness found in the relationship of parents with their children cannot be observed in any other relationship.  Allah the Almighty has forbidden being ungrateful to kindness.  The Holy Prophet ﷺ has taught kindness to Allah by way of showing presence of mind during prayer as if you are seeing God or at the very least that God is seeing you.

The Holy Prophet ﷺ has stated that the person who found the month of Ramadan and whose sins weren't forgiven them is very unfortunate.  Another Hadith has one who rose during Ramadan in belief and hoping for reward has all their sins forgiven.[1]  Hoping for reward in this instance is explained as waking up hoping to be rewarded.  According to the lexicon when the word appears on its own its primary meaning is to account for.  This means that one should account for oneself critically.  It would mean accounting for yourselves as to what state you are in,  what foul deeds you have started to abandoned during Ramadan, what good deeds you started acting upon and made all the more beautiful.  

Then one should analyse whether one is fulfilling the requirements of faith or not and an analysis is important in order to fulfil the retirements of faith.  Analyse so as not to permit any aspect of Shirk [affiliating partners with God].  

Ramadan bring many adorned blessings so as to beautify your lives.  These are the bounties of God-consciousness and purification.  So one should analyse oneself in light of that, and also constantly analyse one's wife and family, friends and companions and make a habit of speaking about these things in your houses to explain the benefits of Ramadan to them.  The virtues you achieve in Ramadan, the evils you shun demand that the rest of your year should pass in accordance with it.  The Holy Prophet ﷺ states that one who spent a good  Ramadan would have spent a good year.  When this same subject appears before us with reference to the Lailatul Qadr [Night of Decree] we would learn that if the night was spent in a good way then one's life was sorted.  When the good of one month of Ramadan pans out upon the rest of the year one night of Lailatul Qadr encompasses an entire lifetimes.  These are the topics which one should keep in mind in one's everyday life and derive benefit from.  

To wake up for worship during the nights and to worship as a form of self-analysis if the topic elucidated by the Holy Prophet ﷺ and resulting in forgiveness.  The status and position of this forgiveness can be found in this narration of Hazrat Abdur Rehman bin Auf (Allah be pleased with him) in which the Holy Prophet ﷺ said that 'The person who fasts in the month of Ramadan being self-awareness and prays devotedly is purified from sins as if they had just emerged from the mother's womb.'  Once you are born into the spiritual world it is important to continue to possess this innocence.

Although the whole of 'The Holy Quran' is for the sake of self-analysis Surah Fatiha alone is enough for it.  It contains the key to every virtue, every gnosis.  The meanings of the Quran are also achieved through studying the Surah Fatiha and by loving it.  The subject of [2]الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ has always existed in relation to praise.  The Holy Prophet ﷺ has taught the subject of praise perfectly and more than anyone else.  The more your knowledge abut the worlds and the Lordship of the worlds increases the more the subject of الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ will open onto you and continually become all the more vast for it.  May the journey of every prayer during this Ramadan guide us to loftier heights than ever before.

[1] Bukhari, Imam Muhammad bin Ismael.  'Sahih Bukhari'.

[2]  'All praise be to Allah Lord of all worlds.' 

('The Holy Quran'.  al-Fatiha [The Opening]: 2).


The text http://www.alislam.org/urdu/sermon/FST19970124-UR.pdf


© The Tahir Archive / MTA International, 2015.
Friday Sermon 24 January 1997

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