Upholding the Prophetic Character in a Divided World

Khutbah - Upholding the Prophetic Character in a Divided World

Opening

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the most honored of the Prophets and Messengers, our Master, our Master, and our Beloved Muhammad, and upon his family, his companions, and his followers, until the Day of Judgment.

The Principle of Unity and Dispersion

However little our Islamic knowledge, we all know that this principle of unity and dispersion is at the heart of really everything that we believe in. Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى has created the world with various oppositions in it. There is up and down, and there is good and evil, and there is light and there is dark.

That's the way he's made it. One of these fundamental differences, it seems to me, is the difference between the one and the many. When we look at the seerah of the Chosen One صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ and the topic for this evening, we see exactly what it was that he did for his people عَلَيْهِ الصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلام and the psychological as well as the social revolution which he left behind him when he went to join his Lord.

The Essence of Tawheed

Tawheed, however little our Islamic knowledge might be, is the one indispensable truth. The one, the affirming the one. When we turn within ourselves, we find too many things.

Our emotions are many, our impulses are many, our daydreams are many, our sins are many. They jump around, each with their own demands and burden, and we seek peace, we seek a healing and a release from that, and we'll only find it in the one, the one source, the one place of origin, the point of return, that which gives sense and proportion and balance to everything else. That's in the soul.

Only with the remembrance of the one (تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ - tatma'inul qulub), do the hearts find peace and serenity, which is what, I guess, every single human being craves. And it's the same, of course, in society. So many individuals and special interests jumping around, pulling society in different directions, and we become sick outwardly just as we're sick inwardly when the many prevail.

Only the one, the one legislator, the one source of values, the one guarantor of meaning, the one ground of everything, can help to suppress those jumping voices and help them to come together. Tawheed is not just the declaration of the divine unity, but is the way in which society itself can find balance and proportion and stillness and peace.

The Prophetic Revolution

This is something that we all know, and we see it in the seerah of the Chosen One صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ Behind the outward show of the destruction of the 360 idols around the Kaaba, there was the reality of the destruction of the idols in the souls of Quraysh. And they're turning towards the Kaaba, the symbol of الْوَاحِدُ الْقَهَّارُ Al-Wahid Al-Qahhar). That was what the seerah did, the accomplishment of the abolition of the false gods of the many and the re-establishment of the one god of Sayyidina Ibrahim خَلِيلُ اللهِ عَلَيْهِ السلام

The Danger of Shirk

And again, you don't have to know much about Islam to know that the opposition to this principle of the one is shirk. The many we express as shirk. That is to say, suggesting that as well as Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى there are other sources of authentic value and strength and autonomy out there in the cosmos, that there is a rival, a partner, something that challenges the authority of الْوَاحِدُ الْقَهَّارُ

And the ulema have listed so many different forms of shirk, warning us against it, because after all, even though Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى كَتَبَ عَلَىٰ نَفْسِهِ الرَّحْمَة )kataba ala nafsihir rahmah), he has inscribed mercy upon his own nature, he has indicated that this particular failing is not to be forgiven.

"Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills."

This is the one unforgivable sin, to say that behind the many that we see, there is another bunch of many things. Or alternatively, to say that behind the many that we see, there is just a void and nothing at all, and the mystery of the many coming from nothingness is a puzzle, but there are people whose souls are dark enough to be inclined towards that paradox as well. But no, we say behind the many, there is the one.

Contemporary Forms of Shirk

All else is madness. And that madness is the nature of idolatry. Whether or not it takes the form of crude bowing down to crude statues, or whether it takes the form of bowing down to any other real rival to the

authority and sovereign unique rights of our Creator is not really the point.

There are many kinds of shirk. And the ulema have indicated, at least my teachers used to say, that there are two kinds of shirk that in our age seem to be particularly pestilential. And we might as well briefly indicate what they are, because I think there is a sobering lesson for us.

We're not just talking about statues of wood and stone, we are talking about ongoing dark realities that compromise our tawheed.

Shirk al-Ihtisab (Ostentation)

And these two are شرك الاحتساب shirk al-ihtisab) and شِرْكُ الْأَسْبَابِ shirk al-asbab). Shirk al-ihtisab means the shirk that happens when, because of our desire to please somebody who is not our Creator, or because of our fear of somebody who is not our Creator, we do things that seem to be ostensibly religious.

So if we're in the masjid, and there's somebody who we think we might get some benefit out of watching us, and our prayer, as a result, becomes a little bit longer, we have split the qibla. We have two qiblas. And that is a form of shirk.

That is ostentation. الشَّرْكُ الْأَصْغَرْ Al-shirk al-asghar), the lesser shirk, as the Holy Prophet عَلَيْهِ الصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلام described it. Now it is a catastrophe if shirk is the thing that is not to be forgiven.

And nowadays there are some who believe that it is not just through hope, but through fear, that people are to be constrained into Islam. The one who barks at the poor sister whose hijab isn't quite right, and she adjusts her hijab not 100% to please her Lord, but to stop that man barking, he has imposed a kind of shirk upon her, potentially. Her qibla is split.

She is doing it not just for fear of her Lord, but for fear of that man who is barking at her. That also is a lethal compromise in our tawheed. The one with the large stick and the angry face, who wishes to beat people because they are not complying with some ruling of sharia, needs to think about the implications for people's tawheed of what he is doing.

What if now they go to the masjid, or they fast, or they do some other good work, not just for Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى or maybe not at all for him, but simply because they don't want to feel those blows raining on their head. What has happened to that tawheed? And nowadays there are many Muslims who think that because of the political dimensions of religion, you have to use that stick to force people into paradise, dragging them to heaven by the scruff of their neck, as it were, a very strange conception. What are they doing to the tawheed of those people? In the longer term, they will find that they have no tawheed at all.

Shirk al-Asbab (Polytheism of Causes)

So that's shirk al-ihtisab, which the scholars say seems to be a particular risk in our fragile and spiritually ignorant times. And the second is شِرْكُ الْأَسْبَاب )shirk al-asbaab), the polytheism of causes. We believe in an all-powerful deity, an all-knowing deity.

No leaf falls but that it is known to him. Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى creates us and what we do. There is no other genuine agent out there in creation.

He alone does things and this staggers the imagination. We cannot imagine such a being or what the world is really like if we don't accept that there are causes. But we know in our theology that this is real.

Everything that happens is what Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى is doing. There is nobody who can rival him. He does not step back from certain possibilities in creation, limit himself, chain himself.

That is not possible. So shirk al-asbaab is the idea that things are out of control. Things cause other things according to certain laws or rules.

And this causes again a kind of shirk-type anxiety in the human soul. People feel frightened because the world seems to be out of control. What if? What if? What if? And the believer is not like that.

The believer has تَوَكَّلٌ tawakkul) and knows that whatever afflicts him is from Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى . And whatever blessing comes to him is from Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى. He believes in الْقَدَرِ خَيْرِهِ وَشَرِّهِ al-qadri khayrihi wa sharri).

He believes in destiny, its good and its evil, or its good and its bitter, the bitter and the sweet of it. And this is the essence of what it is to be Muslim, surrendered, accepting how things are. That behind the outward show, the scenery of cause and effect, there is the reality of the total unopposed divine control.

The Gift of Divine Nearness

And when we have that, tawakkul comes and again the healing ensues. And this at least used to be one of the great gifts of the Muslim. Now, if we overcome these two forms of shirk and look at the world in this serene and knowing way, seeing behind the infinitesimally thin surface of things to the reality of the divine power and glory and mercy, knowing that there is nothing really out there that is not simply an expression of the free and unopposed interplay of Allah's names in every instant, whether it be names of beauty or names of rigor, it is all what he is doing and what he is intending.

Everything in that sense is absolutely and utterly holy. When we have this, our hearts turn because we perceive him not as a god of absence but as a god who is absolutely present. This is the مَعِيَّةٌ ma'iyah) هُوَ مَعَكُمْ huwa ma'akum), the Quran says, he is with you.

And this is his name الْقَرِيبُ al-qari), which is a name we've almost forgotten. Many of the divine names in the Quran again come in pairs الْمُحْيِي الْمُمِيتُ al-muhyi, al-mumit), the one who gives life, the one who gives death الْخَافِصُ الرَّافِعُ alkhafid, al-rafi), the one who lowers, the one who raises up and so on. But there is no name that stands as a complement to the name القريب al-qarib), the near.

He is never referred to as the distant. Now we are distant in our forms of idolatry. What happens at the ends of the stories of the idolaters in the Quran, often we have this idea of distance, distant or distant to the people of injustice.

This was the people of Nuh and so on. But الْبَعِيدُ al-ba'id) is never one of the divine names. Where is he? Close? What does it mean to be close if we're not speaking about geographical distance or being close to us in time? What other kind of closeness could there possibly be? But Allah says he is close.

"And when My servants ask you concerning Me - indeed I am near. I respond to the invocation of the supplicant when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me [by obedience] and believe in Me that they may be [rightly] guided."

It's a famous ayahقَرِيبٌ إِنِّي ف fa inni qarib) He is proclaiming that he is near. When we have this transformation in the souls, so we don't just see the world as a kind of piece of clockwork with laws producing effects, but see the divine hand and wisdom and beauty and majesty and rigor in everything, then he becomes قَرِيبٌ qarib) to us in our perception as well as قَرِيبٌ qarib) in the reality of creation.

The Transformation of the Fatiha

And this is the state to which every believer must aspire. It is here that tawheed becomes not just something that we pay lip service to, but becomes a reality that dictates our form of being. All too often believers in today's world mouth a whole load of doctrines, but their hearts are still full of anxiety as if the world has slipped out of control, as if الْوَاحِدُ الْقَهَّارُ is no longer running things, but some other strange thing has taken over the world and it's run away.

This is not the case. The world is simply the outworking of his preexistent decree in his wisdom. And the believer must know this.

When he sees this, then Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى is قَرِيبٌ truly قَرِيبٌ for that person. We are invited to make this journey from perceiving Allah as a kind of abstract theological other to unlike anything in the world really to be open of access and towards one to whom we can relate and pray. Remember the beautiful ayah that it's لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُّونَ la'allahum yarshudun) that perhaps they will receive guidance.