Abdul Rahman Chao - 6-28-24

During the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab radiyallahu anhu. Just a few years ago, the Muslims were on the backpedal still, trying to defend themselves from the Meccans. And it's only been five years that the Prophet ﷺ had just passed away.

And the Muslims were already knocking on the doorsteps of the Byzantine Empire and the Persians. So in the battle of al-Qadisiyyah, Umar ibn al-Khattab had sent one of the individuals who was promised Jannah, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, who was promised Paradise. He was the leader of the army.

And when they had reached the Persian Empire on the outskirts, the Persian Empire, the Sassaniyya, the Sassanid Persians, they had amassed an army of 80,000, and in some narrations, over a 100,000 troops. And the commander of that army was none other than the Spahbad, the leader known as Rustam Farrukhzad. And he was of nobility, and he was the army commander.

And so he had situated himself in the back of the army center right. He had a big tent, he had a high platform, he was wearing his crown, and he had pillows and gold clothing, and he was pretty much decked out in everything. And he had this big carpet lining the way from where he was sitting inside his tent to the entrance of the tent.

I want you to imagine the scene. And there were royal guards flanking the side of this red carpet. So he sent a message to Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, he says, send me someone who has intellect so I can parley with, so I can have a conversation with.

So Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas sends none other than Ribi'i ibn Amir radiyallahu ta'ala, a companion of the Prophet ﷺ who was very poor, he didn't care about wearing fancy clothes, he wore clothes that were very modest. In fact, in the eyes of the Persians, they thought he was terribly dressed. He rode a very short horse, it was a hairy horse, and when he came in, he didn't dismount, he actually came into the tent with his horse, and the horse was trotting over this fancy carpet that they had laid out.

And so they tried to stop him. So finally he gets down and he ties his horse to one of the cushions on the ground. And when the horse came in, I was walking around, it actually messed up some of the pillows.

He gets off the horse, the guards say, give us your weapons. He says, no, you called me here, I didn't come here because I wanted to, you requested me to come here, so I'm going to come in the way how I come. Look at the dignity, mashallah.

Look at the honor that he has, the sharaf that he has for himself. So now he gets off the horse and he's using his spear, and he's getting closer and closer to Rustam. And the spearhead is actually on the bottom instead of on the top.

So as he's walking, he's inevitably poking holes through all these pillows, these fancy gold pillows, and he doesn't care. So Rustam said, why are you here? So Ribi' bin Amir, he says, verily Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has sent us, so that we can bring people, the servants of Allah, from the worship of the creation to the worship of Allah.

We were sent to bring people out from the worship of the creation to the worship of Allah. From the constriction and the tightness and the oppression of the world to the vastness of Islam. And from the oppression of other religions to the justice of Islam.

So Rustam said, okay, give us some time, we will go back and write to our leaders and we will think about it. Ribi' bin Amir says, how much time do you need? One day, two days to think about it? He says, no, no, no, we need more time. He says, no, we're gonna give you three days. The Prophet ﷺ never gave his enemies except only three days for them to think about.

So he said, okay. After a while Ribi' bin Amir leaves, and Rustam says to his advisors, what do you think about what he says? Have you seen someone so eloquent, so clear in his intellect and the way how he explained himself? They started shaming him. They said, you would abandon your religion for this dog? You would abandon everything for this dog here? You're gonna leave your religion for this?

No. Look, they said, look at the way how he dresses. Look how ugly and simple how he dresses. Rustam said, no, don't look at his clothes. But look at his speech. Look at his character. Look at the intellect, look at the stuff that he's talking about. Look at the context of what he's saying. You've never seen a person talk like this.

The Essence of Muslim Identity

Brothers and sisters, you look at this story. You cannot help but see that this dialogue between Ribi' bin Amir and Rustam is nothing less than the perfect example of what it means for this companion to demonstrate the essence of having a strong Muslim identity.

And when we talk about the issue of identity, I'm not talking about the social norms on the outside when someone says, oh, how are you? And what do you do? That you say, well, I'm a computer engineer or I'm a lawyer or I'm a doctor. There's nothing wrong with that.

But what I'm talking about is what do you view yourself inside your heart? At night when you are sitting there by yourself, how do you view yourself? What is your identity?

Brothers and sisters, the fundamental identity that should govern our entire way of life is that you know that you are a servant of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that you are a slave of Allah before anything else. Before you're an Arab, before you're from Pakistan or India, before you're from this country or that country, before your passport or nationality, before your job, before what college you graduated from. Your first identity is, I am a servant of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

I'm a Muslim and I'm a servant of Allah. That should be your first thing that comes to your mind.

Allah tells us in the Qur'an:

I have not created the humans and the jinn except that they worship.

A Title of Honor

And because we live in the west where this word being a slave of Allah, the word slave has a historical context to it, we are afraid of identifying as, I'm a slave of Allah, servant of Allah. I'm not talking about you go out into the street and say, who are you? I'm a slave of Allah. I'm talking about how you view yourself.

But this title of, you are a servant of Allah, a slave of Allah, this is a title of honor that Allah has given us. Allah calls His prophets and messengers servants and slaves.

Glory be to the one in which His servant traveled through the night and went up, talking about Muhammad ﷺ. How did He describe him? As His slave.

Allah describes Dawood alayhis salatu wasalam. What did He describe him as? He described him as a servant of Allah, as a slave of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

And so brothers and sisters, when we say we are a servant of Allah, it's not this philosophical idea that's too hard to understand. It's simply a mindset, that everything that you do is governed by what does the Qur'an tell me to do? What does the Prophet ﷺ teach me to do?

Beyond Cultural Labels

So when you go to China for example, when you tell people in China, I am a Muslim, most people don't know what that means. But you have to tell them, Oh, I'm a Hui, which is the Chinese word for Muslim. A Hui Muslim. Then they're like, Ah, the people who don't eat pork.

And if you think about that, is that what Islam teaches us? That our identity is based on what we eat and what we don't eat? No? And if you look in the West, at best, when you say, Oh, I'm a Muslim. What do the people outside think? Ah, the women wear hijab, and you fast in Ramadan. That's the nice version.

And then you have the nasty version, what goes on right now, right? The violent people, the so and so, the people who oppress others, right? They tell our story for us.

But brothers and sisters, when you are a Muslim, what it means is that there is no Muslim mode on when you're in the masjid, Muslim mode off at work. Muslim mode on when you're around other Muslims, Muslim mode off when you're out clubbing.

No. You should be Muslim mode on all the time.

The Bedrock of Identity

Don't get me wrong, brothers and sisters. We are not saying that the Muslim identity is only limited to this. We are saying that this is the bedrock of your identity.

So while the people on the outside think that the identity of a Muslim woman is the hijab, we say to them, if the hijab is worn, but there is no concept of why I'm wearing it for the sake of Allah, then we have a problem.

When we have a person who is practicing certain rituals of Islam that identifies them as Muslim, but they're not really understanding that, why do I do this? Why do I pray five times a day? Why do I get up for fajr? Why do I fast Ramadan? Then when something bad happens to them, they end up quitting all of these things that they used to practice in Islam. Why? Because that concept of, I am a servant of Allah and I obey His commandments and I stay away from all the things that He has commanded me to stay away from, out the door, because they have a crisis of faith.

A companion by the name of Salman al-Farisi. He was once having a conversation with some of the pagan Meccans, and they said, your companion even teaches you how to use the bathroom? And he said, yes, Muhammad ﷺ teaches even how to use the bathroom. And there's no shame in that.

True Freedom

We are living in a time, brothers and sisters, that when you talk about that your identity is as a Muslim or you are religious to some religion, the atheists and the liberals, they always are projecting onto religious people. Ah, they think they're better than everyone else. Ah, these are the nutcases. These are the religious people who are enlightened.

So which leads us, brothers and sisters, to why is it important that you understand that the fundamental identity of your existence is to worship Allah? It's like what Ribi Ibn Amir says, من ضيق الدنيا إلى ساعتها والآخرة That you are liberated from the constriction of this dunya to the freedom and vastness of the dunya and the akhira.

So when they say to you, but you are of this nationality, why are you Muslim? I'm not bound by these rules. But you're an American, why are you in hijab? I'm not bound by these rules.

So you're not going to submit to the constriction and the beliefs that other people impose onto you. That's what it means to be free. And so the non-Muslims, they will always be trying to misguide us and lead us into other temptations because they know, when you as a Muslim know your worth and value, is that you're not gonna bow down to someone else and what they say who you are, you can't be controlled.

So when you look at the people of Gaza right now, they are demonstrating for us what it means that they know that there is no one but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So when people are saying, where are the Arab? Where are the Muslim rulers? No. We do not depend on them.

When you're a Muslim, you know that your job and your boss, they are the means to your rizq and your sustenance. So when you lose your job and your identity is not, oh, my entire identity is because I'm an engineer. Because when you get laid off, we as a Muslim, we know Allah is in charge. Allah is going to provide. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will continue to give, not the company. That's the benefit of having that strong belief of knowing that you are the servant of Allah.

So that when other people say to you, you need to conform, you need to assimilate. You know that the only thing you need to assimilate to is to assimilate to what the Qur'an says, to assimilate to what the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ says.

Islam as a Dye

And therefore, brothers and sisters, when you think about this conversation between Rustam and Rabee' bin Amr, think about the verse in the Qur'an where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes the religion as a dye, as a color dye.

Allah says in the Qur'an:

What does صبغة الله mean? صبغة is originally from the word a dye that you use to color your clothes. But why does Allah describe His religion of Islam as a dye? Because when you take clothes and you dye it, you put it into indigo or whatever color it is, you expect the color to stay. Because when you wash the clothes and it bleeds out constantly and it ruins other clothes, you're like, well I don't like the quality of this.

So Islam is a religion where the effects of your deen are shown on this. It doesn't just simply fade away. It's a process where the more you practice, the stronger that dye, that religion of Islam is a part of who you are.