Making the most of our Time
By Abu Taubah | 2026-01-15T14:16:31.570162+00:00 | Topic: Time
Making the Most of Our Time
Opening Salutation
(السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ - assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh)
(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim)
Opening Khutbah (Khutbat al-Hajah)
إِنَّ الْحَمْدَ لِلَّهِ نَحْمَدُهُ وَنَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَمِنْ سَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللهُ فَلَا مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلَا هَادِيَ لَهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ حَقَّ تُقَاتِهِ وَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنتُم مُّسْلِمُونَ يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ اتَّقُوا رَبَّكُمُ الَّذِي خَلَقَكُم مِّن نَّفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ وَخَلَقَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا وَبَثَّ مِنْهُمَا رِجَالًا كَثِيرًا وَنِسَاءً وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ الَّذِي تَسَاءَلُونَ بِهِ وَالْأَرْحَامَ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلَيْكُمْ رَقِيبًا يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَقُولُوا قَوْلًا سَدِيدًا يُصْلِحْ لَكُمْ أَعْمَالَكُمْ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ وَمَن يُطِعِ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ فَقَدْ فَازَ فَوْزًا عَظِيمًا أَمَّا بَعْدُ فَإِنَّ أَصْدَقَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابُ اللهِ وَخَيْرَ الْهَدْيِ هَدْيُ مُحَمَّدٍ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ وَشَرَّ الْأُمُورِ مُحْدَثَاتُهَا وَكُلَّ مُحْدَثَةٍ بِدْعَةٌ وَكُلَّ بِدْعَةٍ ضَلَالَةٌ وَكُلَّ ضَلَالَةٍ فِي النَّارِ
All praise belongs to Allah. We praise Him, we seek His forgiveness and His guidance. We seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our own deeds and the evil of our own egos.
Anyone whom Allah guides, then no one can lead him astray. And anyone whom Allah leads to stray, then there is none that can guide him. And I bear witness that there is nothing worthy of worship and no gods in reality except Allah, the one and only.
And I bear witness that Muhammad ibn Abdillahi (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) is His slave and His final messenger.
Opening Verses
Allah says what could mean in the Quran:
"O you who believe, fear Allah, respect Allah, remember Allah as it is His right to be feared, respected and remembered. And don't you dare die except that you die as a Muslim."
"O mankind, fear your Lord, have taqwa for your Lord, the one who created you all from one soul, Adam. And created from that soul its mate, Eve. And raised up and spread from the two of them many men and women. And fear Allah, the one whom you ask things for. And don't cut ties with the wombs that bore you. Indeed Allah above you all is laying in watch."
"O you who believe, fear Allah, respect Allah, think about Allah. And in light of your fear, respect and thinking about Allah, say a word that goes straight to the point so that it penetrates the issue."
"If you do this, Allah has promised us that He will rectify our affairs. He will make right something we did wrong. And forgive you your sins. And whomsoever is already obeying Allah, and already obeying His messenger, has already achieved the highest achievement anyone could ever hope to aspire for."
Introduction
As for what follows, then know that the best speech is in the Quran, the speech of Allah. And the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wasallam). And the most evil of affairs are those things that we invent and we come up with ourselves.
Every one of these things that's not in the sunnah, that's not in the Quran, that's not in the Islamic law, is something that leads us astray. And everything that leads us astray, even a little bit, will eventually wind us up and lead us into the hellfire.
Main Body: Priorities and the Condition of Our Hearts
Some of us have our priorities mixed up.
Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah, he was a famous general. He was known as the trustworthy one in the Ummah of Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wasallam). He was a general. And he lined his troops up. And he inspected them. And you know in an inspection of the troops, he wants to make sure that their uniforms are clean, that they're well groomed, that they have their weapons ready, and their equipment is proper.
And he afterwards, after inspecting them, he said to them, Some of us have our priorities mixed up. You see one of us come to Jumu'ah with a clean thobe, ironed and pressed, washed body, itr on him. But his soul is a dirty, stinking, filthy soul. His heart is filled with blackness and disease.
So we'll clean our thobe and we won't leave the house unless our thobe and our clothing and our body is well cleaned and presentable for the eyes of man. But we don't ever think about cleaning our hearts, purifying our hearts, emptying our hearts.
We walk around in the daytime and we pick up dust from walking in the street, dirt from walking past people that smoke. When we walk past the water, the car splashes a little bit of filth on our clothing. So even if we ourselves didn't sweat much, didn't come up with much internal filth, we get the filth of the dunya on our physical clothing.
And we would never ever think to leave out our homes, or even approach our children sometimes in the house, when we come in the house with dirty clothes or go out with dirty clothes. I remember going to the internet cafes in Egypt. And if anyone's been there, they smoke a lot of cigarettes.
So if you spend five minutes in there, your whole thobe is drenched in the smell of cigarette and nicotine. So I used to come home and make sure that before my children hugged me, before I gave my wife a hug, I would say, and I would take my thobe off, go make wudu and even more than wudu, just to wash that filth off me and then greet my family.
But the external is of less importance than the internal. Because as we have learned, every physical, every external act of ugliness begins with an internal act of ugliness in the heart.
Our Accountability is Near
Allah says:
اقْتَرَبَ لِلنَّاسِ حِسَابُهُمْ وَهُمْ فِي غَفْلَةٍ مُّعْرِضُونَ
"Man's account with Allah is getting closer and closer. Every day, every moment. Our life is the moments that we live. اقْتَرَبَ لِلنَّاسِ حِسَابُهُمْ And they the people, are unmindful. They're not paying attention to any of that. وَهُمْ فِي
غَفْلَةٍ مُّعْرِضُونَ Turning away from it, not paying any attention."
There doesn't come to them any new reminders from their Lord. And the reminders from your Lord come in many different ways. You could see something in the street happening and that's a reminder for you from your Lord. You could see a car accident. You could see an old person in the street or a young person being born into the world and that's a reminder for you.
These are the days that Allah tricks them, turns them back and forth. He gives us these vicissitudes of life. One day we live, one day we die. One day we celebrate life, one day we celebrate and commemorate death. Or a life. And we never know when it's going to be us or someone dear to us.
اقْتَرَبَ لِلنَّاسِ حِسَابُهُمْ
The people's account, your account is getting closer and closer. What do you think is going on when we start going gray? I mean that's a major sign. And most of us here are going gray. We have some gray. How long do you think you're going to live? What do we as the Muslims believe? And what does our belief make us do?
Because what we're talking about here is general. Everybody wants a quick fix. There is no quick fix in Islam. The confusion or the difficulty of Islam is in its simplicity.
أَلْهَاكُمُ التَّكَاثُرُ
"Allah gives it to us right there. لَهَتْهُمُ الْقُلُوبُ Our hearts. Our hearts are distracted. أَلْهَاكُمُ التَّكَاثُرُ What are they distracted with? The same word."
We're distracted with these, you know, what they call trifles. These petty things. TV, color, buildings, car, money, fame, business. لَهَتْهُمُ الْقُلُوبُ Their hearts are filled with these things. And so this is why we're not paying attention to the details of life. This is why we'd rather clean our phone and get mad at our wives if our clothes for Jumu'ah are not ready.
But not do any self-reflection to make sure our hearts are ready. Are we ready? Are we spiritually ready to make the changes? The internal changes that each and every individual has to make in order to establish Islam first and foremost in their own selves. Then it transcends to those around you.
Purifying Our Hearts
And if we would focus first and foremost on our own hearts, the filth that they pick up just by walking in the street. Let's not even say that the things that you yourself think about. The things that you pick up like the filth
you pick up from walking in the street.
The music that gets in there. The hatred, the animosity, the bad taste, the guilt. And the Muslims shouldn't be guilty because we have tawbah. The Prophet Allah, he always describes the mujrimun, the criminals of having guilt. Why do they have guilt? Because they did it. It doesn't mean that they feel remorse.
But they're guilty of whatever they did. How does a person stop being guilty? He repents and he follows up a bad deed with a good one. A criminal is not considered a criminal if he's paid his debt to society.
We pay our debts to Allah for violating his laws by repenting back to Allah. And following up that bad deed, that bad thought with a good one. And we purify our hearts. We set ourselves right by returning back to that right position.
But it's just like Allah said:
لَهَتْهُمُ الْقُلُوبُ
"The people's hearts are distracted. Our hearts, let's not say someone else. Our hearts are distracted. What are they distracted with? You know. Everybody here knows what his dhamir, what his conscious is considering."
What happens?
وَأَسَرُّوا النَّجْوَى الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا
"Allah says, those who, the oppressors. But let's take another language. Because people oppress themselves. Anybody who violates the law of Allah has oppressed themselves. People conceal their secret thoughts and their secret conversations."
When someone comes and gives us some advice and we don't like it:
"This guy, who do you think he is? He's nobody, just somebody just like us."
We say that. Not just to the anbiya, but to the imam, to the duaat, to the guy in the street. Somebody tells you, Islam says you have to grow a beard. You get mad at him. Like he's the problem. Like you didn't know that when you shaved your face.
Nobody can force you to do anything. We're not trying to pick on the brothers that shave. I'm just making a point. The same thing can be said about the brothers when they say, Okay, raise your pants. Wear a thobe. Cover your kubra.
Second Khutbah
Because your account with your Lord is coming. And all we've been doing is wasting our time. We praise Him. We seek His forgiveness. And His guidance. We seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our own egos and the evil results of our own deeds.
The Hadith: Five Before Five
Allah's Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) he said:
"Take advantage of five things before five things happen. And we know this hadith."
(Musnad Ahmad 3575, Al-Hakim)
We're familiar with this narration. But how many times have we really put it into practice?
- Take advantage of your youth before you become older
- Take advantage of your wealth before you become poor
- Your health before you get sick
- Your richness before you become poor
- And ultimately your life before you die
Time Management: The Four Quadrants
We hear this in a practical sense. A man is always in one of four situations. There is something that we call urgent and important. We call important and urgent something. It's either important but not urgent something. Urgent but not important. Not important and not urgent.
And the person has to look at his time in the context of these four frames. And this is something practical. Everybody can walk away with. Because what we're doing, we're wasting our time. Busying our time with laahiyah. Those wasteful things. We call an amusement park a malha. You know, a place where you go and just waste your time. Watching some TV. So we have to look at it. What things are we doing that we're wasting? Where is it where Allah tells us, Where do you fall into that? So let's look at it.
First Quadrant: Important and Urgent
What is something important and urgent? Well, when you have to take someone to the hospital. May Allah protect us from that. Then that is important and urgent. So important and urgent is something that cannot be put off normally. It has to happen right away. Or there's some detrimental effect that happens.
Second Quadrant: Important but Not Urgent
Then we have the second one. Something that is important but not urgent. It's been described, if you have a half a tank of gas. You need gas, it's important. But it's not urgent.
However, the thing to remember about those things that are important and not urgent. That if you ignore them, when they're not urgent. They can become important and urgent. And so you have to be careful. The things that are important and urgent come anyway. There's no way of stopping those. Some of those things. But you are responsible for stopping them. If it's important and not urgent.
So you get gas before you run out. So let's say the incident happens when you have to rush someone to the hospital. But because you didn't take care of getting the gas when it was important and not urgent. Now you gotta go get gas before you can go to the hospital. And that delays the important and urgent thing.
Third Quadrant: Urgent but Not Important
The next one is urgent but not important. This is when you're late and you have to go someplace. And someone wants to tell you something. He say, hey look, I'm trying to tell you and you have to go.
That's urgent but it's not necessarily important. They want to tell you what happened last week. What happened last night. Something, it may be urgent but it's not important. So you have to watch out for those things that are urgent but not important. A waste of time.
Fourth Quadrant: Not Urgent and Not Important
And the last one are those things that are not urgent and not important. And sadly most people are busy with those things that are not urgent and not important. You'll see the masjid empty if there's a soccer game. I'm sorry, a football game going on. It's not important and it ain't urgent.
Who won last year's World Cup? Who cares? What's that gonna do for you? How's that gonna get you into jannah? But you'll see some people stop talking to each other. If there's some not important thing on a game,
affect their country. We need to reflect on our time. Because that's what we're wasting. And this is what Allah is constantly showing us. That we're wasting our time. And that things, wasteful things are filling up that time space that we're supposed to be using. This time to gather up and store for ourselves some reward in the hereafter.
Our Chief Investment: Time
The person that is very economic, thrifty. He's a business person. He's going to take his chief investment, his time and use it in the best way possible. So he can get the most profit. The most profit is to store up the most deeds. The most good deeds you can store up for yourself in the hereafter. That is what you should be busy with. This is my dawah for you guys today.
Helping Our Brothers in Pakistan
I said my statements, may Allah forgive me and you all. And lastly, we have to remember our brothers. Everybody's heard recently what happened in Pakistan. The Muslims are like one family. If we're really like that, you know, if we really were like that, we would be very much up at night. Like the prophet said, worried about our brothers.
I know it's not always equal that we get the word out. We hear about Pakistan, we might not hear about Africa or we might not hear about Malaysia. But since we have heard about this one, we need to be responsible and help our brothers.
It's not the rest of the world's responsibility to reach out and take care of the Muslims. No matter what country they come from, you know. And this idea, this nationalism, you know, this nationalistic idea, it's wrong. It's not from Islam. Islam really came to kill all this nationalistic ideas. The Muslims are the Muslims.
3.2 million people are reported to be displaced. And you guys know the details that some of you might have relatives there. The prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said whoever begins a good sunnah, you know, and he spends his money or does something.
And this was in the context of spending. Because one time the prophet saw a bunch of people come forward, and they didn't have much even clothes. And then their swords were hanging from their necks, the mudar. And the prophet told Bilal, you know, give us some mercy. And when he did, they prayed. And after they prayed, one man, he said, look at your brothers.
He said, taqoolah, look at your brothers. And then the people sat there. And then one man got up and left and came back with clothes and food. And he just put it there. And then other people started doing the same. And then in this context, the prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) said, whoever starts a good sunnah, right? Whoever does this,
a good sunnah, and then everybody else follows him in that sunnah, then they get the reward for what they did and what everybody else did without decreasing the other people's reward.
Let us open our hearts. We forget the things we can do. If you don't have money, make dua. Dua is the weapon of the believers. If we really believe in Allah or life, make dua. And if you come out your pocket, understand that Ali ibn Abi Talib said, where a man spends his money is proof. This is his proof, what he really believes in.
Closing
"I say this and ask Allah's forgiveness for me and you."
END OF KHUTBAH