Watch Your Tongue - Corrected Khutbah Transcription

Watch Your Tongue

Speaker: Joe Bradford

Opening

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

Whomsoever Allah guides, none can misguide him, and whomsoever He leaves astray, none can guide him.

The Story of Abu Bakr and the Importance of Silence

There was an occasion when the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) was enjoying his time going to one of the local springs, dipping their feet in the water, conversing and enjoying their time. And in one such instance, as the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) was sitting with Abu Bakr, a man came and approached Abu Bakr and started yelling at him and cursing at him and speaking bad about him to his face.

Abu Bakr sat there and didn't respond. And when the man noticed his silence, he was silent for a moment and then he started again - yelling at him, cursing at him, speaking bad about him to his face. Abu Bakr sat there silent, didn't respond.

When the man noticed that he didn't respond a second time, he let in on him a third time - yelling at him, cursing at him, speaking bad about him to his face. At the third instance, Abu Bakr (رَضِيَ اللهُ عَنْهُ) sought to avenge himself and so he replied to that person and spoke back to them.

And it was at that moment when he replied, when Abu Bakr avenged himself for the wrong that that person was saying to his face, the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) stood up and walked away.

Abu Bakr (رَضِيَ اللهُ عَنْهُ) followed him. He said, "O Messenger of Allah, did you find anything wrong with me? O Messenger of God, do you find something wrong with me? Is there something that I did?"

(Abu Dawud 4896)

"The angel of heaven descended to deny what he said to you. An angel had descended from heaven defending you because of what this person was saying about you. When you defended yourself, the devil appeared, and I was not to sit when the devil appeared."

The Lesson: Angels Defend the Silent

That the appropriate response to someone's negativity is not negativity itself. We can get caught up in the traps of our own tongue at times, not remembering what Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) Himself has said:

"And say to My servants let them say what is best. Indeed, Satan wishes to tear them apart."

One of my teachers used to say: "The difference between what Allah wants from us and what we want from ourselves is one dot." Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) says, "Say what is best" - that's what He wants from us. What we want from ourselves is what is coarsest and roughest. We want to show how tough we are, but Allah wants better than that for us. He wants greater than that for us. He wants us to be people of positivity in times of positivity and in times of negativity.

The Heart, Tongue, and Actions

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said in a hadith narrated by Imam Ahmed in his Musnad:

(Musnad Ahmad 12895)

"The iman of a man will never be upright until his heart is upright, and the heart of a man will never become upright until his tongue becomes upright."

The Arabs say: "Every dish pours out what's in it." The Salaf used to say: "Your tongue is the ladle to your heart." Have you ever used soup or eaten soup? What you serve the soup with is called the ladle. So whenever you speak, you're scooping out what's in your heart and presenting it to the people.

So it's important not to allow ourselves to get trapped. While we remain silent, while we allow others to disparage us, angels are defending us from the heaven, calling those who attack us liars, defending us in the spiritual realm so that when we reach Jannah our reward is even greater.

But it's easy to forget and lose sight of our eventual return to paradise. It's easy to lose sight of what our real destination is in life. Are we living in the moment or are we living for an existence which is longer than the existence of the heavens and the earth?

The Daily Battle of the Tongue

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) told us about the dangers of the tongue:

(Tirmidhi 2407)

"When a human being wakes up every single morning, every single one of his limbs implores the tongue, saying: 'Be mindful of Allah about us, because if you are upright we will be upright, and if you are crooked, then we will be crooked as well.'"

The things that we say have an effect on the things that we do, have an effect on the mood and the emotions that we express and how we act with others.

Many times it's our lack of positive affirmation in life that causes us to be such negative people, that causes us to feed into the negativity that others want to express towards us. If you know that it's not true, there's no need to reply, because in replying to a negative person you're feeding into their desire to weaken you.

The Servants of Ar-Rahman

Allah tells Satan: "My servants, you have no power over them." So you have to ask yourself at that moment when somebody is speaking disparagingly to me, is speaking badly to me: Am I being a servant of Allah or am I falling under the authority of Satan?

In speaking about the servants of Allah, Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) says:

"And the servants of Ar-Rahman (the Most Merciful), those who walk on the earth with humility, and when ignorant people speak to them, they say 'Peace.'"

I don't have time for that. Peace out. No need for negativity, no need for ignorance, no need to feed into the trolling, no need to feed into the snapbacks, no need to feed into the hate speech. There's no need for it. Peace.

Live at peace with yourself first and you'll be able to live at peace with others. But I know personally that one of the reasons why we find so much conflict with others is because we ourselves are at conflict with ourselves. We ourselves are not living in states of peace. We ourselves have not developed that inner positivity in our hearts, that contentment in our heart, that ability to be cognizant of seeking Allah's pleasure at every moment of the day.

Building Spiritual Strength

And it's nothing that you can take a magic pill for. It's not something that's going to come at the blink of the eye or a snap of the finger. There's no secret formula for it. There's no way that you can instantaneously become a person that's cognizant of Allah at all times. It's a process that you have to go through. It's effort that you have to put in.

I remember one time speaking to one of the greatest Qurra of Madina Munawwara and asking him, "What's the secret to memorizing the Qur'an?" He said to me, "Son, there is no specific thing to say, no specific dua, no specific food that you eat, no specific thing that you drink, no specific time that you memorize. My Lord gives strength to the one who picks up the Qur'an, the one who says Bismillah and reads. You do it by putting forth the effort."

(Quran 19:12)

"O Yahya, take the book with strength."

And those who hold tight to the book... Remaining cognizant of how we speak during the day is extremely important for our own emotional intelligence and our emotional strength, not falling victim to the attacks that other people may try to make us fall into.

And the servants of Allah, the servants of Ar-Rahman, they walk with humility. When the ignorant speak to them, they say peace. Later on in the same surah, Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) says:

"And those who do not attest to falsehood, and when they pass by frivolity, they do so in a dignified manner."

Preserve your personal dignity when dealing with others. You will find that Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) will preserve your dignity in this life and in the next.

The Consequences of Much Speech

[Saying of the Salaf]

"Whoever speaks a lot will have a lot of trip-ups. Whoever speaks much will fall much. And whoever is being tripped up much will have diminished humility, have diminished humbleness. And whoever's humility is diminished, then his precaution to do what is right and be pious will be diminished as well. And whoever's precaution to piety becomes diminished, then his heart will die."

May Allah make us not from amongst those whose hearts die.

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said to us

(Bukhari 6475, Muslim 47)

"Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him speak good or let him remain silent."

And he gave us a promise - in fact, he guaranteed for us - if we are able to control ourselves and control our tongues, then something immensely great is waiting for us:

(Bukhari 6474)

"Whoever can guarantee what is between his two jaws and between his two thighs, I will guarantee for him Jannah."

The Digital Age Challenge

Perhaps one of the worst instances of negative speech and us falling into the traps of that negativity is found in online activity - it's found in social media and on the internet. Is it wrong to be on the internet and to use social media? No, but it's extremely important for us to realize that online life is not real life.

Many times people are saying things on the internet to get a reaction out of you. They don't even believe what they're saying. They'll say the most stupid, racist, bigoted, ignorant things just to get a reaction because many people are sadists, they're narcissists, they're trolls. They don't want anything but to make you angry and to see how you will react, and to force you out of your skin.

Which is why it's important that we understand there's a principle in Islam, a principle in Islamic thought:

الْكِتَابُ كَالْخِطَابِ Islamic Legal Maxim

"Writing something is the same as speaking it."

When you write something down, it's the same as if you said it. So if you were unable to speak and you wrote down "I sold you my car for such and such" and I wrote down "I accepted," this is a valid contract in Islam.

If you write down slandering someone on a piece of paper and give it to them, then you can be held liable for slander as well, because writing something is the same as speaking it, is the same as saying it.

And unfortunately, it's very easy for us to react to things online. People who tout themselves as warriors of some greater good will come and attack you online only to see you falter and only to see you fall. It's important not to feed into that negativity and to make our children cognizant of the fact that not everything online is true and online life is not real life.

Prophetic Guidance for Speech

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) gave us several instructions that can help us rehabilitate and prevent ourselves from falling into these things. A very simple hadith - a hadith that I love for its simplicity, its succinctness and the shortness of the phrase - three words only:

(Tirmidhi 2501)

"Whoever is silent is saved."

Many times the problems that we create for ourselves are due to us speaking about them, due to us responding. Remember the hadith of Abu Bakr: the angels were defending him from the heavens, descending and defending him until he tried to avenge himself, to prove himself, to prove those other people wrong.

If you understand that what you've said or what you've done has nothing wrong with it, don't worry about trying to explain to people who don't want to hear it in the first place. They only want to elicit a reaction from you.

Another prophetic guideline for speaking with others - the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said in a hadith:

(Tirmidhi 2411)