No One Gains From The Good That We Don t Do

By Khalid Latif | 2026-01-16T13:24:52.662654+00:00 | Topic: Iman

Extracted Text

No One Gains From The Good That We Don't Do | Imam Khalid Latif

| Jummah Reflection

Opening Greetings and Salutations

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى رَسُولِ اللهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَمَنْ وَالَاهُ

Opening Khutbah

All praise is due to Allah. We thank Him, we praise Him, we glorify Him. We beseech Him to send His choicest salutations upon His most beloved, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon all those who choose to tread on his path until the last day.

Alhamdulillah, we're blessed to be able to spend these moments together on this Mubarak day of Jum'ah, the blessed day of Friday. May Allah make it a day of benefit and increase for all of us and make us from amongst those who find within the blessed hours of this blessed day that unique hour in which our supplication, our prayer, our dua is said to be most accepted, and may we be from amongst those who are making dua in that hour.

May He make us from amongst those who in our books this blessed day is written as a day of growth for us, a day of drawing closer to Him by drawing closer to an understanding of who it is that we are. May He make this a day that draws our hearts to one another in closer proximity that despite our physical separation we still have as sisters and brothers a deep spiritual connectedness.

Introduction and Context

In New York City where I am, the circumstances are quite unique in that Alhamdulillah, our city is starting to open up more. What we find in different parts of the country is now the unfortunate circumstance of increased cases and individuals passing away—fatalities from the illness that we all know as COVID-19, the coronavirus. May Allah grant ease to all those who are facing difficulty in any way, complete healing and shifa to those who find themselves ill, and relief and ease to any who have lost loved ones as a result of this plague.

The moment becomes imperative for you and I to reflect deeply yet again, regardless of what part of the world, what part of this country, what city we find ourselves residing in, to think deeply about who it is that we want to

be and what these moments will help us to do to achieve that reality of what it is that we envision our ideal self becoming and turning into.

Right now more so than ever it is important for you and I to start to think and assess what it is that we are doing in the framework of what it is that we do not do.

Reflection on Pain and Remembrance

As many of you know, I've had some difficulties with my physical health in the last couple of months and Alhamdulillah, I'm doing much better. In the course of engaging in correspondence with individuals of our community to give updates on my own personal health, one of the things that I had mentioned to people that I received a lot of feedback on was a statement that I had written in a post, in a letter to the community, saying that there's a uniqueness when we experience pain because it's hard to forget pain—that we remember pain in ways that we don't remember sweetness, compassion, and kindness. But as hard as it is for us to stop remembering the experience of pain, it becomes impossible for us to remember acts of kindness, compassion, love, beauty that we never were recipient of to begin with.

People said that this seems to be a very important statement, can you embellish upon it more? And essentially what it is that I was trying to say was: nobody is going to be able to remember acts of goodness that you did not ever do. It becomes impossible for anyone to be able to reflect back upon experiences that they have not ever had.

But in particular when an individual is trying to think out how to move forward or to find light in a moment of darkness, to think about where there's gain or potential for them to find comfort and solace, they can't include you and I in the actions that we undertake unless we actively undertake them to begin with.

The Foundation of Altruism in Islam

Altruism in and of itself is a key part of Islam as a religion.

Hadith: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love for others what you love for yourself. You will not enter paradise until you believe and until you simply love one another."

(Related in Sahih Muslim)

This is a fundamental hadith that we are taught over and over and over, we hear them.

The definition of altruism that we would want to adopt for ourselves is one that recognizes that we engage in an act of goodness, an act of benefit, an act of kindness for someone else with no expectation of anything in return

for ourselves—that there is no element of self-gain to it, no selfishness, no egocentricity.

You find this embedded within some of the ritual that we have. The rules of zakah, for example, the obligatory charity that we are required to give per annum once we cross a certain threshold of wealth and retain that amount of wealth for the course of an entire lunar calendar year, we don't dip below—it has parameters in place that your zakah and its giving cannot be to benefit yourself. It's simply to benefit the beneficiary.

In so many other ways there are things that we are called to do, things that we are commanded to do, things that we are obligated to do that stem from this notion of simply doing it because it will bring benefit to somebody else.

The Value of Small Acts

I want you to think deeply about this for a moment and not in a way that's self-deprecating but in a way that elevates the self, in a way that gives you a self-recognition that's empowering—and not at a level of grandeur or a scale that thinks about thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions, but to bring it back to Hadith.

Hadith: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, tells us to not undermine any good action, to not belittle any good deed, to not think of any righteous act as insignificant. He says even simply meeting your brother with a cheerful face.

(Related in Sahih Muslim)

And to then think about what your capacity is to be, to do, to engage, to act, and to let the idea be something that does not ruminate within you but you contemplate upon it: How can someone benefit from the good that you have not done? How can someone gain from acts that you have not undertaken? And where will the starting point begin and initiate itself?

A Story of Selflessness

Yesterday some of you might have read─I shared on social media an experience that I had with my daughter Medina, who many of you know. As New York City seeks to reopen and it goes from its different phases of opening, we have found that in New York City playgrounds have started to open up. I've taken my children pretty much every day since that time to different playgrounds to let them be outside and be around other children in a still socially distant way.

Yesterday we went to a place where the whole way down my daughter was talking about how excited she was to just play on a swing. We got out of our apartment, we got onto a bus, we rode the bus, and she said the first

thing I want to do is this. In New York City the days are getting hotter and hotter, and once we got out of the bus the sun was on its way to the time of Dhuhr and it was blazing down upon us.

The swings that my daughter can go on now are not the ones for little kids anymore, but she's getting bigger mashallah—she can only fit on the regular adult size ones. This particular playground had just a couple of those but so many more for infants and toddlers, people who are of the size of my son who could still fit in one for a smaller child. As my son got situated and I started to push him, my daughter waited in line, and the line that she was in—she was the last one—but she waited until her turn.

About 20 minutes passed where she just stood in the heat waiting for this swing with excitement. Mashallah, she has a lot of light and a lot of vibrancy to her. You could tell just how happy she was as she got closer to it.

Within a minute of being on this thing she started to pump her legs back and forth and she got higher and higher. She said, "Baba, I'm going to touch the trees today!" You could tell that she was so excited.

After about 60 seconds passed, we heard a deep wailing. There was a young boy who was standing at the edge of where the swings were, had two casts on each of his arms, and seemingly could be identified as being autistic. His nanny was trying to calm him down, saying that he would eventually be able to get a turn, that the little girl who was on there now had just gotten on there and the other people who were sitting were there for much longer.

As I started to just think about this young child and the nanny that was with him, I suddenly felt someone poking me from the side. I turned to see my daughter looking at me and she said, "Baba, is it okay if I give him my turn?"

And I said, "Baby, if you want him to have it you have to go and give it to him, but are you sure that you want to give it up? You've only been on it for a little bit and you might not get another chance before we go home."

And she said, "Yes, Baba, I just want to help you in pushing Kareem."

So she went to the young boy and she gave him her turn. He got a little bit excited as best as he could given his circumstances, but his nanny was quite relieved and was just professing gratitude to my seven-year-old who said, "Don't worry." She came back to where we were.

As she walked close to me, my son said to me, "Baba, didn't Didi [meaning big sister in Hindi] didn't she do a good thing then?"

I said, "Yes, Mashallah, she did a really great thing."

The Ripple Effect of Goodness

When I shared that story, I want you to think about this now in layers of engagement.

هَلْ جَزَاءُ الْإِحْسَانِ إِلَّا الْإِحْسَانُ
(Quran 55:60)

"Is the reward for excellence [anything] except excellence?"

Allah's verse is true: that is the reward for beauty, goodness, excellence—anything other than beauty, goodness, excellence. It just kind of creates and regurgitates, goes on and on.

The direct beneficiary of my daughter's act of goodness—who we can say her intention is good (she's seven years old, what else could her intention really be?)—was not just simply this boy who was the direct beneficiary, but:

• His nanny also took from her act of goodness

• My son was clearly moved as he found another reason to look up to his big sister

• I still, more than 24 hours later, have to fight to hold back my own tears as I affirm my greatest teachers in spirituality are my children who show me so much about what it is that our potential is and how it is that the dunya pierces ourselves and turns us into everything that we are not supposed to become

But when I went and told the story and I shared it with others and thousands began to engage it, including some of you who are listening right now, the affirmation was there that so too, that one act moved so many hearts. No one can say that she was doing it to show all those people—she doesn't even know that there are people who know that she did this thing.

But that's what goodness does: it creates more goodness and more goodness, and it just makes it contagious. It's not just that one person will fail to benefit or gain from the good that we choose not to do, but potentially so many more will not be able to benefit from the blessings that you can afford to offer to them when you choose to not do what it is that you have the capacity to do.

Being Muslim: A State of Being

It doesn't take a lot to be Muslim, but to be Muslim is not just a thing, an identity variable—it's a state of being, a consciousness, a mode of condition that you embody, a state of mind. Sometimes what gets in the way for us is our inability to really recognize where people are at, but that's something that can be worked upon.

There is no shortage of challenges in the days that we find ourselves in right now. We find gross inequity and injustice yet again at the hands of the Israeli government that is seeking to annex the West Bank and Palestine.

The Metric is Attainable

The metric, the bar, is not set to a place that's intangible.

Hadith: Because the best of creation, peace and blessings be upon him, has said: Don't belittle any good deed, even meeting simply your brother with a cheerful face.

(Sahih Muslim)

You can't create a face of cheer that someone benefits from without being in a place where they can see it in the first place. Your ability to inculcate that sense of growth and gain is a subjective affirmation that in the days and months that are ahead we got to think deeply and get done what we have capacity to get done.

I've felt pain, real pain in the last months of my life that I would not wish upon anybody. May Allah accept all the du'as that you all have made for me, and I tell you I feel them, I can feel it. But the pain that was there is a physical pain.

I don't know what it's like right now for anyone who is coming to a place of recognition that they will soon have to pay rent, or the 50,000 eviction cases that sit in front of New York City courts right now that will likely increase in number, the sheer number of people who have lost jobs or have family members who have lost jobs who need kindness and compassion to be what ignites our hearts.

Those who turn to us, whether we are knowing of it or not, that our Fajr prayer is not simply ours but it is for everyone, and the prostrations that we choose to make are arguably just as important as the ones that we chose not to make.

Whatever reasons we give to ourselves for not doing what we have the ability to do, I would say just look at it in this frame: No one can gain from the good that you do not do. No one can benefit from the righteous

1. Align Actions with Your Skills and Strengths

Where you start to think about what it is that can bring you to that place of engagement: If you seek to do things that are attached to your skills, your strengths, you will likely do them with more continuity. If you bring yourself to a place of finding a sense of purpose that is drawn from where it is that you draw benefit through and from, you will likely find yourself in a sphere where you will continue to do what it is that you need to.

As a first rule in going out and doing things that are good, I would say that you do not want to support or do good things from the outside that are bringing support to things that are harmful or have really no sense of purpose. There's a lot of causes out there that one can engage in altruistic acts but still at the end create harm for people.

So don't support mischiefs that act upon principles of racism and exclusivity or dishonor the rights of women. Don't put your money into investments or candidates that support the prison industrial complex or the military industrial complex. Just because from the outside it seems that there is something that's there, to break it down requires to have qualifications that say that I am not going to gain or let others gain at the expense of our brothers and sisters who have sat incarcerated in prisons—many infected with COVID-19 and many for crimes that they didn't even commit, let alone things that aren't even considered to be a crime anymore.

You want to do what you enjoy and what you excel at. You want to be in a place where where you go and what you do you can see the fruit of your commitments so that you can engage in a sense of confidence building and self-esteem and recognize the beauty that's there.

2. Encourage Others to Join

You want to encourage others to the acts as well. So when that crowdfunding comes, don't hesitate in building by donating and then telling other people you contribute to. You're going to go to the soup kitchen? Tell others to go to the soup kitchen. You're going to volunteer at the hospital? Tell others to volunteer at the hospital.

If your friend circle and social circle does not engage people that also are willing to go out and do this, don't leave behind those friends, but build bonds and relationships with others that are going to be recipient of this kind of behavior. Where it is that you bring them in, you bring them in through positivity, not through negativity -highlighting what is good within others and seeking to share that with the people who are around you.

Your choice is to balance between consumption and contribution and to see that the gain that is there can be rooted in just these small acts and consistent acts that our tradition tells us to go through.

3. Document Your Actions

I recommend that people document and write things down. What helps me when I share stories with you about the people that are around me that are doing amazing things is that I can go back and read them again. When I take account of myself at the end of the day as objective as I can be and I can measure out what came for me that was khair (that was good), what came for me that was sharr (that was evil), and what came for me that was laghw (futile, no benefit or detriment), it sets now a metric that is not just stuck in my head but is there documented where I can be honest with it.

So just start today on this blessed day of Jummah and say: What good has come for me? What have I done for others?

4. Set an Achievable Goal

A fourth thing that you can do to help you become more helpful of others is that you set a goal for yourself that is able to be achieved. There's not one of us that cannot commit to doing a good act and building a habit of practice by simply helping one person every day.

What you want to qualify is what it means to give support to someone else and not belittle the hadith that comes from a man who set a standard of selflessness that for 23 years, peace and blessings be upon him, he simply did not stop but just kept giving of himself and giving of himself. He countered the mindset that many corporations and companies and leadership of those spaces have when they say, "Why should we make decisions for generations that come later? What have they ever done for us?" by seeking to do not just for those who are in his immediate, peace and blessings be upon him, but for doing for you and I as well.

Hadith: So when he says don't belittle any good deed, and in the same hadith says that even meeting someone with a cheerful face.

(Sahih Muslim)

You dig deep and you start to think about how much of a difference it actually makes to simply say to someone, "How are you today? What is the condition you find yourself in? What is the state of your heart?" The thank yous, the pleases, the apologies, the I'm sorry's that go unsaid then also keep the healing, the growth, the gain from not happening.

But as a fourth tangible act, you make a commitment today as I make the commitment with you that we will not let any of our tomorrows pass without at least helping one other person, bringing benefit, light into someone else's life.

5. Visualize the Good

How do you start to do that for yourself? You start in the beginning of your day—again a practical thing, fifth— by just visualizing the good that can come from you. You sit with yourself and you mark out your day and what

you seek to achieve, and I see it in my head and then it plays out as I do it more tangibly. That visualization will let you see how you can do for someone.

You bring it to a place and the Prophet's, peace and blessings be upon him, words were most remarkable because definitely as he speaks to people the opportunity for there is to visualize even just in meeting someone with a cheerful face. You close your eyes and think about who it is that before the day is over you can simply give a sense of warmth to either virtually the way we are talking now, in person if there are people around you, through a message and a photograph that says "I was just thinking of you today"—but something that you start from here and you look also with a visualization of your heart, and it makes it easier to play those things out.

6. Reflect on Goodness Done to You

As a sixth in trying to increase and remove barriers that keep us from going out, think about the good that others have done for you. Think about the good that you see others do around you and recognize why your heart becomes moved by those things. Express gratitude to the ones that have done for you, but show appreciation by doing for them also, because the way that we benefit those who benefited us is by acting upon what it was that they taught us in the first place.

If somebody's act of goodness gets you to go out and do good, while I'm comfortable in saying that look at what my seven-year-old did and saying without hesitation that a good chunk of what I sought to do thereafter was because of what she taught me, and then share with you all so that you will go and do good, our tradition says that because she is the originator not of goodness in the world but that sense of goodness within at least me, if not some other people, she will continue to get the benefit back from it as the one who taught it to us and I will preserve her.

So when you start to think about it in the immediate, in the past, people who have done for you, you can now start to move forward with that because it gives us a vision modification and will help us see what it is that's around us and start to remove the barriers.

Core Message

No one can benefit from the good that you choose not to do. No one can gain from the acts that we have told ourselves that somebody else is supposed to go and get them done. No one else is going to be able to do, my sisters and brothers, the things that we have capacity to do.

It's not even about digging deep-start with the small acts, let them have deep impacts, and then continue to build and grow as best as it is that you can. Inshallah ta'ala there will be much gain in it in this world that is looking for help.

Call to Action

Some opportunities that will come through the Islamic Center inshallah ta'ala: We are looking to create some campaigns in the coming days, if not sooner, for our sisters and brothers in Yemen who right now are in need of financial assistance. Whether it's today or in the next day or so, we'll send out the campaigns and encourage you all to contribute.

I would also encourage you that if you are somebody who has access to networks, job opportunities, whether under your own jurisdiction or you know others who do, that there are so many people who are hurting right now and they will find a lot more difficulty in the coming weeks. May Allah make things easy for all of them.

You want to share those opportunities, ensure that nepotism and racism does not dictate who has and who has not, but those who have ability and skill are given just as much consideration despite the color of their skin, the country of their origin, the language that they speak.

Where you have the opportunity to employ people or pass on resumes or create some connections, this is the time to do it right now. You got opportunities that are at your disposal? Send them over to me, I will send them out to everybody. There are people you are looking to hire? Let me know, I will pass them around to people who definitely need an income right now and they will be good because it will mean something different to them.

That's what goodness does. That's what kindness does. It creates more positivity, more kindness. It's not the time to be thinking about what we might lose but to think deeply about where and how others will gain.

Practical Information

In these coming days that are ahead of us and through the remainder of this blessed day of Jummah, just think about what it is that you might be able to do for someone else. If you find yourself in a place of need, you find yourself looking for assistance, please feel free to reach out.

On my end, I am more responsive to email. The numbers of people that engage on social media and with some of the platforms that I have, all the messages don't even come through. So you can feel free to reach out through our Islamic Center at NYU. My email address is KL442@nyu.edu. Let me know what it is that we can do, whether that's together for others or if it's something that you might need for yourself that we can try to help facilitate. I'll do my best to make sure that it happens.

Again, as we close out and make dua, please look out for the campaigns, the calls to action that will come. Please if you have things at your disposal that we can share with others, let us know. Just make a commitment that every day that you are in this dunya will be a day that this world will be able to testify to a completed act of goodness, benefit, kindness, compassion, beauty, love, altruism, selflessness that comes from you that you'll get it done just because you can and just because it's the right thing to do.

No one can gain from the acts of goodness that we do not do. So let's fill this world with the light that we possess and go out unqualified and do for Allah's creation what we have the means to do.

Closing Dua

May Allah guide us and protect us. May He bless us with knowledge that benefits us. May He bless us with the light that we possess.

Ya Allah, clothe Your creation through us. Ya Allah, give shelter to Your creation through us. Ya Allah, give hope to Your creation through us. Ya Allah, give strength to Your creation through us. Ya Allah, be merciful to Your creation through us. Ya Allah, love Your creation through us.

Make us those who have a self-love that enables us to go out and be everything that we are able to be, rather than a love of the self that places us at the center of everything and has us chase after the fulfillment of our complacent wants at the expense of our own needs and the needs of others.

On this blessed day of Jummah, Ya Allah, we ask that You bring ease to all those who are facing oppression and inequity of any kind.

Special Duas for the Oppressed:

We ask Ya Allah that You help us to become those who do all that we can to be a means of benefit for Your creation and to do good just because it's the right thing to do. Where we find the balance tipping and selfishness and greed so evident that people won't even wear a mask knowing that their actions might lend to someone dying, make us, Ya Allah, those who embrace our humanness and live with the purpose that You have intended for us to live.

Make our generation a generation that sees the establishment of systems and structures that honor Black life. Make us from amongst those who do whatever it is that we can to ensure that in our time we will see a free Palestine.

And for every heart that is hurting, for every heart that is alone, make us those who remember the world's forgotten in our prayers, our duas, our prostrations, our supplications. Let those prayers carry forward to their hearts, giving them strength and an understanding that beyond this world there is a much bigger world and that You, Ya Rabbi, have given promises that are beyond any truth that we might be able to fathom.

Help us, Ya Allah, to be evidence of Your mercy, Your compassion, Your love in this world. Protect us always from hearts that are not humble, tongues that are not wise, and eyes that have forgotten how to cry.

Forgive us for our shortcomings and guide and bless us all.

Closing

Jazakumullah khair. Thank you all for joining us today.

InshaAllah ta'ala you all are keeping safe and well. Please do take advantage of the remainder of this day of Jummah. May Allah make it a means of benefit for all of us.

Jazakumullah khair.

وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ تَعَالَىٰ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

Note: This khutbah emphasizes that no one can benefit from the good deeds we fail to perform. It encourages us to engage in acts of kindness, no matter how small, and provides practical steps to help us become more beneficial to Allah's creation.