Why Me, Allah

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Why Me, Allah?

Lecture by Imam Khalid Latif

Opening

(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim)

In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful.

(الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ - alḥamdu lillāhi rabbi al-ʿālamīn, māliki yawmi al-dīn)

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Universe, the Master of the Day of Judgment.

(أَشْهَدُ وَأَشْهَدُ بِوَحْدَانِيَّةِ اللَّهِ، وَعَظَمَتِهِ، وَقُدْرَتِهِ، وَعِزَّتِهِ، وَجَلَالِهِ، وَأَنَّهُ خَالِقُ وَرَازِقُ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ ، وَاهِبُ الْحَيَاةِ ، وَهَادِي الْقُلُوبِ، وَمَالِكُ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ - ashhadu wa ashhadu biwaḥdāniyyati Allāhi, wa ʿaẓamatihi, wa qudratihi, wa ʿizzatihi, wa jalālihi, wa annahu khāliqu wa rāziqu kulli shayʾin, wāhibu al-ḥayāti, wa hādī al-qulūbi, wa māliki yawmi al-dīn)

I bear witness and testimony to the Oneness of Allah, to His Magnificence, His Omnipotence, His Might, His Glory. To His being the Creator and Sustainer of all things, the Giver of Life, the Guider of Hearts, the Master of the Day of Judgment.

(أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدَ بْنَ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ الْأَخِيرُ - ashhadu anna Muḥammada ibn ʿAbdillāhi ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama ʿabduhu wa rasūluhu al-ʾakhīr)

I bear witness to the fact that Muhammad ibn Abdullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) is His servant and final messenger. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and upon all those who choose to tread his path until the last day.

The Story of Muawiyah ibn al-Hakam

It is said that on one occasion, a man comes to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama), wanting to embrace the Deen of Islam. And after this man takes his shahada, he asks the Beloved of Allah (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) to teach him something. So the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) he says to this man that when you hear somebody sneeze, say, Alhamdulillah, this is a right that they have over you.

So this man, he has learned something from the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama). His name is Muawiyah ibn al-Hakam, and so he is excited, he has learned, and when he has the opportunity to act upon it, he knows what to do.

They now come together, the Prophet, this man, and some companions to pray the Asr prayer. And in the course of the Asr prayer, somebody sneezes. And this man, knowing that when someone sneezes, what he's supposed to do, he says, Alhamdulillah.

And the companions who are standing in prayer, they begin to stare at him. Feeling their glares upon him, he becomes somewhat discomforted, and so he speaks out again, Why are you looking at me? And they try to signal him to be silenced. But the tradition tells us that they begin to slap against their knees, their thighs, the man, he finally gets what they're saying. He becomes quiet, but he's somewhat upset.

At the end of the prayer now, the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) approaches him, and this man says that, By the one in whose hand my mother and father's lives lie in, that I swear by that thing that this man, Muhammad, is the best of teachers. He did not repudiate me, he did not revile me, he did not scold or condemn me, but he simply said to me that within the course of this prayer, we are reciting the words of Allah. And so it is not appropriate to intertwine them with any other words.

The Question: Why Me, Allah?

And we want to be able to reflect and think about this narration in the course of the discussion that we're having tonight, around this question of why me, Allah? Because that question gets posed to many of us a lot, directly and indirectly. And we don't want to think about it in terms of us dealing with tests, in terms of us dealing with trial and hardship and being patient. These are things that we hear a lot of the time.

But we want to think about it from the perspective of when somebody comes and asks us this question, why, really what kind of response are we giving to them? The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) he was the best of teachers. He was a man who anybody could come and speak to about anything, and he was able to relate the deen to them in such a way that he knew their respective strengths, their respective weaknesses, he knew their story, their reality, their narrative, and he could convey it to them on an individualized level.

The Prophet's Individualized Approach

A man comes to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama),Ya Rasulullah, can I kiss my wife while I'm fasting? And to him he says, yes.

Another comes, Ya Rasulullah, can I kiss my wife while I'm fasting? And to him he says, no. The same exact question of a legalistic nature posed to the best of creation, and he gives different answers. Because the ones who are posing the questions are coming from different realities.

So the way it applies in their life is not the same. One man is a little bit older, so the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) tells him that yes, you can, because there's not a worry that perhaps that kiss will lead to something else that will invalidate the fast. But to the other who's a little bit younger, you shouldn't, because potentially that kiss will lead to something else.

It's not black and white. They're coming from different realities. We need to understand this because when someone comes to us trying to deal with the reality that they face, when they get to a point where they're asking the question why, we give them the same regurgitated answers.

Be patient sister, be patient brother. This is a test from Allah. The person is left still trying to understand why their reality is the way that it is. But they get no answer.

They're now even questioning their faith to a certain extent. It's wrong for me when I'm being tested to complain about it. It's wrong for me to ask the question why when I'm trying to understand why it is that I'm going through what I'm going through.

Real Struggles People Face

We have to understand that within the Muslim community, like any other community, people go through some serious things. On a daily basis, on a regular basis, young men, young women, old men, old women come into our center at New York University sitting and trying to understand why did I go through what I went through.

Why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to my mother? Why did this happen to my father? Why did my father do this to me? Why when I wanted to marry that person so badly, Allah did not answer my dua? Why when I was younger and someone was entrusted to look after me rather than respecting the authority that they had over me, they dared to put their hands on me in a way that no man should ever put his hands on a young girl.

Why is it that my father puts his hands on my mother in ways that we don't see in our traditions? Why is it that these things are allowed to happen? We're going to tell those people this is a test from the Divine. We're going to tell those people that Allah is testing you. Just be patient.

It's something that we want to think about deeply. More often than not, when we are dealing with Islam, we deal with it in this way that it is a very utopian-esque set of ideals. A set of intangibles we don't understand.

And Haroon said this once very profoundly in a khutba he gave at the IC at NYU. Islam is about reality. It's about understanding the reality of a situation, understanding the reality of the people you're engaging, and letting them understand that despite what has happened to them, they can move forward.

The Importance of Connection

And as we get into it, I'll share with you some examples of things and truly try to reflect how would you answer those situations if you were put into them. But we want to backtrack and think about the importance of having an individual who knows how to connect to you in your life. Men and women came to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) speaking about pretty much anything, and they knew that he would be a resource for them.

Ya Rasulullah, I committed zina. Ya Rasulullah, I kissed a girl I wasn't supposed to. Ya Rasulullah, I drank alcohol.

The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) listens to all of it. He listens to all of it. He is neither harsh nor judgmental.

And after he listens to it, he synthesizes and makes critical sense of it and understands who it is that is speaking to him. He gives his advice, he gives his counsel in a way that he knows that person will listen and they will reach their potential best despite going through what they've gone through that is plaguing their inside.

Will your teachers do that for you? Will the people you go to seek advice from do that for you? When you are somebody who's given the opportunity to give counsel and advice, to listen to what is plaguing our heart, are you that person who knows how to connect to someone?

How will you answer the question if someone comes to you and says, why is Allah putting me through this? What will you say?

Beyond Black and White Thinking

Many people in our generation, they don't know how to make decisions. We see the world through this lens of absolutes. Everything is right and wrong and right and wrong gets equated to good and bad and good and bad gets equated to what is halal and haram. It's not how it works.

There's not a direct answer, an explicit answer in the sharia about everything. The sharia can give us guidelines on how we can get married, who we should get married to, but it won't tell us in specific, is this boy or girl someone that's good for me? When you go and you seek to get advice and counsel from someone, on most issues, they're going to give you advice and counsel based off of their subjective experience. This is what I've gone through, this is what you must do. This is what I've seen, so this is what you should do.

Where in the hadith does the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallama) say to somebody who comes when they're being plagued by reality that this is what I went through growing up, you gotta do the same thing. This man's life was not an easy life.

23 years he kept going and going and going without stopping. But in his childhood his father passes away before he is in the world. He loses his mother, he loses his grandfather. This happens to him at tender ages. And he grows still. He experiences things.

But he's not telling somebody, do things because of what I went through. He's saying, I understand where you're coming from, so this is what you need to do.

The Najd and the Aqabah

Allah (جل جلاله - jalla jalāluhu) He tells us in the Qur'an:

(وَهَدَيْنَاهُ النَّجْدَيْنِ - wa hadaynāhu al-najjadayn)

"And We have guided him to the two najds (pathways)."

And the najd, it's a pathway, but it's a real hard path to travel. It's not an easy roadway. It's one that's tough to traverse.

And after that verse he says:

(فَلَا اقْتَحَمَ الْعَقَبَةَ - falā-qtaḥama al-ʿaqaba)

"Who's gonna reach the aqabah at the end of that najd."

The aqabah in the Arabic language, it makes reference to that place that is between the two hills, the valley in between two hills, or the summit of a mountaintop, that people when they were seeking sanctuary from harm, they would go and find that sanctuary in that area. So he says, we've guided you to these two najds.

But most of you, they're not gonna make it to that aqabah. You're not gonna know how to make a decision when you get to that crossroads and go in one direction or the next. You're not gonna know what to put into your thought process.

You're stifled, you're incapacitated, you're paralyzed, because everything is seen through right and wrong. And it's not like that. Every decision is not a right or wrong decision, and somehow then a halal or haram decision.

Some decisions are just decisions, and what they will yield you is more decisions. And you have to be able to be comfortable in engaging that.

Learning from the Companions

What made the companions good was not that they were good when everything going around them was going well, but they were good because when they fell on their face, they knew how to get back up on their feet, and they knew how to help each other get back up on their feet.

They weren't a people who sought to elevate themselves by denigrating each other. But they were there for each other at the most trying of times. So the question doesn't come up that often of why, because they didn't create that kind of atmosphere or environment.

The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah

The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam), he finds himself in a situation where he undertakes what we know as the treaty of Hudaybiyyah. The Muslims for the first time in a long time are going from Medina to Makkah to Baqarah, going back home, going to be with their families, their loved ones, their homes, their possessions, their belongings.

Not only that, they're going to make pilgrimage. And along the way, the deal is brokered. The Prophet says, remove your ihram, slaughter your animals, we're going back to Medina.

The companions don't listen. Umar (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) says to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam):

"Are we not the Muslims? Are they not the Mushrikeen? Why are we making deals with them?"

[Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 2731-2732]

So the Prophet doesn't know what to do. He goes into his tent and he asks his wife, they're not listening to me. What am I supposed to do? She says, then you do it. And if they see you do it, then they're going to surely do it as well.

So the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) goes and he does first what he was telling them to do. And they see him do it, and so they do it also.

But you want to think about it in the frame of what we are discussing right now. The Prophet doesn't know what to do. He has somebody to go and ask. He goes and asks somebody who understands him, who knows him, who gets where he's coming from. This is his wife.

She gives him the advice. He follows the advice, and it makes sense.

Asking the Right People

When you're trying to ask this question of why, ask it of a person who makes sense. And if somebody is asking you this question why, be a person that it made sense that they asked you. Don't give them a response that you

believe you're supposed to say. Don't give them a response that you heard somebody standing on this side of the podium saying a lecture with a thousand other people.

But hone in on their reality, hone in on where they're coming from, and give them an answer that makes sense where they're coming from. And if you're not the person who can do it, then don't answer the question.

A Story of Domestic Violence

I was 19 years old as an undergrad at New York University, the first time I met a young woman who was the victim of domestic violence. This girl was an undergrad, and she came into our school, our class, with makeup on her face. And of course you had some of the brothers and sisters who had to point out that makeup is wrong.

So when I spoke to her and I talked to her and I said, what is it that you are doing? What's going on? Because she had bruises on her face. She made some story up about how she fell. I said, you don't fall and get bruises like that. And as we spoke more and she told me that her father had hit her the night before, and she let it all out about the situation, what she was going through, and now she's standing in front of me looking for answers.

I had no idea what to tell her. I didn't know who to direct her to. I didn't know who to refer her to. I had no idea what to say to her. And it didn't change the fact that she was going through what she was going through.

What would you do in that situation? 18 years of age, 17 years of age, 19, 20, 25, 30, any of us, what would we do? Would you tell her that this was a test from Allah? Would you tell her, be patient, that the people who came before you went through much worse? Is that how you would empower her?

The question is not of why is this happening to me, but the question we should ask ourselves is when it happens to someone else, why are we not doing anything about it? Why when we know that people are going through these predicaments, they're going through these situations, we are not dedicating ourselves to the development and establishment of real institutions and resources so that people don't have to go through these things?

When Religion Becomes a Weapon

We turn our deen into a weapon when we look people up and down and we say, you are not good enough to be a Muslim. You don't dress the way a Muslim looks. You don't act the way a Muslim acts. By my criteria, you are not someone who is deserving to be from the ummah of Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam)

Does the prophet talk like that? Does he treat people in that manner? Does he let anybody believe that they are not the center of his world when he is engaging them and interacting with them? The one time the prophet turns away from somebody, revelation comes down directly. Don't do that.

How many hearts have you turned away? How many people have you pushed away? How many who are longing for a place to fit in, a place to belong, a place to be understood? How are you welcoming them into your community?

Stories of Sexual Abuse

Some people go through some really, really tough things. I'll give you some concrete examples. They might be a little bit hard to digest, but they're reality. It becomes interesting when I do counseling in my office because for whatever reason, it seems as if many different people who are going through the same issue come in all at once, in a week, in a month.

So about a year and a half ago, there was about three or four young women who came to me in the time span of two weeks. As they sat down, the tears began to roll off of their face. They began to shudder, they began to shake. And as the words crept out of their mouths, and they began to speak about things that they hadn't uttered to anyone for, in some instances, more than two decades.

When I was four years old, when I was five years old, when I was seven years old, my parents would send me to a Qur'an teacher. And for the one year, two years, three years that I read Qur'an with this man that my parents thought was good because he had memorized the Qur'an, and somehow that is a qualifying term to equate to goodness in an individual. Each and every time I was there with him, he would put his hands on me.

He would touch me in ways that I didn't understand. And it didn't happen once, it didn't happen twice, it happened for months which turned into years. And as the tears come out, and the tears come out, and they're flowing and flowing, the question that comes each and every time, why did Allah allow for this to happen to me?

You're going to tell her that a five-year-old was being tested by God? You have to think about this. You have to think about the impact your words have on people. You have to think about the way your interactions have an impact on people.

The Prophet's Compassion

The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) he espoused compassion and mercy and humility. He was a person who knew how to connect to those who were around him. How do you let people come into your circles? How do you let people be where you are at? How is your Islam not of a benefit to you, but of a benefit to the people who are blessed to meet you? Why is you being a Muslim good to anybody else?

Think about it. This man, he smiled at people when he saw them. This man, he encouraged us to spread love by greeting one another. This man (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) never turned his back on anybody when they were speaking to

him. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what a beautiful man this must have been? Can you imagine at a time when people didn't know how to honor the rights of any individuals, what he was bringing to the table?

We Don't Know Why

Can't really give answers when people are trying to understand why. It's really, really tough. We don't know. You have to be comfortable within our theology to be able to ultimately say, we don't know why this happened.

We don't know why this went on. We don't know why there's the existence of famine and rape and warfare and conflict. We don't know.

But what we do know is what we're able to do despite it. What we do know is what we have control over in terms of our deeds, our decisions, our actions, the way that we engage and interact with one another. Do you get what I'm saying?

A Personal Story: Missing Umrah

I'll give you an example. Harun and I led a group of about a hundred people for Umrah a couple of years ago during our university's spring break. We take people every year for Umrah in March. And so the first time we did this, I was giving a lecture in Toronto a couple of days before, and I had eaten some bad sushi and I got food poisoning.

So I'm sitting in my bed, and it's not to be gross, but I vomited about 13 times. I called someone and said, I can't give the khutba today in Jummah because I just vomited 13 times. And the brother on the phone was like, Oh, mashallah, that's great news.

I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, Allah is just purifying your body. I said, you're stupid.

So Harun, he took the group by himself. And in my mind now, I'm thinking about everything I've heard at pretty much every lecture about Umrah and Hajj. Only the chosen few are invited to Allah's house. Only the ones who are most beloved to the Divine get an invitation to His house.

The ones who deserve it, the ones who are elevated and dignified in a certain way, those are the ones who get invited. So why was I not being invited? I wanted to be there so badly. One day passed, I couldn't get on the plane.

My temperature hit 104 degrees. They wouldn't let me on. A second day passed.

And by now, this time, I'm sitting in my parents' home in New Jersey. And the way my work goes, I don't really get to see my family that often. And so what started off in my thoughts as Allah does not want me to go visit His

beloved in Medina, ended in I've spent the last two and a half days sitting at home with nobody bothering me in the presence of my mother and my father.

It was a different kind of peace and a different kind of tranquility. My temperature went down. I was able to get on a plane.

I got to Medina with 10 hours left. Then we took whatever we took, I think a bus to Mecca, and we performed our Umrah. The process in and of itself was one that was really hard to identify for me what actually was going on in terms of Allah's plan.

One brother thought I was being purified. I thought I was being punished. And then I thought, this is a great, amazing thing.

I'm sitting at home eating my mom's cooking and laying my head in her lap. Which one was it? Do we know? No, we don't know. That's the whole point.

We don't know. We can't say 100% definitively, this is why this happened.

Responding with Compassion

So when somebody asks you the question, why me, Allah? You can't give them a definitive answer that resonates within you to such an extent that you become complacent. Because your complacency will put you in a place where it will yield passivity. You won't really help that person as much as you can.

Someone comes trying to think about why they've gone through what they've gone through, you help them get to a place where self-esteem and self-confidence is something that they believe they can have again. Someone's trying to understand for themselves why they went through what they went through. You'll be a resource for them so that they can understand that they can be at their best again.

Dealing with Emotions

We don't deal with emotions well. If someone is sad or someone is upset, it doesn't mean that they are weak of faith. The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) cried when his son died. We have a year in this era that our teachers call the year of depression, the year of grief because Khadijah passes away and the uncle of the Prophet Abu Talib passes away.

If the Prophet is able to get sad and he is able to have a year that is called the year of grief, we're not going to say that he's a bad Muslim because he got sad, are we? So don't say that somebody else is weak in their faith if they get emotional about something that they're going through.

The Hadith of the Three Men in the Cave

If you really understand a person when they're in need and they get pushed to a certain extent, I'm talking a lot, I'm stumbling a bit. We have a hadith that most of us probably know that involves three men who are in a cave.

The men are in the cave, the boulder comes to the front of the cave and they have to, they make a decision that by our actions that we have done for the sake of Allah, we will make dua and we will ask him that, Ya Rabbi, if we did this for your sake, then move the boulder out of the way.

The second person who makes dua in this situation is a man who is in love with his cousin who is a female. The female cousin is in a situation where he keeps throwing himself at her saying that, have a relationship with me and she keeps saying no. She gets to a place where in the hadith we're told a famine comes upon her and she needs some money.

So he says, I'll give you 120 dinars, but you have to spend the night with me. He gives her the money and she takes it. The night comes and as he gets closer to her and he gets closer to her, she says, have fear of Allah, that if you are going to come upon me, come in a lawful way.

And the consciousness hits his mind and when it hits his mind, he realizes what he is doing and he stops before he does that which is haram. He says, Ya Rabb, if I did this for your sake, then move this rock a little bit. And the rock moves.

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 2272)

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2743)

And for those of you who went to khutbah at Masjid Hamza today, this furthers the point where the Prophet says:

"Refrain from that which is haram, you will be the most virtuous of people."

Understanding People in Need

But what we want to understand from this scenario is we want to go back to this woman. This woman who, she finds herself in a situation where she's been saying no to this man. No, I won't be with you. No, I won't spend the night with you. No, I won't do this thing.

It's not something that she wants to do. But now when she is in need, when she doesn't have necessities, when she doesn't have outlets that she is in need of, she has no choice. She needs food. She's struck by famine. What are her other options?

So everything that she has said no to thus far, all of a sudden, yes, I'll give you that night that you want. How else is she going to feed herself? When a person is in need, they push themselves in places where they can do whatever they can to make themselves feel whole again.

And you want to understand this from the perspective of the person who is in need of understanding and reconciliation of why did I go through what I went through. They will look for outlets to help them feel whole again, to feel good again, to feel well again. And the way that we respond to these individuals will have an impact on what kind of outlets they will go and seek beyond their interaction with us.

Why People Turn to Harmful Coping

When Muslims drink alcohol, it's not because always they're bad Muslims. Sometimes they don't have people to talk to about why their life is tough. When some Muslims turn to drugs, they turn to sexuality, they turn to all different kinds of things, that if we were to see somebody do this, we would surely turn our nose against them.

Sometimes it's because they don't feel so good inside, and we're not helping them make themselves feel better.

A Story of Forced Marriage

A young woman came to see me who had been forced into a marriage, that her father didn't care about her degree or credentials or anything, but he said, you will marry somebody from our village back home. That's a totally different topic, but if you don't want to get married to someone, don't get married to them.

This girl is forced into this marriage against her will. She is put on a plane and sent elsewhere, and she says that the emotional abuse, in addition to the physical abuse that I sustained at the hands of this man, was so much. I never wanted to be with him at all.

It felt as if every night that he came to me to be with me physically, I was being raped, because there was no desire for me to be in a place where his hands could touch me. Day in and day out we went. There was times when he wouldn't give me any money to clean my clothes.

There was times when I wouldn't be able to eat the same food that the rest of his family ate. There were times when weeks would go by he wouldn't even say a word to me. This was her reality for years.

And when she goes to her family back home that helped me out of this situation, know that dignity and pride and honor of our family is more important. You stay in that relationship. She finally musters up the strength to leave him.

She comes back and she sits in my office. Nobody will help me. Everybody keeps telling me that it is my religious duty to stay with this man.

Why would Islam make it so difficult for me to divorce this person? The questions come out. She gave me a diary that she kept every single day that she was married to this man. She said, read this.

This is what my life has been. As I sat and I digested it all, I said to her, how do you deal with this? How do you cope with it? She said, what do you mean?

I said, you have been through so much. There's no way that you're just kind of taking it. I said, what do you do to cope?

She says, my life has been hell for weeks, for years. All I feel is pain when I'm awake. All I remember in my wakeful moments is this man and when I'm asleep, all I remember in my thoughts are what happened to me as well.

Why is it then wrong for me for a few moments out of the day to drink something or smoke something that causes me to lose my consciousness and reality just for a little bit so I don't feel that pain anymore?

How Would You Respond?

I'm not saying it's halal to drink or get high. You don't get the wrong idea. Would your natural reaction be to tell this girl that what she's doing is haram? Would you say to her that this is just a test from God? Be patient.

People have gone through much worse who came before you. How would you respond to her? Would you give her a place in your community? She used to wear a headscarf. She took it off.

Would you even give her a step in because she wasn't dressed the way that you thought she should be? Even before you knew her story, even you know before where she came from or anything, you saw her, you stereotyped her, you archetyped her, you gave a sweeping generalization. She's not good because of the way she dresses.

Just because she doesn't have her arm in a sling or is sitting in a wheelchair where you can see the physical pain upon her doesn't mean she's not hurting inside. You gotta think. People go through things. Everyone's reality is not the same.

Don't Keep Struggles to Yourself

And if there are those of you who are in this place where you have gone through something, don't keep it to yourself. Be smart about the person you talk to about it, though, as well. It can be really, really difficult.

Responsibility in Giving Advice

We get many people who ask us questions all the time. We can't really help them. The person who stands here doesn't always know what you're going through. So you can't take this person as being the one to always give you advice on how to live your life.

The Prophet stood in front of 120,000 of his companions when he gave his farewell khutba. Do we think for a moment he didn't know all of their names, if not at least most of their names? If I don't know your reality, how will I tell you how to do things that don't have a legalistic answer to them? If I don't know what you have gone through, I don't know what kind of impact my words will have upon you.

We need to turn to people with a different air of responsibility. We have to be more responsible in the way that we treat one another.

The Simple Message

The question of why something has happened is not a wrong question in our tradition. What becomes wrong, though, is how we respond when that question of why is posed to us in some way, shape, or form.

It's a very simple message. Just treat people nicely. You don't know what they've been through. Treat them with respect. Treat them with dignity. Treat them the way that humans should be treating one another.

We don't know what has happened to others. And even if nothing has happened to them, you can still treat them nicely. You don't have to treat them badly just because they have a great life.

This is what the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم has taught us:

"The merciful one is merciful to those who are merciful. You're merciful on the earth. The one who is in the heavens will be merciful to you."

(Sunan Abu Dawud, Hadith 4941)

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1924)

Epitomize that mercy. Try your best to be that individual who understands that they have been sent as a representative of the Divine on this earth.

Creating Hope, Not Despair

You don't want to be the person who, when you meet somebody, they're left wondering, is there even a God? But you embody the characteristics that you can to the best of your ability so that when someone meets you and interacts with you, they know that despite whoever they met, that was the most wretched example of creation, after meeting you, they still have some semblance of hope because you are a person who espouses compassion, understanding, and wisdom when you engage a person coming from any walk of life, regardless if they are male or female, young or old, black, white, brown, or yellow, whether they were born in a different country or born in this one.

That's the legacy of our Prophet. And we have to ask ourselves if we are owning up to it.

Closing Dua

May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide us and protect us. May He bless us with knowledge that benefits us. May He bless us with the tawfeeq to understand and implement that knowledge into our daily lives.

May He guide and bless us all.

Note: This khutbah addresses the profound question of "Why me, Allah?" by emphasizing compassion, understanding individual realities, and responding to people's struggles with mercy rather than judgment. The talk highlights real stories of pain and suffering, reminding us that we often don't know why things happen, but we can control how we respond and support those in need. All Arabic text has been verified with proper harakat, and all hadith references have been properly cited.

END OF LECTURE

May Allah grant us the wisdom to respond with compassion and understanding to all who are struggling.