Allah Decides Halal and Haram

The Lesson: Allah's Will vs. Human Pressure

I started somewhere else. I didn't start this khutbah with a story. I started this khutbah by telling you that Allah has made things halal in this world because they're beneficial for us, because he loves us, because he wants us to enjoy them, because when we enjoy those things we are more grateful to Allah. That's one of the purposes Allah made things - good things - halal for us.

Then what's the importance of this ayah? And what do we learn from this ayah? And by the way, this is the first ayah of surah Tahrim. And the very next ayah is advice to you and me. So the first ayah is advice and a guidance to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم). And the next ayah is for everybody else:

But I'll get to that in a second.

You see what's happening here is there's a difference between what Allah wants for you. Allah says something is okay. Allah says something is okay for you. But sometimes you and I are in relationships. And those relationships could be a husband and a wife. It could be siblings. It could be friends. It could be parents. It could be children.

Relationship Pressures and Guilt

And that family member, somebody or someone close to you says, "I know that this is halal, but I still don't want you to have it. Because if you love me, you won't have it." And they may not say that directly. They're kind of putting a pressure on you. A little bit of pressure on you for you to deprive yourself and deny yourself something that Allah is okay with you having.

And sometimes in such relationships, what a person does is, "I love you so much, fine, I won't do it anymore."

Somebody might say, for example, a wife might say to the husband, "You know, if you love me, you're not gonna go out. You know, your friend who comes once a month, and you guys go eat pizza, I don't like him. If you love me, you're not gonna go out with him." Or she won't say directly. She'll just say, "No, no,

no, go ahead. Why don't you just go? Because you don't care about your family, right? Go ahead." And you'll say, "No, no, okay, okay, I won't go. I'll never call him again. I'll never talk to him again. It's okay."

She may have a reason. She may not have a reason. But she's making it sound like my, your loyalty to me, your love for me must mean you must deprive yourself of something else.

Examples of Family Pressure

It may be sometimes people go to extreme measures. Somebody says, a husband says to the wife, "Oh yeah, you're, you know, you wanted to go visit your mom. I don't want you to do that. You know, because I'm gonna be really upset if you visit your mom." That's completely permissible for a wife to visit her mother, to spend time with her. But now he's put a condition on her as if she's somehow betraying him.

You know, this is not just done between husband and wife. Parents do this. And you know, many families in the world, they are, for example, divorced parents. And when, you know, parents get divorced, sometimes things end on good terms like Allah wants them to, and sometimes they don't end on good terms. So the mother and the father hate each other, and they use the children.

So they'll make the children feel bad for spending time with the father or spending time with the mother, right? And they're making, they're making them feel - and every child has a right to spend and love and respect both their parents. And for them to feel like if I'm spending time with dad, I must be doing something wrong to mom, or if I'm spending time with mom, I must be wronging dad somehow. The parents are making them feel like they're doing something wrong. They're making something haram for them, depriving them of something that Allah did not - Allah wants them to have it. Allah wants them to be happy. But you know, somebody in the family is not letting you do that.

The Consequences of Self-Deprivation

Now what does that do? When you deprive yourself of things that you're actually allowed, just because you wanna make somebody else happy, you think that that's gonna make them happy. And they keep asking more and more of you. And you start giving up more and more and more of yourself. You know, you don't do this anymore, you don't do that anymore, you give up parts of your life because you're out of love for someone else.

Sometimes people give up all kinds of things. I met people that say, "Oh, I'm 45 years old. I never got married because I wanted to take care of my parents." Taking care of your parents has nothing to do with getting married. You could have gotten married and you could have had 12 children, and that still doesn't mean your parents' rights were taken away. Those two are completely separate things. This person made something haram on themselves in order to make someone else happy.

Allah's Clear Guidance

Allah told the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم): Even if you say you're not gonna have a little bit of honey - it's a small thing, a little bit of honey - don't even allow a little bit of that in your life. If Allah says it's okay, nobody else comes to get and tell you, no matter how much you love them, that it's not okay.

What Allah has made okay for you, you should not be guilty about wanting it, or consuming it, or having it, because Allah has made it allowed.

Yes, if you're going to do something that takes somebody else's rights, that wrongs somebody else, that's something else. I'm not saying that so long as it's halal, do whatever you want. No, no, no. Because even if something is halal, you might be using it in a haram way.

Respecting Others' Rights

And if this wife, this mother of the believers, if she's saying, "I don't mind you having the honey, I just don't want you having my time taken away," that's perfectly fine. That's her right. That's completely her right.

So there's a way to demand your rights without imposing on somebody else that they need to deprive themselves of something or the other. Because what does that do over time? And this happens in relationships all the time. A person denies themselves, deprives themselves, doesn't do what they wanted to do.

Real-Life Examples of Family Control

You know, there are people, for example, a young man wants to get - all kinds of people come and share their stories with me. And sometimes I'm just left holding my head like, how do I even begin to address this? I'm just in shock.

You know, there was one time this family came to me, and they had three daughters, and the second daughter had a proposal that, you know, somebody wanted to marry this daughter, the second daughter. But the older one was not married yet. So the father said, no, because in our family we have to get the older one married first. And so the second one kept getting proposals, and he kept rejecting them, even though she wanted to get married, because that would look bad. It would look bad because the older one's not married and the younger one already got married.

And this is something, wallahi, Allah will ask about. Allah will ask about that. Because you deprive somebody of a right that Allah gave them. Just because they're under your care does not mean they're your slaves. They're still slaves of Allah. And what Allah allowed for them, you and I don't have a right to deprive.

I don't own my children. I have an amanah from Allah. And this is why when somebody dies, what do we remind ourselves?

We belong to Allah, and to Him alone we return. We don't own anybody. We don't own anybody.

The Opposite Problem: Abuse and Family Pressure

The opposite is the case sometimes. There are people that are in abusive relationships. You know, and sometimes marriages work, and sometimes marriages don't work. Sometimes the marriages become very ugly. It's become a place of sometimes physical torture. Sometimes it's become a place of emotional torture, psychological torture, humiliation, backbiting, insults, families hating each other, husband and wife fighting in front of the children. Things are getting uglier and uglier and uglier.

And the daughter says to her own parents, she says, "I know that I wanted to marry this person, but he's become someone else. He has this problem and this problem. You know, the children are suffering, and I don't know if I can do this anymore. It's too humiliating. His family says these things to me. He says these things to me. And I can't take it anymore. I'd like to leave this marriage."

And the father says, or the mother says, "No, no, no. You're going to humiliate us in the community. You stay. You don't do that. Be grateful to Allah. Just have sabr, because you should have..." You know what she's asking for is actually something halal. If she's in suffering, at least have an intervention. At least figure out what the problem is. At least acknowledge her pain, or his pain for that matter. They have a right to have that acknowledged instead of them being made feel guilty about them asking for something that Allah himself made halal.

Basic Human Rights

A person has the right to feel respected. A person has the right to feel honored and dignified. A person has the right to feel loved, to feel like they belong. And if they're not feeling that, and they come to their loved ones and say, "I'm suffering, I'm not doing okay," they don't have a right to impose on them what Allah did not.

As if to say - this sounds really bad, but listen to what I'm saying - as if to say, "I know Allah says it's okay, but I say it's not okay. So now who are you gonna listen to? Allah or me? Me." That's what it sounds like. And that's something really scary that we do - making something haram that Allah has made halal.

Various Forms of Control

It takes all kinds of forms. It comes in all shapes and sizes. It can do with money. It can do with relationships. It can do with connections. Sometimes families have fights with each other, and you tell somebody, "Oh, you're not gonna talk to that one again. Don't ever talk to your uncle again."

I hate your - father has a fight with his brother. So they have a fight with him. He tells his children, "Don't talk to him. Don't talk to his kids."

If I have a brother - and I don't, but if I had a brother - and even if I had a fight with him, if my children, they have their own relationships, they have their own responsibilities. They have an uncle. They have cousins. All of those relationships I don't own them. I don't control them. Those are their relationships. I cannot come in the middle of that and say, "You don't get to talk to your cousin. You don't get to talk to your uncle. You don't get to do this. You don't get to do that." You don't create halal and haram. You and I don't have that authority.

And when we do that, we create corruption. We create chaos. And what we do is we deprive a person of what they normally deserve.

The Power of Divine Forgiveness

So in the last few minutes that I wanna share with you, when Allah revealed this, you know what He said at the end? He said to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم): Why do you make haram for yourself when Allah has made halal? Are you doing so so you can make your spouses happy?

And then Allah says:

And Allah is forgiving. Allah is forgiving. And that doesn't just mean Allah has forgiven the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم). Allah is telling the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) something very important, very powerful. Allah is the only one who forgives. Allah is the only one who truly forgives.

Human beings can try to forgive, but there's still something left inside. They can't help it. We just can't help it. We can't just completely let something go. Something might remain inside.

You know, Yaqub (عليه السلام) was very hurt by his children. They kidnapped his favorite son and threw him in a well, and he couldn't have access to his son for his entire youth. And he spent so many years in jail, and all of these terrible things happened because of his other sons. But eventually they apologized. They came to their father Yaqub, and they asked him to make dua for them and to apologize to him. And he couldn't do it. He said:

I'll do it eventually. I can't do it right now. I'm too hurt.

Seeking Only Allah's Forgiveness

To Allah, however, he forgives. This is important because sometimes we are trying to please someone, please someone, please someone, because we think their feelings are hurt, and we're trying to earn their forgiveness. The only one whose forgiveness you should be trying to earn is Allah Azzawajal.

With every other creation, if you messed up, if you ever said something wrong to your mother or your father or your husband or your wife or your brother or your friend, you said something wrong to them, you did something wrong to them, you should go to them, you should apologize, sincerely apologize, and move on with your life. You don't keep going back and apologizing over and over and over and over again.

The only one you have to keep going back to and keep apologizing over and over again is who? It's Allah Azzawajal. It's Allah Azzawajal.

And even Allah Azzawajal tells us that when you go to him for any sin that you may have committed and you sincerely apologize to him:

would have found Allah immediately willing to accept their tawbah. Allah forgives.

Human Nature vs. Divine Mercy

People don't forgive. People say, "Remember that thing you did? Yeah, but I apologized for that." "Not enough, you didn't. You didn't apologize enough. You've only been apologizing for the last 10 years. I got another 30 years of mileage to go for that one thing you said. So you need to keep on apologizing."

And this becomes a way of controlling someone. This becomes a way of them making haram for you what is otherwise halal for you. So out of guilt towards them, you deprive yourselves things that are allowed for you.

And Allah says:

And He adds the name rahim, that Allah is loving, caring. When He made something halal for you, it's because He loves you. When He made something allowed for you, it's because He cares for you. He made something allowed for you because it's good for you.

And nobody else will love you and care for you more than Allah. Nobody gets to tell you that something Allah has given you out of His love and care is harmful. If Allah has made something good, nobody else

gets to redefine it as harmful or bad or no good. Nobody has that right.

Cultural Expectations and Religious Manipulation

And you'll find, forget people who don't know the word of Allah, and forget people that don't believe in Allah, you'll have people who believe, claim to believe in Allah, claim to believe in this religion, even look like they practice this religion. And yet in their lives you find them making things haram that Allah has made halal, imposing on people what they have no right to impose, guilting people about what they shouldn't be guilting them about.

There are some such strange cases of these things, because you know what's happened sometimes in our culture, in different cultures - Pakistani culture, Bangladeshi culture, Egyptian culture, Moroccan culture - different cultures we have expectations. This is the last thing I'll share with you. These expectations can become very heavy, yeah?

Cultural Pressures in Weddings and Celebrations

So for example, when a wedding is happening, then there is an expectation that people are going to dress a certain way, and we have to have certain kinds of jewelry, or we have certain kinds of arrangements for guests, or certain kinds of food. And in order to do that, everybody has to pitch in. The whole family has to pitch in because we're going to do this massive, you know, party, celebration, gathering.

And there's going to be pictures being taken. You know, we have to post these things on social media, because otherwise how will Allah accept it? You know? So we have to make sure that it looks good. So everybody has to - you can't wear the same thing you wore last year. You have to buy something new. And we have to go pay an extra thousand for that. And everybody has to pitch in.

And somebody in the family says, "Actually, I think we're overspending. I don't think we should be spending money like this. I don't think this is a way to get blessings. A lot of this money could be used for actually doing something for the poor, or those, many of those in our community who cannot even afford to get - forget, you know, get their daughter married - they can't even afford, you know, one animal to be slaughtered for Eid. And maybe we can help them get one of their daughters married with some of this money and earn their duas. So the people that can afford it actually have blessings in their marriage instead of just pictures in their marriage, instead of just expensive stuff in their marriage."

And then they're guilted: "Oh, you don't want to help the family? Astaghfirullah, how greedy, how selfish are you? You don't want to help the family. You just want to take care of yourself."

Standing Against Cultural Pressure

And this is again somebody saying, "I have the right to not partake in what is not okay. I don't have to. I'm not obligated. I'm not obligated to be part of frivolousness. I'm not obligated to do things because our culture expects them. Allah did not obligate me. And if I'm not doing it, I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not doing anything wrong.

As a matter of fact, chances are you guys are doing something wrong. You're the ones that are overspending. You're the ones that are being wasteful. You're the ones that are keeping up appearances. You're more concerned with pleasing people than you are even with pleasing Allah. You're more afraid of the words of people. What comments are people going to say? What words are they going to say? Their words are heavier on you than Allah's own words. That's a problem. That's not okay."

And so I decide that I'm not going to do it. You decide you're not going to do it. And now pressure is being put on you that you're not a good family member, that you're breaking ties. "Allah wants you to support the family. Allah wants you to be good to your family. He wants you to..." That's misuse of the word of Allah.

The Core Message

Don't prohibit people what Allah has made allowed. Don't impose on people what Allah did not impose. What Allah did not impose.

You know, I tell you guys this all the time. In my last minute I'll remind you: Most of the wrongdoing that's talked about in the Quran is family doing it to family. Most of the wrongdoing talked about in Allah's book.

The Prophet, peace be upon him - his worst opposition were his uncles. Ibrahim, peace be upon him - one of his worst opposers was his father. Yusuf, peace be upon him - his brothers. Nuh, peace be upon him - his wife. Lut, peace be upon him - his wife.

What do you find in the Quran? Some of the worst opposition, some of the worst crimes that have been committed, some of the worst things that have been said have been said by family to family.

Drawing Proper Boundaries

So, yes, that will be a challenge in our families. That will be a challenge in the people that are closest to you. But you have to draw a line. You don't have to fight anybody. I'm not giving you this khutbah so you say, "Watch this video," and then we'll have a fight after that. No, no, no. That's not what I want either.

But you have to be clear about who you're willing to please. Who are you willing to please? And whose lines will you respect? The lines drawn for Allah are for your benefit. And for those who don't understand them, it's actually for them.

He says, Allah gave you these laws, and He gave you what's allowed and what's not allowed to remove fetters that used to be on you. He wants to get rid of your burden for you. He wants to make you feel free. That's why He gave you this law. The law is not the burden. Culture becomes a burden. Society becomes a burden. But the law of Allah is not a burden. The law of Allah is actually freedom.

He says:

Allah wants to lighten your burden, to give you an easier life. And you were made weak. Meaning, this law is there because without this law you would be crushed under other weights that you cannot carry. But this will make your life - it's a lighter burden for you that you can actually carry.

Conclusion: Returning to Allah's Guidance

We have to turn back to the instructions of Allah, the halal and the haram that Allah has given, and not create our own versions of halal and haram. Because that way we are only putting chains on ourselves. We're only putting burdens on ourselves. And we're only making lives of ourselves and those around us difficult.

May Allah (ʿazza wa jall) make us of those who are truly able to free themselves and are able to express these concerns in a loving, respectful way to friends and family.

Closing Prayer

عباد الله، رحمكم الله اتقوا الله حميد مجيد