Khutba
By Nouman Ali Khan | 2026-01-09T13:37:08.546434+00:00 | Topic: Iman
Khutba by Nouman Ali Khan - March 23, 2012
Opening Praise and Testimony
Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest. O my Lord, all praise is due to You until You are pleased. And all praise is due to You when You are pleased. And all praise is due to You after You are pleased. And all praise is due to You forever, forever, forever. So all praise is due to Allah, who guided us to this, and we would not have been guided if Allah had not guided us.
And all praise is due to Allah, who did not take a son and did not have a partner in sovereignty. And He did not have a guardian from humiliation, and glorify Him greatly. And all praise is due to Allah, who we praise, and we seek His aid, and we seek His forgiveness.
And we believe in Him, and we put our trust in Him. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls, and from the evil of our deeds. Whom Allah guides, none can misguide him. And whom He misguides, none can guide him. And we bear witness that there is no god but Allah. Alone, there is no partner for Him.
And we bear witness that Muhammad is the servant of Allah and His Messenger. Allah has sent him with guidance and the religion of truth, so that he may manifest it over the whole religion. And Allah is sufficient as a witness. May Allah send peace and blessings upon him.
Foundation of the Khutba
Then after that, the best speech is the book of Allah. And the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad, may Allah send peace and blessings upon him. And indeed, the worst of things is its innovation. And indeed, every innovation is a misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire.
Allah says in His noble book, after I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan:
"And indeed, We sent Moses with Our signs to bring your people out of darkness into light. And remind them of the Days of Allah. Indeed in that are signs for every patient and grateful."
O Allah, make us of the patient and grateful. May Allah bless you and me in the wise Quran, and help me and you with the verses and the wise remembrance. And O Allah, make us steadfast at the time of death with no god but Allah. Ameen, O Lord of the worlds.
Introduction to Surah Ibrahim
In today's brief khutba, I'd like to share with you a few reflections from the 14th surah of the Quran. This is surah Ibrahim. And in this surah, among many other surahs of the Quran, we learn something very interesting. The nation that the Quran offers up the most, by way of examples for Muslims to learn lessons from, is the nation of Musa (peace be upon him). 70 plus times passages are dedicated to Musa (peace be upon him) and the legacy of his people.
And this is not just a case of when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) moved, migrated to the city of Medina, and had interaction with the Jewish community, this is a Meccan surah. So even earlier on, he was being served as an example for the Muslims, and his interactions with his people were being served as an example for the Muslims, and even for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him).
The Book That Brings Light
This surah begins:
"This is a remarkable book that We have sent down to you, so you, meaning the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), can bring people out of the darknesses into light. They're stuck in many different shades of darkness. Your job is to bring them out into light by means of this book. That's what your job is."
A few ayat later, what I recited to you, listen to this carefully. Allah says:
"We sent Musa with our miraculous signs: bring your nation out of the shades of darkness into light."
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was told this in the beginning of this surah, and now as a case study, he's being told, you're not the first one. I gave these same instructions to Musa (peace be upon him). So why don't you listen to what he had to say to his people? Why don't you pay attention to that? And it will teach you something for your own people. This is how Allah teaches us, and even teaches His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him).
The Constant Need for Guidance
So now, of the things, because you know, the story, the history of the Israelites in the Quran is very diverse. We learn so many things about the conversations between Musa (peace be upon him), and Moses, and the Pharaoh Firaun, his people before they escaped, his people after they escaped, when they were wandering in the desert. There are so many epic tales, epic adventures, historical accounts that are all over the Quran.
So which one is Allah going to highlight when He talks about bringing them out of darkness into light? What particular focus does He have now? And why I highlight that for ourselves, is because I feel like all Muslims should constantly be worried in terms of coming out of darkness themselves into light. Allah didn't just call it one darkness, He called it shades of darkness. Just like a shade, a shadow can be very dark, and it can be light, right? So Muslims aren't self-righteous, we don't think that we're guided, we're in the light.
We may have some shades of darkness we have a problem with, and we need to constantly pull ourselves out. And one of the most common and dangerous forms of that darkness is going to be highlighted in this passage. So let's see what Musa (peace be upon him) has to say to his people.
Remembering Allah's Favors
As I translate this for you, you and I should be thinking, each of these things that Musa is offering (peace be upon him), is his way of getting his people from darkness into light. First thing he says, make mention of the gifts Allah has given to you, the favors of Allah upon you. Make mention of Allah's favors upon you.
And you know at the time that these words are given, I'll talk to you about the historical context in a little bit, but the Israelites weren't exactly a people that were having a good time. They weren't exactly a people that enjoyed a lot of success, especially not during the career of Musa (peace be upon him). Either they're stuck in a situation where a tyrant ruler is about to annihilate them, and is slaughtering babies, not one, but by the thousands. Or they're in the desert about to dehydrate and die. So they're not exactly in a luxurious situation. And yet the first thing that's told to them isn't, be patient.
The first thing told to them is, make mention of Allah's favors on you, instead of focusing all your energies on what is going wrong. Why don't you think about what is going right? What is it that you do enjoy?
The Complaint About Food
Along these lines I want to share with you, when they crossed the water, when Allah rescued them from Fir'aun and they crossed the water, and Allah basically provided for them in a situation which, otherwise they only deserve death, and nobody can survive in the desert with that huge population, men, women, children. There's no shelter, nothing.
So Allah provides shelter by means of clouds. He provides rain. He provides manna and salwa, as you learned in Sunday school, many of you, huh? He provides manna and salwa, He provides their food. He provides drink by means of 12 springs:
12 springs are coming out. So their food, their water, their shelter, in an impossible situation has been taken care of.
But something very interesting is quoted in the Quran elsewhere, and I wanna highlight that and come back to this. After a while, they started getting tired of that food. So they asked, you know, they're sitting around, what's for lunch, manna and salwa? What's for dinner? Oh, salwa and manna, I don't know. There's not a lot of variety in the food.
So you can imagine a couple of the guys sitting around saying, man, don't you miss that restaurant back in the day? That Egyptian place was pretty good. So they're sitting around and they're making mention of some vegetables, right? And they obviously, the Quran mentions, when they went up to Musa (peace be upon him) and said:
They went to Moses, they went to Musa (peace be upon him) and they said make a prayer to your god, to your master, so he can bring out some lentils and garlic and onions, and can we have some fries with that? And you know, it's like a whole menu. It's a whole menu.
The Prison Mentality
And now the question arises, when did they learn the name of these items? It's not like they learned the names of those vegetables when they were in the desert. They learned those back in Egypt, when they were still under the clutches of Firaun.
So ask yourself this question, when somebody comes out of prison and says, man, I miss the food I used to get served, you know, when I was doing time. When you miss the food from prison, what does that mean? It's like you miss prison itself. You're not appreciating the taste of freedom. You understand? So you can focus on what food we don't have, or you can focus on what we do have. Now we have the taste of freedom.
So Musa (peace be upon him) is deeply upset, and he says to them:
You seek to replace that which is better with the inferior, and he's not talking about food, or not just about food, he's talking about freedom.
The Culture of Complaint
So you have to focus on the blessings you enjoy in the midst of all of your troubles. What is the easiest, most common conversation Muslims find themselves in today among each other? What are our problems? Man, the youth got problems. Man, politics. Man, Syria, Palestine, Kashmir. Man, we got problems at the masjid. Man, this guy's got a problem. That board, that committee has a problem. This organization has a problem. Man, our MSA is just full of problems. All we talk about are problems. That's all we do. It's entertaining.
Some of you have been raised in households where your dad would have his friends come over, over chai or baklava, you would discuss the world's problems. That's all you would do. That's your culture. You just discuss, this is wrong with that one, that's wrong with this one, this is wrong with that one, this one's corrupt, that one's corrupt, and that's it. See you next week, we'll discuss the same problems again. Right?
Allah tells the Israelites, the first thing you need to focus on is the favor of Allah:
Remembering the Rescue from Pharaoh
And then he goes further. And he says, if you can't think of any, let me remind you:
When He rescued you once and for all from the clutches of the Pharaoh. He was humiliating you with the worst form of punishment. He was slaughtering your children, your sons. And letting your women live for the purpose of further degradation and humiliation. And in all of that, there was a huge trial for you. You were in great difficulty as a result.
Now this conversation is happening when they've already been freed from all of this. And now they're in another difficult life. But Allah's Messenger is telling them, your first darkness is that you're not grateful enough. That's your first real problem. You always think about your problems, you don't think about what's going on good in your life. What are the good things in your life?
The Family Situation
And I want to, before I go on, turn some attention to the family situation in the Muslim households. How many mother-in-laws are always complaining? How many wives are always complaining? How many husbands are always complaining? How many daughters and sons are always complaining? You don't get me this, you don't get me that. I never get to do this, I never get to do that. Why couldn't you move here? Why did you move there? Why did you take that job? Why did you move out there? Why did you do this? Constant complaints about each other. That's our life, that's become our life.
The Power of Positive Focus
This lesson is not just for us in the religious setting. We have to learn to focus on positive things. And when you don't, you know what happens. And this is not just even religious advice. When you focus on negative things that are going on in your life, you lead a miserable life. You lead a depressed life. Nothing makes you happy because you're too overwhelmed by things that have already occurred.
And by the way, when you look back, just a remarkable thing to think about. What the Israelites have gone through is nothing easy. I mean, when you hear news of a child being killed even by mistake in a car accident, it's disturbing. This man is killing children by the thousands on purpose. That is a trauma for a nation not to easily overcome. So even if they've escaped, that trauma shouldn't just go away. But Allah says, even then, focus on the favor of Allah on you. Focus on the fact that that's been done with. It's over. And now you've been rescued from that. You know, this changes their mindset. They're not supposed to be a people of complaint anymore.
The Divine Promise of Increase
And he goes on, and this is the amazing thing:
Very famous ayah. Often it's quoted without the context. I'll roughly translate it for you first. When your master, your Lord declared, if you're grateful, I will increase you multiple fold. I'm doing a very casual translation so far. Your master declared, if you are grateful, I will increase for you multiple fold. And if you're ungrateful, if you deny, then my punishment is intense.
The Context of Divine Declaration
But let's go back a second. This (وَإِذْ تَأَذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ) - Many of our scholars say in tafseer that this declaration is, (اذْكُرُوا إِذْ تَأْذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ) - Remind yourselves, oh Israelites, followers of Moses, followers of Musa (peace be upon him), when Allah addressed you directly. You know there's an occasion in the history of the sons of Israel, when Musa (peace be upon him) took them, took the leaders of Bani Israel to go make tawbah, to repent to Allah.
And he took them, and Allah addressed all of them directly. And when He addressed all of them directly, He said many things to them. Otherwise in Quran we've read:
(Quran 2:63)
Hold on to what we've given you with all of your might. They were given very stern advice, hold on to the book. In this passage Allah highlights something else they were told. Something else they were told. And all of it has to do with just being grateful. The Israelites are now being called, and the only thing Allah wants them to focus on is be grateful.
The Power of Linguistic Emphasis
But before that even, the word used is (تَأَذَّنَ). You know in the Arabic language there are lots of words for declaring something. Proclaiming something. (أَعْلَنَا) can be used. (أَخْبَرَكُمْ) - So many words can be used.
(تَأَذَّنَ) comes from the word (أُذُن) which means ear. And it's the kind of announcement made that rings in your ears, it doesn't let go. Like you think about it all the time. This strong announcement. You know how sometimes your parents, they yell at you all the time. But there's one time they yell at you and it rings your head. And you're sitting there quietly, you close your eyes and it comes back a flashback from that one time. That's the (أذن). It doesn't let you go.
Allah says, basically He's saying through the language, He said in the most stern possible words. He said in the most penetrating form to you these words.
The Grammar of Gratitude
(لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ) - If you were just grateful a little bit. (شكرْتُمْ) is in the past tense in the Arabic language. And that suggests something rhetorically. I'll put it in simple words for you. If you were even grateful one time. If you were just grateful even once. If you could for once show gratitude. If you could do that. For that one act of gratitude, (لأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ) - I swear to it, I will increase and increase and increase and increase for you. Allah swears to it three times over in the ayah linguistically speaking.
He swears that He will increase for you if you just show gratitude. You just have to be grateful. That's it. That's all I ask of you. I'm not asking for you to be grateful all the time. That's what I will do if you show gratitude once. You show gratitude once and there's a switch that happens to the present tense. Immediately, I am and I will continue to increase you. Which implies it's gonna happen continually.
The Intimacy of Divine Response
The other thing that's really interesting here is that the ayah began in the third person. (وَإِذْ تَأَذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ) - Not (تأذنت) - Allah didn't say when I decided, when I declare to you, when I proclaim to you. He said when your master proclaimed. That's the third person. But immediately, He comes close to you. And He says if you are grateful, I will increase. He doesn't say He will increase. The rest of the ayah should remain He. But He says if you are grateful, I will come close to you. You will earn My closeness just by being grateful. This is the greatness of the ayah. SubhanAllah.
In the ayah itself, Allah offers you and me that He will be close to us. All He wants from us is for us to learn to be grateful:
The Comprehensive Nature of Gratitude
And what's even more interesting in this ayah from a rhetorical point of view is when you say you always add who are you thankful to. If I say I thank, commonly when we talk to each other, we say thank you. We add that you. We thank Allah. He doesn't even say (لئن شكرْتُمْ لِي) - If you are grateful to Me, I will increase you. He said just have the attitude of being grateful. It's not even limited to Allah.
Because the Prophet teaches us (peace and blessings be upon him) - The Quran in addition teaches us we're not just supposed to be grateful to Allah. We're supposed to be grateful to our teachers, to our parents, to whoever does any good to us. Because being grateful, when you recognize a favor being done to you, it is an extension of what Allah has given to you. It's a part of your rizq.
So if you fail to be grateful to your husband, you fail to be grateful to your wife, you fail to be grateful for the blessing of your children, you fail to be grateful for the job you do have, as opposed to the job you want. You fail to be grateful for the car you do have, as opposed to the car you want. When you fail to be grateful for those things, it's an extension of not being grateful to Allah.
(لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ) - In all of its forms. If you are grateful all around, to anybody. It's not limited to one thing. And if you can learn to do that, Allah will give you, and give you, and give you. And when He swears by it, who can compare? When He gives that guarantee.
The Divine Oath
(لأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ) - This is the word of Allah. Allah doesn't need to swear for anything. You know in normal language when a person swears, I swear I didn't do this, I swear I'm gonna do this for you. You know when that's done? When somebody doesn't believe you. When you come late to work, you tell your boss, I swear it was a lot of traffic. Because you're afraid he's not gonna believe what you're saying, so you're ready to testify and go to court for it, right? Swearing is done when the person you're talking to is skeptical.
Allah is talking to a believing community. He's talking to the Israelites directly. There's no doubt here. But He still instills it in them as though there might be waswasa from Shaytan, whispers of the devil later on, that you'll forget to be grateful. So I'm reminding you in the strongest possible words, I will give you more. I will take care of you, I will hook you up, just trust me, be grateful. I'll take care of you.
The Days of Allah
Now the last thing, something I skipped, before I move forward. I wanna go backwards a little bit again. Allah said, or Musa (peace be upon him) said to them, right before this - When Musa (peace be upon him) was given instructions, this is how you bring your people out of darkness into light. Allah said to him:
Remind them of Allah's days. One of the instructions given to Musa, this is how you make your people grateful. Remind them of Allah's days. Now what in the world does that mean? Allah's days. There's a surah dedicated in the Quran just to Allah's days. And that's surah Al-A'raf. In surah Al-A'raf we found lots of Allah's days. The day Allah created us. The day we were brought to this earth. The day Allah took an oath from us. The day we're gonna go back to Allah. The day on which He warned nations. The day on which He destroyed nations.
But each one of us also has Allah's days. Specific days you can recall where Allah did a favor to you that you could not have expected from anywhere else. And He did it for you. And that nation particularly, their day of Allah was when Allah rescued them from Fir'aun.
So Allah told him in the previous, told Musa (peace be upon him) in the previous ayah, remind them by using Allah's days. And in the next ayah, Musa (peace be upon him) applies the ayah and says, Remember the day He saved you from Fir'aun? Remember that day? He applies what Allah taught him.
Personal Application
What are we learning? We should apply. Remember the day you came out of the hospital? Remember the day the baby came out and everything was normal? Remember that day? Those are the days of Allah. Nobody gets credit for those days except Allah. You know? We have to mark those milestone days in our life that people celebrate. They should be celebrated with gratitude. There are supposed to be opportunities for us to become more and more grateful.
You know? How many friends I have, they had their first child after a lot of attempts and when they had a child, it was born 3 months premature. And the child is in the ICU for 3-4 months. And this is maybe 10 years ago. Now the child is living a normal healthy life. But every year, they look at this child grow and they increase in gratitude because it looked impossible. Doctors were shaking their head that, no, you should just mentally prepare yourself. We have this counselor on staff ready to, you know, console you for the loss of your child. Everything was ready and set. Except Allah decided, no. This child will live. And it will be a source of happiness for his children. SubhanAllah.
The Lesson for All Communities
We have to learn to become a grateful people. If Bani Israel in the midst of all of their complaints are taught this, we are no one to complain. And the first teaching is that to Musa (peace be upon him). And
that's another important lesson. If there is one messenger before Rasulullah (peace and blessings be upon him) who has a right to complain. He's got a right to complain. Not just because he gets hate from the enemy, from the disbeliever. He gets trouble from his followers. So much so that the words that come out of his mouth:
Why do you continually cause me pain? You believe me. You already know I'm God's messenger to you. Why do you cause me pain? If there is one messenger that has a right to complain, it's Musa (peace be upon him).
The Qualities of the Guided
What does Allah say at the end of this ayah when he gave this messenger instructions to pull his people out of darknesses into light? He says:
He said, this reminder is going to be good for anybody, any person who can have two qualities. The people that will benefit from this the most, these kinds of reminders the most, are the people who have two things in them. They are sabbar and they are shakoor.
Now let me translate those two for you. One is extremely patient, continually patient. Over and over again exercising their patience. And the second is extremely grateful. These are both hyperbolized nouns. Extremely patient, extremely grateful. If you can do those two things, you will benefit from guidance like nobody else.
The Connection Between Patience and Gratitude
But why these two things together? I'll give you a simple example. I've given this many times before, but shamelessly I don't care. You open up the fridge. You see four or five different kinds of drinks. But you see the one drink, you wanted it, you wanted orange juice, you see grape juice, you see orange mango, you see soda, you see water, you just don't see your orange juice. Wow, where is the orange juice? God, every time.
Instead of being patient, before even patience, your patience is tested because you fail to be grateful for everything you do have. So you lose your patience when you don't have gratitude. The first thing Allah calls for here is sabr because they were in a difficult situation. But what will make your patience easy? Some people ask sometimes, how do I become patient? Brother, I have a temper problem. I get very angry. I get very impatient. You know. What should I do? I have a real... I can't help myself. Yes, you can.
Why don't you learn to be grateful? That's the teaching of the Quran. If you want to fight your impatience, learn to become grateful. Because when you focus on the gifts Allah has given you, your mind will not have the energy left to focus on the things you don't get your way.
What You Want vs. What Allah Wants
What you want is your desire. What you have is what Allah wants for you. Compare the two things. I'll say that again. What you want is from your heart. I want that car. I want that house. I want my son to do this. I want my daughter to do that. I want you to do this. I want him to do that. But what you do have right now is all because Allah decided it.
So you're comparing what you want with what Allah has already given. We have to learn to be grateful for what we have. I'm not saying we don't strive for better. We absolutely do. But we do that with patience and with gratitude. And if you do want things to improve, the ayah has the solution.
Brother, I don't see my family situation improving. I don't see my salary increasing. I don't see my debt going away. I don't see my problem disappearing. Allah has the formula here:
If you're just grateful, I will increase you. I'll give it to you. Where do you think the money comes from? Where do you think the solution to your problem comes from? It comes from Allah. And He says, I've kept it locked until you show some gratitude. You show gratitude, I'll unlock it for you. What are you waiting for? Learn to be grateful.
The Consequence of Ingratitude
And then He adds one more thing and I'll end with that:
And if you choose not to be grateful, if you wanna just be in denial that these are gifts from Allah to you, you wanna focus your life on all your problems and complain all the time to yourself and others, if that's the life you wanna live, my punishment is really intense.
What's remarkable about this ayah, he doesn't even say, if you are ungrateful, I will punish you. He doesn't say that. He doesn't even mention you. He just says, my punishment is intense. Remember when someone shows gratitude, he mentions them:
لأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ - I will increase you. He honored you and me by mentioning us. But the one who is ungrateful doesn't even deserve to get mentioned by Allah after that point. He just says, my punishment is intense. You're not even worthy of mention at that point. You don't mention me, why should I mention you? That's what Allah does in the ayah.
.SubhanAllah - إِنَّ عَذَابِي لَشَدِيدٌ
The False Sense of Security
And you know the Israelites, specifically the Israelites, they carried an attitude that we today see in Muslims sometimes. Allah wouldn't do that to us. We're special. He brought us all the way out of the water, now He's gonna punish us? Come on. After all, He brought us all the way this way. And He saved us because we're special. He's not gonna punish us. We're the Ummah of Musa (peace be upon him). Sound familiar? We're the special Ummah. He wouldn't do that to us. What is the next ayah saying? I'll conclude with it. Just so we have a reality check.
The Reality Check
Allah says:
Musa (peace be upon him) says to his nation, if you all become ungrateful, and everyone for that matter becomes ungrateful, then Allah is completely free of need. He doesn't need you. Don't you for a second think you're special. You're not special. Allah is غَنِيّ. He doesn't need you to praise Him. He's already self- praised حميد He doesn't even say محمود
In Arabic grammar, مَحْمُود means someone who is praised, which suggests somebody is praising them, but they're not been mentioned - somebody else. He's praised in and of himself, even if nobody else is around. You think he needs you to pray to him? He doesn't. That's only for your benefit, so you can increase for yourselves.
Conclusion and Application
This is the lesson Allah, Musa (peace be upon him) was taught to give his people, so they can come out of darkness to light. And then this message is important enough that Allah put it as a teaching for the messenger himself. This is teaching methodology for Rasulullah (peace and blessings be upon him). He was first told, you bring your people out of darkness into light. Then he was told, here's how Musa did it. Musa reminded his nation this way, so you remind your nation this way.
May Allah bring us out of the very shades of darkness that we have into light. May Allah make us a grateful people. May Allah make us focus on the good things we enjoy in this life, and truly sincerely become grateful to Him. And as a result of our gratitude, may Allah increase us in the good things, and in the guidance and the blessings that we enjoy in this world.
Closing
Fear Allah, O servants of Allah. Indeed, Allah is Praiseworthy and Glorious.