Picking & Choosing
By Nouman Ali Khan | 2026-01-08T17:12:58.035585+00:00 | Topic: Iman
Picking & Choosing - Khutbah by Nouman Ali Khan
Introduction
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful.
Historical Context of Surah Al-Ma'idah
One of the last surahs to be revealed in the Quran to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is surah Al-Ma'idah. It's the fifth surah in the order of the Mus'haf. And it's one of the final revelations given to Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم). In that revelation, there's a lot of conversation between Allah teaching His Messenger what to say to the people of the book.
The Jews and the Christians, particularly the Christians. There's quite a bit of discourse with the Christian community. This makes historical sense because by the end of the Prophet's career (صلى الله عليه وسلم), we were already engaged with the Roman Empire.
So it was already clear that the Muslims are going to be dealing with the Christian civilization quite a bit. And particularly what the Quran does is something unique that you don't find in other religious traditions. The Quran does not try to preach to the average follower of a different faith.
It actually went after the most knowledgeable among them. So the people of knowledge among the people of the book, the rabbis, the priests, the ministers, etc. It would talk to them.
The Quran's Approach to Interfaith Dialogue
You see, it's easier to talk to somebody from a different religion who don't know much about their own religion. And you could say, well, here's what our religion teaches. And they don't have anything of their own to cross-reference it against.
But what Allah did in the Quran is He would go to the scholars of the Israelites. He would command His Messenger to go talk to the priests and the ministers and say, open up your book. Bring what you have.
Because what we have, what this revelation is, is a confirmation of what they had. Regardless, as part of that conversation, Allah told him,
We sent this revelation down to you with purpose. This book has been sent down and the laws in it, the right and the wrong in it, has been sent down to you, these guidelines, for true purpose.
And then He says, it's also serving the purpose of confirming the truth of previous scripture. And it guards over the truth that's in previous scripture. (وَمُهَيْمِنًا عَلَيْهِ)
The Command to Judge by Allah's Revelation
Then He adds, Allah, He says
Therefore, make judgments between them based on what Allah has sent down.
And this comment isn't just limited to the Christian or Jewish people and to pass judgments about what they're saying based on revelation. But this is a universal principle given to Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) that when people come to him, even the Muslims, when they come to him, and they come with any issue, now go back to Allah's word and give them the answer from Allah's word.
Understanding Islamic Principles vs. Specific Situations
Now on that point, before I go on, I want to help everybody here understand something.
Allah, in the Qur'an and in the sunnah of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), you don't find the answer to every one of your questions. Sometimes we have questions like people ask all the time, what does the Qur'an say about in- laws? Or what does it say about crazy cousins? Or what does it say about your uncle who does this, that or the other? And people have very specific situations, and they want to know what the Qur'an says about this situation or this situation, or how the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) deal with that situation, etc. But all of your situations don't necessarily occur in the Prophet's life (صلى الله عليه وسلم). What the revelation does give us is principles.
So there are many situations in the book and in the sunnah of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), but what we get from those situations are principles. And once you learn those principles, they can apply to any situation. There are certain things that are explicitly right and wrong, there are halal and haram, those we have to be clear about.
But beyond that, we have to really understand the principles of our religion. Fairness, equality, justice, these kinds of principles that are there, that have to be applied in any circumstance.
The Warning Against Following People's Desires
But anyway, what I wanted to highlight today for you, is what Allah says to these people that come to Him for judgment, but He warns His Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم). When people come to you, and of course the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is not among us anymore, so his words are among us, and the words Allah gave him, the Qur'an is among us, right? So, in the ayah, it's describing a scene where people come to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم). But for us, it's describing the same scene when we come to Islam, when we come to the word of Allah, when we come to the words of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), seeking an answer, when we do that.
So, even though he's personally not with us, his words are with us. The teachings that were given to him are with us. So that attitude that someone used to have, towards meeting the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) in person, is the
same attitude you and I have to have, when we come to the word of Allah, and we come to the teachings of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), as if we're meeting him in person, and he's giving us this verdict.
Of course, once you understand it properly. So what warning did Allah give to His Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم)? He says,
First of all, make judgments between them, based on what Allah sent down. Meaning, Allah's word is the final verdict.
Nothing goes higher than the word of Allah. Allah describes His own words as
The word of Allah is in the highest possible place. It's the highest.
There's nothing that can be higher than the word of Allah, than the Quran. So, first and foremost, the Prophet is being commanded (صلى الله عليه وسلم), that when people come to you, give them their answers, based on what Allah has given you (بما أنزل الله) with what Allah has sent down.
Now, the first warning after that (وَلا تَتَّبِعْ أَهْوَاءهُمْ)
And don't follow their empty feelings.
The Danger of Bending Religion to Our Desires
Don't follow their whims. Some people come to you with a lot of anger, and they want an answer that justifies their anger. They have an anger towards someone in their family, or someone in their business, or someone else, and they want an Islamic answer to justify their rage against someone else.
Give me an ayah or a hadith that I can slap them with. You know, they have their hawa, and they want you to use the religion for their hawa. And somebody else comes to you with greed.
And they say that, I know this business is kinda haram, but can you give me some justification so it's not that haram, so it's a little bit less haram, it's not like capital H, it's lower case H, maybe reduce the font size a little bit, and that should be okay. Well, you know, this is people's whims. You wanna take the word of Allah, which is constant, but your feeling goes this way or that way, because of love, because of hate, because of greed, because of fear, because of anxiety, any of these feelings, and you wanna bend the word of Allah to your will.
So your will and my will, my feelings are now actually superior to the word of Allah, ma'adallah. Because it's no longer in the highest place. Now the highest place belongs to my own feelings.
My own feelings should make the word of Allah submit to my feelings. So the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is being warned when people come to you, and you give them a verdict, make sure that you don't fall into their feelings.
Islam's Care for Human Emotions
Now it's not to say that the Qur'an doesn't care about how you feel.
The Qur'an actually is very concerned with the sadness of people, with the pain of people.
Allah would even sometimes give revelation and say, I gave this revelation, so it would give cleansing and it would give healing to the feelings of a believing group of people. Sometimes Allah will give us revelation just to give us comfort.
And there are many occasions of that in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, but the shaitan's job is to actually take everything beautiful and make it ugly. And to take everything ugly and make it beautiful. So the deen of Allah, the laws of Allah, actually came to protect us from the harm we can do to ourselves.
The Analogy of Parenting and Divine Guidance
You know, just like a child, right? A child has uncontrolled emotions, uncontrolled desires. If a child likes chocolate and they have the feeling that they want to eat chocolate all day, and you say, well, that makes them feel good, just keep giving it to them, you're killing this child. You're causing their dental problems.
You're causing them to have stomach aches. You're hurting them because you're following their feelings. Well, in a larger sense, human beings can be childish.
Human beings can actually act like their feelings are, all I care about is what I want to do. Just let me be happy. Doesn't matter what the word of Allah says.
And when we do that, we're actually causing harm to ourselves. So what Allah does, He teaches us that sometimes our own feelings are actually the biggest danger to ourselves. They're the biggest danger to ourselves.
He says,
The one who feared standing in front of his master and was able to stop their own self from running into one feeling after another.
Like they stopped their whims from dictating all of their actions.
The Marketing Example: How Desires Are Exploited
You know, in the world of marketing, I've given you this example before. When I was in business school, in the world of marketing, we studied like grocery stores. Right? And in grocery stores, the way they lay them out, to this day, and I studied in like 1875, but whatever. Now, even nowadays it's the same.
When you go into a grocery store, most people go to the grocery store to get some milk, some eggs and some bread. So you would think it's logical that they should put the milk, eggs and bread right at the entrance. So people can come, grab it, and go to the cash register.
But they put the milk, bread and eggs all the way on the farthest end, as far away from the entrance as possible. And the reason they do that is they want you to go through all of these products, and your feeling will come in. I should just grab that.
I should just put that in here too. Put that in here too. Put that in here too.
They're hoping your whims dictate your judgments. They're hoping for that. You know? And then you'll notice that at the cash, at the exit, it's the most unhealthy products that taste the sweetest, are right there at the cash register.
Because as you leave, just follow your taste. Put some more candy in there. Put some Tic Tacs in there.
Put some Twix or chocolate or whatever in there. You see that? So the idea is that human beings by and large, we have a feeling, we just want to act on it. Allah teaches us otherwise.
He teaches us to control our emotions.
Allah's Warnings to the Prophet
So He says, He tells His Prophet, the first warning is, when you give them their judgments, don't make your judgments bend to their feelings. Don't make them... The judgments that Allah has given, are already taking into consideration what's best for you, based on your feelings even.
He knows better about us than we know about ourselves. In one place in the Quran, Allah even says,
You're gonna teach Allah your religion. You know better than Allah.
Because sometimes we hear something Allah wants us to do, and our immediate response is, but what about... And there's a counter in our head. No. No, give me something else.
That's not what I feel like. It doesn't feel like it's good for me. Our feelings are stronger than even the word of Allah.
We have counters to it. So He says, He warns him first of all, don't fall into their whims. Then He says,
And then He says, be careful about them. Watch out for them. And these are the people of the book that are coming and asking the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) questions about revelation. But also anybody who comes and asks him.
He says, be careful of the ones who ask you. Because the ones who come to the religion, sometimes they become a majority or they become a huge number of people. And then they say, you know what? We want this religion to fit in with the majority's opinion.
We want everybody's more comfortable if the verdict of Islam was this way or that way. So let's just have enough people that can lobby and we can change the law of Allah just a little bit, or interpret it a little bit differently. So it fits in better with our community.
It fits in better with our comfort zone. So let's reinterpret all of this because we're not so comfortable with the old way of looking at things. So He says وَاحْذَرْهُمْ
The Greatest Warning: Selective Following
And then He teaches us in the scariest part, the warning to the Prophet ﷺ. And therefore to us when we seek answers in our religion.
That they might actually put you into trial regarding some of the things Allah has revealed to you. They start testing you about some of Allah's revelation.
In other words, somebody says, put it this way, you know when you're shopping, for example, if you're shopping for a home, you're like, I like the neighborhood, I like the first floor, I'm not so sure about the second floor.
I like all of this, I don't like this. Or when you order food from a restaurant, you like most of what's on the plate, you leave some of the salad behind. You're like, I'm not crazy about the salad.
In other words, you pick. You don't like everything, you like some parts. You take some parts.
And we become consumers of the parts we like most. And we bring that attitude like a consumer to the religion and say, I like the salah, those are pretty good in Islam. But this whole riba thing, you know, it's a little too inconvenient.
And this whole like, these certain prohibitions on our diet, that's a little too much. And this is haram and that's, I don't know, and this is mandatory also. And these inheritance laws, you know, if we follow these inheritance laws, then I have to give my brother an equal share as myself, but I don't like my brother, nobody likes my brother.
Let's keep him out of the inheritance. So let's not follow, we can follow other parts of the law, but there are some parts of the law we're not comfortable with, so let's leave those alone.
The Religious Hypocrisy of Selective Practice
And you know what people do? People come up with the greatest scam.
They say, we're gonna ignore the word of Allah when it comes to money. We're gonna ignore the word of Allah when it comes to certain halal and haram, but we'll go to Umrah every year, and we'll take pictures at the Kaaba, selfies with the haram behind us, because on judgment day we're gonna collect those, right? So we'll take a picture at the haram, you know, put ihram on and show people how spiritual you are, because that's really important. That's why we go there, to take pictures.
Do that, so that you feel good that you at least do something for Islam, while at the same time violating the major teachings of the religion. And what people do in any religion, in the psychology of religion, Allah describes this in Surah An-Nisa, He says,
If you avoid the major sins, then the smaller ones Allah will overlook. The smaller ones, you make istighfar, Allah will overlook.
You know what people do? They do the smaller good deeds, while they want to hold on to major sins. And they say, since I'm doing these smaller good deeds, you tell yourself, then these major sins, Allah will overlook that. At least I'm memorizing a surah, at least I came to Ramadan, at least I did that.
Like you decide, and I decide, what part of the word of Allah, what we're going to offer Allah, is up to us. We decide what the priorities are. That's not how this religion works.
The Master-Slave Relationship with Allah
That actually starts to redefine our entire relationship with Allah. Allah is the master, we are the slaves. The master tells us what's important and what's not.
The master tells us what's the mandatory requirement, and what is the extra activity. The master tells us what's absolutely impermissible, and what's okay. He decides that.
We don't get to negotiate that on our terms. To give you a small example of that, so this concept sits in your mind well. If you get a job, and you just got a new job, and your boss says, I want you to do project A and project B, and when you're finished with those two, if you're done during the day, and you have some time left, you can work on C. That's your three tasks, A, B, and C. That's all you got to do.
And you go in there and you say, A is kind of hard. And B, I don't like too much, it's boring. But C, I love.
So I'm just going to work on C all day. And you work on C all day. And the boss says, how did it go today? I was great, I really loved work.
Here's my work. And he says, wait, I told you to work on A and B. And you say, yeah, but those, you know, but look at my C. It's so good, right? You're going to get fired. Because you don't decide what's
important.
You don't decide what's priority. The boss decides. The same way Allah decides what's the priority in my religion and your religion.
We don't get to renegotiate those, and reorder those, and say, well, here are the things I don't want to do for Allah. Here are the crimes I want to continue to commit. Here are the lies I want to continue to tell.
But I'll make up for it with these other extra activities so it should be okay. That's just a way of us lying to ourselves.
The Consequences of Selective Following
Now the warning given to the Prophet ﷺ in Surah Al-Ma'idah, is
And by the way, if they want to make you slip from just some parts of revelation.
See, the wording is not, they want you to turn away from all of revelation. They just want to bend some parts of what Allah has said. The other parts they're okay with.
The other parts are fine. Just some parts that don't fit with me, or don't fit with my preferences. Allah says, what's the consequence of it?
Then you should know that Allah intends to strike them with calamity because of some of the sins that they are committing.
Meaning, this isn't just something that will affect someone in the next life. This will affect someone in this life. There will be problems coming your way and my way when we start compromising the word of Allah knowingly.
Knowingly something was haram, and we made it halal for ourselves, or we decided not to think about it. We know it's in the back of our head it's wrong, but we don't want to deal with it. We just want to pretend it's not there, and keep going about our business as if everything's okay.
If we do this rationalization to ourselves, Allah guarantees to His Messenger ﷺ, that is an act of turning away from the word of Allah. And the consequence of that is calamity will strike you because of some of your own sins here. You don't have to wait for it in the next life either.
Types of Calamities That May Strike
It'll come here. Some health problem will come. Some family crisis will come.
Some financial issue will come. Some emotional trouble will come. Depression might strike someone.
Anxieties might strike someone. Sickness might strike someone. It may come in all kinds of... You know the musiba is not just some physical injury.
Musiba can be emotional. It can be something in your mind. You could lose your peace of mind.
You can't even go to sleep. You're constantly worried and negative all the time. And it's draining your soul.
It's eating away at you. And you know what can solve this problem? Who can I go to to solve this problem? And you know, even though I'm a major believer in therapy and seeking counseling and all of that stuff, but one part of this solution, if Allah has taken the peace out of someone's heart, because they keep disobeying Him, then no matter what therapy you go to, that peace will not come back because it only comes from Allah.
He sent His own tranquility onto the hearts of believers.
Allah says, there's a part of your peace that will come from that. Yeah, you can do yoga. And you can do some exercise.
And you can do some mindfulness exercises and feel better. But that'll work. It works.
It's great. But there's a part of you that's gonna feel more and more broken. And that's just gonna be an escape.
And that peace will only come when we are honest with ourselves. And we say, I'm not gonna play with Allah's words anymore. I'm not gonna play this game with Allah anymore.
I acknowledge that I did that. I acknowledge that I deliberately ignored the word of Allah. And I refuse to do that for myself anymore.
I will no longer harm myself. Allah says, you should know Allah only intends to strike them because of some of their own sins.
And many of people are truly corrupt.
The Universal Nature of Human Corruption
And their corruption comes out.
Look at the wording of the ayah الناس says, this is not just a Muslim thing.
This is not just a Christian thing, or a Jewish thing, or a Hindu. It's a human thing. Human beings know something is wrong, they wanna do it anyway.
So he says, human beings have, so many of them, fall into this kind of corruption.
The Rule of Jahiliyyah
But the scariest of these ayat is the next one.
It's a rhetorical question from Allah.
The rule of jahiliyyah. Now jahiliyyah means a couple of things. Let me explain that in a couple of minutes to you.
Jahiliyyah, one meaning of jahiliyyah, is the time before the Quran came in Arabia (عَصْرُ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ زَمَنْ الجاهلية) So there was jahiliyyah and then there's Islam. Jahiliyyah means the age of ignorance, when there was no light of revelation, when there was darkness.
So the ayah says, are they looking to judge their lives? Are they looking to live their lives like they did before revelation ever came? Is that what they want? They wanna go back to the old way of doing things? That's one way you can interpret this question that Allah is asking.
Another way you can look at this question is actually the root meanings of the word (جهل جهل جاهليّة) doesn't just mean ignorance.
(جهل) means the inability to control your emotions, to be impulsive, to follow your whim, to follow your greed, your lust, your temper. Whatever feeling it is, you just follow it. You just follow it, you fall into it.
He says, would they like to follow the rule of whatever they feel like? Would they like to be impulsive throughout? And he says,
And who's going to be better than Allah in giving verdicts?
In other words, either we are following jahiliyyah or we're following the word of Allah. The scary thing about this ayah is, it's talking at the end of Revelation. 23, almost 23 years of Revelation have already come.
And now Allah says, still there are people that would like to live their lives as if there's no Quran, as if there's no word of Allah, as if it's just an inconvenient truth. The only thing we can do, we don't wanna follow it, but we'll like to put it in a really nice shiny cover and put it on a shelf somewhere. So, you know, it'll feel good because we have it.
I got a really nice copy from the store. I got a frame in my house too. Look at all this calligraphy.
SubhanAllah, Allah... Look at the calligraphy, it looks so beautiful. But following it, no. Let's just perfect our tajweed of it.
Let's just recite it beautifully. If that's what they're doing, then that's أَفَحُكْمَ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ يَبْغُونَ حُكْمُ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ Are they... In a contemporary we had translate, are they really pursuing the verdict of whims? The verdict of the times of ignorance
"Do they seek the judgement of [pre-Islamic] ignorance? But who is better than Allah in judgement for a people who have certainty."
Who can be more... Who can give better verdicts than Allah for a people that actually have conviction?
The Importance of True Conviction
And that's the last comment I wanna share with you. The question Allah asked, who can be better than Allah at giving a verdict? At giving a judgment about what you and I should do with our lives? What choices we should make? When He says those words, He adds لِقَوْمٍ يُوقِنُونَ For any group of people that are looking to have conviction.
If you and I are not convinced that what Allah says is the very best thing for you and me. If we're not convinced of that. If we don't think that Allah knows better what's good for me more than even I know for myself.
If that conviction is not there, then حُكْمُ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ becomes easy. And following the way of whims becomes easy. And if that has been the case for you and me.
If it has been the case that we're not following the word of Allah and we're mindlessly, without conscience, we keep following the way of our own whims. If we keep falling into those traps, you know what that means? We're not seeking to have real conviction in the word of Allah. We don't give it its place.
We might have respect for it. We might be anthropologically Muslim. Meaning it's been passed down to us and we belong to the Muslim civilization. We have Muslim names. We say salam to each other. We show up at Jum'ah and stuff.
But really it's not the way we see the world. The word of Allah is not the highest word. It's not the one that decides all of our matters.
It's not the one that gives us principles that once these principles are given, I will not go around these principles.
The Traffic Light Analogy
I give you guys the silly example all the time of traffic lights. When you stop at a traffic light, you don't say, I'm not in the mood today.
I'm not feeling very spiritual. I'm gonna go through it. You don't do that because you realize that's a constant.
You're not gonna mess with it. You're not gonna mess with that because that's a law of an authority higher than you. And you're convinced that that's an authority higher than you.
And in fact, you're also convinced that if I cut a red light, that I might get slammed into from the other side. There's a harm that will come to me if I cut this red light. If I just go into the highway and jump right in without looking around.
It's gonna actually bring me harm. Where is that conviction when it comes to the word of Allah?
The Seen and Unseen Worlds
In these 30 seconds, I just remind myself and I remind all of you, Allah created two worlds. There's the seen world and there's the unseen world.
In the seen world, there are laws like gravity, right? If I drop something, it'll fall to the ground. That's gravity. Allah created these principles and fire will burn, you know? Fire will burn.
These are things everybody knows. The same way, certain actions have certain reactions, right? That's what the physical world is. That's what we study in chemistry and physics and biology, etc, etc.
The same way in the unseen world, in the moral world, there's also a kind of physics. There's also a kind of action and reaction. So when you decide not to follow the word of Allah, you might not immediately see a physical reaction.
If you lie, you're not gonna see a lightning strike come and burn your tongue. That's not gonna happen. If you steal, your hand is not gonna become paralyzed for the next 45 minutes.
Oh, you stole. Allah says, you don't get to use this hand now because you did haram. That's not gonna happen.
But what will happen, what will in fact happen, is that Allah will give us consequences in this life in ways we cannot physically see. Maybe those consequences will come now. Maybe they'll come 10 years from now.
Maybe they'll come, you know, to the world around us. But there are absolutely consequences. And I pray to Allah that we protect ourselves from those consequences and abide by the rules of Allah that He has given to us for our own benefit.
Conclusion and Supplication
May Allah help us take a really good look at our own selves and be honest with ourselves and really truly develop a fear and a consciousness and an appreciation that Allah has given us a gift.
"Allah has sent down to you a reminder"
Allah has given you a beautiful reminder. A reminder for yourselves.
May Allah help us to take in that reminder and really illuminate our lives with it.
May Allah bless me and you with the wise Quran and benefit me and you with its verses and wise remembrance.