Khutba Take Your Heart Back! (Formatted)

Khutba: Take Your Heart Back!

Speaker: Yasmin Mogahed

Opening

I know he said we were going to minimize the Arabic. I will explain what the Arabic what I said. I begin with, we begin in the name of Allah, we begin in the name of God and we send blessings, peace and (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) blessings on his messenger Muhammad.

The Supplication of Moses

And then I begin with the supplication of Moses and this was the supplication that we are told in the Quran that Moses made before he went to face Pharaoh. He asks God:

oh my Lord, expand my chest and make my matters easy for me and take out the knot from my tongue so that they can understand my words. And I ask Allah to do that, to take the knot from my tongue so that whatever I say will be beneficial for myself and for you.

The Importance of the Heart in Islam

The topic that I'm going to speak about is one which is of utmost importance because it talks about the very core of Islam and that is the heart. The title is take your heart back or take back your heart. Why do we need to talk about the heart first of all? Before we talk about any subject, it's important to understand its significance.

Why the Heart Matters

Why is the heart so important in Islam? I think one of the issues is that with all the discussion about Islam, we have so much about Islam in the media, we have so much even for us Muslims, how we're taught in Sunday schools and by our parents and by our teachers and there's just so much information out there that I think that sometimes the essence gets lost. The essence of what Islam really is, it gets lost because growing up for example, sometimes we're taught a lot of lists, right? We have a lot of lists of do's and don'ts. We have a lot of lists of what's allowed, what's halal and what is prohibited, what is haram and then we have a lot of rituals that we do and sometimes the essence of Islam gets lost in the rituals.

The Famous Hadith About the Heart

So it is very important that we often come back and remind ourselves about the essence. The Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) in a very famous hadith, in a very famous prophetic tradition says:

(Bukhari 52, Muslim 1599)

that what is lawful is clear and what is unlawful is clear and what is between them are the doubtful matters and then he goes on to warn us to stay away from the doubtful matters in the same way that a shepherd who does not want his or her flock to go into the preserve, this off limits area, should not take the flock near that area and in the same way we should stay away from the haram by avoiding the doubtful matters. Now this is a hadith which I personally growing up always learned it, just that section of the hadith, right? That we shouldn't do haram things, we should stay away from, we should not do prohibited things and we should stay away from doubtful matters.

The Connection Between Rules and the Heart

But I was actually very surprised to find out that this prophetic teaching does not end there but in fact continues and there is another half of this prophetic teaching which is typically taught separately and there is a reason why they are put together and that second part of this prophetic teaching is that indeed in the body there is a lump of flesh and if it is set right then the entire body is set right and if it is corrupted then the entire body is corrupted, indeed it is the heart.

Now what is the connection between this part of the hadith and the first part of the hadith? The first part of the hadith is about rules, correct? It's about how we live our lives, it's about all these do's and don'ts that we are taught and we hear about, right? Oh you know in Islam you're not allowed to drink, you're not allowed to take drugs, you're not allowed to date, you have to dress a certain way, all these rules, right? How do we now connect these rules to the heart? And this is what the hadith is doing. The Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) is telling us that yes there are prohibited matters and there are things which are doubtful.

The Purpose of Divine Rules

Now staying away from those prohibited matters, now this is an important note, staying away from those prohibited matters is not because we are doing God a favor. Now that's the thing is that sometimes we feel like man with all these rules, it's just like why, you know why all these rules? Well when you go to a doctor, right, and the doctor tells you eat healthy food, stay away from poison, you know it's not a good idea to drink poison, you know you might want to stay away from it. Now if you decide with your own free will to go home and drink poison and not just drink one bottle but drink three, do you harm the doctor or do you harm yourself? Clearly you harm yourself.

The Doctor Analogy

The doctor does not get harmed if you go home and completely ignore his or her advice. You only harm yourself, you're poisoning your own self. And it's that same way when there's something that God has prohibited.

God gives us rules, it isn't for his sake in the sense that we benefit or harm him because God cannot be benefited or harmed by us. God is completely self-sufficient and one of the, you know, I think one of the false understandings we have of God is that you know if you stay up all night and you pray, you feel kind of like oh I just, you know, I should be paid back as if you did God a favor, right? You did all this hard work, you know, you put in all these hours into volunteerism and all these good deeds and it's almost like we feel like we did God a favor. We don't benefit God, we don't do God a favor, that's impossible because we can't add to God's kingdom.

But in fact we do ourselves a favor and this is why Allah repeats to us and God tells us again and again in the Quran that if you, whatever you follow, whatever you do of good is for yourself. And they did not harm us, God says they did not harm us. See, when we rebel against God, we don't harm God, we harm our own selves.

The one who went home and drank the poison is not rebelling against the doctor but is rebelling against his or her own self. So this concept of the haram and the halal and the forbidden, all these rules, right? We have to come back to understand the essence that it isn't just about rules, it isn't just about our parents trying to control us or our husbands or our wives or our teachers but essentially this is something for our own good.

The Heart as the Center of Reform

And then comes that part of the hadith where the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ), is talking about something which seems unrelated and that is this lump of flesh.

What does the heart have to do with the first part? What does the heart have to do with the rules and the haram and the halal and staying away from the doubtful matters? Well, it has everything to do with it because if you rectify this lump of flesh, if you rectify the heart, then as the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) says, the rest will fall in line. If you rectify the heart, then the entire body becomes rectified. If you want to make it easier for yourself, so Islam in its very essence is a religion or rather a way for us to journey through this life without drowning.

The Nature of This Life vs. The Next Life

Because this entire life, one of the most beautiful analogies the scholars have given about this life, which the Arabic term for this life is dunya as you know, and this word in every term, it actually has a very deep

meaning. In this case, the word for this worldly life, dunya, it has the essence of meaning that which is lower. So this life by its very essence is the lower or less real life.

And when God talks about the next life, actually in the Quran, the word الْحَيَوَان is used and this word, this now means, it's like an exaggerated version of the word حَيَاة it's an exaggerated version of the word life. So God is telling us there's this lower life, the lesser life, which is worldly life or dunya. And then there is the next life, which is the real life.

The Reality of This Life

You know, God tells us in the Quran that one of the conversations that we have in the hereafter, and we hear many of these conversations about the day of judgment and the hereafter, we're given a window into what will happen. And one of the conversations that we're told about in Surat al Fajr is that people will say:

oh that I would have put forth, I would have put forth for my life. You see, we think we're living life now, right? We think, wait a minute, I'm living life now.

No, actually, that's real life. This period of time that we have in dunya right now is like something that will be like the blink of an eye, right? When you go and people ask one another on the day of judgment, how long were you in that life? They say:

a day or part of a day. But ask those who are keeping track.

The Dream Analogy

It seems like a day or part of a day. What does that sound like? What is a dream like? When you're in a dream, right, when you're dreaming and you're actually in the process of dreaming, you feel like it's real, correct? You feel not only that it's real, but it seems like it lasts a really long time while you're dreaming, right? Does anyone know how long a dream lasts, actually? It's a matter of seconds. And yet while you're dreaming, your consciousness is as if it is very long and as if it is real.

Often in your dream, I mean, it's very seldom in your dream where you know you're dreaming, right? Like, very seldom are we dreaming and we say, I know this is a dream. Most of the time we think it's real. And that's exactly our state in this life, right? We're in this life, it is an experience, but it isn't the highest experience, the real life.

Preparing for the Real Life

And this preparation for the next life is just like a person who's getting ready to move. If you're getting ready to move and you have two homes, right? You have a house in this life and you have a house in the next life. Now if you're going to, you know you're moving to the next house, what are you going to do in terms of preparation? What kind of person is going to take all the furniture out of the house they're moving into and put it into the house that they're leaving? It doesn't make sense.

We always go and we prepare that house that we're moving into. It's this kind of sentiment that the people will have, يَا لَيْتَنِي قَدَّمْتُ لِحَيَاتِي Oh, that I would have prepared for my actual life. This preparation, the essence of it is the heart.

The Heart as a Boat in the Ocean of Life

This is why the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ), in this hadith, is talking about the importance of rectifying the heart. So if we want to summarize the essence of this way, it's this roadmap of how to get through this life to the real life without drowning in the process. And the analogy, one of the beautiful analogies of this life that the scholars have given is that this life is like an ocean and that our hearts in this life are like the boats.

The Titanic Example

When you think of a boat in an ocean, there's only one way that the boat will be able to be successful in that ocean, right? And that is that the boat does not allow the water into the ship. But the moment that, when does a boat start to sink? The boat starts to sink once the boat allows the ocean into it. And you know, if you think about something so grand as the Titanic, what happened to the Titanic? Such a massive ship, right? They used to call it the unsinkable ship because it was so massive and so majestic.

But what is it that ended up making the Titanic something that we'll always talk about in history about is because it got holes in it and water entered. And when the water entered that ship, regardless of its size and its strength and its majesty, it got broken into pieces and it ended up sinking. This is the analogy of the heart in this life, that this life will own the heart only when you allow this life to enter into your heart.

When you start to become owned by this worldly life instead of you being in control. And this is very theoretical, but how does it actually play out in our lives? Well, see the thing is that whatever owns our hearts, meaning that whatever we love most, really it comes down to ultimate love and ultimate fear and ultimate hope. Now whatever I love most, I am going to fear losing most.

The Master of Your Heart

And then I'm going to hope in it most. So everything really kind of stems from love. Now what if the thing that I love most is money? What if? If the thing that owns my heart, meaning now money has entered into my heart and taken over.

So now my greatest love is for money and for status and for wealth. Then what happens is I no longer own my money. My money owns me.

And that's the essence of what happens when something is in the heart so much that it's just like the boat, right? The boat that allowed the dunya to enter, the boat that allowed the ocean to enter. So when money goes in the heart, it starts to own the person. And now that person will do anything for money.

We Are All Slaves

In essence, whatever is in my heart becomes my master. See we are all slaves. We like to think that we're, you know, that we like to think that if we don't believe in God that we're actually free, right? I don't have a master.

I'm free. I'm not, you know, I don't, I don't even believe in God. But we actually are all slaves.

We actually all have a master of some sort. But the difference is that when a person becomes Muslim, they have, they have chosen to make their master the master of masters. So their master is actually God instead of anything else.

When you do not enslave yourself to God, then you enslave yourself to something else. You're always enslaved to something. So what you've enslaved yourself instead is something else.

Maybe it's money. Maybe it's society's standards. Maybe it's your own desires.

But you are a slave. The question is, what's your master? That's the only question you have to ask. It isn't, well, am I, am I a slave or am I not? We are all slaves.

We are all dependent and we all take some sort of master. The only question we have to ask is what is it? And then that ends up being what it is that owns our heart. For those people who take money as their master, they become enslaved to money.

Sama'na wa Ata'na (We Hear and We Obey)

And that means, see, when your master tells you something, here's how you respond. سَمِعْنَا وَأَطَعْنَا - We hear and we obey.

Therefore, if it's money, if it's money, anything that will make you more money, anything that will prevent you from losing more money, we hear and we obey. See, because now money is my master. And even if it means, you know, massive amounts of riba, even if it means selling alcohol, even if whatever it means, but if it's about making more money, we hear and we obey.

The Example of Fashion

Similarly, depending on what it is, if for some of us, it's how we appear in society, right? So in the case of, you know, especially for us women, there's a big push in terms of being fashionable, right? And wearing those things which are in fashion. And as you know, fashion is constantly changing. You know, I've witnessed in the last five years, like a massive, massive transformation in terms of the definition of pants.

Okay? Y'all seen that? We don't notice it because we're in it, right? We don't notice, but when you look at the massive, like even for men, even for men, that the definition of what is a pair of pants has absolutely changed from being pants to literally being tights, literally, let's just not argue, okay? And this transformation, we, because when we make something our standard, when our standard is no, I got fashion, I gotta be in style, when that becomes my standard, then whatever it commands, we hear and we obey. This is how we, and I bet you that if five years ago, especially the men, especially the men, if I showed you a picture of skinny jeans and I said, wear these, you would say over my dead body. No, really, you would.

You'd say, me wear those? But let's just be real. We're wearing them. We're wearing things that we would never imagine ourselves wearing and then going out that way, five years ago.

But the reason I'm bringing this up is I'm not trying to emphasize one aspect, I'm making a point that somehow we went along with it because of what is it that's our focal point. If it's fashion, if it's being in style, then that becomes something that controls me, right? Now it's whatever you tell me to do, I'm gonna do it, even if it's ridiculous, even if it's completely contradictory to modesty, even if it's completely contradictory to what God has said, but whatever I love most becomes my master. So that's the whole point.

The Solution: Making God the Master of Your Heart

And this is the message that the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) is telling us in the Hadith, that there is that lump of flesh and whatever captures that lump, whatever captures your heart, that's going to be what then controls the rest of the body. And if that lump of flesh is set right, then the entire body will be set right. If in your heart the thing that you love most is God, then whatever God says, then you say we hear and we obey, that's the essence of submission, that we don't submit to these other things.

We can love other things, we can love to be fashionable, we can love to have money, we can love people in our lives, but we do not submit to those things, we do not become slaves to anything other than God. And that's the essence of what is it that controls your heart.

Conclusion: The Journey and the Prescription

To summarize, this is a process of a journey, right? We are all in this life together, and we know with certainty that we're going to another higher life, inshallah.

In order to be able to take that journey without drowning, we have to protect the heart. And that whole sort of prescription of how to protect the heart is what Islam is. It gives you a prescription.

The example of Muhammad, the example of our messenger, the book, the words of God and the example of the messenger is a prescription to protect that heart and to keep that boat so that the ocean doesn't enter.

Closing