Reviving the Sunnah of Compassion

Reviving the Sunnah of Compassion

Imam Zaid Shakir

Opening Greetings

As-salāmu alaykum wa rahmatullāhi wa barakātuhu. This is a sort of fuzzy Christian concept that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, love. But in reality, it shouldn't be strange to us. Love is fundamental, is foundational to our affair.

The Foundation of Faith: Love Among Believers

The entrance into Paradise has been made conditional on our loving one another. So the Prophet (peace be upon him) mentioned:

"You will not enter Paradise until you truly believe, and you will not truly believe until you love one another."

(Sahih Muslim 54)

So, we're not getting into Paradise unless we love one another. And sometimes if we look at some aspects or some parts of our community or some parts of our ummah, and we ask ourselves, where is the love? That wasn't just a popular song back in the day. Where is the love? Some of you remember that.

I'm not going to do my imitation of Donnie Hathaway and Roberta Flack, forget it. Leave that to Tariq Subhani. But we ask, we look at what's going on and we ask, where is the love? How can people who love one another do these things to each other? How can people who love... Where is the love for your Muslim brother if you can bomb them like they're being bombed in Yemen? Blockade and boycott them.

Starve the children. Allow conditions to exist that afflict a nation with over a million cases of cholera and growing. Threaten upwards to 15 million people's starvation.

Muslims are doing that. So, but America's providing the bombs. Yeah, but who's buying the bombs? And who's dropping the bombs? America can't do anything anywhere in this Muslim ummah without the help of some Muslims who lack love and compassion for their fellow Muslims.

It's that simple. We have to love one another. We have to love one another in our local communities.

The Story of Mu'adh ibn Jabal and the Manifestation of Love

We have to love, and not just love one another because that's a package. The Prophet (peace be upon him), or rather, Mu'adh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him), he said to Abu Idris al-Khawlani, when the latter, just the first time he saw Mu'adh ibn Jabal in a masjid, and people were deferring to him, and Mu'adh was fairly

young (may Allah be pleased with him). And they were deferring to him. They were referring their questions back to him.

And he said, who is this young person? And they said, it's Mu'adh ibn Jabal. And the next day he came back, and he just walked out, and Mu'adh was praying. And he walked up to Mu'adh and he said, I love you.

And he said, Wallah, Allah. By Allah? He said, Allah. By Allah. Allah. Allah. He repeated it again. And then Mu'adh said to him, that I heard the Messenger of Allah say:

"My love has been made incumbent for those who love each other for my sake, and those who sit together for my sake, and those who visit each other for my sake, and those who spend on each other for my sake."

(Muwatta Malik 1711)

And of course Allah incumbated that upon Himself. He can't incumbate anything upon Allah. My love, I have made my love obligatory for those who love each other for my sake. وَالْمُتَزَاوِرِينَ فِيَّ And those who visit each other for my sake. So it's not just loving each other.

That love translates into visitations. And not just one way street. Sometimes we love somebody and it's a one way street. We do all of the reaching out. We do all of the, nowadays I guess texting. We do, it's one way. We do all of the visiting. وَالْمُتَزَاوِرِينَ فِيَّ Those who visit each other for my sake. وَالْمُتَجَالِسِينَ فِيَّ Those who sit together for my sake.

And they visit each other for my sake. وَالْمُتَبَاذِلِينَ فِيَّ And they expend. They expend their money on each other. They spend their time on each other. They exert themselves for each other. Meaning they sacrifice for each other. Their money, their time for each other. This is the nature of our ummah. So we shouldn't find this idea strange.

We should challenge ourselves to translate that idea into action. And into a reality that defines our community. Because this is who we are.

The Foundation of Marriage: Love and Mercy

The foundation of our community is the union between a man and a woman. The family, that's the foundation of the community. And what is the foundation of that union? Allah Ta'ala mentions in the Quran:

"And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought." (Quran 30:21)

In order that you live together with them in peace and tranquility. And He's made between you love and mercy. To facilitate that peace and that tranquility. That sakinah. لِتَسْكُنُوا إِلَيْهَا And He's made between you love and mercy. Surely in this are signs for people to reflect.

That's the bedrock of the community. But what's built on that? The community built on that foundation of the family. What holds that together?

The Community as a Single Body

The Prophet (peace be upon him) mentioned:

"The likeness of the believers in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion is like that of a single body. If one part complains of some injury, the entire body responds with fever and sleeplessness." (Sahih Muslim 2586)

Alhamdulillah. That love is there but we have to nurture it. And we have to encourage it to grow. And this is what the Majlis is trying to be. It's trying to be a space where that love that should exist between the believers can be nurtured and it can grow and it can reach fruition. And not be stifled and stymied and crushed before it even gets a chance to blossom. We want to see beautiful flowers. And that's what's going to change the course of this nation.

The Problem of Division and Enmity

We find people growing apart and being encouraged to hate each other. This isn't who we are. And a lot of Muslims, not many, but there are some who buy into that philosophy. That you're automatically at enmity. They set up these dichotomies. And if you're on one extreme or the other, you're instantly, automatically, with no consideration of your individual character, who you are, you're categorized into a group. And then there's automatically enmity.

And that's from shaitan, that's not from Allah. Shaitan wants and other things. That's not restricted. Shaitan wants to create hatred and enmity between you. With alcohol and with gambling. And with whatever else he can use. He has a big tool kit. And he's very clever. He has a lot of experience.

Don't think you can outsmart shaitan. He's sitting around with his dupes, they're laughing. They're like, this guy, remember in 500 BC someone tried that same trick? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then in 280 the same thing happened. This guy thinks he can outsmart us. He's seen it all. He knows the tricks. He has a big tool kit. And he uses every tool in the kit to get us to hate one another. To get us to break relations with one another.

He learned these shayateen. They learned from the two angels Harut and Marut that which sows dissension and division between the man and his wife. And between brother and brother. And sister and sister.

The False Paradigm of Oppressor and Oppressed

But to go back to the point. There's actually a diagram of sorts that's been set up. Draw a line. And then you put lines that cut through that line. And on each line cutting through the horizontal line, the vertical lines. And on the vertical line, on the top, for example, there's heterosexual. On the bottom there's homosexual. On the top there's rich. On the bottom there's poor. On the top there's white. On the bottom there's non-white. On the top there's male. On the bottom there's female. On the top there's black. On the bottom there's white. On the bottom there's non-white.

So if you're on the top and if you have all of these characteristics, then you're instantly, automatically, irredeemably an oppressor. So if you're a white, rich, heterosexual male, forget it. You're the most oppressive force on earth. And if you're homosexual, non-white, poor, etc., you're oppressed. And because you fit in these categories, there's no consideration that a person might be white, male, heterosexual, rich person who is charitable, who is pious, who is compassionate.

It doesn't matter. If you're in that category, you're bad. If you're in this category, you're good. If you're in this category, you're an oppressor. If you're in this category, you're an oppressed. And this dichotomy, this dichotomizing of groups is set and firm.

This isn't Islam. This is some strange figment of Herbert Marcuse's imagination. Islam says no individual can bear the burden of another. Islam says that everyone will come before Allah as an individual. They won't come before Allah as a member of an oppressing or oppressed group. They will come to Allah as a pious, believing, righteous individual. As a sinful individual. Based on their individual responsibilities. Their individual acts. Their individual intentions.

And Islam says there's nothing to prevent people who might be in this category or the other from loving and having compassion for someone in the other. Rather it's the lower which are the oppressed or the upper which are the oppressors.

The First Four Converts: A Beautiful Example

And this is beautifully illustrated by the first four converts to Islam. If you look at the first four converts to Islam, who did you have? You had a child that was poor, Imam Ali. You had a former slave, Zaid bin Haritha. These are oppressed. You had a wealthy woman who defies the whole paradigm because as a woman she's oppressed, but as a wealthy person she's an oppressor. And then you had Abu Bakr who's straight up oppressor because he's male and he's rich.

In the eyes of Islam, they're all Muslims, they're all believers. And they all supported the mission of the Prophet (peace be upon him). And collectively, the rich and the poor came together and supported this mission. And love and mercy was established between their hearts. Regardless of whether they were black. Zaid bin Haritha was black. He was Arab. There were black Arabs. Arab Saudis like the people in Jericho in Palestine. Palestine, any Palestinians in here? You've been down there?

There are black Palestinians. That's one of the best kept secrets on earth. I mean black Palestinians. You think like, man, did I get on the wrong flight? And they're brothers and sisters of any other Palestinian. So you have black people. You have rich people like Khadija. You have aristocratic people, bourgeoisie, like Khadija and Abu Bakr, joining together with the slaves and the blacks like Bilal and the oppressed and the downtrodden, coming together as one ummah because Allah put love between their hearts.

Allah put love between their hearts. مَثَلُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ فِي تَوَادِهِمْ Which Sahaba didn't love Bilal? Zaid bin Haritha was called the beloved of the Messenger of Allah حِبُّ رَسُولِ اللهِ. The Prophet loved that young boy so deeply. And when he refused to go to his own biological parents, his love just became that much deeper. He even adopted him as his son before the practice was forbidden.

After he turned down his father and his uncle and said I'm staying with Muhammad, no one ever treated me like he treated me, the Prophet (peace be upon him) grabbed him and said هَذَا زَيْدُ بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍ "This is Zaid the son of Muhammad." That's how much he loved him.

The Story of Umm Ayman and Usama

And then he married eventually, after Zaid divorced Zainab bint Jahsh, then he married her (peace be upon him). He married Zaid to another person he loved who was also someone downtrodden supposedly, which was Umm Ayman. Umm Ayman was an Ethiopian slave that Khadija freed (may Allah be pleased with them all). She was from Ethiopia. She was a black woman. And the Prophet (peace be upon him) called her أُمِّي بَعْدَ أُمِّي "She's my mother after my own biological mother."

She was one of the people that nurtured the Prophet in his youth, in his infancy (peace be upon him). And she married, he married Umm Ayman to Zaid bin Haritha. And they had a son Usama bin Zaid who the Prophet loved so much. We know the stories. Anytime they wanted to ask the Prophet (peace be upon him) something difficult, they send Usama. He never say no to Usama. And Usama was called حِبُّ حِبّ رَسُولِ اللهِ "The beloved of the beloved of the Messenger of Allah" (peace be upon him).

So this ummah isn't predicated on people being rich or poor, black or white. It's not predicated on them being from this tribe or that tribe. This nationality, that nationality. That's why you have even this sampling here. We have black folks here, white folks here, people in between. And it doesn't matter. Our hearts are joined together in love and faith.

What This Nation Needs

This is what we need at this time when our country is being pulled apart by these divisions that are being foisted upon people. And the divisions that are being accentuated and not de-emphasized. That are being overly emphasized. And so we need a force that's built on love and mercy to go out and to rescue this country from itself.

And people say, oh things are good. There's a book, Factfulness. Some of you are familiar with that book that just breaks down how things really, they're not as bad as they seem in some areas. That book focused primarily on development, disease and standards of living. Yes, those things are going up. We're wealthier than we've ever been, which is not necessarily a good thing because all that wealth comes from the earth. And we're devastating the earth.

So maybe we need to become accustomed to a little more poverty as opposed to only finding our fulfillment and an increase in material well-being. We need to find our fulfillment in spiritual well-being. And there is no spiritual well-being without love and mercy.

Creating a Space for Spiritual Wellness

So we're trying to create a space where people can be well spiritually. And they can nurture each other and help each other to attain to those levels of wellness so they can go out and affect this world in a positive way. We can't do that if we're sick. We can't do that if we're hurting.