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Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem, Alhamdulillahil Rabbil ‘Alameen, wa salaatu was-salamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen, Muhammad ar-Rasool Allahi sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma’in. Tasliman kathiran kathirah.
Humma ba’du, my brothers and sisters, Ya Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, we know the first hadith in Bukhari, narrated by Umar ibn al-Khattab radi allahu anhu, where Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is reported to have said: “He said, the reward of the deed is based on its intention.” This applies obviously to the Akhira where we get the rewards, but it also applies to the Dunya because in our actions, whatever we do, the reward comes based on the intention. If you do it sincerely, with the intention of helping somebody, doing something, not to show off, not to propagate your own image, then you get a beneficial reward for that. On the contrary, if you do something just to show off, just to show people that you are doing something, then there is no reward for that with Allah and there is no reward God for that, for ourselves in this dunya.
We know the hadith of the Salas. This is one of the most important hadith of Rasulullah, the hadith of the three. And that hadith is that Rasulullah said, Abu Hurairah narrates, I heard the Messenger of Allah say: “Say, the first of men whose case will be decided on the Day of Judgement will be a man who died as a martyr. He will be brought before the Judgement Seat, Allah will make him recount his blessings, that is all the blessings which he had bestowed upon him, and he will recount them, the man will recount them and admit having enjoyed them in his life. Then will Allah say, what did you do in response to these blessings? He will say, I fought for Allah. Allah will say, you have told a lie. You fought that you might be called a brave warrior and you are called that. And then orders will be passed against him and he will be dragged with his face downwards and cast into Jahannam.”
Hayyadu Billah.
Then will be brought forward a man who acquired knowledge and imparted it to others and recited the Quran. He will be brought and Allah will make him recount his blessings. And he will recount them and admit to having enjoyed them in his lifetime. Then Allah will ask, what did you do in response to or to requite these blessings? He will say, I acquired knowledge and disseminated it and recited the Qur’an seeking your pleasure, Ya Rab. Allah will say, you have told a lie. You acquired knowledge so that you might be called a scholar. And you recited the Qur’an so that you might be called, he is a Qari. And such has been said. And orders will be passed against him. And he will be dragged with his face downwards and cast into the fire.
Then will be brought a man whom Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala had made abundantly rich and had granted every kind of wealth. He will be brought and Allah will make him recount his blessings and he will recount them and admit to having enjoyed them in his lifetime. Allahﷻ will then ask, what have you done to requite these blessings? What have you done in response? He will say, I spent money in every cause in which you wished that it should be spent. Allah will say, you are lying. You did that so that it might be said about you, ‘He is a generous man.’ And so it was said, then Allah will pass orders and he will be dragged with his face downwards and thrown into Jahannam.
May Allah Ta’ala save us from the corruption of our niyyah and grant us ikhlas al-niyyah. First three people, all three Muslim, all three doing things which we know to be, Alhamdulillah, inshallah, good.
And that’s why the Sahaba, they used to do good and fear Allahﷻ, that this good which they are doing may not be accepted by Allahﷻ. Because Allahﷻ is not compelled to accept what we do. Allah is not forced to accept. We go and present to Allahﷻ. It’s up to Allah to accept or not to accept.
So, how to ensure, inshallah, that our deeds will be accepted? Number one, do them with ikhlas. Do them with only the intention to please Allahﷻ, nothing else. Second thing is, continuously check this niya.
The ulama say that it’s like going into a big fair or big marketplace with money in your pocket. So, you’ve got this wad of notes in your pocket and you are going into this big hujum. What will you do? You know there are big pockets, you know that people are after it. So what you will always have one hand on this money right? You will constantly check this money: I took the money yes, but do I still have it? Otherwise it is very likely that you, by the time you reach whichever shop you were going there to buy, and you put your hand in your pocket and the money is gone, the pocket is empty. This happens. There is nothing new, your wallet is gone. So if you want to make sure that you still have the money, you have to continuously keep on checking: do you have same thing? With the When we start, alhamdulillah, inshallah, we have ikhlas. But does this ikhlas continue throughout my life, throughout this amal? Or does somewhere shaitan come in to corrupt that? Right? Shaitan corrupts in many ways.
Shaitan, first and most important, shaitan, oh, mashallah, mashallah, mashallah. At this age, mashallah, you are coming to salatul fajr by jama’a, wallah. Look at all the kids here. Nobody is only Ahmed so Ahmed may Allah bless him and may Allah protect him. You might feel, ‘Oh mashallah, I am, I am special.’ Yes, you are special, but the minute you start believing that you are dead seriously, you say, ‘Oh I pray salatul fajr, oh I am giving so much of charity, oh I am praying tahajjud, nobody else no.’ Never allow that to happen. Shaitan does this. Happens to me all the time. The minute I give a khutbah, ‘Oh Mashallah, Mashallah, My Sheikh Baharul Rung.’ You are a sea of knowledge. What? Garbage. Sea of knowledge, I am not even a drop. That’s why I see, I very strictly prohibit when they write posters and so on: For me, Great Speaker. This I said remove every single thing. Put my name. My name is what my parents gave me Alhamdulillah. It’s a good name. I am not interested in anything more. You have to write something. Write A normal title, whichever it is. Other than that, nothing.
I fear for myself. I don’t care. You write some nonsense and that goes into my head, then I am dead, before Allah. Constantly, that’s why Nabi said to his Sahaba, he said, I am not afraid for you that you will worship idols. He said, Alhamdulillah, I am not afraid for you that you will worship idols, that you will actually go and commit shirk. This I am not afraid, you will not do this but he says I am afraid that you will do shirk khafi, hidden shirk. Hidden shirk. Allahﷻ promised to forgive everything except shirk, so “inna allaha la yaghfiru ay yusharakabihi wa yaghfiru ma dhuna dhalika mayyasha limayasha.” Allah will not forgive the one who makes sex, joins partners with you. Other than that, Allah will forgive whatever He likes. So, Nabi said, I fear for you shirk khafi, hidden shirk. They said, Ya Rasulullah, what is hidden shirk? They said, hidden shirk is to do something for Allah, but in your heart you want to please somebody else. And he said, hidden shirk is so hidden, it’s like a black ant crawling on a black rock in a pitch-dark night.
And the antidote for that is constantly to keep checking and constantly to make istighfar because when you make istighfar Allahﷻ forgives. Somebody asked this question to Shaykh al-Uthaymeen rahmatullah alayh: he said to him, ‘Ya Shaykh, I have my qiraat is is good. I recite Quran well. So, whenever I am there, people always put me forward to lead salah. So, when I am leading salah, say I have the intention that I will recite say 20 ayats. But the minute I start reciting, when I have done two or three ayats, the thought comes into my mind that I am doing this to please the people, not to please Allah. I’m doing this so people will say, oh, mashallah, what a beautiful Qari, what beautiful Qara.’ So this thought comes in my mind that I am doing this to please the people, not to please Allah. What shall I do? The Sheikh asked him, what do you do? He said, I cut short my recitation. Sincere man. He said, I’ll, he thought he will recite 20, but by the time he’s on the second or third ayah, so he said, I maybe just read one more ayah and I go into it. Why I cut short my recitation.
The Sheikh said to him, Do two things. Firstly, the minute this thought comes, you make istighfar. Because, wallah, maybe this is true, maybe there is some contamination in your niyyah. So, istighfar does not mean that in the middle of the Quran he is saying astaghfirullah. No, in his heart, he is asking Allah for forgiveness. And then he said, then increase your recitation. If you wanted to recite 20, recite 30. He said, beat shaitan. Because shaitan is doing this. This waswasa is coming from shaitan. This is not good intention, this is shaitan. Shaitan because shaitan is seeing that because of your recitation people behind you they are connecting with Allahﷻ, they have got khushu’, and you know so shaitan wants to spoil all that, so therefore he puts this thought in your mind: no, no, no, this is only for to show off. So he said, beat shaitan, do more, don’t cut it short but make it simple right? Similarly sometimes what happens is if you want to give charity, right, and you put your hand in your pocket, you thought you will take out maybe 10 rupees or 20 rupees, and suddenly you find you got a 500 rupee note or are they still legal or not I don’t know whatever anyway, so we keep changing our note. So supposing we put 500, then the immediate thought is ‘I wanted to give 20.’ Give 500. Allah wrote this Alhamdulillah. Allah gave me 500, I can give 500. And if Shaitan puts another 500 until he runs away, beat Shaitan at this game because Shaitan does this. This is all from Shaitan. Shaitan does this anytime you want to do something good, shaitan will put some waswasa in there.
Supposing you did not have good relationship with your brother or you know close relatives, these things happen. May Allah have mercy with people and people have such harsh and hard stances on this. They won’t see, they won’t talk to their own brother forever. “Inna lillahi wa inna lillahi rajim.” This is something which is punishable before Allahﷻ. The silatul raham, the relationships of the raham, these are from Allahﷻ. And we have problem for what? Not for Allah. It’s some nonsense in this life. He misbehaved with me, he did not say salaam to me, some garbage. For that you are cutting a relation which Allah made. The relation with your mother, your father, your brothers, your sisters, your uncles and aunts, immediate ones, khala, phuppu. These are from Allah. We have no business cutting those relationships but we do it. May Allah have mercy on us. So supposing for example you had a bad relationship with somebody and you decide ‘No, no, no, this is nonsense, I must go and correct this.’ As you are going, shaitan will put in your hand: you remember what he did that time, you want to go back there. Go faster.
Beat shaitan with this thing. Niya is very very very important. I remind myself and you let us constantly keep checking our niyas so that Alhamdulillah whatever good we do shaitan does not steal that from us because of this shirk khafi. Is this riyah? It’s called another word for it is riyah. Riyah is to show off to people and riyah is shirk khafi. It’s as critical and as terrible as that, it’s shirk khafi, shirk hidden which is a riyah. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to save us from Riyadh. We ask Allah to save us from Shirk and all kinds of Bizaad. We ask Allah to keep us on the right path and give us Ikhlasul Niyah. Wa sallallahu ala nabeel kareem wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma’in bi rahmatika wa rahmatullah.