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Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘Alameen, wa salatu wa salamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen Muhammadin Rasulullah ﷺ, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam tasliman kaseeran kaseera, fama abaduh.
My brothers and sisters, I am here at the grave of my very dear and good friend Tajib bin Hajar, rahmatullah alayh. I am here with his son, Abdul Basit. It’s uh, the first time I’ve come after he passed away.
The cover is uh, literally as the Sunnah dictates, which is just the soil. There is no headstone there, wallahu a’lam. And may Allah Ta’ala keep Taji bin Bhai in a special place with him, insha’Allah.
We’ve been friends for over 25 years, alhamdulillah, and his commitment, masha’Allah, to his family, to his work, to Islam, to all the good works that he used to do, may Allah Ta’ala grant him the reward of that in keeping with the majesty and grace. I remind myself and you that if I look here now, this graveyard is quite a big one and this part doesn’t seem to be particularly well minted; the grass is not cut and so on, but the other side is clean. So maybe they are continuing to do the work inshallah. The thing I remind myself and you is that this is our ultimate reality.
And it’s a good thing therefore, and the Prophet said this: he said, “Go and visit the graves to remind yourself.” We don’t go to visit the graves to ask for favours; we don’t go to visit the graves for any other reason. We go to visit the graves to remind ourselves that one day we will also be in a grave like this somewhere. And only Allah knows, only Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la knows where that grave will be.
Two days ago, I was in Crescent University and I went to the grave of the founder B.S. Abdur Rahman ﷺ, Mahatma Laleh, and his wife. And the same thing there also, Mashallah, Alhamdulillah: not even a headstone, even his name is not there, just soil, just earth, and even the earth is not made up into a mound—I think it rained and so on—so it’s kind of got depressed. So, just flat earth, completely, Alhamdulillah, in keeping with the Sunnah.
Now thinking about this, Alhamdulillah, both of these people that I am talking about are people to whom Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la gave wealth and they spent it well. They spent it in the service of His Deen; they spent it for their families; they spent it in doing good for people, running schools, colleges, so thousands upon thousands of students benefit and they continue to benefit. So there is Sadaqa Jariya going on as we speak. This is the thing that I remind myself and you: it is not how much money we make, it is not how much property we accumulate, it is not how much authority we have, it is not election-winning elections or any material wealth or power—it is what we send ahead of us to the Akhira.
So as I say, even looking at charity, for example, you know, we like to say, “We like to call charity.” We say, “This is sacrifice,” make sacrifice in the path of Allah. And when we listen to our brothers and they give their bayans, they say, “Make sacrifice in the path of Allah.” And I always remind myself and them and anybody else and say, “How can you make sacrifice in the path of Allah?” It’s impossible. Because the condition for sacrifice is that what you are so-called sacrificing has to be owned by you and you must not get any reward for it. Now, when we spend in the path of Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la, Allah Subh’anaHu Ta-A’la Himself said, “The one who comes to Me with one good deed, I will give him ten times that; ten likewise.” So, when you are getting a thousand percent return, how is that a sacrifice? It’s not a sacrifice, it’s an investment.
And the reason why—I’m not saying this for semantics—the reason why it’s important to understand that spending in the path of Allahﷻ, working for the Deen of Allahﷻ, is not sacrifice and it is an investment. The reason to understand that is because when you think about something as a sacrifice, you are saying it is a net outflow, right? So I have so much, I’m giving out of that, I’m giving 10%, 15%, 20%, 50%. 100% even if you give, a time will come and it will come long before it comes to 100%, where you will feel incapable of giving anything more. Because literally nobody will give everything and stand there naked, you know, having given his clothes also. Nobody does that. So, even if you do that, even at that point in time, you cannot do anything more because everything you have has gone. But when you look at investment, what do you call an investment? Investment is something on which you are getting a return. So, when you are putting something somewhere and you are getting a return, there is no end to that. Because the more you put in, the more return you get. So, that’s an ongoing thing. It doesn’t stop. Whereas, with the sacrifice, if it’s a net outflow, then it has to stop at some point in time.
So, the reason I’m saying this is because, alhamdulillah, in my study of the Seerah, one of the things I can say is that the way the Sahaba looked at what today we call “sacrifice,” they looked at it as an investment. They did not consider it to be a sacrifice. They looked at it as an investment.
So, when Rasulullah said, “Do this and give in the path of Allah,” whether it is money, whether it is effort—including whether it is their own lives—they gave it very willingly and they gave it with great joy and they considered it a privilege to be asked to be put in that position. To give the biggest and the most powerful example of that for the Seerah is the Baitul Aqaba where 73 Sahaba came from Medina to make Baya to Rasulullah to give Baya to him in the Ayam Al-Tashriq after Hajj and they came to Mina and they came to one particular place. It was a small building. Today, the Masjid is there. So, they came in the night and Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam and Allahabbas bin Abdul Muttalib—at that time he was not a Muslim—he came and they asked him, they said, “Talk to us; tell us what you want from us.”
Now, I have mentioned this story many times in many of my bayans, so I will sort of briefly say it here. Rasool Allah said to them, “I want you to promise that you will obey me whether you like what I say or you don’t like what I say.” See the condition that He’s putting. He says, “Today when we talk about obedience, we say, ‘Okay, you will obey.’ You will obey your father, you will obey somebody, your teacher, whoever. However, but the condition there is, I must like what He’s saying, I must understand what He’s saying, He must explain it to me, He must convince me.” Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is saying none of that, right? He’s saying, “You will obey me whether you like what I say or you don’t like what I say,” which automatically implies whether you understand why I’m saying that or you don’t understand it, whether it makes sense to you or it doesn’t make sense to you. You will obey, first condition. Second condition He said is that you will give in the path of Allah when I ask you to give, whether it’s a time of plenty for you or whether it’s a time of scarcity. So you will give whether you have it or you don’t have it. Find it from somewhere. You will give when you have it, when you have wealth and you will give when you don’t have it. And the third condition He said was that you will protect me like you protect your wives and children, meaning with your lives. And “protect me” is not—He’s not afraid of death. He’s “protect me,” meaning the work of Deen. So He says, “You will protect me like you protect your wife and children, meaning even if you have to die for that, you will die for that. You will not back out from that.”
Now, think about this. How reasonable, within quotes, does this sound? And this is: he is asking this when he has no supporters. These are the only people, because he—you know—the story before that, two years before that, every year he would go to this Mina during Hajj and he would go from tent to tent to tent asking for support. Nobody supported him. So, once these people support him, now He is putting these conditions which seem to be, may Allah have mercy on us, they seem to be completely unreasonable, right? If you or I were advising Rasulullah at that time, we would say, “Rasulullah, please don’t be so tough. Don’t say things like this. I mean, who will support you?” Yes, let’s go there. We stay in Madinah, you know, get used to the people, make some friends and have some influence, circle and so on, then slowly everything will happen. Right in the beginning, you are saying, “You have to die for me; you have to give me whether you have it or not; you have to obey me whether you like it or not.” I mean, these are—this is what we would have advised them, right? But may Allah have mercy, the sign of the Amir was they did not dilute the message. They said what had to be said and they said it directly without any flowery language.
So, when he finished, the representative of the Ansar, he said, “We have heard you. What will we get?” I am talking about the concept of investment and not sacrifice. So, he said, “What will we get?” Rasulullah replied with one word. He said, “Jannah.” Jannah. And the Ansar—and may Allah Ta’ala have mercy on them—they said, “What a bargain.” They said, “SubhanAllah, what a bargain.”
Now, my submission to you is: what do you call a bargain? Right? What is a bargain? If I give you this, if I sell you this phone for 100,000 rupees, is that a bargain? It’s not a bargain. Because for that money, you can get a brand new phone and still have money left—it’s not a bargain. A bargain is if I sell this to you for ten dollars—that’s a bargain because it’s worth more than that so you’re spending a little bit and you’re getting much more. That’s about this; that’s about the point being: they understood that this life—even if I have everything I want in this life, even if I am weighed in gold, even if I live in a palace—one day I have to leave it behind. And what the Rasool is promising me is forever. It’s a fantastic bargain. I’m giving up what I have to give up anyway. Nobody takes it with him. We are standing here, as I said, at the grave of my dear friend Tajuddin Hajar and his son Basil is here. What did he take with him? Nothing. Wrap up in a sheet of cloth, the qabr put in the earth, cover up—finished class. What did he take? What did anybody take? What will I take? Nothing no matter what I have. But what He will get, insha’Allah we ask Allah that for him and for all of us, insha’Allah, that is forever and that is dependent on what we spend in the path of Allah, how we live our life. And that’s why our decisions will go into the cover with us. The material will not go. If I borrow on interest to buy to build a house, the house will stay here but that decision to borrow on interest will go with me into my grave. Right? If I—if I borrow on interest to grow my business, sound like a nice thing and all the you know especially if you have some capital and all that—you will have enough and more advisors to tell you: “No, no leverage the capital; don’t spend your capital.” The bank will lend you the money. Don’t spend your money. Right. Spending your own money is the most expensive way of using capital. Leveraging is what you should do. All of this garbage because I—I mean I am an MBA from IIM so this stuff we learned there—but they don’t tell you that that leverage is taking you straight into Jahannam. What kind of leverage is that? This is where we have Yaqeen in our Deen because this is Minna Allahi Ta’ala. And where Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam prohibited this and Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la prohibited this and not only prohibited, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la declared war upon the one who deals in interest in Riba of any kind. Interest is only one kind of Riba; there are other kinds of Riba. When a person does that, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la declared war on that person on his behalf and on the behalf of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
The thing I always remind myself is when I stand before Allah: Do I want to stand before my Rabb, who I love and who I ask for mercy, or do I want to stand before my enemy with whom I have taken a declaration of war? I mean, does it make any sense?
So that is the point that I want to—and let me close with this—that Alhamdulillah, this is what we should remind ourselves: that one day I will be in the grave, just like everybody, and I will be in it and just like they are now with Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la and they are facing what they are facing. We ask Allah to make it easy for them, we ask Allah to forgive them, we ask Allah to fill the qabr with Noor. All the people in this Khabarustan and all the Muslims everywhere, we will face the same thing. And if we live a life where that thing which we are going to face is not good, then that is forever. This life will end. We don’t know when it will end, but it will end and whatever we have will stay here; nothing will go, not one handkerchief will go with us, not one piece of tissue paper will go with us. But what we will get is forever. That is the bargain. So we need to think about and say, when the Sahaba said “what a bargain,” what is it that they understood that we don’t seem to understand today? So we ask Allah to open our eyes and hearts so that we see the Haqeeqah, we see the truth and the reality as it is. We ask Allah to bless all the Muslims who have passed away. We ask Allah to fill their Khur with Noor. We ask Allah to forgive them. We ask Allah to cover them in His mercy and for all their people who have not died and for all of us, Insha’Allah.