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بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين، والصلاة والسلام على أشرف الأنبياء والمرسلين، محمد رسول الله صلى الله عليه وعلى آله وصحبه وسلم تسليماً كثيراً كثيراً. أما بعد.
My dear brothers and sisters, we know the hadith of Rasulullah ﷺ: إنما الأعمال بالنيات. The Prophet ﷺ said, the deed depends on the intention with which it is done.
Fudayl ibn Iyad, the great qadi and the great scholar from the Tabi’een, he said… people asked him, what do you find the strangest of all things? And Fudayl ibn Iyad said, it is the heart that knows Allah, yet still disobeys Him. You know, really, we need to reflect on ourselves and say: one day we are going to meet Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. This is our fundamental belief. Alhamdulillah, we all believe this, and whether we believe it or not, it’s going to happen. So it’s something that will not be changed, and therefore it’s very important for us to keep this in mind always. So he says, it is the heart that knows Allah, yet still disobeys Him. It’s the strangest thing.
My brothers and sisters, taqwa is the desire to please the one we love the most. The more we love Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, the more we want to please Him, and that makes us more muttaqi. Remember that all the promises of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala are for the muttaqun, not merely for the Muslim.
Ramadan opens the door to the palace of Taqwa, filled with Allah’s grace and majesty. Allah SWT said:
كُتِبَ عَلَيْكُمُ الصِّيَامُ كَمَا كُتِبَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ
The importance of taqwa is self-evident, but even if it wasn’t, this one ayat is enough for us to show how important it is that Allah SWT sent us a whole month just so that we may improve the level of our taqwa.
Now think about this: what is the true meaning of “Iyyaka na’budu wa iyyaka nasta’in”? I don’t mean the grammar of it or something. I mean, what does it do to us when we say it? What happens to the heart?
This is the greatest tragedy that faces us today: mechanical obedience. I’m not even talking about disobedience, because disobedience is not an option. Somebody who’s disobeying Allah, this person is truly unfortunate, because this person is disobeying the One to whom he owes everything, and he’s disobeying the One whom he will face on the Day of Judgment and to whom he will have to answer about why he disobeyed Him. And he is disobeying the One who, if he had obeyed, he would have been rewarded in a way that he could not possibly imagine, yet he disobeys. So we are not talking about that. We are talking about people who obey, but with mechanical obedience, like robots, machines that do what they are supposed to do, but with no heart, no spirit, no laughter, no tears, nothing, just mechanical movements. Focus exclusively on the external. Total absence of focus on the reality, the maqsad, the purpose, the reason, and therefore no thought for the effect or the result of the action. We don’t say or do an act of worship for any specific purpose. So we don’t monitor the result. And therefore, when nothing happens, we are not concerned. We didn’t do it for anything to happen; nothing happened, so no problem.
For example, Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said about Salah:
إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَىٰ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ
Allah said that verily the Salah separates and clears and removes us and distances us from the fahsha’ and munkar, from all sorts of disobedience, all sorts of shameless things, from all sorts of, what shall I say, rebellious things. So Allah is saying, this is what Salah does.
But when we pray, I remind myself and you, just ask this question: when I pray, am I thinking about this? Am I saying, I just finished Salatul Fajr, alhamdulillah, in jama’ah, in the masjid. What is the effect of that on my heart? Which of the fawahish and munkarat that I used to do, for example social media, for example, may Allah protect us, those who are addicted to pornography, for example listening to music and such, all kinds of disobedience, have I stopped doing that? Has the desire to do that disappeared, inshaAllah, or decreased, or what has happened to that? My obedience to my parents, for example, this is something which is enjoined upon me by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. I wasn’t doing it too well. So now, having prayed, what is the effect of that on my obedience to my parents, birr al-walidayn, for example? But we don’t do that.
We focus on clothing, the topi, where we fold our hands, whether we raise our hands once or more, and what we do with our finger in tashahhud. Do we raise it once? Do we raise it not at all? Do we wave it around? What do we do? And this is what we argue about. Have you ever heard somebody talking about the khushu’ in salah? Have you ever heard anyone arguing about the khushu’ in salah? And that’s the only thing which Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala asked for. We focus on tajweed of recitation, the style of it, which surah or ayat, which riwayah, is it Hafs or is it Warsh? Which surah or ayat should we recite in the first rak’ah and which in the second? Let me leave it to you to add to this list. But do we focus on the khushu’? Are we concerned that our forgetfulness in salah is a sign that we have no khushu’? We are concerned about whether we need to make sajdat as-sahw, but we are not concerned about why we got into this dilemma in the first place.
When we finish Salah, do we ask, what is the result? Did I get what I wanted? The reality is that I wanted nothing, got nothing, and so that is as it should be. One job done, one box ticked, now let’s get on with life.
Now contrast this, for example, with everything else we do. Take employment, take business, take sports, take the gym, diets, education. Everything has a goal. For everything we have metrics; we measure achievement; we course-correct if we don’t get the results we expect to get; we seek mentors and coaches if we find that we are unable to get results on our own. We have role models we look up to and try to emulate. Ask if we do any of this with our ‘ibadat. Even though as Muslims we know that we are not created for the gym or the basketball court, but to worship Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. We don’t look for results because we have no goal. We don’t seek to improve because we have no metrics. We are satisfied with simply carrying out the physical actions because we don’t have any expectations from Salah.
When we work out regularly, we expect to look different after some time. Likewise for diets. When we practice basketball regularly, we expect to shoot hoops in our sleep. When we pray regularly, what do we expect? When we fast in Ramadan, what result do we expect? Do we measure ourselves to say, this is how I was on the first of Ramadan, now on the day of Eid, am I different? When we pay zakat, what do we expect? When we make Hajj or Umrah, what do we expect? I’m not talking about the reward in the Akhirah, I’m talking about the results that we can see and measure right here.
I remind myself and you that all the ‘ibadat, all the acts of worship, are tools to get us something, and that is closeness to Allah. Salah is not for itself. Sawm is not for itself. Each one is a tool to do something. Allah said Salah, to keep us away from fahsha’ and munkar; sawm, fasting, to make us muttaqun; zakat, to purify our wealth; and so on. Salah is a sign of obedience, and it’s a protection from disobedience. Each ‘ibadah is designed to achieve a certain purpose.
Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said about Salah, in the ayat which I recited for you:
اتْلُ مَا أُوحِيَ إِلَيْكَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَأَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ ۖ إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَىٰ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ ۗ وَلَذِكْرُ اللَّهِ أَكْبَرُ ۗ وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَصْنَعُونَ
Allah SWT has said: recite, O Muhammad ﷺ, what has been revealed to you of the Book, the Qur’an, and establish as-salat. Verily as-salat prevents from al-fahsha’, which is all sins of every kind, great sins, and al-munkar, all evil deeds. And the remembering of Allah, and the praising of you by Allah in front of the angels, is greater indeed than your remembering Allah in your salah. And Allah knows what you do.
Then Allah said:
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اسْتَعِينُوا بِالصَّبْرِ وَالصَّلَاةِ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَ الصَّابِرِينَ
Allah said, O you who believe, take the help of sabr and salah, and verily Allah is with the people of sabr, as-sabirin. Allah defined the quality of our Salah as a distinguishing feature of ours. Allah said:
قَدْ أَفْلَحَ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ الَّذِينَ هُمْ فِي صَلَاتِهِمْ خَاشِعُونَ
Allah said, successful indeed are the believers, those who offer their salah, who do their salah with full submissiveness and solemnity.
Now, brothers and sisters, this is something that I demand of myself first, and remind you about: when I’m focusing on salah, because this is the most common of all our ‘ibadat, we do this, or we’re supposed to do this, five times a day, and then of course if you add the sunan mu’akkadah and so on, it’s more times. Let us not just spend that time like some exercise, standing, sitting, getting up and whatnot. Let us focus on the purpose of it. Let us focus on the achievement of it.
As they say, the guy who invented the Six Sigma quality standard, Mikel Harry, from Motorola, he said, if you want to see what someone values, see what they measure. And by measure, he means the metrics of it. So do we focus on the metrics? Do we focus on saying, well, I just finished Salatul Dhuhr, I just finished Salatul Fajr. How was it? What is the quality of it? And Allah showed us what is the quality of Salah. The first and foremost quality, the thing that Allah mentioned, is khushu’:
قَدْ أَفْلَحَ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ الَّذِينَ هُمْ فِي صَلَاتِهِمْ خَاشِعُونَ
So I remind myself and you, let us begin with this. Let us focus on the khushu’ in our Salah and ask, how focused am I on Allah in my Salah? We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to give us khushu’ in salah, and to help us to pray in a way that pleases Him, and to reward us in keeping with His majesty and grace.