Rights of Rasoolullahﷺ – #2 Ita’at

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. We praise Him, we ask for His help, we ask for His forgiveness, we believe in Him, we trust in Him, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls and from the evil deeds of our deeds. Whomsoever Allah guides, no one is misguided from Him, and whosoever He guides, no one is guided from Him. And after that, my brothers and sisters, help us. We are looking at the rights of the Messenger of Allah on his Ummah, meaning on us. And as I mentioned before, the issue with rights is that if somebody has a right on you, and you do not fulfill that right, then you are culpable, you are punishable if Allah wants to punish. We ask Allah to save us from that, because of all the rights, the rights of the people, the rights of creation, the number one first right is the right of Rasulullah . We spoke about the first right, the first right of Allah. The first of them, adab ul-ihtiram, the respect and honour that is due to Him . Today we will speak about the second of them, which is itaat, to obey Him without question. Allah said that He sent His Anbiya to be obeyed. This is not blind following, but obedience with the knowledge of who we are obeying and why. And this is not a new system, you need to follow it completely, not partially, not selectively. That change is to move from living by our desires to living by the command of Allah . Allah said, وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِنْ رَسُولٍ إِلَّا لِيُتَاعَ بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ Allah said, we have sent no Messenger but to be obeyed by the command and leave of Allah. That is why Abu Hurayrah reported, that Rasulullah said in a Hadith, Sahih Hadith which is recorded in Bukhari, Everyone from my nation will enter Jannah except those who refuse. Everyone from my nation, from the Ummah will enter Jannah except those who refuse. So they asked him, Ya Rasulullah, who will refuse? He said, whoever obeys me enters Jannah. Whoever disobeys has refused. May Allah grant us the Tawfiq not to refuse to enter Jannah. I remind myself and you that the most common reason we refuse to obey Rasulullah is because of our slavery to our desires, to our Nufus, to our Nafs. The question is to ask yourself this question and say, is whatever we want to do that is against the command of Rasulullah and can result in our being listed as a Nafs? In our being listed among those who refuse to enter Jannah, is it worth that price? Is it worth that price? Allah made it a condition of Iman, of faith itself, that not only should we accept every judgement of Rasulullah without question, but we must not even feel any resistance in our hearts or we risk being out of Islam. Now this is a condition that is unique to the judgment of Rasulullah. Which indicates his position and the importance of obeying him totally. Because in the Sharia, it's only what you say and what you do which becomes possibly culpable, which you are accountable for, not what is in your heart, not what you feel and not what you think. Except when it comes to the judgments of Rasulullah . In the case of anything which the Nabi ruled, even thinking and feeling against it is, an issue of great importance and great problem as far as Allah is concerned. I am talking about blind obedience versus obedience with knowledge. The most common, the most simple, the easiest way to understand is the standpoint from which you obey a physician without question. Not because you are doing blind obedience, but because you trust him. Because you know his training, you know who he is, and you know that he has the knowledge. He has your best intentions of heart. And so he tells you to do something, you do that. You follow his advice. You don't argue with that. Now Rasulullah in the same way, with the greater magnitude that as far as the physician is concerned, is something which cures an ailment, maybe it's a life-saving thing. Life is saved by Allah , but anyway. But with Nabi , it's the question of the difference between Jannah and Jahannah. So we obey him, we go to Jannah. Allah stated very categorically. Allah said, Now Allah is using, if you see the Arabic grammar of this, Allah says, No, but by your Rabb. This is like a, you know, double whammy as far as the taking of an oath is concerned. He says, Allah said, But no, by your Rabb. They can have no faith. They can have no faith until they make you, O Muhammad , the judge in all disputes between them, and find within themselves, in their hearts, no resistance against your Jannah. And they can make their own decisions, and accept those decisions with full submission. And then Allah said, And it was not for a believer, man or woman. When Allah and his Messenger have decreed, and the Messenger has decreed, that there be no doubt in Allah, and that there be no doubt in Allah, and that there be no doubt in Allah, the Messenger and the Messenger have decreed in a matter that they should have any option in their decision. Which means that they should have any other opinion, other than what Allah has decreed and the Rasool has decreed. And whoever disobeys Allah and his Messenger has indeed strayed in plain error. The submission to the command of Allah to obey the Messenger without question, and not only not express disdain, express disagreement but not even feel it is critical to the establishment of a new way of life which was almost the opposite of the current way of the time. Now this is a vicious circle, vicious cycle because if there is a deficit of trust we act half-heartedly or partially and this causes the initiative to fail which falsely reinforces the initial lack of trust. The only way is to trust completely and to act wholeheartedly and completely and sincerely secure in the knowledge that success is inevitable for the one who follows divine decree. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says إِنَّمَا كَانَ قَوْلَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذَا دُعُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ لِيَحْكْمَ بَيْنَهُمْ أَنْ يَحْكُمُوا بَيْنَهُمْ يَقُولُوا سَمِعْنَا وَعَطَانَا وَأُولَٰئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ Allah said all that the believers say when they are called to Allah and His Messenger that He may judge between them is that they say we hear and we obey. سَمِعْنَا وَعَطَانَا And it is those who are successful. And Allah said يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اسْتَجِيبُوا لِلَّهِ وَلِلرَّسُولِ إِذَا دَعَاكُمْ لِمَا يُحِيكُمْ Allah said oh you believe Answer Allah by obeying Him and His Messenger ﷺ by making zittiba when He ﷺ calls you to that which will give you life. To obey Rasulullah ﷺ is to obey Allah. Allah said مَا يَنْتِقُوا عَنِ الْهَوَىٰ إِنْهُوَ إِلَّا وَحِيٌّ يُوحَىٰ He said and He, the Prophet ﷺ does not speak out of his own desire. What he says is nothing but a revelation. That was revealed to him. And then Allah said مَن يُطِي رَسُولَ فَقَدْ أَطَىٰ اللَّهُ وَمَن تَوَلَّىٰ فَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ عَلَيْهِمْ حَفِظًا Allah said whoever obeys the Messenger has obeyed Allah. Whoever obeys the Messenger thereby obeys Allah. And as for those who turn away, we have not sent you, O Muhammad ﷺ, as a guardian over them. And then Allah ﷻ said إِنَّمَا الْمُؤْمِنُونَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا بِالْحَيْرِىٰ وَرَسُولِهِ ثُمَّ لَمْ يَرْطَابُوا وَجَاهَدُوا بِأَمْوَالِهِمْ وَأَنفُسِهِمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ أُولَئِكَ هُمُ الصَّادِقُونَ Allah said only those are believers who believed in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and His Messenger ﷺ and afterwards did not doubt. لَمْ يَرْطَابُوا But they strive with their wealth and their lives for the sake of Allah. For the cause of Allah, those, they are truthful. It's interesting to note that there is no ayah in the entire kitab, in the entire Qur'an, where the obedience of Allah has been mentioned alone with no reference to the obedience of the Rasul ﷺ. And this is because it is impossible to obey Allah without obeying Rasulullah ﷺ. On the contrary, the Qur'an did not deem it sufficient to refer to the obedience of Allah without referring to the obedience of Rasul ﷺ to remove even the remotest excuse for ignoring obedience to the Prophet and to leave no doubt whatsoever in the fact that the obedience of Allah is not complete unless the obedience of Rasul ﷺ is fully observed with all its implications. Point number three, itiba, is to follow and emulate Him in every way. This is the third right of Rasul ﷺ on us. Now there is a very important difference between itaat, which is obedience, and itiba, which is emulation or imitation. Itaat, obedience, to obey, there has to be something to obey. There has to be a command or a request or a, you know, instruction without which obedience is not possible. For example, you are sitting here now for Salatul Juma and if you have a desire, I must pray Salatul Asr. Can you pray it now? No. Because time for Salatul Asr has not come. The hukum for Asr is not established. But when the time for Salatul Asr comes, at that time you pray, alhamdulillah, you are obedient. You don't pray, you are disobedient. So for us to obey, there has to be, there has to be an instruction. If I say to somebody, you are being disobedient, they say, to what? You never said anything. You didn't tell me to do anything. So if you are saying, I am not obeying you, it is an accusation because you never gave me an instruction. How can I obey you? But itiba, which is emulation or imitation, is purely a sign of love. It requires no instruction, no order. The one being emulated, may not even be aware that he is being emulated. After all, look at all the so-called influencers and the icons and the sports stars and what not, what not. Look at yourself, what you are dressed in, how you wear, what you wear. You are imitating somebody or the other. Some do it consciously because they are influenced by some so-called influencer. Others are doing it unconsciously. But everyone is imitating. Now those people who you are imitating, they don't even know you exist. They are not paying you, they didn't tell you.