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What are Your True Intentions? Goodwill VS Ego | Khutbah
Sh. Elshinawy discusses the concept of naseeha (sincere advice) and reflects on a powerful question: What are our real intentions when giving advice or facing disagreements? Are we driven by sincerity and goodwill, or do pride and ego sometimes cloud our intentions?
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
After praising Allah, the Glorified and Exalted, and testifying to His unique Oneness and Perfection, and to Muhammad (ﷺ) being His final Prophet and Messenger, and after welcoming my brothers and sisters to the house of Allah عز و جل, the Mighty and Majestic, and reminding myself
and you with our ultimate duty of taqwa, living lives that are purposeful, living lives that are meaningful, by being lives that are filled with consciousness of Allah and dutifulness
to Him. Brothers and sisters, it's reported that Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, the Great Companion, was one time robbed while he wasn't paying attention. And so the people instinctively
made du'a, supplicated against the thief. And then they told ibn Mas'ud, make du'a against him. And so he lifted his hands and he said, O Allah, if he was driven to stealing
by need, then bless it for him. I relinquish it. It's his property now. And if he was driven by his waqaha, by his shamelessness, then make it the last sin he commits. Guide him
and allow him to repent. And this is just one of the embodiments that existed among so many of the sahaba that they drew from living around the Prophet (ﷺ) and his magnanimous
spirit, and about which he said, ad-deenu nasiha. This deen ultimately boils down to nasiha. Meaning if you miss out on nasiha, you've lost the plot on what this deen is
so much about. They said, whom is this nasiha due to, O Messenger of Allah? He said, to Allah, to his book, to his Messenger. But then he said, for the purposes of this khutba,
li'a'immat al-muslimina wa 'ammatihim. To the leaders of the Muslims and every last one of them. Their common folk. So what is nasiha? People think nasiha is advice. It's not. It's
the place where sincere advice comes from. It's really about having goodwill at heart towards others. Sincerity and goodwill. Well-wishing for others. And subhanAllah, when he spoke
about it in terms of interpersonal relations, not just sincerity to Allah, to the book, to the Messenger, but with people, he didn't just say in all Muslims or all people. He said to the leaders of the Muslims. Why? Because they tend to be in the limelight. So they
tend to be more criticized unfairly than anyone else. They got a crosshair on their back because they stand taller than everyone else. And so people tend in general to have less goodwill.
Less charitable perspectives on their words and their behavior. Right? But then he also said every last Muslim. But before he said every last Muslim, he singled out the leader
especially because the leader is not perceived with goodwill. In other words, check there first to see if you've truly internalized nasiha. You know, it all starts within. Having goodwill towards everybody. It's hard. You know, most of the fights and the strained
relationships you have with people, it's probably because you're not willing to get into a fight with yourself because that's the hardest fight to wage war on yourself, to restrain
your self-centered ego, right? To tame your assumptions that you jump to sometimes your conclusions to tame your desire for your own selfish interests. This is normal. But how
do you tame it so it doesn't become ugly, doesn't become monstrous. It needs to be tamed. I want others to be right. I want the leader to be better. I want this person I'm in a
debate with to be correct. Not just me always being correct. I want them to be good. I want them to be right. I want to be able to accept that maybe they are right. Maybe they're not
as bad as I think. And you think of the infinite applications of this too. Kids suffer for
a lifetime. Why? A lot of times because their parents are incapable of stopping their childish bickering, right? They have to have the last word in the conversation and the kids grow
up watching this and they suffer for a lifetime with emotional insecurity and otherwise because of this communities and can suffer for generations. Why? Because not enough of them are able to
fit at the same table, to collaborate for the greater good. There is no community without leadership for instance, right? Which one of us is going to be the leader, right? There's
no community without direction. Whose opinion is going to inform our direction? Too many obese egos to fit at one table and whatever the reason, sometimes it's tribal, ethnic,
sometimes generational, the standoff between the youth and the elders. Sometimes it's political. Sometimes it's just personal. You get 20 people at a table and you have 21 opinions.
How are we ever going to move forward? Until someone or enough of us are able to employ what the Sahaba employed, the heroics of backing down, the honorability, the honor of backing
down. This is what makes nations and without it, this is what breaks families and individuals. Wallahi, the Sahaba were exceptional in this. Having goodwill, having humility, taming the
ego, backing down. You know when the Prophet (ﷺ) died, of course Arabia was about to fall
apart. Before he was buried, the senior Sahaba heard that the Medinans, Al-Aws and Al-Khazraj were picking a leader from among them and they had to stop them because Arabia, if they
would accept a leader, it would only be from Mecca. This is of the wisdoms why Allah sent the Prophet in Mecca (ﷺ) to give more people a chance to be guided, to accept, to fold
under his leadership. So the next morning they rush over to what was known as Saqifat Bani Sa'idah, the council of Bani Sa'idah and they tell him, you can't do this. Umar said, I spent the whole night putting my words together because this could have been a blood
bath. This could have been a civil war before the Prophet was buried (ﷺ). Who's it going to be? He said, before I spoke, Abu Bakr shut me down and he spoke spontaneously, more eloquently
than all my preparation. And he said, we will be the leaders and you will be the wuzara, you will be the supporters, the advisors. And so they said, no, absolutely not. And
so Umar is trying to sort of loosen up the deadlock. Abu Bakr is telling them, he was being assertive. He said to them, pick a man from Quraysh. Don't do it. Don't ruin
this. You were the first people to support the Prophet (ﷺ). Don't be the first people to burn it down, to burn this Ummah down. You have Umar, you have Abu Ubaidah, pick
one of these two men from Mecca. And then Umar jumps up and says, we will never put ahead of us someone who the Prophet (ﷺ) put, other than the one who the Prophet put ahead
of us in the prayers. And he grabs Abu Bakr's hand and he gives him a pledge of allegiance. Some Usaid ibn Hudair from the Medina says, it's about the prayer, it's about religious, not sort of tribal. Fine. Okay. And he pledges allegiance as well. And some couldn't get
themselves to do it right away, like Sa'd ibn Ubaidah, the head of Al-Khazraj, but he didn't burn it down. He bowed out quietly until the day he died, right? He was quiet
about it. He felt a certain way, but he understood this is just my perspective. We will not take the whole community on a ride because I feel hurt. Right? You know what else brothers and
sisters in Sahih al-Bukhari and elsewhere, the son-in-law of the Prophet (ﷺ), the cousin of the Prophet (ﷺ), Ali ibn Abu Talib was offended by how this happened because he was
busy washing the Prophet (ﷺ), preparing him for burial. He doesn't know that it was about to be a disaster. And so Abu Bakr and Abu Ubaidah had to sort of offset it in any way. They were reacting. And so he didn't want to be the leader. Of course not. But you could
have at least consulted me. I'm a nobody. Like I'm not even involved in the discussion. And he remained in his home for six months, not mixing with the people because it's embarrassing. People are saying stuff.
Umar (رضي الله عنه), he says about this whole incident, he said, كانت سقيفة بن سعد فلتة.
What happened on that day was a fluke. This doesn't mean a conspiracy. We all know the virtue of Umar. He means it was not supposed to end like this. The tension was in the air. It was about to become a disaster. People were going to slit each other's throats if
this went the wrong way. It was a fluke. وقان الله شرها. That Allah protected us from its worst outcome, its worst potential outcome. The fact that
everyone in that room was able to restrain their ego, was able to perform the heroics of backing down. It was not supposed to end like this. And that's just one example, brothers
and sisters. There are so many. You know, when the reciters among the sahaba were killing off, massacred, martyred in large numbers at Yamama, the battle of Yamama after the
Prophet's death, they ran to Abu Bakr as-Siddiq and said, hurry up, document this Qur'an. So he picked the best of the best of them to document the Qur'an. And eventually, after he passes away and Umar passes away, Uthman is leading the Ummah now. Uthman standardizes
it, sends it to all the provinces and tells people, listen, we don't want discrepancy. Some people have their own personal copies of the Qur'an. Maybe they have some commentary in the margins. Maybe it's a different kind of script. People that are non-Arab are now
becoming Muslim far and wide. Leave this to be the standard copy just to tighten the room. And so one of the greatest sahaba, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, didn't want to back down initially.
He didn't want to. He had his own manuscript with many surahs in it. Of course, it has sentimental value. He learned them directly from the Prophet (ﷺ). He had certain surahs in the standard copy now that he thought were du'a, were not necessarily surahs. He
knew of them. It's not like missing surahs or anything. And initially he didn't want to. But he did back down. And it's amazing to think about. Ibn Mas'ud, if we were Ibn
Mas'ud, we could have probably said, do you know who I am? There are 70 surahs of the Qur'an that I took directly from the Prophet's mouth. He said that in a different context.
Nobody can claim that but me. It's true. He could say the Prophet (ﷺ) said about me, if you want to hear the Qur'an fresh, fluid, the way it came down from Jibreel, hear it
from Ibn Mas'ud. He could have cited all this stuff. He could have cited the ayah where Allah ﷻ said, وَإِن تُطِعَ أَكْثَرَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ يُضِلُّكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ
If you follow the majority of people on earth, they will misguide you from the path of Allah. He didn't do any of that. He stopped, restrained himself, said, wait a minute, what is the
likelihood here that they're all wrong and I'm right? Yes? And he conceded. No one took his Qur'an away from him. There's no discrepancy on the content. That's why even people who
memorize the Qur'an and get certified their ijazah, it goes through Ibn Mas'ud. May Allah be pleased with him. But it didn't have to end like that. Think of also Khalid ibn Walid.
They took from him his leadership of the army when he was an undefeated warrior, living legend. That's probably not easy. People are saying stuff, how come you got demoted and
someone else got on top of you and you never lost and against all odds and Umar made a decision, a wise decision. But it probably was not. But Khalid accepted to be a leader
one day and to be a follower the next day. You know, another beautiful example. Notice how many there are, the heroics of backing down among the Sahaba and what made them so special and exceptional in this regard. Abu Dhar Al-Ghifari used to believe, may Allah
be pleased with him, that it was haram to save money. You know why? Because early on when the Muslims were still getting on their feet, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala revealed
in the Qur'an, they ask you how much should we spend? Say to them, whatever remains, meaning
what you need, use it, the rest share it. Al-afu, whatever is extra. Later on, zakah was institutionalized and that rule is overturned. Yes? This is a living religion. The day the
Prophet died, verses were still in a sense coming down, right? Not everyone got every memo instantly, yes? And not everyone understood the ayah, the later ayah in the same way. So he believed until the day he died, you're not allowed to save money and that is the
kenz, the hoarding that is prohibited in the Qur'an and condemned there. Then the Muslims become very, very wealthy, very fast after the Prophet's death, right? And he starts
seeing people saving money and now he speaks out against it. Now in society, not among the companions, there are now agitators saying, yeah, you heard what Abu Dhar Al-Ghifari said?
These people are materialistic. Uthman, the Khalifa, Muawiyah, the governor of Ash-Sham, these people are power hungry, they're money hungry, they're nepotistic, they're putting
their families in places, they're tyrants. So they complain to Uthman and Uthman tells Abu Dharr, please come, come back to Medina. So Abu Dharr walks into Medina, walks in on
Uthman and he says to him, you think I'm one of them, don't you? Must have hurt, right? I know why you called me. You think I'm one of the rebels spreading rumors about the leadership in the Ummah. You think I'm one of them. Wallahi, I'm not one of them. But you guys
are not behaving the way we used to act in the Prophet's lifetime. So he says to him, can you stay by my side? Just stay here. Be my advisor here in Medina. He said, I can't
do it. You know why he couldn't do it? Because he believed that even Uthman had no right to save money. He was saving money too. Tidbits, but I can't do it. He said, please just excuse
me. And he walks away. He could have said, the Prophet said, Islam began as a stranger. Glad tidings to the strangers, right? He could have said the greatest jihad is a word of
truth spoken to power, spoken to a tyrant, right? He didn't do that. He said, can I just go? Because if I see it, I'm going to have to say it. And you can imagine how difficult
it was for him to pack up his horse. And for sure he must have been thinking of the Prophet's hadith from years ago, Abu Dharr walks alone and will die alone and will be resurrected
on the day of judgment alone. And he goes with his wife and dies in the wilderness. I did my job. Every time I saw it, I said it, let things fall where they may. That's
what made the Ummah, right? That degree of humility, that could have been a disaster. In fact, those who didn't do this were the beginning of the greatest disasters that happened in his Ummah's history. I say this and ask Allah's forgiveness for me and you.
When Uthman, may Allah be pleased with him, enough momentum was mobilized against him and he was assassinated, brothers and sisters. An army came from Asham, from the West, and
in it was some of the great companions. And even our mother Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, caught up with the army. This army was not coming to fight Ali ibn Abi Talib, was not coming to fight the believers, right? In Medina or later on in Al-Qub. No, it was
coming to get the killers of Uthman. None of these were companions, right?
But after Ali's army stops this incoming army and says, put it down. I can't, not right now. I need to sort of establish power and then I'll go after them. They accept. And
they go to sleep that night and the agitators emerge again, the rebels. See, not everyone is as protective as you, right? The rebels come out and they attack, they provoke in
the middle of the night. So everyone's waking up, we were betrayed by the other side. It engulfs in flames. By the morning, by the time the dust settles, some of the greatest companions of the Prophet (ﷺ) were killed. And I used to always wonder how could this
happen in the best community? But perhaps of the greatest wisdoms of why Allah let it happen is to show us that even that can be walked back from. Even that can be reconciled.
Even that doesn't have to break a community. Can you imagine Ali, (رضي الله عنه), taking our mother Aisha, (رضي الله عنها), and having his personal guards escort her safely all
the way back to Medina? He sees through the agitation. He sees through the rebels. He realizes it was a dirty game and that they weren't part of it. Immediately he was able to see that. And then he walks out among the dead and he sees Talha, (رضي الله عنه), the
senior companion, and his son Muhammad killed on the ground. And he picks him up and he carries him close and he wipes the blood and the dust off his face. And he says to him,
how difficult it is for me, O Talha, to see you like this. We were in Badr together, we were in Uhud together, we were everywhere together. Somehow an army that I was leading
included people that started a problem that got you killed. Immediately he saw it. And there are so many, you know, the last two examples I'll give you, brothers and sisters.
The son of Ali, (رضي الله عنه), Hassan ibn Ali, is able, when he becomes the khalifa, to give up the khilafa, the leadership of this ummah, to give it up to the leaders of
Ash-Sham, Muawiyah, may Allah be pleased with them all, to mend the rift that the followers were suffering from, and restart the momentum of this ummah and its expansions. But it all
requires lots of heroics. Al-Hassan, it was not easy for him to become what the Prophet (ﷺ) said he would one day become. Perhaps this grandson of mine
will mend between the rifts of the Muslims, will move them forward from a deadlock. Backing down is a heroic act, brothers and sisters. And more often than not, we need to practice
it, we need to adopt it. Many times we think we know we need to act in a certain way, but the great pause, let alone in this age, the great pause is so important. The final example
I said I would share, in Sahih al-Bukhari, some of these rebels, or sympathizers of the rebels, before they killed Uthman, they came to Abdullah ibn Umar ibn al-Khattab in the
Kaaba, and he said to him, I ask you by the sanctity of this house, Uthman, did he flee the battleground at Uhud or not? He said yes he did. And was he absent from the battle
of Badr or not? He said yes he was. And did he skip, was he not present in the bay'ah, the pledge to fight to the death if we had to, at al-Ridwan, the tree of al-Ridwan? He
said yes he did. So the man said, Allahu Akbar! Young foolish man, thinks he knows everything he needs to know, right? You know like those bumper stickers that say everything I need to know about Islam I learned on 9-11, what else is there? I got all the facts, right?
So he said Allahu Akbar! Ibn Umar said to him, now come here, let me tell you what you don't know. Your half-truths, right? Let me tell you what you don't know. As for the battle
of Badr, the Prophet's daughter was sick, and so he stayed by her side, and this is why the Prophet (ﷺ) said, Uthman is to be awarded the reward with Allah and the spoils
just like anyone else that attended Badr. It was the Prophet's orders, the Prophet's daughter he was taking care of. As for fleeing at Uhud, you made me testify he wasn't there.
I testify that Allah has forgiven him and it's in the Qur'an. Like you swear you know a historical fact, you don't even know what's in God's book. Allah said he forgave them
all. And as for Bayat al-Ridwan, the pledge of allegiance, you know during the Treaty of Al-Hudaybiyah they went to Mecca, they wouldn't let them in, it was a standoff, and they pledged allegiance at a tree called the Tree of Al-Ridwan, the Tree of Pleasure, where
Allah declared that he is pleased with all 1400 of them. He said to him, do you know why Uthman wasn't there? If there was anyone more honorable than Uthman, he said to him,
he would have been in Mecca. The reason we gave that pledge is because Uthman didn't come back from Mecca. We thought he could have been killed and so we said we're going to fight till every last man is done. That was the whole purpose of the Bayat, it was
for him, right? And he said that is why we were standing there and the Prophet stuck out his right hand by that tree and slapped it with his left hand and said this is Uthman pledging allegiance just like every one of you. This is on behalf of him. May Allah be
pleased with them all. Now get out of here. Ibn Umar Sattum, now get out of here. The
khutba time is over, but that is our job, to tell our egos to get out of here, right? To pause, to verify, to listen, to want others to be right, to ask yourself if you would
even have room for that. May Allah guide us with the guidance of the Qur'an and allow us to embody the sunnah of the greatest man, may Allah forgive our sins and cure our sick
and have mercy on our deceased and bring dignity and honor to this ummah through the unity that we take part in.


































































































































































































































































































