Oleh: Abu Hamzah

This is the khutbah for the Friday Prayers on 31.07.2009 in the Medium, Hradec Kralove

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Abu Bakr al-Siddiq r.a – The Keys To Success

1. If you look throughout the civilization, in every civilization you would find some great names with some great contribution or some great accolades. Similarly in the Islamic civilization, over successive age of time, the Islamic civilization has continued to produce such great names. But there is several uniqueness in the civilization of Islam.

2. First of all, the names transcend the boundary of ethnicity. You have people from various races across the world, across the age of time. Right from the time of Sahabah, the Salaf, and troughout the time. You have al-Imam al-Bukhari, from Bukhara, Uzbekistan.You have al-Imam al-Nasa’I from Nasa’, Persia. You have Salahuddin al-Ayubi who is a Kurdish. Then you have Muhammad al-Fateh, the leader of the army who open Constantinople, the person of which the prophet said, as the best of the Leaders, and his armies, as the best of the armies. Islam transcends the boundary of races and ethnicity. And this statement is so much important today, because increasingly, the Muslim are forgetting this and becoming more and more exclusive towards their own people.

3. Another uniqueness of the Islamic civilisation is that, all these names, they didn’t achieve their greatness for themselves, their country or their races. They had one purpose. And that is to uphold and to glorify the name of Allah s.w.t. and the his Deen, al-Islam. In each or any achievements and accolades that were achieved, it is for Allah s.w.t. These are the people of Allah, Allah and Islam drove them to achieve greatness.

4. And in this civilization, the Prophet s.a.w. said there is one group of people who stands out among all the other generation, and they’re known as the Salaf al-Soleh, The Righteous Predecessor. And among this group, there is one man who stands out among all the great names. He is the giant of the giants. The Best among the Best. And he is none other than, Abu Bakr r.a.. And this is not my word. It is from the word of the Prophet s.a.w., in many of his Hadith.

“Were you to take the iman of the Abu Bakr ra on one side, and the iman of the whole ummah, the iman of Abu Bakr will outweigh them.”

And you are not talking about lay people like us. Included were the 9 other companions who were promised Jannah, and included also, was all the sahabah who has made so much sacrifice to preach and to glorify this deen of Allah, throughout the 1400 years of our civilization. Who had sacrificed so much for Islam. Think about Umar, Uthman, Ali and all the sahabah included. How much is their sacrifice and struggle for the sake of Allah and the Prophet s.a.w.. Yet, the Prophet saw said Abu Bakr outweighs them all.

5. In another Hadith by al-Bukhari, Aishah r.a., the daughter of Abu Bakr said: I can’t remember any day except that the Prophet came to visit the house of Abu Bakr twice in a day. Just imagine we have the leader of this world, coming to visit you at least once in your life time that is already a big thing for us. Imagine what kind of a person Abu Bakr is to have the leader of the mankind, coming to visit twice a day.

6. The question is, the people before us have passed. They had their challenges, and history tells us how they have succeeded. Now it’s our turn to face our own challenges. What lessons can we take from Abu Bakr to help us with our challenges? That’s actually our purpose here.

7. From the history of this great man, the scholar has picked out on 2 essential characters that summarized Abu Bakr for us to take lessons. These are his principles.

8. The first, is that, Abu Bakr is among “al-sabiquun al–sabiquun ” - he is the foremost of the foremost. In every single deed, Abu Bakr put himself at the forefront of that deed. Whether it meant da’wa, his infaq, his solat, his Prayer, his sadaqah and in his companionship of the Prophet saw.

9. The prophet saw. took 2 great journeys that define Islam. One is al-Isra’ wal Mi’raj, and the second is Hijrah. In Isra wal Mi’raj, the Prophet went to Allah and the five times Solah was legislated for us. His companion was Jibril as. While in Hijrah, the journey that defines the civilization of Islam, the ear our Hijri calendar started, the companion was Abu Bakr r.a.. In the book of Al-Bukhari, when the prophet saw reached Madinah during Hijrah, the people in Madinah was confused who was the Prophet and who was the companion. They greeted Abu Bakr, they took his hand, and actually Abu Bakr responded so that the people would not disturb the Prophet s.a.w after such a tiring journey. Until, the sun came out from behind the cloud and shines above the Prophet s.a.w.. Then Abu Bakr took his shawl and shaded the Prophet saw. Then the people realize who is the Prophet, and who is the follower.

10. In another occasion, the Prophet gathered his companion, asking them to bring what they can in order to help the preparation of the Muslim for the war, and some scholar said that it is during the Tabuk war. The Muslims were under such a dire need at that time, for one of the biggest and most difficult battle during the Prophet’s time. The prophet s.a.w. asked them to bring what they can. And Umar, in his own word said, in this occasion I will out-do Abu Bakr, because Abu Bakr has outdone Umar so many time. So he decided to bring half of his wealth, 50% of his wealth, and put at the foot of the Prophet. And out of the corner, Abu Bakr came, and he had brought everything in his house for the Prophet saw. 100%. Until the prophet asked him, “Ya Aba Bakr, what have you left for your family? Abu Bakr said, “I have left them Allah and his Messenger”. And at that moment, Umar said, I knew, I would never be able to out-do Abu Bakr.

11. He was the foremost of the foremost. Like I said before, not among us – you and me. Look at the competition that he had. That is the challenge for us today in fact. Now, we have to look at our own life. Abu Bakr has passed and there is no point getting excited about these stories just for the sake of it. For us, in our situations, where can we be the foremost of the foremost? How can you and I be the best? In our Solah, in our Sadaqah, in our Qiamullail, in our Qur’an and in leaving my desires for the sake of Allah. In our infaq and sacrifice for Allah swt. How can we make ourself the foremost? We need to look at our own self, we know our self the best. And we have the potential. Let’s look at ourselves and think how we can achieve being a better Muslim overall after listening to this Khutbah. Where would we be in the Day of Judgement?

Part 2.

1. The second character of Abu Bakr is that, he implemented a powerful hadith from the Prophets saw. as his core principle in his life. “ addal alal khair,kafa’ilhi “ –a hadith by Muslim. The person, who guides to goodness, is exactly like the one who did the goodness. Meaning, the person who guides someone to do something good, receives the same ajr, rewards as the one who did it. Abu Bakr understood the power of this hadith really well.

2. Not only was he the foremost, he spent his full effort to guide the others to these deen. Whenever, wherever he sees the opportunity to tell the people about these Deen, Abu Bakr did not cease. He would never give up on guiding them to the goodness, to Islam, telling them about Islam.

3. And look, Abu Bakr didn’t guide a nobody. We have one of the famous group of people, the 10 people whom the Prophet guaranteed that they would be in Jannah, by his own tongue. The truthful tongue of the Prophet, s.a.w.. The ‘Ashara Mubashara.

4. Now the majority of these group were guided to Islam, by Abu Bakr. Now imagine, every single deed that they do, Abu Bakr would get his piece as well. Now you understand the hadith that I mentioned. Why, because everything that they are doing, is actually, going into the account of Abu Bakr as well.

5. So, imagine these really carefully. Not only did he receive the rewards of his own deed, he would receive the reward of those who did the deed that he preached. Isn’t this so motivating for us? Don’t we want the same for us? That, we just teach or ask someone to do some good deed, and if he does that deed, inshaAllah, we would get the same reward as him.

6. That’s another principle that is for us to follow. But now, the reality is, for you and me, we are all weak. We make million mistakes. Subhanallah, if the Sahabah would see us today, they would wonder, whether we are even real Muslim. That’s the truth if we analyze our life properly. We have to be honest with ourselves.

7. But, having said that, we have this hope. That, if we invite people to do good, if we can find somebody whom we can teach or guide them to do goodness, everything that they do would actually end up in our account, and we would have some hope during the Day of Judgement. That should be our driving force in our life from now onwards. Everybody we know, we have to teach them goodness and advise them to do goodness and ask them to follow this Deen, so that they would be in a better situation than they are currently at.

8. That’s the 2 principle that we should really contemplate and take lesson. The issue for us is not that to establish Islam in the West, to glorify Islam, to make Islam the world super power etc. that is already guaranteed, Allah will make this Deen of His victorious. It has been written.

9. The issue for us now is, who would Allah choose to do that work. Will Allah choose us to get all these rewards. That’s not guaranteed. We don’t get it just because we are Muslim. That’s the question, will Allah use us for this deen? Let us pray, that Allah will, inshaAllah, ameen.

* This excerpt is a note from a lecture by Sheikh Hussein Abdul Sattar with the same title which can be found at halaltube.com