BismillahirRahmanirRahim
Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alamin. Wasalatu wa salamu ala rasulina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmain nahmadulllahu ta’ala wa nastaghfiruhu wa nashadu an-lailaha ilallahu wahdahu la sharika lah wa nashadu anna sayyidina Muhammadin abduhu wa habibuhu wa rasuluhu salallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa azwajihi wa ashabihi wa atbaihi.
Khulafail Rashidin mahdin min ba’di wuzerail immeti alal tahkik. Khususan minhum alal amidi khulafai rasulillahi ala tahqeeq. Umara il mu’mineen. Hazreti Abu Bakr wa Umar wa Uthman wa Ali. Wa ala Baqiyati wa Sahabai wa Tabieen. Ridwanallahu ta’ala alayhim ajmain.
Ya Ayyuhal mu’minun al Hadirun, ittaqullaha Ta’ala wa ati’uh. Inna Allahua ma Allathina -Ttaqaw wa-Lathina Hum Muhsinun. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa Afdalu Salat wa Atammu Tasleem Ala Sayyidil Ambiya’ wa Imam al-Mursaleen.
All praises are due to Allah, Lord of the Universes. All praises are due to Allah Who is the First, the Last, the Manifest, the Hidden, the One who has Might and Power over all things. All praises are due to Allah Who sent His Most Beloved One, Sayyidina Muhammad (asws), as the Mercy to the Universes.
And may all peace and blessings be upon the Sultan of the Prophets, the Imam of the Messengers, the Master of the First and the Last, the Pride of the Universes, the Grandfather of Hasan and Huseyin, Sayyidina Muhammad (AS), and upon his noble family and blessed companions, especially upon the Four Khulafa-e-Rashideen, Hz. Abu Bakr el-Siddiq, Hz. Umar el-Faruk, Hz. Osman el-Ghani, and Hz. Ali el-Murtaza, and all those who follow them until the Last Day.
Ya Ayyuhal Mu’minoon! O Believers. Welcome to you on this Holy Day of Jummah. Welcome to you on the first Jummah of the Month of Zul Qaida. O Believers! Treat the Jummah Day with respect. Hz. Ali (kw) was saying in his Khutbah what he heard from the Holy Prophet (asws), saying: When Jummah comes, the sheytans go to the markets with their flags, and involve people in their needs and prevent them from the Jummah prayer. The angels come early in the morning, sit at the door of the Masjid, and record that so-and-so came at the first hour, and so-and-so came at the second hour until the Imam comes out. When a man sits in a place where he can listen to the Khutbah and look at the Imam, where he remains silent and does not interrupt, he will receive a double reward. If he stays away, sits in a place where he cannot listen, silent, and does not interrupt, he will receive the reward only once. If he sits in a place where he can listen to the Khutbah and look at the Imam, and he does not remain silent, he will have the burden of it. If anyone says to his companion sitting besides him to be silent (while the Imam is giving Khutbah), he is guilty of idle talk. Anyone who interrupts (during the Khutbah) will receive nothing on that Jummah.
Insha’Allah ar-Rahman, we will show the proper care to this Jummah that is being taught to us by Shah-e-Mardan.
O Believers! Allah (swt) is saying to us in the Holy Quran, As for whoever passed the limits and preferred the life of this world, surely his abode, his home, will be the Fire; and as for whoever feared to stand before his Lord and he controls the desires of his ego, surely his abode will be the Garden. And Allah (swt) is also saying, “Have you seen the one who takes as his ilah his own desire? Then would you be responsible for him? Or do you think that most of them they hear or reason? They are like cattle. No, they are even more misguided in their way.”
And in another Ayet Allah (swt) is saying, “The one who purified his ego has succeeded. And makes Zikr of Allah and prayers. But you prefer the life of this world. Even though the Hereafter is better for you and longer lasting.” And the Imam of the Haramayn, Sayyidina Muhammad (asws) is saying in his Hadith Sherif: “Your worst enemy is your ego that lives between your two sides, inside your body.” And the Holy Prophet (asws) speaks the truth.
O Believers! The ego is our enemy. That nafs, that ego that lives inside of us, it is our enemy. And as Holy Prophet (asws) is saying, it is not only our enemy, it is our worst enemy. More than any government, more than any state, more than any conspiracy, our biggest enemy is our ego. Because falling into the tricks and traps of the ego, as Allah (swt) is saying in the Holy Quran, it leads us to the Fire. And the ego and the desires, they want us to worship them, they want us to take them as an ilah. And if we do that, then we lose the title of human beings and we become worse than animals.
So many foolish 21st Century Muslims today, who have no connection to Holy Prophet (asws), who have no connection to his inheritors, who have no connection to the 1400 year old living tradition that is the inheritance of Rasulallah (asws), they are running around saying that in this time we have to physically fight. We have to go to war. They are running to fight an outside enemy without fighting their inside enemy. Firstly, there is no fighting in this time, without a Khalifa who is the Inheritor of Rasulallah (asws). So whatever fighting they are claiming to do, it is without the permission of Rasulallah (asws) and without the permission of the Friends of Allah.
But even more than that, there is a more important fight that must be fought. Who is saying this? This is not our own idea that we are speaking on the Mimbar, no. These are the words of the Holy Prophet (asws). As our Sheykh is teaching us, The Holy Prophet (asws) is coming from the war. He came to his masjid, he sat and the Sahaba-e Kiram came and they sat. He said to them, `Now we are turning from the small Jihad to a greater Jihad, to the bigger Jihad, from a small war to a bigger war.’ They said, `Ya Rasulullah, we are just coming from war, so many Sahaba died, so many are wounded, so much wealth disappeared. Can there be a bigger war than this?’ He said, `Yes. The war that you are going to make against your ego, against your Nafs, that is the biggest Jihad that you are going to make.’
And Sheykh Effendi is explaining this Hadith to us more, saying: And that Jihad must continue until you enter to the grave. You cannot let it go. You cannot say, ‘Oh, today I fixed myself, my ego is complete, so I’m going to do as I like.’ You cannot do as you like. The more you are completing your ego the more you are going to see Allah’s order becomes more detailed to you. You watch every word that you say, you watch every step you make. This is the reason of Tariqat. Tariqat is not for you to eat each other, Tariqat is not for people to sit next to each other and hate each other. It’s not that. Tariqat is to teach you, to take you from the lower self and to bring you to the highest station. If you are not doing that then it doesn’t matter what kind of Sheykh you have. People didn’t listen to the Prophet (asws). They ended up in Jahannam. Abu Jahil didn’t listen to the Prophet (asws). So many like Abu Jahil didn’t listen to the Prophet (asws). They were sitting in front of him, they were watching him, they didn’t listen to the Prophet (asws). Who they listened to? To their ego, to their Sheytan. And the end? They are in Jahannam. Right now that we are talking the fire is burning.
Just like one Evliya, Hz. Bulleh Shah is saying in his poetry: You read so many books trying to become a scholar; but you never read the book of yourself. You run to enter into every Masjid; but you never tried to enter your own heart. Every day you go to war against sheytan for nothing; because you have never gone to war against your ego. O Bulleh Shah! You are trying to grab what is in the sky; but you never caught hold of what is inside you.
So this struggle, this jihad against the ego, this is what we are here for in this life. If we leave this life without conquering our ego, then we are going to leave this life as the losers. And we have to understand how dangerous an enemy this ego is. That ego is so dangerous that even the Holy Prophet (asws), the one who was a Prophet when Adam was between water and clay, the one who passed beyond Sidratul Muntaha, the Most Honored One in Divine Presence, he was praying to Allah (swt) saying: “Ya Rabbi, do not leave me to the hand of my ego even for the blink of an eye.” What about us?
And the only way to conquer the ego, the only way to fight the ego, the only way to gain mastery over the ego, is to submit and to follow someone who has already fought and they have won that battle. Today’s Muslims do not want to follow anyone. Today’s Muslims learn their “alif, baa, taa,” they learn a couple of Surahs, they listen to a couple of lectures, and they think that they are the biggest scholars and saints that have ever appeared on the face of the earth. They even dare to criticise the earlier scholars and the earlier Saints. They think, why do I need to follow someone? Don’t I have a brain? Don’t I have my own intelligence? Don’t I have books I can read? So their egos have already conquered them.
If a man found himself in the middle of a war, with the bullets flying and the bombs falling, he would not try to fight. He would not even try to save himself. He would look for someone to save him. He would look to someone who knows how to avoid and dodged this bullet and all the mines to save him. The battle against the ego, it is more dangerous than the war zone. Because in the physical war, the worst thing that can happen is that you will be killed. In the war against the ego, you may die a spiritual death, and you are the loser not just in this life, but for eternity. May Allah save us from that.
So Allah (swt) has sent the inheritors of Rasulallah (asws) as the Guides to help mankind fight against their ego. The Evliyaullah, they have conquered their egos already, they have won that battle, and they are the Generals who are there to guide mankind toward the same victory. And the only way to fight this ego is to submit totally to the Sheykh. Without full submission, the fight against the ego cannot be won. You know how to submit to a corporal or even to a general if you are in the army. You know how to submit to a sergent, but in the spiritual war, the ignorance of 21st century Muslims have reached all he way up to Sidratul Muntaha and they say, ‘no, we are not going to submit to anyone except for Allah.’ Who are these ones teaching you to? Themselves? They are teaching you to submit to Allah. But you cannot enter into the Divine Court of La ilaha Ilallah until you enter into the Divine Court of Muhammadu Rasulullah.
Our Sheykh is teaching us how to enter into the court of the Prophet (asws). As Sahib el-Sayf is saying: Tariqat is submission. If you have submission then you have Tariqat. If you don’t have submission then you don’t have Tariqat. You can claim as much you want that you have Tariqat. You don’t have Tariqat. Your Tariqat is according to your ego then. You are making your Tariqat according to your ego. That’s why in today’s world everywhere there are Tariqats. People are dancing, eating and sleeping, saying, “Tariqat, we are in tariqat.” Tariqat teaches you how to work against your ego, nothing else. Either you are working for Allah or you are working for your ego. If you are working for Allah then leave the desires of the ego aside because Allah gave you whatever is necessary for you and for the enjoyment of this life within the borderlines of Islam saying, “Do this and do that. It is okay.” But if you don’t know the limit then you are going to pass out of that limit and then you are going to think, “Yes, we are still number one”, but you are not. You are already out. You have already fallen out of Tariqat.
So this road of fighting the ego, this road of submitting to the Sheykh, this road of walking in the way of Allah, it is not easy for the ego, it is very easy for the spirit. Because the spirit is always in submission, the spirit is always in the will of Allah. But there is no other choice. And the reward for walking this road with sincerity and submission, it is a tremendous reward. Holy Prophet (asws) is saying in his Hadith Sherif: The true Mujahid is the one who battles his ego to become obedient to Allah Azza wa Jall. And for the person who does that, Allah (swt) is telling us how He will call him in the Next Life, saying: BismillahirRahmanirRahim. O you Nafs al-Mutma’inn, the Nafs that is satisfied with his Lord. Return to your Lord, that you are pleased with your Lord and He is pleased with you. Enter amongst my Righteous Servants. Enter into my Garden. Sadaqallahul Azim
Insha’Allah, we are asking Allah (swt) for the Tawfiq to stay with our Sheykh and submit fully to him in this way of fighting our egos, so that when we pass from this life, we can hear our Lord saying that call to us. Amin.
Jummah Khutbah by Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz,
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
OSMANLI DERGAHI- New York
6 Zul-Qadah, 1436H
August 21, 2015
Sahibul-Saif Sheykh Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi 