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 allaha ma allathina-ttaqaw wal-lathina hum muhsinun. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa Salatu wa Salamu ala Ashrafil Ambiya’i wa Imam al-Mursaleen, Sayyidina wa Mawlana Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmain. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa Salatu wa Salamu ala Ashrafil Ambiya’i wa Imam al-Mursaleen Sayyidina wa Mawlana Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmain.
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 Sayyidina Muhammad (AS) as the Giver of Glad Tidings and the Warner.
May all peace and blessings be upon the Seal of the Prophethood, the Imam of the Messengers, the Guide to the Straight Path, the Master of the First and the Last, 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-Faruq, 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 the Holy Day of Jummah. Welcome to you as we are thirteen days away from the Holy Month of Rajab, which begins the Three Holy Months of Islam. We are asking our Lord to let us to reach to those days.. Amin.
And welcome to you as we are about to commemorate the Battle of Canakkale, when 253,000 brave ones stood up in Gallipoli to defend their Sultan, their Khalifah, to defend Islam. We are honoring their Shahadat; because without their sacrifice, we would not have Islam today. May Allah raise their souls to the highest stations, may He let their support to be with us, and may we make intention to walk in their footsteps. Amin.
O Believers! One day, this world is going to come to an end, and a Day is going to begin when we will be called to account for what we did in this world. The Day of Judgment is a certainty. And Allah (SWT) is describing that Day in the Holy Quran, in Surah Abasa: BismillahirRahmanirRahim. But when there comes the Deafening Blast – that Day a man will flee from his brother, and his mother and his father, and his wife and his children. For each one of them that Day will have enough preoccupations of his own. Some faces, that Day, will be bright – laughing, rejoicing at good news. And other faces, that Day, will have upon them dust. Darkness will cover them. Those are the disbelievers, the wicked ones. (80:33-42). SadqallahulAdzim.
And in Surah Jumah, He is saying (SWT): BismillahirRahmanirRahim. Indeed, the death from which you flee – indeed, it will meet you. Then you will be returned to the Knower of the unseen and the witnessed, and He will inform you about what you used to do. (62:8).SadqallahulAdzim.
This world has a timespan. And each day that passes, we get closer to that Day when Allah (SWT) is going to question us for how we lived in this world. Holy Prophet (AS) gave us the signs of how to recognize what is going to happen before the Day of Judgment. And those signs, they do not show that the world is going to get better and better as we approach the Day of Judgment; they show us that the world is going to become covered in darkness. And those signs they are appearing faster and faster. Just like everything else, the speed with which these signs continue to appear is a fulfillment of the Hadith of the Holy Prophet (AS). He said, The signs are like beads strung on a string. If the string breaks, they [quickly] follow one after the other. (Ahmad).
Rasulallah (AS), the Mercy to the Universes, did not tell us the signs of the End Times to fulfill just an intellectual curiosity; they are for us to understand how to live and keep our faith in the Ahir Zaman that we are living in now. And if one looks at the context in which he used to tell people about Ahir Zaman, the situation of the first Jahilliyah during his time, the situation when he used to tell the Sahabis about the Ahir Zaman, it was always with a sense of urgency. He used to make the Sahabis repeat to him the signs of the Ahir Zaman. He would gather all of them and speak the whole day about what would happen in Ahir Zaman. Just this context enough shows us that this knowledge it is central and it is very important to our faith, especially for us living here now. If the Holy Prophet (AS), he considered this knowledge to be important, then we must deem this knowledge to be important.
This Ummat, it is one Ummat. The Ummat of the Holy Prophet (AS), it is one body. And that one body, it must be moving in harmony toward one direction. And that direction cannot be determined by philosophy or ideology. The Holy Prophet (AS) set that direction for us 1400 years ago. For the Ummat to be united, it must understand what that direction is, so that it can navigate itself to that direction. And Holy Prophet (AS) charted the course for what is important for the Ummat in the Ahir Zaman through his Hadith Sherif. There is no confusion how the ummat should behave in these days. There should be no argument about how the ummat should behave in these days. If we want to be united, we must be united in avoiding the dangers that he warned us about, so that we can walk safely together to safety. We should not be united with the dangers that he warned us about.
And from amongst the knowledge that he taught us, he said (AS): Indeed all that I fear over my nation are misguiding Imams. If the sword is placed on my nation, it will not be raised from them until the Day of Resurrection. And the Hour will not arrive until tribes from my nation associate themselves to the unbelievers and until tribes from my nation worship idols. (Tirmidhi).
And he is saying, (AS), The world will not pass away until the one who enjoys it the most is the degenerate son of a degenerate. (Ahmad)
That’s the kind of world that we are living in today. Do we have any doubt? But some would have us believe that we are living in a society that is the highest level of civilization, of history. There are some who believe that this world is at its highest point. There are those, from amongst the Muslims, who would say that this modern age is the best era in the history of the world. This era, when nuclear bombs have been deployed to destroy the whole of mankind, when children are held in slavery for the sick pleasure of the twisted, when the rich feast while the poor starve, when truth has become a commodity to be bought and sold, when injustice is complete in the earth, they are teaching us that this is the best time ever.
But more than that, some are saying, this world has now become perfect; and we have to change Islam so that it can adapt to this world. That is why Holy Prophet (AS) is saying in his Hadith that he fears the misguided Imams more than anything; because while misguided kings can destroy the nation from a physical perspective, the misguided Imam can destroy the peoples’ souls and condemn them to complete and eternal misery.
So Imams of today, what are they saying? They are saying that this world is great and Islam, it is deficient. For 1400 years, the scholars of Islam looked at the world and said; this dunya is dirty, it is asfala safileen, and Islam teaches us how to clean it up. Today, they are saying, hasha, Islam is backward and the modern world is forward- we have to make Islam fit to this era.
Who is saying this? People who have inherited the history of Islam? People whose fathers and grandfathers sacrificed for Islam, people whose mothers and grandmothers stayed up the night praying and crying to Allah, people whose generations lived and died on the Shahadat? Or the offspring of the historical enemies of Truth, who have put on the clothes of Islam like someone puts on clothes that are in fashion? We are not insulting anyone. But we are saying, we should use our intelligence. Allah (SWT) is asking us repeatedly in the Holy Quran, don’t you use your intelligence?
Just as we have to be united on Hakk, we have to be united against to Batil. Because Batil, it completely withers before the light of Hakk. Allah (SWT) is saying in the Holy Quran, in Surah Isra: BismillahirRahmanirRahim. Truth has come and falsehood hath vanished away. Indeed! falsehood is by its nature, vanishing. (17:81). SadqallahulAdzim
In order for us to be united in avoiding falsehood, we have to understand falsehood and its various disguises. This is why Holy Prophet (AS), he spoke at length to the Sahabis about Dajjal, so that they would recognize him and protect themselves against him. That is why we must recognize who is trying to corrupt this Ummat, so that we can oppose them.
So it is not the descendants of the Holy Prophet (AS), or his Sahabis, or the righteous believers of 1400 years who are now trying to change Islam to fit modernity; it is those who are descendants of those who have worked for 1400 years to bring Islam down and the other foolish Muslims who support them, forgetting their own heritage and forgetting their own lineage.
And the new fashion is to say, well, Islam has to change if it is to survive. In order to preserve Islam, we must change Islam. We cannot say that Islam is defined by the five pillars of Islam and the six principles of Iman, no; we have to accept anyone who declares they are Muslims as Muslim. Kharijis are Muslims. Qadiyanis are Muslims. People who curse the Sahabis are Muslims. Don’t define who is and isn’t a Muslim according to Allah’s words; they are saying define who is a Muslim according to who signed a declaration in Amman.
They say, Islam must adopt capitalism. Capitalism is a system that yes, even the majority of people in the capitalist societies and the countries understand is the engine of oppression and injustice. Capitalism is a system that is founded upon flaming the passions of the ego and driving people crazy with consumerism. But capitalism is the foundation of modern society, based on riba’ so we have to make Islam fit into capitalism.
And in terms of law, we have to take the legal system out of Islam, they are saying. This is one of the most subtle and harmful arguments that the new scholars they are making. They say, look, there is no such thing as Khilafat. That is the reality of the world. So the time that Islam was a legal system it is over. We should not live in a fantasy land anymore. And once they convince the Muslims that the laws of Islam are obsolete, then they can start insulting those laws. They say, what a relief, we don’t have to follow those laws anymore. And then they say, look how nice modern laws are. No cutting of hands, no caning, no barbaric punishments, because this is all that they understand from shariat, whereas shariat is about protecting the rights, first, of the poor and the oppressed. These laws are actually better than the laws of Islam, they are going to say. And they hide the darkness underneath the modern legal system, which systematically takes away the rights of the poor and of minorities.
They ignore the aspects of the legal system which leads to modern slavery through a prison state. And they convince the Muslims, the laws in your religion, they are primitive, and the laws of modernity society, they are civilized. Well, the whole world is witnessing the civilization of modern man today. And in such a way, the faith is taken out of the hearts of Muslims. That is the warning that Holy Prophet (AS) gave us 1400 years ago. And we should be united in heeding that warning. He said (AS): Years of treachery will come over people in which liars are believed and the truthful are denied, the deceitful are trusted and the trustworthy are considered traitors, and the Ruwaybaḍah will deliver speeches.” It was said, “Who are the al-Ruwaybaḍah?” The Prophet said, “Petty men with authority over the common people.” (Ibn Majah). Everybody wants to be on YouTube.
We cannot be from those who are fooling, or from those who are getting fooled. Because Allah (SWT) will deal with those who are fooling the people and He will also deal with those who get fooled because we have been given the intelligence to tell the difference. Holy Prophet (AS) is saying: There will appear in the later days men who confuse the world with the religion, deceiving the people in soft skins of sheep, with words sweet as honey. But they will have the heart of a wolf. Allah will say: They want to deceive me? They want to defy me? I swear by Myself, I will send a tribulation upon them that will cripple the most forbearing among them. (Tirmidhi).
O Believers! We are speaking about the dangers of Ahir Zaman because Holy Prophet (AS) spoke about the dangers of Ahir Zaman. And this specific warning, about misguided Imams, it is warning us not to become distracted by knowledges and ideas that are useless and dangerous. So to combat useless knowledge, we must run after useful knowledge. And what is the most useful knowledge, according to Rasulallah (AS)? The most useful knowledge, it is to understand that this life is going to end, and to prepare for what is coming ahead. A Sahabi asked, Who is the most intelligent and careful person? Holy Prophet (AS) replied, Those people who remember death most and prepare for it most. These are people who have excelled in the nobility of this world and the honor of the hereafter.
If we are seriously preparing for our deaths, then we are not going to be distracted by philosophy, ideology, by modernity, or by post-modernity. We are going to be focused on preparing to meet our Lord. And as our Sheykh, Sahib el-Sayf Sheykh Abdul Kerim el-Kibrisi el-Rabbani is saying, preparing for death will make you prepared to be with Mahdi (AS). The preparation is the same. Because the one who is prepared to die, he is prepared to meet his Lord with honor. And the one who is going to be honored in the sight of Allah, he is going to be honored to be with Mahdi (AS).
O Believers! Be careful. These are the last days. In these days, run after safety. Run after the people of safety. Listen to the warnings of Holy Prophet (AS), and be with those who are reminding us of those warnings. That time, insha’AllahurRahman, we will find ourselves untied with Hakk. Amin.
Jummah Khutba by Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
OSMANLI DERGAHI- New York
18 Jamadial Ahir 1438
March 17, 2017
Sahibul-Saif Sheykh Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi 