Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid August 31, 2012 www.circlegroup.org

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Taqwa: a Protection from Danger and a Means to the Love of Allah from Allah

In Holy Qur’an, Allah (swt) reveals in Surah Mā’idah, ‘āyat 93:

There is no blame on those who have attained to faith and who work

good deeds, for what they may have eaten before, so long as they guard

themselves and believe and work deeds of goodness, then they guard

themselves and believe, then again guard themselves, for Allah excels in

doing good deeds and Allah loves those who excel.

Also in Surah al-Hujurat, ayat 13, Allah reveals:

Oh you people! Surely We have created you from a man and a woman,

and made you people in tribes so that you might come to know one

another. Truly, the most honorable among you in the sight of Allah is

the one who is most conscious of Allah, warding off evil from within and

without. Allah is all knowing.

And finally, in Surah Muzzammil, ‘āyat 7-10, Allah (swt) says:

Indeed, in the day you have a long line of duties which takes up your

time. So remember the Name of your Lord and devote yourself to Him

with utter devotion. Lord of the East and the West, there is no deity save

Him; so take Him as your Guardian. And bear with patience what they

say and depart from them with a gracious departure.

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He is referring here to those who reject, not necessarily outwardly, but reject the

Truth through their words and their actions. Salaam aleykum ramatallah barakatu.

Perhaps the simplest definition of taqwah is godliness or piety, and it is a result of

ibāda. In fact, if we consider ibād as the main source of godliness in Islam, and its

derivative to be an ‘abd of Allah (‘abdullah), it is to be in service or as a slave to

Allah. This taqwah, this godliness, and devotion, and piety come from worship. So

we have to understand what is worship. We can say with surety that a person who

submits himself or herself totally to the Will of Allah develops taqwah, but worship

is paying attention to Allah, bringing Allah into each moment of our life. Worshiping

is to remember, dhikr, and to act with that knowledge in remembrance.

It takes us back again to the topic of things like choosing not to choose,

understanding, managing not to manage, trusting in Allah, understanding what is a

servant, a lover of Allah. Every messenger of every path told the followers to

worship Allah, to obey Allah (swt) in order to develop this taqwah. It is a very

important quality, obviously. Godliness, piety, god-likeness are developed so that

the reality of Allah – that is to say, compassion, and mercy, and patience, and love,

and understanding, and justice, and all the things that we talk about so much – can

be expressed through us. Because Allah says “I will speak through your lips. I will

walk through your feet. I will work through your hands.” So what does it mean? It

means that by this godliness, this piety, this god-likeness, Allah works through His

people, through human beings.

Obviously, not everyone fits that definition. You can have a person who puts his

head down on the ground five times a day and does everything perfectly well, but

they don’t fit that definition of piety, where Allah is working through them with

compassion and love, mercy and patience, tolerance and understanding, justice and

kindness, and all the rest. They are just going through the performer’s act, thinking

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that is what being an abda-Llāh is. But true piety allows us to see how the system

operates, also. The piety, or godliness, or surrender allows us to feel devotion that

we have to have, need to have, for our Creator, and not turn our attention just to our

own selfishness or our own self-aggrandizement.

This word taqwah comes from the word itiqah. One definition of it is to guard

oneself against danger. What this means, in a much deeper sense, is that we have

the responsibility to guard ourselves. That also implies that if you have the

knowledge of how to do that, you have to do that. That is what Allah tells us to do.

That is what all the message tells us what to do. To have taqwah (some people call it

to have the fear of God, or piety) is to be aware of what happens in this whole

process of life, in this system of life, here and in the Hereafter, in the reality of a’faq

and anfus, in the reality of the dhahir and the batin. This is a very serious and an

especially important enjoinder by Allah (swt) to us to understand how our actions

affect our souls, and where our soul is destined, and what it is created for.

In Qur’an it says, “Don’t deny Allah against yourself on that day. On the day that

We will make children hoary headed (or grey haired).” Meaning to know

yourself in the way you know Allah. If in the denial of your responsibilities, if you

are not prepared before Allah on that day of the Yawma Qiyama, you will not have

anything except intense fear. You have lost the way, and you will know that you

have lost the way. You have not excelled. You have not fulfilled. You have not

optimized. You have not created the best environment for yourself, or for others, or

for your family, or your neighbors, or your brother, sister. But if you have done

those things, reciprocally, the fear of Allah or piety [will be there]. If you have that

piety, and you measure your actions and choices by those standards and by the

message, then on that day you will go proudly toward Allah (swt), conscious and

aware.

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You will know that although there are many things that you should have done better

or could have done better, you have wound up, at that moment, like our sister this

past week, filled with love and light, knowing that the life was well spent. Someone

might say, “Oh, well you didn’t travel much.” You didn’t do all those other things.

She had the opportunity to do that. She had the finances to do that. She had every

invitation to do that. But she decided to refine her life and her environment here,

and help us also to do that.

Another definition is to fear some unexpected trouble or disruption, not to think

that everything is just going to go away, and that we have entitlement in this life to

only have goodness and ease. Allah tells: “Inna m’al ‘usri yusrā. With hardship

goeth ease.” This kind of taqwah results from a kind of attentiveness. When there

are times of very deep angst or fears or worries, what we worry about is losing

context, being disobedient, becoming overwhelmed by arrogance, or doubts, or

distractions. It is the kind of anxiety that comes through a person, who in their

arrogance, makes bad choices; and then find out how disastrous their choices are.

They realize their arrogance and they realize that they have caused themselves to be

distant from happiness and joy.

In the light of the understanding of the word taqwah, gaining the taqwah (itiqa), that

person’s heart becomes filled with Glory and the Beauty of Allah (swt), because they

are in the right environment, because they are around the right people, because they

are in the suhbat, because they are sitting in muraqabah, because they are making

the dhikru-Llāh, because they are studying Qur’an, because they are doing good

deeds for other human beings. When those angst and difficulties come, and they

realize that they have caused themselves separation, they turn their hearts back to

Allah. If we don’t submit, and if we don’t really do that, then we are not really on the

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path, or on the path that that life is intended to be. If we don’t buy into the totality of

what Islam really is, how one would be able to develop real taqwah and god-

likeness? Once, the Holy Prophet (sal) defined taqwah in these terms:

A man who was passing through a thick forest of thorny bushes tried to protect

himself from the thorns all around him. He endeavored to keep the thorny

bushes away from him as much as possible. Sometimes he moved to one side,

sometimes he moved to the other side to guard himself as much as possible

against possible injury. This carefulness on the part of the man in the thorny

forest to protect himself against thorny bushes and trees is taqwah.

We have to see the world in a way that we would be able to measure what is

happening to us, what is coming before us, what we are walking through, where we

are. We have to understand what the choices are that we are making, and how, and

what they will mean from day to day, what they will mean a week from now, a year

from now, what they will mean five years from now, or twenty years from now, or

longer. I, again go back to Iman, and the many people sitting here, and the choices

that you have made over the years, to have a view or understanding of where you

are now, and where you want your life to lead in this world, and what benefits and

blessings Allah has given you to make those things happen, but it is a life of periodic

thorn bushes.

The world has evil and goodness, corruption and has uprightness, humility and

arrogance, and it is full of unwarranted encounters, and desires and needs. We have

to have furqan/discrimination. That discrimination does not come from the water

you drink. It does not come from the air you breathe. It comes from life; it comes

from the people who are exemplary, like our sister who passed this week. Not

perfect, exemplary. Exemplary in the ways where we all can say (I know I can say),

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“When I pass, I want to pass like that.” Don’t ask any other question. I want to pass

saying, “I love you.” I want to pass remembering the children. I want to pass caring

for everyone. I want to pass grateful for what I have done, and I want to pass

repentant for what I haven’t done. Those are all things that were expressed to me in

the last three days of our sister’s life, Iman’s life.

Allah (swt) gives us prayer to develop a sense of attunement, to pause, to look, to

think. Allah (swt) gives us muhasabat and munasabat (accounting of oneself and a

cordial relationship with our guides, our teachers). He gives us wudu to refine

ourself. He gives us so many things: du’ā/supplication, khidma/service,

ibada/worship of all kinds, as a kind of protection. This is the immunization to

guide us from the onslaught of evil, from the dis-eases of corruption, from the dis-

eases of darkness from within ourselves and outside of ourselves. Believe me, that

immunization is very, very important; and a little dose goes a long way in

homeopathy, as you know.

The best people in the eyes of Allah are those who have taqwah in their hearts. He

loves those who are the most righteous. How do you know? Because He gives us

means, and assistance, and He places in our heart the desire to change, the desire to

be strong, the desire to succeed and to excel, the desire to overcome our own

selfishness, or our own self-doubt, or our own fears, or to be humble with our own

courage. He loves those who are the most righteous: “The most honored of you in

the eyes of Allah, and the most pious and righteous people.” It is addressed to

all human beings, not just Muslims. When you find Muslims that think this is only a

message addressed to them, or Christians who think it is only a message to them,

you know, as we say in Arabic, “Forget about it!” It is not the way it works. It is a

message to everyone.

Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid August 31, 2012 www.circlegroup.org

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Obviously, if human beings descend from one set of parents, then the relationship

remains, whether they are tribes or races or nations with different names and

different characteristics. In the eyes of Allah (swt), according to Qur’an, which are

His words, we are one. Among those who get the most honor are the ones who are

the most righteous among the people. It is not the ones who put their heads down

on the ground the most—maybe, maybe not. It is not the ones who can quote the

Qur’an the best, or quote the Injīl the best—maybe, maybe not. “The most

righteous,” think about what it means. It means right choices, right actions, right

thinking, right feeling, right knowledge. Right? See. We say in English, right. We

don’t say left, or wrong. Even we say, “I could be wrong, right?”

It also seems clear that any commandment of the Qur’an, whether relating to ibāda,

or the struggles of life, or the practical daily work in life, or goodness and justice is

not isolated, but is integrated into a whole teaching of what is Islam. We can say,

with surety, that you can know the ocean from a drop of the ocean; but you cannot

know absolutely everything from that drop. You can know that it is ocean, but you

don’t know what is happening off the coast of Madagascar by looking under a

microscope of a drop of ocean from Myrtle Beach, S.C.

We have to understand that where Islam is different is you can know the totality of

Allah Swt if you know the totality of compassion (that means the totality of what any

human being can know; not the totality of Allah, but the totality of the message).

And that is because mercy, compassion, patience, tolerance, understanding, and

justice are all linked together. One leads to the other. When we struggle with our

practices, our attendance, and with our minds, internally, who are you wrestling

with? This is like the wrestling in the River Jordan, with the Shaytan, from the story

in Torah. You are wrestling with your nafs, your lower nature, and with your

destiny.

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The best way to worship is to begin through that worship inside yourself to submit

to what you know is right and what you know is good. Maybe it’s boring. Maybe it’s

interesting. Maybe it’s engaging. Maybe it’s not in the moment. But you know in

yourself what is good and right, and you know to place your body where your body

should be, place your mind where your mind should be, and place your heart where

your heart should be, then your soul will be where your soul should be. If your body

should be here in the masjid during prayer, then put it in the masjid during prayer.

If your body should be at dinner, then place it there. If your body should be at work,

then put it there. If it should be at this khutbah or at a dars, then put it there. When

you bring your body, bring your mind; don’t leave it outside. Bring your feet; bring

your fingers. Don’t have your fingers here (texting) while your mind is there. Oh,

the days when it took 13 days to get a letter. So many problems were solved by

those 26 days: 13 days coming and 13 days back.

If your body should be at the service of another human being, then place it there.

Don’t deal with your resistance other than to say, “I’m going to place myself where I

should be at this moment.” “I really wish I didn’t have to go into town today. I’ve

already been in town 3 times this week, but I don’t see any other time to go.” So you

go. You may grumble the whole way. Go, do your work, and then come back. “Oh,

it’s time for prayer right now! Gee. I gotta go to prayer. Gee.” Instead say, “I’m

going to prayer.” How do you know you can do that? If you have a little cold, do you

go to work or stay home? Go to work. If you have a little pain in a joint… anybody

have one…do you stop walking? If you have a little bug inside of you, a little “C”

inside of you, when you have the strength, do you come to the khutbah like Khadija

did today? Subhāna-Llāh.

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Is that inspiring? (Yes.) How long will it last? Will it last until you deal with your

own joint pain? Or will you say, “Ooo, Khadija came to the khutbah today. Isn’t that

wonderful? Yes, but Shaykh, can I be excused? I have a little headache.” Carry it over.

If you have a meeting with a doctor, or a lawyer, or your accountant, or if you have

to teach a class at the college, do you go? You go. You have an airplane trip today.

Will you go? Yes. Would you go if you had a little sore throat, or if your toe hurt

you? Yes. Let me step on your toe and see if you will really go! Allah didn’t give us

our homes as an excuse to retreat from worship. He didn’t create those places to

retreat from suhbat. He didn’t give us a nice bed to jump into when we decide that

since we don’t get paid to come to the masjid, to do prayer, or to come to dinner or

the suhbat, that we can just go to bed.

But you do get paid to drive in your car a hundred miles to a PDO or do your job. No,

I don’t want to hear about how much you get paid. Obviously, the biggest fault with

religion is that it is not subsidized. Is that it – our spirituality isn’t subsidized? Or, “I

came to the mosque, my platelet count should go up.” If you came piously, maybe it

will. Believe me, that’s right: you don’t get paid for this… directly. But a lot goes into

your spiritual savings account. On the day of the Yawmi Qiyama, your bruised toe

will say, “I was bruised, and I walked him to the masjid.” And your beard is going to

say, “He clipped me, remembering Allah.” Remember that, girls. Your throat will

say, “He used me to recite Qur’an, even though I was sore.” What happens is you get

deductions from your bank account if you are not in the right place at the right time.

A lot of energy goes out with worry and doubts and fears and illnesses. You get

tired. How do you renew yourself? With faith, belief, truth, trust, and submission.

Your birth is when you signed over, like when you signed up for electronic banking.

We’re going to deduct $42.11 every month until you tell us not to. That is what

happened when you got born. Here’s how you pour money in, and here’s how you

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take it out. For special bonuses or some special thing, you say, “I haven’t taken

vacation in years. I have a lot of vacation time to take.” Allah has it in your bank

account. When we are born into this world, we came with a bank account. The idea

is we are supposed to invest it and increase it, and give some of it away (zakat and

sadaqa). You get deductions for the things I’ve been telling you about. And when you

die, and you are in the grave, Allah says, “I’m looking at your record, and I see that

you don’t have the fare to get even to the lowest level of Paradise. So you will have

to stay here.” Or Allah will say, “I’m sending a limo, taking you to the jet.” You will

still have a lot left over to buy a big house, a big mansion. Or He is going to say, “You

don’t have anything left. You will have to earn some money, go to the cosmic steel

mill and work at the furnace. You will earn 12 cents an hour, and it will only be two

or three thousand years there, until you have enough money to go to the lowest

level of Paradise.” I don’t like fear tactics, however, but it’s true.

This is taqwa. You don’t get paid to come, but there is a deduction. I’m not the one

taking it. It also means you come to the prayer mat at home, or do your muraqabah

at home, or your Hizb ul Bahr at home. It also means how we speak to each other,

and how we manipulate our own minds to think I can do halal, haram, halal, haram.

This is what people do. They label things halal or haram. What is halal is what is

good. What is haram is bad choices. It’s not just that you know the difference

between the two. If you are struggling with it, that’s fine. If you are manipulating

around it, that’s another thing. Anybody who is guilty knows. This is a very

uniquely refined system of life that we find ourselves in.

We try to follow a truly Islamic tradition, the very growing, organic system that

affects the structure of all aspects of life, everything from the physical world to the

natural world. There is a natural ability to assimilate into many systems and

disciplines, without doing damage to the totality of the system or its parts. In fact,

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it’s a very specific quality in Islam, when it is truly practiced with intelligence and

an open heart, that will keep vitality and beauty and elegance in our lives. There’s a

nice word, elegance. We don’t use it very much anymore. It’s a really nice word.

What was Iman like? An elegant person, a refined person. What was Musa like? A

very refined man. Daoud? Very refined. Why do we just have to talk about the

people who are gone like that? Can’t we be that way ourselves? Can’t we talk about

each other in those terms? Can we look for the elegance and beauty in each other

while we are still walking around on this world?

The key and the driving force behind this ability is taqwa, righteousness, doing what

you know is right, even if it is difficult, speaking in a good way, acting in a good way,

going towards what is good and away from what is not good. Good for whom?

Everybody? Maybe. Good for you? Maybe. This direction is also a means for

adjustment, a correction. It’s a force that gives us direction and adjusts our lives as

we go along, and it provides for us a livelihood and a liveliness that affects everyone

who comes into contact with us. And that’s great, if we understand it. I don’t know

how many people I’ve told: you have light. People are attracted to your light. I tell it

to the children, my children, adults, people on this path. You have light; it’s

attractive. You have to know it. You have to understand that not everything that is

attracted to light is good. A beautiful pink and white moth comes to the light and

sits on the door at night, and then there is the bell hornet who also comes. You don’t

want to disturb or touch the beautiful moth, but the bell hornet wants to sting you

and cause you pain. The light is neutral in that sense. How you use it is important.

Understand what taqwa is: it molds our nature and our attitude. It molds our

community, by creating within us and within this community of Muslims as a whole,

and in the community of human beings a close relationship and affinity with the

Creator if the person is humble. It gives us new direction and new life in our life, a

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new purpose within the ideology within the ideas, beyond the petty materialistic

objectives. This relationship affects us from how we eat our meals to the

institutions we build, how we survive, how we speak to our family, how we speak to

the rulers of the world. It affects our expectations and how we fulfill them, how we

relate to our innermost self, how we prepare our life to do good work, how we

study, how we work, how we work with others. Once the force of taqwa is created

in us, through our ibada, our practices, our muhasabat, our munasabat, our service,

not only does society become more balanced, but because we have greater strength

of character and will, that force of will cannot be overcome or conquered by

negativity. It is like a reinforced wall that maintains its strength when it’s attacked

or hit.

When this force of taqwa has worked itself deep into the heart of a human being,

and made us fully conscious of our duties and obligations, not only to Allah in some

abstract way, but to Allah Swt through each other, as human beings, to nature, to the

environment, then we are transformed into better human beings. And we can say

that the role of the Sufi, the light of the Sufi, the mu’min, is totally transferred to

create this new being. The object is to see the beauty and wisdom of Allah

everywhere, to see that interrelationship, and the response that comes instantly,

and to be able to carry the burden of the tests, the trials, and the vicissitudes of day

to day life, and still be an example to others. It is to protect ourselves and our loved

ones, our community, our society, nature, and to care for those who need care,

whether it’s our blind BonBon, who walks in circles around the house and bumps

into things, or whether a newborn babe, or Mona who is crawling now. It is to help

our lives, our societies, to direct our power toward healing our self and others,

fulfilling those responsibilities, maintaining our community, increasing the reach of

ourselves and others with that taqwa, through our actions, attitudes, words, ideas,

and examples.

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The motivation of the individual is so strong, the purpose becomes so clear, the

attitude so selfless, that whoever comes into contact with that one finds not only

guidance and help, but sees that they can rise to the test and pass them—if you want

to use that metaphor, if the person really wants to do that, and if there is that arms’

length that is necessary. Realize it this way. Allah is as near to us as our jugular

vein, but conceptually, He’s always arms’ length. We think Allah is there,

somewhere else. But He tells us, Allah is as near to you as your jugular vein. So we

have to move toward Allah, sayr-i-Llah. When we move toward Allah, we realize we

are moving with Allah, sayr-fī-Llah. Then we are traveling in Allah. This is a stage of

development. That force of taqwa inspired this community. Those 3 ½ hour

semas… all the buildings, including this one… all has inspired others to come over

the years, and still does.

It’s taqwa of generosity and peacefulness. It’s the joy of struggle. It’s an

indispensable quality of the believer to engage in practical words of righteousness,

what the Qur’an calls “the doers of good.” In other words, these are people who

observe taqwa, love Allah, and have a kind of anxiety toward Allah in the future, who

do good works fī sabīli-Llāh, for the love of humanity, who struggle for the amanat,

who love this creation and responsibility for this creation, who look at the same tree

every year and still take another picture of it, who can walk across the stream every

year and still take another picture of it, seeing something new, something different.

Without these fī sabīli-Llāh, fī sabīli-amal (for the sake of work), there is no life. It’s

not just our actions but our intentions, our will, our emotions, our honesty to

submit.

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Let’s be of those who do good work. Let’s be a person of taqwa, for Allah loves those

who do good work. To understand this is the very core, seminal issue we have to

deal with in our lives, inshā’a-Llāh. Aslaamu aleykum.

SECOND KHUTBAH. O Allah, for those who have passed this week including our

beloved Iman, we ask You to bring her near to You and Your Throne, and have her

sit at your feet at the ‘arsh, and have her love bathe You with her light. And have us

remember all the goodness You have brought to us, all the help You have brought to

us, and all the support You have brought to us. For those of us who are living, we

ask You to make our life more and more worthwhile, clear, and purposeful, and to

remember the blessings that You have given us in our work and our community, and

not to turn our back on them, or take advantage of them.

For those among us who are ill, we ask You for Your Shifat. O Allah Swt, bring Your

Shifat so they can once again join fully in the service of You, and the ibada of You,

and the work toward You, Allah. For our brothers and sisters in Syria, help us to

help them. And in other parts of the world where there is such misery and

oppression in Your name, or not in Your name, but with greed and obsessiveness,

teach every one of us that being obsessive, possessive, and acquisitive leads to no

good. O Allah Swt, make us humble and protect us.

For those who are traveling, we ask You for protection in going and in coming, and

safety for all those who are traveling with us. We ask You Allah to bless us with

remembrance of You and to make us more worthy. Amin.