Sacrifice
is Essential for all Muslims
An Eid Khutbah delivered at Islamic
Dr. Syed
Hasanuddin Ahmad
الله
اكبر الله
اكبر لا اله
الا الله
والله اكبر
الله اكبر و
لله الحمد
Today is the day of Sacrifice all over the country.
We have just prayed to Allah for giving us the opportunity to thank him by
sacrificing animals, and to commemorate the great Sacrifice of the Prophet
Abraham AS.
In a wider sense, 'sacrifice' means giving up
things which are valued or desired. Those things may be tangible, or countable
like time, wealth or life, and intangible, or immeasurable like feelings,
attitudes, opinions or aspirations. As a sacrifice all these are given up for
the sake of something that is more worthy or more important or more urgent.
Sacrifice has always been an important ritual in
all religions and civilizations. However, it is important to bear in mind,
though, that in Islam primarily sacrifice means slaughter of animal or offering
one’s life to God, and, hence, surrender to God of some belongings.
قل
ا ن صلا تي و
نسكى ...........
'Say, my Prayer and my nusuk (sacrifice), my living and my dying - all belong to
Allah, the Lord of all the worlds' (al-An'am 6:162).
Sacrifice is a trait of which ordinary human lives
are made. Without it, life, devoid of peace, harmony
and co-operation, will be full of conflict and discord, a prey to self-centeredness,
covetousness and immediate gratification of desires. Moreover, neither families
nor communities can exist or achieve cohesiveness and strength without some
sacrifice on the part of their members. Also, no human endeavor can, succeed in
reaching its goal unless one sacrifices things valued or desired.
Sacrifice is the nourishment without which the tiny
seeds of Belief (Iman) will not grow into mighty, leafy trees, providing shades
and fruits to the countless caravans of mankind (Ibrahim
14:24-5). It is always true whether the path taken is personal - to reach
spiritual and moral heights, or social - to cast life and society in the mould
of Islam (surrender to One God). And it is true, when these two paths most
desirably merge together. For, loftier the goal and more arduous the way,
greater the need to sacrifice, and more sacrifice.
First let us briefly look at an important question.
Why must Islam be so emphatically linked with the idea of struggle? What has
the one to do with the other? Cannot a person become a good Muslim without
involving himself in a struggle that necessarily requires sacrifices? The
answer is simply No; and for very obvious reasons.
Islam is not merely the confession of a faith which
is made once in a lifetime. The faith is of cosmic dimensions. It requires a
radical reorientation of entire life and the world. The confession is not
merely verbal; it is an act of witnessing which must transform life into a
living and continuing testimony of faith. We enter into Islam by saying shahadah (bearing witness). But we can live as Muslims only
by constantly doing shahadah (al-Baqarah 2:143, al_hajj
و كذ
ا لك جعلنا كم
امة وسطا
لتكونوا شهدآء
على
النا س
Doing shahadah will
bring us in ceaseless confrontation with false gods inside us, and with those
outside as well. It will also require a ceaseless striving to reshape self and
society so as to attest to our witnessing of Oneness of God.
That is why the Prophet, blessings and peace be on him, in the very early days of Makkan
life, declared:
“There were such people before you that a man would
be seized and a pit would be dug for him in which he would be thrown, then a
saw would be brought and placed over his head and he would be cut into two, and
his flesh would be combed away from his bones by iron combs - still nothing
would turn him away from his religion. By God, he will complete this mission
until a rider will travel from San'a to Hadramawt and will have no fear but of God, and no worry
but about a wolf that might harm his cattle (Bukhari)”.
Not much comes to us in life without endeavor or
struggle. We gain only what we earn by our strivings: Allah points out
لقد
خلقنا الا
نسان في كبد
"We have created man into (a life of)
trial and pain" (al-Balad 90:4). "And that
nothing shall be accounted unto man but what he has striven for" (al-Najm 53:39). The soil is there, the water is there, the
seed is there; but the soil will not turn seeds into crops unless we dig it,
plough it, sow the seeds, water the plants, protect them and harvest the crop.
Without sweat and toil, the gifts of God that abound all around us will not
yield their full treasures to us. Indeed the richer the treasures desired, the
greater the efforts required.
And what purpose in life could be more valuable,
more compelling, more important, and more urgent, than that of bringing the
whole man - his inner personality, his environment, his society, the entire
world - to the path of Allah. Without struggling hard, merely by wishing,
desiring, professing, making claims and statements, how can we ever hope to
reach the destination that we have set for ourselves? If one's daily bread
cannot be earned without effort, will Allah give His greatest blessing -
success in this life and success in the life to come - unless we prove that we
deserve to receive it? Unless we demonstrate that our profession of faith is
rooted in our hearts, we are truthful in our claims of loyalty, and that we are
prepared to offer sacrifices required of us.
ام
حسبتم ان تدخل
الجنة .............
Do you think you should enter
Every
act of sacrifice nourishes and increases our Iman; for it transforms a verbal confession
and a mental conviction into a living reality. It confirms, and thus increases,
our love for Allah; for at every step we give up something for the sake of this
love (al-Imran 3:172-3). It reinforces our loyalty and fidelity to Allah; for
all other loyalties become secondary as they are sacrificed for the sake of
this loyalty. In short, sacrifices bring us nearer to Allah. The process is
mutually interactive: stronger the faith, greater the will to sacrifice. For
this we take help from patience and salat. Allah says
يآ
ايهاا لذين
آمنوا
استعينوا با
لصبر والصلا ة
ان الله مع
الصابرين
Patience
is a very comprehensive virtue. One of its many aspects is discipline.
Discipline is closely related to sacrifice; they are in fact interdependent. It
cannot be attained in its comprehensive sense of self-discipline, spiritual and
moral discipline, organizational and social discipline - unless we are prepared
to sacrifice things we love. Nor we can continuously offer sacrifice of things
to which we assign some value without developing a discipline within ourselves,
an inner discipline. Though disciplined, collective life, too, plays no less
important a role in reinforcing the spirit of sacrifice. And sacrifice is
equally essential for generating and sustaining such disciplined collective
life.
Worldly possessions, not to say of human relations,
are not easy things to give away in the way of Allah; so many falter and fail
when confronted with real choices.
What will help us to offer these difficult
sacrifices is to constantly remember certain things.
Firstly, nothing belongs to us;
everything belongs to Allah. When we sacrifice something in the way of Allah, we
are only returning it to the rightful Owner.
لله ما
في السماوات و
ما في الارض
Secondly, whatever great value we
may attach to worldly possessions, these will become naught with our last
breath.
و
ماعند كم ينفد
و ما عند الله
باق
All that is with you comes to an end; but what is
with God is everlasting (al-Nahl 16:96)
Thirdly, only by giving it away
for Allah can we receive it back, increased manifold.
How? We will see that later in the story of Ibrahim and
Think for a while: What worth can our claims of
commitment to Islam have if we spend more money on meaningless pleasures, like
smoking and eating, than on His cause? Of what value is our
faith in the promises of Allah, when the slightest hope of profit in this world
makes us invest all our savings in a business transaction, whereas, the promise
of at least seven hundred-fold return, never to be taken away, cannot force our
purse-strings open? We may measure what place Islam occupies in our life by
looking at what proportion of our wealth we spend in the way of Allah.
Familial love is the strongest and the most
predominant relationship that we have in this world. From childhood till death,
love for parents and children, for husbands and wives, for brothers and
sisters, even for other relations, remains at the centre of our lives, it dominates
all our concerns. We usually live and work and acquire worldly possessions for
the sake of love and responsibility to them.
It is quite normal for us to consider its claim
upon our heart and mind, upon our attention and loyalty, upon our time and wealth
as prior to every other claim. The familial bonds of affection bind us to
themselves as no other bonds do. So often we hear someone saying 'my family has
the first claim upon me' or someone taking pride in being 'totally devoted and
loyal to his or her family'.
And
for good reason, family is the oldest and most important human institution. It
is the bedrock of all civilization and culture that man has built up. Without
such deep and pervasive love and such overriding loyalty it would never succeed
in fulfilling the role of transmitting civic values, norms and mores, or making
them secure and stable. Without family, man, as man, will perish.
Like
و بشرناه
باسحاق نبيا
من الصالحين
And we gave him glad tidings of
Isaac who was to be a prophet and among the righteous.
Another example is that of the Prophet Muhammad
blessings and peace be on him. Whether it was in the
valley of Makkah where thorns were laid in his path or in the valley of Taif where stones were thrown at him, on the battlefield of
Uhud where he lost his teeth or in the streets of Madina where his enemies raised all sorts of slanderous
campaigns and propaganda against him, he has left for us the best examples of
sacrifice. So did his followers and Companions.
Allah can reward us the same way even today, provided the primary motivating force
that drives us to make sacrifices must lie inside our
own self. The urge should come from within. The roots must lie deep in heart
and soul. Neither group approval, nor conformity, nor organizational
discipline, nor any other external pressure, should provide the compulsion to
come forward with our sacrifice. Each one of them is important and has an important
role to play in shaping our conduct. But if sacrifices are offered for any
reason other than Allah's pleasure, it would be extremely difficult to offer
large sacrifices, or offer them continually, under all circumstances. The will
and spirit to sacrifice must be internalized.
Let me say, in conclusion, that all sacrifices are
required of us because we have to shoulder the immense responsibility of
fulfilling the mission that Allah's Messengers were charged with: 'That you be
witnesses unto mankind.' We must be true slaves of our Lord, and be selfless
servants of mankind. It is to serve mankind that we have been constituted into a Ummah. That calling requires that we prepare ourselves for
one of the most difficult tasks in life.
Without making sacrifices the revival of Islam will
always remain a matter of speeches or a matter of dreams. To actualize it, we
will have to give up our time and wealth, our life and resources, our personal
likes and dislikes.
Even our best efforts, however, may not be perfect.
We may waver and falter, we may fail and despair. But this is only human. What
Allah looks at is our intention and effort. So let us turn to Him to help us
lest our human frailties overwhelm us when sacrifices are demanded of us, and
to seek His forgiveness for all our shortcomings and failures.
الله
اكبر الله
اكبر لا اله
الا الله
والله اكبر
الله اكبر و
لله الحمد
اقول
قولي هذا وا
ستغفر الله لي
و لكم و لساءرالمومنين
والمومنات