الحمد لله، الحمد لله الذي جعل صحةَ الإنسان وحياةَ المجتمعِ في إصلاح المعاملة، وحفِظها في المدينة المنورة، نحمده تعالى ونستعينه، ونشكره تعالى ونستغفره ونستغيثه، نعوذ بالله من شرور أنفسنا ومن سيئات أعمالنا، من يهد الله فهو المهتد ومن يضلل فلن تجد له وليا مرشدا، ونشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له، له الملك و له الحمد، يحيي ويميت، بيده الخير، وهو على كل شيء قدير،  ونشهد أن سيدنا و مولانا محمداً عبده ورسوله، وحبيبه وصفيه، بلغ الرسالة وأدى الأمانة ونصح الأمة، النبي الأمي الذي أرسله الله بالهدى والدين الحق، بشيرا ونذيرا بين يدي الساعة، صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلى آله وأصحابه ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.

أما بعد! فيا عباد الله اتقوا الله حق تقاته ولا تموتن إلا وأنتم مسلمون. يأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويغفر لكم ذنوبكم. ومن يطع 

الله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما. اتقوا الله فيما أمر وانتهوا عما نها عنه وزجر.

قال الله عز وجل في كتابه العزيز: “ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِي النَّاسِ”

 

Allah says in His Mighty Book, the translation of which is, “Corruption has appeared in both land and sea because of what people's own hands have wrought.”

It is clear, if you look around the world today, that human society is on the very brink and the world we live in has been brought to its knees by misuse and exploitation. Mankind is marching inexorably towards his own destruction and the destruction of his environment, and its guardians - those charged with its protection - are in absentia. Where are those whom Allah placed as Khulafa - viceregents on the earth? The vast majority of them have been led astray and have forgotten the reason they are here, while far too many of those who remember cannot see the wood for the trees. They have become so bogged down in the legal and technical jargon of Islamic Law, so focused on the detail and the labels that they have forgotten how the deen was established in the first place. They have a fully codified template of the deen and want to impose that on society from above, but the deen is not brought to life by methodology, it is brought to life by people. 

This deen is one of action, not labels. It is a living organic thing. The deen is like a tree - if you plant it as a sapling and water and take care of it, it will grow into a strong healthy tree, deeply rooted in the ground. But if you transplant a fully grown tree and place it into a shallow hole, the first wind that blows will knock it over. In his exposition of the madhhabs, Shaykh AbdulHaqq Bewley says,

“The madhhabs were excellent tools for implementing the Book and Sunna once they were in place but they had nothing to do with establishing Islam in the first place. So it is most unlikely that the madhhabs as presently constituted will provide us with the means to perform the task which faces us.”

The madhhabs and the compendious compilations of legal rulings that accompany them, covering every aspect of personal, social and economic life in the Muslim community, were developed to protect and preserve the deen and maintain its boundaries, not to bring back from scratch something that has been well and truly lost for the last hundred years and is today nowhere to be found. The situation we find ourselves in today has not been seen in the Muslim world since the very first community. And so it is to that community that we must turn in order to understand how to recover what was lost, and bring sanity back to a world that has completely gone off the rails.

Imam Malik used to say, 

لا يصلح آخر هذه الأمة إلا بما صلح به أولها

 

“The last of this community will not be put right except by what put it right in the first place.”

To re-establish the deen we must go back to Madinah al-Munawwara - the original model of a Muslim society, for that was where Islam came into being in the first place, directly at the hands the Prophet in his explanation of the ayats of the Qur’an and his implementation of them in his own life among his Companions. And that model was preserved for posterity through the medium of the ‘amal ahli’l-madina, the Actions of the People of Madinah, by Imam Malik ibn Anas. He saw it as his task to pass on the living deen that had been passed down to him unaltered through the two generations that had elapsed since the lifetime of the Prophet. There still could be found the deen in its pure 'Umari form, primal and unadulterated and full of the same potency and vitality that had allowed the deen to spread with such awe-inspiring speed in the first generations. 

This madhab for want of a better word - the madhhab of the people of Madina - was to prove the catalyst for the reinvigoration of the deen whenever it became weak. To see this one has but to look at the Murabitun in the eleventh century who revived Islam throughout the Maghrib and al-Andalus under the tutelage of Abdallah ibn Yasin, the teacher sent to them from Kairouan, where the living record of the ‘amal ahli'l-madina had been passed on unbroken from the time of Malik himself. The force of this teaching was recognised by the great scholar of India, Shah Waliullah, who explicitly propagated it as a way of reviving the deen in India in the face of the advancing British imperialism.

But what is it that gives this teaching such force? What is the source of its strength? Its strength lies in the fact that it passes on something that was a lived reality - it focuses on the people and what they actually did. Texts are merely used to prove their authenticity. And that continued to be the way of all of those who followed that teaching. When Qadi ‘Iyad, 400 years later, wrote his great work Tartib al-Madarik, tracing the history of the Madinan school down to his own time, he did not dwell on the texts written within it over the centuries but rather devoted himself to describing the type of men it produced. The judgements were secondary to the people. And that provides us with the strongest indication of the most essential ingredient for a healthy, living, society - healthy, living people. People are the medium through which Allah brings about change - that is Allah’s sunna in His creation. Whenever a people went astray, He sent people to guide them back to the Straight Path. Allah says,

 

إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُوا مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ

 

the translation of which is, “Allah never changes a people's state until they change what is in themselves.” The men and women who will be the vehicle for the re-establishment of the deen will be those men and women who transform themselves, inwardly and outwardly, through remembrance of Allah and obedience to Him and His Messenger. It is only the qawm - those who acknowledge their own helplessness and hand their affair over to Allah completely and utterly - who will be granted success in this task. The Muslims had to first undergo the purification and hardship of Makka, and give bay’a to the Messenger of Allah,  before they could establish Madina. For it is only when the core of the Muslim jama’a, represented by ‘ibada, is firmly in place and there is strong leadership that the necessary third element, mu’amalat can be brought into being. And the only way to ensure that strong leadership is to give bay’a to an amir. This is an essential part of the contract and is, in fact, part of obedience to Allah. Abu Hurayra narrated that the Messenger said, 

 

من أطاعني فقد أطاع اللَّه، ومن عصاني فقد عصى اللَّه، ومن يطع الأمير فقد أطاعني، ومن يعص الأمير فقد عصاني

 

“Whoever obeys me has obeyed Allah and whoever disobeys me has disobeyed Allah. Whoever obeys the amir has obeyed me and whoever disobeys the amir has disobeyed me.”  It is this leadership that turns a group of individuals into a jama’a and gives them direction, for a body is powerless to act without a head. It is then that they become the transformative  catalyst needed to revitalise the deen. As the Prophet said,

يد الله مع الجماعة

 

“The hand of Allah is with the jama‘a.” So, we ask Allah to make us into a strong jama’a. We ask Allah to strengthen our leaders, guide them to what is pleasing to You, and give us and them the capacity to do what needs to be done in order to see your deen living and flourishing once more.

 

أقول قولي هذا و أستغفر الله لي و لكم و لسائر المسلمين من كل ذنب فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرَّحيم.الحمد لله الحمد لله رب العالمين، وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له وأشهد أن محمداً عبده ورسوله، صلى الله وسلم وبارك عليه وعلى آله وصحبه، والتابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.

أما بعد! فيأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله ما استطعتم واسمعوا وأطيعوا وأنفقوا خيرا لأنفسكم. يا عباد الله أوصيكم وإياي بتقوى الله وطاعته وأحذركم وإياي عن معصيته ومخالفته. قال النبي صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: الدينُ معاملة

 

The Prophet said, “The Deen is mu‘amala - transactions”. In order for the deen to truly once again be in place, the zone of mu’amala must once again be restored. Even though it constitutes two thirds of fiqh, this vital aspect of the deen has almost completely fallen by the wayside, especially those elements relating to business and trade. Muslims, just like everyone else, have become enslaved by modern finance and no longer even think of those things as falling under the bailiwick of Islam - you have your work and your deen or so the belief goes. But that was not the way of the first Muslim community. Indeed, the first thing the Prophet did after establishing the mosque was to establish the market, and the place that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab mentioned as the place he would most like to die in was the market-place, indicating both the incredible emphasis that the deen places on economic activities and the similarity between it and jihad. And that is confirmed by the hadith of the Prophet,

 

طلب الحلال جهاد

 

“Seeking halal earnings is a jihad.” The market and the economic sphere is the venue for the jihad - it is there that the Muslims will find their enemy, as Shaykh AbdalQadir says in his seminal work, Sign of the Sword:

“It is vital that the Muslim mujahideen do not mistake the enemy and think this is a war against a nation or a leader. … It is a Jihad against the usurious banking entity.” 

But that jihad is not one which is fought with physical weapons since, as the Shaykh says, “It is not merely a personnel but a method, a deen, with its Temples, the banks; with its holy places the Stock Exchanges of the world; and its false scriptures – the data-banks of figures, these magical millions and billions that hold the world's poor to ransom for the sake of a small elite of kafir power brokers … It is with these that war must be waged.” 

No, our weapon will be the restoration of the mu’amalat as instituted by the first community in Madina. And that is a weapon that none can stand against, for it is divinely ordained and true, and as Allah says, 

 

جَاءَ الْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ الْبَاطِلُ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا

 

the translation of which is, “Truth has come and falsehood has vanished. Falsehood is always bound to vanish.” Falsehood can never stand in the face of truth, and there is nothing more false than the numbers of money wizards today. They are the modern magicians of Pharaoh, but we have the staff of Musa. Allah says,

 

فَلَمَّا أَلْقَوْا سَحَرُوا أَعْيُنَ النَّاسِ وَاسْتَرْهَبُوهُمْ وَجَاءُوا بِسِحْرٍ عَظِيمٍ وَأَوْحَيْنَا إِلَى مُوسَى أَنْ أَلْقِ عَصَاكَ فَإِذَا هِيَ تَلْقَفُ مَا يَأْفِكُونَ فَوَقَعَ الْحَقُّ وَبَطَلَ مَا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ فَغُلِبُوا هُنَالِكَ وَانْقَلَبُوا صَاغِرِينَ

 

the translation of which is, “When they (i.e. the magicians) threw, they cast a spell on the people's eyes and caused them to feel great fear of them. They produced an extremely powerful magic. So We revealed to Musa, ‘Throw down your staff.’ And it immediately swallowed up what they had forged. So the Truth took place and what they did was shown to be false. They were defeated then and there, transformed into humbled men.”

These mu’amalat will be restored by restoring the institutions that gave them a functional reality. These institutions included the dinar and dirham, free and open markets, caravans, guilds, halal contracts and waqfs. All of these institutions were founded on the principle of ‘adl or equity. Allah says,

 

إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ وَإِيتَاءِ ذِي الْقُرْبَى

 

the translation of which is: “Allah commands justice and doing good and giving to relatives.” And He says,

 

وَلَا يَجْرِمَنَّكُمْ شَنَآَنُ قَوْمٍ عَلَى أَلَّا تَعْدِلُوا اعْدِلُوا هُوَ أَقْرَبُ لِلتَّقْوَى

 

the translation of which is, “Do not let hatred for a people incite you into not being just. Be just. That is closer to taqwa.” Equity means that a transaction is just and of mutual benefit to both parties. It is not one in which the cards are stacked in favour of one of the parties, as is the case will almost every transaction carried out today. And that is because the lie that is propagated in the modern world is that the secret to wealth and prosperity is stockpiling capital and profit in the hands of the few, whereas the truth is the very opposite, for as a wise man said, ‘A country does not prosper by making profits; its equity is its profit.’ So we ask Allah to make us people of ‘adl and ihsan and give us the strength and the knowledge to restore the mu’amalat and revive the deen in our time. We ask Him to bring life and health back to our communities and societies and grant us a swift victory over our enemies.

 

إِنَّ اللهَ وَمَلَائِكَتَهُ يُصَلُّونَ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ، يَا أَيُهَا الذِينَ آمَنُواْ صَلُّواْ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلِّمُواْ تَسْلِيماً. اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ وَسَلِّمْ وَبَارِكْ عَلَيْهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ  أَجْمَعِينَ. 

وَارْضَ اللَّهُمَّ عَنِ الْخُلَفَاءِ الرَّاشِدِينَ أَبِي بَكْرٍ وَعُمَرَ وَعُثْمَانَ وَعَلِيٍّ، وَعَنْ سَائِرِ الصَّحَابَةِ أَجْمَعِينَ، خُصُوصاً اِلأَنْصَارَ مِنْهُمْ وَالمُهَاجِرِينَ، وَعَنِ التَّابِعِينَ وَتَابِعِي التَّابِعِينَ وَمَنْ تَبِعَهُمْ بِإِحْسَانٍ إِلَى يَوْمِ الدِّينِ.

اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِ وُلَاةَ أُمُورِ المُسْلِمِينَ لِمَا يُرْضِيكَ وَلِاتِّبَاعِ سُنَّةِ نَبِيِّكَ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ، وَثَبِّتْ أَقْدَامَهُمْ عَلَى الصِّرَاطِ المُسْتَقِيمِ، وَأَصْلِحْهُمْ يَا رَبَّ الْعَالَمِينَ.

اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ عَلَى شَيْخِنَا، وَعَلَى أَمِيرِنَا، وَعَلَى جَمِيعِ أُمَرَاءِ وَزُعَمَاءِ المُسْلِمِينَ.  

اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ عَلَى المُسْلِمِينَ فِي هَذِهِ المَدِينَةِ، وَوَفِّقْهُمْ لِمَا تُحِبُّهُ وَتَرْضَاهُ يَا أَكْرَمَ الأَكْرَمِينَ. 

اللَّهُمَّ أَعِزَّ الإِسْلَامَ وَالمُسِْلمِينَ (3) وَاخْذُلِ الْكُفْرَ وَالْكَافِرِينَ، وَانْصُرِ المُجَاهِدِينَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللهِ. وَاجْعَلْ كَلِمََتَكَ هِيَ العُلْيَا وَكَلِمَةَ الْكُفْرِ هِيَ السُّفْلَى.

رَبَّنَا ءَاتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقَِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ. 

اللَّهُمَّ لاَ تَدَعْ فِي مَقَامِنَا هَذَا ذَنْباً إِلاَّ غَفَرْتَهُ، وَلاَ عَيْباً إِلاَّ سَتَرْتَهُ، وَلاَ مَرِيضاً إِلاَّ شَفَيْتَهُ وَعَافَيْتَهُ، وَلاَ مَسْجُوناً إِلاَّ طَلَقْتَ سَرَاحَهُ، وَلاَ مُسَافِراً فِي بَرِّكَ وَبَحْرِكَ إِلاَّ سَلِِمْتَهُ وَغَنِمْتَهُ.

إِنَّ اللهَ يَامُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالإِحْسَانِ وَإِيتَاءِ ذِي الْقُرْبَى، وَيَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالمُنكَرِ وَالْبَغْيِ، يَعِظُكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَّكَّرُونَ، وَلَذِكْرُ اللهِ أَكْبَرُ وَاللهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَصْنَعُونَ. وَقُومُواْ إِلَى صَلاتِكُمْ يَرْحَمُكُمُ اللهُ.