الحمد لله، الحمد لله الذي جعل النجاحَ والتوفيقَ في طاعةِ الصادقِ الأمين، وجعل سنتَه وحياتَه تفسيرا وتوضيحا لكتابه الكريم، 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 وأدٌى 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.

In the course of this past month, we have been talking about the Messenger of Allah, about his tremendous qualities, about honouring him and loving him and about showing him the respect that is his due. There are a number of ways of doing that, studying his seera, including his shama’il and fada’il, praising him and doing plentiful salawat upon him and celebrating his mawlid. But, by far the most important way any one of us can truly honour the Prophet is to follow his sunna. For that is the very heart of the matter which we are upon. Allah says,

وما أرسلنا من رسول إلا ليطاع بإذن الله

the translation of which is, “We did not send any Messenger but for him to be obeyed by the permission of Allah.” Allah did not send Messengers so that we could simply read about them and admire them from afar - he sent them to give us a living example of how we should live our lives.

لَقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِي رَسُولِ اللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ لِمَنْ كَانَ يَرْجُو اللَّهَ وَالْيَوْمَ الْآَخِرَ

the translation of which is, “You have an excellent model in the Messenger of Allah, for all who put their hope in Allah and the Last Day.”

They were not simply the bearers of a Message, they were the living embodiment of it. The Qur’an could not have been revealed to anyone other than the Messenger and its meaning would have been lost to mankind without him. 

There have always been those who have sought to downgrade the importance of sunna and make the Qur’an the sole criterion for judging the correctness of an action. Such people even appeared in the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah, causing him to remark,

لا ألفين أحدكم متكئا على أريكته يأتيه الأمر من أمري مما أمرت به أو نهيت عنه فيقول: لا أدري، ما وجدنا في كتاب الله اتبعناه

“Do not let any of you be found reclining on his bed when he hears an injunction from me which is from among those things which I myself have commanded or forbidden so that he says, ‘I do not know. We only follow what we find in the Book of Allah.’” And such a viewpoint is at the very cornerstone of modernism, for abandoning the sunna is the only way that they can justify adopting the institutions of kufr and adapting Islam to ‘meet the times’. By disregarding the sunna, they hope to make the deen ‘a deen of moral principles’ rather than a deen of laws, they hope to make it less a matter for society and more a matter left to individual conscience, they hope to turn Islam into a religion in the modern sense of the word. 

Well the truth of the matter is that there is no way to follow the Qur’an without following the sunna, and without giving the sunna primary importance. Umar ibn Abdal-Aziz said, 

سنّ رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم ووُلاةُ الأمر بعده سُنَنا، الأخذُ بها تصديقٌ بكتابِ الله، واستعمالٌ بطاعة الله، وقوةٌ على دين الله

“The Messenger of Allah made a Sunna and the people in command after him made sunnas. To adopt them is to affirm the Book of Allah, and to act on them is to obey Allah and strengthen the deen of Allah.” One cannot divorce the Quran from the Sunna and anyone who does so is in effect rejecting them both, for rejecting the sunna is tantamount to rejecting some of the ayas of the Quran, such as Allah’s Words:

وما آتاكم الرسول فخذوه وما نهاكم عنه فانتهوا  

the translation of which is, “Whatever the Messenger gives you you should accept and whatever He forbids you you should forgo.” And rejecting part of the Quran is the same as rejecting it in its entirety. So anyone who disregards the sunna as a source of law and bases his deen entirely on the Quran is an unbeliever - such people are no longer part of the umma of the Prophet, for he said,

من اقتدى بي فهو مني، ومن رغب عن سنتي فليس مني 

“Whoever follows me is of me and whoever wants to abandon my sunna is not of me.” The sunna is the very heart of the deen, and holding firm to it is the secret to success in both this world and the Next, especially in these troubled times. As the Prophet said,

المتمسك بسنتي عند فساد أمتي له أجر مائة شهيد

“The one who clings to my sunna when the community is corrupt will have the reward of a hundred martyrs.” We ask Allah to increase in love of His Messenger and make us people who honour him in the way he should be honoured and cling to his sunna. And we ask His help in bringing the parts of the sunna that have died back to life and restoring it in its full glory and magnificence.

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.

Today there are many Muslims who purport to follow the sunna, but seem to have a warped, or at least a limited, idea of what that means, either thinking it enough to make cosmetic changes to their person such as by growing their beard to a certain length or using the miswak or dressing in a certain manner; or enough to make cosmetic changes to their daily routines,  such as by memorising and reciting a whole litany of duas for every occasion or doing lots of supererogatory prayers during the night.

While it cannot be denied that many of these matters are part of the sunna - and this is by no means a call on any one to cease doing them - they miss the entire point about why the Messenger of Allah was sent. Mankind was in darkness and needed a light to show them the way. That light was Sayyiduna Muhammad. Allah says,

اللَّهُ نُورُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ مَثَلُ نُورِهِ كَمِشْكَاةٍ فِيهَا مِصْبَاحٌ الْمِصْبَاحُ فِي زُجَاجَةٍ الزُّجَاجَةُ كَأَنَّهَا كَوْكَبٌ دُرِّيٌّ يُوقَدُ مِنْ شَجَرَةٍ مُبَارَكَةٍ زَيْتُونَةٍ لَا شَرْقِيَّةٍ وَلَا غَرْبِيَّةٍ يَكَادُ زَيْتُهَا يُضِيءُ وَلَوْ لَمْ تَمْسَسْهُ نَارٌ نُورٌ عَلَى نُورٍ يَهْدِي اللَّهُ لِنُورِهِ مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَيَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْأَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ وَاللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ

the translation of which is, “Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The metaphor of his Light is that of a niche in which there is a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, the glass like a brilliant star, lit from a blessed tree, an olive,neither of the east nor of the west, its oil all but giving off light even if no fire touches it. Light upon Light. Allah guides to His Light whoever He wills and Allah makes metaphors for mankind and Allah has knowledge of all things.

According to Ka’b al-Ahbar, Ibn Jubayr and others from among the Companions, “the metaphor of his light” refers to the light of the Messenger of Allah. 

He is the misbah, “the lamp”. But the light of that lamp must pass through a glass before it can reach us and if that glass is opaque, blackened or dirty, it reaches only dimly if at all. That glass is the sharia, the set of laws Allah prescribed to this umma, a complete package that gives us guidance in every aspect of our lives. 

The true sunna of the Messenger of Allah is none other than the establishment and implementation of the deen in its totality, and anyone who is content with anything less is not truly following his sunna. The true lovers of the Messenger of Allah, the true defenders of his sunna are those who strive to recover what has been lost of the deen, those who do not rest and do not stop until it has been established in all its glory. The true lovers of the Messenger of Allah are those who come to a place that is in darkness and leave it in light, those who come to a place without deen and leave it a Madinah, for that was the way of our noble Prophet.

If you see someone who constantly speaks about the Prophet and says salawat on him, dresses in a thawb, has a long beard, fasts Mondays and Thursdays and fills his night with prayer, and yet is content with the status quo and does or says nothing to change it, then know that he is further from the sunna than the Muslim who does not necessarily do any of the above but works tirelessly to rid society of riba and the institutions of kufr and re-establish a society along the Madinan model. So, show your love for the Messenger of Allah and honour him by following the teachings of our Shaykh and restoring the Shariah in its entirety. That is the Sunna of the Messenger of Allah and that is the Sunna of his Companions and all those who followed in their footsteps. We ask Allah to place us upon their footsteps and give us the success and strength to put His Deen into practice. 

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.