Khutba About the Council

Muslims: I exhort you to have Taqwa from Allah, to be sincere with each other and to help each other to achieve success and triumph in this life and in the Hereafter.
Know that Allah is pleased with you, that Allah has created man and has put in him the instinct of companionship, of community, of life with his fellow men.
Adam’s son is a being whose nature leads him to live in community, not to isolate himself from the world.
The true believer is the one who puts it into practice, the one who loves his brothers and sisters and strives to live with them, to forgive their mistakes, to overlook their faults, to see the good aspects and forget the bad, to desire the good for his brothers and sisters, to want for them what he wants for himself.
The Messenger of Allah said: “None of you believes until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself.” The strength of the Muslims, the strength of the believers, lies in this.
It lies in union, in being brothers, in being as one body, in strengthening one another.
The Messenger of Allah said: “You see the believers, in their mutual compassion, affection and kindness, as one body; if one part complains, the rest of the body responds with sleeplessness and fever.” As believing Muslims we must lean on one another.
Support each other to continue growing, to move forward.
And if we support each other and help each other in the good, in achieving our goals, we will be as the Companions of the Messenger of Allah were, the best of the communities.
Allah says in His Book: “By Time! How true it is that man is in a loss. But not so those who believe, perform good deeds, exhort themselves to the truth and exhort themselves to patience” (Surah of Time).
Every human being is at a loss.
Every man or woman is diminishing, losing everything.
We are all on the path of perdition except those who believe in Allah, those who do good deeds, those who exhort one another, those who call each other, those who counsel truth and patience to each other.
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon Allaah be upon him) said: “The Deen, the counsel.”
They said: “To whom, O Messenger of Allah?”
He said: “To Allah, to His Book, to His Messenger, to the imams of the Muslims and to all of them” (Rawahu Muslim).
Giving each other sincere advice brings the Muslim community together, collaborates, supports each other, and drives away confrontations, hatred, enmity, and disputes.
Counsel means loyalty, sincerity, truthfulness, purity, wishing the good to whom you are advising.
The advice, or loyalty, to Allah is to proclaim His Unity, to turn to Him in repentance, to worship Him as He should be worshipped, to turn away from what He has forbidden externally and internally.
It means turning to Him at all times, elevating your matter to Him and leaving it in His hands.
Loyalty, the advice to the Book of Allah is its recitation, its memorization, its understanding.
Advice, loyalty, sincerity with the Messenger of Allah is to obey Him, to follow Him, to love Him, to take Him as an example in every situation, to follow and to carry out His Sunnah. With regard to the imams of the Muslims, we must bear in mind that this category includes anyone who has a position of authority, both public and private.
One has loyalty to them by giving them support and obeying them in all that they command us and that pleases Allah; helping them in everything we can so that they can fulfill their obligations, being for them a support and not a burden; and ask for guidance and success for them.
Advice, loyalty to all Muslims.
This means desiring the good for them to the same extent that you desire the good for yourself and turning away from harming them in the same way that you do not want the evil for yourself.
O slaves of Allah: Know that giving advice has certain conditions.
Not all of us have the capacity to do so; Not every time is good to do it, if what you are looking for is really that change from evil to good. Consequently, these conditions must be kept in mind: The first and most important is sincerity.
First of all, your sincerity with Allah, and then your sincerity with your brother.
Sincerity in the sense that you do it because you really want their good; You are not looking for position, you are not looking for pride, you are not looking for people to talk about you and your advice.
Sincere counselors are those who do not divulge their advice, do not boast of it, hide it like a trick between him and the one who has asked him for that advice, since their objective is the good of that brother of his, it is to improve his condition, to protect his honor and his name.
The second condition is knowledge.
Knowledge of what you are advising, of the situation in which that person is, of everything that surrounds them, of what that advice can contribute.
Actual knowledge of the error that person is in.
Knowledge that what you advise you do at the right time and in the right way.
Knowledge that that person will listen to your advice, for if you do not do it with knowledge, then it is possible that by wanting to fix a munkar you will cause a greater munkar , and may Allah save us from it.
And the third condition is that, in the event that the person you advise is doing a clear evil and not a doubtful matter.
What the one who acts in this way does is to break and dynamite the strength of the Muslims, which lies in the jama’at, in union, in remaining united as one body.
O Allah, we ask you that we may be able to be loyal and give each other good advice among the Muslims.
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon Allaah be upon you) said: “Whoever among you sees a munkar , let him change it with his hand; if he cannot, let him do it with his tongue; and if he cannot, let him do it with his heart, and this is the lowest of the Imam.”
In this hadith, the Messenger of Allah gives us the keys to fix a munkar that we witness.
The first condition is that it is a munkar, that it is an obvious evil deed, that it is something that goes against what is stated by Allah in His Book and by the Messenger of Allah in His Sunnah.
If it is not a clear munkar , the rest of the hadith does not apply.
And the Prophet, p.a.w.
s., says: “Let him change it with his hand.” Let him who has the power to do it with his hand, who has authority and position to do it with his hand, change it with his hand.
Whoever does not have that position, whoever does not have that authority, then let him change it with his tongue.
With his tongue he does have the knowledge and wisdom to do so.
With his tongue if his voice is going to be heard because he is a person of knowledge, because he is a person of experience and understanding.
And if not, if he does not have these qualities, then let him change it in his heart, let him change it in his heart by not doing the same, rejecting it with his heart and asking Allah sincerely that his brother will stop doing munkar and do good. Muslims: The believer is a mirror of the believer, he is the reflection of himself.
Consequently, if you see something in others that is wrong, something that you think is wrong, the first thing you should do is look at yourself, ask yourself if what you have seen wrong in that person is a defect that you also have, a similar one or even a bigger one.
And the next thing you have to do is seek knowledge on that matter, since it is possible that what you see as a mistake in your brother is something right and you are the one who is wrong.
As brothers that we are, as Muslims that we are, we cannot weaken each other.
We have to stand together, the strong and the weak, the people of knowledge and the ignorant, the rich and the poor.
We will all be judged by Allah, and we will be judged individually, and woe to the one who wrongfully harms his Muslim brother!
Fear Allah, O His servants.
Be aware of the world in which we live, lean on (a) one another, do not weaken each other, strengthen one another, do not attack each other.
We need to protect and help ourselves.
Muslims protect themselves and are loyal; Hypocrites attack and deceive each other.
Desire for your brethren what you desire for yourselves, love for them what you want for yourselves, exhort one another to the truth, commend one another to patience; if you do this, if you believe in Allah and do the deeds of good, you will be saved from falling into perdition and misdirection and you will be one of the victors in this life and in the Hereafter.
O Allah, we ask You to make us sincere in giving advice and sincere in receiving it. Khutba of Shaykh Ahmed BermejoGreat Mosque of Granada