Episode 29 The Farewell Pilgrimage

The farewell pilgrimage and the farewell sermon of the Prophet ﷺ, is one of the most incredible and comprehensive moments of the life of the Prophet ﷺ. There's so much to even talk about. was just speaking with Shaykh Abdul Nasir about this episode and we came up with, like, four or five different ways to think about it. It's just that amazing. And encourage everyone to look into it. But wanted to point out, think, what will be valuable lesson. During the final khutbah, the Prophet ﷺ, he mentions this line that just sticks to the ribs. It's something that it penetrates the heart so deeply and it really causes us to reflect and think about how we treat one another. First, let me ask everybody. There's no doubt that everybody reveres and loves Makkah al-Mukarramah and the Kaʿaba and the days of Hajj, Dhul Hijjah, right? The month of Hijjah, especially the first ten days and the days of Hajj. These are sacred moments, sacred places and sacred times and sacred structures. We love them. When you look at the picture of the Kaʿaba, your heart yearns to be there. When you see people making Hajj, you start thinking about how you can get there. And these are signs that these places, these times and these experiences mean so much to us. Now, the Prophet ﷺ in his final khutba, he did something very interesting. He asked everybody this amazing question. He said, "Is this city sacred to you?" Makkah, right? Arafat was right outside the city of Makkah, but he was referring to the area. He said, "Is this بلد, is this land sacred to you?" And the people said, "Yes." And he said, "Is this Kaʿaba, is this Masjid, this Kaʿaba, is this sacred to you?" And they said, "Yes, of course." And he said, "Are these days, and this day, the day of Arafah and these days of Dhul Hijjah, are these sacred to you?" And they said, "Yes, Ya Rasulallah." These are, like, rhetorical questions, almost. There's no answer. Of course, the answer is, "Yes, Ya Rasulallah." And the Prophet ﷺ, as he did, the amazing teacher he was, معلم, he flipped the entire narrative on its head and he said, إن دماءكم وأموالكم واعرض حرام عليكم إلى أن تلقوا ربكم كحرمة يومكم هذا في شهركم هذا في بلدكم هذا الا هل بلغت He said, "Just like you guys have all admitted and you've agreed that this structure, this place, and these days are all sacred, he said, don't forget that, Just like that, the letter ك in Arabic is an equivocation. Just like that. Exactly like you would never disrespect the Kaʿaba, Exactly like you would never disrespect Makkah, you would never disrespect the day of Arafah, He says, "Don't you ever think that you can disrespect each other. إن دماءكم Right. You can't spill blood of each other, you can't be violent with each other, وأموالكم, and people's property, and their rights financially over you, واعرض, and their honor, their reputation. When we think about the sanctity of Makkah, of Dhul Hijjah, of Arafa, of the Haram. We have to remind ourselves that the Prophet ﷺ taught us that the brother or sister that we meet, the family member that we live with, the friends that we have, their reputation, their life, their property, their finances, they deserve our respect and they deserve our reverence. Just like we respect and revere these symbols of Allah ﷻ. The Prophet ﷺ had an amazing way of reminding people that people matter too. We love structures, we love buildings, we love experiences, but people also have to be cared for and also have to be taken care of. We cannot disrespect someone while thinking that we are being respectful of the religion for the sake of religion. It doesn't work like that. The Prophet ﷺ taught us that we have to carry in our hearts deep love and reverence for the heart of another person and subhanʾAllah, when people ask the question, "How could the Prophet ﷺ have been so successful in his mission to spread the message to the Middle East, to Arabia and the world? How was he able to be so impactful and so efficient and successful in allowing people to see the beauty of his message and accepting it? How?" The answer in my understanding, according to this narration and the entire farewell sermon, is that the Prophet ﷺ cared deeply for people. And because he cared for people, they felt seen, they felt heard and they felt loved and they felt respected. The message that he had was only the inevitability of that. If he made people feel unwelcome or unloved or unheard at the expense of something else, then they may have not followed him, but because he had such beautiful, charismatic way of connecting with people and this was his final message. want you to understand that if you know that your time on this earth is coming to an end soon and you have one last gathering with everyone there to tell them something, are you going to waste any of it on something that's not important? No, of course not. So the Prophet ﷺ took this time to impress upon the entire believing community and us that we have to be respectful and loving and we have to really revere each other and take care of each other in order for this Islam thing to work, in order for communities to work. These are the conditions that we have to follow. So we ask Allah ﷻ to give us the respect of each other. Just like we respect the Kaʿaba, just like we respect Makkah, just like we respect Dhul Hijjah, We ask Allah to allow us to respect and to love one another. امين يا رب العالمين. Our goal and objective here at Qalam is to make the knowledge and the understanding of Islam as accessible as possible to as many people as we can. Alhamdulilah, we hope and pray that this video was of benefit to you and that you benefited from the knowledge and the understanding shared here. 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