The Jumu’ah khutbah delivered by Imam Didmar Faja at UICA on the 03/09/2018
Topic: HOW TO DEAL AND OVERCOME THE CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS IN OUR LIFE
All praise be to Allah, the Most Merciful and peace and blessings be upon the Prophet Muhammad (saw), his family, his companions and the believers who follow them on the path of goodness.
Allah says in the Qur’an:
يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَى وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ شُعُوبًا وَقَبَائِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوا
إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ
O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted. (Surah al-hujuraat Verse 13)
When it comes to dealing with challenges, we find that there are different types of people who respond differently based on their upbringing, their different characters and personalities.
• There are some people who find the challenges very difficult and they just let go and don’t get engage with them, thus resulting into a boring life with no meaning and no sense. They get use to skip everything.
• There are other people who panic in front of challenges and they get reactionary through panicking. When this happens, they start blaming themselves, the situation or blame the other people.
• There are some who take the challenges like a burden and they just want to get done with them. They are always in the skipping mode.
• Yet, there are other people who remain calm in front of challenges. They neither panic and nor skip them. They think about tackling the challenges and take lessons from them. These people automatically know how to deal with the problems and this is the best category of people.
The believer looks at the challenge as a positive thing in life. Because Allah will purify him of his mistakes and sins and through this, Allah teaches him many things. When a challenge comes to you, embrace it, then deal with it and afterwards learn from it.
The Prophet Muhammad (saw), being a man of wisdom and thought, accepted the challenges and overcame them. Therefore, Allah gave him victory. Otherwise, if he and his community were people who were unable to overcome the challenges, or remain inactive, we would not be Muslims today.
Mercy and forgiveness are shown when the case is evaluated. One of the best example is the ‘conquest of Makkah’ when the Prophet Muhammad (saw) returned to Makkah from Madinah. One of the companions, Sa’d ibn Ubaadah (ra) said: “Today is the day of slaughtering. Today is the day wherein Allah will put down the Quraish”. Abu Sufyan who became Muslim at that time was worried about the statement of the companion and submitted the affair to the Prophet (saw) to which he (saw) replied: “Today is the day of mercy. Today is the day when Allah (swt) will elevate the Quraish”. He (saw) analyzed the situation and showed mercy and forgiveness as they are more beneficial than slaughtering; with the hope that the people will accept Islam. He did not show mercy to people only but also to animals.
In an authentic hadith which came at that time, hadith narrated by Abdullah ibn Amr: The Messenger of Allah (saw) said:
عَنْ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ عَمْرٍو قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ الرَّاحِمُونَ
يَرْحَمُهُمْ الرَّحْمَنُ ارْحَمُوا مَنْ فِي الْأَرْضِ يَرْحَمْكُمْ مَنْ فِي السَّمَاءِ
“Those who are merciful will be shown mercy by the Most Merciful. Be merciful to those on the earth and the One in the heavens will have mercy upon you.” (Reported in Sunah at-Tirmidhi 1924)
Often, people tend to become reactionary or they do not pursue a challenge because they get tired of it, or they had a past experience from it and they simply don’t want to go through it anymore and they even get scared of it sometimes. But Islam teaches us to be people of courage and not to fall because one time we failed, so we won’t try again. Life is not like that.
Allah says in the Qur’an (Surah Baqara Verse 214):
أَمْ حَسِبْتُمْ أَن تَدْخُلُوا الْجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَأْتِكُم مَّثَلُ الَّذِينَ خَلَوْا مِن قَبْلِكُم مَّسَّتْهُمُ الْبَأْسَاءُ وَالضَّرَّاءُ وَزُلْزِلُوا حَتَّى يَقُولَ الرَّسُولُ وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مَعَهُ مَتَى نَصْرُ اللَّهِ أَلَا إِنَّ نَصْرَ اللَّهِ قَرِيبٌ
Or do you expect to enter Paradise before the example of those who came before you had reached you? Adversity and hardship had afflicted them, and they were so shaken up, that the Messenger and those who believed with him said, “When is God’s victory?” Indeed, God’s victory is near.
Life is a struggle and full of challenges. If we fail one time, we must try a second time. If we fail the second time, we must try again maybe with a different approach. They say that Thomas Edison, the American inventor who invented electricity, failed over a 100 times before succeeding and today we have electricity everywhere.
Often people get stuck for something that happened previously and they decide not to do anything about it and that also is not a good way to deal with it. We must evaluate the problem and not get scared when approaching the challenges and not play the blaming game and start blaming others. This is not going to solve the problem either. We need to think deeply about the situation and look for changes. Nevertheless, we can only explain to someone who is at the level of understanding. Sometimes, you can understand the level of intelligence of people based on their behaviour and their reaction. Therefore, evaluating the situation is necessary and we must not think that everybody is the same!
Allah says in the Qur’an in many places that He (swt) loves the ‘Muhsineen’. He (swt) loves those who are progressing and part of being a progressing person is to evaluate the situation and you learn from them and letting go.
Letting go means being in peace with yourself and with things that you don’t have control over. However, letting go does not mean that you completely forget about it. And letting go is not to remain with fear, worry and anxiety in your heart because of that.
We ask Allah (swt) to give us the courage to face the challenges that we have ahead in our life. May Allah (swt) make this life easy for us so that we can earn paradise.