With the Hadith
Initiative in Obedience
We greet you all, dear friends everywhere, in a new episode of your program "With the Hadith." We begin with the best greeting: Peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you.
It is mentioned in Sahih Muslim, in the explanation of Imam Al-Nawawi "with modifications" in the chapter on urging to hasten with good deeds before the appearance of trials:
Yahya bin Ayyub, Qutaiba, and Ibn Hajar all narrated to me from Ismail bin Jaafar. Ibn Ayyub said: Ismail narrated to us, saying: Al-Alaa informed me from his father, from Abu Hurairah, that the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, said: Hasten to do good deeds before trials appear like pieces of a dark night, when a man will be a believer in the morning and an infidel in the evening, or a believer in the evening and an infidel in the morning, selling his religion for a worldly gain.
Dear listeners:
The trials that Muslims are experiencing these days are not hidden from anyone. They have affected the common people and the elite, so they live between hearsay and gossip, and between "I heard from so-and-so" and "I read for so-and-so," and everyone is asking about what is right, about a way out, and about the path. In the midst of this turmoil comes the hadith of our noble Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace: Hasten to do good deeds before trials appear like pieces of a dark night.
O Muslims:
Initiative is competition and rivalry, but not in worldly matters, but in matters of the Hereafter. This is the path, this is the way out. Hasten and compete with others in working to get out of these trials, with awareness of reality, with knowledge of what is right and correct, by calling people to goodness and righteousness, by working to honor this religion, by working with those who are working to re-establish the rule of the Book of God and the Sunnah of His Prophet among people. Those who take the initiative and hasten to do good deeds exist in this time just as they existed in the time of our noble Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace. But those who have neglected work and have not taken the initiative, have not competed, and have not understood the reality of the situation they are living in, will flounder in these trials, they will go from darkness to darkness, they will begin the day considering unlawful what God has forbidden and end the day considering it lawful, and they do not know the taste or path of truth.
O God, hasten for us a rightly-guided caliphate on the method of prophethood, in which the disunity of the Muslims is mended, and what they are in of affliction is lifted from them. O God, illuminate the earth with the light of Your generous countenance. O God, Amen, Amen.
Dear loved ones, and until we meet you with another prophetic hadith, we leave you in God's care, and peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you.
Written for the radio by: Abu Maryam