21st April 2006

Believers! One of the instinctive indications of every human being is to strive for happiness and to seek the means of attaining enjoyment and well-being, but people vary greatly in their understanding of happiness and what the best means to achieve it are. There are people who consider it to be related to the acquisition of wealth and others who connect it to the possession of good health. Yet others think it is dependent on social standing and many think it is simply abandoning themselves to the gratification of their appetites.
Everyone then devotes themselves to pursuing those means they imagine will produce the desired result. But at the end of the story, all of them will discover that their assessment missed the mark, they have not achieved their aim and the only outcome of their lives is loss and regret. Yet the Creator, may His Power be exalted, Who is more Merciful to His creatures than is a mother to her newly born baby, has made the true path to happiness absolutely clear to us, and has made following it easy for us. It is not only a matter in this case of happiness in this world but also in the Next.
All that is necessary is Iman and right action. Allah ta’ala says in His Noble Book in Surat an-Nahl:
[arabic]
97          Anyone who acts rightly,
                   male or female,
                        being a mumin,
              We will give them a good life
                   and We will recompense them
            according to the best of what they did.
 Acting rightly encompasses every form of obedience both in acts of worship and day to day transactions. Iman has progressive degrees and has six pillars. One of the signs of a good life is having hope of Allah’s mercy and aspiration for his reward because that has a sweetness which only those who taste it know. The enjoyment of Halal provision is part of a good life, as is being content and satisfied with what Allah has allotted to you. Al fro the happiness of the Nest World, that is an everlasting state which Allah has prepared in the Garden for His believing friends.
If our Lord makes it possible for us to take the path of happiness , He does so by singling us out to take advantage of particular times and places where his Mercy is manifest. The place in this world where Allah’s Mercy is most manifest is the Mosque. The Prophet, sallallahu ’alayhi wa sallam, said in a hadith in Muslim reported by Abu Hurayra: “People do not gather in one of the houses of Allah reciting Allah’[s Book and studying it, without the stillness of the Sakina descending upon them, and mercy covering them, and angels surrounding them and Allah mentioning them among those who are with him.”
The houses of Allah are places of dhikr and prayer and crucibles within which the selves of the Muslims are forged and where they are cured of their attachment to this world and where the social divisions of this world are evened out because no-one is superior to anyone else except by taqwa and right action. According to these things alone, people are looked on by their Lord with a glance of Mercy and their supplications are answered. Last week we saw that the first institution in the new Islamic polity was the Mosque and it was the basis of every other institution, and the blueprint for all subsequent developments. When the Muslims respected and honoured the role of the Mosque and they elevated the standing of the houses of Allah, Allah elevated them and raised them up and opened up this world in from of them and they will become examples for the whole of mankind with respect to leadership and justice and all kinds of knowledge.
But when the mosques lost their pivotal role and ceased to play a central part in the daily life of the Muslim Community and became restricted – in contrast to what it had been previously – to merely being a place of prayer, the Muslims became weak and abase and exchanged their role of world leadership for one where they were merely followers like froth on a fold and they turned into no more than a wagging tail. When we read those Ayats in which Allah praises those who properly use the Mosque, we find reference to those who use the whole earth properly and put things in their orrect order in the world as a whole. As for example in the Ayat in Surat an-Nur in which Allah tal’ala says:
[arabic]
36          In houses which Allah has permitted to be built
                   and in which His name is remembered,
              there are men who proclaim His glory
                   morning and evening,
              not distracted by trade or commerce
                   from the remembrance of Allah
                        and the establishment of salat
                                               and the payment of zakat […]
In these words we find glorification and dhikr of Allah and the establishment of the Salat, alongside matters of economic life such as wealth, trading, and the giving of Zakat. The Book of Allah praises these men and describes them as having masculinity, meaning nobility, and there is a great difference between simply being male and having this kind of masculinity.
Allah ta’ala describes them like this because they put everything in its right place and give everything its due. Their business affairs and jobs do not prevent them form fulfilling to the full their responsibility of attending the mosque and worshipping their Lord and at the same time they do not lean towards a monastic lifestyle which is forbidden by the Shari’at of Islam. They honour the houses of Allah and busy themselves with their essential means of glorification and remembrance of Allah, having already built them in a material sense. If it were not for their wealth the mosque would not have been built in the first place. Allah connected prayer in the mosque with the giving of Zakat just as Salat is worship, with respect to the body, Zakat is worship with respect to wealth. If Salat in jama’a is demanded an rewarded twenty-five times more than Salat alone, it must certainly be clear that the social aspect included in the payment of Zakat is not less important because the gaining of wealth is inevitably a matter involving society as a whole, and the payment of Zakat necessarily involves the jama’a.
There are three aspects to this jama’a: the givers, the receivers and those who ennoble the transaction to take place. All of these find their meeting place in the mosque and in their recitation of Allah’s Book and their study of it. This in itself brings about the descent of Mercy and the Tranquillity and the angelic presence, ensuring baraka in their transactions, and the putting right their lives in this world, and thereby confirming their happiness in this world and the Next.
Our Deen involves the whole of our lives every day from the time we wake until we go to bed. If we respond to all the Commands of Allah we will be in a state of continues worship. We cannot confine our Deen to particular times and places, rather it extends through all our daily lives, both in our acts of worship and all our transactions and activities. If we read the Ayat of Jumu’a, which makes it obligatory for us to attend Salat al-Jumu’a, we find in the same Ayat judgments about our activity in the market place and what is permitted and forbidden there. When the Prayer is called, the Muslim must abandon everything which keeps him from the Prayer, but when the Prayer is over, he is encouraged to return to his daily activities and his means of obtaining his Rizq. At the same time he is instructed to continue remembering his Lord, in fact to increase in it, and in this lies the path of success in this world and the Next.