Khutba on insult against the Prophet (pbuh)
الحمد لله، الحمد لله الذي أرسل رسوله على خلق عظيم، وجعل محبتَه الطريقَ الوحيدَ إلى النعيم، الحمد لله، الحمد لله الذي آذن بالحرب على الربا، وحفِظها في المدينة المنورة، نحمده تعالى ونستعينه، ونشكره تعالى ونستغفره ونستغيثه، نعوذ بالله من شرور أنفسنا ومن سيئات أعمالنا، من يهد الله فهو المهتد ومن يضلل فلن تجد له وليا مرشدا، ونشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له، له الملك و له الحمد، يحيي ويميت، بيده الخير، وهو على كل شيء قدير، ونشهد أن سيدنا و مولانا محمداً عبده ورسوله، وحبيبه وصفيه، بلغ الرسالة وأدى الأمانة ونصح الأمة، النبي الأمي الذي أرسله الله بالهدى والدين الحق، بشيرا ونذيرا بين يدي الساعة، صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلى آله وأصحابه ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
أما بعد! فيا عباد الله اتقوا الله حق تقاته ولا تموتن إلا وأنتم مسلمون. يأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويغفر لكم ذنوبكم. ومن يطع
الله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما. اتقوا الله فيما أمر وانتهوا عما نها عنه وزجر. قال الله تعالى في كتابه الكريم لَقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِي رَسُولِ اللهِ إِسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ
Allah says in His Noble Quran, the translation of which is, “In the Messenger of Allah, you have a fine example.”
The Messenger of Allah is the standard by which all human undertaking is judged – his is the example that all other human beings must aspire to and seek to emulate whether that be in terms of actions, words or states. Whatever he is known to have done is praiseworthy and whatever he is known to have prohibited or avoided is blameworthy. His life and his character is the template, and that template must be preserved and kept free from blemish at all costs. He is the key to all that is good, all that is beneficial, he is the unique source of Allah’s final guidance to mankind. Without him, there is no light to sweep away the darkness and no hope of Allah’s acceptance. To disparage him or demean him in any way is to call the entire affair into question and is one of the worst forms of wrong action that any human being can commit. Allah says,
إِنَّ الذِينَ يُوذُونَ اللهَ وَرَسُولَهُ لَعَنَهُمُ اللهُ فِي الدُّنْيَا وَالآخِرَةِ وَأَعَدَّ لَهُمْ عَذَابًا مُهِينًا
the translation of which is, “Those who harm Allah and His Messenger, Allah has cursed them in this world and the Next World. He has prepared a humiliating punishment for them,” And He also says,
وَالذِينَ يُوذُونَ رَسُولَ اللهِ لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ اَلِيمٌ
the translation of which is, “Those who harm the Messenger of Allah have a painful punishment.” And He also says,
وَمَا كَانَ لَكُمُ أَن تُوذُواْ رَسُولَ اللهِ وَلاَ أَن تَنكِحُواْ أَزْوَاجَهُ مِن بَعْدِهِ أَبَدًا اِنَّ ذَلِكُمْ كَانَ عِندَاللهِ عَظِيمًا
the translation of which is, “It is not for you to hurt the Messenger of Allah and you should not ever marry his wives after him. That is something terrible with Allah.” So, insulting the Messenger of Allah is an action that brings a humiliating punishment and a painful punishment and is one of the things considered ‘adheem, immensely bad, in the eyes of Allah.
So severe, so serious is this matter that Qadi Iyad dedicates a whole section, one quarter part of his great book, the Shifa, to discussing it. Part four is entitled, “The judgements concerning those who think the Prophet imperfect or curse him”, and in it he states that any disparagement of the Messenger merits death, no matter how minor or mild it might appear. Qadi Iyad says,
“Know that all who curse Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or blame him or attribute imperfection to him in his person, his lineage, his deen or any of his qualities, or alludes to that or its like by any means whatsoever, whether in the form of a curse or contempt or belittling him or detracting from him or finding fault with him or maligning him, the judgement regarding such a person is the same as the judgement against anyone who curses him. He is killed as we shall make clear. This judgement extends to anything which amounts to a curse or disparagement. We have no hesitation concerning this matter, be it a clear statement or allusion. The same applies to anyone who curses him, invokes against him, desires to harm him, ascribes to him what does not befit his position or jokes about his mighty affair with foolish talk, satire, disliked words or lies, or reviles him because of any affliction or trial which happened to him, or disparages him because of any of the permissible and well-known human events which happened to him. All of this is the consensus of the ‘ulama’ and the imams of fatwa from the time of the Companions until today.”
He is killed as a hadd punishment without possibility of repentance. Malik said, “Anyone who curses the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, reviles him, finds fault with him or disparages him is killed, be he Muslim or unbeliever, without being asked to repent.” This applies no matter how minor the slight. Ibn Wahb related that Malik said, “Anyone who says that the Prophet’s cloak was dirty, thereby intending to find fault with him, should be killed.” And Abu Muhammad ibn Abi Zayd gave a fatwa to kill a man who was listening to some people discussing what the Prophet looked like. When a man with an ugly face and beard walked by, he said to them, “You want to know what he looked like? He looked like this passer-by in physique and beard.” For that, he was ordered to be killed.
This ruling is clear from the Quran, Sunna and ijma. As for the Quran, we have already mentioned the ayat that they are cursed in this world and the Next, and part of that curse in this world is being killed. Allah says,
مَلْعُونِينَ أَيْنَمَا ثُقِفُواْ أُخِذُواْ وَقُتِّلُواْ تَقْتِيلاً
the translation of which is, “Cursed they will be. Wherever they are found, they are seized and all slain.”
And as for the Sunna, the ruling is clear from both the actions and words of the Messenger of Allah. The Prophet said,
من سب الأنبياء قتل ، ومن سب أصحابي جلّد
“Whoever curses a Prophet, kill him. Whoever curses my Companions, beat him.” And in another hadith, he said,
مَنْ لِي بِكَعْبِ بْنِ الأَشْرَفِ؛ فَإِنَّهُ آذَى اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ
“Who will deal with Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf? He has harmed Allah and His Messenger.” And then he sent someone to assassinate him without calling him to Islam. And there were many others whose deaths he commanded as a result of similar actions.
And as for ijma, the people of knowledge are in agreement that anyone who curses the Messenger of Allah in any way is put to death. Harun ar-Rashid asked Malik about a man who had reviled the Prophet and he mentioned to him that the fuqaha’ of Iraq had given a fatwa that he be flogged. Malik became angry and said, “Amir al-Mu’minin! There is no continuation for a community after it curses its Prophet! Whoever curses the Companions of the Prophet is to be flogged.” It must be said here that the fatwa of flogging for insulting the Prophet mentioned here contravenes even the position of the people of Iraq, for it was also the consensus among them that those who curse the Messenger of Allah be killed.
أقول قولي هذا وأستغفر الله لي ولكم ولسائر المسلمين من كل ذنب فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرَّحيم
الحمد لله الحمد لله رب العالمين، وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له وأشهد أن محمداً عبده ورسوله، صلى الله وسلم وبارك عليه وعلى آله وصحبه، والتابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
أما بعد! فيأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله ما استطعتم واسمعوا وأطيعوا وأنفقوا خيرا لأنفسكم. يا عباد الله أوصيكم وإياي بتقوى الله وطاعته وأحذركم وإياي عن معصيته ومخالفته. قال الله تعالى في كتابه الكريم إِنَّ اللهَ يَامُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالإِحْسَانِ
Allah says in His Noble Book, the translation of which is, “Allah commands to justice and ihsan.”
This deen is a deen of justice and structure. It is a deen of balance, a deen for people of ‘aql, not a deen of mass hysteria and mindless, uncontrolled and uncontrollable bursts of raw emotion. It is a deen that calls for the burden of proof, and only those who meet those standards are considered guilty and are therefore liable to punishment. Only those who can be proven to have committed a wrong action are punished and no one is killed or punished by hearsay or through association. When the Prophet commanded the death of Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf, he did not command that all those who listen or associate with him also be killed – he did not command that all the unbelievers of Quraysh be held accountable for the actions of the one. On the contrary, he commanded that only the one responsible be killed. And the guilt of that one was well established through ample witnesses and confession.
As we mentioned earlier, cursing the Messenger of Allah is a crime, a crime that is punishable by a hadd punishment, but there are a number of preconditions that must be met before a hadd punishment is implemented.
First the deen of Allah must be properly established, for no ruling can be established without a ruler to implement it. You cannot have a hukm without a haakim. A hadd crime is not a zone for fatwas, unless that fatwa be to advise the Muslim leader, but rather a zone for decisive judgements. The matter is brought to the Muslim ruler and he determines the judgement based on the evidence.
If the deen is not established, such as was the case in the time of Makka, then the Muslims must act on Allah’s command,
وَجَادِلْهُم بِالتِي هِيَ أَحْسَنُ
“Argue [and speak] with them with that which is better,” until such time that it is.
And if the deen is established, but the perpetrators are beyond the reach of the Muslims, then the carrying out of the sentence is left until such time that they fall within their reach. There were a number of people who continued to insult the Messenger of Allah for years, such as Ibn Khatal, but the execution of their sentence was postponed until the conquest of Makka when they finally fell into the hands of the Muslims and it became feasible. It is a matter of amr and should only be carried out at the behest of an amir.
Second, the guilt of the accused must be established beyond any reasonable doubt. And guilt is only established by one of two things – witnessing or confession. Confession includes putting your name to something and acknowledging that it was your work.
Third, only the one guilty of the act is to be punished and no one else, not his family and not his nation. As we have said, insulting the Prophet is a crime, not an act of war, and so war-time analogies cannot be applied. If a country is harboring a criminal, they are not to be considered guilty by association and are not subject to the same penalty or punishment, and so any action taken against them on the basis of that crime is itself a crime, such as the attack on the embassy in Libya for which there was no justification under these circumstances.
Fourth, the sentence must be carried out in a way and at a time that is most effective and beneficial, not when it might bring harm to the Muslims. There were certain people whom the Messenger of Allah commanded killed immediately and others whose sentence he postponed because of the difficulty of laying hands on them due to their being deep within enemy lines.
If these conditions cannot be met, then the sentence cannot be carried out. But, of course, if the Messenger of Allah is insulted, we cannot stand by and let it stand. It is deeply distressing. If you do not feel anger when the Messenger of Allah is insulted, then your heart is dead. It is the natural impulse of the healthy Muslim to want to leap to his aid and punish the perpetrator. Any form of disrespect towards the Prophet filled the Companions with ire. How many times in the seera, for example, do we read of Umar ibn al-Khattab leaping to his feet and demanding to cut a person’s head off for what he perceived to be a slight towards his beloved Prophet.
No, we must respond, but the response must be made with wisdom. It must be made in a way that minimises the effect of the insult and the influence and reach of the perpetrator, not accentuates and propagates it. We cannot fall into the traps they have laid for us.
Of course, we must stand up to defend the Messenger of Allah. Of course, we must repudiate any lies directed against him, but not in the form of mass protests, not in ways that feed raw emotion and result in hysteria and uncontrolled mindless actions that do more to strengthen the hand of those opposing the deen than to defend the name and honour of the Messenger of Allah. A protest claiming to stand up for the Messenger of Allah and his honour that then goes and does things that he would never do or condone, is itself an insult to him, for it claims to represent him and thus those who see their actions associate them with the Messenger of Allah. We must be very careful to be balanced and correct in how we respond, for each of us is his representative. If the person responsible is outside of our zone of authority, then we must respond to his curses with praise – praise of the Messenger of Allah and talk of his fine qualities of character, and not repeat or propagate the lies and insults. We must ensure that what people see of the Muslims increases their appreciation and good opinion for all that they are and all that they stand for, and does provide further ammunition for their insults and bad opinion.
For make no mistake, those who make these insults and those who propagate them, do so in the desire and hope for a response like that we have seen in recent weeks in Libya and Egypt and across the Muslim world, for it is responses such as these that enable them to continue to paint Islam as an irrational barbaric anachronism rather than the rational balanced way of life that it actually is. In one article in the Independent, for example, the author writes, “There is an angry mob in the streets and it is getting bigger every day and what it calls itself is Islam.” It is not Islam, it is angry and disaffected youths whose ulama have let them down. They do not know what Islam is, because they are not being taught a correct Islam. We need to restore the deen to how it is meant to be practiced. In this time when others seek to demean the deen and our noble Messenger, we must remind ourselves and them of his glorious sunna, and honour and respect him in the manner in which he deserves to be honoured and respected. By taking his sunna and putting it into practice and demonstrating its superiority to all other ways of living. By restoring the Madinan model that represented the highwater for the human race, and continuously singing the praises of the noble Messenger. That is the way we respond to these insults.
We ask Allah to restore order and unity to the Muslim umma and rid its people of their compulsion to engage in demonstrations of mindless and uncontrolled outbursts of raw emotion unfettered by knowledge and hikma. We ask Him to guide us back to the sirat al-mustaqim and restore us to the Prophetic Madinan model. We ask Him to give us a true appreciation for the station of the Messenger of Allah and increase in love of him. And we ask Him to punish those who disparage or demean him in any way in this world and the Next. And make their attempts to destroy the deen and sully the name of the Muslims fail and instead become a means to the re-establishment of His deen in our time.
إنَّ اللهَ ومَلائِكَتَهُ يُصلُّونَ على النَّبِي يَا أَيُها الذينَ آمنوا صَلُّوا عَلَيْهِ وسَلِّمُوا تَسْليماً. اللهمَّ صَلِّ وسَلِّم وبارِك عَلَيْهِ وعلى آلِهِ وصَحْبِهِ أجمعين. وارض اللهم عن الخلفاء الراشدين أبي بكرٍ وعمرَ وعثمانَ وعلي، وعن خديجة وعائشة وسائر أزواج النبي، وسائر الصحابة أجمعين، خصوصا الأنصارَ منهم والمهاجرين، وعن التابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
اللهم اهد ولاة أمور المسلمين لما يرضيك ولاتباع سنة نبيك صلى الله عليه وسلم وثبت أقدامهم على الصراط المستقيم وأصلحهم يا رب العالمين.
اللهم بارك على شيخنا، وعلى أميرنا، وعلى جميع أمراءِ وزعماء المسلمين.
اللهم بارك على المسلمين في هذه المدينة ووفقهم لما تحبه وترضاه يا أكرم الأكرمين.
اللهمّ أَعِزَّ الْلإسلامَ والمُسِلمينَ (3) واَخْذُلِ الكُفْرَ والكافِرينَ، وانْصُرِ المُجاهِدينَ في سَبِيلِك واجْعَلْ كَلِمََتَكَ هِيَ العُلْيَا وكَلِمَةَ الكُفْرِ هِيَ السُّفْلى.
ربنا ءاتنا في الدنيا حسنة وفي الأخرة حسنة وقنا عذاب النار.
إن الله يامر بالعدل والإحسان وإيتاء ذي القربى وينهى عَنِ الفحشاءِ والمُنكَرِ والبغي، يعظكم لعلكم تذكرون، ولَذِكْرُ اللهِ أكبر والله يَعْلَمُ ما تَصْنَعُون. وقُومُوا إِلَى صَلاتِكُمْ يرحمكم الله