Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said,
you, Oh Muslims, he said, are the last of 70 Nations Allah has created.
Yet in the eyes of Allah,
you are the greatest and most Noble of all of those nations.
Where is this favoured Nation?
How is it that we are these people in the eyes of Allah,
Yet wherever you look, you see nothing but carnage and pain and suffering and blood.
For those who ask how and why,
the response is the same as what Musa (a.s) received from his Lord,
when he wondered, Why am I suffering?
He stands and he hears the voice of Allah,
saying to him, Ya Moses, ... it is Me, Allah.
And now, all of a sudden,
Musa (a.s) receives closure, answers that he needed all throughout his life.
How can I be a person who is prepared by Allah for Allah?
I share with you five signs,
signs that you're suffering as a Muslim is not going to waste.
There is a particular Prophet of Allah
whom the Quran gives a huge amount of attention.
Not only do we know about his adult years as a Prophet,
but we know about him as a child.
We even know about the events that led up to his birth.
We know about his mother, his brother, sister, fatherinlaw, his wife.
We even know the very dowry, the Mahr that he paid for Marriage,
mentioned around 183 times in the book of Allah.
And this is not in vain, across 25 passages of the Quran.
this is none other than the Prophet of Allah, Moses / Musa (a.s)
And there are three descriptions that Allah Almighty gives
to the Prophet of Allah, Musa that were not given to any other Prophet in the Quran.
The first of them, Allah said about him,
I have cast the garment of love over you, meaning everyone who saw him loved him
according to one of the two interpretations.
The second unique description to Musa (a.s)
where Allah said to him,.... so that you will be nurtured under My eye.
And the third unique description given to this honorable Prophet,
is where Allah said about him ...
I have prepared you for Myself, Allah said,
what type of human being would a person become
when he is prepared by Allah to be for Allah?
The outcome is Prophet Musa (a.s), a man whose essence and his ambitions
and his yawnings and his existence was all for Allah.
And by Allah and to Allah,
no part of Musa was for this world, 'I have prepared you for Myself'
When did Musa (A.s) hear these words;
He heard these words from Allah during one of the loneliest periods in his life,
when he and his wife were pushed to their physical limits, traveling the Earth
all by themselves with basic provisions, just enough to keep them alive,
Lost for direction...they see a glimmer of light.
Musa says to his wife, wait here for a moment.
I see a glimmer of light / fire..
Perhaps I will bring you a torch of fire from It.
Or maybe someone will just give us some guidance
to help us navigate this terrain.
unbeknown to Musa (a.s), however, he was not making his way to a higher.
He was being called by Allah to stand in the sacred Valley of Tuwa,
to speak to the King of Kings, the owner of sovereignty and
the possessor of all Dominion, Allah.
He stands.
And he hears the voice of Allah, saying to him,
Oh Musa!
It is Me, Allah.
And now all of a sudden,
Mosa (a.s) receives closure, answers that he needed all throughout his life.
He had suffered.
And up until this moment he had no idea why all of this suffering came on to him.
He was born as a male child and in the law of the Pharaoh of Egypt,
every male baby was worthy of execution.
He was then separated from his mother at the age of suckling,
to be raised in a home that is not his.
His sister would walk the bank and go to the palace of the Pharaoh and say,
I know someone who can breastfeed this baby.
And his mother would be reunited with Musa.
Then Musa would become a man and would accidentally kill someone.
Now he is a fugitive on the run, wanted by the authorities, dead or alive.
He is escaping the country in terror.
Then he would find a wife to marry.
And the mahr / dowry was ten years worth of arduous labor.
Why all of these sufferings?
He needed answers.
And now, as he stares into the evening night sky, looking above Him
and hearing the voice of the glorious, Allah, who answers are finally given.
What does Musa hear?
He hears these following words documented by the Quran.
So you can imagine it and benefit from its treasure.
He hears,
oh Musa! We have responded to your request.
We have conferred Our favor upon you yet again
When we sent inspiration to your mother,
saying to your mom, Place the baby in the cot.
Then place the cot in the river.
Then the river will take him to the shore
where an enemy of his and an enemy of Mine will take him, The Pharaoh,
and I have cast the garment of love over you
so that you will be nurtured under My eye
Remember when your sister, she followed you and she said to them,
Shall I not tell you who can take care of this baby?
Then we return you back to your mother,
so that her eye can rest.
And she would not grieve
And remember, Mosa,
when you killed someone, but We saved you from retaliation.
And We tested you with severe tests.
Then, Musa, you spent many years with the people of Median.
Then you came to this place at the decree time
And I have prepared you for Me.
So now he understood all of his suffering in his life was not in vain / in waste,
It was a preparation for this moment
to become a Prophet of Allah and his heart and his heart finally settles.
Now, as a Muslim, when you hear the story
and you have read it before, you ask yourself the question,
how can I be a person like Musa whom Allah prepares by himself to be for Him?
I would love to be this person whom Allah guides and helps and nurtures
and supports against enemies and gives answers
and gives him security on the Day of Judgment and the highest gardens of Jannah.
How can I be a person who is prepared by Allah for Allah?
I share with you five signs,
signs that you're suffering as a Muslim is not going to waste.
And your sacrifice will be thanked by Allah,
five signs, and we take them from the biography of Musa (a.s),
Sign number one, measure yourself against these five;
You have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
This was Musa when he came to learn of a man who has more knowledge of him.
In some things.... He said, I'm not going to stop traveling,
till I arrive at the junction of the two seas,
Even if it takes me many years, I will find this man and I will learn from him.
And when he came to his mentor who was less than him in status.
But he has some knowledge.
He said, ..do you mind if I accompany you to learn
some of the sound judgment that Allah has given you,
Allahu Akbar.
So this is sign number one to measure yourself against.
Are you a man, a woman chosen by Allah to be for Allah?
Tell me about your thirst for knowledge.
Our prophet Muhammed (pbuh) said, when Allah wants good for a person,
it gives him understanding of the religion.
Sign number two, you have a strong commitment to worship in all of its forms.
The very first words Musa heard from Allah in that sacred Valley of Tuwa was
Worship Me
and established the prayer for my remembrance,
That's sign number two, to measure yourself against
What type of worshipper are you, become an exemplar Worshipper of Allah.
When people are eating and drinking, you are fasting,
When People are sleeping at night, You are standing in Salah.
When people are gossiping and scrolling through their socials,
You are busy in the remembrance of Allah.
That's sign number two.
You are a worshiper in times of ease and in times of hardship.
In times of happiness and sadness, Prosperity & adversity.
Your motto in life is salah, dhikr, Quran, Qiyam...
a sign that Allah has chosen you to be for Him.
Sign number three,
you have a fearless ability to acknowledge your personal error.
There are certain mistakes that we've made in our past
that we should have amended ten years ago.
Certain people we should have apologized to 15 years ago.
Musa (A.S) He said, I was not that man.
When he made a mistake,
He was quick to say, astagfirullah,
this is from Devil and he would make the changes in his life.
But he saw two men fighting
and he underestimated his own strength and he pushed the Egyptian and the man died.
He didn't say he deserves it. He's a rogue man,
Troublesome, always fighting, always getting up to no good.
I know what I'm doing. He's in the wrong.
No apology from me. This wasn't Musa,
He said... this is from Shaitan
He's an enemy, openly leading people astray.
Then he said, my Lord, forgive me.
So Allah forgive him, .......
So this is sign three to measure yourself against.
How do you feel when someone advises you,
are you now thinking as a kneejerk reaction,
how to advise him back, to give him a taste of his own medicine?
How do you feel when you hear the sermon like this?
There's a meme, a lecture, a talk, whatever it may be, advising you;
This is halal. This is Haram.
This dress dress is an obligation. This dress is impermissible.
This business is halal. This business is Haram.
How do you feel if you find yourself accepting the mistake,
acknowledging your error and rushing to make the change?
Absolute good news, That's sign number three in your life.
The Allah is preparing you to be for Him.
Sign number four, you have an unbreakable ethic of patience.
Before he left Egypt and after, Musa (a.s) suffered at every level.
Yet he was only ever seen patient.
In fact, so great was his patience
that our Prophet (pbuh) saw Musa (a.s) as an example.
And when things became tough for him and people harmed him, he would say,
May Allah have mercy on my brother Musa (a.s).
He suffered more than this,
he was patient with the Commandments of Allah, patience with the prohibitions of Allah,
patience with the Qadr, the painful decrees.
That's sign number four, to measure yourself against.
Your fifth sign, to measure yourself to see
whether you are being prepared by Allah to be for Allah
is that you have this desire to be of service to others.
Musa sees two people fighting.
He has to involve himself to settle this. He did this twice.
He sees two women who can't push and shove with men to water their animals.
So he takes the initiative,
brings the animals, water them, hand them over and walks away.
Even when he was studying under his teacher
and he saw things that he didn't like, he had to say something.
So Musa (a.s) was a man of excellence, wanting to serve.
It's not just about his ambitions and his career and his mirror reflection.
Allah says, when he reached his full age of maturity and became a man,
We gave him wisdom and knowledge, why?
Because Musa (a.s) was a man who was an excellent of service to others.
These are five signs to measure yourself against, to see whether you are for Allah,
by Allah and for Allah, we said, number one, a thirst for knowledge.
Number two, a commitment to worship,
Number three, a fearless acknowledgment of personal error.
Number four, an ethic of patience.
You're not quick to snap.
And number five, you have a longing to be of service to others.
Prophet Muhammad said, you are Muslims,
he said, are the last of 17 Nations Allah has created.
Yet in the eyes of Allah,
you are the greatest and most Noble of all of those names.
When you hear narrations like this
that speaks of our virtue of Muslims as Muslims, how Allah loves us as Ummah,
you can't help but say, how do we understand the battered nature of our Ummah
that is being beaten black and blue,
Wherever you look, wherever you turn to look at the anatomy of this nation,
you see nothing but bruises, cuts, wounds and hemorrhage.
You turn to China and you see the plight of the Uighur Muslims ongoing,
the ethnic cleansing of an entire community.
Then you turn to Myanmar (Burma) and you see the Rohingyas.
Their plight is continuing.
And you look towards India,
towards what seems to be a genocide that is making its way to them.
Then you turn to the Muslims of Yemen
and you see a famine that is threatening the existence of the entire region.
You turn to Syria.
A decade long war crushing our brothers and sisters there.
You turn to Saudi Arabia,
You see scholars and activists and people of good,
ingering in the Dungeons of the Gulf.
You turn to Palestine, You see corruption at its core
and you see struggle at the other part and a siege and an illegal occupation.
You turn to Gaza,
You see your biggest open air prison on planet Earth today.
You turn to Al Aqsa, and you see
our third holiest site being desecrated before the eyes.
Where is this favored nation?
How is it that we are these people in the eyes of Allah?
Yet wherever you look, you see nothing but carnage and pain and suffering and blood.
For those who ask how and why,
the response is the same as what Musa received from his Lord.
When he wondered, Why am I suffering?
He was told,... I am preparing you for myself the same way
that the suffering of Musa (a.s) was not because Allah hated him,
or because Allah had abandoned him,
but because he was being prepared to leave bani israel out of Egypt.
We are to see our pains in the same light.
Allah has not hated us, nor has he abandoned us.
These are preparatory events to allow
the Muslims to take center stage and to lead humanity.
And the process of preparing Musa for leadership
is the same process that will apply to us.
Why do you think his name was repeated 183 times in the Quran?
wisdom, what was the process of preparing him as a leader,
separated him from his mother, separating him from the people he loved.
And we too will have to be in the process, separated from the people we love
and the places we love, even if it happens to be Al Aqsa.
But Musa was reunited with the people he loved, and Allah has promised
that we sooner or later will be reunited with the people and places we love.
The waves of the River Nile that bashed into his cot when he was still a suckling child
are no different to the waves that bashed the Muslims through
the Islamophobic industry all across the world.
But the shore of the River Nile was near for Musa,
and Allah has promised that our shore is just as near, He said,
those who oppose Allah and His messenger they will be the debased,
Allah has already decreed that I Allah and my messengers will overcome.
We shall prevail, Allah is mighty and Allah is wise