The prophet (pbuh), the most remarkable Qualities
that's mentioned for him in the Quran is his empathy.
Your suffering is hard on him.
He comforts someone when he is in so much pain himself.
To have the responsibility to understand who are you in charge of,
what is your responsibility, who are the people that depend on you?
who are the people that need you and being able to take care of them
and look after them and welcome them and comfort them.
Every time the prophet (pbuh) addressed community,
He always said 'Two things'.
The Prophet (pbuh) was selfless sacrifice, self sacrificing and selfless.
Where the Prophet (pbuh) would put others and others needs before himself.
He would take care of everyone and make sure everyone was taken care of.
That kind of sacrifice where the Prophet (pbuh) himself comes home hungry,
but on his way home, he sees Abu Hurairah (ra) starving.
He can't sit properly, so he says, come home.
And he hasn't eaten himself.
He says, do we have anything?
And they have a bowl of milk.
A bowl of milk.
And the Prophet (pbuh) told Abu Hurairah (ra),
go get all your friends, go get everyone from the Masjid.
And then he tells Abu Hurairah (ra), of course, this is a moment of a miracle.
The Prophet (pbuh), through his Du'an blessing
and his miracle, that bowl of milk sufficed 70 people.
But he makes everyone drink.
And then he sits Abu Hurairah (ra) down and he says, Drink.
Watching him, he says, Drink more, drink more.
Until he says, yeah Rasulullah, I don't have room for more.
And then, and only then, the Prophet concerns himself with himself.
But that kind of self sacrifice, right?
The Prophet (pbuh)'s the most remarkable qualities
that's mentioned for him in the Quran is his empathy.
[Qur’an: Chapter 9, Verse 128]
Your suffering is hard on him.
He feels your pain.
The Prophet (pbuh) buried his own uncle, his own cousin, his own students.
People that were like children to him, Mus'ab ibn Umayr (ra), was like a child to him.
He loved him like a son.
He just gets done burying all of them.
And then he sees Jabir (ra), this young Ansari companion, barely 20 years old,
who's just buried his father, who was his best friend, Abdullah.
And he sees him hurting.
And the Prophet (pbuh) puts his own suffering aside,
walks across the room, goes to Jabir, hugs him and comforts him,
and tells him that the angels shielded your father's body
from the moment he fell, that before a drop of blood touched the ground of your father,
he was already deemed an inhabitant of paradise.
That your father's soul, when it went before Allah.
Allah (swt)...,
your father's soul said to Allah that if I were given the opportunity 100 times,
I would give my life 100 times for you, oh Allah..
He comforts someone when he is in so much pain himself.
That kind of self sacrifice, that kind of selflessness.
And then the other side of what Anas (ra) also says
he says, but at the same time, when we socialized with,
When we met the Prophet (pbuh),
when we spoke to the prophet (pbuh), when we sat with the Prophet (pubh),
when we ate with the prophet (pbuh), in the Masjid, in the home,
I never touched any silk or any luxurious garment that was more comfortable,
more softer, more gentle, more welcoming
than the hand of the Prophet (pubh), that same iron fist was so warm and welcoming.
And that's the other side,
to have the responsibility to understand who are you in charge of?
What is your responsibility?
Who are the people that depend on you?
Who are the people that need you and being able to take care of them
and look after them and welcome them and comfort them.
The Prophet (pbuh), when it came to his family, it's a very beautiful narration
where the Prophet (pbuh) is at home and there was a companion, he was Persian,
so he used to make some kind of food that the prophet (pbuh) was very fond of.
And the processor just jokingly,
kind of commented that it's been quite some time you haven't made that for me.
So the companion comes over to the Prophet (pbuh)'s home
and he's spending the evening with his wife, Ayesha (ra), our mother.
And he knocks on the door and the Prophet (pbuh) opens the door
and he says, Rasul Allah, I wanted you to come have this food with me.
And he said, Well, I'm home with my wife so I won't be able to make it.
Understanding who has what rights upon you.
And then he comes back a little while later and he asks again
and the prophet (pbuh) says no
And then finally the companion is able to make some arrangements
and he comes to the Prophet (pbuh) and he says, okay,
well, what if Ayesha (ra) also came to my home to have food with my family?
The Prophet (pbuh) says, well, it's up to her, this is her time.
I've dedicated this time to my family, so I'm not just going to bail on them.
When Ayesha (ra) agreed, then the prophet (pbuh) went.
There's a lot of weird kind of conversations and rhetoric in the community and online,
So a lot of times these types of things get kind of portrayed
or they get presented as kind of like talking about men not being men
or being weak and giving into their wives and giving into their families.
No, not the Prophet (pbuh),
That's people projecting their own weakness onto the Prophet (pbuh),
You know what this is about?
This is about the fact, Anas (Ra), who I talked about,
served the Prophet (pbuh) for ten years, never left his side for ten years.
You know what he says in authentic narration?
Every single time the Prophet addressed the community like this,
the sermon.. every time the Prophet addressed the community,
he always said two things:
someone who cannot be trusted, that person has no real faith
and somebody who does not keep their word has no real deen (faith).
It's about keeping your word.
It's about responsibility.
It's about putting everything where it belongs and fulfilling your responsibility.
That the Prophet (pbuh)...come to the home of Ali and Fatima (ra),
and pick up and take Hasan and Hussain (ra),
his grandchildren, and spend the day with them.
That's how we have all these narrations
where the Prophet saw someone who's having a meeting with tribal leaders,
the Bedouin tribes, and then they run into his lap and he likes sits them
and he hugs them and kisses them.
And then when one of the tribal leader kind of says, like, well, what's up with this?
I have ten kids. I never did this.
And the prophet (pbuh) said, I feel bad for you. You have no mercy in your heart.
How did that happen?
When the prophet (pbuh) is giving the sermon,
and Hasan (ra) runs up to him because it was kind of an open pulpit,
he runs up to him and the Prophet (pbuh) picks him up and holds him,
and then he kind of wants to get down and he runs off,
and the prophet (pbuh), very famously makes that comment,
this boy of mine, my grandson, my boy, he's a leader, right?
All these other interactions,
when the Prophet (pbuh) is praying and they crawl onto his climb onto his back,
and then he stays in Sujud (prostration) for extra long
because if he gets up, they will fall..
so he lets them kind of play and kind of get off before he gets up.
That when he's walking in the masjid, holding the hand of Hasan (ra).
And he reaches over and there's dates collected of Zakat, Sadiqa, Charity.
And he reaches over and he grabs one.
And the Prophet (pbuh), he puts in his mouth
and prophet (pbuh) takes it out of his mouth and takes it out of his hand.
He says, no, we don't eat Zakat. We don't eat Sadaqa.
The family of Muhammad (pbuh) does not take from Charity, no son, no.
Like, where are all these interactions? How are they all happening?
Because whatever you want to call it,
whatever the word of it is, spending time with them or babysitting them
or keeping them or whatever verbiage you want to use.
But he's spending time with his children, with his grandchildren,
teaching them, loving them, raising them, doing their Tarbiyah (upbringing)
So this is the side of the Prophet (pbuh) that's also very important.
When his cousin Ja'far ibn Abi Talib (ra), like a brother to him,
he lovingly told Ja'far (ra),
Ja'far (ra) was like Hamza (ra)'s a big brother to the Prophet (pbuh),
even though he was his uncle,
he was his foster brother, but he was like a big brother to him.
Jafar was like a little brother.
And what does he tell him?
He tells him, you look like me and your character is like mine.
He walked and talked like the Prophet (pbuh), He loved him so much.
And when he was killed in the battle Battle of Mu'tah,
the Prophet (pbuh) goes to his home, pays condolences, gives condolences to his wife,
and when she says, what about our boys? They lost their father.
The Prophet (pbuh) holds them in his lap.
One narration mentions that, he gives them a haircut
combs and brushes their hair and says, I will take care of them.
This is also a part of the character of the prophet (pbuh),
that kind of love and compassion.
But to understand it again, from the paradigm
that I'm trying to present to you all, it's about responsibility.
That's your job. That's your responsibility.
What do you want to.... pat on the back, right?
No, that's your job, that's your responsibility.
That's part of being a man.
And the Prophet (pbuh) his relationship with Allah,
these three things I want you to remember.
And the third one, and the most important one
is the Prophet (pbuh)'s relationship with Allah that came before everything else.
Even in the battlefield,
he never turned his attention away from Allah.
He remained connected to Allah, that even in the battlefield,
the prophet (pbuh), there was a strategy of what they would do,
where they would divide the army into two groups:
And one group would go and pray one unit with the prophet (pbuh),
and then pray their second unit...
Then they would go to the front line, then the second group would come
and pray one unit with the Prophet (pbuh) and then complete their prayer
that even in the battlefield, we pray, we make Du'ah, we turn to Allah.
We never forget Allah.
Every situation, every circumstance, he remembered Allah,
he turned to Allah that even at home we were talking,
the second thing we talked about was how he treated those people in his life.
How did he treat the people in his life?
Ayesha (ra), Umm Salama (ra),
The mothers of the believers, the wives of the Prophet (pbuh),
they say that the Prophet was very attentive and very loving
and very involved when he was home, paid attention to everybody.
But it was time for Salah, became a stranger to everyone.
Not now..
And he would get up and he would change into his nicer garments and clothes
and he would go and he would make wudu / ablution and prepare for the salah.
And then he would get there. Bilal (ra) says,
before I would even call the Adhan, the Prophet (pbuh) would already be in the masjid.
And oftentimes the Prophet (pbuh) would tell Bilal (ra), time to call the Adhan,
that he always prioritized Allah (swt),
that he comes home after taking care of the world, quite literally taking care of everyone.
And he comes home and he spends a little bit of time at night at home
and lays down in bed, kind of spends some time with his wife, talking to her.
And then he says to her, he says, I'm going to go talk to Allah now.
That kind of prioritization of one's relationship with Allah,
because there's something to think about.
And I want you all to chew on this.
I want you all to think about this.
It is your relationship with Allah that will keep you honest,
that will keep you sincere, that will keep you correct
in all these things at the end of the day, because at some point in time,
everything else might be telling you to do something bad or to do something wrong.
But it is that's fear of Allah,
that connection to Allah, that God consciousness
that Allah is watching me, that is what will make sure
that you always do the right thing and make the correct choice.