You can listen to Imam Adam’s Khutbah above (starts at 3:49), watch it below, or read the summary below.
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
وَإِذَا الْمَوْءُودَةُ سُئِلَتْ
بِأَيِّ ذَنبٍ قُتِلَتْ
Waitha almawoodatu suilat
Biayyi thanbin qutilat
And when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked
For what sin she was killed
(Surah At-Takwir, Quran 81:8-9)
My dear brothers and sisters, on the day of judgment, Allah tells us in Surah At-Takwir, that those young daughters that were buried in the time before Islam on that day will be asked, “Why were they buried? Why were they put to death? Why would they put to death in such a way?“
The Quraysh and the Arabs before Islam, the time of Jahiliyat, the ignorant times, at the time of the delivery of the child, a man would order his wife to give birth next to a hole dug in the ground. If the newborn was a male she would return home with him. Otherwise, if the child was a daughter, the woman would put the child in the hole and bury the daughter alive. SubhanAllah. At other times, if they let the daughter live then when the daughter reached six years of age, the man would tell his wife to adorn her and perfume her. Then he will take her to a well in the desert and tell her to look down into the well, then when she would do this, he would push her into it from behind.
SubhanAllah! What a terrible thing! What a tragic thing! What a horrible thing!
Then Islam came and got rid of this. This doesn’t happen anymore, right? It’s 2017. Now 1400 years have passed. We must have gotten past this by now, but the problem is that it still happens. If you look at certain countries, you can Google it, the human sex ratio, how many men are there for every women or how many women are there for every men.
You’ll find, for example, in China, that there are tens of millions of more men than women because they had a one child policy. So when people found out that they were going to have a daughter, they would go to a clinic and they would abort the daughter. Then the government made a rule that you can’t abort for that.
Then, if people had a daughter, they would hide it very quickly in the villages and throw the daughter out somewhere so that no one would know and it would not register that the daughter was there. SubhanAllah. Now you may be thinking well that’s in China. But when you Google the human sex ratio, you’ll find that in the Middle East, in North Africa, in Pakistan, in India, this practice continues. That when families find out they are having a daughter that they abort the daughters. SubhanAllah.
This is happening in Muslim countries, where there are more men than women. When you ask the doctors, they say that first of all, the abortion happens. Also, if the daughter gets sick in the first years of their life, then the parents don’t give them as much attention. So the rate of death amongst girls is higher. You might say, “well, that’s not me. I don’t do that. It’s tragic, but I don’t do it.” But actually, the fact of the matter is, my brothers and sisters, that there is still something wrong and there’s something that needs to be changed. (Learn about parenting from the lessons and stories in the Quran.)
A’isha (ra), the wife of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), said, “a poor woman came to me with two daughters and she had nothing to eat. And all I had was a date in my home so I gave her this date. The woman took the date, split it in half, and gave it to each of her daughters and afterwards she left.” When ‘Aisha (ra) told Prophet (pbuh) about this, he said, “because of this woman’s act, because she has been kind and merciful to her daughters, she is guaranteed Jannah.“
In another hadith the Prophet (pbuh) said, “whoever is given three daughters and raises them well and was good to them and merciful to them- then I guarantee for that person Jannah. And one man said, what about two daughters, ya Rasul Allah?” The Prophet (pbuh) said, “I guarantee it for him as well.” And then another man said, “ya Rasul Allah, what about just one daughter?” And the Prophet (pbuh) said, “I guarantee it for one daughter as well.”
When I had my son and I told everyone, “it’s a boy,” there were people that I knew, some relatives (not my parents, alhamdulillah) that gave a sigh of relief. And to myself I said, are we still in Jahiliyat that we think this is a sigh of relief? Actually, I lost a good opportunity for Jannah by not having a daughter. SubhanAllah.
And we might say, “I actually love my daughters.” What more can you tell me? Well, I will tell you this, my brothers. This is a very difficult thing to say, just to give you an example of something. A woman came to one of the imams in this community and she said, “my husband is abusing. My husband is beating.” And the imam asked, “why is he doing this? Why is he angry? What is the problem?” And she said that, “one of the reasons is because I only have one daughter. I have no sons.”
The imam said to her, “doesn’t he know the hadith? Doesn’t he know what the Quran says?” And she said, “Yes, he knows. But it’s his friends who mock him. They say he must not be much of a man because you only have a daughter and you didn’t have a son.” So not only is this within this person in this family, but it is spread. SubhanAllah. And this is here. I’m not talking about somewhere else. I am talking about here and now. So this is a problem, my brothers, and I want to address this today. (Learn about how the Quran continues to honor and empower women today.)
I also had families come to me and say, “my daughter, my teenage daughter or my adult daughter. She lives with us. She’s aggressive towards us. She’s always arguing with us. She wants to run away. She doesn’t want to come back home. She wants to go to college far, far away from us. She wants to go to a different state. She doesn’t want to stay here. And I said, “well, have you asked her, why? Have you tried to get her side of things? Have you tried to listen to what she has to say?” Because we may not be burying our daughter’s alive. We may not be aborting them. We may not necessarily be abusing the woman in our family physically. But that doesn’t mean that we are in the clear.
We may not burying our daughters physically, but we bury them in another ways. We bury our daughters when they want our attention and we are too busy with work. We are too busy with whatever’s going on WhatsApp, whatever’s going on TV, whatever’s going on outside. We bury our daughters when you don’t talk to them or ask them how their day was. We bury our daughters when they have aspirations to educate themselves and we tell them, well, it doesn’t matter because you’re going to get married and have children anyway. Or on the other hand, they want to get married and they want to have children and we tell them, now you have to get you a PhD first. That’s how we bury our daughters when we don’t listen to them.
We bury our daughters when they want to marry to a good Muslim man who happens to have a different culture who happens to have a different race. We bury our daughters when we have two standards- that, our daughters correctly so they don’t have relationships outside of marriage. But our sons go out late at night and they spend time with whoever they want. We bury our daughters when we give them so much work at home, but with no appreciation and no reward. We bury our daughters when we do not show them mercy. When we don’t tell them and remind them, that being beautiful on the inside is just as important or even more important than being beautiful on the outside. So this is something I want all of us to think about.
Allah talks about Firaun. He was a tyrant in the land, but he was also a tyrant at home and he punished his wife Asiya very heavily. Eventually it got to a point because of the torture that he did to her, that she passed away. And as she was dying, in her last moments, the narration says Firaun tied her up and he had people place a boulder on her because of her imaan, her faith in Musa and Haroon and in Allah. So he punished her and as she was dying, she said,
رَبِّ ابْنِ لِي عِندَكَ بَيْتًا فِي الْجَنَّةِ
rabbi ibni lee AAindaka baytan fee aljannati
“My Lord, build for me near You a house in Paradise”
(Surah At-Tahrim, Quran 66:11)
O Allah make me a house in Jannah, next to you, just for me, ya Allah. Those were Asiya’s last words. (Learn more about the incredible women mentioned in the Quran.)
My brothers and sisters, and especially my brothers, the question we have to ask ourselves is, “what kind of person are we when we go home?” Are we like the Prophet (pbuh) who A’isha said, “I have never seen anyone smile more than him.” His own wife is saying, “I never saw anyone smile more than the Prophet (pbuh).” Are we like Prophet (pbuh)? Are we closer to him? Or are we closer to Pharaoh? Are we someone who, when you walk into the home, everyone gets quiet? Are we someone laying the law all the time? What kind of people are we? What kind of effect do we have on our families? This is incredibly important to think about.
The brothers might think why are we only focusing on us today. Don’t worry. Everyone’s chance comes. Alhamdulillah, I am still here. Everyone’s opportunity will come. But specifically, because these issues came up recently to my attention I wanted to talk about them today.
Of course, we should pay attention to all of our children. This is a huge problem. I’ve talked about this before that we should listen to all of our children and we should spend time with them, but there’s a little bit of an imbalance. So today I wanted to correct that imbalance and talk about how we need to pay attention to the women and our daughters, in particular.
After all it Musa’s (as) sister who had courage to go to the palace of Firaun. Firaun’s wife took Musa (as) into the palace and Musa would not take milk from any of the nurses that were there. He would not take milk from anyone. And Firaun, he was the one who was going around and killing all of the boys amongst the Bani Israel. He would go and he would murder their children. SubhanAllah. This is the kind of person Firaun was, and everyone was afraid of him. And he claimed to be God. He claimed to have the highest position in the land. This is how Firaun was.
So it was Musa’s sister who had the courage to go to the palace. When Musa (as) was not taking milk from anyone and they were all worried that the baby would die and would perish because he was not drinking, he was not getting fed. It was Musa’s sister who had the bravery and the courage to go and tell them in the home of the man who killed all the boys in her tribe amongst the Bani Israel. And she went and she said, “I know someone who can do this for you.” That is how, SubhanAllah, Musa (as) and his mother were reunited.
You know the story of Hajar. Ibrahim’s (as) test was to leave Hajar and Ismail in the middle of the desert. His son that he waited for. His son that Allah had blessed him with. And Hajar’s test was to raise that boy in the middle of the desert. Subhan Allah. How difficult that must’ve been! She did that in the middle of the desert with no one else there. That was Hajar (as).
Then we have Maryam (as) mentioned in the Qur’an. She gave birth to Isa (as) and she was worried that, “what will the people say? How is this possible?” But she had trust in Allah and she brought him. Then the people looked on there and they said, “how could you have been this?” Then she pointed at the baby and the baby spoke and said, “I am the slave of Allah.” SubhanAllah. So these were the women that were mentioned in the Quran and we have so many examples.
One of my teachers, Shaykh Akram Nadwi, started writing on the women scholars of Hadith. He thought maybe I will write one volume and that will be enough, but as he did research and he found that there’s a whole lot more to this than even he thought. And so he continued writing. One volume became two volumes, two volumes became three volumes, three volumes became 10 volumes, 10 volumes became 20 volumes. And once he had compiled all of the information on the women’s scholars of hadith, he had reached 50 volumes. This is a man who is alive today. Of those 50 volumes, the introduction of it is in English. It’s translated Al-Muḥaddithāt, the women scholars of hadith.
It’s important that we realize that women have a status within Islam and they have equality before the eyes of Allah. It’s important that we treat our sons and our daughters equally. In actuality, we should realize that our daughters are our keys to Jannah. Because the Prophet (pbuh) as I mentioned, said that whoever has a daughter and raises her well, marries her off to a good family, teaches her Islam and raises her. Then that that person will have Jannah. Jannah is something that we all want, isn’t it? Something that we desire? So I would say we shouldn’t just desire sons, we should desire daughters even more, because that is one of our keys to Jannah.
That is not to say at the end of the day, the boys are not important. Of course not. But what I wanted to do today was to fix a bit of an imbalance that we have. As I mentioned at the beginning, the stories are there, the statistics are there, that in our countries, unfortunately people get rid of their daughters. SubhanAllah.
So we ask Allah that He guides us in this life and in the next life. We ask Allah that he guides the young and the old. We ask Allah that He makes us amongst those who follow the way of the Prophet (pbuh). I ask Allah that He protects us from becoming pharaohs in our own homes.
I asked Allah that He guides us and He guides our hands, that He guides our feet, that He guides our tongue. I asked the Allah that He cures us of diseases in our hearts. I ask Allah that He helps us to manage our anger. I ask Allah that He guarantees us Jannah through our children.
I ask Allah that He helps us to guide our children and direct them in this life. I ask Allah that He protects us from all of the Fitnah’s and all of the tests and trials of this time. I ask Allah that He guides our community. Finally, my brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the hadith-
لُّكُمْ رَاعٍ، وَكُلُّكُمْ مَسْؤولٌ عَنْ رَعِيَّتِهِ
“All of you are shepherds and each of you is responsible for his flock.
Every one of you is a shepherd and every one of you will be held accountable when it comes to their flock. So we have to ask ourselves, who is our flock? Our families are our flock. Our children are our flock, our siblings are our flocks. Our parents, we also have a responsibility to them. They are our flocks. We have a responsibility to all of these people and we have to give everyone what they are due.
If we do not give them what they are due, then on the day of judgment, we will be asked about this. Allah will ask us about this. That, where were you when your children were in trouble? Where were you when they wanted you to listen to them? What were you doing? What were you busy with? When you are supposed to teach your children Islam but instead you let them leave it. When you were supposed to teach them the beauty of Islam, instead, you only taught them what is Haraam and what is Halaal? That’s it. And that’s all they were concerned about.
عِبَادَ اللّهِ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ وَإِيتَاءِ ذِي الْقُرْبَىٰ وَيَنْهَىٰ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ وَالْبَغْيِ يَعِظُكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ
Servants of Allah. Indeed, Allah orders justice and good conduct and giving to relatives and forbids immorality and bad conduct and oppression. He admonishes you that perhaps you will be reminded.
اُذْكُرُوا اللَّهَ الْعَظِيمَ يَذْكُرْكُمْ واشْكُرُوهُ يَزِدْكُمْ واسْتَغْفِرُوهُ يَغْفِرْ لكُمْ واتّقُوهُ يَجْعَلْ لَكُمْ مِنْ أَمْرِكُمْ مَخْرَجًا
وَأَقِمِ الصّلَاة
Remember Allah, the Great – He will remember you. Thank Him for His favors – He will increase you therein. And seek forgiveness from Him – He will forgive you. And be conscious of Him – He will provide you a way out of difficult matters.
And, establish the prayer.
