Guidance & Misguidance: Rewards & Punishments: Part 2
“Those
who reject Allah and hinder from the Path of Allah, for them will We add
penalty to penalty, for that they used to spread mischief.”
(An-Nahl 16: 89)
As
for those who harbour hatred and hinder people from the way of Allah, by
restricting them from listening to the prophet of Allah and to believe in the
Divine Message he has come equipped with, therefore such people invite upon
themselves penalty upon penalty because not only have they disbelieved but they
have also contributed to a larger extent to the ruin of the faith of others,
lying as barriers in their path to forbid them from the way of Allah.
Hell is a place made by Allah to punish the evildoers in the hereafter. Paradise and Hell each has seven levels. The concept of stages or levels in Hell is based on the extent and weight of the sins committed by the sinner and those levels are associated with different kinds of punishments that are both physical and spiritual in nature.
The
punishments of Allah vary for the various categories of people according to
their deeds. There is the least punishment for a sin or wrongdoing and there is
the extreme punishment. In a Hadith of our Holy Prophet Muhammad pbuh) reported
by Al-Nu’maan ibn Bashir (ra), he (pbuh) is quoted to have said: “The person
who will have the least punishment among the people of Hell on the Day of
Resurrection will be a man under the arch of whose feet will be placed a
smouldering ember, and his brains will boil because of it”. (Bukhari)
The
Messenger of Allah (pbuh) has warned the believers against the seven major sins
before the sight of Allah. In a Hadith of his narrated by Hazrat Abu Huraira
(ra), he (pbuh) said, “Avoid the seven great destructive sins.” The
people enquire, “O Allah’s Messenger! What are they?” He said, “To join
others in worship along with Allah, to practice sorcery, to kill the life which
Allah has forbidden except for a just cause, (according to Islamic law), to eat
up Riba (usury), to eat up an orphan’s wealth, to give back to the enemy and
fleeing from the battlefield at the time of fighting, and to accuse, chaste
women, who never even think of anything touching chastity and are good
believers.” (Bukhari)
From
the verses of the Holy Quran and the Hadiths of His Beloved Messenger (pbuh),
it is clear that Shirk ranks first as the foremost major sin which
anyone may commit and its punishment are the most extreme. The Muslims are warned
against falling prey to it. Besides this major sin, there is another Hadith
which enlighten us further.
Khalid
ibn al-Walid (ra) narrated that the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said, “Verily,
the people most severely punished on the Day of Resurrection are those who most
severely tortured people in the world.” (Ahmad)
Allah
detests injustice. He is the Supreme Judge, the Just Judge. His decisions are
ever right and true. Whenever a Messenger of His comes in the world, the people
torture him in various ways, and included in this torture are the people who
have believed in him.
In
the first era of Islam, the most sincere of Muslims were made to go through the
fires of torture or persecution. Before them, all the prophets and their
followers went through some kinds of torture for the sake of Allah and His
Prophet of the time.
Allah
warns the people of the world against torturing His prophet and the believers: “Those who persecute the believing men and women without
repenting will suffer the torment of hell and that of the burning fire.”
(Al-Buruj 85: 11)
In
this present era, as well as in the previous era of the Promised Messiah, none
of us were exempt from such torture. Plots upon plots were devised to restrict
the message of Allah and the truth from propagating. The believers are made to
go through the fires of trial, but Allah says: “I am with My true Servants!
Nothing can touch them without this being returned to the offender. A time will
come surely when the fire of Allah will consume the fires of hatred which they
perpetrated upon the earth in the name of Allah or even in the name of their
false gods.”
There
is a share of happiness and sorrow in everyone’s life. The greatest happiness a
true believer has is Allah. And if he is fortunate enough to witness the era of
the advent of a Messenger of Allah, that Messenger also becomes part and parcel
of his happiness because this joy is a God-given joy and hails from none but
Allah Himself.
Thus,
all those who try to dig a hole to trap the Messenger of Allah and to make him
go to his downfall, Allah uses the same trap or a more grievous punishment to
trap the sinners. The one who harms His Messenger, harms Him (Allah), for the
Messenger is a part of Him, from His own Essence and Spirit. He is the
Khalifatullah, the Right-Guided One whom Allah creates with His own two Hands
like the Quran teaches mankind.
The
thin line between right and wrong can at any moment break. A believer can
become a disbeliever and a disbeliever can become a believer by the will of
Allah. Those who harbour hatred towards Allah and His plan and try to overturn
the will of Allah are those who will go to their lost. Allah’s plan is solid.
He is the One Who has given man freewill, and He knows what he will do with it,
whether he will follow the right path or let himself be beguiled by the Satan.
But the freewill is there. Man has been endowed with the needful abilities and
capacities to distinguish right from wrong. Allah keeps sending His
divinely-guided teachers in the world in this aim. Satan and his armies have
their duties to accomplish, and the Messenger of Allah and his armies also have
their duties to accomplish. In the battle between good and evil, Allah has promised
victory to the upholders of goodness and who against all odds keep the true
faith alive in the world. Their efforts do not ever go to waste. Effort is all
that it takes as well as a good intention, for these two are what are essential
to truly distinguish good from evil.
The
believers are those who strive with all their might to make the truth triumph
in the world, and they respect the limitations of Allah on earth and establish
themselves on His laws and guide their lives according to His commandments.
Blessed are such believers who witness the advent of a Messenger of Allah and
have him as their leader. Rare is such an occurrence, and truly fortunate are
they who receive this boon.
So,
today, in the battle between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, the
Messenger of Allah, the Khalifatullah is present among you all and you are
fortunate to receive the divine messages which prove that your Allah is a
Living God. He Speaks today like He spoke yesterday, and He rewards handsomely
the sincere and punishes the insincere and rebels and those who go beyond all
limits to hinder people from the path of Allah and render this path tortuous
and crooked, but Allah says: Impossible!
Those
who try to render the right path crooked and ugly, Allah will seize them with
such a punishment which cannot be conceived. If in eras devoid of a Messenger
of Allah, where man does not receive a Guide with the Holy Spirit (Ruh’il
Quddus), the people of the world try to commit evil, such evils despite
being evils does not equal the evils committed by the people in the eras of
Messengers of Allah, for their punishments are multiplied to greater extent for
those people exceed all limits of decency to try to defeat those Men of God.
Such eras are a paradise for the believers – despite the trials – and hell for
the disbelievers – despite their faux semblance of a rich and lavish
life, filled with wealth and power. But Allah says: They are mistaken and
will fall flat on their faces!
So,
this is a warning from Allah and this humble self – His Messenger, the
Khalifatullah – warning all mankind against using any means to defeat His
Messenger, for “Allah has decreed, ‘I and My
Messenger shall certainly triumph.’ Allah is All-Powerful and Exalted in
Might.” (Al-Mujadilah 58: 22)
Try as they may, the disbelievers or even the hypocrites cannot harm the greater plan of Allah. Islam cannot be harmed in any way when Allah is its Caretaker. The people of Islam will surely triumph one day. I pray the day comes when the blindfold blinding the Muslims will fall and the false pretences of this world will lose all their allures in their eyes and they will realise that no victory can ever come until we are all united in the obedience of Allah and His Messenger of the time. May Allah unveil this blessed day when His Islam will be valued in the hearts of the people and unfaith to become helpless before the mightiness of the Divine Truth in the world. Insha-Allah, Ameen.
-------Friday Sermon of 19 May 2023 ~ 28 Shawwal 1444 AH delivered by Imam- Jamaat Ul Sahih Al Islam Hazrat Khalifatullah Munir A. Azim (aba) of Mauritius.