Commentary

The responsibility for what I say is guaranteed, and I am answerable for it.

Whoever has been shown clearly — through lived experience and historical examples — the punishments that Allah inflicted on past nations, piety will hold him back from falling into doubts and misgivings.

Know that the very same tribulations and disorders that existed when Allah first sent the Prophet (in the Days of Ignorance) have come back to you today.

By Allah who sent the Prophet with the faith and the truth!

You will be violently shaken and sifted as wheat is sifted in a sieve,

you will be thoroughly mixed and turned over as food is stirred in a cooking-pot,

until your lowest become the highest and your highest become the lowest;

those who were lagging behind will come forward, and those who were ahead will be pushed back.

By Allah! I have neither hidden a single word from you nor have I ever lied to you.

I was informed in advance about this exact event and this exact time.

Beware! Sins are like unruly, unbroken horses: their riders are mounted, the reins are released, and they plunge headlong with their riders into the Fire.

Beware! Piety is like well-trained, obedient horses: their riders are mounted, the reins are firmly in hand, and they carry their riders straight into Paradise.

There is truth and there is falsehood, and each has its own followers.

If falsehood dominates for a while, that has happened before;

if truth appears diminished, that too has often been the case.

Rarely indeed does something that has fallen behind suddenly surge ahead.

(Sharif ar-Radi’s comment: This short sermon contains more beauty than the mind can fully grasp, and it arouses more wonder than can ever be adequately praised. It has layers of eloquence that defy description. No one truly appreciates it except the masters of this art.)

From the same sermon (continuation):

Whoever keeps Paradise and Hell constantly in view has no other goal.

Whoever strives and acts swiftly attains success;

the seeker who is sluggish may still cherish hope;

but the one who fails to act at all faces ruin in Hell.

To the right and to the left are deviant, misleading paths.

The straight, middle path alone is the one that remains — it is the Everlasting Book (the Qur’an) and Sunnah of the Prophet.

From it the Sunnah branched out, and to it the final return will be.

Whoever lays claim to anything else is destroyed,

whoever fabricates falsehood is disappointed,

whoever confronts and opposes truth face-to-face will be smashed by it.

It is ignorance enough for a person that he does not know himself.

Whoever plants his roots firmly in piety will never perish,

and the plantation of a people founded on God-consciousness is never deprived of water.

Remain within your homes, mend the rifts between yourselves,

and let repentance follow at your heels.

Praise belongs only to Allah, and blame is to be directed only at one’s own soul.

Commentary

“By Allah! Even if I found that by means of this money (taken unjustly from the public treasury) women have been married off or slave-girls have been purchased, I would still take it back and restore it (to the treasury).

For indeed, there is vast room and latitude in (acting with) justice,

and whoever finds justice too restrictive, oppression will be even more restrictive and unbearable for him.”

Sermon 14

Commentary

Condemning the people of Basrah

You were the army of a woman and in the command of a quadruped. When it grumbled you responded, and when it was wounded (hamstrung) you fled away. Your character is low and your pledge is broken. Your faith is hypocrisy. Your water is brackish. He who stays with you is laden with sins and he who forsakes you secures Allah's mercy. As though I see your mosque prominent, resembling the surface of a boat, while Allah has sent chastisement from above and from below it and every one who is on it is drowned.(2)

Another version

By Allah, your city would certainly be drowned so much so that as though I see its mosque like the upper part of a boat or a sitting ostrich.

Another version

Like the bosom of a bird in deep sea.

Another version

Your city is the most stinking of all the cities as regards its clay, the nearest to water and remotest from the sky. It contains nine tenths of evil. He who enters it is surrounded with his sins and he who is out of it enjoys Allah's forgiveness. It seems as though I look at this habitation of yours that water has so engulfed it that nothing can be seen of it except the highest part of mosque appearing like the bosom of a bird in deep sea.

Commentary

Sermon 12

Delivered on the afternoon of the Battle of Jamal

Commentry