Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, may Allah raise the rank of Prophet Muhammad, his kind Al and Companions.
Dear brothers and sisters in Islam,
Prepare for Judgment Day. Accumulate your deeds of obedience to Allah in this life to take with you for the everlasting life of the hereafter. Commit yourself to the obedience of your Lord and avoid what He forbade. Ask Allah to make your hearts among the hearts that fear Allah, make your eyes among the eyes that weep in humility to the Creator and make you among the ones that are always satisfied with the sustenance Allah provides them with. Ask Allah, dear brothers, to protect you from committing the sins as they might lead to a miserable ending. Many people blasphemed before their death and died as blasphemers due to their continuous engagement in sin-may Allah protect us from such an ending.
One such example is of a man who was seen gripping the curtain of the Ka^bah whilst repeating the supplication: O Allah protect me from sedition till the end of my life and let me die as a Muslim.
When a scholar named Shayban Al-Ra^iy who was a true Sufi heard him, he asked him why he was continuously repeating such a supplication. The man replied: I had two brothers. The first one has spent 40 years of his life calling the people for prayer voluntarily, then on death bed asked those around him to bring him the Quran. They did, thinking he wanted to seek its blessings before death. Instead (may Allah protect us from such blasphemy) he held it in his hands and said: Bare witness O people that I have turned away from everything inside this book and died as a blasphemer.
The second brother voluntarily called the people to prayer for thirty years and on his death bed he too did exactly what my first brother did.
Shayban asked him: “What deeds did they use to do in their life?”
The man said: “They used to seek out the (faults) sins of other Muslims to expose them without an Islamic valid reason.”
So my Muslim brothers, do not be like the one who said about himself: ‘I do not see my faults/sins, but I seek the faults/sins of others’. Indeed, the pure rules of our religion urge us to conceal the faults/sins of others. The Prophet said:
من رأى عورة فسترها كان كمن أحيا موءودة من قبرها
This means: the reward of the person who conceals the faults/sins of another is similar to the reward of the person who rescues a girl buried alive.
O brothers and Sisters, if you notice that another Muslim has committed a fault or a sin, then secretly advise him against it and do not let the devil instead, lure you into gossiping about him behind his back. If you know of a fault, a sin or a weakness about your brother in Islam; advise him but do not scandalise him. Treat others the way you’d like to be treated. You do not wish people to scandalise your faults and shortfalls- who amongst us doesn’t have any fault?
Another example showing that sins have an evil potency is a story related about a student of a scholar who was on his death bed. The scholar stood by the bed of his student and said the shahadah for the student to repeat before his death. As much as he tried, the student was unable to utter the shahadah. Finally -may Allah protect us from such blasphemy- he said: “I have turned away from it”, and died as a blasphemer. The scholar became extremely afraid and remained that way until one night he saw his student in the dream. He saw him being dragged to Hellfire. He yelled to him: “O you, what have you done in your life to deserve this”. He replied: “I used to gossip about my friends and envy them, so I plunged into these pits.” We ask Allah ta^ala to protect us and end our life as Muslims.
Dear Brothers and sisters, this does not mean that gossip and envy or jealousy are types of blasphemy; rather it means that such sinful deeds have such an evil potency that when a person commits them continuously, his situation will worsen to the point where these sins could lead to blasphemy. The devil might drive one from a series of sins to blasphemy- may Allah protect us.
In the end, we ask Allah not to make our calamity on earth a calamity of sin and we ask Allah to make us steadfast to Islam Ameen
