In The Name of Allah, The Compassionate, The Merciful. The First Sermon

His Eminence, Sayyed Ali Fadlullah, delivered the two Friday prayer sermons at the Imamain Al-Hassanain Mosque, Shaban 25, 1444/ March 17, 2023. Several prominent religious scholars, dignitaries and hundreds of believers attended the Jumu’a prayer. Following is an edited text of the sermons.

Allah, The Most Exalted, says in His Glorious Book: The month of Ramadan [is that] in which was revealed the Qur’an, a guidance for the people and clear proofs of guidance and criterion. So whoever sights [the new moon of] the month, let him fast it; and whoever is ill or on a journey – then an equal number of other days. Allah intends for you ease and does not intend for you hardship and [wants] for you to complete the period and to glorify Allah for that [to] which He has guided you, and perhaps you will be grateful. Allah, the Most Exalted speaks the Truth.

 

In a few days, we will receive the blessed month of Ramadan with all the blessings and gifts that God has bestowed on us in it. The Messenger (p.) has pointed to the greatness of this month when he said: “O people! A month has approached you laden with blessing, mercy and forgiveness; it is a month, which Almighty Allah regards as the best of all months. Its days, in the sight of Almighty Allah, are the best of days, its nights are the best of nights, and its hours are the best of hours. It is a month in which you are invited to be the guests of Almighty Allah and you are regarded during it as worthy of enjoying Almighty Allah’s generosity. Your breathing in it is regarded as praising Almighty Allah and your sleep as adoration, your voluntary acts of worship are accepted, and your pleas are answered. O people, the doors of Paradise are open during this month… and the doors of Hell are closed, and the satans are in chains… It is a month of mercy in its beginning, forgiveness in its middle and freedom from hell in its end… Thus, only a wretch is the one who is deprived of Almighty Allah’s forgiveness during this great month.

Our awareness of these facts makes us thankful for Allah, for He has provided us with this opportunity. And,  we are going to enter this month with joy and yearning for its advent, and well prepared to perform all its duties, so that we will receive by the end of it all its provisions.

Dear loved ones, the duties and responsibilities of this month are not restricted to abstaining from eating and drinking. They extend to abstaining from all that God deemed Haram, as evident from the narration that states that the Prophet(p.) ordered a woman whom he heard cursing her slave in the month of Ramadan to eat, for she would not be fasting if she curses her slave… Fasting, therefore, is to evade all that Allah, The Most Exalted, deemed to be Haram.

The Messenger (p.)  emphasized the significance of these responsibilities in his sermons. He called in his speech on the last Friday of Shaban to make the month of Ramadan the month of charity, honoring the orphans, respecting the old, being merciful to the young, maintaining relations with one’s kin,  neighbors and believers, improving manners,  not lying or backbiting, easing the burdens of the weak and the workers, and not looking or listening to what Allah has prohibited. The Messenger (p.) also talked about the big results of shouldering these responsibilities, when he added, “O, people, in this month, the one who ameliorates his morals will be on the righteous way when the others deviate from it, and the one who lessen his sins, God will lessen his torture, and the ones who don’t do any bad things, God will not be angry from them in the day of resurrection; besides, the one who confers honor upon the orphans, will confer honor from God when He meets him, and the person who keeps in relation with his kin and others, God will have mercy upon him when He meets him, while the one who puts an end for his relationship with his relatives, God will not be merciful toward him in the day of resurrection. Furthermore, the person who prays a commendable prayer, God will let him be exempted from hell, and the person who performs an obligatory act of worship will have the reward of seventy obligatory rites in other months. He who increases his praying, God will make his balances heavier at the time when the balances become reduced, and the one who recites just a single verse will have the reward of reciting all of the Holy Quran in other months.

Therefore, before we enter this month, we are required to set a plan that includes all our spiritual, religious and cultural needs, so that this month will not pass like any other, and become as Imam Ali (a.s.), said, when those who fasted will be rewarded, among the losers.

We have to plan well a program that although takes into account our circumstances, would be a spiritual and religious one, in which we perform prayers on time, supplicate and praise Allah, perform recommended rites and recite the Noble Quran, for this is the month of The Quran by which we purify our thoughts and our acts, and be in harmony with the Right and faith…  We should set a plan to maintain our relations with our relatives, neighbors, and the people around us. A program to help the poor, the orphans and all who need help as they have significantly  increased these days…

Moreover, we should not be driven to adopt other programs that claim to seek to comfort the fasters and entertain them, making us move from one TV series or an entertainment show to another,  for this is prone to weaken our spiritual immunity or even make us commit Haram.

This does not mean that we are against giving the faster some leisure time, for this is what we are called for. The Hadith says: “The believer should have(divide his time into)  three hours: one hour to worship his Lord, and one hour to work to earn a living, and one hour in which his soul engages in leisure in what is allowable and nice or something not prohibited, and this hour is a help for(attending to) the (first) two hours.’     Nevertheless, the time in which we entertain ourselves should not be at the expense of the spirituality and the goals and meanings of this month.

Dear loved ones:  the days, hours and minutes of this month are too precious to lose.  Let us fill them with worshipping, praying, doing good, forgiveness, love and kindness.

The Second Sermon

Worshippers of Allah, The Most Exalted, I advise you and myself, with what Imam Al-Rida advised  Abu Salt, one of his companions, on the last Friday of Shaban: when he said to him, “Abu’l-Salt:  Most of Sha`ban has passed. This is the last Friday in it. You should thus settle what you have missed in this month by working hard for the rest of it. You may supplicate, seek the forgiveness of Almighty Allah, recite the Holy Qur’an, and repent before Almighty Allah from your sins so that you receive the month of Ramadan with pure sincerity to Almighty Allah. You must fulfill all the trusts that you are liable to settle; and do not bear malice against any of your brethren-in-faith, and you must give up any sin that you commit. Fear Almighty Allah and trust in Him in secret and openly, for ‘If anyone puts his trust in Allah, sufficient is (Allah) for him. For Allah will surely accomplish his purpose: verily, for all things has Allah appointed a due proportion…

Dear loved ones: in this advice, the Imam has guided us to what we should do to be worthy to be guests of God in His month so as to earn the enormous rewards Allah has promised us in the month of Ramadan … By this, we would be closer to Allah and more capable of confronting challenges.

We begin with Lebanon in which the price of the dollar has exceeded a hundred thousand Lebanese pounds and is likely to continue to increase, for there are no radical solutions that have been devised to restore the value of the Lebanese currency.  Moreover, the temporary solutions the Central Bank resorts to only stop the rise for a certain period, after which the national currency would once again be a hostage of the big exchangers and those who are behind them… This threatens the ability of the Lebanese to provide for themselves their very basic needs and jeopardizes the functioning of the public sector as well as the public teaching institutions and might also hurt those of the private sector.

Meanwhile, the political situation remains the same, as the political parties continue to turn their back on what is happening as if everything is fine and the people are able to tolerate more agony … Instead of disregarding their conflicts and struggles and uniting to deal with the multiple social, economic and political crises, we find these parties go to extremes in exchanging accusations and laying the blame on one another, depriving the country of any chance of a solution that would at least end this downfall towards total collapse that it has become clear that it begins with the election of a new president and the emergence of a government that is able in collaboration with the Parliament to start to enact the necessary reforms that would restore the confidence of the Lebanese in their country as well as the world…

In sympathy with the Lebanese and their country, we, therefore,  reemphasize the need of all political parties concerned  to listen  carefully  to the pains of the Lebanese who are no longer capable of tolerating  any new burdens being already  overwhelmed with the current ones   and shoulder their responsibility in this respect in fear of the wrath of the people who will not be patient for long, and hasten

to agree on a president who takes into consideration the interests of the Lebanese who yearn to get out of their hell.

As for the judicial measures that involved the Central  Bank Governor, we reassert that we support any serious measure that would help in revealing the truth about what was going on in the offices of this bank, as it was responsible for what the country has reached… Although we are afraid that it will not lead to what the Lebanese hope to of holding into account those responsible, which will help in getting the country out of the tunnel it has plunged into as a result of the internal and external interventions that exempt the high ranking officials from being held into account…

In occupied Palestine, we fear that the claim that the bold operation that perplexed the enemy was executed by someone who sneaked from Lebanon is a prelude for a military adventure that aims to undermine any conciliation such as the one that took place of late between Saudi Arabia and Iran or an attempt to escape forward from its internal problems.

As for the conciliation itself, we believe that it is very important as it enhances the consolidation between Arabs and Muslims to confront the challenges that they face.