DAILYREFLECTION
Praise be to Allah from Whom we ask help and pardon, and in Whom we take refuge from the evils within ourselves.
Most of us have said this line, hundreds of times.
Every Friday the khatib, the one giving the sermon, opens with the same phrases. Praise. A seeking of help. A seeking of refuge.
They come so early that we are usually still settling, still finding a space on the carpet.
And inside that opening sits a sentence that should stop a person cold.
Wa na'udhu billahi min shururi anfusina. We seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our own selves.
The ordering is the lesson. The address the Prophet ﷺ taught praises, asks for help, and then, before naming any threat from outside, asks protection from the people saying it.
Not the disbeliever at the gate. Not the hypocrite in the ranks. Not even Shaytan, whom the tradition names often elsewhere.
The first enemy the sermon names is the one on the minbar and the one on the carpet. Ourselves, in the plural, out loud, every week.
We usually account for our condition differently. Ask what is damaging the ummah and the answers arrive fast: the culture, the algorithms, the politics. There is something true in most of them, which is what makes them comfortable.
All of them are outside the person answering.
Shaytan operates from outside. He proposes. What he never does is reach into a chest and move a hand.
The self is what agrees. Every wrong any of us has done had two participants: something that suggested, and something that said yes. Only one belongs to us, and it is not the one we blame.
So refuge is sought from both, and the self is named first. Against a whisper, seeking refuge is the whole answer. Against our own consent it is not, because nothing outside us is holding the pen.
Reflect on this: Arrive before the khutbah starts this Friday. When the refuge line comes, name one thing in yourself, specifically, and let it be the only accusation you make all hour.
SADAQASPOTLIGHT
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