The sermons at Minā and the equality of mankind

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

On the Day of Sacrifice, the 10th, and the days after it, the Prophet ﷺ addressed the vast crowd again at Minā, smaller sermons than ʿArafah's, on the 10th and 11th and perhaps the 12th, taking each chance to convey more to the masses.

❧The calendar restored

"Time has come round to its state as on the day Allāh created the heavens and the earth: the year is twelve months, four of them sacred, three in succession, Dhū al-Qaʿdah, Dhū al-Ḥijjah, and Muḥarram, and the Rajab of Muḍar, which is between Jumādā and Shaʿbān." He was ending nasīʾ: the Quraysh had a habit of shuffling the months whenever they wished to fight in a sacred one, as if, when January is sacred and they wanted war, they simply declared "let it be February now, and January next month", until, after years of it, the calendar was thoroughly jumbled. That year, by Allāh's decree, it happened to fall exactly right, in the order of creation, and he fixed it there: keep the calendar, keep the four sacred months where they are, do not move them around. And the Muslims have kept it ever since.

❧"What day is this? What place is this?"

Then he asked, "what month is this?", and the people, so wary he might be about to change some ruling, were too unsure to answer until he named it: "is it not Dhū al-Ḥijjah?" "Yes." "What day is this?" Silence, until: "is it not the Day of Sacrifice?" "Yes." "What land is this?", "the sacred precinct." Every Arab understood the sanctity of the Kaʿbah, of Minā, of that day; so by these questions he made them feel it, and then drove it home: your lives and your wealth, and now he added, your honour, أَعْرَاض, that you not slander or attack another's integrity, are as sacred to one another as this day, this month, this place. Uniting the Ummah into one. Then: "woe to you, do not return after me to disbelief, striking one another's necks," لَا تَرْجِعُوا بَعْدِي كُفَّارًا. And in a report in al-Tirmidhī: إِنَّ الشَّيْطَانَ قَدْ يَئِسَ أَنْ يُعْبَدَ فِي هَذِهِ الْجَزِيرَةِ, "Shayṭān has despaired of being worshipped in this Peninsula" (until the days of the Dajjāl, in the very last generations), "but he is content to be obeyed in what you deem trivial," in the smaller sins; and فِي التَّحْرِيشِ بَيْنَكُمْ, in setting you against one another. Disunity is now his hope, not the idol. He defined the Muslim: الْمُسْلِمُ مَنْ سَلِمَ الْمُسْلِمُونَ مِنْ لِسَانِهِ وَيَدِهِ, "the one from whose tongue and hand other Muslims are safe", the muʾmin the one people trust with their wealth and lives, the muhājir the one who forsakes sins, the mujāhid the one who strives in Allāh's path. And, "let the present convey to the absent, for perhaps the one told will understand it better than the one who heard it." In al-Tirmidhī too, from this Ḥajj: "fear Allāh, pray your five, fast your Ramaḍān, give your zakāh, obey your rulers, and enter the Jannah of your Lord", concentrate on the pillars, be good Muslims, and you will enter Jannah.

❧"No Arab is above a non-Arab except in taqwā"

And in the Musnad of Aḥmad, an authentic ḥadīth from this Ḥajj: "you are all from one, and your father is one, لَا فَضْلَ لِعَرَبِيٍّ عَلَى عَجَمِيٍّ وَلَا عَجَمِيٍّ عَلَى عَرَبِيٍّ، وَلَا لِأَحْمَرَ عَلَى أَسْوَدَ وَلَا أَسْوَدَ عَلَى أَحْمَرَ، إِلَّا بِالتَّقْوَى." This is revolutionary. No philosopher or thinker or leader in the history of humanity had ever said all humans are equal, every society thought itself superior, by race or ethnicity or blood. That the very man with the noblest lineage among all the Arabs, the grandson of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, was the first to declare it so bluntly is itself proof that it came from the Divine, for it is not what such a man would say of his own accord: إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ. Fourteen centuries on we are still struggling toward this truth, though we know it is right. He was dissolving the two things that split the Ummah to this day, tribalism, and racism, and so laying the foundation for its unity and its expansion; for had the Ummah not been united, Persia would not have fallen in a few years, nor Rome been cut in half, nor half the known world been opened.