I Am Sick of What You Are Doing

And then Ibrāhīm said silently to himself — he was speaking to himself: by Allah, I shall plot a plan to destroy your idols after you have gone away and turned your backs. He made a plan. He said: I am going to destroy your gods. Somebody heard Ibrāhīm making that threat, but maybe they didn't take it seriously.

These people, they had a day in which they would go out of the town, and they would celebrate. All of them would go out in their jāhiliyyah, ignorance, and they would go out in celebrations of the shayāṭīn. So they would go out of their town; all of them would go together. So they came to Ibrāhīm and told him: come on, let's go. He said: I am ill.

He wasn't physically ill. What he meant is that I am sick of what you are doing. I am sick — he is not physically sick. He said: I am sick of what you are doing. They understood that he means that he is physically ill, so they allowed him to stay. But what he had in mind is that I am sick of this worship that you are doing. So they left him alone, thinking that he is ill, and they all went out of town.

Ibrāhīm followed through his plan. He took his axe, and he went to the temple. He destroyed all of their idols except for the large, big one — the humongous one, the biggest one. He left him intact. He destroyed all of the rest, and then he hung the axe on the shoulder of this large idol. He left this axe on his shoulder.

Allah (swt) says: fa-jaʿalahum judhādhan illā kabīran lahum laʿallahum ilayhi yarjiʿūn — so he broke them to pieces, all except the biggest of them, that they might turn to it.

So they came back. They looked at these idols. Qālū man faʿala hādhā bi-ālihatinā innahu la-min al-ẓālimīn: who is the one who did this with our gods? He must indeed be one of the wrongdoers. Who is the one who did this? The one who heard Ibrāhīm speak — he came and said — actually, it was more than one who heard Ibrāhīm. Qālū samiʿnā fatan yadhkuruhum yuqālu lahu Ibrāhīm: they said, we heard a young man talking against them, who is called Ibrāhīm.

Two things I want to turn your attention to in this ayah. First of all: a young man. Fatā: young man. He was young. This is the responsibility that the youth need to realise: that major changes, and daʿwah that was done, were done by the young.

The second thing: when, for example, I'm speaking with you, and I'm telling you: Muhammad called you — it's different than if I say: a guy named Muhammad called you. What is the difference between the two? If I tell you, Muhammad called you, or I tell you, a guy named Muhammad, he called you? When I tell you Muhammad called you, both of us know who Muhammad is. When I tell you that a guy named Muhammad called you, it's either both of us, or one of us, doesn't know who Muhammad is.

Over here they said: we heard a young man called Ibrāhīm. Ibrāhīm wasn't even known to the society. He was a young boy. He wasn't even known to the society, and he's coming up with this change that will bring down a whole society — carrying all of this load on his shoulders. A young boy, carrying all of this load on his shoulder, going against the whole society.