Feeling The Weight of the Prophet's Mantle
Listen now (4 mins) | A Middle Ground Podcast Short
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A Middle Ground Podcast Short
May 25
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Before starting my Saturday Qur’ān class, Understanding the Qur’ān, where we read from Ibn Juzayy’s tafsīr, I shared a reflection on what it’s like to give a khuṭbah on the minbar, week after week. That there’s a weighty feeling of responsibility that comes with opening your mouth in not just a public space but most importantly a sacred one. Even after having given a khuṭbah nearly ever single Friday for over a decade, I still wrestle with the weight and the significance of standing in the place where the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ stood and preached. This is compounded now with the ever increasing tendency, at least in America (if not in the greater West) of the “speakerfication” of religious sermons in our community and not for least because when someone listens to one of my khuṭbahs—and takes what I say to heart—and then acts on those words, it leaves me feeling inadequate and hesitant to speak. Every time.
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As I said, we live in an age where the word “speaker” has come to replace khaṭīb or preacher. This shift may have been understandable in the early years of the Muslim community in America, when many came from cultural Muslim backgrounds with little to no formal training. But after decades of growth, and with a new generation of Western Muslims who have pursued formal study both at home and abroad, this terminology—and the mindset behind it—feels outdated.
Yet the old mentality persists. Along with reducing the khaṭīb to a “speaker,” the khuṭbah itself has been downgraded to motivational talks, TED-style sermons, or worse: political pandering and incoherent rambling. As someone raised in the ’70s, the word “speaker” meant Cerwin Vegas or JBLs—equipment, not people. Today, the criteria for assuming the mantle of the Prophet ﷺ can be as superficial as having a large social media following or the right connections to the masjid board.
I don’t say this to be harsh, but because of some recent experiences that both I and another brother were witness to. This brother shared with me disturbing feedback from a khuṭbah he attended where the khaṭīb made deeply troubling remarks. I also recently attended one myself that left me questioning where we are as a community. Who is being allowed to shape the minds and hearts of Muslims every Friday? Has our reverence for what it means to speak with authenticity and accountability fallen this low?
Giving a khuṭbah isn’t just a speech. It’s not “content” and furthermore, it’s a responsibility, an obligation to know what the khuṭbah is, something which the Qur’ān is not silent about. Allāh says in the Sixty Second Chapter,
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ إِذَا نُودِىَ لِلصَّلَوٰةِ مِن يَوْمِ ٱلْجُمُعَةِ فَٱسْعَوْا۟ إِلَىٰ ذِكْرِ ٱللَّهِ وَذَرُوا۟ ٱلْبَيْعَ ۚ
O believers! When the call to prayer is made on Friday, then proceed with haste to the remembrance of Allāh, leaving off all business matters.
The khuṭbah and the prayer are jointly referred to as dhikr Allāh, “the Remembrance of Allāh”. Many have the skewed view that the khuṭbah is some kind of weekly alternative to the normal prayer which is conducted silently. But Friday (Yawm al-Jumu’ah) has its own uṣūl, its own foundations, of which the khuṭbah is foundationally a part of, not alternatively.
My point is that I’ve seen an attitude develop amongst this generation of Muslims where the khuṭbah is not regarded with the same reverence and regard as the prayer. This, along with other factors, has led to a degrading of the khuṭbah. This is of special concern in that what young Muslims are seeing—online or in-person—isn’t knowledge-based. Arguments about abstract theological debates from centuries ago or political grievances, especially those that have no real bearing on our lives today, have no place on the minbar.
We need to ask ourselves: Are people bored of serious scholarship and spiritual effort because the people who represent it seem more interested in spectacle than sincerity? And have we contributed to that, creating a culture where nobody wants to get up for Fajr and study, not because they’re lazy, but because they’ve never been invited into something worth sacrificing for?
This is why the minbar matters and why I feel its prophetic weight every Friday.
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