Friday Sermon: What are the Good Deeds?

Introduction:

Lord Shahid Aziz began with chapter 9, verses 71 and 72 of the Holy Quran. He explained that the passage had described believing men and believing women as friends and supporters of one another. Together they had enjoined what was good, forbidden what was evil, maintained prayer, paid the poor-rate and obeyed God and His Messenger. Such people had been promised divine mercy, lasting gardens and good dwellings, while God’s pleasure had been presented as the greatest achievement of all.

He treated these verses as a practical description of a believing community. Faith had not been presented merely as private conviction or ritual observance. It had been expressed through friendship, cooperation, moral responsibility, worship, financial care for those in need and willing obedience to divine guidance.

Believing Men and Women Worked Together:

He drew attention first to the statement that believing men and women had been friends of one another. In some communities, women had effectively been confined to the home while men had moved freely in public life. He argued that complete separation could not be reconciled with the work assigned to both sexes in the passage. Friendship, communication and cooperation had been necessary if men and women were jointly to promote good and resist evil.

The following words of the passage had reinforced this conclusion. Men and women had not been given unrelated moral roles; both had shared responsibility for prayer, charitable obligation and the moral health of the community. He therefore regarded the verse as evidence that they had needed to meet, communicate and work together honourably in the service of common religious aims.

Defining a Good Deed:

He then turned to the sermon’s central question: what had counted as good? People had offered many definitions, and some had imagined that enjoining good required dramatic intervention. They might, for example, have thought it virtuous to drag reluctant people from their homes or wake them in the middle of the night so that they would pray. Although encouraging worship could have had value, he said the prophetic teaching had also located goodness in much simpler, everyday acts.

The breadth of that teaching had mattered. A good deed had not needed to appear impressive, attract notice or carry an overtly religious label. An ordinary act of thoughtfulness could have become morally significant when it protected another person, eased a difficulty or respected a right.

Respecting Public Rights:

Referring to a report in Bukhari, he said that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had warned people against sitting in public roads. The listeners had explained that such places allowed them to meet and converse. The Holy Prophet Muhammad had replied that, if they insisted on sitting there, they had to give the road its due rights.

Lord Shahid Aziz explained that these rights had included allowing others to pass without obstruction. He compared this instruction with the legal concept of a right of way. Long before the expression had become familiar in English law, the prophetic guidance had required people not to block a highway or pavement. Social enjoyment had therefore remained subject to consideration for everyone else using the same space.

Protecting Dignity rather than Publicising Faults:

The rights of the public way had also included lowering one’s gaze, avoiding harm, returning a greeting, encouraging good and discouraging evil. He explained that lowering the gaze had required people not to stare at or expose another person’s fault. The responsible response to witnessing something shameful had not been to turn it into entertainment.

He contrasted that restraint with the modern habit of recording incidents on phones and publishing photographs or videos on Facebook, TikTok and similar services. Instead of spreading another person’s embarrassment, a believer had been expected to preserve dignity and prevent harm. In this sense, refusing to publicise a fault had itself been a good deed.

Removing Harm from the Way:

He gave another prophetic example in which a person had noticed a stone or other dangerous object in a street. If someone might have tripped, fallen or been injured by it, moving it safely to one side had counted as charity and as a good deed. The action had required little effort, yet it had protected an unknown person from possible harm.

From this example he derived a general rule: wherever people had been and whatever they had been doing, they had needed to consider the effect of their conduct on others. Goodness had begun with alertness to another person’s welfare. A small preventative act could have carried genuine religious value even when nobody saw it or offered thanks.

Good Intentions and Divine Generosity:

Lord Shahid Aziz next described the generous way in which intentions and deeds had been recorded. When a person had sincerely intended to do good, God had credited that intention as a good deed. If the person had then performed it, the reward could have been multiplied many times—as though the good had been done ten, one hundred or even seven hundred times.

The accounting of evil had been markedly different. A passing intention to do wrong had not been charged in the same multiplied manner. If a person had resisted and abandoned the intended wrong, that restraint had been credited as good. If the wrong had actually been committed, only the single offence had been recorded. He used this contrast to show that divine judgement had favoured repentance, self-control and every movement towards goodness.

Seeking an Honest Moral Judgement:

He considered how a person could know whether an action had truly been good. In another report, the Holy Prophet Muhammad had advised the questioner to ask his neighbour. If the neighbour regarded the conduct as good, that independent view could support the judgement; if the neighbour regarded it as bad, the person needed to take that criticism seriously.

The purpose had not been to make morality depend upon popularity. Rather, an observer who had witnessed a person’s normal conduct could have exposed the excuses that self-interest created. The neighbour’s view had provided an external test when the person responsible had been too willing to defend himself.

The Danger of Self-Justification:

He warned that human beings had been highly skilled at rationalising their own wrongdoing. Even after a plainly harmful act, someone might have claimed that everyone else behaved in the same way. He illustrated the absurdity of that excuse by imagining a person attacking another with a baseball bat and then offering the common behaviour of the neighbourhood as a defence. Repetition by others could not have converted an injustice into a good deed.

He also mentioned a person who had chased a fleeing burglar while carrying a baseball bat. Although anger and the wish to protect property might have seemed understandable, the law could still have asked why violence had been used after the intruder was escaping. The example had shown why people needed an outside moral assessment: personal involvement had made almost any action appear defensible to the person performing it.

Nuclear Weapons and Unequal Moral Standards:

He extended the problem of self-justification from individuals to governments. The invasion of Iraq had been defended by claims about weapons of mass destruction and the possible development of atomic weapons. He criticised the inconsistency of political leaders who had condemned another state’s supposed nuclear ambitions while their own countries had possessed nuclear arsenals. In his view, possession by powerful states had not granted them a superior moral position.

He stated his personal belief that no country should have possessed nuclear weapons. He recalled seeing heavily protected structures in London and later learning that government and military leaders could have used such facilities during a nuclear conflict. Those who had initiated and directed a war might therefore have sheltered while ordinary people suffered its consequences. He regarded that arrangement as morally inverted: leaders who chose war should have borne its danger rather than transferring the cost to civilians.

His wider point remained connected to the sermon’s theme. Nations, like individuals, had needed to submit their explanations to honest moral scrutiny. Power, habit and national interest had not automatically made an action good, and a standard applied to opponents had also needed to be applied to oneself.

Every Act of Help Counted:

Returning to the definition of goodness, Lord Shahid Aziz said that anything a person had done which genuinely helped someone in any way had counted as a good deed. The benefit might have been physical, social, emotional or practical. It might have involved removing a hazard, making room, returning a greeting or responding to a need.

This definition had brought religious duty into ordinary life. Goodness had not been reserved for exceptional occasions or public acts of sacrifice. Every encounter had offered an opportunity to reduce harm or provide assistance, and every such act had been known to God even when it seemed insignificant to other people.

Serving the Sick, Hungry and Thirsty:

He paraphrased a hadith about the Day of Judgement. God would confront a person for not having visited Him when He had been ill. The astonished person would ask how God could have been ill, and the reply would explain that a servant of God had been sick and known to him. Had he visited that suffering person, he would have found the reward of the act with God. Neglect of the human being had therefore represented neglect of duty towards God.

The report continued with hunger and thirst. God would say that He had asked for food and drink but had not been helped. The explanation would again point to needy servants who had requested assistance and had been refused. Feeding the hungry and giving water to the thirsty had been treated as service offered to God because His creatures had received the benefit.

Lord Shahid Aziz said the hadith had made the religious meaning of human service unmistakable. Claims of devotion to God had been hollow when a person ignored a sick neighbour, a hungry family or someone without water. Compassion in response to actual need had been one of the clearest forms of goodness.

Worship could not Replace Human Duty:

He recalled a doctor in Pakistan whom local people had regarded as pleasant and religiously observant. Sick patients had sometimes waited downstairs in pain while the doctor remained upstairs reciting the Holy Quran. Although recitation had been an act of worship, it had not excused the neglect of people who required his professional care.

The example had demonstrated a mistaken division between religion and duty. A person could not have claimed to be occupied in serving God while refusing help to someone in immediate distress. At that moment, attending to the patient would itself have fulfilled the purpose that sacred recitation was intended to cultivate.

Great Claims and Neglected Neighbours:

He criticised the tendency to speak enthusiastically about great religious struggles while overlooking simple obligations nearby. Some people had talked about going out for jihad or performing impressive acts, yet had paid no attention to a neighbour who was hungry, distressed or in need of medical treatment.

He said that every small act of help had brought its own reward. Assistance had not depended upon the recipient’s religion, race, creed or colour. A person in need had been one of God’s creatures, and the believer’s duty had arisen from that shared humanity rather than from membership of a preferred group.

The Pilgrimage that was Accepted through Service:

Lord Shahid Aziz ended with a story about an elderly Sufi who had returned from Hajj and prayed to know whether his pilgrimage had been accepted. He had been told that it had not, but that another man’s pilgrimage had found acceptance. When the Sufi eventually located and congratulated that man, the man had replied that he had not actually reached Makkah.

The man explained that he had intended to perform Hajj and had begun his journey. At the end of his street, however, he had heard children crying in a nearby home. Their widowed mother had no means of support and no food. She had placed an empty pot over the fire and told the children that the meal was not ready, hoping that exhaustion would eventually send them to sleep despite their hunger.

Shocked that such suffering had existed in his own neighbourhood without his knowledge, the man had postponed his pilgrimage. He had returned home, bought food and other necessities, and undertaken to support the widow and her children. Although he had not completed the outward journey to Makkah, his intention and compassionate service had been accepted as a pilgrimage in the sight of God.

Serving Humanity was the Purpose:

The story had shifted attention from the number of pilgrimages a person could claim to the purpose of the institution. Lord Shahid Aziz noted that some people had proudly announced several pilgrimages, although the Holy Quran had required one and the Holy Prophet Muhammad had performed one. The more important question had been whether pilgrimage had produced service, humility and concern for God’s creatures.

He explained that worship had been intended to transform conduct. Prayer, fasting and Hajj had lost their meaning when a worshipper failed to serve humanity without discrimination. Religious observance had not been an escape from the needs of other people; it had been preparation for recognising and meeting those needs.

Conclusion:

Lord Shahid Aziz concluded that good deeds had included every sincere act that protected, respected or helped another person. The examples had ranged from keeping a pavement clear and removing a dangerous stone to visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, giving water and supporting a destitute family. Their common feature had been consideration for others.

He had also warned that intentions, religious language and personal explanations needed moral testing. A believer had been called to resist self-justification, preserve human dignity and apply the same standards to himself that he applied to others. Service to humanity, regardless of background, had revealed whether worship had achieved its purpose and whether faith had become a living source of mercy.