Title of the Sermon: Alteration of the Religion
Elements of the Sermon:
How was the religion of Ibrāhīm altered?
How is the religion changed, for whose benefit, and by whom?
Honor lies in the revealed religion, and disgrace lies in the altered one.
All praise is due to Allah, who promised the believers a pleasant life, and threatened the misguided and misguiding ones with a miserable existence. I bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah, alone without partner, and I bear witness that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger. May Allah send abundant peace and blessings upon him.
To proceed:
Fear Allah, O servants of Allah, with the fear that is due to Him, and be mindful of Him in private and in public,
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ حَقَّ تُقَاتِهِ وَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنْتُمْ مُسْلِمُونَ
﴾O you who believe! Fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except in a state of submission to Him.﴿ (Āl ʿImrān: 102)
Have you heard of ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy?
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “I saw ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy dragging his intestines in the Fire.” (Reported by al-Bukhārī and Muslim)
Do you know why?
The Prophet ﷺ informed us that: “He was the first to change the way of Ibrāhīm,”
and “He was the first to lead the Arabs to the worship of idols.”
The Arabs had been upon the creed of Tawḥīd, the religion of Ibrāhīm (ʿalayhi as-salām), until they were misled by ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy al-Khuzāʿī. He was wealthy, a revered leader among the people of Makkah, known for feeding the pilgrims. His words and actions among them were regarded like binding law. One day, he travelled to al-Shām (Greater Syria), and passed by a people who worshipped idols. He asked them: “What are these idols that I see you worshipping?” They replied: “These are idols we worship. We seek victory and rain from them.”
This devilish idea appealed to him. He took one of their idols and brought it to the Sacred House and called the Arabs to worship it. He did not stop there—he changed the law and rituals of pilgrimage, making the lawful unlawful, and the unlawful lawful. He was the first to alter the religion of Ibrāhīm (ʿalayhi as-salām).
This is what the allies of Shayṭān do to people: they either pull them out of religion into irreligion, or replace their true religion with a distorted, counterfeit version.
Allah, Exalted is He, said in a ḥadīth qudsī: “Indeed, I created My servants as pure monotheists, but the devils came to them and diverted them from their religion. They made unlawful for them what I had made lawful, and commanded them to associate partners with Me for which I had sent down no authority.” (Reported by Muslim)
Consider Banū Isrāʾīl: Allah sent them messengers and revealed to them scriptures, but when the truth conflicted with their desires, they altered Allah’s Book and changed His religion. Did not Allah say about them:
أَفَتَطْمَعُونَ أَنْ يُؤْمِنُوا لَكُمْ وَقَدْ كَانَ فَرِيقٌ مِنْهُمْ يَسْمَعُونَ كَلَامَ اللَّهِ ثُمَّ يُحَرِّفُونَهُ مِنْ بَعْدِ مَا عَقَلُوهُ وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ
﴾Do you then hope that they would believe you, while a party of them used to hear the Words of Allah, then they would distort it after having understood it, while they knew?﴿ (al-Baqarah: 75)
ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with them both) said: “O Muslims! How can you ask the People of the Book, while your Book that was revealed to your Prophet ﷺ is the most recent report from Allah? You read it pure and untainted, and Allah has told you that the People of the Book altered what Allah had written and changed it with their own hands, then said: ‘This is from Allah,’ so that they might sell it for a small price.” (Reported by al-Bukhārī)
And these were the disbelievers of Quraysh. When our Prophet ﷺ came to them with Tawḥīd, they bargained with him and offered a satanic deal. Allah narrated it to us:
وَإِذَا تُتْلَى عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتُنَا بَيِّنَاتٍ قَالَ الَّذِينَ لَا يَرْجُونَ لِقَاءَنَا ائْتِ بِقُرْآنٍ غَيْرِ هَذَا أَوْ بَدِّلْهُ قُلْ مَا يَكُونُ لِي أَنْ أُبَدِّلَهُ مِنْ تِلْقَاءِ نَفْسِي إِنْ أَتَّبِعُ إِلَّا مَا يُوحَى إِلَيَّ إِنِّي أَخَافُ إِنْ عَصَيْتُ رَبِّي عَذَابَ يَوْمٍ عَظِيمٍ
﴾And when Our clear verses are recited to them, those who do not expect to meet Us say, ‘Bring us a Qurʾān other than this, or change it.’ Say: ‘It is not for me to change it of my own accord. I only follow what is revealed to me. Indeed, I fear, if I disobey my Lord, the punishment of a tremendous Day.’﴿ (Yūnus: 15)
They asked him to bring a Qurʾān other than this one—a religion other than this religion. A Qurʾān that would not command them to worship Allah alone, that would not destroy their falsehood, that would not criticize their idols or expose their filth, that would not disturb their forbidden desires with talk of resurrection and accountability. They wanted a religion aligned with their whims, making the unlawful lawful, and the false true—one that would not come between them and their lusts.
This satanic proposal has never ceased. Since the enemies of Islam failed to corrupt its words or extinguish its light, the new plan became: alter the religion itself—introduce a religion attributed to Allah that bears the name “Islam” but not its reality.
You might ask: How does that happen? For whose benefit? Why would anyone change the religion? And who would do such a thing?
The alteration of religion happens by distorting its texts or their meanings, then attributing that altered version to Allah, the Exalted. Allah said:
وَإِنَّ مِنْهُمْ لَفَرِيقًا يَلْوُونَ أَلْسِنَتَهُمْ بِالْكِتَابِ لِتَحْسَبُوهُ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَيَقُولُونَ هُوَ مِنْ عِنْدِ اللَّهِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنْ عِنْدِ اللَّهِ وَيَقُولُونَ عَلَى اللَّهِ الْكَذِبَ وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ
﴾And indeed, among them are a group who distort the Book with their tongues so that you may think it is from the Book, but it is not from the Book. And they say: ‘It is from Allah,’ but it is not from Allah. And they speak lies against Allah while they know.﴿ (Āl ʿImrān: 78)
As for the Qurʾān, not a single heretic has been able to add or subtract even a single letter or vowel from it—for Allah has guaranteed its preservation:
إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ
﴾Indeed, We have sent down the Reminder, and indeed, We will be its guardian.﴿ (al-Ḥijr: 9)
As for the noble Sunnah, which completes the preservation of the Qurʾān and its meanings, Allah assigned thousands of ḥadīth transmitters to preserve the Sunnah—both through memorization and writing. Then He appointed masters of ḥadīth criticism to rigorously evaluate these narrations, distinguishing between the authentic and the weak, exposing the fabrications and identifying the liars, all in protection of the religion from alteration.
Only the distortion of meanings remained, and this has long been the primary field of crime for the heretics throughout the ages—a vile collaboration between the people of desires among the wealthy and influential, and the false turban-wearers who produce a repackaged version of the religion, one that does not oppose their interests and worldly gains.
The Prophet ﷺ said: “When the time was prolonged for Banū Isrāʾīl, their hearts became hardened. They invented a book from their own selves, which their hearts were drawn to and their tongues found sweet. The truth came between them and much of what their souls desired, so they cast the Book of Allah behind their backs as if they did not know.” (Reported by al-Bayhaqī)
And Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with them both) said: “There were kings after ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) who altered the Torah.” (Reported by al-Nasāʾī)
The Prophet ﷺ clarified the underlying reason with his words:
“The truth came between them and much of what their souls desired,”
so they resorted to writing another book besides the Book of Allah and replaced the religion.
Here is a practical example from their own reality:
One day, a Jew who had committed adultery was brought before the Prophet ﷺ. His face had been blackened, and he had been flogged. The Prophet ﷺ asked them:
“Is this the punishment for the adulterer that you find in your Book?”
They said: “Yes.”
So, he called one of their scholars and said: “I implore you by Allah who revealed the Torah to Mūsā! Is this what you find as the punishment for adultery in your Book?”
He said: “No, and had you not implored me by this, I would not have told you. We find the punishment to be stoning, but it became common among our nobles, so if we caught a noble committing it, we let him go, and if it was a commoner, we applied the punishment. So we said: Let us agree on something that we can apply to both, and we substituted stoning with blackening the face and flogging.” (Reported by Muslim)
People have walked the same path ever since, as though yesterday and today are one and the same.
Today, there are attempts to empty the religion of Islam from its true essence and repackage it in a distorted form that pleases the enemies of Islam—wrapped in attractive slogans that do not offend the masses. Sometimes it is called “moderate Islam” or “civilized Islam.”
It becomes a purely spiritual religion, confined to rituals alone, with no relevance to worldly affairs, rulings, or boundaries. The verses of honor and striving against the enemies are removed, the verses of loyalty and disavowal are silenced, and the rulings of the Sharīʿah are subject to public opinion. If a Muslim dares to remind them of these verses, the propagators of falsehood leap to whitewash the deviation, saying: “This is religious reform and a contemporary understanding. These rulings are not binding. We know better about our worldly affairs. Religion is about benefit, and wherever benefit lies, there lies the Sharīʿah of Allah.”
They engage in what they call “reinterpretation of Islam” and rebrand foreign false ideologies with Islamic terms. They sugarcoat them with fake moral polish. To these impostors, Islam is one day secular, another day democratic, then socialist, then capitalist, then liberal, and another day feminist.
They reduce religion to so-called humanitarian work and serving humanity. Whoever does this, they claim, has accomplished every virtue—even if he carries within him every vice. But this is no surprise—for this is an old satanic path.
Here is Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf, the Jewish figure. The polytheists of Makkah, worshippers of idols, asked him: “We provide water to the pilgrims and maintain the Sacred House—are we better or is Muḥammad ﷺ?” This wretched liar gave them a ruling that they were better than the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. So, Allah revealed:
أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى الَّذِينَ أُوتُوا نَصِيبًا مِنَ الْكِتَابِ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْجِبْتِ وَالطَّاغُوتِ وَيَقُولُونَ لِلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا هَؤُلَاءِ أَهْدَى مِنَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا سَبِيلًا
﴾Have you not seen those who were given a portion of the Book? They believe in al-Jibt and al-Ṭāghūt and say to the disbelievers: ‘These are more rightly guided than the believers.’﴿ (al-Nisāʾ: 51) (Reported by Ibn Ḥibbān)
In the altered religion, the standards become skewed. A disbeliever who indulges in immoralities, a shameless performer, or a depraved dancer—yet who feeds the poor and treats the sick—is seen as better than a Muslim who sincerely worships Allah alone and submits to His Sharīʿah.
May Allah bless me and you through the Noble Qurʾān, and benefit us through its verses and wise reminders. I seek Allah’s forgiveness for myself and for you, so seek His forgiveness—indeed, He is the Most Forgiving, the Most Merciful.
The Second Sermon
All praise is due to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah, his family, his companions, and all those who follow him.
Indeed, this religion has been perfected by Allah. It contains no deficiency, no injustice, and no deviation. We will have no good life, no honor, and no victory over our enemies except through adherence to the revealed religion—not the altered, distorted version. The true believer submits to the ruling of Allah and feels no discomfort or constraint regarding it.
ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (may Allah be pleased with him) once stood before one of the great men of the Byzantines during the conquest of Egypt. He spoke about our Prophet ﷺ, the religion of Islam, and the state of the Arabs before and after the advent of Islam. When he finished, that man said to him:
“Your Messenger has spoken the truth. Messengers once came to us with what your Messenger has come with. We followed it until kings arose among us who began following their own desires and abandoning the commands of the prophets. If you continue to follow the command of your Prophet, no one who fights you will defeat you, and no one who competes with you will overcome you. But if you do what we did—abandoning the command of your Prophet and acting upon your desires—then we will be left to face you without divine restraint. You will neither be more numerous than us, nor stronger than us.” (Reported by Ibn Ḥibbān)
The clear and decisive rulings of this religion are found in its illuminating verses and radiant aḥādīth, upheld by the true scholars of this religion—those who have not sold their faith.
So beware of the imposters and misleaders who have walked the path of the destroyed and misguided nations before them.
O Allah, grant victory to Islam and honor to the Muslims. Destroy the criminal Jews. O Allah, deliver Your oppressed servants and raise high the banner of this religion by Your power, O Mighty and Strong.
O Allah, grant us safety in our homelands, and rectify our leaders and those entrusted with our affairs. Make leadership belong to those who fear You, are mindful of You, and follow Your pleasure.
Our Lord, grant us goodness in this world and goodness in the Hereafter, and protect us from the punishment of the Fire.
