Nawawi Hadith 31: Renounce the World

Part One: One Deed, Two Loves

Brothers,

Today’s khutbah is based on the 31st hadith in Imam Nawawi’s 40 Hadith:

On the authority of Abu al-Abbas Sahl ibn Sa'd al-Sa'idi (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: A man came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, 'O Messenger of Allah, guide me to an action which, if I do it, Allah will love me and the people will love me.' He said, 'Renounce the world and Allah will love you, and renounce what people possess and people will love you.' (Ibn Majah)

This is a hasan hadith, graded good by the scholars of hadith, related by Ibn Majah and others. Look closely at what this man asked for. He did not ask for wealth. He did not ask for status. He asked for two loves at once: the love of his Creator and the love of the creation. Most people spend their whole lives chasing one of these and losing the other. The Prophet ﷺ gave him a single deed that secures both.

Part 1: Two Loves, One Prescription

Notice the structure of the answer. Two commands, two results. “Renounce the world and Allah will love you.” “Renounce what people possess and people will love you.” The first is about your relationship with dunya itself. The second is about your relationship with what other people hold.

Allah does not ask us to abandon this world entirely. He asks us to hold it loosely.

But seek, through that which Allah has granted you, the home of the Hereafter, without forgetting your share of this world. And be good to others as Allah has been good to you. Do not seek to spread corruption in the land, for Allah certainly does not like the corruptors. (Al-Qasas, 28:77)

This verse gives us the balance. Seek the Hereafter. Do not forget your portion here. Zuhd is not the abolition of dunya. It is the correct ordering of it, so that dunya becomes a means and akhirah becomes the goal.

Part 2: What Zuhd Is Not

Some of the Companions once resolved to abandon the world entirely. Three men came to the houses of the Prophet’s wives asking about his private worship, and when they were told of it, they considered it too little for themselves. One said, “I will pray all night, every night.” Another said, “I will fast every day and never break my fast.” A third said, “I will never marry.”

The Prophet ﷺ came to them and said, 'Are you the ones who said such and such? By Allah, I am more mindful of Allah and more fearful of Him than you, yet I fast and I break my fast, I pray and I sleep, and I marry women. Whoever turns away from my sunnah is not of me.' (Bukhari & Muslim)

Zuhd is not monasticism. It is not starvation of the body or abandonment of the family Allah permitted us. Allah rebukes the invention of extreme asceticism among previous nations:

But monasticism, they invented, We did not ordain it upon them, seeking thereby the pleasure of Allah. But they did not observe it as it should have been observed. So We gave those who believed among them their reward, but most of them are defiantly disobedient. (Al-Hadid, 57:27)

Renouncing the world is not refusing its permissible pleasures. It is refusing to let those pleasures own you.

Part 3: The Heart’s Detachment

The real location of zuhd is the heart, not the hand. A man may own nothing and still love this world with every fiber of his being, resentful, restless, consumed with what he lacks. Another man may have wealth and responsibility, a home, a family, a business, and still be a zahid, because his heart is not attached to any of it.

No calamity befalls the earth or yourselves without being ˹written˺ in a Record before We bring it into being. This is certainly easy for Allah. ˹This is˺ so that you neither grieve over what you have missed nor boast over what He has granted you. For Allah does not like whoever is arrogant, boastful. (Al-Hadid, 57:22-23)

There is the definition, in a single verse. Zuhd is not grieving over what has slipped from your hand, and not boasting over what has landed in it. It is a settled heart under both loss and gain.

Zuhd in this world is not by making the lawful unlawful, nor by wasting your wealth. Rather, zuhd is that you have more confidence in what is in Allah's hand than in what is in your own hand. (Hasan al-Basri)

That single sentence dismantles every misunderstanding of zuhd. It was never about how much you own. It is about where your confidence rests.

Part 4: Renounce What People Possess

The second half of the hadith turns our attention outward. “Renounce what people possess and people will love you.” This is a direct instruction against envy and covetousness. When you stop eyeing what your neighbor has, when you stop measuring your worth against his car, his job, his family, his freedom, something remarkable happens: people relax around you. They stop guarding what they have from you, because you are not a threat to it.

On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), the Prophet ﷺ said: 'Richness is not having many possessions, but richness is being content within oneself.' (Bukhari & Muslim)

True richness has nothing to do with your bank balance or your inventory. It is the state of a soul that does not need what is in someone else’s hand to feel complete.

Part 5: The Living Proof

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ did not simply teach zuhd. He lived it in a house most of us would call poverty.

On the authority of Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her): 'We, the family of Muhammad, would sometimes go a month without a fire being lit, our sustenance being only dates and water.' (Bukhari & Muslim)

Umar ibn al-Khattab once entered the Prophet’s chamber and saw the marks of a rough straw mat pressed into his side. He wept, seeing that the kings of Persia and Rome slept on silk while the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, the noblest of creation, slept on straw. The Prophet ﷺ turned to him and said:

Are you not pleased, O Umar, that this world be theirs and the Hereafter be ours? (Bukhari & Muslim)

That is the whole of zuhd in one sentence. Let them have what fades. We are after what remains.

Part Two: A Heart Already Free

Brothers,

Part 6: Two Freedoms in One Deed

Zuhd frees you in two directions at once. It frees you from chasing what you do not have, and it frees you from the fear of losing what you do have. Most anxiety in this life comes from one of these two directions: wanting something out of reach, or dreading the loss of something in hand. The zahid has released his grip on both.

Part 7: When the World Has Already Been Taken From You

Brothers, this hadith speaks to your circumstance with unusual precision. You already live much of the outward shape of zuhd, whether you chose it or not. You do not own a car. You do not choose your meals. You do not decide where you sleep or when the lights go out. In many ways, dunya has already been stripped from your hand.

The question this hadith puts to you is not whether you have dunya. It is what your heart does in its absence. Two men can live the exact same restricted days in the exact same building. One spends every hour in resentment, replaying what he lost, cursing the walls, poisoning his own heart while his body sits still. The other takes this very confinement and turns it into the training ground zuhd was always meant to build. His heart learns, by necessity, what free men spend a lifetime failing to learn: that peace was never in the possession, it was always available in the heart.

Ibn Taymiyyah, imprisoned unjustly more than once in his life, is reported to have said:

What can my enemies possibly do to me? My Paradise is in my heart, wherever I go it is with me, inseparable from me. My imprisonment is a retreat, my killing is martyrdom, and my expulsion from my land is a journey. (Ibn Taymiyyah)

Read that again. A man in chains describing his own imprisonment as a retreat. That is not denial. That is a heart that had already renounced the world before the world renounced him. If Allah loves the one who renounces the world by choice, imagine what He offers the one who renounces it with patience when it was taken by force.

Part 8: Building This in Practice

Zuhd is not a mood. It is a practice, built brick by brick.

Reduce your complaint. Every time you catch yourself narrating your losses out loud, replace the sentence with one of gratitude for what remains: your health, your mind, your deen, the brothers beside you.

Fill the hours that resentment wants to occupy with dhikr instead. A tongue moist with the remembrance of Allah has no room left for bitterness.

Stop measuring your day against the men who are free. Comparison is the engine of envy, and envy is the opposite of the second half of this hadith. Measure your day instead against yesterday: are you closer to Allah today than you were then?

Seek Allah’s love before you seek anyone’s approval. Do not chase status among the men around you, do not perform piety for their eyes. Seek the One whose love was promised in this very hadith, and the respect of people will follow on its own, exactly as the Prophet ﷺ said it would.

O Allah, grant us hearts that are content with what You have decreed for us.

O Allah, do not let our confinement become the reason we grow bitter, let it be the reason we grow near to You.

O Allah, make us love You more than we love the world, and love the Hereafter more than we love what fades.

O Allah, remove envy from our hearts toward those who have what we do not.

O Allah, give us the richness of the soul, not the richness of possessions.

O Allah, as You tested Your close servants with loss, grant us their patience and their reward.

O Allah, free our hearts even while our bodies remain confined.

O Allah, let us leave this world with nothing owed to it, and everything owed to You repaid in worship.