Yesterday a nation was destroyed for refusing its warner. Tonight we meet a boy, alone among idols, who looks at the stone his own father has carved and asks the question no one around him will answer: what is this, and why are you on the ground before it? From that one honest question, a whole religion of pure devotion is about to be born.
This is day ten of twenty-nine, and the start of a four-part life that Allah honours like almost no other. Mufti Menk reminds us at the outset just how high Ibrahim, peace be upon him, is raised: every messenger who came after him was from his family, and Allah tested him again and again, and again and again he passed. Tonight is the first test, the test of a young man who would not pretend, even when standing alone cost him everything.
A boy born in the land of idols
وَإِذْ قَالَ إِبْرَٰهِيمُ لِأَبِيهِ ءَازَرَ أَتَتَّخِذُ أَصْنَامًا ءَالِهَةً ۖ إِنِّىٓ أَرَىٰكَ وَقَوْمَكَ فِى ضَلَٰلٍ مُّبِينٍ
“And [mention, O Muḥammad], when Abraham said to his father Āzar, "Do you take idols as deities? Indeed, I see you and your people to be in manifest error."”
Surah al-An'am 6:74 Read 6:74 with tafsir
He was born in Iraq, in the city of Babylon, in the days of a king named Nimrud, a ruler Allah had given enormous power and who had let that power swell into the belief that he himself was a god. His people worshipped idols and worshipped wealth. And his own father, the man the Qur'an names Azar, made his living from it: Azar carved gods out of wood and stone, and then he sold them. So the boy grew up watching his father shape a deity with a chisel, hand it to a customer, and watch that customer carry it home and fall down before it, begging it for health and long life and food and guidance.
Mufti Menk pauses on how absurd it was, and how the absurdity never seemed to occur to anyone. The poor could only afford the small idols; the rich owned big ones; and when someone had a big problem, they would go and borrow a bigger god from a wealthier neighbour, as though stone had a scale of strength. People with working minds had switched their minds off. And the boy could not. So he turned to his father and named the thing exactly as it was: do you really take these statues as gods? I see you and your people lost in something plainly, obviously wrong. Allah Himself preserves the boy's father by name here, Azar, so we tell it as the Qur'an tells it.
The question no one would answer
إِذْ قَالَ لِأَبِيهِ وَقَوْمِهِۦ مَا هَٰذِهِ ٱلتَّمَاثِيلُ ٱلَّتِىٓ أَنتُمْ لَهَا عَٰكِفُونَ
“When he said to his father and his people, "What are these statues to which you are devoted?"”
Surah al-Anbiya 21:52 Read 21:52 with tafsir
Allah says of him that He gave Ibrahim his sound judgement early, long before, and He knew exactly the one He was raising. Some narrations put the boy as young as seven when the questions began. He went to the worshippers directly: what are these statues you sit before so devotedly? Do they hear you when you call them? Can they help you in any way, or harm you in any way? It was not rhetoric; it was an honest cross-examination, and it had only one honest answer.
They could not give it. They did not say yes and they did not say no, because both were impossible. Instead they reached for the only defence a person has when the truth is against them: "We found our fathers worshippers of them." Mufti Menk lingers here, because it is the oldest excuse in the world and it is still everywhere: we do it because it was always done. Ibrahim refused to accept inheritance as proof. He told them straight that they and their forefathers alike had been in clear error all along, that everything they bowed to was in truth an enemy to him, every last one of them, and that there was only One he would ever worship: the Lord of all the worlds, the One who actually made him.
O my father
يَٰٓأَبَتِ لِمَ تَعْبُدُ مَا لَا يَسْمَعُ وَلَا يُبْصِرُ وَلَا يُغْنِى عَنكَ شَيْـًٔا
“O my father, why do you worship that which does not hear and does not see and will not benefit you at all?”
Surah Maryam 19:42 Read 19:42 with tafsir
يَٰٓأَبَتِ إِنِّىٓ أَخَافُ أَن يَمَسَّكَ عَذَابٌ مِّنَ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ فَتَكُونَ لِلشَّيْطَٰنِ وَلِيًّا
“O my father, indeed I fear that there will touch you a punishment from the Most Merciful so you would be to Satan a companion [in Hellfire]."”
Surah Maryam 19:45 Read 19:45 with tafsir
With his father he was gentler than with anyone, and Mufti Menk loves this scene for how the boy speaks. Four times in a row, the Qur'an records, he begins the same soft way: ya abati, O my father. O my father, why worship something that cannot hear you, cannot see you, cannot do a single thing for you? O my father, knowledge has reached me that did not reach you, so follow me and I will guide you to a level, even path. O my father, do not obey Shaytan; as young as he was, he had already understood there were two forces in the world, the One who makes and the one who deceives, and he could see his father slipping toward the second. And then the most tender line of all, the line of a son who is genuinely afraid for the man who raised him: O my father, I fear a punishment from the Most Merciful will touch you.
Notice the name he chooses, Mufti Menk says: he warns his father of punishment from ar-Rahman, the Most Merciful. For the Most Merciful to punish, the crime has to be the one crime mercy itself will not cover: shirk, setting up a partner beside Allah in worship. Allah does not forgive that a person should die upon it, though He forgives anything less to whomever He wills. That is why the boy is so frightened for his father. And the father's reply is ice: have you no taste for my gods, Ibrahim? Stop this, or I will stone you; now get away from me for a long while. His own father threatened to kill him. Ibrahim answered only with peace, and a promise to keep asking Allah to forgive him.
The kind of God worth worshipping
ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَنِى فَهُوَ يَهْدِينِ وَٱلَّذِى هُوَ يُطْعِمُنِى وَيَسْقِينِ وَإِذَا مَرِضْتُ فَهُوَ يَشْفِينِ وَٱلَّذِى يُمِيتُنِى ثُمَّ يُحْيِينِ
“Who created me, and He [it is who] guides me. And it is He who feeds me and gives me drink. And when I am ill, it is He who cures me. And who will cause me to die and then bring me to life.”
Surah ash-Shu'ara 26:78-81 Read 26:78 with tafsir
This is the heart of the whole episode, and the heart of everything Ibrahim would ever teach. He did not just attack the idols; he laid out, plainly, the test any honest person can run on whatever they are about to worship. Ask, he said, who actually made me, because the One who created me is the One who guides me, and I owe my worship to Him. Who feeds me and quenches my thirst. Who, when I fall sick, is the One who heals me. Who will take my life and then give it back to me on the Day I am raised. And the One I genuinely hope will forgive my mistakes on the Day of Judgement: that One, and no other, is the One I will put my forehead on the ground for.
A stick cannot do any of that. A stone cannot feed you or heal you or raise you. So from a very young age, Mufti Menk says, the boy had reasoned his way to a conclusion that no one had to teach him: I can only worship whoever made me. This is the pure, unmixed tawhid that is the first half of the shahada you yourself have said, la ilaha illa Allah, there is no god but Allah. Every single prophet, from Adam to the final Messenger ﷺ, was sent with this one message and nothing else. When Ibrahim worked it out alone in Babylon with the chisel-marks still fresh on the idols around him, he was carrying the exact testimony that would one day be said in Makkah, and that you say today.
Ask the big one
فَجَعَلَهُمْ جُذَٰذًا إِلَّا كَبِيرًا لَّهُمْ لَعَلَّهُمْ إِلَيْهِ يَرْجِعُونَ
“So he made them into fragments, except a large one among them, that they might return to it [and question].”
Surah al-Anbiya 21:58 Read 21:58 with tafsir
قَالَ بَلْ فَعَلَهُۥ كَبِيرُهُمْ هَٰذَا فَسْـَٔلُوهُمْ إِن كَانُوا۟ يَنطِقُونَ
“He said, "Rather, this - the largest of them - did it, so ask them, if they should [be able to] speak."”
Surah al-Anbiya 21:63 Read 21:63 with tafsir
He had made a quiet vow: by Allah, once these people have turned their backs and left, I will deal with their idols. The chance came on a festival day, when the whole town streamed out to worship and left their gods behind in the storehouse. They had invited Ibrahim along; he had said, simply, that he was sick, and Mufti Menk reads the double meaning, that he was sick to his soul of what they were doing. Alone with the idols, he gave them their chance to prove themselves: turning to them, he asked, do you not eat the food set before you? What is wrong with you, that you will not even speak? Silence, of course. They were wood. So he set upon them and broke them to pieces, smashing them one by one, asking each as it fell what it could do to save itself. All of them lay shattered, except the biggest. That one he left standing, and hung the axe on its shoulder.
When the crowd returned to the wreckage of their gods, fury went up: who did this? Someone said they had heard a youth called Ibrahim speak against them. They dragged him before the assembly, the leaders and elders and his own relatives, and demanded: was it you who did this to our gods? And here comes the answer Mufti Menk calls the work of a brilliant mind. No, said Ibrahim, pointing at the one idol still standing with the axe across it: rather, this big one here did it. Ask them, if they can speak. The trap shut on them. For one honest moment they turned in on themselves and admitted, you are the wrongdoers, you know full well these things do not speak. He had not destroyed the idols so much as forced his people to say out loud, with their own mouths, that the things they worshipped could not so much as form a word. Then do you worship, he pressed, beside Allah what cannot help you or harm you at all? Shame on you and on what you worship; will you not use your minds?
O fire, be cool and safe
قَالُوا۟ حَرِّقُوهُ وَٱنصُرُوٓا۟ ءَالِهَتَكُمْ إِن كُنتُمْ فَٰعِلِينَ
“They said, "Burn him and support your gods - if you are to act."”
Surah al-Anbiya 21:68 Read 21:68 with tafsir
قُلْنَا يَٰنَارُ كُونِى بَرْدًا وَسَلَٰمًا عَلَىٰٓ إِبْرَٰهِيمَ
“We [i.e., Allah] said, "O fire, be coolness and safety upon Abraham."”
Surah al-Anbiya 21:69 Read 21:69 with tafsir
For a heartbeat the truth had them. Then pride pulled them back, and a mob's logic took over: he is guilty, and we must make an example of him so that no one ever dares this again. They sentenced him to be burned alive. They gathered fuel for a long time, Mufti Menk says, until the blaze was so monstrous that they could not get near it; they had to fling the fuel in from a distance, and birds flying overhead are said to have dropped from the heat. Ibrahim they bound in ropes and chains and loaded into a catapult, because no hand could carry him close enough to throw him in. And as he was hurled toward the flames, alone, with not one human being on his side, his whole answer was his Lord. The Prophet ﷺ tells us in an authentic narration the words Ibrahim said: hasbunallahu wa ni'mal wakil, Allah is enough for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs.
Then Allah spoke to the fire. He gave a command of two words that overturned its entire nature: O fire, be coolness and safety upon Ibrahim. Mufti Menk notes the precision of the order. Not merely cool, for cold alone could have harmed him too; cool and safe. It burned the ropes and chains off him and touched nothing else. The crowd watched a man sit down inside an inferno as though he had walked into a garden; later in his life he would say the best time he ever spent was the time he spent in that fire. No one cried sorcery, because they had all seen with their own eyes that not one of their idols had lifted a finger to help him. The One who made him was the One who saved him. They had meant a plot against him, and Allah turned it back on the plotters and made them the lowest, the greatest losers of all.
The first to believe, and the road out
فَـَٔامَنَ لَهُۥ لُوطٌ ۘ وَقَالَ إِنِّى مُهَاجِرٌ إِلَىٰ رَبِّىٓ ۖ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ
“And Lot believed him. [Abraham] said, "Indeed, I will emigrate to [the service of] my Lord. Indeed, He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise."”
Surah al-Ankabut 29:26 Read 29:26 with tafsir
قَالَ أَوَلَمْ تُؤْمِن ۖ قَالَ بَلَىٰ وَلَٰكِن لِّيَطْمَئِنَّ قَلْبِى
“[Allāh] said, "Have you not believed?" He said, "Yes, but [I ask] only that my heart may be satisfied."”
Surah al-Baqarah 2:260 Read 2:260 with tafsir
For most of this, remember, Ibrahim stood completely alone; not a single person had accepted his call. Then a young man stepped out of the shocked crowd and said: you are right, and these people are wrong; I surrender to whoever made me, just as you have. It was his nephew, Lut, not yet a prophet, the first human being ever to believe in Ibrahim's message. The two of them resolved to leave a place that had tried to burn them, and Ibrahim said the word that names a whole act of faith: I am making hijra, emigrating, to my Lord. He could not worship Allah freely there, so he would go where he could.
And before they went, Mufti Menk shares one more scene that shows the texture of this man's faith. Ibrahim asked Allah to show him how He brings the dead back to life. Allah asked him, do you not believe? Yes, Ibrahim answered, but I want my heart to be at rest, I want to see it. So Allah told him to take four birds, and call them, and they came flying back to him at his call, and his certainty was strengthened, mercy upon mercy. It was never doubt; it was a believer asking to be shown the thing he already trusted, the way a child asks to watch how a thing is made. Ibrahim and Lut turned their faces toward a blessed land, and a king named Nimrud, who had heard that this boy survived the fire, summoned him to his court. What passed between the prophet and the king who thought he was a god, we will see tomorrow.