Abdal Hakim Murad – Return to the Sunnah Ramadan Moments

Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala

Rasulillah. While he was off, be on and voila.

We're moving into the last

last few days of the fasting month, and we've traversed the

landscape of renunciation. We've become accustomed to the fact that

we need less than the ego always told us we did.

We have traversed the great landscape, the hills and the

valleys of Allah's book.

We've learned so much.

Families in Sharla have come together.

United as it were in adversity at the times of Sahar and Iftar.

And so many higher ups, so many good things have been fought out

over us.

While may reflect at this time on

the reason for this extraordinary commitment on the part of a

quarter of the world's population,

it would be hard to point to another religious community or

perhaps secular community, where such sacrifices were not

exceptional, but the norm.

There was something about this ummah, that stands out.

And it behooves us to reflect on this.

What is it about us that has been singled out for this favor this

protection,

that amongst the honors, it is this Muhammad and Alma that

continues to focus on the things that really matter, the timeless,

perennial truths of God, a family, of duty, of renunciation, of

prayer, of Scripture, of chanting, of ritual, all of these things

which were at the center of normal human life, for almost all of the

history of Benny Adam, but which have been slipping from the grasp

of so many outside the fold of this golden community of Islam.

This time, last week, I was preparing for my tarawih in the

prophetic mosque or Masjid in nebo. In Medina,

you can imagine postcode COVID, the crowds,

like the Day of Judgment,

1.9 million over capacity.

And all of these people who are streaming in from all directions

and putting up with despite the plushness of some of the hotels,

the undeniable discomfort with the situation, having to arrive at the

mosque, an hour and a half before Fajr in order to get a place

inside the building. Even though the building is apparently the

second largest building in the world.

What drives all of these people, you look out of the high window,

and you see hundreds and 1000s and 10s, of 1000s of people at the

prayer times, all moving in one direction, nobody going the other

way.

What is driving them to make the sacrifices to get up at an

unearthly hour and to endure the privations of fasting and to spend

what is known as twinging some

getting to the holy cities.

And it occurred to me that this is one of the meanings

and the fulfillments of the dark that we make after the other one,

which is a door out for prophetic blessings and this is from the

Sunnah.

Oh Allah give him a direct shuttle Aleta raffia

give him the high Nobel degree.

All of these people are driven by what?

Not financial gain certainly.

But by love, really. The force that makes the world go round.

That true love, not love for some

earthly thing. But love for somebody who was driven by what is

on earthly

love for the chosen ones on Allahu alayhi wasallam. That's what makes

all of those feet move around the world to go to his home. And

that's what makes us get up for the soul. And that's what makes us

attend the tearaway and in your patiently, the hours of privation.

It's really love.

And it's clear that this is what mocks out authentic religion from

its simulacrum from its outward form.

Now there's something that you can't touch

Gotta see it's an inward light.

And we have to move from the outward forms of the religion into

the inward reality. So that we truly inhabit that which we are

claiming through going through outward motions.

And this love which is a specific quality of this, Mohammed and

religion

relates to his title of Habibollah. God's beloved.

Adam is Sophia Yola.

Nor isn't Adeola Musa is collembola Eisah is ro Hola. And

so on the Hadith, these have certain designations, and the

title, the noble title, which singles out our blessing messenger

sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is that he is Habibollah because

beloved, and this quality of Mahatma

is characteristic of what drives us. That's what makes us walk long

distances.

My father in the 1950 woods when he was courting my mother, they

were engaged used to cycle from Norwich to see her in London.

Love if you like the Humber.

But we're doing that all the time. Insofar as we are seeking in our

humble and broken way to put our feet in his footsteps in which so

many flowers have grown.

This has always been a blessing, to have a form of perfection that

enables one to demonstrate and enact one's love.

So that every action of our religion becomes an expression of

this love, love for God and love for Habibollah God's beloved,

so that every aspect of our following the Sunnah is an

expression of this, this love this passion, this recognition of

beauty and perfection.

And this outward form, which we take on, and which we take on

somehow with greater ease during the month of Ramadan

is what we call the Sunnah, the prophetic way.

And it has boundaries, and it has limitations. And it has

commandments and it has prohibitions and it's

it has strong way of life. It expects sacrifices, because it's

optimistic about human nature and our capacity to make those

sacrifices. And the month of Ramadan is proof that Benny Adam,

rich and poor, male and female, they can all make the sacrifices.

And

if the lesson of Ramadan is really about love, and is about patience,

and is supremely about the Sunnah,

because what we do in Ramadan, our times of inSec uptimes, if thar

our recital of the Quran, everything is just doesn't come

from our own preferences or from nowhere but comes from the way in

which the chosen one I leave his salat wa salam did these things

are beautifully he must have done them.

That by stepping outside the form of ourselves, mandated by our own

ill informed desires and into a form of perfection.

Prophetic perfection the highest form of perfection that there's

ever been

Adamic primordial perfection, a complete harmony with creation as

it is, with the natural world, with the animal world, with the

world of human beings,

with the divine.

By stepping into that kala full dignity.

We as it word Dawn, a robe of honor. We stand up straight, we

start to hear the angels, and we discover what we are for which is

to be a bad a lot. Allah's slaves were created to be slave

worshippers of the real

and that's a liberation. There's no liberation finer than being

liberated from one's own futile, individual individualistic wants

and desires and egotism. To be liberated from those and to

breathe the fresh air of true freedom

is a part of the gifting that we receive in Ramadan.

But we understand therefore, the great importance of this.

The Sunnah is in a sense how we confirm our Muslim Ness.

And the great ones if the Halima Solahart. The Alia have always

voiced in the Sunnah and have always sought out the Sunnah is

great and small, easy and difficult in order to be liberated

by them.

God kennela COVID Rosu

leader, Hassan Hassan, the Holy Quran says, There has always been

for you in Allah's Messenger, an excellent example.

Now in our time, a time where the Enlightenment seems to have

reached its final logical conclusion.

Be yourself, find yourself, express yourself, discover

yourself, and anybody who gets in the way of yourself.

However vague a thing that might turn out to be, is oppressing you.

But it's clear that this is not working very well.

We're experiencing now particularly amongst young people,

a mental health pandemic across the western world.

44% of 18 to 24 year olds in the UK, are reporting mental health

issues.

It's not a happy age, an age which is free to be oneself but not an

age in which anybody is really happy in themselves.

And the reason for this for us, is clear.

We're not designed as a species to be in a borderless freefall, an

area without contours, without traditions without landmarks

without norms.

We are designed to inhabit a world of boundaries, a world of right

and wrong, a world of gender, a world of nobility. But nowadays in

our free for all world, we are told to celebrate a freedom which

consists in not having boundaries to exist in a kind of

freefall in a space that has no limitations, no rules, no

categories.

And we are told that this will make us freer to be ourselves and

therefore to be happy. But it's not working.

This mental health pandemic is a tragic thing. So many young people

are hurting.

It seems that that kind of freedom does not yield happiness, whatever

its promises.

The freedom that does yield happiness is freedom from self,

from knifes in his egotistic dimensions.

And as we rise above our personal

temptations and desires and intimations into the glorious,

noble form of the Sunnah, we are liberated from those things that

bring us down and we come into a fresh realm

where the divine can be encountered.

So it seems quite clear that in our age of confusion, the Sunnah

is more important than ever.

And whatever our point of view in Islam, wherever we stand in the

great family of Muslim denominations and realities, this

one is basic,

who would not wish to be like the best of creation, who would not

wish to be beautiful, to be good to be as he was to be close to God

to be prayerful?

You'd have to be strange not to want what is evidently best for

you.

And so,

in this age, this boundaryless age of false freedom.

The Sunnah, which we are reminded of, particularly in the month of

Ramadan offers us a real freedom, an authentic freedom that which

has been celebrated, and which has set free the great sages and the

saints and the scholars of this ummah,

down the ages.

This is what imamo crocheted equals Horrea freedom,

not freedom to be myself.

And to see how many people on social media are liking myself,

but rather freedom from the false self freedom in the true self.

This great gift.

Holy Prophet says to his Sahaba, one of the last times he addresses

them, woman Yasmin come for Sofia, Yara, FTF and kathira. Whoever

lives long enough amongst you shall see a great FTF difference

disorder. multiplicity.

Nowadays, everything is intolerable diversity. You want to

buy a table.

I tried this the other day, you go on eBay. There's 10,000 tables and

then that becomes complex and stressful, if the left but in

terms of forms of life, lifestyle, all of these choices that young

people have nowadays you can be this you can be that you can

identify very bewildering places a lot of pressure on them on their

poor little nascent selves to decide these major things. So they

become anxious, they become depressed, they self harm. It's

very sad.

But the liberation from that is exactly the Sunnah. So immediately

after saying that about the FDF that will come he says Allah

Allahu alayhi wa sallam are li gon be so naughty. Or so naughty. Hola

Raj, Idina Medina Minh body. Otto Ali have been no ages.

So what's the solution to this if DLF is different forms of life,

these different positions.

Follow the Sunnah He says, My son and the son of the Rightly Guided

caliphs after me, hold on to them by your teeth. It's very dramatic

image. You can imagine a drowning man might just do that in order to

save his life. It's an image of desperation, and in the raging

seas of late modernity and postmodernity. This world of a

billion choices, and much confusion and unhappiness. This is

the ship of salvation. So let our lesson from this Ramadan amongst

many other gifts that it offers us be a renewed respect for and an

awareness of our absolute need for the Sunnah of the chosen one

Salalah alayhi wa sallam religion is not just a matter of identity.

It is a matter of living claims about human ability and the

capacity of Benny Adam to be noble and to be good, and to be holy.

So insha Allah as we continue after the days of Ramadan, we will

keep up some of the good practices that we began in the month we will

have a new renewed respect and gratitude for this form of life

the suit of armor that keeps us away from the madness of a

degenerating age and insha Allah through this love for the Sunnah.

Despite our inadequate practice of it, we may merit some share of the

intercession of Habibollah called beloved on that day when

we all need him more than ever. May Allah subhanaw taala bless you

in your fasting in your last days, and your families and bring you to

the aid and to your Liliana in sha Allah surly mean Vani mean was

salam aleikum wa rahmatullah.

wa salam Wa alaykum. Thank you for learning with us. At Cambridge

Muslim College, we are raising the standard of Muslim scholarship

through talks like these, but also through our certified academic

programs. We're training our students to speak to our times and

to meet the needs of our communities. But we can't do this

without your help. Whether it's a cut, a one off donation, or a

regular contribution. Your gift will help us educate more

students, elevate new leaders and illuminate entire communities for

generations to come.