Abdullah Hakim Quick – The Amazing Verses About Ants in The Qur’an
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Smilla Rahmanir Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa sallahu wa salam ala Zayed over Li will Akhirin Nabil ana Muhammadan wala alihi wa sahbihi Adji may provide all praise the due to Allah, Lord of the worlds and peace and blessings be constantly showered upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad, the master of the first and the last, and upon his family, his companions and all those who call to his way, and establish his sunnah to the Day of Judgment. As to what follows my beloved brothers and sisters, I begin with the greeting words of the righteous are salam Wa alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa
Alhamdulillah, it is a great privilege and honor again, to be with you here in Trinidad. And every time I come back to the region, it's like a homecoming. For me, my grandmother, my mother's mother, left Barbados, in 1930. And she settled in the United States married and African American, my wife is Jamaican Alhamdulillah, I lived in the region for over four years, and been here many times. And so every time I come back,
there's a emotional thing for me, because it's like somebody coming home, especially coming in the month of January, when it is freezing in Toronto now. And I said to the brother, you know, we had a warm day, when I left, it was five degrees centigrade,
people were taking their coats off.
And so to be here in the tropics, and the rain is coming, and the sun and to be back is a blessing from Allah subhanaw taala. And I believe that this really is the place that all human beings actually should live.
Alhamdulillah I want our sessions and nights to be a joyous session to be a family oriented session.
But at the same time, I want to share with you some of the understanding that I got from traveling to over 63 countries to living in the Muslim world. And as a young, new Muslim, very innocent, open minded, traveling and meeting people meeting the scholars and trying to understand what is happening to us.
And today, it is so important for us to answer that question because we are coming out of the COVID 19 era.
And
people are returning to the masjids returning to normal life, but the world again, has changed.
And so we need to be adaptable, we need to have the wisdom to understand what is happening around us to analyze this in the light of the last revelation.
And in the light of the Sunnah of the Prophet Alayhi Salatu was Salam to be able to set some framework for the continued spread of Islam. And hopefully our children can stay on the path.
And so I want to first introduce this three part series. This is the first part of three important
understandings of the book of Allah subhanho wa taala.
And
it came about, really with
the travel that I did with I'm just trying to understand the Muslim world. I don't know if everybody can see from over here, but I will tell you what is on the slide.
Let's look at the background and why we are studying what we are studying.
If we look at the Muslim world today, you will find that there is great potential in the Muslim world.
We make up over 26% of the Earth's population and we are rising.
And you will be surprised to know that Islam is the majority religion on the African continent. I had the opportunity to live in South Africa for 10 years and to travel to 20 African countries.
Islam also the largest Muslim populations are not in our
Arabia. But in India, Indonesia, these are the largest Muslim populations. In Europe, you will be surprised to know that the majority of people in Paris and mass say,
who are 26 years old and under are Muslims.
In Belgium,
in Holland 50% of the children born in the hospitals right now are Muslims. So quiet is kept, we are rising, there are people still entering Islam. And so Allah blessed us with population.
Allah also blessed us with natural resources, over 50% of the valuable minerals of the world lie under Muslim countries, our countries lie on strategic positions, strategic waterways, strategic mountain passes.
We have young people, the majority of Muslims are young people. If you were to take all of the Muslims and put them on one field,
you will find the majority under 20 years old.
So we are a growing young population.
We also have huge standing armies, hundreds and 1000s of Men at Arms, we have a history, strong history of respect. Our sacred sources are still there for us, the other religions cannot go back to their original source. And so they have to continue to revise what they have, we are blessed with the original source. So even if somebody tries to change it, we can go back to the original to find out whether that person is telling the truth or not.
And so Allah subhanaw taala has blessed us with great potential.
But the question that I asked, and many young people are asking,
with this great potential
with some of the richest people on Earth, living in the Muslim countries, many of you watch the World Cup. And you saw Tata and the standard of living on the UAE,
with some of the richest people on the face of the planet Earth. Why is it that we have some of the poorest people
that's a contradiction
with standing armies that we have.
Why is it
that people are crying out martial art saw in Palestine is still under attack. Muslims are still finding themselves at the brunt of Islamophobia.
The scholars in many places spend their time arguing over minor points for all instead of dealing with who sue which are the principal points.
And so this is the question this leads to a type of frustration.
And I looked in the book of Allah subhanaw taala what could Allah azza wa jal tell us?
And inserted Harsha verses 18 to 19 Allah azza wa jal tells us our uza bIllahi min ash shaytani regime. Yeah, are you Hala? Vina Armineh taco Allah Well, Tondo, enough soon Moqtada McDavid what? Tapachula in hola habia Don't be Marta Amador Well, that's a cool new Ken Levine and so laha for unser home, unforseeable hula Iike homo fastco.
Allah tells us Oh you who believe have the consciousness of Allah and let every soul look to what it put forward for tomorrow. And fear Allah. Surely Allah is well aware of all that you do.
And be not as those who forgot Allah, and so he made them forget themselves.
Surely they are the disobedient ones. So with the divine use of three letters NESEA Allah said Lata Kulu Kaladin Ernesto Allah for answer on fossa, you forget Allah he will make you forget yourself.
Your money will not be spent for the poor.
Your armies will not liberate the oppressed people.
Hi,
this is a contradiction.
And again I searched, how can we come out of this? And Allah subhanaw taala has revealed to us in His mighty book
in Allah, Allah you haoma be a Coleman, Hatha Yoga, very Roma be unforseeable. Allah will not change the condition of a people
until they change that which is in themself. So there's something inside of us as individuals, our families, our Muslim world, there's something that needs to go through a change, the internal Muslim,
right to the heart.
And today in Juma, I was discussing with the brothers and sisters, the importance of sincerity, that in this year 2023 of the solar calendar, you could say it's a year of survival.
We have to survive an onslaught of immorality, we have to survive an onslaught of the climatic change. And even here you felt the floods Majan how it was like in Pakistan Majan what it was like in California right now, when the water is coming down. And so this is the year of survival and in this year, we need to be sincere with Allah azza wa jal.
One of the areas of this sincerity
is sincerity to the book of Allah,
we have to be sincere to the Quran itself.
A great scholar of Islam and African scholars see the Amazon rook of the city of Fez. Many of you got to know the Moroccan tea. People watch the World Cup. The Moroccans defeated the Spanish they defeated the Portuguese, who was the Moroccans? See, the ombudsman wrote a great scholar and First he said if you want to be sincere to the book of Allah, you need three things. Taksim, Tilawat T? What's a double IRT he won it by a woman here.
You must first perfect the recitation beautify with Tajweed. Secondly, to double IRT, you must think about the verses contemplate, reflect upon what Allah subhanaw taala has revealed and finally,
you need to implement this put this into practice. This is the complete sincerity that we need.
And Allah azza wa jal has given us so many examples in his book, Allah has given us parables, parables of the prophets, parables of the creation, Allah subhanaw taala is so merciful.
And within the book itself, there is a lot of deep knowledge. So I want to extract some knowledge and reflect upon
a very important section of the book of Allah. And that is concerning
insects. I want to do something a little bit different now. The young people who are here if you can, can you see the board there?
You can see it. Okay, any young person who can't see it, then move over. So you can see because this is a visual presentation, as well as just an audio presentation.
We want to look at the miracle of the end.
And this takes us
to certain naman
the chapter of the end now you know that Allah subhanaw taala has revealed chapters using the name of insects. One of them is certain number.
And people read before us to say okay, that's interesting.
But what about it?
Let's look at the miracle of the end.
Allah subhanaw taala has revealed
in his book inserts a number of verse 15. I'll do the translation a little bit long have some of it and read the Arabic of some. So Allah has revealed indeed we granted knowledge to doubt and Sulaiman and they said in acknowledgement
Alhamdulillah are praised for Allah, who has made us Excel over many of his faithful servants.
And Tao Wood was succeeded by Sulaiman who said, Oh people, we have been taught the language of birds and been given everything we need. This is indeed a great privilege.
Suleiman alayhi salam
was given something no other prophet was ever given before.
That is the ability to communicate with insects to communicate with the jinn.
No other human being has ever been given something like this before.
And then the Ag verse, Allah told us
and when they came across a valley of ants had ta either Atal Allah was a normal, call it num latonia Or you have normal old Halima Sakeena, comme la Yattaman, Nakum. Suleiman what you know, do who were hula? Yes.
So this is the key point here. And it says,
And when they came across a valley of ants,
and ant
spoke out and said, Oh, ants, go quickly into your homes.
So that suit a man and his army, do not crush you, unknowingly.
So this is the shayad within
this amazing chapter of the book.
And when you look at it right from the beginning,
those who are speaking Arabic,
they see right away. When it's speaking about the end, it is saying, call it number Latin,
female.
science has now shown us that the majority of the ants, the ants who are moving around all over the place that you are basically seeing are all females. They are not males. This is a miracle of the Quran. How could Prophet Muhammad Salah seldom know that the majority of the ants are actually female? Why would the correct because this is the book of Allah azza wa jal.
And so
the end,
she was selfless. Imagine now the huge army is coming instead of just running away. She calls out to the other ants
and said, Go into your home's go underground go somewhere. So you will not get crushed. In other words, that aunt was selfless, that Eric was thinking about the other ends more than she thought about herself.
And this is one of the important qualities
that we need to understand about the ads. And this really came to me when I was living in Cape Town.
And in Africa, in southern Africa, the ads are really aggressive.
For some reason, in Trinidad, I'm not seeing ants, like I used to see I don't know if they're using extermination, or what it is. But I'm not seeing ants like I used to see.
But in Africa, in Cape Town, in a middle class area, if you put down a piece of bread,
in 15 minutes, there's a line of ants moving from the bread.
One Scout goes out and find something communicates it to the other and suddenly they are moving in line. And one day I was doing Vica
and I was sitting in I watched a line of ants going this way and the line going the other way.
And when the ants were passing each other, they would not just go past they would recognize each other.
They communicate with each other they don't communicate with their mouth they have and tennis
so they're in constant communication with each other.
They are amazing creatures.
As a matter of fact, we could say
the end is the most successful creature that has ever lived. This is a deep statement to make.
It is the most successful creature so there must be something above the ant
That makes it successful something why Allah azza wa jal would put the number inside of the code so that we could reflect
so that we could think about this and take lessons from the ants.
There are over 12,000 species of ants.
And they make up what is called scientifically one six to 1/4 of the entire animal biomass. In other words, if you took all animals living things, and you just put them all in a mass, one, six to 1/4, would be ants.
That's how many ants that are in this world. For every human being, every one of us, there are 20 million ants. I don't know about Trinidad down to where they went. Maybe the underground. But there's 20 million ants for every human being. Think about this.
The ants are so successful,
that they live in every single continent of the world, except for one place.
Anybody know without looking at the board where it is?
Excellent, Masha, Allah, and Africa. I don't know why it's Antarctica.
But Antarctica, there's no ants. Every single place in the world, China, Europe, Africa, India, the Americas, everywhere in the world, there are ants and the ants.
You know what's so interesting about them.
And that is that a colony of ants
can be about 10 million ants in a colony, but they will mix with other colonies and they can form what is called a super colonies,
which is billions of ants. Now what is the miraculous thing about ants is that even though they are so much in number, they are one mind.
All of the ants think together.
So when one is thinking and communicating,
there is a connection with the other ants within the colony itself.
And so they function as one body.
They communicate using their antennas. And I watched the ads in their communication moving around with each other. The scientists show that with the antennas, the ants can produce they produce chemicals. And they can actually inform tell the other ends, there's danger up ahead.
They can even show the other ants through chemicals and through their communication, how to get to the food.
That's why suddenly there was a line going from my piece of bread so fast.
Because they communicate they have no cell phone.
They have no mass communication, no walkie talkie.
But they communicate with instinct, what Allah azza wa jal naturally gave them.
And when you are in the colony,
they is no rebellion. In the constant in the colony. There is no
Marxist Leninist. The worker ants fighting against the bourgeoisie ants. There's no rebellion, as they would say, rebellion is futile.
There is no rebellion.
Because they live together, they learn to accept each other
and move together as one body.
And when the ants pass each other, and that's one thing that I noticed, I look really closely at this, every time an app crossed another ant, that he stopped with antenna, she stops and give salam we would say give us the labs.
When one ant is moving across, and there's three ads.
She gives the lamb to the first end, and then nod to the other two. So she gave Salam to the Emir of the Jamaat,
and for the rest of the people in the Jamaat, she then nodded to the rest, because the Emir will then get across the salon, but they will not pass each other.
Think about Muslims today.
The Prophet Sal seldom said the time would come
When there would be a Salam al Haase, they would be a specialized Salam that people would only give to members of their family or members of their tribe.
And we noticed this so much in our communities. Here, our community is fairly tight in terms of ethnicity in our masjids, you will have people from all over the world on each day, when people are supposed to be hugging each other as Muslims, they hug one person, and then they look for someone else that looks like them. And then they give him some lambs and Eid Mubarak, and they look for stuff their cousin or somebody else, passing other Muslims.
That is what the Prophet SAW seldom said salaam will pass.
It's a specialized Salaam. And he was telling us this, in order that we would
be more aware of other Muslims.
The ants are extremely powerful, extremely powerful, you know, one ant
can lift 50 times his weight,
one act,
this is what they would call the Super hit
50 times this way, you could take five automobiles, five cars, and you can lift them all up if you have the power of an axe. But even though the ant has this power, they do not use this strength against each other.
They use it only somebody who is attacking the colony.
And think about it when we get a little bit of strength.
We do a little exercise, we learn a little Arabic.
we memorize a little code and and suddenly, I want to start my own Masjid.
I want to have my own Jamaat, because he thinks he has a little bit of power.
The ants are the most successful creatures on earth. And Allah is pointing to us as Muslims. Why is this?
And if you think about Muslims today in Trinidad, just alone,
or if you look at us in other parts of the world in Canada,
if all the Muslims were united, we would be a powerful block, a powerful body. But when division is between one mastered one community, one ethnic group and another, then you're just a lot of different communities. But when you have what is called OMA consciousness, the Ummah, the nation, when you have the consciousness, the ants have OMA consciousness. There are all types of ants. There are male ants, yes, there are males and the drones, they just sit around and eat food and
get the Queen pregnant.
There's the Queen, who is the ultimate female.
And the queen is special.
The queen is special.
And she is naturally the queen. She doesn't have to go to charm school, to learn how to be a queen, to walk in a certain way to talk in a certain way. It comes natural.
And all of the ants respect in some colonies, they even found there are certain ants that have big claws. And they actually do like machinery. They lift heavy things. There are other ants whose bodies are really strong. And they are the ones who go to the front line if there is an attack.
So there's all types of ants doing all types of activities, but yet and still, they work together. And you know what is one of the beautiful things about ants themself.
It's that teamwork. It's the character.
The Prophet so seldom said an authentic hadith. In the My barista legal Tammy macadam, Allah flock very rarely I have been sent to complete the best in character. That's the essence of your Islam. It's not your beard. It's not your job.
It's not how tall your hat is.
It's your character. You live as a Muslim.
And the ants have this character. It's a beautiful quality. Imagine one app can lift 50 times their weight, but yet they are polite with each other. An experiment was done with a group of ants in Argentina
You know, Argentina to they won the World Cup, right?
An experiment was done in Argentina, and they made a maze. And they put the parents in the maze. So it has little little lanes and corridors. And what they did when you come to you're going along a lane, and they blocked.
You go another one, they blocked it. And they found out that the more difficult it became, is the more patient, the ants became. Think about human beings. Think about us, if you're in line, and the people get unruly and stop fighting each other. We even experienced this when we're on how much it can happen with human beings. But the ants, the more difficult it came, when they did this experiment is the more polite they were with each other. Because they realize that their success is the success of the Jamaat.
It's not just their own success, and being patient
is an amazing thing. And you see amazing feats the ants can do, I want you to take some time, basically our younger brothers and sisters, but everybody look up x.
They're amazing creatures that Allah subhanaw taala has made this picture here, if you can see that mass right there.
That is going through a stream.
This is all ants.
They stuck together to each other.
And they hung on to some wood. And they floated together
as the Jamaat when the water was moving too fast. And because of that unity, they were able to cross the river in a way that they would not have been able to do. If they were not united,
the ants think positively.
But sometimes even the ants get angry.
And in one case, they evolve according to the situation. There was even an ad in in America. In Texas, they said the aunt of pol ants and that these ants were attacking electronic devices. They were attacking the computers.
And the Americans had to do make all kinds of poisons. And when they made the poison the air evolves and he defeats the poisons. They said it was the end of all ads, it was an unbelievable experience that they were having and to show what the ants can do.
So what is the lessons some of the lessons for the Muslims today?
Number one, the Arabs are in submission to Allah subhanaw taala they don't have to be trained, they take goals they function naturally
excellent character,
politeness, hard work,
acceptance of each other.
Think about these qualities we need to like workshop these we need to, you know, show this to our younger generation.
selflessness. It is said that in the Battle of Bogota
when the Muslims were facing the Romans, and one of the Sahaba read the Allah one who made my end, he was wounded and he was calling out. He was calling out for water and they came to him and then he heard his brother. And so he said don't give it to me give the water to my brother. And they went to the other one he was calling out and he went to the third person and when they reached him he had died. Shaheed they came to the second he died Shaheed and they came to the first and he was Shaheed selflessness.
How you take Islam spread so rapidly, in the time of the Prophet SAW stolen right up in 100 years, Islam and entered China,
far north, in the Caucasoid mountains, deep south on the Swahili coast, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean 100 years.
Thinking in one mind,
one mind, this is not easy. There may be some differences amongst us. But at the end of the day, we are all Muslims. We are the people of the Qibla.
And we need to be able to look at each other for that which is similar, instead of that, which is different.
So one of the things plaguing us they'll look at Sundays and look how he makes a lot.
And he makes a lot a little bit different. He makes he's a Maliki and he's wiggling his finger like this.
He's wiggling his finger.
And they're looking at him. I was in one country, I won't say which one it is. And the Imam read the salaat. So beautiful salata, Maghrib. And I said, I mean, I was the only one in the mosque.
So when they finished, they said, where's that shaytaan? Where is
and they came to get me and they said, Brother why I said get Sahil Buhari.
And you will see that the Sahaba said are mean so loud, it shook the building.
So you have the right to be silent. For the right to say aloud, all of it is allowable within Sundar. See, that's what knowledge can do.
And so
this is unity that we need to have, I call it operational unity.
And that is we have Muslims from different schools of thought, we have different Islamic movements. But we need to have operational Unity, we learn to work together. If there's a difference we discuss amongst each other. If we disagree, then we agree to disagree.
But we still love each other, and we still protect each other. That is the example of the ants.
thinking positive. When the Prophet SAW Selim would send his people out on a journey, he would tell them Bushido that to not Pharaoh. Yes, Cyril will have to hustle. He would tell them give glide, glad tidings. Don't drive people away.
Make it easy, make the religion easy, don't make the religion difficult.
That is the original way, how the Muslims would function and how Islam began to spread. And I want to read, there is a famous in a poem, it says Courage isn't always a lion's roar. It's also the silence of ant working patiently, persistently, and never giving up.
That is courage, to continue to work, to strive to overcome our differences.
To think in one mind,
to submit completely to Allah subhanaw taala.
And to take these examples, our Muslim world now has the potential to be the leaders of the planet. But if we continue, as different ethnic groups of different, the rich and the poor,
even different Islamic movements, then we will continue to be conquered by alien enemies, who will have no mercy on us. And so I pray that Allah subhanaw taala would bless us to have this feeling and understanding of the ants. I pray that Allah subhanaw taala would raise up in our younger generation, those who can break down differences, and those who can appreciate other Muslims and appreciate people of other faiths and nationalities as well. So that we can bring this world from darkness into light. So we can survive in a tidal wave of immorality, which is surrounding us.
A tidal wave of economic pressure. Everything is getting more expensive, it's getting more expensive in Trinidad too, right?
Everything is getting expensive. But at the same time, there's so with this some rich people, the top percentage of people are rich, anybody has ever been in the world.
So this is where humanity needs to come together. And I believe that Muslims can lead this cause if we would take the lessons from Allah subhanaw taala and put it into our lives. I leave you with these thoughts. And I ask Allah to have mercy on me and you
was salam Wa alaykum warahmatullahi wa barakato