Adnan Rajeh – Seerah Halaqah – #41
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of knowing behavior and avoiding mask and barriers to keep people safe. They also discuss the difficulties of living in a new lifestyle and the importance of learning and being mindful of one's behavior. The speaker emphasizes the importance of learning and being mindful of one's behavior to avoid disappointment. They also touch on the history of Yathiva and the struggles of the Mojiraic community. The speaker emphasizes the importance of learning and working with others to avoid disappointment.
AI: Summary ©
We continue within the Seerah of the Prophet
ﷺ, and where we had arrived, or what
we reached up to last week, was when
the Prophet ﷺ entered Madinah, entered Yathrib, and
he gave his first speech, he spoke to
the people of Yathrib for the first time,
and then he decided to let his camel
kind of just wander, and wherever it stopped,
that's where he would stay.
And Abu Ayyub al-Ansari took the initiative
and threw the Prophet's ﷺ luggage into his
house, and that ended up being the place
that he stayed for the duration until he
built, until his own home was built and
he was able to move out.
So he was there, some scholars say he
was there for a couple of weeks, some
say he was there for a couple of
months, but he wasn't there for anything over
a year.
And Abu Ayyub r.a., Khalid ibn Zayd
ibn Ta'lab al-Khazraj al-Ansari r
.a., is one of the great sahaba, and
the barakah of the Prophet ﷺ living in
his home was something that was felt by
the sahaba for the rest of his life.
He is one of the few sahaba that
attended all of the battles of the Prophet
ﷺ, and he got through his time with
the Prophet ﷺ with not one negative story
about him.
There's not one piece of critique or criticism
that was made against him ﷺ at any
point throughout his life.
Now all the sahaba, توثي رسول الله ﷺ
هو راضي عنهم Tawuthi Rasool Allah ﷺ huwa
raazim anhum The Prophet ﷺ passed away, and
he was in a state of satisfaction with
them, and he had rida about all of
them.
But throughout their lives, or most of them,
there was always a point or a story
where something could have been done better.
Abu Ayyub was one of the people who
didn't, and it's valid, there's some sahaba that
we don't have critique, but we don't actually
have a lot of stories about.
Abu Ayyub is special because Abu Ayyub, he
had the Prophet ﷺ live in his home
for a while.
The Prophet ﷺ was his guest, so the
Prophet ﷺ got to see how Abu Ayyub
was living his life.
You see, it's one thing for me to
know you from afar, it's different for me
to visit you, it's different for me to
live with you in your home.
When you take a roommate, that's when you
actually get to know the person.
That's when you actually get to know the
person, their nature, their habits, their cleanliness, how
considerate they are, how compassionate they are, do
they pick up after themselves, do they take
care of their business, do they take care
of others around them, how do they live?
Do they have good habits in their lives?
And that's hard to know about someone by
the way they dress or how they deal
with you in their general life.
That's something that they say al-bi'utah
salat houses are secrets.
You don't know what's going on unless you're
living there.
So the Prophet ﷺ lived with Abu Ayyub
in his home.
So he got to see Abu Ayyub and
Umm Ayyub, one of the great sahabiyats, up
close in their habits and the way they
lived their lives and their akhlaaq.
You see, also your demeanor and your character,
it's difficult to establish what type of character
you have by just seeing you in a
masjid.
We're all going to be at our best
behavior in the house of Allah ﷺ, that
goes without saying.
This is why Sayyidina Abu al-Khattab would
say that you don't know someone unless you've
done one of the three things with them.
Either you've traveled with them, you've done business
with them, or they're your neighbor.
So this is actually an intensification of being
a neighbor, living with the person in their
home.
That's even way more difficult.
And I talk about this obviously today and
next time and next time because we have
a couple of stories regarding it.
But I like this first one.
It's like we're warming up to this concept.
Why the Prophet ﷺ lived in someone's home
for a while.
Now we're going to talk about muwakhaa and
what that led to, obviously.
But he lived in his home.
We don't have really other stories or other
pieces of evidence that the Prophet ﷺ lived
in someone else's home, aside from Abu Ayyub.
He would go and visit and sometimes stay
for hours and sometimes stay for a night
in Bait Umm Haneh and Bait Umm Sulaim
and others, he would stay there.
But this is different.
He lived with this man.
And he had nothing but praise for him
ﷺ.
Now he had not one bad thing to
say about Abu Ayyub.
Not one.
He did not engage with Abu Ayyub in
teaching him anything.
He did not offer Abu Ayyub any piece
of advice regarding his general day-to-day
life ﷺ.
And he would have had he seen something
that was worthy of sharing with Abu Ayyub
out of love for Abu Ayyub and obviously
being the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Ayyub being a
Muslim.
But he didn't.
Which tells you the nature of the character
and the nature of the household that Abu
Ayyub ﷺ ran, which was something of high
caliber and great ethics and etiquette.
Abu Ayyub not only would he be with
the Prophet ﷺ in every single battle, he's
one of the few if not the only
household that when Aisha ﷺ was accused of
something she didn't do, he defended her, as
did his wife.
So you can see that the choice of
being in his house, yes he took initiative,
but Allah wanted us to get to know
this gentleman.
To get to know who this person was
and the status of him.
He would outlive the Prophet ﷺ by a
number of years.
And he would live all through the Khilafah
Rashidah.
And he would live through the Khilafah of
Sayyidina Muawiyah Abu Yusufiyan.
And he would engage and participate in all
of the major conquests of Islamic history.
I mean he was there for the battles
with the Persian Empire, he was there with
the battles with Sayyidina Khalid Ibn Walid in
the Roman Empire, and he made it as
far as Qustantinia which is today Istanbul.
And if you go today to Istanbul you
can find Masjid Sayyidi Abu Ayyub Al-Ansari,
it's one of the busiest masjids, he was
buried there.
He got so old within the Khilafah, Muawiyah
got so old that they told him that
you can't really go with us on any
of these conquests of jihad, you have to
stay, he said no I go with you,
and if I can't move just put me
on a horse and let the horse keep
on running towards the enemy until I drop
and then bury me at the farthest point
away from Medina as possible.
Not because he didn't love his city, but
he wanted, and they asked him why, so
I'm brought on my resurrection day from there,
telling the Prophet he told him this is
how far I went for you, this is
how far I went, I kept on pushing
until I dropped, I didn't stop until I
dropped, so he would say this is how
far, I couldn't make it any farther than
this, my lifespan didn't allow me to go
beyond this, but I kept on going until
the day I died, and he passed away
at the gates, at the walls of Al
-Qustun Tiniya, and he didn't witness his conquests,
his conquering, it took years later for it
to happen, but if you ever go to
Turkey, go visit his Masjid, and stand there
in awe of this gentleman, truly a gentleman,
who had the Prophet live in his home,
because I want you to think about that,
imagine if he decided to visit you today,
and they said I need to stay with
you for a couple of weeks, what would
he have to say at the end of
them, how would he find your room, would
he be proud of your room when he
comes into it, you would be happy to
show him your room and your bed and
your stuff and your closet and your bathroom
and your kitchen, would you be happy for
him to see how you're living, would he
be happy with the way you speak to
your parents, would he be happy with how
the spouses are speaking to each other, and
how the parents are speaking to their children,
and how siblings are discussing with one another,
or would you have to completely change your
lifestyle in order for you to be able
to maybe just get through these two weeks,
you see he stayed with Ayub long enough
to the point where any mask or any
axe would have dropped, he stayed long, because
you can keep up that axe for a
day or two or three, but you can't
keep it up for months at a time,
for months it's impossible to do that, it's
too much time, your mask will drop, you
can't continue to hold yourself in a certain
way for months, but Sayyidina Abu Ayub didn't
have to put up a mask or put
on a show for the Prophet alayhi salatu
wasalaam, the nature of his life, the akhlaaq
that he lived by were akhlaaq of great
etiquette and great attributes and great character, so
ask yourself, if the Prophet alayhi salatu wasalaam
was to knock on your door and ask
to stay with you, and let's say you
had the extra room to put him in,
would you be proud of what he would
witness alayhi salatu wasalaam in your household, or
would you feel that my house is not
worthy of you, you see Abu Ayub not
only, this is the point that we don't
think about, Abu Ayub it wasn't just about
wanting the Prophet alayhi salatu wasalaam in your
home, in your house, it was also being
at a level where it's appropriate for him
to come to your house alayhi salatu wasalaam,
if you're running a failing household, if you're
running a household that is not functional you
don't want him to come and live with
you alayhi salatu wasalaam, Abu Ayub it took
courage from Abu Ayub to do this, you
see when you think about it, the reason
that people weren't fighting over his luggage immediately,
is because a lot of people knew that
we love him, we want him in our
neighborhood, but I can't have him in my
home, I would be very embarrassed and ashamed
if he came and lived with me alayhi
salatu wasalaam, so they didn't, but Abu Ayub
wasn't, Abu Ayub was happy for him to
live with him because he had certain things,
and this is what I'm asking you to
think about, this beautiful piece of the story
where someone had the honor of having Rasool
Allah alayhi salatu wasalaam live in his house,
the problem is if you were offered that
honor would you be able to live up
to it and you can't put on a
show for 8-9 months, you can't, you
can't, the true colors of your lifestyle will
shine, it will be apparent how you're living,
and he will hear it, see if Abu
Ayub and Abu Ayub weren't getting along he
would hear them fighting or yelling or using
language or you would see if the children
were not, if Ayub and his siblings were
not respectful to their parents, he would know
alayhi salatu wasalaam and then he would have
to spend hours upon hours fixing this household
and fixing this family and repairing these relationships
and teaching people how they're supposed to talk
to one another, how they're supposed to communicate
with one another, what type of attitude they
should have within the household, how they should
treat each other, how they should look at
the work that others are doing, how they
should see their obligations, he'd have to sit
down and teach them alayhi salatu wasalaam how
to live, how to live, but he didn't,
he didn't have to spend any time educating
Abu Ayub and Umm Ayub and their family
on anything alayhi salatu wasalaam, and that's why
Abu Ayub was quick to pick up the
luggage and throw it, yes, he can live
with me, I'm proud of how I live
well, and I think he would enjoy being
with me, so I'm asking you, would he
enjoy being with you in your home alayhi
salatu wasalaam, would he be in a household
that you want to present your household to
him, like you want him to see alayhi
salatu wasalaam how you live, how you sleep,
how you wake up, how your household functions,
what it looks like, how you treat people
around you in the home, what attitude and
ethics and behaviors exist there, or you like,
no, I want him to come to my
house to fix everything, if you're thinking that,
no, he needs to come to my household
to fix everything, then the first thing he's
going to be fixing is going to be
you, see alayhi salatu wasalaam would, if you
sometimes think I make you feel uncomfortable, then
you hadn't meet him, you hadn't meet him
alayhi salatu wasalaam, you hadn't meet him alayhi
salatu wasalaam yet, had you met him, you
would have known, had you met him, you
would have known that he doesn't sugar coat
stuff, if you're asking for education, if you're
asking to be taught, if you're asking to
be mentored and to be pointed out, he
doesn't sugar coat, if he said ya rasoolallah
come and fix the problem of my home,
most likely the first thing he would do
is point his finger right at you, say
you have a problem, the problem is you,
you're not doing your job, have you done
your job, do your job and then tell
me that the household is not working, put
in the extra 10%, put in the 100
% and the extra 10% and then
tell me it's not functioning, because the human
being is very quick to blame everyone else
and then play down, water down their own
shortcomings, this is how the human being is,
I see, you look at my shortcomings, I'm
only making one, two, this mistake and this
mistake, that's it, everyone else is making 100
mistakes, I play down, I water down my
mistakes and I focus on theirs and he
wouldn't be okay with that, I'm telling you,
I'm guaranteeing this to you, whenever he spoke,
he walked out knowing that something had to
change about you, this is how he taught
Islam, you listen to what's being said and
then you go and you apply it to
yourself, you don't go and apply it to
other people, you don't go and ask other
people to hold themselves to what you heard
from him, but rather you go hold yourself
to it first and once you hold yourself
to it appropriately, then you can do in
a da'wah form, offer people to hold
themselves to it, this is important, this is
how he was, so Abu Ayyub knew this,
they knew that he would not shy down,
he would speak, he would teach when needed,
so if he came to your house, why
would he tell you, how impressed would he
be with your lifestyle, or would he have
a lot of points that he has to
make in order for you to already sit
down and talk to you in terms of
what you need to change in order for
your lifestyle to be something that is worthy,
something that is reasonable, something that is good,
something that is respectful and honorable, so imagine
if he was your guest for a while,
what would you change, I know right now
you're listening to me like I would change
1, 2, 3, ta'eeb ya kheem, ta
'eeb ya kheem, change them, change them now,
why wait, if you're thinking in your mind,
no if he lives with me, I would
stop doing this, I would start doing that,
I would change this aspect of my behavior,
I would change my tone when I speak
about this, I would clean up that behind
myself, I would make sure, alright do them,
do them so that he can be proud
of you, so you could feel that I'm
living in a lifestyle that is worthy of
respect, and I've always found this piece to
be a beautiful aspect of the seerah for
reflection, something to think about, because Abu Ayyub
didn't hesitate, he picked up the luggage, threw
it in his home, where are you going
to separate the man and the luggage, the
luggage is in my home, he's with me,
so people are okay with it, he thought
it through, it wasn't like oh my gosh
what have I just done, I'm a slob,
I can't have him in my house, I
can't have him see what my bed looks
like all day long, I can't have him
smell what my room smells like or see
what my bathroom looks like at the end
of the day, I can't have him here
because he only sees this, and I can't
keep up any form of actual, of any
good habits to cover this for too long,
he didn't, he knew how he was living,
he knew that the way he was living
was an honourable way, that the Prophet would
be impressed, and he was, he had nothing
critical to say aside from praise for Sayyidina
Abu Ayyub and his house.
So let's talk a little bit now about
the difficulties of this new community because I
need you to have this context, in order
for the seerah halaqah to be meaningful to
you, moving forward for the next couple of
months until we conclude the story, you have
to have this context of what Yathrib, what
the city looked like and what society the
Prophet was living in and what he was
trying to repair and fix and what he
was trying to do.
So there's a bunch of, first of all
you have the muhajireen, the people who came
from Mecca, they are homesick, they are homesick,
they are very, it was hard for them
to go from Mecca to Yathrib, it was
a huge transition and they lost a lot
of them, they had been living there obviously
all their lives and they were natives of
the city, their ancestors built the city as
it was, so for them to leave it
was very difficult, and there's a story where
Bilal is, they got very sick too by
the way, disease, Yathrib was a city that
had way more disease because it was more
diverse than Mecca was and because of the
climate, so people got sicker, back then they
didn't have vaccines, they didn't have antibiotics and
a lot of what we have today, so
it was easy if you were living in
a place that wasn't to get sick, so
people got way more sick in Yathrib than
they did get in Mecca, and the people
who immigrated from Mecca to Yathrib, they got
very ill, and there's a story where the
Prophet and Abu Bakr and Bilal are all
lying down ill, like they're all just lying
down completely, they have fevers and they're tired,
and Bilal starts to sing, he says, Alaa
hal abitanna laylatan biwadin wa hawli idkhirun wajalilu,
he said, Ya layta shi'ri will they
come where I will sleep again in a
valley and I'm surrounded by idkhirun wajalilu, this
is a place in Mecca, he's talking about
a nice place in Mecca where people go
and have picnics and there's shade and stuff,
so he's singing, I know it's poetry, saying
when will the day come where I will
be able to lie down in that valley
again, wa hawli idkhirun wajalilu, fa qala salallahu
alayhi wa sallam, be quiet, da'il juroohatan
damil, let our wounds close, ya Bilal, our
wounds are fresh still, what are you doing,
just be quiet, and then he would make
dua, and I shared some of these adhia
with you when I was reciting the shama
'il muhammadiyah, with the Prophet alayhi salatu wasalam,
Allahumma habib ilayna almadina, kama hababta ilayna makkah,
Allahumma kama da'aka Ibrahim li makkah fastajabta
lahu, fa inni adauka lil madina fastajib li,
he would say, Allah, as you made us
love Mecca, make us love Madinah, and as
you accepted the dua of Ibrahim to Mecca,
where Ibrahim said, Rabbana inni askantu min dhurriyati
biwadin ghayri dhizaran inda baytikal muharram, Rabbana li
yuqeemu as-sala fa ja'al af'idatan
minan nasi tahwee ilayhim warzuquhum minath thamarat ila
allahum yashkuroon, Ibrahim asked Allah, Ya Rabb, I
put my family in the middle of nowhere,
and there's nothing there, oh my Lord, may
people come to them, and may they prosper,
and may green come from the ground, and
may they eat well, and may they have
provision, so the Prophet alayhi salatu wasalam said,
as Ibrahim made dua to you for Mecca,
I make dua to you for Mecca, Allahumma
unqul hummaha ila kharijiha, Allah, take all this
hummah, this fear into the outside, Allahumma barik
lana fee muddiha wa sa'iha wa burriha
wa sha'iriha wa ahliha, O Allah, and
grant us barakah in the provision that it
carries, like the food, and the people, so
he'd make dua alayhi salatu wasalam because he
wasn't enjoying it, see this dua tells you
about how he was feeling, when he's saying
this, Ya Rabb, make me love this place
as much as I loved Mecca, that means
he's not, right, initially he wasn't, oh Allah,
as you accepted the dua of Ibrahim to
Mecca, accept my dua for Medina, because this
is, yeah, at the beginning they were miserable,
at the beginning they weren't happy, Yathrib was
not a friendly place for them to be,
and they were homesick, and they were literally
ill, so think about that, they're in a
place where they didn't necessarily want to be,
they want to go back home, they want
to go back to Mecca, they never wanted
to leave, and now they're physically not feeling
as well, you know that, if you get
on a plane and you go and live
in a different country for a week, the
water itself will make you sick, just drinking
the water, you come back and then you
get sick again, drinking the water again, the
water changes, the food, everything changes, so Allah,
people are just different, this collective existence affects
us more than we know, agriculture, agriculture was
a big thing, these are the three things
I'm going to talk about, the people of
Mecca were not fallaheen, they were not farmers,
the people of Mecca were merchants, that's what
they did, they knew how to buy and
sell, and Yathrib was not a place for
business, Yathrib was not a blooming business space,
Yathrib was agriculture, people would put in the
ground, whatever the ground gave you, you would
take that and sell it, so you're eating
from it and selling whatever it is that
you're putting in the ground, whether it's wheat
and barley and lentil and corn and rice
or dates and grapes and other types, that's
all they had back then, and most of
the people of Yathrib, that's what they did,
so the people of Mecca were coming in,
they're businessmen, they're merchants, they're looking for big
markets, they don't find big markets, they're finding
very small markets and the markets are run
by certain people who don't welcome others to
be a part of their markets, so it's
hard for them to penetrate, and they are
not muzariyeen and fallaheen, and they were required
at the beginning of their time in Yathrib
to go and work with the people they
were living with, so they had to go
and give a city boy a shovel, he
doesn't know what to do with it, he
thinks it's a big spoon for food, you
don't even know how to hold it properly,
I was like this, when I went and
finally, so my dad, he's not here so
I can say this, when my dad moved
me finally back to his hometown in 1999,
he was attempting to teach me to become
a farmer, it took him around 7 years
to completely give up on me, and he
gave up alhamdulillah, eventually he decided that I
was useless and he stopped trying, but for
years, because all of my father's a farmer,
all of my uncles are farmers, my grandfather's
a farmer, my great grandfather were farmers, that's
what they do, now they would go and
educate themselves, my grandfather was a lawyer, but
they were still farmers, what they understood was
the land, I'm named after my uncle, my
eldest uncle, and I remember one morning after
fajr, I would come back and I would
go, there's so many trees of fruits around
my house that I would just, after fajr,
go take a walk and take something for
myself to eat, different types of berries and
different types of cherries and apricots and other
things, so I'm going there, I'm a teen,
figs are absolutely majestic, if you should definitely
make that, put that on your bucket list,
so I was coming down, I remember my
uncle, it's still not bright, the sun is
not fully up, and I could hear someone
speaking, so I come and I find my
uncle, he's standing there and he's speaking to
his apricot trees, he's speaking, he goes and
he's wiping with his hand on the tree,
so I stand by and I watch him
as he goes around looking at the trees,
speaking to the trees, and then after a
few minutes he sees me, he gets very
upset and he throws rocks and I have
to run, because I was basically eavesdropping on
him, but farmers have a certain way of,
and there's a reason why he was sent
there, look, at the end of this, I'm
going to awe you with the choice that
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, with the decision,
with the decree of Allah, Allah sent the
Prophet A.S. to Yathir for a reason,
for a reason he went there, nothing is
random, Mecca was a metropolitan with people who
did not, were no longer connected with the
universe, were no longer connected with the land,
were no longer connected with nature, they weren't
connected anymore, the people of Mecca had been,
Mecca became such a center with Aslam and
other tribes and Hajj, that they had lost
that piece, and Islam was not going to
prosper there, Islam was not going to grow
and become, and succeed in that, it was
going to succeed amongst people who were still
connected with the earth, who still felt the
barakah of the rizq of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, coming from the ground that they
walked on, and having that connection, and there's
a reason for this, this is why Allah
sent the Prophet A.S. to Yathir, so
agriculture, not something that they knew how to
do, so it was hard for them to
make a living, it was hard for them
to get used to this new lifestyle, another
problem, I'm just pointing out the problems that
the people had who were there, because there's
all these different groups now, Yathir was a
very heterogeneous city, it's not all the same,
you know, they're very different, they spoke Arabic,
the only thing they had in common is
that everyone spoke the language, but aside from
that, people were very different, they had a
different culture, a different culture also comes from
this concept of farming, so farmers, and I
come from that background, are much more social
amongst each other, like men and women, they're
more social with each other, why, because everyone's
out there working the fields, this is because
people in the cities is different, the men
were out in business, the women were in
their houses, their homes, there was less communication,
so people didn't know each other as much,
and that's what the people of Mecca were
used to, people of Mecca were used to
that, and they came to Yathir, and they
found that the women were way more active,
and way more involved, and we have stories
in the Sahihayn that point this out, when
Umar al-Khattab was one day speaking to
one of his wives about something, and she
yelled back at him, she yelled at him,
what, since when, since when did you yell
at Umar, all the women here do this,
which women?
So he starts asking the question, so he
finds out that this is the, in farming,
that's how it is, like where I grew
up, I was more scared than my uncle
by far, till this day, I was way
more scared, I still am, I was more
scared of my aunts than I was of
my uncles, because they were much more involved
in life, and they made decisions with their
men, because they were both working the fields,
so the decisions were mutual, in Mecca, the
man made all the money, did all the
work, the women stayed at home, so he
made decisions almost unilaterally, that was the system,
again, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
needed the Prophet to get out of that
and go somewhere else, Islam was going to
prosper somewhere else, meaning where the culture was
different, where the culture was more inclusive, where
the culture had, women were more involved, and
they had more of a stance because of
the culture, so Umar al-Khattab, he didn't
like this, and he went immediately, and he
was sitting with his family, and Hafsa was
there, Hafsa at that time was the Prophet's
wife, and he's saying, my wife is yelling
back at me, all women do this, and
he said a bad word to her, himself,
he said, he's the old daughter of whatever,
and he's talking about himself obviously, so he
goes back to him, you speak like this
to the Prophet, and all of his wives
like that, he almost said he wanted to
kill her, how do you speak to the
Prophet like this, the reason I'm telling you
this story is because later on, when the
Prophet had a moment of sadness and grief,
Sayyidina Umar al-Khattab wanted to make him
laugh, he would tell him this story, he
would say, our women never spoke and yelled
back to us before we came here, and
now they, so the Prophet, he smiled, he
was upset, and when Umar said this joke
or told him, our women don't listen to
us, the Prophet laughed, and the examples of
that are many, if you read the Meccan
seerah, you don't have a lot of these
interactions in the Madani seerah, it's different, you
have these discussions, the women are now present
in the masjid, they are speaking to the
Prophet in the groups, and they are speaking
to him in person, and they are a
part of the battles, and they are participating
in combat, the participation level that existed in
Mecca was very close, but now their participation
level is much more apparent, and it's much
more central in the story as well, as
you'll see, it's very easy, this part will
just flow out as I tell you the
story, because the sisters are just much more
there, so that was a difference of culture,
it was causing disputes in homes, they had
mut from one place to the other, and
now there's a different culture, and now they
have to also adjust to this change in
what is expected, in the demeanor, and in
the nature of the relationship, so the muhajireen
weren't having a great time up front, they
were homesick, they were physically ill, they didn't
know how to work the land properly, there
was a worse market, and now domestically the
relationship was very different, so it wasn't a
walk in the park, now, Yathrib itself, before
the muhajireen make do, it has within it
the following groups, it has al-ansar, amongst
them obviously, and I say Ous and Khazraj
as in the two cousin tribes that have
been living in that city for a very
long time, and have been at each other's
throats for over two centuries, they've been killing
each other for a very long time, and
the blood count was in the hundreds for
both tribes, and Khazraj was larger in terms
of numbers, and Ous was much more intense,
there were smaller in numbers, but they were
more intense in their leadership, and they were
much more solid as a group, and these
two tribes have a lot of baggage, of
historical baggage with them, and it's hard for
you to see that they're going to be,
to make them friends is not easy, because
they've been fighting for way too long, and
the animosity has been there for way too
long, you had the mushrikeen, the pagans, not
all of Yathrib accepted Islam by the way,
the Prophet did not go to Yathrib with
everyone being there Muslim, the majority were Muslim,
but not the totality, there was still a
large chunk of people living in Yathrib who
were Arab and mushrikeen, and they did not
believe in the Prophet's message, and there was
a reasonable percentage of that society, of that
community, and you had this new group that
didn't exist before, this group didn't exist before,
they didn't, this is new, the concept of
pagans, and mushrikeen existed in Mecca, Ous and
Khazraj are just two tribes that everybody knows
about, even in Quraish, Banu Abd Al-Dar,
and Banu Abd Manaf, and Banu Umayyah, they
didn't get along, they fought a lot, but
they were part of the same family, but
they didn't fight as in, you know, blood
was shed, Yathrib the same thing, two families,
Ous and Khazraj, there were two brothers, and
the tribes came from them, but there's blood,
meaning there's actually wars, and there are days
where they remember, where this number of people
died, and this number of people died, but
this is new, hypocrites new, this didn't exist,
munafiqoon, they didn't exist before, it's a new
group of people, that the Muslims had no
experience, and the Prophet had no experience in
dealing with them, Ali did not have experience
in dealing with these people before, because they
didn't exist, someone who accepts Islam, just to
get the perks, just to take whatever benefits,
but is not going to participate in the
buy-in, is not going to carry the
load, like they're just there for the good
days, not for the bad days, like they
will celebrate the victories, they will receive some
of the zakah, but they're not going to
pay, they're not going to put their sadaqat,
they're not going to stand in battle with
them, they're not going to attend the salawat,
they'll do just enough, for not to be
completely ostracized from the group, like they'll come
for Jumu'ah, they'll come for Jumu'ah,
they'll sit there, because Jumu'ah is like
a big deal, they'll come for that, and
not all of them by the way, that's
hard, munafiqoon, they're difficult for any community to
function, because they are a dead weight, they're
dead weight on the society, you're forced to
carry them, they won't get off the wagon,
they won't get off so that you can
move quicker, and they won't help in pushing
or pulling, they're just sitting on top, being
pulled by everyone else, they're very difficult, you
can't accuse people of this, that's why the
Prophet ﷺ never stood on the minbar and
said, fulan munafiq, fulan munafiqat, never, even though
he knew who they were, he knew who
they were, he left that information with Hudhayfa
later on, he never did that, he never
stood up and said fulan is munafiq, never
did that, so be careful, there's this unfortunate
level of audacity that I find amongst Muslims
where they point out fulan is a munafiq,
and this guy is a munafiq, and that
guy is a munafiq, have you learned something
that the Prophet ﷺ did not know, first
of all you don't know that's true, you
think that's true, you have signs maybe, but
you don't know with certainty, he did know
with certainty, he knew with certainty and never
ever called anyone munafiq ﷺ, and you don't
know with certainty and you're calling people, that's
not his hadi ﷺ, that's not his hadi,
we know that they're there, and they are
an enemy to us, meaning they are the
ones that are holding us back, but we
are not allowed to go and accuse people
of things, we're not allowed to bear arms
against them or remove them, no, they have
to make a choice of not participating or
removing themselves, but they are dead weight upon
the ummah, and the Prophet ﷺ didn't have
that problem, I'll tell you where the problem
is, so he stands on the minbar for
example, he sees in front of him a
thousand people, there's a thousand people in this
community, in his community at the time, let's
say 1500 who could bear arms, so 1500
people are attending, so he knows, as you'll
see in a moment, he does a census
when he gets there, so he knows the
number of people, he knows how much wealth
exists, he said I need this much in
order to build this or to prepare this,
and then he gets half of the amount,
or he says we need to go on
to battle, so we need everyone to go
with us, and he gets half the number,
700, why?
Because the rest of them are dead weight,
the rest of them aren't going to participate,
aren't going to pay, aren't going to help,
so now it becomes difficult for the Prophet
ﷺ to estimate what he actually has, because
there are people who are there, who will
show up for the good times, but then
won't commit to any of the buy-in
of what it means to be Muslim, and
that can cripple, can cripple a nation, can
cripple a community, and he did not have,
like that was new, and of course the
Qur'an will talk about this group in
depth, and we'll talk about them as we
go along, I'm just telling you that Yathrib,
you have the Ansar, the believers, then you
have Aus and Khazraj as two tribes that
are still fighting, you have the pagans, you
have the hypocrites, you have the Jewish tribes,
you have Ahlul Kitab, you have three tribes,
at least three, there's actually more than three,
Banu Awf, there's a bunch, maybe seven tribes
in total is what the number that scholars
give, but three that we talk about a
lot, because there were actual incidents, Banu Nadir,
Banu Qurayza, Banu Qaynuqa, and then there's a
bunch of other tribes that existed there as
well, now they have their hands on the
water supplies, all of the wells are in
their lands, they run the markets, so you
can't really go take a space to sell
anything or become a merchant without paying certain
dues to them, so it was difficult to
penetrate, the financial aspect of the city was
wrapped up in their hands, Aus and Khazraj
were very poor in comparison, in comparison they
were very poor, all these tribes had high
castle walls surrounding their neighborhoods, and the Aus
and Khazraj were like they were living in
the slums, this is what the example is,
they were living in the areas that were
very simple, they had land and they grew
it and they were farmers, but their lives
were simple, the tribes had a lot, so
the Prophet has people of a different faith,
who have been there for a while, who
run the financial aspect of the city and
they're quite comfortable where they are financially, this
is the landscape of Yathrib, Mecca was way
more simple, Mecca was pagans, disbelievers that don't
like you, and the believers, and his family
who supported him, very simple, very easy, Yathrib
was different, Yathrib had all these new groups,
many of them he did not have, did
he have experience in dealing with tribes of
other faiths?
No, he never done that, so this is
all going to be new to him, he
had to figure out how to do this,
so he had a two year plan for
reform, how he was going to run this
new country that he is in charge of,
so I'm going to share with you his
two year plan, because he had to sit
for a while and reflect on this reality,
how you have the Muhajireen, you have the
Ansar, you have Aus and Khazraj, there's the
pagans, there are the Munafiqeen, you have the
tribes, Ahlul Kitab that are holding on to
this, this is the reality of the city
that he is running, there's a lot of
problems amongst all of these groups, there are
struggles amongst all of these groups, and the
city now, I wouldn't say it's overrun, but
the city has more people than it had,
than it ever had had historically, demographically there's
been a change, let me tell you this,
I grew up in, the village I grew
up in, where I come from, had maybe
up to 2000 and early 2011, maybe 3000
people, maybe, and that's like, I'm pushing the
number, half of them carried my last name,
half of them Rajah, I didn't even know,
I have no idea exactly how we were
related, nor did I care, like it was
just too many people, and then within 6
months after the civil war began, or after
the revolution began, we went from 3000 to
15, the number was trying by 5, we
were basically emptying barns and emptying spaces and
people putting up tents to live, so when
there's a demographic change in a city, in
a town or a city, it can cripple
the economic life, it can cause difficulties, it's
not a simple thing, it's very hard, it's
very harsh, what happened in Yathrib, is that
the number of people that were living there
was not very high, and then the Prophet
ﷺ performed Hijrah, a lot of, all of
the Muslimin from Mecca did Hijrah, and then
all of the people who accepted Islam from
the other cities, other tribes also came to,
like Abu Huraira for example, I know he
came later, but these people would come from
other tribes, they're also Muhajireen because they didn't
live in Yathrib, so Yathrib is now at
least doubling its population, at least, if not
a little bit more, like it's doubling its
population, within what, within less than a year,
within less than a year, with very very
simple infrastructure, like there was no, this was
not, so the Prophet ﷺ had to deal
with all of these problems, and I'm trying
to make, I'm trying to help you understand
how complicated this topic was, so this was
his two year plan, there's three things, he's
going to do three things to start out,
number one, he's going to build the masjid,
I'm not talking about Quba, that was built,
the first one, and we talked about why
he did that, I'm talking about the masjid
that was going to become, did I put
something, no, where he's going to become the
centre of the community, the community centre, where
all announcements will be made, where you will
get your news from, where you will be
educated, where you will come and be mentored,
where you will come and find out about
what the plan is going to look like,
where you will come when you have problems,
or when you have good news, where people
will get, where the kitab al nikah will
happen, where the celebrations will happen, where the
azawah, everything is going to happen in this
centre, when we say he built the masjid,
what you hear in your ears should be,
he built the community centre, something that did
not exist in those times, meaning old Arabian
cities did not have community centres, they had
parliament halls, they had places like that where
the nobles would go and hang out, the
nobles always want a place they can hang
out where the poor don't come, they don't
want slaves and poor people, they don't want
that, so they build halls and they make
sure that it's a country club, only certain
people are allowed into that club, it's closed
and open at certain times, it's not access
for everyone.
The concept of a community centre, he coined
that alayhi salatu wasalam, it was just called
a masjid, that's all, or a jami'ah,
actually what does the word jami'ah mean?
What does jami'ah mean?
Jami'ah, the gatherer, I'm translating literally the
word, jami'ah, the gatherer, the one that
gathers, the thing that gathers, what, isn't that
a community centre, what else, how else do
you define a community centre aside from that?
So it's called a jami'ah because it
will gather, it will bring everyone, everyone's welcome,
why?
Because you need Abu Bakr and Umar and
Bilal and Ammar and Abu Ayyub and As
'ad to stand in the same line, toes,
foot to foot, ankle to ankle, shoulder to
shoulder, you need to stand like that in
salah, they have to stand equally with one
another, they have to get in line and
stand together and shoulder to shoulder so that
their brotherhood is established, you need a community
centre, he would build the masjid, and that
was a good time for them, it was
a good time, the Prophet alayhi salatu wasalam,
there are narrations where they contracted a Roman
gentleman who understood how to put the labin,
so labin is where you're taking soil and
certain types of sand to make something that's
similar to concrete, it's not concrete because they
didn't have concrete, but something that would hold
structures together, and so he brought someone who
knew how to do this and they would
do the digging and they would bring the
rocks and they would bring the material and
this man would help build, so this became
a social endeavour, everyone got involved, all the
Muslims in Yathrib became a part of this
work, they were helping him build the, and
the reason they helped him is because he
himself alayhi salatu wasalam was digging with the
shovel, carrying the labin, carrying the rocks and
the dirt and going, and they figured out
where the space was going to be, they
bought the land, it was a piece of
land that he bought alayhi salatu wasalam and
they established it, of course you have to
clean the land out, you have to remove
all the weeds and all the rocks, you
have to make sure there's entrances into it
and exits out of it, and then you
have to start figuring out where the qibla
is and start building the masjid, so they
worked together, and when they were working together
they would make nasheed, so they would say,
if we are to sit while the prophet
alayhi salatu wasalam is working and carrying, then
indeed we are a misguided group, we are
not a good group if the prophet alayhi
salatu wasalam is working and we are sitting,
so everyone was carrying, so sometimes the prophet
alayhi salatu wasalam would see someone carrying two
loads of sand or soil, and he saw
Sayyidina Ammar carrying two, Ammar, he's carrying two,
everyone's carrying just one sack, he's carrying two
sacks, he gets two ajr, and there's a
lot of laughter, and there's a lot of
enjoyment, and all the people who were not
used to working, like Sayyidina Uthman ibn Madh
'un, Uthman ibn Madh'un a great sahabi,
and I told you his story before, where
he almost lost his eye, when he was
beaten by people who wanted to be like
the Muslims, but he came from a very
luxurious home, he was not someone who was
used to heavy labor, so he was finding,
he didn't enjoy the dirt and the soil
and the wasikh, and every time he was
carrying something his clothes were getting dirty, so
he was like standing there, so Sayyidina Ali
al-Utayb is his friend, so he sees
him doing that, standing there, kind of a
little bit disgusted with all of the dust,
so he said, they're
not equal, the one who builds the masjid
and you see them carrying and standing and
doing, and the other person who is disgusted
from a little bit of dust, and he's
like, he's not happy, men do this obviously
to their friends, and he's roasting his friend
a little bit during the work, so the
people are laughing and they're going back and
forth, and then Ammar ibn Yasir, he doesn't
know what's going on, he hears Sayyidina Ali's
song, so he sings out what Sayyidina Ali
was singing, and when people work together, incidents
happen, like incidents will occur, I'm not here
to tell you some unrealistic version of the
story that shows you that the Islamic work
is going to be absolutely clean, there's not
going to be any problems, no one is
going to disagree, no one is going to
fight, no no, when people work together, there's
going to be disagreements and disputes, and there's
going to be ways, and we're going to
have to learn how to fix them and
how to deal with them, so when Sayyidina
Ammar decided to sing out what Sayyidina Ali,
was singing, Sayyidina Uthman al-Mad'ud got
upset, because he doesn't know Ammar, and he
doesn't like him, for whatever reason, he said,
he told him, he called him by the
name of his mother, one of the great
sahabiyat, but she was a slave, so he
called her, and he said if you don't
be quiet, don't shut up, I'm going to
hit you on the jilda, on the piece
of skin, between your nose and your eye,
here, in the face, in the head, which
is an insult, and when he said that,
everyone went completely quiet, they were singing, and
there was a lot of joy, and everyone
just went quiet, because it became awkward, Sayyidina
Ammar doesn't know what to do, because he
didn't understand what these pieces of poetry were
meant for, he had no idea that Sayyidina
Ali was roasting his friend, he didn't know
that, he had no idea, so now they
all freeze, so the Prophet Ali, stands up
and he said, Does Uthman al-Mad'ud
not know that Ammar ibn Yasir is a
piece of skin between my eye and my
nose, and Uthman, he apologized to Ammar, and
Ammar apologized to Uthman, there's an aspect of
learning the seerah of the Prophet, that it
was human, and they did fall into trouble,
and they would sometimes fight, and they sometimes
would do things, but they had the etiquette,
and they had the tarbiyah, and they had
the sincerity, and genuineness, and they had the
leadership, and they had the ihtiram, and the
respect amongst them, that allowed them to fix
these problems, and get rid of these disputes,
in a way that was classy, and honorable,
and we have to do the same thing,
we have to learn to work with each
other, because working with people is never easy,
it's never going to be easy, it's not
expected to be easy, if you enter Islamic
work expecting everyone to be perfect at all
times, and things aren't going to go wad,
then you're in for a very bumpy ride,
you're going to be very disappointed if that's
what you're thinking, but we do have to
learn to do this, I'll end with that
inshallah ta'ala, we'll continue with the two
year plan the Prophet Ali had next week.