Adnan Rajeh – Sunday Tafseer_ 69 Part 3 Surat Al-Haqqah – 17-24

AI: Summary ©
The importance of balance and helping others achieve their goals is emphasized in Islam. The transformation process from person focused on reminding others to stay strong to a person focused on helping others achieve their goals is discussed. The speakers emphasize the importance of listening and learning about "hasha" in order to achieve success in life. The garden's fruit, including the beautiful garden fruit and the garden fruit, is discussed, and the garden fruit is the garden garden and the fruit of the garden garden are the garden fruits.
AI: Summary ©
It's going to be a nice, cozy halaqa
tonight, it's all snowy outside and people are
going to probably stay home.
We were taught to teach, we were taught
that if you schedule a session, to teach
it, even if you sit and speak to
the wall.
And twice in my life I've done that.
One of them was here and one of
them was back in Syria, I remember the
time back in Syria I sat and I
spoke and halfway through the halaqa, there's absolutely
no one in the room, absolutely no one
there.
The farrash, the guy who takes care of
the masjid, you know, the person who cleans
and takes care of things.
He walks in, he sees me teaching, so
he walks out again, and he's like, sorry,
he walks out, he comes back in and
he puts his head in, Sheikh, what are
you doing?
Hani, it's a halaqa, so he said, it
might be suhaik, so he took the Quran
and sat down and he attended my, he
attended the course, or attended the session.
And here it happened once in the basement
of LMM, like years ago.
Alright, bismillahirrahmanirrahim, walhamdulillahi rabbil alameen, Allahumma
salli wa sallim wa barik wa azlim ala
nabiyyina wa habibina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa
sahbihi ajma'in wa ba'd.
So tonight, inshallah ta'ala, we're going to
continue in the tafsir of surah al-haqqa,
and we stopped at ayah number 16 last
week.
And surah al-haqqa, as I explained before,
is offering us our quota, or our requirement,
or what is it, our dose of spirituality,
or wa'ud, reminders that move the heart.
Islam is a balanced, is a religion that
has a specific balance to it.
Everything within Islam is about the balance, right?
And I spent a reasonable amount of time
talking about this piece when we did tafsir
of Surah al-Rahman, where Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala talks about talking
about the balance, and it's really not the
scales, it's more the balance itself, and I
gave a series of khutbah on this topic.
And amongst the balances that Islam cares for
is the balance between the mind and the
heart, between rationale and emotion, and obviously behaviors
and the pragmatic aspect of that.
But within the Qur'an, both approaches are
respected, and they have space, meaning the rational,
logical approach where it talks to your intellect,
and asks you to think deeply about things,
and contemplate and reflect is there.
And then you have the aspect that goes
after your heart, and the reflection that comes
with that is a different type of reflection.
It's a reflection of observing people's experiences, seeing
those who are in joy, seeing those who
are in pain.
For example, now that alhamdulillah the ceasefire has
begun, and hopefully inshallah this is going to
be seen through, and things will calm down
a bit for the people in Gaza, and
calm down for us as well, I think
there's two ways to reflect on that, right?
There's the intellectual, logical way, where we break
it down to numbers, and we talk about
alliances, and we talk about those who stood
by justice, and those who did not, and
we study this in some degree of detail,
figuring out where mistakes were made, and what
can be done next time.
And that is the intellectual aspect of reflection.
But then there's also the emotional piece of
reflection, which is what Surah Al-Haqqa, for
example, talks about.
We reflect on the fact that a lot
of people have passed.
Families have been wiped out.
Children have lost their limbs.
People have been removed from their cities.
Hospitals have been destroyed.
Doctors have been killed.
Journalists have been killed.
And that should move you in a certain
way, move you on an emotional level, because
it's sad, because it's extremely painful.
And that pain is an emotion that if
you are to take and use appropriately, will
turn into an energy that you can later
channel in a good direction.
All of your emotions are energy.
They're internal energy.
You choose how you want to use them.
You can let them break you.
Really, a lot of the mental health issues,
and I'm not talking about stuff that are
severe like psychosis.
No, I'm talking about the basic anxiety and
depression that a lot of people go through,
whether they're functional with it or they're non
-functional with it.
A lot of it is that there's this
negative energy that they're carrying that they have
not figured out how to channel in a
positive direction.
So it ends up just eating away at
themselves.
It's like a fire.
If you don't use it to move a
wheel, if you don't use the burning to
move a car, then it'll explode.
It'll burn the actual vehicle itself.
So that's what emotions are for.
But the problem with emotion is that having
too little of it means you're running out
of fuel.
Having too much of it will burn the
whole house down.
So you have to be careful what you
do with it.
And then having too much of it can
also shut the system down.
It'll shut the system down.
We put it all aside.
It can burn away.
It's not a part of who we are
anymore.
And I know this is the analogy that
I'm offering, but I hope you understand what
I'm talking about.
So the Qur'an is very specific in
how it stirs emotions.
It asks me more specifically what emotions it
wants to stir in you.
It wants you to have some degree of
fear, some degree of desire, some degree of
reverence, some degree of love, some degree of
upset.
These are the emotions.
And the Qur'an talks about them all.
You should have a certain degree of all
of them in certain situations.
You hear about Yawm al-Qiyamah.
You have to have some degree of fear.
You have to.
You have to be afraid of being held
by Allah accountable for what you did.
That should scare you.
If it doesn't scare you, then you're in
trouble.
You're in trouble for not being scared.
Because you're lacking that emotion that will fuel
your ability to do the right thing.
No matter how logical something is, if you
lack the emotion to fuel it, you won't
get anywhere.
We're going to talk about this more in
Surah al-Muzzammil.
Surah al-Muzzammil is going to really help
us with this piece.
But this is why you have that aspect
of reminders in Surah al-Haqqa.
Surah al-Haqqa is probably the prime example.
Because it talks about, here's your dose.
Here's what you need to remind yourself of,
so that you're moved.
Listen to what's going to happen on the
Day of Judgment.
Reflect on what happened to the people who
lived here before you.
Not in an intellectual way where you're breaking
down, okay, what did they do?
No!
The Qur'an didn't talk about what they
did.
In Surah al-Haqqa, did it?
Go back.
It didn't go through what they did.
It just said, They just refused.
It didn't go by in detail.
Other places in the Qur'an, it goes
into detail.
Of what their sin was.
What exactly they did.
But here, they just disobeyed.
They disagreed.
They turned their back.
Fir'aun didn't talk about...
They just refused to listen to the Prophet
that was sent to them by their Lord.
Why?
Because the point is not to have that
intellectual reflection.
It's an emotional reflection.
Think about how strong they were and how
quickly they disappeared.
How quickly they vanished.
That is the strength of your Lord.
And that could happen to you.
And if there's a possibility of it happening
to you.
Or if you were promised that it's not
going to happen to you, then you should
have a certain degree of either gratitude, which
is another emotion that can bring you near.
Or fear.
Or both.
And those emotions, if you harness them, and
you turn them into positive energy, they push
you forward.
They bring you back tomorrow.
They'll bring you back for another dars later
on.
But if you don't harness any emotion...
People who come to the durs, I'll tell
you this.
People who come to halaqat and durs and
aren't moved at all, they don't come back.
I see it.
They don't come back.
If I can't reach them, I can't reach
them emotionally.
Now for me to reach them emotionally, I
have to reach them intellectually first.
It has to make sense to them.
If it makes sense to them, then I
have maybe an opportunity to reach them emotionally.
But if I never reach them emotionally, they
don't come back.
If they're not moved by things, if they're
not reflecting on it, and it's not affecting
their souls or affecting their spirits and the
way they see things, they burn out quickly
and they stop coming.
And I don't blame them because that emotional
piece wasn't there, so they can't keep on
going.
It's understandable.
The Qur'an takes care of this piece
for you.
It doesn't over-exaggerate it and doesn't ignore
it.
Just enough.
It's like a car.
You have to fill it up with fuel.
Too much fuel?
You bathe the car in fuel, you'll set
the whole thing on fire, you'll die.
Not enough fuel?
You'll run out.
You'll stop in the middle of the road.
And it has to be done in doses.
Which is why, for example, the very famous
hadith where Ibn Mas'ud would say, كان
يتخولنا رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم بالموعضة
كل خميس The Prophet would give us a
maw'idah, a reminder, an emotional reminder, once
a week.
Sometimes Thursday nights or something.
And he said this, رضي الله عنه, because
his students, Ibn Mas'ud's students said, يا
أبا عبد الرحمن هل لا وعفتنا Can you
do more of this?
فقال له فإن القلوب تصدأ وتمل Because hearts
will get bored and tired.
Too much emotional charge will make people, they'll
stop wanting to, they can't handle it.
So I do it once a week, as
the Prophet عليه الصلاة والسلام does it.
Now you say, well you're doing a hadith
every day.
I'm not doing maw'idah.
Most of the time I'm not doing maw
'idah.
It's knowledge.
Knowledge can be done all the time, not
every day.
It can be done all day long.
It's knowledge.
You're giving pieces of information.
But when you bring an emotional charge to
the talk, it has to be done in
healthy doses.
In healthy doses.
Not too little, not too much.
Which is why Surah Al-Haqqa is a
prime example of this.
Because the surah is just focused on one
thing.
Just think about, imagine.
فإذا نفخت الصور نفخة واحدة وحملت الأرض والجبال
فدكتها دكة واحدة فيومئذ وقعت الواقع وانشقت السماء
فهي يومئذ واهية when it's blown into the
horn, that one blow and the earth and
the mountains are carried and then they are
crushed in one single strike and on that
day the inevitable reality is going to occur
it's going to settle in and the cosmos
will be ripped and teared from their core
and at that moment they'll be in a
state of complete weakness.
You're imagining this.
You're asked to imagine this.
Why?
Because if you imagine it, it moves you.
If you imagine something that is powerful, that
is scary, that is strong that is beyond
your ability to reprimand or to correct or
to change or to affect in any way
you feel that weakness and that weakness will
humble you and that's another emotion that you'll
carry inside.
All of these emotions are very positive.
You can take them and use them to
push you to be a better person and
do better things.
Which is why in a marriage, for example,
if love fizzles out you can't get people
to do anything anymore.
They stop doing things because the fuel has
run out.
There's nothing left.
They're running on very little.
They can't get anything done.
They can't communicate appropriately.
They can't be kind to each other appropriately.
They can't get things done because that love
is gone.
It's the same thing with Allah.
If you don't have that love, if you
don't have that reverence if you don't have
that fear, if you don't have that desire
then you're not going to get much done
in this relationship because it's going to fizzle
out with time.
With time, your Salah will become mechanical.
Your attendance will become scarce.
Your care about all of this will become
very superficial.
Then what will happen?
Then some Muslim country will be bombed.
An oppressor will kill people that look like
you.
It will move you not on an intellectual
level anymore.
Now it's no longer just the intellectual level
because you know what is right and what
is wrong.
It's obvious.
It's easy.
But then because it moves you emotionally, because
you feel sad because you feel angry, it
brings you back in again.
So I tell people, Allah gave you a
reminder.
Filled your heart with some emotion.
Brought you in.
Keep it.
Keep that going.
You have to keep that emotion moving.
You have to learn how to fuel that.
You have to learn how to reflect on
what Allah is teaching you.
You have to learn how to reflect on
what's happening in the world around you.
So that fuel continues to fill in your
tank so you can keep on driving.
Or else with time, it will fizzle out.
And people will go until it happens again.
Every couple of years, they bomb Gaza.
And then the massacres fill up.
People get upset and up in arms from
all over the world.
They get up in arms and upset.
And you want the Sheikh to give a
tremendous khutbah.
And they want to be moved.
And then they stop the bombing.
And then everyone just fades out again.
Because they don't understand the relationship between the
intellect and the heart, the emotion.
The intellect is there to keep things within
parameters.
You don't do something crazy.
You don't harm anything.
You make sure that you're being moved by
the right thing, not by the wrong thing.
Moved in the right way.
But you still have to reflect enough so
that your emotions matter.
So that they're there.
So that your heart is moved by what's
happening.
Without that piece.
Which is why Surah Al-Haqqah is so
focused on just reminding you in that emotional
way.
To move the heart.
So we'll continue how Allah still is within
Surah Al-Haqqah Laying out for us occurrences
on the Day of Judgment.
So we've heard a few cosmic changes.
And what's going to happen in the cosmos.
And the earth.
And what you're going to witness in terms
of reality changes.
Now he kind of shifts it a little
bit, SubhanAllah, to another snapshot of what's going
to happen.
We'll start with Ayah number 17 of Surah
Al-Haqqah.
Surah Al
-Haqqah Surah
Al-Haqqah Al-Malak
is the word for angel.
That's the translation we have in English for
it.
I don't like it very much.
The reason being is that if you grew
up in the West, then the word angel
has a certain connotation to it.
Like it describes a certain...
It gives you a visual image in your
mind.
Because of how the Western society has decided.
Like the Judeo-Christian philosophy or culture.
Or nomenclature.
When they say the word angel, it gives
you a certain image.
In Islam, the word malak does not necessarily
mean that image.
But we translate it that way because it's
still probably the only word that we have.
But the malaika are amongst the creation of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Who don't have the freedom of choice that
we do.
They have a margin of freedom of choice
for sure.
They have an intellect.
They're able to think.
They're able to speak.
They're able to object.
They're able to ask questions.
But they just don't have the freedom of
choice to disobey.
It's not like they want to, but they
can't.
Because some people think about this and say,
oh, they want to.
No, no.
They don't have within them any need, reason,
or care to disobey Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta
'ala.
It's just absolutely not there.
Why would they?
There's no...
The buildup is just not there.
It's just like me and flying.
I don't have the choice to fly.
But it's not like I'm standing here all...
It's just not a part of my buildup.
It's just not an option.
It's just not how I was made.
So, as in fly personally, not get on
a plane.
For malaika, the same thing.
The concept of disobeying Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta
'ala.
If you talk to them about it, they
go, well, why?
Why would you ever do that?
What level of insanity is required to disobey
the Almighty?
Why would you even say something like that
to begin with?
So, their lives are...
It's not like they're...
Because a lot of people when they think
about angels or they think about malaika, they
have this false imagination or false understanding that
somehow they are restricted beings.
That they are beings that are miserable because
they are programmed.
They have no...
No, it's just we have a margin of
choice that is wider.
It's not infinite.
We don't have an infinite number of choices
ahead of us.
The margin actually is not that big if
you think about it.
It's there, but it's not huge if you
really contemplate it.
You don't really choose where you're born or
who your parents are, what culture you come
from, what language you speak, what upbringing you
have.
You don't choose what you're going to look
like at the end or what physical attributes
you're going to have.
And sometimes not even necessarily the intellectual attributes
you're going to have.
A lot of these things are not what
you choose.
So you can't...
It's not that you can choose anything.
Like I said, you can't choose to fly.
You can't choose to breathe underwater.
You just don't have...
Certain choices aren't there.
You do have a margin of choices that
you make.
It's just the difference between you and a
malaika is that the malaika, their margin of
choices doesn't include disobedience because they just don't
have that built.
You and I have a build on the
inside, a nafs, that wants to do things
that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
has pointed out to be harmful, sinful, and
inappropriate and an act of disobedience to Him.
But our nafs is not mature enough to
comprehend that fear that it should have, that
reverence that it should have over Allah Subh
'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
The long-term planning of what's going to
happen on the Day of Judgment, it doesn't
have it.
So it's very likely to get you to
do something you shouldn't do.
It doesn't care.
It's just...
Your nafs is just very immature and can't
think or see beyond its nose.
It just wants what it wants.
And it wants it now.
Very selfish.
So it doesn't care about these things.
You have to learn to tame that and
change that so that you can make choices
that are correct and you can avoid something
that's going to hold you and put you
in a bad position on the Day of
Judgment.
The malaika, just their margin of choices doesn't
include that.
And they're happy with it.
Which is what the amanah is in the
Qur'an.
The amanah of the ability for you to
worship Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
freely.
Because the malaika worship Allah and they love
that they do it.
And they find a lot of joy in
it.
And they're satisfied with their lives.
They don't have any objections to their existence.
They don't want to become human beings.
The human being is just the only creature
that's worshipping Allah freely.
Meaning you have the option to say no.
You can say no.
No other creation has that option there.
And they don't want it.
And they don't see why you would want
that.
And they don't understand why the heck that's
even a good thing.
This is how most everything else that observes
the human being.
Why would that be?
The ins and the jinn are the ones
who have that option to say no.
Which is where this whole story came from.
The story of existence.
You have that option.
Your worship to Allah is much more valuable.
It's much more meaningful because it's free.
Because you're not forced to do it in
your life.
Others, that's how they are.
These are the parameters of their existence.
They are there to serve Allah and they
love it.
You and I are given just this little
caveat.
You can't say no.
You shouldn't.
You'll regret it later.
But you can.
Technically speaking, no one can force you to
love Allah or to want to know him.
Even if you hold a gun to your
head and you dress up as a Muslim
and come to the masjid, you can still,
deep down inside, be a munafiq and not
want any of this.
That's why forcing in Islam is insane.
There's no ground to coerce someone to be
Muslim.
You just make a munafiq.
You don't need more than those people.
You have enough of them.
You don't want to do this.
Don't do it.
It's totally up to you.
This is the whole story.
This is the whole test or opportunity for
you to find whether you want to do
this or you don't.
The mala'ika don't have that.
They are a part of Allah's kingdom and
they serve freely and openly.
They love what they do.
The word mala'ika here is not referring
to one.
In Arabic, sometimes the word that refers to
one can refer to more just based on
the context.
Here, that's the context.
So it's not the word mala'ika as
in one mala'ika, but mala'ika as
in angels in general, as in the species,
as in the race.
Ala arja'iha, or at the corners of
the universe.
They come and they're at the corners of
what is left of Allah's creation.
People, as they observe the destruction of the
cosmos and of the earth they're on, people
are being brought to Ard al-Mahshar and
we're standing there trying to figure out what's
happening and what's going next and where our
loved ones are.
Trying to remember if we did enough to
actually get there.
All of those emotions and thoughts that are
coming all at once at us because many
of us maybe lived in doubt or didn't
really take it that much seriously and now
it's occurring.
They're wondering, trying to go back and see
if at the end of their lives did
they end it well or did they not
end it well.
Just a million things happening.
They're watching everything that they've ever known be
destroyed in front of them and they look
around at the corners of the universe.
No matter where they look, all they see
are the lines of mala'ika that are
marching towards them for this day, for this
day of judgement.
It means a lot of organisation.
You can barely organise 200 people in this
centre without a team of 50 people and
we fight all the time.
Imagine trying to organise all of humanity.
You're going to need a couple of trillion
mala'ika to keep everyone in line and
keep people standing where they are.
So everyone's coming.
The mala'ika or mala'ikum ala orja
'iha at the corners, at the end of
it all.
wa yakhmilu arsha rabbika fawqahum And carrying upon,
above them, the throne of their lord, thamaniya.
Eight.
And eight what?
Eight mala'ika, eight rows, an eighth of
the numbers?
I don't know.
I don't know.
No one really knows.
Scholars have opinions.
It doesn't matter.
This is an issue of ghayb.
This is whatever Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta
-A'la wants it to mean.
He puts those words in there to say,
Oh, you want to know?
You'll find out soon enough.
Don't worry.
You'll find out.
You'll be there.
You'll witness it first hand.
You won't have to witness it second hand
by hearing the number here.
You can go there.
You'll see it.
wa yakhmilu arsha rabbika The throne of their
lord in all of its glory, in all
of its majesty is carried by eight of
the mala'ika or eight, as he said
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, above them
as they come to Ard al-Mahshar, as
the king and his forces come for the
day of reckoning, for the day of everyone
being held accountable.
yawma idhin On that day, tu'arabun You're
going to be exposed.
la takhfa minkum khafiyah No secret is hidden.
No more secrets.
You have no ability to hide a secret
anymore.
It's all going to be exposed.
If you're lucky, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta
-A'la, if you're blessed and Allah Subh
'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la sees fit, may
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la grant
us this blessing, He will only expose it
when you're standing for judgment.
He won't carry it around for others to
watch.
Some people will walk around yawm al-qiyamah
with their sin exposed, hanging above them on
banners or just as physical entities following them
around.
They run away from them, and they follow
them.
The person runs away from the sin that
they don't want to be associated with.
They're very embarrassed that people are seeing it,
that they've done it, that they were a
part of who they were.
They managed to fool everyone for so long,
so they run away, but these entities follow
them along.
The Prophet ﷺ tells us, لِكُلِّ غَادِرٍ لِوَاءً
يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ مَكْتُوبٌ عَلَيْهَا هَذِهِ غَدْرَةُ فُلَانٍ Every
traitor, every person who committed treason, who backstabbed,
who betrayed others, will have a banner yawm
al-qiyamah written on it, this is the
betrayal of fulan.
So that you look up, you see the
betrayal of this person.
They run away from it, they can't get
rid of it.
يَوْمَئِذٍ تُعْرَضُونَ That's the day where everything is
exposed.
لَا تَخْفَى مِنْكُمْ خَافِيًا خافية is a secret,
something that is hidden.
لا تخفى, it won't be hidden.
It cannot be hidden, it's not invisible anymore.
Anything that you've done in your life, or
anything that you're thinking, or you're feeling, or
any sin that you carry is invisible, I
don't see it.
No one does, you carry it alone.
This is something, most sins are not going
to be exposed in this dunya.
You're very, very unlucky.
Some things can come out to light, if
you were careless and you made mistakes, and
you got caught, for example, it can come
out.
But most people, no, their sin stays.
And by the way, the culture of Islam,
the teachings, the tradition that we have, is
that you don't expose sin.
Is that if someone sins, you put your
best effort into concealing it, into hiding it,
and granting them sitha, so that they have
a chance to change their ways.
Because once things are exposed, it's hard.
You can't put the rabbit back into the
hat.
Once it's out, it's out.
So the sunnah of Islam is to try
and conceal sin as much as possible, which
is why, if you see something you shouldn't
see, you should never talk about it.
And if you do talk about it, you
should talk about it to someone who has
the ability to go and fix it.
If you see someone, for example, in my
capacity as a teacher, if I see a
student doing something wrong, no, I go and
I confront them, because I'm in the capacity
of teaching them something.
So it's actually a betrayal for me to
see them sin and not say anything about
it and ignore it.
But if it's a friend, if I have
the ability to offer them advice, if they'll
listen to me, if I know that I
have that relationship with them, that rapport, then
I'll speak to them.
If not, then I shouldn't speak or tell
this to anyone who does not have that
ability.
If I'm going to talk to someone, I
have to talk to someone who has the
ability to go and intervene and offer this
person advice and they're willing to listen to
it.
But on the Day of Judgment, all that
is gone.
You're exposed that day, and no secrets are
now hidden.
It's all going to come out.
Think about that a little bit.
This is not an intellectual reflection, right?
This is an emotional one.
Think about what that means to me and
to you, to yourself.
What is it that you...
The things that you say, no, no, as
long as this one thing is not exposing
them, okay, that's the thing.
Every time, every time you say that, everything
but this, it's this.
It's going to be this.
It's going to...
So you have to spend the time in
your life now making up for it, doing
the best you can so that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala continues to conceal your sin
for you.
So at Yawm al-Qiyamah, you are amongst
the blessed who...
He does not remove the veil from around
you on the Day of Judgment.
You have to work for that in dunya.
It's not a granted right.
The point of this ayah is that that's
not a given.
It's not a right that you can demand.
I demand to be concealed.
Nope, sorry.
You can't even demand to be clothed Yawm
al-Qiyamah.
Forget about your sin being exposed.
You can't even demand to be clothed appropriately,
for your awrah to be covered.
Some people will stand there, they have no
clothing for them.
They come out of their graves, they're resurrected,
and they're naked.
Aisha would ask the Prophet, peace be upon
him, Rasulullah, naked, men, women?
You need to clarify this.
So he said, O Aisha, the issue is
way worse than that.
Than that as in what you're thinking of.
No one has time for that.
That doesn't exist anymore.
That shahwa is gone.
How?
It's going to be scared right out of
you.
The amount of fright that you're going to
be hit with, that's going to completely annul
it.
It doesn't exist.
You have no capacity to think about this.
The degree of fear on that day, the
degree, the tremendousness of the changes that are
going to occur.
The reverence that you will carry, and the
shock that we're all in as we see
al-haqqa and al-waqi'a, and we
see duqqata dakqatan wahida, as we watch all
of this, as we see the throne of
God himself be brought in by eight, with
mala'ika filling the horizons in every direction.
You don't have time for this.
You don't have time to look at fulan
and fulan.
It's not an option.
It's not a topic of discussion to begin
with.
That's the degree of fear.
But we all would like not to be
standing there uncovered.
We all would like our awrah to be
good.
So only based on your hasanat, only based
on your good deeds, only based, some scholars
actually, some of my teachers, which I always
thought was a very interesting insight, because we
don't have specific evidence based on what you're
going to be covered, you al-waqi'a.
We just know that the Prophet ﷺ tells
us, Ibrahim would be the first one to
have the kiswat and then the Prophet ﷺ.
Meaning the piece of clothing is just a
collar.
Others it covers their chest.
Others it will cover up to their navel.
And some of them it will cover their
awrah.
And some of them it will cover their
knees.
Or al-Khattab will be picking up the
extra pieces of his garment as he walks.
What is your interpretation of this dream that
you saw?
Hassan al-Basri would add that piece.
I think it's based on amount of deen.
That's a very generic word.
So what does it mean?
So the scholars say, based on how much
you cared for your sitr in dunya, and
how much you cared for the sitr of
others in dunya, I mean how much you
cared about the privacy or the privacy of
yourself, of concealing your sin and making sure
that you don't go public with a mistake
and not spread it and get other people
to do it.
And how much you cared about the privacy
of others.
So if you cared about the concept of
concealing sin and sitr in dunya, then Allah
ﷻ will care for you for that yawm
al-qiyamah.
And if you don't, then you'll come and
you're exposed.
So the exposure yawm al-qiyamah is not
just in terms of sin.
It's also in terms of just your body.
And no one is comfortable standing there naked.
It's not a comfortable feeling.
It's very vulnerable.
Men and women alike, it's very vulnerable to
stand there not able to cover your own
awrah.
Not finding a piece of cloth somewhere to
pick up and just cover yourself.
You can't, unless Allah ﷻ grants it to
you.
You don't have access to clothing yawm al
-qiyamah.
It's not a human right on the day
of judgment.
Because that's the day where everything is exposed
and no secrets can be held back anymore.
So if you want to be concealed and
covered, if you want to be protected, if
you want your privacy to be respected yawm
al-qiyamah, then you have to work for
that in dunya.
This has to be worked towards in this
life.
May Allah ﷻ grant us sitr yawm al
-qiyamah.
Alright, we'll move on to ayah number 19
inshallah.
Surah Al-Qiyamah بِمَا أَسْلَفْتُمْ فِي
الْأَيَّامِ الْخَالِيَةِ فَأَمَّا
مَنْ أُوتِيَ كِتَابَهُ بِيَمِينِهِ So there's a piece
here that is deleted or absent in the
continuity of these events that is understood by
context.
And on that day, when Allah ﷻ, His
throne is brought for people to witness, and
the mala'ika fill the horizon, and people
are exposed and they come bare, come with
nothing, no titles, no letters at the end
of their names, no large signatures.
They don't bring their certificates and diplomas and
PhDs with them.
They don't bring their bank account information with
them.
They don't come with their posses.
They don't come with people who support them
and clap for them and call out their
name.
They come bare with nothing, even clothed in
white.
It's only when Allah ﷻ decides through His
grace to clothe you that you find clothing
on Yawm al-Qiyamah.
Otherwise, you could have lived your whole life
from moving from one castle to the other.
Everyone's looking to please you and wants your
blessing on this or blessing on that.
On Yawm al-Qiyamah, you don't have the
ability to clothe yourself, to cover your awrah,
so you're not standing there bare.
In the midst of all of this, people
look and they see a dark cloud coming
from the end of the horizon that they
can see.
The cloud gets bigger and bigger and bigger
and it blocks the sun.
The sun is close to Yawm al-Qiyamah.
It's weaker.
It's no longer what it once was.
It doesn't have the same burning capacity.
It's close by, but it's still nonetheless making
people sweat and people are very hot and
it's very tiring and it's very busy and
full.
But then this cloud, it covers the light
of the sun.
You can't see anything anymore.
And as it moves, slowly you figure out
that it's not a cloud really.
It's just all of the books of the
human race being sent all at once and
they start flying down from the sky, these
suhuf, these kutub.
And each book has a very clear destination
of where it's going.
And the first group of people that this
surah talks about are those who are going
to be granted their books in the right
hand.
فَأَمَّا As for the ones مَنْ أُوتِيَ كِتَابَهُ
بِيَمِينِ who are going to be given, granted,
handed their books in their right hands.
People sometimes think about this and say, how
can it all be in a book?
You think it's hard.
You think it's hard to put information in
a book.
Actually, even technically speaking, it's not that difficult.
If you've studied medicine, you've carried a book
that's maybe 2,000 pages.
It comes in one volume.
If you think about it, how many days
do we live?
What's the average?
If you live the median life of a
man, I think now is around 80 years
old, something like that.
Of course, most of the time, we don't
make it that far because بِجْلُطُونَا alhamdulillah someone
finds a way to give us a heart
attack before that time.
But if you live 80, if you want
to break it down a little bit, make
it a bit more simple, 1,000 months.
That's what a kid is born.
You say, may Allah grant you 1,000
months.
That's generous.
That's beautiful.
You're 82 or something.
Michelle, may you live well.
1,000 months, 30 days a month, that's
30,000 days.
30,000 days.
If you're carrying a book with maybe 3
,000 pages, if you do the math, 10
days per page.
You can't break down 10 days per page.
I can break down a year in a
page.
Of my life.
You could probably do the same.
A lot of life is cruise control.
A lot of it is just the same
stuff being repeated.
The book is not interested in all these
little boring things.
No one's going to read a novel that
you're reading about what the بطل is doing,
the hero of the story, the antagonist of
the story.
You don't care about and in the days
where nothing was happening, they woke up and
they had eggs and toast and they drank
a cup of tea and then they went
to the bathroom for 15 minutes and then
got dressed and argued with his wife and
then got walked out.
No one cares about these details.
It's not a part of the story.
No one's going to watch it.
If a movie is telling us what happened
over the span of a couple of years
and you spend a couple of years and
watch what happens, you just want the points
that matter.
The same thing, this book is going to
point out the stuff that actually matter.
10 days, let's see what happened here.
What actual tests occurred.
You're writing this novel, this book.
You are the author of this book.
You may live your life and never write
a book, but you're writing this book.
This is yours.
And it's better than AI.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has those who
are...
He's hired for you some malaika who have
nothing else to do.
They just sit there and they write down
everything you do.
He said this.
She thought that.
They attempted this.
They did it.
They didn't do it.
This is what they were thinking.
This is why they did it.
Write it all down.
Just documenting everything.
They're recording.
They're recording everything.
Everything is being recorded.
Why?
Because you're writing a book.
That's how important you are.
That's how significant you are as a person
that there are malaika hired with no other
job in the world aside from just following
you around and writing down what you're doing
because your life is that interesting.
Every aspect of your life is going to
be recorded.
If you think about it, if you live
80 years, the first 10 years don't matter.
You're only recording some of the good stuff.
Maybe recording some things that happened to you
so it makes your argument better.
But what you do in terms of bad
things when you're a kid, it doesn't matter.
I argue even probably beyond 10 years because
it takes a while for this generation to
mature appropriately.
But you're writing this book and then it's
going to be edited and a lot of
the cruise control, useless stuff is going to
be removed.
It'll be packaged and sealed out nicely and
then it'll be given back to you so
you can read.
Read your book.
We're going to refer to your judgment upon
yourself.
You read this book and please, as you
read it, tell us as you go through.
Does this sound to you like the story
of someone who praised their lord?
Who loved Allah?
Who lived with purpose?
Who knew where they were going?
Does this seem to you to be the
story of someone who believed they were going
to be held accountable?
Is this the story of someone who's worthy
of this?
And they show you what Jannah looks like.
This is where you're going.
Read the story and tell me if this
person that you're reading about is worthy of
going there based on what you're reading.
When you start reading the book, some people
are given the book in their right hands.
They pick up the book, they open the
book and they start reading through the book.
It's a pretty damn good book.
It's a good book.
He's going through it.
He's enjoying this book.
He's liking it.
He's getting through the first chapter, second chapter.
This is awesome.
This guy rocks.
This guy is absolutely a star.
So what does he do?
This person cries out or yells out.
In Arabic, it's a way to say, take
this from me.
But it's an enthusiastic way.
I honestly don't want to spend the next
30 minutes explaining to you how this works
in Arabic.
But it's made of two things.
Here it's not a mother.
But it comes from ummu and it's broken
down.
Ummu is direct yourselves towards me.
So ha-umm is just a breakdown to
say here, take this.
If you read the verse, it has a
med in it.
So the person who is doing this is
yelling out.
Ha-umm.
It's a count med.
Ha-umm.
Read my book.
Here, read my book.
Read this awesome novel.
That's me.
It's my biography.
Read.
Look how good I look in this.
Some people are very proud of it.
Why?
Because a lot of the bad stuff are
forgiven or justified or explained.
A lot of the good stuff are emphasized
and talked about.
This is a good novel.
Well written.
The hero of this story did well.
It's obvious that the hero of this story
had purpose, understood their mission, knew what they
were doing, were empathetic, were people of God,
who had Tawheed, who had love, who worked
hard and dedicated themselves, were devoted, were committed,
were quick to repent from a sin.
People who actually, this person, this is a
good person.
So they'll call.
Ha-umm.
Oh, everyone, come, please, take, read my book.
I knew, I was sure of this day.
I knew I was going to come one
day.
Zalantu here is not I assumed.
It means I was sure or certain.
But the reason he used zalantu is because
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through his grace
allows for the believers yawm al qiyamah to
have some degree of lack of certainty.
So zan is not I thought or I
assumed.
Zan is I knew.
I knew in my soul.
I didn't have physical evidence for it.
But everything in my life told me that
this was going to happen.
I had certainty based on something that was
not physical.
I didn't have an equation.
I didn't meet God beforehand.
But all of the arrows in this world
that I contemplated were directed and were facing
that la ilaha illallah.
And that's why he uses this term zalantu.
That's the point of it.
Anni mulaqin hisabiya.
Mulaqin is liqaa is to meet.
Mulaqin, that I'm going to meet.
I'm going to arrive at something.
I'm going to be exposed to something.
Hisabiya.
Now hisabi is my reckoning or my accountability.
The ha at the end, you say well
the ha is just because all the other
verses end with ha.
Correct.
But in Arabic, just so you know, that
whenever you want to emphasize something being yours,
you add a ha to the end of
it.
If you go back to Arabic poetry for
example, if you want to emphasize something being
yours, you can say yaani hadha bayti o
hadha baytiya and you add the ha and
that ha there is just to emphasize that
it's mine.
There's no one else's.
This is mine.
It's just to emphasize yaani you're mulkiya.
So yes it works with the surah, but
this is how the Arab would do it.
Mulaqin hisabiya.
I was going to meet the day I
was going to arrive and be there.
I knew I was going to be held
accountable.
That's why my book sounds so good.
That's why this is a good book because
I knew this day was coming so I
wrote this novel appropriately.
I wrote it well.
I made sure at some point in my
life it clicked so I started changing the
way the hero is behaving.
Think about that wallahi.
Go home today and just think about that.
Consider your life a movie.
Wallahi we watch so much our generation.
I love the theater and I love cinema.
I do.
I absolutely love it and I love poetry
and I love reading these type of things
and it's unfortunate because it takes up more
time than it should and I should be
doing other stuff.
But I love reading literature.
It's just a very interesting aspect of the
human experience to hear these things.
And a good story is a good story.
A good story, regardless of whether it talks
about goodness or evil or oppression or heroes
or whatever.
If it's a good story, it's a good
story.
And it's worth listening to and it's worth
learning something from.
Think about your life as a movie and
imagine what story are you telling?
If someone was to make a movie of
your life after you die, what do you
want it to look like?
Let's say, somehow we get James Cameron interested
in directing a movie about you.
What would you want the movie to be
about?
What story is this person going to tell?
Of course, to tell a story, what are
you going to have to do?
You have to go and ask people, right?
If I'm going to make a movie about
you, I have to go, well, sit with
your kids, sit with your parents, sit with
your siblings, sit with your friends, right?
I have to pull out footage.
I have to see what your habits were
like, where you spend your time.
I have to read what you wrote.
I have to listen to what you said.
I have to take a glance at what
you achieved.
I have to speak to people you knew.
If someone's making a movie about you, how
do you think it's going to sound?
Are you happy with what it would be
today?
Or would you like it to be something
or could it be something different?
Or is there potential for it to be
told differently?
You get one story to tell, right?
Make sure it ends well, at least.
Maybe it didn't start well.
Maybe it didn't start well.
For a lot of us, it didn't start
well.
And maybe for the first couple of, maybe
the first half hour of this movie, it
didn't go, it was not, you weren't winning
the empathy of the viewer.
Like the audience was throwing their popcorn at
the screen.
This guy sucks.
I don't like this guy.
That's fine, but make sure that it ends
well, at least.
Make sure that at some point, you make
a transition.
And the story is worth telling.
And you do something that's worth talking about.
Something that you can read.
You have to be able to look at
your book and say, I did this.
I know, I know, I know the rest
of it is not good.
But I did this.
I'm coming to you, Ya Rabb, with this
one thing.
Or maybe these two things.
Or whatever it is.
But you have to have something.
So you can stand out.
So you have some uniqueness.
You have to show something.
And I knew this day was coming, so
I was prepared.
So I wrote my book well.
And I made sure that you direct your
movie.
And you author your book.
No one else does.
This is a piece that was written, performed,
edited, directed by you.
The credits at the end of this is
just you.
There's no one else.
There's no graphic designers or sound experts or
costume.
It's just full-on.
You did everything.
That's why you stand, and you answer for
it yourself.
See, other movies, there's the credits roll, and
then you have the actors, and the directors,
and the executives, and the producers, and all
the others.
They all have to come when they get
the Oscar.
15 of them get on stage, and they
give these convoluted, boring speeches.
On the Day of Judgment, the credits when
they roll is just your name.
No one else did anything.
So you stand on the Day of Judgment,
whether you're getting the book in the right
or you're getting it in the left, whether
it's just there's no one to go to.
So that person on that day will be
in a satisfying satisfaction or content when you're
in a state of content with things.
You're happy with them.
You're okay.
You have no objections.
You have nothing that you want to say.
That person on that day will be in
a this is a slang term in Arabic.
We use it a lot, and it's actually
a fasih word.
It's in the Quran twice.
They're in a lifestyle.
Isha is a lifestyle.
In Arabic, I mean your way of life.
Everything about your life.
It's a word that encompasses every aspect, every
angle of your existence.
It's not talking about your physical health or
your mental health or your financial health or
your social health or your personal health or
your academic or professional.
It's talking about all of it together.
Meaning the sum of it all.
The sum of your life in general.
Everything put together, what it adds up to.
He's living a life, this person.
He's living a life that is very satisfying.
They're content with it.
They're happy with it.
They're living that within an elevated garden.
It's up there.
It's far away from all the noise that's
happening down at the bottom.
It's far away from the heat and from
the discomfort and the pain.
It's far from the fear.
It's far from all of that.
It's elevated far away.
You don't have to deal with it.
You see, in dunya, if you live that
way, it's usually not good.
You can't afford to do that in dunya.
You can't afford to put yourself in some
ivy tower and just sit there away from
the sound of people's pain.
You can't.
If you do that, on yawm al qiyamah,
you're going to be at the bottom.
It's just going to flip for you.
But yawm al qiyamah, if you spent your
life down there in the gutters, working with
those who were not doing well, helping them,
supporting them, with every aspect of your being,
to the best of your ability, within whatever
capacity Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
puts you in, depending on where you grew
up and how you...
And you did that, then yawm al qiyamah,
He will elevate you and put you in
a place where you don't have to worry
about that anymore.
You don't have to be exposed to that.
You don't have to know about it.
Just leave it alone.
It's not...
You're in a garden, a place where it's
beautiful.
The word jannah in Arabic, we translate it
as garden, but really what it means in
Arabic is anything that is absolutely beautiful, we
take from it.
So, what's the root?
Entertain this with me, humor me here for
a second.
The word jannah is taken from the root
of jim, nun, nun.
That's the root of it all.
Now, the root jannah, what does it mean?
Just the jim and the nun with a
sheddah.
Anyone want to tell me?
Throw it out.
What does it mean?
It's insanity.
It's insanity.
Jannah, jim, nun, nun.
It's insanity.
It's the loss of a grasp of reality.
From this root, all of the words that
come from it have a certain aspect of
that in it.
So jinn, they're not insane, but they are
so out of our reality that we can't
grasp them.
That's why they're called jinn.
And jannah is something that is so beautiful
that it's outside of your reality.
Meaning you don't have the ability to understand
it.
You can't imagine it.
You can't fathom it.
That's why it's jannah.
The concept of the loss of grasp on
reality is what brings all of the words
that are derived from this root, puts them
all together.
In Arabic, that's how it works.
You have a root, then you derive all
these words.
All these words will have a remnant of
the basic meaning of the root within them.
Which keeps it all together.
So in a place that is elevated and
so beautiful that you don't have the ability
to comprehend and reflect upon.
You don't understand.
So we sometimes call gardens jinnan or jannat.
Why?
Because we think this is so beautiful.
I couldn't have made this.
It's just absolutely mesmerizing.
I love it.
You'll use that word.
But this usage for it is a figurative
one.
It's not a literal one.
Its fruits hang low.
They hang near.
It's not low as in low.
Low as in near.
Is proximity.
Is proximity.
Is proximal.
The fruit of this garden or this jannah
that you're in.
They're very proximal.
They're very close by.
Meaning no effort is needed.
What are you trying to teach here?
In dunya, for you to get something, you
have to get up and go and work.
You have to slave away.
You have to put in that 100%
to get.
You have to put in that effort to
get what you want.
In jannah, you don't.
In jannah, that piece of the equation is
removed.
No, no.
It's all right there.
There for you to enjoy.
Put your hand out.
You get what you want.
The Prophet would give us examples of this.
He would talk to us in different hadith.
There's a...
Imam ibn Kathir has a book called Sifat
al-jannati wa na'imuha.
It's properly...
They perform tahqeeq upon it, which is authentication
of the hadith, I think maybe 20 years
ago.
It's a very nice book because if you
take it and you read it and you
focus on the hadith that are authentic and
you get rid of the rest of them,
then you get a little bit of understanding
of what occurs there.
He points out in one of the hadith
and has a reasonable chain of narration.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, would say
that the person who's sitting in Jannah would
look at something they wanted and by looking
at it, it would come near.
The tree itself would bring its...
If you desired meat of some sort and
you saw something, it would bring it.
Whatever you want just comes to you.
You don't have to get up and go
to it.
Because in Jannah, the concept is that you
don't have to work for this.
You've already worked for it before.
You've paid ahead.
You've paid it forward.
Now, you have a lot of credit here
with us.
There's no need.
In dunya, we have to see.
Are you willing to put in the effort?
Do you have the energy?
Are you willing to devote it and dedicate
it?
No?
Well then, sorry.
But yes, don't worry.
You're not going to have to do that.
So this person is in a satisfying lifestyle.
In an elevated Jannah, a place that is
unfathomably beautiful, with fruit and desired things that
are close and proximal to them.
They are called upon on that day.
Eat and drink.
The word is another word for satisfaction, really.
Or ease and satisfaction.
We use this a lot in slang.
When someone offers someone something to drink, for
example, or you'll say to them, may you
enjoy it fully, to the fullest extent.
Enjoying it to its fullest extent.
Eat and drink.
Enjoying both the act of eating and drinking
to the fullest of its extent.
Because on the Day of Judgement, it's not,
in Yawm al-Qiyamah, in Jannah, eating and
drinking is not to fill in an empty
void.
You're not filling an empty void inside of
you.
Which is what we usually try to do
here, because we're hungry.
We need to eat so that we have
enough energy.
Yawm al-Qiyamah, that's not what it is.
Yawm al-Qiyamah, it's purely for Hannah.
It's just joy.
You just have taste buds and you can
just taste nice things.
And they feel amazing going in and they
don't necessarily have to bother you on their
way out.
It's a different equation.
Well, why all this?
Why Eishat al-Radhiyah?
In Jannah al-Aaliyah, in Qutuf al-Hadaniyah,
in Kulu wa Shrubu al-Haniyyah.
All of that, bima aslaftum fil-ayyam al
-khaliyah.
Because of what you have paid forward.
That's what aslaf.
Have you ever heard the word silfah?
Before?
So, people who live in the Middle East,
many of our miserable souls who used to
live there and work there, if you didn't
have enough money, you would go to your
boss and you would ask him for a
silfah.
A silfah means, can you give me a
piece of what I was going to earn
next month?
Pay it forward to me.
Can you pay it forward to me now?
I'll work next month for you.
But can you give me a part of
that?
Like, you've already paid me for this month,
I'm going to be working with you next
month.
Can you pay me for next month now?
It's called a silfah.
You're going to pay it forward to me.
Bima aslaftum.
Because of what you paid forward, fil-ayyam
al-khaliyah in the early days.
In duniyah, al-khaliyah, the days that are
gone, that have moved on.
In duniyah, you paid it forward.
You didn't try and cash in in duniyah.
Every time you had the opportunity, you sent
it to us, yawm al-qiyamah.
You did a qardh.
You offered Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala a
beautiful loan.
You send it to him, he took it
and he's going to do riba on it
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It's the only time the contract of riba
does not need to go through Sheikh Arij
or Khalid Sultan or myself to see if
it's okay or not.
You don't need a fatwa for it.
It's the one qardh, ribawi that you're invited
and encouraged to be a part of.
Because you're paying it forward.
The concept of paying it forward is so
unrealistic and untrue that it humbles you and
humbles me to think about.
Because how are you paying forward when your
life and your existence and your spirit and
your soul was a gift from Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala?
How am I paying it forward?
If all of that I got for free
and I've never paid back.
But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala from his
mercy and his compassion and his love, he's
saying I'm going to consider what you did
in dunya payment forward.
We're going to forget about what you owe
me for your existence in total.
And that's the beauty of something worth reflecting
upon.
I'll end with that inshallah.