Ahmad Saleem – Connecting with the Quran- The Key to Overcoming Todays Trials
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The importance of faith and rationality is emphasized in various trials and tests related to the Q Chevrolet of Surah Al-Foni. The Q Chevrolet of Surah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah Al-F servah
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Alhamdulillah, we praise Him, we ask His help,
and we ask His forgiveness.
And we seek refuge in Allah from the
evil of our souls and from the evil
of our deeds.
Whomsoever Allah guides, none can misguide him, and
whomsoever He misguides, none can guide him.
And I bear witness that there is no
god but Allah, alone, no partner for Him.
And I bear witness that Muhammad is His
servant and Messenger.
I advise you and myself to fear Allah.
There should be no doubt in anybody's mind
that the events that display themselves on the
fabric of this universe and this earth today
for all of us, that doubt should not
be there that we are going through a
very difficult time.
As a matter of fact, we're going through
a time of fitna, a test.
And the word fitna in the Arabic language,
as many of you may have already known,
is to take something that was very precious,
such as gold, which has impurities in it,
and you put it in fire to remove
those impurities.
And that process is called fitnatul dhahab, i
.e. the cleansing of the gold.
And the trials and tests that we are
going through are just the beginning of what
may come, as Rasulullah ﷺ has told us.
And to sit down and enumerate, and if
you do remember the last time that I
was here, we talked about the fitna of
dajjal, and we talked about how that is
the greatest fitna.
But between the dajjal and our fitna, there
are lots that are going to take place.
As it is mentioned in Tirmidhi and many
of the seerah books, a story, although the
story has some da'af, but the meaning
of the hadith itself, as the ulema have
said, is absolutely accurate because it is verified
by every single ayah of the Qur'an.
And the story is that Ali was sitting,
and Rasulullah ﷺ was in the majlis.
And he turns to Ali, and he says,
Indeed, there is going to be these great
trials that the ummah is going to be
inflicted.
Satakoonu, i.e. this is about to happen.
Something that is going to happen as soon
as Rasulullah ﷺ, Abu Bakr, Umar, and after
that, after that fitna began.
All the trials and tribulations on the ummah
from that time till today.
So I said, How do
we get out of these trials and tribulations?
How do we get out of these fitnas?
Now, obviously, we are living in a very
rational time where everything is through rational.
What is the hikmah?
Why did Allah say this?
Well, this hukum of Allah doesn't make sense.
Before I submit, I need rationality, I need
rational proofs.
If we were there at the time of
Rasulullah ﷺ, we would be asking such questions.
But Ali, whose tarbiyah was done at the
hand of Rasulullah ﷺ, he's not concerned about
rationality.
He knows that whatever Rasulullah ﷺ says is
true.
And he says, How do we get out
of it?
Today, that is the number one question we
need to ask.
We have so many debates.
Everyone has their own solution to how to
get out of it.
We have to protest more.
Perfect.
We have to do this more.
Perfect.
We have to do this.
We have to boycott this.
Everyone is presenting solutions.
What is the solution of Rasulullah ﷺ?
To get out of this fitna is what
we need to hear.
He ﷺ says, Kitabullah, it's the book of
Allah.
You want to get out of this fitness?
By holding on to the kitab of Allah.
Now, as we go through this hadith, it's
going to enumerate a few things.
But I want to pause and reflect on
the state of ummah and our connection with
the kitabullah.
First, in this entire audience, I see that
the hall capacity says 597 plus the sisters
at the back and the children.
We would, by the time the Jummah, at
the end of Jummah, we would roughly be
around 6 to 700 people easily.
What percentage of these individuals can accurately recite
Surah Al-Fatihah without mistakes?
We don't need to go far.
We don't need to become an alim.
Just something we need for our daily five
prayers.
Surah Al-Fatihah to recite it without lahan
jali, without major mistakes.
Add to that, how many of us would
have a deeper understanding of that Surah Al
-Fatihah or even just the translation?
We don't need to go far.
We have left, as an ummah, at wholesale
Qur'an.
We have jumped onto every single type of
solution to fix the gap, to fix the
space, fix that emptiness that can only be
filled by the Qur'an.
You say there is a halaqa about tafsir
of the Qur'an?
10-15 people will show up.
You say we're having a halaqa about hard
connections, hard talk.
Everyone's gonna go, Oh, it's hard.
I need to, my heart's aching.
That hard talk ain't gonna fix you if
you don't connect with the Qur'an.
Right?
This, again, we have to be realistic about
this.
There is no way, no matter how high
the maqam of an alim, the kalam of
alim is going to supersede kalam Rabbil Alam.
It can't happen.
When I hear ayahs from the Qur'an,
if I am not moved greater than the
way I'm moved by the words of a
scholar, then we have a problem in that
equation.
So Rasulullah ﷺ says, Kitabullah, it's the book
of Allah.
Why?
It has news for the people that came
before you.
Notice how the hadith did not say, There's
a difference between naba and khabar.
Every news, khabar is news.
Naba is, It is a great news.
I.e. it has an impact in your
life and it is beneficial to you.
When you get that news, it provides you
benefit.
Just a quick reflection.
Surah Al-Baqarah has 286 ayat.
115 ayat, they speak about Bani Israel.
That's almost 40% of Surah Al-Baqarah.
The first surah that you are introduced to
in the Qur'an after Surah Al-Fatiha
is all about how not to be like
them.
How not to be like them.
Be careful.
They were given the book.
They were given this.
They broke their promises.
They did this.
They did this.
All of that.
How not to be like them.
And now this is different.
Over here Rasulullah says, And you're going to
get information about what is going to happen
in the future.
There are predictions in the Qur'an about
what is going to come.
Some of those predictions are And others, they
are clear like the sun.
And there are others, They are between, you
have to ponder.
And when you ponder and reflect more, you
get to understand more.
It is the criterion through which you and
I, if we have issues amongst us, is
there as a criterion to rectify that issue
between us.
It is a decisive criterion.
It separates between that which is haq and
which is baatil, non-righteousness.
And it is not hazal.
It's not a joke.
It's content or not a joke.
It's a matter of serious understanding.
And this is related to the leaders of
the Muslim ummah.
But if they stop, if they stop using
Qur'an as the source of legislation, Allah
will sever them.
If you read the tafsir of this, and
if you read the sharh of this, it
says, Allah will sever them from his rahmah.
Allah will sever them from izzah.
Allah will sever them from karama.
Allah would sever, i.e. the leaders and
then us, vis-a-vis.
We all know the shaheed that we had
last week, very famous.
When he passed away, that same week in
the khutbah in the morning, I viewed over
200 khutbahs in the last 24 hours after
his death, and only two khutbahs talked about
him.
Over the 200 khutbahs that were live-streamed
on YouTube in major masajid across the Muslim
world, only two people spoke about him.
So when we leave Qur'an as a
legislator, then this is the consequence.
And then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
And if somebody wants to seek guidance, you
choose any other source other than the Qur
'an, you will be misguided.
You may gain some religious knowledge, but it
won't be accordance to the Qur'an and
the sunnah.
I remember when I went for my studies,
and this is right after we attended the
ilm summit in 2008 with Sheikh Waleed Bisyouni
and some of the mashayikh at that time
in Houston.
I got motivated and I said, I need
to go and learn.
And when I went there, my teacher, they
met me, and almost all of them, all
of them, they said, How much Qur'an
do you know?
Can you recite Qur'an properly?
I said, No, Sheikh, but I want to
learn this amazing book.
And he's like, One of my Sheikh, he
says, Why did you get involved in the
books and you can't even recite Qur'an?
Today, you have people who are graduating from
in these lands, graduating from madaris, ma'ahid,
they're graduating from institutions with a degree in
five years, and they have read tafsir of
taftazani or madri ish, and then you ask
that guy to lead the salah and he
can't even recite surah al-fatiha.
Hajib, our priorities as a community is off.
In the past, they would say that somebody
who would get a status within the community,
they said, Whosoever would memorize and understand surah
al-baqarah, if you understood surah al-baqarah,
then you would get the status of being
like an elder in the society.
Today, you have so many hufadh of the
Qur'an, they don't even understand anything.
And it has become a status symbol.
When I go to new communities, they will
be like, As-salamu alaykum, my name is
Abdul Basit, I have a son who's a
hafiz.
How does that add any value to you?
Then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, sorry,
Prophet shallallahu alaihi wa sallam says, This, this
Qur'an is the rope of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
If we hold on to it, that's what
Allah says in the Qur'an.
Hold on to the rope of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala collectively.
And don't divide yourselves in the community.
Then he says, Prophet shallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
You want wisdom and remembrance, and you want
to be remembered, reminded of wisdoms, you will
find them in the Qur'an.
Through the Qur'an, you will find the
straight path.
This is the book, if you understand it
in the Arabic language, your desires, your nafs
is not going to be able to come
and deviate you from that.
You have, no tongues are going to be
able to convolute the recitation of it.
The greatest mu'jiza is that if you
go to Kenya, if you go to any
of these places, if you go to Ethiopia,
if you go to Pakistan, if you go
to India, China, people who have memorized the
entire Qur'an with proper tajweed, with proper
recitation, they don't know what the meaning is,
but their tongues are in...
If any Arab comes and recites, the ajam
will correct him.
They may not know the meaning, but the
tongues, they are, that once you know the
Qur'an, it becomes impossible for you not
to read it correctly.
And the scholars, they cannot get enough of
the Qur'an.
It is mentioned if you read the stories
of the ulema of the past with the
Qur'an.
For example, Ahmash.
It is mentioned about him that he told
his daughter that I, you know, he pointed
to a pillar of the masjid, and he
was about to leave this earth, and he
was smiling.
And they said, why are you smiling?
He said, I smile because I know that
underneath that pillar, I have finished the Qur
'an 400 times in my life.
Recently, there is a shaykh in Morocco, and
he's well known, and his video has been
circulating online.
He has listened to the Qur'an cover
to cover of hufadh, more than 7,000
students.
Imagine the iman of that person.
The ulema, they can't get tired of reading
the Qur'an.
May Allah make us from that.
And then, you don't get bored.
You don't get bored at all of repetition
of the Qur'an.
And then it says, And it has amazing
things in the Qur'an from the time
of Rasulullah ﷺ till today.
People can't stop writing enough about the Qur
'an.
Just yesterday, Right?
It's a printed copy of a tafsir from
the ulema of Najd.
And I came across this because my own
shipment was lost.
So I lost my copy, and I was
looking for a PDF version.
And I had forgotten that just for Surah
Al-Fatihah, Shaykh Ad-Dawsari, just for Surah
Al-Fatihah, he has dedicated a mujallad kamil,
over 400 pages on just the tafsir of
Surah Al-Fatihah.
And then in the end of it, he
says, I could write a lot, but I
said, people are going to get tired of
400 pages.
So I did a summary of that, which
I had to say about Surah Al-Fatihah.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us
to truly connect with the message of the
Qur'an.
In the end, we finish the hadith.
It says, If we act upon the Qur
'an, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives us
ajr.
There's a beautiful kitab written.
It's called Qur'an It's a consortium of
effort of multiple scholars, over 20 scholars that
put together.
And if you're in Arab, mashallah, it is
translated.
It's very easy to read.
If you're not in Arab, there are few
translations that are coming out.
I think just 30th, few of the surahs
are out there.
But it is beautiful because one page you
read, and in the bottom, it says, Here
are the three things you have to put
in practice today with this page of the
Qur'an.
This is what the Qur'an tells.
This page tells us to put into action.
It has taken away your thinking.
Just follow and say, I read this page
today.
What are the points of amal I need
to do?
You follow those points and bismillah.
And if we use the Qur'an as
a source of legislation, then there is no
greater justice.
Hudiyya ila siratil mustaqeem.
And if we become callers to others to
come to this Qur'an, Allah with the
barakah of that calling will take you to
siratil mustaqeem.
And then Rasulullah ﷺ in the end, he
says, Take it.
Take this.
Don't leave this Qur'an.
Take it.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us
from those who hold onto the Qur'an.
In the end, we ask Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala on this blessed day to send
salutations on Nabi Muhammad ﷺ.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
on this blessed day of Friday to protect
every single one of us in our imans.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that you know what is in our hearts.
We come to you on this Friday with
weak imans and we hope in your mercy
and your rahmah.
O Allah, do not deprive us on this
day from your rahmah.
O Allah, let not any one of us
leave this masjid except that you have forgiven
all of our sins and you have confirmed
the protection of iman of every generation to
come ila yawm al-qiyamati Ya Rabb al
-alameen.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that we have not honored the Qur'an
the way it was supposed to be honored.
O Allah, do not hold us accountable for
that.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
on this blessed day to connect our hearts
with the Qur'an and make us from
those people who recite the Qur'an day
in and day out.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to give us the tawfiq to recite surah
al-kahf today.
For those of us who have recited, Allah
puts barakah in them and provides them the
nur that was promised.
And for those who haven't recited, Allah gives
them the tawfiq to recite before maghrib.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that our brothers and sisters in Gaza, our
brothers and sisters in Sudan, our brothers and
sisters in Kashmir, our brothers and sisters in
Bangladesh, our brothers and sisters in every single
part of the world are suffering.
Oh Allah, ease their suffering.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to protect their bloods.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to protect their sanctity, to protect the sanctity
of our sisters in Gaza, protect the sanctity
of our sisters in Sudan and all other
parts of the world.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that all of these affairs are in a
simple term, kun fayakoon, Oh Allah make ease
for our brothers and sisters with your kun
fayakoon.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that our ummah has suffered for too long.
Do not let our sins be the cause
of that suffering.
Please provide the ease to the Ummah of
Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam and provide every single
one of us the tawfiq to carry on
the banner of Quran and the banner of
la ilaha illallah Muhammadur Rasulullah to every corner
of this earth.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that we become a source of providing hidayah
to the people around us and we become
a source of blessing and rahmah for the
people of America.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that our Ummah is going to going through
difficult times, allow us to be from those
who worship you with true sincerity in these
difficult times and make us from those when
you make ease for us, that we are
the ones who come to the masjid and
fill the masajid in those ease times.
We ask you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to protect the maal, the money, the health
of every single one of us here and
provide us shifa and kamilah if anyone is
suffering with any diseases.
And we ask you Allah that if any
one of us has lost any of our
relatives, and if any one of us has
lost any of our fathers and mothers and
grandfathers and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala raises
their ranks in the qabr and makes their
qabr a piece of paradise and provides them
the nur and hidayah of life and makes
every single one of us who have left
behind a mother, father or grandfather that you
become from those where Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam
says, Give us the tawfiq to make dua
for our parents if they have been deceased
and to provide sadaqah jariah for them if
they are deceased.