Ahmad Saleem – Tafseer Surah Kahf – 005
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the benefits of secession, avoiding loss of personal information, and protecting one's tongue. They also touch on narrations and personal affairs, including the importance of staying to personal affairs and not getting involved in public affairs. The radio show emphasizes the need to avoid doing too much fast and hanging out with people, avoid drinking water and have multiple experiences, and to not drink water and have multiple experiences.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu, bismillah
wa alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salam ala Rasulillahi
wa ba'ad, Rabbish rahli sadri wa yassir
li amri, wa ahlul uqdatan min lisani yufqahu
qawli, Rabbana zidna ilman ya kareem.
InshaAllah we're going to start our class.
Yeah, um, if you can go to the
channel and also share on the, just type
in on YouTube Ahmed Saleem and then share
it on the group, you know the group
that we had?
Our group, no WhatsApp group, okay.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu, folks
on Instagram, inshaAllah we're going to start in
a couple of minutes, we're just setting up
something, and for those of you that are
here, if you want to see it in
high definition, we're also streaming live, so the
YouTube link is I believe in my bio,
so you can go and watch it live
there too on YouTube inshaAllah.
So we're live on YouTube inshaAllah, alright, bismillah.
We want to first start off by thanking
Allah subhana wa ta'ala, and also thanking
the brother who actually donated all this equipment.
One of the brothers over here just decided
to, you know, he said, I believe in
streaming, I believe in live streaming, why I'm
like, I just, it's too complicated, he's like,
we'll buy you the best equipment, so may
Allah bless him, if he's listening, you know
who you are, you know, he's not able
to be with us because he has family
commitments, but he wanted to listen to it
from home, so he said, well, I'll make
it beneficial for everybody, so may Allah bless
him for all that he did, you know,
and everything so that, you know, it's now
just one cable to the laptop and you
can stream, as opposed to other things, alhamdulillah.
May Allah bless him and his family, and
may Allah preserve the iman of the brother
inshaAllah.
We're going to start, we're going to start
with inshaAllah, verse number 16, as is our,
you know, we start off with a couple
of verses before, so we can create the
sequence, this gives time to people that are
still trickling in and stuff, so they don't
miss the main session, inshaAllah.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, He says, So
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, He starts off
in these verses, He says, and we have
talked about these verses in detail last time,
so we're just going to do a running
translation, so we understand.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that
when, remember the time when they, i.e.
the people, the seven people, when they distanced
themselves, with that which they used to worship
other than Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So seek refuge in the cave, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is going to provide for
you, accommodate for you, from His mercy, and
Allah will prepare for you from your affairs,
an accommodation.
So this is when they ran away from
their family and they're having this conversation within
themselves.
Now, the ulama, they have described many benefits
of seclusion.
So what they did is they secluded themselves.
And the ulama, they have described numerous benefits
of seclusion.
One of the benefits that the ulama, they
say, is that it provides a very strong
connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So when a person secludes themselves from everybody
else, then you have nobody else to look
forward to other than yourself.
You're left with yourself.
So ultimately you have a choice, and now
you can get connected to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala through Qur'an and through dhikr.
The second benefit is avoidance from sin.
When you are secluded, you're less prone to
fall under sin.
Nowadays, when we say seclusion, it's also from
your cell phone.
It's like, yeah, I'm secluded, but I've got
my laptop and my cell phone.
We have a lot of such seclusions, where
people are secluded in their rooms, but they're
secluded in their rooms with their cell phones,
they're secluded in their rooms with their laptops.
That type of seclusion doesn't help.
It's seclusion where you don't have any connection
with anyone and you're forced to work with
yourself.
There was a person by the name of
Ahmad al-Shugairi, and he's a guy who
used to have a very famous television show
in Saudi for the longest period.
Khawater.
Yes, yes, yes.
Ahmad al-Shugairi, he used to have Khawater.
So after being on television for so long,
you know, that industry does something to you.
Right?
And he calls these kalakia.
You develop internal knots of understanding.
It's all in your emotions.
So what he did, he secluded himself for
40 days in an island where he went,
found a house, rented it for 40 days,
and the only thing he took with him
was the Quran and 40 books to read.
So he had the mushaf and he took
40 books to read.
And he told his family and his wife
and children that, listen, unless it's my parents
that are dying, you don't call me.
Like, if my mom or dad are dying
or you're dying, then call.
Right?
And there was only one cell phone that
he took, which was hidden.
So it was just, it was there, but
it was like Abu Kashaf, you know, the
small ones that like, you know, it's like
a small one you can hardly even see
the screen.
And that phone was there and that's it.
That was only there for emergency purposes.
So after 40 days, it's a beautiful interview
that he talks about.
And he said, you actually realize that you,
around the first day, second day, the third
day, you start hating yourself.
Because you don't even recognize how bad you
have become with the environment.
You don't have any cognitive reality of who
you are.
And he said around the fifth day or
sixth day, you start actually figuring out, okay,
I need to do something with my life.
And he's like, around the tenth day, you
actually start developing love because now Qur'an
is actually talking to you.
Because before, it was all these shackles of
society and burdens, everything is bothering you.
And he said around the fortieth day, you
almost don't want to go back.
So he wrote an entire book on that.
His journey of these 40 days, and he
called it Arba'een or Arba'oon of
Ahmad Shigeri.
I think they've also translated it into English.
And it's about each day and his reflections
on each one of those days.
So the ulema, they have, you know, a
list can go on of the benefits, but
first benefit is strong connection with Allah through
the forms of dhikr and Qur'an.
Second benefit is that you stay away from
sins like gheeba, riya, right?
Imam Khattabi used to say if the only
benefit of uzla, seclusion was that you could
protect yourself from riya, that's enough of a
benefit.
Like if seclusion had no other benefit except
that you could protect yourself from riya, then
that in itself is enough of a benefit.
Then the third is protection from fitna.
Remember the hadith of Prophet ﷺ when he
said, إِذَا رَأَيْتَ النَّاسَ مَرِجَتْ عُهُودُهُمْ Remember when
you see people and you see that their
affairs have become jumbled up, mixed up.
مَرِجَتْ عُهُودُهُمْ Good and bad, everything.
Prophet ﷺ, what did he say?
وَكَانُوا هَا كَذَى So he took his fingers
and he said good and bad.
And he did his fingers like that.
Right?
وَشَبَكَ بَيْنَ أَنَامِلِهِ Then he says when this
happens, when good, bad, it's all mixed up.
فَلْزَمْ بَيْتِكَ Then stay in your home.
When that level of fitna, we're living in
that level of fitna.
فَلْزَمْ بَيْتَكَ وَمْلِكَ وَأَمْلِكَ عَلَى لِسَانِكَ And the
first thing we have to be careful about
is our tongue.
In the matters, in the times of fitna.
And today what happens with our tongue?
That's the least thing that we're careful about.
And now the tongue, by tongue, we have
the extension of commenting, we have the extension
of messaging, we have the extension of, we
don't even have any idea what we chatted
with, who we spoke to, what we wrote
two days ago.
That's all lisanic.
It's in that same category.
That whatever you wrote, whatever you spoke, it
doesn't have to be physically coming out.
It's also your text fingers.
فَلْزِمْ بَيْتَكَ وَأَمْلِكَ عَلَيْكَ لِسَانَكَ وَخُذْ مَا تَعْرِفْ
Stay with the knowns.
What's obvious and known, just stick to that.
Anything that is new, any ism that is
new, or there's a new way of doing
things.
You know my Sheikh used to say, جَدِيدُ
الْإِسْلَامِ قَدِيمٌ وَقَدِيمُهُ جَدِيدٌ The new things in
Islam are actually old.
They're irrelevant.
And the old things are actually the new
things.
They are the more fresh things.
Because Islam has a heritage, it has a
lineage, it has a sanad through which we
get our religion from.
It's not just haphazard.
So he says, وَدَعْ مَا تُنْكِرْ And if
you see something, and you look at it,
you're like, wait a minute, this doesn't seem
right to me.
This doesn't settle well with me.
Then he says, وَدَعْ مَا تُنْكِرْ This is
in matters of new affairs.
Like if it's a new thing, you don't
know if this new idea, this new way,
anything that is new, be very careful about
that.
Then he says, وَعَلَيْكَ بِخَاصَةِ أَمْرِكَ In one
narration, وَعَلَيْكَ بِخَاصَةِ أَمْرِكَ In another narration, Prophet
ﷺ said, وَعَلَيْكَ بِخَوَيصَةِ أَمْرِكَ And stick to
your personal affairs.
Things that bother you, stick to them.
وَدَعْ عَنْكَ أَمْرِ الْعَامِ وَدَعْ عَنْكَ أَمْرِ الْعَامِ
And public affairs, forget about them.
Just leave it.
Don't get involved in that.
So that's just one hadith out of the
numerous ahadiths about fitna.
Okay.
The third is protection from the evil eye
of people, evil's eye of people, such as
hasad, da'in, all of that.
You will be protected from that.
Okay.
Then Allah ﷻ says in the next ayah,
وَتَرَى الشَّمْسَ إِذَا طَلَعَتْ تَزَاوَرُ عَنْ كَهْفِهِمْ And
if you were to look at the shams,
we've done the detailed description about it last
week.
I believe you have uploaded the video, right?
You have uploaded the video, perfect.
So the video for last week, if you
missed it, do go and check it out
because we did a, you know, we did
the grammatical analysis but more importantly we did
the word analysis of it and then we
talked about what this ayah is actually talking
about from scientific worldview.
Okay.
وَتَرَى الشَّمْسَ إِذَا طَلَعَتْ تَزَاوَرُ عَنْ كَهْفِهِمْ And
if you were to look at the sun
when it rose, inclining away from their cave
to the right وَإِذَا غَرَبَتْ تَقْرِضُهُمْ وَإِذَا غَرَبَتْ
تَقْرِضُهُمْ ذَاتَ الشِّمَال وَإِذَا غَرَبَتْ تَقْرِضُهُمْ ذَاتَ الشِّمَال
And when it was set, as it set,
declining away from the left وَهُمْ فِي فَجْوَةٍ
مِّنْ وَهُمْ فِي فَجْوَةٍ مِّنْ And they were
in a gap in its open space, i
.e. the gap between the light or the
gap between the cave.
ذَلِكَ مِنْ آيَاتِ اللَّهِ These are the ayat
or the signs of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta
'ala.
مَنْ يَهْدِي اللَّهِ Whosoever Allah guides فَهُوَ الْمُهْتَدُ
He is truly guided.
وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلَنْ تَجِدَ لَهُ وَرِيًّا مُرْشِدًا And
whosoever وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ Whosoever Allah decides to lead
astray then you're not going to find anybody
that could guide that person.
What is the significance of the ending of
this ayah over here?
The significance of the ending is for us
that like this sign Allah is going to
show us signs.
You're going to have tons and tons of
signs all throughout that are going to be
aja'ib that are going to be strange
and it's only the ones that have iman
will be able to witness those signs and
they will be able to come back from
them.
Imam al-Suyuti, very famous scholar Jalal al
-Ain and all of these books that have
been written from 600, 500, 600 Imam al
-Suyuti he says something so powerful in the
book of khasa'is of Nabi ﷺ Imam
al-Suyuti says that there used to be
a handkerchief like a rumal that Rasulullah ﷺ
used to wipe his sweat with and it
was with some person in his town that
person's entire house got burned down except the
rumal of Rasulullah ﷺ right with that so
many people accepted Islam like this is what
Imam al-Suyuti is saying that you know
that so these are called khasa'is but
these are also called aja'ib, these are
things that Allah ﷻ shows so when this
whole thing about Ashab al-Kahf their sun
declining away all of that these are signs
from Allah ﷻ whosoever Allah ﷻ wishes they
will see these signs and they will say
I believe and others are going to be
like oh please don't tell us these folklores
and if Allah ﷻ if somebody listens to
these stories and they say you know what
what is this nonsense a'udhu billah if
they say that Allah ﷻ says there are
going to be people towards them, what are
these old stories you're telling me fabled legends
of the past I don't want to believe
in that right so then over here Allah
ﷻ is like right in one of my
travels I met an individual who happened to
momentarily leave this earth like he died medically
medically he passed away and they stopped generally
you should resuscitate them in a certain number
of time, certain minutes but those minutes had
passed but these doctors they really liked this
person though they went beyond the call and
they gave up on him and when he
died he could not speak or understand Arabic
but before dying he made a dua to
Allah ﷻ that I would like to learn
Arabic, when he woke up after 20 minutes
of everything stopped and his heart just started
back he was fluent in Arabic and I
met this person he was not from even
Arab country, he doesn't have any Arab parents,
he didn't even live with Muslims, he just
accepted Islam in the hospital and the doctor
was like one day he just like resuscitated
and he started speaking Arabic and he forgot
English and I met that person ذلك من
آيات الله Allah shows us signs and when
we see these signs مَن يَهْدِ اللَّه فَهُوَ
الْمُهْتَدُ whosoever Allah guides through these signs they
will be guided وَمَن يُضْلِلْ وَلَن تَجِي but
if Allah chooses to lead you astray from
that فَلَن تَجِي لَهُ وَلِيَّمْ مُرْشِدًا you're not
going to find a guiding mentor for that
person now we didn't do this ayah right
وَتَحْسَبُهُمْ أَيْقَادًا وَهُمْ رُقُودًا if you were to
enter the cave now the scene switches Allah
is like if you were in the cave
you would see the sun rise and set
and the sun would deviate to the right
to the left that's a miracle, we talked
about it in detail in the last week
in last week this one Allah says وَتَحْسَبُهُمْ
أَيْقَادًا if you were to look at them
if you were to look at them you
would believe that they are awake أَيْقَادًا they
are awake وَنُقَلِّبُهُمْ ذَاتَ الْيَمِينِ وَذَاتَ الشِّمَالِ وَنُقَلِّبُهُمْ
ذَاتَ الْيَمِينِ وَذَاتَ الشِّمَالِ the sun also turned
away ذات اليمين و ذات الشمال the sun
also did the same ذات اليمين و ذات
الشمال so Allah is like we were turning
them towards the direction of the sun That
al-yameen wa that al-shimal.
We kept turning them left and right, okay?
And then Allah says, wa kalbuhum basitun dhira
'ihi walwasid.
And as for their dog, these paws, they
were sitting right in the front like that
and he was sitting in upright position.
And wasid is the entrance of the cave.
Lawittala'at alayhim, if you were to look
at them, lawallayta minhum firaran walamulikta minhum ru
'ba.
And if you were to look at these
people in the cave the way they were,
it was so terrifying of a sight that
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, lawallayta minhum
firaran.
When do you run away from something?
When you accidentally look and there's like a
black bear behind you, okay?
Right?
We went camping in the summer and, you
know, they put me in a cabin and
the day before they said, you know, we
have captured a bear, so don't worry, there
won't be any more.
I said, Habibi, this is jungle, okay?
You captured one, now you're telling me that,
you know, I need to walk all this
jungle to go to the bathroom?
So anyhow, at 3.30 I was like,
I need to go.
So I went, took the torch, and I'm
in the bathroom and I'm lying down.
So now I'm too scared to go back.
And I'm like, you know what, two hours
till Fajr, like, you know, the bathroom had
a medical unit infirmary, so I just went
in that and they had a bed.
So I was like, perfect, I'm just going
to lie down here and inshallah, Allah will
take care of me.
Okay.
In the morning, what was the guy's name,
Mike or Dave?
Mike.
Mike comes, and he said, we had a
bear sighting.
He said, where was the bear?
So imagine this is the infirmary, and then
the bed is like this, and then, so
there's a cabinet, bed, and then there's this
door that goes to the jungle.
And there's a door that comes from the
bathroom inside to the infirmary.
The door is the emergency exit, so if
there's an emergency, you open and a crash
door opens.
So he's like, the bear was right at
the emergency exit smelling something.
I'm like, it was me?
I was sleeping there the whole night?
So he could smell, but he couldn't get
in.
I was so afraid after he told me.
Before, I had no idea that the bear
was there.
I had no idea.
And subhanAllah, imagine if I had seen that
bear.
Even if I knew that there was a
danger for me, I would have still...
I heard this story after it happened to
me, and I was like, next day, not
going to the bathroom.
Right?
I'm like, I'll go at 11 o'clock,
and then I said, khalas, I will hold
it until fajr.
When everybody wakes up, because when there's too
many people, then they run away.
So Allah is saying that if you were
to look at them, this is my state
after somebody tells me the story that there
was an incident.
They're saying if you look at them, you
will be so filled with fear that that
fear is going to force your...
you won't have instinct.
Your instinct will take over you, and you
will run away, firaran.
So there was some danger that was coming
to you.
Your only farra ya firru is actually when
you run away from some imminent fear and
danger to yourself.
walamu li'ta minhum ru'ba.
And this scene would have filled your inside
with horror.
Now, if you understand this entire ayah, what
state were they in?
Question for everyone.
Have you ever been afraid of someone this
much when they were sleeping?
And Allah is like, wa tahsabuhum what?
A'iqad, which is the opposite of sleeping,
okay?
And then Allah says, Allah does not say,
wahum na'imun, wahum ruqood.
The word ruqood is a complete...
it's a little bit of a different thing.
And it's very, very interesting, because once you
make this connection from the Qur'an, this
ayah will make a lot of sense to
you.
Where does this word come again in the
Qur'an?
man ba'athana min marqadina ha.
Who woke us up from our marqad?
When the marqad was where?
Who woke us up after when the qiyamah
is going to come?
They're like, who woke us up from this
resting place of ours?
Were they alive or dead in the grave?
Alive.
They had a life.
They were physically here, like the bodies, dead
bodies, they're physically in this world, but spiritually
they're where?
Somewhere else.
Alamul arwah.
Okay?
Spiritually they're here, sorry, physically they're here, but
their spirits and spiritually they've gone somewhere else.
So while Allah is using this word, tahsabuhum
ayqaadan, if you would look at them, you
would look like they're fully awake, but their
spirits were not there.
Their physical bodies were intact, but they were
ruqood, their spirits had gone.
They were somewhere else.
Bodies are still in a state of living.
Standing.
Now, in what state would you be afraid
of them?
What state you're more prone to be afraid
of them?
Lying, sitting, or standing?
Nice.
But just any standing is not going to
be afraid.
You're not going to be afraid of somebody
standing.
Okay?
Now, if they're standing, and then Allah is
like, wa nuqallibuhum dhaatal yameeni wa dhaatal shemal.
But if they're standing, and they are moving
left to right, left to right, all of
them in sync moving left, all of them
in sync moving left, right, left, right.
Now you're like, look at them, and they're
literally like robots.
Their bodies are wa nuqallibuhum dhaatal yameeni wa
dhaatal shemal.
They're moving left, right, left, right.
If you were to see that scene, they're
all standing, they're awake, they're you calling them,
because what this tells you, that wa hum
ruqood, if you were to even have called
them, right, ruqood, their soul had left.
They were like somebody min marqadina, somebody who
was like a dead person.
Physically here, right, but dead.
But the spirit still exists and feels.
Wa kalbuhum basitun dhiraaihi bilwasit.
What's really interesting over here is that their
dog, the state of the dog, Allah is
saying, sometimes we understood, a lot of the
mufassirun, they understood this, they said the dog
is the source of terror.
This is in the tafsir, because they could
not put the terror with the people.
So they said the dog is the source
of terror.
And like, for example, Dr. Israr Ahmed, he
said, because it must have been like, you
know, a rottweiler or some like really ferocious
dog.
Again, that's his tafsir.
We don't have any hadith from Rasulullah that
tells us what's the nature of that dog.
But then I spoke to enough people that
own dogs, and then we had that dog
trainer in front of our house.
I spoke to her about this ayah.
And she says, this is known amongst the
dog training world, that when the dog submits
and he is harmless to you, the paws
are in the front and they're sitting like
this.
Like, come on, give me a treat.
So the state of, so Allah is saying,
the murajiza in the ayah is that their
dog was not in a state of terror.
Like, you would have been filled with terror
by looking at them.
And their dog was right at the entrance,
and he was not in a state of
terror.
He was sitting in a very passive submissive
state.
So your fear was directly from them.
Okay?
If you would have looked at them, you
would have seen the state, you would have
just ran away.
And your heart would have been filled with
terror by looking at this state of theirs.
Now did they own a dog?
Was it their dog?
Beautiful.
It followed them.
All the mufassirun, they say that as they
were going, so the dog followed them.
In the Qur'an, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa
Ta-A'la mentions the dog, right?
And in this ayah itself, in surah, this
surah, six times.
Six times in this story it is mentioned.
In every single time, the dog is attributed
to them.
Their dog, their dog, their dog, their dog.
And the ulama, they took out a really
beautiful point over here.
This is from one of the tafsirs that
I read.
And they said that when the dog, which
according to the fiqh is not a very
pure animal, but when the dog, one of
the most najis animals for our fiqh, when
that dog allowed itself to be in the
company of pious people, then that dog became
worthy of being mentioned in the Qur'an
because of that company.
And in the Qur'an, that dog is
mentioned six times because of the company, the
suhbah that he had.
And the opposite, what other animals, people's animal
do we know?
Like people that were attributed to an animal,
huh?
No, a group of nation, they were, group
of nation and Allah says, the people of
this animal, ashab-ul-feel, ashab-ul-feel.
In that story, the mufassir says, in that
story, the people got attributed to the animal
because the animal had more foresight about taqaba
than the people.
So Allah attributed the insan to an animal.
That your worthiness was because the animal was
much more pious than all of you people.
Right?
You remember the story, right?
When he saw, when they took the camel
at the time of Rasulullah's, the year of
Rasulullah's birth with the person by the name
of Abraha, and Abraha was there, what was
the camel's name?
Who knows?
Elephant?
MashaAllah.
Camel's name was elephant.
What was the elephant's name?
Sorry.
What was the elephant's name?
Mahmood.
Mahmood was the elephant's name.
Mahmood, a person came running and spoke in
the ear of the elephant.
And what did he say?
He said, Mahmood, this is the house of
Allah, stop.
So the elephant stopped.
No matter.
They brought the person who manages, who's able
to control the elephant.
They brought another one, another one, another one,
another one.
He wouldn't move.
Here's something that you may have not ever
heard in tafsir books that is also mentioned.
Mahmood.
Who else was there in Makkah at that
time?
Huh?
He was not born here.
He was in the belly of Aminah radiAllahu
anhu.
So some people they say, in tafsir books
they say that Mahmood, he saw that there
is a light, a Divine light of Prophet
Muhammad ﷺ there.
Right?
Alusi and some of these Mufassirun, they will
say that the second thing was that he
saw there is something there.
The mother was pregnant, Aminah, because he was
born in that same year.
Right?
Abdullah had already died.
The father was already.
So and these are matters of sight.
As the ulema they say, some see and
some cannot see.
Some can see all the way to the
Ka'bah.
An animal, Allah can give the foresight to
be able to see these things but an
insan will be deprived.
Right?
May Allah never make us like the animals
but give us the foresight.
So, wa kalbuhum, their dog, basitun zira'ihi
bilwasid, we have done this whole ayah but
that was a point that, wa
kathalika ba'athnahum.
Whenever Allah ﷻ says, wa kathalika, this is
something important for us to understand and like
this, and so whenever Allah uses the word
kathalika, it is an indication like the way
we protected them in the cave and then
we saved them from the rays of the
sun and we made the sun deviate to
the left and to the right and then
we allowed them to be in the cave.
We made them awake while sleeping, looking like
their souls were gone, you would look at
them, they would be awake and then we
were rotating them left and right.
All of this that we did, wa kathalika,
and likewise we did all of that, we
also woke them up, ba'athnahum, we resurrected
them.
We brought, now when do we use the
word ba'ath, generally in the Qur'an,
wal ba'athi ba'dal mawt, this also is
the indication for the ruqud, that their ruh
had left, wa ba'athnahum, then their ruh
came back, it was like a mini-resurrection
for them, wa kathalika ba'athnahum liyatasa'alu
baynahum, so right away we know that there
was a dispute, they started arguing with one
another, how long did we sleep, liyatasa'alu
baynahum, they started talking to one another and
asking one another, liyatasa'alu baynahum, so they
might question one another, qala qa'ilum minhum,
one of them said, kam labiththum, how long
did we stay, so I want you guys
to also do this, sometimes grammar can tell
you the number, so think, qala qa'ilum
minhum, how many, who said, one person said,
beautiful, qa'il, one person, qaloo labithna yawman
aw ba'da yawm, a group of them said,
we stayed in this day, in this cave,
labithna, we stayed yawman, part of a day,
aw ba'da yawm, a day or part of
a day, qaloo, another group said, rabbukum a
'alamu bima labithtum, Allah really knows how long
we stayed here, fabaathu ahadakum bi wariqikum hadihi
ilal madina, so one of you should send
one of, like, so send one of you
from amongst us with this wariq, yes.
So Allah ﷻ over here, the first part,
how do we know there's seven, some of
the mufassirun, they said, qa'il, one person,
qaloo, three, qaloo, the next qaloo, three, that's
seven, okay, make sense, qa'il, one person,
qaloo, minimum plural is three, the next qaloo,
minimum plural is three, that's seven, so that's
another indication that some people said that you
can get from this word that, you know,
this is qaloo, then Allah ﷻ says to
them, then one of them said, let's, one
of you send bi wariqikum with this silver
coin, I'm not going to go into this,
you know, the whole currency and all of
that, that's a very long discussion, but there's
a bigger discussion to have, bi wariqikum hadihi,
one of you go and take this coin
of yours, silver coin, wariq was actually a
silver coin, right, and in general wariq was,
a wariq comes from wariq of the shajar,
of the trees, how many leaves do we
have, lots, so when somebody would have wariq,
it was an indication, it was an ibra,
or it was basically a kinaya that they
would use, it was sort of like a
subliminal message that we have a lot of
money, use some of the money from the
lot of money we have to go and
buy some other food, so that also tells
you that they were quite rich people, they
had a lot of money at that time,
maloon kathir, okay, then what do they ask
for, fal yanzur ayyuha azga ta'am, so
one of you should go and check and
look for the purest of food, azga ta
'am, okay, what's azga ta'am, mufassirun, they
have lots and lots of discussion on this,
but I think it's important that we have
this discussion, so and again as we said,
the purpose of this tafsir is we are
going to go whatever a topic opens up,
we will elaborate, we will cover it in
ample understanding so we have a greater understanding
of this topic, so in terms of the
opinions that the people said, the mufassirun that
they have said about azga ta'am, I'll
mention those first, halal food, azga ta'am
they used to consider a halal trader, buying
from a Muslim trader, okay, very particular, they
were about that, azga ta'am was also
the highest quality of food, okay, azga ta
'am, a food that is not exuberant in
its quantity, i.e. a good amount of
quantity but not very exuberant, azga ta'am
is food that is tasty, all of these
tafsirs are there in our tafsir books, okay,
different different tafsirs but these are the six,
and I believe there's one that was ta
'amun rakhis, something that is cheap, like with
all these qualities and it's also not very
expensive, you're not spending a lot of money
on that.
Now, azga ta'am specifically for halal, and
this is a discussion that comes up all
the time, the summary of the discussion on
halal meat, non-halal meat, halal meat, all
of that, okay, and again I'll present all
sides so you understand where everybody's coming from,
that's the purpose, and you choose whatever you
want.
First and foremost, the ulama, they are in
absolute consensus on that the animal has to
be halal, you cannot say bismillah allahu akbar
on a pig and eat it, okay, one
of my sheikhs, he was saying that, you
know, he was visiting, I believe it was
Portugal or Spain, and as he was visiting
that country, the person, he wanted to bring
in Muslim customers, so he put up a
sign and he said, halal meat, so the
sheikh went in there and he was selling
pork, he said, halal chicken, halal turkey, halal
pork, right, so you know right away that
this person is just doing it for the
sake of money.
So first and foremost, the unanimous consensus of
the people is that food has to be,
sorry, the animal that we eat has to
be halal, there is no dispute in any
of the fuqaha on that.
The second, that the person, the zabih, the
one who slaughters, the one who does the
act of slaughtering, that person has to be
either a Muslim, Jew or a Christian, ahl
kitab, okay, there is a, again, if anybody
comes across, there is an opinion that there
is a third category that are also part
of ahl kitab, okay, al-majus, the Zoroastrians
are also entered in ahl kitab, according to
some scholars, that's there in our tafsir books,
okay, but again, majority is these three, we
don't have Zoroastrians anyway, so number one, the
animal has to be halal, number two, the
zabih, so first is the zabih, what are
you slaughtering, the zabih, the one who is
slaughtering, the act of, he has, that person
has to be either Jew, Christian or a
Muslim, jameel, what do you think is the
third condition?
Come on man, you guys have all done
zabih so many times, like, no, no, halal
money, haram money doesn't make the animal halal
or haram, that's the last, it should be
alive, yes, yeah, iraqat-ud-dam, blood must
gush out of that animal, okay, iraqat-ud
-dam, blood must gush out of the animal,
does it have to be a knife?
No, right, it has to be any type
of a wound on that animal that could
create the effect of gushing blood, for example,
a person, he shoots an arrow and he
was able to shoot an arrow towards the
chest, look at how we slaughter, for example,
a camel, right, we don't do this, we
just do nihab, like we just, just, we
poke it in the right area where enough
blood gushes out and then the animal dies,
we don't say bismillah allahu akbar because by
the time you say bismillah allah, we're on
the camel, it will say bismillah allah, we're
on you, right, you will be gone, right,
it won't let you, the same thing for
llama, the same thing for ostriches and stuff,
it's quite hard with those bigger animals, so
number one, the nabiha, the animal has to
be halal, number two, the one who is
carrying out the act of slaughter, that person
has to be from the ahlul kitab or
muslim, number three, there has to be blood
that must flow, okay, why is this important?
Because nowadays, as I was also reading the
fatwa of azhar, nowadays they have come up
with a new way of slaughter, in which
they slaughter not like this, but they slaughter
like this, so there's a machine and the
animal goes and the blade cuts the animal
straight like this, splits the head up, and
the reason they do that is because it
is, it's more cleaner and less blood comes
out and the animal dies, as per FDA,
the animal can be killed, so while the
animal is alive, they start splitting the head
of the animal until the brain and then,
you know, eventually when it gets to that
area, then they're like, okay, the animal is
now dead, and then eventually no blood comes
out or very nominal blood comes out, okay,
so instead of horizontal killing, now they do
vertical killing, okay, so animal could be standing
and the blade will come from the top
and will split the head in half, okay,
so iraqat-ud-dam is important, number four,
the blade, this is where it's important for
muslims, must come from the bottom, okay, ninety
percent or almost eighty-five percent, Ali Juma,
he's a, the mufti, he was to be
the previous mufti and stuff, a scholar from
egypt, he says, he did, he did, he
went and did the research and he found
that almost eighty or eighty-five percent of
these slaughterhouses, they cut from the top, they
don't slaughter if the animal, yeah, so if
the goat is there, the goat comes in
a clasp and they will start cutting from
the top, so they just want to chop
the head off, even if that happens, the
blood flow does happen, but the blade didn't
start from the bottom, so the blade has
to start from the bottom, okay, the position
of the blade is important, the next condition
is where there is ikhtilaf, so up till
now, we are all in unanimous, all four
schools of thought, even the the zahiri or
the salafi school of thought, they all agree
to this, where there is ikhtilaf is whether
saying bismillah is required or not, okay, the
shafiis, those of you that are from kerala,
you're lucky, right, or sri lanka, the shafiis
do not require bismillah, they say that condition
is already fulfilled by selecting a muslim or
a jew or a christian, and their god
is the same god, so that is condition,
and all the ahadith that talk about you
must say Allah's name on the animal, all
of those are high recommendations, and they are
not requirement or mandates, whereas all the other
schools of thought, the hanafis, the malikis, the
hambalis, as well as the zahiris, they all
say that it is a must mandatory requirement,
mandatory requirement, that is one, one issue that
there is ikhtilaf on, the second issue the
ikhtilaf is on, is whether the bismillah allahu
akbar is on the animal or on the
blade, so do i at the time of
my slaughtering, i say bismillah allahu akbar, and
i can slaughter with that, according to one
opinion, i can slaughter as many animals as
i want, because i have said bismillah allahu
akbar at the time of grabbing the knife,
and that is where hand slaughter and machine
slaughter issue is coming, because the ones who
say one bismillah allahu akbar is enough for
me to slaughter ten, like so there is
ten goats, i say bismillah allahu akbar on
the blade, and i go one, two, three,
i have said bismillah allahu akbar, the act
is continuous, so i have killed ten, no
problem, so that is where the scholars they
say machine slaughter, if the person says bismillah
allahu akbar on the button, that blade is
now, as long as somebody does not stop
that blade, that blade has bismillah allahu akbar
on it, okay, and the others they said
no, no, no, it has to be bismillah
allahu akbar on every single animal, so bismillah
allahu akbar one, bismillah allahu akbar two, bismillah
allahu akbar three, bismillah allahu akbar four, and
every single animal there must be bismillah allahu
akbar, okay, and that is where all of
these differences are coming from, there is a
third element to this, which is that at
the time of slaughter the animal must be
alive, okay, and that is where also the
machine and hand slaughter is coming into, because
there is two to three percent of the
animals that may not make it alive after
the process, so if they were electrocuted or
they were, so now what they are doing
is they no longer electrocute them in water,
so the chickens they are basically dipped in
water while they are alive and they are
given a shock of one second, so that
zaps their brain and then numbs them for
a second, puts them in a shock, so
they become like very calm then, and then
you can slaughter them, okay, it does not
kill them, now what they are doing, which
I personally saw in a slaughterhouse myself with
my own eyes, because I went to inspect
it, is they put them through a chamber
where in each chamber the percentage of oxygen
drops, so it goes from 100 percent next
chamber 90 percent, they bring them to the
next chamber 80 percent, so CO2 and oxygen
levels they oscillate, so they go from 80
to 70 carbon dioxide, 60 to 30 percent
oxygen and those people they actually go into
sleep, kind of like when you choke somebody
and you put them on a sleeper hold,
right, you choke this oxygen supply to the
brain and they faint, so similarly they do
that through the process of a chamber, the
bird is not shocked but it is fully
alive and they have people who are trained
in holding the bird, if the bird is
dead then it is like its wings are
going to like flap out, it has got
nothing, but if it is still alive it
still has the wings intact, so there are
people who are trained that are putting that
chicken on the rail and they remove all
the dead chicken as they are coming, so
that whole debate, now personally this debate is
just over exaggerated by certain group of people,
I don't want to take names, but there
is a certain group of individuals and obviously
they you know they have their scholars they
follow, but they are very like because they
are predominantly Desis and those Desis scholars are
promoting this particular understanding, again if they want
to follow that no problem, what is not
right is for example when we went to
somebody's house and that brother refused to eat
your Muslim brother's chicken because you don't know
if it is hand slaughtered or not, that
act is Haram, that is my problem right,
that when a brother serves you, the Hadith
of Prophet ﷺ, where is Prophet ﷺ?
In Bukhari, the Hadith is what?
The Sahabahs they came and said you know
Rasulullah we have some new Muslim brothers we
don't know if they really know like how
to slaughter or not, like you know they
are just new, they are figuring things out,
should we eat their food?
So Rasulullah ﷺ said, they are your brothers,
say Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim and eat, so we
are not allowed to, for example when we
would serve food in the Masjid, there would
be brothers that would not eat food because
oh it's it's you know this Imam is
serving you know non-Zabiha, he is not
verifying and and stuff like that, to force
your opinion onto others is actually the biggest
Bid'ah, period, you can follow whatever you
want to follow, but if you're coming to
the Masjid, Allah has not given you a
right to ask the Masjid administration what type
of food, because that is now you're putting
a Tahuma or you're saying I don't trust
you as a Muslim, Ta'amul Muslim, the
food of a Muslim is Halal for you,
even if he serves you Haram, even if
he serves you Haram, it will not affect
you, right, he'll get the sin for it
to serve you Haram, right, like I know
that for example I was in somebody's house,
I had eaten food in their house multiple
times and then afterwards we were in some
discussion and he's like you know I buy
my food, I buy my meat from Costco,
so now I know, now I know, I
don't need to insult him and say brother
I can't come to your home unless you
buy your meat from you know this butcher
or that butcher because I know you buy
your meat is Haram, because he still follows
a Madhhab, he follows a that allows him
to buy that, okay, so we should not
create such stringent views around this that you
know divide the community over that, now what
happens to the meat that is found in
Costco, what happens to the meat that is
found in mainstream places, the meats of Jewish
people is Halal for us and is actually
the most Halal, it is as equal to
Halal, like one of the brothers saw me
buying turkey from Costco, there's that Plainville turkey,
that's the kosher turkey so you remember that,
they were like Sheikh Imam this is Halal,
I'm like yes it's kosher, no kosher no
kosher is different right, no no Habibi, kosher
is Halal, Halal is kosher, kosher is Halal,
they're Halal for us right, so as long
as you know that the meat is kosher
you can buy it and eat from it
without any Haraj, that means you can go
to your local publics and buy kosher hot
dogs, they're there, they're kosher, there's absolutely nothing
wrong with that, now the rest of the
meat, this is that people have taken now
which they say I'll go buy meat from
Costco, I'll just say Bismillah Allahu Akbar on
it, that opinion is literally from the mainstream
scholars, even the scholars that sometimes people attribute
this to such as Sheikh Uthaymeen, Sheikh Fawzan,
Sheikh Bin Baz, they themselves never allow anybody
to eat meat except Allah's name is mentioned
on them, the ones that are easiest on
that are the Shafiis like you and me
right, you're Shafi right, Astaghfirullah you're confused, may
Allah help you, he has become a Shanafi,
a Shafi Hanafi, he's become a Shanafi, he's
got too many Hanafi friends so he's become
a Shanafi now, so anyhow, the Shafiis are
the only ones that actually allow without Bismillah,
but they also legislate you must know that
this is coming from a Christian, you must
know that this is a Christian, like the
institution, the place that is selling, that owner
has to be Christian, so buying food from
Costco, these places, literally I search through all
the fatwas, it's just the fatwa of ease,
there's one or two fringe fatwas, fringe that
are out there that allow you to eat
Bismillah Allahu Akbar, just say you know what,
just say Bismillah on the food and becomes
halal, other than that mainstream majority scholars do
not allow you, now for example my friend,
like you know he's a chaplain, Ben right,
he's 76 years old, so just so you
know, he's not my friend, like we work
at the same place as a chaplain, so
if he goes hunting, I told him if
you go hunting, right, and you get some
meat, bring it for me, because he's a
practicing Christian, I'll eat meat from him, right,
but if he goes to Costco and buys
meat for me, I know that it's a
Costco meat, that meat is not, it doesn't
all of a sudden now become halal because
he bought it from Costco, right, it has
to be something he hunted or he slaughtered,
right, that meat is halal, okay, so may
Allah make it easy for us, but again
this, so all of that when the scholars
they say halal, this is the entire discussion
that is intended by that one word, that
is halal, now similarly on each one of
these, halal trader, halal quality, those discussions can
have, but we're not going to go into
that discussion for today's sake inshallah, so Allah
Subhanahu wa ta'ala says, so let, Allah
knows how long you stayed in the cave,
so one of you shall send, with this
money of yours, to the city, go and
look for the most purest food that you
can find, let you bring some food from
there, and be very, very, very cautious, show
exceptional caution, and let not anybody
have a whiff of your presence, if they
get to know that you are here, end
of story, because they're gonna, they're going to
arrest you, the next ayah says, if they
capture you and they find out about you,
they will stone you to death, or they
will return you, in their ways of ibadah
and worship, they will take you back in
the older ways, and in that case, you
will never be able to be successful then,
i.e. you will never succeed, not in
this dunya, in akhira you will not succeed,
we'll stop over here inshallah, we'll start from
verse number 21 next week, inshallah, if anybody
has any questions about what we covered or
anything related to that, feel free in the
next four or five minutes, yeah within them,
within them, within them, they haven't left yet,
this all is in the cave, they're awake
and they're having this conversation amongst them, the
next one is, the next ayah is like,
وَكَذَٰلِكَ أَعْفَبْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ I think that's the next
ayah, وَكَذَٰلِكَ أَعْفَبْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ right, the next ayah
is where we talk about that, so this
entire discussion is just amongst them, yeah, yeah,
try, bismillah, ask all the questions, these youngsters,
yeah, were you here the first day, okay,
so the background was they ran away, right,
the king was going to kill them, he
was going to arrest them and kill them,
because they were not, they don't know that,
they don't know that, they think that the
other king is still there, in their mind,
they're like, oh, we only lived in the
cave for one day or day, a part
of a day, so they still believe that
the same king who they ran away from
is still there, but now they're feeling hungry,
and the greatest mu'ajizah over here is,
you know, and this is a really interesting
point, that in whose hospitality were they for
300 years, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, no
food, no drink, no bathroom, nothing, right, similar
to Prophet ﷺ, when he used to do
the siyam al-wisal, when he used to
do the continuous fast, right, some of the
sahabas wanted to do it, so he forbade
them, he said don't do continuous fast, he's
like, why ya Rasul, you do it, we
want to do it too, right, so he
said, right, literally, like I'm gonna hang out
with him tonight, the Arabs, they say, I'm
gonna chill with him tonight, I'm gonna be
in the presence of this person, I'll hang
out with him tonight, like I have my
moments with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, yu'ta
'imuni wa yasqini, and I get special food
from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he feeds
me and he gives me water, so I
can do that, right, and that's the ziyafah
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and that
is why some of the ulema attach to
that, they say that when we will be
in the eternal hospitality of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala in Jannah, there will be no
bathroom, we will not have any need to
go to the bathroom, we will not have
any need to go to the bathroom, and
that is why some of the Jews, when
they heard about that, he was a very
famous tabi'i, I'm just missing his name,
anyhow he'll come to me, very famous now,
very very famous tabi'i, he was a
qadi too, so there were Jews that were
living in his town, so they heard about
this, the Jews, they said, what's nonsense that
you're saying, like you're gonna go to Jannah
and you're gonna not gonna have to go
to the bathroom or not, what kind of
nonsense is this, they didn't believe in that,
so this qadi, he said to the the
yahudi, he said, when you eat the food,
does the entire food come out or some
of it, he said, some goes to my
body, and he said, if in this dunya
some can go to your body and other
can come out, then why in the akhirah
not the entire thing can go to your
body and nothing comes out, right, so these
are matters of mantiq, like when we understand
and have belief in Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala, these things, so anyhow, coming back, this
was their state, they were a mu'ajiza,
so when they woke up after 300 years,
they come back, came back to the hospitality
of this world, and the first thing this
world does to you when you're born as
a baby, is you cry for hunger, while
you were in your mother's belly, you were
not hungry, you didn't need food and water,
right, because you were again in the hospitality
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, but the
minute you come into the hospitality of this
world, then the necessity of this world is
food and hunger, you're going to need that,
yes, that
is not just only for Sayyidina Maryam for
example, right, many of the sahabas had similar
mu'ajizat, Khubaib radiallahu anhu, when he was
being killed, right before when he was captured
in Mecca, Khubaib, when Khubaib was captured in
Mecca, the house in which he was imprisoned,
the chief's house, she says, the chief says
that, I would see Khubaib and he would
be eating fruits, and
the people of Mecca had no fruits, so
he, like this is even the sahaba, this
is, these are mu'ajizat, right, my sheikh
wrote actually a book on this, which is
the mu'ajizat of not having to need
food in this world, and he documented in
the 40 pages that he wrote, or 50
pages, authentic narrations of people of the past,
where they built such a connection with Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala, that they never needed
food in this dunya, and we have many
narrations from the sahaba and you know, anyhow,
good question but it opened a tangent, it's
okay.
Any other questions?
Otherwise we'll end inshaAllah.
Good.
Allahumma salli wa sallim ala nabiyyina Muhammad wa
ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim taslimin kathira
wa barikillahumma ala Muhammadin wa ala Ali Muhammad
kama barakta ala Ibrahima wa ala Ali Ibrahima
laka Ahmadil Majeed.
O Allah we ask You with Your blessed
names, O Allah we ask You with all
Your infinite names, the ones that You have
taught us and the ones You have kept
secret from us.
O Allah give us the ability to truly
connect with the Qur'an.
O Allah we ask You to truly understand
the Qur'an.
O Allah we ask You to open our
hearts to be able to understand the intricacies
of Your kalam.
We ask You Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
allow this Qur'an to illuminate our hearts
and allow the illumination to illuminate our paths
in our lives.
Allow us to make decisions with the light
of this Qur'an.
We ask You Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
in this blessed month to fill our hearts
with the love of Nabi Muhammad ﷺ.
We ask You Allah to grant us the
ma'rifah of Rasulullah ﷺ.
And we ask You Allah to give us
a ru'ya of Nabi Muhammad ﷺ before
we meet You Ya Allah.
We ask You Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that our brothers and sisters in Gaza are
suffering, allow them with Your mercy to ease
their suffering.
We ask You Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that all the plots of the enemies and
what is taking place in Lebanon and Sudan
and all other parts of the world that
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala eases the pains
of our brothers and sisters in all parts
of the world.
We ask You Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that You truly understand what is in our
hearts and You understand the pains that we're
going through.
O Allah we ask You to alleviate and
eliminate all the pains that we have and
fill our hearts with the joy of iman
and the light and nur of the light
and nur of hidayah and the love of
this Qur'an and the love of Nabi
Muhammad ﷺ.
Aqulu qawli hadha wa astaghfirullaha li walakum wa
lisa'ilil muslimin fa istaghfiru fa inna huwa
al-ghafooril raheem.
BarakAllahu feekum.
Yes, Salam.