Ahsan Hanif – Quran Tafseer – Page 135 – Why Are We Tested
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AI: Transcript ©
Welcome to another episode of out of Seer
page by page. InshaAllah today
we are on page 135 which is in
the 7th juz of the Quran Surah Al
Anaim.
In the previous episode, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
mentioned to us some of the etiquettes that
the believers should have and And the prophet
salallahu alaihi wa sallam should have with the
believers and that they should mutually have towards
one another. And from those etiquettes
is spreading the salam.
When you make dua for someone else that
Allah ajazhu shows his peace and his safety
upon your fellow brother or sister in this
religion, that is from the greatest of greetings
and salutations that you can give to another
believer. And how Allah ajazal mentions that Allah
has made an incumbent upon himself
that he is all merciful
and that mercy extends to the believers in
the way of them turning to Allah in
repentance after having committed
sins and evil deeds, and how Allah promises
them that if they are sincere in their
repentance
and they rectify their affairs, that Allah is
Ghafoor al Rahim of Forgiving Most Merciful.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala then mentioned to the
prophet that
he should state his position with regards to
the Tawhid of Allah and his belief and
how he absorbs himself
from the ways of the mushrikeen and the
disbelievers and those who rejected and denied Allah's
oneness. And then Allah azzawajal in the final
verse that we mentioned in the last episode
spoke about some of his powers jalafi'ula,
some of his abilities and some of therefore
the greatest reasons as to why we should
believe in Allah and worship him alone. Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala alone has the knowledge of
the unseen. To him alone belong the keys
of the unseen. And Allah has intimate knowledge
of everything that takes place upon the earth.
Not a single leaf forms, nor is there
a single grain in the heavens or the
earth, a single atom, nor is there anything
that is withering or dying or that is
full of life, nor anything hidden within the
earth except that Allah azza wa jal has
intimate knowledge of it. Nothing escapes the knowledge
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and it is
not just knowing about its presence or being
slightly aware that it's there but Allah
has intimate and intricate knowledge of each and
every single detail.
And Allah azza wa Jal in the verses
that we are going to be covering today
will continue
with this particular subject. Allah's
blessings
or rather Allah's abilities and Allah's powers
and therefore the reason why
these are evidences in and of themselves to
worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and how those
people who turned away from Allah ajawajal disregarded
these evidences
and based upon these evidences
how we should devote ourselves, submit ourselves to
Allah ajawajal. Love Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala submit
to him in worship, devote ourselves to him.
Praise him and honour him. Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Allah
says in verse number 60 from where we
begin today,
It is he who calls your souls back
by night, knowing what you have done by
day, then raises you up again in the
daytime until your fixed term is fulfilled. It
is to him that you will return in
the end and he will tell you what
you have done.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in this verse he
speaks about his power jalafi'ura
and that is his power to give life
and death. Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And therefore from the attributes of a God
that is all powerful, that is all knowing,
that is all controlling, is that he alone
has the power to give life and death
jallafiy'ula.
Allah determines who lives, how they come to
this world, when they will come to this
world, and how they will live in this
life. And Allah determines their moment of death,
and the manner of death, and the place
of death when their souls
will leave.
And Allah says that it is He who
calls your souls back by night. And Allah
therefore calls our sleeping at night a type
of death. As the prophet said salallahu alayhi
wasalam that sleep is the brother of death.
And so when a person goes to sleep
at night,
their soul in one way leaves their body
and it is extracted from their body not
in the full sense in the time of
in the sense of the full death that
takes place when a person leaves this realm,
But it is a smaller type of death
because you no longer are conscious of what
is going on. You don't really know what
happens to you when you are asleep. You
can't really control your movements. You dream, you
see and experience things that you would have
otherwise experienced when you are fully awake.
That is all from the power of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And if Allah will
as he mentions elsewhere in the Quran, Allah
could withhold your soul during the night. Meaning
that it doesn't come back into your body
as you wake up in the morning or
as you wake up in the middle of
the night. Allah 'Azza wa Jal hadi, if
he so wills, can keep that soul with
him. And that is why there are people
who die in their sleep. They go to
sleep at night, they don't wake up in
the morning. And that is why the beauty
of our religion
is found in the dua that we were
taught by our Prophet
and
there are a number of duas when it
comes to going to sleep. But from them
is the dua that we are all very
familiar with. O
Allah
with your name or by your name do
I live or die? And that is again
acknowledging
the fact that if Allah will
during that night that we sleep in, if
Allah so will we wouldn't awake in the
next morning. And there are as we know
people that takes place or happens to.
And Allah knows what you do by the
day, meaning that Allah
can return your soul to you if he
so wishes, and what you do during the
day in terms of your deeds and actions,
that is something which Allah ajwajal also has
intimate knowledge of. And as we mentioned in
the last episode when it came to that
verse that we concluded that episode with, Allah
ajwajal speaks about the knowledge of the unseen
and from the knowledge of the unseen
is that Allah knows what every person will
do the next day. Me and you we
have plans,
we can make plans, we think that we
will go to work, and once we get
to work we are going to do x,
y, and z, and we can make plans
to visit people and to travel and to
do other things, but whether that actually happens,
that is only known to Allah
And how often do we make plans and
those plans change? How often do we make
plans and obstacles come in the way and
they divert us from our plans? How often
do we make plans and then we are
not even able to fulfill those plans because
of some calamity or hardship or difficulty
that comes upon us. But Allah
knows what
will take place tomorrow.
And then He raises you up again in
the daytime until your fixed term is fulfilled.
Meaning that there are some people who their
souls are returned to them in the morning.
They wake up and they continue because the
time of their death has yet to come.
And so Allah says,
so that they can fulfill their fixed term.
Every one of us has a term. As
the prophet told us salallahu alaihi wa sallam
that when the child is in the womb
and 120 days pass by, the angel comes
down and he blows the
soul into
the child.
And then he writes by Allah's command a
number of things. And from the things that
he writes down is the lifespan of that
child, how long they will live for. And
that is something which is then recorded by
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and so each and
every single one of us has
a fixed term upon this life. No one
knows what it is except Allah azza wa
Jal. And that is why you have people
who are young and healthy and fit and
they die in their 20s. And then there
are people who are frail and old
and have diseases and illnesses upon them and
some of them can live to over a
100 years old. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is
the one who determines and no doubt we
should take the means
by which we look after our health and
we look after ourselves that is something which
is also part of our religion. But in
the end Allah is the one who determines
how long a person will live for or
how short their lifespan will be. And so
Allah sends people back to this life, meaning
every morning he allows them to
rise up and awake and to continue their
pursuit in this life until they fulfill that
term. But when that term comes,
there will be no escape. When that term
comes, they will not be able to run
away from that which Allah has decreed.
There will be no way of delaying
the decree of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in
terms of death.
And then after this you will return to
him in the end meaning to Allah
and he will tell you what you have
done in terms of your deeds and actions.
And that will be therefore the end of
every single person. And that is the return
to Allah and the accounting before him.
That is what Allah says in verse number
61.
He is the supreme master of all his
subjects. He sends out recorders to watch over
you until, when death overtakes any of you,
those sent by us will take his soul,
they never fail in their duty.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that he is
al kahir.
He is the supreme master
over all of his subjects. Allah is the
one who controls everything in this universe.
Me and you think we can do as
we please and that we can go and
do it and Allah has given us free
will to do as we please to an
extent. But even that free will comes under
the Divine decree of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala
meaning that we have free will in that
which Allah allowed us to have free will
whether we believe or disbelieve or we don't
have free will in certain things. We didn't
get to choose our parents. We didn't get
to choose our ethnicity
or the complexion of our sin or the
way that we look. We don't get to
choose our life span. We don't get to
choose the circumstances that we are born in,
the country that we are born in,
the ethnicity or the tribe that we come
from. These are things that Allah determines.
And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is supreme
of all of his creation. There is nothing
that you can do to oppose the decree
of Allah azza wa jal, there is nothing
you can do to withstand
the commands of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in
this universe. You have free will when it
comes to issues of belief or not believing,
doing good or not doing good. But Allah
azza wa Jal will hold us to account
for all of that as well. And that
is why Allah azza wa jal then
says,
and he sends upon you those that record,
the angels that record everything that you do
as Allah azza wa jal tells us in
Suratul Infitar. Wa'inaAAalaykum
lahafilin,
upon you are those who record and watch
Kiram and katibeen,
noble angels that write down. You alamoonamatifaaloon,
they know all that you do. Allah has
placed to each and every single one of
us angels that come and they record everything
that we do, the good and the bad.
And those are the deeds of record or
records of deeds that we will be presented
on your mumuquayama.
So if your good outweighs your bad, you
will be given a record of deeds in
the right hand. And if your evil outweighs
your good, then the record of deeds will
be given to you in the left hand
as it mentioned elsewhere in the book of
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Allah
has placed upon
you those angels.
And so whatever you are,
whatever you are doing, however alone you may
think you are, Allah azza wa Jal is
always watching and those angels are always recording.
Until when the time of death comes, the
lifespan that Allah determined comes, it has been
fulfilled.
Our angels will come and overtake them, meaning
that they will take their souls away by
Allah's command. Allah gives the command, the Angel
of death comes to take the soul from
that person. Those angels will come and they
will do as Allah commands.
And they never fail in their duty. The
angels of death are not delayed, the angel
of death doesn't miss an appointment, the angel
of death doesn't get lost, The Angel of
death doesn't get confused because you have a
name similar to another person or you look
like someone else or you are identical twins
or whatever it may be. The Angel of
death and the angels that Allah azza wa
jill entrusted with the soul.
They don't fail in their duty and they
are not lax when it comes to fulfilling
the commands of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And
this is from the universal decree of Allah
azza wa Jal. So Allah azza wa Jal
will command the Angel of death to come
to each and every one of us and
to take away our soul at the time
of death. For the believers,
that is the moment they realize the promise
of Allah azza wa Jal, as Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala will mention elsewhere in the Quran
that the angels come, and give them the
bushwa, the glad tidings and the good news
of the life they lived in worship, in
Iman, in youthfulness to Allah
and that they will not grieve nor will
they fear. And that everything that will come
after this point, they will have the angels
alongside them as their oliya,
helpers, protectors
and Allah
will give to them the angels as
a means of welcoming them into their next
life. But those who disbelieve,
those who deny and reject it, they will
see at that time the beginning of their
torment, the beginning of their punishment and they
will realize the fallacy of what they did
in this life when they turned away from
Allah
and rejected him. And that is why Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says in verse 62.
No matter what we did in this life,
whether it was good or bad,
no matter whether we believed or didn't believe,
after death the people will turn back to
Allah Azzawajal and that returning back to Allah
begins from the very moment of death and
that existence in the grave until Allah decrees
that Yomun Qiyama will come and the people
will stand before their true Lord. And on
that day no one will dispute that Allah
alone is the true Lord and God of
all that exists.
No other Gods,
no other lords that people took as gods
besides Allah azza wa Jal, no other deities
that people worship besides Allah will be able
to stand on that day and claim divinity.
None of them will have any power. None
of them will have any say or influence.
So Allah azza wa Jal will be their
one true Lord. And
on that day all judgement belongs to him.
No one can come besides Allah azza wa
Jal and say actually I disagree,
I dispute,
I think we should do this or these
are my followers or these are my people
or these are the ones who follow me.
No one will be able to come and
dispute the judgement of Allah azza wa Jal
and Allah from his justice, from his fairness
subhanahu wa ta'ala
has already told us what his judgement will
be. Allah has told us what you need
to do in order to gain the favour
of Allah and His mercy. And Allah has
told you what will happen if you don't
gain that favour and don't gain that mercy
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. وَاللِيمِّيمِّيمِّي
نِيمِّيمِيمِّيمِيمِّجْعِيمِيمِيم
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will do as
He pleases jallafi'ula.
These verses that we have mentioned today, these
are signs of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And
these are signs from Allah azza wa Jal
that show that he alone is worthy of
worship. So those people who then turn away
from Allah, or neglect Allah ajawajal or they
heedless of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
where are you going? And what are you
doing? And to whom
are you hoping salvation from? Where are you
trying to find happiness in this life if
it is not through the path Allah has
laid down before you. And everyone that worships
anything besides Allah azza wa Jal, they will
not have the knowledge of their gods to
the extent that we have in our religion.
And that is the beauty of the book
of Allah azza wa Jal. So people who
follow any other God that they worship. If
you were to ask them for the intimate
details of their gods in terms of their
abilities and their names and their attributes and
what they will do they will give to
you general details and they won't be able
to go into more specific details
without contradicting themselves,
without falling into some type of trap or
something because of the way that they themselves
have
concocted their versions
of these divine beings or these deities. But
Allah azza wa jalib
for us we know that everything that he
says is true, that it is not contradictory,
that there are no mistakes in it because
we take it from the most trustworthy of
sources and that is the book of Allah
azza wa Jal and the sunnah of his
Prophet
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala then in verse number
63
again speaks to the disbelievers and this time
he speaks to them again asking them who
they would worship besides Allah these Gods that
they worship besides Allah what they can do
for them.
Allah
says
Say, who is it that saves you from
the dark depths of land and sea when
you humbly and secretly call to Him and
say, if He rescues us from this, we
shall be truly thankful. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
therefore addresses, after mentioning the names and attributes
and powers of Allah azza wa Jal, He
addresses the disbelievers and says, who saves
you from the darkness of the land and
the sea when you think and feel that
you are in danger
and you yourselves according to Allah azza wa
Jal in humility, in humbleness and in secret
because you don't openly claim to believe in
Allah you claim to worship other Gods but
at that moment of danger and hardship you
only turn to Allah alone.
You turn to the greatest of all the
Gods that you claim to worship. And that
is Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. You call upon
Allah
and you turn to Allah
and you ask of Allah
and you say La'ina Jaitanamin Hadee, Laitan Jainamin
Hadee, Laitan Jainamin Hadee, Laitan Jainamin Hadee, Laitan
Jainamin Hadee, Laitan Jainamin Hashakereen,
if he rescues us from this, we shall
be truly thankful.
So even at that moment
you call upon Allah Azza wa Jal and
you turn to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as
we know throughout the Qunla that Allah Azza
wa Jal mentions concerning the mushakeen of the
Arabs that in those times of difficulty and
desperation
they would turn to Allah Azza wa Jal
alone and they would make du'a alone
and they would call to Allah Azza wa
Jal alone. And even today you will find
that people who often go and see, people
who are sailors,
for whatever reason they do that,
that's their professional, whether they're in the navy
or whatever it may be, you will see
that they often have many superstitions
about what will keep them safe from the
the
the the the the possible dangers that they
will find upon the sea. And likewise, you
see from people in the olden days when
they travel by land. And they would traverse
great distances by land. The superstitions that they
would have and the different things that they
would do in order to keep them safe.
And in times of difficulty, because people know
that they are every human knows that they
are just very small when it comes to
the vast scale of the creation of Allah
The whole universe, we are a speck in
that universe. What power do we have as
individuals except very little? And so you turn
to someone or something that you think and
believe is greater than the power that you
possess and greater than the power of the
universe that can control it. And you seek
refuge in them, seek their help and assistance.
And so that is Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala.
Allah is the One Alone who has power
over all things. Allah says
in verse number 64
that these people once their duas have been
accepted, once Allah has responded to them, once
Allah has given to them their safety that
they requested.
Say Allah rescues you from this and every
distress, yet still you worship others besides him.
Allah does as you ask of him and
implore of him and beseech of him. And
Allah helps you in other things as well
in other affairs, but still you will turn
and make shirk, still you will turn to
other Gods and worship them besides Allah azzawajal.
And if this is the case then don't
those people deserve
to be punished by Allah? Don't they deserve
that Allah azza wa Jal should punish them?
Because of the shirk they commit, they turn
to Allah, they make dua, they ask for
Allah's help and assistance and Allah responds to
them.
And then at times of safety and ease,
there are people of negligence and people of
people of heedlessness.
And this is unfortunately something that you will
find amongst Muslims. In times of calamity and
hardship, they turn to Allah azza wa Jal
and they increase insala. If they are not
praying, they start praying. They didn't normally read
Quran they start reading Quran. They don't usually
make dua. They start making dua. They don't
normally give sadaqa. Now they give sadaqa. And
then as soon as Allah azza wa Jal
makes their affairs easy again, they don't pray
anymore. They don't read Quran anymore. They don't
give any more sadaqa, no more dua. And
so they become healers.
And even though these people are Muslims
but
their characteristics
or
their methods are similar to the methods that
Allah azza wa jal is describing here about
the disbelievers.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that these disbelievers
therefore deserve the punishment of Allah and
he says in verse 65.
He has power to send punishment on you
from above or from under your feet, or
to divide you into discordant factions and make
some taste the violence of others. See how
we explain our revelation in various ways so
that they may understand.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says these people turn
away from Allah and they commit shirk and
they don't think that Allah will punish them,
they don't think that the one who can
control the heavens and the earth and who
controlled the sea for them and made it
safe for them during their travels, he doesn't
have the ability then to punish them, to
use that very ocean or to use the
very universe that they sought Allah's help in
controlling, that Allah can't then turn that around
and use it as a means of punishment
upon them?
Say, He alone has the power to send
punishment
upon
you. Whether it comes from above you
or it comes from under your feet. So
Allah can cause something to descend upon you
from the heavens,
something that will come and destroy you from
the heavens as happened with many of the
past nations. And even in our time, even
if it is not in the guise of
the punishment like happened with the Ayad and
Thamud and others, Allah can send upon us
thunder,
can send upon us lightning,
hurricanes,
typhoons,
so many different types of calamities
that a person
can die within or that can be
their ending and their destruction.
Or that punishment can come from below your
feet, meaning underneath you.
Whether that be an earthquake upon the land
or whether that be the oceans when you
are in and you
are drowned within the waters of the seas
and the oceans. Allah Azzawajal can punish you
in either direction,
from above or from below.
Or he can divide you into factions
and into groups and
then you taste the violence of one another.
As we see in our time today and
for much of history,
the countries fight other countries, tribes fight other
tribes, nations fight other nations, people fight other
people.
And so those people, this is also a
type of punishment from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
That is why the Prophet salallahu alaihi wa
sallam said to the Muslims of Arabia
that it is not shib that I fear
upon you, but I fear the enmity that
will arrive amongst you. And the Prophet salallahu
alaihi wa sallam, don't turn around after me,
meaning after my death, Don't turn back. That
you start to fight one another and start
to strike the necks of one another. So
you find today Muslims fighting Muslims. In their
countries, they are fighting over power. They are
fighting due to politics. They are fighting due
to influence. Whatever it may be, wealth or
treasures or whatever it may be. They are
fighting one another. Muslims are fighting Muslims. You
find that on a small scale in families
and in communities and you find that on
major scales on the scales of nations. And
that is exactly what Allah says that Allah
can punish people in many different ways. Don't
think that these aren't punishments from Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala simply because they are fighting over
power or
wealth or natural resources. These are also types
of punishment from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
See how we explain our revelations to you.
That you may understand.
The believers see these things around the world
and amongst them and make those connections with
Allah and they see the lessons of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala whereas everyone else looks at
the very same thing and they don't make
those same connections.
Allah says in verse number 66.
Yet your people still rejected even though it
is the truth. Say, I have not been
put in charge of you. And so despite
all of these signs from Allah azza wa
Jal everything that Allah has shown your people
are still in doubt. Your people still reject
and deny. Why? It shows that they are
not sincere in their seeking of the truth
and in their seeking of guidance.
So say to them I
am not in charge of you. I am
not responsible for you. My role is only
to convey the message and it is for
Allah azza wa Jal to decide who is
worthy of that message or not. And then
in the final verse that we will take
today verse 67, Allah
then says,
every prophecy has its fixed time to be
fulfilled and you will come to realize this.
Everything has its time. The punishment of Allah
descending your lifespan upon this earth when Yawmul
Qiyama will take place. Everything Allah has given
to it is fixed time. And Allah alone
knows what that time is. And so when
calamities before,
only Allah knows how long they will remain
before they are lifted. And only Allah then
knows how long a time will pass before
the next calamity comes. And only Allah knows
the timings and durations of these things alone,
also fata'alaymon
and you will come to realize the truthfulness
of this and its reality. And with that
we come to the end of today's episode.
Barakallahu fikum, Wassa Allahu Alayhi
wa sahabi ijmain, Wassaamu alaykum Muhammadullah wa Barakatuh.