Ahsan Hanif – The Power Of Revelation
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the historical context and importance of Islam, including the revelation of the prophet sallali and the lineage of the Quraysh. They emphasize the importance of learning to understand one's religion and finding the right way to write a book based on sharia context. The speakers stress the importance of seeking knowledge and learning to achieve greater understanding of Allah's teachings and share experiences to develop one's interest and knowledge. They emphasize the need for personal and professional development to achieve greater understanding and connection to Allah's teachings and show their own experiences.
AI: Summary ©
The story of the revelation is,
as you know, the beginning of our religion.
It is the beginning of the prophethood of
our messenger of Allah
It is the beginning of the revelation of
the Quran.
And so as it speaks to
us in terms of its importance, in terms
of what it denotes,
in terms of what kind of an event
it was that took place in that cave
of Hera,
in the city of Mecca to the prophet
on that evening, the night that he was
there,
in that cave and the revelation that he
received, there is something which is extremely important.
And it's a story that we're all familiar
with, And so it's not a story which
I feel that I need to go into
in terms of the narrations a great deal.
Because I think everyone here, every child, every
adult,
every Muslim is familiar with the story of
how this religion began
and the first words that were revealed to
our prophet
But there are some important points and some
important
context
that has to be understood and remembered.
The beginning of our religion, the beginning of
this religion,
the beginning of the messengership of our prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam
when he's in the cave of Hera, and
we know that it's in evening,
and we know that it's at night because
the narration say so. And Allah tells us
in the Quran that the beginning of this
revelation took place
in the night.
And in the other verse,
we reveal this to you on a blessed
night,
the night of.
In the hadith of Aisha radiAllahu anha and
it's a long narration.
She says that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
would go to the cave of Hera,
And Hera is not the name of the
cave, but rather the name of the mountain.
But the Arabs called the cave after the
mountain.
And so that mountain was known as the
mountain of Hera, so the cave became known
as the cave of Hera.
He would go there and he would spend
nights,
numerous nights, a number of nights in succession.
He would spend in that night secluding himself,
thinking about the signs of Allah's creation,
trying to determine the path that he should
be upon in order to worship Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
And the mountain of Hera for anyone that's
been to Mecca, you performed Umrah, you performed
Hajj and you go on one of those
yara trips where they take you to the
different sites of Mecca. You visit Mina, you
visit visit Arafah, visit those places.
One of the places that you're likely to
have gone to is the cave of Hera
or the mountain of Hera.
And today it's known as Jebel Anur,
the mountain of light they call it.
The Arabs used to call it in the
in the olden days or the Quraysh used
to know this mountain as the mountain of
Hera.
However, over time it became known as the
mountain of light because revelation descended there and
so the Quran
is light.
The point being either way, if you were
to go there and you would see to
see the distance
between the Kaaba
and between the mountain.
It's not a close distance.
Would take you a while to get there,
40, 45 minutes and I will walking from
the Haram to that mountain.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam will not
only walk to that mountain, but then he
would climb
up high into the mountain where he would
come to that cave and the cave is
small. If you've seen the cave, you've seen
photos of the cave,
you've seen,
a recreation
of the cave because if you go now,
they have a museum in the area. You
can go and you can see a physical
recreation of the grave above the cave without
you having to go and climb the mountain.
The point being is not a big place,
it's a small cave that the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam will spend nights in. The narration
says
that he would only go
home, back home to the house of Khadija
when he would run out of his of
his provisions.
He would take with him food, he would
take with him water, spend a number of
days there. And then when the food and
water went out, he would go home to
replenish his supplies
and then to go back to
the cave.
That took place in the month of Ramadan.
Ramadan
in Quran. It was the month of Ramadan
that Allah revealed this Quran.
And most specifically that night in which Jibreel
alaihis salam descended was the night of day
that Qadr.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam receives revelation because
Jibreel alaihi salam comes to him
and he commands him to recite, to read.
In the middle of the story, the prophet
says, I can't read. And he commands him
a second time and a third time. And
then he gives to him the first revelation
of the Quran.
The question that we should all think about
and ponder over here is,
for more of the things that Allah
could have given to our prophet
at the beginning of Islam,
for more of the different issues that Allah
could have chosen
to begin this religion with, for more of
the different commands that could have been given
to the Muslims as the beginning of Islam,
what was the one thing that the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam chose?
Because if I was to ask a general
question to all of us, what's the most
important thing in this religion?
Some of you would tell me it is
still heat.
Another people would say it's the salah.
Another people say maybe it was respecting your
parents
And others may say it's enjoying the good
and forbidding the evil.
And many different things that you could say
that are important, that are obligations,
that are in
this religion.
And all of you would be correct in
some way, shape or form.
But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala didn't begin with
any of those commands. The first command of
the Quran is not one to have tawhid,
is not one to pray, is not one
to give zakah, It's not one to go
and perform hajj. It's not one to fast
in Ramadan. It's not one to go and
be good to your parents. It's not one
to stop
oppression or to stop harming others or devouring
their wealth, would stay away from or
or drinking alcohol or whatever it may be.
None of those things are mentioned in the
first revelation.
But the first revelation speaks to something which
is extremely
fundamental,
pivotal, very important,
and that is the command of Allah
to read.
And to read is a command to learn.
It is a command to seek knowledge.
It is a command to understand your religion.
It is a command to understand what Allah
revealed
in the Quran. What the prophet told us
and taught us
And that is a command that is extremely
important
because I want to frame this now in
the context
of the Arabs of that time, the Quraysh.
The Quraysh are the people that lived in
the time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
in Mecca.
Who are the Quraysh?
Who are the Quraysh?
The Quresh, if you were to look at
them in every worldly
sense,
if you were to take the lenses of
the dunya, the things that people in the
dunya in this world, they consider to be
important.
They consider to be meaningful
and then you were to place those lenses
upon the quaresh.
You would see that the quaresh
were from those people that were from the
elite of the elite.
From all of those different angles.
For example, if you were to look at
people's lineage,
that's one thing that people like to look
at, right? Who's your who are your ancestors?
Where do you come from? What's your ethnicity?
Who are your forebearers?
And people look at other people in terms
of their ethnicity. Even till today, even amongst
muslims,
people want to know what your background is.
When you want to marry their daughter, they
want to know what family you come from,
what tribe you come from, which part of
the world you come from. That's ethnicity. It's
lineage.
If you were to look at the Quraish,
when it comes to lineage, there is no
one more noble.
No one better.
No one greater in terms of lineage than
the people of Quraish
because the Quraish go back to the lineage
of the prophets.
They are the descendants of Ibrahim and Ishmael,
alihi mus salat was salam.
And not only that, not only are they
the descendants of those 2 prophets of Allah
alaihi musaratus salam. They were people who knew
that that was their lineage.
They used to be proud of their lineage
and that is why the Quraysh were given
even amongst the Arabs a pedestal.
They were given importance and they were given
influence over the rest of the Arabs of
Arabia
because of that lineage that they possessed.
That they
are they are descendants from prophets of allahu
alaihi was salam.
So if you look at in terms of
lineage, there are few if any people that
are better than Quresh. And that is why
the prophet told us
that Allah
chose from the children of Ishmael
and he chose from them the children of
Quraish
and he chose from Quraish Banu Hashim and
he chose from Banu Hashim me meaning the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
So he placed amongst them
people of Nasib, lineage, Quraysh are from the
edith and there are numerous narrations if you
were to go through the long, large text
of hadith.
Those encyclopedias
of narrations that the scholars preserved and related
to us, you will find
whole chapters like an
imam has a whole chapter that speaks about
the virtues of Quresh.
Because the prophet spoke about their virtues,
mentioned a hadith about their virtues. Even though
we know
as part of our
understanding of our religion from the principles of
Islam is that if a person's but
they're not a Muslim like Abu Jahl, like
Abu Lahab, like those people is a Qurashi,
he's from Quresh, but he's not a Muslim.
The lineage doesn't benefit him in anything. Doesn't
matter that he's the descendants of the prophets.
But if he's a believer, he's a movement,
and he's from Quraish,
this religion honors that person,
gives to them a certain level of of
honor and respect because that is what the
prophet told us to do, sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
And that is why when after the death
of the prophet
would debating who should be the next Khalifa
and Abu Bakr came and Umar came and
Abu Ubaidah came
They told those Ansar,
despite their virtue, despite their place in Islam,
despite the striving and the sacrifice that they
made for the sake of Allah,
When it comes to leadership, the it's
down to Quresh.
Allah favored those people And
so these people of Quresh are from a
lineage
that Allah has praised and blessed, lineage of
the prophets.
So they had lineage.
If you were to take another lens, look
at them in terms of geographical location.
Where are these people situated?
Where do they live? What do they call
home? What's the city that they come from
and hail from?
It is the greatest and most beloved of
lands to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
There is no more nowhere more blessed, more
sacred,
more holy than the city of Mecca. And
the people of Quraish from the way that
Allah honored them, he gave to them the
city of Makkah.
Me and you,
we're not people of Makkah. You don't call
Makkah our home. The streets and neighborhoods of
Makkah are not our neighborhoods.
We go to Makkah if Allah allows us
to perform amrah and hajj, but we're visitors,
we're pilgrims.
Those people lived in Mecca.
They would wake up in Mecca. They would
sleep in Mecca.
They would go and they would have their
majalis and their gatherings
under the shade of the Kaaba.
They would sit there and that's where they
would chill out. That's where they would come
and they would sit and they would speak
and they would have their conversations and their
gatherings.
Those are the people of Makkah.
And then for everything that came along with
that,
also they benefited from.
They benefited from zimzim.
They drank from zimzim.
They benefited from the different rights that the
people used to perform in Hajj. Being custodians
of the Kaaba, they benefited from that. They
held the keys of the Kaaba.
They used to go in and go out
as they please and choose who could go
in and go out. They were the people
that were custodians of the Kaaba and that
is why our prophet told us
in the hadith of Aisha.
When they rebuild the Kaaba in the early
lifetime of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
He said that they raised the door of
the Kaaba.
The Kaaba's door today, if you look at
the photos,
it's raised up high. You can't reach it.
You can barely touch it with your hands
depending on how tall you are. And if
someone wants to go into the Kaaba, they
have to bring a staircase out for you
to climb up the stairs to get inside
the Kaaba.
That's not how the Kaaba was built by
Ibrahim alaihis salam. But the prophet told
he said to Aisha, it was your people,
meaning Quresh,
that raised the door of the Kaaba.
They raised it high y
so they could choose who goes in and
goes out.
They could decide who goes in and goes
out. And that's because that was from the
ways that they wanted to show their prestige
over people. They wanted to show that they
had influence over people. You can't just go
in and out the Kaaba whoever you want
and whoever you are. We will choose who
goes in. We will choose who goes out.
And that is why even at the beginning
of Islam,
even though the prophet was from Quraish,
he's from the nobility of Quraish, when he
would say to them, I want to go
in the Kaaba, they would say no. You
can't go in the Kaaba because they didn't
like him. They didn't agree with him. And
there are a number of stories in that
regard. But the point being here, that Allah
honor them in terms of their location,
in terms of the custodianship that they had.
Allah honored them. People take pride
in the responsibilities that they have, in the
custodianship that they're given.
People are proud of the different places that
they're associated with and there is no greater
custodianship
than having the custodianship of the Kaaba. The
house of Allah in Mecca and that's what
the Quraysh had. And the would be would
be considered to be honorable
and they were proud of the fact that
they were custodians of the different things to
do with the Hajj and the Kaaba.
So the people that used to own or
hold the key of the Kaaba were proud
of that. That's their responsibility.
And the family of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, they would do the they would give
water to the pilgrims. They were proud of
being that. And those companions who were or
those Quraysh families that were in charge of
the maintenance of the Kaaba, they were proud
of that.
All of these different families of the Quresh,
each one of them has a different responsibility
about the hajj, about the Kaaba, about the
upkeep of Makkah and its maintenance. They were
proud of this. And so Allah gave to
them the greatest of custodianships.
And not only that, but then Allah
bless them in terms of their dunya as
well. If you're looking at wealth, you're looking
at prestige, you're looking at influence, you're looking
at power,
The qurish had it all.
And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions in
the Quran in surah Quresh,
is surah named after them. The favors that
Allah bestowed upon them
because the people of Mecca
live where in the city that is barren.
Allah calls it in the Quran.
Where did really these are? Mecca
is a barren city. Nothing grows. Why? Because
it's all hills and valleys and mountains. Not
like Medina.
You go to Medina and what you find
the ground is?
Flat.
Full of gardens,
full of farms, full of date palm trees.
The people of the ansar were agricultural farmers.
They were people of gardens and dates because
their land was built for that, fertile for
that. But the people of Mecca had no
fertile ground. Nothing grows in Mecca. Till today,
nothing grows in Mecca. So valleys,
it's all mountains,
It's all hills.
Nothing grows in Mecca.
And that is why it is said in
some of the narrations that from the miracles
that the demanded from the prophet
was this miracle.
They said, oh, Muhammad, if you are truthful,
then ask your Lord
that he makes the valley of Makkah flat
like other places, and gives to us vegetation
and agriculture that grows.
And if you do that, then we will
believe in you.
That's one of the things that they demanded
because they themselves knew that their land wasn't
good for that.
So it's not a land that is good
and especially in those times because people in
those times survive on agriculture.
1400 years ago, not like the world today,
you can't just go to Tesco and as
it done by you, you need agriculture.
And if you don't have flat land, then
it's difficult to herd your animals.
Yes, the Arabs had animals, the Quresh had
animals, but if you look at the narrations,
where would they go? They would go to
the outskirts of Mecca.
They would have to take their sheep far
from Mecca in order to find grazing for
them. As is mentioned, even in the stories
of some of the companions of Umar
and others that if they wanted to take
their flocks of sheep and they were young,
they would take the flocks of sheep of
their families. They would go to the outskirts
of Mecca
because there's no grazing to be found anywhere
near the Kaaba.
So these were things that were difficult for
them, but Allah
favored them.
Allah bless the people of Quraish.
They didn't need agriculture.
They didn't need farming. They didn't need flocks
of sheep. Allah brought to them their rizq
in Madinah,
brought to them wealth and money, brought to
them their provision, made them affluent and rich.
Why? Because Allah
gave to them the people who would come
for Hajj and pilgrimage
for Umrah even in the time of Jahiliyyah,
and they would bring with them their wealth
and they would bring with them their business
and commerce and trade. And so Mecca became
a center of business,
a center of trade. People are buying and
selling, and what are the Quraish doing? They're
benefiting.
They're the ones selling. They're the ones buying.
They're the ones taxing people. They're the ones
loaning money and taking back that money with
interest and because of this they become affluent.
They become rich
And so Allah
favors them and he mentions this in the
Quran.
Didn't Allah favor those people? Look at all
the other Arabs.
Look at the people of Arabia in general.
Poor,
people of tribes,
people of no wealth, people who have no
unity, people who have civil war and strife
between them, but the Quran says in the
Quran, he favored you.
He didn't make you like the other Arabs.
You had wealth and prestige. And that's why
the were the premier tribe amongst all of
Arabia.
Not only that,
So Allah fed you from anger. Meaning these
are people who have no vegetation,
no farming,
no agriculture,
but they're not starving.
They don't need
agriculture because their risk is coming to them.
And Allah gave to them security.
Because if you look at the rest of
Arabia,
it's full of wars,
full of civil strife,
full of problems because that's the nature of
tribes. My tribe is bigger than yours. I'm
going to attack your tribe. Or someone comes
and does something to your tribe that you
don't like, so you now have a war
with another tribe. That's how the tribal system
works.
So tribes are always fighting. There's always civil
war and strife amongst tribes.
But Allah saved the quresh
from that type of difficulty. Didn't have any
problems.
Had good unity amongst them. They were people
who were strong in terms of their bonds
between themselves
and the other Arabs who leave them alone
because they're the custodians of the Kaaba. They're
the custodians of the Mecca and all the
Arabs want to go to Mecca. So why
are you going to fight the people who
are the custodians of the place that you
want to go and visit for pilgrimage?
The Quraysh had all of these things and
more that Allah favored them with.
But did it benefit them?
Did it benefit them that they were the
descendants of prophets?
Did it benefit them that they lived in
Makkah?
Did it benefit them
that they were the custodians of the Kaaba?
Did it benefit them that they would drink
from Zamzam?
Did it benefit them that they could make
umrah or Hajj whenever they wanted every year
as many times as they wanted in their
lifetimes?
Did it benefit them that they had this
and provision and business coming to them? Did
it benefit them that Allah gave to them
relative security and safety?
Did it benefit them when they turned away
from Allah?
Did it benefit them?
And Allah clearly tells us in the Quran
that he didn't benefit them.
So the question here that we have to
ask
is what happened to a people
that are from the descendants of prophets
live in the best of places, drink from
the best of water,
have the best of places to worship and
pray and do everything else in, what happens
to them
over time and over generations
that by the time of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam, they were full of shirk,
full of idolatry.
To the extent then inside and around the
Kaaba alone,
the narrations tell us that they had some
360
odd idols.
That's only in the Kaaba and around it.
360.
Let alone what people had in their homes,
what people had in their businesses, what people
had in the marketplaces,
what people had in other public open areas.
100 upon 100 of idols that they would
worship besides Allah
What happens to a group of people
who can say my grandfather,
my great grandfather is Ibrahim,
that they come to a stage where if
they wanted to build an idol, they would
take food like barley and wheat wheat and
dates and they would mold
the idol with their own hands and worship
it besides Allah.
And then if drought and famine came upon
them, they're hungry, they're poor, they don't have
anything left to eat, They take that same
god that they claim is a god besides
Allah and they eat
it. Because made of food,
it's made of dates and wheat and barley.
If you're starving, you're going to eat it.
And they would eat it and it wouldn't
make them think twice.
Won't hesitate.
These are the same people who are the
custodians of the Kaaba,
are told that they're the descendants of the
people who raise the foundations of the Kaaba,
and they're the ones telling people that you
can't make the waf except unless you're naked.
What happens to a group of people that
they think that it's permissible and good, that
it's something which is acceptable, that they would
have their young daughters and they would bury
them alive?
What happens to a group of people? How
does that take place?
How do you start from an area or
a place of prophethood,
of wisdom,
of knowledge, of scripture and revelation,
of Allah
giving you his commands,
and then you end up like the Quraysh
did at the time of the prophet.
Something must have gone wrong over time.
Something they must have lost something.
So what did they lose?
They obviously didn't lose their lineage
because they're still the descendants of Quraish, of
the of the prophets.
They didn't lose their geographical location because they're
still living in Mecca.
They didn't lose the Kaaba. The Kaaba is
still there. They didn't lose Zamzam, they're still
drinking from Zamzam.
So what did they lose?
And that is what Allah
mentions to us in the first revelation.
What they lost
was knowledge.
What they lost was the religion of Ibrahim
alaihis salam.
What they lost with the teachings that they
were given by those prophets of Allah alaihi
musaratus salam.
And when you lose knowledge,
knowledge of your religion,
what he means to worship Allah alone,
what he means to follow the prophets that
Allah sent to you, what he means to
understand and follow the revelation
that Allah has given to you, what it
means to lose or be ignorant of the
laws of Allah and the commands of Allah
and the prohibitions of Allah
then you lose everything.
You lose your religion
and everything else that you have then has
little to no worth.
Allah
didn't honor the people of Quraish, didn't praise
them when the prophet
came despite their lineage, despite who they were,
despite what they had. But rather
Allah in the Quran over and over and
over again, he ridicules them.
He rebukes them. He mocks them
because they don't think, they don't understand.
They lost knowledge and the excuses that they
make
are ones that are not accepted by Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala
and so they lost knowledge.
So when Allah gave to us this religion
and he gave to us the revelation of
the Quran, The first command that Allah
begins with is the command to read.
And not just read anything. It's not just
a general command to learn or to be
educated
or to go to university and have education.
It is
read in the name of your Lord, meaning
that which Allah has given to you, has
revealed to you because the that is the
greatest of knowledge
And it is the most blessed of knowledge.
And it is the most beneficial of knowledge.
And that is why from that moment onwards,
the first revelation that the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam receives for the next 23 odd
years. What does the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam do? He teaches.
He's a teacher.
He conveys.
He teaches the Quran. He teaches the sunnah.
He teaches people their religion.
And yes, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam did
many things.
He was a leader in jihad, the general.
He was the leader of a community.
He was so many different things, our father,
our husband, many other things. But one of
the greatest roles
that he fulfilled and perhaps the one that
he was most
regular upon if you like from that moment
at the beginning of prophethood until the end
of his life, is the role of a
teacher.
The one who seeks knowledge and the one
who spreads knowledge.
And that is the difference between
the people who know Allah and worship Allah
and those people who only make the claim.
The difference between us
and people of other faiths
should be this one issue.
And that is that when we worship Allah,
when we say that we believe in Allah,
when we say that we are pleasing Allah
or doing things that Allah loves and has
commanded,
it should be based upon knowledge.
And so this is how the religion begins.
Seek knowledge,
learn,
benefit.
And from that moment onwards, that is what
the companions do.
Some more, some less. Each one according to
their own ability. But the scholars or the
companions of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, not
one of them ever thought that I'm too
old to learn.
That I don't have the ability to seek
knowledge. That this isn't something for me, it's
something for the young or something for people
like Abu Bakr and Ahmad or something like
just for certain segments of the community.
Every single one of those companions
is a student of knowledge.
They learn and they ask and they want
to come closer to Allah And
so they want to seek knowledge.
And so Allah
gives to us this very important principle.
Now in our time, unfortunately,
and over time,
it is something again that we are beginning
to lose.
And we, me and you, we're not Quraish.
We don't even have the lineage.
We don't even have the city of Mecca
that we can claim and boast about. We're
not even custodians of the Kaaba that we
can see with pride that we're doing something
to to look after the house of Allah
If the people of Quraish despite all of
their accolades,
despite all of the things that they had
in terms of virtue, didn't benefit them.
Whether you didn't know their religion,
then what about me and you?
And people in our time are becoming more
and more distant
from their religion.
And the core reason,
the main reason
is the same issue
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentioned over 1400
years ago. That Allah
gives to us his context in the Quran
because he tells us about the stories of
Ibrahim and Ishmael, alayhim as salaam.
The issue that they lost the Quraysh was
the one of knowledge.
And so the prophet
numerous hadith
speaks about the importance of knowledge, the virtue
of knowledge, the virtue of the people of
knowledge, the rewards of seeking knowledge.
Many hadith scholars of Islam wrote whole books
on this issue and topic of knowledge because
of how many a hadith they found concerning
this. And as a principle,
if you want to know the methodology of
the salaf, when it came to authoring books,
the earliest scholars, the and those came after
them. If they wanted to write a book,
they often wrote it for a number of
reasons. One of those main reasons
is because they found that the sharia
place so much emphasis on that one issue.
So they're all books on iman
and books on because the sharia places so
much emphasis on it. And there are books
on and books on because the sharia places
so much emphasis on it. And they're all
books on knowledge
and its etiquettes and its virtues because the
sharia places so much emphasis on it.
And so they wrote books on this topic,
gathered the narrations of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, gathered the narrations of the companions of
the Tabireen
and the lens that they would go to
in order to learn one hadith,
in order to understand a single verse of
the Quran, in order to gain a small
amount of knowledge. Why? Because those companions understood
something that today unfortunately many of us have
misunderstood
or have not even begun began to understand.
And that is
that religion
or your iman and your faith and everything
else in terms of your religion, it is
closely linked
to the issue of
knowledge.
If you don't have knowledge of Allah,
you don't know anything about Allah, you don't
know the names and attributes of Allah, then
how can you worship Allah?
How do you know that your faith in
Allah is correct? How do you know that
your understanding of what it means to be
a Muslim is correct?
If you don't know the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, you don't know anything about him, you
know very little concerning him, how can you
truly love him
more than anything and everything else?
If you don't know anything about the Quran,
you're very large when it comes to the
book of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. You understand
very little of it. You have very little
connection with it. Then how can you claim
to be a person who loves the Quran
and is from the people of the Quran
and does everything in accordance to the Quran.
And you can continue with that same train
of thought, many of the other issues that
we have in this religion.
So this is something very important for us
to understand.
Today, many of the issues that we find
in the Muslim community,
whatever it may be, whether it's issues to
do with people's faith and their lack of
faith or that people are losing their faith,
whether it's to do with issues of
people committing amongst different segments of the Muslim
community,
people committing innovations when it comes to the
religion
or when it comes to people just generally
in terms of certain of Islam not being
able to understand why does Allah allow this?
Why does Islam forbid this? Why is this
this way and that that way?
All of this comes back to the central
issue of knowledge.
And the true fact of the matter is
that for many of us, we find it
very difficult, very burdensome.
We don't really want to put in the
time and effort to learn and to seek
knowledge.
Even though we know as a fact of
human life
that if you want to excel in something
or you're passionate about something or you're really
determined and truly believe in something,
then you have to give that thing a
great deal of time and effort in your
career, in your studies, in your profession, if
you're a businessman,
and even if none of those things, just
your hobbies and interests.
You love something, you're really passionate
about sport, about cars, about traveling, whatever it
may be. You're going to read, you're going
to research, you're going to watch, you're going
to learn
because that's one of the ways that you
keep developing your interest.
Someone who loves something doesn't ignore that thing.
Someone who's really passionate about something doesn't stay
away from it and learn nothing and read
nothing, but they've subscribed to all of the
things, they're watching all of the videos, every
time something new comes out to the first
person to be there. Why? Because that's human
nature.
And human nature shows that if you truly
love something, you're going to act and behave
in a certain way.
So if we truly love the religion of
Allah,
and we know what it's worth, and we
know its rewards, and we know that it's
our salvation in this life and the next,
and also now
we know that it's also the face the
future of our families, for our children, for
the sake of our community.
We need to put in that time and
effort,
then you have to seek knowledge.
And seeking knowledge
is many different ways and many different things.
But one of the things that it often
doesn't refer to, which is also unfortunately very
common in our time,
but what it doesn't refer to is just
a 30 second clip on YouTube.
What it doesn't refer to is someone's Facebook
post,
or someone's social media post that they put
on there for 10 seconds, or 1 minute,
or a sentence here or there. That's not
really seeking knowledge. Yes, that's inspiring and it's
good and it may motivate you and it
may give you some benefit, but that's not
seeking knowledge.
That's not seeking knowledge.
Seeking knowledge is for you to actually make
an attempt to understand the Quran,
to understand the sunnah, to learn about your
aqeedah,
to actually go with a in a methodological
way of trying to gain closer
or a greater
understanding of your religion so that you can
have a closer connection to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. You can be better in your worship,
better in your iman, better in your character,
better in the way that you deal with
people, a better understanding of what is halal
and what is haram.
That is what Allah
wants from me.
And this is something which the companions used
to do.
Companions that were old, companions that were young,
men, women, one of the things that they
had was a passion for seeking knowledge and
learning knowledge.
Look at the companions of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam. How eager they were. How often
they would come and ask questions to the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? How often they
would want to sit and learn from the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? And even if
they were able to,
because some of them are busy, some of
them have businesses, some of them have families
and responsibilities,
they would do their utmost
to do as much as they can.
Look at the example of Umar
used to say that I would be busy
and
days days I would be busy, I would
make a pact with my friend from the
Ansar, that he would go to the prophet
and I would go and work. And in
the evening, we would meet and he would
tell me what was discussed.
And then the days he was busy, I
would go and sit with the prophet
and he would work. And in the evening,
we would meet and sit with one another.
That's what you have in terms of a
person's
willingness to sacrifice,
willingness to learn, willingness to go,
because it's something which they see as beneficial.
Just like me and you are willing to
sacrifice
for our hobbies,
for our friends, for our interests, for other
things the companions were willing to sacrifice
for seeking knowledge and learning the religion of
Allah
And you have many such examples amongst the
companions.
The women of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
the female companions, the women of Madinah came.
They said, oh, messenger of Allah, all of
the lessons are for the men.
All of your lectures are for men.
Why don't you give us time?
We need time.
So the prophet
gave them time.
Said this time, it's for you. I will
come and I will teach you.
This is what he would
do with different people. And then those companions
that he saw, that they had more ability
to learn, they were more enthusiastic perhaps, or
they were giving him more time, he would
give to them more time.
Give to them more time. Look at the
statement of when
he says, I learned 70 surahs
from my the mouth of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
70 surahs of the Quran.
114 is all we have in the book
of Allah.
70 of them he said, I took directly
from the mouth of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam.
Because he's
a scholar of the Quran,
and that's why the prophet said,
take it from 4 people the Quran. The
first one he mentioned was Ibn Mus'ud.
So he's a specialist in this way. He
gave him more time. Abu Huray radiallahu an,
prophet said this in the hadith,
who will
give to me their attention and I will
give to them my sunnah.
Abu Huraira said, me, oh messenger of Allah,
he said, take out your robe, put it
out. And the prophet
then gave to him words and gave to
him narrations and he said,
take your cloth back. He took it back
and said, by Allah, I never forgot anything
after that that the prophet said.
Give him more time. So he gave him
more time in return. And that is how
the companions were. And it wasn't just the
companions
who had the opportunity to spend that time
with the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, but even
after the death of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, the companions continued to learn. You have
the famous story
of Abdullah ibn Abbas, when the
prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam dies, he's a young teenager.
12,
13, 14 years old, maybe younger,
very young in terms of his age.
And he said to his friend from Lamsar,
let us go and seek knowledge.
We have major companions here, people of knowledge,
Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, these companions who
spent their whole life with the prophet said,
let's go and seek knowledge from them.
And his friend from the unsaid said, why?
Who needs me and you when you have
these people here?
Who needs me and you to go and
seek knowledge? This is the way many of
us think today. Why should I seek knowledge?
If I have a question, I'll go and
ask it. If I have something, I'll Google
it. Right? If I need something, I'll find
it on YouTube. This is what we think.
Why do we need to go and seek
knowledge? We have the imam, we have the
sheikh, we have so and so, but the
companions never thought like that. They never thought
that it's enough for someone else to know
their religion.
They wanted to know their religion.
They wanted to learn for themselves
because there is nothing better that gives you
more confidence that will bring you closer to
Allah than you knowing your religion. Not someone
else knowing their religion for you, or your
religion for you. They know it, that maybe
he made a mistake.
He knows it, but maybe his understanding wasn't
correct. He knows it, but maybe the way
he understood the issue wasn't the way that
it should be understood.
There is nothing better for you in terms
of your connection with Allah than you learning
it yourself.
So ibn Abbas ignored
him, ignored his friend and he would go
after to the houses of companions and lay
down in front of their door in the
heat of the sun in Medina.
And he would wait for them to come
out, and they would find the son of
the uncle of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam lying down outside of their door waiting
for them. Because not only is he seeking
knowledge, but he has the etiquettes of seeking
knowledge. The respect for his teacher, not gonna
knock on his door, not going to disturb
him, wait for his teacher to come. Show
him humbleness and humility.
Show him good character and respect,
and then he would seek knowledge from those
companions.
And Ibn Abbas, as we know, becomes from
the greatest of the scholars of his generation.
From the greatest of the companions of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in terms of the
of the Quran, in terms of the rulings
of in terms of many of the issues,
many hadith, among the most prolific narrators
of the hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, and that's not just him, but it's
something which the other people who then came
after them,
inspired them to
do. One of the things that you will
find in the stories of the salif
is that just as today,
every parent dreams for their child.
I dream that my child
becomes a doctor. I dream that my child
is rich. I dream that my child buys
a nice house.
I have dreams for my children,
aspirations for them. One of the things that
they had in those times and generations for
their children
was operations that they would become people of
knowledge.
That they would learn the Quran and the
Sunnah.
That they would know their religion.
And that's why they would sacrifice for them.
Imam Malik Rahim,
it was his mother
who would take him and advise him before
he used to go to his teacher. And
she would say to him, go to Rabiya,
your teacher, and take from his etiquettes before
you take from his knowledge.
Imam al Shafi'i was an orphan. His father
died when he was young Rahimahullah.
And it was his mother that would take
him to go and seek knowledge in some
narrations
in the life of Imam al Shafi'i.
It is said that one of his teachers
would only teach after Fajr.
Only teaching the masjid after Fajr.
So she would wake up and
wake her son up,
and she would bring him by the hand
to the masjid,
and she would wait outside. He would go
in and pray salah, pray jama'a with fajr.
Then he would seek knowledge and learn, and
then he would come out and she would
take him by the hand and bring him
home
because he's too young. Time of fajr is
dark. She doesn't want to let him go
out by himself,
but she would take him to go and
seek knowledge in that way.
This is how the scholars of Islam were.
This is how their parents were. This is
how the people were so they would understand
this in terms of
the benefits and virtues of knowledge.
Because it is known in child psychology, as
a parent, if you stress the importance of
something for your child,
they'll buy osmosis.
Take that in. You show your children that
something's important, they'll consider it to be important.
You show them a certain characteristic and a
trait, young children, very young children, this is
how they understand and learn things. Yes. When
they become older, teenagers and so on, they
develop their own thoughts, But if you've given
them that solid foundation by Allah's permission and
his will, then it's something which stays.
It's a stable foundation.
But if as a child, all you're showing
them is cartoons and TV and the Internet
and games, that's what they think is important.
YouTube is the only place that they can
seek knowledge. That's all they learn from. Rarely
come to the masjid. Rarely sit in a
gathering like this. Rarely go for the. That's
what they're going to think is important.
But look at the way that the salafah
wanted to teach them not just knowledge, but
the etiquette and importance of something.
That just as you strive, just as for
our children, we strive today. They have their
GCSEs, their a levels. You're going to find
them a private tutor. You're going to find
them an online school. You're going to find
them extra support. You're going to pay money
and drive them from one place to another
so they can learn and benefit more.
So what about then their religion? What about
their knowledge of the Quran and the sunnah?
What about their knowledge of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala?
There was a famous scholar by the name
of Abdul Abu Waisa Sijzi,
Rahimahullah from the famous scholars of hadith of
his time. The people of his time would
travel from across the world to listen to
him for Sahih al Bukhari and these books
of hadith because he's is not this chain
of narration back to Imam al Bukhari was
one of the shortest of his time.
He says
as mentioned in his biography, remember
and others mentioned. He says that when I
was a child,
a young
boy, my father would walk with me from
one village to the next, from one town
to the next, miles
in order for me to go and seek
knowledge with the scholar of hadith.
And as we would leave our town, our
village and walk, he would give me 2
rocks, 1 in each hand to hold.
Imagine,
7, 8 year old boy walking with 2
rocks in his hand and he is walking
3, 4 miles.
So I would walk like this.
And after a while, I would become tired
as a child.
7, 8 years old, he's getting tired, so
after a while he'd say that that was
difficult for me. So he would say to
me, are you tired? And I would say
to him, no, it's okay. But you could
tell. The father knows he's tired. So he
says to him, drop one of the stones.
1 of the rocks dropped them. So he
would drop them.
So now he has one rock between two
hands, easier.
But even that after a while, it's difficult,
becomes tired again.
So then he would say to him, are
you tired? And he says, it's okay. He
says, no, you're tired. Drop the other stones,
he would drop it. And then he would
continue to walk, but he's tired now, still
walking. Are you tired? No. I'm okay, but
he's tired. So you see him climb on
my shoulders and I'll carry you. So he
would climb on his shoulders.
The people of the village were farmers.
They would be going out with their donkeys
and their horses and going from one place
to another, and they would have those those
little carriages that they would take their stuff
on, and they would come across him every
day.
And they would say to him, the father,
why don't you just ride with us? We'll
take you some of the way, half the
way, all of the way. Let him ride
with us. Why do you make him walk
like this with these stones everyday?
He would say, I want him to learn
how it will be to travel for the
sake of knowledge. And as he travels,
how he will feel to carry books in
his hands.
I wanna train
him because if he doesn't walk, it's gonna
be difficult for him to walk. Just as
people are not used to sitting in a
masjid and listening to a lecture and making
notes, difficult for them. Age 20, 30, 40,
it's difficult.
You start at a young age. That's what
you know. Just like other school, children go
to school, they get into a rhythm. They
get into a habit. They know what to
do, they come, it's like second nature to
them.
You ask them to come and learn Quran,
learn their religion, it's difficult because we didn't
teach them that way. I want my son
to know what it feels like to carry
books. I want him to understand what he
means to walk from one village to another,
because he will walk as he goes from
one place in the Muslim lands to another,
one country to another to seek knowledge and
seek the religion of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And that's what he did. And Allah honored
that father's intentions,
honored him,
and blessed him in what he intended.
And Allah made his from the greatest scholars
of hadith of his time.
And that's
the way that we would they would have
aspiration
for their children.
So this command of Allah at the beginning
of the Quran or the first revelation of
the Quran,
seems like a very simple command. One word,
read.
Every child knows the story. Every Muslim knows
the story.
But even though the word and the command
is simple,
easy, rolls off the tongue very nicely,
it is extremely important.
And if you were to understand its importance,
we were to understand its significance in this
religion, then it was something that we would
really apply in our in our lives.
We would make a determined change
to learn and to seek knowledge because the
time that we live in today
is a time when knowledge is more accessible,
more easy for you to gain than at
any other time of history,
any other time of history.
Before, if you want to seek knowledge, you
would have had to be like that child
walking,
traveling
miles and miles, 100 if not thousands of
miles to find someone to teach you. Now
you're just home.
Now there's so much available,
so much for you to learn from and
seek knowledge from. But the problem now is
that we no longer have that determination.
We no longer have that aspiration.
We don't have the discipline anymore. We don't
have that self discipline to be able to
sit and to learn.
Ask yourself this question.
In your lifetime,
how many books of tafsir have you read?
Not even translation of the Quran. Have you
ever read a book of tafsir?
The book of Allah. Some of us in
our thirties, now in our forties, in our
fifties. Have you ever read a book of
tafsir?
The book of Allah that we know is
greater, more blessed than any other book. Greater,
better than anything else that we have.
From one cover to another. Okay. Not the
whole Quran, half the Quran.
Okay. Not half the Quran, a quarter of
the Quran.
Okay. Not a quarter. Just one surah of
the Quran.
That's a question that we need to ask.
Or a book of hadith from cover to
cover.
Bukhari
Sahih Muslim.
Not even Sahih Bukhari Muslim. A book like.
A book that we can read in one
volume, a 1000 hadith, 2,000 hadith.
All of these are statements of the prophet
salallahu alaihi wasallam.
So we have to be serious if we
want to learn and benefit and change
the way our community is and the things
that we're heading towards. Each and every single
one of us has responsibility
for ourselves, for our families that we learn,
we seek knowledge, we understand
what Allah wants
from us, understand his book, understand the sunnah
of the prophet and
if we understand this command of Allah
then that is something which inshallah
Allah will bless you, feel sincere in your
efforts, and you make that determination.
And you take those first few steps just
as
Allah blessed those scholars of the past, or
when their parents made those first few steps
with them,
when they themselves did so, Allah saw the
sincerity of their hearts, the purity of their
intentions,
and Allah bless them in their efforts. Ask
Allah by his most lofty names and his
most beautiful names and love attributes that Allah
grants
us his and
grants us his blessings. And that Allah opens
up for us the door of correct and
authentic knowledge. And that Allah makes us from
those people who learn the Quran and soon
and understand them, and then apply them into
our lives.