Ali Ataie – Being a Muslim in a Postmodern World
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AI: Transcript ©
Allah,
he says in the Quran speaking directly to
our master, Muhammad
We do not send
we do not send you except as a
mercy to all the worlds
That the
greatest manifestation,
of the compassion,
the rahma, of the indiscriminately
compassionate,
Ar Rahman,
is our master Muhammad
The prophet, peace be upon him, he said
in a hadith and there are some weakness
in the hadith, but the ulama consider it
sound and its meaning. He said,
that my lord has disciplined
or trained,
educated me. My lord taught me adam,
and how
great, how beautiful is my adam.
So the prophet Tarbia, his education if you
will, is
is lordly.
So just as Allah
is the most compassionate
and the most forgiving,
he has trained and disciplined and commanded
his messenger,
to be a paragon
of compassion
and forgiveness.
To reflect those divine names
at the level of a human being.
Thus, the prophet
is the abdulla
par excellence.
He is the perfect servant
of Allah
That he is a uniquely sanctified
human agent
of the divine.
Compassion
and forgiveness
are core virtues
in the broader,
what's known as the in the West as
the Abrahamic tradition.
It is,
it is reported that Dawood alaihis salam,
he said in the Psalms,
in the Hebrew language, he said,
The Lord is good to all.
And that his mercy is over all of
his works. His mercy is over all of
his actions.
Or to put it Quranically,
As Allah
tells us in the Quran
that my mercy
encompasses
everything.
In Matthew chapter 9,
Isa alaihi salam is reported to have said,
speaking to the Pharisees, he says, go and
learn what this text means.
And then he actually quotes from the written
Torah.
So he quotes from the Torah, and this
is something that we find quite often in
the New Testament. It's interesting Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala tells us in the Quran
that Isa alaihi salam said Torah,
that he confirms
the Torah.
So he said,
Quoting the Torah in Hebrew, I require mercy
and not sacrifice,
and the knowledge of God more than burnt
offerings.
And this is a very interesting statement that's
attributed to Isa, alayhis salam, whether he said
it or not,
But it's very interesting
because according to Christians,
according at least to trinitarian
Christians,
God himself
sacrificed
himself
for our sins.
This is not the teaching of Isa, alaihis
salaam. This is not the teaching of Jesus,
peace be upon him, even according to Matthew's
gospel.
In Matthew's gospel, he says, I require mercy,
not sacrifice,
and the knowledge of God more than burnt
offerings. God requires
mercy.
And he inscribed mercy upon his own nafs.
Allah
said,
that your lord has inscribed mercy upon his
own self.
And, of course, the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasalam,
as we said, is that beautiful
reflection
of the divine attributes at the level of
a human being, a
rahmatullmuhada.
I He said, ana, rahmatulmuhada.
I am a gifted mercy.
He said,
He said, show compassion and mercy
to those on earth and the one in
heaven, and no anthropomorphic
sense will show you mercy.
Now with respect to forgiveness,
Allah
says in the hadith Qudsi, which is related
by Imam at Tirmidi. He said, yeah, Ibn
Adam, oh child of Adam,
He said that, oh oh child of Adam,
as long as you call upon me and
you have hope in me, I will forgive
you and I don't mind.
And I don't mind forgiving you.
In a hadith that's related by Ibn Huhaqan,
we're told that the prophet
on the day of Uhud, while blood was
streaming down his face,
he sustained injuries inflicted upon him by his
enemies on that day. The Sahaba saw him
with his hands raised to the heavens, and
he said,
O Allah, forgive them. Forgive my people
for they don't know what they're doing.
This is the prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam. There's
something similar to this attributed to Isa alayhi
wasalam.
The new testament tells us that Isa alaihis
salam forgave his enemies. He said, father, forgive
them for they know not what they do.
This verse, which is in Luke chapter 23
verse,
34 is now
universally recognized as a fabrication to the text
of the gospel of Luke by New Testament
textual critics. Yet our prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
when he came into Mecca during the conquest
of Mecca, and he's now in a position
of power.
He's in a position where he can punish
the entire city. What did he say, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam? He said,
This shows the magnanimous character of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He quoted Yusuf alaihi
wa sallam according to the Quran. This day
there is no blemish upon you.
Allah has forgiven you.
In a hadith that's related by Imam Anawy,
in the riyadu Salihim, we're told that a
man came to the prophet
after the prayer, and he said, you Rasulullah,
I have committed a sin. I have I
have transgressed the bounds
of permissibility
according to the book of God.
So so punish me according to the book
of God.
And the and the prophet
looked at him and say and said,
didn't you just pray with us?
Didn't you just pray with us? And the
man said, na'am, he said, yes. And the
prophet said,
It has already been forgiven for you. It
has already been forgiven.
This reminds me of something else that the
Christians attribute to Isa alaihi salam in John
chapter 8, what's known as the pericope adultari.
We are told and this is mentioned in
every single Jesus movie that you might have
seen.
This scene is indispensable. They have to put
it in every movie. This is when a
woman was caught in the act of adultery,
and she's being chased around by these Pharisees.
And she finds Jesus, and she collapses at
his feet. And then he says the famous
statement, who whoever is without sin
cast the first stone.
This story in John chapter 8 is also
universally recognized as a fabrication
to the gospel of John.
Very, very interesting.
So we have these we have these traditions.
This is something that,
is is interesting because oftentimes when we think
of compassion and mercy, we think about Christianity.
And obviously, compassion and mercy are great virtues
in that religion. We think of the Bible,
and obviously, in in the New Testament, compassion
and mercy are great virtues.
But this is something that is found in
our tradition in spades.
If we would just look at our tradition
and the and the common perception is that
Islam is all about,
retribution
and fire and brimstone
and this type of thing,
but we have to look deeply into our
into our tradition. So the point is that
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he prioritized
compassion and forgiveness
over justice.
Justice is a great virtue.
Right?
Don't get me wrong. It is the basis
of our Sharia. According to Imam al Khortubi,
without justice,
we wouldn't have social well-being.
We couldn't have peaceful coexistence.
But the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasalam, he prioritized
compassion and forgiveness over justice.
Now none of us have compassion and forgiveness
in an absolute sense,
absolute and perfect sense. That is only for
Allah
And it's the same when it comes to
justice.
It's the same when it comes to justice.
So absolute and perfect justice cannot
manifest
in this world.
This is our belief.
And I hate to burst,
your bubbles. It's just it's just not going
to happen.
It is not the nature of the dunya
to produce absolute and perfect justice. And to
obsess in its pursuance
is an exercise in futility.
Of course we have to do our best
to be just in this world, according to
our principles.
We have to do our best, but ultimately
we will fall short of perfection.
And we have to recognize
this. Earthly systems,
human interpretations
will never be perfect.
You see, we are not meant to be
too comfortable in the dunya. And this is
the secret to understanding what it means
to be in the world and not of
the world. Or as the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
sallam, he said, kunfid dunya
Only Al-'Adil
can be absolutely just.
The state or some polity cannot replicate
or replace Allah
And to think that it can
is is beyond terrifying
and really intimates a crisis of faith. And
they tried this in the past. It's called
Maoism. It's called Stalinism.
It's called fascism.
This is why we believe in something called
Yom Al Qiyamah.
Yom Al Qiyamah. Yom Uddin, the day of
judgment. Yom Al Hissab,
the day of accounting,
Yom Avim, Yom Ya'qumun Nasirabbil
'alamin. This is a day on which human
beings will stand before the lord of the
worlds.
And guess what? On that day, on that
yom adim, we won't want justice.
We will want compassion.
And it is our hope in Allah's compassion
that gives us peace.
It is our hope in Allah's compassion
that gives us peace.
No compassion, no peace. No one on the
yomul qiyama is going to be saying no
justice, no peace.
No compassion, no peace. That is the sentiment
on the Yomul Qiyamah.
When I say peace here, I'm talking about
a true peace,
a lasting peace.
This is our hope.
Allah says in the Quran, indeed indeed you
have in the messenger of Allah, salallahu alaihi
wasalam, a beautiful pattern of conduct, a paragon
of virtue.
For whoever has raja, who has hope, who
has hope in Allah, and hope in the
final day, and makes remembrance of Allah
in great
abundance.
In college, you may have studied someone,
philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche,
who said that compassion was actually a vice
and an indication
of a slur of a slave or herd
mentality.
And he advocates for what he calls a
transvaluation
of all values, essentially rethinking all values.
And when he when he's talking about values,
he means Christian values.
And those are values that we as Muslims
oftentimes
share with Christians. And people say, well, Nietzsche
was a visionary,
and he saw or he predicted
this type of nihilism that would come out
from this what he called the death of
God in the future. And he was a
a a a bit of a visionary. I
will admit that.
But how ironic is it that this man's
final sane act
before completely losing his mind, he was walking
in the streets of Turin, Italy, and he
saw a man beating his horse. And he
ran and he embraced the horse and he
was crying. And that's his final sane act.
He never even spoke again. His final sane
act on this earth
was an act of compassion.
Very, very interesting. How ironic.
Now what we cannot do
is align ourselves
with certain people
who represent certain groups,
who are fundamentally
opposed
to our nonnegotiable
metaphysical
and moral
commitments.
And
various Muslims do this for a variety of
reasons.
Probably the biggest reason is this shared perception
of victimization,
what's known as, intersectionality
in the academy.
Or it's out of this need to assimilate
with postmodern
quote unquote progressivism
in the academy
really due to a lack of knowledge,
of one's,
of one's own tradition or a lack of
confidence
in one's own tradition.
So some of us, we align ourselves
with certain people who maintain very, very antithetical
positions
to our tradition.
People who say things like all traditional value
systems
are inherently oppressive,
that the Judeo Judeo Christian Islamic tradition,
is inherently oppressive.
People who have declared
essentially ideological
warfare
on the tradition of Ibrahim, alayhis salam, on
Abrahamic religions,
on Abrahamic morality.
These are people who believe that there is
no such thing
as objective
truth,
which is in and of itself a contradiction.
These are people who believe that that there's
nothing normative. They don't like that word
normative. Why is this a problem?
Because eventually,
they will expect us to compromise
our morals,
our ethics,
our theological beliefs, the very ethos of our
religion,
and the hopes of mutually
conjuring up by any means necessary
some sort of radically
egalitarian
and quote, unquote just
utopia
on earth
according to their subjective
definitions
of justice,
morality,
right, and wrong.
You see the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he
said there will come a time when nothing
will remain of this religion.
Layaqaminat
Islamillahisma,
except its name.
It's going to become,
a name without a reality.
This hadith indicates that there is a normative
definition
of Islam. It is not defined
by our feelings. It is not defined by
the zeitgeist,
the the sort of spirit of the current
age.
You see, in the premodern world,
the truth, how does one know the haqq,
the truth? The truth was taken from Naqal
and Aqal. It was taken from revelation and
reason.
Revelation and reason working together, what the Quran
calls nur, nurun ala nur, light upon light.
Now I'm not romanticizing
the pre modern world. I'm not talking about
the pre modern world on the level of
society or or politics. I'm talking about the
pre modern world on the level of epistemology,
on the epistemic level. How does one know
the truth? It was taken from Nakal and
Akal, and that's true. That's right. They got
that right.
And then we move into the modern world
and Nakal, revelation, is completely thrown out of
the window.
Everything becomes aqal or everything becomes a strict
rigid type of empiricism
that if you can't see or taste or
touch or see something or or or or
smell something, then it doesn't exist. So we've
entered into a state of of total materialism,
mechanistic science,
Newtonian physics
completely disregarding the metaphysical and the spiritual.
This is the epistemology
of the modern world, but now we've even
moved beyond that into the postmodern world
where Nakl and Akl, both of them are
thrown out of the window. You can't trust
your intellect. They say there's no objective truth.
So how does one arrive at truth? What
is the epistemology
of the postmodern world? It's based on your
feelings.
Whatever you want reality to be, it's your
truth now.
Lowercase t, your truth. There's no such thing
as alhaq anymore.
There's no such thing as the truth anymore.
It's all your truth, and now reality is
simply defined
by this by the current zeitgeist.
No matter how antithetical
it might be to the authentic teachings
of our prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
But as Muslims,
we have certain,
theological and ethical tawabit.
These are immutables.
These are nonnegotiables.
These are underlying
principles that we cannot give up.
Islam is defined
by Allah and His Messenger.
Islam is defined
by Allah and His Messenger.
It is not defined
by our feelings.
The Quran says that Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala,
he could have made us one people, all
like minded,
but he didn't do that. So we need
to be principled
and not sell out. Right? The prophet, sallallahu
alaihi sallam, he said to one of his
companions,
Speak the truth even if it's bitter.
And don't be afraid of people. Don't be
afraid of the people who reproach you for
your religion.
Morality is not subjective.
Truth is real
and falsehood is real. And this is our
deen, we should stick up for it. And
if people disagree with us, then just say,
laqum deen, laqum maliadin.
Quote the Quran to them. What's more tolerant
than that? You have your religion. I have
my religion. You have your epistemology.
I have my epistemology.
You're you have your so called truths, and
I have I have my truth.
You have your ways of of living, your
way of life, whatever you want to do.
I have my way of living.
Don't tell me what to say or do.
I won't tell you what to say or
do. The Quran says,
Whoever wishes, let him believe. Whoever wants to,
let him believe. And whoever doesn't want to
believe, let him disbelieve.
I used to tell my Christian students, I
used to teach at a a, predominantly Catholic
college.
And many of my students who were Catholic,
they would get berated by some of their
professors who would spout this postmodern philosophy.
And they would come to my office hour,
and I would tell them
I would tell them, believe in God,
persevere
in God, don't sell out,
don't be afraid. I would quote to them
their own scripture.
Isa, alayhis salaam, he said to the disciples,
if they hate you, remember they hated me
first.
You see the people of Dunya, the geocentric
people. I'm not talking about scientific
geocentrism.
I'm talking about people who are morally geocentric,
people who put the world at the center
of their lives,
in the center of their lives, or egocentric
people, people who put ana, people who put
the ego in the center of their lives.
These people tend to hate
and insult and ridicule
the theocentric people, the people who put faas,
who put Allah in the center of their
lives. This is the dunya.
Welcome to the dunya.
So if this is our position, if we
take our stand and we stand firm, then
you will notice
that decent non Muslim people,
especially people who fear and love God,
who practice traditional morality,
people who understand
the power of compassion and forgiveness,
and are not constantly screaming justice, justice, justice.
They will respect our differences.
They will advocate for peaceful coexistence,
and they will agree to disagree.
But with these postmodern types,
these moral relativists,
these critical theorists,
these nominalists,
the philosophical
materialists,
the social constructionists,
when it comes to them, they will never
agree to disagree with us.
What you will eventually hear from them, if
they do agree, it's for a short term.
But eventually, what you'll hear from them is,
if you don't agree with me and if
you don't radically
reform your
archaic religious beliefs and opinions,
then you are a racist, and you're a
bigot, and you're a transphobe,
and you're a homophobe.
You might be a fatphobe.
You're a misogynist.
You're a caveman,
and you're just a purveyor
of toxic
patriarchy.
And you know what? There's no room for
you anymore in our little earthly utopia.
And my response to that is, that's fine.
Kasbuun Allah.
Allah
is sufficient for us
all by himself.
Don't sell out.
It's not worth it. Have istiqama.
Life is too short to be a sellout.
It's going to be over soon. Stick to
your principles.
Have istifama.
Have uprightness in the religion. The man came
to the prophet and
said,
Tell me something about Islam that only you
can tell me. Tell me something precious and
unique. The prophet said,
Say, I believe in Allah.
And be upright
and steadfast upon that. Don't be wishy washy.
Seek a place with Allah,
not a place in the hearts of human
beings. We know that the prophet, salallahu alayhi
sallam, is the beloved of Allah, subhanahu wa
ta'ala, is Habibullah.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tells him in the
Quran.
If you were to follow
their vain desires
if you were to follow their vain desires,
even you,
if you were to follow their vain desires,
even after knowledge, now that knowledge has come
to you,
then you will find neither helper
nor protector
against Allah
And, of course, we have this axiom
in in, Islamic exegesis, that
the salient point is taken.
Is the the salient point is due to
the generality of the wording,
not due to the specificity of its occasion
of revelation. In other words, this ayah also
applies to all of us that if we
were to follow their vain desires,
now that after knowledge of the truth has
reached us, then we would find neither helper
nor protector
against Allah
Another thing,
to paraphrase a very brilliant man,
if we're going to,
constantly complain about things,
and,
complain about others
and complain about how bad we've got it,
we better make sure that the evil is
truly out there, is truly outside of ourselves
and not
in our own hearts.
The prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he said,
Whenever you want to mention the faults of
others, first remember your own faults. He
said,
Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Whoever exalts
himself will be debased and humiliated. This is
totally lost
on a lot of modern people.
Be humble.
Be grateful.
Inequality
does not always mean inequity.
Just because there is inequality
in the world,
which by the way is the nature of
the world.
The world is high and low. It's ebb
and flow. That doesn't mean that there are
always victims
of that inequality.
It doesn't always denote that there's injustice.
There are some people who are more intelligent
than others. There are some people who have
more wealth than others. There are some people
who are better looking than others.
That's the nature of the world. Now there
are victims in the world. That's true. Obviously,
there are victims of oppression
and injustice,
but what we tend to do is self
victimize.
Right? We feel like someone owes us something.
And the cure for that is really self
criticism
and gratitude.
Shukr. This is a big theological
virtue
that's mentioned many, many places in the Quran.
In Semitic rhetoric, there's something called binarity.
Binarity. You find this in the Quran. This
is when antithetical
ideas or concepts are juxtaposed
in a text. For example, Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, he
says, remember me or have regard for me
so that I might have regard for you.
Be grateful to me and do not disbelieve.
Be grateful, have shukur, and do not enter
into into a state of kufur.
Very interesting. These two ideas are juxtaposed.
Shukur and kufur are juxtaposed.
What does that mean? That means they're antonyms.
They're opposites. In other words,
ingratitude
is a type of kufr.
Ingratitude
and kufr are synonymous then that the word
for ingratitude
in the Quran is kufr.
So we have to be very, very careful.
There was a certain king who had it
all except
gratitude, so he was discontent.
One of my teachers told this this parable.
He said this certain king, he had it
all, but he didn't have gratitude. And he
would go on walks outside of his,
outside of his castle, in the woods outside
of his castle, and he noticed a pauper,
a very poor man
next to a tree. And this poor man,
he had a glass of water. He had
some a little crust of bread, barely any
clothes to cover his, but this pauper, this
poor man, he was singing the praises of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So the king approached
him and said, why are you so happy?
You have nothing.
And the man said, why shouldn't I be?
I have it all. I have water. I
have some food. I have clothes that cover
my aura. I have blue skies. The birds
are chirping. I have my health.
I have the dhikr of Allah
spinning in my heart and in my tongue.
Why shouldn't I be happy?
And this man was an aras dela,
this pauper, and he recognized the king. He's
why are you so unhappy? You're the king.
And the king said, I don't know. I
have it all, but I'm unhappy. So the
pauper said to the king, if you were
stranded in the desert
and you were going to die of thirst,
how much of your kingdom would you give
for a half a glass of water?
How much of your kingdom would you give
for half a glass of water? And the
king said, half of my kingdom,
I would give. And the man said to
him, if you drank that water and you
could not excrete it out of your body
and it was going to cause an infection
and kill you, how much of your kingdom
would you give to get rid of that
glass of water from your body? He said
the other half of my kingdom. So the
pauper said your entire kingdom is worth a
glass of water.
I have that here. I also have some
bread. I have blue skies. I have clothes
that cover my aura. I have the birds
chirping. I have my health, and I have
the dhikr of Allah in
my heart and spitting on my tongue.
What more can I want?
This parable is obviously meant to be hyperbolic,
but you get the point.
Just be grateful.
Be content.
Be in a state of taslim
to the Qadr of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Because continuous
ingratitude
and an obsession
for earthly justice
is upstream
to discontentment
with Allah's Qadr, and that is dangerous.
A lot of our young students
in high school and and and college, they
wanna change the world, and that's good. We
should want to be idealistic to change the
world, but they get involved
in these radical causes. I tell them, relax.
Calm down. You're not Aquaman.
You're not Wonder Woman.
You're not in the justice league.
Nietzsche's Ubermensch
or Superman
is motivated by a love of this world
and a rejection of the next.
While the prophet, sallallahu alaihi sallam, the true
Superman,
he said, love of the world or attachment
to the world, to the ephemeral,
to this to this world that's going to
pass away into nothing. Love of the world
is the head of every sin,
is the head of every sin.
We just need to do our best and
say,
praise be praise be to Allah
in every state, and we should have shukr
because we know that our prophet
is
is khairid kalkidna.
He is Sayidu Waladi Adam. He's a master
of the children of Adam. That fact by
itself
should should engender within our hearts an extreme
manifestation of shukr
to Allah
to the point where we really don't have
much to complain about,
especially us living in the west. What are
we complaining about?
Think about it.
I can't even go to an interfaith dialogue
anymore. I used to do these. I've done
these for 20 years. I can't go anymore.
Now they just become exhibitions of ingratitude.
They've become these pity parties
where no real knowledge is communicated.
It's just anecdotal evidence. I remember a time
at interfaith dialogues.
We used to actually talk about Allah and
his messenger.
Now it's a bunch of people complaining.
Oh, I was 20 years ago, I was
in a grocery store, and somebody made some
racist comment
to me in a grocery store.
Okay. That's that's horrible.
You know, racism is an evil thing.
But is that really what we're talking about
now
in interfaith dialogues?
What do you expect from the world?
You know the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, in
Medina.
This is his own city.
He's the head of state.
People said worst to him to his own
face in Medina.
Why do we expect America in 2020 or
2010, whatever, to be better than Medina?
The prophet
was walking in Medina with his wife,
and a group of people walked by him
and said, Assamu alaykum, may death be upon
you.
This is this is a tandid. This is
a threat. They're threatening his life,
salallahu alayhi
wasalam.
Why do we expect our conditions to be
better?
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala did not pity his
prophet. He gave him words of consolation.
There's a difference.
He gave him suar or chapters of the
Quran, of tasriyah
to strengthen him, to encourage him.
When the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was was
kicked out of the city of Ta'if, stoned
out of the city,
and collapsed under the tree. He said, Allahumma,
Ashku ilayka
da'afakkuwati.
I complained to you, oh god, of my
weakness of strength. He didn't complain to Allah.
Look. What what did you do? Why did
you do this to me? I complained about
these people. What did he say? I complained
of my weakness, of my strength.
He complained about his own weakness.
This is the prophet, sallallahu alaihi sallam. We
complain so much. We have to think about
this because
Allah certainly gave us all a reason to
complain now.
Look at us now.
But even now
even now, don't complain
because you know it could be a 1000
times worse.
It could be a 1000 times worse.
Just look inward, repent, and correct your conduct.
The prophet
was a victim
of verbal and physical abuse in Mecca,
but how did he handle that situation? Now
some of the and I'll end with this.
Some of the ulama, they divide the prophet's
life in terms of Aisawi and Musawi periods,
Christic and Mosaic periods. In other words, when
the prophet
was living in Mecca, he resembled the Isa,
alayhis salaam. When he was living in Medina,
he resembled Musa, alayhis salaam.
Right? Mecca and Medina.
In Mecca, the prophet, sallallahu alayhi salaam, he
practiced something called assertive nonviolence.
Martin Luther King said that, Alayhi salaam, practiced
assertive nonviolence. What is assertive nonviolence?
This should be our practice.
It is to be totally nonviolent,
totally nonviolent,
yet
principled,
virtuous,
and devout.
To have istiqaama
in the game,
to follow our
our kitab, our revelation, to follow our messenger
salallahu alaihi wasalam, unapologetically,
but shun violence.
Allah
says to the prophet, salallahu alaihi wasalam, when
he went out for dawah and they threw
garbage on him,
Oh, you wrapped in a mantle.
Get on your feet.
Get up and go warn the people. You
have a job to do.
What is Allah telling the prophet here essentially?
Essentially,
continue to be compassionate
to them in the face of their abuse
to you.
Because a prophet is a naveer.
He's a warner. When someone warns you about
something, that's a manifestation of compassion. Allah tells
him get up and go back out there
and show them compassion.
And magnify your lord.
Stay positive.
You have a rub. The rub
immanent deity. The rub is the one who
takes care of you.
Right? The God who loves you and takes
care of you. Trust him.
And keep your clothes clean.
Right? They did it to you. They threw
this garbage on you, but you are going
to clean it up.
Right? Take care of yourself.
Don't victimize yourself.
Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off.
Go back out there and show them compassion.
This is very, very difficult
because we wanna stay down with dirt on
us and say, you pick me up. You
put me here, you have to pick me
up. I'm not going anywhere
unless you pick me up. You did this.
I'm the victim.
And shun their idolatry, their immorality.
Be principled. Don't be a salal.
Out. And don't think that don't think that
they owe you anything. They don't owe you
anything.
And be hopeful. Be optimistic.
Don't be rash or impetuous.
Be patient on your Lord.
Inshallah. May Allah
increase all of you. May Allah
increases all in knowledge
and in patience,
and in shukr. May Allah
make us of the shakireen