Ali Ataie – Eid ulAdha 14412020 Reminder
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Due to our
unusual circumstances,
this is not an official
Eid Khutba.
Just a short reminder,
inshallah,
to myself and by extension to all of
you.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said,
He said there are no days more beloved
to Allah
than he be worshipped in them than the
10 days
of Dhul Hajjah. And this hadith is in
multiple books of Hadith, Bukhari, Tirmidi ibn Majah.
So notice he said, ma min ayamin,
which in Arabic, denotes a strong negation that
there are no days
whatsoever,
not even the days of,
Ramadan,
according to many scholars
that are ahabu.
Ahabbu,
is,
in Arabic,
called an elative of of comparison.
The root word is hub or love.
There are no days more beloved to Allah
than the
10 days of Duhija.
And when something is beloved to Allah,
then it's the duty of the believers,
to to pay close attention to that.
For example, in a hadith, the prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, he said,
The most
beloved places to Allah
are the mosques, the masajid.
And we know that, but many of us
don't even know what month it is or
even what year it is
according to the, Islamic
calendar,
let alone specific days.
Allah,
he takes an oath
in the Quran.
He says,
by the dawn and the 10 nights and
by the even and the odd. Many exegetes
of the Quran say
that the 10 nights mentioned here
are the first 10 nights of the month
of Dhul Hijjah,
the first 10 nights of the month of
Dhul Hijjah.
While the even
refers to,
right, also called yomun nahar, the 10th,
of Dhul Hijjah, while the Ad Al Watar
refers to the blessed day
of Arafah,
9th of Dhul Hijjah.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said, Ma'am
min
Yom min aqthara
min anyou
That there is no day when Allah
sets free more servants from the fire,
emancipates
more servants from the fire than the day
of Arafa,
and that Allah
draws near to his servants according to the
hadith,
then praises them to the angels and says,
what do these people want?
And the Hadith is in Muslim, And, of
course, Allah
knows what we want. Allah's
knowledge is perfect,
but the purpose here is to motivate us
to make du'a
during
this time.
Furthermore, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the
Quran,
That we prescribed
for Musa alaihi salaam 30 nights, and we
completed it with 10.
And so the appointment of his lord was
completed
at 40 nights.
Right? So Imam Tabari and many others, Imam
Azamashari,
they say that the 30 here,
right, falatheen alaylatan refers to the month of
Dhul Qaada,
while the final 10,
Fatima Miqaldu rabbih arba'in alayla. Right? Before that,
and we completed it with 10 more.
At the final 10 here,
refer to the 10 nights of Dhul Hijjah.
That, in other words, the revelation of the
Torah
was completed in the month of Dhul Hijjah.
So why are these days so blessed?
These are the days of Hajj, the pilgrimage,
and the pilgrimage hearkens back to the very
primordial
origins of our deen.
Right? The rights of the Hajj go back
to our master Ibrahim alaihis salaam.
Right? Allah,
he says,
Hajj,
commanding our father Ibrahim Alaihi Salam
to announce to the people the Hajj of
the pilgrimage.
So a man whose very name, Abraham,
right, Avraham in Hebrew,
his very name actually means
father or patriarch of many nations.
This is a man that's revered and loved
by over 3,000,000,000 human beings on planet Earth.
So Eid ul Adha is really a commemoration
of our master Ibrahim alaihi salaam.
It is our origin story, if you will.
A man who was called, the friend of
God, Khalilullah,
in the Quran.
He's also called the friend of God in
the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, as well as
the New Testament. All three texts,
he is referred to as the friend of
God,
the man who was known as the great
iconoclast
or the breaker of idols,
a man who was called the imam of
mankind,
Inni jaylukalinasi
imama.
Indeed,
I have made you
for the people,
a leader,
the one about whom Allah
says,
that he brought to his Lord a sound
heart,
the one about whom Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
says in the Quran,
Ibrahim
alayhi salaam, he was an ummah. He was
a nation unto himself
devoted to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
the primordial
and quintessential
monotheist, Hanifa, and not an idolater.
The The centrality of the Abrahamic tradition is
very clear in the Quran.
The Quran says they say,
be Jews or Christians in order for you
to be guided.
Say, no. I would rather follow
the millah,
the tradition, the creed of Ibrahim alaihi salaam.
He did not in partner with Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in the Quran,
Ibrahim alaihi salam was not a Jew nor
a Christian.
The term Jew did not have any type
of meaning at the time of Ibrahim alaihis
salam. It's anachronistic to refer to him as
a Jew. Jew comes from the word Judah,
one of the sons of Jacob,
and, certainly, there weren't any Christians around. Christians
are named after Christ, which is the Greek
of Mesir
or Mashiach.
But al Islam, submission unto God.
That was the religion of Ibrahim alaihi salam.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says he was a
quintessential monotheist, a Hanifa, and a Muslim, a
submitter unto God,
a submitter unto Allah,
and he did not in partner with Allah.
Allah says,
Allah speaks the truth.
Follow the of Ibrahim alaihi sallam.
Right? And the verb there, ittiba, is also
used when Allah
says in the famous Ayatul Imtihan speaking
directly to the prophet Muhammad
Say to the people, oh, Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam,
if you really love Allah, then follow me.
Then will Allah love you and forgive you
your sins. Allah is
forgiving and merciful.
So in one verse, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
commands us
to follow the millah of Ibrahim alayhi salaam,
his tradition, his creed, his religion.
In another ayah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells
us to follow, same verb, the prophet sallallahu
alayhi alayhi wasallam. So the exiges deduced from
this that the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wasallam, he is upon
the primordial Abrahamic path, and this is actually
stated explicitly in the Quran.
Indeed, the closest of humanity
to Ibrahim alaihi sallam are those who follow
him as are this prophet
and those who believe,
and God is the protector of those who
have faith. So the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam,
he is really the great restorer of the
Millah,
the tradition and creed of Allah's Khalil, Ibrahim,
a, sallam.
The prophet, sallallahu, a, sallam, restored and perfected
the deen and millah
of Ibrahim alaihi sallam.
So he restored and perfected it biivnillah with
the with the permission and the tawfiq of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. This is why he's
Habibullah.
He's the beloved of God.
And not only that, the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam in his physical manifestation
even resembled Ibrahim alaihi wasallam. The hadith in
the Shama'il of Imam at Tirmidi that the
prophet sallallahu alaihi salam describes
the physical appearance of some of the major
prophets.
And he said and
he said,
He said, then I saw Ibrahim Alaihi Salam,
and the closest in appearance to him,
is your companion, meaning himself, salawat alaihi salawam.
Physically,
the Khalq, what what manifest
physically is is the closest to Ibrahim alayhi
salam internally as well as far as his
ethos
and his theology or teaching, his Millah.
Allah
revealed
to the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, on
the day of Arafah, 9th of Dhul Hijjah,
during the final pilgrimage,
That today, I have perfected
your religion for you, completed my favors upon
you, and have chosen as your deen al
Islam. So according to many exegetes,
this perfection and this completion, this kamal and
tamam,
this perfection and completion refers
to the establishment of the rights and procedures
of the final Muslim
ritual obligation, the final pillar,
Hajjubaytillah,
pilgrimage to the house of God.
Such is the importance of the Hajj. The
prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasalam, he said, the one
who performs the Hajj for Allah
without engaging in inappropriate talk and transgression.
He will return like the day his mother
gave birth to him.
This hadith is in Bukhary and Muslim. This
is a strange time, as we said. Many
of us intended to go to Hajj. We
even had our
reservations
booked,
but it didn't happen.
And,
we are, we are, content with the Qadr
of
Allah, but many did make Hajj. They were
fortunate enough to make Hajj.
If you had that intention, then, inshallah, Allah
will reward you for your intention.
And, inshallah, in the future,
we will definitely make the Hajj if Allah
wills.
Now given the high status of Ibrahim alaihis
salaam in our deen,
it pains me to say that society in
gen in general,
mainstream media and an ever increasing
monoculture
in
colleges and universities, the academy,
they have declared ideological warfare
on the middleah of Ibrahim alaihi salaam, on
Abrahamic tradition and Abrahamic morality. And if you
don't know this is happening,
then you've really been asleep. College students are
constantly told
by their social science professors
that all traditional value systems are inherently oppressive
because they involve
hierarchy and patriarchy.
And this has led many Muslims,
young and old, to leave the religion altogether.
So not only a pandemic
of COVID 19, but a pandemic of Irtidat,
of apostasy,
has afflicted the Muslim ummah.
So we need to advocate a return to
Ibrahim
alaihi salam, and this is what Islam essentially
is.
It is an Abrahamic
Theoethical
Judeo Christian reform movement
at its essence,
an Abrahamic theoethicaljudeo
Christian
reform movement at its essence,
a reformation
of Jewish legalism
and Christian theology,
thus a restoration of the true milah
of the great patriarch.
And Allah
says at the end of Suratul Hajj appropriately
titled the pilgrimage,
and strive in Allah's path as you ought
to strive.
He has chosen you and has not imposed
upon you any difficulties in the religion.
Ibrahim. It is the religion,
the creed, the tradition of your father, Abraham.
And in the first instance, Allah
is speaking to the Arabs, the Qurayshi Arabs,
who are literally descendants of Abraham.
Your ancestor.
But what about the vast majority of Muslims
who are not Arabs?
Well, Abi
here,
Abi also means spiritual father.
Here's our spiritual father.
He is the one who called you Muslims
in the past and in this scripture
and the Quran.
Now not to belabor the point because I
I talk about this a lot,
but I just wanna mention, quickly that
the the dominant epistemology today in the Western
Academy
is broadly known by this term postmodernism.
And this, includes various philosophical movements,
like critical theory and deconstructionism and post structuralism,
neo Marxism.
And this is really our challenge.
Right? Postmodernism
is really our challenge.
Obviously, there's a there's an explosion of sort
of anti Muslim,
polemics that are coming from
Christian elements, as well, and we can deal
with those. Those are the old sort of
tired arguments that they're just recycling.
But,
when it comes to postmodernism,
this is really a challenge that we need
to focus on.
We need to understand what it is and
how to deal with it,
or else this pandemic of Irtedad,
of apostasy, will continue and continue.
In in contrast to,
premodernism
and modernism,
postmodernism
is really a revolt against both faith and
reason. So this is something I've mentioned before.
It's against religion and rationality,
against Nakhal and Akal.
Right?
The most infamous of the postmodern philosophers, he
said, quote, it is meaningless
to speak in the name of or against
reason, truth, or knowledge.
So reason, truth, and knowledge. Right? So aqal
or mantak
and haqq and elm, these are meaningless, he
says. Right?
Reason is meaningless, they say. It's all about
feelings now.
Now reason is limited.
That's true.
But is it meaningless, and can we really
not know anything?
How many times do we find in the
Quran
phrases
like,
do you not reason
in order for you to reason? If you
would only reason,
use your use your intellect.
Right? Muslim theologians like Ibn Uday Miya, he
said that
reason and revelation
are not in conflict, but that the proper
use of the former will lead to the
recognition of the latter because they come from
the same source, ultimately.
Everything is from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Imam
Al Ghazali says in his that
the Quran itself appeals to logic
through syllogistic
arguments
long before Hellenistic influences upon
Muslim theological discourse.
In other words, the prophets themselves used logic
and reason to appeal
to the respective communities,
because logic and reason have efficacy.
And our master Ibrahim, alayhi, sallam, is a
prime example of this.
Allah
tells us in the Quran, surah number 6
Al Anam,
he says in meaning, thus did we show
Ibrahim alayhi salam the dominion of the heavens
and the earth
that he might be among those possessing certitude.
The word for certitude here, right, yaqeen,
the people, that's the noun, the people of
yaqeen. And the word yaqeen is used a
few places in the Quran,
very notably in Surat Al Hajjar,
aya number 98,
when Allah
says
worship your lord until certitude comes to you.
Most of the exegetes in,
concerning that ayah,
they say that al Yaqeen here means deaf.
This is Imam Razi, Imam Qurtubi,
Imam Tabari as a Maqshri, etcetera. Worship your
lord until death comes to you because death
is certain.
And when human beings die, that's when they
actually wake up according to the tradition.
However,
Imam, ibn Umar al Abiqa'i,
he says here that al Yaqeen
could mean the sapiential station of certitude in
this life,
that it is to experience the reality of
Allah.
It is to know that there was no
god but Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Right?
So thus did we show Ibrahim
the dominions of the heaven the dominion of
the heavens and the earth,
that he might
be among
those possessing
Yaqeen, those who experienced the reality
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So going back
to the ayah, the ayat in Surah An'am,
When the night grew dark upon him, when
the night grew dark upon Ibrahim alaihi salaam,
and he saw a coke up, a star,
he said, Hazar Rabbi. This is my lord.
But when it set,
he said, I love not things that set.
And then he saw the moon rising and
he said,
this is my lord. But when it set,
he said,
if my lord does not guide me, I
shall surely be among those who go astray.
But then he saw the sun rising,
and he said,
This is my lord. It is greater.
But when it set, he said, oh, my
people, I am free of the partners you
ascribe.
Truly, as a Hanif, as a quintessential monotheist,
I have turned my face
toward him who created
the heavens and the earth.
Now don't get the wrong idea here. What's
going on here? There is no question
of Ibrahim alaihis salam even considering the worship
of the sun and the moon and the
stars as Ibn Kaffir and others, Imam al
Razi, point out.
This is Ibrahim Alaihi Salam's rhetorical argument against
the idolatry of his people, the ancient Babylonians.
He is drawing out through intellectual deduction,
through reasoning, the flaws of their beliefs.
So he ascends, yes, there is order and
predictability in nature. The ancient Greeks called this
logos,
that the cosmos, right, the the universe has
order, has logos,
but natural phenomena also changes.
It is mutable.
It sets.
Right? When he saw the star,
and it set, and then he saw the
moon,
it set. And then he saw the sun,
Falamma Affalaat.
Right? And that which changes,
as Imam al Razi argues,
cannot be the eternal.
And if something is not the eternal, then
it is created,
and it cannot be worshiped in its right.
It cannot be ma'abud bi hapihi.
It cannot be worshiped in its right. Or
to say it another way,
that which is perfect cannot change
because it either changes for the worse or
it improves. But if it improves,
that means it could have been better, therefore,
not perfect.
So at the end of this, Ibrahim alayhi
salami says,
alaihi fatharasamawati
walardhanifa,
that indeed I have turned my face
toward him who created the heavens and the
earth
as a pure monotheist,
and I am definitely not among those who
associate.
Imam Tabari even mentions here that there's a
hint of sarcasm
in Ibrahim's argument.
This sort of adds to its rhetorical power
as if to say,
come on. You know better
than worshiping mutable,
changeable,
celestial bodies, worship the immutable,
supernatural creator.
And this is one of his names, Assalam.
Allah
is Assalam.
And Assalam here doesn't mean the peace.
It means the perfect.
Right? The perfect is related to the word
Salim or Salim,
the perfect one.
And there can be only one perfect being
because in order for 2 beings to differ,
there must exist a lack of something between
them.
In other words, if you know something that
I don't know
and I know something that you don't know,
then neither one of us is perfect.
Right? Neither one of us is As Salam.
There's nakhs. There's deficiencies
in our knowledge.
Now if a skeptic were to posit 2
perfect beings,
let's say a skeptic says, look, there's here's
2 perfect beings. Perfect.
Then we could ask,
well, which one has power over the other?
One of them?
Both of them? Neither of them?
Every answer is wrong, and we come to
a logical impasse.
Christians say that there are 3 perfect
and equal persons of God.
Yet the second person, the son,
s o n, according to them, this is
according to them, was caused, was generated
by the first person, the father.
These are their terms. So they admit that
the father is the cause
and origin
of the son.
In Matthew 2436,
according to Matthew,
Jesus admits again, this is according to Matthew.
He admits that he does not know the
day of judgment. He admits deficiency in his
knowledge.
Therefore, Jesus is not perfect.
He's not a salam
and thus not worthy of worship. He's not
Ma'abud,
bi haqqihi.
He's not worthy of worship,
in his right.
Right? On the Yomul Qiyama, we're told in
the Quran that Isa alaihi salam will say
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, you know what
is in myself, but I don't know what
is in yourself.
In another place in the Quran, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala says in Al Baqarah,
have you not considered the one who debated
with Ibrahim alaihi salam about his lord?
Because Allah had given him sovereignty.
Right? And who is this one who debated
with Ibrahim? According to the Mufasiddim,
the king of Babylon, Nimrod.
Right? When Ibrahim said my lord gives life
and causes death,
then Nimrod said, I give life and cause
death.
And the tafsir says he called for 2
slaves. He released 1, and he killed the
other.
Ibrahim. So the Ibrahim responded, truly Allah
brings the sun from the east.
Bring it then from the west.
Thus, he who disbelieved was confounded, buhita,
and Allah
does not guide a wrongdoing people. So in
this debate, Ibrahim alayhis salam,
he points out the the limitations
of
of of human volition,
of human choice. Nimrod claimed to be God.
In fact, many exegete say that he was
the first man in history to make such
a claim.
That's why the word Nimrod in modern English
slang
means an idiot or a fool,
a moron.
If Nimrod is limited in his choices and
potential, then he is not perfect.
If he's not perfect, then he is ontologically,
essentially inferior
to a deity. He doesn't qualify as being
a deity.
Therefore, his mulk, his sovereignty, could not have
originated
with him.
It was given to him. And this is
Allah
says, and
that Allah gave him sovereignty.
Ibrahim, alayhis salaam demonstrates
this quite dramatically by demanding Nimrod to bring
the sun from the west.
In other words, you think you have power
over life and death? Let's see you let's
see you have power over the sun.
And this is easy for Allah
because Allah has absolute
unrestricted volition within his nature. He is omnipotent.
Allah has
is one of his qualitative attributes.
One of the qualities
as we say of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Nimrod has no rejoinder in this debate.
We are told that Ibrahim alaihi salam, he
destroyed the idols of his people.
He was a very young man living in
a city called Ur in ancient Mesopotamia,
Ur of the Ur of Chaldees
in modern day Iraq.
And he said to his people,
he
said, do you worship that which you carve?
Allah created you and your actions.
So the argument here is,
how can how can something that you made
be worthy of your worship
and only exists because of you? You are
you are a sufficient cause.
Thus, you are greater.
Yet Allah
made you. Thus, Allah is greater.
And since Allah
is the only real creator
and there can only be one creator
or else we're stuck in the intellectually repugnant
paradox of infinite regress.
Since Allah
is the only real
creator and the only one creator and the
efficient cause of all creation,
then only he is worthy of worship.
Their response to this was
cast him into a fire.
Right? So threats, violence,
ad hominem attacks.
There is an amazing ayah in the Quran
that ties all of this together. Allah
says,
All you who believe, if you turn back
from your religion, then Allah
will bring in your place a people,
a people that he loves and they love
him,
lowly with the believers and strong against the
unbelievers and striving and struggling in his path
and not afraid of those who find fault.
So So the exegetes mentioned 2 things here.
They say there's 2 main reasons for this
Iritidat, for this apostasy that we can glean
from this ayah. Number 1, a lack of
love.
This is why
Allah says that he'll bring a people.
Right? A people that he loves them and
they love him
because these people have a lack of love.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that Ibrahim alaihi
salam is from the in
at least 3 times in the Quran.
Allah
explicitly says that he loves the Mursinin, the
people of Ihsan,
the people of spiritual excellence, Inalaha yohibul Mursinin.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam, he defined
Ihsan
as
to worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as though
you can see him.
And I always, when I talk about this,
I give the analogy of imagine your CEO,
asked you to make a sales call, and
then he sat in your office as you
made it. And the speaker phone is on,
and how excellent you would make that call.
Well, that's some CEO.
That's some human being.
And the other reason for the irchidat that
we can glean from this ayah is a
lack of intel intellectual sophistication.
So why does Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, say
that these
people, they're not afraid of people who who
reproach them for their faith.
It's because
they are intellectually formidable.
They're intellectual warriors
that they'll engage in dialogue with the
with wisdom and wise exhortation,
with academic rigor and rational proofs, and with
good ethos, good character.
So this is the way of our master
Ibrahim alaihi sallam. This is the way of
our master Muhammad sallallahu alaihi sallam.
Love of God rooted in the knowledge of
God, A marifa of Allah
that leads to Mahaba.
And I'm out of time.
As a reminder that, you know, the the
the substitution
of of the ram
for Ibrahim's son,
serves as the basis
for the ritual of of slaughtering an animal,
the,
that is required as a final rite of
the Hajj.
So make sure that you,
perform the
or have someone
do that on your behalf.
Don't forget to do the
after every
prayer that's that's
obligatory right after the prayer, right after the
salaam.
Engage the taqbiraat.
It's according to the Hanafi school to say
it at least once after the.
And this began at Fajr on Yomi Arafah,
9th of Dur Hijjah, and this will continue,
23 prayers. So the last one that you'll
do will be after Asr prayer on 13th
of Dur Hijjah,
which is on Monday.
May Allah
bless all of you. May Allah
accept a pilgrimage from the from the Hijj
that were able to make pilgrimage. May Allah
accept the intention of the pilgrimage for those
who intended to go but could not go.
May Allah
increase all of you in love of Allah,
and may Allah
increase all of you
in your ability
to reason and use logic in order to
defend this religion.
And and we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to give us victory
over the shaitan and over our enemies.