Ali Ataie – Istiqaama (Steadfastness) is the Way for the Believer
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
The attributes,
the essential sifaat of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
This is called Tatiel, denial of the sifaat
of Allah Subhanahu Wa This is a prevalent
Jewish or belief.
Show us the straight path, the path of.
The path of those who we have favored,
not the path of those who have earned
your nor those who have gone
who who have who have gone astray. Many
many executes of the Quran say that these
two groups refer to and
respectively, then that we are in the middle.
We are a middle nation, a nation of
of balance.
This ayah is exactly in the middle of
verse 1 143
of 246.
Don't go into extremes in a religion.
He
said that the also the foundation of is
is uprightness or steadfastness
upon the oneness of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
With respect to actions,
denotes that one does not become excessive or
extreme,
nor does one fall short of one's obligations,
That one is neither a glutton nor a
monk. There were 3 Sahaba that came to
the that that made resolutions.
This is in Bukhari and Muslim. One of
them said,
I'm going to pray
every single night. I'm not going to sleep
at night. The other one said,
I'm going to pray every single day. I'm
going to fast every single day. Excuse me.
I'm going to fast every single day. And
the third one said,
I'm I'm gonna swear off women. I'm never
going to get married.
The prophet
was informed of their resolutions,
and he came to them and he said,
are you the ones that are saying this
and that?
He said,
He said, I swear to Allah, I am
the most pious among you and the one
that fears Allah the most.
He said, but I
I pray,
I fast and I eat. I pray and
I sleep. I marry women.
Whoever turns away from my sunnah is not
from me. He's teaching them istikama,
balance between ifrat and tafrit, between these extremes.
Allah
speaks of those
in the Quran who are constantly vacillating
between faith and infidelity.
Indeed indeed, those who believe, then disbelieve,
then believe, then disbelieve.
Why?
Lack of
bouncing around from one extreme to the other.
When one has
one becomes fortified in one's faith,
confident in one's faith.
It means to be principled. It means to
stand up for something. Abu Bakr as Siddiq
once came to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
and he said,
oh, messenger of God, you have become gray.
According to there was a little bit of
gray hair in in the blessed chin of
the prophet,
and some concentrated at his temples.
The prophet
responded. He said,
He said that Surah Hud and her sister
Surah's
have turned my hair gray. In another hadith,
he said,
that the the subject matters of these
have incredible
gravitas to them. They have taqeeda, they're weighty.
The Imam Al Razi, he said that according
to Ibn Abbas,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam specified
aya 112 of Surah Hud as having an
exceptionally weighty effect on his physical body that
it hurt turned his hair gray.
This is when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala spoke
to the prophet of the lord alaihi wasalam
and said,
Be upright. Have
as you have been commanded.
And those with you that are turning to
Allah and this is a direct reference, direct
address. The is the prophet
this is second masculine singular. Without skipping a
beat,
says,
and now in the plural,
this is a sudden change of of number.
This is called
rhetorical device. Now Allah
is not only speaking directly to the prophet
but but by extension to the Ummah.
So this device shows or denotes a very
close affinity
between the prophet
and his.
Do not transgress.
Imam Musayuti says the meaning of this is
Do not overstep or exceed the parameters
of Allah Stay within the bounds of permissibility.
And then Allah says,
do not literally lean towards or in incline
towards those who do wrong.
Imam says,
even.
Do not incline towards those who do wrong
with your affection
or your flattery
or your approval. You're content with their deeds.
Or else the fire will touch you.
And you'll have no one other than Allah
as a protector, and you will not be
helped.
Even if they
are rich,
even if they're famous, even if they have
power or influence in the don't be a
sellout.
It's better to remain grounded in one's principles.
Brother who came to me
many, many years ago, and he said, I
got a job in a financial district, and
it's Ramadan. They're gonna take me out to
lunch. I'm just going to eat.
Can't eat. So I'm just going to eat.
They're gonna find out I'm Muslim, and then,
you know, they're gonna make a hard time
for me. I said,
no, don't. And I and and I told
them it was something that actually happened to
me. A similar thing happened to me many,
many, many moons ago
when I was working in the financial district.
Out his matzah crackers out of his bag.
He was a practicing Jew.
And he said, why aren't you eating? I
said, I'm fasting. It's Ramadan. And I said,
what is this? He said, this is pass
over week. So we struck up an incredible,
incredible relationship.
The CFO was my best friend in the
entire office. Other employees would go around thinking,
what is this lowly staff accountant? Accountant? How
does he have such a great relationship with
the CFO? I told them religion brought us
together. We bonded over religion.
A Muslim and a Jew bonded over religion.
Be principled.
Be principled. Ibn Hisham, he mentions that early
that during the early Meccan period, the Quraysh
tried essentially to muscle the prophet salallahu alaihi
wasalam.
To intimidate him. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
was speaking to prophet during the Islam and
saying,
be patient in the face of what they're
saying.
And and leave them with a beautiful leaving.
So he wouldn't engage with them. So they
went to Abu Talib, his uncle, the man
who raised him. And they said to him,
silence your nephew. Tell him to stop preaching
against our gods. If not,
we'll fight both of you. This is a
tahdig.
This is a threat. So Abu Talib, he
called for the
and tried to appeal to the the gentle,
kind, prophetic heart, and he said to him,
spare me and spare yourself. Do not lay
a burden on me greater than I can
bear. In other words, take it easy on
me. I'm an old man.
I can't fight Quraish.
It's time to make a deal.
It's time to compromise.
Now the prophet was
very gentle and a very compromising person.
It is part of the mercy of Allah
that you
have gentleness, lean, you have
you hit the rift Allah loves gentleness.
But the prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam would, would
only compromise
to the extent that he did not breach
the of Allah
theologically or ethically.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's response to
Abu Talib is the stuff of legend. He
said,
He said if they were to put the
sun in my right hand and the moon
in my left hand, if they gave me
the world on the condition that I forsake
this mission,
on the condition that I forsake this mission
until Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala makes it victorious
or I am destroyed in the process.
I will never abandon this mission. And Abu
Talib looked at the prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam,
and he saw that the prophet was absolutely
deadly serious about this. And he said, okay.
Say whatever you want.
I'll continue to support you.
They fight us. They fight us.
Be a principled person,
especially in modern times. In our times, very
difficult.
Says the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said,
There will come a time upon the people
when one who is steadfast in his religion
will be like a person clutching onto a
burning ember
or burning piece of coal,
So, maintaining that there is an absolute truth,
capital T, that there is alhaq, or that
there is moral right and wrong, objective right
and wrong, will make you the target
of ridicule and verbal attack in our culture.
That's because Abrahamic morality and tradition is under
ideological assault everywhere in the media and in
the academy.
They're going to call you backwards and misogynistic.
They call you homophobic and transphobic.
They'll call you violent and stupid and archaic
and outdated.
You see, people don't like to be ridiculed
or verbally attacked.
So what do they do? What do young
Muslims do in college when this is happening
to them? What do they do?
They drop the coal.
They say, wow, this is too hot.
I can't handle it. Was
an
There was an 18th century French philosopher, a
believer in God. He said it like this.
Imagine there's a magic button.
Imagine there's a magic button. If you press
this button, all of the wealth of the
world will come into your possession, but there's
a catch.
A human being somewhere in the world will
fall down dead. It could be your neighbor.
It could be your brother. It could be
a total stranger, a civil engineer living in
Beijing, China. A human
person will fall down dead if you press
this button.
So he says, to whom then will you
entrust this button? A very devout, God fearing,
Abrahamic theist who believes in the day of
judgment and absolute moral responsibility,
supernatural moral responsibility,
or a very committed atheist who believes in
natural selection,
survival of the fittest,
no afterlife,
no supernatural
moral accountability,
to whom then will you entrust
us?
You better believe it.
Allah says in the Quran, and this is
a verse that I find myself quoting a
lot these days.
He says, oh, you who believe if you
turn away from this religion,
apostate, leave the religion.
Soon will Allah bring a people. Now Allah
describes
them. That he loves,
Allah loves them, and they love him.
They are humble with the believers.
Respected amongst disbelievers.
Striving the path of Allah
And they're not afraid of people who blame
them or find fault in them or reproach
them.
That is the bounty of Allah upon whom
he gives out of his will.
Allah is all encompassing and omniscient.
The ulama say the main reason,
of the for the for the apostasy that
we can glean from this ayah is lack
of love because Allah
says that he'll bring a people, he will
love them, they will love him. So this
means that these people who are being replaced,
they've lost the love of Allah
Whom does Allah love
and why?
In the Quran, Allah
tells us explicitly the categories of people whom
he loves.
These are people who exhibit some sort of,
character virtue. And by the way, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala never says anywhere in the Quran
that he hates anybody. It's not in the
Quran. There's a verse like this in the
Psalms in the bible, which is ironic considering
the Christian dawah to us. But in the
Quran, Allah says,
He loves or he doesn't love, and his
love is open to all, But it must
be earned.
These are the categories of people
whom Allah
loves. The people of Tawba, the people of
Tahara,
the people of justice,
the people of
the people of of Taqwa,
the people of Sabar, the people of Ihsan,
the people who engage the enemy with one
heart, the people who adhere to the messenger
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
These are the virtues of the
of the beloved ones of Allah Wa Ta'ala.
Now there is a hadith in. There's some
weakness in the hadith, and that's okay.
So when the prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam is
reported to have said something quite amazing. This
is quoted many times with the Irkama.
He said,
He said,
indeed Allah has ordered me to love 4
people.
And he's informed me that he, Allah, loves
them.
It was said, oh, messenger of god,
can you name them?
Name drop.
If you look at these four names,
these were men who never wavered in the
deen.
People of repentance,
purity,
justice,
reliance,
piety,
patience,
all of the virtues that are beloved by
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
The first one he mentioned was saying,
salam,
he asked to organize a banquet and 40
men of the aristocrats
of the, Abdul attended.
And the prophet fed them a meal, and
was 13 years old at the time probably,
very young, and he gave them this weighty
responsibility.
After they had finished the meal, the
prophet stood up and he said I've been
ordered to call you to Allah.
I've been ordered to call you to Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala as the only god.
Which of you will help me in my
mission? And there was a long uncomfortable silence
until stood up himself and said, I will
help you. And everyone started laughing.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he smiled
at Ali, and he said,
This is my brother. Obey him.
And everyone started talking to Abu Talib and
laughing. He's ordering us to obey your son.
That was Sayidina Ali.
He's not afraid of people who find fault
in him, who reproach him for his deen.
In a hadith of on
the day of Khaybar, the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam he said,
Tomorrow I'm going to give the standard to
a man who loves Allah and his messenger
and is beloved to Allah and his messenger.
And he gave the standard to say,
In Bukhary,
we are told that the Mushriqim tried to
revise the treaty of Hudaybiyyah.
He saw Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Rahim and
he said, what is Ar Rahman?
Who is Ar Rahim?
Change this.
Was the scribe.
So the prophet
said, okay, fine. So you Ali change change
the
Okay. I'll change it.
And Suhail keeps reading. Is Muhammad or Rasulullah?
He said, no. No. Rasulullah
changed Ibn Abdillah. Let's make it more secular.
I will never erase you.
I will never erase you.
Sayna Ali even
disobeyed the prophet out of love and respect
for the prophet.
Ali is from me and I am from
Ali. They are united.
The second of the 4 he mentioned,
Abu Dharr Al Khifari, Radiallahu Al Anhu.
When Abu Dharr became Muslim,
he went to the Kaaba.
This is early in the Meccan period, very
dangerous. He goes to the Kaaba and he
starts shouting,
and the mushuliqeen beat him within an inch
of his life. And Al Abbas had to
throw his body over him to protect him.
And the prophet said to Abu Dhar, you
should have done that. And Abu Dhar said,
I couldn't help him.
When the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam passed away,
Abu Dhar moved to the Syrian desert.
He never recovered.
He never recovered when his beloved had passed
away. He was never the same person until
his own death.
Terminally brokenhearted.
One of my teachers said,
slain
with the sword of love.
This is Abu Gharr Al Ghifari.
The 3rd of the 4 he mentioned, Al
Niqdad ibn al Aswad.
That just before the battle of Badr, Hazrat
Badr, the prophet
held a war council.
The prophet told the Ansar that the coming
conflict was within the Quraish. In other words,
between the polytheistic Meccans
and the believing immigrants.
So the Ansar were not even required to
join the fight. Gucari relates that on the
authority of Abdullah ibn Masood Al Nikdad ibnul
Aswad, Aswad, he stood up in the council
and he said, you Rasulullah,
we're
not going to say to you like what
the Israelites said to Musa alaihis salam,
You go with your lord and fight. You're
gonna just sit here.
But advance, we are with you.
And Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, he said,
It looked as if the prophet's face
was beaming with joy
at the words of.
The 4th one, Salman al Farisi.
Salman was a scholar of religion who traveled
the world to find the truth.
A Christian Bishop in Iraq told him
that there that a prophet, the coming of
a prophet was imminent in the hijas.
So Sanman arrived in Medina,
but was captured and enslaved by a Jewish
tribe of Bani Toreidah.
And he remained a slave in the city
for years years.
Once in a while, he'd see the prophet
and feel absolutely elated. He'd take his
and
found a way to free him from his
so called master. The prophet said in a
hadith in Tirmidhi, if
if faith were suspended on pleiades,
on
if iman was suspended from the stars,
then this man and his companions, and he
put his blessed hand on the
on the fire of Salan al Farisi. This
man and his companions would somehow get to
that and reach it.
The prophet
dedication,
loyalty,
courage,
love, devotion.
Finally, my advice
to myself and by extension to all of
you is to be patient,
to keep going,
keep the faith, as they say.
A Muslim's life is a marathon.
You have to pace yourself.
Don't stop running.
Don't sell out the deen,
and don't check out of the deen. Allah
ordered
us. Worship your lord until
comes to you. What is in this eye?
And most
of them and
many many others. They say that
here means
means death,
that that is the end of your Ibadah.
With your death,
one of the very last things
the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said,
while he was in his final illness,
he sat on the minbar in his masjid,
and he
said,
Indeed, Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, has given a
certain slave of his a choice between what
is in the world and what is with
him.
And that servant has chosen what is with
Allah.
And Abu Saeed Al Khudri who relates to
Hadith,
he says,
And he said he said,
we didn't understand why is he weeping. And
then Abu
prophet
he's referring to himself. He is the
in his statement.
That this intimates that the time of the
prophet
is very very short.
One of the final things he said after
that
So be patient,
keep going,
persevere
until you meet me at the Haud,
the prophet's basin just outside of paradise.
Persevere,
keep going,
keep moving
until you beat me at the.
Then you can relax.
Then you can relax. Until then,
Allah and his messenger know that we cannot
be perfect.
O you who believe, fear Allah as is
his right to be feared. And the Sahaba
heard this ayah and he started to shake.
How can we have
of Allah? How can we fear Allah as
is his right? Another ayah was revealed clarifying.
Fear Allah as much as you can.
This is the right of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. Do the best you can.
If you trip and fall in your marathon,
stand back up and keep moving.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was abused
physically, they threw something on him. He lied
down. Jibil alaihi wasallam said,
stand back up. Get up.
Go back out there. Keep moving. You have
to keep persevering.
The prophet
said,
try your best to be upright, although you
will not be able to do so.
Strive for perfection.
You he knows you can't be perfect.
But keep working.
So keep working.
And the best of your actions is the
prayer.
And only a believer is constant in his
ablutions.