Ali Ataie – Laylat Al Qadr The Night of Power
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
The beautiful talk.
I was hoping that imam Zaid would be
here,
so we just cut out the middle man.
But,
as sheikh Osama said,
is very persistent, so
I couldn't weasel my way out of tonight.
It's a few reflections regarding Leila Tal Qadr.
There's so many of my teachers here as
well. The staff of Abdullah Ali is here.
He should really be speaking as well.
Verily, we have
sent it down on the night of power.
Now the ulama and this comes really from,
Ibnu Abbas,
He says there's 3 levels of meaning of
Qadr. When we say Leiratul Qadr, the night
of power, this is the construct phrase.
This is one of the meanings that this
is a night of power,
the night of majesty,
a night of honor.
And interestingly,
this is the night when Durush,
Jibril alaihis salam descended and came to the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in Jabal Anur in
Gharihira.
And it was interestingly, the name Jibril obviously
is not an Arabic name in its origin.
It's a Hebrew name,
Gabriel,
which literally means the power of God or
the majesty of God or the honor of
God.
And, of course, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
although he is a student of Jibril is
better than Jibril
because the prophet
is khaydul kalkellah
that when he went beyond Sitaratul Mun Tahaa
and Jibril alayhi salaam could not pass
because he said, I will combust into flames.
But the prophet
he did pass,
and the ulema say that he kept his
sandals on.
Why
didn't his sandals combust into flames? The ulama
say it's because they were attached to the
foot, the blessed foot of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi
wasallam. Anything attached to the prophet does not
touch fire. Have to have strong attachment, a
strong iqisal
to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He
said in a hadith,
Allah In another rewire,
And on that day, the day of judgment,
all relations are cut off except for my
progeny and those who are joined to me,
those who are connected, have a strong Ibtisal,
have a strong connection
with me.
So
this is one of the meanings, the night
of power.
Ibn Abbas, he also mentions
that one of the meanings is
the night
of the decree,
The night of Qadr, meaning decree, that all
of the affairs of the year are decreed
on Laylatul Qadr.
Although we know
that Allah
decreed everything before he created the universe,
pre eternally. Iiradah is a pre eternal attribute.
Or that Allah
had decreed this night in previous dispensations and
revelations.
And indeed, we read
in the previous
revelations.
For example, in the old testament
that the book is given to one who
is an
One of the meanings of nabeelummi
in addition to being unlettered
is a gentile prophet. The yahud bani Israel
in Medina,
they would refer to the Arabs as.
Right?
Could mean gentile prophet.
The book is given to a gentile prophet,
and it shall be said to him in
the Hebrew, it says, para,
which is the exact same cognate word as
the Arabic Iqra. This is in the Bible,
Old Testament,
Isaiah chapter 29 verse 12. And he shall
answer, lo
in Hebrew, which literally means I don't know
letters.
This is his response.
Right?
So this night was decreed in the previous
dispensations,
and they know him like they know one
of their own sons.
We
we read in literature, ibn Ishaq ibn Hisham.
They say that the Bani Israel in Medina,
they used to give good news bushrah
to the Arabs of Yathrib,
the Alsina Khazraj that a prophet is coming
here who is going to punish you for
your idolatry.
Right?
And this is the prophet One
of the other meetings,
is,
the night of constriction.
Constriction
or restriction.
So the Ullama explained the meaning here,
and they say that
as Abu Huraira said, there's so many angels
on the earth,
on laylat al Qadr, that the earth seems
to be constricted.
The the Earth is literally constricted with Malaika.
In the hadith of the prophet,
he
that the number of angels on the earth
is like the angel is like the number
of stars in the heavens.
It's a night of constriction.
That's why the urlamasay,
based on hadith literature,
that,
you you know you've witnessed later at Al
Khadar if at Fajr time, the sun rays
are faded because of the residual light of
the angels, the that
were on the earth, faded off the sun
rays.
Right? The night of constriction.
It's also a night in which he was
constricted, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. That Jibril alaihi wasallam, according to the
sound hadith,
embraced the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, and he
felt the constriction.
And according
to Catholic doctrine, this is a sign that
this is true prophecy. This is called the
law of discernment of spirits, that when a
true prophet receives true revelation from an angel
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, ultimately from Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, immediately he feels a constriction
because it's a weighty issue.
It's fateel, like Musa alayhi salam, according to
the Torah and other prophets in the Torah,
they try to get out of the mission.
Pick someone else. I'm not eloquent. I can't
do this. They feel a constriction.
This is a sign that it's from Allah
This is according to Catholic doctrine,
law of discernment of spirits.
Or as you see false prophets,
when shayateen come to them
or Auliya,
Sheikh Abdul Qadr, Jinali, Jilani,
It's related that he's walking down the roadway.
A great waleed of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
and suddenly he saw this vision and this
this light, and he felt this warmth, and
this voice came to him. You Sheikha al
Islam, you've transcended the prayer. You don't have
to pray anymore. You're above the prayer.
You've transcended the prayer.
And he said the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam,
he had to pray 6 times a day,
his wajib salatul dahujjud. And you're telling me
I've transcended the prayer.
You are rejected. You are a person. There's
shaitan trying to play with him, but he
felt his expansion immediately. All this great fuzzy
feeling.
Right? But that's not how it comes to
the prophets, the true prophets of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
So these are the meanings
of of laylatulqadr
according to the hadith, according to,
the ulama. Now we're coming to the end,
as Asad
Samah had said, sheikh Osama, may Allah preserve
him.
We're coming to the end of the month,
and we have a lot of intentions to
make during this time. Obviously, this is a
time of character reformation,
but it's really important that we get into
a mode of studying sacred sciences.
Study sacred sciences. I mean, just the other
day, a brother from another community said, you
know, Alhamdulillah,
I've I've fasted most of the days of
Ramadan.
So why were you traveling? He said, no.
I had to study for a test one
day, so I decided not to fast. And
so you have to do kafara. What's that?
Well, you have to expiate. What what does
that mean?
Is isn't it optional? I mean, this is
it's very basic.
People don't know basic fiqh.
May Allah
give us tawfiq to study very basic fiqh.
Even the fuqaha are very, very high levels.
The greatest of fuqaha, they go back 6
months, every 6 months, every year, and they
begin reading from the very beginning. Aksamul Miya,
the types of water, how to make istanja,
how to make wudu, how to make hosul.
They review these things.
So may Allah
give us tawfiq to get in in some
sort of study circle and learn these things
and not just depend on our uncles. Right?
There's a of the uncle. My uncle says
this, therefore, it's the gospel truth, so to
speak. This is Sahih Qacajan or Sahih
how do you how do you say uncle
and Ordu? I I forget.
Cha cha. Cha cha, man. Or Amu John,
something like that.
Everyone has a weird uncle, they say. Right?
And if you don't have one, then you're
the weird uncle.
Right? But we need to actually sit with.
It's very important. This is how we transform
the internal. This is how we achieve khorb
with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Nearest to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Muhammad Al Ghazali mentioned, sit with the urama
and take from their prescriptions,
and this will bring you near to Allah
And this will endear Allah
to your heart, just watching ulama, not necessarily
even understanding them.
I I attended a Daras one time when
I first went overseas in Arabic Daras. I
didn't understand any Arabic
during that time, and I sat, and
the teacher was
expounding on a sacred text, and I didn't
understand. I got up and left, and one
of the other students said, no. Just sit
down and watch him.
Just watch what he does. Watch how he
speaks. Watch how he sits. Watch how he
points. Watch how he smiles. And, Wallahi, I
learned more from that, not understanding anything.
I didn't understand anything as to what he
said, but I learned more from that daras
than many many other duroos that I have
taken just by watching the ulama.
The prophet
is related to hadith of Abdullah bin Amr,
that the prophet
that he walked by 2,
gatherings in his Masjid.
Both of them are good.
But one of them is better than the
other.
As for one of them, they're making du'a
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
If Allah wills, he'll grant them what they're
asking for. If not, he he won't give
them what they're asking for.
As for the other one,
As for the other group, they're learning fiqh.
And in this context, fiqh doesn't mean jurisprudential
things, although that's part of it. We've mentioned
this many times.
Here means the essence of the religion.
The essence of the religion. They say the
arlamas say, like, the essence what is the
essence of a rose is the smell. Can
you imagine a rose without a smell? You're
missing the essence of the rose, the essence.
They're learning religion at a deep level. The
hadith says when Allah wishes good for someone,
you.
He gives him in the deen. In this
sense, you can be a faqih, not necessarily
in the jurisprudential
aspect.
Right? But in the sense that you have
a deep understanding of the religion. There's no
order in the Quran to memorize the Quran,
but there is a command to have
the Quran.
And this isn't a there's there's taksees. There's
no specification here.
This is for everyone
to have a deep tadaqr of the Quran.
Obviously, we have to memorize the Quran, and
there's great in that. Don't get me wrong,
obviously.
But we should understand what we're reciting.
Have tadabr. Tadabr means to penetrate something and
to find the end of it, penetrate the
meanings of the Quran.
So he said,
one group is learning fiqh or
or you alimunajahila,
and they're and they're teaching the ignorant for
whom.
They are better.
They are the better group.
That doesn't mean that, okay, I'm not gonna
do any du'a, a du'a, muqul, ibadah. It's
another hadith that supplication is the essence of
worship. We talked about essence. Supplication is the
essence of worship. We've been need to be
supplicating to Allah
Some people go
weeks weeks without raising their hands. They just
do their prayer like a robot. They're thinking
about other things. May Allah
save us from that. And they don't even
remember the last time they actually spoke with
Allah
from the heart. They just recite the Quran
like a parrot.
It doesn't go past the throat. They don't
understand what they're saying, even if they do
understand what they're saying. It's just motion. It's
just adaat. It's just habitual custom.
Raise your hands to Allah
and make du'a
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. This will bring
you closer to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala loves when his servants call
upon him in no anthropomorphic way.
So then he said but he said, for
whom? They're better. The ones who are learning
sacred knowledge, the essence of religion,
and teaching the ignorant.
For whom?
I was only sent as a teacher.
And then he sat amongst them.
So when we gain sacred knowledge,
we should also gain
adab.
Right? The word adib in Arabic
means an an erudite person, an intelligent person.
Because intelligence goes hand in hand
with
adab, with comportment, having good character.
Right? That's why someone who has a lot
of knowledge
and is not someone who has good character,
we have to question who are his teachers,
or what kind of attitude does this person
have? That's an that's a sign that this
person has an ego. An ego, of course,
is a Greek word that means I.
Right? I. Like Imam Jaffa had solved that.
He said the only one who has
the right, the Haqq, to truly say I
is Allah
because he's noncontingent being. He's the only real.
He's the only one that can say,
the only one who could say that. And
it's interesting that it's there's a duplication
in this verse when Allah
speaks to Musa alayhi salam.
He says it twice, and this is found
in the Torah also.
I am who I am.
Right? Like if shaytan was asked, shaytan was
commanded,
make sajat to Adam.
Me, ananiyah, egoism.
Right? This type of thing.
So we need to work on our adab,
our adab with Allah
that when something goes wrong in our life,
we don't breach adab. We don't have su'al
adab with Allah
There's gonna be tribulations Allah promises us in
the Quran
with with tokid and the grammar that truly
we're going you're going to have tribulation in
your life. Lots of wealth and lots of
lives and and the toil of your struggles,
and these types of things are gonna happen.
We need to increase an adab an adab
with the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. Have adab with the messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi sallam. There's a story
of,
Imam Malik ibn Anas. We told this story
last night in a different masjid,
where he was in the masjid. And, of
course, Imam Malik is a Mujtahhid
mutlaq, because the school of jurisprudence is based
on his
codification or student's codification of sacred law. One
of the greatest scholars of Islamic history
is in the Masjid,
and
the Abbasid caliph was there, Abu Jafar al
Mansur, also known as al Mansur.
And some of these
hadifas
after, obviously, after the Khalifa Rashidin,
sometimes there's a there's an ego issue. May
Allah
save us from our egos. We all have
this problem. They have the problem as well.
Al Mansur was the man who imprisoned Abu
Hanifa.
He came to Abu Hanifa, and he said,
I want you to be the Qadi, al
Khuda, the chief justice. Abu Hanifa said, no.
I'm not the right man for this.
And he said, Khadibta, you've lied. Then Abu
Hanifa was very clever, very high acumen.
He said, if I'm a liar, then why
do you want me to be the judge
anyway?
So Ad Mansoor didn't like this comment, so
imprisoned him. And some say he died in
prison. He's an old man, 68, 69, 70
years old at the time.
Anyway, so al Mansur is in the masjid,
and he's having
a discussion with Imam Malik, and Imam Malik
did not like to argue.
His students said that
is haram for Muslim laity to sit around
and argue about Asharima Turidi and Salafi and
and Shi'a and Sunni, this type of he
said this is haram.
This is his the opinion of his students.
And then he
said
because they have adab and sometimes it's necessary.
Even that's if you're an.
Right? So Al Mansur begins raising his voice.
Right? He's probably losing the discussion or something.
He's becoming impatient.
He raises his voice, and Imam Malik was
very radiAllahu.
He's very soft spoken. He said that I
never slept one night without seeing the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam in my dream.
Every night he saw the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. And according to the
hadith,
Whoever has seen me in a dream has
truly seen me. Ra'al Haqq in another Hadith.
I've seen the truth. I've seen reality. He
saw the prophets in
every
night of sleep. He used to when he
talked the Muwata in the Masjid, he used
to say,
and he used to point to the prophet.
The the occupant of this grave said this
is his proximity to the prophet
as far as spatially
in physicality,
but also,
a relational nearness to him
So Al Mansur says raising his voice, and
his son, Imam Malik says, lower your voice.
He's very stern with him. Right?
Oh, this is the Caleb.
Lower your voice. How dare you?
Right? So then he explains it to him.
He said, haven't you heard Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala say
Haven't you heard Allah said,
those who lower their as their their voice
in the presence of the messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
For those are the ones whom Allah has
tested their hearts with taqwa. They have they
have forgiveness with their Lord and a great
reward.
Right? We're in the presence of the Messenger
of Allah. This was his point to Al
Mansur. We have to have adap with the
Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam who's hayyun
tariun fiqabrihi,
who's alive in his grave. This is our
aqeedah of alhusunna wal jama'a.
So then Al Mansur said,
when we make a dua, should we face
the Kaaba or the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam? You can read this in
Ashifa.
Which
who should we face?
And he said,
why would you turn your face away from
the prophet
He is your shafir.
In other words, do you think Allah
is in the Kaaba?
Astaghfirullah.
There's no where with Allah.
Children ask the question all the time. This
is a this is a question of a
child.
Where is God?
There's no answer to the question because the
question is faulty in and of itself. A
interrogative
particle that denotes
space or place or location.
Allah transcends
space and place and location and time and
direction. He transcends all of these things.
It's like asking, where does the one who
resides not reside?
Does it make any sense?
Or to give another example,
This is just an example. And with Allah
as a high similitude. It's like asking,
where do the fish fly?
Can you answer this question?
Where do the fish fly? Say, no. I
can't answer it. Oh, you can't answer. You
don't know.
There's no answer. The very question is faulty.
Right?
Allah
transcends these things.
There's nothing like
Whatever you could possibly think of, Allah is
not like that.
Whatever,
you can, your inability
to
conceive of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is your
conception of Allah
And whoever has, whoever talks about the vat
of Allah
The essence of God is committed kufr and
shirk. And this shirk is as a saying
of Abu Bakr as Siddiq
So the Kaaba is a created
entity. It's not literally the house of God,
not in the literal sense. Al Adafah, meaning
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, owns everything, and this
is a house dedicated to the worship of
Allah
But children ask this I asked this question.
I remember
when I was 7 or 8 years old,
I asked my mother. She said I said,
what is this? She said, this is the
house of God, and I literally thought that
God is inside the Kaaba.
This is a question for children.
This is what children ask.
Right?
So he said, this is created.
The prophet
is created. But which one is better?
Who's better?
Khaydul Khalkillah.
The prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam is better. He
is your shafir.
So face him and supplicate to Allah
out of respect for the prophet salallahu alaihi
wa sallam.
This was his answer.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
is Sayyidu Walidi Adam. Some people say don't
call him Sayyid. Some of the Khutaba, they
get on the minbar, and they don't even
send blessings of peace upon the prophet. They
say, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, astaghfirullah.
It's called him, like, he's like, he's their
cousin or something.
Who who's Muhammad, your cousin? Who works over
here at the at the gas station? Who
are you talking about? Muhammad said this. Muhammad
ibn Abdullah said that. Who are you talking
about?
You're talking about Rasulullah,
Saydah Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Allah
when he speaks to the prophet, he doesn't
use his first name. Never says, yeah, Muhammad
in the Quran. Never says, you Ahmed, you
ayyuhan Nabiyu,
you ayyuhar Rasool,
you ayyuhal mutafir.
This is how Allah
addresses the prophet
in the first person with a title, but
you're on the minbar saying this and that.
And they say, don't call him Sayyid. Some
of the Khutaba I've heard, they say, this
is Bida. You call him Sayyid.
Right?
Imam Jafar al Sadiq, whose imam of Ahlul
Sunnah wal Jamaha. He's a teacher
of Ma'ak ibn Anas and Nur Aman ibn
Thabit.
Ja'far Asadiq,
great great great grandson of the prophet Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
He said,
You Seen
could mean You Sayyid.
This is his opinion.
No one knows the meaning, but this was
his opinion. Possibly, maybe.
You is a vocated particle.
Oh, master.
Right?
2nd person masculine and singular. Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is speaking directly to the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
This is part of his evidence.
I am the master, the sayyid, of the
children of Adam. We should use a title.
We don't want to breach adab with the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. If we breach adab
with the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, then we
breach adab with Allah
This is how it is.
This is how it is. There are people
who mock sunnah.
They mock Muslims who mock sunnah. Muslims who
mock the turban.
I've heard these things coming from people sitting
on minbas,
people making fun of turbans and beards and
things like that. These are these are sunnah.
These are these are,
transmorphic,
transtemporal
sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. It's
very dangerous
to do that.
So
I'm just trying to kill some time here.
I don't see him coming.
Believe me, if I saw him coming, I
would sit down. So
So we need to increase our knowledge and
our love of the prophet
and
defend him
Defend him.
You know, there's I mentioned this also somewhere
last night. I don't remember where it was.
There's 13
European nations
in the Western world
that have laws that are anti Holocaust laws.
That if you question the Holocaust,
they will put you in prison.
Right? Free countries. Freedom of speech. Right?
But if you question the Holocaust,
they'll put you in prison.
You'll go to prison,
which is very interesting.
Right?
There was a man named David Irving
from Oxford
who was is an academic. He showed up
in in Austria to give a speech on
the Holocaust.
And we don't deny the Holocaust. It's established
through
Tawato. This is an issue that is is
just
pure idiocy for Muslims to get into. It's
established
through.
And if we question that, then our our
way of looking at history is compromised. That's
the bottom line. And this whole thing about
this kind of anti Jewish sentiment,
I'm I don't get down with that at
all. Unfortunately, some of this has permeated
into Muslim cultures around the world. This is
completely haram to have this opinion about human
beings.
Okay? So I don't I don't agree with
David Irving whatsoever. This is just an example.
And I'll show you the point of this
in in a minute, InshaAllah.
So he stands up at the podium, gives
an academic
speech about the Holocaust.
And immediately, he's taken to prison.
Immediately for 1 year, he's taken to prison.
Right?
Yet if you go to a bookstore here,
Barnes and Noble, or I guess there's no
more,
borders, but
you'll find 2 or 3 books. There's a
whole genre
now.
Anti Mohammedan literature.
Just books dedicated to denigrating and insulting him.
And as soon as a Muslim raises his
voice, they say, oh, we have freedom of
speech.
This is freedom of speech. Not one person
that I know of, and I researched the
issue, not one human being on earth came
to the defense of David Irving and said,
freedom of speech? What do you why is
everyone so uptight? Jail?
That's his opinion.
Right?
Not one person. When it comes to us,
when people slander the prophet,
suddenly, oh, relax, Muslim.
Woah.
Wow. You guys are angry.
Freedom of speech.
We're not looking for laws to be passed.
Right? We're looking for cultural sensitivity.
There are certain things in in certain cultures
that are just taboo to talk about. It's
taboo. You go to 19 fifties and you
listen to politicians, they're dropping the n word
left and right, dropping it left and right,
and it's all good back then. Nobody cares.
That's how it was. But try to do
that now, that person's ostracized
completely, fired from his job,
disgraced. Right?
It's a cultural taboo. You can't do that
anymore.
There's a cultural sensitivity.
So that's what all we're asking. We're not
trying to get you know, you read some
of these propagates.
These Muslims wanna change the constitution, and and
they wanna change freedom of speech, and they're
trying to get these anti blasphemy laws passed.
Not on my watch. Don't tread on me.
Right? No. We're not. We're asking for cultural
sensitivity. That's all we're saying. The prophet
is more beloved to us
than anything in creation.
Anything in creation.
So we defend him not because he needs
a defense. He doesn't need anything
from us.
But because
people are being
indoctrinated, people that can potentially be guided
have these false notions of who he was,
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, and in turn, there's a
backlash against Muslims and our children.
And this is very, very dangerous.
Am I supposed to talk now?
Where's,
where's Abdul Mahali?
What do you think?
Whatever you want. No. No,
So no.
So I've I've spoken too much already.
No. No. No. No. No. But that's not
what he said, but
but that's my opinion. That's my assessment.
So
forgive me for speaking out of turn. I
know Shaili Dun is here and Abdullah Ali
is here. So, and we wanna make some
fiqh.
I've,
I've requested that another speaker come and speak,
but I guess we're going to make some
fiqh with Qari Uma.
So