Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflection A Faith Built on Five
AI: Summary ©
In a recorded session, the Muslim community Center of the East Bay discusses the importance of witnessing the presence of God and the holy holy holy message of Islam. Sayid Ali explains that the church wants to unify the spiritual reality of Islam by witnessing the holy holy message of Islam. The church's representative, Ass Assaysiss Wa huhu, discusses the holy holy message of Islam and the importance of witnessing it in the church's expansion.
AI: Summary ©
This is your brother Ali.
Thank you for joining this session.
I'd like to thank, the Muslim Community Center
of the East Bay,
for having me.
May Allah
bless all of you.
Muhammad
is reported to have said and this hadith
is recorded
by Bukhari and Muslim
He said, peace and blessings of God be
upon him. Islam is built on 5,
I e pillars or supports,
to witness that there's no god but Allah
and that the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
is messenger of God
and to establish the prayer, to give charity,
to make pilgrimage to the house and to
fast the month of Ramadan.
So the analogy
is of a bunyan, of a building or
an edifice.
If one of the support columns is weak
or missing, then the entire edifice, support columns
is weak or missing, then the entire edifice
is in danger of collapse.
So the first support, shahada, has two meanings.
Number 1, to simply testify
or affirm
on your tongue
and in your heart
that there is no God, but Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and that the prophet is
the messenger of God.
That's the basic meaning.
But shahada also means
to literally witness,
that is to see,
that is to experience and understand
that there is only one God.
That's the higher meaning, to see divine unity
in the multiplicity.
This is called tohid, which is usually translated
as oneness or unicity or even monotheism,
but it literally means
to make one, to unify.
And all of us do this intuitive,
intuitively to a certain degree.
If you were to look at a picture
of a redwood tree
and then a picture of a palm tree
and then a picture of an oak tree,
despite their particular
differences
in appearance,
you unify them in your mind
by looking past their particular differences
and tap into their very essence,
their tree ness, if you will.
In other words, you recognize
a unity
among them.
When the Sahaba looked at the natural world,
when they looked at the phenomenal world, what's
known as the ilam of shahada,
they would see noumenal or spiritual
realities that all pointed
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
They would see Allah's mercy, Allah's wrath, Allah's
power, Allah's knowledge
in all things.
Sayidna Ali
who in Sunni tradition,
is is known as the quintessential
Wali
of God, saint of God. He said,
I never look at a thing except that
I see Allah beforehand.
He sees Allah
in all things.
This is the actualization
of Tawhid.
But what does he mean by that?
So when Sayid al Ali looked at his
wife, for example,
Sayid al Fatima
did he see Allah?
The answer is
yes. But what does he mean by that?
You see when the true Musahed,
looks at his wife, for instance, his basar,
right, his his physical eyes
sees her physical person,
but his basira,
his inner sight or his mind's eye,
right,
that sees the niyama of Allah, the Rahmah
of Allah, the Karam of Allah, the blessing
of Allah,
the compassion of Allah, the generosity of Allah.
When a Musahed looks at the ocean, his
bus or his physical eye sees water and
waves,
the horizon,
but his mind's eye
sees the qudra, the omnipotence,
the power of Allah.
When the Musahed looks at the earth and
realizes that the earth were,
just a little closer or farther from the
sun
or if the gravitational
constant affecting the earth
were just a little bit off, there would
be no life on earth.
His basira sees the
the omniscience,
right? The, the, the incredible knowledge, the endless
knowledge, the perfect knowledge
of of Allah Everything
is
a manifestation
of the will, knowledge, and power
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in the
Quran
Did they not look at the camels and
how they were created?
And at the heaven or at the sky
and how it was raised
and
at the mountains and how they are set
up
And at the earth and how it is
spread out.
So remind
you are indeed someone to remind. And of
course, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is speaking
directly to the prophet
but by extension
to the ummah of the prophet
It's interesting here in this
passage, all of the verbs,
in the,
first four verses of this passage, this is
from Suratul Ghashiya.
All of the verbs are in the passive
voice.
This is an aspect
of the balara,
the unmatched eloquence of the Quranic discourse.
You see, the point of that is that
the Quran wants us to think about
who did these things?
Who created the camels? Who raised the heaven?
Who set up the mountains?
Who spread out the earth?
And of course, the answer is Allah.
You see, the Quran wants us to see
Allah
in all things.
We will continue with our reflections in the
next session inshallah
until then, Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi