Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflection A Faith Built on Five

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