Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflections Be Patient, Be Principled
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Being a principled person,
especially in modern times, in our times,
is a very difficult proposition.
There's a hadith that's related by Imam Atidmidi
from Anas ibn
Malik. The prophet
said
Where he said that there will come a
time upon the people when the one who
is steadfast in his religion
will be like a person clutching onto a
burning piece of coal,
Simply maintaining
that there's an absolute truth
or that there is a moral right and
wrong
will make you the target of ridicule and
verbal attack in our culture.
Abrahamic
tradition is under ideological
attack,
in the media and in the academy.
They'll call you all sorts of things, all
sorts of ad hominem,
epithets,
backward, misogynist,
homophobic, violent,
stupid, archaic.
And people don't like to be ridiculed or
verbally attacked. So what do they do?
Well, they're going to drop the coal
and say, wow, that is just too hot.
I can't handle it.
People are led to believe
nowadays
that atheism
is better for societal well-being
than theism.
There was an 18th century French philosopher,
a believer in God, who said it like
this.
Imagine you had a magic button,
and if you press this button,
all of the wealth of the entire world
would come into your possession.
But there's one catch.
If you press this button,
a human being, a random human being anywhere
in the world will fall down dead. It
could be anyone.
It could be your own mother.
It could be a total stranger halfway around
the world.
So he says, to whom would you entrust
this button?
To a very devout God fearing Abrahamic theist
who believes in
absolute moral accountability,
who believes in a day of reckoning, a
day of judgment,
or to a very committed atheist
who believes in natural selection,
who believes in
survival of the fittest,
does not believe in an afterlife,
who does not believe in any type of
supernatural
moral accountability.
Think about it.
Ibn ibn Juzay al Kalbi,
he said that there are 7 compositional forms
in the Quran. In other words, 7 types
of ayat in the Quran.
2 of them
are covenantal
and retributive,
or wad and waid,
promise and threat.
The following, the following is a retributive verse
that I find that I find myself quoting
a lot these days.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
oh, you who believe, whoever amongst you turns
away from the deen,
from his deen, soon will Allah
soon will Allah
bring a people
whom he will love and they will love
him
lowly with the believers.
But
but having izzah, having honor,
having
a type
of strictness with the unbelievers.
Striving and struggling in the in the way
of Allah
Allah and never afraid of those who find
fault,
never afraid of being blamed for being believers.
That is the grace of Allah
that he gives them whom whomever he wills.
And Allah
is,
He is the one who is all encompassing
and omniscient.
So what do we glean from this ayah?
We glean
that the main reason
for the Iritidad,
the the main reason,
for the apostasy,
that Allah
is describing in this ayah
is a lack of love.
Because Allah
says
That if you turn away, then Allah will
bring a people.
A people that he will love and they
will love him. So it's a lack of
love according to the exegetes, the ulama,
the,
the mufasareen
of of this verse.
Whom does Allah love
and why? Well, in the Quran, Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala explicitly,
tells us the categories of people whom he
loves.
These are believers who exemplify
some sort of character virtue.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
for example, Allah
loves the people of Tawba,
the people who repent.
Allah
loves the people of Tahara, the people who,
the people of purity who purify themselves.
The people of the people of justice.
Allah
loves the people of Tawakkul.
The people who put their trust in Allah
Allah
loves the people of taqwa, the people of
piety,
the people who fear Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala loves the people of
patience, the the people of perseverance, the people
of Sabr. Allah
loves the people of Ihsan,
the people who make things beautiful,
the people of spiritual
and
and and every other type of excellence.
These are the virtues of the, Hiba'u'llah,
of the beloved ones of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
Now there is a Hadith in Tirmidi, and
there's some weakness in the Hadith.
Well, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is reported
to have said something quite amazing.
He
said that Allah
has ordered me to love 4 people
and he's informed me that he himself
loves
these people.
It was said, O Messenger of God,
name them for us.
Now he's going to name them. But if
you look at all 4 of these names,
you'll notice that these were men who never
wavered in the deen.
They were principled. They were dedicated.
They were loyal.
All of the virtues that are extolled in
the Quran,
People of repentance, of purity, of justice, of
trust, of piety, of patience, etcetera.
The first one that he named was Sayidna
Ali ibn Abi Talib.
Imam al Tabari says
that
in the early Meccan period when the ayah
was revealed, warn
your family who are nearest of kin. The
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam asked Sayidna Ali to
organize a dinner party.
And 40 men of the aristocrats of Bani
Abdul Muqtaleb attended.
And Sayna Ali was maybe 13
13 years old at the time.
And so the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam, he
stood up and he said I've been ordered
to call you to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Call
I've been ordered to call you to Allah
as the singular God with no partners.
Which of you will help me in my
mission? And there was a long uncomfortable silence
and then Sayyidina Ali stood up and said,
I will help you.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, Hadha
akhib, this is my brother, Atirahu, obey him.
And all of the men started laughing and
said he's ordering us to be under your
son. They were saying that to Abu Talib.
But that was Saidna Ali.
He wasn't afraid of people who
who found fault in him or blamed him
for his religion.
And of course, we have the famous hadith
or the famous statement of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasalam mentioned by Ibnu Majah.
That when the prophet
was at Khaybar,
he said one night
Tomorrow, I'm going to give the standard to
a man who
loves Allah and his messenger and who is
beloved to Allah and his messenger, and he
gave it to Sayyidina Ali. In Bukhari, we
are told that the Mushrikeen wanted to revise
the treaty of Hudaybia
from saying Muhammad or Rasulullah to Muhammad ibn
Abdillah.
And so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he
ordered Sayna Ali, he said erase where it
says Rasulullah
and Saydna Ali said
I would never erase you.
So Sayidina Ali even disobeyed the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, but it was out of
love and reverence
for the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
The next name that he mentioned was Abu
Dar al Ghifari.
When Abu Dar al Ghifari became Muslim, he
went to the Kaaba and started shouting
and the beat him
within an inch of his life. And Al
Abbas had to throw his body over him
to save his life.
And the prophet said to Abu Dhar, you
you should not have you should not have
done that. And he Abu Dhar said, I
couldn't help it. And when the prophet passed
away, sallallahu alaihi salam, Abu Dhar moved to
the Syrian
desert. He never recovered from the passing of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He was never
the same. He was terminally heartbroken.
And the 3rd man he mentioned, Al Miqdad
ibn al Aswad, just before the Battle of
Badr,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he held a
war council.
And the prophet told the Ansar that the
coming conflict was within the Quraysh.
In other words, between the polytheistic
Meccans and the Muslim immigrants.
So the Ansar were not required to join
the fight.
Imam al Bukhari, he relates on the authority
of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud Mas'ud that Al Miqdad
ibn Aswad, he stood up in the council,
and he said,
We will not say to you as the
Bani Israel said to Musa alaihi salaam, go
you and your lord and fight, and we
will sit here.
But advance and we are with you.
And it was as if the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam's face was beaming with joy
at the words of Al Miqdad ibn al
Aswad.
And the 4th name he mentioned, Salman al
Farisi.
Salman, of course, was a scholar of religion
who traveled the world to find the truth.
He was told by a Christian bishop in
Iraq that the appearance of a prophet
was imminent in the Hejaz.
Salman arrived in Medina, and he was captured
as a slave of the Bani al Qoreda.
And he was a slave for years.
And once in a while, he'd see the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and feel absolutely elated
until finally,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam found a way
for him to be free from his so
called master.
And the prophet said in a hadith in
Tilmadi that if iman if faith was suspended
from the pleiades,
this man and his companions would find a
way to reach it.
The prophet said about him, Salman
is from us. The people of the house,
an honorary member of the
So the prophet said that I have been
ordered to love them and I've and I've
been formed by Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala that
he loves them.
So look at the qualities of these beloved
ones of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So my my advice, my parting advice
is to be patient, to keep going, to
keep the faith,
to understand that life is a marathon,
and that we need to pace ourselves.
But don't stop running.
Don't sell out the religion and don't check
out of the religion. Allah
ordered us in the Quran
to
worship your lord.
Worship your lord until
certitude
or the certain thing should come to you.
And many of the exegetes including Imam Al
Qurtubi, Imam Al Razi, Tabriz, Al Maqshiri,
They say that the meaning of al Yaqeen
here is probably a reference to death.
Worship your lord until death comes to you
because that's certain.
One of the very last things that the
prophet
said while he was in his final illness,
he sat on the minbar in the mosque.
And he said
Allah he said that indeed Allah
has given a choice to one of his
servants between what is in the world and
what is with him.
And that certain servant
chose what what is with Allah.
And at that, Abu Bakr as Sadiq, he
started to weep. And Abu Saeed al Khudr,
he said,
that we were very surprised at his weeping.
Why was he weeping? And then he realized
that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was talking
about himself, that he was the servant,
that his time was very short.
And the prophet
said,
be patient, persevere
until,
until you meet me at the Hawd at
my basin. So be patient, keep going, persevere
until we meet the
prophet
just outside of paradise.
Allah and
his messenger know we can't be perfect.
Do the best we can. As
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran,
fear Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as much as
you can. Do your best. The prophet
said, try your best to be upright, although
you will not be able to do so.
We will never reach perfection, but do your
best.
And he said,
work, work, and the best of your actions
is the prayer.
And only a believer is constant in his
ablutions. We ask Allah
to give us the the tawfiq to understand.