Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflections Our Means of Approach
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The title "wasila" in the Quran is specifically for those with authority and rank in academia, and is a means of approach to Islam. It is important for those who have authority to show love for Islam, followed by the guidance of Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa sallam, and demonstrate it through worship. forgiveness is a means of pleasure, and it is the key to achieving the "we" and "we are."
AI: Summary ©
Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, he says in the Quran,
It's
It's one of my all time favorite ayaat
of the Quran.
I quote this aya in
many, many in the past.
It is an incredible
ayah of the Quran. This is in Surat
Al Maida
verse number 35, which Allah
says, oh, you who believe
people of Iman,
have taqwa of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
be conscious of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
be pious,
have a type of
fear of Allah
and
then and this is a,
a command from Allah
and seek alwasila.
Seek a wasila to God,
v wasila to God.
What is al wasila? This is related to
the word tawasul,
which means intermediation,
literally the means of approach,
you see. So there are many deficiencies
or there may there may be many deficiencies
in our iman,
in our taqwa.
So Allah
commands us to,
fill in, as it were, our deficient gaps
of iman and taqwa
with,
the wasila.
To give you an analogy,
if someone is going to apply to a
university,
unless that person has
a near perfect SAT score and a near
perfect ACT score
and, you know, a 4 point o GPA,
that person is going to need help
in the form of letters of recommendation.
And who writes these letters of recommendation? Well,
people who have authority and rank in academia.
Right? And it's similar in the spiritual realm.
We need all the help that we can
get, right, from those nearest and dearest,
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And we all practice tawasul at some level.
Right? If you read the Quran, which of
course we do,
well, the Quran is not Allah
and the Quran is not you.
So reading the Quran is really a means
of drawing near,
to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. It is
seek the means of approach to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. In this case,
we do it through the Quran.
But specifically with respect to this verse, ayah
number 35 of
Al Maeda,
there's difference of opinion amongst the exegetes of
the Quran
as to what specifically is this,
wasila.
Some of the ulama say that it is
tawba,
right? Tawba is a means by which
we approach
Allah. And Tawba is a great thing. We've
mentioned it many, many times.
Right?
That the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he said
that the one
who repents
is like the one who never had the
sin at all. Tawba is a great thing.
Right?
And,
unfortunately, in our modern culture,
we're taught to simply
accept who we are, accept our actions, accept
our thoughts and our inclinations,
and that really just cuts off the road
to tawbah.
So that really, in a sense, cuts off
that wasila, that means of approach
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala as you know says in Suratul Anfal
in the Quran that he would not punish
a people or him speaking directly to the
prophet, sallallahu alaihi salam, as long as you
are amongst them. And then he says, and
Allah
will not punish them
as long as they are asking forgiveness for
their sins.
And, of course, in the Quran,
Allah,
he
explicitly says that he loves certain types of
people, at least 8 types of people, and
they're described by these attributes. We mentioned this
in the previous
khutba or or small lecture
that Allah loves the mursinin and the buttaqeen
and the sabine and mutawakileen,
and he also loves the tawabin, who are
the people of toba,
Right? Who are the tawabin? People who sin
and then they repent.
Another opinion is that the wasila in this
ayah, 35, of Al Ma'ida
is alf the fara'id,
the obligatory
acts of worship that no one should be
leaving. If people aren't praying, for example, if
people aren't fasting during Ramadan without a valid
excuse,
then there's serious deficiencies,
in our deen.
May Allah protect us.
Yet another opinion is that al Wasila in
this ayah, ayah 35, Suratul Ma'ida,
is a reference to our master Muhammad that
he is the means of approach to our
Lord. The
of Yemen, they have a beautiful they recite
a beautiful benediction upon the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wasalam.
Oh Allah, bless and give peace to Muhammad,
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, our master, Muhammad.
The key to the gate of the mercy
of God. So if you think of the
analogy of the rahma, the mercy of Allah
as being like this walled city with a
gate, and many claim to have the key.
But the
true key is our master, Muhammad salallahu alaihi
salam.
Allah
says in the Quran speaking directly to the
prophet,
again, a very oft repeated
ayah in many of my lectures and talks
and.
Say, if you love Allah,
say so that Allah said is telling the
prophet to ask the people, if you all
claim to love Allah, then you have to
follow me. You have to follow the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi salam. Then will Allah love you
and forgive you your sins. And Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala, is forgiving and merciful.
The Saba'bon Nuzoor, the occasion of this verse's
revelation,
according to the, Mufasilin,
is that
a Waft, a, delegation of Christians from the
Najran, they came into Medina,
and they said that they worshiped Isa, alayhis
salaam, but they did it out of love
for God.
Right? And this this ayah demonstrates
that,
you don't demonstrate
your love for
Allah by worshiping
any anyone other than God. You don't worship
the messenger. You don't worship the messiah.
You don't worship the sheikh, you don't worship
the Kaaba,
you don't worship the Quran,
you only worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and
that's how you demonstrate
your love. Right? So what do you do
with the messenger?
You
adhere to him, you obey him, you follow
him.
Because the messenger is
is
He is the key to the gate of
the mercy of God. He is
He is
the the key to the gate
of the love, the unconditional Mahaba of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. So ask your lord by
means of his beloved and he will not
be rejected.
Honor the beloved of your lord and you
will be honored and this is how it
works. The prophet,
he
said, that,
that all of the lineages,
all of the connections are cut off on
the yomul kiyama
except my lineage and those connected to me.
So obviously here, he's talking about the the
righteous Ahlulbayt
as well as those who are connected somehow
to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Really the
I tisal of Mahaba,
connection through love. Right? Think of Salman al
Farisi
who's not even Arab, he was a Persian.
And this hadith gives gives us, Ajami's a
lot of hope
that,
Salaman al Farisi,
the the Ansar wanted to claim him as
one of their own because they said that
he became Muslim in Medina. The Mujahideen said
no. He made Hijra. He came into Medina
just like we came from Mecca. So he's
one of us and the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, he said
Salman is from us, the people of the
house,
and in effect made him an honorary member
of the blessed prophetic house of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He was beloved to Allah
because,
he loved the messenger sallallahu alaihi
wasallam.
There is an amazing hadith
recorded by Ibn Umayja, Ima Matir Midi,
narrated by Uthman ibn Uhunayf. Over 15 masters,
hafav of Hadith
have explicitly said that the following hadith is
absolutely sound,
Bukhari and Nasai Abu Nuaim al Bayhaqidabarani,
etcetera, etcetera,
that a man who was Dariel al Basar,
he was blind. He came to the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi salam, and he said
and you and you afiani.
Pray to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for me
that I might be
healed. And the prophet, salallahu alaihi wasallam, said,
if you have patience, it is better.
But if you want, I can supplicate for
you. And the man said, he said, supplicate.
So the prophet, salallahu alayhi wasalam, he told
the man to go and make an excellent
wudu, and then pray 2
units of prayer,
and then say the following words,
That, oh, Allah, I ask you and I
turn to you by means of Muhammad,
the prophet of mercy. You see,
seek the means to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And, of course, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam is the walking Quran.
Right?
Quran. And so his his his prescription
his prescription to the blind man,
was based on the Quran recognizing
that he is
that he is the means of approach to
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
One of my favorite hadith in Bukhari also
oft repeated by me, a man came to
the prophet
after the congregational prayer,
and he said, oh, messenger of God. I
have transgressed the boundaries of permissibility, so punish
me according to the book of God.
The prophet said
did you did you not just pray with
us? He said yes. And then the prophet
said
indeed Allah
has already forgiven your sins. So the point
I'm making here is that this man brought
his sin to the door of mercy, and
he was shown mercy.
Well, some might say, well, the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam
was alive when that happened. Now first of
all, according to our aqidah,
the prophet
is
This is the aqeed of Ahl Hasan wal
Jema'a, that he was alive in the sense
that he's has a state of he's he's
he's in a state of consciousness somehow in
a mysterious way in his grave. There's a
hadith of Abu Dawud, which which is a
strong hadith,
that, no one gives me salaams except that
Allah
returns my soul to me so that I
might respond to his salaam. Imam Suyuti says
the meaning of this is that his consciousness,
a heightened state of awareness returns to him.
You might say, well, how is that even
possible if millions and millions of people are
giving salaam to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam?
He's able to hear this and respond. You're
making him into a god. You're giving him
divine attributes. No. No one's making him,
into a divinity or a god or anything
like that. Think of a tweet. If you
have a 1000000 followers and you send a
a tweet, 1,000,000 people, if you have a
a 1000000 followers, will simultaneously get your tweet.
You see, the unseen realm is totally beyond
our imaginative
limitations.
Allah
says that the
the
are not dead,
that they're alive. Who's better, the shuhada or
al Anbiya? And amongst the Anbiya, who is
the greatest? It's the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. The bottom line is that
our our taqwa, our iman is deficient and
we need to take the means
of approach to Allah
We need to appeal to Allah's beloved,
and nothing and no one is more beloved
to Allah than our master, Muhammad salallahu alayhi
wasalam. And I'll end with this, that somebody
might say, okay. What about after the physical
passing of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam?
There's a very famous narration found in multiple
books confirmed by all of the salaf. You
find Kitabu Shifa the Qadhi Iyad, who's a
later scholar. Imam Nawawi as well, a later
scholar mentions this as well, that a Bedouin
came to the grave of the prophet, sallallahu
alaihi salam, and he said, oh, messenger of
god, I've committed a grave sin that I
heard Allah say in in his book,
That if only when they had wronged themselves,
they had come to
you, They have come to you, the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And they had sought forgiveness from Allah
and the messenger had sought forgiveness for them,
then they would have found Allah relenting and
merciful. So the bedouins said, so here I
am.
I'm here to ask Allah for forgiveness
and ask you to ask him for my
forgiveness.
Alright? So this is someone who's coming to
the grave of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. And then al Utsbi, according to this
narration, a man named al Utsbi was watching
this happen, and then the Bedouin left. In
Al Utsbi, he dozed off, and the prophet
came to him in a dream, and the
prophet told him, go catch up to that
Bedouin and tell him that Allah
has indeed forgiven him. So the Bedouin, he
brought his sin to the door of mercy,
and he was shown mercy. May Allah
give us the
to understand and to rectify our iman
and our taqwa
and for us to be seekers of
unto him.
We should make this dua
these last 10 nights. It is the practice
of the
prophet according to our mother Aisha in a
hadith at
that he would recite this du'a quite often
in the final 10 nights. Oh, Allah, you
are the effacer of sin, and you love
to efface, so please efface our sins.