Ali Ataie – Wasilah The Divine Link To Arrive At God’s Favor
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AI: Transcript ©
This is Surat Al Maida, ayah number 35.
Allah
says, oh, you who believe,
oh, you who have Iman,
iman, have taqwa
of Allah
and seek
and seek to him,
means the means of approach. This word is
related to the word
or intermediation.
So there may be deficiencies
in our
iman, in our taqwa.
So Allah,
he commands
us.
This is a command. He commands us to,
fill in, as it were, our deficient gaps
of iman and taqwa
with alwaseelah,
the means of approach to
Allah To give you an analogy,
if you apply to a university,
you know, unless you have a 1600
SAT and a 36
ACT and a 4.3 GPA because you're taking
honor classes,
you will need help
with, letters of recommendation,
help from people who have authority and rank
in academia.
And it's similar in the spiritual realm.
We need all the help that we can
get from those nearest and dearest to Allah
We all practice tawasul at some level.
Do you read the Quran? Well, the Quran
is is not Allah, and the Quran is
not you.
Reading the Quran is a means of drawing
near
to Allah.
It is technically a wasila.
Some commentators,
they say here that
in this ayah, chapter 5 verse verse 35,
is tawba, is repentance, and tawba is a
great thing. The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam, he
said,
that the one who makes tawba, the one
who repents
from his sin is like the one who
didn't sin at all.
And, of course,
they're,
among the 8 types of people that Allah
explicitly says that He loves in the Quran.
One of these are the
Allah
loves those
who repent.
And who are the
They are people who sin
then repent.
Other commentators say that in
this ayah
is a reference to the the
obligatory acts of worship,
and yet others say in
this
ayah
and seek to him and seek to him
the means of approach. The means of approach
here according to many is our master, Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi sallam,
the means of approach to our lord.
The Badawi Sadat of Yemen, they recite a
beautiful benediction upon the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
They say,
Oh, oh, Allah,
bless and give peace to our master, Muhammad.
The key to the gate of the mercy
of God.
The key to the gate of the mercy
of God.
So if you think of the analogy of
the rahma, the mercy or compassion of Allah
as being,
a walled city with a gate.
Right? And many claim to have the key
where the true key
is our master, Muhammad sallallahu alaihi salam. Allah
says in the Quran,
Say if you really love Allah, then follow
me. Now Allah is speaking directly to the
prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Say to them, if
you all claim to love Allah,
then you then follow me.
Then will Allah love you.
Then will Allah love you.
And forgive you your sins.
Allah
is forgiving and merciful.
The Sabbath on Nuzul, the occasion of this
verse's revelation, we are told, is that a
waft,
a delegation of Christians from Najran,
they came into Medina,
and they said that they worshiped Isa alaihis
salam out of love for God.
Right? And then this ayah was revealed.
Right? That they worshiped Isa
out of love for God. But you don't
demonstrate your love,
for Allah
by worshiping Allah's creation, by worshiping Allah's prophet.
You demonstrate your love for Allah
by adhering, by having ittida,
by following
the prophet of God, whoever that prophet might
be.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is niftahhu
babi uhammatilla. He is the key
to the gate of Allah's
mercy. He
is.
He is the key to the gate of
the love of
Allah. If we want to enter into that
city,
that city of Rahmah through the gate, we
have to go through
a prophet.
In our case and in the case of,
the Muslims all around the world and in
the case of the entire world, really, because
the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam,
he's a
He is a universal messenger, and his
sharia
abrogates all of the previous,
Shariah,
that he is the means of approach
to Allah
So we ask our Lord by means of
his beloved,
and we will not be rejected.
Honor the beloved of your lord, and you
will be honored. This is how it works.
The prophet,
he said,
Every
lineage on the day of judgment is cut
off
except those who are connected to me. So
the righteous
as well as those who are connected
to the prophet
through love, what's known as the itisal of
Mahaba.
Think of Salman al Farisi
who was a beloved companion of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he's not even Arab. And
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he said something
extraordinary about Salman al Farisi. First of all,
the the Ansar, they wanted to claim him
as one of their own because Salman, he
traveled to Medina
and became Muslim, and the Ansar did that.
And the Muhajarin, they said or sorry. The
Ansar, they became they became, Muslim in in
Medina, and Sanman became Muslim in Medina. The
Muhajarin, they claimed him as well because Salman
traveled to Medina and they traveled,
from,
Mecca to Medina,
as well. And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam,
he said,
is from us, the people of the house,
making him as it were an honorary member
of the house, the prophetic house, the house
of the prophet salamwal alaihi sallam.
Salman was
beloved to Allah, beloved to the messenger of
Allah.
He was beloved to Allah because he was
beloved to the Messenger of Allah, and there's
many, obviously,
examples like this. Extraordinary statements the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam makes about some of his companions,
about Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas on the day
of Uhud. When he was defending the prophet
with a life and limb, the prophet said,
shoot your arrows, oh
May my parents be your ransom.
What he said about in
the hadith,
There was a prophet after me at what
has been.
The prophet
said about,
He said,
and when the prophet
was visiting Jannah with Jibreel alayhi salam and
later to Israel Al Mi'raj, he said, I
heard the footsteps
of Bilal in front of me.
You see, all of these all of these
people, beloved to Allah
because they are beloved
to the messenger of
There is an amazing hadith that's recorded by
Ibn Umayyah and Imam Atirmidi,
narrated by Earthman ibn Hurneif. Over
15 masters, her father of hadith,
have explicitly said that the following hadith is
absolutely sound, including Bukhari and Nasayid,
Abu Nu'aimbe,
Haqi Tabarani,
etcetera, etcetera,
that a man who was dariel al basar,
a man who was, blind came to the
prophet
and he said,
He said, oh, messenger of God, pray to
Allah. Supplocate to Allah so that I might
be healed. And the prophet said, if you
have patience, it is better, but if you
want, I will supplicate for you. And the
man said, please supplicate.
So the prophet
told the man to go and to make
an excellent
and to pray
2 units of prayer.
And then say
Say,
oh Allah, I ask you and I turn
to you by means of Muhammad,
the prophet of mercy.
To our original ayah, oh, you who believe.
Fear Allah
and seek
the means of approach to him.
Right? So the prophet,
he taught this blind man.
I turn to you by means of Muhammad
the prophet of mercy. The prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam is the walking Quran, so his prescription
to the
There's a hadith in Bukhari, one of my
favorite hadith. A man came to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam after the congregational prayer, and
he said,
O messenger of God, I have transgressed
the parameters of permissibility,
so punish me according to the book of
God. You can imagine how difficult this must
have been for this man to go and
tell the prophet that he's
disobeyed Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, how embarrassed he
must have been, how how, frightened he must
have been during this time. And the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, said to him,
didn't you just,
didn't you just pray with us?
The man said yes, and then the prophet
said,
For indeed
Allah has already forgiven your sin.
You see, this man brought his sin
to the door of mercy,
and he was shown mercy.
Some might say, well, the prophet was
alive when that happened. Now first of all,
according to the sound hadith,
the prophet
is. The prophet is alive. He is conscious.
There's an awareness about him in his grave.
In the hadith of Abu Dawood, which is
a strong hadith, the prophet
he said,
That not not a person gives me salaams
except that Allah,
returns my soul to me so that I
might reply to his salaam. Imam Musayuti says
the meaning of this is that his consciousness
returns. A heightened state of awareness
returns to him. You might say, well, how
is this even possible if millions and millions
of people upon the earth are giving the
prophet salons, and he and he he can
he can, he can hear that or he
can respond to that? Isn't that making him
into some sort of divine entity or giving
him divine qualities? And the answer, of course,
is no. I mean, think of a tweet.
You might send a tweet out to a
1000000 followers,
and at the same time a 1000000 people
see your tweet. The unseen realm is beyond
our imaginative
limitations. Allah
says in the Quran that the shuhada, the
martyrs are not dead.
They are alive. Well, who is better? The
shuhada,
a a a a murderer,
who's a who's non who's who's a nonprofit
or the
prophet whose haleel.
Obviously, the latter,
is better.
The bottom line is that our, our Ibadat,
our taqwa, our iman
is going to be deficient.
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 sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. Okay.
Now what about after the physical passing of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam? There is a
narration found in multiple books confirmed by all
of the salaf. You'll find it in Kitabu
Shifaqadi Iyad. Imam An Nabawi relates it as
well. A better one came to the grave
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam, and he
said, oh, messenger of God, I've committed a
sin, a grave sin,
but I've heard Allah
say in the Quran,
This is from the Quran,
Surah Al Nisa, I believe, ayah number
65 if I'm not mistaken.
That,
that
if only when they had,
transgressed their own souls. Come to you.
The here
is speaking directly to the prophet
and
Allah had and they have asked Allah
for forgiveness,
and the messenger had asked forgiveness for them,
then they would have found Allah relenting
and merciful. So the Bedouin comes to the
grave of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam according
to this famous narration, and he recites this
ayah speaking directly to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. Oh, messenger of God, I've committed a
great sin, but I've heard Allah say this
in the Quran, that those who come to
you,
right, and ask Allah's forgiveness and ask you
to ask Allah
for their forgiveness,
then they would find Allah relenting and merciful.
And he said, well, here I am.
I'm here to ask Allah for forgiveness and
to ask you to ask him for my
forgiveness.
And, of course, he recited a famous poem
here,
Oh, best of whose bones are buried in
the earth, and it continues.
You are the beloved whose intercession
is to be sought or hoped for. And
then the Bedouin wept, and he walked away.
And a man named Al Utsbi was watching
this happen.
And after the Bedouin had left, Utsbi had
dozed off, and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
came to him,
in his dream. And, of course, according to
the hadith, and the hadith has reached according
to many ulama the level of,
multiple attestation,
that whoever sees the prophet in a dream
has truly seen the prophet,
and so the prophet told
told him told al Urzbi to catch up
to the Bedouin and give him glad tidings
that Allah
had forgiven him. So the Bedouin brought his
sin to the door of mercy, and he
was shown mercy.
Without the shafa'ah of the prophet,
we will be lost.
This isn't this idea of vicarious atonement.
This is very different than the Christian idea
of someone who literally takes on your sin
and bears the brunt
of your sin. This is not what we're
talking about here. Is not someone taking your
sin.
Is someone interceding
on your behalf,
like, like an advocate of some sort with
Allah.
No one can take your sin. You're punished
for your own sin.
But
Shafa'a is a type of grace that can
be dispensed upon us from Allah
due to some sort of connection we have
with those who are beloved
to Allah
There are extremists who write in their very
popular books
that one of
the Islam, one of the nullifiers
of one's Islam, is taking intercession
with Allah
This is ajib and khareem. I mean, good
luck on the yomul qiyama. And I don't
know what Quran these people are actually reading
because the Quran that I read, Allah
says, and obviously there's only 1 Quran.
I mean, that's half the ayah. If you
stop there, yeah, on that day,
no one will benefit from intercession.
Again, that's only half the ayah. There's an
exception.
It's called an in
Arabic.
Except the one
except the one who has hidden permission from
the indiscriminately
compassionate,
and he and his speech,
is is well pleasing
to Allah.
Right? In Ayatul Kursi, we all know the
ayam.
Who can intercede
with him?
Who can intercede with him?
Except by his permission.
And according to the sound hadith, the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi wasalam, on the
straight to Allah,
and Allah will tell him
Ask for intercession,
and your and your intercession
will be granted. So I don't know what
Quran they're reading. I don't know what hadith
they're reading. In the hadith recorded by imam
ibn Umaja, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam, he
said,
3 types of people on the
will be able to intercede. Al Anbiya, the
prophets,
then the people of knowledge,
the scholars,
then the martyrs.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said in
a hadith recorded that Imam Atirmadi and Abu
Dawood
That my intercession is for the people of
mortal sin, the people of grave sin from
my ummah. The prophet
said in a hadith in
That a people on the day of judgment
will come out of the hellfire by means
of the intercession
of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, and they will
enter paradise.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said in the
hadith
every prophet was given a supplication.
Every prophet was given in intercession.
But I wanted to keep my or to
conceal
my,
my supplication if God wills for the day
of judgment
to be or to act as an intercession
for my.
He said
in a hadith that's recorded by imam Matul
Midi commenting on the ayah in the Quran.
Soon will your lord,
soon will your lord raise you to a
to the praiseworthy station. And
he was asked about that. What is
And the prophet said,
it is the intercession.
I don't know what tasir they're reading.
Allah
says in the Quran speaking to the Prophet
And soon will your Lord give you something,
and you will be immediately pleased by it.
Imam al Suyuti says, what is this thing
that Allah
will give to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam,
and he will be immediately pleased? There are
many
opinions, but the main thing that Imam Musayuti
mentions is a,
the intercession.
Without the sunnah of the prophet, we will
be lost. Without the sunnah, the Quran becomes
incomprehensible
at times.
The Quran is powerful, and without the sunnah
wielding it,
the Quran can become
potentially dangerous.
Allah
That that we sent
among you
a messenger from you,
to recite upon you our signs, to recite
to you our signs, our ayat, and to
purify you and to teach you the book,
teach you the revelation, teach you the Quran,
and teach you wisdom, al hikmah. We'll get
to the meaning of that. And to teach
you that which you knew not
before. Notice it says,
in among you, a messenger among you. The
immediate,
meaning,
is the Arabs.
Right? Because the Quran was revealed first to
the Arab, but the Quran is a very
deep text. It's very, very polyvalent
text. It has multiple levels of meaning according
to the hadith. Every verse of the Quran
has a and a and a.
It has an exoteric aspect, an esoteric aspect.
It has a it has a parameter, like
a linguistic parameter, and it has,
a high or the highest meaning, the matla,
the point of ascent, the greatest meaning.
So what is it?
Could mean the Arabs, but another meaning
of of of the messenger being
in you
is is a internalization,
if you will, of the sunnah, the normative
practice or the agreed upon ethos
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, that this
ayah is also is also intimating
this idea of appropriating or internalizing
the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
in the hearts of those who are the
lovers of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. In
this sense, he is.
He is alive in our hearts. Imam al
Shafi said that hikmah in this ayah, right,
that he teaches you the book and wisdom.
He said wisdom here, hikmah, is the sunnah.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he taught
the Quran.
He's Mu'alim of the of the kitab of
the Quran.
Wal Hikma and its application.
The Quran must be interpreted through the lens
of the sunnah.
The sunnah is the the hermeneutic
of the Quran, to use
a modern academic term. Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala,
says
That we indeed, we sent down to you
at Vikr, the reminder,
in order for you
in order for you to explain to the
people,
to to explicate, to make to the people
What has been sent down to them.
And in order for them to think deeply,
you know, to have tafakkur, to to to
think deeply,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam's words, the purpose
of the commentary, if you will, of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam of the Quran is
for us to think very deeply,
not to be literalist or to be simplistic
in our interpretations,
but to think very, very deeply about the
Quran guided by the sunnah, motivated by the
sunnah.
The extremists.
Right? The mututarifin.
They only they only look at what the
Quran says. They
only look at what it is.
Right? They ignore the why. Limada.
Why did Allah say this? And it's and
the and and and and also the third
aspect, very important, the how.
Kifa, how to implement.
They only look at what, and they don't
look at why Allah said that, and they
have no idea how to implement these things
at different times in history. The latter 2,
the why and the how, this takes rigorous
ichtihad,
rigorous scholarship grounded in the sunnah and the
principles of the sunnah of the messenger sallallahu
alaihi sallam.
The method of extremism is facile and lazy.
The The Prophet,
he said,
How important is following the sunnah?
Whoever turns away from my sunnah is not
from me. And, of course, the Quran describes
the prophet
that, it,
that
it grieves him that you should perish. Deeply
concerned is he about you. Deeply concerned so
that when the prophet gives us advice, when
the prophet gives us command, it's coming from
a position of deep concern.
Right? And what did he say?
I exhort you to follow my sunnah.
As well as the sunnah of the rightly
guided caliphs
Hold on to it tightly
and bite into it with your molar teeth.
Look at the analogy
he's using here.
There's a hadith of Aisha related by Imam
Atirmiddhi,
that there are 6 people 6 types of
people that are cursed
that are cursed according to the statement of
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam. He said, for
example, the
one who adds or attempts to add something
to the book of God,
the one who belies or
disbelieves
in the divine decree.
And one of these 6, he says,
the one who abandons my sunnah. You see,
the sunnah personalizes
the Quran. It provides examples of the universal
principles
of the Quran, what are known as kuliat
and juziat,
what are known as the universals and the
and the particulars,
The minhatch of the mututarifin,
the minhatch of the extremists is that they
elevate
particulars
over
the universals.
You see? There are particular
stories attributed to the prophet, for example,
in Sira literature,
and in particular, hadith, for example,
that do not match his universally agreed upon
personality
or his sunnah. You see, not everything that
is written about him is true, and I'm
talking here about Muslim sources. Just because it's
in a Muslim source doesn't necessarily mean that
is true and that there is a difference,
and it's a very important difference
between hadith and sunnah. Sometimes, obviously,
I mean, we draw the sunnah from the
hadith, but this is not a one to
one.
Right? There's a very important distinction to make
between hadith and sunnah. That hadith is simply
something that is attributed to the prophet
or is the sunnah is the normative or
the universally agreed
upon ethos of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam or practice
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
So his character virtue that dominates his personality
is
There's many hadith like this, that I am
a gift of mercy.
I am the prophet of mercy. So anything
that contravenes
that is immediately suspect.
Anything that contra
contravenes that, even found in Muslim sources.
This is what we have to understand.
The prophet
the hadith
Oh, my dear son, it's a term of
endearment. If you're able to wake up
and go to sleep,
and you are able to not have any
or carry any type of rancor or hatred
for anyone in your heart, then do that.
He continues. Oh, my dear son,
and that is from my sunnah. This is
from the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
sallam. Not having any rancor or hatred
in your heart the whole day through.
He continues to speak to Anas ibn Malik.
And whoever revives or brings to life
my sunnah, he has loved me,
And whoever loves me will be with me
in paradise. Revive a sunnah.
It's not difficult. Abdullah ibn Uhadith, he said,
He said, I never saw anyone smiling more
than the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi sallam.
It's easy to smile. Just smile at people.
And I'll close with this. A warning in
Tirmidi
related by Ubayd Allah ibnu Abi Rafia
The prophet sallallahu alaihi said to me, he
said, let me not find any one of
you,
like lounging on his couch.
When a command that I ordered or a
prohibition from me comes to him, meaning from
the prophet Sunnah,
he says,
He says,
you know, I don't know. What we find
in the book of God, we follow it.
I don't know about the sunnah thing. Thing.
Whatever we find in the book of God,
we follow it.
They separate, divorce, and sever Allah from his
messenger. Again, the Quran,
with respect to many of its akham, is
a difficult book.
Without the sunnah, one can make a mockery
of the Quran.
One can take things out of context.
1 can defame the Quran. 1 can cause
humanity to revile and flee from the Quran.
We ask Allah
to give us the tawfiq to understand
the sound hadith of our master Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wasalam, related to us from our mother
Aisha
is when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam used
to say during these last 10 nights,
Oh, Allah, you are the effacer of sin,
and you love to efface sin. So efface
from us.