Altaf Husain – How Islam Addresses Grief
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
You sound like you didn't have lunch.
Did you have lunch? Yes.
If you get like a really weak lecture
or a weak khutba, it's usually because people
are asleep
because the speaker draws energy from the crowd.
So if you get, like, a really good
salaam, then, like, I can give give that
back to you. Yeah.
Ali, are we gonna have a q and
a? Okay. So time wise 15?
Alright. Safe recording.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gathers us
in a in a at a time
when it seems like there's there are so
many trials and tribulations
impacting
the average individual, the
average individual
and
yet, Muslims
are not immune
to facing those difficulties not only in our
individual lives but also and especially
as a collective, as a community.
In our earlier session,
we talked about trauma
and this notion
of how we're just learning as a community
to understand and to accept the fact that
it's okay to get help, to seek assistance.
It's okay indeed and to get rid of
if you will the stigma
from,
from seeking mental health and other sort of
services.
It is important, I think for us to
keep going back to this
notion that I've mentioned in an earlier lecture
that we're talking about this
in connection with faith
really at a time
when there's such a very systematic
attack on the concept
of faith,
on the concept of being connected with God
or of being spiritual.
And so it should not be lost upon
us
that our children and indeed, we ourselves
may actually be impacted
by that level,
by that level of spiritual
arrogance that essentially says that, I am everything,
I don't need anyone else especially not prayer,
especially not a connection to any religious community.
I can manage this on my own.
The reality is, and the research shows this
and some of it was mentioned earlier.
The reality is,
you're not actually going to be able
to get over
a major crisis
or to get over
a collective crisis, if you will, without actually
processing what occurred,
without actually allowing space
for you to process what occurred.
Much of the conflict we see in families,
especially as the children grow older
and then also
when,
younger folks are getting married
and then issues arise,
it sometimes has less to do with the
husband and wife or the parents and children
and more to do with unresolved,
unresolved trauma,
unresolved crisis that nobody bothered to acknowledge, let
alone address.
And so when we get together
and when we start to reflect on these
topics, especially from the side of Yaqeen Institute,
our focus is to say,
nothing
should come between you and Allah
and to create in you a spiritual crisis,
if there are sufficient resources
to be able to help you to indeed
rise above that.
The title of this talk is very interesting
because if you think about
that, it makes it seem as if what?
It makes it seem
as if the scientific method and everything to
be quantified actually exists. So the idea would
be that you have an app, you go
to the app, you launch the app and
you say onset of crisis, so you say
for example,
Sunday
at 3:53,
right? And then you say, approximately
how long it's lasted? And you say, it's
been a week and it says, you're over
5 days, you should have been over this
in 2 days, right. There is no formula
for this. There is no formula
for actually how long it would take for
someone to get over it. Now, the beautiful
thing is, that we are within a religious
framework,
a theological
framework, whereby the Quran, the teachings of the
Quran that engrain such tawakkul,
such trust
in the qadr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That as things are being ordained
that we accept
that which occurs,
not necessarily justify it because then people say,
well how do you counselors and folks talk
about stuff like, you just accept the fact
that that was destined. So you mean abuse
was destined,
like somebody was destined to be challenged with
this level of difficulty if you will, the
politest way to say it within a family
structure,
between husband and wife.
The notion is,
it occurred,
we're not saying it didn't occur, it occurred.
But what do you make of it? What
do you do about it? How do you
in fact process it?
The system within the religion is very interesting
when you talk about people who are
necessarily
obsessive compulsive for example, over certain things. There
are amazingly
quantifiable things within the religion that start to
tell you maybe grief for example, maybe cleanliness
for example,
can be assisted
if I have a framework. So for example,
if I ask you, typically speaking, we are
taught in making wudu, right? To repeat the
same act in terms of washing different parts
how many times?
How do you all know that?
How do you all know that?
You should say it's from the Yaqeen app.
You know that because the prophet said,
just do it 3 times.
A person who suffers
from doubt,
doubting themselves about cleanliness is now liberated
is now liberated.
Cleansing blood off of,
clothes
and then it says do this this many
times, you're liberated because after that leave it,
after that leave it.
Grieving,
grieving
3
days. And you're thinking about this and you
realize, SubhanAllah,
people are shocked when I tell them so
and so passed away, especially my university because
I have to leave the campus and go
to the janazah, and so and so passed
away last night, and they're gonna be having
the burial at like zuhr time. They're like,
I'm sorry, what?
No
wake? No memorial?
No like
no viewing? Like where you come and wait?
No. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and His
Prophet shalallahu alaihi wa sallam within the mercy
of the system was, things will occur.
As you process it, as you deal with
it, there's a framework if you follow it
and you trust in Allah, there's a reward
for being able to do so, and then
leaving that doubt out of it if you
will. So, we can't say
with certainty how long it would take someone
to get over
grief, to get over trauma.
We can't, but we can say there are
certain signs and my fellow panelist will indeed
discuss this
at length. But what we can say is,
the scholars have taught us how
to deal with or think of grief.
The Prophet shalallahu alaihi wa sallam,
upon losing his son, his infant son Ibrahim,
you know, three things come out of the
way the interaction occurs
between Him and those observing Him grieve.
His was one of the most public lives,
if you will.
And as he grieves
the loss of his son,
infant son,
and you realize
the death of Ibrahim,
the death of Ibrahim
was
his father,
a parent losing a child.
But in the realm of the thinking of
the Quraysh and all of the people around
him was what? It was the end
in their minds of the progeny that would
carry on the dawah of Islam.
And so, they actually mocked him. So, it
wasn't just that it wasn't sufficient that he
had lost a child. He was trying to
grieve. He was also then subsequently
having to deal with the fact that they
were saying things about Him. So, let me
go back to the first thing. How did
He grieve?
The eyes.
The eyes do shed tears.
Immediately
normalizing the fact that it will be okay,
brothers especially,
for us to cry.
And our younger boys as they're coming into
their teen years, it'll be okay for us
to let them cry. The the the other
panelist will remind you and they'll inshallah address
this, that how long we keep crying?
How long we keep crying? How intense the
crying sessions are? That's where you start to
say, Something is now not right and we
have to seek help. The eyes will shed
tears.
The eyes will shed tears.
The heart does feel the pain. The heart
does grieve but
but
the tongue
does not say anything
about what occurred displeasing to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
How often and how long will I stay
grieving?
Here we're trying to find trying to say,
let the natural part of it happen first.
Let the crying happen, let the heart you
know, to be able to feel the grief
but let the tongue monitor itself or at
least those around saying, don't question
or say something displeased into Allah. Things like
what? Often times we're here saying,
the most common things that people say is,
Why me?
Why us?
Why
us? And remember when I said about the
Prophet shalallahu alaihi wa sallam, Why me? Would
have been the most
obvious thing because what were they mocking him
about?
Abtir,
that you are now cut off.
The loss of this son has cut you
off because in their minds it was, every
king married as many wives as possible so
that he could have in those days as
many sons as possible so that one of
them would live to carry on the throne
of power.
And in that moment
of despair when he's being mocked and said,
You are abtar, you are cut off. Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala revealed which is why you
go back to using the Quran also
to realize and say, Maybe I should seek
guidance, not only from the Quran as was
mentioned earlier, but also the professional help and
make it a combination. The Quran is revealed
saying,
(QS.
Alkafiqarah)
The one who mocks you, the one who
makes fun of you, the one who says
they're cut off, look at their lives, they
will be the ones cut off. And believe
me, believe me, there is not a single
part of the world
where islam reached
or at least the news of Islam reached,
that people do not say the name Muhammad
That they don't utter the name, Muhammad
People who have never met,
centuries away from his existence.
So brothers and sisters,
I ask you, and Muhammad al Sharif, a
beautiful lecturer who founded Al Maghrib said in
one of his sessions, he said, You know
how you know that?
That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, Warafa nalaka
zikraq, We will make indeed
your remembrance.
Right?
That indeed nobody,
nobody goes to ancestry.com
and says, I wanna see how related I
am to Abu Jahal.
But everybody says, even in the heart of
Africa, we are sayyid.
And people say, Are you serious? I don't
want to question that, it's between you and
Allah.
But nobody says, I'm related to Abu Jahl,
mashAllah. We just found out over Thanksgiving. Right?
We're gonna celebrate that we're related to Abujahed.
So to close inshaAllah,
I have my own mental clock, MashAllah.
To close,
what we're saying is that it will be
natural to grieve,
there will be some instances when the grief
goes on and persists or lingers longer than
expected.
But Ibn Qayyim has a very beautiful saying
about this,
he says that when Allah tests you,
when Allah tests you, it is never to
destroy you because one of the reasons grief
lingers and people don't get over things is
because they think they are done, they are
destroyed, they are done, there is no hope
for them, why would I try to improve?
But he hafidullah
says, that when Allah test you it is
never to destroy you.
When He removes something from your possession,
when Allah removes something from your possession, it
is only it is only to empty your
hands for an even greater gift.
It is only to empty your hands for
an even greater gift. Now think about how
powerful that is. Because you and I, you
and I take
everything we have
as ours.
And so, we actually grieve over sometimes property,
sometimes belongings.
And he is saying,
even if you lose
a human being, a relative, a loved one.
How do you know
among all the losses that Allah is not
emptying your hands for an even greater gift?
I mentioned in another lecture, and I'll stop
there.
A couple in Indonesia after the tsunami, or
during the tsunami actually in the mid 2000s,
had lost 9 of their children which was
essentially all of their children.
And when President Clinton had gone back to
meet them through the Clinton Foundation work, they
had brought that couple to meet him and
he found them smiling and he thought it
was strange. So he asked them, you know,
he said, is this the same couple I'm
trying to meet? Because he expected them to
be what? Like completely
overwhelmed
with this traumatic event that had occurred of
disastrous proportions.
And then they were, when they approached they
said, the translator said, they're smiling because she
has received the news that she is expecting
again.
She's expecting again.
The other 9, Allah has taken them,
but now He has given a new sign,
a new hope for that family. And so
they accepted it and they smiled. Brothers and
sisters, a lot to be hopeful for. Alkireen
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this, they're writing from direct experience.
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Allah bless us, may Allah indeed help those
of us. Sometimes we treat these lectures as
if it's just a lecture, maybe they they
are those who are hearing these words and
for whom it's a very direct direct touch
to their heart. May Allah improve improve your
condition. May Allah indeed bless you and allow
you to persist in that which you're experiencing
and grant you inshallah an opening.