Ammar Alshukry – Allah’s Beautiful Names #13 Miracles Happen When You Depend Only On Allah – Al Azeez
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AI: Transcript ©
Military badges, Ivy League degrees, MDs, PhDs,
where does true honor come from?
Al Aziz is one of the names of
Allah that appears the most in the Quran,
some 92 times. Is in the Arabic language
is strength and the quality of overpowering,
and is loftiness
and being hard to attain.
Something that's hard to attain and desirable also
is Aziz, but it has to be both
rare and desirable. Being rare, and if you're
not desirable, doesn't matter. You have to be
rare in something that people want. A precious
metal for example. And so the name in
Aziz
has three aspects, that which is rare, that
which overpowers,
and that which is the source of power.
So the idea of overpowering is mentioned in
the hadith of Uthman
said, I had a pain which was about
to destroy me. So I came to the
prophet and
the prophet
said, wipe over it with your right hand,
And 7 times
say, I seek refuge in the dominant power
of Allah, where and his might from the
evil of what I find. So what's being
communicated is that Allah overpowers
even this pain. Allah overpowers this disease, this
ailment. He said, I did it
and the pain went away,
and I told my family, told everybody to
do it. Right? So you're asking Allah
to overpower
this illness that you experience. The other aspect
is Allah
being the source of power.
And this is a crucial concept that Muslims
always have to remember and it will truly,
if we believe in it, it'll change the
trajectory of our ummah. Allah
is the source of strength.
Oh, Allah, owner of sovereignty, dominion. You give
sovereignty to whom you wish, and you take
sovereignty away from whom you wish, and you
honor whom you wish, and you humble whom
you wish, in your hand is all good.
Indeed, you are able to do all things.
And Surah Al Imran.
And Allah
says,
That whoever wants honor and power to Allah
belongs all power and all honor. And Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala all mentions
that they say
The hypocrites they said that when we go
back to Madinah,
the powerful of us are going to remove
the debased. The honored amongst us are going
to remove those who are debased, but
Allah
but honor really belongs to Allah and to
his messenger and to the believers, but the
hypocrites, they do not know.
Islam is the source of honor. You know,
Hakim ibn Hizam, he went to the marketplace,
and he found a cloak that was being
sold that belonged to one of the kings
of Yemen, Duyazen.
So he bought it for 50 dinars. And
then he went to the prophet and
he gave him this cloak that belonged to
a king as a gift. And so the
prophet
went on to the pulpit and he wore
it, and it was said that there was
no one in a cloak that was more
beautiful than Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam when he
was wearing that cloak. And then the prophet
salallahu alaihi wasallam
goes and he gifts it to Usam ibn
Zayd.
Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasallam was not attached to
the dunya. He wears the cloak. It's beautiful.
Thank you very much. But then he's just
as happy to go and give it to
somebody else, and he gives it to Usam
ibnizaid. So Hakim
sees Usama in the marketplace wearing the cloak
of the Yazan. So Hakim is seeing now
the son of a freed slave wearing the
cloak of a king of Yemen.
So he walks up to Osama, and he
says, yo, what's going on? And so Osama
says, what's the problem?
I'm better than Dhul
Yazan. My father is better than his father,
and my mother is better than his mother.
What made Usama ibn Zayed say
that he, the son of a former slave,
is better than one of the kings of
Yemen? What's the difference between them? It's not
his money. It's not his resources. It's Islam.
Islam gave him that
Islam gave him that dignity. He believes that
he's better than one of the kings of
Yemen, and he absolutely was.
Not because he has more money than the
king or more subjects, but because he and
his family had Islam. And that is the
true source of honor and the true source
of superiority.
There was a a high school student
in my community once who reminded me of
this concept.
In the world of high school social structures,
I was I was
not in high school anymore. So this is
not a high school story, but he was
in high school.
And he would have been top tier in
the world of high school social structures. He
was tall, strong, handsome,
very strong personality.
He would have been someone that at any
high school, he would have been any crew
would have loved to have him. Yet I
would always see him when he would come
to the Masjid with 2 other brothers who
were the complete opposite. They were also in
high school, but they were small, they had
very mild personalities,
and so as far as high school social
structures go,
he would be top choice and they would
probably be the bottom choice. I'm just being
honest. So one time I asked him about,
like, why do you choose to keep company
with them as opposed to the thousands of
others I'm sure that would love for you
to be in their company?
And then he said something to me. He
said, anybody who makes such a to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, they are more beloved to
me that I be in their company. The
fact that they pray to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala makes them cooler than everybody else in
the school.
That is
the attribute of somebody who believes
that Islam is the source of honor. Islam
is the source of dignity. That is what
Izzah does. It makes a person feel that
Islam is enough. And one of the greatest
statements in that regard was given by a
man who knew who knew strength and who
knew honor.
In fact, more than most people who have
ever lived, and that is the Khalifa,
Umarul Khattab radiAllahu,
the man who empires would collapse at his
feet. When Umar radiAllahu traveled to Jerusalem, he
was approached by his general, Abu Baydin al
Jarrah. Before the official protocol of the city
began receiving the caliph of the Muslims, Abu
Baydin told Umar that these are people, you
know, they're people of extravagance. They're people who
like lavishness.
And so he's basically, you know, Umar is
coming
with his patched
garments that he would sew.
And so it's a vision that's much, much
different than what the people of Al Quds
were used to. So Baydna is hinting to
Umar, like, can we get you in some,
you know, can you wear something different? And
then on Umar, he says to Ubaydah, I
wish that someone other than you had said
that. And then he said,
we were the most humiliated people. This statement
is one that we should all know. It's
one that we really need to not just
memorize, but try our best to internalize. He
said,
Allah honored us with Islam. He said, we
were the most humiliated people. I want you
to imagine the map of the Arabian Peninsula
at that time. You had Yemen south of
you, and that was
conquered or occupied by the Abyssinians.
You had Iraq to the East of you,
and that was taken over by the Persians.
You had Assam, north of you and that
was taken over by the Byzantines.
And the Persians and the Byzantine Empire are
both fighting over Assam. And then you have
Egypt west of you, and that is taken
over by the Byzantines as well. So everywhere
around you has been divided up by the
superpowers of the world. The Abyssinians had taken
Yemen. The Persians had taken Iraq. They're fighting
over a sham, and you have the Byzantines
in Egypt.
Nobody even bothers to conquer the Arabs.
Nobody.
Like, do you know what that does for
your self esteem
when nobody even bothers to conquer you? Nobody
even there's nothing there. There's no resources.
There's no rivers.
There's no minerals.
There's just some desert
and some Bedouins
fighting each other for 100 of years,
and there's a house that they say was
built by Abraham. That's it. There's no use.
But Allah honored us with Islam. Now all
of those powers
are collapsing under our feet. Now we've taken
Iraq, and we're taking Assam, and we're taking
Egypt on all of these places.
What gave them that honor? What gave them
that dignity? He said Islam.
So Umar's perception doesn't end there. He continues
saying, if we were to ever seek a
source of honor other than Islam, Allah
will humiliate us again. Islam is the path
of honor. It's the path of dignity. It's
the path of strength Because all of these
things are sourced from Al Aziz. And so
if we're to seek it from other than
him,
through other systems, through other beliefs, through other
methodologies,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will humiliate us again.
So following Islam
is undoubtedly a path to Islam, but there's
also another one that I wanna mention to
you. When a person understands that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala is the source of Izzah, then
they trust Allah even if it's opposite to
their instincts. Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he says,
He says that wealth is not ever diminished
by charity. And he says,
and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not increase
someone who forgives in anything other than honor.
And no one humbles themselves for Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala except that he raises them. This
is in it's reported by Muslim.
All of these three things in this hadith
go against what you would instinctively expect.
That if you give charity, it diminishes your
wealth. And that if you forgive someone, they'll
take advantage of it. And that and and
that they'll see it as weakness. And if
you humble yourself, people will think less of
you. But the prophet
is teaching us that these things ultimately are
in Allah
control, and he is the one who renders
these things effective or ineffective. And so he
made giving charity a cause of increase of
wealth, not decrease. And Allah
made forgiveness a cause of increase of honor,
not less. And Allah
made humility a cause of loftiness and not
humiliation.
One of the takeaways that I want you
to have with this name is to try
to seek
'izzah through forgiving others. May Allah
grant the Muslims 'izzah over every earth and
under every sky.