Ammar Alshukry – Title 5 Lessons From The People Of The Cave
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AI: Transcript ©
All praise is due to Allah. We seek
his
guidance and his forgiveness, and we seek refuge
in Allah from the evil of ourselves and
the whispering of our desire. No one can
misguide.
And whom he allows to be misled, no
one can guide. And I bear witness that
there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah
alone and having no partners,
and that Muhammad salallahu alaihi wasallam is his
slave and his messenger and his perfect worshiper.
To proceed,
we are encouraged by the prophet
every Friday to read Surat Al Kahf.
And Surat Al Kahf is a chapter
that details
4 stories.
It is a chapter
that deals with the concept of fitna,
trials. And the 4 stories that we read
in Surah Al Kahf reflect this notion of
trials.
A person will be tried in their deen
like,
or a person will be tried in their
money like,
the owner of the 2 gardens,
or a person will be tried with regards
to knowledge even like Musa and the Khidr,
or a person will be tried
regarding power like Dhul Qarnain.
And so in this brief Khutba, I wanted
to share just a few lessons
from Ashabul Kahf.
This story
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that
Rasulullah
salallahu alaihi wasalam was asked about
about a group of people who came into
a cave.
Their story was amazing. And
I don't have the time to go over
many gems, but I'll just share
3 or 4 if time permits 5.
But the first thing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
tells us that these people were persecuted and
they came to a cave. And Allah mentions
twice that they are a
that they are sorry,
not a but
We
know Allah says that they are young,
and the fact that they are young is
praise for them
because young people normally
are more distracted
with entertainment
and the frivolity of youth
than big picture questions.
Why are we here?
And why are our people worshiping idols?
Generally, young people are deluded by entertainment.
And so if you were to ask young
people about the newest singers, they would know
the newest athletes, they would know the newest
movies, they would know the newest series, they
would know.
And so when Allah
is repeatedly calling them young, that is praise
for these young people that they separated
from the frivolity of their society.
They believed in Allah and we increase them
in guidance. But there is also praise for
the companions of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam when
the Surah was revealed in Mecca because the
people who were around Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
were also young, and young people change the
world in every time and place. And we
see even here in the United States in
the past couple of months after everything that
has been happening with the war on the
people of Gaza, you saw that the greatest
national conversations were sparked not by people in
corporate offices and not by politicians,
but by the young people, the students in
universities who are having encampments all over the
country and all over the world that were
causing
the discussion to be happening about divestments from
the Zionist state. We
Allah says they were a young people who
believed in Allah.
So the first is the power that comes
with youth.
The second lesson
is Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
Allah says, we strengthen their hearts.
We strengthen their heart when they stood up
against their people. And they stood up, the
mufasrin said, a number of times. Number 1,
they stood up in front of the king,
and they addressed the king for his idol
worship. And then they stood up to their
own families, and then they stood up in
the marketplace, and then they stood up when
they met each other in front of the
cave, and they said,
our Lord, the Lord of the heavens and
the earth. We won't call upon other than
him. And so this idea that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala gives steadfastness and Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala gives strength to people's hearts in their
greatest moments of difficulty and crisis. And we
see this word,
we see this phrase appear in a number
of other places in the Quran, where we
see it before the battle of Badr when
the Sahaba Radhiallahu anhu are about to meet
the enemy for the first time and Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala cast drowsiness
upon the companions. Instead of being nervous and
and being incredibly anxious, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
put a calmness and a stillness on them
and made their hearts steadfast so much so
that their swords almost slipped out of their
hands.
And we see also with the mother of
Musa, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in Surat
Al Qasas,
Allah says
Allah
says, Allah
says, that when the basket that was placed
in the river went to the house of
pharaoh, and Faraun's wife
captures
the son,
the son of the woman or Musa alaihis
salam,
and she says,
She says, this is a joy to me.
The mother of Musa put him in the
Nile River because she was afraid of him
ending up in the hands of Thrawn. And
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sends that basket directly
to the house of Thrawn. That would cause
anybody to panic.
But that's the plan of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
And that's the ilm of Allah. And that's
the wisdom of Allah. And that's the power
of Allah. That he can make Musa grow
up in the very house that the mother
of Musa is afraid of, and he will
be the most protected child in Egypt because
of it, because Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala knows
what you do not know, but Allah had
to give her heart steadfastness.
That she can be of those who believe.
And so you ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
for steadfastness of your heart as you are
going through difficulty.
Number 1, steadfastness of the heart allows for
a person to believe in the deen.
Number 2, it allows for you to believe
in the promises of Allah. Allah
and his promise
and his prophet, they promised
that
that the end will always be for the
believers. No matter how dark it seems, no
matter how the entire world goes against the
believers, no matter how belittle the people are,
no matter how weak they are, Allah
has promised
that our soldiers are going to be the
ones who win.
Allah prescribed that I will win and my
messengers and everybody else will lose.
But you need steadfastness of the heart to
be able to believe in the promise of
Allah. A third
is
what the
people say
when they enter into the cave. They say
They go into the cave
and they
say, enter into the cave, Allah will spread
out for you from His mercy.
They're entering into the cave.
It is a place that is dark. It
is a place that has no amenities.
It is a place that is constricted. It
is a place that has no heat. It
is a place that is cold. It is
a place that has nothing. But what are
they expecting to find? They're expecting to find
the mercy of Allah.
And that shows incredible optimism
that a person, even as they're entering into
the cave of their life, the cave of
oppression
or the cave of imprisonment
or the cave of grief or the cave
of poverty, that a person has optimism in
Allah.
That Allah
because I know that Allah is a Rahman,
that Allah
will provide for me
mercy from where I don't expect.
And we read in Surah Al Kahf how
Allah
dealt with them and gave them divine care
and how Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala watched over
them and protected them.
The 4th the third is optimism.
Having optimism in
when you see how Allah
deals with the righteous. But then the 4th,
and this is the last one, Allah
as you know causes them to go to
sleep for 100 of years, 309 years to
be exact, and then he resurrects them and
Allah
specifically uses the word bath in their story
twice to indicate the resurrection that the Mushrikeen
of Makkah did not believe in. And Allah
then causes for them to be resurrected
and they come out and Allah says,
We cause them to interact with the people
of the town that they may come to
know that the promise of Allah
is true. For who to know that the
promise of Allah is true? For
that they recognize that the promise of Allah
is true. You see, they were a people
who fled
a society that was idolatrous
because they knew that they did not have
the power
to confront them.
They were going to be persecuted.
They said that if our people have power
over us, they're gonna stone us or they're
going to force us back into our religion.
And so they fled
to seek refuge in a cave.
But Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala caused them to
sleep for that period of time. And when
they came out, they found that that entire
society had become Muslim.
So that they may come to know that
the promise of Allah is true.
And I share this to you because the
promise of Allah is true.
And it may be that you are expecting
the promise of Allah to happen in 1
year or 2 years or 3 years or
4 years, but the promise of Allah
is not tied to your time span.
It is not tied to how you feel
it should pass.
It is tied to Allah
timing.
And these people,
they had to have an extended life period.
Allah
caused them to die for 300 years just
so that they could have the gift to
witness that the promise of Allah
is true. And so we believe that the
promise of Allah is true. We believe that
Palestine will be free. We believe that there
will come a time when the Ummah of
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam will be led
by the righteous and not be led by
the wicked. We believe in a time Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says
that we will give establishment
to those who have been oppressed.
Those that have been established in the oppressed
in the east and the west, that Allah
will make them a ima, and he will
make them of those who inherit the land.
That is a promise of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala. Whether or not it happens next year
or the year after, what we are required
to do is to believe in that promise,
to have steadfastness with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
have rubbed of our heart, and that we
ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to grant us
a worship of him that he loves and
that Allah
allow us to worship him as he loves
until the day we meet him and that
he makes the best of our days the
day that we meet him. We ask Allah
to allow us to hear the speech and
to follow the best of it. We ask
Allah
to grant freedom to our brothers and sisters
who are occupied in Palestine
and to bring
safety and security to them. And we ask
Allah
to relieve the bloodshed from the Muslims all
over the world, whether it be in Sudan
or whether it be the Uyghurs in China
or whether it be our brothers and sisters
in Bangladesh, that Allah
brings stability to the Muslim world and that
Allah
guide us and guide our hearts and guide
us to the unity that he loves.