Bilal Philips – The Best In Islam #32

Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. Bella's Peace and blessings beyond each and every one of you. I'd like to welcome you, their viewers, to our series, the best in Islam,

where we're looking at what Allah and His Messenger have defined for us, as what is in fact best, best in our lives, best in our community's best in our wives, our husbands, our children, best in our behavior, best in our property, best in all aspects of our lives. And in this segment, we'll be looking at

benefit. What is the best with regards to benefit?

Prophet Muhammad may God's peace and blessings be upon him

was reported by Jabber, even Abdullah

to have said, head on NASCI and Pharaoh homeliness, the best people are those most beneficial to other people. The best people are those most beneficial to other people. This lays down a principle in Islam, of the importance

with regards to benefit that whatever we do, whatever we develop, whatever we work on our jobs, our play, our families, everything should have at the back of it, benefit. Whatever we do, we should be doing it because there is a benefit in it, doing things just for the sake of doing it, without having any real benefit behind it is not the Islamic way, Islamic way is about the benefit that comes. So when we have an educational system, it should produce

a product that is beneficial to the society, not a product that is going to be harmful to the society, destructive corruptive. No, we need graduates who will benefit the society. So from one perspective, such graduates need to be morally upright.

And this is a problem that the world faces today, because of the fact that Western education was secularized.

Religion was taken out of education and with it religious values. So education became just teaching the facts. The end result is that

the moral principles which should guide people upon graduation are missing. And students will practice malpractices in order to achieve success in their education, without any worry or moral questions asked.

So it is taken for granted

that students will cheat. This is something I found all across the world. I went from one end of the Muslim world to the other.

Meeting students in

final years of their studies about to graduate, also students in first years of university first and second years, and asking them, you know how many of them would be able to swear by Allah, that they had not cheated on any test or examination. And there were few and far between hundreds would be in the audience and only a handful would raise their hands. Cheating had become a norm. Of course in the West, it's well known.

It's well known there too, but efforts to prevent it are greater recognizing this norm. They have tried to cut it out and do

with it very severely, very harshly. But it doesn't stop it. Because once the goal is a material goal, purely, there is no moral principle behind it. It's just about getting caught or not. So if you've got a sure way to cheat your way through, you will do it. If you shaky not sure, okay, you will avoid it because you don't want to get caught. But

reality is that in Muslim schools, for example, this should not be the case. It should be that when we ask that question to our graduating students, they all should put up their hands. But because of the fact that the education they're receiving is the same as education in the western systems, and there are not as many stringent rules to prevent the possibility of cheating. And cheating becomes rampant. It's done left and right. People don't even question it anymore. But what are we producing? What is the product of such educational systems where cheating is natural? Especially considering that the Prophet may God's peace and blessings be upon him, it said, when the Russian athletes, I

mean, whoever cheats us is not us. They're not true Muslims, their Islam is corrupted. And when we look across the Muslim world today, and we see people complaining everywhere, about the government's being corrupt, everything, all the dealings are corrupt, the police are corrupt, the Army is corrupt bribery, you know, kickbacks, all this stuff is going on, from one end to the other. How do we change this, the only way that we can change it is by producing graduates who are morally sound. Such graduates can then benefit the society.

Because if they are immoral, when they replace those who were there before them, it will be the same, they will just now have a turn as the others before them had a turn to fleece, the government to take the wealth for their personal gain, etc. Those coming after will do the same, it will just be a cycle repeating itself time and time again. So if we are to consider the importance of benefit, then we have to be conscious of the need to bring morality back into the classroom. In every class that we're teaching, there should be moral messages that are given to the students to build their moral character. So that they will in fact be beneficial products of our educational system

beneficial to the society to the community. So this idea of benefit

is critical. From the Islamic perspective. The jobs that they're going to take, when they graduate, they should be jobs which benefit the society, research, which is of no benefit should be discouraged in the society. For example, you might find research, which is focused on finding a cure for death. We know there's no cure for death. So should we be spending millions and millions of dollars trying to find a cure for death? No, this is not beneficial. Or we may spend billions of dollars to put a rocket ship on Mars in order to discover or determine the composition of dirt on Mars. Should we be doing that when there are millions and millions of people who are homeless on the

earth? No, there's no real benefit in that. The benefit should be in utilizing the wealth that we have for the benefit of our citizens, and so on and so forth. Always we judge things, whether to do it or not to do it, according to the benefit that there is in it. This is a critical point. And this is what the Prophet SAW Salem is saying, the best of people are those who are most beneficial to people. And that's why when he talked about learning the Quran, for example, he said Heroku Manta allemaal Quran, Allah, the best of you are those who learn the Quran and teach it to others. He didn't just stop at learning the Quran because of course, if you learn the Quran, it's beneficial to

you, but it's not necessarily beneficial to others. So that's why he added the additional principle and you

teach it to others. You know, that's what makes the learning of the Quran beneficial,

makes the learning of the Quran, what is most pleasing to Allah, where we learn it. And we pass that knowledge on to others, of course, internalizing it and trying to practice it ourselves before doing that, but the idea of teaching others becomes a critical principle. In order to generalize, benefit in the society as a whole, we always look at things with regards to the benefit. So for example, when your children, say for example, your children like sports, and they see the big soccer players getting billions of dollars, you know, the athletes, runners, jumpers, high jumpers, whatever, they're getting millions of dollars, basketball players, you know, volleyball players, all these

people getting a lot of money, and your children want to be one of those they want to be a star athlete, then we have to advise them. Is that really beneficial, besides the fact that if you put all your energy into athletics, all it takes is one injury and you're finished. And of all the people who strive in athletics only a fraction a small fraction succeed.

So we should encourage our children to seek worthy goals, goals, which will benefit the society will leave behind them a legacy, which will continue to benefit society, even when they're gone. So as the prophet may God's peace and blessings be upon him, it said the best of people are those most beneficial to people. With that their viewers, we're going to take a small break, and I'll see you right after the break.

Welcome back from the break, after looking at

the benefit, what makes people the best,

the fact that they are most beneficial to people. We're now going on to another topic, and that is perfume. We've reached the letter P. In our various texts, which speak about the best which have been

arranged alphabetically. So under perfume, we have the statement of the Prophet may God's peace and blessings be upon him

quoted by Ambleside and Audrey,

ought to booty Bukom al misc. The best of your perfumes is musk, this statement

indicates that

in terms of all of the various forms of perfume the best is musk. However, this statement was made in the context of burying the dead. And it is known that what this is referring to in terms of the best forms of perfume to use to put on the dead.

On the shroud which is over the dead, the best one is mosque. So it doesn't necessarily mean the best perfume period is mosque but for burial purposes the best is musk. perfume of course, is among the things that the Prophet may God's peace and blessings be upon him loved. As he said, another narration of all the things of this world which have been made appealing and pleasing to Him, the Prophet, it was perfume and women. And that's natural for men,

that Allah has made women most pleasing of the things of this world.

And he had said in other narrations, that the best of the things of this world are

a righteous woman relative to men again, but going back to perfume. The prophet had further said,

as Narrated by Abu Huraira in the hierarchy be Rajul. Mother Harare, who will have fear alone will have a three bit Nisa, Mother Hara Lono will have theory who the best perfume for males is that which has the strongest scent

and the

faintest color. While the best perfume for women is that which has the strongest color, and the faintest scent, this is in keeping with the general prohibition, which the Prophet, God's peace and blessings be upon him made for women wearing perfume in public, when leaving the home, that they should not perfume themselves to such a degree, that when they leave anybody within 10 meters of them, they get the blast of the perfume.

Because such a person is drawing attention to herself, and we're talking about male attention, not female attention. And of course, the consequence of it again is harmful to her. So this is why the Prophet may God's peace and blessings be upon him. It said that a woman who goes out deliberately, having perfumed herself to such a degree, that the scent is going to be hitting everybody left and right, drawing the attention of the men, that she is like an adulterous going out of her home.

This is something that she should not do. And here the Prophet Muhammad wa sallam has said that the best scent for the woman is the one in which the color that comes from it is stronger, and the smell is weaker. So this was general recommendation, not to oppress women, to prevent them from performing themselves. If they're going to gatherings or women's gatherings, no problem, fine for them to wear strongest of perfumes, no problem. Amongst the women, where the harm of male attention, unwanted male attention has been prevented.

But in the general society, then in order to protect her because she is the one who suffers in the end. I mean, how many cases do we hear of men, you know, being attacked, and raped by women, I don't think we can hear any. So that's not a fear on their part. And their gatherings tend to be more in the society. So they're encouraged to have stronger perfume, you know, to keep the atmosphere, the areas that they're in, nice smelling, etc. So this is the recommendation and the Prophet Muhammad wa sallam himself, used to love to wear perfume himself, and he encouraged others to do so. Moving on.

We're coming still under the letter P. We've come to poetry and what is the best and the worst of poetry? We have a narration from our era in which he quoted the Messenger of Allah is saying the onion Telia. jofa had become prey Han. Uriah who highroller who men and em Telia. Sharon, la an EM tele a job for a hottie come, I haven't Uriah highroller. Who, when an EM tele Sharon, it would be better for you to have your insides filled with pus, which corrodes it, then to fill it with poetry. Sounds very harsh. For those of us who like poetry, it's very tough. So what did this all mean? Why is the Prophet Muhammad Salah coming down so heavily on poetry, that it will be better not to have

that in our brains in our heads? Keep poetry out of our heads?

He is referring really here now to the corrupt poetry.

Well, how do we know the statement doesn't make any distinction? Well, this is an important point that we have to keep in mind when we look at Hadith statements of the Prophet may God's peace and blessings be upon him just like verses from the Quran. If you take a verse out of its context, it can change its meaning. You can find a portion of a verse For example, where Allah says in the Quran

Latok Abu salah, don't come near prayer, formal prayer, don't come near prayer. Stay away from prayer.

But all of Islam says pray. So we have to know the context. It goes on to say one to Sakara if you're in a state of intoxication if for whatever reason you became intoxicated,

you had to have an operation. So they gave you anesthesia that anesthesia puts you in a

State of which is similar to intoxication. So the time for prayer comes you they've just come out of the operation, you know, you're still under the anesthesia, don't pray, then wait until you know what you're saying. Your head is clear, then pray. Context, important. Same thing with many of the verses that those who dislike Islam are opposed to Islam will quote verses where it says, with regards to disbelievers, killed them wherever you find them. But again, these verses are talking about the battlefield, where one is in a battle, and you come across the enemy, you have to kill the enemy. That's what you're there, for. That's what the battle is about, you know, is Kill or be

killed, but not anywhere you find people in society, you're going to start massacring people left and right now. So the context is important. So similarly, when the Prophet Muhammad SAW Salam said this, we have to look at what else did he say, we also find that he had taken a poet, Hassan amplifier, but he had made him his personal point. So that when different tribes from Arabia would come to visit him, and it was their practice, to recite poetry, to show how,

you know, prestigious, they were, et cetera. So when they came, and they would make the recitation you would call Hassan would recite Islamic poetry, to respond to them. So we're, if it meant that we were not supposed to deal with poetry at all, then the Prophet Muhammad Salah would not have done that. So from his own actions, it clarifies that what he's referring to is the corrupt poetry, poetry, which is used to praise idolatry. Or it's used to praise, * and fornication,

alcohol and corruption, that kind of poetry, of course, is harmful. So to be better, to have pus filling your insides and to have that type of poetry within you. So that's what it is, in reference to. And in our times, of course, poetry is put to music, or we call it song and dance today, that poetry, if it is filled with corruption, and much of it today is, then it is something that Muslims should avoid. If it is, praising God, speaking about good things, etc, then it isn't evil. It is something which is acceptable. Of course, there are some other conditions with regards to music in general, that the use of musical instruments in a winded stringed instruments is not permissible,

but where we're using drum and the voice, this is permissible. So the content as long as the content is halal, then such forms of music, of poetry are acceptable Islamically and perfectly rewardable Not just acceptable, but rewardable If what is being said in the poetry is in praise of Allah, and in praise of Islam, and enlightening people to the truth with that their viewers would like to thank you for being with us, and another of the segments from our program, the best in Islam. And we hope that you'll continue to be with us in further episodes of the series. And now I bid you farewell. Salaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi wabarakatuh