Faraz Rabbani – The Rawha #116 Loving Prophet Muhammad and Faith What Prophet Muhammad was Granted Experiential Sp
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You're listening to the Roja, daily guidance for
seekers with Sheikh Rasro Beni.
In our Roha sessions
in which we look
at some of the hadith of the messenger
of Allah
and some guidance
for students of Islamic knowledge from the words
of Eam al Ghazali
We are continuing to look at 40 hadiths
on
the virtues of the prophet
And we reached hadith number
14.
You
a Muslim.
Sayna Anas ibn Malik
relates
that
he said
that he heard the messenger of Allah say,
none of you believes
until I am more beloved to them
than
their parents,
their children,
and all people.
This hadith is related by both Bukhari and
Muslim.
None of you believes what's being negated here
is none of you believes
as they
have been commanded to believe.
None of you believes
with proper belief.
Because sound belief, it is sufficient to believe
in the messenger, sallallahu alaihi salam. Valid belief.
But it is a religious obligation
that one believe,
that one love the prophet
more
than any other
creation.
And this is the love
of preference
and choice.
It is the love of preference and choice.
The love
of
of inclining with one's temperament,
there too
the perfection
of love
is that even one's inclination
of preference be towards
the messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. But the
very least is
that you would choose the prophet
over anyone else.
Right. It's a love of preference.
You would prefer the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam over any other.
But more than that, is that
you would want
you incline
to all that is of the prophet
over your inclination to anything else. As Sayid
Al Nas himself
exemplified that he he did not like you
used to like gourd and squash.
But when he found out the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam liked it, he started liking
it.
That is
the love of inclination,
which is even higher than the love of
choosing.
So sayidna Jabbir
relates
that
I was granted 5 things
that none was granted before me.
The first
the first is
I was granted victory
through
dreadful awe
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala would place
a roab, a dreadful awe in the hearts
of his enemy
of his enemies.
For the distance of
a month's travel.
That even
when they were coming towards battle they would
have fear in them,
even though if you consider
any of the early battles.
The the Muslims were several times smaller than
their enemies. Yet the enemies were fearful of
them.
At Badr at Uhud, the enemy was 3
times larger,
And they were incomparably
better equipped and better trained.
They had more weapons and they had more
mount
more mounts.
The Saba had barely any horses between them.
While a lot of the Qureshi army had
horses and other animals.
They didn't even have enough swords to go
around.
Yet this was from Allah's
granting the prophet
victory.
Right?
And
and
refers to victory
and that which leads to victory. So I
was given victory, I was supported
in being given victory
by
through dreadful awe for the distance of a
month.
And the whole earth was made a place
of worship
for me,
and made pure and purifying.
So any person of my community
who who find themselves within the time of
a prayer, let them pray.
Because in some
religious traditions,
you could only perform the prayer in designated
places of worship,
in the masjid,
in the place of worship.
Or in a particular manner you had to
be in
a home, like you had to be in
a building, you couldn't be outside,
you had to be in private. There's all
kinds of limits
to that.
And the per the place had to be
sanctified.
The place had to be sanctified.
So that becomes
a haram.
Right? Or
or it becomes designated,
consecrated as a place for Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala. Just like the Masjid has to be
dedicated it
in perpetuity
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
But
the believer can pray anywhere
on earth,
and all the earth has been made
pure,
completely pure.
Right? And purifying in that you can if
you don't have water, you can use that
earth itself
for purification,
for Tsheyamun.
So there's no excuse. So any person of
my community who finds,
you know, who enters in a time of
prayer,
let them pray
that you don't have an excuse and this
is a great
divine
favor and facilitation
to his prophet
Of
course, this does not mean
that any place on earth is considered a
masjid.
Here, masjid
is
being used in the general linguistic sense.
Ini
is a place of prayer.
Right? Because Masjid has in the in
the religious usage, Masjid has a specific
is a specific
concept.
That is
the Islamic
usage
of the term Masjid,
which is a place that had been has
been a place that is owned
and has been dedicated in perpetuity to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So it is not permit and in that
sense, it is not permitted
in the Sharia
to name
a place Masjid
unless
it is owned and has been dedicated in
perpetuity
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. It has been
designated a masjid.
Right? So a masala, a place that is
being rented out, for example, cannot be
cannot be referred to as a masjid.
Right? Because a masjid has its rules.
According to all 4 schools, you can only
perform iqikaf in a masjid.
There's rules related
to the masjid. But here, it's being used
in the general sense. The linguistic sense of
Masjid
is
which is a place
that you can prostrate in, I e, you
can pray in.
In. And
war spoils have been permitted for me,
and they were not permitted for any before
me.
Right? And
the the spoils of war, there's
a fiqh related to how they are to
be apportioned.
That what can be taken
if one wins
in in in war and how it is
to be distributed.
And there's a sam, there's a share
that was
for the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And that share, of course, he would distribute
it to to those in need, etcetera.
Right?
And this was not permitted for prophets before
him.
And I was granted
the intercession.
And the intercession here is referring
to a Shafa'al Uthma, the great intercession,
which we'll see further about. And we've seen
earlier in the rohas when we looked at
the hadiths of the greater intercession, which are
mentioned in the Sahih.
On the day of resurrection, the prophet will
intercede
not just for his ummah, for all
of creation,
for the
awesomeness
of
the
last day
to be
lessened.
And a prophet would be sent to his
own people
exclusively.
And I was sent
to all people,
generally.
To all people,
generally. This is related by Imam al Bukhari
and Muslim.
And al Qasthalani,
the commentator on Sahih al Bukhari said,
the mention of a month of travel
is because that was the furthest possible enemy
that the prophet had
from
from Medina.
Right?
Hadith number 16. So these are some of
the unique qualities of the prophet
and from this and other hadiths,
the ulema
took
a separate science related to the prophet
which is the Hasa'is.
This
this hadith mentions 5 things unique to the
prophet
And there's others,
there's other texts that mention things that are
unique to the prophet that no one shares
him in
shares with him in.
So they made that as one of the
doors of furthering one's knowledge of the prophet
to know those matters that are exclusive
to the prophet
Hadith number 16.
So Abdullah Ibn Amr
relates that the messenger of Allah
said, I am Muhammad,
the
unlettered
prophet.
There is no prophet after me.
I have been granted
comprehensive
speech
and
complete
speech.
Right? So there's 3 parts. I am Muhammad,
the unlettered prophet, and Nabiul Ummi.
The
The is the one who does not read
nor write.
We do not say he was illiterate because
literacy has to do with
has a sense of education.
He was not uneducated,
but rather he was unlettered that he did
not learn how to read, read and write
but rather
Allah
granted him
both knowledge and wisdom
far exceeding the knowledge and wisdom of anyone
of his age even before prophethood.
So much so that he was still in
his thirties, not yet considered out
from
the age of being a young man.
And yet, Quraish would
refer to him and defer to him
despite his being an orphan
on critical
decisions
and to resolve critical disputes such as how
they who would place
the black stone into the Kaaba because every
one of
the clans
within
Quraysh wanted to be the one that did
so, and each had their variegated claims.
But
they agreed to defer to the prophet
even though
the Arabs, in general, particularly Quraysh, were more
status conscious, did not defer to someone young.
They did not defer to someone
who was an orphan,
who was not an an elder, who was
not well connected, and he was not wealthy
by their standards
and
the the unlettered prophet.
And he's also, of course, his
Ummah. The Arabs were known as. K. The
unlettered
peoples.
And as the prophet said,
We are an unlettered people. We neither read
nor write. But he's not talking about the
whole community of the prophet and this is
a general statement
referring to his people
at that time,
but he instilled the principles of literacy within
them,
and
and
actively encouraged the Sahaba to read, to and
to write.
And there's a process of literacy
that took place of education
that took place
particularly in the Madinan phase, but had started
in the Makkan phase. And
this is, of course, one of the
qualities of the prophet that was mentioned in
in previous scriptures.
It is one of the the reasons the
prophet also mentioned it.
And his being unlettered
highlights
his miracle
even more
intensely.
This was not due to his
learning and his gathering
of
of knowledge
and
his dipping into different intellectual traditions.
And this was
it could not be claimed but that it
is
divinely
granted.
There is no prophet after me. This is
something the prophet emphasized
in numerous hadith. Some of them on their
own have reached the level of mass transmission
as an individual text,
but there is
a mass corpus
of this of decisively established
traditions, all highlighting the same meaning in many
different ways.
I was granted
comprehensive
and completing
speech.
The words of the prophet
were few,
but their meaning
was
vast.
Single statements that the prophet
said
have
numerous different contextual
applications.
So for example, the prophet
said,
be with the group
and beware of being alone.
This has theological
implications
that make your understanding
of matters of belief
correspond
to the group. And beware
of divergent.
And beware of diverging
from
in your in what you believe from
the
the mainstream
of Islamic
of this of of the Islamic community.
It has
consequences at the level of practice
of religious practice.
Ensure that your
understanding
of
your
religious practice
and your own
on your own religious practices
correspond to a majoritarian
understanding.
It's not something
it's not
a and beware of divergence.
Beware of divergent understandings
from the mainstream. If people haven't said this
before
and we believe in a
in a revealed tradition
that is preserved till the end of the
day till the end of times, then if
what you're doing wasn't something
that
has been
yeah. That the mainstream
of Islam has not accepted as being one
of the sound understandings, then beware of divergence.
It also has to do with socially. Be
with the group. Be with community.
And beware
of being alone.
Right? It has
a theological
aspect. It has
a religious
practice aspect,
and it also has a social aspect.
Don't be alone. K? All from 1 and
much more can be said
of the many dimensions of the application of
this hadith. It applies to the individual and
also applies to the community.
Similarly, the prophet
said,
gatherings are a trust. Two words
and a letter connecting them.
Gatherings are a trust, meaning
many things.
1, at the level of what is said
in a gathering, that what is said in
a gathering is a trust. If it's a
private gathering,
so it's not clearly a public gathering, then
anything said in a private gathering is a
trust.
You cannot disclose it unless
you have clear permission or you're sure.
But gatherings are trust also entail that everything
connected with the gathering is a trust.
So for example,
if
brother Amr went to make wudu, he took
off his cap.
He went make made wudu
and then he prayed.
But he forgot to put on his cap
and he left.
That cap and you but you were sitting
with him.
That and there's no one else. Everyone left.
It's only
brother Bilal
and the cap.
If he leaves the cap and it gets
stolen,
he
squandered a trust.
And there's many, many implications.
The Olamah explained this
to have
numerous implications.
Also,
in the sense of
that when you sit with somebody,
they're trusting you in the conversation that they
have.
So they connected it with the sense that
if you sit with someone and they they
discuss something with you.
You have to guard their privacy, but you
have to only say that which is trustworthy
to them.
So someone's asking you for advice on how
to
how
to deal with their husband,
and you say, you know, best thing to
do with the husband is to
is to
ignore them.
And just see let's see what happens if
if they do that. No. Because that's a
breach of trust.
Many, many implications just of 2 words, the
prophet said.
Similarly, when the you know, and many many
other examples.
And the ulama differed. The of
the prophet the encompassing speech of the prophet
does this refer to a subset of hadiths.
And some of the hadith
commentators and scholars
took that opinion.
It refers to a particular set of hadith
of the prophet
that are the brief but comprehensive hadiths,
such as the ones we have mentioned.
That the one who is consulted has been
trusted.
And other such hadiths that are brief but
very comprehensive.
Others said no.
That I was granted comprehensive speech. In general,
the prophet only spoke briefly.
It's very rare that he spoke at length.
Even when he spoke at length,
his statements were brief.
So for example, the famous hadith in the
40 Na'awi,
purification
is half of faith.
And the praise of Allah
fills the scales,
etcetera. But each of them, each part of
it is brief yet comprehensive.
And every part of it is
It's
comprehensive
speech.
So the other position, which is a stronger
according to the ulama,
is that all the words of the prophet
were comprehensive in meaning.
And in this narration,
in with
in in the Muslim, if Ahmad said to
Joab, we're granted the most comprehensive
of speech,
wakawatima,
and
the
final and decisive
most perfect speech. The khatim
is
final speech. There's no words after the words
of the prophet
on any topic.
But also
it
this is the most perfect of speech.
Right? Because Khatim
completes a document,
but it also perfects it.
No words,
no human words can be more perfect than
the words of the prophet
So we'll look at one more hadith,
The messenger of Allah
said, I came
with
the keys of the world
on
a
radiant
horse
that
Jibril
came to me. And it and upon it
was
a,
you know, like a a carrying case of
sundus. What is sundus?
Yeah. Of of
precious stones.
Right? With the keys to the world. Right?
And this hadith
but the the prophet
did not want it. Now they say was
this actually physically
or spiritually? Was this in a spiritual vision
or physically? We don't know. The hadith was
related by Imam Ahmed
and by ibn Hibban
and Abduya al Maqdisi
with a sound or rigorously authentic chain of
transmission.
Okay? And this idea that the prophet was
given the the
the Maqalid
or the Mafatiha
of the Khazayin of the Duniya. That Allah
granted him the choice
to to be
a king prophet.
Right? Who has dominion on earth and the
wealth of the earth
or to be a servant messenger.
And he chose the path of servitude over
the path
of kingship.
And he was granted
the choice to have wealth beyond imagination,
and he turned away from it.
And then in the next hadith, the prophet
describes
the the the akhlaq that he was sent
with. We'll look at that next time.
We'll just read briefly from Imam Al Ghazali's,
So Imam al Ghazali in in his council
to a student
of his,
it's a council for all those seeking
to act on on
on guidance,
continues by saying
He said, no well
that
some of what you asked me about
is not sound to answer
in writing and speech.
But rather,
the answer is by reaching that state.
You know what it is.
Otherwise,
knowledge of it is from
the impossible.
Why? Because it is experiential.
Because anything that is experiential,
it's not
sound
to
describe it in by by words alone.
They describe love. I can talk about it,
talk about it, but you have to experience
it. Such as describing sweetness. You have to
taste it.
Or the
bitterness of what is bitter.
It is it can only be known through
experiencing.
Just as an impotent man wrote to a
companion of his to describe to him the
experience
of *.
How is it?
So his friend wrote to him and said,
oh so and so, I used to think
that you're just impotent. But now I know
that you're both impotent
and stupid. Because
this experience,
this taste
is experiential.
If you reach it, you will know.
Otherwise, it is not sound to describe it
by words
and and writing.
So to talk about
spiritual experiences and so on,
you have to.
They're about experiencing it. So you're saying, I'm
not gonna answer your questions about those things,
rather get there and you'll know it.
What the can you describe what it means
to have kashiya of Allah?
Knowledge
can tell you how to attain kashiya of
Allah,
The characteristics of those who have it,
etcetera.
What's the reality of it? How do you
feel when you have kashiya of Allah?
Right? What does it mean
to feel gratitude to Allah? What does it
mean
to have reverent of Allah? We can say
that reverent of of Allah is nurtured in
these ways.
It's facilitated
by these things. It is manifest in these
things. But what is it itself?
Attain it and you'll know. If you don't,
then
and so some of the avoided talking about
and Imam Ghazali generally, though not always, stuck
to this.
Dislike
describing spiritual experiences. Why?
Because the
the the point is get there.
How?
By striving. Whoever
strives, attains.
But other olema said that no.
Just as the Quran
and the sunnah
point to the experiences
and the joys, and they describe them
of
closeness to Allah and the good pleasure of
Allah and the rewards of paradise
and
the rejoicing of those therein.
Right? That these are things that if you
that tashweek.
Right?
That
out of encouragement
and to
and to raise people's religious resolve.
They say, oh, well, right now, just focus
on getting there. But you find people aren't
getting there, so you
share
truths about it
that would encourage them to get there. So
those are 2 methods
amongst
the,
you know, amongst
the the olema who wrote about matters of
spirituality from the earliest times.
But from the salaf,
many of them did talk at length about
it. Amongst them,
the likes of
Imam Junaid al Baghdadi and others who were
undisputedly
of the imams of guidance of our religion.
And there's
others who were wary of talking too much
about these things.
But also, there's a caution that many people
like reading about spiritual matters and so on.
The real
question is,
what will you do to get there?
What will you do to get there? We
ask Allah to
make us of those who don't merely talk,
but who
who yearn for the high meanings,
and who take the means of getting there.
This is why generally they said, that people
of spiritual concern, they said, that you don't
one does not talk about spiritual experiences except
for two reasons.
1 is a perfection
and the other
is unbecoming.
The perfection is
lishedi,
lished
to guide someone.
To guide someone.
Right? To give them guidance, so that they
can take the means to draw closer to
Allah. Then one talk about spiritual experiences and
so on.
To point, you know, to point them towards
that direction.
And the other is someone,
or because they're overcome
spiritually.
But that is unbecoming.
Right?
One cannot choose that. And the
both the early scholars and the late scholars
consider that not proper.
Right?
Right? Because the nature of spiritual how can
you talk about it?
You cannot talk about like someone has a
meaning of faith regarding Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Words do not encompass
spiritual experiences.
So,
and
and that's why people one of the things
to be careful of is people who talk
in general, they say that sign of a
sincere person is that they point towards
Allah and they point toward they point towards
god and good.
And their words point towards Allah and they
point towards the good
that enables you to draw closer to Allah.
And it said to be very wary of
those who talk about
who point towards themselves explicitly
or implicitly.
That's why the all I know would often
say,
I seek refuge in Allah from saying I.
Right?
Right. Because it is the the I that
is the barrier between you and closeness to
Allah.
So we'll continue from here.
Thank you for listening to the Aroha, daily
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