Fatima Lette – Exploring the Quran for Women- Lessons from the Prophets Life #02
AI: Summary ©
The interviewer discusses the history and political aspects of the Prophet's message, including political rivalries and political rivalries between Yemen and the Arabianissian waif. They also touch on the topic of sh focuses and the importance of acceptance of boundaries and peace. The interviewer emphasizes the need for people to be empowered by others and the importance of understanding the Prophet's mission. They also discuss the negative impact of certain narratives on people's lives and their emotions, and the importance of peace and blessings for individuals.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome back to Exploring the Quran.
Alhamdulillah, we have been covering the topic of
seerah through the Quran.
So last week, we did the intro, which
was just learning about why it's important to
study the seerah and who the Prophet, Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, is to us.
And this week, inshallah, we're gonna now kind
of get into the life of the Prophet,
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Now, we could start with the Prophet, Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, receiving revelation, and then from there,
going through those ayahs, or the verses, of
him receiving revelation.
But if we were to start there, you
wouldn't be able to truly appreciate what it
means that the Quran came down 600 years
of no revelation.
You wouldn't be able to really appreciate the
transformation that the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, was
able to do to pre-Islamic Arabia.
Now, a post-Islamic Arabia looks very different.
The rulings are very different.
The way people carry themselves is very different.
The way people interact is very different.
And so, what we have here is that
Allah SWT says in Surah Ibrahim, He starts
off by saying Alif Lam Ra.
Alif Lam Ra is interesting.
Like, in other times, perhaps, maybe I would
just translate it as Alif Lam Ra.
But it's important to know, as we're going
through the background of Sirah, and what happens,
and what a person's experiencing at that time
when the Quran is revealed, it's important to
know why Allah SWT brings letters in the
Quran, because Alif Lam Ra is considered to
be Huruf Muqatta'at.
And these are these disjointed letters.
So, it's as equal as me saying, like,
A-B-C, or A-L-M, okay?
Not like the sorority, but, you know.
Oh, sorry.
Fraternity.
Okay.
My bad.
Oops.
They'll be okay.
They don't watch this anyway.
I don't even know them.
I'm just playing.
Right?
So, it would be equivalent to just saying
letters.
But what we understand from this is that
Allah SWT brings down the Quran at a
time where something that the Arabs had a
lot of pride in was their language.
They had a lot of pride in their
poetry.
It is to the point that on the
Kaaba, they had, like, poets, poetry.
They had culpits of poetry on the Kaaba.
And what they would do is that, even
within being able to communicate, like, contracts, and
deals, and all these things, their language was
the pride and joy that they had.
And imagine you have something that is a
talent or something that you love and you
care for, and you put that and elevate
that above Allah.
And so, for them, they had this pride
to the point where they felt like, well,
God can't communicate something to us that we
don't know or in a way that we
don't know.
So, this is why you find that there
are certain surahs that start off with these
letters that are considered to be disjointed letters,
so they come together as a beautiful recitation,
but we don't have access to the meaning
of it.
It is something that only Allah knows the
meaning of.
The other thing is that it will stop
them in their tracks.
The Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam would recite the
Quran, and he would say, alif-la-mim,
or something like that, or he would say,
ta-ha, or ka-ha-ya-ayn-saad,
and it would stop them, because they will
be thinking, and thinking, and thinking.
And when you look at the Quran, the
purpose of it is for you to reflect
on it.
Yes, you take ruling.
Yes, it's the speech of Allah.
Yes, you take understanding, but you're not able
to understand if you don't reflect.
And so, them being stopped in their tracks
and then having to think, what does this
mean?
It means Allah won.
Like, Allah got you to do exactly what
you thought you were not gonna do, because
you were so great at language.
So, Allah swt starts off Surah Ibrahim by
saying alif-la-mim-ra.
And then he says, kitabun anzalnahu ilayk.
It is a book referring to the Quran,
and we've sent it down to you, O
Muhammad, li-tukhrij-an-naasa min-ad-dulumati
ila-l-nur, so that you may take
people from the darkness, the many layers of
darkness that they're in.
It is not just one layer of darkness.
It is not just that they were committing
shirk.
It is not just that they had terrible
transactional practices.
There were so many layers of pre-Islamic
atrocities that they were engaging in that Allah
swt says the purpose of the Prophet's mission
and message, the purpose of the Quran, is
li-tukhrij-an-naasa min-ad-dulumati, is
to take them out of their many different
layers of darkness and wrong, ila-l-nur,
to one light.
To take them to one light.
And that light is to take them to
Islam.
It is to take them to Allah.
It is to take them to the path
that Allah swt wants them to walk.
And then Allah swt says, bi-idni rabbihim.
But this is not done just by the
Quran by itself.
And it's not done just by the Prophet's
ability by himself.
It is done with the permission of their
Lord.
That the Prophet's salam could want, and we
know this about him, he could want, he
could yearn, he could spend as much time
as he possibly could sitting down with someone,
teaching them the Quran, trying to convince them
to believe.
All of these things.
But if Allah does not give permission for
that person to believe, then belief will not
happen.
Which takes the burden of responsibility of guidance
off of the shoulders of the Prophet's salam.
That for the Prophet's salam he has the
responsibility of just preaching the message.
Coming and saying the message.
But he doesn't, the Prophet's salam is not
just a preacher.
He was never just that.
He was a community leader.
He was someone who was a part of
his community in every aspect of the way
that you can think of it.
Right?
So he had that touch point with the
people in his community.
And so Allah swt says you can be
transformative to them, but you can be transformative
to them only by the permission of Allah.
Ila sirat al-Aziz al-Hameed.
And you're taking them to the path, and
the path of the one who is Aziz,
he's almighty.
Hameed, he's the one who is praise worthy.
The one that you should show praise and
thanks to.
So this kind of gives the backdrop of
pre-Islamic Arabia.
That there were so many societal illnesses that
they were engaging in, and the Quran came,
and the Prophet's salam came to transform them
out of those societal illnesses.
One of the things that we have to
do, I'm not much of a, you know,
history, land type of person, right?
But in order for us to understand as
we keep going, what does it mean to
have a trade route and all these things?
It's important to understand a little bit of
the political aspect of it.
And one of the political structures of Mecca,
or actually the Arabian Peninsula at that time,
was that they didn't have a single governance
body.
So it wasn't that the people of Sham
had certain rules and they followed those rules,
and the people of Mecca had certain rules
and they followed the rules, and everybody in
Mecca and neighboring had rules as well.
It was a lot of tribalism.
So depending upon what tribe you came from,
the rules came like that, which doesn't bring
a very fair society in and of itself.
And because the Quraysh had such a level
of power, right?
The Quraysh were people who were considered to
be the ones that had the highest level
of, the Quraysh were the ones who had
the highest level of governance.
They kind of made up their own rules.
So if somebody came and they wanted to
do something that maybe, I don't know, was
like stealing somebody's money, if the Quraysh liked
them, they would say, you're right, actually, you
can take this for free.
You're right, you actually don't have to pay
them.
That was how the Quraysh were.
So they had the highest level of governance
because of the amount of numbers that they
had, but also because they were custodians of
the Kaaba.
So it brought them prestige in that way.
You have neighboring places, which is like Ta
'if, and Ta'if was, it was actually
the place to go before people vacationed in
Ta'if because it was an oasis.
The weather was nicer, it's still like that.
The weather was nicer.
The ground cultivated land easier, so like cultivated
for vegetation easier.
So it was an easier way of living.
So people would go and they would live,
prefer to live in Ta'if.
But there's a du'a that Ibrahim Alayhi
Salaam made.
And that du'a that Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam
made is what made Mecca the place that
it is.
And I'm not gonna go through it today
because I want us to go through it
when we talk about the raising the foundations
of the Kaaba.
But what's important to realize is that sometimes
you're benefiting from something that was not supposed
to be there, but because somebody else made
du'a for it, you have it.
And that is what we're doing in our
benefit of Mecca.
When we yearn to go to the Kaaba,
or when we look at like, you know,
going for Hajj and Umrah, and we're saying
to ourselves, man, we can't wait to go
to a place that we can make du
'a to Allah, and we can show our
dedication and our devotion to God.
We're also an answer to a du'a
that we never made.
We're an answer to the du'a of
Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam, one.
And two, we're benefiting from a du'a
that we never made.
And so Mecca became the place, it became
the land of trade.
It became the place that everybody wanted to
go to.
In addition to that, you had that before
the time, the birth of the Prophet Salaam,
there was a big battle between the people
in the Arabian Peninsula and Yemen.
And they had like a rivalry.
We're gonna talk a lot about that when
we talk about the Kaaba, the year that
the day, the year of the elephants, the
year that the Prophet Salaam was born.
Because that rivalry hits like, it hits the
fans, basically, and it explodes.
And what ends up happening is Surat al
-Fil.
That doesn't mean anything to you guys, you
just have to come back in three weeks,
okay?
So there's a rivalry between Yemen and the
Arabian Peninsula, and that rivalry is kind of
brewing at this point.
You also have that northern, the northern portion
of the Arabian Peninsula is where you have
Najran, and this is where the Christians stayed,
okay?
And then you have the Persians, and there
was Zoroastrians, so they used to worship on
fire.
And you have the people within the Arabian
Peninsula, so this is Mecca, your Mecca, your
Yathrib, which is also known as Medina, this
is your Ta'if, this is your Bilad
al-Sham, which is current day Syria area,
right?
These people were polytheists, so they worship idols.
Now polytheism was one of the main offenses
that was a part of pre-Islamic Arabia
that had a very negative, brought a very
bad taste into anyone's mouth that came into
the Arabian Peninsula.
Amongst many reasons why associating partners with God
is not a good idea, it just didn't
make a lot of sense to other people.
Imagine someone is like worshiping fire, and somebody
else is worshiping an idol, and the people
who worship fire are saying that worshiping an
idol doesn't really make sense, right?
And it's like the pot calling the kettle
black, but that's how terrible it was.
And so there was many people who were
around who worshiped different things or did different
things, and they just didn't understand why the
Arabians had this obsession with worshiping idols.
You have that there's a narration that points
to the first person to introduce idolatry back
into the Arabian Peninsula, or not back into,
but into the Arabian Peninsula, Mecca and surrounding
area.
His name was Amr ibn Luhay, and he
was a leader of one of the tribes.
And what he used to do was he
used to travel to different lands and see
the things that they would do.
So he would travel to Persia, see that
they're worshiping like fire, he will go up
to Najran, and he saw that, okay, like
they worship Jesus, like these different things.
And he comes and he's like, you know
what?
We kind of need something different.
Like what we're doing is not different.
We're worshiping like one God.
You know, the Christians are talking about the
Trinity.
The Romans have like these pillars that they
have built for their like Roman gods, you
know?
So there, he says like, we need to
switch it up.
Can you imagine someone coming to you and
being like, you know what?
You've been praying five times a day, like
six times sounds cute.
You know, like they just, you need to
switch it up.
Oh, you've been fasting from sunup to sundown.
Perhaps maybe try fasting from like one to
12.
You know, like, they like switch it up.
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make sense.
That's why over and over and over again
in the Quran, when Allah SWT addresses this
mindset, he addresses it by saying, do you
not use your logic and reasoning?
Why do you have to be a sheep
and just follow what somebody else tells you
to do?
If you thought about it just a little
bit, it would not make sense to you.
But nonetheless, when he starts to think about
what should we do to switch it up,
maybe we should do something else to make
things a little bit, you know, spicy is
my word, to make things a little bit
spicy, you know?
The narration said that he gets waswasa.
And waswasa is not rooted in reality.
It is Shaitaan saying, oh, I caught one.
And Shaitaan basically leads him down this rabbit
hole and he finds a place, this one
singular tribe, place, they worship idols.
And he goes to them, he asked them,
what are you doing?
Like these are the statues that you have
built, they look so beautiful.
These statues that you've built, they look so
beautiful, what are you doing?
And they say, well, these are our great,
our people who have fallen.
And we pray to them because they were
so great and they brought about such goodness.
And we pray to them.
He says, got it.
And he introduces that into the Arabian Peninsula.
But you know how they say, mandala ala
khayri kafa ilihi, that the one who points
someone toward something good, they get the reward
of the good that the other person has
done.
But the opposite is also true.
When we point, when we lead people down
the path of things that are not good,
and the sin that they incur from doing
that thing that is not good, we too
have to take responsibility for our action in
front of Allah for that wrong that we've
introduced people to.
So, Amir ibn al-Hayy, being a leader
of his people, people looked up to him,
they followed him.
And when he started to worship these idols
and do these things, people followed suit.
And that is something that he is going
to have the answer to on the Day
of Judgment.
Allah swt says in the Quran, wa ya
'buduna min dunin laahi, and they worship other
than Allah.
ma laa yadurruhum wa laa yanfa'uhum.
And it's not like they just worship things
that give them good.
No, they worship things that don't cause them
harm.
So in the case that they weren't worshiping
their idols, in the case that they decide,
today we're not gonna ask our idols of
anything.
And today we're not gonna devote ourselves to
our idols.
Their idols wouldn't be able to do anything
to them, because it's literally stone and bricks
and wood.
So Allah swt says, ma laa yadurruhum, it
does not cause them any harm.
They're not doing this because they're scared.
wa laa yanfa'uhum, and they're not doing
this because they're getting any benefit out of
it.
Because their idols do not bring them any
benefit.
wa ya'kuluna haa'ulaa'i shufaa'uhnaa,
and inna Allahi.
And they say that these are the partners,
these are our intercessors, sorry.
These are the ones that are gonna come,
and they're gonna speak on our behalf before
God.
That's what they say.
Imagine on a day of judgment, there is
a group of us running to the Prophecy
Center.
Running, we talked about this last week.
Running to the Prophecy Center.
Why?
Because we know that he's rahmatullil alameen.
We know that Allah created him, and Allah
swt sent him to us as a mercy
to mankind.
And we know that he's gonna go into
sajda, and he's gonna ask Allah on our
behalf as a character witness to enter us
into paradise.
And there's a whole group of people who
think that rocks and stones are gonna intercede
for them on a day of judgment.
That is the way that they communicate.
And then they say, Allah swt says, Qul,
say to them, Atunabbi'una Allaha bima la
ya'namu fissamawati wala fil ard.
Are you gonna inform Allah?
Are you gonna inform the one who created
everything in the heavens and the earth?
Of something that he doesn't know and what
he created?
Are you gonna inform Allah about the heavens
and the earth like he's not the one
who created it?
And then Allah swt says, subhana.
How perfect, how exalted, how above God in
what they say.
Amma yushrikoon.
And how they try to associate these partners
with him.
Allah swt also says, and these verses are
the ones that really like put in perspective
what it means for someone to be delusional.
Allah swt says, wala in sa'altahum man
khalaqa al-samawati wal-ard.
If you were to go to these same
people, and you were to ask them who
created the heavens and the earth, la yaqoolanna
Allah.
Without a doubt, they will say Allah.
Because they had a concept of God.
They had a concept of God.
They named their children Abdullah.
You think that the name Abdullah came post
-Islamic Arabia?
It came pre-Islamic Arabia.
Abdullah means what?
Servant of Allah.
They had a concept of God, but they
felt that God need helpers.
If I felt that my boss needed helpers,
I would not work for him.
Because what am I doing here?
Assistant, crazy, crazy work.
Can you imagine submitting to someone that you
think needs help?
It doesn't make any sense.
Allah swt doesn't need us.
He doesn't need our worship.
He doesn't need our devotion.
He doesn't need our dua.
He doesn't need our tears.
He doesn't need our happiness.
He doesn't need anything from us.
Whether I existed, you existed, we existed, our
family, our children, our friends, whoever, or not,
the world continues on.
It keeps going.
There is nothing that we have that is
100% in our control that we are
doing that is so amazingly transformational that God
needs us.
Nothing.
Not a single one of us.
It is to the point, the Prophet shallallahu
alaihi wa sallam is known as Habibullah, the
beloved of Allah.
And Allah swt tells him when the Quran
is being revealed to him, and he's rushing
to repeat it because he wants to make
sure that he has memorized it and he
can pass it on to you and I.
Allah swt tells him, don't move your tongue
so quickly.
Why?
Because the preservation of the Quran, it is
not your responsibility.
You're good.
Allah is the one who sent it down
and Allah is the one who will preserve
it.
Allah created you and I.
Allah created the heavens and the earth.
Allah created every single thing.
To think that we are the reason why
the earth is taken care of is absolutely
astronomically insane.
Because when human beings have interfered with the
precision that Allah has created every single thing,
we've just broken it.
We've just broken it.
Allah swt tells us that everything has its
precise measure.
He brings things in this precise measure.
So God doesn't need us.
He truly doesn't.
And so what they claim of Allah is
so bizarre.
But they still believed in Allah as the
main God.
Which is why they would never name any
of their other idols with the name Allah.
Insane.
Because on one end, it's like you kind
of feel like, see, you look like a
little bit, sound like a believer.
And then on the other end, they say
something like, intrusive like a toddler, you know?
Like some intrusive, wild comment.
And that's what comes next.
Because Allah swt says if you ask them
who created the heavens and the earth, without
a doubt, they will say Allah.
Khul, say to them.
Afra'aytum ma tad'auna min doonin laahi.
Do you guys not pay attention and see
what you're calling upon other than Allah?
Because you're saying that Allah created the heavens
and the earth.
In aradani allahu biddurrin, hal hunna kashifatu durrihi?
Aw aradani birahma, hal hunna mumsikatu rahmatihi?
That if it was the case that Allah
intended for me, meaning the Prophet salallahu alayhi
wa sallam, harm, then would these idols be
able to help, prevent, take away that harm
in the least bit?
The answer is no.
And if it were the case that Allah
intended mercy, would the idols be able to
take away or withhold the mercy of Allah?
The answer is no.
So then what does Allah swt tell the
Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam?
He says don't engage with them anymore.
Why?
These people clearly are not using their brain.
They clearly do not understand.
They're clearly not using their logic and their
reasoning.
So qul, you say, hasbi allahu, Allah is
enough for me.
Whether you believe or not, Allah is enough
for me.
Alayhi yatawakkalun mutawakkilun.
And it is upon him that those who
entrust will entrust.
If people truly believe that they put their
trust in God, they will never put their
trust in other than Allah.
And recognizing or having tawakkul is very interesting.
Because having tawakkul is one of the things
that is repeated the most with ayat of
shirk.
Tawakkul, one, and ingratitude.
Trust and ingratitude, not having trust in God
and being ungrateful to Allah are two of
the concepts that are being repeated over and
over again in ayat as it pertains to
shirk.
Because we're believers, and we're saying to ourselves,
that was a pre-Islamic Arabia problem, and
it's not a Dallas, Texas roots problem, alhamdulillah.
But what are the qualities of shirk?
You know, this is why when you talk
about like hypocrisy, for instance, there are two
types.
Take all the anomaly.
There's one that is creed-based.
We leave that to the side.
We say that person, Allah says they have
a sickness in their heart.
But then there's action-based.
Doesn't mean that this person is truly a
hypocrite.
But they have certain actions that resemble that.
The same thing goes with shirk.
That there is obviously your creed, we put
that to the side, we've discussed that already.
But what about in our action?
When you think about tawakkul and trust, if
you, a person, it's easier to say that
I trust someone.
Okay, you can tell people all the time,
I trust you with my life, I trust
you with this, I trust you with that,
you know?
But imagine you tell somebody, I trust you
to drive my car.
I trust you.
And the moment comes up for them to
drive it, and you should not be driving
that car, but you realize, I don't really
want them to do it, you don't trust
them.
You don't trust them.
So we say to Allah, I trust you
with my life.
And then the moment comes up where we
actually have to exhibit that faith and that
trust, and all of a sudden, even though
we don't have control, that's the craziest part
of it, even though we have no ability
to fix the thing that we're so fixated
on, we don't leave it to God.
Do you know what that means?
You need to work on your trust.
I'm not gonna say you don't trust God,
I'm gonna say you need to work on
it.
Why?
Because if you truly trust Allah, I'm not
saying it'll be easy to give it up,
but you will still give it up.
It is hard, you let go of control,
but you will let go of that control.
And so Allah SWT ends off this verse
about polytheism and their inability to worship one
God by saying it's just because you don't
trust God.
Had you trusted him, you wouldn't think that
God needed partners to carry out anything.
You would know that Allah is Al-Qawiyy,
he's all capable and has the, he's Al
-Qadir, he's all capable, and he's Al-Qawiyy,
he has the strength to bear anything, to
be able to push anything forward.
The second thing that they really struggled with
was how to treat children and how to
treat people.
They had a lack of care about human
rights and human life that a lack of
care, we pulled all the ayats, we'll be
here all day.
They have a lack of care about orphans.
This is why you have even narrations and
ayats where Allah SWT literally talks about how
they don't go and just spend time with
the orphans.
Or they would go, spend money on them
and degrade them, treat them like nothing.
And Allah SWT is like, no, they are
human beings.
You should treat them like they're human beings.
But they had zero regard for human life.
They had zero regard for children.
Allah SWT says about the daughters, the baby
girls, because what they would do is that
if they had a daughter or maybe they
had too many daughters, they would just bury
them alive.
Like it doesn't, there's no way to cut
the cake or the pie to know that
it's wrong.
And to think about it now, imagine you
saw someone outside burying their child.
You would say something.
You would think that that's not okay.
This was a societal issue.
Society had said it was okay.
So they would brag about it.
Oh, we had a daughter, but yeah, she's
gone.
And Allah SWT says that on the day
of judgment, this is one of the events
that is gonna happen.
Wa ila l-maw'udatu.
You have the newly born baby, su'ilat.
She will ask the question.
The newborn baby on the day of judgment
will speak.
And she will ask the question, bi-ayyi
dam bin qutilat.
What did I do that was so grave?
What sin did I commit that was so
wrong that I deserve to be killed?
That's the question.
But it wasn't just the baby girls.
When they would fear poverty, that they will
be poor, and they feared that they had
too many kids, and maybe that was why
they weren't having as much wealth as they
wanted, they would kill their children.
So when Allah SWT brings different ayat that
have commandments to it, one of the commandments
that you see that repeats over and over
again is wa laa taqutuloo awlaadakum min imlaaq.
Don't kill your children because of poverty.
And other places, Allah SWT brings fear out
of fear of poverty.
That you're not even poor, but you're scared
you're gonna be poor, so you kill your
child.
You don't do that.
And it's interesting because people bring this as
a nice little point when talking about children
and the importance of respecting them and all
this stuff that children are referred to all
the time in the Quran as hibah, or
when Allah SWT is referring to a child,
like we just talked about it in the
class earlier, in Surah Al-Hijr, when Allah
SWT is referring to Ibrahim al-Islam about
having a child, they say we've come with
good news, right?
But you realize that the Quran is doing
something.
It is not just providing a perspective that
you should have on children, but rather what
it's doing, it is getting rid of a
negative way of how people used to think.
It's building your worldview.
It's building your thought process.
It's building how you view things in life
and your understanding.
And so they looked at children as a
burden.
They looked at children as a burden, through
and through.
And unless this child was gonna come and
carry my legacy, I don't want it.
Which is why they would abandon kids.
They will sell them into slavery.
All of these terrible acts.
And then when it came to human life,
they had zero regard for it.
So Allah SWT says, wa laa taqtulun nafsan
lati haramallahu idha bilhaq.
That a person should not kill another person
because Allah has made human beings sacred.
As human beings, we didn't have the dignity,
we didn't have the respect for ourselves to
allow other people or to address other people
or to treat other people with dignity and
respect.
So therefore, Allah had to tell us that
human life is sacred.
Because it should have been a no-brainer.
But Allah had to tell us.
And He says, illa bilhaq, because there is
a time where war happens.
But that's such a very specific type of
context and situation.
And so the reality of it is that
they did not have any type of concept
of taking care of human life.
And at the end of these commandments, Allah
SWT says, dhalikum.
That this is for you all.
Wasaakum bihi.
And it's what Allah has instructed you.
La'alakum.
That perhaps you, ta'qilun, will use your
logic and reasoning.
He didn't say that perhaps you'll follow it.
Allah SWT basically said, all of these commandments
are common sense.
Don't kill your child, common sense.
Don't kill other people, common sense.
But because people did not use their aql,
they did not use their logic and reasoning,
I think Allah had to bring it back
for them to have that understanding.
The next thing that they struggled with, and
this is one of the biggest areas that
they struggled, and it's because there's so many
things that go under here.
We're just gonna keep it as a very
general thing.
And it was having a moral compass.
Having a moral compass.
Let me tell you why.
Financial dealings.
You're my friend, you're selling something, I'll buy
it full price.
You're not my friend, you're selling something, I'm
gonna agree to buy it full price, and
then when you come to collect, I'm just
not gonna give it to you, and you
can't do anything about it.
Why?
Because you come from a lower tribe than
I do, and no one's gonna defend you.
That is exactly how conversations will go.
They will get into trade and business dealings,
and choose not to fulfill the responsibility there.
When it came to even how they interacted,
or family life, it was almost like an
oxymoron.
They had such huge, they had such a
huge respect as it pertained to family relations.
They believed in selat ar-rahim, maintaining family
ties.
They believed in it, okay?
But marriage, depending upon the person, could be
an open marriage, be a closed marriage.
It is how that person determined what they
wanted.
The woman didn't have a right to be
able to say what she determined the marriage
to be.
It was what the tribe determined that marriage
would be.
If someone passed away, the wife was inherited,
so she would just move on.
If someone passed away, leadership was inherited, there
was no such thing as voting, so save
your votes.
There was no such thing as having clear
rules of inheritance, so someone could die and
they could have a wasiyah, they can have
a will, and they could give all of
their wealth to their neighbor.
All of it, which is why when Islam
came, the only amount that a person's able
to say this is what I want to
do with my money is 1 3rd of
their wealth.
Everything else has been distributed in accordance to
how Allah tells you it should be distributed.
But before that, it wasn't like that.
So imagine someone's dad has a best friend
that he's been best friends with since college
or whatever, and all of a sudden, nobody's
opinion matters except for this one human being,
and when he passes away, he gives all
of his money to that one person.
Meanwhile, he has seven kids and six other
wives, and nobody leaves the house immediately.
House is gone, the neighbor takes it, everybody
else, orphaned, nowhere to go.
That was the reality of what they were
living, and you could say that these are
like, oh, that's an issue in regards to
marriage, that's an issue in regards to women's
rights, that's an issue in regards to, no,
all of these are issues of morality.
They're an issue with understanding why you exist
in this world.
It is a moral problem.
And what we understand of our deen and
our religion is that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa
Ta-A'la brings and gives us an
understanding of morality.
Because if it was left in our hands,
and what we are witnessing every single day,
we don't have a good judgment of what
is moral and what's not.
Just like they didn't have a good judgment
of that.
Because we just said that they will watch
and applaud their neighbor and their community members
for burying their daughters alive.
Oh, you did what you had to do,
good job.
And everyone was on board.
So now today, the world that we're living
in, and there are so many agendas, because
this is exactly what they are, they are
being pushed upon us.
And so many narratives, they are being pushed
upon us.
And we're reading it, and we're seeing it,
and we're experiencing it, to be honest.
And sometimes the thought creeps in your mind.
Maybe are we wrong?
Because it seems like the whole world is
on this side of the spectrum.
The entire Arabian Peninsula was on one side
of the spectrum.
And the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, by himself,
and then Khadija joined him, were on a
different side of the spectrum.
Can you imagine?
The Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, went to God
to head off, because he did not like
the way that people were in the city.
He didn't like how they dressed.
He didn't like how they talked.
He didn't like what they worshiped.
He didn't like what they did.
His moral compass was flickering.
Telling him, this is dangerous.
But you know what happens when you still
stay in a place that is so filthy,
filthy, and you stay in a place that
constantly tells you, this is how you should
be, this is okay, da-da-da, blah
-blah-blah.
You get immune.
You get desensitized.
And at some point, you get to the
point where you're like, at least I'm not
doing it.
But what happens when you get close to
that line?
And maybe you're not engaging in those things,
but now you're promoting it.
And now you're saying, well, we should just
let people be.
And I'm 100% okay with letting people
be, but you have to let me be.
Because people are pushing agendas.
With an S, multiple, different things in society,
they're pushing it.
They're pushing it.
Whether it is trying to legalize different types
of medication that is not okay for children,
whether it's embedding certain ideologies into children programming,
whether it's saying that children have a frontal
lobe that is fully developed for them to
make very big life decisions, because that is
insane.
Very insane.
If children can make life decisions, let them
drive.
You don't want that?
Okay.
But if that's happening to kids, what's happening
to us?
It's far worse.
It's far worse.
So Allah SWT brings the Prophet, peace and
blessings be upon him at a time where
society was in its darkest.
But remember that the Prophet, peace and blessings
be upon him was not just sent to
the pre-Islamic Arabia.
Remember that the Prophet, peace and blessings be
upon him, is the final Prophet.
And he was sent to that time in
our time today.
And if that means that his message and
the mission of the Prophet, Allah SWT, is
still going, and the book is still being
preached, it means that we're still in darkness,
guys.
We're still in darkness.
So this pre-Islamic Arabia right now, or
what we're learning from back 1,400 years
ago, it's America today.
All of these issues are issues that still
are prevalent.
They just look different.
They're just wearing a different hat.
That is it.
They're still prevalent, which is why the Quran
is still relevant for us today.
Allah SWT says in Surah Yasin, the reason
why he sent the Prophet, peace and blessings
be upon him, لِتُنذِرَ كَوْمًا مَا أُنذِرَ آبَاؤُهُمْ
فَهُمْ غَافِلُونَ It is, he sent the Prophet,
peace and blessings be upon him, so that
he may warn our people, whose forefathers, people,
generations that came before, they didn't listen to
that warning, so they walked around heedless.
You ever wonder why certain things are okay
today?
It's because yesterday, people were not flagging it.
That's why.
It's because today, people are kind of like
picking, choosing.
No, Allah SWT says he sent the Prophet,
peace and blessings be upon him, to warn
people who were not warned, because they were
heedless.
You can't hear the message if your ears
are not open.
But then you also have, and we'll end
off here, the beauty in how Allah SWT
presents the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon
him, to us.
He says, لَقَدَ مَنَّ اللَّهُ That Allah has
truly bestowed favor, blessing, answer to a du
'a, gift, عَلَىٰ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ On the believers.
إِذْ بَعَثَ فِيهِمْ When he sent from amongst
them, رَسُولًا A messenger.
مِنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ Who comes from them.
When he sent to them, sorry, a messenger
that comes from them, from amongst them.
يَتْلُوْ عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِهِ And his responsibility in what
he does, is that he recites the book,
he recites his verses, meaning the verses of
Allah upon them.
That the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon
him, is a vessel in which the Qur
'an has come to us.
وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ And he purifies them.
What does that mean?
If something is pure, does it need to
be purified?
If the water already came out of a
bottle, no, that's not the best way, but
if the water already came out of a
bottle, to go and double purify that bottle
of water, people think you're crazy.
Which means that we're flawed.
We're flawed.
So وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ And to purify them.
وَيُعَلْمِمُهُمْ لِلْكِتَابَةِ When you start to do better
in life, you wanna do more.
You wanna learn more, you wanna understand more,
you wanna solidify that better more, you wanna
see what are other routes that I can
take to be a better person.
So Allah SWT says, and to teach them
the book.
وَالْحِكْمَةِ But knowledge is not enough, because knowledge
by itself is information.
But for knowledge to be transformative, that is
where you wanna be.
So hikmah is the wisdom in how you
carry yourself with what you've learned.
This is why Allah SWT sent the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam to us.
And so today, we close off on understanding
that pre-Islamic Arabia looks a lot like
today.
And if that's the case, what came to
cure pre-Islamic Arabia was the Quran and
the Sunnah.
And when the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam passed
away, he said, I leave you with two
things.
Kitabullah, the book of Allah, was sunnati, and
my way and my sunnah.
So I pray that Allah SWT allows us
to be people to hold on to the
book and hold on to the sunnah of
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
I pray that Allah SWT allows us to
be people who are purified, allows us to
be people who have the Quran in our
hearts, and allows us to be people who
carry ourselves by means of that which we
learned from the Quran.
I pray that Allah SWT allows us to
gather in the gathering much better than this,
that Allah SWT forgives us all of our
shortcomings, and that those of us who are
struggling, Allah SWT eases that struggle.
And our brothers and sisters around the world
who are facing different levels and types of
oppression and difficulty, that Allah SWT eases that
oppression, takes it completely away, eases that difficulty,
and punishes those who do wrong by His
beloved servants.
Subhanakallahumma bihamdika nashadu ala ilaha ila anta nastaghfiruqa
walatubu ilaik.
Jazakumullahu khairan.
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.