Hamza Yusuf – Be Like the Sword of Time
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AI: Transcript ©
Hasten.
Hasten to your lord
and to to this forgiveness that your lord's
offering you and hasten to a paradise. The
just the Ard of it is like the
heavens and the earth.
In Surat Al Hadid, Allah says,
So in one, Allah says, and the other,
he says.
Both of them indicate a hastening
like the
the poet who said, Asibaq Asibaq
Qaulin Mufi'la
Had their nafsa
Hasratan Masbokhi.
Like hasten quickly quickly
in word and deed, and
warn the self, the nafs,
about the grief
of the day of the losers,
the ones who didn't take this opportunity,
the opportunity of life.
The prophet
said in a really amazing hadith,
Ikhtenim
Khamsin habla Khamsin.
Ichtenim
is
to get this Hanima,
which is what you get in a war.
But it also here it means
seize this,
seize 5 before 5.
And then he lays out
really a plan
for putting your life into proper perspective.
Your life
before your death.
This is the big picture: we're alive
and then we're going to be dead. There
were people this prayer
of Friday prayer
has been prayed for over 1400 years.
Many people have prayed this prayer
Friday, maybe 60 years, some of them who
had long lives. Every Friday, they went to
the masjid unless they were sick or something.
They're all gone.
They're all gone.
And all they left behind is their deeds
in this world and
whatever khair that they did, their sadaqa jariyah,
whatever khair they did, but they're gone.
They saw sunsets. They said subhanallah.
They said mashallah.
They got angry.
They laughed.
They told jokes
all of these things that humans do and
now it's our time
and then we're gone.
And there's other people here with all the
same problems,
the same arguments, the same debates.
Why isn't your robe shorter?
Why isn't your beard longer?
This is some of the silliness of our
community.
Al Mutanabbi said
you
know Is this the extent of your religion,
the length of your beard? Oh Ummah that
all the nations are laughing at.
I mean, so it shows you back then.
Zamaq Sheri has famous lines where he says,
you know, don't tell people your medheb because
you're always going to find people find fault
in you. They cancel culture. You think it's
new?
Like, cancel culture is new? There's nothing new
about cancel culture. People have been canceled
since Cain and Abel.
Cain canceled Abel.
This is human,
so have this big picture. Your life is
here now, you're living, you have height your
height
But not forever, for a short time.
Ikhtanum Khamsan Qabal Khamsan. And then he said,
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
According to Imam Ahmad
and Al Hakam and Al Bayhaqih, this sound
hadith.
And then he said
was Sahataka
Qabbla Saka Micha.
The next most important thing after life itself
in order to do things is health.
So you need to be high but then
you need to be Sahih because once you're
sick
you can't do anything. So now you have
the time, you have the health. I'm warning
myself,
wallahi,
first and foremost, because I'm old now. I'm
not young. Many of you are very young
people. We were young like you.
You know, it goes very quickly.
The Romans, they said Tempus Fugit, time flies.
It flew for them
like a bird. Now it flies like a
jet plane.
But still it flew for them.
Time flies.
Your health
the Arabs they say
Health is a crown on the heads of
healthy people that only sick people can see.
What a blessing just to be healthy, not
to be in pain,
not to be suffering,
not to be sick. People have dementia now.
Dementia is a global problem. Partly because nassulafa
and salhamanfusuhum.
They forgot Allah
and so Allah caused them to forget themselves.
And what greater baliyah than to forget your
Lord, but the next greatest baliyah is to
forget yourself.
This is dementia now. We have we have
spiritual dementia.
You can know everything and remember all the
things you did yesterday,
but if you forgot your Lord you have
spiritual dementia.
So he said, Take your health before your
sickness,
because everybody gets sick.
Marabutar Haif used to say,
If people got sick there in the desert.
And when you get sick in the desert,
like, Sheikha said to me, we were driving
one day and there was a car crash
in the desert
and people got really hurt and there were
people helping them. And he said, There's no
911
here
in Mauritania. There's no 911 to call the
ambulance.
It's just people get sick and they
die.
So he said
your health before your sickness because we're all
going to get sick, so
There's no good in a body that doesn't
get sick.
It's a blessing because one of the most
important things about sickness is
By their opposites you know things. So when
you get sick, suddenly you remember the great
blessing of health.
It's a great blessing, health. And then you
remember when you get sick, and then when
you're sick
you you you can't remember being well,
and you think you're never going to get
out of it. Even the flu, you feel
like it's going to go on forever and
then suddenly you're well again.
Salman al Farisi, he said the kuffar, when
they get sick,
you know, they're like a camel that gets
hobbled and then they get well. It's like
the hobbling cord got taken off. They just
forget and they just go wandering again.
So the sickness is a blessing.
But we ask for afiyah.
Alafiyah to Ausa'uli, the prophet, asked for well-being.
Lis salallahu alafiyah.
If he saw people in tribulation
he reminded them, Ask Allah for afeah. We
want afeah,
well-being,
in everything. But sickness,
when it comes you can't do anything.
You're just barikal faraj like the Arabs say,
in bed, bedridden.
And then
the other this other amazing blessing which we
don't think about
your leisure before your preoccupation.
Because wallahi,
we get preoccupied.
When you're young one of the reasons they
say in Mauritania they have very prodigious memories.
But they say
that young people memorize quickly and easily not
because they have better memories, they don't. They
said it's because they're not preoccupied.
Because when you become an adult and you
have adult responsibilities
your mind, mushetet,
it becomes distracted.
You know, distractere from the Latin to tear
apart. You're being pulled, you're thinking of all
these things. It's hard just to sit down
with an empty heart and fill it with
useful things.
So that's very important.
Leisure.
Leisure is not,
it's not, the time to go and play.
Leisure is free time
to work on yourself, to study, to learn,
to become educated, to do dhikr of Allah.
We waste so much time.
And time,
time is
is an invaluable thing.
The Arabs say that time can
laqima talahu. In other words it can't be
la yukayam.
It cannot be measured
in any evaluation.
Why? Because the only way you can measure
something in terms of evaluation is in another
thing
where there's some type of relationship.
So gold, for instance, is the traditional standard.
So this gold is precious
but it has a price. It's not priceless,
it has a price.
Time cannot be evaluated because it's priceless.
There's nothing like time.
It has absolute
pricelessness.
It cannot be ever there's no valuation of
time. And so with loss of time is
loss of something you can never replace.
Ibn Atha'illah, he says
that there are 2 types of Hukuk in
time.
Hukuk Al Aqat.
Two types.
Hukuk
Fil Aqats,
the rights
within the time.
So for instance,
if it's right now it's time for Jummah.
This is the Haqq of this time.
If you miss the Jummah
you can make Isidraq.
So this is a type of Haqq that
you can make up. If you have a
valid excuse, if you didn't have a valid
excuse you say, I'll stop Firalah and hope
Allah forgives you. But if you had a
valid excuse
you can make up by praying dhor.
So there are haqquq that can to stadrak.
They can be redressed.
That's haqquq and fir'a'okat. So these are the
wada'if,
the ibadat,
those things
you know, birulwadidayin. You have a haqq for
the parents.
You have a haqq for your body to
exercise.
That's a that's a hack of the body.
If you're not exercising
every day you are.
You're oppressing yourself because you're gonna get sick.
And sickness,
as one of my teachers said, is largely
a choice.
You know most sickness, people made themselves sick
by not doing the things necessary to maintain
their health.
That's why preventative medicine
is so important.
Right?
The Arabs say a a penny of prevention
is better than a pound of cure.
So you have to go out and exercise
your body
or else your body is going to,
yatehdihalek.
Because the Valim always, the Madulum
fights the Valim.
That's the nature of the Madulum. People, the
Palestinians, why why are they doing what they're
doing? Because it's the nature of the Madlun.
They will fight their volume. They will fight.
You can't oppress people
without some type of reaction. So if you
oppress your body your body is going to
fight you.
It will get sick,
but you are the Valim.
People pray for good health and then they
don't exercise, they eat poorly, they eat
the angels,
if they were like us, if they had
spleens, as Shakespeare said, they'd be laughing at
us.
You pray for health and then you don't
do anything about it. So fara
hablashhurikah,
your leisure time.
Every time has chokuk.
There are rights in every time.
The other type
is hukookalawkaat.
These are the rights of time, they can't
be
replaced.
They can't be replaced. So for instance
if your parents are alive,
if your parents are alive
and they're old
and you don't have filial piety towards them,
meaning you're not showing them
the respect and also taking care of them
the way they need to be taken care
of in their old age, and the prophet
said:
I don't understand
how somebody
could because Ajab is you don't know the
Sabab. Like he's saying, I don't understand. It's
incomprehensible
how somebody can have their parents in old
age, one of them or both of them,
and they don't use it as a means
to enter paradise.
Just that alone, if a prostitute
was forgiven for giving a dog water
in the Sahih Hadith,
what what is the reward of taking care
of your parents when they're old? One man
came to Umar and he said,
I'm washing my mother the way she used
to wash me when I was a child.
In other words, he's having to clean her
because now
they go back to the infancy.
He said I'm cleaning her the way she
cleaned me. Is this mukafa'ah?
Is this recompense?
And Omar said,
no. He said, why not? He said, because
when she was doing it she was praying
that you would live a long life and
when you're doing it you're hoping she dies
soon.
SubhanAllah.
So Farah,
this precious time, especially
the students,
you have this time. Don't waste it.
Don't waste
it. Hasrat al Masbuk
And then there's student that won't waste it
and then you'll see them. They'll be honored.
They'll be, they'll get the honors
when you graduate
because they seize the moment, they seize their
time.
The same on Yom Kiyama. There's going to
be people that are honored and then there's
going to be other people.
So and then
Shabaabaka
hablah haramika,
your youth before your old age.
And those of us who are in and
this is old age, so I'm speaking now.
You know I
taught this hadith when I was 40
you know or 35.
I've known the Hadith for a long time
but I didn't know what it meant
because you don't know when you're a shab
you don't know what haram is.
Would that my youth would return so I
could tell what old age did to me.
Because you don't
you see the soul doesn't age
because the soul is eternal. It's sempiternal.
It was created, but it goes on forever.
And that's why you'll never feel old in
your in your consciousness.
You won't feel old.
You'll feel when you're 60, you'll feel the
same way you felt when you were 20.
But when you when you get up too
quickly
then you know
something changed.
See? He knows. We know.
Yeah, suddenly and you hear noises that you
didn't hear when you were young,
and you know something's changing.
Then
when we were young
all night we stayed up and studied,
And then suddenly you do that and 3,
4, 5 days it takes to recover.
When you're young you just get back. Same
with cuts and wounds.
When you're young they heal so quickly. Little
babies, they heal almost overnight. It's miraculous
because there's so much life in them.
Sheba'at
Anar. You know, Shabab is Sheba'at Anar. It's
the fire. We're in the embers.
We're in the embers. When you get older
you're in the embers. The fire is gone.
But there's still there's still something there.
A little bit of warmth but not like
the fire of youth.
So you have to use that time, don't
waste that time.
They say sofa is
Iblis. I will is from the jund of
Iblis. It's it's one of Iblis's armies. I'm
going to one day. This is what Yusuf's
brothers,
you know, when they they said let's get
rid of Yusuf and then we'll be saliheen.
That's what they said. Let's get rid of
Yusuf,
you know, because our father's doting over him.
He forgot about us.
Let's just get rid of him and then
we'll be salihim.
You
know, just one more deal and then I'll
stop.
Right?
That's what people say but death comes on
us suddenly.
Sabiqaoh.
Saudiuu.
Moses
alaihis salam
when Moses
he was given victory over pharaoh. We just
celebrated it, right?
The victory of Moses over pharaoh.
So Moses
Allah says, you Bani Israel
Khadan Jainakkum.
Right? Allah saved them. So
he promised them to meet them, Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. To meet Bani Isra. They have
a special relationship with Allah for good and
ill.
For good and ill.
Because Allah gave them so many prophets. See
we were given ulama.
They were
given ambiya.
But our our ummah is a chosen ummah.
Right? We were given
ulema.
1 comes after another. Look at the ulema
we've been given. No Ummah has the scholars
we've been given. No Ummah.
You show me any Ummah that has the
scholars that we've been given.
Even their knowledge.
Fakhruddin al Razi says that he knows
that a human being could not learn what
he knew in one lifetime.
Like he realized that. And if you read
him you'll know that the truth of that.
How did Imam know we do what he
did in the short period of time? He
died in his forties.
How did he leave behind that opus of
work? Teaching,
giving fatwa,
meeting with students, all of these things. How
did they do it? Sahir Bukhari. I have
a,
facsimile
of 1 of the great ulema of Sahir
Bukhari.
He wrote out the entire
Bukhari by hand.
By hand. People used to write whole books.
Mur Abd al Hajj, half his library, he
transcribed the books because Moritanis couldn't afford books.
And the books were hard to come by,
so they would literally copy out the book.
Half his library is is books that he
copied with his own hand.
How did they do that?
They knew the value of time. I used
to go to one of my teachers
and he always Sheikh Abdulaywud Sadiq. He was
one of the greatest ulama that I knew.
Sheikh Abdulaywud Sadiq
was a student of Muhammad Al Amin al
Shinkirti.
He was one of the most brilliant
minds that I've come across.
One time, I was like night 20 maybe,
and they asked me the the system of
America, you know, like the Makkamal Ulya, and
how how does the court system work?
So civics class from high school,
I started explaining it. He said, no no
no. He said, there's 9 district courts. And
then he started explaining to the other ulama
the the system in America,
the the istitinaf
appeals court, how the
the Supreme Court worked, that was nothing to
him.
So I used to go and I would
do my lesson and he knew, mashaAllah. I
mean he was in psychopedic knowledge from Tajikhanet.
They say, La'ilmujakani.
When I finished the he would just say,
are you done? I said, yeah. He'd go
back to reading.
Then I would go to another teacher, Sheikh
Sheibani,
Alaia Ramuh. Beautiful man,
but very social
and I would always, when I finished the
dars with him, he would have tea with
me and we would just talk. And one
day and this is stupid, so, you know,
don't ask about things. If you get the
answer they bother you. So I said to
him, you know when I go to Sheikh
Arolay with Siddiq,
you know after the dars he just goes
back to reading. I never have tea with
him. He said, but you always give me
tea. He said,
He values time more than I do.
Morab Tahaj gave up tea because he felt
it was
a waste of his time.
So these are maqamats.
We can be social, the prophet sat with
people, he spoke, but always
in knowledge.
Even his his,
Musa, you know, his his,
his humor was always
meaningful.
It was always meaningful. He he he was
humorous at times, but like salt. It should
flavor, it shouldn't be the meal.
And this is what's happened in our frivolous
culture. We have a culture of frivolity.
Everything's fun and games.
All these communities if you watch these people
you'll kill your heart.
If you watch all these comedies all the
time, looking at things, laughing,
joking, you'll kill your heart.
That's what
the salaf said: too much laughing will kill
your heart.
The prophet said, Da'Imir Hazan, he was serious
man
because he knew,
he knew the momentousness,
he wept a lot, his silence was long.
Sukutu hotawil.
He was not a frivolous person.
He was serious
because life is serious
and it comes to an end. And the
last thing
this
shabab pablaharomika
you know this
shabab
before
before your old age. And finally hinaka
hablah fakrikah.
Take use of your independence
before you're in need.
If you have
what you need in life, be very grateful
because once you lose it that's all you
can think about.
Fakkhar is a terrible thing
to be poor, and to be worrying about
rent, and to be worrying and many people
now you see we have a crisis now
all over this globe. So when when when
Musa alaihis salam went,
he was promised
he was promised,
to meet him and his people because it's
Bani Israel.
But he went
first and he told them to follow him.
So when he got there to Tur, he
heard Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala revealed to him,
Ma'ajerika
anqaumika
You Musa.
What has caused you to hasten so quickly
and leave your people behind? Because he was
told to come and the promise was with
Bani Israel.
Israel. Right? Those people
they're coming behind me.
But I have hastened
that you might be pleased.
No tasweef.
No procrastination.
He told Bani Israel
to hasten
that he would come.
They're on my
they're
they're following,
behind me.
And I have hastened to you
But Allah says, Qala it's inna
qatfathannaqawmaqamin
Badika waalbanduhamisamani.
No. Your people, I tested them after you
left them. Because Allah knows where they were.
This is he's asking Musa, he knows, Allah
knows, but this is chetaab.
He knows. But Musa tells him I hasten
to you.
The the the salaf said, Khayruul Bir
aajaluhu.
The best of Bir is what's quick.
Al Abbas said,
No Birr is completed
unless it's done quickly. And this is why
you have to respond to the khatr. But
now so so
so when Musa comes he finds them. They're
worshiping the the cow,
the ejal, the cap, the golden cow.
They they waited. They were given menna and
salwa. They were given all this, you know,
blessing and then they they forgot. They forgot
their Lord. So this is what happens, if
you don't hasten
you'll go into ghaflah. You'll go into heedlessness.
And this is the disease, in fact the
disease of Rafla is so serious that,
Imam al Junaid said
They say,
The first Wajib
is to know Allah.
Imam Al Junaid said
that the first sin is rafla and so
the first wajib
is to get that rafla out of your
heart.
Because we're heedless, the humans are heedless. We're
so easily distracted
When, Layth ibn
Yahiyah came, Yahi ibn Layth came
to Imam Malik and
somebody came in, they were reading hadith.
And somebody came in and said, oh an
elephant just came into Medina. This is a
rare occurrence
because they came from India, from,
Persia. An elephant came in in a caravan.
So everybody ran to go see the elephant.
This happened to Sahaba too. When the caravan
came they all left, it's at the end
of Surat Al Jum'ah.
They all left except for 12. Those were
the Ulel Azmi of that group and that's
why Malik made 12 as the jama'a.
So they all ran to see the elephant
and only Yahimun Yahi Elaithi was there. And
Malik looked at me and said, don't you
want to see the the elephant?
He said,
I didn't come from Andalusia
to to look at elephants,
I came to learn from men.
Yahibnu Yahi Leithi was not the great scholar
of the Malakis,
But his riwaya is the one that all
the Malakis depend on.
He wasn't the greatest of those who narrate
the Mu'ata but he had a Sir.
And so Allah made him the one that
the riwaya comes from.
So Yaqum, Yaqum, Yaqum, woe unto all of
us this,
this procrastination
as our sister said earlier.
Don't procrastinate,
don't put off
for tomorrow
what you can do today as they say.
Right?
Because the procrastinator
has nadamah on the day of judgment. He's
gonna have lots of nadamah. And this is
why ibn al Farib he said,
Like hasten quickly to this affair
and and and answer Allah's call.
Right?
Answer Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala's call.
He's calling to bring you back to life.
Answer Allah's call
and don't
and avoid saying, Hadan ooshamru ansakishtihadan
binahaddati.
Tomorrow I'm going together. This is, Iblis.
That's why Iblis, when you go to sleep
he says, oh, lakkalaylam
pawil. You have a long night, don't worry.
You have plenty of time to do it.
You're young. Enjoy yourself.
Enjoy yourself.
Sheikh Mohammed Amin al Shinqeel, his son told
me, Mohammed Muhtar, he
died. But I used to go to his
house a lot when I lived in Medina.
And he told me once that when he
was young,
he because he was studying all the time,
he was he saw all his friends playing
soccer and doing things, and he he wondered,
like, am I just missing my youth
doing all this? And so he went to
Sheikh Mohammed Al Amin and he told him
what was happening in his heart.
And so he said leave all of your
studies and I want you to recite the
Quran only.
And that's what he started doing, and he
said he had a big opening.
So
he became a great scholar.
He became people from all over
would sit in his, tafsir class in the
Haram al Medini. All his friends who played
soccer,
if they're lucky they were sitting in his
class.
And then he says,
And be like the sword of time.
The sword of time cuts. Imam Shafi'i said,
Inam taqtabihiqataq.
Time is a sword. If you don't cut
with it, it will cut you down.
So he said, be sorry man.
Sorry man also means like to be zealous
and and really serious, but it's also a
type of sword.
Kumsariman
kalwakti, like time.
Time just comes.
It just cuts.
Odiousness is insane, perhaps.
And beware of maybe.
Because that's the
most dangerous
of
causes for losing this time.
Fahadukalbaataratuhma'akhartaasmani
sahatti.
And he said then
go,
you know, take this time, set out on
this journey 1 hub
and and and rise up broken,
kasiran.
Don't be arrogant.
Because
ba'ala is your
state as long as you're not working. And
that's why, Sayna Umar, he said,
It's a nice Arabic word for you.
I hate to see people wasting their time.
Imam Malik was asked Who are the worst
people? He said
Those who lose their akhira
because of their dunya. He said,
Is there anybody worse than them? He said,
No.
Those who lose their akhira because of other
people's dunya.
Just wishing they had what so and so
had.
And then he said,
Sofa.
And then cut
Like with this sword of seriousness,
of Azima,
cut sofa out of your life.
You know they're called it's called harfootanfis.
Yunifis gives you time, gives you time to
breathe.
Yunifis sofaafalu,
That's what it does. That's what Iblis does.
You'll get it done one day.
One day never comes.
And then he says,
if you cut it,
you will find this breath.
You'll find this wind in your sails.
Because your soul, if you're generous with it
by using it for its purpose, it will
become serious for you.
Alhamdulillah,
I'm talking to myself. I just want to
remind all of you of that, wallahi.
I've wasted so much time in my life
And this is why all we can do
is hope that whatever
is left
we we we use it for the preciousness,
for the the the the pricelessness
that it possesses.
Imam al Shafi'i said if there was only
1 surah
revealed in the Quran, it would be enough.
And that's Surah Tarasr.
Walasiri.
Look at the word asr which is time.
Asr you asru.
Asr you asru.
Your life is gonna be squeezed out of
you until there's nothing left.
That's what time does. It squeezes us until
there's nothing left. It takes every last drop
of our ajal,
and then it's over.
Khosr is loss.
Kierkegaard
said
the easiest thing to lose in this life
is yourself.
He said you can lose $5 and you'll
notice it.
You can lose a limb, you'll definitely notice
it. You lose a spouse, you'll notice it.
But he said people lose their lives and
they don't even notice it.
It's amazing.
They lost themselves. That's what Allah says in
the Quran,
They lost themselves. And then he says that's
the Khusran al Mubin. That's the manifest loss
is to lose yourself.
Walasuri innal insana lafi hussa. The human being
is is at a loss
because time is diminishing,
it's going, and none of us knows the
Adjal. Imagine if we all had our Adjal
over our heads. So you meet somebody, oh,
you only have 3 days left, subhanallah.
What are you gonna do?
Imagine if we all had our Ajl over
our heads,
how it would change our perspective of meeting
people?
We don't know. This is something Allah has
hidden from us.
Except those who utilize their time.
They believe
in other words, they have knowledge because you
can't believe without knowledge.
Know that there's no God but Allah. So
they learned their deen.
And then they have action based on knowledge.
And then they enjoin others to the truth.
And they enjoin to patients.
Amazing Surah. It's all there. Those are the
things. Learning,
acting,
calling others to the truth,
and then being patient with this dunya because
this dunya is a tribulation.
It is a bala. And bala in Arabic
is from a verb that means to wear
you out.
It's a robe that's worn out. That's what
bala does. It will wear you out
and that's what it's designed to do.