Ramadan 2019 Ruminations Lesson 2

Bismillah R Rahman Rahim, Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh sallallahu ala Sayidina Muhammad wa ala annual southview send them to SEMA. In the last short reflection. I talked about taqwa in the in the idea of taqwa being one of the fundamental principles that the Quran is constantly reminding of us. So what I'd like to do is define taqwa, first and foremost and then look at the idea that allow people to limit the pain or will Arqiva to the taqwa

the end affair is always for taqwa, and, or for the people of taqwa. So, the template itself wants you to taqwa Hd nabooti tan, if you love him about me that too. Now, this what even I showed one of the great Moroccan scholars of the law and has said in his summation that taqwa is empty.

It's to obey the commandments of God. And his job is to avoid the prohibitions. So there's allameh, and Noah, he in the Quran, and in the heady, there are things that the prophets I said m, was commanded to tell us were prohibited or disliked or discouraged. And then there's things that he was commanded tell us were either obligatory or recommended. So the idea of taqwa is essentially, the people of taqwa are the people that do what they were commanded, and avoid what they were prohibited. And and they do this through a disciplining of the soul. So there's, there's actually a discipline of the soul that occurs through your life through practices. And so one of the things

about practice is practice is what enables you to incrementally get better at something. So for instance, people who learn a new skill initially it's very difficult for them, but over time, as they continue to practice, it gets easier and easier. This is the process of habituation, collusion ad, whenever the bad everything is habit, even devotion. So, in fact, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle said that virtue was basically the habituation of the soul to a virtuous practice. In other words, you actually habituate over time, through constant practice, and discipline of the soul yourself to a virtuous practice, until it becomes second nature. And so basically, what tequila is,

is it is practicing these things, and because all fall short of the glory of God, because people will always fall short in their practices, that it becomes very difficult. At times, to to be consistent in this we have what's called Toba, which is in Greek they call it metanoia, which is very nice term, which means to change your mind. Toba is literally, Toba, tab, a means to turn or repent. So it's going back to God. And so the people of taqwa when they fall short of that the expectations upon them, they repent, they turn, if you're driving down the road, going the wrong way, you have to make a U turn. So you might see a sign that says

something and you realize I'm going the wrong way. You have to do a U turn. Well in the road of life, you're going to sometimes make the wrong turns. And then you're going to get signs that tell you that you're on the wrong path. Now, unfortunately, what a lot of people do, they just ignore the signs.

In the end, those are basically roads to hell. There'll be hell in this life because the nature of sin is that it just creates a lot of misery. So when the Quran tells us well are people to the taqwa, it's telling us that in the end, victory is for taqwa victory is for piety. It's for conscientiousness. It's for all of these things. And so

an example of that there is a great poet, Lowe, who said, truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet the scaffold sways the future and beyond the dim, unknown, standard God among the shadows, keeping watch above his own, what he meant by that truth forever on the scaffold. The scaffold is an edifice that you build to hang people. So it says if truth is always being strung up. So for instance, if you look at the Quran, many of the prophets are actually not successful.

They actually they're, they're completely attacked by their own people there. But their success is in their conveying the message, despite the fact that they're killed despite the fact that they're turned upon Ibrahima, an incident with Nimrod and his people, he was not successful in turning them back to God, he was successful in conveying the message. And this is the meaning of truth forever on the scaffold wrong forever on the throne. So Pharaoh is chases Moses, out of Egypt, Moses has to flee for his life. But the point is that the scaffold sways the future that the arc of the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. This is what we have to be constantly

reminded of that an RP but to lynmouth ducane will are people to the taco, we have to remind ourselves constantly that no matter how dark it looks, no matter how dark it gets, we believe that the end is for tequila. The end is for piety. The end is for the people of conscientiousness. This is extremely important to keep in mind, and inshallah I'll explore this some more in our next session. As I go ahead and sign up medical what happened to live what occurred to