Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 1439 Ramadn Late Night Majlis 22 MarifMasnav The Sultans Pearl 06072018
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Gave us the tawfiq to reach this
22nd night of Ramadan.
Allah fill it with blessings and Allah
fill it with openings
and fill it fill it with with
with his mercy
and right for all of us that we
are
manumitted in our
manumitted from the slavery of the fire and
that we are
our sentences are commuted
and that, we are pardoned,
from the indictment that that stands against all
of us. Allah give all of those things
to us by his
father and his mercy.
So today we read the hikaya of,
sultan Mahmud and Ayaz.
Sultan Mahmud,
being the sultan, the legendary
Turkic conqueror,
Mahmud Al Ghaznawi.
Ghazni is a a a city and metropolis
of,
Central Asia, Khorasan,
which is
located in the
the current nation state of Afghanistan.
And Sultan Mahmud was a great warrior and
a great conqueror and a great mujahid in
the path of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
He was the one who
conquered
a great portion of, of Hind,
and he was the one who destroyed the
Somnath
idol.
The Somnath idol was a a a an
idol in a huge temple complex
of the, Hindu god Shiva.
And it was so huge
that it literally took the army,
3 days to break it into pieces.
And in fact, as is known that this
was the custom of our forefathers. May Allah
bless them and reward them in the highest
level of Jannah.
They were people of Haqq
and they were people whoever they went to,
they they took the Haqq with them and
they weren't perfect people,
But, Allah Ta'ala honored them by,
giving them the title of of of idol
breakers. This is a sultan Mahmud
Ghaznavi was, literally called the butshikan,
the the the Persian expression meaning idol breaker.
And, he,
you know, he that that idol was so
huge in those days when they used to
break these huge idols, the likes of which
there are very few nowadays left.
They didn't they didn't just, trash them. Rather,
there was so much stone that went into
making those idols.
They did like
the army of the Kutbuddin Abek,
in which our sheikh,
Khaja, he, he was in his army. So
what they did was those idols, some of
them, they literally they they broke the idols
into blocks,
and they used those blocks in order to
make their masajid.
And there's currently in Dili,
which is a
metropolis of this Ummah. And it pains me
and it grieves me,
greatly to see that
one of the
evil parts of the aftermath of the,
the the partition of India and Pakistan was
the systematic,
eviction of Muslims from the areas around Delhi,
which was a city that was completely built
in its traditions for centuries were
those of our forefathers of the Muslims.
Within that city, there still is a masjid,
the original masjid that was built by
Ubudina,
Ibak,
called the Islam masjid.
The the, literally meaning the power of Islam.
That much of that Masjid was actually
built from broken,
parts of idols that were
made into,
made into blocks.
And some of the the blocks actually, if
you pull them out of their place and
flip them around, you can still see the
frescoes and the pictures and the paintings,
and the carvings, in them.
That's what that's what Allah gave our forefathers
the Tawfiq to do is to to,
take the deen with them and take the
tawhid of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with them
wherever they went. And, you know, I guess
modern sensibility is going to say, you know,
speak ill of such people and say, oh,
they're very intolerant and they're this and that
and the other thing.
My brothers and sisters on the day of
judgment, whoever saved a person from worshiping a
monkey or a cow or a piece of
wood or a piece of stone,
that person deserves to be thanked. That person
is not going to,
that person is not going to be mocked
or jeered at in front of the Lord.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has Ghairah that no
one should be worshiped other than him.
And, such a person will be loved by
Allah Ta'ala. They will not be
subject to the same modern
liberal sensibilities. And,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala let us remember that
when we make our decisions.
So Sultan Mahmoud Ghaznawi,
who
who was this legendary Turkic warrior king
who carved out this huge empire
and was known to be just a very
fearsome personality.
He had a a very humble slave who
was in his,
who was in his retinue and who was
in the service of his house by the
name of Ayaz.
And, the slave was of a very good
and pious disposition,
and he was very loyal to his master.
And people who accumulate great amounts of wealth
and great amounts of power, they oftentimes are
surrounded by
highly insincere people.
And so,
the the king, he loved his,
the slave Ayaz, because of his sincerity toward
him. And, the love and the friendship that
they had for one another was so legendary.
It became a a mythala. It became a
a a a a kind of
likeness
by which, friendship can be.
A metaphor for friendship can be made.
And so,
there are some lessons from the path,
from the spiritual path to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala which,
Mawlana Jaladin Rumi, who himself was from Balkh,
which is
a city
also in in in Afghanistan,
the last days of Balkh before it was
desolated by the Mongols.
Molana Rumi took that old,
cultural and civilizational tradition
with him and saved it,
from being completely ruined once the Mongols destroyed
Balch. He took it with him to Anatolia
where it could be saved and preserved and
propagated.
The best of the the the spiritual tradition
of of that culture because you have to
remember these cities were established and conquered and
set by the Sahaba radiAllahu ta'ala on whom.
And so many of the people even though
they're far away from the central lands of
Islam because these places uh-uh you know weren't
constantly in turmoil
and constantly in war and whatnot. So oftentimes,
they preserve, in some of these far flung
places, even the places that are not Arabic
speaking places. They preserve certain customs of the
Sahaba
that you're not going to find even in
these central lands because of the great amount
of upheaval and turmoil and change that that
that's taken place in those places.
So at any rate, so we read today
the Hekiah
of a particular story of the sultan,
Mahmoud Ghaznavi, and his slave Ayaz.
One day, Sultan Mahmoud called together the officials
of his government with the aim of testing
their intelligence.
He took out a pearl from his treasury
and first of all handed it to the
chief minister
and questioned him. What is the value of
this pearl? How much can it be sold
for? The wazir,
meaning the chief minister,
replied,
sir, this pearl is of great value. It
is more valuable than 200 donkeys laden with
gold.
The king ordered, I command you to crush
this pearl into pieces.
The wazir replied, I will not destroy this
valuable pearl. I have the welfare of your
treasury at heart, and to crush this valuable
gem would amount to disrespect on my part.
The king applauded this reply and rewarded him
with a royal robe of honor.
The king then took the pearl from the
wazir and handed it to another one of
his court officials
and asked him to determine the price of
the pearl.
That court official replied, sir, this precious pearl
is more valuable than half of your kingdom.
May God protect this pearl.
The king also commanded him to crush the
pearl into small pieces. He replied,
sir, my hands cannot move to destroy this
valuable pearl. To destroy this pearl would amount
to enmity toward your treasury.
The king praised him profusely for his reply
and also rewarded him with a royal robe
of honor.
In this manner, 1 by 1, the king
called 65 officials from his government,
and every one of them followed the example
set by the chief minister.
The king praised each one of them and
also rewarded them with a royal robe of
honor.
After he had tested all the official officials,
the king now called Ayaz and handed the
pearl to him and said, oh, Ayaz,
every one of my officials have seen the
pearl. You also have a look at it
ready at it. You also have a look
at its radiant light. And tell me what
is its value?
Ayaza replied, sir, whatever value I am going
to mention, this pearl will be worth much
more than that. The king ordered, quickly crush
this valuable gem into pieces.
Ayaz knew the king's temperament.
And immediately realized the king was putting him
to a test. He broke the valuable pearl
into small pieces and did not pay any
attention toward
receiving any royal robe as a reward. As
he broke the pearl into pieces, all the
officials began creating a loud noise so that
the king's court in the king's court, a
commotion took place.
The minister of state uttered by Allah, this
man is a disbeliever and an ungrateful one,
showing no regard for a valuable gem belonging
to you.
Ayaz replied, respected brothers.
Is the command of the king more valuable
or is the pearl more valuable?
Oh, people in your sight, the pearl is
more valuable than the king's command. I will
not remove my sight from the importance of
the king's command like a Mushrik and and
like a Mushrik turn toward the pearl. To
remove my sight from the king and turn
it toward the pearl means performing shirk in
the love and the obedience of the king.
Ayaz
said, respected sirs, is the command of the
king more valuable or the pearl? I shall
not move my sight from the king, and
I will not turn my sight to the
pearl like a mushrik. Oh, you unworthy ones,
the actual pearl was the king's command. All
of you broke down the pearl of the
king's command.
When Ayaz explained the secret to all the
ministers who were jealous of his closeness to
the king, they became humiliated and disgraced,
by his understanding and his success.
Moana, Hakim Akhtar Saab, in his commentary on
this hikaya,
says, in this story, we learned that the
command comes before respect.
That command comes before the respect before respect.
It means that when a command is given
by the king, and Allah ta'ala, one of
his names is Al Malik, that he is
the true king. Al Malikul Haqq. When the
command is given by the king, the correct
line of action is to obey the command.
Ayaz had personal love for the Sultan Mahmud,
whereas the ministers and courtiers
were in love with their own positions, rank,
and wealth. The understanding and rational reasoning which
Ayaz displayed
was an outflow of his love for the
Sultan.
This love teaches us its own manner of.
When
it this love teaches us its own manner
of. This is a person the people who
love Allah, they have their own adab with
Allah.
And it's interesting that that, you know, even
the the
the wording that
that's in the Hekaia is that the the
chief minister
when gasping at the destruction of this pearl,
he actually literally called he called the Ayaz
a disbeliever for destroying the the pearl.
And,
and and and Ayaz rather than, you know,
going on him and being like, well, this
is not Kufr. You know, I just broke
a pearl and, like, a person doesn't leave
Islam except for by disbelieving the thing that,
brought him into it in the first place,
destroying property and vandalism.
Worst case scenario, it's a sin, but it's
not it's not kufr. Instead of going the
fiqrah out, what did he say? He rolled
with that that, that analogy.
And he said that the love of the
king
the love of the king is the actual
object of value, not the pearl.
And if I had looked at the pearl
and its value and put it in front
of the love of the king, then I
would have been a mushrik in that case.
Right? So you called me a disbeliever,
said what you did is closer to shirk
than what I did. And this is something
to remember for all those people who go
down the spiritual path, which is what sometimes
if you obey Allah ta'ala's hukum and his
command, other people will look at you and
say, oh, you're crazy, you're stupid, you look
crazy, you. They'll tell the sisters you dress
like a like a, you know, like if
you're in live in Afghanistan. And they'll say
to the brothers, oh, you look like Taliban
and
whatever, and ISIS, and they'll tell the they'll
tell the, you know, people, oh, you have
a backwards religion, and medieval and this and
that, patriarchal blah blah blah. All the other
kind of stupid, like, cuss words that they
make up for the people of Din. And
oftentimes, many of the people who will say
those things, they also themselves,
claim to be Muslims or they also themselves
are at least legally in the hookahum of
being a Muslim. Many of them will be
your relatives. Many of them will be people
who, you know, you would have expected better
from, but they'll gasp when you, follow the
command of the king
and, you know, their heart will be more
attached to the pearl than it is with
the with the the the the king,
with Allah
and, you know, you have to ask yourself,
sure Allah may forgive a great number of
people on the day of judgment,
But would you rather be your with Allah
be like the with the with with the
Sultan or would you rather be like the
courtiers with the Sultan? It's plain to see
the person who really loves Allah Ta'ala, which,
which which Maqam is is closer and better
and superior
and more worthy of adulation and more worthy
of praise and more worthy of Allah
love as well.
This is true understanding and knowledge is not
derived through the intellect.
It is created out of love.
Right? It says it says that that that
he says that the understanding and rational reasoning
which Ayaz had displayed was an out outflow
for his love for the Sultan. This love
teaches its own manner of adab. This true
understanding and knowledge is not derived through the
intellect, rather it is created out of love.
That if love drives the intellect, then the
intellect will be a wonderful servant, and it
will take the heart to the thing that
it wants. And if the intellect is in
the driver's seat and the and and,
then afterward,
the heart claims that it has love, it
doesn't have love. Love doesn't work that way.
Love doesn't take a back seat to anything
else. And,
Mona Hakimathr brings, like, a real, like,
like, punch in the gut, like,
example for the the the point he's making.
He says, the true understanding and knowledge is
not derived through the intellect. It is created
out of love. Note that Shaitan himself was
a rational being and not a being filled
with love. For this reason, he objected the
to the command of Allah, the ruler of
all rulers, whereas it would have been only
proper that when an order came from Allah,
it should have been immediately implemented.
The result of his action was that he
was banished from the court of Allah. On
the other hand, Nabi Adam and Hawa, alayhim,
were lovers of Allah ta'ala. When they committed
a mistake, they did not feel any disgrace
in admitting their fault to Allah together with
admitting their fault before their beloved one. They
busied themselves with gaining his pleasure by shedding
tears,
and they prayed for his pardon. And look
at the the way the Quran describes allata
describes in Surat Suratul
Baqarah. It was so few words.
That Adam, he he he put forth a
few words,
and turned toward him in repentance. And so
Allah accepted his repentance.
Indeed, he is often,
accepting repentance,
and he is the most merciful.
That all that's all it was. The difference
between shaitan and between Insan, is that both
of them had an intellect, but one of
them, the intellect was the driver and the
other one,
the intellect was the driver and there was
no love underneath it because love doesn't take
a back seat to anything. And the second
one,
they had an intellect and they had love.
And the love directed the intellect.
And you can see how out of the
2 of them, which which outcome is more
rational, going to Jahannam forever or, going to
Jannah forever.
Right? So even the intellect, it outsmarts itself,
which is not very rational. It's very funny
that there are a lot of people who
have shaitanid,
shaitanid,
inclinations,
and they say, oh, look. I'm just acting
rationally. Is it going to Jahannam forever is
not rational?
Oh, I'm just acting rationally. What? You're gonna
keep making money your whole life, and that's
rational? What? Are you gonna take the money
with you in your grave? What once,
your company, Masha'allah, corners the market and takes
all this money after having polluted the entire
earth and polluted all the air and all
the water and poisoned all the land and
poisoned all the children. What,
is that is that money somehow useful for
you? The intellect itself, when it grows and
turns into a monster,
it will end up making you miserable and
making everybody else miserable with you, which is
what Shaitan's job is. That I you know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna go to
Jahannam, and I'm gonna take as many of
these,
morons with me as I can. And,
what is the the the the answer of
love? The love of Allah
will
not only preserve the intellect, but it will
itself
guide the intellect to,
the place where it's going to benefit itself
and benefit others,
which is, Allah's rida and Jannah and his
happiness and his Tawbah and his Rahmah.
And it's it's interesting to note right now.
Imam Janaid
He, once, he once had the thought that
I wanted to meet Shaitan.
I wanted to meet Iblis and see what
is this what it who is this, character,
you know, and, like, what he did. And
so one day, he, he actually,
he actually met the met Iblis. And,
he he he said, can I ask you
a question?
And,
Iblis said, go ahead.
He goes, he goes, what drove you to
what
drove you to not make in front of
Adam when Allah told you all of this
could have been resolved very easily,
instead of, you know, instead of all the
difficulty that we all have to go through
and
blah blah blah, you know, all these all
this, you know, you're gonna be punished and
there's really it doesn't make any sense that
outcome, you know, that came from your refusing
to obey Allah's command. And so Iblis said,
how can I,
how can I make
in front of
a created thing instead of making sajdah in
front of the creator?
And Imam Junaid
his his intellect,
kind of took a look into the abyss,
the precipice,
and the abyss that,
that was
offered by
Iblis's answer that how can I make a
sajdah in front of something that's created? And
he said, no, I'm not jumping into this.
And so he said,
And, Shaitan ran
in pain from from from
him. Meaning what? You're you're the one who's
saying, oh, I'm champion tawhid and I'm a
great, you know, like I love the tawhid
of Allah so much so that I'm gonna
I'm gonna, not make in front of Adam.
Allah is the one if you would really
love Tawhid,
then Allah is the one who commanded you
to make the
and he's the one who made that sajdah,
not an act of worship at that point.
And, if you think that you can dictate
to him how you worship him, then you
don't worship him in the first place at
all.
And this is this is something that people,
I guess, they they they lose sight of.
Why? Because the mind may be filled with
a 100 ideas and the nafsme
and the ego and the intellect, all of
them may think very well and highly of
themselves. But if there's no love inside of
the heart,
then, it's like a car that has, like,
a a randomly rotating station, you know, steering
wheel. It could have a wonderful engine. It
could have wonderful fuel economy. It could have,
a good AC and stereo system that you
can listen to all of your Halal machines
on. And it could have every single feature
Italian leather from, you know, halal slaughtered,
Italian cows or whatever. It could have everything
in it. But if you cannot steer it
in a direction that's going to be of
any benefit to you, what's the point? You're
just gonna end up you just end up
crashing it somewhere, or you're gonna go somewhere
where you didn't wanna go in the 1st
place, or you didn't intend to go in
the 1st place.
And, there's no point to that. There's no
benefit to that at all. And if you
had a real intellect, which was in check
rather than out of control, then that would
have been, clear for everyone to see. But
there are many people who their intellect is
completely, like,
out of control, and, it's so smart it
ends up fooling itself.
So for this reason, he objected to the
command of the King of Kings, where
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, whereas it would have
only been proper that when an order came
from Allah, it should have been immediately implemented.
The result of his action was that he
was banished from the court of Allah. On
the other hand, Sayna Adam and Hawa
alayhi wasalam were lovers of Allah. When they
committed a mistake, they did not feel any
disgrace in admitting their fault to Allah. Thereafter,
with admitting their fault before their beloved one,
they busy themselves with gaining his pleasure by
shedding tears as they prayed for his pardon.
In this story, there's a further lesson lesson
of the magnitude of the divine command which
should be carried out without any hesitation.
The relationship between Sultan Mahmud and Ayaz was
a relationship between master and slave. Our relationship
with Allah Ta'ala is even greater and even
deeper.
Every atom of our bodies was created by
him, reared by him, and owned by him.
He has such an ownership over us,
wherein no one else shares that ownership with
him. Muslims are,
are commanded to struggle in the path of
Allah
And, jihad, remember that the kuffar, the disbelievers
are also Allah's creation and also Allah's
bounty and rearing
and Allah's bounties and rearing them is also
provided for them just as it is provided
for the believers.
Oh, Allah, you are kind that from your
unseen treasury, you provide sustenance to the non
believers as well. But when the command is
given to struggle in the path of Allah,
it would be inappropriate to think about shedding
the blood of so many people for whose
fostering and nourishment,
the heavens and the earth, the sun and
the moon, and the stars and the clouds,
the east and the west, the south and
the north, the air, the sea, the mountains,
and the services of thousands of machines and
factories,
and laborers and animals were utilized. It would
be wrong to consider,
going out in the path of Allah Ta'ala
in which the destruction of,
so much who's fostering and rearing and continued
life on earth and provision had been made
by Allah Ta'ala that he saddled the whole
creation for their services.
Now in going out in the path of
Allah Ta'ala, those very same people for whom
so much provision has been made,
is now being destroyed within minutes and seconds.
Now there will be no time for hesitation
because the order of Allah Ta'ala has come
in the face of,
has come. And in the face of Allah's
command, the whole world has no value whatsoever.
When the command of Allah Ta'ala comes, the
demand is that,
that the enemy should be struck for their
enemies of Allah fighting against the believers.
Without the command of the Sharia,
it is a crime to even drink water.
And when the fat fatwa is given to
strive in the path of Allah path of
Allah,
it may also be obligatory
to destroy.
Obviously, this is a,
this is written in in a context,
so don't go and join any stupid nut
job group.
This is the,
you know, whatever weird groups are causing facade
in the backwoods of Syria and Iraq and
whatever. This is in the context of a
sovereign state,
in a sovereign state. This book was probably
written in the in the days when the,
when Afghanistan was being invaded by the Russians.
And,
you know, the people
got banded together both from that country and
from other countries,
in the Muslim world and other places as
well,
in order to defend those innocent people against
the
the the advent of, of the communist invader
and colonizer.
So but the idea is this is not
to get into a political
squabble. But the point is that just like
that pearl is precious,
in a certain time,
it's appropriate
to,
it's appropriate to
protect its worth.
But in another time, it's actually appropriate to
destroy it when the command of the, when
the command of the lord comes.
That there are certain times when destruction may
also be,
from the the divine command. And a person
just has they shouldn't hesitate to protect that
which Allah Ta'ala has protected.
They also should not hesitate
when it's time to destroy the thing that
Allah Ta'am commanded to be destroyed.
And this is not a green light for
anyone to join, any kind of weird group
that operates outside of the parameters of the
Sharia,
outside of the sovereign state and outside of
the,
just struggle in the path of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
And you can call your, local mufti or
your local,
reputed ulama
in order to tell what the difference is
between one and the other.
In this story, Milana Rumi told us of
1 general law.
Through which a person can have his bondage
from disobedience and from going astray.
A person can save,
himself from the bondage of disobedience and going
astray.
All those desires which are contrary to Allah's
wishes, no matter how valuable, how pleasurable,
how beautiful
they may appear to us. The true lover
of Allah
and the the courageous one should never act
in accordance to those desires. In fact, they
should readily crush the pearl of their desires
with the stone of Allah's command, neither should
they cast an evil glance,
at the,
at a beautiful face that they were commanded
not to look at,
Nor should they look at a strange woman
even though there's danger from them,
losing their lives
from averting their gaze and looking away.
Yusuf Quran writes in
brackets that the first accidental gaze is forgiven.
Allah
give us to,
have the courage in order to sever the
bonds
of
of disobedience
and to put our love
for Allah Ta'ala in a superior and a
supreme place inside of our heart
over our intellect so that the intellect can
serve it well and not to put the
intellect over the love so that the intellect
can destroy both itself and the love as
well. Allah to Allah give all of us
so much stuff.