Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 15 Ramadan 1441 Late Night Majlis Revival Of Religious Knowledge Addison 05082020
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The speakers discuss the "offers of the year" and the importance of not reacting too quickly to past events. They encourage people to not let go of their plans and pray with their children. The "will" of Allah's plot and the secret of his secret are discussed, along with the "will" of swaying events and the "will" of the Bathe Nights." The "will" of the Blandt movement's negative treatment of the Blandt movement is also discussed. The "offers of the year" and the "will" of the Bathe Nights are discussed, along with the "will" of the Alkhani beast and the "will" of the Alkhani beast. The "offers of the year" and the "will" of the Bathe Nights are discussed, along with the "will" of the Alkhani beast and the "will" of the Alkhani beast and the "will"
AI: Summary ©
We have reached the 15th night of this
Mubarak month.
Make this night Mubarak and every other night
Mubarak.
All
of us.
From those who are,
emancipated from the,
from the from the torment of the fire
in this Mubarak night,
and in this Mubarak month.
Just a couple of words before
continuing with,
with our reading, inshallah,
of,
Sayed Mouna, Sayed Abu Hasan Ali Naddooey's,
interesting biography about Imam Ghazali
and that is that, you know, these these
Mubarak nights are passing. They're slipping away. This
is the night last night of the first
half of,
of of Ramadan.
Then it's all gonna be,
it's all gonna be, from here on out,
just a a matter of
what's in front of us is less than
what's behind us.
So don't be amongst those who are, you
know, who who say that, oh, look. It
came back so fast, and where did it
all go, and,
you know, this type of stuff. Don't don't
be one of those.
Rather,
put more put more effort into it.
Don't cry over what's gone as much as
let it, you know, the the burning, of
having missed it, motivate you to do something
for the future.
Is a day that people will rove around
looking for 1 and 1
and
1
and 1 and 2 and 1,
you know, Allah,
or, you know, just to,
put something in the scale pants.
And so, you know, still there's there's opportunity.
And, you know, all the cool people already
have been on the ball for some time
now. They've been fasting since Rajab.
So,
that's fine.
We're not them. Allah forgive us. But it
doesn't mean that we need to, like, completely
let go or that there's any benefit in
it. And, this goes double for
those brothers and sisters,
who are, have have family, have children,
have dependents,
have people who look up to them, even
have peers, but peers that, like, you know,
listen to what they have to say.
You know, this is this is a wonderful
time. If you have kids,
you know,
this is the time. If you need to
buy them candy to bribe them, buy candy
to bribe them. If you need to, you
know, threaten to take away their, Chromebook or
laptop or a
tablet or phone,
make all the threats in the world, this
is the time to to to pull the
leash and dangle the carrot,
in order to get them to do what's
right. Even if you have to get them
together and pray 20 rakahs only with Fatiha
in it, I know that our Hanafi Mufti
Hazrat will probably,
are sharpening their knives as they hear it,
but in the Maliki school, it's still valid.
And, you know, that's not to say that
I'm recommending it, but I'm saying even if
it's just that, that's all they can handle.
And get them together and pray with them,
the 20 of of Tarawi. You know, if
they can't pray 20, then pray 12 with
them. Pray 2 with them. Do something with
them. You know? Gather them together. Sit them
down. Say some word of good to them.
You know? Shut the lights off and, you
know,
with them in these Mubarak
nights. And, they'll remember. You know, you'll you'll
be your dust will be mingled with that
of your grave
and, you know, they'll remember and they'll take
the divine name and it will be a
benefit to all of us. So don't don't
waste these don't waste these opportunities.
You know, right now,
describes the,
That they they they plot a plotting, and
Allah to belong to Allah belongs even their
plot.
Allah forgive me if I, messed up the
wording at all. But, you know, that, that
Allah to Allah to him belongs even their
plotting, even if their plots are so great
that, they will,
rent mountains asunder.
And, you know, those types of plots seem
to be afoot nowadays but don't worry,
wrapped up within 1 Allah is the secret
that, binds the heavens and the earth together.
And, you know, a 1000 foundations from a
1000 billionaires who are up to god knows
what, you know, can't undo any of that
nonsense.
That nonsense, I should say, cannot do any
of undo any of that power. So sit
down with your kids and say, Allah, Allah,
in that name,
and in that
is the secret,
that shaitan
is humiliated
by. And it is the only one thing
that all of this,
complete, like,
nonsense,
theatrics of this world that are going on
are trying to take away from you. And,
you know, it's the one thing that was
there. The only the only distance between you
and it is the distance between your heart
and your tongue. And even if your tongue
were to be cut out from, your mouth,
Allah taught, spare
us all. But even then, it suffices. That's
it's just there in your heart. So these
are the nights inshallah. Bring it forth and
enjoy,
and enjoy the kingship and the,
the victory
and the glory and the the honor
and the happiness and the joy and the
security and the peace,
of of that divine name
being repeated in your house and those ayat
of that,
book, that was sent down,
from, from the highest heavens, from the,
and from the.
Enjoy those things in these Mubarak nights. Then
afterward, you guys are gonna be busy. We're
all gonna be busy trying to, you know,
hustle and earn a living and do all
the other fun stuff. So enjoy, enjoy them
now while you still can.
So we continue,
attack on the Bathe Nights.
So we talked about Ghazali's 2 major classes
of refutation that he authored and penned was,
external refutation. 1 was on the, philosophers
and the other was on the Bathe Nights,
cult of esoteric,
weirdos who, essentially essentially
will
claim falsely
descent from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
and access to secret knowledge by an infallible
imam
who tells them that the outward meanings of
the Quran is not what it means at
all
and, it's just
a bogey in order to distract the normies
and we're the deep spiritual, like, you know,
spiritual new age,
big spiritual guru masters and we know what
it actually means and only if you're friends
with us then you can understand.
But sneak preview, it means, you know, it
doesn't mean that you have to follow Shadi
at all. So he, you know, they employed
some very sophisticated,
and when I say sophisticated, I mean sophistry.
Some very,
very
tricky language in order to try to prove
what they wanted to prove as people do
to this day. There are people who have
penned entire books saying, you know, arguing from
the Quran that
that for example that the Quran doesn't prohibit
homosexuality or that it doesn't prohibit,
drinking alcohol or that it doesn't prohibit a
number of things that it obviously prohibits
and all of those works,
whether they're articles or entire books, all of
them are are just the tafsir of Allah
that Allah guides through this Quran many people
and He'll send astray through this Quran
many people and he won't send anyone astray
through this Quran except for those people of
Fisk, the people who love sin and profligacy.
Attack on the Ba'athianites.
Beside philosophy, the crisis caused by the Ba'athianite
movement,
had received the attention of Ghazali during, his
first stay in Baghdad
when he wrote the, Mustahaviriya,
at the instance of the then caliph.
Al Ghazali
has made mention of this book in his
autobiographical
account,
of the search for truth entitled
Al Muqib min Abbalal.
Ghazali
perhaps wrote 3 other treatises
entitled,
Hudjatul Haqq,
Muvsalul
Khilaf,
or Muvsalul Khilaf, and Qasimul
Bataniyah.
And he mentions these names, in another book,
called Jawahirul Quran.
2 more books on the subject. He writes,
and,
have been mentioned in the list of Ghazali's
writings. No one else could have encountered, or,
countered, I should say, the Bataanite so successfully
as Ghazali did for he was fully aware
of the ways of the mystics besides being
a savant to both the secular and religious
knowledge,
secular and religious sciences, taking shelter behind the
terminology drawn from philosophy. Their cult of quote,
unquote, esoteric meanings was a combination of sophism
and conspiracy.
For a man like Ghazali, it was compare
comparatively easy to, smash the snare of the
Bataanites.
His effective, answer to the challenge of the
Bathanites, made it a discredited
sect ever after him.
Ghazali's evaluation of social conditions.
So he he moves on. By the way,
the Botanis are, you know, they're an interesting
group of people. Philosophically,
they get shut down pretty hard by Ghazali
and,
you know, like, in an intellectual sense, they
don't really recover from that. And, there's a
lot of hate that their their,
successor movements will like try to project on
Ghazali. Almost none of it has to do
with any of his works.
But,
I I real I noticed that in Pakistan
is that, you know, the alkhani Ismailis
will from time to time in their,
articles and things like that in the Don,
snip in, like, slip in little, cheap shots
at Ghazali,
saying that, oh, look, you know, ever since
his attack on the philosophers, the whole Muslim
world has been behind on science and blah
blah blah, all this other nonsense which is
ridiculous because the whole Ottoman Empire, technologically modern,
empire which was Sunita the teeth and,
Ghazalian,
to the bitter end,
you know, they, you know, they there's no
real turning your back on science or modernization,
in in in that, in that state. In
fact, both the Mughal empires and the,
the,
empire of the Ottomans were,
you know, some of the first empires to
adopt gunpowder.
So this kind of like, you know,
kind of weird,
drawing room,
you know, lord mountain bennaccented
uncle,
who doesn't know how to read,
you
know, but, like, going on about how Ghazali
like stunted sciences in the Muslim world. Nonsense.
I see a lot of them pushing this
type of narrative and then they have, you
know, if
there are people who like to listen to
this nonsense from them,
who wanna believe that somehow it's who,
you know, who did the Muslim in,
which is really just a closeted way of
wanting to think that it's the Quran and
hadith that did the Muslims in, which is
not a very Muslim sentiment at all,
and it shows that a person doesn't know
anything about the or about the Quran or
the hadith,
or much about Islam for that matter beyond
a very cultural
level but, we we digress.
But, just, you know, to wrap up a
loose end.
Intellectually, Ghazali is the one who who, kind
of,
you know, quashes the the botanist
after him, really, they don't get taken all
that all that much more seriously in the
Muslim world,
intellectually.
However, the and you can see in the
books of Kalam,
of both the and
the,
a relatively deep and sophisticated knowledge of their
of their,
of their opinions and positions that they enumerate
in their various books and works and, a
pretty, pretty,
thorough refutation thereof.
But,
the political ascendency
of the botanese
is ended by Saladin Ayubi and his liberation
of Egypt from their, from their rule.
And,
still after after that, still there is a
group of them that will hang on
to
some
sovereignty and some sort of political relevance,
in a place in the mountains in Iran,
and a fortress called, Alamut,
which,
is the fortress of the assassins,
the Hashashin.
They will drug their disciples and give them
some false type of paradise that they have
staged. So this person who's, like, high on
Hashish,
that's the word assassin, Hashashin,
This person who's high on hashish will be
shown
a fake jannah with beautiful women and wonderful,
like, wine and
carpets and whatever. Some sort of b moving,
b movie set,
with b list actresses,
to show them how,
how paradisical
their paradise is and then they'll be told
is all you have to do is like
listen to the
listen to the great imam of the botania
and so they're like, okay, cool. And then
they'll send them to different places around the
world, say go get a job in the
palace, go get a job to do this.
They'll give them some training on how to
fight, kill poison, do weird stuff and then
they'll give them jobs all over the place
and then these guys will essentially become an
extortion racket.
They'll more or less tell the different kings
and princes and wealthy people in different places
around the world, you pay us so much
money or we'll kill you. And, initially, people
will be like, whatever. And then they'll kill
a bunch of people through their,
through their, what you call their network of,
clandestine
assassin cells. And, those people will promptly, you
know, kill themselves so as to not spill
the beans
and,
or, you know, they'll be killed in the
process and, of like they're not supposed to
not spill the beans of how the scam
works and,
then, the assassins get taken seriously and they
amass a great amount of wealth,
for their, kind of weird crooked purposes.
And, what what what will end up happening
is, they get taken very seriously. In fact,
Nizam al Mulk, the prime minister of the
Seljuk state
that actually endowed the madrasa Nizamiyah,
by which, Ghazali and his
sheikh were employed were actually, you know, his
sheikh, Imam al Haramain Joeni. Nizam al Mook
will be actually one of the people assassinated
by the by by this kind of riffraff
leftover set of botanist
and, they will be kind of a thorn
in the side of the the known world.
They'll do this with Christians as well.
There'll be a thorn in the side of
the world and so it's said,
in Atal,
Malik Juwani,
or Atal Malik Juwani,
who is not Imam Kharramain, but a later
functionary who will,
work for the Mongols after their conquest.
He's commissioned to write
a history of the world conqueror,
Genghis Khan and of the Mongol, conquest of,
of the world.
And so, he obviously is a Muslim and
it's like kind of hurts his feelings that
Baghdad got sacked by these people
and but, you know, he needs a job
and, you know, the Mongols will probably kill
him if he says anything they don't like,
so he will make a very cursory job
of the of the futuhat of the conquest
of Genghis Khan and
of his grandsons,
but like about a third of the book
is is dedicated to how,
who this cult was and how the Mongols
destroyed them and basically the story is this
is that,
that, Chinggis Khan when he's dying, he makes
his grandsons swear an oath that, like, when
you come to the assassins,
you know, their their mountain fortress, which is,
like, almost unassailable.
It's just, like, really really,
hard to get to. He says that throw
as much,
as much,
resources and effort at it as you can
and when you conquer them,
abandon the Mongol tradition of offering them,
surrender,
or,
of surrender or
or slaughter.
Just go go straight to the slaughter. It
was because these people, if you leave them
alive, they'll just do this nonsense again and,
once they're out of your grip then they'll
assassinate your people and they'll just, you know,
they're just they're just like scum, like, there's
no
negotiating with them. And so they all, they
all will give their their word that if
and when they get to the,
get to the assassins, they'll do this.
And,
yeah, lo and behold, actually, he gives a
a a a history
of that assassin cult in that mountain fortress
and he actually mentions something really interesting
which is that one of their imams actually
makes Tawba. He actually
recants his botanism
and makes toba and becomes a Muslim and,
you know, tells all of his,
all of his disciples to become Muslims and
they do it. And it's kinda like, you
know, it's kinda like,
the reverend Louis Farrakhan.
You know, they all kinda become Muslims and
then some of them don't enjoy it after
a while. And so when he dies or
when they get rid of him,
they basically revert back to their old ways.
And, that's when,
that's when
Hulegu,
who is
kind of, like, mockingly referred to in the
Muslim,
in the Muslim historical,
literature as Halaku.
Halaku means death in Arabic and is his
name, and so this kind of like a
play on words, they kind of like satirically
call him Halaku.
So then Hulegu basically,
knocks on their door not too long after
that,
and he he just decimates them. He destroys
them.
And so there are very few of them
that are left afterward. They're not politically all
that relevant,
until later times where, you know, they basically
make it to India and,
more or less move into some, poor villages
in Gujarat and,
have competing claims of the Imamate between the
Boris and the the Ismailis and whatever. But
essentially, it seems like Gujarat seems to be
where, you know, all these different competing groups,
seem to be making their,
their economic footprint.
And so,
the Avraham,
you you'll hear him from time to time.
He has, like he's a relatively influential person
politically, good big ties with the UK, with
Canada. Justin Trudeau is, like, a very close
personal friend of the Al Khan and, like,
they go and, like, party on their,
you know, on his private island together and
stuff like that. The Al Khan owns, like,
great, you know, tracts of,
land in, the northern areas of Pakistan and
they have converted,
you know, huge villages to botanism,
and there are actually preachers that go there
and try to, like, you know, and sometimes
successfully try to, you know, convert those people
back to Islam.
They owned huge
swaths of land in in Afghanistan as well.
Basically, that's who they are and what they're
up to nowadays. And, if you ask them,
obviously, are you guys assassins? No. No. That's
very exaggerated and, you know, we don't ever
this and that. But it's essentially the same
group.
It's essentially the same group. Taxonomically,
they're they're they're part of
the the same group. So that's just a
small
small interesting,
side note with regards to the refutation and
the quashing of of botanism,
and its various kind of weird forms in
the, in the Muslim world.
Ghazali's evaluation of social conditions.
The second remarkable achievement of Ghazali was his
evaluation of the religious and moral state of
re Islamization of the community. The Hialuma
re Islamization
of the community.
The Hayal al Mudin, revival of the religious
sciences, was the result of his endeavors in
this regard
and I think the word magnum opus is
thrown around. It's his greatest work. It really
is his greatest work and it's just a
really amazing work.
The Hayal al Mud Din.
The Hayal al Mud Din,
occupies a distinguished place amongst the few literary
works which have had a lasting effect in
molding the moral and spiritual life of the
Islamic world.
Hafiz Zainuddin
Al Iraqi, the author of the Alfiya, the
sheikh of, by the way, the sheikh of
Hafez bin Hajar, Al Askalani,
and then thereafter a distinguished pedigree of of
Muhandi Thein,
who did great
service for the hadith sciences in the Mamluk
era.
Hafiz Zainuddin Iraqi who brought out a collection
of traditions quoted in the Hia is of
the opinion that the foremost,
that it is the foremost literary composition of
the Muslim people.
Abu Ghafir al Farisi, a contemporary of Ghazalim,
disciple of Imam Al Haramain,
said that no book like it had ever
been written before. Another reputed scholar, Sheikh Mohammed,
Gazruni,
remarked that if all the sciences were effaced
completely, he would revive them all with the
help of the
'Hafiz ibn al Josi,
differed from Ghazali on many issues but he
acknowledged Ibn al Josi inshaAllah the next chapter
is about him. He's a great Hanbali scholar
of that era. So the Hafiz ibn al
Josi, differed from Ghazali on many issues but
he has acknowledged the popularity and matchless sincerity
of the uhya and had written a summary
of it under the,
caption of Minhas al Qasidin.
The uhya was written at a time when
Ghazali had returned home after more than 10
years of seclusion and meditation in search of
the truth. He now wanted to disseminate his
message of reform
and rectitude.
In reflecting the tremendous sincerity and heroic sacrifice,
heartfelt certitude, and ardent zeal,
of the author to revivify the true, faith,
that Haya presents
a striking example.
Shiblu Noamani
writes,
in his,
biography of Ghazali,
in Baghdad, he felt an irresistible urge to
embark upon the quest for the truth. He
proceeded to study each religion but still remained
dissatisfied.
At last, he turned to Sufism,
but it was something to be experienced in
the recesses of one's heart rather than to
be studied. And the first step toward it
was purification of the heart and transformation of
the self. The preoccupations
of Al Ghazali, however, left no room for
it. What honor and what honor and fame
sermons and debates, had to do with purification
of the heart and soul.
Obviously, it was a path, that led to
the wilderness.
At last donning a mendicant's habit,
he left Baghdad and took off to Wandering.
After a long period spent alternately in complete
seclusion and meditation,
he had an access to
divine manifestation.
He would have spent the rest of his
life lost in beatific visions, but witnessing the
contamination
of religion and morals all around him, a
malady from which the laity and the elite,
the knowledgeable and the illiterate were suffering alike.
He began to give
expression to his experiences and convictions.
He could not bear with the equanimity,
the degeneration
of the,
mentors of faith into a cesspool of materialism.
Let's read that sentence again.
He could not bear with the equanimity of,
the equanimity, the degeneration of the mentors of
the faith,
had which turned,
into a cesspool of crass materialism.
He wrote the book in these circumstances
as he himself writes in the preface, quote,
I found everyone hankering after material gains. People
had become forgetful of eternal salvation while the
doctors of religion who were guides to the
right path,
were no longer to be found anymore.
There remained only those who had lost their
soul to worldly temptations.
These people had led everyone to suppose that
knowledge consists simply in the debates and arguments
by which they spread their fame,
or else ornate sermons by which they held
the people spellbound,
or else legal opinions by which they sat
in judgment to settle the disputes of others.
The knowledge that was required to illuminate the
path leading to the world to come had
thus completely disappeared.
I could not endure this state of affairs,
and had ultimately to sound the alarm.
So, you know,
here,
is a really incredible book. One of the
interesting things,
that, you know, in my travels I came
across was that apparently there are Darz Nazami
Madaris in,
Madaris that teach the Darz Nazami curriculum in
South India, in the Malabar Coast, Kerala,
and,
in the southern parts of India
which, in which the,
the
because the people, majority of the people in
those coastal areas follow the Shafi'i school,
the Hayalu Madin is actually part of the
Darshnazami,
curriculum. I think this is the same thing,
you can correct me if I'm wrong, but
I think if not in whole, at least
in parts,
the Haya and other works of Ghazali are
also read in Moana Taha Karan's,
Madrasah in in the Cape in in Cape
Town in
in South Africa, which is just really I
I just think it's, like, really incredible. I
I was told this when I was in
the Emirates by a scholar from Kerala. He
told me,
he told me,
about that, and I actually saw him. 1
of the Shami scholars took me to visit
him,
and, he was just sitting in his and
his, on
a on the, you know, like, the the
whatever
the bed the traditional village bed in the
subcontinent
is basically like
a metal frame with rope,
like a hammock type rope configuration
ran through it so that a person can
sit on it and lay on it in
the heat and it doesn't, you know, heat
you too much like a mattress.
So he was sitting in the Emirates in
a obviously, it was a long time ago.
He was sitting in the Emirates in a
courtyard basically in the in the shade in
a in a hot summer day
and a number of students from really all
over the world, Arab and non Arab, were
sitting next to him and he was basically
teaching the hiya,
to them and, you know, it it was
it was something really beautiful. Like, I just
I there was a lot of in it.
So
Allah,
you know, give give and
and to those people who are preserving,
this knowledge and and,
you know, propagating it. And the is definitely
written from a point of view, but,
anyone who's read it knows that, you know,
the benefit from it is far far greater
than just that of a Firkim Adheb,
because of its, its, like, holistic treatment of
the deen.
Al Ghazali's object was to bring about a
moral and spiritual
transformation of the people of his time.
He wanted to create for the purpose and
awareness of the ills and weaknesses the Muslims
as well as their religious and intellectual leaders
were suffering from.
To tell them how the devil of earthly
passions had taken hold of different sections of
society
and to let them realize what factors were
responsible for diverting their attention from the
true content of their faith to its outer
forms, rituals,
and customs thus making them oblivious to eternal
life and the will and pleasure of God.
In order therefore to achieve the end, he
had in view, Ghazali undertook a detailed analysis
of the intellectual and moral approach
of the then society toward life
and the world, highlighted the vices
of the different sections of society, defined the
aims and methods necessary to achieve those objectives,
delineated the individual and communal obligations of the
people,
brought out the distinguishing features and differences between
secular and religious sciences,
invited the attention of the affluent and ruling
classes toward their shortcomings,
criticized unjust laws and rules promulgated by the
state, and exhorted them to give up their
un Islamic ways, customs, and usages.
It was thus that the first detailed sociological
study in Islam, which was brought out courageously
and poignantly,
which brought out courageously and poignantly
the social and moral ills of the society,
and suggested
measures,
for its reform
and transformation into a healthy community.
Inshallah, I think, that's enough for today.
Tomorrow, inshallah, we'll continue with
a discussion with regards to
Ghazali's
assessment and
advice for rectification
for the of his time.
Inshallah,
but, until then, inshallah, we ask Allah
to accept, our speaking and our listening for
his sake. And we ask Allah
to give us, the barakah of this night
and of this Mubarak month of Ramadan
and save us and spare us from the
calamities of this world and the hereafter
and,
to rectify
our our situations as individuals and as
families and as communities and as an Ummah,
that Allah
bring, so much more from this Ummah
before,
before it's time for this entire show to
be wrapped up.