Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 2 Ramadan 1442 Late Night Majlis Sufis And Sunnah II Addison
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Alhamdulillah by Allah SWa'Dulillah, we have reached this,
Mubarak second night of Ramadan.
And
because of the moon sighting,
and how long it took
to
get the,
the confirmation of the moon being sighted in
San Diego and then,
Santa Cruz.
I was unfortunately unable to make it to
the Masjid for Taraweeh, and so
we just prayed
at home with the children,
which had
become a a kind of a good habit
of ours, last
Ramadan.
Although a good habit built on the necessity
because the massages were closed.
By the time I got done with the,
moonsigning meeting when I was able to gather
the children together,
maybe about an hour or 45 minutes to
an hour had already passed and would take
another 15 minutes to get to the masjid.
So we just prayed at home together,
which is also a great blessing, hamdulillah.
But,
today,
we, got to go to the masjid and
pray.
And although it was still with, you know,
a mask on,
for a very long time
with, you know, social distancing, prayer rugs, and
whatnot,
But still it's such a blessing. It really
has been too long.
Such a blessing. Allah
let us pray the masjid. Whatever fear,
whatever,
anxiety, whatever threat, real or perceived,
that was there that obstructed us from gathering
the masajid last year, Alhamdulillah that it's not
there anymore and that we have this opportunity
to pray together,
in the Masjid,
taking,
obviously, precautions against what is a real issue,
but also not overblowing it to the point
where we, just, you know,
wave our hands and with that wave the
entire deen of Allah Ta'ala off.
Alhamdulillah, fumalhamdulillah, walaallamdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah,
umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah, umdulillah,
umdulillah,
So we continue, with this, book, Masha'Allah, compiled
and translated by Moana Tamim,
called Guardians of the Prophetic Tradition,
with some anecdotes,
regarding the mashaikh of the tariq
and their
strict adherence to the sunnah and love, of
the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam in service of it.
So, sheikh Tamim brings,
an anecdote from Imam Abu Bakr Tartushy.
He relates that when Muhammad bin Wasir, who
is the leader of Aldi,
Zuhad of the ascetics of his time entered
into the court of Bilal bin Abi Burda,
the governor of Basra with his lower garment
to the middle of his shin.
The governor of Basra said to him, oh,
ibn Nawasser,
what is this ostentation?
Meaning what?
Obviously, it's a sunnah for men to,
wear their,
wear their lower garment above the ankle,
above the ankles
all the way to the, middle of the
shin, nisussak.
And this is known to be a sunnah,
martial arts mentioned, by Imam Ibn Abi Zaid
in his Risala
in Maliki Firk, and, it's it's just well
known to be the sun of the prophet
that
your lower garment shouldn't drag.
Although the nisusak,
the middle of the shin, is considered the
upper limit. It's not
good to make the lower garment,
shorter than that,
although it's permissible as long as the aura
is not showing the knee or what's above
the knee depending on which method have you
followed. But, the point is is that the
upper limit is in
saq. And so what happens is that the
governor of Busra Bilal bin Abi Burda,
he says what ostation,
ostentation
is this?
Meaning what? The man was
following the sunnah,
and he accused him of showing off,
for following the sunnah.
And, this is unfortunately
a very kind of circular,
donkey backward,
type of
accusation that that people make, and they still
make to this day,
where if somebody
takes the guise of the pious or the
righteous,
and dresses or makes their appearance look,
like they're supposed to make it look. Whether
it be, with, having a beard or covering
their head or
wearing modest clothing or whatever,
people accuse them of being ostentatious,
where they're not being ostentatious. And people say,
well, you know, on one side, they'll say
that, hey. Look.
The,
you know, the the the outward appearance of
a person is not as important as what's
inside, which is technically true. But what what
they mean by it is that the outward
appearance isn't important at all, which is absolutely
not true.
It's just not as important as what's in
on the inside and both are important.
And then, after saying that, they'll say, well,
also, by trying to look,
like the pious,
You're somehow showing off
where
if everybody knows that
a person's what's in their heart is what
counts, then what they look like on the
outside shouldn't be considered such a big achievement
or and it shouldn't be something that intimidates
people all that much. Rather, it should be
a norm and a standard.
Otherwise, we'll accuse people who,
clean their bathroom in the house or, you
know,
wash their car or wear clean clothes without
stains of ostentation. That's not ostentation. Rather, what
is it?
Is beautiful and he loves beauty.
Things should be in order. The appearances of
things should be in order to the ability
that is possible and definitely,
you know, in accordance to the dictates of
the Sunnah.
So the governor says to Ibn
ostentation? Ibn Wasayah replied, it is you who
have made us ostentatious.
For verily, this is the dress of the
pious predecessors.
All of you have linked in your garments
so that the Sunnah has become a Bida'i
and a ostentation in your sight. When you
guys all abandoned the Sunnah, and now when
somebody actually dresses,
or comports according to the sunnah,
it sticks out and it becomes ostentatiousness
for for for you people because the norm,
amongst you has become, the abandonment of the
sunnah.
Protect
us. Sadly and unfortunately,
that's also, like, where we are,
nowadays today as well.
Whether it's the moon sighting or whether it's
a man keeping a sunnah length beard,
which is that he doesn't cut it less
than a fist length, whether it become a
person keeping the hem of their lower garment
above their ankles,
whether it become,
you know, a woman,
dressing modestly rather than provocatively.
We've made even, hijab into a mockery now,
to the point where, you know, the ladies
in hijab,
some of them, they dress
and they, do their makeup with such particularity
that it itself is something that
attracts people's gaze. And I'm not here to,
like, you know, criticize this person or that
person. I know everyone's, you know, at their
own place in their journey, whether it be
brothers or sisters.
Everybody deserves a little bit of indulgence and
a little bit of mercy,
in, you know, in in getting their act
together and in their, you know, journey toward
Allah
But it's still, you know, it's not just
a piece of cloth on your head
and,
that, you know, covering your head is an
obligation of deen, but if it's done without
the right, you know, without the right understanding
and without the right spirit, it itself it's
not any guarantee that a person is
practicing modesty. That even those, you know, girls
who and ladies and sisters who try to
dress plainly,
and not attract attention to themselves.
Oftentimes, they're, you know, passed over and looked
to the side,
for all sorts of things,
whether it's for marriage or
for, leadership roles or for
any sort of attention in education or,
in,
you know, social,
social matters.
Why? Because even though they're the ones who
are practicing the sunnah,
the the ones who are ostentatious and the
ones who have,
tried to, you know, use,
you know, the red flags,
of,
you know, different types of visual cues to
attract attention to themselves.
They've made those ones into,
into the the outliers, whereas that's the sunnah
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
The same thing with a man that a
man should wear white, that a man should
wear, There's this whole, you know, understanding of
what the sunnah of how a man should
dress is. And one of the beautiful things
about having read a khatam of the Shamal
of Tilmidi,
in in a number of places, we read
one most recently in Sheikh Musa Suwapang's
Ummah Center
Masjid
in Columbia Station in Ohio.
One of the beautiful things about reading that
book is that you see what the Rasul
wore. He was the one whose
perfect fitra was preserved intact,
the way that he dressed, the the the
way that he comported himself.
And, you know, some of those things are
known and some of those things are unknown.
And many of the things that are unknown,
are unknown and abandoned for that reason. Some
of the things that are known about the
sunnah of the prophet
are abandoned
anyway. Why? Because,
you know, like, ibn Wasi'ah says to Bilal
bin Abi Burda, it is you who have
made us ostentatious.
For verily, this is the dress of the
pious predecessors.
You all have lengthened your garments so the
sunnah has become a a bida, a reprehensible
innovation
and ostentation in your sight. Will
Allah
save us from having a crooked gaze that
would look upon
that which Allah loves
as if it's ostentation or as if it's
impious innovation or deviance,
and such a crooked gaze that would
look at those things that in some cases
are literally the deviance against which the messenger
of Allah
warned and look at them, with the with
the eye of love.
And it's a problem, you know. It's a
real problem.
It's a real problem. Some of us, even
those who are practicing and who are really
serious about their saluk,
you know, our alienation from the sunnah of
the prophet
forget about the practicing of it for a
second. Just inside the heart, our alienation from
it is
is, is something that we really should be
concerned about to the point where we see
a man with a beard and we get
as afraid of them as, you know,
you know, a anxiety
laden,
you know, grandma from Iowa, at the TSA
checkpoint.
Why? Because we've been ourselves trained to look
at that beard, that turban,
those traditional clothings, that hijab and that niqab,
and that jilbab as if it's some sort
something threatening or backwards.
Whereas, that was the sign of the pious
and the righteous, you know, from the entire
history of the ummah. Those were the signs
of the people that the poor could turn
to to be fed and the the that
the oppressed could turn to for justice and
that the confused could turn to for guidance
and for advice
and that the, brokenhearted could turn to for
solace. And if we ourselves look at it
as if it's something,
like dangerous or something
subconscious. But then you look at the, the
devils in suits and ties and the devils
in, you know, with, you know, clean shaven
faces and with makeup, caked faces and think,
oh, this is something I'm gonna, you know,
find something good with. You got another thing
coming.
And, you know, when I say devils, I
know I realize many of our brothers and
sisters, they wear suits and ties, and,
you know, our many of our brothers wear
suits and ties, and our sisters wear makeup
and whatever. And those things may be permissible.
They may be impermissible.
They themselves don't make it a person into
a devil. But the point is is that
those civilizational
trends were set by whom? They were set
by Shayatin that, declared enmity for the deen
of Allah Ta'ala and and for the sunnah
of Hisr Rasool who
declared
that, individual freedoms and
that, you know, just a human being's own
desires and ego is itself an ultimate truth
that will guide how we live our lives,
and that resent the the idea that someone
would bring the writ of the Lord and
bring,
the words of revelation
to human beings in order to teach them
how to live rather than,
them being able to live themselves. And for
us to
look at their archetype and their model as
something, you know, that we feel comfortable with
or that we yearn for or that we
love or that we have fondness and affection
for,
suffice to say, it's a real problem. It
it really is a problem. It's it's,
cure sickness that's inside the hearts, Amin.
Sheikh Abdul Qadr Jelani
he said,
the people of the Lord are the deputies
of the prophet
so you should accept the instructions they give
you, for they will tell you to do
what is commanded by Allah and his messenger
and forbid you to do,
what is forbidden by them.
They are made to speak, so they speak.
They are given,
things are given to them, so they take
None of their movements are motivated by their
natural impulses or their lower selves.
Not because of their passions,
not because of their passions do they participate
with the lord, of truth in his religion.
They have followed the messenger of Allah
in his words and his actions. They have
taken heed of the word heed of the
words of Allah.
Whatever the messenger
gives
you,
take it. And whatever he forbids you, abstain
from it and keep your duty to Allah.
Fear Allah,
which is,
from the Surat Al Hashir.
They have followed the messenger
until he conveyed to them,
conveyed
them to the the one from whom the
message is being sent. Meaning, they follow the
Rasool Allah
until he conveyed them, to Allah who sent
him. They have drawn near to him,
so he brought them near to the Lord
of truth.
And this is a very, again, a very
beautiful exposition of what the function of the
Alula,
of the saintly people of God is and
how you can recognize them. That they're not
people who just merely claim that we're the
people of Allah.
So follow us. But the sign that you
can see in them is that they are
the ones who are following the prophetic teaching.
They are the ones who,
take heed to the prophetic words. They're the
ones who,
dye themselves in the color of the prophetic
example,
and, they're the ones through,
you know, through that process
that will bring the people
through the messenger to the one sending the
message who is Allah Ta'ala.
Sheikh Ahmed Rifai Rifai,
the great,
who who was a founder of Atariqah, the
cornerstone of which is humility.
Sheikh Sidi Ahmad Rifai,
said, oh, honorable ones,
the dervish,
is treading the tariq as long as he
remains in the path of the sunnah.
And the word dervish that is it's actually
an English word from the Persian word darvesh,
which means,
the one who is the the the the
faqir, the one who has
shown his neediness to Allah
and the salak who travels the path toward
Allah.
Says the dervish is treading along the path
to Allah as long as he remains on
the path of the sunnah. No sooner does
he stray from the sunnah,
than he deviated.
He also said, Rahimahullah,
seek Allah by following the messenger of Allah
and beware of treading the path of Allah
through the desires and of and the lower
impulses of the nafs.
For he who treads the tariq through his
desires will go astray from the very first
step.
What does that mean? A person's like, well,
I wanna be a Muslim. Okay. I wanna
be a good Muslim. Okay. Why? Well, I
I saw a really,
cool speaker, you know, give a really good
talk, and so now I wanna become a
speaker and give a talk. Well,
the prophet
didn't come to make you a speaker who
give talks.
What is it? I wanna be a good
Muslim. Why? Because my,
you you know, my family are Muslims and
we're better than everybody else.
Well, the whole point of Islam is not
to make you, you know, fully yourself and
a vainglorious
boaster
who, you know, plays identity politics and so
it's a very convenient part of your,
convenient part of your identity.
These are very subtle tricks of the nafs,
and they can take a person
down a path that looks very much like
piety and righteousness but really isn't.
And the touchstone through which a person can
see,
is this nafs or is this, deen? Is
the sunnah the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi
sallam?
Because the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam never played identity politics. He never put
himself forward in order to speak so that
he could be heard. He never valued,
leadership
and the and, you know, the opinions of
people to the point where he was looking
for likes and retweets and, you know, that
type of
stuff. He really wasn't there to,
be loved by the people. Rather, he was
there to be
a slave of Allah to Allah, which is
the most beautiful thing a person can be.
And,
this is one of the
it's one of the
attributes of Allah's slavehood
is that whoever,
you know, imbibes that color
with vibrance,
that person will be loved by good people
and they'll be hated by bad people.
And, you know, there are oftentimes a person
is in a gathering or amongst the people,
in which the evil or the bad overwhelms
the good, and so such people oftentimes are
hated and reviled
as we see,
examples of, of which in front of us,
in front of our own very eyes,
all the time.
And so, you know, whoever treads the tariq
through their own desires, that person will go,
astray from the very first step.
And whoever,
seeks by following the messenger of Allah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, that person is actually traversing
and making progress on their journey.
He also said,
oh, honorable ones.
He used to address his students and
his disciples
like that.
Again, because the cornerstone of his study was
what was humility.
He once said in the in the in
the field gathering
that,
may I be
gathered on the day of judgment in the
gathering of Firaun and Haman
and the the gathering of Firaun and Haman,
of pharaoh and his
and his evil and despicable,
minister, Haman,
if I think of myself in this moment
as better than any of you.
Meaning what? That
my own
path
requires me to think of all others as
better than me.
And this is something I've kept, you know,
front and center
in my heart.
And if it wasn't something I kept front
and center right now,
may I be
raised up on the day of judgment with
pharaoh and Haman,
which is a very
extreme thing to say, to say the least.
So this is one of the reasons that
he used to
address his,
address people with such humility. So he'd say
to his own students, he's, oh, honorable ones,
revere
and honor the status of your Messenger sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
He is in the station of barzakh between
the creation and the lord of the truth.
The word barzakh is a Persian word,
meaning,
barrier,
and then it becomes Arabicized.
It says he is in the station of
Barzakh between the creation and the Lord of
truth.
He is the slave and beloved of Allah,
the messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi wasalam,
the most perfected,
creation of Allah. He is the most virtuous
of all the messengers of Allah,
the guide to Allah, the caller to Allah,
the one who informs us of Allah, the
one who takes from the divine blessings of
Allah.
He is the door of 1 and all
to the divine court of the merciful.
He is our intermediary to the presence of
the all independent Lord.
He who connects himself with the Messenger of
Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam will have connected
himself to Allah,
and he who disconnects himself with him or
from him will be disconnected.
Sheikhtammim,
continues. He says, Imam Haddad,
writes in his Kitab al Marunah,
on the following,
on following the sunnah.
Adhere to the good manners of the sunnah
outwardly inwardly. Make them habitual to you, and
you will be
perfected in your following and emulation of the
messenger of mercy, the prophet of guidance, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
If it would be pleasing to you to
become one of the true saints, the siddiqun,
then do not habituate yourself to any kind
of behavior until you study it and ascertain
whether the messenger of Allah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam,
any of his companions, or any of the
leaders have thus behaved.
If you find that they did not,
while able to have done so, then refrain
even if it be something licit, something lawful.
For they refrain from it only because of
their knowledge that to do so was better.
If you find that they did it, find
out how they did it, then follow suit.
A certain scholar who refrained from eating melon
explained his behavior by saying that
he had been informed that the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam had eaten them, but
that it was not known how he had
done so,
and this was why he had abstained from
them.
Of course, this is something that, many people
are not going to understand or appreciate,
but,
you know, this is a type of death,
tamuk,
that the people who love the rasul sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam,
go into.
And this is the level of reverence for
the sunnah that the companions
and the aslaf, the the pious forebearers had,
and the the the mashaikh of the tariqa
that are are the ones that that we
take our guidance from rather than the charlatans
who kind of make stuff up, as they
go along.
Imam Haddad,
continues.
Know that the one who observes prophetic good
manners in his everyday activities is preserved by
Allah from passing into base attributes and behaviors
that are outside of them,
and obtains the religious and worldly benefits that
Allah has set through his wisdom within them.
Anyone who would be pleased to become completely
free and clean of impurities and human passions
should make all his outward and inward motions
and times of stillness conform to the law,
and follow the dictates of both law and
reason.
When the Sufis deprecate certain everyday activities, their
purpose is to criticize the manner in which
these are done,
under the influence of cravings and passions,
to excess and or with neglect of the
good manners established by the sacred law.
Imam Ghazali
said in his Arba'een,
the 14 or the 40 foundations,
of of,
the Deen.
After providing an encouragement to follow the prophet
in pointing out certain secrets of this,
he said,
all this applies to everyday activities. As for
acts of worship, I know of no cause
for leaving the sunnah except for that it
is not begotten of concealed disbelief or manifest
foolishness. Know this.
That's really, deep and it's,
something really scary.
What did he say? He said that when
we talk about following the sunnah of malic
maleness,
we're talking about, like, a person's daily habits
and customs,
and, you know, where there's, like, subtlety and
nuance in,
in what that discussion entails.
He says all this applies to everyday activities.
As for acts of worship, he says there's
no more subtlety and nuance left here. Here,
you just follow the sunnah of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He says why? Because
I know of no cause for leaving the
sunnah in an act of worship,
except for that that that leaving of the
sunnah has been begotten of concealed disbelief,
of nifaq,
of hypocrisy,
or of manifest foolishness. That a person is
just kinda just like lost the plot. And
sadly, we have many people who have lost
the plot and are happy to have lost
it and are afraid to pick it up
again. May Allah
make us, amongst the,
people of,
of Marifa, of Noses, the people of of
deep knowledge, the people of,
of his love, and the people of the
sunnah of the prophet
and the people who worship as he,
Allah Ta'ala, as he worship them or at
least make a good faith effort and attempt
at least
have some khasla, some some attribute of the
rasul salah, some's
worship,
even if it's very small and even if
it's one out of an, you know, 1,000
and millions of beautiful attributes of worship in
the messenger of Allah, just one enough so
that Allah can
look at us,
with
look at us with that one attribute and
that we,
he sees in us some small piece of
the,
what he sees when he looks at the
Rasool Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the one that he
loves, and so that he may love us
as well. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala give all
of us so much