Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 20150218 Fiqh Class.mp4
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Before we start, were there any questions from
last week?
So we left off talking about the Asman
Sifat of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
The names and attributes of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
And the names of Allah Ta'ala
are,
special names of Allah Ta'ala that we know.
They're tawkishi.
They're they're
names that are known because they're either transmitted
in the Quran or they're transmitted by the
Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And
the attributes are,
you know, ways that that the creation interact
with Allah Ta'ala. And so some things are
both a name and an attribute. So for
example, Al Raheem,
the merciful or the the the inner Writful
of mercy is both the name of Allah
Ta'ala and it's an attribute of Allah Ta'ala.
Whereas for example,
An Nasir, the one who gives help, it's
not specifically mentioned in the book of Allah
Ta'ala or in the sunnah of Rasool sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam as a name of Allah
Ta'ala. So we won't say that it's a
name of Allah Ta'ala, but it is one
of His attributes in the sense that we
do agree that He gives help.
So,
the the what we have is a relationship
between Asma and Sifaat. The names and the
attributes,
a relationship
of more or less of of Umum and
Husoos that that that
names are attributes, but not all attributes are
names.
Names are attributes, but not all attributes are
are names, with the exception of the of
the the word Allah.
Allah is, you know, there's a discussion about
this as well, but,
Allah is,
by and large considered to be
not some part of the way we interact
with him. So we say that all of
the names of Allah Ta'ala that that we
have, they're names that he named himself.
And all of the attributes of Allah ta'ala,
they're attributes that he has now, he had
in the past, and he, will have forever.
And we talked about this a little bit
before, but it bears repetition.
And that is that Allah Ta'ala doesn't change.
Allah Ta'ala is not caged within time and
space. You and I are caged in time
and space.
What we knew yesterday,
we may not know now or what we
may now we what we will know now,
we may not know tomorrow. There's there's ways
that we can change. In fact, nobody is
exactly the same as they were a 2nd
ago and nobody is going to be exactly
the same as they are now
a second from now. But Allah Ta'ala's
holy, that His holy,
essence is such that it never changes.
Now this brings up the question that
a person
uh-uh may say well Allah Ta'ala is angry
with some person and is merciful to another
person, how can that be that he's being
different with different people or perhaps
somebody is,
you know, a kathir today and maybe a
Muslim tomorrow or someone may be a Muslim
today, will
be a kafir tomorrow?
You know, what's the,
you know, what's the deal with that? Like,
how can we how can we reconcile that
with what,
you know, what we said about Allah Ta'ala
not changing, you know, meaning in his attitude
toward a certain person. And this is why
it's very important to understand
that it's a very big part of our
aqid that we believe in Qadr. We believe
in divine predestination.
And that is that Allah knows
before he created the heavens and the earth,
who would be created, how they would be
created,
how they begin, how would they live their
life, how would they end their life, who
is a person of Kufr, who is a
person of iman,
every morsel of food that they eat, every
sip of, drink that they drink, every,
you know, breath of air that they breathe.
He knows that just like we quoted the
ayah before Surah An'am
that a leaf doesn't fall except for He
knows about it.
That a leaf doesn't fall except for he
knows about it and nor is there a
seed and, you know, planted in the darkness
of the earth,
nor is there anything,
moist or anything dry except for he has
already had it recorded in a,
a manifest book. In fact, the the the
the sacred history of the universe
is what? Is that the first thing that
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala created was the
the pen and the tablet and then he
commanded the pen to write everything that was,
everything that is and everything that will ever
be.
Now a person may ask well
why? What's the point? Allah Ta'al already knows
all of it. You know one of the
possible hikmas, I mean we don't know exactly
why Allah does does what he does, right?
This is an important point also. You know,
we don't know why Allah does what he
does and in fact the question itself is
haram to ask.
Although people ask the question they don't mean
it in the the haram way, right? The
the aqidah of the Muslims is what? That
Allah Ta'ala says in his book,
He is not nobody has the right to
ask him about what he does,
but the he has the right to ask
others. Meaning that that all of his creation,
they can be asked about everything. They can
be asked and questioned about things. So when
we say why did Allah do this? Why
did Allah do that?
Essentially we're not ask we're not answering the
question of why. The question of why is
a seeker that Allah knows,
and it's his right to do whatever he
does. And something perhaps we mentioned this before
that, like, if a person owns property,
they have the right to do with it
whatever they want to.
And that's something even, you know, as Americans,
we're very keenly aware of. Right? Imagine
hamza. If your mom gives you
if your mom gives you and, like, all
your brothers
a, I don't know, like a balloon. Right?
So this one's for you. This one's for,
you know, these 2 are for the twins.
This one's for the baby. And you take
your balloon and you pop it. Right?
Well, can someone call the police and say
that wasn't fair?
No. No. No. Your mom might be like,
oh, why did you do that? But at
the end of the day, you know, it's
your balloon. You popped it. Case closed. You
know? And so
that's what that's something somebody gave you. Right?
What about the entire heavens and the earth
that Allah created from nothing?
Right? Whose whose property is it? Clothes. So
if he chooses to pop 1 balloon and
he chooses not to pop the other balloon,
is there someone afterward to call the police
and be like, oh, that's not fair?
No. No. Because it's his. Right? So that's
what we mean when we say
that he's not to be asked about what
he did because he can do whatever he
want for whatever reason he
wants. And as a matter of creed, we
believe there's a we believe that he has
wisdom in everything that he does, but that
wisdom sometimes is understandable by us and sometimes
it's not.
And, even when we do understand, we're just
like dipping our beak on the surface of
the in the surface of the water. The
water goes down deep where it ends. Nobody
knows.
Nobody has the the ability to perceive, you
know, even a small amount of how deep
the wisdom is. But we are allowed in
certain cases to think about reflect over what
the wisdom of Allah doing something is. And
Allah Ta'ala himself shares in his book or
on the tongue of his messenger, sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam, what the wisdom of him doing
certain things are in in certain places. In
certain places, he teaches us that you will
not understand the wisdom, so leave it alone.
And so when we say why did Allah
do what he did, it's,
an attempt to understand the wisdom of him
doing what he did. It's not answering the
question of why.
It's a very subtle distinction between the 2
of them. Maybe later on in the Darsif
we, have time we'll go go go back
to to, you know, to that distinction.
But coming back to the Asman Sifat,
of Allah Ta'ala. The Asman Sifat well, so
we actually we're talking about the lowhend of
qalam Muzdi.
You know, why did Allah Ta'al create the
pen and the tablet? He definitely didn't need
to have a written attestation of everything that,
you know, was and everything that is and
everything that will ever be.
But, you know, at the same time,
at the same time, you know, there's there's
many possible hikmas of why he did that.
And one of them that I can understand
is that the the knowledge of Allah Ta'ala
is one of his
one of his, sifaat. It's one of his
attributes that Allah Ta'ala has knowledge and his
knowledge is complete and it's perfect and it's
something that you and I cannot relate to.
That type of knowledge is not something that
you and I can relate to. We're impressed
if someone memorized the Quran or we're impressed
if somebody, you know, memorized Sahih Bukhari or
whatever. That's like impressive, Masha'Allah.
While the knowledge of Allah Ta'ala is so
detailed,
that it boggles the mind it's impossible for
us to know and that's just the knowledge
of the creation. The greater part of the
knowledge of Allah Ta'ala is not knowledge of
the creation rather it's knowledge of himself,
which is something we can completely totally can't
relate to.
But if we see
if we see, okay, you know, the knowledge
of the creation is all written and recorded
in one place,
right,
we have a visual representation
of how overpowering his knowledge is to us.
And we also have a visual representation, which
is a proof to us that what? That
he knows what's gonna happen, that predestination, that
father is true. Now the predestination is an
issue that that we'll talk about a little
bit later, but it's something that a lot
of people struggle with.
If you have you struggle with, you know,
this concept and what the relevance of this
concept is and how or why it works,
know that that your struggle will will oftentimes
with the with the issue of predestination, it
will return to the precept of what?
That he is not asked why he does
what he does,
but but the creation they're they're asked. At
any rate, so we say that all of
his, Asma'an Sifaat, they always existed,
and they all exist now, and they all
will exist forever
the way that they always were. But we,
remind,
you know, about, like, for example, the the,
you know, the the the the example of,
like, watching a film, you know. That if
you put the film through the the
the
projector, you'll see one frame at a time,
one after the other. That's a way of
experiencing the film through time. If you splice
all the the film up on the, you
know, on a backlit board, then you can
see everything at the same time. This is
not the mifal of how ta'ala works, but
this is just a way that we can
conceptualize in our mind that Allah ta'ala,
you know, how, you know, how how it
is that that that that
that time can be experienced all at the
same time, that it's not something that you're
you're bound by rather.
You know, Allah Ta'ala,
his view of time is from,
you know, from a point of view that
envelops it, not a point of view that's
enveloped by it.
So you know, you can imagine, you know,
that that one frame, the ghadab of Allah
Ta'ala is going to one frame
and the mercy of Allah Ta'ala is going
to another frame,
and,
that Allah Ta'ala, he treats people
based on what their kawateem is. What the
the the frame that's most relevant for a
person that we experience right before we die,
that's the frame that Allah ta'ala always treats
us with and always looks at us,
by.
And that's why it's a hadith of bukhari
that all affairs are to be judged by
how they end,
because that's the frame that Allah informs us.
That's the frame that will be the one
that will last forever.
In our experience when we enter Jannah, that
one will be then you know, that one
will be the one that that Allah looks
at in order to deal with us,
for however he deals with us for the,
for the rest of time. So Saeed Nama
radiallahu anhu, you know, he said it comes
in the that where was our where were
where were our,
brains back in the days when we used
to make an idol out of dates and
then we'd worship it and then we'd eat
the idol afterward.
That that said, the Umar who confessed this,
you know, even when he was an idol
worshiper bowing to idols, Allah Tawah still loved
him.
And that's something important to understand. This is
as a side note why we,
we don't consider it permissible to curse a
person who's living because
as long as they have breath in them,
they it's it's possible that Allah Ta'ala's love
will overtake them and they will be from
the people, of Allah Ta'ala's love.
It's a hadith of the prophet that one
a person will do the deeds of a
person in the fire, until their fate overcomes
them, until they'll do the deeds of a
person in the fire until they're only, like,
1, like like, a forearms length. They're basically,
they can reach out and touch it, you
know, and then the the qadr of Allah
ta'ala will over overtake them, and then they
will keep doing good deeds, good deeds, good
deeds until they become a person of jannah
and Allah calls them back. On the flip
side,
the same hadith said that some people will
do the the actions of the people of
Jannah until they're just,
you know, they can reach out and touch
it, basically. They're just a a a a
a a forearms length away from it. But
then their their other their fate will over
overtake them and then they'll keep doing bad
deeds until they become a a person of
jahannam
may Allah protect us from,
from from such an end. It's hadith, it's
a dua of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam alamma.
You
know, I I
ask you,
refuge from you from becoming confused after having
had everything together. You know?
I ask you that you protect me from
from becoming confused after having had everything all
my understanding together proper.
And so
this is,
you know, coming back to the Asman Sifat
of Allah Ta'ala,
this is why we say that he was
Khalib,
even even in the time that we before
we experienced
creation,
that he was a Khalib and he was
the razit. He was the one giving provision
before,
the creation experienced their own,
existence.
And he was, you know, he was the
one who had mercy on his creation even
before
the creation,
experienced their own existence because Allah ta'ala,
is not caged by time and space.
These are these are things that we're caged
by and so we don't understand how how
it is that Allah Ta'ala can transcend these
things, but he does transcend them. He does
he does transcend them. His his existence is
just on such a scale that that these
things are are are are not you know
they're not something that he's bound by and
that's part of, you know, the un understandable
or in
the the non understandable
nature of the that of the,
of the the holy essence of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
So we say that we continue with the
text that Allah Ta'ala is too
is is too exalted
that any of his,
that any of his sifaat, any of his
attributes should be created.
And he is, too exalted that any of
his names
should be,
also likewise created or started at a discrete
point in time.
Meaning that everything having to do with him
always was and always is and always shall
be. Now there was a sect of heterodox,
Muslims
that,
you know,
became very,
very well known and and and had quite
a
quite a quite a following in the,
2nd century, meaning after a 100 years after
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And they
were known as the Mu'artazila.
And the Mu'artazila
were
a group of people who essentially said, listen,
the Sahaba
have a very dull and unsophisticated
understanding of Islam,
and, they were mostly people who are trained
in Greek rationalist philosophy.
And they said, we want to reinterpret the
Quran
and the hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam based on the principles of Aristotelian
rationalist philosophy,
which in theory sounds great, you know, rational
stuff is good, you know, stuff should be
rational. Right?
In theory, it should be great, but problem
is that the whole concept of wahi, the
whole concept of divine revelation
is predicated, the usefulness of it is predicated
on the idea
that,
that that there are certain things that the
rational mind cannot understand.
And,
you know, the ulama described
this phenomenon
as not a failure of rationality.
We don't say that rationality means nothing. You
know, simple precepts like if a equals b
and b equals c, then a should equal
c as well. These types of precepts are
are are universal, they hold true
at at every level. But rational inquiry has
limits.
And, you know, just like, you have a
a gram scale that a jeweler has. Right?
A gram scale that a jeweler has will,
you know,
be very precise in weighing small amounts of
stuff. Hopefully, jewelry, sometimes other
contraband
materials.
Right? But if someone were to say to
you that here, here's a mountain, go weigh
it in this gram scale,
you know, you have a problem here. And
the problem isn't based on the scale not
being,
not working or functioning. Right? So we say
that the ALCO, there's a range of things
that the ALCO is good for dealing with.
Right?
And there's a range for which it's completely
like its way
out of its bounds. So the the, you
know, the aqqal allata gave in San, it's
it's like a gram scale. It has limits.
Whereas the 'ilma of Allah Ta'ala has no
limits.
And the idea of wahi is what? There
are certain things that people have to know,
in order to,
get by and make it in this world,
and so Allah put those things, amongst mankind.
And this is something I mean, this is
a really it's a really deep concept, you
know?
It's a really deep concept because there are
certain things that, you know, they used to
look around, you know, they used to observe
nature around them. We don't know anymore where
is the sun rising, where is the sun
setting, where does the moon rise, where does
the moon set. If we wanted to go
inside the moon for Ramadan or for whatever
other month, we wouldn't even know where to
look for it. We we're so disconnected with
the world around us. The old ulama were
not like that. And so the old ulama
used to ask wonder about questions like why
is it that we can speak and other
people can't or other species can't.
And one of the interesting things is that
the time and age we live in,
it betrays the fact that that,
we're not even like like brain wise, we're
not even the most well equipped animal.
There are certain animals that have
that have brains that are similar to ours
and may exceed ours in certain ways.
You know, certain, like, whatever, killer whales and
dolphins
and, like, you know, chimpanzees
and gorillas and whatnot. You know?
They may not be
more well equipped mentally, but they're similarly equipped
to us. It's not like there is like
a day night difference, like the difference between
a human being and like an octopus that
doesn't even have, like, traditionally speaking, a brain
like we would think of a brain.
It's it's pretty it's pretty similar. The structure
of it is very similar.
The way it works is very similar, etcetera,
etcetera.
And the thing is, the great thing is
you can actually teach a dolphin,
you can actually teach a gorilla, you can
actually teach a chimpanzee sign language.
And some animals, you can teach them language
and they can even vocalize certain words. It's
just the issue of anatomy that they can't
vocalize things that we can, and we can't
vocalize things that they can. But you can
teach them these things. So the ulema used
to consider simple things like what?
Speech. This this is something that comes from
wahi. It's something that's a gift from Allah
ta'ala. It's not something that that that human
beings just got on their own. Because if
it was possible to get it on their
own, all these other animals would have it,
you know, and we wouldn't be the only
ones
that have it.
There are a number of things. You know,
even the ancients, like, you know, even the
mushrike, who are definitely
not people who,
you know, are on on on anything resembling
the deen of Islam, but like, you know,
the Greeks they had a
a myth that fire and the use of
fire was a gift that was given by
the Titan Prometheus for which the rest of
the gods chained him up, right? And the
idea was what? They, even as ancient people,
had an understanding that that there are certain
things a person wonders, like,
how the heck did we, like, figure this
out? You know what I mean? Like, if
I never saw it before and I was
just, like, isolated in a cave, there's no
way I would have known about it. Right?
Why is it that we're the only, we're
the only animals that we're close?
There's no other animals that that that we're
close.
Why is it that, you know, there's a
lot of things. So a lot of the
uloom, they come from wahi.
Whether whether it's something that's completely agreed upon
or whether it's something that that it's by
conjecture,
by observation, by whatever. But the idea is
that there are many things. If it wasn't
given to us by Wahi, by divine revelation,
how would we have figured it out? You
understand what I mean? There's no way that
we could have,
figured it out. And so,
you know, we say that, coming back to
the
coming back to the text that Allah Ta'ala,
his,
sifaat and his asma, his names and his
sifaat are not
in any way, they're not any way created
rather they're taught to us by Allah
himself.
And and we're we're giving a we're giving
a dalayel that there are certain knowledges that
were given to mankind by Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala and that's not a a far fetched
it's not a far fetched understanding.
And that the reason for that wahi is
what? That there are certain things
the 'aku will never arrive at. And so,
yes, we're talking about the Mu'utazila. Right? So
the Mu'utazila are these rationalist philosophers. Right? They
said that all of wahi, all of revelation
can be reduced to rationalist principles.
And if that were true, then, you know,
Socrates and and, Plato and Aristotle should be
ambia.
And some of the Muertazilah indeed believed that.
Allah Allah knows best, you know. Doesn't seem
like it, but, you know, if you read
some things about their lives, you'd be like,
it's not something that we would do. But,
you know, we weren't there. So whatever. We
suspend judgement about things we have not you
know, that we can't prove or whatever. But
it does look very dubious.
But they that that's the extent to which
they they they went. And so one of
the precepts of their their deen was what?
Was that the all of the,
Sifaat and Asma'bala
ta'ala are,
are basically
things that he,
made up for the purpose of
communicating with his creation.
Right? So before he before he because they're
based on what? Rationalist philosophy. So, you know,
how can he be al Khalifa before he
created anything? That doesn't make no sense.
Okay? How can he be a razif before
there's anyone who needs risk?
That doesn't make any sense. Right? So they
they said no. All of the what existed
before creation was jasti, that the essence of
Allah ta'ala and afterward,
you know, as need came, then he became
the khalit and the razik and all of
this other stuff. Right?
Now
this is not
it's not a small
discussion. It's not a small concept that we're
talking about.
Why?
Because we say Allah transcends,
His creation and is unknowable by His creation.
There's
nothing like anything like Him.
There's no one who is
like unto Him, JallAllahu Allah.
And so part of that is what? Is
that we say that His existence transcends our
our kind of our existence in a way
that he's unknowable. Right? So the Muertazu
would say, oh, that's a complete cop out.
You're saying it's a mystery. You can't explain
it. Right? It sounds like the trinity to
me or whatever. Right? They'll say stuff like
that. We say, no.
True. But we say that Wahi is there
to teach a person, revelation is there to
teach a person what they couldn't have figured
out on their own, and this is something
that Wahi plainly tells us. There's no one
like unto him. There's no one like anything
like like him, you know, etcetera, etcetera. And
so many statements of the Quran like that.
Right? He
has no partner, you know, etcetera, etcetera.
And so we say that this is our
dawil for it. And the Quran is the
Quran. If we I mean, if we were
debating with a Christian, we could you could
still debate further, but you guys, Mu'athazil, you
claim you're Muslims and you claim that you
accept the Quran, so this is our deal.
The problem with the Mu'tazilah's
claim, which sounds kind of like it makes
sense,
their claim that Allah
you know,
wasn't Al Khaliq and wasn't a razik, you
know, before and then he became Al Khaliq
and razik afterward
is that now you cage Allah Ta'ala in
time inside time and space.
And you give Allah Ta'ala a number of
essential
attributes that are similar to the creation.
Okay? A number of essential attributes
that are similar to creation.
This is the way the Greeks and Romans
used to think about their gods.
What? They live on Mount Olympus, which is
an actual mountain. If you climb high enough,
which they weren't able to, there's a big,
like, hall up there and they're sitting on
chairs, and Zeus gets upset at someone and,
you know, hit some of the lightning bolt.
He has powers and nobody can challenge him.
If you try to challenge Zeus, he'll kill
you or whatever, and he can fly and
do all these magical things. You'll never touch
him. So he's a god in that sense,
but he is a humanoid
and he lives in time and space. He
gets angry. His mood changes, etcetera. He makes
mistakes. He all of these human things. Right?
So the Mu'tazila,
their entire interpretation of the kitab and sunnah
are based on what? Greek rationalist philosophy.
So all of a sudden they've brought Allah
Ta'ala into
into the into the creation
with the whole time and space thing. And
now they've also introduced the idea that Allah
Ta'ala can change.
The idea the question is if Allah Ta'ala
is perfect and always was perfect and always
will be perfect, when he changes, what was
he not perfect before and is he gonna
become perfect now? Or was he perfect before
and now has he become imperfect?
What what's the what's the need of the
necessity of of of the change and what's
the impact of the change? Now Christian theologians,
because their theology is completely rooted in in,
like modern Christians, I should say, their theology
is completely rooted in Aristotelian philosophy and Greek
philosophy.
So they make up phrases like what? God
is going from
ever increasing,
he's going to ever increasing levels of perfection.
Right?
And we still won't accept that. He was
perfect before and he's even more perfect now.
Right? Why? Because if anyone says Allah was
any less perfect a minute ago, we'll we'll
consider that person a kafir outside of the
fold of Islam.
You understand what I'm saying? That this is
a nakshan that this deficiency that's attributed to
the,
the the the existence of Allah Ta'ala. We
won't accept it. We won't accept it, because
that goes against the definition of Allah Ta'ala
that we have. The definition,
of Allah Ta'ala that we have that he's
he's above, above his creation, above understanding, and
he's above imperfection in any way. Right? That's
what when you say subhanAllah
means what? Allah ta'ala is is free from
any blemish.
He's so far away from our perception in
the sense that we're so low and Allah
ta'ala, his perfection is something that
however much we reach, we'll never we'll never
touch it. We'll never come any close to
it. Right? The the the zikr of the
prophet
that he used to do
Alright. Subuh means the one who is so
exalted
and Qudus means the one who's so holy,
right? And what does holiness mean? What does
the Qudusiya of Allah ta'ala mean? It means
exalted from any blemish or any deficiency.
Right?
It means exalted from any any blemish or
any deficiency. That's why one of the reasons
we don't say holy prophet people say this
when they speak in English. They say the
holy prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and this
is a a a a Christianism that people
have used. You'll never see a Rasool al
Muqaddas. It doesn't because
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the
only belongs to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
because he is unlike his creation. He's completely
holy, meaning he what? He's free from blemish.
So we will not accept this
theology of going from ever increasing levels of
perfection, because it implies there was a lesser
level of perfection at some point or another.
And you have to understand, right, every argument
and every
conception of everything in life, whether it be
physical, scientific, theological,
rational, philosophical,
everything has certain things that you have to
accept as premises, and the first premise of
this deen is what? That Allah ta'ala is
Allah.
Right? And being Allah means that he was
there forever. He'll be there forever. No one
can harm him. He's free from from blemish.
He's free from partners, etcetera, etcetera.
Doctor Omar,
in Chicago, one of our,
he said that there is one of the
the linguists of the Arabic language, they say
that one of the Bida'at that doesn't that
he did a linguistical
analysis of the word alihah, the the plural
for the word god. Right? Illah means god
in Arabic and Ali has the plural of
it, that even the plural itself is a
Bida'at. You can tell by the way it's
formed that it's not formed analogically properly compared
you know, when you compare it to the
rest of the Arabic language that even the
word itself, just the word gods
is is is is like morphologically
in terms of Sarfitz. It's it's malformed,
as a daleel for it not being something
that people it's not it's not it doesn't
have any existence at all. It's fake.
So
that's our our our our beginning,
what you call, our beginning
point for discussing theology is that Allah
is Allah. He's perfect.
He is the standard against which we judge
things. He is the standard of perfection free
from blemish,
transcends his creation in every way, shape, or
form.
And the problem is that when you have,
like, for example, if you talk to a
person who's theologically trained,
a Christian who's theologically trained,
when you ask them about what the whole
saydnaisa alaihisam and the crucifixion and all of
these things, they'll say what? They say God
is
is is everything he does is rational.
Right? And then the normal Muslim who's, like,
not trained in theology will be like, yeah,
of course.
Doesn't do things that don't make sense. What
do we say? We say
He's not asked about what he does. You
have no right to render judgment about whether
what he does is fair, unfair, just, unjust
makes sense, doesn't make sense. Sometimes you'll understand
why he does what he does, sometimes you
won't, but he just does what he does.
There's no judgment. We don't we we abstain
from value judgments on what Allah does.
It it just it is what it is.
Right? We we we love it because we
love him.
We love what he does because we love
him jalla Allah and the people who don't
love him are not gonna love what he
does with him. That's the that's the way
it happens to turn out, but even if
it wasn't that way, he's Allah. It's his
right to do whatever he wants. So what
will happen is the the the rut that
they get stuck in, the rationalist philosophers, they
say, well, god is just
in everything he does. Right? Okay. So somebody
does a sin and
and look at the the the tahafut, the
incoherence,
the complete irrationality of kufr,
the irrationality of kufr. They say if somebody
commits a sin,
they should be punished. Right? Because if Allah
punished 1 set of people and he didn't
punish another set of people, that would be
unjust.
Right? Okay.
So now
the first day, the chain that you put
Abu Billah in your conception of Allah Ta'ala.
Right? He's exalted above that conception. Is that
now you've tied him down. Now you brought
him into time and space. Now you tied
him down also that you have to. He
has to punish everybody. He can't forgive anyone.
Why? Because that would be unjust and because
of your whole rational framework that you've set
up for yourself, he can't be unjust.
He can't be unjust.
Okay? So
how do we get out of this one?
He has to find somebody who's sinless
and then punish that person,
the punishment of all the other sinners, so
that the punishment happens
and his justice is still protected.
Right?
This is all very rational. We think about
the the we think about the the the
aqidah of the,
of the Christian as being irrational. At a
high level, it's it's very rational.
But when you get stuck in this little
microcosm, it makes some sense, you know, in
that. But the problem is, you stuck yourself
in a hole, now you have to make
up this whole, like, you know, whipping boy
now that's gonna take the punishment for the
entire,
for the entire creation in order to
maintain the justice of Allah Ta'ala
and the problem is what? The problem is
man, punishing somebody who's like actually innocent of
a crime is like the most unjust thing
in the world. Punishing somebody, the only person
that was ever innocent of any crime in
your aqidah,
of everybody's sins is like the way, like,
cosmically, like the most unjust thing that ever
happened. You You understand what I'm saying? And
the fact that you're punishing yourself
even further makes no sense. You understand?
That's the problem with Kufr. That's the problem
with bida'ah. When you start
trying to talk about stuff that you're forbidden
to talk about, you will plunge into an
ever,
descending
spiral of of less and less sense.
And so we say that no. Rationally, it's
much more sound to say, Allah, then we
created the heavens and the earth from nothing.
Right? You know, a carpenter who creates a
table from something, it's easy to accept the
fact that the carpenter understands the table more
than the table understands the carpenter
in in in a lot of ways. That's
easy to understand. Right? We'll say, yeah, Allah
ta'ala understands everything. He does what he does.
We can't understand everything he does just like
the table doesn't understand why the carpenter does
everything.
Why did he use, you know, the power
saw from Sears instead of the one from
Home Depot? Allah Allah you know, like, the
table is not gonna understand any of that
stuff, and the table understands more about the
carpenter than we understand about Allah ta'ala. Just
to accept that one thing, the entire the
entire system falls into place so beautifully, so
perfectly.
So the the words the words of Surat
Al Fatiha is right.
Guide us to the straight path.
Right. The path of those who you,
blessed.
Nor the path of those who you're angry
with. The
the the the the wording is not
those who earned your anger,
but the,
the the path of those who you're angry
with.
And those people Allah knows before, again, like
we said, before the creation, before everything, whatever.
Now why did Allah make it such that
he knew what was gonna go on?
And why did he why does he make
us live our life?
You know?
Again, it returns to the principle of lais
aloo amayefa aloo. You know, why he does
what he does, you cannot ask him and
say why definitely.
One of the hikmas is what? Is that
so that we can
know that the position that we have, you
know, eternally is something that we earned.
Yeah. Yeah. I think she
was alluding to, Kesem.
Yeah. Which is a concept we'll get to
later on in the chapter. Yeah.
Because I think when people translate,
like, the people who translate for every good
thing, it's like they have that concept of
concept. And so that, like, they translate it
the past. It's interpreted it's an interpretive translation
rather than a literal one. Yeah.
Whereas sometimes the literal one actually serves your
needs bet better than the interpretive one does.
But that's why we say the Quran can't
be translated, that even what we call, quote
unquote, translation is really just a commentary on
the Quran in English.
But
but but but yeah.
We'll get we'll go into that a little
bit in more detail. I can understand how
it's
it it can use a little bit more
explanation.
So at any rate, that we he says
these two things specifically. Why? Because
during his his lifetime, the Muertazila and their
ideas were still rife in the Ummah.
So he says no.
Allah is too exalted that his,
sifaq, that his attributes would be
created
and he's too exalted that his
name should be accidental.
So accidental doesn't mean like you didn't look
at the stop sign and you got t
boned by somebody.
Accidental in the language of philosophy means,
anything that's not kadim, anything that's not primordial.
Meaning there are certain things that were always
existed
and there are certain things that come into
existence later, right? So in the Muslim Aqidah
the only thing that was the only
being that was always existent is Allah.
According to the atheist philosophers they say the
material world always
existed as well, but that's not something that
the
the the people of this deen, ever believed.
By by Dalil of the Quran that Allah
created everything from nothing.
So we continue.
So now we talk about the nature of
Wahi, of
revelation.
We say that Allah Ta'ala spoke to Sayyidina
Musa alayhi salam
with his
speech,
which is a sifa. It is
an attribute of his holy essence.
It's not created. It's not a create creation
from, from it's not a created thing from
His creation.
So we say that Allah Ta'a speech is
what? It's an attribute of Allah. So you
can say, oh my gosh, what does that
mean? That's really confusing because
how how can speech be an attribute and
like how it cannot be created because you
speak through time? Well, we say what? That
when we say the kalam of Allah ta'ala,
right? We're not talking about a body making
noises through a voice box and a larynx.
Right? We got to get our heads out
of the
the the anthropomorphic
scene.
Right? That we say that Allata's speech is
a sifa, right? It's a attribute just like
Allah's mercy is a attribute by which,
you know,
the creation
without any, without deserving it will
will will feel some solace and will feel
some blessing and will feel
some softness from Allah Ta'ala, you know. Just
like that the kalam is a, a sifa.
It's an attribute of Allah Ta'ala
through which somebody will understand what Allah wants
from them.
Okay?
It's not words, it's not sounds that travel
in sound waves, it's not words written on
a paper, rather it's Allah Ta'ala,
how he affects somebody, which helps that person
or helps that creation to understand something of
what Allah Ta'ala wants from them. So if
you read the the tafsir of Surat Baha,
in Ibn Kathir, right, He mentions that Sayidina
Musa alayhis salam when allata
spoke to him.
Right?
Again, this is these are very like neo
platonic
Christian
Jewish ideas that we have because the Neo
Platonic thought also affects the Jews very heavily.
They become Hellenized
and it very
heavily affects them. You know, Greek becomes the
language of learning for the privileged class of
Maccabeans,
and the era of the second temple to
the point where Herod was, you know, he's
a very Hellenized person, the the the Harrods
that ruled over the Holy Land during the
time of Sayyidina Isa
And it's interesting that what the gospels the
oldest copies of the gospels that the Christians
find or call
authoritative,
those copies of the gospels are not in
Hebrew nor are they in Aramaic or Syriac.
They're in what?
They're Greek.
Right? And if we say it's Greek to
me, that's what Saina Isa alaihis salam would
have said also because he didn't speak. He
wasn't from that class of people.
He was he was a, you know, like
the NBA, he was a person of the
people, of the poem. He wasn't that elite
class of Greek educated people who thought about
things in this different way. Right? So when
we say Allah Ta'al spoke to Sayidina Musa
alayhi salam, they say that when, that Sayidina
Musa experienced the speech of Allah Ta'ala
with his ears and with his head and
with his hands and with his feet, with
his entire body,
one in the same.
It wasn't sounds going into his ears, it
was something that permeated his entire existence. It
was an experience unlike
the experience of listening to people talk.
This is what the experience of wahi is.
This is what the experience of wahi is
that Allah, when he speaks to a person,
he speaks to them in in a way
that that that that is befitting, his jalal,
his his majesty jalawalah.
So we say that what?
Allah ta'ala spoke to Sayyidina Musa alayhis salam,
and it's again, just like Allah is showing
mercy to one frame of that of that
whole splice of movie, he's sometimes showing his
kalam, which is a sifa that by which
he
gives the knowledge to one of his creations
of what he what he wants from them
in a very direct way, you know, bypassing
any sort of
any sort of intermediary that he gave that
knowledge to Sayidam Musa alaihis salam,
and that that Sifa, that speech of his
was
a sifa. It was an attribute of Allah
Ta'ala. It wasn't a creation from the creation
of Allah Ta'ala.
And Allah Ta'ala then, he he he showed,
you know, he showed the effect of this
attribute,
the power of this attribute
to the, mountain that was in front of
Sayedem Musa alaihi sama, and it rent that
mountain asunder,
which shows again it's not
it's not, it's not speech like your speech
and my speech.
Rather, this is a a a pure,
sifa of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala,
that, that that he makes. This is a
prelude then regarding the to the discussion regarding
the nature of the Quran, but the idea
is what? Is that all of Allah's wahi
that he gave to his prophet salam,
there there it's all attributes from his attribute.
Right? We say that what Allah is saying
now, he always was saying and he, is
saying now and he always shall say,
that his call is the haqq that Allah
ta'ala you know, this is something, inshallah, if
we get a chance to
please give the adhan, inshallah.
That this is something that, if we get
a chance to read the uloom of Quran,
we'll talk about that that that, Allah doesn't
change his mind and what is the naf,
the process of changing the hookahum of one
thing to another?
Are there any questions?
These are the same people that,
that that you told me about that's concrete
created.
Oh, that's that's next next week's episode. You're
jumping you're jumping the gun. Yeah.
Yeah.
Are there any questions about today's, it's a
relatively cerebral
Is it gonna be, lesson? Go ahead. I
have to stop the time.
Is there a simple example of,
So basically, what it is is that they
didn't accept the the companions really along on
whom they didn't accept their
interpretations
of the book of Allah or of the
sunnah, the prophet
to be authoritative.
That's that's basically what it was. They they
they they claim that they understood what their
rational philosophy,
Allah's,
message,
and Allah's messenger
more,
more fully and more properly,
than the Sahaba did
So they would essentially, what they did was
they said that, you know, in that, what
they did was they said that the hadith,
they weren't
transmitted properly except for very few of them.
So they didn't accept the hadith off the
bat, and they said that the Quran itself
is, yeah, we consider it to be
transmitted faithfully,
but they didn't understand the meanings of the
Quran like we did.
And there's a whole there's a whole actually
tariq of this. The Muertazilah is like a
2.0 movement. The 1.0 of the Muertazilah was
the Khwaraj,
who are these kind of psychopathic
psychopathic,
you know, type people who basically they have
these set of heterodox beliefs, and then they
say whoever doesn't follow them,
those people are all
non believers as well, and they should be
killed. Their money is becomes halal to take.
Their family should be enslaved, etcetera, etcetera. And
this was a a problem that the
the later,
part of the Sahaba's generation had to deal
with Sayna Ali radiallahu anhu went after him.
Now,
what happens is the Sahaba not only defeat
them in battle
and subdue them, suppress them, but they also
out,
out debate them intellectually.
And so one of the the things that
the the did was because they're all Bedouins,
they're desert Arabs, and they understood Arabic very
well. And their command over the Arabic language
was oftentimes
better than that of many of the Sahaba
And so,
you know, what happens is that the Sahaba
then would debate with them
and there's a if you look in the
Itkhanfi uloom ul Quran, the uloom ul Quran
book written by Imam Siuti,
Nafir bin Azarak, who is a great chief
of the Khawarij, a very accomplished poet. I
mean, his poetry, we have some of it.
It's really it's beautifully written and and it's
very witty and whatnot.
Nafar bin Azarak, who's this Bedouin, who has
a real command over the Arabic language,
there were words in the Quran that some
of the Sahaba didn't understand what they were
because the the the rhetorical the eloquence and
the rhetorical style of this the Quran is
very high. It's not something that, okay. I'm
from so and so Arab country, so I
understand everything that's there. Is it?
Right? So yeah. So people would hear, you
know,
what's a you know, and things like that.
You know, people people don't know what those
things, you know, what those things mean always.
So, Nafir bin Azraq, he saw Sayidna Abdullah
bin Abbas radiAllahu anhu sitting around the in
the Haram Sharif,
around the Kaaba
and teaching the tafsir, the Quran of the
people, and he says, oh, look at this
guy. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
Let's go and show him what's up, you
know, with one of his companions.
And so what happens is he starts asking
him, what does this word mean? And so
Sa'd ibn Abdullaban Abbas will answer him, will
say this word means this, and then he
says, what's your proof? He says, my proof
is it's used like this in this context
in the Quran, and they said, well, what's
we want more proof than that. And then
he will quote
a line of poetry from
Jahiliya, you know,
from Jahiliya that it's used in that context
there as well. And this is actually the
beginning of lexicography. There's nobody has did any
say, not Abu'l bin Abbas is the reason
we have dictionaries in the world. Because all
the the Arabic language is a first language
by
centuries, the first language that has
dictionaries.
And the uslub, the style on which the
dictionaries are written are exactly the way that
Said Abu Abin Abbas quoted it. If you
look at Arabic dictionaries, they will tell you
this just this is what the word means.
They'll say this is what the word means,
has these different contexts. This context is mentioned,
this ayah, this hadith. This is context mentioned
in this ayah, this hadith. And it's mentioned
in the poetry of Jahili also like this,
so that you can prove that it's not
something that the people the Sahaba made up
to suit their purposes rather
Rather, that's what it meant to the Arabs
beforehand as well. That's why we'll say, you
know, certain words in the Quran are not
meant in the way that we understand them.
They're meant in the way those people understood
them.
And so what happens is the Khawarij are
completely shut down on all sides. So the
Mu'tazila
is that same tendency
that comes up again. You know? And we
talked about that. We talked about the rational
philosophy. Someone may say, well, that's great. We
need more rationality in our deen because Muslims
behave very irrationally.
Well, you know, it's kinda confusing apples and
oranges. People who behave irrationally is because they
don't know the deen that we have. It's
not that they're implementing the din that we
have. They don't know what the din that
we have is. And just like the, Khawarij
were homicidal maniacs,
the Muertesel are also the are also homicidal
maniacs. What happens is in the reign of
the emperor Mamun or the the Khalifa Mamun,
and then after him in the,
the reigns of Wathib and Mu'tasim.
So 333
Khalifas during their reigns.
Basically, the Mu'tasil will take over the, the
functions of the official olamah of the court
and anyone who holds the, the creed of
the Sunnis,
especially the Muhaddithin. They would persecute them, and
they killed them. It's the first time in
Islam over a 100 years after the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's death that that Muslims
actually had an, inquisition,
and it wasn't at the hands of this
the Ahlus Ahlus Sunnah. Ahlus Sunnah would say,
well, you're wrong. We disagree with you, and
they would debate with them, but no Muslim
has a right to kill another Muslim unless
that person, you know, violates x x x
laws, you know, x y and z laws,
in our Sharia, and it's very difficult to
get to that point. You have to be,
like, really crazy, like, I am God or
I'm, you know, or let you know, whatever.
I'm a prophet or something like that for
for for it to get that out of
hand.
But the more it says that I did
it on a very obscure question. Is the
Quran created or is it not? And we'll
talk about that next week. And like most
Muslims, you just drop in on them and
say, hey. Is the Quran created? I don't
know. I never even thought about that before.
You know? It's an obscure question. It's not
something that a person needs to know how
to answer that question. It's a very obscure
hair splitting theological issue.
People who are
people who delve into theology will understand why
it's an important question later. But for to
ask the average person in the village, you
know, like, what's your opinion about this is
a complete bida. And the Nabi never
required people to know this. If he did,
he would have said it himself. It would
have been
created or not created and, you know, and
get done with it. You know? It's not
it's not, but it's not like that. You
know? And so,
the that's basically what what they they they
they the the key difference between them and
the ahlas sunnah al jama'ah. These people think
Sunni is just someone who's not shia. Right?
That's not what it is. It's a complete
methodology and approach to the deen. The ahlas
sunnah one of the hallmarks of the ahlas
sunnah is what? That they consider the interpretation
of the Sahaba
to be canonical, to be authoritative.
Whereas the Mu'tazila and the Rawafid and other
groups, you know, you'll see that that that
they'll have their own other angles, but they
all agree that they al Asuna is unique
in the sense that none of them accept
the interpretations of the sahaba.