Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 7 Ramadn 1441 Late Night Majlis Gardens of Paradise Addison 04302020
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We continue with our reading of,
Waratul Anbiya,
the heirs of the prophets, Ibn Rajab Hanbali's
and commentary on
the well known, hadith, narrated by Saidin Abu
Darda
regarding
the virtues of seeking knowledge,
ably translated by Imam Zayd. May
Allah elevate both of their ranks and give
both of them their due mercy and,
exalt the ranks of Ibn Rajab,
amongst his
and
protect,
our good imam,
as long as he is in this earth
in his
physical person and in his spiritual state.
Chapter 5, grazing the gardens.
In a well known hadith, the prophet
relates,
if you pass by the Gardens of Paradise,
graze therein.
The companions asked, what are the Gardens of
Paradise?
He said,
circles of dhikr, the remembrance of Allah.
Whenever he mentioned this hadith, Ibn Mus'ud would
say, I do not mean gatherings of sermonizers,
but study circles.
A similar hadith has been narrated by Saidna
Anas bin Malik
mentioned,
gatherings of zikr are gatherings to study the
lawful and unlawful,
how to buy and sell, how to perform
well, the prayer salat,
the fast, som,
the laws of marriage and divorce,
how to perform Hajj, and similar matters.
Yahya'ibnu Abi Kathir said, a lesson in jurisprudence
is prayer.
Abu Suwar al-'Adawi was sitting in a study
circle which included in attendance a young man
who exhorted the assembly to say,
and
became
angry and said, woe unto you.
What then is the purpose of our gathering?
Meaning
what? That the exhortation to worship
was unnecessary
because
learning the knowledge itself is a higher form
of worship.
This indicates that the gatherings of dhikr are
not merely uttering the words
and similar meritorious phrases.
Rather, they include those gatherings in which the
commands of Allah, his prohibitions,
the lawful and unlawful,
and that which he loves are discussed.
Perhaps this latter form of dhikr is more
beneficial than the former,
since knowledge of the lawful and unlawful is
obligatory for every Muslim in proportion to his
needs.
As for mentioning Allah with the tongue, it
is largely voluntary and only rarely obligatory,
such as dhikr and the mandatory prayers.
What knowledge is mandatory for the Muslims?
As for the knowledge of Allah's commandments, knowing
what gains his love and his pleasure and
what incurs his anger, such as knowledge
such knowledge is obligatory for everyone.
For this reason, it has been related, seeking
knowledge is mandatory for every Muslim.
Hence, it is obligatory for every Muslim to
learn the requisites of purification,
salat, prayer,
psalm, fasting,
and the like.
Furthermore, it is mandatory for everyone who has
wealth
that he learn what is obligatory in terms
of charity zakat
due to the needy,
doing what is voluntary and what is compulsory,
pilgrimage or Hajj and jihad
to struggle in the path of Allah ta'ala.
Similarly, it is mandatory for everyone who buys
and sells that he learns what transactions are
lawful and which ones are unlawful.
As said, no one sells in our market
except for one who is knowledgeable of the
religion.
A similar hadith has been related on a
weak chain by who
said,
understanding of religion precedes commerce.
1 who engages in commerce without properly understanding
the religion falls into usury with little chance
of escaping from it.
This is very important. Why? Because we have
now a bifurcation in the
ummah has gone in 2 different directions. Either
you're gonna go into trade or you're going
to understand the din.
And, that's that's that's really harmful.
The economic life of the ummah
and the intellectual of the life of the
ummah, both of them are,
you know, very, intimately, intuitively linked.
The separation,
of the 2 of them is a great
folly
and, will be the seed,
for the tree of destruction of, the ummah
as we know it as a concept.
And this is something this is something really
unfortunate
that, you know, I've taught in Islamic schools
before.
I know a number of people who are
listening may have
taught or had some experience in them, may
have, studied in them. I never studied in
Islamic school. I didn't grow up, going to
an Islamic school,
but I have taught in them. And, you
know, there's this idea that
somehow,
you know, the purpose of the Islamic school
is to have a kid who knows how
to read,
Quran,
from beginning to end at least once in
his life as if it's a type of
Hajj.
And, thereafter, you know, do good on SATs
and get into a good university.
And, hey, there's nothing wrong with that. I
did really good on my SATs as well
and, you know, I got into a fairly
good university too, and I have no objection
about that whatsoever.
However, there are branches of knowledge that
are very important that have to do with
things like buying and selling and other,
you know, more Usuli,
type concerns
and other more foundational
Assasi type concerns, foundational type concerns for society
at large. And, the ignorance of those
leads to having, you know, people who are
very intelligent,
you know, working as, like, actuaries,
and working
in, you know, in the corporate sector,
doing all sorts of things,
good, bad, ugly, funny,
and, making
good amounts of money, which in and of
itself is not a bad thing. In fact,
it needs to happen. We need to have
a Sharia compliant space
where Muslims can generate the the huge amounts
of wealth that, you know, supported things like
our Madars in the past,
supported Okav in the past, supported things like
the Ottoman Empire. I'm reading this Khilul Inaljik's
book about the the classical period of the
Ottoman Empire.
And, you know, it's part of the inherited
ruling traditions that the Muslims have,
from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's time
and also the inherited wisdoms that they have
from the great empires of the past
that,
that, you know, you cannot have
a good
and viable polity without
without having a populace which is fed properly.
All of it requires
a delicate balance of, you know, livelihoods
and funding
and,
taxation
within
reasonable
boundaries
and systems in which in which money flows
in healthy ways through society.
None of that is possible if you're raising
kids who, like, graduate from 12,
you know, 12,
years of Islamic school and, like, the only
Arabic they know is.
And, you know, one time we watched Kung
Fu Panda in Arabic, and after that, you
know, they'll say, what is the difference between
Imam Mahdi and Sayidna Isa alaihis salam
to, you know, ask them about transactions or
to ask them about taxation or zakat or
any of these things is it's not really
gonna work out. And, you know, someone might
say, I'm always being a hater. I'm not
being a hater of Allah. Nothing would make
me happier if than if we could reform
these institutions in order to teach these basic
things.
Why? Because it will engender a type of
change. The problem is what?
Most of our institutions where these things are
taught,
you know, we don't respect we don't respect
people of scholarship, people of subject matter expertise.
You know, if you,
you know, give someone a
level
of Arabic
grammar
after a year or 2 years of,
quote, unquote, taking Arabic
in in in Islamic middle school or high
school.
There's a rebellion,
amongst the kids and there's a rebellion amongst
teachers as well. And many of the people
who teach these subjects, frankly, they're not qualified
to teach them.
And, you know, until we respect,
these branches of learning, you know, no one's
gonna no one's gonna really no one's gonna
really learn them. And until anyone no one
learns them, there will be a chasm and
understanding between,
quote unquote, secular type people and,
the people who are the people of knowledge
of religion.
And, you know, it's easy to be a
person who's like, oh, look. I have the
Haqq. I studied the deen. Look. This book
says that, you know, the prophet
said that this is a duty on every
Muslim and, like, everyone else is a sinner
and a horrible person.
And then let, you know, let everyone go
to *,
at the end of it. Unfortunately, that's not
the way that or fortunately, that's not the
way that the prophet
used to think. And so it's important to
mention these things again and again,
in our gatherings or lack thereof due to
coronavirus,
epidemic or whatever. It's important to mention these
things so that,
so that through that,
you know, maybe
somebody
somebody
who has more
is in a better position affect things properly
will be able to take this right understanding,
implement it into,
some sort of right implementation.
Because these changes need to happen. If they
cannot happen,
then,
you know, the Muslims will be in a
bad situation which they've been in before.
Interestingly enough, Nizam Al Mulk,
the great prime minister of the Seljuk,
heroic Seljuk Sultan,
Alp Arsalan, Allah
give give them a high rank
and forgive them their sins and reward them
on behalf of the Ummah, Sayid Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. You
know, Nizam al Mook, who who who inaugurated
the madrasa nizamiyah and who, you know, spent
from Alp Arsalan's
treasuries
on education the same amount that he,
spent on the military,
that Madras in Izamia was not necessarily a
an original development of the the the Sunni
classes.
Rather, you know, it's been suggested by some
historians that it was a reaction against the
heterodox
Urbaidiyah, dolatul Urbaidiyah in Egypt,
the Urbaidiyah that,
called themselves,
the Fatimids,
even though they have no descent from Sayida
Fatima
and no Shadrach verifying their claim of descent,
and she has nothing to do with them
as well. Their heterodoxy
being a very ugly form of
of
of of of of of fraud.
But they had
institutions to train their
to go and convince, you know, regular laypeople
that, somehow or another,
that they have
a correct form of Islam.
And,
the Sunnis basically did what they often do,
which is the same thing they did with
the Aristotelian logic or with, you know, certain
other things, which is they adopt,
the the the the learning of other peoples
and
they refine it and they use it for
the service of the deen, and they exceed
in doing so.
And so that madrassa was what?
It was seeing a need,
adopting what they have at hand,
and using it in order to make dawah
to the people back to actual Islam.
And their dawah was superior. The dawah of
the Ubaidiyah lasted for 250 years in Egypt
and the Egyptian populace by and large did
not convert to Isma'ilism.
And,
you know, the the the the the the
heresies of the of the,
of the Botania from from the Obedi state.
Much of their survival to this day actually
is transmitted through
Sunni books of Kalam because the Sunnis
learned, studied their doctrines and their creeds,
analyzed them, including including Ghazali, including,
like Abu Moreen and Nasefi, and including Taftazani
and people like that. That they they they,
they studied those creeds
and then they,
you know, with a superior training and and
and logic and philosophy,
they picked them apart and they pointed out
the inconsistencies and the flaws in them, especially
with regards to, how they fit with the
basic texts of of of Islam.
But the point is is this is that,
like, you know,
we need to we need to fix those
institutions in order to start producing this knowledge.
If we don't, it's not enough to just
be like, oh, wow,
you know, it's Ramadan and I feel real
spiritual tonight.
InshaAllah, everything will be just fine.
Rather here, you see all these hadith that
that that are being mentioned about, you know,
the the learning, the gatherings of dhikr are
the
They
are the gardens of of of the paradise
in this earth and the prophet says graves
in them. And it's a whole of a
great number of our aslaf that is not
only just sitting and saying
in a circle. And I'm the last one
who's gonna who's gonna, you know, speak
ill of that or who's gonna say that
that's not important or or even necessary.
But we have a great number of our
aslaf that considered from part of the dhikr
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. You
have to learn this knowledge as well.
You know, there are so many masha'if of
the tariqa
They're, you know and those were in the
days when the masha'if were not like show
business masha'if and they were not,
a a carobody
mercantile.
You know, people who,
are good at, like, siphoning donations and
taking,
you know, taking perks from people,
and, you know, putting together political or quasi
political
entities in the vacuum of of the state
or in the vacuum of any sort of
religious authority, which is kind of what's happening
in America
right now with, the kind of
collapse of the Masjid,
with the collapse of the Masjid,
institution.
That people are serious about their deen. You
know, they have to have, like, their, you
know, dhikr sessions in their homes, and they
they, you know, they take their brothers in
the Tarifa as a, you know, substitute for
having community with the rest of the ummah,
which is good in a sense because it's
something where they, you know, a space that
they can function seriously with their deen. But
it's bad in the sense that then it
makes kind of a sultanate their sultanate, that
there's a kind of Islam within Islam,
which kind of cheapens the actual
Islam that's supposed to be providing that for
a person.
That, you know, without without this understanding
that the old masha'i had, those masha'i who
really their their disciples were were
serious about their saluk.
Those who would mandate to their that you
have to read, you know, the the the
the, you know, you have to read on
Musa del Moren. I have right now sitting
right next to me, a tahtif of the,
it's
Ahmed Al Aluy's
Sufiq Sharjah of the Merciful Muireen of Ibnu
Ashir.
And so it is a spiritual commentary on
a fiqh book and all the Murids had
to memorize it.
It was the ram of all of those
people and it was the the the the
the the the
ram meaning what? It was the grief and
the dard and the pain of every one
of the of the Murids that what? That
they should be,
that they should be striving to fulfill the
orders of the Sharia
as a very basic part of their saluk.
And if you wanna be serious about that,
you have to memorize this text.
And,
you know, and that's an example in the
west. What's an example
in the east?
You know, you have these Mala Buddhamin Hu
genre of of books. You have even in
the more modern era,
this book,
which you call the
the,
which is a wonderful book that it's like
a like a a 5th book transduced into,
like,
you know, something very easily packaged and digested
for a layperson.
You have to have all of these things
spread out,
and the Mo'riads have to take these things
seriously. They have to sit and learn alif,
ba, ta, fa, they have to sit and
learn tajweed. You know, they have to sit
and recite the fatiha to Akari. And, you
know, even even the, you know, even the
great Muftis and the masha'if, the qoodat that
come to the come to the masha'if even
in the east, the masha'if would tell them,
no. Go go to that Qari Saab and
recite the fatahat to him. Why? They have
to go through that system.
Because that system was considered to be sacred,
that system has been kind of, like, thrown,
behind people's back. And so now there's a
chasm in understanding between people,
which is which is, highly
problematic.
And it's not just because of, you know,
one group of people is, quote, unquote educated
and the other one isn't or that one
group of people is quote, unquote religious and
the others isn't. It's that these precepts, these
basic understanding, understandings of din, if they're not
there, if they haven't
shaped you, if they haven't influenced you, if
that you, you know, you haven't been dyed
in their color yet,
if you haven't been dyed in their color
yet. The the metaphor of dyeing
in color,
This is a very potent metaphor in,
in the spiritual path that's directly
taken,
taken from what? Taken from the Quran itself.
What does that mean? Right? This is not
just something that you sing at, like, whatever
Mehdi or like PTV cultural shows. Right? These
things, all of the the the the the
the the the the the the
color that the disciple takes from the sheikh
is what is the rung that the companions
took from the prophet
It's not all, it's not just all mystical
and spiritual. There's something that's, you know, has
to do with the way you think as
well from it. And that's why,
these from the were saying that the
is not just
even though that's wonderful. That's great. That's, like,
the best thing in the world.
But this is also something that's from it
is that you have to sit and understand.
Abdullah bin Mubarak
was asked what what now this is actually
to back up. As Omar
said, no one sells in our marketplace except
for one who is knowledgeable of the religion.
Like, look how far have we come from
that.
You know, that who are the people who
are donating? Who are the people who make
money? Who are the people who
run,
you know, these things? We have masajid that
are having, like, raffles and things like that.
Like, who are the people running these things
in the masjid? Are they people who,
are they people who, like Sayid Nama said,
no one sells in our marketplace except for
the one who's knowledgeable of the deen.
Look how far we've we've we've gone. Right?
Sayid N Ali that understanding religion precedes commerce.
One who engages in commerce without properly understanding
the religion falls into usury with little chance
of escaping from it.
You know, we've we've kind of put the
cart before the horse,
in terms of these things, and it's it's
it's very problematic, and it's hurting us, and
it shows.
Abdul Abdullab Nubarak was
asked, what knowledge is obligatory? He replied,
if a man does not have any wealth,
he's not required that he learn the rulings
of zakat.
If his wealth reaches nisab, the minimum level
of wealth that obliges one to pay zakat,
it is obligatory that he learn how much
he should give in zakat,
when to give, and to whom.
Other taxable possessions should be treated in a
similar fashion.
Imam
Ahmed was asked about a a man.
What knowledge is incumbent for him to seek?
He said the requisites for establishing the prayer
and the divine commandments
relating to fasting and zakat,
the prayer being the first one that was
mentioned.
He, by the way,
had a very stringent opinion with regards to
praying in congregation. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala open
the doors of our so we can pray
together again soon.
He then mentioned the basic laws of Islam
and said it is appropriate that he learned
these. He also said obligatory knowledge is that
which is indispensable for performing his prayer and
establishing his religion.
You should know that knowledge of
and unlawful
is honorable.
It includes learning that which is individually and
communally
obligatory.
What is the, fardayn and what is the
fard kifaya?
It includes learning that which is individually and
communally obligatory. Some scholars have written that learning
the lawful and unlawful is better than voluntary
worship.
Among them is Imam Ahmed and Ishaq.
And here, I'm assuming he's talking about Ishaq
bin Rahway,
which is one of the great Muaddithin,
that I believe
even Bukhari
took benefit from.
Reluctance in giving religious verdicts.
The early imams are cautious about speaking about
the lawful and unlawful because one who speaks
about such matters is relating information from Allah,
enunciating his commandments and prohibitions,
and passing on his sacred law.
Let me repeat that. The early imams were
cautious about speaking about the lawful and unlawful
because one who speaks about such matters is
relating information from Allah,
enunciating
his commandments and prohibitions, and passing on his
sacred law.
Meaning what? In my humble opinion, doesn't exist.
If it's talking about deen, it's talking on
behalf of Allah, and if you don't know
what Allah and his rasool salallahu alaihi wa
sallam meant or wanted by something, you can
just shut up. You can just shut up
and close your mouth.
We don't speculate.
It's a very beautiful and succinct sentence from
the that
we don't speculate about Allah
nor do we, like,
bicker back and forth about the
the
deen of Allah
It was said about Ibn Sirin, if he
was asked about something regarding the lawful or
the unlawful, his color would
change. He would be transformed until he no
longer seen the same person.
Abba'a Nusa'aib
said, I met people who, when asked for
a religious verdict, would tremble when they spoke.
I've seen this. I've seen this in people
before.
It does exist.
It's not just a it's not just a
fiction or a hagiographical
flourish.
I've seen this in
people that,
that they are paralyzed with fear when it
comes to these types of things. Many of
them just won't answer. And if they're cornered,
you know, in a place where there's nobody
else who can answer and they know that
if they don't answer, that's also going to
be something that they're going to be liable
for.
I've seen this this fear enter into people.
It doesn't happen much in America, by the
way.
And it doesn't happen much on YouTube or
on on Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Snapchat.
Have you ever heard someone say, oh, so
and so, you know, is giving fatwa on
Snapchat? You know, like, and he was asked
a question and, you know
anyway, whatever.
Inshallah, maybe maybe it does exist. Whoever it
is, Allah reward them.
It's related that Imam Malik, when asked about
a legal matter,
it was as if he was suspended between
heaven and *.
Imam Ahmad was extremely hesitant to speak on
the lawful and unlawful
to claim that something was abrogated or related
matters which others would too readily
expound.
He frequently prefaced his answers with phrases such
as I hope that, I fear, or it
is more beloved to me.
Imam Malik and others used to frequently say,
I do not know.
Imam Ahmed would often say,
on an issue about which the righteous forebears
had various opinions, the most likely answer is,
I do not know.
Allah
give us from his
father,
rectify our how we make this dua when
we think about these things in these Mubarak
nights.
Oh, the one through whom everything subsists.
We
desperately cry out for your mercy.
Straighten and rectify for us our our affair
and complete,
and do not leave us to our own,
egos
even for the twinkling of an eye.
There's no god except for you. Like I
said, in the unison
cried out from the belly of the whale,
there's no god except for you.
Transcendent are you above any blemish.
Indeed, we were from the transgressors.
You Allah forgive us and rectify our how
and give us the najat that you gave
to sit in the Eunice from the belly
of the whale. Give us the salvation from
the troubles and perils that we're in like
you gave to
from the belly of the whale in this
world and in the hereafter.