Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Aqidah Tahawiyyah Part 3 Tawhid Center MI 08202016
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So we start on point number 12.
Muhammadum billamakafatin
baythum billamashakatin.
Allah
is the one who gives death,
and he doesn't fear,
anyone in doing so. He doesn't fear retribution,
nor does he fear,
any sort
of consequence or repercussions.
This is what Allah Ta'ala says in his
book.
That
Allah totally destroyed Samud
and he didn't.
Fear afterward what the repercussions of this he
meets
he meets out death
without
fear of consequence,
just like that,
it it he doesn't fear any or sorry.
He doesn't have any difficulty in bringing those
dead back to life.
And, this is something
that,
just from a rational perspective.
It's interesting that
Allah
in in his book,
there are a lot of places where he'll
put rational proofs for certain things.
He
he invokes throughout the Quran his right as
Allah to Allah to be obeyed,
but then he will let the fishing line
out a little bit for certain people who
read the book in bulk and and in
incredulousness
that this is not, you know, whoever thinks
that this is not the word of Allah
and this is just made up or the
the the arguments in here are spurious.
So here he'll kind of throw throw people
a bone. Right?
So he
says,
The people say how is Allah
going
to raise the dead again? And he brings
us a
a proof that it's possible.
The fact that he created you in the
first place.
So to
make the make the the
the technology,
is that harder or is making the knock
off harder?
Right. Making the technology in the first place
is the difficulty. Once you've made it, other
people can figure out how it works.
They can make a knockoff easily. To make
it the second time, the third time, there's
a learning curve. It becomes easier and easier.
So
you will resurrect the dead without any sort
of difficulty. This is one of the one
of the rational rational arguments of the Quran.
So
Allah all of his attributes that he had,
from before time,
which we talked about this yesterday. Allah to
Allah doesn't change and Allah to Allah is
not,
caged in time and space.
So to think of him as changing through
time like we change through time is
incorrect.
Allah
always was,
before time,
in his attributes,
as he is and as he shall be.
And
by having,
you
or sorry.
With time with the passage of time, he's
not increased in any of his attributes.
And so he'll he'll talk about
he'll talk about,
you know,
specifically, like specific examples of this. But having
created the creation doesn't
increase Allah Ta'ala in any of his attributes.
As Allah Ta'ala was with his attributes,
forever in the past, so shall Allah
be forever in the future.
Meaning, past and future don't mean anything to
him. They don't mean anything to him. They
don't affect him. They don't pass over him.
They are a small creation of his,
his
that transcends
the effects of time,
being anything over him.
And so this is a specific example
that Allah,
we don't say regarding him
that
before the creation was made,
he wasn't the creator.
And then he created the creation, he becomes
the creator.
Nor do we say that before he originated
things,
he was the originator and then afterward or
he wasn't the originator and then afterward, once
he originated them, he becomes the originator.
It's all a matter of perspective. Right? From
our point of view, it doesn't make sense.
I remember we talked about frame of reference.
From our point of view,
you'd say that that somebody, okay, once he
starts practicing medicine, he becomes a doctor. You're
not gonna say he's a doctor when he's
like a kid in 4th 4th grade.
Why?
Because we are
caged within the box of time and space,
and those things affect us. And those things
are affect us so essentially, they are like
they become part of our being.
Allah
right, from a universal frame of reference,
Allah
is the same Allah
There's no before. There's no after. There's none
of these things.
It's not like he experiences the passage of
time
from from within that cage.
Allah
to him, the Nabi
was the before he created the heavens and
the earth.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to him even the
person who may be right now
drunk and partying or crazy,
that person who dies on iman, to that
person that to Allah Ta'ala, that person is
beloved always.
For us, we go through these cycles and
there's some hick Hikma and benefit of going
through these kind of processes in our lives
and, you know, becoming what we become and
experiencing what we experience in order to understand
things that we don't understand.
But for Allah
that's not from his from that universal frame
of reference we say about the dua'at of
Allah that it doesn't change at all.
So we we say that he was the
creator
from before the, before the creation, and he
was the originator before
originating
a
thing.
Why? Because, again, strictly speaking,
to say before before time, it's a it's
a it's a mistake to say that. Why?
Because the word before implies some sort of
temporal relationship.
If time doesn't exist, then temporality doesn't exist
anymore. Before and after don't mean anything anymore.
And we talked about that. Right? What if
we say t equals 0 is the moment
that the universe is created, then how do
you say 5 seconds before that? What does
a second even mean at that time? It
doesn't mean anything at at at all. You
busted out. Once you busted out of the
cage, once you're free from you you float
float, you know, once you when once you
busted the joint, once you're out, then it's
a whole different it's a whole different ballgame.
It's a whole set of different set of
rules,
at that point. But this is,
this is something it's important to understand that.
It's important to understand Allah
is neither contained by time nor by space.
Allah is the the the the Lord
without having
without having any,
anyone to be lord over.
And he has the reality of being the
creator
even when there was no creation.
Just like Allah
is the one who brings the dead to
life
before he brings the dead before he's brought
the dead to life.
There may be, like, one off exceptions, a
couple of them, but even those are temporary.
Has he brought back to life the dead
forever yet?
No.
But we say, yeah, Allah, you're the
you're the one who brings the dead to
life.
Why?
Because
there's the one route that we we went
through,
which was,
I guess, more abstract and philosophical.
So Allah doesn't exist in time anyway. Right?
So whatever is gonna happen, it's all equal
in front of him.
Whatever happened is happening is gonna happen. All
of it is equal to him anyway. But
there's an even more basic point that's being
made here that's more intuitive to a human
being even if you don't, like, watch so
much Star Trek that you think about, like,
time and space and all these things. Right?
The more intuitive and basic point is what?
That yeah. It makes sense that we say
Allah is the one who brings the light
the dead to living the the the dead
to life
because it's gonna happen on such a big
scale,
that that's something that's worthy
of of,
of of calling Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And
we know it's going to happen, and he
said it's going to happen and etcetera, etcetera.
You know, something is impending, you know.
If, you know, tomorrow the president is someone's
gonna be inaugurated, then to everybody for all
practical intents and purposes, he's the president.
Right? So we don't just say for all
practical intents and purposes. We say, you know,
is is the rabbi, is the.
Because to us, it hasn't happened yet. To
him,
that whole timeline is not,
it's not it's not even a thing. It's
not even a, you know, something to take
into consideration.
So just like he,
merits the the title of the one who
brings the dead to life.
After having resurrected him just like that, he
receives the or he he has the
the he deserves the title of,
of
of the creator before before having created them.
So I apologize. The point here is is
actually it's actually even more
it's one step even deeper.
So once he's brought all the dead to
life,
there's no dead anymore to bring to life.
He's still the one who brings the dead
to life.
I mean, the point the point the abstract
point is the same that temporality is not
so imagine,
there's some there's there's people. They're all dead.
Now we brought them all to life.
Is there any dead to bring to life
left?
No.
But we'll still say that Allah is the
one who brings the dead to life.
That's
a that's
a quality of his or an attribute of
his that we know him by.
And it will be like that forever.
Just like that before he had created any
other creation, he's still the creator, meaning temporality,
that
time the the dependence on time in order
for
things to take on a reality.
That's not that's something Allah doesn't it's not
something that we conceive of Allah through that
frame
that frame of before and after and all
of these things.
We definitely and so someone's like, well, Sheikh,
what does that mean that as Muslims? Like,
you know, there was a brother who talked
about, I ate,
you know, breakfast before lunch. Should we call
him a kafir? Because in I think that
class we talked about there's no temporality with
Allah.
It's all a frame of reference. The way
you and I
experience things. Yeah. Sure. There's a lot of
stuff that happens before things and after things
and that's a reality for us. And that's
that's not something that we say that, oh,
you know, because of that we don't believe
that anymore or whatever. Right?
But in order to understand all of a
lot of things in, you have to be
able to place every
piece of information in its correct frame of
reference. That's all. That's all.
This is because Allah Ta'ala has power over
all things and be because all things are
in need of him.
All things are in need of Allah
And we say the need of Allah is
not just like, okay, I'm going to be
hungry after an hour. So, you know, I
I need him.
We say that when Allah Ta'ala right.
That
his his affair is not except for if
he wishes for something he says to it,
be and it is.
We don't say that Allah said to the
universe at one time, be in a sense.
It's been ever since.
We say what? That this kun, this command
of kun is something that exists in every
moment of the universe.
And if it ever stopped, if the tawajah
of Allah ta'ala's
khaliqiya
ever was removed from the
creation for even an instant, The
only the
The only the only one in the universe
that that exists
on his own without any aid or support
or intervention is Allah. Our
existence is contingent. It's all contingent on his
creation.
So when we say
everything is in need of him,
it doesn't just mean, like, okay. Like, you
know, I really need this job. That's, like,
very far gone. That's also you we also
need him for that.
Right? But but the need is much more
basic,
and it's much more essential.
It's in the fabric. It's in, like, every,
you know, whatever atom, electron, neutron, quark, or
whatever is smaller than that, whatever is greater
than that. It's in every single thing, every
part of
a person.
The need is there. And the need is
equal for a good person, for a evil
person, for the mbya alayh Musaam, the shayat
you know, shaitan and Firaun and Tajal and
everybody the need is still there. Their dependence
on Allah to Allah is equal in that
sense at an essential level.
It's just that, you know, in the nilaamat
Taqeen, the need is equally absolute for everybody.
The
is some people realize it more than other
people do.
And so some people use the realization of
that need as a
means to get Allah to Allah's pleasure, and
other people missed them. They kind of that
miss they missed that boat.
All of his affairs are facilitated for him.
It's easy for him to do whatever he
wishes to. And
he
He doesn't need anything,
and there's no one like unto him. And
he is the all hearing, all seeing.
Literally, there's nothing like anything like him.
And he is the all hearing and all
all seeing.
He created the creation
in his knowledge.
He knows exactly how everything was going to
be created before he created it and what
the impact of creating
what he created the way he created it,
what that impact would be.
If the boiling point of water was 10
degrees higher, what would that impact be? If
it was lower, you know,
what would the impact be? We might say,
oh, lucky for us, the things are like
they are. They work out for us.
This is actually an argument in favor of,
in favor of there being a creator because
there's so many things. There's so many things
in the natural world, in the natural universe
that if they were a little bit
different,
our existence would be impossible.
If we were a little closer to the
sun,
maybe he would be like Venus and have
like
a, an atmosphere with, like, plumes of, like,
sulfur dioxide
shooting through and like like weird sulfuric acid
rain and things like that,
which for those of you who haven't taken
chemistry is not a good thing.
Or if we were a little bit further
or a little bit smaller or a little
bit bigger, if we were smaller,
we would have lost our atmosphere. If we
were bigger, we would have been crushed under
the weight of gravity. If we were closer
to the sun, we would have been bombarded
with radiation. This would have happened. That would
have happened. All of these things if water
was
boiling point was a little higher or lower.
Like, really weird things. Right? Like, water.
I don't wanna make this into, like, the
scientific miracles of Islam Bayan because
that's not really you don't need to know
any of these things to have a proper
iman. They're villagers who don't know that water
is made out of hydrogen and oxygen. They're
gonna be like the greatest of all the
it didn't it's not something they needed. But
since this is something we grew up with,
you know, like simple, like weird things, like
water doesn't have like a has like a
really weird solid. It just starts hydrogen binding
with it itself.
So ice is less dense than than liquid
water is, which is counterintuitive.
Most things, the solids are more dense than
the liquid is. And so ice floats
to the
top. If if things float froze from the
bottom,
then, like, in winter, everything in the ocean
would or in the winter, everything in lakes
and rivers and parts of the ocean would
die, but it doesn't really work that way.
There's like a lot of, like, little things
that that, Allah created them. It was in
his that he created them the way he
created them. It's not an accident that, oh,
we're really lucky that this was just nothing
nothing really nothing lucky is luck is nothing.
Right? Like, you might say someone is good
fated that Allah
wrote a good fate for a person. So
that's they're they're they're fortunate.
But we don't even you know, you don't
say like in Arabic when someone is going
to go take an exam. You don't say
good luck to them.
You say what, Tawfiq? You wanna do good?
May Allah also want you to do good
as well.
So he created everything in his knowledge.
And he meted out for every
everything,
a discrete quantum,
in which it was
in in which it was to be, which
is also, you know,
in line with what we were talking about
just a minute ago.
So the quantum is not only an amount,
but it's also temporal
that everything happens,
in the amount of time that Allah
measured out for it.
Nothing was obscure to Allah
from the actions,
of his creation before he created them.
Right? This is what the angels say. Right?
The angels
what did they say?
They say,
that are you going to,
put these people in the earth
that are going to cause all of this
mischief, and they're going to spill all of
this blood?
And,
you know, they're gonna have this, like,
super
inferior quality,
of conduct.
Why what's the point of putting them in
in the earth? We're already in the earth
and we we
We,
glorify your praises
and,
sanctify you.
What did Allah Ta'ala say to them? The
angels are very intelligent, by the way. Just
because they do what they're told doesn't mean
that they're not intelligent. Oftentimes,
in the in the Quran and the hadith
of the prophet,
they'll make certain comments,
about things. And they may even be wrong,
but the comments are very astute.
In in a certain context,
they're very accurate.
They may be missing a greater point, but
they're they're very accurate. So Allah is telling
them that he's not saying that they're you're
wrong because that's what I mean. What are
human beings do doing? Right? Turn on the
news. What are they do? They're causing mischief
and they're spilling each other's blood. That's basically
what people are doing.
Allah protect us from being one of those
people.
But Allah
I know something that you don't know. That
there is some there's some good that's gonna
come from this.
All of these things, you know, Allah is
aware of all of these things before they
happen. And this is one reason when stuff
happens to you, whether it's really good or
really bad or
really weird or, you know, whatever it is,
A person should not
should not feel like so super disoriented. Like,
what's going on? My whole life is upside
down. I don't get it. Nothing make sense.
Blah blah. It may not make sense to
you, but Allah chose
this.
He chose this, this way of things happening
on purpose and for a reason.
And he knew exactly what they were going
to do before he even created them. None
of this was obscure obscure from him at
all. And he come
despite knowing that people are gonna do what
they're gonna do,
which is what? Which Islam is that? Which
system is that? That's the system of Taqin.
Right?
Despite knowing stuff is gonna happen and people
are gonna do what they're gonna do,
On top of that, there's another system that
he imposed, which is the niram of his
tashiriya, of his legislation.
That he commanded them obey me and do
not disobey me. He forbid them from disobeying
him.
The commandment to obey Allah Ta'ala and the
the prescription of disobeying Allah
superimposed
upon
his knowledge of what was gonna happen anyway.
And that is,
that is so that we have for I
mean,
one of the hikmas is of that is
that we have a
a way or a chart that we can
figure out how we can gain Allah
happiness and gain Allah
pleasure with us.
But just the fact that or this is
something that people, you know,
people struggle with these things. I'm Muslim. I
pray 5 times a day. I this. How
come my law how come my house burned
down? How come my, you know, whatever,
relative died? How come how come, you know,
nobody married me? Or better yet, how come
I'm married to this person? How come
how come this happened? How come that the
mustard is so horrible? Everyone in the mustard
is like this and like that, and they're
fighting and they're racist and they're blah blah
blah.
And how come, you know, I can't get
a job and how come I can't all
these things are real. I mean, the pain
and suffering of these things is very real.
Right? Doesn't Allah hear my prayers? Doesn't isn't
Allah, you know,
could care for me? Doesn't Allah ta'ala,
you know, whatever. Maybe God doesn't exist. Maybe
maybe,
whatever.
Maybe Islam isn't the truth because I'm going
through hardship. Look,
The promise of Allah
is what? If you believe in him,
right, you'll receive salvation. You'll receive najat.
Salvation is where?
Tawhid Center?
Where is it?
It's in the hereafter. Right?
So there's a story about Mulla Nasruddin.
Anyone here not familiar with Mulla Nasruddin?
Mulla Nasrudin was a very famous sheikh in
Alem.
There's some scholars debate whether he actually existed
or he's just fictitious, but I think he
actually did.
I think there actually was a sheikh by
this name from Samarkand
from, from Central Asia.
And he wrote he wrote he taught the
dean through a bunch of, through a number
of jokes.
And it became a genre, and then later
people used to write Mullan Nasruddin jokes afterward
because it became such a good genre.
And he taught people about the dean through
what? Through jokes.
And some of his jokes are are
less funny than others. Some of them are
actually very funny. Some of them are almost
inappropriate to mention in front of people. But
if you ponder over them, they actually have
a very deep lesson.
So they're jokes about the kind of stupidities
that people like, misconceptions or, like,
irrational
thought processes that people have
that,
lead them to silly conclusions.
So one of the one of the very
well known jokes about Mulla Nasruddin is that,
Mullaji, once one time they see him
searching for
something
under under a street light at nighttime.
And so the,
you know, people see this is a alim
this is a alim of Din. You know,
he's looking for something. Maybe he lost something.
Let's help him out, you know. Out of
respect, let's go help him out. And so
they start
looking for,
for for whatever it is he lost
under the street light. And then they look
for a really long time.
And then after whatever, an hour, 2 hours,
some really long time, they're looking. They say,
where did you last see it? He said,
oh, I last saw it, like, way over
there.
He said, why are you looking for it
under the street light then? So how how
am I gonna look it over look for
it over there? There's no light over there.
Right?
And so, obviously, it's not like really that's
not like that funny that you're gonna
whatever, go on stand up tour with it.
But the point is is that
if people
don't laugh about it, at least they can
say, well, that was kind of dumb, wasn't
it? Right? Allah promised you your reward in
the akhirah. Why are you looking for it
over here?
That's what Mulladi is trying to say. He's
not it's not about
it's not about this. You your reward isn't
akhirah. Why are you looking for it in
the wrong place?
So because I can see it here. I
can't see that's in the that's in the
dark. I can't see it on that side.
It's there. It's there.
Every action has a equal and opposite reaction.
Right? If you physically if you physically hit
somebody, punch somebody,
right, they're gonna feel the effect.
Right? If you do spiritually something like that,
you think that there's no effect of of
that type of of that type of activity?
You think
you're gonna do good in this world and
there's not going to be good for you
in return. You're gonna do bad in this
world. There's not gonna be bad for you,
in this world in return. That's the way
created the
the the the
creation. And this duniya is like a metaphor
for the
This duniya isn't the but it's a metaphor
for how the is going to work.
This duniya is like a shadow of existence.
Right?
Forget about the. Even once you die, you're
like everything is going to all your capacities
are going to expand immediately.
Your hearing will become sharper.
Your sight will become sharper. Your feelings will
become sharper. Your intelligence will become sharper. Your
perspective of the universe around you will expand.
It will broaden immediately.
Right? A person who dies
is like a a a a a baby
that that, like, is born from the mother
of the womb, and that's just the that's
not the that's just like the the existence
that you have between here and Yom Kiyama.
Then from from the barzakh until the Yom
Kiyama, it's like a baby that was born,
left the womb. The womb is like the
whole universe that the baby knows. And then
it's like, oh my god. There's all this
stuff out there.
That's that's how that that experience is going
to be.
We're we have several of those to go
through yet.
The womb just like, okay. You can get
some a little bit of, like,
idea of, you know, some experiences you'll have
outside inside. Okay. Your baby inside. You're chilling.
You know, you never ate or drank nothing
yet. But, like, okay. It's cold. It's warm.
There's, you know,
mama is sleeping. Mama went jogging. Mama did
this. Mama went whatever it is that mama
is doing. Right? You kinda you understand something,
like, must be going on on the outside
that's affecting inside, but you really don't know
what's going on yet.
But, you know, coming back to the
coming back to the, the the the the
issue of Apida. You can see the overlap,
by the way, of Apida with with our
spirituality, with our tezqiyah,
you know, with our tasawaf, which is a
part of our our tradition. Right? The knowledge
of how you worship Allah ta'ala as if
you see him.
And if you don't, at least to constantly
be aware that he sees you.
This is a branch of this is a
branch of deen. This is a great branch
of deen. You can call it whatever you
want to call it, whatever makes you happy.
But this is a great branch of the
practice and the theory of Islam. And you
can see what the overlap of Akida is
with that.
This is one of the reasons I think
that the teaching and learning of Akida is
so important.
And unfortunately, people avoid it because they associate
the teaching and learning of Akita with sectarian
fights.
And the point of teaching and learning
isn't, you know, bickering with somebody else. It's
not something negative. And it's not something that
has to do with others. It's something positive
and it has to do with yourself.
That it helps you also understand the world
in a way that's conducive to good conduct
and conducive to Ikhlas and sincerity
and being able to trust in Allah ta'ala
and understand how Allah ta'ala's universe and system
works.
So Allah Ta'ala commanded the
on on the heels of him creating everything
he created
in his
knowledge of how it was going to turn
out, he commanded the
the the creation to his obedience, and he
forbade them from his disobedience.
Everything will run according to his,
according to his power and his shaping it
in a specific fashion,
in a specific in a discrete quantum.
And according to his,
meaning his will.
And whatever his will is, that will be
carried out. Right?
Tanfulu means what? Nafidah, one of the meanings
of nafidah means for an arrow to be
shot from the bow.
That however however whichever direction he points it
in, that's the direction it's going to go.
That's it.
So much so to the point that
the creation just like their
existence is contingent on his existence, even their
desires are contingent on his desires. Nobody even
is able to desire
something on their own without him having desired
that person to have the ability to desire
that.
Allah says in his book,
they don't desire anything except for Allah desires
them to desire it.
So he's the one who wants the kafir
to have his kufir. He's the one who
wants the movement to have his iman.
All of it comes from from from from
him. Again, it's a matter of perspective. From
your perspective and my perspective, we're the ones
doing what we're doing.
From our individual perspective, from our observer perspective,
we're the ones who make our decisions and
we're the ones who,
you know, make intentions and we're the ones
who think about stuff, etcetera, etcetera.
But all of this is contingent on Allah
allowing us to be
be the way we are and having created
us the way that we are. And he
knew all of this was gonna happen from
before. So from the universal perspective,
nothing happens except for his,
you know, wanting it to happen and enabling
it to happen.
This is important to understand.
You can ex you know, you can experience
things the way that you are, and you
will conduct yourself based on that point of
view and that frame of reference. But it
is important to see and understand from a
a a broader perspective what's actually going on.
And there are a number of questions that
this brings up,
and we'll get to them.
We'll get to them, Insha'Allah.
Allah
guides whoever he wills and protects that person
from
error and from sin.
And he
preserves or keeps in a good state whoever
he wishes to out of his grace,
out of his fable. What is the fable
of Allah ta'ala? The fable of Allah ta'ala
is his grace.
What is the grace of Allah ta'ala? It's
that gift that Allah gives to
the creation
that they did nothing to earn and that
gift that Allah Ta'ala gives to the creation
that they can never do anything to repay.
When someone says this is the fable of
Allah Ta'ala from the fable of Allah Ta'ala,
have them in fablei rabbi.
What does it mean? It It means the
grace of Allah Ta'ala,
which is the gift Allah Ta'ala gave to
the creation
that they did nothing to earn.
And the gift that Allah gave to the
creation that they can never repay.
Whoever has
iman and whoever has guidance,
this is from the father of Allah ta'ala.
Nobody should act as if
I deserve this iman. I am the one
who did this. I am from this family.
I am from this lineage.
I am from this profession.
I am from this whatever affiliation background.
I deserve this iman.
When I was a kid,
I was very careful to read the ingredients
on all things and I never ate gelatin
and haram things. So I'm I'm a good
Muslim. This is why I deserve to be
a Hafiz of Quran or whatever.
This is all nonsense.
There are a lot of people, by the
way, who have these lines of thinking.
Most of them
are not in this classroom right now.
Maybe 1 or 2 of them are.
Give all of us Hidayah.
If this line of thinking occurs to a
person, they must immediately make tawba because the
Allah ta'ala that gave this
this gift of
guidance
could take it away from the person who
doesn't appreciate it.
And in fact, this is the father of
Allah. Many people who don't appreciate it, he
still doesn't take it away from them.
It's not because those people are wonderful people.
In some cases, it's because as a favor
to someone's forefathers.
In some cases, a favor to someone's teachers.
In some cases, it's just so Allah can
show his creation that look,
this chump is gonna have hisab in front
of everybody. Not just the human being. Not
just the ummah, the entire humanity. The angels,
the jinn, the animals will be watching and
say, this person?
Really?
Jannah? This person?
Why? Just so everyone can bear witness that
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, his rahma
overtakes all things.
If I were you, I would not ice
skate and try to, like, be like I
would try to ice skate past and say,
yeah, I'll probably get that past. Because there
are a lot of people who are not
gonna make it. The statistics are not good.
It's not a chance you wanna take.
It will happen. It will happen. In fact,
some ways, all of us should admit that
we're kind of banking on that a little
bit as well.
Even, you know,
one thing is to be good.
Right? One thing is to be bad, but
at least to know that you're bad and
to admit you're bad in front of a
lot. This is also a maqam with Allah.
This is a maqam that most people are
maqam from. Most people are they'll they'll never
achieve it.
So
we cannot
kinda console ourselves. Right? But the the point
is, that everyone who Allah guides and protects
from sin,
that person is just the falo of Allah
ta'ala. This is one of the reasons of
the hadith of timidity
that a person should never look at his
brother for a sin that he commits.
Look down on on that that brother for
a sin that he commits. Like, I'm better
than than this person or this person is
so horrible. It's such a bad person.
And whoever does that, the punishment of that
act is what? Is that that the one
looking down on the other will not die
except for he will be tried with the
same sin before he dies.
This is real,
and it gets weird sometimes.
Just don't go down that path.
It's, you know,
how do we say this? It's not just
Muslims that this stuff applies to. There's a
the the whatever president of the Evangelical
Pastors Association,
some, like, maybe 10 years ago. His name
was Ted Haggerty.
He he he would get up and say,
like, all this, like, stuff about homosexuals and,
like, just
really, like,
put them down a lot. Right?
So one day,
he's doing cocaine with a male prostitute.
And the prostitute said, I was watching TV
and I saw this guy who has been
using my services for God knows how long,
and he's, like, railing against homosexuals.
And I was like, yo, this guy's a
hypocrite and he totally exposed him.
Allahu
Alam. Allah knows best. When I when I
read about that, all I could think of
is, like, this guy probably wasn't even, like,
trying to do any of this stuff. This
is just
the the the divine,
the divine plot having ensnared him.
Don't look down on other people for their
sins. This is the
the the sunnah that if you're in a
position,
that's better than what other people are in,
you should thank
Allah ta'ala. You should make dua for other
people. Right? There's a dua, for example, if
someone sees somebody who is in a condition
that
that they wouldn't wanna be in, you say,
Alhamdulillah
who, you know,
saved me from or or kept me in
a good state,
that I was safe from the thing that
he tested this person with,
and he favored me over many of much
of his creation, a great favoring.
You should acknowledge that to Allah and just
move on. And that engenders in you at
that point not an air of superiority, but
an air of sympathy for the person.
This sympathy is something that overwhelmed the prophet
not just for physical disabilities, but for spiritual
disabilities.
Nabi cared for
and cried
for non Muslims more than we care and
cry for one another.
Unfortunately, nowadays, more than we even care for,
we cry for ourselves.
Nabi
used to paint him when someone would die
without without iman.
It really pained him. It hurt him. Like,
it hurt his feelings. It was very difficult
for him. There's a a number of parts
of the Quran that were revealed
because of this. La'alaqabaqirunnafsaka
Allahayakunumumineen.
Allah Ta'ala says that, like, it seems that
you're almost going to destroy yourself
because of your your
your your sorrow that they that they don't
accept iman. Allah tells us, if we wish
to, we would have sent down a sign
from the skies
that was so
great, all of their necks would have bent
down in humility in front of us. Meaning
what? Allah tells him, this is my choice.
It's not your choice.
Inakala in a different place. Inakala Ta'ala.
You do not guide who you want to.
Allah ta'ala, rather, Allah guides who he wishes
to, and he has more knowledge about where
he puts his guidance.
And so this is a a a
this is something that we should,
understand
that this is a divine favor to us,
and we should feel that that ghamm and
that that that that that sorrow for the
difficulty other people go through. And we should
make du'a for their guidance. We shouldn't
feel that we're better than other people. Unfortunately,
this is one of the reasons you have
a a world in which people are very,
very quick to pull the trigger on one
another.
Takfir, Fulan is a deviant, Fulan is a
bad person, Fulan is a kafir, Fulan is
mubitadeh, Fulan is this and that. Right? Why
it's easier to kick somebody out
than bring somebody in. This happened, I remember,
in the madras that we were we were
studying
studying
in. 1 of the teachers,
some of the teachers our teachers are all
different dispositions. Some of the teachers used to
really be very kind to the students. Why?
Because they wanted the students to keep studying.
They didn't want them to run away.
And so one of the teachers yelled at
a student and said, if you, you know,
do this again, then don't bother coming back
to my class.
So one of the students says to me
says that this teacher doesn't know how much
difficulty how much difficulty the student
came came with
and how much if so and so, Ustad
actually worked with him just to get him
here.
He just for him, it's easy to say,
like, just to kick him out or whatever.
And,
you know, that's they're 2 different mindsets.
They're 2 different mindsets. If you if you
if you have the mindset of
the one who cried and brought us into,
you know, who who whose tears in front
of Allah Ta'ala,
were the subab of us coming into the
deen, then you would also be very,
very sensitive about that and not eager to
kick people out.
Obviously,
if a person,
you know, if you say, what if someone's,
you know, whatever, stole something? What should we
do?
You know, call the call call the cops.
What if it's, like, what if it's your
brother? What if it's your son, your daughter?
Like, okay. Well, let's try to return the
thing and see if we can work it
out and which is different. Why? Because you
feel some sort of personal connection with people.
People should have that feeling. Why? Because of
the humility of knowing that even even the
hidayah that you and I received,
this was a special favor from Allah
If we didn't have it, we would have
been in the same situation as well.
We would have been helpless and hapless as
well.
So we shouldn't be too quick to judge
other people.
And the punishment for being too quick to
judge other people is what? That you'll be
put in their position as well. Because
to be like that, to be that judgmental
type of person,
This is
irrigating
the
respect that Allah
deserves for having given you the and I
the gift that he gave us.
And it's overlooking the fact that he his
favor, it was his through his favor that
we had whatever we had
and that we have whatever we have.
And it's attributing that favor that's from Allah
to Allah to us ourselves.
Imagine your boss at work, you know, somebody
who got you a job. He's like he's
like, don't worry. I'll get you this job.
You're not even qualified for it, but you're
my wife's
cousin's brother or whatever. So I have to,
as a favor to my wife, hire you
or as a favor to my husband, hire
you.
So here, here's your job. And then the
next day, you see that person come in
and I was the most qualified candidate. I'm
this. I'm that. Stop being a joker.
We know your we know your reality.
So don't be a joker in front of
Allah ta'ala with this type of stuff. It's
it's very important. It's very dangerous to do
so. And if a person does it, then
bad things can happen and bad things do
happen. So hadith to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam.
The happy one is the one who takes
a lesson from other people's misfortunes.
Don't wait for the misfortune to happen to
you and then be like, well, I think
I heard someone talk about this at Tawhid
Center one time. Time. That's not at that
point, it's not gonna be useful. The knowledge
is everyone will have it. It's not gonna
be useful to you at that time. This
is the time that that if you see
that this has happened to other people, that
you take a lesson from it and you
don't,
you know, you don't, you don't fall victim
to it. Still, there are people who fall
victim to it. Still, it's the falaq
Some people
breaks them in half in this dunya. At
least they have a chance before they leave
to realize what their mistake was and to
make tawba for it. The real unfortunate one
the real unfortunate one is the one whose
whose arrogance is so bad that Allah even
deprives them of that
opportunity.
Otherwise, everybody knows that everybody knows that it's
the Haqq.
So just like Allah gives us guidance and
protects people from the path of error,
and,
and preserves them in a good state from
his grace, Just like that,
Allah misguides or allows to go astray whoever
he wishes.
And he
lets that person destroy themselves,
and he puts that person in the state
of fitna through his justice.
So one might say, well, how is that
just?
Someone is born in a family that they
don't know who Allah and His Rasool is,
and they are, you know, not in a
position to be Muslims and all of the
and all of the means for the fulfilling
of the are
there enough to entertain and distract them from
the true purpose of their existence for a
100 lifetimes.
You know, how is that fair?
We're gonna break it down to a much
more basic level.
Even there that there's some some something to
be said about that.
We're gonna bypass that level of argument and
come down to a much more basic level.
And as Americans, people who are very
people are very keen to assert their ownership
over property, it should be a very easy
concept for us to understand,
which is what?
You
own something. Right? So you you if you
bought a new car,
right,
would you rather have a Lexus or a
Tesla?
Okay. So he'd rather have a Lexus. He's
he he yeah.
So so you got a new Lexus. Not
like one of the, like, the cheap, like,
entry level, like, whatever, 50,000 high. I don't
know how much they cost. Right? But, like,
one of the big, like, flagship, like,
$400,000
ones was all souped up in
auctions and whatnot.
So you take that Lexus and then you
drive it to your house way out wherever
you live
out there somewhere
in rural Michigan.
And, you take a nice big metal Easton
aluminum baseball bat
and you, like, smash it to pieces, the
windows, the the the open the hood up,
smash the engine. You just just bash it
till it's completely useless.
Okay?
And the neighbor then calls the cops and
says, oh, he just destroyed his car.
And the cops are gonna be like, well,
did he steal it?
No.
Did he pay for it?
Yes. Is the battery acid leaking that we
can call the EPA and
say, oh, look. There's some sort of, you
know, environmental
hazard. Well, not that I can tell.
So what's what's your problem?
No. But it's unfair because the car didn't
do anything to him.
You know, like, if you call the cops
for something like that, like, once, they'll probably
be like, okay. This is not a crime.
Please don't call us again with this. You
do it 2, 3 times, they they may
actually arrest you
and fine you for wasting their time.
Why? Because you paid for the car. It's
yours. You can do with it whatever you
want. Right?
Allah subha'i, so who whose whose ownership is
more complete?
The one who
purchased the car
with money, with somebody else's face printed on
it
that was earned from some other corporation
on an education given to you by somebody
else, paid for by mommy, daddy,
right, and by the state and by
whatever other means of financing are available.
Right? That's like all these
and all these people were helping you to,
like, get to this point where you can
buy this Lexus. Right? Or Allah ta'ala who
created the heavens and the earth from nothing.
If he wishes to, he can trash the
entire thing. He can
send everyone to Jahannam, and it's not an
injustice.
If someone wants to earn Jahannam properly,
what can you do? Everything, all the good
deeds you do in order to present to
him, it's his favor that he even gives
you the means to do those good deeds.
This is a very fundamental,
fundamental issue,
and it's a very fundamental
understanding that seems to be missing from a
lot of people.
And I
attribute this
being missing to,
kind of the the Disneyesque
course that western civilization has taken?
Like, have you ever read, like,
Cinderella, but the, like, the brother's grim version?
It's very different than the Disney version.
A lot of the old like children's story,
they're very just read like go read the
Brothers Grimm. They're, they're very they're Jacob Grimm
was a genius. He's a linguistical genius. He
basically
decoded like how
Urdu and Farsi and English and Russian are
all essentially the same language. And we literally
use the same words when we speak.
And like, he decoded like, you just flip
this word this way when you move east,
and when you move north, you flip this
word this way. And, like, everything they're all
cognates. He's a really genius person. So he
they they compile, like, all of these old,
you know, stories that that that you tell
the children. They're very different than the Disney
version
of stuff. Right? The Disney version is very
sanitized, and everything is just a happy ending.
You know, They one time, they showed Bambi's
mother getting shot and, like, all these executives
when they've screened the film, they started crying.
They said, you have to take this out.
You can't have kids watch this because we
want them to give us money. We don't
want them to, like, be traumatized and all
this other stuff. It's you know? So everything
has become very sanitized and very, emptied of
any sort of reality.
And,
that's
that's like, I think people has kind of
started to affect their theology
to the point where I've heard, like, Protestant
pastors say that we're under direct instructions from
our,
like, central, like, whatever denomination
not to
mention * and the hellfire in sermons anymore.
Because statistically, they found that it,
you know, it causes decrease in in in
attendance in church.
So we just don't talk about that, and
we don't tell people what you're doing is
wrong, this, that, and the other thing. I'm
like, really? Yeah. Okay.
So why don't you come with me to
Jummah next week? So a guy comes with
me to Jummah, and, like, after he's done,
he's like, oh my god. That was amazing.
I was like, what do you mean?
He goes,
the the imam just, like, told everybody that
what they were doing is, like, totally wrong.
And, like, they did. They're gonna go to
* if they do do it. And, like,
nobody got up and left, and no one
said anything, and, like, everyone's, like, thanked them
afterward. What is this? Like,
I I was like, yeah. That's like
what how is this supposed to be? Right?
So no. They tell us you can't ever
say any of these things. Otherwise, it's gonna
all go wrong and no one's gonna show
up next Sunday and blah blah blah.
You know,
one of the things that we should appreciate
from this class
is that part of the of Muslims is
that ignorance is not bliss.
It's better to know. It's better to have
knowledge. And one thing I'll tell you anecdotally,
this is maybe not a issue, but this
is something that's,
a practical a practical matter. It's always best
to have bad news quickly
first. If you ever run a business or
if you ever are, like, working on a
project or something like that, this is a
really important rule to have that you give
bad news as fast as possible.
And when you have a good news and
bad news, always take the bad news first.
Why? Because then, you can still, like, while
you have time, you can try to deal
with it, cope with it. You may not
be able to even to solve the problem,
but you can at least mitigate it somehow.
You can at least be ready for it.
But, we don't believe ignorance is bliss. Always
knowledge is superior to, not having knowledge.