Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Gathering for Prayers for Aleppo 12132016.mp4
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AI: Transcript ©
Ostensibly, we're here,
you know, for the remembrance of Allah to
Allah and to make du'a for
our brothers and sisters in Hallab in Aleppo
in Northern Syria,
even though that's not the only crisis or
disaster that's going on in the Muslim world
as we speak.
There's a disaster of quite some intensity in
Burma as well.
The numbers are equal, if not greater, than
than what's happening in Syria. And there are
other things that are fires that are burning
in a number of different places in the
Ummah right now.
And, you know,
they've been going on for a while,
and we've been
better or worse at,
you know, tuning them out and going on
with our
quote, unquote regular lives at sometimes than at
others. And then at sometimes, it's so in
your face that you really can't do anything
to ignore it.
And, so that's the first,
I guess,
calamity that that that's, you know, brought us
together today.
The second calamity
is something a bit more,
Latif. It's a little bit more,
it's a little bit more, what you call?
Subtle. Subtle. Thank you, JazakAllah Khairan.
Which is what?
Which is that
I feel myself 2 things. 1, I feel
horrible about what's going on, and the second
is I feel bad because it seems like
myself first,
all I do is just retweet things or
repost things or re WhatsApp things, and we're
not really doing anything about it.
And what does it mean to do something?
What does the deen require us to do
when we see something happening? Is Hadith
narrated from
That the person amongst you who sees something,
an evil, something detestable that that's that everyone
agrees is not a good thing. Then let
that person change it with his hand.
And we're we're completely overwhelmed. If somebody knows
something that they can do that I don't
know, they're welcome to share. But, you know,
when
airplanes rain bombs out of the sky,
then,
you know, individuals who are,
you know, in positions that we're we're in,
are powerless. These are things that, you know,
as individuals, we really can't do anything about.
It requires a type of preparation that even
the most powerful nations of the earth. And
I see a lot of this happening also.
People are blaming
blaming Muslim governments. And definitely the Muslim governments
have,
their fair share of blame to take on
their shoulders.
But something if even all of them made,
you know, a week ago and said we're
gonna stop this right now. It seems to
be something that there's really nothing they can
do in the short term because of it.
So if a person is unable to do
anything, this is something that's mentioned by the
Rasool, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, that this is
gonna be a situation for
Then let them speak out about it.
Let them speak out about it. But the
point of speaking out is not to
throw your voice into a black hole,
and talk to people who it's not really
gonna change. To speak out about it is
okay. You fly down to Moscow and talk
to the
whatever, you know, to the secretary of defense
and say this is not a good thing
or fly to, you know, to Damascus or
to Tehran or to
Beirut or these other kind of centers where
these evil plans
and and devices are are coming together. If
you have the ear of somebody and you
can convince them to do something, go ahead
and do it. Please, what are you waiting
for? But unfortunately, none of us have that
either. We can post and tweet and retweet
and whatever. And there's some
some amount of
some amount of, I guess, benefit in people
at least knowing what's going on.
But, that amount, we've
reached it a long time ago,
and, it's a dead horse that that that
we've been beating because now what we're doing
is we're sharing these things over and over
with one another,
and it's not really gonna change anything
beyond a certain quantum that we hit a
long time ago. And the even more scary
thing about it is what? Is that
we are allowing
beating that dead horse
to somehow
put ourselves to sleep
that we're doing something. And the fact of
the matter is really from all practical purposes,
it's really not doing anything.
It's not doing anything. In fact, it's doing
a lot of harm
because
by sending
a 1,000 retweets versus like 5,
what you end up doing is not changing
any situation on the ground.
And you also then every time you relieve
the trauma of that thing,
again and again,
you psychologically harm yourself,
and you harm other people as well.
And,
you know, if you're not able to do
something positive for your brothers and sisters,
you're not helping them by harming yourself either.
And that's one of the reasons I'm very
glad that Bahiman came, and I wanna let
him have a chance, you know, 5 or
10 minutes to say something about that as
well,
about about, you know, not letting this thing
kind of,
you know, harm your own health,
because you're not gonna help anyone by having
compromised health, physical or mental, and you're not
gonna be able to help somebody. You're you're
you're not gonna harm your enemies, and you're
not gonna be able to help your friends
by by harming yourself even though there's some
sort of kind like a,
type of,
like, masochistic, like, you know, like, original sin
bearing the cross, like, very,
very,
almost like, you know,
Catholic type of
enjoyment people get out of it. It's not
the way of our Rasool sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam.
So if our doing something and saying something
is not helping anything,
what is the Sunnah people in position the
position that we're in?
And what have our forefathers done traditionally when
they're in this position?
Now for some reason or another, this is
usually
translated as if he can't do anything, then
let him hate it in his heart. But
literally what the hadith says, if he can't
change it with his hands, let
him change it with his hands. And if
you can't change it with his hands, then
let him do so with his tongue. And
if you can't do it with his tongue,
then let him do it with his heart.
How do you change things with your heart?
This is something that
is exactly what we can be doing and
exactly what we should be doing.
And the right speech that we'll say in
order to change things
will only flow from the heart,
and the right action that will one day
Allah
give the Ummah the ability again to
preserve its own honor, it will only come
from having a right heart and right speech.
And this is what we learned from our
masha'ikh and from our our our ulema, the
living amongst them and the ones who passed
100, if not over a 1000 years ago,
is that the the correct change starts from?
It starts from what? It starts from calling
on Allah
because the right heart that has to alook
with Allah
that is the one that that that that
that garners the help of Allah ta'ala. That
is the one that garners change, and it's
a big war out there. And the fact
of the matter is right now, this is
something that as an umma, we should have
proactively been working on. This is what Rasulullah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam worked on with his
sahaba alaihi wa ta'ala anhu. And I'm not
pointing the finger at other people. It's myself
is just as much, if not more, to
blame than any other person for this. That
there was a time that we needed to
work on this from before catastrophes happened, from
before disasters happened, and we didn't. We went
on with our lives as an ummah and
as individuals. We go on with our lives
thinking that I can ignore these things. I'm
just trying to make my own life. I'm
trying to have my own enjoyment. I'm trying
to I have my own plans for what
I wanna do in in my life, and
it doesn't include
any fiqh for the deen, and it doesn't
include any fiqh for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
other than or for the Ummah Sayed Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Other than I'll just
make sure to pray 5 times a day
while I'm doing whatever makes me
happy.
So, that's that's something that that that we've
been, you know, that we kind of missed
the boat on, you know, in terms of,
like, okay. The heart patient is right now
having his 5th heart attack and has to
have so many bypass surgeries.
The time to talk about, you know, maybe
you should have a healthy diet and get
some more exercise.
That time is gone.
It's okay. There's still something in the deen
for us.
Right? What is the the the the thikr
that we see from the book of Allah
that's prescribed after you're already
you're, you know, you're already up the wrong
creek and you don't seem to find a
paddle
when you're already in a situation where it's
like you have no hope whatsoever.
What we learned from our our olamand, there
are many things. One of the things that
we learned from them is that the ayah
Allah
sent down,
in which he describes what does
Sayidna Eunice alayhis salam.
I look at the nisbah of of everything
in this deen. All of it is tied
to revelation.
What does Satan, the Eunice, alayhis salam, call
out to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? What does
he say from inside the depths of the
the belly of the fish when
it seems like he's basically
you know, there's no hope left. There's really
nothing nothing left to look forward to. There's
no hala or plot or plan that we
can rely on. And, there's nothing smart to
say, and there's no preparation we can do
anymore. We're basically,
in just in a bad position,
and there's really nothing else to do. It's
the only thing left to do is die,
basically.
And that's the the crying of Sayna, Yunus
alaihi salam from inside the depths of,
of the fish.
That he cried out to
Allah. He says, there's no god except for
you.
Glory be to you. Indeed, I was from
amongst the transgressors, from the Valimin, from the
oppressors. The one who didn't didn't do justice,
and the one who didn't give,
give Haqq neither to you nor to anybody
else. You just admit your your weakness in
front of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. From amongst
our elders, there are such people who you
you would go with them, stay with them
for decades, and you'd never hear a complaint
or cry about anything. But from amongst them,
there were those who used to cry and
complain about every small thing to Allah Ta'ala,
not to anybody else ever.
And why the idea is that if you
are with Allah
like a baby, like a newborn child,
dependent on him for every single thing, Allah
will carry you.
And if you are, a person who thinks
that I have, you know, I'm smart. I'll
think about it. The way out of this
is this thing, and the way out of
that is that thing. And everybody has something
to say about everything in a comment and
some sort of bright and
intelligent and analysis that they're gonna make about
something, go ahead and make your your analysis
now. People are being killed in the streets
like animals.
The women are apparently asking
for for permission to kill themselves because they're
afraid of being,
raped by,
by enemy soldiers.
And those places that the Mas'ad used to
that they called, you know, for over a
1000 years, uninterrupted,
Adan and, Jamaa,
through the times of the Crusades, through the
times of Mongol invasion, through the time they're
silent now, and those Masanid were
Masnads where the hadith of the prophet used
to be taught. Our Akabir, Masha'i, so many
of them came from from Halab.
Sheikh Ab Abdullah Sirajuddin,
Rahimuhullah,
Sheikh Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Fuddha.
Many of them are still alive. Sheikh Mohammed
Awama,
protect
him, and he's in Madinah Munawwara. These are
all Halabees. They're they're ancient Madars that are
that are that are basically bombed into rubble
now. They held classes still after their buildings
were bombed into the ground. They still held
classes in the homes. Not even those are
done. Even those are finished. Those zawaiyah where
the zikr of Allah ta'ala is made, those
things were they're they're done now. It was
a favor that Allah
gave to this ummah, and who knows, maybe
we didn't make enough sugar for it or
maybe it's something else. We should always have
a good opinion of Allah, and never have
a bad opinion of him that everything he
does. As long as a person still has
iman, he does it in his hikmah. But
the fact of the matter is when Allah
makes a decision, if he decides to take
something,
then that can be very hard it can
be hard for us as creation.
And there's no bad adab with Allah in
admitting that that sometimes his decisions are difficult
for us even though we have sabra and
don't say anything that that that, shows bad
adab with.
So this is a chance for
for us.
The the first calamity of the city falling
down around us is not something that we're
suffering from, but the second one is something
that we're probably in a worse situation than
anyone else's. That the actual way of dealing
with these things, the actual way of dealing
with these issues,
and I'm not a quietest or a pacifist.
I'm not saying just make zikr and let
everybody
run rough shot in the streets. But what
I am saying is any solution that's gonna
have the help of Allah Ta'ala and Baraka
in it has to start with the remembrance
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala from which I
myself have been,
not not putting in my time and effort
like I need to.
And I suspect that maybe there are other
people who are like that as well. So
maybe this is
an occasion for us to
remember Allah ta'ala again and to
ask do at least our little
peace in asking for his help.
And if we invoke it in this world
or not,
then know that your remembrance of him isn't
going into a void. It's not going to
a black hole. If you don't see what
you asked for in this world, then you'll
definitely see something better than what you asked
for in the hereafter
one way or the other. May
Allah give so much tofees to all of
us, InshaAllah. So be before we begin our,
and dua, we'll just sit for some time,
and we'll we'll we'll make dhikr to Allah
ta'ala, and then we'll again make dua together.
And then after that, we can,
leave and go home
with a good hope from Allah ta'ala that
that inshallah, he'll change our lives for the
better, and he'll, bring something good out of
all the suffering and the difficulty that people
are going through and, that we also leave
with an intention
to make,
some sort of toward Allah
toward the service of his deen. If anyone
has any,
you know, ability to do so, the other
thing that I'd like to ask, maybe you
can, like, pull out one of these baskets
from behind you,
before you leave, Insha'Allah.
They pull yeah.
Just put the books books in the shelf
for a minute or the whatever is in
there and just
empty it.
Then what we can do also is it's
still a,
an obligation on us as an ummah, and
it's something we can do something about,
which is what more important than the buildings,
more important than the physical land of the
city, the territory of the city. It's the
people who are there. And they're I wanna
remind everybody, they're still most of them are
still alive. And,
you know, all of these kind of western
nations,
not just western nations, even Muslim countries that
have
kind of looked down on these refugees as,
you know, you know, like a burden, and
why are these people leaving? They should have
just stayed home and made a better life
for themselves and blah blah blah. This the
the other thing.
Well, those people,
they had an idea that this day was
going to come, and they chose to survive
rather than to be killed in cold blood.
And we should honor that decision of theirs,
and it seems that Allah,
you know, showed that it was a very
wise decision,
and, we should help them to survive and
help them to thrive however we we can.
So, Insha Allah, whoever has some some money
also
should give as much as they're able to,
without, you know, impinging on their, you know,
people are in debt or people have other
obligations without families
or whatever. But even if all you can
do is take out a dollar or a
20 or a100 or something like that without
impinging on your own,
on your own,
you know, obligations, then we should also give
for them as well. Not because the money
we're gonna gather in this majlis is going
to change anything.
Maybe we won't even be able to
bring any significant change in the life of
1 person even or maybe only 1 or
2 people. But, a, that's better than nothing,
and, b, the idea is what?
That you will not you will not,
attain righteousness until you spend from that which
you love. Hopefully, maybe by the act of
takarub and coming close to Allah ta'ala by
making his zikr and then by giving up
from that thing that Allah
knows that we love, maybe it will make
it more Mubarak and more acceptable to him,
and it will accelerate the the the spiritual
change that has to come before the physical
change happens in order to make some help.
So this is a majlis not of despondency.
This is not a majlis of of losing
hope, of despair. It's also not a majlis
that that that's there to make everyone feel
better and put them to sleep. Some people
are professionals at that. They're professionals of telling
everybody everything is gonna be okay and put
them to sleep. If you're behind, you have
to work even harder to catch up. You're
not going to,
you're not gonna be able to slack off.
That's just that's just being real. But the
the the good news is Allah is there
to help us. And the fact that we're
even here, and have this fiqh and this
concern
about mending our relationship with him as a
as individuals and as an ummah in order
to make something better happen, it's already a
good sign, Insha'Allah. It's already a good sign
for us. And if whatever happens, we ask
for everything in this world like the prophet
asked for every good for this ummah in
this world. If some part of it happens
or doesn't happen in this world, then know
that everybody who belongs to this ummah is
going to be in a good condition eventually
on the, in the hereafter. So, inshallah, that's
something also that that I ask everyone to
do to, inshallah, help those who are still
there as much as you can because you're
not going to fight the the the governments
of large countries and nor do I
encourage you to do so. But you are
gonna be able to help someone, you know,
some refugee family that doesn't speak English and
has several children and whatnot, you know, pay
their rent over here. Or you are going
to be able to get a heater for
a tent in the middle of the winter
in a refugee camp in Jordan or or
in Lebanon or in in Turkey.
So,
that's something that I encourage everyone to do.
If you don't if you do whatever you
can, do something here first, and then afterward,
you can go online and and make some
sort of, you know, more regular commitment. There
are a number of
reputable and and trustworthy
organizations that you can do it through. Whoever
you do through, inshallah, it's your, you know,
it's your choice inshallah. But,
please do even if it's something that you
go to the Masjid, then you find somebody
and there are people. I know in Rockford,
there are people maybe we can talk amongst
ourselves afterward. But there are Syrian refugees in
this area.
They can introduce you to them. They live
here. You can help them out directly if
you wish to as well. You don't even
have to go through an organization, but we
also should make a commitment, you know, rather
than retweeting into the abyss and reposting Facebook,
you know, until, until we end up, you
know,
we end up losing our minds.
Rather than doing that, make some sort of
make some sort of
commitment for the people who are here, who
have Allah Ta'ala has spared their lives and
show Shukr to Allah Ta'ala that he spared
them by by honoring them while they're still
here,
and amongst us and and and, you know,
helping ourselves out while we're still here and
able to help ourselves by helping them.
Maybe 5 or 10 minutes to say something
Inshallah for the benefit of people's
psychological
and and spiritual Inshallah well-being and then after
we'll make zikr for some time and make
dua inshallah
and then we'll be please inshallah something, whatever
Allah puts in your heart to say.
So I'm here basically as a listener and
to try to do something, you know, in
terms of
making some thikat and and dua.
I think,
the only thing that I can just,
maybe add to what
Maulana Hamza was saying
is, I think the overall message that,
part of the message that he is trying
to convey is this,
sort of balance between,
you know,
because their religion
is
that
one one should not
be so despondent
on one occasion on on from one perspective
and think that, you know, we are, we
are so
incapable and and and look at the situation
of the world and sort of retweeting and
reading all of these posts that
what happens is that you're sort of drowning
in that sorrow.
And that's actually
useful
to some extent, right? So sadness, what is
the function of sadness?
Sadness is to develop some sort of meaning.
If an individual does not
feel sad on occasion, then that person is
hearts dead, right? They don't feel any emotion,
they don't have the capacity to be compassionate,
empathic. They can't take any meaning.
So sadness is useful in so much as
it can mobilize and do something.
That it can cause an individual to be
reflective and very importantly, I think reflective over
their own individual lives. They're sort of,
the finiteness of the of the world.
You know,
the the has a really nice,
kind of 17
of
of trials and tribulations. And he says that
there are some actually he talks about the
benefits of trials and tribulations
and he enumerates 17 of them.
And,
one of them is, you know, the very
first one he starts with is an.
Right? The
the
the majesty and magnitude of the,
of of lordship and and its dominance.
And then he follows up with,
and, and then he follows up to say,
sorry.
And the recognition of the lowliness
of the, of of of servitude and and
the incapacity of the human being.
And, and then he and then he goes
on to say that that that the next
benefit is.
Right? That a person has sincerity
at the door with dua that a person
is moved to make some
humble,
sort of, dua,
in recognition that Allah Ta'ala is,
is in charge of everything. And
and so this is sort of an adaptive,
I think useful way of
responding to it at least to the extent
that we have the capacity to be able
to do something
is I think obviously making dua to be
able to do something given from well. But,
but also very importantly, I think taking a
personal lesson from it. Alright? Because one thing
is to feel sorrow for the for the
suffering of others, but the saddest reality is
that an individual gets so wrapped up in
the sorrow of others that they forget the
sorrowful state of their own selves.
You know what I'm saying? So,
sometimes
a person will reflect over
how how bad another person has it, but
the the the recognition of the fact that
what's worse is that you don't recognize that
you
have it, you know, have it worse by
not being able to have that awareness,
you know, being blind to it. And so,
I I think that
the part of the adaptive, the the usefulness
of this is that,
you know, one have sort of a wake
up
call to examine and do
to
take account of oneself
to kind of reflect and take take stock
of this,
of this. And then also the other side
of the, you know, equation
is to have,
is to have Raja
and and positive hope in Allah Ta'ala
that that
that that that things Insha'Allah,
you know, will get better eventually inshallah
and that,
and that we have
majalis of dhikr and and and and and
and we have Madaris and all of that.
These are all good things that still exist
that I think that we can,
kind of reinforce, which is,
one might not think that they are, you
know, very large. But in the bigger plan
of Allah, I think we hope that
we would be used by Allah in some
shape or fashion to do the and and
ultimately that goes back to to his master
plan. And that maybe we have some
some some share of that master plan, and
that Allah uses us
in that process to be able to serve
his deen, and and and and that's the
optimism
that that we can have is that that
that we can be propelled to actually do
something
and and be
be a part of the, you know, mercy
of Allah be a part of the the
the the, you know,
the the help of Allah that's coming and
that maybe we would be
the the the vehicles of being able to
mobilize
some of that change Insha'Allah Ta'ala,
that's all I have to say.
Hamar, someone would like to say something?
I really don't have much to say. I
think
Sheikh Hamza, brother Humana, covered it all.
I'm just gonna kind of
reiterate
some of the things that were mentioned, kind
of like Brother Humon did.
First of all,
we see and we hear about the situation
that our
brothers and sisters are in.
And, of course,
we feel
and if we don't, then there is definitely
something wrong with
us. Right? Because
mentioned the hadith
that the whole ummah is like a body.
That if a portion of it feels pain,
then the whole body feels pain.
Same way, like, if, you know, if your
head hurts, your whole body hurts. So whole
ummah should be like that, that we see
and we hear about our brothers and sisters
suffering the way that they are suffering.
So we should feel, and we should do
whatever is in our capacity and within our
ability
to do.
Like Sheikh Hamza mentioned,
excuse me, we cannot go, and we're not
expected to go and fight against
nations and against governments.
Right? We cannot do that.
But what we can do is we can
make dua, we can do a dhikr, we
can do dua, we can help out monetarily,
whatever we can do. And at the same
time,
we do shukr to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala,
that as individuals,
he did not put us
us in that same situation.
Although,
realistically speaking, we probably deserve it more than
they do.
Right? Think about our own
what we do, the things
we do on a daily basis.
And to think that they're getting it
because they deserve it is wrong. Allah
tests this ummah in different ways.
And this is one of the ways. He
tests
people
who don't necessary not necessarily deserve
to be,
put in that situation to see what how
the rest of the Ummah would react. So
in a way, in a sense, this is
a test for us as well.
So inshallah,
I'm gonna end here. I didn't really have
much to say and this is just what
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala put in my heart
right now. May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala accept
our dhikr that we're about to do and
may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept our otherwise
inshallah.
Everyone
can sit face the Qibla.
Everybody. Face the Qibla.
If you wish to, you can close your
eyes. Everybody will just repeat to themselves
quietly,
the
mentioned words of Sadna,
Yunus alaihis salaam,
which was
the Masoon way of dealing with being in
a situation that's completely overwhelming and having no
recourse left to anyone except for Allah
There's no god except for
you.
Glory be to you. Indeed, I was
short in my fulfilling of of of rights.
I was a a an oppressor and a
transgressor.
If this is the words of a Nabi,
may the peace and blessing of Allah be
upon them all,
then think of how much more it applies
to us.
Repent for your sins.