Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Healing of the Heart Through Recitation of the Quran at Muslim Association of Greater Rockford
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Do you mind handing you the mic?
All praises to Allah. All praises to Allah.
All praises to Allah who guided us to
this,
who guided us to Islam and to iman,
and to his Mubarak house on this Mubarak
hour, this Mubarak day, and we were not
to be guided. Was it not that Allah
had guided us?
Oh, Allah, to use praise as his commensurate
with the majesty of your countenance and the
greatness of your authority.
Oh, Allah, we do not limit you with
any praise we could come up with ourselves,
rather we admit that you are the only
one who knows the true extent of your
praise worthiness.
And may the peace and blessings of
Allah be upon his servant and messenger, Sayna
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wa
sallam. May the peace and blessings of Allah
be upon
him and upon his noble companions
and upon his pure
wives and upon his Mubarak and blessed family
and progeny and upon all of those who
follow all of their way until the day
of judgement.
So
in Abu Saeed al Shudu
narrates a hadith meaning
a hadith that the prophet
narrates from the words of the lord, most
blessed is he and
high.
That whoever
the recitation of the Quran
and my remembrance
makes them busy
from making du'a.
Whoever
is busy from making du'a, from asking me
for things, due to his recitation of the
Quran
and due to his remembrance of me,
I will give that person the best that
anyone who asked could have asked for.
Meaning what? Whoever the recitation of the Quran,
a person is can only do one thing
at one time.
Whoever is busy in reciting the Quran and
busy in remembrance of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And that busyness takes them away from being
able to ask. Allah is the only one.
If you ask,
he listens. If you ask, he's happy with
you asking him. He wants you to ask
more and more. Every other person, the more
you ask, the more annoyed they get with
you, the more irritated they get with you.
Rather, a du'a or asking Allah
is the mentioned by the messenger of Allah
to be the
It is the mirror, the the core, the
inside of.
The word colloquially in Arabic, for those of
you who speak colloquial Arabic,
the word muq generally people they say it
means head.
But classically that's not what it means. Classically
it means the hollow space inside of a
bone.
Obviously, since your skull
is made out of bone and there's
I guess a space more hollow for certain
individuals than others inside of it. The word
has now come to mean head,
according to many people. But classically, it means
any space that has the core the hollow
inside of a bone. Every bone
has a hollow core inside of it.
And so the the dua is what? It's
the core of of worship. Why? Because
it's an expression of our aqidah. It's an
expression of our belief that the only one
that you can ask that will actually give
you and that actually has the ability to
give you anything is Allah ta'ala.
It's Allah.
And so
this is not to belittle the the
the the status of du'a, the status of
asking God for what you need or for
what you want. In fact the messenger of
Allah salallahu alaihi wa sallam also says
that whatever du'a that we make, whatever we
ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
all of those things that are asked in
faith, all of those things will be answered
in one of 3 ways. Either you'll get
what you asked for or an equivalent
calamity that was about to befall you or
equivalent portion of calamity that was about to
befall you will be negated through your asking
for something. Or the third possibility is you
won't receive what you asked for in this
world.
You will receive when you meet your lord
every single thing you asked for. On the
day of judgment, people will come to Allah
ta'ala with mountains of good deeds with mountains
of good deeds
and with mountains of reward and with mountains
of of ajr. And they'll ask Allah to
say, Allah,
to be honest, we didn't really do all
of these things. We we don't know where
these things are coming from. This is not
anything that we
deserve ourselves that that we see here on
this
on this day, on this momentous day and
it's in our account.
And they'll be told. What will they be
told? They'll be these are they'll be told,
these are all the things that you made
dua for. You didn't receive them in this
world. You'll receive them on that day. And
so it's important to ask Allah ta'ala
because there's nothing there's nothing nothing lost in
it. It's very easy. A person can sit
and rack up so much
so
much
spiritual benefit
from asking Allah ta'ala. In 5 minutes, how
much can a person ask for? You can
ask for so much, and it's so beneficial
to us. And to Allah ta'ala, it doesn't
decrease in his in his in his storehouses,
anything.
But despite this despite this high,
status of dua, despite the fact that dua
is the if a person goes to Hajj,
A person asks Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the
Hajj
the the Hajj is essentially a big it's
a long trip of du'a. From the beginning,
the,
the, you combine your 2 prayers together so
you can make dua for the entire day
of.
You stone the first,
you the the first jamara, and you stop
and make dua for as long as it
takes to read Surah Al Baqarah, and then
you stone the second jamrah and then you
stop and make dua for as long as
it takes to read Surah Al Imran. It's
an entire of dua.
So we're not saying that this means that
dua is not an important thing. The dua
is means that a person can receive a
high status with Allah ta'ala. To ask him,
ask again and again, ask more and more.
Ask Allah ta'ala and he'll give you even
more and more every time. But this is
to say on top of that understanding of
how important is du'a,
how important is it to ask, how beneficial
is it?
How beneficial is it to ask?
Allah ta'ala from his mercy, he made those
things in this religion that are important, also
beneficial to us. They're all in our own
interest.
On top of that though, if du'a is
so important, what does it mean that Allah
ta'ala told us Nabi salallahu alaihi wa sallam?
That the one that is made busy from
making dua because of their recitation of the
Quran
and because of their remembrance of me.
They're made busy. They're not able to make
du'a because they're busy because of their recitation
of the book of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That person
should not have any fear or or any
doubt lingering inside of their head. Rather that
person should know that as long as they're
reading the book of Allah ta'ala.
That's such a person I will give to
you. Such people
that's such a person I will give that
person the best thing that that anyone who
ever asked could have asked for.
So you will have recorded for you in
your book of deeds on top of your
recitation of the book of Allah the
best thing that a person could have asked
for. It comes in the hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
that that every house, every letter of the
Quran that a person reads, it is recorded
as 10 good deeds in their account.
And the Sahaba
whom were were astonished and they were amazed
So much reward from doing something that is
not physically an exertion.
10 good deeds. And so they said, you're
saying someone reads alif lamim, they get 10
good deeds? And he said, no. Rather alif
is 10 good deeds, and lam is 10
good deeds, and Meem is 10 good deeds.
Allah
his Messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
he says in a hadith narrated by Sayda
Aisha
That the person who is
proficient in reading the Quran.
Some people are like that. Some people, they
recite the Quran beautifully.
Some people memorize the Quran, and they recite
it beautifully in the day and in the
night. And it's a pleasure for for people
to hear from them. We read just the
other day,
or we mentioned just the other day the
hadith Abbasid Abdullah bin Mas'ud
who wanted the kurfaq of Quran in the
life of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
That the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam once asked him, 'Can you read some
Qur'an for me?'
And Abdul ibn Mas'ud was surprised.
He said, how can I read the Qur'an
to you when you're the one upon whose
heart the Qur'an was revealed?'
And the prophet
said himself, no, sometimes I like to hear
it from somebody other than myself.'
So the person who is Mahir, the person
who recites Quran proficiently,
what is that person's rank? The person who
recites the Quran proficiently
is is
with whom?
That person is with the noble angelic scribes
that record
the
the the the deeds of,
God's creation and record the commandments of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. Amongst the angels, certain angels
are safarrah, they're
they're scribes. They record the commandments of Allah
Ta'ala. They bear witness to the actions of
people. They record things.
And the scribe is somebody who is a
person who's trustworthy.
A person who's trustworthy. So imagine if the
angels are not able to sin.
That's already there's a certain standard that you're
achieving here.
After that, that from amongst the angels, certain
ones are chosen as scribes, This is a
standard above that standard.
And it is a, it is a, an
appropriate
metaphor. Why? Because the person who memorized the
Quran, what do we call them? We call
that person a hasil, a protector or guardian
of the Quran.
We don't say that that person is the
zakir al Qur'an, the one who remembers the
Qur'an. Rather he's the hafib, he's the guardian
of the Qur'an because he guards it inside
of
his heart, and she guards it inside of
her heart. It's not a joke. I mean,
people have been doing it for
centuries, and even, even though even though,
you know, some of us are are Qasr,
some of us are fall short in the
Haqq of the Quran. There are people who
didn't short in the haqq of the Quran.
There are people who memorized
it both in its rasam and also in
its recitation
in its various recitations.
We've met people before who have memorized the
Quran from the inside of,
from the inside of flower pots. We've met
people before that have memorized the Quran from
inside bathrooms.
We've met people before who memorized the Quran
from inside, like secret dungeons inside of their
houses. This happened in Stalinist Russia.
Right? The you know, people from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Kazakhstan, these places, people people nowadays just say,
oh, these guys are Russian. They're not Russians.
Those are the heartlands of Islam. Those are
the places Islam was brought to, those places
by the Sahaba radiAllahu ta'ala
Anhu. Many of the greatest ulama were from
those places.
From the Indian subcontinent personally. Many of the
greatest ulama and many of the greatest ulia
of Allah
that brought Islam to our lands came from
those places to the point where even the
dress that we consider to be, the dress
of the Indian subcontinent, it's actually the dress
of Central Asia. Otherwise, the people of the
Indian subcontinent barely used used to wear clothes
at all anyway before
before,
Muslims came. It's true.
And so, you know, places like that when
they got taken over by Stalinist Russia,
you know, very anti religious people. If there's
going to be a government that's anti religion,
that government is for sure gonna hate Islam
double because Islam is the dean of not
just is it religion, it's the religion that
Allah accepts. So it's going to obviously,
peak their their ire and their their their
aggression and their anger. And so you have
a time when it's banned. You cannot read
salat. And they would have school children. They
would ask, like, kindergarteners,
1st graders, things like that. They'd ask the
school children,
does you do do does your do your
parents pray? Do they, make vicker? Do they,
fast? You know, etcetera. And the little kids
I mean, little kids don't know how to
deal with the security agencies.
And so what will happen is that they'll
put throw their parents in jail, and children,
they'll unwittingly send their own parents to gulags
and to
these labor camps or sometimes they'll just disappear
altogether.
And so there are people, you can meet
them in Madinah Munawara, and you meet them
in different places that came as muhajarin, as
refugees.
They'll tell you, I memorize the Quran. Someone
told the story about in their house what
they did was they,
they they
built
a basement, like a secret basement in in
the house,
and they, walled the door up with bricks.
And the rest of the house, they they
put, like,
alcohol and pork and, you know, pictures of
and things like that so that if the
secret police come to their house, they won't
suspect anything.
And they would wall them and go in
for like a month at a time. The
teacher and the student, they would go underneath
month at a time and they would memorize
that that's how the Quran was memorized and
transmitted from one generation to the other. And
the thing is that these are the people
this is why they call someone to memorize
the Quran haafid.
It's because of that type of dedication. It's
something that's almost
unthinkable
to people like us.
And those people sometimes would get found out.
If they got found out, that's it. You're
dead. They're gonna kill everybody. They're going to
separate families. They're going to send you to
Siberia, and you're going to work yourself to
the cold until you're utterly dead. It's a
it's a it's a torturous death sentence. But
there are people who do that. Why? Because
they took these of the messenger of Allah
salallahu alayhi wa sallam very seriously.
Right? So they that's why those people are
the actual huffal, the people who actually guarded
the the the wahi, the revelation of Allah
ta'ala with their own lives. And what did
Allah give them in return? That the one
who recites proficiently,
that person will be
That person will be with Allah
of the rank of the noble and righteous
angels that record Thee, the commandments of Allah
And what what about the rest of us?
What about the rest of us who didn't
learn to read the Qur'an with that much
proficiency?
The Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is
his shan his shan is generosity.
His affair is generosity. Nobody would come back
empty handed when they ask Allah for something,
and when they come to the rasul sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam with something for for something.
So what did he say? He says that
the people who are profesion with the recitation
of the Quran,
those people will be with the noble angelic
scribes, the righteous and noble angelic scribes that
write the commandment of Allah
And as far as the one who reads
the Quran,
What does
mean?
It's what we call in English,
we call in English
It's a sound that is what the thing
that it sounds like.
It's a sound of stuttering.
A person who reads the Quran and they
stutter, it's difficult for them, it's not easy
for them, which is the case for a
lot of us. It's the case for a
lot of us. Many of us didn't have
the luxury of
being able to read and write Arabic from
the time we were children.
Many of us either grew up here or
grew up in other places in the world.
There are places even in the Muslim world
where the script is not the Arabic script
of the of the native language. Like in
Turkey,
they change the script out of out of
the Arabic script into a Latin script. Or
in Bangladesh or in Gujarat or places like
that where the script is not the the
the script is not Arabic. It's very difficult
if somebody doesn't have, you know, for someone's
parents to find a special teacher to come
in from the side and teach the children.
It's not easy. So not everybody not all
of us had that
opportunity. Many of us grew up over here.
We went to public school. We didn't have
that opportunity. I'll I've said it before and
I'll say it again, that myself, the first
time I was able to read a a
page from the mus'has from the beginning to
the end,
comfortably in one sitting, maybe I must have
been 18 years old at that time. I
could recognize but
when you ask me to join the connect
the words together, it becomes very difficult for
for a person who doesn't have the opportunity
to practice more and more and more. It's
difficult.
And so you see that.
Other people are cruising through 1 juz and
another juz and one khatam and another khatam,
and you're you're struggling with the same page.
Person may complete the entire juz, it's very
difficult, or perhaps you don't even know how
to read that much.
But what does the Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam say for the rest of us? He
said, The one who stutters when he reads
the Qur'an. As for the one who stutters
when he reads the Qur'an, And
and it's difficult for for such a person.
Alright?
Means difficult
metaphorically.
But literally, what does it mean?
Means to to to,
to break something into 2 pieces.
To break something into 2 pieces, meaning it's
so difficult. It's like it's busting you up.
It's that's how difficult it is. It's not
easy,
you know. When I go to work, I'm
a doctor and everybody respects me and I'm,
you know, a person that, you know, people
trust and I'm competent at what I do.
But when I sit in the masjid, there's,
you know, Iqra school kids who are reading
laps around me
and I'm still like,
and the the kid from behind is like,
That that you know? That's it. It's very
it's like it breaks you into pieces. It
breaks your nafs into pieces. That's it. It's
not easy. It's difficult.
So what does the nabi salallahu alaihi wa
sallam say about those people? As far as
the one who stutters when they read, and
it's difficult for for that person, That person
receives double the reward in reading.
That person receives double the reward in reading.
This is one of the the the the
the kind of
disappointing and difficult
realities about the Islam that people practice,
in the time and place we live in
is that people have stopped giving importance to
the recitation of the Quran now. People have
stopped giving importance to the reading of the
Quran now. People prefer to go to lectures
and prefer to go to kind of Islam
attainment,
type of,
gatherings and venues. People prefer to talk about
politics.
People prefer to talk about economics. People prefer
to talk about the news. People prefer to
have a huffing and puffing lecture, which is
great. If you need motivational speaking every now
and then, there's a time and place for
that. But that doesn't replace the bread and
butter,
the the the the the the the the
the the foundation and the meat of what
the deen is. And one of the primary
ways,
not secondary, primary ways that a person will
attain a rank with Allah ta'ala
is through the recitation of the Quran. But
the thing is it's not easy. It's difficult.
It's not easy to get to that point.
Many of us learned, we didn't learn tajweed.
Many of us didn't learn the makharaj of
the huroof, how to say the different letters.
Many of us didn't learn the Arabic language.
A person might say, How am I gonna
learn the Arabic language? You know, what does
the Quran mean? I don't even know what
the difference between and is.
It's a long road.
It's a long road.
Everything is a very long road. Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala who created the heavens and the
earth,
he himself
the the the of his very existence is
is is infinity.
The the affair of his existence is that
it's it's an overwhelming infinity. So if a
person
wishes to leave their home one day and
seek Allah ta'ala,
let them not expect that there's gonna be
anything short or quick about it.
Rather it's an ocean that is is something
that you're meant to drown yourself in.
Right?
Right? The, Amir Khusro, he he says that
that Amir Khusro, the the way the he's
a poet of the of several languages, a
poet of the Indian subcontinent from 13th century.
He said that, Khusro,
know that the system of the river of
love is opposite. It's backwards
from the system that you the physical world
that you that you live in. Why? Because
that's the river, the one who,
the one who floats in it, the one
who who comes to the surface, that's the
one who drowns. He's not gonna make it.
And the one who drowns in the river,
he's the one who crosses.
That's the way it is. Right? So if
it's a long road,
Allah gave you a couple more years of
life, inshallah.
Who knows? Maybe maybe just a couple of
days for some of us. But Allah gave
you a couple, a little bit something or
another more of life. So keep going, keep
going. That's the river if you drown in
it, that's how you're going to make it.
If you don't drown in it, if you
didn't drown in that river, you're not gonna
make it. You're not gonna get across to
the other side.
So that's fine. Don't worry yourself with the
fact that it's difficult,
the fact that I won't make it, the
fact that I can't even imagine becoming a
of Quran and then afterward there's 10 other
I have to memorize and so much tafsir
and and all of these things. Just do
something just do something while you can.
And for those of us, I want to
give heart to those of us who are
at the level that that level that that
that that that I myself
feel that I'm at.
The people of us are that are at
that level, just come to the masjid. There's
so many people
There's so many people in this Masjid. They
can teach
you They'll give you a little bit of
their time. You don't need to go to
the imam for every single one of these
things. There are some people who teach you
even better than the imam. There are certain
people who teach you even better than the
ulema. Some people are better naturally like that
as teachers. Sisters, they are there to teach
sisters, brother, they are brothers, they are there
to teach brothers. But it's difficult. It's difficult
shock. It's hard on the
because it's not glamorous. It's something that time
requires putting a little bit of time,
again and again consistently
over long long periods of time over long
periods of time. But please, put the time
and effort into it. If this is something
good, if you feel some benefit from it,
that you will receive with a reward with
Allah
of the person who whatever dua you could
have come up with, it would have been
less. Whatever the best person who Allah created
that made dua, whatever dua that one would
have made, you will receive the reward of
their duas because you're you're spending your time
with the reading of the Quran.
If you if it makes you happy to
receive double the reward of the the noble
angelic scribes that record the hookm of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. If it makes you happy
then your ears will be clean from the
filth that entered your ears through your life.
So many things people heard that no human
being should have to hear.
Backbiting,
cursing, evil speech, hateful speech, foul speech,
from our own tongues and from the tongues
of other people. If you want your ears
to be cleansed and have peace again, fill
them with the Quran.
So many eyes have been
polluted
and have been damaged by seeing those things
that no eye is supposed to see.
Violence, anger,
injustice,
belittling one person or the other,
*,
the dismembered bodies of of of people killed
in Dhul. All of these things, no eye
should ever have to see any of these
things. It's enough to make a person go
mad.
If you want to cleanse your eyes from
the hurt and from the pain of those
things, then let them look on the pages
of the must have and let them read.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
give us the happiness and the joy of
experiencing
from the Quran. That it is
That may Allah ta'ala give us the the
happiness and the joy of experiencing its guidance,
and that it is a a shifa. It's
a healing for the illness and the sicknesses
that that reside within hearts. May Allah
give us that tawfiq
and make it important for us once again
like it was important to our forefathers.
May Allah give us the tawfiq to be
able to make time for these things. And
may Allah for those of us who recite
proficiently,
give us a good share of the reward
of the safaraatul kiramilbarara.
And for for those who don't, who are
brave enough to subject themselves to that type
of difficulty, may Allah give them their double
reward and even more on top of it.
May Allah Allah give us all so much
tawfeeq.