Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Virtues Of DhulHijjah Arafah & Eid Ribt 06162024
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the history and significance of the Monday after the birth of the prophet Sallali Alaihi wa Sallam, as it is recognized as the day after the birth of the same person. The holy month is recognized as the holy month for Islam, and the upcoming Sunday is recognized as the busiest day for Islam. The importance of praying for the busiest day of the year for Islam is emphasized, as it is a day when people's money is not going to benefit them. The speaker also discusses the benefits of fasting during the holy month, including the reward of good deeds and actions, and the importance of acceptance of connections and not just rewarding people for their actions. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of stparking the jamarat and not just rewarding people for their actions, as it is a process.
AI: Summary ©
Gave us the tawfiq of reaching this Mubarak
day.
This Mubarak day,
that
is narrated from the prophet
in a hadith that we read in this,
from before that the messenger Allah
said,
It's a hadith of Muslim that there is
no day,
in which Allah
will manumit
more slaves from the hellfire than the day
of Arafa.
This is a day its sacredness was
observed from the time of Jahiliya.
It's a day, the sacredness of which was
observed in Islam before Hajj was legislated.
So Hajj was
only 2 years during the life of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
The first Hajj, Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
sent Sayna Abu Bakr Siddiq
as the Amir of Hajj.
And this is another yet another proof for
those who speak ill about the,
Khalafar Rashidun and about the companions
that the inaugural Hajj
in Islam
was under the Imara and direction of Saidna
Abu Bakr Siddiq
It's one of the 5 pillars of Islam.
If a person makes jahdav and if a
person denies that this is a part of
the deen, the person is a kafir.
And for the Rasul
to ostensibly have,
entrusted
this
indispensable right of Islam with somebody who is,
Aulubillah, a a a hypocrite or some sort
of traitor or something like that.
At that point, the allegation is not really
against the companions or the Allahu on whom
anymore is it. Who is it against?
The prophet
that a necessarily known part of the deen
somehow is
not being handled properly or is being handled
incompetently. And,
that allegation against the prophet
is not really an allegation against the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, who is an allegation
against
Allah Ta'ala.
And for that reason, you know,
we'll say it's tantamount to
kufr. Sometimes there are certain things that if
you a person thinks it,
the logical entailment of it may be kufr,
but we won't make takfir against the person.
But we
just because we don't make takfir against the
person for saying these things,
or may or may not make that fear
against the person for saying such things,
it doesn't mean that there isn't a severe
flaw and defect in the thought process
so much so that such people should not
be put forward to lead the prayer. They
should not be put forward to positions of,
trust
they should not be followed, or given a
platform to speak about Dean,
and a person should, in general, be very
wary of such
people. So
this Hajj
was only legislated in the penultimate year of
Rasulullah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's life.
And in fact, Rasulullah sallallahu
the next year, he will, then lead the
Hajj,
entourage,
and he will pass away
just months,
after that, if even that you know, just
a couple of months after that. He passed
away
in Rabiu Al Awal,
which is the month that we also recognize
as the month of the birth of the
prophet
It was also
the month that he passed away
from this world. And so Muhar al Safar
Rabi'l Owa, it's,
like, less than 4 months.
But the Eid ul Adha Abha was legislated
when
in the 2nd year after Hijra.
There's a very famous hadith of the prophet
that someone told the Rasul sallallahu alaihi wasallam
that the Ansar, the people of Madinah have,
like, 2 days that they celebrate as holidays.
And,
if you look in the hadith commentaries,
the names of those holidays,
to them were and.
So the names indicate that they had appropriated
the holidays of the Persians.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam says that
Allah has replaced for them 2
holidays that are better than them.
The Eid ul Fitr the Eid ul Fitr
and the Eid ul Adha,
which is better for them, obviously, from a
spiritual point of view because it has some
sort of significance. It's also an act of
worship that brings a person closer to Allah
as a
kind of diagonal addition to that.
It's from the
original
and
authentic,
observances,
that they,
that they were able to observe rather than
acting like another person,
rather than being a poser, rather than being
a loser, that the Persians had their holidays.
And you're not authentic enough to have your
own culture or your own customs.
So
in order to celebrate, you to then imitate
in other people. Obviously, it's not going to
work correctly.
It's going to work about as good as
when a man says I'm a woman and
he starts imitating woman. Everybody, men and women,
can see that something is very wrong, that's
happening here,
even though their tongues are tied due to
circumstance, political or social or otherwise, something wrong
has happened. So the Rasul
says you don't need to imitate these people
anymore. Rather,
Allah gave you these, days. Not only are
they authentically yours, but there's a benefit in
them. And this is something always to remember
and to remind one another as well. Maybe
some of you will give the idhutba one
day. You're not gonna live in Chicago forever.
You may go to some weird obscure place
where there's no Muslims anywhere around, and then
you get you you get to be shayef.
So remember to mention this that day when
that happens,
that the differentiating
factor with our holidays compared to that of
every people of Kufr
is that other people celebrate what someone else
did or what happened with somebody else.
We celebrate what we do ourselves.
In the Ilo Fitar, the celebration is of
your own fasting of the month of Ramadan,
your own prayers, your own tahajjud, your own
observance of the.
No
to my recollection has ever claimed that something
historic happened in the month of Ramadan,
other than something that happened in the unseen,
which is
but it's something unseen.
The second Eid, which is the one that
is upon us now.
One could say, well, this is the sacrifice
of Saidna Ibrahim alaihis salam that we're celebrating.
I think celebrating may be
a incorrect term.
The correct way of saying it is that
there's some
observance of it. But the observance is what
is that? It opened the door for us
to also be able to give our sacrifices
as well.
Because
the person who has the wherewithal in order
to give a sacrifice,
it still doesn't give a sacrifice,
then there's no point in that person
showing up and being present in our,
place of prayer.
So
this
Eid, this day of Arafa, the point is
it is ancient and it has a significance
that even predates the Hajj in Islam.
And its significance is something that ties back
to the Hajj of Saidid Ibrahim alaihi. So
when we say Hajj of Islam, we mean
the historic
Islam rather than the,
the our sacred history, the one that we
refer to within our own sacred history.
And interestingly enough in Jahiliyyah,
so the Arabs used to worship 1 god
or at least
the ones that were in Makkamukarama
and around them who accepted this deen and
who used to come and visit and revere
the the Kaaba, which which at some point
was all of them, but they dropped off
the map little by little, not all all
at the same time.
That these rights were
recognized by all of the Arabs,
but they were kind of twisted and perverted.
One of the perversions of this, of the
rights of Hajj was that when all the
tribes would come to Makkumukarama
to visit the house of Allah,
they still have this idea that there's a
day of Arafa before a day of
sacrifice. But the mushrikeen of Quresh wouldn't go
to Arafah.
One of the reasons that
that that's mentioned by some of the scholars
that the name, al Mashar al Haram, it
refers to a specific place within Muzdalifa, and
it also is a general term for,
Muzdalifa and
all of it.
One of the reasons they say that they
they they would call the masha'al
Haram, the,
pilgrimage site,
most sacred,
is because there was a which
is Arafat.
There's a haram that surrounds the city. It's
a sacred boundary that surrounds Makkamukarama,
and
is within it. Mina is within it. Obviously,
Makkamukarama is within it. Otherwise surrounds it doesn't
mean surrounds. Obviously, the
what we call now the masjid al Haram
in the sense of the building around the
Kaaba is within it. Obviously, the Kaaba is
within it. But the masjid al Haram that's
referred to in the Quran and that's referred
to in the hadith is not the building
because that building didn't exist at that time.
The Masjid al Haram that's referred to is
what? The Haram that surrounds Makkamukarama.
So Muzdalifa is part of that. And like
that, Khalil also writes in his, Manasik that
his opinion is that the hadith about the
prayer being worth more than a 100,000 prayers.
It's not just for the master of the
Haram or the congregation of, of the Kaaba.
Rather, it's for any prayer that's done within
the the the the sacred boundary that surrounds.
And then the further and further you go
within it, the more and more the,
the sacredness and hallowedness of,
the place becomes. And the closer you get
to the Kaaba, the more reward there is,
in the in the prayer on top of
that.
And so the way that the alafat was
perverted by the,
mushrikeen of Quresh
was
how many people here have gone on Hajj
before?
Just
to not to show off or anything. Right?
Out of all the stuff you do in
Hajj, Arafat is, like, way the farthest of
all of it.
If you were to do Hajj on foot,
the maximum walking from point to point is
maybe 3 or 4 miles,
except for Arafat. Arafat is like from Minai
to Arafat is like 13 miles or something
like that. It's it's pretty far.
It's
it's by by far the furthest of the
Manasik of the rights of pilgrimage, one from
the other, because there's a lot of stuff
you have to do when you're,
when you're in Hajj. And so the mushrike
in of Quresh, they would go out.
It's a line from Maqamukarama to Mina to
Mustalifa,
and then Arafat is, like, kind of way
out. They would go out with the pilgrims
all the way to Musdalifa, and they just
pitch pitch camp over there. And they say,
we're the people of the Haram. We're not
gonna leave the
Haram. This was their excuse. It was really
deeper than that laziness.
But deeper than that, Allah took away
took away the barakah of Arafat from them
because of their
having brought idols into the house of Allah
ta'ala and because of their propelling it and
trying to
sell, what should be sacred in order to
make money and, trade it for some piece
of the dunya.
So what happened was that the
Arafat was taken away from them,
and
they would stay in Musdalifah and let the
other tribes go all the way to Arafat.
So the meaning of this hadith is what
that the prophet
is correcting a
an incorrect
understanding on behalf of
his home and on behalf of the Arabs
and on behalf of the Ummah of Islam
until
the day
of judgment, which is that, no, this is
actually very a very sacred occasion. And in
fact,
this day is a sacred day, and on
this day,
there is no,
greater the fadhilah and the virtue and distinction
of this day. The
virtue of this day is that there is
no day in which Allah Ta'ala will manum
it more slaves from the hellfire than on
this day. And this is why that day
was observed by the Rasool sallallahu alaihi wasallam
with fast.
And interestingly enough, the fast is sunnah for
everyone except for for the people who are
on Hajj.
And in fact, they
mentioned that we didn't see the prophet
eat or drink anything on this day until
later on in the day he took a
sip of
of water.
So he really effectively fasted,
but he took a sip of water just
to show that it's not a sunnah to
fast on this day. If people fasted on
this day if the prophet fasted on this
day, people from America would be like, well,
do I have to? And you say no,
and then none of them would fast. But
the Muslims would
fast.
Some of them, if you told them that
you might die, they'd be, well, it's a
sunnah, so it's what I'm supposed to do.
Another group of them said, you might die.
They'd say that would be, like, the best
thing in the world.
The hadith of the prophet about the person
who leaves this world in the state of
Ihram that Allah writes for them the reward
of continuously performing Hajj until the day of
judgment,
and that the first thing that they say
when they're resurrected is.
It's a day on which people's money is
not going to,
benefit them anymore.
It's a day on which people are not
going to be able to go to their
favorite restaurant ever again. It's a day on
which people are not going to be able
to enjoy, the things that they enjoy ever
again,
unless they
are able to meet with the mercy of
the lord.
On that day, the person who
is raised up and their first word is
labayk. This is a fortunate sign. It's a
good omen.
And
so
the Rasul
didn't, fast, but the point is what?
The point is that there are certain times,
there are certain places, and there's certain company
that you're in
that open up a person to the Fadl
of Allah Ta'ala, to the divine grace.
And
when you find them,
you have to collect some part of that
grace,
and the container in which you collect that
grace is what? Is your deeds.
So what's a Mubarak place?
The Haram in Sharifein, the Masdul Aqsa.
What's a Mubarak place? The house of Allah
ta'ala. What's a Mubarak place? A place where
good deeds are done. The place where darsha
is read. The place where dhikr is made.
What's a Mubarak place? There are so many
of them that are mentioned in the, a
hadith of the prophet. That's why we we
read the reality of Salihim that little by
little, a person then can start to identify
what those places are. What's a Mubarak time?
Ramadan is a Mubarak time. The first 10
days of Adul Hijjah is a Mubarak time.
The Ashurul Haram, Rajab, Dhul Hijjah,
Muharram are Mubarak times. What's a Mubarak time?
Friday is a Mubarak time. What's a Mubarak
time? The time before the sun rises and
the time before the sun sets. All of
these things that hadith of the prophet
identifies that these are times of barakah. Who
are Mubarak people? It's Mubarak company. The company
of the learned, the company of the pious,
the company of the righteous,
the company of,
those people who are brokenhearted for the sake
of Allah ta'ala.
The company of those people who lost something
for the sake of Allah.
And there's so many other people who are
Mubarak people.
When you come into any of these sources
of barakah that are very clearly delineated by
the book of Allah ta'ala and by the
sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
It's still not enough just to be there.
The were
there in Madina Munawara
completely,
benefit
proof. The Abu Lahab
has the same relation to the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam as Abbas radiAllahu ta'ala in
Huhad.
Completely benefit proof.
Like the gore tex wudu socks that the
Hanafis make wipe over.
You stick your foot in the water and
pull it out, and your foot doesn't get
wet at all.
No benefit whatsoever. 100% benefit proof.
Why? There's no iman. There's no good deeds.
But what happens is that a person this
is one of the reasons why the masha'ih
prescribed urad to people.
Urad, the bulk of which are what? Prescribed
by the prophet
for every believer.
What's a word that the prophet prescribed in
the ummah? And when we have an example,
What?
The 5 daily prayers, the greatest word any
nabi ever gave to any sheikh ever gave
to his murids, any nabi ever gave to
his ummah.
The 5 daily prayers, the greatest word, like,
bar none. It's the most amazingest thing in
the world ever
if you think about it. The idea is
amazing. The timings, all of it, the wonderful
exquisiteness with which it is,
conveyed and preserved and the benefit that it
has. So much so to the point that
the people who pray 5 times a day
are so accustomed to the benefit, they think
that there's no benefit going on even though
there's so much benefit going
on.
And the people who are able to then
dive into its depths,
those people then there's no life for them
without
the 5 daily prayers.
And it's available for everybody, for pious people
and for sinners for everybody.
After that, there's a cascade of all of
these other that a person does.
Again, right, what do you have to do?
You have to have your old ad so
you can catch some of the barakah. Right?
What now do you understand that the point
of praying in the Masjid is? Masjid is
a Mubarak place.
Now do you understand the point of praying
the Jamah?
Jamah is Mubaric company. People come together for
the sake of obedience to the lord.
It's a very.
So now your salat is catching something.
Whereas if your salat is like the best
net in the world, but there's no fish
in that river,
then don't blame another person
for
why you don't get benefit out of your
salat.
At any rate, this Arafat, the prophet through
this hadith is informing the ummah that this
Arafat is a very Mubarak time,
and it's a very Mubarak place. For those
of you who cannot make it to the
Mubarak place,
for those of us for right now, we're
sitting here,
the Arafat Khajjajj have come and gone and
left already.
For us, Allah Allah ta'ala hisr Rasool Allahu
alaihi wa sallam gave us what a motive
tadaaruk that we can somehow catch the best
net for catching the barakah of that time
and places to be in Hajj.
The second best is what? Is that a
person should fast on this
day? The third best is what? That the
prophet
even prescribed a wird on top
of
the obligatory prayers,
on top of dua, on top of the
other Mas'oon acts that people in Arafat are
doing, which is what?
There's no god except for Allah alone and
without any partner. To him belongs praise
and his is dominion,
and he is has omnipotence over all things.
That
zikr. We'll spend some time
for for this zikr and that time as
well.
These are
all ways that a person can can make
the thing that they that that was far
away from them in in physical proximity, you
can still grab, reach out and pull some
part of that, follow from Allah
and pull that thing into your own life,
pull it into your own heart, pull it
slide into your own heart, and pull it
into your own practice.
As time goes on,
I, myself, am astounded despite the fact that
I've made a living, a profession for myself
telling people you should make vicker and pray
and this and that and eat halal and
blah blah blah. I, myself, I'm astounded as
time goes on more and more how effective
these things are.
How effective these things are? How effective these
avkar that are given by Rasulullah
are?
How effective
the orad of the mashaikh are. Because the
orad of the mashaikh are also from the
Quran and from the hadith of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam at maximum they have
to do with what? Identifying which piece of
the puzzle fits in which place, which key
is the one that unlocks which door.
We were lost on the way to,
Jish al Sharif. We were lost, like, in
the middle of, like, Afghanistan, like, an hour
or, like, 2, 3 hours from Herat and
2, 3 hours from Cizh. You look on
the Google Maps
that you're according to Google Google Maps, there's
no road anywhere near you, and there's just
villages everywhere.
And your driver and guide have never been
to where you're going before.
I sit and read the within, like, 3
minutes before the before, like, even half of
the word is done somehow or another. There's
a paved road, and it's a paved road
from nowhere to nowhere.
But it ended up ended ended up saving
us, like, an hour of drive because it's
in the right direction. I have no idea
who would which contractor built this road. It's
not from anywhere to anywhere, but it was
in the general direction of where we we
were going.
Like I have mentioned from before,
their o rod that gets you out of
a traffic ticket never failed to this day.
Might they fail one day? I guess.
Should a person read the Quran in order
to get out of traffic tickets?
No. You should read it for your salvation
and to
heal the broken bond between you and the
Rab Tabarak.
But it does
work. All of these things work. You just
have to do them.
And the fun thing is that they work
in such a way that only the person
who has the requisite amount of
magnification of Allah in their heart will they
work for such a person? Otherwise, for the
rest of them, it's like a person who
like, their phone has the battery is dead
and they're like, look.
The I don't think T Mobile has signal
over here. No. You have to turn the
phone on first.
You have to charge it first.
Once you do that, you will start to
see the phone does all sorts of wonderful
and amazing and some scary things as well.
So this is the first, hadith I wanted
to,
share, which we already read in the
that it's a
Mubarak
Rasulullah
was asked regarding the fast of the day
of Arafah.
The thing is the companions,
they would see people doing stuff in Jahiliyah.
They don't know which part of this is
real and which part is fake.
For example, the Sahih, which is one of
the arkhan
of the of Hajj, without which Hajj is
not valid.
Going back and forth between Safa and Marwa.
The Ansar
used to have 2 idols that they used
to venerate. 1
was on Safa and one was on Marwa.
That was like the thing that even though
they don't live in Makkumukaramah, but when they
would come, this was their tribal custom that
they would venerate these 2 idols, like, more
than other people. And so when they became
Muslim, they were, like,
never doing sai'i ever again.
Burn Safa and Marwa down.
And then the prophet
said to Aisha
had to explain to them, look. This is
a legitimate
right of Hajj.
And the 2 idols, not Isaf and Nailah,
the 2 idols that were on Safa and
Marwa,
the Rasul explained that these are 2 people
that committed zinai in the Haram.
And because of that, Allata turned them to
stone.
These are not idols to be worshiped.
But people saw this happen, and then afterward,
they
made it into something that it wasn't.
And this is what the meaning of of
the verse of the Quran. The Quran doesn't
make sense.
That there's no there's no fault on a
person to go back and forth between Safa
and Marwa.
Some people read this and they said, oh,
no fault on them. This means that it's,
like, recommended or optional. It's not optional.
What it was is and said the Aisha
has said that if it was optional, the
wording would be
that that there would there's no,
difficulty on them if they don't
go back and forth between them. The point
is it's explaining to the that this is
not that idolatrous nonsense. Like, they used to
make the law for, like, buck naked, and
they used to do weird, like, whistle and
snap and and do all these other weird
things. Those are the things that the prophet
told them don't do these things anymore.
The prophet then restored the Abrahamic,
pilgrimage to its
proper state. So they asked they asked about
the yom yom harafah. Is it something that
we should do? Should we fast?
The same thing. Even the the
sacrifice of yom nahr, the and Nahar, the
companions asked, like, what is this? Is this
a thing? What is this?
And the Rasulullah
said what? He says,
the sunnah of your father Ibrahim
He said then what they asked, what reward
do we get for it? He says that
for every
hair on the body of the animal, you
receive a separate reward.
So even the animals that are wooly, they
have so much hair. He said even the
animals that are wooly, he says that
the blood will be accepted of the
spilt blood of the sacrifice. The blood will
be accepted by Allah to Allah before it
even hits the ground. Fatib will be Hanafsun.
So be happy about it. Be pleased about
it. Look forward to it. Make it something
that you're
happy about.
And so like that, the Prophet explained that
this is
a correct
observance and ritual.
And on top of that, it is
a kafara. It is an expiation for the
sins of the
year past
and the sins of the year forward. What
does this mean? Obviously, sin still major sins
require,
repentance.
But those sins that a person sit by
a person that they didn't understand or they
didn't know about are those sins that are
considered minor sins that there is no explicit
threat about or explicit warning about or explicit
punishment about or explicit deterrence about mentioned in
the book of Allah or the sunnah of
the prophet but there's still sins that a
person should have been known better about them,
that those will
be forgiven, that a person, the sins that
they made Tawbah for, that they,
repented for, that those sins that that the
the repentance for them will be accepted.
Someone might say, look. Well, if I've been
fasting, harafah, for every day of my life
or every not day of my life, every
year of my life,
and it's for the year behind and the
year in in front,
what's the point?
There are a number of answers to this
question, but one of the answers is what?
Is that the person who receives the kafara,
Receives the expiation, the mikdad of expiation that
comes with it. If they have no sins,
their sins are already forgiven, then it translates
into good deeds.
You guys heard the,
hadith of the prophet
about a person who will come on the
day of judgment with, like, a huge pile
of good deeds.
But his account, he'll think it's over, but
it's not over.
People will come that this person, he cussed
them out. This person, he docked them out.
This person, he spoke ill about. This person,
he did said this about. This person, he
said that about. So every one of them,
they were allowed to take some of his
good deeds, and then the line is still
there when all the good deeds are exhausted.
Does it end there? No. Then what do
they do? They start offloading their sins onto
him. So he came with a pile of
good deeds,
and, he left with
a mountain of sins.
It works the other way around as well.
In the deen,
if it's going to work, it's gonna work
in your favor.
The worst case is reciprocity.
So
the expiation, if a person has no sins
left or if they've been fasting alafa, the
same the same,
for example,
reward or virtue of
the expiation of the deeds in the past.
It exists also for fasting on the day
of Ashura.
It exists also for fasting on the day
of talwiyah, which is yesterday,
8th of Dhul Hijjah.
So if a person, you know, makes tarakub
of all of these things, the tarqeb of
all these things, that there's one over the
other over the other, still a person is
receiving the reward of all these things. The
Rasool salawasam
ex explained it so that the people knew
that it is a great reward.
In another hadith narrated by bin Abbas
He said that the Messenger of Allah sallallahu
alaihi wasallam said,
It's a hadith of what? A Bukhari
that said Abdul Abin Abbas, may Allah be
pleased with him and his father,
that they
that he narrates that the messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said
that there are no days in which a
righteous deed is more beloved to Allah than
in these days.
This is a very clear
proof,
not only of the sacredness of these days,
but that these days are more sacred than
any other part of the year,
that they're more sacred even than Ramadan.
The most that any of the ulama wrote
or said was
that
the mention is of days, it's not of
nights, and that the laylatul Qadr is greater
than the nights of this
these these 10 days. The greatest of which
is what?
The greatest of which is the 10th of
the Hijjah or the day of Arafa depending
on who you ask.
So the prophet said that these are the
days in which what?
In which the,
the deeds are most beloved to
Allah, and they're the most sacred of days.
And just because we don't because it's not
far, there's oftentimes a kind of a
lack
of cultural festivities
that are tied with these days.
But if a person looks at what the
reward is, people fast these 6 of
Shawwal.
Right? On some of Ramadan, the ataba'a will
be sitting in Shawwal.
The person who fasted the month of Ramadan
and then follows it with 6 days of
Shawwal, what is the reward that's promised?
It's promised that it's as if the person
fasted the entire year.
Hadith of the prophet
is regarding
these 9 days. Is that whoever fasts any
one of them is it's as if they
fasted the entire year.
This is not to beat down our Hanafi
and,
other friends,
but this is also another proof in the
favor of the Malekis that the 6th fast
of Shawwal doesn't have to be in Shawwal.
It could be from any time.
And in fact, they're
best kept
they're best kept in these days,
in these Mubarak days.
But that's fine. The different have their own
have why they're accepted, and we accept and
revere and respect all of them
while
gaining the benefit of the difference of the
opinion. But the point is, is what? Is
that people will fast those 6 days after
Ramadan
when any one of these days is already
superior in terms of reward as a fast.
And there's how many of them?
There's 9 of them.
And then further than that, the fast is
not the only thing that's mentioned.
Rather, the magnification of the reward of the
fast is mentioned that it goes from one
day to an entire year.
This magnification is there for all of
the acts of piety and righteousness that are
available to the slave
in their
deeds.
The recitation of the Quran, the dhikr of
Allah
the keeping of good company, the listening to
a good word.
That the believer
will not
be satiated from good things that they hear.
They keep going. Because the thing is, look,
all of you guys I look in your
eyes. Look. We already know all the stuff
already.
The glad tidings if even if you didn't
learn anything new today.
Is that what a believer
his description is that he'll never be
satisfied or satiated. He'll never have enough of
hearing good things.
Until what? He'll keep listening to good things
more and more and more and more and
more and more until the end of this
process is in what? It's in Jannah.
That the,
Amal Sallihan, just like the magnification of one
day becomes like a year,
it's like that for all of these other.
And this is a
another understanding of the ma'rifah of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
That this is a process. It starts it's
a yearly process that starts when
it starts like in Rajab,
that a person slowly starts to ramp up
their good deeds.
Shaaban, the prophet used to fast the entire
month of Shaaban
so that he could hit Ramadan, hit the
ground running.
Then Ramadan, a person does all of these
things.
And then people faster 6 in Shawwal.
And then
the is a sacred month.
And then Dhul Hijjah comes and you receive
all of this reward. What is it? So
that you
don't lose any time. You don't drop out
of you don't drop out of sync. You
don't lose any time. You hit the ground
running. You take the maximum benefit of
this offer that Allah has just like a
relay race runner.
When you have relay races in the Olympics,
the person who is going to get take
the baton, he doesn't take the baton or
she doesn't take the baton while just standing
there stationary.
They also start running and they hand the
baton off running. So you get a running
start on all of these things. But this
is one process.
It's there from start to finish.
One of the interesting things is that those
people who live in the Muslim world or
have lived for some time in the Muslim
world,
they'll see they'll notice that the attendance of
the Masjid drops off after Ramadan.
But when does it drop off? It drops
off like Safar,
you know, like it drops off later on.
America, sadly, the drop off is much more
precipitous.
It starts on the day of Eid.
You remember one of our friends, I won't
take his name, but one of our friends
from Seattle,
he went to a particular community and was
telling me about how awesome it is in
Ramadan, and I'm I just kinda like yawned
and I'm like, yeah, whatever.
And he got annoyed, you know. He's a
good he's a good guy, you know? He
did break with me. Always, like, one of
the most, like, adi people I know, but
he got annoyed that I said that. And
so he's like, well, you know, like, just
because people aren't doing exactly what we're doing
doesn't mean that shouldn't see the good. I'm
like, okay. Cool. And like, Allah reward you.
You're a good man for seeing the that,
you know, we see. And then he called
me on the day of Eid, and he
apologized.
It's one of these, like, big megalopolis, mega
masjids that everyone's like, oh, look, we should
be have activities like them.
Right? It was like he was like,
and, like, whatever. And he's like, I wanna
say sorry. Sorry about what? He's like, oh,
I talked to you that day. That one
it's okay, man. Like, it's not you were
probably right. Like, you know, I was just
being a jerk like I usually am. And
then and then he's like, no. You were
right. I was like, what makes you say
that? He's like, I showed up for Duhur
on the on the day of Eden. There
was nobody there.
No. I'm not super packed for the entire
month of learning nobody was there. Don't blame
them. Don't blame others. Don't blame yourself even
all that much.
That's the the nature of the beast that
we're living in.
If you're in a place that smells bad
for a very long time,
you get used to how bad it smells,
and it no longer smells bad anymore. You'll
smell it anymore.
But, you should be cognizant because oftentimes things
that smell bad, the body tells you it
smells bad for a reason. It's something dangerous.
It's something that can make you sick. It's
something that can harm you.
So if you become desensitized to it, what
what what do you do? You slowly poison
yourself. It's okay to remember that there are
some things that smell bad. A person should
not be
desensitized
to them. But at any rate, in an
ideal scenario, in an ideal world, a person
should think about these things, like, I don't
know, like, 20 days after
but, like, before,
is about to start or whatever in that
kind of no man's land before between the
2 Eids. But this all is ramping up
more and more and more and more.
All of this is ramping up more and
more to the point where you get to
and
to the point where you get to
and all of a sudden one day of
fasting is like a year of reward.
All of a sudden,
you know,
your one Eid sacrifice
that you give.
It's not even a particularly difficult
ritual.
You can literally outsource it to somebody else,
but so much good deed that a person
gets from it. The person who goes to
Hajj,
so much good like, everything from the
intention, the 2 rakas, that a person reads
from intention before even their haram starts. From
them setting foot out of their home. From
them making the niya to go to Hajj.
Sins are being washed again and again and
again and forgiven. People say,
Hajj al Mahmabruur,
that the accepted Hajj there has no Jazar
except for Jannah, it has no
recompense except for Jannah.
But the person is actually not
doesn't have to wait till the end of
Hajj. Rather, this process of them being forgiven
again and again, it's happening again and again
from the moment that they make their intention
to,
go on Hajj.
This is one of the things because my
brothers were here that didn't
come to the last week when we talked
about how it was to visit Afghanistan. So
here's a part of the that I'll share
with you that I didn't share last time
about the how how everything went.
So one of the great oliya of Allah
Ta'ala was buried in Herat. His name is
Ali bin Muwaffak.
His
Nazar is right across from the office of,
Iqdilahat and Farhang,
the office of, like, information and culture or
whatever.
And,
and so what happened is I saw they're
like, oh, this is a great Wali. I'm
like, okay. I'm gonna look it up.
Because sometimes it it really is a great
Wali, like, in this case, and sometimes it's
like
buried his donkey there and, like, cried one
time. So everybody goes in, like, I don't
know, prays for, like, children
and ties a blue ribbon or something or
something weird like that. Right? So I'm like,
let's figure out what's going on. Not that
I don't trust people, but, you know, just
just because. So I realized, like, well, I've
I've actually we may have actually read his,
biography in one of the late night majalis,
in fact.
He's definitely mentioned in the Qasf al Mahjub
and in the,
in in those old books.
And one of the, interesting,
things about him well, I'll read the the
entry that the the Habibi has about him.
The Habibi is definitely a spiritual man who
has respect for the of the Tariq, but
he's not like a
you know, he know he knows when the
Sufis go too far, and he's like, okay.
That's weird. Stop doing that. Right? It's a
very
he he he knows where to draw the
line, and he's actually very conservative in where
he draws the line. So he writes in
the,
in the entry on
from the
great worshipers of Allah Ta'ala.
He went on Hajj a lot. He went
on Hajj, like, a a bunch of times.
So 300 and
59,
he passed away,
and he narrated the hadith to
Mansoor bin Ammar in, ibn Abi Abi Hawari.
Hajj Nathan.
So it's 50 something times he went on
Hajj.
And he said,
He said, I looked at the people who
are in Arafat.
Arafat.
And to the the the the
the the the sound of their cries and
their crying
and their pain in front of Allah
ta'ala.
He said, you Allah, if any one of
them if you accept from any one of
them their Hajj, he says, I do my
Hajj on their behalf. I gift the reward
of the Hajj to them.
This is a long discussion about the
Esau Al Salab gifting the reward of a
good deed to another person.
And so someone's like, well, why do I
need to gift the reward of a good
deed to a person who's already pretty pious
already. Right?
Like, why should I give a a udhiyah
on behalf of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam?
He's already going to Jannah. The point is
is his
is going to be accepted.
You don't know about yours.
When he sees that, oh, look, this person
from, like, whatever, DuPage County
sent me a gift,
Then he's the one, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
he he has the shafa'ah of shafa'atul Uthma
on the day of judgment.
It will come in handy.
Having ties with good people comes in handy
in this world. If your, like, brother-in-law is
the president of Congo
and you wanna go to Congo, you don't
go show up at the embassy. You just
call up your brother. You know? He might
be annoying. Right? Your brother-in-law is kind of
annoying and a pain and whatever from time
to time. Your brother-in-law is a pain and
annoying from time to time. But
he can definitely get the bees out of
Congo done without me having to, like, argue
with Matambe up in the front desk or
whatever, like, for half an hour who won't
even let me in. You know?
So
biased people, they're good people to know in
this world,
and they're good people to know in the
next world even better. So it might actually
come in more handy than Hajj.
And at any rate, the people who are
the, like, Muqadda being the close people of
Allah ta'ala, they love Allah ta'ala, and they
love the thing that Allah loves. So if
Allah loves someone, he makes them, like, super
pious like the one guy who Hajj is
accepted from level of bias. And so if
Allah loves them, then the person who loves
Allah also loves that person as well.
It's kind of a little bit different than
the kind of pedestrian,
consumer Islam we have. We're like, I do
this and I get that. I do this
and I get that, which is fine. That's
great. But that's like the entry level. It
goes further than
that. So what happens is he says, you
Allah, if any of these people, you accept
their, you know,
you choose to accept their their Hajj, then
I give the reward of my Hajj to
that person.
Then he goes after the
is over, I went back with the pilgrims
toward the Kaaba, and Musdalifa is on the
way and we spend the night in Musdalifa.
So
he said,
and I slept over there.
He says, I saw the Lord of the
Lord
of, honor in my sleep.
He said to me,
He says, are you trying to are you
trying to show how generous you are, like,
how much more generous you are than me?
He
says, He says, I I've already forgave all
the people who are there on the
and everyone who's like them.
The people who are like them, this is
all of them also. I,
sorry. Or maybe perhaps the meaning of this
is also
He says, and I've not only have I
forgiven them, but I've accepted
from all of them
their intercession on behalf
of their ashila. Your ashila is not like,
it's bigger than your family. It's like your
tribe,
your people that you come from. Right? Which
Omar, which bayt what are you from?
It's not a bayt. It's a small village.
What is it? What where are you from?
Abu Sharedim. Abu Sharedim?
Abu Sharedim. Yeah. Right?
There's a lot of people. Right? Not everyone
in Abu Sharedim is like your, like, relative.
Right? They're probably 2 families, and they marry
into each other or whatever. Right?
Yeah. But, like or some but, like, you
know, Ashila is like all of them. It's
like your kinsmen.
And so
he says he said, I I've also accepted
their their intercession on on their behalf on
behalf of their kinsmen that they've prayed for
as well,
from every single one of them, and from
their family and their home and from their
kinsmen.
He says, I'm the one who
it's my right that people should fear me,
and it's also befitting of me to forgive.
So
the the the the you know, coming back
to the hadith that we were reading,
that
this is a very Mubarak time. This is
then, like,
the, pinnacle of all these things that are
ramping up,
to the point where this is Arafat,
and then afterward, think about then the tawaf
alifada, the tawaf that a person makes afterward,
how much greater that is in reward.
Think about
one of the lesser,
Manasik
compared to Arafat and compared to Tawaf
is the stoning of the Jamarat.
Lesser meaning why do I say they're lesser
if a person doesn't throw in one stone
in their Hajj?
They can give a sacrifice and
be clear of it. The Hajj is still
valid. Whereas if you don't do tawaf, you
don't go to Arafah, like, your Hajj is
not valid. Right? So they're of a higher
level of importance. So these aren't relatively lesser
in importance.
One of the rewards of stoning the jamarat
is that Allah
will for it, that a person cast a
stone at the jamarat and says allahu akbar,
in exchange for forgive such a sin that
if a person were to be taken to
account for it, it would have plunged them
into the hellfire.
And everybody's trying to skip out and everyone's
like, do I have to do this? Do
I have to do this? Do I have
to do this? Do I have to do
this?
I say, look at me, poor Hamza,
Pocket full of rocks on DuPage County,
and I don't get that deal.
So the point is all of these things,
they escalate to, this
level of
reward and grace from Allah
and just because other people don't see it
and don't do anything about it,
just because your relatives don't care about it,
just because of your friends don't care about
it, just because your family doesn't care about
it, doesn't mean you should be blind to
it. You should open your heart. Don't be
benefit proof.
Don't be like Abu Lahab that the whole
rest of everyone gets to be the and
you end up being
being even though you're from 1 blood.
Don't
don't be benefit
proof. Rather, put your hand forward, cast your
net,
and when Allah gives, Insha'Allah, whatever you get,
great or small,
it's
a
great
a great sign of of the the grace
of Allah
May Allah accept it, on all of our
behalf. May Allah
accept it from all of us. May Allah
accept the Hajj of the Hajj that are
there right now from from here. Some of
our friends will come to Majlis from time
to time. I don't know. You know, Abdul
Raffa, he's there on Hajj right now.
He texts me from time to time. So
should I do this? Should I do that?
What should I do from here? You know,
when when's the last latest I can get
back to Mina?
The academy
from, Khalil Center, doctor Fahad Hafiz Fahad,
you know,
by Ashar Malik. I don't know if you
guys know him or not, but he oftentimes
enters and leaves the madras quietly. But if
you see him, you would
recognize him. There are people who are from
our acquaintances and from the people who come
and go to this madras,
with some regularity
that Allah accept from them and Allah accept
from everybody else.
Allah subhanahu wa ta accept from the Ummah
of Saydah Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Allata
make it an opportunity for things to change
for the better. Allah awaken those things that
are,
good things that are asleep in the heart
and put to sleep those things that are
evil in the hearts. Allah,
give people tawfiq to be able to enact
and find a way and show them a
way to enact those pious
intentions that they have, but they the doors
have been closed so far.
So many things a person wishes. Everybody in
this at least in this room wishes they
could do something about Gaza.
Someone might say, well, yeah, you can do
something, you know, and it's just suicide. It's
not really you're not really doing anything. Like,
strategically and whatever, materially, you're not really affecting
anything. So a person sits with their head
in their hands. What should I do? At
some point point, it crosses the mind of
a person even though you don't share these
thoughts with other people because otherwise, like, the
feds will get up on you or whatever.
Right? When a person thinks, oh, well, what
the *? Why not just do that? Because
what is it worth living, you know, when
you live in such a screwed up society
that can know the sanctions
of spilling of blood of children?
But, the answer is what? Keep keep asking
Allah
Don't push it out of your heart. Don't
numb your heart to it. Keep asking Allah
for help. Allah will open a way for
you.
Just like Allah. Even if it's something like
the way that Allah Ta'ala opened
a path that was bone dry in the
middle of the sea for Sayedid Musa alaihi
salaam and for his own.
And those were the people those were the
generation that worship the the calf. Those were
the generation that disobeyed the
and beyond of Allah
What do you think about the ummah of
Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? Allah will
not leave it without help.
So keep making dua. Every little piece of
it, you know, you collect, you put your
net out, and you collect. It's all part
of the solution.
And when critical mass you know what critical
mass is? You know what critical mass is?
Right? It's like the amount of uranium that
you have to put together for it to,
like, make an explosion. It's actually really abhorrent
and ugly expression in its literal meaning. But
inshallah, critical mass but for good things, not
for, like, nuking Japanese people or whatever. Right?
But for, like, actually good things in this
in this world. Inshallah, the critical mass will
come together, and that's a chain reaction once
it starts, not like nuclear chain reaction, but
good chain reaction.
Once it starts,
nobody will be able to stop it.
All of the haters that are busy hating,
all of the liars that are busy lying,
all of the evil people that are busy
busy being evil.
On that day, on that Mubarak day, they'll
see that the lies are
nothing compared to the truth and that the
hate is nothing compared to love
and that,
evil is nothing compared to goodness. There's not
a damn thing they're gonna be able to
do to repel it and to stop it.
And we think of our job as not
losing faith before our death. This is the
first step.
But part of the job and part of
the honor of the ummah of the prophet
and part of the honor of the prophet
himself is that his ummah is not going
to be the one that just sits around
to die
without joining evil, but they're the ones who
are going to be able to stand up
and put a hand against it.
And,
for that reason, you know, you have to
keep asking Allah because if it was easy,
everyone would have done it. Other people would
have done it as well, but it's not.
It's only possible with the help of Allah.
So we ask
Allah we ask Allah,
to give us this aid and to give
us this mother then to
push us through,
to see that Mubarak Day both in this
world and the mother of Allah that are
coming down on the people of righteousness on
the day of judgment as well.