Hisham Jafar Ali – Names Of Allah And His Attributes #14 The Subtle & AllAware
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AI: Transcript ©
When a father is teaching their children about
Allah,
you might wonder where do I start and
where do I end?
How do I begin to explain to this
child the Almighty,
the one whom the minds are not able
to grasp,
the one whom I call in the darkness
of the night, the one I hope for
in the day?
How do I teach and in what order
do I teach this child about Allah?
The Surah Luqman in the Quran,
Luqman, alayhis salam, begins to teach his child
about Allah.
And the first thing he teaches his child
is that Allah is 1 and that they
should be no equal to him. And he
says,
It is extremely wrong, immoral, incorrect to make
an equal to Allah.
But then he adds a second point.
My dear son,
if there ever is a mustard seed,
the tiniest seed you can imagine,
Imagine if this seed was hidden inside a
large boulder, a large rock.
Or if this tiny seed was hidden somewhere
in this universe,
anywhere,
deep into the earth, buried underground
or somewhere in the sky, somewhere on another
planet.
Imagine this tiny mustard seed mustard seed
was hidden buried
beyond
human perception.
It doesn't matter where it is my son,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala knows where it is
and not just that, Allah will bring it
forth on the day of judgment.
Indeed, my son, Allah is very subtle in
his ways,
and he is all aware of what we
do.
Those are
the second pair of names that Luqman teaches
his son. That is the two names we
are going to take today.
Allah, Al Latif, Al Khabir.
What does Latif
Latif mean in the Arabic language? Anybody want
to tell me?
Anybody want to tell me what does 'latif'
mean in the Arabic language?
Yes. Lenient.
Lenient.
Okay.
Anybody else? Any other ideas?
Yes. Subtle.
Subtle. Okay. That's the that's the English translation
you will find in the video,
in the name on YouTube, and that is
the English translation you will find in most,
Quran translations.
Al Latif,
they say the subtle.
The subtle in English means something that you
can't detect easily,
something you can't see easily. It's a bit
hidden.
It's not obvious.
That's what subtle means.
Any others? Any other ideas?
Latif in Arabic comes from the root letters
la laqafa
or laqafa.
Laqafa in Arabic
is rifq,
to be gentle.
To be gentle and kind to someone or
something.
So when you go out to the masjid
and you see a cat on the street
and you gently
caress the head of this cat, you are
being Latif.
You're so lovingly gentle with this cat. Yes?
This is latafa.
The other root word for latif is latufa,
which is something that's really small,
like microscopic.
You know, sometimes you're eating food. Let's say
you're eating rice, biryani.
There's something very dangerous but very latif in
biryani is the ginger.
Sometimes, you know, the chef doesn't chop the
ginger finely enough. They leave big pieces of
ginger in the biryani. So you think it's
potato,
You put it in your mouth,
and you realize
it was lakif. It was very small. It
was not detectable. You didn't see it when
you put the spoon of rice in your
mouth. But once you tasted it, you knew
that is that's not potato habibi. That is
something else,
and your mouth is burning for the next
30 minutes. This is latif, something small. You
can't detect it. You can't see it.
So latif has two meanings in Arabic.
Kindness that you do in a gentle way,
nice way, a soft way.
And something the other meaning something so small,
so fine
that you can't even detect it.
And so when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, his
name Al Latif,
the scholars have such a beautiful way of
summarizing the meanings of this name.
You
see,
Al Latif
is the name of Allah, which means he
is the one
He shows his gentleness and his love to
you in ways that are hidden.
You don't even realize it.
How often Allah sends us a calamity, but
it's actually a hidden blessing.
And how many how often Allah gives us
a difficulty and a pain, but in reality,
we realize later on it was actually
a benefit and a blessing to us. This
is Allah's name, Al Latif. And this is
very relevant for what we are seeing today
at the moment, with the earthquakes that are
being experienced in Syria and Turkey. You know,
young children, young men, young women, Muslims might
ask the question. Anybody can ask the question,
why did Allah send the earthquake to a
place so densely populated by Muslims?
Why not any other place?
Because we understand Allah's actions,
earthquake equals punishment.
So whoever was there, Allah wanted to punish
them. These are all these people there who
are refugees from Syria. These people who have
already been through an immigration crisis. They lost
their homes in the civil war, and now
they're dead in the earthquake.
We have to start to understand Al Latif,
Allah's name, Al Latif, teaches us to understand
and to interpret Allah's actions in a different
way.
To stop thinking we understand what Allah is
trying to do here.
One of the prime examples of this name,
Al Latif, in the real life of one
of the prophets
is the prophet Yusuf Alaihi Salam.
Yusuf Alaihi Salam,
he goes through so many difficult moments in
his life.
The darkness of the well,
the slave market of Egypt, the noisy crowded
slave market of Egypt, the unknown territory that
he went through,
the plotting and the planning of women against
him in the palace,
The darkness of the prison with people he
didn't know alone away from his family for
almost a decade.
And then the test of power after that,
and the test of being the the the
minister in years of hunger and wrought a
lot of pressure on him.
He went through so many things in his
life.
But the worst part of all for Yusuf
is his distance from his father and his
family.
All that time he's far from them, and
he can look at these events and interpret
them in a negative way.
You know, today, we have a trend
where people like to play victim
to the test Allah puts them through.
So their whole identity is I'm a victim.
So, madamele, let's say, as a child, they
lived in a had a difficult situation. Their
parents didn't get along. They'll say, I'm from
a broken home.
So then they start to internalize this idea
that I'm from a broken home. I have
been through trauma. I have been through bad
experiences. Therefore, it's a bit of an excuse
for me to be act negatively as well.
They give themselves an excuse because of the
bad situations they have been through.
Yusuf, alayhis salam, at the end of his
life,
when his parents come to him
and he stands there in Egypt
and his dream comes true,
he says,
Allah mentions in the end of Surah Yusuf,
He raised his parents to the throne.
And they all fell in prostration to him.
And he said, my parents, this is my
dream come true.
My lord
made it come true.
And my lord was so gentle,
so kind to me when he took me
out of prison.
And he brought Allah brought you here from
the middle of the desert after the shaitan
created a distance between me and my brothers.
And then he concludes.
My lord
is so subtle and gentle in the way
he does things.
He is the all knowing and the all
wise.
When he says this sentence,
You know, one thing all of us should
do as a homework,
when you read Surah Yusuf,
look at the names of Allah in Surah
Yusuf, and look at how Yusuf, alayhis salam,
uses the names of Allah.
This is the end of his life, and
in this one sentence,
this final statement, how many names of Allah
he uses?
7 names of Allah in one dua.
One statement he makes to Allah, 7 names
of Allah all playing together. This is a
man who knows Allah really well, and he
knows how to use his names really well,
and he knows what they mean and and
how they are different to each other.
How is it
that after mentioning all of the bad things
that happens in his life, he says Allah
is Latif?
Didn't we say Latif?
It's someone
it's when Allah
is gentle and kind.
How is it that he's mentioning bad things
that happened to him? How is this an
indication that Allah is Latif?
He's talking about prison, and he's talking about
the well, and he's talking about the difficulty
he had with his brothers, and he's saying
Allah is Latif.
Allah is gentle and kind,
and subtle in his ways.
Yeah.
Okay. By making Yusuf alaihis salam go through
all of that, in the end he makes
him unite with his family. Okay? Anybody else?
Yes.
Good.
Yeah. So, in the same The other thing,
Beautiful.
Yes.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Al Latif
in the life of Yusuf, alayhis salam,
is because whatever Yusuf, alayhis salam, reaches to
in the end, it happens in a way
he could never imagine.
Allah's Latif
means when Allah plans, you don't realize how
he's planning.
Did the brothers think that they would go
to get their food from the Ministry of
Agriculture and they would find their brother?
Did Yusuf alaihisam imagine that one day
he would be in this level this level
of power in Egypt? Did he think that
the prison would be a means to power?
He would never have imagined it.
Allah,
he gives you sometimes things you hate,
things you despise,
things you struggle with,
but when he turned the coin on the
other side, there's something beautiful at the other
end you did not realize.
Then it may be that you may hate
a thing but it might be good for
you in the end.
And Allah knows, but you don't know.
Think about a child now under the rubble
in Syria.
Under the rubble, the destruction,
no house, no electricity.
Where is the silver lining in this cloud?
Where is the light in this tunnel?
Where is the wisdom in this nightmare?
One may ask. One may feel this way.
And you don't know
that when we see things,
as they say, the scholars say, we only
have 1 pixel,
but Allah has the full picture.
When we see things, we see things with
tunnel vision. We only see this much,
But Allah
sees all and hears all. That's why latif
is always paired with the name Al Khabeer,
the one who is all aware of things
that are hidden.
Al Khabeer
comes from the word khabar,
to be informed about something.
Now you are only informed of something
if it's not obvious.
You've heard of the word informant?
Yes? Al muhabarat.
Right? There are people who are paid for,
hired by the governments to go and spy
on people and come and tell them the
secrets that are going on.
Those kind of informations, the secrets that nobody
knows that you have to send a spy
and pay them to get,
those akhbar, those secret hidden rumors, those secret
hidden news, Allah knows it all. That is
what Al Khabir.
And so
al Latif ul Khabir
is the one who knows the hidden,
And he knows
that you may see something apparently as a
mistake, as an evil, as a crime, as
a difficulty,
but you don't realize that really there is
something good on the other side.
Think of the man who owned a ship,
and he got a customer
called Khidr,
and he told this customer, come on board
my ship. We'll go for we'll take you
for a spin.
And this guy Khidr came, and he sunk
the boat.
Musiba.
Another yet another Musiba.
Did he, this
ship owner, imagine one day, did he ever
imagine
that the sinking of his ship would save
his
ship? Because his ship would sink.
There is a king who was taking and
seizing people's
wealth and their ships and their vehicles, and
because that one had a hole, he would
just leave it. Did he ever imagine when
he got this nasty customer that actually this
nasty customer would actually save him later on?
Did the parents whose son was killed in
the story of Khidr al Musa alayhi, did
they ever imagine
that the death of their son would be
better for them than his life?
Did they ever imagine
How many a moseebah,
how many a difficulty, how often a calamity
comes to us, but instead inside it it's
hidden a reward, a blessing, a wisdom,
but we cannot
understand and grasp it at that very moment.
And
teaches us to be patient.
He teaches us to interpret events,
the difficult events, in the best possible way.
In hope, not in fear.
In having a good opinion of Allah.
That when we see something negative happening, something
bad happening, for us not to rush and
raise
and associate negative things with Allah. Look at
Yusuf alaihi salam. When he speaks about Allah,
look how much look at his manners when
he talks about Allah.
When he talks about something good, he attributed
to Allah.
He says, Allah took me out of prison.
And he says, Allah brought my parents out
to the desert, and Allah gave me all
of this wealth and kingdom.
But when he talks about something negative,
the the animosity,
the the hatred between him and his brothers,
who does he attribute it to?
Shaitan.
We know everything is done by Allah.
Shaitan is not separately doing things without Allah's
permission,
but it's from adab, from manners,
and from a correct understanding of Allah to
know Allah never intends pure evil.
There's no such thing.
Good and evil are subjective.
You might see from your eyes something evil,
but from someone else's eyes, it's something good.
From your eyes, you watch the FIFA World
Cup. You thought, wow, masha'Allah.
So much fun for me to watch on
my television screen.
But maybe for
the 300 and something laborers that died building
the stadium, it was a moseebah. It was
an evil for them.
Nothing is purely good, and nothing is purely
evil. No event is purely good or purely
evil.
Everything has a good side, and everything has
a negative side, but Allah is the only
one who knows the true reality of these
events.
And this is why, Al Latif, knowing Allah's
name, Al Latif al Khabeer,
we internalize the meaning of.
We learn how to deal with difficulty. Your
parent died in COVID.
You went under debt, financial difficulty. You lost
your job in this economic recession. You lost
your house.
You didn't look up at the sky and
scream, why me, oh Allah? You know, one
time I went to a job interview,
and,
I was with somebody else.
This is a I'm just gonna give you
example.
What happens to us when we don't realize
Allah is Al Latif,
and that sometimes He gives us difficulty He
gives us a gift wrapped in a difficulty.
I went for a job interview,
and I was with somebody else.
And we were on the train together. We
reached the the place for the job interview.
And
he was walking behind me. I was walking
in front of him. And, you know, double
doors.
I went in the building, and the door
shut behind me. And he got stuck outside.
The doors were locked. They didn't open.
And he's standing,
and then it starts raining.
And he's he gets soaked. His suit gets
soaked,
and then he doesn't know what to do
now. And then the the receptionist comes and
opens the door, and he's standing there dripping
outside. All of his presentation notes, his laptop
is all soaked. The laptop's not turning on.
The notes are all ripped.
He's standing there. He's thinking,
why did this happen to me? And he
says says it to me,
why is God doing this to me?
Of course, this gentleman was not a Muslim,
so I couldn't tell him Allah is latifun
kabeer, my brother. I didn't know, does he
believe in Allah or not? I said I
said, I'm sure there is a there's always
a silver lining behind the cloud. He said,
I can't really see it at the moment.
I said, don't worry, my friend. Don't worry.
So what happened?
The interviewers didn't even interview him.
He came in dripping wet, and he gave
his presentation with no notes and no power
point.
They said, look at this guy,
soaking wet. Look at the bravery. Look at
the patience.
From his memory, he gave a presentation. Hire
him on the spot. I had to wait
14 working days to get my response. He
got hired before he left the building.
How often a difficulty
is, is, you know, we have a gift
wrapped in a difficulty.
And how often we interpret an event negatively,
but Allah is hiding a blessing inside.
But we have to be patient.
Going through life is like digging through a
mine. You got a pickaxe.
You know there's a jewel, a diamond worth
1,000,000 of pounds somewhere inside. But to get
to the diamond, you've gotta dig through, and
you got black suit all over your face
and hand, and you might get stuck in
the mine for a few months. But when
you see the jewel and the diamond at
the end, it's all worth it.
Teaches you sabr.
Allah says in the Quran,
We will definitely test you with fear and
with hunger.
And you will lose
wealth, sustenance, food.
But congratulations
to those who are patient.
When a calamity strikes them,
they said we belong to Allah.
And we are going back to him.
Those who return calamity by saying, you Latif,
oh, Allah.
I don't know what's inside this present.
And when am I going to find the
diamond?
But I'm going to keep digging day after
day until I find it.
A latif
teaches you to be tolerant with other people.
Because every time you look at someone
and they were late to a meeting,
or they didn't reply to your message, or
they gave you a hard time, you don't
know what they are going through because Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala, by definition, Allah kif,
he has ways you can never realize. You
don't realize
what is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala really planning
for you.
And how many other people are having that
in their lives. So you start to feel
a bit of mercy towards them.
When Allah
talks last time last week, our name we
took was
Arazak.
And Allah pairs this name, Alatif, with rizq
in the Quran.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in Surat Ashura,
Allah is subtle and gentle with his slaves.
He provides for whoever he wishes.
And he is the mighty and the dominant.
What does Allah's lutf have to do with
rizq?
What does Allah's lutf
have to do with rizq? What's the connection
between these two things?
If someone other than these two boys can
answer me, we can have a good day
today insha Allah. We can have some diversity
of of opinion from the audience.
Yes? What does Latif have to do with
risk? We might get the prize as well.
Allah Akbar. Sheikh Muhammad Ali Mawid is here.
Yes.
He's back to this special day for participation.
Yes, Habibi. Yes. Go ahead.
Okay. He's saying Allah
to provide because if he is not gentle
and kind, then how is he going to
provide?
Good.
Beautiful. Correct.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Another eye of the Quran, Allah tells us.
If Allah expanded the risk, the provision for
some of his slaves, they may have used
it for wrongdoing.
So sometimes
Allah taking away from you is good for
you. This is the this is Allah's lutuf.
Sometimes Allah not giving you something is better
for you. You know, sometimes how often?
You know if you take your children inshallah
for umrah,
you should keep a bag with you
because every 30 seconds someone's gonna give them
sweets.
You say yes, jazakalakhi. The chocolates go. Yes,
shukran. Yes, caramel sweets. Yes, thank you very
much, darling. Dolly pops, shukran. Jazakalakhi.
And then your children get upset.
Why are you not giving me the sweets?
Look at these kind people, these marshineen,
giving us lutf.
And what are you doing? You're keeping all
of the sweets in the bag.
Sometimes I have to take away
for their benefit.
And sometimes I give
and it will harm.
This is what Allah says.
The next ayah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells
us.
Whoever wants the provision of the afterlife,
you're gonna get maximum
of that, what you are looking for.
But if you just want the stuff of
this world, you'll get some of it.
And you'll get nothing in the afterlife.
So sometimes Allah takes things away in this
life only to give us in the afterlife.
Now I'm going to give you the real
example.
Allah's lutf and his rizq.
I'm gonna ask you about a child who's
under the earthquake rubble in Turkey right now.
Allah took away their life.
Allah took away their house.
Allah took away their food.
They are lifeless underneath the stones.
What did Allah give them?
Yes, we need some diversity. Yes, Habib? Are
you sure? Yes, please.
No, diversity and inclusion, please, Habib. He
doesn't have to put in the hardship of
life.
Okay. They don't have to go through the
hardship of life.
Yes, sir Chad.
They have the companionship of Ibrahim alaihis salaam.
Beautiful.
But they are I'm talking about risk. You're
saying Allah took away their life, took away
their house, but he provided them with something.
What did he provide them with?
He provided them with the shahada.
Don't think that those who died in the
path of Allah are dead.
They're alive with Allah and he's giving them
rizq.
They are happy, content with whatever Allah is
giving them.
You suddenly start to look at the dead
child in a very different way.
You don't feel sympathy. You start to feel
jealousy.
You don't feel just sadness. You start to
feel happiness.
Because Allah didn't just take away from them
their life
and their house and their electricity.
Allah is providing them with food that you
cannot even imagine. The kind of food, even
if you went drove up and down Winslow
Road all day, you wouldn't find this kind
of risk. There's a risk that only comes
from Allah, the contentment that only comes from
Allah. They're in the company of Allah.
There's no comparison.
Teaches
you that when you look at a calamity,
never look at things and judge them at
their cover. Never judge a book by its
cover. Because
if the cover is destruction and the cover
is evil and the cover is sadness,
you don't know inside the book there might
be a lot of mercy and a lot
of happiness and a lot of contentment.
Allah has His ways, but we don't always
understand His ways. And that is why he's
Al Latiful Khabir. Did you think that Musa's
mum,
Mi Musa,
alihi masalaam?
That river Nile,
that long and dangerous river,
one of the longest rivers in the world,
with the crocodiles snapping,
did anybody ever think
that that dangerous river would become a red
carpet for Musa, alaihis salam, to glide
to a palace?
Did anybody ever think that the palace of
a tyrant,
the prison, the evil and horrible place of
the palace of Firaun would turn into a
lovely nursery for a baby called Musa?
Did anybody think?
But it is only Al Latif who converts
the dangerous river into a red carpet, and
the tyrant into a stepfather,
and the horrible palace into a lovely nursery.
He is the one.
When you you see things in an apparent
manner,
in the obvious manner, you lose trust in
him. But when you trust in him, he
shows you that what he has planned is
better than what you had hoped for.
Nobody knows
the hidden beauties that Allah has kept for
them.
As a reward for what they used to
do.
Did we think that the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam,
the man who lost his mother, and his
father, and his wife, and his uncle, and
his sons,
the man who lost his family, they died
in front of his eyes. Did he ever
think that he would gain a family that
today stands at 1,000,000,000 people?
Bilal al Habashi,
that Ethiopian slave, who before Islam people used
to look at him like he was a
scum of the earth. Nothing. He was dirt.
He was dust. Did he ever think that
one day he would put his feet on
top of the Kaaba?
Sohiba Rumi
Bilal al Habashi. Al Khabab ibn Abat, that
man whose back and flesh was burnt with
iron.
Did he ever think that one day he
would be of those that was promised paradise?
Never underestimate the plan of Allah.
Because no matter how many excel sheets you
have and whatever your budget forecast is and
whatever the news tell you, Allah is
and we have to trust in his lutf.
Because Allah's kindness sometimes shows in ways that
we don't appreciate.
You know, many of us, we can appreciate
that from our parents.
Sometimes our parents were harsh and strict with
us, but it was for our good. We
only realized a lot later on. You know,
I remember one thing.
My mother never allowed me to drink soft
drinks, 7 Up, Coca Cola, fine type Pepsi.
My whole childhood
until the age of 17, I had a
sip by mistake
of 7 Up, and I thought,
strange taste. Why do people drink this stuff?
And you know today, every time I go
to a shop and they give you a
free drink, I have no appetite for the
soft drink. I don't.
At the time as a child, I was
thinking, you Allah, this Museeba.
My mother does. Everyone is drinking it like
it's water. It's running in their veins like
their blood. Only me. And today,
all my friends who have
dental problems,
who have heart problems,
who have excess sugar,
drink
water and have no problem.
Sometimes
the gift is wrapped in a difficulty.
Sometimes the test shows itself to you, but
inside it is a blessing. And to understand
this is to understand the nature of Allah
tif. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
he addresses the wives of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam.
The wives of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
And
he says to the Ummaha tul Muween, the
mothers of the believers.
Recite or remember or teach what was recited
in your homes from the verses of Allah
and the wisdom.
Allah is Latif and Khabeer.
This comes after a series of verses where
Allah
gives the mothers of the believers, the prophet's
wives,
he gives them additional rules that other women
don't have to abide by.
He gives them, according to many scholars of
tafsir and many of the scholars of fiqh,
he gives them rules that are just for
them,
specifically for the mothers of believers
because they
are special. They are different from any other
woman.
He says to them, you are not like
you women are not like any other woman
in this world
if you fear Allah.
And then he gives them some special commandments.
Now when he gives special commandments, additional commandments,
you might feel, oh my god, more and
more commandments. But then Allah says,
Sometimes the restrictions of Allah are not restrictions.
They are freedoms.
They are liberties
because they liberate you from yourself and from
your ego and from your desires.
But you translate it as a restriction, like
me and 7 Up.
I translated it as a restriction.
Ah, it's tightening. It's too difficult. My life
is becoming more hard. But actually, it was
freeing me. It was for my benefit. And
the same way,
Allah talks about his Sharia,
about his laws. That sometimes today people interpret
them in the wrong way. Oh, the sharia
is murder and chopping and stealing and oppression
of women. But if they were really to
understand it and really to give it justice,
they would realize that the Sharia came from
Al Latif ul Khabeer, the one who knows
the hidden secrets, and the one who is
so gentle to us from the restrictions.
If Allah did not restrict zina,
AIDS would spread throughout this earth.
If Allah did not restrict
everything that he restricted,
we would have the breakdown of the family,
and we would have people lost about what
gender they are. And we people have people
lost about what purpose they have in life.
But the restrictions
help us. They free us. They liberate us
because they come from al Latif al Khabeer.
And so,
to complete
a reminder to one and all of us,
what is happening and what we see on
the news is coming from al Latif al
Khabeer,
the one who is more subtle and the
one who is all aware.
One more reminder that after Isha there's a
talk in this masjid by Sheikh Abu Samad
Dhabi who has come all the way from
Birmingham. So please come back after Isha. That's
why I finished a little bit early.
Go home, take a rest, take freshen up
and come back insha'Allah.
As salamu alaykum wa wahtahla.