Husain Sattar – The Domain of Allah
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Last week we,
began with a little bit of a
background to a opportunity that I recently had
to travel with Sheikh Zulfekar in South Africa.
And, I shared just some of the events
that occurred during that trip because,
they were interesting and because they were something
to learn from.
And there was a few things that I
wanted to say yes, last week but we
ran out of time because it's time for
a shot to come in. So I wanna
add those now and I don't wanna take
too long because I don't wanna push us
over like we did last week. But basically
just as a review for those people who
weren't there, for those people who need a
little refresher,
What I had said last week was that,
you know, among the many things that we
did in this trip with Sheikh Zulfiqar, one
of the things that,
was scheduled and that and that we did
was to spend time in Kruger National Park.
And I had mentioned in particular that when
people visit Kruger National Park, they visit for
days or weeks.
They make a plan to stay there for
several days. And during that time, they have
the idea that they'll be able to view
many of the,
wild game that are present within that national
park. And because it takes several days to
be able to see everything, people, if they
travel all the way, especially from America, they
plan several days in the park.
And what I had shared with you was
that one of the most interesting things that
happened on our trip was that we went
to a part of the park where people
would not expect to see very
very many many animals.
We didn't go because of the animals. We
went because we were passing through that area
to get to go from one talk to
another.
And we went for a very short period
of time. Literally, we got there after Fajr
prayer, and we were there till, you know,
the Lord prayer, maybe the Lord prayer prayer,
maybe the beginning of also
prayer. And in that very short period of
time, I mentioned that we saw so many
different animals. You know, we saw elephants, giraffe,
lion, hyena,
etcetera. It was as if almost I mean,
you could argue that the animals were coming
to see us.
And again, not us, but basically Sheikh Zulfiqar
as I had mentioned last week that, you
know, there's a famous hadith where Rasulullah
mentions that a person draws very near to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through their superrogatory
acts of worship such that there comes a
point when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala announces to
the angels that I love this so and
so person, such and such and so and
so, so you should love such and such
and so and so.
And the angels then subsequently make the announcement
to
all of creation, including the animals, such that
it goes to the fish at the bottom
of the sea that I love such and
such and so and so, so you also
should love such and such and so and
so. And so basically, what I was highlighting
was that,
this event that we witnessed, you know, in
this such a short period of time, animals
coming in
out of nowhere, just us able to see
these animals. And in particular, at the very
end, I even mentioned that there was this
enormous elephant that basically just blocked the road
and was standing literally right in front of
us. I mean, I'm still amazed at how
close that elephant was.
All of that, I took that to be
a sign of basically the fact that we
were with a very, very righteous, pious person.
And that being in the company of such
righteous and pious people,
those animals almost as if they knew that
this is someone that is seeking Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala and so it was an opportunity
for them to be able to interact with
this person as well. And, you know, like
I said, this isn't,
like I said, this isn't only at the
level of the animals.
This happens wherever Sheikh Zobokar goes. There's this
this enormous
there's this in a very, very ajeev and
strange thing that no matter what masjid we
go to,
everybody wants to come and shake his hand.
Everybody wants to just catch a glimpse of
him. And I mentioned last week that there
that he went to in Sheikh Zulfikar went
to India recently,
just a few months before he went to
South Africa,
and hundreds of thousands of people came to
his talks.
Some some place a 100000, some place 200000,
some places maximum close to 300000.
And, obviously, in India, you know, they don't
have these mega speaker systems and hall halls
and where where you go when you go
to a religious gathering, the vast majority of
people couldn't even hear what he was saying.
The vast majority of people only saw him,
let alone saw him. They just saw the
crowd from a distance.
Yet so many people came. So many people
came, and you wonder,
how did that come in the hearts of
those people? Where did they know? You know,
how did they know to come to that
point and to just even just see that
person? And that's because, again, this is a
person or these are the types of people
that pursue Allah
and Allah puts the love of them in
the hearts of others. It's a very, very
natural occurrence.
So that was last week's summary. Now I
wanna take that one step further. So I
told you what I saw, but I didn't
tell you the reaction of Shaykh Zulfiqar to
this, And I think that's also very important,
and it's actually a derivative principle from the
sunnah, so that's why I'm highlighting it.
Every time this happened,
literally, I can say every time this happened,
for example, some very unique animal will show
up. Okay? We get into the park and
within 3 minutes, just elephants all over the
place. Right? Or we're sitting down and having
breakfast, and elephants are just
grazing, you know, just by us. I mean,
we literally had breakfast with the elephants, I
was saying. Because when I was sitting with
the people, I said, we didn't have breakfast.
I'm seeing elephants. We had breakfast with the
elephants.
And then all these, you know, zebras coming,
and my daughter corrected me when we were
leaving. And she said, it it wasn't,
it wasn't, dozens. It was 99 zebras. I
counted them. 99 zebras or whatever it was.
99 zebras. I mean, you know, where does
this come from? Every time some unique, like,
occurrence like this happened, Sheikh Zulfiqar would turn
to someone in the group and say, oh,
they came to visit you.
They came to see you. He would never
say,
you know, Alhamdulillah, Allah sent 1 zebra would
have been enough to come and meet me,
but 99 came Alhamdulillah. You know how if
it was me and and I'm with people
and say, you know, some rare occurrence occurs,
I would in a very subtle way make
a hint that it was because of me.
I would say like, yeah, you know, this
is the first time that it's happened to
me like this, but allhamdulillah,
you know, pull my head down. This is
human nature. We would begin to, we would
begin to attribute it to ourselves.
Right? We would think that, even if we
didn't say it, we would think it That,
oh, this is really I wonder, you know,
if I if I just make an extra
dua, will another animal come and see me?
We would start attributing attributing
it to ourselves.
But that is never the way of the
oldia.
Never the way of the oldia.
They will always turn to someone else and
attribute anything good to them. Literally, I will
tell you, every time that happens, some very
unique occurrence would happen.
He was telling us like, he was saying
that, oh, you know, we came
and we wanted to see giraffes very badly,
but we didn't get to see giraffes the
last time.
And then he went through how there was
a person with on the last trip who
just wanted to see a giraffe, but only
they would every animal would come and that
person, I wanna see a giraffe. I don't
care about this. I don't care about and
no giraffe was seen. And this time, we
saw so many giraffe, and we were just
randomly stopping. A giraffe would be sitting and
eating from the top of the trees and
putting their legs like this and drinking. And
and we were seeing giraffe after giraffe. And
so then he was he would turn to
someone in the group, and he would say,
oh, they came to see you. Oh, they're
here because of you. He would that would
be the attitude that he would express that
always, they you know, he came because of
some other reason.
And, you know, the reality is actually I
was thinking the opposite. I was thinking that
maybe because of my sins, we wouldn't see
anything. I was thinking the other way, you
know, that it's possible that because of our
sins, we're not gonna see anything. So we're
really lucky to actually have seen any of
this. So, but this is the way of
the Haodiyah. They always attribute
people of righteousness.
They never attribute anything to themselves and they
never seek out the attention of other people.
They're very quiet in the way in which
they carry themselves
and they're very quiet in they're very humble
in the way in which they deal with
others. I can tell you that I've seen
many, many gatherings, many, many gatherings where throngs
of people are waiting to reach Higgs O'Moore
or
throngs of people are wanting to just, you
know, surround him. And every time, he quickly
escapes and gets in the car and gets
out of there. He just doesn't want that.
He just
won't just does not like that. He's very
uncomfortable about that.
Very uncomfortable. I mean, he's willing to shake
people's hands because they're really, you know, been
waiting for a long period. They've been hearing
he's coming. They're waiting for him. They're excited.
He shakes their hands, but if there's any
extra moment of these types of crowds, he'll
very quickly get himself out of that situation.
I I vividly remember we were in the
Haram,
maybe, I don't know, a year ago, and
a big crowd showed up. Now, you know,
I mean, in the Haram there because people
from all over the world know who he
is and the Indian Wolama, especially in the
Indian,
people who are, who are, who are students
and studying and they really, really desire to
see him and there's no opportunity except there.
So slowly crowds started building up, crowds started
building up, crowds started building up. He got
very angry at us. The person who was
pushing him and then he was in a
wheelchair that time. The person who was pushing
him, he got very angry. He said, you
haven't moved out of here. You should move
move move move move. You know, he very
quickly said, move move move move move move
move move me out of here. And we
went and we went, and people were still
following. And he would we would keep moving
keep moving until finally we found another place
where there was nobody. And, again, he was
comfortable, and then, you know, he was happy
that he was in that place. The the
people of righteousness don't seek out attention.
People of piety don't seek out attention and
they are actually uncomfortable with attention.
Now, where is this all derived from? This
is all derived from actually actually Rasool Allah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
There's a very famous incident which is narrated
in the book of imam,
in the book of imam,
ibn Majah.
Alright. The book of ibn Majah.
And he,
narrates
from Abu Umama
radiallahu alaihi wa'am. Abu Umama is narrating the
hadith
and in the hadith he says that one
day it was very hot outside. I see
it very interesting the way he narrates the
hadith, very, very insightful way that the hadith
is narrated. He says one day it was
very hot outside. It was a very hot
day
and Rasulullah
salallahu alaihi wasalam was on his way to
visit
the Baqi graveyard, you know, the Baqi graveyard
that's present in Medina,
Medina shayef.
So as Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam was
heading towards the graveyard,
he began to hear large numbers of footsteps
of people behind him.
And then he's commenting,
Abu Umama radiAllahu an is commenting in the
heave. He says then he says he says,
This weighed heavily on the heart of Rasulullah.
He's putting in his own commentary. He says,
This weighed heavily on the heart of Rasulullah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
To the extent that Rasulullah sallahu alaihi sallam
sat down,
he just stopped.
And then the he's Abu Lahama radiAllahu alaihi
wa'ala wasalam is commenting and he says that
this was because
he felt a he was afraid of the
heaviness of pride entering into his heart. Now,
of course, how could what would pride enter
into the heart of Rasool Allah sallahu alaihi
wasallahu alaihi wasallam? I mean, he was he
knew exactly who he was and he was
he that wasn't an issue, but it was
a lesson for us. So he says that
this was because of the issue of the
possibility of pride entering into his heart. So
he sat down and he let the crowd
dissipate
until finally he got back up and did
what he needed to do. Now
when Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasallam did this, basically
what had happened was he was going out.
It was a hot day. Right? Now if
it's a hot day, nobody else is going
out. See, that's why I say it's very
interesting the way the hadith is narrated because
he starts by narrating the circumstance that created
the idea in the mind of the prophet
It's a hot day. Nobody else should be
out. Nobody it's not like people were out
randomly.
They started following him because it was an
opportunity to follow him. So a big crowd
built up.
Now Rasoulas
knows that it's a hot day. People aren't
supposed to be out. You know, I'm going
someplace. People must be following me for this.
So he's he was very uncomfortable with that.
He sat down. Now people, they didn't have
permission to follow him. Nobody had he didn't
they didn't have an appointment. They hadn't made
a made a meeting with him. They were
just following him, so they also became, you
know, they saw that he sat down. So,
they themselves, they began to go off to
different directions.
And then Rasulullah
he stood up and then he began to
pursue that which he was supposed to pursue.
So
from this hadith,
it's one of the very famous, hadith that
our at Kabaneen,
they mentioned,
that we learned a very important lesson which
is that, you know, the seeking of attention
of others actually it makes us uncomfortable.
It's nothing that we should ever pursue.
It's something that we should become very uncomfortable
with. You know, we should be naturally have
a natural disinclination
towards.
And all of us have this within us.
We want the attention of others.
It's in everybody,
whether it be by driving a certain car
that we know that everybody will look at
or whether it be by having our, you
know, the purse that nobody else has,
or whether it be by,
you know,
by by saying things about ourselves that naturally
draw attention to us,
you know, and and we do it the
righteous do it. The the the people of
the new do it.
You know, in the in the gatherings of
the righteous, it's, well, you know, when I
did my 6th Hajj
my 6th Hajj that time this happened. You
know, you have to make sure that it
was the 6th Hajj and you make it
very clear with everybody in the gathering that
that was your 6th Hajj. So it's a
mechanism of drawing attention.
But
the or Kabirin and the people of piety,
they never would want attention drawn to themselves.
In fact, they remembered exactly who they were.
They remembered exactly who they were. And I'll
tell you the opposite extreme, which also comes
to mind in the context of this discussion.
Not only would Sheikh Zulfikar attribute whatever happened
to somebody else in the group or you
or it was because of you or because
of you or because of you when something
good happened, but if there was something negative,
he would always attribute it to himself.
I I vividly remember on one occasion, he
made a statement, very interesting statement. We were
sitting and somebody said something and he said,
I don't know how to do the only
thing I know how to do is sleep.
He said this. He said this in front
of all of us openly. We're all sitting
there. I'm it was like my hand was
in my face, you know. The only thing
I know how to do is sleep.
I'm looking at it and I said, Husband,
I never even see you sleep. If you
wanna learn how to sleep, come come. I
can teach you how to sleep, you know.
What are you talking about? But he you
know, this was this is the humility of
these people, you know. They he makes a
statement that
it's just no way. I mean, there's no
way. I have not seen anybody sleep less.
I've seen him sleep half of the person
that I've seen sleep the least. I've told
you these stories before. And he says, you
know, the only thing I know how to
do right is sleep, SubhanAllah.
SubhanAllah, as if like nothing else is going
you know, as if nothing else is being
done.
So in actually, it's the opposite. Instead of
seeking attention, they create mechanisms to divert attention.
And and this is, again, this is exact
this is all a derivative from that simple
hadith that I just, you know, the the
narrated the meaning of which I just quoted
before you.
So we should not ever seek the attention
of anyone except Allah.
We should never see because it becomes almost
there's a possibility of shirk. Right? If we
begin to seek the attention of other people,
then on the day of judgement, Allah will
tell us to take our reward from them.
Right? If we begin to seek the attention
of other people, then on the day of
judgement, we'll say these are the people that
you aim to please, so take your reward
from them.
And if we seek the attention of Allah,
then Allah
will reward us from His reward. In fact,
it's clearly narrated in hadith
that there would be groups of people on
the day of judgment who performed acts in
order to show others what they did. And
it will be told to them that you
you did these acts to show others, so
go and seek the attention of those people.
I mean, we know the famous hadith where
there will be people raised before Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala,
a big scholar will be raised before Allah.
And it will be said, what did you
do? What did you do for the deen?
And the person will say, I was a
big scholar and I established and I taught
your your deen. And then it'll be said,
liar.
Liar. You did that because you wanted other
people to say you were a great scholar.
And it was said.
Right? And it was said, and that person
will be vanished into hellfire.
Another person will comment, you know, why what
did you do? Oh, I fought in for
in the in the path of Allah. No.
No. No. You didn't fight in the path
of Allah. You fought so that people would
call you a great strong warrior,
And it was said and it was said.
What you desired was said
and that person will be punished
because they have established
partners with Allah. They're they're competing in Allah's
domain. You know, Allah's it is Allah's domain
that all attention be turned towards Him.
Allah is the one who deserves that all
attention be turned towards Him.
So if a person competes in Allah's domain
and tries to draw attention to them,
it's a very serious infringement on the rights
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And it's close to among those things that
don't get forgiven. It's a type of shirk,
it's right. It the Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa
sallam mentioned that I'm not afraid of the
major shirk. I'm afraid of the minor shirk.
So the salah asked, what is the minor
shirk? Minor shirk is to seek the attention
of others.
Minor shirk is to seek the attention of
others.
And you see, we wanna talk. We're in
gatherings. We wanna be the one that talks.
We wanna say we want everyone to focus
their attention on us
to the extent that we'll lie to get
people's attention.
We'll exaggerate
to get people's attention.
We'll speak about others to make people laugh.
And we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
We're burying ourselves in our own spiritual grave,
and we think that we're achieving something.
We have to be very, very careful whose
domain we step in.
You certainly never wanna compete with Allah in
the in the matter of attention.
All attention is for Allah.
All praise is for Allah. Alhamdulillah.
All praise is for Allah.
And it is only our job to turn
others' attentions towards Allah as well.
This is our job, not to ever bring
an iota of attention to ourselves,
but to take everybody's face and turn it
towards their creator.
And if we've done that, we've succeeded.
And this was the mechanism of the companions
and the people that came after them. They
were never interested in
attention for themselves.
They were always interested in bringing other people
into
the court of Allah
You have to be very careful because this
is something that plagues people of the dunya
and it's something that plagues people of the
deen.
And it's less it's just a lesson that
we learn even in the most extreme. You
know, that's the time to say when the
animals are coming out of the jungle to
see you. That's the time to say, you
know, Alhamdulillah, Allah accepted my dua.
That's the time to say that. Right? And
we maybe we would be the ones to
say that,
but that was not what we that's not
what we've seen from our Kebiti.
That's not what we've seen from the pious
biased predecessors.
And, certainly, we should be very, very careful
in this regard.
So, yes, you know, it's true that when
a person as I mentioned last week, when
a person attains a certain degree of piety,
no doubt Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala subjugates many
aspects of the physical world to them.
However, those people never ever
assume that to be a sign of progress.
They're always afraid of their mistakes,
and they always humble themselves,
and they recognize who they are in the
in the in the in in in the
big picture,
which basically in the in the in the
in comparison to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, we're
all nothing.
We're all nothing.
And so we should be particularly careful. We
don't need to seek attention and bring attention
to ourselves and say things that would make
other people
attracted towards us or think something of us
or
exaggerate in order to attract the attention of
others, etcetera.
So may Allah
give us to to be among those who
humble ourselves before him and may he make
us among those who are raised on the
final day because of their humility.