Jafar, Najashi & The Original African Dawah

Now whoo hoo and a strain on the stock funeral when we hit our caller ID on all the bIllahi min Julie and phocoena Amin see Dr. Molina Mejia de la who further Medela will make you deliver lucha de la

is a beautiful story that takes place in the early years of Islam, which I want to reflect on today and take some lessons from. And this is the story of Jaffa even abdali. Regular one who and he's Dawa to the Najafi to the king of Abyssinia.

And I think this is a very important story for us because of the context in which the story takes place. Comparing to the context in which we live

that Jaffa ibn Abi Taalib was part of a small group of immigrants to a Christian African land. And the story showcases how they did Dawa, in that land.

And today we live as a minority in a Christian African land. So we can take parallels from the story of Jaffa if not be tolerable to see how we should be doing Dawa to the people around us. So a bit of context about the story. This story takes place early in Islam, when the Muslims were a minority in Makkah, and they were being oppressed, and they needed a way out. So Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam suggested to those who are able to he suggested that they migrate to Abyssinia

why to Amazonia? Because he said there is a righteous just king over there. There is a king over the unknown for his justice.

Now adjust king will treat you well even if he doesn't agree with you.

And the rule is America at that time will not just show a delegation of Sahaba left Makkah and they migrated to Amazonia

and the goal was just to escape the persecution of the Moroccans and to seek refuge and the HS King.

This group was made up of some of the most important Sahaba including Osman even avant Rajala one who and his wife who was the daughter of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, but the man that was sued allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam chose to lead this group was his cousin, Jaffa even ABI Taalib Rajala one who now Java even Abi Talib is one of the most important of the early Sahaba. But many of us are more familiar with his younger brother, who was the younger brother of Jaffa

Ali ibn Abi Taalib, Ali ibn Abi told him, right, he's the more famous of these two brothers. So I will tell him had many children. Two of them who converted to Islam were very famous Jaffa and Harley. And Joker was one of the early convert to Islam. And he was very close to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam in that they were in their relationship with each other, like brothers are best friends. Right? He had, he had a very close brotherly relationship with Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam anyway, first cousins, right the prophets oysters father Abdullah, and Jonathan's father, I will call him were brothers. So they were first cousins, and they had a

friendship.

And at the time of this hijra, Jaffa was in his early 20s, so is a young man,

and Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam puts this young man in charge of this Hijra. And this is something that's from the Sunnah of Rasulullah, sallallahu alayhi wasallam, that he would give men authority and leadership positions at a very young age, to train them for life. Because once you take up a leadership position, you need to gain experience to become good at it, right. So if you start gaining experience at a young age, if you start taking up leadership positions from the age of 18, or 20, by the age of 30, or 40, you are one of the most experienced leaders in the world. So to train people to be great leaders later on in life Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa salam would put

them in a position of leadership at a very young age, so that they will get used to it early on, and you will gain experience early on and this is something we need to revive in our communities, that when our boys hit puberty, when they hit the age of 1516, we start need to start giving them leadership positions. So they get used to that position, they learn and they experience and they grow into men. So Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he sends this delegation to move to Amazonia, led by Jaffa. But the Quraysh America at that time had so much hatred for Islam. They didn't even want to allow Muslims to live

In peace in a foreign land, so they sent a delegation to speak to Najafi to get him to send the Muslims back. Now who was in the Joshi before we continued, so he wasn't a Joshi. The Joshi is a title given to the ruler of Amazonia at the time. Right. And this was a very righteous man, a righteous Christian man by the name of Osama. And he had a very interesting story in there when he was young, and his father was the king. His uncle killed his father blamed him for it. And he went into exile for 10 years. He comes back 10 years later defeats his uncle and becomes the king of Abyssinia. Right you may be the story may sound familiar because Disney stole it and turned it into

a cartoon. Right? That's one of the theories. But this is the story of the Joshy. So he's nice to power is very interesting because he has to fight his own uncle, he goes into exile, and he becomes a very righteous king and a very just king. And because he saw the oppression of his uncle, over his people, he didn't want to be the same. So he was a very just man, and he always was willing to listen to both sides. So the people of Makkah sent a man by the name of Ahmed ibn Al asked to speak to Nigel Sheena, who is Omer? Omer is one of the most fascinating people in our history, as we will see later in the story. At that time, he was the enemy of Islam. Later on, he becomes one of the

most important Sahaba but at that time, he is the enemy of Islam, and they sent him to speak to the Joshi for two reasons. Number one, Omer is one of the most eloquent of the Sahaba of Saudi of the Sahaba of the courage. He's one of the most eloquent of the Quran, she had a way with words, he could talk to a person in a way that influenced them, and it be sure to take advantage of this. Number two, he actually had a close friendship with Najafi right Ahmad used to travel a lot for business. And during his travels, he met Anna Joshi and they formed a friendship. So they thought they could take advantage of this friendship and getting the Joshi to send the Muslims back to

Makkah.

So Amana goes to Abyssinia, and he meets in the Joshy gives him a whole other presents tries to bribe him. And he essentially tells him that these people who came seeking refuge in your community, they are troublemakers, just give them to me, I'll take them back, and I'll shut them out. We don't want them causing trouble in your community. And the Joshy being the just king. That is He says I need to hear their side of the story first. And this is an important lesson for us. Whenever people are saying something bad about someone else, always listen to the other side of the story. First, we live in an age where people are very quick to believe the worst of others. All it takes is one

WhatsApp message or one tweet to ruin someone's reputation. But as Muslims, we cannot allow ourselves to just believe the worst of others, you have to hear the other person's side of the story first. So this is the justice of the Joshi that he wants to hear the other side of the story. So he tells the Muslims to choose a representative to speak to him and to bring their case before and so they choose Jaffa because he's the leader. He's eloquent. He's young, he's dynamic. He's charismatic, and he's from the family of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam. So Jaffa comes and we have these two Qureshi men in the court of Najafi. And what's interesting at this point in time,

Omer is a idol worshiper. Jaffa is a Muslim, and the Joshi is a Christian, but they all passed away as Muslims, all three of them ended up passing away technically as Sahaba. The Joshi is a unique case, in that the historian see he was as a hobby in one way and Tabin in another way, because he accepted Islam in the life of Rasulullah sallallahu sallam, he passes away in the life of Rasulullah sallallahu sallam, Rasulullah sallallahu. Some even praised Janaza for him, but he never met Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam. So it's difficult to decide whether we can categorize him as he's a hobby or not. But nonetheless, at this point in time, there are three separate religions,

representatives of three separate religions meeting in the court and discussing religion. And so Omer presents his case, and he says that these people are troublemakers, and they invented their own religion, and they, you know, they're going to cause trouble in your community as well. So the Joshi asked Jennifer, to explain what they believe. And whether he prepared the speech beforehand or not, we don't know. But Java, even ABI Taalib delivers one of the greatest whispers in the history of Islam, one of the most legendary goodbyes and descriptions of Islam in history. wanderer has been repeated over and over again because of its eloquence and its power, and how beautifully he

summarizes the message of Islam in a few lines. So just to go through some of what he says. He says, Oh, King, we had people who were ignorant and immoral, we worship idols, we ate dead animals. We come up with all kinds of immoralities we broke family ties, we treated our guests badly, and the strong amongst us exploited the weak. We stayed in that state until Allah sent us a profit

From amongst us, who whose lineage, truthfulness, trustworthiness and integrity was known to us. He told us to worship Allah alone, and to give up the worship of idols, he told us and commanded us to speak the truth, to honor our promises, to be kind to our families, to help our neighbors to avoid the prohibited to avoid murder, to avoid being vulgar, and to avoid causing harm to orphans or taking the property. He commanded us to worship God alone, to pray, to give charity and too fast. We believed in him and what he brought to Allah, and we followed him, and we stayed away from the prohibitions. But oh king, our people attacked us. They punished us, they tortured us. They tried to

get us to give up our religion, and to take us back to the moralities of before. They oppressed us so much and made life so difficult for us that we left our country and we came here seeking your protection. This beautiful speech of Jaffa moved Najafi and it impressed the Joshi so much that his heart opened up to the Muslims. And then he asked Jaffa ibn Abi Taalib Can you tell me something about this message that your Prophet board recite to me some of his scripture and Jaffa Rajon who does a genius tower move? Right? He could have recited any part of the Quran that had been revealed up to that time, what the draft will choose to recite to the Christian king. He chose to recite the

opening pages of Super Mario, one of the opening pages of Super Mario Subrahmanyam begins with the story of Zack Korea and the birth of his son Yahia, known to the Christians at John the Baptist, followed by the story of Maryam Mary, and the birth of a son Jesus is Ali salaam, the Muslim version of these stories of these figures who are so central to Christianity, recited in the most powerful and eloquent ways, because anyone who is recited Subramanyam knows that this is one of the most powerful and eloquent and beautiful students in the Quran, the rhyming of the Surah, it just hits your heart, as we recite this surah, the surah and he recites these verses and he recites the

stories. And when you finish reciting, he turns and he looks around, and he sees that the king is crying, and all of his priests are crying as well.

And the Joshi he tells him that what you have brought, what your prophet has brought, what Jesus brought is the same message and he tells Omer that go back to your land, I'm never going to give up these people to you. And then he secretly converts to Islam. And this is the controversial part of the story because right till today, right till today, Christians claim that no Joshi never converted to Islam. And Muslims believe that he secretly converted to Islam. Right. And there is no way to prove it except to our scriptures because we have scriptural proof that he that he converted and they don't accept our scriptures. Right because he has a secret convert right to the end he hid

Islam from his people, but we know that he was a Muslim, because many years later, after the Prophet SAW Allah is a moves to Medina and takes over Medina and establishes the Islamic State Shubhra

the angel Jabra who comes to him and says, when when the Joshi dies, the angel Jabra EO comes to prophets, Allah loves them and says, Martha, your modular Saudi, a pious man has died today. A pious man has died today. And the prophets will allow the sun for the only time in his life. He gathers the Sahaba and they pray janazah in absence for Najafi, and for us as Muslims, this is the proof that he was a Muslim, that he was secretly a Muslim, because we not preach it as an absence for anyone else besides a Muslim. sunnah, Joshi got converted to Islam, and he protects the sahaba. And

this goes on right until the Muslims conquer Medina. They conquer Haber, the whole land becomes Islamic. And then Jaffa and his companions move back to Medina. And that doesn't last very long. Because a few months later, the prophets Elijah and puts Jaffa in charge of the army to go to Muda, which often is martyred, fighting against the Romans. Radi Allahu Anhu. So this is the story of Najafi and I want us to take time to reflect on the story and to reflect on some of the Dawa lessons that we can take from the story because the story of Jaffa and the Joshi gives us an idea of how Muslims are supposed to be in a Christian net, how we are supposed to interact with those around us

the Dawa, we are supposed to do the wisdom we should use the choice of words as soon as we recite the way we portray ourselves. We learn all these lessons from the model of Jaffa ibn Abi Taalib and the immigrants to Abyssinia Subhana rahbek. Robin is at Jamba spoon, wa salam ala saline or Hamdu lillahi rabbil aalameen

hamdu lillah wa Salatu was Salam ala Malanda

Be about Mr. Bad Venus second Hadith Nikita Bula Well, have you heard you heard him Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was several, many more they said to her were in bed

at in Dolla dolla in.

The way Dawa works is we don't often realize the ripple effects of our Dow and how it affects the lives of others. And when you look at the story of Najafi from one perspective, you don't really see the Dow continuing. But when you look at it from another perspective, it's amazing, right? So from one perspective, we can say that Islam in Abyssinia didn't really split between past that first generation. Right, the Sahaba moved there. They lived there. They didn't really become part of the culture because they always felt like foreigners, and they eventually moved to Medina. Now Joshi secretly converted, so his people never converted. So that land remained the Christian land and

remain to for hundreds of years. Right. And so in a way, it seemed that Islam died off in that region. But it's another angle you can look at from the story. We said in the Joshy, he secretly converted, right? I'm not even asking I'm not even asked the story. At that point in time, the Muslims run away to Amazonia to escape the oppression of the coalition I'm going to ask goes after them to bring them back. Forward. 15 years later, the Muslims are on the verge of conquering Makkah. Among Us runs away to Abyssinia to seek refuge with Dr. Joshi. He goes to the court of Najafi and he starts talking bad about the Muslims and the Joshi gets irritated with him and says an intelligent

man like you should know that Islam is the truth. At that moment, I'm realizing the Joshi is a Muslim, they talk about an animal decides to become a Muslim. He goes to Medina, he converts to Islam, and he becomes one of the commanders of the Muslim army. But the story doesn't end there. I'm not even us as the commander of the Muslim army in the time of omitted male hot tub another 10 years later, what does he do? He conquers Jerusalem, Palestine becomes a Muslim than through the armies of Mr. Libin. Alas, and it goes even further than that. He then Congress, Egypt, he learned from North Africa becomes a Muslim land through the efforts of Amory Bunnell us Now this seems like a very

roundabout way that we don't think about, like how the ripple effects of Dawa that we see the Sahaba moving to one non North African land and doing Dawa, and Islam doesn't really spread in that land. But their Dawa, to the king causes Dawa, to be done to armor which causes Islam to spread in Egypt. So Islam does spread in North Africa, but in a different country, in different parts of the continent. And that part of the continent becomes not just a Muslim land, but a land that today is known as Islamic. Right? We know of Egypt as a Muslim. Now, it's like, you can't even think of any other land, even though right until that point in time, it was a Christian that, but it became

completely absorbed into the Islamic empire, and the land of Islam became part of the nature of people. So we see that sometimes we don't see the immediate fruit of our Dawa. Sometimes you may be calling someone to Islam, and you may not see in your lifetime, the impact of that hour, but you may have an effect on one person, and that person may have an effect on somebody else. And that person may have an effect an entire nation. And that may only happen after you've passed away. When I'm not able to ask Congress Egypt, it is 20 years after job for had passed away. It is 20 years after the Joshy has passed away. None of them got to see the Muslims as a superpower. None of them got to see

the Muslims spreading across the world. They passed away very early in our history when the Muslims were still a minority.

But their Dawa had a ripple effect that changed the world and change the

the course of events of North Africa. So what can we learn from this? Number one is that as Muslims living as a minority, in a Christian land, or in any kind of non Muslim land, we must live lives of Dawa. That the way we live the way we practice our manners, our character, the way we conduct our businesses, the way we treat our neighbors, the way we give charity. All of this must represent Islam properly. Not all of us are eloquent enough to speak about Islam do a job for some of us have been gifted with that some have not. But we all can represent Islam, in our actions in our lifestyle. The people when they interact with us, they should fall in love with Islam. They should

see Islam as a force of good for this land, as a force for positive change for this land, that we should be the representative of the true message in everything that we do. Number two, we learn from the story of Jaffa the importance of being truthful about the message of Islam, and not sugarcoating it. One of the problems today is that many people when they present Islam to others, they want to change it to suit that person. Right. So if somebody believes something is bad, they will say Oh, Islam doesn't really teach that

Islam doesn't really teach this. No, you cannot sugarcoat the message. This is not your message. This is Allah's message. You have to convey it as it is. So in the story towards the later part of the story, I'm not even on us and we get a bit frustrated, then the Joshi is softening towards the Muslims. So he tells him that these Muslims don't believe that Jesus is God. It's fine. He doesn't believe it himself, but he's just trying to cause problems between the Muslims and the Joshi. Joshi asked Jaffa, what do you believe about Jesus? And he says, We believe he was a prophet of God and a slave. He tells it as it is, you know, sugarcoating the message that see what we believe, right that

he was a prophet, not God, not the Son of God. And the Joshi accepts that and he ends up converting and accepting the truth. You cannot convert people to Islam, if what you're teaching is the same thing they already believe. You have to be open about what Islam teaches, even when it is politically incorrect. And this is a problem we have today that whenever a part of Islam seems politically incorrect, we want to hide that part of Islam. No, we should convey the message in for people converting to Islam should know what they're getting into. It shouldn't just be teaching them the little bits that seemed nice to them while hiding, hiding the difficult parts of the religion.

Our religion should be conveyed in full, it is the true religion, and we should be confident in its truth. Number three, the importance of being brave. When Jaffa stood before the Joshi and spoke the truth and delivered the message of Islam and recited Quran, he did not know how the Josh is going to react as a kid, he could have killed him. He could have sent him back to Makkah to be tortured by the Moroccans he could have reacted in any way. But as a leader, appointed by the prophets like some to lead his people and represent Islam. Jaffa was brave. And he was brave at many points in his life. But this was one of those two main events that we remember his courage. One was standing in

front of a king, and conveying the message of Islam with such courage and such truthfulness and such sincerity that the king himself convert to Islam. And the other time was when he died fighting in the Battle of Muda. In the Battle of what our job food was the commander of the Muslim army, and the enemies had chopped up both of his arms. And he continued to hold the flag with the stumps of his arms while his arms are bleeding. And he passed away in that state. And he's known as the man with two wings in Jannah. Because Allah would replace those arms with wings for him after he passed away. So this was a man who lived a life of courage. And this is something we have to revive in our times,

that as Muslims, we must have courage, we must be brave, we cannot be cowardly. When you are cowardly. You compromise your faith, you and your cowardly you cannot protect your families. When you're a coward. You cannot convey the message with truth and honesty. We have to be people of courage if we want to be true believers and we want to represent this religion properly. And the final lesson that we take from the exchange between Jaffa and the Joshi is we don't know who Allah has written guidance for. We do not know who is ending is a good ending. When you read the story, it seems that Ahmed even R Us is evil. And really when you read the story, he comes across as a

villain. He comes across as a very evil person representing a very evil people. But 10 years later, he, his life turns around completely. He realizes his mistakes, he realizes he was wrong, he will repent, he converts to Islam, and he's such a sincere repentance. When he comes to the prophets like I'm to accept Islam. He says oh Rasul Allah, make dua that Allah forgives me for everything I've done until now. And the prophets always says when you accept the psalm, everything's already forgiven. That's part of converting, he said, still make the dua for me, because he realized that what he had done before that was like so evil. This was a man who fought Muslims who killed Muslims,

who tried to get him kicked out of cities, and you realize how long wrong his actions were, that he passed the prophet to make a special dua to Allah to forgive him. And he ends up becoming a great hero of Islam, and he ends up being a great person in later times, who conquered lands and brought his lands into Islam, lands like Syria, and Palestine and Egypt. He was part of those leadership that brought those lands into Islam. So we are not the ones who should be judging where somebody's ending is going to be because we do not know which person today seems evil, who tomorrow may make Toba and convert and become a leader amongst the Muslims. And this is the final lesson that we take

from the story we ask Allah to make us from those who represent this religion properly. We ask Allah subhanaw taala can make us rightly guided in the means of guidance for others. Allah how much I'm gonna hide the idea alone, which I don't know how to do alone, which I know how do my dear Robin attina Dunya Hasina will feel awkward. He has now walked in as a banal Robin Hublin I mean, I was watching I was reacting a Kurata

Subhana rahbek Robin is at the mercy food was salam normal saline well hamdulillahi rabbil aalameen