Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadith for Modern Times #04
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AI: Transcript ©
Okay.
So we're gonna get into the next chunk
of the hadith,
after the angel has now sat down, the
angel Gabriel,
and has begun
interacting with the prophet.
Last week, we were talking a lot about
what those initial interactions were teaching us around
just the etiquette of being a student
and why it was important for us to
understand
some of the specifics
of this description
that he's wearing this very white clothing and
what does that mean in terms of how
we should be dressing when we are standing
in front of Allah in our prayers, when
we're going to Jummah, you're coming to the
halukkah, to the class, that he's standing as
close
to the prophet
seated knee to knee with him, you know,
his hands on his knees that you wanna
not be at a distance from the teacher,
but you wanna be in a place where
you're kind of there with a desire to
learn.
His hair is very dark black, the hadith
says, So indicating that the form the angel
takes of a young person, not an elderly
person. So part of the etiquette of learning
is that when you're young, you're making time
for the acquisition of knowledge,
and other things that we're getting into. So
if somebody wants to just read the hadith
in its entirety,
and then we'll pick up from the parts
that we had left off from.
It's the second hadith
in the collection of Imam Noe's hadith,
40 hadith collection. This is called the Hadith
Jibrael,
the Hadith of Gabriel. So you can also
look it up that way too.
Does anybody have it? If you can't read
the Arabic, you can just read the English
also, especially in the interest of time. We're
gonna try to bang through a bunch of
things before my group starts.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Also on the authority of Omar who said
one day while we were sitting with the
messenger of a
a man came over to us with clothes
whose clothes were exceedingly white and whose hair
was exceedingly black.
No signs of travel was seen on him,
but none of us knew but none of
us knew him. He came and sat down
opposite the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
and rested his knees against his, placing the
palms of his hands on his thighs.
He said, oh, Mohammed, inform me about Islam.
The messenger of Allah
to establish prayer, to give zakah, to pass
from Adan, and to make the pilgrimage to
the house if you are able to do
so.
He said you have spoken the truth,
and we wondered at his asking and then
confirming it. He said, then inform me about
Imaan.
He said, it is to believe in Allah,
his angels, his books,
his messengers,
and the last day, and to believe in
predestination,
both the good and the evil thereof.
He said, you have spoken truth.
He said that inform me about Islam.
He said, it is to worship Allah as
though you see him. If you do not
see him, indeed, he sees you.
He said, then inform me about the hour.
He said, the one question about it knows
no more than the questionnaire.
He said, then inform me of its signs.
He said
that the slave woman will give birth to
her mistress and that you will see barefooted,
naked, destitute shepherds
competing in the wildness of constructions.
And he departed, and I stayed for a
time.
Then he says, oh, I'm like, do you
know who the questioner was?
I said, although I'm his messenger. I'm more
knowing.
So the entire context of the hadith submitted
in this last section that the Angel Gabriel
is coming to teach
this religion to people. So every element of
the Hadith
has some capacity of learning to it. So
we're in the second section now where the
conversation starts. Aqbirni
* Islam
that give me
the teach me, inform me about what Islam
is.
And it presents to us now an important
facet. In other variations of this hadith,
we have what is iman that comes first.
Right? In the formula
of it, iman becomes a necessary
prerequisite
in order for the Islam as an element
to be something that's a key variable to
this. And I wanna give you a definition
of what iman is
and a definition of what Islam is beyond
just some of the things that we kind
of understand it to be in terms of
what the actual responses are that the Angel
Jibrael is met with from the prophet
Right? That these 5 pillars, for example, are
things that the prophet says that this is
what Islam is.
But that first one that he mentions of
the Shahada
gives us embedded within it both the definition
or an opportunity for a definition
of what Islam is and what iman is.
But we
want to kinda think about this for ourselves
a little bit deeply.
Iman,
if we were to give it a definition,
it has 3 parts to it.
They say,
first
element of iman, what is faith,
is,
that you have an affirmation with the heart.
The second element
to iman is
that you have now
a element
of kind of affirming this from the tongue.
You're speaking it.
And then the third element
of iman is
that
there's actions from the limbs.
And so you wanna see this as a
synergetic relationship between Islam and Iman, this definition
of what faith is, an affirmation
of it,
this shahada, for example,
that exists within the heart. Right? Because in
that first layer,
there is a
acknowledgment and a recognition of a relationship
between one and one's creator.
That's where the affirmation of the heart comes
in.
You then have the second element that comes
up,
the
so that there's an element of recognition of
where and how we relate on a communal
level. Right? How would one know that you're
Muslim if you're not speaking that element of
Iman
in
a actualized manifest capacity.
Doesn't mean that you have to do it?
No. Not necessarily, but there's an intrinsic link
here that we'll talk about. Because there were
people who did the
but they didn't have.
These were the. May Allah protect us from
them. The hypocrites, they outwardly expressed Islam, but
didn't have the inward element of faith. Does
this make sense?
And I want you to think about this
definition and how it attaches to the the
actions of the limbs
in relation to what we know
as we talk about this first part of
the Hadith Jibrael
in the instructional
format
where he asked
Islam, give me the Khabr of Islam
because most of us would respond
knowing what the 5 pillars of Islam
are, but what is the actual definition
of this word? Right? Grammatically, it's a gerund.
It's a verbal noun. So it's denoting that
you're doing Islam.
Right? There's this element there
of an active engagement of it, and we
quite often understand it in the prism of
this definition of iman
to inform
submission
to something,
what are you submitting to?
Because these things that the angel is being
met with in response
are the vehicles
of submission.
But if somebody was to say to you,
what is the submission in its totality about
when you're talking as
a
as a sociological
identity variable. I was born into the religion.
But if somebody says, what am I
definitively submitting to? And thinking about it more
broadly. You cannot have a definition that says
I'm just submitting to Allah if you've never
thought about who Allah is to you to
begin with.
And understanding the different pieces of all of
this altogether,
what is it giving to us in the
broader sense
for me as a Muslim practicing this religion,
my submission is to what?
What I'd like you to do is turn
to the persons next to you, share names,
a few more people have trickled in.
What is it that this definition
is?
Somebody was to say Islam is about subservience,
submission to something.
What are you submitting to? And not a
platitude,
not a slogan.
Don't say that I'm just submitting to the
will of God if that doesn't mean something
to you.
Distill it to a place that is concrete
that gives you a set of metrics to
assess
where that actual
submission is and what is it that is
a totality, a holistic submission. Doesn't mean you
can't struggle with things. Right? That's not what
we're saying. It doesn't mean that you suddenly
become a super Muslim overnight. We're not saying
that either. But we have to have a
baseline definition
of what it is that we're working towards
and what is the application of this word
actually
in reference to when we're talking about submission
as a key part
to this first dimension of Islam, which is
attached to these rituals and practices.
Does the question make sense? So if you
turn the person next to you, what is
it that we are defining this to be?
Right? I am a Muslim.
What am I actually submitting to through the
practice of my Islam? If you can turn
to the person next to you, talk it
out for 2 minutes, and then we'll come
back and discuss. Go ahead.
Okay. So what are some of the things
that we're discussing?
How do we understand this concept
of
submission?
What quite often gets the translation of Islam.
Like, if we were to kind of distill
it a little bit more,
what what is it that we're
talking about? Who wants to start?
Yeah. We said that it's mission to, of
course, like, a lot, but through the
some. So so what does that mean?
Sharia.
The
the tradition.
The
the yeah. Some some
Yeah.
We discussed, like, doing what
recommended not to do.
Okay.
Other thoughts?
It's not like a right or wrong as
such unless you look crazy wrong or something.
But
what are you discussing? So you start to
build kind of a tangible relationship with it.
Yeah. I just said that,
to kind of, also being in line with
facing Ahmad so that with with every action
he does, he tries to keep that in
mind as well as he sees that as
a submission.
Yeah. And so it's not like a pick
and choose
mentality
that here's what I'm going to do
and here's the stuff I'm gonna leave behind.
There's a difference between struggle versus being selective
by virtue of what exactly. So if you're
to give a definition to this, what is
Islam,
it's essentially a submission
to everything
that was brought by the prophet Muhammad, peace
be and blessings be upon him,
all of it.
You have these
mechanisms that are there that manifest themselves in
terms of ritual and practice,
but embedded within those are also
deeper understandings and implications
that say, there's a lot that goes into
this
that is much more than these five things.
What most of us get is just this
one pillar
of or one dimension of religion.
And you wanna really think about it in
terms of a learning mechanism and process,
How it is that one can qualify themselves
to be Muslim?
Is it a baseline? You gotta at least
do these things. We're gonna talk about them
in a little bit more detail in an
upcoming hadith that says
that Islam is built upon 5 things.
So what all of these things are in
more detail,
we can kinda extrapolate more meaning when we
get to that hadith.
But understanding
at a minimum,
these are things you gotta do if you
want to have the label of Muslim, and
they're an outward
understanding
of the faith in and of itself.
They have a relationship
to the next tier which is iman
because the ritual is not meant to be
something that is an ends but a means
to something.
But you'd have to wrestle inwardly with yourself
that says,
I am Muslim,
but I'm not doing
even these things.
Am I doing the prayers?
Am I fasting the fast?
Am I giving the zakat?
Did I get the Hajj done as soon
as I had the means to do so?
The central point for all of it is
this first part, which is shahada
that bears an outward
expression.
Right? If you convert to this religion, you've
seen people convert to this religion,
they are verbalizing
the testimony of faith. They're putting it out
there. Even if they're just saying it to
themselves,
sitting in their house, it is considered valid.
But you've seen people come at Jummah. You've
seen people come here. Last week, 3 people
walked into this space and took their shahada,
They're doing that second part of the definition
of iman.
It is spoken. It is being
manifest from the tongue.
In and of itself, though, it segues
back to that first element
that is
to have affirmation in the heart.
And so these practices are meant to bring
you from the outward in to that state
of a wakeful heart. Do you get what
I mean?
It doesn't do that
if there's not a recognition of what it
is as an entirety of a system.
If you live your life in such a
way where there's not struggle with religion
sometimes,
sometimes you get to a place that says
this is tough or this is difficult.
And somehow everything just falls in accord with
the way that you do things is always,
like, the right way to do it, then
you're probably not living a life that's subservient
to God, but you've made God subservient to
you in some capacity.
Does that make sense?
It doesn't mean perfection is what the pursuit
is
because that's a futile pursuit.
There's gonna be mistakes. There's gonna be struggles.
But this idea of submitting to it
has to not be understood in a vacuum.
It has to be understood in a place,
well, what are these things
giving to me
as a means?
And it's coming back to the idea that
that outward
is meant to
deepen in a state of inward transformation.
And that second tier of what is iman
is meant to be the inward now starts
to bear manifestation
of what is the outward.
Why this hadith is called Umasunna?
It is the mother of the sunnah
is because within it is every part of
religion.
And this is a foundational
entry point.
Iman and Islam,
the two things go hand in hand.
You have a concept in Sharia
that looks at do these words have interchangeable
meanings
or not?
Can somebody say
Muslim and Mu'min,
a person of Islam and a person of
Iman are the same exact word? It would
depend contextually.
If you're in a place where the words
are used separately
in
no relation to one another in the sense
that someone says I'm a Muslim, someone says
I'm a Mu'min,
then in those verses in hadith,
they tend to have a similar meaning.
But when they're mentioned simultaneously
in a certain
tradition
verse, then there's a categorical
distinction that's being made and qualitatively
the distinction
is rooted in these. Elements of what is
inward, faith, and elements of what is outward,
practice.
So that first part of what is Islam
will get into more detail as we get
to another hadith,
but you have to see how it links
to faith.
And that inward
introspective
recognition,
can I say I'm a person of faith
if I am not doing the minimums,
or can I get to a place where
I understand
that the minimums
become
a key foundation
for me to deepen in that affirmation of
inward states of my heart? Do you get
what I mean? And you wanna shift the
paradigm
because the notion isn't to weaponize it and
to start breaking people down. Because how are
you gonna know what's going on inside of
somebody to begin with?
There's a companion of the prophet by the
name of Osama bin Zayd
who he is the son of a man
by the name of Zayd bin Haritha.
Zayd ibn Haritha is so close to the
prophet, alaihis salaam, that on one occasion, he's
actually known as Zayd ibn Mohammed.
Zayd, the son of Mohammed. And when the
Quran reveals verses that say you can't assume
the natal identity
of another child
person's child. Right? Like some of you know,
my wife and I, we have
become registered to officially be foster parents of
children
who are in the foster care system. I
can't say that that kid is now my
actual child, but it doesn't mean that I
can't help provide care to that child. Right?
There's a lot of mention in the Quran
about taking care of orphans and children in
need and all of these kinds of things.
But I can't say
you are now
the son of Khalid Latif. It doesn't work
that way. There's wisdoms to this. You can't,
for example,
usurp
people's wealth and their inheritance. Right? Because it's
crazy.
Walk into a foster care home, you kinda
see just the
devastation that these little babies are going through,
but then you also understand the corruption that
exist on other ends. People take children in
and stories that we see, plot lines in
movies are actually very real. They're collecting
government subsidies to be able to line their
pockets as they abuse these children. May Allah
make things easy for all of them.
Osama bin Zayed
is the son of this man though who
was so close to the prophet that before
those verses were revealed, he was known as
Zayd bin Mohammed.
And when the verses are revealed
of you can't assume the natal identity of
any individual,
Zayd bin Mohammed goes back to being Zayd
bin Haritha.
Usama ibn Zaid is also the son of
a woman by the name of Umaimin Barakah.
If you come to the Wednesday class, we're
gonna talk about a little bit more this
Wednesday. She's arguably the only companion of the
prophet who's with him from the time he's
born until the time he dies.
She is an Abyssinian woman who at 16
years of age is taken in his servant
in the household of Abdullah, the prophet's father.
When Abu Bakr and Umar missed the prophet
after he passes, they would go sit with
this woman, Umaimin Barakah.
It's a black woman
living in the house of the prophet,
one of the women who nurses him,
very close to him.
Osama
is the child of these 2 beloved people.
When the prophet would take his own grandson
and put him on one of his knees
and put Osama bin Zayed on his other
knee, he would make duas saying that y'all
love them as I love them. There's no
doubt that he loves Osama bin Zayed. When
Osama bin Zayed is older, and he's not
like 50 years older, as a late teen,
he's appointed in high ranks
within the Muslim army because
patterns of maturation
and emerging adulthood were very different. And it's
not that it doesn't exist today.
Right? But just again to understand the context
of what we're talking about here. You go
to some parts of the world right now
and walk into marketplaces,
and there's 7 year old sitting behind stalls,
dealing and negotiating with people.
But a product of society where we are
that doesn't allow for accountability,
which is intrinsically linked to this idea of
submission from the standpoint of our religion
that you have choice, but you don't sometimes
choose when the full picture
is not presented in where is that it
should be.
And dunya then becomes what you're actually in
submission to or your own ego.
Do you see the one who takes their
desire as being their lord?
Usama bin Zayed is a mature young man,
and he's in the battlefield
there
with a Medanese person, someone from the Ansar,
a man from Medina.
There's somebody who is going back and forth
with them, causing a lot of detriment,
and before Usama is about to strike a
fatal blow, this man says.
And Osama bin Zayed has seconds to decide
what he's going to do.
So he decides to take this man's life.
The Medanese man goes back to the prophet
and says, this is what transpired.
The man said his Shahada, Osama took his
life. Is this what we're supposed to do?
He's drowning a direct fatwa from the prophet
of God. He's not telling on somebody. He's
just trying to understand religiously what do we
do in this situation.
The prophet says to him, did you kill
him after he said
And Osama bin Zayed says
that he was just seeking protection. Right? How
we say
He's
saying he's seeking protection in this way. He
said, did you kill him after he said
He was just scared to die, oh messenger
of God. And he says, you Osama, did
you open up his chest and look into
his heart to see that this was the
reason that he did what he did?
And then he continues to ask him, did
you kill him after he said
Did you kill him after he said
To the extent that Osama bin Zayed says,
I wish I became Muslim after this day
so that the prophet wouldn't be so disappointed
in me.
There's other narrations that give us different insight
on similar incidents,
same incidents,
but the prophet has a similar interaction with
Osama bin Zayed.
He is in the battle. Somebody
is causing problems,
takes his life after he says,
The people say, oh, messenger of God, rejoice.
Osama took care of this person who did
this. The prophet says, tell me how it
happened, and he gives each detail including that
the man says
before he takes his life. And the prophet
says immediately,
then why did you kill him?
He says,
seek forgiveness on my behalf, oh messenger of
god.
He says, yeah,
Osama Then, Osama, what are you gonna do
when he comes carrying
this against you on the day of judgment?
He says, it's,
seek forgiveness on my behalf, oh messenger of
god.
This is, what are you gonna do when
he comes carrying this
against you on the day of judgment?
Another principle
to this
is when he is saying, Akbirni * Islam,
and the prophet is saying, this is what
is Islam,
This is what is iman.
You are not the adjudicator
of somebody's
Islam.
The notion is not to utilize for yourself
limited knowledge that then elevates you by denigrating
somebody else.
Within the prism of what is Islam and
what the prophet has brought, there are diverse
opinions pretty much on most everything.
And it becomes a sign of spiritual immaturity
to believe I know the reason that everything
happened and every opinion on whatever it is.
We don't wanna be in this place,
where we think about things in these ways.
I used to be a TA when I
was an undergrad at the New York City
Technical College
across the street from Tandon, which was then
called Polytechnic,
our engineering school in Brooklyn.
It was the winter time and I went
to pray in the New York City Technical
College
prayer room that they had for Muslim students.
I made wudu in the bathroom.
I took off my socks because that's the
opinion I follow that you can't wipe over
socks. There's other people who have different opinions.
And then I put my socks back on
because it was the winter and it was
snowing and it was cold.
And I went into the prayer room there's
a guy leaning against the wall. I'm not
stereotyping
him, but he looks like somebody that would
hang out in an MSA prayer room all
day.
And a guy came to pray next to
me,
and we prayed together.
And then the person who is sitting in
the prayer room pretty much all day said
to him in Urdu
that he's wearing his socks and wiped over
his socks when he made wudu, so his
prayer doesn't count, count, which means your prayer
doesn't count and you should repeat your prayer.
And I turned around and started talking to
him back in Urdu and said, I actually
took off my socks, but even if I
didn't take off my socks, who are you
to tell me my prayer doesn't count?
And he said, I didn't know you spoke
Urdu.
And I said,
that makes it twice as worse that you're
gossiping about me in front of me,
and you were wrong on numerous occasions.
And this poor guy is just trying to
worship his god, and he sees you as
the dawn of the MSA
because you look Muslim by the length of
your beard. You have more responsibility
than to just play games with this beautiful
religion and tweaking your ego.
And he said, sorry brother. I won't do
it again. And I said, you shouldn't have
done in the first place.
Says that we as Muslims connect by virtue,
not of shared externals,
shared race, shared culture, shared class.
But you are people who will praise salah
together, you should be able to eat together.
You are people who share a common shahada,
that should be enough for you to uphold
a certain sense of dignity towards one another.
The Quranic narrative already says,
that all of the children of Adam are
dignified regardless of their faith. Everyone you share
humanity with. But now you nuance it with
a shared relationship in faith rooted in this.
This is a key variable.
I'm not connected to you just because you
and I speak the same language.
I'm not going to look for a way
to weaponize
this beautiful deen and take things
into a place where I suddenly now comment
on everybody's
practice.
The prophet is telling his
close companion that he loves. Did you look
into someone's chest,
opening it up and looking into their heart
to see why they do what they do?
So it's not meant to be in this
place of let me use it to suddenly
break down people around me.
What is Islam? This is Islam. Just these
five things.
And the angel
says,
that he has spoken the truth.
That you are truthful.
He you are correct.
There's a point here on Adam also that
stems from the first part
that is important to understand.
That you wouldn't
be in a place where when you're speaking
to somebody out of deference,
an elder, a professor,
a teacher, a sheikh, whether you agree with
them or not, that you sit down and
you ask them a question.
Hey. Do we pray 5 times a day?
And the person says, yes. We pray 5
times a day. And then you say to
them, yeah. You're right.
It comes across as disrespectful.
There's an absence of adab that is there.
You understand
ethics in Islam to be situational,
not things that are just absolute. I don't
talk to my 8 year old the way
that I talked to his almost 80 year
old grandfather.
They are in different frames of existence.
The angel Jibrael is given a different insight
here based off of what we were talking
about before.
Why is he able to say to the
prophet
something that a student should not say to
a teacher, a young person should not speak
to an elder in that way because he's
the prophet's teacher.
So he's able to engage him in a
different capacity.
We're gonna go through each of those points
in detail,
and we want to understand them from the
stand point of they lay the foundation
dimensionally,
you have to practice this religion. If somebody
says, what's the points of the practice?
Well, these are the things you gotta do.
That second frame,
give me news what is this thing of
iman
It's something that has to happen simultaneously
that most of us don't get.
If you want to have a starting point
because he now gives these 6 articles of
faith,
which again, if there's a commonality
across the board of what is foundational
principles of iman,
then you don't want to get into the
habit of saying that somebody
is not right in their being
Muslim if they are sharing these things in
common with you.
We're gonna look in the coming weeks at
this part of the hadith in a lot
more detail.
But to start off with some of the
things that you wanna do is look at
Surah Al Ikhlas,
the short chapter that many of us know
that speak to us fundamentally about what is
the theology of God in our religion.
It's a very negative knowledge, not pessimistic, but
we know who Allah is by knowing who
Allah is not.
If I asked each one of you to
write down on a piece of paper and
hand to me who is God to you,
what would you write on it?
And to understand that in this prism
of iman Bilalah,
having faith in God,
you can believe that Allah created you. It
doesn't mean that you believe Allah is your
provider.
You can believe that Allah is Al Khaliq.
It doesn't mean that you believe that he
is Ar Rahman, the most merciful.
You can believe that Allah made you and
created you and put you in this world
and even believe that he will take you
out. It doesn't mean you believe that you
have some type of accountability
towards him or that you're going to stand
in front of him. Do you believe in
his eternal beginninglessness?
Do you understand that even after there is
nothing, there will still be him? Do you
recognize
who Allah is
as an entity
in our relationship to our Islam.
We'll go through all of these things in
terms of angels and books and messengers and
the last day and predestination,
god, they're the good and bad of it.
And then talk about Hassan, how do these
three things look at each other from a
dimensional standpoint,
and then how the prophet encapsulates all of
this in the variable of time.
Right? When he's asking about tell me about
the hour. What I like you to do
between this week and next week is think
about these things.
Not just as practice that somebody gave to
you, you converted to Islam and they said,
here's a list of do's and don'ts and
rules. Where you were born into it and
you were taught how to recite the Arabic
of the Quran and the mechanics of the
prayer, but nobody said this is who you're
praying to.
Think about it as systems that exist within
a broader umbrella
overlapping
as dimensions that are necessary
for the enhancement
of one's own relationship
to themselves,
to the others around them, to God
in very definitive ways,
and where you stand in relation to all
of them. We're gonna call the Adan in
a minute,
and sorry we're rushing through it, but Maghrib
is earlier. One of the things that we'll
probably do maybe from next week, just by
a show of hands, if we move the
start time of the helicopter
for the next few weeks to 7:30,
will that work for people if you raise
your hands just by a show of hands?
7:30 ish.
Yeah.
Okay.
The other option is we still start at
6, then we pause at Maghrib, but Maghrib
will be even, like, 10 minutes earlier next
week. So we just kinda what if we
start at 7 o'clock? How would that work
for people? Can I just get a show
of hands?
Yeah.
Okay.
So we'll figure it out, but the kinda,
daylight savings time will push things back a
bit,
soon, but just so there's not, like, a
abrupt break. So we're gonna have iftar. It's
potluck. If you brought food, feel free to
put it on the table.
If people,
want to bring stuff for Thursdays iftar, you
can as well. Just a few couple of
quick things before we break. You don't have
to fast to to stick around for Iftar.
Please do stick around for Iftar so we
can just be in community with each other.
People can get to know one another a
little bit better. And after we pray Maghrib
and people pray their, we'll make a couple
of other announcements
as well. Okay. So if somebody wants to
call the Adan,
you wanna call the Adan really quick? Yeah.
Hearth.
And then, we'll stand to pray.
If you haven't break in your fast, if
you were fasting, you can grab a date
from the table in the back. We'll see
everyone next week.