Khalid Latif – Seerah Studies, Part 1 The Meccan Years
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The speakers emphasize the importance of learning to be content with what one has and finding a way to achieve success without harming one's ego. They stress the importance of trust and reliance in making decisions and protecting individual privacy, as well as the need for a multi pronged understanding of clout and being open to change. The speakers also emphasize the importance of learning to make w vi and being willing to be open to change, as it is crucial for achieving success.
AI: Summary ©
He's gonna close at 9 today and not
10, so we'll still pray Maghrib here,
but just so people anticipate after Maghrib
we'll head out
as opposed to the building staying open a
little bit later like it normally does.
Technically the building was supposed to be closed
by 7,
but they extended it for us.
A lot of people are away for the
July 4th weekend,
so just so we're on the same page
with that. Yeah.
Great.
So last time we were talking about some
of the things we could extrapolate
from the migration
to Abyssinia
and we talked about
both the 1st and second migrations to Abyssinia
and that this was taking place in the
5th year
of
Revelation
at this point. So we're 5 years into
it,
that they come into
Abyssinia,
and that first migration takes place in the
month of Rajab.
A couple of months later
there is the
second migration
and the reality now is there's about
a 100 Muslims
in Abyssinia give or take.
That's a big chunk
of the community.
That
demographic
stays now
well into
the establishment
of the city of Medina.
They're in Abyssinia, and we'll talk about that
for a little in a little bit,
as to why that might be something that
the prophet
had take place.
The Najashi
is an interesting
individual,
because ultimately,
he is someone who
the prophet gives us indication in the hadith
that he becomes Muslim.
He's a Christian king,
the king that is
the ruler of the Abyssinian nation, what we
know as modern day Ethiopia,
that this group of Muslims have been sent
to, and we talked about this a lot
in terms of what are some of the
wisdoms
that they were sent to this particular kingdom,
the prophet being informed as an individual
that he knows that this kingdom actually exists.
We talked about
why it was important
that and impactful to understand that this was
also
the kingdom of a black king in a
black community
and a black society
that the Quraysh were being sent to, that
the early Muslims were being sent to.
But
in the 9th year after Hijra, so in
Medina,
there's an instance now where the prophet
tells his companions
that,
essentially
today
our brother has passed away, the Najashi in
Abyssinia,
and he commands people to pray the Janaza
prayer for him.
Over the course of the period where he
is in authority
of his kingdom,
he's not publicly
declaring his Islam.
And there's a lot of instances
over that period of time. Right? We're saying
from the 5th year
after Hijra or sorry, the 5th year of
Revelation.
Right? So year 5
of Islam
and then there's 13 years in the Meccan
period. We're in year 5 right now, so
we have a long way to go till
we get to Medina,
but that's gonna be another 8 years
in Mecca
and then there's 10 years in Medina,
right? So
the calendar
that we have that denotes after Hijra
is not talking about the Abyssinian
Hijra migration,
but the
high migration from Mecca to Medina.
So in the 9th year after that movement
is when the Najashi passes away. This Christian
king
who they were sent to
so if you do the math, right, 8
years plus 9 years
is
17 years. It's a long period of time.
And over the course of that time,
he is being
challenged every so often that
you don't adhere to our Christian theology,
you don't adhere to what it is that
our doctrine teaches.
There's some indications
within
the
prophetic
biography,
the literature of the Sira, that the Najashi
had written
certain
things onto a document like a small letter
that he would carry within
essentially his garment.
And when people would ask him questions
about his belief in a triunal system, a
belief
in the deification
of Jesus,
alayhis salam,
his belief in some of these things,
he simply would put his hand on his
chest and say this is where my belief
is in response to that question.
But, as we had mentioned when we were
talking about the persecution
of the early Muslim community
and there were some people who took it
forthright like Bilal ibn Rabah,
but there were others who when they were
really pushed and challenged
that at some instances, they would just give
in to what the Meccans were doing under
that persecution.
The Najashi has
autonomy within our religious tradition
because of the threat to his life and
his existence
to not publicly
tell people that he practices
Islam.
And the whole idea is that when you're
in that space where there's an outward threat,
the explanation
that preserves your life
is
acceptable
so long as it's not indicative
of what you actually believe in your heart.
You see what I mean?
And so the Najashi is in this place
where
he is considered now categorically
as
one of 2 different groupings of people.
We have like the title of a sahaba,
a companion of the prophet.
Right? To be a companion of the prophet,
you're somebody who would have had to
met the prophet in your lifetime
and then passed away in a state of
iman, a state of faith.
So Abu Lahab, Abu Jahl,
these were people who met the prophet in
person
but did not pass away
in a state of iman.
Then there was people who come in the
generation after, they're called the Dabaiin.
So these were people who would have met
a companion
at some point in their lifetime
and they then pass away in a state
of faith, a state of iman.
There's 2
individuals that we're taught about, the Najashi being
one of them
and another person by the name of Oasis
Al Qarni, Oasis of the Qarn tribe.
Right? Some people might have heard his name
before. He's a person who the prophet tells
Umar ibn Al Khattab
that if you see this man Owais of
Qaran,
like, come amongst, like, caravans coming from Yemen,
etcetera. He gave a bunch of descriptions, and
you can look it up online. Right? Owais
of Karun,
he says if you ever meet him, like,
tell him to make dua for you. Do
you know? And probably this week, but more
likely next week, we're gonna talk about the
conversion of Umar ibn Al Khattab. Today we're
gonna talk about the conversion of Hamzay ibn
Abdul Mutaleb,
which also takes place in this 5th year
of Revelation,
but Umar
is known to be like a very key
figure in the establishment
of the Muslim community. The prophet says of
him
that if there was a a Nabi, a
messenger after me, it would be this man,
Umar. Right? He has a lot of kind
of,
weight and recognition
in terms of his contributions
and the prophet's telling him that if you
see this man you
tell him to make dua for you, right?
Because of the lofty nature
of Owais of Qarun and one of the
things that we're taught of Owais of Qarun
was that he had a mother who was
very ill
and he had the opportunity to come visit
the prophet
and then gain this title of Sahaba
so that he would have met the prophet
in his lifetime.
But he foregoes this
and he stays
and takes care of his sick mother at
home.
So these two people,
they have a different opinion
of people who are of this background,
that we know they existed during the time
of the prophet,
but they didn't meet the prophet and they
clearly die in a state of iman, the
prophet prays over the Najashi.
So there's some people who would say that
yes, they're also given the title of Sahaba,
but what most people would say is that
they exist categorically
in a different
grouping than people who are known as Sahaba
or the Tzabayim.
Right? But they have a uniqueness because they're
willing
to exert on their convictions
something that helps them to stand out from
the rest of the groupings, And this is
something that's a really important thing to reflect
upon. Right? Like there's a companion
by the name of Saeed bin Zayd and
his father is a man by the name
of Zayd bin Amr An Nuffel.
Zayd bin Amr An Nuffel,
he passes away before the prophet starts preaching
Islam, but he was known as somebody who
was Hanif. He spoke out against social
injustices.
One of the things that Zayd ibn Amr
An Nufayl would do is that customary in
the Meccan society
was that people wanted to have sons. They
didn't want to have daughters, and they practice
female infanticide.
They would literally bury their daughters alive
and this man, Zaid,
would go to the fathers who didn't want
their daughters and would say don't bury them
alive, I'll look after them.
His son is now asking the prophet, what
happened to my dad?
He came before you started preaching. The prophet
said on the day when we all stand
in front of Allah
and every person will stand behind the one
they claim to be a follower of. So
the Ummah of Musa Alaihi Salam will stand
behind Moses,
The Ummah of Nuh, alayhis salaam, will stand
behind Noah, peace be upon them both. The
Ummah of Muhammad, alayhis salaam, will stand behind
him. May Allah make us from amongst those
who stand behind the prophet Muhammad.
He said on that day when everyone
will stand amongst the nations they claim to
be a part of, your father is going
to stand as a nation unto himself.
Right? Like, he's not standing behind anybody. Do
you know? But what was giving uniqueness
to these individuals
was both the conviction they had and how
they were willing to exert action based off
of conviction.
They were distinct from what the norm was.
This is what hanif means. Right? We talked
about tzajumah a couple of times. Right, but
the Hanif
was somebody who's a non conformist.
You know? Like,
they didn't necessarily
just fit into what was normatively understood in
society.
With the Najashi also,
kind of wrapping up some of what we're
talking about in relation to Abyssinia,
the prophet
prays the funeral prayer for the Najashi,
like
without the body present.
There's different opinions on this, right, that some
people will then utilize. They'll say you can
pray the funeral
for someone who has passed away
without their body being present.
What are instances that this might happen? Somebody
drowns,
Right? Somebody,
you know,
is, you know,
lost
in battle someplace. Right?
When
we had September 11th,
you know, in 2,001,
the World Trade Center was attacked,
There was
a man
who was part of a community that I
grew up in in New Jersey. His name
was Tarek Amanullah, who died in the World
Trade Center,
attacks
and,
you know, I used to coach his son
in soccer. I knew him really well. He's
a very nice man, may Allah grant him
peace.
There was tons of people who
in the World Trade Center attacks,
there wasn't really like any discernible
parts of their body that were left, right?
There were like bits and pieces of things
that might indicate like some type of DNA.
So there's instances as to why there might
be a need to pray a genazo without
a body present.
There's other opinions that would say this was
an exception to the rule. Like, it's not
the norm
and where you don't have the body, you
can't do the janaza prayer. Right? And Allah
knows best. They're both valid opinions.
So the prophet
has
most of these Muslims stay in Abyssinia
until the 7th year after Hijra.
So they've now been in Medina for 7
years
and
that's the point where he turns to the
Najashi and says,
send all of them back to Medina.
Why do you think this is? And, like,
what is some of the things we can
extrapolate from this?
That they're not in Mecca where they're being
persecuted.
They're in Medina
and they're pretty much closer to the conquest,
the return back of Mecca to their authority
than not. They've established a lot in those
7 years in Medina.
Why does the prophet
have them still stay
in Medina for 7 years? Like, what are
in Abyssinia for these 7 years in Medina?
What are some of the things that we
can kinda draw from this in terms of
just learnings that he doesn't bring all of
them back right away? He has them stay
in Abyssinia
quite at a distance from them,
and they're not proselytizing
by the way, right? Like they're in Abyssinia,
we know that Najashi became Muslim,
but there's not any indication that a lot
of other people in Abyssinia
converted to Islam at that time. If anything,
when we talked last week,
when she's talking about the kind of anxiety
that they're feeling
because they're in this place just trying to
do their own thing and then all of
a sudden the king calls them to come
speak in their court and they're in a
state now that's quite frantic, like what's about
to happen here? They're trying to keep it
undercover.
They're not trying to necessarily,
you know, say, Abyssinia is going to be
where we propagate all of this stuff.
So why
7 years after the Hijra is when there's
now movement away
from Abyssinia back to Medina.
And we could just to get people talking,
like, why do you think this is? Strategically,
what's happening there? What are some of the
things we can take from it? If you
can turn the person next to you and
just kinda talk it out a bit, and
then we'll come back and discuss and then
move forward from there. But go ahead.
Okay. So what are some of the things
we're talking about?
Why do we think this might have been
the case strategically
that they still stayed there even after Medina
was established? Or what are some of the
things we can kind of extrapolate from this?
What did we discuss?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, the establishment
of a Muslim community in and of itself
does not mean that you have to automatically
now leave your place
to go and be in a place where
Islam
is now kind of the mode of governance,
right? We don't have kind of these, you
know, understandings of the world that
is a part of if you're looking at
kind of social commentaries
on Islam through a political framework,
There's some people who would divide it into
Dar al Islam, like the abode of Islam,
Dar al Harb, like the abode of warfare,
right, and there's these like 2 kind of
conflicting modes,
but the predominant
understanding
is that there's a third prism that's called
Dar al Salam,
and this is an abode of harmonious living
that you're able to fundamentally
exist
within societies
as long as there's no threat to your
faith
that you can be there and you can
thrive in these places. Do you know? What
else did we discuss? Like, what else might
be the reasons as to why they were
there? Yeah.
We were kinda discussing how even though the
presence of the president of the prophet Salas
wasn't actually even physically there, So they're kind
of serving as an example of how we
can maintain our faith in both, again, a
place where
it's, like, it's not a majority Muslim country
or anything, but it's also having that faith
in our messenger
and his teachings.
Yeah. Okay.
Other thoughts? Anything else?
So in the context of what they're experiencing,
right, the entirety of what we've been looking
at for months is a life that's being
lived in real time.
Do you know?
Up until this point, we're in the 5th
year
after Revelation,
but we've looked at
now
45 years that the prophet has been alive,
right, because he got Revelation at 40,
and we talked about so many things that
precede revelation.
Been talking about like a long chunk of
history, but if we narrow it down now
to just these 5 years,
what is it that brings them to Abyssinia
in the first place?
It's not that they're moving to this place
proactively
out of a sense of joy, they're moving
to Abyssinia
because they're being killed in Mecca.
Right?
And there's a good chance
for the individual
maintenance of their faith
that those people initially,
like 15 or 16, the second group is
80, they're going to protect and preserve their
own faith,
leaving behind family, leaving behind friends, leaving behind
everything that they know,
but also
as they individually preserve their faith,
they
are so to
a source of preservation of the faith on
a whole. Do you know what I mean?
Because there's not so many people left in
Mecca at this point
when all of these people have gone in
the second migration of Abyssinia.
And we're gonna talk
in the coming weeks about how the prophet
starts to go from place to place. He
goes to Thayef
and people just boot him out of Thayef,
right, abusively.
When he gets to Medina, the people welcome
him into Medina,
but
what if Medina doesn't work?
Right?
What happens
if Medina
just fails?
Does that make sense?
And the whole idea
of creating now
something that says
we're just gonna do everything
in this all or nothing mode. Right? Like
when we talk about Badr, the prophet stands
and makes dua
everybody in the world who believes in you
is here.
If we get wiped out, nobody's gonna be
left. Do you know?
So recognizing that he's living these experiences,
he's living through this persecution,
He's seeing consequently what's taking place.
The idea that there's continuity
through the establishment
still
of a grouping of people that are thriving
and practicing
their faith elsewhere
also ensures
that if Medina does not work out,
there's still people someplace else that can keep
this thing going.
That there's still opportunity
for us to then think out,
maybe we shift and move someplace else.
Why is that an important thing for us
to understand
aside from, like, recognizing
the brilliance of foresight that the prophet has.
So remember, you wanna think now, because we've
talked about this enough, that you wanna start
to see how different pieces of this
is executed upon
throughout,
like, the entirety of the siddah. So we
talk about the prophet being a shepherd
and we say, what's the relationship between the
shepherd and the sheep? Those of you here
like some months ago, right, the sheep is
limited in its vision and its scope. The
shepherd has foresight. It's looking in the distance.
He's taking these skills
and applying them
with a recognition
of everything he's learning
as he's going through any of these things.
And there can be shifts in dynamics
at any given juncture, especially as you get
bigger and bigger
because in the first couple of years when
the
period of prophethood was more private, nobody was
bothering any of them at all and then
when he makes a public propagation
that's where things get messy, right? They move
into a medina.
There's nothing that he has that has been
told to him, hey, by the way, this
is 100%
gonna be successful.
It's going to be something.
Why is this an important thing to understand?
So you came to Joma maybe
last week or 2 weeks ago. I don't
remember what I talked about Jummah, when I
talked about it. But one of the Fridays,
we talked about tawakkal,
like trust in God.
Right? Was anybody here last Friday? Was it
last Friday we talked about that?
Yeah. Great. And what did we say? There's
3 modes of reliance on God that people
implement or reliance. Right? Not on God, but
just reliance. There's a person
who solely
says
I put my trust in God, but then
does not exert their authority or power
to work towards the achievement of what it
is
that they're asking of God.
Do you know? They just say, I'm gonna
ask God
to do this and then I'm not gonna
put in any effort
on my own.
And the example that we utilize were
people who would come for Hajj from Yemen
and they didn't bring a lot of provision,
right? You can look up the Hadid, it's
there. These groups would come from Yemen, they
didn't bring provisions for, you know, the journey.
When they were told like why are you
not doing this, they would say like, you
know,
we are like Allah has us, right? And
then they'd get to Mecca and from Mecca
when they get to Medina, they didn't have
anything
and they would have to, like, beg for
support.
And there's verses in the Quran that
essentially are revealed in relation to these incidents
that say that you take your provision when
you go on your journey,
but
the best of provisions is having taqwa of
Allah.
Right? But to illustrate it, it's you put
your trust in Allah
but there was
no action
to utilize the means that you have access
to to also work towards what you want
or the other grouping, secondly, were people who
relied solely on the means,
but did not then put any reliance on
Allah. So the example I gave was when
the prophet Noah, peace be upon him, the
floods arise,
he tells his son come with me and
his son says I'm going to the mountains.
He's reliant
upon the means
but he has no reliance upon the divine
and then when you have the combination
of the reliance on Allah and then you
exert your means,
right, you trust in God and tie your
camel as the Hadid says.
The combination of both, that's what Tawakkal is
rooted in.
And so, like, when Mary, peace be upon
her,
is at the base of the tree,
like, she's still told to shake the tree.
Do you know what I mean? She's got
to exert the action
in kind of engaging the tree.
Does that make sense?
So the prophet here
has his trust in God,
but he's got to still tie his camel.
And so, if this thing in Medina doesn't
work,
this thing in Abyssinia is really important.
Until there's surety,
we have to make sure
that that's still an option.
Do you see what I mean?
Right? And it's putting into play
this notion of what live
actually is. I put my reliance in the
divine and I still take the means
that I have access to. So I ask
Allah for healing,
but I still then, like, go take the
medicine.
Right? The medicine can only do what Allah
allows for it to do, but I engage
in the means,
the combination of the 2. Put your trust
in God and tie your camel. Does this
make sense?
A couple of other things to think about
in this instance,
we said,
Amr ibn al As
was not Muslim at this time
and he was amongst the people that the
Quraysh sent to Abyssinia
to bring people back to Mecca.
He wasn't successful.
Right?
How far was Abyssinia from Mecca? Do people
remember? We talked about it a bunch of
times.
70 days what?
Walking. Right? It's far,
you know?
This guy
wanted so badly
to bring these Muslims back so they could
persecute them more and he failed at it.
But the catalyst for his failure
was that the person in authority, the nijashi,
the negus,
he
bought into what Jafar ibn Abi Talib was
saying
was the belief.
And we read the beautiful
words that Jaffa Radiallahu An shared
last time and you should familiarize yourself with
it. It's like a
really amazing moment in the Sira. If you
read it and try to just visualize it
in your head and the words that he
shares, it's remarkable.
How do you think Ahmed ibn al-'As is
making that 70 day trek back to Mecca?
You know, and he's not walking, maybe he's
on a mount, we don't know how many
days it took him, but it didn't take
him an hour. Right?
He had to go back
trying to figure out
what he
just failed at and how did he fail.
So we said last time, he bought gifts
for like the bishops and the advisors of
the king. He knew how to schmooze with
people and get in front of the Najashi,
he even brought gifts that he knew the
Najashi would appreciate
and they still didn't get to bring these
people back.
So what some of our narrations say is
that when Amer bin Al As comes back
to his home,
he just keeps himself in his house
and he's not talking to anybody.
He's not an everyday person. If he was
some random person, they wouldn't have sent him
to Abyssinia in the first place. Right?
So people
take notice of this,
but what he's trying to figure out when
he's in his house
is what is it that the Nejashi
sees in what these people are doing
that
I don't necessarily
see eye to eye with?
Amr ibn al-'As
becomes Muslim
in Medina
shortly before the conquest of Mecca takes place.
It takes him that much time
from the 5th year after Hijra,
of Revelation
until around, like,
the 6th, 7th year after Hijra. Right? Because
Fath Al Makkah is around the 8th year
after Hijra. We'll talk about all of this
later. You have to know the dates just
to memorize it, but just to understand sequentially,
like, what's actually happening in real time?
It takes from
the 5th year of revelation
until that much time
in Medina
to then come to a place where he
finds truth in Islam.
A portion of the catalyst
starts to now sit with him in the
back of his head
that this man who is a Christian king,
he's a king.
He's the king of a kingdom
that's a thriving kingdom.
It's not a kingdom that's running on empty.
It's like doing well.
He believes
that
this person is a prophet.
Like, he believes that their teachings are similar.
He believes in what these people are saying
they believe in.
It's like, why don't I believe in this
thing?
And that opportunity
to be able to reflect
is afforded to him,
but it takes him a little bit of
time to get to the place
where he then
becomes Muslim later on. Right? And what's amazing
is when he comes and he says, I
don't want anything to be held against me.
In Medina,
the prophet says to him
that, like, a hijra
wipes out, like, everything that came before it,
migration.
Right?
And when you look at, like, the nuance
of meaning,
this man was involved also in
a great persecution that he made a migration
to Abyssinia
only to make life difficult for these people,
and now he makes a migration to Medina
in order to embrace
Muhammad Rasoolallah,
but it took him that much time to
do it. Do you know?
If you have people in your life
that fundamentally
you want them to understand something, but they're
just not there,
They go at their pace as best as
they can
and you don't know what's going on in
the back of somebody's head in terms of
now
how life experiences
get them to think things differently.
Right? Think about what it must feel like
for you when you don't get the job
you applied for, when the marriage you want
to have, like the person's
parents say no, when things don't work, how
much you're in your own head.
Amal bin Al As can only get to
where he has
gain through loss in his
mind
because he didn't
succeed,
he didn't bring them back.
But through that failure,
he has an opening to something
that's a greater blessing than anything else.
It gets his mind now to start reflecting
in things that he wasn't reflecting on prior
to. Do you see what I mean?
So it goes back to us individually
as well
and this idea of trust
that you can plan, I can plan, but
Allah is the best of planners.
And it might not make sense to you
in the moment and you might get frustrated,
but you still
just put your trust and then you let
Allah
do what it is that he knows makes
the most sense.
So you have family that's not doing right,
you don't know what it is that's going
to tweak them towards an understanding
of what's gonna
be more
good for them, not just in a worldly
sense, but in otherworldly sense.
Everybody has this capacity to change. This man
was going to bring these people back so
that he could hurt them.
And then years later, he is amongst the
people who is praying side by side with
them.
How does that transition come into play and
what catalyzes it is important.
A beginning part in that journey for him
comes from him
failing at something,
not succeeding at it. You understand what I'm
saying? Does that make sense?
Okay. So let's do this just so we
can kinda think about a little bit. If
you can turn to the person next to
you, what is it bringing up for you?
What is it making you think about,
Let's talk about it a little bit and
then we'll come back and discuss, but go
ahead.
Is it not working?
Is that one here the whole time?
Is that one here the whole time?
I'm so out of it, man.
How does snow
okay.
So what are some of the things coming
up? Maybe around this idea of, like, trust,
reliance,
you know, and the divine,
because I think it's probably stuff we can
resonate with. Right?
Or even any of the rest of it.
What are you discussing? What's what's coming up
for people?
I feel the same way. Don't worry. It's
okay.
Yeah.
We discussed
rejection being redirection
something better is on the way than what
we imagine for ourselves.
Yeah.
That's amazing. Rejection being redirection.
Do you know? You shift paradigms. You're controlling
vantage points on some of this stuff. What
else?
Yeah.
The timeline you might have in your head
for someone's journey to where where you think
they should be or where you think they
will eventually get,
is kind of outside of our control. So,
like, having that perspective and being aware that
someone can only go at their pace. So
what what would you need to
do? It's like making decisions around, do you
wanna be there for that? What do you
need to do to allow you to be
there for that?
Yeah. And divine timing is a real hard
thing to wrestle with sometimes.
Me wanting it is not enough of,
reason as to why I should have it
right now.
Do you know? And the ego is very
real.
To get to a place where
my
defining
of,
like,
success is that I get it when I
want it, as soon as I want it,
and how I want it. You know, when
you live in a consumer driven society,
it's built off of this idea
that liberation is rooted in the freedom of
choice.
Do you know? But what they're really doing
is suffocating you with so many choices
that it gets you to a place where
you don't have contentment with what you have
because you're always wondering if something else is
better. Right?
And, you know,
I can't enjoy any of it because I
wonder if I had picked one of the
other options, that might have been better. You
know, why are there 50 types of jeans?
Right? Like, there weren't before.
When you go into a ice cream store
I use this example a lot. I take
my kids to get ice cream, they spend
hours like, not hours, that seems dangerous. They
spend we sit there for 8 hours.
They spend, like, a long amount of time
trying to figure out what ice cream to
get, you know, and they always end up
getting the same thing, but they're constantly,
like, looking and seeing, and they will sample
to the and my kids are cute, Michella,
so the people behind the, you know, like,
counter are like, we'll give you whatever you
want, keep sampling it.
And then when we sit down,
they're in a place where
they're not fully able to enjoy what they
have
because they're worried
that something else would have been better that
they didn't pick.
Right?
And you think about it, Like, why why
is it hard for Muslims to be committed
in relationships?
A good chunk of it is that I'm
always wondering if something else might
be better. Makes fundamentally
no sense
when you're looking at it and you're involved
in it, but it's not a product of,
like, maturity and immaturity.
It's a product of you live in a
consumer driven society
that's teaching you that novelty is what creates
contentment.
You have to constantly be buying something new.
And if you don't have, like, a new
version of this that you're using exactly the
same as the first five you bought with
money you could spend on something else because
you're buying into the marketing scheme that's teaching
you that your contentment is attached to having
this and every version of it that comes
out so purposely
that you know how crazy it is. They
keep changing the charging port, so you can't
even do anything other
than continue to buy stuff again and again.
But the second thing that it's teaching you
is not just that this is where your
happiness lies, but it also teaches you simultaneously
to be dissatisfied
with what you have in front of you
in the moment.
Do you know?
And that novelty
experience gets equated falsely with contentment.
And here, we're able to understand it through
some different prisms,
through some different recognitions
of, like, how do we actually get to
a place where inward balance is a part
of this? And it's not based off of
me just getting it how I want it,
when I want it, exactly the way that
I would like it.
And knowing how you work becomes important so
that you don't feel like you've succeeded
because people give you coffee written with your
name on it to your exact specification.
It's actually creating a detriment
that feeds the ego and enables entitlement
and thinks that just because I want something,
that means I should have it. And it's
a destroyer of.
Right? Because you're putting more emphasis now on
the nafs
than on the heart. The heart's contentment is
on this type of reliance.
What else is coming up for people when
we think about some of these things? What
else do we discuss?
Yeah.
Yeah. Amr ibn Al As is not stewing
in his failure
and then, like, berating the Nejashi
because he knows just like other people know
that Nejashi is a just person, He takes
care of his citizenry,
and he's open to the idea of contemplating
on something
even if it's against his perspective.
It's not an overnight experience,
but in a lot of where we get
situated, especially as you get older,
like bitterness sets in and jadedness sets in
and exhaustion sets in, the capacity to instantaneously
change
is not like something that happens. Sometimes
it takes a little bit of time,
but he's at least willing to tolerate the
idea
that this person
is someone who's offering a different vantage point.
What has he been immersed in in the
Meccan society?
The authority and the elite are the ones
who are actually
persecuting everybody,
not creating space for them. He's gotta be
out of his own bubble to be able
to think about what that insularity is providing
him with, but he's sucked back into it.
He still gets to a place where years
later, he's standing in front of the prophet
and he says, How many people in that
moment of that
contingent in Abyssinia
do you think if they were asked like,
hey, you think that guy one day is
gonna become Muslim?
Right?
We don't know. It's conjecture.
But likely, they were like, that guy wants
to just take us back
to destroy us. That's what he's bent on.
You see?
Okay.
What's happening in Mecca when this happens?
Like, they're in Abyssinia,
all this stuff is going on. Right? The
world doesn't function in a way where something's
happening in one part of the world, like
everything just freezes in the other part of
the world. We're all existing here right now
and there's so many other people
who you all know that they're existing right
now someplace else.
Every single person that's in the park right
now has their own thoughts. They're walking someplace.
People who are driving these cars, people who
are flying in planes above us, people who
are asleep on the other side of the
world, people who are just waking up in
different parts of the world. Right? Right now,
in some parts of the world, people are
getting ready to pray fajr. Do you know
what I mean? Things are happening
that
exist
simultaneously
to our existence.
We're not the center of everything.
There's things that are going
on all around us
whether we are moving or not moving. Does
that make sense?
So what's happening in Mecca right now likely
when
a ton of Muslims
who make up the majority of the numbers
are in Abyssinia
and they were already being persecuted
in Mecca
and the prophet doesn't go to Abyssinia
ever,
let alone on these migrations,
what do we assume is likely happening
in Mecca now at this point?
Hey, buddy. What do you think?
It's not a trick question.
So, like, trying to figure out how to
get rid of the community in Abyssinia or
how do you think it's like for the
prophet in Mecca right now? Oh, it sucks.
It's terrible. Right?
He just lost a ton of people
and it was in the midst of persecution.
What's gonna be happening
now at this juncture?
So in this 5th year
of Revelation,
one of the things that we start to
also see is how key individuals
play a role
in the development
of
the communal growth and the longevity of things.
The nejashi is a necessary
component
to what it is that those people experience.
Right?
Here now in Mecca, the prophet
finds himself in a situation
where he is walking near the mountain of
Safa and
as he is walking near the mountain of
Safa,
Abu Jahal
is in a particularly
hostile
mood.
He starts to verbally
abuse the prophet
and then starts to physically
abuse him, mistreat him. And we already know
that he was from amongst the most horrendous
in terms of his opposition
against the early Muslim community.
Now he's in a place where all of
his people are still in Mecca
and a majority of the prophet's people are
in Abyssinia.
He's got even less people to have his
back.
So Abu Jahal,
he
persecutes
and is hostile towards the prophet
in ways
that he has never been before
and he's doing it in front of people.
Abu Jahl, as a reminder to everyone,
he's from a clan that's called the Banu
Maqzum
and the prophet,
his clan's name is what?
The Banu Hashim. They're in different clans.
In this
kind of rant now and verbal abuse and
physical abuse,
Abu Jahal now starts to speak against
the forefathers and ancestry
of the prophet as well.
And there's a lot of women who are
in the area, like, hearing and listening what's
going on.
People from the Banu Hashem,
they see a line has been crossed
in relation to what's taking place
and the altercation
is something that sits with a lot of
them.
What's happening simultaneously
to this,
the prophet has an uncle,
Hamza ibn Abdul Muttalib.
Hamza Radiallahu An is
the son of Abdul Muttalib,
the grandfather
of the prophet
meaning that Hamza is the brother of who?
He's the brother of Abu Talib,
He's the brother of Abu Lahab.
He's the brother of Al Abbas
and he's also the brother of Abdullah, the
prophet's father.
Right?
Do people remember who Thaweiba was? We talked
about her months ago. Who's Thaweiba? You're nodding
your head.
Yeah. She nursed the prophet. Right? Thawayba
was the emancipated
servant of the prophet's uncle. That when the
news of the prophet's birth came to him,
he set this woman free and said go
nurse my nephew.
Hamza
is not
like much older than the prophet
And Hamza radiallahu an is close in age
to the prophet alaihi salaam,
and he's also
nursed by the same woman, the wayba.
So they share an extra bond
that is their milk brothers to each other.
Hamza radiallahu an
is somebody
who has a different
reputation in the Meccan society.
He's called us of the law,
the lion of God,
but he's known,
like,
for different things
in that Meccan society.
For example, he was known as somebody who
in battle,
he could fight with both hands at the
same time.
It's not like an easy thing to do.
Right?
I know a lot of us have
never been in battle before.
Clearly, I am not built as someone who
is out there doing those kinds of things.
But just try to conceptualize
as best as you can in your head.
Anything that you have seen
cinematically
where someone is fighting,
they usually have something to shield themselves
as well as something to kind of engage
the opposition
with weaponry, like in an offensive manner. But
just think about how you function as a
person. Right? Like most of us
are able to use one hand well.
You know, we write with one hand. We,
like,
have a stronger hand in relation to a
weaker hand. You know? Some of us might
be ambidextrous. Is anybody ambidextrous here? You can
use both of your hands. Amazing.
My son, Kareem, thinks he's ambidextrous
also. He's constantly telling me, Bubba, I'm righty
and lefty. I'm like, alright, green. You know?
But it's not an easy thing to do.
And the ability to do that well. Like,
think right now, if I said to everybody,
you can only come to the Islamic Center
if you write legibly
the same exact way with both of your
hands. You know? Most of us cannot do
that. This man can use a sword
in both of his hands
at the same time with efficiency.
That's like a thing you get known for.
Right?
He's also known because he's not really involved
in the day to day
stuff that's happening in Mecca.
He goes on a lot of expeditions,
explorations.
He's like a hunter
that will hunt and come back and share
stories of his hunts
and the things that he has seen. He
also shares the meat with people. He's not
hoarding it for himself. And one of the
things that he was known for
prior to his Islam
was that when he would come back from
one of these journeys
that he would
always make tawaf around the Kaaba before he
would go back to his home. It was
something he would do with all of his
belongings. He would come in, so he had
that element of spirituality.
Right? And you think about people who hunt
their own food, people who are travelers.
Right? People will ask Hamza
he's gonna take his Shahadah
in this 5th year after Revelation
And he's very close to the prophet. They
had a close, like, upbringing. They spent a
lot of time together,
you know, they had the same milk mother.
We talked about him,
like, when we talked about the wedding of
Khatija Radiallahu Ta'ala Anha to the
prophet and a little bit more detail there
and that Hamza was, like, present and one
of the witnesses at this wedding. You know,
he's close to the prophet of God.
He's not in Mecca so much
because he's going out and doing these things.
His hunts,
like, his travels,
but he still has this notoriety and recognition.
And when he comes back in,
people want to be like Hamza.
Do you know?
He comes in, they gather around him, they
look up to him. He's known as like
a strong,
well built,
like, attractive individual
and not just in terms of, like,
physical aspects of beauty, but when people have
confidence. Right? They have a sense of self
esteem.
You are drawn to their personas in different
ways,
right? And he's also not like a arrogant
person that we see this amongst other people,
but he's sharing his meat with people.
Right? He's engaging them when they're coming to
talk to him. He doesn't brush them away,
but he tells
them stories. Do you see what I mean?
When this thing happens
with
Abu Jahal and the prophet Alaihi Salam
near the Mount of Safa,
Hamza is away on one of his journeys.
He comes back in that day. He's got
his bow
around him. He's got all the stuff that
he's brought. He's getting ready to, like, tell
people some good stories.
Do you know?
The servant of Abdullah bin Jadaan
comes forth to Hamza
and says,
before you do this,
you need to know what was happening here
with your nephew.
And Hamzah radiallahu an, he says like what
took place?
And she starts to say I have never
seen
somebody do something like this as what was
done to your nephew today.
He's like, was it really that bad?
And she doesn't spare details and says it
was that bad.
Hamza Radiallahu An,
he still is carrying all of his stuff
with him,
and he walks now
where Abu Jahl is seated
amongst, like, the people
of his own clan and the people who
have his back,
and he goes to where he is and
he takes his bow
and he strikes
Abu Jahal in the head and they say
it, like, splits his head. Blood is gushing
forth from it. And all the Banu Maqzum
stand up to go at it with Hamzah
radiAllahu an.
And Hamzah radiAllahu an, he says that
you are attacking
my nephew,
you are attacking,
like, who he is,
then know I am one of his followers.
And they say in that instance,
the Islam of Hamza
is not genuine. It's coming
from a place of hubris
in relation to
the connection he has to the prophet alayhis
salam.
These people are ready to now go toe
to toe with Hamzah radiallahu an.
Abu Jahal
is not a physically small person
but the way we are constantly described
of the physique of Umar ibn Al Khattab,
for example,
is a large individual,
strong built. Right? Like, he's literally wearing his
sword on his neck when he's walking to
meet the prophet the day he converts.
If you've ever held a sword,
has anybody ever held a sword before?
No one's ever held it. You've held a
sword? Yeah, like a big sword?
Yeah. You can't carry it, like, on your
neck. It'll swing and you'll cut into yourself.
Do you know what I mean?
Carry a sword is crazy. I don't know
what you felt like when you held the
sword. Was it what was it like?
Oh, you're a better person than I am.
I was in Sri Lanka giving a chutba
at Jumma
and one of the sunnah's when you're giving
a chutba is you hold either like a
staff or a sword in your hand. I
clearly don't hold a sword in my hand
here in the middle of the West Village
at NYU when I'm giving chlutzpah and now
I'm on the member and this guy comes
and hands a sword to me. Right? And
I'm like, what is this? And now I'm
getting a hook up this thing in my
hand. I felt, like, super empowered, ready to
go.
He's wearing this on his his as a
necklace.
Right? That's how big of a person he
is, that it's not causing him physical damage.
Abu Jahal, they say, is physically,
like, large the way Umar is large, you
know?
Hamza
is going, like, head to head with him.
And the way they say he struck him,
if he struck a smaller person, that blow
would have likely killed that person.
And he struck this man who's, like, physically
more established.
He's able to endure some of it
and in the midst of it, Abu Jahl
tells his people,
no, let him be,
I did overstep my boundaries with his nephew.
I went too far in what I did
to him today.
Why do you think Abu Jahal does this
in this instance?
He has a shift now in his tenor.
Right? Because prior to all of this,
nobody's getting in his face.
And here now, he has an opportunity to
let all these people
tear Hamza apart.
But he says, no.
Let him be like I did do stuff
that I shouldn't have done.
What do you think it is that's happening
here in this instance
where he
doesn't
provoke or agitate,
why is that something that you think he's
doing? If you just turn to the persons
next to you and talk it out a
little bit, what do you think Abu Jahl
is hoping to achieve
through placating this situation?
But go ahead, and then we'll come back
and discuss.
I am just asking, what do we do
with this question? What do you do with
this question? What do you mean?
It's I
guess when you, like, spend, I'll understand.
Okay.
Is it a hard question?
No. But, like
like, he's all okay,
but then
he was why
do we need to I guess he wants
to play it. That's the only thing. Yeah.
So talk about it then. Why don't you
talk about it?
You doing okay?
Yeah.
You take a quick nap if you need
to.
No? Sir?
We can all do that. We can have
nap time for 5 months.
Okay. So what do we think?
Like, why is this
suddenly the response?
Abu Jahl,
he is not an ethical person.
Right? He is literally
been
abusing,
beating,
like, terrorizing
these people.
Why does he stop in this moment
and say I
was the wrong one here. I transgressed. What
what do we think?
Yeah. Go ahead. No. Go for
maybe because you want to avoid conflict between
2 tribes instead of just being 1 person.
Because
Okay. And why would that be a problem?
Like, if the Banu Banu muk Zoom and
the Banu Hashim kinda go at it, why
is this an issue?
What were you gonna say? I was gonna
say that the concept has a good reputation
in the community to go and gain someone
who has a reputation would be not good
for him.
Why?
Why? But he also mentioned, like, the economics
of it as well. Like, Macau is like
a trading city.
So it's just going off, but he said,
like, maybe
having, like, 2 tribes, like, fighting with each
other,
will
economically
will be in be in a negative sense.
Has anybody
thus far
been able to do what Hamza just did?
No. Right? Did we see anyone so far?
Like, any of them? Some of these people
are, like,
powerful in different ways. With Manim and Efnan,
he's wealthy.
Abu Bakr is wealthy. Right? They beat Abu
Bakr
to unconsciousness,
into a coma,
to the point where his clan also said
this thing that if he is dead, we're
gonna do to the persons who did this
to him like just as much if not
more so, right?
What does Hamza have that these people don't
have?
The power dynamic that he possesses
is not simply rooted
in what some of the other Muslims
who had some power and privilege possessed.
And he's the first person of this caliber
that is now going toe to toe with
Abu Jahal and the opposition.
It's not just a physical
kind of battle at this point,
but it becomes now an opportunity
for there to be that much more of
a notoriety
that exists now at the level of what
is intellectual in a war on ideas.
Everybody knows Hamzah radiallahu an.
They wanna hear his stories. They wanna be
like him. They want to, like, spend time
with him.
He is popular
amongst people across the board.
And if they start to fight with him
and he has iterated to them,
I am now a follower of my nephew,
then people are going to do what Hamza
did simply because Hamza did
it.
Do you see?
Because they can't do it, like, literally, when
they migrate to Medina,
everybody
is trying to be undercover. Right? Even when
the prophet and Abu Bakr migrate, they hide
in a cave. Do you know? Right? And
we'll talk about in more detail.
When Hamza is getting ready to leave Mecca
and go to Medina,
he stands in front of the Kaaba and
he says to people,
I'm gonna go. Does anybody wanna fight me
before I go?
He said, is there anyone
that wants to try to take me on?
Right now is your last chance. I'm leaving.
Does anybody want to do this?
And nobody does anything. They say to just
let him go
because they can't do anything to him in
that regard.
Do you see?
He's not gonna take it that way.
And Abu Jahal,
what do we know Why is Abu Jahal
called Abu Jahl? Is that his name?
No. What's his name?
Why do they call him Abu Jahal, the
father of ignorance?
Because what he was known as was Abul
Hakam, the father of wisdom.
So it was kind of a play on
the name that he had. So he's like
an intelligent person.
Right?
And he has also
this, like, thought process
that recognizes
that this moment is much bigger than my
ego being wounded.
I could go and put this guy in
his place and start like a clan on
clan battle. These guys literally launched the sacrilegious
wars. Do you remember when we talked about
the Fajal wars
and they could they had a multi year
battle
that ended up as a concluding point of
what they could have done right in the
onset of it and there would have been
no war and no bloodshed. Right? They'll do
anything for their egos,
but here he knows the cost is gonna
be greater,
that this will potentially then bring that many
more people to them.
Hamza
he leaves from this place
knowing that he was not sincere
in his conviction.
Can you guys move up this way just
so as people are coming in,
they know they can come and pray in
the space so they don't feel like they
have to. So we can just
kinda create some room for people to come
in. That'd be great.
Yeah.
So he now sits with himself
because
his
statement of conviction in his nephew,
he doesn't even know if that's what he
believes in. He just said it
because he knew that was gonna be the
thing that also
put Abu Jahal in his place for the
most part.
So now Hamza radiAllahu an is sitting here.
Think about, like, the context of this. He's
the prophet's
uncle.
He's his milk brother, they're close friends,
he, you know, is like well known, he's
popular,
he's of the Banu Hashim,
he's the son of Abdul Motalib
who is like
the person
in meccan
kind of lore.
Right? He's got a lot of different things
going on for him
in every way that somebody could on a
materialistic,
worldly sense of recognition.
And he's sitting with himself in this night
trying to figure out what do I actually
believe in at this point?
Is this something that's genuine?
Is this something that I actually buy into?
And Hamzah
he spends his night
in a place
where he wrestles with this question,
should I actually become Muslim
or not?
And in his own way turns to the
divine because he believes in God. Right? He
has this belief.
So in it now, he's looking for guidance.
He's looking for insight,
and it shifts from what it was during
the day to a place of
potential openness
and they say the next day when he
awakens,
he knows that Islam
is what it is that he should be
following.
So he goes to where the prophet alaihis
salam is,
and
he proclaims his faith in Allah as the
only god
and the only thing worthy of worship
and in the messengership
of his nephew
Right? This is a big deal.
How many elders in your life are willing
to follow you and what you think is
right?
Do you know?
Like, how many?
You think you know Islam better than me?
Right? You know, I taught you how to,
like, clean yourself after you go to the
bathroom. You're suddenly like this big person. You're
gonna tell me what it is. Hamzah radiAllahu
an is still the uncle of this man
and he's saying, you are now my leader.
Right? That's really, really remarkable
in and of itself and you know it
because you know elders in your life who
are not willing to hear a word that
you have to say of what it is
that would be beneficial to them. Right? May
Allah never make us like that. You don't
want to limit who your teachers are and
there's a lot that we can learn from
people who are younger than us. I started
working here when I was 22. I'm now
41.
Right? And every year when I work here,
a lot of you come from different access
points to our community,
but some of you are students. Right? Working
at a university, I get a year older
every year and the students stay the same
age every year. They're always 17, 18, 19
years old. I learned so much from these
kids
and
that's, like, an important thing to be able
to understand. What is he relenting to in
this moment? All the other stuff
that clearly in real time he's picking up
on, like these guys
are not getting treated well, they're getting treated
poorly.
Hamzah
when he now becomes Muslim
and he goes to the prophet, he's
not a passive
person in his Islam.
I'm gonna be Muslim. I believe in this
thing, and now I'm gonna go hunting. I'll
see you later.
I'm gonna go on an expedition
and kinda continue the way I was,
but he now plays a different role
in the development
of the Muslim community at that time.
We said that they were gathering
at Dar Al Arkam. You remember?
Right? The house
of, Al Arkam ibn
Al Arkam. Right?
The young man who inherited a home of
his father and they were going there to
convene.
Hamzah
essentially becomes
like the protector, the bodyguard.
It's a different type of protection
than what Abu Talib was able to offer.
Because Hamzah radiallahu an,
he's not going to let you
cross boundaries
with the people who he protects.
Do you see?
And at any given juncture, he's now becoming
more of the focal point
for what it is that people have to
go through in order to continue to persecute.
So in every instance whatsoever,
it adds now a different layer of protection.
It gives a different sense of hope to
those who are there
in that house of Al Arkam.
You walk in
and all of a sudden,
like, Hamza, the son of Abdul Motalib converted
to Islam.
That's crazy.
And they start to
feel
a different sense of
just protection
manifest through
this person
in what he offers.
When you read about Hamza
the way we talk, for example, about Abdullah
bin Masood, he stood in front of the
Kaaba and read Quran publicly the first time.
Right? Surah Rahman.
Do you know?
We don't hear things like that about Hamzah
do we?
When we read hadith like in the other
class that we do, we talk about Abu
Harira,
Aisha
we talk about Abdullah bin Umar. We talk
about prolific narrators of Hadith.
That's not what Hamza is known for.
Nobody is saying the recitation of Hamza bin
Abdul Mutaleb was amazing.
Nobody's talking about how he was profound
in his understanding of fiqh.
He was a protector
of Muslims,
and he offered something that nobody else could,
but it didn't come through the prism of
religious leadership.
Do you understand?
When we know who Hamzah is,
there's a lot of different things that we're
taught about in terms of his practices, his
habits.
Right? In the Meccan period of Islam,
alcohol has not been prohibited yet. Right? There's
no prohibition on alcohol. Hamzah radiallahuan
drank alcohol.
Understanding
some of these things requires us to think
out
where communally
there's not
power in the favor
of individuals
that are a minority population.
The recognition of what creates strength is not
simply about,
hey, that person who is quote, unquote the
most religious is what we need right now,
But to be able to see it as
a multi pronged understanding
of how clout is developed,
And you might be looking down at somebody
who could be what it is that is
needed
for the elevation
of a community's growth.
One other thing that happened, and we'll talk
about it more next week,
3 days
after Hamza
becomes
Muslim,
Umar bin Al Khattab becomes Muslim.
And with the 2 of them
being Muslim,
they're able to publicly
do things
in ways that they couldn't do before.
And this is all still happening
in year 5 of Revelation
with all of these people sitting in Abyssinia.
So when you're thinking about what's going on
right now, it's not that there's a 1,000
of them
and they have these numbers,
there's literally now back a regression
to
small numbers of Muslims in Mecca
because a lot of them are in Abyssinia
and these two people now, they leverage their
clout
and they're not bringing
clout to the Muslim community
because their access points are through what we
quite often
understand
leadership to be rooted in. It's not that
they're the prayer leaders. It's not that they're
the ones, like, teaching
the hadith about the athkar that you do.
They were bringing something that was a necessary
piece to the foundation of it, Hamza
in particular,
that was rooted in just his strength,
his courage,
his confidence.
He was the bodyguard of the Muslims.
He was their protector.
He had
no hesitation
in being able to stand and put himself
out there
in order to
offer this
to their development.
We're blessed in our community to have a
lot of different people step up in different
ways, but a lot of Muslim communities,
they push away their hamzahs.
They don't necessarily
find what is inherently beautiful
or strategically
enable there to be growth structures
because there tends to be now a pushing
away
unless you fit into this rigid
kind of box of what it means to
be authoritatively
qualified.
You see what I mean?
The other thing that's important to understand is
that Hamzah
he has self actualization.
He knows what he can uniquely offer back.
He's not trying to fit into somebody else's
steps that this is how I give back.
That person is great at reciting Quran. Great.
That's the spiritual gift Allah endowed them with.
Right? That person is a great orator.
That person
is
great at just their kindness and generosity.
You might be good with numbers. You might
be good with graphic design.
You might be good in an entire gamut
of characteristics
and trainings and skills,
interpersonal or otherwise,
but if you limit
it to this notion that says
our growth is going to be attached
to only equating leadership
to religious leadership,
then we're not gonna be able to have
the successes that these people have. When they
needed somebody more so than in any other
time,
Allah gave them a hunter.
Right?
He gave them somebody. Hamza is no joke.
Even when Umar comes to convert and he
knocks on the door of Al Arkam,
everybody backs away
because they're afraid. They don't know what's gonna
happen and so
Hamza stands up and says, I'm gonna go
get the door. Right? He's got no fear.
And there'll be people that we know who
are like this,
and you think about how they get pushed
away from community settings
because they might not necessarily fit into what
we archetypally
understand,
like a good practitioner
of religion
to be or to look like or whatever
else. Do you know what I mean?
Can you imagine if somebody who had that
strength was sitting next to you in the
course of a prayer?
They walk in. You think about
how you might conceptualize
a modern day hamza
carrying themselves, who they are.
Where we kind of find them is not
that they don't exist,
but it's not part of, like, the focus
strategy
of thinking out how it is that you
enhance certain things. Do you do you see
what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Right?
Hamzah radiallahu an,
he is a person
who anybody
who goes to Mecca and Medina,
they go to, like, the base of the
Mount of Ohad.
They
are there where the cemetery are is of
the shuhada,
the people who are martyred at the battle
of Uhud.
Nobody goes to Uhud
without greeting Hamzah
He becomes a target
for the mushrikeen,
and we'll get to Ohad and talk about
it more, but he is passed
from this world because Hind, who's not Muslim
at this time, hires a man by the
name of Washi, who's a spirit thrower, to
essentially assassinate Hamzah
and the nature of that assassination
is that he targets him in the midst
of this battle and then she comes upon
his body at the plain of Uhud
and cuts it open and bites into his
liver raw. Right? That's how much these people
disliked him and the hatred that they had,
and that's how much he put himself out
there,
right, through his sense of strength and his
sense of courage,
meeting what the challenges were.
He didn't have to be the person that
was leading people in the sense of I
stand in front of people to pray. He
was the person that was leading because he
said, I have your back.
You know? I'm here for you. I'm gonna
leverage
my clout and my privilege
to be able to offer to you, like,
protection.
Do you see what I mean?
And it's not to, like, gender the conversation,
but this is what, like, a Muslim man
is supposed to be doing also.
Right?
What did you say?
Sorry. Oh,
yeah. This is this is like the idea.
Right? We can delve deep into,
like, concepts of marua,
right, and look through entire sayings of companions
of the prophet, what manliness is, what masculinity
is. It's not like the kinda condescending understanding
of gender that comes about. Right? Nor does
it say that, like, a woman by any
means is helpless. You know, the first person
martyred in our religion is a woman. Do
you know? That's not what we're saying, but
we're saying here, this person knows,
like, what manhood is by living in this
way. He's not deriding people. He's not mocking
or ridiculing people. He's saying, I'm here to
have your back.
I'm here to offer to you a sense
of security, a sense of safety. Right? Hamzah,
he's willing to stand up to anybody
because he recognizes his capacity
to do that. Do you see what I
mean? Does that make sense?
Okay. Let's take a pause for a second.
You turn to the person next to you.
What's kinda coming up from you from this
part of it? Like, what is it making
you think about?
How do we kinda draw some meaning from
it in terms of where we are, like,
here today. We'll come back and discuss, but
go ahead and kinda talk it out for
a little bit. So yeah.
Who's this? My brother. Oh, yeah? Do you
like her?
Do do you get along with your sister?
You do? What do you like about her?
Amazing. Great.
Well done.
No, man.
There's no way it is.
Oh, god.
We're supposed to go to the gym last
semester. We didn't even go.
Are you living in Gramercy?
Do you live in Gram? Where do you
live?
Oh, it's not gonna happen. Wait. And you
said you're gonna get the full.
No. I didn't get it. No. Because, when
I when the voice message started, it was
me. Oh, yeah?
It's not gonna happen.
Where's Kareem? Kareem went to Virginia.
I just texted my wife. I said we're
they're at a place called House of Biryani
and kebabs right now.
Yeah.
You do?
Oh, man.
We said you said stay there. They coulda
hung out with you.
I have a lot of things to do
over the next few days, so I told
them they should make a plan. So my
wife has a really good friend that lives
in Virginia, and they have kids. They're gonna
stay with them for a year. Yeah.
Good to know. Okay.
So what are some of the things that
we're taking away? What's coming up for people?
What are we discussing?
We talked about the importance of diversity
and how it's important to our unique gifts
of the community, but also of ourselves
and how we each are we each have
a unique purpose. And,
you know, we also talk about how empathy
is often seen as a weakness, but it's
actually a superpower to feel things on a
visceral level,
and how courage is really what
essentially emboldened Hamza to stand up,
for his people and,
yeah, and how we all need to practice
nonjudgment,
because we might be judging people based upon
their appearance or ethnicity,
country of origin,
or gender, but they might be the reason
why our prayers are answered.
Yeah. Amazing.
Other thoughts? What else do we discuss? Yeah.
It kinda relates back to the piece we
were discussing on Monday about capacity Mhmm. And
how we as much as we have the
ability to
exemplify beauty, we also have the capacity to
be complete opposite.
So what Kimza taught us was to, like,
reflect and really just
if you truly like, you can choose to
do one thing or full send to the
other thing.
So without hesitation, you would choose to exemplify
this continuous support to back up.
Anything else?
And you know what's crazy is, like, you
don't need a 100 hamzas.
They just needed 1 hamza.
Right?
And then it puts things into different modes.
Do you see what I mean?
And if you are not in a place
where you can recognize
the uniqueness of what individuals can offer, sometimes
we don't need a 1,000 people to be
able to do a certain thing. You just
need 1 person to be able to do
something, and then somebody else does something else.
That's how you all kind of fit together.
Right? It's a hadith that tell us, you
know, we're like one body. If an organ
is not working, it's not functioning, the entire
body feels the sickness. Right? We have, like,
you know, likenesses to a building, brick upon
brick reinforcing one another.
There's bricks missing,
then there's like holes in your house. Right?
Doesn't work. So you're not fitting into a
place that takes away your uniqueness. You just
need 1 hamza. They didn't need a 1,000.
You see what I mean? Right? And then
a few days later, Umar
becomes Muslim.
These are game changers. Do you know? The
prophet starts to make these duas.
Allah bring to Islam.
Right? Izzah is a strength
that is rooted in dignity. There's honor in
what hamza does. There's dignity. There's chivalry. Right?
What we call futua
in Arabic. Right? Ibrahim alaihis salam, the prophet
Abraham, he's described as fata, like a young
person of nobility
when he's out there trying to, like, do
what he's doing. And futua
is like a central part of characteristics
within our tradition.
And so drawing upon these from, like, a
lesson standpoint
and thinking out, like, hey, what are they
doing? And the prophet particularly makes this jaw
because he's saying we need this type of
strength, this izah, this dignified
strength by the one of the 2 men
who is more beloved to you, Abin Esham,
who we know as Abu Jahal or Omer
Ibn Al Khattab, right, and the dua is
accepted
and they're leveraging
what they offer.
You know, we'll talk about Omar more next
time. What I'd like for us to do
is if you can
laptops or phones,
Google, like, this sentence because it'll bring up
a particular
website.
So the title of the page is True
Men,
Manhood and Masculinity
in Islam.
True Men,
Manhood and Masculinity
in Islam.
And so the link that you wanna go
to is with Abu Amina Elias.
Do people see it in front of them?
We can click on that link,
It talks about, like, positive masculinity
rooted just in hadith and sayings of the
companions
and the people who come after the companions.
And if we scroll down,
they would discuss these things. So if you
go, like, a few paragraphs down,
there's
a sentence that says the Islamic concept
of masculinity,
manhood or manliness,
al murua,
can be summarized by the broad ethical ethical
injections of the Quran and sunnah.
And so here there's a saying Ali
passed by some people who were talking.
Ali said, what are you doing? They said,
we are discussing manhood.
And Ali said, has not Allah Almighty sufficed
you in his book wherein he said, indeed
Allah commands justice and excellence?
Justice is to have a sense of fairness,
and excellence is to prefer others to yourself.
What remains of manhood
after this?
They have definitions of manhood.
Do you see?
You scroll down,
in the second, like, saying that's there,
says the foundation of a man is his
intellect, his honor, and his religion, and his
manhood is in his character.
Hassan al Basri
is,
asked what is manhood? Hassan says,
ad Din, it is the religion.
And Hassan said, indeed there is no religion
for one without manhood.
And you keep going down and they define
this in Lane's Lexicon,
manly perfection
consisting in abstinence from things unlawful
or in chastity of manners,
having some art or trade or in abstaining
from doing secretly
what one would be ashamed to do openly
or in the habit of doing what is
approved and shunning what is held base, when
preserving the soul from filthy actions, and what
disgraces it in the estimation of men or
in good manners, and guarding the tongue and
shunning impudence
or an equality of the mind by preserving
which a man is made to preserve in
good manners and habits, a manly virtue or
moral goodness.
Hamza is not a good man
because he is physically
strong. Do you understand?
Because there's other people who are physically strong.
Abu Jahl is physically strong,
but he lacks marua. He doesn't have these
definitions
of masculinity
to him.
You see?
And you can scroll through these and read
some of it even more.
Right?
What is manhood? Anaf says, forbearance at a
time of anger and forgiveness
at a time of power.
Why you wanna read these things? Well, 1,
it gives you an understanding
of what our religion understands,
like, from the standpoints of gender. Right? This
is what masculinity
is from an Islamic
paradigm.
I went through these things with various groupings
of people. One of them I did with
a group in Minnesota
that does work around domestic violence and they
said, can you come and do a workshop
on positive masculinity?
All I did with them for like 8
hours
was go through each of these things in
more detail like talking about what do the
words mean, the nuance of them, the grammar
of it, the person who's saying it, how
do we draw from it principally.
So somebody says, how do I want to
be like Hamzah? Whether you are a man
or a woman,
here's like a starting point
to read some of these sayings and think
about where do ethics and values
resonate in my practice of Islam.
You're not a good Muslim
just because
you know how to prostrate
with your back in the position and posture
perfectly.
You're not a good Muslim
just because when you bow, that back is
straight. Yes, the mechanics of it are a
part of it. We're not saying that it's
not, but it's not the absolute part of
it. Where are the ethics and values
that are meant to be the outcome
of religion
and ritual
that is transformational
of your inner self and should be bringing
you to things like this. Right?
A man will not hit the mark nor
fulfill his manhood
until he has two characteristics,
forgiving people and overlooking their faults. So when
we are conjecturing and ideating
about what we take away from Hamzah
and you can say like non judgmentalness.
This is what these people were saying centuries
ago that your job is to not look
and see what you perceive in adequacy to
be in someone,
but your sense of
brings you to a place
where you understand
that everybody's got falls, man.
And how you see people is not telling
you about who they are, but how you
see people tells you about yourself.
And if all you can get into is
being able to size somebody up and down
based off of their shortcomings,
You start to think what is masculinity? What
is marua?
Why do I always have to be right?
What is the bigger picture, the foresight?
What am I bringing people to?
Muhammad ibn Nadir Rahmullah,
he says the first part of manhood is
a cheerful face.
The second part is loving kindness to people.
The third part is fulfilling the needs of
others.
When you think about
stereotypes people have of Muslim men,
right,
Or you think about
Muslim men that you know or masculinity.
Is this what we're taught growing up?
What is, like, the idea of a strong
man societally?
What is, like, the purpose of it? They're
not saying here
manhood in Islam is that you put food
on the table.
Manhood in Islam is about how many dollars
you have in your pocket.
Manhood in Islam is about a cheerful face.
How can you have a cheerful face if
you exhaust yourself chasing after dunya and and
you don't know how to take care of
your heart and you burn yourself out
in immense ways, constantly chasing after things then
that just numb the exhaustion.
Umar ibn Al Khattab says, do not let
yourselves be impressed by the roar of a
man,
Rather, if he fulfills the trust
and restrains himself from harming the honor of
people,
then he will truly be a man.
He
says,
there is no manhood for the liar.
It's
beautiful.
Ethics,
character,
goodness.
It's not moral relativism.
This is what a Muslim should be striving
towards.
Hamzah
he wrestles with himself that night
to be open to the idea of what
is actual truth.
What is my belief? What is my conviction?
And how do I shift now what it
is that I hold on to inwardly
in terms of my strength, my notoriety?
Abu Bakr, when he becomes Muslim, they say
all that he possesses, his wealth, everything he
has is for Allah and his messenger.
Hamzah radiallahu an is doing the same thing.
He's just taking his talents and his skills,
recognizing his spiritual gifts, and then using them
in the way that Allah would want him
to use them. That's what you gotta do
is be open to the idea that Allah
has blessed you with spiritual gifts,
and then think about how they're not self
serving,
but so many of these things on are
talking about
how you treat others,
fulfilling the rights of others,
doing right by others, maintaining the trust with
others.
Do you
see?
Abdullah bin Masood
narrates that the messenger
says the believer does not taunt others, he
does not curse others, he does not use
profanity,
and he does not abuse others.
Saeed ibn al-'As,
he says,
I have not insulted a man
ever since I became a man.
Ibn al Mubarak says whoever belittles his brothers
will lose his manhood.
Do you get do you get the idea?
And so what brings Hamza to a place
is not his ego.
His protection of these people is rooted now
in buying into a system
that doesn't just teach you practice and ritual,
that's one facet to it, but there's a
robust theology
that you can buy into with faith. That's
what iman is that informs practice.
There's a spiritual tradition
that is amazing in what it offers to
people's inner self that is Ihsan.
There's sets of ethics and values
that tie it all together that is not
egocentric.
The prophet says
the strong are not the best wrestlers.
Indeed, the strong are only those who control
themselves when they are angry. How does Hamza
go from this emotional roller coaster? He comes
from a journey
not expecting somebody is going to tell him
that someone was abusing his nephew.
He hears this,
goes into a place where there's a physical
altercation,
and then shortly thereafter
is in a place of solitude and reflection
that ends with him saying,
Islam is true.
The capacity
to have that kind of emotional recovery
is not rooted in the physicality
of his strength,
but the strength that he has to overcome
and be in control of his emotional and
mental self.
How many times do you sit in a
place and you say, I wish I hadn't
said the thing that I said. Sorry I
said that to you. I didn't mean it.
I wasn't myself. I wasn't in control of
myself.
But what were you equipped with in your
training,
in your socialization?
The teachings of what goodness we're actually rooted
in?
Sufianna Thode,
he says, a woman will pass by a
man and he cannot restrain himself from looking
at her lustfully,
although there is no benefit in it, what
could be weaker than this? Have you ever
walked down the street and seen the way
men look at women?
Like, have you ever seen it? If you're
a woman and you've been looked at in
this way,
there's literally people, I walk with the street
down with my daughter, my son, my wife
by myself,
no hesitation
in the ways like literally
grown adult men are looking at women who
are half of their age,
let alone
anybody that has no permission to look at
them like that.
Our deen teaches us that this is wrong.
Sufyan athoudi
was a man who as there was legislative
growth in Islam,
he was Mujtihad.
He had his own school of thought.
That's how equipped he was in understanding
the fic of this religion and the depth
of this religion
and he's telling you that if you as
a man
can't control yourself
and how you look degradingly
and objectifying
a woman that does not have given you
any permission to look at in that way,
what is weaker than this?
Do you know what I mean? And that's
why you gotta know who these people are
in the sierra literature, and then think about
what's the base and foundation
of what's bringing them to exert like the
decisions that they make. Right?
The truly weak man is he who is
too weak to manage himself.
There's a lot more that you can kinda
look through here. I wanna share this with
you so, like, you spend some time with
it. Right? Our tradition teaches us what positive
masculinity
is
and we can then understand the absence of
these things as being the absence of masculinity
in our religion. So if you're raising boys
or you are a boy yourself, you are
a Muslim, you wanna think about what is
values and ethics
and what governs us,
these are the things that govern us. It's
not because
people around us are all standing up for
righteousness,
you still do what's right because it's the
right thing to do. There was one hamza
in the face of all of these people
and all of them had gone to Abyssinia
and he was still taking them on.
Right?
But he's doing it because there's a base
to his decisions. Do you get what I
mean?
Okay. My favorite is gonna come in in
2 minutes. It's really quick so you're not
ending hearing me talk. You can turn to
the person next to you. What's this conversation
bringing up, some takeaways,
We'll come back and discuss,
and call the athon, but go ahead.
Okay. So what are some of the things
we're taking away? Things coming up for people.
Maybe we have a couple of people to
share and then we'll
wrap up. Yeah.
Yeah. Right? If you keep reading, it tells
you Hadith, the prophet goes to the grave
of his mother and he starts to cry
and the people around him started to cry
because he was crying. Do you know?
That's masculinity,
like, that's a part of
it. Who teaches us that? Right?
What else what else is coming up for
people? Yeah. Like the idea of I mean,
it goes along with the whole idea of
not hypermasculinity
but the asserting dominance kind of thing, putting
other men down,
to assert dominance, to show your masculinity,
where we've read multiple instances where it's now
do not speak bad about your brother's job,
put, like, other people down.
So, yeah, it's just like the complete opposite
of what's being perpetuated and what is
quote unquote masculine in,
a lot of society.
Yeah. Right? And we talk about these people
in the prophetic
biography. We talk about these companions.
Umar Radiallahu An, Hamza Radiallahu An. We talk
about, like, these stories. He literally tells people,
he's going to Medina, I'm going to Medina.
Anybody wanna do anything about it? Anybody wanna
fight with me? And then the end result
is thinking about that from the standpoint
of very reductive and simplistic understandings
of what masculinity
is. Do you know? But what's bringing him
to that point is not machismo.
What's bringing him to that point is what
we're reading here.
What it is that is rooted in this
understanding
of what it needs to be like an
ethical
value driven practicing Muslim.
Tawhid
brings you to these types of characteristics.
Do you see? Does that make sense?
You wanna spend some time with it, reflect
on it, read it, because it also make
more expansive of an understanding of, like, what
this religion really offers to us. Right? It's
not just telling us to get a headache
trying to figure out how to make will
do and pray your prayers in a society
that isn't built around this, but once you
can tap into this
as a frame to understand why those exercises
are important because they're a conduit to get
your heart soft enough to be able to
then actually hold
virtues and values like this.
Do you know? They all go hand in
hand. Do you see what I mean?
And then you start to think about, like,
what these people were really built of and
what they were made of, and what is
a Muslim supposed to be?
And they're supposed to be different. Do you
know? I mean, like even this saying of
Sufjan, I could tell every single one of
us if we walk through any part of
New York City today, you definitely saw a
man that was looking at a woman inappropriately.
Do you see what I mean?
This is why people need, like, what Islam
teaches
because it's telling us to do what exactly,
right,
but if it's not taught to Muslims,
then Muslims don't know what, like, our teachings
are fundamentally
because you can't get out of just learning
how to make wudu. At some point, you
have to stop, like, just
engaging
in only the fiqh, right, or thinking about,
like, someone converts to Islam. There are people
who take shahada here all the time. Some
of you have done it here. Right? What
do people turn Islam into? Do you know?
Like, hey, you can't have a dog.
Right? Hey, you know what? Now you gotta
do this or you can't do that.
But
are they saying to you like this robust,
beautiful
tapestry
of teachings
that these are people who are saying this
thing based off of their understanding of the
Quran and the Hadith.
Somebody is can only give to you what
they have and from their understanding of the
Quran and the Hadith, you've been Muslim for
5 days and you gotta get rid of
your pet dog is the first thing you're
telling somebody.
Do you know what I'm saying? Right?
So who does it differently? We do it
differently because now you know these things exist.
You want to take what you know and
how you act on what you know and
keep those closer together. It's a secret to
contentment
and then you just try your best. You
go to a pace that makes sense. Hamza
wrestled with himself. He was willing in that
night to be open to change.
You gotta be willing to be able to
be open to change to then be able
to offer some of it back.
Okay.
Tomorrow, the building's closed,
along with the rest of the university buildings.
Friday, we're gonna be open only for Jumah
from 12 to 4.
It's gonna be me and Esam here, who's
our digital media coordinator. He'll come in in
a bit to take this down. So otherwise,
free at 12 o'clock or after Jumah. We
just need help with setting up for lunch,
cleaning up, serving stuff, all this kind of
stuff.
So definitely come, And if you know people
who are in the city and they don't
know what to do,
we're purposely having lunch this Friday. Because on
Friday, we wouldn't have had it because we
had lunch last Friday. We do it every
other week. Now it's gonna be fresh chicken
Friday, 3 weeks in a row. Right? So
somebody's duas were answered in the room,
you know? So tell people who you know
are gonna be by themselves.
They don't really know, like, what to do.
Maybe they haven't gone to Joma ever in
a long time because of work schedules.
Right? Or their Jumah experience is gonna be
something where nobody, like, talks to them. You
know you're gonna be here. Invite them to
come here to be with people and be
in community. And then if some of you
are free, the building's gonna be closed from
12 to 4. That would be open only
from 12 to 4, but there's stuff you
wanna do with other people afterwards. Right? It's
a long weekend. It's a holiday. Let it
be replenishing,
you know,
as best as it possibly can?
And then we will be closed for the
weekend.
Friday, we'll also have, like, our sisters circle
and, like, the parents class that we do
with toddlers.
All of that's gonna happen with lunch before
4 o'clock. So anybody who could help us
make that happen, we'd appreciate it if you
could come to help out. If people wanna
just put their chairs against the wall, we'll
call the adhan for Maghrib and pray. And
as a reminder, the building's gonna close at
9.
So after Maghrib is done, if you could
start kinda gathering your stuff and make your
way out, we'd appreciate it.
Thanks, man.
But we'll how do you be heading