Maryam Amir – Be Famous to the Angels
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss various topics including the loss of their grandfather, the importance of building relationships with the Q jam, and the importance of reading the Quran in a understood language. They also touch upon the impact of the Prophet's words on their confidence in their Q Kia and the importance of seeking fame and success in life. The Q Chevrolet did not record the Q fever, but the Q Chevrolet did not say that Adam Adam's mother was disappointed for a second. The speakers emphasize the importance of seeking fame and success in life and building emotional connections with the Quran.
AI: Summary ©
There are female reciters of the Quran.
Women have the ability to recite the Quran
very freely.
And so I think she's at the forefront
of doing that.
Recently, I came across this app, Fadiya.
I'm not encouraging the brothers necessarily to download
the app, but I want all the sisters
to download this app.
It has over 80 female reciters of the
Quran.
And I'm sure it's an incredible thing to
be able to hear women recite the Quran
for our sisters.
And so she's at the forefront of that,
she's a Fadiya herself.
In addition to that, she does a lot
of work in the area where she lives.
She is also a scholar.
She has a degree from Al-Azhar University.
There are many, many people who benefited from
that institution, and it's such an honor to
have her with us.
So I'll invite her to the stage.
She'll speak for about 20 minutes or so.
Afterwards, we're going to hear from our brother,
Sami, who I introduced before.
Our favorite political analyst about American affairs from
the UK.
And lastly, someone who needs no introduction, I'd
like to invite Imam Al-Azhar, who will
speak to us.
He is someone that we all know, a
local scholar, a local imam.
He does a lot of youth work.
He's not affiliated with organizations, but he's always
supporting every organization that we mention here.
And so Insha'Allah, I'll invite Hussainah to
come speak about the Quran that is the
ocean.
The ocean that is the Quran, and the
impact of the Quran in our lives.
In Ramadan, many of us seek certain surahs
that we want to hear, right?
Maybe some of you are looking for Surah
Ar-Rahman, and you can't wait for Tarwiyah
when you get to hear that surah.
Maybe you want to hear Surah Ad-Duha.
Maybe there's a specific ayah, a specific surah,
that you wait all Ramadan to be able
to hear, and you feel like Allah SWT
is maybe speaking directly to you when you
hear that surah.
And every Ramadan, there's a set of verses
that I seek.
Of course, we all seek all of the
Quran.
We love all of the Quran.
But there are different surahs for different realities
in our life.
And so, this particular Ramadan, many years ago,
I was waiting for this set of surahs.
In my masjid, they do a juz'a
night.
So, I expected that I would hear it
on a particular night.
But I had moved to a new city,
and I was shocked to find that they
don't recite one juz'a night.
And every night, they pick a completely different
surah.
So, I went from one masjid to another,
trying to catch that set of verses.
SubhanAllah, I didn't.
In the last 10 nights, I flew back
to spend the last 10 nights with my
family, and subhanAllah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
willed that I would learn that my grandfather
was sick.
And we went to the hospital, and my
grandfather, may Allah have mercy on him, and
all of our loved ones who have passed,
and all of the martyrs of Gaza and
Sudan, and every single part of this Ummah,
my grandfather passed away in the last 10
nights.
And this was...
He was one of my best friends.
Losing my grandfather was something that I think
many of you can relate to when you
have had personal loss.
And if you haven't had personal loss, and
may Allah protect all of your families, you
can relate in seeing the pain in some
small way of what Gaza is experiencing, except
to another level.
They can't even bury their martyrs easily in
protection.
So after we went to the janazah and
we finished the day, may Allah have mercy
on him, and all of our loved ones,
that night I went to the masjid.
And for the first time, the imam who
always recites one juz' a night, who there
is no way he would be at the
beginning of the Quran for the verses that
I was looking for.
That night, he started reciting the verses that
I had been seeking.
And his story is that there was a
young boy who was being trained to be
a sorcerer by the king.
And as he was trained to be the
sorcerer, he also found a monk on the
road, and he would stop, and he would
learn from the monk, and then he would
go to the palace, and he would learn
from the sorcerer.
And then eventually, there was a big boulder
on the road, and he thought, let me
test what's going to work, what I'm learning
about Allah or magic.
So in Allah's name, he was able to
open the path.
And then he began to cure the sick
in Allah's name, including one of the people
who were part of the king's intimate crowd,
who became blind, and went to this man,
this young boy, who healed him in Allah's
name.
So when one of these advisors came back
to the king, and he said, how did
you get your vision back?
And he said, Allah cured me.
And the king said, I cured you.
And he said, no, you didn't.
And until he was tortured severely, he didn't
give up the fact that it was the
boy that had, by Allah's power, cured him.
And so then he, the king, tried to
kill the boy over and over, until he
couldn't kill him, except with the way the
boy said, in the name of Allah, the
people witnessed, and that's when they accepted that
Allah is their Lord.
And so trenches were built, and they were
thrown into a fire.
They were persecuted.
They were murdered.
They were massacred in a trench, just like
our brothers and sisters, our brothers today in
Al-Azhar, are being massacred.
And yes, they didn't encamp their fate.
That is the surah, that the people of
Al-Azhar, over and over, are fighting in
the pockets of their martyrs.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is talking to
them.
And when we come on the Day of
Judgment, or in the Hereafter, and when we
are asked, what did you do?
Many of us are going to say, inshallah,
we boycotted, we lobbied, we donated, we tried,
we tried, we tried.
But do you sometimes not feel hopeless?
Don't you feel like we've done all of
this, but it hasn't changed?
It has changed.
And one of the questions that I think
we need to ask ourselves when it comes
to Quran, is have we changed with Quran?
What has our relationship with the Quran been
like in this past year?
And if it hasn't changed, I want to
share with you the story of one of
the tabi'un.
He was, of course, righteous even.
For those who are not familiar with the
term, this is someone who met the companions
of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
Someone in your community passed away.
And this man was known to drink alcohol,
and he was known to commit major sin.
So when he had his janazah, this tabi
'un decided he's not going to go to
the janazah.
He decided not to go.
And that night, he had a dream.
And in this dream, this man, who was
known for not living a righteous life, he
appeared in the dream in paradise.
And he said to this man, why didn't
you come to my dream?
So when the tabi'un woke up, he
went and looked for someone who knew him,
who knew that person who had passed.
And he asked him, why didn't you come
to my dream?
And the response was, did you not know
that every single Friday, this man would go
and visit the orphans of the city.
He would gather them together.
He would bring them something sweet.
He would play with them and pat their
heads.
And he would ask them, make dua, that
Allah blesses me with repenting.
And three days before he passed, he repented.
The Qur'an is a door for every
single person in whatever place you are in
your life.
And many people tell me that they feel
like they're too old, they don't know where
to start.
They're too old, I think is very, very
funny.
Because I was approached by a 16-year
-old girl who had tears in her eyes
and cried, because she had not yet memorized
the Qur'an.
And I told her, Mashallah, you're 16.
You want to memorize the Qur'an at
16?
Mashallah, that's amazing.
She said, yeah, but everyone else around me
memorized it at 12.
And I said, Mashallah, you just made a
new community friend.
Because memorizing at 12 is a blessing and
an honor, Mashallah.
But 16 is still very young.
And I still get that question from people
in their 20s.
And by 30, people say I'm too old.
My Qur'an teacher, Shaykh Muhyiddullah, one of
his students memorized the entire Qur'an in
her late 70s.
She would go every single day with her
grandchild.
And it took her years until she memorized
the Qur'an.
Are we going to be alone in our
graves?
Yes or no?
No!
When you have the Qur'an, the Qur
'an will be with you.
The Qur'an will come to you.
Surah al-Mulk that you recited every single
night will be a protector for you.
The Qur'an will come so beautifully in
the shape of a person asking, do you
not recognize me?
And you see this man and you say
I don't recognize you.
This is the Qur'an that made your
throat so thirsty.
Where you struggle to recite where sometimes you
feel isolated from people because you struggle with
navigating what the Qur'an says or maybe
what people are encouraging you to do but
you tried and if you made a mistake
you repented.
This is the Qur'an.
It doesn't leave you in the hereafter.
So when we're looking at building a relationship
with the Qur'an, some of us know
we have ups and downs.
But first, looking at how to build the
Qur'an in an emotional context, an emotional
context is looking at the Qur'an not
as a book but as a relationship.
And I'm going to share with you three
different scenarios that happened to me.
Number one, I was on a flight last
month.
The middle seat was empty.
There was a man sitting on the aisle.
And he told me that he used to
work for the airlines.
I was like, that's wonderful.
He said, I had friends who were the
pilots on my flight.
In this moment, I thought to myself, I
have no interest in continuing this conversation.
Previously, it would have been a Dawa opportunity.
After a year of genocide, I've found my
responsibility to educate you.
But, it is my responsibility to make Dawa
a course.
And so, I told him, I had a
relative in the tables.
Alhamdulillah, he's safe.
Alhamdulillah, he's alive.
Alhamdulillah, he was able to get out.
But, the way that he looked at me.
Now, that emotion, when you heard that statement,
where I ended up being like, what a
wonderful person to continue to get to know.
I wanted to feel that emotion.
Second, I was on a train.
I wanted to sit in the middle seat
and the only one available was one where
a woman was sitting in the aisle.
So, I asked her, would you mind moving
so that I can sit in the window
seat.
I said it way more politely.
Hello, how are you?
I hope you're doing well.
Would it be okay if I sat in
the middle?
She looked at me, looked me up, looked
me down, crowned me, said okay.
I was like this.
For women who are actually deaf, or maybe
men who are more visibly questioned for your
identity, do you resonate with maybe sometimes wondering,
was it my appearance?
Or honestly, if you're a person of color
or a person in the black community, we
all have reasons why we sat, sit for
a second.
Maybe that's our own internal processing, but this
moment was one of them that helped me
start shifting the way I looked at the
world and the way that the world saw
me.
I thought to myself, let me just introduce
myself.
Let me ask her how she's doing.
She told me, I'm on the way to
the funeral of my cousin who was my
best friend.
And so instead of taking it personally, I
started talking to her about her cousin and
her friend, and we started sitting together, and
we cried together, and we hugged by the
end.
Emotional connection that started out mature, but became
one that was very rooted in compassion and
in empathy.
Now I want you to imagine going to
the furag, and you have two different scenarios.
Number one, maybe your furag and experience started
as a child when your parents or a
teacher or someone in the community maybe harmed
you through the furag.
And that's very real.
People talk to me about that all the
time.
Especially because of Faria, which I'm so grateful
that you mentioned, brother, for when you introduced
me.
Thank you.
Faria is the woman furag reciters of it.
It's an app for sisters, for you and
your children, for families, and to all of
you to hear women's recitation of the furag.
We have a strong and long history of
women's recitation in our homeland.
And Mashallah, we're so blessed to have recitations
of women who have passed away, who were
famous reciters or public reciters on the radio
of Egypt in the early 1900s.
So it's been a pleasure for you to
listen to them and give them this opportunity
to inshallah continue having their voices listened to
in the Quran.
But women have come to me after we
put Faria out, and they've told me their
stories on why it was hard for them
to listen to the Quran until they listen
in a woman's voice.
And that makes me very sad because we
should love listening to Abdu'l-Basit and
Minshawi.
We should want to hear the Quran from
anyone.
But the reality is that some people have
a negative connotation with it unfortunately.
And so they shared with me that they
were able to come back to listening to
the Quran in a way that they hadn't
thought.
And so I want to share with you,
if you are struggling with building an emotional
connection with the Quran, number one, read it
in a language that you understand.
The Quran was revealed in Arabic to people
who spoke Arabic.
And there's also a story if you're reading
the tafsir of a surah that has to
do with menstruation, that there was a companion,
not a companion, he was a righteous person
who was listening to his neighbor because the
walls were very thin and he could hear
his neighbor reciting.
He was reciting the verses of menstruation.
And he's weeping and weeping and weeping and
his neighbor notes in the tafsir, this man
was not a native Arabic speaker.
And so the neighbor is like, why is
he crying about verses on that?
And it was so interesting to me to
see it noted in the tafsir of the
ayah that many of us, myself included, are
not native Arabic speakers.
And reading it in a language that you
understand is so important to access the words
of change of menstruation of the Qur'an.
And as you're reading it in Arabic, listen
to it.
Take courses, inshallah, so that you can continue
to build that relationship with it.
And number two, approaching it with an awareness
that the Qur'an is interactive.
There's an ayah in the Qur'an that
says, حَتَّى يَقُولَ الْوَسُولُ وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مَعَهُ مَثَى
النَّصْرُ اللَّهُ أَلَا إِنَّ نَصْرُ اللَّهُ قَرِيبٌ Until
even a messenger said, what is the victory
of Allah?
And then Allah affirms, indeed, the victory of
Allah is near.
Why was this verse revealed?
Because it was the battle of Ahzab.
And the companions were so scared.
They were being surrounded by all over them.
They were being surrounded.
And they thought, what's going to happen?
They were so terrified.
And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala revealed
this ayah.
But even the messenger asked, even the messenger
asked, where is the victory of Allah?
And sometimes if you've asked that question in
the past year, Allah has already answered that
question.
Indeed, the victory is near.
But we just have to keep working.
The Qur'an is interactive.
Why does the Qur'an mention that Maryam
said, يَا لَيْ تَلِمِتْ If only I had
died.
Why does the Qur'an mention the companions
who wanted to go with the Prophet sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam in terms of tawbah, on
the battle, and they couldn't.
So what?
تَفِيلُوا مِنَ الدَّمِي But their eyes just had
so many tears coming down from them.
Why did Allah record their tears instead of
recording when they said, الحمد لله, Allah has
the best plan.
Did they say that?
I don't know.
Because the Qur'an doesn't record it.
The Qur'an records that they cried.
Why is it that Maryam's mother عليها السلام
called out when she becomes a widow, and
now she's thinking being a single mother.
And in the tafsir of her discussion privately
with Allah, she's making dua, she sees she
has a girl.
And she's disappointed for a second.
Not because she doesn't want a girl, but
because she had a plan.
She was going to submit this baby to
Baytul Naqdis to be a servant.
Why does Allah include her processing of the
information?
Why does Allah include the fact that Adam
عليه السلام's son wouldn't kill the other?
Or the fact that Nuh عليه السلام with
so much emotion is saying to his son,
يَعْتَبْنَعْنَا Just come on the boat.
Every single one of us have pain and
struggle that the Qur'an reflects.
And the Qur'an did not say, be
optimistic.
Well of course it's, of course it's like
that, it's the optimistic.
But to the point that you never have
hope.
The Qur'an did not say, have so
much iman that you will never be upset
or sad.
The Qur'an was revealed because of sadness.
The Qur'an was revealed because of people
being afraid.
The Qur'an was revealed when the child
of a prophet turned away.
So what about when your child turns away?
The Qur'an interacts with us when we
interact with it.
It is ready to interact with us.
And subhanAllah, when we have this interaction with
the Qur'an, and we come to it
with understanding, it seeks answering you.
The Prophet ﷺ taught that if you are
so busy reciting the Qur'an, even if
you don't have time to make du'a,
and I'm not saying like, اَبْرَكَ سُبْتَكَ سُبْحَانَهُ
Really, make du'a, from your heart, that
even if you don't have time for that,
Allah will answer the needs of your heart
because you're so busy with the Qur'an.
And I want to end by telling you
to seek fame.
I want you to seek being famous.
But seek being famous with the angels.
Because Allah ﷻ, He ordered that angels roam
the earth looking for your voice reciting the
Qur'an in your home.
That your home is illuminated to the sky
because of your recitation of the Qur'an.
Imagine that the angels can't do anything except
what Allah ﷻ commands them to do.
And so as you seek Allah ﷻ, imagine
the angels seeking you because they want to
hear the words of Allah from your lips
and write it as you are the people
of the Qur'an.
The Qur'an means action.
So the more that you learn, many of
you may struggle with that connection at times.
But acting on the Qur'an, the companions
imagined that they saw a verse being revealed
but they didn't necessarily memorize that ayah.
But they acted on it.
Right now, in the previous session, they were
talking about Starbucks and Sami Hamdi, may Allah
bless him, spoke about how the Yemeni coffee
shops didn't have that much support because people
were going to Starbucks.
During COVID, there were so many incidents, sorry
pre-COVID, 2018, there were so many incidences
of Starbucks employees either being harassed by Starbucks
because they were black or clients entering and
Starbucks employees being racist towards them that they
had to shut the entire Starbucks down just
so that they could do diversity training for
one day.
Why didn't we boycott at that time?
The Qur'an is about changing our life.
Whether it is something as small as where
my money is going to go because I
do not value giving billionaires the ability to
have power over certain decisions or infrastructures that
continue to harm people or whether it's standing
in the middle of the night and like
one man, whose story I'll end with, inshallah,
who was known as someone who was righteous,
who was known as someone who gave lectures
and when he passed away, his son had
a dream about him and this man was
in Jannah and his son asked him, how
did you get to Jannah?
And he didn't say it was because of
the many, many, many hours of qiyam or
it was the many, many, many hours of
giving lectures, which I'm sure, of course, was
helped by Allah's mercy, but what it was
was that he would go once a week
to a group of illiterate elderly women and
he would teach them three or four fatiha.
The span, that short span, of working on
this one deed was enough for Allah to
enter him into paradise.
And sometimes when we feel as if what
we are doing is nothing, remember, that Salaf
al-Din conquered Jerusalem by Allah's mercy, but
it was because of the people whose names
are not known who supported him.
And he said, it was the dua of
the people who are in their homes, who
cannot be with us.
Those people like you, who are reciting the
Qur'an, who are donating, who are doing
everything you can and you don't see the
effort, you don't see the fruit, those people
sometimes passed away before they saw Aqsa open,
just like Murad al-Din and the work
he did until Salaf al-Din came.
But what did he say?
Their dua allowed for the arrows to hit
their mark.
Every time you go to the Qur'an,
make the intention, oh Allah, let this be
an arrow that hits its mark.
Because you don't realize the power of our
Ummah if we were to turn to the
Qur'an collectively, how it would be able
to shift us for our liberation from our
own selves.
And this from all together.