Mohammad Elshinawy – Divine Parables #09 Spiderwebs – The Shambles Of Shirk 29-41
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the parables of the Quran and their implications for personal life, emphasizing the "will" of Allah's power and actions. They stress the importance of recognizing and following the "will" of Allah's actions to avoid disappointment and crumble. The speaker also touches on the danger of false entities and the "will" of sh appointed people, emphasizing the importance of testing one's actions and understanding the dynamics of power within the world. The "will" of sh appointed people is a factor in achieving unity of humanity, and the potential collapse of society and sh pattern are factors in achieving unity of humanity.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah Alhamdulillah.
Wassalaatu wa salamu ala rasulillahahu
alaahi wa sahabijmainu.
Be in the name of Allah. All praise
and glory be to Allah. May His finest
peace and blessings be upon his messenger Muhammad,
and his family, and his companions, and all
those who adhere to his guidance.
Brothers and sisters, before I begin,
I need to tell you that I cannot
describe how much I have personally
fallen in love with the study of the
parables of the Quran in this month, and
I hope you're benefiting as well. But I
cannot tell you how much I have. And
I hope that our benefit is not just
hearing and listening,
and being fascinated, and being entertained. And I
hope I'm not the last to benefit from
my words, but just know that and know
that it is extra difficult for me to
decide every night what I'm not gonna share.
Because it's just so amazing and so endless.
In any case, may Allah
bless our time and our decisions.
Tonight's parable is in Surah Al Ankabut, the
surah of the spider, 29th chapter of the
Quran. And it is about the namesake of
the surah, the Ankabut itself, the spider.
And ultimately this is a parable regarding
the inherent
perfect might and power of Allah,
and the inherent
powerlessness
of everything else.
And by extension, the wisdom and the correctness
of tawhid, of singling him out as the
ultimate source of power,
and
the futile,
pointless,
preposterous notion of shirk of setting equals to
Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Allah says the example of those who equate
others with him, deem others as equivalent to
him.
Is like the example
of the spider
beta
when it constructs its house.
And certainly the weakest of houses
is the house of the spider
If only they would realize.
So this parable is to help us realize
the reality check
of Allah's great power
and the utter powerlessness
of everything else.
Think about it. What is the house of
the spider? Obviously the house of the spider
is the spider web. What is the the
house of the spider? It is flimsy threads.
It does not
offer any shelter
from an enemy attacking.
It does not offer any protection from the
elements, the cold, the wind, the heat, nothing
at all. Right?
Therefore, it doesn't even deserve to be called
a home. The supposed home or house of
the spider is not a home at all.
It's just a name that it is that
it that is undeserved.
And likewise throughout the Quran, Allah azza wa
Jal says, all of these false entities you
rely on in here
It is nothing but asma, names, labels that
you called that you and your forefathers.
So in reality, you're just worshiping the label.
It's imaginary.
It's not actually providing you with anything. It
is flimsy, it is weak, It is unreliable.
It is like as Ibn Al Qayyim said,
you take the skin of the onion, you
know, the onion peeled, the very thin, almost
see through skin of the onion, and you
call it meat. It will not nourish you.
Changing the name won't do anything.
And so this is the first thing that
all of the idols or the ideas, the
presumed power of anything else is pathetic and
vulnerable and unstable,
and bound to disappoint and crumble.
The second reflection
that we can perhaps stop at is that
the house of the spider is not just
unqualified to be called a house,
it is actually a trap,
isn't it? You know they say that the
spider doesn't even necessarily
live on the web. It goes to more
reliable areas like between 2 rocks or something,
and it has like a trap line. Now
we know this from like modern observation and
stuff. When the fly lands, the fly gets
trapped. It feels the vibration it runs to
eat it. Right? It's it looks like a
but it's a trap.
Likewise with shirk.
Shirk has this false promise
of security,
of refuge, of sanctuary, of fulfillment.
You will never have security outside away from
Allah
You will never have inner peace distant from
Him
It's actually a horrific experience
to get caught in the trap
of the spider web and await for the
spider to get to you and eat you
alive.
Similarly, like the other ayah that says,
whomever sets equals with Allah confuses Allah with
others,
It's like they fell from the sky. Horrific
experience. You might die from a heart attack,
a love forbid, on the way down before
you actually crash.
You can't And you will not really have
much chance at survival through shirk. Right? The
same way you don't have much survival and
you fall for the trap, or you fall
out without a
a parachute or something. Yes?
So it is a trap. And recognizing it
as a trap is a great favor from
Allah azaawajal
for us.
This this you know illusion of power,
what can and can't we share here?
You know,
our job, our test in life is what?
To make sure we never allow anything to
crowd the uppermost station in our heart. Tawhid.
Yes?
Because then you are not differentiating
between
your firmest hand hold
and between a flimsy thread. You know elsewhere
in the Quran, Allah said that openly. He
said,
Whomever rejects all
other supposed entities, supposed sources of power, and
believes in Allah. What makes a mummin so
resilient, so strong, so stable? It's not that
you believe in Allah.
It's not even that you worship Allah. It
is that you've rejected all else but Allah.
It's that sword of yours where you say,
Because you know if you only worship Allah,
but you still believe there are others that
are inherently powerful out there, you will always
be haunted
by what if I'm not pleasing the other
god right now? Whether they're my boss or
some supernatural being. Right? That is the problem.
That is the trap.
And so
our test in life is to differentiate
always between the flimsy thread and the firmest
hand hold. That's our job.
You know, why is it that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala
allowed for illusions
of power to exist, so that this test
would be a real test. Do you know
Surat Al Ankabut, the chapter of the spider
begins with what? A hasib an nasu and
yutaraku. The people think they're gonna be left
alone to say, We believe in the one
true God. And they will not be tested.
No. We're gonna test you.
Then it speaks about the illusion of power.
And are you gonna push through and never
fall short of seeing through that? And the
surah ends with saying what,
If you keep those that strive to do
this, strive in our path, strive for our
sake, we will guide them. You know this
just like the in Surat Muhammad which is
also the Surat Khitaal of combats and fighting.
Allah says, Dalik, walawyasha
Allahu lantasaraminhim
minhum.
That will be sort of the the dynamic,
believers, disbelievers, shayateen,
all of these. Right?
And if Allah wished, He could've defeated them
all.
But He wants to test you one with
another.
So this is our test in life, to
separate between the flimsy thread, the pathetic,
to see through it all, and to hold
on to Allah
no
matter what.
It's all about to collapse,
to see it that way. You know, interestingly,
I was reflecting just today on
think of
the Zionist project
For how long they've been weaving their web
of allies,
and lies, and conspiracies,
and networking,
and it is all collapsing right in front
of them, and they're making in their scrambles
one uncalculated
sort of mistake after another. May Allah accelerate
the collapse.
But think about it. They're getting caught completely
off guard.
Or even look in your own personal life.
Shaitan is casting web after web of temptations
on us all year round,
shackling us with these things and in an
instant,
Allah chains him up and says, Start over
in Ramadan.
This is Allah
The last thing I will say very quickly
or else I'm going to be all over
the place tonight,
is that some of the scholars said
that
the
spider
very rarely
lives in a colony. It is imaginable.
They may have colonies, but in general, spiders
build their webs alone away from the rest,
and they're solitary creatures.
And likewise with shirk.
With shirk, when everyone sort of making up
their own false god, they're going to sort
of build their
allegiance and their enmity based on whether you
agree with my god. So this is why
without the unity of Allah,
you will never have the unity of humanity.
Through shirk,
even humanity, the social fabric, the camaraderie, the
fraternity, the will be in shambles as well.
Not just the individual,
not just his strength, not just his psychology,
not just his spiritual purity. The relationships
will never work without tawhid.
They will never be.
And so, you know, Malcolm
used to always say this. He used to
say that
Malcolm X, Malik Shabazz
when he went to war with the racism
problem. He said, The Americans need to understand
that nothing has the solution to racism,
except what?
Islam. Nothing.
Because you know, what are all the turf
wars, the territorialness of all human? What is
it? It is because you are your own
inherent God. You're imagining yourself, your the illusion
of you being God. So everyone's gotta be
like me, and everyone's pulling in their own
direction. But when we all submit to Allah,
one creator on this one planet, we are
one family, only through that can the ego
sort of be reeled in, and the unity
of humanity be realized.