Divine Parables #09 Spiderwebs – The Shambles Of Shirk 29-41

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

of humanity be realized.

of humanity be realized.