Mohammad Elshinawy – The Subtle Secrets Behind This Eclipse
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
I ask Allah azza wa Jal to accept
these moments of standing from us and lighten
by that our standing on the day of
judgment. I ask Allah to write for us
in these moments His infinite favor.
And hearts that are awake and continue to
get sharper in their insight,
Sharpen our spiritual insight for us in a
way that would deliver us to His forgiveness
and His pleasure
at the end of our lives' journeys.
I want to mention 4 things quickly.
The first of them is that the prophet
sallallahu
alaihi wasallam when he spoke about the eclipse
he
said, If you see any of that, meaning
the sun or the moon eclipsing,
then scramble to prayer.
Means like flee, run.
To prayer salah and du'a and supplication invoking
Allah azza wa Jal, humbling yourself in pleading
with him.
And he said, zikr and continue remembering Allah
the words of remembrance. SubhanAllah.
The
recitation of the Quran. And he said, sadaqa
and give in charity.
And he said they said,
The sahaba said, and we used to be
instructed during the eclipses to,
look towards emancipating slaves. Free a slave if
you can. That's like a major donation. Right.
And istighfar and the seeking of forgiveness.
Seeking of forgiveness. Seeking of forgiveness.
And so I begin with that
to highlight
that the eclipse will be ongoing as is,
forecasted for about another hour or so. And
it was not intended that it have to
be entirely spent in prayer
but he did say, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
do these things salah and dua and wicked
and charity and freeing slaves and istighfar.
He said
until it it clears what has befallen you.
So it is supposed to be consumed
or subsumed in these acts of devotion one
for another. So try to have a share
of as many of these as possible
before this remaining hour is
out. The second, the context
in which it took place during the time
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. It's
a highly authentic hadith in Bukhari and Muslim
and elsewhere,
where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's
son Ibrahim had died. He had a 2
year old son named Ibrahim radhiallahu anhu who
had passed away
at 2.
And on the day that he passed away,
a solar eclipse took place. The sahab was,
At the same time it coincided with the
death of Ibrahim.
And so the people said
that this eclipse was due to the death
of Ibrahim.
The death of the prophet's son. The skies
are darkened
because the son of the messenger of God
has passed away. Right. Because that was the
standing myth. The standing superstition or myth was
that
a great man is born today, that's why
there's an eclipse. Or a great man has
died today, that's why there's an eclipse.
And so He sallallahu alaihi wasallam
despite the fact that
he was grieving his death
the death of his son,
he went out and ascended the altar or
the pulpit, the mimbar,
And he said to the people, oh people,
The sun and the moon are strictly two
signs of god.
2 of his great signs. Signs of his
power.
They don't eclipse
due to the death of any person or
the birth of any person.
And so if you see them,
then rush to the prayer and rush to
charity and rush to freeing slaves and rush
to
all that I explained to you. And you
know
you always have to stop and say,
this is of the greatest proofs of his
prophethood
Like if if you
are in it for self promotion, if you're
putting out this project about, like, everyone listen
to me, I'm god's final messenger,
this is extremely inconvenient.
This is extremely convenient as a credibility booster.
It's perfect.
The timing was like, it's a jackpot.
And he didn't even have to say it.
People went and said it. That's how obvious
it seemed to be, the connection.
And he was he he could've just let
them be. Not only did he not say
it
and despite the fact that he was hurting
so much from the lost of Ibrahim and
he said, the eye tears and the heartaches
but we only say that which pleases our
lord.
We belong to Allah and to him is
our return and it saddens us so much
to be separated from you, Ibrahim. He said
all of these things. Yet in the middle
of that,
he still made it a point to step
out and say, this has nothing to do
with me or my son.
I don't call to myself. I call to
Allah And
so this is of the greatest proofs of
his integrity and his
truthfulness as a prophet.
That was the second.
The third thing I wanted to say is
that this is above and before all a
sign of Allah's power that he wants us
to recognize and behold.
That's what it is. They are signs of
Allah to signal for us, to awaken within
us
recognition of his power.
You know,
the the fact that Allah
can make it go dark
during the daytime.
Yes.
The change of routine.
This is of the greatest things to revive
your faith is to not become a victim
of mundanity, to be a victim of routine.
It's daytime means lights out.
Lights on, not lights out. Lights are on.
No. The daytime can be dark.
There will be actually an end to all
routines.
And the one who did this, what you
can step outside in 5 minutes inshallah and
behold,
safely what you will behold, he will end
all routines
and he can and will bring about an
even greater change of routine.
Not only will the sun be darkened or
covered,
the sun will rise from a whole other
direction one day.
The famous hadith of Abu Dharr, do you
know where the sun went? He said, Allah
and his messenger know best.
Like you know, I know where the sun
went. The sun set. But he knows the
prophet alaihis salatu wasalam is trying to stir
in him something very important.
Unparalleled really in its importance
which is our world view. You know the
We speak about our belief.
The belief in the heart. The belief is
not a theory. It is the way you're
supposed to view the world.
This is why Allah
says,
It is not really the eyes that go
blind. That's not the point. That's not the
real problem.
But
it is our viewpoint, the heart. It is
the hearts that go blind. The hearts within
the the chests. And so he wanted Abu
Zar
to keep it clear in his head, in
his heart, in his world view. Where did
the sun go?
He said, Allah and his messenger no best.
He caught it. That, oh, you want to
show me something. Remind me of something. He
said, it went to prostrate under the throne
of Allah
Of course, in a manner This
is not something you have to sit there
and wonder like, Wait a minute. How if
the earth is not flat? And the sahaba
are unanimously agreed that the earth was spherical,
by the way. Ibn Hazmih reports this. Ibn
Hazmih they all knew it, but they knew
better to than to say how does that
work exactly? That it went under God's throne
when it's always out somewhere. Right.
So he said to them, it went to
prostrate under Allah's throne.
Meaning it's submitting to his power. Right. Submitting.
It says go, he goes.
He says, and it seeks permission to rise
again from the east and Allah permits
it until one day break of routine.
Until one day it will seek
permission to rise and Allah will not permit
it and say to it go back where
you set.
Go back where you came from and that
is the day the sun will rise from
the west. That will be the end of
routine. The end of time as we know
it.
And so this is important. You know some
people that are
religious skeptics, skeptics of religion. People that unfortunately
in this realm are are blind to just
how biased they are, and they think a
little bit too highly of their of their
opinions.
They say the reason why the Muslims pray
an eclipse prayer
is because, you know, back in the desert
back in the desert,
primitive backward society, they don't know when the
eclipse is gonna happen. So it catches them
off guard.
And so they have to scramble to the
prayer, oh my god, the day of judgement
is starting. Absolutely not. That's not the reason.
That's a very short sighted analysis.
It is actually A better one is I
know when the eclipse is gonna happen. They
knew by the way. So many people were
able to calculate even in pre modern times.
The same way I know when my harvest
is gonna happen. But when I actually see
them,
as we discussed yesterday, right, you see the
plant finally stand on its own two legs
figuratively. Right. When you see the harvest ready,
even though you know it's gonna happen in
September, October. But when you see it,
the gratitude is just different. You know pregnancy
is 9 months, but when you just see
the baby, it's different.
Yes. That is the idea. Allah a zawajal
does not want us to see one of
these signs
and not interact with it.
A sign of his great power.
It is only by his power that it's
actually daytime right now.
The snap in routine does that. And that
is my final,
you know, actually nobody move. I promise. Give
me 2 minutes. No. I'll be out in
10 seconds
or 2 seconds, but give me 2 minutes.
So I've actually been staring at this and
reflecting on it for, like, a week.
No. No. I'm not, like, that, sharp. I
wish I was. What I've been thinking, should
I share this with you? Because we all
eat dates. Right? We're all eating dates in
Ramadan.
Some of you may or may not know,
the date is actually referenced in so many
different places in the Quran, right. Cause it's
so familiar also to sort of the Madinan
culture. Right?
At least four times that I can recall.
So first of all there's the date itself.
There's a there's a point here. I promise.
Allah
says,
Allah is the one that splits open the
dates and the seeds.
He wants you to see this
rock solid piece of junk to people's eyes
as a source of life by Allah's power.
He's calling you to be intimately familiar with
him through the mundane, through the routine. So
that's one. The other one is Does anyone
know what this is called?
I don't even know if you guys are
going to be able to see it.
See this filmy stuff?
Where is he?
Okay. Don't answer the next 2. Okay?
You guys
can can you see it?
Good. I hope you can't see it so
that next time you grab a date, you
look for
it. There is this film me thing that
they say basically, subhanAllah, from the the great
wisdom of Allah
that separates the sweetness of the dates from
the bitterness of the pits. Right. It's like
an insulation around the pits.
Allah
even speaks about this in the Quran. And
he says,
All these others
beings out there in life,
right, the false gods, your bank account, whatever.
Right. Everything out there in life, they don't
own this.
Let me let me for dramatic effect, let
me drop it for you.
They don't own this.
Wait for it.
Does anyone know what this is called? Shehkhutur
Khaled. We're not friends if you answer.
On the inside where the pit cleaves, there's
this. This tiny tiny thread.
Look for it at iftar today.
Okay.
This is called
a fateel.
Fateel or fateel is a string. Fateel is
a tiny string.
Allah
says,
I promise you even this amount I won't
wrong you.
This amount, I'm gonna reward you for. I'm
gonna pull out those forgotten good deeds you
did
and those very subtle wrongdoings that happened to
you, And I promise you I'll make it
all worth your while.
He wants you to look at this and
say remind you of Allah's world view.
Let me put down my props.
There's one more.
You see where the pit cleaves
I need to finish in a minute. You
see where the pit cleaves?
So there's a round side and where it
folds in on itself.
If you turn it the opposite of that,
behind every single date pit there is a
tiny dot.
A dot. It's like a peck in the
date pit. Look for it.
This is called a nakir.
Nakra is like
a jab or a peck or a tiny
hole
or an indent.
The nakeer
means a tiny, tiny indent. Allah says everyone
else,
They cannot
poke anyone
at all
without Allah
consent.
So look at He's calling your attention to
the mundane. This is the idea. You You
know, we've been talking about the parables of
the Quran all month. Right? In Taraweeh. We're
saying these are supposed to be prescription lenses
for us. Allah
says in the Quran Capture this brothers and
sisters. He says in the Quran,
Allah does not shy away from striking an
example out of a mosquito.
Date pit, mosquito, fly.
Well at the end of the day, the
creation is just a creation. They're all the
same size really, combined compared
to Allah because
people are saying, why is the Quran keep
talking about spider webs? The Quran is talking
about flies. Quran is talking about mosquitoes. Quran
is talking about dates and date pits and
sort of like filmy,
covers of the date pits. Allah is saying
those are actually treasures for you. And so
I leave you with that message brothers and
sisters. This is a world view.
How we behave in the likes of these
events and what we draw from the pages
of the Quran
is gonna make all of the difference.
And so if you're going to safely take
a look,
yes, we all worried about some damage, some
blindness that could happen to the eyes, but
the ultimate objective is from
our duty, our desire
to make sure our hearts don't become blind.
They don't become materialistic.
They don't become
blurry in their belief in the unseen. May
Allah azza wa jal with these events and
our devotion for this next hour, renew our
faith with it and help us behold his
his power in a way that would transform
us in better and better ways.