Muhammad Alshareef – Seerah Part 2 Course Methodology Style And Sources
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Alright, just concluding how I'm going to be
teaching the class inshallah ta'ala.
One of the approaches of seerah, like I
said, if you wanted to complicate it, you
could approach the seerah from a refutations type
of seerah.
Which is, oh, you know, the orientalist said
this, and oh, you know, this person said
that.
And I totally don't like that approach for
myself.
And so, like, I'd be in the middle
of a seerah, and then right in the
middle I'd tell you, you know, a kafir
so-and-so attacked the Prophet ﷺ, I'm
like, why?
Right, and why give that person a podium
like this to spread, you know, kind of
like that falsehood and so on and so
forth.
So my approach totally is not in a
refutations type of seerah.
Or, you know, bringing up theories of orientalists
and so on and so forth.
During the class inshallah ta'ala, I definitely
would like you to take notes.
Definitely like you'd take notes.
Even if you're like, you know what, you're
not writing down the notes specifically, but you
would be doing, for example, you know, writing
down your reflections or things that you heard
or so on and so forth.
I don't think you're memorizing everything.
And so, during the Al-Maghrib Institute classes,
we put all this information in two weekends
so that when you come to the exam,
when you come to the exam, that inshallah
ta'ala you get that opportunity to review
the information and look it over again and
then write it and so on and so
forth in the exam.
So that you can truly benefit and make
this part of your knowledge that's at your
hands.
A lot of times people, they listen to
like khatirahs and lectures and so on and
so forth and they're never writing anything down,
correct?
I'm sure you've seen this.
They're everybody just sitting around and nobody's writing
anything down.
Then later on when you need to explain
something about Islam, you're going like this, um,
um, I don't know, um, I think it's
a hadith.
No, no, wait, it might be a verse
of Qur'an.
Do you guys do that?
Okay.
And so instead of, and one brother, you
know, praised this and he said, it's like
unconscious knowledge.
And I said, how about conscious knowledge?
Where you actually know what you're talking about.
And so what's going to make the difference
is that it's having a different attitude in
the class and that is taking notes.
So you have your binders with you, you
can follow along.
It doesn't have, you know, great detail and
that's on purpose so that you have to
put in your, you have to use your
brain.
I'm not going to just write out a
seerah book.
You can get rahiq al-mukhtoom and just
bring it with you to class.
It's like, you know, you have it there.
That's not my intention.
The intention is to give you kind of
like just a framework in your notebooks that
you can follow along what I'm talking about,
inshallah to Allah.
There will be, you know, maybe there's a
story in the seerah that you love very
much and then I come to a point
where I should have mentioned it and I
didn't and then you're like very sad that
I didn't mention it.
The purpose is not to tell you every
single story that happened in the seerah.
The purpose is to give you like the
framework A to Z of what happened in
the seerah so that when you go back
to the seerah books, you'll recognize something that
I mentioned and then the next paragraph in
the seerah book will mention something that I
didn't mention which will, you know, it'll give
you like a foundation so that you can
launch from there and study more, inshallah to
Allah, and learn more.
There's going to be a topic that you're
going to be presenting for next weekend, inshallah
to Allah.
So the four topics are, if you want
to write it down, is it in your
binder?
Is it towards the back, four topics?
Okay, so the four topics are these, if
you want to write it down.
Number one is the sahaba educational system.
Sahaba educational system.
So this is giving you a glimpse of
different advantages, advantage points of the seerah.
So the sahaba educational system, for example, is
a topic that some of you are going
to be preparing.
Secondly, the role of women in the seerah.
The role of women in the seerah.
Thirdly, the economic structure of the Medina society.
Economic structure.
How do they conduct their business?
And the fourth topic is, how was the
message of Islam spread?
How was the message of Islam spread?
So we'll have more details on that, inshallah
to Allah.
We'll be breaking into groups of four, and
in that group of four, each of the
people in the group of four is going
to choose a topic of these four topics,
and then during the weekdays, they're going to
prepare those topics, and then come next weekend,
inshallah to Allah, they're going to present a
vantage point of the seerah, so that you
will get a glimpse of what it feels
like to take one topic of the seerah
and just come from that angle, right?
The binder.
If somebody could just pass me the binder.
A binder.
I've organized the table of contents in a
unique way that has never been done before,
right?
And this basically is the story.
These, like, anytime there's like an epic story,
right, whenever they say an epic journey, an
epic story, it will always have these components.
And so what I did is I took
these components, and as like a foundation, I
tried to plug the seerah in a way
where you could understand it from these angles.
So firstly, in an epic story, there is
a desire.
A desire to do something.
A desire a person has, okay?
And so what was the desire of Ibrahim
alayhis salaam?
What was the desire of the Prophet sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam?
Secondly, then there's a problem that needs to
be solved.
So if you're looking like an epic story,
there's some problem that needs to be solved.
Sometimes I'm reading a book, and they're like,
someone got killed at the beginning of the
book.
And I realize that this is the problem
that the next 500 pages of the book
we're going to be solving.
Who killed this fictitious person?
I'm like, I don't have time for this.
I don't care who killed this fictitious person,
right?
So what is the problem?
And then after that, once the problem, you
know, the person, you know, this is the
problem.
This is what their life is about.
This is what their purpose in life is.
Then they have opponents.
And their opponents are going to be external
and internal, right?
So they themselves, internally, will have reservations and
beliefs that are like holding them back, stuff
like that.
Or they might have people externally, or maybe
from intimate family members and so on.
You'd have Nuh alayhis salaam, his own son
not believing in him.
Lut alayhis salaam, his own wife, and so
on.
And plus the other people.
So then there's the opponents.
How does the da'i, the prophet, take
on these opponents?
That's the plan.
So there's an approach.
So like, what was methodology?
How did the plan?
And then you'll see after the plan, in
an epic story, usually it's not like this
is the plan, and then you pass, and
then end of story.
Correct?
You will always get to a point about
three quarters in a movie or something like
that when everything fails.
It will always happen.
It's like everything that they planned for, everything
fails.
So it's like the plan fails.
And I put a question mark because the
plan doesn't fail.
That's just part of the plan.
Allah's plan.
Allah's plan.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tests
us.
And what you set out to do, you
might think, oh, this is it, and then
things don't work out.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la might
be planning for you for something better.
And that what you learn in the hard
times is actually lessons that make you stronger,
make you better prepared for what Allah Subh
'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has prepared for
you.
And then you have the next section, which
is self-revelation, where a person, you know,
you have equilibrium, the battle of al-Ahzab,
the battle of Hudaybiyyah, the treaty of Hudaybiyyah,
sorry, and then equilibrium at the end, which
is towards the end of our class, which
is everything comes together, the nations enter into
Islam, farewell hajj in the last days of
the Prophet ﷺ.
So that's the table of contents.
That's how we're going to approach it.
So sometimes I'm not necessarily going to go
chronological order.
Probably by about Sunday, this Sunday, I'll start
going chronological.
But before that, like Saturday, I might be
jumping around when I'm explaining the opponents.
Because the opponents were not necessarily just in
Mecca.
There's opponents in Medina and there's, you know,
different beliefs throughout.
So to explain the opponents, the strategy, there's
more to it than just the Meccan phase.
Okay, there's three levels of benefit.
Three levels of benefit.
I may have mentioned this in the Tafsir
Surah Al-Baqarah class.
Okay, so when it comes to benefiting, intellectual
is the first one.
Usually people, they come into a class, the
information comes into their mind intellectually, right?
So they'll be taking notes.
They'll spend like hours and hours and hours
and stuff like that.
But then you look at their lives afterwards
and nothing has changed.
A great example of that is a Jummah
Khutbah, right?
You'd have 500 people at Jummah Khutbah.
The Imam says something amazing about changing the
lives of the Ummah.
And it's so brilliant.
Everybody walks out and nobody does anything.
And nobody even remembers what he said.
What happened there?
Even though it was a brilliant Khutbah, people
were like, how was the Khutbah?
It was brilliant.
That's it.
It was just intellectual.
Meaning information was processed intellectually and it stopped
there.
And if that's the case, then may Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la protect us
from that.
You're talking about a nation that's in big
trouble.
If the information is said to them and
they don't implement it, then they're in big
trouble.
The Prophet ﷺ used to seek refuge in
that.
He'd say, اللهم إني أعوذ بك من علم
لا ينفع Oh Allah, I seek your protection
from knowledge which brings no benefit.
Which knowledge that brings no benefit.
SubhanAllah, it's um...
How many people saw like the conversations in
Hellfire thing that I did online?
In that halaqah that I did, it was
interesting that one of the key things that
the angels, the gatekeepers of Hellfire, say to
the people as they enter Hellfire, what was
the key thing?
What's the key thing?
I need a little louder, yes?
Didn't a warner come to you?
أَلَمْ يَأْتِكُمْ نَذِيرً You see that in multiple
parts in the Qur'an.
And I thought to myself, how many people
are going to be entering Hellfire?
You're talking about like millions, billions, whatever.
How many times are the angels going to
say that?
Like millions of times.
Like every time people of Hellfire come in,
they're like, أَلَمْ يَأْتِكُمْ نَذِيرً Didn't a warner
come to you?
Didn't a warner come to you?
Didn't somebody tell you?
Didn't you, weren't you told about this?
And it's like, it's like humiliation for them.
Weren't you told intellectually about, weren't you told
it, all that happened was intellectually?
Yes, intellectually we knew about Hellfire.
But it was not an emotional attachment to
that information, nor did it translate into physical
change in our lives.
So if you write this information down and
you don't implement it, it's going to testify
against you on the Day of Judgment.
And it will be said to you, may
Allah protect you, didn't you attend an Al
-Maghrib class?
Allah protect you, Allah protect me.
Now someone will say, man, I shouldn't have
come to this Al-Maghrib class.
Because if I don't take the knowledge, then
you know, somehow I will be saved.
Which is not the case, by the way.
Because everybody has had the warner come to
them.
Whether they come to a class like this
or they don't, whether they go to Jum
'ah khutbah or they don't go to it,
the warner comes to everybody.
There's always a warner, nobody goes through their
lives that doesn't come in contact with a
warner.
Someone will say, oh, I'm just going to
close my ears throughout my whole life.
Hopefully no warner will ever say anything so
that I'll have an excuse.
Which is not happening.
Which is not happening.
There was someone said to me, they're like,
Muhammad, you're hafidh of the Qur'an.
They're like, you know what?
If you don't practice what you learned, then
you're in big trouble.
And I said to them in response, what
did I say?
And I'm like, and if you don't learn
the Qur'an and practice it, you're in
big trouble too.
Because whether someone's hafidh or they're not hafidh,
we're all required to follow what's in the
Qur'an.
If you choose to be ignorant, then you're
responsible for that.
The Prophet ﷺ said, طَلَبُ الْعِلْمِ فَرِضَةٌ عَلَى
كُلِّ مُسْلِمٍ Seeking knowledge is fard on every
Muslim.
What does fard mean?
Susceptible to punishment if not done.
So if someone doesn't, not saying that they
have to take an al-Maghrib class, but
if they consistently avoid studying the deen, they
are committing a sin for that.
If they consistently turn their back at every
opportunity and still make the mistakes, of course,
they're just going to fall in the pits
because they haven't learned that ignorance, they will
be held accountable for not studying the deen.
May Allah protect us.
So then after intellectual, then there's the emotional,
where a person gathers the information and now
they have an emotional attachment to it.
Maybe they become sad or they become happy
or, you know, there's an emotional attachment to
this information.
Yes, I agree with what he's saying.
You know, there's an emotional attachment to it.
A beautiful hadith about this one, the Prophet
ﷺ said, of those who get shade on
the day of resurrection is a person who
remembers Allah in private, and his eyes well
up with tears.
In remembrance of Allah in private, nobody sees
the person, he remembers something intellectually and leads
him to an emotional connection to what he
had learned intellectually.
There is an emotional connection.
Crying is not good enough.
It needs to lead to action.
So when you learn something, you learn the
khuluq of the Prophet ﷺ.
It has to become physical.
You actually have changed your lives.
So it's not this, yes, it was a
nice lecture, yes, oh, you know, we cried
here and there, but there's a physical difference.
A person will say, you know, you're different,
something seems different.
So I was doing an event, there's a
brother, he attended this event in Toronto, and
then I did the same event in Ottawa,
and he had come with like eight other
brothers.
And I asked everybody, at the beginning of
this event, I was asking everybody, why did
you come, why did you come?
And each of those eight other brothers that
came, each one of them said, I came
because I saw the physical changes in this
other brother.
Second guy stood up, why did you come?
He said, same thing.
I saw the physical changes in this other
brother.
Third person, why did you come?
Because of the physical changes in this brother.
Meaning that, and that brother, when I asked
him, what happened to you after that other
event?
He said, like, you know, his whole life,
probably in one week after that event, he
had done more than he'd done in his
whole life.
And they saw the physical change.
Now, do you think it would be easy
to give da'wah if when we learn
something, it went physical?
Be very easy, right?
As Aishah radiAllahu anhu said, كان خلق القرآن
His khulq was the Qur'an.
Meaning you learn something, and it becomes physical.
In Ramadan time, when we're hearing the Qur
'an, is the Qur'an commandments entering our
brains?
Under which category?
You know, it's not even intellectual.
Because you don't even understand what the Qur
'an is being, what's being said.
And so if you don't understand, there's no
emotional, there might be like an emotional attachment.
It's Ramadan and the person is imagining possibly
what the imam is saying, you know, in
his dua, in his recitation and so on
and so forth.
But there's, rarely is there like this physical
reality to learning these things.
InshaAllah ta'ala, I'm saying all of this
so that you can aim for the physical.
You can aim for the physical, even if
you learn less, but it's physical, there's much
more barakah in it than the person who
knows so much knowledge, yet does nothing with
that knowledge.
Right?
As one of the scholars said, someone came
to scholar and they said, so-and-so
has memorized Sahih al-Bukhari.
And then the scholar said, Alhamdulillah, we have
another copy of Sahih al-Bukhari in town.
So now, because just the mere intellectual memorization
of Bukhari doesn't make a person, right?
So what the scholars say, not belittling, yes,
he memorized the hadith that Prophet ﷺ has
in Bukhari, but what will make a difference
is if he physically implements what he learned.
He's teaching it and living it, you know,
by the examples and so on and so
forth, then something else has changed.
The other thing I wrote here, just as
I said, know thy destination, know your destination.
What that means is that here in this
class, what are you actually trying to achieve?
You might say, I never really thought about
it.
If you don't know your destination, you're not
getting there.
If you, and that's a law of life.
If you don't know where you're going, then
your destination becomes nowhere.
And so you're just going for a ride.
And so you'll see there will be a
difference, you know, let's say there's a student
who's sitting at the front who came early
and is writing everything.
If you ask them, what's your destination?
They'll say, I'm getting at 110% in
this course.
They know exactly, you know, they have a
goal.
They have their aim.
They know what they're here for.
Their actions are reflecting it.
Correct?
And if someone is not planning to come
to the exam, I can tell right away
whether they're planning to come to the exam
or not.
How would I know?
By their actions.
They'll come in late for class.
They won't write any notes.
You know, it's just because, and so even
though you're all here in the class, may
Allah reward all of you, you're still not
at the same level inside the class.
And so I would take it upon a
challenge to challenge each other.
And this is the beautiful thing about taking
notes is you become an example for other
people.
If you've ever, you know, you're sitting beside
someone and all of a sudden they start
writing and you're like, what did the Sheikh
say?
Let me write something too.
All right.
You just start writing because and here's a
technique is how many people are here to
learn teaching techniques?
How many people are here to learn teaching
techniques?
Raise your hand a little bit more.
If you know, there's not too many.
I won't tell you.
Okay.
There's not too many.
Here's a teaching technique.
Write this down.
That's a teaching technique right there.
So if you want people to write things
down, just tell them, write this down.
And they don't care what you say.
They're going to write it down because you
told them to write it down.
Okay.
The outcome of this seminar inshallah ta'ala,
the seerah, what I hope for you is
that third physical level.
You know what?
If you failed your exam, I actually don't
care.
But if you fail to implement what you
learn, that's what I care about.
Because the exam is our teacher to tell
us, you can take an exam again.
Maybe I didn't write the question properly, you
know, or, you know, something you didn't write.
It's not that big a deal.
Obviously the exam is for your benefit.
And I'm saying take the exam definitely.
But ultimately the outcome is that what you
learn in the class becomes your reality.
You change your life.
You hear the seerah of the Prophet ﷺ,
his life and character, and how he treated
people, and so on and so forth.
How he stood up for the truth.
How his whole desire in life was the
guidance of humanity.
That hopefully inshallah ta'ala, you come out
of the class taking on that responsibility.
Taking on that responsibility.
I was thinking about something today.
You know, like here, I come to the
airport.
And let's suppose there are certain people, they're
like, okay, I'm not saying about anybody picking
me up and so on and so forth.
But there will be people though like, you
know, can you pick up, you know, brother
Muhammad from the airport?
They're like, you know what?
I'm a little busy.
I can't make it.
And then the person might call someone else.
Can you pick up brother Muhammad from the
airport?
You know what?
I might come a little bit, so on
and so forth.
But there is a person that if everybody
else says no, there's a person that no
matter what they will do it.
Do you know what I'm saying?
There's something deeper that they don't let go
of responsibility.
That in the end, it's like the last
man back.
That there's nobody behind this person.
They've got, you know, they're holding fort.
That if everything was to collapse and everybody,
no one would volunteer, no one would help
and so on and so forth.
They would still stand up for the responsibility.
This is the example of the Prophet ﷺ.
Last man back, he will always stand up
for the responsibility.
The question is, will you stand up with
him?
And stand up for this deen?
And be in a stand up and be
counted for and do something beautiful for this
deen, for your life and for this deen?
Or will you just be like, just like
everybody else?
And so either way, a person is either
doing something great for this deen or they're
just like, you know what?
They're just one of the people and so
on and so forth.
May Allah ﷻ make all of you from
those who can stand up and be counted
for.
All right, where do you get this seerah
from?
These are like the books where they come
from.
Obviously from the Qur'an, Allah ﷻ will
explain seerah in the Qur'an.
Also, you will find the seerah mentioned in
the books of hadith.
As well, there's a book, they're called كتب
الدلائل.
دلائل is the book.
You don't really have to write in Arabic
if you want.
دلائل is the book, the types of books.
And those are like proofs of messengership of
the Prophet ﷺ.
Those type of seerah books.
You also have books of شمائل.
شمائل are books where they're detailing what the
Prophet ﷺ looked like, what he ate, what
he wore, things like that, how he walked,
how he dressed, things like that.
They're called شمائل.
Very famous book of شمائل is by Imam
al-Tirmidhi, رحمه الله, شمائل al-Tirmidhi.
And some of them are translated into English
as well.
If you go into an English bookshop, usually
you can find a book on شمائل.
شمائل, they're very interesting books to read.
And then there's books of seerah, like seerah
Ibn Hisham, that are just like seerah books.
And then seerah books might take different approaches.
Some of them are just narrating like the
events, right?
Some of them might take specific angles.
But you actually find that those who take
specific angles of the seerah, you might find
difficulty finding books like that.
A lot of the seerah books in the
seerah section are usually just, you know, chronological,
this is what happened, this is what happened,
and so on and so forth.
When you're looking for vantage points of the
seerah, you probably have to go into other
sections of the library.
So for example, like women, the women in
the seerah, right?
That's one of the topics that you have
to do.
Where would you find a book like that?
If you went into the seerah section, you
might not find a book like that.
You might go into, you know, women in
Islam issues, and then there's a book called,
you know, The Female Companions of the Prophets
of Allah ﷺ.
And where, you know, how do they become
companions?
They live the seerah, so you have to
like be a little bit more flexible in
finding books like that.
And then you have books of maghazi.
Maghazi means battles.
So there's books dedicated to the battles of
the Prophet ﷺ.
A lot of times, the seerah is focused
on the battles.
And of course, there's much more to the
seerah.
The battles, yes, and there's more to it
than that.
So a lot of times, you know, we're
doing battles, and we're going to do the
battles here because they're so cool.
Alhamdulillah.
But in addition to that, there's strategies, there's,
you know, community development, there's a lot of
different things that you can keep, as I
said, keep going back again, and again, and
again to the seerah to find this out.
Books of history in general.
Books of history in general.
So you have a book like Imam Al
-Tabari, Alhamdulillah, has a book on history.
Imam Ibn Kathir, Alhamdulillah, has a book on
history as well.
And then in those history, they're like going
through like all of humanity history and so
on.
And then there will be the seerah section
of those general history books.
Some of the key books that are used
in this course, and it's in English, is
Al-Raheq Al-Makhtoom, right?
The Sealed Nectar, which I think is very
widely available by Mubarak Furi.
The Sealed Nectar.
Seerah Ibn Hisham, which many of you might
be familiar with.
It's a very famous seerah book, Seerah Ibn
Hisham.
There's another book, which when I prepared this
class, I was using the Arabic, but Alhamdulillah,
I'm very happy to find out that it
was translated as well.
So it's one of the most amazing seerah
books that you'd find.
It's called Seerah Nabawiyah by As-Sallabi.
As-Sallabi is his name.
All right.
Any questions about that?
Questions?
We're going to be breaking for Maghrib in
about three minutes.
I can take like one question.
Yes.
Okay.
So the question is, out of the books
that I mentioned, which one would I recommend
to give to a non-Muslim?
I would actually recommend that you give a
non-Muslim like a CD.
All right.
So a person might say, here, read this,
read this.
A lot of times people, they don't read.
Right.
And so you might have more success by
giving like using a different multimedia type of
presentation.
Right.
So that could be, it might be a
YouTube video, or it might be like an
audio CD as a gift or something like
that.
And then that, you know, if they used
it, it's like a small step.
They just plug it into their car.
And then after that, if they enjoyed it,
then they can move on to say reading
books or so on and so forth.
But you want to look at, does this
person watch TV 24-7 and you're going
to give them a book?
So it'd be better that you give them
something that they can watch.
Allah.