Mustafa Umar – Islamic History 101 #3 Life Of The Prophet
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Before we begin,
a few preliminary things. First of all, with
regards to attendance,
instead of taking role, we're going to be,
putting a bunch of sheets in the back
where you can sign your name. So, that's
gonna be coming by the break time,
So sign your name and, put your,
time that you actually came in, and, please
just be honest about that. K?
Second thing is,
before we begin, is there any feedback that
people would like to give just for a
few minutes? How are how are the how
was the class last week?
The new file that was sent. Yeah. So
the syllabus,
I mean, needs to be updated.
So basically, the thing is for the syllabus,
there was the sections that were mentioned, right,
in the syllabus. So don't follow the page
numbers. If there's a conflict, always follow the
sections. That's gonna be that's gonna be guaranteed
away. Because there's actually 2 versions of the
Islamic sorry. And another class is 2 sections
of the book as well, so just always
follow the sections. You you won't go wrong.
Okay. Then,
remember, before we begin again,
my advice to everyone is don't get intimidated,
don't get, don't think of quitting, don't think
of any of these things, just keep attending.
If anyone wants to attend the classes and
they're they just don't,
want to take the test or it's just
too much for them or they can't handle
it or whatever, just go ahead
and attend the class anyways and stick stick
in the class. If you don't wanna if
you don't wanna take the quizzes at all
or the tests, you don't even wanna try
it because it intimidates you or whatever, please
send an email to the TA letting him
know that, you know, you're in that status,
you're gonna attend, but you don't wanna,
go through all of that, so it'll just
make it easier, for him so he doesn't
have to grade it. He doesn't have to
he can keep a separate, tally of people.
Okay? So if you have that, please send
an email, and that's fine. You'll at least
you'll learn you'll learn something. The letters that
were there on the grades have been removed,
because I think probably some people got intimidated
by a letter grade they got if they
got 70%, like c minus, and that's bad.
Don't worry too much about it. It's gonna
get better in time and all of that.
I know some of the
questions may have been a little bit difficult
or tricky or whatever,
strange.
So,
give us the feedback if you feel that
any question is,
this should not have been worded this way.
One of them we've already modified in, one
of the
one of the questions.
The next thing is study schedule. K? How
many of you actually made a study schedule?
Raise your
hand. You made, like, a time where I'm
gonna study in the week, these are my
times, and I'm gonna stick to it. Raise
your hand again. How many of you actually
made it? Okay. I'm telling you, if you
start falling behind and you didn't make a
study schedule,
then you can only blame yourself.
I'm I'm very seriously saying that. If you
made the study schedule and then you're falling
behind even if you're trying with the study
schedule, we made a mistake then. So please,
please make a study schedule for yourself, otherwise,
it's gonna be difficult to balance things. Yes.
To take the test and get certified? I
mean, without attending the classes or reading or
anything?
I mean, if you can pass the entire
test, I can give you the final exam
right now, inshallah, alhamdulillah, I won't mind. Just
talk talk to me afterwards. Yeah. Talk to
me if you're ready for the final exam,
we can give it to you, inshallah. It's
not a problem. I mean, it's 3 hours
it's over 3 hours though, so just be
ready for that, inshallah.
Yeah. If you fail, can you just keep
taking a class? No. No. You can't just
keep taking a class.
Perhaps if IOC needs more donation, then we
can just keep charging you every time you
take the final. Alhamdulillah.
Right?
Alright. So please make a study schedule for
yourself.
Test tips. So some people ask me how
do how do how can I do better
on the test?
How can I,
you know, get better scores on the free
response?
First of all, remember the free response is
open book.
K? The free response is open book, so
you can actually go through your the the
the the text that you have or the
book, the reading that you have, you can
go through it, and you have, you know,
you'll have let's say 60 minutes, whatever. If
we decide to change it 60, you'll have
60 minutes. You can go through it. Whatever
you do though, do not plagiarize.
If you try and copy and paste from
a text or you try and type the
same words or something, we'll see it and
we'll know it, and you're not gonna you're
gonna lose all your points for that. So
don't plagiarize number 1 from the book, don't
plagiarize from your friend
because we'll we'll be able to catch that
most probably as well, and,
there's a grading syllabus. Is the syllabus public
for all the people to see? Yeah. So
there's there's a there's a rubric. There's a
grading rubric that is public and you can
see it on Canvas. So you can see
exactly what you need to get a 3,
exactly what you need to get a 2,
what you would get for why would you
get we would get a 1. All of
the things are mentioned in there. So please,
you know, take a look at the rubric
and you'll understand exactly how we're grading. And
if you have any more questions on details
like why did this happen or whatever, you
can always email the TA, and he'll explain
to you where, you know, some of your
points were were were going off. K? Yeah.
No. No. Free free response is open to
everything. You can use your books, you can
use,
you know, sheikh Google, you can use your
friend, whatever. But for asking questions, don't go
and ask someone else to help write it
for you. That's the only just be honest
about it. Okay? And,
lastly, I don't mind at all that, people
are sending me messages. It's perfectly fine. But
please, whenever you send a question in Canvas,
make sure it's relevant to the course. So
if you wanna ask me any other question
that's outside of the course,
use my email address. But if you wanna
ask me something with regards to the course,
then you can use the Canvas messaging system.
I've been getting a lot of questions that
like, about, like, all all that stuff, you
know, halal meat and, like, all these things.
Right? So please email me that, and don't,
don't use Canvas. I don't mind. I'll answer
it, but don't don't use Canvas for that.
Okay?
Alright. Let's begin.
Today we're gonna be covering
the
house of Allah, the Kaaba, how it was
built, how it came about. We're gonna be
talking about the age of ignorance,
the time before the life of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and,
you know, how society was at that time,
and we're gonna talk a little bit about
Arabia, its geography, and its political situation.
Okay. So how many of you read, by
the way, before coming here?
Very good. So pretty good. So this is
gonna be,
more in-depth then. So the house of Allah.
When we talk about the life of the
prophet,
peace be upon him, we
actually want to look at the background circumstances
about his life, about where he lived, about
all of these things. And that's why the
story of the prophet actually starts earlier
than the 7th century,
earlier than the 4th century,
1000 of years earlier than that, and this
go goes all the way back to the
time of prophet Ibrahim
or prophet Abraham.
Now prophet Ibrahim,
you find that there are 3 people who
trace their
trace their,
narrative
back to him, and that is the Muslims,
the Christians,
and the Jews.
All three people primarily trace their origins back,
and they make a claim about prophet Ibrahim,
and they say, well, we believe in him
and he's the person that we're following. And
as Muslims, we make the same claim and
we say, no.
There are some things that other people believe
about him that may not be exactly correct.
He was a Muslim in the full sense
of the word, meaning he submitted himself to
Allah. Now when we go back to prophet
Ibrahim,
the text that we have to go off
of
is the Quran
and the reports of the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam, like hadith, all of these things.
But the other people who talk about Ibrahim,
there are some books written about his life,
but almost all of them trace their sources
back to one thing, and that is to
the old testament or to what's known as
the Torah,
supposedly the, Torah that's there, the book of
Genesis.
Now what does the book of Genesis say
as a historical document?
Not as a document that we're accepting as
creed, but as a historical document, what does
it say? It says, and as for Ishmael,
meaning Ishmael, prophet Ishmael,
I have heard you.
God is supposed to be speaking, I have
heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and
will make him fruitful, and I will make
him a great nation. So there's something very
early recorded about prophet Ibrahim and about one
of his sons, his eldest son, his first
son, prophet Ishmael or Ishmael,
we who we claim to be a prophet.
And then another verse says,
and God was with the lad, and he
grew, and he dwelt in the wilderness of
Paran.
Okay? Now
growing up in the wilderness of Paran, what
is the area of Paran? If you look
at, for example, an encyclopedia on the bible,
if you look at the Catholic encyclopedia or
something like that, they will give you several
different theories about what Paran is supposed to
be. There's, like, at least 5 or 6
different theories.
And if you actually look at, you know,
without going into too much detail, if you
look at the research, there's very good research
to indicate that Peran is the area of
Western Arabia.
The area known as the Hejaz where Mecca,
Madinah, Jeddah, Qa'if, all of these cities are
located.
And if you want more details, you can
you can see,
the book that I referenced in the text,
by Allama Shibli No Omani. It's called Siratul
Nabi, it's a 5 volume book, and he
goes into a lot of, details about why
this is a good theory. And in fact,
if you ask most people, they will give
you different theories. No no one has a
straightforward theory about where the Quran is because
it's a wilderness, it's an area, it's a
desolate area,
and this was where
the historical document or the bible is saying
that actually,
Ishmael grew up where he went to. Now
what do the Muslims say? Muslims say that
prophet Ishmael,
he actually
went to
this area, this Paran area is where Makkah
is, where Hijaz is this entire area. So
he actually traveled over there, and he went
to a place known as Baqah,
the valley of Baqah. And Baqah became renamed
later to Makkah, so Baqah and Makkah are
the same thing. K? And this is also
mentioned in the Quran even. So
prophet Ibrahim
took his son and this is a story
that most people know, but it's a it's
a long story. We're not gonna get into
the details. But prophet Ibrahim was a prophet,
and he was commanded by Allah to take
his wife and to take his son and
to leave them in this desolate area.
And there was a specific purpose, and we're
gonna find out what the purpose was. One
of the purpose was to test them, to
see whether his dedication to his family takes
precedence or not. And another reason was because
something was specific to happen in this area,
and Allah had planned that he had a
plan for this area and he had a
plan for these people. So this was a
test as well as there was a further
plan involved in leaving them there. So what
happened?
First of all, this area
is surrounded by hills. Okay? So this is
a valley, Baqah was a valley uninhabited.
There's nobody there. It's surrounded by hills, so
it's a valley,
and it's very hot, it's very difficult to
live. So what ended up happening, they did
they ran out of food, they were running
out of water, and Allah came and he
sent an angel, and he caused a well
to spring up, and that well was known
as the well of Zamzah.
So most people are familiar with that. The
well is still there. It's still flowing till
till today.
But the point is that
because of the well,
because of the well and because of the
source of water that was there,
people began to inhabit this area afterwards.
So this area was uninhabited before, and the
tribe of Jurhum, one of the tribes came,
and there's a long story about what happened.
But basically, they asked for permission and they
decided that they're going to start living in
this area, and that's the origin of the
city of Bakr
AKA Bakkah.
So that's how this city actually came about,
and it's important to understand that when the
prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him,
when he comes into the city of Makkah
and what he's doing in the city of
Makkah, it's important to know the origins. It's
important to know what Arabia and what Mecca
was like before he was actually born and
before he actually started his message and his
mission.
So,
prophet Ishmael,
right, Ishmael, also later known as prophet Ishmael
in Arabic, he learned he learned the Arabic
language.
He married within the tribe. He remained there
with his mother, and, you know, later on
his father came to visit, but basically,
Ishmael
became an Arab.
Okay? He became Arabized, he adopted the culture,
he adopted the language, and he remained there,
and he lived there. Okay? Now
when prophet Ibrahim
had left him there, he came back. He
did not just abandon him. He was coming
back and he was visiting his son, he
was visiting his wife, he was in constant
contact with them. So it's not like this
narrative that some people present, and he just
threw them away and then they were forgotten.
They were not forgotten. It was a temporary
period where they were being tested for one
in particular thing where the well came, and
then the city is being established.
So when he came back to visit his
son, they both were commanded by Allah to
build a structure,
to build a building which is dedicated to
the worship of Allah. Because there were several
buildings
throughout the world at that time that were
dedicated to idols. There were several buildings at
that time where fire worship was taking place,
and in fire worship, for example, there's a
fire, and you keep the fire alive in
the temple. There's someone who's dedicated to the
temple, they have to just keep putting fuel
on the fire, and the fire just keeps
on burning. They're not allowed to let the
fire go out. There are other temples that
have, you know, different rituals and different practices
and all of that, but there was no
temple. There was no place. There was no
space
that was dedicated primarily to the worship of
1 God, of Allah.
There was nothing at that time. That's why
technically this is the first house that was
built for the worship of Allah, whereas there
were so many other places where other people
were being worshiped. So Allah
revealed
to prophet Ibrahim
and to his son that I want you
to build this building in this specific area,
and it's going to be a place where,
where Allah is going to be worshipped. Okay?
So this is the Kaaba,
and we're gonna talk a little bit more
about it. So are there any questions,
on this slide so far? Quite a few.
Okay. Well, keep in mind the the question,
should be a question,
and it the question should be limited to
20 seconds, please. So please just follow those
rules, don't get intimidated, but please limit to
those rules. Yes.
What were they before they took on the
Arabic culture?
They they were living in a region of
Iraq, like Mesopotamia and all of that, so
they they had traveled a lot, Ibrahim traveled
a lot, but they were kind of in
that area.
Yes. So there's there's a discussion in Islamic
books that Adam had actually built the first
Kaaba or something like that. There's a lot
of different opinions that scholars hold. One of
the good balance opinion is by Ibn Kathir
is that prophet Adam was,
he was in Makkah, and he he had
the foundations of the building, but the building
was not established. Just the area and the
spot was holding, but the actual building was
not there. Okay? Yes.
So the question is, what what did prophet
Ibrahim leave his pregnant wife, and then she
did she give birth over there in Makkah?
No. Actually, the child was already born, and
he left both of them over there because
the child was already crying. So she did
not actually give birth over there. The child
was already born. Genesis is is a book
is the first book in the old testament,
and what the Jews accept to be the
Torah is the first five books of the
old testament are known as the Torah. Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 5 books. Five books
makes the Torah. Yes.
According to according to the Jews
and according to the Christians. We believe that
the Torah was original revelation that was given
to prophet Musa, prophet Moses, but that's not
been authentically preserved. The prophet Ibrahim spoke Hebrew,
it's not it's not a very strong theory.
If he did, he probably knew it as
a sign language, but that's not the area
in which he,
because Hebrew became more common later on. And
the thing is the Jews make, you know,
make a claim going back, but Hebrew is
not known to be a traditional language in
Babylonia or in the area of Iraq at
that time.
So they can make a claim, but, you
know, I I don't I don't think the
evidence for that is very strong. If if
it was, I I would like to see
it. Okay. So, how old was, Ismail?
This is unknown. He was a young kid,
he was a child, he was probably crying
or a young kid perhaps, it's unknown. Whether
how did prophet Ibrahim travel? Did he travel
slowly or did he travel fast or did
he was he aided by a miracle or
something? It's also unknown. Okay. So what do
non mus what do other, faiths believe about
prophet Ismael?
Okay. So there's a large number of Jews,
and many of the Christians have accepted the
idea that prophet Ismael,
because he was supposedly the son of a
slave,
right, which which we don't which is not
proven, by the way, in Islam that, his
wife Hajar was a slave girl. There's some
reports in the bible and some reports in
Jewish tradition, but it's not a 100% proven
in any hadith or anything like that that
she was a slave. There are some peep
Muslim scholars who argue that she was a
very honorable woman, but for them anyways, they
say because she was a son of a,
she was the child of a slave and
the child of a second wife, she's an
he was an illegitimate child. And because he's
an illegitimate child, he has
no honor, no bearing whatsoever.
So how do they explain, you know, this
verse?
It's difficult for them to explain this verse,
first of all, but
the way they explain it, they say, you
know,
he was gonna be made a great nation,
meaning, like, just a lot of people. He's
just gonna have, like, a lot of kids.
So there's another verse in the in in
the in the Torah or in the old
testament which talks about him, like, you know,
being upset
and having anger like a donkey and certain
really bad things, you know? So there's some
really bad stuff that's also mentioned in there.
So how do you reconcile that God blessed
him
and God is gonna make him a great
nation, and yet there's like some verse about
him being a donkey or something. Like, how
do you reconcile that? Well, I mean, I
don't know how other people will reconcile it,
but we believe
that scribes and rabbis have added stuff to
these
So therefore, that's probably one of the things
that they added. You know, describing his anger
or describing whatever it is, and these other
things talking there's a lot of there's a
lot of slander against prophet Ismail in the
bible as well. Even though there's these great
verses, there's like some other things that are
like kind of in there and it's very
difficult for people to reconcile.
Okay.
So let's move on.
The, house of Allah. So
the Kaaba was the first structure
that was dedicated
to the worship of Allah.
Right? So that that that is something that's
specifically mentioned in the Quran. It's something that
we need to pay attention to. It's something
that we need to understand. There were so
many other places. This is the origin. This
is the first house. This is the first
building where you're supposed to come and you're
supposed to worship as a specific place. It
didn't mean people didn't worship Allah, but it's
the first structured place where people are supposed
to go for this particular reason.
And the building is actually very simple. The
building is act if you look at the
Kaaba, the original Kaaba, even today it's simple.
In that time when prophet Ibrahim was building
it, it was even more simple. So it's
built of stone,
Okay? It's built of small like big stones,
but still it's small building.
It was rectangular in shape. Okay? So today
if you look at the Kaaba, it's more
cubic in shape. That was not the original
structure. So it was actually rectangular in shape,
and if you look at the Hatim, this
this area, the semicircular wall that goes around,
those are the original boundaries of the original
Kaaba. K? And we'll talk about what happened
later on and all of that, but the
original the original structure
was a lot smaller than it is today
as well. So it was, like, maybe a
little bit higher than an average human being.
It was not a very tall structure, and
it also had no roof. So it was
open from the top as well. A very
simple, very basic structure, that was the Kaaba,
and people would come, prophet Ibrahim built this
with his son, they would worship there, and
they would, you know, they what did they
do? They began to spread
the idea and the belief among the Arabs
in this entire area that you should only
worship Allah, and that you should not accept
any other idols, and you should not, you
know, bow down to any other deities, and
you should get rid of all of these
superstitions.
All of these things came
because they were being revealed to prophet Ibrahim,
and later on to his son because they
were both prophets. So they spread this message.
So array this is this is not just
building a building and them sitting there by
themselves worshiping,
right? This is not prophet Ibrahim sending his
son and sending his wife over there and
say, okay, now this revelation comes and you
build the building, and then this building just
kind of stays there, nothing really happens, and
then all of a sudden 1000 of years
later the prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa sallam
comes and he starts, you know, making this
call to Islam. That's not the way it
was. Every prophet's job was to spread the
message. And prophet Ibrahim and prophet Ismail, once
they built the Kaaba, they were spreading the
message around, not just in the city of
Makkah, which was a small city still at
that time. They were spreading the message around
through all the areas. And one of the
ways they in which they did it, this
belief began to spread. But how did it
begin to spread?
Prophet Ibrahim was commanded by Allah
to call the other people for pilgrimage,
to call the other people in the entire
area that you should come here
at least on a regular basis or yearly
basis or whatever it was, that you should
come to this place and you should be
worshiping here. So we're not talking about some
random haphazard belief, we're talking about an entire
movement, we're talking about an entire system they're
setting up that everyone should be coming, Everyone
who's a true believer in Allah, who started
worshiping Allah and removed the idols, they should
be coming to this center. So Makkah
became a center of monotheism.
Monotheism meaning the belief in 1 God.
The belief that you only worship God. Right?
So they started becoming a center for monotheism
or tahid, what's known as tahid in Arabic.
So
people were coming, and people were flocking, and
they were coming to this place, and they
were worshiping, and they were thriving. This is
a success
story that all of this was taking place.
Now what happens?
Okay? This becomes a house of Allah. So
people start worshiping there and the call is
to some extent, to whatever extent, we don't
know, to some extent, it's very successful.
So people are coming there and they're worshiping
Allah. How are they worshiping Allah? They would
be bowing.
So when you bow down that's a form
of worship. They did not have the exact
same form of prayer that we have today,
but they had something similar. So bowing is
one of the very important parts of prayer,
they were bowing. Prostration is one of the
very important parts of prayer, they were prostrating.
And another way in which they were worshiping
was by walking around the house.
Now some people never probably never gave any
thought. What why would you walk around something?
Right? What is the point of that? Sometimes
people even walk around the Kaaba and they
never think about what they're doing. So what
does it actually mean for you to walk
around something? It means that you make that
actual thing the center
of your thoughts,
the center of your attention, the center of
your life. Because when you're going around it,
right, you're making it the middle
of your path. Imagine this is your path
of life.
You're putting it in the center,
and this is something that's common. Why does
this work this way? It works this way
because you see, prostration,
for example, has a universal,
acceptance
for the most part. There will be some
exceptions, but for the most part, prostration in
almost every society is seen as something where
you're becoming subservient to the thing in front
of you. Not behind
you, not to the side of you, but
you're putting to the thing that's in front
of you. This is a fairly universal.
Okay? If somebody, you know,
contradicts it or something and says, I don't
believe that, that does not, exceptions don't make
the rule. So the rule is prostration means
this, bowing has a similar meaning as well.
In a kingly court and things like that
people bow out of respect. Even in martial
arts for example people bow, it's a sign
of respect. It's almost in all cultures it's
a sign of respect. The same thing, this
going around in circles
is something which is actually universal.
If you study other religions,
tribal religions or other major religions, you will
find that many of them have something where
they go around a certain area, and this
applies in many places. So what Allah has
done is Allah has commanded
certain forms of worship which are already built
into the universal custom of all human beings
or most human beings for that matter, so
that it's understood
why we're doing this. The reason why sometimes
we may not understand that is because our
perception is living in the 21st century is
that all the religions were kind of taught
that everything is backwards, everything's been messed up
for all these centuries. We're the new modern
enlightened human beings, and these are all messed
up people in the past, so we don't
try to look at the deeper
things in which they're doing. Yes. We don't
accept idolatry. Yes. We don't accept fire worship.
We don't accept, you know, whatever dancing around
the fire and, you know, whatever chants or
things that are going on, But to not
understand
why they're doing what they're doing, to not
understand even what their emotions actually mean, that's
quite superficial or that's quite, excessively arrogant. So
what we need to do is we need
to understand that, and that's something that
Allah instituted that why we go around, we
go around because it's a form of worship.
It's a form of worship that's been acknowledged
in custom, and it's a form of worship
that still exist in many places today, that's
what they used to do. So they were
walking around the Kaaba and that used to
become a very common form of worship, and
that's the same thing, the way that we
worship Allah at the Kaaba today.
So then,
prophet Ibrahim, he made a prayer. All of
this is in the Quran, lot of this
is in the Quran by the way. So
all the verses are are footnoted in your
text. So prophet
Ibrahim made a prayer, and among the prayers
that he made, he said, oh Allah, make
this land safe
and protect my family from idolatry.
Among the prayer he made many other prayers.
Among the prayers he made, he said, make
this land safe. Which land? Area of Makkah,
this area, this region. Where Makkah is where
the what the the worship of only Allah
has already
began to become fruitful. It's already started, and
it's it's moving.
So make this land safe,
right? Make it a safe area, it's not
gonna be taken over, it's not gonna be
colonized, it's not gonna be destroyed or something
like that. And number 2, and protect my
family, meaning my family and all the people
around me, protect them from idolatry. Now why
would prophet Ibrahim make these 2 duas?
Right? Number 1, these 2 supplications. Number 1,
make the land safe because he wants this,
what he set up, he wants it to
remain. He wants it to last long, and
he knows that one of the ways in
which believers,
true believers in Allah, have been destroyed in
the past
was by somebody coming
and taking them over and just wiping them
out completely. So he's aware because he's a
prophet, he's aware of this history. He understands
that this is one of the ways that
can destroy
the entire message of Islam in this area.
And the second way that Islam can be
destroyed in this area, Islam meaning worship of
Allah, the second way it can be destroyed
is idolatry.
Now why would he say protect my family
from idolatry when he's already teaching them? He's
a prophet, his son is a prophet, and
they're teaching them directly this is, you know,
you only worship Allah, you only do these
things. Because you wanna answer it? Yes.
But as a as a prophet yes. As
a prophet, he knows the reasoning behind it,
that's one. There's there's another reason. Yes, sister.
So like prophet Nur Hassan, he thinks maybe,
you know, the message will not carry on,
perhaps that that's another that's another reason.
Okay. People may start getting into other things
and giving value to other things and all
of that.
The people who read the text, there's actually
another answer in there. If you read it
carefully, it's there. Yes.
Exactly. He experienced it. He saw his own
father
making idols, idol worship. He saw his own
people. He saw the king arguing with him.
Those who know this are familiar with the
story. If you don't know the story, it's
fine. But basically, he had dealt with it
in the past. His entire life before he
moved to Makkah, before he moved to Arabia,
he was debating with his people. He was
trying to convince them, and trying to show
them through proof, look, why would you worship
these stars and moons and all of these
things? Why do you worship this king? Worship
Allah. And he couldn't convince most of his
people, that's why he left that area. So
he has 100%
experience with it, and that's something which you
understand gives you it gives you, like, a
a sense of zeal, you know. If you've
dealt with it, if you've dealt with it,
if you've seen your own parents go down
a path that have been wrong, you're very
careful. If you've seen, for example, your own
kids going off and doing something really bad,
it's it's affected you directly. That's what you
find today is you find people coming and
say, you know what? You know, we need
to focus on the youth. We need to
focus on the youth. Right? The people who
are very adamant and saying we need to
focus on the youth, oftentimes
either them, their own family, or someone very
close to them, they saw that their youth
their their children have gotten messed up, and
now they have a sense. Whereas other people
who haven't had that yet, like, yeah, it's
nice, you know, we should focus on that
too, but they're not gonna have the same
type of thing that the people who went
through that experience.
The people who came from idolatry
into Islam, they have that sense of we're
not going back to that. The people who
came from worshiping Jesus and they came into
Islam, they're gonna look at that and say,
woah, woah, woah, woah, before you tell me
to go and, you know, kiss this, Sheikh's
feet or something like that, This is reminding
me of this, and I came far away
from this. I'm not going back near this.
Do you understand? So experience
gives you a very positive,
you know, scent you know, pot optimism,
positive sense of life. And that's one of
the reasons why Allah tests us, and he
tests the prophets so much because it gives
them an experience which actually continues to motivate
them. Prophets are the people who are tested
the most. So it gives them that power,
it gives them that zeal. So prophet Ibrahim
made these two prayers, and then prophet Ismael
after prophet Ibrahim passed away,
and probably his mother passed away as well
whatever whatever point in time, prophet Ismael also
became a prophet.
So how do you become a prophet? Allah
decides that he chooses you and he receives
revelation so he is also a prophet. And
what does he do? He stays in this
area and he continues to teach people about
all of the things, about the pilgrimage, about
worshiping Allah, about how you should worship, about
all the good qualities and all the, you
know, bad things to stay away from. So
the message continues in this area,
and the Kaaba becomes the spiritual capital
of Arabia
over a period of time. Whether or not
it was it was in the lifetime of
prophet Ishmael, or it came a little bit
later, the message continued, we don't know. But
the point is that
at this point in time, at this point
in history,
Makkah and some of the surrounding areas or
some of the surrounding tribes had Islam, and
Islam was established over there. K. Islam was
established over there. So that's very important to
understand.
Any questions on this slide?
Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So how do you answer
someone who says
that the Kaaba is like an idol
and therefore you're worshiping it? Usually, this question
comes from Christian missionaries,
and it's ironic that it's coming from I
just wanna add this little point. It's ironic
that it's coming from people who actually have
a giant statue of Jesus
inside their church.
Right? But, nonetheless, it's something that should be
answered. Right? So the thing is,
first thing you ask them is say I
usually when I give a presentation, I explain
I tell people when I'm telling them what
the Kaaba is, and I say, you know,
and people pray in this direction and they're
praying at this building and everything,
guess what's inside this building that makes it
so special that people are praying
in in, you know, in this direction?
And everyone starts guessing all of these different
things and everything. You say nothing. It's absolutely
empty. There's nothing inside of it. Right? And
that's the whole point. The point the one,
the fact that it's empty.
The 2, that it's the fact that it's
unembellished almost.
3, that there's there's absolutely nothing in there.
And if you look at it this way,
if you look at all the people who've
worshiped things throughout history,
right, they've always been something of something important
significance.
Some idol, some shape, some tree, some something
that's considered to be special. And that's probably
one of the reasons why the Kaaba is
kept so simple. No one even no one
has an admiration for the building because of
the building.
Right? If it wasn't connected to Allah and
that prophet Ibrahim built it, there's nothing absolutely
intrinsically special about it, and there's nothing inside
of it as well. Right? So that's one
of the the simplest ways and the other
thing is, it says look, if you look
at it in isolation,
and you say well I'm gonna look at
people who are worshiping over there, and I'm
gonna look at them in isolation and not
understand what they're believing. What does the Quran
say about idol worship? What does the Quran
say about wats of Allah? What does the
Quran say about that? And if you go
to anyone who's in front of the Kaaba,
like if you go to like some people
who are worshiping in a mosque which has
a grave or something like that, some people
will get it wrong.
If you go to anyone at any point
in history throughout the history of the world,
you know, but from the time of Islam,
the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam, if you
if you were to ask them,
what are you doing over here? Are you
worshiping the building? Everyone would say absolutely not.
Right? So that's probably one of the clearest
ways. There's so many ways to, you know,
keep on going with that, but hopefully that
does that suffice?
Yes.
Okay. So the the position of the Kaaba
is directly in the in the sky above,
it's actually above what's called Baitul Ma'mur, which
is another
area where which is the throne of Allah,
where the angels are actually going around and
they're worshiping up there as well. So yes,
from that perspective. Right? Even though it's transcendent,
but yes from that perspective.
Yeah. I think one of the most powerful
things is to explain that
there's nothing inside the Kaaba.
Right? Literally, there's nothing inside. Right? So if
someone were to say that no, no, you're
worshiping it for sure, are we worshiping the
bricks
or the stones? And if we're worshiping the
bricks and the stones, we're gonna actually find
out the Kaaba had been rebuilt.
So most of the stones that are there
are not the original stones either. So if
you're worshiping the original stone, people stop worshiping
those stones. Why don't we take one of
those stones out and start worshiping that stone
because it's the original one that prophet Ibrahim
built? There's another answer.
So it's it's usually
usually people don't argue when you explain it
to them. To be honest, from my experience,
I've encountered this question several times, and when
I explained it to them, most people were
were fine. Only people who would continue to
argue are those who, you know, nothing is
gonna, you know, nothing nothing will appease them.
Right. So, yeah, that's a good argument as
well. So if the Kaaba was destroyed for
some reason, we would still pray in the
same direction. So it's not the building. It's
definitely not the building.
Okay?
So by the 7th century, what happened around
this okay. What is the 7th century?
Yes. So from the year 600 to 699
is the 7th century. Alright? I'm venturing this
because some people actually think that 7th century
means, like, 750
or 740
or no. That's so you take the number
and you go down a little bit back.
So 600 to 699
is the 7th century. 700 to 799
is the 8th century. So That's important. It's
very, very important for you to know as
a, you know, as a person studying history.
So this was by this time, by 7th
century, k, around the year 600 somewhere,
the Arabs had forgotten the teachings of prophet
Ibrahim and prophet Ismail.
They'd forgotten the teachings. The teachings are gone,
the monotheism, all of that started going down,
down, down. How did this happen?
Right? How did this take place? Well, here's
a number of things how it took place.
Number 1, what you actually see is that
pilgrimage.
Right? Coming to Makkah,
worshiping Allah over there, going around the Kaaba,
bowing, prostrating, all of these things became a
ritual.
It's one step in the process. It became
a ritual. So what does that mean when
you have a ritual?
Meaning you don't understand why you're doing. You
don't you don't understand what you're doing, you
don't understand why you're doing it. So their
parents maybe they didn't teach them, and their
grandparents didn't teach their parents, and they kept
on doing the motion,
but they didn't understand what they were doing
and they didn't understand why they were doing
it. This is one step in how
they forgot the the true teachings of the
prophets.
Then
in the 4th century,
right, this is we're looking at the 7th
century now, how things had already become messed
up. This is one thing. So in the
7th century, people are still performing the pilgrimage,
what's known as the Hajj. They're still performing
the pilgrimage.
It's there,
but
it's just the ritual. They don't really know
what they're doing or they've changed the meaning.
The people think I think the Hajj means
this. Someone else says no, I think the
pilgrimage means this, and they'll just go ahead
and doing it anyways. In the 4th century,
another thing happened.
The 4th century is
300
to 3 99. Right? So in the 4th
century, the descendants of Isma'il, up until this
time, the descendants and family of Ismael or
the lineage of Ismael continued to control Makkah
up until this time.
In the 4th century,
the descendants of Ismael were kicked out of
the city by one of the tribes known
as Khuzar,
another Arab tribe, right, because prophet Ibrahim mixed
with Jurhum, prophet, Ismael mixed with Jurhum, and
they continued to control that area. Afterwards, around
the 4th century, they were kicked out by
another tribe,
which means that, you know,
the spiritual,
you know, lineage going back kind of was
being shaken. Now whether or not they were
messed up already, Allah knows best, but it's
it's something that's a significant event that took
place in Makkah.
K? And then around this time with the
tribe of Khuzaa,
idolatry was introduced
into Makkah. Now how did idolatry get introduced
into Makkah? Well, there was a man
it's reported that there was a man by
the name of Amr Abu Luhay,
And he went and he was in charge
of the city, or he was one of
the influential people in the city, and he
began to bring idols into the city.
Whether he bought it from Syria or whether
he bought it from another region, it's not
important. He probably found an idol somewhere, he
was messed up in his own thoughts, so
he brought an idol an idol into the
city,
and people began to start worshiping idols from
this time. This is how idolatry began to
be how it started. Because if the the
understand this very important point.
If the people
if the first generation after prophet Isma'il, who
had learned directly from him, who were strong
in their faith,
If a man like this had come and
brought the idol into the city,
what do you think would happen? You think
people would start worshiping him? No. Because their
faith is strong,
they just they understand the message on all
of these things. But here, with the passage
of time, you kind of forget what are
you praying in the 1st place, what are
you doing at the Kaaba in the 1st
place. You can modify it, mess it up,
whatever it is. Once you lose the substance
of what you're doing, number 1. Number 2,
your figures who are considered to be the
they're kicked out by the people who you
hold in authority, your lin your your spiritual
lineage, meaning the people who you respect, your
history
is destroyed.
Your history that you you held in such
awe has been thrown out and dismissed completely.
Right? Like today,
we live in a in a place where
our history is being dismissed. Most Muslims don't
know their own history. You you throw that
out, and now it's very easy to replace
it with different beliefs. So first you lost
the meaning behind what you're doing, and number
2, you've lost your historical connection to what
you actually held to be dear. And now
idolatry can
be introduced.
Now you put an idol in there and
you tell people that, you know what? This
idol is something great. If you worship it
and you just pay it a little bit
respect, it'll intercede with you on behalf of
Allah, and you could get all this stuff
done, and you don't really need to do
much work, and everything is just gonna be
perfectly fine.
This is how it happens. It's important to
not to not think that all of a
sudden from day 1, you know, that everyone's
worshiping Allah, and then all of a sudden,
you know, all they just decided to start
worshiping idols because they looked at it, and
the idol was so pretty they just couldn't
resist. That's not the way idol worship starts.
It's a gradual process,
and it has to do with either ignorance,
has to do with ignorance of your culture,
your history, all of these things. So it's
important to analyze
and to understand how this actually takes place.
So they had a few lifeless rituals.
They had a few, you know, things that
they were doing, and this is from the
time of prophet Isma'il.
It's not that they changed the form.
Right? They didn't change the form necessarily,
they changed the substance.
They changed the meaning behind the things. Some
of the things they kept directly from the
time of prophet Isma'il. That's why you're gonna
find that when the prophet, peace be upon
him, when he comes on the scene,
some things he keeps intact,
some things he abrogates completely because he knows
what was a remnant from the time of
prophet Ismail because he's a prophet. So just
keep that in the back of your mind.
And then
at the during 7th century,
there were about 300 idols inside and around
the Kaaba, in this area that were being
worshiped. That's how prevalent it became. Idol worship
became very very common. People used to go
and, you know, they had big idols, they
had small idols, they had portable idols, they
used to walk around with them, they used
to take them on their journeys, they used
to do all of these things. So,
idols became very, very common place. Some of
the ways in which
it began to spread even more and develop
into different things
Is some stones people used to take some
of the stones, not from the Kaaba, from
but from Makkah. They used to take a
stone from Makkah and they used to take
it back with them. And they used to,
you know, think that, oh, this is gonna
help me because Makkah is a sacred place.
And now that since Makkah is a sacred
place, we take a little stone, it reminds
us of Makkah. And then after a little
while, gradually, people start putting this stone in
a special, you know, jar and on display,
and then after a while people go, oh,
wow, people start worshiping it, and then it
becomes it turns into an idol. So all
of these idols started becoming like little portable
idols and people started carrying them, and it
started with a good intention.
That's the important thing to understand, is that
most idol most of idol worship coming from
the prophet began with a good intention and
flip it changed around.
It became modified. It it turned turned its
way around. That became problematic.
Now
idol worship became an addiction.
K. It became so extreme and so severe
that people couldn't pray anymore without idols. Even
though they had a concept of God, a
concept of Allah, they couldn't pray without idols
anymore. You just have to have an idol
for whatever, for the sake of concentration,
for the sake of blessing or whatever it
may be. So there was 1 Arab man,
and this is a pretty authentic report,
that this man, he couldn't find a rock,
so he wanted something to worship and he
couldn't find a rock. So he's looking around,
he's traveling,
and he's looking, he can't find anything. So
what does he do? He says, you know
what? He has a I think it was
a sheep or a goat or something like
that, and he takes a pile of dirt
and he piles it together, and he milks
the animal on top of it so there's
some milk, kind of solidifies and everything, and
now he's got an idol and he starts
worshiping that thing. Right? Suddenly he he just
milked an animal on top of a pile
of dirt and he started worshiping over there.
That's how addictive
it actually became.
So it's something that you have to understand.
This became something that they couldn't do without.
They just feel that you cannot go directly
to Allah anymore. You have to go through
this idol and probably many people started worshiping
the idol itself.
K. There's another Arab, there's another person at
this time it's reported that he made an
idol out of dates.
He made an idol out of dates while
he was traveling because he didn't have anything
else, and then he was worshiping it. And
then afterwards, he got really hungry and he
said, you know what? I'm hungry. I need
to eat something. So he started eating the
dates. Right? Now, this is this is, you'd
think that, wow, back in the days, this
was something weird. This happened very recently.
This is not something like, oh, wow, 7th
century or something. This happens today. In fact,
this was, I heard it on the news,
about 4, 5 years ago. In India,
they decided to make an idol out of
chocolate.
Yeah. Seriously. They made a giant chocolate idol,
k, and everyone was worshiping the idol.
Everyone was worshiping the idol, and it just
happened. It just happened, like, around that time,
maybe a month or 2 or something like
that, that there was a major massive heat
wave in India.
Right?
Bad timing. Really, really bad timing.
So what happens? The idol started melting. Be
you it's very hard to keep that thing,
you know, intact. You have the refrigerator units
or whatever they use to keep it intact.
So the idol started melting.
So they called all the people from the
village and the areas and everything, and they
just they ate it.
And that's it. They ate it. That's So
the the the thing is the point is
that
this is not something that
is
non existent anymore. We kind of look at
the store and we think this this, you
know, that was way back in the days.
Right? People have changed or something like that.
No.
The characters have changed. Right? The characters have
changed, but the attitudes and the behaviors are
consistent. Maybe not in every society, but there
is a common there's a common precedence that
goes across. Now the thing to remember
is that there's a footnote in your book.
There's a footnote in your book which says
that this was Umar ibn Al Khattab.
Right? And when I wrote that at that
time, that's, the report that had reached me.
But after investigating it in more detail, that
report that it's him is actually fabricated. So
you could just strike that from your notes,
it was not actually
him. Okay? Or
it it wouldn't it wouldn't, reduce his status,
but, some people had a con, you know,
an issue took an issue with that, and
that's actually true. It's not it's not an
authentic report, authentically attributed to him. K? Any,
any questions?
No. Very good question. I'm not going off
the Hijri calendar.
So when I say 7th century, I'm talking
about the Christian calendar, common era CE. No.
No. No. I I I I I went
back where I'm saying this is Arabia in
the 7th century. Right? And then I'm saying,
how did this happen? How did all this
idolatry come about? Well, there were some steps,
some steps, and one of the important steps
to get here was in the 4th century
this happened.
Does that
make sense? Because we're going up. Right?
We're going 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th,
7th century. Right?
Is Ismail was way,
way 1000 of years back. He's he's before
year 0, so he's he's BCE.
He's BCE. He's 1000, 1000 of years BCE.
Okay? So remember, there's there's there's calendars. So
I'm glad you actually asked this. So remember,
there's 2 calendars, right, that were utilized generally
in studying Islam. One is the Hijri calendar,
the migrate the calendar according to migration, and
the other one is the the Christian calendar,
what's called what we call CE, common era.
BCE means before common era. This used to
be called probably when you were in high
school or something, used to be called AD
and BC. Right? So BC used to mean,
like, I forgot what it means. Probably some
people say before Christ. Could have been before
Christ. AD does not mean after death, by
the way. K? A lot of people thought
it means after death. No. It doesn't mean
after death. Anno?
Yeah. No minute. You're right. Exactly. It means
the year of our lord. That's what it
means. So Christian calendar. That's politically incorrect
because no one besides the Christians
accept that it's the year of the lord
because they believe that Jesus is the lord
and Jesus was born at that time. So
that's not in use anymore generally. So try
not to use,
AD
and use CE instead. So we're gonna use
CE, stands for common error. K. I think
there's a footnote probably in the book regarding
this, I think. Yeah. The one about Omar
being the one who ate the dates that
he was worshiping. Yeah. The thing is the
report itself, if you look at the chain,
the chain is so weak that it falls
in the realm of being fabricated.
That's the reason why it's considered to be
fabricated.
Right? So
Yeah. I know. I know. Unfortunately, you hear
it a lot from a lot of people,
but see, the the thing is this. The
reason is because
some people think that attributing this story to
Omar degrades his status.
But to be honest, for the my perspective,
it actually upgrades his status even more. Where
he came from
is amazing. Where where where he how he
changed now. But some people take very high
offense to it and say, no, you're degrading
Omar and he couldn't have been like that
and no one no one could, you know,
be like that or whatever. That's I I
I don't see it, but I'm just telling
you for the sake of, you know, academic
purposes authentically, it's not that authentic. The the
story is most probably true,
but the fact that it's Omar,
the fact that it's identified as being Omar,
that's the part that's it's not you can't
trace it directly back to him. Probably someone
was doing it, but we don't know if
it was Omar or not. So it's it's
it's a good it's a good, point you're
making. So people go crazy about the Kaaba
cloth nowadays. Right? Now the thing is, it
depends on how they are. Right? It's something
that's dangerous,
you know, in the sense that when you
look at idolatry and how it started and
all of that, but you have to kind
of look at what
threat or what potential reaction do people really
have in the Kaaba cloth. Some people will
say that, you know, it's it's just an
honor, we really enjoy having the, you know,
the cloth and all of that. It depends
on how people you see them reacting to
it. If they're really going crazy and they're
really, like, you know, treating it like something
way way up there or something like that,
then if they should be cautious about it,
they should be very cautious about it. Okay?
It's about their reaction more because generally Islam
closed a lot of the doors by putting
more strict regulations
for this ummah, for this for this community.
So most of those hard and fast rules
have been there, but you just you need
to be careful about some things based upon
people's behavior.
So idolatry, how did how did it start
up? Alright. So,
let's look at what the Arab beliefs at
that time. Arabs believed in Allah as a
creator,
and this is mentioned clearly in the Quran.
If you ask them who created the heavens
and the earth, they're gonna say Allah. The
majority of Arabs actually believed in Allah. It's
not that they didn't believe in Allah, they
did. And they believed him as the creator.
Right? So the idols were what? They were
like the mediators.
They were like the messengers that can, you
know, like the get out of jail free
cards who, like, kind of, you know, the
buddy who's gonna go and talk to the
president or the king on your behalf, and
he's gonna hook you up. Alright. The idols
are basically your hook up person. Alright. They're
gonna take care of you. So that's why
idol worship became so prevalent, so you can
go and you can go through them, and
people thought you can't go directly to Allah
anymore, you have to go through the idol.
So what would they do? They would bow
down to the idols. Now how would they
worship the idols? They would bow down the
same way that you're supposed to worship Allah,
they would bow down to the idols. They
would ask the idols as well for wishes
like, you know, can you, you know, grant
grant me like a a nice new camel,
or, you know, can you give me,
kinda like what we do today, right, with
cars and stuff. So they would go to
the idol and they would ask them, you
know, grant me lots of children and and
grant me a nice wife or grant me
a nice husband or all of these things.
They would seek protection from the idols. They
say if they're going into a war or
something, they would talk to the idol and
ask, you know, protect me from this enemy
or protect me from these things. So they
would do all of these things.
Then they used to have a a culture
where they would dedicate
certain animals
to slaughter for the idol. So basically, there
were certain type of animals. They say, these
kind of animals
have to be sacrificed
to the idols.
Either you you choose some every year or
every season or whenever it is to get
something done, or they had some strange customs
like if an animal gives birth to a
certain type of,
animal, another type of animal, say, well, this
is quite rare.
So this animal is deemed sacred now. So
sometimes, like, this animal needs to be slaughtered.
Sometimes no one's allowed to touch this animal,
you can't kill it, but they would do
all sorts of other things. They would slaughter,
you know, animals
to the idols, they would give the idols
gifts, they would maybe offer food in front
of the idol or something like that,
so give gold or whatever it is, and
this this this kind of practice still takes
place around the world in many places.
And that's when it became an organized religion.
I use the word organized religion because it
became something that was systematic,
and it became something that people were, like,
a kind of like a little hierarchy or
a clergy kind of started to develop a
very primitive form of, like, a clergy. So
there were certain crops and certain animals that
had to be dedicated to the idols. So
certain crops that came out, so you have
to give this portion, has to go directly
to the idol. And like I said, the
animal, if it gives birth certain number of
ways or if there's a certain type of
animal that's born with, like,
some deformity or some kind of different feature,
say this animal has to go to the
and it became like a formula. It became
like,
you know, like a religious right standardized
law. This is the way idol worship takes
place in Mecca and the surrounding regions. So
any sheep or camel giving birth to 10
children, for example, became deemed sacred. This is
not,
being sacrificed to the idol, this means that
if any animal gave birth to 10 children,
it's sacred, you can't slaughter it. You can't
get rid of it. So it just walks
around, no one can mess with it, no
one can touch it, or anything like that.
So they developed other superstitions that started coming
out.
Other Arabs existed at that time, they were
materialists.
Okay. Materialists in the traditional classical sense of
materialism,
where they only believe that they believe in
time. Like the Quran says, they believe that
time kills everything. So they believe in cause
and effect, they don't believe in afterlife, they
don't believe
maybe some superstitions, some spirituality,
but they say, you know, we just we
live and we die and that's life. Don't
worry about anything else. That's all we need
to focus on. So materialists existed at that
time as well, what you call atheist or
something like that, materialists.
There were people who worship the sun. There
were people who worship the moon. There were
people who worship different planets.
There were people who worship different stars. And
certain tribes, there were a few tribes who
they would worship different stars. So this tribe
worship this group of stars or this constellation.
This other group would worship another star or
something like that. So they had their own,
you know, they had their own, like, claim
to idol worship.
Okay? And most of the Arabs, even the
ones who believed in Allah, they had very
little or no concept of an afterlife.
Why? Because if you're praying to the idols,
if your main prayer becomes to the idols
and you're bowing to the idols, what you're
doing, you're asking the idol for wishes,
stuff you want, and you're asking the idol
for protection and all of that stuff.
You're not asking the idol for success,
you know, in the next life. You're not
asking the idol for, you know, I want
you to, you know, guide me along the
path, you know, all of these things. Right?
So it's it's it's important.
Right? It's important. So it's important to understand.
Can someone in the back just tap the
brother? You awake?
Okay, good. He was He's like dozing off,
insha'allah. So I just wanna make sure I'm
checking that you're awake for your own good.
So they had mostly no concept of afterlife.
Okay? So any questions on this before we
take a break?
When they started instituting,
saying that certain animals are sacred and crops
are sacred,
that became,
that became an organized religion. Why? Because
who could how could the idol
communicate to someone else that this crop or
this animal was sacred and had to be
sacrificed?
If you lift if you left it open
and said anyone can bring whatever they want
to the idol, then it's it's a free
for all. Right? You can bring whatever you
want. When you have some people going and
telling everyone else, you know, if this animal
gives birth to 10 animals,
right, then it's sacred, or you have to
give this kind of animal and this much
crop to the idol.
Who came up with that in the first
place? That's how it became organized religion. Yeah.
You're saying the the the prayer of prophet
Ibrahim? Yeah. So so it's changed, but the
thing is, first of all, it lasted for
a very long time.
It went away for a period,
and now it's about to come back. And
until now to today, it's lasted again. So
keeping it safe and keeping protected and keeping
the family away, technically, the family had been
kicked out. So actually the prayer was okay
because the ones who introduced idol worship were
not even from the family originally. Right? So
the family was affected later on afterwards,
but they recovered.
They recovered. So this temporary step, keeping the
family safe and having the dua accepted, the
supplication accepted, doesn't mean that every single person
in your family. It means generally. If you
look at on a wide enough zoomed out
scale, the dua actually was accepted.
It was accepted. Okay? So we'll take,
a 10 minute break and resume at,
8 no. 904.