Mustafa Umar – Islamic History 101 Lecture#8 Life of the Prophet
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the secret call of the prophet Quraysh and his importance in building trust with people. They emphasize the importance of acknowledging and submitting worship before acknowledging the serious charge and its consequences. The speaker also discusses the use of "we" in English to indicate wealth or power and the importance of finding one's family before starting with Islam. They stress the need for people to show respect and value for their ancestors and warn against the loss of control from the past. The speaker suggests using a scare tactic to prevent false advertisements and warns against the loss of control from the previous generation.
AI: Summary ©
After the secret call,
the prophet
said we're not going to
convey this message publicly just yet.
But after a while, which will actually took
about a few years,
this call remained secret.
They continued to pray in secret. They continued
to call only
the few people that they trusted,
and this was not publicly declared in Mecca
yet. But
obviously,
it's a small city,
people talk,
tribal, you know, relations, so the message was
kind of known. It was kind of getting
around,
but no one was making a big thing
about it because no one was openly proclaiming
it. It was kind of like,
you know, if people wanna worship whatever they
wanna do, it's not a big deal. It
doesn't make a big deal. If few few
people wanna do it, that's fine. Not a
problem.
But after a few years of this secret
call, there was about 50 believers.
Okay? By the 3rd year, there were about
50 people who had accepted.
So
better than nothing,
not that high though. Not that high.
Now the verses are revealed
to the prophet
saying,
now openly proclaim what you are commanded
and turn away from the idolaters.
Meaning,
that now it's
you have to clarify and make it very
clear that we're against idolatry.
Now this the message has changed a little
bit in the sense that now the the
the step
or the phase
that's being entered now is a different phase.
It says, indeed, we will suffice you against
the mockers.
Now, there's no mockers yet. Right? No one
is mocking, no one is making fun of
them, no one's doing all of these things
yet. But Allah
is saying, don't worry. We know what's gonna
happen, and we're gonna take care of you.
You don't need to worry about that. And
another another verse says, and warn your and
warn your family
and warn your tribe. So meaning, now it's
time to warn everyone.
We're not just your immediate family, meaning warn
the entire tribe, warn everybody.
So the prophet he understood
that now the mission is entering into a
new phase. What needs to be done in
this phase?
People need to publicly
know about Islam. So the first thing that
the prophet does is he he ascends a
hill, and there's a hill that was there.
It's a special hill where people used to
make very important announcements.
Rarely used. Right? It's like an entire city
wide announcement.
So if some messenger goes and goes on
top of the hill, it means everyone is
gonna come and gather at the, you know,
at the bottom of this hill, at the
foot of the hill
to hear what what's going on. Something really,
really important is going on. So So the
prophet goes and he ascends on top of
this hill,
and he proclaims out loud, everyone
important person had been sent over here, or
they sent one of their, you know, messengers
to go find out what's the news, what's
going on. So the prophet
says, oh people of Quraysh,
telling everyone, Quraysh meaning everybody,
would you believe me if I told you
that there's an enemy behind this hill
ready to attack the city?
This is very very important statement that he's
making here. He's saying he's asking them,
I'm standing on top of the hill,
you guys are down there, so I can
see you
and I can see what's behind me as
well.
So if I told you that I'm able
to see that there's an army, a giant
army coming, and they're about to attack the
city right now, would you believe me?
Right? Now, this is the thing is they
don't have much time to climb up the
hill themselves.
If there's really an army on the other
side, that army is gonna come into the
city and it's gonna destroy them. If they're
if they don't go grab their weapons, grab
their armor, go lock themselves inside their houses,
prepare for war. There's not much time.
So the answer they gave was, of course,
we would believe you. Why?
Because you're not a liar.
You're not someone who who would make something
up like this. You're not someone who would
do we trust you very much. If it
was somebody else on the hill,
maybe not. But for for you,
very clear. Your reputation has been the trustworthy
Al Amin. You're the guy who helped rebuild
the Kaaba. You're the one who, you know,
participated in the pact of excellence. You're the
one who, you know, solve other issues. You're
very well known, we keep our valuables with
you. All of that reputation now is coming
back to their minds and thinking,
this is a guy we can trust. Why
should we not trust him?
Now, the important thing to understand is why
the prophet
said this instead of just going and saying,
you know what?
People of Quraysh,
I'm receiving revelation, I'm a prophet, you should
believe.
There's no reason why you shouldn't believe, and
if you don't believe, you're going to the
fire of *. Or if you believe, you're
going to paradise.
Why didn't he just come straightforward with the
message? Why did he have to make this
introduction
to test them? What was the point of
that? The point of it is because he's
trying to make an a very important analogy
between the fact that he's a prophet
and between why they should believe in him.
So he's making them acknowledge
a very important principle which they have acknowledged.
They said, yes, we're willing to believe you
if you're reporting something to us
that we're unable to see,
but you're able to see it.
And there's no time to even verify.
You see, this is the important thing about
his example. The one of the best analogies,
best examples you can come up with. There
is no time to doubt what you're saying.
Because if we doubt what you're saying, the
and we're thinking, you know what? We don't
know. We need a few hours to think
about it. The army will come in and
it will destroy them, if he was right.
Number 2, they don't have time to get
people to climb up the mountain and go
and double check and verify. By that time,
the army will have already seen them and
will come over, and they're gonna be dead.
So it's very interesting what he's saying. He's
saying that I'm in a position right now,
physically,
that I can see something that you are
not able to see and you're not gonna
be able to see it in time.
There's no time for you to get to
the same position where I am.
You'll you may find out later, but now
you have to take my word based upon
trust.
Now if you think about how that relates
to his prophethood,
a prophet
is able to see
and perceive things that the average human being
cannot perceive in this lifetime.
They will see them when they die. They
will see them in the next life, but
there's no time for you now because no
one else is gonna be receiving prophethood. There's
no time for you to see that. Only
the prophet can know these things.
So part of the reason why you're taking
them, why you're believing in them is you
you know their character, you know what kind
of people they are, and you're taking them
on their word.
And also, you're taking them on their belief
that there's nothing strange about it. There's an
army over the hill. It's come to attack.
Nothing strange. If he said that, you know
what? There's a 5 headed monster
with, you know, 3 wings outside over the
mountain, maybe they would think, okay,
we trust the guy,
but he's reporting something really weird.
Right? Something really strange. That's the same thing
with Islam.
How do people build their belief? Number 1,
by knowing who the prophet is, and his
character, and his reputation.
Number 2, by looking at the message and
saying, this makes sense.
There's nothing strange about this. We're not asking
you to believe that, you know, Allah is,
you know, 5 people in 1 or that
you need to, you know, do some weird
kind of thing or something like that. There's
nothing strange, nothing logically,
you know, strange about it. Rational, irrational about
it.
You can't perceive certain things. You can't understand
certain things because they're beyond your capacity,
but they're not irrational or just crazy.
There's a difference between 2. 1 is being
transcendent or beyond your understanding,
and one is saying that this is just
ridiculous.
2 different things. So he's saying this is
beyond you, but I can tell you because
I'm a prophet. They acknowledge this and say,
yes, we're willing to believe you in something
we're not able to see.
And then he said, well, I've been commanded
by Allah to warn you, and I cannot
protect you in this world. Now he's delivering
the message full force, straightforward because they've already
acknowledged that. Now I've been I've,
I cannot protect you in this world nor
can I promise you anything in the next
world unless you acknowledge and submit to the
worship of Allah alone? The message has been
conveyed.
Clear.
They acknowledge the principle, the message has been
conveyed. There's no wishy washiness about it. They
got the message.
The message has has reached them. He didn't
say that, you know what, well, by the
way, you know, let me describe to you,
you know, what we've been doing lately. We've
been praying
and, this is the way we pray,
and just letting you know who we are.
Thank you very much for your time. Very
clearly has conveyed the message to the people.
Now what happened? People were shocked. People were
stunned. They didn't know what to think. They're
they're thinking. Something is going on in their
mind. They're thinking, woah, this is
everyone is quiet, everyone is trying to figure
out what what should we do.
The first person to break the silence
is the prophet's own uncle Abu Lahab.
And Abu Lahab makes this comment and he
says,
may you be destroyed.
Okay? This
this statement
is
is really really harsh. It's a very very
bad statement.
It's like saying, today,
go to *
in in the context that we use today.
Go to *. So basically, he's saying that,
and the interesting and then he said, you
called us here for this.
This is his response. And Abu Abu Lahab
is one of the important clan leaders.
He's the uncle of the prophet. He's from
the clan of Hashim as well. He's one
of the very important prominent people in Makkah
as well. So he has a status.
Number 2,
he's an uncle of the prophet.
Now in this society,
family supports family.
This is not like, sometimes in American society
you have your family, you know, making fun
of you or someone. This is a society
where your uncle would always take your side.
Your uncle always has your back, and now
your uncle is not privately but publicly
making fun of you and telling you something
like this.
Really really bad situation.
So people are noticing this and they're seeing
this, and what's his what's his, reason? What's
his excuse? You called us here for this?
He said, I'm out of here. And he
started leaving, and other people started leaving along
with him. Started following the crowd, no one
else had anything to say. Because it's a
very tribal society, you see a leader doing
that, everyone's like,
I'm not gonna say something. Maybe I'll think
about it when I get home, but I'm
not gonna say something in front of this
situation here.
So he did this and he left. Now
look at his reasoning. You called us here
for this, meaning
Abu Lab's thinking,
you know, I don't have time for this.
My life revolves around business.
My life revolves around money.
My life revolves around relaxation and enjoyment. I
don't have time for these spiritual things and
importance of life, purpose of life, and this
is gonna be, you know, paradise, and we
have to worship. Don't don't bother me with
these things.
Mentality of many many people today.
You talk to them about the purpose of
life, I don't have time, you know, for
that. If you wanna discuss the news, or
you wanna discuss sports, or you wanna go
catch a coffee, you know, when you wanna
catch a movie or something like that, let's
I I'm willing to give you 2 hours.
I'll give you 4 hours. But to talk
about something so serious,
I I don't have time. I don't even
have 5 minutes to talk to you about
this. This is the same mentality Abu Lahab
is is having at this point in time.
So he leaves
in protest. This is a waste of my
time. I don't have time for this. Everyone
else leaves. Everyone else disperses.
Some follow him, some just go back home
and they say, we're not gonna leave it.
Setback.
Major major setback for the revelation.
The first time
the prophet was commanded to do this,
and this is the reaction that he gets.
Open reaction. Now what would many people do?
Many people would get depressed. See, you know
I tried and I failed, and I'm never
gonna be able to do it, and you
know, oh Allah, you told me to do
it and you said you're gonna suffice me
against people like this. What's suffice? Everyone left.
His whole audience left. The entire thing didn't
work, but he conveyed the message, but it
didn't work. So
we're gonna see what happens after this. Any
questions?
Question is, what was Abu Lab's relationship with
the prophet before
Islam? We don't know the exact details, but
there are reports
that
he was
not directly, you know, his uncle. He was
uncle from the other side of the family,
actually. So that's one of the reasons why
Abu Talib was closer to him because he
was from the same side of the family.
Abu Lahab was a little bit on the
other side of the uncle from the other
side. Other than that,
we we don't know exactly what his relationship
is. Yeah. That that's true. Yeah. So so
that's actually that's a very good point. I'm
glad you reminded me of that. That's one
very important point. That the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam's daughters
were actually married. 2 of them were married
to Abu Lahab sons.
So that kind of gives you a clarification
on the relationship, actually. So outside of that,
we don't know incidents and conversation that took
place between them, but that does show you
that there's a pretty good relationship going on
between the 2 of them. Okay. Jazak Malache
for that. Okay. Very good question. Very good
question.
Why is the word we used instead of
the word I? Alright. In fact,
we have a q and a bank
on our website, iioc.com.
It's gonna launch next week.
And one of the detailed answers that I
wrote was actually an answer to this question.
So the answer is, why is it we
this is what this is known in English
as not the royal we, there's another term
as well. The majestic plural. Yeah. It's known
as the majestic plural. And this this is
a a style that exists in many languages.
So using the plural
to refer to yourself
when you're talking when you when you're expressing
a sense of majesty. You know, kings and
queens and all of these people, they use
the we when they're actually referring to themself.
It it shows like a grandeur.
It shows like a high level. So this
is something that takes place, you know, in
many places. Like the king of Saudi Arabia,
he uses we still in Arabic. In India,
where I studied, for example, all the people
refer to themselves as we because it used
to be like a like a court type
culture in the city of Lucknow. Everyone says,
like, we are coming, and we are going,
and we have arrived. It's just one person,
but they're using the term we. Right? So
this is something that was very common to
indicate grandeur or majesty.
Now Allah uses this in the Quran, we,
generally, when he's trying to in indicate his
greatness or something like that. When it's more
intimate conversation,
he uses the term
I. Now why this is important to understand
or why this became a big issue is
because a lot of Christian missionaries
tried to bring up the idea
that the Quran supports the idea of trinity
because
the word we is being used in the
Quran.
The very simple answer to that is number
1,
many many languages,
including Hebrew and Arabic and Urdu and even
English,
they have the majestic plural,
and it does not indicate
that you're referring to multiple people. Number 1.
The language is just like that. Number 1.
Number 2,
you only find the plural
in the first person.
You will never find Allah
ever being referred
to as you, plural,
or being referred to as them, plural,
by a prophet,
you know, praising him or a prophet praying
to him or something like that. It only
exists
in the first person. If it exists in
the 2nd person or the 3rd person,
perhaps they could make some far fetched argument,
but there's absolutely no basis for this. And,
obviously, all the verses which speak against trinity
and that Allah is 1 make it very
clear that there's no way there's no basis
for this. But still this gets pushed a
lot and tries to confuse a lot of
people. So it's look why he uses the
word we. They they don't, but what they
try to do is they try to confuse
the Muslims into thinking
that something about their own book or something
like that.
It's very common. You'd be surprised at how
common it is. In fact, I have 2
books at home written by missionary. It is
one of, like, an entire chapter dedicated to
this.
It's like, you know, it's it's called God
loves you my Muslim friend, and then, like,
read this. And the entire chapter on this
telling you about this. So it it's there.
It's there. Trust me. It's there.
That was question number 3. Right? Yeah. So
continuing.
So now the prophet has
a setback.
Major not a major. You could say major
setback, minor setback, whatever it is, but the
mission continues. He continues.
He doesn't stop and that's the important thing.
That's a very important lesson to learn is
that when you get
turned down,
when you go and you speak to somebody
and they reject you, and imagine how badly
he was insulted
by his own uncle
in public. I mean, it can't get really
worse than this. And with such a beautiful
strategy he used, I mean, such a beautiful
way of calling. He used the best strategy,
and it completely failed because of his uncle
and all of these things in public. But
the prophet continued with the mission. He continued
to call people.
And
another reason,
another thing to understand is the people when
they left,
they never
really considered Islam seriously. They just kind of
they had heard about it before, now they're
getting the message,
you can't just stop and say, well, you
know what, they've rejected so let's leave them.
They said no, they said no, stop bothering
them. No.
Had they really given it serious thought? No.
So you don't just give up all of
a sudden and say, well, he said no.
So therefore, you know what? We're not gonna
talk to him ever again about this. We'll
just continue to talk about other things. No.
There's if you really want to give the
message to somebody else, you continue to try.
You try a different alternative.
If you if you want something good for
them, someone is addicted to drugs
and they're your friend, and you try and
tell them, you know what? You need to
stop. Someone's addicted to smoking, and you try
to talk to them and say, you know,
this is really not good for your health.
Say, no. I like it so just leave
me alone. Do you leave them alone? You
say, well, they said no, so I'm never
gonna bring it up again. No. Out of
your love for them, you want them to
stop, so you try to give it to
them another way or bring it up some
other time. Or maybe, you know, when they're
in a different mood, you can talk to
them or something. So the prophet continued
to spread the message to the people. So
he started going around Makkah, and he started
calling people. He started calling people. He started
calling different groups here and there in a
very wise ways like he did before. So
he was calling people with wisdom and going
and talking to them. And what was he
met with? More rejection.
More rejection. People are not interested. They don't
wanna hear the message. They don't wanna leave
their, you know, idolatrous ways. Now at this
point in time,
several verses from the Quran are being revealed.
This is kind of we're we're past the
first phase now. We're kind of like in
the middle phase of Mecca now.
Verses are being revealed about prophet Noah, prophet
Noah, prophet Ibrahim, Abraham, prophet Yusuf, which is
Joseph. Prophet
Yunus,
who's known as Jonah. Prophet Musa and prophet
Asa, Moses and Jesus,
and other prophets. Verses are being revealed.
Why? To show
that look, you're not alone.
This is not the first time it's happened.
When those prophets received the message, this is
how they called their people. So use some
of the use some of the techniques, use
some of the lang they used,
and be prepared for rejection. They were rejected
initially as well.
Some of them were rejected for a very
long time. Prophet Nuh, for example, for the
most part, he was rejected.
Right? So he's learning now about what other
people had gone through in the past. Very
important time to reveal these stories.
And keep in mind, there's no Jews living
in in Mecca at this time. So if
anyone says, well, all these prophets were taken
from, you know, the Jews, the Jewish stories
or something, that happened 15 years later or
13 years later. It happened very a long
time later.
You could say 10 years later, but it
happened later. So it's not something that was
taking place. So it was something that they're
supposed to learn. The prophet is supposed to
learn. The believers are supposed to learn the
lesson from how these prophets,
you know, were giving the message. So it
teaches them technique,
and it teaches them patience.
You have to have patience while you're delivering
the message. Now the prophet
at this time,
now that the call is public,
the believers and particularly him, they started praying
at the Kaaba.
He was praying at the Kaaba and this
also served as an invitation to people towards
Islam.
Even though he's not speaking, but what is
he doing? He's at the Kaaba
and he's reciting verses of the Quran out
loud
in his prayer.
What does that mean? They understand Arabic. They
know what he what's being said.
They're just listening to the Quran, and this
is a way that he's calling other people
to Islam.
Some people are really upset that they don't
wanna hear it. Some people are listening, say,
wow. That's interesting. Not accepting it, but see,
that's really interesting. So the message is being
delivered in some way, shape, or form. Very
good question.
That was exactly the point. The question is
based upon this experience,
does that mean we should start with our
own family and invite them to Islam first
before we go out to other people? Absolutely.
As long
as as long as your family is, you
know, close to you.
If your family is not close to you,
then it's a little bit different. But generally,
if your family is close to you, the
people who are closest to you, you should
always start with them because they're the ones
who know you the most. They're the ones
who trust you the most. Even if they're
averse to it in the beginning, you know,
there's a way to do it, and there's
a there's there's a time
to start opening up,
you know, to your family. So, yeah, generally,
you should start with your family.
Generally, but just as a caveat, some people
get the misunderstanding and they say, well,
so if I just accept Islam
and my family is really against it, the
first people I should start with are my
family? Not necessarily.
I I I've written a book about this
for for new Muslims that they should test
their family first.
Because now that they're living in a, as
Muslim minorities,
if they get kicked out of their house
by by their family because they really hate
Islam and there's been a lot of propaganda
or something like that, and they're young or
they don't have a lot of money or
something like that, maybe they should wait
before, you know, telling their parents about Islam.
They should even keep it secret for a
little while until they can kind of be
independent
so that they don't encounter too many hardships
on them.
So that's the rule, you know, for for
brand new Muslims who are in danger. But
the general rule, when this when this situation
is not so bad doesn't apply, the general
rule is you always start with people who
are closest to you, and that's your own
family members. Question is why were they praying
at the Kaaba when they prayed in the
direction of Jerusalem?
So they actually prayed at the Kaaba
in the direction of Jerusalem.
So they were facing in the direction of
Jerusalem, but since you could pray a different
size of the Kaaba, they would face this
way and they would pray in the direction
of Jerusalem as well. So they're praying in
the direction of the Kaaba as well as
in the direction of Jerusalem. Okay. Let's continue
with the last slide then. So now what
happened? The prophet, the prophet, the prophet, the
prophet, the prophet, the prophet, the prophet, the
prophet, the prophet, the prophet, the prophet, the
prophet, the prophet,
is conveying the message,
and people are rejecting it. But the important
thing to understand is why are they rejecting
it, and are these good reasons that they
have?
Are are they legitimate,
solid reasons that they have for rejecting it?
Well, let's look at it. Many of their
some of the reasons why they were rejecting.
Number 1,
it's not so easy to change
your culture or change your tribal customs once
you've lived your life one way for a
very long time. So people,
especially when they're a little bit older, they're
very averse to change.
They don't, you know, they've been living the
you know, they've been they're so comfortable
with their culture. They're so comfortable with the
way things are. They don't wanna change in
their life. They're very just don't you know,
if it's not broken even if it is
broken, don't try and fix it anyway. Don't
try and change it anyways. Because they were
very happy, so you find that people who
are highly cultural
don't like to go against their culture
at all on anything, and these were very
cultural tribal people.
Anything which will go against what they're used
to is anathema to them. They're disliking it.
It's it's it's repulsive.
That's one reason. The second reason is
their high respect and esteem that they had
for their ancestors.
Now, not all the way back for their
ancestors because remember, their ancestry all the way
back to prophet Ismail kinda got a little
bit blurry up there somewhere. So which ancestors
are they really looking up to? The more
immediate ones. The last, you know, 3, 4,
5, 6 generations.
And those were people who are already worshiping
idols. So for them,
if it's good enough for our grandparents
and good enough for, you know, the the
previous generations,
how can someone come and tell us that
they were wrong?
They're the people who we idolize. You know,
they're the people who we hold in esteem.
How dare someone come and tell us that
what they were doing was incorrect? If they
were worshiping idols, that's what we're gonna do.
So that's number 1. What is another reason?
Number 2 was their their high esteem for
their ancestors
and the previous generations.
Number 3,
they were actually scared. They were a little
bit scared. Some of them were scared of
their idols. That you know what? They were
told that, you know, if you mess with
this idol, you're gonna get bad luck. Or
if you do this, you're gonna get like
people in America are scared. You know, even
though they don't believe,
they don't really believe that if you break
a mirror, you're gonna get 7 years of
bad luck. But some people say, you know,
but just in case, you know, I'm not
gonna dispose of that mirror. Let let somebody
else take it and throw it in the
trash. I'm not gonna do it. You will
handle it. Right? They just they have that
thing in the back. It might happen, you
know. I just wanna take it safe. So
they were doing the same thing. I don't
wanna mess with the idol, you know. I'm
just gonna, you know, just gonna give him
a little food from some, you know, from
time to time so he doesn't mess with
me. I'll be okay. So they thought it
might be bad luck, the idol will curse
them, something will happen to them.
The next reason
is that the leaders
were in control of Mecca.
They feared that they may lose their position.
They may lose their power. Because if everyone
is following this idol worship and then they
come with something new, what's gonna happen? If
the people don't accept it as well, these
guys are ousted. So you know what?
We we lost our career. We just lost
our position. It's like a politician today. He
knows something is wrong.
He knows, you know, some injustice is taking
place.
Some, you know,
secret prison is torturing people through waterboarding or
something, and we don't close it down because
our reputation is on the line. Not to
point at anybody, but, you know, these kind
of things happen. Right? So what do we
have? You you're scared to lose your power,
and you won't be in that position of
power anymore. So they were they were scared
because they don't know for sure if their
their followers will follow them or not. So
power took precedence over truth for them.
The other thing was
they may lose their business
at the Kaaba. Because remember the Kaaba during
pilgrimage season,
it's a magnet. Everyone from Arabia is coming
over there, and there's festivals, and they're selling,
and there's buying, and there's trade going on
and everything. This is this is what made
the city.
Now it's already become idolatrous.
If you take the idols away and everyone's
into the idols, you just lost your city.
Maybe someone else they'll go somewhere else. There
were other places and shrines and temples where
idols were being worshiped as well. If they
lose their status over here, people go, well,
we're not gonna worship there anymore. We'll go
where the other idol is. Because
for them, they're equal opportunity idolaters. Right? If
this idol is not gonna do it, we're
gonna go to the other one because he's
gonna go ahead and, you know, do what
we need to do, whatever it is. The
next is they would lose their freedom to
act immorally.
Now they weren't thinking immorally, meaning they would
lose their freedom.
Right? This is a problem that people have
that when you come with a message,
and the message is telling you that look,
this is from Allah
and you should be a righteous person.
You have to organize your life according to
principles that are coming from Allah. The thing,
well,
I can't drink anymore.
You know, I can't, eat whatever I want.
I have to pray now. I can't just
sleep, you know, 24 hours or one day
if I just feel like just chilling out
and doing nothing. I just can't do that.
So they're lose they feel like they're losing
their freedom, like their kind of shackles being
put on them or something like that.
Maybe even if people wanna live a righteous
life, they want that, you know, I want
the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever
I want, even if it's ridiculous.
Even if it's something that's bad for me,
I wanna do it anyways. And they know
that this is gonna be a restriction on
them, so they're concerned with their freedom. And
there's a lot of people have this,
this this,
this mentality, this way of thinking. That if
we if we enter into a righteous life
or we start following the guidance from Allah,
then we're gonna not be able to do
all the things that we enjoyed doing before.
We can't go get drunk over here, and
we can't party over there, and we can't
play around with these type of things and
all that. This is a problem that people
have. So these are some of the reasons
among
probably others that they had for not accepting,
the message of the prophet But
they were not the type of people who
just reject
and just kind of sit on the sidelines.
These are people who are active. Remember remember
we talked about some of the good qualities
of the Arabs? When they're convinced about something,
then they're willing to fight for it. So
now they're convinced and they have this belief
that no, we're not gonna accept this guy.
And we're not gonna accept him and he's
gonna keep, you know, talking to us, we're
gonna go ahead and fight against him. So
how do they start fighting against him? Many,
many different strategies they use. Number 1,
they would
use insult and accusations. So they would insult
the prophet.
They would call him names. They would call
him bad things, and they would make accusations
against him. And why were they insulting him?
Some of the things was, you have no
wealth.
You're not one of the richest people in
the city.
And you have don't you have no power,
meaning you're not one of the most powerful
people in this city. So why should you
be a prophet
when you don't have the same money as
I have, and you don't have the same
power as I have? So their understanding was
Allah should give
prophethood and status
to somebody who has money and power. That's
the way they measure things, but that's not
the way that Allah measures things. So that's
one of their accusations they had. The second
was a lot of accusations, they called him
a magician.
Right? Now why would they call him a
magician? A magician meaning like,
a sorcerer.
Now why where did they come up with
this sorcerer thing? Because they saw that the
people who started following him
were so dedicated, and their lives had changed
and transformed to such an extent, they say
it's like the per it's like the guy
had cast a spell on them. So they
saw people who are really dedicated to Islam,
this
this this is not normal. Right? No one
should be this dedicated because they're very lazy
maybe themselves. They look at someone else, this
guy should not be dead. Something happened to
him. If somebody bewitched him, someone put cast
a spell on him, he must have done
something like that. Number 2, they started saying
that he's a poet.
Now why are they saying that he's a
poet? Because he's coming with verses from the
Quran.
Now for them, poetry was a style in
their language. They knew that poetry,
you know, the Quran was not like poetry,
they knew that. But what else can they
say? They say, well, what does this guy
do? What is his profession? He's like any
other poet. He just comes up with some
stuff and it's for the sake of entertainment.
It's very nice poetry,
you know, maybe we'll hang it on the
Kaaba or something, but when we move on
we don't take it very seriously.
Number 3, they said he's insane.
So they said, you know, this guy is
crazy. He's saying that he's receiving a revelation
from Allah,
someone that we can't see, and now he's
telling us that we have to change our
lives because of this revelation. This guy must
be insane. He must be crazy.
Then they challenged him to bring miracles.
He said, we want you to take this
mountain and you need to turn it into
gold. And if you can't do it right
now, then we're not gonna believe you. If
you do it, then we'll believe you. So
they asked him to do really ridiculous things.
We want right now, we want you to
do this and we want you to do
that. And then some of them said, you
know, you know what?
Even if you did that, I still wouldn't
believe in you. But yeah, I wanna see
you do it anyways. Right? So they're not
really
they're not really being tested by their miracles.
And the interesting thing to note, very very
interesting observation,
one of the scholars it just hit me.
1 of the scholars observed, if you look
at the vast majority of people throughout history
who've believed
in any of the prophets,
the vast majority
never believed due to a miracle.
In fact, miracles,
for the most part, serve the opposite purpose.
It serve the purpose to seal the argument
against the people who disbelieved.
Very interesting because,
at least for a while, I had thought
that the miracle is like the important thing
to build the faith, but it's not necessary.
In fact, when he explained it, it made
more sense. It's actually the opposite.
It's to seal the argument against people who
are going to disbelieve. So they started saying,
you know, bring a miracle. Bring a miracle.
The Quran in itself was a miracle. It
was miraculous enough, but they wanted, like, a
physical miracle.
For them, they knew they were astonished. They
were stunned by the Quran, and they couldn't
explain it either. That was a miracle in
and of itself, but they wanted something physical.
We want, you know, some some amazing thing
to happen, you know, in the sky or
something like that.
The other reason they fought against him or
the other way or reason they fought against
him was there was a lot of clan
rivalry.
So remember, there's a tribe.
The tribe is composed of different clans. So
among the clans that were really prominent were
Hashim, which we talked about, and there was
2 other clans, Umayyah
and Mahzum.
2 other very important clans who were who
were power like, who were quite powerful in
Makkah among Quraysh.
And these clans would always be competing with
one another. Even though they were family, but
everyone wants to kind of be on top.
They wanna be a little bit more they
wanna outdo the other person. So for example,
it's time to throw a party. Right? And
you wanna invite everyone. One clan would be
like, okay. We're gonna outdo the party that
they had last time. We're gonna step it
up one star a little bit higher. And
the other one, oh, they did a little
bit better. Next time, we're gonna do a
little bit better. We'll add a little bit
more food. We'll add a little bit more
hospitality,
and you know, our status will be elevated.
So they were competing with everything. They would
compete in charity.
Who could give more charity? Who could take
better care of the pilgrims? Who could do
this? Who could trade? Who could make more
money? All of these things, they were competing.
Now the thing
is by the way, Umayyah was one of
the tribes who the most hostility came from
them because they were in direct competition.
They were in direct competition. And it's it's
interesting and somewhat ironic
that you have the Umayyad Khalifa
afterwards.
Bani Umayyah actually
was responsible later on, 100 years after prophet
for spreading Islam
the most.
Among
throughout the world, they were one of the
people who were very, very responsible for spreading
the message to so many different countries. So
Allah has a plan. People have a plan.
Allah has a plan.
You find that
some of the hostility came from here. Why?
Because here's the thing,
if you throw a party
and then the other client says, well, we
can do a better party than that.
And then someone, they give charity and say,
we can give better charity than that. How
are you gonna compete with the clan who's
saying, we have a prophet receiving revelation directly
from Allah?
You can't compete with that. So they automatically
lose. There's no way their their their rivalry
is over.
If they accept
that the prophet
is a prophet of Allah.
So for many people in these clans,
one of the things that stopped them was
we can't allow this clan to be on
top.
We'll we'll never beat them. There's no way
we can win. This is a lose lose
situation. So that's another reason. So for the
most part, the hostility was coming from these
two clans
with the one exception.
Right? The one exception was
Abu Lahab
coming from inside the clan of Hashim.
One of the people who he was he
was from the own clan and that's why
it made it even worse. He came from
within. Otherwise, most of the hostility
against the prophet was coming from outside of
his own family, outside of the clan.
Now we're talking about
the year after he started publicly calling people
to Islam.
Now the season for pilgrimage is coming. The
Hajj time is coming up. What's gonna happen
during pilgrimage season?
Everyone around the entire region is gonna come
to Makkah.
Now they're concerned because if he's openly proclaiming
Islam,
now everyone, not just in Makkah, everyone around
Arabia is gonna find out about Islam because
he's not gonna stop. He's gonna keep spreading
the message.
So now we need to make sure
that we keep our city
stable,
intact. We make sure our position is clear,
and we somehow stop the other people from
getting the message of Islam.
So what's gonna be the best tactic for
us? So they started discussing,
and they started thinking. And in fact one
incident occurred where they started deciding and said,
well,
let's go and tell people that he's a
fortune teller.
That he's just one of those people who
kinda tells the future,
looks into charms and ambulates and, you know,
looks into the teacup or whatever whatever they
use at that time, and he can tell
the future, and that's what he's doing. But
then you don't need to really pay he's
like any of these other guys who have,
like, the little fortune teller shop in the
corner. He's one of those guys, don't worry
about him, don't pay him any attention. If
you want to go and to get the
future known, you can go for it, but,
you know, no need to waste your money.
That's what they thought about. And then they
say, you know what? It's not gonna work
because he doesn't resemble a fortune teller. Everyone
knows what the fortune tellers are like. Like,
today, we know. You go to you know,
hopefully, you don't go. But I mean, you
see the 4th teller, right, they sit on
the table and they have the little glass
ball. They have the cards, tarot card, Whatever
they're doing, we kind of know what kind
of style they have. He doesn't have any
of that. He doesn't resemble any of that.
He doesn't even talk like they talk. But
they say, you know what? This is not
gonna work. It's it's an idea, but it's
not a very good idea. People are not
gonna believe it. They said, okay. You know
what?
Let's say he's insane.
He's possessed by a demon. He's gone crazy.
This kind of answers the accusation that, you
know, why was he why did he feel
he might have been possessed the first time?
They said, let's let's say he's insane. He's
possessed. He's just crazy.
They say, yeah. Okay. That might work, but
it's not a very good thing because people
know what possession looks like. The guy doesn't
look crazy. He's not rolling on the floor.
He's not yelling and shouting. He's not raising
his voice. He's not doing anything that a
crazy person so who's gonna believe us if
we tell them that and then they look
at him and they meet him?
He doesn't look crazy. There's not in fact,
he looks like one of the most intelligent
people.
So we're gonna look we're gonna look foolish.
This is not gonna work. So they said,
okay. You know what? That's not the best
idea.
Let's let's say he's just a poet. So
we're gonna use that one, you know, and
say, look, it's not gonna work either because
everyone knows poetry.
Everyone in Arabia is really good at poetry,
and poetry has a certain meter, has a
certain style of rhyming.
You see, this Quran that he's bringing doesn't
resemble any poetry. The moment they start he
starts reciting, people are gonna be like, that's
not poetry. That's something we've never seen before.
Because it's neither prose nor poetry. It doesn't
it doesn't match any of the meters or
any of the style of poetry. So they're
gonna say they said he's a poet.
This is not poetry. This is something else.
So they lied to us. So they say,
you know what? That's not the best idea.
Then they said, let's say he's a sorcerer.
He's bewitching people and he's controlling their minds
and everything like that. And they say, you
know, that's not gonna work either because he
doesn't resemble
any like, he doesn't resemble what a sorcerer
does. He doesn't look like him. He's not
hanging around. The sorcerer used to do a
lot of weird things. They like used to
hang out in the woods, in the forest.
They used to, you know, do certain strange
things. Right? Like witches and all that. We
kinda know what they resemble.
He says, he's not doing any of that
either. So they're out of ideas. And they
say, well, which one? We gotta pick one
of these. So which one is the best
to pick? We pick the sorcerer.
Why? Because it has the most fear. It
scares people the most. If you go near
a sorcerer and he bewitches you or he
bewitches one of your kids,
it's over you. There's nothing you can do.
So the best thing is a scare tactic.
Fear factor just scared them so much that
they they won't even go near him. That's
what we're gonna do. So what did they
do? They station people
with this propaganda,
like little propaganda machines. Right? Station on the
outskirts of the city. While people are coming
into the city of Mecca,
before they even get inside the city, before
any Muslim can go and tell them about
Islam, they kinda fill their ears a little
bit. By the way, there's a sorcerer you
know, what's the news from last year? Oh,
yeah. This year, we have a little epidemic.
Nothing major, but there's this sorcerer guy, and
he's bewitching people. You better watch out. Don't
even get your family near him, otherwise, you're
gonna lose your family, and everyone's gonna be
messed up. So they got really scared. It
shows you propaganda
has always been about fear throughout history.
Hasn't changed. It's the same thing. You just
get them to be scared so much that
they're not gonna think about it, and they'll
try their best not to learn anything about
it because they're so afraid, they're so scared.
So this is what they did,
and this is the period of mass rejection.
So now the people are coming, and they
come to Makkah, and the prophet is trying
to spread the message, and still he's
not very successful
because the Quraysh are against him, and they're
fighting against the message, and they're making fun
of him, and they're rejecting the message themselves.
So and we'll stop here insha Allah Any
questions?
Yeah. I don't think we have time to
share it, but yes, it's true that,
I believe his name is Tufail ibn Amr
Adousi, and he was one of the great
poets of the time, and he
you know, tried not to listen to the
Quran. He was told not to listen, but
he's like, you know what? Let me listen
to this. You know, I'm I'm an expert
in this field, I'm not gonna be affected
by this. So he listened to it and
he was so surprised and so shocked at
the amazing, you know, literary features and how
amazing the Quran was, that he immediately accepted
Islam. And he actually spread Islam as well.
He becomes a very important character in Islamic
history, and we'll probably cover his life a
little bit more in detail. That's a very
important point.
Tufail ibn Amr ad Dawsi, I believe, if
I recall correctly. He's from the tribe of
Dows for sure. I believe it's Tufail ibn
Amr.
Okay. Was it true that Khalid ibn Walid
coined the term sorcerer for the prophet?
Not that I recall. In fact, Khalid ibn
Waleed was not mentioned in any of these,
narrations.
There there were some,
I forgot exactly who it was,
but it definitely was not Khalid ibn Waleed.
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. It was Walid ibn
Mughira.
He was the one. He was the one
who coined the term.
Yeah. Maybe not coined the term, but he's
the one who made this decision. Anyways, the
decision to go with sorcerer, if not coined
the term himself. Are we keeping up with
the test? I've noticed that almost 50% of
the people have not been taking the test,
who are enrolled in the class. You you
don't wanna take it. Did did you notify
the TA about it already?
Okay. If you could please notify the TA
because we're gonna,
start dropping people who are not taking the
test, and they've not notified us that they
don't want because it becomes very difficult to
keep track of everything. So if you could
do that, if you don't wanna do it,
please notify the TA and let him know
that, you know, I'm just an observer.
I'm not interested in taking the test, and
we can figure out an easier way for
it. You yeah. Yeah. You can still stay
in the class inshallah.
The sign in sheet is gone. If you
look at the announcements, the role,
has changed.
The role has changed, which doesn't mean you
should not come to class. Yes? Alright, inshallah.
May Allah allow us to understand these lessons
and practice them in our lives. Ameen.