Nadim Bashir – Conversations In The Quran #11 Stories Of Old Prophets
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AI: Transcript ©
Today's conversation As you know that on Monday
nights we go through the conversations of the
Quran. Today's conversation comes from Surah Yaseen.
Surah Yaseen is a Maqi Surah.
Surah Yaseen has Since it is a Maqi
Surah, it talks about the life hereafter. It
talks about the risala of Rasulullah
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
It talks about the greatness of Allah Subh'anaHu
Wa Ta A'la. It talks about the tawheed
of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta A'la. In addition
to that, if you look at the surahs
that come afterward,
Surah Safat
Because once again, the prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
is all about Risaleh and the messages of
the previous prophets.
Surah Safat talks extensively
about the stories of the past. And then
Surah Yaseem talks about the day of judgment
And subhanallah, the surah after Surah Safat. Surah
Sad talks about the day of judgment extensively.
So you see that there is a lot
of symmetry when it comes to the Quran.
Surah Yaseen begins with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
talking about the purpose of the Quran,
the objective of the Quran. He talks about
Rasulullah SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam being sent as a
prophet,
and how there will be people who will
completely reject and deny
the message. Even though it is a clear
message
of Islam, a clear message of the Quran,
and of Rasulullah alaihi wa sallam.
And not only that but Allah says, wa
jalalamin
bayni aedi him sadhan woman kalfi him sadhanfaaghshayinaahumfaumla
ybusiloon
There is like a wall be in front
of them. There's a wall behind them and
they are completely blind. They cannot see and
they have been covered from the top. So
Allah Subhana Wa Ta'ala is telling us that
this is the state of the affairs of
certain people.
Now, imagine if you're reading any book. Any
book, and you read a formula,
usually what happens after that is, the author,
he brings an example to help understand
or to help explain
the formula. So Allah talks about an issue.
Now Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, he brings a
story in the Quran
in Surah Yaseen
to help us understand
what Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta A'la is talking
about. So Allah brings a story of the
past. Now interestingly about this conversation,
we have no idea, really. We have no
idea
when did this story take place.
We have no idea
what is the name of this town.
Though, theoretically speaking, some of the ulema
of the mufa or some of the ulema
of tafsir,
they have perhaps
given a name to this town based on
Once again, there is no hadith of the
prophet Hussain saying this. This is just a
theory of theirs that this area is name
is Il Taqiyyah. It's mentioned in some books
of tafsir.
And so, wallahu a'alam, what is the name
of this town? Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
that he sent there some prophets.
What is the name of these prophets? This
is also unclear
in the Quran. So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
he begins the the passage
by saying, id arsalnah
There is a town. Now the reason why
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said, Asha bal qariyah
Because Allah wants us to remember the town
in itself. The people at that time,
they should remember that town.
Why? Because people will come and go.
A town does not come and go. The
town remains.
When people come and go, if the story
is just about the people,
if the people are gone, the story will
eventually go away too. The story will be
forgotten.
But when Allah is talking about a certain
town,
as long as that town is in existence,
the people will keep on talking about the
story that took place in this town. You
see, this is why Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala
is
very precise
in his words in the Qur'an.
Wadribalahum
mathalan not
ashab He said ashabalakarya
but he did not just say ashab,
he said ashabalqariyah.
The reason he mentioned qariyah
is because every single person who will come
to that town, they should remember.
Just like when we go to different places,
when the prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, he would
travel with the Sahaba and he will say,
this is a place where the wrath of
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta A'la came down. He's
not talking about the people, but he's talking
about the land where the wrath of Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta A'la came down upon them.
So that is what the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam is talking about. And this is what
exactly Allah is talking about in the Quran.
Allah says, idja ahl mursaloon
There were prophets that were sent to these
people. How many prophets were sent? Allah says,
id aarosanna
ilayhimuthnayin
Allah first sent 2 people to go and
give dawah to the people of this town.
When these 2 people were openly rejected,
Allah says,
faazazna
bi thalith
We gave them strength.
See the word azzazna, another word that
can come from the word azzazna
is al aaziz.
Okay? Al aaziz comes from the word azzazna.
Aziz means the one who is mighty, the
one who provides power, The one who has
the authority in his hands. He's the one
who gives power, who takes away power. So
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is telling us, faazaznabi
thalith.
We gave that
group of 2 people,
we gave them more
reinforcement and hence now they became 3.
And now when they became 3, now they
are going and they are giving dawah. Now
interestingly,
something else to be learned from this, from
this ayah here is,
Allah did not say,
I sent 2. There is a third one,
and now the third one is the leader.
Allah did not mention anything about a hierarchy.
Allah did not mention that out of the
2, the first one or the second one
is in charge, and the other 2 are
not in charge.
Why didn't Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mention this?
Because
this could cause some kind of friction. 1
is in charge, he orders the other 2.
No. When people come together to give dawah,
Allah Subhanahu wa'ala is telling us, it should
not be about competition.
It's about Ikhlas. When people work together for
the sake of Allah Subhanahu
wa'ala, it should only be for the cause
of Allah Subhanahu wa'ala
So Allah says, faazaznabi
thalith
Now these 3 as a jama'ah,
as a group, they went and they began
to give dawah. What happened?
Of course, as we see in any story
in the Qur'an,
they got a lot of pushback.
And the general perception of the people at
that time was, if you're gonna send, if
God is gonna send someone to invite mankind
to him,
why would he send human beings? You're just
like me. Why would he send you? Rather
he should send malaika. He should send some
other creation of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. So
this is exactly what they said. They said,
Now Allah
by the way, in the Quran also, when
he talks about Rasulah
He says
that this was a common complaint even in
the time of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. But the reason why
Allah would send First of all, interestingly,
Allah will always send a Prophet from within
that group of people. Why?
Because if they were sent
another person who speaks a totally different language,
then there will be a communication barrier. That's
number 1. But number 2 is, Allah Subh'anaHu
Wa Ta'ala always sent a human being. Why?
Because Allah wants them to understand
that he's a human being. He has a
family. He lives. He drinks.
He produces and so forth. He marries and
produces and so forth. Just like you, if
he can believe in Allah, so can you
believe in Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala And by
the way, SubhanAllah,
you know, people till today, you'll find many
times people, they have the same perception about
imams. Wallahi, I kid you not, I'm standing
right here. This is 2024.
2024.
Last week, last week,
I was right here in Kroger.
Okay?
A guy came to me, he goes, Oh,
you come here and shop?
And I'm like, Yes.
Okay? I'm a human being. I shop. Maybe
kathum, maybe pitahu. Okay. I have to go.
I have needs. Okay. I have to come
and shop also. But it was shocking that
This is 2024,
and a person is telling me, this is
like no different. Wallahi, when he said this
to me, I said, wamaa'arsallnaqabbalaka
minalmursaleenaillahinnahum
la yaquluona
ta'ama
wayyamshoonafil
aswak.
The people that long time ago, they said
the same thing. These are prophets.
Why are they eating? Why are they going
in the bazaars and so forth? So once
again, this person, he said this, and you
know, once again, this is what the mindset
was.
I mean Allah should have said angels. Now
these people, what did they say? Rabbuna
paalu rabbuna you aalamu innahilaykum
la mursaloon Allah knows that we have been
sent as prophets to you. Now, I'm gonna
give you a quick example of usually what
happens. You know, have you seen people when
they get together,
when they do dawah? You know, they they
put those dawah booths together. You've seen this,
right? Yes or no? The dawah booths, they're
sitting there giving out the pamphlets. They have
a Quran. You're gonna have one guy who
is mashallah very, you know, he's a energetic
diary and so forth. He's going to open
up the Quran. He's going to open up
the Bible. He's going to open up and
show all the fallacies in the Bible. He's
going to open up in the Quran and
say, You see there's no fallacies in the
Quran and so forth. You're going to, you
know, you find those kind of people. Now
imagine there's one person, and I've seen a
lot of videos like this. There's a person
who's very calm in their approach. Okay? They're
very calm in their approach. And he's talking
to another person. Now when that person gets
stuck
and they have no answer,
you begin to see them getting red. Okay.
Because they don't have an answer. They're getting
embarrassed, right. So they, so first it's just
getting red. Then after that, when the frustration
builds up, then it shows in then the
frustration builds
up, at that time it comes out in
their words. You can see the frustration
in their words. First it was just apparent
on their face.
Now you see that in their words. Verbally
they're starting to say things, They're starting to
raise their voices.
And you know what happens after that?
If someone is really obnoxious,
they're gonna say, you know what? But you
Muslims,
you're the one who's causing all the problems.
Like right now, if you know, if you
have been in touch with the news and
social media,
you know that right now in the UK
there's a lot of rights going on. There
are a lot, there's a lot going on
right now. And you'll find all these people
who are Islamophobes,
the right wing and so forth, They're gonna
say that we had our country, our country
was doing perfectly fine,
until these Muslims came into this country. Okay.
These Muslims, they do this, they do that,
they destroy the infrastructure of the of the
society,
They cause all the problems and so forth.
And by the way,
it's not the Muslims. If you know the
story on the back end, it's not the
Muslims, it's other people who are causing the
issues. It's happening. What's happening is that the
Muslims are playing a lot of defense,
but the society and the media is portraying
the Muslims as if they are the ones
who are playing offense. You understand? As if
they are the aggressors. They're just playing defense
here at this point right now. So the
point is, that you see they start to
become aggressive. And when they become aggressive,
it gets to the point where they cross
all the limits.
Okay? Now you see this happening often. Even
as I said, going back to the Dawah
booth situation.
You see people getting frustrated. I've seen, you
know, especially this happens a lot in the
UK, where you find a lot of people
giving, you know, street Dawah and they're just,
you know, there's a lot of clashes and
so forth. People going back and forth and
so forth. There's a lot of yelling and
screaming and so forth.
Now you see, subhanAllah,
even at that time,
the same exact thing happened to these people
too. Listen to the verse of the Quran.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, These people they
said, wama aaleina illalbalagunubeen.
We have come
and we are here to convey a very
simple and clear and constructive
message. That's all we're here for. What did
they say?
They said,
You are the ones who are the bad
luck here in this place.
Once again, does it make sense? Does it
sound familiar? When these people they said, You
Muslims are the problems here in this society.
These people they said the same thing, Innatatayarnabikom
You are the problems over here. You're the
ones who are bringing the bad luck to
our community, in our society.
La illamtantahu
If you don't stop this,
look at their threats, lanaarjumannakum
lanaarjumannakum,
we will stone you. You see, once again,
these people,
when a person when you're giving dawah to
some person,
and they don't have any response,
the last resort that they're gonna come down
to is, they're gonna threat you with their
life. They're gonna threat you of your life.
This is because why? They don't have an
answer to your questions. They don't have an
answer when you'd ask them a simple question.
So this is how they respond. And they
said,
We're gonna inflict upon you a severe punishment.
Now what did these Now, keep in mind,
one thing is, what was their response?
Taalu ta'irukum maqum The problem is not with
us. These da'ees, these 3 people, they're saying,
ta'irukum maqum, you are the problem, not we
are not the problem.
Inlukirtum,
if you are not given
good counsel.
Then he then they said, balantum
kaw mum muslifun.
In fact,
you are the ones who jumped from just
talking to killing, and inflicting pain, and stoning
us. If there's anyone here who's wrong, it's
you guys.
Now, the key thing here is to understand
as Muslims,
as Muslims,
we see that in the Quran, Allah is
talking about this erratic behavior
is the behavior of the kuffar.
This is not the behavior of the Muslim.
However, in this day and age, we have
seen
that this nature, bal antuqamu musifoon
This has become the nature, the behavior of
the Muslims today.
Let me give you an example.
You know, many years ago,
you all know that in in France there
is a
newspaper
agency. It's called Charlie Hebdo. I mean you
probably have heard about this. They usually have
a habit
of writing
very
nasty,
derogatory things about different people, different things.
One time they wrote something about Rasulullah SallAllahu
Alaihi Wasallam They made a cartoon
about the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam openly disrespecting
Rasulullah SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
What was the reaction? You see once again,
I've always said this. As Muslims,
we need to be smart.
Sahaba were smart. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
was smart. These people are saying too, that
this is your behavior. This erratic behavior is
your behavior. This is not the behavior of
Muslims.
But you see, you know what was their
reaction
when that happened?
In Muslim countries,
they're going down burning
restaurants, KFC,
kafir fried chicken. Okay. Let's just burn this
down also. This, let's burn this. Let's burn
this. Flipping cars over, destroying property.
This is not the nature of a Muslim.
I mean, do you know that in here
in Dallas, I remember soon after that, there
was an author of a writer. He used
to work for the Dallas Morning News. He
actually came and interviewed me after this. And
he asked me that, what is supposed to
be the right reaction of the Muslim community?
And I saw And I told him that
this is not the way Muslims should do
things. And by the way, after that, there
was another incident that took place. In fact,
right here, in Right in our backyard,
there was a very strong islamophobe
Islamophobic lady.
She came here in Garland, and she put
together an event.
She put together an event called drawing the
Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And it was extremely
It was extremely,
disrespectful and so forth. But we all said
to ourselves, as imams, we told all of
us, ourselves, and we made sure that we
tell all of our communities,
no one goes there and engages with these
kind of jahil people. You understand? Because this
is what they want. That same author, you
know in the Dallas Morning News, you know
what he wrote? He said, Muslims,
please be smart.
Muslims, please be smart. Why is it that
we need a non Muslim guy coming and
telling us Muslims
how we need to behave? You understand?
So this is what we find in the
Quran.
The erratic behavior
is not the nature of a Muslim. This
is their nature. Then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
says, wajaaminakasalmadinati rajuluinya saa'a. Then
aqasalmadeenati
rajuluinya saa'ah.
Then came from the place from the corner
of a town, a corner of that city,
that same town, there came a man running.
Now, I want you to think about this.
Imagine,
if you have a party of people and
you all are on one side,
and there's one person
who turns their back against the entire group.
They're going to launch attack, and they're going
to launch an attack against that person. They're
all are gonna attack that one person, that
you are supposed to be with us. How
dare you turn your back against us, and
you go on the other side. You understand?
So this is exactly what happened.
A man is coming and telling them these
people that, My qaum, my qaum, my people.
Please understand, these people are legit.
They are truly prophets. Listen to them. Obey
them. Listen to their message. Convert to Islam.
He himself converted to Islam. He took his
shahada in front of everyone. Now, of course,
this is a person of their own town.
When he has turned their back
against them,
now they revolted against him. And at that
time Allah He said, Ittabi'oo
malayasalukum
ajran These people, people come, they are always
asking for things. These people are coming, fee
sabillillah.
They're not asking you of anything.
Now what happened was, he began to talk
about himself. Wamaalialaaabudulllevi
fatarani wa ilaytuljaoun
aataghilumindunihi
aliataninyulidunirrahmanu
bidulillatunni
ani ila akhil aya. Basically he's telling himself
that how can I worship any other God?
It is only befitting that I worship only
1 God. That one God who benefits,
the one who provides benefit, the one who
provides harm, and in his control is everything.
And he's telling himself, if I don't worship
this one God, Innee idan lafi duaalimubin
If I don't do this, then clearly I
am the one who is in wrong. Now,
when they revolted against him, what did they
do? They killed him.
They killed him. And now look at this.
SubhanAllah, one thing we learned about this man
is,
even though he's at the end of his
life, he's at the tail end of his
life. Even at that time, he's saying about
he's talking about his own people. He's being
told, teeladhquliljannah
You have been entered, you have been given
permission and admitted into jannah.
At that time,
he never still referred to his qaum as
these kafir people, or these people who have
gone far away, and so forth. He's telling
himself,
qala yalayta
qaumi
I wish my qaum
I wish my people would understand
what benefit I'm receiving.
Now he's in a different realm altogether.
He is receiving the benefits of Jannah, and
he is saying, I wish my qum understood.
What do they
what does he want them to understand? Bi
maqafarali
rabbi. How Allah
forgave me. Wajaalaniemialmuqrameen.
And He has made me amongst those who
are the dignified.
He has made me amongst those who are
the extremely honored. So this is what This
is the ending of this person. He passed
away. And but the point is, that there
is, subhanallah,
this one man,
this one man who probably did not live
a long life in his He did not
live a long life as a Muslim. He
may have lived a regular life but as
a Muslim he did not live so much
time.
But till today,
we remember this person in the Quran. And
the lesson to be learned in this is,
that when people, when they strive for the
cause of Allah, when they give their life
for Allah, when they give their time for
Allah, when they give their energy for Allah,
then that is the one that is going
to be remembered at all times.
The other people
and by the way, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala
says, Inkanat illa sayhatanwahiliathan
fa idamqamilu. Some of them do all of
them, they say that, Allah Subhanahu destroyed the
entire town.
The town has been forgotten. The people has
been forgotten. The town remains there. The people
have been forgotten. But this one person, because
of his dedication
to faith, because of the fact that he
stood against the entire society,
because for him, to stand up against the
society is not easy. To go against your
entire town that you have been part of
is not easy. But he understands,
when it comes to right versus wrong, you
need to always stand on the side of
right. And he stood on the side of
right, and because of that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa
Ta A'la honored this man. And the lesson
in this also finally is for us, that
no matter what the situation is You know,
I'm going to finish on this.
I've had someone come to me not long
ago, and they asked me a simple question.
And I'm gonna give a khutbah about this
by the way.
Someone asked me a simple question.
What is going to be the state of
affairs
of Muslims?
Because we were having a general conversation about
what is going on in society and so
forth. And he asked me a simple question,
was, what is going to be the state
of the affairs of our youth
30, 40, 50 years into the future?
Like And we're having all sorts of this
kind of discussions.
And I told them one simple thing. I
said that, I don't think
that we have a problem when it comes
to the youth, when it comes to their
finances. I think they will take care of
themselves.
But the biggest issue that I find about
the upcoming generation
is that they will be very afraid
to speak the truth.
They will be very afraid
to speak the truth because speaking the
truth against the society,
against what is norm, the norm in society,
wallahi, this is why the prophet says,
The greatest jihad
is to speak the truth
in front of the tyrant.
The society has become the tyrant.
To stand up and say, This is the
haqq. I'm gonna stand by the haqq haqq
and everyone else is doing wrong, this is
what personally I'm afraid
of. I could be wrong, but this is
what I'm afraid of when it comes to
the upcoming generation.
I feel
that many of our youth, they're gonna have
ima in their heart to a certain degree.
But for them to come out and speak
the truth,
it's gonna become very difficult. I mean, I'm
sorry to say this. If many imams I'm
sorry I'm saying this even as an imam.
But if you If I look at
overall imams and shayuk and so forth, if
many of the imams in the shayuk are
so afraid to speak the truth too, nowadays.
So many imams in shayuk are so afraid
to speak the truth.
Then what do I expect from others?
This is what causes me, you know, you
understand. This is what caused me that concern
in my heart. I think about this all
the time. What's gonna happen if I cannot
even speak the truth? Then the truth is
always gonna be hidden, the truth is gonna
be suppressed, and khalas, no one Everyone's gonna
forget about the truth. And one thing, as
I said, the last thing that we learned
from this story was
that this person,
he said, I'm gonna stand on the side
of the truth. They took his life. Allah
honored him. We always need to teach our
children to stand by the side of the
truth and always learn how to speak the
truth. I ask Allah to grant all of
us tawfiq to learn these stories from the
Quran, to benefit from these stories of the
Quran, and apply them in our life.