Nadim Bashir – Conversations In The Quran #8 Conversations
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AI: Transcript ©
Today, inshallah,
as you know that every Monday night we
cover a conversation, a story from the Quran.
Today's story, inshallah, comes from Surah Namal,
which is the ant. But it's not a
story about the ant, but it's a story
about Sulaiman alayhis salam.
And this is a story about Sulaiman alayhis
salam. And as we all know that, you
know, he used to assemble all his animals
and so forth, and he had a very
special bear bird that is mentioned in the
Quran by name. Its name is hudhud, as
we all know.
But in this story, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
talks about a conversation that takes place between
him, the bird, and not only that, but
the queen at that time, as some refer
to as queen Sheba or the queen of
Saba and so forth, but she has this
conversation with her people. And then not only
that, but Suleyman alaihis salam is having a
conversation with his people. And then at the
end, there's a conversation between Suleyman alaihis salam
and herself.
So Hudhud, as he as we all know
that he would often go out to explore.
And one time he was not there, Suleyman
inquired about him, and he brought the news
to Suleyman
that I came across. The reason I was
not there present when you wanted me to
be there is because I came across a
certain nation.
And what Hudhud began to describe,
he said that there were two distinctions about
these people. Number 1 is
that these were people who had a very
beautiful throne. The queen over there, she had
a very beautiful throne. And number 2 is
that these people, they used to worship the
sun. Now, first of all, let's take even
a step back and ask, you know, many
people they ask is that what is the
story of this queen and how did she
come into power?
Now, of course, when it comes to history,
there's always gonna be theories out there, and
there's no Hadith of Rasulullah
alaihi wa sallam,
you know, pinpointing
exactly how did this woman come in a
position of power.
However, in books such as Al Bidaya wani
Haya of ibn Kathir Rahmatullahalaihi,
he states And once again, this is just
a theory out there that she had a
Her father was the ultimately the king of
that area.
But he did not leave behind any sons,
and the only one he left behind
was one daughter.
Now often, generally speaking, the sons would someone
Someone from amongst the sons would become a
king, would become the next ruler in line.
Because he did not leave any sons, it
is mentioned that there was another person who
began to assume responsibility,
another male figure. Perhaps in the family, or
someone who was very close to that king
who began to assume that responsibility.
Because she felt Now once again, this is
mentioned that because she felt that she should
have been the one in power,
so therefore she married this man, and hence
she became the queen of this man who
was the king. Later on, now some books
of history mentioned that he died a natural
death or some books of history mentioned
that she planned and plotted to get this
man killed, and she killed this man. And
hence, when he was removed from the picture,
she was the one who came in the
position of power. Once again, it's just a
theory out there that's mentioned in some books
of history. So now, this woman is there,
she worships the sun, her and her entire
nation, they worship the sun, and they have
a very beautiful throne. Now when Hudhud brought
this news to Sulaiman
interestingly,
Sulaiman
responded
to these two claims. The very first thing
he said was, Allah yasjudoolillahi
ladi yukrijul kaba a fisamaawati
wal audi wa ya'alawmatuqfoonawmatu'alilun.
He's talking about that if they have such
a big throne,
then they are deserving and they should be
worshiping Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Why? Because Allah
Subhanahu wa ta'ala Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Why?
Because Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has a knowledge
of what is apparent and what is not
apparent, what is visible and what is invisible.
So that is the very first thing. Because
Hudhud is saying it from the perspective
that if they have a huge, magnificent,
and very beautiful throne, that means they have
a lot of money.
In their response, this is why Sulaiman alayhi
wasalam is saying, if they have all these
riches of this dunya, they should be worshiping
Allah
The second claim or the second thing that
Hudhud said was that,
they worship the sun. Okay. They worship the
sun. And to that also Ibrahim Soma
said that first of all, Allah's throne is
bigger than her throne. Allah hula illaillahu rabbullahashiladim
and Allah yasrudoolillahi
ladi yukujal khaba This this ayah, he's saying
that anyone, if there's anyone who's to be
worshiped, it is only Allah
not the sun. Now, Ibrahim I mean, sorry.
Sulaiman
is now saying that, I'm gonna send her
a letter. Let's see what her response is.
When he sent the letter to the Queen,
Hudhud took this letter, when she received it,
she called all her people around her ministers,
her close confidantes,
and said that,
I have received a letter from Sulaiman.
Okay. I've received a letter from Suriman
and
Suriman
He began the letter by calling her to
Allah
by writing, BismillahirRahmanu
Raheem. And ibn Kathirahmatullahi
a'layhi he says interestingly
that it was because Suleiman
was a very first Prophet that calling someone
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala he wrote, BismillahirRahmanu
Raheem. And as a result, this became the
nature of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that whenever
he would write a letter to any rulers
or kings, he would always begin with, Bismillahir
Rahmanir Raheem. So he learned this from Sallam
alaihi sallam as Ibn Kathir Rahmatullahi
mentions.
Now, at that time, she asked her people
that what should we do?
At that time, there was one person who
gave this suggestion
that And Sulaiman
basically wrote this letter to her and he
said,
Allataaloo alaihiya means, do not put yourself above
me. Meaning that, listen Read this letter I
have sent you. Don't be arrogant about it.
Don't think that you're above me and so
forth. Just take it and read it with
an open
heart, and come to me. Now come to
me as a Muslim. No. Come to me
in submission.
Then Allah
says that she consulted.
1 of them said, that, nahnuuluqooatinwaulubaasin
shadeed
That, you know, queen, why do we have
to listen? We are very powerful.
We are very mighty. We look at our
throne, look at the things that we do,
look at our infrastructure and so forth. We
are an advanced nation.
Why should we become intimidated
by anyone like this? Now, of course, the
queen could have just taken his advice
and move forward, but she said, Give me
another advice, I need to think about this
very thoroughly.
So she came with the suggestion or the
conclusion
that in history,
whenever there is a king, whenever there's a
king, and he is a tyrannical king, what
their nature is that they go, they conquer
lands, they kill
people, and they imprison people and so forth.
I want to know, is this person, Soleiman
alayhi wasalam, like that kind of king, or
is he another kind of person? Mean that
he might be even a Prophet, He might
be a genuine person.
So what did she do?
She
sent many gifts to Sulaiman
Now when these gifts were brought to Sulaiman
Sulaiman he said, Why are you sending me
all these gifts? I don't want these gifts.
I'm not interested in your gifts. The only
thing I'm interested in is you coming to
Islam. Now there's a lot of things to
be learned from all this, but I'm just
quickly going through the story first. So then,
Sulaiman alaihi wasalam he returned all the gifts.
When the gifts were returned to the queen,
at that time, she realized
that perhaps this man is a genuine man.
He's not after my riches. He's not after
my gifts and so forth. And not only
that, but Sulaiman
this time, when he sent the gifts back
to the Queen, he sent a strong message.
He sent a stern message
that you are to be I'm asking you
to come here. Otherwise, when we come, we
can come your way, and there could be
some
challenges, there could be some issues. So I'm
demanding that you come this way, you come
to me. Now she came with everyone. She
He received the news. Surima
received the news that she and her entire
entourage,
they're coming towards his way. So he came
to one of his jinns, and he asked,
you know, once again he had, you know,
he had people in front of him, he
had jinns in front of him, and he
made this claim, or he made this, this
demand,
that which of you
can bring the throne of Bilqis
here in my presence?
Now there was 1 jinn. 1 jinn said
I mean, this his name was Efreet.
And this Efreet, if you notice, Allah says,
Meaning that there are a lot of jinn
over there, but this Efreet jinn had the
physical capacity because not all jinns are alike.
Not all jinns are alike.
This has to be a very strong jinn.
This strong ifrit jinn said,
I will bring it to you before you
even get it from your place.
Okay. I will bring it to you before
you even get it from your place.
Then he said, I need something that's more
quicker. You see, Sou'ma
he was not playing games. He was he
wanted something, he was demanding it. So the
Quran says,
I will bring it to you
before you even blink your eye. And at
that time, the throne was brought to Surah
Alaihi Wasallam Now when the throne was brought
to Surah Alaihi Wasallam, she's still on her
way coming. She's still coming on her way.
And then he told his people that, what
I want you to do is that I
want you to make some subtle changes.
I want you to make some subtle changes
to her throne. I want to see, does
she recognize, is this her throne or not?
So when she came, when she came,
when she came,
Sulliman brought her forward,
and he said, and it's mentioned,
That when she came, she looked at the
throne. And she was looking at it very
closely, very intently,
because she realized that there is something about
this throne that really just, you know, it's
You know, it screams at her, you know.
Meaning that, she realized that there's something very
similar about this throne with her throne. Not
realizing that this is exactly her throne. And
not only that, but the Quran even says,
It was said to her that, is this
yours? Like, this has to be very similar
to yours.
And then, even though she looked at it,
and she says, this is very similar to
my throne. She still did not convert to
Islam right away. Then, Sulaiman
invited her into his palace.
And when she walked inside the palace,
it is mentioned
that, when she came inside the palace,
When she walked inside the palace of Sulaiman
alaihis salam,
she saw that What she saw was like,
it was almost like an aquarium. You go
to many places today, they You know, you
could sit be sitting in a restaurant, and
there's an aquarium around you. You go to
places, you could be sitting under an aquarium.
So likewise, what she saw underneath her was
like an aquarium.
It was all glass floor, something that was
very,
very unusual at that time. So, she saw
this glass floor, and because of that she
thought, she did not know it was glass,
she thought it was actual water. That's how
clear the glass was. So she picked up
her, her dress or whatever she was wearing,
she picked it up a little, and she
tried to walk on it thinking that it
was water. When she took her first step,
she realized that it was glass.
And that is when she realized
that this throne,
and this palace
is far beyond what she has. She began
to realize that what she had, even though
she had a great throne,
but that throne compared to this is insignificant.
And that is when she realized
that this man is the Prophet of Allah
because Sumehat alayhi salaam had already introduced himself
that he is the Prophet of Allah. But
then when she saw this, and she went
through this experience,
that is when she took her shahada and
she converted to Islam, and she declared Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
as her Rab, as her ilah.
And at that time everyone in her qawm,
in her nation, they also accepted Islam. Now,
the question is, what are some of the
things to be learned? Because there are some
very powerful lessons to be learned in this.
The very first thing that we learn in
this story is,
pay attention to what Hudhud said. Hudhud
said that these people, they worship the sun.
Okay? And he says that
Shaitaan has made their actions beautiful to them.
By the way, this is one of the
oldest tricks of shaitan in his book.
Anytime he wants to make you feel complacent,
anytime he wants to make you feel good
that you're doing something that is right, he's
gonna beautify it. And that is why there
are a lot of people who are doing
good things. You might find someone who is,
mashallah, very particular in their salat. They might
be very particular in their in their Quran,
in their dhikr. But subhanallah, their akhlaq is
absolutely terrible.
Do you find people like this? I You
come across them like this at all times.
There are some people whose akhlaq is extraordinary,
but then their salat is weak, their Quran
is weak. They don't ever pray. They don't
ever do the dhikr of Allah
What shaitaan does
is that shaitan will come to that kind
of person and say, You don't pray. That's
fine. But look at your akhlaq.
Your akhlaq is exemplary. Your akhlaq is like
the akhlaq of Rasulahu alaihi wa sallam You
are doing something that most of the ummah
is not doing. So let go. No problem,
you let go of salat. No problem, you
let go of going to the masjid. No
problem, you let go of your dhikr and
so forth. But this akhlaq, it's amazing.
Now once again, you see what shaitaan has
done.
Shaitan has taken one good thing that they
have done, and he's magnifying it that a
person realizes or a person says that, You
know what? Even if I let go of
the other aspects of my faith, my deen,
and my religion, it is no problem because
whatever good I'm doing, shaitan has magnified it.
You understand? And this is one of the
greatest pitfalls for a Muslim.
Our deen is very clear. We have to
do everything in our deen. Yes, we're weak.
I, I, I understand we're weak. We're not
gonna be extraordinary. We're not gonna be exemplary
in all aspects of our deen. We might
be praying salat. There might be some weakness
in our salat. We may have akhlaq. There
might be some weakness in our akhlaq. We
might be reading Quran. There might be some
weakness in there. No problem. We all are
trying to grow every single day. But if
I'm leaving out a very important aspect of
my deen,
and shaitan is gonna come to me and
say, It's no problem. You're leaving out this.
There's so many millions of people who don't
do what you're doing. You are better and
superior than everyone else. Then this is, Zayana
lahu shaytan wa aamalahu.
You understand? So that is why it is
extremely important. And, you know, let me give
you
I don't I mean, this may seem I
don't want to come off like, you know,
attacking 1 group of people, but, you know,
subhanAllah, even a lot of times when I
go to many places, like for example, MSAs
and so forth, a lot of times you
see Muslim youth, mashallah, they're trying to do
a lot of good work at the schools,
and the high school level, at the university
level. They're trying to do a lot of
good things, but a lot of times you
will see that they began to cross the
lines.
They're trying to do good Islamic work. They're
trying to revive some Islam in that university.
Sometimes they're trying to give dawah. It's all
great, but sometimes
they will also do things that are not
within the line of Sharia.
And this is where Shaytan comes to them.
And once again, there's so many other people
and so many different aspects that Shaytan can
come to many people and say, you're doing
some good things. It's better. It's no problem.
No. If we have a weakness, it's our
responsibility to overcome that weakness.
2nd thing another thing that we learned from
this story, which is very important,
which is a very big issue in this
day and age, you look at Saliman
She is sending all these gifts.
Okay. She's sending all these gifts to her,
to him. And what is he doing?
He is fulfilling
his prophetic responsibility
of calling people to Allah
That's his responsibility, right? Yes or no? Calling
people to Allah is Suleiman's responsibility, right? Yes
or no?
Yes or no? Okay. So he's fulfilling his
responsibility.
At the same time, he's making it very
clear to her, I'm not interested in you.
I'm not interested in what you have. All
I'm interested is, I want you to come
into Islam.
Now let me be very blunt when I
say these kind of things, and I'm sorry
if I have to be straightforward about these
kind of things because in this day and
age, there are a lot of people who
sugarcoat many things. I'm not a person who
sugarcoat things. Okay. I'm very straightforward about these
kind of things.
Even in this day and age,
you know how many
Muslim men
or Muslim women,
they will start giving dawah to someone.
Okay? They will find Let's say a Muslim
young man. There's a woman at college
or university,
they meet each other, she begins to take
an interest in Islam.
Okay?
Usually, a lot of times, I will ask
that young man
that, what is your reason of giving her
a dawah?
Okay?
And a lot of times
Okay? A lot of times, the answer is,
I'm hoping she becomes a Muslim, so I
can marry her.
Okay?
I'm hoping she becomes a Muslim, so I
can marry her. Or, the other way around
too. Some Muslim, young woman, meets a man,
and he becomes a Muslim. First of all,
is that,
we have to understand. What we learned from
the story of Sulaiman alaihis salam is, we
cannot be interested whether we get married to
them or not. If I give someone dawah,
I give someone dawah because I want them
to become a Muslim.
Not because If marriage is one of the
objectives, that could be a secondary objective.
The first objective is what? I want them
to become a Muslim
because it's my role and my responsibility
as a Muslim to call other people to
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala That should be our
objective. You know why? Because I can tell
you this, there are many times where you
will have Muslim men
converting a woman to Islam, and then marrying
her, and then there is a fallout. There's
a fallout, and you know what happens to
that woman? The very first thing that happens
when she gets a divorce, she gives up
her deen, she gives up her Islam.
So the reason why this is happening is
because the niyyah,
Inna mal aamalu bi niyyah, the niyyah was
corrupt to begin with. The niyyah was, I'm
making her a Muslim so I can get
married to her. You understand? When the niyyah
is corrupt,
the outcome is going to be corrupt also.
So that is why it's very important. If
I want anyone to become a Muslim, I
want them to become a Muslim because that's
my Muslim Fareedah. That is my Islamic
responsibility
to give people dawah and to bring them
to Islam. And if there's any secondary
objectives,
that is secondary. But primary is calling people
to Allah
Another thing that we learned from this story
is, look at this woman. She's not even
a Muslim, but look at her ability to
consult with others. This is something that is
often lost.
She is the leader, just like we find
in the sila of the Prophet He is
the leader, but he would always consult with
others. And not only that, but in her
story, when you had one of those people
who were giving her a consultation,
or was giving her a counsel, and he
said, We don't need to go and, you
know, succumb to them, we don't need to
go and, you know, and talk to them.
We are the ones who are more powerful
and so forth. He was taking the more
violent approach.
Did she listen to him right away? No.
She thought about it, she took the more
rational approach.
Likewise, in our life, even if I consult
with 10 people,
there might be 1 or 2 people here
and there who are gonna give us the
wrong advice, who are gonna give us the
wrong counsel. And it's our responsibility
when we consult with others, first of all
is, we have to consult with the right
people. If it's a medical issue, I'm gonna
go to a doctor. If it's a religious
issue, I'll go to the imam. If it's
something related to my career, you're not gonna
come to me. You're gonna go to someone,
like if you're in the IT, you're gonna
go to someone who's in IT.
First of all, is we need to know
who to consult with. That's number 1. But
number 2 is, even when we consult, it
doesn't mean that they give you, you know,
they give you some advice or they give
you a suggestion
or recommendation
and khalas you take it and you move
forward. No. We have to apply some critical
thinking at times to see, is this does
this make sense or not? And especially,
especially
Listen to this very carefully.
When it comes to marriages and relationships
Okay? When it comes to marriage and relationship,
and you need advice and so forth, and
you need people to come and give you
a suggestion,
I say this with a very clean heart.
Okay?
You have to make sure you go to
people who are not biased.
You have to make sure you go to
people who are not biased.
There are issues peep people have in their
marriages. You know who they go to? They
go to their parents. You know what the
parents do a lot of times? Instead of
making the situation better, they make the situation
worse.
See, when you go to someone who's gonna
be biased, any person,
any person, if they see their daughter going
through a difficult time of their marriage, naturally,
because of their love, they're always gonna take
the side of their daughter.
They're always gonna take the side of their
daughter. And naturally, if it's your son who's
married, and who's going through a difficult time
in their marriage, and they come to you,
obviously you're gonna take their side.
Although, make it very clear. In the Quran,
the Quran makes it very clear, there still
has to be justice. Even if your
son or your daughter-in-law or your daughter or
son-in-law is coming to you, you need to
apply justice. We all should be applying justice.
But you see the point I'm trying to
make is, we have to make sure that
even if I go to someone and get
advice from someone, I need to get advice
from someone who is going to give me
proper who's going to give me a proper
recommendation.
And the last thing is
that we understand
that from this story,
that Suriman
at the end of all this,
at the end of all this,
once again, he was not after what she
had. This is something very important that today,
he wanted to
extend extend the awwah to her, not because
of what she had. This is very important.
When someone comes to us and they want
to build a relationship with us, it should
be only and only for the sake of
Allah
Because
they are a Muslim. I am a Muslim.
That is it. I don't need to keep
a relationship with anyone because of what they
have. That is when we have problems in
our society,
our families.
Because today our friendships are insincere.
Our relationships are insincere. Whenever we do anything,
we invite someone, it's insincere. So when everything
is being done insincerely,
then the results are gonna be terrible. The
results are not gonna be productive and that
relationship will become even worse. So these are
few things inshallah that we learned from the
story of Suri Alaihi Salam. I ask Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us amongst those
who can understand from the story, apply the
teaching of the story, and may Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala give us the ability to take
a lesson from all these stories of the
Quran.