Nouman Ali Khan – Finding Balance Between the Spiritual & Material – Surah Al-Qiyamah
AI: Summary ©
The transcript is a jumbled mix of disjointed and difficult conversations, with a lot of dark news happening and a darker animal. The speakers discuss the meaning behind the universal message of the universal heart and how the energy of the heart is constantly changing due to the world winning. They also talk about mistakes made by people during the time of the Sahaba and how mistakes are bigger than others. The focus is on the " pestilized" message and the importance of the " pestilized" message for shaping one's thoughts and experiences.
AI: Summary ©
When Allah says, النفس اللوامة, this thing has
to be maintained in its right place.
As-salamu alaykum.
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The real power, the real powerful element inside
of us is being denied.
The ruh itself is being denied.
Instead of tapping into your ruh, you're tapping
into your misplaced guilt.
And then you're being told, no, just follow
your nafs, do whatever your nafs tells you.
Do what feels good.
Just do what you feel.
Follow your feelings.
Your feelings are your truth.
And that's basically, you know what that is?
Follow your nafs.
Follow your what?
Nafs.
What does Allah say about the Day of
Judgment?
He says, وَعَمَّا مَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبِّهِ وَنَهَى
النَّفْسَ عَنِ الْهَوَى The one who feared standing
in front of his Rabb and prevented the
nafs from following whatever feelings came.
Allah didn't say they prevented his own nafs.
He said, prevented the nafs.
As if there's something inside you, outside of
yourself.
Now we're gonna come to the Quranic picture.
I've described to you what's happening in Christendom,
in Judaism, in modern reactions to them, in
the psychological approaches that are now being taken,
in which the ruh isn't even part of
the equation in psychology, and guilt is a
problem.
But guilt in this surah is sacred, man.
It's the key to our survival on Judgment
Day.
Think about this, where does tawbah come from?
Guilt.
Where does taqwa come from?
Guilt.
What did Adam a.s. feel after he
came to the earth that redeemed him?
Guilt.
What did the Qabil feel when he killed
his brother that redeemed him?
Guilt.
What did the farmer feel in Surah Al
-Kahf when his garden got destroyed, and he
made tawbah to Allah?
Guilt.
What did Dawood a.s. feel when the
angels left, and he passed a hasty judgment?
Guilt, and he made istighfar.
What did Zulaikha feel in Surah Yusuf when
the court case was finally revealed?
Guilt, and she redeemed herself.
Over and over again.
What did Yunus a.s. feel when he
was in the belly of the whale?
Guilt.
What did the Sahaba feel when they left
their position in Nuhud?
Guilt.
And Allah acknowledges that guilt, and describes it
as the road to tawbah.
The guilt is the road to tawbah.
Guilt connects you to Allah.
So when therapy comes and tells you, let
go of guilt, it's as if it is
telling you, let go of tawbah.
And if you let go of tawbah, you
know what tawbah literally means?
It doesn't mean repentance.
Tawbah, ta'ba yatubu in Arabic is raja
'a, returning.
Ta'ba yatubu means to return back to
God, return back to Allah.
Guilt will make you go back to Allah.
Listen to this carefully.
We want to go back to Allah in
this life, which will prepare us for the
ultimate going back to Allah, on Yawm al
-Qiyamah.
That is at Nafs al-Lawwama and Yawm
al-Qiyamah.
And Nafs al-Lawwama is going back to
Allah in this life, which is preparing us
for going back to Allah on Yawm al
-Qiyamah.
SubhanAllah.
How those two things are inseparable.
So now let's look at the Qur'an's
description of the Nafs.
What does the Nafs have inside it?
It has hunger inside it.
It has sexual urge.
It has the desire for shelter, homes.
بساكن ترضونها.
You want to beautify your home.
You want to get new curtains, a new
couch, a new sofa.
You know, beautiful ride.
زويا للناس حب الشهوات من النساء والبنين والقلط.
Children.
I want to make videos of my baby.
I want to do, you know, buy cute
sweaters and take pictures.
And all this other stuff.
And then cars.
الخيل المصومة.
Business investments.
أنعام الحرث.
Right?
Return on investment.
Yield.
This is the stuff.
The urge to dominate.
Like the herd, you know, the lions like
to dominate their pride.
Well, you got to make sure that, you
know, your team knows who's the manager.
You better make sure everybody remembers you're the
dad in the house.
What did you say?
The older brother better remind.
Hey, come here.
Just sometimes the older brother just calls you
just to slap you.
Just to remind you that you just need
to remember that I can get away with
it.
Just so you remember.
In case you were forgetting.
Looks like your zikr was getting a little
weak.
So let me bring it back a little
bit.
You have that.
The urge to dominate.
The urge to overpower.
And this urge comes out in weird ways
among aunties.
And uncles.
When they got no other way to make
someone else feel inferior.
Yeah, my son already graduated.
He's already got a job and mashallah.
And you know that this kid just, you
know, got kicked out of school or something
happened or...
Yeah, you just get to throw mashallah at
my son.
This is petty urge to just...
I need to be above.
I need to make you feel less so
I can feel higher.
Somehow, someway.
And then the fight or flight.
And the territorialism.
You know, this is my house.
Who's gonna lead the prayer?
Who's gonna lead the taraweeh on 27th night?
What?
They gave him what now?
What?
Who's gonna be the main speaker at the
convention?
And there's vengeance.
These are all things inside the what?
The nafs.
And it has other darknesses too.
The nafs is dark.
And every one of you has it.
There's something very dark, very animal inside each
one of us.
It's so scary that Allah says, وَمَن يُوقَى
شُحَّ نَفْسِهِ فَأُولَئِكَ أَمُّ الْمُفْلِحُونَ Whoever is protected
from the unrestricted greed, the unchained animal of
greed, that is inside of their own nafs,
those people are successful.
There's something inside you so bad, that Allah
says, you need to be protected from it.
And that is a part of you.
But not all of you.
It's a part of you.
It's a part of you.
You know when someone is really messed up,
and they say, I don't know what happened
to me.
I just became someone else.
That's not really me.
This is me.
Let me tell you something, homie.
That's also you.
The darkest parts of you, the darkest moments
of your life, was also who?
That was you.
That was your nafs.
أَمَّارَةٌ بِالسُّوءِ The one who commands you to
do bad.
The animal within.
Now look at this picture I made.
This is my beautiful art project.
There are...
Is it behind?
Is it lagging?
It's lagging.
That's not what I'm doing.
Look.
Oh no, this is what I'm doing.
But how come my screen is not showing?
This is not the screen I'm showing.
Yeah.
I'll show you something else.
I need you guys to see this one.
Did anything change?
No, the screen is frozen, my dear.
Because I really need them to see this
one.
Well, not this one.
It's a diagram.
But let me explain it to you.
There are three words I need you to
know.
روح, قلب, نفس.
روح, قلب, and نفس.
And in that order.
One روح, two قلب, three نفس.
What's in the middle?
قلب.
قلب is the battlefield.
The قلب is the battlefield.
Between the روح and the نفس.
The نفس says, take more.
The نفس says, I want more.
The نفس has greed.
The نفس has desire.
The نفس has vengeance.
The نفس has jealousy.
The نفس has lying and cheating.
Just get yourself.
Me, me, me, me, me.
That's نفس.
And the نفس wants control over the what?
The قلب.
The desire to please Allah.
The desire to find peace.
The desire to be grateful.
The desire to be generous.
The desire to be selfless.
The desire for the justice for others.
The desire to do good.
The desire to do something other than for
yourself.
All of that comes from where?
The روح.
That's coming from?
The روح.
And the روح is also trying to influence
the heart.
So from the one hand, the روح is
trying to pull the heart towards itself.
And on the other side, the نفس is
trying to pull the heart towards itself.
And the نفس itself, the قلب itself, the
heart, is the battlefield.
The قلب by the way, comes from تقلب,
changing, alternating.
Like literally the heart is constantly changing, because
the battle is never over.
It's constantly, somebody is tugging, somebody is winning.
And each one of us are in between.
Each one of us.
There are some days, where the روح is
winning.
You're in the masjid in Ramadan, and you're
making du'a and you're crying.
The روح is winning.
And when the روح is winning, it remembers
all the injuries the نفس caused.
Because when the نفس dominates the heart, and
you do something bad, the heart, it doesn't
just stick to the heart, it causes injury
to the روح.
And the روح sends a message back to
the قلب, and says, Hey, what are you
doing?
Why am I hurting?
And the قلب goes back to the نفس
and says, What did you do?
And the روح says, Oh, sorry, sorry, I'm
ashamed.
النفس اللوامى.
Temporarily ashamed.
And then the نفس says, Well, I'm still
hungry though.
And then it does something again.
And then it goes back to the روح
again.
And the روح complains to the heart again.
And the heart comes back to the نفس
and says, What did you do?
And again, نفس says, What?
Because the روح says, You're taking me away.
The قلب is what's gonna be judged on
judgment day.
The قلب will be judged.
And the قلب has to have a connection
to Allah.
Which of these two is the connection to
Allah?
The روح.
So the روح wants the قلب to remain
pure.
And the نفس is pulling it in the
opposite direction.
Now, remember what I told you?
Mind and matter.
Do you remember what I told you when
philosophers said, Matter doesn't exist.
It's all that matters is the mind.
And the scientists said, Forget the mind.
The only thing that exists is what?
Matter.
Now bring that to this conversation.
The روح is spiritual.
And the نفس is bodily.
It's the bodily needs.
It's the material needs, right?
So this is the battle between the spiritual,
the mind and the matter, the spiritual and
the physical, inside of ourselves.
In Christianity, that battle was the solution was
going to the monk life.
Feel guilt your whole life.
Be لَوَّامًا your entire life.
In Judaism, have a little bit of لَوْم
at the end of your life.
In modern psychology, who needs النفس اللَّوَّامًا?
Get rid of it.
Get rid of it.
Get rid of the روح.
There's no روح.
There's just النفس اللَّوَّامًا.
Do whatever you want.
What did the Qur'an do?
The Qur'an did not say that the
روح is more important than the نفس.
The Qur'an created a harmony between the
body and the soul.
The Qur'an didn't say, just remember Allah
and don't enjoy good food.
The Qur'an did not say, have desires
but don't get married.
The most spiritual time of the year is
Ramadan, isn't it?
And Allah says fast, which means you're denying
your body.
But then at night He says, go be
intimate with your wives.
What?
And eat and drink until the morning comes.
Isn't that for the نفس?
So all day you took care of your
روح and all night you're taking care of
the نفس, and then روح, and then نفس,
and then روح, and then نفس, all month.
It's not an entirely spirit, it's a month
of balance.
Allah says, وَوَضَعَ الْمِيزَانِ Allah revealed a balance.
The most spiritual moment of your life will
be Hajj, isn't it?
We wear clothes that we're gonna be buried
in, isn't it?
Meaning all we care about is Akhirah.
It's all we should care about.
We're doing tawaf, we get past Muqanyamani, everybody
raises their hand and says, رَبَّنَا هَاتِنَا فِي
الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الْآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً If this was
only about the Akhirah, what should we be
saying?
رَبَّنَا هَاتِنَا فِي الْآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقِنَا عَذَابَنَّا Why
dunya?
Because dunya is the problem, that's the نفس,
right?
Christianity's solution was deny the نفس.
And by the way, then new Christianity, Joelstein
Christianity, prosperity gospel, came up with a new
solution.
No, no, no, you don't have to feel
guilty.
The Lord wants you to follow your نفس.
Why don't you get yourself that Rolex?
The Lord got me a helicopter.
He got me two private jets.
I got a mansion in Florida.
Jesus is good, real good.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
What did they do?
They said, forget guilt, let's make a new
Christianity in which you following your نفس means
God must love you.
Super smart re-engineering.
It was great re-engineering.
What is the Qur'an doing?
I told you hajj is the most spiritual
experience, right?
You know what Allah says?
لَيْسَ عَلَيْكُمْ جُنَاحٌ أَن تَبْدَعُوا فَضًّا مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ
There's no harm on you if you produce
some business when you go to hajj.
Hajj?
Ya Allah, hajj?
I came here to leave dunya.
Allah says, no, but you have customers from
all over the world coming.
If you want to pursue some فضل for
yourself, make some new business connections, make some
contacts, hey, do it, do it.
There's no harm.
What does Allah keep doing in this religion?
He keeps balancing the spiritual with the material.
Over and over again.
In food, in marriage, in finances.
Don't give all of your money.
Give what, you know, what purifies your wealth.
He didn't stop us from doing business.
He didn't stop us from travel.
He didn't stop.
قُلْ سِيرُ فِي الْأُولِ Travel the world.
How can you be grateful to Allah if
you're not appreciating Allah's blessings?
How can you do that?
Eat delicious food.
Allah says, look, وَنَخْلُ ذَاتُ الْأَكْمَام The Christian
monks said, we're only gonna eat one kind
of food because we want to shun the
world.
And Quran says, look at these fruits I
made.
Enjoy the peel, enjoy the fruit, enjoy this,
enjoy this milk, enjoy this.
Oh my God!
He wants us to enjoy this world too?
The only, I told you at the beginning
of this long-winded introduction, the only ideology
that will survive in the end, is one
that will meet the needs of human nature.
And human beings are a huge contradiction.
There's an animal inside us, and there's an
angel inside us.
There's a ruh inside us, there's a spiritual
thing inside us, and there's a physical material
thing inside us.
And they both have an appetite, man.
They both have needs.
And Allah gave us this ultimate balanced religion
which addresses the needs of both.
And when you go out of balance, then
you get al-nafs al-luwama.
That's when you get al-nafs al-luwama.
You know, it's so cool that the idea
of qiyamah, standing, you have to stand on
two feet.
Right?
You can think of it as dunya and
akhirah.
Two feet.
You got to stand on both.
Both legs.
Look at this last observation about this entire
discourse.
I'm going to leave you with two things.
Misplaced guilt and absent guilt.
Two things that we have to be scared
about.
Let's talk about misplaced guilt.
When Allah makes something halal, nobody can make
you feel guilty about it.
But society does, doesn't it?
There are things that are halal that society
doesn't like, or your family doesn't like, or
your culture doesn't like.
And therefore, you feel bad about it.
We have to...
And misplaced guilt, I'll give you another misplaced
example.
You know how people are very sensitive about
pronouns nowadays?
Friend of mine went to a cafe, not
Starbucks, and the person served him.
And he said, Thank you, sir.
And he left.
And he realized, Oh my God, I said,
Thank you, sir.
That was gendered.
I think I need to go back and
say, I didn't mean to say, sir.
Because you never know with these people.
Right?
And he goes back and he's thinking about
going and apologizing.
And he's like, he stopped himself.
He's like, I'm not thinking about the thousands
of people that are being slaughtered in Gaza.
And I'm thinking about this person being offended
by this pronoun.
I'm being conditioned to feel guilty about the
wrong thing.
My guilt is being reconditioned.
If your conscience is connected to Allah, if
the ruh is connected to Allah, then you
will not be reprogrammed in the wrong misplaced
guilt.
Our connection to the Qur'an will redirect
our guilt in the right place.
And it will remove it from the wrong
place.
By the way, guilt misplaced creates disasters in
the world.
Just look at what Christianity did.
The world we're in today is because of
misplaced guilt.
That's where it's coming from.
So that's the first disaster, misplaced guilt.
What was the other one?
Absent guilt.
Okay.
I'm gonna give you a scary one.
And I don't mean to criticize anybody personally
or any institution.
Just think about what I'm saying.
You don't think...
You know, we're celebrating teaching our children Tajweed.
And we're teaching our children beautiful recitation of
the Qur'an.
And we're teaching our children memorization of the
Qur'an.
And then we're having Qur'an recitation competitions,
and Hifz competitions, and qiraat nights.
And we're celebrating, celebrating Qur'an, celebrating Qur
'an, celebrating Qur'an.
And nobody thinks for a moment that when
we go in front of Allah on Judgment
Day, Allah will say, you made people feel
like they have served my book without ever,
ever, ever making them contemplate what it is
that they're reciting.
You distracted people from the Qur'an using
the Qur'an.
You made people think that their job to
the Qur'an is done by never once
contemplating it.
Never once putting in the minds of these
millions of kids that have memorized the Qur
'an that this word deserves their mind and
heart immersed in it.
Not for the sounds that it produces, but
for the message and the wisdom that it
contains.
You replaced its message and its wisdom with
its sounds.
I thought the message, the sounds and its
beauty and its recitation was supposed to be
the gateway, the first step towards its contemplation,
not the conclusion.
And you made that the conclusion?
And then you celebrated that?
And you don't even feel guilty about it?
You feel good about it?
Isn't that absent guilt?
To me, that's absent guilt.
I mean, I wanna celebrate memorization of Qur
'an, but I wanna lament the millions of
hufadh who don't know the word of Allah,
but they know the sounds of the Qur
'an.
To me, that's a tragedy.
How close...
This heart has Qur'an in it, and
it was never given the thirst to know
what it says.
Never.
And even when they said, oh, no, no,
no, they're hafiz now, they should become a
alim, they should become a scholar, they should
become...
Then they will study every other subject.
They'll study fiqh, they'll study aqeedah, they'll study
seerah, they'll study kalam, they'll study mantiq, they'll
study...
Guess one subject they're not gonna study?
Deeply, ever.
Qur'an.
I went to Pakistan, I went to Indonesia,
I went to different Muslim countries.
Wallahi al-'azim, I went to madaris, and I
said, where's the taqassus in Qur'an?
Where's the specialization in Qur'an?
Oh, we don't have that.
We teach fiqh these many years, we teach
aqeedah these many years.
Okay, what about Qur'an though?
No, we just read this tafsir.
I was like, yeah, but that's not Qur
'an, Qur'an.
That's one tafsir, but Qur'an is a
library, Qur'an study.
Yeah, we don't do that.
Then I called Dr. Akram, I was like
shocked.
I was like, Dr. Saab, where is Qur
'an being taught in the world?
And he's like, I can't think of any
place.
Like maybe some places in Sudan, there's some
efforts happening here and there, and like Morocco,
but generally no.
I'm like, all these madad, I have to
say this without shame, without hesitation, the subject
that became yetim in Islamic studies, in the
study of our deen, is the Qur'an.
That happened.
And we as an ummah feel no guilt
about it.
Nothing.
To me, this is absent guilt.
There's something very wrong here.
There's something deeply, deeply missing.
This cannot carry on.
So when Allah says, النفس اللوامة This thing
has to be maintained in its right place.
We have to rescue it from misplaced guilt,
and we have to restore the guilt that
should be there.
The guilt that should be there.
And so now, within five minutes, my final
comment.
Psychology says guilt for the most part is
useless, unless it translates into action.
In this ayah, Allah used guilt as a
mechanism to prepare us for Yawm al-Qiyamah.
Yes or no?
That means guilt, the purpose of guilt is
not sit there and feel bad.
The purpose of guilt is to drive you
to fix what led to the guilt.
To make corrections.
إِلَّا مَن تَعْبَى تَعْتَابُوا وَأَصْلَحُوا وَبَيَّنُوا They make
tawbah, they fix, they become proactive.
We're not sitting there in guilt.
We're not lamenting in guilt.
We're not keeping somebody in guilt.
You know, people mess up.
Sometimes people mess up big time.
You and I mess up, I mess up.
Whether the world knows about it or not,
we make mistakes, we all do.
But some mistakes are bigger than others, man.
When those Sahaba came down from their position
in Uhud, that was a big one.
Lots of Sahaba died.
Lots of Sahaba's bodies were mutilated.
Hamza رضي الله عنه was opened up and
his liver was bit into.
His heart was ripped out of his body.
And the Prophet saw his mutilated body like
that.
His beloved uncle.
And that happened because some people left their
position.
That is not a small amount of guilt.
Like I can imagine the guilt they must
be feeling for what happened because of that
mistake.
And they could have stayed in that guilt
for the rest of their lives.
Isn't it?
And Allah revealed to the Prophet, فَبِمَا رَحْمَةٍ
مِّنَ اللَّهِ لِنْتَ لَهُمْ وَلَوْ كُنْتَ فَضًّا غَلِيظًا
الْقَلْبِ لَنْ فَضُّوا مِنْ حَوْلِكَ فَاعْفُوا عَنْهُمْ وَاسْتَغْفِرْ
لَهُمْ وَشَاوِرْهُمْ فِي الْأَمْرِ فَإِذَا عَزَمْتَ فَتَوَكَّرْ عَلَى
اللَّهِ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُحِبُّ الْمُتَوَكِّرِينَ It is the
mercy of Allah that you are lenient towards
them.
Had you been harsh, hard-hearted, they would
have dispersed away from you.
So فَاعْفُوا عَنْهُمْ Pardon them.
وَاسْتَغْفِرْ لَهُمْ وَاسْتَغْفِرْ لَهُمْ And pray for their
forgiveness.
وَشَاوِرْهُمْ فِي الْأَمْرِ And take their consultation.
They made a mistake, that doesn't mean they're
useless.
Still utilize them.
And value their opinion.
They're not valueless because they made a mistake.
And then when you make a decision, هَفْتَوَكُلُنَّ
اللَّهِ The religion did not keep us in
guilt.
Not in the guilt of our father Adam,
but not even in the guilt of our
own mistakes.
You can redeem, move on.
They feel bad, that's it.
They made tawbah, that's it.
Life goes on.
And this is not a small mistake.
This mistake cost lives.
And move on.
SubhanAllah.
What a religion.
What an incredible deen Allah has given us.
And in just these two words, لَا أُقْسِبُ
بِيَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ وَلَا أُقْسِبُ بِالنَّفْسِ اللَّوَّامَةِ Is an
entire philosophy of the Qur'an.
An entire world view that sets us apart
from other religions.
It sets us apart from modern psychological trends.
It is actually the savior for what's happening
in the world.
This is the only path that can save
the world.
May Allah عز و جل make us a
people, truly a people, of النفس اللَّوَّامَةِ as
it's supposed to be.
And allow us all to reach that state
of النفس المطمئن.
بارك الله لي ولكم في القرآن الحكيم ونفعني
وإياكم بالآيات والذكر الحكيم والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله
وبركاته Hey guys, you just watched a small
clip of me explaining the Qur'an in
depth as part of the deeper look series.
Studying the Qur'an in depth can seem
like a really intimidating thing that's only meant
for scholars.
Our job at Bayyinah is to make deeper
study of the Qur'an accessible and easy
for all of you.
So take us up on that challenge.
Join us for this study, the deeper look
of the Qur'an for this surah and
many other surahs on bayyinahtv.com under the
deeper look section.