Nouman Ali Khan – Jumuah Khutbah – Vancouver
AI: Summary ©
The Surah provides opportunities for people to get together, but they were not listening. Jesus spoke to the Israelites and warned them of their corruption, causing them to become irrelevant and punished. The importance of remembering the secret messages of Islam is emphasized, including the use of "naq centers," "any thing you know" cycles, and the importance of not being caught in the "any thing you know" cycle. The speaker discusses the negative reactions people experience when they receive information about Islam, including physical weakness and desire to take responsibility, and emphasizes the importance of giving gifts and developing a means and systems in the family and friends to ensure everyone is happy and satisfied with their current situation.
AI: Summary ©
It's an honor to be here today and
InshaAllah over the next a little over 20,
23 minutes, I'm going to try to share
some
reflections from the opening
of Surat Maryam. So for after the Khutba
is done, after you get some time, I'd
like you to spend some time reading the
opening, the the first few ayaat, maybe the
first page of Surat Maryam on your own
and do some reading and study on your
own as well.
This Surah,
the opening is about a time, a very
important time in history. So I wanna first
tell you about that time.
The children of Israel were chosen by Allah
to be an example for all other nations
before humanity.
And they had had many many prophets,
one after the other.
And the Quran describes that they disgraced those
prophets. In fact, they even killed many of
those prophets.
You know, yaktulun and nabiyeenabiraidilhaqq.
They were killing prophets without justification.
So it's not just that they were not
listening to them, they were even assassinating
prophets of Allah time and time again.
But this was almost
the end of the line for them. Allah
had given them many many opportunities
and now we're getting close to the end.
And by that time they had reached
a new level of corruption within them.
So they were already, they had different layers
of corruption
but the kind of corruption they reached
by this time that is going to be
described in the beginning
of Surat Maryam is the height of their
corruption.
And how do we know that? Well one
of the ways you can think about that
is this is right around the time Isa
is born.
So the last prophet that is going to
speak to them directly is coming. This is
their last shot. This is their last chance
to get their act together.
And if you study Jesus, even outside of
the Quran, if you study what Jesus is
saying to the Israelites in their own literature,
in Christian literature,
you'll find that he has no kind words
for the Israelites.
And he's exposing,
he's extremely offensive at the level of corruption
that they've reached. In fact, it's no surprise
then that they orchestrated
the attempt to get him executed.
Right? Because it was too much of a
problem for them and he was exposing their
corruption too much. Now
he hasn't been born yet. The opening of
the Surah, he hasn't been born yet.
It opens with actually his mother's uncle.
It opens with Zakariyah
And this khutba is really about Zakaria
but I want you to know what Zakaria
himself went through
He's Allah's prophet.
He knows
even though he's a prophet too Bani Israel,
he knows
that they have killed many prophets before him.
So the first question is why didn't they
kill him? Well, there's 2 things that happened.
Either they killed prophets
or they just stop listening to them and
ignore them and make them irrelevant.
And now whether you kill kill them or
not, nobody's listening to you anyway.
So it's as if Zakariyah alaihis salam who's
doing his responsibility
as the imam, as the leader of that
community, as the prophet of the time,
has been giving them dawah and trying to
make correction with these people but they have
basically rendered him irrelevant.
And he knows even the people that are
close to him, even they suffer from deep
corruption.
And he's been asking Allah
all this time for some kind of support,
some kind of help. Because whenever he gets
some kind of help, he's he he sees
that they have other influences and they're not
he's not able to give them tarbia properly.
So his dua to Allah
was, maybe the only way I can really
have someone to help me is if they
were born in my own family, my own
child. I will be in charge of their
upbringing myself.
I'll make sure that they're brought up the
right way. And then they can take responsibility
because I'm getting older and older. So So
his entire life he's making dua for someone
to support him. And now he's so old
that he can see that death is
any any moment now. He's already got one
foot in the grave. And it's at that
time that Allah records this conversation
that he had with Allah in the opening
of
Surat Maryam.
It opens with
And you and I know we don't know
what that means. But why put that there?
One of the reasons you can think about
putting that there is Allah is reminding us
that he knows and we don't know.
And He has wisdom we can never possess.
He knows, He understands things that we can
never understand. And when He plans the world
the way he plans it, we see things
happening in the world, we don't understand it.
But the one who created this world and
has the entire plan,
he has knowledge and he has access that
we can never have.
Right? And when you see something in front
of your eyes and you see it as
a problem, like Zakariyah
sees that these were the muslims of that
time. They're not kuffar. They're the muslims of
that time. So he sees the muslims of
that time so corrupt,
so lost
and he even being a prophet of Allah
can't do anything about it. It seems to
be he seems to be helpless his entire
life to be able to help these people
to do any kind of reform among them.
And now he's reached an old age and
he doesn't see anybody who's gonna take over.
And he's gonna be gone and what's gonna
happen to these people? The last voice that
was there to speak the truth to them
is about to die. And in that moment
he turns to Allah and Allah describes the
opening is so remarkable
This is a reminder and a mention
of the rahma, the loving care
that your Rab had towards his slaves Zakariyah.
And that's confusing. Allah is saying in the
beginning Allah wants to remind you and me
and His Prophet
that Allah was extra merciful
and extra loving and caring to his servant
Zakariyah. But if you study the history, you
what do you think nowadays? What's our concept?
If Allah is merciful to you, you make
dua, Allah answers your dua. That means Allah
is merciful to you. And if you're making
dua and Allah didn't answer your dua, that
means Allah is not merciful to you.
That's it's our simple formula because I say
often we've we've equated dua to Allah with
Amazon delivery. So if it doesn't come then
clearly there's some maybe my payment didn't go
through. It wasn't accepted. Maybe there's something wrong.
Allah is not happy that's why He didn't
send it.
He didn't give me answer to my prayer.
Allah begins by saying Allah has Allah wants
us to remember until judgement day in his
final revelation
that Allah had a special rahmah
for his slave Zakariyah.
The slave of Allah who was asking Allah
of the same dua over and over again
for years
years. And in all of those years, he
never got that dua answered.
He never got that dua answered. So what
the first lesson to learn here is your
dua and my dua not being answered according
to our timetable
has nothing to do with the rahmah of
Allah.
It has nothing to do with the rahma
of Allah. And Allah wanted us to remember
the rahma he had for Zakariyah
forever.
Now look at the frustration of Zakariyah alaihis
salam. Zakariyah alaihis salam is among Muslims
and the vast majority of them are in
deep corruption.
He doesn't have any support system. Who's he
gonna
You can complain about the kuffar to the
believers. Who you gonna complain to about the
believers themselves?
Where you gonna go? Right?
So he's in that state and Allah says,
When he called on his Rab
with a secret silent call, he made sure
nobody hears this dua.
This is incredible.
Now billions of people know this Dua.
Allah put it in the Quran.
Now everybody knows it. But he made sure
that his dua would be a secret.
Now what's amazing about that is, one of
the rahma that Allah has given Zakariyah alaihis
salam, to this day, every time somebody's reciting
the Quran and they recite Surat Maryam, who's
getting the ajr?
Who's getting the reward?
And that dua he made in secret, no
human being recorded it, no historian knew about
it,
It's not in the bible.
It's not recorded in their books because it
was a secret dua. He didn't tell anybody.
And he only told Allah. This is a
conversation between him and Allah. And Allah knows.
Only Allah knows this dua. And Allah decided
to take that secret
between him and his servant Zakariyah
and publish it in the Quran
for for us to know until judgement day.
And every time we recite this Dua, his
Maqam goes up.
This is rafu zikr. This is Allah elevated
him
So what does that mean? Maybe his all
those years, his pain, and in that moment
of his death when he was making the
dua, his pain in that time, he didn't
even know that was the best moment of
his life. Because that moment of his life
was so beautiful, Allah put it in the
Quran.
It's so powerful that moment. How would you
know and how will I know
what is the best moment of our life?
Because people, when you ask what's the greatest
accomplishment of your life, you think of well,
I met the president
or I won this championship
or the day my business took off, or
the day this happened or that happened, major
events in your life. Right? And what people
do with major events is they take a
picture of them, They frame them in their
house. They put them as the background on
their phone, the wallpaper on their phone. This
is the major event of my life. They
wear it like a metal on themselves.
And here you have this this man has
this moment in his life
he wouldn't even know at the time. He
wouldn't even know that was the most precious
moment of his entire existence
even as a prophet.
What is Allah teaching us through that?
Allah is teaching us that my relationship with
Allah, your relationship with Allah,
it's nobody else's business.
And we don't know which of our deeds
are the most value to Allah, and maybe
there's even an isharah, an inclination in this
ayah to let us know that my private
moments with Allah are the dearest ones to
Allah.
They might be the the most precious ones
to Allah
because the public moments everybody else can appreciate
but the private ones are especially only and
only for Allah.
Only and only what an encouragement
for you and I to take some time
where nobody can see. You're at home. You're
making salah, maybe your wife can see you
raising your hands. Nah, not good enough.
Not good enough. You got you got to
be somewhere,
nobody's around.
And you're just having a conversation with Allah.
You're just having that conversation. It's your nida
and kafiyah.
You heard your beautiful Prophet Zakaria alayhis salam
call on Allah secretly.
It's just between him and Allah. You know
what one another meaning of that is? Whatever
he was gonna ask for, nobody ever heard
about it. He didn't tell people I asked
Allah so many times. I tell Allah so
many times this Dua. And you No. No.
No. It's a secret Dua.
It's a secret. It's Nida and Kafi'ah. So
nobody knows about it. It's only Allah who
knows about it. What's happened in the age
of social media is we like to publish
our pain.
Right? So we wanna make a make a
meme about when you're asking a love for
relief and no one answers, you put a
hashtag underneath sabar.
Right? Like you.
So we we wanna we wanna advertise our
personal
connection to Allah because it's something to promote
in front of followers.
Right?
Or even if you're not on social media,
you have people that are making a dua,
and they're not getting the answer in time,
and they're talking to everybody about it. They're
saying, I keep asking Allah, I don't know
when it's gonna come. I keep asking, where
is the Nida Khafiyyah?
How is this an intimate conversation between the
slave and the master? Right? The beauty of
that is being highlighted in just
Now look at his words.
He said, my Rab,
my bones I'm gonna translate as literally as
I can. My bones have become so weak
they don't listen to me anymore.
That's I'm gonna add some words here in
English so you understand the balaka of the
Arabic. My bones have become so weak.
They are no longer listening to me. Some
of you guys play sports when you were
younger, played basketball or whatever else and then
you got then you turned 40.
And then you're you're in your brain, in
your mind, you're about to do a crossover,
but your bones say, no, you're not. That's
not that's not what's gonna happen right now.
Right? So
and it happened a lot quicker in your
head.
But the the bones are starting to give
away. But he's he's now describing my body
is no longer
complying. It's no longer cooperating with me. It's
become so weak. My bones have become I
can feel it. I can feel it within
me, the weakness within me. Now Allah knows
his weakness more than he knows. He could
have said, You Allah, you know.
But actually and the first thing he's saying,
it sounds like he's complaining.
You Allah, my bones hurt. Arthritis.
You Allah, my back hurts. I have a
hard time sitting down. You Allah, when I
walk I have to lean over. My bones
don't comply. My knee hurts. I can't go
up the stairs.
You Allah, my hands are always in pain.
I can't grab anything.
You know. But he's turning to Allah and
basically look at the beauty of that.
It's it's interesting. Another place in the Quran
you find someone
sharing their pain with Allah is Yaqub alayhis
salam.
Right? Yaqub alayhis salam. And notice
that in these aat,
he's gonna say, yarithuni wa yarithu min
Ali Yaqub. He's gonna mention Yaqub alayhis salam
later on. He sees a connection between him
and Ya'qub because he's what's the connection? Ya'qub
alayhis salam went through a lot of pain.
He's also going through a lot of pain.
Then he says
and what to speak of the bones.
He literally says my hair,
it's as if a fire came and burnt
my hair and it's turned into white ash.
Basically, he's saying all my hair has turned
white.
It's and and he's he's comparing
age
with a fire that burns through and you
only have white ash left. That's why Isti'al
is used. So this is a really beautiful
tashbih
in this ayah, an analogy in this ayah.
Wastaalarasu
shayba. Because of old age, my hair is
all turned white. This is his way of
saying I don't have a lot of days
left.
You Allah, you know when I'm going but
it looks to me like I'm going. My
body is kinda telling me it's time to
go. They say in Arabic, shaybuqa na'iq.
Your gray your graying or whitening hair
is the alarm that it's time to go.
You know back in the day they used
to have an alarm when there's a when
there's a war coming or there's a horn
that gets sounded and the whole village wakes
up. That's the nai.
Right? So they say when your hair is
turning turning gray or turning white then the
horn has been sounded.
It's time to go, get ready, you know,
like the troops have to march. So he
tells Allah
But then he says the most beautiful part
of all of this.
He says,
I have never been hopeless or miserable or
depressed
or negative or pessimistic. All of these are
the meanings of shakih.
I have never been any of those things
when it comes to asking you for something,
making Dua to you.
And this is really confusing. He spent his
entire life making dua for something. Allah didn't
answer it. And he's getting old. He's about
to die. Allah still didn't answer it. And
he's saying, You Allah, never once did I
feel negative about making dua to you and
you didn't answer.
Never once have I felt depressed. Never once
have I said, Yeah Allah didn't answer my
prayer. Now you have to ask yourself, we
have to ask ourselves.
What level of frustration
do we easily get with Allah?
Easily, when our Dua isn't answered on our
schedule?
He's surrounded by frustration.
He's surrounded by it never with Allah.
No. And it's not like he's not frustrated.
He is frustrated. He's frustrated with his physical
weakness.
He's frustrated that he's he don't doesn't see
a solution,
But never does that frustration turn towards Allah
and he says, yeah, Allah, I'm telling you
this not because I'm complaining to you. Because
any negative emotion I've ever ever felt it
never incorrectly directs towards you.
That never happens.
So lam aqun bidlaaikarabi shakih.
Having said that, I do have some anxieties
from people.
And the people that are associated with me,
the people that are going to take charge
after I die, the people that are going
to take control of the masjid, this community,
the people that are gonna stand up and
give the khutba after I'm gone,
I am afraid of them.
I'm afraid I'm afraid of
them.
I'm afraid of how much they're going to
cause corruption. I'm afraid of how ignorant they
are. I'm afraid of how arrogant they are.
I'm afraid of how little they know but
they believe they know so much.
I I'm afraid of how they're going to
cause division in this community. I'm afraid of
their ulterior motives, their agendas.
I'm afraid of their insincerity. I've seen it.
I'm afraid of their ignorance, their arrogance. I'm
afraid.
What's gonna happen?
And he says, You Allah, and by the
way the solution to that would have been
me having a child but he says,
But my wife was unable to bear a
child from even when she was young.
You Allah, I'm not saying I'm not complaining
but I'm saying the reality is you didn't
give me the child and you didn't give
me any of these scrubs over here that
could rise to the occasion,
and that's the situation I'm dealing with.
So he says look at what he said.
And he said, I'm never gonna be depressed.
Now it looks like everybody around me is
a loser, so they're not good enough for
the job.
I don't have a kid myself.
What's the solution? Look at his and and
we said he's never negative towards Allah. What
does he what does he tell Allah? He
says,
then give me the gift
from yourself
of someone who will take charge.
You you find a way, You Rabbi. I
don't know but you're the giver of all
gifts. You're the
wahab so give me a gift.
The word gift is also really beautiful here.
It's an indication that he feels after all
these years of making dua, he still doesn't
act like he deserves it.
He still understands
Allah doesn't owe me anything.
If even now Allah gives me that will
be a gift,
not because I deserved
it. What happened with us in Dua? We
make Dua to Allah and now all of
a sudden the answer to the Dua is
almost an expectation from Allah that if Allah
doesn't deliver,
He hasn't met my expectations.
I did my part of the deal, where
is this part of the deal? Wait, hold
on. If this is your expectation
then it would not be a hiba, min
Allah. It wouldn't be a gift because a
gift is not expected. Unless you have some
really crazy drama on things. He expects gifts.
But gifts are not expected.
Gifts are an unexpected thing. They're not earned.
It's an unearned thing.
He says, You Allah, I'm not I don't
I'm not entitled to it but if you
can just give me the gift
of someone who will take charge after me.
Yarithuni wa yarithum min aliyahqub. He will inherit
me and he will inherit from the family
of Yaqub.
Now notice Yaqub was surrounded by sons
who gave him grief.
And Zakaria is surrounded by a comb that
is giving him grief.
And he says, I need someone like a
Yusuf
who rises to the occasion. Where's my Yusuf?
So he says, yarifuni wa yarifumin aliyakum. How
beautiful,
you know.
And so even though the the time for
Khubba is up, just one more small thing
I want you to remember from this. What
did he ask for in this
this child that Allah will give, or this
new wali that Allah will give him? What
did he ask for in him?
He said, This is actually this is
Make him. My Rab, my Rab, please just
make him
a And means 2 things in Arabic.
One thing it means,
You Allah make him someone you are pleased
with. It doesn't matter if I see something
in them or not, so long as you
see their potential that's good enough for me.
Because sometimes
Allah sees something in someone, we can't see
it.
So so long as he's good by you,
that's good enough for me.
That's so long as they meet your expectations,
because I have my own expectations,
that's good enough.
What's the other meaning of rebli?
It actually means You Allah make him someone
no matter what happens
they stay content with you.
You're content with them
but they also say content
with you like he himself.
All these years, no prayer answered, but he's
content with Allah. You Allah, I need someone
who can live in a frustrating situation
in difficult circumstances,
but never do those circumstances
impact their relationship with you.
That doesn't happen. They remain lovely with you.
They remain content with you. That's the kind
of next generation I need. That's the kind
of walli I need.
This beautiful
private
personal dua was recorded and I believe one
of the reasons this was recorded in the
Quran is that this is the way we
should be asking Allah
for our next generations.
This is what we should be asking Allah
for our generations. Like what are the qualities
we want when we're gone from here?
What We're
going to have to develop a means, a
We're going to have to develop
a means, a system
in the family, in the Masjid,
among friends.
We're gonna have to develop a system. We
create that kind of influence among our young
generation so they grow up to be.
They're growing up to be pleased with Allah
and Allah is pleased with them. Like that's
that's the benchmark of okay. Now now I
can die in peace.
Now I can die in peace, you know.
So this is,
this is something I want you to recite
on your own. Even memorize these opening ayaat.
They're very easy, very short ayat.