Nouman Ali Khan – Picking & Choosing

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Alhamdulillah Latina who wanna start you know who when istockphoto when you know he went to Taco la when I wrote the Billahi min surely unforseen a woman say Dr. Molina and yes the Hello fellow mobile data woman you will follow howdy Allah. When Allah Allah Allah Allah, Allah, Allah. When Allah Allah Mohammed Abdullah he Rasulullah sallallahu taala Bill houda Medina, Huck, you Hara who Allah DD wa kafa biLlahi shahida for sallallahu alayhi wa seldom at the Sleeman kathira and kathira ama bad for in the cul de tabula. Well, hello, howdy howdy Mohammedan sallallahu alayhi wa sallam were in a short run ohmori Masato. However, in Nakula desert in VEDA akula with it in Bala akula boletin

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one of the last soldiers to be revealed in the Quran to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam sulit Alma ADA. It's the fifth surah in the order of the Mazel Tov, and is one of the final revelations given to the civil law. So the lahardee, who said them, in that revelation, there's a lot of conversation between olara xojo, teaching his messenger what to say at least how to Salaam to the people of the book, the Jews and the Christians, particularly the Christians, there's quite a bit of discourse with the Christian community. This makes historical sense, because by the end of the prophets career, some of them we were already engaged with the Roman Empire. So it was already

clear that the Muslims are going to be dealing with the Christian civilization quite a bit. And particularly what the Quran This is something unique that you don't find in other religious traditions. The Quran does not try to preach to the average follower of a different faith, it actually went after the most knowledgeable among them. So the people of knowledge among the People of the Book, the rabbis, the priests, the ministers, etc, and will talk to them. You see, it's easier to talk to somebody from a different religion, who don't know much about their own religion. And you can say, Well, here's what our religion teaches, and they don't have anything of their own

to cross reference it against. But what a lot did in the Quran is he would go to the scholars of the Israelites, he would go along, he would command his messenger to go talk to the priest and the ministers and say, open up your book, How to vote Hanako bring what you have, because what we have what this revelation is, is a confirmation of what they had. Regardless is part of that conversation. Allah azzawajal told him what ends are not illegal. kitabi Huck Musab de Colima VEDA de humanly kitabi, Babu Haman, Allah He sent this revelation down to you with purpose, this book has been sent down and the laws in it that the right and the wrong in it has been sent down to you these

guidelines for true purpose. And then he says it's also serving the purpose of confirming the truth of previous scripture. And it guards over the truth. That's in previous scripture when Mohammed and Allah He, then he adds Allah azza wa jal, he says, For combinar habima anzahl Allah, therefore make judgments between them based on what Allah has sent down. And this comment isn't just limited to the Christian or Jewish people, and to tell you know, pass judgments about what they're saying based on revelation. But this is a universal you know, principle given to those who will last a little longer I knew that when people come to him, even the Muslims when they come to him, and they come with any

issue, now go back to Allah's word and give them the answer from Allah's word. Now on that point, before I go on, I want to help everybody here understand something, Allah and in the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you don't find the answer to every one of your questions. Sometimes we have questions like people ask all the time, what does the Quran say about in laws? Or what does it say about crazy cousins? are what does it say about your uncle? Who does this fat or the other and people have very specific situations, and they want to say they want to know what the Quran says about this situation, or this situation? Or how the prophet SAW them deal

with that situation, etc. But all of your situations don't necessarily get occur in the prophets life on a subtle Salaam. What a revelation does give us his principles. So there are many situations in the book and in the Sunnah of the prophet sites on them. But what we get from those, those those situations are principles. And once you

Learn those principles, they can apply to any situation. There are certain things that are explicitly right and wrong. There are halal and haram, those we have to be clear about. But beyond that, we have to really understand the principles of our religion, fairness, you know, equality, justice, these kinds of principles that are there that have to be applied in any circumstance. But anyway, what I wanted to highlight today for you, is what a less has to these people that come to him for judgment, but he warns His Prophet alayhi salatu salam, when people come to you and of course, the prophet SAW Selim is not among us anymore, so his words are among us. And the words of

Allah gave him the Quran is among us, right? So, in the ayah, it's describing a scene where people come to the Prophet alayhi salatu salam, but for us, it's describing the same scene, when we come to Islam, when we come to the word of Allah, when we come to the words of the prophets always have him seeking an answer when we do that, so even though he's personally not with us, his words are with us, the teachings that were given to him are with us. So that attitude that someone used to have towards meeting the Prophet sallallahu alayhi Salaam in person is the same attitude you and I have to have. When we come to the word of Allah. And we come to the teachings of the prophets, I send

them as if we're meeting him in person. And he's giving us this verdict, of course, once you understand it properly, so what warning that Allah give to His Messenger Elisa to salam, he says what combina homie Manzil Allah, first of all make judgments between them based on what Allah sent down, meaning Allah, His Word is the final verdict. Nothing goes higher than the word of Allah. Allah describes his own words, as we're coming to LA here earlier, the word of Allah is in the highest possible place. It's the highest, there's nothing that can be higher than the word of Allah, no Koran. So first and foremost, the prophet is being commanded sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, that

when people come to you, give them your their answers based on what Allah has given you. Bhima anzahl Allah in with what Allah has sent down. Now, the first warning after that, when at home, and don't follow their empty feelings, don't follow their whims. Some people come to you with a lot of anger. And they want an answer that justifies their anger. They have an anger towards someone in their family or someone in their business or someone else. And they want an Islamic answer to justify their rage against someone else. Give me an ayah or a hadith that I can slap them with. You know, they have their power, and they want you to use the religion for their power. And somebody

else comes to you with greed. And they say that I know this business is kind of Haram. But can you give me some justification? So it's not that haram? So it's a little bit less Haram, it's not like capital H, lowercase H, maybe reduce the font size a little bit. And that should be okay. Well, you know, this is people's whims. You want to take the word of Allah which is constant, but your feeling goes this way or this way, because of love because of hate because of greed, because of fear because of anxiety, any of these feelings, and you want to bend the word of Allah to your will. So your will in my will, my my, my feelings are now actually superior to the word of Allah, Allah, because it's

no longer in the highest place. Now the highest place belongs to my own feelings. My own feelings should make the word of Allah submit to my feelings. So the Prophet size on him is being warned. When people come to you and you give them a verdict. Make sure that you don't fall into their feelings. Now, it's not to say that the Quran doesn't care about how you feel. The Quran actually is very concerned with the sadness of people with the pain of people will yes face will do what I mean, Allah would even sometimes give her a revelation and say, I gave this revelation. So it would, it would give cleansing and it would give healing to the heart to the feelings of unbelieving group of

people. Sometimes Allah will give us revelation just to give us comfort. And there are many occasions of that in the in the Quran and the Sunnah, but this Chapin's job is to actually change take everything beautiful, and make it ugly, and to take everything ugly, and make it beautiful. So the deen of Allah, the laws of Allah actually came to protect us from the harm we can do to ourselves are, you know, just like a child, right? A child does it has uncontrolled emotions, uncontrolled desires, if you should, if a child likes chocolate, and they have the feeling that they want to eat chocolate all day, and you say, Well, that makes them feel good. Just keep giving it to

them, you're killing this child. You're causing their dental problems, you're causing them to have stomach aches, you're hurting them because you're following their feelings. Well, in a larger sense, human beings can be childish. Human beings can actually act like their feelings are all I care about is how about what I want to do. Just let me be happy, doesn't matter what the word of Allah says. And when we do that, we're actually causing harm to ourselves. So what a lot does is he says sometimes he teaches us that sometimes our own feelings are actually the biggest danger to ourselves.

Their biggest danger to ourselves. You know, he says, well, Norman hoffa Nakamura be one and nafsa. And in our, the one who feared standing in front of his master, and was able to stop them their own self, from getting from running into one feeling after the other, like they stopped their whims from dictating all of their actions. You know, in the world of marketing, I've given you this example before, when I was in business school, in the world of marketing, we studied like grocery stores, right, and in grocery stores, the the way they laid him out to this day, and I studied in like, 1875, but whatever. Now even nowadays, it's the same. When you go into a grocery store, most people

go to the grocery store to get some milk, some eggs and some bread. So you would think it's logical that they should put the milk, eggs and bread right at the entrance. So people can come grab it and go to the cash register. But they put the milk, bread and eggs all the way on the farthest end, as far away from the entrance as possible. And the reason they do that is they want you to go through all of these products, and your feeling will come in, I should just grab that I should just put that in here to put that in your to put that into the they're hoping your winds dictate your judgments. They're hoping for that, you know, and then you'll notice that at the cash at the exit, it's the

most unhealthy products that tastes the sweetest are right there at the cash register. Because as you leave, just follow your taste, put some more candy in there, put some tick tax in there, put some tweaks or chocolate or whatever in there, you see that? So the idea is that human beings by and large, we have a feeling we just want to act on it. Allah azzawajal teaches us otherwise he teaches us to control our emotions. So he says he tells us his profit. The first warning is when you give them their judgments, don't make your judgments bend to their feelings. Don't make them the judgments that Allah has given are already taking into the into consideration what's best for you,

based on your feelings even he knows better about us than we know about ourselves. In one place in the Quran. Allah even says to Allah Muna, la Happy tinicum you're gonna teach Allah your religion, you know better than Allah? Because sometimes we hear something Allah wants us to do, and our immediate responses, but But what about? And are there's any counter in our head? No, no, give me something else that wasn't that's not what I feel like, it doesn't feel like it's good for me. Our feelings are stronger than even the word of Allah, that we have counters to it. So he says he warns him first of all, don't let them fall, don't fall into their rooms. Then he says what is our home?

And then he says, Be careful about them. Watch out for them. And these are the people of the book that are coming in asking the prophets I some questions about revelation. But also anybody who comes in essence has to be careful of the ones who asked you, because the ones who come to the religion, sometimes they become a majority, or they become a huge number of people. And then they say, you know what, we don't we want this religion to fit in with the majority's opinion. We want everybody's more comfortable if the verdict of Islam was this way or that way. So let's just have enough people that can lobby, and we can change the law of the law just a little bit or interpreted a little bit

differently. So it fits in better with our community. It fits in better with our comfort with our comfort zone. So let's reinterpret all of this because we're not so comfortable with the old way of looking at things. So he says we're not home. And then he teaches us in the scariest part, the warning to the prophets, I saw them and therefore to us, when we seek answers in our religion, he says, and yes, the Nuka and Lima, Angela, Allahu LA,

that they might actually put you into trial, regarding some of the things Allah has revealed to you. They start testing you about some of the less revelation. In other words, somebody says, Let me put it this way. You know, when you're shopping, for example, if you're shopping for a home, you're like, I like the neighborhood. I like the first floor, I'm not so sure about the second floor. I like all of this, I don't like this or when you order food from a restaurant, you like most of what's on the plate, you leave some of the salad behind, you're like, I'm not crazy about the salad. In other words, you pick, you pick, you don't like everything you like some parts, you take some

parts, and we become consumers of the parts we like most. And we bring that attitude, like a consumer to the religion and say, I like the prayers. Those are pretty good in Islam, but this whole, this whole ribeye thing, not you know, it's a little too inconvenient. And this whole, like prove the certain prohibitions on our diet, that's a little too much. And this is haram and that hurts. I don't know. And this is this is mandatory also. And these inheritance laws, you know, I, if we, if we follow these inheritance laws, then I have to give my brother equal shares myself, but I don't like my brother. Nobody likes my brother. Let's keep him out of the inheritance. So let's not

follow, we can follow other parts of the law, but there's some parts of the law we're not comfortable with. So let's leave those alone.

You know what people do? People come up with the greatest scam. They say we're gonna ignore the word of Allah when it comes to money when it comes to ignoring the word of Allah when it comes to certain halal and haram, but we'll go to Omar every year. And we'll take pictures of the Kaaba selfies with the harem behind us, because on Judgement day we're going to collect those right? So we'll take a picture at the bottom, you know, put your arm on and show people how spiritual you are. Because that's really important. That's why we go there to take pictures. Do that, so that you feel good that you at least do something for Islam, while at the same time violating the major teachings of

the religion. You know, and what people do in any religion in the psychology of religion, Allah describes is in certain Nyssa he says inteligente bukoba Yamato nanhu, Luca francomb sejati come? * come with Harun Karima. He says if you can stay away from the major sins, then the smaller ones Allah will overlook. The smaller ones you make a staccato level overlook, you know what people do, they do the smaller good deeds while they want to hold on to major sins.

And they say oh, since I'm doing these smaller good deeds, you tell yourself, then these majors a level overlook that because look, look at what I'm doing. At least I'm memorizing the surah. At least I came to the Ramadan. At least I did that, like you decide. And I decide what part of the word of Allah what we're going to offer, Allah is up to us. We decide what the priorities are. That's not how this religion works. That actually starts to redefine our entire relationship with Allah. Allah is the master, we are the slaves. The master tells us what's important. And what's not. The master tells us what's the mandatory requirement, and what is the extra activity. The master

tells us what's absolutely impermissible, and what's okay he decides that we don't get to negotiate that on our terms. To give you a small example of that, so you this concept sits in your mind, well, if you get a job, and you're you just got a new job. And your boss says I want you to do project a and project B. And when you're finished with those two, if you're done during the day, and you have some time left, you can work on see. That's what lets you three tasks A, B, and C. That's all you got to do. And you go in there and you say is kind of hard. And B i don't like too much is boring. But c i love so I'm just going to work on C all day. And you work on Cod. And the boss says how'd it

go today? I was great. I really loved work. Here's my work. And he says, Wait, I told you to work on a and b. And you said yeah, but those you know, but look at my see. So good, right? You're gonna get fired, because you don't decide what's important. You don't decide what's priority, the boss decides the same way a lot decides what's the priority, my religion and your religion. We don't get to read this. We just you know, renegotiate those and reorder those and say, Well, here are the things I don't want to do for Allah. Here's the thing, here are the crimes I want to continue to commit. Here the lies I want to continue to tell, but I'll make up for it with these other extra activities. So

we should be okay. That's just a way of us lying to ourselves. Now the warning given to the Prophet sallallahu hundreds of insulinoma EDA is an EFT Luca and the mountains and Allah for him the window. And by the way, if they want to make you slip from just some parts of revolutions either the wording is not they want you to turn away from all of Revelation, they just want to bend some parts of what Allah has said the other parts they're okay with. The other parts are fine, just some parts that don't fit with me or don't fit with my preferences. Allah says what's the consequence of it for into one load and if they were to turn their backs for a number laahu ud Do you see Barham B, BB D, Lu v

him, then you should know that Allah intends to strike them with calamity, because of some of the things that they're committing. Meaning this isn't just something that will affect someone in the next life. This will affect someone in this life. There will be problems coming your way and my way, when we start compromising the word of Allah knowingly, knowingly something was haram and we made it halal for ourselves, or we decided not to think about it. We know it's in the back of our head. It's wrong, but we don't want to deal with it. We just want to pretend it's not there and keep going about our business as as if everything's okay. If we do this rationalization to ourselves, Allah

guarantees to His Messenger Salallahu alaihe salam, that is an act of turning away from the word of Allah. And the consequence of that is calamity will strike you because of some of your own sins here. You don't have to wait for it in the next life either. It'll come here, some health problem will come. Some family crisis will come some you know some, some financial issue will come. Some emotional trouble will come. Depression might strike someone anxieties might strike someone sickness might strike someone. They may it may come in all kinds of, you know, the masiva is not just some physical injury. masiva can be emotional, it can be it can be something in your mind, you could lose

your peace of mind. You can't even go to

Sleep, your you're constantly worried and negative all the time. And it's draining your soul, it's eating away at you. And you know, what can solve this problem? Who can I go to, to solve this problem. And you know, even though I'm a major believer in therapy and seeking counseling and all of that stuff, but one part of this solution, if Allah has taken the piece out of someone's heart, because they keep disobeying him, then no matter what therapy you go to, that piece will not come back because it only comes from Allah, for Allah Allahu sakeena, tahu araku, meaning Allah sent his own tranquility onto the hearts of believers. Allah says there is a part of your piece that will

come from that, yeah, you can do yoga. And you can do some exercise and you can do some, you know, mindfulness exercises and feel better about level that'll work. It works. It's great. But there's a part of you that's going to feel more and more broken. And that's just going to be an escape. And that's that that piece will only come when we are honest with ourselves and we say I'm not going to play with Allah's words anymore. I'm not going to play this game with ally anymore. I acknowledge that I did that I acknowledge that I deliberately ignored the word of Allah and I refuse to do that for myself anymore. I will no longer harm myself. Allah says you should know Allah only intends to

strike them with because of some of their own sins were in Mecca theorem in an na sila, farcical and more in huge numbers of people are truly corrupt and their corruption comes out. Kathy domina naskila second, look at the wording of the eye on us. He says this is not just a Muslim thing. This is not just a Christian thing or a Jewish thing or a Hindu, it's a human thing. Human beings know something is wrong. They want to do it anyway. So he says human beings have so many of them fall into this kind of corruption. But the scariest of these AI artists the next one, have a hook manager helia to rune. It's a rhetorical question from Allah. The rule of jaha Leanna. Jamelia means a

couple of things. Let me explain that in a couple of minutes to you. Jamelia. One meaning of Jamelia is the time before the Quran came in Arabia as Raja helia zamunda helia Okay, so there was Jackie Leah, and then there is Islam. jaha means the age of ignorance when there was no light of revelation when there was darkness. So the ISS, are they looking to judge their lives? Are they looking to live their lives like they did before revelation ever came? Is that what they want? They want to go back to the old way of doing things. That's one way you can interpret this question that Ally's asking. Another way you can look at this question is actually the root meanings of the word yahaya. JOHN,

john doesn't just mean ignorance. JOHN means the inability to control your emotions, to be impulsive, to follow your whim, to follow your group, your lead, your greed, your lust, your temper, whatever feeling it is, you just follow it. You just follow it, you fall into it. He says, do what they like to follow the rule of whatever they feel like what they like to be impulsive throughout. And he says, Why am I suddenly in a lie Pokemon, and who's going to be better than Allah in giving vertix In other words, either we are following Jamelia or we're following the word of Allah. The scary thing about this ayah is it's talking at the end of revelation 23, almost 23 years of

revelation have already come. And now Allah says still there are people that would like to live their lives as this as if there is no Koran. As if there's no word of Allah, as if it's just an inconvenient truth. The only thing we can do, we don't want to follow it, but we'd like to put it in a really nice shiny cover and put it on a shelf somewhere. So you know, it'll feel good because we have it I got a really nice copy from the store. I got a frame in my house to look at all this calligraphy Subhanallah have a look at it calligraphy looks so beautiful, but following it. No, let's just let's just perfect art that you either have it? Let's just recite it beautifully. If

that's what they're doing, then that's cool. Jamelia have a Hotmail, Yahoo, Yahoo, Yahoo. Are they in a contemporary head translate? Are they really pursuing the the verdict of whims, the verdict of the times of ignorance, woman accent woman Allah He commonly called me up known who can be more who can give better verdicts than Allah for people that actually have conviction. And that's the last comment I want to share with you the question of last who can be better than Allah at giving a verdict, and giving a judgement about what you and I should do with our lives, what choices we should make. When he says those words, he adds the whole menu meaning for any group of people that

are looking to have conviction? If you and I are not convinced that what a law says is the very best thing for you and me. If we're not convinced of that, if we don't think that Allah knows better, what's good for me more than even I know for myself, if that conviction is not there, then hook manager helia becomes easy.

And following the way of whims becomes easy

And if that if that if that has been the case, for you and me, if it has been the case that we're not following the word of Allah, and we're, you know, mindlessly, you know without conscience, which we keep following the way of our own whims, if we keep falling into those traps, you know what that is, that means we're not seeking to have real conviction in the Word of Allah. We don't give it its place, we might have respect for it. We might be you know, anthropologically Muslim, meaning it's been passed down to us and we belong to the Muslim civilization. We have Muslim names, we say Salaam to each other, we show up at Juma and stuff. But really, it's not the way we see the world. It's the

word of Allah is not the highest word. It's not the one that decides all of our matters. It's not the one that gives us principles that once once these principles are given, nothing will I will not go around these principles, we don't I give you guys a silly example, all the time of traffic lights, when you stop at a traffic light, you don't say I'm not in the mood today, I'm not feeling very spiritual, I'm going to go through it. You don't do that. Because you realize that's a constant, you're not going to mess with it. You're not going to mess with that. Because that's, that's a law of an authority higher than you. And you're convinced that that's an authority higher

than you. And in fact, you're also convinced that if I cut a red light that I might get slammed into from the other side, there's a harm that will come to me. If I cut this red light, if I just go into the highway and jump right in, without looking around, it's going to actually bring me harm. Why? Where is that conviction when it comes to the word of Allah? This is I told in these 30 seconds, I just remind myself and I remind all of you, a lot created two worlds. There's the scene world, and there's the unseen world, in the scene world. There are laws like gravity, right? If I if I drop something, it'll fall to the ground, that's gravity, Allah created these principles, and fire will

burn. You know, fireable burn, these are these are things everybody knows, the same way. certain actions have certain reactions, right. That's what the physical world is. That's what we study in chemistry and physics and biology, etc, etc. The same way in the unseen world, in the moral world. There's also a kind of physics, there's also a kind of action and reaction. So when you decide not to follow the word of Allah, you might not immediately see a physical reaction. If you lie, you're not gonna see a lightning strike, come and burn your tongue. That's not gonna happen. If you steal, your hand is not going to become paralyzed. For the next 45 minutes, I'll use stole. Allah says, You

don't get to use this hand now because you did hold on. That's not going to happen. But what will happen? What will in fact happen is that Allah azzawajal will give us consequences in this life, in ways we cannot physically see. Maybe those consequences will come now. We will come 10 years from now, maybe they'll come, you know, to the world around us. But there are absolutely consequences. And I pray to Allah azza wa jal, that we protect ourselves from those consequences and abide by the rules of Allah that He has given to us for our own benefit. May Allah azza wa jal help us take a really good look at our own selves and be honest with ourselves and really, really truly develop a

fear and an inner consciousness and an appreciation that Allah has given us a gift. But until Allahu la con vichara. Allah has given it given you a beautiful reminder, a reminder for yourself, May Allah help us take in that reminder and really illuminate our lives with it. barakallahu li walakum glucuronic Hakeem whenever anyone here can be iottie Hakeem