Nouman Ali Khan – Striking Examples From the Quran #18 Lustrous Land
AI: Summary ©
The Parable of the Sea is about the land and the use of farming and its use of sea travel and cargo ships. The speakers discuss the complexities of farming, including the use of humans and their agricultural practices, and the importance of sustainable and efficient farming practices. They also touch upon the use of "has been feeding the cattle" and the influence of Islam on women, including the way they are used to being the same as cattle. The speakers emphasize the importance of having a clear mindset and positive deeds to move forward.
AI: Summary ©
Oh, turn this off.
We're good? Okay.
So everyone,
after
again, we're gonna try to look at ayah
number 24 of Surat Yunus today.
Yesterday's parable was actually 22 and 23. So
it's actually right after the parable of the
sea and the winds
that that we walked through yesterday. Right after
that, Allah talks about this parable, which is
interesting because you saw
When he rescues them, they go about in
the land
rebelling
without justification. That's what Allah said yesterday in
the yesterday discussion.
So the the ayah was about sea, but
then Allah mentioned in a very subtle way
that the person goes about when they land,
and they're back on land again, solid ground,
they act like nothing ever happened. Right? So
now Allah will actually pick up from something
he said in the very beginning. He said,
He's the one who make things easy for
you in the land and in the sea.
But in the previous parable, everything was about
the sea. So what's still missing?
The land. So now this parable is about
the land. Right? So it's kind of everything's
coming full circle.
And the land parable is actually supposed to
be more obvious, so Allah starts with the
less obvious, which is the sea, and then
brings it back to the land. Now
let's walk through a rough translation of what
Allah is saying in ayah number 24.
The example of worldly life amounts
to nothing more than So if you wanna
think of the entire life of this world,
or this worldly life, this temporary life, then
you can sum it up in this following
example.
This is a genre of examples in the
Quran where Allah summarizes all of life. He
does this in multiple places, and it does
it each one of them highlights something else
and something really beautiful about life. You can
you can summarize all of life in one
way or the other in each of them.
So let's see how it's being summarized in
this ayah.
He says the example of worldly life,
can be amounted could could be reduced to
nothing more than,
like some water that we sent down from
the sky.
2 translations, but I'll go with one of
them. And as a result of the water
coming from the sky, the water mixed with
the the the the the herbs and the
plants of the earth.
So the the new the the, herbage of
the earth, it mixed with it, meaning the
water went into the soil and it mixed
with the plants and all of that started
happening.
Agriculture started happening.
From which people and cattle eat.
Until the
point when the earth
took on its most beautiful form,
and it became
incredibly
decorated.
So
it became stunning,
you could even say. It became stunningly beautiful.
And its people, meaning the people of the
land,
were convinced that they they are in complete
control over it, that they're going to have
full control over the land.
Our decision
came at the land,
came at the crop in the middle of
the night
or during the broad daylight,
then and turned it into
already harvested crop, cut crop,
grazed crop. You know, if nowadays you have
tractors
that graze the crop and collect all of
it. Right? So imagine once the tractor is
done going through it and there's nothing left,
it's just stubble, it's just been cut already.
That's what it what what it's left to.
As if it wasn't fully populated just the
day before.
That is how Allah explains his ayat or
separates his ayat, his miraculous signs.
For a people that are going to try
to think deeply. So Allah is demanding on
people
to think deeply about what he's about what
he's saying here in this parable. So we'll
we'll try to think a little bit deeply
inshallah today, like always,
about this this remarkable parable. Let's start with
something. It's, this is an example about farming
and growing crop. Everybody's clear about that.
And crop a growing crop is
a really difficult
job.
It's back breaking work to plant seeds 1
at a time
all across the land to make sure the
soil is clean, make sure that it's saved,
make sure birds don't come, make sure insects
don't come. This is an exhausting kind of
labor.
And at the end of all of that
labor,
none of that will be worth anything if
it doesn't rain.
If you don't get good rain and you
get a drought, all that work has gone
to waste.
So Allah did not mention the part of
the job that the farmer is doing.
There's no mention of the all the work
that went into
getting the farm ready. Incidentally, just in the
back of your minds, I want something to
remain present throughout these particularly in Suratunas.
And that is that human civilization began with
farming.
The reason,
and the the the farming farming is an
industrious process. It goes through phases. Right? There's
the planting phase phase. There's the caring for
the crop or caring for the soil phase.
There's the the the regular watering, etcetera.
Then there's When the when the plant comes
out and it's just small, you have to
care for it in a certain way. You
have to then next phase next phase next
phase until the harvest is done. And then
the storage, how the how the harvest has
to be stored. And then the replanting has
to be done exactly at a strategic time,
etcetera.
There are processes to this. It's an industrious
process.
But if you think about it in one
way,
every other thing that we do as human
beings on this planet depends on
farming,
everything else.
There's, you know, at the end of the
day, if we didn't put farming
industry in place
on earth,
then all the other industries that we've created,
all the other jobs that we've created, all
the other processes that we've created, in every
field on earth,
none of them would exist.
It is like it's the it's the seed
of all industry, quite literally.
Right? It's the seed of all industry. So
by Allah talking about this
industry,
it's as if he's by talking about the
seed, he's talked about everything that it branches
out to. Every line of work, every field
of work all boils down to this one
thing.
Another interesting thing about this, the use of
farming
and right after the use of sea travel
you saw the previous IL was about sea
travel.
To this day, the 2 if you were
to argue 2 things that all of humanity
depends on and the human
industry
and and economies could never function if there
wasn't if it wasn't for farming and it
wasn't for sea travel, even now, even if
now we have, you know, air travel and
we have cargo cargo planes and things like
that, it doesn't even begin to compare to
the amount of cargo that is being delivered
and traveling
throughout the Earth by sea
every single day. And how much of that
travel do some you know, we're living in
a fascinating age. You can look anything up
now, and you can, you know, look this
up for your own benefit. I was looking
at this
a few years not maybe 2 years ago
when we were studying Surat al Dariyat. And
Surat al Dariyat, Allah talks about winds.
Interestingly, he was talking about winds in the
previous ayah too. Right? Nice winds and then
tough winds. Right?
And, actually, all of sea travel
depends on
patterns of winds that exist that Allah created
on this earth. And had it not been
for those patterns of sea travel,
massive cargo ships couldn't get to where they're
getting to. They could they depend on the
reliability of the winds and they literally carry
them to wherever they need to go.
The winds that carry large burdens.
They don't just carry the clouds, they literally
carry all of the cargo.
Most likely the clothes you're wearing, or or
if those of you that have glasses on
or the phone in your hand or the
shoes you wore or the car The parts
of it came by sea from somewhere,
right. We're like And when you go home,
practically everything you touch
most likely most of the items in your
home did not come to you by land.
They came to you one way or the
other by sea,
right? So we're actually We don't even realize
how dependent on the ocean we are.
Well, as we're sitting and then, you know,
when you open up your fridge and look
at the groceries, how much of that depended
on,
you know, farm?
You're like, no. No. I just eat beef.
Yeah. Well, what do what do the cow
need, bro?
So where
the the the dependence on these 2, sea
and farming,
is so it it the like, all of
humanity can be brought on its knees on
just these two things. Right? And sometimes you
find in the world, there's kind of some
some kind of a war conflict going on,
like with Russia, Ukraine, for example, in in,
a little bit recent history. Right? And they
were producing a lot of wheat, and the
wheat supplies got affected. And entire economies started
shaking because the wheat supplies have
been disrupted. And now with what's happening in
Palestine, may Allah help us and help the
Muslims against those monsters.
You know, like,
if the Swiss Canal, you know, there's some
disruption or there's some disruption in sea routes,
then every nation gets alerted. The Chinese start
showing up with their warships. The Russians start
thinking about maneuvering because
this It's the lifeline for the entire world.
It's a delicate balance that has to be
maintained. So when Amal is talking about on
the one hand, you could think, oh, far.
Well, it's just far. But, actually, it's it's
almost like he's talking about the pulse of
the entire planet
when he's talking about this this image.
And he starts it in the most amazing
way. He says,
all of worldly life amounts to this. And
how does he begin?
Like water that we sent down from the
sky. He didn't mention the part that you
and I do, or the farmer does. He
mentions the part that he does, sending water
down from the sky.
Notice in the previous ayat, water was your
death.
In the previous ayat, and in this in
this ayat, the same water is
your life,
like your life depends on it. Just like
in the previous ayat we saw, the winds
can be good and they're a blessing and
those same winds can turn into a curse.
The same way now the water in the
previous ayah was your death and now, it's
the source of your life. In fact, the
water that rained was clouds and most of
those clouds were formed over the sea
as it the the vapor rose. Right? So
there's this interconnectivity.
We're we're engulfed in this beautiful system that
Allah has made.
And you see the effects of that sea
and
the it's the that brought the clouds over
to that land.
And then it it pours down from the
sky. It's as if Allah is saying you
had
pretty much nothing to do with farming.
Like I I did all of it. Like
all you did was put a little thing
in the ground. That's all you did.
The fact that
who gave the soil its nutrients?
Who gave the cloud its ability to rain
on top of it? Who gave the seed
the engineering ability to split open and start
growing?
Like, you had nothing to do with any
of that.
Right?
Are you the ones harvesting it? Are you
the ones growing it? Or are we the
ones growing it? You know?
And so here, when he when he took
takes this kind of credit on his own,
now we're gonna see other parts of this
ayah where human beings are almost made absent
or secondary in the language. So you'll notice
the next thing Allah says is,
That then, the water that came down, it
started mixing with the the the herb the
herbs and the nutrients
of the soil, the seeds and different kinds
of plants. It started interacting with it and
started mixing with it. The idea of mixing
is 2 things can, you know,
conflate together and fuse together until they become
1. Now let's keep up with the imagery
and also what it might represent as we
move forward. So the blessing comes from Allah.
It couldn't have come from us. We couldn't
have made it rain.
Are you the one sending it down from
the heavy cloud or are we the one
sending it down? Allah asked the question. Right?
So that's from Allah. But then that water
went into the soil and inside the soil
it started mixing together. Now those 2 things
It used to be 2 separate things, seed
and water. But now they've become 1. They
they become 1. And this is an imagery
of sometimes there's a blessing from Allah,
used to be up in the sky, there
was no way you had access to it.
Allah decided to send it down and then
you came into contact with that blessing and
then you
enjoyed and used that blessing so much you
became one with it. You became inseparable from
it.
Right? Just like the plant becomes inseparable from
the water. The water is in it,
you know, the water is inside the the
sap of the plant. And if you squeeze
the leaf, it'll have liquid in it. But
that liquid didn't come from the leaf. It
came from the sky.
And it made its way into the soil
or into that leaf, right? Now the same
way, if you think about what this could
represent,
you know, human beings, we all of us,
we identify ourselves
with our blessings,
in fact.
So if Allah has blessed you, for example,
to acquire an engineering degree, then you don't
you're not you're no longer, Abdullah.
You're an engineer.
Abdullah the engineer.
If you have become you know, if you
if you're an accountant or if you're, you
know, if you're succeeded in business or if
you you were blessed to memorize the Quran,
then you're no longer kareem. Your half is
kareem.
Right? So we the blessings Allah gives
us the blessings Allah gives us, they allow
us to function in the world. They give
us some kind of a credential.
They become a part of our identity. You
know how they say, you are what you
do?
Right? You do it so much, it becomes
a part of you. It becomes inseparable from
you. Right?
And actually, back in, India and Pakistan, some
regions, the peep people did some work so
much that they they used to turn it
into their name.
Right? The,
and this
and this, you know,
and this.
I have all kinds of.
Right? The slipper guy and the I I
knew somebody who was a German
because he was he did business with the
Germans, so they call him German.
It was just became his name. So you
you you get associated
with something, and that just becomes your thing.
Right? And
the the the thing is,
that's totally workable and totally understandable in this
world. It's completely understandable.
But
we forget in the in the middle of
all of that, that I'm actually this blessing
that allows me to further my identity,
and I project myself a certain way to
the world, that didn't come from me.
That was a rizq Allah opened for me.
And had he not opened that for me,
it would never have been a part of
me. But it becomes I get so mixed
with it that it just becomes one thing.
And I don't even think of it as
something separate from myself.
And the height of that is
like
the Qarun attitude. I got all of this
because I'm really smart.
I figured this out because I'm really
good. Right? And this is my doing. So
Allah is now talking about the plant that
starts mixing together with the water.
The next piece of this, which didn't even
have to be stated, but Allah is dropping
these nuggets in this ayah. He says from
what people eat and what cattle eat.
By by saying he did a few things
here. One of the things he did here
is he could have said from what people
eat.
He could have just left it at that.
But he said, no. People eat from it
and
animals, cows, and eat eat from it too.
So he kind of put us on the
same level
as cattle.
Like, you know, we human beings think of
ourselves as obviously superior to cattle. The cattle
serves us.
We
grow oranges. We grow apples. We grow fruits.
We grow all kinds of vegetables. And the
leftovers go to the animals.
The grass goes to the animals. Right? But
at the end of it all, all of
it started from inside the earth
sprouting open, and because of that, the origin
is actually essentially still the same.
And as a result of that, you're not
that different. The way you think you're feeding
the cattle, it's actually Allah feeding you
and your cattle.
Like he says elsewhere,
There's another spiritual
kind of tendency here that I that I
don't I can't help but not ignore, and
that's in Surat al Surat Muhammad.
Allah says
Leave them alone. Let them enjoy. Let let
them eat and enjoy the way cattle eats.
The way cattle eats
and fire is their place.
Now if you work backwards, one of the
parables we did was
They're like cattle, they're even worse.
Allah is even describing all of this miraculous
stuff happens,
and the the the earth produces its food,
and the cattle eats it. But when the
cattle is eating it, it's not profoundly moved
by what is on its in in what's
going in its mouth that came from a
heavenly process. It's just eating it mindlessly.
Human beings would it would be a tragedy
if the human beings were eating their food
not that different from
the way cattle is eating its food, like,
not aware of how it got
there. You know?
Just, you know, sometimes you just go to
the grocery store, you buy an orange or,
you know, whatever, apples for iftar or something.
Right? You have to think about where did
this apple come from? It came from the
grocery store, but how do we get to
from the grocery store, it was on a
truck. Before the truck, it was in some
some farm. Before the farm, it was on
the on some tree. Before the tree, it
was it was slowly growing, and it was
only growing because rain was coming. And, like,
if you keep going further, how long did
it have to journey before it could get
to
your plate?
And then for that to become your it's
a profound thing that Allah is doing. It's
a profound thing that's happening, you know. And
that every morsel of it was written for
me. That every piece of it, like, this
this was the apple that had to be
chosen from all those billions of apples that
traveled maybe halfway across the continent
to get to my plate,
you know, and how much of this will
become nutrition for me?
Subhanallah. Subhanallah.
You know? So Allah says, yes, it feeds
you, it feeds people, and it feeds cattle
too.
And it's it's it's kind of a humbling
statement to make. Right? Putting us in the
same place as cattle, putting us in our
place a little bit.
This is the part that I was telling
when we discussed this today. I was like,
I don't know. I'm gonna get in trouble
today.
But that's okay. There's only a couple of
weeks left.
Okay.
Until the earth took up
its beauty. The phrasing is
used when people dress their most beautiful clothes.
And the language is actually borrowing. It's in
to describe a woman on her wedding day,
a woman getting dressed for her husband on
her wedding day. So she's looking the most
beautiful she can possibly look, and she's got,
you know, several layers of
chemicals on
to,
and she looks like an entirely different,
you know. The different societies in the world
do different things on wedding days. I get
it. Right? I know that in South Asia,
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, etcetera,
it doesn't matter who you if if your
sister is getting married
or your cousin's getting married or the neighbor's
daughter's getting married, if you look at the
way they turned them into after being a
dulan, they all look exactly the same. You
can't even tell. Is that my sister?
Because the the layers that are placed up
like you have to you could it's like
a layered cake. You could just,
you know.
But anyway, so they they turned them into
this other creature. Right? But they they did
this in ancient times too. They dressed up
the girl, and they put the most beautiful
clothes on her and all of that and
when when she's
completely decorated looking incredible,
looking just absolutely incredible, for who? For her
husband.
Now, Allah is borrowing the imagery of a
young man who's obsessed with this girl who
looks so beautiful that he just got married
to, and she's just beautifully decorated and dressed
up for him. He's comparing that
to
the the the crop
that blossomed,
and the farmer's looking at this farmland, and
he's going,
It's
it's the bar and then there's
there's something called
and and meaning you could use the next
language to take you out of the image
or you could use the next language to
deepen your appreciation of the image and this
is this is actually
this is taking you deeper in actually
is taking you deeper inside And so Allah
says, was
and she became
stunning.
He's talking about the earth like he's talking
about a beautiful woman,
was Zayeda. And she just became absolutely breathtaking
to him. While Zukruf
is about the beautification
by way of, you know, decoration.
You could call it makeup, jewelry, clothing, all
that stuff. Right? That's Zukruf,
but the way it appears to someone is
Zina.
It's the purpose The purpose of it was
Zina. So, she accomplished, the earth accomplished
looking breathtaking
to the one who worked on it. So,
Allah is comparing the romantic,
you know, fascination
of the man who's about to be with
his wife. He's
comparing that to the fascination the farmer has
with his farm that has blossomed.
But we're not all farmers.
So what is this fascination talking about? Why
would the the pupils dilating and the excitement
and the where what is he referring to?
He's referring to when you work on any
business venture,
any any any project,
maybe even an educational journey,
and you are just about to graduate,
You're you're just about to
receive the big contract.
Or it just it came through. Right?
Or the the successful deal you were hoping
for is just about to get signed or
just got signed, and you the signature has
been made. You're just waiting for the the
wire transfer now. And all of a sudden,
there's this,
yeah,
life is good.
You know? And so that that
that imagery is captured in, you know,
This is another important
consideration in this ayah, that the first thing
Allah mentioned was crop grows so we can
eat and animals can eat.
Function.
But now he's going beyond just function. He's
talking about beauty now.
He's talking about beauty.
And, you know, beauty is itself a very
powerful commodity.
The most powerful nations in the world
demonstrate how powerful they are
by having the most beautiful monuments,
and the most powerful companies by the most
beautiful headquarters.
Right? The most the most powerful people have
by having the most beautiful homes,
the most beautiful clothes, the most beautiful beautiful
beautiful you name it.
Right? So beauty and power, they're kind of
married to each other. They go hand in
hand with each other.
And the idea of when, you you know,
places in the world that are
strategically beautiful, meaning, for example, they have lots
of crop and they have, you know, a
mountainous region and all of that, beautiful places
tend to actually be very powerful places too
in the world.
So if, you know, one of the great
advantages of the United States, if you've ever
been to the United States, you might if
you've traveled across, you might know. I've traveled
most of the country. It's massive.
A lot of people say Americans don't travel.
Yeah. They don't because they don't have to.
They have practically every landscape
possible
in the country.
You know? You want snow mountains, you want
desert, you want, you know, the the ocean,
you want the cold sea, you want the
warm you want warm ocean, you want the
east coast, you want the west coast, you
wanna see the sun rising from the ocean,
you wanna see the sun setting into the
ocean.
Yeah.
You wanna see lakes, forests. What what do
you what do you what do you wanna
see? You know, waterfalls?
It's
wild. The the natural resources of the land
are it's just mind blowing. Right? And it's
one of the great powers of the country
actually also.
So the idea of beauty and beauty has
always been
a a power is attracted to beauty, and
beauty is attracted to
power. These two things are always kind of
together. So now Allah has mentioned
in the first part function. Okay. The the
crop that's produced, you eat from it. But
now he's gonna change the subject and say
it became beautiful. And notice what notice the
language of what he says next, he says,
And they were
And its inhabitants,
the people of the farm, the people of
the crop, they were now convinced that they
will have power over it.
They'll have power over
the beautiful land. The imagery is that of
someone who someone who has a really really
beautiful wife, and the more beautiful she is,
the more he needs to control her. The
more he nobody should see her. Nobody, you
know, where are you going? Hey, who are
you talking to? And it becomes more and
more possessive, and it becomes more and more
controlling.
Because when you have something beautiful, you have
to protect it even more, you have to
control it even more, right? You have to
covet it even more. And so it's using
the same language to describe
how they were convinced that they will have
complete control over it. It also offers an
insight into the the human psyche that human
beings don't just wanna see beauty, they wanna
own it and control it. They see something
beautiful, they want to own it and they
want to control it, right? So they see
this beautiful crop, these people and they they
are convinced they're gonna have control over it
and says,
Now we go back to We. The first
thing was, We sent water from the sky,
then Allah stopped mentioning we. Now then Allah
talked about how the Earth itself became beautiful
and attractive and they thought that they'll have
control. But then, now he says,
Then our decision came.
Something just like the water came from the
sky, this time a decision came from Allah.
And it came in the middle of the
night
or it came the next day. It's almost
like still borrowing the imagery of the marriage.
You got married at night, maybe that maybe
the,
the disaster started that night or it started
the next day.
It's
pretty heavy stuff. Some people are crying. Don't
cry.
People find out what happened. Okay.
So then
this
gets worse. He says, We
turned it into barren cut already grazed
farm, meaning somebody came and just ripped it
all up.
It's as if that image of that beautiful
woman who was adorned and decor and all
of it, by mourning, like,
who who who are you?
What have I done?
That same crop that was a piece of
heaven the day before.
I can't believe I have this. I'll never
let it go. I wanna protected it anyway,
and the next morning, Allah protect me from
this.
The night before, but now when Allah's command
came, it's completely been
as if it wasn't populated the night before,
as if the crop wasn't lush
just the night before.
In Arabic
means a few things. So means
to be
to be populated. So
in the Quran, for example, as if they
weren't populating the place. But
also means
to be wealthy and to be
independent.
Right? And when someone This is an interesting
side note, but like one of the names
of Allah is Al Ghani, right? Which means
He depends on no one. He needs no
one. That's one of the meanings of the
name,
Hina.
Similarly, the kafir who thinks they don't need
anything from God,
they're fine on their own.
It's the same language that's used. He sees
himself as someone who has no need. He
thinks he has no need.
Right?
There's a there's an axiom in Arabic,
That the dignity of a man is in
him not being needy of other people.
Like, Allah protect all of us from being
in a situation where we need other people.
Right? So we'll become needy and we have
to beg other people. So that's part of
our dignity.
But interestingly,
beauty
comes with its own independence. When someone's very
beautiful, it's like they don't need anything else,
they already have everything Because beauty is everybody
wants them, they don't everybody needs them, they
don't need anybody.
Everybody comes to them, they don't want anybody.
So it's as if Allah is saying just
the day before,
this land, anybody who looked at it would
want it. Just like that beautiful woman that
was
decorated, she was the prize.
But all of a sudden when it's cut,
it's as if that beauty never existed, that
independence
never existed,
that we I'm not the one in need,
all of you are the ones that are
desiring,
right? That like it never even happened.
And Bil'am suggests just the night before,
I'm still kind of borrowing the wet wedding
imagery,
but also suggesting this happened very quickly,
Which is similar to the previous parable where
the wind came, the bad wind came very
quickly. Right?
So the same way
What are we learning from all of this?
What we're learning from all of this is
Allah created our lives
in
episodes, like farming
has episodes.
There's a part where you have to put
the seed in the ground. There's a part
where it starts growing a little bit. There's
a there's other parts, other parts, other parts,
other parts. Some parts of it are very
beautiful.
Some parts of it are excitement, hoping that
beauty will eventually emerge. Some parts of it
are just You're just doing a job so
you can eat. Just like the animal and
the cattle eats and the human being eats,
right? There are these things that we do
all the time And we get so immersed
in our day to day tasks. There are
some things we do that we just do
just like the water mixed with
the soil. We get mixed in with our
tasks, and we're just doing them, and living
our lives in that way. And then there
are some things that become a real
aspiration for us to acquire. Something really beautiful
that we really wanna have. And Allah shows
us every time you will run after something
beautiful,
it might be that Allah's command comes and
the same thing that was beautiful,
you'll be like, was this beautiful? I can't
remember.
This is that that sense of beauty is
completely gone.
It's taken away.
Right? And this is Allah's way of teaching
us that life has temporary motivations.
It has temporary motivations.
And they can be so,
intoxicating.
The the desires of this world as temporary
as they are. You know, a young man,
not here because these are all religious guys,
you know, leads.
He just wants to marry this one girl.
He saw her on campus one day and
that's it. That's that's the girl he wants
to marry. That's it.
Nothing nothing else matters.
When you fall in love, there's no point
giving any advice.
That's it. Now he's giving he's looking up
Islamic lectures
to give to his parents about how he
has the right to marry that girl, and
he's trying to talk to her father about
how he shouldn't be turning down a good
Muslim, and he tried all these things. All
these jihad
he's doing because he wants to marry that
girl. And then
he marries her, and he says, you're not
what I thought you were.
You know, I I just
you're a completely different person.
You know? What happened to him? Well, he
decided something is the most beautiful thing ever.
This is what he wants in his life.
Once I have that, oh my god. My
my deed, my my
Everything's sad.
Right?
And then he finds out,
I don't I don't actually like her that
much, and she doesn't like me that much.
What's going on here?
And and this is not just about marriage.
It could be other things, other aspirations in
life. I just want this more than anything
else. People tell themselves,
set these goals up for themselves, and Allah
is teaching us It's such a different way
of looking at religion than any other religion
on earth.
In every other religion you go to God
and you tell Him what you want.
Right? You tell Him what you want. You
Allah, I just started
this
if I could just get this
this loan, or I could just pay off
this, or I could just get this, or
get this. And you make a request to
God,
and if He answers that request,
God is good.
And here you're contemplating a parable, Allah says,
I will show you beauty like you've never
seen. And you're gonna be so amazed by
that beauty, and then I will take it
away.
Immediately.
It'll just be gone. Just to teach you
something. Beauty is deceptive,
and it's temporary.
Appreciate it for what it is.
Appreciate it, but don't be diluted by it.
It'll go.
And all of us, you, me, everyone,
we're just here for a season.
Just if life is just a season, right?
That it started with the command of Allah,
and it ended with
He ended with it being cut down.
So don't worry about, you know, oh my
God, if I have this,
I will you know, everything will be okay.
No. Nothing. Every there's no such thing as
everything will be okay, that's jannah.
This life is just about going from one
phase of a season to the next to
the next until the end of the season.
That's it. It's a temporary place.
So we have to make the most of
the moments that are happening in life,
instead of waiting for this
ultimate thing that will happen, and eventually it'll
feel like we're living in Jannah.
You know?
It's
this perfect balance between not being hopeless about
this world
but also not being drowned in this world.
Allah has given you things to enjoy in
this world. But he didn't give you those
things so you become, you know,
intoxicated by them.
And you get lost in them.
You get completely lost in
them. And he says,
That is how we explain the ayat for
people that are going to think deeply. You
know one of my favorite things about the
Quran is how ayat are stitched together. If
you notice the next
Allah is the one calling you to the
home of safety.
What
a place to put that ayah.
Allah is calling you to the home of
safety.
Why? Because the crop is not safe.
Because the seed wasn't safe. You're not even
safe.
The beauty wasn't safe.
Nothing in this world is safe, but Allah
is calling you to a place
where everything will remain safe.
And he guides whoever he wants to a
straight path. May Allah guide all of us
to to his straight path. SubhanAllah.
So with that InshaAllah, I'll conclude today's, darfs
on this parable. And, we're getting we're getting
into the some heavier stuff. I don't know
how far we're gonna get InshaAllah in our
journey, But now you've seen a few different
kinds of parables
kind of start tying together.
One last comment about this that I I
I should have made before
is that you know how Allah mentions it's
gonna get cut down in the end?
It's gonna get cut down in the end?
There's an alternative view that's mentioned in Surat
Al Kahf.
When we get there, I'll I'll explain that,
but I'll drop the hint to you now.
Somebody wanted to build an empire.
Like, they're gonna have the biggest tire business
in the world.
And when they die, what happens? What what
do the kids do?
Run it into the ground.
The legacy is gone, destroyed.
It gets Sooner or later, whatever empire you
build
will crumble.
And peep Some people just build businesses. Other
people build entire nations, founding entire nations, empires.
And those empires last until eventually what happens
to those empires?
They collapse,
you know. The sun never sets on the
British Empire. The sun never rises in the
British Empire.
Right?
Sultanayn
built a pretty amazing wall.
Who could cut through anything couldn't cut through
it.
But he says,
yeah but when my the promise of my
Reb comes, this wall will get crushed, there'll
be nothing left
it's pretty depressing that you just finished building
a wall and he says yeah one day
Allah will destroy
it why did you build it?
Why put so much work in if someone's
gonna destroy it and hide that gap?
What's the point of doing it? You know?
Why? Because you have your task to do
this season.
Your job is not to create something forever
for every season, that's with Allah.
You just worry about your season.
That's it.
Don't worry about a hat. The only thing
that you should worry about that goes beyond
you is deeds.
The things that
remain So none of this will remain, all
of this will get cut down
but the one thing that will last longer
is good deeds.
They'll they'll last longer, SubhanAllah.
SubhanAllah. It's it's what an incredible, incredible teaching
that our our religion has given us and
what a liberating mindset. It's actually quite liberating
that we're not chained by these things whose
beauty
fades. We can enjoy them and move on.
And enjoy them and move on and just
make the most of what we have by
way of doing good. May Allah make us
people that do good across all of our
circumstances.
Usually, I give the guys opportunity to ask
questions. Sisters had a few questions yesterday. I'm
gonna give them first chance today. So you
can turn the lights on or something. I'll
be there in the middle for a few
minutes and then then I'll head back.