Nouman Ali Khan – Striking Examples From the Quran #20 Fading Foam
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Everyone once again.
I I pray that Allah accepts our worship,
especially in this last part of Ramadan. And
then he allows all of us to
capture the blessings of Laylatul Qadr,
and that he uses that this this precious
time for all of us to overlook
our sins, to forgive our past mistakes,
and to allow us to live as better
slaves of Allah into until the time that
we're ready to meet him.
A couple of things I wanted to say
that are, or maybe just one thing I
wanted to say outside of the context of
this lecture. Just that I know people are
watching online also and a lot of you
here. Just some things about the
the the adab of the Quran and some,
kind of part of the relationship we should
have with the Quran. Taraweeh is going on.
You know, sometimes people step out, they make
they come back in. Sometimes I walk in
a little bit later into the masjid. Salah
is already going on.
And, some of you are excited to see
me or see each other, and you start
saying salaam to each other. How are you?
How's it going? Things like that. Right?
Allah has said in the Quran,
Allah says when the Quran is being recited,
then,
you know, listen
to it carefully
and remain silent,
like, don't talk
when the Quran's being recited.
So now what happens sometimes is you're walking
and the imam is leading the prayer so
everybody can hear the Quran. Even if you're
not praying, you can hear the Quran, and
somebody comes, how are you? I just have
a very small question or
can I can I do or, you know,
you wanna have the conversation?
And now,
I need to I know some everybody else,
I sometimes I try to use sign language
like,
And sometimes that's clear, or sometimes I actually
have to say we can't talk over the
Quran.
And so but but this is a habit
you need
to develop for yourselves,
and this is a habit you need to
develop into your children. Sometimes kids are playing
in the back, and they're not joining the
prayer, and that's okay. But even if they're
not joining the prayer,
part of your training at home should be
even if you're not praying and the Quran's
being recited,
we need to remain silent.
And sometimes you have, for example, Quran playing
in the car because it's Ramadan. Right? So
you're listening to recitation in the car,
and then you get a phone call or
you're talking to your wife or somebody in
the car while the Quran is playing. You
know, it's better for you to just pause
the Quran playing and then have that conversation
then allow the Quran to be background noise
while you're having conversation because it's the word
of Allah. It deserves
that respect and Allah
has explicitly said that that's what it deserves.
That's what the Quran deserves. So even if
I'm if I can hear the Quran and
I'm not even in the salah, I should
still be quiet.
I should still be quiet. And,
some of you understand this this kind of
etiquette of the of the
in the context of. Right? So when you
walk into and the is going on and
your best friend walked in, you're not gonna
be like, yo, I haven't seen you forever,
man. Where you been?
It's.
Everybody knows you're not supposed to do that.
Right? So you already know that you don't
wanna burn your good deeds, but expand that
same etiquette,
that same,
you know, decorum that you observe
to not want to burn your good deeds
during the the Jumu'ah Khutba or during the
salah, the same thing should be the same
courtesy should be awarded to the Quran if
it can be heard
if it can be heard, which is why
just on a on a side note, you
know, there's some places in the in the
Muslim world sometimes people get excited and they
wanna put the Quran on loudspeaker in the
neighborhood,
right, in the market. They wanna put the
Quran on loud speaker and like the whole
neighborhood is just buzzing with Quran recitation.
The The problem the only problem I have
with that is you're keeping people from doing
their business and the only way they can
do their business now is by disobeying this
verdict of Allah himself. You should be quiet
and listen to the Quran. So you should
there's an environment in which the the Quran
recitation should be happening. And when you find
yourself in that environment, then you and I
should observe that to the best of our
ability. May Allah forgive our shortcomings and may
Allah make us attentive listeners and benefitters from
his own words. Okay. So today is one
of the most
rich powerful examples,
in early Quran.
Hey. Who's this little guy?
Hey,
you. What's up? Yeah.
Okay.
Alright. That's your guy? Okay. Alright.
Cool.
I I thought I was being about to
be jumped.
Okay. Happy birthday.
So this this parable belongs to Surat Rad.
It's ayah number 17.
It's really rich. There are multiple ways that
you can,
see the imagery of this ayah manifest, like,
what it represents.
So I'm gonna try to be as systematic
as I can be. The first thing I
think I'm gonna do to try to help
you wrap your minds around what's going on
in this parable is by translating it at
the at the most surface level, like a
very basic translation
of the ayah so you all know what
it's talking about. To give you a background
a little bit, the ayah is going to
talk about,
foam.
And not I don't mean foam in the
mattress. I mean foam like, you know, when
it floods or when there's waves of a
beach and they come towards the sand and
there's kind of this bubbly white stuff that
rises above the water or when there's a
wave rising up, you can see the white
foam and the froth on top.
That foam, that's called
In Arabic, that's called
And that It's gonna be described in 2
ways. So just keep this idea in mind
that this is One of the central images
in this ayah is about foam and this
bubbly substance that rises above the water. Okay?
So
he sent water down from the sky. So
Allah is referring to rain coming from the
sky.
Then because of that water,
the valleys flooded,
the valleys got filled up and they started
flooding not as in drowning
but they started, you know, flowing.
Like water is coming and now it's kind
of coming off of the rooftops, it's coming
down from the mountains and the streets are
flowing with water. So the water seeps into
every nook and cranny inside of these valleys.
Suggests as much as they could take. So
not more than they could take as in
everything got flooded and homes got destroyed and
cattle got killed and all that stuff,
but as much as it could take, it
could take. So it's maximum amount of rain
is happening, extreme rain is happening and the
water is flowing. That kid, masha Allah. 2nd
time I saw a 100 of you like
following him now like,
where is he gonna go this time? You're
still following him.
Anyway yeah. That's okay. That's the nature of
education. Anything but the speaker will become interesting.
Anyway
so but, speaking so so so the rain
is coming, and now it's flooding in every
every nook and cranny inside multiple valleys.
Then that flood water or the water that's
flooding all the streets and the valleys and
different areas, right, because it's different elevations,
it starts building up, it starts carrying.
The the flood water starts carrying with it,
zabad, the foam,
rabi and rising above. It keeps on rising
above. So it's not just clean, clear rainwater,
you could see bubbles forming and froth forming,
and this this foam forming on top, and
that's you're starting to notice that it's rising
higher and higher.
Now Allah pauses that image and takes you
somewhere else and says,
And from what they burn on fire, meaning
people burn on fire,
when they want to make jewelry or they
want to make utensils.
Utensil could be a shovel,
a utensil could be a fork or a
spoon, but the idea is Allah is saying
And by the way, sometimes people take metal
like steel or aluminum or some other metal
and they burn it. They put it inside
extreme fire or even gold. They put it
inside extreme fire. And they put it inside
extreme fire because they're trying to get it
to melt.
So if deep inside the metal, there was
any impurity,
it will burn and it will rise to
the top and it will also form foam.
It will also become like froth or foam
that comes to the top. So now Allah
is actually talking about 2 kinds
of foam or froth, one that was coming
from the flood rains and all of a
sudden people are burning a fire and they're
trying to make
in pursuit of making jewelry, so it's the
same process for when you're trying to make
jewelry, and the same process,
or any other utensil, any other utility. So
even basic items, like if you to manufacture
a spoon, or you wanted to manufacture a
fork, or you want to manufacture an iron
rod, or something like that,
the metal that's needed needs to be cleansed
of the impurities in the middle. If there's
dirt in the middle, if there's other metals
in the middle, if there's air gaps in
the middle, it needs to get all cleansed
out so it can be
molded properly. Right? And then he says,
it also has froth just like the first
froth. Okay? So that's the image.
And so,
then Allah concludes this,
is about to conclude this parable, he says,
That is how Allah strikes the truth
against the falsehood. That's how In a sense,
you could say that's how Allah makes truth
and falsehood
clash into each other.
So that's the point that he's making. We're
gonna dig into what we can learn from
that. But then he as he concludes the
parable, he adds some more imagery. He says
in Arabic is
So,
as for the froth, the foam, it will
disappear, it will go far away, it will
become nothing. By the way, just like, you
know, when a wave is coming and there's
foam on top, it looks really scary and
intimidating
because it adds a lot of height to
the wave. But once it crashes, you realize
the foam was actually nothing.
It's the the water was underneath it but
the foam was actually just empty. It looked
far more aggressive. Right? Because it's just mostly
bubbles anyway. It's just nothing. So he says
as for the foam,
it's going to dissipate. It's going to distance
itself.
And ask for whatever benefits people
then that will become stationed or remain in
the land or embed in the land. What
that refers to is the rain came,
the foam rose,
but some of the rain went inside the
soil also. Right? Some of And and that
rain that went inside the soil is going
to cause vegetation to grow and is going
to bring life to that earth.
So Allah is now comparing those two reactions
of the earth. And then at the end
of it all he says, and that is
how Allah strikes examples.
So this is
this is the just translation. No explanation of
what Allah is saying. Now, let's try to
dig a little bit deeper into what Allah
is saying.
1st and foremost,
you know, I'm I'm gonna try to give
you the analogy of how
truth itself comes from the sky,
like revelation came from the sky. And Allah
says,
the truth is from your Rab. The same
way the water comes from the
sky. Right? The water descends from the sky.
And when the water descends from the sky,
I'll I'll talk about it at an individual
level first.
When I as a human being come into
contact with the truth,
then
before I came into contact with the truth,
there were 2
things. There were There was a part of
me that was good and there was a
part of me that wasn't very good, but
I didn't even know that there was something
bad or something wrong with me.
That I didn't even know that some of
my habits are bad.
Once the revelation came, it made me see
that some of the things that I have
that I'm carrying are impure.
They're not good. And just by learning the
revelation, just by
taking in that reign, it started washing away
my broken concepts.
There's people behind there having a conversation, and
I really wanna hear what they're saying.
Okay. Yeah. You guys. Yeah. I see you.
Yeah.
Okay.
Alright. So sorry.
So the the thing is I gotta concentrate.
Sorry.
So I don't I don't mind awkward pauses
and situations. Actually, I kind of enjoy awkwardness.
It's,
it's entertaining.
Yeah. Yeah. You know what I feel. Yeah.
Okay.
So
what was I saying something about Islam?
What was I saying?
I come into contact with the truth. I
start learning about one God. I start learning
about revelation. I start learning about
kindness to parents. I start learning about honest
dealings in business. I start learning about rituals
that my family had or my tradition had
and my culture had that were pagan, that
were, you know, vile, that were evil, and
I start seeing them for what they are.
And all of a sudden,
ideologically,
as as far as my world view,
there are concepts and practices
that were a part of my heritage
that are starting to what?
Wash away. They're starting to wash away. Like
this this rain comes and it washes away
all the impurities that were on top, it
starts just cleaning me out.
And I start developing a purified concept of
who God is, a purified concept of who
I am, a purified concept of what life
is, what's coming ahead.
It's just it starts cleansing me. It starts
detoxing me in some sense. Right?
But then
that's one kind of froth that gets removed,
But then there's another kind of froth that
gets removed. Allah Allah didn't just talk about
the rainwater coming and smoothly all the dirt
starts
washing away. Then he talked about a really
painful process
of people taking a metal. That's not a
natural process.
Gold can be discovered naturally, but if you
wanna purify gold, you have to go through
a a man made process,
you know, uh-uh an artificial process of creating
an intense fire,
and then putting that gold into that flame,
and allowing that gold to be burned so
much that it starts melting, and only then
can the heat penetrate deep inside the the
core of that metal to find the impurity
for that to emerge which is similar to
even though I felt that I have been
cleansed.
I felt that my concepts have been cleansed
and my beliefs have been cleansed, and my
worldview has been cleansed,
but there are still impurities inside me.
And sometimes I have to go through a
really difficult situation
and Allah will And sometimes that difficult situation
comes at the hands of either I put
myself in the flames or somebody else put
me in the flames. And there was some
deep,
deep darkness or some impurity that was so
deeply lodged inside me that it Just imagine
in the first case when rain water came,
if there was a piece of metal that
had an impurity inside, the rain water will
come and go over it. It's not gonna
cleanse the inside.
Right? So even though it got it created
a lot of foam
which was the impurity being removed,
there were There are some impurities that are
more stubborn
that won't just get removed because you came
into contact with water.
Those impurities
have to go The only way to remove
them is to go through some excruciating
burning experience.
And then you realize
through that experience that as much as I
thought I was cleansed
there were some dirt inside me that this
experience
exposed. And then that rose to the top,
and then I learned something about myself,
this impurity that wrote I I realized that
that was always there and had it not
been for this difficult situation
and not been put in this fire, then
that would not have emerged.
Right? So that's at a very personal level
you can see that this
cleansing that Allah is doing, this ayah can
be looked at as an ayah about tazkiyah,
about purification,
that that can happen at 2 levels, at
a theoretical level, at a learning level, every
time you're sitting in a halaqa learning something
about Allah's book, learning something about Allah's Messenger
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, every time you're enhancing
your knowledge of revelation,
whenever that's happening, you are actually your mind
is being cleansed of certain things.
Your your thought process is being cleansed of
certain things. But not all learning happens in
the classroom.
Right? Life is also a teacher.
Right? And painful experience is also a teacher.
And so those those those lessons will come
from a different kind of textbook.
They will come from a different experience. So
Allah is putting those 2 together and
as if to describe that both of these
have the same function to separate the froth,
to separate the impurity from within ourselves. Right?
But then he mentioned this interesting thing,
in pursuit of jewelry and in pursuit of
utensil,
Which is again another,
reinforcement in the Quran of
the conflation, the union between beauty and purpose.
Jewelry, the purpose of jewelry is beauty.
And the purpose of a fork and a
spoon and a shovel and all that stuff
is what?
It's function.
And Allah always puts these two things together
and it's as if even Islam itself is
both of these things.
Islam
when it comes in a society or it
comes in a person for example, that person
becomes purposeful.
That person is fair. That person will give
their family their rights. That person will give
the inheritance
that his sister deserves
and not take her share. That person's gonna
give the Mahar that he's supposed to pay.
The person's gonna pay Zakat. The person's gonna
be fair in their business dealings and they're
gonna not lie about you know, not paying
the loan back on time and they're they're
gonna become honest. Right? They're fulfilling a purpose.
But at the same time what Islam does
even more than that is it makes them
a beautiful person. They're a beautiful person to
be around.
They're a beautiful person who Their mannerisms become
beautiful.
Their interactions become beautiful.
Their presence
adds beauty in the life of others around
them.
That's what happens when deen
enters into somebody.
It's actually kind of like when the water
enters inside the land then beautiful flowers bloom,
then beautiful plants bloom, right? Revelation comes inside
a person and the best of them, the
nicest of them comes out. They used to
have a really ugly temper.
Nobody likes anger, right? If you're an angry
person people don't like being around you especially
when you're angry, right? If you have a
sharp tongue, nobody likes people with a sharp
tongue, and even if they tell you they
like you, they're telling you they like you
because if they tell you they don't like
you, they'll get your sharp tongue. So
so they're they're That's a that's a security
policy that they say they like you. You
love me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I totally
love you. Yeah. So much.
Please please believe me.
Right?
But what what does the din do? It
it controls a person's tongue.
It controls a person's anger. And so the
the ugliness in them is been contained,
And the beauty of them therefore emerges.
Right? So
and some of you may have some young
men that weren't practicing or weren't conscious of
their deen maybe a year ago, months ago.
You remember yourselves being a very angry guy.
You remember yourselves punching walls
and flipping out and cussing and you know,
storming out of the house and speeding down
the highway just to blow off some steam
or whatever.
You remember that guy and then you remember
the person you become after deen enters into
your life and the salah enters your life
and
something happens to your personality.
And that ugliness goes away and beauty takes
its place, and that's actually also
right? Islam has a function, but actually even
more importantly, Islam emerge brings out the beauty
in a person.
The religion brings out the beauty in a
person. But now I'm going to take a
step back and share something with you that
I think is the core message of this
this ayah.
This ayah is a commentary first and foremost
I believe not just on the individual it's
actually a commentary on the seerah of the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
It's actually it's a Maqan Surah. So Turad
is a Maqan Surah. So it's earlier
but it's as if Allah has mapped out
the entire adventure of the Sira. What's going
to happen in Makkah and what is going
to happen in Madinah all in one ayah.
It's all laid out already. So let's understand
how
the Quran came in Makkah and Makkah is
a valley
Makkah is a valley and Allah said
He sent water from the sky and the
valleys
started getting flooded. And what's the first valley
that started getting flooded?
Mecca. And it took as much as it
could take.
It took us So the Quran is going
in every nook and cranny. It's going everywhere.
Right? One of the things that you may
be familiar with in the Quran if if
you've been listening to my lectures especially more
recently on the Makkan Surahs that I've been
working on I make it very clear that
the Quran was not just criticizing Mushrikoon in
Makkah The Quran was criticizing
the the politically
The most powerful politicians,
the most wealthy millionaires and billionaires,
the most elite social class of people. Now
if you live in a society that doesn't
have
you know major, you know like
civil rights like nowadays modern societies talk a
lot about civil rights. But if you go
to a society that's tribal
or you go to a society that's more
traditional old school, right?
Like if you go to a country that
for example has a king and has a
royal family, so countries have that nowadays too,
right? You're not gonna go in that country,
walk around and say whatever you want about
the royal family
if
you are interested in maintaining your health.
Right? You're not gonna do that.
You're In fact, you might find in some
countries, there's so much they have to make
sure that,
that they show enough respect
and you know, royal you know, reverence to
the king that they might have to put
a picture of the king and the queen
in every restaurant, in every office, in every
lobby. They might have to wear a little
locket. Hey, hey, hey, hey, no, no, there's
a king right here in my heart. You
know?
They might have to do that because they
no. No. No. We respect the king. This
is, you know
and if, you know, some some places they're
so scared that they might be seen as
defiant against the king or the ruling class
that when they're driving a taxi and some
tourist comes. So how's the government here? Oh,
the government's amazing. It's the most amazing government
ever. Our king is the best the best
king ever. It's a gift from Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala that he sent on us. Oh,
the king the king. Oh,
hold on. Let me pull up my car
and just make dua for the king. Yeah.
Because they have to show proper reverence. But
maybe if it's not even a kingdom, maybe
it's a village, and a village has an
elder.
Right? And the elder, you know, he's not
just the elder, he's got like 30 guys
working for him. He's got security guys around
his compound. Everybody else lives poor. The guy
that Chaudhry Saab, if you're Chaudhry, sorry. But
this is Chaudhry Saab. He's got his mansion.
He's got this giant 10 foot fence around.
Guys with machine guns, you know. You don't
know about that stuff. You you don't know
about that life in like England or America,
but you go to some of the Muslim
countries, you're gonna see, you know, that's that
you and then some random kid from the
village is talking trash about, you know, the
the big guys
kids or his his lifestyle or whatever. That's
not gonna work out really well. It's not
gonna go well. And Mecca was that kind
of society.
The rich and the powerful, you don't just
you don't open your mouth about them just
like that. You don't just say whatever you
want about you know, I call him Abu
Jahal
or, you know, because Abu Jahal is actually
a condescending term. It's not it's not that
was not his name, you know.
And you don't talk about, you know, Walid
ibn Mughira, the way the Quran talks about
it about him. You don't say things like
You don't say things like
You don't comment on, oh look at the
face he made, Look at the way he
was staring. Look at this. Look at And
I will, you know, I will make them
climb the mountain in * and I will
make them do this and I will, woah
and this is not just one comment that
somebody made and people said yo somebody might
hear you no no no this was Quran
Quran was coming down insulting these top dog
millionaires and these politicians and these big guys
and then these surahs were being memorized
and were being recited
everywhere in Makkah.
A flood came and now these The message
of Islam, the insults against the most corrupt
people in that society which are also the
most powerful people in that society
you know you might have some very wealthy
guy who just buried his daughter
right and then the Quran is coming and
saying
or you might have some very wealthy man
and beggars came and begged him for some
money and some he pushed these kids away
and said, get away from me, new clothes
You know, and he just now it's coming,
the Quran is calling these people out?
You think they're just gonna sit quietly and
take it? No. People like that get very
upset when you talk about them.
You know, they get upset if the servant
comes and he puts the tea in front
of them, and he doesn't say, you know,
doesn't bow his head. Hey,
what was that?
What was that? Did you look up at
me? Did you make eye contact with me?
That's the kind of arrogance these people have.
And the Quran is just hammering them 1
ayah, after 1 surah after another, after another,
after another. You know what happens then? These
kind of people, they get so mad,
it's like they start foaming at the mouth.
They start getting they need to make this
stop.
And you know what happens then? This anger,
it's not just though they love shirk and
they hate it tawhid, no they love their
egos.
I would argue more than worshiping the gods
that they set up around the Kaaba, they
worship their power, their money, and their status.
And the Quran was coming after their power,
coming after their money, coming after their status.
And when the Quran was doing that, the
rage was rising like foam.
Now they they live off of this reputation
in the before Islam came
these were the most respected people of the
society.
These were the most honorable people of the
society. These were the people that are stable,
wise. We listen to their direction.
We follow them. They are the influencers,
etcetera. Right? These are the, because they if
they got to this position of power that
must mean they're smarter than the rest of
us. That's how they got there. So we
should be listening to them. And the Quran
comes
and all of a sudden Allah says, you
know,
All valley started getting flooded. Now everybody's hearing
the reality of these people but then if
these people are the foam,
people used to be impressed with them but
after the Quran came, the Quran exposed that
these are not the best of you. This
is the worst filth of you that the
flood water comes and rises raises like foam.
And by the way, foam
has no weight.
Foam is light. Right? It's it's dead twigs
and pebbles and things like that. The impurities
on the earth which if the rain never
comes it just looks like that's what the
land is. But the rain water comes and
then it starts removing these impurities you didn't
even know were there.
But it only removes things that were lightweight
and you know what? These people were the
heavyweights of the society.
These people were the ones of gravitas and
the Quran with its words is lifting them
like they're foam
and it's stirring them up and it's enraging
them like rising foam
and they don't know what to do with
it
And Allah didn't just say
He said
foam that keeps on rising just like in
Makkah,
their aggression towards Islam kept on rising. They
get angrier then angrier then angrier then angrier
and Allah says yes that's what happens when
water comes.
Foam rises.
It's Allah's way of saying when truth comes,
the hatred towards the truth rises.
That is the natural way of things just
like Allah made night and Allah made day
just like Allah made male and Allah made
female
just like Allah made life and Allah made
death Allah made truth
and the opposition of truth will always rise.
Falsehood will always rise.
That's the nature of it. You can't just
have truth without a clash.
You can't just have water coming without the
froth rising.
You it must exist.
It must exist. So this clash must happen.
By the way, I'm taking you forward in
the parable Allah says
That's how Allah strikes truth against falsehood. Now
interestingly that form kind of rose on its
own because the Kuffar
proudly declared themselves Kuffar.
The Kuffar
openly made Istihza
they made fun of the Ayat of Allah
they openly called the stories of the Quran
Asateerul Awaleen They openly declared the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam Sahir, Kadeb, Khazab, Majnoon
They called him a liar, they called him
a magician, they called him possessed, they called
him insane. They called him all these things.
Right? So they were open in their froth.
But the second image
is not you can't just pour water on
it, you can't just pour Quran on it,
or give Dawah of the Quran,
and the filth emerges
when the Messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
moves to Madinah.
When he moves to Madinah,
then there is a population of people who
call themselves believers.
But within them there are people
who are actually hurting the mission of the
Prophet
but they're not calling themselves Kufar.
So they are enemies of the Prophet's mission
but they don't call themselves enemies.
In fact, they are deeply embedded
inside the Muslim community.
They call themselves believers, when they come and
meet the Prophet
they say
you know,
at the end of Surat Al Baqarah, we
say, for example,
Right?
And we we say, you know,
we say we believe the Munafiq also says
we
say they say
so they're the same
they they testify that Muhammad is the Messenger
of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam
They're embedded in the Muslim community.
In fact, in some battles they even said,
Oh, we should come too. We should join
you too. You know.
Now,
they are a much tougher problem because they
don't rise to the top on their own
because they're so deeply embedded and they're disguised.
It's almost like an impurity that lies deep
inside of a metal.
And you cannot purify a metal unless you
put a metal inside of a flame.
You can't just
pour some soap on the gold and get
a get a sponge and, you know, try
to purify the gold because the purity the
impurity is too deep inside.
The only way is that the metal has
to be put through the fire.
When the Messenger of Allah
moves to Madinah,
then Allah puts the ummah through multiple battles
and extreme difficulties.
Multiple battles.
So
multiple skirmishes in between, and then economic insecurities
and threats from outsiders. All kinds of stuff
was happening in Madida and every one of
them is like the believers being put in
flames.
And then in one of them, one of
the worst
is actually Uhud.
So let's take Uhud as our case.
In Uhud, we lost some of the most
significant Sahaba numbers.
And many of them were the providers, the
economic providers for the ones that who were
even left behind. Not to mention their households,
they were the primary providers for their households.
So So not only did we we lose
many precious
Sahaba including the Prophet's uncle and
the Rasulullah
almost got killed himself
But also, Madinah essentially which was already poor
is now guaranteed to be bankrupt,
basically.
So where we had an economic disaster a
military disaster plus an economic disaster
on top of that
then Allah describes why did he put the
Muslims through this
He says
These are the days we flip between people.
Sometimes we give Kufar victory. Sometimes we give
you victory.
Then he says,
so Allah could expose and bring out who
truly believes.
And he could take some shuhada among you.
And Allah does not love the wrongdoers. The
didn't win because Allah loves them.
Then He says so beautiful He says
He says, So Allah could purify those who
believe. Now
in Arabic is used when you purify gold,
which is what the parable we're talking about
now is.
It's as if Allah is saying believers
are like a metal that until you burned
it, the impurity of the munafiq inside would
not rise to the top. And what happened
in Uhud?
They rose to the top on their own
like froth.
They exposed themselves like froth.
You didn't
They would never have declared themselves munafiq in
that way
and hey I'm right here I've been hiding
all along. Gotcha.
They wouldn't have done that
unless the events of Uhud happened.
So Allah says in the second case scenario
is
when you burn a flame
and then the foam rises to the top.
So the kafir just separates themselves clearly, just
from the dawah. They separate themselves, like in
Mecca. And the munafiq has to be separated
through tough times.
Sometimes we have to ask ourselves when the
Ummah is going through tough times. What's the
what's the objective Allah has of putting the
Ummah through tough times?
Perhaps,
perhaps,
it just exposes those who wanted to sell
the religion out and they just come out.
They you don't have to call them out.
They declare it themselves.
They just emerge on their own.
Now, let's go go back to the parable
again. There are 2 things Allah mentioned. Allah
said you do this for the purpose of
making jewelry
and you also do this for utensils remember
It's fascinating
because
if you stick with the imagery, if you're
gonna go through the process of burning a
metal and carrying the metal and creating a
furnace and all of that,
and you say you have 2 things you
can make. You can either make jewelry
or you can make a spoon.
Which one you're gonna make?
You're going to make the jewelry because it's
way more valuable
What is it? Same amount of labor and
what do you get at the end? You
get a necklace, you get a crown,
you get a precious metal or you get
a spoon,
right? So
clearly one is far more precious than the
other, isn't it?
When the Muslims were going into battle,
they wanted 2 things.
1,
they wanted shahada.
They were running to the enemy and Allah
said,
run to forgiveness from your Rab. You're not
running to your enemy's sword, you're running to
your own forgiveness.
That's how they saw
it. You're running towards the Jannah. That's what
Allah described in Al Imran.
But the Muslims also wanted victory.
We also want victory.
And then
in places like Surat Asaf,
Surat Al Fath,
what Allah does is he compares victory
and Jannah.
So Jannah is in the akhirah, victories in
this world, right?
So He says
about that Oh,
can I tell you of a deal that
will save you
from from painful punishment?
And by the end of that ayah,
you know, and he will enter you into,
you know,
he'll enter you into gardens, Jannah, that's goal
number 1. And then he said,
and secondarily,
you also love that victory should come.
So there's a primary objective, heaven,
salvation,
and there's a secondary objective,
victory in this world.
And in this parable, Allah said, Yes, people
do burn metal, but they burn it for
two reasons,
jewelry
and just utensils.
So as if the victory of this world
is not the crown jewel. That's just a
utensil that's just a means to an end
if Allah gives us victory, the ummah victory
then we will worship Allah better but if
Allah doesn't give us victory we'll still worship
Allah
That will not change.
It's not like our Islam will be different
without victory and with victory, our Islam will
still be Islam.
Our commitment to Allah is still our commitment
to Allah, the Messenger is still Allah's Messenger
sallallahu alaihi wasallam. The book of Allah is
still the book of Allah.
My connection to Allah is still my connection
to Allah.
But it would help, it would be a
further utility,
so it would add something to it.
So now Allah has made that that incredible
comparison between the ultimate objective and the secondary
objective even in this parable
But then even beyond the Seerah,
even beyond the Seerah,
It's as if Allah has described forever, this
is how truth and falsehood are going to
be.
You know, Allah didn't say, you know,
he said, and it's it's interesting. It's
multiple valleys got flooded as much as they
could. And Qadr in Arabic is as much
as it could, Qadr also means schedule. Like
when Musa alaihis salam was told,
You Musa, he arrived right on schedule.
Okay? It's as if Allah is saying that
the message of Islam that came to Mecca
came at a certain time
exactly when it was supposed to come. And
then from that place, it reached another place.
It reached Persia.
It reached Africa. It reached Europe. It reached
India, it reached different parts of the world
right on schedule. There was a time when
it was supposed to reach
these other places.
And each of those places was supposed to
take in the message as much as each
place can take.
Some soil
is is richer and it can take more
water. Some takes less water.
Some grows a different kind of plant and
requires less water. Some grows a much heavier
kind of plant. The Quran went and Islam
went all over the world but the way
that Islam went and the way that Islam
was taken in, and the way that Islam
flourished all over the world, there was a
variety.
And each one of
rose.
The foam also rose. And in each society
that Islam came and will come until judgment
day,
each society
opposition will rise. So for example, when Islam
came and it became more of a prominent
presence
in the United Kingdom,
Right? Over the last century, it became more
and more of a prominent presence in the
United Kingdom. You're gonna see Foam rising. You're
gonna see opposition to the presence and the
existence of Islam in this country. The more
Islam will become prominent in this country, the
more it will become a problem.
Seen by some as a problem in this
country.
You know, we must eliminate it. We must
get rid of it because we need to
keep this land pure from any foreign or
external influence. This is the same exact thing
the people of Makkah were saying about Islam
when Islam came to Makkah.
Makkah was doing just fine. We don't need
this. And then you will see the people
who are otherwise really nice
but because this water has now arrived, now
you could see that they were actually froth
rising. You never saw their hatred before,
but now all of a sudden,
you can't even believe it's the same person.
People may have Before the coming of Islam,
people might even have had nice opinions of
Abu Jahal or nice opinions of some of
the elites, Walid ibn Bukhira.
They might have been as much a normal
part of society and even looked up in
that society, but once the Quran exposed them
and once their opposition to Islam came out,
then you you saw the true side of
them emerge. And you might find that in
any society where Islam comes.
You might find that again and again.
But this is not just about even Islam
in non Muslim societies.
It may even be that Islam
over time just like water goes in the
earth and it dries up.
Sometimes
it allows you to grow, sometimes it remains
deeply embedded inside, and until you dig, you
don't you find there was a well underneath
that had formed.
Right? So it went in but you didn't
know that it had gone in. So I'd
like to even share the example of sometimes
there were people that were Muslim
that used to be Hindu. They became Muslim
maybe 200 years ago, 300 years ago they
became Muslim and they passed Islam down into
their family.
But over time,
even though their grandpa was a Hafid of
the Quran or he was like a, you
know, very conservative or etcetera, but the children
became a little bit more,
you know, liberal, and then their kids became
a little extra liberal, and then their kids,
you know, were not religious. We're Muslim, but
we're not we we do Eden stuff, but
we're not we don't identify ourselves as too
Islamic. That's a bit extreme for us. And
they became basically
almost you can't tell them from non Muslims.
Right? So it started off, they came left
Hinduism, came to Islam, but a few 100
years and now you they're basically back to
being looking and acting just
like non Muslims. And then what happens then
is what does Allah do? There was water
somewhere in there and so one of
that very liberal, very agnostic, very secular,
very progressive family,
their 18 year old girl
starts watching this Islamic stuff online
and starts showing secretly wearing hijab
and their 20 year old son
starts praying and he closes the door and
he starts praying in there in his house,
and they don't even know that he's becoming
like I mean we're all Muslim but why
are you becoming like Muslim Muslim? Like
like this is this is too much too
much Muslim,
you know.
And take that thing off. We don't wear
that in our family.
What are you doing?
You might find women that are even college
university girls that wear,
they'll cover, they'll wear wear the Khimar,
what you call hijab
on campus but on their way home they'll
take it off because the home won't tolerate
it. And they're Muslim families.
Right? And the family felt like they got
rid of it, they got rid of this
water thing, but the water stayed
and maybe it slept for a couple of
centuries.
Maybe it slept for 1 generation,
but it's so resilient. It just comes back.
Allah says by the end of this parable,
Froth
will come and go.
The bubbles come and they disappear.
Just like ideas,
ideologies,
groups,
they come,
they become powerful
and then they disappear.
The Mongols came, and then they disappeared.
Came, and then they disappeared.
The colonizers came, and then they disappeared.
And then ideas come,
ideologies come, communism came.
It came like a wildfire.
It took over almost huge parts of the
world.
There were even strong communist movements within the
UK when communism was rising.
And then it started withering away. It started
disappearing.
Ideas rise and they fall, and they rise
and they fall.
Allah says,
and for what whatever benefits people will remain
somehow stationed within the land. The water will
actually seep inside the soil, might become so
deep that you don't even notice it anymore
but the water will stay.
It will stay.
So you'll find Islam came and you would
say, well, you know, the world has modernized.
We don't need religion anymore.
But Islam seems to stay.
And then you have communism came, for example,
in places like the, you know, the Soviet
Union before its collapsed. There were places like
Kosovo and Albania and, you know, Montenegro. And
there were there were Muslims living in, like,
what what is now Kazakhstan and, you know,
other Uzbekistan, other places where the the communism
was so extreme that you could get killed
for holding on to your Islam.
You could literally quite literally get executed.
What did Islam look like after the the
extreme secularism of Ataturk
in Turkey
Right? I met people who told me it
was illegal to even have a copy of
the Quran in your home
Their grandma the grandma said, You couldn't have
a copy of Quran in your home
right?
And men were ripping off hijabs of women
in the street
this like Islam was such a problem for
them They wanted to rip it out of
people, like, gutting it out. Like, imagine
something deep inside you, and they wanna cut
you open and pull it out of you.
That's how they wanted to get rid of
Islam.
The way they tried to get the way
they got rid of Islam in Granada in
Spain centuries ago.
What the what the Uighur Muslim are going
through now,
forcing their young men to drink, drink alcohol
in Ramadan.
Right? Forcing their daughters to marry Buddhist men.
To put pictures of their ruler in front
of the Masjid in in the where the
Qibla goes.
Forcing them to do that.
Hoping and then putting security cameras and you
know surveillance outside every home and having an
agent live with them
stays.
It just stays and there's 2 ways of
fighting Islam. Is everything okay?
Oh, it's small. Okay. So there's 2 ways
of
destroying Islam. So now we're gonna flip this
image that Allah has given us in this
ayah. We're gonna flip the image.
The first imagery I gave you is the
Quran came and flooded society.
And then the trials came in Madinah that
purified the believers.
But on the other side is
This is the story of Haqq.
The other story is the story of
They also want to create a flood.
They don't want to destroy Islam in America
or Islam in Canada or Islam in England
or Australia
by police
and by forcing you or making it illegal.
Let's slowly trying to make those policy
much softer approach. Let's use the education system.
Let's use funding.
Let's use other me let's use media tactics.
Let's flood them with messages.
Let's flood them in a way that the
weak among them will leave Islam and rise
like froth.
Right? We want them to be separated from
their religion.
And if that doesn't work, then let's take
the more extreme measures that are now found
in some other parts of the world.
Let's police them. Let's beat them. Let's make
it illegal for them for them to even
read the Quran.
Let's torture them.
And that's like, you know, putting them in
the fire. So on the one hand, there's
the fire that believers put themselves in, and
then there's the fire that the disbelievers are
putting them in.
All of this to just remove,
get get rid of this entity, this thing
called Islam.
Just get rid of it somehow.
Previous parables I was telling you, even people
who leave Islam can't seem to leave Islam.
They leave Islam and all they do is
make videos about how much they hate Islam.
Just leave Islam
bro. Just leave already.
You know what else I hate you? Yeah,
I got it. You hate me. Go. And
what else? One more thing.
Why are you still crying?
I don't know. Because I wanna come back
or something, but I can't admit it.
It'll remain in it'll remain station. Whatever benefits
people will remain.
You know, even within Islam,
we've had so many different denominations. Right? There's
different groups, there's different ideologies, there's different schools
in within Aqeedah. There's still
different masalik, different factions, different cults,
different tariqas. There's all this kind of variety
in Islam.
Some of the most interesting varieties you get
in the United Kingdom.
Right?
Depending on the much that you walk into,
you're like, oh, okay. Alright.
You know? So you'll you'll get and if
the Muslim world is like that,
and you know what? Some of those groups
have risen and fallen.
Some ideas have risen and fallen. Islam somehow
stays.
You would think with this many factions, it
would just collapse. No. Islam stays. The core
values, the core core principles of this deen
are there to
stay.
Will remain in the land. And I would
argue from the beginning, this is a parable
about the Quran itself. And the what truly
benefited, what truly flooded Mecca was the Quran,
was the word of Allah.
And what I'm hoping through this series, you
guys are starting to realize
is how much we need to flood ourselves
with the Quran.
And how we we've actually
we haven't done our job educating ourselves and
being allowing ourselves to really contemplate the word
of Allah the way it should have been
contemplated. But that need that needs to come
back, and that we're the ones that will
benefit from
it. Last comment about these ayaat.
I love the conclusion
That is how Allah gives examples, Allah
says
Just ponder how much, how rich this parable
is,
and how there are some things that will
be cleansed just by education
and others by difficult experience. How much has
been encapsulated inside one example?
Just just in these, you know, to have
that's how Allah gives examples. That's what he
says. That's how Allah gives examples.
So the last comment I wanted to make,
to you about this is about the and
the. Allah, just like He knows everything in
the past, He knows everything in the future.
And Allah gave us this final religion,
this last revelation
that he gifted to Muhammad
and we became we are now in 2024
the recipients,
the carriers of this revelation.
And Allah has a plan for the rest
of the world and what's gonna happen in
the world. And all the places in the
world are like valleys.
And every one of them, one day or
another, will be flooded
with the water that comes from the sky
which is the Quran.
And every one of them will take it
in a way that is meant for it
to be taken. Some places will get Islam
in this century. Some places will get Islam
200 years from now. We don't know.
We don't know what that's gonna look like.
I don't think anybody in India imagined a
100 years before Islam came to India that
Islam will be like the the Muslims will
be the the the dominant population of Muslims
in the world will be South Asia and
Southeast Asia. I don't think anybody would have
imagined that.
When I when I went to Indonesia, the
most populated Muslim country in the world,
you know, before the Adan,
they have this you ever seen those giant
gong drum things?
They beat that drum and I'm like what
is that?
What are you guys doing? Like, the
and it it goes faster and faster. And
then a few minutes after, then they give,
and I'm like, what's that about? That's
cool and weird.
So I asked about and they said that,
you know, before Islam came here, this is
how they used to call people to the
temple.
And then people used to come in. And
the early Muslims, when they wanted to give
dawah, they employed this technique
to break Subhanahu wa'ala.
Subhanahu wa'ala. And the majority like the biggest
Muslim population of the planet,
you know.
So how will Islam come to a region?
We don't know.
How will it come? We don't know.
But so long as it will be something
that benefits people.
Now Allah has already sent his Messenger.
The the rain has already fallen. The Quran
is already now in our possession. The only
difference now is who is going to be
spreading this word?
Who's going to be internalizing it and then
spreading it? You know? What remains in the
world just just think about that. You know
people say, oh, times have changed. It's not
the time for religion anymore. It's time for
humanity to move on from these barbaric old
ways, etcetera, etcetera.
The imagery here is when water goes into
the ground,
then it produces life. Isn't it?
And when water produces life,
it produces a tree,
then it is producing
endless trees because that tree will give fruit,
the fruit will have seeds, that seed will
produce another tree, another fruit, another tree, another
And for generations,
fruits will continue to grow because of that
one rain that came. So this is something
that will emerge in new generations, one after
another after another after another. It's not something
that's going away.
It's not something that will ever ever disappear.
What a beautiful description of the Quran.
That which benefits people.
That which benefits people. Islam didn't come to
invade people or to control people. The Quran
didn't come to, you know, impose on people.
The Quran came to benefit people.
This is for you.
If you excel, you're doing it for your
own benefit.
And that's
the
challenge of our society. How are we to
understand
How will the word of Allah bring benefit
to our valleys?
Every one of us, especially the young here,
you Allah has put you in a particular
valley at a particular time.
And you understand your society, your culture, your
heritage,
your opportunities like nobody else does. And you
must internalize the word of Allah and then
see how that word of Allah will bring
benefit in that society.
May Allah truly make us like the example
has given. One one scary thing I didn't
give you, I should give you now. And
that is I'm I'm sorry. It'll take 2
minutes. And that is Allah at the end
he mentioned
that the water in the land will stay
and the froth will disappear.
By using it like that, it's almost as
if he didn't mention the froth from the
metal.
It's like he brought emphasis to the froth
from the land and not the froth from
the metal. Why would that be? Maybe it's
a very subtle way of describing that the
will die.
Will disappear from Makkah. But
which is deeply embedded,
you'll remove some of it, but not all
of it will go.
Not all of it will go. Nifaq will
be an ongoing problem. Hypocrisy will be an
ongoing disease. So he didn't bring an end
to Nifaq,
but he did bring an end to kufr
in the parable. And that's what happened in
the region of of, you know, Hijaz. Kufr
was brought to an end, but nifaq even
in the last revelations given like in Surat
Tawba,
Allah says Right? Even until the end, the
disease remained. May Allah protect all of us
from nifaq and may Allah bless us from
the beauty of these ayaat and allow them
to to come into our hearts, minds, and
into our communities.
Assalamu alaikum, everyone. There are almost 50,000 students
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