Striking Examples From the Quran #23 Uprooted
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Channel: Nouman Ali Khan
Series: Nouman Ali Khan - Ramadan 2024 - Striking Examples From The Quran
File Size: 46.40MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
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Before you begin this video, just quickly wanted
to let you know that so much of
the work on the Quran has been completed
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way to the end in brief and then
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Everyone once again
Yesterday we looked at Ayahs 24 and 25,
and tried to learn some things about the
parable that Allah has given of a good
word compared to a good tree.
Today, we're gonna look at the next ayah
26 and probably also 27 and 28.
In 26 in particular, Allah is going to
give a comparison of a bad word or
a filthy word.
So the what the place I want to
start
is an understanding that this is Allah is
talking about 2 extremes.
He's talking about 2 extremes. He's not saying
if it's not it
must be
That's not the case.
So you saw already before
The 2 extremes are being talked about, and
there are things in between. There are things
that have an element of goodness in them.
There are things that are entirely neutral.
So you shouldn't become you shouldn't look at
these parables and say, well, you know, any
word that comes out of anybody's mouth is
either
or a filthy word or a good word.
There's plenty of in between. There's plenty of
neutral words in between. Right? So,
but the but the Quran
is commenting, especially in the Maqan Quran, and
by many accounts, Surat Ibrahim is a late
Maqan Surah,
which is another significant,
observation to make about the placement of these
ayaat
and this parable, which we didn't talk about
before,
is that the clash between right and wrong,
the clash between Iman and Kufr is reaching
a climax.
Almost
all of the Maqan Quran has now been
revealed,
so the truth has been been abundantly clear.
And the antagonism and the opposition of the
Quraysh is also reaching its climax.
In that context, there are 2 things that
are interesting to note. One of them is
Ibrahim alayhi salam himself,
who plays a central role, obviously, in the
Surah, Surat
Ibrahim. Right? And Ibrahim
said a word to Allah, made a dua
to Allah 1000 of years ago,
And now with the coming of Muhammad
those words are bearing fruit.
And now that
is actually turning into a
which is actually the coming of Muhammad
and the Quran. And in fact, Ibrahim alaihis
salam's
legacy
carried on in some way or the other
in the world
all this time. In some way,
something was there. Whether it was through his
children,
you know, the Israelites, or eventually through the
Sharia given to Musa alaihi salam, all the
way into the legacy of Jesus with with
the deviations that came there,
something of the the the legacy and the
good word left behind by Ibrahim alaihi
salam was there. It's also interesting that the
word occurs in the context of Ibrahim alaihi
salam too.
Allah says,
Right? Allah tested Ibrahim Alaihi Salam with words.
And then of course his remarkable words, his
dua,
one of the most beautiful and amazing words
of Ibrahim alaihi wasalam, as he was building
the the the Kaaba, he made dua for
the coming of a messenger
with his son Ishmael.
And that dua is answered in the coming
of the prophet
So the Quran we are reciting in a
sense is the answer to the dua of
Ibrahim alaihi salam.
Right? So there's a deep connection between those
elements. There's another important observation, and that is
that Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam has been doing
his work in Mecca for all this time.
It's almost 13 years now that he's doing
his work, and he's spreading he's trying to
spread this message.
But the the the the people that follow
him are very few, and the people that
are against him, they're not just against him.
They're more against him than when he started.
So things haven't gotten better. They've gotten worse.
It's not just that, oh, you only have
these few Muslims and the rest of them
are non Muslims. No. The non believers
have not only become much much more aggressive
to the point where they're physically aggressive, and
they're ready to even kill, torture and kill,
but they've been they've been able to antagonize
a much larger audience around them too. Their
propaganda has also spread much further. So things
have gotten a lot worse, and the word
that the prophet has spread is, you know,
trying to deliver, the dua he's trying to
deliver,
he's not seeing, at least from the looks
of things, that it's going anywhere.
In that context, when you look at these
ayaat and you think about a good word,
like a tree, like a seed that gets
planted and the root is deep inside, It's
like the prophet is being told even on
the verge of hijrah,
even as he's about to leave Mecca, that's
become a hopeless place,
you don't know that people that are in
this town
that the the seed has already been planted
and you don't know when it's going to
blossom and it may be that people like
Khaled ibn Walid
who's not a believer at the time, you
know, and there are many other Sahaba who
are not believers at the time that are
going to come eventually.
They're going to blossom. And so the prophet
is also, in a sense, being given a
kind of consolation
that even though on the ground you don't
see the numbers with you, the the seed
that you have planted, that's up to Allah
when it when he will make it blossom.
Right? So that's a little bit of the
context of,
this parable. The other thing that I,
wanted to share with you that that's also
important. You know, on the one hand, you
might become
depressed that the the work of the deen
is going on. Allah is you know, Allah's
messenger is delivering his Quran, and people are
hating it even more, and they're antagonistic even
more, like instead of them becoming closer to
the word of Allah, they're more opposed and
more aggressive to the word of Allah, and
that sounds like things are bad. But actually,
that's an indication that things are good.
It's it's quite the opposite. The taller a
tree gets,
the more it gets hit by the wind.
Like, the the the height of a tree
makes it more susceptible to the elements.
The fact that the response
to the Quran has become more aggressive
is because the Quran is that much more
powerful
and that much more impactful
that it must be dealt with with more
severity.
So
the severe response of
was actually a recognition of the power of
the Quran and how deeply it had spread
and how high its branches are already starting
to reach in society.
Right? So, you know,
when I was studying political science a long
time ago in 18/65,
my professor said something really epic. Sometimes you
know, one of the things with being a
Quran student that's why I recommend everybody. I
don't care if you're a med student, a
history student, a law student, accounting. May Allah
forgive you. Like, whatever you're studying,
study Quran at the same time. Just study
Quran at the same time. You know what's
gonna happen? Everything you're studying will become a
Quran class. You won't
even Your atheist professor doesn't even know he's
teaching you something about the Quran
because Allah
teach starts training you. When you study the
ayat of Allah, He starts training you to
see his ayaat in creation, see his ayaat
in history, see his ayaat everywhere, and you
just start you're sitting there going, wow. That's
yeah. Yeah. You don't know that, but Allah
said that, and thanks for helping me out
with that one. Right? So that that happened.
My my professor one time, he said, you
know,
the more military presence you see on the
streets, the more police you see on the
streets, in political science, that is the indication
of how unstable that government is.
The weaker the government gets,
the more police it needs, the more military,
and even tanks, and armored vehicles, and blocked
roads it needs on the streets.
That is an indication of its weakness, not
its strength. And the stronger
a government is, the less you see the
police around.
The more stable it is, you don't you
don't see even see the cops. Right? You
see the cops, they're having an ice cream
and you're like, Oh, okay. You
know, how is it? Should I get that
flavor? He goes, Yeah. I get that flavor.
Yeah. It's good. That's an indication of how
stable a society is actually. Right? So the
the more that they're getting an aggressive response
in Mecca,
that's actually an indication that the Qurayshah is
starting to weaken.
The same was true of If you heard
me talk about I've talked about it many
times in the course of his conversation with
Musa Alaihi Salam who went with
Right? And he's opposing
in a sense. That's a clash of the
good word versus the evil, the filthy word.
Right?
In that conversation, by the end of it,
what did what did what did say to
Musa
you better stop or I'm gonna get you
thrown in jail. Show me something or I'll
get you thrown in jail.
Wait. We were just talking here. You could
keep talking to me. Why do you wanna
throw me when he says, I'm you better
shut up or you better show me something
or I'm gonna throw you in jail. You
know what that means?
I'm losing this battle of words.
I don't have the words to fight you,
so the only solution I have is I'm
gonna get you put put in
jail. That's actually an admission of defeat.
He he can't he he he's lost his
bout, because it's it's supposed to be a
battle of words.
Well, the threat of jail means I no
longer have words, I gotta use something else.
I've already lost that battle. You see? So
there is this this power dynamic also. Words
that are good are rooted deep. They can
take the hit. They can take the storm,
and the the tree is still standing where
it's standing. And in opposition to that now,
we look at the opposite, a filthy word.
So first, let me tell you a little
bit about the word, kabeeth,
or filthy.
I know that some of you in from
from Pakistan background or speaking background, you say
this to your children a lot.
Like, look. Why are you calling yourself
like, why?
So let me tell you a little bit
about so you stop using that word for
your kids or yourselves or your lineage.
It's used for throw up and,
you know, excretion,
you know, all body whatever discharges from the
body, it's used for pus.
It's used for, you know, when when the
when they would when they would burn metal
and melt metal, the useless part of metal
that they would have to throw away and
that smell bad and throw away, that stuff,
all the stuff when they when you, like,
when you're slaughtering an animal and all the
guts that are getting just no good and
you gotta throw them, all of that is.
All of that is considered. All things vile,
filthy, disgusting, repulsive,
you know, those things are actually.
Right? That's actually what the word means. So
now Allah is not just talking about words
that aren't Islamic. Allah is talking about filthy
words, or that's his description of these words
that have a stench that are that are,
you you know, they're disgusting.
You should distance yourself from them. Right? Because
the the even the word means, you see
something, you wanna cross the street or step
back or make sure even even though you
don't feel the bottom of your shoe, you
don't even wanna
step into something filthy.
Even though it's technically not gonna touch you,
but you don't even want your shoe touching
it. Right? So there there is this element
of one wanting to distance themselves
from something that's filthy, and that's where Allah
begins,
the example of a filthy word. You'll also
notice in the previous ayah, Allah called
attention to Himself.
Allah mentioned himself. Didn't you notice how Allah
gave the example? Allah mentioned himself. But in
the beginning of this ayah, you see,
and the example of a filthy repulsive word,
Allah didn't mention himself. It's as if Allah
He he he he distanced himself from the
filth.
Like he'd it's like his name is so
pure and so beautiful. It doesn't even deserve
to be mentioned in proximity
of this word. And rhetorically, that also serves
a purpose. And that is that filthy words
are ones that are distant from Allah
by definition. Like you would have to be
spiritually,
intellectually,
ideologically distant, far from Allah, to be engaged
in a filthy word.
You know? And so what is this filthy
word that Allah is referring to? It can
you know, if you kind of do a
survey of the Quran, what kinds of words
are filthy?
You know?
And and and what sense filth is used
in the Quran? First of all, Allah says,
you know, describing the mission of the prophet
Right? So one of the one of the
defining markers of the coming of the the
final messenger, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, is everything
good and
pure, he will make halal. And
everything filthy and repulsive, he will make
haram.
He will make haram. Now, this is a
very important statement,
not just about words, but even about the
law of Islam, the laws of Islam.
If Allah has made something halal,
then by definition, it is good and it
is pure and it is beneficial
because that's what the word tayib is. So
if it's halal, it has to have good
in it.
And if Allah has made something haram, it
has to be filthy, repulsive, and something that
one must distance themselves from. It has to
be disgusting and dirty. There's no reason why
Allah would make something haram that doesn't have
something harmful, disgusting, dirty in it.
That's that's the principle. Now that sounds pretty
straightforward,
but what do we do as cultures?
What we do as cultures is we take
something Allah has made halal,
and we say, but we don't like it
in our culture.
So in our culture, we make it haram.
So even though it's halal in the sight
of Allah, it's not hara it's not so
halal in our family.
Allah is okay with it, our village is
not okay with it. Allah is okay with
it, our country is not okay with it.
Allah is okay with it, our culture is
not okay with it. So what do we
do? We start think taking things that Allah
has made halal, and in our own way,
we start making them haram. We start doing
that. Right? To give you a recent example
of that just because it's a side note,
but an important one,
You know, a a woman who's divorced
and, you know, Allah Allah says about them.
Whatever they wanna do with their lives in
a dignified way they can do. Right? So
they can get remarried if they want to.
Allah has given a woman who's been divorced
or widowed or whatever that right that she
can get, she can be she can receive
a proposal, she can accept a proposal, all
of that's fine.
And in Muslim countries,
Muslim countries, there's some woman not getting married.
Right, because her mother
her mother
looks at all these proposals, says this one's
nose is this way. This one's too short.
This one, one shoulder up, one shoulder down.
This one, you think you're gonna wear clothes
like that and marry my daughter? And the
poor girl's 40 something years old, she can't
get married because her mother has a rocket
launcher waiting at the door for any proposal
that comes. And then she says, in Islam,
you have to obey your mother.
No. Actually, you don't have to obey your
mother in that case at all. Allah didn't
give her mother the right
to deny something to that woman that's halal
for her,
and then and somehow in the name of
it, that's not Islam at all. That that's
I don't know what that is, but it's
not Islam.
I call it you go ahead and call
it that. But that's creating a haram
where Allah created made something
halal. And that that when you do that,
when you do that in society, when you
take something halal and you start closing the
doors on it because you don't like it,
because you have your rak, then you open
the doors for filth and haram.
You're Like you're creating haram in society. You're
creating evil in society.
You're creating, you know,
a bad legacy in society.
The same way what other societies do is
they take something Allah has absolutely made haram,
and they make it what?
Make it halal.
Like it totally Like, it's normal.
Completely
normal. Like, for example, even though the word
isn't used in this case, but the of
Allah is used in this case, in the
Quran, Allah says when a man divorces his
wife,
right, the if he says I divorce you,
then she has a period. There's a time
period
before before the divorce is finalized. Yeah.
In that time period, Allah says in Suratul
Talaq,
do not expel them from their homes as
if to say, in that time, that's not
your home anymore. That's their home. For the
next 3 period cycles, the home doesn't belong
to you. It it actually belongs to her.
The woman you just divorced, your house,
but for that time, whose house is it?
It's her house. It's her house. And she
may not leave either.
Unless they've done something openly
shameless that you can't you there's no way.
That is what Allah said, and he emphasizes
it multiple times in the opening.
Now you go to Muslim countries, Muslim countries,
where the masajid are full for taraweeh, Quran
is being recited, hafid of Quran, tajweed masha'Allah,
had divorced his wife and then called the
father and says, Come take your daughter. I'm
done.
What?
Like, if you're not allowed to do that,
you're that Allah said, that's not your it's
not even your house. In fact, early would
say, in that situation,
if the guy if there's not enough room
for her and him, he should move out.
He should live out with the
cow. He can't kick her out because Allah
said.
That that that's the rule. And what do
we do in Muslim countries?
Come take your daughter, or the girl says,
I ain't staying here. I'm out. Allah told
you stay.
Hold on.
You know? So we have so what some
something Allah prohibited,
openly violating it. Open but just make sure
the chicken is halal though. Is
it Right?
So
so do that and then openly violate all
these other rules. So there are things that
Allah has made halal
that we shamelessly make haram
openly. And there are things that Allah has
made haram that we openly make
halal, and we assume that that has no
consequences.
There's actually some pretty heavy prices to pay
for that kind of violation. But anyway, so
that's a little bit of the use of
and
and and, in
the Quran about in in the context of
halal and haram.
But So
But there are other words, particularly words that
are hadith, like backbiting, talking behind somebody's back.
And
people who do backbiting, they're pretty sure they're
not doing backbiting,
right? They're pretty sure. They start the conversation
with, you know, I don't talk about anybody.
I keep I mind my own business. You
know? Like, I I don't wanna say anything.
When somebody starts with, I don't wanna say
anything, they really wanna say something. That's that's,
you know and when somebody says, I really
I just mind my own business. These this
is the one guy that you know in
the room that don't mind his own business.
You know?
So and then and then if you wanna
say the worst things about someone to make
yourself feel better, he's a good brother.
I just
and then you slip in a little bit
of the actual you wanted to
so you make yourself feel better. But you
but I said he's a good rabbi. Allah
forgive all of us, you know?
Okay.
Yeah. I make dua for him. Do you?
I needed to know that. Because obviously until
you said it,
how would the angels record it?
Right?
So
so the this is so this is something
that's filthy.
Slander is something that's filthy. Questioning somebody's integrity
is something that's filthy filthy. Questioning somebody's iman
is something that's filthy. Lying is filthy. Cheating
is filthy.
You know,
there there, you know, you're and lying and
cheating isn't just simple lying and cheating, but
lying and cheating happens in business all the
time.
You know? You know that the labor is
gonna cost a 1,000, but you're like, that's
not enough. Oh, it's gonna be at least
5,000. Prices have gone up. They haven't gone
up. You decided the prices have gone up,
or the economy is really Oh, Ukraine Ukraine.
You just say something and just jack up
the price and rip your customer off. You're
you're lying.
You're actually lying, but it's okay.
Business is good. Barakat of Ramadan.
Right?
So contractors can lie. Car mechanics can lie.
Accountants can lie. Doctors can lie.
Pharmaceutical companies lie.
You know? Teacher teachers lying now. Teachers got
your your your kids aren't not enough kids
from your class are passing this looking bad
on your progress.
So he's giving extra marks to kids to
pass them on the exam. It looks like
his class and those kids are not ready
for the next level of math, they're not
ready for the next level of science, but
the teacher wants his promotion, so he gives
them extra points
and lets them pass because it's gonna look
good for his job.
These are
Right? This is making fun of someone,
humiliating someone,
So there's a there's a plethora of things
we can do with our tongue that is
filthy.
But there's even more that by the end
of today's, I'm I'm gonna point out. But
here, we're not just talking about bad words
that come out once in a while. We're
also talking about
ideas, ideologies.
Like, Islam is a way of seeing the
world.
Right? It's a it's a way of understanding
reality, understanding society.
Right?
And there are
offers its own way of seeing the world.
The opposite
has its own worldview.
And it's actually the opposing worldviews
to to Allah's worldview, the revealed worldview, that
are actually in a sense being called
also.
So we're gonna spend some time trying to
understand them, but now I'm gonna get to
the analogy, which is really
very powerful.
He says it's like a filthy tree.
It's a filthy tree. Now the the word,
kabitha, I told you, has depth in it,
has smell in it, has disgust in it,
has, you know, you know,
repulsiveness in it. And then he says,
it's been uprooted,
plucked from above the surface of the ground.
Now, this is a contrast that's being made.
To help you understand this image,
there used to be a tree.
Obviously,
in order for it to turn into a
tree, it was also growing. But clearly, its
roots never
got deep. So it grew too fast above
the ground,
but really nothing deep happened
below the ground. And the next time any
wind came or any resistance came, that tree
fell over. Now, once that tree fell over,
there were, you know, for example, bees had
a hive in that tree, or birds had
a nest in that tree, or, you know,
there were fruits on that tree. All that
stuff is now gone. Or that tree used
to provide shade, that shade is now gone.
Right? So all the good that used to
come from that tree has now disappeared. And
the leaves on that tree, and the fruits
on that tree, they're no longer being,
nourished by the roots because it's now ripped
over ripped off and it's fallen over.
The other thing was by comparison, the branches
used to point to the sky when it
was standing. Are the branches any longer pointing
at the sky?
No. Because it's tipped over, so it's all
focused towards the Earth.
Right? It's become it's become
attached to the ground, attached to the the
the surface of the Earth. Then when the
tree dies,
the the the
animals and the people that used to get
nutrition for or, you know, benefit from that
tree, they're all gone. But then there are
parasites
and fungus, and maybe a snake or a
scorpion, and those kinds of things get attracted
to the dead tree.
The moisture in it is pretty good for
a snake to just lay low in and
camouflage itself,
or it starts getting this moss growing around
it, very strong fungal moss smell, or some
kind of poisonous plant start taking root.
Right? Or parasites start coming and, you know,
eating off and hollowing the tree out from
the inside. And it attracts all of this
vileness,
this tree that's lying there. If you don't
get rid of it, it starts creating a
problem. Those of you who've ever had a
property, and a tree fell on your property
and you don't get rid of that tree,
the kind of problems you will get because
you didn't get rid of that tree, you
will know.
You will know. You'll you'll You know, the
kind of animal problems you'll have, insect problems
you have, rodent problems you'll have, it's crazy.
It gets worse and worse and worse because
that tree is just lying there. Right? So
now, this is the image of that tree.
Now compare this to the last tree it
was
people want to come and they want to
relax under the tree It gives fruit every
season. It was an image of beauty,
and this is an image of would you
go near it? The the question is, would
you go near it? Or would you say,
I'm really tired. I'm just gonna lean back
on this,
tree that's lying in a puddle of mud,
and I hear a little bit of,
but that's okay. That's probably,
you know, a Bluetooth speaker somewhere. So I'm
just gonna sit back and lean. No. You're
gonna You know what? I'm not touching that.
I'm not going near that.
Remember, kabeeth by definition is something you kind
of distance yourself from. Right? So Allah says,
It has no station.
The word is really cool here. Allah could
have said
means it doesn't stand firm, and is also,
you know, to something settled. It's not set
the tree is not settled. But the word
has other meanings too. The word gives us,
for example,
And the word
is actually, you know,
Right? So nobody knows what relief
it lies for a person. The word includes
the meanings of coolness. It includes the meaning
of calm and relief.
Like, for example, you know,
who was a was a dua the Arab
used to make for somebody, may Allah cool
his eyes.
May Allah cool his eyes means, may Allah
give him relief from the difficulty he's going
through.
Allah make his situation easier, they would say,
So so it's actually even a meaning of
relief. Now Allah is saying,
this tree has fallen, clearly it had no
it had no stability like the last tree,
but also there's no
way to get any relaxation, comfort, or cooling
from this tree. You wouldn't wanna go near
it. There's Not only does it self not
have,
it can no longer offer any to anybody
else.
It can't offer any good to anybody else.
It's actually a nuisance. Its existence is a
nuisance.
Now, having said all of that,
the question that arises, why would the tree
fall?
Well, the first reason is the roots weren't
deep enough. The question then is why weren't
the roots deep enough? And you'll if you
study trees, you'll know roots don't get strong
if you don't give enough water,
and roots start becoming weak weaker. And we
already know the imagery of water is that
of revelation
falling in. Right? So that's one explanation. But
the other is even if sometimes there's a
weak tree and it rises and it grows,
and as much as it's grown, people don't
know that it's weak until there's a storm,
until it's opposed,
until it's challenged. And when it's challenged,
it tips over. And that same storm comes
to a tree
whose roots are deep, and the branches are
way, way higher, so it should be falling
way quicker, but it's standing tall. When a
tree survives a heavy storm, what does that
tell you?
That tells you the roots were very, very
strong.
Right? So actually, the the this is a
commentary on ideas.
When an idea doesn't have real roots,
when a philosophy doesn't have real roots, when
a religion doesn't have real roots,
you know, when a concept, a political ideology,
a trend doesn't have real roots, then an
opposition will come and it will knock it
down.
The next opposition the next wave will come,
and then that last wave will be gone.
So, you you know, what's happened, for example,
a lot of times people ask me what's
what's Islam's take on, you know, the LGBT,
gender identity,
you know, homosexuality, etcetera. Like, there's all these
other questions around all of these, and feminism
and, you know, extreme feminism, etcetera, etcetera. And
I'm like, look.
The simple
concept in the Quran
is that when an idea doesn't have roots,
real roots,
then what happens to it naturally?
It falls.
It falls. And when an idea has deep
roots, it stands tall.
Instead of worrying about, oh my god, that
idea doesn't have deep roots, but it's it's
getting really tall.
Yeah.
But when
ideas like that get big,
then they're just setting up for what?
They're just setting up for a fall.
The thing you should worry about is did
you feed your own roots?
Not whether or not we need to chop
down this tree. That tree was designed to
fall.
That was that was made to fall. It
was engineered
to fall.
You, however, need to make sure that you
yourself are a strong tree that doesn't fall.
You understand?
So we're so concerned about the other ideology,
the other idea, the other philosophy. You know,
when communism was spreading half a century, more
than half a century ago or in the
early part of the last century even,
Muslims were very worried about communism.
What's what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? This
new thing,
you know, it's gonna take over everywhere, and
communism was spreading in the Muslim world too,
You know?
And, you know, I actually personally believe the
same thing about atheism. Atheism is spreading very
fast in many places in the world. Atheism
is spreading even among Muslim youth, in Muslim
countries also, and in European nations, other other
places.
But, actually, if its roots aren't deep,
if its roots aren't deep, it's bound to
fall. But the thing is when it falls,
it gets replaced with another weak tree.
So what happens usually with ideologies is when
ideology comes,
it becomes all the rave, it grows too
quickly, and it amasses a massive audience.
So many people are following it. It becomes
like a trend, a massive trend, and people
are like, oh my god. This is an
amazing trend. Everybody's following it. Everybody's following it.
And then there's an opposition to it. When
the opposition comes, it starts showing the holes
in this theory or this philosophy
and the contradictions in it, the gaps in
it, and it starts collapsing,
the new one that comes
is a reaction to the first one.
So it's saying, hey, this new idea doesn't
have the the same weaknesses that the last
idea, but you built your entire new ideology
just as a reaction to the last one.
So you're so focused on not making those
mistakes, you end up making new mistakes.
And then somebody else comes and knocks this
one down and says, hey, this one had
these these mistakes, we're gonna make sure we
don't have these these we're correcting these these
mistakes. And ideologies keep coming and tipping over
and keep coming and tipping over and keep
coming and tipping over. But then there's one
tree that just just stands there.
It's just rooted, and it's and the winds
come, and they try to knock it over,
and it's just standing where it's standing. It
doesn't budge. It doesn't move.
And that's that's the description of the believer.
That's the description of someone who has
inside of them.
There's another interesting thing about
this tree that doesn't have deep roots.
You know,
Rasool Allah sallaihi wa sallam
was call he was given many accusations, right,
that in order to dismiss Islam, he was
accused of many things. And 2 of those
I'll point out for you this discussion for
you. He was called a poet,
and he's called a liar.
And a poet is an entertainer.
You guys know that. Right? A poet is
an entertainer.
And an entertainer, when he starts, you know,
spitting out his bars
and the people start booing, I don't wanna
hear this.
You know? What's the entertainer gonna do? Keep
going?
No.
He's gonna say, I'm gonna go find a
different audience.
These guys don't like it. I'll pack my
bags, move to the next town, maybe they'll
like my song better.
Or he's going to change his song entirely.
I don't want to hear about this. He'll
change the subject matter of his music. He'll
change the tune entirely.
That's the 2 options the poet has.
The liar,
if he speaks and the public says, you
liar,
we know you're lying.
You know, you're full of it. And they
call him out for being a liar. Is
he going to go to the same group
again and lie to them again? No. He's
going to try to find some other sucker
somewhere else, in some other town,
and hopefully they don't catch him being a
liar. You understand?
Rasul
is being called a poet and
a liar. He comes back to the same
crowd or goes to a different crowd?
He goes to the same crowd. And is
he is the next surah that's being revealed,
is it changing the message, or is it
keeping the same message and even reinforcing the
same message? It's reinforcing it. And if he's
a liar, why is he coming back for
more?
And no liar ever come comes back for
more.
So they didn't even call him, they called
him because it's, it's got the in it.
Right? He keeps on lying. He keeps on
lying. That's their way of saying, he keeps
coming back. I don't understand this.
Why does he keep coming back? Why doesn't
he just go? Any other liar would just
go away. Why doesn't he go away? You
know? And that's one of the things I
realized today about even the previous parable about
the roots being deep,
it helped me understand something about the Quran.
Notice if you study the Quran beginning to
end, even if you're just reading the translation,
you'll notice some ideas are repeated over and
over and over again.
Right? And that's you know, one of the
functions of that, one of the purposes of
that is it makes your roots deeper.
It makes that some ideas become second nature.
They're repeated so much,
and they're embedded in you so deeply that
you can't escape them ever. It's almost like
I'll give you the parable of, like, a
red light, traffic light. I don't care where
on the planet you are. If you're driving
and you see a red light, you're gonna
stop except for Pakistan. But everywhere else, you're
gonna stop.
You're
because the you're attuned, you're
you're you're programmed that that's a stop.
You're sitting in a car. You're you're a
taxi, an Uber. You're not even driving. You're
in some other country, and there's a red
light and the guy is talking and he's
not slowing down. What are you gonna do?
Hey. Hey. Hey. Red light.
Why? Because there's been so much of the
red light
your whole life. It's been it's, you know,
it's
in your soul.
So nobody has to teach you that. You
just see the red light, you know you
have to stop. One of the things that
the Quran does is it the reminders about
Allah, the reminders about
the the reminders about what the Quran really
is. They are so reinforced
that a regular listener to the Quran,
some things will just become deep and firm
and really well rooted and established.
And every time we make salah, every time
we recite Quran, they get established again and
the roots get fed again and the roots
get fed again. Right?
So now, this is this is the last
bit of, what I want to share with
you
about ideologies. Like, for example, communism or new
waves of, of ideologies.
Usually
what most people,
millions of people get affected by is not
an idea. Usually,
in the world, most people get affected by
a personality.
So you can have an Adolf Hitler,
and he's very charismatic in the way that
he speaks and very, you know, emotionally
entangling,
and millions and millions of youth start listening
to what he has to say.
The communist revolution wasn't spread by articles and
papers as much as it was by extremely
charismatic
of
the communist movement.
Right? So you have to have these personalities
that can sell the idea,
that can gather the masses, and, you know,
attract the crowd.
So it becomes
revolving around personalities. This is this is also
true of, like, Napoleon in history, for example.
And from what we can tell of the
of Firaun in the Quran, it seems like
he was a very, very eloquent speaker. Like,
he was a very effective communicator.
Right? So this is one of the qualities
of
ideas that spread quickly. But the thing is,
now you're not attached
to an idea. You're attached to a personality.
You're attached to a person. You're attached to
it. And you don't know you you haven't
gained enough depth in that idea. The question
is, why are they doing it? Please pay
attention to this part. This is the last
thing I'll share with you, but I think
it's very important for you to understand this.
Because this will this is really the difference
between Kalima Habita and Kalima Taima to in
my mind.
How many people here study marketing?
Marketing. Okay. 1 or 2 people. May Allah
forgive us. Okay. So, like
so in marketing, you have something called a
funnel. Right? So the the the idea of
a funnel is I'm gonna create some content
online, for example, nowadays, and it's gonna be
10 seconds long, 20 seconds long, but I'm
gonna make sure that it's so interesting
and so click baity
that as many people as possible, a 1000000
people, 5,000,000 people are gonna click on this
thing, and they're gonna watch these 10 or
20 seconds. Right? What's my hope? My that's
not my end goal. That was my starting
point. I got somebody interested.
When I got them interested, my hope is
they'll watch the next thing that's similar to
that. That's 20, 30 seconds. From there, I
might interest them in a 3 minute video.
From there, I might interest them in a
30 minute podcast.
And from the 30 minute podcast, I might
sell them a it's a product that I'm
selling based on these ideas, my my brand
new revolutionary shampoo.
Right?
My goal was to sell the shampoo,
but I started by making a video that
had nothing to do with the shampoo, but
it reached how many people?
Like, millions of people. And then a 100000
people saw the 3 minute video. Then 5,000
people saw or heard the 30 minute podcast,
and 20 people bought the shampoo.
Right? So now I realize I gotta get
20, 30, 40,000,000 people, and that'll become 60
sales, 70 sales, a 100 sales. That's the
funnel.
Keep feeding the top of it and some
people will keep dripping into your sales. Right?
That's the idea.
What's the ultimate objective?
You know, the shampoo I made from banana
peels or whatever I made. Right? That's that's
my objective. That's what I'm trying to sell.
At the end of it all, you're trying
to get a message out to people
as far wide as possible. Is the message
deeply rooted in something?
No. And what's the end objective of that
message?
The ben to benefit the one that's giving
the message.
To benefit the one that's giving the message.
If you look at the analogy of the
good tree
in the previous ayats,
At the end of it all, it produced
fruit.
Is the fruit benefiting the one who planted
it? Or is the fruit benefiting others?
It's benefiting others.
It's actually benefiting others. The effort of the
one who's planting a good a good word
and a good tree is not so they're
the beneficiary
in the end. They're doing it so others
are a beneficiary in the end and the
their own branches are pointed to the sky.
They're expecting from Allah and they're hoping other
people can benefit not because they're looking for
praise of other people, but when other people
benefit, it only elevates their own rank with
Allah. That's their hope. Right?
Now with this in mind, we're not gonna
talk about shampoos. We're gonna talk about other
things. We're gonna talk about different kinds of
religious ideologies,
cults.
You know, we don't have to talk about
Hinduism or Buddhism or Christianity or other. We
need to talk about the dirty laundry even
within the ummah, even within the the world
of Islam. So I'll share one one crazy
story with you,
and I will call it a night. And
this is this is about charlatans,
posers.
You had
this this actually happened in the United States.
There was some some guy came, sat in
the back of the masjid,
looked like a sheikh, like there's a sheikh
look. You guys know, you know, like a
like
almost floating,
You know? He's sitting in the back just
doing and just signing. And somebody comes, I've
never seen you here before.
I'm a traveler.
Everything is okay.
Oh, okay. So you you look like you've
been here for a while. You didn't eat
anything. It's okay. Allah will provide.
No. No, brother. Come to my home and
eat.
I takes the guy to his house, and
they have dinner. And he says, so where
are you from? I'm just a traveler in
this world.
We're all travelers in this dunya.
And then he starts talking about dunya and
Achera, and the, you know, what's gonna happen
on judgement day, and our sins and the
guy who's giving him dinner is like,
oh, the she really touched my heart.
Hey, Sheikh,
please come back tomorrow. I'm gonna bring some
of my friends.
No. No. No. It's okay. I don't want
to be a burden. No. Please, Sheikh. Please.
Come. And he brings him the next day,
and then this life is a journey, and
has nothing, and our sins, and there's 3
guys that are sick.
My my wife really needs to hear this.
Can I bring our can we bring our
families next week?
And he starts a whole thing in not
in the Masjid.
Do you wanna do this in the masjid?
No. No. No. No. No. I don't I
don't want to go to the masjid.
Plus, if you want to do this in
the home, it's okay. I don't want to
bother the masjid administration.
Goes and starts doing it in people's homes.
Now people start gathering around the sheikh, the
mysterious sheikh, and families are getting together. And
they're all sitting 3, 4 hours listening how
terrible they are and how ready for hell
they are, and there's no hope, and they
better fix their ways and all of it.
And he's got them a lock, and then
they come and say, where are you staying,
Sheikh? I noticed you have a lot of
clothes in your car. Are you staying in
your car? No. No. No. We can't have
that. Let me get you a let me
get you an apartment,
and let me set you up. No. No.
No. I don't want any No. Shit. Shit.
Shit. You have to There's not even a
choice. And now they get him a place
to stay. Now they're getting him food. Now
they're getting him money. He's not out he
keeps saying no no no no no no
no. And they keep giving giving giving. Eventually,
he has such a hold on these few
families.
He starts telling them, yeah, there's, you know,
the that that you pray in the masjid,
that's not even.
You know? And then, yeah, it's not. And
then they start having their own
jumah
with the with the sheikh in the living
room.
And then
then he starts telling them what to name
their kids when they're when they're born, and
who they should whether they should marry or
they should get divorced.
And then the women want their special with
the sheikh, with their for their own questions.
And he has a special hold on the
ladies in the in that community. And he's
got money, money, money, money from the he's
getting it, and he's sending everybody to Jannah.
He's doing it.
And all of a sudden, somebody finds out
that he was doing some inappropriate things that
I don't have to spell out to you.
He's doing some inappropriate things. And now they
wanna ask some questions. Next thing you know,
you can't find the sheikh. The van is
gone.
And in the sheikh, two towns over, is
another masjid somewhere,
and he's sitting in the back doing zikr.
And somebody comes, brother, sheikh, I've never seen
you around here. I'm just a traveler in
this dulia.
You know,
it sounds funny, but actually this exists.
These charlatans exist.
These people that sell people religion,
that manipulate people's emotions. For what purpose? For
their own gain.
For their own gain. For their own, you
know, hubris.
And they're doing this. They pick up they're
they're not rooted in any place. They're not
rooted in any ideas. That's why
notice the language
right above the surface of the earth as
if to say the roots never took hold.
They're right under the surface. There's nothing really
there rooted. And once they get picked up
from one place, they just set up somewhere
else and start the same problem again, and
then go somewhere else and start the same
problem again. Their prop their their the the
purpose isn't to benefit people. The purpose is
to raise your your your own tree as
high as possible
before the wind comes. And as soon as
the wind comes, I'm out. I'll set up
somewhere else.
Right? You know, in business, those of you
that are in biz in in in the
in the world of business, there's vertical
customer base and there's horizontal customer base. What
that means is if I have a million
customers and they all buy one thing from
me once a year or something or just
come and come and go, that's my horizontal
base. But if I have loyal customers who
understand my product, who are, you know, who
are brand ambassadors of mine, they come come
those are your vertical base. Right?
What Islam does it's interested in getting the
word out the Prophet
even said
vertically
to to knowing more about the Rasul
to knowing more about Allah etcetera etcetera they're
gonna start on a journey right but at
the end of that journey who's gonna benefit
They are. They're the they're the ones that
are gonna have the fruit and there'll be
a benefit to other people. That's why it
spreads the way that it does. And then
there are other ideas that spread, but the
reason they're spreading is somebody's making money off
of you.
You're they're making their content viral
because they're getting kickbacks from the end or
they're selling their banana shampoo or whatever the
hell they're selling.
Right? That's that's about them,
And that's it has no stability. It's not
calling to anything deeper.
You know, yesterday, I made some comment about
emotional rhetoric
in Islam, and I don't mean to be
condescending to any efforts or undermine any efforts,
but understand this. If even if you're gonna
give a fiery,
that fiery khutba should lead to something more
settled.
It's it's gotta it's it's it's bringing people
towards something more stable.
Because for example, if, you know, I'm in
Egypt
and there's, you know, you know, what used
to happen is people used to make, you
know, like what happened in Denmark and other
places, they made cartoons about Rasool alaihi wa
sallam or burning a mushaf and things like
that. Right? And we're enraged and somebody gets
up in a Muslim country and gives a
fiery khutbah about the honor of the prophet
salallahu alaihi wa sallam and how we cannot
tolerate him being dishonored alaihi sallahu alaihi wasallam.
Right? And so really fiery Khudbah and everybody's
speaking takmir.
So there's all this rage of 10,000 people
in the crowd that got really fired up.
What do they do with that rage? Now,
you see some of those guys in the
love of the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam
start burning down a KFC because it's fried
chicken and you know like flipping cars over,
burning tires,
causing damage,
you know, roads are blocked, some lady needed
to get to the hospital, the ambulance can't
get through because people love the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. They're protesting right now.
Like, so you took that rage, but you
didn't channel it in a in a direction.
And what happens then? From there, Shaitan takes
good intentions and turns them into whatever he
wants to turn them into.
So it's not enough to actually agitate the
emotion or to excite the emotion. It must
be channeled in a proper direction. That's
That's actually
Now look at these last words, and I'll
let you guys go for the night. I
know it's late. Like,
Allah will firm up those who have believed
with the firm word.
Remember
and now
with Allah will firm us up with the
firm word. This is referring to the Quran.
Notice it used to be now it's
meaning from a word to entire speech. Meaning
there's a development, there's a progression. You started
with a word but now you're actually embodying
the entire word and a kalima was one
instance. At some point somebody said something good.
But
in this worldly life and in the next
life, that's actually a lifelong commitment to
We become people of straightforward speech.
What does that what does that
do? Actually, I I wanna take time to
describe this to you originally tomorrow because it's
this is an important concept.
The the tafbit
of alqooluthtabit.
This is the juice of these two parables
now, Allah is giving us the concluding ayah
in 28, and in it he says,
1 observation about this ayah I will tell
you today, and that is notice 3 times
Allah mentions his name.
3 times. Allah
says,
3 times.
Why
3 times? Because when someone has
then they remember Allah,
It's almost an isharah that you cannot
have you cannot have the firm word within
you without the excessive remembrance of Allah. Because
from a language perspective, you mentioned the noun
once and then you mentioned pronouns. You don't
mention, you know,
Right? But this is
It's actually constantly
Allah, Allah, Allah,
To emphasize
what does it mean for someone to have
tomorrow in some depth.
tomorrow in some depth.