Nouman Ali Khan – Striking Examples From the Quran #27 Unravelled Yarn
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the parable of Surah Al Nahal and the importance of finding a way to be a better position in the world. They emphasize the importance of protecting oneself and finding a way to be a better position in the world. The speakers also emphasize the importance of testing one's behavior with Sabotage and maintaining consistency in goal setting. They stress the need for privacy and maintaining a positive attitude.
AI: Summary ©
Somebody, go get some water, please.
There's a cup saying, well, what's he's doing?
There's someone that's just mute that.
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So the parable that I'm leaving you off
with,
is actually number
92
of Surah Al Nahal. So you notice that
there have been a number of parables in
Surah Al Nahal. So it's one of the
unique features and qualities of Surah Al Nahal.
And this parable is unlike
pretty much any other parable in the Quran
in terms of the the painting that it
that it depicts.
Don't become like the woman
who,
broke apart or unknotted,
untied
her spindle.
Now many of you might not know what
a spindle is and what that means, so
let me try and explain to you in
simple language. You can look this up on
YouTube. If you look up spindle and ancient
spindle and wool, you'll find the imagery that
it's talking about, but I'll try to
describe it in words to you. So they,
you know, they wanna make wool from a
sheep. Right? So they shave the the fur
or the wool off of the sheep, and
it's just a bunch of fluffy stuff like
clouds. Right? It's like cotton candy type looking
thing. Right? So what they do then is
they have this metal device
that's got a hook on top and it
spins and it's got a weight. So they
hook some of that fluffy cloud into it
and they let it hang.
And once it hangs, it starts pulling down
on
the cloud and forming a little bit of
a string, then they spin it so the
wool starts spinning and getting stronger.
And little by little, the patch of wool
is starting to turn into a string.
And as because the more string
it starts producing,
the lower this thing is called the spindle.
In Arabic, we call it a gazal
a gazal. So the lower the gazal gets,
the longer the spindle gets the longer the
thread gets, the lower it's getting to the
ground. Now, you can't use it anymore because
it's already touching the ground, so what they
do with the way they make the spindle
is you wrap the string around
the the gazal, around the spindle. So you
can keep spinning it and keep producing more
and more and more of the yarn, more
and more of the wool. Right? And that's
the ancient way. Of course, later on machinery
came and there was mechanical ways of doing
this, but this was a skilled technique
that people used to use to produce
basically wool string, right, which is then going
to be used
to make mats. It's gonna be used in
huts. It's gonna be used in producing warm
clothes. It's gonna have multiple functions, right? It's
basically their fabric,
right? And that fabric is gonna be used
for multiple functions. So Allah is saying, don't
be like the woman who undid
her spindle,
after
strength. What that means is, after strengthening the
wool, because the more it spins, the stronger
the thread gets. And she's apparently The example
of the woman being given is very good
at making this wool, so the string gets
very very strong.
And now it's all wrapped up around the
spindle, and after it's all done and it's
ready, she starts tearing it she starts unwrapping
it.
She starts And then she Allah says,
and she breaks it up into
smaller ripped fibers, like she just literally takes
the string that took so much work to
make, and she starts tearing it open and
ripping it open.
Okay? And Allah says, don't be like this
woman. Now this sounds like a crazy lady,
right, quite literally. It's it's it's like this
lady who's like, you know, this is not
an example of knitting, but imagine some lady
who's knitting, knitting, knitting, some old crazy woman
and then she's like, and she starts tearing
it up, right? And then she starts knitting
it again and then ripping it up again.
Right? This is psychotic behavior, right?
But this is not about the knitting, this
is about creating the spindle or doing this
this really crafty work, and at the end
of that crafty work, undoing all of it.
But that's not the entirety of the ayah.
That's the entirety of the parable, but not
the entirety of the ayah. And we're gonna
try to contextualize
what this image represents,
what are we learning from it. Right? So,
let's finish the rest of the ayah in
translation.
You people, all of you,
take your oaths
as a means of creating deception among each
other.
I'll say that again. You take your oaths,
meaning you swear by something, and you use
that oath that you swore by
as a means
to deceive each other.
And here is being used in the meaning
of and
and I'll explain that when the time comes.
That's still not the entire ayah. Why
do you take these oaths and deceive each
other?
So that one group can become in a
higher position
or become
loftier or more powerful or more in some
way
than another group. So one group can become
enhanced above another group.
And then Allah says, It
is Allah that it's only the fact that
Allah is testing you by means of it,
meaning by means of this oath or this
opportunity.
And absolutely
he swears by it that he will clarify
to all of you
on the day of resurrection,
in all of the things that you were
disagreeing with. So at face value, this seems
like a pretty obscure statement. We started off
with, don't be like a woman who undoes
the spindle and undoes all the threading of
the the work, Then the next component was,
you know, you take your oaths as a
means of deception. What in the world does
that mean? Then you make this you do
this deception so one group can have more
power than the other. Then Allah says, and
on judgment day or Allah is testing you
by means of this, and then he says
on you know, this is all done to
test you, and Allah will clarify on judgment
day the disagreements you used to have. So
it seems like a number of apparently disjointed
statements
that are all put together inside of one
ayah, but we're going to quite we're gonna
do literally what the image does. In the
image, it looks like incoherent
fluff of wool and it turns into a
coherent string, and we're gonna string all of
these concepts together
ourselves as we try to understand this ayah.
So the first thing I'll do is take
you back a little bit to the 80th
ayah, this is the 92nd ayah. I'll take
you back to the 80th ayah for a
moment,
where Allah says,
that Allah made homes for you,
you know, of your homes He made a
way for you to be at peace,
And from the skins of animals, and the
skins of cattle, and, you know, domesticated animals,
you were able to make your homes, meaning
the walls and the windows and the curtains
of your homes. Right?
And they're very light for you to carry.
So they used to create these tents
from the fur of the animal, or the
leather of the animal, or whatever. And they
were lightweight. And Allah says you are they're
light enough for you that you can take
them when you go on your trips and
even when you settle down. So, they're using
tents and, you know, the kaima of the
ancient Arab world, they're using it as a
residential component
and they're also using it on their journey.
It's like a mobile home type thing, right?
So, and from the wool, and the fur,
you know, and the different, you know, the
hairs that come out of the animal, all
of these you put to use in different
ways, and you utilize them until a given
time. So Allah is already making reference to
the idea that animal fur and animal hairs
are being put to variety of uses. Now
the idea is already kind of planted in
the mind of the listener, and now Allah
is building on top of that idea as
the ayat go on, right? So that's one
kind of a subtle reference to what's coming
already mentioned in the ayat before. Now I'll
take you to ayah number 88.
Those who disbelieved and stopped themselves and others
from the path of Allah, We increased them
in punishment above and beyond punishment
because of the corruption they caused. Now there's
some interesting elements here.
The those who disbelieved and stopped themselves
and stopped others.
Is double meaning. Stop yourself and stopped others.
And then the other is, they'll get double
punishment because of not their corruption,
but the corruption that they caused.
So it's not
or It's actually
It's So they're causing corruption.
They're kind of, you know, making corruption viral.
They're spreading it. Right? So this seems like
an unrelated ayah, but we're gonna see how
this all ties together. Now
one last thing. The ayah I wanted to
share with you, the the one we're talking
about with the with the woman you working
on the spindle, this is ayah number 92.
I'll just start now our actual work from
ayah number 91.
And fulfill the promise made with Allah when
you've made that promise.
The context of this surah is it's one
of the late late
Maqan Surahs. Surah Nahl is a late Maqan
Surah. Now why is that important? Because
the experience of the Muslims is very different
in early Islam
in Mecca to late Islam in Mecca.
Things have become much more hostile.
We are very, very close to Mecca not
being livable anymore for Muslims,
so there are there's already an effort to
look for an alternative base for Islam, and
for Muslims to be able to survive. You
all are familiar with the attempt
to try to find safe haven in Ta'if.
You're familiar with that, and eventually Allah opens
the door in Madinah,
right?
And at this point, even coming back from
Ta'if, Rasulullah
had to seek the protection of a non
Muslim to be able to come back into
Mecca. Right? So things have become
a security threat for Muslims by this time.
Things have become very, very difficult by this
time. The Arabs have a culture, and in
that culture, when you are threatened,
when you're in danger,
and you're a small group of people, then
you seek a wali.
You seek something called a. This is before
Islam.
And a is someone, if there's a small
tribe, and they're afraid that the big tribe
is going to attack them, they'll go to
another tribe and say, hey. We wanna be
you want us we want us to be,
we wanna be to each other. We'll be
for each other, which means we'll do business
with each other, we'll marry among each other,
we'll give each other loans, we'll, you know,
exchange,
ideas,
we'll teach your kids, you can teach our
kids, we'll do all kinds of stuff together,
and if we're ever attacked, we'll defend together.
Right? So this became an alliance.
Right? They become to each other. This is
the kind of thing the United States and
Israel is nowadays.
Right? They're oliya to this is an example
of oliya.
This is
just so you can understand what oliya means.
There's business ties, there's political ties, there's economic
ties, there's, you know, all kinds of ties
that that create this system. But the motivation
for the weaker group
was by making this we're going to have
some level of protection.
We're going to secure ourselves, and we're going
to put ourselves in a better position. So
I want you to keep that in the
back of your minds. Now,
they've tried to eliminate Islam for almost 13
years now.
It's not working.
They tried to ridicule the Prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. They tried to feel sorry for
him, call him crazy.
Maybe he's upset. Maybe maybe he's possessed, poor
guy. He was a good man, but, unfortunately,
these things happen. What can you do? Or
maybe somebody did magic on him, or then
maybe, no. Nobody did magic on him. He's
himself the magician. He's the liar, he's the
poet. All these allegations came and went, none
of them stuck. They could they none of
them could work. And the and Islam keeps
moving forward. Then, of course, came further propaganda,
putting pressure on the youth that were becoming
Muslim, and getting them to feel loyal to
their families, and getting them to leave Islam,
and go back to the old way. That
wasn't working. Then they noticed that the the
the lower class of society,
like the slaves of the society,
or the poor of the society, many of
them were starting to come to Islam, like
Bilal came into Islam, for example. Right? So
when when people like that come come into
Islam, they're like, well, it's not really that
big of a problem, because this is a
religion of poor people, insignificant people.
The the riffraff.
You know,
the insignificant
population.
But then you start seeing people like Hamzal
or Omar Ibn Khattab
or Abu Bakr Siddiq himself is actually a
significant figure himself. Now you're starting to see
some pretty serious people in the community
also coming towards Islam, and this is not
looking good because they're not just silently Muslim.
They're all becoming vocal advocates and vocal mouthpieces
for what the Quran is saying.
As we saw in the previous parable. So
the problem is becoming bigger. I want you
to think from the Quraysh perspective. This problem
is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and
the open opposition against it
is not helping.
It's not working.
So they tried a new tactic.
And I want you to today is gonna
require a little bit of cognitive energy. It's
our last parable, but it's work. So I
want you to just to stay focused with
me. Towards the end of Makkah,
you find a couple of Surahs
where the fur for the first time, the
Quran is gonna talk about hypocrisy.
For the first time, the Quran will talk
about hypocrisy.
Normally, we think hypocrisy is a subject in
Madinah.
So just even though hypocrisy is a giant
subject in the Quran, the basics you need
to understand for this discussion
is that the idea of the hypocrite is
they come into Islam
for some other objective,
for another motivation,
and they have something to gain other than
the pleasure of Allah for being Muslim.
Basically, there's a there's a alternative objective. Either
they came in with the wrong intention or
they came in with good intention, and over
time their intention became corrupt,
and they have other motivations.
That's basically, at a very simplistic level, that's
what nifaq is. Now, the enemy was not
able to take Islam on head on.
So one of the things they tried to
do is to get some of the people
that are in Islam,
to offer them an alternative. Look. Ever since
you became Muslim,
life has become hard, hasn't it?
Your cousins hate you. Your brother hates you.
Your uncle hates you. Your mom doesn't talk
to you. You've been homeless for 2 years
now. You realize that. Right?
Remember your favorite horse? Your brother's riding it
now. It's not you. Remember the girl you
were about to marry? She spits at your
name now.
And they're they're coming to this guy, and
they're trying to, like, look. Life was good.
Everything was great, and this Islam
is the reason there's a problem. We're not
saying you become non Muslim, though.
We're not saying that. We're just saying that,
you know, if if your prophet is ever
saying something about us or if he's making
any kind of plans, you could just let
us know.
You could just because we're family too.
So maybe, okay, we don't like Islam, but
we like you, though. We like you. You're
one of the good guys.
So you're not like the rest of those
extremist Muslims.
So we want you to under like, okay.
Fine. You're a Muslim, but you're also a
Qureshi.
We're still family,
So you know, you could just help us
out a little bit, take care of your
own too.
It's not such we're not asking you to
just, oh, forget about God or whatever. Okay?
Your religion is your religion. We understand. It's
completely fine. You can be a good Muslim
and be a good citizen of Mecca at
the same time. Okay?
And this is this is for your own
benefit. We're just looking out for you. We
care about you as a fellow family member,
a fellow Qurayshi citizen,
right? Of course, this used to happen 1000
of years, centuries ago centuries ago. It doesn't
happen anymore, so this is I'm just talking
crazy. But anyway,
now this person who is
in Islam, have been has been in Islam,
is starting to get tempted to
switch sides a little, not even openly, just
a little bit.
Just a little bit. Just spy on your
people just a little bit. You know?
Not full
on just
Okay?
Alright.
So you could just you could still stay
within your people, but then have dual,
you know, loyalties.
And then there's another kind of believer too.
A believer who's who's starting to some of
this talk is starting to get to him.
You know, when you come into Islam in
Mecca,
life gets hard, and it doesn't get easier.
It keeps getting harder.
It keeps on getting harder and harder. And
as it keeps getting harder and harder, you
know, something you were some convenience you were
used to is gone now, And then there's
another annoyance, and another annoyance, and another aggravation,
and another agitation, another deprivation, another and it's
just adding up. And eventually, you know, somebody
might start thinking, this is something, it's too
much, I can't take it anymore.
Okay? Fine. I wanna be Okay? It's the
true religion, but this is too hard for
me, I can't.
It's too much.
You know? And they may have done a
lot of good for many years, but they're
starting to get burnt out.
They're starting to feel like, you know what?
I, you know, I I tried. I really
did. I came into it for good reason,
but I don't have the energy to keep
going like this.
I I don't I don't have that in
me. And they're trying to now they're thinking
about
pulling back.
Listen to these aat again with that background.
Fulfill the promise made with Allah that you
have already made.
And do not violate the oaths that you
have taken. You've taken an oath with Allah.
You took an oath with Allah,
and you didn't took take an oath with
Allah and say, I will follow your religion.
I will follow this prophet. I will accept
this message so long as it's convenient,
or so long as it doesn't cross a
certain threshold of my my comfort level. If
it drops below that comfort zone, I I,
you know, I can't I can't do this.
So, you know, it's not it's not I
accept Islam, I accept Allah as the God,
and I accept Muhammad as the Messenger of
Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam until it's easy.
And until the moment it gets difficult, then
you know, we'll have to renegotiate next year,
let's come back and revisit the contract.
Allah is saying,
after it has been reinforced because over the
years you came into Islam, but after you
came into Islam, more Quran was revealed.
And every time more Quran was revealed and
you heard more of the word of Allah
it became even more enforced why you should
be a believer.
Over the years your reason to be convinced
were only enforced not weakened,
right? Now this is again I've talked about
civilizational Muslims before but a lot of times
when Muslims don't have a connection to the
Quran,
then they may they're raised in a Muslim
religious family,
and they are practicing, their father brings them
to the masjid, mother puts them in some
kind of an Islamic school or Islamic weekend
program or the Qarissa comes to the house
and has you recite Quran or whatever. You're
a good boy. You're a good girl. Right?
But over time, you start questioning things, and
then your parents don't have the answers to
those questions. And eventually, you start thinking, as
I age,
the longer I stay in this religion, the
more unanswered questions I have.
So I'm my religion is not being reinforced.
It's actually being weakened over time
instead of being reinforced.
And the parents are thinking, well, we we
brought a guy with a beer to the
house so everything should be okay now. He
was reciting Quran so and it's the dude
that was pretty good and he even made
him memorized a couple of surahs so he
should be guaranteed to be a solid Muslim
for the rest of his life and this
same kid starts asking questions about stuff, and
you're like, oh,
I think we need to bring a different
kind of who's gonna
you
know? But here, what Allah is saying is
these people came into Islam,
and then after coming into Islam, Allah actually
reinforced their
faith.
After it was reinforced and reemphasized,
and you had made Allah the care your
caretaker,
meaning you had left your hand matter in
the hands of Allah. Allah became your gufil,
your guarantor.
You didn't concern yourself with what society thinks,
what anybody thinks, you came with resolve. You
know what happens to people sometimes? They get
fired up and they sign up for something,
and later on the fire wears off, and
they're like,
can I cancel my membership?
You know?
You know, know? Because in the heat of
the moment, you just, ah, yes.
And then later on,
actually,
I I'll I'll call you back.
You know.
And so, Allah is saying, actually, you had,
at the time, you had made an oath,
not with the Prophet
but you didn't leave your matters in the
hands of some Imuh, you made Allah your
caretaker. You decided that Allah will take care
no matter what happens.
And Allah knows what you're doing. Now comes
this parable,
Don't become like the woman who undid the
spindle. So now let's understand what Allah is
saying.
Coming into Islam
and staying in Islam
is hard work, like the woman who's doing
hard work and making the threat.
She's doing hard work and making the threat.
Right? And as you're making the thread, as
you're staying in Islam,
there are,
you know, grievances.
There are difficulties. There are challenges. There are
inconveniences.
There's you know, just like the thread, it
has some imperfections,
because it's wool, right? So it's not perfect.
There's some strings pulling out here and there,
and there are challenges as you're making it.
Now, this lady who's making the thread, she
wants everything to be perfect.
So the moment she notices one thread is
going this way, one is going that way,
she goes, ah, forget it.
And she just
undoes everything. Forget it. Forget it. I don't
want to do any of this. Allah is
describing the mentality of a person who came
into Islam, and they assumed that once they
come into Islam, because Allah is on my
side, life will be easy. And they came
into Islam, and life became what?
It became hard. I didn't sign up for
this. This is too much anxiety. This is
actually I'm I'm really I'm really triggered person,
and I'm healing right now, so I can't
you know?
This is too triggering for me, so I
need to I need to take some time
for myself and heal
from Islam.
So
so,
you wanna take a break. You wanna just
un and you did a lot of good
before this happened, before you ran out of
steam, before you decided to take a break,
or have some me time, or whatever it
is you want to call it, right? Before
that, you had done a lot of good,
and Allah is saying, if you walk away
from this religion in that way,
then it's like all the work you did
has all gone to where you just you
ripped it all
up. You ripped it all, and all because
you couldn't handle certain inconveniences. This is an
about developing grit, toughness.
You're on a task, stay on task.
And sometimes people are in the middle of
doing something, like, you know, for example, you're
praying every day, you're reciting Quran, you're some
some kids are memorizing Quran, etcetera.
And after a while, you start getting tired
of it, and you're like, why am I
even doing this, man?
I don't even know why I'm doing it
anymore.
I'm losing motivation.
I'm losing sense of purpose. You know why
that happens? Because now you you're not do
you weren't doing it for the right enough
reasons. Maybe you're doing it because everybody else
around you is doing it, maybe you're doing
it because your parents told you to, maybe
you're doing it because you started off with
clear a clear conscious mindset, that you're doing
it for Allah, but there was no afterwards,
there was no reinforcement afterwards, so that original
intention started
kinda slipping out, slipping away.
Right? I'm I'm reminded
I didn't plan on discussing this with you,
but I'm reminded of, like, you know, sometimes
brothers get together and families get together in
a community where there's almost no Muslims,
and they take some of their life savings,
put them together, and they start renting some
empty storefront
to turn into a masjid.
Right? And it's really hard for them to
put that together, but they do, and they
start praying there, and slowly people start showing
up for jum'ah, and stuff like that, and
then they start collecting a little bit of
money, and then more money comes in, And
their intention was, You Allah, we just want
a place where we can worship You, and
we can bring our children to worship You,
because this is a land where there's no
Muslims there. Right? So that was their intention.
And then, fast forward 5 years, some Ramadan
they had a fundraiser, they had another fundraiser,
another fundraiser. Now they've gathered a couple of
1,000,000, and now they bought this big land,
and giant construction project. It's a beautiful masjid
in the same neighborhood. And when this beautiful
masjid came, then those same brothers who used
to pray together, and used to be like
best of friends, and help each other, and
all of that. Now there's who's gonna be
president?
Wait. So so so you're gonna be president?
But
No. I think you should be secretary. I
think I should be president. Who's gonna be
treasurer? Who's gonna sign the checks?
Now who's gonna do this? Who's gonna decide?
Who's gonna hire the imam? Who's gonna And
now those same people start having a power
struggle among each other, politics among each other,
unfortunately, in some cases, lawsuits against each other.
This happens. This is a reality. What happened?
The intentions were very pure in the beginning,
but there was no afterwards. There was no
reinforcement of the same mindset. And this is
Allah teaching us just because you start something
with a good intention, and a good purpose,
and a good motive, doesn't mean that that
motivation will remain
automatically on autopilot the same way. You have
to keep nurturing it.
Just like has to be reinforced, our motivations
have to be reinforced.
They have you have to revisit them. So
now and don't become like those who don't
revisit them, and then those motivations and the
original intentions,
they almost disappear somewhere in the background,
and now you don't you don't even know
why you're doing what you're doing.
You you don't even have a and you
start ripping it apart.
You start tearing it up.
The the other implication of this that I
want you to understand is, don't be like
those who undo
this, and
let's tie it to the rest of the
ayah when Allah says,
So you're taking your oaths with the Muslims,
this is the part you need to really
understand, There are some Muslims who become Muslim,
life has become hard. Other people from the
Quraish side are coming and saying, hey, man.
Remember life was good with us?
And listen, Islam is not doing so well.
You can see it's not doing well. Right?
You saw what happened with, you know, our
family the other day. You saw what happened
with the last week, you saw what happened
with Bilal, right? The whole boulder situation, you
know about that, right? So you know how
things are going,
and you know where this is going to
end up, like you're not blind. I know
you're a pretty to be a pretty smart
guy. I'm not saying you leave Islam,
but just can you just introduce,
when the next time you guys have your
meeting,
can you just kind of
introduce some things on my behalf? Just
throw this in a little bit. Throw a
little bit of, you know because because I'm
I'm looking out for you. So just I'm
not asking you to do Allah. Just a
little bit of sabotage.
Just a little bit of sabotage. This is
the beginnings of nifaq, isn't it? This is
the beginnings of hypocrisy.
You're trying to get some people from within
the group of Muslims
to start sabotaging.
And so, Allah says that you take your
oath, meaning your
your shahada with the Muslims, you're using it
as a means of creating deception within you.
In Arabic means entry,
and is when something is unusually or unnaturally
inserted into something.
Like would be a bullet wound, because the
bullet doesn't belong inside the body, it's an
alien entity, so the body will reject it.
The woman that's undoing the spindle, it's like
she'll take the the tip of a knife
or a needle, and she'll try to insert
it into the thread, so till she can
re even rip it piece by piece, little
by little. And where am I getting the
little by little? From the word angathan. Because
nakaba is to undo a knot. It's
or or
But
is to actually tear to small pieces.
So you're not just undoing the whole knot,
you're going little piece by piece, meeting by
meeting, comment by comment.
Little by little, you're creating this sabotage,
and that you're you're becoming a puppet for
this outside force.
All of this why so one group can
start to rise above the other group. Some
of us looked at this as but the
word actually means to rise
Right? In the Quran. So one group will
rise above. In other words, you're looking at
the trends and you're saying, Islam and the
Muslims are having a hard time, and the
people of, they're gaining the upper hand. I
mean, it's only smart to kind of
have good ties with the people that are
winning. By the way, does this happen in
politics all the time? You can have some
mayor, or governor, or some, you know, some,
candidate for some cabinet seat or something else,
and they see one party is winning in
the elections, or the trends are favoring them,
and all of a sudden, they'll have a
private meeting, not publicly, private meeting, even though
they're from the opposite party, they'll have a
meeting with the other party and say, Yeah,
so Yeah, maybe we can work something out
maybe. You know, and then the other opposite
party will say, Look, you know how the
trends are going, we like you, we don't
like your party, we like you though.
So just a little bit of give and
take, and I think we can work something
out here. And so, Allah is saying, You
are going to stay within the Muslims,
cause deception,
all because one group may come to the
top, rise above another group
What a what a, like,
a distinct
and very precise laser precise commentary
on the nature of politics and sabotage.
Like I told you, they couldn't destroy Islam
from the outside. So now this is the
beginnings of trying to destroy Islam from the
inside. Get somebody on the inside to break
it up. Get somebody inside to to sabotage
the the Muslims.
Allah says, and these offers will come because
you they'll be enticing because if you accept
this offer, all those inconveniences will go away.
Right? Now look at this from another perspective.
You know, this this in the modern day
and age, what happened in some some governments
that shall not be named,
what they'll do is they'll go online under
some pseudo name on Twitter,
and they'll say the stupidest thing in the
name of Islam.
Yeah, we all know in Islam women are
almost animals
post
and now thousands of comments underneath they created
an entire store and you you And the
guy's name is Sincere Muslim_actually22.3.
Right?
And that
that's some government agency somewhere, that's
some bot somewhere that's generating this, and Muslims
are jumping in on this. This is the
new Muslim Twitter conversation.
And then there's another one, and there's another
Muslim Twitter. Oh, you know what's happening on
Muslim Twitter? Oh, Muslim Twitter.
You know?
And then they'll they'll do other things, like
they they did in the United States. It
was it was very interesting. Sometimes church groups
did this, sometimes other
intelligence agencies did this. They call this casting
a wider net. So what they do is
this one one time this even happened with
me, this was soon after 911.
There was this young guy that almost just
out of nowhere showed up at the masjid.
Can I get a ride with you? Can
you can you drop me home? I was
like,
okay. Yeah.
This young guy, it was 4, 5 of
us. We're driving together. He used to attend
the Halakon Wednesday night, so it was a
thing.
We're driving, and and he goes, yeah. You
know, we should do something. We should we
should we should at least, you know, attack
the airport or something.
And I was like, okay. So I'm gonna
report you to the authorities, and you can
get off this car right now. Because I
know for a fact he's wearing a recorder.
Right? And they're just they're trying to find
a moment to get you to say some
and there's a Muslim kid,
right, clearly a college student, probably in, you
you know, student debt, and they come and
say, listen. We can take care of your
debt. We know you don't have a proper
visa. We can take care of that too.
Just, you know, you just gotta just drop
one of these 2 1, 2 nights, and
plus it's the masjid you get reward for
going and praying there too.
So just go do that and just a
little bit, you know, you you
and and he's like, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And so this
is what Allah is saying,
They'll set people up that way. Right?
It's because this is sabotage from the inside,
from within.
And Allah
says, this
whole thing,
Allah is testing you with it.
There are 2 audiences in this. This is
what I want you to understand. One audience
is the person
who is being tempted by these offers.
So it's the person who the
have come to
to become a double agent.
Right? That's one side of it.
There's another side of it.
The other side of it is let me
give you the analogy. Let's go back to
the analogy to understand the other side.
Somebody was taking care of the sheep.
Somebody was milking the sheep, feeding the sheep,
getting them to graze the grass. Somebody else
was in charge of protecting the sheep.
Somebody else is in charge, or there's another
person in charge of housing the sheep.
Somebody else is in charge of shaving the
sheep. Somebody's in charge of carrying all that
wool and loading it and delivering it where
it will be turned into a spindle. And
to from from spindle to threads. Somebody's job
is to take the threads and take it
to someone who will actually turn it into
a bed or a a blanket or a
sweater or whatever they're gonna turn it into.
There are multiple parts of this process,
and one of those parts is the one
who's working on the spindle.
Now, if the people who There were people
who worked in this work supply chain before
her, and there are people and there are
people after her.
If she takes
this this, you know, thread, and she ruins
it,
didn't she put all the people behind her's
work to waste?
And all those people are like, I do
all this work, I take care of the
sheep, I do this, I do this, I
do this,
and I give it to her and look
at the You know what? I quit.
I can't work with these people. You know
what? I I'm just gonna go do something
else. I'll go, you know, raise chickens or
something. I'm done with sheep.
I don't wanna do this anymore.
And on the other side, after her, after
the her the supply chain, the one who's
supposed to knit and their their livelihood depends
on the knitting, they're like, where's the where's
the thread? Yeah. I ripped it up.
Forget it. I can't work with these people.
You know what this does? It's not just
her
that's been affected
by what she's done.
She's actually created
she's demoralized
people before before her, and she's demoralized people
after her. And they're like, you know what?
What's even the point of working with these
people? They're just going to sabotage everything.
Allah is actually saying in the beginning of
this parable,
it's the plural.
None of you should become like the woman
who undoes the
spindle, because some of you will see the
crazy lady, and you'll say, you know what?
She destroyed everything, there's no point in me
trying anyway.
So she became the reason that you messed
up.
The reality Allah is describing here is sometimes
somebody else in your when you're doing Islamic
work, when you're in a Muslim Students Association,
when you're in a organization,
when you're working at a masjid, when you're
working with a group of people that are
doing something for Islam, and somebody in the
organization did something messed up.
Somebody messed up. Somebody sabotaged. And you're like,
forget it. I can't work with these people.
I'm done. I'm out of here. I don't
want to deal with this anymore. You're just
like that person. Their sabotage succeeded. Not only
did they stop themselves,
they were successful also in
stopping you. Remember?
They stopped themselves and stopped you from the
path of Allah?
So now you're letting this lady not just
undo the spindle, she's undoing all of you
too.
That's what she's actually doing.
And so,
By the way,
is also important because the person who will
do the sabotage will be the same person
who had done a lot of good. They
were very good at what they were doing.
They were very reliable. Bin Badi Huwatin suggests
she's very good at what she does. She
can make very strong threads,
but she still destroyed it all, she undid
it all.
All because one group can rise above the
other group,
Allah is testing all of you with this
kind of a scenario.
He's not just testing that one person who's
acting like that woman, everybody who's impacted by
this
sabotage,
all of them are being addressed directly, this
is the kind of test that Allah will
give you,
and Allah will clarify for you on the
day of resurrection the disagreements you used to
have among yourselves. In other words, some of
these people were planted within the community
just to create disagreements.
And you used to wonder, why are we
why are we always disagreeing? Why is there
always this problem? And Allah says, Allah will
clarify to you on judgment day where all
these disagreements came from. SubhanAllah.
There's another dimension to this parable.
And the the the other dimension to this
parable actually has to do with,
the work that Allah has assigned
that all of us should be doing. Right?
It is it's meant to serve a greater
objective,
and you cannot lose sight that your work
is part of a larger
picture.
And whether somebody else does their part or
not,
you need to do
your part. Think about
Uhud.
In Uhud, every soldier is assigned a position
and a place.
Whether other soldiers are doing their part or
not has no effect. You have your job
to do. You cannot leave your position.
The same thing happens, for example, in sports.
You know, for some people, sports is just
fun, but for professional athletes, when they're playing
football, basketball,
kinds of these kinds of sports with their
positions, strategic positions,
then you that territory is your job.
And no matter what else is happening over
there, you cannot The goalie cannot decide to
go in the other guy's penalty and say,
I'll I'll take matters in my own hand.
You can't you can't do it. He has
he has a position he has to be
in. You have to you have to maintain
your role,
And you cannot start looking at other people
and saying, well, they're not doing their job,
so I'll do that, or forget it. I
don't wanna do it either.
You can.
If if the military started doing that, any
military who does that will fail, will collapse.
And so Allah is warning the ummah not
to be that way. And then then the
question arises, if we are 1 ummah, why
do we have so much trouble inside of
us?
Allah says,
Had Allah wanted, he would have made you
one single ummah.
However, Allah will allow to be misguided whoever
he wants and guide whoever he wants.
You will be questioned about what you did.
Don't look at somebody else and be demoralized,
you'll be asked about you, not anybody
else. Now look at that same parable,
And don't take your oaths as a means
of creating deception between each other. Be sincere.
Otherwise, if you do this, then feet that
were firm
are going to start slipping
even after they were firm. You were standing
strong, and now your feet started slipping. And
if that starts happening,
Same phrase again. And you will end up
tasting the evil, tasting the harm because of
stopping yourselves and stopping others from the path
of Allah.
Allah, and you'll have painful punishment.
You'll have this is the warning that Allah
has given us inside of this ayah, not
undoing the good that we may have done.
It's also describing that I may have done
a lot of good in my life.
I may have made a lot of thread.
Right?
And I've done years years of it. Oh,
I got entire
factories full of wool that I've yarned. How
many people are wearing my sweater?
Right?
But you know what? In this parable, it
doesn't matter how much wool you already made.
You could do what with one behavior?
Undo all of it. You know how Allah
says,
don't you dare die except that you're Muslim?
Does the concept
of and
in Islam, a bad ending and a good
ending in Islam?
Right? So it doesn't matter how much good
I have done before,
I need to protect all of the good
that I've done by not messing up now.
It's like all the good that I and
you may have done in our life is
not safe.
It's not it's like it's as delicate as
the wool,
And I may be so stupid like the
woman who
did all this work, and then she went
psycho and she tore it all up, or
she said, why am I even doing this?
There's one last bit of,
you know,
observation in this that you need to understand.
This is an about switching teams, isn't it?
Right? You see an advantage, somebody's rising to
the top, and you're like, I'd rather do
that.
The thing is, this lady just imagine the
ladies making this yarn.
She's making this yarn, and
she sees that if she takes up this
other job,
and she violates because she's making yarn for
somebody,
And somebody comes and says, I'll pay you
twice the money. Just destroy their business.
I'll give you money just to undo all
the work you're doing for this one.
And and those of you that are in
HR and recruiting,
sometimes,
people wanna poach poach employees from other companies.
Right?
I bet you, this probably never happens in
Manchester, definitely not on Winslow Road, but you
might have a really good chef in one
restaurant, and the other restaurant owner kinda after
the guy gets off of work. Yeah. I
wanna talk to you for a second.
Can you put a couple of cockroaches in
the biryani?
I'll give you a lot of good money.
You get tempted by one side to sabotage
the other.
You see something it's called the shiny new
penny syndrome. Right? You see a new opportunity,
and you see immediate gains, and the immediate
gain will come by you
not honoring the obligation you're already in.
You know,
for just to give you a kind of
an everyday example of that, you have contractors.
Like in technology,
you have contractors. Right? There's app developers and
things like that. Right? And they'll give you
a really good presentation. We can finish your
app in 3 weeks, and we can do
this, and we have so many developers, look
at it, you know, and
you're like, okay, let's sign the contract, and
the guy starts,
once he gets this contract, he puts, you
know, sends an email out, you know, we
have a contract with this company.
And now they start getting offers for 20
other contracts.
Do they turn them down and say, no.
We're busy with this one?
No. They accept all of them, and they
promise 3 weeks to all of them.
They don't say which 3 weeks.
There will be some weeks that will come
one day, hopefully, before your
And now the same people that were selling
you this
have now because they see shiny new penny,
right? So they overpromise,
and they get their loyalties go in every
direction, and they're not able to fulfill what
they were supposed to. It started with, you've
made an oath with Allah.
Fulfill the promise made with Allah now that
you've made it,
and now, don't let any other greedy shiny
opportunity get in the way of violating the
promise you've made with Allah. All the good
that you may have done will be washed
away.
This is the inclination
towards nifaq
that's already emerging
in Makkah,
in Makkah, as things get tougher, because nifaq
emerges when things get tougher.
You'll see it's spelled out in Suratul An
Kabut, which is also a Makkan Surah.
Allah will expose those who truly believe, and
Allah will expose those that are and that's
surah is also about difficulties intensifying for the
Muslims. So the kuffar coming and offering incentives.
Hey, we can make things easier for you.
Right? And so you'll find an ayah here
that almost sounds like a Madani ayah.
Do not sell the
signs of Allah, the ayat of Allah, for
a small price.
What Allah has in His possession is in
fact better for you
if in fact you know.
Whatever you have will run out.
And whatever Allah has will remain.
And those who can maintain sabr. Sabr means
you don't quit, you keep spinning, you don't
undo it, you don't say I've had enough,
I'm I'm tired, I'm burnt out. You keep
your agenda, your your goals clear. If you
can do that, if you can maintain that
grit, that consistency, that
then the best of what you did is
what you will be rewarded with
This is the message of this, you know,
this crazy lady who's undoing her spindle.
I know I promised you one last thing,
but this is the last thing. This is
a real promise.
And that is,
why describe a crazy woman who spins,
makes does all this work, clearly, she's good
at the work, and then she undoes all
of it. It's actually if you were to
put this example in a category, it's among
the category of insanity and stupidity.
Right? And we've seen some other examples, some
parables in the Quran that allude to insanity
and stupidity also. Right?
We've seen a few of those already. So
why describe it like that? Because people
who make these deals for political reasons,
or financial reasons,
People who make these deals think they're doing
the smart thing, don't they?
When they make these kinds of sabotage deals,
they think they're smarter than all these stupid
Muslims, and they can fool all of them.
They're the ones that are smart.
They have this notion that they're smarter than
everybody else. And Allah, by this example, shows
them who the fool is, and who the
insane person is. You had a treasure being
built that would remain with Allah.
This thread you were spinning was going to
remain with Allah, and you would have seen
the best reward of it, but you undid
all of it before you could meet Allah.
Who's the fool?
Who's the idiot?
Right? I hear you're thinking you're making a
fool out of those that you're trying to
do with, you're trying to deceive, because the
one who tries to deceive others thinks they're
smarter than the ones they're deceiving. Right? And
so Allah is exposing them as the ultimately
senile, stupid, and insane.
May Allah keep us smart, and may Allah
not allow us to undo the good that
we may have done, and accept all the
good and the best of it that we
have ever done, and forgive all of our
shortcomings.
And thank you so very much for attending
this one.
I sat through the entire even though it's
late at night,
and I got you guys some candy.
So,
yeah, don't raise your hand. You can just
come on up when it's done, but you
gotta listen to him first. Okay. Alright.
Thank you, Asta. Thank
you for making this Ramadan
a memorable experience for us. Do you agree?
Yes. Yeah.
Struck for us the greatest example
of,
what Quran
means to us and what Quranic engagement
looks like
in the way you explained
versus to us making
it intelligent,
making versus,
simplified
that we understand that we can become,
drawn to Allah's words.
You were the strong tree
that you talked about
in Surah
Surah Ibrahim
with deep roots.
We all took shade
from this tree, and you've planted seeds of
inspiration
and seeds of love for the Quran al
Khareem.
The examples that you've given are nothing short
of profound
from your anecdotes and from your personal
memories since 9 1837,
Zakkallahu Hayran,
for making this a memorable experience.
Although I'm a bit sore because you thrashed
me multiple times at table tennis,
and you almost beat me in a race.
But,
we would have to replay that video a
few times
and do some forensics on that one. But,
we're also super grateful to uncle,
our
the Ustad of our Ustad,
who I found out actually that
the before Ustad existed,
uncle
has been a well, he's been a student
of Arabic
since the sixties, since the seventies.
And so no doubt, the seeds
which, Ustad Ustad Ustad has planted, alhamdulillah, we've
seen that bear its fruits today.
So
bless,
Ustad's family. May Allah
give you health.
May Allah give you a afea, contentment,
for making this a memorable Ramadan
in Manchester. Hashtag Ramadan
2024 will be something that will be circulating,
and it will be remembered for a very
long, long time.
I just wanna say this. Is no celebration.
Ustad has to leave, so please be mindful
of that.
Tomorrow you'll be here, inshallah.
Yeah. Inshallah. Inshallah.
So this is the last of the series,
of this topic, but inshallah, we do invite
you to come tomorrow.
Please bear that in mind.
To all of you, to the children, and
to the families. And now please pass me
the candy. Okay.
Yeah.
It's it's not just the boys. There's girls
here too. So I'm gonna give you guys
half, and I'm gonna give them half. Okay?
Assalamu alaikum, everyone. There are almost 50,000 students
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