Nouman Ali Khan – Surah Al-Jumuah #30 Is Entertainment Wrong in Islam
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the distraction of the Prophet's remedy and the danger of distraction caused by the use of "ma'am" and "mon'am" in a rhetorical context. They stress the importance of learning and taking responsibility for one's own actions in light of the Prophet's teachings. The speaker also emphasizes the danger of distraction and distraction caused by the use of "traditional" words and the importance of protecting one's privacy and privacy for one's own personal reasons. The speaker gives advice on protecting one's privacy and friendships, emphasizing the importance of not touching anything and not leaving anyone alone.
AI: Summary ©
You know, that's a it's okay to have
some.
It's okay to have some entertainment. It's okay
to play sports. It's okay to play a
video game every once in a while. It's
fine. This is nothing.
Where does the harm come from?
Assalamu alaikum. Before you begin this video, just
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So I'm going to speak to you now
about the 2 things that Allah mentioned,
that distract from the remembrance of Allah, trade
and
distraction. Distraction
another term you can use for distraction is
also entertainment.
Can also mean entertainment. Okay. Now
what Allah is teaching us in this ayah
is that these two things in this particular
incident
were the main culprit. They were going through
a hard time, money was a big factor,
they had
to get their their business trade deals done,
their their groceries bought or whatever they had
to do, and that became a heavy factor
for them to walk away from the remembrance
of Allah. But not everybody went to the
caravan
because they were going to do trade. Some
people, you know, when you see a bunch
of people going somewhere, and you see a
lot of noise or lights, you're like, what's
going on there? So you go also. So
the second group of people went for the
purpose of
entertainment.
Like, or they just wanna distract themselves. Right?
So sometimes you have a bazaar, or you'll
go you when you go to the mall
on the weekend.
Right? Not everybody's in the mall shopping.
Most people are just
walking around without a purpose in the universe.
Just so there's there's some people that are
actually buying stuff, selling stuff, etcetera, but then
a lot of it is just lahu.
Right? Conventions, trade shows, things like that. There's
people that go and actually do business, and
other people just say, hey, let's go see
what's happening. There's gonna be a lot of
people there. It's also in one of the
narrations that I didn't share with you, it
was also the case that every time there
would be a wedding,
that the Arabs had a tradition before Islam
that they kept even early after Islam,
in the early time of the Prophet
That the girls,
the friends of the girl who's getting married,
they would start singing and playing the drum
and doing this stuff
to celebrate the girl's wedding. It was like
a girl's party and they would do this
whole thing on the street.
Right? And every time that happened,
you know, people got attracted to that and
wanted to see what's going on or people
were having fun or whatever. It's like a
little party going on on the street, you
know. So that's also part of lahuan.
Now the question that arises from this is,
is entertainment
or business a bad thing? Because Allah is
putting it against,
you know, the remembrance of Allah and leaving
the Prophet
stranded.
Our deen gave us
a really amazing balance.
Allah gave me obligations in my prayers every
day. Allah told me certain things are prohibited
for me. Allah told me certain things are
prohibited for me to eat. Certain ways of
earning money are wrong for me. Certain, you
know, pleasures or whatever are there's only a
halal way to get to them and there's
no all the haram avenues are closed from
me. And in every other matter,
Allah Azza wa Jal just, you know, so
long as I'm living a purposeful life,
there's nothing else expected from me. There's not
much more than that expected from me. So
for example, I asked, jokingly asked some of
you guys or some of you gamers and
some of you
raise your hand.
You know, that's a it's okay to have
some
It's okay to have some entertainment.
It's okay to play sports. It's okay to
play a video game every once in a
while. It's fine. This is nothing
where does the harm come from? Our religion
gave us principles. If you're not violating any
of the principles, then you're fine.
If your entertainment or your work is taking
you away from the mandatory remembrance of Allah,
it's taking you away from what you should
be doing, then there's the extreme. By the
way, there's the opposite extreme too. I'm not
doing enough for my deen. I need to
study more deen. Okay. Well, you're you haven't
spent any time with your wife for 2
months. Yeah. But I'm studying deen right now.
Well, you're spending time with your wife is
actually a part of your deen.
Spend playing with your kids is a part
of your deen. Earning is a part of
your deen.
Right? Keeping keeping
Your own person has rights over you too.
Quran even
says, don't for don't forget your own portion
in this life.
Allah made us appreciate, like, you know, for
example, if I was studying all day
and the Quran says, and
the farm,
and the winds that blow that have beautiful
smell in them, How am I gonna sit
there in the masjid and understand this ayah?
In order to appreciate this ayah, what would
I have to do?
I have to go outside.
Go travel in the land.
Take a look how did creation begin.
You know, I can't do that sitting and
studying or doing dhikr, I have to go,
that's the dhikr too. That's why the ayah,
the ultimate dhikr of the weak is, and
then Allah says,
Go!
Go spread out!
So there was this three-dimensional
view of the dhikr of Allah. Yes. Sometimes
entertainment is okay in some quantity.
But that the thing with these things is
they easily become addictions.
And when they become addictions,
you go deeper and deeper and deeper and
deeper in them, and you don't know when
to stop.
Right? And that that's at that point, it's
taking you away from the remembrance of Allah.
Okay. And that point it becomes a problem.
By the way some people become workaholics, don't
they? They're always thinking business, they're always thinking,
Oh, gotta open up the next store, they're
always thinking, Gotta make more profits, or keeping
track of the stock, or whatever else you're
doing.
Bitcoin or whatever, you know.
Anything that immerses you so much
that now your basic remembrance of Allah is
going away, your obligations to family are going
away. You're not even, you know,
your connection to the Quran is disappearing,
then this is where you have to draw
a line. So Allah mentioned these two things
because these two things are actually so dangerous,
so powerful,
that they can even take someone away from
the Prophet standing there.
They're that powerful. So don't underestimate them.
Deal with these, we have to do business.
Entertainment at some level and distraction at some
level is a necessity in life, but make
sure you understand you're dealing with something that
can easily go out of balance,
that can easily become very powerful, and start
replacing the remembrance of Allah. Notice also something,
a final quick observation 2 observations
about,
the the use of these two words in
this ayah. Allah mentioned them twice.
1st interesting thing is Allah said
even though there's 2 things, it would be
but he said, just 1. And it is
referring back to tijara.
Tijara. And some said, oh, because it's because
they're all fused together, another rhetorical purpose of
this could be that the lahu, the distraction
is actually emanating from the tijara. In other
words, let me put this to another way.
It could be that you're making good money,
and because you're making money, now you can
afford a PS 5.
And now you can download the newest game.
And you're making good money, and now you
can go on that extra vacation. Or now
you can buy the tickets to the game.
Or you now you can So so the
more
happens, the more room for
comes in. Right? So the real culprit then
becomes, why are you making more money? Are
you making more money because you want the
more expensive vacation?
Do you are you making more money because
you wanna distract yourself with, you know, more
movies, more games, more whatever? That's the goal
from the money, So it's creating more distraction.
By the way, distraction isn't just distracting activities,
sometimes it's stuff. You wanna buy more stuff,
you wanna collect more stuff.
Right? And so the the the main culprit,
is actually highlighted in that. But also in
the incident, the male culprit the main culprit
was the trade caravan.
Right? More people the the first people
reason people got up is because they wanted
to buy something.
Secondarily, people got up and said, Hey, some
people are getting up. We should get up
too. So the tijara group was A, and
the group was B.
But then at the end of the ayah,
Allah flipped the equation, He flipped the sequence.
He said,
Tell them what Allah has in His possession
is better.
What Allah has in His possession is better
than entertainment
and better
than trade, so he flipped it. So in
the beginning of the ayah was and
at the end of the ayah, it's
What what could the reason for that be?
This is what we we see in the
Quran multiple times, a transition from the specific
to the universal,
a general to the universal. The general the
specific situation was there was a trade caravan
that came,
and Allah dealt with that. When they saw
that trade opportunity,
they left you standing there. And of course,
Jum'ah is so serious, nobody's just gonna leave
Jum'ah because they wanna play a video game.
They might leave Jum'ah because it's a really
important business meeting.
So the
real thing that might pull you away from
the Friday prayer is gonna be some business
situation.
But then Allah mentioned in general, universally,
if all of human beings were told, they
had they should remember Allah, and what Allah
is offering them is better, then the common
denominator among the us is not business. The
common thing among us is entertainment, actually.
That's first. Why? Because not everybody is doing
business. Not everybody is working.
But everybody is still distracted.
Everybody still wants some form of entertainment.
Right? So,
is actually the more universal culprit, generally speaking.
So Allah says, in general in life, what
you should remember, tell them what Allah has
is better than,
entertainment
and better than business. Now what is it
that Allah has? What's he referring to that
Allah has? In this case, anything Allah commands
you to do, Allah come in this case,
Allah wanted me to come to the remembrance
of Allah,
That remembrance of Allah is building something in
me. He's giving me a treasure.
So he's actually almost
commodifying the dhikr of Allah. Allah didn't say,
remembering Allah is better than entertainment and trade.
Allah is saying, what Allah has
is better than entertainment and trade. As if
to say, when I truly remember Allah, Allah
gives me something.
Allah gives my heart something. Allah gives my
soul something. Allah gives to me in some
way. And that thing that Allah gives me,
whatever it is, it cannot be named because
He gives it in different ways to different
people. That's why Ma'a is used, whatever Allah
has.
Right? He didn't say, it's the salawab of
the akhirah.
He didn't say, it's a new job that
Allah will get you. He didn't say, it's
a sickness that Allah will remove from your
life. He didn't specify it. But it's something
that Allah has. And the only way you
for you to get it, is by the
dhikr of Allah.
If you can get that, then you will
realize that that is better than entertainment,
and that's better than trade. And Allah is
the best of razikin. I'll tell you quickly
about the word rizq.
Really cool. That's a creepy photo, but still,
it helps us understand
what rizq is. It's a bird feeding its
child. They they get the worm, the bug,
or whatever, and they put it most birds,
they put it in the mouth of their
child, or they actually stick it all the
way into the throat of their child and
then let go.
That's how they feed their young. And now,
let me tell you why I'm using this
picture.
In Arabic means whatever reaches the belly, and
whatever nurtures you, whatever nourishes you. You can
eat something and throw it up, it's not
rizq. But if you eat something and it
gives you energy, it nurtures you, it feeds
your body, that's called rizq.
Let me tell you what this means. Actually
the Arabs used to use the word it
is to describe the bird putting the food
in the mouth of its child.
That's how they describe it as, meaning that
which helps the child survive.
What which provides and nourishes the child. And
from it, it started getting used for anything
that you place within you, meaning the thing
that you store, because the child is storing
it in its belly. So anything that you
consume, anything that you store becomes this. Anything
that becomes a part of your life becomes
this that that enhances your life in some
way. So what is riz then? In its
broadest sense, it's actually
food is riz, clothes are riz because they
are enhancing me in some way, they're nourishing
me in some way, their home as it
is, their car as it is, your friends
are are are it is,
family members of this. I know.
That's crazy.
Not all of them.
Some of them are fists. Other ones
are
just
your teachers can be this.
Right? The the opportunities that come in your
life, maybe it is the experiences you have
that benefited you, that strengthened you, that nurtured
you. Even bad things that happened in your
life can actually become riz because by way
by way of them, you became stronger in
some way. Allah is the best of those
who can give risk. But why mention
the plural? Why even mention that Allah could
just said,
Allah is the provider.
Allah says,
Allah is the best of those who can
provide.
Why even mention others who can provide? There's
a necessary
call
to comparison in this ayah. I start thinking
my employer provides. I start thinking my parents
provide. I start thinking my culture provides. My
culture provides protection.
My family provides dignity. My my job provides
money.
My society provides this. My my government provides
that. We start thinking provision comes from different
places. And the more you think of these,
then you start making you you wanna make
sure you don't hurt any sources of income.
Right? So if you're for example let me
give you a social media example because we
can relate to that easily. If your money
comes from your social media following,
and you're monetizing your content or whatever, then
you know who your razik is in your
head? Your followers are your razik.
Okay. The ad revenue is your razik. So
now you're not you're gonna make sure you
don't mess with anything that can hurt your
following.
Right? So you'll make sure not to cross
the fall offend your following in any way
because it will directly impact your
list. If your job provides your paycheck, you
will make sure you will do nothing to
put your job in danger, because your job
is, in your mind, your
razik. So when you identify a razik,
then you don't mess with it. You make
sure and if anybody's coming close to it,
say, hey, hey, no, no, no, don't touch
that. Don't touch that.
Like for example, if your if your
your job is you you're a techie, or
you're a contractor, and you're a coder, or
whatever, and you have your laptop and you
work on your laptop. When your kids come
close to your laptop with a bottle of
chocolate milk, in that moment, that's not your
child. That is public enemy number 1. You
get away from this.
You can cry, I'll say, I'll hug you
later, but right now, this is my lap
this is my risk right here. This in
a sense, this is my logic right now.
You're not gonna mess with my risk.
Okay? And then later on, you could be
the child.
Okay?
There's there's some things you just don't mess
with it. You don't you don't touch it
because it's it's a matter of
this. Same way what happens in families is,
you know, you could you you could be
running a business,
and people can
your family can have an opinion on everything.
But the moment they try to tell you
how to run your business
excuse me. Wait.
This is not for you.
Step off.
I don't care who you are. You're not
touching this. You know, I love you in
every other way, not in this. You don't
exist. You're 0.
You're fired.
Why? Because people, they they wanna protect their
risk. If you have that mentality, this is
a very easily understandable phenomenon.
Right? And if risk is an opportunity,
and you don't wanna miss the opportunity, you
will do nothing will get in your way
from missing that opportunity.
If you have a job interview, and you
have to get to that job interview, it's
starting at 9 AM, and you have to
leave your house at 8 AM, and then
your sister calls, your mother calls, your friend
calls, and says, I wanna talk to you
about my feelings right now.
You can talk to me while I'm on
the road. No. No. No. I need to
talk to you in person. No. I have
a job interview. No. Forget your job interview.
No. I will talk to you after. I'll
say sorry. Do it first to say sorry
later. I gotta go. I'm gonna do this
job interview. I can't I can't be with
you right now. I can't talk to you
right now. Isn't that the case?
You're not gonna let anything get in the
way. When Allah calls himself,
You know what that means? If Allah is
my provider,
just like if anything else I think is
my provider, I
nothing gets in the way.
Nothing gets in the way. Then if Allah
is my provider,
and he says, what I have is better
than anything else,
that, you know what that means? That means
messing with Jumu'ah is messing with my razikr.
If I mess with Jumu'ah, I'm messing with
my
razigh.
If I'm messing with the dhikr of Allah,
I'm messing with my razigh. I'm messing up
my own rizq
by compromising the remembrance of Allah.
What a way to end this surah.
Allah
everything in the skies and the earth, when
we started the surah, everything in the skies
and the earth is doing
And by the way, everything is being provided
for by Allah.
And the only ones who don't do
are human beings,
the way they should.
And now Allah says, by the way, I'm
I'm providing you, but if you really want
me to provide you, you better get in
line with the rest of the universe.
You better do your version of this. Your
what has expected from you. That expected from
the sun is constant, never ending
That expected from the moon is expected from
the moon is constant, never ending
The expected from you
is on particular times,
very little is being asked of you.
And of those
the biggest of the week is the the
Friday prayer, don't mess with it.
This is just some speech you're attending.
That's a there there there this is how
Allah Azawada ties the lessons of this Surah
together. So now I'm gonna share with you
what we learned in this section 3. I
I walked you through the structure of section
1
and section 2. So we're the final section,
section 3. Right? So,
we
see, When the call is made for Friday
prayer, rush to the remembrance of Allah and
leave the sail, we covered that. Then,
That is better for you if you actually
know.
When the salah is done, what should you
do?
Go out, spread out.
Seek Allah's favor.
Remember Allah, Allah. And if you can do
these things, what's gonna happen?
So that you may succeed. That's the formula
Allah gave. Then He says, (QS.
3) When they saw
trade and distraction,
they ran off to it, they broke off
from the Friday prayer,
and they left you standing, leaving you standing.
Tell them what Allah has is better than
distraction
and better than trade.
And Allah is the best provider. This is
the final section of the surah. Let's go
through that again.
When the call is made, leave,
and rush to the remembrance of Allah.
On the flip side, when the call was
made, they ran off,
and left you standing.
So, you should be leaving business, but what
you did was, you left the Prophet.
You see that?
So
and then the second thing was,
that is better for you,
if you know.
And then we see, what Allah has is
better.
Then He said, go out, seek His favor,
remember Allah, go out and do what? What
did I say? Go out and do what?
Business, go earn riz. And Allah ends the
Surah by saying Allah is the best of
providers.
Allahu
Sa'il Rasakeen.
You see how beautifully things are organized?
How everything ties together?
You know, and this is our section 3.
Now just
so you have a picture. Now we we
did section 1, we did section 2, we
did section 3. Now let's look at the
whole thing together.
Everything does this be, and I'm summarizing. This
is not a capturing of all the messages
of the first section, but some main things.
Everything does this be the favor on the
ummah, that the meaning Allah has done a
huge favor on the ummah by sending the
messenger who purifies them, and you know, go
on from pure reads the ayaat, purifies them,
teaches them the law, teaches them wisdom, summarizing
here. Okay? Then
we should learn from the example of those
who failed their book. What am I talking
about here?
Right? That was the middle section. And then
the final section was, don't take the Friday
remembrance lightly, don't allow anything to abandon your
messenger.
Isn't it? Now notice in the first such
first section was tasbih, and the last section,
there's dhikr. What's one of the best forms
of
Tasmee.
And then, the first section said, the Messenger
has done you a huge favor. Allah has
done you a huge favor by sending you
a Messenger.
So you shouldn't be the ones to leave
your messenger standing in the last section.
You see the connection?
Between those 2? And then in the middle
is the example of those who the killer
book. So even the Surah as Allah as
a whole kind of forms the asymmetrical
kind of structure.
Okay. So this this brings me to the
end of what I wanted to share with
you in terms of the lessons from Surat
Al Jum'ah.
Assalamu alaikum. I hope you guys enjoyed the
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