Nouman Ali Khan – Taking Accountability for Our Actions – Surah Al-Haqqah
AI: Summary ©
The decline in language and the use of words in Arabic due to the decline of natural language has been impacting the human experience. The emotional distress of people feeling pain and the use of artificial language to express emotions has caused the decline. The challenges of translating the Quran and creating a world where everything is just a result of actions are being made, and the negative impact of true to oneself and not letting people manipulate with their actions is a topic of discussion. The importance of being true to oneself and not letting people manipulate with their actions is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
Now the idea that I'm trying to project
onto all of us is that we are
on the clock,
We're on the clock,
And Allah is watching,
and we're there are enough human beings in
this world that like to pretend that they
have free reign, they can do as they
please, there is no accountability for what I'm
doing.
Today the, the section we're going to go
through, at least I'm ambitious about it, is
rather large. It's from ayah number 25 all
the way to ayah number 37.
If we don't get there, I'll be okay,
but,
at least we'll try to get there. This
is the section of the people of the
left hand. Basically that that entire section is
dedicated to the people of the left hand.
And so it begins in contrast with the
previous section where Allah says
He
asked for the one who's been given his
his book in his left. The word shibal
comes from shamada or ishtimal, which means inclusion.
The left hand is considered secondary when you're
holding something and you wanna include the second
hand in to be able to grab it
properly. That's what became the shimahal, because it
helps you become to to do Shamul of
something, to include something in your grasp. Right?
So it's actually considered in that sense secondary.
Right? And by saying it's he's been given
the book or it's something somebody did something
with their Shamal, what that actually means in
Arabic is they didn't take it that seriously.
It wasn't really it's it wasn't worth much
because it was if something's worth something, you
put your right hand on it. Right?
So
as for the one who's been handed his
book and has left
then he will call out
oh, my oh, what has happened? Or
Leita is one of those words in Arabic.
It's a word for regret. I'll tell you
the etymology in a minute, but
it's very hard to translate.
In older English, they had things like woe
unto me or woe is me.
Right. But woe,
is not to say woe now.
Right. Woe in Shakespearean English had a certain
effect. It doesn't have the same of like
no teenager goes around when, you know, their
their dads grounded them for a week or
they took their your mom took your cell
phone away. Woah. And to me hast thou
not taken off my,
iPhone
Pro Max.
So so the word woah doesn't doesn't have
a serious impact anymore. It did in Shakespearean
English. Right?
So, so what does it mean? We'll, we'll,
we'll look into that when the time comes
Inshallah a little bit deeper. But one thing
I will tell you is
as as technology has improved,
the human ability to articulate themselves has declined.
Right? So there are studies now about even
handwriting. Human handwriting is declining rapidly.
Right? So adults are writing like 3rd graders
used to write.
Right?
Teenagers will see me just write something. Why
you can write like that? I was like,
2nd grade.
2nd grade. But Lao, that that looks like
calligraphy now. Why? Because there's a decline in
linguistic ability.
Because we're handing so much of the linguistic
work over to machines.
Right? The same way emotions or language is
not as rich as it used to be
once. Why? Because for example if you want
to express frustration
you can just take a round yellow face
with steam coming from the nose and send
it to somebody.
Instead of expressing frustration with words you could
just send them an emoji.
Right?
And you can also now because we're we're
in the world of rapid communication,
we don't even write the full sentence.
I mean, it was used to be alright,
then it became okay, then it's become k.
Right? So the the abbreviation of language and
the misspelling of words, that's that's the common
thing now. Right? And so
language is going through a tremendous decline. And
this is not something that happened after social
media. It it got exaggerated after social media.
But even before then, language has been declining
for some time now. And actually some of
the ancient languages of the world are very
quickly dying. There are many languages that are
dying.
By the way, you'd be interested to know
South Asians might be interested to know, Urdu
and Bangla is 2 of the languages that
are dying.
They're dying.
And so I and I I experienced this
firsthand. I have up to an 8th grade
level education in Urdu.
That's all I learned when, so I was
in a Pakistani school before that, you know,
before that I knew some German because I
wasn't born in Germany, but that's gone
9. So
so, but my Urdu was, you know, it's
it's 8th grade education. So it's not college
level Urdu. It's not even high school Urdu.
It's 8th grade Urdu. Right? And then my
family came here after that. So I haven't
had continued Urdu education since,
and that was in 18/65.
So it's been a while. So I last
year I went back and I gave lectures
in Urdu in different cities in Pakistan. I
went on, like, 22 different universities over the
course of a month.
Right? And
people coming up to me telling me
You speak like ancient Indian
aristocrat.
I I do? I don't I don't think
I did, because
8th grade from my time until now,
the language has been impacted so deeply by,
you know, it's got Anglo influence now and
it's got Hindi influence now.
So now people are coming up to me
and saying,
And I was like, what's?
I knew a but this is a this
is a
new. So so the language started kind of,
you know, breaking apart.
And it's
the insertion of outside words becomes more and
more common. Right? This is happening with Arabic
too, by the way. The Arab should should
be very sad about that. And the entire
Ummah should be sad about that. If we
lose the language
from a, from a, you know, mother tongue
perspective, then that there's a loss of natural
language. Right? So
as a result of that,
the Quran's language seems artificial.
So when it says something like or
from a 100, 150 years ago in English,
somebody says, woe is me.
That sounds odd to you now.
Right? Because we just don't have words for
certain emotions anymore.
Right? Because we just say, well,
or, oh, man,
or,
oh, can you just think about that? Those
aren't even words.
Is that a word?
They actually had a word for that in
Arabic. Taawu. Taawu means to do.
Alright. So
so that that and that's a challenge of
translating the Quran because the purpose of translation
is it should be able to impact the
reader in whatever language it's being translated. Right?
So that's one of the challenges in ayat
like these. But anyway, let's get to the
commentary on this ayah. First of all, the
reaction, because the reaction when given the book
in your right hand was come, take it,
read it, right? He's he's adding it to
his loved ones.
When this person saw his book and he
saw the ugliest deeds that they had done
are there in glaring record. They're humiliated by
that.
And it's perhaps that humiliation
that's even more more intense than the punishment
of the flames themselves.
Like human beings
are pained not just physically, we're also creatures
that are pained emotionally.
Right? So the psychological torture of jahannam has
begun
just by a person
looking at their deeds.
You know, you you should keep in mind
this idea of you being emotionally tortured
is so so powerful that it overrides physical
pain. There are two examples of that I
can think of in the Quran.
One of them is Musa
alayhis salam. Musa alayhis salam knew that when
he's going to go back to the pharaoh,
they're gonna call him a liar. They're going
to publicly humiliate him. Okay. So he told
Allah on the mountain
Master I am afraid that they shall call
me a liar.
And then he made a list of things
that he's afraid of and the 5th thing
that he listed the last and 5th thing
he listed was
They have a crime recorded against me and
I fear that they shall kill me.
So his first fear,
the first thing that came to his mind
to bring up as a state of emergency
to God, to Allah, when he's directly in
conversation with Allah is humiliation.
And the last item was what?
Death.
Just think about what worries him because the
thing that worries you the most is the
one you bring up first, right?
Similarly you see the case of Maryam
who bears Jesus, she gives birth to Isa
and she knows when she comes back to
town
of that time, the Muslim city, that's that
she was living by the Masjid, there was
a mihrab, the imam was Zakariyah alaihis salam,
right? She disappears
and then she comes back and she comes
back with a baby and everybody knows she's
been raised in the Masjid, what are people
gonna say?
And you would say no no no These
aren't Akuffar. These are Muslims. Muslims don't talk
like that about fellow Muslims.
Yeah. We wouldn't know.
This is this is something that used to
happen 1000 of years ago. We don't have
that problem anymore. But anyway, so she's worried
that they're gonna point the finger at her,
tell her that this is an illegitimate child,
what have you done? She can't bear the
thought of even hearing that stuff, so she
says that it's recorded in Allah's book
If only I could be dead before this
happens.
She wished for death instead of humiliation.
Like, she wasn't even worried they're gonna stone
me. They're gonna murder me. They're gonna hurt
me. She just didn't wanna face that
humiliation.
That was more than more it it was
more acceptable to take death than to take
that humiliation.
And of course if you did your own
studies, especially those of you that are studying
psychology,
perpetual
humiliation,
degradation,
peep feeling feeling suppressed,
Right? People even kill themselves without the fear
of Allah. That's actually a solution for people.
Right? There are people that are well off
financially or this or that, but now they
there's a trial that's going to happen and
all of their dirty deeds are gonna come
out. What happens the day before the trial?
You find the guy overdosed on some drugs
and he's out. Because you couldn't it's not
like they were gonna hurt him, but they
were going to what? It was gonna humiliate
him, couldn't take it. What is Allah doing
here? He's humiliating the person on the left
hand. By the way,
let's keep the subtext in mind. Why would
someone be humiliated? Why would Allah humiliate someone?
Because they were in the business of, fill
in the blank,
humiliating others,
humiliating others,
people that got a kick out of,
you know,
putting other people's laundry out, using vile words
against someone, bringing the worst of their deeds
to their attention. Like, you know, Firal was
trying to humiliate Musa
didn't you do what you did?
You know?
You know, you're gonna you're gonna talk to
us?
Or the people who are humiliating right?
Or humiliating her. So this idea,
every time there's a punishment you have to
keep in mind the punishment reflects the nature
of the sin
that came before it. Right? So these were
people like Allah says in another place in
the Quran.
And are
qualities of people that speak ill of others
and get a kick out of it, basically.
They enjoy humiliating others. By the way, this
idea of homazalomaza
in the environment in which we live, where
most people aren't even watching social media content,
they're list they're they're reading the homaza lomaza
on on underneath in the comment section
and getting a kick out of it.
Right?
So for those who do enjoy that trolling,
that's their, that's their feed.
Just let me remind you of something. Allah
says, Wafiqum Samma'oonalahum,
Allahu Alewa biabilwala'i.
Among you are those that are just audiences
to those vile people, and Allah knows all
wrongdoers.
And Allah is saying the people that are
making those vile comments are wrongdoers,
and the people that are just
consuming that are also
wrongdoers.
Right? Because they that's and that's what they
call engagement nowadays, isn't it? They put those
comments there because it gets them more engagement
and and all of that. Anyway,
so the the punishment has already begun, and
it's humiliating in nature.
Says this should make you pay attention
that the, the, the punishment to the soul
is much more intense than the punishment to
the body
because the soul wants dignity. Right?
Now
the mental punishment of receiving the record in
your left hand,
One of the, another dimension of this is
I've got the book in my left hand,
I know something really terrible is coming.
He thinks that it's just gonna break his
back
any moment. Now if you know something really
bad is happening, but it hasn't happened yet,
you're in this
terrible state, not just of humiliation,
but of anguish, of anxiety.
When is it gonna happen? Are they gonna
find out? When are they coming? You know,
and you can't have a moment of peace.
Even if you're not physically in torture, you
are living in terrible, terrible anxiety. And anxiety
is a debilitating, debilitating state to be. It
can, it can render a person
paralyzed,
like literally paralyzed, you know, and it's the
paralysis that Allah even describes in other places
in the Koran, when he says things
like their eyes are petrified.
They're just, you know, their necks are held
back, like they can't move, their muscles stiffen
up. These are if you if you study
people that have extreme cases of paranoia or
anxiety,
those kinds of things,
you'll notice that they they exhibit these behaviors
that Allah is describing people experiencing on judgment
day.
But what's worse about it is whatever it
is that you are anxious about, if you're
afraid of something, right? Let's say there's police
and some guy knows that they're they're looking
for him, right? And he sees the police
right over there. Which way is he gonna
run?
Opposite direction. You know, what does Allah what
Allah does on judgment day? He gets people
to keep their eyes open so they can't
blink.
The criminals, they have to keep their eyes
open, they can't blink. He keeps their necks
up so they can't look down,
and then He forces them
he forces them to run towards the thing
that terrifies them
Like instead of running away from it, which
is your natural impulse,
he makes them run towards it.
And again, every description of punishment in the
Quran is a response to something that used
to happen in this world. What did they
used to do? They used to hear those
warnings about what's coming and they used to
run-in the opposite direction.
They used to run,
you know, and and and or they would
run towards it laughingly. Oh, you you wanna
punish us? Okay. Let me do more. Is
it is this gonna burn too? Is that
oh, so this if I do this, I'm
gonna go to *? Okay. Let me do
it 2 times more. You know those people
who like to the one they're in trouble,
they like to get in more trouble.
Right?
Like, hey, you shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't
have done what? Drop this?
Okay. So so they
they enjoyed it. They'll they loved that defiance.
Or, you know, that's actually the word for
that is atia
in Arabic, right? Or ati, a person who
enjoys being defiant. Right? So
this is the, this is the, the anticipation
of something terrible coming. Now let's talk a
little bit about the word you later.
It comes from the word later and later
in Arabic has two meanings.
As a verb means when you turn away
from something
and if something is diminished,
If something is somewhat diminished something from you.
Allah uses this this word as a verb
in for example
Okay. From
he says
meaning Allah will not reduce you in your
deeds in any way
That's not so important but later
so later became the meaning of hope and
expectation,
and basically it's the word it's different from
just raw hope and expectation in that if
something's already happened and you wish it didn't
happen,
the English equivalent of the English equivalent would
be something like crying over spilt milk. You
ever heard that before? Crying over spilt milk?
When you are expressing that regret that, oh,
I wish things were different.
Urdu speakers here might be familiar with the
word ekash.
Kashkeh sahota, kashkeh va sahota. Right? That's that's
Leita. That's the equivalent of Leita in Urdu.
I don't know of, an English equivalent,
of of just as a word.
The closest I can think of is if
only.
Like, if only things were different, if only
that didn't happen. Right? That would be a
close English equivalent, but that's the word Leita
calling out crying over how things have turned
out and I wish they hadn't been that
way, if only things had turned out differently.
So
This word of hope is emanating. Remember I
told you the verbal meaning is diminishing,
right, and turning away. So reality turned in
a different direction and you were diminished from
what you could have had and now that
feeling of loss is making you say I
wish I wasn't experiencing this loss. That's where
the word leita comes from.
Now so now in in contrast, let's let's
keep contrasting what's happening in this passage with
what happened in the passage about the person
on the right hand. In contrast with showing
others, this person doesn't even wanna face it
himself.
Look at look at the
the the stark contrast.
This person gets the book in their left
hand, but I'll not make any of us
of them,
and they they have, they're not saying look
at my book, they're not saying, oh my
god, what's in here?
They're not even opening it. They're just saying,
can I not get it?
I wish I never got it.
I wish I never they didn't say, I
wish I never read it. The other person
uses the word reading, remember?
So they've read it, and they want others
to read it.
This person, there's no mention of reading. There's
just a mention of it being handed to
them, and that's a tragedy enough for them.
I wish I just never had to to
touch it. I wish I was never given
this book.
This is a very powerful expression to describe
the state
of the people of the left hand and
how they used to be in this world.
So let's take a minute to understand that.
Why is this so important
that they say I wish
this never I was never given my book.
You've probably heard the expression
YOLO.
You only live once.
And the idea behind that is that this
life is all there is. But if this
life is all there is, and you are
let's say you you hit the age of
40,
that means you're about to have your midlife
crisis. You've heard that one before?
Midlife crisis means means you're you're in the
last episode of your youth. After this, you're
gonna be in some kind of a hospice
care or somebody's gonna have to clean your
clean your diaper and you you know, you're
gonna be out of drip or something. You're
gonna end up, you know, in a nursing
home, things like that. So the the the
last
few the last couple of decades where you
have,
control over your body
has begun. The last episode, because this is
all there is.
So this becomes an incredibly,
depressing realization
for people.
As a result of that,
they start
behaving in certain interesting ways. They start listening
to music from their teenage years.
They start buying the car that has no
purpose except to show off.
They start engaging in they, they, they start
drinking more. They start partying more. They start
pretending they're 20.
Right. They'll break the family. They'll go, you
know, step out of the marriage, all kinds
of stuff. They'll, they'll abandon the kids. This
is, I'm just going to travel the world.
I just need to expose, you know, experience
the world. I wanna experience life. I wanna
live my life, etcetera. All of this is
happening
because they're not worried about the consequences,
the devastation they're gonna leave behind. They're not
worried about that. You know why? Because by
the time the devastation catches up with them,
they'll already be
dead.
This is all I get to have. Let
me just have my fun. Because you only
live once.
This is never gonna come back. This is
all we ever have. Right? And so these
people
created an entire life
based on the assumption that everything I'm doing,
live in the moment, be yourself,
be in the now,
you know, enjoy yourself,
find your find your true happiness, you know,
connect with your with your true self, you
do you, all this kind of crap that's
now being sold
to to humanity, you know. I just I
just wanna I just wanna do me, you
know. I just wanna do me. And then
do me means I wanna do really bad
things,
but I'm gonna glorify that as saying I'm
being true to myself.
That's because when you're being the idea of
true to myself, let me just take off
the the pretty rapping and tell you what
that really means. That means
I don't want to think about the fact
that everything I'm doing is being surveilled, recorded,
documented, and I'm answerable to someone.
I don't want to think about that. I
have no one watching over me. I have
no authority over me. To give you an
example of,
you know, somebody who is an employee
and they're in the government building or their
employer's building. They're in the building and they're
on in billable working hours.
Right?
There's some room. They can take a coffee
break. They can take a bathroom break. Maybe
a cigarette break for some people or whatever.
Right? But there are guidelines when you're in
the workplace, in working hours. There are certain
things you cannot do
because you are on the clock.
Everybody understands that. Right? Now imagine somebody who's
on the clock, and refuses to accept the
fact that they are on the clock.
Refuses to accept that fact,
within 10 minutes, if they wanna act crazy,
there are gonna be consequences. Right? Now the
idea that I'm trying to project
onto all of us is that we are
on the clock,
We're on the clock,
And Allah is watching.
And where there are enough human beings in
this world that like to pretend that they
have free reign, they can do as they
please, there is no accountability for what I'm
doing. And this ugly attitude of defying Allah,
like the greatest the greatest entity
please remember this phrase, the greatest entity to
which I am answerable is me.
The greatest entity to which I am answerable
is me. There is nobody else I'm answerable
to. In fact,
I am so important,
and some Muslims are starting to do this
because Christians were doing this before us, we
copy pretty well.
The prophet warned us you'll end up following
the ways of those who came before you.
What did they do?
I'm so important. I'm going to mold the
concept of God to fit my needs.
My Allah wouldn't judge me.
Really, you're you're Allah.
Yeah. My Allah doesn't, you know,
my Allah is loving and merciful and kind.
It was like, you're speaking on Allah's behalf.
That's really adorable,
but he speaks for himself.
It's called revelation.
You know, that's a
but now there's a I'm gonna tell you
what what my personal relationship with God is
and I dictate the terms of that relationship
because in the end the highest authority is
me and I even get to curtail
what God is to me, what lies to
me, you know.
It's wild. It's the it's it it would
make Firaun feel humble.
Right?
Didn't want to bring God down, wanted to
be God. This is a next level up,
this is like, no no no, we can
keep God, he just has to serve us.
He just has to serve our ups.
It's it's wild to me that that's that's
that's become the case. But that is a
reality that we have to contend with. Right?
And because if I am the supreme,
like the authority, then I also decide reality.
Reality doesn't come from somewhere else. Reality comes
from me. So what new terminology did we
develop? This is my truth. You heard that
one?
This is my truth.
You know, I don't know what your truth
is, but this is my truth. And then
since it's my truth and my truth is
dictated by how I feel, today I feel
like I'm a zebra.
To Laura, I feel like I'm a cat.
To the next day I feel like I'm
a pronoun that hasn't been discovered by anybody
yet.
Right?
All of what you're seeing is a result
of something that started these these are just
dominoes that are falling, but the first domino
to fall in all of this is actually
Allah commented on this in the Quran, have
you seen someone who takes their empty feelings
and turns them into their God?
Right. So
that's what that is.
Such a person, obviously there's no there's no
reckoning. There's no concept of I'm being recorded
and I'm being watched.
I don't want to deal with that. And
if somebody wants to hold them responsible, let's
say their mother says, hey, I think you
need to stop doing that. Or their friend
says, Hey, I think you're going this is
too much.
The moment somebody tries to reign such a
person in, you know what they do?
You can't tell me what to do. I'm
my own person. Just let me be.
You know what? Bide your own business.
Right?
Nobody gets to check what I'm doing.
And I don't want I can run from
that conversation.
I can avoid it. I can slam the
door, walk out. You know what? You are
a negative toxic influence in my life that
is trying to bring me down. I'm going
to go out there and I'm going to
do whatever I feel like doing because I
just need to get away from this toxicity.
And I'm blocking you, mom.
Right?
Common practice.
Because because you wanna, you know, find your
you find your happy place.
Right?
And this this thing is all about not
having to face what you've actually done.
And the moment you're about to face it,
you run off.
You you run off. What does Allah do
on judgment day? Hands you the book and
you can't throw it away. It's stuck on
your hand
and it's open and you gotta face it.
And the first thing is, really? Do I
have to have this book? Can I not?
It's I lived my entire life avoiding
thinking about what I'm doing.
I don't wanna think about it.
I just wanna escape my pain by doing
things that I'll never have to think about.
Let me just forget about what I did
yesterday.
I just wanna get over it.
I don't wanna think of it. This whole
mentality
is being encapsulated in just You laytani lamutakitabiya
Allah could have just said he's gonna throw
them in * and that would have been
enough but no Allah dug He gave us
a prognosis.
He gave us a deep insight into the
mind of the people of the left
hand. Just with this phrase, you know,
And this is their their their their lack
of,
will to to face their own consequences, the
the consequences of their deeds. Walam adri majisabia.
There's 2 readings of this,
one reading of this is grammatically separate from
the previous. This is the last bullet point
here, but I'll tell you now. It's grammatically
separate. What that means is I had no
idea what my reckoning was gonna be. I
had no idea, like, even now they're throwing
an excuse out. I had no idea.
Really?
I didn't know what what this was.
That's not fair.
But another reading, which I find more convincing,
is that this is grammatically connected to the
previous statements.
And what that would then mean is, I
wish
I had no idea what my account is,
which now suggests that the book has in
fact been opened.
So there's an escalation. The first IOS, okay,
I did I wish I didn't get my
book.
I wasn't given the book. Now it's, I
wish I didn't know what my account is.
Meaning now they're the deeds and what they're
worth and the sins and what they're worth
and the weight of them and the the
punishment is the suitable punishment for all of
that's been laid out,
laid out before them to see, right. I
wish I didn't know. Look at also
this you know, the second use of the
iraya you saw in the beginning
And now Allah is bringing the same word
This is a way I I call this
in Quran within a surah, I call these
anchors.
These are anchors inside of a Surah. The
same word is repeating itself strategically
to make a connection with what came before.
When did it come? Do you have any
clue as to what is real?
And now, I wish I had no clue
what my reckoning is. Connect those two dots
together, what do you get?
Your record is very real.
The accounting is very real. Do you realize
how serious that is? How powerful that event
is?
Then there's a contrast.
I already shared with you the insight into
recklessness, but the contrast between
what he's saying, this person saying,
I had no I wish I didn't know.
But what did the person on the right
hand say?
They said
I was always thinking
I was convinced, I was thinking, I was
mentally conscious that I'm going to meet
my reckoning. I'm going to meet my record,
my account.
I'm going to have to face it.
So there's a 2 very divergent
contrasting positions. One position is I'm always thinking
about the audit that is coming, and the
other, I wish I never knew even now.
Just like I never knew or cared
when I was alive.
It is not in this life, even in
the previous life I didn't know, I didn't
wanna know, I don't know now, I don't
wanna know now.
SubhanAllah.
It's just a direct one to one contrast.
So I wish it if only it we're
gonna talk about what it is, if only
it
was decisive
if only it was decisive. Now Allah didn't
say what that it is.
So let's see what that it is
What is the it? Go back to.
The first interpretation is it refers to the
time I died.
I wish that my death the first time
around was decisive.
Like I wish I didn't get raised again,
right?
Means decisive meaning cutting you off from the
first life,
and that would be for this person the
end and they're free to they don't have
to worry about it. Now I'm just gonna
go into the universe.
I'm just gonna be particles spread across the
galaxies.
That's all I'm gonna be. You know? Just
spread my ashes in the ocean.
You know? Because I used to love the
ocean.
You know? And people have those those wakes.
Right?
I used to love fishing.
Bye, Frank.
And Frank is back like,
no. No. No. I was done.
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