Nouman Ali Khan – The Illusion of Power – Surah Al-Haqqah
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss various topics related to Islam, including the use of credentials and the importance of staying alive. They also talk about the end of a life, the use of death by poison, and the importance of money as a resource. The use of currency and political power is also discussed, along with the use of words and phrases to instill fear and guilt. The concept of "peep people" is also emphasized, and viewers are encouraged to visit the deeper look series for more information.AI: Transcript ©
You know what you're talking about? I know
what I'm talking about. That's being used as
a weapon. Some people use their credentials,
maybe their professional credentials,
maybe their academic credentials,
maybe their place, their rank in the family.
I'm the father, I'm the older brother, I'm
the this, I'm the that. Depending on whatever
you are, you're going to use that as
a position of power to wedge and to
enforce some kind of wrongdoing.
So so Allah says
when the prayer is done with,
when the prayer is done with. Musa alayhi
wasalam punched a guy and the guy died.
He he ended his story.
Same word was used. Right? So qaba is
used for judgment, but it also means the
final end of something. So I if only
death could have been the end of it.
You know, if only YOLO was true.
He gets up and says, no. No. No.
No. No. I don't I don't wanna be
alive. I don't no. No. No. I don't
want this. By the way, people that are
living
people that are living, what's the most important
thing for them? Staying alive.
That's the most important thing. This same guy
who lived for this life
is resurrected
and the most the biggest wish he had
is what?
Staying dead.
Staying dead. Just look at the irony of
this.
That was the end of my my story
If only I wasn't resurrected after it
and I I I wish I never had
to come into contact with all these things
that I've done before
Khatada radiAllahuhanhu
said this person is now wishing for death
and while they were alive nothing
was more hated to them than death.
And the only thing that make will make
you wish for death is something that is
worse than death.
Right? So the fact that they're alive, they
know what's coming now is far worse than
death.
That humiliation is worse than death, and then
what's coming next is far far far worse
than death. In other word, other place in
the Quran, when when this person is handed
their book in their left hand, you know
what they say? They say,
At that very moment they will say, Tubur,
immediate death, please.
Just just do it. Please, just end me.
Allah says,
No, no, no, no,
no. Don't don't call for death today.
Keep calling for death. Lots of them.
Allah says another place in, in. So malayamutufiha
walayahya.
He doesn't get to die there. He doesn't
get to live there. You can't even call
it life,
but you don't get to call it death.
Death would be too easy of a term
for this and life would be too merciful
of a word for this.
So it's not life and it's not death.
Allahu will protect us.
Wasari, the second meaning of it. So the
first meaning was death in this life. Right?
If only it was decisive,
if only death in this life was decisive.
Okay.
So the second reading is he realizes as
humiliating as this is,
as humiliating as the reading of the book
is,
something much worse is coming.
And so can this be it?
Can this reading of the book and this
being handed can this be okay. Okay. I
get it. I get it. Okay. I was
bad.
I'm humiliated. I learned my lesson. Can we
just stop now?
So he wants the the first death was
what interpreted. The other is can can we
just end it now, but can I die
now though? Okay. No. I I got it.
I was really
bad. And then end it? No. No. No.
That's what I've got this statement I wrote
that for you already. Okay.
By the way, Qad Qad also Qadhi also
means,
alikda also means termination and qadah also means,
qad also means deadly poison.
So like death by poison
is actually also qad.
Anyway,
if death is the end, you lead a
very different life. We talked about that. Alhamdulillah.
Okay.
Okay. His, his cry
has not been completed in the Quran.
Allah wants us to hear
multiple cries of this person.
They're not in *
yet. They're in judgment day with the book
in their hand. And these are the things
they're saying. I wish I didn't get my
book. Then I wish that would the death,
death was the final death. Just I wish
it didn't happen. Now the third thing they're
saying
is My money
never made me
independent from this problem.
It never solved this problem.
This is an indication that this was a
person that was wealthy.
You remember the Quran, I was telling you
the early Quran was coming after the elite
of Mecca that were the primary opposition of
the prophet
and they were throwing money at the problem
too. Didn't they try to bribe the prophet
too
Right? The elite of 5 paid hoodlums in
the street money
to stone the prophet alaihis salatu sallam.
When the prophet was doing dawah in the
marketplace, they paid women money to start a
concert to start singing and dancing so they
would get attention.
Right? They were throwing money at this problem
all the time. And then didn't they gather
so much money to build up the army
to annihilate the Muslims once and for all?
Right? They use their money as a resource
to annihilate Islam. That was part of their
budget.
You know, this was part of their national
security budget
to, to eliminate this religion.
So now, and of course,
even if you're not talking about one's opposition
to Islam, there's another component to this. And
that is, there are people who live this
hedonistic life, this life of, you know, pleasure
is everything.
And in their mind, so long as you
have money, you get whatever you want.
You can just, you know, what problem can't
money solve? A legal problem, I'll get the
best lawyer. Okay. If it's if the lawyer
is not enough, I'll I'll buy the judge.
Say what's supposed to be the problem? What's
the problem? Okay. That's not working, okay, I'll
get citizenship in a country where I have
immunity.
Oh, they're not giving immunity? Okay, I'll buy
the prime minister.
Right? Money can solve
any problem. Every problem. Okay? And there are
places in the world I was just talking
to somebody. I won't name the country because
I don't wanna diss countries.
But there are countries in the world where
if you have a problem with somebody, they
keep coming out like, the the daughter keeps
coming after her share of the inheritance or
whatever. It costs the equivalent of $300 to
get her killed.
$300.
Somebody will kill her for you. Just drive
by on a motorcycle. Problem solved.
Now I don't have to share the inheritance.
Cheap solution.
Now I get to keep the entire farm.
Right?
So this this idea
of money can solve any problem.
They were used to that.
They were used to that. And by the
way, with money, when you have that kind
of money, you have lots of employees, you
have lots of people under the table you're
paying, right? You're you're bribing cops, you're bribing
certain people, or you're a you you you
paid certain politicians
enormous amounts of sums sums for their political
campaigns so they're in your pocket too. We're
seeing some of that nowadays, aren't we?
Right? Where some of that's now emerging, it's
coming before our eyes, right, how much lobbyists
are paid,
you know,
and or how much money lobbyists pay in
fact.
So
this this entire mechanism was there because they
never want to face accountability. They can't be
brought to trial. They own the court.
They own the court. They can't be brought
to trial, they own the system.
So you could do whatever you want, they're
gonna get away with it because what is
in their control?
Money. Money.
And it's interesting that Allah mentioned money here
before he mentioned power.
You would think he would mention power first
and he would mention money.
2nd, he mentions money first and power second
as if Allah is commenting on something. Economic
power is the driving force behind political power.
We think, in our simplistic world view, that
political power is real power.
So if you have the if you have
the government, if you're the president, the prime
minister, if you have the the the majority
in congress, then you have power.
But actually,
as the people that are funding you behind
the scenes and the people that are
owning majorities of the the majority of the
assets of the nation,
It's the people that are run driving the
major businesses,
the major employers,
the people that are controlling the finances.
How much more powerful are banks than the
federal government? The federal reserve in this country
is a private agency.
It's called federal, but it's not government.
It's a private company.
Right? How powerful is it? It's probably the
most powerful entity, financial entity on the planet.
Right?
And how much does that control
everything?
The the amount of gas, the what you're
paying for gas, where we're gonna go to
war, where what what what genocide will we
stop and what genocide will we not stop?
All that's coming from financial decisions.
These are financial calculations
made by people at the very top.
The Quraysh people think were in love with
their political power. The political power was a
facade. The real thing they had was an
economic power.
They they had that.
And the reason Abraha you remember the story
of Abraha and the elephants and all that?
The reason Abraha wanted to destroy the Kaaba
is not because he was interested in building
his own Kaaba,
because he wanted the religion to change. If
he built an alternative to the Kaaba, then
that would become the business capital. People would
come there and they would stop by and
that would grow the economy.
Right? So money being the kind of the,
the, the, the, the blood that courses through
the veins of the powerful.
Right? That's the, that's the imagery that this
person is describing. I have all this, I
had all this money. None of it was
able to solve this problem.
Ma'a unaandi maliya. And by the way, these
people, do they ever solve their own problem?
They pay somebody to solve the problem. Don't
I pay you enough? Take care of it.
I don't want to hear about it. Right?
But now,
first of all, they got no money left.
They get up naked like the rest of
humanity.
They get up bare bone like the rest
of us,
standing there by themselves, exposed completely, no protection
from anywhere. Right? So in me,
This is gonna be the words of someone
who had enormous amounts of wealth, who lived
thinking about their wealth as their an extension
of themselves,
had a great power.
And that's the group, the elite group,
out out from out of the entire body
of people of Shirk and Kufr.
So if this is the elite and they're
standing there saying, my money didn't do any
good, that all the stupid people who followed
them and did the same thing, who didn't
have the money, they're gonna be like,
yo, they they're not safe?
Oh.
Because we do we do even when when
things go bad, we know some people are
gonna survive.
Right? They're gonna get on a rocket ship
to space.
Right?
They're gonna know. There's some people will know
before the market crashes, they'll pull all those
stocks out of the market. They're gonna
know. They're gonna know when to do this,
when when to dump, when to when to
get out of the country before the bombs
start dropping. They'll know a day before. They'll
know 2 days before.
These people are the 1st in line to
get in trouble.
There's no okay.
There's no and some people had their hopes
so long as they're okay, we're going to
be okay.
Right. So Allah took the the the the
king off of the chessboard
first, subhanAllah.
And this is a direct
shot taken at the leaders of the Mushukun
of Arabia.
Like Allah says in other places in the
Quran, let me deal with the all the
people who call you a liar, particularly those
that are blessed with more.
Let me deal with them myself.
Right? Allah says, it's almost like the, Allah
is telling the prophet
don't worry about giving dawah to them, step
aside, I'll deal with them myself.
That's how Allah speaks about these people.
So, arena actually in Arabic comes from the
lack of need.
That that's actually and makhani are high elevated
places
that are above sea level or above ground
level. So if there's a storm or flood
or anything, the the one place that will
survive no matter what will be the Mahani.
They'll be, they'll be higher up. Right? So
that's kind of where the, the origin of
the word comes from.
This is similar to an expression in Arabic
they say
They say your
status
deceived
you.
Your status,
conned you.
You got you got deluded by your status.
And when that status was removed,
that became your humiliation.
So the reality emerged.
So so this is the other nothing benefited
me there are two reasonings
of can be read is one reading I
told you with this is
my money did not benefit me at all.
Not me, it didn't benefit me and the
brought first as if he's still obsessed with
himself.
My money didn't help me.
You know, what about my money?
That's that's one. But the other is by
Estefania,
which means, what good was my money? Didn't
even help me. Like, he's asking an angry
question, the is a question form. Right? What
good was it? Oh my god. All that
money I had. What happened?
And there's a shock expressed in
in this phrasing.
This is, actually I'll read that to you
later.
That was,
Hamidu Din Farahi actually.
Oh, my team added more notes than I
first told them. Okay. This is my notes.
Okay.
Let me tell you a little bit about
sultan.
Sultan in Arabic means argument.
One mean one meaning of it is argument.
It originally actually comes from power.
So to overpower someone.
Okay. A sultan
is,
the king also. In Arabic you may have
heard, sultan is the king also.
The reason he's called the king is because
his argument is final.
You don't argue back with him. The the
final argument is his. The final verdict is
his. So sultan is a powerful argument which
cannot be rebuttled.
Right? That's why the word sultan is used
for power. It's also used for decisive,
argument, decisive
evidence, concluded, like, case closed kind of evidence.
Right?
So, in the Quran for example,
you know, people who believe in shirk, they
have no Sultan for what they believe.
That doesn't mean they don't have a king
for what they believe, it means they have
no decisive argument for what they believe.
Right?
Allah revealed no sultan for this, they're only
following their assumptions.
But here the word sultan can mean 2
things.
It can mean all the arguments I used
to make to just to to dismiss this
religion.
All of them have died. All of them
disappeared.
By the way, what were the arguments? We'll
see them in the Surah. Oh, he's just
a poet.
Oh, he's just an entertainer.
Just
just just because he sings some songs, they
rhyme. You heard the Quran, it rhymes.
It's
just it's all it is.
Oh, he's a cajun. He's just a mind
reader.
Is this the I mean, you you haven't
seen these people before? They're all over the
place. I've seen seen it, I've been around
town. This is not my first rodeo.
Take it from me. I didn't get rich
being stupid. I'm smart, I know, I'm telling
you this is a kahin. These were their
arguments.
My arguments have disappeared. The other thing this
means is my power has disappeared. By the
way, now power if powers or my authority
has disappeared, if that's being mentioned second,
what was behind it?
Money.
My money didn't benefit me, as if to
say, and my power has disappeared as a
result.
As a result,
guards
I need a whistle and they'd come running.
Right?
Get me some clothes.
You know? Get me some water. It's hot
here.
I need to play I need a place
to sit,
you know, why am I around all these
other people?
None of that's working. I have no authority
left. Halaqaani sultaniyah that's so
my power is gone, my governance over people
is gone, and I'm now just a beggar?
I'm just humiliated?
Well so
and Ibn Abbas interpreted this way Mujahid bahaak
ekrima said the arguments I used to make
all of them have now been
vanished into thin air. So the word the
word
which is used for,
death,
is actually also used for disappearance
or something no longer existing.
So, you know,
another I in the Quran,
I destroyed so much money, which means I
made so much money
vanished. Like I blow a lot of money.
Right? That's the expression for it in the
Quran.
All the powers I used to have, all
the tools and devices that I bought that
could help me for what any need that
I have all of them I've become I've
been rendered incapable of using any of them
He will say this out of great grief
and out of great sadness.
I wanna
take this commentary and add something for our
benefit.
How is power defined
nowadays?
Power is economic. Of course, I mentioned that.
Power is political. That's also true.
There's also psychological power.
Some people exert control without lifting a finger.
Right?
And they can, they can make you do
things you don't want to do just because
of the way they look at you.
Some people are don't look at them right
now. They're probably looking at you right now,
telling you what they're look, not to look
at them.
Right? So there's, there's psychologically
manipulative people that can exert a great deal
of control.
They can do that. There are people that
can do that with their words.
They have Sultan just using their words. They
can do those words can have the effect
of instilling fear in you, but also instilling
guilt in you, instilling anxiety in you, instilling
shame in you. Some people use shame as
a weapon, some people use guilt as a
weapon, Some people use fear and inte intimidation
as a weapon. There are multiple weapons at
people's disposal for sultan
for sultan. Some people use their social position
as a weapon.
Right?
I'm, I'm a, I'm a PhD.
It's gonna be so you know what you're
talking about? I know what I'm talking about.
That's being used as a weapon. Some people
use their credentials,
maybe their professional credentials, maybe their academic credentials,
maybe their place, their rank in the family.
I'm the father, I'm the older brother, I'm
the this, I'm the that depending on whatever
you are you're gonna use that as a
position of power to wedge and to enforce
some kind of wrongdoing,
right?
Or
I'm the provider, what are you gonna say?
I'm the one that pays the bills, shut
up.
Right? So peep people, it's not just people
in elite positions that have sultan.
Every human being has been given some degree
of autonomy and also given some degree of
power.
We have some degree of power.
And this person is on that day
declaring how all of that power that they
had in any capacity over anyone else, in
fact, even over their own bodies
has now been eliminated.
All of it's gone. K.
You should know I swear to God not
everybody who goes to the hellfire is the
prince of a city
or is the head of a village.
However, Allah created all of them
and gave them power over their bodies.
But he did give them power over their
bodies and commanded them to obey him and
forbid them from disobeying him.
The concept of tudmeen is important here, I'm
gonna give you a silly example to help
you understand it then we'll take our break.
Okay. Tudmeen is something that occurs
enough times in the Quran that you should
become familiar with it.
Some English commentaries of the Quran also use
the word tadeem in their commentaries, and use
like what does this tad mean? What's that
talking about? Let me help you out. In
English, I'm gonna use English to explain this
to you. In English, some verbs have prepositions,
Right? So you you don't say I gave
arguing, you say I gave up arguing.
So now the word quit,
the equivalent of that is this a synonym
for that is gave up. Right? Which is
made up of a verb and a preposition,
gave up. Right? Here's another another word. He
abstained
from arguing. What's the preposition here?
Yeah, from. So you don't say he abstained
up arguing,
or he abstained to arguing, or he abstained
of arguing. They're particular prepositions for particular verbs,
for particular meanings. Right? They they interact with
each other and create a certain meaning. Right?
So
gave goes with up,
and abstained goes with from. What the Arabs
used to do
is they'd say, he abstained up arguing.
So they take the verb from 1 and
the
preposition from the other,
and the listener was sharp enough to say,
I see what you did there. You're trying
to tell me he gave up arguing,
he abstained from arguing and gave it up
entirely.
You're telling me both.
Just because you used the verb from a
and the preposition from
be. Pretty cool, We don't do that anyway.
You could try it. You'll sound stupid, but,
k, I ask you to abstain
a bit,
but but the idea behind it is two
meanings fused together as 1,
right? Halakah
doesn't actually come with Al.
So the verb is Halakah and the preposition
is
Actually,
halaqa sultani,
and it would be minni.
It would not be it would be minni.
But Allah used Ani, halaqa anni sultaniya. So
this would be an example of
which means the verb is hadaka, but the
preposition is coming from some other verb.
Right? So then the scholars started thinking what
is this other verb? And one verb they
just described is raba and the other is
labiatfar.
So they say
the you know my authority disappeared
at the same time my
authority you know has died, halakah, it died,
my authority has disappeared, and my authority refused
to defend me.
My authority is no longer defending me. All
of those meanings
got included because what preposition was being used?
And this happens on a number of occasions
in the Quran. In most translations of the
Quran, is not respected, so they just go
with the verb and kind of ignore the
preposition.
I say, okay, it's not the normal preposition
but and
and then this is kind of strange because
they they gotta do like a one liner
translation so they don't really, pay too much
attention to it. So we'll we'll come back
inshallah and continue from ayah number 30. Barakallahuwalaikum.
Assalamu Alaikum.
Hey, guys. You just watched a small clip
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in-depth can seem like a really intimidating thing
that's only meant for scholars. Our job at
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