Nouman Ali Khan – What Does Calling To Allah’s Way Mean #1
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of communication in Islam, including being able to communicate in a way that is effective and not just general. They stress the need for students to use words like "by law" and "by the way" to convey their intentions and emphasize the importance of finding oneself on a path and not missing out on opportunities. They also emphasize the need to be open about one's path and not let anyone convince them to do so.
AI: Summary ©
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Allah Allah azza wa jal kitabi Karim Buddha rubella Himanshu Tanaka Jean de la civilian Robbie COVID Hekmati will know wherever till Hashanah T which ideal humility here is an inner bucha who will be mumbling gonna answer b d.
d. Frobisher surgery with silly MD, Dr. Tammy lasagna, Ollie along with Epic multi Bella ilaha illa Allah how much I mean everything I'm gonna I'm gonna study hard, but also be happy, whatever sub sub i mean, yeah, but I mean, I think inshallah for the next few weeks, as I share with you on Friday in sha Allah, I'm going to try to focus on lessons that we can derive from the 100 and 25th I have selected. So this is slide number 16 and I am number 125. And what I want to do in this you know series of hot buzz is really talking about this really comprehensive place in the Quran where Allah has taken lots of lessons that are dispersed all over the Quran and fuse them together inside of one
single ayah. So let me first translate this for you so you understand the overall scope of what this is talking about. And then inshallah we'll get into the subject matter which I think everybody can benefit from including myself with lsvt loud because it Hekmati was motivated Hazara call to the path of your master call to the way of your master with wisdom and with beautiful counsel. So the second word is beautiful counsel, was your ideal home bility here arson and debate them and argue with them in a way that is better. So argue with them in the way that is better in Rebecca, who will be Madonna and severely he no doubt your master, in fact is the one who knows better, who is truly
misled, or who is last far away from his path. Well, who then will be Mr. Dean and he knows better who's committed to guidance. So there's lots of things that are being said here, but as you can tell, the subject matter of the is calling people to the path of Allah. Allah subhanaw taala being generally Muslim is called giving the power, right. And the idea of giving the power or sharing something about a law is something we do with Muslims and non Muslims. It's not something limited to those who don't believe in Allah only or don't share the faith of Islam only but we give each other that will also. So let's first start with the word that one die in Arabic means to call it also
means to invite. So it's a little bit different from nada or NIDA. The dynamic also means to call and it's one of the names given to the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam robina, Indiana semana Muna dn United diliman, we heard the call of a caller calling to eemaan. And then that is the word munadi was used, which is used for calling. But the word that which can also be used for calling has a shared meaning with invitation. Now that makes it a pretty significant difference, because when you call someone it can be for any purpose. You can call someone to do some work with them. You can call someone because you're warning them you can call someone for just a very random specific task,
right? But when you call someone and in behind that call is an invitation. Then there's a friendliness, there's a safety, there's a care that you have, because obviously you don't there's no way you're going to invite someone you don't like. And if you do then you have some, you know, dubious purpose like in the story of use of a salon. The wife of the minister invited other women to her house, but she had some other alternative motive, right. See also
Your agenda. But generally, if you're gonna invite somebody that actually means it's an expression of friendship, of welcoming of bringing somebody into your home, making making someone feel safe making giving somebody or hospitality, opening your doors to them, all those things are embedded inside the word tower. So when you are going to, you know, sometimes young, you know, men and women when they're University and other settings this hour, I want to give Dawa. Right? So they'll set up like $1 table or something in the middle of a street somewhere on campus. And it's like, why should you become Muslim and people are coming and stopping by, and sometimes some very staunch atheist
stops by or some very hardline Christian stops by and it turns into a spitting match and everybody's raising their voice and you know, argumentation is going on and things are being said about the Prophet sly salon, or about the Koran and things like that. And they say, well, brother, we gotta do the Dharma. That's not dalla, that's something else. But that's not thou, because that means invitation. Now, who would look at that and say, oh, they're inviting each other? Or He's inviting them? You know, it's a completely different gesture, isn't it when you say, hey, let's go have lunch together, or you come over to my place, or I'd like you to sit down with me, or, you know, those are
Invitational gestures. So the word itself includes a kind of mannerism to begin with. And if we don't possess that mannerism, there are other aspects of Islam that the ayah covers, but don't like this, this wouldn't be that well, it's also important to mention that that we should be separated from the concept of
the Prophet social and gave us the responsibility ballyhoo attend, right, communicate on my behalf, even if it's a single ayah. By law cannot calls itself but out, communicator, or communication. The prophet of Islam is total Malaika lol, but you have no responsibility other than to just communicate, in other words, but it means not how you're inviting, but what you're saying needs to get the message across, you got to say stuff that somebody will understand. And they actually get it. So if you start using big words that they don't get, or you start throwing in technicalities that they have no background in, you're no longer doing but us Quran calls itself by law. And by
law, actually, the original meaning of by law is to reach and from it, one of the sciences of the Arabic language, they call it by law, you may have heard of that. But Allah is actually the the art of communication. When you're talking to somebody, I want you to imagine it like this, this is how I used to explain, but I've got my my Arabic students think of it as when you're talking to someone, they have a protective wall, literally the chest cavity, around their heart. So what you're seeing is going to bounce right off, right, you've got to find the kind of words that can penetrate through this cavity and go deep inside somebody's heart and impact them. And that's actually called
bodyline, Arabic When you are getting through to somebody, and it really hits them. So that's actually the art of communication. So the hour is, first of all, an invitation. It's a friendly gesture, it's a call, by law, or by law, or even to leave is to communicate in ways that are the most effective, which means we have to become students, not just of the manners of speech, but the nature of speech itself. What are we? How are we going to talk to somebody about the same thing, you can say the same thing in the most effective way? And you can say the same thing, and it's the opposite of effective? What is the goal that you're trying to achieve? Are you trying to win a
point? Are you trying to prove someone wrong? Or are you trying to win someone over? Because if you win an argument, the person might walk away losing an argument, but hating you also, you didn't win anything? That wasn't us. And it certainly wasn't that law. But you felt good about yourself, that was more of a you know, a propagation of one's own ego instead of da or w you understand. So this is why these words are actually really important to understand these terms in the Quran, are really important to understand. So we know what is it that we're trying to do, if I'm giving Yeah, and by the way, this is not just about you know, taking some Christian fellow and telling them about the
oneness of Allah or something like that. You could be doing that what your mom, you could be doing them to your to your spouse, your husband or wife or your child, there's an opportunity to invite them to something now let him say invite them to Allah. Listen to the words. ls abelia rahbek. Invite the path of your master inviter the path of your master. Now this is imagery because the Koran communicates some very comprehensive messages by way of painting a picture and this is a picture that's been painted in this ayah and what's the picture has been painted a path is not something you call someone to you call someone to a destination. I can invite you to my home. I
don't say I invite you to highway 183 doesn't make sense because
You don't invite to a path you invite to a destination. So it's interesting language that Allah says call to the path of your master, you understand that? Now the thing about a path is, if I invite 10 people just visualize this, I might 10 different people to the same path or road, let's not use the word path. Many of you use that word. Let's use the word road, right? So I call 10 of you to a road, because 10 of you live in 10 different locations, aren't you going to join that same road at different points? Isn't that true? Somebody will join this road way back 10 miles back, somebody will join it 100 miles ahead of everybody else, isn't that the case. And all of you have different
paces, some of you have a bicycle, some of you are walking, some of you have an animal, somebody, a truck, a car, whatever you got. And what if somebody, somebody will get on that path and move quickly, somebody will get on their path and move slowly, somebody will get on the path and be reluctant to even take the first step, even though they're on the path, somebody will get on that path and take two steps and then kind of want to slip off, you understand the imagery of a path means that you understand that people are at different points in their life. And you're not calling everybody to become the same. You don't want everybody to be like everybody else. You don't say well
look at that one that's on the path. Why can't you be more like them?
You know, because we have this over simplistic picture of what does it mean to call people to Allah, or to call people to the path of Allah. And what we say is, Islam means complete surrender, therefore, you must surrender absolutely, to the will of Allah. And somebody comes in, says, Hey, so if I become Muslim, I gotta stop eating pork, and I gotta stop drinking, and I gotta do this, and I gotta go, and I have to divorce my wife. And do I have to give up this and I have to give up that and then make a list. That's why I can't do it. I know that Yep. You got to do all that right away. And if you don't want it, Islamic surrender, bro.
You better just and you compare this to what happened in the time of the Prophet sallallahu sallam, a person came to the prophet SAW them and said, I've heard basically saying, I've heard about Islam, but he said, Oh by Luca Salatin, I'm ready to pledge myself to you. I'm basically ready to accept you as allies messenger. But I'll pledge that I'll pray two prayers a day. I'll give you two.
And it's very clear that there's no compromise on the number of prayers in a day it's five prayers every Sahabi knows that. It was early established in the religion. It was a heavenly gift from a lot. So it's, there's no negotiation here. And the prophets I send him accepted his pledge and the man happily walked away. A Muslim and the Sahaba were confused. Like, was there a discount program we didn't know about? Like, what, what happened here? And the prophet SAW Selim explained to them, that once he tastes the sweetness of the prayer, he'll come around, he learned, let him take his first steps. Look at the statement of eyeshadow, the Allahu taala. And now what a man does Allah
middle Koran, fashionable hammer, had the first thing in the Quran that came down would have been don't drink alcohol, local novela hillendale local camera, then we would have responded, we swear to God, we will never have banned alcohol ever.
And she quit. She went on to save a lot of law gave several other prohibitions. First, we would have said no, no way. Give up why. No, we would have fought it tooth and nail.
What does that tell you? And you've heard this narration before? What does it think about what that tells you? What it tells you is we consider these the most ready and willing the most submissive slaves of Allah in the history of the oma, these are the Sahaba. These are the Sabbath on the Sabbath on the first of the very first, they are the first and foremost, they're the ones. And they're telling us that they needed time to grow. They needed to be on an earlier step in the path and they needed to take slow steps to get somewhere, you understand. And Allah gave the example of that, how the prophet SAW shall have nurtured them over time, and allowed them to mature and grow.
He gave the example of that at the end of SoTL.
And he described this as, as you know,
it's Zahra in Africa, who for us are who first our either you know, festival of festival or other soupy so it's a it's a little tiny blade of grass, and it comes out and it starts getting reinforced, then it becomes a stock, a toll stock like a bamboo stick kind of thing. And then it stands on its own and eventually turns into a tree. Yeah. Or it turns into a tall crop. And then it gets to a point where it's even taller than the farmer. It was this tiny little seed and it's taller than the farmer. It grew so much. And this is the comparison Allah made to the way the Sahaba matured, how they grew. Now think about that the prophets lie sometimes relationship with the best
generation ever is being compared to a farmer who's being you know, who's being raised. Oh,
Who's raising crop right? So if that's the case, then what we have to understand is that in our religion,
we don't tell someone to
completely transform themselves and become someone else overnight, we have to be patient with people, we have to understand that they just may be a seed right now. Or maybe a little bit later, they might turn into a little blade of grass, or maybe a little bit later, they might turn into a taller stock, it'll take time, but they're not ready yet. And that's still because the seed is on the path to growth, it's still on a path, isn't it? It's still on a path. And by the way, the most beautiful part of that is, when you put a seed in the ground, and you water it, and you nurture it, and you make sure the soil is good. For a long time, you don't see any progress over the ground.
It's underground and nothing is happening. You don't see any progress outside. You know what we do with people, man, I gave him dollar the other day, I told him the ayah. And everything I told him the Hadith about it, I gave him all the Delete, and look, no change, still the same guy.
After I told him, Africa, still the same guy.
Unbelievable. Do the profits do that? Did the profits like know how the salon doesn't have a different audience, he's sticking to the same audience, then you speak to them once and say I already told you and you still look at you, I'm done with this, I need a new audience. Because I already gave them the most the best speech,
that should be enough for them. That's not how human beings work. That's not how transformation works. So the comparison made is because a path takes time to reverse. And the other thing about that is when you call people to a path, make sure you they understand that they're being called to their own path, meaning their own speed. The road is the same, but your speed. And whether you're walking alone or with three other people, or you need training wheels, or you need help, or you need somebody propelling you right now, you can't totally walk on your own, everybody's different, isn't it, just like if you had 1000 people walking on the same road, some will be old, some will be young,
some will be strong, some will be weak, some will be sick, right, some will need more help, some will get thirsty quickly, someone will want to give up, there'll be different people on the road. So when you're calling people on that road, make sure they understand not to compare themselves to someone else. Not just that you don't compare them to others. But they might start somebody takes Shahada becomes Muslim comes to the worship or some Muslim who was raised with the Muslim name and the Muslim family, but they never really thought that religion was not their fault. And they decide they want to figure something out about it. They want to learn about it right. And when they finally
come to a mission for the first time, or come to a Muslim community, hear about a convention, and the guy is giving a speech, and he's dropping all these Arabic words. And everybody's going to come here and he doesn't know what that means. And then everybody screams and he's like, Is there an emergency in the building? He doesn't know. He has no idea and he feels so out of place. And then finally, when somebody tell you gotta pray five times, you got to hear today he was Salatu. Salam Monica, you gotta you got to You got that? Right. You got that? Okay. And here's eight more brochures, you got to make sure you do this. And here's how you people do. And yeah, it's only it's
easy. Let me show you.
If people are information overload, and then they start feeling like, man, there's a lot to learn, and I'll never learn it. And all these people know so much more. I'm never gonna be a good Muslim. There's so much further down the road on this path, and I am. Right so they start comparing themselves and feeling inferior. Allah has said such profound words when he said, call people to the path of your master, the path of your master. Because every one of you is not being compared to the next person. You're not you're your rank in front of Allah is not less because you haven't memorized the Quran, or you don't know that you read yet. Or you don't speak Arabic. Or you don't know, you
know, you didn't memorize the, the 40 hadith of your mom, no, he or you, you know, you're none of that stuff. Those are important and valuable things and rewardable deeds. But that's not the only way reward works. That's not the only way reward works. Actually, it's a relative because I'm in the middle of studying for the use of right now. It's on my mind. I'll just share a simple example with you use the Verizon one of the most awarded profits of our history, right. But he wasn't given a book.
He wasn't given revelation called off came way later. Thought I came to musante Sam. Yes. So there is no recitation going on. There's no scripture that he's reciting and surah is that he knows or, you know, revelation of Unix. He knows the interpretation of dreams. He knows what lies one. He knows his the story of his father's. He knows that but he doesn't know much as far as scripture is concerned.
We have way more access to words of Allah and laws of Allah that weren't even revealed yet, right? But what's his contribution, his contribution is he's making sure the agricultural community is doing its job. He's making sure the money's moving in the right places. He's making sure the administration is running clean. There's an anti corruption policing in place, there's, you know, the poor are getting what they need to get what you would consider secular services, not even religious services. But that's a contribution. And there's a lot of value in values and enough to make it a pseudo we study. So what we do is we start comparing well, religiously, I'm behind this
one, and that one, or I know less than that one, and that one, therefore I'm inferior. Somebody else can make you feel like that. And you can start feeling that way. But when you invite someone to Allah, this is the most important thing, the most important thing is you remind them over and over again, I'm not inviting you to a destination that some other people reached and you haven't reached yet too bad for you. You better catch up. No, I'm inviting you to a path. And the fact that you're on a path is success. That's the last thing I'll share with you. For today, we're just doing the first phase of the show today, we'll it'll take us a while before we get to the whole lot. But in
the first phase of the AI, that being on that path, is actually the ultimate goal.
Because the moment you start thinking that you reach some kind of destination, that's when you failed.
There is no such thing as us having reached our destination in this life, this entire life. Just like every day, the sun takes a path, the moon takes a path. Just like every day, our bodies are actually on a path towards maturity and then decline. Our bodies, our bones are on a path. Our eyes are on a path, our brain cells are on a path dementia will come in eventually. Right? Everything Allah created inside of us is on a path. So is our religion. So is our relationship with him. It's on a path. Our goal is to find ourselves on that path every day. And not to compare ourselves to someone else. But to see that the whatever step I took yesterday, am I taking the next step today?
Am I still on the same path? Did I make progress today? The only one you're competing with is yourself? Nobody else? The only standard you have to hold and I have to hold is I know I could have done more. And I didn't. I know I could have held myself to a higher standard. And I didn't. The failure of so many will be whenever they're about to take the next step. Instead of comparing themselves to themselves. What will they do? They'll compare themselves to everybody else. Well, this one, supposedly, so far ahead of me in the path is so messed up. What's even the point? I don't want to be like them. Therefore, I'm not taking any steps.
Good luck with that in front of a law.
Because it's your own journey. Every single one of us our own journey. We're supposed to help each other along, but not race with each other and make someone feel like you know, you're behind you better catch up, or I'm way ahead of you, man, I wait, I know so many more students than you. I'm going to be like so many levels above you in gender studies and fun. Now.
You know, I'll leave you with the thing I used to tell my students on the first day of the full time dream program. These are students that like, come here with like this fervor to learn the Koran and like they left their jobs, some of them suspended college education, come here to study with me for nine months back in the day. And it said here and I'd say listen,
inshallah, to I'll do my best to teach you Arabic And I have full confidence that if Allah wills, and in a few months, you'll be reading Arabic books, you will be doing that.
But you know, what?
If you're not on a path to connect with the laws word, and you're not changing yourself in here, not here, here, I can help you. I can try. I can grow this, I can't help this that's on you. If this grows, and you know Arabic, if someone was a terrible person before they came here,
then four months later, there'll be a terrible person who knows Arabic
does the only difference now that you eat is better. And they got good vocabulary, and then a lot of grammar, but they're still a terrible person.
Because the simply seeking knowledge does not mean that we're on a path. We have to understand why are we learning? What's the purpose of this learning?
Why are we Why are we acquiring any knowledge at all? Why are we listening to any Islamic content, any car or any car or any anything that you're listening to? What's the purpose? Are you listening man?
I gotta write that down. I gotta use that in a speech somewhere. I got to write that all people got, I'm gonna drop this on somebody at some party, you're looking for quotes to impress people, that's what you're looking for. Is that is that what this is? Because that's not inviting somebody to a path. First of all, I have to be on a path. And because I'm walking in and struggling, I can share with someone else. By the way, I'm no better than you. I just started sometime before you. But it's, it's a path for all of us. And by the way, whenever someone journeys, they get tired. Whenever someone journeys it wears on them, yes or no. Whenever someone journeys, they might need to be
replenished. They need to be rejuvenated. Whenever someone journeys, they may be dangerous on the past, so it's safer to travel in a group, isn't it? So when you invite someone else to a path, you must also be open about the fact that you're on a path yourself. And you have slipped off here and there. But you get back on and hamdulillah you have people in your life that help you get back on, instead of what we've done in the oma when someone slips and falls, we kick them again and say you fell, oh, my God, everybody, this one fell, make sure they don't get up again.
And boot them down. How dare you fall, because all none of us have ever fallen. So I don't understand how you could fall.
This is this is the self righteousness that is antithetical it's the opposite of what Allah is saying in the very opening of this statement, although Illa said we do have become taking a little bit extra time. But since I want to do some justice to this phrase, I'll say one more thing about this opening phrase of the eye again, sort of 16 125 Yeah.
through it as severely, Arabica invites the path of your master, your master, it's saying that sort of loss on the long run. So first of all, when was also time is going to invite even a less house him, didn't he find you an orphan and he gave you shelter? Didn't he find you seeking lost and he guided you.
In other words, he will tell people, I also had a starting point in my path.
And it's not my path. I don't own this road. I don't get to comment on other people in their speed on this road. Because I don't own it. It is the path of belonging to someone who also owns me by master. So now there's two ownerships, I'm my master is Allah. And the master, the owner of the path is also allows origin. That means the way that I observe myself, I'm not the police on this road, I'm not in charge on this road, I don't decide the rules on this road. I don't call people out on this road, who's the only authority who can do that that's a lie himself, because it's his road. Don't act like you own it.
Don't act like you're you've got copyright on this road on this path, and you will decide who should have walk.
That's not it's not your place in white people don't understand that they should be on this path, because it's a path that belongs to their master beautiful language, because it says if Allah is saying that he's telling us that when you when I remind myself and I remind you, there are lots of roads to take in life. There are lots of roads, there's lots of ways you can live your life, but only one of them is actually owned by Allah, then you have to think what are those other pads? Who owns them? And what are they if they're not owned by Allah? Do they lead to who you're gonna meet on those roads? If they're not, if they're not owned by the one who who gave you your life, who
sustains your Oregon's who gives you the air to breathe? Who loves you more than anyone can ever love you? And if he made this road just for you, then he will put people in it that will make your life beautiful.
But what about those other roads that you abandon his road and you take? What kind of people will you meet on that road? What kind of experiences will you hit on that road? Where are you going to head? What progress Are you going to make? As you make progress towards Allah? You Allah literally describes it as rising, rising. Now again, visual I'm taking so long as it
doesn't matter. It's okay. It's COVID-19. You can work from home. So
when it's when you're rising, imagine a road that goes upward Yeah.
So as you're traveling, this road is getting higher and higher. When you get higher, don't you see further?
Aren't you able your view changes, right?
It's a remarkable thing, that the path of Allah is actually heading upwards. Why? Because now for everybody else. They're so caught up in the moment in the day on the weekend, and you can look at your entire life ahead. You can look at your children's lives. You can look at the meeting with a law. You can look at the long term consequences of these steps. You can see it you can see what you left behind.
high end for what it really is, oh my god, that's where I was, you know you when you're inside a city that has a lot of smoke and smog, you don't see it. But if you travel up the road and you look down and it's covered in smog, that's where I was living. Oh my god, I was breathing that and you came out of it. You're rising above it. And the your horizons are changing. You know, you're in a new environment now. And you can see things you didn't see before. That's the invitation that a lot as origin has given us to me because people have vision, literally people a vision, people that can see further out people that are not reacting to moment by moment. This is the opening of the I mean,
I don't want to call it philosophy. It's the wisdom of Dharma in the Quran. How does Allah describe Dharma, and it's just inside this one ayah there are so many just pearls of wisdom packed jam packed in and I wanted to kind of take you know a little bit of them each other time and unpack them so that you and I can truly understand what does it mean that we have been chosen to follow the path of our messenger sallallahu sallam, to invite others on the path that we ourselves are traveling on. barakallahu li walakum phylloquinone Hakeem, when I finally we are going with it with the Clucky.
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