Omar Suleiman – Hidden Causes Of Disconnect From Allah
AI: Summary ©
The importance of witnessing Allah's actions and his connection to his followers is emphasized. The reality of life is portrayed in the "will" of Islam, and small obtained and small obtainings are the main broad category. The loss of honor is discussed, and the consequences of the disease of backbiting and the disconnect between the church and the world are also discussed. forgiveness and being raised on the day of judgment are also emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
We begin by praising Allah by
bearing witness that none has the right to
be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for him.
And We bear witness that Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wasallam is his final messenger. We ask Allah
to send his peace and blessings upon him.
The prophets and messengers that came before him,
his family and companions that served alongside him,
and those that follow on his blessed path
until the day of judgment. And we ask
Allah to make us amongst them.
Dear brothers and sisters, I want to start
with a scene
from Hajj
that
all of us
would love
to represent our ending.
There was a man
in our group, Doctor Suboh,
who after finishing Tawafat Ifaba
on the day of Eid
and Hajj is, of course, with all of
its rituals,
2 pillars. Hajj
is the day of Arafah and then Tawafal
Ifaba.
And as he finished his Tawafal Efadah
and he came outside of the Haram,
he saw an elderly man
from Palestine, from Palestine,
actually from Palestine, who was making Hajj from
Palestine,
who collapsed right in front of him.
And so
he got down
and he put him in his lap. He
tried his best to resuscitate him. He tried
his best to keep him alive.
And as he realized that the man was
escaping, that his soul was leaving his body,
He repeats to him as the Prophet SallAllahu
Alaihi Wasallam taught us to do the Shahada.
And you can imagine SubhanAllah,
this man
leaving this world in his Ihram
less than 24 hours after Arafah,
performing Tawaf Al Ifadah,
just shaving his head,
saying La Illaha Illallah.
Your entire life
is for this 1 moment.
And SubhanAllah,
how badly would you want that to be
your ending?
That Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala takes you from
this world.
Literally,
as you are purified from your sins, like
the day that your mother gave birth to
you
saying La Illahullullah,
staring or looking at the Kaaba
still in your Ihram,
going back to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala pure.
Now was this man some special Waleed of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, some special friend of
Allah, his entire life? We don't know.
Did he make Tawba
perhaps a day before or a year before,
or was it in the hours that preceded
that, that he expressed a desire to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, maybe even internally that
his life would end there?
We don't know. Was he someone that suffered
under the brutal Israeli occupation?
Most likely.
What is it that leads to the culmination
of those events and to that moment?
And I want to walk you back.
Saying La Illahullullah
at the time of death
is a special gift from Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, and it represents a connection that a
person has with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala that
allows them the ability to express that in
their last moments. May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
grant us a Sabat, grant us firmness with
La ilaha illallah as we live, as we
leave this world, as we enter into our
graves, when the angels come to us and
as we rise up on the day of
judgment.
It's that connection to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
It doesn't come automatically.
It doesn't come that easy.
Now I want you to leave that to
the side for a moment
and then come back
to a question
that many people ask themselves.
How come I'm not feeling that connection to
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala? Or maybe even if
I am feeling that connection to
Allah
I may not be considered amongst those who
are connected to Allah
because there is Gurur as well. There is
deception and delusion. You could be crying in
your salah. You could be reading the Quran.
You could be fasting Mondays Thursdays, but there
are sins that are distancing you from Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala at the exact same rate,
and they don't come to you until the
moment of your death. And then they confront
you at that moment or they confront you
when you rise up on the day of
judgment.
But
where is that connection with Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala? And the mistake that we make with
our major acts of worship and with our
daily lives is that we only try to
remedy
our deficiency in worship
with worship,
that we see things in an isolated way,
and they are the entire package.
And as hajj is actually the culmination
of your entire life, and it connects the
dots between your relationship with Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, your relationship with the people around you,
the things that you have to disconnect from
in order to connect to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, because you can't do Tawaf
unless you
enter into your Ihram at the mikat, unless
you change out of your state. And when
you come into that state of Ihram, there's
a mindset
before you go to the Kaaba and you
make tawaf in Umrah or in Hajj. It
connects it all so beautifully.
And for so many of us, we treat
our deficiency in worship and isolation of 1
another.
Why is it that I can't connect when
I read the Quran?
Well, maybe I just need to give it
more time. True. You do need to give
it more time. Why is it that I
can't pray more? Why is it that I
feel a blockage of Piyamalil in my night
prayer? Why is it that I feel that
I'm not able to to to immerse myself
in dua? Why this? Why that? And we
try to
treat it and remedy it within
and say that's where the connection
is failing.
But our beings
are all interconnected in this regard. And SubhanAllah,
just like with Ramadan, a major act of
worship, 1 of your pillars of Islam, your
accepted Ramadan
is about
Whoever does not leave off false speech
and acting upon that false speech, then Allah
has no need of their fasting. Your fasting
is salim,
is preserved
by your entering and exiting your fast without
the intake of Haram
at the spiritual level and at the physical
level.
Not about how much Qiyam you prayed, not
about how much Quran you read. You could
have an accepted Ramadan
and maybe read a few pages of Quran.
I'm saying that that is possible. It's not
ideal, but you could go through technically speaking
from the Hilal of Ramadan to the Hilal
of Shawwal
and not read the Quran at all on
your own. And you could still have an
accepted Ramadan so long as you preserved yourself
from those things. It's not gonna be a
good Ramadan,
but it could be an accepted Ramadan.
Likewise,
Al Hajj. What is Al Hajj Al Mabroor?
What is an accepted Hajj?
Hajj. It's about you not doing those other
things.
It's about you not arguing. It's about about
you not fighting. It's about you not cursing.
It's about you not sinning. It's about what
you're not doing as much as it is
about what you are doing.
And SubhanAllah, just as you have the scene
of that man that I gave you,
there is another scene that is seared in
my mind,
and I ask Allah to forgive
the brother,
you know, who
saying
and someone comes into a tent seeking refuge
from the heat. And in the middle of
your
and I thought to myself subhanAllah
what happens here? Where is the disconnect? May
Allah forgive us all. It's also a scene.
It's also a reality.
But maybe in his mind, it was. I
need to focus on my Ibadah right now.
I need to read my Quran. I need
to do my dua. This is a distraction
for me.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala puts all of this
as a package for us
in a way that represents our lives.
And as wonderful as it might seem, you
know, someone actually had brought this proposition up.
Imagine if Hajj was like a ticket system
where, you know, everyone goes in and has
the whole haram to themselves and
then they kind of check out and then
another person comes in puts the ticket in.
MashaAllah. No bothering whatsoever.
But the reality is that Hajj is like
life. You're gonna have people elbow you, people
push you around, people cut you off, people
that are going to disturb you. That's how
life is, and Hajj is supposed to be
a simulation of life.
It's not ibadah when it's just quiet and
peaceful and no 1 bother me and no
1 get in my way. That's how life
is.
Now, what does this have to do with
the barriers that we might face between us
and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala?
Many of us have heard the Hadith of
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam or Abu Hurray
radiAllahu ta'ala An who says, a man complained
to the Prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, shakaradanabi sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam, that a man complained to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam about the hardness of
his heart.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam told him
to caress the head of an orphan.
That what will soften your heart
is to treat an orphan with kindness.
That's what's going to be the remedy for
your heart. That man might have been thinking,
why is it that I can't connect to
the Quran? Why is it that I can't
cry? Why is it that I can't do
this? Why is it that I can't do
that? And the Prophet
brought in a dimension
that was otherwise foreign to that person.
What does the opposite of that look like?
And the ulamaat mentioned
2 broad categories,
2 broad categories.
And before I say these 2 broad categories,
I want you to understand
that Allah
is not unjust
to catch you on a sin that you
did not know about
or to take you by surprise when you
were sincerely striving
without informing you why you failed. Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala is not unfair. Allah is not
unjust
that a person does everything they know they're
supposed to do and avoids everything they're told
they're supposed to avoid and then finds themselves
suddenly having iman snatched away from them. It's
the opposite.
You're striving, Allah guides you. Allah opens your
eyes wider, Allah opens your heart more. Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala lets your tongue loosen your
out, lets your tongue loosen wicked. Your striving
opens doors, doesn't close doors for you. So
I'll start with
that. 2 broad categories.
Number 1,
muhakarat is the
belittling of sins.
It is the thing that the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam described as a man who goes
and who keeps putting small branches into a
fire until the fire grows and consumes him.
Right? He ends up setting himself ablaze
by throwing these small branches,
the small sins.
Why? Because the small sins by nature go
without incident in your life.
Minor sins don't cause major
ruptures in your life. And so it becomes
easier to engage them on a consistent and
regular basis. And Allah says,
Right? That over time, the heart stains, stains,
stains, stains, stains, stains, stains until the heart
becomes
completely
poisoned,
locked and unable to benefit from the Quran,
unable to benefit from the Salah, unable to
connect in Dua, completely disconnected from worship.
So it is
mentions of the belittling of sins. Imagine taking
a stone and dropping a little drop of
water on the same place over and over
and over again.
Right?
And what ends up happening?
Eventually, the stone will completely be destroyed.
And that is the likeness of the small
sins, the habitual sins, the ones that you
do on a regular basis.
And so that is the first broad category
that a person has to look with deep
introspection
because minor sins are also rarely going to
be called out by someone else.
That's on you
to look to yourself and say, what are
the invisible barriers between me and Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala that even other people are really
not going to note for me? The things
that I regularly watch, the things that I
regularly say, the things that I regularly do.
What are those invisible shackles and barriers? That's
something that's going to come through your introspection,
not through anybody else.
You have to diagnose that for yourself.
And with every age and every circumstance and
every time, the nature of those sins
is going to change. But Shaytan knows what
he's doing.
He doesn't just give you, you know, your
steps and your rope when you're younger and
then he suddenly abandons you and doesn't pivot.
Shayphon pivots to your weaknesses.
He pivots to your weaknesses and gives you
another rope, another trail, another way away from
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to disconnect you from
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
The second 1
that the scholars mentioned
as a broad
category,
which is a significant 1 SubhanAllah, especially in
this day and age
is 'aral al Nas.
Doesn't really connect with people most of the
time. The honor of your fellow brother or
sister.
Violating the honor of your fellow brother and
sister
is the quickest way to distance yourself from
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala altogether.
Why do you think the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam Hajj
was talking to the Sahaba and saying, you
see this Kaaba?
You see this place that you're in, this
day that you're in, you see this Kaaba.
What's more sacred than this? Your brother's blood,
money, honor is more sacred than this Kaaba
to you. Could you ever imagine yourself doing
something to this Kaaba?
So second category,
where do we take that from? And especially
when you combine it with the first category
of the quote unquote minor sins, the zalat,
the the slips of the tongue. Number 1,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam when he
mentions that
that verily a slave will say 1 word,
1 narration.
He doesn't really consider it,
meaning it's just something that slips. Why? Because
it became a habit. I always talk like
this. This is just how I talk.
I don't even recognize how I talk anymore.
So. He doesn't see an issue with it.
The ulema mentioned the intricacy between the 2
is that in the first case, it's just
it's so habitual, like, you're not even thinking
about it. You always talk like that. You
talk about people, you talk in this way,
you talk that way, you type this way,
you just have a long tongue and you
got long fingers always, always talking, talking, talking,
talking.
The second situation,
is that he doesn't think it's that big
of a deal and that he's justified it
or she's justified it in her mind that
it's okay to talk this way and that's
not really going to have an effect on
my spirituality or my standing with Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam mentioned
that that causes a person to fall into
the fire.
The distance between
the East and the West
causes you to go face first into the
fire.
You just talk, talk, talk, talk. Type type
type type. Talk talk talk talk type type
type. Think about what you're doing.
That's gonna come with you
holding yourself.
When the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam talked
about the severity of riba, of interest and
usury with all of its branches,
the least of it being compared to zina
and *,
adultery.
The last thing the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam says,
The worst form of riba, the essence of
Riba, of usury, is the honor of your
brother and sister.
Your tongue being long with your brother and
your sister.
So remember that hajji that I told you
about in the very beginning, a person who's
looking at the Kaaba who can flow with
That whoever lets their tongue loose
on the honor of their brothers and sisters.
Allah will hold his tongue from being able
to say Shahad at the time of death.
May Allah protect us. Let me tell you
1 of the most horrifying things to see.
And anyone who's been around dying people will
tell you that they've seen it. It's a
person who's dying and who's still fully conscious
and someone's telling them to say
and they're going
And it's as if you can see someone
holding their tongue and saying you're not gonna
be able to say it.
No, no. You don't get this gift today.
You don't get this gift right now.
That tongue was too loose
with the honor of your brothers and sisters.
Allah
holds back that tongue
from saying the Shahad at the time of
death. Yes. A person dying and someone saying
to him, say,
He says, I can't say what you're telling
me to say.
It's happened
where a person feels held back. Why did
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala catch that person by
surprise? No. Your tongue was too loose.
Fingers were too loose
talking about other people.
When it came to the honor of the
believers.
And by the way,
this is true. SubhanAllah, Imam Al Ghazai
says about this disease of backbiting,
every single age,
every single social class
is purged with this disease.
There's the riba of the 16 year old
and the riba of the 60 year old.
There's the
ghiba of the backbiting,
and the gossip
of the poor person, the backbiting of the
rich person. But it is a disease
that plagues every single class of people and
that's why it is so warned against.
I don't care if you come to the
Masjid all the time. I don't care if
you read Quran all the time and you
pray all the time and Masha'Allah, you do
so many other things. Your tongue is loose
with the behavior and with with the honor
of people.
It might come back to grab you on
the day of judgment. And that's a that's
a jail. That's a prison that comes down
at that time. So fear Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala with that tongue.
Fear Allah with that tongue. SubhanAllah. And Imam
Sufianath Thawri
talks about the disconnect in this life that
he felt from 1 of his Ibadat.
He said,
I was forbidden from for
6 months. Why?
I saw a man crying in the Masjid,
and I said to myself,
he's not crying for Allah.
That's a person who spoke to themselves.
What about a person who speaks to others?
Oh, you see that brother, Masha'Allah,
making announcements. You see that brother doing this.
You see that sister. Don't they always love
to do that? You know how they are.
Always find their way there. Always do this.
Always do that. Can you imagine if Sufyanath
Thode, the righteous man is saying, I was
forbidden for 6 months for something I said
inside.
Then what is the crime of a person
who actually speaks that to someone else?
That's a barrier that you're putting between you
and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Dear brothers and
sisters, is this not to scare us? In
a way, yes. Because we need to be
afraid of these sins. Otherwise, we fall into
Muhaqqalaat al Dinu. We fall into the belittling
of these sins.
But the only thing I want to put
across to each and every single 1 of
us is that these are things that are
dealt with through introspection.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has made some of
the causes of disconnect from Him more subtle,
but he has not made them invisible to
a sincere,
striving, introspective Muslim.
And I don't care how old you are.
I can tell you, subhanAllah, that
the best hajji that I had this year,
and Allah knows the state of the hijaj,
was a man who learned to do salah
the day before he boarded his plane, the
Hajj.
Can you imagine that?
And may Allah accept the Hajj of him
and the Hajj of everyone else. But SubhanAllah,
it's a This is the flip side of
that.
You Allah,
I seek your forgiveness.
Help me remove the barriers.
That which I know about and that which
I don't know about so that I can
flow with with
Khushur in this life. And at the time
of death, with
ease. And then in my grave, say
with ease and be raised up on the
day of judgment.
May Allah remove all of the barriers between
us and Him. May Allah
remove all of the stains from our hearts.
May Allah
give our souls their tuskia, their purification.
May Allah
forgive us for our shortcomings. May Allah forgive
us for the sins that we know of
and the sins that we don't know of.
May Allah
protect us from deluding ourselves and deceiving ourselves.
And may Allah
allow us to be amongst those who live
and die and are raised upon.