Omar Suleiman – The Firsts – The Jinn Who Became Muslim
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So when we talk about the second group
of companions,
and I can already tell you this will
be the most popular section
of the firsts,
Who do you think we're talking about?
Anybody know?
What are 2 topics that you can always
talk about with Muslims and is super popular?
Jin
and marriage.
And if at some point in my life,
I wanna hit a home run with a
lecture and break YouTube, I'll do a lecture
about marrying Jin, and then I'll I'll be
done.
Alright?
Jin and marriage.
Those are 2 things that Muslims never get
sick of talking about,
never get sick of hearing about. Right?
But of course, we can't just talk about
jinn all the time. Okay? And we can't
talk about marriage all the time.
We have to move
on. But Alhamdulillah,
we have here something from the Quran that
is so deeply instructive about the fruits of
Ta'af to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. That
it's important for us to heed, especially when
it comes to effects of your work that
you completely can't see.
And right now, we see what's happening with
our brothers and sisters in Gaza.
We see the difficulty,
and we see what seems to be, you
know, an ineffectiveness
of what we're doing. And how is it
that we can help and it doesn't seem
like it's changing things? Well,
look at what Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sends
to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And remember when we sent to you
a group of jinn so that they might
listen to the Quran.
And when they listen to you reciting it,
right,
they stacked upon each other. Sufyanathari rihinullah says
in Tafsiri said they stacked upon each other
like rows
as if they were wool.
This group of jinn listening to the Prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
reading his Quran
as he's on his way back from Ta'if.
And they said, Shh, Shh, Shh,
listen to that.
And then when the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
finished his recitation,
they went back to their people,
calling their people
back to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Alright. So let's cover a little bit of
basic aqidah here. Alright?
That can be a little can seem a
little bit complex.
When it comes to the jinn,
are there good jinn
and bad jinn or just Shay'al Teem?
There are good jinn,
right? There are believers
from
the jinn.
When you read Surat Ar Rahman,
right,
Which of the favors of your Lord,
right?
Will you too,
right? Human beings and jinn
deny? And the prophet sallAllahu alaihi wa sallam
mentioned that there were some believing jinn. It's
a different species that we cannot see. They
see us. We don't see them.
That they say, Rabbanah lana u kedib. Our
Lord, we do not deny.
We do not deny.
Right?
So
there are good jinn
and there are bad jinn.
Are there prophets amongst the jinn?
Ambia, Rus'l?
There's a difference of opinion amongst the scholars.
If there were prophets
from the jinn, the majority of them say,
no.
They have warners and they use as the
proof of the ayah, this ayah from Surat
Al Aqaf.
They went back to their people calling them,
warning them. So they can be warners, they
can be du'ats, but they can't be,
jinn. I mean, they can't be actual prophets
and messengers. So some of them
said that. And some of them, like Imam
Hassan Abbasi, Rahimullah, and others, a small group
of scholars said, they could have they could
have had prophets
specific to them,
specific to them,
not to human beings.
Okay?
Whereas the consensus is as follows.
Number 1, there are no jinn prophets and
messengers that were ever sent to human beings.
That's number 1.
Okay.
Why? Because,
We only sent prophets and messengers
in the language of their people. So it
wouldn't make sense for us to be taught
by a jinn. Right? If anything, that that
was the objection of Quraysh, send an angel.
Right? We have human beings that were sent
to us to teach us. That's number
1. Number 2,
every human being that was sent as a
prophet
was also sent to the jinn.
Meaning the jinn were accountable to the message
of the prophets that were sent to human
beings as well. Multiple proofs for that. It's
so self evident. It doesn't need any delving
into and it would take away from the
lecture as a whole. Right?
But they see us. They hear us. They
know the language. They understand.
They have
accountability to the messengers that were sent to
the human beings as well, just as much
as we have accountability to them. Number 3,
no matter what, there is no prophet after
the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Period. He
is the seal of prophethood,
and to believe otherwise is disbelief.
That's the
of Ahlul Sunwar Jama'il. That's our creed. Right?
There is no prophet or messenger after the
Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. He is the seal
of the prophets.
So
all of that to be said, why is
this important?
Because
this group of jinn
are literally the firsts
of the jinn.
The good jinn
are not
of the same category.
There are Muslim jinn that embraced Islam
quicker than others.
They have their own versions and iterations of
the righteous amongst them that called their tribes
kaba'al al jinn that called them to Islam
and had varied responses.
And so who are the first of the
jinn? They would be this delegation of jinn
that actually showed up in Ta'af.
Right? After Ta'af to embrace the message of
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that were sent
by Allah Azzawajal
to the Messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
and who heeded the call from Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and through the Messenger of Allah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. They have dairies amongst them.
They have firsts amongst them. They have their
own fiqh.
Right? So the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam was
instructed to teach them some of their own
unique elements of fiqh, of jurisprudence, because obviously,
they are bodily and physically
manifested completely different from us.
But there are jinn who are Christian,
there are jinn who are Jews,
and there are jinn who are complete polytheists
before the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
is instructed with his call. So what just
happened here?
And why is it so significant to Ta'af?
And why did Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tell
the Prophet
about this at that moment?
Right? Because Surat Al Akhaf comes down, it's
Maqi Quran.
It reinforces the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Why tell the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
about this group of
companions, right, that you can't see, that you
don't deal with, but they embrace your call,
they embrace your message, and it's significant.
Ibn Abbas
He narrates that
before the Prophet
made it back to Mecca, it
was coming from Ta'af.
He rested
in a place called Nehalah.
And,
this place
is a small area between Ta'af and Mecca
that has,
you know, some trees to take shade from,
and it has some water as well. So
it was common
for people that were coming from Paf because
remember, it's about 70 miles. It's a long
it's a long trip back, you know, back
then without modern transportation.
They would rest there. So they would take
their water there
and they would, you know, take shade under
the trees. Now generally speaking, the jinn tend
to inhabit those types of places, right, that
are abandoned most of the time.
Right? But then there's there's some of these
means that exist over there. And the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
was reciting the Quran
and he was reading Alayhi Salatu Wasallam either
in his Qiyam. So it was night prayer.
Night prayer here can mean his 'isha,
his Qiyam, or his Fajr. The point is,
it was one of the prayers where the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was reciting out
loud.
Preceding
that moment,
when Allah Azzawajal revealed the Quran to the
Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, there are things that
started to happen in the heavens
that made life more difficult
for the Shayateen, the expulsion of the Shayateen,
the expulsion of the devils, as they tried
to gather the news
of what takes place
outside of this realm.
And
so, they, the jinn, understood that something significant
had just happened to the world.
Right?
And there are a group of jinns, subhanAllah,
just like there are a group of human
beings like Sadan al Farisi radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu,
like Suhaybar Rumi, that are looking around to
figure out what's happening,
either as sincere seekers or to interrupt that
message even. Right? To stop it and to
solve the problem so that they can continue
their devious ways. The point is, is that
it's creating a search
where some people are stagnant and settled in
their place, others are searching.
And what's really
profound here is that Ibn Abbas radiAllahu ta'ala
Anhuaman and Ibn Sa'ad, you'll notice in their
narrations, they mentioned that these were jinn from
a nus Saybin.
And Nus Saybin
was, the center
of an historian Christianity in the 5th century.
It's one of the places
that Salman al Farisi radiAllahu ta'ala An who
went to
in his pursuits
because there was some reverence for the book,
the actual message
of the Torah and the Injil in those
places. So it was a place of scholarship,
religious scholarship of Al Kitab,
of the Torah and the Injil. Right? And
so
the Nestorians there, which was a a bright
offshoot of Christianity, which more than likely is
what Salman radiAllahu anhu was encountering as he
was going to these places sort of
studying outlawed Christianity at the time. Right? That
wasn't tarnished yet to the extent that the
others were tarnished,
by the Trinity.
Those jinn
are from this area.
SubhanAllah. So the same place that Saman, radiAllahu
anhu, once settled,
looking for Tawhid, looking for monotheism,
a group of jinn
come to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
in this place
where he is reciting in, Anakhla.
Now, as he's reciting in Anakhla Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam in this place,
The traditions
about how the interaction between the Prophet
and the jinn took place has to be
taken
as a collective.
So for example, here
O, our people. That they went back to
their people and they said, O, our people,
we have heard
the book that has been recited
or a book that has been recited
after Musa, alayhis salaam. And it confirms that
which has come before, and it guides to
the truth, and it guides to a straight
way. And they called
their people
that, oh, our people come back to or
believe in this book, accept the invitation
and come back to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
and Allah will forgive your sins and He
will protect you. Min adabunaleem. He'll protect you
from a punishment, which shows you, by the
way, that they are also accountable to punishment.
And whoever does not call or respond to
the call of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
then they will have absolutely
no power in the earth
to protect themselves, nor protector, nor guardian to
save them from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And
such people are in manifest error. They are
far away from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
The suggestion here, some of the mufasidin mentioned,
is that these jinn did not immediately approach
the Messenger of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala Meaning
a conversation
between the Prophet and them did not necessarily
take place here.
They went back to their people and called
them to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and then
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala appointed a time
by which the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
spoke to them
directly.
Okay?
And there are multiple interactions that have been
narrated
of delegations
from them that Allah allowed
to speak to the Prophet and for the
Prophet to teach the message
of Islam.
And that's where you see what is known
as Laylatul Jin,
Laylatul Jin, the night of the jinn. So
if you go to Mecca now,
you'll find Masjid al Jin. Right? The Valley
of Jin. Right?
And this is an area
that exists,
right outside, subhanAllah, the beauty and the irony
of it, right outside of Khujun
where Khadija radiAllahu ta'ala An has buried and
Abu Talib is buried in Janatul Mu'ala in
Mu'ala cemetery.
And as the scholars mentioned that the jinn
also tend to frequent the cemeteries, the graveyards.
Right? So imagine, subhanAllah, near where Khadija radiAllahu
ta'ala Anha is buried,
a conversation will take place between the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
and a delegation from the jinn that have
come to believe in Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Again, whether they are an it's an immediate
conversation that transpires after Ta'if or there's some
time and then they come back to the
Messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
that is
undetermined. Right? We don't actually know for certainty
what this is about.
But the night of the jinn, when you
hear laydah to the jinn, it's talking about
this night and it begins by Al Kamah
asking 'Abdulla Abu Mus'ud radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu in
the famous hadith,
were you there
on the night of the jinn? Were you
there when the jinn came to speak to
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
and to embrace
this message. And Ibn Mas'ud radiAllahu ta'ala Anha
proceeds to say not only was I there,
he goes on to recall the entire incident
that he was basically the closest one to
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam when all of
that was happening. And he mentions
in summary that the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
had
essentially disappeared from us. We couldn't find him
anywhere.
Right? The Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam had gone
and we could not find him anywhere. And
this panicked search
amongst the companions with the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam starts to take place where they're looking
for the Messenger of Allah SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
everywhere. And then it gets worse because after
Fajr, right? And the time goes on, the
Prophet eventually
shows up.
And
they come to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
and that's the area where Masjid Al Jin
is and they asked the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam what happened and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam here mentions
that a group of jinn
had come to me
to ask me about an Ismail,
to ask me about this message.
A group of jinn had come to me
to ask me about this message. And this
is subhanallah where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
we have sent to you nafarunil jinn. When
you read it in the Quran that we
send these groups to you. And the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, was coming from the direction
of hira'ah,
and he basically
recited to this group of jinn, the Qur'an.
Okay?
Nablum Mas'ud radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu mentions
that
they saw the effects
of the jinn in that place.
And in one narration where Ibn Mas'ud radiAllahu
anhu mentions going with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam to meet a group from the jinn,
he mentions seeing
a manifestation,
a physical manifestation
of the jinn as the Prophet was teaching
them the book of Allah and giving them
the rulings. And in one narration, he mentions
that he saw a group of them later
on in Kufa and Iraq that resembled that
group.
Like that same group of jinn that had
met the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and that
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam had given da'wah
too.
The point is,
is that these jinn then basically formed
the basis for a group of jinn that
would do Dawah to jinn around the world,
that would take the message of the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and do Dawah to Jin
around the world.
SubhanAllah,
so much wisdom to be gleaned from this.
Number 1, Surat Al Akhaf.
In Surat Al Akhaf, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
gives to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, it's
literally named after the Akhaf
which are the hills.
Right?
Where Hud
is calling out to his people and giving
them a final warning, and they're not listening
to him.
So Surat Al Akhaf, you have these prophets
that are giving their people a final warning
and they reject their people. They reject Hud,
they reject Salih.
And as a result of that, they are
completely destroyed. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sends upon
them utter destruction.
But
the stories of Hud and Salih
became lessons for the Ummah of Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
The effects
of their da'wah remained in Mecca
and remained in the surrounding areas. Right?
To where these neighboring cities
could then be lessons to heed for the
presence in Mecca.
So don't think that your da'wah was worthless
because look,
even after you pass away, it may be
that another group of people will heed the
lessons.
Until today, we heed the lessons
of what happened to those groups of people.
So there is a time element that is
there. That you don't know when you're doing
da'wah,
if another group of people will come after
you and benefit from your da'wah far after
you're gone, even if the people immediately in
front of you will be destroyed.
Number 2, where Allah
told the future,
Do you see, oh people of Mecca,
if this is from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
and you have disbelieved,
and a witness from Bani Israel
has bore witness to this message of the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He believed and you
disbelieved.
Right? And this was a prophecy
of the Islam to come of the chief
rabbi of Madinah, Abdullah Abu Salam radiAllahu ta'ala
Anhu.
That look, you're rejecting this message today.
Tomorrow,
Abdullah Abu Salam,
a rabbi will come from Medina, the chief
rabbi of a neighboring city, and you to
be inferior to the people of the book
and understanding
the people of the book. In fact, subhanAllah,
by the way, rutman shayba, you know what
they told Adas? They told Adas, stick to
your Christianity
and leave this man.
Stick to your nastraniyah. We're okay with your
Christianity. Stick to your Christianity and leave this
man. They didn't mind as well the Jews
of Madinah and the Judaism of Madinah. In
fact, they felt an inferiority towards the people
of the book. Right? And Allah is saying
a rabbi, the chief rabbi will embrace Islam
and you will disbelieve in it. Right? So
what then is that a testimony to or
what does that say about your state?
He will believe and you will show pride.
Of the wisdoms of that, by the way,
is that as some of the scholars say
is a bushrah, a glad tidings of Medina
again being the place that will embrace the
Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
after
all of that. And so when it comes
to the jinn,
even if the human beings in front of
you have rejected your your message,
Even if the only thing you saw
was people punching you, throwing things at you,
spitting at you, cursing you.
There's another group that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
brought
that heard your message and that heeded your
message. How many jinn embraced Islam? This is
where the books of tafsir
go all over the place.
Allah knows best.
Whether it's 70 or 700
or a 1000 of them came back to
the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, it is all
entirely irrelevant. The point is, is that the
dawah of the jinn started
from the moment after Ta'af when the prophet
faced rejection at the hands of the people
of Ta'af. And that's where the firsts literally
of the jinn who are like, what's their
parallel to our Abu Bakr and Umar and
Uthman and Ali? We'll never know.
And we don't need to know. But just
to know from a da'wah perspective
that it is Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, that
will guide and that will send people
in the darkest moments, seemingly the darkest moments
that will embrace your message, and you don't
know what effect you're having. You don't know
what seed you are planting. And that's why,
by the way, the next several sections we're
gonna cover, the next three sections are gonna
be about the children. Who the prophet did
not realize that the seeds were being planted
at the moment, but those seeds came to
bear fruit later on even in the midst
of that painful rejection from the Messenger of
Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. The last thing that
I'll say from this this moment of Ta'af
is that, you know, Ibn Hajar
mentions something
very powerful
in the aftermath of Ta'af as well.
The Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
was taken on, as we know, the journey
of Al Isra'il Mi'raj
after Ta'af.
So he actually met Musa, Alaihi Salaam.
Right? He actually is meeting, Isa, Alayhis Salaam.
He's actually seeing prophets and interacting with prophets.
But after Ta'if,
you know, he there's this interesting point
that Isa Alaihi Salaam
becomes a companion of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam.
Why does Aisa become a Sahabi?
Right? If you think about it, because Aisa,
Alaihi Wasallam never died.
He met the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, and
there was Tastiq, there's affirmation of the prophethood
of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam while he
is still alive.
And so you talk about companions along the
way.
Allah
was placing in the path of the Prophet
the perfect
people, the perfect instances.
And
the ground was
made fertile
for literally a decade later where we'll start
to see Insha'Allah Ta'ala some of these same
people now embrace Islam
after the prophet
left there seemingly completely
despised and humiliated.
The Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, took the
maximum ajr,
the maximum reward because the greater the hardship,
the greater the reward.
Right? In the Maghires Re Usra with hardship
comes ease. After the beating of Ta'if, the
prophet salAllahu alaihi wa sallam was welcomed through
the heavens. Marhaban bin Nabi al salih. Marhaban
bin Nabi al salih. Welcome to the noble
prophet as he goes from heaven to heaven.
After the rejection
of the elites
of
the people in the tribal sense, he was
given the most elites of humankind
in the heavens to greet him in the
Anbiya of Allah, the prophets of Allah, and
then the angels greeting the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam. And after the rejection of the human
beings, Allah sent him the first delegation
of the jinn to embrace Islam.
And so all of this, SubhanAllah, is a
is something to ponder upon, especially in these
moments where I don't see anyone.
I might not see anyone benefiting from what
I just did. I was at work.
I
did my best. I got fired from my
principles. No one took my side. No one
did anything. I went to a restaurant. Someone
looked at me in a certain way. We
had an interaction. I moved on for the
rest of my life, and you don't know
what you planted in that person's heart. You
don't know if that person then went home
and read about Islam and years later becomes
Muslim. How many stories do we see of
someone that becomes Muslim because of a Muslim
that they knew years ago
and there is no direct connection between their
Shahadas. And so Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
makes these ways out for us and Insha'Allah
Ta'ala,
in the next few sections, we're gonna cover
the children, bid in the night time, and
some of those those interactions now unfolding,
which is
particularly, I think, the most beautiful part of
it because that's who the prophet had hope
in.