Saad Tasleem – Do Not Dispute – Quran Reflection [8-46]
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of disputing all forms of conflict and embracing and removing differences as sources of strength and weakness. They stress the need to obey Allah and Messenger and avoid discomforting challenges and give up on one's own effort. The challenges of physical differences and globalized world have affected Muslims, but it is impossible to unite with people and see everything will happen. The speakers stress the importance of taking care of each other and not giving up, and the need for patience and faith in oneself to unite with others.AI: Transcript ©
Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala rasulillah who Allah and he will be he will Manuela Today we are in jersey number 10 or the 10th section of the Quran just number 10 made up of unfed 41 until the end, and so that Toba which is sometimes known as Ba, but we'll refer to that as sort of a tober, from the beginning until verse number 90 to reverse that we have for today's sort of an unfair verse number 46. In this verse, Allah Subhana, Allah says, The wellfleet Allah, so Allah and obey Allah and His Messenger, what xR zero and do not dispute, meaning do not dispute with one another, but def shallow, what does habari hokum so that basically if you if you do dispute, then
you will become discouraged and weekend was zero and have patience or persevere with patients in alohomora. slavery, that's certainly a lot is with those who persevere or with those who have patience. Now, what is this verse talking about? The context of this verse, is the Battle of budhha, the Battle of beddoe, the first major battle in Islam. And here, what this verse gives us it is that it gives us a framework for what to do when we're faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. As we know, the Muslims are, we're very small in number compared to the machete corn, the Muslims had never fought a major battle before. It seemed like a one sided battle that the Muslims would be
easily defeated. The numbers are around 300 to 1000. Approximate. But you know, we're talking about 1/3 of the militia code and army basically, and Muslims, you know, in terms of their wealth and supplies, it would seem like a losing battle for the Muslims. So this verse is, is, as we said, like a framework for Muslims, framework for what we're supposed to do when we have this challenge. That seems like something that would not impossible, but seemingly impossible. And here, this is our methodology as believers, and this is what Allah has pointed out, I instructed the believers with so the first thing, the first part of this, we can even call it a principles pauwela. The first part of
this is Allah says, Allah Khaled osuna that obey Allah and His messenger. And this tells us that everything we do, when it comes to these challenges that we face, we refer everything back to Allah and His Messenger, that is the that is the baseline, right? So that is where we start. So before we take a step, before we move forward, we ask ourselves, is what I'm doing islamically correct, and acceptable, and good, or not. And that, obviously, you know, comes from obeying Allah and His Messenger, we may make all the effort in the world put all the preparation in the world to do something. But if it is something that is displeasing to Allah, who's paneling to Allah, then what
is the point of it, and not not only what is the point of it, but actually, it may end up being something which is bad for us. So we don't want to start something and do something and you know, get get on the path, put all this effort into something when it is not something which is pleasing to Allah, to Allah. So anything that we take any challenge that we take on in life, we ask ourselves is this, you know, as I usually say, you know, very cliche, but am I good with God? That's the first question we ask ourselves, you know, is this something which is pleasing to Allah who's kind of data or not? And that comes by, as we said, obeying Allah and His messenger. Now, once that is, you know,
we fulfill that requirement. The next thing Allah says, what I've done is that Oh, so as a community, as a group of believers, the first instruction that is given is do not dispute with one another. Now, we would ask ourselves, why is there a requirement to have this be an instruction? Well, this is a requirement, even though we are one oma, we are one body as a prophet sallallahu Sallam said, this is a requirement, because in the end of the day, we are human beings. And as human beings, we are bound to have differences. No matter how close you are to someone, no matter how much you share the back of your background with someone, there will always be differences. And to kind of
drive this point home, I always say that think about the closest people to you in terms of, you know, life experiences and what you've been through and how you grew up and what you've been taught. Usually, it's it can, you know, we can think of our siblings, right, they've been brought up in the same house, the same parents were brought up in the same way probably went to the same schools had the same teachers, you were taught the same things, you're fed the same food, everything is pretty much the same. But if you ask yourself, do you always agree with your siblings? Then what's the answer? No, right? No. And actually, sometimes we we have even more differences with our siblings
because they're so close to us. And so the solution to getting rid of
have our problems. And and you know uniting there's a lot of talk of unity, right like we need to unite as as believers and come together. And that's where our strength is, there's often a focus on removing our differences. And the reality is that it is impossible impossible to completely remove our differences, there will always always always be differences. So the question we ask ourselves is, can we come together? Number one, despite our differences, and number two, can we use our differences to strengthen one another? Can we use and I'll say that, once again, instead of looking at our differences as a weakness, can we look at our differences as a strength, and this is
something that was found amongst the companions of the prophets that I send them. They were not just one monolith that even the companions of the party said there was a lot that united them, but there were also a lot of differences. Yes, they're united under the cutting mat law in the law, they're united by their faith, and their devotion to Islam, their submission to Allah Subhana Allah, but if you look at their personal lives, and their backgrounds and where they came from, and their life experiences, they had so many differences. And so they will not look at their differences. And this is something that, you know, does take time, but they looked at their differences as a source of
strength. So, as an oma for us, instead of always trying to get everyone to be exactly like us. Our challenge is can we start to recognize the differences as potentially something that is positive, so that we can come together? And that is why Allah has kind of led to Allah here in this verse did not say latticed any fool, don't be different. And, you know, don't have differences because it's enough to have differences is different than a tennis or tennis is a very strong word. Actually, tennis is like problems, you things that will make you averse to one another things that will build animosity. And that is what 10 out of 10 as it builds animosity and builds hatred. When we argue with one
another and we have disputes. If Deneuve is not necessarily a bad thing, and this is why a lot didn't say what not to study for in this verse. Allah said, What is that? Oh, because there will be if the love the prophets, I send them he said many h minquan per se yada if DNF and katiyar, whoever lives amongst you will see a lot of different differences. But I lay conditionality is upon you to stay upon my son was similar to the whole of Russia, Dean, Dean, I mean badly, he said, and so stick to the Sunnah the way of the righteous hanifa is that come after me? The point is that, despite our differences, we can come together. And that is what Allah has presented to Allah is encouraging us
here. And that's what that's what the message here is of this verse. Even, you know, I don't know how many people here from the US. But what we've seen in the last,
actually, this has been there for a while, I don't want to say this is something which is new, but you know, it's it's come to the surface, a lot of the a lot of polarization has come to the surface. In the last, you know, since 2016. And even before actually 2016, you know, when Trump became president, but actually really started with, with Obama becoming president having a black man as President, you know, people started to take sides, at least publicly, and it started to boil to the surface. And so, you know, even in like American politics, and American culture and American life, there's this, you know, there's a lot of polarization people have, you know, people are very
divided. There's the right and the left and liberals and conservatives and so on so forth. And and there's a lot of effort to just change people, right? That you have to be like, the conservatives are like, you have to believe what I believe in agree with what I agree with, otherwise, you're my enemy. And likewise, the liberals are no different in that sense, right? There's different ideologies and different views and different opinions. But you have that, that that type of extremism is found in liberalism, as well. There are liberals will be like, either you agree with me and my stances and what I believe, or you're my enemy, and that's it. And so we as Muslims, we have
to be very careful not to fall into that extreme, not into fall into that ideology that we can only be good to someone if they agree with us, and and actually, our data and calling people to goodness would actually come to a halt, if that is what we believed that unless someone agrees with me, I can't be good to them. And I can't be nice to them, and I can't be generous with them and gentle with them. Well, we would never be able to make data and our data will actually become very harsh. And we've actually seen this happen that when when Muslims do take on that methodology of giving Dawa, that either you agree with me or you're my enemy, then the data it becomes very, very
difficult. And, you know, making these camps of you know, this is my camp and your camp and so on and so forth. It doesn't work, a better conversation to have is, hey, listen, let's be real about our differences.
Let's talk about the commonality that we do have. And can we unite upon that commonality? And can we unite upon the things that we do have in common? That is a more productive discussion to have. That's a more of a macro level, but you take it even bring it, bring it smaller, bring it to a community level, even in our communities. There's something very interesting that you know, being an American,
you know, being not being a Muslim, American Muslim, or Muslim American, however you want to say it. I know, some people are very touchy about how you say that. But however you like to say it, right? being a Muslim in America, how about that? One of the things one of the challenges that we've had to face, which really wasn't found, to this degree in Islamic history, was Muslims from different backgrounds and cultures, being put together in one place and having to sort it out. So you know, our communities here in America, we do find issues of, you know, we have in the same community have Muslims from from the Middle East, you have and even amongst that, we have, you know, the honeybees
and so on and so forth. You have the people from from Egypt, and here and there, and you know, you have those differences. And then you have, you know, Muslims from the subcontinent, Pakistan, India, and so on and so forth. And then you have Muslims more from the east and, and there's so many Muslims from so many different backgrounds, and you bring them to one Masjid, and you're like, Here you go, run this Masjid sorted out. And, of course, it will lead to a lot of differing, it will lead to a lot of problems when we're not used to dealing with each other's differences. So one of the problems that, especially like the immigrants face, you know, the first generation immigrants when
they came to America and started to establish masajid, is that they knew Islam to be one very specific thing. And I'm not talking about the fundamentals I miss now I'm here, I'm not talking about the soul of our Dean, I'm talking about what Islam looks like on a day to day basis. So even something like where you place your hands during Salah, right, which if you go back to the books of filk, there's a lot of disagreement on this issue. The mother had differ on this, but if a person is brought up to pray with your hands in a particular place, and your Islam is defined by that, and now someone comes in your mission, and they're praying differently, you're like, Hey, what are you
doing? Because this is not this is not what Islam is. And and that is where we find a lot of that, that deferring and not having the knowledge and the understanding of the wisdom to know the difference between these are like there are certain matters that that are that are from the fundamentals and they also love our Deen that don't change. And then there's no option in that. So praying five times a day is a pillar of our Deen we can there's no debate on that matter. So somebody comes to our images and says no, actually, you're supposed to pray. Islam teaches us to pray one once a day or two times a day. Okay, that is that as a matter of difference that when it
comes to our Deen, okay, we got to take a stand there. But there are certain other matters matters of love, right matters of valid differences of opinion, where there is more a lot more leeway. And so what Muslims have had to deal with is those differences and say, Look, can we can we get past these differences of what and as I said, a lot of times, it's a visual thing, right? Like, what does Islam look like? And I, on the session where we spoke about, you know, dress and clothing that we see people differ on that as well, because that is a visual visual representation of Islam. For some people, like I get it when they look at me, and they're like, Oh, you know, he's being referred to a
shift, like, how can you refer to this person as a shift? Look at the way he looks. And I don't agree, but I but I understand that this person is coming from because maybe in their culture, where they're raised their shift, or their email, or their scholar has looked a very particular way. And now to see someone who looks so different, or someone who looks what I didn't I don't get into specifics here. But obviously, that can be jarring. But the reality is that this is the world that we're living in this is now you know, it was just that like a problem of, you know, different people coming from different backgrounds to one community. But now more and more as we move to a globalized
world. These are challenges that we're dealing with head on, because there used to be these physical boundaries, right? You crossed the border, and you come to a different country now, because of the Internet, and social media, and whatever else, those boundaries are breaking down. So you want to look at what Islam looks like in America, just YouTube. You want to look that way Sam looks like in Saudi Arabia, YouTube it and then you get to see and now even you want to listen to scholars from one country or another country, you have access to them. And so now it becomes even more of a challenge and we are now even people who never had to deal with this before. And like I said there
was a time in history where Muslims really didn't have to deal with this. You lived in your you know, your land, whatever, whatever you practice is what people around you practice your hanafy everyone around you and your homies everybody hanafy rhymes hanafy everyone's happy, no problem. Your magic everyone's and you wouldn't travel across you know very few people would travel across
What lands, you know, hundreds and 1000s of miles, there was no planes and things like that it was very difficult to travel, the only time someone will come across something like this is during hike. But for the most part, the vast majority of Muslims didn't really see that. But now this is something that we've come face to face with. And this is why a verse like this, I think is important to reflect upon, because it takes on an Eve another meaning. So there's the original meaning and for us, as we know, the deen of Allah, Allah is meant for all times in all places, and all cultures and all environments. So as culture changes, and as life changes, the Quran will take on even further
additional meanings for us and have even even more ways in which we can apply the Quran. And so for us now dealing with all of these differences, because as I said, globalization, this becomes even a takes on a whole new meaning for us and new and not as an it changes the original meaning I don't want to you know, that's very clear, but it's a meaning as in, we can apply it in a way that we may not have thought about before. So Allah Subhana Allah says what it does, because that will be your downfall. Where do we hear that Allah says, if a tip shallow, what is the texture? effective shallow means you'll become discouraged. You're, you're become despaired, you'll you're you will lose heart,
right? You're not gonna, you're not gonna feel good. Because what happens and you know, to really make this real for, for people, it's you can think of a family breaking down, right? When May Allah protect us when when parents, if they go through a divorce, what happens to the kids? Right? What happens? How do the kids feel when their parents break break apart? And they begin to disagree with one another? They begin to they have tunnels, right? There's tunnels or in the household, that or, you know, even before divorce, there's fighting, there's arguing, there's, you know, putting each other down, what happens to the kids and what happens to the family? Well, obviously, it causes
people to feel discouraged, it causes the family to feel discouraged, because, you know, that was that that was that that was their strength, the strength of the family came from being together, and being united and having each other's back and understanding that we have differences, you know, that I have different, you know, I differ from my from my sibling and this and that we have differences in the house, but we're still together, right? We've got each other's back, and we're going to take care of each other. And so there's that you will always have hope. No matter what challenges we're gonna face, no matter what thing we're going to come across, we can handle it as a family because,
you know, whatever our problems are, we're together. But when that family may, Allah protect us begins to break apart, especially for younger kids, it can be incredibly disheartening to see, it's, you know, your parents who you look up to, they're mean the world to you, you know, at a young age, you know, your world is defined by your parents. And so to see parents fighting and arguing, and so on and so forth. It can be incredibly disheartening, and you take that and you take that example and take apply it to the Ummah and we see it happen, that when there's infighting amongst us, that people begin to lose hope. And we get to look at the oma and say, you know, that's it, you know,
Muslims are doomed, and you know, there's no, there's no future, like what's going to happen to our oma. So Allah says, that is the outcome, Allah is telling us that is the outcome of a 10 hours of that dispute. As Allah says, fatigue shallow, right, you will become discouraged or lose heart, and you'll get, you know, as you said, Have despair, what does have it, which is a beautiful statement here, literally, you'll lose your wind. But what it means is that you'll become weakened, that it is almost as if, as one of our scholars he said it is it is like, you can think of like a bird who needs the wind to flow underneath them to keep themselves up, right. Or you can think of a plane
that you know, you need to keep moving forward together, to stay to stay afloat, to stay in the air, and you can move forward together. But when that wind is taken out, you fall down to the ground, right? And so this is what Allah has kind of out of this is the analogy that Allah is given to us here, that this is what this is the outcome that's going to happen. And so so this is why this is why it's not easy, right? It's not easy, it is very difficult to unite with people that you may have disagreements with, it may be very difficult to put your ego aside and to and to say, you know, I'm gonna put my ego aside and for the sake of our family, or for the sake of our community, or for the
sake of Muslims in America or whatever country or for the sake of our oma right, we can take it as macro, as you know, take it all the way to a global level, for the sake of the the oma of the world. We have to learn to to unite with each other despite the differences that we have, or despite certain things that I don't like about the people that we need to unite with. That's difficult. And so Allah has kind of went to Allah says was zero, have patience, right? Because without patience, you're not gonna you're not going to be able to come to
Gather with people that you may not like or people that you may have differences, but it's going to be very, very hard. It's going to take a lot of patience. And yesterday we spoke about, you know, how we how we talk to someone who may be maybe showing animosity towards us. And we talked about how it was pointed out, it says that it will take a lot of patience. Well, now you lock in Elana, Dana Farber, that this will not be attained, except by those who have patients to take someone as if you remember from yesterday, to take someone who is we have animosity within end to end to change them into a close friend. It's going to take a lot of patience, right? Anytime we're dealing with people
that we have differences with, and and to to have that that harmony with them or try to build try to have harmony with them. It's going to be difficult. So Allah Subhana, Allah says, was to zero, so have patience. And then if that wasn't beautiful enough, Allah Subhana, Allah says in the love slabit, in that Allah is with those who have patience. And now this is amazing, because we're talking about community here, right? We're talking about togetherness. And can we be disunited, if Allah is with us all together? No. And so Allah to Allah says, and I often say this, sometimes we may not believe in our own abilities. But as a believer, we have to believe in Allah ability to help
us. So you may look at yourself and you may look at your community, you may look at whatever relationships and say, I don't have the ability to solve this problem. I don't have the ability to unite this community or this, you know, as we said, I can take it as large or as small as you want. But we should have faith in Allah ability to help us. And so what it like in terms of being being proactive, and what action do we take, we are patient in those times. And so we invite Allah has pointed out his help, we invite Allah being with us. And if Allah is with us, as a community, as a people, as a family as whatever, then how can we be disunited, right? It's not going to be easy, but
we're going to have the help of Allah who's panel to Allah.
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