Suhaib Webb – AlMunfarija Part Two Tests and FaithfulResilience
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Me
and just think like they're perfect,
and they drift away from people.
And they continue to drift away from people
until
they're unable to relate to the downtrodden and
to people that are vulnerable and to people
in need and people that just suffer, like,
basic challenges every
day. So that's why the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam,
when he was asked
like, who are the people who were tested
the most?
He
said prophets
and
the righteous.
We believe, as is mentioned in numerous places
in the Quran,
that life is a test.
But what is the test?
The test is to see
under what circumstances,
in what difficulties can
I
The test is to see
my commitment to worshiping Allah as though I
see him?
So that's why I said before,
everyone has to experience
the family disruption
perhaps of Adam.
Perhaps someone will go through the experience let
me rephrase it again. Some of us may
experience the trauma
with family like the trauma of Adam,
but he maintains
that Maqam of Ihsan.
Some of us may go through
the test
of being ridiculed
of prophet Noah Noah
as he was building a boat and no
one believed him.
Maybe today in the academy, to say you're
a believer in the academy is to be
very similar to, like,
Noah telling people I'm building this boat because
it's about to get lit.
And they were like,
like they ridiculed him.
Maybe to be a believer in
certain professional settings
is
equated to being like a form of, like,
needing psychotherapy.
That's something that people will go through.
Maybe the the challenges
of
the heat of life, so I have to
go through the fire of Ibrahim.
The isolation and loneliness of may maybe being
a divorcee in the community or being, you
know, in your thirties and still single
or forties or fifties,
the loneliness of Sayna Yousef.
Maybe I'm away from my family
in
New York City or wherever,
so it compounds my sense of loneliness. I
asked converts once, man, what's the greatest difficulty
you face in conversion?
And they said loneliness,
because you commit like social suicide, man, to
a certain degree.
You go from the bar to the minbar.
It's a big change.
2nd
the next is like
understanding the great wisdom of Dawud and Suleiman.
Being the victim of patriarchy like Seda Mariam,
like every single prophet goes through something that
we
experience, the bondage of the people of Moses.
Speaking truth to power,
Sayedna Issa being cast out by his people,
Saydna Muhammad
having to migrate from
a place which he said you are
like you're the most beloved place to me.
So the prophets now
become an opportunity to generate
a wisdom into trauma and challenges.
So Imam Ibn Nawi,
he wants to talk about how do we
see that test of Ihsan.
When the focus is clear, when the focus
of life
is to worship Allah,
then the test and success becomes like salt
on the food.
But when the focus of life is the
test,
that's where things get twisted. And it's not
easy, like, I'm not saying I did it,
you know.
There's there's no way I'm telling you I've
been through that and been able to, like,
say, yeah, I'm mister super holy guy. I
can do this.
May Allah make it easy for us. And
that's why one of the great dua at
the end of because
we believe that supplications at the end of
the second chapter
are accepted.
And what's one of the things that stated
at the end of the chapter?
Like, don't burden us
in a way which we can't handle.
So forgive us, pardon us, like we've made
these mistakes. So pardon us in our failure
to uphold
and forgive us for the sins which we
admit we've committed in the shortcomings we've fallen
into.
And then grant us paradise.
So that's where we understand now. The purpose
of the text is to help us understand
one of the greatest mysteries of being a
is
why does Allah test me?
Why is there pain?
Why is there suffering?
So Imam Ibn Nawi
takes us on that ride and he does
through through poetry.
We said that, you know, poetry was something
that scholars recognized as a means of achieving
public literacy in an easy way.
And again, ibn Nahwy, even though he's a
great scholar, he doesn't drift so far away
in the name of being a scholar that
he forgets how to spit bars.
He still understands how to engage in what's
called the public intellectual,
the public intellectual.
So we'll just review some of the lines
that we went through and then Insha'Allah today,
we're going to go through a few of
the lines and then we're going to talk
about all of the hadith of the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, that teach us supplications
for anxiety.
Insha'Allah, we're gonna relate those hadith with a
sanid back to the prophet. If you want
the sanid from me, you can contact me,
insha'Allah,
but you have to read the hadith to
me. I'm not just gonna give you the
sanit like that. You know? You have to
make a little effort,
insha'allah. But we don't learn learn knowledge for
chains of narration.
Chains of narration may be used to, like,
start the fire for us in *,
but we learn knowledge to be better people
and to achieve.
So the sheikh, he says,
The sheikh,
he starts by formulating how we should see
test and trials and understand test and trials.
And the first one he touches on something
really important is to never lose your agency.
Never surrender your ability, Insha'Allah, to change a
situation.
Don't surrender
to the test.
And that's why he begins
He orders the test. ESMA is not just
a test, it's like
super test.
I know how to translate it.
A trial.
So he says, increase.
Bring it.
Like if you wanted to translate it like
in
colloquial language like, yo bring it.
That's that's the feeling of the poem.
Oh, whatever difficulty he was facing,
bring it. In Arabic,
And one of the great scholars said that,
you know, this is used in a way
to show that even though he's being test
tested and challenged,
he's not allowing it to own him. He's
the one calling the shots. He's the one
who frames the relationship
by the grace of Allah.
So that's the first lesson that we learned
from that line
is to not be
not allow things to control us and destroy
us.
Happens in relationships. People are like, I'm insecure.
I'm insecure. I'm insecure. I'm insecure. Okay. Deal
with your insecurities.
Right? Address them. Wrestle them. Fight them.
But don't let other people carry that burden
that you know
you and I may be responsible for.
And there's another reason he said that, because
we believe that the greater the test, the
greater reward, the greater the reward.
Prophet
said that,
you know, in the famous hadith, that ease
comes after the hardship.
Now the narration when he said it is
you know, within hardship, there's ease, the verse
of Quran.
And we noted that there's 2 trans translations
kind of of this in Arabic, right, or
tafsirs.
Number 1 is, like, after the hardship ease
comes,
or
while you're being tested and you're being patient
and you're struggling to remove it,
incrementally,
that is going to be a reward for
you in the next life.
Increase your velocity on me because
you're going to relieve me ultimately. Like the
greater you are the greater the relief.
So that's the first point he makes.
The second point is Khadazanalayluki
bilbalaji.
And his language is not easy to translate,
insha'Allah, maybe we'll see it tonight. He was
really, really eloquent person. He was very careful
with the type of wording that he used.
And he says, you know, because
your night beckons the dawn
and your here means the trial, as though
the trial is night.
What he's saying is that through difficult times,
the dawn is always a promise.
And that's why we said.
It doesn't say. It doesn't say the Quran,
I seek lord and the refuge in the
lord of of. It says. The word means
to split.
Allah splits the seeds.
Right? Because the idea is that the test
will be split from you, and then you'll
enter a metaphorical dawn, which is now redemption.
And that dawn will bring you to life
and give you hope just like the sun
as it used to rise, especially in the
desert,
afforded people the the idea of hope.
That's what one of the prophets said to
his followers, isn't the dawn close?
Yani, the promise of redemption
and life, and warmth
that the sun brings.
The other point that he's saying is like,
you know, eventually things will pass.
Just like the dawn and the night,
the rising of the sun and the setting
of the sun.
These are things that come and go.
So there's something else lost kind of in
the language and that is like,
just as you see the day and the
night
as a constant around you,
success and test and success and test and
relief and anxiety
will always also circle you. That's why Allah
says,
In Surat Alfaqan, Allah is the one who
made the day and the night for you
to go in succession.
For the one who who wants to remember
and reflect,
and the one who wants to show thanks.
Meaning
here, there's 2 meanings. When the night hits
and the test comes, it's an opportunity for
reflection.
And when success
and relief comes, it's an opportunity for what?
For thankfulness. Now you understand the verse,
So the Sheikh is saying, you know,
eventually
the trial has to end.
And trials will come and go just like
the day and the night, they come and
go.
And we went through, like, a few of
the points that that verse gives us. Number
1 is with Allah's help, you're in the
driver's seat,
the idea of owning it.
And if it gets too hard, we talked
about what we do when we
feel that test because we're human too. Right?
And there are times when we need help.
That's one of the 25 wisdoms of tests.
Imam Izzid Izzidine Abdulsalam says one of them
is to show you you need other people.
Like, it just can't be a solo artist.
So perhaps turning to family,
turning to good friends, turning to a support
group.
Right? Addiction and things like that that sometimes
are best treated with support groups.
The arts as a healing instrument is something
that should be considered.
And then therapy, like, if somebody's in a
situation where that
is causing tremendous trauma and debilitating their ability
to function.
The prophet
said,
servants of Allah's secremedies.
And we said the worst thing I said
I ever heard was when someone said you
have anxiety
and depression because your iman is weak. So
I said go to that person and cut
them, and if they bleed say
man, you're bleeding because your iman is weak.
Like,
it's not logical. It's not logical.
The second is to never despair of Allah's
grace that the dawn will come.
The dawn will come.
Number 3 is have conviction in Allah's prescription.
We're gonna talk about that insha'allah, hopefully.
That hardship is followed by ease. The prophet
said that undoubtedly relief accompanies hardship.
And then he moves on to the second
line.
And the second line is really trying to
frame the idea that tests just don't suddenly
like, they're not just suddenly removed.
We live in a world now where everything
happens so fast that we've become really an
event based species.
And if you think about it the way
that
the political situation in America is covered and
in the world,
we're we're moving by events.
We're not moving by a process.
And while in certain cases, that's important if
it really is like breaking news. Right?
That's important.
But often, like, imagine if your marriage went
on events,
Like how the Trump administration is covered. Like
everyday it's a new scandal. Right? So it's
like And today, he, you know, threw the
recyclable stuff in the wrong trash can.
More later.
Then it's like an hour later, you know,
and you know, he tried to do avocados
with his fingernails.
Served his family. Right? I don't know anyone
that does that.
But I'm saying like, imagine if we covered
our family in the event based way that
we're taught to react now to like,
media,
or even
the
cult of consumption.
It's always something new. Right? Imagine, like, if
you actually ran your life this way. It
would be chaotic.
But what that's caused us to do is
to forget that life is a process.
Allah says about the Sahaba, I mentioned this
a lot of times because it's important.
The Sahaba were like a seed that grew
slowly.
And I mentioned it today in the Khutba,
the statement of imam
Like dig yourself deep in the earth.
Because what's not dug deep in the earth
doesn't grow.
Like,
give it the process of training. Give it
the process of growth.
It's not just suddenly gonna become.
I remember when I was memorizing the Quran,
SubhanAllah, the hardest chapter to memorize
is, the 4th chapter.
At least for me. Surat Nisa.
So
I remember and I memorized it. I didn't
understand Arabic, so it gets even more difficult
because you're reading.
I even know what you're reading. Right? I
just knew it was like really hard. You'll
see
Yeah. You can even hear it. It sounds
like,
It's like a lot easier than
What? So I remember
my Sheikh from Senegal,
he was like if you memorize Surp Nisa,
it's like you memorize the Quran.
So like that put a lot of pressure
on me. So
like, I went home. It's like busting soap
mishap. I was in college as well. So
I was like really trying to make it,
like, on lock.
And and at least in that part of
Sintedah,
they used to say that you can't move
to a new chapter till you memorize one
chapter like you memorized your name.
K.
And it so it's like you really have
to memorize it.
And we used to have to write also.
Maybe some of you brothers, sisters from Senegambian
region you know about writing on,
like, the loa.
So I came, I was ready, I was
killing. It was a 45 minute drive to
my teacher, I used to drive everyday 45
minutes back and forth. I had no money,
everything was on gas.
And
I got there and I was like, I'm
gonna kill, I'm gonna slay. You know, you
forget you need a lot and a lot
will teach you.
So I sat down.
I sat down
the first page.
And then I got lost.
And Sheikh Sheikh Masha'Allah,
he was like,
like there were different sounds. Right?
Was like,
oh, Lord.
Right? And you never heard in the beginning.
Like that's like in the middle, or like
you have a blowout halfway through.
So I was like, yeah.
He was like,
I was like, oh, man.
He's like, did you prepare? I was like,
yeah. I like, I really prepared. He said,
halas. One more time. So I started.
And then, like, halfway through, anyone who's memorized,
you know, the end of
it Every verse.
It's the same thing. So you're getting lost,
like you're lost, man.
So if you make one mistake,
you might go to like 2 pages somewhere
else.
So I was like, and
I stopped.
He's like,
So, oh man, here we go. And then
I had this massive blow out in Surat
Nisa,
And then I started crying, man.
And he said to me,
anyone that wanted this had to cry for
it. Every
Imam, every sheikh, every who
sit where you sit now
had to fail to learn to be human.
And I was like, maybe maybe cry more.
Okay.
But the Sheikh is saying
embrace failure.
So he says,
meaning at the moment that you're going through
that crippling challenge
and you feel broken,
you might see the bright stars.
So he like uses analogy
because he's from the Bedou, from the desert
of this dark, dark sky.
And he's saying
the darker the sky,
the brighter
stars.
So the moment that you feel broken or
the moment
that you're experiencing trauma,
it may be an opportunity
to gain the ability for appreciation.
That's why that verse says, the night and
the day were made for reflection and thinks.
The test and trials and success are made
for reflection and the opportunity
to appreciate.
And sometimes nothing helps us appreciate things like
loss.
So he says,
Be patient and stop in the middle of
the trauma
and try to count
the blessings that are in front of you.
Until
until
the sun
eliminates that, until the son takes over, meaning
the trial is removed.
And again, that alludes to the idea of
patience,
resilience,
things don't happen immediately, the the the process
of crying and learning.
That's not an event. Right? Just don't go
once and read Quran and cry.
You don't go once and, like, you know,
put too much on the bar.
Right? You don't walk into a relationship and
make and and and be told
that you're not gonna make mistakes.
You're gonna make mistakes.
And that's why I would say, and I'm
like by no means some super successful wise
Anthony Robbins type dude. Although, we are probably
gonna jump over some rocks outside with some
fire in Washington Square Park.
But the best relationships I've ever had with
anybody, regardless of family or friends, are people
that were able to accept the notion that
neither of us were perfect. Not to a
point where it took advantage of people.
But the idea that, you know, there's gonna
be
mess ups.
That's just how life is.
And there is a challenge with this. Oftentimes,
we don't believe that we are not impenetrable.
So Allah will teach us, man.
The dunya can humble people.
Number 2 is maybe we're not empathetic to
others.
So by going through different trials
and pain,
and we talked about this today
with regards to Malik Shabaz, that
his experiences in life not only protect him
from repeating those mistakes,
but also
become like,
you know, almost like a consultant that he
hired
to remind him how to treat people.
And that's why the prophet, salallahu alaihi wa
sallam,
the early part of his life is tremendous
tremendous trauma.
But if my focus is Allah, I understand
that trauma is
a personal trainer. I don't like that personal
trainer. I don't wanna eat kale.
Right?
But I know eventually it's good for
me. And that's kinda where we stopped.
He said that, you know, the
the darkest nights have the beaut most beautiful
stars,
and that will stay until the sun comes
and removes all the darkness
and then you're experiencing,
like, bliss.
And this is a metaphor for emotions.
Right? He doesn't mean it literally,
but he's using nature to kind of
fill in the lack of meaning.
And then he says
You know, the
intimidating
clouds that come bellowing in through the heavens
that scare you,
they have rain.
And what do you think he means by
that?
See, he's like really I live I'm from
Oklahoma. So Oklahoma people, we scary.
The reason that we're scary is because of
tornadoes,
you know. Yeah. My grandmother
my grandmother could tell me it's gonna rain
today, man. I was like, no, it's not.
How do you know that? She's like, I'm
a country woman.
When I say it's gonna rain, it's gonna
rain.
But
there were people that would see things in
the sky before you had cable news and
everything that's happening and apps to tell you
what's going on,
and the sky would create fear. So I
remember, as a child,
at least 2 or 3 times where I
was taken into a cellar
because it was windy, it was rainy,
people were worried.
So the Sheikh he paints like this really
intimidating imagery
of this this massive clouds that are rolling
into your life as a metaphor
for the crap that's rolling into your life.
For the drama that's coming into your life.
For the test that may have been there
or is rolling into your life,
and it's very similar to what he said
earlier about the dark sky having bright stars.
Saying, like, you may be scared and intimidated
by these clouds,
but they bring rain.
And, you know, religiously, it doesn't mean a
flood, of course.
Religiously, like, we we are someone our Quran
constantly talks about, of course, water as a
source of life.
Water as a source of purity.
Water as a source of tazkiyah.
Water as a source of
So what he's saying is, like,
don't let it destroy you.
I think we talked about the ant. Right?
A 1000000 times.
The ant on the hill.
Shelly said, you know, the ant was, like,
wow, I'm an ant. Why am I climbing
a mountain? I'm just an ant.
And she became terrified, this poet, and the
ant started running down the hill from what
she was scared of. And as she was
running, inadvertently, what happened?
She fell on a puddle. She'll keep says
a puddle to an ant is an endless
ocean.
So she drowned, and as she was drowning
the ant said, what?
Sahin
Like why did I listen to these fears?
I should have just, you know, hand up
my business. And Ahmed Shawkhi said,
Sahin
He said exactly, don't be scared of stuff
because what you may inadvertently run to like
the white girl in Scream.
Okay. What you inadvertently run to
is more dangerous for you.
So the Sheik is saying,
don't let it control you to the point
that that fear becomes in front of you
and not behind you.
Fear is a good motivator. We mentioned Al
Qazari said fear is good as long as
it leads to responsibility.
But if it's like, I'm scared. Okay. I'm
not gonna do anything.
Then he said
which means that the relief, the rain will
come when it's time.
Because maybe someone's like, well, when will the
relief come? Well, when will the rain come?
And, of course, in his era, they didn't
have all of the
technological
advancements that we have now. So rain was
still very much a mystery.
There's also something else happening here. I don't
wanna go too far away from the text,
but when we read
classical texts,
it's as important that we learn from the
silence of the author as we learn from
the voice.
So there's some anchors that he's alluding to
to weather the storm.
How can I jump into that metaphoric cellar
and take on
the challenge of the storm?
The test,
number 1 is to be pleased with Allah's
Qadah,
to be pleased with the outcomes.
It's one of the things we can't change
is what happened,
very rarely.
And we can't control what will happen no
matter we try our best.
So I find rida with Allah.
We mentioned that Allah
said to say,
If you wanna know if I'm happy with
you, are you happy with me?
It's not easy, man. They say that people
with the happiness to God fall into 3
categories. The first are infants.
So if it's good to them, they're happy.
It's candy.
My daughter, she's give me a sucker, give
me a sucker. I used to give her
a sucker. You're the best baba, allah,
But if I take the sucker away
oh, man.
Have to start reading verses of Quran.
Some of us are like that.
I think every week I run into someone
that swears somebody should have been their spouse,
but they're
not.
Or I was supposed to get this job
or this raise or
this was supposed to happen.
That's tough. I'm not saying this is easy.
We all we all,
every single person in this room, there's no
holy man in the Muslim community or woman
that doesn't go through these things. If they
tell you that, run.
Number 2 is the is the Kada of
the middle schooler.
Right? Middle school, man.
High school, middle school.
Where, you know, I'm I'm able to see
a little wisdom sometimes in not getting.
But still my happiness
with receiving
is
by far more intense than my happiness with
not receiving.
They say that's the that's the Iman of
the Amma like most people, Like most people
are in this place.
It doesn't mean these people are bad by
the way. We're talking about aspirations. The first
one is a problem. The second one,
it's not easy, man.
The third is the of
those who have Basira,
who have insight beyond this world. Last Tuesday,
we talked about there are some people that
Allah gives them the ability to see what
their faculties beyond just this physical world. Not,
of course, in a physical way, but in
a way of understanding.
So, for example, the the the the people
in Mecca
in the 7th chapter of the Quran, Allah
says
They're looking at you o Muhammad, but they
don't see you.
Meaning they don't understand what you're for. They
can see you physically,
but they don't understand your purpose.
So they don't follow you. So the idea
is that someone that Allah has given,
they've been able to see is that they
see the purpose of things.
So they are able to prioritize
stuff.
They are able to understand
that test and trial again, is just part
of the process.
So the test and trial or the success
doesn't consume them.
Because all that is just a means,
that is not the ending.
So for them
we're gonna talk about the 8
etiquettes Insha'Allah maybe later if we have time.
Test is an opportunity for patience,
Success is an opportunity for thankfulness.
The prophet said, I'm shocked at believers.
Every affair for the believer is good.
The believer the one who sees
the purposes.
So he said, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, if
the believer is given something good, then
that person is thankful. That's good for them.
And if they're tested for
they're patient, and that's good for them.
So that's that
in
a very mature nuanced way.
The other thing is to have patience with
trials. As we mentioned,
that patience, resilience I don't like the word
patience. I like the word resilience.
Sheikh Zakaria al Ansari actually to prepare this
text, I actually went went to a handwritten
book. I don't know if it's been published
by Sheikh Zakaria Al Ansari. He's buried next
to Sayyidina Shafi'i in Egypt.
Sheikh Zakari Al Ansari said there are 4
types of of resilience, of sabr.
Number 1 is to be patient on the
obedience of Allah. So
to be patient with obedience.