Suhaib Webb – An Introduction to Aqida alAqida alTauhidiya of alDardir (Part Two)
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Assalamu alaikum
Welcome back now to the second part in
our introduction
to,
Sunni Theology.
My goal here is to help you just
understand this text. I'm going to be avoiding,
for those of you who've studied this or
engaged this, some of the, you know, important
arguments and discussions that you can find. Actually,
I explain this
text in almost 30 lessons,
on the Swiss page, Alhamdulillah. And actually translated
this and wrote a brief
explanation of this that you can find on
Amazon called Essentials of Islamic Faith. It says
for parents and teens, but it's like really
for everybody.
And in front of us, as I said
before, is this one page
right
here, which is a really nice text that
gives you this foundation.
And what we what do I mean by
foundation is that studying this should accomplish really
4 things. Number 1,
it should allow us to deal with any
of our own doubts or concerns that we
have in the realm of theology, so it's
going to strengthen our
Number 2, it's going to increase our capacity
to make sense of a chaotic world. It's
going to provide us lenses, right, to see
clearly
through the deception, the chaos,
of the dunya, of the temporary world.
Number 3, because of that is going to
allow us then to increase our our
connection
with Allah
and with faith, and to expand our ability
to become people of Ihsan,
to live as though we see Allah Azzawajal,
alhamdulillah.
And then of course the 4th 5th. 4th
is to defend Al Islam
from the notions of its enemies or even
the inadvertently ignorant people who may even be
Muslim.
And then the 5th is to call to
the Haqq.
Right? We have to call to the truth,
it's a command of Allah.
I call to Allah
meaning on deep knowledge,
a deep understanding
of the situation.
So last time
we began,
and we're just gonna read up into the
point that we stopped just Alhamdulillah to stick
with the text. So Sheik Adardir, he says
rahimuhullah
Nafanallahu
ta'ala bi almi fidaridi ami Qala Bismillahrahmanur
Rahim.
After saying Bismillahrahmanur
Rahim with the name of Allah, the most
gracious, the most merciful
So he says the first primary obligation upon
any responsible person
is to know
is to know
is to have
you know the ability to think
and conclude
marifa
of Allah
And this book is gonna teach us the
Sharia understanding of what is ma'rifah of Allah.
As Al Qadi Abu Bakr he mentions and
I actually have this in in the explanation
of the masses creed, which I'm working on,
hamdulillah, hopefully will be finished by the end
of the summer. The very beginning of the
introduction when I talk about public theology.
What is a public theology? One of the
challenges of postmodernity,
is that, you know, these kind of things
about god and faith
are, like, coming from an internal
set of optics,
not external.
But we believe that this is
called, you know, very profoundly, we believe that
we have to be taught these things.
And that that
Allah is not something faith is not something
that's just off a premonition
or how I feel
or
as Al Qadi Abu Bakr argues brilliantly,
that
faith is something which has to be learned
through revelation
through revelation.
Of course that's a different discussion. So the
first obligation is to know how do we
know who Allah is?
Of course you think,
but that thinking has to be guided
by revelation.
Because
to believe in god on my own terms
makes me god, it's
kinda like a subtle form of idolatry.
So I have to surrender
and I have to
accept
what God has taught me about himself,
What the prophets have taught us about Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So first we have to know what is
obligatory for us to believe about Allah, what's
impossible, what's unacceptable
for us to believe about Allah and then
what is probable
in our faith in God. And we'll talk
about that later on.
And with the prophets.
And with the angels, the honorable angels.
So from the perspective of Sharia,
and of course, what is Sharia? The word
Sharia is from the word Mashra'a
Al Ibl,
Right? The oasis in the desert. We see
people attacking sharia all the time. They have
no idea what they're talking about.
And the interesting
kind of caveat is there as we see
these are people who tend to hold themselves
above any legal
code or system. You know, January 6 certainly
comes to mind.
And the treatment of of black people in
this country
and
others finding themselves above any legal system. So
it's not just Sharia. It's anything that will
hold in the nafs and discipline a person,
and therefore they see that as a problem.
But the word Sharia actually means
Everything revealed to Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
to Tabar Sharia
is considered Sharia. So what was revealed to
the Prophet? So Quran and Sunnah.
So the Sharia has made
20 ideas, 20 concepts
about God
obligatory upon us as Muslims
To make it easy.
To make it simple for people.
Maybe someone says what about the 99 names
of Allah? How many people know all the
99 names of Allah?
Very few.
What about all the verses in the Quran
or the ahadith that talk about the sifat
and of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. How many
people memorize more than
10hadith?
So here we see the wisdom of their
ulama
that these 20 attributes
encapsulate
everything in the Quran and in the Hadith
about Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. That's the job
of the ulema
is to facilitate for people. That's why he
said, any idiot can make things difficult for
people, but it's the job of the scholars
to facilitate.
That's why the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa'arihi
wasallam, he said,
I was sent as a teacher to facilitate
things for people.
That's why Sayidni Imam Malik, ibn Anas, Imam
Dari Tanzil.
You know there were certain things
from the names and attributes of Allah that
he didn't teach in front of the masses
because they couldn't handle it. Imam Ibn Jozi
Al Hanbari
very clearly rebuked people who taught
the masses
you know the subtle difficulties the scholarly issues
related to theology
Said the Imam Al Qazari wrote a book,
Il Jam Al Awe and Il Makalem, right?
Basically
bridling the masses from engaging in these issues.
That doesn't mean that there's something to hide.
It just means that those things are not
going to lead to Amal,
not lead to practice.
And that's why subhanAllah,
you know we find Imam Abu Bayjorie
brilliantly
in his explanation
of
Jauhara
Jauhara Tawhid, you know, saying that what becomes
an obligation upon a person
in these issues is when they encounter these
things, when they run into these questions, when
they have these kind of issues pop up
in their life, then these kind of
more particular issues become obligatory.
And that's why Imam Al Ghazari in Manahajul
Abideen when he talks about the 3 things
you have to learn and then he talks
about what you have to learn. He says
initially is this stuff.
But then if you encounter doubts in your
life or if you find yourself surrounded by
people that have certain questions like us maybe
as new Muslims, our family members have a
lot of questions. I remember sitting, you know,
one time at the table and my mother
said, what do you guys believe about angels?
She doesn't wanna hear all the detailed
in-depth
issues about Malaika, just the foundational
beliefs about Malaika.
So here when he says
that's what I heard from Sheikh Hassan Kriti.
Right? That this is generally obligated
is to have a general understanding of these
20 things.
Why? Because the 99 names of Allah, there's
a difference of opinion. Is the hadith authentic?
This, this, this. People don't have time for
that.
So they don't have time to know the
99 names of Allah
let alone do they have enough time to
engage in kind of the deeper theological
discussions about those names and attributes and so
on and so forth. So this caller said,
look we're gonna zip file for you, Akhida,
into 20 things you have to know about
God,
And one of the outcomes of living in
this age, especially a post colonial
neo hellenistic age, is that we don't trust
our ulema. And where does that lead people?
On one side, you have groups like ISIS
who kill ulama and deny their ulama any
type of credibility, but then also the irony
is that on the other side of it,
the far irresponsible liberal side, they also don't
believe in ulema. They don't have any respect
for the ulema and look where the ulema
is now.
So
these twenty things are made to make it
easy for you. Alhamdulillah.
What were the Ulema who who kind
of position these 20 things? For example, Imam
Al Razi, Fakhruddin Al Razi, Imam
So many of them, Ibn Rushd, you name
it.
Sayyidina Imam Sayyidina
Imam Anawi, SayyidinaIm
Hajr even though their focus was in theology.
Said Nas Sheikh Zachary Al Ansari Radiallahu Anhu
Al Azhar
of old,
Damascus,
Morocco,
Libya, Tunis, Sudan,
Somal,
Africa,
most of Malaysia and Indonesia.
Allahu Akbar.
So
we we also have to realize that one
of the goals of the current world
is to break our relationship with our spiritual
luminaries
and our
ancestors.
But mashallah
stick stick stick to that path, man. Stick
to that way
so that things are easy. You don't find
yourself confused. So
he
said, Twenty things we have to know about
God
and believe
what here and they are. Al wujud, we
talked about it. Existence.
Everything he mentions in this text there's a
verse of Quran to support
it.
So Allah says in the Quran that he
exists.
Allah has no beginning.
Has no beginning.
No ending.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is in opposition to
Al Hawadith. What does Hawadith mean? It's a
plural of hadith. Hadith means something has a
beginning and an ending.
Sayyidina Sheikh Dardir,
he says in Al Kharida
Right? That
the idea of something being hadith is that
they existed after they didn't exist.
There was a time when United didn't exist
now we exist.
Allah says
how could you disbelieve in Allah?
You were dead then he brought you to
life.
Then you will die.
Then you'll be brought to life,
resurrected.
Look at it. We know we were dead.
We know we're alive. We know we're gonna
die. The only thing that people doubt is
the the the last 25%.
I mean, if you are a betting person,
that was a biller, 75% of it is
done. The only thing left is 25%. This
is what people are doubting in,
but we know that we were dead. We
know that we're alive and we know we're
gonna die. This is what we call.
For Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is in opposition to
anything that we know that's created, anything we
know that has a beginning and an end.
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
Allahu Akbar. What's the evidence for that?
And we talked about what that means, the
3 areas,
that we understand that,
through. And that's why we we have
severe differences with all religions on the face
of the earth because every religion on the
face of the earth their god is hadith.
Whether theoretically hadith
or physically
hadith. Christianity.
The fact that god could be
encapsulated
in inside a human body
is that god slept, Hawzibullah
walked and talked or had a son.
This is all hudus.
So now we see Islam
is true
in its affirmation
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala's transcendence.
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Nam.
We talked about Allah's independent
and that he's 1
in 3 areas. That takes us to now,
the rest of the text Insha'Allah which we're
going to divide in 2 more this part
and one more part and then we'll finish
Insha'Allah. And he says wal hayat
and we believe Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la is
alive.
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has knowledge.
Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says
Allah says in the Quran that he's the
all knowing, the wise.
He says to say, no, Muhammad, we taught
you what you didn't know.
And the blessing of Allah upon you was
great.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala extracted us from the
wombs of our mothers. We didn't know anything.
And then he gave us
then he gave us the ability to hear
and to see and to feel.
Has a divine will
that supersedes
all wills. There's no will
that can oppose His will, and all wills
are the extension of His knowledge and His
will. Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala fa'aluma
you read
Allahu Akbar.
Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is all powerful. Wallahu
Wa Ta'ala is all powerful. Wallahu Wa Ta'ala
Khadir. It doesn't say Wallahu Wa Ta'ala Khadirun
Aala Khulisha.
If you understand Arabic
doesn't say that Allah is powerful over all
things it says and Allah
over all things
nothing is left out is Qadir.
He administrates and controls all things.
And he hears
and he sees all things.
Allah
nothing is hidden from him when we read
in the bible for those people who say
that Jesus is God and then he says
I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't
know what's gonna happen.
That's impossible
for that to be god.
That's impossible
because there's no way that God can be
ignorant.
Because ignorance means that there was a beginning
and the end to the knowledge. It means
that there is a shortcoming in the knowledge
and for those of you who aren't Muslim
who are watching this,
you know one time I gave this book
to a Christian woman in Georgia. I was
at a summer camp.
And she was like, you know, the fox
going, Trump supporting kind of evangelical,
nice lady,
but politically, you know, we certainly don't align.
And after I gave her the book,
she came back the next day like my
grandmother that went to the church of Christ.
I mean, she had notes like everywhere,
like she had read it, not only read
it, notes.
And she said something to me just after
reading these qualities that we believe about God
is found in the Quran and through the
teachings of Sayedel
Akwan through the prophet she said, you know,
in Christianity,
we worship Jesus.
We
we we worship
Jesus
but y'all
y'all worship god And then she said, did
I just say that? I said, yes, you
did. You just said that.
She was like, man, you caught me. I
said, well, at least you're honest.
Thou shall have no other gods before me.
La ilaha illallah.
It's right there in in in the biblical
text.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sees all things
and hears all
things And the reason for those of you
who are students, he put knowledge
before will and
and
is to remind you that in everything he
does
there is transcendent perfect knowledge.
In his will, Some people say why did
this happen? Why
did
this
happen?
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
Allah knows better than we know.
We talk about this of course in other
classes.
Says to Moses and Aaron, Musa and Harun,
I'm with you. I see and hear all
things.
He speaks.
Then the sheikh says
that Allah is always alive.
Doesn't just like
was born
or
he's gonna die.
No. No.
He is
constantly living.
Constantly
knowing.
Wamurid and constantly willing he doesn't have good
days bad days he doesn't rest on the
7th day
none of that he is who he is
And maybe you're wondering like knowledge, hearing, seeing,
remember you have to interpret all of that
under that first
series of a second series of attributes. The
third is
so he knows, he sees,
he wills,
he lives
but in a way which is in opposition
to things that are created things that have
a beginning and an end.
So don't forget that
That he's constantly alive, constantly knowing, constantly willing,
constantly in control, constantly hearing, seeing, and speaking.
Subhanahu wa ta'ala,
The sheikh, he said these are the 20
things you have to know about God. That's
it.
What are they again? Pay attention.
He exists.
He has no beginning.
He has no ending.
Opposition to creation,
creation is opposition to him also,
absolute independence,
oneness.
Living
life,
knowledge,
power,
hearing,
seeing,
speaking,
constantly living,
constantly knowing,
constantly in power,
constantly willing,
constantly seeing, speaking and hearing.
How many is that? 20.
The opposite of those 20 are what we
have to deny.
That's why Saheb
In a book, a small poem called Joharat
Tawhid,
mama Laqmani says that the opposite of these
twenty is impossible, the things that we deny.
So what did the sheikh teach you? The
20 obligations. You have to believe as a
Muslim that god exists.
He has no beginning. He has no end.
He's in opposition to creation.
That he's independent,
that he's 1. You have to believe that
he's alive,
that he's knowledge, that he that he has
life, you have to affirm life to him,
knowledge to him, will to him,
seeing to him,
hearing to him,
speaking to him, then you have to affirm
that he's constantly alive, constantly knowing, constantly willing,
constantly
controlling,
constantly hearing, seeing and constantly speaking. The
opposite,
So in reality, how many obligations are there?
40.
He mentions
the 40
that we have to affirm
Sheikh Laqani in Jawaharlat Tawhid says, and what
you have to hold as improbable and unacceptable
to believe about god are the opposites
of those 20. What would they be? So
let's go through it quickly. Number 1, Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala exists, the opposite non existence.
That Allah Subhanu wa Ta'ala
has no beginning,
the opposite of that will be
Right? That he he would be born
or come into being in some way.
The third,
no ending.
The opposite of that will be alma't,
death.
The 4th,
in opposition to creation.
The opposite of that will be partial
likeness or complete likeness to Allah,
or that Allah has a partial or complete
likeness to his creation.
It's an opposition
to
The 5th, Qa'im Binafs,
independence,
that will be iftaqar or faqar,
that he would need something
in the huhaja,
that he would have some kind of poverty
or need.
The 6th, Al Wahdaniyah,
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala or the 7th Al Wahdaniyah
that Allah azza wa jal is 1, the
opposite of that is shirk.
So now you expand to the idea of
tawhid.
In many ways shirk means association
through his attributes, his actions
or his essence
That we continue to the next life, the
will be death.
Knowledge, the will be ignorance.
A will, the will, he has no will.
That
he is all powerful, the opposite of that
will be that he's weak.
Then hearing, seeing, and speaking, the opposite of
that would be, they're opposites.
Then the final,
that he is constantly living, the opposite of
that would be sometimes he's alive, sometimes he's
dead,
That he's constantly
knowing,
sometimes he's ignorant,
that he's constantly willing, sometimes
his will isn't there, there's another will that
runs
creation and the universe.
The opposite of constantly hearing and seeing, he's
not,
and then of course constantly speaking, that he's
not. So the sheikh he says about what
I just said
And then he mentions their divisions. We have
names for these
different categories of attributes of Allah, aza wa
jalah. We provided evidence from the Quran for
each one.
For each one.
He said
the first one is called
or Sifat Ujudiyya.
What are the 5 after it?
No beginning,
no ending,
opposition to creation,
independence,
and 1,
oneness
Those are called
Why? Because they're opposites, if you infer them
it's impossible for you to affirm
those opposites and then God be God, God
be transcendent.
Right? If you say God has a beginning,
God has an end, there's no more transcendency.
Means to be like constantly a negative person.
If I hear
means
the negative attributes, the opposite of these.
Right? They automatically,
denote them
or, like, deny them. Excuse me.
The 7 after that are called.
We can talk about what that means in
the future.
And what comes after those is called
We have 2 more sessions hopefully,
and we'll finish this text.
This is very important. So we took the
20 obligations.
Sifat Navsiyyah, Sifat Salbiya, Sifat Ma'an, Sifat Ma'anawiyah,
Alhamdulillah