Suhaib Webb – Bound By God Zarrq’s Foundations of Sufism Part 6
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AI: Transcript ©
He's like what do you mean? He said
Allah is teaching you that even though you
learned all that you learned well, Allah, you
can't stop this.
He's like, what do I do? He said
flee to Allah,
and then Masha'Allah over time he got help.
Substance abuse issue.
Got help with it. Overcame it. So sometimes
we may fall into sin, this is gonna
sound crazy, some scholars said sometimes a sin
can be an opening
because it reminds me I'm not as special
as I thought I was. It doesn't mean
I go out and sin. Yeah, I'm so
humble. Okay, light that up. No, of course
not. That's not what that means, right? What
it means is I'm trying not to but
I'm telling myself how great I am and
then I make a mistake.
That mistake
is to tell me
the hustle is God, not you.
Don't get it twisted.
So the Sheykh is saying
aslu al asti
falawarillatator.
If the sincere intention is there, Pastan Arabic
means the place you want to travel to.
That's what it is.
And and actually the word Mia
is from the word which means the direction
you travel.
So if my Mia is right
and the objective is right,
other stuff is not gonna come between it.
Happens in marriages. Right? People get married and
as Malcolm X said, in laws or outlaws.
Right?
Or family members or friends.
They come into the marriage.
You love This is not my case. I'm
a mother-in-law here. She's amazing. Masha'Allah.
So Let me make that clear, but I've
seen this where the mothers will come and
say why do you love your wife more
than me? What are you doing?
You should have you want to raise your
son to love your life or wife more
than he loves you. That means you've been
a great mother
or vice versa,
but they'll start to and then you find
the couple start to fall apart, but
if the intention for love is real,
you'd be able to make it through. Why
do you like those those waves, man? They
rock you.
But I know
what I want and I know it's right.
I'm not gonna be rocked.
If I decide to become more religious, I
I find opposition in my family and people
close to me. I want to take become
Muslim or I want to grow spiritually or
I want to become a better person, but
I'm worried about the Awari,
But if the objective is real
that's not gonna rock me.
So that's why in Uhud,
what does the Prophet do with Uhud?
He smiles
because he's like, we got bigger things to
worry about.
We have a greater goal.
Now the Muslim community, all the losses that
Islam and Muslims have gone through,
And now it's so bad you got Muslim
states attacking Muslims. Like Saudi press has released
the articles attacking Ilhan Omar. Like, what the
heck? Like, what? This is not Islamophobes
attacking sister Rashida.
Muslims attacking sister Rashida because she dropped an
f bomb.
Like, look, go feed your kids or something,
man.
Got other things doing life. God bless her.
It's hard, man. She overcome with emotion, and
she's from Detroit.
Like, just give her give her a break.
Right?
But
we're not focused on the objective, we're caught
up in the alayd.
So sheikh is saying, Ida Saha Asl Ust
if the foundation is really real with you
and authentic and intrinsic to you,
fa'alaawari
rudal Tador. You're not going to be harmed
by the secondary
stuff. You got your focus.
The Arabs have a beautiful metaphor. It's very
sexist, so forgive me,
on both sides.
But it's interesting. They said if if the
groom
is overwhelmed by the girl's beauty, he doesn't
care about the mire.
You can tell Mike, one meal. No problem,
dog. I'm good.
30 grand. I'm good.
I love this person.
And they say, and if the woman
likes the guy,
she doesn't care how low the man is.
It's a metaphor.
It's an old metaphor, but what it means
is
if I enjoy what I struggle for I
don't care about the struggle.
The struggle is just the process.
That's why when you go to the gym
and the personal trainer talks to you, they
got all those posters around you.
He's like, yeah. You about to do 300
mountain climbers.
I don't want to. Look at that. Oh,
okay. I'll do I'll do 500.
Six pack, 500.
Right? The objective is there in front of
me.
So shaykh is saying,
if Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is the objective,
then life is just salt on the food.
Alright, we can move on.
That's dealing with attachments,
objectives,
goals,
and then he starts to lay out foundations
and principles. So
he says, So now maybe someone asked like
how do I learn this?
How do I lay out these foundations?
Listen,
the first thing that you have to do
is not have a shade, not have a
guide,
not have someone that you're living your spirituality
through.
Again,
tech support.
It's important, I need tech support,
okay?
But he says, Usul Aslomin Kuli Usulim Men'uloomin
Dunya wal Akhira. The foundation
of all sciences in the world. Like what
he means is generally, not specifically,
right? The foundation of all that is taken
from the Quran and Sunnah.
Have a relationship with revelation.
Have a regular relationship
with revelation.
And reframe the Quran
as not
an opportunity
to be debased,
but as an opportunity
for exploration
and growth.
I'm scared when I hear people tell me
I've been told I'm not good enough for
the Quran.
Like did we forget who the Sahaba were?
I started reading the Quran in the bathroom
of my mother's house
next to the kitchen where she was cooking
ham hocks
and bacon.
I don't think it's a worse situation to
be reading the Quran. I didn't know
because my mother is a old school southern
Christian woman,
and I was scared. If she found that
Quran in the house man, I'm going to
be next to the ham hocks and the
bacon.
Seriously.
So I had to hide it in a
place where no one would be able to
find it. So I headed in the restroom,
and I would go lock the door, 50
years old,
listen to Nas and read the poem.
Illmatic
and fat shit. Like, how does that work?
And next door now I come out she's
like you're in the restroom for a really
long time. You have a girlfriend now or
something? What's going on? I was like nah
nah nah. You know what I'm wrong?
So if like I found
truth
in that situation,
why would you tell yourself if you're already
Muslim like the Quran doesn't have something for
you? The Quran is for sinners.
It ain't just for saints.
And there's a very very beautiful statement of
Abu Nuwas.
Abu Nuwas was a person who lived in
the early history of Islam, who was a
drunkard. Do you know who his friend was?
Imam Shafi.
Imam Shafi stayed in touch with him.
Why would he do that?
Because Imam Shafi is also Minister
Shafi.
Not just Imam Shafi. This my dude.
Even though he's drunk like I said, relationship
with him. So he kept a relationship with
him. Abu Nawaz's poems about alcohol,
we studied them till now because they're so
beautiful, the way he talks about alcohol,
because the language is so beautiful.
But he's talking about getting lit.
Imam Shaqih keeps a relationship with him, keeps
a relationship with him.
And you have this beautiful beautiful example of
a person
who ultimately,
because the objective is there,
is able to wade through a life of
sin
and find God.
The process,
as our boy,
our our man, Joel Embiid talks about.
Trust the process. Are those not working for
him right now? Trust the process.
Jimmy Butler man, trust the process.
And Abu Nuwa's when he dies,
you know you should read about him, someone
should
translate his story.
The Imam refused to prey on him, righteous
indignation.
Not Imam Shaqih, of course,
but another imam. People went to him and
said, Abu Nuwaaz die. Can sharbul Khamr? He
has a form of poetry in Arabic called
Khamriyat,
just about Hamr.
He created
it. The poem praising alcohol,
that's him.
But towards the end of his life,
the hustle is there. So not only does
this pertain to the person, but if I'm
around people that have the same foundation as
me, but they may be struggling,
I understand.
Right? That I keep that relationship. I keep
them connected to Quran. I keep them somehow
on the periphery. Maybe one day that light
will touch them.
So what does he say?
I refuse to pray for this man. So
they start to watch his body and they
found a poem in his pocket that said,
Oh, Allah, my sins are massive.
But your forgiveness is greater than my sin.
This poem called the Tawba of Arinuas
and in the second line he says,
If
only the righteous people can hope in you,
man yas al damil
al su'aludin
who will the sinner?
So if the Quran is only for the
righteous people,
what's his purpose? Because the majority of us
are what? Broken.
So don't tell yourself like I don't have
access to this. I'm not good enough. I'm
not Arab. I'm Arab. I don't speak Arabic.
You know, blah blah blah. I know how
it is.
Yeah. I'll be rocking the hamper diab. I
don't understand Quran.
Hey, Faq. I understand.
Quran, I don't understand. So what? Like, Sahaba,
we're not a monolith.
So he said the foundation
is Quran and Sunnah
and start that scaffolding. So the first is
to have an intimate relationship with revelation, not
to approach it as simply something that's there
to debilitate me, There's times where I need
to be rocked. There's times I need to
be checked. There's times I need to be
corrected. Of course, I need that. It's discipline.
But overall the Quran is an opportunity man
to sustain that relationship, and the same thing
with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So he
said,
madhal,
whatever the Quran has praised I understand is
praiseworthy, whatever revelation has debased I understand it
as being debased.
And that's how I approach it and then
I begin to work on myself.
Move on to the next one. I think
that's the last one in the next slide.
Yeah.
From here,
we're gonna focus on a few principles that
deal with the community.
Up until now,
Shaykh has talked about how you scaffold and
how I scaffold my own internal relationship. Right?
First idea is the idea
of wellness
then sincerity.
And after sincerity,
worship and remembrance,
in the moderation and balance,
fear and hope,
and then the idea of
starting this relationship with Revelation. I look at
Revelation now as that personal trainer
in my life that helps me stay focused
on a righteous objective. If you can scroll
down.
Keep going.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is nice.
Can you go faster? Yeah, there's another there's
another file.
So the file is all under.
Oh, hold on. Wait. Wait. You know what?
Go back up.
This is important.
Before we move into certain community principles,
we're going to make it quick.
This is this is profound because
he talks about
the individual's sincerity
and individual devotion.
As though like at this point he's gonna
just
embellish everything he said prior to this.
So he says,
right? Devoting the heart to God the most
high is required.
Required or commendable
because required would mean.
Islam didn't ask us to do that all
the time. That's impossible.
Islam asked us to try
to have a heart that's present, so I
like to use the words said required,
encouraged,
sought
after, but not required
in every situation.
It says,
How do you deal with fearing that you're
showing off? While being
sincere.
Wanafi'lalajab
and how do you deal with that because
now he's gonna talk about what are the
things that can take away your sincerity. So
one is like showing off, the second one
is getting it twisted, thinking I'm the greatest
thing since sliced cheese.
She says,
that you know you can deal with thinking
that you're awesome by remembering who gave you
these things.
So dealing with showing off?
Sincerity.
What does sincerity mean? I'm not doing it
for people, I'm not doing it so people
will be quiet, I'm not doing it so
people will be quiet and I'm not doing
it so people will talk about me. I
don't care about people.
Our teacher one time tells a funny story,
there was this guy in Kuwait who, he
wanted to get married. So he met this
girl, she's really cool, Masha'Allah,
and he decided to go to her father's
masjid and pray to impress her father.
So he has a small masjid, so he
went there, he was like getting down.
Getting down,
brother was crying,
and
and her father, he noticed him. This is
I don't think it's true, that's funny. And
so then he was talking with the other
uncles as he was praying he was like,
Masha Allah, had a shayab Tayyib, alhamdulillahi
Yusane Bil Khushur, you know he's like such
a good boy,
prays with Khushur,
and Masha'a look at how he prays and
then he said, Wa ana Sahim.
The guy praying said, I'm fasting too.
She said like that's example of rial, right?
Using worship
for agency.
Said the way to repel that is
don't think about people
in the sense of praise
or in the sense of being changed. It's
hard, it's not easy.
The way to deal with like being
hubristic with myself
is to remember,
is
to remember blessings. Like I'm not really the
cause of any of this.
All of this is room. There's been times
our life when we accomplished things and we
said to ourselves, I have no idea how
I could do this, man.
I know I don't have the constitution to
do this.
Happens a lot.
At that moment I remember that's why Allah
says to Musa,
over and over in the story of Moses,
I did this for you, I did this
for you, I did this for you, I
did this for you, I did this for
you. Same thing with Sayna Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam.
And avoid becoming thirsty. It's interesting that that
word thirsty. Remember back in the yo, you
thirsty.
Right? The word in spirituality is Tamah.
You thirsty.
Right? To avoid being thirsty for dunya
by trusting in what Allah has given you.
We'll unpack that if we had time.
Wadar kullaa aasaputur khaltim minadl aabdeen He said,
and all of this
falls on the fact and he doesn't mean
the responsibility so we need to be careful
here.
He said, but all of this rests on
the fact that when it comes to acts
of worship and devotion,
you're oblivious to creation.
Because the hustle is something else.
The foundation is God so my focus is
God.
This is what he means by efrado calba.
The heart is exclusively for God, meaning I'm
not worshiping for agency. I'm not worshiping for
some kind of utilitarian dua.
I'm worshiping because worship is
worshiping. That's why Allah says,
to Sayna Muhammad, you know, Umirtu Abu Allahu
muka salallahu alaihi. I was ordered to worship
Allah. See that's why I said sincerity is
a challenge. What does sincerity mean? I'm able
to pull through the test of finding popularity
in the agency.
I'm I'm willing to pull through the test
of being debased or ridiculed
for worship.
I go through all that,
the blood and the feces,
that's a class.
So it's hard to translate.
I'm cleansed.
Now we don't have time, you see the
wisdom of tests
because those tests make me work the milk.
If there were no tests,
I may not be sincere.
So that's why I said it's hard to
translate Yikhlas to just sincerity.
Ikhlas
means up and through it.
And the test and that's why the Prophet
said from saying, Ali alaihi salam
that indeed Labdulsaleh
yujabra will be it tilah will be cleansed
by a test
like silver and gold is tested and cleansed
by fire. That's the meaning.
That process so now I can appreciate trauma,
you know, I like it.
I can appreciate hardship
and I can live
a life that sees hardship and tests
as a means of improvements and becoming better.
Because now you can understand what he said
earlier inshallah and it may rock you. The
goal isn't the test.
The test is what affects me,
but the goal is Allah.
So the test is just the means for
me to deal with the feces and blood.
Sometimes it's not and it's not easy
but I'm able to frame
tests
now as opportunity
to work on myself.
That's why some of our teachers used to
say the best pharmacist is ugly.
Best pharmacy is Adar.
Like the best place to get the prescription
is Qada and Qadr.
It's Allah's knowledge of everything that happened, why
it happens.
It's not easy man.
And then He says,
That a person will not achieve
the goal
of
worshiping Ikhlas
Hatatasota
nafsuhu
mina'inihi,
until his
personal agency
is lost.
Like really man,
And that's why sometimes our teachers used to
say to us,
do good and don't tell your wife about
it.
Don't tell your husband like, why? Keep something
from Allah.
Lose any agency.
Right? There's a balance.
You don't wanna where's all that money going?
Oh, no.
It gets you in trouble,
but or where you've been?
I can't say.
Don't do that.
You're in trouble on either side of the
fence, right? You could just say I did
something for Allah, I'm gonna keep it to
me in Allah.
Someone has Sahaba will put perfume on their
charity.
He's like this is a gift to myself.
So the idea here he's saying is,
and Sahal
Tustari is a great scholar from Persia,
genius,
Adim,
Fakih,
specializes in the heart. He said the reality
of tisauwuf
will not be achieved
until you forget yourself
when it comes to serving God.
Meaning like fudger, man I want to get
up on you to sleep late, forget yourself.
That's what he means.
And at that moment he said the way
that you can
this is that you realize that the only
thing that matters in this life and the
next is you and God.
Just see that. Yes,
Sen.
Or, Yesput
al Khalqum Minaydi or that at the second
level, maybe that's hard but at least the
world around him, the
spiritual likes and dislikes that aren't rooted in
something sacred
or are trivial,
you don't see them, they're not you badic,
they don't bother you.
Then he said, through that process,
sincerity,
through that process
then you are going to be from the
people
who
those challenges will slowly disappear from you.
They may come back later on but you'll
have moments because we have to realize it's
not like a one time thing,
life is a process.
But there'll be moments of bliss, moments of
protection,
moments of strength.
That whoever wants fame is a slave of
fame.
Woman arada
ghfa and whoever wants
to be out of the limelight for the
people. So I'm doing it for the people.
Fame for the people, oh man I'm pulling
out man because the people will think this.
So it's not about the objective anymore. It's
about those secondary issues. So whoever wants
to be out of the limelight Fadhu wa'adhu
and they are the servant of being out
of the limelight.
Wa'Abdulla
salaalaihi
abhar o'akhha, it's mizamir he said, but the
servant of God it doesn't matter, you in
the limelight, you're not in the limelight, it
doesn't matter
because idasahal
aslu
falaawarimal
taduh if the foundation
is sound
all these things don't impact it.
We don't have time, mashallah. I forgot how
deep this book is. Actually, I'm tired teaching
it.
I think that's the last one. I'm gonna
scroll down.
But
the next part that we'll cover
takes it towards
community,
because okay, can't just be about me.
One of our teachers used to say the
worst topic of tasawaf
is the tasawaf that caused you think about
yourself all the time.
Because that's the opposite of what it should
do.
But in the next part, we'll do part
2 inshaAllah
if everybody's ready. I hope everybody's okay, it's
not too deep or anything for you.
Hopefully you can have the text so you
can take notes because the way I wrote
it you can take notes in it.
But the next part he talks about community,
so he says things like this, because sometimes
spiritual growth
creates a sense of hubris and selfishness which
is not
healthy. So like, I may feel that I'm
spiritually somewhere,
so now I treat the community
like garbage.
Well, that's being deceived.
So he talks about things like this or
maybe I'm like, you know, I'm a student
of knowledge, I memorize the Quran.
What do
you
do? So she's customer support. I'm like, you
know, customer support is horrible. You know, what's
your name?
Halah. Halah is not very spiritual. Halah is
not a good person. Mustafa Allah. Muhammad, I
can't believe you gave birthday cake to his
wife. I'm a haf,
mashallah.
It wasn't even vegan or gluten free.
So or it could be I'm an activist,
all these sheikhs
suck, you know, or we're sheikhs, all these
activists are heathens untethered from religion.
Sheikh he
says, on one of the axioms that we
learn,
That different ways to God
are a blessing for you.
So he moves away because there's something that
happens in his time that we find now
in America.
That Sufism
is its own counterculture.
Where you got to speak a certain language,
gotta look a certain way, gotta talk a
certain way, gotta act a certain way to
be considered
on the way.
But sheikh is saying,
no. The way is for everybody,
and the ways
are rahma.
It would be over for all the overall
all those like, oh, we're all customer service
too.
Like that'll be so boring. What do you
do, man?
We're all IT c plus plus for life.
Right? Back in the nineties c plus plus.
You know, like
you know.
But the fact that we're like so different,
we come from different places, all of us
here today but we're all here for Allah.
So he's saying like, that's amazing.
So he said, you shouldn't be threatened
by people coming to God through different expressions,
you should be
enlightened and overwhelmed by Allah's mercy.
That's why later on he'll say, Iqtilaf
al Maqasih
Layajbibbu
Iqhilaf
al kast.
Mean Iqhilaf and messadik, sorry, differences in approaches,
la yajlibbu doesn't necessitate
the different objective
because we believe Allah is what?
Al
Wasay.
Al
Wasay is the one that has no beginning,
no ending, no time, no place, no measurement,
no physicality.
So if Allah is beyond
the physical then everything that we do that's
righteousness within the physical realm
can be accepted by the transcendent being Allah.
So later on he begins and he does
something remarkable.
If in this part
he he married Thich with Tasolef,
he marries the community with the names of
God,
And that's like art man,
it's art.
So he said, you know, these differences
are something you should appreciate
if they're all within the realm of the
permissible, of course, right.
Then he says something else and I'll finish.
This is very powerful for us.
He says that the blessings of something
is based
on what it follows,
not who followed.
What he means is
sometimes you hear people say to you like,
you know, like you're you're from the latter
Ummah of Mohammed, so you suck.
Like you're so far away from the Sahaba,
your life is trash.
Right? We're so far away from those days.
What Sheik is saying is,
it's not about time and place.
It's about who you follow.
And then he says many of the Sahaba,
especially Ahosophar
were
poor and they became rich
but there's Allah still like commanded them in
the Quran and praise them in the Quran
and mentioned their greatness even after some of
them achieve material success.
So he unpacks this very important point, you
talk about
the like honestly,
if we look at like 85% of the
boards in Muslim nonprofits, there's not one poor
person on the boards.
What does it tell you about us that
our values are capitalism?
Our values are deed, whereas the prophet love
to sit with who?
And be with who? And he said, and
that hereafter, I hope I can be resurrected
with who?
With the poor.
So what Sheik is trying to say is
the the the line of Rakim for old
heads. It ain't where you're from, it's where
you at.
It doesn't matter
where you say you are, who you are,
how much money you have, or your race,
or whatever, or that you're not from the
time of the Sahaba. You follow Mohammed.