Suhaib Webb – Good Assumptions of God (Part Two)
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Peace and blessings upon our beloved messenger Muhammad
upon his blessed family, companions, and those who
follow them until the end of time.
Brothers and sisters, assalamu alaikum
Welcome back again
to our readings
from the book of even Abi Dunya. Imam
even Abi Dunya.
Having
giving Allah
the benefit of the doubt.
Having a good assumption with Allah
where the imam, he collected a series of
prophetic narrations as well as stories
of the salaf
that help us create the capacity for hope,
which is very important in an age filled
with individualism,
cynicism,
and so many other really kind of challenging
emotions that are
sort of the
fruit
of atheism,
secularism,
and even heathenry.
So
it's important that we come out of
sort of
the month of Ramadan
with a renewed hope
and trust in Allah
and to realize that the cynicism that some
of us
may find
comforting
or as a source of
making sense of the madness
is really the gift of
it really starts in 17/49
with the French Revolution
when
movements in Europe begin to
condition religion and remove god
and take away a theistic way of life
and replace it
with what you see today.
And the outcome of that because once you
take Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala out of the
equation,
then people are going to start to live
for the dunya. And the dunya is something
which is fragile
and futile,
and that's going to lead to
this kind of cynicism that we see now,
as well as
the individualism
that we see as a hallmark of this
age. So as Muslims,
especially when we think about a decolonial theology,
decolonizing our minds.
A restorative transformative theology,
one of the most important components
for a believer is hope.
To have hope in Allah
and fear of Allah
But hope,
as long as it inspires
to greater good,
and fear of Allah
as long as it inspires to becoming better.
So we're going to continue
reading, and I encourage you to look up
kind of those things I just talked about,
the cynicism which is used
in
most circles,
pushed by
corporate media,
entertainment.
And
when you tie that with a difficult time
historically for Muslims,
it becomes very difficult to foster the key
ingredient of hope.
So that's why
we're gathering together to read
from these hadith
and narrations
to learn.
Again, I'm someone who believes in
decolonizing
theology
and creating restorative theology
and transformative theology.
And there are some signs of that we
can talk about. For example, if you're living
your religion to debate with religion with others,
instead of
if we are living our religion, we are
living our religion
to simply debate, engage with others
instead of to serve others, then that is
a sign that we are impacted
by the negative cynicism
and individualism
of this age.
If we constantly find ourselves
questioning
the wisdom of Allah
and finding ourselves ungrateful
for the things that Allah has given us,
then that perhaps is a sign
that we are impacted by this age.
And there's some other things that we'll talk
about. This is a
this is not something that I'm doing haphazardly.
This is something that I hope will contribute
to a broader healing,
which is much needed in the Muslim community,
where we fight each other more passionately than
we serve each other. Think about that. That
individualism, that is a symptom
that starts really as I talked about in
17/49.
Look how it's impacted
the world,
up until this point. You see the splintering
of society
and then the individualism that everybody wants to
do religion on their own. There's little respect
for traditional ulama, for scholars.
In fact, the rejection
of scholarship,
a rejection
of having hope
in
Islam
is a means now to individually become my
own sort of,
religious guide, and there you go. There's that
symptom again. So I hope in the future
this summer, plan to offer some courses on
this,
with some really bright people,
that we can kind of unpack what that
means and get to a place of healing.
If I'm more invested in disunity than connections,
that means that I'm not being informed by,
religious teachings.
If I'm allowing myself to be completely colonized
by
the vocabulary of the political left and right.
I had a student
who is memorizing the Quran with me, and
I challenged that student
to not think of or designate any
Muslim
with the political vocabulary of the left to
the right as it runs now in America
in particular.
And he came back to me and he
said something very interesting and profound, and I
learned something from him.
And after I saw him, it was about
a week, I said, so how was it?
He said, I realized I forgot
religious vocabulary.
I can no longer describe people excuse me.
You can hear
the realities of American life behind us, please.
He said that
I could no longer
find
religious terminology to describe people. I forgot religious
terminology.
And I kept when I would look into
my mind to describe things I was seeing,
I would find political terminology.
And because I asked him not to do
that and he's a good student,
he didn't engage. So I said, what did
you do for that week that you, you
know,
you weren't using political terminology to talk about
Muslims and attack them?
He said, I studied and I stayed quiet.
I said,
So maybe there's a lesson in there for
for us now to think about some signs
of being impacted by
the cynicism of a of a post, particularly
the French revolution,
industrial age, the birth of modernity.
These are very important things,
and what they have led to the splintering
of humanity,
the intra splintering amongst Muslims,
the co opting now of political nomenclature
and inserting into
languages which are meant to be held by
religion, by Islam. Islam has its own language.
And then
serving people becomes secondary to fighting people.
Those are things we should think about and
how it's impacting our community and the root
of all this
is that hope has been misplaced.
The object of hope is the dunya
instead of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So that's
why
we're reading this important text and we continue
to layer our understanding of theology,
together inshallah. So the first narration, and forgive
me for going on a rant,
my apologies.
This narration,
he says when he narrates this he narrates
this with this. Now forgive me. I'm a
little bit tired. I've been traveling
quite a bit.
From Atris,
So this narration is, about a Bedouin person
who is dying.
And it was said to him, you're you're
you're dying.
And he said to them, and where am
I going?
The
Arab Baduan responded to the people who said
to him, you're going to die. You're dying.
Where am I headed?
They said to Allah.
Then he said, there is nothing
that I would ever ever hate.
I would never hate
to return to the one
who the only thing I ever have seen
from him is good.
Meaning that at the moment of his death
as he was dying,
he had this, like, beautiful
One of the the challenges
of being infected with hypercynicism
is that,
and we we've talked about this before, that
if if religious teachers and
content providers aren't careful,
they may become an inadvertent extension of the
colonial enterprise
and that they begin to look at the
ummah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
through the lenses of modernity and through the
terminology of modernity.
Especially if they have not engaged in a
deliberate attempt to decolonize
their religious understandings.
And one of the outcomes of that is
communities that have lost hope, being overly harsh.
There's certainly a time for for being firm,
and there is certainly
a place for orthodoxy, and there is definitely
a need
to hold
the line, but oftentimes, we find people are
lions with the Muslims
and kittens with the disbelievers,
And people are knights and and and with
swords
unsheathed,
you know, at the Muslims who are trying
their best
to live a life of submission and adherence
to the teachings of the prophet
but then we find them they're like silly
putty
with the enemies of the ummah and the
enemies of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
And and sometimes that harshness
will cause them to as imam,
he warns us, he says that you should
teach people like a doctor
cares for a patient. If if the doctor
over medicates, then the liver will become
infected and poisoned.
But if the doctor under medicates, then the
person will become sick and die.
So he says, so then take them, like,
imbalance between
invoking responsibility,
using
fear when it's needed, but also with hope.
Right? There has to be a balance. Even
though has a beautiful statement. He says that
fear and hope are like 2 wings of
a bird. A bird can't fly with one
wing. So oftentimes, we see
people using terminal, oh, this Muslim is a
liberal,
or this
Muslim is is conservative.
What happened to words like a and?
We have our own terminology.
Why are you now becoming an extension
of a brutal secular political
epistemological
framework
which actually drains
the warmth and redemption
of Islam. Islam has a door of redemption
for everybody as we'll talk about in a
minute.
An example of this is the following narration
from Ismail.
And the and and this narration in a
stronger form is found in Bukhari,
who mentions that there was
a a a a man who narrates from
and
of course was a student of anti Semitic.
Back to the prophet
that Allah
says
or said to the angels,
shall I not tell you about
2 devotees, 2 servants,
or 22 servants of Allah, 2 creation, 2
human beings
From
the tribe of Bani Israel.
As for one of them,
he was the most righteous amongst the people
of Bani Israel.
And the one who had the most knowledge
and the most.
And he was known for a person of
good character.
While Akhar
in the next one was seen as a
Musrif, was
a sinner.
And so some people they mentioned to that
righteous person
about the one who is the sinner, the
one who is known to be a person
of knowledge
and religion and good character.
Again,
He said Allah will never forgive him.
The narration says that Allah
will resurrect this person and say to him
Allah.
Allah will say to this person, don't you
know that I'm the most merciful of the
merciful?
Oh, don't you know that I'm the most
merciful of those who give mercy?
Don't you know that my
mercy precedes my anger?
And for that sinner, I have decreed forgiveness.
And for that
arrogant person
who became overly harsh and said I will
never forgive somebody,
I have decreed punishment.
There's other narrations which are very similar like
this, and they are many of them are
authentic.
The prophet
warning us
to not be deceived by Allah's guidance in
our life and to see
guidance as a gift and that it should
make us
more appreciative and more humble
and more
careful
in our dealings with people.
This is a very very beautiful narration,
that even Abi Dunya, he mentions from Ikramah.
From,
An Bam Bam, his name was Bam Bam
Ubud,
who said the Haltu Masjid Rasulillahi
sallallahu alaihi
wa salamam
He said you know I went into the
Masjid of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam I
saw someone with extremely,
like, bright shiny eyes and extremely, like, his
teeth were, like, like, bright, like, shining.
And it was said to me
that,
you know,
I was I I wanted to know who
this person was. Excuse me.
So he said I came close to this
person
and he said to me
And that person he said to him
by Allah I advise you
that you should never say to anyone
Allah will never forgive
you.
And that he will never
place you in Jannah. So he saw, bum
bum, he saw this person,
very handsome person,
And as he got close to that person,
that person began to say to him
that by Allah, you should never say to
anyone that Allah will never forgive them.
And you should never say to anyone from
the Muslim here the context
that Allah will
never enter you into paradise.
And
he said,
Who are you?
May Allah have mercy upon you.
And he said, I'm Abu Huireira.
SubhanAllah was Abu Huireira radiAllahu anhu. He was
quite old at that time, but he was
still, masha'Allah,
very nice in his appearance.
And then he said to him,
he said, you
you have prohibited me from something that I
used to do.
I used to get angry at the people
in my house and I used to get
angry at others and I would say these
kind of things.
You know? The prophet said that sometimes believers,
they have this kind of insight, the spiritual
insight.
I experienced this with Sheikh
sometimes they they they can see with the
the with the eye of their heart that
Allah has given them insight into a person
and not with their eyes.
Because after Abu Huraira said to them said
this to him, he said,
this is what I do.
What's also nice is bumdum,
he didn't take it personally.
Nowadays,
somebody were to talk to us maybe like
this, we'll become extremely angry at them.
But he he took his advice, and then
he became vulnerable.
And that's the sign also of this, of
this age filled with cynicism.
Nobody can be vulnerable. The word personality in
Greek means a mask.
SubhanAllah.
Everybody's mask up. Nobody the mask. Yeah?
Everyone's mask up. But not the mask that
we've been wearing because of COVID.
It's the mask we've been wearing because of
narcissism
and and and and hubris
and cynicism and individualism.
Nobody can be vulnerable. Look at. And this
is the key to overcoming
and also to see this as an investment.
As I talked earlier about decolonialism.
To be a vulnerable, simple person, to be
a fluid person who can take advice.
Now let have mercy on the one who
gave me the gift of my mistakes.
And the prophet
in the statement
knowledge is 3 kinds. One of them is
I don't know.
So when
Abu
said something to Bam Bam
that he knew
he did,
He didn't get in his feelings about it
because
there's not that kind of ego that we
have in this modern age.
There's
a longing to be a better person.
So when someone feels they are complete,
that's when they get into their feelings.
But when someone understands that
completeness belongs to Allah alone
and to the MBA,
they're always willing to learn something new
and to grow.
So he said to him
after Abu Hurairah
told him that,
Never will Allah he say to anyone Allah
will never forgive you
and that Allah will never enter you into
paradise.
And then after he said
he wants to know is this person a
qualified person?
May Allah have mercy upon you. Thank you
for telling me this.
He He said,
I'm You you have prohibited me from something
that I used to do.
I used to say when I would get
mad at people in my house and and
my friends and others.
Said,
don't don't do that.
Don't don't do like that.
I
heard the prophet say that there were 2
men from Bani Israel.
One of them
he was a sinner.
The other he was a worshiper.
And the righteous one used to say to
the sinner, why don't you stop?
Why don't you deal with your shortcomings?
And the sinner used to say, Mary, what
a what? They said,
what is this to do with you and
me?
Believe me alone with my lord.
And then finally,
that righteous guy, he became so angry.
And he discovered this man committing sin.
He said to him,
the prophet said,
Allah will never forgive you.
And that Allah will never enter you into
paradise. And this is the one that's close
to the meaning in if I remember correctly.
So this is why Abu Huarera is telling
him, bum bum, don't do like that, man.
Don't do like that, bro.
Because I heard this from the messenger of
Allah
Here we see the etiquettes of the Sahaba
that what they teach is what they heard
from the prophet
and then the prophet continues
then Allah
dispatched the angel of death to both of
them.
And
at the moment of their, you know,
being reckoned,
it will be said to the sinner
go into
enter Jannah.
Because
of Allah's mercy.
It will be said to that righteous man,
you told
one of my servants
something that caused them to despair of my
mercy?
Do you have power over me?
Take him to the hellfire. Why? I heard
this from one of my teacher from Mohammedia
in Morocco.
Who said because the first guy, his mistakes
are mistakes of actions. His sins are related
to actions. So Allah forgives
him. But the one who said Allah will
never forgive you. This is a major mistake
in belief.
So he's punished. See something.
See something.
A few more inshallah that we're going to
finish
this evening because I don't wanna take,
too much of your time. In
fact, maybe,
yeah, we can read a few more. Insha'Allah.
This narration is from Abdullah ibn Mas'ud.
No.
Actually, this narration, I'm sorry, is from
Abdulrahman al Muzani.
Who heard from Thoban,
the mawla of Rasulullah
who said that he heard the prophet
say,
Allah
That the prophet
said, if it wasn't for this verse, I
would not love to be in the dunya.
Meaning, this is the most beloved verse, One
of the most beloved verses of the Quran.
To our
beloved messenger
who phrases this in such a powerful captivating
way. That I would not want to reside
in this dunya without this verse, more or
less is the meaning.
What verse do you think it is
And as as you think about this for
a second,
ask yourself,
what is your favorite verse of the Quran?
What is the verse of Quran that centers
you
and allows you to maintain
the strength of hope
with the responsibility of fear.
So he says
that the prophet
said
that, you know, if it wasn't for this
verse,
you know, I I I don't
from
I
don't even,
you know, there's there's no value in the
dunya.
What's the
verse the 39th chapter of the Quran?
Verse number 53.
My my servants who have sinned,
who have wronged themselves,
who have gone into excess
with their souls,
you are forbidden
to give up on the mercy of Allah.
That's the prophets
Alaihi
Salam. His favorite verse. According to Imam
Indeed Allah forgives the sins to all of
them.
Indeed Allah is the partner, the forgiver.
The next narration
from who was one of the great early
scholars
from Avi Al Kanud
who says that we were walking and we
passed by a person
who was reminding people of hellfire.
And he said this person was a harsh
person.
And he said suddenly,
subhanallah,
one of them said to that person,
and these are from the salaf,
what kind of reminder is this
that you are causing people to despair of
Allah's hope?
Person was like going hard. He was going
hard on him to the point that
he was worried. The salaf was worried
that these people are going to give up
on having hope in Allah. Remember what we
said earlier about
saying treat people like a physician. Don't over
medicate. Don't under medicate. And if you find
yourself as
a content provider, an influencer, an imam, a
shaykh, and you're too hopeful to the point
that it leads people to irresponsibility
or you're too harmful to the point that
it causes people to despair, you need to
engage in self care.
Take care of yourself. This happened to me
in the past.
Right?
Where you wanna step back for a minute
and take care of yourself and make sure
that you're looking after yourself. If you're overly
if you're causing people to be overly despondent,
maybe you're projecting your despondency
upon them. If you're
in a really great place,
right,
where you're being deceived
by
your joy with Allah that is causing you
to get
too loose.
You need to center yourself. And how do
you center yourself?
Well, self care. If you're always angry at
the people, probably because you're angry at yourself.
And as we mentioned earlier, no one should
have so much hope in Allah
that they become too easy. Like there has
to be this balance
and that balance is achieved
by being resilient
and being vulnerable and being supported by others
and then also being able to step back
and look after yourself,
take care of yourself.
So they said to that hardhearted
person,
why are you causing the people to despair
of Allah?
And then he read to him,
Abil Kunud,
The verse we read earlier.
Oh, my servants who have sinned, never despair
of the mercy of Allah.
Used to
say
where Allah says that Allah
will never will not forgive shirk unless of
course somebody repents. So this means in the
hereafter as we talked about before. Sometimes people,
they read this verse that Allah will not
forgive. Allah will never forgive me. First of
all, the will never commit
mention on the authentic hadith of the prophet
but then secondly,
it's talking about people who don't repent now.
Yeah. So this is talking about in the
day of judgment but the of the early
Muslim scholars, this verse is talking about in
the day of judgement.
Is to say this is the most beloved
verse to me. From the Quran. That Allah
will not forgive shirk on the day of
judgement but he will forgive all the other
sins. Because why? Say
Nari is a
As we finish inshallah, we're going to mention
2 instances which are really beautiful and profound.
From some of the early Muslims inshallah.
And this is from even
who said that one night we spent,
with
a a person who was from the.
The worshippers.
And
we saw this man, he was crying.
And that man actually was supposed to lead
the prayer for fajr,
and he began to cry and he was
so overcome by
his
crying
that we felt we may
miss the proper, not the proper time but
the best time to pray fajr.
For Fajr, for the majority of the the
is
when it's still very dark outside. For
when it's light outside, not when the sun
is up, but you can see some light
in the sky. So, obviously, the person's talking
is not Hanafi. So, he said, we started
to worry that we're going to lose
that opportune time according to those to
pray Fajr.
And then he said we became
closer and closer to that person,
and we heard him saying,
my my sin
my sins
are many.
My my sins
are great,
but your pardon
is greater.
So therefore,
join together
my great sin
with your greater pardon,
oh most generous.
And subhanallah they said people begin to weep
when they heard him say this.
And people begin to be impacted by his
dua.
Subhan Allah. Subhan Allah.
The next narration
from Abdullah
Evan Shamit.
From his father,
these 2 great important people we can talk
about one day when we read other narrations
together.
Who his father mentioned
that there was this person,
he mentioned some sin. Excuse me.
Some
evil.
So his father actually was, like, making
dua. And as he was making dua, he
was mentioning some sin.
And he mentioned, you know, how great and
how
impactful this sin unfortunately was in his life.
And then he said in his
He said that every time I have done
something which is great,
oh Allah, a great sin,
I know that when it is compared to
your mercy, it's insignificant.
This is the balance of fear and hope
that we're talking about. I am responsible for
myself,
I acknowledge my sin,
I own my sin,
but I do not allow the greatness of
the sin to own me,
but I liberate myself from sinning
by knowing that with Allah's rahma, I'm winning.
If I change
and if I become a better person.
So it's very beautiful actually.
It's
actually really touching
that I know and maybe what he did,
it wasn't that big, actually, because he was
a righteous person,
but he's holding himself accountable.
And that's one of the symptoms we'll talk
about on the age of cynicism,
is I hold
everyone around me accountable
except me,
except myself.
Here's the opposite when
so I feel the the magnatomy
of the sin
but I turn to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
and I know that his rahma
is greater
subhanAllah
than my sin. Insha'Allah we're going to stop
here.
Trying to do a little worship and of
course we all have work and so on.
Ask Allah's
be,
you know,
His
mercy and His
magnificent
grace to forgive us all inshallah
and to accept from us inshallah
and to make us inshallah from the righteous
and to unite us with the prophet
We pray for our brothers and sisters in
India.
Pray for our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia,
in Nigeria.
A lot of things happening in the world.
We ask
we