Suhaib Webb – Imam alSuyuti’s Introduction To Orthodox Tasawwuf Part Five Emancipating Your Mind & Heart
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The speakers discuss the concept of "has been there" and its impact on one's life, emphasizing the importance of understanding the reality of the world and avoiding attached to things. They also touch on the "weAKening of the hereafter" concept, which is a core part of Islam, and the importance of avoiding false accusations and staying balanced. The discussion also touches on the "weAKening of the hereafter" concept, where religion should be tied to personal success and utility, and the importance of avoiding the huduth of the world and staying balanced.
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Important course, inshallah, and ask Allah Subhanahu
wa
Ta'ala and to
make it a benefit to all of us.
We were at the part where Sayna Imam
Masiyyuti is talking about the branches of faith,
and he talks about the first branch of
faith, and
he says, We talked about it, and he
said, that is, you know, the first branch
is to have faith with
Allah
and with the attributes of Allah
and then to believe that everything else, the
word Huduth
is something which we're going to talk about
today.
Huduth means something that's temporary,
It has a beginning and an end. So
in my explanation, make Dua and shall I
finish
the explanation of this book insha Allah, we'll
post it for you, at Swiss.
Imam Assiote uses here a very very important
word. Huduth is something common amongst the scholars
of theology.
If you've taken the master's creed with me,
you've heard this term used.
And as we continue through theology together, this
term is going to become like a centerpiece
in how we frame
our attitude towards the world and root ourselves
in a
transcendent
set of moralities,
morality.
So Imam al Suyuti uses an important word
Huduth. Huduth means temporary. As I've said, something
which has a beginning and an ending. In
other words,
everything except Allah. It's very important that when
we look at
life, we see everything as being temporary except
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Now you can appreciate
when we talk about wujud,
qidam, baqa,
and then
when we talk about those attributes of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala that he exist,
He has no beginning and no ending. This
is the underpinnings of this idea of everything
else is Hadith.
Everything else has a beginning and has an
ending.
That distinction is important because, as I just
said, it lays down the foundations
for Allah's existence,
as viewed by Islam,
responds to the ignorance of atheism, and compels
a Muslim to live a life of responsibility
and righteousness.
We know that matter is neither created nor
destroyed, but matter is here.
All matter has a beginning, all matter has
an ending. So whatever created matter has no
beginning and no ending.
And this kind of begins to formulate some
of some of the early, early, early arguments
about the existence of Allah
So the idea of something being hadith
is central to one of the arguments
for faith. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in
Surat Sur, after
Did they create it? Like did they create
the material world? Were they created from nothing?
Did they create it?
Did they create the heavens and the earth?
So the ability
to bring something into existence from nothing
is for us, we're here,
we're alive,
you see the world around us, and we
all know that we can't create.
I like to ask people to do something
like close your eyes, do it, do it
for a second, and try to imagine
a creation in your mind that's never been
seen before, different color, different shape, different size.
You can't do it because it's not even
in your hard drive to be a creator.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is Alhaaliq, and
one of the ways
that early Muslim theologians
framed this discussion in the face of atheism
in their time, was to talk about great,
then who made everything? We know we didn't
make it, SubhanAllah.
And also, it compels us to live a
life of purpose.
We understand that everything around us is temporary,
and that everything around us is not the
creator, therefore nothing around us
is worth
worship,
meaning an unhealthy
attachment.
So this also is going to kind of
begin to lay out the foundations
for indifference to the world.
Azuhut,
and not being unhealthily attached to things. And
this is really, really important
in a post
colonial
colonizer
economic structure,
that
it's very foundations
are built for exploitation.
It's very foundations
are built to create a people who are
being completely devastated by it, whereas
some will benefit from it.
One of the things that they do to
make us serve their interest is to make
us caught up
in
conspicuous consumption,
you
know, The person who just collects everything,
they want it all,
because they wanna be part of that group.
That's that kind of Stockholm syndrome that comes
with a post colonial world. How do we
emancipate ourself from
the, what we can say now is the
globalized cult of consumption
and opulence
is to understand the reality of the world
is one of being temporary,
and that we cling to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Everything else is going to perish,
except Allah. My teacher Sheikh Ahmedi from synagogue
used to say,
You know, the hard the dry eye is
from the hard heart.
And the hard heart mean
is from a lot of sins.
And,
a lot of sins is because we forget
death.
And forgetting death is because people are unhealthily
attached in their love to the temporary world,
and loving this world
in an unhealthy way is the foundation of
all evil. So when we talk about everything
is Hadith, except Allah,
this is an
emancipating
concept
that is unique to Islam,
that frees us from being unhealthily attached to
anything in this world,
and also allows us to frame this world
in a healthy way that we're gonna
talk about. This is, found in a book
that I'm gonna teach you after the masses
creed.
Al
Kharida, excuse me, Waddel
He said, then you must know and know
well that this creation, meaning everything except Allah
that transcended the knowing,
That it is hadith and that it is
in need.
We all are in constant need.
We talk about Allah's
absolutely independent.
His existence is because of himself, but I
am I am
with gravity.
I am established with an infinite number of
things.
That's what that word be means here, because
of. So I want you to think about
right now, how many things
cause you to be
just in the room that you're sitting in
right now?
You can't count them. Now you can't understand
the verse.
If you wanted to count the blessings of
Allah, you couldn't do it. It but Allah
is
The Quran says He provides
food he doesn't need to be fed. Subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
So now you can see the way that
I've been teaching you Aqeedah,
how it has a direct impact on
how it has a direct impact on Tuskiest
and nefs, and the danger of
is when it separates itself from creed and
fiqh. This is where you get into the
weird stuff that sometimes you see. But
orthodox
Sunni to SAWUF is one which is rooted
in
Orthodox
foundational Aqidah.
And one of the foundations of this is
that everything around us, except Allah, everything in
the universe and in creation
has a beginning and has an ending.
Not only in a chronological sense, in a
physical sense, to move from here to here,
that's a beginning and an end. So the
mere presence as someone says, someone walked on
the earth, that immediately makes it impossible for
that to be creation, to be the creator,
excuse me,
because they walked, they started and they stopped.
Allah
is beyond these physical laws, beyond these things.
And
if you think deeply about this,
it allows us to see beyond
the icing of the temporary world,
the filter of the temporary world, and see
Everything is being controlled by
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So the Sheikh, he says,
Everything around us has a beginning and an
ending, and it needs
something else internally or externally
to be.
Because Allah has created us and everything in
flux,
in flux.
And then Sheikh Ahmadardir
he defines what is
Hadith. He says, That
the
temporality of existence,
all things including us,
is because it exists when it after it
didn't exist. Like we didn't exist.
100 years ago nobody knew who we were.
For some of you less than 20 years
ago nobody knew who you were.
Non existence,
and then
existence,
is a proof that you and I are
Hadith.
Well,
and the opposite of that, something having no
beginning and having no ending is
So now, everything around us has a beginning
and an ending.
It needs to exist.
So then why would we
develop an unhealthy attachment to it?
Allah
says,
You're stuck to the Earth, like you're glued
to the earth.
And and this is also very important in
some of the foundational discussions about Islamic Liberation
Theology,
And that is that liberation, as ibn Ajeeba
talked about,
is being emancipated
from
an unhealthy connection to the dunya, so that
you're free to serve the Lord of the
Aqira. Allahu
Akbar.
Allah
in the 57th chapter of the Quran,
and in numerous places, but in the 57th
chapter, 20th verse,
reminds us of the temporality
of everything except Him.
He says
He says know that the life of this
world is nothing but amusement,
diversion,
adornment,
boasting to one another another, and competition in
amassing wealth in children.
We have to be very clear that this
is not talking about the believer. As Imam
al Tabari mentions in his tafsir,
when Allah is shaming the dunya and saying
the dunya is a place of jest
and play. It's addressing disbelievers
and people caught up in sin advice.
But as for the believer who observes what's
right and avoids what's wrong,
this dunya is something else that we're gonna
talk about in a minute. So know that
the life of this world is but amusement,
diversion, adornment, boasting to one another, and competition
in amassing wealth and children.
It is similar to rain, whose resulting plant
growth amazes the planter.
Kufar has two meanings and this is the
beauty of the Quran.
Right?
Could be someone who is like a gardener,
it could also be a disbeliever.
So this is the beauty of the Quran,
it can have two meanings. It could be
the person who, you know, actually grew something
and it came out really beautiful and they
were amazed by it, or that
the ratchetness of this dunya
delights the disbeliever in the hereafter.
One word, two meanings.
That amazes the planters then dries and you
see it turn yellow, then it becomes scattered
debris. So the bunya is like green and
lush, and then suddenly it starts to, you
know,
wilt, and then eventually becomes scattered debris, and
what's left?
And he says,
but the hereafter is the forgiveness of Allah,
and the pleasure of Allah,
and that this world is nothing but an
enjoyment and delusion.
The reason I say that is that if
we look at the Ummah of the prophet
we see that we are an Ummah compromised
in many ways.
And one of the things that has compromised
us, is that we have fallen into this
system
of seeking opulence,
instead of
seeking
what can sustain us.
Opulence
versus sustainability.
The Prophet
this was one of his primary concerns for
us. It wasn't leaving Islam,
it wasn't falling into shirk,
but
opulence. He said,
Prophet said, and this is a good hadith.
The greatest fear I have for you
is when Allah brings the delights of the
world to you.
He was asked, what are those? And he
said, the blessings of the Earth. The blessings
of the Earth.
Of greater concern
outside of
just opulence,
right, and we have to be very careful,
those who are influencers,
those who are
engaged in using things like Instagram.
Are we as a prophetic community
amplifying the dunya,
when one of the foundational
principles is that we are to
amplify the hereafter
and reduce the glitz of the dunya?
Like have we When we forget this, we
can't function in a Prophetic space.
If if
if we are amplifying
the dunya,
and the ornaments of the dunya, to the
point that it becomes a source of comfort
that people rely on,
we're no longer functioning as a prophetic community.
A job of a prophetic community
is to remind people of the hereafter
and the temporality of the dunya.
It's one of the main
functions.
That's why all the Prophets,
I fear for you, a grievous punishment. All
the Prophet said this,
Allah is going to give you something better
than this,
Something better than this.
But I have greater concern,
and there's some really good books
about this, and maybe I'll put them,
if I can remember them, How Quarantine Has
Kept Us All From Our Libraries,
Is
how
corporate interest,
government interests,
are infiltrating
religious spaces
with money.
I remember when I graduated from Al Azhar,
I received a phone call, this is around
10 years ago,
from a man who told me if I
didn't talk about politics,
and if I didn't speak on certain issues,
he would fund me.
Wallahi.
And and as I began to pry and
try to understand things, he became hip to
it,
and eventually
he let it go.
But I have been approached,
by people that put money
to either keep me silent
or to encourage me to say things, and
that's why your support of Swifts is important,
we wanna stay and we'll stay independent. If
we can't stay independent, we won't operate.
We cannot be compromised.
And there's a number of really great books
about how the evangelical community,
starting with Lyndon B. Johnson and the law
and order state,
the militarization of black people,
and people of color, Native Americans,
and now Muslims.
And then up into the eighties, how corporate
America
evangelical community
because they understood that the evangelical community
denied climate change.
So they put money into these communities
in order to expand their power,
and these people are seeing that their power
is for God. Whereas behind, many of the
players
within the evangelical community,
is corporate money.
Corporate money that needs environmental regulations to be
kept off the table.
So for example, I was reading,
Strangers in Their Own Land, it's a great
book.
And, you know, she quotes
a minister
in the bayou in Louisiana. You can no
longer eat fish and shrimp in the bayou.
They call it cancer alley.
And she quotes a minister, who in the
book of Revelation,
in the new testament of the Christian Bible,
talks about the seas will be turned to
fire. So
his argument
is that
everything you see around you now,
is a segue
for Jesus to come.
And one of those promises is that the
sea will be fire. So he's like, it's
good that there's pollution.
This didn't come out of a vacuum. There
was money behind this.
And Muslims also, and Doctor. Sara Abu Kabir,
she has a great book, article on,
all access isn't good.
And Malcolm taught us this, Prophet Muhammad taught
us this, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, when they try
to buy him and sell it, get him
to sell out, he refused.
Malcolm
reminds us that you have to stick to
principles.
So we also have to be very careful
of this idea
that religion should be tied
to personal success
and utility in the dunya.
And you see this happening now.
You see this happening now.
So
why opulence is a concern
in general for Muslims, not sustainability,
opulence, because it takes us away from the
hereafter.
Opulence,
when it is
being achieved by religion,
is even a bigger problem.
So of greater concern, especially in this age,
is when
our values are changed, and we begin to
use religion to seek attention.
We fall into what's called hidden shirk in
our religious
acts.
We do things to get likes, you know,
I met one time
a person who's not
you know,
a renowned teacher,
but a teacher who told me that he
buys likes
on Instagram.
I told him this is insane.
And this is a form of religious corruption
that infects the hearts, rust them, and leave
them void of the light of faith and
awareness.
Added, it confuses
the religious person because he assumes, or she
assumes now, that the attention
is parallel to Allah's pleasure with me.
But that's not necessarily the case, there were
some prophets that had no followers.
How many times did a small group defeat
a big group? If attention comes without somebody
seeking it, that's very different.
We're talking about now somebody purposely having a
strategy
to amass
attention around his or herself
that is now used to sanction his or
her relationship with Allah.
Nahuwah.
In Surat Ma'ida,
Allah quotes
Christians and the Jews saying,
we are the sons of God and we
are the most beloved to God.
Like don't get it twisted.
Don't get it twisted.
So numbers,
as one of my teachers used to tell
me, are never indicative
of our status with Allah.
Just like wealth is never indicative of our
status with Allah.
We know our status with Allah
by our commitment
to the prophetic mission and morality.
That's it.
And the fard,
everything else is temporary.
What with Allah lasts.
So, religious person can get confused,
Even though Josei, he says like one of
the last attempts of Shaitan to
misguide somebody is to cause them to fall
into this,
where their religion is used for utility. We
ask Allah Bilafiya.
And none of us are free of that.
I'm not free of this is a test.
May Allah protect us.
You Rab, can you imagine when did the
pleasure of people
equate
or eclipse the pleasure of the creator?
In religion.
And this also comes after 9:11 and Islamophobia
and how the Muslim community has been curated
and conditioned to want to be
liked. So sometimes we won't say the truth
because we want to be liked.
That means we are infected
and compromised
and unable
because we are attached to an unhealthy attachment.
The prophet, sasai, sasai, he warned us of
this. He said
He said what I fear for you most
is the minor shirk.
And they asked him what is that? He
said showing
off.
Allah will say on the day when his
servants are being recompensed for their deeds,
Run to those who you used your actions
to gain their attention in the temporary world,
and see if there is any reward for
you there.
May Allah protect us.
And listen to this statement of the Prophet
and this hadith also is a good hadith,
minhursilmarii
alalmarii
washarafi
liddinihi
You Allah
2 hungry wolves set upon a pack of
sheep will cause less corruption
than the man who uses
wealth,
his religion for
wealth, and status. Let me read this Hadith
one more time.
2 hungry wolves
set upon a pack of sheep will cause
less corruption
than a man who uses religion for wealth
and status.
Thus,
framing the world as huduth,
as a provisional
stop toward the meeting with Allah
and judgment with Allah
is key to staying rooted
in morality
and faith,
because it provides us
a lens to see, to understand what is
important,
and what's not important.
Sayyidina Umar ibn Khattab RadiAllahu Anhu,
and Sayyidina Umar became disturbed by what he
saw,
and he said to him, O Messenger of
Allah,
O Messenger of Allah, if you like we
can provide for you like a comfortable bed.
And the Prophet said,
What concern do I have with the dunya?
The only example of me in this world
is the example
is like a traveler who traveled on extremely
hot day,
and took
a small break under a tree to cool
off and gain some
shade, and then kept going,
and then kept going.
The greatest trial
of this Ummah is what I'm talking about
now,
forgetting the huduth
of this world, the temporary world,
and being compromised
by the glitz and glamour of the dunya,
finding utility
in the shine of dunya
to the extent that it blinds the light
of the akhirah from our hearts.
You Allah,
we're not that community man, we're not that
community, and when we become that community,
the dunya will shame us, SubhanAllah.
The Prophet said,
Every religious nation had a trial.
And the greatest trial, the trial from my
Ummah, is going to be wealth.
However,
we need to stay balanced.
Imam al Maqdisi, inshallah will teach his book
at Swiss and the future,
his
which is an abridgment of an abridgment of
the ahiyah of Sayna Imam Al Khazari
He said everything
that we talk about from like being indifferent
to the world and anger and happiness and
all these have to be placed in the
normative middle,
the vital center, not one extreme or the
other.
You know, when I first converted, I read
that hadith, and I refused to sleep on
my bed. I used to sleep on the
floor.
And my mother was like, I don't understand
what's wrong with my son. He doesn't wanna
sleep on a bed. And then I got
bit in Oklahoma. I got bit by a,
a brown recluse and had to go to
the emergency room, and he slept on the
floor since, man.
We don't want to hear this and go
extreme.
The Prophet didn't tell Omar that a comfortable
bed is wrong.
See something there. He just talked about what
he what he was about. He didn't tell
Omar don't do that, and we don't have
reports that from that point on where Omar,
he slept on the ground.
There is a difference between sustainability
and opulence.
One may assume,
what we're talking about now is the hudus
of the Adam,
and
the infinite transcendent nature of Allah
is the foundation of
is an excuse to live irresponsibly,
but that is incorrect.
We're going to talk about that next time,
insha Allah.
The balanced understanding of Zuhd, in the light
of the huduth
of the temporary world.