Suhaib Webb – The Hikam A Proper Servant
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AI: Transcript ©
Allah says that he gives hikmah to who
he wants, wisdom
to who he wants. And whoever has been
given wisdom has been given like an infinite
good. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in describing the
prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he
says that the prophet taught people the book
and the wisdom and the wisdom.
Wisdom actually comes from a word which means
to stop. Right?
So, Hakamtu means like I stop somebody. There's
a ancient poem that says
stop your ignorant ones stop your ignorant ones
it also carries the meaning of Yuhkim Tasarrufa
who as the ibn Malik says in his
Lamia it it means to perfect because like
you stop any imperfections from happening.
Now you can understand why Allah is Al
Hakim
absolutely wise,
free of imperfections and all of his decisions.
But we're studying a book called Al Hikm,
of course, which is the plural of of
hikma, the wisdoms of Imam Ibn Ta'ala.
And these wisdoms are meant to protect us
from ignorance. Sayyidina Musa says,
I seek refuge in you from ignorance and
Allah from being an ignorant person.
What does wisdom
mean? Of course, wisdom means to live a
life based on revelation, right? Quran and Sunnah,
Allah
says
Quran
guides to what's upright, right, to to this
kind of wisdom.
And about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam says
you guide to what's upright.
And Hikma for us, wisdom,
is a little bit more broader than say
it is in the western academic as well
as religious tradition.
Wisdom here means the soul,
the mind, and the limbs are all acting
in concert avoiding
ignorance
as well Allah
says about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
Allah swears the stars and says indeed your
Sahib,
your companion, or Mohammed meaning
is not astray
and means externally astray
nor internally
does he have any challenges that are going
to contradict his internal state So his heart
is guided
and his actions are guided.
And his words are not based on desire.
So all 3 are together. Right? Heart,
actions, tongue. That's why Allah
in the Quran when he uses the word,
Ibed, he uses the word servant or worshipper
of Allah in three context, intelligence,
the
people of knowledge,
they have this of Allah,
his servants.
Number 2, those who have
the servants of the most merciful are those
who walk on the earth with humility, with
humility. And then the third is having that
heart in the right place, Allah
when talking about
Ibrahim being the Ibad of Allah
who came with like a sound heart. So
3
areas are brought together to equal wisdom hikma.
When the tongue,
the heart, and the mind, and the tongue
here meaning the limbs
are all brought into concert with one another
then
a person is from the people of Hikma.
Even though the scholars use tongue or speech,
that is oftentimes
representative of the broader set of actions which
we engage in.
But they tend to isolate speech because speech
is like the first,
if you will, kind of area where it
becomes apparent if someone's acting upon guidance or
not. Now you can understand the hadith of
the prophet
that the Muslim or the believer is the
one who others are safe from his tongue,
her tongue, and his or her hands because
these are the two things which can either
do great good or or great evil.
The prophet, someone said,
whoever believes in the last Allah in the
last day, let them say.
Doesn't mean that the rest of my limbs
are absolved from any responsibility,
but this is so important that oftentimes it's
mentioned mentioned in isolation.
So,
heart,
actions, specifically speech,
and
our our our thoughts when brought together in
concert and following the guidance
of our religion. This equates to wisdom.
Cognition without action is actually considered ignorance.
That's why if you look in the Quran,
Allah
when talking about the story of Sayyidina Suleiman,
and so to Baqarah, he says,
You pay attention to the verse Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala affirms
that they have knowledge and then talking about
the same thing says they don't
know. They knew this was wrong,
but they didn't know. 1 of our teachers
in Al Azhar Sheikh Mohammed Alisayyah said
because they didn't act on it, so it
was though it never existed. That's why subhanAllah
in Islam we say
everything that exists in the mind and in
the heart of a person
mean that it doesn't exist in the physical
space. It exists in only an imaginary space.
So until he or she acts on it,
or doesn't act on it, then it's not
like it's not born. Right? It doesn't really
exist.
So not acting on something and knowing it
is not enough. You gotta act on it.
So, we see something in the Quran that
learning
is
intrinsically tied to action and this leads
to wisdom. So the book that we're going
through, the book of Sayna imam, imrata Allah,
Rahim
is trying to unpack some of the greater
wisdoms related to faith, practice, and spirituality. And
last time we talked about sincerity,
right, when he said
right, that every action is like an empty
vessel, and the spirit of that action is
the existence of sincerity
inside it.
Now he says something very important, and he's
going to start to build on how do
we create the capacity for sincerity and I
want you to understand something very important
that qualities like Ikhlas,
sincerity,
tawakkul, trusting in
Allah these are processes
not events.
Very rarely they happen just in the moment.
So I want you to kind of look
at this as a lifestyle change, if you
will. So the sheikh, he says,
The sheikh, he says
the word means actually to bury a body.
To bury
someone who died.
Bury
your existence
in a in a distant land. Khamal means
to be like distant,
barren,
abandoned.
Not barren, but like abandoned.
Because
then what hasn't
what has
it will not
grow.
What has not been buried won't grow.
It won't be able to like a seedling,
it it won't
sprout if it hasn't been buried.
And nor
will it be ripe.
Man, what an example.
In a deep land. Of course, this is
a metaphor for take time out for isolation.
Take time out for professional development, whether in
your religious
space
or in your professional space, you've got to
take time out to invest in yourself to
grow. Because if you don't sprout,
right, you don't give yourself that opportunity to
sprout, you're not gonna be able to bring
fruit,
nor are you going to, like, grow correctly.
So the sheikh is alluding to one of
the important qualities that allows us to achieve
sincerity
and that is interval moments of
isolation. Being alone with Allah,
taking time out to look into yourself.
It's very important because we live now in
an age where value is brought through exhibition.
Value is brought by showing off. Value is
brought by being publicly out there. Ex exhibition
All the time is destroying the human soul.
Islam says the opposite,
right? You're gonna have to take time out
sometimes
to work on yourself
and be alone with Allah to create the
capacity
for sincerity,
for that spirit that's going to come into
your ama. So he says
dig yourself in a deep land
dig yourself on a deep land because what
hasn't been buried
will not grow nor will it bring fruit.
There's something very powerful here
too, and that is that when we take
time out, we're going to get to this
in a in a few hiccups coming. He's
gonna talk about what is the etiquette of
interval isolation.
But he uses the word bury,
and there's a very profound metaphor in this
that when you engage in interval isolation,
you want to bury certain negative qualities.
You want to, in turn, if you will,
the negative and be reborn
with your positive.
It's very beautiful. For Ad Vinyani,
allow those things to die.
Allow those things to move on. There's 3
areas that we wanna think about when we
think about our seed
and how do we grow that seed.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describing the Sahaba in
the end
of the, the 48th chapter, the last verse,
he says,
that they were like a seed and a
weak stem came from the seed. Most ulama
said the seed is the Quran and and
the sunnah and the stem of the Sahaba.
They were weak in the beginning and they
grew and they grew and they grew and
they grew until they could stand on their
own the process.
What are the foundations
of digging yourself in that soil
and allowing yourself to grow religiously? Allah mentions
them in Surat Ibrahim. He says
Allah says
Allah says, have you not thought about a
parable that Allah says forth? A good word
like a good tree
who its foundation is strong and its branches
shoot out to the heavens, like
infinitely shooting out into the
heavens. Sayduna Imam ibn Abbas, the nephew of
the prophet
said,
so the first foundation of the seed, the
soil
is
right?
The tree, its foundation is
and the foundation of the tree is firm,
this is your heart
rooted in that and
in situated and posited in a healthy soil.
We could talk about in the future about
friendship,
about environment, about triggers, that's the soil, right,
that's around us and then what allows that
to grow
is what is the source?
And that's why Allah if you pay attention
in the Quran, the same word for rain,
Anzalah, is used for the Quran Anzalah. Because
just as
the water
of rain brings life
to the dead earth,
the Quran
brings life to a scorched heart.
After talking about the Quran and the relationship
with the Quran, it says are you not
aware that Allah brings the earth that was
dead to life with rain? So the Quran
and rain are here used to make us
think about what's the purpose of the Quran,
to grow that seed.
What's the source? That's
the foundation.
This alludes to what we call
islam
that all of us may
articulate
and translate our faith in different ways to
different talents. Maybe we are the airline stewardess,
maybe you know, I drive Uber,
maybe I'm a lawyer, maybe I'm a college
student, maybe I'm still in high school, maybe
I'm at home with my children as a
homemaker whatever,
the branches
are unlimited, Masha'Allah,
So we ask Allah
to help us understand the importance of pulling
back.
And allow us to grow. In the next
few hitam we're going to be talking about
what are the etiquettes of being alone with
Allah
that interval isolation