Sulayman Van Ael – The Divine Names 17
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بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والصلاة والسلام وبركة على
سيدنا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين أما بعد
فنسأل الله عز وجل بأسمائه الحسنى وصفاته العلا
أن يجعلنا وإياكم من المستمعين للقول والمتبعين أحسنه
إنه ولي ذلك والقادر عليه ثم أما بعد
فالسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته أطلب من الله
سبحانه وتعالى أن يحمينا وأن نحافظ دائما على
قلبنا على طريقه لأنه في الدنيا إنه سهل
جدا أن تخسر نفسك خصوصا عندما يكون شخصا
مصابا أو محاولا بكثير من الأشياء التي يمكن
أن تحاولها إنسان في هذه الحياة مثل السعادة،
مثل الأشخاص الذين يسحبونك، الأشخاص الذين يسحبونك، الأشخاص
الذين يسحبونك، الأشخاص الذين يسحبونك، الأشخاص الذين يسحبونك،
it means that everything turns around him and
not around you.
And this is so difficult because very often
in life, you will find that things don't
go the way you like them to go
at all.
Sometimes you look at the puzzle and it
just doesn't make sense.
You look and you say, this doesn't make
sense.
Why is the one that is crushing me
with lies believed?
Why is the one that is slandering and
I am just being patient, saying, Ya Rabbi,
help me.
Ya Rabbi, stop the batil.
But he doesn't stop it yet because he
wants you to lose yourself.
He wants you to give up on yourself
until you are broken, until you are on
your knees, until you don't find even the
strength to say, Ya Rabbi, help me.
أَمْ حَسِبْتُ مَن تَدْخُلُ الْجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَأْتِكُمْ مَتَلُ
الَّذِينَ خَلَوْا مِن قَبْلِكُمْ مَسَّتْهُمُ الْبَأْسَاءُ وَالضَّرَّاءُ
وَزُلْزِلُ حَتَّى يَقُولَ الرَّسُولُ وَالَّذِينَ أَمَنُوا مَعَهُ مَتَى
نَصْرُ اللَّهِ أَلَا إِنَّ نَصْرَ اللَّهِ قَرِيمٌ And
do you really expect to enter Paradise without
being afflicted by that which they who were
before you were afflicted with?
They were afflicted with pain and suffering until
the Prophet and the believers said, when is
Allah's help?
Ya Rabbi, I can't, you know, please give
me a sign.
Ya Rabbi, I feel alone.
I'm on the Haq, I'm on the truth,
but I feel so alone.
And sometimes a true mu'min may have the
feeling that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is
no longer with him because he keeps on
being tested and afflicted.
And this is what the Prophet ﷺ has
said.
He said, like in the Jamia of Imam
Suyuti, in the Hadithi sound, that tests will
be poured down on a true believer quicker
than rain is poured down upon the earth.
You, this is what we were created for.
We are the object of tests in life.
And as long as we don't understand this,
we will break, our heart will be broken
every time over and over again because we
want everything to be perfect.
Sometimes we don't say this, but it looks
like we think to be the rulers of
the world.
Why didn't this happen?
Why did that happen?
Why didn't this person?
Why isn't that person exposed?
With all the wrong he did, or with
all the wrong she did, why do people
turn against me?
And not against them.
I didn't do anything.
This is life.
Because Allah wants to put you in a
corner where you find nothing.
Nobody who believes you.
Nobody who takes you by the hand.
Nobody who supports you.
Nobody who helps you.
Nothing.
In that little tiny, dark, obscure corner.
So that eventually, you will understand that life
has nothing to give you.
And that Allah has everything to give you.
And this is why we are tested over
and over again.
Not because He hates us, because He wants
to get every hope in creation out of
our hearts.
He wants our tears no longer to flow
because of the harm we are afflicted with.
He wants our tears to flow because we
yearn for Him to strengthen us in the
midst of this difficult life.
And this is why one of the names
of Allah Jalla wa Ala is Al-Wali.
Al-Wali and Al-Wali.
Al-Wali Al-Ladhi Yuwalli Amra Wa Shu
'una Ibadihi Al-Wali is the one that
takes responsibility over that which concerns His slaves.
If Allah loves you, then He will take
care of everything in your life.
But you need to have the courage to
give yourself.
You know, it's like when you climb a
mountain and you have these, how do you
call these?
SubhanAllah.
When you mount the Mount Everest.
I haven't by the way.
You have, how do they call it?
These people that guide you?
Sherpas, right?
Yeah.
Do we say Sherpas like this?
Okay.
You have these Sherpas.
You need to follow them blindly.
You need to shut off your mind.
They have done it so many times.
They say go left, go right, go over,
go down.
Even if it looks dangerous, you need to
follow.
He says not one step to the left.
He said but look.
Look.
He says yes, I know.
I've been here.
One step to the left and it's finished.
So you have to let go at a
certain moment and put your trust in your
leader to the top of the Mount Everest.
But to be quite frank, we keep on
holding on to our own selves like we
are afraid to submit to Allah.
Sometimes we are afraid to submit ourselves to
his guidance, to his power, to his being
a king and we think that we will
be able to take care of it.
We can't.
Some tests will never leave you in this
life.
Some tests will follow you till your grave
and then you say Salaam Alaikum.
They're gone forever.
You have an eternal reward in the gardens
of bliss and you will see on the
Day of Judgment all the people that you
couldn't take care of, those who were harming
you, those who were afflicting harm on you,
who were making you desperate, depressed, you will
find them on the Day of Judgment because
Allah doesn't let go.
Allah doesn't let go.
And this is where we are sometimes too
impatient.
We have no patience.
I want it now.
I want to see them now.
Ya Rabbi, five months, one year, that guy,
SubhanAllah, you wanted to marry a woman or
a man and all of a sudden there
is another woman or another man who gets
married to this woman or man.
It's your friend.
He knew that you wanted to get married
to Zainab, for example.
You wanted to get married to her or
to Ahmed.
And then you say, Yes, you know I
found a very good sister.
I'm going to get married to her, bro.
You know, I really like her InshaAllah because
she's on the deen and she's intelligent.
The brother says, Oh, SubhanAllah, who's that?
Zainab.
Oh, okay, good, good.
And then when you go, knock the door
to ask her hand.
Say, I'm sorry, there is somebody who already
asked her hand.
Who's that?
It appears to be your friend.
This breaks your heart.
Tears you apart.
Your trust just, you know, in people evaporated
together with your friend.
And now you see them happy every time.
And now you need to work on your
own heart because you don't want this lady
to be unhappy.
You don't want this.
So instead of saying, Ya Rabbi, crush their
marriage, Ya Rabbi.
Ya Rabbi, don't give them any children.
Ya Rabbi, make them poor.
Make them suffer.
SubhanAllah.
You are going to say, Ya Rabbi, please
give barakah.
And if you think that something needs to
be settled, ufawwidu amri ilayk.
I rest my case with you, Ya Rabbi.
Because the reason why we go mad in
our lives, the reason why we lose it
sometimes, the reason why we become angry and
depressed and frustrated is because we can't let
go.
Our heart turned into a suitcase or a
backpack where we put every frustration.
And then at the end, it's filled.
We can't carry anything anymore.
Do you know why?
Because you weren't created to carry all of
this.
You were created to let go of things.
To give them to Allah.
wa ufawwidu amri ilallah innallaha basirun bil'ibad
I rest my case with Allah because verily
Allah sees His creation.
So when these kind of things happen, you
say Bismillah.
Why?
Because these negative emotions, they imprison you.
You wake up with them.
You go to bed with them.
SubhanAllah.
You pray with them.
You eat with them.
You sleep.
Everything, everything in your life turns around your
frustration.
So at the end, you are a captive.
You are imprisoned.
So you want to be free.
You don't want to wake up every day
with this eventually something which will turn into
an obsession, you know.
When people have wronged you, you start following
them.
Oh, Facebook, what did they do today?
Oh, they're smiling today.
Why are they smiling?
Like SubhanAllah.
Oh, and they're on a holiday.
Ah, they are making money now and I
am not.
You know, obsession, following.
SubhanAllah.
Don't.
Allah is Al-Wali.
Allah will take care of everything better than
you do.
Without any doubt.
Al-Wali huwa allathee yuwalli amraa ibadihi wa
sha'oonahu.
He is the one who takes care of
the affairs of his servants.
In everything.
Also your rizq.
Young guys like you, for example, other people,
and us, you know, adults, we think about
the future.
So much that we are afraid, like we
are not sometimes enjoying our present because we
are worrying about tomorrow.
We don't enjoy our present while everything is
there to be happy.
Because we worry about our tomorrow.
While some people, you know, they have reason
to worry, but they hope for tomorrow.
You see the difference?
Very often the people who have the most
blessings are the ones who are blind for
their blessings.
So what about tomorrow?
What about tomorrow?
Bro, you have healthy children.
Brother, you have healthy children.
You have a healthy...
Your wife, your mother is still there.
Your father is there.
You have your job.
You have your car.
You have a little cough.
Okay, hay fever, no problem.
You won't die.
You have everything, but you're looking there.
But you have everything.
And then you have people.
Mothers, right now, while we talk, in Syria,
Iraq, Yemen, while we are speaking here, worrying
a bit about our income next month, will
I be able to have an extra 150
pounds to buy that dress that I want
to wear when I travel to Pakistan?
You know?
While maybe we fight, husband and wife, no,
that's too much.
No, not to...
But you promised me.
Please, it's only once I go there.
I want the best dress.
No, you don't...
So we are fighting over ne'am.
We are fighting over blessings.
You say, take it, go.
I will draw a smile on your face
if you like.
But on the other hand, while we are
sitting here, there's maybe a woman with a
baby that she still needs to feed.
She doesn't even know if in the evening
she will have a sufficient amount of milk.
You know, because she's underfed herself.
While she's walking with a toddler here, three
years old, another one four years old, mommy,
mommy, hungry, hungry, the child is crying.
And she says, my children don't worry, tomorrow
will be better.
So they look there and they believe that
Allah can give better.
And we have everything and we believe that
Allah will give worse.
It doesn't make sense, does it?
So al-waali, enjoy today, wallahi.
If everything goes well today, enjoy it.
Wallahi, that's the biggest form of worship, is
to appreciate what Allah Jalla wa'ala has
given you.
That you can walk, that you can talk,
that you can smell the food, that you
can see colors, that you can hear sounds,
that you feel the wind.
You know, some people have no feeling whatsoever
on their skin.
They don't feel anything.
Even pain, they don't feel pain.
They need to watch out for whatever they
do.
You know, they burn themselves, they don't feel
it.
Sometimes they might be harmed, they don't know.
They die.
Why?
Because they didn't feel pain.
We have everything to be happy about.
So now, to come back.
Al-waali is the one who takes care
of his servants, also about their rizq.
Don't worry about your rizq.
Don't.
It drives you crazy.
The one who has provided for billions of
people is able to provide for you.
But you need to let go with your
heart.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, like in
the sunan of Ibn Majah, and the sunan
of Imam al-Tirmidhi, and the hadith is
sound.
He said, تَفَرَّغُ لِعِبَادَتِي أَمْلَأُ قَلْبَكَ يَعَبْدِي تَفَرَّغُ
لِعِبَادَتِي أَمْلَأُ قَلْبَكَ غِنًا وَأَسُدُ فَقْرَكَ وَأَسُدُ فَقْرَكَ
He said, oh my servant, free yourself to
worship me, and I will fill your heart
with a richness.
You will feel rich on the inside, and
I will take care of your poverty.
That's the only thing you need to do.
Free yourself.
When we are worrying, panicking for risk, we
knock on every door, but not on his.
While we say that we believe that he
is the king and the sustainer of the
universe, we know, bro, bro, I don't have
money, what do I do, what do I
do, what do I do?
But there, رَزَّقْ الْوَالِي He will take care
of you.
So now, الوالي, as I said, is the
one that takes care of you.
But also by giving you advice.
By showing you the way.
When someone was good for you, he tells
you even those things that you don't like.
Right?
A good parent doesn't only tell you what
you need to do, but also what you
need to watch out for.
That's the Qur'an.
It tells you, do this, don't do this.
This is الوالي.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala telling us sometimes
things we don't like to hear.
This is the human being.
Nobody told us that religion is always easy
upon the ego, otherwise paradise would have been
really easy.
If everything we had to do was like,
oh, piece of cake.
Waking up 3 o'clock at night is
for me exactly the same as eating a
brownie.
Oh, that would be nice.
Going to Taraweeh after so many hours of
fasting, and really being tired and trying to
hold on to my own hand, not to
fall asleep, for me is the same as
watching the Champions League.
That would be easy, wouldn't it?
But it isn't.
And you don't need to feel bad if
sometimes you feel that it's heavy upon your
shoulders.
It's when it's heavy, and it's when you
feel I don't want to do it.
And you yet do it, that's your biggest
reward.
When you fight yourself, say, come on, get
out of your bed, lazy man.
Go and pray.
Lower your gaze.
No, but...
Lower your gaze, I said.
Okay.
While everything in your heart says, look.
No, I don't.
Prophet Ali s.a.w. said, if someone
passes and wants to look with passion, being
a woman, looking at a man or a
man looking at a woman, and he said,
and if then one lowers the gaze, Allah
will fill his heart with a light and
a joy until the Day of Judgment.
When you lower your gaze for the sake
of Allah s.w.t. Say, no, no.
All of a sudden you feel light in
your heart.
Because staying away from haram is one of
the biggest forms of worship.
You know.
Staying away from haram is one of the
biggest forms of worship.
So now, yes, don't feel bad when sometimes
you feel, I don't really have the feeling
that I want to pray.
Are you still praying?
Yes.
Then you're a good man.
You're a good woman.
It's good.
Keep on fighting yourself.
It's with ups and downs.
We are no angels.
You know, the Iman of the Rasul, Iman
of the Prophets, always increases.
It always increases.
It never goes down.
The Iman of the angels, it's stagnated.
It's always the same.
Sorry?
What did you say?
Consistent.
Okay, it's consistent.
And then we have the Iman of the
believer.
يَزِيدُ بِالطَّاعَةِ وَيَنقُصُ بِالْمَعْصِيَةِ It increases when he
or she worships Allah and decreases when one
is disobedient.
And this is what we feel.
Sometimes we don't enjoy being with Allah as
much as other times.
And that's just because we killed our heart.
So we need to revive it.
So now, Al-Wali subhanahu wa ta'ala
is the one who takes care of you.
Even when you don't see it.
Even when you don't feel it.
If you are on the truth, victory will
be yours.
Done.
If you doubt this, you have a problem
with your faith.
If you doubt what I just said, you
are having a big problem with your faith.
If you are on the truth, victory is
yours.
When?
That's another story.
We don't know when.
It can be here, it can be there.
And the example I always give in every
name of Allah is Yusuf alaihi salam.
If you look at him, everybody thought that
they were winning.
The brother said, Yes, Yusuf is in the
well.
There we are.
Gone.
He will never come to his father again.
Then they found Yusuf.
They said, Yes, we are going to sell
him like a slave.
And then he went to his master's house.
And then the lady, the wife of his
master, wanted to abuse Yusuf.
And then he went into prison.
Everybody was happy now.
The brothers were happy.
Everybody was happy.
Happy.
Why?
Because they didn't know that Allah has the
last word and the first word.
Sometimes, when He loves you, He makes you
go through the mud of humiliation.
The mud of humiliation to allow you to
find the treasure of honour.
Sometimes, when people want a treasure in the
depths of the ocean, they go for weeks
looking for that treasure.
It's not nice.
Decompression.
One month, you know, they need to stay
in a small little room in the boat
because they are going to dive 100 meters
or 200 meters.
They don't come up immediately, do they?
They stay there.
They need to stay.
They need to acclimatize or whatever you call
it to adapt to that kind of pressure.
Then they go and they dig and they
dig under the mud.
What are they doing?
Mud, suffering, masks, oxygen, whatever far away from
their families, waves of 10 meters, 20 meters.
At the end, to find a treasure.
When you look at them, you say, I
don't want to do this.
But when you see the result, you say,
I want this.
True?
When you look at, when you look, for
example, at Anthony Joshua, for example, right?
Apart from his last fight.
Then you see that when you see the
money, you say, I want this.
When you see the muscle, you say, I
want this.
But when you see what he has to
do for it, you say, not for me.
So we all agree that the people we
very often look up to to get to
a result we would like go through ways
that we dislike.
And that's the same with faith.
The same with your Iman.
When Allah wants you at the highest levels,
close to Him, near to Him, there where
there are only but a few participants, the
better you get, the fewer they come.
So close to Allah, this real connection.
Then you have to go through everything you
hate.
Losing your honor, maybe losing your children, maybe
losing your status, your job, your health.
This, this, this, this, this, this.
You wanted me.
Well, I will show you if you really
want me.
There I'll take your health.
You still want me?
There I'll take your wife or your husband.
Still want me?
There I'll take your honor.
Want me?
There I'll take your money.
You wanted me.
You said, you're the only thing I want,
Ya Rabbi.
Well, here you are.
So this is what happens.
When Allah SWT wants you near to Him
and He finds in your heart that you
have obstacles between Him and you that distract
you from Him, He will take away the
distractions.
So don't get distracted and He will let
you have and keep what you love.
But if you are distracted from Him, then
He will take it away.
Unless He knows that you are not worth
to come near to Him.
You see?
So the Wali SWT is the one that
takes care of you even through ways and
paths that you dislike.
But at the end, victory is yours even
if it doesn't look like it.
Wait.
Allah.
Okay.
The Prophet SAW said, اَوْثَقُ عُرَىٰ الْإِيمَانِ مُوَالَاةُ
اللَّهِ I am the strongest.
Hand-hold?
Hand-hold?
You say hand-hold?
What you hold on to.
Like if you have...
Yeah, but it's something with hand.
I looked up the word before coming here
and I forgot it.
Let us call it hand-grip, whatever.
So it's the...
You know when you have these old vases,
a vase, then you...
Hand-hold?
Handle.
Handle?
خَلَص.
تَفَقْنَا هَنْدَلْ The problem is, if the scholars
here differ about the word, what do I
need to go by?
Hand-hold?
خَلَص.
Hand-hold.
So the strongest hand-hold, the Prophet SAW
said, is مُوَالَاةُ اللَّهِ meaning that you leave
your affairs to Allah and that you direct
yourself to Him.
He said that's the strongest shackle of faith.
The strongest hand-hold.
So anyway.
So now there is a difference between الولي
and الوالي.
Now if you know that Allah SWT takes
care of your affairs, then you will not
stand up for yourself in a wrong way.
Meaning, our scholars, they very often, pious people
used to be afraid to react to the
wrong, to the wrong the people did towards
them and the harm they afflicted them with.
Because they said, look, when you harm me,
it's your loss.
When I react, either I react in harmony
with what you have done, and then we're
equal, or either I do worse than you
have done.
If somebody would say, say behind my back,
yes Suleyman, he said that you are a
real donkey.
And I say, what?
He said that you are a real donkey.
I say, sorry?
No, no.
And then, if I then now say, well,
you know what?
He is a real, real donkey.
I said real, real.
One word more.
Now, he's the one who's being wronged.
See this?
And this is sometimes when people make us
angry, because they wrong us.
You know, they talk nonsense about us.
They accuse us of something.
They lie about us.
They say, he told and he said, while
you didn't do it.
Makes us angry, doesn't it?
So now, if I now react, because every
time I see this person, I will talk,
yeah, he's the liar.
He's the one who told this.
And you keep on doing this for months
and months and months.
Okay.
Now, he needs, you need to excuse yourself
to him.
Do you see how it works?
So a lot of people would never react
emotionally, but only fiqh-y, from a juristic
point of view.
They would see, okay, in fiqh, has he
got to give something to me?
Then I will, you know, through the legal
ways, get it back.
But if it was insulting or harming or
gossiping, they would just let go.
They said Allah will take care of it.
You see.
So, sometimes, and that's what I started with,
you just need to leave it to Allah
SWT.
Okay, from everything what I've said until now,
what have you taken away for yourself?
What have you taken away for yourself?
From the beginning.
Okay, very good.
Allah takes care of you, even through a
way or a path that doesn't seem to
be heading to your victory.
Two.
Yes.
We have to be very patient.
Three.
Stay hopeful.
Why?
Yes, good.
Four.
No problem.
No?
I'm sure you have something.
What's your name please?
Abdullah.
Beautiful name.
Prophet Isa also said that the two most
beloved names to Allah SWT is Abdullah and
Abdulrahman.
MashaAllah, good.
Your son?
Yes.
MashaAllah.
Nice.
Yes.
Don't get distracted by dunya.
Yes, please.
Gratefulness.
If you're not grateful for what you already
have, want, you may have.
Yes, very good.
Very good.
You?
Love and trust go together.
Okay.
Where did you get that from?
I mean, where did you take this away
from?
How you describe Allah and His relationships with
you.
Yes.
From that.
And then a little added to that, maybe
putting on the table, No.
Excellent.
Your relationship, everything that you do.
If you put all of those together, and
have extra, and you have trust, Then that
would help your relationship.
Yes.
Okay.
And also at the very beginning, also at
the very beginning, when we said that, life
will not give you what you want.
And that's where we always go wrong.
That's the heartbreaker.
And that's the soul shaker.
It always goes wrong there.
SubhanAllah.
So we have Allah Al-Wali and Al
-Wali, and I'm not going into detail of
the name Al-Wali subhanAllah wa ta'ala.
But then we have Allah Jalla wa Ala,
who is at the same time Al-Hafidh.
He's Al-Wali and Al-Hafidh.
And Al-Hafidh, he's the one who preserves,
the one who protects.
SubhanAllah.
And Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, he said,
if you want to know Allah's blessing, then
look at what He is protecting you against.
Do we say protecting against something?
Okay, what is withholding from you?
Like, I mean, for the moment, what you
should know, we have the laws of nature,
but Allah's power is stronger than the law
of nature, isn't it?
So, law of nature is necessary, and there
needs to be gravity, there needs to be
all these things.
Allah has created it.
It's not just like, oh, there it was.
No, we don't believe that.
We believe that everything was created by Allah
subhanAllah wa ta'ala.
But we also believe that Allah subhanAllah wa
ta'ala can dismantle and, you know, look
at so many things.
Like in the Guinness Book of Records in
the 90s, and I don't know why they
put it in the Guinness Book of Records,
they wrote that a stewardess, a female steward
on an airplane, fell down from 10,000
meters, I don't know how many miles it
is, it's cruising flight height, fell down and
she came out of the plane without any
scratch.
So she is the record holder of falling
from the highest height and surviving it without
a scratch.
What did she do to it?
Yes, please.
No, she didn't.
It's the same thing with, for example, also
in the Guinness Book of Records, I don't
know why he is there as well, a
man who was struck by lightning seven times
and didn't die.
Seven times.
One in his toe, one on his head.
And they put them in these Guinness Book
of Records, that I say, but they didn't
have to do anything for it, it's actually
Allah who did it.
You see, so, oh, well done, you survived.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is a
protector.
But we also believe in the Asbab.
The Asbab were created.
And this is what the verse in Suratul
Baqarah is about.
When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, وَتَزَوَّدُوا
فَإِنَّ خَيْرَ الزَّادِ التَّخْوَى And there were people
from Yemen, they were performing Hajj, but they
wouldn't take food with them.
They said نَحْمُوا مُتَوَكِّلُونَ We are those who
put their trust in Allah.
So we go, we take no food, no
drink, no anything, we just go.
But then when they arrived, they started asking
people for food.
So have you got a bit of food?
So they turned into beggars.
So they were not متوَكِّلُونَ They were متوَاكِلُونَ
المتواكِل هو الذي يتوكل على الله من غير
أن يتخذ السبب The one who is متواكِل
is the one who puts his trust in
Allah without any means, using any means.
This is allowed if you dare not turn
into a beggar, for example.
This is why Ibn Rajab said, if someone
doesn't want to take medicine when he's ill,
then he would be allowed to do so.
If he says Allah can cure me, but
then he doesn't have to complain, he doesn't
later on have to say, why did I
do this, why, nothing.
And if you then accept the decree, it
would be allowed.
Other scholars say no.
Because you were ordered by Allah to take
care of the amanah, that what you have
been entrusted with, and that's your body.
And this is why some scholars go very
far in explaining the verse, وَيُحَرِّمُ
عَلَيْهِمُ الْخَبَائِثِ And the other one, كُلُوا مِنَ
الطَّيِّبَاتِ وَأَعْمَلُوا صَالِحًا Eat from the good things.
Now, a question that I want to ask,
eat from the good things.
In the time of the Prophet ﷺ, good
things was الحلال طيب.
Meaning it was the halal, they didn't have
E's, they didn't have Z's, they didn't have
all these numbers in their food.
It would either be clear forward, straightforward halal,
straightforward haram.
And they wouldn't eat things that would directly,
you know, have a bad effect on their
health.
Now today, what is الطيبات?
Is it only for the faqih to decide?
No.
The طيبات from a juristic point of view
is clear.
Halal and haram is very straightforward in Qur
'an and Sunnah.
But now the verse has a larger meaning.
The طيبات meaning everything which is good for
your body.
Not only halal and haram now.
But everything which is good for your body
is halal, and everything which is bad for
your body is haram, because of that which
it can lead to.
So all these E numbers they can lead
to.
The problem is you're going back home, you
find in your fridge all these E numbers,
you said, Sulaiman you spoiled my evening.
So anyway, you ruined my evening.
So all these things which are bad for
our body, because we are eating things which
are not meant for a human being to
eat from.
Now many things that we eat like candies
and stuff, there is no food in it.
There is no nutrition, any nutrition in it.
So الطيبات actually now means everything which is
halal, and which is good for your body.
And the haram and the خبيثة from the
أكل is everything which is bad for your
body.
So Allah SWT, being الحافظ, also made clear
how we should do حفظ of ourselves.
He also showed how we need to preserve
our body.
And I'm not a good example, I have
diabetes, and probably because I eat too much
sugar, I don't know.
But we need to preserve our bodies, and
we need to preserve our minds, we need
to preserve our heart, and we need to
preserve our soul.
All of this.
So Allah الحافظ, yes he is the protector,
but him being the protector also taught us
how to protect ourselves.
So you can't just sit in a car,
drive 150 miles an hour, without your seatbelt
in Germany, and then boom, you crash, you
die.
Or you're paralyzed for the rest of your
life.
But Allah was حافظ.
It doesn't work like that.
And this is why the Prophet ﷺ said,
put your trust in Allah, but take your
precautions.
Put your trust in Allah, but take your
precautions.
The Prophet ﷺ made it very clear.
Like when the man came to the mosque,
and he said, Ya Rasulullah, they stole my
camel, remember?
And he said, did you tie your camel?
He said, but I put my trust in
Allah.
He said, tie your camel and then put
your trust in Allah.
It's the same thing.
So now we need to learn, if we
know that Allah is the protector, subhanahu wa
ta'ala, how we are going to protect
our body, our deen, our mind, our children,
our ummah, humanity.
This is what it means to believe in
Allah the protector.
When he descended the Qur'an and the
Sunnah, he told us exactly what to do
to keep the world safe, to keep the
world from being corrupted.
If we were to have followed the Qur
'an and the Sunnah, we wouldn't have this
problem with the planet earth heating up.
How do you call this?
Global warming, of course.
So we wouldn't have the problem of global
warming.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the very
Surah Al-Baqarah, He says, وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمْ
لَا تُبْسِدُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ قَالُوا إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ مُصْلِحُونَ
And when you tell them, don't corrupt, spread
corruption over the earth, and don't, you know,
filthy the earth, and whatever it entails, the
word, say, we only do good, yes, for
your own pocket.
That's what people do.
They allow laws and they forbid other laws.
Laws that bring money into the pockets of
the important people, they won't, you know, forbid
them.
But small tiny things, like you drive in
Belgium with your car in a certain zone,
because you don't have money, you know, to
buy a new car, so you go to
a certain low emission zone, and I'm talking
about Belgium now, so I'm in no way
referring to the UK.
So in Belgium, when you drive your car,
there's a low emission zone, right?
So if your car is from 2008, you
can't drive there anymore.
They say, yes, low emission.
But the problem is, does this really change
something?
This is number one.
Two, who are they helping?
Because when you pay, where does it go?
Does it go to planet Earth?
Or does it go to pocket Earth?
And so what I'm trying to say is,
you know, Allah Al-Hafiz, Jalla wa Ala,
if we believe in him, then we need
to express this, also by taking care of
issues like global warming, for example.
And now the problem is, when we do
this as Muslims, we don't need to put
the ticket Islam on it.
So we want to participate in the debate
of global warming.
We don't need to come with, قال الله,
قال رسوله, and so forth.
Why?
Because taking part in the dialogue is actually
putting into practice Qur'an and Sunnah.
You understand what I mean?
So we can participate when everybody is already
participating, without turning it into something entirely Islamic
and putting this sticker on it and so
forth, because this might stop people from working
together on something which is important.
Which doesn't mean you shouldn't tell you're a
Muslim and not that you tell it because
you want to, and so forth.
Anyway, Al-Hafiz.
So we as Muslims are the first ones
who are responsible for everything which happens on
the face of the Earth.
Not meaning we are responsible, we are the
cause.
But we have a responsibility.
We are a ummah of responsibilities.
So if Muhammad a.s. were to come
back today, what do you think he would
talk about?
Do you think he would rest?
Do you think he would sit and have
food while people are dying?
Don't you think that he would look into
solutions to get rid of poverty and people
dying because they have nothing to eat?
Muslims and non-Muslims alike?
He wouldn't rest.
So why do we?
We always say, I can't do anything about
it.
It's too big.
It's the world.
When the Prophet s.a.w. came, he
came into the midst of a world.
We had Persia on the one hand, we
had the Romans on the other, and they
were all oppressing people.
Even there where the Prophet s.a.w.
came, they were oppressing people.
The leaders were oppressing people.
Everybody was burying girls alive.
Widows had no right whatsoever.
Girls didn't inherit anything.
When a man would die, then his son
would inherit his wife, if it was not
his mother.
Would inherit his wife, she had nothing to
say.
If a man divorced his wife, he could
choose whether she got married again or not.
This was the life they were living.
There was prostitution, there were so many different...
Riba was everywhere.
People were slaughtering for idols.
They were going naked around the Kaaba.
Should I say more?
That was the world Muhammad s.a.w.
was born in.
So he could have said, oh, this is
too much.
But he was courageous.
All of a sudden, people didn't bury their
baby girls anymore.
He even took his granddaughter Umayma, Umayma is
the Musafar, on his shoulders to show all
these macho men that the place of a
baby girl isn't under the soil, it is
on the shoulders of a Prophet.
You see?
Bilal r.a, the Arabs back in the
days, they were racist.
They didn't like people with dark colored skin.
They said, no, no, no, they are just
there to serve us.
They didn't give them any qeema, any value.
Like Bilal r.a, under these stones, crushing
him, they put him for an hour on
his belly in the burning sand.
It can be as hot as 60 degrees
Celsius in the desert.
Then they would turn him, but not naked.
No, they would put on him a harness
of iron.
Then they would turn him from zahran to
batan.
They would whip him in the face.
And he was saying, ahadun ahad, ahadun ahad,
he's one, he's one.
And now the Prophet s.a.w., when
he came back to Medina, where did he
tell Bilal to perform the Adhan?
On the stone of Jannah, the Kaaba.
So the one that was saying ahadun ahad,
calling upon Allah, when no one heard him,
under the stones of Dunya, was now allowed
to perform the Adhan, calling upon Allah, when
everybody heard it, above the stone of Jannah.
He said, people of a dark color, their
place, my friend, is not under a stone.
It's above the stone of Jannah.
When we see how he s.a.w.
showed everything to the people, not just in
words, but in deeds.
I mean, 1400 years ago, people were enslaving,
people from Africa, everywhere.
Colonialism everywhere, with ships and boats, the Portuguese,
the Italians, the people from Spain, everywhere.
Selling them, throwing them off the boat, like
they were no humans.
But we're not allowed to say this, that's
a part of history, we don't like to
mention.
Well, it was there, not that long ago,
even in South Africa, apartheid.
1400 years ago, when everybody was doing this,
Muhammad s.a.w. said, لا فرق بين
أعجمين ولا عربيين ولا أبيض ولا أسود إلا
بالتقوى There is no difference between an Arab
and a non-Arab, white or black, apart
from taqwa, the way he is on the
inside.
That's what it means, taqwa, to start with.
That what makes you different is not the
way you look, it's the way you are.
That is what makes you human.
So the Prophet s.a.w. was doing
all of this.
Did he say, I can't?
One man.
One man, without Facebook, no social media, no
likes, nothing.
Until today, 1400 years later, more than one,
almost two billion followers.
Two billion followers.
Even Ronaldo has two billion followers.
He's got 120 million or something.
It's nothing, two billion followers.
And he doesn't have a page.
Without page, how do you do this?
When it comes from Allah.
It's ajeeb.
Everybody does the most strange things on the
internet, on Instagram and so forth, to have
as many people as they can.
The most stupid things.
10,000 people, 20,000 people, when they
got 500,000 people, they think that they
are the president of Instagram.
And subhanAllah, our Prophet s.a.w., his
name is mentioned five times a day.
In the Adhan.
Then in prayer.
Always.
وَرَفَعْنَا لَكَ ذِكْرَكَ And we are the one
that raised your name.
مَا ذُكِرْتُ إِلَّا وَذُكِرْتَ مَعِي مَا ذُكِرْتُ Whenever
I am mentioned, then you are mentioned with
me.
أَشْهَدُ أَن لَا إِلَهِ إِلَى اللَّهِ Is not
complete without أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ اللهِ أَذَانُ
أَشْهَدُ أَن لَا إِلَهِ إِلَى اللَّهِ Is not
complete without أَشْهَدُ أَن مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ اللهِ You
see this?
فَرَفَعْنَا لَكَ ذِكْرَكَ So, Allah is الحافظ He
preserved His Deen with or without us.
And this is why sometimes we say When
everything goes wrong, you know what?
I'm not going to do anything anymore I'm
not going to help people anymore Everybody I
help, they turn against me Every time I
try to be good, people are back to
me Done!
Who are you stopping it for?
If you want to build your hereafter You
have no choice but to continue You have
no choice but to carry on doing good
You don't care Because the people are not
the ones who will reward you The people
are not the ones who will protect you
The people are not the ones who will
grant you paradise The people are not the
ones that will protect you against hellfire It's
Allah, you do it for Allah And this
is why we end with what we started
with Ikhlas is your only saviour bi-idhnillah
Ikhlas So, Allah protected the Deen Like one
of the ulema said If other religions and
faith communities Would have been afflicted with what
the Muslims are afflicted with They wouldn't have
survived They would not have survived Do you
see everything which happened?
I mean not even 200 years ago Muslim
countries were colonized The French, the Italians, everybody
came Give me a piece of cake Give
me a piece of your land Give me,
give me, give me And then they went
They even didn't allow people to speak their
own language But today, you see that a
Muslim is also a hafiz Not al-hafiz
All these people in these Muslim countries That
suffered, being it in Libya Being it in
Lebanon Being it in Palestine Being it in
Morocco Being it in Tunisia All these countries
that were colonized Or being it in Pakistan,
whatever All these people They are now in
the countries of the people that colonized them
Not to seek revenge They are looking to
build bridges This is how strong Muslims are
That they look at today That they can
forgive tomorrow And that they look That they
can forgive yesterday And that they look at
tomorrow That they want to live in peace
Even after everything they've gone through And this
is what makes me proud Being a part
of your community I turned Muslim when I
was 18 And I can say that Regardless
of our flaws, our shortcomings, our mistakes And
our many diseases As a community, there is
one thing And that is that we have
strength When we fall, we crawl Until we
can stand again And when we stand strong
We help those who have wronged us yesterday
This is what this community is So this
community is one of the manifestations Of the
name al-hafiz subhanahu wa ta'ala This
is the last thing I want to say
One of my teachers said in his tafsir
of surat al-fatiha About sirat al-mustaqim
He said this deen is like a tree
When you cut its branches, it grows stronger
When you cut the branches, they come back
stronger More leaves And this is what happens
to Islam Every time it goes through these
difficult periods in time All of a sudden
you see it grow The terrible thing which
happened in America When the twin tower was
attacked Then you see after that The amount
of non-Muslims who were interested in Islam
grew Not meaning that what happened is a
good thing What happened is a bad thing
We never want this to happen again to
anybody in the world Being Muslims or non
But you see that some people said This
is a proof that all Muslims are bad
people Which doesn't make any sense But then
people started looking Is Islam really so bad?
Is Islam really so terrible?
And then they found out that Islam is
actually very beautiful So in that year There
were more masahif sold than ever before And
more Muslims More people embraced Islam than ever
before So when Allah takes care of his
deen Let him take care of you Trust
him, submit yourself to him And let him
guide your way And you will find your
path Through him, with him, by him
جل
وعلا سبحانه وتعالى الحمد لله رب العالمين وليكم