Riyadh al-Saliheen and Women’s Q&A #03

Okay, it's just o'clock so we'll get started Inshallah, this will allow him and hamdulillah Ramadan Amin was Salatu was Salam ala as football NBA were muzzling so he didn't want to Vienna what would watching a Muhammad Ali he offered the Salah was testing on Lahoma I didn't know be May on fat or no on fat now the amount of internet, was it an element here of the line, I mean.

So we started talking about

the first Hadith, and realvest Salim.

And there's a lot to say about it.

We basically covered the first section of the Hadith where the prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam gives us two key principles in and out and I don't believe yet we're in America Limra in our

that actions that we do, deeds that we commit are accompanied by and caused by intentions, they're inseparable from intentions. And everybody in the hereafter in the afterlife is going to be rewarded or punished, recompensed, or reimbursed for their intention.

We talked a lot about how

this should keep us humble, because the intention is something that a law has deliberately made unknowable to us, and part of the unseen world.

There was just one remaining point

that I wanted to mention before moving on to the rest of the Hadith. And that has to do with a

common pitfall we could say, or a common orientation that we find ourselves in,

towards our religion itself, that comes under the wisdom and the guidance of this hadith. So we know that we're only going to be rewarded by what were intended, or what we intended. So we have to ask ourselves, what is the correct intention to have? And how do we know if we have it or not? The Prophet SAW as salaam, he's going to mention this in the very next slide of the Hadith, doing things for Allah. Right? Generally, generally, you know, word. So one of the things that we have to look out for, and this is very common, and it can happen to anybody is a kind of instrumentalisation of our religion, or an instrumentalisation of our faith. What do I mean by that? I mean, sometimes a

person can do good deeds, and really throw themselves into the religion and worship and religious practice. However, one of the things we need to look out for it is expecting that those kind of that kind of increase in practice is going to essentially get us what we want in this world. Right? Do you see what I mean? Right? So it's like, it's the difference between,

depending on a loss pinata, and worshipping out of love for him, and worshiping Him out of fear for him.

It's the difference between that and kind of saying, Well, I want this thing out of life. Whether it's a career, or it's a certain lifestyle, or if it's a certain income bracket, or it's a certain relationship, or even health, it can be health, too. And then you're kind of looking at yourself, like, I'm not getting what I want, I must be doing something wrong.

It's almost like in Christianity, they call this actually like the prosperity gospel, because it's kind of this assumption that people's wealth, and health and success writ large in the world is determined by how pious they are. Right? Which when we put it in terms like that, we can say, That's ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. But sometimes, we can unknowingly slip into that kind of mentality where we want something so bad, that

we've stopped questioning ourselves. Whether it might be possible that Allah doesn't want this thing for us.

But we're so adamant about this one thing. Yes. So exactly as if you are bargaining with a law, very well set, right. And it's like, I'm going

Only two if I do this extra fast thing. And if I do the extra prayers, and I really throw it in, then I'm going to expect to get this certain thing that I really want. Or the opposite. You blame yourself for things that you deem as bad and negative because of your own perceived shortcomings, and we all have shortcomings. So for example, you want something maybe you're having conflict with your spouse.

And you kind of maybe turn it on yourself and blame yourself and say, Well, if I was really living the life that Allah wanted me to be living, I wouldn't be having these conflicts.

Right. And so it's almost this mechanism of self blame.

And all we have to do is look at the Sierra, the biography of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sunnah, and the biography of the companions to know that this isn't, this is not

true at all. This perspective is a warped perspective. Because the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam was the most pious, he was my son, he didn't have any sins to speak of,

especially not major sins.

And yet, he had conflict with his wife, and his wives, and he had conflict within his family. And he had hardship. He had enormous hardship, he lost his first child, he lost subsequent children after that a total of three children. Right?

If one of us were going through the same thing today, we might be tempted to say that, Oh, I must not be doing something right. Why is the law punishing me? Why is Allah doing this to me. But if you look at the companions of the Prophet, Mohammed sai says, we have to conclude that no, this is not a punishment. There's a difference between what we want and what we consider good for us. And what Allah wants for us and what Allah considers good for us. And we have to be careful to put ourselves in a situation where we're not allowing

any questions about our own kind of perspective. Because maybe something is happening to us. It could be health related. It could be, it could be job related, it could be relationship related. And it could be very, very hard and very, very difficult. Now, we don't see the wisdom, because we're normal human beings with limited knowledge. But Allah understands the wisdom, and Allah is actually putting it, putting it upon you, and putting you through it, for your own good. This happens all the time. So that's something to be careful about. And it's very, very common not to instrumentalize your religion, but we as Muslims, where people have process, right, we don't look towards the

results. All we do is we try to zero in on the correct process. And we try to be as consistent as possible. And we try to be as sincere as possible. And we leave our results or the results of those of that process up to a lot. And we expect and we hope from Allah subhanaw taala that if it's hard in this life, that Allah is going to give us the reward that we hoped for in the afterlife. So then the Prophet Muhammad sigh someone moves on. He says, after what in the medical Limra in our famine, can at his rato, huile Allah He want to slowly Keifa his multiple Allahu wa salam. Now he gives an example. He says, so whoever made hijra, whoever migrated or emigrated for Allah and His Messenger,

then he migrated for Allah and His messenger. Okay, that's the literal translation of what he said, we're going to go into why doesn't a literal translation doesn't quite do it justice here. But first we need to explain what is Hijra. Because it's a central concept in a snap. Hijra has two meanings. One of its meanings is an external, outward, macro meaning and the second meaning is an internal one, one that everybody in the life has to wrestle and grapple with. So the outer meaning of hijra, it means to, it's about residents. It's about your political allegiance, right? Like so. For example, you make Hedra from one place to another, we all know that the Companions they made his

route from Mecca to Medina after life became impossible in Mecca

Hmm. We also know that the Companions they made Hedra from Mecca to Abyssinia before their Hijra to Medina and lived on

are a Christian king, that Joshi when it was not possible

to live in Mecca and practice their faith

and SubhanAllah. Today, we don't think of Mecca and Medina as being two different places, right? Because they're in one nation state.

For all intents and purposes, from our perspective, it's the same culture. It's the same language. It's the same everything. That's not quite true. Now, even if you get down to the level of tribes in which tribe lives were, but it wasn't, it was especially not true that and the people the mohajir, on the companions that came from Mecca and migrated to Medina, they experienced a lot of culture shock, and they experienced even physical sickness. Due to the differences in climate, the differences in lifestyle, the differences in diet. It was an extremely hard thing for them. They all got sick, they all spent years getting sick constantly. There's actually a story where the prophet

muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in order to kind of figure out how the mohajir when we're dealing with the move to Medina, he sent Ayesha to a couple of people to ask, and I Aisha, she asked below, and she asked her father Abu Bakr, how they were adjusting, and all they had to say were bad things. They complained, they said, I will Bucko said that he felt as if death were as close to him as his sandal strap. And below, he cursed the Quraysh for turning them out of Mecca in the first place.

They were so sickly for so long, that once they finally made the first or Umrah

after the Battle of hybrid, this is later on for you guys who know the Sierra

the word had spread that they had gotten sickly and weak. And so for this reason, the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa salam was commanded to bear his shoulder. If you've ever seen, you know, the Pilgrims garb, the men bear their right shoulder. And they were commanded to kind of jog around the Kaaba. All of this was to kind of prove the the idolaters wrong in what they had heard that the muscles were so weak and sickly, even though it had been true for a long time.

There were other things other than weather other than diet, other than there were gender norms. And this is of particular interest to us. The women of Mecca tended to be more submissive. And when the mohajir en came to Medina, and they started intermarrying, they were shocked at the,

at the backtalk that they got from the women of the unsalted, even the way that and we won't go into details, but even the way that the the women of the unsalted were intimate with their husbands was completely different from Mecca. So I mentioned these things, because, as you know, being Muslim isn't just one way, right? Like sometimes, especially in modern contemporary movements and issues. We might think, Oh, well, to be completely submissive to everything your husband says is more correct or more the Sunnah. Right? Then for example,

let's say being more of an advocate for yourself, that's a diplomatic way to cite. And when we go to the Sierra, when we go to the seminar, we find that there's both. So we don't go to either extreme and say that, no, you have to be this kind of firebrand, you know, Disney Princess woman. And that's like, the only way to be a Muslim woman, nor do we go to the other extreme and say, Well, you have to be meek, and you have to be mild and you have to be submissive. Now, in Islam, we find both the Sahaba yet the female Sahabas were both and so it's them gives you that freedom of personality.

Anyway, this is the outer hijra, okay, leaving one place to go to another, because you're no longer able to practice your religion in one place. Now, I feel like it's prudent to address a topic that probably some of you have heard whisperings or commentary on before and I'll put it in the form of a question. Are we allowed as Muslims to live in a non Muslim land?

I want to see your thoughts either either unmute your microphone or type in the chat. Are we allowed to be here? Are we allowed to be in the United States of America? A Muslim minority are we required to make Hijra to

One of the Muslim countries in the world, Pakistan or

Saudi Arabia or anything like that? So I see yeses and yeses, I'm guessing. So my first question was, are we allowed to live here? And the answer is yes. To how many says we can do dalla here Shahida says why wouldn't we be? And that's true? That's true. It's a misconception that I hear a lot of people spread. Some people say that it's an obligation to make Hyjal from lands that are not Muslim to lands that are Muslim lands. And to that I would respond with two things. First of all, we see that the first hedgerow of the companions was not to Medina, but it was to Abyssinia.

And those Muslims who lived in the Scindia, lived under a Christian king

when the other hazera happened,

and the mohajir on left from Mecca to Medina, and they set up an Islamic state with Islamic rules and governance and things like that. The

companions that were in Abyssinia, under that Christian king did not pick up everything and go to Medina right away at all. They stayed there,

under the authority of the Christian king the Joshy, until much later, until after high about until about the seventh year after the Hijra. So they even though they had the possibility,

they had the chance and the opportunity to move from a place that was ruled by a Christian, to going to a place where the prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi. Salam was the head of state.

They chose to stay in Abyssinia for seven years.

That is significant. And that proves the permissibility and the right to live in a place that is conducive to you practicing your religion as a smart set. Right? And to Hani said, right, right now, this seems to be the best place to live for us. Because we have the ability and the freedom to practice our religion here. And we are able to organize ourselves, whether and we have rights, whether we take advantages of those things, fully or not is a separate issue. But the thing is, we are it is permissible for us to be here and to move here and to organize here. And we should avail ourselves of all the opportunities that we find here. But that's a common doubt and a common thing

that's brought up and so I felt the need to address it.

So that's the first meaning of Hijra is this kind of political residence right, where you're where you move, to moving to a place where you can practice your Islam from a place where you're not allowed or able to practice your SNAP, but the inner meaning. The inner meaning of Hijra is something that applies to every single person not just applies, it describes our fundamental reality for our entire lives. The problem of homicides, Saddam, he captured this reality very well in a hadith that's both in Sahih al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is a Muslim man Salim and a Muslim more than mainly Sunni he was already well Mohajer min Hydra, min Allahu Anhu. So he said that a Muslim is

someone who other Muslims are safe from them, both in their from their tongue and from their hand. And that's an expression in Arabic That means from what they say and what they do. So a Muslim is someone

from home, other Muslims are safe from their actions and their statements.

And the second half of the Hadith, he says, and an emigrants are Mohajer someone who practices or participates in Hijra is someone who has migrated from what Allah has prohibited. They've migrated away from what Allah has prohibited. This is an amazing Hadith the first thing that we notice

is the let's take the first half the problem we'll have a slice that I'm said a Muslim is one whom other Muslims are safe from what they say and what they do.

Now, I don't know about you, but I have harmed other Muslims before I'm sure that either with what I've done, or what I've said.

So does that mean that I'm not a Muslim anymore? Do I have to take my Shahada over?

And why not? Because this is what the Prophet SAW he said I'm said it seems like a very clear Hadith.

A look

You know why though? Why not someone comes to you they say, Look, it says right here authentic hadith, that if you hurt your Muslim brother or sister, you're not a Muslim. Catherine

what would you say to them?

We can do so far. Very good. That's one thing

I think it's that was a continuous process. Very nice. And the laws forgiving. Excellent. All true.

So those the prophets of Allah honey was salam mean that your all of your Islam has gone? Let's see we have, it's a statement of what we strive to be not conditioned to be a Muslim. It's a characteristic of Muslim, not a condition of being a Muslim. Oh, that's very well said. So

that's very well said. I like all the answers are right. But I really liked the way that estimate worded it

to not harm the province, I said, I'm used a certain wording here that was meant to shock.

Okay, and meant to surprise because he wanted to prove and drive home the fact that this is an essential characteristic of a Muslim. It doesn't mean that if you go against it, or you violate it, or if you slip up or make a mistake, that you're no longer I must. The province relies on a means a complete Muslim, someone who has submitted completely. This is such an essential characteristic of a Muslim that he doesn't hurt other people with their tongue with the thing that they say with the things that they do that he likened it to someone who is not a Muslim at all. And if you know other Hadith of the prophets, like Southern we find this everywhere.

You are not a true believer until you love for your Muslim brother or sister what you love for yourself. You're not a true you're not a believer, the literal text of the hadith is you're not a believer, until you love me meaning the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, more than himself more than yourself.

In all of these cases, the Prophet Muhammad slice,

it's not meant to be interpreted at face value in a literal way. It's meant to state the importance and the centrality of a particular behavior, or a particular disposition to Islam.

But it's still scary. It's still scary, and every single one of us should ask ourselves,

Am I a complete Muslim? According to the definition of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam? Are there people that I'm hurting brothers and sisters in the faith that I'm hurting through my actions, or through what I say is something that every one of us myself for most among you should spend some time to think about?

So the second half of the Hadith and we'll finish this part and we'll move on to questions because he got some juicy questions this week.

And emigrants are Mohajer is one who has migrated from what Allah has prohibited.

The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam, he's explaining to us that every single one of us is on a journey,

that this life, its fundamental reality is that we are travelers on a journey.

And that journey is to the afterlife.

And when we look around us, our coworkers, our classmates, people, our neighbors, people we see at the store, not everyone realizes that they're on this journey.

In fact, there's certain people that seem to be sitting on the road, acting as if the whole point is just to sit there and look at the scenery. It's like, staying at a rest stop for hours and hours and hours.

But the reality is that this is just a path we're just passing through, because it's not going to last forever.

And so because we're all on this journey,

we're on this journey towards Allah and towards

comportements and towards kind of

shaping ourselves to be in harmony with what Allah wants us to be.

We shouldn't be comparing ourselves to other people on the journey and where they are.

All that it makes sense to compare ourselves to is our previous selves, right? There might be somebody on the journey, who's got a very fast means of transportation

to write, maybe they've got a Ferrari, or some sort of, you know, fancy car. And then there's other people who, you know, maybe they have a horse, or they have a donkey, a camel. And then there's other people who are walking along, and other people that are sliding along on the ground.

It doesn't make sense for these people in different situations to compare themselves to one another, oh, look at that person, they're further along on their journey than I am. And then they feel bad about themselves. And maybe they get discouraged. And maybe they know, we all are kind of on this trip, yes, together. But also kind of it's a very personal, individual journey.

And we're not so much going to be asked about how far we got

by Allah, as we are going to be asked about which direction are we moving? And did how, how well did we try.

This is the process of internal Hijra.

And it shows us that you can't do everything at once. If you look at all of the commands in Islam, all the prohibitions, if you were to count them, they'd probably be in the hundreds.

And this hadith is telling us that it's a process. And Mohajer, the person who is a migrant is somebody who walks step by step,

they might might not be the absolute best person right now. But

two months from now, they're going to be better than who they were two months earlier. And two years from now, they're going to be better than the person they were two years before. That should be the mentality that all of us adopt, compare ourselves to ourselves, our previous selves, to see which way that we're going, and to mark our progress along the way.

So the last thought, before we go to the questions is that the two meanings of hijra,

the outer and the inner, the external and the internal, they kind of converge at the point of our priorities. Right?

People in our society, you know, the United States, it's a very, I don't think it's a controversial thing to say that it's a very materialistic society, right? Like the first thing you get asked, like, what's your name? And then what do you do? Like, what's your job? How do you make money basically, and you're a lot of respects, in mainstream American society, according to basically your job, and your, your, your income.

And so, okay.

And so people don't consider it a strange thing, to move or make major life decisions, due to economic concerns, to relocate because of a job of promotion, even a better school, college, all these sorts of things. They're rites of passage, they're expected of us, in our society.

What we don't really have, we don't have an expectation from the society that we live in that we would make similar sacrifices and similar moves for spiritual reasons. And we're not saying that people need to go move to a place that's better. No, I want all of you in Utica, but I'm talking about internally,

to move to migrate towards more compliance with what Allah wants from us to migrate towards a more intimate devotion and relationship with Allah subhana, WA, tada. These are all extremely much more important than the moves that we make for jobs and work and dunya. And these sorts of things. Right. And we don't necessarily have the same pomp and fanfare to accompany them, but they deserve to be watched and monitored more than the others. Okay, we have eight minutes on change. So I have to get to some of the questions that you guys responded to. Inshallah, we'll get through to questions today. And then there's two remaining. If you have any questions, please send them because after

next week, we will have run out of the questions that's in my backlog of questions. So today, we're dealing with dividing assets evenly between children during your lifetime. Okay. Islamic inheritance law. Good. So there's a temptation to see what's going on as unequal. Okay.

And our society that we live in today, is very suspicious of Islamic inheritance law because if there is a son

and a daughter, then, and they're together on the same level, then the son will get twice the share of the daughter at least that's the classical view. So we need to go into inheritance law and ask ourselves Are these laws that were meant to be changed according to society according to culture according to circumstance, or were they meant to be laws kind of that are eternal, and unchangeable.

apportioning of inheritance is something that has great importance to Allah subhanaw taala we can tell us because it's one of the few things that Allah details. So specifically in the Koran, there are other things that are as important such as a cat, that Allah never specifies numerically in the Quran. No, nowhere in the Quran does Allah say that you need to give a 40th of your cash and this amount from your camels and this amount from your sheep. All of that comes from the Sunnah. Right? So it's interesting that okay, you have a cat and inheritance law. And Allah subhanaw taala took the time and effort to spell and nothing's an effort for him, really, but it's an expression to spell

out specifically who gets what.

Okay, that's the first thing we look at. The second thing that we look at is, what's the language that's used in the text? Does the language that's used in the text indicate that this is something that is multiple Musleh that is occasioned or caused by sort of like whatever's beneficial? And so it might change? Or does the language indicate that this is something that is fixed, and for the sake of time?

If you go to the language of the inheritance law, you can find it on page 78 in your court, and that's where it starts. So it's on the side of the fourth chapter, the court M, verse 11. A lot specifically lines out all of these inheritance ratios, these fractions. And then he says after the first part, he says, about upcoming webinars can lead to a Johann parabola canephora He says that you are your parents and your children. You don't know which of them is most beneficial or most deserving of your inheritance. And then Allah concludes the verse by saying in Allahu Khanna Honeyman Hakima, is that Allah certainly is ever wise and ever knowing. Okay, then Allah continues

with more inheritance rules. And then at the end of it, he says, Tilka doodle Allah, these are the bounds, the boundaries of Allah. And then he makes a promise. He says, Well, many other Allah wa Sula, who you live with Jannette right? So he says, Whoever adheres and obeys these rules, Allah is going to enter them into Paradise, and whoever violates them, well, many UFC Lucha sola were out there who do that? Who you the hero who now holiday party than FIFA, whoever violates these boundaries, Allah will put them in the fire. So if we compare this language to other things in the Koran, like say, for example, severance or let's say alimony, okay, for marriage law, or dowry,

right, or lots of other things that have to do with money, lots of other things that have to do with people's rights, we find that a lot uses more flexible language, he says a bit of mouth roof, right? What's what's understood or what's acceptable among you, he leaves some gray area for cultural difference. But when we go to the what the Koran says about inheritance law, we find that the language is different entirely. And the language is very, very absolute, and doesn't really give us any wiggle room for

being able to textually support an argument that says that the inheritance laws are kind of able to be amended and changed, depending on gender norms, depending on societal dynamics. If that's the case, then we need to ask ourselves a question. Okay. Why did Allah make it the way he made it? Why is it that there's a if you have a daughter and a daughter inherits by herself, she gets half and if there's a daughter and a son than they get the remainder of what's left and the son gets twice of what the daughter gets.

Allah says himself that he knows best who to give it to. And that he is Hakeem and Alima he is wise and knowing in what he gets, it occurs to me, and this is my

interpretation or whatever you want to call it. That

Allah has built in inter family dependents within inheritance laws. There's a reason why people's inheritance changes, depending on who's around and who's not. As we just illustrated, each person isn't given their portion in a vacuum. Their portion is dependent upon who else survives and is living.

And when it comes to family, Allah says in the same surah in salts in the SAT a couple pages later he says Attorney General Pomona and any savvy my father Allahu Allah Hamada, Battle of the mountaintop who and where to him, he says that men have a special responsibility over women, due to what they spend on them,

due to what they spend on.

So this isn't just for husbands. This is also for brothers, this is also for uncle's, this is also for male male relatives. If we tie this to inheritance law, then we get a sense that a law has certain expectations for how our families should operate.

Where we run into problems, is when our families no longer look the way that Allah wants them to look. And what I mean by that is that Allah subhanaw taala, He wants your sons to be a place of refuge, a place of support, a place of safety, and provision for your daughters, especially if something happens like they're widowed, or they're divorced, after you're gone. And that

a lot actually wants this kind of dependency, or potential dependency to be there, because that's what creates a strong family in the first place. We know the saying it takes a village to raise a child and child psychology and education literature is coming around to this realization that you tend to be more successful with raising a child if there's multiple adults involved. To the contrary, look at the statistics for children who are raised in single parent households.

They're more likely to engage in risk behaviors, they're more likely to end up in jail, and all these sorts of things. So when we look at inheritance law, if we gave every single individual equal portions, it would, treating them like atomized, separate individuals.