Riyadh al-Saliheen and Women’s Q&A #04

Okay, it is six o'clock so we're going to show up this microphone that are him hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Ashraful MBIA, almost saline lobby in our put what's in a Muhammad Ali of follow Salam wa as Curtis name Allah Marlena Nyan founder, one fountain and Bhima Island and I was in no money at all. But I mean,

so last class, we reached about halfway through this hadith we have in the amount open yet that

certainly

action is good deeds are only going to be judged according to their attention intentions.

Well in the medical Limra in that hour,

and people are only going to receive compensation in the afterlife for what they intended.

We talked about a whole lot of issues and we said them and Kenneth who's Rendezvous in the law, he was solely here. And we began to talk about hijra, the outer meaning of hijra, your residence, your allegiance, and your the inner meaning of hijra, which is something that every single one of us

engages with, which is a lifelong process of wayfaring, towards Allah subhanaw taala, a lifelong process of approaching,

or increasing our obedience, and deepening our devotion to our Sustainer.

And we kind of stopped there and talked about a lot about our priorities, right, and how the direction that we're moving in, for better or for worse is reflected by the decisions that we make in our lives. When two sets of imperatives or interests conflict with each other, which one tends to wind up when out? And this is these kinds of moments are they expose our priorities? And so we always need to take account of ourselves to see what are our true priorities? And what do we truly value so that we can attempt to continue to prioritize more and more.

What Allah wants from us, which first of all is paradise Allah wants us to be in paradise, and second of all, the means to get there, which is a life of devotion, and compliance and obedience to Him.

So that was our last class. Now we're going to talk about Inshallah, inshallah we're going to finish the Hadith today. I know it's been a while. So the prophesy centum says, the men cannot his daughter who Ilahi what a solar heat for his daughter who will Allahu wa Solly that translates literally as, who ever migrates are migrated for Allah and His Messenger, than his migration is for Allah and His messenger.

A question I will pose to you all is that why does it seem like the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is just repeating himself? He says, Whoever migrates for Allah and His Messenger, then he migrates for Allah and His Messenger is this taken at face value? Is this something that is redundant? Or what is the real meaning of what the Prophet Mohammed Salah holiday was said I'm just trying to get out here.

He just told us that his head that his migration is for Allah and His Messenger, why does he have to tell us a second time what's the point?

You can either unmute yourself to speak on the mic or you can type in the chat box

emphasis a smart Yes, that's part of it. And this is their

focus on our mission and not means to an end. Mashallah, that's nice. I liked that. I didn't think about that. But I like that I think that's true.

Mashallah, part of the emphasis or the point will become clearer once we study the next sentence. But part of what we can tell from now is that there's a hidden word or phrase in what the Prophet Muhammad SAW is on the same is saying that whoever migrates for Allah and His messenger then he

Truly migrated for Allah and His messenger and therefore he will be rewarded according to his intention as migrating for Allah His messenger. Right?

It will become more clear when we get on the second half, then he says, One min Kenneth hige, lots of who lead dunya, you save Aha, and whoever migrated for the dunya, which linguistically comes from Diana, and Danya is using the 4am to talk about something that is both close and also something that is lowly, right? So everyone, every time when we say a dunya, it's automatically saying like, this lowly existence, this transient plane we talked about in the other class, on the Sunday night class about how the author of the book that we're studying, is saying that our reality is one where we're kind of on a boat, passing through the stream of time, only, we're going to get off any second, we

don't know exactly which second, we're going to get off of this boat. It's just the passage. It's a temporary station.

Right. And so because it's dunya, it's just this passing phase, it's not something to really put your hammer or to put your your focus are all of your emotional investment, or all of your spiritual investments, or all of your time or your worldly talent, to put it into this thing, because it's dunya. It's low. It's close, but it's also passing. So he says, Well, men can attach lots of who the dunya leave see behind to catch some of the dunya or to obtain something from the dunya

and then he says, I will not attend Yong ki haha, or a woman to marry.

So here's rateable Ilana Hajra Elaine, he said, If that's your situation, then you are hijra, your migration is to

whatever it was that you migrated for. So the whole context of this part of the whole context of the entire hadith is talking about intentions, and the relationship between intentions and Allah's reward. Okay. And even now, once the Prophet saw is that I'm kind of set us up for that. He's not going to insult your intelligence by keep on repeating intentions, intentions, intentions, everything he's talking about here has to do with intentions. Right?

So if you intended this, then you're going to be rewarded for this. And if you intended that, then you're going to be rewarded in a different way with something from this transient plane, this passing abode this temporary life.

Why does the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam This is a very important question. Why does he mentioned women specifically here? And like who wants to capture or obtain a piece of the dunya? Or to marry a woman?

Is it because

this this religion is just part of the patriarchy?

And you all are evil temptresses? What's what's the reason?

Why does the prophesy Saddam mentioned women specifically?

Especially seeing that women are part of the category he just he just mentioned, right? This is called otford Cos Allah Alon. So he mentioned the category of dunya, you'll see Baja and then he mentioned this something specific which is already part of that category. Oh, I'm not it's Indian Keiko her. A woman is to marry as part of the dunya. But he mentioned the category. And then he mentioned in addition to that, this particular example, so this is completely intentional. Why.

Okay.

Alia says because women have equal rights as men.

That's true that women have equal rights as men, but I don't see how the prophets Allah is sort of mentioning this would indicate that maybe you can explain further to how he says the

next few months. Because the women are half of the population. That's true. Women are half of the population. That's true, but again, it's true, but I don't I don't see. What's the relevance that women are our half of the population

refers to seeking worldly temptations. So you agree, Samira, so women are just temptations?

Careful

There's at least two reasons the prophesies that I mentioned women. I want to hear more responses though before I get into it. One of them's an easy and easy answer. And the other one's a little bit more complicated. Women are resilient and strong. Of course they are Masha Allah, especially the sahaba. Yet the companions of the Prophet sly Saddam, but that doesn't answer for me. Why did the prophesy said I mentioned it here. He's talking about Hijra. He's talking about why you would do it. He gives one example of the good hijra, which is for Allah and His messenger. And then he gives the less good Hijra. It's not bad. It's the less good hijra, that is for the dunya. Or to marry a woman.

Marriage is good.

Women are good. Common Reasons to migrate is not very good. It's a common reason to migrate. Why is it a common reason to migrate?

Is there something in men a smell that makes women a common reason to migrate?

Because men asked for women, yes or no? The honey? That's correct. Because they do set a family. I smell good. Women don't ask for men. Not you know, we're talking about a Avila via Yes, you're right. The majority case usually, usually the man is the one who's kind of in pursuit. Or you could say, right, lineage. Why is the man as to honey said,

typically in pursuit?

Because for the sake of time, because Allah created men and women differently. Right. Well, they said that clinical onset to continue the name. Yeah, that's part of it. That's part of it. OMYA Yes, very good. Yeah. lineage is Matt. Very good.

Because Allah subhanaw taala created

men and women with a lot of overlap. Yes, Hamdulillah. But different points of emphasis. So you'll find that men are women. And there are always exceptions. We're not saying that, you know, every single woman is the same or every single man is the same. But there are certain propensities,

tendencies, patterns, we could say, that apply typically to men and others that typically to women. And one of the patterns of behavior that applies typically to men, is that men will, men are

willing to

sacrifice a lot of things. And in the pursuit of women, okay, let's put it like that.

They are in they are often both culturally and through kind of hormone levels and other things. They're often in the role of pursuer.

We see that all over allows creation. Right?

So the you guys jump to the subtle answer, the harder to tease out answer.

The prophesies that a mentions a woman

because, as was said, it's a common reason for men to migrate, or the common reason that men will go to kind of men will go to extremes in pursuit of a woman. Let's put it like that.

There's a simpler answer. And that's simply that this is the story of the Hadith. Okay, so this hadith has a historical moment that it happened in. And there was this exact situation where there was a woman who accepted Islam, and came to Medina. And then there was a man from Mecca, who was in love with her. And basically, she told him, Listen, I'm not going to marry you, unless you become a Muslim. And you come to you come to Medina. And so that actually happened. And so this hadith is addressing this sort of thing about how there's kind of this ambiguity of intention. Did this man from Mecca accept Islam out of his own pure hearts, because of his own love for Allah, his own kind

of internal epiphany? Or was he did he migrate to get the woman? Right? So that's the easy answer. The second answer is that is men's attraction to women. And the intensity of that attraction and how it will often

inspire or drive men to do to do a

feats, right feats of strength, feats of,

of logistics, whatever it takes.

And this is backed up by the Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sallam, he said that there, he said, addressing the men, that there is no bigger fitna that has been left for men than women.

Now, this is not a blame statement. Okay. We don't look at the statement to be. And so therefore all burden is on the woman to kind of remove this fitna, or women are science kind of existentially a fit enough for men. No, not so much in such stark terms. When we look at gender relations, right, or appropriate gender relations between men and women and men and women in Islam, we find that like with most things, Islam is somewhere in the middle, between two extremes. So you have one extreme, that says that basically, it's basically impunity. That all burden is on women

to behave in a certain way to dress in a certain way. So as not to

invite the advances of men.

That's one extreme.

Boys will be boys, right? That's, that's kind of that culture, or that attitude summed up in a statement. And you have this other extreme,

which expects that women should be able to dress however they want,

and act however they want,

around men at all times of day and night in any sort of part of any city.

And

they should never have to have any responsibility

for those behaviors, or those any views,

or the dress.

And so Islam is a very practical religion. And it puts things right in the middle. It says that there is responsibility on both sides. Okay, men are responsible for their actions. And there is no, there is no thing that removes that responsibility from men. It doesn't matter how someone has dressed, okay?

Or the surrounding situation, there are certain things that it doesn't matter, the man is responsible for his actions.

At the same time,

women also have a certain responsibility when it comes to not attracting undue attention.

So we have a distribution of responsibility across both genders, and not one gender or sex straddled with all of the responsibility.

There was a study that I had read and this is really interesting, maybe for you, maybe this is okay, there's two points. And then we have to, we have to move on to the questions because time is so short.

I read a study recently by one of the major universities they were doing a study on CO Ed friends, like pairs of friends in college, okay. And so there's every single couple is a quote unquote pair is a man and a woman right setting, you know, 1819 2021 years old, 22 years old. So they bring them in, they separate them.

fitna is a very strong word. Mashallah. Very good.

We'll talk about that. That's a very good point.

So they separate them they have they separate the boy and the girl.

And they asked them about their feelings to the other. What do you think about so and so and they asked them about their romantic feelings about the other. And they asked them about what's the possibility if the other one was interested romantically in you

that you would be interested in the other. And what they consistently found was that men were more delusional, if you will.

Sorry, excuse me one second.

That men were much more likely to assume that the other side had romantic interest in them.

And women were much less likely to assume that the man had any romantic interest in them.

So there was kind of this dual reality going on

where

Men were very susceptible to kind of be taken away by delusion. Any little sign of what they perceived was maybe attraction or flirtation they were ready to, to assume that there was something there that there was this kind of like romantic interest.

Whereas the women were much more level headed. They kind of saw reality for what it was. They understood that they didn't have any feelings in that friendship, and they never would have assumed that the other party had feelings for them.

So

there could be multiple lessons about this one particular word. One of the sisters private messaged me and she said that fitna is a very strong word. And that's true. fitna is a very strong word and the way that people use it today, but fitna, in the language of the Sharia has more than one meaning. So when the prophesy Salam said that he left as a fitna, Allah says in the Quran that your spouse's general, not just women spouses, but also male spouses and children are a fitna

and fitna, all that it means in the context of the Shetty is that it exposes your priorities because of fitna is nothing more than a test. A fitna isn't the location of blame. We don't that's how people use it these days when they say so and so is a fitna. It's like ooh, it's like a blame. It's bad. A fitna is merely a test. And so Allah says in the Quran,

that your spouses and your children are a fitna and we know that those things are good.

How are they a fitna? They're a fitna in, they expose our priorities, which is exactly what the Prophet Mohammed Salman was talking about. He's talking about what are your intentions? Are you making Hijra? Are you serving a lot for the sake of Allah? Or are your intentions kind of somewhere else? Are you really prioritizing your role in the dunya or some particular advantage or interest that you're trying to achieve?

So the problem I have is, is that um, as he says, he says, Whoever migrated for this world, or to achieve something from this world or for a woman to marry

for his daughter who Ilana Khanna has a Ilana Hazara ELA, he says that his migration is meaning truly, and will be rewarded. For he says, whatever it was that he migrated for.

This is called ceva attack here. He doesn't even mention a second time, those things. In order to differentiate the two follow the difference between how

rewardable and commendable it is to migrate for the sake of Allah. and His Messenger is that he repeats it twice.

Whoever migrated for Allah and His Messenger, He truly migrated for a law in His messenger. And whoever migrated for the dunya or something else, anything in this dunya. Then he migrated for whatever it was that he migrated for.

There are many general lessons from this hadith that we can take. And we'll try to mention them quickly so that next class, we can move on to the second.

One of them is that

focusing on our intentions is one of the most important jobs that we can do as a Muslim.

Having our intentions taken away and corrupted from us, is one of the most

perilous, dangerous things that can happen to us.

allow certain sorts of milk. Leah biloba come at you from acid or am Allah, Allah created life and death? Yes, great question. Excellent. We'll get to that. In sha Allah.

He created life and death, in order to test which of you axon is best of intentions, or best an actions we should say X? No, I'm Allah, and who is best and actions as determined by their intention. Allah didn't say XR or Angela. They didn't say who does the most. He didn't say who does the most prayers that most fasting the most charity? No, he said acident Who does it the best? And the reason why some actions are better than others is due to the purity of intention. As Matt brings up a great question. Can you have dual intentions? Of course, of course you can. And there's a big scholarly debate when it comes to like the prayer for example. Let's say you have multiple

intentions when you're going into

Something, is that a permissible sort of thing. There's even a lot of discussion about differentiating between doing things for the sake of Allah and doing things to achieve the benefits of paradise does that kind of is that kind of a little bit more selfish than doing things for just the sake of Allah. But, and the reality is that it's all a spectrum. Right? And it's, it's not a black and white issue. And so which makes sense, because then our task, then, if it is a spectrum, is to just keep on trying to move ourselves

further on the spectrum towards doing things purely for the sake of Allah subhanaw taala. And there's lots of ways in which that can happen. We can talk more about some of those ideas next time, which would be a really nice discussion.

However, I am obligated to return to your questions, because last class, I was cut off in the middle of answering a question, and that's my fault for not managing the time correctly. Actually, the first few classes we had, if you notice, they were 15 minutes long, because zoom was giving me some, like, extra time is kind of a promotion. And then they stopped. So I had gotten used to the nice free promotion. And then once they stopped, I kind of had to adjust. So we were talking about inheritance law. And can I gift to my children, all equally all of my assets before I pass away, and I had kind of gone on a long thing to kind of situate the wisdom of a laws, rulings on inheritance

law, and the language of the Quran that he uses to indicate that these things aren't subject to amendment throughout time. Okay. As opposed to other things, which many things in Islamic law are subject to amendment depending on time and place, the dowry is one, right? What's acceptable to for expected gender roles within the household? What should the wife be doing for the husband, what should the husband be doing for the wife, all these sorts of things are kind of left open to be determined by culture and class and sort of as things change. But when it comes to the inheritance laws, Allah is very strict. He says that this, he specifically says that you don't know whose best

to give it to your inheritance. And Allah is Ever wise and knowledgeable. And then after the second batch of inheritance law rules, he says, These are the limits of Allah, and whoever transgresses the limits of Allah, then he has, you know, has basically, a, he's looking forward or he or she is looking forward to a punishment. So all of that was to try to say that if

giving out gifts, or distributing your assets, to your children, before you die, while your living

is an attempt to circumvent Allah's laws of inheritance, then that's a very dangerous thing.

And I would not recommend,

if you're giving them as gifts, you're giving out your assets as gifts.

And there's going to be some time where you're going to accumulate more assets and usufruct. And then it's going to be distributed according to Islamic inheritance law. That's something different. But if you're coming from a place of, I'm concerned about the fact that my daughter's aren't going to get as much as my sons of my assets. And so I'm going to distribute them before I die, then this is problematic. And what I had started to say at the very end of the last class was that one of our problems is that when it comes to the Islamic family is that we're selective in what we

implement. So we might implement the numbers of inheritance law, but we're not raising our sons to feel dutiful to their sisters, which is a calamity, a calamity. Because within the city, the whole reason why the some male relatives, not all of them get more inheritance than some female relatives, not all of them is because it's legally an obligation upon the males to take care of the females, especially if the divorce happens if someone gets widowed, if you know, adversity or trials happen. Right. So if we're doling out the money, according to how a law said to dole out the money, but at the same time, we're not giving our sons the sense of duty and responsibility to the female members.

Have a household so that they're not in a position that they would be jumping at the opportunity to take care of them. Should something happen, then this is a problem. And this is where we get into now we start to question the inheritance laws because of that other sort of thing. Can one write a will prior according to Islamic law? Yes. When we got it, yes, very good. So when it comes to getting your assets distributed, according to Islamic inheritance law, the United States Government isn't going to do it for you, you have to write it into a living will. And basically have everything set up in place so that the executor of your will, can distribute things according to Islamic law.

The easiest way to do this is to use an app or an online service that Joe Bradford provides Joe Bradford has a master's degree from the University of Medina. And Islamic law. He's an expert in Islamic finance. He has an app called My was sia for a website my was sia.com. It's like TurboTax. You sign up, it asks you questions. It gives you an Islamic will, that is actionable and legal. In all, I believe all states in the United States, and it divvies it up according to Islamic inheritance law.

So that's what I had wanted to get to that question. The following question was hanging up pictures in your home? I will try my best to finish this question. In the seven minutes that we have left. When it comes to pictures, we know that the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he forbidden something called tusks with, okay, stick with me. He said it in Arabic, what's Haram is tough, sweet.

And there's a lot of punishment in the afterlife for people who are engaging in this activity. Then the scholars have a discussion what all is, is included in this test suite, and what is not. So there's various degrees, depending on what's the specific thing we're talking about. Everything can be broken down into two main categories. We're talking about making representations of things that have souls, such as animals and human beings are making representations of things that do not have souls, as we understand it, such as trees and plants and mountains and rivers and things like that. So when it comes to the second category, trees and mountains and rivers and scenery, landscapes, you

can do anything. It's permissible. You can do sculpture, you can do paintings, you can do photography, you can do sketch, sketching with anything is permissible.

We're getting there. Yes, that's what we're going to answer, inshallah. Well, we gotta go step by step. Okay. So that's, that is the first thing. Okay, now we're moving to the firt. Back to the first category, which is things that have a soul, human beings and animals, we're going to go category by category, because some categories there's EJ, Matt, there's consensus of the scholars and in other categories, there's differences of opinion. So if we go to representations of humans and animals, there is consensus that three D sculpture is not permissible to make three D sculptures because the the basis of the word sold off in Arabic, it means something that has Vil, something

that has a third dimension that casts a shadow. Okay. So

by consensus things that have that are animals or human beings, you are not supposed to represent them with a three D representation, such as sculpture, except, except kids toys. And that's because I had kids toys that were dolls that were 3d representations of, of humans and other things. She had a horse with wings as well. This is all well known in the sun. Okay?

If there is such a sculpture than it should be modified to look like something else. This is actually something that prophet will have this little lie some commanded someone to do whose job was to make statues of people, he commanded him to change it into a statue of a tree, which is why we know that it's permissible to have statues of trees and mountains and things like that. Okay. Now, let's go from three dimensions to two dimensions, which includes drawing, painting, charcoal, all these other sorts of things. Anything that's human craft, even embroidery. Okay, this is a subject of a difference of opinion. Okay.

Some of the scholars said, we gather all of the Hadith that have different narrations about what the Prophet SAW, he said, I'm said about different two dimensional representations. They said that when it comes to a place of honor,

such as a wall or their time a curtain,

then it's not permissible to have A to D represent

quotation of a human or an animal, we're not talking about photography yet. We haven't gotten there. Okay? We're talking about human craft, painting, drawing embroidery. And that's because the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam, he came in once, and he saw that Aisha had a curtain and on the curtain worth embroidery of animals, and he commanded her to take it off, and to make it into pillows. Okay, so and then in another Hadith, the Prophet Mohammed says that I'm said that, except what's on your clothes. Okay, so many scholars, not all of them, some of them think that it's all haram. But many scholars said that this proves that it has to do whether the 2d representation of a

human or an animal is in a place of honor or not. And they said, if it's in a place of honor, then it should not be there. And if it's not on a place of honor, such as a floor mat, such as a carpet, such as something you walk on, such as something you wear, like clothes, all these sorts of things. In that case, it's permissible. Okay, now we're moving on to photography. Okay, does photography which we call to sweet in our colloquial, modern day Arabic? Does it take the same rulings as two dimensional human crafts, such as embroidery and painting and drawing?

The scholars fall into two camps? Some say yes, some say no. My personal leaning is no, because photography is not the act of human arts or craft, even though photography is an art, but it's more like a mirror, or the reflection in a pool of water, which nobody ever had said, there's any problem with. Right? So when it comes to photography, there's some scholars that say that No, it's not permissible. There's many scholars that say that yes, it is permissible, it does not take the linguistic, it does not take the *ty meaning of TestSuite, even though it has a linguistic similarity. And so in that case, according to that opinion,

it's not a problem. If you put pictures, even in a place photographs we're talking about in a place of honor, as long as you have a good intention for memory and things like that, and not the intention to

where it indicates some sort of priority over a lot and His Messenger, if you have core ad on the wall, and you have a picture on the wall, the Koran should be higher, for example, that would be something

we have less than a minute left, but that's the absolute minimum I wanted to get through when it came to representations and pictures and images. Are there any other quick questions? Put it in the chat box right now or say over the mic? Any other follow up questions on these issues or other issues that got you thinking inheritance law, pictures, representations, send them in the whip in the WhatsApp women's group? Or send it to me privately, and I will get to it Inshallah, when we get to it, any final questions

if the video cuts out, that means that our time has been up and they pulled the plug on me.

Thank you, everyone. I appreciate this is my favorite class of the week.

I appreciate all