Tom Facchine – Riyadh al-Saliheen and Women’s Q&A #29
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The speakers discuss the importance of orientation towards one's life and the need for practice and acceptance in achieving peace and liability. They stress the transactional nature of practices and the importance of avoiding confusion and distrust in life. The speakers also touch on issues related to divorce, including problems with couples and women during the waiting period and issues with marriage during that time. They emphasize the importance of not letting hardship hold on and the need for a clear end point.
AI: Summary ©
Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Ashraful MBA Momo Selena vino of the Latina Muhammad Ali he of those Salah was for to sleep, Allah Martin in Novi million Ferrando and fatten at the Mount ILM Tana was dinero many of the anime salon where they come up to like it would occur to everyone Everybody welcome Thursday nights. Ladies class we have a solid him and we're into of the pullout
the understanding the rules pertaining to divorce and everything else that's included in that.
And we have a new Hadith for tonight were the chapter of suburb of patience and steadfastness.
So our hadith is number
27
My translation is a little bit different from yours.
That will Yeah, so how you even see now and how the Allahu Anhu reported that the messenger of allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said,
how wonderful
or strange is the case of a believer, there is good for him and everything. And this applies only to a believer.
If prosperity happens to him, good times. He expresses gratitude to Allah azza wa jal, and that is good for him.
If adversity, or calamity or hardship befalls him, he endures it patiently. And that is good for him.
This is a famous Hadith of the Prophet saw it was agreed upon, or assuming it's in Sahih Muslim.
So we can be convinced and
at peace as to its authenticity.
And this hadith establishes the fundamental attitude, and perspective and worldview of a person of faith.
That
everything is good, there's almost a contradictory message or what appears to be a contradictory message at first.
Because the beginning of the Hadith says that
everything is good. All of it is good.
And then the Hadith continues on to say if good happens, then etc, etc. If bad happens, then it's good.
So
at first glance, not everything is good, right? And for saying that, if good happens, that's good, and it's bad happens then it's good. There's an acknowledgement here, that bad stuff happens.
So this isn't like a
you know, this isn't like a cult, right? Where we're kind of just like policing each other. And they're like, it's all good. Right? Right. Right. No, bad things happen. in a relative sense, right? Just say that's the lesson that it is bad in a relative sense.
We're going to experience hardship.
We're going to experience sadness, we're going to experience loss, we're going to experience failure. We're going to experience rejection, we're going to experience humiliation.
Even danger,
deprivation, some of us Yes.
The hadith isn't telling us that
these things don't happen.
No, these things are a fixture, a permanent part of human life.
However,
what the hadith is telling us is that it does not doom us.
It doesn't have to conquer us. It doesn't have to break us. It doesn't have to
become our entire world. And our entire live existence doesn't have to be the story of a victim.
There's a way that you can turn it, there's a way that you can flip it. If we can't control what's coming at us, we can at least control our orientation towards it.
And if we orient if we orient ourselves towards it, What's the guarantee? The guarantee isn't that you're going to live a carefree life. It's not that you're never going to have any trauma or triggers. It's not that you're going to be the most peaceable, non stressed person ever. These are not what the hadith is.
promising. Islam doesn't promise that to anybody.
But what it does promise
is that all of what you go through, and what happens to you will ultimately be good for you.
It will ultimately benefits you.
Even if there's some negative side effects or consequences along the way, due to your hardship.
Even if it makes you a disorganized mess, even if it makes you feel on edge
what's the ultimate good here?
The ultimate good is two possible things.
One, the obvious is the afterlife.
A certain orientation towards the hardships that happens to you
will be ultimately good for you in your hereafter when it really counts.
But it's also possible
that your orientation towards whatever is happening to you
will give you lessons
and a capacity for tolerance or a capacity for hardship in this world. It will give you lessons that will give you skills that will give you experience.
But this is not an automatic formula. This doesn't happen to everyone who experiences hardship.
It's set up for such a person, that's the situation but it has to be unlocked and unleashed. What unlocks it or unleashes it is our orientation towards it.
Which is, in the end of the day, the only thing that we can control
one of the subtler
takeaways from this hadith
the Prophet SAW is Southern he takes his time or he kind of takes a slight divergence to emphasize he says that
all of it is good for him. Okay. Kind of makes sense. And that only happens to the believer
only happens to the believer.
One does that mean? Does that mean that this type of
goodness that the prophesies that I was talking about is exclusive to people of faith.
That's what it seems to me.
It seems to mean that it's not an automatic thing, just like we said.
Now, what's the difference? What's the difference between
a person of faith
who actually has this orientation of the prophecies that I miss,
guiding us towards and hoping that we adopt towards our hardship?
What's the difference between that person and a person who is not a person of faith? And trying to be patient or trying to accept what's the difference? Because I'm a skeptical guy.
And this is all you know, please someone answered in the in the chat or unlike unmute yourself. I'm a skeptical person. Okay. So I'll just say, Well, wait a second. We have so much self help stuff these days. It's all about acceptance. It's all about release. You know, I do yoga, I practice mindfulness. Right. What are you trying to say? That this goodness is only for a person of faith or a believer?
Can't I get that goodness?
What's the difference between a person of faith and a person who's not a person of faith, but
they practice all these sorts of things?
I wait for this one. This is a good this is a juicy question.
Always.
All right, say more Dana. Speaking from experience peace.
Oh.
Oh, I like that. I like what Samira said, as well.
So I want to hear what Dana has to say more about so she has experienced peace. Wait, are you trying to tell me Dana, that
It's not,
I can't achieve peace by just doing yoga and meditation. Because that's what I was kind of hoping for.
What is it about faith that promises a higher level of peace than the other kind of popular
forms of, quote unquote, enlightenment? And while I wait for your response to that, the other responses believer is doing it for the sake of Allah, Oh, intention, masha Allah, and not worry.
I can't type that best. Yeah.
I'm old.
So
the thing about doing yoga and mindfulness is that that's the, that's what you're striving for is, like, that's the end of it. Because I did yoga and mindfulness before I converted,
but it was always to, it was always very selfish. And I want to feel better. My life is chaotic, I want it to feel better. Whereas Islam allowed me to say, life is chaotic. And this is the will of Allah.
So I'm going to be patient,
through it, and grateful, you know, look for the the ease and the hardship.
And then also, to not focus, I don't just focus on myself, I'm also thinking about
how I can serve others too. So that makes me even more grateful. It's just,
it's a very different, it's a selfless feeling compared to a non fi. Well, who actually had a high GPA. That's beautiful. And that's also my experience as well.
What you said was so rich, I think we'll just make the list the rest of the lesson based off of that. One thing that she said, one thing that she said,
and if I'm like sum it up in the word transactional.
Right, this is something that's crept up in some other lessons that also and so clip shows
that the practice of yoga and mindfulness
can be and usually is materialist and transactional, right? We're doing it to get something. Right. We want that thing.
And so what happens is, it's a very kind of consumerist orientation. It's like if I pay the yogi, and I do all the correct exercises and techniques, then I will expect that it will formulaic ly lead to this feeling of peace and tranquility. And if it doesn't happen, I'm gonna go ask for my money back. Or maybe I'll write a bad review on Google. Right? And I'll go to the next yoga studio, or the next
mindfulness sensor, and so on and so forth. Right. So we're relating to it as consumers are relating to it
in a transactional sense. So that gets back to some arrows point about intention.
It's also leans upon materialism. Right? We've completely put trust, and this is where it's actually against how he this sort of mentality because we put complete faith, if that's our men heads, that's our kind of Mo. We believe that true peace comes from yoga and mindfulness, then we have put our faith in yoga and mindfulness. We believe that it is kind of the cause. And it's a mechanistic, materialistic cause.
And we forgotten the cause, or of all causes a loss of Hana with the ANA.
Who can make the person in the most stressful situation in the world, we're talking about worn war torn countries, we're talking about systematic extermination can make somebody going through that circumstance, feel at peace and submissive to their Lord and their faith.
And can take someone in North America or somewhere else, who's got a stable job and stable income and a big house and land and isn't a relatively good neighborhood, and can make that person feel nervous and dissatisfied and miserable.
That's the causer of causes. That's a lot of again.
And if I can backtrack to some nearest points, you mentioned the word the word worldly.
Doing it for a worldly cause. V. If we're going to hang our hat on one, take one
ahead and hanging right here. Want, you can see my COVID one fundamental difference between the person of faith and someone who's not a person of faith is our belief in the afterlife.
That's it. That's one of the most fundamental things. And we believe that at the end of the day, the selflessness
that Dana was talking about, can only truly come about
if we believe in an afterlife.
If this life is all we have, it's too hard. We're too selfish heart, we're going to die, you're going to be worm food.
And you're only going to be young for a little bit. And you're only going to be attracted for a little bit before you get old and rickety. So you want to maximize you want to consume, you want to do this, you want to do this, all this sort of stuff, right? Live in lead life in the fast lane.
What's missing is that there's another life, this is not it. When you believe that there's another life coming later, it's freedom.
It's freedom to accept what goes on in this life, to not have an orientation of the consumer where you have to go out and you have to get every experience and you have to get every sort of even piece. Something that I can buy or sell in the marketplace, something that I can obtain through the fruit of my labor, and the wages that I earn.
That's the the the
the hamster wheel of materialism. Once you believe in the afterlife, boom, the cage falls apart. You're free to be selfless. You're liberated.
Yes, there's a difference. Okay, so good is not so good question. Asthma. So the golden question steadfastness. Somebody doesn't preclude being angry or emotional over your circumstances, as long as it doesn't cross over shift boundaries. Did the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam cry when his children passed away? Yes, he did.
Who would dare say that the prophesy centum was not patient.
But solid. Patience
communicates control of your out side to a reasonable extent.
You're not going to curse somebody out. You're not going to. Yeah, exactly. You're not going it's a little bit more broad than just share boundaries.
It's we're not going to trample on somebody else's rights, we're not going to harm anybody. Despite what's the turmoil that's going on in the inside, that's solid subgenres to, despite the inside control the outside at least in a relatively
at least to a degree that prevents you from harming anybody.
So we covered a lot of what I had, in a much better way, because of the immense contribution mashallah, I guess the last thing I'll say is this is that, what makes Islam
Oh, I'll preface it by this, if you're on social media, you're on Facebook, you're on Instagram, you're on, you know, whatever have you, you see that there is a
there is a entire industry of self help.
Right? Therapy, self help.
Mindfulness, yoga, meditation, breathing, relaxation, all these sorts of things. Now, this is not to say that none of this can be beneficial. This is not to also say that people don't live through some horrible trauma and need to experience therapy. We're not touching that at all, at all.
But there's a fundamental difference between Islam and this entire industry that has crept up this industry that has crept up in response to people having less and less faith in a lot less and less faith in the afterlife.
Which is that Islam requires you to challenge the self.
It requires you to challenge the ego.
It doesn't take for granted the sacredness of yourself, your opinions, your way of making sense of everything.
Right, which is what happens with the consumerist model. If peace and tranquility is something that I can buy from a yoga studio or through an apprenticeship or through some sort of experience.
Then I'm keeping myself completely intact.
I'm fine pieces out there. I need to get it and bring it back to me.
Which is the selfishness bit which Dana said.
This doesn't challenge the cell.
But what if you're wrong? What if you've got to completely backwards? What if the what if the problem is you?
You can't be patient, you think you're just gonna breathe a little bit differently and you're going to become patient?
What if the problem is you? What if the problem is your attitude, your orientation,
your lack of belief, your lack of faith.
Islam
challenges the self
challenges yourself by saying, yes, hardship is going to have to come you can be certain of it. Allah promised us hardship in several places in the court and assorted Buffalo and sort of food and other places, promised us hardship.
And is telling us that the way out of it isn't to just reduce hardship. control all the variables and the causes and these sorts of factors.
The way out is to change yourself, and to change your orientation.
To accept and to believe, and this is only true for the believer,
makes us submissive to Allah's power to audit
opens us up to have that freedom. Where we can submit we can accept gives us the opportunity to be grateful when things are going good.
We don't just rely on the causes. We don't think it's like, oh, I guess I found the right yoga, yoga master yoga teacher, I found the right you know, breathing exercise. No, it leads us to be grateful of hamdulillah Allah is responsible, Allah could have made the same circumstances feel horrible.
And instead he's allowing me to to experience peace.
And if the hardship comes and we know that the orientation we have to have his patients storm on the inside, we can't control that.
But holding on to our outside so that we're not harming other people, or not taking it out on somebody else.
Very, very fundamental hobbies.
Okay.
Switching to
switching to divorce.
Nice, Sunny topic. Okay, here we go. So we're, we're nearing the end of divorce, maybe this week, and next week inshallah. Today, we're talking about
exceptions, different sorts of things that people can say in the pronouncement of a divorce, do they count? Do they not count? Okay, conditional statements, whatever you can think of, okay. And these fall into two main categories. Okay, but one of them is really the important one. The first one is the conditional category. What if somebody makes their pronouncement of divorce conditional upon something else? Does it happen? Is that a legit divorce announcement? Or does it not happen?
Scholars asked the question, they looked at the different types of things they said, Okay, there's three main types
of conditional divorce pronouncements or three types of conditions upon which divorce announcements can be made conditional.
So the first of which is choice, okay? Or will like, what if Allah wills, right? What if someone says that you're divorced? If Allah wills Inshallah, right? We use Inshallah, for everything, even the president says, right? What if we said, your divorce inshallah? Does that count or not? Second scenario, within this first scenario, this first category? What if we tie it to somebody else's? Will an approval, say that you're divorced if my mom says, so? Believe it or not, there are males, men, husbands, that, that do that. We're going to look at that second category of conditional divorce is some sort of
occurrence, some sort of happening, that's going to happen in the future. And the scholars looked at things from three perspectives. Is that thing likely to occur? Is it certain to occur or is it kind of 5050 The third type of thing
is the discovery of some sort of information.
You know, like,
similar to an action in the future, but it's something that already exists and if it's discovered, and we'll go over the different types of that.
Okay,
so
points of consensus, the scholars have consensus that if someone makes a pronouncement of divorce, and they can't make it conditional upon a future occurrence or a future happening,
and that thing is 5050 might happen or might not, then that is considered a divorce pronouncement. Okay? If that thing happens, the divorce also happens
but let's back up for a second. Let's talk about the first category, which is, if somebody says Insha Allah, okay. Say you're divorced in sha Allah.
Does this sort of thing? Is this a valid divorce pronouncement or not?
This schools of law are split right down the middle on this one. Malik and Achmed son sort of molecules and the Hamleys. They say that it has nothing to do with anything, maybe they lived in a time and place where they use in shallow like we use in shallow, they said, if somebody says you're divorced, insha Allah, it means you're divorced. That's it, it counts as the waiting period starts all the whole process becomes only
whereas I will Hanifa and a chef theory, they say that, no, this does matter. If you say Insha Allah, then that is not a announcement of divorce. Obviously, this is advantageous for women to know, because if a man at some point says you're divorced, Inshallah, then you can just say that didn't mean anything. Or if you want to be done with it, you can say, oh, that meant something, even if he insists that it doesn't.
Okay, the scholars, as we said, or I should say that the vast majority scholars now we go to what if that's if Allah wills? What about a person?
Okay, I'm going to divorce you, if
so, and so says
is that a divorce pronouncement or not?
The majority of scholars and I believe all four legal schools said yes, this is actually a full blown divorce announcement. And if the person they go to that person, and they say yes, then even more so.
The scholars are also agreed that if there's a conditional divorce on a future happening, and that thing is has to occur,
right, let's say if somebody says, You're divorced, if the sun comes up tomorrow
the scholars are unanimous that this is an announcement of divorce, there's no getting out of it. He can't backtrack and say that's not what he meant, or whatever.
What they do disagree about is when does the waiting period start? Does it start write that in there? Because we're certain that this thing is going to happen? Or does it wait until the actual thing occurs? In this case, the rising of the sun, majority of scholars say you have to wait until the actual action occurs.
Most of these I mean, these are kind of if they might sound strange to you. Okay, these specific examples, but the principle that carries the day. And what the scholars were looking at is that
divorce is not something to be played with. Right? So we don't want to, we don't want to have a scenario where husbands are able to kind of dangle this thing as a threat over women, and then take it back and say, Well, no, that's not what I meant.
Right? Because one of the mechanisms in Islamic law that protects women, is that the process of divorce, it automatically happens. You don't have to wait to go to a court. You don't have to wait to go to a movie or an email or anybody. Because if you did, then there could be you know, maybe the husband pays the email, maybe the husband pays them the whatever. And then there's all this kind of
entryways for abuse.
So if the thing just starts automatically, and it has a clear end period, when the thing is done over then that benefits, benefits the woman. It gives her a clear and to look forward to she can't be jerked around, she can't be kind of kept in limbo. And Allah went out of his way to specifically blame and threatened people who kept their wives in limbo, divorced or not divorced, divorced or not.
So all of these sorts of things. Weather and they cover lots of crazy different issues. If somebody says I divorced you half a divorce or I divorced your hair or I divorced your like they do, like if they try to cheat
I'll put up, cut it, play with it do with it, whatever they want. The vast majority of the time, the scholars saying, you can't play with this thing,
that if you set it, it's divorce, and the clock starts ticking. And now you have to undo the damage that you did, and reconcile, or allow it to expire and be done.
That brings us to the following chapter which has to do with from home is a divorce valid, and upon whom is a divorce about. Okay, so there's consensus that divorce is
valid, if it isn't announced by the husband, who is in his right mind, and he's conscious.
And he is past the age of puberty. And he is free and he's not forced, he's not under duress. Okay. So our first issue
is exactly this. What if somebody divorces their wives, and they're being forced to?
Well, the very first thing that scholars said was, okay, we have to define what it means to be forced or coerced. So if somebody comes and I've heard this happen, a husband comes to his wife says, I'm sorry, you know, I really liked you. But my parents are forcing me divorcing.
This isn't adhering to a classical definition of what coercion and force means. Okay, so the scholars, they identified three conditions to say that someone is coerced or actually under duress.
First of all, minimum codon, right. It's somebody who's able to inflict some sort of punishment on
young love on a lawn.
Bina Zulu I like and it's extremely likely, it's known that this person is not only capable, but will do this thing this punishment is going to happen to you.
And here's the kicker, which is why the parent example doesn't work. And why are you doing Rahu? kathira? Is that the thing that is the threat is something that is existential.
Right? It's something that is extremely threatening to that person, their life,
or their limbs? Basically.
Not, you know, the displeasure of your parent. And that's a different issue. But like, if someone is trying to come to somebody and say, Well, my parents are forcing me or this or whatever, no, that's not true. You're choosing and you're using them as an excuse.
They're not forcing you, they're not threatening to kill you. You This is your own decision.
If this were to happen, if a husband was truly forced by the ruler, by the president by somebody to say, your divorce wife, then the majority of scholars, the vast majority would say, this does not count. It's not valid, they are still husband and wife. There's no such thing as the divorce process, etc.
What about being financially cut off if you don't divorce her?
So we're imagining a scenario in which a husband is, well, they are either
completely financially dependent upon his parents, and he's married, and they're going to turn the screws on him and use that to try to say
that you have to divorce. No, that's not
that's not coercion within within.
If he's able bodied, right? Maybe if he's handicapped and he can't earn income for himself, then that would be perhaps, but if he's if he's able bodied, then this is not considered coercion.
Right? All of the guidelines for asking for money
which in Sahih Muslim there's a hadith previously said, I'm said that it's not permissible, permissible to ask somebody for money. We're talking about charity so far, except three scenarios.
Okay, a calamity, like a natural disaster that wiped out everything
that's left that's in vain, which is like kind of like your you took your own money and made peace between two people who are about to really get into it.
And then the third scenario is if you're sitting in your home for three days, and you've got nothing to eat, etc, and the vast majority of scholars they make go out of the way to say in this scenario, well, Hello, Father on alarm and that he's not able to work. Right. If you're able to work, you're expected to go work. And that's something that men take need to take seriously. Why did a loss and Sorenson they sat
me down? And he said, why? He said that men have a degree
A degree of authority over their wives. Why? Because of the strength that Allah endowed them with. And they're
bringing home the, the big bucks, right? They're providing. If they're not providing, then that's a huge, huge, huge problem. That's not how a lot of design marriage, it's not how Islamic law conceived the marriage. And there's a lot of tangential or secondary problems that come from that.
So the short answer is no, that's not considered.
A cross that's not consider coercion.
Okay, what about somebody who is drunk? We said he had to be in his right mind, meaning.
sober and
conscious. What about? Well, yeah, there'll be law. husband comes home drunk, and he says your divorce?
Does this count? Or not? All four schools say yes, yes, it does.
His sin cannot be a cover for the consequences of his actions. And the consequences of his actions that are done while in the state of sin should actually serve as a disincentive as a deterrent to not engage in that state in the first place.
Okay, now, this is not relevant.
That issue is not relevant.
And that takes us to the end, and we're out of time.
Perfect. So then what only what's only left of divorce law is
situations regarding women, actually.
Okay, that's just that's very easy. So this should be common sense that if someone is divorcing somebody else, that
woman has to be his wife. Okay. So the issue that the scholars bring up is, what if somebody made a condition for somebody that they weren't married to?
Right? They didn't like this person. They said,
If I ever marry you, you're divorced.
And then what if you know, a law is more believable? Kulu he causes them to fall in love and they get married?
Are they married? Or do they are they automatically divorced?
The vast majority say that they're still married. That sort of thing? isn't applicable when he wasn't her husband in the first place, no matter what do you say? mean love will hottie and that takes us to the end of the chapter.
Next time, we'll get into things that have to do with reconciliation, right? What is reconciliation? How does it happen? What isn't reconciliation? Right? So during that entire waiting period, how do you know when you've been reconciled with your husband or not? And so you don't need to get married again. And so the divorce is not finalized. And then finally, we've got kind of a smattering of issues that happened to do with
both of the
and what happens to women during the waiting period and after the waiting period.
And then that takes us out into it. So we'll try to we'll try to finish that next week. Inshallah, let's see how far we can get. Anybody have any questions?
Thank you very much, everybody for your participation. Great contributions tonight.
Oh hamdulillah your hands are still awake.