Tom Facchine – The People of KUFR Arent Capable of Belief
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of belief and the use of "arrogance" and "iv games" in the context of criminal behavior. They also touch on the shrockist nature of shrooming and the importance of rejecting falsehood. The speakers emphasize the need for investigation and avoiding giving names of one's idols. They also touch on the shrockist nature of shrooming and the importance of rejecting falsehood.
AI: Summary ©
Previously, we began and we almost finished the
first page of Surah Al-An'am and
we said that we're starting with Surah Al
-An'am because it is a Meccan surah
and so it's particularly relevant to us, this
community, and in general I think probably most
communities here in North America.
It has to do mostly with belief and
mostly with aqeedah, mostly with the reality and
the true nature of things.
Whereas the verses in Medina have more to
do with the law, the sharia, even though
the sharia is much more than law, it
assumes that someone has already submitted.
It assumes that somebody doesn't have significant doubts
and so that's why when Allah, Azwajal, almost
without exception, when He's about to lay down
a hukam, a command, He says, past tense,
you who have already believed, you who have
attained to faith already, you're ready to submit
to this, so here's what it is that
you have to submit to.
On the other hand, if someone was not
ready to submit, you could come to them
with every rule, the most perfect system, and
if they're not ready to submit then they're
just going to look at you and say,
why on earth are you bothering me with
this sort of thing?
Who are you to tell me what I
should be doing or how to dress or
what I should do with my time or
my money?
And so that's why iman always comes first
and aqeedah always comes first because you can't
put a price on or you can't exchange
trying to go over the motivation before you
go over the compliance.
So that was part of the reason why
we started with surah al-an'am and
we said that surah al-an'am touches
on many many different things.
One of the main themes of surah al
-an'am is the nature of kufr, is
the nature of the opposite of iman, the
nature of belief, and Allah subhana wa ta
'ala makes it crystal clear through various different
types and various different examples that the nature
of kufr is arrogance and not ignorance.
Arrogance, not ignorance.
And those are two very different things.
Somebody who is ignorant simply doesn't know.
They're uninformed.
Somebody who is arrogant, they don't want to
know.
And that might be through a very very
deliberate act or it might be through some
sort of neglect.
We even recognize these differences within American law.
There's something that's called criminal neglect, okay.
If you have a child at home, right,
a young child, they can't take care of
themselves, they can't feed themselves, they can't change
themselves or clean themselves.
It's not necessarily only illegal to actively do
something bad to the child if you endanger
the child.
That is a crime, yes, but it's also
a crime to neglect that child in a
criminal way, right.
There is such a thing as criminal neglect.
Well, our hearts are a similar thing.
There is a level of interaction with our
hearts or cultivation with our hearts where we
know exactly what's true and we're going to
just strive against it, strive to undermine it,
fight against it, and make it look bad
at every single turn.
This is some of the people who are
living at the time of the Prophet Muhammad
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and some of the people
that still live today.
They know Islam is 100% true.
They know that the Quran is Allah's words
and yet they are going to attempt to
undermine it, misrepresent it.
And then there's other people who are not
guilty of that level of kufr but are
guilty of a sort of criminal neglect that
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gave them the
tools to submit.
He gave them a heart and it started
clean and He gave them reason and a
mind to think and He gave them signs
throughout the creation.
But due to various reasons, diseases of the
heart such as arrogance, such as laziness, such
as too strong of an attachment to this
world, people can allow their muscle of belief
and their muscle of faith to weaken and
weaken and weaken and neglect it and neglect
it and neglect it until there's nothing left
to be able to submit.
There's nothing left to be able to register
the signs and that is a type of
criminal neglect.
And so Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in
the Quran and especially right here in Surah
Al-An'am, He's going to go through
these different types.
He started out the Surah by reminding us
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala created everything
and that He knows everything and yet there
are people who will reject that and are
not grateful.
And then He started by talking about kufr.
He started talking about denial and He gave
different sort of thought experiments or different sort
of situations.
The first thing He had said and this
is everything we went over last time, no
matter how many signs they are given, they
are not going to believe.
This is one of the most distinctive things
about kufr.
Again, arrogance, not ignorance.
It's not a problem but they simply haven't
gotten enough proof.
If we're able to find some sort of
scientific miracle or some sort of way to
convince them, then they will agree.
No, kufr, the nature of kufr is an
issue of arrogance rather than ignorance.
The second thing that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta
'ala brought up, He brings up a historical
argument.
He says, look at the other nations around
you, those who have gone before you.
They used to be more powerful than you.
They were widespread on earth and yet they
met their demise.
Don't you think you're headed the same direction?
Especially the ones specifically that were punished for
rejecting a prophet.
Because this is the situation that the Quraysh
were in.
Now they've been sent a prophet.
He's like, who are you kidding?
You think you're going to be able to
escape some sort of fate by rejecting your
prophet?
Look at literally every single other community that
was given a prophet before you.
If you don't accept, then the same is
going to happen to you.
And it is significant that Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala does not refer to this argument
first.
Because it is somewhat threatening, right?
He's saying basically, if you don't do it,
then you're in for a lot of trouble.
It's a threat, more of a promise.
But yeah, you could call it a threat.
But that's not the first argument that Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala uses.
He first tries to talk to them through
their sense of indebtedness and calling them to
gratitude.
But once they've rejected that sense of indebtedness,
and they refuse to be grateful, then he
moves on to just state the plain facts
about the danger that they are heading towards.
Then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala had said,
even if they were given a book directly,
we're talking papers with ink on it, they
would claim that this thing was magic.
They would not accept it.
So similar to the other sorts of signs
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala shows, even
if they were given direct revelation in a
book handed down, they would still have rejected
it.
Again, we're talking about arrogance, not ignorance.
And then finally, where we left off was
their demand to see an angel.
If only there had been an angel sent
to him.
We're talking about the Prophet ﷺ.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala responds, He says,
if I had sent an angel, at that
point, everything would be decided.
Everything would be over, there would be no
opportunity to have true faith.
Because the choice to believe or not to
believe it wouldn't really be a choice anymore.
Basically, the day of judgment would have been
already established.
And they would have come face to face
with the consequences of their beliefs.
This is something that's extremely significant to us
today.
And we touched on it last week, when
it comes to the intersection or the relationship
between Islam and science.
Some people demand to know, where is the
scientific proof for faith?
Where is the scientific proof for God?
And that's an absurd question.
There's no such thing as scientific proof for
God in the absolute sense that people mean
it.
Right?
Because the definition of faith is having to
believe in something that's beyond the material world.
It's having to trust in something and not
just trust it, in a sense where we're,
you know, maybe foolish enough to do it
or naive enough to do it.
But we have to be virtuous enough and
sincere enough to trust it, even though we
don't have 100% physical proof.
That's the whole game.
That's the whole test.
The people who are sincere, who want to
do well, they're going to decide to believe
they're going to be guided to faith because
they want to do the right thing, even
if it's not sure.
No, it's not 100% sure.
But their sense of virtue is going to
compel them towards belief.
Whereas a person who is wickedness in their
heart, they have arrogance in their heart, they
really want to get away with what they
can.
Right?
And so if there's any little, they have
the opposite view towards it.
If there's any little possibility that it's not
true, they're going to act as if it's
not true.
Right?
Maybe sometimes you guys have seen this, you
younger guys who have been in school, has
it ever been where you've had like the
teacher leave the classroom?
And then what happens when the teacher leaves
the classroom?
Things get crazy pretty quickly.
Right?
People are upstanding on the desks, writing on
the chalkboard, maybe writing insults about the teacher.
Right?
No, that's the school that I went to.
Maybe not the ones he went to.
Okay, it doesn't make sense, right?
Some kids go to a certain extent that
literally defies sense.
It's almost as if they act as if
the teacher's not going to come back.
Of course the teacher's going to come back.
It's 100% certain.
Right?
But it's almost as if there's this 1
% chance they're holding onto in their heads.
Maybe they won't come back.
Maybe we can get away with this sort
of unruliness, this chaos for the whole period,
for the whole day.
And then the teacher comes back in, takes
names, sends people to the office, detentions are
handed out.
This is the same thing that we're talking
about.
There's some people, there's a 1% doubt,
God, the afterlife, everything.
And they say, you know what?
Out of their sense of faith and virtue,
I should say that their faith is a
virtue.
They say they are sincere enough to take
that and to say that, you know, this
is the right thing.
Even if it's not 100% sure.
The right thing to do is to submit,
is to adhere to these sort of external
rules and values and the whole thing.
And then there's other people who see that
1% of doubt and they say, ah,
there's my chance.
Here's my chance to act out.
Here's my chance to live life to the
fullest, quote unquote, and do whatever I want
to do.
And so Allah subhana wa ta'ala here,
He says there is no certain proof.
If you're waiting for certain proof in the
materialist sense that we're talking about, eyewitness, you're
not going to get it until the day
of judgment.
And by the time the day of judgment
comes, it's too late.
Everything's all decided.
And Allah says in Surah Al-A'raf
that at that point, faith is worthless.
There is no such thing as faith at
that point.
It's not a virtue to believe anymore.
If you have 100% certainty, you've seen
everything, the angels are coming down, the earth
is being torn apart, the sky is unraveling.
What's the virtue in believing anymore?
And so Allah subhana wa ta'ala says
that even if He had sent an angel,
they basically shouldn't be wishing for that because
that would mean everything was over.
Rather, this is showing that they're simply making
excuses.
Then Allah subhana wa ta'ala gives another
response.
He's like, okay, okay, let's think for a
second.
You're saying that you want an angel.
If we were to send an angel to
you, angels are supernatural beings, right?
They're part of the unseen.
If an angel is going to come to
you, he's going to have to change his
form into some sort of form that you
can understand.
He's going to come to you in the
form of a man.
And then they'd be even more confused.
Because they're saying that they don't want a
man.
They're saying that they want an angel.
But then if we send them an angel,
he's going to be in the form of
a man.
So what will they do then?
The reality is that they're just trying to
get away.
They're trying to escape.
They're making excuses.
The goalposts are shifting because they have no
intention to truly believe.
They're merely trying to get away with being
responsible.
Which is why Allah subhana wa ta'ala
then talks about the mockery that such people
have towards faith and messengers.
Just like this, the people before them used
to mock.
They used to mock the other messengers.
They used to mock the other messengers that
were sent before them.
And then it caught up with them.
The very, very thing that they used to
mock was exactly the thing to be that
would destroy them.
There's a lesson here, and this is something
that repeats in the Qur'an, about how
Allah azawajal consoles the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ when
he is feeling sad, when he's feeling down.
And this is something subhana wa ta'ala
that shows the sincerity of the Prophet Muhammad
ﷺ compared to us.
All right?
What do we do?
Let's have a thought experiment.
What do we do if we want to
advise somebody?
Okay?
We think about what we're going to say.
We maybe bring our proofs, our dalil.
We go to somebody.
We say, hey, you know what?
You should be doing this.
What if they reject it?
If they reject it, we're more likely to
blame them.
Right?
Usually.
Say, oh, their hearts are sealed.
Right?
Oh, he couldn't hear it from me.
He was too proud.
It's his culture.
We've got lots of different ways to virtue
signal to say that basically this person, they
were just too stubborn.
We were right, and they were too stubborn.
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ knows that they are
lying, and yet he always doubts himself first.
He always doubts himself first, to the point
where he said, Allah subhana wa ta'ala
said in surat al-kaf, It's as if
you're going to die with grief.
It's as if you're going to kill yourself
with grief because of how you're reacting to
your people's rejection.
You know you're the Prophet.
You know that you're getting everything from Allah,
and you have to know that all of
these proofs and miracles, they're custom-made.
They're not like stock store-bought, you can
get them from BJ's.
They're like actually specifically for your people, and
they're rejecting them.
And yet out of his sincerity, the Prophet
ﷺ was blaming himself first.
He felt bad himself.
He was concerned about them.
Sincerity is about wanting guidance for the other
person, to the point where you're ready to
question yourself first.
Am I taking the most effective means?
Did I say something wrong?
Did I approach it in the right way?
Was it the proper time?
And so Allah subhana wa ta'ala is
in the position to console the Prophet ﷺ
at various points throughout the Quran.
And he often turns to two things, or
he uses two techniques to console the Prophet
ﷺ.
And these are two things that we can
use in our lives if we find people,
our spouses, our family members, even our children,
are going through difficulty.
They need to be consoled.
The first thing Allah subhana wa ta'ala
says, you're not the only one.
Sometimes part of our concern, and part of
our fear, is that this is only happening
to us.
And when we know that the same exact
thing is happening to other people, and has
happened to other people, somehow that makes it
feel a lot better.
You can look to somebody else and say,
well you know what, they got through it,
so then I'll probably get through it too.
So when Allah azzawajal says, wa laqad istuhziya
bi rusulin min qablik, right?
He's saying that every other Prophet before you
was mocked just like this.
So he's both at one time, Allah subhana
wa ta'ala is pointing out to these
people that they're not really asking serious questions.
They're not ready to believe if they get
their request met.
No, they're actually mocking.
And at the same time he's saying that
the Prophet ﷺ, like look, don't worry, you're
not alone.
This has happened to you, and it's happened
to every single other Prophet before you.
The second technique that Allah azzawajal uses to
console the Prophet ﷺ, is he tells them
that, listen, they're going to have maybe their
moment now, but in the end, you're going
to win out.
In the end, it's going to collapse upon
them.
Fa haqabal ladheena sakhiru minhum ma kanu bihi
yastahzi'oon.
In the end, those people who used to
mock the Prophets, the very thing that they
used to mock caught up with them and
swallowed them.
Just like the people of Nuh ﷺ, right?
Nuh ﷺ is building the boat, the ark.
Every day there's people coming by, they're making
fun of him.
You idiot, what are you doing?
Making this huge boat for what?
You're wasting your time.
And then the rains start to come, and
what happens?
The rains swallow up the people, right?
This thing happened again and again and again.
The very, very thing that they're mocking ends
up being the thing that is the end
of them.
So that's how Allah ﷻ consoles the Prophet
ﷺ.
First, he tells him, you're not the only
one.
Other people have gone through this before.
And two, in the end, it's going to
turn out okay.
Then Allah ﷻ just says, Qul seeru fil
ardi thumman thuru kayfa kana aqibatul mukadhibeen.
And Allah ﷻ uses the word mukadhibeen here,
and that's significant.
As we said last time, kufr is not
just not knowing, which is why I don't
particularly like the translation of disbeliever or unbeliever.
It makes it seem like someone just without
belief.
The people who lie, the people who know
but they deny, they reject.
Allah ﷻ says twice in Juz Amr ayats
that most of you probably know, balilladhina kafaru
yukadhiboon.
The people who kafaru, the people of kufr,
they're lying.
Balilladhina kafaru fee takdheeb.
The people who are of kufr, they are
in falsehood, meaning they're actively rejecting it.
It's not just a passive thing.
So Allah ﷻ says, he says to the
Prophet ﷺ, go ahead, if you don't believe
me, I've consoled you in these two ways,
look.
Look at history.
Just like he told the kufr to go
look and see what happened to the other
nations, he tells now the Prophet ﷺ, you
go look.
You go look and see the other nations.
What happened to them?
Every single time, Allah ﷻ saved the Prophet
and he destroyed the people.
So how can you be afraid?
How can you be worried?
What's going to happen?
It's going to be the same thing.
Allah ﷻ is going to save the people
of truth and he's going to let the
people of falsehood destroy themselves.
One slight correction for the qari.
That first laam is mushaddada, has a shadda
on it and the second laam.
It's a rhetorical question.
Allah ﷻ asks, say, to who belongs the
heavens and the earth?
Say, to Allah.
There's a couple of things here.
One of them, Allah ﷻ said, Allah ﷻ
decreed for himself mercy.
Kataba has the literal meaning of right but
it also means decree.
He decreed for himself mercy.
Some people, they get confused.
They say, well, Allah doesn't have to follow
any rules.
Allah doesn't have to be nice if he
doesn't want to be.
Allah can become incarnate if he wants to.
He can walk on earth.
He can die on a cross, whatever it
is.
Allah can do anything.
They're neglecting this sort of thing that Allah
does.
Allah ﷻ decrees for himself.
In this case, he decrees for himself mercy.
And that means that, yes, Allah ﷻ has
punishment.
He has hellfire.
He has all these sorts of things.
He's quick to take account.
He's severe in punishment.
But what does he remind us of at
the beginning of every single chapter of the
Qur'an except for one of them?
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.
If you're going to know anything about Allah,
know that Allah is merciful.
And that should tell us something about the
emphasis that we should put, especially teaching other
people about Allah, non-Muslims and our children.
Some people, because they're tempted to get compliance
with however they can.
Right?
We want our kids to pray.
We want our girls to wear hijab.
We want our kids to memorize the Qur
'an.
Okay?
The temptation for us is to go quickly
towards shadid al-iqab, to go towards the
anger, to go towards the threat.
If you don't do this, this is going
to happen to you.
Allah is watching.
The angels are writing.
All these sorts of things.
It's all true.
No one's saying it's not true.
But are we putting the same emphasis that
Allah is putting?
Allah emphasizes rahmah.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala always, always, always
emphasizes his rahmah.
To the point where the Prophet alayhi salatu
wasalam said in a hadith qudsi that Allah
said, my mercy outstrips my wrath or my
mercy is greater than my wrath.
So we need to be careful and not
fall into trying to reinterpret or better yet
re-emphasize things that Allah subhana wa ta
'ala has already emphasized in the Qur'an.
He's emphasizing his mercy.
You've got people who don't pray.
People who drink alcohol.
People who go to the club.
And they think they're too far gone.
They think that Allah won't forgive them if
they turn around and change.
And they need to know that Allah will
forgive them.
All they have to do is turn around.
And then Allah subhana wa ta'ala brings
it back to the Bay of Judgment.
Two points of emphasis here.
There's no doubt about it.
And then Allah subhana wa ta'ala tells
us what's really going on.
These people who don't believe, what's the reason
that they don't believe?
Remember we talked about active criminal activity and
then passive criminal neglect.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala says here, the
ones who lost themselves, their own selves.
They've lost their own selves and so and
so they will not believe.
They can't believe.
They've lost the ability to believe.
Maybe some of you young guys go to
the gym.
Right?
Right?
You guys go to the gym.
Okay, what do you bench?
We'll say mashallah, don't worry.
You don't have to say, okay, whatever it
is you bench.
Okay, let's say you skip a month going
to the gym and you're going to go
back to the bench.
You're going to put the same amount of
weight on and then what's going to happen?
You're not going to be able to lift
it.
Right?
Those muscles have gone away.
Right?
They've atrophied.
You don't have the same ability that you
used to have because you let it go.
Why would we expect the heart to be
any different?
Why would we expect the soul to be
any different?
Why would we expect our ability to believe
to be any different?
The successful person is the one who purifies
the soul, keeps it clean, keeps it ready
to submit.
And the person who is a loser, he's
the one that lets it get dirty, neglects
it, just like a house, just like a
car, just like anything.
You let it go.
You don't do anything to it.
It's only a certain amount of time until
it's not going to work anymore.
It breaks down.
It's useless.
The heart's the same.
The soul is the same.
And Allah says here, this is the reason
that they can't, they not only don't believe,
they can't believe.
You had Abu Lahab, we said last time
Abu Lahab is told in the Quran to
his face, he's going to be in the
hellfire.
All he has to do to prove the
Quran wrong is believe.
All he has to do to prove the
whole thing wrong is say, But he can't.
The people who already lost that ability, they're
never going to believe.
They neglected their heart.
They neglected it until it atrophied.
They have no ability left.
Allah SWT possesses and controls and owns not
just everything in the heavens and the earth,
or not just, yes, everything in the heavens
and the earth, but also everything that is
in the night and in the day, or
takes rest in the night or takes rest
in the day.
Then Allah brings it to the point.
Should I then take anyone other than Allah
as a Wali, as a protector, as someone
who I'm going to turn to, to get
what I need, to guide me to the
right way?
The one who split or who initiated the
heavens and the earth, and he feeds other
people and is not fed.
Allah SWT controls everything.
And so it makes absolutely no sense to
try to rely on anything else or anyone
else.
Like the Prophet SAW said to Abdullah ibn
Abbas, when they were riding on a camel
together, and he said to him, If everybody
on earth got together to hurt you, they
would not be able to hurt you with
anything that Allah SWT hadn't already decreed.
And if every single person on earth got
together to help you, they would not be
able to help you with anything that Allah
SWT hadn't already decreed.
Allah is the one in control.
Allah is the one in charge.
And so we turn to this and we
turn to that and we turn to that
and we're looking for help.
And Allah SWT is telling us there's no
help outside of Allah.
Relying on the secondary causes is not a
problem.
That's not to say, okay, you need to
get married.
So then Zakariya MashaAllah, he's ready to get
married, right?
Soon?
Not yet.
One day InshaAllah.
When he's ready, is he just going to
sit in the masjid and raise his hands
and say, Oh Allah, descend upon me, send
down a spouse right here in the masjid.
I would not advise that.
Why not?
It's not going to work.
Okay, it's not going to work probably, right?
And Allah SWT made cause and effect, right?
You have to do certain things.
If you want to make money, you got
to go out and get a job.
Do you want to get a spouse?
You have to take the means of getting
a spouse, right?
And so it's not an excuse by saying
that we only rely on Allah SWT.
It's not an excuse to just sit around
and do nothing.
But we're realizing that who ultimately decides whether
that other thing works or not.
It's Allah SWT.
You go to one person to fill out
a job application, one job.
You go to a second one to fill
out another job application.
Allah SWT decides whether you get accepted or
not, here or there.
You might be super qualified for one and
you get rejected from it.
You might be horribly under qualified for the
other and you get accepted.
It's up to Allah.
That's why some of the most amazing miracles
that Allah gave to the prophets had to
do with flipping that, inverting it.
With Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam, they built a fire
to kill him, right?
What did Allah say to the fire?
Be cool.
The fire is cool.
Everybody knows fire is hot.
How could fire possibly be cool?
Because Allah SWT gets to the side at
the end of the day.
Musa, when he was a baby, his mom
had to throw him in the river.
Yeah, he had his little floaty thing.
But come on, would you do that to
your kid?
No, that's like sure death, right?
And yet for Musa Alayhi Salaam, that was
sure life.
That was sure life.
If you knew somebody was out to kill
your baby, would you send the baby to
them to raise them?
No chance.
For most people, that's sure death.
But if Allah SWT wills, it's sure life.
For Musa Alayhi Salaam, it was sure life.
And he tells the Prophet, I have been
ordered or commanded to be the first one
who submits.
And don't ever be those who break up
the tawheed, who commit shirk in all of
its various forms.
And we today, we don't have the shirk
of idols of stones very much anymore.
Though it's making a comeback, right?
We have crystals and we have chakras, and
we have the zodiac.
That sort of stuff is coming back, manifesting,
right?
But most of what we see in the
West is not that type of shirk.
It's the type of shirk of obeying convenience,
obeying money, obeying wealth, obeying fame, other people's
opinions of us, obedience, love, fear.
This is all part of worship.
And a certain amount of obedience and love
and fear is only for Allah.
It's set aside only for Allah.
And if we take that part that's set
aside only for Allah, and we give it
to anything, even our parents, even our spouses,
even our kids, let alone wealth, popular culture,
whatever, then we are going overboard.
We're transgressing against Allah subhana wa ta'ala's
tawheed and his right to be worshipped alone.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala said something very
important right before that, that I forgot to
touch on.
وَهُوَ يُطَعِمُ وَلَا يُطَعَمُ Allah subhana wa ta
'ala is the one who feeds and he
is not fed.
Again, Allah subhana wa ta'ala restricts himself.
He has the power to do it, right?
Somebody can't come and say, well, Allah can
do whatever he wants.
He can eat if he wants.
No, he can't.
Allah can't forget if he wants.
Allah can't oppress somebody else.
It's a contradiction of who he is.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala feeds everybody, takes
care of everybody.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala knows everything.
That's literally the definition of who he is
and he can't be something else.
He says something else.
قُلْ إِنِّي أَخَافُ إِنْ أَعْصَيْتُ رَبِّي عَذَابَ يَوْمٍ
عَظِيمٍ He's telling the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam things to say.
If I were to disobey my sustainer, then
I fear, I would fear a great punishment.
مَيْ يُصْرَفْ عَنْهُ يَوْمَ إِذِنْ قَدْ رَحِمَهُ وَذَلِكَ
الْفَوْزُ الْمَبِينُ And the true success in this
world is not being safe, not living into
your 90s, not having a mansion and three
cars, not all these things.
What's the true success?
The great success is being saved from the
fire on the day of judgment and being
taken away from it into Jannah.
وَإِنْ يَمْسَسْكَ اللَّهُ بِضُرٍ فَلَا كَاشِفَ لَهُ إِلَّا
هُوَ وَإِنْ يَمْسَسْكَ بِخَيْرٍ فَهُوَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ
قَدِيرٍ If Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala were
to will for you that you would be
touched with any sort of harm, then no
power can remove that from you except for
Him.
And if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala had
willed it for you that you're going to
get benefit in some sort of way, then
know that He is able to do whatever
He wants.
Similarly, there's no taking it away from you.
It's what Allah decided.
وَهُوَ الْقَاهِرُ فَوْقَ عِبَادِهِ وَهُوَ الْحَكِيمُ الْخَبِيرُ And
He is completely powerful, unable to be resisted
over His servants, and He is the most
wise and the all-informed.
Then Allah says, قُلْ أَيُّ شَيْءٍ أَكْبَرُ شَهَادَةً
قُلِ اللَّهِ That's the one that's different.
So you have قُلِّ اللَّهِ earlier, which is
لِلَّهِ, possessive.
And then you have قُلِ اللَّهِ, right?
Which is different.
Say Allah.
And this proves, many of the scholars mentioned
in their tafsirs, that this proves the permissibility
of referring to Allah as a thing.
Which seems weird in the English language, but
He says here, قُلْ أَيُّ شَيْءٍ أَكْبَرُ شَهَادَةً
What thing, literally, is best as a witness?
قُلِ اللَّهِ Say Allah is the best thing
to be a witness.
قُلْ اللَّهُ شَهِيدٌ بَيْنِي وَبَيْنَكُمْ وَأُوحِيَ إِلَيَّ هَذَا
الْقُرْآنُ لِأُنذِرَكُمْ بِي وَمَن بَلَغْ Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala says, He's giving more things for
the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to
say in the face of the opposition that
he's seeing.
Tell them, أُوحِيَ إِلَيَّ That it's been revealed
to me, this Qur'an, so that I
warn you and whoever it reaches.
Which is proof that the Qur'an was
not meant just for the Arab.
It was not meant just for the Quraysh.
It was not meant just for 7th century
Arabia.
We can leave its laws now and, you
know, do away with inheritance law and do
away with this law and do away with
that law.
No, وَمَن بَلَغْ Everybody it reached.
How many people has it reached?
How many languages of the Qur'an translated
in?
It's not the actual Qur'an, but it's
translated in today.
The Qur'an is supposed to be a
universal message until the day of judgment.
أَإِنَّكُمْ لَتَشْهَدُونَ أَنَّ مَعَ اللَّهِ إِلَىٰ آلِهَةً أُخْرَى
Are you guys trying to say that there's
other real gods besides Allah?
قُلْ لَا أَشْهَدْ Say to them, I don't
bear witness.
I can't clap to that.
قُلْ إِنَّمَا هُوَ إِلَٰهُ وَاحِدٌ وَإِنَّنِي بَرِيءٌ مِّمَّا
تُشْرِكُونَ Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala introduces to
us an important concept in Islam, which is
البراءة Sometimes it's called الولاء والبراءة It has
to do with separating yourself from something that
is clearly false, right?
And Allah says this in Surah Al-Baqarah
right after Ayatul Kursi, right?
He says that it's not sufficient to merely
believe.
Part of our belief is rejecting, right?
But what are we believing and what are
we rejecting?
We believe in Allah.
We believe in Tawheed.
We believe in the Quran and everything the
Prophet ﷺ came with.
But we also have a duty and a
responsibility to reject falsehood.
We also have a duty to reject falsehood.
We can tolerate that people live and believe
different things, but we can't tolerate falsehood in
the sense that we can't pretend like it's
true, which is one of the more dangerous
aspects of a lot of interfaith discussions today
that go on.
Not all of them.
Some interfaith is actually very respectful, but a
lot of interfaith discussions these days is built
on the premise of me recognizing that your
religion is true and you recognizing that my
religion is equally valid or equally true.
This is problematic.
Allah ﷻ asked us in the Quran to
state affirmatively what's false, to not sugarcoat it,
to not...
That doesn't mean that we're rude or arrogant.
We're diplomatic.
We can be polite.
But if somebody wants me to, you know,
do the sign of the cross or pray
in the name of Jesus.
Sometimes you get missionaries that come to mosques
and they say, can I just make a
prayer?
It's like, well, are you going to pray
in the name of Jesus?
And the answer is no, I'm not going
to let you do that.
Right.
Or they want to like have a laying
on hands.
You know, they, especially evangelicals, they like to
try to show a miracle so that they
can convince the Muslims, because most of their
religion is emotion.
So they try to say, anybody here sick?
Has anybody here got some sort of, you
know, ailment and come here and then, you
know, lay the hands on and supposedly the
miraculous cure comes and they want to lead
people into their faith.
Allah ﷻ told us that we have to
reject all this.
We have to say, we don't believe in
that.
And we don't think that that's true.
Why is it a problem today in North
America?
Because North America is built off of European
history and European experience.
And in European history and experience, when you
disagreed with somebody else's religion, you kill them
or you fought a war against them, or
you tried to wipe them out or burn
them at the stake or whatever it was.
If you had the political power to do
it, you would do it.
Right.
And so that's why in North America, when
people are like, no, we have to, everybody
accepts everybody.
We have to say that, you know, you're
true.
You have your truth and I have my
truth and our truths are equally truthy.
Right.
And all this sort of wishy-washy stuff,
because they have that historical experience.
In Islam, we don't know that.
And in Muslim history, we don't know that.
Right.
We're able to live in Palestine.
We've been living with Christians and Jews and
Muslims for a thousand years before the nation
state, before Britain got involved.
Right.
And all over the world.
And so it's not our problem.
So I can tell you to your face,
I think you're horribly wrong.
I think your beliefs are ridiculous, but I
can respect you as a human being.
You know, if you need a hand, if
your car breaks down on the side of
the road, I'm going to help you change
a tire.
I'm going to help you get a tow.
I'm going to do these things for you.
That's part of my religion.
That's part of how I worship Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
I'm not doing it for you.
I'm doing it for Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
But being kind to you and giving you
your due right and respecting you as a
human being and respecting your life and your
property is not predicated on me thinking that
what you believe in is true.
Or you have some sort of equally valid
path to paradise.
Or you have some sort of equally valid
path to Allah.
No, I believe that the things that you
believe in, they might end you up in
*.
They might.
Allah has the right to do that.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is telling
the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to
do the same thing.
Say, no, no, no.
I do not bear witness that there are
other gods besides Allah.
Say, He is only one God.
And I am free from, I've got nothing
to do with this lie that you've made
up.
Then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala starts to
talk about the people of the book for
just a little bit.
He says the people who have been given
revelation in the form of a book, they
know it.
As well as they know their children.
They know it as well as they know
their children.
Wow.
Allah puts these two clauses together.
He brings back the thing he said earlier.
Remember he was talking about the kuffar of
the Quraysh.
And he said that they had lost the
ability to believe through a criminal neglect.
Right?
Just on the previous page.
The people who have buried their hearts, let
their hearts rust, let their hearts atrophy.
They haven't done anything for it.
They have lost the ability to submit to
the signs when it comes to them.
Now Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is talking
about the people of the book.
Them too.
Yes.
He says basically or implies if they had
been reading their books correctly, if they had
had a sincere intention to follow the truth,
then they would have at least thought about
it.
And this is true up until today.
It was even more true in a certain
sense back then because there were many people
who were Christians and Jews who understood that
there was supposed to be another prophet coming,
the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
And so people were searching.
You had Salman al-Farisi, right?
His whole story.
And you had others, Abdullah ibn Salam.
People who were searching were waiting for the
prophet.
That was their understanding of their religious texts.
Today if you tell a Christian or a
Jew that they'll look at you like you're
crazy.
Like what are you?
It's not in our texts.
Most of that knowledge has been lost.
But still there's an aspect of neglect going
on here because if you were someone who
believes in Abraham, in Moses, in David and
Solomon for the Christians in Jesus, and then
someone's going to come and say, I believe
in all of those two.
And there's one more.
His name is Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
And he brought another book, the Quran.
And it ended up being the second most
popular religion on the face of the earth
on trajectory to become the first in 2050.
Wouldn't you think that a sincere person would
at least check it out?
Would at least be like, wait, okay.
Well, I don't know.
But let me look into it.
Because this is big news if it's real.
If this is the real thing.
If they're actually, if my understanding of Jesus
was wrong.
And this is actually like the thing that
I'm supposed to follow.
Somebody who's sincere is going to at least
consider it.
What does it say about a person who
doesn't even consider it?
Who thinks, oh, this is just devil worshipers.
Evangelicals call us devil worshipers.
Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was a devil.
Right.
Or some of the more kind of polite
ones.
They just, oh, well, this is their culture
or, you know, Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
had helped, right?
You know, he has some sort of Christian
guy in the back coaching him, telling him
what to write, these sorts of things.
All far from the truth.
But somebody who's sincere is going to feel
the need to investigate.
And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says
here, they know, they know it just as
well as they know their children.
But the people who have lost themselves, the
people who have let themselves go, they won't
believe.
It's upon every single one of us to
nurture that ability to follow the truth when
it comes to us.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does this amazing
thing in the Qur'an.
It's one of my favorite things about the
Qur'an.
Sometimes he'll respond to a doubt that the
reader might have, but he doesn't mention the
doubt.
So you're reading something and you're like, well,
what about this other thing?
And then boom, Allah responds to it without
telling you, without naming it in the Qur
'an, right?
He does this in Surah Al-Baqarah.
He has the long list of all the
sins that Bani Israel did, right?
They broke the Sabbath and they asked about
the cow and all these sorts of things.
In the middle of all that long list
of what Bani Israel did, what does he
say?
Okay, very well known ayah.
Certainly the people who believe and the people
who were Jews and Christians and there's a
big difference of opinion who they are.
Whoever believes in Allah and the day of
judgment and did righteous deeds, they are going
to have their reward with their sustainer.
They will not have anything to fear, nor
will they be sad.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions this in
the middle of a long, long list of
Bani Israel's sins and transgressions.
And one of the reasons he does this,
one of the wisdoms behind it is because
the reader thinks in the middle of all
that list, was it every single one of
them?
Every single one of them was really that
bad?
That's like hard to imagine that every single
one of them would be that bad.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, it's as
if he's saying, nope, whoever was good, they're
going to get their reward.
But this was the general thrust and this
is the point for you.
This is the point I want you to
take away.
This is the lesson I want you to
learn.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does the
same thing here.
He's talking about the people who received the
book before.
He says that they've already let themselves rot
to the point where they cannot submit to
the truth.
They won't believe.
And then he says, وَمَنْ أَذْلَمُ مِمَّنِ افْتِرَىٰ
عَلَىٰ اللَّهِ كَذِبًا أَوْ كَذَبُ بِآيَاتِ It's almost
as if as a reader, you want to
say, well, is it that bad?
Do they really deserve that?
They were following something that Allah had sent
down.
Isn't it not really that big of a
deal?
Then Allah says, what is the worst possible
thing that somebody could do?
وَمَنْ أَذْلَمُ Or the most oppressive thing specifically
Allah says, وَمَنْ أَذْلَمُ مِمَّنِ افْتِرَىٰ عَلَىٰ اللَّهِ
كَذِبًا Who could be more oppressive than somebody
who invents a lie about Allah?
Worse than killing, worse than genocide, worse than
all of the horrible things that we know
in many other parts of the world today,
especially the Muslim world.
وَمَنْ أَذْلَمُ مِمَّنِ افْتِرَىٰ عَلَىٰ اللَّهِ كَذِبًا أَوْ
كَذَبُ بِآيَاتِ The two most oppressive things that
somebody could do is lie about Allah, checkmark
for the people of the book.
أَوْ كَذَبُ بِآيَاتِ Or reject Allah's signs when
it comes to them.
Here it comes, they're guilty on both counts,
right?
They were given the book, they were given
the prophet, they turn the prophet into a
god, they say, oh, he's the third of
three, the trinity, the son of God.
And then the Qur'an comes and they
reject it with all the miracles and the
prophethood and everything, and they reject it.
So what could be worse than that?
Then Allah SWT reminds us of what's at
the end of it all.
يَوْمَ نَحْشُرُهُمْ جَمِيعًا ثُمَّ نَحْشُرُهُمْ جَمِيعًا ثُمَّ نَقُولُ
لِلَّذِينَ أَشْرَكُوا أَيْنَ شُرَكَؤُكُمُ الَّذِينَ كُونُتُمْ تَزِعْمُونَ The
day when we gather everybody together and then
we will say to the people who used
to have idols, the people who used to
be the people of shirk, where are your
idols now?
Where are those things that you used to
worship?
The things that you used to allege could
save you.
ثُمَّ لَمْ تَكُنْ فِتْنَتُهُمْ إِلَّا أَنْ قَالُوا وَاللَّهِ
رَبِّنَا كَسْرًا وَاللَّهِ because it's a swear, وَاللَّهِ,
وَاللَّهِ الْعَظِيمِ وَاللَّهِ رَبِّنَا مَا كُنَّ مُشْرِكِينَ They're
lying.
They're confronted.
And they say, no, no, no, no, no.
We weren't really worshiping idols.
أُنظُرْ كَيْفَ كَذَبُوا عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ وَضَلَّ عَنْهُمْ مَا
كَانُوا يَفْتَرُونَ Look at how deluded and far
astray they have gone.
They've lied to themselves.
They've deluded themselves.
That's how deep they are in their confusion
and in their wrongdoing.
We're coming up to Maghrib time here.
I think we'll stop here.
والله تعالى أعلم Does anyone have any questions?
The question was, okay, if in a medical
field, sometimes we find ourselves in the position
where somebody is at the end of their
life, and they are not a Muslim.
They're from a different religious tradition.
And there's a moment of silence or, you
know, there's various ways in which you might
be asked to participate or not.
You're just there.
So how should you navigate that?
And the specific question was about, is it
okay to just stand in silence?
And yeah, it's okay to just stand in
silence.
You're not bearing witness to falsehood, right, by
standing in silence.
You're showing respect for the deceased.
And it's funny, actually.
It reminded me of a joke that someone
we were sitting with the other day.
They were an anesthesiologist in the community.
And they were saying, you know, instead of
telling them the count down from 10, they
should say, before they put people under that
way, just in case, you know, that was
funny.
But no, you're as long as there's a
difference between doing something and not doing something,
right?
Active and passive.
If you're not doing anything, you're not saying
anything, you're not holding hands in prayer, and
they're praying to Jesus or anything like that,
you're not doing anything wrong.
Even if they're going to do their own
religious rites, that's fine.
You're just there.
You're just standing, and you have a duty
to be there because of your profession and
even because it's common courtesy, right?
It's understood.
But if someone asks you to partake, someone
asks you to participate, you know, that's when
you can respectfully decline and say, I'm sorry,
that's against my beliefs or something like that.
And that's perfectly fine.
And other people do the same thing.
That's a good question.
I have a question.
Yes.
Can you just like explain about, so Benny
Israel, they were like questioning things.
So what is the difference between them questioning
things and a person?
We just want to get clarification.
Fantastic.
Well, that's exactly it.
The question is, okay, Benny Israel, they ask
certain questions.
Why is Benny Israel blamed for having questions,
but other people aren't?
And then he said, well, they're asking questions
to get clarification.
And that's exactly it.
There's two types of questions.
You can ask certain questions to get clarification.
That's a good question.
Do you want to know what to do?
Okay.
You're actually, it's a real question, right?
And then there's rhetorical questions.
There's questions that you don't really mean it,
right?
It's like you ever have one of your
children, you know, you tell them what to
do.
And they ask some question, but they're really
just trying to buy time.
You know, that's the sort of thing we're
talking about.
Somebody who asks, all things go back to
their intentions.
And if somebody has a bad intention, when
they're asking a question, they're not really asking
a question.
And Allah calls out Benny Israel for that.