The Wisdom of Islam – Ramadan Series

Ramadan is like a refuge. We look forward to it most of the year and we're happy when it comes. And Ramadan is sort of like spring for the believer, right? It proves to us that things that we normally think of as impossible are actually possible. Once again, things like fasting for 30 days in a row, finishing the core and worshipping late into the night. All these sorts of things that in a normal week, any old time of the year, it might seem impossible. Now they seem possible. It's constructed by Allah's power to otter, with wisdom, with beauty, and with reason. And so this Ramadan, we're going to be looking at the wisdom of Islam, piece by piece, our beliefs, our actions, our

responsibilities and our obligations. One of the fundamental things that we believe about Allah subhanaw taala is that he is the most wise Hakeem and so his religion and Islam is also wise it is something that has wisdom behind it. And if you do to double if you do reflection and you do contemplation, if you contemplate on the different parts of Allah's Deen, you will actually find that there is more wisdom than you could ever imagine, even if we begin with something as simple as faith, Eman, there is tremendous wisdom in what Eman is what is faith.

In Islam, faith has to do with three things has to do with the things that you say, what's in your heart, and the actions that you perform. And there's wisdom, and faith being all three of these things. When it comes to the things that we say, there's amazing wisdom behind faith being part of the things that we say.

Because we have to use one part of our body in order to speak and that part is the tongue. And for many of us when we're breathing, while when we're speaking, air has to come out, it has to pass through that tongue, it has to pass over that tongue around that tongue in order to come out and make noise. There's nothing more central, perhaps to our life as a human being than our breath.

Even a lot of sort of secular meditation practices start by bringing us back to our breath, to draw attention to the fact that we are here. And now in the present. We are a living being we have a heartbeat, we have these sorts of cycles. And this makes us feel more connected with the world around us. Well, there's something even more going on, that is present when we say that faith is something that we set, because when we speak and we're breathing this air and it passes over or around our tongues, it should make us think we stop and close our eyes and think where did this breath come from, where the ability to breathe come from where the capacity the Oregon that we have

these lungs, in our chests, where to come from this air that we breathe, that happens to be just the correct mixture of elements and molecules that we can benefit from, and survive with and thrive with? Where did it come from.

It all came of course from the Creator from Allah subhanaw taala.

And so when we recognize this, then we can use our tongue to actually give praise to Allah. And thank Allah, La ilaha illa Allah, or if it's test be, right, we say certain formulas of vicar like Subhan, Allah Alhamdulillah these are things that we're now giving glory to the Creator, every single breath that we take, we breathe in.

And it has a new purpose. When we breathe out, we thank the one who gave us the breath. So the fact that faith is partly how we use our tongues, and the things that we do to express our gratitude for that it's an amazing piece of wisdom. There's wisdom behind that. It's also incredibly wise that faith is not simply what our tongue say, because as you and I know very, very well people can lie, right? People can say things that they don't really feel.

And not everybody has the same capacity to speak the tongue as an organ like any other organ. It can be strong or it can be weak. Some people they have a disability, some people have a speech impediment.

And so faith is not limited to the tongue. But faith is also in the heart. And so that means that even if you are in a situation, whether it's a permanent situation or a temporary situation where you can't speak, you can't even move your tongue.

You can still have the faith in your heart and Allah subhanaw taala knows he is at Ali Maccabi, the one who's informed

About everything. This mirror is something else, which is the fact that in this life, we don't always, we don't always have the benefit of being understood. Sometimes we have a good intention. We try to do things with a good intention, other people misinterpret us, or they misunderstand us. And they think that we're trying to do something bad.

And you can try to convince that person, and you can talk until you're blue in the face, but it's not going to make them believe you.

But Allah subhanaw taala knows what's in our hearts. And so it gives us hope, for a day when we're going to be rewarded according to what our hearts held what our hearts believed.

So faith is part of what we can do with our tongues. It's what's in our hearts. But that's not all. It's also on our limbs. It's also action. And so when you look to the creation, you see those who serve a loss of penance, oughta who try to bring about a loss glory in the earth with how they treat other people and how they take care of the earth and how they take care of everything around them.

This is something that demonstrates faith. So there's tremendous wisdom in faith not being restricted to any one of these. It's not restricted to the tongue. It's not restricted to the heart. It's not restricted to the limbs or to action. But faith is all three