Walead Mosaad – Session 2 Beautiful Islam
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So thank you all for rejoining us for
the 2nd week
of this class that's entitled,
Beautiful Islam.
And thank you to Sister Erum for taking
over for Doctor. Ayoob tonight, who I believe
is traveling. May Allah facilitate his travels and
give him a safe trip, and
return him back to his home, safely.
Insha'Allah.
So,
those of you who
joined us last week or if you didn't
catch kind of what we were talking about,
we entitled
these set of sessions,
Beautiful Islam.
And in the hope that we can explore,
you know,
the what was sometimes called the divide between,
spirituality
and religious practice.
Many people today,
I think if you ask them, Muslim and
non Muslim alike,
and if you ask them, you know, are
you do you feel like you're a spiritual
being? In other words, are you more than
the sum of your physical parts, and is
there something greater about the universe than just
yourself?
And in some way, do you feel connected
to that,
otherness or greatness about the universe? I think
many people will say yes.
However, if you ask them the question about,
specific
organized religion or religious practice,
I think you'll find less people saying yes.
So there is unfortunately,
to some degree a stigma
around
religious practice.
And we had mentioned, I believe in the
previous session,
that
let's talk from our perspective, the Muslim perspective.
Sometimes we as Muslims, we tend to get
in the way of ourselves.
And we've heard this from our teachers and
from others that really no one,
offends or can turn people away from Islam,
except for some themselves. You know, what was
the advice of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
to Ali and Ma'ad
Badiallahu Anhu when they went to Yemen
for Dawah,
Yesuru
or Yesira Walatwasserah.
Wabashira
Walatwasserah.
Yesira Walatwasserah.
Yeah. You facilitate for people.
Don't put undue hardship on them which is
also the tawasir.
Wabashira
walatunafira.
And give people glad tidings, bashira. It's kind
of a hard word translated English, this word
of,
which means,
you know, give them reason to be optimistic.
Give them reason to be hopeful.
Encourage them to,
do things that are pleasing to God
in a in a hopeful way, in an
optimistic
way. And don't do the opposite which is
10fir. Right?
10fir is,
to turn people away, to push people away.
One of the our teachers that I respect
greatly,
he came out with a recent book, Doctor
Abdul Hakim Winter, May Allah be pleased with
him.
And in the book he refers to
kind of this
phenomenon
lately of of Tengfir and he calls people
Tengfiriyun.
And I He's the first person actually that
I've seen kind of use the term in
that way. So, we don't want to be
Tengfiri Yoon,
right? We want to be Muslim Moon. So,
Tengfiri means we're we're pushing people away
by our own
acts, and by perhaps,
the
the false premise of what we associate to
be with our own piety.
Right? And,
one of the,
they say the affet,
one of the shortcomings,
that sometimes befalls people who are religiously committed,
especially those who are newly religiously committed after
not being committed,
is that they can have this sense of
piety and overbearingness.
And it's kind of because the light bulb
turned on in their head,
and they
are the lost to see why it doesn't
turn on for everybody else at the same
time. So,
sometimes they tend to be judgmental. So I,
you know, to give them benefit of the
doubt, I think it comes from a good
place.
But it's clearly indicative of a lack of
a
spiritual maturity.
So, you know, Islam is beautiful.
The prophet is the most beautiful human being
to have ever lived, and will ever live,
both
outwardly and inwardly.
And in as much as we're able to
imbibe,
those teachings and follow the way of Muhammad,
then we too can be beautiful, and we
too can
exhibit
beauty, and love, and compassion, and mercy.
And we can be,
beacons of that. No pun intended beacon foundation,
but we can be beacons of that. We
can, you know,
be that way for others. And that's really
the,
the legacy of,
the prophet, Muhammad SAW.
And,
it was just at this time last week,
right at the beginning, right at the end
of our session, I think, I got a
text message from a friend, who was informing
me that one of
our our shuh,
closest shoe actually that I've had in my
lifetime,
Sheikh Ahmed Tahir again,
rahimahullah,
who had just passed away
as as we were doing our class,
last week, so exactly 1 week ago.
And I bring him up, because I've been
thinking about him a lot, obviously.
And also to me he he kind of
exemplified
that
beautiful Islam.
And he did it in the role of
'alim. Right? He did it in the role
of scholar and he did it in the
role of,
min Kivar, mishaikh,
al Azhar.
He did it in the role of being
one of the,
principal and,
you know,
senior,
Shuh Scholars of Azhar University or or Jerm
Al Azhar in general of Azhar Mosque and
and Azhar University,
which is one of the more or most
renowned
places of Islamic learning in the world and
has been that way for centuries.
And so he kind of epitomized that, what
does that to me anyway? What does that
look like in terms of how a carries
themselves?
Right? And I can talk much about what
he taught,
but I can also talk just as much
or perhaps even more
about
what we learned and what we were able
to,
take away from his character, from his mannerisms,
from his gentleness,
from his what we believe to be sincere
concern for every single person that came into
contact with him. You know, these these are
the attributes of
prophetic legacy. Right? Of an if and nebawi.
And that's really what we're looking for. You
know? Who has this inheritance? Who has
this prophetic legacy in the way that they
whatever they do. And
you don't have to be
a scholar
at alzhat to carry that prophetic legacy. You
can be an emergency room physician, you can
be a school teacher,
You can be,
someone who doesn't necessarily have a career and
goes from one gig job to the next.
None of that defines the person. So whatever
in whatever role
that you're playing in life,
the primary role if you're a Muslim should
be that you avail yourself of something of
this
prophetic legacy. And if you do,
then
everything that you do will be beautiful, or
inshallah most things that you do will be
beautiful at least.
And people will then come,
to see that. And this really was the
secret of the dawah.
This was the secret of the spread of
Islam.
It wasn't spread by the sword. It wasn't
spread by violence.
It wasn't spread by,
coercion.
But it was spread by people seeing
something in this thing, in this great deen,
in this great way of the beauty of,
of Islam and the beauty of the prophet
Muhammad SAW. And
some people came by way of the beauty
of the Quran.
They read the Quran's like Omar Ibn Khattab
and he read from Surat Taha, I believe.
And he saw within those meanings
something beautiful and
unlike anything else
that he had come across before.
And there are others who came across
the prophet
himself and saw in him something unlike they've
never seen
before. And some of them, many of them
from Medina, for example, when they met Musa
ibn Umayr, who was the emissary of the
prophet they came across in him
someone unlike something or someone
that they had come across before.
And this is the Sir, you know, we
call it secret, and secret means something
conventionally that, only a few people know about.
But,
in Islamic terminology, Sir can also mean that
which is deep and innermost.
Right? That which is the kind of the
real
power behind something or the real driver behind
something. So I mean it in this sense.
And also in the conventional sense works as
well. That Sir, right, of of this deen,
of these teachings of Muhammad is
its ability to transform people,
into the most,
beautiful human beings
that ever were.
That's
and, make him amongst those who are
of the prophets and the messengers and of
the siddiqeen, of the awliya,
and of the shuhada, and the saliheen, and
the great and the great righteous people which,
insha'Allah, we're we believe he is.
This this was a life of beauty. And
and that beauty didn't mean that it was
just ease. There was a life of sacrifice.
There was a life sometimes of conflict,
that we know about. There is,
sometimes
dealing with very adverse circumstances, which can include
loss of wealth, loss of
life, loss of health.
And but even in those situations,
we have at our disposal
the spiritual tools by which
to what seems to be like an ugly
situation or an adverse situation,
and make it into something beautiful in the
manner
by which
we choose to deal with it.
So, you know I had spoke last week
a little bit or the last session about
some of the relationship of the Islamic
sciences. I kind of touched on it briefly.
I'm going to get a little bit deeper
into it
in in this,
session.
And I had mentioned
that the Anilat,
when they were trying to convey the meanings
of Islam,
they were writing for particular audiences, number well,
number 1. And number
2, they were also writing to
address a particular context
within their particular time period that they were
living.
And I mention this as being significant
because sometimes,
the, you know, what I believe to be
apparent beauty of these books, and the way
that these people wrote, and the means they're
trying to convey,
can be lost
if we fail to recognize the context of
those two things in particular.
Who they were writing for, and the context
that they're writing about.
And, there can be
something of a disconnect
or cognitive dissonance when we don't take those
things into consideration.
So, you know, you could come across a
book like Anan al Ghazani of Ahyeh al
Umidim,
which is widely considered to be one of
the most important
and influential books,
ever written, not just in kind of the
Islamic realm, but in general.
And in it, you know, he called it
Ihya al Muid deen, so the revival of
the Islamic sciences.
And there's a context behind that, right? And
perhaps, you know, when the prophet
will refer to
that the practice of the deen,
right, Which we'll talk about a little bit,
edin watadayoon. But the practice of the deen
can become a little bit tired
and worn.
Not because the deen is that way, but
because the practice of the people becomes that
way. And so then every 100 years,
the prophet said that Allah will send, men
yujadidullahhun
dinahu, oh amradinihim.
Prophet
will send someone every century or 100 years
its approximation,
someone
that will renew
the faith for them. So, not really
renewing or reforming Islam as some,
people who look at take a sort of
cursory look at Islam, and those who have
some agendas in mind, and thinks that Islam
needs
a sort of Protestant like reformation. That's what
happened with Martin Luther because there's something wrong
with it and so forth. But no, this
idea of renewal
or tashdeed is not the same as reform.
Reform means you take something apart and you
put it back together.
You know, Allah did not lie when he
said to all of us,
On this day,
I have completed the deen for you,
and I have completed the niyama, the blessing
that has been given to you. I have
made perfect the deen, and I have completed
the niyama,
the blessings, and I have been pleased with
Islam as your deen. So no one needs
to come along,
and take it apart,
and then reform it and say, now it
makes sense.
What may not make sense
is the manner
by which we
practice the deen. Right? In other words, our
own shortcomings,
our
own
deficiencies
in the manner by which we interpret, we
learn it, and then we practice it. And
this is where you know, we have to
put a little work. We have to do
some
ishtihad and some jihad, right?
Right.
So
which means intellectual scholarly activity
To understand the Quran of Sunnah, what it's
saying to us in our particular context.
And
to then extrapolate
rulings that apply in particular situations.
That's the
ichdihed part. And then the jihad part, which
is Jihad in nafs,
right, which is then struggling
for us to accept truth as it is,
to accept the reality as it is, and
then to
act upon that sort of knowledge that we
have of what is true and what is
not, and then what is real and what
is not. And that's kind of another realm
that is not so much an intellectual activity
but is more
a spiritual
activity.
And I think sometimes those 2 get conflated.
And that's why I mentioned last week,
Imam al Sha'arani, for example,
the great Egyptian scholar of
the 15th century. He said that,
el kinem or the books of theology,
which is usually
what we want to tend to study first.
And
you know, in the past several decades,
people have heard this word of aqida.
You know, what's his aqeedah? Is his aqeedah
straight or is it not straight? Or, you
know, is his aqeedah ahadhul sunnah or is
his Aqeedah like something else? And, you know,
and then people then like, what's Aqeedah? This
is so important
that we we need to know what it
is because it could be wrong and then
it can take us outside of Islam.
And so I think I'm gonna use a
word like hysteria.
Let's call it aqidah hysteria
around,
this term has caused many people to feel
unsure about like, you know, am I actually
doing this right? Am I really Muslim? Or
did I just say something that's gonna put
me outside of Islam?
And I've seen situations and I've been in
situations where people have really have said something
innocently or, you know, without intent or anything
like that, and then someone really kind of
very aggressively and abruptly comes up and says,
you know, I think you kind of left
a slam
right now. You have to retake your shahada
or something like that. You know, to me
that's not an example of beautiful Islam.
And it's misplacement and mishandling
of issues, yes, that were pertinent and very
important, and still are, but
not in the same manner as they were
back then. So, when a member Sharani says
the books of 'aqida or books of kenem
for the most part were written
to dispel
particular
polemical misconceptions
in their time, rather than to ingrain and
imbibe and inculcate
the meanings of marifa,
of knowing God in a way,
right, as he should be
known, right?
Having taqwa of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
as the Quran instructs us.
You know have the the haqq of the
tukha or the haqq of the taqwa
for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in the manner
that is
commensurate and indicative of His Majesty. And you
can't really do that unless you know Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Right? You know, sifat,
jalani or sifat al jalaniyah. You know the
attributes of majesty, and you know the attributes
of beauty. And you know how those 2,
both sides,
or both sets of
attributes are very important.
And then you learn come to learn that
you're going to have,
some personal struggles
in accepting all of that because we have
this thing called ego, and nef's, and passion,
and desire, and
lust and,
hubul Mahmeda and and like to be praised
and we like to feel like peep we
hold a special place in people's hearts. And,
you know, those feelings then may drive us
to
do things that are not in line with
this idea of taqwa or not in line
with this idea of, true madifa or true
knowledge of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So
I intend in our sessions here, and I'll
touch on a little bit tonight,
to talk about some of these aqidah issues.
But as I said before, our greater
objective will be, you know,
how do I then,
you know, imbibe that within myself on on
on on the spiritual plane, on the spiritual
level?
You know, if I I know that Allah
subhanahu wa'ala is 1 and he sees everything
that I do, how then does that translate
into
how I conduct myself, or how I try
to conduct myself, or how I see others,
or how I see,
adverse things that happen to me that I
feel like I don't like them. But nevertheless,
if I know from a point of aqeedah
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
fa'alu li na yurid,
he will
put into place and make things, make all
that he intends or desires happen and it
will happen, then
I should suspect that there's going to be
a way that I'm going to handle that
differently than if I did not know that,
than if I did not see that as
real.
So
so we said last week, books of Aqidah
and Mekele were not written primarily to lead
to the knowledge of God, but rather to
dispel canonical
misconceptions.
Similarly,
the books of fiqh, and I don't think
I talked about this last week. So when
we talk about jurisprudence and we talk about
manuals basically of a fit, when in one
of their school of law, whether it's Hanafi
or Maneki or Shafi'i or Hanbali, or even
some of the others that are lesser known,
they also were written for specific
reasons.
And that specific reason is to kind of
show us where the boundaries of the Sharia
are. So, this is haram, and this is
not haram. This is halal, and this is
not halal. This is obligatory, and this is
sunnah.
So, it more or less categorizes things.
But one thing you can make an argument
that the books of fiqh don't do,
is
to instruct upon moral and ethical behavior.
So it might tell you something is disliked
initially or it's merely permissible,
but it doesn't really tell you in your
specific situation
what should you be doing, or how should
you handle this situation,
or how should you deal with this situation
with ihsan.
And I'll tell you all kind of like
a little secret,
in the conventional sense. Not a lot of
people know.
If you read, if you base your let's
say marriage,
just upon what you read in the books
of fit,
and that's what you're going by, and how,
you know, in terms of treatment between husband
and wife, and you don't go by anything
else,
I can't say for certain, but I'm, I'm
pretty certain that once you get to that
point, your marriage is not doing well.
And, you know,
we say that you go to the chapters
in marriage, and then the one that follows
obviously divorce, is when the marriage is in
trouble.
So, the vixa 5th would actually tell you
how to treat your wife or how to
treat your husband. It may outline
rights and responsibilities or what you'd call duties
to one another.
But,
you know, marriage is not based upon just
a sense of duty from one partner to
the next, to the other. But there also
should be as the Quran mentions,
So, Mawaddah,
compassion, love, rahma, mercy.
So, these are what should be, you know,
underwriting your marriage, not
the very fine points of law that you
will find in in the books of faith.
And so again, depending upon how you approach
these particular disciplines, as long as I'm speaking
specifically to people who consider themselves to be,
to love elm or students of knowledge,
you can get into trouble with that.
By saying, you know,
this book in filth, it said that, you
know,
you have to serve me 3 square meals,
and that's what it is. Otherwise,
you're kind of doing mokalfah of the sharia,
and so forth.
I'm not aware of any madhab that actually
says it like that, but just say, for
argument's sake,
that's not the way to
go about conducting it. So our understanding of
how we read 5th, how we read Islamic
jurisprudence
also is quite important
when we are trying to figure out how
to,
do the right thing as it were.
And even I would say the books of
spiritual purification, Otto Salwuf,
I stated here, were primarily written to outline
the principles of spiritual purification
for different audiences and sometimes employed
highly specialist language that presumes
experiential knowledge of the reader. So not all
books of teske or tesauwuf necessarily
are going to be read and say, okay,
let's apply this
in this particular way. Some of them actually
outline or delineate,
very specific sort of relationships
that were specific to a particular context
between a teacher and completely
different
cultural context of 5 or 600 years ago
in,
you know, the the the reef mountains in
Morocco
where some of these practices were there versus
someone who's living in Detroit or in London,
or in,
Cairo for that matter, today in in 2021.
So again,
it has a
particular context,
underlying it, and and it's important to to
to recognize that. And so,
my conclusion
for why we kind of tend
to get it wrong a lot rather than
getting
it right, is the Quran is there, the
hadith is there, the sunnah is there. All
of the things that our predecessors predecessors were
reading,
we have access to them,
and we could be reading the same thing.
But yet we see
a different result. Right? We're not seeing,
at least
extensively, we're not seeing
kind of getting that same beautiful result
that we think we should be getting. So
the problem then is not with the deen.
Right? The problem is not with
the the sources of the deen or anything
like that, as people want to point out.
The problem is with us.
In other words, the problem is with the
tadayoon.
Right?
So is how you go about practicing and
applying the deen. This is where the issue
is. So we have a dearth of qualified
people actually,
who not just,
Hafizan musous, not just memorized what our predecessors
have said, and opinions that they came up
with, and meanings and understandings,
but to be able to take those understandings
and those meanings,
and
translate it and apply it to a world
that is very, very much different than the
world that those people lived in.
Than the ones that they saw, than what
they saw, and what they, you know, the
experience that they had. We don't have too
many people like that. There's not that many.
And we are, you know, unable to produce
people like that like we used to. And
I'm just thinking even on our Sheikh Sheikh
Ahmed again,
there's nobody who's gonna replace
him. There's no one now, today, this week,
who's going to sit in the chair that
he sat in, in Al Azhar, or sit
in the chair that he sat in in
JAMA ad Dardir
and do what he was doing, and teach
what he was teaching, and in the manner
that he was teaching, and command the
authority, and the love really
of all of the people around him, the
students, people that came into contact with him
like he did. So this is like a
thulma or a sathra. It's a it's a
wide gaping hole
in our Ummah.
Right? And this is what the Prophet referred
to in the hadith of Mary by Bukhari.
Allah does not like rip knowledge
from the Ummah, walaakin,
biqabd al olamah.
But rather by,
taking the olamah.
So that means
Quran and Sunnah is going to remain.
The actual text of the Quran and of
the Sunnah of the Hadith, anyone can go
and Google now and go look all that
up. That's going to remain, and we know
it's going to remain till the very last.
Some hadith indicate
that, you know, the very last thing to
go will be even the Quran from the
pages of the Mus'haf will be gone when
the hour is imminent.
But we're not there yet.
But now we are in the period where,
there is this Kabdul Alameh.
Another Sheikh Mohammed
Amin Saraj
of Turkey also passed away this week. A
couple weeks ago,
Murabit Ahmed Fayed of Mauritania,
also a great Medici scholar,
passed away.
And several months ago the great Muhamaddith of
Sham, theqtor Muldoon Etr, our Sheikh as well,
passed away, Raheem Muhammadu al Jami'al.
So,
it's it's continuing, it's increasing. And for every
one of those people that has gone, I
can't think of a person that replaces them.
I can't I don't have a conception of
someone who's like, okay, they're they're deputy or,
you know, and they're going to kind of
plug in the hole and take over.
Nothing like that. They had many students,
and they had many people benefit from them.
But to say that any one of them,
or any one of us could,
take over not take over, but kind of
occupy and and fill up that gaping hole
as I mentioned,
no one, much in the same way, who
could fill the gaping hole when the prophet
left this dunya?
As great as Abu Bakr Siddiq is, as
great as Sayyid Nama is, as great as
Sayyid N'ali, as great as Sayyid N'athman, all
the Sahaba,
put them all together, still
they can't they can't
do or be what the prophet
was.
So,
you know, whatever time we have left in
this dunya, each one of us, whether it
be decades or days or months or years,
who knows,
We want to follow the the the Qur'anic
directive, waabuddhulabaqahata
yaqal yaqeen.
We want to worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
until the yaqeen,
the absolute yaqeen, the absolute certainty upon death,
and we see the reality as it truly
is.
There are many things in this particular realm
that you occupy,
the reality as it truly is. But once
death comes,
there's no more falsehood, there's no falsity, there's
no more fake news.
You know, there's no more demagogues, there's no
more people trying to make that which is
false look real.
It's done.
Once you take that last breath,
and then you open your eyes again in
a sense in the next realm, then you'll
be in a place of complete haq,
complete yakin.
But then we know at that point, if
you didn't already know that before you died,
it's too late.
So,
Worship your Lord, until that moment comes upon
you, the last moment.
So,
looking,
a kind of a deeper look into
why is it, let's say,
somewhat difficult
to practice Islam today? And this is important
because we're gonna think about it once we
identify some of these difficulties,
then we can begin to
try to look at remedies, and, or at
least on a personal level, what we can
do about it.
So
one of the things that has crept into
our discourse,
and when I say our, not just here
in the United States,
but really everywhere,
is polemics and sectarianism.
So, everybody's heard the terms of Wahhabi, and
Salafi, and Sufi, and Ikhwani,
and Shih'i and Zaidi and,
on the Minhaj and not on the Minhaj.
All of these different
categories and classifications. And probably for the average
or lay Muslim,
but what do those terms mean, and why
is that important, and,
you know, how does that affect how we
live and and how to be a Muslim?
And it sounds all very complicated,
and
complex. And I'm not where to start with
that. And who who are who are in
the right and who are in the wrong.
Could there be more than one right?
So,
you know, this discourse
unfortunately
heavily affects,
I think,
many people who are not in the masajid,
right? Many people don't even come to the
mosque, or come to the class, or come
to the gatherings, or come to aid even.
But they've seen much of that, or they've
exposed been exposed to enough of it
that they figure that Islam is not something
for them.
So, this is one of the,
the difficulties. And I think
we begin on a personal level, and then
hopefully take it to a communal level. We
have to root out these polemics.
Yes,
there is descent,
descent and divergence of opinion
in terms of how we interpret the Quran
and the sunnah, how we interpret Islam to
begin with. But there is also boundaries
by which we understand what Islam is, what
Islam is
not. And so,
the teaching of the prophet Muhammad
are going to be very certain about certain
things.
And other things, there's going to be more
biodiversity
of opinion.
And that's always existed even from the time
of the companions, even from times of the
times of the Sahaba.
And
they knew they had an edeb
of how to handle an etiquette, how to
deal with diversity of opinion to deal with
dissent.
We have almost completely lost that. You go
on most social media accounts today and look
at what people are writing,
and
most of the time
it it it it descends down into something
quite ugly and name calling, and, you know,
I've seen people call each other kefir
on on on the Facebook and on the
social media and
fasit and you're off the minhaj and,
you know, really
despicable things. And these are people who seem
outwardly outwardly having their profile pics, pictures of
the Kaaba or pictures of the mosque of
the prophet, so I send them or something
like that.
But then, this is the behavior that we
see. This is the kind of the discourse.
They actually think they're doing a service because
they are rejecting the.
Right?
They are, you know, enjoining the good and
they're forbidding the bad. And so they are
these keyboard warriors and they have to root
out,
you know, all of this vault in, and
all of this falsehood that they may see
on social media, and they have to call
out people when they need to be called
out because this is upholding justice,
and so forth.
And,
I don't have like a
algorithmic solution to that, about what we should
do about it, but I think certainly it
begins with
personal character, and it begins with tasquiatineffs,
And it begins also with intentionality.
We're going to talk a little about intentionality
here, but I'm going to give it greater
attention in the other classes. Those of you
who are interested that I'm doing on Friday
nights at 9 PM
with Majlis in in Southern California, which is
also via Zoom. But we're gonna
and that's called beautify your home, so I'm
kind of on this beautify thing right now.
But,
that we're going to talk more about intentionality,
because,
I mean, really, as I just stated a
few minutes ago, we have the same kohang,
we have the same sunnah,
we have the same books,
we have everything that our predecessors have.
We pray like they do.
Right? We don't we don't pray, we actually
know how the prophet prayed. We know what
he looks like when he prayed. We know
that he stood and that he did the
Quran Sujood, and, you know, all of that
is known, and we know what he read
In the Fatihaal, he read the Surah, and
we even know what he said on certain
occasions, and
so we have all of that. So what's
the difference?
Intentionality.
Our intentions are different.
Right, the difference between someone whose prayer is
elevating them to
these
doors and windows of meaning. And the one
who's standing next to him and is thinking
about,
you know, the next
Netflix release,
is intentionality.
Right? One has an intention here,
and this one maybe not. And even beyond
intentionality,
one may be taking steps
actively
to
help themselves concentrate and focus in prayer.
Right? And so, they recognize their own shortcomings
and weaknesses, and they do something about it.
Where someone is thinking, well, I'm praying,
you know, and you know, I got to
go soon, but
I'm actually physically doing it, so I'm doing
what I'm supposed to do. And there's a
lack of awareness and a lack of recognition
of, wait, I I am a complex creature.
I do have my physical
outward attributes, but I also have inward attributes
that
are affected by what comes in outwardly.
So, what I look at, what I hear,
what I choose to listen to, the conversations
I choose to partake in,
the thoughts even.
There are people who are arbeb al ahuwal,
as some of the books of the salawaf
mentioned,
who are
the masters of the ahuwal,
the masters of the inner states.
So, their level of Taqwa is not
just outwardly,
like, don't go there, don't touch this, or
don't say that.
But
even inwardly,
to the level of, I shouldn't think that.
I shouldn't have isdira or ahtifaar akhin Muslim.
I shouldn't think lesser
of that Muslim who just came into the
mosque because maybe his clothes look a little
bit tattered and not as,
you know, pressed and as clean as I
think they ought to be. And then I
judge them. Right? But there are people who
are self aware to the extent where they
say, wait a minute. Stop.
You have no right to judge that person
based upon what they're wearing, because there could
be a whole story behind that. And who
are you to judge? How would you know?
You don't know their hat. You don't know
their state. So you're looking at the the,
you know, judging the book by its cover,
looking at that word, and then you're making
some statements. Even if it's in your head,
in your thoughts,
but nonetheless,
those thoughts are going to affect you and
affect the ability of of things like the
prayer,
of things like reading Quran, of things like
tasbih,
affecting you inwardly.
Didn't the prophet say in one of the
hadith, and I think it's a Muslim,
that the man who raises his hands to
the sky, and ask Allah for things, but
his,
his,
his,
and his,
The one who's outwardly,
they have a house and they have, clothes,
and they have things to eat.
But, you know,
haram sources of how they procured it, or
at least even shubha,
mashbu.
There may be some, you know, shady things
about it. And then they raise their hands
and say, Allah give me this and give
me that.
He said, how can Allah answer, give him
what he wants,
when he he's not even aware of himself?
Not even aware of the things that he's
doing.
And then the 3 people who will be
The first three people who will be dragged
to * fire.
1 of them
will come to Allah
and said,
you know, what you have and what you're
showing? He said,
You know, I I I fought in your
way Allah
He said, kazap'd.
You did that hafta yukhullaka jari.
You only did that so that it could
be said that you're courageous. So, you got
your courage in dunya, but take him off
and drag him to hellfire.
And then the one who's who
had much wealth,
and he said, I spent it on this
charity, and I spent it on this thing,
and this masjid, and these orphans, and so
forth.
Said, kadab, you didn't spend it for that.
He spent, So,
it would be said that you are generous
and people will have that in their hearts
for you. Take him off too.
And then the 'alim,
the scholar,
that will be said to him,
what did you bring? He said,
I know I learned and I taught people
and It's like a salakatjar, he's like, kadab.
He only said that so people will think
that you are ali. So it will be
said about you, so that you have Mahmeda.
People will praise you. Kedap, take him off
too.
All
3, the common thing between them is their
intentions.
They did them for different intentions.
The first hadith narrated in the collection of
buhari. Innamal aamalu bin niyat. He thought this
was the most important thing that he started
the book with. Just like Allah put the
Fatiha at the beginning of the Quran,
he instructed the prophet put the Fatiha as
the first surah, even though it's not the
first surah to be revealed.
But put it in the beginning because it
is the
key. Right? Key is the thing that goes
in the beginning that opens everything else. Inam
al amanu biniyatim al Abuqari said put this
in the beginning, he put it in the
beginning because this is the key by which
everything else is understood.
And so,
intentions and intentionality
is really the whole thing.
And it's not so much about what you
see outwardly.
Right? We are a culture now that's very
much immersed
in the outward,
and
immersed in,
you know,
doing things.
Right? We have this very sort of, you
know,
hands have to be kept busy, and very
activist sort of,
take on how we should go about doing
things, and be doing something.
Right? But sometimes,
that doing something has to happen in the
heart first.
There has to be, you know, methodologies that
have to be embraced, and techniques that have
to be implemented
to help one get over their own selves.
And then,
right? Then you will see many amazing things.
You know, how were this small group of
Arabs that nobody had any
any respect for, didn't think they were gonna
do anything, they weren't even really a nation
or a country, they were not unified, they're
Byzantine Empire and they were knocking on the
doors of Constantinople.
How is that?
It was not except by,
these powerful
inner states that they embodied, that they exuded.
So, polemics and sectarianism is a major issue.
I touched upon these two next ones, the
gap between traditional methodologies and modern discourse. So,
there's a context that we're dealing with here
that we haven't really,
I think in many places been
to kind of reconcile between those things and,
you know, how do I go about living
my life as
a modern person,
but also very Muslim person?
How do I how do I marry those
2 things? Or how do I reconcile
those two things? What does that look like?
We'll be talking more about that.
As I mentioned also, a dearth of qualified
teachers,
and that's something that needs to be remedied.
We need to have more people dedicated to
actually learning, and also the best people.
So,
I take me no offence, but the best
people, the smartest people,
the people who have the most aptitude, the
people who
will will will learn the most or garner
the most. Now, most of the brightest minds
are going to STEM fields, they're going to
medicine, they're going to engineering, but we need
people who are going
to the study of the Sharia and the
study of the Islamic sciences.
And we also have to up our game
in the way that we teach them.
Right?
We can't take the best and brightest minds
and then give them,
like
a mode or a method of teaching that's
not indicative of those brightest minds.
So, both senses have to be up to
bid a little bit.
And then the 4th thing that I mentioned
here in difficulty practice to learn today,
the rigors of contemporary
technology,
technologically
driven
life.
So this is kind of related to
the second one,
in the sense that
there's something modern about technology.
And
you know, I'm not going to sit here
and pontificate and say, you know, get rid
of your devices and get rid of your
iPhone and,
you know, we're benefiting from right now as
we speak. I'm here sitting, I don't see
you,
really,
and you see me, but you see an
image of me projected on some
technology, technological device, so
there is some benefit in it. We're not
going to say that there's not, but
we have things that we need to watch
out for, that it's
driving us rather than us driving them.
Technology is driving the way that we live
rather than being tools at our disposal
to further
help us and assist us in living the
type of life that we want to live.
And certainly technology can play that role. And
there was certainly technology in the time of
the prophet
that wasn't there, let's say, you know, in
epochs before that that previous prophets didn't have.
So,
you know, they made use of camels and
horses,
that maybe,
previous
prophets in the very beginning didn't have that.
And they had
certain technological
modes of warfare that may have been available
in their time or wasn't before. So, the
prophet said then,
even embrace new technologies at times,
he embraced the khandaq, or a hitherto unknown
form of technology. One said man in Farsi,
and
the Confederates 10,000 strong army was
about to surround Medina. And one of the
ideas was we go out and fight them.
Another one said we stay back and fight
them from our our homes. And then some
men in Pharisee said, well, in Persia we
build a ditch
that they can't cross.
And that was something unknown to the Arabian
Peninsula.
But yet, nevertheless, the prophet
embraced that. He also embraced the signet ring
when he was told that you if you
send letters to
Caesar, and you send letters to,
the,
the Persian
king and so forth, and then Najashi,
Kisra and Najashi, then they may not accept
it unless they have some authentication.
And they said they authenticate by a signet
ring. So, we took a signet ring, a
ring that you know makes an imprint, and
that's authenticated and that's a very famous ring
that we know of that had,
Allah Rasool Muhammad So,
there's nothing wrong conceptually
with
employing
technologies, but
it has to be a guided
employment of technology. Not the technology is kind
of leading us around, but we're using it
in a manner that is beneficial, in a
manner that is not detrimental. So
I'm not saying that there's hard and fast
rules about this, but I'm kind of just
saying on a theoretical conceptual level,
then we have to
think about how we deal with technology, especially
when
there
are addictive things built into it, and that
can affect children very adversely from a very
young age.
I was recently on a trip and I
saw children who didn't have technology because their
country can't afford it.
And I saw a marked difference
in 2, 3, 4 year olds
than I see 2, 3, 4 year olds
in the United States.
And
I've been in gatherings and children on that
age level, they grab their parents' phone or
they maybe even have their own, and that's
just what all they're doing the whole time
they're sitting
there. Versus
seeing what I think to be normal,
and kids running around and emulating adults,
and things that they do, and actually talking
with them, and having exchanges,
and things like that, a more, I think,
healthy
way of raising children, have a relationship with
them. So these are things collectively we have
to think about,
Insha'Allah.
And
you know, they will,
they will come through. But I think for
now, since I've
more or less run out of the hour
and I'll leave some time for questions,
I will stop here until the
next time we meet with Islam.