Yasir Khan – Weekly Seerah Session
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AI: Transcript ©
We're gonna continue
in our Sira Halaka.
Last time we spoke about how
the prophet began
to give openly.
And, of course,
when you start to give
openly, when you start to call to Islam
openly,
it's not just calling, but it's actually
challenging.
It's actually challenging the current way of life,
the current people who hold power, and the
current, you know,
set of morale or ethics.
So, of course, the people who are comfortable,
the people who are running the show, the
people who have it their way,
they're going to stand against it because they
don't want that change.
And the main change is that Islam is
calling what's the main what's the main cause
for opposition?
The main cause for opposition
is that Islam calls for complete authority of
Allah
Whereas the people, they want authority for themselves.
The people, they want to be in control,
they want to be the ones to make
the decision. They want to be the one
to tell people what to do. But Islam
is the opposite. Islam is telling people
how everybody should be treated. So it's no
longer, okay, just this one family is going
to get rich.
It's going to be a system of zakat
is going to be placed. It's no longer
that people are going to come and specifically
do tawaf this way. No. It's going to
be the way Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wants
it to be done. So, of course, when
you are challenging
the way of life, you're challenging authority, you're
challenging all of that, everybody
is standing against it now.
So when they stand against it, the first
thing that they do
and remember, we covered in the day the
in the days of jahiliyah
that there was no such system as police,
no such system as court, as judge, as
lawyer, anything like that. So they can't say
that, you know what? We're we're suing the
prophet
for such and such. I'll see you in
court. Nothing like that. There's no such thing
as like, okay, this guy is doing this
to our society. It's against this code, so
lock him up in jail. You can't do
that. So what was the system at the
time? The system was a tribal system. If
you had an issue with someone, you had
to discuss it with the tribe specifically because
if you cause any harm to this tribe,
then the people from his tribe are going
to come and go to attack you. So
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is from the
Banu Hashim. And the leader of the Banu
Hashim at this point after Abdul Muttalib
is Abu Talib.
So the first person that they all go
to is Abu Talib. And tell Abu Talib,
listen, your nephew has come and he's challenging
the ways of our forefathers.
He's challenging the ways of
how we do things. He's just creating this,
you know, friction in society, and we really
need you to work on him and he
needs to stop.
And, you know, the Abu Talib clearly speaks
to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that,
hey, this is going on and, you know,
people are kinda standing against it. A prophet
is like, my uncle, I have been ordered
by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. I can't do
this. Abu Talib is trying to tell him,
listen, we don't want this extra burden of
stress and pressure and people doing all this
to us. He kept going back with the
prophet
but when he realized that this is the
mission of the prophet
Abu Talib told him that, listen. I'm with
you. Whatever you want to do, I will
be protecting you. I'm with you. Whatever you
want to do, I'll be protecting you. Now,
again, these people, of course, they, you know,
they're put in this tough situation
because if they do something to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
Abu Talib is gonna go and the whole
Banu Hashim tribe is going to attack the
tribe that did something, and there's going to
be a civil war. So they can't do
anything. So Abu Talib clearly didn't do any
difference. So they're like, you know what? Let's
go and make a deal with Abu Talib.
And the deal we're going to make is
that listen. This is your nephew. Right? And
yes, at the time people took a lot
of pride in how many children they had
and all that because that meant strength for
you. This is your child. This is your
this is a male in your house. What
if we were to give you another male
in the house?
What if we were to give you another
male? You take care of him. We will
we'll give you one of our sons and
you give him to us, so man for
a man and that's it. Done.
Abu Talib is like, are you crazy?
You want me to give you my son
so you could go kill him and give
me your son till I could raise him
for you? Like, does this even make any
sense?
Right? So, of course, that was not a
deal that goes on. And so at this
point, they realize
that, you know, working with Abu Tared really
isn't going to make a difference.
So now you have to start to
take things into your own hands.
Now taking things into your own hands, of
course, as I said, they can't kill him,
they can't harm him. He's protected by the
whole tribe. So what you have to do
is now
somehow
create
a negative PR against him. Right? You know,
create negative,
image of him.
Tell people all types of lies about him.
You gotta do something to basically stop him.
And they don't just try one thing or
two things or three. They try a multitude
of things to try to stop the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
But the main thing that they start with
is that there's one thing
that just
they knew that that was the catalyst.
That was that thing that just attracted the
people, and we gotta put an end to
this as soon as possible. What was that?
That was the Quran.
Anybody who would hear it, they would be
in shock.
The people there,
they knew
they knew the Arabic language very well.
They knew poetry very well.
There was nothing else that they could be
busy with. There's no media technology, nothing else.
The only thing they put their efforts into
was language.
So they're so involved in knowing every minute
nuance
in language and sentences and prose and poetry
and all of that that it really attract,
attracted them. So now at this point,
they when they hear the Quran, especially when
they hear with the Tajweed,
when they hear it the way it's recited,
anybody who hears it, they're like, oh, this
is something else. This is, like, this is
not from this world. And immediately that becomes
an automatic
message to Islam. They don't need to go
put banners. They don't need to do it.
Somebody who hears the Quran, that's it. It's
done. Subhanallah. One of the stories we know
is that one of
the one even though this happens a little
bit later, but it just goes to show
you the, you know, the influence of the
Quran.
The influence of the Quran, how it penetrates
to the hearts.
One time a person comes from the tribe
of those.
A person comes from a different tribe from
Yemen. And as soon as he come, the
Quraysh, Abu Jahl goes to him and people
go to him, hey. Listen. You better not
listen to this guy. He's crazy.
He's gonna divide your family, this, that.
He comes and he's a leader in his
home. He's a leader in his people. So
you better not listen to this guy. He's
no good for you guys. So to
fail, he said that what I did is
I took cotton balls and I put it
inside my ears because I don't want to
hear him by mistake.
And so one day,
I was like,
not to fail. You're,
you know, you're a smart enough guy. Why
can't you be able to become a judge
yourself to know what's good and what's bad?
You know language, you know poetry, you know
all that, and you're a sensible guy so
go listen to it. So when I listened
to the
recitation of the prophet
as he was praying,
my heart was captivated.
I went to the prophet
and I said, what is this? And when
he started to explain and when he recited
the Quran, immediately right there and then I
accepted Islam.
Immediately right there and then I accepted Islam.
There's so many stories. Even the enemies of
Islam
that when they used to hear the Quran,
they could not, you know, hide from its
captivating
capability. For example, one time, the prophet
would wake up in the middle of the
night, go to the area where the Kaaba
is, and he would stand there and start
reciting the Quran.
One night,
the prophet
is reciting. And some of the very staunch
enemies of Islam, for example,
Abu Jahl and Asana, Afna Subdu Shureikh and
Abu Sufyan.
These people are there and they're listening. Now
they're all hiding from each other. They don't
know that the other person is there. But
the Quran is so captivating that they're listening
over there quietly thinking the other person doesn't
know. But one sees him, one sees the
other, the other sees the other. And they
see that this is going on, but they're
listening to the Quran and they just when
they see each other, they quickly dismiss as
if nothing happened. Oh, nothing happened. Right? The
next day, each of them come out again
from different corners and each of them is
listening to the Quran quietly.
And then again, they see each other and
they're like, as if nothing happened, just dismiss.
And then the 3rd day, same thing happens.
And at this point,
they meet each other. They're like, listen. We
why are you here? Why are you listening
to this? And then the others are like,
what? And then they go to each other
and they're like, what do you think?
And when they go to Abu Sufyan, they're
like, I don't know. It's just something about
it I can't explain.
I can't explain.
When it comes to Abu Jahal, he's like,
listen.
It's clear.
The
Banu Hashim,
they
this is this is a competition between our
tribe and their tribe.
The Banu Hashim,
they clearly tried,
you know, that
they are better than us and so when
they were the most hospitable people,
we basically competed with them by spending our
wealth and hosting people.
Then when they were the people to, you
know, take care of the Kaaba, we're like,
we're gonna take care of the Kaaba too.
So whatever the Banu Hashim did, we tried
to compete with them and say, we are
gonna do it as well.
But then
when
they claim that now they have a prophet,
how the heck are we gonna compete with
this?
We can't compete with this. So we're never
going to accept his prophethood. Why? Because we
can't compete with this. So you kind of
start to see
the rust in the heart. You kinda see
that they're realizing the influence of the Quran.
They're realizing that it is the truth, but
because of different reasons that they have in
their heart, you know, they are going to
cover. They're not going to be able to
see the reality. And this happens all the
time that when you make up your mind
or you have something in your mind, doesn't
matter who comes to you and tries to
explain to you otherwise that, hey. This is
like this or this is like that. You
won't understand because that's it. You've made up
your mind, and that's what happened at this
time. Now, of course, as I said, the
Quran is being recited, and it's being recited,
you know, privately, and people are going and
hiddenly listening over here, and people are hiddenly
just listening. But one day, they're the Sahaba
are all sitting in Darul Arakam.
And they're like, listen, why are we just
like quietly saying it? Why don't why don't
we go and just openly recite the Quran?
Right? Because you know the Sahaba, they always
had this longing.
I wish we could do something where people
could just accept Islam, man. This is so
clear. This is Haqq. This is beautiful. I
wish people could just accept. And so they're
thinking this way. What if, you know,
what if we were to just go and
make this, you know, recitation and everybody will
hear it and then everybody will know about
it and maybe this will do something. Why
don't we just go recite the Quran? And
so the different Sahab are pondering and then
Abdullah bin Masood radiallahu anhu, he's like, I'm
gonna go recite it. And the Sahab are
like, no. No. No. No. You're not going.
Why? Because you're not even a Qurayshi.
If you're not a Qurayshi, what can happen?
Remember, we said the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
is protected. Why? Because he is a Qurayshi
and his tribe is protecting him.
Ibn Masood, you don't have a family here.
You don't have a tribe to protect you.
So if you do something out of the
ordinary, they're gonna come and they're gonna attack
you and then who's gonna protect you? And
so Abdullah bin Masood is like, I don't
care. I'm just gonna go. I'm gonna reside
anyway. Abdullah bin Masood, the next day he
goes to the,
to to the Kaaba and he goes and
recites,
right, loudly, Surah Ar Rahman. And as he's
reciting,
people are looking like, what is this?
People are captivated
because, again,
yes, it's Arabic. It's their language, but the
way it's recited,
it's it it it really captures their hearts
and everybody stops and everybody's like, ah, this
is the guy, Mohammed. He's one of his
guards. Oh, this is he belongs to Mohammed?
Go and start beating him up beating him
up so much that he was close to
death.
Then when he goes back, the Sahaba is
like, see we told you don't do it.
Look what happened to you. He's like, well,
like, I'll go again tomorrow and I'll do
it. Right? This was their zeal for the
thing. They nothing stopped. They know we're gonna
go and we're gonna basically recite the Quran.
That's it. Right? So this is how the
Quran is now getting introduced to the people,
and the people are, you know, being basically
completely captivated. Abu Abu Bakr
when he would recite, the women would come,
the children would come, and they would stand
outside the house and they would cry.
They would cry. There's so many times where
people individually
goes to the prophet
to recite,
and they're just like,
that that's it. It's like, please stop. That's
it. For example, one of the story is
one of the leaders of the Quraysh, he
goes to the prophet
and he's like, listen. You're such a respected
person.
You basically have everything that you want. Right?
Now listen.
Whatever you want from us, we're ready to
give you. You want the most money, we
will collect all the money in the world,
give it to you. You'll be the richest
of us. You want the power, we will
collect all. We will all agree on the
fact that you become our leader. What? You
want a doctor? You want to marry someone?
Whatever it is, we're ready to give it
to you. And he kept going and going
and going, and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam kept on listening. And then he's like,
are you done? I guess I'm done. And
he starts to recite Surah Fusilat.
And when he's reciting, Abu's like, please stop.
Stop. The azaab of Allah is going to
come on me. Stop.
He's backing out backing out. Let's stop.
Similarly,
he
was the Shakespeare of his time.
He was such an such he he was
he was the leader of the the tribe
of Abu Jahal. Right?
Father of,
Khalid Abu Waleed.
He was basically
the, you know, the the the standard or
the peak knowing
the the poetry so well that there was
nobody better than him. And so one day
he goes to the prophet
and he basically starts to talk to him
that, listen, why don't you work with us?
Please stop your way. This thing, that thing.
And the prophet
starts to recite. When he starts to recite
the Quran,
is so shocked,
so astonished
that
he's he goes back and he tells his
people,
I have traveled.
I have listened to poetry. I have listened
to all types of.
This is not the words. This is not
the speech of ins or jinn. This is
not the speech of insan or jinnat.
This is something out of this world. The
sweetness and the tenderness and the softness of
this this this Quran that is being this
is something else that we cannot
we don't know what the what what this
is.
The people are like, oh, wow. So they're
kind of influenced. Now Abu Jahl, he is,
you know, he's the furan of this ummah,
so he's gonna go and do his work.
So he tell me, what the heck are
you saying? You're saying all this praise about
the Quran. You know what this is doing?
This is gonna make everybody now start liking
the Quran. You have to now go back
and you gotta change what you say. Go
back and take your statements.
Right? Go back and reverse on what you
said. And he's like, what do you what
what do you want me to say?
He's like, I don't know. Say he's a
crazy person.
He's like, look. We've seen crazy person. We
know how they act. We know how they
speak. He's clearly not a crazy person.
Okay. Alright. Say he's a poet. He's like,
listen. I am the best poet around.
And what he has, this is not poetry
at all. Okay. See, he's a magician.
Like, listen. We've seen magicians, how they work
and the formation, all that. He's not a
magician. Okay. See, he's saying he's a soothsayer.
He's fortune teller.
We've seen we see fortune tellers everywhere. He's
done like this.
So Abu Jahal is like, listen. I don't
care what you say, but you need to
go back on your word and you need
to say. Right?
He goes back. He's like, give me some
time. He goes back to his house, and
he's thinking now,
what should I say?
And he's thinking,
and
he's pondering over what should I say about
this. And
as he's thinking,
and he's going back and forth, and his
face is changing.
Right?
All of that, Allah
sends a surah in which he explains his
emotions and his actions and his words, everything
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is sending to the
prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam explaining all of
that.
Now he comes back. He's like, he's this,
he's that. He's thinking of then finally, he's
like, okay. You know, I'm just gonna go
and tell people he's a magician and that's
it. And so Allah
curses him in the Quran. Allah
says,
leave me and him alone now. I've given
him whatever he wanted in terms of wealth
and in terms of this, in terms of
this. And now
he's thinking like this?
How is he thinking?
That he's going back and forth. He knows
the reality, but he's coming up with this
excuse, that excuse, because why? He's afraid that
he's gonna lose his power. He's afraid that
he's gonna lose his status.
Because if he says this, everybody else is
against it. What am I gonna say? And
subhanallah, we see this today as well. Politics,
all of these different things. When somebody says
something, everybody stands up against immediate. No. No.
That was a mistake. I I didn't mean
to say this. I meant to say this.
It was mistaken. It was this. It was
that. So it's very, very hard to stay
with the truth. And that's why the truthful
people are very few,
but those are the people who Allah
Anyway, as time
ends, I just wanted to speak about
the importance of Quran
in the beginning stages of dawah,
and how it captivated
groups of people, how it captivated specific,
you know, hearts of individuals,
how it captivated
all types of people. And, subhanallah, the only
thing we can do is listen.
The first thing is let the Quran
captivate your own heart.
Go find a reciter of the Quran that
you listen to,
that is specific to you, or read in
a way that is specific to you, whatever
it may be. But just go back and
think that if this is the Quran
that made the kuffar,
tell the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, stop. Stop.
I don't wanna hear it anymore.
Ask yourself, let me not make my Quran
a, you know, just an instrument of barakah.
We pick it up and we kiss it
and we put it back on the shelf.
Let's not make the Quran into this. The
Quran should be something that should have an
active effect on my heart.
It should be something that when I read,
it should go in.
That's why you see the stories or you
hear the stories that some of the pious
predecessors,
They
would be praying tahajjud,
and they would come to 1 ayah.
And the whole entire night, they would be
repeating the same ayah again and again and
again and again.
Why? Because that one ayah would mean so
much to them that that's it.
It would it would crush their hearts.
So now
we have to look at how to develop
a relationship with the Quran.
If and clearly we see from all of
these stories if it had this type of
influence
on the hearts of these people. And subhanallah,
one of the reasons too is that their
hearts were not so preoccupied
with all the technology and the busyness and
all of that. As I said, today, we
don't just live our life. We live the
lives of multiple people because we follow everybody's
shows and, you know, this account and that
account. And so our hearts are so full
that, unfortunately,
nothing comes into it.
And for every single day, we set a
period of time, and we empty this heart
out. We empty this heart out. And after
this,
we try to recite the Quran and connect
to the Quran,
then you will start to see that it
won't be immediately like that. But slowly slowly
it will start to bring a difference in
your life. So everybody from this gathering should
go with the intention that I need to
develop.
I need to accept Islam. I need to,
you know, I need to become a Muslim,
a not just a Muslim, but a mummin.
A person who has faith in every single
aya. A person who knows the importance of
every single aya. Allow it to come and
touch my heart and then subhanAllah.
Then you will see that when you talk
about that ayah to other people, it will
have a different impact.
When you try to impact,
put that ayah into your life, it will
it will be a completely different effect. We
ask
Allah to allow us to understand the importance
of the Quran and allow us to understand
and bring it into our life, allow us
to develop a relationship with the Quran. The
Quran is something that's going to come in
a form of a human in the hereafter,
and it's going to intercede.
It's going to intercede for the people who
had relationship with it. So, Hannah, just recently,
one of the
one convert came to our madrasa,
and he is basically paralyzed.
Right? He's paralyzed.
He's 19 years old.
And I was speaking to him, and I
I said, you know, where do you live?
New Jersey.
He's on a wheelchair.
Right?
All the time he's on a wheelchair. 19
years old. He accepted Islam 2 years ago.
And he said that I came over here
because, you know, Dallas has a lot of
different
educational
programs and all of that. And I have
a friend's house over here, so we're over
here. So he's staying in the house of
one of our students,
one of our students. He's staying in that
house. So he came over here and, subhanallah,
ask the students over here and ask the
teachers.
Every single person who listened to this student's
recitation,
they are shocked.
All of the students are shocked. He recites
as if he's a born Arab.
He converted 2 years ago.
And 2 years ago and look at this.
He his whole entire family died.
He lives alone.
He's on a wheelchair.
He does not have a ride to the
masjid.
Does not have a car.
Doesn't have any of that.
And he developed that type of recite that
type of recitation. And he comes to the
madrasa in the morning. And the only reason
he comes and he's revising the Quran.
And then he comes and he's like, can
you listen to me? And he recite. And
I'm telling you when I listened to him
the first time when I was listening,
there's no way you could tell that he's
a convert
or even guess that he's a convert of
2 years ago.
So, look,
this is somebody living in our society today.
Maybe if he's still around, I'll try to
bring him next Tuesday over here. But this
is somebody who's living within us.
What excuse do we have? We have our
legs that are working. We could walk, drive,
whatever. Go for the classes. All of that.
Right? And subhanallah, not just not just Quran.
This kid is speaking Arabic with our students.
He's speaking
Arabic with the students.
All of that,
he's learning on his own.
What excuse do you and I have?
We really have no excuse. Right? Look look
at what he has. Look at what we
have. Right? He doesn't have he can't walk.
He doesn't have a family.
He doesn't have a car.
He didn't He wasn't born with the language.
Wasn't born with even reciting Alibbat Abbas. He
accepted at the age of 17.
And just within 2 years,
this is the condition.
So within 2 years, we could change our
conditions as well.
And even, like, if he's able to change
his conditions in 2 years with all the
limitations that you could possibly think of, all
the limitations, then
we we don't have those limitations.
What can you and I do?
Right? So we ask Allah
to allow us to really, really dedicate ourselves
because, you know,
tomorrow understand one thing.
We are going to be standing
together with this this student's name is Anye.
We are going to be standing together with
him.
And when we stand in front of him
and he tells Allah, you Allah I had
no legs.
You Allah I had no family. You Allah
I had no money.
You Allah had nobody to take me to
the masjid.
Nearest masjid for me is 30, 40 minutes
away.
Right? Yahalla had nobody to really come to
me and teach to me. Whereas over a
year,
Allah will tell you you had this, you
had this, you had this, you had this.
I mean, just imagine how we're going to
answer.
So may Allah allow us to realize and
allow us to connect with the Quran.