Yousuf Raza – Changing The World With The Quran – 10 – Dr Yousaf Raza
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of Islam's supposed supposed supposed meaning and the need for people to be understood as their God. They stress the importance of experiencing the Q dash representing desire for acceptance, hesitation, and hesitation. The community is not supposed to be lone warriors, but rather a group of people who move together. The importance of god in shaping the universe and the hierarchy of Gods is discussed, as well as the need for help with marriage. The speakers also touch on the misogivacy of people and the importance of spiritual needs and the need for help with their marriage. The importance of god in shaping the universe and the hierarchy of Gods is also discussed.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, all praise is
due to Allah, all praise is due to
Allah We praise Him, we ask His help,
we ask His forgiveness, we believe in Him
and we put our trust in Him and
we seek refuge in Allah from the evils
of our souls and from the evils of
our deeds Whom Allah guides, none can misguide
him, and whom He misguides, none can guide
him and we bear witness that there is
no god but Allah, alone, with no partner
and we bear witness that Muhammad is His
servant and Messenger The best hadith is the
book of Allah, and the best gift is
the gift of Muhammad, peace and blessings be
upon him and the worst of things are
its events, and every event is a creation,
and every creation is a misguidance, and every
misguidance is in the Fire Allah says in
His noble book, after I say I seek
refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan And
those who disbelieve say, why has not a
sign been sent down to him from his
Lord?
Say, Allah misguides whom He wills, and guides
to Him those who turn to Him Those
who believe and whose hearts are at rest
in the remembrance of Allah Those
who believe and do good deeds will have
a good return Allahumma
benefit us with what You have taught us,
and teach us what will benefit us, and
increase us in knowledge Allahumma show us the
truth of things as they are Allahumma show
us the truth, and grant us to follow
it And show us the falsehood, and grant
us to avoid it Ameen, O Lord of
the worlds As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa
barakatuh This is the 27th ayah of Surah
Al-Ra'd And with all the ayahs that
have passed, and all the ayahs in the
universe that these ayahs have alluded to This
particular one quotes an attitude that the people
of Mecca had at the time An attitude
that so many of us have from time
to time as well We want Allah to
show us some sort of miracle We want
Allah to show us a miracle on demand
وَيَقُولُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُونَ The disbelievers will say, لَوْ
لَأُنزِلَ عَلَيْهِ آيَةٌ مِّنِ الرَّبِّ Why has there
been no sign sent to him from his
Rabb?
Bear in mind that all the ayahs that
the Qur'an refers to as ayahs Which
are the phenomena of the heavens and the
earth that human beings experience Everything that they
experience within themselves And then the ayahs of
the Qur'an being revealed repeatedly Yet they're
saying, we want an ayah What do they
understand by ayah?
What they understand by ayah is a miracle
A miracle on their demands according to their
standards They're setting the standards and they're asking
God to meet those standards And on principle,
the predominant stance of the Qur'an has
been And in Mecca remained, except for one
or two exceptions That no ayah is going
to be given to you other than what
is being revealed already Other than this Qur
'an You want miracles?
Your demand is not coming from a place
of love It is not coming from a
place of genuinely, sincerely wanting to know It
is coming from a place of arrogance It
is coming from a place of defiance It
is your addiction to your lifestyle of sin
That does not allow for you to take
the Qur'an seriously It does not allow
for you to see ayahs in the Qur
'an Ayahs of the Qur'an and the
ayahs that the Qur'an is talking about
in the universe They don't register in your
mind as ayahs You take them for granted
As if you know everything about them As
if you were the creator of them As
if you control them As if they're no
big deal As if they're just there And
there's nothing impressive about them That all that
is incredible, incredulous, inexplicable, ineffable Within human experience,
within the universe It's just child's play for
you And you don't take that seriously enough
And you want miracles to be given to
you on demand Again, something of an attitude
that in our own religious journeys We may
relate with When we have particular prayers A
particular dua that we're fixated upon That we
want should be accepted as is We want
this prayer to be accepted as is And
if God does not accept my dua as
I'm asking for it And that God is
not acceptable to me Then I will be
greatly upset And again, as a natural reaction
In the journey of a human being You
can see where that comes from And there's
a place for that But if that's where
we become fixated If that's where we refuse
to grow out of There are so many
needs that we have There are so many
desires that we have There are so many
hopes, aspirations, expectations that we have That do
draw us closer to Allah That if we
come to the masjid, if we praise Allah
If we do all of what we do
in terms of ibadat We have particular duas
in our mind Particular prayers that we want
should be accepted Supplications And to turn to
Allah with those needs Absolutely nothing wrong with
that Allah acknowledges within the Quran that we
get really desperate We turn to Him alone,
even if we're polytheists But that is to
be understood as a sign From within our
own selves Of how we recognize and understand
Allah And relate with Allah How there is
within us That sincerity of iman, of tawheed
That we experience in those moments of desperation
That experience in the moment of desperation of
our own tawheed Is a sign that if
we reflect on it If we persist on
it Then when that state of desperation is
over Then it should lead for us to
persevere In that same attitude of prayer It
is a need or a desperation that brings
us to prayer But then it is the
experience of prayer And the relationship we develop
with Allah That keeps us or should keep
us Even if that desire has expired That
expectation is over Whether that dua was fulfilled
in the way we want it Or not
All duas are fulfilled Without a doubt If
we meet the prerequisites If we bring sincerity
And a halal self to that dua Duas
are accepted Allah even accepts the duas of
those mushrikeen Who in their desperation for life
Turn to Allah asking Him to save them
Allah accepts their duas Duas are accepted But
what we should be looking for Is to
be accepted ourselves Are we acceptable to Allah?
Are duas are acceptable?
Are we acceptable?
Are duas developing, evolving, maturing?
Are we changing?
We want circumstances to change in our favour
Fair enough But do we change for Allah
In the process of attaching ourselves to Him
Praying to Him Allah's response to this arrogant
demand for miracles Say to them Ya Rasulullah
That Allah misguides whoever He wants This mayyasha
whenever it comes in the Quran A lot
of times you will find that it's being
It can be read in both ways And
mufassireen will say that it can be read
in both ways Allah guides whoever Allah wants
should be guided It's Allah's will Allah guides
whoever wants to be guided If Allah sees
sincerity there If Allah sees effort there Then
Allah guides because Allah wants us To be
guided to begin with That's why He's revealing
the Quran It is hudal linnas So He
misguides whoever wants to be misguided And He
guides to Himself whoever turns to Him Whoever
makes that move Whoever takes that one step
Allah takes ten Whoever comes walking Allah comes
running Miracle or no miracles God is not
a God of miracles That is the characteristic
defining feature Distinguishing feature Of the way Allah
is described in the Quran As opposed to
any other understanding of Him That you would
find as popular In religions or spiritualities or
what have you That Allah does not want
to be identified As the God of miracles
He identifies Himself in the Quran As the
God of non-miracles as well Of that
which is mundane Of that which is routine
That which is everyday That which is every
second In your experience He is the God
of all of that He is not asserting
His presence Because He did That which was
mind-boggling Unfathomable Unexpected Allah invites us to
reflect So we understand That the reality that
we live The fact that we are Just
the fact that we're alive How incomprehensible is
that?
How unfathomable is that?
How impossible is that?
Just that we breathe Just that our heart
beats Just that the sun rises And it
sets and it comes again And the cycle
of day and night Just because it happens
routinely You think there's nothing special about it
You reflect upon it How mind-boggling it
is How the odds do not make sense
No measure of probability Can come to estimate
How it is that we are alive We
live, we talk, we converse We have such
ambitions Such aspirations We have lives that are
so complex Relationships that are so difficult Don't
you see the impossibility behind that?
You want Him to demonstrate More impossibilities on
top of this?
وَيَهْدِي إِلَيْهِ مَنْ عَنَابٍ Those who see all
of that Turn to Him Allah guides them
to Himself الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا Those who have believed
Those who have this attitude of Iman Remember,
there's three contrast classes of Iman within the
Quran Iman is contrasted with Kufr Belief and
disbelief Kufr particularly understood as the act of
hiding And so in that context, what does
it mean?
You have an experience Some experience of Allah
in your life But to disbelieve is to
hide that experience Or hide Allah from that
experience Just like a farmer hides a seed
When a farmer is farming He will sow
the seed in the ground The seed is
no longer visible That's the word literally what
Kafir means The act of sowing the seed
Hiding the seed under the dirt And that's
what disbelief is as well That there was
something astonishing Something surprising Something incredible Something mind
-boggling Reflection upon which was taking you to
Allah It was leading you to Him but
you hid it You stopped that process You
hid that experience or you hid Allah from
that experience You subtracted Him The ayat of
Quran were taking you somewhere Your own duas,
your desperation was making you turn towards Allah
Your exasperations, your frustrations You, from within yourself,
felt that cry of Ya Allah come out
But as that situation was resolved, you forgot
all about it It was the doctors that
saved my dad Thank God we found that
money It all worked out fine He's excluded
from all explanations That's the first contrast class
of Iman The other contrast class of Iman
is Nifaq, hypocrisy That we've experienced Allah, we've
acknowledged Him We've attested to His being, His
reality But then, we don't live it What
our own belief entails The way we should
live our lives Especially when it comes to
giving and sacrificing We're stingy, we hold back
We serve self before we serve Allah We
obey self, obey desires, obey others rather than
Allah And this attitude of thinking that what
we're doing is the best Where it has
taken away so much From the religion of
Allah, from the struggle towards Allah The characteristic
feature of hypocrisy is the refusal to struggle
Laziness then becomes a habit of the hypocrite
Which we see in a hadith as well
of the Prophet ﷺ Telling us, Isha and
Fajr being the most difficult prayers For the
people of hypocrisy The third contrast class of
Iman The less recognized one The less spoken
about Something that these ayaat are alluding to
specifically from Surah Al-Ra'd Is Iman as
opposed to Kibr Iman as opposed to arrogance
That ayaat of Allah Demand an attitude of
humility Iman as humility That when we experience
the ayaat of Allah We experience them with
an openness That they are teaching me something
Something I did not know, something I had
forgotten Something I did not see from this
perspective Something that I understood incorrectly An area
where I had a shortcoming in A misunderstanding,
a mistake, an ignorance, whatever That this attitude
of humility when we bring that to the
ayaat of Allah Ayaat in the Qur'an,
ayaat outside of the Qur'an Then this
attitude of humility is such that it always
teaches There is something new about Allah that
we continue to learn That we continue to
experience Allah in new ways قُلَّ يَوْمٍ هُوَ
فِي شَأْنٍ He is in a new splendor
He manifests, expresses himself, exhibits himself In a
new splendor every day And then when we're
coming from a place of ignorance There is
so much of Allah that we still have
to experience And so the iman brings that
attitude of humility That when a humble mu'min,
a humble believer With that attitude which recognizes
I don't know everything I don't have all
knowledge I'm not infallible I make mistakes, my
understanding is limited I need correction, I need
rectification, I need repair With that attitude when
I come to the ayaat of Allah Then
what lack of clarity does to me What
lack of knowledge does to me It creates
this angst inside me It creates this frustration
inside me When I don't know, when I'm
confused When I'm in a state of doubt
Then it manifests as knots in my chest
I feel constrained That's how the Qur'an
represents it as well رَبِّ شَرَحْ لِي صَدْرِي
Open my chest for me I feel a
closeness in my chest أَلَمْ نَشْرَحْ لَكَ صَدْرَكَ
Did we not expand your chest for you
So there's a feeling of being constrained, tightened
But what the attitude of iman does is
that Whenever you're experiencing that tightening Because of
not knowing or not understanding completely And you
bring that feeling with that humility to the
ayaat of Allah What happens الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَتَقُوا
مَا إِنُوا قُلُوبُهُمْ بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ The ones who
believe, who have this attitude of iman This
humility of iman Their hearts find tranquility اِطْمِنَان
In the dhikr of Allah Remember where the
ayaat started off from They're demanding ayaat of
Allah Miracles on their description, on their standards
They're demanding from their arrogance Allah is saying
those who have the humility of iman Where
are their ayaat?
In the dhikr of Allah The Quran is
adh-dhikr The remembrance of Allah These people
saying we don't have itminan We're not convinced
To convince us, to give us itminan, show
us a miracle The Quran is saying the
people who genuinely have iman They don't ask
for a mountain to turn into a camel
They don't ask for the sea to split
They don't ask for none of that They
find in the dhikr of Allah Their contentment,
their itminan اَلَا بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَتُمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبِ
Unquestionably It is only in the remembrance of
Allah In the dhikr of Allah That hearts
find tranquility Now we look at these ayaats
And we remove them from the context That
they've been revealed in And we judge harshly
Every experience within ourself and in others Of
whenever there is a lack of tranquility As
a lack of iman As an insufficient attachment
to the dhikr of Allah Please understand And
this was in the very previous surah that
we studied With respect to Yusuf a.s.
With respect to his father particularly That his
lack of itminan On account of his sons
not being there He didn't have sukoon He
was deeply sad and deeply grieved Nevertheless His
hope with Allah was firm Whenever the Quran
asks us to not fear, to not grieve
It presupposes that we are in a state
of fear We are in a state of
grief And it is this cycle Of being
anxious And being upset, being saddened That relating
with the Quran Will result in some level
of tranquility For us to find tranquility in
the Quran We have to experience a lack
of tranquility Just like Allah tells Rasulullah s
.a.w وَالضُّحَىٰ وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا سَجَىٰ By the
glorious morning light And the night when it
is still For you to appreciate morning You
have to experience night For you to experience
tranquility You have to experience confusion, perplexity, anxiety
That is the only situation where you will
be able to appreciate The tranquility that you
are getting And it is not that as
your state of Iman grows As you grow
closer and closer to Allah That the state
completely disappears There are higher stations of tranquility
Which means there are also higher stations of
anxiety There are higher stations of grief And
there will be higher experiences with the Quran
And yes at times we do experience A
degree of unrest within us Which our personal
encounter or experience with the Quran No matter
how much we recite it or try to
understand it It doesn't go away That is
where وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالصَّبْرِ comes in That
is where the community comes in That is
where help comes in We are not supposed
to be lone warriors The Muslim community is
not a community of isolated individuals It is
a community People who move together When somebody
is falling back Or upset, or saddened Or
anxious They shouldn't feel the need to hide
To hide themselves away from the community That
they are going to judge me They are
going to see me as weak They are
going to look at me as faithless I
don't want to talk to them, I don't
want to be with them But they should
see themselves as Safe in a group of
people Who will understand their pain And whatever
it is that they need for their Or
their There will be a facilitation for it
That is the example of Rasulullah When he
would experience in the Any such problem, difficulty
He would look at where that difficulty is
coming from Does he need a shoulder to
cry on?
Does he need advice?
Does he need money?
Is he having problems in his marriage?
Does he need help with that?
All of those things would be brought into
the conversation الذين آمنوا وعملوا الصالحات Those who
believed and performed righteously Again, the focus on
عمل The action that follows ايمان طوبى لهم
وحسن مآب There will be a delight for
them And a beautiful place to return كذلك
أرسلناك في أمة قد خلت من قبلها أمم
Thus have we sent you to a community
before Which other communities have passed on So
there were other Nations before لتجسلوا عليهم الذي
أوحينا إليك So that you can recite to
them What we have revealed to you وهم
يكفرون بالرحمن While they deny the most compassionate
God They believed in Allah They believed in
خالق They even believed in رب But what
they had a deep difficulty with Was الرحمن
Because understand polytheism The reason why there are
so many small g-gods In polytheism Is
because the capital G-God Is inaccessible The
capital G-God is so Powerful, so mighty
So transcendent So high So distant that he
was distant He couldn't care about what's going
on On earth He couldn't be in any
way concerned About what you and I are
feeling What you and I need He was
a necessity to believe in because How else
do you explain reality But that he is
as high and mighty And great and transcendent
as he is Would be concerned about what
you do when you wake up What you
say before you sleep Whether you wash yourself
after using the bathroom or not Why would
he care?
Are we living?
Are we dying?
Are we in pain?
Are we in ease?
Do we know what to do?
Do we not know what to do?
What would he care?
He's transcendent, beyond transcendent, beyond transcendent So transcendent
that he's inaccessible Now if that God is
so inaccessible What do we do?
We have spiritual needs.
Who's going to fulfill those spiritual needs?
The small g-gods, the idols They'll be
our intercessors before him We're too lowly We're
too pathetic We're too sinful To be in
any way worthy of relating with him Talking
to him Him talking to us Him responding
to us What does it mean for him
to respond to us?
That he heard us That he heard us
and he did something That otherwise would not
have happened Our dua changed something in reality
That level of personal involvement That was absolutely
unacceptable for the people of Quraysh They're like,
who is this Rahman that he's talking about?
We don't know no Rahman This intense level
of mercy associated with that God Say, Ya
Rasulullah He is my Rab My Rab is
Ar-Rahman There is no Ilah except Him
There is no Ma'bood except Him There
is no Matloob except Him There is no
Mahboob except Him All of these meanings encompassed
in the word Ilah Who is the ultimately
desired Who is the ultimately trusted Who is
the ultimately loved Who is the ultimately worshipped
Who is the ultimately lived for Is Allah
He is incredibly merciful towards me And the
least I can do Is respond He intensely
loves me The least I can do is
love Him back Upon Him I have relied
I have placed my trust And to Him
is my return And had there been a
Quran other than this One that would have
made the mountains move One that could split
the earth Or one that would make the
dead rise up and speak But to Allah
belongs the affair completely What is implicit, what
is not said What is tacit in these
ayat is Even then they would not believe
It is made explicit in other ayat of
the Quran Even if this Quran had done
that If it was that kind of a
miracle that they are demanding They would still
not have believed Because their problem is not
that there is not enough evidence That there
are not enough ayat There is not enough
willingness on their part Because Allah has sent
those miracles before as well Did everyone believe?
Not really وَلَمْ يَيْئَسِ الَّذِينَ آمَنُونَ Have the
believers not yet given up hope?
Because understand this predicament was becoming Quite tense
within Mecca The Quraish are demanding miracles The
Prophet is reciting ayat talking about the miracles
Of other Prophets before him Yet Allah refuses
to give miracles And so they are like
waiting for some miracle to come The believers
want a miracle to come Our team is
losing, we need a score of victory If
Allah responds to their challenge we'll have something
to show for it Allah says no, I'm
not doing it I don't do that I
don't want to spoil them further Have the
believers not given up hope?
اللَّوْ يَشَاءُ اللَّهِ That if Allah wanted لَهَدَ
النَّاسَ جَمِيعًۭا He could have guided the entirety
of mankind If that was the point to
begin with If He wanted to force people
To commit to Iman He could have just
done that, He has the power to do
that But He has given people freedom To
see who uses that freedom And comes towards
Him If He wanted to compel them He
would have just done that before But He
respects the freedom of human beings Even if
that means holding Himself back وَلَا يَزَالُ الَّذِينَ
كَفَرُوا تُصِيبُهُم بِمَا سَنَعُوا قَارِعًۭا Some disaster will
continue to strike the disbelievers Because of what
they do اَوْ تَحُلُّوا قَرِيبًۭا مِّن دَارِهِمْ Or
it will crouch at their very doorsteps, this
is them being threatened They're asking for ayats
They might just get an a'zaab from
Allah And it is around the corner The
a'zaab is around the corner Their attitude
is asking for it Until the promise of
Allah is fulfilled اِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُخْلِفُ الْمِعَادِ
And Allah will definitely not betray His promise
وَآخِرُ دَعْوَانَا أَنِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَىٰ If
there's any questions, comments, reflections Please do feel
free So
for them, there is always a capital G
God So they believed in Allah Allah, Khaliq,
Rabb These were beliefs that they carried with
their polytheism So even the Quran says If
you were to ask them who created the
heavens and the earth They will say Allah
So even that word was used And
he was Allah identified himself with the same
name As what they were familiar with Rahman
was alien to them In their understanding there
was that capital G God Big God And
I think that's similar to what a lot
of Hindus believe too Yeah So there will
be Mahadev So there's Devtas and then there's
the Mahadev So they also have the Big
God Even if everything else is God If
there is pantheism, nevertheless there is a There
is a hierarchy among Gods In which there
is a greater God Mahadev, Bhagwan I'm not
as familiar with Hindu theology But from what
I have From secondary sources There is a
hierarchy and in that hierarchy There is an
ultimate God That's true for most polytheists Today
is hourly 8 to 7 I
bear witness that there is no god but
Allah I bear witness that there is no
god but Allah