Yousuf Raza – Changing The World With The Quran #7
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I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed
Satan, in the name of Allah, the Most
Gracious, the Most Merciful.
address the very core of what it means
to be a believer.
Iman in Allah.
Tawheed as these ayats and these surahs, how
they address that very central issue.
Our relationship with Allah basically.
We saw Yusuf a.s. in the previous
surah, his iman, the level of ihsan with
which he lived his life, the sabr that
he was able to manifest in the face
of all kinds of suffering.
And then what was demanded of Rasulullah s
.a.w. and the Sahaba r.a. also
in the face of their suffering.
How do you get that kind of iman?
How does it develop?
How do you have that relationship with Allah
that it's such a living reality?
That it has a greater influence on what
you do, on your choices than any other
relationship in your life.
Absolutely nothing else matters as much as your
relationship with Allah s.a.w. matters.
And to prefer, to give priority to this
relationship with Allah does not mean to ignore
and neglect every other responsibility in your life,
every other relationship in your life.
To the contrary, every other relationship of your
life becomes honored, becomes sanctified, becomes more worthy
precisely because of this relationship with Allah.
It is a demonic relationship.
It is a relationship with shaitan.
Shaitan has that characteristic where he demands that
come to me and forget everybody else.
That listen to me and then he makes
promises and as we fall for his seductions,
he abandons.
That is characteristic shaitan.
He drives you down a path away from
everybody else and then he leaves you stranded
on that path.
And he says, إِنِّي بَرِي أُمِّنكُمْ I got
nothing to do with you.
إِنِّي أَخَافُ اللَّهِ I am afraid of Allah.
We will even come across those ayahs in
these few surahs that we will study inshaAllah.
With Allah it is different.
It is much different.
To give him priority paradoxically means that everything
else falls in place as well.
So how do you develop that sort of
relationship?
That relationship is developed through the ayahs of
Allah.
What are signs of Allah?
What is a sign?
A sign is something that reminds you of
someone.
A sign is something that stands for something
else.
What it stands for, what it ultimately stands
for, what all ayahs ultimately stand for is
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
They are ways of knowing Him.
They are means of knowing Him.
The ayahs in the Qur'an in the
most miraculous fashion from Rasulullah ﷺ transmitted across
generations.
The same surah al-Ra'd that was revealed
upon Rasulullah ﷺ in the middle of the
Meccan period.
Down to the last dot, this is the
same surah that we're studying today.
Again, no other religion, no other people of
scripture can lay this claim that what they
have is exactly down to the last vowel
what was revealed to their Prophet.
No one can lay that claim.
What we have an opportunity to experience are
ayahs that Rasulullah ﷺ experienced.
Ayahs after experiencing which him and the Sahabah
ﷺ and generations of Muslims to follow.
The way they would then experience the world
outside, the way they would experience rain, the
way they would experience thunder, the way they
would experience just looking at the sky.
It transforms.
It becomes an act of worship.
It becomes an act of relating with Allah.
It becomes an act of remembering Him.
Just looking at the trees, just hearing the
birds.
All of that, to dwell on that, to
focus on that, to reflect on that and
to see where it's taking us.
And where it's taking us is recognizing Allah.
So alif, laam, meem, raa.
Again, haroof al-muqatta'at, these disjointed letters.
Even in the alphabet of any language, there
are ayahs of Allah.
Who knows to speak other than the human
beings?
The language that we have the capacity for,
that no other creature of Allah does.
Their tasbihat, their language, their speech is very
primitive, it's very primordial, it's very basic.
The level to which human speech has been
developed.
And what we've been able to do on
the basis of that speech is what has
resulted in human beings taking more responsibility than
any other creature of Allah.
Allah testifies to that in Surah Ahzab, how
much responsibilities human beings took.
And then how our distinguishing feature even before
the angels was the ilm al-asmaa, the
ability to give terminologies for words, for language.
And how that same language that humans have
such an incredible ability for, Allah chooses to
articulate His kalam, His message in that language.
And that's as explicit as it gets, that's
as clear as it can get.
filka ayatul kitab These are the ayat of
the book.
waladhi unzila ilayka min rabbika alhaq And what
has been revealed to you from your Rabb
is the truth.
That the truth, the ultimate truth, ya Rasulullah
is being revealed to you.
walakin aksaran naasi la yu'minoon But most of
the people do not know.
Again, in retrospect, it's easier for us to
see how that truth manifested itself when it
was just a claim of one person and
a handful of people who believed in him.
And no one could have imagined, no one
could have imagined that less than two decades
after that claim, he would be the uncrowned
king of the Arabian Peninsula.
It is mind-boggling even still to consider
how that happened.
Nothing, no political dynamic, no social dynamic, no
economic dynamic that you could work out at
the time of the revelation of this, these
ayat would lead you to believe that that's
what would have happened.
Nobody could have predicted that.
But Rasulullah's salallahu alayhi wa sallam's iman and
what he's being asked to believe in and
what that belief does.
But most people do not believe.
Allahu alladheer rafa'a assamawati bighayri amadin tarawnaha
Allah is the one who raised the heavens
without any visible support.
You have doubts about this revelation coming from
Allah, that this kalam being the kalam of
Allah, that these ayat being the ayat of
Allah.
Whereas in your daily life, you look at
the sky and its grandeur, and its elevation.
How is it just there?
Allah is the one who did that.
Thumma istawa'a alal aqsh Then he established
himself on the throne.
And yeah, you can go into the aqeedah
and the different interpretations of that, but ultimately
what does it all boil down to?
He took control.
He created and he took control of everything.
Every single thing that happens, Allah is not
distant from it.
These are actions of Allah that we're experiencing
every moment of our passing life.
Wasakhara shamsa walqama And he subjected the sun
and the moon.
Who did he subject the sun and the
moon to?
To the human beings.
That ultimately, ultimately, which species of Allah gets
to maximally benefit from this particular order of
the sun and the moon.
And when we say sun and the moon,
we're talking about millions and billions of light
years of galaxies.
And the only one in which we understand
life to be possible.
And how delicate a balance.
How you had to be at just the
right distance from the sun.
And the moon had to be just the
right distance from the earth for anything to
take place really.
Wasakhara shamsa walqama He subjected it for you.
Ad-dunya khuliqa lakum The Prophet ﷺ tells
us.
Dunya has been created for you.
Antum khuliqtum lil-akhira And you have been
created for the hereafter.
Kullun yajri li-ajalim musamma Each running its
course for a definite time.
Yes, it's been subjected to you.
But it has a deadline.
It's not going to be there for an
eternity.
And even now, whatever astrophysics tells us, it
tells us straight off the bat that each
galaxy, each solar system, there's not an eternity
for it to live forever.
It has a point in beginning and it
has a point of ending.
Where all of whatever we see is going
to fall out of orbit.
And then what happens is going to be
utter catastrophe.
And what that deadline says, what that limit
on its existence, what it tells us, is
that there is a sense of urgency.
That there is a responsibility that is to
be fulfilled.
That there is something that you're created for
that you have to do before your time
runs out.
Yudabbirul amr Allah arranges each matter.
Every single thing that goes into human existence
becoming possible.
Allah arranges it, plans it very meticulously.
Every single detail.
Yufassilul ayat And He spells out the signs,
the ayat.
La'allakum biliqa'i rabbikum tuqinoon So that
you may have a firm conviction that you
will ultimately meet your Rabb.
That through all of this, you see His
Rabbiyah.
And in His Rabbiyah, you see a meaningfulness.
And the ultimate meaning being there is going
to be meeting with Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
This is not a meaningless creation.
This is not a purposeless creation.
The incredible existence of the human being with
all our abilities and creativities, and language, and
ability to understand, and ability to raise monuments
really.
Whatever it is that we're capable of doing
is not meaningless, it's not random, it's not
purposeless.
To say that is the greatest offense.
To understand your life to be meaningless is
the greatest offense against Allah, against His creativity.
Waj'ala feeha wahuwa allathee maddal arb He
is the one who spread out the earth.
The way the language in these ayat you
see is one of hospitality.
One of a host.
Laying it out, the way you would lay
out a carpet.
The way you would lay out a table
spread.
At your service.
Wahuwa allathee maddal arb He is the one
who spread out the earth.
Waj'ala feeha alrawasiya wa anhara And He
sat there upon mountains and flowing rivers.
Wa min kulli thamarat waj'ala feeha zawjayn
itnayn And He created all types of fruits
in pairs.
Two and two.
And how that pairing of fruits allows for
this self-sustenance.
And this cycle continues.
Again, we like to understand or explain whatever
cannot be explained by God.
So we would explain that which has no
understanding or no mechanics that you can understand.
We say that's because of God.
The Quran's narrative is not that.
The Quran does not say that wherever you
lack an explanation that is Allah.
The Quran says wherever you do have an
explanation that too is Allah.
The mechanics that you understand the cause and
effect that you have some idea of how
the water cycle works, how plant life works,
how fruits come about all of that you
understand.
Good for you.
But understanding it doesn't mean that's excluded Allah
from the explanation.
And that He only comes in where there's
some miracle to be explained.
Whether it's the routine experiences that you do
understand to whatever degree or it's the inexplicable.
All of that is one creator, one Allah.
وَهُوَ الَّذِي مَدَّ الْأَرْضَ وَجَعَلَ فِيهَا رَوَاسِيَ وَأَنْهَارَ
وَمِن كُلِّ السَّمَرَاتِ جَعَلَ فِيهَا زَوْجَيْنِ اثْنَيْنِ يُغْشِي
اللَّيْلَ النَّهَارِ He covers the day with night.
He makes time move.
He makes the day pass into the night,
the night pass into the day.
Again, a movement, an alternation that is something
that human beings have a very unique perception
for.
Our relationship with time, our relationship with past,
present and future.
What we understand of it experientially is something
that gets corrupted when you go to 6th
grade physics.
Your 6th grade physics understanding makes time really
unreal.
It puts it on a line, a straight
line that goes in one direction.
And it's predictable, everything upon it is expected.
But what you experience it in yourself, within
yourself, every day, every passing moment, it is
one of the greatest challenges for the human
mind to get a grasp on what this
is and how this is.
To the point that the greatest of thinkers
have said that time is an illusion.
It's not real.
It's another dimension of space, X, Y, Z.
All of these different explanations that have been
given for the Quran, for the Muslims specifically.
The phenomena of time is our closest experience
that we can get of Allah's involvement, Allah's
intimate involvement in our lives.
And how making it real, He's involved, actively
involved, dynamically involved, closely involved in this movement
in every second.
إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ And all
of this is ayaat.
But will everybody be able to appreciate these
ayaat?
No.
لِقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ For people who commit themselves, for
a group of people, for a community of
people who commit themselves to reflect on it,
to think about it, to pay attention to
it.
وَفِي الْأَرْضِ قِطَعٌ مُتَجَاوِرَاتٍ And on earth there
are tracks side by side.
There are pathways for you to go on.
وَجَنَّاتٌ مِّنْ أَعْنَابٍ And gardens of vine, grape
vines that you see all around.
وَزَّرْعٌ وَنَخِيلٌ صِنْوَانٌ وَغَيْرُ صِنْوَانٍ And date palms
originating from single roots, or otherwise, يُسْقَى بِمَاءٍ
وَاحِدٍ All of them are irrigated by the
same water.
The same water that irrigates the date palms,
that irrigates the grape vines, that irrigates your
crop.
Yet you see the diversity in the creation
of Allah.
وَنُفَضِّلُ بَعْضَهَا عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ فِي الْأُكُلِ Yet we
made some of them excel over others in
taste.
Same soil, same water, but different taste.
The spontaneity and diversity that you see in
creation.
Because if you want to explain creation in
mechanical ways, then mechanical ways cannot explain novelty,
newness, diversity.
If you have a closed jar, and in
that closed jar, you have four elements, let's
say, then there's a finite number of ways
that those elements can interact with each other.
And it's predictable, and it's going to be
the same over and over and over and
over again.
But what we have in human experience is
something far different than that.
That the diversity that you see, the different
types of crop that come about, same soil,
same water, different crop, different fruit.
Within the fruit, different taste.
How is that taking place?
How is that happening?
And that is telling you about the diversity,
the spontaneity, the choices that Allah is making
with each fruit.
How He's sending one in one direction and
the other in the other direction.
How He's involved in its development from scratch
all the way to when it's served to
you on your plates.
إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّلقَوْمِ عَقِلُونَ Indeed, there
are many ayat, many signs, for who?
For people of aqal.
Use it.
For you to use your aqal.
Again, the Quran is not a text that
says put your aqal aside and then come.
No, bring it.
Empower it.
Develop it.
Nurture it.
Mature it.
وَإِن تَعْجَبْ And if you are amazed, ya
Rasulullah, فَعَجَبٌ قَوْلُهُمْ Then amazing is their comment.
What is the Prophet ﷺ amazed by?
He's amazed by their inability to understand the
Quran.
They're saying, this is not from Allah.
This can't be from Allah.
Allah is responding that everything that you've needed,
physically you've gotten.
Whatever you needed for your protection, you have.
Whatever you needed for your nourishment, you have.
Whatever you needed for your going from point
A to point B, you have.
All of that meticulously provided for you.
Everything that you need to survive, not just
survive, but thrive, is there for you in
one form or another.
But then what you need even more than
all of that for physical survival, which is
your own guidance through life, what to do,
what not to do, how to do it,
how to relate with Allah, how do we
know what we're supposed to do.
You think he's gonna leave that unaddressed?
He made arrangements for everything, down to the
last dot.
He's hosted you on his earth with that
level of hospitality.
You think he's going to neglect the most
important aspect of human living?
What are human beings supposed to do now?
You think he's gonna leave that unaddressed?
So for that too, that's what this Quran
is, that you're rejecting.
So if you're amazed, ya Rasulullah, that they
cannot accept the truth of the Quran, فَعَجَبٌ
قَوْلُهُمْ Amazing is their qaul, their comment when
they say, أَإِذَا كُنَّا تُرَابًا When we're dust.
أَإِنَّ لَفِي خَلْقٍ جَدِيدٍ Could we then be
raised to a new life?
That's like them denying what's all around them.
That's like them saying, oh this is easy.
This heavens, earth, fruits, plants, water, diversity, that's
easy.
Being raised all over again, that's really hard.
That's impossible.
That's inconceivable.
How did you conceive of one to be
easy and the other to not be as
such?
Because you've experienced one, you can't see that
happening all over again.
It's supposed to be harder the first time.
Anything that you do, it's supposed to be
harder the first time.
Repetition is easy.
أُولَٰئِكَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا بِرَبِّهِمْ These are the ones
who deny their Rabb.
Because what is accepting the hereafter?
What does accepting resurrection entail?
Understanding the Rabubiyah of Allah.
That all of this development, me going from
one stage to another, to another, to another,
comes with a responsibility and I have to
relate with that Rabb.
I have to be an abd to that
Rabb.
I have to worship Him, love Him, and
live like He wants me to live.
Understand that purpose that He has for me.
Reject all of that, that's convenient.
Now I don't have to worry about anything.
I can live life the way I want
to.
أُولَٰئِكَ الْأَغْلَالُ فِي أَعْنَاكِهِمْ These are the ones
who will have iron collars around their necks.
Why will they have iron collars around their
necks?
Because that's how they're behaving with the ayat
of Allah.
This is their arrogance.
An arrogant person would be looking down at
everything over their nose.
That's the arrogance that is going to be
quite literally embodied in who they're going to
become with these iron collars around their neck.
وَأُولَٰئِكَ أَصْحَابُ النَّارِ And these are the companions
of the hellfire.
These are the people of hellfire.
Why is hellfire necessary?
Because well, nothing else can melt away arrogance.
Again and again and again and again to
break through that arrogance that you've locked yourself
in.
هُمْ فِيهَا خَالِدُونَ And they'll live therein forever.
وَيَسْتَعْجِلُونَكَ بِالسَّيْجِئَةِ قَبْلَ الْحَسَنَةِ And they urge you
to bring about evil rather than good.
So they were challenging Rasulullah ﷺ repeatedly that
where's this punishment that you're promising?
Bring it on if you're truthful.
Let's see what you got.
Let's see how true you really are.
Let's see if you're really a prophet of
God.
Let's see if God's got your back.
Why isn't He punishing you?
Punishing us for doing what we're doing to
you.
We've tormented your followers.
We've tortured you.
We've boycotted you.
We've done this.
We've done that.
We don't see nothing.
No punishment came to us.
We're still the leaders of the land.
We're still the most powerful people in Arabia.
They're urging, they're hurrying on.
They're impatiently urging you to bring about the
evil and not the good which is for
them to accept, which is for them to
respond.
وَقَدْ خَلَطْ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمُ الْمَثُولَاتِ While similar punishments
have already been there before them.
Why do they think they're invincible?
When so many more stronger than them were
never invincible.
They all had their fall.
وَإِنَّ الرَّبَّكَ لَذُو مَغْفِرَةٍ لِلنَّاسِ عَلَىٰ غُلْمِهِمْ And
your Rabb is full of forgiveness for mankind
despite their ghulm.
This is Allah's hilm.
That He continues to tolerate so many opportunities,
so many ayat يَمُرُّونَ عَلَيْهَا that we just
pass by.
See the sky, the birds, the trees, the
fruits.
Eat them.
Devour them really.
And not once remember God.
Not once remember Allah.
So many ayats of the Quran we hear
and we don't really hear.
That don't get translated in our lives.
If Allah wanted, the first time we ignored
Him, the second time we ignored Him, the
200th time we ignored Him, the 1000th time
we ignored Him, could have been the last
time.
Yet we're here.
Yet we get another opportunity to hear more
ayats of the Quran, to connect with them,
to relate with Him.
How much of His hilm do we continue
to take advantage of?
How much of His maghfirah?
He covers it up as if it didn't
happen.
But He tells us He can't continue to
do that for an eternity.
There comes a limit where He says enough.
Now if I continue to do that, then
that's unjust to those who do respond, to
those who do accept, to those who are
not arrogant.
وَإِنَّ الرَّبَّكَ لَشَدِيدُ الْعِقَابُ For your Rabb is
stern in punishment.
As much as forgiveness, maghfirah, is part of
His rabubiyah, being shadeed al-'iqab is part of
His rabubiyah.
وَيَقُولُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لَوْ لَا أُنزِلَ عَلَيْهِ آيَةٌ
مِّن رَّبِّهِ And the disbelievers say, why is
there no sign sent upon Him from His
Rabb?
Allah continues to tell us that these are
all ayaat, the Qur'anic ayaat, the ayaat
in the world that you're walking around.
But they want to know very specific ayaat.
They're saying, we're going to tell you what
an ayaat is.
We're going to set the standard for God
to fulfill.
Ma'azallah, it's like a hoop that we
want Him to jump through.
We designed the hoop.
We're going to say what it is, and
we're going to demand for it to be
fulfilled.
So why no miracle?
Why no miracle the way we want a
miracle to be?
إِنَّمَا أَنْتَ مُنذِرٌ Allah says, no, you're just
a warner.
All you can do is warn them.
You're not here to reinforce their arrogance.
You're not here to feed into their demands.
Allah has bigger plans.
Allah has, on previous occasion, with previous nations,
responded with their demands, fulfilled it, given them
ayaat of their liking.
The miracles that they wanted.
They never responded.
They never responded.
And you, of course Rasulullah ﷺ being the
last and final prophet, this door is being
closed.
Humanity is being weaned off of this institution
of prophethood.
It has to be closed.
And it is necessary to close it for
the maturity of other dimensions and other aspects
of human society.
To continue to give in and to continue
to let these ayaat flow on human demands.
And those two insolent humans are not going
to respond.
Allah has something else planned for humanity.
He wants human beings to become stronger than
that.
Other than that, more righteous than that.
وَلِكُلِّ قَوْمٍ هَادٌ And for every people, there
is a guide.
اللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَحْمِلُ كُلُّ أُنثَ Allah knows
whatever every female carries.
وَمَا تَغِيظُ الْأَرْحَامُ وَمَا تَزْدَادُ How much the
wombs fall short or exceed.
How premature is the labor.
How much the labor extends beyond its time.
وَكُلُّ شَيْءٍ عِنْدَهُ بِمِقْدَارٍ Everything with Him is
precisely measured.
عَالِمُ الْغَيْبِ وَالشَّهَادَةِ الْكَبِيرُ الْمُتَعَالِ Knower of the
seen and the unseen.
He is the Great, the Highest.
سَوَاءٌ مِّنْكُمْ Of you it is all the
same.
مَنْ أَسَرَّ الْقَوْلَ وَمَنْ جَهَرَ بِهِ One who
speaks secretly and one who speaks aloud.
Allah hears all.
وَمَنْ هُوَ مُسْتَخْفٍ بِاللَّيْلِ And the one who
is hiding by night.
وَسَارِبٌ بِالنَّهَارِ Or walking around in daylight.
Allah sees everything.
لَهُ مُعَقِّبَاتٍ He has protectors.
Which are understood to be angels.
Supervising.
مِنْ بَيْنِ يَدَيْهِ وَمِنْ خَلْفِهِ From before him
and behind him.
يَحْفَظُونَهُ مِنْ أَمْرِ اللَّهِ They guard him by
Allah's command.
That every single human being has protectors, has
guards.
And there are experiences that time and time
again all of us would have had where
we would be sure that that was such
a close call.
I just got saved by an inch.
If that car was just here.
If it was just two seconds earlier.
If it was just two meters here.
If it was just so many times.
I don't know how I survived that.
The car got totaled.
How did that happen?
And then an even more delicate balance that
runs inside of us.
And for us to realize how delicate that
balance is when somebody experiences an imbalance and
their life comes to an end.
We come to understand how much is going
on that we have no idea about.
How minuscule the measures are.
And so this protection from Allah for every
single human being.
It's absolutely incredible.
One who has such meticulous control.
Such precise control of the smallest atom in
the entire universe.
But when it comes for a people to
change their condition for a people to change
the way they are as a society, as
a community, as an Ummah.
Allah says, Allah never changes a condition of
people until they themselves change what is within
themselves.
Allah honors, Allah respects human freedom.
And He would not sidestep it.
He would not overstep it.
He wants human beings to take control, take
charge.
He says, I got everything else taken care
of for you.
Everything else I got taken care of for
you.
You're living proof of how much meticulous care
your survival, your life takes.
All you gotta do is take control of
a very minuscule fraction.
And that's your own spirituality.
That is what is within your control, as
your choices in your society.
You want good?
Do good.
You want strength?
You want to be in a better place?
Work hard.
That sunnah of Allah is not changing.
There's no cheat codes.
There's no cheat codes around effort.
Around sacrifice.
The Prophets had to do it.
The families of the Prophets had to do
it.
The beloveds of Allah have had to do
it.
No one gets a get out of jail
free card.
إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُغَيْجِرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيْجِرُ
مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ Even that change which comes for
you after your effort is Allah bringing about
that change.
But He says the ball is in your
court.
You gotta play the shot.
Whether it lands or does not land, Allah
will take care of it.
You gotta play the shot.
But if you don't play the shot, you're
definitely gonna miss.
So of all His power, do not let
His power waylay you or misguide you into
thinking that you have no responsibility.
Because what that does is that makes your
life meaningless which again Allah takes very personally.
How dare you say that your creation is
meaningless.
Not even if you're doing that exalting my
power.
Not if you're doing that exalting my knowledge
and wisdom.
No.
I did not create this abbas.
I did not create this batil.
This is haq.
And so you gotta do your part.
وَإِذَا أَرَاضَ اللَّهُ بِقَوْمٍ سُوءًا فَلَا مَرَدَّلَ When
Allah decides to inflict people with a catastrophe,
with an ill, with evil, no one can
turn it back.
وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِ مِّنْ وَالٍ And nobody,
no one, can, they have as a protector
other than Him.
وَآخِرُ دَعْوَانَانِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالِمِ If there's
comments or questions, please.
Please.
So it goes across the board.
It goes across the board.
Spirituality, religiosity, economic condition, social condition, political
condition.
Across the board, human beings have to take
charge of whatever is in their domain of
responsibility.
We cannot say as we have been saying,
that we take care of the spirituality and
we will not have to take care of
anything else.
As far as what we see from the
Qur'an and what we see from the
example of Rasulullah ﷺ and the Sahaba, that
is not the case.
Allah does not say that spirituality is my
domain and the political domain or the social
domain or the economic domain belongs to some
other God.
Those are sunan of Allah in those domains
as well.
And those sunan have to be understood and
complied with and acknowledged and worked in accordance
with.
This is something we're gonna see in Surah
Bani Israel very expressively.
That whoever makes a dua, وَيَدْعُ الْإِنسَانُ بِالشَّرِّ
دُعَاءَهُ بِالْخَيْرِ Insan makes dua of sharr, asking
for khayr.
He thinks it's khayr for him, but what
he's asking for is sharr for him.
Nevertheless, when it comes to making an effort,
it is clear.
The one who makes the effort for it,
the way it deserves for the effort to
be made.
Allah says that's the one, that's the person
we're gonna reward.
That's the one who's gonna get the fruits
of their action.
So it is across the board.
So if it's a punishment, evil, so sharr
exists.
And the attribution of that is not to,
it is the absence of khayr, yes, but
there are, so the one who experiences the
ultimate catastrophe, Allah's final punishment, that's destruction and
then they go in the hellfire.
That would be for them, in their context,
evil.
Although from within that context, that individually for
that particular person who's condemned, is evil, there
is khayr for the rest of humanity in
the grander scheme of things.
In Allah's hands is khayr, of course.
But it has to be for grander, we
have to take the grander perspective in mind.
For a specific individual person who's condemned, who's
damned, whose heart is sealed, and who's now
going to face the punishment of Allah for
an eternity, now that's a done deal.
Does that make sense?
So there is the meaning that we share,
being the ummati of Rasulullah ﷺ.
There are obligations and responsibilities that we incur,
that we take on as a result of
that.
The pillars of Islam, the amr bil ma
'ruf, the nahiyan al-munkar, those responsibilities that
we have, the hudud that Allah has asked
us to maintain.
And then within our individual lives, within our
context, societies, wherever we are, what will that
amr bil ma'ruf, nahiyan al-munkar look
like?
What is it that I can do that
will improve the human condition?
That will improve the condition of the ummah
of Rasulullah ﷺ?
Something that I'm gifted with.
Something that I have the resources for.
Something that I have the opportunities for, or
the opportunities to create opportunities for.
Right, so there is that which we share,
and then there is that which is unique.
To take responsibility for that.
I have been created by Allah, there is
definitely a meaning, a purpose in my creation.
It is unique, as well as communal.
And I have to realize that, understand what
that is, and put in my effort in
that direction as best as I can.
Thank you very much.
I'm trying to understand, what is it really
like?
And how are you better than out of
context?
No, no, no.
So, there is diversity across Allah's creation.
Right?
And that includes the human beings.
There is diversity in language.
There is diversity in appearance.
There is diversity in abilities.
So people from certain tribes, cultures, will have
some abilities that others don't.
Right?
So there will be, there will be, perhaps
in the context of, we see the Arabs,
they're very practical people.
They're very hands-on people.
And so for them to be the primary
recipients of the Quran, it means they heard,
they understood, they enacted.
The gap between hearing, understanding, and enactment wasn't
as much.
As when you see the other nations and
tribes, Persians for example, they are more a
people of intellection, and reflection, and thinking, and
so the Prophet ﷺ points to Salman al
-Farsi and say that even if ilm is
on Sirius, a star, a person from his
nation is going to go get it.
So they're more erudite in terms of not
just practical application, but before practical application, intellectual
development.
Even spiritual development for that matter.
Languages too.
There's a saying in Arabic that that things
are known by their opposites.
So much is recognized in contrast.
That we understand things in contrast.
So for you to know each other, I
know me, I know me better.
If I know a person of another race,
of another nationality, of another tribe, of another
background, there's so much about myself that I
would not be aware of.
Goethe said, he who knows one language knows
none.
Because when you know two languages, then you're
able to appreciate the nuances in both languages
and different languages better.
And also commonalities would become more clear in
how we understand them.
So that diversity to enhance human understanding of
themselves is at least one dimension of it.
There's a whole lot more to it.
What is to be condemned, what is to
be curtailed in that understanding is that you
do not make that a sense of privilege
or Allah has favored or Allah loves one
more than the other, period.
And the other doesn't have a chance.
That one is lesser human and one is
greater human.
Because one is whiter.
So there's no room for racism there.
Or a superior race.
That door is being closed off.
Identity, understanding, relating, that relationship takes place across
differences.
You can't relate without differences.
Differences have to be there for relationships to
be taking place.
I hope that makes sense.
For sure.
And how a Norwegian will then practice Islam,
he will bring that commonality with the ummah,
but then there will be a new flavor
as well.
A new beauty that you will see expressing
from a Norwegian's Islam for that matter.
And we see that.
We see that more here, which is a
multicultural context.
The diversity that we see in understanding fiqh
for that matter.
Understanding spirituality for that matter.
It helps us understand and learn from each
other as well.
I may bring some detrimental aspects of where
I come from.
There are some bad habits of my culture.
For example, we tend to be very lazy.
Right?
We have this, you know...
Yes.
For sure.
For sure.
And let's see.
It makes us a particular way.
But I have to be cognizant of that.
It can get in the way.
The more I appreciate it, the more I
can overcome it, the more I can learn
from other cultures where they are perhaps better
in certain areas.
There is, for example, there is a mindset
of scarcity that South Asians are particularly prone
to.
And that has a historical context as well.
30 million or more people died in famines
orchestrated by the British.
Now, trans-generationally, we grow up with this
fear of poverty.
Where are we going to eat from?
You have to become a doctor or engineer,
otherwise you are going to die of hunger.
You have to...
There is very limited resources.
You have to compete with everyone else in
order to grasp those resources.
In order to make sure you succeed, you
have to climb this ladder.
And if you have to climb this ladder,
you have to push other people off this
ladder.
This has a history.
And that history has...
It's a traumatic history.
And it's something that we need to be
wary of and understand better.
People who don't have that background, for them
it will be easier to say, tawakkalallah.
It's okay.
There are multiple professions.
You will not die.
You are not a lesser human being if
you are not a doctor or an engineer.
We have a colonial history that we need
to be wary of.
So, different tribes, different nations, there will be
commonalities and there will be differences.
I wouldn't say opposites necessarily, but commonalities and
differences.
So there will be those that will help
us understand each other better, understand ourselves better
and relate with each other from that context.
For example, the Quran says that from the
Bedouins, the Quran creates a distinction now.
There are the city dwellers, there are those
in Medina, there are those in Mecca.
But then there are those who are Bedouins.
More harsh, more strict, more blunt, more offensive,
more likely to apostate.
And that's what led to the apostasy wars
as well.
That it was those nations, Allah identifies in
Surah At-Tawbah that you need to recognize
this limitation, that you need to recognize this
fault and you need to send people over
to benefit from Rasulullah ﷺ and learn from
him and then go back to your people.
So that difference too is a difference to
be acknowledged and overcome and transcended.
Something that the people around Rasulullah ﷺ, they
didn't have that challenge as such.
Again, the difference between people of Mecca and
people of Medina.
Umar ﷺ says that, Ya Rasulullah ﷺ, ever
since we've come here, our wives talk back
to us.
They never used to do that in Mecca.
They've gone along and they've gone around these
women of Medina and now they're more blunt.
And you need to do something to curtail
this.
But that's a difference.
That is a difference that is now coming
to the fore which wasn't there before.
And you would see again similar South Asian
women versus Arab women.
The culture, there is a clear difference.
You would find that Arab women are more
likely to be teachers of religion in the
United States.
Take stage, talk about it.
South Asians, not so much.
Would not do that.
We have a history of muhaddithat as Dr.
Akram Nadvi has shown, 11,000 or more
teachers of a hadith.
Women.
11,000 throughout our history.
And he says, there are so many more
I wasn't able to, I had to finish
it otherwise it would have kept going.
Women who taught in the haram.
Taught men.
Imagine in this masjid a woman is sitting
in front of you instead of me.
Again, something that's culturally very alien to us
although it's part of the same tradition.
Part of the same tradition.
It has its own justification.
There's that diversity.
So much to learn from there.
I think we're extending into Isha.
Please, please, please.
That's again, in this particular ayat, it is
generally for humanity.
Every human being.
Every human being.
And the angels have two functions.
As we understand from the Quran and the
sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.
One function is protection.
The other function is documentation.
Scribes or whatever it is that we're doing
to keep a record of our actions.
So there's those and then there's the protectors.
Protectors front and back and the scribes right
and left.
Angels, angels are...
There's a lot of convert stories that you
will hear who talk about how they had
some sort of experience like that after which
their search for the divine, their search for
Allah began and they found Islam.
So that's again, their own religious experiences.