Yousuf Raza – Quran Daily #1 Audhubillah
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The host discusses the importance of protecting oneself from Shaytan and demonic influences through proper name and activity. They stress the need to be active and seeking refuge from Allah, and emphasize the potential for personalized experiences and psychological experiences to be present in the mind of Allah. The speakers also discuss the psychological makeup of negative psychological behavior that comes from within within, which is causing suffering and negativity, and the importance of finding out who comes to Shaitaan, the devil, and the individual's immune system to overcome fear and belief.
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All right, so here we go again.
As-salamu alaykum and hello everyone watching and
everyone listening.
Today in Qur'an Daily, we're talking about
عَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنِ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ Yes, the requirement
that Allah ﷻ praises upon us within the
Qur'an.
He says that whenever you recite the Qur
'an فَاسْتَعِذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنِ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ that you
seek refuge, addressing actually the Prophet ﷺ and
through him, us, that you seek refuge with
Allah from Shaytan.
So there's with Allah, there's from Shaytan, and
we are the ones who are seeking refuge.
First up, عَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنِ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ Let
me very quickly translate this.
I seek refuge with Allah from Shaytan, from
Satan, from the demon, the accursed, the rejected,
right?
So that's a very quick translation of عَعُوذُ
بِاللَّهِ مِنِ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ Now again, this is
not formally a part of the Qur'an
itself, as in an ayah or a verse
of the Qur'an, but it is a
requirement to recite this before beginning our recitation.
So immediately we have some understandings or some
reflection points that this gives us.
When I'm saying this, then I'm recognizing, I'm
believing in three dimensions in the very least.
Myself as a seeker, and I'm not just
a passive seeker of refuge, I am an
active seeker of refuge.
That is made very clear in the beginning.
i.e. I'm not just sitting back and
saying, Allah, you protect me, I am doing
nothing.
Or expecting that the mere recitation of these
words will be sufficient.
But I am acknowledging that there is an
effort that has to be made consciously, deliberately,
on my part, to seek refuge with Allah
سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى To seek refuge with Allah.
So I am an active seeker of refuge.
I am not a passive, sitting back on
my backside, expecting just refuge and protection to
come.
And then when it doesn't, blaming Allah or
blaming God for not being there for me
and not protecting me when he should have,
or becoming or developing this cocksure arrogance that
I am protected.
So anything and everything that I'm saying is
absolutely immune from all demonic influences, simply because
I recited, simply because my tongue uttered the
A'udhu Billah prior to doing any activity,
or even the recitation of the Quran itself.
Right?
So that's the foremost lesson we need to
impress upon ourselves, drill into our minds, that
we are active seekers of refuge, i.e.
there's anything and everything which is within our
control to protect ourselves from Shaytan, from demonic
influences.
We need to resort to them as best
as possible.
And then of course, yes, all that is,
which is outside of our control, we leave
that to Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى to protect
us against.
Right?
So that's the first point.
Second point, what we're recognizing from the get
-go is hope and our vulnerability.
Hope with respect to Allah Himself and vulnerability
with respect to demonic influences, that Shaytan is
very much a possible influencer of our thoughts,
emotions, and actions.
But before we get too bogged down because
of that, Allah as the ultimate transcendent being,
yet so imminently close to me, so involved
in my life, that I can invoke Him
for protecting me.
Right?
So He is who He is in terms
of His greatness, His grandeur, His ultimate ultimate
-ness.
But that doesn't mean that He is distant
from me.
He is very imminent.
I have a conversation portal, if you will,
open to Him.
That is, these are some of the beliefs
that I am enunciating, that I am expressing,
articulating when I recite the A'udhu Billah,
that I expect, I believe that He will
protect me.
And I believe that I am vulnerable and
that I believe that I need to actively
seek the refuge of Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى
from Shaytan.
Another thing that is important to realize that
when we talk about Allah and when we
talk about Shaytan from a theological perspective, from
a particularly Qur'anic perspective, then these are
not just psychological entities.
We cannot just say that these are projections
of our mind or socially constructed ideas.
No, these are not ideas.
These are personified beings.
Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى is not just a
projection of my hopes, of my psychic complexes,
that He is nothing more than a psychic
reality.
The theological perspective or whatever we get from
scripture generally, the biblical scripture and the Qur
'anic scripture is very vehement in establishing that
it purports an understanding of a personified being
which has a proper name.
That proper name with respect to the Qur
'an is Allah.
So it isn't something that you've conjured up
to put yourself at ease or it's just
psychic complexes.
There are psychic realities to them, yes, but
there is a corresponding being in the outside
world, if you will, even though these discussions
have, there are nuances and there are intricacies
that we can just casually get away with,
but for the sake of a public discussion,
to understand that we can't just say that
He is a psychological entity, just a figment
of my mind or within me.
We cannot psychologize Him and leave it at
that.
There are corresponding psychological experiences that we have
of Allah and Shaytan that we will talk
about, religious experiences and their reality as we
extend further into these studies.
But nevertheless, they have an external source.
They have an outside source as well.
And that outside source isn't just a source,
isn't just some random force, isn't just some
random phenomena.
It is a personified being with an individual,
if you will.
So that has to be acknowledged, and His
name is Allah.
We will develop as to His attributes when
we start talking about Bismillah from tomorrow and
then into the Surah Fatihah.
We will see what we mean when we
talk to Him.
But in the A'udhu Billah itself, we
see that He is imminent, that He is
someone who we turn to, we look, we
hope, we expect, we believe that He will
give us sanctuary, that He is accessible to
us.
So hopelessness, whenever we experience that, then there
is at some level a negation or a
weakening of this belief that He can protect
or He can give or He will be
there for us.
The imminence of Allah has gone in the
background.
And that's a perfectly natural process to think
that, oh, I experienced hopelessness, my faith is
weak, I'm a goner.
No, faith is attained by a process, that
is life, right?
So no one can just have it and
be okay with it.
Everyone who has it has to go through
a pretty draining process, struggle to attain it,
to perfect it, and to continue to strengthen
it.
And even then, there will be ups and
downs.
That's expected, that's part of being human.
We continue, we own the process, we own
the journey.
And never, the reason why that becomes so
intimidating or so daunting is because we expect
for us ourselves to just have it and
continue to have it and never falter in
it.
That's not gonna happen.
That's not gonna happen.
So hopefulness in Allah, the mere reiteration of
the A'udhu Billah, repeating it again and
again is a means of countering that hopelessness,
is a reminder to the self, a conscious
expression in which we are telling that part
of ourselves that is driving us towards hopelessness,
that no, Allah is, he has asked me
to say this, and when I do say
this, then I expect that there will be
assistance, there will be help.
I need to look at what I have
to be doing, right?
So we can go towards both extremes, we
can become completely passive, expect him to do
everything.
And this can be, A'udhu Billah, can
be an escape from us.
I don't wanna do what I have to
do.
I just expect you to do it.
And when you don't do it, I blame
you, a scapegoat.
God becomes a scapegoat.
That's idolatry.
That's not who he is.
That's not who he is presenting himself to
be from the understanding that we just get
from the A'udhu Billah.
There is an active seeking that is required,
efforts that are required.
And when I see, I seek refuge with
Allah, then okay, there are certain things that
he requires for me to do to come
into that refuge.
Part of them is reciting this repeatedly, but
then there is more to it.
What that is, we will talk about as
we go on in our study of the
ayahs of the Quran.
Right, the third part, the third dimension that
I wanna be talking about is the vulnerability
that we recognize towards Shaytan.
The demon, the accursed, the rejected, right?
So again, psychologically speaking, whether we're talking about
God or we're talking about the demon, all
we can talk about is the effects that
they have on our psyche.
And we can talk about how those influences,
the positive and the negative influences that are
going on within us, what those phenomena is.
It has to extend into a religious belief
structure for us to assign proper names to
the sources of those effects that we experience
psychologically, right?
So we are at the border right there,
the intersection.
As psychologists, the max we can say or
the maximum point where we can go to
is that yes, there are influences.
There are very negative influences, influences that are
driving us towards our own damnation, so to
speak, driving us towards against our own better
judgment, towards this downward spiral, towards this suffering,
which is coming from within, this negativity that
is coming from within, this demotivation that comes
from within, this self-loathing that comes from
within, which is not action oriented, which is
precisely the opposite.
It takes us away from action, right?
So we can talk about that at a
psychological level.
But to source it in the individual of
Shaitaan, of Satan, of the demon, that is
where religion comes to our support and help
and gives us this as a matter of
faith and belief to understand it.
And when we see that they're aligning, that
what we understand from our psychological studies, so
to say, they align, they make sense, they
synchronize with the religious belief structure, things add
up, things make more sense and the belief
becomes stronger and our understanding of the psychological
phenomena is also enhanced, right?
So very briefly, a detour, if you will,
on these understandings, but coming back to the
vulnerability point, our vulnerability before Shaitaan, before someone
who is rejected, before someone who is cursed,
who has access to us, right?
One way or the other can influence us
and it is going to be covert influences.
It is not necessarily, or at least for
the most part, these influences are not going
to be embodied as in somebody coming up
to us and meeting us.
That may be a possibility as well.
The Quran talks about or the demons from
the human beings.
These are people whose demonic dimensions have gotten
the better of them and are completely driving
them and then they would be inviting you
towards that which is not good for you
here or hereafter, right?
But right now we're talking about the Shaitaan,
the devil and for the most part, his
influences as far as my individual self are
concerned are going to be covert, are going
to be implicit, are going to be unconscious,
right?
It's going to work through deception.
It's going to work through self-deception and
so the recognition as to how dangerous this
is is seen by how many times we're
required to reiterate A'udhu Billah and how
something as blessed as the recitation of the
Quran, something as honorable, something as noble requires
that we recognize that even in this practice
of reciting the Quran, of reading out the
word of Allah, of God, we are still
vulnerable to Shaitaan.
That when I am with my Mus'haf,
when I am with my Quran, reading it,
reciting it, reflecting upon it, interpolations from Shaitaan
are very much a possibility, actually a probability
because if there was just a possibility, not
a probability, maybe I could have done away
with or not recited the A'udhu Billah
at times and done it at other times.
Do as I feel.
No, but the requirement is do it every
time.
Do it every time.
When you're starting your Salah, you're going to
recite your Fatiha.
Before the Fatiha begins, the A'udhu Billah
has to come in, right?
So the recognition of that vulnerability, again, always
remember the greatest trick that Ravel ever played
is to convince the world it doesn't exist.
So as far as our personal growth is
concerned, spiritually, religiously, or in any other dimension,
or whatever the case may be, it is
to consider that there is no negative side
to me or dimensions from within myself that
are pulling me away from where I want
to be or where I should be.
If I am oblivious to those negativities and
that evil within myself, actually, it's not just
negative.
It is outright evil.
It is the accursed devil, Satan, Shaitaan, right?
It is he's rejected.
So to recognize that possibility, no, the probability
of evil within is of the utmost importance.
But not to be carried away with it
or not to be bogged down by it
with the recognition that refuge with Allah is
that sanctuary with Allah, the protection of Allah,
that possibility, that probability, that help is always
there.
So again, active seeking, with Allah, the hope
dimension, the recognition of this, of the help
from the Almighty and the vulnerability that we
feel towards Shaitaan and acknowledging that so we
can take those active measures and ask Allah's
help.
This is something that is regarded to be
so important that we have to recite it
every time before we recite the Quran.
So that's the message.
That's the reminder for today, taking A'udhu
Billah very seriously and the different dimensions of
our psychology, of our personality that have already
started coming out, just reflecting on simple translation
of A'udhu Billah minash Shaitanir Rajeem.
Thank you so much for watching.
I will be back tomorrow with talking about
Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem.
Inshallah.
Thank you all once again.
Bye-bye.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.