Yousuf Raza – Quran Daily Surah alFatiha Ayah1 RabbilAalamin
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Alright people, we're back.
As-salamu alaykum again with Let's Grow Qur
'an Daily.
And we're talking about the last phrase of
Surah Al-Fatihah, which the first ayah of
Surah Al-Fatihah, which is Rabbil Alameen.
We spoke about Rabb yesterday as to how
this carries a connotation of a loving, nurturing
relationship towards those who fall under the Rabubiyah
of Allah SWT rather than that of a
tyrannical mastery.
And you would find in, for example, the
dua that we are encouraged to recite in
Surah Fani Israa, in Surah Israa, Allah SWT
says, وَقُلْ رَبِّرْحَمْهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِي صَغِيرَ That with
respect to your parents, pray, make dua that
my Rab, calling on to Allah SWT, have
mercy upon them the way they raised me,
nurtured me when I was little.
Right?
So this Rabbiyani and Rab having the same
roots, and then the understanding or the implication
of Rahmah, of mercy and compassion already inbuilt
within the word, as we see in the
dua that Ya Allah, treat them with mercy
the way they Rabbiyanied me when I was
little, when they nurtured me and took care
of me when I was little.
So they did that with compassion.
They did that with mercy, right?
So the understanding of mercy and compassion is
inbuilt in the word itself.
Further, we find that Books of Tafasir, one
very beautiful definition of Rab that I found,
said that this is يُقَالُ لِمَن قَامَ لِإِصْلَاحِ
شَيْءٍ وَإِتْمَامِهِ This word is used for the
one who stands for the rectification of something,
the repair, the making something better, وَإِتْمَامِهِ and
its perfection, taking it to the level of
its perfection.
So again, the definition that we spoke about
as to how Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist,
as to how he spoke about love in
the context of appreciating the other for who
they are and who they can be, recognizing
them, in other words, for the potential that
they carry, and looking for them to live
up to that potential fully, as best as
possible.
And then we spoke about how the reciprocity
of that would mean that I see, I
recognize, and I reiterate to myself how Allah
loves me like this, and then I try
my very best to live up to that
image that He holds of me, the potential
that He sees in me, that He has
put in me, and that He wants me
to rise up to that potential.
So becoming the best version of yourself in
the understanding of الحمد لله رب العالمين becomes
a divinely ordained exhortation.
This is something that Allah as Rabb wants
for us to achieve foremost.
So it's not just for the sake of
me that I become the best version of
myself, but it is in the recognition, in
gratitude and appreciation and praise of Allah who
wants me to do that, who wants for
me to become that.
And further, when we connect this with عالمين,
He is the Rabb of عالمين, He is
the Rabb of all of reality, of all
the world, of all nations, of all creations,
of all beings.
And when we speak about this, we have
to understand that عالمين is everything that is
in the created realm of Allah سبحانه وتعالى.
This extends to the physical world, the material
world, the biological world, the psychological world, the
spiritual world, and all of these different dimensions
of reality, including inanimate objects, animals, plants, angels,
jinnat, and finally human beings.
All of these created beings are related by
this connection of being under the ربوبية of
Allah سبحانه وتعالى, being subjected to the love
and nurturing care of Allah.
So in my relationship with the Rabb of
عالمين, my extension of those same attributes of
mercy, of compassion, of nurturing, should extend to
the environment around me.
Not only to the people that I relate
with, definitely to the people that I relate
with within my family, outside of my family,
outside of my nationality, outside of my religion.
That everyone falls under the ربوبية of Allah
سبحانه وتعالى and is related to Him thus
and through Him to us in that way.
Not only that, it extends to the world
of nature, of the environment that we live
in.
To have a harmonious relationship with that is
part of our responsibility.
That the love of Allah, that the way
He has meticulously attended to the nurturing and
the step-by-step development of all that
exists in the material world as it has
evolved to be what it is today, and
then from there into the biological beings coming
into existence from physical inanimate beings, from matter,
and from their development of consciousness and their
in the form of self-consciousness as human
beings have been endowed with as we have
developed, and all of those step-by-step
evolving under the loving, nurturing care of Allah
سبحانه وتعالى.
So one of the understandings of رب has
been, and you will see in translations, as
the one who has evolved the عالمين, who
is the evolver of creation, bringing them from,
and Allah سبحانه وتعالى says that in another
surah as well, تركبنا طبقاً عن طبق that
you will grow actually from stage upon stage
the way the moon grows stage after stage.
And part of those stages mean that Allah
سبحانه وتعالى Himself subjects us to a very
diligent control in which we are subject to
laws or habits of Allah سبحانه وتعالى that
take us, the instincts that guide us and
one of the understandings within ربوبية is guidance
as well.
So guided by the laws of nature, laws
of Allah سبحانه وتعالى basically, laws that are
part of His sunnah as to how His
habits are with reality, with creation.
That's what we get an understanding of and
that's the second dimension of the word عالمين
that the world that He has created, our
علامات, our symbols, taking us all of reality,
all the realms of reality, all worlds within
reality are علامات of Allah سبحانه وتعالى which
let us know His habits, let us know
His sunnah, sunnatullah.
They make us understand, get closer to Him.
These are signs, ayaat as the Quran reiterates
so many times, ayaat spread about in the
physical, biological, psychological, spiritual world of reality.
So we see from all of these, Allah
سبحانه وتعالى, His creation depicts to us, His
being سبحانه وتعالى that all of these are
علامات of His love, of His ربوبية, of
His creation and like we were saying, His
guidance as to how He has guided reality
purposefully.
Now we see in the biological creation of
Allah سبحانه وتعالى that purpose, that it is
not randomly going towards nothingness or anythingness, it
is going towards life, it is growing towards
reproduction, towards replication, towards self-repair, towards self
-maintenance for the production of a species, for
the maintenance of a species and then even
within there, the extinction of certain species also
serves grander ecological purposes all the way to
the service of human beings and how then
as human beings develop, as human beings grow
and the human society grows, the hold of
those laws or those biological instincts is definitely
there, but it is now complemented with a
freedom that we have attained as self-conscious
beings and when we talk about the story
of Adam عليه السلام, we will talk about
this a little more, but part of the
ربوبية of Allah سبحانه وتعالى in nurturing us
step by step, evolving to the highest level
of our potential, first it was through very
diligent, meticulous guidance that we didn't really have
a lot of conscious control over except that
we complied, we complied with all the physical
laws, we complied with all the biological instincts
and even to the level of consciousness a
lot of psychological needs, but then the higher
human beings or the more self-conscious human
beings when we developed and then we have
come to the fore with Adam عليه السلام,
we are now more responsible with freedom so
that the rest of the potential that has
to be achieved has to be achieved by
making conscious free choices.
Again, recall the example that we gave of
Zayd and the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم
that their relationship exemplified this beautiful submission
that Zayd gave towards the Messenger صلى الله
عليه وسلم even prior to him being the
Messenger of his own free will, when he
had the حرية, when he had the freedom
to do so and that was the perfection
of the relationship that's where him turning or
accepting Rasulullah صلى الله عليه وسلم was really
something that you don't find a parallel to
that.
It's just simply amazing that's the kind of
relationship we're looking for and that's the kind
of relationship that can only come to full
realization after freedom is put into the equation
and with free choice we understand and we
recognize الحمد لله رب العالمين and using that
free choice we look to fulfill the potential
that Allah has placed within us and using
that free choice we look to fulfill the
potential in the عالمين, in the world that
Allah has created, in all the worlds that
Allah has created that now we are responsible
to take to completion and perfection as human
beings and being the خلفاء of Allah and
we'll again talk about that as the ayat
move ahead, we carry that responsibility so the
harmonious relationship within the human community and then
beyond that the community of nature with the
plants and animals and everything around us coming
into our responsibility.
These things do not exist so they can
merely be exploited randomly, mindlessly for our comforts
and we see that they are now in
the form of the climate change chaos that
the world is experiencing and worse is about
to come we see the punishment really of
our irresponsibility that our choices do not go
without consequences we took irresponsible choices and now
we have to bear with the consequences and
that's all of it coming together again putting
it all together all praise and gratitude is
for Allah who is the loving caring, nurturer,
evolver of all realms of reality of all
beings, of all creation and we continue with
the second ayah inshallah Al Fatiha