Yousuf Raza – Ramadan Conversations Episode 12 They thought their claims wouldnt be tested AlAnkabut 17
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The implementation of Islam in their cities has been characterized by physical torture, abuse, and negative language. Practically living it is essential for becoming a believer, and the process of becoming a believer is essential. The struggle is for one's own growth and its impact on one's life.
AI: Summary ©
Alright, bismillah wa salat wa salamu ala rasulullah
wa ala alihi wa ashabihi ajma'in.
Qala tabarak wa ta'ala fi kitabihil kareem,
ba'ad an aqool, a'udhu billahi minash
shaytanir rajeem, bismillahir rahmanir raheem.
Alif Lam Meem.
SadaqAllahul Azeem.
So this is the twelfth day of Ramadan
Conversations.
We continue within the seerah of Rasulullah ﷺ
right around the middle four years.
So a lot of the scholars in terms
of placing where the revelation or the Meccan
revelations, the part of the Meccan Qur'an
was revealed in which time period.
So they say that it's the first four
years, the middle four years, and the last
four years, or the third set of four
years.
And that's how they place a lot of
surahs.
This particular surah that I recited from, and
we're going to study the first ruku'ah,
which is Surat al-Ankabut.
The idea is that this is right around
the cusp of the middle four years and
the last four years.
It's right around that central time period in
Mecca.
And what was characteristic of this time period
was the physical torture that the sahaba radhiAllahu
ta'ala anhum, the companions of the Prophet,
what they were subjected to was at its
peak.
So when whatever they had in terms of
accusations against Rasulullah ﷺ did not work.
By did not work, I mean it did
not deter the messenger and his handful of
companions, even though the number of people who
had accepted Islam remained small.
So in that sense, their calumny, their accusations,
their propaganda, whatever you want to call it,
it did work in that it wasn't allowing
Rasulullah ﷺ to be taken as seriously as
he would have wanted to get an audience
for people to hear him out.
That didn't happen.
Nevertheless, those who did accept, as few as
they were, and Rasulullah ﷺ himself, they held
strong.
They kept going.
Not because it did not hurt them, not
because it did not bother them, but because
they were willing to take on that hurt.
They were willing to face that pain because
of their commitment to what they believed in.
And this was frustrating the people of Quraysh
even more.
What Rasulullah ﷺ is calling people to words
is different, drastically different from the polytheism that
is rampant, from the understanding of society, of
human beings, their position, their status, everything.
And so it's incredibly irksome for them.
They wanted to end more than anything else.
They want things to go back to normal,
quote-unquote.
That unjust, evil, normal, whatever it was, they
want that status quo to come back.
Now, its status quo is still there, only
Rasulullah ﷺ's voice is irritating.
It's saying that it should not be this
way.
Them standing strong, continuing, the ayat of Qur
'an are continuously coming.
Rasulullah ﷺ continues to teach the companions.
They're spreading it, they're talking about it as
much as they can, as much as they
can allow or they're allowed to.
The Quraysh, they scale their efforts to deter
Rasulullah ﷺ and the companions even more.
They scale them up, they increase the atrocities,
the oppression.
So you can take the verbal abuse.
Let's see if you can take the physical
abuse.
So right around this point, Rasulullah ﷺ and
the Sahaba, mostly the companions who were from,
who were slaves, who had responded to Rasulullah
ﷺ.
Because for the slaves, for the very first
time, a message was presented to them, a
belief system was presented to them that valued
them as human beings.
Something that they were not accustomed to.
And it made sense.
Because whatever they saw of themselves as human
beings was finally getting some validation, some appreciation,
some, it was being sanctioned as opposed to
whatever they were subjected to before, which a
lot of them had resigned themselves to.
But this value of their own life in
relationship to the one God was so powerful
that commitment to this, not just for their
own selves, but for others like them, they
were willing to bear any and all sorts
of torture for it.
And so we've all heard the stories, we've
all read what they went through.
Every single one of us.
We've heard Bilal r.a. being tortured by
Umayyah, deprived of food, deprived of water, tied
up to rocks in the desert, in the
scorching desert sun, being made to lay barebacked,
without much clothes on, on the scorching desert
sand, with a huge boulder on his back,
and all the time being whipped, being beaten
up.
And with every whipping, a demand was placed
in front of him.
Quit Islam.
Denounce Islam.
Get away from, say something bad about Muhammad.
Consistently.
Physical pain as much as Umayyah could manage.
And not just Bilal r.a. and so
many others.
Bilal r.a. rather than saying what Umayyah
wanted him to say, continued to say, Allah
is One.
And they actually asked him later, why did
you say, why did you choose that word?
He's like, because it irritated him the most.
And so he continued to say, The more
I said it, the more he punished me,
the more he tortured me.
And so he chose to say this again
and again and again.
Those of you who've seen the Umar series,
would see how this particular depiction in there,
it is actually very brilliantly portrayed, as to
how the one being tortured, but saying, is
more free, more liberated, than the chief of
his tribe, the affluent person with authority, who
is forcing him to, or trying to force
him to recant.
The chief looks more imprisoned, more in his
frustration.
And the slave looks more liberated, although he's
being tortured.
Others, women slaves, they were beaten.
Umar ibn al-Khattab, prior to accepting Islam,
of course, he was one of the people
torturing the Muslim slaves.
He would torture them so much that one
of his, the slave girls he would torture,
he'd say, I'm stopping not because I feel
sorry for you, but because I'm tired.
I'm tired of beating you.
Imagine that poor soul, that woman, that girl,
how much she has gone through.
One of the earlier couples who accepted Islam,
Yasir and Sumayya radiyallahu ta'ala anhuma, and
their son was Umar ibn Yasir.
Although they had been freed of slavery, but
even the status of a freed slave in
the Arab society was not really free.
Abu Jahl had his sway over them.
And so he started torturing them.
He tortured them repeatedly, incessantly, in public, he
would strip them of their clothes in front
of people watching, both husband and wife, and
beat them, and torture them, demanding of them
to just acknowledge some level of divinity in
the idols, something.
They refused.
So for Sumayya radiyallahu ta'ala anha, he
took a spear, and he speared her through
her pelvis, with people watching, with her own
son watching.
With Yasir radiyallahu ta'ala anhum, he had
him tortured, forced him, tried to force him
to recant, he wouldn't.
And so he had him tied up with
four different animals, four different ropes, four different
limbs, and he had them run in four
different directions, so that he's literally torn to
shreds.
And that's how they became the first martyrs
in Islam.
Yasir and Sumayya radiyallahu ta'ala anhum, their
son Ammar, having witnessed all of this, also
being tortured, could not bear it anymore, and
actually said what Abu Jahl wanted him to
say.
And then he became incredibly remorseful and came
to Rasulullah salallahu alayhi wa sallam saying, I
didn't want to say it, but I didn't
have, it was just too difficult for me.
And Rasulullah salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, it's
okay, do not worry about it.
You said it, you were forced to say
it, it doesn't count.
So reassuring him, and this is a person
who's seen his parents die, and he could
not bear the torture himself.
So then there was Khabbab bin al-Ard,
radiyallahu ta'ala anhum, and he was one
of those tortured the most.
And it is important, I've repeated these narrations
multiple times myself, a lot of you have
heard it, but it remains important to reiterate
this before ourselves for how we are so
prone to forgetting, because we owe these people,
the world owes them, for so much of
what we take for granted.
And the Sahaba used to repeat it among
themselves, in better days, in more affluent days,
they would remember those days in Makkah, and
they would talk about what went on.
And they would say to each other, okay,
what did you go through?
What did you go through?
With Khabbab, they would ask, and he wouldn't
tell them what happened, he would just lift
his shirt, and they would see that his
back was filled with holes, and those holes
were burning pieces of coal that he was
made to lay down on without his shirt,
and he was, a huge rock was kept
on his chest, so he couldn't get up
or try to run away, and those pieces
of coal would pierce through his skin.
It was him who came to Rasulullah ﷺ
and said, Ya Rasulullah, don't you ask Allah
to help us?
When is the help of Allah coming?
When is the help of Allah coming?
Rasulullah ﷺ would say, You need to hang
on.
It's too early to be asking that question.
We have a long way to go.
We have a long way to go to
be deserving of that help.
Paraphrasing, of course, but something to that effect.
And it is at this point, of course,
Rasulullah ﷺ himself is watching all of this
torture.
It's torturing him.
He himself is subjected to torture.
On two occasions, at least, once he's in
sajdah, Abu Jahl winds his rope, his cloak
in the form of a rope and strangulates
Rasulullah ﷺ to the point of his eyes
bobbling out.
Doesn't kill him, but nearly so.
On another occasion, he dares one of his
cronies that there was a sacrifice of a
camel at a distance.
Who's going to bring the remains of that
camel and thrust them upon him?
Rasulullah ﷺ was in sajdah.
And in that sajdah, he's attacked to the
point that it's obviously too heavy for him
to get out from underneath it.
And there is nobody there who would dare
to remove it from his body to help
him out of it.
And he's suffocating underneath.
And it was Fatimah ﷺ who runs to
the aid of her father.
And she's a young girl at that point.
So it is all of these things that
are going on.
And Rasulullah ﷺ is asked by other sahaba
too.
And so this surah is revealed at that
point.
Alif Laam Meem Do people think that they
would be left on saying we believe and
they will not be tested?
They are saying that they believe.
But since when did human beings start thinking
that they are so uncomplicated, so straightforward that
who they say is who they are?
What they say is what they actually believe.
Since when did human beings start deluding themselves
such?
If you're making a claim, words that issue
from your tongues, they have a bearing.
Words have, they have their own rights.
And if those words happen to be words
of Iman, that you're professing in Allah, coming
from a society that has pretty much rebelled
against Allah in anything that relates with Tawheed.
So there is going to be a test.
And it's important to know that this word
Fitnah is, let's just say that a test
is a very inadequate translation of it.
One of the implications of this word is
the process of purification for gold.
Gold, it is found in its ore as
mixed up with all that is not gold.
All that is impure.
All that is not as valuable.
And for it to be purified of those
impurities, of the rest of its ore, it
has to be heated.
So it can be melted and siphoned off.
That is the word Fitnah.
It is used for gold.
So the words that we say, they're important.
They're who we want to be.
And these experiences of living up to those
claims, of living up to those words, is
becoming who we want to be, who we
claim to be.
The claim is not a declaration of where
we are.
It's not of being human.
It is of becoming human.
So the claim to believe is, it says
I believe, but it aspires to believe.
It is the process of believing, becoming a
believer.
And in that becoming of a believer, these
purifications are necessary.
Practically living it is necessary.
And we will talk about in Surah Al
-Baqarah as to how precisely because of the
sacrifices of the Sahaba radhiAllahu ta'ala anhum,
the process of purification so that whatever gold
we hold inside of ourselves, the gold that
we claim to be, it isn't as physically
demanding for it to be drawn out.
At least not anymore.
And we'll talk about why that is.
But nevertheless, there is demands.
Some of them are physical, not to the
level of torture, but nevertheless, those demands are
there.
Claims are to be tested.
We can't take our claims for granted.
We can't assume ourselves to be so pure
already.
I'm already pure gold.
That is the greatest delusion that we can
be suffering from.
We have a lot of evil tendencies.
We have a lot of inadequacies, which is,
which are fetters, which are holding back from
so much of that goodness that is also
there from coming out.
And it is these practical experiences of living
up to our claims that we get an
opportunity to be purified.
It's at every, at every sight of suffering,
at every possibility of difficulty, of a struggle,
if we shy away, then what we're depriving
ourselves of are opportunities of actually growing to
the greatness that we hold inside of ourselves.
And if we justify our laziness by our
narcissism that we're already there, we're already so
great, then all of what that suffering becomes
is a victimizing, and then we end up
victimizing ourselves to go through that suffering with
a nobility, with hope of growing.
Despair is suffering minus meaning.
And this understanding is to inspire a recognition
of that meaning so that suffering is more
bearable.
It's less insufferable.
Psychological challenges will accompany that, and part of
those psychological challenges will include, why me?
I don't want to bear through this anymore.
I don't feel like there is any hope
left.
That is going to be a natural part
of those challenges.
But to hang on for dear life, for
dear faith, even in the midst of that,
even in the face of that, to continue
standing however much our legs wobble, reminding ourselves
and taking other people's help to remind ourselves
of that meaning, of that faith.
وَلَقَدْ فَتَنَّ الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْ So Allah says
we definitely tested those before them.
Rasulullah ﷺ told Khabab that that people before
you, they were sawed in half.
They were buried in sand neck deep and
sawed in half.
They've gone through worse.
There's people who have gone through worse than
you.
وَلَقَدْ فَتَنَّ الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْ وَلَيَعْلَمَنَّ اللَّهَ الَّذِينَ
صَدَقُوا So Allah will find out those who
are really truthful.
وَلَيَعْلَمَلْنَا الْكَاثِبِنَ And He will find out those
of you who are liars.
You're making a claim.
The future is an open possibility.
Maybe you're telling the truth, maybe you're not.
Allah will find out.
Allah will find out.
He's not a puppeteer.
He's not written the script to the end
and that's just, it's gonna play out the
way it's written now.
No.
You have choices to make.
And your active decisions, especially those in the
midst of suffering, are very, they're determining that
end.
They're influencing what the end is going to
be like.
Your choices have, they have a lot of
power in your story.
وَلَيَعْلَمَنَّ الْكَاثِبِنَ أَمْ حَسِبُ الَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ السَّيْجِئَاتِ
أَن يَسْبِقُونَ And to those who think who
have, who practice all of this evil, all
this torture, do they think they'll get the
better of us?
صَهَأْ مَا يَحْكُمُونَ What a ridiculous judgment.
How evil is their judgment?
If that's what they've concluded.
مَنْ قَانَ يَرْجُو لِقَاءَ اللَّهِ Those who hope
to meet, the one who hopes to meet
Allah.
فَإِنَّ أَجَلَ اللَّهِ لَآدْ And you should know
that Allah's appointed time is definitely going to
come.
Because in the midst of that suffering, that's
exactly what you're feeling.
Hopeless.
It's not going to come.
But a feeling of hopelessness does not have
to equal to despair.
And it is because of that feeling of
hopelessness that no, it's not going to come.
That the reminder that it is going to
come becomes necessary.
It has some value.
So judging people for feeling hopeless or feeling
like it's uncalled for, that is why the
reminder is of necessity.
That is why the statement is being made.
It is a meaningful statement.
It is meaningful precisely because the person feels
hopeless.
فَإِنَّ أَجَلَ اللَّهِ لَآدْ وَهُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْأَلِيمُ And
He is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.
He's with you in that suffering.
وَمَنْ جَاهَدَ فَإِنَّمَا يُجَاهِدُ لِنَفْسٍ Whoever struggles is
struggling for his own self.
The struggle is for your own enhancement, for
your own growth.
إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَغَنِيٌ عَنِ الْعَالَمِينَ For definitely Allah
is independent of Alamin.
Allah is Ghani And so much of your
struggles are elevating you towards this استغناء this
power and independence.
The more you struggle, the stronger you get,
the closer you get to Allah and to
Allah's attributes.
But it is important to journey the journey.
You can't just jump to the end.
وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ لَنُكَفِّرَنَّ عَنْهُمْ
سَجِّئَاسِهِمْ And for those who believed and performed
righteously, we will definitely blot out their sins
from them.
Those sins that are holding you back from
attaining to those attributes, from becoming that gold.
And what's that gold?
That gold is embodying yourselves with the attributes
of Allah.
وَلَنَجْزِيَنَّهُمْ أَحْسَنَ الَّذِي كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ And without a
doubt, we will reward them for the best
of what they did.
وآخر دعوانا أن الحمد لله ربنا