Yousuf Raza – Ramadan Conversations Episode 21 Allah Salutes the Messenger… Surah alAhzab 56
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Okay, bismillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, wa salat wa salamu
ala rasulullah wa ala alihi wa ashabihi ajma
'in.
Qala tabarak wa ta'ala fi kitabihil kareem
ba'd an aqool a'udhu billahi minash shaitanir
rajeem bismillahir rahmanir raheem Inna Allaha wa malaikatahu
yusalluna ala an-nabiyyi ya ayyuha allatheena aamanu
sallu alayhi wa sallimu tasleema Sadaqallahul Azeem Rabbish
tahli sadri wa yasir li amri wahla luqbatan
mal-lisani yafqahu qawli Allahumma anfa'na bima
'an lamta'na wa a'limna ma yanfa
'na wa zidna ilma Allahumma arina haqiqata al
-ashya'i kama'i Allahumma arina al-haqqa
haqqa wa rizqna ittiba'a Wa arina al
-baatila baatila wa rizqna itjtinaaba Ameen, Ya Rabbal
Alameen Assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu I
hope everybody is doing well We are into
the last Ashrah, the last 10 days of
Ramadan For a lot of you tonight is
going to be the first odd night We
had hours here last night And yeah, this
is that time where we pick up on
our slack And we make the most of
what is remaining in Ramadan insha'Allah Moving
right along to our episode for today We
are going to speak about this ayah that
I recited from Surah Al-Ahzab It is
an incredible surah Especially with respect to the
seerah of Rasulullah ﷺ So many of the
collective as well as the personal dimensions of
Rasulullah ﷺ's life Are brought into this surah
And then there is this incredible ayah Right
along towards the end of it What I
just recited Which talks about how Allah salutes
Rasulullah ﷺ But before we get to the
ayah A little bit of background is necessary
of course We left in our previous episode
We spoke about Uhud And just a little
bit about, a little summary of what took
place And some of the lessons that we
can glean from that But of course there
is no, there are incredibly more And perhaps
even more significant lessons that can be brought
out Or taken from the incident of Uhud
Of course we work with our limitations Both
in terms of time and ability And restrict
ourselves to whatever we did discuss After Uhud
In a sense between Mecca and Medina The
score is tied Badr belongs to Rasulullah ﷺ
and the Sahaba Uhud belongs to the Quraish
They won Right Now there is something of
a tiebreaker That has to take place And
for this tiebreaker of sorts There were various
times in between that They tried but couldn't
It didn't really work out No battle really
happened After Uhud And the Quraish really wanted
to come strong So what they did was
They developed alliances They hired people They cut
deals with entire tribes Ghatafan being one of
them Of the major ones To bring to
Rasulullah ﷺ and the Sahaba And this is
a huge army 10,000 strong At least
from what I remember That's going to attack
Medina Not just from who's coming with the
Quraish But also there is a threat That
the Jewish settlements May break their treaty With
Rasulullah ﷺ And that opening Is going to
be the weakest link Weakest point Now of
course The army that Rasulullah ﷺ can put
together In this time is not going to
be sufficient To match whatever is coming towards
Medina And so what they do As you
all know Is on the advice of Salman
Farsi Is to dig a trench So this
is also known as the Battle of the
Trench The Battle of Ahzab In that there's
this confederates The alliance that is coming to
attack Medina And then there is the trench
Throughout this Surah of Ahzab It's very interesting
that The Surah transitions from A commentary on
the battle And a commentary on The married
life of Rasulullah ﷺ His personal affairs There
is a back and forth In this Surah
From those dimensions Because Rasulullah ﷺ Is not
just a prophet And that's all he does
Or a general of an army Or head
of Medina or what have you That's not
all of who he is He's a husband
At the same time He has social relations
So this is going on like In daily
routine In the life of Rasulullah ﷺ That
he's dealing with these affairs One after the
other Some social, some personal, some political And
of course spirituality infuses All of these through
and through But they're not all religious affairs
Some of them are very personal affairs And
they too are being commented upon By the
Qur'an By this Surah in particular So
Ahzab is dealing with those issues In particular
the marriage of Rasulullah ﷺ to Zaynab RadhiAllahu
Ta'ala Anha Attracted a lot of controversy
And there was a lot of criticism There
was a lot of hurt That Rasulullah ﷺ
was subjected to This time not at the
hands of Quraysh But at the hands of
people in Medina So there is that going
along There was the issue of Zayd Being
Zaynab RadhiAllahu Ta'ala Anha's husband And him
being the adopted son Of Rasulullah ﷺ So
there was that issue as well And the
position or to what degrees Adoption, how okay
is that In terms of being really his
son So he even had Rasulullah ﷺ's name
So his biological parentage Was not accounted for
That was okay in the Arab tradition But
the Qur'an objects That no they have
to retain their lineage That is important In
any case we're not going into the details
of that So all of this is being
Taking place in this surah Is being spoken
about In this particular surah As far as
the battle of Ahzab was concerned Rasulullah ﷺ
and Sahaba RadhiAllahu Ta'ala Anhum Had as
far as their This is their, what Ta
'if was The ordeal of Ta'if The
pain that Rasulullah ﷺ The suffering that he
had to go through In Ta'if He
had to experience Or Medina had to experience
this As a unit When Rasulullah ﷺ suffered
individually The Muslims suffered collectively In Medina, in
Ahzab It became unbearable It was intolerable How
difficult the circumstances became Digging the trench Manning
the trench Making sure nobody comes through Some
skirmishes that did take place Across the people
who were able to come through Then suffering
through the hunger Because when you're locking them
out You're locking yourself in And when you're
locking yourself in There's only so many resources
that you have to supply on You don't
know how long this is going to last
And so yes they have to go through
starvation They're doing all of that labor All
of that fighting While not having food Basic
food So the incidents that we hear about
People come to Rasulullah ﷺ That to keep
ourselves from feeling the pain Of starvation, of
hunger We have to tie stones around our
bellies Rasulullah ﷺ lifts his shirt and says
That he shows that he has to tie
more Than they are So all of them
across the board Head of the army As
well as The most common person Of course
would be subjected to this starvation To this
pain of Ahzab At this point A very
important Filtration takes place And that's something that
we have to recognize That in our own
spiritual religious journeys It will take place When
we become religious When we become spiritual There
is a lot of The benefits of religiosity
Of spirituality That we are told about That
are of course legitimately there How it is
going to make us feel What order it
is going to bring in our lives The
psychological and social hygienic elements Associated with religiosity
and spirituality So in this particular instance The
sahaba radhiAllahu ta'ala anhum Are going through
all of this torture None of those hygienic
elements are available They're not to be seen
So what we spoke about with respect to
Suraqa bin Malik when Rasulullah ﷺ is migrating
He told Suraqa that I see the The
bracelets of the king of Persia On your
hands, on your arms So this is something
that The rest of the believers Have also
heard of Of course Rasulullah ﷺ has prophesied
And said that the success That this campaign,
that this religion Is going to have, is
going to be such That we're going to
conquer Persia And as difficult to believe as
it was Badr was such that It becomes
more and more believable Of course there's the
experience of Quran And the personality of Rasulullah
ﷺ himself That they trust that A lot
of the people Are jumping the bandwagon of
Islam Because now it's easier to become a
part of The Muslim contingent Because now they're
getting successful Now there's actual spoils coming in
They're economically growing Come Ahzab All of that
is replaced with strife With difficulty With pain,
with suffering And that's something A good group
of them say We did not sign up
for this We signed up for this religion
To follow with this prophet We were told
we're going to get The jewels of Persia
This, we don't even have the freedom To
go to the bathroom Literally verbatim this is
what they said We can't even go to
the bathroom And we were told We're going
to get Kingdom of Persia or whatever Look
at this So that, the Quran quotes this
In Surah Ahzab And they said The promise
of Allah and his messenger Was a deception,
they lied to us And the reason I
say that each and every one of us
Will to some level, to some degree Experience
this in our individual lives Exemplified most commonly
by How we're expecting some of our prayers
Our duas That in our pre-religious life
Or pre-practicing life We were very fervent
in And thought that the more religious we
become The more guarantee we get For those
prayers to be accepted For the peace and
tranquility The happiness That we associate, that we
market With spirituality and religiosity That we attain
that And of course With religiosity, with spirituality
There is this promise of Prayers being answered
There is this promise of Life being better
But It comes with a lot of qualifiers
And of them is the struggle that is
involved To get there That how much As
important as Prayers getting answered Are in a
religious, spiritual life of an individual Unanswered prayers
are instrumental as well As important As experiences
of tranquility, of peace Of order, of happiness
As they are In the life of a
spiritual religious person The promise of strife Of
suffering, of pain Of hunger Of fear, of
grief Those are equally important Because it is
a journey It is a process It is
not something that you Boom, sign up for
religion And everything is okay That is not
how it works So when the group of
Medina Identified as the hypocrites When they experienced
the strife of Ahzab Of the battle of
Ahzab They say Allah and his messenger lied
to us We've been deceived This is something
that we may not have the audacity to
say In our individual lives when our prayers
are not answered When that happiness does not
come in When there is suffering and strife
Despite religiosity and spirituality We may not have
audacity to say it But at some level
we feel it We experience it emotionally And
the more we're unable to express it or
even acknowledge it The more we grow in
resentment And so we find the typical pattern
Of religiosity not lasting very long We won't
say why We may not even be consciously
aware of why But we're just not practicing
anymore Not praying anymore Not interested in religion
anymore Other than the bare minimum So somebody
who was so intent at one point Five
daily prayers, tahajjud, intent du'as Crying, Qur
'an, the whole shebang Now barely makes it
to Jum'ah And it's gradual But we'll
never say that it's because I didn't get
what I was looking for No one's going
to say that Some people will Most won't
Until we probe, until we dig And this
is something that inevitably you have to do
When you get at somebody's unhappiness This is
a very important history For a lot of
people who come from a religious background Now,
at this point In Medina, with the battle
of Ahsab There is this parallel contingent Of
the sahaba radhiAllahu ta'ala anhum Whose iman
is verified By Rasulullah ﷺ, by the Qur
'an Who say, That this is, this suffering,
this pain, this difficulty This is what Allah
and His Messenger promised us We knew this
time was going to come We weren't shown
half a picture Rasulullah didn't just tell us
About the kingdom of Persia He told us
of the pain and suffering in its pathway
as well The Qur'an told us The
Qur'an promises That we will definitely test
you With khawf, with fear That's something emotional,
that's something psychological You will have to go
through fear Of hunger You will have to
face it, there is suffering in this path
Loss of fruits, fruits of your own labor
Labor that you do for your religious growth
and development Didn't work out You will have
to face it Prayers that won't be answered,
all of that All of that So the
sahaba said We knew that this was going
to come, this is it This is what
we were waiting for We set ourselves up
for it And Allah and His Messenger spoke
nothing but the truth This is what we
were looking for And these are the people
that Rasulullah ﷺ He sanctions, he affirms for
us their iman The Qur'an affirms for
us the iman of the sahaba That these
are the people who have spoken the truth
These are the people when they say la
ilaha illallah It is the truth These are
the people, surah ahzab tells us that Rasulullah
ﷺ is the uswa hasana And then these
are the people who verified their iman Who
proved true to their iman Very quickly, if
I can just scroll to those ayat Allah
ﷻ says Yeah, hang on Okay Give
me a bit, I'm almost there Almost there,
there you go Okay, so Oh no, I
lost it again Wait, wait, wait, wait There
you go This is the beginning of the
third ruku, ayah number 21 لَقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ
فِي رَسُولِ اللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ لِمَنْ كَانَ يَرْجُ
اللَّهُ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ Definitely for you in the
messenger of Allah is an excellent role model
Who, for those who hope in Allah and
the last day وَذَكَرَ اللَّهَ كَثِيرًا And remember
Allah a lot وَلَمَّا رَأَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ الْأَحْزَابِ When
the true believers وَلَمَّا رَأَى الْمُؤْمِنُونَ الْأَحْزَابِ When
the true believers saw the allied forces, the
confederates قَالُوا They said هَذَا مَا وَعَدَنَ اللَّهُ
وَرَسُولٍ This is what Allah and His Rasul
promised us Just few ayats ago, the munafiqeen
were quoted as saying Allah and His Messenger
lied to us The feeling of being betrayed
by own spirituality and religiosity They expressed it
and were set on it The sahaba said
no, we knew that this suffering was coming
That it was going to be a difficult
walk, it wasn't going to be a walk
in the park وَصَدَقَ اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُ Allah and
His Messenger were absolutely true وَمَا زَادَهُمْ إِلَّا
إِمَانَهُمْ وَتَسْلِيمًا And these experiences of suffering increased
them In imaan, faith and submission مِنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ
الرِّجَالَ And from these believers are men صَدَقُوا
مَا عَاهَدُوا اللَّهَ عَلَيْهِ They are true to
what they promised Allah Now this categorization of
men is gender free In the sense that
it is talking about an achievement In commitment,
in truthfulness Really lived up to their word
فَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ قَضَىٰ نَحْبَهُ So from them are
those who have fulfilled their vow وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ
يَنْتَظِرُ And some of them are still waiting
for their chance To fulfill their vow وَمَا
بَدَّلُوا تَفْدِيلًا And they have not changed at
all The surah goes on to say Allah
addresses the believers and says that Allah salutes
you The ayat that I recited today Allah
and His angels They send salutations upon Rasulullah
ﷺ Sixth ruku of the same surah, ayah
number 41-43 يَأَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ أَمْنُوا اذْكُرُوا اللَّهَ
ذِكْرًا كَثِيرًا وَسَبِّحُوهُ بُقْرَةً وَعَصِيلًا That you who
have believed remember Allah Frequent remembrance and exalt
Him Every morning and afternoon هُوَ الَّذِي يُصَلِّي
عَلَيْكُمْ Allah is the one who salutes you
He sends his salutations upon you You turn
to Him in dhikr and prayer He uses
the same word Salah is what we use
when we pray Salah is our five daily
prayers Allah uses the same word to say
هُوَ الَّذِي يُصَلِّي عَلَيْكُمْ He prays upon you
And of course that means He confers His
blessings to you He sends His salutations upon
you As do His angels لِيُخْرِجَكُمْ مِنَ الظُّلُمَاتِ
لِلْهُ So that He takes you out of
depths of darkness into light وَكَانَ بِالْمُؤْمِنِينَ رَحِيمًا
And He has always been constantly merciful to
you To the believers, to the people who
have iman So this is, again It was
after this that this ayah comes in That
اِنَّ اللَّهَ وَمَلَائِكَتَهُ يُصَلُّونَ عَلَى النَّبِيَ That Allah
and His angels send salutations Upon Rasulullah ﷺ
So the salutations of Allah and the messengers
upon Rasulullah But the salutations of Allah and
His angels Upon believers who do Who remember
Allah morning, evening and night Salutations of Allah,
salutes that Allah sends Respect that Allah gives
Trust that Allah gives A belief that Allah
has In us, in our abilities To do
good And empowering That Allah Is in the
process of كُلَّ يَوْمٍ هُوَ فِي الشَّأْنِ He
is engaged in something novel each day And
part of His Novel engagements Includes Remembering human
beings And sending salutations upon them Sending salawats
upon them There is so much more to
the word Salah and salawat than I even
understand That Famier than salutations can Communicate But
to get an idea We are the focus
of attention Of None other Than Almighty Allah
And Allah Himself So He What does it
mean for Him to send His salutations Upon
Rasulullah ﷺ And what point Are these announcements
being made Allah sending salutations upon Rasulullah Allah
sending salutations upon the mu'mineen These announcements are
being made in the aftermath Of Ahzab All
of what they've been through, all of what
they've done The proof that they've presented That
through thick and thin Through difficulty and ease
We remain committed to You Ya Allah Maintain
that degree of sabr Stricken with fear The
Quran testified, the surah testified That Ahzab was
the most fear That any of them had
ever experienced That as a collective unit they
had not been They had not been subjected
to more suffering And so Allah responds to
that with salutations It is usually after experiences
of Great suffering That these salutations These salutes
Are conferred, are promised Rasulullah ﷺ experienced mi
'raj after Ta'if After losing Khadija RadhiAllahu
ta'ala anha nabi Abu Talib He experienced
mi'raj The believers in Medina Experienced the
salutation, the salawat of Allah Or they've been
getting them Allah announces that He sends them
And His angels send them To reassure them
And sure remembrance of Allah Is reciprocated by
Allah's remembrance of you Wa akhiru da'wana
anilhamdulillahi rabbil alameen