Yousuf Raza – Ramadan Conversations We gave you Fatiha Surah AlHijr 8599 & Surah alFatiha
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The transcript describes the historical and characteristics of Jesus's story, emphasizing the importance of forgiveness and finding a genuine relationship with someone. The transcript also touches on the need for human resource and the importance of forgiveness and knowledge. The transcript uses various examples and references, including Jesus's story, and emphasizes the need for spiritual and spiritual resources.
AI: Summary ©
As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh We're
continuing with our fifth episode today and this
particular one we're going to be talking about
Surat al-Hijr.
This particular surah again one of the longer
earlier surahs revealed in the Meccan period Rasulullah
ﷺ is in these and we're just covering
the last 15 ayahs.
Please note that when we read books of
seerah we get this impression that Rasulullah ﷺ
until he got on to the mountain of
Safa and he proclaimed Wasabaha that's when he
went public.
That's something of a misunderstanding because Rasulullah ﷺ
never really kept his call or his prophethood
secret.
He was telling people about it.
He was going person to person as it
is.
He wasn't trying to hide it.
It's just that that proclamation on the mountain
was a very open call, a very public
public call.
It wasn't secret, but yes, it was person
to person.
It wasn't announced as such in front of
a huge gathering of people, but it was
never secret.
So Rasulullah ﷺ from the time that he
received Iqra in the cave to the mountain
of Safa where he proclaimed Wasabaha and then
addressed all the people of Quraysh and Mecca
until that time he is continuing to deliver
the message to talk to people of his
family, in his friends, one-to-one introducing
them to the experience that he's had and
the implications of that experience.
So he is sharing it and which is
why the criticism, the mockery has already begun
and it is in the background of that
mockery that these ayat, the ayat that we're
going to speak about today, which is ayat
85 all the way to the end of
Surat al-Hijr is what we're discussing.
Again, these are earlier Meccan surahs, so they're
very fast-paced, short ayat, very rhythmic, very
fast rhythm and they're addressing Rasulullah ﷺ's initial
concerns.
So the ayah begins or the 85th ayah
reads, أَعُدُّ بِاللَّهِ مِنِ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ وَمَا خَلَقْنَا
السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ وَمَا بَيْنَهُمَا إِلَّا بِالْحَقِّ We did
not create the heavens and the earth including
all that is in between them except with
a purpose, except with a truth.
It is a meaningful creation.
The experience of Rasulullah ﷺ, his message, his
proclamation, makes sense only with the meaningfulness of
the creation of heaven and the earth and
the human being taken into consideration.
If the meaningfulness is left out, if there
is any belief that renders the understanding or
renders the creation meaningless, renders the existence of
human beings meaningless, none of this adds up.
None of this makes sense.
If the understanding is fatalistic, if the understanding
is something to the effect of how human
beings are puppets and nothing more, that renders
it meaningless.
You won't be able to make sense of
prophethood.
You won't be able to make sense of
what Rasulullah ﷺ is doing.
Akhira will not make sense.
Afterlife will not make sense.
The meaningfulness of creation of human endeavors is
critical for the understanding, to understand how consistent
the belief in prophethood, afterlife, Tawheed really are.
And so that's what the address begins with.
This is the meaningfulness of creation, the burden
of which you're facing right now or you're
having to confront right now.
وَإِنَّ السَّاعَةَ لَآتِيَ And for sure the hour
is going to come.
The day of judgment is going to come.
فَاسْفَحِ السَّفْحَ الْجَمِيلِ So forgive Ya Rasulullah ﷺ
a gracious forgiveness.
Let it go.
Turn the other page.
Turn away.
They are being cruel.
They are mocking.
They are not leaving any stone unturned in
hurting Rasulullah ﷺ.
Rasulullah ﷺ is being told that this is
what was going to happen.
These are people leading meaningless lives for the
most part.
And the meaninglessness of their lives is being
challenged.
They're being asked to live more responsibly, take
their actions more seriously, take their positions, their
wealth, their authority, everything in their lives more
responsibly, more seriously, more meaningfully.
And when you make that call to them,
they're going to lash back at you.
And everything that is supporting their agendas of
leading life as it comes, with its pleasures
and exploitations and whatnot, anything that challenges that,
they're definitely going to oppose it.
So Ya Rasulullah ﷺ, the hour is going
to come.
Forgive a gracious forgiveness.
Give them time.
Give them time.
It is only the beginning.
It is too early to expect them to
immediately respond.
These habits that they have, they're pretty much
hardwired into them.
For now, forgiveness is critical.
And why would the Qur'an ask Rasulullah
ﷺ to forgive?
Because the reaction, the natural reaction that Rasulullah
ﷺ would feel towards the mockery would be
an instigation.
How could they say this?
I'm bringing them the message of Allah.
There is this natural tendency to say something
in response, to fight with them, to say,
how dare you say that?
And which is why the reminder, no, forgive.
That reminder becomes necessary only when there is
this tendency to not forgive.
A reactionary tendency.
That's unfair what they just said.
The accusations that they're heard.
No.
فَسْفَحِ السَّفْحَ الْجَمِيلِ A gracious forgiveness.
Not just, I forgive you.
No.
A gracious forgiveness.
An understanding forgiveness.
A beautiful forgiveness.
A sort of forgiveness which empathizes with the
other person's anger.
Which empathizes with the other person's ignorance.
That I am forgiving you because I understand
that this is not that easy to wrap
your head around.
This is not that easy to accept.
It is groundbreaking.
It is very difficult to have something that
you've lived by your entire life, to have
that challenged.
It isn't easy.
So a gracious forgiveness.
A beautiful forgiveness.
إِنَّ الرَّبَّكَ هُوَ الْخَلَّابُ الْعَلِيمُ Most definitely, your
Rabb is the only one who's all-creative,
all-knowing.
You cannot expect the level of knowledge from
them.
They're people of ignorance, pretty much.
And for them to respond to what you're
bringing to them, that immediately?
No.
Forgive them.
Let them go.
إِنَّ الرَّبَّكَ هُوَ الْخَلَّابُ الْعَلِيمُ وَلَقَدْ آتَيْنَاكَ سَبْعًا
مِّنَ الْمَثَانِ وَالْقُرْآنِ الْعَظِيمِ As for you, we
have given you seven of the oft-repeated
verses, the ayat that are repeated again and
again, وَالْقُرْآنِ الْعَظِيمِ and the Great Qur'an.
So what's going on here?
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ, again, he was
صادق الأمين, the most truthful, the most trustworthy.
That was the reputation that he had in
Mecca.
Everyone trusted him.
Everyone believed in him prior to prophethood.
His understanding, his reputation was point blank.
It was across the board, unquestioned.
There was not a single stain, not a
single mark on his credibility, on his reliability.
When there was the issue with the Ka
'bah, it had to be rebuilt.
And then when it was rebuilt, the question
came, which tribe gets to place the black
stone?
Who gets the sacred honor?
A fight was breaking out.
It had broken out.
And there was fear of bloodshed.
And it was Rasulullah ﷺ's credibility that not
only the people of his own tribe, but
all the other tribes accepted him as judge,
that he's not going to be biased.
Everybody else is going to be biased.
Everybody else is going to be unjust.
Rasulullah ﷺ's credibility was such that everyone accepted
him.
To go from that to being called a
Qadhaab, not just a liar, but the biggest
liar, a fraud.
To go from having the reputation of being
the most reliable to having the reputation of
the most unreliable.
To having your sanity questioned.
You're not doing all right.
People would come to Rasulullah ﷺ.
Uthbah came to Rasulullah ﷺ and he said,
my son, you know, like as an elder,
I know some very good healers.
I know some very good, you know, people
who deal with this, whatever you're suffering with.
I can take you to them.
They can help you.
Come with me.
You don't have to suffer through this.
It's difficult what you're going through.
Let me help you.
Others would straight out be blunt and derogatory.
Just looking to offend him.
And Rasulullah ﷺ has to face all of
that.
Our sense with respect to him is that
he took it in his stride.
It did not affect him.
Rasulullah ﷺ was not a robot.
When he himself had trouble after the first
experience and it took an incredible amount of
internal effort to have faith in the experience
that he'd had to come to terms with
his prophethood.
Whatever you held onto for 40 years in
your life, that ground was, it was just
swept away from underneath your feet.
That's what happened with Rasulullah ﷺ.
He did not expect to become a prophet.
But he became one.
And once he became one and he overcame
and he had faith and he had trust
in Allah's word.
In his own prophethood.
And he went ahead to proclaim that before
the people.
Everything started backfiring.
He's being accused.
He's being ridiculed.
He's being mocked.
He's not used to being mocked.
He's not used to any of that.
He's used to a very good reputation.
To being praised.
To have that, to trust Allah.
To have that faith.
To, you immediately expect, okay, I'm doing Allah's
work.
He's given it to me now.
I should start getting good responses.
I should start seeing the fruits of the
faith immediately.
I should start seeing changes now.
It was that, the angst for a positive
change that had taken him to the cave
to ask for guidance to begin with.
And when the guidance came, as overwhelming as
it was, he trusted it.
He had faith in it.
And he lived in accordance with it.
But the immediate responses that he got after
he's just believed in it are very, very
hurtful.
They're again pushing him to renounce whatever it
is that he's believing in.
So he's deeply grieved.
He is saddened.
And it is in that background that Rasulullah
ﷺ is told this is why we have
given you those seven ayat, those seven verses
that you are required to repeat again and
again and again and again and again.
That is your affirmation.
That is your reflection, those ayat in Fatiha.
So right around this time, Surah Fatiha has
been revealed before these ayat.
And it is in Surah Fatiha that Rasulullah
ﷺ gets to reiterate before himself the why
of what he's doing.
So he knows the how of coping with
it, of dealing with all the torture, the
verbal assaults.
Eventually they will turn into physical assaults.
A lot against the followers of Rasulullah ﷺ,
some against Rasulullah ﷺ himself.
What is his handhold to continue going?
It is Fatiha.
When you do believe, when you experience that
spirituality, that spiritual conversion, that religious experience and
you commit yourself to it, you have some
grand expectations as to how things would be
and how people are going to be.
When to the contrary, the response that you
get is one of hate and incredible pain.
It does shake you up.
Not only does it emotionally hurt, spiritually you're
shaken up.
You start experiencing questions again.
Where am I going wrong?
What is wrong with these people?
Did I make the right call?
Should I continue on this?
To maintain that stability, Fatiha is prescribed to
Rasulullah ﷺ as a continuous reflection, as a
form of prayer, the prayer actually, that allows
for him to ground himself.
Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen.
Ar-Rahmanir Raheem.
A reminder to himself repeatedly, again and again
and again and again of the gratitude that
he owes to Allah.
Of how everything good that he's experienced, everything
positive, the gratitude for that belongs to Allah
ﷻ.
How that imposes upon the one who is
grateful a responsibility to live gratefully.
And how this is a part of the
Rabbil Alameen, of how Allah is the Rabb
of all the worlds, of everything that exists,
of everything that he's created.
And it is his Rabubiyah that you are
carrying forward as his abd.
Ar-Rahmanir Raheem.
The incredible mercy of Allah.
Because when you're faced with toxicity, when you're
faced with the hate of people to remind
yourself of the mercy of Allah, in the
face of that, so that you can be
merciful.
So that you can stand the ground of
being merciful repeatedly, even though you don't want
to be.
Remembering the mercy of Allah.
Ar-Rahmanir Raheem, Maliki Yawm al-Deen.
To remember that it culminates, that there is
a deadline for this activity in this world.
And that it culminates with Akhirah, with the
Day of Judgment, where it all comes together.
It's something grand, it's something huge, where the
consequences will really materialize.
Iyyaka na'budu wa iyyaka nasta'een.
To continuously remind yourself to have this communication
with Allah.
To tell him, yes, you are the only
one that I am going to lovingly commit
myself to in obedience.
This journey of love.
Why am I doing it?
Why am I suffering it?
Because I love him.
Because it's worth it.
Wa iyyaka nasta'een.
And to him, I continuously turn to for
help.
Making my best effort in turning to him
for help.
Ihdinas dara'at al-mustaqeem.
To recognize that you are in constant need
of guidance.
To say that you're in constant need of
guidance, is to say to Allah that I
am open and I am willing for my
belief structures to acknowledge their naivety, to acknowledge
their weakness, to acknowledge that there is improvement
that is necessary in that.
That I don't understand completely.
That I don't know everything.
That I don't have the perfect faith or
belief.
That I need to continue to refine it,
revise it, improve it, mature it.
It is an evolving process, this process of
faith.
It's a journey.
To ask Allah for guidance is to tell
him that, yes, I am willing and I
am open that when you do guide me,
when you do inform me, when you do
teach me, I am willing to take on
that pain because learning is a pain.
Being guided is painful because what being guided
means is every bit of guidance, every experience
of guidance asks you to let go of,
to shed your skin to whatever you thought
was guidance before.
And that's not easy.
It is very painful.
It requires a lot of humility.
And a lot of times we get stuck
in life because there is so much inexperience
in knowledge that is trying to teach us,
to guide us.
Allah guiding us, but us refusing that guidance.
Because as immature, as naive, as weak, as
dysfunctional as our previous understanding is, it's our
comfort zone.
And when things are happening to the contrary
of that understanding, we're being asked to upgrade
our understanding and belief.
We're being asked to move out of our
comfort zone and it's difficult.
So putting ourselves before Allah.
Rasulullah ﷺ was asking for guidance when he
got to Hira, to the cave, asking for
guidance from Allah.
What does this all mean?
What am I supposed to do?
What is Tawheed?
What is this world?
What are these people?
I don't like it.
How do I make it better?
He's asking for guidance.
He gets the guidance in the form of
Iqra bismi Rabbika allathee khalaq.
He's petrified, horrified, insecure, doubtful, really grieving, really
sad, really anxious.
What do I do now?
The implications of that guidance.
So every time you're putting yourself before Allah
in your prayer, asking ihdinas siratal mustaqeem, you're
showing your willingness to be changed yourself, to
be molded.
And that's asking a lot.
That is asking a lot.
And that is one of the basic prerequisites
for growth.
In the hadith, Rasulullah ﷺ says these ayat,
these seven ayat of Fatiha are the seven
of repeated ayat and they are the great
Qur'an.
The Qur'an al-'Azim is also an appellation
for Surat al-Fatiha.
Guide me to the path of those who
you had your special blessings, special favor upon.
There are people before who did this.
Because understand whenever it is that you catch
yourself in the midst of trying to do
something good, every input that you get, every
stimulus that you get from the environment, from
the society is one inspiring hopelessness.
The response of the people, their attitude, their
arrogance, their mockery, the results that you're not
getting, all of it.
You look at how dead the world is,
how chaotic things are.
You lose hope.
You feel very, very helpless.
But to turn to Allah and asking for
the way of those who were an'amta
alayhim, Allah had favored, is to ask for
those, ask for the path of those people
who in spite of all of those pains
and difficulties and the contrary results that they
were getting, whatever it was that they were
facing, all the messages of hopelessness that they
were bombarded with, they held on to hope.
They held on to hope to the point
of being ridiculed as being deluded.
That you people are idiots, you people are
stupid, you people have lost your minds because
you really think that anything can change for
the better.
But they hung on to it.
And Fatiha is a means of hanging on
to it, of hanging on to that hope
against hope.
In the face of hopelessness, when it's really
bleak and dark and you don't think you
know, you don't think you can get out
of it or there's any way out of
it at all.
It guides you, it reminds you of those
people who held on to hope as a
matter of faith even though everything around them
pointed to the direction of hopelessness and then
they actually created hope.
They actually made, they lit that darkness up
themselves.
Those were the an'amta alayhim.
They are the reason that the darkness was
dispelled time and time again within the history
of humanity.
So if you find yourself in the midst
of darkness and hopelessness, how people before hung
on to that hope in the pits of
darknesses themselves and they lit their candles.
How they dispelled that darkness.
Everyone in his own way were asking Allah
to guide us to their path.
Not the path of those who incurred your
wrath and not the path of those who
went really astray, who went even more lost.
That to recognize within yourself the potential of
being lost that this guidance, getting it once
is not the end of it.
I need to continuously stay in the process
to maintain this attitude, this humility of this
upgradation.
Because if not, I have the very potential
to be destructive rather than favored and to
be destroyed as well.
To repeat that before Allah again and again
and again.
So Allah is putting this before Rasulullah ﷺ,
a very hurt Rasulullah.
One who is in pain at what people
are saying.
And he says, we've given you Fatiha and
it has, it'll help you get through.
Because in the face of Fatiha, Allah has
given Rasulullah ﷺ Fatiha.
What has he given everyone else in Quraysh?
Authority, power, money.
And it is but natural that Rasulullah ﷺ
is looking to all of that.
If only I had a position.
If only I had as many resources as
these people did.
Allah says, no, no, no.
Do not look at the articles, whatever we've
given them.
Whatever resources that these people have, some of
them.
And do not be grieved over them.
Rasulullah ﷺ is looking at them for the
resources that they have and also the consequences
of what they're doing with those resources.
And he's hurting more.
If only they'd listen.
Do not be grieved for them.
And lower your wings for the believers.
As few as they may be, welcome them.
Open your arms to them.
Depict that mercy towards them and see what
happens.
You need human resource.
You need spiritual resource more than anything else.
That material resource that they have, don't look
it up right now.
Forget it.
Forget.
And tell them, I am a clear warner.
I am just a clear warner.
That's my responsibility to tell you, go here,
this is the consequence.
This is the harm you're going to incur.
كَمَا أَنزَلْنَا عَلَى الْمُقْتَسِمِينَ Just as we revealed
to the separators, to those before.
الَّذِينَ جَعَلُوا الْقُرْآنَ Those who split the Qur
'an in portions.
Those who were given the revelation of Allah,
but they split it up.
It's not that the people before Rasulullah ﷺ
did not have any guidance at all.
They had revelation.
And that revelation was good.
But there is a tendency to make something
incredibly good incredibly evil when you split it
up, when you fragment it.
And each group takes one portion to the
exclusion of all else.
And they claim that what they have is
the absolute truth.
But what they have is a degenerate portion
because they've cut it off from its organic
whole.
And so what they have is an amputated,
necrosing, dying something which they are claiming is
the living, the whole body, the healthy whole
that everyone needs.
They cut it up.
فَوَرَبِّكَ So by your Rabb, Ya Rasulullah, لَنَسْأَلَنَّهُمْ
أَجْمَعِينَ We will question each and every one
of them عَمَّا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ about all that
they used to do.
فَاسْتَعْ بِمَا تُؤْمَرْ Rasulullah ﷺ is not getting
the response that he wants with a few
people that he's going to.
The person to person that he is taking
this call to, Allah says, tell them all.
Go announce it, to declare it to everyone.
It is after this that he goes to
the mountain of Safa and declares his Prophet.
And it seems to be like, what?
It's not working with the people that you're
talking to.
Tell it to everyone.
Invite more pain.
Invite more mockery.
وَأَعْرِضْ أَنِ الْمُكْشِرِكِينَ And turn away from those
who do shirk.
إِنَّكَ فَيْنَكَ بِالْمُسْتَهْزِئِينَ We will be enough for
you, Ya Rasulullah, against those who mock you.
الَّذِينَ يَجْعَلُونَ مَعَ اللَّهِ إِلَهًا آخَدٌ These are
the people who've set up guards with Allah.
فَسَوْفَ يَعْلَمُونَ So soon they will know.
وَلَقَدْ نَعْلَمْ And we know, Ya Rasulullah, أَنَّكَ
يَضِيِّقُ صَدْرُكُ We know that you feel distressed.
The kind of distress that is so much
that you feel it physically in your chest
as a knot.
That your chest tightens up.
You feel suffocated.
You feel like you cannot breathe.
You don't even have that much room.
Allah is telling Rasulullah ﷺ that I'm not
some impersonal robotic deity who doesn't care what
you're going through.
No, I know very well, Ya Rasulullah.
I know very well, Ya Muhammad, that you're
hurt.
That your chest is tightening.
I know it that well.
I know what you're feeling inside of you.
أَنَّكَ يَضِيِّقُ صَدْرُكُ That you feel distressed.
بِمَا يَقُولُونَ Because of what they say.
Neither Rasulullah ﷺ nor Allah are robots.
We say this all the time.
I hear it all the time.
Every time in consultations, patients will come up
and I don't want to feel anything.
I don't want to feel so hurt.
I don't want to feel so bad about
what people say.
So what if they say whatever they say?
I need to be strong so I don't
feel it.
No.
The best of people, the best of people,
the strongest of people, felt it, felt hurt
by it.
And Allah recognizes that hurt.
This is as intimate as a dialogue gets
between Allah and His Messenger.
We know you're hurt.
فَسَبِّحْ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّكَ So continue to do Tasbeeh
with the Hamd of your Rabb.
وَكُن مِّنَ السَّاجِدِينَ And join those who prostrate.
Your prayer.
You continue to have this, let's continue talking.
Let's keep this going.
That'll be the balm that you need to
help you stand strong.
وَعْبُدْ رَبَّكَ And continue to do the Ibadah
of Allah.
Keep this relationship strong with me, with your
Rabb.
Why are you to go through all of
that pain?
Because that pain is the way to grow
in this relationship which will get you closer
to me.
حَتَّى يَعْتِيكَ الْيَقِينَ Till the certainty of death
approaches.
And what does it mean till this relationship
grows until you get closer to me?
Is that you become more and more somebody
who expresses attributes of Allah Himself.
Those attributes of mercy.
Those attributes of forgiveness.
Those attributes of care.
Those attributes of justice.
Those attributes of strength.
Those attributes of wisdom.
Those attributes of knowledge.
Those attributes of power.
Those attributes of resourcefulness.
Growing your relationship with Allah is in growing
all of these attributes.
What Rasulullah ﷺ proved that his prayer was
not auto-suggestion.
Was not him just affirming himself.
It was him growing in a genuine relationship.
So that he expressed real attributes that are
only possible when you are in a real
relationship with someone.
You incorporate within yourself the best of what
they have to offer.
And so he did what he did.
And he became who he became.
وَآخِرُوا تَعْوَانًا أَنِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِ