Zia Sheikh – Aqidah Belief of a Muslim 432017
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AI: Transcript ©
Alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salamu ala rasulillah.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
Inshallah, today we're going to be starting a
new series on the aqeedah or the belief
of a Muslim.
And this is very important to learn because
generally speaking, most of us, they were born
into a Muslim family.
And being born into a Muslim family, we
were basically taught or told that you are
a Muslim and this is what your belief
is supposed to be.
You believe in one Allah, you believe in
the hereafter, you believe in the angels and
so on.
So that basic understanding of aqeedah has been
instilled into us.
And this is what we've understood from childhood.
However, there are deeper things that we must
know about aqeedah that we are not familiar
with.
Sometimes, because of the traditions that are being
practiced around us, many people, they fall into
even committing shirk without even knowing it.
There are so many traditions, especially in the
Indian subcontinent that take place, that are not
part of the religion, they are not part
of the deen.
But they have been taken from Hindu teachings
or Sikh teachings and they have become part
of the culture of Islam.
And people practice them unknowingly, thinking them to
be good practices.
But in fact, the reality is that they
are actually handed down from Hindu traditions and
non-Muslim traditions.
For example, the issue of a person when
he passes away, there is something which is
called what people do traditions that they have
after 7 days.
And then after 40 days and then every
year.
There is nothing in Islam that talks about
this issue that you must do things after
7 days or 40 days or after 1
year.
And people, they kind of mix and match
the Islamic teaching with what they've picked up
from, this is basically a Hindu tradition.
So there are so many things like that.
So we need to be able to differentiate
between right and wrong, between shirk and tawheed
and to make sure that we're not doing
something wrong.
Our belief is correct and there is nothing
that we do that is contrary to Islamic
teaching without us knowing it.
One of the things that people used to
object to when the anbiyan-e-musallat-u
-salam came to them was that our forefathers
have been doing this for generations.
Meaning when the anbiyan-e-musallat-u-salam
used to teach people and tell them what
is right and what is wrong.
One of the biggest objections that they got
from the people that they were trying to
invite was that are you telling us to
stop what our forefathers have been doing for
centuries?
So this is not a dalil, this is
not a proof, this is just an objection
that many people put to knowledgeable people when
they try to teach correct knowledge.
So just because we've been doing it for
centuries or just because our village or our
city or our country, we've been doing it
for centuries, that is not a dalil, that
is that what is being done is correct.
The only thing that we can use for
proof is what is derived from the Quran
and the Sunnah and that is what makes
something correct or incorrect.
So why is aqeedah so important?
We find that in the time of the
Prophet ﷺ, the Prophet was sent at a
time when humanity was at its lowest.
In terms of their beliefs and the things
that they used to do, humanity was doing
things which were very far removed from what
they were supposed to be doing.
They were in such ignorance that people didn't
even want to rule over them.
So much so that people used to be
feuding for centuries over something as trivial as
why did your camel drink from the same
watering hole as my camel?
Why did your camel graze onto my land?
So people used to feud for decades and
centuries and they used to forget what the
actual feud was about.
But when Islam came, the Prophet ﷺ had
this very unenviable task of trying to lead
people away from that ignorance.
And obviously the biggest ignorance was the ignorance
of shirk that was being committed in the
house whose basis and foundation was Tawheed.
This was the first house that was built,
the Kaaba, that was built on the basis
of Tawheed, on the basis of the worship
of Allah ﷻ.
But in that very house, shirk was being
practiced and idols had been erected.
360 idols, which ultimately the Prophet ﷺ after
the conquest of Mecca broke every single one
of them.
As Allah ﷻ declared and the Prophet ﷺ
declared as he was breaking the idols.
But to take people away from that shirk
that they were indulging in, it took a
lot of effort.
So the beginning years of the Prophet ﷺ's
prophethood for 13 years continuously the Prophet ﷺ
was talking about Tawheed, the oneness of Allah
ﷻ.
Instilling into them the Iman and taking away
from them all the different forms of shirk
that the people had been committing and taking
away this ignorance.
So much so that certain things that the
people used to do, the Prophet ﷺ forbade
them even though they in and of themselves
they were halal.
For example, there is a hadith which prohibits
the usage of certain utensils, particularly those utensils
that were made from hollowed out gourds.
What we call loki or kaddu, if you
basically hollow it out, the outer shell becomes
hard and it becomes like a utensil.
And what people used to do was they
used to put the grapes, grape juice inside
these utensils to ferment the grape juice and
to turn it into wine.
So this winemaking was such a part of
their culture that initially the Prophet ﷺ forbade
even using those utensils.
Why?
Because they might have flashbacks and they might
go back to practicing the fermentation of the
wine in those utensils.
So initially the Prophet ﷺ forbade the usage
of anything that could take them back to
their old ways.
Those old ways were instilled into them so
much.
Then after the people's iman became strong and
they were ready to accept the message of
Islam and the orders of Allah ﷻ and
the commands of Allah ﷻ, the Prophet ﷺ
then relaxed the rules for those particular things.
So the main thing was instilling into them
the strength of conviction and the aqeedah and
the correct belief.
We all know that the prohibition of alcohol,
it took place over three stages.
In the first stage, Allah ﷻ describes in
Surah Al-Baqarah, يَسْأَلُونَكَ عَنِ الْخَمْرِ وَالْمَيْسِرِ They
are asking you about khamr and maysir.
They are asking you about wine and gambling.
قُلْ فِيهِ مَا إِثْمٌ كَبِيرٌ وَمَنَافِيٌ لِلنَّاسِ Allah
ﷻ basically told the people that there are
benefits and harms in both things.
Even today, if you read medical reports, the
doctors say that if you drink a glass
of wine after dinner, it lowers your cholesterol
levels, it's high in antioxidants and so on.
So even today, the doctors will say that
there are some benefits in the consumption of
wine.
But the disclaimer that they have usually at
the end of their statement is that if
you have not started drinking, then don't drink.
It is better for you not to drink.
So Islamically, this is what Islam said at
the beginning.
There is benefit, but the harm outweighs the
benefit.
The second stage of prohibition of alcohol was
when Allah ﷻ told the people not to
drink alcohol while coming for Salat.
After one of the Sahaba, he was intoxicated,
he led the prayer and he read certain
verses of the Qur'an and he changed
the meaning in that recitation.
So Allah ﷻ revealed, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا
لَا تَقْرَبُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَأَنْتُمْ سُكَارًا This was the
second stage.
Finally, the last stage, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا
إِنَّمَا الْخَمْرُ وَالْمَيْسِرُ وَالْأَنصَابُ وَالْأَزْلَامُ الرِّجْسُ مِّنْ
عَمَلِ شَيْطَانٍ فَاجْتَنِبُوهُ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ In this, Allah
ﷻ forbade and made haram four things and
one of them was alcohol and he told
the people to avoid them.
It is mentioned that once Anas bin Malik
ﷺ who was in the house of Talha
ibn Ubaidullah and he was serving wine to
the people sitting around.
And suddenly there was a commotion outside.
Somebody was making an announcement outside.
So Talha said to Anas, go check what's
going on outside.
What's this noise that we're hearing?
So Anas ﷺ went out and he found
out and he came back after a while
that the announcement has been made that alcohol
has now been prohibited.
It is now haram to consume alcohol.
So if we would be in that situation,
we would say, okay, we are halfway through
this dinner.
At least let's finish off these glasses and
then we'll see about the prohibition later on.
Okay, so Talha ibn Ubaidullah, he said immediately
take this wine and pour it outside in
the street.
And this was the habit of everyone that
heard the announcement.
They were taking out wine, which was decades
old, fermented for years and they were pouring
it out into the streets saying, we've stopped,
we've stopped.
This was the attitude that came after the
Iman and conviction was built of the Sahaba.
Aisha r.a, she says, She
said that the beginning surahs, if you look
at Juz Amma and the 29th Juz, most
of these surahs are Makki surahs and most
Makki surahs, they will talk about Iman, Tawheed,
Jannah, Jahannam, and they will build inside a
human, if a person reads them and he
understands them, he will get that Iman built
inside him.
So she says that the first surahs that
were revealed, they were mentioning Jannah and Nahr,
Jannah and the Hellfire, Paradise and the Hellfire.
When people started coming close to Islam or
becoming entrenched in Islam, then Halal and Haram
came down.
Then the rulings came down.
If the first thing was revealed by Allah
SWT that do not consume alcohol, If it
was the first thing that was revealed, then
people would have said, I swear by Allah
or we swear by Allah, we will never
leave wine ever.
Wallahi, they would swear by Allah that we
will never leave the wine ever.
And if Allah SWT had revealed do not
commit Zina, They would say that we are
never going to leave Zina ever ever.
So basically, if we look at the way
that Allah SWT revealed verses and built up
the character of the people and built up
the internal conviction and the Iman of the
people, it became easy for them to practice
Islam as the commandments came down.
And that is why this Aqeedah and inner
belief is so important.
And I was mentioning the other day at
a fundraiser for a school, that the building
of one's character is the most important thing.
The character building, especially of our children, inner
character, strength of conviction, inner belief is so
important, especially in this day and age, where
what's going on is the threat of atheism,
the threat of agnosticism, the threat of different
religions vying for the attention of our kids
and the information which is readily available online,
which kids read and not having the correct
guidance, they slip up and they become further
and further away from Islam.
So these challenges can be faced by the
character building of our children.
We obviously we've been raised in environments in
which our conviction was strong and we were
strengthened, our Iman was strengthened and it's difficult
for us to leave something that we so
strongly believe in.
But when the character is weak and the
strength of the Iman is weak, then, you
know, it's very easy for our kids to
slip up.
And that's why we hear this hadith all
the time, right?
That when the son of Adam dies, These
deeds, they stop except from three sources.
Knowledge which is benefited from.
Or a pious child that prays for him.
But if we pay attention to all of
these three things, if the people that we
leave behind, they do not have the strength
of Iman and they are not practicing what
we taught them, then Sadaqah Jariah is useless.
We build a Masjid, but nobody is practicing
in that Masjid.
Then there is no Sadaqah Jariah.
There is no benefit from it.
We're not getting a benefit.
We built a Masjid, but we didn't build
the character of the people to inhabit the
Masjid and go to the Masjid.
We taught knowledge and that knowledge is only
going to be beneficial as long as people
practice it and it is spread and taught
to other people.
If a person gains that knowledge and it's
just information that he has, then it's not
going to benefit me when I'm in the
grave.
It's only going to benefit me when the
people that I've taught, they have that character
to practice that knowledge.
And the third thing that's mentioned there, a
pious child that prays for you.
Again, if we didn't instill into our children
the importance of the rights of the parents
and part of the rights of the parents
is praying for them after they leave, then
that character is not there.
That conviction is not there.
So who's going to pray for us?
So this Hadith completely becomes nullified because of
the fact that we have not built into
our children that character, that conviction, that Iman,
that faith that is supposed to make them
practice what is mentioned in that Hadith.
So this is why the learning of Aqeedah
is so important to make sure that our
conviction is such that we do not slip
up.
The first few weeks basically what we're going
to be doing is that we're going to
be dealing with certain terminology, terminology of the
lessons that we're going to be learning.
What is Iman?
What is Islam?
Is there any difference between the two?
For example, we've learned Iman, we've learned about
Islam, but are they mutually exclusive or are
they understood to be something together?
So inshallah we're going to be learning about
that.
What does Aqeedah actually mean?
What does Usul mean?
What is the Asal or foundation mean?
What does Deen mean?
What is the word Deen?
So all of these things, the first couple
of weeks we're going to be discussing terminologies
and then inshallah we're going to get into
the depth of what the belief of a
Muslim is supposed to be.
Hopefully inshallah these are going to be interesting
lessons for you.
We'll stop here right now.
Inshallah we'll continue with this next week.
I pray that Allah subhana wa ta'ala
gives us tawfiq to understand and practice what
is being said and heard.