Zia Sheikh – Ramadan Khatira Day 14
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In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
In the name
of
Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
We completed Surah Bani Israel yesterday and the
major portion of Surah Al-Kahf.
And I just want to focus in on
a couple of verses in Surah Bani Israel.
Before doing that, the verses which precede the
verses which I want to talk about.
Allah SWT prohibits us from doing certain things.
Firstly, killing our own children.
And of course in those days, in the
days of Jahiliyyah, people used to actually kill
their children.
Especially their daughters, they used to bury them
alive.
But the same ruling applies to abortion which
is done for no valid reason.
Allah SWT prohibits it and this is a
prohibition.
The other prohibition is that we should not
get close to Zina.
Nothing which leads us to Zina, we should
get close to that.
So anything that makes us close to Zina
or leads us to Zina, that is something
that is prohibited.
And as a preventative measure, Allah SWT tells
us, Do not even go close to Zina
because it is the worst way to adopt.
And then after that, Allah SWT prohibits the
murdering of anybody.
We are not allowed to murder somebody.
Killing somebody is not permissible.
And only the killing of somebody will be
allowed if the judge passes a judgment according
to the Shari'i ruling that if a
person kills somebody and then to take revenge
for that killing, it is permissible to kill
that person back.
But that has to be done under the
court of law and where the law allows
it to be done.
And even in that case, Allah SWT says
that if you are taking revenge, then that
revenge has to be swift.
You cannot take the person and torture him
and make him suffer for days, day upon
day, and then just kill him after that.
Allah says, That israf should not be done
in the killing of that person.
It has to be done swiftly and without
any kind of oppression upon that person.
And then after that, Allah SWT talks about
not touching the wealth of an orphan.
This is obviously not getting close to the
wealth of an orphan.
This is an exaggeration to show that how
dangerous it can be for a person to
go close to the wealth of an orphan
who doesn't have people to look after his
rights.
His parents have passed away or his father
has passed away.
And because there is nobody to look after
his rights and his wealth is just sitting
there, you may want to take advantage of
it.
Allah SWT says, If you do touch it,
it has to be with a good and
valid reason to spend it upon the orphan
or to invest it.
For those reasons, otherwise, no.
And then, Allah SWT says, Complete your covenants,
your trusts, your promises.
Fulfill them.
These promises, you will be questioned about them
on the day of judgement.
And when doing trade, business, When you are
weighing things, make sure you weigh in a
fair way so that you are not taking
somebody else's rights, somebody else's wealth without a
reason.
If somebody is paying you for a pound
of apples, make sure you give a pound
of apples.
Or even more, just to be sure that
you are fulfilling the right of the person
who is buying that thing from you.
Do not lessen the thing that is being
paid for.
Make sure you give in equal measure or
even more.
Allah SWT says that this is the best
thing to do.
Now the thing I want to focus on
in detail is the next verse.
Do not pursue that thing that you do
not have knowledge about.
The word Qafaa Yaqfu, it means to follow
in somebody's footsteps.
When you see somebody's footsteps, you track that
person and you go after that person, you
pursue that person by following and seeing the
person's footsteps.
So Allah SWT is saying that don't go
after people, don't pursue people and don't go
in their footsteps with the intention of finding
things out about them and then spreading them.
This is what this verse is about.
And there are other interpretations given by scholars,
false testimony, false accusations, things of that nature.
But it's more related to things which are
related to Dhan.
And the Prophet SAW said, Beware of Dhan.
Dhan means misgivings about people, suspicion, thinking about
something, thinking something about a person that's not
there.
For example, you see a person who you
see frequenting the Masjid and you see him
at night going into a convenience store which
happens to be also selling alcohol.
So automatically you assume that he must be
going in there to buy alcohol.
Not thinking about the thousand other things that
could be available there and what he might
have a need for.
Maybe there's no other pharmacy in the area,
so he needs to buy some medication which
is found in that convenience store.
Or he's out of matches, there's no other
place open to buy matches from, so he
goes in there to buy matches.
But the mind takes a person, the shaytan
takes a person into thinking that he's going
there to buy alcohol.
And then that thinking takes a person to
using his tongue and telling other people, I
saw that person going to buy alcohol last
night, do you know that?
He comes to the Masjid, he thinks he's
so holy and pious and everything and he
acts this way and the reality is that
he goes and buys alcohol and he drinks.
So this thinking results in spreading the slander
and basically bringing a person down.
So Allah SWT says, do not pursue something
which you don't have knowledge about.
If you don't have knowledge about something, do
not pursue it.
Indeed the hearing and the seeing and the
heart, all of them will be questioned about.
They will be questioned about this issue.
So hearing something and then twisting it or
assuming that this was what was said.
And this is again, we have so many
fights sometimes between people, where they think they
heard something and the reality was that it
was completely different.
But it results in a fight.
Basr, like the example that I've just given,
seeing something and assuming something else.
And Fuad, heart, thinking something and the reality
is something else.
So Allah SWT says, these things will be
questioned about on the Day of Judgment.
And the wording is actually used in a
way to denote that the hearing, the seeing
and the heart, they have a life of
their own and they all will be questioned
by Allah SWT on the Day of Judgment
individually.
As if they are living things.
Actually Sheikh Osama, he read some verse in
the Quran which indicates the same thing.
On the Day of Judgment, the mouth is
going to be closed up.
First the testimony is going to be asked
from the mouth.
The mouth will lie and then Allah SWT
is going to close up the mouth.
The mouth is going to be closed up.
The hands, the feet, the rest of the
body is going to testify.
The hearing is going to testify.
The seeing is going to testify.
And the skin is going to testify.
They are going to say, oh skin, why
are you testifying against us?
Why are you testifying against us?
And the skin basically is going to respond.
Allah is giving us a tongue.
That Allah who gives everything the ability to
speak, has given us a tongue today to
speak.
That's why we are testifying.
Allah SWT is asking us to do that.
They all will be questioned.
The hearing, the seeing and the heart, they
all will be questioned about what a person
did.
So we have to make sure, especially living
within a community, to make sure that we
don't fall into the trap of doing things
which will result in misgivings and fights and
disputes amongst people.
And this is how those fights and arguments
actually start.
When we have misgivings about people.
And then after that Allah SWT says Do
not walk on the earth with arrogance.
However strong you get, however powerful you get,
you are not going to be able to
rip up the earth and you are not
going to reach the height of mountains.
This is never going to happen.
So what is your significance, what is my
significance in the comparison of the things and
the powerful things that we see around us?
We are nothing.
We are nothing in comparison to what Allah
SWT has created.
Ali RA said that how can a person
be arrogant when his beginning is an impure
drop of sperm and his end is a
rotting corpse and in the middle he walks
around with filth in his body.
How can a person be arrogant when this
is the situation?
So we have to understand that humbleness, humility
is something that is taught to us by
Islam.
We should always lower ourselves and not be
arrogant.
Arrogance was the thing that took the shaytan
out of and wasted his thousands of years
of worship for Allah SWT.
He had gotten close to Allah SWT by
worshipping.
He had got so close that he used
to sit with the angels.
He was a jinn, but he used to
sit with the angels because of all the
worship that he did.
It was only one moment of arrogance where
he said, I am better than him.
That resulted in him being cursed until the
day of judgement.
So we need to make sure that we
don't fall into this trap.
I want to focus on another verse towards
the end of the surah.
Allah SWT says Allah says, the Quran, we
split it up.
There are two qiraat in this word.
means, we split it up.
Meaning, the Quran was revealed slowly.
Over 23 years Allah SWT revealed it on
an as needed basis.
It means, we clarified it.
So this is a slight difference in wording,
but the meaning changes.
But the purpose is, Allah SWT says addressing
the Prophet SAW so that, O Prophet, you
read it to the people means, to wait,
to be patient, so to recite the Quran
slowly, steadily, and not rush it.
Mostly in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Hafiz
who reads the fastest is regarded as the
best Hafiz.
So the people tend to go to the
place where the Taraweeh is done in the
shortest amount of time and the Hafiz recites
the quickest.
And this is not really something to be
proud of.
This is not something that we should be
proud of, that a person is reading so
fast.
We have to make sure, keeping this rule
in mind, why was it that Allah SWT
revealed the Quran over 23 years?
So that the Quran would be recited slowly.
People appreciate it, take it, whatever has been
revealed, learn it, and internalize it, and focus
on the verses which have been recited, and
then basically put them into practice, and then
learn more which are coming now.
So this was the wisdom of the Quran
being revealed over 23 years.
Again, Allah SWT emphasizes that we revealed it
slowly.
There's one word is Inzal, It means something
that comes down quickly.
And Tanzeel means something that comes down bit
by bit.
Slowly, slowly.
This is what Tanzeel means.
Allah says, We revealed it slowly, so that
people could internalize, and grasp what has been
recited, and not so that people just take
the whole thing at once, and not appreciate
what was given to them.
So this is the lesson, this is one
of the main lessons that we learned, towards
the end of Surah Bani Israel, about the
recitation of the Quran, that it should be
done slowly and surely, according to the etiquette
that has been taught to us, with the
correct Tajweed, with the correct pronunciation, so that
the meanings don't change, and the beauty of
the Quran is maintained as it was revealed.
I pray that Allah SWT gives us the
tawfiq to understand, and practice what has been
said in here.