Zia Sheikh – Tafseer of Surah Nahal Ayah 30 onwards Session 7
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AI: Transcript ©
Which means the Beehive.
Allah will be mentioned later on.
Today, inshallah, we're going to be starting from
Ayah number 30.
Earlier in the Surah, Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala described how when the disbelievers are asked
about what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala revealed.
وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُم مَاذَا أَنزَلَ رَبُّكُمْ قَالُوا أَسَاطِيرُ
الْأَوَّلِينَ They said, the fairy tales of the
old.
This is what the Qur'an is.
This was their response to the question, what
did your Lord reveal to you?
Here, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala now describes
how the people of Iman, when they are
asked, how they respond.
There is a point that is being made
here, is that when anybody wants to come
to a conclusion, a fair conclusion, then he
should not just rely on one side of
the story.
One person tells you, and that's it, you
accept it as being genuine, as being the
truth, as being something that you rely on.
And this is unfortunately what goes on in
this country.
We have people that call themselves fair and
balanced, but the reality is they are far
from that.
And when people just rely on one aspect
of news, or one avenue of news, the
reality of it is that they will always
get a slanted image and a biased image
that doesn't give the true reflection of what
the news actually is.
So that's why here Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala is saying that, okay, we've asked what
they think about the Qur'an, and they
have said that this is Asatirul Awwaleen, this
is the fairy tales of old.
But now let's ask the other party at
least to see where they stand.
So here Allah says, وَقِيلَ لِلَّذِينَ التَّقَوْا مَاذَا
أَنزَلَ رَبُّكُمْ قَالُوا خَيْرًا When the people of
Taqwa are asked, what did your Lord reveal?
They respond by saying, خَيْرًا.
He sent only good to us.
And we'll see what خَيْر is in a
minute.
Related to this is the story of Dawud
alayhi salam.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions, Dawud alayhi
salam was one day sitting, making ibadah of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, making the dhikr
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Suddenly, two men appeared to him out of
nowhere.
And he got kind of afraid.
So where did these people come from?
So this is actually mentioned in Surah As
-Sa'ad.
He wants to look it up.
So these people said, okay, we've come to
put a dispute in front of you.
And one of them started speaking and said,
that my brother here, he has 99 sheep,
and I have one sheep.
And he's actually trying to even hold of
that one sheep that I have.
And he's being arrogant in his speech.
Okay, so he gave his judgment and said,
no, this is not right.
Why do you want his one sheep?
Without listening to the story.
And being an Imam, I have so many
cases or situations where a husband may come
in complaining about his wife, a divorce situation,
problems occurring within the household, and he says
one side of the story.
And then when the wife comes, the story
is actually completely different.
Okay, so again, to pass a judgment based
upon hearing one side of the story is
not sufficient.
So Dawud alayhi salatu was salam, once he
passed the judgment, he realized his mistake, and
he made istighfar to Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala that he should have listened to the
other side of the story.
He fell and prostrated in sajda and made
tawbah to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So again, the point is, when you want
to make a judgment, always hear both sides
of the story.
And here Allah is giving us both sides
of the story.
First of all, the disbelievers are asked about
what they think about the Quran.
Now the believers are asked what they think
about the Quran.
So it is said to the people of
taqwa, What did your Lord reveal?
They respond by saying khair, good.
Also here Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala doesn't
mention who the disbelievers are.
And this is the conclusion that they were
generally weak people, faceless people that lived in
the shadows when the surah was revealed.
Basically they were in hiding, in secret.
And they couldn't expose their iman because of
persecution.
So that's why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
doesn't specifically mention.
When it is said to the people of
taqwa, What did your Lord reveal?
They respond by saying khair, good.
Now what is good?
What is the definition of good?
Sometimes people think that something is good for
them, but in reality it's not good for
them.
It is bad for them.
For example, a person who is taking drugs,
and he realizes that he thinks that he's
getting a high, and he's feeling good, and
he thinks that that is something good for
him, the reality is that he's harming himself.
So this is not good.
A person who takes alcohol also, when he's
drinking alcohol, he's doing it to get that
temporary feeling of exhilaration, euphoria, and feel good
for a little while, but when he gets
that feeling of a drunkenness, he actually ends
up worse than he was, with a hangover
and feeling really bad about what he had
done the night before.
So what is the definition of good?
What do we define as good?
This is something that we look at from
the angle of what Allah SWT defines as
good.
And that's mentioned after this ayah.
للذين أحسنوا في هذه الدنيا حسنًا Good is
that those people that they do good in
this world, for them there is good.
So this is the worldly life.
So to do good in this world, so
from this we understand that to do worldly
things, there's not something necessarily wrong with it,
as long as you don't forget Allah SWT,
and you fulfill the commands of Allah SWT,
and you don't, in trying to seek the
worldly things, you don't engage in something haram.
So Allah SWT says that those people that
do good in this world, there is hasanah
for them, there is good for them.
Now, a person who lives a clean life,
an honest life, a person who has no
guilt on his conscience, he lives a peaceful
life, even though he may be earning very
little, he has very little worldly goods, but
he sleeps well at night, and he has
no qualms about somebody knocking on his door,
and coming to arrest him.
Okay, so this is what is meant by
a person who does good in this world,
good life, he has a good life.
And on the other hand, a person who
earned his money from illicit means, he robbed
a bank for example, and he earned or
he took money in cash and jewelry and
whatever, and he thinks to himself, well, I'm
saving my life because I have everything that
I could ever imagine for the rest of
my life.
But what kind of a life is it,
when he's actually looking over his shoulder all
the time, and each time somebody knocks on
the door, he fears that it may be
the police coming to arrest him.
Each time he passes a police car, he
has to look behind the rear view mirror
to see if that car didn't turn around
and follow him.
So what kind of a life is this?
Probably he has to sleep with guns by
his side to make sure that the people
that he robbed the bank with, they don't
turn against him, and try to take that
money away from him.
So seemingly, he got all the material gains,
but did he really have a good life
in this world?
Is that really khair?
So this is something to think about.
So Allah is saying that those people that
do good in this world, they have hasana,
they have a good life.
They have a good life, meaning a peaceful
life, peaceful existence.
They sleep well at night.
They have no guilt on their conscience.
But despite all that, if a person doesn't
have good in this world also, if he
worked and strived towards the hereafter, then the
abode of the hereafter is better.
That is the real good thing that he
should be striving for.
That's the definition of good in the eyes
of Allah.
Good in this world means that you live
a clean life and obey Allah.
Don't do anything wrong.
Don't wrong anybody in this world.
And work for the hereafter.
And khair in the hereafter means that you
will have eternal success in front of Allah.
The abode of the hereafter, it is better.
And indeed, how good is the abode of
the people of taqwa.
So there's a very strong wording here.
Here it's for stress.
It's for taqeed.
Allah is saying indeed, taqeed is used to
show something which is very good.
It's from afaarul madh.
That how wonderful is the abode of the
people of taqwa.
Which is of course, the jannah, which is
described in the next ayah.
What is the abode of the people of
taqwa?
Allah says, jannah tu'adna.
The gardens that are everlasting.
And this word, Allah SWT uses throughout the
Quran, jannah tu'adna.
Everlasting gardens.
So again, we have a worldly comparison of
jannah in the hereafter.
If we have the most beautiful gardens, and
the most beautiful gardens in this world, there
is a time when you have to leave
it.
You will leave this world.
Basically you will die, and you leave it.
Or, you know, someone will file a court
case against you and take it away from
you.
Or, your kids are going to want their
share of the possession, of their property, while
you still have to give it over to
them.
So any type of possession that you have
in this world, gardens, palaces, money, riches, it
is completely temporary.
So when Allah SWT, He defines jannah as
jannah tu'adna, the gardens that are everlasting,
that is to impress upon us that there
is no fear of those jannah being taken
away from you.
How wonderful the feeling is going to be
when a person is in this jannah, in
this paradise, and he knows that nothing can
take this away from me.
It's not going to be taken away from
me.
I'm not going to be taken away from
it by leaving this world.
I'm going to be here forever and ever.
Just imagine the peacefulness he gets when he
is observing this paradise that he is in
at the time.
So jannah tu'adna, jannahs that are going
to be everlasting, yadkhulunaha that they will enter,
these people will enter those jannahs, tajree min
tahtiha al-anhaar, rivers will be flowing from
underneath them.
There are two ways that this is described
in the Quran, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
in one place it says, tajree tahtiha al
-anhaar, which means that the rivers will flow
underneath the jannat.
How that will be, Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala only knows.
Underneath, maybe there's going to be a glass
floor or something in which you can see
the water flowing.
Allahu a'alam.
But tajree tahtiha al-anhaar means that the
river comes from somewhere else and you can
see it flowing from there.
But tajree min tahtiha al-anhaar, that means
that the rivers will actually be from underneath
those, they will flow and they will start
from underneath the jannah that the person is
living in, and basically then will flow underneath
the paradise.
So, as we know in the Quran, Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says, there are four
types of rivers in jannah.
There are four types of rivers in jannah,
one of them is pure and clean water,
the second one is beautiful honey, sweet honey,
the third is clean wine that doesn't make
a person drunk, and the fourth is milk,
which will never go bad.
These are the four types of rivers that
we'll have in jannah and they will be
flowing underneath the gardens that we're going to
be living in.
Lahum feeha maa yashaa'oon And for them,
for the people of paradise, they will have
whatever they want.
Now, yashaa'oon means, it's from the word
mashia, and it means that a person, and
from mashia, actually, a person is, mashia means
to love something or desire something.
Now, a person's desire in this world differs
according to the situation that he's in.
So, if a person, for example, is homeless
and penniless, and you ask him, what do
you want?
He will just tell you, maybe a burger
and fries.
That's what he wants.
That's probably what he's been dreaming about for
weeks.
But then a person who has everything that
he needs, maybe he lives in a palace
which has ten bedrooms and five bathrooms, and
he's going to ask for a palace which
is bigger than that.
So the concept of mashia, it differs in
this world according to a person's understanding and
according to a person's situation, it varies.
But in general, basically mashia will be completely
different.
It will be a level for everybody that
a person will be doing everything just for
the sake of enjoyment.
Here, a person's wish will be sometimes for
his need and sometimes for his enjoyment, but
there, that mashia will be only and only
for enjoyment.
And the Prophet ﷺ said, there's a hadith
Qudsi, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, I've
prepared for my pious slaves such a Jannah
that no eye has seen and no ear
has heard about, and no person has ever
imagined what that Jannah is about.
So basically what it is, that we talk
about Jannah and we've just been talking about
it, right?
We've mentioned gardens and rivers and palaces and
all these things, but according to our description,
it's going to be way better than that.
It's not according to our description, the reality
of it.
An example that you can understand from that
is somebody, you talk to a baby that
is in the womb, the stomach of the
baby, and you say to this baby that
after nine months you're going to be coming
out and you'll see a world which has
cars in it.
You'll say, what's a car?
You're going to see buildings, what's a building?
You're going to see food, what's food?
You're going to see water, what is water?
So you cannot explain to this baby anything
that is going to be in the world,
he has to experience it for himself.
The same thing really applies for our concept
of Jannah, this is what that hadith means.
We can talk about it as much as
we like, but our understanding of Jannah will
be according to the limited experience that we've
had of our worldly life.
It is really not going to be anything
like this.
It's not going to be anything like the
worldly life.
And that is why the Prophet ﷺ said
that no eye has seen it, and no
ear has heard about it, and nobody can
even imagine what it is about.
So they will want things, they will get
whatever they desire, but that desire will be
according to whatever they will see, and it's
not compared to the worldly life.
This is how Allah ﷻ rewards the people
of Taqwa.
Who are the people of Taqwa again?
At the time of their death, how is
their death going to be?
أُدْخُلُ الْجَنَّةَ بِمَا كُنْتُمْ تَعْبَلُونَ This time of
death for the believer, it's going to be
the best time of his life.
He's going to be looking forward to meeting
Allah ﷻ, and finally ending up in the
abode of peace.
Allah ﷻ says that when these angels come
to take him, while he is tayyib, tayyib
means he is pure from shirk, he is
pure from kufr, and all forms of impurities,
he is dying in that state of purity,
and he has iman, they're going to say
to him, أَسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ يَقُولُونَ سَلَامٌ عَلَيْكُمْ The
angels are going to say, سَلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ to
him.
So this is again, we have this concept
that if somebody says, سَلَامُ to me, I'm
really somebody.
If somebody, he initiates, and he sticks his
hand out to me all the time, people
try to say, سَلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ and greet me,
that means that I am somebody.
I have a status and a respect in
people's eyes, that's why they do that.
And just imagine, that the angels are competing
with each other to say السلام عليكم.
Just what can that, what does that say
about your status, سَلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَعَلَيْكُمْ وَعَلَيْكُمْ and
how much respect you have.
There are other verses in the Quran, Allah
SWT says, إِنَّ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا رَبُّنَا اللَّهُ ثُمَّ
اسْتَقَالُوا عَلَيْهِمُ الْمَلَائِكَةِ أَلَّا تَخَافُوا وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا
وَأَبَشِرُوا بِالْجَبْرِ كُنْتُمْ تُوَعَدُونَ Indeed those people, they
said that our Lord is Allah SWT, and
they remain steadfast, the angels are going to
descend upon them at the time of their
death, and they're going to console them.
A person obviously, when he is leaving his
wife, his kids, his family, his house, there
may be some kind of trepidation, some kind
of fearlessness, but the angels are going to
console them, لا تخافوا ولا تحزنوا Nothing to
worry, nothing to fear, nothing to worry about.
And have glad news of Jannah.
We're going to give you glad news of
Jannah that you've been promised.
We've been your friends in this world, and
also we're going to be your friends in
the hereafter.
وَلَكُمْ فِيهَا مَا تَشْتَهِي أَنفُسُكُمْ Whatever your heart
desires, you're going to get it.
Whatever you call for, you'll get it.
نُزُلًا مِنْ غَفُورِ الرَّحِيمِ This is a Nuzul
from Allah SWT.
It is, you know, Nuzul means when a
guest comes, you prepare something for him, that's
called Nuzul.
So Allah SWT will prepare a Nuzul for
this person who's leaving this world, and you
give him glad tidings of it.
So, الَّذِينَ تَتَوَفَّهُمُ الْمَلَائِكَةُ الطَيِّبِينَ Those that, the
Malaika, they take them away, they give them
death, at the time of their death.
We mentioned last week, the word Tawaffa, it
is from the word Wafaa Yafee.
It means to complete.
Okay?
So, when a person, he has his Wafaaat,
it means he's completed everything.
He's completed the Rizq that was written for
him, he's completed the air that was written
for him, he's completed the water that was
written for him, and, basically now, once all
of that has been completed, according to how
Allah SWT wrote it for him, now is
the time for his death.
This is the end of his life.
So, those that the Malaika give Wafaaat to,
while they're in a state of purity, away
from Shirk and Kufr, they will say to
them, سَلَامٌ عَلَيْكُمْ أُدْخُلُوا الْجَنَّةَ بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ
Enter into Paradise, because of what you used
to do.
And we've mentioned before, that this is only
to make the person feel good, that he
achieved something.
But the reality is that the entrance into
Paradise, is not because of our Aamal, it
is because of the mercy of Allah SWT,
and nothing more than that.
This Aamal that we do, it is simply
to get that mercy of Allah SWT.
Okay?
The Aamal, it is nothing in comparison to
the blessings that Allah SWT.
So inshallah with that we finish, and we
will continue with this next.
Allah SWT.
In fact, after Ramadan now, we'll start, I'm
traveling out of the country for a week
next week.
And inshallah after that Ramadan will start.
So inshallah we'll restart again after Ramadan.
I pray that Allah SWT gives us tawfiq
to understand, and practice what has been said
and heard.
Al
Fatiha.