Zia Sheikh – Tafseer of Surah Nahal Session 6
AI: Summary ©
The history of Islam is discussed, including the use of "hasra" and "will" to describe the plan of Islam, as well as the concept of "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to "by the way" and "by the way" in relation to
AI: Summary ©
Today, I'm
going to give you a brief introduction to
the Quranic verses of Surah Al-Baqarah.
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
Surah Al
-Baqarah,
Verse 1 We're going through the Tafseer of
Surah Al-Nahl.
And today, Inshallah, we're going to be starting
from Ayah number 26.
But prior to doing that, we're going to
step back one Ayah, because this Ayah, today's
Ayah, Ayah number 26, is related to the
previous Ayah.
In which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, He
asked those people that disbelieved Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala asked them,
or when people asked them, ماذا انت لربكم؟
What did your Lord reveal?
قَالُوا أَسَاطِيرُ الْأَوَّلِينَ They said, all fairy tales,
all fabricated nonsense, this is what Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala revealed.
لِيَحْمِلُوا أَوْزَارَهُمْ كَامِلَتَينَ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ So that they
could hold their weight, and the weight of
the people that they led astray before them.
Okay, so we mentioned how people are going
to be taking each other's sins, because of
the fact that they became the means for
the sins of others.
Because they became the means for the sins
of others, that's why Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala will hold them accountable for their sins.
أَلَا سَاءَ مَا يَزِيرُونَ Allah says, how bad
is the thing that they're carrying, the sins
that they're carrying.
So now Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala described
those people, and then He goes into detail
about previous nations that did the same thing.
What happened to those previous nations, and how
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala dealt with them.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, قَدْ مَكَرَ
الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْ قَدْ مَكَرَ
الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْ قَدْ مَكَرَ الَّذِينَ مِنْ
قَبْلِهِمْ A concealed and a protected location.
So that's the actual definition of makar, planning.
So Allah uses that word to describe the
plotting that the people did before them.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala what He does,
He actually makes their plan look like a
building.
He makes it look like a building.
So a plan makes us envision their plan
like a huge building, like a castle or
a fort.
They have protected themselves inside.
And when a person makes such a strong
building, he assumes that he is protected inside
that building.
He is protected from the elements, from thunderstorms,
from rain, from wind, from cold, from heat
and so on.
He thinks along those lines.
But when that same building collapses upon him
or doesn't protect him from the elements, that
comes as a huge surprise.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala actually uses
the word makar and then He makes it
look like a building.
And what happens to that building that the
people were assuming that is going to protect
them, what's going to happen?
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, قَدْ
مَكَرَ الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْ Indeed, the people that
came before them, they did makar.
They did their plotting and planning.
فَأَتَلَّهُ بُنْيَانَهُمْ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْ Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala came into their buildings and foundations.
So this is the most dangerous thing.
People living in Dallas and especially Irving, where
the soil always shifts.
They always complain about their foundations.
The soil shifted, the foundation moved and the
walls now have cracks in them.
So the foundation is the key to the
building.
You mess up the foundation, the whole building
basically, it goes haywire.
But Allah says, Allah came into the buildings
right from the foundations.
Right from the foundations and moved them from
the foundations.
فَأَتَلَّهُ بُنْيَانَهُمْ مِنَ الْقَوَاعِذِ فَخَرَّ عَلَيْهِمُ السَّقْفُ مِنْ
فَوْقِهِمْ And the ceiling collapsed on top of
them.
And again, what is the purpose of the
ceiling?
The roof, protection.
So the same thing they thought was protecting
them, it fell down upon them.
So this was the result of their makrut,
the outcome of their makrut and their plotting
and their planning.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes it in
such a beautiful way, just like a building.
But those whole plants collapsed on top of
them.
And one very prominent event in history was
the plan that they made to na'udhu
billah, kill the Prophet ﷺ before they could
get to Medina.
They all came, they decided, Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala describes that in surah al-anfal
وَإِذْ يَمْكُرُ بِكَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لِيُثْبِتُوكَ أَوْ يَقْتُلُوكَ
أَوْ يُخْرِجُوكَ وَيَمْكُرُونَ وَيَمْكُرُوا اللَّهُ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ
الْمَاكِرِينَ They came and they made all of
this planning, and they thought either we should
kill him or we should deport him or
وَإِذْ يَمْكُرُ بِكَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لِيُثْبِتُوكَ Either keep
you and imprison you or we have to
look or kill you or explain it to
Makadon Wa Karma And then the shaytan took
the form of a human being and he
started giving opinions.
Okay, no, no, no, don't keep him.
Don't expel him because he's just going to
go outside and he's going to cause fitna.
So when they decided, okay, we should kill
him, he said, yes, that's the best.
So that's what they decided.
Now how to do it in such a
way to protect themselves from the revenge of
Quraysh?
They decided that all of the tribes should
simultaneously kill the Prophet ﷺ using their spears
and arrows and so on, so that the
revenge could not be taken upon all of
the tribes.
So this was their plan.
So ultimately, we know what happened.
Ali stayed behind and the Prophet ﷺ, he
sneaked out right in front of their very
eyes and they didn't even see him.
And finally, he went to Medina.
Ali was in the bed.
He was protected.
He didn't get killed.
And he joined the Prophet ﷺ later.
So this is one example.
And then countless examples of battles where planning
was made to do something against the Prophet
ﷺ, but the opposite happened.
We see that even today, many people plan
to do things against Islam and those plans
actually go against them.
The more they publicize hatred against Islam, the
more people become Muslim.
Obviously, it has negative effects and repercussions, but
also it keeps Islam in the public eye
and keeps people researching about Islam.
And the plans that they make, they basically
fall under their own plans.
And Allah ﷻ, He describes that.
That, Indeed, those
people, they disbelieve.
They spend their wealth against the path of
Allah ﷻ.
They prevent people from coming towards Allah ﷻ.
But what's going to happen, Allah ﷻ says,
they're going to spend their wealth and that
same wealth is going to be a hasra
for them.
They're going to be sorry that they did
it.
And then on top of that, So this
is the planning that people had against their
Prophets ﷺ.
Allah ﷻ made all of their plans go
to waste.
And Allah ﷻ says, That ceiling came down
upon them and they were destroyed under their
own plans.
When it came to them, from where they
did not even realize.
Again, what kind of things happened to people?
Namrud, he was basically a mosquito in his
ear and he was destroyed by that.
Can you imagine?
A person who thinks he's God and he
claims to be God and he tells people
to worship him.
But he gets a mosquito in his head
and he feels uncomfortable with that mosquito.
So much so, the only way that he
feels comfortable is when people hit him on
the head with slippers.
So if you can imagine, this person who
claims to be God, but he's been beaten
by his own servants with slippers.
And that's the only way that he gets
ease.
In any case, Allah ﷻ then goes, Then
on the Day of Judgment, Allah ﷻ is
going to disgrace them.
And now the thing is, what is Khizyun?
What does Khizyun mean?
Khizyun means disgracefulness, shamefulness, embarrassment.
And this actually sometimes is worse than physical
punishment.
When a person is physically hit by somebody,
you get a bruise and you hurt for
a few minutes.
But disgrace and embarrassment is something that kind
of sticks with you.
There's a stigma with you.
Any person who has been convicted of a
crime in this country, he remains a felon.
It doesn't get removed.
A person has this on his record.
So this is what Khizyun means.
Khizyun, embarrassment, shamefulness.
And Allah ﷻ is going to give them
this on the Day of Judgment.
Allah ﷻ is going to ask them, Allah
ﷻ is going to say, Where was that
you made shaq with?
Shaq means divisions with.
In Arabic you call it shaqah.
Shaqah means an apartment.
Why?
Because it's basically a divided part of the
building.
And what these people did, Allah ﷻ showed
them one straight path, which was the path
of tawheed, path of obedience, path of worshipping
Allah ﷻ.
But they took the path of worshipping other
gods, and they made divisions amongst people.
So Allah ﷻ is going to say, Where
are my partners that you made divisions with
amongst people?
You worshipped other gods, and the people who
were focusing on tawheed, they worshipped me.
You created divisions.
Where are my partners now?
Where are my partners now?
Where are the statues that you used to
worship?
You thought that they're going to help you.
Where are they now?
Obviously, those people are going to be questioned,
and they have no answer.
They have no answer because the statues are
helpless on the Day of Judgment.
They're not going to be able to help
them.
So who's going to respond to the answer?
Allah ﷻ describes, the people of knowledge are
going to say, إِنَّ الْخِزِيَ الْيَوْمَ وَسُوءٌ عَلَى
الْكَافِرِينَ And the bad situation is for the
disbelievers today.
Who are those people?
الَّذِينَ تَتَوَفَّهُمُ الْمَلَائِكَةُ ظَالِمِيْ أَنفُسِهِمْ Those are the
ones that the angels gave death to while
they were doing zulm upon themselves.
There are two things here.
Firstly, the concept of وَفَاة.
What does وَفَاة mean?
وَفَاة is from the word وَفَا يَفِي.
وَفِي, وَفَاة means to complete something.
Okay, so basically a person when he gets
his وَفَاة, in Urdu we use the word
وَفَاة too, فَوَطْ وَنَا وَفَاة Okay, it means
he's completed his breathing, he's completed his rizq,
he's completed his time.
It has been completed.
So, أَلَّذِينَ تَتَوَفَّهُمْ Those people that when the
مَلَائِكَةُ complete them, meaning complete their lives, ظَالِمِيْ
أَنفُسِهِمْ while they did zulm upon themselves.
Meaning, what does zulm upon oneself mean?
What does the word ظُلْم actually mean?
It is to basically not give a person
his due right.
So, how does a person do zulm upon
himself when it comes to a religion?
How does he do that?
So, if you think about it, when a
person feels hungry, what does he do?
He eats.
When he feels thirsty, he drinks.
When he feels tired, he goes to sleep.
Right, he doesn't do zulm upon himself, he
eats.
But what does he do zulm for?
He does in terms of his spiritual needs.
That is the zulm that he is doing
upon himself.
That's why in a very famous dua is
رَبَّنَا ظَلَمْنَا أَنفُسَنَا Oh, our Lord, we did
zulm upon ourselves.
We did zulm upon ourselves, meaning we didn't
fulfill the spiritual needs.
And another example of that is that if
a person thinks about this worldly life, he
focuses on this worldly life so much, whereas
this life is very temporary.
Okay?
And the life of the hereafter, it is
permanent.
Okay, so focusing on the temporary life in
such a way that a person is forgetting
about the permanent life, isn't this zulm?
And I've given this example many times, that
a person is sitting, for example, at an
airport terminal, and he thinks to himself that
I have no decor.
I don't like this decor of this airport,
of the terminal.
So he calls a decorating company, and he
says, Okay, I want you to decorate this
terminal.
Isn't this person foolish?
He spends $10,000, $15,000.
Okay, decorate this terminal for me because I
don't like it.
Why?
Why is this person foolish?
He's just going to hop onto his flight
in two hours and maybe not even come
back to that terminal ever again.
So, this is actually our action in this
world.
This is what we're doing in this world.
We're focusing on something so temporary, and this
is what zulm is.
That really we're going to leave it all
behind.
And the reality should be, the focus should
be on something which is going to be
permanent.
Okay, so this is what zulm is.
فَأَلْقَوْا السَّلَمُ They will be standing in front
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and they're
going to be presenting their salam.
Salam means peace.
Okay, a peace offering, a treaty, a white
flag.
This is basically what salam is.
And they're going to be presenting that to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that now we
want to obey you, and we want to
listen to you, and we want to worship
you.
And they're going to say, ما كنا نعملوا
من سوء We didn't really do anything wrong.
We didn't do anything wrong.
We didn't do any disobedience to you.
Allah responds to that and says, بَلَا إِنَّ
اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ بِمَا كُنْتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ Of course, no.
Indeed, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is fully
aware of what you are doing.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is completely aware
of what you are doing.
The word عَلِيم is opposed to عَالِم.
عَالِم means a person who is knowledgeable, right?
But there's a difference between عَالِم and عَلِيم.
عَالِم means limited knowledge.
Knowledge that a person reads, and maybe he
has for a certain amount of time, and
maybe forgets.
عَلِيم means consistently, permanently knowledgeable.
That's what عَالِيم is.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was fully
aware of what you are doing.
We read this in Fajr, this morning, in
Surah Al-Mujadila.
Allah says, أَحْصَوهُ اللَّهُ وَنَسُوهُ People will be
presented in front of Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala on the Day of Judgment.
Allah encompassed everything, and gathered everything that they
did.
Everything is written.
Allah accumulated it.
وَنَسُوهُ They themselves forgot, but Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is going to still bring it.
أَحْصَوهُ اللَّهُ وَنَسُوهُ And in another verse, اِقْرَأْ
كِتَابَكِ كَثَىٰ بِنَفْسِكَ الْيَوْمَ عَلَيْكَ حَسِيبًا Read your
own book.
You are enough to take account of yourselves.
You can read your own book of deeds,
and take an account of yourselves, then a
person will read, and realize, yes, I did
this at that time, I did this at
that time, I disobeyed Allah at this time,
I lied at this time, I cheated at
this time, I didn't pray at this time.
So everything will be written.
Not everything will be, not anything will be
missing.
فَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْخَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْرًا يَرَى An atom's
worth of good, he will see it.
وَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْخَالَ ذَرَّةٍ جَيْرًا يَرَى An atom's
worth of evil, he will see it, on
the Day of Judgment.
So we need to be cognizant of this,
and we need to understand that we need
to be self-accountable for our deeds, and
we need to think about how we're going
to present ourselves in front of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
And then on top of that, modern technology,
that should kind of give us a little
bit of a hint about you know, the
recording of things.
We often think about this issue of the
NSA recording our phone calls and monitoring our
bank transactions and things of that nature.
Okay, why are we so worried about it?
Because we know that once we make that
transaction, once we make that phone call, once
we send that money to somewhere, that is
recorded.
It is in the system.
Okay, it is in the system, it's not
going to go away.
So five years later, if the government wants
to present it in front of you, you've
forgotten about it.
But the government has it.
Okay, you've your tax returns three, four, five
years ago.
Okay, you forgot even what the numbers were.
But it's in the system.
And the government, they can present it to
you and say what you wrote, in reality,
your earnings were so much and you didn't
declare them, you didn't disclose them.
This is a small example of how recording
can take place and this we are seeing
with our own eyes and we are fully
aware that this can happen in this world.
So cannot Allah SWT monitor everything that we
do when he is our creator, he is
our sustainer, he sees everything, he hears everything.
Easy then for the angels on our right
and left side to write what we're doing,
good and bad.
It's possible, right?
These are examples that we need to learn
from and think that truly it is completely
possible for these things to happen.
So this should in fact boost us and
our faith in what Allah SWT has told
us.
So Allah says بَلَا إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ بِمَا
كُنتُم تَعْمَلُونَ بِمَا كُنتُم تَعْمَلُونَ Of course you
did.
Allah SWT is fully aware of what you
are doing and you did do bad and
you did disobey Allah SWT.
Allah SWT is fully aware of it.
فَادْخُلُوا أَبْوَابَ جَهَنَّمَ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا So enter into
the doors of Jahannam, enter into the doors
of the hellfire and live in it forever
and ever.
خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا Live in it forever and ever.
The question some people might have is that
a person lived for 50 years, 60 years,
70 years and he disobeyed Allah SWT for
that amount of time.
So why does he have to be punished
forever and ever?
That is that if he lived forever and
ever, he would have maintained that same attitude
of disobedience.
So that's why he's punished forever and ever.
فَادْخُلُوا أَبْوَابَ جَهَنَّمَ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا فَلَبِئْسَ مَثْوَى
الْمُتَكَبِّرِينَ What a bad abode or what a
bad refuge it is for the people of
تَكَبُّر.
تَكَبُّر, remember any word that is on the
وَزَن of تَفَعُّل, it means that a person
is doing something that he is not worthy
of doing.
That he is not really capable of doing,
but he is doing it.
So تَكَبُّر means that he is not worthy
of having كِبر.
He is not worthy of having this arrogance,
but he is doing it.
And the only one who is truly worthy
of تَكَبُّر is Allah SWT because He is
worthy of كِبر.
He is worthy of that arrogance.
He is worthy of that status.
So with that inshallah we finish.
We finish today at ayah number 29.
I pray that Allah SWT gives us tawfiq
to understand what has been said and heard.
Ameen.