Zia Sheikh – Tafseer of Surah Yousuf Ayah 8 onward 622016
AI: Summary ©
The history of love is discussed, including the lack of love for family members due to the Prophet's words and the importance of sharing love with family members. The segment also touches on the idea of love being a "monster" and the influence of the Prophet A.S on forgiveness. The segment also discusses the miscalculance of a loss of father and a mistake made by brother, and the importance of being a good person to avoid suffering from jealousy and hatred towards the brother. The segment ends with a recap of the discussion and a invitation to continue the discussion in the next week.
AI: Summary ©
I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the
accursed.
In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent,
the Most Merciful.
When they said to Yusuf and his brother,
He is dearer to our father than we
are, and we are a group.
Indeed, our father is in clear error.
Kill Yusuf or lay him on the ground.
Your father's face will remain for you, and
you will be, after him, a righteous people.
One of them said, Do not kill Yusuf,
and throw him into the depths of the
well.
Some caravan will pick him up, if you
do.
And what their thinking was.
And inshallah, in today's lesson, we go into
detail about the discussion that took place about
what they should do with Yusuf because of
the fact that their father loves him and
his brother bin Yamin so much.
So, Allah SWT says, When they said, meaning,
when the brothers said, the mention of the
brothers took place in ayah number 7, which
we discussed last week.
So, here Allah SWT starts discussing what was
it that they said.
When they said, Indeed, Yusuf and his brother.
So, this laam here, lay Yusufu, it is
classified as laam lilqasm.
It is for ta'keeth, it is for
an oath, that basically, if you were to
translate it another way, I swear by Allah,
or we swear by Allah, Yusuf and his
brother, They are more beloved to our father
than us.
And we are a strong group.
Indeed, our father, he is in open misguidance.
So, there is a lot of detail that
we need to discuss here.
Firstly, why would they have any kind of
problem with the fact that Yaqub AS is
loving Yusuf AS and bin Yamin, the blood
brother of Yusuf AS, because they were born
from the same mother.
Why would they have that jealousy towards them?
Like I said before, in previous lessons, this
is a very natural thing that pretty much
all siblings have.
That when they see that their father has
more attention, or pays more attention towards the
newest child of the family, the youngest child,
or for whatever reason, the attention towards one
child is more than the other, so there
is always going to be some kind of
sibling rivalry, and some kind of resentment towards
that brother or sister who is getting the
most attention.
So, that is completely natural.
The question is also, why did Yaqub AS
have more attention and more love towards Yusuf
and his brother?
So, before we go into that, it is
important to understand that there are two kinds
of love.
One is known as Hubbul Aql, which is
the love of the intellect, which a person
purposefully brings into himself, and forces himself to
instill, forces himself to have that love instilled
into him.
And the example of that is our love
for the Prophet SAW.
Because the fact is that we have never
met the Prophet SAW.
We have never seen him.
The only thing is that we have heard
about him, we have read about him, we
hear lectures about him, and because of the
fact that he is our Prophet, we have
the complete love for him that we should.
But this is Hubbul Aql.
This is a love which is based on
logic.
It is based on intellect rather than emotion.
It is based on intellect rather than emotion.
And the example of that is a saying
of the Prophet SAW.
He said, The Prophet SAW said that, none
of you can have true Iman until I
become more beloved to them than even himself.
Umar RA, he was sitting there, said, and
this was how brutally honest Umar RA, and
really all the Sahaba were, said, yes Ya
Rasulullah, I can love you more than my
family, I can love you more than my
wealth, but more than myself, I am having
difficulty with that.
So the Prophet SAW, he said the same
thing again, that none of you can have
true Iman until I become more beloved to
him than even himself.
So Umar RA thought for himself, and he
thought that this is an issue related to
the completeness of Iman, and he then forced
himself to love the Prophet SAW even more
than himself.
So from this we understand that that love
of the Prophet SAW is not an emotional
love, rather it is something that we instill
into ourselves with the understanding that our Iman
is incomplete until we love the Prophet SAW
more than ourselves, more than our families and
so on.
So this is a love of intellect.
However, the love for our children, the love
for our families, the love for our wealth,
it is actually a love of emotion.
We emotionally love our children, we emotionally love
our families, and because of the fact that
we are always interacting with them, we have
made effort into having those children, into raising
those children, giving them a good education and
so on.
So anything that you put an effort into,
there is this love of emotion associated with
that.
Now going back to the issue of Ya
'qub SAW and his love for his children,
specifically Yusuf SAW and Bini Amin, the history
behind that is that these two who were
born from the same mother, they actually lost
their mother while they were very young.
And because of this loss, the father, Ya
'qub SAW, had to replace both the father
and the mother.
He was the father anyway, but he also
had to show them the love of the
mother that they were deprived of because of
her loss, because of the fact that she
passed away.
So his loving the children was not based
on intellect, rather it was based on this
emotion that these two youngsters of mine, they
have been deprived of the love of their
mother, and this inclination forced him to love
these two more than the others.
And there are many examples of that in
the seal of the Prophet SAW that he
excused himself the Prophet SAW he when he
was told that he is supposed to be
just between his wives, he said that this
issue of love it is not something that
the heart can control.
Justice between co-wives is such that you
spend equal time with them, you give them
an equal amount of money to spend and
equality in all material things that you can.
However, love is something which is associated with
the heart, so the Prophet SAW he said
about this issue that I have done my
bit and I am paraphrasing the words I
am doing my bit in terms of being
equal with the wives as for the matter
of the heart that is something that I
have no control over and he used to
say because at that time Aisha RA was
his co-wife he said I love Aisha
RA the most, more than anyone else.
So this is again the love of emotion
not the love of intellect the emotions people
cannot have control over.
There is a very famous saying in Arabic
in the old days when a person was
asked which of your sons are more beloved
to you?
It is a beautiful saying.
The response would be the youngest one until
he becomes big, so there is a natural
tendency that the youngest one he gets the
most love that is one answer the son
who is absent until he comes back a
person who leaves the country he may be
the biggest, oldest, youngest, it is irrelevant the
one who is absent he is missed the
most until he returns back and the last
answer the sick person, the sick son until
he becomes well again.
So again when one of the children is
sick in the family until he becomes well
again the whole attention of the family is
directed towards that sick child and Allah forbid
if the sickness is severe and they have
to come in and out of hospitals what
happens is the others they tend to get
neglected and it becomes very difficult for the
other siblings to actually deal with that kind
of situation but again this saying of the
Arabs is very poignant it is very powerful
that when a person is asked which of
your children is most beloved to you says
the youngest one until he becomes big the
absent one until he returns and the sick
one until he becomes well so this is
the same thing we can apply to the
issue of Yusuf A.S. and Binyamin Yaqub
A.S. was not purposefully being unjust with
the rest of the sons rather it was
this emotional attachment that he had to Yusuf
A.S. and Binyamin that forced him to
love them more than the others there is
another story that is related to Umar A
.S Umar A.S was sitting one day
and somebody pointed to a guy who was
walking past and said look this is the
killer of your brother he is walking past
so Umar A.S turned his face away
and he didn't want to look at him
the person he saw this he noticed and
he came up to Umar A.S and
said why did you turn your face away
so Umar A.S very straight forward again
I don't like you why?
because you are you are the killer of
my brother the person he responded back by
saying the fact that you dislike me
he is saying to Umar A.S the
fact that you dislike me is that going
to prevent you from fulfilling all of my
rights he is a Khalifa right Umar A
.S is a Khalifa so this person who
is the killer of his brother is asking
the question that the fact that I killed
your brother and you dislike me are you
going to are you going to fulfill my
rights or not or are you going to
deprive me of my rights he said no
I am not going to deprive you of
your rights so again this dislike towards this
person is not based upon the fact that
he just wants to dislike him rather it
is something that cannot be helped it is
something that it is a natural inclination that
any person would have who has been wronged
that I will not like that person who
has done any wrong to me and that
is why also the Prophet A.S many
verses were revealed for the killer of Hamza
A.S this
verse is according to many Mufasireen was revealed
for the killer of Hamza A.S and
he was forgiven by Allah for committing this
huge sin of killing the uncle of the
Prophet A.S but despite that the Prophet
A.S used to tell him that don't
come in front of me because each time
you come in front of me it reminds
me of my uncle so again natural inclination
rather than forcefully having a dislike for a
person there is a difference between the two
so anyway going back to the story of
Umar A.S and the killer of his
brother the person he said to Umar A
.S he basically rubbed it in a little
bit he said it is your right to
love who you want and it is your
right to dislike who you want but really
the person the only people that cry over
love are women so basically he gave Umar
A.S a dose before he left why
are you crying over the loss of your
brother only women cry like that and anyway
so the point was that the fact that
Umar A.S he disliked the person it
was not because of any personal thing personal
inclination rather it was because he had wronged
him and that is something that is natural
going on they said the children, the sons
they said that Yaqub A.S loves Yusuf
A.S and Ibn Yamin and his brother
Ibn Yamin more than us we are a
group Usbah in Arabic refers to a group
of people which are ten so Yaqub A
.S he had become old and he had
given the responsibility of looking after the affairs
to the brothers and because of the fact
that they were all together they were working
together they were a group they felt that
their attention and the love of their father
should be directed towards them but when there
are ten people there is a group of
people the love becomes kind of divided he
loved them equally as a group and loving
them equally as a group wasn't enough for
them they wanted attention separately so Usbah can
mean a group of ten people Usbah can
mean also a strong group a group that
does work and this group of brothers were
working and taking care of the family affairs
after the father Yaqub A.S had retired
they finished off the sentence by saying indeed
our father he is in open misguidance clear
misguidance there are two types of misguidance one
is called and one is is when a
person who getting all the proofs from the
Quran and the Sunnah he chooses to reject
the Quran and the Sunnah he chooses to
reject Islam this is one type of and
the other type of is which is basically
a person he loses his way goes into
the forest takes a wrong turn and he
gets lost so this is an example of
so the fact that they were hinting at
the father being in some sort of it
is indicative of misguidance which was not intended
rather than the intended misguidance now they made
the plan what was the plan kill Yusuf
this was the first suggestion that came up
and then they thought this is too extreme
and the question is first of all why
only Yusuf when in the first sentence they
said Yusuf and his brother they are more
beloved to us to our father than all
of us so then why did they direct
their attention towards Yusuf there are two answers
for this one opinion is that they didn't
want to shock the father too much by
getting rid of both of them so they
thought ok we will just get rid of
one of them and the other opinion is
that they had heard about the dream not
directly from Yusuf but from external sources they
had heard about the dream of Yusuf and
their jealousy towards him became more severe so
that's why they decided to get rid of
him so the first opinion was kill Yusuf
and then they decided ok this is too
extreme we don't want to kill him they
had the second opinion throw him into the
desert into some barren land so these were
the two opinions and why did they want
to do that يخلوا لكم وجه أبيكم when
that happens the attention of your father will
be directed towards you only meaning the father
will start loving you only وَتَكُونُوا مِنْ بَعْدِهِ
قَوْمًا صَالِحِينَ and after that after we have
done the deed after we have got rid
of him what we are going to do
we are going to become pious people صالحين
there are two opinions here what it means
one opinion is that we are going to
make tawbah we will commit the sin but
after that we will ask Allah for repentance
and we will become pious after that the
other opinion is صالح basically means to become
at ease ok to become repaired you can
say so our misgivings our jealousy our hatred
towards our brother it is going to go
away and after that we are going to
be good internally we are going to be
good and we are not going to have
this stress of jealousy anymore so we are
going to become good after that we are
going to become at ease after that وَتَكُونُوا
مِنْ بَعْدِهِ قَوْمًا صَالِحِينَ you are going to
become after that pious or good people or
relaxed people now in the course of this
discussion one of them said ok you have
got two opinions here killing him or putting
him in the middle of the desert ok
I think we need to kind of ease
up a little bit more and what was
his opinion قَالَ قَائِنٌ مِّنْهُمْ one of them
said so why does Allah SWT not mention
who he was according to some Mufassireen Allah
SWT didn't mention who he was so that
our حُسْنُ الظَّن meaning our good will towards
the rest of the brothers all of the
brothers could be equal it could have been
any one of them so our thinking about
them should be حُسْنُ الظَّن we should have
good intention towards them we should have good
thinking about them rather than having any type
of misgiving about them so that's why Allah
SWT didn't mention the name however some Mufassireen
have mentioned the name Qatada says that it
was the oldest one his name was Rubil
Suddi says that it was one of them
whose name was Yehuda and the third opinion
is Mujahids he said his name was Shemaun
Samuel Shemaun it was these are the three
opinions but irrespective of who it was Allah
SWT does not mention the name so he
said لا تقتلو يوسف killing Yusuf it's a
little bit extreme don't do that و ألقوه
and killing Yusuf putting him in the desert
was tantamount to killing him too right put
him in the middle of the desert nobody
can find him he's going to perish within
a few days so both situations either directly
killing him or putting him in the middle
of the desert means that he's going to
die so what was his opinion و ألقوه
في غيابة الجوم throw him into the darknesses
of a well غيابة is the portion of
a well which is hidden from human eyes
غيابة الجوم so basically if you look in
you will look directly at the water and
maybe there are edges around the well that
you really never pay attention to so this
is known as غيابة الجوم throw him inside
this well and what's going to happen يلتقطه
بعض السيارة caravans which are going by they
know about these wells they're going to drop
their buckets inside the well and one of
them is going to just draw Yusuf out
pull Yusuf out take him away and you
know he'll be you'll get rid of him
and also he'll stay alive so it's going
to be the best of both worlds so
يلتقطه بعض السيارة some caravan is going to
* him up and take him if you
are going to do anything so this end
sentence it indicates that this older brother he
was not even inclined to doing that but
he said if you're going to do anything
then just do this so he was not
inclined towards even doing this he was kind
of hesitant to go along with the plan
of the rest of the brothers inshallah we're
going to stop here and we will continue
with this next week I pray that Allah
SWT actually Ramadan is coming up so we'll
continue with this inshallah after the month of
Ramadan may Allah SWT give us tawfiq to
understand and practice what has been said and
heard