Zia Sheikh – Tafseer of Surah Yusuf Ayah 18 onwards 9282016
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AI: Transcript ©
And they came upon his shirt with false
blood.
He said, Nay, but your souls have made
for you a decree, so be patient, beautiful.
And Allah is Helper over what you describe.
And a caravan came, and they sent their
father, and he gave birth to a son.
He said, O good tidings, this is a
boy, and they gave him a good harvest.
And Allah is All-Aware of what they
do.
And they bought him at a low price,
a precious diamond, and they were among those
who increased it.
So they set out a plot to remove
Yusuf from the picture, so that the whole
attention of the father could be diverted towards
the other sons, and they could have the
love and affection that they craved from the
father.
So ultimately they decided, first of all the
idea was given that he should be killed,
and ultimately they came to the conclusion that
instead of killing him, let's just put him
inside a well or something, and a passing
tribe, a passing caravan is going to just
pick up Yusuf and take him away from
us, and our problem will be solved.
So this is what they did.
They made an excuse to their father that
tomorrow we're going out into the desert, and
we're going to race, and we're going to
just compete with each other and have some
fun.
Why don't you send Yusuf with us?
And apparently, according to the wording we heard,
that this was something that they had been
persistent about for a long time, and finally
Yaqub, the father of Yusuf a.s. gave
in and allowed them to take Yusuf, and
they took him and put him inside a
well and brought back a shirt with fake
blood on it, and this is where the
story resumes from today.
Ayah number 18.
وَجَاءُوا عَلَىٰ قَمِيصِهِ بِذَمٍّ كَذِبٍ And they brought
forth a shirt, and on it there was
fake blood.
How was it fake?
They slaughtered a goat or a sheep, and
they took the blood of the sheep, and
they put it all over this shirt of
Yusuf a.s., and they presented it to
Yaqub a.s. saying that we went away
racing, and while we were away, a wolf
devoured him, a wolf ate him up, and
this is his shirt as proof.
Now Yaqub a.s. is not foolish.
He sees the shirt, he sees the blood,
and he sees that the shirt is completely
intact.
It has not been ripped to shreds.
If a wolf had attacked him, there would
have been holes in the shirt.
It would have been ripped.
So he knew immediately that there is something
wrong, and he started to confront them about
this issue.
And of course they started changing their story,
even to the point that according to some
rewired, one of them whispered to another one
that let's say that instead of a wolf,
a bandit actually took him.
So he overheard the whispering, and he said
that if it was a bandit, he would
have more need for the shirt.
He would have taken the shirt of Yusuf
rather than taking his life.
So even that story doesn't add up.
So this was basically what happened.
They brought this fake story, and Yaqub a
.s. did not believe them, and basically he
started interrogating them, and their story didn't match
up.
There is a saying in Arabic that What
does that mean?
That if you are going to be a
liar, you are going to be a persistent
liar, then you also have to have a
good memory.
What does that mean?
That when a person is always telling the
truth, then he doesn't have to remember the
lies that he fabricates and tells people.
If a person lies, then he has to
keep on remembering all the lies that he
said to make sure that he is on
the right side of the person that he
is lying to.
So this saying in Arabic, it's a proverb,
that if you are going to be a
liar, then also make sure you have a
good memory.
So this is exactly what happened, and whenever
you have any kind of crime scene, and
detectives suspect somebody, what do they do?
They send somebody in for an interrogation.
So one person interrogates, and then another person
goes in for what's called a cross-examination.
Okay, so the second person makes sure that
the stories add up.
And then if there are two or three
people that are accused, all of their stories,
they have to match up.
And if not, then obviously there is something
wrong.
So this is exactly what happened with Yusuf
A.S. or Yaqub A.S. when he
suspected them, he didn't believe them, and he
said to them the following, قَالَ بَلْ سَوَّلَتْ
لَكُمْ أَنفُسُكُمْ أَمْرَىٰ The word sawwala, it means
to relax.
So when a person, he wants to relax,
the word sawwala means that a person relaxes
his whole muscles and his body, so that
he feels ease, and he feels comfort.
So Yaqub A.S. said to his sons,
that your nafs, your anfus, meaning your cells,
have taken this issue very lightly.
قَالَ بَلْ سَوَّلَتْ لَكُمْ أَنفُسُكُمْ أَمْرَىٰ Meaning that
you are relaxing in this situation, you are
at ease in this situation, whereas the situation
is much greater than that.
It's the loss of a son.
A son is missing.
And not only the son, but the most
beloved son is missing.
So this thing should not be taken lightly.
قَالَ بَلْ سَوَّلَتْ لَكُمْ أَنفُسُكُمْ أَمْرَىٰ Your nafs
has taken this situation very lightly.
فَصَبْرٌ جَمِيلٌ So, a good patience.
What does that mean?
This is an incomplete sentence, and you can
basically complete the sentence using your own wording.
It means a beautiful patience.
Meaning that I need to adopt a beautiful
patience.
This could be the completion of the sentence.
So what is the definition of صَبْرٌ جَمِيلٌ
Imam Thawri, Sufyan Thawri, he says that there
are three things that define صَبْرٌ جَمِيلٌ that
make صَبْرٌ a good صَبْر and a complete
صَبْر.
They are the following.
أَلَّا تُحَدِّثَ بِوَجْعِكِ That you should not be
complaining about your pain.
The pain that you're going through, you should
not be complaining about it.
You should not be making an issue out
of it.
The second thing is that وَلَا تُمُصِيبَتِكِ And
you should not be complaining about the affliction
that you have come across and you are
facing.
وَلَا تُزَكِّي نَفْسَكِ And you should not purify
yourself.
Meaning you should not proclaim your purification.
In the sense that a person when he's
going through difficulty and he's going through hardship
then he complains first of all to Allah
SWT and he says to Allah SWT O
Allah, I've been praying 5 times daily I've
been staying away from the haram and I
have done my best to be a Muslim
so how is it that I'm still faced
with this difficulty?
And why am I facing this problem?
So that's one aspect of tazkir of oneself.
And another tazkir of oneself is when a
person for example he's having a domestic dispute
with his wife and he is basically going
through this difficulty of maybe heading towards divorce
or at least having an argument on a
daily basis and what does he do?
He addresses his wife and says Didn't I
do such and such a thing for you?
Don't I provide for you night and day?
Don't I go to work and really break
my back doing all that I can to
provide for the family and so many years
I've been doing it and now after all
these years you're giving me a hard time.
So this is another form of tazkir of
oneself that a person in his difficult time
he is proclaiming that he's done so many
good things.
So these three things Sufiyan Thori says that
when a person is going through affliction and
difficulty if a person doesn't have these three
things and in that situation then he has
sabrun jameel.
This is sabrun jameel.
That a person doesn't complain about his pain
he doesn't complain about his affliction and he
doesn't do tazkir of oneself meaning he doesn't
proclaim his own purity and he doesn't say
good things about himself so that is the
definition of sabrun jameel sabrun la shikwa fee
there is no shikwa, there is no complaint
in that sabr.
So Yaqub alaihissalam realising that what's going on
he says fa sabrun jameel Allah is the
one whose help is sought in this thing
that you're describing.
So the question is that on the one
hand Yaqub alaihissalam is saying sabrun jameel and
then on the other hand he's saying that
I seek Allah's help.
So what that means is that seeking Allah's
help in a difficult situation is not contradictory
to sabr.
Seeking Allah's help at difficult times is not
contradictory to sabr.
And that's why in every rakat of salah
what do we say?
Only you we worship and only your help
we seek.
Isti'ana as we see here is only
from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so asking
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for assistance asking
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for help asking
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to pull you
through these problems there is absolutely nothing wrong
with that and this is not contrary it's
not contradictory to sabr.
If a person is going to complain he
has to complain to Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
And that is why in another verse of
the Quran I only complain to Allah and
I know from Allah what you do not
know.
This actually comes later on in the surah
Yaqub a.s he says the same thing
that I complain about my grief and my
difficulty to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and
Allah alone.
So to complain to Allah and to raise
your hands in dua to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala that is not contradictory to sabr.
Allah is the one whose help is sought
upon the things that you are describing.
So the word that Yaqub a.s uses
is alama tasifoon tasifoon means from the word
wasafa yasifoon it means to describe something.
So they were describing something which was not
a reality.
You only describe something when you are basically
making things up.
So another translation could be Allah is the
one whose help is sought about the things
that you are making up.
So the description that they are doing it
is a fabricated description.
It is not something that is true.
After that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes
what happens to Yusuf a.s when he
is in that world.
Allah says A caravan came the word sayyara
it is the modern term sayyara is used
to describe a car but in the old
days it referred to people that were wandering
around.
It is from the word and sayyara means
people that are wandering all the time nomads,
bedouins.
So this caravan of bedouins it came they
sent their warid warid refers to the person
who goes ahead of the caravan and he
looks for water so that the caravan can
camp in a certain location so they sent
their warid they sent this person to seek
water and he found the well and he
put down the bucket he put down his
bucket to try to take the water out
of the well and what happened this happened
according to the mufassireen this happened after three
days a caravan came after three days and
there is a difference of opinion as to
what was going on after that some scholars
say some mufassireen they say that the brothers
of yusuf alayhi salam they were actually waiting
by the well to see what would happen
so they waited, waited, waited after three days
this caravan came this person put down his
bucket and yusuf alayhi salam he grabs the
bucket and the person pulls him out and
he says he says he says oh good
news this is a ghulam this is a
boy, a young man and ghulam can also
mean a slave so basically they intended to
take him and sell him into captivity so
the difference of opinion amongst the mufassireen is
that who actually sold who and what happened
so according to one opinion the brothers they
said ok this is our brother or this
is our runaway slave and we want to
sell him so they sold him to the
caravan the people that work in the caravan
so they sold him as a slave another
opinion is that the brothers were not there
the caravan people themselves they basically took yaqub
alayhi salam and just assumed him to be
a runaway slave and sold him later on
down the line so both these opinions occur
and inshallah according to both of the opinions
inshallah I'm going to translate so it goes
on so ya bushra hadha ghulam the person
who pulls him out he says oh good
news there's a young man here, young man
so he's happy that he can take this
young man and sell him as a slave,
that's one opinion, one opinion is also that
bushra was the name of one of his
companions, his travelling companions, and he said oh
bushra meaning he's the name of bushra, he's
a boy here, so both opinions exist from
the perspective of the word bushra wa asarruhu
bi da'a so they hid him in
the form of goods for sale, so again
both opinions here can be taken they hid
him meaning that the brothers of yusuf alayhi
salam they pretended that he is a runaway
slave for sale and yusuf alayhi salam he
doesn't say anything because he's afraid of his
life, he's afraid for his life so wa
asarruhu bi da'a when the brothers they
secretly assume him or pretend that he is
for sale he doesn't say anything so wa
asarruhu bi da'a means they secretly pretended
that he was goods for sale another according
to the second opinion, wa asarruhu bi da
'a means that the person who pulled him
out of the well him and his companions
that were with him, they secretly put him
amongst the rest of the goods they didn't
want to tell the rest of the tribe
and they wanted to get the money for
themselves for selling yusuf alayhi salam so it
can also mean that the friends, the companions
that pulled yusuf alayhi salam out of the
well, they hid him amongst the goods for
sale and they didn't disclose him to the
rest of the tribe wallahu alimun bima ya'malun
and allah swt was fully aware of what
they're doing, so again if it's the brothers
it means that allah swt continuously was watching
them and even to this point he was
watching what they're doing and he's aware of
what they're doing and if it's referring to
the tribesmen the bedouins, then allah is aware
of what they were also doing wa sharahu
bi thamanin baqsin and again this verse, if
we keep both of the meanings in mind
they sold him for a meagre price for
a meagre price, either the brothers sold him
after pretending that he was like a runaway
slave or something, they sold him for a
meagre price, or the tribe's people, later on
they sold him for a meagre price, what
was the meagre price?
According to ibn masud r.a they sold
him for 20 dirhams and ikramah says 40
dirhams he was sold for which is obviously
a very small price to pay for a
young man who's at the prime of his
youth or approaching the prime of his youth
so they basically wanted to just get rid
of him if you assume that it was
the brothers that wanted to get rid of
him, basically they didn't want the situation to
get out of hand and for them to
start interrogating so the best bargain that they
could, they sold him as quickly as they
could so that the tribe could take him
and he could be gotten rid of so
with a very small price thamanin baqsin and
if it was the tribe that took him
and sold him for a meagre price, well
anything that they could get for him was
a profit, right anything that they could get,
it's a profit so, for example, a person
who, you know, it happens all the time,
is somebody approaches you on the street and
wants to sell you a television, okay, the
television is highly likely that it's stolen, right
and he offers it to you for 50,
if you offer him 20 he'll take 20
because he wants to just get rid of
it because it's as the saying goes, it's
hot it's, he could get caught with it
and if he gets caught then it's stolen
goods, he's going to get incriminated so he
wants to get rid of it for whatever
price he can get so, the fact that
this tribe, they found Yusuf Alayhi Salaam anything
that they got for him, 20 dirhams, 40
dirhams, it was better than nothing so they
got him and they sold him for a
meagre price wa sharahu bi thamanin baqsin darahima
ma'dudah, just a few dirhams, just a few
dirhams he was sold for, wa karu fihi
minaz zahideen and this price was such that
they were careless about the price itself it
was so small it was such an insignificant
amount that they were zahideen from that amount,
like the example that I gave you, what
can a person get for 20 dollars, hardly
anything right, but the fact is that when
somebody wants to get rid of something, even
20 dollars is something better than nothing but
if you look at it from the perspective
of the amount it's not something that you
can do much with so wa karu fihi
minaz zahideen means that the people that sold
him, whether you assume that it's the brothers
or whether you assume that it's the tribes
people they were zahideen, meaning they were needless
of that amount they didn't even need that
amount, it was such a small amount, so
we'll stop there and we'll continue with the
tafseer next week starting from ayah number 21
I pray that Allah gives us taufiq to
understand and practice what has been said in
that