Zia Sheikh – The Story of Samiri & Goldern Calf Ramadan Khatira Day 15
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim.
Alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salamu ala Rasulillah.
Last night we completed Surah Taha and in
Surah Taha there is a story which I'd
like to talk about and in it we
learn the lesson of how it's very easy
to slip up and fall into sins even
as grave as shirk while being even in
the presence of illustrious people like the Ambianim
wa Salatu wa Salam, the Prophets themselves.
And this is something that we should learn
a lesson from that we tend to have
a logic or we tend to try to
work things out by ourselves to justify things
that we do sometimes and in doing so
when we don't have the right guidance we
tend to instead of doing the right thing
we either end up in doing a bid
'ah or innovation or even go as far
as to commit shirk.
So this story is the story of Samiri
or As-Samiri, the person who misguided Bani
Israel while Musa Alayhi Salatu wa Salam was
away.
So the story is that Musa Alayhi Salatu
wa Salam, this is after the Israelites escaped
from Fir'aun they were wandering around in
the wilderness and in the course of doing
this Musa Alayhi Salatu wa Salam was instructed
to fast for 30 days then he added
another 10 days and he had a meeting
scheduled with Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala and
he went for that meeting in the meantime
behind him a person who the Quran calls
As-Samiri and this probably was not his
name the indication is that As-Samiri, the
Ya at the end is called Ya'ul
Mansub or Ya'ul Nisbah and this is
like a person saying Pakistani, Hindi, okay so
he was from a place called As-Samir
or Samir he was from this place called
Samir, his real name Allah Subhana wa Ta
'ala only knows what it was there is
a possibility that it was Haroon but why
that was Insha'Allah I will discuss that
in a minute so this Samir what he
did, he created for the Bani Israel a
cow which made a noise, which made a
sound and the Bani Israel they started worshipping
that cow, they started worshipping that cow while
Musa Alayhi Salatu wa Salam was away this
is the story of how it came about
so I am going to do the translation
of those verses and as we go along
Insha'Allah I will explain so I will
start with the Ayah number 83 in which
Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala says to Musa
Alayhi Salatu wa Salam O Musa what made
you rush in front of your people?
so his people were left behind, Musa Alayhi
Salatu wa Salam in eagerness to meet Allah
Subhana wa Ta'ala and talk to him,
he is running forward and he meets Allah
Subhana wa Ta'ala so Musa Alayhi Salam
said Musa Alayhi Salam said they are following
in my footsteps, they are coming up behind
and I rushed to you so that you
could be pleased O Allah Subhana wa Ta
'ala Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala says indeed
we tested your people after you and As
-Samiri he has misguided them he has misguided
them, so Musa Alayhi Salatu wa Salam he
returns back Musa Alayhi Salatu wa Salam returned
back to his people in the state of
anger and in the state of sorrow, grief
and he says to his people that didn't
your Lord Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala give
you a good promise meaning that Allah Subhana
wa Ta'ala up until now he has
been saving you he saved you from Firaun
and you saw how he destroyed Firaun's army
and everything that has happened since you started
following me has been in your favor and
now you turn around and do this completely
against my teachings meaning that you saw with
your own eyes how Allah Subhana wa Ta
'ala destroyed Firaun a miracle, how the sea
split and the army of Firaun was drowned
there you saw with your own eyes the
miracles that I have been performing in front
of you and it's not even been a
long time, you saw this with your own
eyes you know you could say that okay
200 years later, 300 years later you forgot
about my teachings but these things happened in
front of you and the time has not
even been that long so how is it
that you fell into this kind of misguidance
or was it simply that you wanted Allah
Subhana wa Ta'ala to be upset with
you and angry with you so therefore you
broke my promise or went against my promise
and now this was the excuse that the
Bani Israel gave to Musa A.S. they
said that we did not go against your
promise with our own accord but we were
laden with the jewelry from the jewelry of
the people and we Qadhafna Hamini with the
jewelry of the people you threw it, you
put it in one place and similarly Samiri
did the same thing the story behind this
was that when the Israelites escaped from the
clutches of Firaun when they escaped from Egypt
they had taken with them all their jewelry
they brought it all and now they were
basically laden with it, it was heavy so
they decided that they are going to put
it in one place, melt it and then
make gold and silver bars out of it
so it becomes easier for them to carry
it so similarly Samiri did the same thing,
he had his own jewelry put it and
they melted it all and Samiri what he
did, he instead of making the jewelry into
bars of gold and silver he shaped the
jewelry into the shape of a cow and
this cow had a noise, it made a
noise so what was this noise?
some scholars say that he and I will
cover that in a minute that there was
a sound that came from it that statue
actually made a sound and others say and
this is the majority opinion that the holes
in this statue were such that when the
wind blew through it, it made a sound
like the sound of a cow so the
Israelites, they were fooled into thinking that it
has some kind of life and this was
the only proof that they had that this
is something worth worshipping that it made a
sound and that's it, we should worship it
and when they heard this sound they said
this is your God and this is also
Musa's God but Musa forgot Musa forgot that
this is his God Allah says about this
thinking of theirs do they not see that
this statue cannot even respond back to them
cannot talk to them and does not have
control on any harm or benefit so the
only logic that they had the only argument
that they could present was that it's making
a sound therefore it's worth worshipping so the
point that we can make is that sometimes
we will justify an action of ours with
a logic that we have in our mind
but that logic is against the teachings of
the Quran and the Sunnah we think that
we have some logic behind it we have
a reasoning behind it but if you ask
a real knowledgeable person he will tell you,
no, this logic of yours is tainted this
logic is wrong so then after that Allah
SWT talks about Harun A.S Harun A
.S, he tried to prevent them from doing
what they were doing and this is against
the teachings of what the Bible says the
Bible says that Harun actually encouraged them to
make an altar for this cow and encouraged
them to try to worship that cow and
the scholars think that there is a possibility
that Harun was the name of a Samiri
and that Harun is what is meant in
the Bible however as a Prophet, Harun A
.S could never dream of or could never
imagine encouraging people to commit shirk this is
not something that a Prophet let alone a
good Muslim would do so Harun A.S
prevented them from doing that Allah SWT says
about him indeed Harun A.S said to
them from before that oh my people, indeed
you have been tested by this this is
a test for you and to fall into
the trap of the Shaitan and to start
worshipping this thing you are failing this test
miserably your Lord is Ar-Rahman, he is
Allah SWT so follow me and obey my
command you should listen to me and what
was their response?
we are going to continuously make I'tikaf in
front of this cow, meaning worship it until
Musa A.S comes back it means to
devote yourself to worship and the word I'tikaf
is from this the root letter is the
same so we are going to stay devoted
in worship to this cow until Musa A
.S comes back now the next sentence it
talks about it is the saying of Musa
A.S and from this exchange between Musa
A.S and Harun we can learn a
huge and a beautiful lesson also he
said, oh my, oh the son of the
mother oh the son of my mother, meaning
he is basically trying to get him to
calm down hey listen, we are blood brothers
here calm down, I didn't mean to do
anything wrong I didn't go against your command
don't hold my beard nor my head this
could be literal or it could be figurative
it could be an expression that don't basically
don't hold me accountable for this situation I
was under the impression, I was afraid that
you are going to say that you made
a split between Bani Israel and you didn't
wait for me to come you didn't wait
for my command so here we learn a
lesson Musa A.S is a prophet Harun
A.S is also a prophet both brothers
both of them have an understanding that you
should have done this Harun A.S says
Musa A.S said, you should have done
this Harun said, well if I had done
that I was thinking that this would have
happened and there would have been a split
amongst the group so I thought it's best
for me to stay here wait for you
to come back and then resolve the situation
after you came back so the lesson we
learn is that when this can happen between
two prophets a disagreement and you know, differences
of opinion how could it not happen between
two ordinary individuals so in community sometimes we
have differences of opinion amongst people and differences
of viewpoints and the underlying thing should always
be that each and every community member or
Shura member or leader of the community always
has the objective of doing good for the
community that should always be the bottom line
and the reasoning behind every person serving the
community in trying to pursue that goal or
achieve that goal there will always be differences
of opinion differences of viewpoint but the underlying
factors should always be the pleasure of Allah
S.W.T and when we have differences
of opinion this should not be the cause
of argument and fighting between us Musa A
.S. and Haroon had a difference of opinion
as to what should have been done and
they were prophets they were prophets A.S.
did they want to please Allah S.W
.T both of them did did they want
to disobey Allah S.W.T no they
didn't how could they, they were prophets so
similarly we learn from this that differences of
opinion amongst people are not necessarily wrong and
if there are differences of opinion we should
try to work them out and understand that
there always will be differences of viewpoint that
we should try despite those differences to try
to work with each other so then Musa
A.S. turned to Samiri and he said
to him what's your explanation of Samiri what
is this situation that you've got the people
into so he said so
the translation I'll explain it first and then
translate probably makes it easier that he said
that I saw what other people could not
see I saw the messenger and who is
the messenger here one opinion is that it's
Jibreel A.S. I saw Jibreel A.S.
and I could see him and I could
see where he could put his footsteps and
where he put his footsteps I took the
dust from that or the soil which was
there and I put it inside the cow
and this is the thing that made the
noise come that's one opinion and another opinion
is that he was trying to trying to
as the saying is he was trying to
butter up Musa A.S. and try to
soften his stance by saying good things about
him and the messenger here is referring to
Musa A.S. that I followed the footsteps
of the prophet Musa A.S. and I
took from the dust from his footsteps and
I put it into the statue of the
cow and this is what made the sound
now the Quran doesn't say that this is
actually what made the sound come the Quran
simply says that this was the explanation that
Samiri gave to Musa A.S. and it
doesn't say whether that was true or not
simply the excuse that he presented so as
a criminal, as a person who has done
wrong he has a right to present his
case he presented it and the Quran doesn't
say either way whether he was telling the
truth or not so we can simply come
to the conclusion that there was no magic
dust there was no magic soil simply the
fact that the cow it had holes in
strategic locations and the wind blew through them
it was just making that sound so Musa
A.S. told him Go!
Go!
because in your life you are going to
just tell people don't touch me, don't touch
me so he was afflicted with a certain
type of illness maybe leprosy in which he
used to tell people don't touch me, don't
touch me either he became very sensitive to
the touch where somebody touched him and it
hurt him or it was a contagious disease
that he was afflicted with and nobody was
allowed to get close to him because of
that you have a promise or an appointment
that will not be changed meaning you will
have a certain amount of time in your
life after that you are going to leave
this world and then what was done to
the statue this
statue of yours we are going to take
it and we are going to burn it
and then the after effects of the statue
being melted and burned we are going to
throw them into the sea and this is
exactly what happened and then at the end
indeed your God is not this statue it
is Allah S.W.T there is no
one worthy of worship except Him and His
knowledge is vast over everything so basically the
summary is that when it comes to the
Deen and the religion we need to make
sure that we are taking the religion from
the right sources and we are not taking
it from somebody that claims to be religious
claims to be performing miracles claims to be
a person who is in touch with jinns
or whatever certain people claim our source of
religion should be the righteous guided scholars the
Quran and the Sunnah and people that follow
the Quran and the Sunnah as a proof
in their lives other than that if we
try to take other people or other sources
there is a very high chance that we
might be misguided and we will use the
simplest and the smallest of justifications to follow
that misguided path just like the Israelites did
their proof was simply that the cow is
making a sound therefore it is worthy of
worship so these are the lessons we learned
from this I pray that Allah S.W
.T gives us sufiq to understand and practice
what has been said in here