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Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa salatu wa salamu ala ashrafil amliya wal mursaleen Muhammadu Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Taslimun kathirun kathirun. We are once again on the Kafui River. Absolutely beautiful scenery, which Ismail Bhai will take. We’ll pan the thing and show you as well. The banks have got trees all down to the water. In some places, there are tall grasslands with elephant grass. In other places, it’s just trees.
They don’t seem to be mangroves, but other species that are tolerant to water, so they have their roots in the water. This river is famous for its hippos and its crocodiles. We saw an absolute monster the other day, and just now we have been tracking a hippo which keeps coming up and going down and this is the one that comes into the camp also in the night I remind myself I knew Allah SWT described Jannah in the Quran and wherever Allah SWT almost wherever I don’t want to make a definitive statement on this but almost everywhere that Allah SWT spoke about gardens of Jannah he spoke about rivers
gardens under which rivers flow. I just heard the call of an African fish eagle, hopefully we’ll see them as well. Now the relationship between the earth and water, the relationship between green and blue, the relationship between trees and water is so beautiful that I play this game with myself mentally that if this river was not there, if you just had a dry riverbed as we see in so many places, literally the beautiful scene that I’m seeing, you would detract 90% of the beauty from the scene. The water adds the beauty, the reflection of things that are on the water, the mystery of what is under the water. All of this plays into the beauty of the the scene that we see. So Allah is describing Jannah and He’s describing a place which has gardens with rivers that flow in it. I mean, imagine how beautiful this is. I therefore remind myself again and again that it is essential to believe in the,
believe in the word of Allah that this is true that jannah is actually true and the reason i’m saying that is you think about the time when these ayat were revealed and the people to whom they were revealed and the um the the nation the land in which it was revealed what was the scarcest thing going especially in makkah uh zamzam was there as a well but other than that they had just had some wells and so on no rivers no lakes uh it’s not on the sea even though jeddah is you know in those i mean today it’s an hour’s drive in those days it was a couple of days journey so there’s no water anywhere yet allah is describing jannah as a place that doesn’t just have water it has flowing rivers makkah was a place which was i mean at least even i remember in the 70s, in the early 90s, when I went for Hajj in 97, I think it was, it was black rocks all over the place. It was just huge crags, black rocks with cactus on them, you know, no greenery of any kind. You didn’t hear any bird song. You didn’t hear, you didn’t see any wildlife, nothing. It’s just black rocks everywhere. Now imagine, go back 1400 years, what were they seeing at that time? Same black rocks. Yet, Allah is talking about and describing a landscape which was completely alien to the Sahara. Alien to the extent that for them even to visualize, because when we visualize, we essentially go into our memory and we build on things that we have experience of. You cannot visualize. For example, if you tell me visualize what the surface of Mars is like, I have no clue. Even if I want to think about it, I’ll probably go back in my mind to any pictures of NASA or something I have seen of the Mars surface. Other than that, there’s no way. Somebody said visualize Mercury. There’s no way you can visualize Mercury. So visualizing itself requires previous experience. Yet the Sahaba were able to visualize Jannah so beautifully that Faizan Ali bin Avijari, who is famously reported to have said, If Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la shows me, literally shows me Jannah just now, it will not make any difference to my faith in Jannah that I have now. So even if I actually see Paradise, I will not believe in it any more than I already do. Because the word of Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, this is Haqq. This is, as far as we are concerned, this is true. There’s a beautiful story, the seerah of this mother whose young child passed away. Her young child died. So she was distraught. She was very, very upset about that. And then she said to Rasulullah, Ya Rasulullah, what do you say about my child? Rasulullah said, your child is playing in the gardens of Jannah. Your child is playing in the gardens of Jannah. She asked, what about my child who passed away? Rasulullah said, your child is playing in the gardens of Jannah. And then he said, if you want, I will ask Allah to show it to you. If you want, I’ll ask Allah to show it to you. Dhawman said, no.
He said, Alhamdulillah, I don’t want to see it. She walked away. One of her friends said, what kind of thing is that? I mean, the Rasulullah said to you, I will show it to you. Why did you say no? He said, why do I need to see it? He said it, that is enough for me.
He said it, it’s enough for me. Why do I need to see it? I don’t need to see it. He said it, khalas. Take this again with when Nabi mentioned his trip, Al-Israa wal-Maharaj, his trip from Makkah to Jerusalem and then into the heavens and back. In fact, when people went to Abu Bakr Siddiq and they said, this is what your friend is saying. Your friend is saying he went from Makkah to Jerusalem and then into the heavens and in the back again and all of this in the space of one night all of this in a space of a few minutes i mean you know it doesn’t make sense what does it mean do you believe that and abu bakr answer is actually the framework on which hadith are authenticated he said if he said that i believe so he said he’s not saying i believe you the report you’re giving me he said if he sallallahu said that i believe now they asked him why do you how do you believe that you know Does it make any sense? Is it possible? I mean, if you’re talking about 1400 years ago, even today, to go from Makkah to Jerusalem and all this is not possible. He said, we already believe in things which we have not seen. We believe in Allah, for example. We have not seen Allah. We believe in the Day of Judgment. We have not seen the Day of Judgment. We believe in Jannah and Jahannam. We’ve not seen that. So what is so difficult if Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la is Rabbul Alameen, if He is the creator of all of this, and all that we know and all that we don’t know, and He has the power to do all of this, and he has the power to give life and he has the power to take life and he has the power to create things that we cannot even imagine. What is so difficult for him to take his slave from al-Masjid al-Aqsa, from al-Masjid al-Haram to Masjid al-Aqsa and back? What’s so difficult? So what’s so difficult about believing that? Because Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la said, سُبْحَانَ الَّذِي أَصَرَى بِعَبْدِهِ لَيْلًا مِّنَ الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ
in the who was samuel basir allah mentioned this so he said what is so difficult to believe that so i remind myself and you that belief comes because we believe muhammad and when we believe muhammad then whatever he said we believe that to be true and then that is what gives us the motivation to work for that how to earn this general how to be imagine this and we cannot even compare but how to imagine this and then we have this belongs to you right it’s not just being on a boat uh it belong this thing belongs to you and there’s no harm in it you can you can walk across this water if you want there won’t be any crocodile to eat you even if you walk over the water i mean this is anything you can imagine unless whatever you imagine allah will give you you ask allah all of us who are in this boat to give us to grant us We ask Allah to fill our hearts with the love of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and the love of Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la.