Did you not see – Mahmood Habib Masjid and Islamic Centre

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In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers, Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon himﷺ, and upon his family and his companions. Peace be upon you all. My brothers and sisters, Allah Almighty in the Book of Surah Al-Fil mentioned the historical incident of the attempted invasion of Makkah Mukarramah by the King Abraha.

And his distinguishing feature was that he came with an army of elephants. So in his army there were elephants. And he was a very good man. And that’s why the Surah is called Fil.

Now, we know the whole story. This happened in the year in which the Messenger of Allah was born. He was born after this incident. But in that same year, the year of the elephant. The Arabs had this way of naming some months based on significant events or things that happened during that time. So this year was called the Amal Fil, the year of the elephant. Many years later, when Rasulullah and the Banu Abdul Muttalib they were boycotted. And they were confined to the valley of Abu Talib. And in that year, Rasulullah suffered two major tragedies in his life. The passing away of his uncle Abu Talib. And the passing away of our mother, Khalijatul Kubra.

And so he was very, very sad. And that year is called the Amal Huzn. The year of sadness. And that was the year in which Rasulullah was granted a marriage. So this was the custom of the Arabs. Now, if you look at the year in question, the Amal Fil, the year of the elephant. This was the year in which, as I said, Abraha invaded the land of the Arabs. Or tried to invade Mecca. With the intention of destroying the Kaaba.

And we have the whole story of how Abdul Muttalib, 200 of his camels were captured by the soldiers of Abraha. And Abdul Muttalib went to try to get those camels back. So he knew the love of the elephant. He knew the man who controlled the elephant. Or who rode the elephant. And that man was somebody who had the ear of the king. And he was, the king had given him great status. So, Abdul Muttalib went through him. And when Abdul Muttalib entered that hall, the king was so impressed with his appearance and so on that he actually stood up and he invited him to sit next to him. And so on and so forth. Then he asked him, what can I do for you? So Abdul Muttalib said, I have come for my camels. Your soldiers have captured my camels. I have come to reclaim my property. So the king said to him that, I was very impressed with you until this moment. But now I am no longer impressed with you. So Abdul Muttalib said, why? He said, because I have come here to destroy the Kaaba. I have come here to destroy you and your people. And instead of being worried about that, instead of talking to me about that, you are worried about your camels.

So Abdul Muttalib said to him, I am not worried about you. The Qal sweet take care of the Kaaba. He said, that is not my job. Abdul Muttalib himself was the keeper of the key of the Kaaba. So when the king gave him back the camels and so on he went back, came back to Mecca. He told his people, leave Mecca and go off into the hills because we cannot, we don’t have the strength to fight this man. We cannot fight this army and we’ll just get killed for nothing. So leave the place. He took the key of the Kaaba and he hung it on the door of the Kaaba and he said, Ya Allah, this is yours. You take care of it. And then Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala did what he did. He sent the ababil, he sent the birds, the swifts and they came with the camels. They came with the stones from, we say stones from Jahannam wallahu alam and destroyed the entire army of Abraha. And before even that happened, the elephant which was supposed to destroy the Kaaba refused to move in the direction of Mecca. They turned him around, he would go but he turned towards Mecca, he would not move. So all of these were signs but anyway, Abraha didn’t pay heed to those signs and in the process, he and his entire army were destroyed by the command of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Now, my intention of mentioning this and reminding myself anew of the story is because Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala starts this surah by saying, “Did you not see?” And obviously, Rasulullah could not have seen. He was born, he was not even born, he was born after this. But, in this sense, ‘did you not see?’ doesn’t mean physically seen. It means, did you hear about this thing? Did you think about this thing? Did you consider this thing? When we say sometimes, do you see what happened here? Do you see what’s happening in wherever it’s happening, right? Iran or something. We have not gone to Iran, we don’t know what’s happening. When he said, do you see? It means, did you examine, did you think about it? So, Allah is saying, did you not see what your Rabb did? From Buka, B.S. Habib, he said, your Rabb did with these people, the people of the elephant. Now, you think about this, what exactly happened there? What happened there is, there was this person, Abraha, with overwhelming force. He had all the resources. And the people of Mecca had nothing. They had nothing to the extent that they had to run away. They could not even face him, you know, even to shoot one single arrow. They just had to run away and leave Mecca to this Abraha to do whatever he wanted with it. They could not help themselves in any way. Completely helpless. And this man was free to do whatever he wanted. And he had the power, he had the means, he had the authority, he had the wealth, he had the army. He could have done anything. But Allah said, see how your Rabb dealt with him. And then Allah could have sent a tornado. Allah could have sent some natural calamity. Allah could have sent malaika. He could have sent an army of angels. He didn’t do any of that. He did not do any of that. Allah sent against the people of Mecca. He sent against one of his biggest creatures. He sent one of his smallest creatures. Small swifts. Allah did not even send eagles. To think of, I mean, Allah could have sent any kind of bird if he wanted to send birds. Right? He didn’t. He sent some smaller species.

You see the descriptions of the punishments that Allah has sent on the different people who rebelled against Allah. And who imagined that their strength was more than the strength of Allah. You see the punishments. In one case, it was a tornado. In another case, it was just a sound. What do we understand from this? We understand from this that Allah is not only destroying the people of Mecca. The small sweet bird gone finished, finished no sign of them complete army is destroyed by a small bird so Allahﷻ is showing that it’s not the bird, it’s not the elephant, it’s not the dinosaur, it’s not the you know the aircraft carrier or the bank or the battle tank, it is the power of Allahﷻ and if Allahﷻ wants to protect, Allah will protect and nothing can touch the one that Allah protects and if Allah wants to destroy, Allah will destroy and nothing can stop that destruction from happening because even if you look at this in physical terms imagine when you are sitting here on the earth it looks big to us whatever that thing is but if you look at it in a cosmic sense this whole earth itself is less than in size it is less than one grain of sand on a beach. One grain of sand this whole galaxy of ours I’m not talking about the solar system I’m not talking about the planet I’m talking about the galaxy which has billions of solar systems billions of suns like the sun we have they have solar systems they have planets around them and some not all of them but a lot of them this galaxy the Milky Way galaxy is one of billions of galaxies in the visible universe which is the universe part of the universe that we can see with whichever radio telescope we have that piece of universe has billions of galaxies like this the galaxy itself has billions of suns like the sun we have and we are one planet around one of the stars which is called the sun so we are less than the whole earth is less than one grain of sand on a beach.

So on that grain of sand who is the king who is the president who is what is the army what what it has no there is no sense you can’t even understand how small this acting whole thing actually is, how small it is we can’t even imagine so and we think oh it’s so big and so and so so wealthy or so powerful what wealth what what wealth what power that is why see the thing is that’s the reason why Allahﷻ said Allah said don’t they reflect on the Quran or is it that their qulub have kufa have locks on them their hearts are locked? Is it is it that their hearts are locked? Don’t they think? Don’t they reflect? Allah is talking about those who deny the kalam of Allah and who don’t reflect. May Allah have mercy on us. We also read, you know, those of us we just read the Quran as a ritual Alhamdulillah. There is sawab. I’m not talking about the sawab. There is reward in reading the Quran whether you understand it or you don’t understand it’s the kalam of Allahﷻ when you read it inshallah Allah will reward you but is it the purpose of the kalam of Allah that it should be read without understanding? I mean think about that. So we have to understand it. We must try make the effort at least minimum read the translation ideally speaking we should learn the language itself because the Arabic language itself is a miracle of Allahﷻ in terms of what the enhanced understanding it brings if you understand the language but at least until you learn you know read the translation so we know what we are talking about.

So these are the purposes of this surah is one of the purposes of this is to encourage us and to say that look you worship the one who created all of this who is the creator of all of this and you are afraid of some one creature out one creature so called king so called you know this one or that one imagine how ridiculous that is that will happen only if you lose touch and if you lose sight of the creator of everything Rabbul Alameen otherwise it cannot happen how can you fear when you have Allahﷻ in your corner when you say I worship Allahﷻ then how can I fear this ant or this germ it’s not even there is no comparison between Allahﷻ and any human being no matter who that human being thinks he is. So this surah is meant to show us and to give us courage and to help us understand that Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah by the will of Allahﷻ that we are, we worship Rabbul Alameen, we worship Allahﷻ Jalla Jalaluhu, we ask Allahﷻ to help us to understand the Quran Al-Karim and to reflect on it and think about it and to immerse ourselves in it in a way that energizes us enlightens us illuminates us and keeps us in the protection of Allahﷻ and Bayt Bayt.