Podcast: Play in new window | Download (17.4MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | Youtube Music | RSS
Auto-generated transcript:
Bismillāh ar-Raḥmān ar-Raḥīm. Alhamdulillāhi Rabbil-‘Alameen. Wa salātu wa salāmu ‘alā ashrafil-anbiyā’ wal-mursalīn, Muḥammadin Rasūlullāh ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa ‘alā ālihi wa sahbihī wa sallam. Tasliman kathīran kathīrān. Wa amma ba’du, my brothers and sisters, we continue with our discussion on free thinking in the Qur’an. And I remind myself and you that the Kalam of Allah Jalla Jalaluhu is, Alhamdulillah, it is easy to understand. It is something which Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala revealed which is clear. It is not mysterious. It is not something that requires a PhD to understand. But also, it is not something that is so simple that you can understand it without any training, without knowing the language. You just get out of your bed and you understand the Qur’an. Obviously not. And that is something which is very, very important to understand and to be careful. And to make every effort to acquire the knowledge in order to understand the Qur’an.
Now, I remind myself and you that we accept this logic of this methodology for everything in life. I can give you, Alhamdulillah, all of you understand English. So, I can give you a book on pharmacology. I can give you a book on pharmacy, or a book on physiology. I can make a list of this and I can guarantee you that not one of you will understand any of those books, even though they are written in English. They are not written in some other language; you know, English. You read English. So, why won’t you understand those books? Not because you are stupid, but because you don’t have the fundamental technical knowledge of that subject to understand a book which is about that subject at an advanced level. So, to understand a book on pharmacology, you have to understand the fundamentals of pharmacology. To understand physiology, you have to understand the fundamentals of it. This is a no-brainer. I mean, we understand this logic for everything.
I can give you a book on how this phone is made, for example. You want to understand it unless you are an engineer, unless you understand the engineering of this, you will not—even though you can read the book—I mean, you will read the book, you can read it aloud, because you know English, you can read English. Somebody listening to you will understand what you are saying, right? You go to a doctor; I will give you another example, which is also easy to understand. We all go for medical examinations annually, whatever, whatever. So, the doctor gives blood tests, urine tests, and so on, and so on. All of these test reports come. All of those test reports are in which language? English. But if you look at your own test report, it’s your own test. Do you understand it? Why don’t you understand it? Because you don’t know the fundamentals of medicine to understand a test report. Now, think about that. Do you understand it? Your own blood test report, you cannot understand even though you can read it. Then how on earth do you imagine that you can understand the Kalam of Allah, the speech of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala, without even knowing the language?
I mean, I tell you, Muslim, you must make a sincere and very, very humble *astaghfār* and *tawbah* to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala and say, “Allah, I have been fooling myself and I have been literally doing *gustakhi*, impertinence and, you know, disrespect of Your Kalam in front of You. Please forgive me.” Because I went around imagining that I can understand Your Kalam, Your speech, even without knowing the language. Can you imagine? And the biggest, the biggest warning for us is the Sahaba of Rasulullah ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam, who were Hassan bin Thabit, radhiyallahu ‘anhu, who was the one who said, “I am the major linguist and one of the great poets of Arabia.” He came to Islam because of the language. He came to Makkah and he will have told him, “Plug your ears with cotton or something and don’t listen to my nephew when he recites whatever he is receiving. Because it will change your mind.” So, Hassan bin Thabit did that. He plugged his ears. Then he saw Rasulullah ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam praying in front of the Kaaba. And he was reciting Qur’an. And Hassan bin Thabit thought to himself, “What is it that Muhammad can say which I, which will just change my mind like that?”
“I am a linguist. I understand the language. I am not some *jahil*, some from somewhere, some *baddu* from, you know, the boondocks who come and he gets influenced and his mind. I am not like that. I am a scholar. I am the expert of the language. How can it change? You know, this.” But when he went there, he heard Rasulullah ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam recite the Qur’an. He said, “This is not the speech of any human being. No human being can say this. He said, ‘This has to be the speech of the Rabb, Jalla Jalaluhu.’ And he became Muslim.” People like that did not pick up the Qur’an and say, “Now that I have become Muslim, here is the Kitab of Allah. I understand. Ya Rasulullah ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam, I don’t need you.” They didn’t say this. Na’udhu billah.
But today, in our, you know, steeped in arrogance, we are marinated in arrogance. We are like cobs waiting for the fire. Marinated in shaitan and in barbecue, ready for the barbecue. We all have mercy on us. You know, go take a bath, remove all this stuff which is, which you are marinated with and get off this, get off the grill. Otherwise, when the fire is lighted, you know what it is.
Seriously, take the trouble, learn the language. And until the language picks up, a good translation by a known *alim*, who is known. There are people who translate the Qur’an, may Allah have mercy on us, anybody. And they give dars of Qur’an. And you go and check his own, the teacher’s antecedents; you say, “Where did you learn? Who is your teacher? Do you know the Arabic language?” Nothing. Zero, zero.
Stay far, far away. Because shaitan comes in many ways. And one of the finest and most effective ways that shaitan comes in, is in human form. People who pretend to be scholars and shaitan gives them a very sweet tongue. So, they speak in very, you know, convincing ways. And you listen to that and say, “No, he is speaking right.” What is he speaking?
So, really, very, very, very important for us that we have to understand. For anything, to learn any branch of knowledge, there are some basic fundamental, what we call, *usur*, basic principles. Right? A spanner is a spanner, a hammer is a hammer. To open a nut, you need a spanner, you don’t need a hammer. So, this is a basic fundamental rule. You can’t hammer a nut open. You can, but you will destroy the nut. You need a spanner of the right size, not any spanner.
So, fundamental *usur*. Now, there’s a very, there’s a very severe prohibition on free thinking. And we know this from the behavior of the Sahaba themselves. For example, in Surah Abasa, Allahﷻ revealed, “wa faqihatan wa abba.” So, when this ayah was revealed, and Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab heard this ayah, he said, “We know what is *habba*.” *Habba* is a new shoot. You plant something, the new green stalk comes out, that’s a *habba*. So, Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab said, “We know what is *habba*, but what is *abba*?” And then he reprimanded himself. And he said, “Woe to you, ya Umar. You want to speculate about something which Allahﷻ decided not to explain? Allah could have said, ‘What is *abba*?’ He didn’t say this. So, he said, ‘Woe to you. You want to speculate about what Allahﷻ decided not to explain?'”
On the same ayah, a man went; he heard this ayah, and he went to Sayyidina Abu Bakr Siddiq, and he asked him, “What is this *abba*?” Abu Bakr Siddiq, he didn’t say, “*Abba* is this, that. Maybe it is this. I think maybe it is this. Logically it appears.” No. He said, “Which earth will hide me? And which sky? Which sky will shade me if I say about the book of Allah that which I don’t know? That is, if I speculate about the Kitab of Allah, where will I hide? And as I said, if…
Is there any generation that could justifiably use the term? My heart tells me, logically I understand: this is what my mind says. All of this stuff—in my opinion—if there was one generation who could be justified to say that, it would be the Book of Allah. That was the generation of the Sahaba. But there is not one single Sahabi who ever said that. The Sahaba took the Quran directly from Rasulullah ﷺ. Their hearts had undergone tazkiyah under his guidance, alayhi salatu wasalam. This is our aqeedah about the Sahaba.
On a side note, please understand this is a very, very important thing because people also speak very freely about the Sahaba.
The Sahaba were people, especially those who were close to Rasulullah ﷺ and who spent a lot of time in his company. These were people whom Nabi ﷺ knew; he loved them. They were in his company every single day for hours and hours at a time. Sayyidina Ali bin Abi Talib r.a. would go to work in a garden belonging to a Jewish man. He would work for him. He would work for half the day. He would take the payment and leave. Now obviously he worked very well. So the man was very happy. He told him, “Just work for the whole day.” He would get double the money or double whatever he was giving him. He said no, I don’t want to work the whole day. I am working only half the day. He said, “Why?” He said, “Because the rest of the time I spend in the company of Rasulullah ﷺ. He is paying to spend time in the company of Rasulullah ﷺ. He is not paying money to Nabi ﷺ but he is giving up his time. He is giving up his livelihood.”
He didn’t say no, but after all, he is my cousin. I live—you know—literally I live in his house. Nabi ﷺ raised Sayyidina Ali. So he was living in his house. He said, “I live in his house. I am there the whole night. I am here, there the whole evening, the whole afternoon.” He is my cousin? No. No cousin. No living. This is the Rasul of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. Now just think about this. There is not one instant where any of our mothers, Ummahatul Mumineen, called Nabi ﷺ “Ya Muhammad.” Nobody. They said “Ya Rasulullah,” “Ya Rasulullah.” Their husband, Abbas bin Abdul Muttalib, he didn’t say “Ya Muhammad.” He is his nephew. As a baby, he would have played in his lap. “Ya Rasulullah.” Sayyidina Ali, Sayyidina Abdullah bin Abbas, they are cousins. Hussain bin Abbas, of Musa Aleyhi Salatu-Alaihi Wasallam. They never said “Bhaija” or anything like that. No. “Ya Rasulullah.” That is why they learn.
So these are the people, and our aqeedah about the Sahaba: Rizwan-ul-Alaihi-Alayhi Majma’in is that these were the people who stayed in the company of Rasulullah. They underwent tazkiyah under the guidance of Rasulullah. Their hearts had been purified by the Rasool, as a result of the Ayah which I recently read in the Salaah yesterday, and they did it for you yesterday. Surah Al-Imran: وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said, “Make their tazkiyah,” and He did it.
And therefore, our belief is that these people—they were in his company, they lived in his company, they received tazkiyah from him alayhi salatu wasalam—and they died on Islam as pure human beings.
They did not leave Islam; they didn’t go away from Islam. Even where there were differences and conflict between the Sahaba, it is our aqeedah as the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah, as Sunni Muslims, that the Sahaba may have made a mistake in their istihdad (decision-making) in a particular situation, but their niyyah was pure.
We don’t say they became murtad; we don’t say their heart changed; we don’t say they left Islam, na’udhu billah, na’udhu billah, na’udhu billah. No.
We say they were human beings, so in a particular instant, their istihad, there was a situation where they had to take a decision, they took a decision, that decision may not have been the correct decision, but their niyyah was pure.
Rasool s.a.w. himself said to Sayyidina Ali b. Vita’i b. Al-Anu—this refers to the Battle of Jamal, the Battle of the Camel—long before this battle, because the battle happened when? After Sayyidina Ali passed away. No, in his time, when Sayyidina Ali was there, but after Sayyidina Uthman passed away, Abdu’l-Anu. So Rasool s.a.w. is telling Sayyidina Ali while he is there, so years before this, he said to him: “Ya Ali, there will be a time when you and Aisha will be on opposite sides. There will be a conflict between you and Aisha.” He said, “You will be right, Aisha will be wrong,”
but make sure nothing happens to her. Take care of her. Of her. Sayyidina Ali said, “Ya Rasulullah, I wish I will die before this day. I do not want to be in a conflict with my mother, Aisha Siddiqua Radhiyal Anha.” But this was the Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam; this was his prophecy, it happened. And in the Battle of Jamal, Sayyidina Ali Radhiyal Anha fulfilled this covenant. He went personally and he ensured that Sayyidina Aisha Siddiqua Radhiyal Anha was protected and she was removed from the battlefield without being harmed.
So obviously, somebody was right, somebody was wrong. And Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam knew this and he told them that.
But do we curse Aisha Siddiqua Radhiyal Anha? Now is the time. You want to curse your own mother? And your mother—you don’t even know if your mother was your mother. You just believe she was your mother because she told you. A woman’s gawahi (witness). But Aisha Siddiqua Radhiyal Anha was removed from the battlefield without being harmed. Aisha Siddiqua Radhiyal Anha is your mother because who said this? Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la said this. So Aisha Siddiqua Radhiyal Anha and all the wives of Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam are our mothers with greater certainty than our own biological mothers. If I tell you, “Give me proof that your mother is your mother,” do you have proof? Do I have proof? If your mother is alive, you will have to go and get some—you know—do a genetic investigation or something to say same genes or not. Otherwise, you don’t know. You don’t know this. What is the actual reality? Your mother told you she is your mother. How do you know this? You don’t know this. I don’t know this.
But with the wives of Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la told us. He said his wives are your mothers. We have to understand these things. People just talk loosely, like my Guyanese friend used to say: he talked because he got mouth. He talked because he has a mouth. Just like a chicken or something. Think and talk. Don’t just talk. So, the point I am making is these were the people. Look at their position. Look at their closeness. Yet, they were people who were so careful about the Kitab of Allah, so careful about the Rasool of Allah Alaihi Wasallam, so careful to be respectful, hugely respectful, and not to take liberties, not to simply say, “This is my opinion.” They never said that because they were so close; so they understood the gravity of it. They understood the importance of it. For them, the Kalam of Allah was not something—you know—like today, even we do it with people who do that, are doing it with a good intention. But if you put on the Quran, the Quran is playing, and you are driving your car and you are talking to somebody and here and there and what not, your attention is all over. The Quran is like some background music. This is a disrespect to the Quran. When the Quran al-Karim is being played on your device or when you are listening to it or something, it is haram to speak. You should not speak to anybody. If you want to speak, turn it off. Then you talk. Nobody says don’t talk. You talk. But don’t talk over the Kalam of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. So, I remind myself: when you let us treat the Quran as the Hadith with the greatest respect. Let us treat the speech of Rasulullah sallallahu wa sallam which is the Hadith with the greatest respect.
Because the Hadith is the explanation of the Quran by the one who received the Quran. Not by some maulvi or teacher or somebody. No, it is by Rasulullah ﷺ himself. And as I have been saying, this is not accidental. Allah ﷻ said this is required. Allah ﷻ therefore sent His Nabi to do this work.
Allah ﷻ said, “Teach them the book.” And that’s what He did. And that’s what the Hadith is. We ask Allah ﷻ to fill our hearts with respect and great awe and majesty of Him and His Kalam. We ask Allah ﷻ to open our hearts to His Deen, to open our hearts to His Kitab, to open our hearts to His Kalam. We ask Allah ﷻ to be pleased with us and never to be displeased, helping us to stay on the right path. To guide us to the right path and to give us istiqamah so we may stay on the right path.