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*This transcript was automatically generated by AI and may contain errors. *
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My friend here, he asked me a question with regard to hijab. And whether hijab is farad or not farad, whether the head should be covered or not covered, whether the face should be covered or not, is it only covering the chest and so forth. So my answer to him and to reminder to all of us is that whether it is hijab, whether it is praying five times a day, whether it is paying zakat, you take any principle of Islam. So really our problem is we start from the wrong end of it, which is we look at the modality of it, the details of the rule itself. Is it this, is it that? Then we get involved in the discussion of the fiqh. And for especially for those who don’t understand Arabic, classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic, you are talking about something which you don’t even know the language. And most common people have no training in the usurafiq. And usurafiq need training like anything else. It’s like trying to discuss medical symptoms and problems, which also people do with equally disastrous results. Because you’re talking about something you don’t have the faintest clue of it. You’re not a doctor, you’re not a physician, you’re not a scientist, you don’t understand, you’re head from your own tail. And you want to talk about medical issues of what should be done, should not be done and so on and so on, which happens quite a lot. I mean, this is a very common thing. People take it upon themselves to talk about medical problems and they have no clue, no training, nothing. So I want to focus on this and say that what is the right way of doing it? I mean, the question is there. We’re not saying like the medical problem. Problem is there. We’re not saying problem doesn’t exist. It exists. But you’re talking to the wrong people. And you’re talking in the wrong way because you are talking to people who don’t have any knowledge or you yourself have no knowledge. You’re trying to speculate. Why? First question to say is why are you doing this? Because there are people who have knowledge. Go ask them. There are usur, there are principles which are established in the case of the hijab and any usur of the Sharia. It’s established by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala Himself. So where is the need for you to speculate? So the first and foremost thing to understand is that the first question, whenever we have this kind of a doubt of, you know, should I do this or the first question to ask yourself is, am I going to die? Will I die? This might sound like a dumb question. Of course, no, no, no, not of course. Go stand in front of a mirror. Literally do this as a physical exercise. Go stand in front of a mirror. Look at yourself in the face and say, will I die? Ask yourself, will I die? And convince yourself that you will die. Convince yourself. This requires convincing. Right? I’m saying this is something, it sounds stupid. Why should I be convinced that I should, believe me, you will have to convince yourself because the reason why we are doing a lot of stuff and we do as Muslims, we do a lot of stuff, disobedience of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala is because we don’t really believe that we will die. We have to question our fundamental foundational belief in the akhirah, which begins with death. Will I die? Will I be resurrected before Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala? Will I have to answer for my actions? This is a fundamental basic question that we have to settle for ourselves. And this is what I remind myself and you, settle this. Don’t live your life like this in limbo, you know, because then you will have constantly problems. It’s not only a matter of hijab. Every single thing in the sharia will become a musibat on you, will become a problem for you, will confuse you, will take you all over the place because you have not dealt with a fundamental issue, which is to convince yourself that you will die. And remember, I’m not even going to where Nabi Salah said you can die any minute. First of all, we are so far from that. When Nabi Salah said you can die any minute and he said, if you put food in your mouth, don’t believe that you can swallow it and die before that. If you’re making salaam and salaa to the right, don’t believe that you will be able to bring the salaam to the left, you will die before that. Insha’Allah if you die, Alhamdulillah, you will be in salaa and die. We are not even there because we don’t think we will die, period. So whether you, the fact that I might die between salaam on the left to the right, it doesn’t even occur to me, I’m not going to die. I will not die. I am immortal. Everyone else will die. It sounds stupid, right? But that’s our way, the way we are living life. If you are watching it from somewhere else, that person you ask him, this guy you’re watching, does it look like he thinks he will die? No, it doesn’t look like that. It looks like this guy thinks that he will live forever. So first and foremost, convince yourself, are you going to die? Now if the answer is, and of course the answer is true whether you like it or not, whether anybody likes it or not, we will die, we will be resurrected and we will stand before Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. This is zaili kal yawm ul haqq Allah said that is the day of truth. Faman sha’at, faman sha’at, faman sha’at takhza ila rabbi sab’ila. Whoever wants, let him create a way past to his room. Now when that is the case, then we have to understand that on that day, all the clever arguments and this and that which we try to create today won’t work. They will not work. They don’t even work here in this world. Go to somebody with knowledge, he’ll laugh in your face. So how is your argument going to work with Allah? Right? Now if you look at to come to this, from this perspective to come to hijab, so first of all think about that. The ayah says clearly, tell the women of the believers, draw your cloth from your head over your chest, bhuza. So if you have a cloth, imagine big cloth, you hold it from here, from your head over here. Is head covered or not covered? Is the face covered or not covered? Then what question is this? It’s mentioned. It’s a stupid question. No, exactly, it’s a stupid question because the people who are asking the question, they don’t understand the language, they don’t understand what it’s saying. So draw the cover from, do it physically, take a big chadar, take a big chadar, put it in this way where it’s only here, right? On your back, it’s not covered. Now you take this chadar and pull it down so that it is now covering your, Allah says very clearly, cover your chest. So pull it down here. Is your head still covered or not covered? Allah did not say remove it from your head and cover your body. Did you see that? He can say that, no. Allah can say forget about your head, no, don’t worry about the head. Take it off your head and wrap it around your body like a shawl, like we wear the shawl. So it’s covering the chest and the rest of the body and the head is open, no. Does it say that? Did, could, you mean to tell me Allah ran out of words, now He doesn’t know the words, He doesn’t, He could not have said that? He’s saying draw it from the top. So all of these arguments, should the face be covered or not covered, what not, what not, what not. So fundamentally you cover everything, including the head, including the face, including the body, cover everything and the covering, your clothing should be loose so that the shape of the body is not visible and it should not be transparent, should not be, so the body itself not be loose, fundamental rule. The qualifying rule, we know the Prophet Muhammad SAW said, he said you can leave the face uncovered and you can leave the hands uncovered. Rukhsah, he did not say do it, he said if you want you can do this. So if somebody is wearing niqab, are they right or wrong? They are right, they are right. That is the fundamental rule, wear niqab. Obviously don’t cover the eyes because you don’t want to fall down, you want to see, so the eyes will be open. But beyond that, to cover the rest of the face or not, it’s up to her. Rukhsah says if she does not wish to cover the face, she can keep it open. The only, there are two instances where a woman is compelled to show her face. she is contemplating marrying. So when it comes to that stage, it means that you send a proposal to her father, her father or the wali, whoever it is, approves of that and then he permits you to speak to his daughter and then now you are speaking to the daughter with the intention of marrying her. You may have married, you may not have married, but that’s the intention. At that point she is compelled to show you her face. She cannot be in niqab because you don’t marry someone you can’t see, so you must see the face at least. You must say, wow, you like the face, don’t like the face. Second place where the woman is compelled to remove her niqab is when she is a witness in the court of law and the judge, who will be a male, is ordered, commanded to look at her face even though she is non-maharam, even though she may be attractive, even though he might be attracted to her physically, he is ordered to look at her face because facial expressions are a part of evidence. When you look at smarty space, if they are lying, you know they are lying, you can make out, this is, looks like that. So the demeanor of the facial expression is part of the analysis of evidence. But other than these two instances, if a woman is wearing niqab, it is entirely up to her, nobody can order her to take it off. This is her choice. Now that is only the face and by the face we mean, don’t mean the ears, only the face being from the hairline to the chin, that’s it. And up to the ears, not including the ears, this is the face. So the ears cannot be, you can’t say very nice earring, so keep the ears out, no. With your maharams, no problem. You can uncover your face, but even there, I mean with your maharams you can’t walk around in shorts, I mean this is, we will be very clear about that, right. So even there, the wakhar, the nobility, the dignity of dress and clothing is compulsory in Islam. Believe me, this whole rule is not only, except for the, obviously the hijab and the niqab is for the women, but other than that, the general rule with regard to dressing, that clothing must be, it should be respectable, it should be dignified, it must not reveal the shape of the body, it must not reveal the body itself. This applies to men also equally. So for example, a lot of people who do bodybuilding and so on and so forth, they like to show their muscles, so they wear this skin tight t-shirt, so they wear almost nothing, just a singlet kind of thing and the big muscles are bulging. This is haram in Islam. It is haram. It is just because you are a man, Allah does not give you the permission to walk around half naked, no way. No way. Shorts, not permissible for men or women. You must cover the knee, they must go down to the, at least to the middle of the calf, must not go beyond the ankle, up to the ankle is okay, but here or little bit further down, but not, the knee should not be uncovered. They must not be tight like they wear those stretch kind of shorts. They say, no, I am only wearing it in the gym. No, no, no, no. Gym is part of life. There are no special dress rules for gym, no. He is taking a break from Islam at the gym. Exactly, taking a break from Islam at the gym, no, no, not permissible. There is no break from Islam at the gym. Especially if you are going to a public gym, especially in this country, I think we need more Islam, not less. Yeah, it’s a must go at all. Yeah, wear a burqa and go in the gym because there is more problem in the gym than anywhere else. So that’s why I say I don’t go, I mean I go to the gym in the mosque because there is nobody. Only me and the gym. Gym and the gym. So the point I am making is that, Alhamdulillah, Allah swt gave us a deen. He gave us a deen, He did not give us a madhab. He did not give us, you know, just a set of bunch of rules of how to worship. Allah sent us a deen, meaning a complete way of life. Everything. This is the beauty of Islam. Islam covers everything in life. Every aspect of life. It covers it for men, covers it for women. It covers all the different roles and responsibilities in society. It covers specific jobs and stuff you might have. If you are a king, it tells you how to rule the country. If you are a slave, may Allah protect us. It tells you how to be a good slave. If you are an employer, employee, husband, wife, child, what not, everything. Everything is covered in Islam. It is something which is all encompassing as a complete way of life. And that’s beautiful because then Allah has not left us to, some people might say, oh, I have no freedom. No, you have freedom. You have freedom within those boundaries. That’s the important thing to understand in Islam. It is freedom within boundaries. If you are driving a car, are you free? Of course you are free. But are you free to go through a red light? No. Oh, I have no freedom. No. You have no sense to say something like that. If I’m telling you to stop at the red light and say, oh, I have no freedom. I say, no, you have freedom, but you have no sense. Because if that is your reaction, then it means you are stupid. Because why would you want to go through a red light? It’s for your safety, for the safety of other people. And if you consider that to be something which is curtailing my freedom, then you need your brain example because the whole point of Islam is, Islam is the guardrails. Islam is a seat belt. Islam is the thing which keeps you safe. And we know, I mean, computer programming, safety is inversely proportional to functionality. The more safety you have, the more number of passwords you need. But then your data is safe. You say, I don’t like passwords. No problem. Remove all of everything. No problem. And next thing you know, your identity has got stolen. Your bank account is empty, right? Because all your data is there for everyone. That’s the choice. That is the choice. So you want to resent safety procedures? After you, you will pay the price. Islam is a bunch of safety procedures. It’s guardrails. By all means, stand there, enjoy Niagara Falls. But the guardrails are there to make sure that you don’t become a part of the Niagara Falls. Niagara fell, I fell with the Niagara. Niagara falls, I fall too. Oh, they all changed the name. Yeah, it’s just right. Niagara and someone falls. Niagara and someone falls. So this is the thing for us to understand, remember that. Alhamdulillah, Allah swt honored us. That was a karam na vaniyadam. Allah has given honor to the dignity and honor to the auladh of Adam, alayhi salam. Allah swt made the angels to make sajdah to Adam, alayhi salam. Who is this? Somebody who the angels have made sajdah to, today see the kind of world that we have created and we are part of. And you might say, well, I didn’t create the world. No, of course you didn’t. But you and I are living in the same world. And therefore our actions, we didn’t create it. But our actions are we supporting the corruption or are we going against the corruption? This is very important. That’s why Amar bil maruf wa nahil munkar. Kundo khaira umat inuqreezatillin naas. Why is that? What does that mean? Amar bil maruf wa nahil munkar. To menuna billah, alayman billah, huwa al ajur huwa hasil from Amar bil maruf wa nahil munkar. Gives you iman. Allah says you have iman, you do enjoying good and you forbid evil and you have iman. How do you have iman? Because you do Amar bil maruf wa nahil munkar. If you don’t do Amar bil maruf wa nahil munkar, you will not have iman. You have iman, it doesn’t work the other way around. It works also the other way around. You are doing Amar bil maruf wa nahil munkar because you have iman. But this iman is strengthened, this iman is reinforced by doing Amar bil maruf wa nahil munkar. And that’s the reason why it’s so important to keep this in mind for ourselves and ensure that we never do anything which goes against this. InshaAllah.
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