Juz’ 19 Qur’an 30 for 30
In the nineteenth episode of this Ramadan series, Dr. Omar Suleiman and Sh.
Abdullah Oduro, joined by special guest Sh. Muhammad Elshinawy, explore
gems from the nineteenth Juz’ of the Holy Quran.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
Salamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato. Salamualikoum wa
rahmatollahi wa barakato. And honor of certain people that are way in left field
and following their desires, whether it’s tribalism and that tribalism has
pushed them to speak badly or to even harm other people. Are you going to
think, do you think that they, you would be their guardian if they’re not going to
follow me, if they’re not going to allow their desires to be humbled and
suppressed for my sake? You see, when you suppress your desire that you
have and you have hope in Allah that he will change it, inshallah, he will
change it.
And that’s what we call tawfiq, that Allah blesses you with this tawfiq. Allah
Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la continues on in the next verse, verse number 44. And
this verse is an amazing verse, to be honest, as all the verses of the Quran are
amazing. But pondering on this particular aspect of creation that he compares
human beings to, it’s profound. Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la says, Am
tahsabu an akhtarahum yasma’una aw yaqiloon? Inhum illa kal-an’ami bal
hum adallu sabila. Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la says, do you think that most
of them hear or understand? Yasma’una aw yaqiloon. What’s interesting,
many different places in the Quran, when Allah speaks about those that were
oppressed themselves in this life and they face the punishment in the next life,
these are the two verbs that they use. Even we see in the chapter in mulk,
when Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la says, wa qalu law kunna nasma’u aw
na’qilu ma kunna fee ashaabis sa’eer. He says, and they will say, only if we had
been listening or reasoning, we would not be amongst the companions of the
blaze. The regret, because we didn’t hear and we listened. Allah gave us those
faculties for a reason. But he gave the faculties to an’am for a different reason.
And it’s pure survival. And we see here, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la says,
inhum illa kal-an’am. That verily, they are just like the cattle. How? That they
have these faculties of hearing and seeing. But the cattle, in some instances,
in particularly this instance, as Allah says, bal, rather, hum adal. Meaning
those individuals, those human beings that heard the message and
understood the message, and they voluntarily followed their hawwa, their
desires. Why is this important? Because the dog or the cat or the animal
knows its Rabb, it knows its Lord. And it’s totally submissive to it. It’s
musakhar. It is created to be subjected to its master and owner.
And it follows it. And it knows that when it follows it, it will receive its maslaha,
its benefit. Human beings may know that their Lord is Allah, but do they admit
it? They know that their Lord is Allah, do they turn to Him? It’s an opportunity
for us to turn back to Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala. When Allah says that they
are worse than animals, worse than animals, because they follow their
desires and they leave off the message that has been given to them via the
faculties that Allah has given you for a particular reason and more a reason to
recognize that the creator of these faculties, the creator of these senses that
He has given you is to worship Him and to use those desires and that which is
beneficial for you. So may Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala make us of those that
turn back to Him fee sirr al mu’alaniya, in secret and in open, and allow that
turning back to Him to be a form of redemption, a form of remembrance to
ultimately be with Him inshaAllah wa ta’ala. JazakAllah khair. BarakAllahu
feekum. So you see subhanAllah how connected it is. Turning away from the
righteous means turning away from the revelation. And so I think that’s where
bid’in Allah ta’ala, Shaykh Muhammad you can take us away inshaAllah ta’ala.
And as-saf and khair bi’dinnah. JazakAllah khairan. Bismillah, alhamdulillah,
wa salatu wa salamu ala rasoolillah, ala aali wa sahbihi ajma’in. So actually I
do want to speak about a particular verse, the 30th verse in surah al-furqan,
turning away from revelation in particular. But first and foremost, you know,
when what Shaykh Abdullah mentioned or what he did there is something we
should all get into the habit of doing. One of the most wonderful ways to
connect with the Quran in its entirety is to realize that every verse relates to
you. Like the verses regarding the prophets, yes we’re never going to be
prophets, but they still apply to us on some level. And the people who worship
to their desires and disbelieved in doing so, that can still happen on another
level, you know, with a believer, on a lesser level of course.
You know, I remember Abdullah ibn Abbas radiAllahu anhu ma’a, you know,
the Turjuman, the master interpreter of the Quran. Whenever he used to read
that story of, you know, the Israelites who violated on the Sabbath, that’s
mentioned in surah al-A’raf, he used to always read it and he would weep and
weep and weep and say, we’ve seen so much wrong in our life and we kept
silent. Like we sort of were too agreeable with the herd or with, you know, the
crowd. Because he noticed in the surah that, you know, the people that forbid
the violation and spoke out against it, Allah said, we saved them. And those
who violated, Allah said, you know, they were destroyed or they were smited
with his wrath. And then those who were silent, Allah was silent about them.
And so that was so scary to ibn Abbas, like what happened to them due to
their silence? And us too, what’s going to happen to us due to our silence? So
that’s a great door for us always to realize how does this verse apply to me?
And so regarding walking away from the revelation, we are all Muslims, right?
And so we can read that 30th verse in surah al-Furqan that we’re reflecting on
َّن َر ال َّرسُو ُل يَا ب َوقَا َل .today
ْو مي وا
ْرآ َن إ قَ
َهذَا قُ
تَ َخذُ
ْ
messenger the and, my Ohَ م ال ْه ُجو ًرا
says, oh my Lord, my people have taken this Quran as something worth
shunning, worth abandoning. And obviously that’s not us in the fullest sense
of the word, alhamdulillah. We’ve accepted this Quran, at least in principle,
we haven’t rejected it. But are we totally out of the red, totally out of the clear
regarding a verse like this? I mean, the verse is very daunting. You know, you
think about the hadith of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم himself weeping at that verse where
he’s going to be made to testify against those who rejected his message. You
think about the hadith that mentioned that every prophet will say, my Lord,
save me, save me, save me on the day of judgment. And the Prophet..
Muhammad will be the only one,
He’s going to be the most compassionate soul on that day and say, my
ummah, my ummah, my people, my people, oh Allah, spare the people. Yet
this verse puts a certain category of people on the opposite end of the
complaint of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم .You know, we never be in the opposite end of a
courtroom where the judge is Allah and the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم is the one prosecuting
us or charging us with an allegation. So obviously, first and foremost, those
who rejected his message are those he’s complaining about. But there are
others as well, like people who selectively accept parts of the message and
selectively reject parts of the message, like the people whose gods are their
desires, right? Those two have rejected the message, essentially. That’s
probably still category one. The people who, yeah, I’m going to accept
whatever of Islam is currently trending, whatever of Islam is currently, you
know, politically correct or socially correct, and just to feel good. In modern
life, everyone does that with their religion these days. They just use their
religion as a lubricant for modern life to validate. And that’s another form of
taking the Qur’an as unworthy of being a leader, a transformative force, a
director of good and evil. So selective acceptance and selective rejection is
another way to abandon the Qur’an. A third way, the scholars mention, is
when people treat the Qur’an like it can be arbitrary. Arbitrarily interpreted.
You can interpret it however you like. And that’s a big deal. That’s a big
problem. You know, like when Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala says, هللا يدي بين تقدمَ ل
ورسوله Don’t you dare, you know, step forward, out of turn, ahead of Allah and
his messenger. هللا واتقوا And fear Allah. That means you need some fear of Allah
here to scare away your conceit. The conceit that makes you think that, oh,
you got this, right? Yes, the Qur’an is accessible and approachable.
And, you know, we even publish that yaqeen about like the keys to reflecting
on the Qur’an, even without the Arabic. But In terms of Qur’an’s, you know,
legal interpretations, how to derive laws from the Qur’an, you got to check first
what else Allah said elsewhere, what else the Prophet said, what the language
actually means, how the first community understood it. And then after all
that, once you’re specialized and trained, if you’re wrong, you’re forgiven. But
if you do any of that before it, then, you know, like Abu Bakr radiAllahu anhu
said, what sky will ever shade me? What earth will ever carry me? If I say about
one verse in the book of Allah, based on what I think, a baseless opinion,
right? Without enough justification. That’s of the ways of treating the Qur’an as
unworthy, right? Just casually interpreting it however we like. Another way to
abandon the Qur’an is to accept it in principle, accept its meanings, you know,
as determined by the system that Allah plays for interpreting it. But then you
just don’t live up to it. When we don’t respect its bounds, you know that verse
in Surah Al-Baqarah when Allah says, Alladheena aataynahumul kitaba
yatloonahu haqqa tilawatihi oolaika you’minoona bihi Those we gave the book
to, who recited the way it deserves to be recited, tilawa, tilawa, recitation,
these are those who actually believe in it. The word tilawa there, Ibn Mas’ud,
the companion of the Prophet, says it doesn’t just mean utterances, because
tala means to follow. Walqamari itha talaaha Allah says the moon did tilawa of
the sun, it followed the cycle of day and night, right? Tala. And so you following
the rulings of the Qur’an, the guidance of the Qur’an in practice is what is
included here. Pronouncing the Qur’an correctly, dedicating ourself to its
study is mandatory. We don’t have to memorize Qur’an, we have to recite it
correctly. That’s part of the tilawa that Allah placed as a condition for properly
believing in it. But living up to its laws also is a part of the proper tilawa, to
follow along, not the tracing of the letters,
But the steps of guidance and the stairway to coming close to Allah, through
his laws, through what he revealed to us. But the last one I want to mention
quickly in these last three minutes that I have, and I wish I had more time to
spend on it, is of the ways to treat the Qur’an as unworthy, is that you make it
your last option when you’re seeking medical treatment. What does that
mean? You see, Allah Azza wa Jal said in the Qur’an, ل ُز
ن م َن َونُنَ
ْرآ
قُ
ْ
We هُ شفَا ء َم َو ال ا
send down of this Qur’an that which is a cure. Cure for what? Physically? Yes,
physically too. The Qur’an is ruqya, you know that hadith of the one, the man
who was stung by a scorpion, they recited Fatiha, and then the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said
to them, how do you know it is a spoken cure? Like it’s an incantation type
cure. Of course, the best of them. But that is secondary actually. As Ibn AlQayyim says, the Qur’an came down to cure our hearts before our bodies. And
so the fact that it even cures our bodies, أولى بابَ من by greater virtue, that’s
another reminder that it’s there to cure our hearts. And so when you have
doubts, how do you triage that? Do you go to the Qur’an first? If you don’t go to
the Qur’an first, that could be of the ways of you seeing the Qur’an as mahjoor,
as worth shunning, as unworthy of approaching. Even when you have not just
doubts, emotional pains. You know, what is your coping mechanism? You
know, I have a sister, I’ll mention her story just very quickly. She came to me,
she had just gotten discharged, completed the cycles of like, you know, some
psychotherapy and otherwise. She had a very difficult past. And she said to
me, to be honest, Shaykh, I’m like totally disappointed. I said, why? She said,
because they didn’t give me anything. Like, they gave me like some like coping
mechanisms. Like when you feel your panic on setting, just, you know, count
to 10, and here’s a breathing technique, and here, you know, write, take a
gratitude journal.
She said, but all of those were like temporary band-aids that were never gonna
ever help me. Like, it’s so shallow because, sure, tell me, be grateful. This was
so profound. She said, she was lecturing me, like she was some expert on like
theology or, you know, philosophy. She said, okay, be grateful. Grateful to who
exactly? Who’s the object of my gratitude? So it’s like, it’s a stillbirth. Like it’s
dead in the water when you tell me to be grateful without setting for me,
clarifying for me what the Quran does, right? That’s how the Quran cures us.
The object of my gratitude. Sure, you can tell me, take control of your life, and
you’re the master of your own destiny. But how do I actually know that? And
how isn’t that like sort of abuse to make me feel like anytime I don’t meet the
bar, it’s my fault that I didn’t work hard enough, as opposed to the Quran that
says, it’s all in Allah’s hands. Don’t you worry about it. Remove that load from
your shoulders. She said, and it couldn’t tell me why I went through my trauma
either. The Quran tells you why you’re here, why you went through this, why
you should have this, you know, directionality, this purpose. And so that was
very profound for me. Like we look for cures elsewhere. That’s of the ways that
we underestimate or deem unworthy the Quran. And as Ibn Al-Qayyim,
Rahimahullah said, and I’ll close with it, all of these fall under the category of,
my Lord, they have taken this Quran as something abandoned. He said, even
if some forms of abandonment are less so than others. And Allah Subh’anaHu
Wa Ta-A’la knows best. Back to you, Sheikh Omar. I want to end this before
you guys talk about basketball again. So no, no, it’s going to happen again.
Can’t do that. You can’t like have technical difficulties suddenly, but honestly
speaking, it’s kind of like, you know, Sheikh, there are a few things, by the way.
So obviously when we prepare our own content,
Sometimes there’s a portion of it that we’re most attached to. So within the
Judgment Day series, we just did unanswered du’as and then the trials that
you didn’t get compensated for in this dunya. So the things that happened in
the hereafter and like how it all just kind of makes sense at that point, like,
wow. So this is what it was for. Like, okay, now I get it, you know, and no one
would want to come back to dunya and be restored here, whether that’s in the
sense of honor or in the sense of pain and things of that sort, right? So when
you’re medicating, and of course, I have to make all the disclaims, right?
We’re not opposed to mental health. We are, of course, Alhamdulillah, but I
mean. I sent her there. I sent her there, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah. But certainly
seeing faith as part of the cure, part of the holistic solution. And I think that’s
where, you know, the interdisciplinary nature of this is so important, right? But
like that belief in the here and Allah and the hereafter. Imanu billah wa yawm
al-akhir. It just, both for our individual pain, as well as the pain that we
sometimes experience as groups. You know, when you’re talking about the
other side of the courtroom, you know, like I just imagine, SubhanAllah, I
mean, like all the backbiting that happens on these WhatsApp groups, or, you
know, like imagine Allah extracting each person from the group and standing
them together and then put the other person that was backbited against on
the other side. Just the physical scene of that, right? Like you have a group of,
let’s say, 80 people, 300 people, and Allah resurrects them and bunches them
together. Okay, all of you were saying this about this person. As-salalahu
alayhi wa sallam. Allah forgive us and protect us. But that’s the just, the
perfect justice of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala with his Ibad on the day of
judgment. So all of those that were mocking Ibrahim A.S, we don’t even know
their names. SubhanAllah, they probably felt so proud at the moment. You
know, at the moment,
Helping set up the fire, throwing them in. And we don’t even know their
names, but like they’re standing and they’re looking at Ibrahim A.S robed
alone and like honored, like, okay, all of you participated. Remember all the
stuff you said about him and all that, what you did to him. Here’s the payback
to Ibrahim A.S and here’s your compensation, right? And so even when we’re
talking about the group dynamics of this all, you know, when you’re thinking
about just the types of things that we encounter in this life, the only thing is do
not be a cause of your own misery and do not be a cause of the misery of
someone else. You know, SubhanAllah, your own misery would be turning
away from the revelation. The misery of someone else would be, you know,
obviously mocking the righteous and being a part of this group mentality that
just leads to complete lack of self-awareness and when you forget Allah, you
forget yourself, you forget everybody else, right? And you just lose yourself.
And then on the day of judgment, It’s like, here’s everything you forgot and it’s
confronting you, right? And so revelation is confronting you. The people you
mocked are confronting you. The Lord that you turned away from is
confronting you, right? And that’s the most severe confrontation of them all.
And so, I mean, that’s the thing. It’s like you prepare yourself for that and it’s
shifa, it’s comfort in so many different ways. Healing, healing in that it can
heal you from those ways that will cause you great pain. Healing in that it can
also, I mean, obviously healing, first and foremost, that’s guidance, but just it
is healing in every sense of the word, SubhanAllah, healing and also knowing
that Allah will not let your good deeds or dua or pain go unrewarded. And so
just keep exerting yourself in the good and in the dua and absorbing the pain
with patience, obviously, while you try to heal in the most holistic sense in this
life.
SubhanAllah, just profound connections that we find here. Sheikh Abdullah, I
wanna give it to you one more time, inshAllah, I mean, if you, and Sheikh
Muhammad, obviously, if you have any thoughts that came to your mind, I
mean, just for the sake of discussion, last couple of minutes, inshAllah. For
the sake of Muhammad, the floor is yours, alhamdulillah. Yeah, maybe only
that Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala, sent us a prophet, salallahu alayhi wa salam,
who taught us to say, Allahumma ja’al qurana rabi’a khalwi wa noora sadri wa
jalaa huzni wa zahaba hammi. Oh Allah, allow the Quran to be the spring that
quenches my heart. That means it has the potential to do that, but you also
need to show your worth, show you want it, show your thirst, show your
interest in it. Oh Allah, make the Quran the spring of my heart and the light of
my chest and the departure of my anxiety, my worry, and the upliftment of my
sadness. And so Quran can be all of that for all of us. We ask Allah for it and
we pursue it through Allah’s book first and foremost, and then through every
other means that Allah Azza wa Jal has made available and permissible for us
so that we can get this world and the next. It’s an all or none actually,
subhanAllah. Right. And you can download, by the way, the book on du’as for
hardship. I think it’s, I know it’s up there. So it’s on the resources on the main
page, inshaAllah. InshaAllah. Sheikh Abdullah, anything from your end? No, I
was just thinking, you know, just stick with the Quran, you know, subhanAllah.
Just throughout the phases of, I remember we were sitting with, you and me
were sitting with my son and my son didn’t want to lead tarawih, you know,
went a couple of rakats and then I told him to ask you, and you were
mentioning tarawih is probably one of the strongest ways..
To keep the Quran. You know, subhanAllah, just it’s that experience.
Sometimes shaitan can play with you, you know, when it comes to
memorizing, reciting the Quran and, you know, the keys to open the door to
allow yourself to understand it and to act upon it. So just stick with the Quran,
ta’ahd bil Quran, you know, just have that connection with the Quran and, you
know, make sure that you stay with it, inshaAllah. InshaAllah. JazakumAllah.
Khairan, mashAllah, fruitful session. Sheikh Muhammad, Knicks or Nets?
Brooklyn, New York, this is my last basketball question. Are you a Knicks fan or
a Nets fan? I’ve never been a fan of a team, just some talent. I actually have
never had a team. You took this anti-herd mentality thing to like the next level.
I’m sorry for listening carefully. I’m going to hide my pelicans and saints gear,
you know, on the new ones. Muslim players are my bias. So who has more
Muslim players on their team than me? All right. One last question. Basketball
question. Two on two. It’s me and Sheikh Abdullah against you and one other
person on the Yaqeen team. Who are you picking up? Are we hiring Khairi
soon? No, inshaAllah. That’s Shatiru Usman, man. Oh, man. We need to get
our retreats going again, man. That’ll be Jordan Pippin. Actually, that’s not a
bad, that’s a bad analogy. It doesn’t matter. You and Sheikh Abdullah. All right.
Politically correct answers. Please enjoy the rest of your Ramadan and keep
the rest of us in your du’a. We’ll see you as well. Good night for the end of
Ramadan strong. I appreciate all of you inshaAllah as well. Please join us.
We’ll see you all tomorrow. As-salamu alaykum. When you speak the truth, it
hurts when they say you lie, doesn’t it? Yet you move on. You take it all in
stride.
The honest prophet who by his own people is belied. You never express the
stress to the tests that came from up above. The trials made you strong and
for Allah’s perfect company you would yearn. For it is to Allah that we belong
and to him is our return.
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