Anchored
Who Decides What Is Haram? | Anchored Ep. 4
In Hadith 6 of Imam Nawawi’s 40, the Prophet ﷺ said the halal is clear and the haram is clear, and that between them are doubtful matters many people don't know. Whoever stays away from those matters protects their religion. What happens to the one who keeps drifting into them?
Hadith 7 was explained to the Companions in two words in Arabic: The religion is naseeha (sincerity). But, towards who? Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy explains why the word means much more than advice, and how the early Muslims lived it, and how it applies specifically to our relationship with the Qur’an and Muslim leaders.
Tune in every Saturday at 9 AM CST/3 PM GMT for a new episode of Anchored!
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00The halal, the lawful, is clear. And the haram, the unlawful, is clear. And between these two is the gray area. Why did Allah do that? Well, I just sort of cherry-pick and fatwa-shop based on convenience. When you keep driving on the shoulder, eventually you'll be in the ditch,
00:14but I have a good heart. It's as crazy as saying, I don't brush my teeth, but I still have good oral hygiene. One of the signs of a healthy heart is that you are uncomfortable with gray areas. And the heart is the only thing that will matter on the Day of Judgment.
00:31We welcome everyone back to the 40 Nawawi Hadith classes. We continue on with Hadith 6 tonight. The Hadith of al-Nu'man ibn Bashir, radiyallahu 'anhu, who said,
00:44I personally heard the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, saying, inna al-halala bayyinun, wa inna al-harama bayyinun, wa baynahuma umurun mushtabihatun.
00:58la ya'lamuhunna katheerun min an-naas. The halal, the lawful, is clear. And the haram, the unlawful, is clear. And between these two is the gray area, right? These are doubtful matters
01:12that many people do not know. fa man ittaqa al-shubuhat, fa qad istabra'a li-deenihi wa 'irdih. And so whomever avoids or guards themselves against the shubuhat, these gray matters,
01:27has, in fact, safeguarded his religion and his reputation. wa man waqa'a fi al-shubuhat, waqa'a fi al-haram. And whomever indulges or meanders
01:41in the doubtful matters will eventually fall into the unlawful matters. karra'i yar'a hawla al-hima. Like the shepherd that takes his sheep
01:54and allows them to circle the preserve, the off-limits grasslands, the preserved sanctuary, yushiku an yar'a fihi. It's just a matter of time
02:08before the sheep trespass, right? Trespass into that preserve and they eat in it or eat from it. Then he said, sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, what this metaphor or analogy is referring to,
02:22ala wa inna li kulli malikin hima. Certainly every king has his sanctuary, meaning has his limits. ala wa inna himallahi mahaarimuhu. And you must know that certainly the preserve or the sanctuary,
02:37the boundaries of Allah, are what he prohibited, what he made unlawful. ala wa inna fil-jasadi mudghah. And certainly there is a morsel of flesh, a piece of flesh in the body. idha salahat salahal-jasadu kulluh.
02:51If it is upright or it is sound, the rest of the limbs will be sound. wa idha fasadat fasadal-jasadu kulluh. And if it becomes corrupted, the rest of the limbs become corrupted by consequence. ala wa hiya al-qalb.
03:06Certainly or indeed it is the heart. Now, this hadith, al-Imam Abu Dawud al-Sijistani rahimahullah, he said it is one-fourth of Islam. And al-Imam Ahmad rahimahullah,
03:20he used to say the bedrock of Islam is three ahadith. The first hadith of intentions, and then the hadith of following the sunnah.
03:33So hadith one and hadith five. And then this hadith of al-Nu'man ibn Bashir about the halal, the haram, and the gray areas. Why these three? Perhaps what he meant was,
03:45your devotional relationship with Allah sits on the first two ahadith. It must be sincere acts of worship aligned with the gold standard, the way of the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam. And then the rest of your day-to-day life,
04:00you must be sensitive to, compliant with the boundaries of Allah. And He did not leave you in the dark. He made the halal and haram clear and also left a gray area there by design
04:12to see if you will be living by the laws set by the divine subhanahu wa ta'ala. Okay, but a little bit at a time. The first thing is the halal is clear and the haram is clear.
04:24And that is one of the great distinct virtues of Islam and what makes our religion so exceptional. That Allah did not leave us in the dark about the most important questions. He didn't leave those questions unanswered,
04:39not even unclear. He didn't even leave them vague, subhanahu wa ta'ala. Islam's foundational truths. They are definitive truths. The agreed upon aspects of Islam, you may, we always talk about differences of opinion
04:54and we will get there, but you can't overlook the fact that the agreed upon definitive aspects of Islam, they are greater than any other religion,
05:05than the constitution of any modern-day country. We have so much that we agree on and you do want to appreciate that before anything else.
05:18Then we say, what is the blessing of that? The blessing of that is Allah did not leave you in the dark because that is who He is and what you should expect of Him. You know, you should not expect anything else from a loving, compassionate God.
05:34There are people in the world who may say God is love, but their religion has been reduced to a feeling. There are no instructions from this loving God. How is that loving? Leaving them in the dark without direction is not loving.
05:46And so it is from Allah's love and care for the world that He made the halal clear and the haram clear. You know, a man said to the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, I'll become Muslim.
05:59I'll accept this religion per se, but I won't pray. He said, what is the purpose of a religion that doesn't involve prayer? You're lying to yourself. You're doing yourself a disservice. I know a man who once wrote,
06:14I used to think Allah would punish me if I didn't pray. But after I started to pray, I realized that not praying was the punishment. Not having clear requirements from Allah means
06:27you need this regimented throughout your day or else you fall apart. The same way, without meals, you fall apart. It also reminds you of why rejecting clear halal, clear haram removes you from Islam.
06:42Because when you see halal and haram as a blessing from Allah, it is almost like imagining the crime of someone who tears down those fire exit signs. Like they're made bright for a reason.
06:54You tear them down, you know how dangerous that is. That is the idea. You're tearing down the fire exit signs. That is the idea. You're tearing down the fire exits. Allah Azza wa Jal made it very clear to us
07:08that to reject his judgments is to reject his religion. Qul atee'u Allaha wa atee'u al-rasoola fa in tawallaw fa inna Allaha la yuhibbu al-kaafireen Say to them, obey Allah and obey the messenger.
07:23And if they turn away, not fall short, moral weakness, sort of human fragility is expected. But if they refuse, if they defy that, they refuse to accept it at least in principle,
07:35then know that Allah does not love the disbelievers. That's an act of disbelief. And so the bare minimum to be a believer is to affirm that Islam is true, but Shaitan does that one,
07:49to accept Islam's judgments as binding, even if it will be a lifetime of living up to that, but to accept it in principle, to ingrain that in yourself and to build it in your children, to respect Allah's boundaries in the day-to-day,
08:03that's a life project, but it has to start where the halal is what Allah made halal, it's clear. The haram is what Allah made haram, it's clear. And to communicate that to your loved ones, to your community.
08:18You know, the Prophet alayhis salatu wasalam would tell his little grandchildren when they would eat from the dates that belong to charity, not to his family alayhis salatu wasalam. He would say to al-Hasan al-Husayn, inna as-sadaqata la tahillu
08:32li Muhammadin wala li aali Muhammad. Charity is not halal, not lawful for Muhammad and the family of Muhammad. The same way we teach our children, you know, to respect rules, respect the laws, put your seatbelt on, right?
08:47You teach them that Allah's boundaries are sacred, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. There is actually, though, a difference between the halal and the haram, a wonderful difference that also helps you further appreciate your Islam.
09:01The haram is that which Allah spelled out as haram. Whereas the halal, the permissible is that which Allah, not forgetfully, but deliberately left unsaid, right?
09:15So the default in Islam is what? Halal, when it comes to worldly matters. Because Allah said in the Quran, wasakhara lakum maa fissamawati wa maa fil ardi jamee'an min and He subdued for you.
09:28He placed it, created it and set it up at your disposal. Subdued for you, everything in the skies, everything on the earth, all from Him, a gift from Him. So it's yours, unless He says otherwise.
09:41So the halal is what Allah didn't prohibit. And the haram is what Allah explicitly prohibited. There's a difference, right? And that is from the great generosity of our Lord, Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
09:54He captured and listed out for you the haram because the halal is actually countless. Like, think of drinks. We can't count the halal drinks, but we can only count the haram drinks, right? Is it intoxicating? No, okay. Is it blood?
10:08No, right? You just check a few boxes off, then it's halal. Whether it is water, whether it's juice, it's halal. Okay, now let's get to the issue of the gray areas. There are gray areas that many people,
10:22he didn't say most people, by the way, he said many people. So there could be most on the other side of this as well. Gray areas, doubtful matters, unclear matters that many people may not know.
10:34So these are matters that were deliberately, by design, left open for the scholars to speculate on in terms of their interpretation. Why did Allah do that? You know, as the ulama say,
10:47if Allah wanted to make this entire deen, every last verse, every last hadith, so definitively clear that it could not be interpreted two ways, that wouldn't be hard for Allah, right?
11:02But he chose that some of it be crystal clear and some of it be subject to interpretation. Where scholars are gonna sit there and say, wait, what was said? Obviously the Quran was said,
11:16but the hadith, is it authentic or not? Okay, but what was meant by what was said? Right, another curve ball. Okay, we've identified what was meant, but what was also said? That's the third factor. How do you reconcile it with the first thing that was said?
11:30And then you bring sort of a coherent position on all of this. Why did Allah Azza wa Jal put it that way? Of the wisdoms here is that, so this deen can be adaptable enough
11:44to suit us until the day of judgment. In fact, you know, Imam al-Shatibi rahimahullah, when he was praising the Sharia, he said, Allah's Sharia is so adaptable, so timeless that if there were no day of judgment,
11:58if hypothetically speaking, this world were to continue without end for infinity, the Sharia has in it enough built in flexibility, not so loose that it's meaningless,
12:12but not so rigid that it becomes time boxed, right? Has enough built-in flexibility to perfection that it can answer an infinite number of questions until eternity,
12:27for eternity, until eternity would be wrong. Another reason why Allah Azza wa Jal did this is not just to make it adaptable to suit us, but also to test our heart's conscience.
12:40Do we have a conscience or not, right? So will I speak on these issues out of line? Will I just sort of cherry pick and fatwa shop based on convenience? No, you're gonna have to listen to the scholar that you believe is more reliable,
12:54even if it turns out being the more limiting view sometimes. Will a scholar bully another scholar when the matter in fact is gray and he's acting like it's not, and the other party is just being stubborn, right?
13:08That's another one of the tests. Will I seek nearness to Allah by following the safer view, even if I don't feel like I have to? I genuinely don't, I'm not convinced by it,
13:21but I'm still going to, out of an abundance of caution, pious caution, practice wara'. He said, whoever does this, fa-man ittaqa ash-shubuhat, whomever avoids these gray areas, right?
13:35faqad istabra'a li-dinih, then he has protected his religion, wa-'irdih, and his reputation. How does avoiding the gray protect your religion? Tell me.
13:47Is the gray haram? It's not haram, the haram is clear. It's near haram. So then how does it protect my religion to avoid it?
14:03It creates a buffer, and that's the most obvious, right, that the hadith is going to continue speaking about. So here's a few things you want to think about. First of all, it could open the door to haram, because it's a buffer; without it, there's a gateway, right? There's a slippery slope.
14:17The other way it could be is that you may start practicing it, and then you discover later, then it becomes clear to you that it was haram, but sort of too hard to let go of, right? So avoiding it would have been safer.
14:32That's one of the ways also. And it will protect your reputation how? That you will not be misperceived as someone that has no care for Allah's boundaries, because others do believe it's haram,
14:45it's a gray area by definition. It cuts both ways. And just as they're supposed to assume the best of you, you're also supposed to do your part to protect your reputation, Islamically. Your dignity, your reputation
14:59is of the objectives of the Shari'ah. So it's a shared responsibility to protect it. But does it mean that if you fall into the gray, I want to make sure everyone understands this, you automatically fall into the haram?
15:11Definitely not, according to the majority of scholars. The default is that the mutashabihat, the gray area itself is not haram. Why is it not haram?
15:23Remember we said everything is halal until we're certain it's haram. So because of that default, it's in and of itself not haram, but it could open the door to haram.
15:36And that's why this hadith continued to say, just like a shepherd that takes his sheep a little too close to forbidden lands, eventually they're just going to fall into it.
15:49Or as Mufti Hussain Kamani, hafidahullah, says that it's like when you keep driving on the shoulder, eventually you'll be in the ditch. You want to sort of accidentally dip into the shoulder because you were going to hit someone and then you come back.
16:01But if you live on the shoulder, you live on the wild side, you're going to find yourself on the dead end. May Allah protect us and you. Okay. Of the lessons of this hadith, now the hadith goes on to say,
16:15and there is a morsel of flesh in your body. If it's good, everything else is good. And if it is faulty, everything else is faulty. And that morsel of flesh is the heart. What does that have to do with the beginning of the hadith?
16:26Sisters, what does the heart have to do with all this? Of the signs of the healthy heart is that you care about there being a buffer between you and haram.
16:39Of the signs of the healthy heart is that you are uncomfortable with gray areas.
16:45You know, some people have become numb, desensitized to al-haram al-bayyin. Right or wrong? The clearly unlawful.
16:59You can get, you know, like this hadith is like the perfect response to the people who totally disregard Allah's boundaries and they claim what? But I have a good heart.
17:11Hold on just one second. Like the good heart here avoids the gray. You know, this is conceit and delusion of the heart to think this way.
17:20It's as crazy as saying, I don't brush my teeth, but I still have good oral hygiene. Who would accept that? Like you openly defy what Allah has clearly made unlawful.
17:33And you let yourself assume that your heart is fine. You know, because of this hadith, some of the early Muslims, it was reported by Abu Hurairah radiyallahu 'anhu, a Sahabi, and others,
17:43that they said, al-qalbu huwa al-maliku wal-a'da'u al-junud. The heart is king and the limbs are the soldiers. So when the soldiers are doing something, it's because the king told them to.
17:56If the soldiers are refusing to bow, that means the heart has refused to bow. Right or wrong? Ibn Taymiyyah rahimahullah, he actually says about this.
18:07He's not disagreeing with it, Abu Hurairah radiyallahu 'anhu's statement. He's saying actually though, the heart is king and the limbs are soldiers. Don't take that too seriously. Like that's an approximation.
18:20He said the Prophet's words are actually more precise. Like if you really want to be precise about it. He said because you can imagine the army every once in a blue moon, there's a coup d'etat, right?
18:34It can revolt against the king. He said but this hadith is telling you the limbs will never revolt against the heart. It'll never happen. Of course there could be other reasons. Sometimes, just to give people the benefit of the doubt.
18:47Sometimes people genuinely don't know. Not knowing whether this is halal or haram, that's why you want to tread with caution. But for your own self, if something is clearly a red line and you just sort of like crash right through it.
19:00You want to say there is something wrong here. There is certainly something wrong here because the Prophet said if things were right in there, the actions would have also been right. And so the heart is everything.
19:13We're going to keep circling back to it. Because the heart is the locus, like the location of where getting to know Allah happens by the way.
19:23There are non-Muslim professors in universities all around this country who can explain the Qur'an better than you.
19:31But they have no knowledge of Allah in a way that drives them to submit to Him and have a meaningful relationship with Him. Right? It is the heart that really gets to know Allah on the experiential level.
19:44Experiences nearness to Him, glorifies Him. Glorifies Him. And the heart is the only thing that will matter on the day of judgment. As Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala said,
19:55يَوْمَ لَا يَنْفَعُ مَالٌ وَلَا بَنُونَ إِلَّا مَنْ أَتَى اللَّهَ بِقَلْبٍ سَلِيمٍ The day no wealth, no children will ever benefit you except the one that comes to Allah with a heart that is salim.
20:07You know salim means like sound free from blemish. Salim is superlative. It reminds you of the fact that it needs a lifetime of work and constant polishing to meet Allah with a salim heart.
20:21May Allah grant us and you hearts that are salim. Allahumma ameen.
20:25Of the lessons of this hadith also is that this hadith declares that the truth will never be absent from the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ.
20:37Like the entire ummah will never be in the dark about the truth. Because it says there are matters in the deen that many people may not know. Even most people may not know. Imaginable, right?
20:51But it will never be the case that the whole ummah doesn't know the truth. Is this clear? This is why when the scholars all agree, with your eyes closed you can definitively say this is the truth from Allah ﷻ.
21:03Because if the truth were otherwise someone would have said it. Many people don't know. That means there are some who will always know. It may be a rotation of who knows when, right? But there will always be someone.
21:17Allah will never withhold the truth, the light of truth from this ummah for the blink of an eye. When the scholars agree you know that's true. And when they disagree what happens?
21:29The truth is for sure among their views. It can't be none of their views or else the ummah again is in the dark. So that's one of the lessons of this hadith you do want to recall.
21:39Someone comes and tells you, "I discovered what the Qur'an actually means about this, that, and the third." Salah is actually just like, you know, the spiritual vibes even if you get them through yoga. Or like hijab is just like an attitude.
21:51It's not actually, you know, sort of involving a dress requirement. Hold on, who thought of this before you? Nobody, can that ever be Islam? The ummah was not in the dark for 1400 years till you, God's gift to the world, showed up.
22:05Sorry, that's not going to work. Even if I don't know the specific holes in your argument that notion is impossible. The last maybe lesson, just to move on briskly, that we can take from this hadith.
22:18Is that I said here that this hadith is saying whoever falls into the gray will fall into the haram. That's what this hadith is saying.
22:30But beyond this hadith now is it possible that the gray area could itself be haram? What I want you to pay attention to because it applies to every one of us even if we're not ulama.
22:44Sometimes the gray is caused by us not applying ourselves carefully. What do I mean? We're not performing our due diligence.
22:53So you are not allowed to speak to someone of the opposite gender that's not your relative. Just sort of playfully, without there being a justification. Like the cashier to get my change, the job interview, the co-worker, the classmate, the teacher, the student.
23:07There's a need for this, right? That need, are you always going to have a scholar standing there with you telling you, okay, that's the cutoff guys. Keep it moving, right? Is that going to happen? No, it's never going to happen. You're going to have to sort of say, it's gray.
23:19The application of the rule that is agreed upon is gray here. You're going to have to be the gatekeeper of your own heart. Is that clear? I'll give you another example. Your job technically is halal.
23:33But can there happen certain things at your job that can render some of your income impure? And no one sort of knows the context or can know that context but you, yes.
23:45In fact, I'll share with you one beautiful story and we'll close this hadith with it and move on to hadith seven.
23:51You know, Muhammad ibn Sirin, rahimahullah, was the great, great, great imam of the tabi'een who became actually a wealthy trader eventually in his life.
24:02And he had borrowed money to purchase a whole load of barrels of oil to resell them for a profit. He basically wakes up one day.
24:14He finds a mouse dead in one of the barrels. So what does he do? He actually dumps all of the barrels.
24:26He doesn't know what happened in which barrel at night in the dark. He was afraid to play. It's probably just this barrel, right?
24:36He was afraid that he just had this optimism bias because he has no idea where he's going to get the money from if he gets rid of these barrels. So he dumps all of the barrels. And as a result, he goes through bankruptcy.
24:48And when his lender came after him, he had to go to prison. You know, sometimes people go to prison and they're the most righteous people on earth, right? He goes to prison because he wanted to avoid the gray.
25:01The gray here is the permissibility of selling this oil that could be najis, right? Could be compromised. And then as he's in prison, this is sort of a double lesson on the same theme.
25:14As he's in prison, you know, the guards came to him and they said to him,
25:23Anas ibn Malik, you know, the great companion of the Prophet ﷺ who served him for 10 years when he came to Medina. Anas ibn Malik has passed away. And he left in his wasiya that you have to be the one that washes him.
25:36So we're going to sneak you out. You do what Anas wants and you come right back to prison. Deal or no deal? He said, no deal. We'll get permission from the authorities.
25:48The authorities don't have the right to give me permission. You need to get me permission from the lender. I'm in here because of him. He's holding me accountable for my money that I couldn't pay him back. Can you imagine?
26:00The lender sort of granted him that concession. So like he refused to sell the oil, then refused to exit the prison, all because what? He wasn't sure it was clearly halal to do so.
26:12And so a lot of this stuff is going to land on you. It's not just sort of scholarly deliberations. And this is why it's so important, especially in these treacherous years, as the Prophet called them, about the end times in which we're sure we're living.
26:25If you want to remember, learn this du'a. The du'a of Umar ibn al-Khattab. Oh Allah, allow us to see truth as truth.
26:38And give us the ability to follow it. And allow us to see falsehood as falsehood. And give us the ability to restrain ourselves from it.
26:52Say it with me. Allahumma arina al-haqqa haqqa. warzuqna ittiba'ahu.
27:03wa arina al-baatila baatilan warzuqna ijtinabahu. Learn it, inshallah. Allahumma ameen.
27:16So, Hadith 7. This is the Hadith of Abu Ruqayya, radiyallahu anhu, Tamim al-Dari, Tamim ibn Aws al-Dari. He said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said,
27:32The deen, this religion, is all about nasiha. Probably, sincerity is the best word we have, though there is no word for nasiha. That's why we're going to unpack it together, inshallah.
27:48We said, to whom is this nasiha due, O Messenger of Allah?
27:58He said, it is due to Allah, and to His Book, and to His Messenger, and to the leaders of the Muslims and their masses. So, of course, nasiha is a very familiar word in Muslim spaces.
28:12Nasiha means what? Advice. For sure, that can't be the end of the story, because to whom is it due, Allah? Who's advising Allah? Nasiha can't be advice.
28:25We got to sort of expand our understanding of this term. So, nasiha is sincerity, but sincerity in the wider sense. We don't just mean like your motive and your ritual act of worship, like with Hadith 1.
28:39Sincerity in terms of your loyalty to the object of your nasiha. Sincerity in terms of your commitment. Sincerity in terms of your genuine goodwill towards the object of your nasiha.
28:52It actually comes from the word nasaha, which means to clarify. You know, like clarified butter? To clarify, to purify something from any extraneous elements or any imperfections that got into it.
29:07The Arabs used to say nasahtu al-asal. I put honey, asal, under or through a process of nasiha, meaning what? I filtered the honey from the wax and the twigs and everything. Get it?
29:21So, it's the filtration to clarify and to purify. And so, to Allah, it means to clear everything that doesn't belong, that shouldn't be, between you and your Maker, Azza wa Jal. So, it means to glorify Allah.
29:36That's what la ilaha illallah means, that Allah is, you know, exclusively the most glorious, the most great, the most prioritized.
29:48So, to glorify Allah above all else, including above yourself. To glorify Him, to prioritize His desires over your desires. Which is only possible when He becomes what? Your ultimate love.
30:03As the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, you will never taste the sweetness of faith without three things. The first of them, an yakuna Allahu wa rasuluhu ahabba ilayhi mimma siwahuma. For Allah and His Messenger to be more beloved to you than everything else combined.
30:18To learn about His perfection and adore Him for His perfection. To learn about His generosity, His graciousness, and adore Him for His generosity and His graciousness.
30:28You know, I was just reflecting yesterday on la ahada asbaru 'ala adha yasma'uhu min Allah. No one is more patient with hearing harm than Allah.
30:41They set up rivals for him, associate partners with him. Ascribe a wife and a child to Him, and in those very same moments, wa huwa yarzuquhum wa yu'afihim, He provides for them and He gives them health. While they're doing that.
30:55And then you read the ayah about, you know, they claim that God had a son. They said something preposterous, takadu al-samawatu yatafattarna minhu, you know, the skies almost ripped open from that statement.
31:09watanshaqqu al-ard, and the earth was about to crack. watakhirru al-jibalu hadda, and the mountains are about to collapse. and da'aw lilrahmani waladan, they claim that the Most Merciful has a son.
31:20And then you go everywhere else in the Qur'an also, Allah says what? yubaddilu Allahu sayyi'atihim hasanat. Allah will take all of that crime and turn it into good deeds.
31:33Not erase it, but make it mountains of good deeds. If they repent from it. When Allah says, inna alladhina fatanu al-mu'mineena wal-mu'minati thumma lam yatubu.
31:44Those who burn the believing men and women alive. Story of the trench, right? And if they don't repent, they will be admitted into the hellfire. And don't repent. That means if they repent,
31:57despite the fact that they massacred, they genocided the awliya of Allah, they still get to go to paradise with them. Can you imagine? Right? We cannot. It is heart melting to get close to Allah's names and attributes.
32:11That is part of the nasiha that is due to Allah. To allow your heart to do that. Then he said, to His Book. What does it mean to glorify His Book? I'm almost shy to say this, but like to actually read it.
32:25To try to commit yourself to get close to it, to understand it. To seek your cure from it. To seek your guidance from it.
32:36You know when the Prophet ﷺ was described by Aisha radiyallahu anha. Kana khuluquhu al-Qur'an. His character was the Qur'an. In the narration of Abu al-Darda, he said,
32:50yurdihi ma ardahu wa yuskhituhu ma iskhatah. He is pleased by whatever the Qur'an is pleased with. Like in approval of. And displeased by whatever the Qur'an is displeased with. You know, I shared this a few Ramadans ago.
33:03This is called emotional alignment. You know. You keep subjecting yourself to the Qur'an until you normalize the value system of the Qur'an in you. You know, why do we say, a'udhu billahi minash shaytanir rajim as a requirement before you read Qur'an?
33:17Why? Why do you think? Why do you think it's required then? Not in any other place almost. Because shaitan's greatest fear is that you actually get close to the Qur'an. That's his greatest fear.
33:30That you stop seeing the Qur'an as a list of duties and hardships. And if I start becoming one of those people that's always reading Qur'an, I'm gonna be one of those uptight religious folks. Dr. Hatim says the shaitan pulls
33:44like a fast one on people. And he gives them rabies regarding reading Qur'an. You know why? It's obviously a medical sort of inside thing that I didn't fully understand immediately. But he's a physician. So you know rabies,
33:58you develop a fear of water. Hydrophobia they call it, right? And like you start spasming and things when you try to drink. But of course if you don't have water, what happens? You die. And so he develops his rabies inside you of the Qur'an
34:12that's like one foot in, one foot out. But if you don't have it, ignorance was never bliss. It's not gonna help. It's going to be spiritual death. One of the early scholars of Islam, they asked him, okay, how much?
34:25How much Qur'an should I read? And he said to them, to the extent of the happiness that you seek. There's no ceiling. But the Qur'an will not begin to give you part of itself.
34:39It's an endless, shoreless ocean that will only begin to give you a part of itself when you give it all of yourself. That doesn't mean like you, you know, you quit school and you quit your job and you specialize in unemployment. That's not what we mean.
34:53But when you're with the Qur'an, you're with the Qur'an. That's part of nasiha with the Qur'an, to clear the road. And then you glorify His Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And we spoke about this a great deal
35:07with Hadith 5. But just to constantly remind yourself that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is the greatest of the creation of Allah. He is greater than the throne.
35:19He is greater than the pen. He is greater than Jibreel alayhi salam. You know, when the buraq was brought for the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to take the night journey
35:32from Mecca to Masjid al-Aqsa, al-buraq irta'ad, the hadith in Sunan at-Tirmidhi says, it shook under him. Maybe out of nervousness, like this is ultimate stardom, right? He's meeting the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
35:46And some scholars said it was because no one has written it for 600 years since Jesus peace be upon him, right? It wasn't used to being written. And so Jibreel rebuked al-buraq and said to him, do you have any idea who's on top of you?
36:00Like you're going to make him fall. This is Muhammad. I swear to you, no one greater than him has ever ridden you. Even the Prophets of Allah
36:12aren't compared to Muhammad alayhi salatu wa salam. And so to understand as al-Junaid rahimahullah, Sayyid al-Ta'ifah used to say that kullu al-turuq, every tariqah,
36:22every path to Allah is now shut. Except the path behind Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He's not accepting any other roads to him. Azza wa jall, subhanahu wa ta'ala.
36:36Now let's get to li-a'immati al-muslimin wa 'ammatihim, to have nasiha with the leaders of the Muslims and the general public or the commoners, not the commoners, the masses, the rest of them.
36:49Sincere goodwill towards your fellow Muslims. So why didn't he say Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, sincere goodwill to the Muslims? Why did he separate, you know, the leaders of the Muslims and the masses? Why especially the leaders?
37:02Because the leaders are part of the Muslims. So why give them a category to themselves? Who's got it? Huh? The leaders have egos. Who else got one?
37:16It's also because leaders are accused before anyone of having egos. Right or wrong? Leaders are usually, more often than not, before anyone else, they are treated with the least forgiveness
37:30when we're assessing them. The least objectivity. We're not like stoic and neutral and objective when we are trying to criticize them. Like most of the time, leaders are under fire. I'm not saying they're angels,
37:44but they're under fire unfairly. It's quite a burden to be a leader. Right? You know, I was just sharing with someone recently because, you know, there are tidbits of leadership
37:57that Allah Azza wa Jal has, you know, tested us with. I said to him, I swear I'm not justifying it, but I totally get why people become dictators. Like why people stop listening to others
38:10because 99% of the stuff that comes their way is completely negative, accusatory. Right? So it's like, what are the odds that they're going to actually tell me something good for me? So they just start,
38:24I'm not saying they should, but I get it. Right? And so here, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is telling you, this default attitude is demonic when it comes to leaders, and you need to shake it off as a Muslim. In one hadith actually narrated by Ahmad,
38:38the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said there are three qualities. Whoever has them, a believer's heart will never be overtaken by hatred and grudges. He said, to work sincerely for Allah.
38:52Ikhlasul 'amal lillah. He said, wal-munasahah li-'uli al-amr and to have nasiha towards your leaders. All right? To have goodwill. I want him to succeed because we all succeed if he succeeds. Right?
39:06I have his back and I tell people to stop interpreting everything negatively, and I give him advice when he needs to hear it as well, but not in a way that sort of would cause society to descend into debacle. To give nasiha to leaders, he said, and to adhere to the community,
39:19meaning even when it's difficult. Okay. So nasiha to the leaders in particular. And then nasiha to all the Muslims, right? Nasiha is about being protective
39:33of every last Muslim, being supportive of every last Muslim. And we will visit this again and again in other ahadith that even more, you know, explicitly emphasize it. But how do you do this in shortest terms?
39:47You love for them what you love for yourself. You put yourself in their shoes. You know, Jarir ibn Abdillah al-Bajali, this is a companion of the Prophet ﷺ. At-Tabari narrates,
40:00you got to hear this, that he sent an assistant of his to buy a horse for him. And so the assistant bargained down to 400 dirham. Or it may have been in the narration of At-Tabari,
40:13300 dirham. And so they agreed and settled. So he brings the horse with the seller back to Jarir to pay him. So he says to him, how much? He said, 300 dirham. He said to him, but your horse is worth more.
40:27So 400 dirham, but it's worth more. 500, I'll take 500. But it's worth more. Until he eventually agrees to pay him
40:39800 dirham for the horse. فَقِيلَ لَهُ فِي ذَلِكِ So people talked to him about this. Like, this is crazy. Like, who does that? So he said to them, إِنِّي بَايَعْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ عَلَى النَّصِيحَةِ لِكُلِّ مُسْلِمٍ
40:53I pledged allegiance to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on the condition that I would have nasiha for every Muslim. Goodwill for every Muslim. I would like, if I was in his shoes, he's saying, someone to tell me
41:07that I am unaware of the market price, the market value of this vehicle. There is a similar narration from Ziyad ibn Rabi' from his father. He says,
41:19I saw Muhammad ibn Wasi' رحمه الله in the market in Marw. Marw is Merv, right? Like Iran, Turkmenistan border.
41:31Famous historic city in Islamic history. He said, I saw him in the market in Marw selling his donkey. And so a man says to him, أَتَرْضَاهُ لِي
41:44Would you accept this donkey for me? Like, are you in approval of it? Like, are you selling this in good conscience? There's no like hidden transmission issues, right? Are you in approval of this for me? And so he said to him,
41:58لَوْ رَضِيتُهُ لَكَ مَا بِعْتُهُ If I was approving of it, I wouldn't have sold it. I'm being honest, I want to get rid of it. That's why I'm selling it. If it was the ideal that I would love for you, I wouldn't be selling it.
42:12But because I prefer the money over the vehicle right now, that's the only reason I'm selling it. Like, there are multitudes of examples of how well-wishing they were. This was the norm. This was the spirit of early Islam.
42:26It's actually very simple. Love for them what you love for yourself. But it's also very, very hard. Right? It's simple. It's not complicated. But it's hard. Why is it hard? Because it requires of us to change our interior.
42:40One by one, we have to change what's in there. And until we start doing that, more and more of us taking on the individual responsibility to purify our interiors, our condition as an ummah
42:53will continue to be what it is. Like that was their norm. That was the ethos that Islam produced among them. You know, one final point I will make. Why is advice now, now that I sort of argued
43:07against nasiha being advice, let me bring it back to the connection of how advice became nasiha in sort of the conventions of language. Why is nasiha called advice? Or advice called nasiha?
43:21It is because the greatest manifestation, right, of you wishing well for someone is you correcting them when they need to be corrected when it runs the risk of them resenting you
43:34because you corrected them. Is there anything more sincere than that? That you gave priority to their welfare over your interests in the relationship. They may hate me for this, but I have to tell them.
43:48I can't leave them blind to their flaws. When you think of nasiha like that, you realize that a lot of times when we're supposedly giving nasiha, supposedly giving advice, sincere advice, we're actually not
44:01because it's not coming from that place. You're just sort of doing what's called fadihah, exposing them, or tawbikh, like humiliating them, rebuking them. It's not actually nasiha because actual nasiha is about
44:14I want the best outcome for this person. I want to rectify that person. You know, it's really beautiful also, and Arabic is like that. The word minsaha in Arabic means a needle that stitches,
44:27a sewing needle. Sewing needles fix things, but they also come with a pinch, right? They also come with a puncture. And so you're trying to rectify even if you're prioritizing their welfare
44:41over the emotional fulfillment you get out of the relationship because you're jeopardizing it with the nasiha. That's why it's sincerity. And sincerity and goodwill and well-wishing for Muslims does not mean, of course, that
44:55we shouldn't be well-wishing and have goodwill for all of humanity. How could that ever be possible? Like we don't want people to get married and have domestic stability and have healthy families and to have dignified livelihoods
45:08and to be cured from their sicknesses. The Prophet ﷺ said, لَا يَبْلُغُ الْعَبْدُ حَقِيقَةَ الْإِيمَانِ The servant does not ascend to the reality of faith حَتَّى يُحِبَّ لِلنَّاسِ مَا يُحِبُّ لِلنَّفْسِ
45:22until he loves for all people what he loves for himself. Al-Fudayl used to say, we are not allowed in Islam to have ill will for a dog. So how could it be for a fellow human being?
45:35That is the default, all of humanity. May Allah ﷻ fill our hearts with sincerity and goodwill and genuine loyalty to Allah and His Book and His Messenger and to our leaders and to the Muslims at large
45:49and to humanity in its entirety. Allahumma ameen. وصلى الله وسلم وبارك على نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين
