Al Asr -1

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the Prophets and Messengers, Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions. May peace and blessings be upon them. My brothers and sisters, the Sahaba, whenever they began a meeting or they ended a meeting, they would start and end with which surah? They would recite one surah. Which one? Wa al-asr. Shukr. Wa al-asr. Inna al-insana lafi khusri. Illa alladhina amanu wa amilu salihati wa tawasubi al-hakki wa tawasubi sabr. Allah SWT said, Allah took an oath. An oath is just a promise. It is taken to emphasise the importance of something. So Allah took an oath by time. In another hadith, Allah SWT said, Do not curse time. People say, oh, bad time. Allah said, do not curse time because I am time. So Allah is taking an oath by time, by himself. And then Allah is saying, see the Arabic grammar of that. Inna, which is emphasis. Wa al-asr. Inna al-insana. And then Allah is using another word of, another command of emphasis, which is the lamb of Taqi. La fi khusri. If you say, Inna al-insana. If you say al-insana, kullu insana fi khusri, the meaning is convertible. No, Allah SWT is saying very simply. Inna al-insana. La fi khusri. Truly and verily and surely and definitely all of human beings. Inna al-insana. Every human being on the earth. La fi khusri. Surely that person is in loss. In khusran. He is in loss. He is in... And then Allah SWT says, makes the condition, the criterion, except those who have Iman. Wa amilu as-salihat. And who do good deeds. Remember, this is all related. Allah did not say, illa alladhina amanu, aw amilu as-salihati, aw no. He didn't say this or that or that. Allah said this and that and that and that. Illal alladhina amanu, wa amilu as-salihati, wa tawaso bil haqqi, wa tawaso bil haqqi, wa tawaso bil sami. And those who invite towards the Haqq, to the Truth, and those who have patience, who have sabr, who have perseverance, who have grit, who have persistence. Now think about this and say, why is Allah SWT... What do we learn from this surah? And why was this surah considered so important that Sahaba, Ridhaan la hiya alayhim in main, used to begin and end their meetings, meetings with this? And that is, because this surah focuses on the most critically important elements of life. Because remember, in our life, it's not how much money you have, how much of power you have, what properties you have, none of that. Your health, your wealth, your, whether you are handsome or pretty, or whatever you are, makes no difference. So Allah SWT in His beautiful Kalam has clearly specified what is important. The importance of, the important things are the ones that Allah mentioned. So the Sahaba used to say, read this surah to remind themselves, what is important? Iman wa amir as-sarihaat, wa tawassu bi-raq, wa tawassu bi-sawar. So let me examine myself to see, do I have Iman? What is the meaning of saying, Iman? It means that I believe, and totally and completely without any doubt, in the Tawheed of Allah SWT, that there is no one worthy of worship, except Allah. And in the Risalah of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi, that Rasool Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is the Messenger of Allah and is the last and final Messenger after whom there is no message. I do not make shirk, I do not join partners with Allah because there are no partners. I do not worship something other than Allah because there is no one worthy of worship except Allah. I do not allow my desires to supersede the orders of Allah. I don't worship my desires, I worship Allah. When I say I worship Allah, it means I keep Allah's boundaries, the hudud of Allah. What Allah made halal is halal, what Allah made haram is haram. Nobody else can do that. Nobody else can come and change that. Wherever the kalam of Allah, wherever the word of Allah comes, I follow the word, I don't follow my own logic. Think about this. Iblis was a jinn, but because of his knowledge and his ibadah and his zikr of Allah and so on and so on, he reached a level where he was with the Malaika. Right? He was with the Malaika. He was with the Malaika. So this elevation of darajat, think about this. Some of these things we have to reflect on. You might say, you know, it's very good, my darajat should be elevated. It is good, provided the ending is good. The darajat of Iblis were elevated to the point where he was with the Malaika in the presence of Allah . Then what did he do? Think about it. He was with the Malaika. Allah commanded, the word of Allah. Allah said, make sajdah to Adam. Right? Make sajdah to the to Adam . What did the Malaika do? They made sujood. What did Iblis do? Iblis used logic. He used logic in the presence of the command of Allah. He used, in our terms today, he used logic in the presence of text. What is text? Text is the command of Allah or the command of Allah . So the command of Allah was make sajdah. Iblis said, no, no, hold on. You are asking me to make sajdah to something which you created him from clay? He said, my logic is what? My logic tells me I am superior. Anna khairum minhu. Why? Khalaqtani minnaar wa khalaqtau minteen Because you created me from fire. You created him from clay. So fire is superior to clay. He is using logic even though there is a hukam of Allah . Sometimes people answer this and they say, no, no, no, you see, he was wrong because you can put out fire by putting sand on it or putting clay on it. My submission is that is a very, very wrong way of answering this. Because when you answer it like that, you are accepting Iblis's logic and you are trying to counter the logic. It's not a question of whether fire is superior or clay is superior. The question there is, Allah commanded he did not obey, period. Even if he was right, he is still wrong. Think about this. Even if he was right, so don't fall into the trap of saying, no, no, but you see, you can put out the fire with the clay. That's not the issue. That is not the issue. If you do that, you are accepting the false argument of Iblis. So what was the result of Iblis using his logic, his reason, in the face of the Kalam of Allah, in the face of the Hukum of Allah? He is the Hellfire forever. So Islam teaches us, when we say Iman, when we say I believe in Allah, this is the meaning of belief in Allah. Belief in Allah is not just simply saying La ilaha illallah. It means living by La ilaha illallah. Not simply saying, will listen. It is Amalul Arqan. According to La ilaha illallah. Right? So InshaAllah, we'll do the other, I don't want to do all the thing today. So InshaAllah the rest of it we'll do maybe tomorrow or something. But think about this. Illa allatheena amanoo Kullu bani Adam fee khusur. Illa allatheena amanoo. All human beings are in loss, except those who have Iman. And Iman means to obey Allah unconditionally without bringing your own reasoning and logic and what not into it. If there is a command of Allah, we suspend everything else. There is nothing wrong with using logic. We should, Allah gave us a brain, we used. Akal is, Alhamdulillah nothing wrong. But when this Akal or an argument is faced with a text, with the Kitab of Allah, or the Hukm of Rasulullah we suspend that, no more Akal. Then only Ubudiyyah. Only submission to Allah . We ask Allah to make us those who submit to Him. We ask Allah to make us those whose hearts are open to the Nur and the Hidayat of Allah . We ask Allah to make us those who follow what Rasulullah taught us and who follow the Deen in the way of the Rasul . May Allah bless the Prophet and his family and the people.