Never despair

https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=TFTthtR4_90 Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wassalatu wassalamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen. Muhammadun Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathira. I'm about to... I'm about to finish this. I'm sitting here at the back of this lovely little lake in Narsapur. And it's a pretty chilly morning. So we have this lovely fire going. And we're contemplating on the khudrat of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The lake at this moment, the water is like a sheet of glass. There is a teal that is circling. And at some point, I guess, it will land on the water. But just now, it's flying somewhere else. There are a couple of... red-bottled lapwings, which are sounding their alarm call. The teal is coming right overhead. It's checking out the ground to see if it is safe to land. Very, very beautiful scene. There are... Fish have started feeding. So you see the little circle as they break the surface of the water. Absolutely, fabulous scene. I remind myself of you, that this is the khudrat of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in one small little corner of the globe. What must be this khudrat? And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us among those who will be entered into Jannah. When we enter Jannah. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala called this dunya. Dunya. the lowest thing. A name which is deserving of the dunya, the lowest thing. Whereas Jannah, Allah SWT said that this is something which no eye has seen and no mind can comprehend the beauty and magnificence of it. So how beautiful and magnificent that should be. We ask Allah SWT to make us among those who will inherit that, inshallah. I remind myself and you about a very important thing, which is the we live today in a world which is full of turmoil. And it's almost like, to say that is like putting it mildly because this turmoil is there, it's seems to be ever increasing and every day there's a new piece of action that happens. And it all seems to be a question of who has the biggest stick. In Urdu there is a proverb of Mahavira which says, Jiski laati uski bhaiys. The buffalo belongs to the man with the stick. I remember the quote of the Roman general Pompey, when he was campaigning in Greece and some of the people of the town, they met him and trying to pacify him, trying to tell him not to invade the town and so on. And they quoted to him different laws which were accepted at the time. And Pompey just replied with one word, one line. He said, don't talk laws to us, we have swords. He said, don't talk laws to us, we have swords. And that is where we seem to be today in this world. Because on the face of it, it seems as if all that we learnt, whether in Islam or elsewhere, about justice, about compassion, about kindness, about what is fair, what is not fair, all that seems to have been trashed. And the only thing that seems to be used and extolled and praised is the power of the gun. How powerful is my military? In that situation, one of the things that we find when we sit in our gatherings and so on, is a sense of helplessness. Where people feel that, you know, after all, what can we do? And what can we do is not asked as a question, what can we do is mentioned as if to say that we cannot do anything. And there's a sense of helplessness, we can't do anything, we just have to bear what is happening. So how do we deal with this and how do we see this from an Islamic sense? My submission to you is this. If you want to think about a sense of helplessness, ask yourself, what must have been the sense of helplessness of a little boy who was probably five or six years old, who was thrown into a well by his own brothers, and he's at the bottom of this well, and those who had sworn to protect him and to take care of him, were the ones who had actually thrown him into that well. What must have been the sense of helplessness of this boy when he is apparently rescued, and then he realizes that the rescue was only to sell him in the market as a slave? What must have been the sense of helplessness of this boy when he is apparently rescued, and then he realizes that he is actually being rescued? What must have been the sense of helplessness of this young man several years later when he was wrongfully accused, and even though his innocence was proven beyond doubt, he was still thrown into prison? What must have been the sense of helplessness of the man who stood, on the mountain of Safa, and called out and said, Wa Subaha? And when the people came, and he said to them, that if you do not leave this worship of your creations, worship of idols, worship of things which cannot do anything to you, no harm, no benefit, and if you do not worship Allah , you will face, disaster. And instead of listening to him at least, people walked away, people opposed him, people abused him, and he did not have a single supporter in the whole town. What must have been the sense of helplessness of this woman who was left in the barren valley of Bakkah by her husband, Khalilullah? She was left there with an infant, nursing infant, and she left him in the valley, and she climbed one hill, and then she turned around and climbed another hill, somehow desperately trying to find some sustenance, find some help, some support. Palestinians have soon soon întarnished. Even if she is not healthy, A full number of Presidents of many religions have been hypnotized by the reality of this wrongness. But to draw some reply or not specify anythingamiall ceremony, she must do it in the mirror, while notwithstanding the presence of the Exalted, and she will doing like that forever. salesman-singer, Purnima from DaliMaybe, She said, she been sitting in, looking at I mean that looking at it from the outside, you and I may have thought that here is a person who is helpless, who has no support, who has no one to protect them. And we do not believe that those people themselves felt helpless because they were connected with Allah SWT. And that is the lesson. The lesson is that even though circumstances might be extremely adverse, a sense of helplessness or a sense of power depends on our connection with Allah SWT. And then if you see all of these stories, see where the story ends. So the thing to understand is that at any given point, our subjective feelings at that time and at that point is like taking a still shot. Of a process that is happening. Now if you take a still shot of a process that is happening, you get only that peace. And at that point that peace may not look very powerful, may not look very beneficial, may not look very hopeful. It might look very helpless. But then we have to understand and remember that that's only a still shot. Whereas the reality is, the entire process, and see where the process ends. In the case of Hajra, I'm going chronologically, in the case of Hajra, what do we see? We see the tribe of Jorhob, which comes from Yemen, and they actually submit to this lone woman. When she says, you can use this water of Zamzam, but the water belongs to us, meaning to her and Ismail, Allah SWT, her husband, our son. And they accept. And that is the beginning of the whole great city of Makkah. It is the beginning eventually of the Kaaba. It is the beginning of the Haram Sharif. It is the beginning of Hajj, which continues to this day. What is the end of the story and the process of Yusuf , starting with being at the bottom of a well, when he's a lady, a little baby, a little boy, is to become the ruler and the governor of the great civilization of Egypt. And what is the, where does that story end? Alhamdulillah, it's still going on. It's not ended 1500 years later of Muhammad , who stood on the mountain of Safa and said, Wa Subaha. The story is that Allah SWT gave in that one same generation, rule and command, over their known world to those people, the Sahaba, Ridwanullahi alaihi majma'in, Rasulullah SAW, and then continued the story. And today we are sitting here on the bank of this lovely little lake, toasting ourselves, our toes in this fire, and talking about the greatness of Allah SWT, Jalla Jalaluhu. All thanks to that one incident. All thanks to where it began. So when we talk about, ah, situations, and especially adverse situations, and when we are thinking about them, and you are saying, you know, what will happen and so on, and things look so bad, and things look so adverse, and we feel helpless, and we sit there and we say, oh, what do you know, we can't do anything. Please understand, that is completely and totally false. Despair does not exist in the heart of a Muslim. To despair of the mercy of Allah SWT, is kufr. Think about life as a process, because life is a process. Life is not a snapshot. Life is a process. And in this process, whatever we might be, is that snapshot. Where does it end? It ends where Allah SWT wants it to end. Where do we want it to end? We want it to end, where, we say, , Allah said, the world is eternal, and there is no end. We want to see the future. Allah said the one who has been freed from the hellfire and entered into Jannah, only that person is successful. So when we look at this world and you see all the stuff that is happening, let us remind ourselves that all this and more has happened before. In the 13th century, if you were in Baghdad, if I was in Baghdad, you would have looked over the wall and you would have seen the horde. You would have seen the Mongols of Hulegu. And you would have known that there is no hope of survival. There is no hope of winning. And indeed that's what happened. The entire city, great city of Baghdad, the greatest city on the face of the planet at the time was leveled. Every living man, woman and child was slaughtered. Every living thing was slaughtered. Every cat, every dog was slaughtered. Yet,