Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. When you talk about the concepts of the hereafter, it's very difficult to actually have the imagery that is necessary to activate within us what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala calls us to. You hear about the day of judgment, you hear about life after death, you hear about heaven and hell, and you hear about all of these lofty things, and all of these stations, and this imagery, and it gets really hard to connect. In fact, if you think about it, in general, in our generation in particular, we're not a people who read books and derive imagery from books as much as we do watch movies that create images for us. And the effects have to become more and more advanced to derive the emotions that are necessary to bring something out of us. I remember seeing this image of a child, and it said a child from 19 so and so, and then another child from 2022. One of them is reading a book, and so the imagery is coming out of the child's mind, and the other one is looking at a screen, and the imagery is coming from the screen into the child's mind. And so, especially now, you hear about heaven, you hear about hell, you hear about things that would have given the salaf, that would have given the pious predecessors goosebumps, or it would have increased them in a certain longing for paradise, and your mind goes towards all of these special effects, and sci-fi, and movies, and things of that sort. So it becomes really hard to connect with those things. On top of that, you also have this obsession with the immanence, and the evidence, and what's right in front of me, and experiencing it, and the inability to work towards something that seems delayed and distant. The promise somehow doesn't seem as real. And you know, I had a really interesting conversation with a young man who was
telling me, he said that, you know, my toba came after watching this TED talk from this neuroscientist that was talking about how we know, we know now, we can scientifically say that consciousness continues past death. That after the heart dies, there's still consciousness, and that there's enough in terms of studies now to talk about how long brain activity lasts, and how many brain cells are necessary to still be able to connect with the environment. And we have all of these, you know, collections of data, out-of-body experiences, and people that were in surgeries, where the assumption was that they were not responsive, but when they woke up, they were able to tell you exactly what was happening with them, and they were able to tell you about what scapules the surgeon was using, and all of the different devices, and things they should not have been able to do. And he's saying, you know, that was my toba, because at the end of this entire TED talk, the guy says, but I'm still an atheist, by the way. So he explains that there has to be an afterlife, there has to be connection, there has to be something else, but at the same time, because he is limited, ironically, by the gift that Allah gave him. Allah gave him a gift of understanding, and science is a gift, and medicine is a gift, he limited himself to it, because he turned it into an object of worship, rather than a means by which you worship Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala further, and glorify him further. So when you talk about the hereafter, and you talk about life after death, and you talk about these concepts that are very hard for us to actually assign imagery to, it's important for us to establish a few concepts within our hearts and within our minds, to really be able to connect. Obviously, when you read about the narrations of the Prophet ﷺ himself, trying to convey, trying to convey what he was seeing on the night of al-Isra' wal-Mi'raj,
even the Prophet ﷺ said that there are certain things that I just cannot impart upon you from a worldly perspective. For example, the colors, Sidrat al-Muntahab. The Prophet ﷺ is saying, these are colors that don't really exist in the worldly spectrum of colors, I've never seen those colors, so I can't tell you green, or orange, or red, because it's somewhere there, and it's majestic. And anyone who's been to the bottom of the ocean will tell you that the colors there are unlike any colors that you've seen above the water, so what then of the colors in the heavens? And the Prophet ﷺ trying to explain that, and convey those concepts. Allah blessed the Prophet ﷺ by giving him an experience on al-Isra' wal-Mi'raj. So now, you can imagine, even for him ﷺ, when he stands on the minbar, and he talks to his companions about these prophets, he's seen these prophets, he's met them. When he talks about Isa ﷺ and the return of Jesus ﷺ, he's seen Isa ﷺ. When he talks about al-Masih ad-Dajjal, when he talks about the Antichrist, he's seen him now ﷺ. He's seen paradise, he's seen the fire, he's seen the reward of the grave, he's seen the punishment of the grave. Even for the Messenger ﷺ, imagine what it was like for him now, when he conveyed this to his ummah. Now we come to what's still left with us though. When we think about the Day of Judgment, and that moment of rising before Allah ﷻ, and Allah ﷻ as he describes himself on that day, and his relationship with his creation. And obviously when it comes to Allah ﷻ and these very vivid images of the af'al of Allah ﷺ, the doings of Allah ﷻ on the Day of Judgment, it's nothing that the human brain can encompass.
Everything that comes to your mind, Allah is different than that. That's the aqeedah, the creed of Ahl as-Sunnah wa-l Jama'ah, is that you cannot encompass. There are certain things that are mentioned and you have to connect with them, but the point is that you connect with them, not that you try to visualize them to a point that you assign human limitations and definitions to them. So when Allah ﷻ talks about himself, when Allah ﷻ talks about his doings and that vivid imagery comes on the Day of Judgment, you could imagine a throne and the shade of the throne, all that you want, but the throne of Allah is not like the throne that you will imagine, and the shade of that throne is not like the shade that you will imagine. But you can still connect to the concept, and that's the gift of Allah and his Messenger ﷺ describing to us the vividness of that day. It's the difference, as one of my teachers mentions, between something being anthropomorphic and something being anthropic. Anthropomorphic is when you start to actually limit that world to what you understand and start to assign to it the constructions that you have in your mind. Anthropic is when you're conveying the meaning and the understanding so that you can connect to it, and that is how we connect to it. Now here's something very powerful as well. When you get to Jannah, may Allah ﷻ make us from Ahlul Jannah, Allahumma ameen. You can't imagine Jannah because it has what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and it has never even come to, la khatrah, it has never even come to the mind of a human being. You cannot even imagine it, but on the Day of Judgment, when you enter into Jannah, may Allah ﷻ make us amongst the people of Jannah, there is enough recognition to have pleasure and to make a connection. When you see people of Jannah that were people of this world, they don't look the same. Our loved ones who have departed from us and the people that we love that we never got to meet,
like our Messenger ﷺ and the companions that came before, each other, because all of us will bury one another at some point and bid farewell. When we meet, there's enough recognition there to enjoy the sense of recognition, but we won't look like we look here. There's enough of a difference as well to where it's still Jannah, it's a different elevation, and Allah ﷻ controls the constructions and Allah ﷻ controls the senses and the experiences, right? So it'll still be that, and what do the people of Jannah say? هذا الذي رزقنا من قبل They see something in Jannah and they say, you know, this resembles what we knew from the world, but you bite into that fruit in Jannah, and this is nothing like the fruit of this dunya. It has absolutely no connection to it in its actual experience, but there's enough familiarity. Now what's the benefit of all this when we're talking about this? I want to point to a few narrations where you find righteous people who experienced something of that world and saw something of that world that maybe we didn't pay attention, or at least I didn't pay attention prior, to some of those smaller points of familiarity. The very famous narration of Abdullah ibn Umar radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma, who had a dream, and in this dream the angels had come to him and he was witnessing in his dream qiyamah, he was witnessing resurrection, and he was being taken by the angels to the fire. Now here's the thing, when he got there, we know that this narration ends with what? The angels told him this is not your place, and he went instead to al-Jannah, so it was frightening in the beginning, but he was saved at the end, but the frightening part of it frightened him to know what he should do different. So he asked through Hafsah radiyaAllahu ta'ala anha, the Prophet ﷺ, what is he supposed to make of this?
And the Prophet ﷺ says, ni'ma rajul Abdullah, what a good man Abdullah is, what a good young man he is, wa kani yaqoomu allayn, but if only he pray a little bit more at night. He needs to pray qiyamah. Now what does Ibn Umar radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma convey from that dream though? He could not describe to us what fire looked like, or what paradise looked like, or what the angels looked like, but you know what he could describe? He said, I saw people in Jahannam in my dream, and I recognized them. You imagine that? There were people that I saw there, and I knew their names and I knew their faces. He didn't say who they were. Can you imagine what that was like for him to actually have that familiarity? Everything else looks very foreign, but there were people there, and I know these people. May Allah ﷻ not make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen. I knew those people. There's another narration that I'll share with you, which I'm sure many of you have heard before, but I'm going to point to one vivid part of it. It's the narration of Malik ibn Dinar radiyaAllahu ta'ala. Malik ibn Dinar, one of the great scholars of this ummah, leading salah, an imam of this ummah, leading salah in the masjid of the Prophet ﷺ, as Ibn Qudamah radiyaAllahu ta'ala said, some of the people asked him, what's your story? How did you get to this maqam? How did you get to the station? Because if you saw Malik ibn Dinar in that light, as the imam of Masjid al-Nabawi, as this great scholar of the ummah, you would think this guy was angelic his whole life. So much nur, so much goodness, so much light in his face, so much contentment with Allah ﷻ. So they're asking him, these young people are asking him, how did you get to this place? And Malik ibn Dinar says, it's not what you think. He said, I used to be a drunkard. I used to work as an enforcer, an officer, under a tyrant. I used to wrong people and beat people. And at some point, he once intervened as an officer
between two people, and he helped the one that was being wronged, and he felt a little good about himself. So he started to make a little bit of a turn. So he used to get married, had a really hard time finding someone that was willing to marry him. Eventually gets married, has a daughter, starts to make a turn in his life. But he was still an alcoholic. And one day, as he's playing with his young daughter, while he is drunk, he drops her and she dies. This story is very different. When you come up to the imam, and you come up to the scholar, and you say, what's your past like? This is not what you're expecting to hear in detail. So I was a drunkard. I killed my daughter by accident. So what did he do? He drank more. And he said, I remember the 15th night of Sha'ban, Sha'ban. May Allah allow us to make the most of this month and allow us to live to see Ramadan. He says it in the narration, it was in the middle of Sha'ban, coming up on Ramadan. And he said, I remember that night, it was the night of Friday. And I was drinking my alcohol. And he said, I didn't get up and pray Isha, I drunk myself to sleep that night. So I skipped Isha that night. And I drunk myself to sleep. And he said, in my dream, and many of you have heard this narration, but I want you to pay attention to a very particular part of this. He says, in my dream, I woke up and I was being thrown out of my grave. And I looked around and the people were being resurrected from their graves. And it was Yawm al Qiyamah. وَتَرَى النَّاسَ سُكَارًا وَمَا هُم بِسُكَارًا People look drunk, but in a different way, because of the anxiety and the fear as the people are running around and trying to figure out what's going to come next. And so I'm seeing the graves turn upside down. I'm seeing the people come out and run around and I'm one of them. And as he's captured by the scene, here's what he remembers. He says, فَسَمِعْتُ حِسًّا مِنْ وَرَائِي
I heard this terrifying noise from behind me. So he said, فَلْتَفَتُّ So I turned around. فَإِذَا بِتِنِّينٍ فَاتِحٍ فَهُ I saw this huge dragon with its mouth open. And he said, أَزْرَقْ أَسْوَتْ It had colors of blue and colors of black. كَأَعْضَ مِمَا يَكُونْ And it was greater than anything I had ever seen in terms of its size. You have this huge dragon. And this is the part of the dream I want to focus on actually. A huge dragon. And he said, it has its mouth open and starts to chase me. سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ قَالَ فَهَرَبْتُ مِنْهُ He said, I ran away. And as I'm running away and panting and trying to get away from this dragon, he says, فَإِذَا بِشَيْخٍ نَقِيَ ثَوْبٍ طَيِّبٍ رَائِحٍ He said, I saw this old man. نقية ثوب, he had a pure garment. طيِّبٍ رَائِحٍ He had a good smell to him. Good, you know, pure old man. But he's just an old man. So he said, فَسَلَّمْتُ عَلَيْهِ فَرَدَّ I said salam to him and he responded to me with that salam. فَقُلْتُ آجِرْنِي مِنْ هَذَا التِنِّينِ Aajarak Allah, help me with this dragon. May Allah help you. Help me with that dragon. May Allah help you. So he responds to him. And he says, subhanAllah, فَبَكَى He cried. The old man actually cried. فَقَالَ أَنَا ضَعِيفٌ وَهَذَا أَقْوَى مِنِّي وَلَا أَقْدِرُ عَلَيْهِ He said, look at me and look at that dragon. I'm a weak old man and that dragon is huge and strong. What am I going to do with that dragon? So he told him, run away. أَسْرِعْ Run away. فَلَعَلَّ اللَّهَ أَن يُطِيحَ لَكِ مَا يُنْجِيكَ مِنْهُ It may be that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will open up something for you that will save you from that dragon. But I can't do anything for you.
I'm done. So he said, I kept on running. In this part of the scene, subhanAllah, he said, I saw this area that looked like something of نعيم, something of blessing. But it had curtains, these beautiful curtains. And the curtains revealed behind them these cliffs. And these elegantly carved out areas within the cliffs, mountains and cliffs. And it had a beautiful scent to it. And I looked and I saw all of these young children. And their faces were like the full moon, bright faces. And he said, and I saw my daughter coming. And subhanAllah, listen to how he describes his daughter. He said, she was carried in a cradle of light. And my daughter comes towards me. And he said, she took my right hand with her left. And she waved off the dragon with her other hand. And the dragon went away. And I was just in complete shock. And she said, يا أبتي ألم يأمد الذين آمنوا أن تخشع قلوبهم لذكر الله Oh my father, isn't it time for those who believe to soften their hearts to the remembrance of Allah وما نزل من الحق and the truth which he has revealed ألم يأمد الذين آمنوا أن تخشع قلوبهم لذكر الله وما نزل من الحق What's wrong with you? When are you going to wake up? And he said, فبكيت, I cried. And I said, أنتم تعرفون القرآن, you know the Qur'an? And she responded. And she actually said, يا أبتي نحن أعرف به منكم We know the Qur'an better than you know the Qur'an. We know the Qur'an better than you know the Qur'an. Isn't it time for you, oh my father, to soften your heart to the remembrance of Allah
سبحانه وتعالى and the truth which he has revealed? So he said, and I asked her, what was that dragon? And who was that old man? And her response, she said that, ask for the dragon, عَمَلُكَ سُوءٌ Those were your sins. And they were coming to consume you and destroy you. You built that dragon. See, this is the thing here. You made that dragon. That was your deeds, your evil deeds, turned into a dragon on the day of judgment. So that's your dragon. You brought that into being. That dragon that's chasing you. And he said, what Shaykh and who was the old man? And this is what I want you to pay attention to. She said عَمَلُكَ الصَّالِحٌ أَضْعَفْتَهُ Your good deeds, you weakened them. Meaning Allah gave you something strong and potent to help you on the day of judgment. But those were your good deeds. أَضْعَفْتَهُ حَتَّى لَمْ تَكُنَّهُ طَاقَةٌ Until it had nothing to offer you. That's why it was pure, a pure old man, a beautiful old man. He wanted to help you. He wanted to help you, but you weakened him. You aged him. You made him utterly incapable of being able to do anything for you. أَضْعَفْتَهُ حَتَّى لَمْ تَكُنَّهُ طَاقَةٌ What was he going to do with that dragon of yours? So she said فَتُوبْ إِلَى اللَّهِ وَلَا تَكُنْ مِنَ الْهَالِكِينَ Repent to Allah and do not be from those who are destroyed. سُبْحَانَكَ بِنُ الدِّينِ حَرْسَةً And I said to her, what are you all doing? What are you doing here? All these children, what are they doing here? Now if you remember on the night of Asra and Mi'raj, the Prophet ﷺ saw children playing around the legs of Ibrahim ﷺ in the garden of Jannah. And he said that those were أَوْلَادَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ وَالْمُشْرِكِينَ These were children that died before the age of puberty, Muslim and non-Muslim, believer and disbeliever. Because there's no thumb on children, there's no sin on these children.
So, they were entered without accountability. But who are these children that are in this elegant place on the day of judgment waiting somewhere? And she said نَحْنُ أَوْلَادَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ We are the children of the Muslims. نَنْتَظِرُ أَبَاءَنَا وَأَمَّهَاتَنَا We're waiting for our fathers and for our mothers حَتَّى نَشْفَعُ لَهُمْ So, we can intercede for them. هَنِيًّا لَكُم May Allah make it easy for all of you who lost a child. With your صَبْر and with your احْتِصَاب, with your patience and your seeking the reward. Your child was in that gathering بِإِنِّ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى So, she said that's who we are. So, مَالِكَ مِنَ الْدِيْنَارِ رَحِيمُهُ اللَّهِ said I woke up. When I woke up, I went to all my idols. I broke them. I made wudu. I prayed and I went to Fajr and the rest was history. That was his tawbah رضي الله تعالى عنه. It started from there. But what was he able to connect to of the visualizations of the Day of Judgment? You see when we dream, there are true dreams. Sometimes Allah ﷻ shows you something in your dream for a reason. What was he able to connect with? He was able to connect with what was familiar to him. See on the Day of Judgment when you're talking about well how is this and how is that and how is Jannah look and how are we going to enter from this way and how did the stages work and at what point do you see Allah ﷻ and where is Ard al-Mahshar and when do you go from Ard al-Mahshar to the place of assembly to a sual, to being asked by Allah ﷻ and where is the Sirat and what point does this happen, what point does that happen? All of that we'll see it. But are your sins a dragon or are they an old man? And are your good deeds someone that you've weakened or are your good deeds going to be
your protector on the Day of Judgment? Those are the visualizations that we should connect ourselves to. And the Day of Judgment, subhanAllah and I'll end with this, it resembles quite a bit the way that our actual work days are. You wake up in the morning, the sun rises, you have some time to do what you do and then the night comes. SubhanAllah on the Day of Judgment the Salaf say what? The scholars mention to us that the sun rises, you're standing under it and then afterwards you go through your process of being asked, you go through your process of meeting Allah ﷻ and meeting your deeds and then after that the lights go out and it's darkness and the nur that you have, the light that you have is the light that you kindled with your a'marah saliha, with your good deeds. It resembles very much what our world is like. And if we look around, everything around us lends itself to this reality, not just the reality of death, the reality of separation, the reality of moving forward, the reality of how transient this life truly is, the reality of a creator that is not limited by this world. All these realities dawn upon us on a consistent basis. Now the story of Malik al-Dinar ends well and that's the hopeful part of this and it is a very hopeful part. Allah ﷻ allows us these opportunities to reflect and ponder deeply about what we want our Day of Judgment experience to be. When you show up on the Day of Judgment you're not going to be handed a lawful mahfuz, you're not handed his tablet, you're handed your scroll of deeds. You know what you're putting in there right now. And so you hold yourself accountable. حَاسِبُواْ أَنفُسَكُمْ قَبْلَ أَنتُ حَاسِبُواْ Hold yourself accountable before you're held accountable. Ask yourself, what am I putting in those scrolls? What am I putting in those scales? You know that part.
Let Allah handle the experience. Let Allah handle the experience. But all we know is what? أَلَا إِنَّ أَوْلِيَاءَ اللَّهِ لَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ That those who are close to Allah ﷻ, they will not fear nor shall they grieve. May Allah ﷻ make us amongst them. May Allah ﷻ grant us العفو والعافية في الدنيا والآخرة. اللهم إنا نسألك العفو والعافية في الدنيا والآخرة. Oh Allah we ask you for safety and for pardon and for forgiveness and for mercy in this life and in the next life. Oh Allah we ask you to please us on the day of judgment. Ya Allah we are pleased with you as our Lord. We are pleased with Islam as our religion. We are pleased with Muhammad ﷺ as our Prophet. We ask you Oh Allah to be pleased with us and to please us on the day of judgment. We ask you Oh Allah to quench the thirst of this world with a drink from the hand of our Messenger ﷺ. We ask you Oh Allah to allow whatever journey you have facilitated us upon in this life to end with Jannatul Firdos, to end with nothing less than the highest level of paradise. We ask you Oh Allah to have mercy on our loved ones that have passed before us, to have mercy on the loved ones amongst us, to have mercy and forgive those who will come after us and to have mercy upon us and forgive us. We ask you Oh Allah ﷻ to count us amongst your Awliya, to count us amongst your righteous ones, to count us amongst those that are pleasing to you and Ya Allah we ask you to let us live to see Ramadan. Allahumma ballighna Ramadan. Oh Allah let us live to see Ramadan. Accept our intention for Ramadan from now. In case we don't get to physically live to see it, accept our intention for Ramadan now. Let us be forgiven through it and we ask you Oh Allah as you love to forgive, to forgive us. Allahumma ameen. Astaghfirullah wa alaikum wa nisaa'il muslimeen.
Fastaqfilu innahu alghfuru wa raheem. Alhamdulilahi rabbil alameen. Assalatu wassalamu ala rasoolil kareem wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'een. Allahumma khul al mu'mineena wa al mu'minat wa al muslimeena wa al muslimat al ahya'i amuminhum wal amwat. Innaka sam' apparaeboon wa jabood jawat. Allahumma kughfir lależyna warhamna wa a'fu ana la tu'adhibna rodana zalamla anfusana ei num okofer lana otah hamna nokunanna min alhasreen. Allahumma innaka caffeine and chain of obediance. Teach people up for the hand over there that will remind you for the Big Herayman. Appease undiminishable we lost. Allahumma a'idha al-Islam wa al-Muslimin wa athilla al-Shirk wa al-Kadhibin wa dammir a'daa al-Deen. Allahumma a'hlik al-Dhulalimin wa al-Dhulalimin. Akhrijna wa ikhwanna min baynihim salimin. Ibadallah anna Allah ya'mur bil-adli wa al-ihsan wa ita'i dhil-qurba wa yanha anil-fahsha'i wa al-munkari wa al-baghi. Ya'idukumna a'lakum tathakkarun. Fathkurullahi yathkurukum. Washkuruhu a'la al-ni'ma yazid lakum. Wala dhikrullahi akbar. Wallahu ya'lamu ma tasna'oon. Wa a'ifin al-salam.
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