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Islam, A Coherent Social Justice Tradition | Omar Suleiman | 16th MAS-ICNA Convention
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How Yaqeen is a Resource for Our Community - Sh. Omar Suleiman | Making Principled Progress
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Conflict Resolution: The Line Between Justice and Peace - Sh. Omar Suleiman | Lecture
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Keeping Masculinity from Trending Toxic - Dr. Jonathan Brown | Reframing the Gender Question
Dealing with Isolation: Learning from Islam’s Original Converts - Omar Suleiman | Lecture
Loneliness can be one of the challenges we face in the pursuit of faith. However, it can be a source of strength in our conviction.
Many believers, including Khadijah (ra), faced isolation for the sake of truth. Sh. Omar Suleiman, Founder and President of Yaqeen Institute, discusses isolation upon truth and the resolve gained therein.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. When we speak about the challenges that we face as individuals or as families or as communities, there is one challenge that stands out that can often paralyze the productivity of any one of those layers. An individual, a family, a community, whatever it may be. And it's that quality or that test of being alone. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talks about loneliness in many different ways in the Qur'an. There is a time where you might be actually physically lonely, put away, and obviously one of the greatest forms of psychological torture that a person can undergo is solitary confinement, where people are confined to cells. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make it easy for all of the political prisoners and those that are unjustly detained and put in those situations. Allahumma ameen. Cut off from the entire world and not having anyone to speak to, not having anyone to confide in, not having anyone to ease your pain. One of the most difficult things that I ever did in my life was I just walked for a few minutes into the prison cell of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. And I thought to myself, how can a man go through this for over two decades with absolutely no communication with the outside world? And it's tough to think about because there are people unjustly detained that go through that on a daily basis here in the United States and elsewhere in torture prisons. Well, all prisons are torture prisons here in the United States, but the ones that are here and the ones that are abroad. And then there's a loneliness where you are estranged from everyone around you. And it's really interesting because that loneliness is the ghurba, that being strange that Allah described the situation of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam with. Where you're physically around people, but no one understands you and people are cutting you off and people have alienated you.
And sometimes, not always, sometimes that is because of a principled stance that you take or because of some truth that you manifest that others around you are not willing to commit to. Sometimes, sometimes you are alone and estranged because of your bad character, your bad akhlaq or the way that you treat people. And there's no nobility in that. Sometimes people don't deal with you and you comfort yourself by saying no one likes me because I speak the truth. But it's not about you speaking the truth, it's about you having a foul mouth. And there's no nobility in that. There's no reward from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in that. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam, he said the worst people are those that people don't correct when they speak anymore, when they lose their temper. Itiqa'a fuhshi, because they don't want to deal with their tongues anymore. They just get sick of dealing with them, going off on them and their tempers and things of that sort. That's a very bad loneliness to have when people don't want to deal with your atha, with your harm. But then when a person is upon the truth and a person is upon righteousness and they feel alienated by everyone around them. And the worst, the worst of that is when it's your own family. And when you look at the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam, when he stood up alone on a safa and called a people that loved him and respected him for four decades. Four decades of establishing goodwill to his people. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam didn't have much in this world before prophethood. He wasn't a wealthy man, he didn't have his parents, he was an orphan. He was not, you know, he didn't live any lavish or extravagant lifestyle. He was a simple, honest merchant, alayhi salatu wasalam, a shepherd. He described himself for six years on the outskirts of Mecca where Ajyad is shepherding sheep for the qararit of the people of Mecca, the pennies of the people of Mecca, or the equivalent of the pennies of the people of Mecca. But he always had the love of his people. The goodwill that he established with his people lasted.
And then there you are at the age of 40 years old standing on safa and you call people to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And you establish your goodwill once again and say if I were to tell you that there's an army that is on its way to affect you, to hurt you, would you believe me? And they all expressed that they trusted him and that he was as-sadiq al-ameen. They trusted him not because of the, you know, the claim making sense, but because of who he was. That he'd established that he was as-sadiq al-ameen, the trustworthy one, the truthful one, the honest one. And they knew that he always wanted to protect them from harm. So he invoked that salallahu alayhi wasalam when he called them to Allah. But what ended up happening? When he said what he said, all the voices went silent, except for Abu Lahab cursing him. He became a stranger amongst his people. And they hurt him by saying that the Lord of Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam has forsaken him. وَالضُّحَىٰ وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا سَجَىٰ مَا وَدِّعَكَ رَبُّكَ وَمَا قَلَىٰ Your Lord did not bid you farewell, nor did he forsake you. Qala is not a physical separation as much as it is an abandonment, where you're estranged. You're not in that situation. And that's the most difficult test that the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam and his companions felt. Probably, and I'm projecting because everyone is very different, but for many people, for many of the companions, more so than the physical torture, was the emotional torture of being outcasts amongst their own people. And you can imagine the pain that they felt when their own relatives plotted against them, and their own relatives tried to kill them, and even pursued them, and stole their wealth, and wished nothing but evil upon them, starting with the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam. It's a difficult society, and a very difficult situation to deal with for each and every single person that's there. And you have to humanize that experience for a moment.
How would you feel if by accepting the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam and by being upon the truth, you're completely abandoned? The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam was not the first one to go through that. In fact, the very first messenger of Allah, Nuh alayhi wasalam, Allah mentions the wife of the first messenger of Allah, Nuh alayhi wasalam, and she herself did not believe. Can you imagine spending 950 years calling people to Allah, and your own wife disbelieves? And you're estranged from your own wife, and the son of Nuh alayhi wasalam. Obviously the painful conversation that we have of Noah, of Nuh alayhi wasalam in the Quran, calling out to his son, and hoping that his son would follow, but his son leaves him behind. Lut alayhi wasalam, his own wife, his own spouse, the uncle of Lut alayhi wasalam, of course being Ibrahim alayhi wasalam. Ibrahim alayhi wasalam, the most eloquent of the Prophets, the father of the Prophets, and look, all of those years of elaborate arguments with his people, and trying to guide them to the truth, and he leaves Haran without a single believer, except for his wife, except for Sara. Everybody else, and at the head of them was his father trying to kill him. Everybody else abandons him and leaves him in that situation. That's hard to imagine. And when you look at the generation of the Prophet, the Sahaba, the best generation, which was an entire generation of reverts, an entire generation of people that accepted faith, and that accepted the principles that came with faith that caused them to be persecuted, and go through what Prophets and their companions had gone through before.
And Allah tells us about Sa'd ibn Abi Waqas, and his mother, when Sa'd, who loved his mother deeply, and his mother said that either you abandon Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasalam, or I will sit out here in the sun and starve to death, or be dehydrated, until either the lice kill me, or the sun kills me, the thirst kills me. And she sat out there until the sister of Sa'd had to force water into her mouth, because she actually wanted to fulfill her oath of killing herself, if Sa'd did not leave Islam. Can you imagine how painful that would be if your mother, out of love for you, she's upon falsehood, you're upon truth, but out of love for you, she's willing to kill herself. And then Allah reveals what he revealed about Abu Lahab. It's really interesting here. What Allah revealed about Abu Lahab, we know what Allah revealed about Abu Lahab and his wife, because Abu Lahab did not reject truth out of any noble sentiment, or out of any love for the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasalam. It was out of love of wealth, and the love of fame, and the love of prestige, and the filthy mouth of Abu Lahab, and all of the pain that he caused the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasalam. That was not out of love, that was out of greed. So, tabbat yadaa abi Lahab bin wa tab. But Sa'd and his mother, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala revealed in surat al-Ahqaf, fawassayna al-insana biwalidayhi ihsana, hamalatuhu ummuhu kurhaa, wawad'atuhu kurhaa, wa hamluhu wafisaluhu thalathuna shahraa. Allah mentioned that we have enjoined upon man that he treats his parents with the utmost kindness, and He particularly mentioned the rights of the mother upon a person. Even as she was calling her son to reject Allah, Allah was calling him to honor her. Allah orders Sa'd to honor his mother, and even if your parents tell you to commit kufr,
tell you to commit disbelief and associate partners with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, to reject your Lord, still, la tu'ti'humaa, do not obey them in that, but at the same time, accompany them with kindness and treat them with love and respect, simply not doing as they command you to do in regards to evil. Simple as that. Allah called Sa'd to honor his mother. And Allah mentions in that same ayah that a person who Allah blesses, who reaches, hatta idha balagha ashuddahu wa balagha arba'een sana, qala rabbi awzi'ni an ashkura ni'mataka lati an'amta alayya wa ala waridayya wa an a'mala salihan tardaa wa aslih li fi dhurriyati inni tubtu ilayka wa inni minal muslimeen. A man who reaches his age of maturity and reaches the age of 40 years old, and thanks Allah for the blessing that He bestowed upon him and upon his parents, and prays for his children. And that is in regards to, according to many of the scholars, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq radiAllahu anhu. This is a really powerful statement that Al-Qurtubi makes. There is not a single companion from the Prophet ﷺ's companions, whose entire family accepted faith except for Abu Bakr. Even the Prophet ﷺ did not have that. Abu Bakr is the only companion who did not have a rejecter from his family. That's significant. That was a particular blessing that Allah honored him with, maybe because he followed the Prophet ﷺ with no hesitation. He was a Siddiq. He followed the Prophet ﷺ with no hesitation. And so he was blessed with a very specific blessing that everyone in his family, his parents, his spouse, his children, would all accept iman, would all accept faith. Not without a struggle, some of them took long. But they'd all accept faith. And he knew that he was unique in that. I mean, just think about that.
When you're sitting with the companions, each and every single one of them has a story about a spouse or a parent or a child or a sibling that's rejecting them. And that's alienating them and isolating them. Except for Abu Bakr radiAllahu anhu. And his father was the last one. His father, Abu Quhafa, held out until Fath Makkah, until the conquest of Makkah. Very late. And he was such an old man that when Abu Bakr brought his father to take the shahada with the Prophet ﷺ, the Prophet ﷺ said, if you would have told me, I would have went to him. Why did you bring this sheikh, this old man from his home? I would have gone to him. Even though he'd spent 20 years rejecting the Prophet ﷺ. And you know what? Abu Bakr, and it's hard to imagine this, but Abu Bakr, when he sees his father with his hand in the hand of the Prophet ﷺ, with a full head of grey, saying, ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah, he started crying very heavily. And the Prophet ﷺ said, ma yubkike ya Abu Bakr, what's making you cry? And he said, I wish that that hand that was in your hand was the hand of your uncle Abu Talib. Because I know how much he wanted that. How much it would have meant to the Prophet ﷺ that even he didn't get that, for the person who was the closest to a father figure in his life, he didn't get to enjoy what Abu Bakr was enjoying at that moment. And Abu Bakr loved the Prophet ﷺ more than himself. All of this was actually to intro a very interesting character in the seerah of the Prophet ﷺ. If I was to ask you who the first believer is, many people would say that the first person to believe in the Prophet ﷺ was Abu Bakr. And you would be right if you were talking about the men. But the first believer in the Prophet ﷺ was Khadija bint Khuwaylid, radhiAllahu ta'ala anha, the wife of the Prophet ﷺ. The first one who actually believed in him was Khadija, his wife.
And I want you to think about the family of Khadija. And there's a very particular character who, when you read about him, it's stunning that you don't hear more about him. He was in the ranks of Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab and Uqba bin Ami Mu'idh, these people that were the prominent rejecters of the Prophet ﷺ. But you don't hear much about him. He was the little brother of Khadija, radhiAllahu anha. His name was Nawfal ibn Khuwaylid, the little brother, the younger brother of Khadija, radhiAllahu ta'ala anha. Nawfal ibn Khuwaylid, can you imagine the first believer in the Prophet ﷺ? His wife, the most loyal, dedicated believer, a woman of perfect faith, with her loyalty, and she is our mother. May Allah be pleased with her. She is our mother. Can you imagine Khadija's brother, what his name was, what his nickname, what his laqab was? His nickname was Shaytan Quraysh, the devil of Quraysh. And he was one of the most harsh rejecters of the Prophet ﷺ. He was a huge man with the same stature as Abu Jahl. And this is the brother-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ, and the brother of the most beloved person in the world to him. And he was the only person who had the audacity to torture Abu Bakr, by the way, in Mecca. He tied up Abu Bakr and Talha, may Allah be pleased with them. They were too noble to be tortured in public. He was the only person that had the audacity to privately tie them up. And they were al-qarinayn, the two tied ones together, and to whip them and torture them tied up together. He took his nephew as Zubayr, radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu, and he wrapped him in a hasir, in a straw mat, and he lit a fire under him while he tortured him in Mecca.
And he was one of the people who plotted the boycott of the Prophet ﷺ that led to the death of his own sister Khadija. Can you imagine that? That you have such a hatred for the truth, that you would plot the boycott that would lead to the death of your sister Khadija, radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu. Of course, the conditions of the boycott eventually led to her death. And he was one of those that planned the killing of the Prophet ﷺ. And he was one of those that showed up on the Battle of Badr, the day of the Battle of Badr. Can you imagine what that did to the Prophet ﷺ? And what that was like for Khadija, radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu? How does the brother of Khadija end up being such a horrible person, and a human being that hurts the Prophet ﷺ the way that he does? And can you imagine what it was like for the Prophet ﷺ to see Naufal standing on the other side? And by the way, he's not the father of Waraqa. Khadija had a brother named Naufal as well as an uncle named Naufal. Imagine the Prophet ﷺ seeing his brother-in-law standing on the other side of the battlefield on the day of Badr, and what that did to him, alayhi salatu wassalam, and how much it hurt him. Think about that. And he just lost Khadija, radhiAllahu anhu, shortly before that, a few years before that, and he's looking at Naufal. And when the Prophet ﷺ saw Naufal standing on the Battle of Badr, the brother of Khadija against him, what did the Prophet ﷺ say? He said, Allahumma ikfini Naufal, O Allah, do away with Naufal. Suffice me in regards to Naufal. I mean, he has hurt the Prophet ﷺ for so long, and now he has the audacity. You would think he would have had some sympathy after Khadija, radhiAllahu anhu, passed away. Now he has the audacity to stand and to want to kill the Prophet ﷺ in Badr. And who is the one that would kill him instead?
Ali ibn Abi Talib, radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu, who was raised by his sister Khadija, radhiAllahu anhu. This is tough. This is tough. This is as difficult as it gets. And this is to show you that that isolation and that loneliness penetrated the house of the Prophet ﷺ himself in every single way. It's one thing when you have a person in your family who refuses to accept you, but does not show such hostility towards you. It's another thing when the brother of the most beloved person in the world to you, Khadija, radhiAllahu anhu, is standing against you. How does Khadija, the first believer, a perfect woman of iman, end up with Naufal as her brother? It's the same way that the next ayah in surah Tahrim, وَضَرَبَ اللَّهُ مَثَنًا لِلَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مْرَأَةَ فِرْعُونَ The same way that you have a woman like Asiya, a woman of perfect iman, married to the worst human being in the history of the world. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has his ways, and there are people that when they accept truth, will face obstacles none so greater than their own family. One of the fitna's that the Prophet ﷺ mentioned of the fitna of Dajjal, the fitna of the anti-Christ, is that there is a young man that would challenge him, and that would stand in front of him, and think that he's full of belief and he can overcome the test, the trial of Dajjal. And that Dajjal would raise an illusion of his parents being raised from the grave. Can you imagine? Dajjal would make it seem like he raised his parents from the grave to tell him to believe in him. That's a fitna that he would not be able to overcome. It's a test. It's a trial. Obviously, there are many lessons that we can derive from this, and time would not give us all of the lessons that we can derive from this.
One of them is that on the Day of Judgment, you don't get to stake your claim and say that I was related to this person, or I was related to that person, and that's my way to Jannah. Because at the end of the day, the uncle of the Prophet ﷺ was Abu Lahab, and there is an entire surah dedicated to his punishment in Hellfire. It did him no good. It did the wife of Nuh no good. The wife of Lut no good. The father of Ibrahim no good. It did nothing for them. There is no good in it. There is no claim in relationship. You don't get to say, well, I came out of this household. In fact, what the ulema will mention is that if Allah has put righteous people amongst you, in your family or your close circle, that's a greater testimony against you. Look at these people, what they had to struggle with. And that's why the most rewarded amongst us, may Allah ﷻ bless you and elevate you, are those who did have to revert, that are sitting in this masjid right now, and face that isolation from your families, and didn't find the warmth and the compassion from the community that could have not replaced it, because nothing can replace that, but at least soften it. Allah knows your struggle, and Allah knows your pain, and you are like the companions of the Prophet ﷺ when they face that isolation. When we look at ourselves, if Allah has given us righteous, truthful parents, and people that raised us to think right and to believe, and we still turn away, that's a proof against us, that's not to our favor on the Day of Judgment, that's actually against us on the Day of Judgment. What else do we learn from this? Something that I wanted to drive home, which I think is very important, and I hope I can summarize it in the couple of minutes that I have. When you are forced to be alone in your principles and in your faith, and loneliness has many different implications and many different layers, that strengthens your resolve upon that truth.
And there is nothing more rewarding than that. When your environment doesn't change you for evil. When the people you love most, showing you hostility because you are upon truth or faith, show you hostility and that doesn't change you. When in fact, you are even able to maintain ihsan towards them, excellence towards them, because the compassion that they are not showing you, you are getting in your worship of the most merciful, in your private time with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, with the Rahman, the Rahim, the Wadood, the most compassionate, the most loving, the most merciful, that's giving you the capacity to still be able to show them that mercy, even as they show you none. Even as a community. I know that as we look right now around the world, and insha'Allah we have Sheikh Sa'ad who will fundraise for Ghouta shortly after the Salah, but we have taking place in Syria and I saw one of the titles of one of the Syrian aid workers who called it a motionless world watching a wholesale massacre of people. The Palestinian people have been abandoned, the Syrian people have been abandoned, the Yemeni people have been abandoned, the people in the Rohingya have been abandoned, the Somali refugees were abandoned, the Bosnians were abandoned, many of the Muslims that struggle in Ethiopia and suffer in Ethiopia, they're abandoned, all of these people facing abandonment. And here we are as a community, and we have the ability to do something for them, as much as we can. We shouldn't leave them alone because the worst thing that we could feel is to be left alone as a community. And in this era where it's fashionable of some sort to embrace Muslims because we have a racist president, someone that hates Muslims so bluntly and hates our religion and appoints Islamophobes all the time, it's something for us to go and to cling on to our allies. And as much as we appreciate our allies, we also have to develop some resolve ourselves as a community
and stick to some sort of truth. No matter what, if people around us hate us or if they love us, we reciprocate love when people love us. And we still show ihsan, excellence, to those that hate us, but as a community, are we really willing to develop that resolve and that truth even when we are abandoned? Because this love fest of the Muslim community is not going to last very long. When it's no longer fashionable to do so, it's not going to be there. Do we have the resolve upon that truth to face that ghurba, that being strange and that being left alone? I pray that we do. I ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that we develop that truth and that principle to where we are able to do so. But it's something for us to think about. And this was the test of the Prophet ﷺ that he lost in a few days. Abu Talib, his uncle who was protecting him, and the most beloved person in the world to him, Khadijah radiyaAllahu ta'ala anha, and then had to face in Badr the son of his uncle, Ali radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, killing the brother of Khadijah radiyaAllahu ta'ala anha for the hostility that he continued to show to the Prophet ﷺ. None of us will ever know what that exactly felt like. None of us can ever endure what the Sahaba endured collectively. But we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that He places within us that resolve upon the truth and that ihsan with others, even as we are tested with that resolve upon the truth. May Allah grant us that sincerity and that thabat and that firmness and steadfastness upon the truth, and never allow us to be cut off from Him. Because He who is cut off from Him will not find any solace or tranquility in any companionship in the world. And He who has Him will be fulfilled by Him subhanahu wa ta'ala in a way that He can face all of the trials and the hardships of this world.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala not test us beyond our capacity, and not leave us estranged and allow us to reach out and to comfort those who have been abandoned by others, only because they are upon the truth.
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