Lecture
63 / 84
17
Social Justice
Islam, A Coherent Social Justice Tradition | Omar Suleiman | 16th MAS-ICNA Convention
22
Jurisprudence (fiqh)
Appreciating Scholarship: Intro to Islamic Law - Tesneem Alkiek | Yaqeen in NY
26
Islamophobia
How Yaqeen Heals Internalized Islamophobia - Dalia Mogahed | Making Principled Progress
29
Education
How Yaqeen is a Resource for Our Community - Sh. Omar Suleiman | Making Principled Progress
34
General Psychology
Spiritual Personality - Zohair Abdul-Rahman | 2018 Yaqeen/MAS Academic Conference
35
Social Justice
Conflict Resolution: The Line Between Justice and Peace - Sh. Omar Suleiman | Lecture
47
Identity
Keeping Masculinity from Trending Toxic - Dr. Jonathan Brown | Reframing the Gender Question
When the Qur’an Changes You | Dr. Omar Suleiman
Having a personal relationship with the Qur’an gives you the potential to not just change yourself, but the entire world around you. Join Dr. Omar Suleiman on a journey with the Qur’an through the eyes of Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud (ra).
This lecture was recently recorded in Allentown, PA.
This Ramadan, automate your donation! Sign up for 30 Days of Giving.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. I want to tell you, brother Ibrahim, that the poem that he just recited is perfect for what I wanted to share. It sets it up entirely perfectly and I see a lot of young people here. And I want you in particular, those of you that have grown up with your parents teaching you the Qur'an, with schools that teach you the Qur'an, with masjids that teach you the Qur'an, to take a moment and to imagine a world without the Qur'an. And that Qur'an not being a part of your life. And of course if the Qur'an is not part of your life, then Islam is not part of your life. And I want to take us all back inshallah to a moment and kind of see the world through the lens of a companion, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu. So Abdullah ibn Mas'ud radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu lives in the lowest class of society and when you think about the ceiling of a person like ibn Mas'ud radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu in the days of ignorance, it's very low. He is a shepherd that works on the outskirts of Mecca, similar to by the way the Prophet ﷺ before being married to Khadija radiyaAllahu ta'ala anha. But the Prophet ﷺ also came from a very noble, the most noble and well-known family. Ibn Mas'ud radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu has no tribe. He doesn't have any financial strength, he does not have a tribe behind him, he doesn't have any claim to any type of racial superiority. A person like ibn Mas'ud radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu really wants to avoid the conflicts of society and basically pass through this dunya without getting into it with anyone. Make your money, feed yourself and move on. No family to care for, no family that cares for him.
And a lot of us were captivated by this image when COVID hit of an empty Ka'bah, of an empty Haram. And it was heartbreaking because I think it encapsulated the feeling of isolation and loneliness that so many of us felt at that time. But many of us can't think about, and we pray that Allah ﷻ never allows us to see anything like that, a Ka'bah that is surrounded by idols, where the Quran is not even recited over loudspeakers or recited at all, where there is no Islam in the world. Imagine, subhanAllah, a world where there is no Quran, where there is no Islam, where the name Muhammad ﷺ does not exist. And it kind of gives some context to the global narrative that the Prophet ﷺ mentioned to us, that Allah looked at the world at that time, before he sent the Prophet ﷺ, nathara ila ahlil ardh arabahum wa ajamahum, that he saw the world, the Arabs and the non-Arabs at the time, and they were repulsive, illa baqaya man ahlil kitab, except for the small group of the people of the book, that were still trying to maintain some semblance of what came to them from the Prophets of old. And as Ibn Mas'ud r.a was tending to the sheep on the outskirts of Mecca, and again, his life, the most that he could hope for at that time, was that he does not upset the wrong person, cross paths with any conflict in a tribalistic society to where he is accosted and then, you know, beaten or abused. He sees the Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr r.a passing through, and he doesn't know who they are. And the Prophet ﷺ asks him for one of the goats or one of the sheep, so that he can have some milk for he and his companion, being Abu Bakr as-Siddiq r.a.
And Abdullah ibn Mas'ud r.a. responds, and he says, I can't give you any of these animals because I am entrusted, ana mu'taman, these aren't my animals, these aren't my sheep, these aren't my goat, I can't give any of them to you because I am entrusted. And then the Prophet ﷺ says, then bring me one of them that has no milk. And so he brings forth the goat that has no milk, and he describes seeing the Prophet ﷺ put his hands on the udders and saying, Bismillah, in the name of Allah. And suddenly the milk starts to flow. And the Prophet ﷺ takes from that milk and he gives some to Ibn Mas'ud r.a. and then some to Abu Bakr and then some for himself. And Ibn Mas'ud r.a. says to him ﷺ, teach me those words that you just said. What are the words that you just recited that caused that milk to flow, that opened the pathways for milk when there were no pathways for milk? And the Prophet ﷺ masaha ala sadrihi, he wiped his chest and he said, innaka ghulamun mu'allam. You are a teachable young man, you're a good student. You're a young man who has a receptive heart and mind. You are meant to be taught, you are teachable. I want to freeze this incident in the context of the world at the time and how it applies to the Book of Allah ﷻ, particularly the words that the Prophet ﷺ mentioned when he put his hands on those udders. The Prophet ﷺ says in the hadith of Abu Huraira r.a. ala inna ad-dunya mal'una, mal'unun maa feeha. That the world is cursed, it's deprived of all good
and everything in it illa dhikr Allah, except for the remembrance of Allah, wa maa wa laa, and what surrounds the remembrance of Allah, wa aaliman aw muta'aliman, or a learned person or a learning person, a teacher and a student. The whole world has no value except for the words of Allah ﷻ, the remembrance of Allah ﷻ, and then one who teaches and one who learns. And so it's very interesting because Ibn Mas'ud r.a. being the sixth person to embrace Islam, for a moment the only value of the world is in this small place here, in a valley on the outskirts of Mecca. The only thing that bears any redemption for this dunya is in this small interaction that now reaches us over 1400 years later because you had dhikr Allah, you had the mention of Allah ﷻ in a world that did not mention Him, and you had the ultimate alim, the ultimate scholar and teacher being Muhammad ﷺ, and a supreme muta'alim, a supreme student, an Ibn Mas'ud r.a. whose heart was ready to receive something else. His heart was ready to receive something else, and he immediately acts upon that. And there's something beautiful about this that if Ibn Mas'ud r.a. chooses in those moments to say, you know what, that was a really cool incident, I'm gonna wait for something to happen in Mecca and the news to reach me, because there's something surrounding this man, and if he chooses to wait it out, then he never becomes Abdullah ibn Mas'ud that we know. He never becomes the Ibn Mas'ud r.a. we know.
Similar to if Umar r.a. when he's in the house of his sister and he reads the Qur'an for the first time, if Umar ibn Khattab r.a. chooses to go home and says, I was deeply moved by this, but I'm not going to act upon it, I'm gonna wait it out, because Umar r.a. does not become the Umar ibn Khattab r.a. that we know and we love so much. So it was opening the heart to the word of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that then grows something so special. And so in the entire world at that time, there is nothing that is of any value except for what's taking place in this one encounter here. And Abdullah ibn Mas'ud r.a. chooses to run down to Mecca. This man who was described as being extremely short, he had dark skin and braids, no tribe, no wealth, every reason to fear disruption in that society. And Ibn Mas'ud r.a. goes following the Prophet ﷺ because he was the muta'allim, he was ready to learn. The rest is history. أخذت من فم رسول الله ﷺ سبعين سورة That narration gives me goosebumps. I took 70 surahs directly from the mouth of the Prophet ﷺ. I saw 70 surahs, heard 70 surahs from his blessed lips ﷺ. No one can match me with that. I sat with him and I was with him when 70 surahs came out from his mouth ﷺ and the Qur'an came upon his heart before it left his lips ﷺ.
And the Prophet ﷺ when he spoke that, it landed in the heart of Ibn Mas'ud r.a. and then it produced this beautiful musk, this beautiful scent in the spiritual sense from his mouth to where the Prophet ﷺ in return says, من أراد أن يسمع القرآن Whoever wants to hear the Qur'an being recited, غدًا طريًّا كما أنزل Fresh, like the day that it was revealed to me, let them listen to the way Ibn Mas'ud recites the Qur'an. You see how beautiful this equation is? It starts off with this interaction in the valleys of Mecca and then it comes down to this, and he hears the Qur'an fresh from the Prophet ﷺ, from the heart to the mouth, and then it lands in the ears and in the heart, and then it comes back out like this beautifully produced recitation that the Prophet ﷺ said resembles how Jibreel ﷺ brought it to him. If you want to hear it fresh, كما أنزل, the way that it came down to me, listen to the way that he recites it. So much so that the Prophet ﷺ asks Abdullah ibn Mas'ud radiyallahu anhu to read the Qur'an to me. I want to hear it recited from you. Ibn Mas'ud says, أقرأ عليك وعليك أنزل You want me to read to you and it was upon you that it was revealed? But the Prophet ﷺ said, whoever wants to hear the Qur'an كما أنزل, the way that it descended, listen to the way that this man recites the Qur'an, this young man recites the Qur'an. It completely changed everything about Abdullah ibn Mas'ud radiyallahu ta'ala anhu. He allowed the Qur'an to completely transform him. And in the process, completely transformed with the Qur'an. You see when we talk about the Qur'an, all of the ahadith where the Prophet ﷺ gives أمثال, gives parables about the Qur'an, talk about the input and the output. That there are some people, المؤمن الذي يقرأ القرآن,
the believer that reads the Qur'an, that's like a citrus fruit. ريحها طيب وطعمها طيب. It smells good and it tastes good. Its inside is good and its outside is good. There's something inside and then there's something outside. When the Prophet ﷺ describes the heart of the believer, like fertile soil, the rain falls upon it and it soaks it all in and then it produces these beautiful gardens that everyone is sustained from. The input and the output. Capture that through this young man, رضي الله تعالى عنه, who then goes to the haram, where we are accustomed to listening to imams recite the Qur'an, where we turn on our 24-hour stations and watch Mecca, المكرمة, and listen to the recitation of the Qur'an in the background. And Abdullah ibn Mas'ud رضي الله عنه being the very first person to read the Qur'an in public, despite being the most likely person to be beat up for reading the Qur'an. The least protected person in society going and reading the most offensive thing at the time to the ignorant Arabs in public. And he goes right in front of the Ka'bah and he starts to recite, رحمان علم القرآن خلق الإنسان علمه البيان SubhanAllah, you think about it, again, the way he would read the Qur'an, the Prophet ﷺ described it was like the way that he would receive the Qur'an. So imagine Ibn Mas'ud رضي الله عنه out there reading the Qur'an, and eventually they pounce on him and they try to suppress it. In Mecca, next to the Ka'bah, and they stomp on him, and they break his collarbone in the process, they knock him out cold to try to stop the recitation of the Qur'an
in the place that we most expect the Qur'an to be recited today, the Ka'bah. Fast forward years later, years later, and Ibn Mas'ud رضي الله عنه literally becomes the influence of Qur'an on the world. A man who, when he goes to a place, not only does he recite the Qur'an, but he teaches it to everyone around him and basically turns societies into societies of Qur'an. Three decades later, Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله عنه literally three decades later, 32 years after that incident, Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله عنه sends Ibn Mas'ud رضي الله عنه to Kufa in Iraq. And he says to the people of Kufa, لقد آثرتكم على نفسي بعبد الله بن مسعود I've preferred you to myself by sending you Abdullah bin Mas'ud. It is painful for me to send him to you because of how much I love the man. And the story of Kufa is that Kufa then becomes the center of Qur'an. When you recite Hafs an-Asim, the qira'ah of Hafs an-Asim, Al-Kufi, Asim is from Kufa. Kufa becomes a place of Qur'an, a center of Qur'an in the world that produces some of the greatest scholars of Qur'an in history. And that can be traced directly back to Abdullah bin Mas'ud رضي الله عنه who takes that Qur'an, who went from being متعلم to being معلم. خيركم من تعلم القرآن وعلمه The best of you is the one who learns the Qur'an and then teaches it. Not just learns how to recite it and then teaches its recitation. Who absorbs it and then gives it to people in a way that they can absorb it as well. And he transforms that society into a society of Qur'an. To where if you talk to people in Kufa, the way they describe their daily lives is with the Qur'an. They become so accustomed to the Qur'an that if you ask them a question,
the first thing that comes to their mind is an ayah of the Qur'an. If you ask them to describe their circumstance, the first way they describe their circumstance is with a verse of the Qur'an. The man who at one point could not read the Qur'an in Mecca is now transforming entire countries with the Qur'an to where the average person in that place now reads the Qur'an even when they're not expected to. There's a famous story where a group of people came from Iraq to Medina and Umar bin Al-Khattab radiyaAllahu ta'ala came out and he said, where are you all coming from? And they said, من فجٍ عميق from a deep valley, a faraway valley, where are you going? إلى البيت العتيق, to Mecca. And Umar radiyaAllahu ta'ala says to his companions that they have amongst them a a'alim, they've got a teacher amongst them. Someone's teaching them the Qur'an, this is not organic. And he starts to ask them, أي القرآن أعظم? What's the greatest part of the Qur'an? And they recite surah al-Fatiha, and he asks them what's the best verse in the Qur'an, and they read ayatul kursi, and he asks them what's the most hopeful verse in the Qur'an, and they say, قُلْ يَا عِبَادِيَا الَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ لَا تَقْنَطُوا مِن رَحْمَةِ اللَّهِ Say, O my servants who have transgressed against themselves, don't despair from the mercy of Allah. And it goes on and on. And at the end of this conversation, he says, أَفِيكُمْ عَبْدُ اللَّهِ عَبْنِ مَسْعُودٍ Is Ibn Mas'ud amongst you? And they say, yes. Like this man transformed all of these people to where their natural response to life is the Qur'an. They resort to it. Now think about this for a moment. They didn't just resort to the Qur'an because it fit the circumstances around them demonstrating a literacy in the Qur'an. They became people of Qur'an to where the way they interacted with the world was so deeply tied to the Qur'an that in their most personal
and most occasional circumstances, the first place their minds, their hearts, and their tongues went to was the Qur'an. They went right back to the book of Allah ﷻ. Because that's how they grew. That's how they were trained. You know there's a famous narration, and it's actually from Ibn Mas'ud radiAllahu anhu, where he's describing the end of times. And he's saying that the signs of the end of times is كَثْرَةُ الْقُرَّاءِ The abundance of people that recite وَقِلَّةُ الْفُقَهَاءِ and the scarcity of scholars. So people recited, but it's not really a recitation that he had. Because the Prophet ﷺ did not just teach him how to recite with a tongue. It went from the heart of the Messenger ﷺ to the heart of Ibn Mas'ud radiAllahu anhu, to the world around him. And then hearts were transformed by that. Until it reached us through the hearts of people that fell in love with that book of Allah ﷻ. And the world literally has no purpose without that mention of Allah ﷻ and everything that surrounds it, and a capable teacher and a capable student. You see once the human receptors are gone, once the alim and the muta'alim are gone, then the Qur'an becomes reduced to environmental noise again. And once it's environmental noise, it no longer is transformative. And once it's no longer transformative, the world no longer has a purpose. Because the Qur'an is meant to transform everything, starting from our hearts to everything and everyone around us, through us. SubhanAllah, you look at the way that this man had this relationship with the Qur'an. And he described it, he said that, inna hadha al-Qur'an ma'duba tul-lah.
That it is the banquet of Allah ﷻ. I was asking the mashayikh backstage, how would you translate ma'duba? How would you translate this? It's a hard word to translate, but basically he's saying that the Qur'an is this provision from Allah ﷻ. It's like Allah invited you to a table, to a banquet. Allah ﷻ invited you to this incredible provision, this incredible sustenance. It's the banquet of Allah ﷻ. You got invited to Allah's table, to Allah's banquet, and to Allah belongs the greatest example. So he said, so fill yourself with it. Fill yourself with it. Take advantage of it. Busy yourself with it. But that's how he describes the relationship with the Qur'an. Inna hadhi al-qulub aw'ya. That these hearts are like empty vessels. So busy them with the Qur'an. Consume the Qur'an with these empty vessels before they become empty. Before they become in ruins. As the Prophet ﷺ said, that the heart that doesn't have anything of the Qur'an, kalbayti al-kharab, is like a destroyed home. And when you say the heart is like a destroyed home, then a world that doesn't have the Qur'an is a world in ruins. And it starts with the world inside of you. So he's describing the Qur'an as the banquet of Allah ﷻ. The sustenance of Allah. Fill your empty heart with the sustenance from Allah ﷻ. But it shows you a personal connection with the Qur'an. For him to even express that type of a relationship with the Qur'an, like Allah invited you to a table, take advantage of it. Sustain yourself with it. Because if you're sustaining yourself with anything else, you're sustaining yourself with literal spiritual junk food. This is what Allah is providing you. This is Allah's invitation to you. Fill your heart with it. And subhanAllah, you start to see, and if you read any book of fadha'il al-Qur'an,
the virtues of the Qur'an, and you read the narrations of the Companions, some of the most beautiful ones are the narrations from Ibn Mas'ud ﷺ. He describes a particular section in the Qur'an, al-Hawamim, al-Hamim. Seven surahs that are all Makki surahs. They're all surahs in Makkah. And they all talk about Allah and the hereafter. There's no legal rulings in these surahs. It's just the mention of the hereafter and connection to Allah ﷻ. They're beautiful surahs. And he said, إِذَا دَخَلْتُ فِى آلِ حَمِيمٍ When I enter into, when I'm reading the Qur'an and I get to this portion of the Qur'an, فَكَأَنَّنِي فِى رَوْضَاتٍ أَتَأَنَّقُ فِيهِنَّ It's like I'm strolling in the most beautiful gardens of the property. I feel like I've entered into a paradise. I've entered into these gardens. Like he gets excited when he's reading through the Qur'an, and I get to al-Hamim, I get to these surahs. Now keep in mind, these surahs were revealed in Makkah, and he was one of those few people around the Prophet ﷺ receiving those surahs. And think about how transformative they were to him. But imagine, subhanAllah, the personal connection he has to the Qur'an. Where he can speak of it that way. It's like when I'm reading the Qur'an and I get to these surahs. It's like I get to this beautiful garden that I get to stroll through. Some of you might feel that way about surah Yusuf. Some of you might feel that way about surah Maryam. Some of you might feel that way about surah Rahman. Some of you might feel that way about surah Yasin. Some of you might feel that way about surah al-Ankabut. Something that speaks to you in your present circumstances and just deeply, deeply connects you to the Book of Allah ﷻ. For him, it was this section of surahs. When he would hear Hamim, he got excited. This is my portion to jump into. That doesn't mean he was disconnected from the rest of the Qur'an. But I'm here now. You know if you're listening to the qira'ah in Tarawih and then you hear those surahs.
You're like, alright, we're here now. These are my favorite surahs. It's okay to have that. But it wasn't his favorite surah because they sounded pretty. Because he liked the rhyme. Because it deeply spoke to him. It was a personal connection. And I see a lot of young people here so I want to capitalize on this opportunity, insha'Allah ta'ala, to just say, at some point, it's important for you to take a step back and to connect with the Qur'an on an individual level and read it like you're reading it for the first time. You know, pray as if it's your last prayer. Read as if it's your first time. That's the way the salaf used to read the Qur'an. The pious predecessors. That's why it gave them something new every time they read it. Not in terms of rulings or any type of alteration of the creed, but in terms of reflection and introspection and the depth of their connection to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Every time they read the Qur'an it was like the first time. Because something came out of it new. And when you're young, you have to have that fresh connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. At some point you've got to develop that personal connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that is independent of your parents or your environment. It's got to be something that you actually take a moment to appreciate. And when they say that you don't appreciate inherited wealth the way that you appreciate earned wealth, right? There's no greater wealth and value than the Qur'an. Than what's been given to you here. Sometimes you've got to take a step back and say, let me approach this individually, alone. Last night I was at a university and a question came, you know, what if I don't feel anything when I read the Qur'an anymore? I don't ever feel those moments of dhikr and depth and connection.
And subhanallah, it's actually like a challenge for a moment. There is no way that you can individually sit. I'm going to venture to say this, individually sit in nature or whatever it is. Mashallah, you have beautiful nature out here in Allentown. We don't have that in Dallas. Congratulations, you've got something we have absolutely none of, nature. But like spending an hour and just reading the Qur'an or listening to the Qur'an and remembering Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala by yourself and just, don't take your cell phone. Leave your technology away and spend an hour. And watch what happens to you. Watch how you start to appreciate it once again. And obviously this connection with the Qur'an is not just a connection with the Qur'an, but in the broader sense a connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and a connection with the religion. Like you've got to be able to form your own connection to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. How many people do you meet that have memorized the Qur'an, whose parents did not put them in hifz school growing up, but who at a later point in life fell in love with it and dedicated themselves to it? It's hard. And say alhamdulillah that it was given to you growing up if it was given to you growing up. You know that's something that's a good thing. That's something you should thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for. But to revive that connection and to have that fresh connection, sometimes you've got to put yourself back in the shoes of Abdullah bin Mas'ud radiyallahu anhu when he meets the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam for the first time. And you've got to play that first time meeting out in your mind. And you've got to read the Qur'an as if it's the very first time that you're reading the Qur'an and try to forge that connection in any way that you possibly can. But it takes time. It takes commitment. It takes clearing out the distractions for you to be able to forge that meaningful connection. It takes approaching the Qur'an with a desire to be changed.
With a desire to be changed. Not just a desire to be comforted or a desire to be soothed. You know at the end of the day, one of the things that makes the Qur'an so different, and I actually remember subhanallah hearing this from a, let's just say an envious person of another faith, who was talking about the way the Qur'an is recited, and admitted to me, and I'm not making this up, but it was really beautiful. It was one of those moments where like alhamdulillah for what we have. He was saying to me, he's like, you know, I've heard the most beautiful gospels, the most beautiful choirs, I've heard the cantors in the synagogues singing, and people that work on the vocals and have all the instruments and everything around it, and I know what they're saying, but he said I have to admit to you, there is nothing that moved my heart and that penetrated my soul, like just listening to the recitation of the Qur'an from this 14 year old Hif student, this 14 year old Qur'an student that you have at your school. He said it's stunning, it doesn't make sense to me, but it moved something deeply inside of me, and the reason being is that this is the word of Allah. This is the word of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is personal, this is deeper, but you've got to give it its time. You've got to approach it in that way, and the world deeply needs you to forge this inside of you, this connection inside of you, and plant those trees, because people are lost, they need that clarity, and that clarity can only come from this book of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And I'll end with this because subhanAllah it's really interesting that a lot of times we get so used to saying things over and over and over again, it's like, qulu wa laa wa ahad, autopilot. Your brain immediately, as soon as qulu wa laa wa ahad, allahu samad la mayyadu wa miyyuradu wa miyakun la wakufun ahad.
You know it was like Dr. Gibran, who's a senior fellow that we have at Yaqeen, I was listening to him in Canada, and he's a neurologist, and he was talking about how the brain works, and he said, you know how when you go into your salah, and this is how he referred to him, he said, you've got your day ones, your 5, 6 surahs, that your brain automatically goes to, and he was saying to disrupt that process of just autopilot, change up the surahs that you read, because otherwise, your brain is already functioning, like, it recognizes, oh we've done this before, alhamdulillah, imanikan wa dinyakin, abu duwayakin wa isti'ayin. You got, wal'asf qulu wa laa wa ahad, qul'awwadu rabb alfalq, inna ataynakil kawthar, he called them your day ones, I couldn't stop laughing, almost fell out of my chair, and I was amongst Canadians, and Canadians don't show much emotion, so I was like the obnoxious American that was about to fall out of his chair. But I was like, Subhanallah, it's so true, right? Your mind goes straight to it. Straight to it, right? And sometimes you don't realize how profound those words are, because your brain is just, it's literally like when you're going home and you're putting the key inside the door and opening the door and doing your basic tasks. You're literally just on autopilot, and you've got to disrupt that sometimes. And I was, Subhanallah, thinking about Al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, Malcolm X, Rahimahullah. I read his autobiography again recently, and he was saying that when he met Dr. Shuarbi, Rahimahullah Ta'ala, he said he dropped something on me that I'd never heard before, and it was, it just blew my mind. No one of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. Malcolm, one of the most eloquent people on the planet, right? One of the most eloquent people on the planet, speaking at Columbia and Harvard and the Oxford Union, he said when I heard him say, no one of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself, he said that that was the most mind-blowing thing I'd ever heard, something that we recite in our fundraisers really quickly.
La yu'min wa'ahadukum hatta yuhibbili aqeema yuhibbili nafsi. We recite it so quickly. It's autopilot. And I'd argue that the most transformative thing, the most revolutionary thing that we've been given is la ilaha illallah, Muhammadun Rasulullah. Like when you actually sit with the implications of those words of Tawheed and that affirmation of who Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is, man, that's revolutionary. That's profound. It's so simple, but it's so profound. And you've got to understand that people that have been tossed from place to place, from system to system, from theology to theology, from idol to idol, la ilaha illallah, there is no God worthy of worship, and there is no God that's worth it. That's not what la ilaha illallah means technically. I'm saying but a fa'idah, just a benefit. There is really no God that's worth it except Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Nothing's worth it except Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Of course, we take that in other ayat and other hadith from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, but it transforms everything. So my call to you is to sit with the Quran until you can speak of it the way Ibn Mas'ud Radiallahu Anhu would speak of it. What's your garden in the Quran? What's your raudat in the Quran? What's the part of the Quran that you become most excited about? What's the part of the Quran that changes you the most? How are you reading the Quran every time in a way that you're providing yourself an opportunity to be transformed? And I ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to make us all people of the Quran, Allahuma Ameen. May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala allow our hearts to be worthy receptors and allow us to be worthy carriers of this Quran, of this deen. Allahuma Ameen. Wa sallallahu wa sallam wa baraka wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuH.
Welcome back!
Bookmark content
Download resources easily
Manage your donations
Track your spiritual growth
1 items
1 items
1 items
25 items
50 items
9 items
