Qur'an 30 for 30 | Season 5
21 / 31
Juz 20: Why We Face Trials | Ust. Fatima Lette
Why do I face hardships? What am I supposed to get out of the test Allah has given me? Is it too late for me to turn back to Allah?
Join Ustadha Fatima Lette with hosts Dr. Omar Suleiman and Sh. Abdullah Oduro as they reflect on Juz 20 of the Qur'an, discussing the purpose of trials (and life) and what makes it all worth it in the end, how to get closer to God as a result of them, the importance of gratitude in navigating life, the hope that Allah gives us, and what to focus on in the last ten nights of Ramadan.
✨Test your knowledge of the Qur'an✨
Which battle is named after a surah in Juz 19?
A. Al Ahzab
B. Al Furqan
C. Al Anfal
Chapters:
0:00 - Highlights
📌 1:01 - Today's trivia
2:00 - Intro
📌 4:36 – Dr. Omar Suleiman reflects on humility and submission to God
6:01 - Is there a better God?
8:23 - Allah's answer to Pharoah
10:04 - "God-like" figures vs. slaves of Allah
📌 10:50 – Sh. Abdullah Oduro reflects on the greatest joy
11:38 - Raja', the hope to see Allah
14:31 - How Allah ends this verse
📌 16:08 – Ustadha Fatima Lette reflects on a verse that encompasses Juz 20
17:50 - If I believe, why am I facing hardships?
20:15 - Trials are refinement
📌 21:04 – Reflections
22:02 - Growing out of your test
23:03 - Hoping to meet Allah vs. fearing Him
24:30 - Heartwork in Ramadan is your clarity
26:20 - Trials are your moments of gratitude
27:45 - When you fail to contextualize your trials
📌 29:15 – Final thoughts
Download the latest Qur'an 30 for 30 eBook: Qur’an 30 for 30: Thematic Tafsir.
Explore the daily juz questions and answers in the Qur'an 30 for 30 Season 5 Trivia.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. You're not eating, you're not drinking, you're kind of putting yourself through a different type of fitna, right? A different type of trial and difficulty and hardship, but that allows you to really truly know your purpose in life. And Ramadan is not just one month in the sense that it is a month of training, right? It's a month of putting your body through it and building good habits. And you take that outside of the month and then you go and you be that person that you've become in Ramadan, you know, for the rest of your life. And essentially with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la's blessing, you don't realize that actually trials and tribulations and hardships, they're meant for you to see the blessings that God has actually given you. And it's meant as a moment of gratitude. So the more grateful that we are, and the more that we are able to see that even in the times of the darkest moments of our life, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has given us something good. There's multiple things that are good, but there's something good that's always there. It really allows us to know that God is all merciful. Like he's so merciful, he's so kind, and he's so loving to us. There's something interesting as well. Surah Al-Ankabut, by the way, is, you know, my favorite Surah in the Quran changes based upon a time, right? But Surah Al-Ankabut is usually the one that's my favorite. Oh, masha'Allah. وَمَنْ جَاهَدَ فَإِنَّمَا يُجَاهَدُوا لِلنَّفْسِ Look, you're doing this for yourself. إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَغَنِيُّنَ عَنِ الْعَالَمِينَ And then when Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la mentions, وَوَصَيْنَا الْإِنسَانَ بِوَارِدَيْهِ حُسْنًا Like the sudden plug of the parents. Where did that come from? Because if you don't recognize the source of your blessings being, you know, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and all the things he's done for you before you were tested, the greatest place of kufr amongst human beings and gratitude amongst human beings is when you're ungrateful to your own mother, when you're ungrateful to your own parents. Because you didn't see when she literally bore you, you know, held you in her womb, bore you, took care of you. You don't remember all those moments.
So Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is saying, you know, this is a you problem. This is a you problem, right? Like this is, if you're failing to recognize the blessings and failing to properly contextualize the fitan, the tests and the trials, this is a you problem. You have a Lord that's merciful, a Lord that bestows despite you having done nothing and that's willing to forgive you despite everything you have done. So you need to recognize al-afu, the one who pardons, the one who forgives, and you need to recognize him first and foremost as the source of your original mercy before you can really appreciate the mercy that you are seeking from him, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. So take a last 30 second boost inshallah, it's the last 10 nights. So Salafatullah, give them your full, your last push inshallah. Yes, so in these last 10 nights, you know, Ramadan is a blessed month. And what I noticed or what I realized about Allah is that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la likes to give us incentive, right? And so that is that we have the whole year and in the whole year of fasting, Mondays and Thursdays is a blessing. But then we have the month of Ramadan, which is the most blessed month. And then within the most blessed month, you have the most blessed 10 days, which is the last 10 days. And within those last 10 days, you have the most blessed day, which is the day of Laylatul Khadr. And so it is so important to recognize that this Ramadan can be your best Ramadan. And so make sure that you don't let these last 10 nights go to waste, don't take them for granted. Don't say, I have another odd night. No, you have this odd night. Perhaps maybe this odd night is the last odd night that you'll be able to do as many blessings as you possibly can. So make sure that all those goals you had, you use this as your moment to do it. And you ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la for forgiveness and you ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to put barakah into your life. Jazakumullah khairan. I think we have to end there inshallah because we're out of time, but reminder to everyone inshallah, please keep us in your du'a, go hard in these last 10 bids in the night. Again, we hope that inshallah you'll support Yaqeen and support the wonderful efforts that are out there bid'ninah. And we'll see you all inshallah for the webathon
as well as for the next Juz bid'ninah for Juz 21. BarakAllahu feekum, wassalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. This is the trial and tribulation that the Muslims and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was facing at his time. BarakAllahu feekum, SubhanAllah there's so many connections that came to mind as you were speaking. And I think it's almost like a realization. You cannot, if you think about the end of Surat An-Naml, which is what I was reciting, the blessings of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la where the blessings of Allah are, all these blessings that you take for granted, you cannot possibly deal with your trial if you don't know where your blessing came from and where you wanna go. Like it's the source and then the goal, the source and the goal. And it's situated here, the beginning of Surat Al-Ankabut. Where did it come from? If you attribute test to Allah, but you don't attribute blessing to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la then you're always gonna be bitter about fitna. But if you attribute blessings to Allah first, then the fitna comes as a test to see if you will properly acknowledge those blessings and then use those blessings to search for the blessing of the hereafter. So if you don't know the blessing that came and the blessing that you're seeking, you don't know the God that put you here and you don't know the person that you're supposed to be, the servant that you're supposed to be to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. There's also something else when we talk about like, growing out of the test that you came from and recognizing that the real work starts when you become believers. It was very easy for people to recognize the evil of Firaun, right? It's easy to recognize, an'abatta bani Isra'il, the bitterness of being oppressed and enslaved by a tyrant like Firaun. But sometimes in fighting that tyranny and trying to get out of that slavery, you don't know where you wanna go. And so when they come out of it,
it's like we kind of lost our identity, right? What do we do now? So what did they do? They went back and they built a calf again, right? Like they're so used to this, right? And so SubhanAllah, it's like breaking out of that mindset into that greater possibility of what it truly means to be Abdullah, to truly, truly turn back to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. The last thing that caught my attention, Shaykh, when you're talking about, you know, those who hope to meet Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. We have this relationship with Allah where we hope to meet Allah, but we're also afraid of the consequences of our sins. Right? Like it's, we love him, Subhanahu Wa Ta-A'la, and it is our greatest goal to meet Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la but we also fear being held accountable. Who wanted to meet Firaun? Who loves to meet a tyrant? No one loves to meet a tyrant. There's nothing but a relationship of fear with a tyrant. Right? With Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, our love for him and our hope for him overtakes, right, that fear to the point that we still want to meet him, Subhanahu Wa Ta-A'la, but we want to be prepared for that meeting. And how does Allah, Azza wa Jal, respond, Surah Al-Ankabut, right after that? Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says, wa ladheena jahadu feena, or, afwan, Subhanahu Wa Ta-A'la. wa man jahada fa innama yujahidu linafsi inna Allah laghaniyun AAamil AAalameen And Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la mentions somewhere in those ayat, wa ladheena AAamilu wa AAamilu as-salihaati lanoo kaffiranna AAanhum sayyiatihim wala najaziAAanhum ahsana allathee kanoo yaAAamilun Right? And you can go find the exact verse, but those who believed and did good deeds, we will reward them only with the best of that which they used to do after expiating their sins. So it's like we'll expiate their sins and we'll reward them with the best of that which they used to do. So Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la wants us to still want to meet him and definitely treats us with a level of love and welcoming us back to him, which is why he gives us these gifts like Ramadan, the last 10 nights. Yeah, that's beautiful, because sometimes people will feel hopeless, right? And it's like, you know,
always know that you have what it takes to be sincere. You know, entering the month of Ramadan, some people might say, you know, I've just done so much, so many sins, people that convert to Islam, you know, people that are Muslim and they just, you know, they went on a deep end and they feel that there's no returning, there's no turning back. Well, there is turning back. There's literally a word for it. It's called Tawbah. It's called Inabah, to turn. Literally what it means, to turn back and to come to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. The door is always open. And to know that the ability to be sincere is there with you. It just may take some time for you to process and to go through the fitn, to go through the trials. And that's literally what the word fitn comes from, is to purify, we're putting iron under fire to mold it. How are we allowing ourselves to be molded, to be sincere? And that's very, very important in the month of Ramadan. And in any month, but particularly it's the month of Ramadan because it's kind of eliminating certain things to get clarity. And when you get that clarity, you have to really be honest with yourself. And that honesty with yourself is the sincere process. It's the process of sincerity. It's really looking at yourself and realizing, okay, you know, Ibn Qayyim, he talks about this so beautifully in a book called the Invocation of God, Shahr of Utterance, where Ibn Al-Sayyid is talking about that the heart goes through these stages of al-inkisar, wal-iftiqar, wal-dhul, and you debase yourself, you lower yourself, you realize I have nothing, I've been indulging upon my desires. So just going through that process, I think is very important for the heart, that heart work in Ramadan, to where when you feel that, that you're nothing without Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, and what you would be if it was left up to you, you're on your way to being sincere, inshallah. And those moments will be very, very intimate, and Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la knows best. Yeah, you know, something else that I realized as you guys were talking was, when you remove things, you're able to kind of see your sincere, true self, or you're able to kind of regroup, and you're able to learn your purpose and what you want to do,
or why am I living life the way that I'm living life? And essentially that's what the entirety of Ramadan is, right? You're not eating, you're not drinking, you're kind of putting yourself through a different type of fitnah, a different type of trial and difficulty and hardship, but that allows you to really, truly know your purpose in life. And Ramadan is not just one month in the sense that it is a month of training, right? It's a month of putting your body through it and building good habits, and you take that outside of the month, and then you go and you be that person that you've become in Ramadan, you know, for the rest of your life. And essentially, with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la's blessing, you don't realize that actually trials and tribulations and hardships, they're meant for you to see the blessings that God has actually given you, and it's meant as a moment of gratitude. So the more grateful that we are, and the more that we are able to see that even in the times of the darkest moments of our life, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has given us something good. There's multiple things that are good, but there's something good that's always there. It really allows us to know that God is all merciful. Like He's so merciful, He's so kind, and He's so loving to us. There's something interesting as well. Surah Al-Ankabut, by the way, is, you know, my favorite surah in the Quran changes based upon a time, right? But Surah Al-Ankabut is usually the one that's my favorite. Oh, mashAllah. وَمَنْ جَاهَدَ فَإِنَّمَا يُجَاهَدُ لِلنَّفْسِ Look, you're doing this for yourself. إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَغَنِيُنَ عَنِ الْعَالَمِينَ وَوَصَّيْنَا الْإِنسَانَ بِهِ And then when Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la mentions, وَلَذِينَ أَمَنُوا وَعَمِلُوا صَالِحَاتِ لَنُكَفِّرَنَا عَنْهُمْ سَيِّئَاتِهِمْ وَلَنَجْزِيَنَ أَحْسَنَ ذَذِي كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ وَوَصَّيْنَا الْإِنسَانَ بِهِ وَارِدَيْهِ حُسْنًا Like the sudden plug of the parents. Where did that come from? Because if you don't recognize the source of your blessings being, you know, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and all the things He's done for you before you were tested, the greatest place of kufr amongst human beings and gratitude amongst human beings is when you're ungrateful to your own mother, when you're ungrateful to your own parents,
because you didn't see when she literally bore you, you know, held you in her womb, bore you, took care of you. You don't remember all those moments. So Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is saying, you know, this is a you problem. This is a you problem, right? Like this is, if you're failing to recognize the blessings and failing to properly contextualize the fitan, the test and the trials, this is a you problem. You have a Lord that's merciful, a Lord that bestows despite you having done nothing and that's willing to forgive you despite everything you have done. So you need to recognize al-afu, the one who pardons, the one who forgives, and you need to recognize him first and foremost as the source of your original mercy before you can really appreciate the mercy that you are seeking from him, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. So take a last 30 second boost inshaAllah, it's the last 10 nights. So Salafatullah, give them your full, your last push inshaAllah. Yes, so in these last 10 nights, you know, Ramadan is a blessed month. And what I noticed or what I realized about Allah is that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la likes to give us incentive, right? And so that is that we have the whole year and in the whole year of fasting, Mondays and Thursdays is a blessing. But then we have the month of Ramadan, which is the most blessed month. And then within the most blessed month, you have the most blessed 10 days, which is the last 10 days. And within those last 10 days, you have the most blessed day, which is the day of Laylatul Khadr. And so it is so important to recognize that this Ramadan can be your best Ramadan. And so make sure that you don't let these last 10 nights go to waste. Don't take them for granted. Don't say, I have another odd night. No, you have this odd night. Perhaps maybe this odd night is the last odd night that you'll be able to do as many blessings as you possibly can. And so make sure that all those goals you had, you use this as your moment to do it. And you ask Allah SWT for forgiveness and you ask Allah SWT to put barakah into your life. Ameen. Jazakum Allah khairan. I think we have to end there inshallah, because we're out of time. But reminder to everyone inshallah to Allah, please keep us in your du'a. Go hard in these last 10, bidninahi ta'ala.
Again, we hope that inshallah to Allah, you'll support yaqeen and support the wonderful efforts that are out there bidnina. And we'll see you all inshallah to Allah for the webathon as well as for the next Juz bidnina for Juz 21. BarakAllahu feekum. Walaykum as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
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