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The Bedouin Who Mastered His Praise with Two Words | Daily Reminders
Sh. Omar Suleiman reflects on the story of a Bedouin who describes himself between two states: that of thanking Allah, and seeking forgiveness from Him, and how his simple praise of Allah was considered masterful.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Once again. I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan. In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And I seek refuge with Allah from the wrongdoers and the punishment is due to the righteous. O Allah, send peace and blessings upon Your servant and Messenger Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions. So last night we talked about Sayyid al-Istighfar, which is the chief of seeking forgiveness, the greatest way to seek forgiveness from Allah. And it summarizes some beautiful, essential creedal points on just the fundamental nature of the relationship that we have with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. One that requires us to acknowledge His blessings upon us in order for us to understand the severity of our sins in response to those blessings. And the inherent deficiency that will be found in our good deeds because we can never do for Allah what He does for us. So that was the essence or somewhat of a summary of the dua. But I do hope that you go back and watch last night if you missed it inshaAllah ta'ala where we talked about Sayyid al-Istighfar, the chief of seeking Allah's forgiveness and broke it down. Now one of the things that I want us to think about as we're going into Ramadan, I'm going to emphasize this over and over again. The personal nature of your dua, the personal nature of your supplication. And as I've said in some of these previous reflections, it's important for you to use the duas of the prophets and the dua of the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him specifically salallahu alayhi wa sallam to springboard you. And then to use the prayers of the pious to give you a methodology by which you supplicate. But at the end of the day, some of the most beautiful supplications are going to be the most heartfelt ones that are in your own language that don't rhyme, that aren't poetic, and that are just you. It's just you pouring your heart out to your Lord.
So that's one way that I want us to approach prayer as we're getting into a month of prayer, right, a month of supplication. But there's another way too is that sometimes we forsake the profound depth of some of the simple adhkar, the simple forms of remembrance that the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam gave to us, right? They're very simple things. They're short statements that we say on our tongue that are loaded with meaning, and if we took the time to understand what those small statements mean, what they encompass, and the nature of servitude, that is embedded within those small adhkar, those small statements of remembrance, then we'd appreciate them so much more instead of just letting them roll off our tongue very quickly. So oftentimes you find that, for example, there's a narration where one of the companions came to the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam and he said to him that, I don't understand your humming. I don't get the humming that you and the companions have. You have these beautiful poetic supplications, and I don't understand them. I'm not able to compose these beautiful poetic supplications, du'as, that you all are able to. And the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam asked him, well, what do you say? He said, I say la ilaha illallah, astaghfirullah, alhamdulillah, allahu akbar. These very basic things, and the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, in brief, that we do the same thing. We take those du'as and then we build upon them. We take those small statements and they form the foundations of all of our du'as. If you think about la ilaha illallah, bearing witness that there is only one God, subhanallah, how perfect is he, allahu akbar. He is greater than all else. Alhamdulillah, all praises and thanks are due to him. Astaghfirullah, I seek forgiveness from him. La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah, there is no power or might except for that which is with him.
If you think about these statements, all du'as, all supplications are built off of these foundations anyway. They are profound in what they encompass. So what is the story that I want to share with you? I know some of you are probably like, get to the title. You talk about this bedouin that perfected his du'a. And I'll say that there are numerous narrations about simple people in society that had very simple du'as that other people might have mocked or found to be very rudimentary, but they were actually very special. And they spoke to the beauty of the hearts of those whose tongues would express those simple forms of du'a. And so you'll find numerous narrations from the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam and the companions and the early Muslims where they just came across these people that were bedouins. And bedouins, you know, were rough with their language. They were hard to understand. They were very simple people. And sometimes they just blew people away with how profound their thinking was, even though as profound as it was, it was actually very simple. So the narration I'll share with you is from Imam al-Muzani, rahimahullah ta'ala. Imam al-Muzani, he says that I saw this man riding his camel. And as he was riding his camel, he just keep mumbling the exact same two things. All he would say the whole time was, Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah, Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah, Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah. Alhamdulillah, all praises and thanks are due to Allah. Astaghfirullah, I seek forgiveness from Allah. That's all he would say. And you know, those two phrases often are not put together when you look at the prophetic narration. So subhanAllahi wa bihamdihi, subhanAllahul adheem, subhanAllah wa alhamdulillah wa la ilaha illallah wa Allahu akbar, subhanAllah wa alhamdulillah wa Allahu akbar.
Istighfar is kind of in its own category, Astaghfirullah. Salawat is in its own category. You usually don't hear hamd and istighfar together. Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah, Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah. So anyway, Imam al-Muzani, rahimahullah, who's a great scholar of Islam, he said that, you know, as I listen closely to the man, can make out his murmuring, what he would constantly murmur. Astaghfirullah and Alhamdulillah. He said, I went up to him one day and I said to him, you know, oh, so and so, haven't you thought of anything else to say in your prayers? Haven't you found anything else to supplicate with? Are you just stuck with these two words? And he said, I know of other ways to supplicate Allah. I know of other ways to pray to Allah subhanAllah, to praise Allah. He said, but I find myself consistently between one of two states, either in a state of being blessed by Allah, which requires me to thank him, or in a state of sinning against Allah, which requires me to seek forgiveness from him. My whole life seems to be between these two states. Either I'm under a blessing for which I should be thanking the Lord, or I am sinning against the Lord for which I should be seeking forgiveness from him. So he said, I find myself between these two states all the time. And my entire existence is between a blessing that he's providing to me and a shortcoming that I'm responding with. I remember, by the way, istighfar, seeking forgiveness is not just for sins when you commit sins, it's also for your good deeds not being complete enough, right, for the inherent deficiency in your good deeds. So he said, I find myself between these two states. So that's all I find myself saying is, Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah, Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah. So he said that I've chosen to spend my life between thanking him for the blessings that he constantly provides me with, and seeking forgiveness from him for the sins that I constantly respond with.
Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah, Alhamdulillah astaghfirullah. Imam al-Muzini rahimahullah, he's, you know, I'm a scholar of Islam. I spent my whole life, you know, composing all of these elaborate systems of how to understand law and jurisprudence. And, you know, he was a faqih and all of these things and understanding Allah. And he said, that man, it could be that that man understood his Lord better than I understood my Lord. Right. And that's Islam is not an elitist religion. Islam is accessible to the Bedouin, and it's accessible to the king. It's accessible to people across their socioeconomic status, because we all supplicate the same God. We all have the same mechanism for supplicating that one God. No one has a shorter ladder to him. Right. It's just there. Allahumma, oh Allah. And once you say, oh Allah, then all of us are in the same plane when we say, oh Allah, oh my Lord. Right. And just call upon him in that way. So he said, my whole life is between Alhamdulillah and Astaghfirullah, Alhamdulillah and Astaghfirullah. And I'll leave you with one more reflection on that. There's a beautiful saying from Fudayla bin Ayyad rahimahullah. And the reason why I chose to talk about this, by the way, is because it connects to Sayyid al-Istighfar, doesn't it? It connects to the chief of seeking forgiveness because we said, abu'u laka bi ni'matika alayya wa abu'u bi dhanbi. I admit to you your blessings upon me and I admit my sins. I admit my shortcomings that you can't understand your sins properly unless you understand his blessings properly. So it's connected to say the chief of seeking forgiveness. So the last thing I'll share with you is a narration from Fudayla bin Ayyad rahimahullah ta'ala, where he was asked, what is better? Alhamdulillah or Tasbeeh or Tahmid, which are saying SubhanAllah, Alhamdulillah, glorifying and praising Allah, or Astaghfar, seeking forgiveness from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now, all of it is good. You occupy yourself in all of the forms of the remembrance of your Lord and you diversify your forms of dua,
your forms of dhikr, your forms of remembrance, and you find beauty in that. But he said that, think of it like a thawb, think of it like a garment. He said that if the garment has stains, is the priority to accessorize the garment, perfume it, or is the priority to remove the stain? If you're walking with a shirt and it has a stain, is the priority to remove the stain or is the priority to perfume and accessorize? So he said in that way, Astaghfar, seeking forgiveness from Allah is superior to praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. However, you need both. You need both of these things. And so we learn from these simple people often and Allah knows how, though he might have been simple, how elevated he must have been in the sight of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And there's so many examples of that, not just by the way in the past, but also in the presence. People that we look down upon, people that we don't take as authorities, people that are not looked to in any way, in a meaningful way in society. But they have such a status with Allah that if they were to take an oath with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then Allah will honor their oath always because of their status with him. So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to accept our hamd, our praise of him, to accept our astaghfar, our seeking forgiveness, to allow us to have a deeper understanding of the meanings of these adhkar, of these remembrances, to be engaged always with these remembrances, to let them be the life of our heart and the way back to him. And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to allow us to realize the ultimate reward of his pleasure on the Day of Judgment. Allahumma ameen. Jazakumullahu khayran. I'll see you all tomorrow insha'Allah ta'ala at the same time. And again Wednesday at the same time for the Ramadan Prep webinar and then Thursday 45 minutes later every night for 30 nights insha'Allah, where we'll summarize every chapter of the Qur'an and extract some gems.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
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