Lecture
45 / 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
The Generous | Episode 6 | To Know Him is to Love Him
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. And so let's take this to the last step before I close. How can we use this to make sure that our doubts do not erode our relationship with Allah and our love for Him Subhanahu wa ta'ala. So if you're going to talk about the problem of evil, well you're going to have to factor in that Allah is the most wise and most generous. And so he's not going to allow something to exist that's going to shortchange people or that's not going to benefit them in any way because that's what the whole idea is even when they debate about it. Like philosophers say God knows and God can and God is merciful and there shouldn't be evil. No, sorry. God knows and God can and God's the most merciful but He's also the most wise Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Right? And He's the most just Subhanahu wa ta'ala. And He's the most generous. And that's why phenomena that we consider evil have to exist. The Prophet ﷺ said that on the day of judgment, whomever believes in Allah on the last day, right? On the day of judgment when the people that went through difficulties and suffering will be given their reward, those that didn't will wish that their skins were sliced with scissors, with blades, with punctures because of the reward of those who went through difficulty. This is not for us to seek difficulty but to know that when Allah does this, He wishes to be gracious and generous with people. You know some people try to like shame you out of disbelief and they'll tell you like but how can there be some sort of like good in some innocent child in some you know place just being mauled and murdered to the end of it. Well if a person were to live the most miserable life ever, right? For 70-80 years and Allah gave them 70-80 years more on earth on a splendid life that would have been just and fair, right? But He will not do that. He will give them in another world that's far better than this world and He
will not give them 70 or 80 years, right? If they were the most downtrodden, pulverized human being ever for a hundred years straight, what is a hundred years divided by infinity? I've never felt any hardship but what's hardship? What difficulty? Never felt it whatsoever after just one dip. And so Allah has not just been just with these people that suffered. He has been gracious with them. He has been Al-Kareem with them, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Similarly when people begin to get unnerved about their faith when their dua gets delayed. Well you're going to have to incorporate your certainty that Allah is Al-Kareem, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. And so if He doesn't give you something, if He filters your dua from certain things you ask, it's because it was for our own good. You know Malik ibn Dinar or perhaps it was Salah ibn Dinar, one of the two of the earliest generations, they would say that Allah's favor over me in the things He kept from me of this world, the things He withheld from the dunya, is a greater favor than His favor in terms of the things He actually did give me. The favors in terms of withholding are greater than the favors of actually extending. He said because the people that were given the dunya predominantly are what? People that have gone corrupt. So He was protecting me from it. The same way someone is protected from the sweets that will destroy them, right? Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, it is reported about him that he would say a person makes a decision sometimes. Like I said I want to marry this person, like I'm going to get into this business and you make dua and like you move forward and all this stuff, right? He says and then Allah says to the angels, divert this opportunity from my servant because if I give
it to them they're going to go to the hellfire. They can't handle it. They're going to see it and forget me. Divert it. He says so the next morning the opportunity is gone and he sits there saying I caught the evil eye, I have bad luck. He's swearing he's such a unfortunate case and it is nothing but Allah's favor over him. That he didn't give him what he asked for in that case, right? Because he's Al-Kareem. We're going to have to see it from that angle. You know one of the Mashayikh last Ramadan in another part of the world, he says I had a friend whose mother was sick and I told him make dua that Allah cure her. He says and I made dua and I made dua and I made dua and she died and so he was shaken by this. So he said to him why didn't Allah answer my dua? He said well why did you want your mom to stay around? He said what do you mean? Because I love her. He said well Allah also loves her and that's why he didn't leave her here. Sometimes gifts are so big that you have to step outside to see them. Right or wrong? They don't fit in this dunya. If I wanted to give you even a car I wouldn't be able to bring it into VRIC, right? You'd have to step outside to the parking lot. There are certain gifts that this whole world cannot contain and sometimes Allah shuts down our world to open up another for us. Ibn Al-Qayyim says and one of the most profound statements I ever read for him he says that so long as your lifespan remains, you still have a life to live, your provisions will continue to flow. Like no one continues living without oxygen, continues living without food. So long as there's a life to be lived, the means to that life will continue being made
available, facilitated for you. He said and then Allah will not close your doors except that he will open in place of them more doors. He said and we even see this with the newborn child. She receives or he receives the infant all of their Rizq from one avenue which is the umbilical cord. That's their source of life and then Allah shuts that down one day upon birth, right? The disconnect happens only to replace that child with twice as many the two breasts of the mother, right? The two pathways of milk and then a day comes when the child is just no longer there. The day comes when the child is just no longer accepting or no longer nourished by those two avenues. They get shut down and Allah replaces them on that day with four in their place, right? Vegetation and meat he says and water and milk which is basically the base for any drinks, right? He says and then they will live for however long Allah determines for them to live and then Allah will shut down those four avenues of Rizq, of provisions. A day will come when food will not work, medicine will not work, oxygen will not benefit and so the day that he shuts down those four, he closes those doors if they are a believer, if they are a believer, he will open up for that believer in place of those four, the eight doors of Jannah to enter from whichever of them they want. Allah Akbar. This is Al-Kareem, right? This is the most generous, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's how he does things. And so you begin to realize that Allah only withheld from me to give me and only Allah only weakened me to actually strengthen me so I don't depend on things that will
disappoint me, right? And Allah Azza wa Jal only put me to death so that he may give me everlasting life. May Allah allow us and you to die upon Iman. And the last of them, so we said the problem of evil, we said the delayed Duaa syndrome, the last of them, the reasons for doubt that I wish to reflect on through Allah's name Al-Kareem is it is unlikely that someone like me after all these times will be forgiven. I've done so much, I've repeated so many times, I've broken so many promises. Do you know where that doubt comes from? That's like a self-esteem issue. I'm not worth being forgiven. And so when you don't know that Allah is the most generous, you project that onto Allah. Allah will not forgive me. How can I be forgiven? That's not about Allah. That has to be about you. But your forgiveness is not going to happen because of who you are. You will be forgiven inshallah because of who he is. That's why Ibn Ata'illah Al-Sakandari, he said, It's actually very poetic as well. He says, one of the signs that you're depending on your own performance, your own actions, is that you lose hope when you slip. Like whoa, hold on. Who said it was about you? So long as you keep coming back to Allah, he'll keep cleaning the slate. And I'll end with that hadith. The hadith of Abu Musa Al-Ash'ariyya radiallahu ta'ala anhu, in Sahih Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ said, by the generosity of Allah, even with forgiveness, he says, Allah continues to extend his hand by night so that the one that sinned by day may repent, may be forgiven. And he extends his hand over and over again by day so that those who sinned that night
may repent and be forgiven. And this will not stop. Endless generosity almost, right? And it will not stop until the sun rises from the west, until the end of this world. Isn't that mind-blowing? Like think about this. If someone extended their hand to you and you ignored them, right? Very unlikely they'll extend their hand again. Sometimes even the closest people to us, they kind of just say, no, I don't know, man. You just got to get your act together. I just see me when you're a better person, right? But you kept Allah waiting 10, 20, 30, 60 years perhaps, right? And he's still there. And the moment you turn, he's there to accept you. And then the scholar said, if Allah knows at the moment that you're repenting, that you're going to slip again, he's still going to forgive you because you don't know that you're going to slip again. Imagine like, I know you're going to do it again in 10 minutes. I'm still forgiving you for this time because I'm judging you on what you know, what you're doing. So long as you're determined each time, the generosity of Allah is what it's about. It's not about us. And that's another big source of doubt that the name of Allah Al-Kareem can insha'Allah help us remedy. May Allah Azza wa Jal grant us and you a life upon faith and a life where we enjoy the sweetness of knowing him and longing to be near to him and seeing him and being with him and his Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in the highest gardens of Jannah. Allahumma Ameen.
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