 Allah SWT, He says in the Qur'an, in the 35th ayah of the fifth surah of the Qur'an, Ya ayyuhal ladina amanu, ittaqu Allah, wabtaqu ilayhil wasila, wajahilu fisabilihi la'allakum tuflikhun. He says, oh you who believe, fear Allah SWT, and seek out the means to Him, and strive in His path in order for you to be successful. Allah SWT mentions in this ayah iman, the verb is amanu, the mustar or infinitive is iman. He mentions taqwa, iman an taqwa, and then he mentions the third thing, al wasila, the means of arrival, the means of approach to Him to Allah SWT. This word al wasila is related linguistically to the term tawassul or intermediation. You see there may be deficiencies in our level of iman, there may be deficiencies in our level of taqwa. So Allah commands us wabtaqu ilayhil wasila. This is a fi'il amr, this is a command to fill in as it were, our deficient gaps of iman and taqwa by seeking out the means to Him. And you apply it to your university. Our young people know this all too well. Unless you have a 1600 SAT and a 36 ACT and a 4.3 GPA, you will need help. This form of letters of recommendation, help from people that have authority and rank in academia. It's similar in the spiritual realm. We need all the help we can get from those things nearest and dearest to Allah SWT. We all practice tawassul at some level. We read the Quran. As one of my teachers said, the Quran is not Allah and the Quran is not you. Reading the Quran is a means of drawing near to Allah SWT. It is a wasila. Some commentators say about this ayah, the means of approach mentioned in this ayah, that it is al anbiya, it is the prophets. More specifically, Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wasallam, our master Muhammad, peace and blessings of God be upon him. The means of approach to our Lord. The Ba'alui Sadat of Yemen, they recite a beautiful benediction upon the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wasallam. They say, Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad, O Allah bless our master Muhammad, Miftahi ba'bi rahmatillahi, the key to the gate of the mercy of Allah SWT. If you think of the analogy of the Rahma of Allah SWT as being like a walled city with a gate and many claim to have the key. Many claim to have the key to the city of Rahma. But the true key is the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wasallam. The ulama mentioned, the Mufassirin of the Quran mentioned that a waft, a delegation of Christians from Najran, they came into Madinah to Manawara and they dialogue with the Sahaba. And the Christians said that we worship Isa alayhi sallam out of love for Allah SWT, out of love for God. This is a sabbubu news according to many of the Mufassirin of Ayatul Imtiham in which Allah SWT commands his prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wasallam to tell them If you really love Allah, you have to have itiba' of me. You have to follow me. You see. So, you don't demonstrate your love for Allah SWT by worshiping his creation. Then will Allah love you and forgive you your sins. So the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wasallam is not just Miftahi Babi Rahmatillah He is Miftahi Babi Mahabbatillah He is the key to the gate of the love of Allah SWT The prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi said Kullun ansab tanqati' yawm al qiyamati Ghayranasabin The prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi said Every type of lineage is cut off and severed on the yawm al qiyamah except my lineage and those who are connected to me So the righteous ahlul bait as well as those who are connected to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wasallam through love The ittisaal of mahabba Connection through love Think of Salman al-Farisi He is not from the family of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam He is not even an Arab The muhajideen claimed him The Ansar claimed him And the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam claimed him Salmanu minna ahlul bait Salman is from us the people of the house Why? Out of love He loved the messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wasallam And the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam loved him as well We are told in traditions that when the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam was shown jannah He said He said The prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said When I was in paradise I was shown a vision of paradise I heard footsteps in front of me And behold it was the footsteps of The abyssinian Beloved to Allah Because he was beloved to the messenger of Allah This is called the ittisaal The connection of mahabba Of love and is open to everybody Ask your lord by means of his beloved And you will not be rejected Honor the beloved of your lord And you will be honored This is how it works There is an amazing hadith Some call it a controversial hadith I don't see the controversy Amazing hadith You'll find it in Ibn Maja Imam At-Tirmidhi records it Narrated by Uthman Ibn Hunayf Over 15 masters of hadith Her father of hadith Have explicitly said that the following hadith Is rigorously authenticated in sound Including Bukhari And Nasa'i Al-Bayhaqi Al-Tabarani You name it That a man who was Darila al-Basar A man who was blind He came to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam And he said He said O messenger of God Supplicate to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala So that he might heal me The prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said to him If you have patience it is better But if you want me to all supplicate He said So the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam told him To go and make an excellent wudu Go and make a beautiful wudu And pray two rak'ateen Two units of prayer And then say the following O Allah I ask you And I turn to you By means of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wasallam The prophet of mercy The prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam This is what the prophet told him The prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam He's maasum He cannot make an error The Quran says The prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam is the walking Quran His prescription to the blind man Was based upon the Quran As he took himself as the wasila There's a hadith in Bukhari This is one of my favorite hadith I mention it all the time It's a hadjeeb Beautiful hadith A man came to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam Up to the congregational prayer And he said I have reached the parameters Of permissibility in the shari'a So punish me according to the book of Allah Now imagine how difficult this must have been For this man Imagine how afraid he was How embarrassed he was Imagine him weeping in a state of Absolute brokenness He comes to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam And the prophet asks him an interesting question He didn't expect such a question He said Didn't you just pray with us? And he said The prophet said Allah swt Indeed has already forgiven your sin This man brought his sin To the door of mercy And the door was opened Well some might say Well the prophet was alive when that happened Now first of all according to the Aqidah Or the sound Aqidah The prophet is The prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam Is alive in his noble grave There's a hadith of Abu Dawud A very strong hadith Whenever someone sends salams upon me Allah swt returns my soul to me So that I might respond to him Imam Usiyuti says This doesn't literally mean the soul of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam Is going in and out of his body But his consciousness returns A heightened state of awareness returns to him You might say How is that possible Tens of millions of Muslims Are doing salawat a la nabi And he hears this and responds to it You're making him into a deity No one's doing that No one's ascribing to him Equality of Allah swt Think of a tweet If you have a million followers You send a tweet in one second A million people see it That's in this world The unseen realm Is beyond our imaginative limitations Allah swt says in the Quran That the shuhada are not dead The shuhada are alive But you don't perceive it Who is better A shuhada or Habibullah Who is better The martyrs are the beloved of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wasallam The bottom line is Our ibadat Our taqwa Our iman is deficient We need to take the means of approach To Allah swt We need to appeal to Allah's beloved And nothing is known Is more beloved Nothing and no one Is more beloved to Allah swt Than the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi alayhi wasallam This is sound aqidah Khayr al-khalqillah He is the best of creation He is better than jannah He is better than jannah He is jannah is jannah Because he is better than jannah So what is his reward Sallallahu alayhi wasallam The ru'iyah The beatific vision Of Allah swt Okay What about after the passing Of the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam As if this makes a difference A prophet's maqam with Allah Is it magically annihilated When that prophet dies A prophet's reality With Allah swt Isn't suddenly annihilated When he dies When he physically passes From this world There is a sound narration And multiple books And confirmed by all of the salaf And you'll find it in very popular books Kitab-u-Shifa Qadi-i-ayyad Imam of Nawa We relate to it as well Very famous story That a better one came To the grave of the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam And he said Ya Rasulallah Oh messenger of God I've committed a great sin And I've heard That Allah said in his book Walau annahum Izzalamu anfusahum Ja'uqa Fa staghfaru Allaha wa staghfarah Lahum ar Rasuluh La wajadu Allahatawab ar Rahima I've heard Allah say If only when they had wronged themselves They came to you This ja'uqa This qafu qitaab The qitaab is the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam Direct address He is the one being addressed If they had come to you And they had asked Allah for forgiveness And that the messenger had asked Allah For his forgiveness Then they would have found Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala Relenting and merciful So the better one said Here I am Oh messenger of God I've asked Allah Now I'm asking you to ask To ask Allah To forgive me Of course he recited The famous poem Ya khayra man duffinat fitturabi A'adumuhu O best of whose bones are buried In the earth And it continues Anka al-habibu li-ladi Tura jasha fa'aduhu Then the better one He wept and he walked away And there was a man named Al-Utbi According to the narration Who was in that area And you'd seen what had happened Al-Utbi after some time He dozed us off He falls asleep Who should come to him In his dream The prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam Man nirani fil manami Fa qadra al-haq Whoever sees me in a dream I've seen the truth So the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam Tells us man al-Utbi Go wake up Go catch up to this better one And tell him Inna Allah qad ghafara lah That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Has forgiven him The better one brought his sin To the door of mercy And it was opened The city of mercy Remains accessible Even after the physical passing Of the key to its gate Without the shafa'ah Of the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam We will be lost In our extremists Who write in their popular books They write things like One of the Nawakud al-Islam One of the Null of Fires Of one's Islam Is taking intercession With Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Ajeem Who's teaching these people Good luck on Yom al-Qiyamah Wallahi I don't know What Qur'an they're reading They say no no no There are ayat in the Qur'an That reject shafa'ah Ibn Hisham said You have to look at the Qur'an As a jumlah wahida Unified totality As an overall message Those are isolating things Look at the overall message There's harmonization in the Qur'an Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says In the Qur'an يوم إذن لا تنق وشفاعته Yeah this is half the ayat لا تقربوا الصلاة That's also half the ayat Don't pray This intercession will avail no one That's half the ayat إلا This is called Harful Istifna This is an exception إلا من قد نذه الرحمان ورد يله قولا Except the one Except the one who has إذن permission From the indiscriminately compassionate And he is well pleased With his speech آية الكرسي من ذا الذي يشفع عنده إلا بإذن Who can intercede With Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Except the one who has إذن permission from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Who couldn't listen to the sound Hadith Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala With all the Prophets And all the people يوم القيامة إشفاعته شفاعت Listen to the sound When you intercede And your intercession Will be accepted What Qur'an Or people reading What hadith Are they reading And the hadith Recorded by Ibn Majah The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Said يشفع يوم القيامة ثلاثة And then the scholars And then the martyrs And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam On the day of judgment Three groups of people Will intercede In this order The Prophets Then the scholars Then the martyrs In the hadith The Tirmid And Abu Dawood The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Say My intercession Is for the people Of mortal sin Of grave sin From my ummah And the hadith four He said There's a group of people On the day of站 Who were called out Of the fire By means of the Sofa The intercession and their enter paradise. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said in Bukhari li kulli nabiyyin da'wah. Every prophet has a invocation for oridu insha'Allah an aqtabiya da'wah tishafaatan li umma tiyyum al qiyama. Al Qama qala alaihi sallatu wa sallam. Every prophet has an invocation and I wanted if Allah wills to save mine until the day of judgment to intercede for my umma. In a hadith in Tirmidhi the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was asked about the ayah. Asa ayyad atika rabbuka maqama mahmuda. Su'ila an hadihil ayah taqwa hadith is in Tirmidhi. What is the meaning of maqama mahmud? Qa'da Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, hiya al shafa'a. This is the intercession. What tafasir are they reading? Wala sofa yu'itika rabbuka fatarudah. Su'u will thy Lord give thee that which will please thee. And Imam Su'yuti and many, many other Mufasirin they say when the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam heard this ayah he said, wa lan tarada wa wahidun min ummatifin naar. I will never be pleased. Even if one person from my umma is in the fire. Even if one person. So what did Allah give him? Wala sofa yu'itika aata. What did Allah give him? This shafa'a is unanimous. Without the shafa'a we are lost. Without the sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam we will be lost. Without the sunnah the Qur'an becomes incomprehensible. The Qur'an is powerful and without the sunnah wielding it the Qur'an can become dangerous. This is what he said, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. I've left behind me two things. Hold fast to them and you'll never go astray. Kitabullah wa sunnahin. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says In the Qur'an, The Qur'anic ayat of multiple levels of meaning. In the immediate instance, this is the reference to the Arabs among the Arabs. Right? You're among them. But the Qur'an has multiple levels. There's deeper meanings. The Qur'an is a polyvalent text. There are levels of meaning. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, Every ayah of the Qur'an has a bahir and a batin and a had and a makla. These are different levels of meaning. So fiqum can also be translated as in you. This messenger is within you. What is within you? The sunnah, the normative practice, the ethos of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam has been appropriated and internalized by the lovers of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This what the Ulamas say, Imam Shafi'i said that the word hikmah in this ayah, when Allah says, that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam will teach you al-kitab, the Qur'an, wa al-hikmah and the wisdom. Imam Shafi'i, he said hikmah in this ayah means sunnah. The word for sunnah in the Qur'an is hikmah, they're interchangeable. The application of the Qur'an. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he taught the Qur'an and its application. The Qur'an must be interpreted through the lens of the sunnah. The sunnah is the hermeneutic of the Qur'an to use a modern academic term. Allah SWT says, That indeed we sent down a zikr, one of the names of the Qur'an. We sent down a zikr, the reminder. In order for you to explain, in order for you to explicate for the people what has been revealed to them, in order for you to ponder, to ponder not to be literalist or simplistic to think deeply about the Qur'an. Guided by the sunnah, the extremist, the mutatarrifin, they only look at what the Qur'an says. They only answer the question, Mahua, what does the Qur'an say? If there's a nus, that's what it is. There it is, Mahua, it's a text. They ignore the why, and the how to implement the kafa. This is very, very important. The latter two takes rigorous itjtihad, scholarship, grounded in the sunnah of the Messenger of Allah SWT. It takes decades. The method of extremism is facile and lazy. The method of impetuous boys. Allah SWT describes the Prophet of Allah SWT in the Qur'an by saying it crushes him that you should perish. Harithun alaykum. Deeply concerned is he about you. So the one who is harithun alayna, the one who is deeply concerned about us is telling us whoever turns away from my sunnah, my normative practice, my ethos is not from me. The one who is harithun alayna, the one who is deeply concerned about us, the one who is crushed if we should fail. He says, I exhort you to follow my sunnah in the sunnah of the rightly guided caliphs who followed me. Hold on tightly to it and bite into it with your molar teeth. This is what he says. There's a hadith of Aisha on Mother Aisha. This is in Tirmidhi. The Prophet SAW said six types of people are cursed as za'idu fi kithab illa the one who attempts to add something to the book of Allah SWT. Al-muqaddibu bi qadr illa the one who belies or disbelieves in the decree of Allah SWT. Those are the first two. You get to number six. The one who abandons my sunnah. Why? Because it leads to corruption in the earth. The sunnah personalizes the Qur'an. It provides examples of the universal principles of the Qur'an, the kulli'at and juzi'at, the universals and particulars. You see the minhad, the textual method of the mututarrifim, of the extremist, is that they elevate particulars over universal. You see there are particular stories attributed to the Prophet in Sirah and in individual hadith that do not match his universally agreed upon personality. His sunnah. Not everything that is written about him. Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam is true. It's not just, you know, where's the text? Where's the nus? No. It takes ijtihad. There's a difference between hadith and sunnah. And there's a cross over obviously but there is a difference that's very, very important. The latter, the sunnah, is the normative universally agreed upon ethos, character, example of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The sunnah is what Allah SWT refers to in the Quran, لقد كان لك في رسول الله قرس وطون حسنة. لمن كان يرجو الله واليوم الآخر الذكر الله كتيرة you have the Messenger of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam a beautiful example for anyone who has hope, رجع, hope in Allah, who has hope in Allah in the last day and makes frequent the vikr of Allah SWT. It is the normative ethos of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that Allah SWT refers to when he says وإِنَّكَ لَعَلَ خُلُكِنْ عَذِينَ Verily you dominate magnificent character. This is important that he is Nabiur Rahman. He is the Prophet of Mercy and anything particular that contradicts this universal is suspect. Anything that contradicts this universal, any type of particular contradicts this universal that he is Nabiur Rahman is suspect. It's open to criticism because we know his normative ethos. We don't allow people to bring text out of nowhere this isolated text, this isolated text and try to defame and character assassinate the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We know the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam the most transparent life that was ever lived. We know his normative ethos. Generations and generations of scholarship have gone to try to determine what was his character. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said said O my dear son this is a term of endearment if you are able to wake up and go to sleep if you are able to wake up and go to sleep and there is on any type of deceit or deception in your heart then do that and he said O my dear son and that is from my sunnah and whoever revives my sunnah has loved me and whoever loves me will be with me in paradise revive a sunnah is not difficult Abdullah ibn Harith he said I never saw anyone smiling more than the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam smile it's sunnah I went to an MSA meeting one time all the students had smile it's sunnah and they were wearing them around campus and the non-listeners would come and say what's sunnah oh sunnah what is that this is the ethos the character of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam it's easy I'll close with this inshallah ta'ala in Tirmidhi this is a warning narrated by Ubed Allah ibn Abi Rafi' where he says that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he said let me not find one of you let me not find one of you lounging on his couch what we say kicking back in his lazy boy when I ordered when a command I ordered or prohibition that comes from me comes to him in other words he's lounging and the sunnah comes to him and he says and he says what I don't know what we find in the book of Allah we follow it you see they want to separate divorce sever Allah from his messenger again the Quran with respect to its ahkam can be a difficult book without the sunnah one will make a mockery one can make a mockery of the Quran one can defame the Quran one can cause humanity to revile and flee from the Quran they will misrepresent the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam may Allah SWT give us tawfiq to learn al-kitab wa al-hikmah the tawfiq to learn al-Quran wa sunnah I say this wa astaghfirullah li walakum wa astaghfiruh innahu hu wa l-ghafuruhin ilallah ya tawab tuba alina alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen wa sallatu wa sallam wa rasulillahi al-mustafa wa ala saadatina wa immatina abibakar umar ar-thman wa alih wa radiallahu ta'ala an ashhadi rasulillahi ajma'in yaqulullah subhanu wa ta'ala fi kitabihil azeez ba'adan naqulu wa a'udhu billahi minash shaytan al-rajim innallahu wa malaiqatuh yusadun al-anabi ya ayyuhal ladina amunusadu alayhi wa sallim wa taslima Allahumma salli ala wa ala alida al-mohammad ka-masoolica alaaseena ibrahim wa la al Aaleeseena ibrahim innaka hamit illalameen innaka hameedla majid Allahumma baarika ala saina muhammade wa ala alizeena muhammad ka maparata a lo say greha wa alaa las ahead ya ibrahim wala al Eyez galli onboard ibrahey feel alameen innaka hameedon majid allalcmuh dina see maate wa-aafina fi man aathate o to wallall malika al-awade wabrekel ala third man alohangli inamanya waqena sharram bataate maera maazate Allahumma inna nasaluqa ilman nafi'an wa rizqan wasi'an wa shifa'an min kulli da'in Allahumma inna nasaluqa binul wa chikad kareemab i haqqik aleyk husna khatima indal mamad lana wa li ahbabina wa li jimi'il muslimin ya ahma rakhineen rabbana la tuzik ulubana ba'ad ibhaideitana wa habalana min lunka rahmah Inna ka antal wa hab rabbana atina fi dhunya khasana tun wa fil ākhirat i hasana wa qinā azab al-Nār la ilaha illa anta subhanaka inna kunna min al-ghalimin la ilaha illa anta subhanaka inna kunna min al-ghalimin la ilaha illa anta subhanaka inna kunna min al-Ghalimin rabbana, galamna afusana wa ilam tawfudlana wa tachamna nana tunana min al-khasidin ya muqaddiba al-kulubat afsar hab al-kulubana al-adinik ya muqaddiba al-kulubat afsar hab al-kuluban alata'ateh Wa sallAllahu Alai Sayyidina Muhammad wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi Wa salamu alhamdulillahi rab al-Alamin wa qeemu al-salah li zikrihi