 The nature program and a program about apes came on and so they were seeing how the apes were acting and we were eating from a we were eating from a plate and he said like he was looking at the apes and he was reminding himself of the the nobility and the dignity that Allah SWT has given us over other animals you see most other animals horses sheep they put their face into the food for us we bring the food up to with our hands now granted there are some animals that do that anybody ever seen raccoons how they eat they'll actually get their food they got their little hands and then wash it in the creek and eat their food they can open up doors you know so there's always exceptions to the rules but that was one of the tefsihs that they've been on basket to this ayah but there's many other ways that Allah has ennobled us with and one of them is the just that that feeling of independence and so when we when we deal with ourselves or we deal with other people around us especially those entrusted Allah has entrusted us to care for them our children our students and we're helping to raise them up we have to recognize their independent choice and and encourage that of course within within reason you know keeping them away from the harm and the haram those two things just remove one A haram and harm keeping them away from those two things but giving them enough autonomy it's almost like semi-autonomous governments we have to give them some some autonomy because the human being by their nature they want to make their decisions on their own and one of the the poet said When nefs are in du'iyah to be unfi'a biya wa hi'a ma'a umi'ah to be bishbi tamiru the nefs a self and this goes for whether you're dealing with other people and first and foremost when you're dealing with yourself the human self the way Allah has created the nefs is that as long as you encourage it with gentleness it will obey but if you try to force it the natural reaction will be no I don't want to do that and just think about any any experience you have of yourself if somebody tries to tell you to do something your first reaction is no I'm going to you know you can't tell me what to do even if you know that that might be beneficial how many times have we had somebody give us advice but it's some of that unsolicited advice that comes in a very condescending manner or you shouldn't be eating that you know and maybe you know okay yeah I shouldn't be eating this but you don't have a right to tell me like that's going to be my decision that's the feeling that we have so we have to recognize that about ourselves so if we're training our souls we can't crush the souls all at once we can't force ourselves to do something we have to go incrementally and that's the definition of ta'biya the definition of ta'biya is that you give people things incrementally at their stage of development like one of my shield said he said it's just like the way a bird raises its offspring at first it sits on the eggs then once they come out it gives them semi-digested food right the bird will go and pick up whatever food it's going to be digest it or have it semi-digested, regurgitate it, give it to the birds then once they get a little bit older they give them fully or undigested food and they get them moving around the nest and they get them up to the edge and they kind of push them out to the branch and incrementally push them away so that's ta'biya now whether we're doing ta'biya of our own selves we have to recognize that we have to give ourselves room to grow and especially if we have our children our nieces our nephews those in the community and our children so one of the things that I wanted to do with this haraqa to also compliment what's going on with the boys and the young men's haraqa is to actually follow a curriculum so last year during the haraqa I was following topics but not a specific book so what I wanted to do was go over during this year of haraqas we're meeting each Friday let's go over a series of just two books by one scholar from West Africa his name is Sheikh Mohammed Molud and I'll tell you a little bit about this sheikh and about the topics that he chose the sheikh is from about 150 years ago in Mauritania in West Africa and he comes from a long line of scholars seven of his grandparents were Qatis they were each judges when it came to him and people expected him now as a scholar who had memorized the Quran as a young child studying the deen knew all of the various subjects of Islam he knew tafsil of the Quran he knew memorization of the Quran he knew the Arabic language grammar Nahu Saf Morphology Lugha Language Bada'a Rhetoric All of the languages, all of the sciences of the Quran he knew the science of Arabic also of Hadith also of Fiqh of Aqidah of Tizquia of all of the logic and theology he had studied all of those now he's ready to be a judge he said I don't want to have this connection that's too much involvement with people there's not much connection to the dunya I want to just teach and be with people and what he said is that he actually wanted to be with people with as few sins as possible so when he would drink tea he would only drink tea with children he said adults have sins and I want to be around the people who don't have sins so that's another thing too that we should remember when we see children because as parents as teachers if we get too much into the mode of the authority figure the Adam giver we forget that these are human beings that actually have no sin on their soul like they're very close their spiritual state they're very close to Malaika the angels in that sense because the angels have no sin and these children have no sin now they might do crazy stuff and they might make choices that if they weren't an adult we would say that's haram but for them it's not haram they're not accruing any sin so in that state they're actually very spiritual so it's also a good reminder to us like when children make du'a that's something we should want for ourselves so if you don't have any family members and you're asking people to make du'a ask the children in your family to make du'a for you because those are people who have no sins on their souls and this is something that even the Arabs in Jahalilah recognized when they wanted to reach out to Allah because the Arabs they were mushriqin they believed in Allah subhanahu ta'ala did the Arabs believe in Allah did they say there is no such thing as Allah the Jahaniyya Arabs that wasn't their kufr what was their kufr shirk they were associating partners with Allah and when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam came and told them not to commit this shirk what was their excuse what's that well that's one excuse our forefathers were doing it but what was their logical excuse they said hold on it's like we believe in Allah and we have these other idols but there's not a problem because what what do they do what's that it makes us closer it's just like these are just intermediaries between us and Allah it's kind of like how in the Catholic faith they have all these saints right the saint of this or the saint of war and the saint of St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland supposedly so some people turn to saint Patrick or whoever it might be they might have the god of this and the god of that or the Greeks have well they don't actually have one main god and we'll zoos I guess right so then all of these other gods so if you want to go if you need love in your life you go to the god of love and if you need war you go to the god of war so the Arabs did the same thing too they said we're just trying to get closer to Allah by going through these other intermediaries but they believed in Allah now that's shirk of course it's kufr it's not acceptable and they knew how they had an understanding that if we need to present or if we want to have somebody present something to Allah we go to the most sacred so one of the things they used to do is they would take children with them to the Ka'bah and hold the children up to the Ka'bah and say Ya Allah send us the rains or whatever dua it was that they were making because they recognized the children have no sins so getting back to shirk Muhammad Maudud he wanted to be with people who were not involved in the dunya and then he began in addition to teaching he began writing books but the choices of the books that he made was almost a social critique of what was being done and what was not being done islamically in terms of education so he looked at all of the various subjects that were being taught and one of the things that he noticed he said some of the people who who study Islam and teach Islam they're getting too caught up in subjects that don't occur too much and he gave examples in one of his books that we'll go through inshallah one is about 80 lines of poetry the other is about 120 throughout this year of haraqa I intend to get through it and I'm also going over it with the young men and the boys in the haraqa so if you have children there you know some of the what we're sharing with them one of the things he said is that people are studying the akham the rules of collateral, putting up collateral so one of the things in sharia this is something the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam taught us is that you can take a debt and you put something up for collateral so the closest thing would be like a pawn shop everybody knows how a pawn shop works you go in there to borrow money you put something up as collateral a phone and you say I'm going to borrow $200 if I don't pay back in such and such time you get to keep the phone now this is something the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam actually codified in the sharia and gave us rules on how to conduct that transaction that business transaction and how not to so pawn shops are not sharia compliant I don't want people to go back and say sharia financing there's a number of issues with that and to show you that even he himself engaged in what's called rachan in Arabic when he passed away he had almost no wealth except what if you're familiar with the shama'il of imamat al-Madeem he had some armor that was marhounan there was a Jewish man in Medina and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam had borrowed money from him and put up his collateral, his armor now this teaches us a lot one, I mean there's many many benefits we can get just from understanding this one, think about this the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam when he needed money he worked for it or he borrowed it and he paid it back now think of people who take on religious roles in our society and they expect the society to support them rather than I'm not talking about a specific like a job, I'm just saying somebody said I'm a pious, righteous Muslim and people should give me gifts because I don't need to work yet the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he either worked for his money and he taught us about how important it was to work from whatever your hands create to the point that one time said maddam sallallahu alaihi wa sallam when he was the governor baskets and selling them and they said, why are you weaving baskets you're the governor of Iraq you're getting a stipend from making man from the treasury that stipend that I give I give away in southern because the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam the person I love taught me that the best thing I can eat is that which my own hand created and so he used to weave the baskets sell them and that's what he supported himself and his family so this is the work ethic that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam taught us and if he needed if he put something up he didn't go and expect somebody to give him sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in fact for him and his family he forbade consuming sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in any case the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam passed away and his armor it also tells us like what was his wealth he had very little wealth one of the things he had was armor and in those days it was quite expensive to have a shield and he had a great armor but that's one of what he owed and if you're not familiar with the shama'il of Imam al-Tirmidhi it's translated sometimes as the description of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam there's various translations it's been translated a couple of times into English it's also been translated into Urdu Shef Sakari al-Kandahari has a commentary on it in Urdu that's also been translated into English you can find it online the shama'il at tirmidhi Imam al-Tirmidhi collected all of the descriptions of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam the way his hair looked, the way his eyes were the way his skin color, his height, his shoes his clothes, his food, everything I mean it's a detailed description of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam so every household should have that read it, it's something you can read on your own and with the commentary you can understand, if you have questions you can ask a teacher so that's one of the hadith that's mentioned there that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam passed away and he had a a shield armor that was in Rahim now, how many Muslims on a day to day basis deal in that sort of putting up Qalado for loans is it a regular occurrence not really, maybe if you borrow against your house that might be a modern equivalent but it's a rare occurrence and yet in our chapters of Fiqh there's detailed rulings of this and definitely we need a portion of the society to understand those rulings but what Shef Muhammad Monu found is that so many people were studying those rules and knowing them and yet rules about the tongue like what are the rules of the tongue, of speaking and interacting with people rules of how to deal with your parents and the communication of the heart and above the masjid so these are all books that he wrote because he was looking and said okay, there's a gap in knowledge amongst my community and this is Mauritania to give you an idea it's split up into different categories but there were certain tribes in Mauritania where everybody memorized the Quran everybody studied the Deen it was considered a shame if you were a young man some of the people that said you could not even get married to a woman in our tribe if you had not memorized the Quran what kind of man are you if you haven't memorized the Quran so these are people who took pride in studying it wasn't just like they happened to be Muslim and a few of them studied they were all studying and yet he analyzed what they were doing and studying and what they were not and then he filled in the gaps of knowledge with this curriculum that he laid out and it's very practical advice implementable things that occur on a regular day and as we go through it I hope you also see what I mean by that in terms of his curriculum so this book that I'm going to go through initially it's called the Rights of Parents the Rights of Parents one of the reasons why it's very important there's a number of reasons and he begins in his book of why it's important and why is it important for us to have parents and they're either living or they passed away and we might have children ourselves so we have a duty to our parents so we need to know what is actually the proper interaction that a Muslim has with their parents our religion is not Alhamdulillah one of the things that we're blessed with is that we have details so if you ask anybody how did the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam do we know that? we do right? how did he pray? do we know that? yes how did he make hajj? we have details and all of this has been preserved how did he buy himself? how did he get married? how did he hire people? all of those rules are preserved the shari'ah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam has been preserved if somebody goes and says how did Musa alaihi wa sallam do wudu because we know that the previous ummas they did wudu and they also made prayer but if you go to any Jewish man right now or a Jewish woman you ask them how did Moses alaihi wa sallam how did Musa alaihi wa sallam how did he pray? exactly I want details A to Z can they do that? it's been lost they don't even have the original Hebrew that Musa alaihi wa sallam spoke the original books the original Aramaic that Issa alaihi wa sallam spoke they don't have access to that we know exactly how the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam decided the Quran we know exactly where in the mouth the word would come from to pronounce each and every letter that's how Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam has preserved this name everything has been preserved when Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says that he has preserved the Quran he's also preserved everything needed to understand the Quran the Quran has sira stories of the prophets that's been preserved the Quran has hadith the signs of Arabic has been preserved the Quran has rules don't we have ahkam in the Quran Allah says you can eat this you can't eat this this is how you pray this is how you fast well all of those rules the details have all been preserved along with the preservation of the Quran so this is something that we have been honored with the ummah of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that we have a preservation of the sharia so now when we come to the subject of respect to the parents we see the Quran but do we know the details so we want to turn our understanding of the rights of parents to more of an objective understanding of what that really means as opposed to a subjective understanding and what I mean by that is if Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says respect to no major parents and if a person doesn't understand the sharia and the rules behind that do we misunderstand the application is it possible that a parent could tell their son or daughter you have to do this and this and this for me because Allah says in the Quran you have to respect me but in reality they are just giving you their own personal opinion of what they think is an obligation upon you does that make sense so we want to turn that subjective understanding into more of an objective understanding and this is one of the things that shaykh muhammad marud has done by bringing together all the ayahs that have been mentioned about vidur-u al-wadi-dayn all the ahadith that have been mentioned about it the stories of the sahaba and the understanding of the ulama and the understanding of the scholars so we'll go through that so again he was he lived about 150 years ago in West African Mauritania and it's important for us to know who we are taking knowledge from so scholars usually at the beginning of their books or at the end of the books they'll mention their names so if you study any traditional book of Islam the author will make their introduction now we have book covers and so forth and people put the title and the author the ISV in, we know exactly where those books but imagine before the printing press which has only been around about 500 years so before that manuscripts and books were very rare and sometimes the pages got sometimes they didn't have covers and so the author would actually put inside the text he'll say and my name is such and such one of the reasons why is because we cannot take knowledge unless we know its source so we can't have some random person come into the message and just start to say okay I'm going to be the teacher we actually have to know who the teacher is and so we look into their backgrounds what I tell people is do a google search actually do a google search on me if you've never heard me or you don't know where I studied it's not don't look at it as like being bad edem being improper etiquette it's actually proper etiquette to know where you're taking knowledge from so if you can ask people what do you know about this person and it's not considered diva and let me ask you this if you start asking say myself let's just use Bob and I like using those names this is a side note I used to make up stories when I was teaching kids and I made this character named Timmy and so Timmy had different adventures and I would try to throw in a moral and so forth and then one day I mentioned something and I was like oh yeah and then Timmy was fasting or praying or went to divestment and the kids were like oh wait a minute what do you think they asked exactly Timmy is a muslim why can't Timmy be a muslim so you can have any name you can have people coming from all cultures around the world and sometimes they have a name that's a sahaba name or a prophet's name but sometimes it's a name that's reflective of their own culture so Chef Bob he walks into the message now we start asking about him we start doing google searches what could somebody say about our process of a background check what would they say like oh you shouldn't do that because disrespectful what could somebody say he is a chef he has a turban and a beard we should trust him because we don't want to have as muslims we should not have what's something like a what? suspicion don't have a bad opinion of your brother how many people have ever been inquiring about a person either for a business transaction maybe looking into a house for my sister or my daughter's hand in marriage and you start asking about them and they're like why don't you have a good opinion of your brother that's because they don't have an understanding of what the suhuban that we're prohibited from is and in fact Muhammad Malud in his book on the purification of a heart he explains exactly what is the haam suhuban what is the permissible suhuban and what's actually the obligatory suhuban why don't you not give a person the benefit of the doubt one of the ulamas said it's a saying some people in their books have attributed as a hadith in my search I have not found it as a hadith but the saying is that it's been accepted from the scholars in meaning the sound so again some attributed as a hadith it's not actually a hadith as far as I have found but what it says is people using suspicion so we've always heard benefit of the doubt give your brother benefit of the doubt have you ever heard somebody say actually be whatever heard that discussion so now in the explanation one of the scholars from fast who passed away in Libya he said there's three areas where you do not have a good opinion you do not start with a good opinion your family your wealth your religion so what does that mean somebody comes to marry your daughter let's have a good opinion of the brother do we do that or do we do diligence and we ask for references and we talk for people because that's what a guardian should be that's what a wadi is if you have somebody in your trust that Allah has made you the wadi of if somebody comes to say hey brother I've got a great business idea you're Muslim alhamdulillah let's go in do we do that when we do something we start actually asking people and we start looking in so and we can find elements of this in the scene where the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would actually talk about people alhamdulillah one time he heard somebody praising another man he said have you traveled with him no have you done business with him no and you don't know him so don't praise him because that's been the true nature anybody has done business with people and that's not you're not the same person you know before we got in the money money really brings out the true nature of people and travel does the same thing too in arabic the word for traveler is what sefara sefara means to become a parent so in the feja when the dawn comes in when the dawn first comes in that's feja and then when it becomes enough light to where you can see the faces of people that's called isfara that's the root word so sefara you travel with people you get them out of their normal routines sometimes routines can hide the true nature of ourselves or other people and then we can see the true nature of people so we can get to when sugo van and personal van is is appropriate but this is where we want to turn our understanding of the gene from being subjective to being objective like we know it's clear what we will do I think this is where you watch too I think this is the way we pray what would happen after 1400 we just got into our new year what would 1400 what 1440 after hijab 1440 years if every generation says I think what would happen by now it would have been gone so the subjective element has been removed in the transmission of this gene this is one of the things Mohammed Molloud is doing and he's bringing back the Tafseer of the Quran the Hadith and it's a lot of one of the hallmarks of his books is it's things that everybody accepts it's not necessarily school of thought meant of specific so he begins his book by saying he says he says praise be to Allah the one who was joined between iman and respect of the parents in the Quran so think about that Allah SWT has joined between iman and the respect of the parents so now think of some of the ayahs if you've memorized those there's one in surah al-Isra 1723 that's actually one of the hallmark ayahs if you don't memorize, if you're not planning on memorizing entire surahs 1723 to 25 that right there you should memorize you can actually do the whole less than a bit of one again off of that and it's good to remind ourselves understand it, 1723 but what is the order that Allah SWT says when he there's a number of ayahs that mention Allah SWT didn't just in the Quran, he didn't just in the list of lessons and just mention randomly oh it'd be good to your parents if you look at how he has actually presented the order to respect your parents it's directly associated with the order to believe in the oneness of Allah SWT and there we have to we have to be we have to look at the subtleties of the Quran where Allah SWT is placing this ayah and what's he placing around the ayah so he's saying and one of the ayahs that says that one of the ordainments that Allah has placed on Bani Israel is that they do not say partners with Allah and that they are good to their parents and so to this Allah says Allah has ordained that you worship none other than him and be good to your parents so this now starts us off with this is not a simple order is it it's not even the order to pray it's not believe in the oneness of Allah well actually that one I have to say because it says the description of the believers usually it's belief and then prayer and what's the next one usually after prayer Zakaab Ibn Abbas, Allah SWT he said there's actually three orders in the Quran that are what could be like dual orders they're mentioned as pairs one is Salat and Zakaab the other is Iman and respect for the parents and the third is it's slipping my mind I'll have to look it up there's a third one remind me next week I'm in Salat I'm in Salat that's a more general order righteous actions but there's something where it's a specific there's a third one I'll look it up it's so much Salat it's a Salat but it's multiple times so it's like usually you see Iqama to Salat and Zakaab so Ibn Abbas said these three orders because they're coming in orders to fulfill the order you have to do both you haven't fulfilled that order until you've done both so if Allah says believe in Allah do not associate partners with Allah and be good with your parents we have to do both together now it doesn't mean that if a person is bad with their parents they're a kafah that's not what it means but the fulfillment, the complete fulfillment of that order you have to do both same thing with Salat and Zakaab the other thing about the Salat and Zakaab I pray five times a day and I fast Ramadan Ramadan is after Zakaab and what did Abu Bakr when the tribes after the passing of the Prophet a lot of the tribes of the Hijaz of the Arabian Peninsula in fact most of the tribes left Islam except for four areas Mecca, Medina Tareem and Hadramud area of Yemen and Ahsaab in eastern Saudi Arabia anybody ever heard of Ahsaab that was one area from the time they became Muslim with the Dawah of the Sahaba and the Prophet actually went to Ahsaab according to one narration they've been Muslims since and that one place in the Hadramud valley in Yemen and Mecca, Medina everywhere else the tribes are like we made our allegiance to Muhammad and he's gone and then they had to be taught a lesson no, your allegiance is with Allah but Abu Bakr he sent out armies and what did Ramad tell him he said they're new to Islam they're still praying because that was their refusal they didn't actually leave Islam they just said we'll be Muslim, we'll pray Zakat is not an obligation upon us that's all, they didn't leave Islam they just said we're not going to pay our Zakat and what did Abu Bakr say he said I will not distinguish between an order that Allah swt did not distinguish between what an important it is so, Muhammad Maudud begins his text by saying I prays Allah was joined between Imam and Birh now if we look at the Hadith of the Prophet he asks the Sahaba a question he said should I not tell you about the worst of the Kababah I've already kind of given a spoiler but usually when I ask children this or even adults in an audience I say what is the the worst sin a person could do what are the answers to this shirk, associating for it that's number one, okay do we get that what's the next one what's that there's so many there's so many, but what's the worst because he told the Sahaba he said should I not tell you about the worst of sins and the first one, Zakat Al Khair brother was a shirk he said so murder is usually one we get what's that, line what's that I gave this spoiler so I kind of like I said that a little bit improperly but yeah and the disrespect of parents so you see the order the Quran says believe in Allah and respect your parents well what's the opposite of belief in Allah shirk and kufa and what's the opposite of respecting your parents so disrespect of the parents so here the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is setting up for us like almost a scale, over here you have iman and right after you have bir al-wadi day and then at the other respect of the parents at the other end you have the far and you have shirk and then you have disrespect of parents now one thing that's interesting in the hadith literature is that in a number of different instances people would come to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and they would ask him a question what is the best action I can do has anybody ever seen some of these hadith so what did he say at one time what are some of the answers what is the best action respecting your mother respecting your mother, what's another hadith even if you don't remember the exact hadith but the idea like I vaguely remember you know the best action taking care of the orphans what else there's a hadith another hadith this is prayer saying la ilaha illallah is prayer and another hadith the best thing after la ilaha illallah is jihad and fi sabir al-dam and another hadith that says sadaqah giving charity now all of these sayings of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam they're attributed to him is he contradicting himself so this is something this is where the our scholars are the interpreters of the sunnah some people have an understanding why can't I just open up the Quran and read it why can't I just open up the hadith well here I'll give you an issue I can give you multiple sahih hadith where it says the best action is prayer the best action is rights of the parents the best action is sadaqah the best action is this well ahsan in Arabic means the best the best explain that one to me I can't figure it out let's see what the scholars did they have taught they have learned and they are able to interpret and we see the sahabah there was only a few amongst the sahabah who had a very high level of knowledge it was about 20 or so so you see examples of the sahabah where if they had a problem who would they go to who are some of the sahabah that they would go to to solve issues or to answer questions there was one who else Ali actually he said he said I seek refuge in Allah from a situation that we don't have Ali to help us solve sorry if the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was a city of knowledge who is the door Ali in fact he was not only was he a warrior on the battlefield he lived with his family and not only was he a scholar he was beyond a genius there is a matter in inheritance the matter of the inheritance is actually called the minbar Ali was standing on the minbar giving a khubba he is in the middle of the khubba somebody outside of the masjid comes up with an inheritance scenario that has never come out usually it's like one eighth, one fourth, one third those are the common denominator you have to find the common denominator there is a little bit of algebra behind the rules of inheritance it's actually very fun to learn for those of you who have studied algebra to learn the rules of inheritance you are like oh it makes sense but sometimes when you have depending on the family members you might have to get to a big common denominator you have to go to 30 30 parts or 50 parts well there was a situation where it actually had to go to 600 parts like that was the common denominator like 5 out of 600 but the person presented this situation to Ali as he is giving the khubba he processes that mathematical equation gives the answer in his khubba rhyming with the rest of his khubba and her eighth has now become a sixth it's called the minbarin that's Ali so these and then of course the sahaba would go to her not only because she was a scholar in her own right in addition to being a scholar she was living with the messenger of Allah so she was right there so we go to our scholars so now we have these multiple ahadith which one is correct well they are all correct the best of actions is prayer the best of actions is Sadaf who does not contradict himself because that would be a sign that this is not revelation what is the Qur'an saying to us that if this book was from other than Allah what would they have founded contradictions much contradictions so we know the book the Qur'an has no contradictions one of the things that the people who attack Islam will say well Allah swt one time says that the day according to Allah swt it's 50,000 years and another ahadith it says what that the yawm is what it's like a thousand years one thousand so here's a clear contradiction no it's not because the Qur'an was revealed in the language of the Arabs and the Arabs used to use mubarakah used to use figures of speech to describe a very long day if you really want to describe like I've been waiting here forever I've been waiting here for 50,000 years man so if you say as mubarakah it's not literal it's like I've been here for a thousand years I've been waiting for you for a thousand hours what would we say now I've been here you know you use a mubarakah was that I've been here forever so you're not literally saying that it's a mubarakah so is there a contradiction between 50,000 and 1,000 no it just means Allah swt is speaking to the Arabs and the Arabic language and he's saying that day it's going to be very long it's going to be very long 50,000 years it says 1,000 years so what the Arabs immediately understood is like it's not 50,000 years and it's not 1,000 years it's just a very long day so there's no contradiction so based on this the people of tafsih have said that one of the signs of falsehood is that it contradicts itself and the sign of truth that it does not contradict itself and if you see whatever it might mean if you find a teacher, if you find a book if you find a person, they're always contradicting themselves they're like ok this person's got some falsehood wrapped up in or they're wrapped up in falsehood the same thing that we apply to the Quran and that it's revelation from Allah there's no contradiction it's the same thing we apply to the messenger of Allah swt and why? because inhuwa he is revelation being revealed to everything he speaks is revelation so if he told us these various ahadith and they're in different we can say ok there's no contradiction but we need to have an understanding why did he tell different people at different times that the best action is prayer, it's right to the parents it's charity, it's this, it's that what could be an answer? Jazakullah my name's Rami too Masha'Allah must be something in the name of Jazakullah it's tailored to the individual so when that person came and he said what is the best of actions and he told them rights of the parents what was that person struggling with he could see what he was struggling with when the person, maybe the miser came and said what's the best of actions Sadaqah another person who was a coward what's the best of action Jihad what's the best of action he's a doctor of the hearts and he's seeing what a person needs and giving them or her that that information so this is why it's very important especially when you read the Seerah to realize there are multiple people and there's multiple personalities and that's what's going to be reflected in our community when you think of the character of Ammah and by character I mean he was a real alive person we don't believe in some metaphor like some Christians will actually explain away stories in the Bible and say oh these are just metaphors and parables and unfortunately some Muslims have fallen into that trap they'll say oh, especially in our day and age they'll say oh the story of Bo Lut the people of Lut the Sodom and Gomorrah that's just a metaphor we believe there was a city the people of Lut they were sent a messenger they were doing something wrong and they were destroyed for an end of story it happened that's what some scholars say and as a side note to that the scholars the Prophet SAW said whenever he was traveling with his companions if they passed through a place where there was a destroyed nation he would tell them hurry up and go through staying long enough just to get a reflection of what happened here but move through and don't use their water and don't use their sand so one time they were going through the people who used to carve their homes out of the stones they passed through and they mentioned that some of the Sahaba had made bread with some of the wells from the people of Thamud the Prophet SAW said give it to the animals don't eat that so the understanding some of them said some said it's prohibited to use the water and the land but the point is don't use that so the reason I mentioned that is if you ever get an opportunity to buy dead sea salts even though oh the mud is great and wonderful for your skin and I'm from Jordan and it's a big export thing they give the export the mud and the salts and all that stuff just pass on just say if that is like what's covering up the people of Luh it's like imagine like a toxic area or a nuclear waste zone that land is radioactive and you don't want to go around it the scholars even differed they said if you do will do from the wells of Thamud is your will do valid if you take Thamud on the land of a parish nation is your Thamud valid like we got to stay away from that so so the Prophet SAW would treat people depending on what they were dealing with so each of us has a certain level of an area that we need to improve with our interaction with our parents so this is what we should remind ourselves when we see ourselves deficient we think of these Ahadi so Muhammad Mouloud begins by saying praise be to Allah who is joined between Iman and the order to bear the valid name the Prophet SAW said that the worst of actions is ship and then go go go valid name so now that sets up what how his text is going into now another thing that Muhammad Mouloud mentions he says after he mentions this he says and Allah SWT has promised to the Abraar think of the ayah that has those two words Na'een and Abraar and most people should indel Abraar ala fi na'een and then what's the next what indel subjar ala fi jaheen say into the story the righteous ones are in jannah and the unrighteous ones are in jaheen there was one of the righteous the righteous men were attending they're greeting his ishbadi it's kind of like what's up it literally means ishbara people always say so when they would ask him ishbadi what's new he would say nothing's new indel abraar ala fi na'een the righteous are in jannah and the unrighteous are in hellfire no matter what happens no matter what news no matter who gets elected at the end of the day what's the closing line of the story the righteous are in jannah and the unrighteous are in jaheen that's it now the word Allah SWT uses for the righteous he doesn't say al-salihrun he says al-adraar those people who do birr now Muhammad Maudud is mentioning this because this subject is birr al-wali day is towards the people towards the parents so those who do birr the plural would be abraar now the general sense of abraar is any type of action that you can do is birr if you do those actions then you become abaar from the abraar but it doesn't matter what you do like you can do everything else so if you don't have respect of your parents to be in the abraar you have to have bit towards the parents I'll tell you an interesting story this shows how when we interact with the Qur'an when we read the Qur'an it should be a personal relationship if you feel comfortable sharing it have you ever read something in the Qur'an and as you're reading it like something happens directly related to what you're reading or to a thought that you're having has anybody ever had that to share something that might have happened I'll start one time I was thinking about giving somebody a gift and I was like I don't know should I really give it and then I was reading an ayah where Allah said I can't remember the exact ayah but it was about generosity given Allah will replace it there's my answer anybody have an experience there's a video on YouTube I'll post it on the WhatsApp group and if you're not on the WhatsApp group for this halata I didn't even say we're going to add people to it there's a link so some of you who has the link to the WhatsApp group just raise your hand we'll have to send it out afterwards if you want to just of a man who was in fact I won't give you the support it's better just to watch it in his own words it's a man who was searching for Islam and he asked a question and the answer was in the Quran so he tells that story himself I'll let you tell it over here but I was with a group of people one time we were in Mauritania and we were in a car and we were passing by the small little village not even a village, just a group of tents and they had named their group of tents Dar An Naim the abode of blessing so as we passed it and I'm familiar with the area he was visiting he's from New York, originally from Palestine he said, Rami, what did that sign say? I said, oh it's a little collection village of tents it's called Dar An Naim he said, subhanallah he said, I was reciting my surahs that I had memorized I had just said Inna Al Abara La Fee Naim and then we passed that that sign of Allah is that coincidence? can statistically, like what are the chances of that happening? like, as soon as he recited that ayah the righteous are in Naim and then we passed by a place that says Dar An Naim and it's almost like a sign it's called the Fad Hassan a good sign that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is giving to that person and this is something the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam used to actually look for he would look for Fad Hassan good signs, he told us not to believe in bad omens you know the black cat and the mirror braids so they have some of these things they said, if you knock over the salt shaker you have to take some salt and throw it over your shoulder anybody ever heard of that? yeah? so they have interesting things that people come up with and I'm sure every culture has something the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, no we don't believe in those things in fact we should do the opposite of them like, see a black cat oh it's gonna be a good day if you see a ladder, walk under the ladder buy a mirror and break it just to do it so so muhammad madud says that the abrar are in na'een and now he's going to begin going through the various rules of qud al-wadi-dain he says, I'm going to show you how to respect your parents and have proper respect of your parents with each of your limbs, with your eyes with your tongue, with your ears with your hands, with your heart all of the different ways that we could respect or disrespect your parents so we'll be going through this over the next coming weeks and again this halata is usually from about eight to nine and it's some of the material that I'm going to be sharing with the young men and the boys in their halata but right now I'll just open up to any questions for anything that I discuss tonight yes, I don't know you mentioned the Dead Sea all the what? all the injustice that we are living we're living on land that's been usurped yes, so the question was what do we do about living here in America from the land that's been usurped you know, it's a lot of stolen land they made treaties with the Native Americans and they took them, what do you do and it is a problem and it's not something that we should think oh, it's not a big deal imam and nilui imam and nilui in modern day Syria I don't think he's from no, he's from nilui in nilui is an Iraq nilui is an area in Syria but he's buried in Damascus and it's funny this shows you like in translations one time there was a shift giving and this sounds like a joke but he was for my voice the young brothers they're praying so the imam said can everybody hear me in the back so the imam said or the chef said something about imam and nilui imam? nilui the translator said the nuclear imam because nuclear in Arabic the modern translation is it like zarra nilui or kuwa nilui so he said the nuclear imam sometimes things are lost in translation one time there was a person he said which what does that mean in Arabic under very harsh circumstances I'm under very harsh circumstances it's a new expression so modern standard Arabic they've kind of taken things from other languages Italian, French and said okay how do we express this idea that's in English in English like how do you translate infrastructure right it's a very powerful English word how do you translate that into Arabic so somebody translated it he's under Cairo envelopes because the roof is also envelopes so sometimes things get lost in translation so so imam and nilui lived in Damascus he would not eat any of the fruits from Damascus the reason why was because one of the things was taken who opened Damascus when did we the muslims get Damascus the Sahaba right Khalid bin Walid is buried there it's a momentous occasion for us as muslims they got Damascus it was one of the centers of the civilized world in fact when the French came in and conquered Syria you know one of the French generals did he went to the grave of Khalid bin Walid and put his boot on the grave of Khalid bin Walid said now we got it back because they know him Khalid as an expert general but if Khalid was alive you think he would be putting his boot he'd go home one legged you know if he was lucky but those lands were taken by the Sahaba and one of the things when the muslims when they took over lands there were certain things that were distributed amongst the soldiers it's called khanima but it did not apply to buildings or agricultural land so what does that mean when they went into Egypt anything that was agricultural or when they went into Syria that became oqaf that actually goes to vaitil mad and so they said the majority of Damascus was actually oqaf that by the time of imama nowi who was about 700 years ago it had kind of like fallen into the hands of of private ownership but a waqf an endowment can never go into private ownership once you put something into waqf what does waqf mean in arabic stops that's it no more transfer of wealth and so this is something from the sharia of the prophet he encouraged oqaf sadaqa jaria and people would do it those lands were supposed to be oqaf so Baghdad, Damascus Qahirah those lands all of the agricultural lands and everything was supposed to be oqaf to support the baitil mad to give you an idea of the power of oqaf and how it can be changed I spoke with a person who did research into the oqaf one of the most the biggest agricultural areas of the Middle East or North Africa is Algeria anybody here from Algeria you know what Algeria produces the minister of agriculture actually studied in Davis why do you think he would study in Davis Davis is a big ag university so he and I know I met his son they had sent him to Napa to study the wine industry because Algeria also now produces wine they have grapes he said at the turn of the century two thirds of the agricultural land of Algeria was endowments two thirds could you imagine the revenue that that would produce two thirds of the lands of Algeria a great amount of lands of Egypt was oqaf and every land one of the things that the colonizers did is they shifted the oqaf from the hands of the free citizens to the governments so you know how every one of our nations whether it's Arab or subcontinent or Malaysia or Indonesia have ministry of endowments you know where we got that the colonizers because they wanted to take oqaf and shifted into the hands of the government now think of what would happen if the private citizens were managing those oqaf and giving salaries to schools, to universities building roads, building bridges, orphanages what would happen in terms of the freedom of thought especially of the scholars now you shift that to the government then what happens so we can go into this I actually know another brother who he came to Islam he was a very successful I think they're done praying back there he was a very successful Swiss banker and for two years he searched he said I want to become Muslim but I'm a Swiss banker so what is he involved in Riba and he said I want to be an honest Muslim so I'm either going to become Muslim and deal in Riba but I want to see is there a way out for me he spent two years just on the matter of Riba as a very successful Swiss banker he looked at everything he looked at fatawa, he looked at books at the end of two years he came across away from the conclusion he said there's no way out for me if I want to be true and honest with myself so he left all of that he became Muslim he's actually in Malaysia right now and he said I'm going to use my banking and investment knowledge to revive privately run oqaf now he has an investment I'll share this company with you if you're interested he does privately manage cash oqaf in Malaysia and Indonesia and he also does investments but he also said he told me this thing about one of the main purposes of the colonizers was to shift privately managed oqaf to the hands of the government because then two things happen it gets eaten up oh this person's cousin he shifts out of the place and gets eaten up and the other thing is now if the government is giving the salary of the scholars do the scholars really have the freedom to speak up they don't but if their salary is not coming from the government the ministry of endowments I don't care what you say I'm going to speak the truth because I'm getting my salary from a privately managed oqaf so the reason I went on that political tie rate was that at the time of Imam An-Naui most of Damascus which used to be endowments had transferred into private ownership so at some point those oqaf were sold illegally to private citizens and so he did not eat any of the fruits of Damascus now could somebody come and say it was haram to eat the fruits we can't say that unless we know for sure if we know for sure that this house was stolen or this masjid was stolen we can't pray we have to be sure 100% sure or almost sure that this house was stolen and this land was stolen if we don't know it's a shock it's a doubtful matter better to stay away from them but do we have to do we have to stay away from doubtful matters no, it's not haram but the more we stay away from the doubtful matters the better our deem will be so we don't know for sure that it has been if we know for sure that it's been stolen then we can't live on that or benefit but if we're unsure then it's a shubha or less than that we also kind of keep in mind like when those societies were passing through those cities so they can avoid water for a little bit you know what I mean? I don't know if they were living there oh like the people of Thamud for example they were passing through they avoided it so if we're passing through America we can avoid it that's a good question the situation of Thamud they were just passing through a short trip they weren't living in the other distinction that I would mean is that those places to know that a place is actually a parish nation it has to come through revelation so the Diab Thamud we know for a fact that those are the houses of Thamud because the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us that but he never told us about the Dead Sea so that's why the scholars actually differ is the Dead Sea the remnants of those people or not? we don't know so in America could there be have been a parish nation? maybe but we don't need revelation to designate for us what is actually Ar-Baba Haddad at 10 o'clock when some of you are parents the time for pickup Insha'Allah we'll continue this kind of next week so kind of a long one we'll take ownership of that I had one to myself for a good time