 Tonight is the 27th of Rajab, 1,443 lunar years after the Hijrah of our Master Muhammad ﷺ. So I'm going to talk about one of the greatest miracles, greatest mu'ijizat of our Master Muhammad ﷺ. It's a miracle of the night journey and ascension. So this is called, And much of what I will mention is similar to something I briefly presented last year when I did a recording for my house, but tonight I'm going to expand a little bit on that, inshallah, and then even take some questions if you have any questions, inshallah. So even though there are numerous miracles attributed to the prophets, al-anbiya in general, there are a select few that only he ﷺ received. So these are from the khasais of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. These are the unique qualities of the Prophet ﷺ. So no one before him received them and no one after him will ever receive them. So they're only for him. So the first one is the wahi of the Quran, the revelation of the Quran. The Quran is the final revelation of God. It supersedes all of the previous revelations. The injunctions, the ahkam of the Quran supersede all of the previous revealed injunctions. In the Torah, there are 613 what are called mitzvot or commandments. These are awamir and nawahi prescriptions and proscriptions. In other words, 613 do's and don'ts. Yet only about 60% of them can actually be applied in the world today because 40% of them are predicated upon the existence of the priesthood and the temple and the sacrificial system at the temple and all of those things are gone and they've been gone for the last 2000 years. So the qadr of Allah SWT, what we would call the irada koniya in effect, abrogated 40% of the ahkam of the Torah. So they're abrogated as a circumstance of history. In other words, Allah SWT saw it fit for those ahkam to be rendered obsolete. So this is compelling evidence, it's circumstantial evidence but still evidence that the Torah was never meant to be the last in universal sacred law for humanity that something else would be coming and that someone else would be coming. Another messenger similar to Musa A.S. would be coming. And of course there are certain immutable theological and ethical principles and foundations. So we call these usul and maqasid. Immutable means unchanging theological and ethical principles and foundations that all of the prophets affirmed. However the religion found its ikmal, like its completion or perfection with the revelation given to the prophet Muhammad SAW which include the Quran and the prophets sunnah. In other words, the prophets firmly established ethos in practice. So that's one of his khasa'is, right, is he was given the wahi of the Quran as the final revelation. There's no more wahi if it sees the final nabi, right, and then the splitting of the moon, okay. And there's many others but these are the three major ones. And the Isra wal-Me'araj, the night journey and ascension and this is in soul and body. The Ruh and the jassad, okay. So Allah SWT, he says in the Quran, in the ayat were recited, may Allah preserve him. Subhana la di asra bi'abdihi, this is how the ayah begins in Surah al-Isra, also Qadani Israel, it begins with subhan. And subhan denotes tanzeeh and tasbeeh. So the other dissimilarity of Allah SWT, his absolute perfection as well as his glory and majesty, that Allah SWT is not bound or dependent upon anything. Such as time, space, or matter. There's nothing like Allah whatsoever. The six directions cannot contain him. Up, down, left, right, front, back. He's neither moving nor still. So our dialectical theologians, they also mentioned that he's neither transcendent nor imminent with respect to his creation. So he utterly crashes the logic barrier. He is the first without a beginning. He is the last without an end. He is the necessary existent who created space, time, and matter. Ex nihilo, out of nothing. Not as a necessary or compelled effect to a cause, but rather freely as an act of will. In other words, Allah SWT chose to create and his act of creating does not affect his perfection. One Ayodah. Okay? Subh'ana alladhi asrabi abdihi. Glory be to the one who took his servant, abd. Right? This is a reference to our Master Muhammad SAW. Now he is called the Abdullah. One of the greatest titles of the Prophet SAW in the previous dispensations that are still there in the Bible as well as in the Quran. This is his greatest title. Many times in the Quran, Allah SWT will refer to the Prophet SAW as his abd. And this is a high maqam. Alhamdulillah, alladhi anzala al-Abdihi al-kitabah. Praise be to the one who revealed the Kitab to his servant. Tabaraka alladhi nazzala al-Furqana al-Abdihi. Right? Fa awha ila abdihi ma awha. And then Allah SWT revealed his slave, his servant, whatever he revealed. So the Prophet SAW, he perfected this rubudiyah, this servitude to Allah SWT. And this was demonstrated just before the Isra. Right? When the Prophet SAW visited the city of Taif and he was stoned out of the city and he sought refuge in an orchard and he was covered in blood, SAW. And he made a beautiful dua. As you know, Allahumma ashku ilaika da'afa quwati. This is how he began the dua. Oh Allah, I complain to you of the weakness of my strength. Right? So the Prophet SAW, he complained about himself to Allah SWT. He did not complain about Allah to Allah. He complained about himself to Allah SWT. There's a beautiful dua. You can read it in the books of Sira. At the end of the dua, he said that if this is happening to me and you're not angry with me, then that's okay. I'm okay with it. I don't mind. His only concern was if he had incurred the wrath of Allah SWT. And of course he is Habibullah, SAW. And of course, he said the affair of the mu'min is always good. Aja ban li amr il mu'min. Inna amra hu kullahu khayr. He said the affair of the believer is always good. And then he goes on. If he's in hardship, he's patient. And if there's prosperity, he has gratitude. Right? Sabr and shukr. These are two of the greatest theological virtues in our tradition. Now, the ayah continues. Subhanallah the asrabiyah abdihi laylamin al masjid al haram. So, glory be to the one who took his servant on a journey by night to the sacred mosque. Okay? Or the inviolable mosque, sometimes translated. This is the Ka'ba in Mecca. The ancient name of Mecca was Baka. Okay? And this is something that the Quran informs us of. The Quran has direct access to history. All right? Inna awwala baytin wudhi aalil nasi bi Baka ta mubarakah. The first house ever established for the worship of the one true God was at Daka full of blessings. This is in Surah Ali Imran. I believe it's ayah number 96. And Baka is mentioned in the Psalms, which is in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Some of the ulama say that these are the, these are the writings of the prophet Dawud A.S. There's some really interesting things in the Psalms, but there's one Psalm 84. How lovely are your tabernacles. And the word here in Hebrew for tabernacles is Mishkanot, which is in the plural. Oftentimes it's translated in the singular, but this is actually in the plural. How lovely are your places of worship. What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord, who have set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. So you have this description of pilgrims going to Jerusalem. They're passing through different places of worship. As they pass through the valley of Baka, they make it a well. They pass by some valley called Baka, which means the weeping valley. Of course, this is where Ismail A.S. was weeping, and where the Zem Zem well came into being. So this is something that's mentioned in Psalm 84 in the books of Ahlul Kitab. You cannot confirm nor deny, but this certainly sounds like something that is a reference to Mecca. And then he says, Glory be to the one who took a servant on a journey by night from the sacred mosque to the farthest mosque whose precincts we did bless in order to show him some of our signs. Indeed, he is all hearing and all seeing. So as the story goes, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was sleeping in the house of Umhani, the sister of Sayyidina Ali, and the archangel Gabriel, Jibril Alaihi Wasallam, appears and takes him to the Kaaba, and his chest was split and sealed. It's called Shaq al-Sadr. The heart was placed on ice, a type of open-heart surgery, if you will. The incision scar was seen by Sahaba, and something called the Hadb al-Shaitan was removed from his heart. Imam Al-Subki, he says, it was a portion of mercy that he had for the shaitan because he is Rahmatil al-Alamin. So this was removed from his heart, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Jibril Alaihi Wasallam then takes the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, to the Borak. And this is something, of course, Richard Dawkins famously ridiculed our belief in the Borak while he was being interviewed by Mehdi Hassan. So Mehdi Hassan, he said that he believed in the Borak, and Dawkins said something like, are you serious? This is ridiculous, and so on and so forth. So Dawkins is a mustahzi, right? There's a term for this type of people. It's called a mustahzi, a mocker. So this is what they do. They mock, they scoff, right? And the Quran tells us about people like this. In many ayat, Inna kathaynak al-mustahzi'een, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says in the Quran to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that I will take care of these mockers, right? Don't engage with them. And of course Dawkins is the same man who says that we're all apes, and life on Earth may have been created by aliens, and that there's no such thing as objective, good, and evil. So on his atheistic worldview, we are all just fizzing stardust, and that's how they put it, with no purpose, just like atoms moving around aimlessly. So if I kill my neighbor, there's nothing essentially wrong with that on materialistic atheism, or on Darwinian evolution. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just atoms colliding with other atoms. There's no moral component to that. Like one of my teachers, he said, it's like a stone rolling down a hill, right? There's no real objective moral component to a stone striking the Earth, right? Likewise on atheism, there is no real objective moral component to my knife stabbing my neighbor. It's just stardust. How can these atoms and fizzing stardust particles have moral responsibility while the ones over here do not? It doesn't make any sense. Atheism is fundamentally non-moral. It doesn't deal with morality. On atheism, everything is just a subjective social convention, unguided and blindly indifferent, as Dawkin says. These are his words. Now the Burak was not from this world. The Burak was from the Barzakh. This is an intermediate realm. It was a special creation of Allah SWT. And it had the ability to travel at a very high speed, as if moving at the speed of light. In fact, Barq is related to Barq, which means lightning. And it took 30 days at that time to travel from the Hijaz to Sham, right? Today it takes an hour by airplane. Allah SWT has power over time and space. Hypothetically, if Allah SWT had manifested an aircraft behind the mountains of Mecca, and the Prophet SAW flew to Jerusalem and back in one night, the Quraysh would still not have believed him and still would have continued to ridicule him. If you try to explain an email, what an email is to a pre-modern man, he would not believe you or think you were crazy or ridicule you. I can talk to another person who lives on the other side of the world in an instant. What are you talking about? The point is that time and location, that is to say context in general, change our perception of reality. Our context is a major determinant of our perception of reality. So like on Earth, I weigh 200 pounds. On Mars, I weigh 76 pounds. I'm 40-something years old on Earth. 44 years old on Earth. Not as old as I look. On Mars, I would be 24 years old. Maybe we should move to Mars. Young man again. So mass is relative. Time is relative. The closer you get to the event horizon of a black hole, the slower time becomes. The faster you travel, the slower time becomes. This is called time dilation. Our mother Aisha, she said the bed was still warm when the Prophet ﷺ returned. The latch of the door was still swinging when he returned. So natural law, what's known as al-Hukum al-Aadi, natural law, or you can call it the laws of physics, the customary laws of time and space were suspended by Allah ﷻ for the Prophet ﷺ. This was to demonstrate that Allah ﷻ has power over all things. There's no such thing as natural causation according to our dialectical theologians. There's no such thing as natural causation. There are only patterns of the divine will in the created world. And this is also known as the sunnah of Allah. The sunnah of Allah. A miracle then is a suspension of the sunnah of perceived causation, right? A suspension of the psychological construct that we call cause and effect. Okay, this is our theology. According to the theology, Allah ﷻ is the direct and sole cause of everything in creation. Nature in and of itself has no power to do anything. In every microsecond of existence, Allah ﷻ is destroying and recreating the atoms and accidents of all things in creation that God continually creates from moment to moment. Nothing other than Allah ﷻ has any causal potency or power in reality. This is what it means. And this is demonstrated in the story of Sulayman ﷺ in the Qur'an. When Sulayman ﷺ asked his council to bring him the throne of Bilqis, the Queen of Saba, right? The Qur'an says, A very powerful jinn said, I can bring it to you before you rise from the Majlis in a couple of hours, right? Like, today we can do that in a couple of hours. I can fly from Jerusalem to Sana'a, you know, and load something into the plane and bring it back in a few hours. But then the Qur'an says, but someone who had someone who had knowledge of the book, and kitab means revelation, knowledge of revelation, meaning he had ma'rifah of Allah ﷻ. He said, I'll bring it to you before the twinkling of your eye. And the ulama said, how did he do this? He turned to dua to Allah ﷻ. And Allah ﷻ destroyed the atoms and accidents of the throne of the Queen of Siba and in the next instant recreated them in Jerusalem in front of the Majlis. This is very easy for Allah ﷻ, okay? So this is a complicated theological issue that deals with, you know, these weird terms, Aristotelian hyalomorphism, you know, atomism, occasionalism, concurrentism, human free will, primary and secondary causation. This is heavy-duty stuff, right? And this is outside the scope of this lecture. The point is a break in natural law. It's called kharkul-a'adat, okay? It is not customary, but it is not irrational. Our belief is not irrational. Our beliefs are not what mockers like Richard Dawkins make them out to be. So he's not a theologian, he's not a philosopher. His caricature of religion is woefully reductionist, right? He thinks we're all like simple-minded, like backwater village idiots, right? A lot of people think this, but they don't understand, you know, that this is a deep, deep religious, theological and philosophical tradition. If I said that a saint of God walked through a wall, a skeptic might say, well, that's impossible. That's irrational to believe that. I would disagree. It is not customary. Not customary. At the sub-atomic level, the quantum level, this happens all the time, according to physicists. It's called quantum tunneling. We just don't know about it. And some physicists believe that this may eventually be possible with larger man-made objects. So Allah SWT knows the physics of everything. He is the master of creation. He is well acquainted with every type of creation. Okay. And then Allah SWT says that the precincts of Masjid al-Aqsa have barakah in this ayah. Barakah. And the earlier one mentioned, this is due to the number of prophets, al-Anbiya, that resided in that area, in and around the land of Sham. It's a very, very blessed place. Hundreds, if not thousands of prophets, born and died in this land. Also according to the sound hadith, the descent of Sayyidina Isa A.S. will be in the land of Sham. Okay. So there's a hadith here related to Anas ibn Malik, radiAllahu ta'anahu. It's in the Sunan of An-Nasai. It's created as a Hassan hadith. So he says that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he said, it was brought to me a beast bigger than a donkey, but smaller than a mule. And his stride would reach as far as his eyesight. So I mounted it with Jibril Alaihi Wasallam. And he said, So he said get down, so I prayed. Get down and pray. So I did that. And he said, Do you know where you prayed? Salaita b-taibah wa ilayh al-muhajir. So he said, you have prayed in taibah, which is Yathrib, which is Madinatul Manawara, where you will make Hijrah. And then he said, and then he continued the journey. And he said, Inzil fa-salli again. Dismount and pray. Fa-sallay to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So I prayed. And he said, I taddi aina salait. Do you know where you prayed? Salaita b-tour. B-tour Sina'i. You have prayed at Mount Sinai. Haithu kallamallahu az-Zabajal Musa Alaihi Wasallam. Where Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala spoke to Musa Alaihi Wasallam. And they continued. And then he said to me, Inzil fa-salli. He said, Dismount and pray. And he said, So I dismounted and I prayed. And Jibril Alaihi Wasallam said to me, I taddi aina salait. Do you know where you prayed? And he said, You have prayed at Bait al-Lahmi. Haithu Wuli Da'isa Alaihi Wasallam. You have prayed at Bethlehem. So now they're in Palestine. Where Isa Alaihi Wasallam was born. And then he said, Thumma Dakhaltu Bait al-Muqtis. So Jumi Alaihi Al-Anbiya Alaihi Wasallam. And then he said that I entered the Bait al-Muqtis. The Temple Mount area in Jerusalem. And prophets were gathered for me. Fa qaddamani Jibril Alaihi Wasallam. And Jibril Alaihi Wasallam pushed me forward. Hatta amam tuhum. So that I might lead them in prayer. Then he said, Then I ascended to the Samā'ud Dunya. Fa'idha fīha Ādamu Alaihi Wasallam. And then I saw Ādam Alaihi Wasallam. And we'll come back to this hadith in a minute. But then the prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam began his ascension through the Samā'u'llah. The heavens or the skies. And these are not paradises. The Samā'u'llah are not the jannat. The Samā'u'llah are seven realms of creation that are not perceptible to us. And the first heaven is called as Samā'u'llah. And the Qur'an says that it is the realm of the stars. So the universe as we know it. And at the end of the Samā'u'llah, according to the hadith, there is a door or gateway that Jibril Alaihi Wasallam and the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam reached. And after passing through this gateway, they entered into a new realm, a second heaven. Now today astronomers and physicists, they espouse the existence of something called a multiverse. They postulate different or multiple dimensions of existence. The prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said the seven heavens in relation to the kursi is like a ring thrown into a desert. The ring is like the seven heavens. Imagine throwing a ring into the desert. And then looking at the desert from a bird's eye view. You won't even notice the ring. It continues. And the superiority of the arsh over the kursi is like the superiority of the desert over that ring. So the vast, vast majority of creation is hidden from us. Even in this room. Right? So if I look at my finger and I tell you I can see my whole finger. Can I see my whole finger? That's what it seems like to me, but I can't see the other side of my finger. And then I can't see inside my finger. Most of my finger is inside my finger. The vast, vast majority of my finger is hidden from me. I can probably see one percent of my finger right now. Less than one percent of what is right in front of my eyes. The vast, vast majority of creation is totally veiled from us. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he saw various prophets who were in these various realms of existence. The significance of these specific prophets is very interesting. The Ulema point this out that the visions of these prophets they point to certain Muhammadan typologies. In other words, they prefigured events in the life of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So in the first heaven he met Adam Alaihi Wasallam. Adam Alaihi Wasallam was exiled from the garden as it were, made hijrah, indicating that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam will make hijrah from Mecca to Medina. In the second heaven he met the two cousin prophets, Issa Alaihi Wasallam and Yahya Alaihi Wasallam and the Ulema mentioned these two prophets were persecuted during their lives. There was a attempt on the life of Issa Alaihi Wasallam which was thwarted by Allah SWT but the enemies of Yahya Alaihi Wasallam are able to kill him and he was martyred Alaihi Wasallam. So there's going to be assassination attempts on the life of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and some say 12, 13 attempts were made on his life Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Third heaven, Yusuf Alaihi Wasallam. Yusuf Alaihi Wasallam came into power over his brothers after being forced to make hijrah or being sort of exiled from his home city and this is going to happen to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam when he goes to Medina and then he comes back during the conquest of Mecca and the Meccans come and they know that that he could take revenge from them. So they say to him you are a noble brother a noble brother and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is not Yusuf there is no blemish on you today just as Yusuf Alaihi Wasallam had said to his brother. The fourth heaven Idris Alaihi Wasallam is probably Enoch in Biblical tradition that Allah SWT is something very quick about Idris Alaihi Wasallam in the Quran basically that's it in the Holy Qur'an Arabic Remember in the book Idris Alaihi Wasallam he was truthful in the Prophet and we raised him to a high place and of course Arabic Allah SWT we have raised your remembrance your zikr is raised and the Ulama say this is when we raise our voice in the Adhan in the world but also his name written on the Arsh of Allah SWT and other things as well the fifth heaven Haroon Alaihi Wasallam Haroon was hated by his people and then loved by his people so initially there was a lot of tension with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam but then they came to love him Abdullah Ibn Amr Ibn Al-A'as said his father on his deathbed Amr Ibn Al-A'as said to him that there was a time of my son when I hated the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam so much I hated him so much I fought in many battles against him and tried to kill him and then there came a time when I loved him so much I could not raise my eyes to his because I was in awe of him and if he says you ask me right now to describe him I haven't laid eyes on him in such a long time so completely turning the hearts and then the sixth heaven Musa Alaihi Wasallam was given a Shari'a comprehensive law code and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was given a Shari'a he is the Prophet like Moses the Prophet like Moses is prophesied in the Torah as it is even today the seventh heaven Ibrahim Alaihi Wasallam of course the rites of Hajj go back to Ibrahim Alaihi Wasallam and so we have a restoration of the Millah of Ibrahim Alaihi Wasallam with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam restoration the true theology of Ibrahim Alaihi Wasallam the true message of Ibrahim Alaihi Wasallam right so one of the things that the Jews in Medina said to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam they said that some of them said you are a Prophet it's called a Nevi Emmet in Hebrew means a true Prophet and there is hadith that indicates sound hadith that they would come into the majlis of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and they would sneeze on purpose and the hadith says because they wanted a Prophet to say and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he would say may Allah guide you so some of them believed he was a Prophet but they said but you are not from Bani Israel so you cannot abrogate the Torah and so the Quran wants to make an argument here right Ibrahim was a Jew but he was a Muslim and he was not a Muslim they call Abraham this is how Jews refer to Abraham our father Abraham if you study systematic theology of medieval Judaism almost all of them say there can be no non-Jewish prophets there can be no non-Jewish prophets yet one of the greatest prophets in their book Ibrahim Alaihi Wasallam not a Jew so this is just a lie and the Quran is pointing this out right that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he is like Ibrahim in that sense but if we look at the verses of the Mi'raj one Najmi Ida Hawa again these were recited by Qari'a, may Allah preserve him your companion so by the star when it sets your companion has neither strayed nor erred nor does he speak out of his Hawa he never speaks from his Hawa it is nothing but revelation reveals very powerful in Arabic this Ithbat we have this sort of affirmation after a strong negation he was taught by one mighty in power possessed a vigor he stood upright so he says possessed a vigor he stood upright while he was on the highest horizon then he drew near and came close and he was within two bow lengths or even nearer then he Allah revealed his abd whatever he revealed and the ulema mentioned here khawatim al-baqarah the end of surah al-baqarah which contains our essential aqidah, creed was revealed to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam at this station when there is no Jibril Alaihi Wasallam without angelic mediation this is a type of interior locution he perceived without angelic mediation Allah swt gave these words directly into his heart also the ulema mentioned the waad the promise of paradise for him in his umma and also the prayer was made farad then Allah swt says that his heart did not falsify what he saw do you then dispute with him concerning what he sees and indeed he saw him another time near the low tree of the utmost boundary and you can write volumes on these ayat you know he saw him another time near the low tree of the utmost boundary near it is the garden of abode when the low tree was enshrouded with whatever it was enshrouded his sight swerved not nor did it transgress indeed he saw of the signs of his lord the greatest ok so something we gather from this story is the importance of prayer right the importance of prayer we saw a connection to Allah swt as well as the importance of a connection to the messenger of Allah sr right it's like the the story says that that when they came to the said to the prophet sr I cannot go any further if I do I will combust into flames and so the prophet sr his maqam he has the highest maqam of all creation so he continued by himself and some of the urlama they ask interesting questions and they say well if jibreel a.s. was going to combust the prophet sr what about his turban and sandals why didn't they combust and the answer is they are attached to the blessed person of the prophet sr anything connected has ittisal there's connection direct connection to the prophet sr the prophet sr going back to the prayer the greatest form of zikr is the prayer and we find in the hadith I quoted earlier at the end of the hadith of sunan and nisa'i that Allah swt said so he says the day I created the heavens and the earth I enjoined 50 prayers upon you and your umma 5 is for 50 so establish them you and your umma okay Allah swt spoke to musa a.s he said indeed I am Allah there's no god but me so worship me and establish the prayer for my remembrance so this is a major tribulation of our times is that Muslims leaving the prayer okay there's a metaphysical equation in the Quran the metaphysical equation is so you have physical equations and you have metaphysical equations gratitude equals increase shukr equals increase so Allah swt ordered us to pray but if we prioritize ourselves over the command of Allah this is ingratitude okay we have muslim college students investing hours and hours of their time going out and shouting slogans in the streets and things like that and there's a time and place for these types of things in protest but many of these people don't even pray the actual function or rationale of the prayer is given in the Quran there's some scholars who take the position that every single injunction in the Quran has a discernable rational basis it's clearly rational indeed the prayer prevents from indecency and sin so even if the prayer is just perfunctory even if you're going through motions you still have to pray with wudu at five different times during the day right so if you have to do that engaging in indecent and sinful acts becomes much much more difficult okay and after some time you will change the prayer is transformative so we have to trust the process this is from Allah SWT it is tried and tested okay so my advice in light of the lecture tonight is do not leave the prayer assalatu imaduddin right the prayer is the quintessential pillar of the religion according to Imam Ahmad leaving the prayer is kufr kufr that you leave Islam by leaving the prayer this is his opinion okay and there is strong support for it the prophet SAW said right that between kufr and iman is leaving the prayer this is in multiple books mantaraka salat faqad kafara whoever leaves the prayer has disbelieved okay so this is something we have to think about you know some of the early madayas question why is Iblis a kafir why is Iblis, why is shaitan a kafir you might say well shaitan does not acknowledge Allah as his lord but in the Quran when Allah said to him faqhruj minha fa innaka rajim wa inna aleyka la'nati ilayum ad-din Iblis responded oh my lord give me respite until they are resurrected some people say Iblis doesn't fear Allah SWT if Badr, what did shaitan say to the mushrikin inni bari'um minkum inni araa ma la tarona inni akhaafu Allah wa Allahu shadeedu l-iqab so Iblis he saw the heavenly hosts descending at ghazwat Badr and he saw this and he said to the mushrikin I am free from you I can see what you can't see I fear Allah Allah is shadeedu l-iqab so shaitan knows that Allah is God and that the Prophet SAW is a messenger of God he knows these things but the religion is not called al-ilm the religion is not called al-ma'rifah the religion is called al-islam submission so what submits the mind, the body and the soul so why is he a kafir? he disobeys Allah SWT makes sajda to Adam abaa wa staqbara wa kana minal kafiri so staqbara means to deem yourself greater that's what it means it's form 10 one of the meaning patterns of form 10 in Arabic is considerative to consider yourself kabir to consider yourself greater than something when one does not pray perform the salah one is deeming one's own desires above that of Allah's command okay so this is something that's so the prayer has a special significance maqam with Allah SWT abandoning the prayer is to abandon one of the 5 major arkan of the religion okay time is it's past 9 I think I'll stop at this point inshallah I think there's a given the status of the isra wal-miaraj is one of the greatest miracles of the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam the greatest human being the question always comes up was the isra wal-miaraj prophesized in the previous books like in the bible and things like that and I think the answer is probably yes and I think I've identified some ayat but I think it's getting too late for this so I think maybe we'll, if there's questions we can take some questions then we can call it an aya inshallah yes yeah that's a good question the question is that he's heard from other scholars that it wasn't an actual ascension so I assume you mean it was an ascension in the body an ascension so the first part of the of the night journey an ascension the isra this is in body okay and there's pretty much there's consensus on this this is the plain meaning of the text of the Quran asrabi abdihi means that the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam was taken literally from Mecca to Jerusalem the second part the miaraj there's some iqtilaf among the ulama whether this was a physical ascension in the body or was it a vision he had but the vast majority vast vast majority they say that this was in body and in spirit yeah so denying the first part denying the isra is dangerous because the clear cut text in the Quran that's clear but the miaraj whether it was in body or a body and mind or just sort of a vision there's a bit of iqtilaf but the overwhelming majority say that it's in the body as well yeah so this is an idiomatic expression in Arabic so a bow is like six feet so two bows length is an expression in Arabic which means something is very very close right so that the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam was very close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala now the ulama would say here that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is transcendent of space time and directionality right so there's no makan and this is you know this is the dominant you know this is sunni aqidah you know this is the matrediri ash'ari right Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is not located in space because he's a creator of space okay so the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam he experienced the ruqya right the beatific vision of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when he was standing at the base of the arsh and it's not because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is physically anywhere this is where the experience happened there's no makan with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so it's an idiomatic expression meaning that in reality it's very close like just a hadith that says aqrabu aqrabu yukunu l'abmi rabbihi wa huwa sajid that the closest a servant is to his lord is when he's in sajda the aqrabu that's the closest so obviously here the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam is not talking about in terms of directionality or you know so you know if I you know and one of my teachers he said that I might have mentioned this before he said he said when Yunus alayhi sallam was in the belly of the whale and he was making sajda to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala he's closer to Allah in reality when he was there then an angel standing in the bayt ul ma'mur in the seventh heaven because he is in sajda so reality he's closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala right so yeah this is an idiomatic expression that the Arabs would have immediately understood yeah there's a few words in the Quran that the sahaba had to ask the poets like the Bedouins about Arabic right there's a word I don't remember the Sayed Na'amar he asked the Bedouin and he said that means attrition to lose like gradually right which is amazing the Quran has you know it's an ocean of not only Arabic but like rhetoric a college student writes a 10 page term paper and he uses three or four sort of rhetorical devices we say oh this guy's a smart guy the Quran has hundreds and hundreds of rhetorical devices right and right now you have this you know see these neo orientalists that are doing really advanced research on the Quran and they keep taking L's at every turn they keep losing because everything goes back to the Uthmani codex and they want to say that the Quran was written after the Quran was assembled after the time of Sayed Na'arathman and everything goes back to this archetype even before that you know because there was a man Wandsbro this orientalist at SOAS in London who said that the Quran was actually written in the 8th century in Iraq by a committee right and it's really interesting because he's like one man couldn't have written this this is incredible what are you talking about? this was written by a committee of philosophers theologians and poets you tell me one man in Arabia wrote this in the 7th century and then they found manuscripts that are dated to the Meccan period the Birmingham manuscripts is dated to the Meccan period and so everyone who followed this guy is just like you can't there's manuscripts that date to 650 of the common era this is less than 20 years after the Prophet peace be upon him there's Uthmanic codices that they've discovered all of these revisionist theories are thrown out the window yes sir the Samawat Samawat because you were interchangeably using heavens I translate Samawat as heavens but Jannat other than when he was in the beatific vision that the Jannat they actually start at the 7th heaven where the sort of the Sidra the base of the Sidra to the Montaha Jannat al-Ma'wa when I said heavens I meant heavens I meant the Samawat but the Jannat I would translate as paradises and then a follow up I'm sorry, bonus a follow up is just confirmation about what we recite in the Atahiyat that's like a conversation that occurs between Jibril al-Salam and the Prophet s.a.w is this, does that occur during the Asra? yeah there's I don't know if there's a definitive proof text for that I know the Ulema have mentioned it this is sort of a traditional basis for the Atahiyat but there isn't a definitive this is definitely how the Prophet s.a.w used to pray because the entire prayer is Tawatur, we know that but exactly where do things come from that are said in the prayer like there's sort of primal origin the actual origin that we know the proximate origin I guess is the Prophet s.a.w there's no doubt about that but where does that story come from that when the Prophet s.a.w experienced the Ru'iyah right he said and then Allah said and then the Prophet s.a.w and then the Prophet s.a.w and then the angel and then the angel and then the prophet s.a.w that's sort of the the legend of it but I don't think there's a definitive text Peace be upon you just you had mentioned the Ru'iyah you made a mention of that if you could speak about that a little bit I mean it suggests first of all what did he see who's the Ru'iyah who's that referring to and then gives the idea that there was a first time for there to be because you even translated it as another time I think so maybe you could just comment a little bit about that I think most of the exeggents of the Qur'an they say that the vision that's described in these ayat is when the Prophet s.a.w he saw Jibril s.a.w okay so he saw him two or three times in his actual form so seeing him again in the way that Allah s.w.t created him but there are other ulema who say that these verses also speak of maybe in addition but they speak of the Ru'iyah that the Prophet s.a.w saw Allah s.w.t in a way that is a modal that is beyond kayfiyat is beyond comprehension there's no how to it so they do mention that but exactly how they deal with the specific words if it's the latter opinion I don't know but it's the general sort of exegesis is that the Prophet s.a.w he saw Jibril s.a.w again in his created form which happened again two or three times o'lahu a'lam yes sir yes part of the night laylan means a part of the night not even the whole night second part is do we know anything about the seven layers of heaven anything beyond just the story do we know anything there's descriptions we have different terms that are used for the different celestial realms like the Malakut and the Jabarut but these are technical terms that require a lot of research so definitely we know more things about these realms but the information comes directly from Allah s.m.s messenger so I mean people will write different books and things like that and people talk but you know it's we have to be careful to sort of separate the wheat from the chaff as it were if Allah s.m.s messenger said it then this is Haq and people can speculate speculation is if it's coming from a place of knowledge and a study and it's something that we can consider but something that is definitively true is from Allah s.m.s messenger so with these things you don't have a lot of information with the Ruh even the Quran says you only know a little bit about the Ruh this is a mystery and so the sort of implication is even if we were to tell you you wouldn't understand it right so oh sorry yes apologies if this question is pretty basic but my what I've heard is that upon this night it's a great night to like do a tons of Ibadah and like to fast tomorrow I guess my question is like what do you recommend in terms of Ibadah to do or like how to really commemorate this night and then tomorrow in terms of like our practical application of like our you know what should we do to like commemorate this this night and tomorrow making a lot of Salawat upon the Prophet s.m. is always good but certainly and you know the 27th of Rajab this is a dominant opinion by no means a total consensus but most of the ulema say 27th of Rajab is so we use it to commemorate this great event so I would increase in the Salawat upon the Prophet s.m. you can do you know additional Nathila prayers all of these things are permissible this is not you know Ibadah or anything like that these are good practices adding anything to the religion and renew intentions right renew intentions not to miss prayer that's the main sort of message I wanted to get across is that this story really highlights the importance of prayer so connection in general connection to Allah, connection to his messenger these two things really highlighted the story so renew intentions renew intentions to follow the sunnah right to dedicate oneself to the book of God the Quran is an absolute Bahar it is an ocean that is without a shore it is unbelievable and we scratch the surface and I'm telling you right now these non-Muslim scholars you know they're you're going to see a massive influx of people becoming Muslim because you have these people studying the Quran to debunk it and that completely changes their hearts and then they have a lot a large following that will become Muslim this is happening now you know there's a lot of submarines they're called submarines a great scholar in the UK calls them so these are like like Muslim non sorry these are intellectuals that on the outward are sort of living a or appear to be non-Muslim but they're actually Muslim in their hearts but they're hiding their iman because you know they're sort of pressures from family and career and things like that but they come to the musted to do their prayers they fulfill all of the rites they do all of the thought right so you know I would engage with the Quran at a deeper level read some tafsir, basic tafsir of the Quran study Arabic a little bit even a little bit you know is better than nothing even if you have to review and you know it's good to do that inshallah my question was when Allah swt spoke with the prophet and he mentioned that you had to pray 50 prayers right is it true that when the prophet went back he spoke to Musa and Musa said to him your people will not pray go back to Allah this is mentioned in the hadith so I mean Allah knows that Allah knows everything so Allah knew that we're not going to pray 50 prayers right of course coming back and forth what's your interpretation about that it was like 40 then 30 then 20 they came down to 5 at the end this seems to emphasize the importance of the prayer so this is an interesting sort of there's something similar to this in the Torah when Ibrahim according to the Torah he prays to God to save the city of Saddam because he said even if there's 50 people there will you spare the city and then God tells him yes so what about 40 what about 30 so this is an interesting way so the Quran is first and foremost is speaking to the Arab and they understand this kind of bargaining tactic and the Quran makes reference to Tijara it uses the term Tijara first and foremost is speaking to the Arab the Arab is going to take the religion to the world so that really has to settle into the mind the culture the psyche of the Arab right so this is a way in which the Arab will really remember the importance of something that the prayer is important that this was a bargain even if we do five right and then there's a strong warning not to be like the previous umam who would fight why do you vex and insult me while you know I'm the messenger of God this is the Quran quotes Musa in the Torah it's 10 times worse they want to kill him in the Torah they want to stone him in Exodus chapter 17 verse 4 they're really to kill him so this is why Musa if you're people or anything like my people you're not going to do even at five he said they're not going to do it and he said I have shame before my lord and there's another lesson here of course Allah knows everything it's like Allah questions hadith why did you do this of course Allah knows the point is for this thing to be recorded for our own edification we'll gain something for it like the man who said to his sons I don't want the body incinerate me when I die I don't want to face Allah I don't want Allah to be able to reconstruct me and this belief is kufr technically the man was ignorant and so Allah reassembled him on the Yom Kiamah why did you tell your sons to incinerate you I didn't want you to be able to and then Allah forgave him because apparently and there's a story about this he cried tears for the sake of the tears I have another point also in regards to prayers I personally feel that prayer is not a command prayer is a blessing it's an absolute blessing because in this materialistic we'll live in if our boss came to us and said you know what I want to have a meeting with you the CEO of a company says I want to have a meeting with you come to my office so that employee that guy goes wow I'm being the boss of the company I'm going to his office he goes to his office right he talks to the CEO the CEO says you know what you want to raise you want promotion do this for me work hard do this do that right you'll get a raise so then we all work hard we work day and night we struggle we work seven days a week we work 20 but you know Allah swt when he personally came and asked prophet to come if you wanted he could have told the prophet through revelation through angel through revelation he never did that he wanted to speak to him personally and say listen I'm giving you a gift prayer it's a blessing if you do this I'll give you a blessing in your life it's a blessing and unfortunately like you said many people don't value prayer definitely a blessing they give lectures and they do all the stuff and while people are praying they're missing a prayer it's like prayer is the most it's a fundamental thing it's a basic basic and it's a blessing so I think what this whole night is about yeah I agree prayer is a blessing but Allah swt is also the sovereign lord of the universe and he makes commandments it's when Allah swt commands we hear it we affirm it's a command all of the commands are blessings of course people can interpret if people don't want to pray or consider it a burden then I think they have a false conception of the religion a cultural something is there's something with them yeah and a lot of times these poor people there's some existential crisis small thing that's in their heart and they're afraid to tell people you know this would happen in the pre-modern world right? and then they jail the person and then they bring a group of ulama and in five minutes that person is completely so oh okay no one ever explained it to me right so there was a pseudo messiah named who claimed to be the messiah this was in the 17th century and he said I'm the messiah and this was a global movement the Ottoman sultanate so he was captured this is treason this qiyana they're going to execute him and so they said to him you know this is qiyana we're going to execute you or you can make toba and renounce her claim right they actually brought in some ulama and the Ottoman ulama they were like Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin and Farsi and they knew the Torah and the Gospel and the Quran obviously and the sunnah and like they converted this man he became Muslim this was like a global movement they thought this man was the messiah you know but yeah sometimes the point is that sometimes it's a it's just a little thing and people should have recourse to ulama and we have technology now so that's a good thing they can do that but people should speak up people shouldn't be afraid but yeah if the religion is making you into a bad person, if the religion is making you into like a grouchy person or a mean-spirited person or someone who's highly, highly judgmental someone who's you know you have to sort of walk on eggshells around because the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam was exactly the opposite of that people felt totally at ease he had such rifq and lean that you just when you talk to you think he loves me, he loves me why does he love me so much people would react when he would speak to them he loves me more than anybody right so that's right religion that's the sunnah yes sir so there are many miracles in Quran and I think this is one of the biggest ones so as Muslims should we we all believe it's happened but is there an explanation always behind either physically or metaphysically for all these miracles maybe like we can explain today or maybe in the future or maybe here in the hereafter are we going to like see the explanation of all these miracles or is it because Allah is all-powerful he can just do whatever he wishes or is there always some explanation yeah I mean there may there may be a discernible explanation like I mentioned earlier that if we apply quantum mechanics to Newtonian physics then in theory it would be possible to walk on water and move through walls it's possible that certain or taught this type of knowledge so what they're doing is actually according to natural law but it seems like it's breaking natural law but in reality there's no break of natural law it's just a break of customary physics so that's one way to explain it the other way to explain it is indeed Allah SWT we believe in God he has power over all things and that's not an irrational belief we believe that this universe came into being everything comes down to basically cosmology yeah faith but faith is a word that is very much sullied today by academia by our culture when people think of the word faith they think of belief without evidence that's how Dawkins actually defines it the head of the snake the new atheists but a better word is confidence if you say I have confidence in Allah it has a better sort of connotation confidence means faith I have faith in Allah confidence in Allah yeah I mean no confidence is a Latin word it's a classical word it means that I believe in God for a reason there's a reason why I believe in God it's not just blind faith because we're not allowed to have blind faith it's called taqleed this is something that's denounced in the Quran Ibrahim SAW says to his people what are you worshiping why are you worshiping these idols where's your akal this is what we found our fathers doing so what you have to believe what you believe right faith has a foundation of course yeah everyone has confidence in something so everyone has faith in something so an atheist believes the universe came from nothing and if you ask them how they say I don't know I just have confidence I have faith they can't tell you how they can't explain it to you from a Newtonian scientific standpoint or even from a quantum standpoint how does something come from nothing how does it happen they don't know but it happened that's what they say I have confidence and maybe one day we'll know how maybe one day what's the difference everyone believes in something everybody believes in something sorry and at 9.30 inshallah we do have one last question yes it's 9.30 already here I didn't check my phone so are there any other references of the buraq being used by the previous Ambiya you know Qadi Ayyad in the Kitab-u-Shifa which is a Mubarak text should have Kitab-u-Shifa in your book and your bookshelf at home what's the difference I don't know how strong they are but there are some traditions that he mentioned he's a great scholar a jurist and he collects some of these traditions some of these athar that mentioned that the buraq was used by previous Anbiya like Ibrahim A.S you know other ulama say that the buraq was only for the Prophet S.A.W that's why he was created so the buraq when it saw the Prophet S.A.W it shied away from him so then Jibril A.S he sort of censured the buraq and said no one more exalted has ever ridden upon you than this man because when people and animals would come into the presence of the Prophet they would be awestruck by him like this you know so he shied away so based on this hadith it does seem indeed that previous Anbiya the other ulama mentioned like Ibrahim A.S he would sort of travel between Mecca where Ismail A.S was and Palestine where Ishaq lived and he would use the buraq of buraq not the animal no I think when Isa A.S in the New Testament prophesies the son of man he says the sun is coming like insan al kamil he says he will come like lightning for his lightning shines from the east comes from the west and shines upon the east so shall the coming of the son of man be I think this might be a reference to the Prophet S.A.W coming to the Temple Mount there is a division of Daniel also where he sees someone he calls an exalted human being and his nation but he is talking about the human being and he said he was brought near before the ancient of days and I think this is a reference to the like the Uruch or the Miraj or the Prophet S.A.W and the evidence works very well that it's the Prophet S.A.W because the Jews have sort of a response the Christians have a response both of them are highly incoherent especially with all due respect especially the Christian interpretation it just doesn't work at all so my come Hamla, Jazak'Allah very nice to have you back at MCC thank you for your questions and your attention Hamla, we have had more than 100 viewers online watching and many of them are online they are asking if you have any books that you are working on or anything they can kind of see you know I was working on a book but I started doing podcasts and I am thinking it seems kind of redundant but that's not a good way of thinking I think so it's kind of on a back burner but I was working on a book on Islamic Christology so basically what is the sort of position of the Messiah in the Quran who is the Messiah, what is the Messiah and then also a sort of refutation of Jewish and Christian ideas of the Messiah so I have been working on that for a long time so the problem with me as I write something and then six months later I don't like it and then I am too lazy to revise it so I write something else and then six months later I don't like that so then after five years I don't like any of it and it's 300 pages so that's a problem you know okay thank you peace be upon you