Description of the Prophet(SAW)

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Event Name: Description of the Prophet(SAW)
Description: I`m not sure where this was found
Transcription Date:Transcription Modified Date: 3/29/2019 8:40:57 PM
Transcript Version: 1


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One of the calamities of religions is when the Messenger becomes exalted over the One who sent him. We do not believe the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) is divine. We have been given the gift of understanding the Messenger in relation to the One who sent him. The Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) is central to teachings of Islam. You cannot exalt the Creator without exalting His Messenger, and you cannot exalt His Message without exalting His Messenger. We are commanded by God to magnify the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). Shaykh Hamza Yusuf eloquently explains why we must celebrate the Prophet every day of our lives. He also adds at the end an elucidating explanation of how Muslims should emulate the behaviour the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) had during trying times, reminding us that Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) taught. The believer is one from whose evil humanity is safe and that he was sent only as a mercy to everyone.

 

Love (mahabba) for people arises from three characteristics: 1) their physical outward beauty, 2) their inward beautiful character, and 3) the good or the sacrifice they do for us. To increase and maintain his love for the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), Sayyidina Hassan (the Prophet’s grandson) sought descriptions of all three of these aspects of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) because he wanted something to hold on to. Adding his own commentary to these intimate descriptions, Shaykh Hamza, with his usual eloquence, passionately relates what Sayyidina Hassan gathered about the Beloved of Allah. Shaykh Hamza says if you knew what the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) did for you, you would fall in love with him and explains that mahabba grows like a seed. For those who desire to fall in love with the Beloved of Allah, this talk is for them.


Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem

 

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Hasan ibn Ali asked his maternal uncle Hind bin Abi Haalah about the description of the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). He said about his uncle that he was very capable of describing, he had given an excellent description of the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). He said “I desired to hear this description from him because I wanted something to hold onto”.

 

One of things about the ulema, they say mahaba (love) for most human beings arises out of three things. The first is the physical love. You see something beautiful and your heart inclines towards it. So He put the love of beauty in the hearts of human beings. If you see something beautiful, you incline towards it. Your eye delights in it. If you see a human being that is beautiful, you can fall in love, it can happen just from sight. The ulema have maintained the physical description of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) because that is a level of mahaba – to actually hear how beautiful he was. He was the most beautiful human being. He was more beautiful than Yusuf. One of the gifts of this ummah is that we have an exact description of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), it is as if you are looking at him. There was a desire to keep the description of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) so people could have a physical attraction to him as well as the first stage of love.

 

The second type of love comes when you hear about the beautiful qualities. You have outward beauty and inward beauty which is akhlaq. They moved to the akhlaq of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) and the next level of love is love you feel for somebody who has done good to you or that you find out somebody made a sacrifice for you. If somebody does good to a good person, they love them more and more for that reason. But other people, if you do good to them, they have envy and start feeling resentment towards that person because their heart is diseased. So they actually get sick because they feel indebted and they do not like to feel indebted so they begin to use strategies in themselves to not feel indebted to the person. These are the sick people, this is why the munafiqun are the sickest people, they are in the lowest place. If people do good to you, human hearts by nature love those who do good to them. If somebody does good to you and then you do not have love for them it is because your heart is not in a natural state. It is in a diseased state.

 

If you knew what the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) did for you, you would fall in love with him. Not just for you, but for humanity. His concern was not just for his sahaba, his family. Most human beings, their concern is limited. Their concern might be their wife, children, husband, family, extended family. Some people, their concern is the community. They care about the poor people in the community. They want to find them and help them because it is about the heart. The bigger the heart, the more capacity for love. The smaller the heart, the lower the capacity for love. It grows like a seed. Haba is seed in Arabic. That is the nature of mahaba, the bigger it gets the bigger the heart has to be to bear the love. There are people whose love extends to the ummah. Their concerns are the concerns of the ummah. They think about people in other places. Umar said his concern was for animals. He said “if an animal was being unjustly wronged in Iraq, I would feel concern for it”. That was his responsibility. The Messenger of Allah felt concern for all of humanity and this is why he went to non muslims. He was not doing dawah to the muslims. He was concerned about the people who had not heard of Islam. This is why he used to go and get literally what most people would call humiliation. He was a Sharif from the aristocratic clan of Quraysh. He was going to the Ghifaris to the lowest tribes on the peninsula and talking to them about Islam, humbling himself before them bearing patiently.

 

The physical description is what he is talking about initially.

 

  • He was very awe inspiring when you saw him.

 

  • He was monumental, grand in nature when you saw him.

 

  • His face was like a moon on laylatul badr. It had a light comin