See you did not ask me
what were the other things, there was one thing that I left out of the three
things. That just reminded me of that.
He has hidden his awliya
amongst His servants and the frightening thing about this it might even be a
non mulsim. That is the amazing thing about it because Imam Qurtabi said that
Sayyidina Umar was beloved to God when he was in Makkah prostrating to idols.
So you do not know, you could meet a person and he could be better than you.
That is why Habib Umar
told one of the students that was in
So then he says they
admit they are His dominion and His servants and ultimately they must return to
His judgment and decree and to His planning and management and to His fate and
measuring out. They have no place of refuge from Him and no way out.
The third benefit of
calamities is sincerity to Allah because one has no place of return in putting
off or defending against the calamities except to Him. So it makes you sincere.
The mukhlis is the one that calls on God without any shirk. So if you realise
you have no other place. They realised that they had no place of refuge from
Him except to Him. That state is a great gift from Allah because it puts you in
a state of ikhlas. One of the ulema said that one moment of ikhlas in this
world is enough to save a person, just to be in a state of ikhlas with Allah. So
that is a great gift that calamity except upon Allah, Allah says “if Allah
afflicts you with some harm there is no remover of that harm except Allah,
except Him”.
When they get on a boat
and there is turbulence and waves, suddenly they are calling Allah sincerely.
These are people that are in a bad state but Allah is saying in that state they
are mukhlisoon because when the calamities come….so that is a benefit of
calamities.
How many times wAllahi
you ask yourselves, everyone of you right now, you ask yourselves how many
times has a calamity afflicted you and it led to the state where you really
felt You are the only one who can help me in this. That is how I became Muslim
wAllahi. I remember very clearly when I was 17 years old, I had an incredible tribulation
and I remember the night. I was in a car and I will never forget that night
where I know I called on Allah with absolute sincerity. I remember it very
clearly and that prayer got answered. That is the beauty, because that is the
ism’alam. If you call on Allah that is the ism’alam, the greatest name is the
name that has no partnerships with it.
The fourth benefit is
that he returns to Allah and is suddenly fervent in his desire of his Lord so
that is a benefit. Allah says when a harm afflicts the human he calls on his
Lord returning back to Him, to His Lord.
The fifth one that it
leads to a humbled state before God and prayers that you are calling on Allah.
When the harm afflicts a person, He calls on Us. There is a hadith that Allah
afflicts the people He loves just to hear them call on Him. SubhanAllah. It is
only a short time, if you keep it in perspective. It is just like the dentist,
it is only going to hurt for a second but he is doing it for your benefit and
that is why you let him do it. It is true or not true? Somebody when they are
pulling out the sliver you know this is just going to hurt for a second, ok go
ahead. It is over that is what you say when you do something to the child get a
sliver out, it is just for a second and then they are crying crying. It is
over, it is over then you hug them and everything is alright and that is the
thing about dunya it is just…..we are getting the tooth pulled out. 70-80 years
maximum but if you relate it to infinity, to infinity, it is cancelled our so
stop complaining. Really, just sit back and relax.
You know what it is like,
I have seen this with my own child and you can do this, don’t do this! Take the
child, I do not want to be responsible, it is
The Moroccans say relax
the mind and learn to swim, seriously relax the mind. Do you remember when you
first learned to swim? I remember, I will never forget it. I got placed on my
back, the person told me relax completely. I was scared to death. Relax
completely? What are you talking about? I am going to drown. No you are going
to float. Relax it was frightening in the beginning but once you learn to relax
suddenly you are floating and everything is fine. That is dunya. You just have
to relax, we are in the ocean of dunya and we need to just float, keep afloat,
do not drown. They are all drowning out there because the person who drowns,
they come up and they are in a state of….if they would just relax, they would
not drown but the panic is causing them to drown and that is what is happening
with all these people out there. It is the panic. “Human beings are created in
a state of anxiety, when any harm afflicts they panic and when good comes they
withhold, they do not want to share it with anybody except the people of
prayer”. They are in a different state and that is the people we want to be
from, the people who are exempted from that other state because that trust in
Allah is what saves you.
Allah says they call to
him, rather to Him may your call be and He will remove what you are calling him
for, to remove the calamity if he desires. So that is one of the benefits. “Say
who will save you from the darknesses of the land and the sea when you call
Him, abased and humbled, in fear and in concealment”.
The sixth benefit is that
you are forbearing to the One who has afflicted you. Allah says in the Quran
“Ibrahim was someone who had compassion for other people, he felt compassion”.
Halim is the gentleness. “We gave them good tidings of Ismail”. Young boy, a
forbearing boy. The Prophet (sallallahu 'alayhi wa
sallam) said “you have two qualities that Allah loves: forbearing and
deliberation”. There is a difference in the rankings of forbearance based upon
the differences of the calamities in their enormities and in their severity,
whether they are great or small. A forbearance shown when there is a great
calamity is much greater than any other type of forbearance so that is one of
the great blessings is the ability to show forbearance because it is a gift
from Allah.
The seventh one is that
you can forgive them so it is not just having forbearance but you actually
forgive them and you get one of the greatest rewards is forgiving people who
have done you a wrong. Allah says “those who forgive people, Allah loves those
people”. “The one who pardons and who rectifies, his reward is with Allah”.
When you forgive people for great calamities, it is better than any other
forgiveness. See if you have family members that cause you problems, you have
to forgive them for the sake of Allah. Don’t do it for them, do it for Allah.
See one of the things that people do, if you get angry and you leave, you run
out of the room and then you do not talk to that person the more you delay that
time the deeper it festers. It is like a boil. If you immediately go, seriously
I got upset with somebody, I took a shower and then just went and asked their
forgiveness and I was not the wrongdoer. The thing can be healed, if you do not
do that, it becomes more and more difficult as times goes on, it festers. Then
pride comes in. Shaytan says it is not your fault, you didn’t do it. He should
be the one asking for forgiveness of you, who does he think he is? Don’t worry
about who he thinks he is, worry about who you think you are, that is the
problem. The problem with the world is who we think we are so asking
forgiveness of people is a great blessing from Allah.
The eighth one is to be
patient during the tribulation “Allah is with the patient ones” so when you
show patience it is a great blessing. To wait for an opening from Allah is one
of the greatest acts of ibadah. There are Muslims you see, if you tell them to be
patient they say how long do we have to be patient. There is this kind of thing
we have been patient, that is not patience. You cannot call a donkey patient in
Arabic. It does not work because patience is based on understanding. You can
bear things, they just bear it. Patience is difference. Patience has ihtisab
which is where you actually reckon with your Lord a reward, you are believing
there is a reward coming from being patient. This brings on the muhabbah of
Allah, the love of Allah and also the abundant reward. Allah loves the patient
ones, so by being patient you are incurring the love of Allah. Engendering the
love of Allah. The sabiroon are given their rewards without any reckoning. Some
rewards you get it is reckoned already whereas patience is without reckoning. No
one was given a blessing better or more than patience.
The ninth one is to
actually be happy, glad about what is happening because of these benefits. The
Prophet (sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam) said
that in a hadith that Imam Ahmad relates about the people who went before, they
used to be as happy during times of calamities and tribulations as you are
during times of abundance. How wonderous those two distasteful things: death
and poverty because in the akhirah, poverty in this world is a blessing because
your hisab is much less if you are poor. That is what Imam Ali said about
wealth “what is halal from it is a reckoning and what is prohibited from it is
a punishment” and that is why the zuhad are called, the most intelligent people
are the people or zuhad because they give up things because they do not want
the problem that go with these things. That they were happy with it not because
they happened but rather because of the rewards and the fruits that came from
those tribulations.
So just as somebody who
is happy who has great diseases when he drinks that bitter cure that will
remove that disease, he is drinking it and he is happy about it because he is
thinking not about the bitterness and the difficult of the remedy but he is thinking
about the benefits that will come from taking the bitter remedy so this is the
way people are of Allah with the tribulations.
The tenth is to be
grateful for it because of what are contained in there of the benefits as a sick
person would be grateful to the doctor who is severing one of his limbs or
preventing him from his desires because he believes that is a cure for him. You
go to the surgeon, the surgeon cut your hand off because there is gangrene,
what do they say to the surgeon afterwards? Thank you so much doctor. He just
cut off your hand. Why are you thanking him? Because you realise he was doing
you a benefit even thought outwardly he harmed you so in the same way those
people who have tribulation from Allah know that Allah only does those things
to benefit them to make them grow and so they actually say alhamdulillah.
The eleventh one, the
purification that these calamities have towards their wrongs and their sins. Allah
said that anything that afflicts you is from what your own hands have wrought
and He pardons much of what you have done in other words what you are being
afflicted with is actually much less than what you deserve and in that, one of
the things that Imam Nasafi in his tafsir and his tafsir, it is a beautiful tafsir,
one of the things he says in that, he said if you reflect on the meaning of
that you will show gratitude for your calamities because you will realise that
it is a blessing that they are much less than what they are, that is the secret
of that ayah. That is why Allah followed that up, that you are afflicted with
your wrong actions, you can feel bad about that when you realise that He has
pardoned so much, it actually makes you feel grateful that Allah has overlooked
so much of your shortcomings.
That the believer is not
afflicted with any difficulty, exhaustion, fatigue, anxiety that concerns him
or even a thorn that punctures him except that Allah removes with it, that he
steps on a thorn that he steps on except that Allah removes with it his wrong
actions so those are all blessings. So no disease, no exhaustion, fatigue
anything like that at all comes as a removal of wrong actions, subhanAllah.
The twelfth blessing is
the compassion that Allah enables you to show to people that are in tribulation
and to help them. “Whoever relieves a quorba, one of the calamities of this world
for a believer, Allah will relieve a calamity for him on the yaum ul qiyammah”
so people in tribulation become an opportunity. One of the things that Imam
Muhammad al Hasan one of the things that he says in his commentary on the
Mudhara, he said there are two conditions that people have:
- Where you have the
afiyah, you have the wellbeing in yourself, in your family but you get
problems of other people
- You have these
problems
If you do not help people
who have problems then Allah will give you those problems. That is the nature
of the world it is to test you. So you are either tested in yourself or with
others but you have to respond appropriately so avoiding those things is a
danger and that is why the tribulations of others are actually a blessing if
they come to you for help or something, it is an opportunity to earn some
closeness to Allah.
In the Muwatta of Imam
Malik, Isa (sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam) was
reported to have said “people are of two types, people of wellbeing and people
of tribulation so have compassion for the people of tribulation and show gratitude
for well being”. That is why if you are in good shape, do not complain, tell
somebody to punch you if you complain or something because you do not want, if
you complain and you do not have anything to complain about, Allah will give
you things to complain about and then you will think about how good things
were. Remember we used to complain about that, what were we thinking? There are
people that say that when real calamities hit them they think what was I
complaining about before? The truth is well stop complaining now because it
could get worse, that is the whole point. It could get worse and one of the
poets said
“The only people that
really feel sorry for people in passionate love are the people who have been in
passionate love”
So when you see people in
tribulation you should remember I have been there, I should remember what that
was like and show compassion to them.
The thirteenth one. Tribulations
give you the blessing of having true knowledge of the extent of blessing of
well being so when tribulations come you really appreciate what well being is.
So it is better to appreciate it when you have got it. The nature of blessings
is that nobody realises the extent of them until they have lost them. That is a
human being. He is just oppressive of himself and constantly denying the
blessings of Allah.
The fourteenth. What
Allah has prepared from the blessings of the reward of the akhirah based on
these varying ranks so this is also a blessing that Allah has prepared rewards
for the calamities that you bear patiently or with contentment based on
different ranks. There are people that are content that will have a higher
station in paradise than people that were simply patient and patience is the
lowest maqam in the maqamat of the tawbahs actually the first one.
The fifteenth: What is
hidden inside in the folds of these calamities are blessings. That is another
benefit. Maybe you dislike a thing and Allah will put in it much good. You
don’t know, there are things hidden in blessings so I will give you an example.
I missed a flight once and alhamdulillah I have never been upset about missing
a flight I guarantee you because I always think if the plane goes down I am
going to feel like such a fool for having run to catch the plane or something
like that. So I just relax, never want to be in a plane that you ran to catch
and then it goes down. What was I running for? So if you miss it, you miss it. But
I missed a plane, they ended up giving me $500 back because they had to
re-route the ticket and things like that and the difference was nothing in time
and things like that. There are always benefits that are hidden in what you
think is a trouble. The thing about the world is that if you enter into a state
with your experience of the world in which whenever these things happen you
just accept them you will always find the benefit, you will see them always, Allah
will show them, you will know there is a benefit. In every delay there is God’s
choice in it and that is part of what the mumin does, he submits to it.
The sixteenth one is that
tribulations prevent you from arrogance and from evil, pride, tyranny, doing
all these things like
The seventeenth one is
contentment, ridha because tribulations afflict the good and evil and whosoever
does not like it then it is just on him and he has lost the dunya and the
akhirah and whoever is pleased with it he is pleased because he knows that
paradise is better than anything in this world and if those are the
tribulations that it takes to get him into paradise then he is content with it.
So these are some of the
blessings I mean there are many blessings but these are the ones that Sultan al
Ulema Abdul Aziz Salaam enumerated and they are good to remember in these
times.
But I will end by saying
read history. These are not bad times. Muslims should not be so negative, there
has been much worse times I mean there are aspects that are bad about this time
and certainly one of the greatest calamities of the rime is that we do not have
a lot of people of knowledge any more and we do not have the levels of deen and
things like this but just in terms of outward dunya calamities, this period is
nothing if you read history, this period is nothing.
The real calamities of
this age are spiritual calamities, they are not worldly calamities so if we are
going to weep over the calamities of this age we should be weeping about the
lack of religion, about the lack of spirituality, we should not be weeping
about all this stuff we see out there because it is just not that bad. I am
sorry and if you think it is you have not read history. Things have been much
worse, read about earlier wars and how many people died and plagues that
afflicted people, a third of
There are too many blessings,
the blessings we have overwhelming. That is why inshaAllah we will ask Allah to
put us in a state of gratitude with Allah and make us from the shaakireen
really make us from the shaakirneen and just not complain. The thing about
complainers is that even complainers do not like complainers really. They want
to complain but they do not want to listen to anybody who complains. So
insha’Allah we will stop whining. It is the maqam of the tifil is to whine. It
is what I always tell my boys, nobody likes a whiner even a whiner and they
laugh because they know it is true. So whining is a maqam, it is the maqam of
the tifil, that is what a whiner is. The rijaal in haqiqah it does not mean
male, the rujul is male and female it is the one who has reached the maqam of
the adult, it is the mature one, that is what it means, the mature one. Rujula
is maturity.
So
insha’Allah Allah make us all mature.
Summary of the 17 Benefits of
Tribulation
1. You realise the power
of Lordship over you
2: You realise your
abject servanthood and your complete state of resignation and brokenness before
the will and power of Allah
3: Sincerity to Allah
4. You return to Allah
and are suddenly fervent in your desire of your Lord
5. It leads to a humbled
state before God
6. You are forbearing to
the One who has afflicted you.
7. You can actually
forgive them
8. To be patient during
the tribulation
9. To actually be happy,
glad about what is happening because of these benefits
10. To be grateful for it
because of what are contained in there of the benefits
11. The purification that
these calamities have towards your wrongs and your sins
12. Allah enables you to
show to people that are in tribulation and to help them
13. Tribulations give you
the blessing of having true knowledge of the extent of blessing
14.
What Allah has prepared from the blessings of the reward of
the akhirah based on these varying ranks
15.
What is hidden inside in the folds of these calamities are
blessings
16.
Tribulations prevent you from arrogance and from evil,
pride, tyranny
17. Contentment