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
CD 1
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
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 coming out of it
like a moon on laylatul badr.
- He
was taller than a moderate build but not exceedingly tall. If you see
somebody very tall then it is strange even amongst tall people. If you see
somebody short then it is also noticeable. He was of a middle stature
inclining towards height because everything about him was middle.
- Even
his physical description of colour was middle. He was not pasty white and
he was not black. He was inclining towards light skin because of the
racism of human beings. That is one of the hikmah of that. He was
inclining towards light skin because of the racism of human beings. It has
to do with the stupidity of human beings in distinguishing between people
because of colour. He was a colour like what we call the harvest moon. He
was not white nor dark, he was light skinned what we would call in
English, a reddy complexion.
- His
hair was neither straight or curly. It was wavy, it was middle. Everything
about him was middle. He had a full head and his hair was wavy. If he
parted it, it parted. It never went past the lobe of his ears if he
allowed it to grow long because sometimes he would cut it for ibadah like
the umrah or hajj. It went to the lobe or in some riwayah it went to the
shoulder.
- He
did not speak slow or fast. He spoke in a moderate tone. His words were
neither too short nor excessive but they were always just right. When he
spoke, people felt as it exactly the right amount of words were used.
Everything about him was moderation.
- He
had a large forehead which is an indication of high quality. He had a vein
on his forehead. If he got upset they could see the vein.
- His
eyebrows were full and there was a slight space between them.
- The
upper part of his nose was aqualine. He had a beautiful nose that had a
bridge on the upper part. He had a light that came from that area of his
face that was clearly discernible.
- He
had a full beard and his eyes were very dark.
- He
had high beautiful cheek.
- He
had a mouth that was full so when he spoke his pronunciation was perfect.
- His
teeth were beautiful, there was a slight space in the teeth.
- He
had a light hair on his chest which was manliness without having a lot of
hair.
- His
neck was like a gazelle’s neck. He had a beautiful neck and a high neck.
It had like a beautiful silvery clarity to it.
- He
was balanced in all of his outward aspects. He had a strong build and it
was all perfectly formed.
- His
stomach and chest were equal. He never had a large stomach. He had no
paunch. Even when he was in his sixties, his stomach was always flat. He
had light hair on his stomach. He had no hair over his breasts.
- He
was full chested and his shoulders were broad. He had large bones.
- He
had hair on his arms and he was sinewy and strong.
- There
was a space in his trachea.
- His
limbs were strong and he had full calves.
- His
feet were very smooth. Because they
were desert people and they walked a lot, their feet would have a lot of
roughness to them. His feet were smooth that water would pour off them.
- When
he walked, he walked softly but he was quick paced as if he was walking on
an incline.
- When
he looked at somebody, he did not just move his head, he turned his entire
body to give full attention to that person.
- He
looked more at the ground than he did up. His glance was generally down
because of the power of his glance. When he looked at people, he did not
maintain his stare. He would look then move away. As he looked at people,
he never fixed his focus on people because of the effect that would have
on people.
He said to him “describe to me how he spoke”. He said “he
was always grief stricken” but the ulema who commented on that hadith have said
that does not mean he was depressed. It means if you looked at him in the
masjid you would think he was grief stricken because his presence with his Lord
was so intense that his face would have a sense of being completely absorbed in
thought. So people who would look at him would think he had grief. There is
another hadith that says the Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) was always happy. The ulema say when he was
with his Creator he was in a deep state of contemplation, when he was with his
people he was happy. He smiled, he always looked at people, smiled and made
them feel joyful. He never made them feel depressed. He laughed at what they
laughed at.
He told jokes. Aisha said “he was always joking with us in
the house”. The Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) said “I joke but I never tell a lie in my
jokes, always I speak the truth”. A man came to the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) and said “let
me borrow a camel”. The Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) said “I will give you the baby of a she camel”.
He said “what would that benefit me, a baby of a she camel”. The Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) said
“Isn’t that the baby of a she camel?”. Another time a Jewess came up to him and
said “O Rasulullah! Am I going to jannah?”. He said “Old women do not go to
paradise”. She became so upset then he laughed and said “you will go in young
and youthful” and then she was happy. A man came the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) and said “I
slept with my wife in Ramadhan and I made an oath I would not do that”. The
Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) asked
“why did you do that?”. He said “I saw my wife in the moonlight and I could not
help myself”. The Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) laughed at the man and said “go and do the
expiation”. That was his nature, even when people came in a state of sin. He
was showing this man his humanity by letting him feel that he just made a
mistake. He made them realise that the doors of rahmah are open. That is why to
make people despair of the mercy of the Lord, these are evil people who do
that. The hadith that says those who say “Allah will not forgive you, He will
send that person to hell”. Do not judge people and do not say you know where
Allah’s mercy is, barakah is, none of that. Who do we think we are? We do not
know anything, nothing, we have no knowledge. Do not elevate yourself over
Allah. You do not know who is going where. You do not know where you are going.
So do not assume other people are going where you do not even know where you
are going. We have big hopes in Allah.
- He
was always reflecting. He did not take rest like other people. He was
concerned about his ummah.
- He
never spoke about anything that was unnecessary. He had long periods of
silence. He used to open his words
and close them with a full expression when he spoke. He spoke with
comprehensive words. He never had excess. He was never at a loss for
words. If he spoke, he would put his right thumb into his left palm.
- He
had soft and gentle character. He was not harsh. The Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) was
not harsh. “If you were harsh hearted they would have fled from around
you”. He was not gruff or harsh ever.
- He
always elevated the blessing even if it was a minute blessing.
- He
never found fault in anything even in a small amount of food. Any type of
food that was given to eat he did not find fault in it nor did he
excessively praise it.
- If
he got upset, it never put him in a state of agitation. He never got upset
for himself nor did he ever seek any redress wrong done to him.
- There
was never a time when a right was presented to him that he would go to
fulfil that right.
- He
did not point with his finger, he pointed with his whole hand.
- He
would say SubhanAllah.
Most of his laughing was smiling. He rarely laughed the way
most people laughed. He smiled but when he smiled his teeth were like
hailstones. Then Hassan said “I did not tell Hussein ibn Ali about this
(because he was young) finally I told him about it and I found he had actually
got it before me”. He had asked his father Ali about how the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) went
in and out of his house and what his majlis was like, what he looked like. He
did not leave anything I had out and then Hussein said “I asked my father about
the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam), how he came in his house”. When he went in. he
went with permission into a place. He gave three parts. He gave a part to
Allah, a portion to his family and a portion for his nafs. He used to give a
portion of that between the people and him. He would leave that upto the
general people for the elect of the people. He never kept anything from them.
In his seerah, he would preferred the people of fadl but
with their permission. So when he would give things, if they were older he
would always give them things. If there was somebody of virtue he would take
permission from the person of haq to give it to that person so even when Ibn
Abbas was young, he took permission from him to give to the older people. Ibn
Abbas refused because he wanted the barakah. But that was his nature to always
take permission from somebody who had a right to give it to somebody who had
the fadl or the virtue.
He would always occupy people in what benefited them and the
ummah. He would ask about them. He would ask news about them. If somebody was
not there, he would say “where is so and so?”. These are teachings for the
people. Now we have people disappear and nobody remembers them. They do not ask
about them. This is the messenger of Allah and he had an ummah. This was a
whole ummah of people. The old woman who used to clean the masjid. She used to
sweep the masjid. One day she died and they buried her. The Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) came
and asked about her. They said “she died O Rasulullah”. He said “Why didn’t you
tell me she died so I could go pray on her?”.
He would ask about somebody who was not there and say “tell
me about people in need who are not able to come and ask me”. He told them
“those people who help other people who are not able to go and get help, Allah
will make firm their feet on the day of judgment”. Looking after people, taking
care of people, he was teaching people how to be human beings. This is all it
is. We are just learning, it is like human beings do not know how it is to be
human. This is all just to teach you to be human beings. The beginning is to
force yourself until it becomes your nature. It is not easy. Being human is the
highest thing in creation. There is nothing higher, it is higher than the
angels. That is the maqam of Bani Adam that if you fulfill your humanity you
are higher than the angels and if you do not then you are lower than the
animals because you had the potential. The animal could only be what it was
made to be. You can go either up or down.
They used to come in seeking and go out guides. What a
beautiful description of his majlis. That people come in looking and go out
showing other people what to find what they were looking for.
- He
never spoke except with what concerned him.
- He
always brought people together and never separated them.
- He
would honour the dignatories of every people and put him over those
people.
- He
guarded himself with people and he was vigilant because of the makar of
those people.
- The
Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam) knew human nature and he knew what people were upto
but never by being rude. He would still always smile.
- He
would seek out his companions.
- He
would consider what was beautiful beautiful and he would show people it
was a good thing. What was foul, he would show it to be foul. He would
make it look insignificant to them, not worth doing.
- He
was always moderate and never departed from that quality.
- He
would never be weary of a people when people were speaking he would never
lose his attention out of fear that they would lose their attention and
get bored. He was always present with them.
- He
was ready for anything and everything.
- The
best people for him were the ones who benefited and were the most sincere.
The ones he had the highest estimation for were the ones who served the
most, helped others and consoled others. Those were the people who he
looked at not those sitting around and doing nothing. Sometimes everybody
looks at those who serve as the low ones, that is why they are doing the
khidmah. That is why the old woman in the mosque, maybe people thought she
was not very significant but she was in khidmah.
- He
gave all of the people who sat with him full attention so that each one of
them thought thy were the most important person in the majlis. “I was sent
to perfect noble character”.
- If
somebody got angry in his presence or had some need and was forceful, he would
be patient with him and he would do that to the point where that man would
end up being calm or forgetting about what he wanted because he was so
patient.
- If
anybody asked him anything he never refused. If they did not get
specifically what they wanted they went out with words of wisdom and
consolation from him. He encompassed all of these people with his
character. He was like a father to them and they were all the same as far
as he was concerned in rights. Only he saw differences in taqwa.
- His
majlis was a majlis of clemency, modesty, sabr, trustworthiness, never
were voices raised, never were anything that was holy and sacred in any way
desacrilised, all of them were humbled in his presence.
- Always
he honoured the older and had mercy on the younger. They would help those
in need and they had special compassion for strangers and guests.
Then he said “I asked him about his qualities when he sat
with people”.
- He
was always smiling, he had gentle character. He was always kind and gentle
with people. He was not harsh or coarse.
- He
never shouted. He did not use foul language.
- He
rarely found fault, if he did it was to point out something that was
harmful.
- He
was not excessively praiseworthy, it does not mean he did not praise, he
did not do praise that was not warranted.
- He
would tell people to encourage them and speak highly of people to
encourage. He did not flatter.
- If
he did not like something, he would act as if he did not notice it. No one
ever despaired of him.
There were three things that were not part of his nature: 1.
Ostentation, 2. Excessiveness and 3. Things that did not concern him. He left
three things that he did not do to people 1. He never blamed anybody 2. He
never found fault and 3. When he spoke people in his gathering lowered their
heads as if birds were perched on them. When he was silent they spoke and never
argued in his presence. If anybody spoke in his gathering they would all listen
until that person finished his words and then they would begin the speech of
what they were talking about.
- He
would laugh at what they laughed at, he would wonder at what they wondered
at or marveled.
- If
somebody who did not know his gathering was harsh, then he was patient
with them.
- If
he saw anybody he would tell his companions “help them out” if that person
was in need.
- He
never sought any praise.
- He
never cut anybody off when they were speaking until they were finished or
the gathering had ended. That is what Sufyan ibn Wakee related on this.
The last reason which is the highest reason for muhabbah is
because he is the habib of Allah. Allah put his love in the hearts of the
people that have been graced with that love and mercy. Allah increase our love
of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam).
CD 2
Allah says in the Quran “we have not sent any messenger
except that he is obeyed by the permission of God or by the authority of
Allah”. The purpose of the messengers is that they are obeyed, but because of
the nature of the human condition, human beings always fall short of being in a
state of obedience and the idea of obeying is that we recognise authority. Human
beings in the presence of authority tend to be very well behaved for instance
when people speed in cars when they see police they often slow down. We
basically view it as hypocritical for a person to do something that he knows is
wrong but when he is in the presence of one who can redress that wrong he stops
doing it. It is very interesting what authorises somebody to have authority
over other people. We have governments instituted because human beings
recognize we need to live in society and if we do not have governments we would
tend to treat each other poorly because many human beings are aggressive by
nature. Many human beings when they want something they will do what they
perceive they need to do to achieve that thing so human beings have instituted
governments.
One of the things that we do not think about very often is
that government is actually a mercy from Allah. Allah in the Quran says “had
Allah not used some of you to constrain others there would be corruption
everywhere”. Earlier commentators tended to interpret it as “had it not been
muslims stopping non muslims then the world would be corrupt”. Fakhridin ad
Raazi the famous musfair was a very deep and insightful human being and he took
it to another level in his famous tafseer. One of the meanings of this verse is
the blessing of government irrespective of who is in charge. One of the
examples of this is in
One of the gifts that Allah has given are Prophets and they
are sent to be obeyed because their obedience is in fact the obedience of
Allah, they are not God but obeying them is the same as obeying God. Allah has
given them authority in His name. This is why the law is of the essence of
humans interaction with other humans and at the essence of the Islamic
understanding of the relationship with our Lord. Our Lord has given us prayer
not like some traditions when you can pray anytime. We have specific times we
have to pray. They have been legislated. They are in the books of legal sacred
law. So we are told to pray at Fajr, you cannot pray at
When Allah sent these messengers, he sent them to be obeyed
by the authority of Allah. We do not obey them by their own authority. We obey
them by what they represent. This is why the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) said “the
political authority is the shade of God on earth”. What do you do in the shade?
You seek protection from the heat of the sun so that you do not die. Shade is a
blessing so political order is a blessing. Also the order of your house, the
sultan of parents over the children. If the children rebelled against the
parents then what order do you have in the house? If the children just did what
they wanted, if they refused to go to school and learn then how do we teach the
next generation the necessary knowledges that have been acquired over centuries
and it is transmitted from one generation to the next generation and the
understanding that when you go to a school and that teacher has something that
you do not have, you recognise his authority. When your parents tell you
something, you recognise their authority. Why? Because they know things that
you do not know. They have been on earth longer than you have and they are not
always right. The nature of human authority is that it is fallible.
But the nature of divine authority is that it is infallible
but even with divine authority how do we understand it? Then we have problems
because this is when the human understanding comes into revelation and this is
what we called ijtihad and human beings can make mistakes in their ijtihad and
human beings can do absurd things in the name of religion in the same way that
laws can be passed in a secular society that are absolutely ridiculous that
systems can come into existence and people wonder why they are there. It
sometimes takes a great deal of time to get rid of them so when the messengers
come, they come with this authority and those who submit to that authority
submit for two reasons because they genuinely believe it or it is simply what
they were told. They inherited it, they do not know why or the real reasons
other than this is what I was told. That type of person will not be adhering in
the same way as the one who actually believes it. “Are they the same those who
know and those who don’t know?”.
Now the Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) said “I was only sent to teach”. My only
purpose amongst you is to teach you. In another hadith, he said “I was sent
only to perfect noble character”. It does not negate the first because noble
character is what he is teaching. How do we become human beings? We are not
animals. The word in Arabic for human being is “the rational animal”. There is
no other animal on earth that shares that quality, that we are thinking
creatures, we are homo sapiens. Even in the West, the classification in
biological classification is the sapiential animal. The knowing creature, the
one who knows. Allah has told us in the Quran that there are two types of
knowledge. They know about the outward of the world but they do not know about
the other world – the akhirah. This is the first world. There is a last world.
Allah has told us there are two types of knowledges. Knowledges of this world
and knowledges of the other world. You can become completely ignorant of one or
the other or both. The jahil is the person who does not have knowledge or the
jahil is also someone who does not act according to his knowledge. That is also
jahil. Jahil is also the person who thinks he knows something but understands
it incorrectly. That is another jahil. Jahil or ignorance in Islam is not just
one kind of ignorance. There are different types of ignorance. You can know how
to build a bridge or fly an aeroplane but you might not know how to go the
bathroom, how to clean yourself from impurities. You might know that pi relates
to a circle but you might not know that you were created for worship so you can
understand something about irrational numbers and not understand something that
is beyond number. The infinite. One in Arabic is not a number. Allah is not a
number. One is not a number in Arabic. Numbers begin at 2 in the Arabic
language.
If we look at our situation as muslims we are people that
Allah said “we only sent messengers except to be obeyed”. So how do we relate
that then if they were only sent to be obeyed, how do relate that state of
disobedience to our Lord and how we rectify that with out Lord? The verse goes on
“had it not been that they transgressed and oppressed themselves, they come to
you O messenger of Allah and asked forgiveness of Allah and the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) asked
forgiveness for them. They would have found Allah full of mercy”.
Our inability to obey authority is part of the human
condition and Allah has said that in order to redress this flaw that has not
only been purposefully put into you because the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) said ”had you
not disobeyed would have feared something worse than disobedience which is
vanity or ujb that you start thinking yourselves to be wonderful”. Whose crime
is that? It is the crime of Iblees. It is why he was not made the khilafah in
the earth according to our tradition. Iblees worshipped Allah. There is a
tradition that said there was no place on earth where he did not make sajdah
but every sajdah he did increased him in his sense of superiority. Instead of
engendering humility in his soul, it actually resulted in pride so when he was
asked to bow down to Adam, he refused. Allah asked “what has stopped you from
prostrating to Adam?” He had arrogance and refused because of arrogance. Allah
asked him not that He needed to know but in order to reveal something to Iblees
for himself. He did not say “I did not prostrate because I am arrogant”. He
said “I am better than him, I am created from fire and air and he is created
from water and earth”. My elements are fire and air and are gaseous in other
words they move up by their nature, earth and water move down so he looked at
it from the eye of the outward and the material world. He said mine are more
subtle, ethereal, they are not low elements, they are high elements. He
believed that made him superior and that in a sense is the first act of
racism because if you ask someone why
are you better than an Iraqi or Pakistani? People say because I am white, anglo
saxon, this or that. I am better because I am Punjabi and he is Beloushi. I am
a Qurayshi and he is Tamimi. These are sicknesses in the heart and this is the
disease of Iblees. To see yourself better than others and this is why the
Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) said
“I was commanded to humble myself until no one showed arrogance towards another
person because if anyone had a right to feel superior than anyone else it would
be me because I was chosen by Allah, but I refused to do that. I am the master
of the children of Adam and I have no pride in declaring that to you”.
Not only because he was showing his humility and giving us a
legal ruling that we need to know as muslims. This is a legal ruling. Who is
the greatest of creation is a legal ruling to understand a hierarchy. He was
also letting us know that is pride is not in
mastery over the children of Adam but in his uboodiyah to Allah. He is
the real life servant of Allah. “Glory be to the One who has taken His servant
on this night journey”. Why did Allah
say servant? It was because this was not in his relationship between creation,
it was in his relationship between the Creator and himself. His relationship
between himself and Allah is a relationship of uboodiyah. His relationship
between the creation of Allah is his relationship as a messenger. He is
Rasulullah as an intermediary between Allah and creation but he is Abdullah as
an intermediary between Allah and His creation.
In other words he is calling creation to Allah but he is
also calling Allah to creation. He is calling creation to Allah but he is also
calling Allah to creation. “O Allah forgive my people, they do not know what
they are doing”. On the day of qiyamah, he will call Allah to his creation. His
function is abd and Rasul. This is his authority that Allah has given him. He
says to him “intercede and it will be granted to you”. Allah could have
forgiven His creation without intercession but He is teaching us something
about the nature of this world. There is nothing that does not exist without
causation. There is nothing that does not exist without intermediaries. You
cannot exist without the hydrogen bond holding all of your DNA together. You
cannot breathe without the means of lungs and oxygen, nitrogen and gaseous
exchanges. Your heart cannot beat. Blood cannot circulate. Everything is by
intermediaries, because only Allah is free. If Allah wants a thing, there is no
intermediary. This is the uncreated word of God, it is not even with letters.
It is the iraadah of Allah, the qalam of Allah and the knowledge of Allah that
all exists as one reality with Allah. We speak of them as separate things but
in reality they are one thing. This messenger that was sent to be obeyed that
the more you become aware of him the more you become aware of your obligation
to obey him. The more distant you are from him, the less present he is in your
life, and the less credence you give to his creed.
If you never saw the police, you would start driving in a
certain way. You would stop obeying the laws, you would not have that sense of
authority present. If you lose a sense of divine authority in your life, you
also begin to lose a sense of your need to obey that authority and that is why
the messenger of Allah is central to our teaching. You cannot exalt the Creator
without exalting His message and your cannot exalt His message without exalting
his Messenger. He was sent that you exalt him, that you honour him. Those who
exalt the symbols of God, they are doing it because of something in their
hearts and when you magnify the Creator, you are magnifying what Allah has
commanded you to magnify and that is why we celebrate him. We do not declare
his divinity. “Leave what Christians have said about their Prophet”. He is our
Prophet also but Imam al Busri has said leave aside what they ascribe to him
which means divinity. He was a man, a human being. That is the Aryan position
which was large group of Christians in the early period. They believed he was a
human being. The divination was declared orthodoxy in 325 after the birth of
Isa. This was a debate amongst the Christians for 325 years whether he was
divine or not. We could have made the same mistake. There are some muslims who
made that mistake about Ali. They never made it about the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam).
Nobody has ever declared our Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) divine and that is one of the miracles of our
Prophet that there are people who declared Ali divine and that they did not
declare the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam) divine. That is a miracle and if you cannot see that
you are a fool. Allah has protected his Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) from being
associated with Allah. The proof is that they associated Ali with Allah and
where is Ali in relation to the Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) with all his greatness and stature? He is a
drop in the ocean and yet there are people who claim divinity for him. But we
did not make that mistake with our Prophet, why? It is because he did not test
our intellects with more than we can understand our of a covetous desire for
our guidance so we neither wander or go astray. This is why he said “do not claim
for me what the Christians have claimed for Isa, but say the servant of Allah
and the messenger of Allah (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam). I am a man like you but I am not like you”
because we do not receive wahy. He is not the same yet he is the same. One of
the scholars said “the Prophet is a human but not like other humans like a ruby
is a mineral but not like the other stones”.
This is the gift we have been given. We have been given the
gift of understanding the messenger in relation to the One who sent him which
is one of the calamities of religion when the Messenger becomes exalted over
the One sending. This is the failure of the Buddhists, Hindus and ultimately
the failure of the Christians in our understanding. So what we are doing when
we reflect on these meanings and I would say that I believe the mawlid that if
you celebrate it one day out of the year it is a bidah. I would say you should
not do that. The mawlid should be celebrated every single day of your life
until you die because if you are not happy that he was born you are a kafir. We
celebrate his birth everyday of our lives and we know that his own Uncle was
given respite in the hellfire, Abu Lahab because he celebrated his birthday
according to the sahih hadith. He freed a slave girl that came and gave him the
news of the birth of the Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam). In the sahih hadith, he is given water in the
hellfire because of that one act. So what do you say about a man who celebrates
his birthday everyday of his life? What is his reward? We are here to celebrate
but not today, tomorrow, the next day and the day after until the last breath
you take. We say that hope springs eternal. The nature of spring is that it
gives you hope. He was born in Spring in April the most temperate month of the
year, the month we all yearn for, we look forward to the flowers. If you look
around you, you see a lot of green. What does that green do to us? It delights
the eye because it connects us with a very deep truth. Green in the spectrum of
colours that is between purple and red. It is exactly in the middle. If you
look at the light spectrum of the 6 or 7 according to
There is something else about green, his dome was painted
green out of a wisdom by the people at that time because they were the people
of the internal and they painted the dome green because it represents
something. The secret of life in biology is photosynthesis. What is photosynthesis?
It is two greek words. It means to make light. What is being made is
chlorophyll and what is chlorophyll? It is green. So the secret of life is the
ability to produce green. That is what life is, the ability to produce green.
Why did Allah make the secret of life related to the colour green? This is a
modern discovery, This is not something they knew 1400 years ago. Everything
that you see in the outward world is a meaning set up in an image. Those who
discern this are from the people of intelligence. This whole world is meanings
set up in images. So whenever you see some outward thing you should know that
it indicates something else. The Arabic word for world alam is the means by
which you came to the knowledge ilm. What did we come to know? Our Lord and
that is the secret of the whole universe. Like the poet said “isn’t it in every
sign, in everything it is a sign indicating the truth of the Oneness of Allah
of the shahada”. The whole world is testifying and witnessing the truth. So
what is it when light hits vegetation there is an extraordinary event that
occurs in which it causes a process to happen and in that process
photosynthesis occurs which is the production of chlorophyll. What happens is
that is what gives us our nourishment. Even protein that we from the animals is
still from chlorophyll. Even the meat that you eat is as a result of this
secret. Your whole body is as a result from this secret. Every cell in your
body cannot exist without this reality. The same is true for the soul. There is
something, when light is allowed into the soul it produces something and this
is the light of the messenger of Allah. “Light has come to you”. The Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) had
a light and anyone who denies that light is a kafir. The sahaba said “we saw in
his face that light and that light is his secret”. This light that Allah has
placed in his Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) and Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) in turn gave
that light out, that light is what transforms the earth and brings it to life.
That light that the messenger of Allah grants you. He grants it because he is
the giver. “Allah is the giver but I am the one who disperses what He gives. I
am the one who has been given that authority to disperse this”. This is why he
is central to our teachings and that centrality goes on as long as we go on.
People misunderstand this but they are foolish because these are at the essence
of what we have been given. The Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam), this light that enters into the heart by
praying on the Prophet. Allah says “the Prophet is an object of His action and
his action is of the essence”. The Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) is an object of
that and it is a special object in the same that we are also an object of that.
We are an object of that because Allah says Allah prays on us but how does He
pray on us? The Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) said “no one says a prayer on me except Allah
says a prayer on him ten times”.
So we do not associate our Lord with our Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam).
We do not do that. We do not believe he is divine, we do not believe he is
uncreated. The Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) is a creation of Allah. He came into existence
from nothing. So we do not attribute to him divinity and we negate that. We
recognise the centrality of his authority and his opposition. It is by the
permission of Allah. If you love Allah, follow me. We cannot love Allah
according to our understanding without following a Prophet of Allah (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam).
The Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam) of our age is our Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam)and we accept
all of the Prophets before him and we love them all. We love Jesus, Moses,
John, Ilyas all of these Prophets. These are our Prophets and we love them but
we love our Prophet (sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam) as our Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) who specifically was sent to us. He is the
beloved of Allah.
I want to finish this by saying a few things:
Good intentions without guidance is of no benefit. You have
to have guidance. When I was taught, I was taught there is no reward for action
without knowledge. There is no benefit in it. Some say it harms and certainly
causes harm because as you lose the love of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) you lose the
light of traditional Islam. You lose the light of this deen. “I was sent only
as mercy to this world”. How do I attribute that to my Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) if I think I
can go kill a Jew because he is a Jew. If I think I can blow up a synagogue in
Morocco and the Morroccan Jews are the last Jews left actually like the muslims
and have a high regard for the muslims because they are the last Jews that
still now their existence is owed to Islam because they fled from the
persecution of Spain, from the Christians to the Muslims and that is why they
are there. There are there because our Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) said he was the
protector of the dhimmiyeen. He said “whoever betrays the trust of a dhimmi, I
am the advocate of that Jew, Christian, Magian, Buddhist on the day of
judgment”. He is not going to stand by the muslim. He is going to stand by the
Jew of Christian and you should think about that because it is a sound
tradition. Our religion is not about tribalism, that is other traditions. Our
religion is not about I am in the right tribe no it is I am on the right side.
If you are on wrong side in any situation, then you should know that your
Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) is
not standing by you unless you repent. That is what has happened, these people
have lost sight of our Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam). What right do you have to remove somebody’s
life from this world without just cause? If you say “this is what they do to
us”, they are not our teachers. Since when did they become our teachers? If we
do not stop this madness we are going to end up like the Jews. We will end up
in the oven because they will just get fed up of us. Seriously, and do not
think that is not possible. The Prophet (sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam) said “you are going to follow the Jews”. If you
look at their persecution and what was done to them, do not be surprised if
that happens to us. But we should be speaking out about this now, this is not
our religion. We should not allow people to speak on our behalf, either with
their words or by their actions. We need to condemn these things because they
are wrong. I am saying this because this is my understanding of Islam and I do
not find any other understanding. I have read their arguments and do not buy
them.
Show people the true face of Islam. The mercy, generosity,
faithfulness of Islam, the honesty of the tradition, the uprightness that it
inculcates in the hearts of the followers and adherence. This is what you have
to do, if you do not do it, I am telling you, things are getting bad and they
are going to continue to get bad. They have just passed the Abu Hamza law in
I went into a mosque the other day and I was almost attacked
physically. I was thinking why aren’t we human anymore? Why can’t we sit down?
Why have we descended to the level of dogs and vicious animals? Raising our
voices and shouting at each other. We can’t have a civil conversation. Our
Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam)
said that a mumin does not raise his voice over another mumin but he listens
until he finishes what he has to say. That is how he describe the character of
a believer. They walk gently on the earth and when ignorant people speak to
them, they say peace. That is the description. I don’t find any descriptions in
the Quran that say be fierce with the kuffar. There is a verse that says “Allah
does not prohibit you from being nice to people who do not abuse you, persecute
you for your religion or steal you land from showing them birr, sharing your
wealth with them”. Allah loves people who do that. He says He loves those people
who show non muslims kindness because they in turn have been kind to them. When
the Christians of Najran came to the Prophet, they came with humility. He let
them pray in his mosque according to one riwayah. These are the teachings we
have forgotten. Why have we forgotten them? It is because we have forgotten
Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam).
We forgot he came as a mercy to everyone. The muslim is the one who muslims are
safe from his evil. So if you want to be a mumim then you have to elevate your
level of consciousness through a higher level. That is why people become
muslim. Now people think Islam is a hotel they have reserved for themselves and
there is no more room. They put up a sign saying sorry no vacancies. If you
come they slam the door in your face because they think it is booked until yaum
ul qiyamah so they don’t even have to be nice thinking they might come back
later when we do have a vacancy. We have muslims out there, this is their
attitude “kuffar”. Who gave you that authority to send people to hell? I thank
God these people aren’t my judge on yaum ul qiyamah. That is why Allah said if
He put rahmah in your hands you would have been misers. You would not have
shared it, but our Lord is not like that and nor is our Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam).