The Qur'an: God's Banquet - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Podcast S2-E09

Transcript Details

Event Name: The Qur'an: God's Banquet - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Podcast S2-E09
Transcription Date:Transcription Modified Date: 10/27/2021
Transcript Version: 1


Transcript Text

we're in the blessed month of sha'ban

and on the doors of ramadan

and one of the great blessings of this

faith that we adhere to is that we were

given the

sacred month of ramadan to restore

to replenish to renew our faith and to

most importantly reconnect with the book

of allah which is

something that people should be doing

throughout the year but many of us

fail to do so and the quran is in

essence

the nourishment that provided this ummah

so i wanted to look at a few

text messages that relate to this allah

says in the quran

yes

fasting has been prescribed for you and

other in other words made obligatory

for you just as it was prescribed on the

peoples before you

in order that you might learn taqwa

the very first command in the quran is

to attack to have taqwa

of allah and in taqwa is one of the

central and foundational

meanings of our faith

it's it's a difficult word to translate

but it's related to protection wikia

and the idea is that one wards off harm

in fact the word in arabic for believer

mutman means to

to actually make oneself safe so iman is

means to make safe and bellahi through

god to make one

one safe through god because if you're

with god then nothing can harm you

and anything that harms you is from

god and by god and and because of the

other of allah and so

in essence taqwa is warding off harm

it's entering into

a assem it's entering into

a a surrender to allah because

allah has given us a free will but he

wants us

with that will to give up our will to

align with his will

and and this this is the paradox of

faith

and this is why the disbeliever is

somebody who wants to assert his own

will

and while we do have will and we do

things in life we choose

things allah has given us all these

choices but he's also given us hadood

and so willfully entering into a

surrender a submission to allah

is to enter into this deen and that in

essence is the way of warding

off the the the consequences

of being in a state of disobedience so

the the month of fasting is is a month

in which allah gives us ample

opportunity to really

align ourselves with this idea of being

in a state of taqwa because taqwa is to

guard yourself

from all those things that are harmful

to you so you have five degrees

according to our scholars even

giusel kelby mentions them in his tapsir

the five degrees of taqwa

the first one is just taqwa kufar to to

really

be guard oneself against kufar and this

is why every believer is a

muttaqi who enters into islam even if

he's disobedient

in his islam he still has taqwa of kufar

and so

in that way he's a muttaqi and which is

very important because hudalin the

quran is guidance for the people of

taqwa and so

just being a believer means you're a

muttaqi because you have

of shirk but then you the of kuffar

and shirk then you have taqwa just being

concerned about

major guarding oneself against major

wrongs and then you have chakras

guarding oneself against the lesser

wrongs and then

being concerned about too much luxury in

life just

having too much of the muba hats because

it's all going to be a reckoning on the

day of judgment

and even though it's permissible if

you're paying your zakat and doing all

these things

nonetheless being extravagant is not

something

he doesn't love the extravagant ones and

he calls them

the accepting ones the brothers of the

demons

so ramadan is this extraordinary

opportunity for us to

return to the book of allah subhanahu wa

ta'ala and this is why

allah reminds us again in al-baqarah

shahrukh ramadan

[Music]

this is the month that the quran itself

was revealed

according to our tradition

with guidance for humanity

and clarifications of that guidance one

for

and a criterion it gives you a criterion

by which you judge

from ensembl

so whoever sees the moon meaning whoever

either sees it or has strong evidence

that it's been cited

then let them fast it and so the fasting

is an obligation from allah subhanahu wa

ta'ala

so what's really important in this month

is to reconnect with the book of allah

subhanahu wa ta'ala the prophet

sallallahu alaihi

wasallam said

yes

the hearts oxidize just as

iron oxidizes when

it is subject to water

ya rasulullah how do we

polish that rust

by remembering death and by reciting the

quran

so remembrance of death is one of the

spiritual practices of a believer

is to in fact really we should be

remembering it in

in every prayer so at least five times a

day one of the things that

some of the set up said was uh

when they would enter into their prayer

you know

pray as if it's your last prayer so

going into the prayer with the idea

that's

your last prayer when you say goodbye to

your family

not assuming that you're going to see

them at the at the end of the day when

you come home

or you may not come home so just

living life with this sense of the

just that life itself is something

precarious and that we could lose it at

any time

and so remembering much of death

so remembering death doing this

reflection

on death and on the just the fact that

life is temporal

and that we're only here for a short

time in fact the quran when it talks

about the days of ramadan it uses what's

known as

which is the the plural of paucity

a yemen you know a few days

so this this idea of ramadan

the beginning of ramallah is like the

beginning of one's life and the end of

ramadan

is is is a metaphor for the end of life

and then the eid is the afterlife

when we we feast on the efforts that we

did here

so it's just important to keep that in

mind the the fact that this

hadith which relates

um in the iman and it's also it's in the

kansas

in the mishkan but this hadith is is an

important

hadith in in in connecting

the remembrance of death with the

restoration of quran

one of the essays that is in the

study of quran that i actually wrote on

the

death in the quran and when i was

originally asked to do that

it forced me to really read the quran

with

the idea of death in mind and what

really struck me was that

the the fragrance of death is on every

single page of the quran

and those chapters that were meant to

recite on a regular basis

they're all death meditations from

beginning to end if you read them from

that perspective you'll clearly see

that they're death meditations and so

the quran

is in essence really a death meditation

and this is not in some morbid sense

it's not the idea that we we simply

become

morose and and and and just

uh filled with angst about life it's

actually

to heighten the experience of life and

the preciousness of life

and the extraordinary opportunities that

we have

i have a little cartoon that reminds me

somebody did this cartoon where it

showed the grim reaper

coming to a man he's at his typewriter

and and the man says to him

thank god for deadlines and you know

that's a humorous idea but but a

deadline

you know the when you have a deadline

you work harder

and so the idea of having a deadline

meaning the end of your life which you

don't know when it will come

one would think that from that knowledge

we would simply be

more apt to act in the present

as long photo says in his famous poem

act now in the living present

because this is it and and our hearts

like muffled drums are beating funeral

marches to the grave

this is this is this is the reality of

it our our heart beat each heart we have

only a certain amount that are allotted

for us

we have a certain amount of breasts that

are allotted for us we have

approximately 20 000 days

in an average lifespan 20 000 days it's

not a lot if you have 20

000 dollars and start just handing them

out one by one they'll be gone very

quickly it's not a lot of money

and 20 000 days is not a lot of time and

it seems that the righteous people are

people that really

understand the preciousness of time but

ramadan is a precious time and so even

though we've squandered much of the year

let's not squander this extraordinary

month that we've

been given that even has a day that's

like a thousand months

i mean it's so extraordinary that allah

has put that much barakah

in this so so tirawatar quran is really

important and so my advice to myself and

all of you it's something

that i do every ramadan is really

disengage from

a lot of things that keep us occupied

during the months so i would

really really recommend that everybody

turn off

their media

just don't listen to it you don't you

can get by without

knowing what's going on because what's

really going on is in the quran

and this is why thoreau's famous remark

about not reading

the times but reading the eternities

the times was like today we have the new

york times the times was a newspaper in

massachusetts so he was saying read the

eternities

read those things at last don't because

you can take a newspaper from 10 years

ago and i guarantee you you won't know

if nobody tells you the date

you won't know by and large

that it's any different from today it's

all the same stuff this is dunya

it's just it repeats itself over and

over again the scandals come

the scandals go a politician rises a

politician falls

there's a war somewhere a lot of people

die

this is dunya it's been going on for

millennia

and and and the the quran is reminding

us

of the eternal truths not of these

temporal truths

and so it's really important for us to

to really use this time to do as much

reflection on the book of allah as we

can

there's a hadith

relate from aisha

that says the

that recitation of the quran in the

prayer is better than recitation of the

quran outside of the prayer

and so taraweeh is a really good

opportunity

to to recite the quran in prayer which

is better than

reciting the quran outside of the prayer

but then he said sallallahu isaam or is

reported to have said

that quran of the

minute that

reading the quran is better than takbir

and tasviya in other words doing other

forms of dikkar

because it's the best of all dikkars and

it doesn't negate la illah

is the there's doesn't negate that

hadith because

from the quran so you're actually when

you when you say

you're actually reciting from the quran

so so the

the quran is is is the best type of

vikar

that we can do and coupled with prayer

is

the very best and i once asked

about and he said it was a good book

but he said but the quran is better

so reading the quran and getting back to

the quran is really something

very important for this community

there's another beautiful

hadith that imam muslim relates

read the quran or recite the quran

because it will come on the day of

judgment as an intercessor

for those who who were its companions

so al-shabab quran are the people that

are always with the quran

that recite it all of the time and imam

al-bayhachi relates a hadith from

anas from the prophet sallallahu isaam

that said no we

know what

illumine your houses your

your domiciles with prayer and

recitation of quran

there's hadith indicate not to make your

house a graveyard a house if you recite

a baccarat

in in your home shaytaan will not even

think about entering that house for

three days

so the quran is is a protection

one of uh my uh favorite

uh traditions is about the uh

the the statement uh samurai

uh and an individual is

it and even though some have said that

it's weak it's also

it's it's uh has other

narrations and even tamiya said it's

but its meaning is certainly absolutely

sound

which is

better every

host of a banquet loves that his banquet

is attended

and then it said

the banquet of god is the quran

so don't miss out don't don't not

show up to the banquet this is god's

banquet

and it's beautiful because dubai which

there's al-bama

over the dal is also related to me

which is the mad deb is the place where

you learn to discipline

uh your your you learn discipline and so

again we get back to taqwa

and disciplining the soul and so it's

really important

during this time to to work on

disciplining yourself

try not to overeat one of the things

about the body the prophet salallahu

said

that it's enough for the son of adam to

have just

small morsels that uh that keep

the back straight but if you have to

then a third for food a third for air

third for water

but but that's that's if you have to the

the

the the origin is the match which is how

the prophet isaiah lived and one of the

things we know now in physiology

is that you do need a certain amount of

food to

sustain your health and you shouldn't do

anything that will harm that

but one of the things that we found most

people do overeat

and that the when the the less you eat

before you get to that point uh beyond

which is dangerous

your body actually gets better

physiologically at using

the the caloric energy that's given

through the food and so the body

actually

becomes better and more efficient but

when we over

eat we fall into all these health and

that's why sumo tosaho

is a hadith that's related in a lot of

the books

fast and become well so there's actually

now we know all this about intermittent

fasting

now everybody talks about intermittent

fasting

and but we we have always had this

because our bodies are actually

designed to spend periods of time

without food

and and and it's a it's a healthy thing

it's a good thing

so not overeating and then also just

guarding the tongue back biting which is

such a problem

stay and people don't realize but your

comments on

on on the internet can there are also

forms of backbiting

and uh and just it's it's very sad that

that so many people don't realize that

putting it on there is like

permanently like anybody who reads it

after that if it's a negative remark

especially if there's obscenities and

unfortunately i mean i think most of

these people are trolls and

they're not actually muslims they just

use muslim names because i couldn't

imagine

any muslims speaking so foully i mean i

just

at least not a practicing muslim because

the prophet saw isaac

said that the believer is

is not foul and one of the signs of the

latter days

is that the

obscenities will become commonplace and

and he and he also said

which because an obscenity usually

occurs spontaneity is through

spontaneity somebody

just spontaneously says something out of

anger but tafash is actually to do it

effectively as as an effect that that

and and now people say it like they're

nothing it's as if these words no longer

have me i mean when i was young

you never heard in public spaces the

type of foul language that you hear now

just

commonplace amongst people it's a very

bad sign and toimbi

marks it as one of the hallmarks of a

civilization on its way out

and which i know there's a lot of people

that

think they'll be happy when they see the

collapse of

this civilization but the truth is they

have no idea

what's coming people have no idea

what what social order is and and when

things break down what happens

and if it's going to happen i mean

there's nothing that can stop it these

are things that allah subhanahu wata'ala

decrees and and when they happened

and they can't bring it forward and they

can't delay it but we should do

everything

to to to want to maintain

social order public order because of the

blessings of living in a time of

of of peace wherever you are and if if

there isn't peace you should be doing

everything you can to work

toward peace because it's it's it's

horrible especially for

uh women and children and and elderly

people

i mean young people unfortunately

there's a kind of excitement that goes

with war and this is one of the things

that

dorothy sayers mentions in her book

prisons we choose to live in where she

talks about

nobody ever wants to talk about the

attraction that young people have to war

young men in particular and and until we

deal with that we'll never deal with

with um with preventing wars and this is

why

uh the jahadi arabs were very well aware

of that

in the in the uh

lines of imminence about war being

seductive to every young

ignoramus are actually mentioned they

were

lines of poetry but the sahaba

considered them worthy of repeating

during times of fitnah

so just hopefully having a safe and

peaceful time

uh and using this time of ramadan it's a

it's a great time of blessing

so may allah subhanahu wa inshallah make

your ramadan a ramadan of virtue

and of um solace and of

family and and blessings inshallah and

and also supplication is very important

during this time

uh supplicating for our community for

ummah

our globe is obviously going through a

lot

and many many places there's incredible

difficulty and hardship and those of us

who are blessed to be in places where

we're not experiencing a lot of things

that other people are experiencing it's

a time to really

magnify those blessings and and avoid

complaining

i mean people will complain about the

fact that the samosa wasn't

cooked uh properly or something like

that and really

stupid things to to complain about we

should just

really try to avoid complaining as much

as possible

and then and then also trying to unite

people because

you know i've been thinking a lot just

about uh

you know conflict theory and there there

are real forces out there that are

trying to to

really create a lot of conflict in our

societies all around the world because

there are committed ideologues

enthusiasts that actually believe

that conflict is a good thing until

the great revolution comes and until

the great egalitarian societies created

through some kind of utopian dream

and this is a real problem because these

people

work towards creating confrontation be

between the

young and the old between the male and

the female between the

the different various ethnicities and

races these are all demonic forces

working in the world

and our tradition is a tradition that

brings people together

our tradition is a tradition that makes

brothers and sisters

of different groups and if people say

that the muslims

themselves don't live up to that it

doesn't matter that's their business

it's not our business it's their

business our business is to do it

ourselves

for us to live up to the truth of this

faith and and to live according to the

principles that the prophet sam gave us

because that's the religion what people

do is what they do

and whether it's in accordance with the

religion or not

is determined by whether they're

following our prophetic tradition or not

that that's how it's determined uh and

and

otherwise uh it's it's just a

free-for-all

so those muslims that are dishonoring

islam

or or are

are themselves wrongdoers and sinners

and people of

of arrogance or whatever sinfulness that

they're expressing

those are all in spite of their faith

they're not because of their faith and

so that's where we have to get back to

is recognizing

what does our faith say not what do

muslims do what does our faith say and

then

each one of us as an individual has to

align with that truth

and that's what this month is all about

it's about realigning ourselves

vertically

with the heavens and and inshallah we we

have

29 or 30 days to do that and and

hopefully we'll

be able to retain as much of that as

possible throughout the rest of the year

until we have inshallah life allah gives

us another opportunity we

none of us know so may allah bless all

of your ramadans

and inshallah may it be a ramadan of t

the polishing of your hearts insha'allah