The Light of Sincerity and the Fire of Hypocrisy | Qur'anic Parables Episode 1

that is happening and in the midst of feeling the departure of ramadan, we have a whole month, insha'allah, in which we will now connect or reconnect with the Qur'an in a way that will hopefully give us a greater appreciation for it. connection with our recitation and allows us to connect with different elements of the Quran so this is the first

episode

of am thad qur

anic

parables

that are in the Quran and the way this is going to work insha'allah is that every week we we are going to take a method, one of the

parables

, and we are going to talk about it from three aspects, one is the historical context, the other, the second thing that we are going to talk about is the parable itself and the third thing is some of the practical elements that we can derive in our day to day life uh from this parable e inshallah ta'ala the three of us uh dr uthman you tasnim and I will be um rotating what we talk about the parable every week insha 'Allah and tomorrow we will have qur

anic

miracles and if you look at the program below you will see that every night we have something but I want you to pay attention to tomorrow specifically what will be the miracles of Quran. that will be exclusively on japan platform so same time but make sure you are watching on yapeen inshallah platforms either via japanese facebook or youtube and inshallah time will upload on all other european platforms and then Wednesday night inshallah ta'ala will.

Go ahead and uh we'll move on to the next uh the next aspect of the Qur'an that we're covering so without further ado insha'allah I want to pass this on to dr uthman uh um to talk about the historical context of the metal of the parable we're going to cover today presents a series of parables in the quran that are meant to make us think and reflect as allah says the whole purpose is to create these analogies that make us think deeply about the quran in our lives the first parable we want to talk about today he is giving us the situation in medina and the prophet muhammad has given instructions on the three types of people that he will find in medina and their characteristics and their attributes and the first of those are the believers, the second are the disbelievers and the third are the hypocrites and the hypocrites again are unique because there were no hypocrites in mecca because there was no benefit in being a covert muslim during that time it was a very difficult time but when islam started to flourish in medina the hypocrites started to rise so allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala, in a way, when it starts, it quickly gives us a snapshot of who the believers are, allah tells us that the believers are the ones who believe in that in the first place. which is beyond human perception they are the ones who set their prayers and there are those who give from what allah has given them and then allah gives us a very quick insight into the disbelievers very quickly about those who have been given the message but they just don't care to hear anything their hearts are sealed their eyes are sealed their ears are sealed allah says they will not believe no matter what so these two descriptions of believers and disbelievers are pretty straightforward and its characteristics are quite obvious but when allah subhanallah then wants to talk to us about the nature of

hypocrisy

and the subtlety of

hypocrisy

and the dangers of hypocrisy he elaborates on numerous ayahs and then ends that whole conversation about hypocrisy with the first and a one of the most beautiful parables in the Qur'an which is what shaykh will be talking about in the next few minutes and what I find beautiful about this parable is that it actually gives us a basis for the language of the Qur'an how allah subhanahu wa will use a specific terminology with regarding belief, disbelief and hypocrisy so i will pass it on to shechem or to discuss the parable is actually the first masala in quran it is the first parable and i could see the wonderful work yafkeen creative team has done made by turning these into animated insha allah gifs so please Watch it too to really understand how deep it is in the pictures we are being given says Allah and this is verse 17 of Surat al-baqarah ladies and gentlemen, their example or example is like one. who

light

s a

fire

but once it illuminates everything around him allah took the

light

from them and left them in the dark so they could not see again the example is like a person who lights a

fire

the fire illuminates everything around him around brings light Allah takes the light from them and leaves them in the dark so they can no longer see.

There is a lot to talk about here in terms of what we take from this life. salvation and then the consequences of that belief and one of the things about hypocrites like dr uthman said they jumped on board they jumped on the bandwagon only in medina when there was a benefit for being a believer and so they wanted to claim the benefits of being a muslim , but not necessarily go through the tests of being a Muslim, so every time a compromise was presented every time there was something that required hardship without benefits, then they would find an excuse and find a way to withdraw. in the battle to defend the borders of medina at that time the community in medina if that was to go to the prayers where they would not be seen so they would not even bother to go to fajr and you may have heard the hadith of the life of the prophet somewhere it said that the most difficult prayers for hypocrites are fajr and isha now it's not just because it's hard to wake up for fajr and isha it's late at night it's because if you went to the mosque in federer or isha at that time without artificial lighting he was not going to be seen so he would not claim the public benefits of being a muslim because he would not be noticed in the first place so why would hypocrites bother going to fajr and aisha if? they were not going to get the credit in the community to go to salah so they only went to the salawath where they would be seen, they made their presence unpleasantly noted when they were there and they withdrew and found excuses when they were there. there was some difficulty and so again they looked for the benefits of believing but at the same time they didn't want to assume the consequences or suffer the consequences of believing it's not necessarily just suffering the consequences it's the natural commitment eh and what comes with the natural commitment to faith they did not want to commit to anything that would involve difficulties they only wanted to benefit the believers they are people who will believe in allah simply because they believe in allah and they will commit to believe because it is the truth and they will do what is asked because they believe that success lies in following the commandments of allah and the messenger and sometimes that's going to have a lot of pain and difficulties uh you know involved or embedded in that commitment so there are different levels of pain therein lies the difficulty of just waking up and going to fajr salata where no one would see you there is the difficulty of going into battle alongside the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and not running away from his side there is the difficulty of being ostracized or stigmatized when you find yourself once again in the climate of La Mecca, there are so many different things they have to go through, but the point is that these believers are willing to go through the consequences of believing in this life and don't necessarily need worldly benefits to commit. and believe and that is how you know if you are sincere or you do not know when Allah takes away the benefit of your belief in this life are you still committing to that? you know when you talk about khalas when you talk about

sincerity

when people are no longer watching you are you still doing what you are doing and are you doing it with the same level of commitment,

sincerity

and humility that you would have if there were eyes of others on you if you are being convicted ostracized and stigmatized true you're still going to commit to your faith you're only going to do it where it's comfortable you act muslim in some context and not in another context so the point is these are people who want to benefit only in this life of Dean but they don't even believe in the afterlife in the first place or not they are certainly not acting towards the afterlife so allah says they are like a people who light this fire and illuminate everything around them the light refers to the benefit then allah then says that allah removes the light and this refers to death now where they can no longer benefit from that belief or that claim to be a believer in any social or personal sense in this world as the light has been removed i.e. , they have died but they have not faced the consequences of believing in this life while claiming its benefits so allah says i left them in the dark where they couldn't even see anymore it has a very powerful explanation of this it says notice allah does not remove the fire he did not remove the burning allah only removed the light he removed the lights but they remain with the fire with the pain why because the fire the part that burns the part of the pain is now in the afterlife where their hypocrisy is revealed and they have to deal with the consequences of their hypocrisy now, the afterlife, where nothing can be concealed anymore or benefit falsely claimed, so the nur has been removed, but the ardor remains now.

I want you to move. with me to surat al-hadid which is sura 57 verse 13 and allah gives us this image of the hypocrites and the believers together once again now the hypocrites and the believers when they are together in this life they are in the same space the same physical space you can't tell the difference between them there are signs but ultimately they are all muslims they are all in the same space huh they all outwardly profess the same things but on the day of judgment now allah azza is speaking that community is being ordered and allah says the day hypocritical men and hypocritical women tell believing men and women as they go as they begin to walk further they say wait we want to benefit from your light you have light we have no light we want to benefit here it is dark we are afraid we want to have your light and those believers will turn to them and tell them to come back and come back here means to come back to the life of that world if you can feel and light your life there like we did then and that will benefit you uh today and then allah says it stood up a barrier between them um within that barrier there is mercy outside of it is punishment and torment so outside is the punishment the consequences inside now is mercy for those believers the hypocrites yell at them and say if we were not with you they will say yes the believers will respond but you grieved you waited you wavered you doubted and delusions deluded until the order of allah came to you and the deceiver deceived you regarding allah so the believers have gone on with the light they burned with faith in this life, which means that in this life they felt pain, consequences and difficulties for being sincere believers, but now allah has removed the pain and all they have is the light and the afterlife stretching from their right and in front of them hypocrites only have the ardor, lastly if you go to subhanallah allah says oh you believe repent to allah sincerely. repentance perhaps your lord will take away your misdeeds and admit you into gardens under which rivers flow on the day that allah will not dishonor the prophet nor those who believe with him his light will proceed before them and to their right and what are they asking for ? for now as they have advanced and left the hypocrites behind they say oh allah keep this light for us perfect this light for us and forgive us and verily you are mighty and proficient in all things so subhanallah is the picture. from the beginning of the hypocrites who light the fire and benefit from the light only without dealing with the difficulties of belief to the end of this which is given throughout the Quran, the end result of this is that the believers advance only with the light and the hypocrites are left behind only with the fire and we ask allah to make us among the sincere believers who carry the light uh forward on the day of judgment um and and really to add to that uh so i came y'all um thank you for that both the introduction to the parable and one thing i wanted to focus on is bringing that home in the sense of what that means for us today but before that i want to talk about you at least you know my understanding of the parable and the implications that it has and hopefully how that can shape our understanding, but Ash Human mentioned that you have this idea, this notion of light, there are different types of light that you have, as it relates to this light general versus nur and nur is used throughout the Qur'an. constantly to refer, of course, specifically to light, but also in uh as an uh, a word for orientation um, always contrasted with, you know, this darkness that this very bare bypass isn't just light, but it's this this light involving us through the guidance of uh of being muslims of having this islam to guide our way so the point is you have this contrast so what the parable is essentially saying is that they are lighting this fire and despite the fight the fact that this light is coming out you have this what we would perceive as lightnow you can see that you have these hypocrites they have this light but they don't have the nurse so there is this contrast and despite the fact that they can see they don't really they are guided and i mention this to connect with some of my absolute favorite verses in the quran and it is from chapter 28 verses 71 to 72 where allah sayswhat could you imagine can you imagine this notion this fact that i can do at night all the time uh until doomsday forever is always going to be dark many like who else besides allah would you call in order to change this reality that i can achieve it we can just tomorrow comes there is the sun does not rise and it is always dark until the day of judgment was how can they do that and it is telling us this in the Qur'an that it will always be dark and wasp the amazing thing about this is that it ends the ayah by saying you can't hear and i'll come back to this but next next ayah asks the same question, have you ever thought about the fact that i can make it a light? i know this many times and i had talked about this in ramadan but what was always fascinating to me about this ayat is that i would mix the endings well so allah first says it will always be night it will always be dark your sense of hearing naturally increases in the dark that when there is no light you can hear more those who are the ones who have no sense of fighting uh their uh their hearing ability is much stronger than us and naturally you would think the last pandara would say ok, It's dark all the time, can't you see what it says? i'm going to do one day i'm going to do this i'm going to have these lights all the time can't you still see despite the fact that it's light all the time and really the connection between these verses that are so powerful the fact that los angeles say listen i can make it daytime all the time you still can't see you can't see what is in front of you it will still be dark all the time you can't hear and that in this eye in this parable in surat al-baqarah that what is happening is that they are lighting a fire a fire in the dark of the fire in the night it will light up everything around you but what you still can do not see that nudity is not yet available to you that that around you can be illuminated we can have one day all the time but we cannot see what is in front of us that that sense of true sight that sense of truth the guide is that we are still deprived of that and I think the most relevant aspect of this is the fact that Nowadays we often think that we know exactly what we're talking about that we know that we know that we're so confident in what we say that we're so confident in what we hear that you know a lot of times we just reiterate, retweet, do whatever, uh , when we see what we see and think we don't, all the evidence is right up front. of us we have all the facts we have all the Quranic verses we have all these arguments these debates on social media in person we know exactly what we are talking about we are so confident in the way we talk about things that we are so into what we we see and what we hear and, you know, and sometimes hypocrisy we associate with this, you know, mass sin, this site, the state in front of us is so terrible, but many times these minor aspects of hypocrisy. they're so prevalent within us that because we consider them minor, it's something we know we don't consider in depth, right?

And now you have this very prominent aspect of hypocrisy where you're seeing things that you believe. You're seeing things but you're not actually seeing them so this and you know the various talks about this within the Qur'an is a reminder to really question sometimes the things you do and chocolate specifically mentions this idea of ​​liking. the car you know something arises, a trend arises, you know things change so fast, our sense of morality sometimes we wonder how is it possible that the Quran says this, how is it possible that the prophet did this and it is a reminder to order to pause and think to ourselves yes we see the things we do today we see the world as it is today but is this true vision correct and do we have and this is a kind of questioning of you know all what we see in here, that's very much based on our limited context, really the bubbles that we live in and it's a reminder that we need to be really humble in terms of our sources of knowledge and our pursuit of knowledge, um, and the way we relate to the knowledge of others. that there is always room for error that there is always room for you to know that you do not have that true true guidance and above all it is an important reminder to pray to Allah for that nakedness.

We don't want just light in your life. that light and uh you know it's full of screen guidance and I hope this serves as a reminder that you really have to be careful about your surroundings and the athletes to really see and hear yeah one of the things finally there as many angles as i heard them both talk about this these parables just have an infinite amount of lessons huh one of the things i thought is if there are so many images in this then i was thinking allah says imagine a parable from people who light a fire and I'm kind of imagining I love to go camping and people like to go out in the dark in the woods if it's pitch dark and you light a fire I mean the fire gives you warmth that fire lets you see where you could go and of course if you are not careful you could fall and burn so Allah is giving us this profound parable to make us hate the hypocrisy that sees if Allah we are all in the dark we all were. lost at some point in our life it was thanks to islam that we can have the nur to see the reality of this life and that is its name you just brought this point it allows us to see the truth as the truth so we can go on and i think sometimes we think something is true when it is not because we are receiving wrong information, but because we are back to the parable that allah when he lights this fire which has heat has nur has everything we want from it if we choose not to act according to guidance then Allah will snatch the noodle out of that and tell us the hypocrites keep this there's still a fire but it doesn't have any lights so I want to think about when you're camping imagine if you started a fire and now you were like okay I know exactly where to go to the bathroom or on the trail and then all of a sudden the fire is gone in terms of the light but it's still burning and what would it feel like to have to walk around a camp or walk around a place where there was a fire burning but you couldn't see it, you would be scared and I think this is an idea of ​​the psychology of a hypocrite that deep down there is this conflict because they know that they are not doing what they are supposed to do and they are feeling this anguish behind it and that it is what allah is describing to us you know that state of psychological torture you knew what was right that you did not follow and now here is the consequence of not following the guidance given to you so may allah make us among those who always follow the nur of islam so that way our hearts can be enlightened subhanallah and there is also something about control like you think you control the reward you think you control the process and the hypocrite thinks they got it and you know we were talking about this in ramadan blues woman friday webinar that anyone who strays from my memory then has a restricted life and then they wake up on judgment day blind and say lima that's a very powerful thing that uh sometimes gets lost in the harder drama the musings on that verse that person on the day of judgment tells allah why you did it make me blind and i used to be able to see so they ascribed sight to themselves the ability to see but ascribed removal from the site, blindness, to Allah, when it is supposed to be like the opposite, goodness comes from your ills. from myself but it's like you flipped it you have to flip it inside out wait a minute i could see his right i could see and you took my sight away while the believer somehow in his humility even in the moments that they have moved on and have the light that you know stretching from their hands in front of them they say this life is perfect for us we cannot do it alone we are deficient we are not in control may allah perfect this life for us allah keep this light for us us because the believer understands that guidance is such a gift that somehow with all its consequences, difficulties and trials in this life it is so worth what it entails in terms of Difficulties in this life and we are so blessed if Allah gives it to us and you know it's not something we did, it's the blessing of Allah and this great blessing of guidance and being able to appreciate guidance and being able to act on guidance. right, so it's like you know the hypocrite thinks they got it, they're trying to control it, channel it here and then eventually they burn, right it catches up with them, the plot fails and they never really met on this. life because the world they were chasing by wearing something so valuable and precious that it could have brought them comprehensive happiness this world doesn't bring them happiness so life was being restricted so it wasn't really light and I think it was a beautiful distinction that the test name given between uh you know uh allah and and um you know he was a pure light he had problems and then on the day of judgment they take it away and he's just burning so allah so here's the Disappointment on judgment day that you're burning for. the believer uh here is the fulfillment and on the day of judgment the reward is light and the reward is right so here is the fulfillment that even if i am fighting it is worth it and uh i know it is by the sight of allah and then on the day of judgment the reward is from allah and i agree with that it's very interesting um you know subhanallah the psychology i think you talked about the psychology of the hypocrite here and what he talks about so what's the thing more practice?

I think if you know, maybe all of us can give a really quick answer, like what's the most practical thing you take from this, like in Islamic work and worship, like right now, we're all in quarantine, um or in quarantine , depending on your state. we're in uh, you know, and so we have to learn how to do these acts of worship on our own, so what's the most practical? Just one thing to take from this that just screams at you what comes to mind. immediately is that the hadith of the prophet muhammad hypocrisy has many flavors there is the total hypocrite and there is the one who is doing acts of hypocrisy and for us to be so cautious to do even the smallest acts that are tangentially related to being hypocritical so when we talk, do it Do we ever lie well when we are entrusted with something?

Do we ever break that promise? And if we do it again, the consequence is not for Allah. Allah will remove the newest from our lives and that is the most dangerous thing that could happen. Want to think about it. Telling the silly lie. Divulging the secret that was entrusted to me. Allah will take away my ability to see things. so they really are to hear things and benefit from it so that's what i think, like whatever, just be wary of indulging in any act that would possibly label me associated with a very powerful hypocritical love in them, um , I think something specifically in the context now that we're uh far from each other physically that we're more on social media and that's just uh a deep hole that can really suck you in um it's a place that we can easily fall victim to this uh you know a lot of misinformation or just a lot of information that could be hard to connect the dots and one thing I'm very particular about is first of all being open to criticism, accepting the fact that the way you perceive the information is the way you connected the dots may not be entirely correct, but also to be careful about that kind of information that's going around and to really protect your heart and soul when you're constantly reading different things out of context and hopefully That's something you know. you can relate to it because there's so much it's very overwhelming when you see all this information and again not to say oh don't seek knowledge or you know don't trust anything but again it's just a humbling reminder that you can always be wrong um and others can always be wrong too but i asked allah begging um like uh dr mentioned may allah and grant us the ability to follow that truth um that is something we should always do our own subhan allah that a secret charity extinguishes wrath of your lord, true, still falls within that same image, right?

So uh salah is a secret charity but I think the best we can get out of this is what are your secret good deeds right hypocrites have bad secrets that come out on judgment day what are the secrets of believers sincere ones that come out on judgment day and we have enough of those secrets to make up for our light on judgment day and I pray that Elizabeth counts us among them for you two for her beautiful musings and thoughts inshallah so we will be together next week talking about quranic parables but again you can look below and you will see all the programs we have throughout the week insha'allah tomorrow inshaallah you can tune in to the miracles of the quran muhammad has written wonderful articles on the miracles of the quran and that they will be on platformsjapanese insha'allah so be sure to tune in and we will continue to be with you every night insha'allah uh on weeknights uh throughout this month and we pray that elijah will allow us to develop a deeper love and connection with him quran and may allah protect us from hypocrisy and fill our hearts with guidance and fill our actions with uh with uh with his complete pleasure inshaallah ta'ala may we meet elizabeth we have that light together on the day of judgment for all of you assalamu alaikum