Let's Talk About Love - Dr. Bilal Philips

I'm didn'r for salat WA Salam o Rasul Allah all praise is due to Allah there was peace and blessings be on the last Messenger of Allah this evenings topic has been already identified let's talk about love addresses one of the most powerful emotions that human beings experience the force of love is one which every human being is driven by at different points in his or her life it may be a drive for good or it may be a drive for evil it is so well known and so attractive that Christians for example today base their evangelical activities around love God is love very attractive so it is important for us as Muslims to have a proper understanding of love in the life of a Muslim where should it be placed how should his or her life be guided by it and if we consider that the most important thing in our life the most critical issue which determines our future our present that most important factor is none other than Allah subhana WA Ta'ala so when we go and look at issues of love this has to be our starting point we have to start with what is most important and put everything in its context and what we find when we look into the teachings of Islam is that love is connected with the most fundamental belief in Islam with regards to allah subhana wa ta'ala himself it is among the pillars among the foundations of tawheed so anyone who will tell you that islam is about rules and regulations laws and punishments but our religion is about love as if there is no love in Islam know that that is false it is so false that without this emotion of love being expressed through the context of tawheed a Muslim falls into shirk the greatest possible sin that he or she could commit which would destroy the good deeds that they may do in this life and relegate them to hell in the next I would say that on the basis of that love is an integral and important a critical part of Islamic belief belief and of course practice because that belief from the Islamic perspective isn't real unless it is manifest in action because belief is not merely what we think we feel in our hearts but it is what is stated on our tongues and it is what is done by our limbs it is how we live our lives that is real belief and if we look back into the past using the Quran as our yardstick we can see that Allah subhana Allah when he described the disbelievers he identified a basic belief which they held and that was the belief in Allah the pagans who we refer to as the mushrikuna for the most part they believed in Allah as most people on earth today believe in allah of course their concept of allah may be distorted in one way or another but they believe in God those who disbelieve in God are few the atheists though they may be very loud and vociferous Hawkins Dawkins and the other kins they may be very loud in the media but reality is that they are few a small number then they've always been a few which is why Allah doesn't hardly address them in the Quran few verses Allah drops a bomb on them here and there but basically Allah addresses the normal human beings yes those who don't believe in God are abnormal the normal human beings the norm for human existence in all parts of the world whether we go to the jungles of the Amazon or the Eskimos of the North Pole wherever we go on the face of the earth people believe in God but that belief in God is not enough as Muslims we believe that the root of that belief was planted at the time of human creation at the time of the creation of Adam when all of Adam's descendants were created at the same time in the body Zach and Allah told them I just stood it up bakhoum and they said Bala Shahid nur am I not your Lord and they all bore witness yes you are our Lord so every human being is born with that seed that seed of belief which leads him or her wherever he is or her in the world to believe in God but that belief in God is not enough because as Allah said o my you mean eclair humbly he allow whom mushrikuna most of those who believe in Allah commit shirk that belief in itself is not enough it has to be manifest in life how we live our lives this is where the shear comes they say they believe when allah says what i insult home and holocaust on our watch well if you ask them who created the heavens and earth they will say Allah they recognize it but when it comes to practice what you find is that they worship other than Allah and that worship can take a variety of different forms and that is why we are talking about the topic of love tonight because this is one of the critical ears in which human beings in our modern times human beings who carry Muslim names born into Muslim families go through the rituals of worship Hajj fasting in etc but there is a rotten seed in their hearts the seed of shirk manifest in their misguided approach to love this powerful demotion and a law addressed it 1400 years ago in the Koran and this verse was recited by our brother in the very beginning woman and nassima attack illumined Unni Lian Dada you have Buddha Hong Kong Binda and there are among men humankind those who take for worship others besides us Allah as equal to him they make equals to Allah they love them as they should only love Allah but those who believe have a greater love of Allah this is a very powerful verse you have buna home Kabila they love them as they should love Allah how is that manifest today well to understand it we need to understand how should we love Allah how is that love expressed is it by spinning around in circles you have some people say I express my love of Allah by wearing what is like a skirt and I spin around in a circle and it raises up like a ballerina you know and um they say well you know that's how I show my love for Allah well in your mind in your heart you might think that this is love and how you love Allah but that is not how Allah told us to love him this is not what he told us this is not what Prophet Muhammad SAW salaam told us to do and that should be our criterion our criterion of love how do we express that love and of course a lost man to Allah did not leave this as a philosophical area that people had to go and philosophize about and you know everybody's got a different opinion of how do we really love a lot well of course if you listen to some people out there it would seem that way as we said some of them are spinning around a circle some jump up and down and some do all kinds of things all of it in the name of loving Allah but the law is very clearly stated Ron pull in kuntum taboo no more fat tabby Rooney you have it go very simple very basic if it is that you love a long as you claim then follow Muhammad sallallahu wasallam and Allah will love you very simple uncomplicated straightforward and that is Islam and that is the beauty of Islam that its teachings are crystal clear not clouded in all kinds of philosophical concepts etc of course Muslims sometimes do it they make it complicated but the real teachings they're very clear so following prophet muhammad sallah and lung is the criteria for determining the love of Allah that's how we express our love of Allah fundamentally to follow the Prophet saws so for those who spin around in circles we ask them well did Muhammad SAW seldom tell you to do this so like you're following him so we can know yes following this doing this is a way of showing our love for Allah they say some of them say yes yeah he used to do that too some are honestly say well no no I didn't well others say no no no he did we did so how do you know that he did this we have some hadith narrated say yes yes we have a chain the golden chain okay yes masha'Allah okay let's have a look at that chain because that's how we determine whether something is truly from Rasool Allah saws Allah more not in terms of our practices and what we hold to be Islamic that's what we have this senate this is what we are known for we are the Ummah of the Senate this gives us authenticity so when somebody in Turkey says well in the Topkapi Museum we have a tooth which was the tooth knocked out of the Prophet saws Ellen's mouth in the Battle of offered and in Pakistan they say the same thing and in Morocco they say they have the tooth there and so many different geez they're people who claim to have this tooth maybe five six seven of them when I only lost one so we say well hey what happened here how do we know which one was actually the truth 2/3 said well okay it had there has to be a Senate when the tooth was knocked out so Hobby full-on picked it up pocketed it and he handed it down to his son and they handed it down and okay it got to the museum but if we don't have that chain then what we have is an empty claim no matter who claimed it without that chain we have an empty claim people may make it very big and glorious day in the museum they put it in special covering and gold and you know lights on it and you know when you see it wow that tooth but doesn't matter no matter how beautiful it might look to us it's not the tooth we don't have the Senate there's no proof so it is just an empty claim similarly when we go to that chain of those who say profits are selling is to spin around in circles like a top and we look in the chain we see Sahabi at one end and we see a chain of shakes and then there is a point between the last of the shares and the Sahaba Sahaba we see a name hidden Heather what's he doing there they're Studdard you know father is still alive he is the one who passed it on to the shake of our order this is nonsense this is nonsense imam bukhari muslim all the Imam hadith they never accepted any hadeeth with Hitler in the chain none of them they never accepted it so we cannot so those claims that this is our way of showing love is love of Allah their claims or false claims they have no evidence to support them what we find instead is promised asylum telling us to follow him by a lost command in the Quran because following him following his instructions is following a laws instructions that's why as Allah said marilla rasool allah whoever obeys the messenger has obeyed Allah so this is the basis and to develop that love of allah where in allah will love us we have the hadith in which bronze our son had said that the servant doesn't come close to allah in any way except by doing the things which allah had made obligatory on him this is the starting point by doing the obligatory aspects of Islam this is the starting point we want to gain the love of Allah we want to show the love of Allah then we do it by beginning with the followed and then the Prophet SAW Salim went on to say that when the servant of Allah continues after doing the obligatory to do the voluntary acts because every obligatory Act has voluntary components to it supportive voluntary acts from the same origin or essence of that compulsory act and he said that when he does that when the slave of Allah when he or she continues to worship Allah through doing these voluntary acts because they are not required it has come from themselves then Allah will love him or Allah will love that person and when Allah loves that person what happens when a lot of that person process element said he becomes the hearing by which he years the hearing by which years what what does that mean Allah becomes his hearing it means that he only listens to the things which are pleasing to Allah not that Allah literally become his ears and instruments inside his head which convey sounds into his brain but he or she only listens to what is pleasing to Allah where their horrible horrible Jahi luna harus Elana when the ignorance the ignorant people speak to them communicating them they say sera peace and go in another direction they don't sit around with them get involved to hear corruption this is the way that Allah becomes their hearing so what does that mean it means in practical terms as a Muslim we must protect our ears we don't go to places or sit in places where we will hear what is Haram whether it is people talking they're talking about others backbiting slander all these kinds of things we avoid that or whether it is music music but fighting and slander but is yeah we all know that one but music yes music music as we know it today produced by wind and stringed instruments is haram yes it has entered upon us we are inundated by it you can't even go to the bathroom without hearing music or something I experienced in the West but I also found it here I went to a couple of bathrooms you wanna heard music coming at me piped it what is the purpose of that make you hurry up and get back out and get back to buying or what is the challenge and we should be clear on this point because of course you have people who will say Oh even husband he said there are no authentic IDs for music and shake this one and that one said yeah musics ok I listen to it but when we look at the tradition of the early scholars of Islam they made all kinds of statements against it and there are IDs which are sound this topic we should research it and be clear on it not go according to what is pleasing to us that shouldn't be our criterion because I like music I like to hear those who say it's ok those who say it's not ok I don't like to hear them this is not our criterion you know some people say well you know dr. Bilal is the old guy you know he doesn't he doesn't listen to it because he he doesn't really know well some of you may know that yeah I used to be a lead guitarist in a rock group yeah it's not a part of my bio but that was the reality when I lived here in Malaysia yeah in East Malaysia in Sabah I was lead guitarist hamdulillah I found this love my bass player also from Islam and the drummer also found Islam later have the love none of us played music after that but the point is that the allure and the power of music I know it and it became so obvious to me when after accepting Islam and I was still playing in nightclubs I accepted Islam and then I divorce myself from the culture of the other members of the group in which I played so I didn't participate with them in the intoxicants and things that people were doing and taking so in the nightclub I used to be the only sober one I'm there playing away and people are dancing him and you know I just looked at this and I could see that this was so devilish you know when Allah speaks about you know how Shaitaan prods the people Yasu whom as I you know that's exactly what was going on you know I could see it it was clear clear so this power that music has over people where people end up loving it loving it more than they love the Quran this is your hip boo no Karbala their love for and that is why even attempts to replace it with Anna she'd okay it started out innocently but then the inertia she'd ended up like rock groups the Anna she'd artists comes in the smoke on the stage and you know is hey what's the difference it's gone right back to that same thing and people will enjoy listen to Anna she'd you turn on the Quran hey I want to hear this this artist or that artist they feel more pleasure in hearing Anna she'd then hearing the Quran itself what is that what is that scale what has happened here this is real some scholars refer to music they refer to it as the Quran of Shaitaan Satan's Quran and it goes into the heart and it occupies the heart when it occupies the heart there's no room for the Quran of Allah that's the reality it squeezes it out and how you can know how powerful and the grip that it has on the human heart you can find it in the fact that if somebody plays two bars of a song which you didn't hear for 20 years you heard it 20 years ago when you're a kid but all you need to hear is just dun-dun-dun ah it's back in your head the old song is their words everything it's all there like it never left that is the way it is this is real so when prophet muhammad saw salaam warned us about it he warned us about something which was dangerous dangerous for our souls that's what Islam is there to do to protect our souls so we have to divorce ourselves from this obsession and no doubt it becomes an obsession among the other areas of love which represents a phenomena in this society may be somewhat different from other Muslim societies on a larger scale is the human love when a man loves a woman and a woman loves a man is Islam against love that kind of love no that's what marriage is about there is a context for that love but when it becomes boyfriend and girlfriend we have boyfriends and girlfriends sounds innocent well if it's a woman talking about her girlfriend then yeah definitely it's innocent but if it's a man talking about his girlfriend then we have something else altogether is there a place for boyfriend-girlfriend relations in Islam on the campus here there is a sign which says no coupling on campus coupling actually is a it gets cleared we have to call that Malay English you're not going to find it anywhere outside of here coupling coupling is it's you know when you when you link certain things together like chains and you couple the chains like human beings coupling know but in spite of the big sign saying no coupling on campus we find couples sitting right on the design we have a problem this is a problem it is a cultural problem it has become a norm in the West of course it's normal parents you know encourage their little kids in kindergarten there are parents when they go to pick up their kids and the little kid says oh this is my girlfriend Oh kisser only three years old four give her a kiss pick a pic take a picture and you know so okay that's a culture which promotes love outside of marriage as a norm they argue and they defend it what's the difference between fornication and marriage a piece of paper solid is that piece of paper but no in Islam it is about protecting the family protecting the building blocks of the society it's more than a piece of paper it is a concept and that is why the law is so severe Islamic ha dude which address adultery and fornication etc very severe people are shocked when they hear it stone people to death lash them a hundred times just for that well as Lomb takes that position because it wants to protect that foundation to have a wholesome society where children are raised with a proper understanding of their roles their relationships etc from what I understand here there is another phenomenon connected to this where we have homosexuals who are accepted they will walk among the girls and the girls will play in laughing joke with them and the society turns a blind eye and of course if you listen to the Protestants it's love God is love love is good whoever you love just love someone that's that's not Islam that's another society and we know how Allah dealt with those people who chose that form of love the standards which are not Islamist set are not flexible when some people ask me can a Muslim be a homosexual okay no more homosexual become a Muslim yes it's possible but it is a sinful state if that person fulfills his desires or her desires through homosexual love even if they get married in Islam there is no room for that but other religions which evolve with the times you know when you ask Protestants about they say hey you have to keep up with the times but times are changed Society has changed you know you guys are very rigid and fossilised harsh God is love so they reinterpret the clear punishments condemnation for homosexuality found in the Old Testament they even go so far as to make a play Jesus Christ Superstar in which Jesus is portrayed as a homosexual a star for Allah so these are among the forbidden love's forbidden forms of love which have spread and have established roots in the society which need to be rooted out so when we talk about love we need to go back to the original teachings of Islam it is from Satan without a doubt this love these desires fulfillment of one's desires in these means or these ways is without a doubt from none other than Satan Allah says really nasty Abu shahe wat the love of those desires this has been beautified for them beautified for them by none other than Satan himself just as in the time of Adam and Eve when they were created put in the garden told they could eat from any of the trees except for this one tree what did Satan do he came and beautified that tree he called it Hejira to hold the tree of eternal life this is beautification the tree of eternal life why so that Adam would feel Adam and Eve would feel that they need to eat from this tree they didn't they had all of the other options in the garden except for one tree and Japan's program was to beautify that tree in their minds in their hearts till they loved it wanted it and felt their lives would not be fulfilled without it so they ate that's the story of our lives and those forbidden loves they are replication of that same process from the past we're just repeating the same error over and over again and a loss Matata had said our item and Takada allahu i have you not seen the one who takes his desires as his god when we follow our desires in this way the desire to have a boyfriend or to have a girlfriend the desires homosexual desires or lesbian desires when we choose that route we have taken our desires as our gods they become our God and we worship them we worship those desires and we love them and love what we get from them more than we love Allah so in fact we fall into silk major ship in doing this where we justify we find a million one excuses for these insidious practices so when we talk about love we have to talk about loving Allah first and foremost loving Allah as a promise on the mat said none of you has truly believed until I become more beloved to him or her than his child or her child father parent or the whole world our love for Allah and His Messenger should supersede our love for anyone in this world and that is the proof of our faith otherwise we call ourselves Muslims we have Muslim names we do things that Muslims do but as the promised Messiah had said there are people who will do as I Muslim the deeds of the people of paradise but they will be from the people of a whole it will do the deeds of the people of paradise as it appears to people they fast they pray they make Hajj they do these things these are the deeds of the people of paradise but rocks are Solomon said they will be from the people of hell and the dividing line between this side and that side is over the issue of love let us not have any doubts about it it's over the issue of love is over the issue of trusting it's over the issue of fear it's over a number of issues but tonight we are focusing on the issue of love since it is all important it is all popular to talk about it is infused in our lives through the media we can't seem to get away from it we need to go back to this otherwise we are fooling ourselves we are fooling ourselves we think we are Muslims we call ourselves Muslims but in reality we are living a lie I ask Allah to protect us from this state and to bring us back to the state of Islam in which we love a lot more than everything else and that verse that we began with I mean an a/c mayor tuxedo Dooney lie and Dadda yuhibbu Nachum Karbala and there is among human beings those who take for worship others besides Allah as equals to him Boonen Karbala Allah then says one ladina am Anu I should do hope Manila but those who believe means kneeling to say that those who don't believe there are those who love what is displeasing to Allah more than the love of Allah those who believe then their love of Allah is greater so that's the proof of our faith if we want to know where we stand before Allah then we need to address these issues and address whatever other loves we may have for other people that love may be tobacco smoking cigarettes it may be drugs there are many other things out there may be money the love for money which drives our presence here for example in the International Islamic University we're here to get a piece of paper so we can make money and we choose our professions based on the one which will get us the most money that's the love of money we're not seeking knowledge as prescribed by the profits wasallam we are in love with money and that is what drives us and the process elevates it I set up to D now Abdera mop the dinner that the worshipper of the dirham and the dinar the ringgit will always be wretched will be rigid and whatever we love greater than Allah it will make our lives wretched because we will not be able to get what we want from it it will be fleeting it will be there for a minute and it's gone and we're running after it all the time it is only with the remembrance of Allah Allah be decree llahi but my Anarkali so it is only with that love of Allah which causes us to remember him throughout our lives that we ultimately will find happiness and find peace it won't be in any of these other things so my brothers and sisters I encourage you to stop for a minute and reflect many of us are caught up in currents were just going along with in the stream we don't really have any control we don't have time to stop and think about it we just in it we need to stop and think because we really don't know when we will breathe our last as young people you might think I got a lot of time how many young people didn't have a lot of time that's reality so we need to stop and think and to turn back to Allah and to love him and worship Him through our love of him by obeying the messenger of allah Salah volley whistle oh we need to do that in order for this amount to succeed it is the only way we can chase the dunya replicate the West their lifestyles etc but where does it lead what is at the end of it all wretchedness we have something which the rest of the world does not have Islam we need to preserve it we need to take care of it we need to live it as it deserves to be lived those were the thoughts I wanted to share with you this evening I hope they serve as a reminder and I remind myself before I remind you all because shaitaan/satan is ever busy he is ever busy and Allah said take him as your enemy and this is one of the main routes that he comes at us through love love of this world the permissible things going to access or love of the forbidden things bar logic Oh Salam alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh

Channel: Digital Mimbar

Views: 33,559

Keywords: allah, quran, islam, islamic, muslim, prophet, messenger, muhammad, mohamed, pbuh, saws, qur'an, sunnah, hadith, hijab, nasheed, jihad, sharia, fiqh, madhhab, sufi, salafi, shia, sunni, haram, halal, lecture, speech, speaker, shaykh, imam, god, ummah, ramadhan, hajj, salah, convert, revert, da'wah, debate, dajjal, niqab, akbar, heaven, hell, religion, religious, preacher, adhan, 'the, deen, show', tafseer, recitation, tawheed, swt, surah, spirituality, worship, pray, prayer, fatwa, soul, purification, salaf, shirk, sins, mosque, masjid, sufism, muslims, song, koran

Id: ivyxlSS2BVw

Length: 57min 27sec (3447 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2011