S Yusuf, 96: "Didn't I tell you?!"

[Music] uh today i try to discuss with you some lessons i've come to learn from ayah number 96 of surat yusuf i've titled as you can see in the video i've titled this didn't i tell you because that is actually part of the phrasing inside of the ayah so let me start right away by translating it for you you guys recall yesterday we talked about how he was being taunted and he was the recipient of the aggravation of his extended family meaning the his grandchildren even according to this conversation took place between him and his grandchildren um where he you know they were uh basically calling him insane and how you're just com you're still so committed to your old confusion and you're still lost and you're practically insane and things like that and he even said it i'm going to say this and had you had it not been that you called me insane in this way that you probably would have sent in this sent also allah would have gifted you this gift also but you can't see it that way because you've you've shut your eyes and you've shut your senses to that dimension meaning the dimension of faith you just don't see it that way now weeks have gone by days have gone by and this you know abuse continues and finally the caravan has arrived and this is the ayah about the caravan arriving i remind you yesterday i said that in the quran ayah after ayah the scene progresses very quickly so you might feel like this happened in a split second he had this exchange with his grandkids and his you know daughters-in-law and then immediately after that the new the good news came that's not the case this is actually describing something that took a long time and if we pay close attention to the language that actually does become clear so the ayah is then finally when it came to pass or it so happened it actually occurred that the giver of good news came along the the congratulator came along now obviously who's the congratulator that'll be a discussion but that's the language al-bashir the the one who gives good news he cast it upon his face obviously the shirt doesn't have to be mentioned by name now because we know what's supposed to be cast on his face so when finally it it so happened that the the giver of good news came along he cast it on his face and he restored he became restored to his state of being someone who can see baseed meaning someone who is able to see he said didn't i tell you certainly i know from it is i who knows from allah what you don't know that's the ayah we're discussing today okay uh there's an outstanding discussion from last time that i want to bring to your attention before we get into today's conversation and that is what yesterday we saw that in ayah number 95 allah didn't say yakub said or the father of yusuf abu who his father said the language is or simply the just a pronoun he said instead the languages their father said abu hum right this is significant because he's been attributed as the father of theirs or in the case of yusuf alayhi salaam go give this shirt to my father right so he used abhi in nalahu aban he has a father so the pronoun he my your our there that's been you know varying when it comes to father in this particular ayah allah chose to tell us to describe yakub al-islam not just as the father of yusuf but he described yaqub as their father now who's they technically is the father of all of his kids right but they're not there they're in egypt or they're on their way back so in a sense what it's expressing is he's the father of the entire clan so even when they're gone he's the father of the grandkids too you know so and in saying that what does that imply well you know the quran's timeless teaching which is even pre quranic is that you have to be the best you can be to your parents and the honor one is supposed to you know direct towards their mother and their father is a timeless principle of this religion and by using the word abu hum he is the he's worthy of their respect two-fold he's not just their father he's their father's father is illustrating the contrast between the way in which they spoke to him and the way that he's become accustomed to being insulted laula and tufanidun he's become accustomed to feeling that way even though he's their father as if allah himself subhanahu wata'ala is offended how dare they talk to their father that way this is important for us for a lot of reasons this is actually the family of ibrahim alayhi salam very directly right so these are these aren't this is not a family of like where he's the believer and his family is not believers right these are all muslims these are everybody in the family is muslim what are we learning about sometimes a dysfunctional muslim family that the dysfunction isn't that some people are believers other people are not believers and that's why there's a conflict inside the family but actually every member of the family in this case is muslim they all believe in ibrahim they all believe in islam that's all already established that's already there it's a given they even call on allah right so that that's not the issue here but what we're learning is just because you're muslim and just because you have a good upbringing environment around you even because even if you have a good role model around you doesn't mean that you uphold your faith in allah it doesn't guarantee that you uphold the values that this deen comes with so what what can happen in the life of a muslim is that they can hold on to some parts of their faith as part of their identity and let go of other parts of their faith as if they have nothing to do with their identity let me be more specific somebody can pray somebody can do vikka somebody can look the part of a very you know a sincere believer they can you know like it's i find it interesting sometimes people comment on brother can you please put a cap on your head or can you make your beard longer or trim your mustache shorter and things like that people have these comments about my peers i find it entertaining personally because uh not that i'm making fun of their their understanding of the religion but alhamdulillah i've got i've had a chance to study these things and i understand them to a certain extent for myself i don't talk about issues in on my public platform because that's not my area of expertise i study that part of islam for myself and for my family i study the quran as something i want to learn and something i want to teach but other aspects of islam are actually personally for my own benefit so when i'm about to go to hajj or umrah i'm going to study the if i'm about to you know if i'm about to engage in any you know sort of ritual or if i'm about to you know do something that i need to understand the rituals of our religion i'll study that carefully for myself because these are matters in which there are differences and there are scholarly discussions and sometimes these questions illustrate how little people have you know access to scholarly discourse that is very classical on some of these things and it's because of the culture that they're surrounded by they see islam in a certain way and they're not able to see it outside of that bubble the historical bubble of islam is much bigger and the contemporary bubble of islam is much smaller right so you're around a certain group of muslims you see islam is limited to that but any coming back to this subject why am i bringing that up now because what can happen is somebody holds on to their faith their prayers their rituals their appearance they are very particular about how long their beard should be or what you know how how you know what kind of pants they should wear and things like that all of that is very particular or what kind of food is all of that but there are other dimensions of the same religion like respect for parents like patients like you know when you're engaging in not raising your voice in the wisdom given in the quran is lower your voice obviously nobody is raising their voice when they are having a normal conversation it's in conflict situations that people raise their voice right so what the the advice being given is in conflict situation is lower your voice but those things even people that are ritualistically religious identify themselves as muslim when it comes to the manners of islam it's like that doesn't even exist in the religion it could be that they're observing the appearance like you know a young girl could be wearing a hijab and observing the five prayers and still disrespects her mom still disrespects her dad still lies still openly falsely testifies that can happen so what happens is sometimes we pick one part of the religion and we say well that's that's where my islam stops the rest is my own domain right and that can it's a pretty scary thing because if that can happen in the family of a prophet who will obviously teach the holistic deen he's not going to teach them the religion in portions while you just hold on to the beliefs and the rituals but the ethics and the morals and the manners that's not something to worry about he did his job teaching sometimes it be the example my teacher used to give and it's actually taken from ali imran because of the the way in which maryam was raised so i'll give you that analogy sometimes you have a garden and you put the seed in the garden the soil is perfect it's the right kind of soil for growing plants because you know if you have the wrong kind of soil it's not going to give the nourishment to the plant right so you have the right kind of soil and it's getting there just the right amount of water and just the right amount of nutrition and just the right amount of rain and just the right amount of sunlight everything for the growth of this plant is it's perfect conditions but there's something wrong with the seed itself right so you planted three or four different seeds some of them are coming out beautifully they're all getting the same sun the same water everything but there's something one seed is refusing to take advantage of all the nutrition that is coming its way you understand sometimes it so happens that you are in a good environment you are surrounded by the opportunity to correct yourself you're living in this case you're living in the family of a prophet for god's sake and the the father figure of your family is a prophet of allah and you are from the heritage of ibrahim alaihissalam right and it's so you have to appreciate the irony you can be in the most nurturing garden and not grow properly as a plant right that's the analogy and what is the analogy of ibrahim you could be in a desert and grow a perfect plant right because he was he was surrounded by a hostile environment that has nothing to do with nurturing your faith everything or in his environment was wrong and he grows up or he he turns into this profound tree of faith surrounded by nothingness surrounded by the desert and now he wants this tree that he's become it seeds to become a garden and now they're that's supposed to become even more so that the nature the future generations it's even easier for them to hold on to their faith they don't have to go through the hostility that ibrahim alaihissalam went through that's what he passed down and now he's got sons those sons have grandsons those grandsons have great grandsons and they're all believers and they all know what their father went through to hold on to this faith and they all have come to know allah and they have left the ways of sheikh all of that's happened now and they understand the institution of prophethood and yet their manners are no different than someone who had no knowledge of islam no no different that's a scary reality and in teach in sharing that with us allah has taught us that this is one of the things that can easily be forgotten in the life of a muslim or in muslim family life that we may hold on to islam but we may let go of the manners that come with it we may let go of the treatment towards each other that come with it that's a very easy thing to let go so you don't you don't even have regard for your grandfather or your father or elders in general or little siblings are you know talking to older siblings like they're garbage and you know there's a culture now we were yeah obviously we're we're exposed to lots of things that previous generations even a decade ago even kids five years ago weren't exposed to kids are playing video games now on social media right people have screen names people are you know foul foul-mouthing each other trash talking to each other your garbage or this you're that you know and there's a lot of like self um aggrandizing i'm number one i'm gonna kill everybody i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that like there's a it's a culture of like uh demonstrating how amazing you are and celebrating your own greatness in sports well whereas you know when somebody made a good shot back in the day if you really know how to play basketball and you made a good shot and other people you know came give you a five but the one guy who made a shot is yeah number one this nobody wants to play with that guy like no because they're too obsessed with themselves you understand but now that's become kind of a thing where you you're self-absorbed and if you allow that culture to permeate guess what happens then you're too big to be corrected you're too big for your mother to correct your manners you're too big for your older brother to tell you clean up your plate and this disrespect culture which is already the co that's the norm online disrespect culture now becomes a part of a young man or a young woman's personality and they bring that into the family they start bringing that language that demeanor those facial expressions the rolling of the eyes uh-huh like if you're talking to your kid and one of your kids goes yeah boy that you might as well use the worst filthy language because that is disrespect at its highest that is not acceptable that's not going to fly what i'm trying to get at is this can make its way into a believing family they could still pray they could still memorize the quran would be perfect but they're still turning into monsters they're still turning into a monster that's not okay and that's something that has to be addressed anyhow so that was an outstanding item abu hum perhaps the phrase abu hum also their father is contrasting that their it's their father who received first and foremost the wrong news with the scent of blood the fake blood on the shirt and it's now their father who even if they don't present to him the truth even before they present it he knows their good is coming it's almost like it's contrasting before the bad happened he had a premonition that that is happening it's about to happen i am afraid a wolf might eat him some harm will come his way i don't want to let him go right he hasn't let him go but the fear has already dawned on him and he's got a feeling that something bad is about to happen to the point where he told his son not to share the dream remember early on in the story it's the opposite now and it's it's kind of in ilham also but a positive one good news hasn't even come yet but he has a feeling it's coming just like bad news hadn't even come yet and he had a feeling that it was coming so that that's an interesting contrast with the word another uh comment that is uh recorded in the fasit i took the arabic excerpt let me read that to you first and then explain to you because i thought it was a nice insight about the previous ayah the people of that seek deeper meaning into the ayat of the quran have said so this is the generalization so it's not a tribute to one scholar in particular that uh allah azzawajal gave brought him this the scent of yusuf alayhi salaam at the end of a period of great trial and difficulty from such a far away place but anyway he's saying and yet for decades even though he says 80 years for decades allah prevented any news of yusuf reaching the father even though the lands are not that far away from each other right so now he's hearing about the sun by way of wind by way of ascent now he's getting sense of the sun and all these years he has no news of the sun even though the lands are right next to each other they're not that far off right and so he says it can be that things that are generally supposed to be easy when allah is putting someone through trial when they're going through a trial easy solutions become impossible and when allah wants to bring relief the most impossible solutions become possible so sometimes when someone's going to trial the solution may be really easy but it's still impossible like for anybody else it would be easy but for you just won't happen right and for other situations it could be when allah wants to bring use to you the circumstances are impossible no science can explain it and yet allah opens the door and that's the nature of trials sometimes you say it's happening that it's working out for everybody else how come it's not working out for me somebody's applying for a job they've got a great resume they've got the perfect you know experience they've got all these credentials behind them you know their their their skill is high in demand and yet they can't find a job and then there's somebody else who has no credentials no experience their resume is a blank sheet of paper with just their name on it and their birthday you know and they get a job in two days and they or they both get a job and the one with high qualifications is getting paid then the one with no qualifications is getting paid more and you say how come it's easy for him how come it's hard for me because sometimes for some people allah creates a pathway of ease and sometimes even though all the means are there allah wants them to go through a valley of difficulty before they reach the ease right so that's actually allah teaching us through the surah that it has nothing to do with how close or far you are from allah that allah will give relief that allah will have you go through trial because ease is a trial and difficulty is a trial there are two different kinds of trials but yet they are still trials nonetheless it's remarkable that in the quran you find an attitude taught to rasulullah in two very different circumstances when things were overwhelming and quraish were insulting him even resorting to torture at that point and things were becoming really overwhelming what was he told behind you just declare how perfect allah is you busy yourself with reminding yourself and declaring the perfection of allah before the sun comes off comes up and before it goes down the circumstances are imperfect but allah is perfect you remind yourself of that just focus on this and then so this was in times of difficulty he was told basically to do this yeah and then victory comes makkah is conquered all the enemies have been subdued foreign when victory comes when people are entering into the religion in droves do this wait you said deutsch me when times are hard now you're saying do this be when times are easy you know what that's teaching us that's teaching us a believer will go through difficulty and a believer will go through ease and in both times they must remember allah is perfect none of the difficulty is not a time to blame allah and ease is not a time to take credit for yourself man finally i overcame now you didn't overcome bro or sis allah brought you out that's still a time to remind yourself of the perfection of allah so and also to remind yourself that even when ease comes that ease isn't endless just like difficulty is not endless ease is not endless this life is just up and down everything in it is waves you know night and day keep succeeding each other you know storm and calm storm and calm storm and calm life and death life and death life and death this life is constant change ease will not stay permanently difficulty will not stay permanently now coming back to the ayah by the way just to establish you know i said he was talking to his you know extended family uh even when he when they were insulting him and i said he must be talking to his extended family this is from him that meaning when he was talking he was talking to those that are relatives of his who didn't go to egypt meaning the kids of his kids others said no not all the sons went back to egypt but i believe i do believe he sent all of them that seems the more plausible explanation now for the ayah of the day then finally when the giver of good news came so the first thing here is for for grammatical purposes and it's something i want you to develop a thirst for the relationship between arabic grammar syntax and its connection to meaning it's a really beautiful thing like grammar seems like such a hard thing to study like it's almost as entertaining as a root canal you know but it's not it's actually really fun and once you get into it it's an addiction it's it's such a high because then you start discovering things about allah's word you know and insights into allah's word that the translations aren't designed to tell you they're not it's not a fault of the translator they're just not equipped to the translation isn't a mechanism by which some of these discussions can even exist for anybody but for those of you that are interested in a little bit of arabic grammar and for those of you who would like to quench or develop a thirst for it then i'm saying all this because i'll be teaching arabic soon and i hope you join me and an actually it's it's considered za'ida here meaning you can say al-bashir translation would be then finally when the giver of good news came the congratulator came and now you have an in there and technically it's considered which means an add-on preposition which would mean that the transition is virtually the same then finally when the giver of good news came so the transition is not quite capturing the and we have to do something to to address that so an has been explained in two interesting ways one way i'll take from ibn ashur more from his uh elaboration he says this is uh meaning that this is an emphasizing an and it's materializing now what does that mean that means previous ayat where i sent i can sense the scent of yusuf i find it over and over again and their kids the k the grandkids said oh you're still in your old craziness come on and actually when the good news came when the giver of good news came meaning when in actual fact his words were proven true so the un makes it an actual fact as if now it's like they got face palmed right they they got owned because the the news has come true so when the truth of it came out is captured inside the word an imam says that an may represent which we can call a an omitted verb in english which is very similar in meaning when it became apparent or when it came when it so happened when it so occurred that the giver of good news finally came so it's actually continuing the irony of that conversation before they were poking fun of him and when in fact he did come and that's that dramatic shift is actually inside the word and it's really quite beautiful and there's these two explanations that eventually lead to the same thing but now let's talk about who is this giver of good news uh i'll summarize the classical tafseer commentary is pretty consistent on what who this could be it said is one of the brothers so one of one of the brothers of yusuf yahudah and it said judah judah means just as i went so long ago when it was riddled with blood meaning i was the one who gave him the shirt stained with blood i'll be the one to give him the shirt that tells the truth this has been attributed to him according to sudden he also said to his brothers the brother that went with the shirt i you guys all know i took the shirt of great of grief and calamity to him let me now take the she the shirt of joy to him so in these narrations the story gap is being filled the question because it doesn't say one of the brothers went it says the giver of good news went right so who's that giver of good news the explanation has been it was one of the brothers i personally am not convinced of this view not everybody accepts this view it's not coming from like irrefutable authentic narration so it's not like we have to take it as an iron-clad evidence there is room for discussion here and i've had some interesting discussions with sheikh sahib about what this could mean because we have to also understand when the quran was being recited its original audience in makkah not everybody was running to ibn abbas and asking what it means they were hearing these words and they were processing them as they were hearing them you understand and so there are there's a there's a dependence also on the text itself to be self-explanatory at some level and or call for contemplation at some level so now what are the other possibilities well one certain possibility is right the caravan and the because the caravan is an official royal caravan coming from the wealthiest nation in the land egypt the fact that it's coming towards the village those of you that watch urturo when the when whenever somebody's coming towards the village they you know hear the drums and they see the flags coming in and then they all come out and they're like good news or bad news you know and they have like eight eight minutes of crying or whatever happens but anyway the point is when when when a procession comes to a village it is uh it's not a small thing you don't just enter a village this is a pretty big deal that's coming in and it looks from afar because of the colors and the celebration and the gifts that it bears that it's coming with good news right and it could be that the brothers are in it but they're here's the reason that made me skeptical that it's one of the brothers allahu adam and maybe it is the brothers but the reason i'm skeptical is these guys went and lied to their father to his face and then yelled at him for even bringing up anything to the contrary for years on end yes i have a hard time imagining that one of them walks in and allah describes him as the bringer of what good news hey dad guess what we've been lying to you all these years here's the shirt to prove it he's alive you were right we were we were just messing with you and all those insults we hurled at you and called you crazy for thinking he's alive yeah it was all a lie but still i'm so happy it's all okay now because he's alive and here's a shirt just don't see it i don't you could see if somebody if if if i was i put myself in that position if i was the one who gave the false shirt and now i have to bring the right kind of shirt i wouldn't be the giver of good news i'd be the i'd bear a huge deal of shame and come before father crying apologizing before i confess that that's the shirt you understand like it's not i wouldn't describe myself as the bringer of good news i would bring i would describe myself as the bringer of a confession first and foremost right and it would be actually pretty disingenuous for someone who has committed such a heinous crime to come in and act like that crime never happened hey dad guess what he's alive what do you know wolves aren't that good at eating you know as if you want to gloss over your crime and let's just focus on the positive right let's just let's not make this a negative occasion that's really disingenuous you should own up to the wrong that you did so for those basic psychological reasons i have a hard time wrapping my mind around the bashir being one of the brothers so what other possibilities are there it could be that because they've been told to go with along with a caravan none of them can find it in themselves to um face father so they take one of the royal employees one of the servants of yusuf friday seven say could you take the shirt please that's the house over there and so this representative from the royal kingdom that is run by yusuf alayhi salaam comes in excuse me sir are you yakub the father of yusuf you know and etc he says yes i am sir i come on behalf of your son yusuf and gives the good news and hands him a shirt and there's kind of this this you know uh he's officially the bearer of good news i get you guys are so islamic because you're on facebook so you don't watch movies and stuff but in movies sometimes they have like kings that send the bearer of news like the king's announcer he comes on a horse he comes down he opens up a scroll and says here ye thus announces the king etc etc and it could be that he's giving a warning or it could be that he's giving good news right and sometimes when he bears good news he becomes the bashiv so it's actually this bashir who's coming this giver of good news that's coming and and telling uh and that's to me is one plausible explanation it could also be that the caravan itself the ear itself its procession at large can be considered the bearer of good news when the caravan arrived meaning the scent got that close and the the details of how the shirt was given to him has been kind of omitted but it's been the gap is filled by our imagination clearly because it doesn't have to be spelled out that's the second explanation that the machine could refer to the caravan at large but i like sahib's suggestion the most the third suggestion and that is something that actually occurred there's a there's a shahid ironically there's an evidence for it in the surah previously you remember in this the case of the um when the shirt was ripped from behind that scene one of the witnesses testified right and some of us actually suggested that that witness is the shirt itself the shirt itself testified even though that wasn't a very plausible explanation then to attribute the shirt to be the witness because it says from her family the shirt isn't from her family so it didn't fit but actually here the word bashir can actually serve the purpose of the shirt because the actual bearer of good news the actual bearer of the heavenly scent of yusuf is who is what the shirt itself so when the shirt itself arrived so the shirt itself arrived so there are these possibilities of the shirt and the shirt or an emissary or the caravan at large or one of the brothers those are the possibilities of what the bearer of good news is and i i do think that there are multiple possibilities here allahu ta'ala anyway so but but that affects the interpretation of the rest of the ayah so let's just go with the shirt for now let's see how that affects the interpretation well it says the ayah says he cast it on his face he cast it on his face so one if it was a brother then the brother cast it on his face the weather the brother you know gently you know put it on his face or hand it to him to put on his face or if it's a servant he put it on his face he's lying in bed he's you know he's sick and now he's being it's being placed on his face so he can smell it but if it's the shirt itself meaning when the good news the shirt itself came he grabbed the shirt and he put it on his face like there's this remarkable scene where he's just drowned in this his son's shirt he's drowned in his son's shirt you know when you miss one of your kids mom sometimes when your kids get older the son travels to college or go somewhere and you find one of his shirts in the closet or in the laundry what do you do with that shirt oh my baby is about my baby and dad's do it too by the way right this idea of just being emotionally drowned in the joy of that he smelled it he smelled it it was getting smaller and getting stronger and getting stronger and getting stronger and finally the good news itself is here the good news is the shirt itself just got it on his face the happiness was already there it was building and building and building despite the negativity of his family we already saw that and now finally as he put it on his face he became one who can see again when something goes back to the state it used to be so he went back to being someone who can see he went back to undo his blindness now there's discussion about whether or not he was actually blind or his eyesight became extremely weak besides the point miraculously the emotional healing led to his physical healing is what the quran is saying now that could be divine intervention and it could also be an insight in the quran about how if you have caused someone wrong then make it right and perhaps their physical pain may go away you may be able to get rid of their physical distress by alleviating the harm you may have caused or giving them that physical relief in this case it's the shirt that serves that purpose he said now we get to the fun part so he's lost in the joy of the shirt the tears of joy are rolling off of his face maybe he's crying yusuf yusuf yusuf my baby my boy my boy and he lost in that joy but now who's around him by this time the sons have arrived the extended family who kept calling him crazy for talking about yusuf is all standing there with their jaw dropped you know how sometimes in cartoons they show the the character's jaw drops to the ground and then the tongue rolls out like a rolling carpet it's like that kind of a scene they're all like uh like you you got owned all of you ali all got owned right now and you're all standing there and the government officials are standing there honoring yahoo and all you all are feeling like we've been insulting the king's father we've been humiliating it and how how immediate your behavior towards him is gonna change because he got back now he got security behind him now he's an official royal immediately you understand so the scene in the family and how they perceive him and what they you know what they were to him and what they have to be to him now has immediately changed and this is for the first time where he is not a powerless old man who's losing his sight in his health bedridden he is in a position of put lay the smack down he's in a position to put them in their place for the first time he could actually now oh you're going to get it so what he said well here's let me just before you tell you i tell you what he said let me tell you what he didn't say didn't i tell you allah will help me against the lies you come up with remember when they came with the shirt didn't i tell you you're a bunch of liars and allah will help me didn't say that you made up this lie and all these years you were angry at me you were the ones insulting me when you did the shameless act and you called me insane you had the audacity to do this to me for all this time this is what you did how do you even look at yourselves in the mirror that's not what he said how much did you torture me do you realize how much you put me through year after year after year not one day did you feel remorse for my tears that's not what he said how disgusting is what you people have done you call yourselves my sons get lost i don't want to see you shame on you shame isn't even the word i don't even know what to say that's not what he said i mean that's what i would say i'd do more i'd say less i do more i find a well i'll chuck them in one at a time and see how it feels i'll check back with you in a week i i would be in after the joy now it's time to make retro make right and even the last time he sent them he said he mentioned yusuf and they got angry at him remember that that's not even years ago that's the last time he saw them that's the last time you saw them and none of this is coming out of his mouth this is where i'm in shock about this man i'm just in awe of yaakov what kind of heart allah gave him what kind of what kind of father he is really at the end of the day he is being depicted not just as a man of patience he is being depicted over and over again allah didn't even say the name yakub he kept saying father father father father father isn't he he's emphasizing something the character of a parent of a father figure of a father i'm reminded of uh ibrahim whose number one concern was what about my kids his concern was for the well-being of people in front of allah it's human to be overtaken by grief and by trauma that hasn't been resolved it's human to lose your eyesight crying over a child and you don't know what happened to him it's human to be lost in tragedy when the people around you are emotionally abusive that's human even a prophet is human at the end of the day he felt all of those things fahu kaleem you know the the sadness the swallowing he had to do all of that's been described but when allah brings him relief which is what happened here right allah brought him relief the moment allah brought him relief instead of focusing on what has happened the way if you try to go inside the mind of this remarkable human being what how is he processing this when the solution comes from allah when the healing comes from allah he is grateful to allah number one that allah has given him relief for all of that suffering and he understands that that's a trial that was met yes it was done by at the hands of people but there was wisdom from allah and allah has given him relief now his number one priority is not to let not to vent is not to let out some steam that he's been holding in is not to release pent-up anger his number one priority now that his trauma has been healed by allah himself is to restore the faith of his sons because as angry as they are right now they are ashamed of what they did and this is this is when the iron is hot i could use this opportunity to shame them and humiliate them and kick them out of the house and be angry at them and punish them or give them the cold shoulder i can do all of those things but right now i have an opportunity to do something that might change the rest of their lives for the better and they can stand in front of allah with faces lit instead of faces dark so i as a father have to decide is my frustration with them stronger or is my desire to see them saved before allah stronger and with that remarkable faith in his heart and his mind he says didn't i tell you i know from allah what you don't know didn't i tell you not to lose hope in the mercy of allah remember that then i know from allah something you don't know didn't i tell you to i i'll keep use of hope and yusuf alive didn't didn't i tell you that allah has given me allah allowed me to hear the dream from yusuf's mouth himself and i knew that's revelation from allah that it will come to pass i know from allah something you don't know didn't you realize i have a connection to allah and an optimism with allah and a hope in allah that never let me give up hope in yusuf and allah is the one who sent me and sent me the sent i already knew from allah what you didn't before the shirt even happened i already knew i already knew i know from allah what you don't know didn't i tell you to just hold on to your faith in allah the way i do and if you're feeling ashamed right now maybe you need to come back to allah and get to know him the way i do this is the time for you all to come back to allah not to come and apologize to me but to come back to allah he didn't he said didn't i tell you yusuf is alive didn't i tell you i was right didn't i tell you you were liars none of that didn't i tell you i know something from allah i've come to experience something from allah that you don't know now this is an important moment because i keep emphasizing and emphasizing and emphasizing that they're all muslims so they know allah [Music] they know allah they know about allah and what he knew from allah he told them that yusuf is alive that i have hope that maybe allah will bring them back together he kept saying that so they know what he knows but how is he saying i know what you don't know because there's different kinds of knowing there's no one cognitively up here and there's knowing in your heart for feeling the knowledge in your heart for something to be true there's levels of conviction there's knowing something to be true in your gut it flows through your veins it's a conviction that is like your life blood and then there's passive knowledge that sits like a shelf in a corner in your brain somewhere yeah yeah we're muslim yeah we know yeah judgment day judgement day i know i've come to experience the real knowledge of allah i really know who allah is the way you don't you've never really known you've you've said the name allah you've prayed you've uttered the asgard you know about your fathers and their prophethood but you haven't really your heart hasn't known allah the way i i do and now it's time that it does it is like he he found the most profound moment to not make them ashamed of him but to make them ashamed before allah and that's the biggest gift a believer can give another believer inspire them to make tawbah when you can hear somebody's words and you're not embarrassed to them but their words are making you embarrassed to stand in front of allah and apologize to allah and make right with allah that is the best gift family can give to family or friends can give or muslims can give each other to remind each other of tawba to remind each other to have hope in allah to remind each other to be bonded to allah to cry to allah to find joy in allah to believe in the relief that allah will bring man that's what he wants for his kids and he knows that if they do that then all the wrongs they can make right if they can just get to know allah that way this is the grandness of this man this father that goes beyond the grudge or the pain his children caused him or the grief that he suffered for so many years he can put all that aside because there's something bigger in front of him the legacy of his father ibrahim alaihissalam who was concerned above all else for what will happen to his kids in the end that that's that was his ultimate concern so he said before i close today i want to share with you um an interesting contrast that you may have observed on your own but it's good to spell it out the two primary characters in the story that we are to follow and learn from as role models are yusuf alayhi salam these are the two people that inform they're they're pillars of the story right and they're the role models of this story you find something odd almost odd about the way yahuwah is talked about after so much grief and allah gives him relief you don't find words of thanks you don't find him thanking allah here those words don't come you find rem whether said explicitly or you can imply it from the words he's using you find a remarkable demonstration of patience that's what you do find but gratitude you don't find the words here you don't find the implication for gratitude but you find the implication for an incredible amount of what patience by contrast when you study the the depiction of yusuf ali salaam in the story you're not going to find a lot of language surrounding or theme surrounding his sabbath even though sabra was always there you do find his gratitude though he is grateful in jail he's grateful when he comes out of jail he's grateful in any situation grateful grateful grateful the the the theme that sticks like glue to yaakov through the entire story to jacob is patience the theme that sticks to yusuf to the entire story is what gratitude now here's the reality yakub alayhi salaam is both grateful and patient he's both and yusuf alayhi salam is both grateful and patient that's that's the fact these are facts but what did allah decide to do he decided to depict patience surrounding one character and lessons of patience surrounding the character of who yakuba even though we know that his gratitude is always there you know in the quran shakur that the quality of a slave is someone who has tremendous patience is also extremely grateful in his incredible legacy when you look back at it you will say that would be the role model in the quran for what quality patience 950 years right well how how does allah describe him he was a grateful slave instead of saying he says to let us know patience uh you know patience his patience is obvious but let me tell you the secret behind his patience which is what his gratitude his gratitude gave him the strength to be patient okay what i'm trying to get at is patience and gratitude are actually two sides of the same coin so let's talk about those two things for a moment let me just instead of being philosophical or theological with you about these two enormities in the quran let's just make it super simple you open up the fridge you wanted to drink orange juice and the orange juice isn't there come on where's the orange juice you had you just experienced a lot a loss of what patience but the moment you opened and you wanted to get orange juice and you didn't see the orange juice but you only saw apple juice or you saw cold water or you saw and you said alhamdulillah i have something to drink there are so many who have nothing to drink and when they do they have to drink out of a puddle and there are people in the world who don't know what a fridge is or for them that's the life of kings and i have a choice of drinks and the fruit whose extract i'm drinking from this apple juice that fruit traveled countries and then went to a factory and somebody worked on squeezing it and some other factory worked on bottling it and a trucker made his living trying to deliver it and then i got to pick it up from this grocery store allah made that apple for me from that tree so i can it can go down my throat i am grateful and when you're grateful then that impatience disappears in other words gratitude makes what easy patience gratitude makes patience easy they're they're losing their two sides of the same coin that's one easy way of looking at it right now one of the most interesting features of the quran that we learn in this surah is as if these two people yapoob and yusuf are like one person like two dimensions of one personality because a person should be patient and a person should also be grateful and what allah does he's not telling us that yakub alayhi islam isn't grateful but he's going to highlight lessons of patience in the character of yahoo and then he will highlight the lessons of gratitude in the character of yusuf as if to tell us the prophets and the people allah talks about are so complementary to each other that they are it's as if they are one body like you know the ummah is described as one body here you have two prophets being described as one body one spiritual body and maybe this is going to inform our study of other surahs and other characters and other individuals in the quran where allah will highlight one thing about them but there will be someone complementary or allah will highlight something else about them and you have to look at the two of them together to find the whole picture you understand so it's a really beautiful unique sophisticated feature of the quran that allah azzawajal does that and he's done that here with you know because for him to just say i know from allah what you don't the choice of words here the impatient choice of words were many and it takes an incredible amount of sabha to choose these words to overstep all of your negative feelings and to choose what will actually be of benefit to these children of yahoo and these grandchildren of yahoo that this will be a lifelong teaching moment for them subhan allah and you notice in the quran we don't find much more being said by him we're going to find one more statement by him and then the story doesn't actually talk about him it doesn't talk about what he says is so the few things that allah mentioned that he says must be of that vital importance and it must be that i know from allah something you don't know which has been repeated multiple times now i know allah in a way that you don't know it's one way of thinking about i know of allah in a way that you don't know is a theme allah wants us to nail into our hearts like if you walk away from this story and you say i learned something about yaakov well the thing i learned about him the anthem the yakub alayhi salaam anthem is i know from allah what you don't know in other words i have a hope in allah i have i find relief in allah i find my strength in allah i am grateful to allah which makes me strong in my patience to allah in a way that you don't realize and that's okay i'm going to and i'll try to instill that in you and it's remarkable that these words came out of his mouth when they were shaming him and these words are coming out of his mouth when they are actually apologizing to him his stance doesn't change he's saying the same thing this is a he's a constant in the family he's a pillar he doesn't shake everybody else is wavering but he's the he's the rajul of the household he's the spiritual anchor of this household so his words stay constant and this is what we're taking away from it this is a um and and this is the last thing five minutes inshallah and i'm done you see the shirt is not yusuf seeing use of hugging yusuf kissing his forehead crying on his shoulder letting him cry on his chest that's the actual moment of relief the shirt itself is just a piece of cotton it's not a person it's not a family reunion it's at the most if you want to give it spiritual significance it's a sign from allah that relief is coming yeah but it's not the relief itself you understand that right now think of it this way if yakub alaihissalam allah decided to take his life and the angel of death came to him before he got back to egypt imagine does he die sad or happy he dies happy why because the relief the grief he felt in his heart has already been removed by way of a shirt even though he actually never felt the relief itself you understand that in other words there's a theme here you there is the actual joy and there is finding comfort in the guaranteed promise of joy let me take to take you away from yakuba i'm giving you another example there's a guy who's absolutely bankrupt not doesn't even have food to eat for the next meal and he gets a letter that next month you're going to get a million dollars you there's a long lost uncle of yours here's the you know here's the address you're going to be handed this mansion and a million dollars and a lifelong income and all of this stuff and he's going to be a millionaire in a month for the next month he's still homeless for the next month he's still got nothing but he's got this letter this government certified legally certified letter and even though he has one meal a day of one bite everybody else is miserable around him and he's like why are you so happy bro i know something you don't know i got something that's a guarantee of something that will give me relief in the future right well he got a letter from the government or a lawyer or something like that and he has confidence in it the promise to yahoo came from who he came from allah and even before the promise is filled his heart is filled with joy yes or no believers have been promised forgiveness jannah that their deeds will be counted that if they make sincere tawba that allah will recognize that then no effort they ever make will go wasted in this life surrounded by misery surrounded by deprivation surrounded by loss there's this promise of allah the faith we have in allah and the promise of allah's words the the the this quran is like the shirt whose scent is constantly giving us relief we're not in jannah we haven't gotten the we haven't gotten the forgiveness but the promise of how to earn it and the honor of being able to do a good deed and every you see imagine the caravan traveling to yusuf again every step that the camel takes every step that the horse takes every tree that yahoo passes by i'm getting closer to my son i'm getting closer i'm getting closer i'm how much longer how much longer every stay state step he takes closer to the fulfillment of allah's promise brings him more joy yes or no in a spiritual sense perhaps we're learning that every step we take to serve our master every step we take to pray every day we get the honor of praying fajr every time we take one step we're getting closer to allah's promise towards us every time we chose the higher road and we didn't back bite every time we chose to tell the truth every time we chose to earn the honest living and not lie every time we tried we we we walked away from you know evil every time we walked away from making bad assumptions every time we walked away from the temptation of saying something wrong we didn't say it every one of those is a step towards allah's promise and every step towards allah promises is supposed to bring us what joy because and everybody else around us are like they'll feel like you're missing out why are you happy because i've come to know something about allah that you haven't experienced yet i am overjoyed that i get the opportunity to serve my rabb to do something that makes me closer to the fulfillment of his promise of forgiveness to make makes me more i pray allah accepts it so that i can see him and i can find the relief in him that he's guaranteed me that he's that he's offering me i i pray allah makes doesn't make it what you know let it get washed away and even if in this world the relief i was looking for never comes i know that allah has given me this relief so i will i will leave this world happy because allah's promise is always true so there's a there's a worldly relief and a hope in worldly relief and there's also a spiritual dimension to this phrase that informs our lives it gives value to nothing being a waste nothing being a waste some of you dropped out of school you couldn't finish some of you lost your business it didn't work out and some of you your marriage failed some of you your children ran away from you some of you your siblings won't ever talk to you again all of us have different kinds of catastrophes in our lives and doesn't matter what that catastrophe was it doesn't matter what that hardship was whatever that hardship was if through that hardship we were still able to obey allah and take a step towards allah then you know what when we stand in front of allah we're going to be like those were the best opportunities in my life what everybody else will see as failure and disaster will be is the secret source of joy for us because we're getting closer to allah he's bringing us closer to him sometimes tears caused by human beings lead to tears in front of allah and those are the most valuable things you'll take in front of allah on judgment day nothing i bring in front of allah will be more valuable that the emotions i felt from my heart when i worshiped him and sometimes he just wants me to do that sometimes he puts me through it so that i recognize who my rob really is who's really in control i can't control people i can't control who loves me and who hates me i can't control what people are going to do to me i can't control any of that that's always been in my rob's hands what i can control is how heart how connected my heart is to allah that i can control and when i can steer myself towards allah man the doors he will open the relief he will bring the scent he will bring my way the joy he will bring may allah azzawajal really give us a life of joy rooted in the promise of allah made to us in his book may allah azzawajal make us of those who really find our their hearts content in his words and are able to stand before allah on judgment day with these words of allah being a testimony in our favor and not a testimony against us and i'm not doing the same

Channel: Bayyinah Institute

Views: 30,670

Keywords: Nouman Ali Khan, Arabic, Quran, Islam, Bayyinah, Bayyinah TV, Bayyinah Institute, Koran, Islamic, Education, Muslim, islam, muhammad, muslim

Id: 0zaVskgwnqw

Length: 62min 34sec (3754 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020