Anchored
Does Islam Command War on Non-Muslims? | Anchored Ep. 5
Some hadith are hard to read and understand the first time around.
One of them is the authentic narration in Bukhari and Muslim where the Prophet ﷺ says, “I was commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no god but Allah.” Read alone, it can sound like an order of endless war against non-Muslims. The scholars who explained it read it a different way. In this hadith, “the people” refers to the pagan Arab tribes who broke treaty after treaty at the end of the Prophet’s ﷺ mission, not to all of humanity. The Qur’an sets peace as the default (“if they incline to peace, incline to it as well”). The Prophet ﷺ made treaties with non-Muslims and lived beside them in Medina. He also said to leave the Abyssinians and the Turks alone as long as they left the Muslims alone. In Islamic law, the justification for war is always protective. Its rules shield non-combatants, women, children, clergy, animals and even trees, and a promise of safety holds even when an eight-year-old gives it.
Hadith 9 of Imam al-Nawawi’s forty asks something closer to home. Why does the Prophet ﷺ tell us to avoid what he forbids completely, but to do what he commands “as much as you can”? Avoiding something takes no money and no strength, only will, so it is within everyone’s reach. Plenty of people do good deeds. Staying away from what Allah forbids is what sets a God-conscious person apart. The same hadith warns about questions asked to dodge an obligation, to trip someone up, or to look pious, like the man who asked Ibn ‘Umar about the blood of fleas. In this episode of Anchored: The 40 Hadith for Today’s Muslim, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy explains what jihad really means in the Islamic tradition, how Islam’s ethics of war compare with other civilizations, and why closing the gap between what you know and what you do matters more than gathering another answer.
Tune in every Saturday at 9 AM CST/3 PM GMT for a new episode of Anchored!
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00I was commanded to fight the people until they testify. Now, I am sure that some people coming across this hadith for the first time or never getting a satisfying explanation for the hadith,
00:13they may find some discomfort in this hadith. You have to get comfortable with the words of the Prophet ﷺ. So let's split this into two parts. The first part is, what I've prohibited you from, avoid it altogether.
00:24And what I've commanded you with, do as much of it as you can. And we do this a lot. We really do. You know, you talk about like halal meat. How halal is this meat? And you sort of debate into 2am about like halal stickered versus halal certified
00:38versus machine slaughter versus hand slaughter. But you consume the flesh of human beings all the time with your backbiting. You're a cannibal with your ghiba and your namima. There's something that needs to get checked there. That's the idea.
00:50Welcome you all back to the 40 Nawawi hadith for today's Muslim.
01:03We are with hadith 8 today, which is the hadith of Abdullah ibn Umar. Wherein the Prophet ﷺ said,
01:20I was commanded, meaning by Allah, to fight the people until they testify that none is worthy of worship but Allah
01:33and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And until they establish the prayer and they pay the zakah.
01:38And if they do that, then their blood and their property become inviolable,
01:55not to be violated, inviolable for me, except by the right of Islam. And their ultimate judgment, their reckoning is with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
02:07Now, I am sure that some people coming across this hadith for the first time or never getting a satisfying explanation for the hadith, even if they've come across it multiple times,
02:19they may find some discomfort in this hadith. And it's important that we address that head on. This is not the type of thing that you should ignore. You have to get comfortable with the words of the Prophet ﷺ.
02:34For sure, he said this. This is in Bukhari and Muslim. It's highly authentic. So what does it mean? Because to ignore it is like throwing a blanket on top of a fire. It'll provide you with momentary relief,
02:46but then it's going to engulf in flames very quickly, right? It becomes more fuel for the fire. And nothing will devour a person's faith, their iman, like a shubha, like suspicions about the faith.
03:00You know, if someone suffers from shahwa, like desires, some weakness, right? Sinfulness, they are far more likely to recover than someone suffering from a shubha, from a doubt, a suspicion regarding Allah and his messenger.
03:14Nothing will hurt your faith like that. And so what does it mean? I was commanded to fight the people. Are the people here, all of humanity? Impossible. It can't be.
03:30This is, you know, utterly unreasonable to believe that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam meant anything by this general statement, the people, right? Except something very particular, something very specific.
03:44And there are many analogs for this in the Qur'an, in the Sunnah, in common day language. Just to give you one example, the scholars give when explaining this hadith always, they say, Allah praises some people by saying, alladhina qala lahumu an-naas
03:59inna an-naasa qad jama'u lakum fakhshawhum fazadahum eeman wa qaloo hasbunallahu wa ni'mal wakeel Allah praises a people, a people that are told by the people
04:14that the people have united against you. Are these all the same the people? No, these are three different parties. Even though the word the people is a very general term, it's generic for all of humanity per se, but context will tell you that can't be what it means.
04:28General term, intended for something very specific. Even in another narration, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, umirtu an uqatila al-mushrikeen I was commanded to fight the pagans.
04:43And we know that he meant the pagans, meaning the idolaters of Arabia in particular. Why? How can we be so sure? Because of his life story. Is that all he ever did was just fight people until they became Muslim? No.
04:57Was it because they weren't Muslim? Not necessarily, no. In fact, he had treaties with some people. He had people that were non-Muslim living in Medina, right? Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Under this Islamic state,
05:11all of Islamic history speaks against this fact that there is a doctrine of perpetual warfare until there is a forced conversion. No way, this can't be the meaning. So he was commanded to fight
05:24the pagan Arabs of Arabia in particular, unless they became Muslim. Was that from day one? It wasn't from day one. It was at the very end of his mission, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
05:38when the whole world saw that they had to be subdued. By the way, like, you know, the Arabs getting a sort of an inside feel of their nature will help you understand why this was necessary.
05:52It's just like someone totally, you know, oblivious to the history of the apartheid in Palestine today. He can just come up to you and say, like, why can't they just get along? I don't get it. Like, aren't you guys like cousins? The Arabs and the Jews are my cousins. Like, what's...
06:05They're so far gone from the reality on the ground, right? And so the Arabs, they are feudal tribes. They are a little bit hot-blooded. I say that as an Arab, okay? Just like, call me self-hating or not.
06:19But they are very hot-blooded people, very prone to rebellion. And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala wanted a cradle for Islam, right? This happened when? When did he move in and tell the people of Mecca,
06:34either you're going to be Muslim or you can't be here, when they betrayed time and time again, war after war after war, then finally their weakness subjected them to a peace treaty called al-Hudaybiyyah. And even then they chose the back door and reignited another war.
06:49It had to end at some point. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. This was the idea. Without subduing them, there could be no hope for a safe haven for an Islamic civilization.
07:02Allah wanted this to be the cradle of Islam. This was the last prophet. This was the last book. The very previous prophet before him, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, was Jesus. Peace be upon him. What happened to Jesus? Peace be upon him.
07:15His disciples were literally fed to the lions in the gladiator stadiums of Rome, right or wrong? And so with this being the final message and the final messenger, Allah wanted this to be the cradle of Islam. And that would only be possible
07:29by at the very least outwardly subduing them. Why do we say outwardly subduing them? Because you're not going to force anyone to be Muslim. Islam is predicated on sincerity. If you're forcing someone into a conversion, you're generating a hypocrite, right?
07:44And so outwardly subduing them. And that is why the Hadith ends by saying, their judgment is with God. But you have shown so much rebelliousness that the only way you could be allowed to remain here is to what?
08:00To be Muslim. This is the safe haven for Islam now. What about everyone else? It's always Islam and the charge of violence. Islam and the charge of violence. The default in Islam is very clear in the Qur'an. Allah Azza wa Jal said,
08:19If they, whoever they may be, are inclined to peace, then you too incline to peace and put your trust in Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. You know, sometimes they like to bring up the ayah,
08:35Fight those adjacent to you from the disbelievers. So is it because they're adjacent to you? So Islam's foreign policy is, whoever shares a border with you is the next target. That sounds like being bent on global domination.
08:49Exactly what the Islamophobes say. Or is it because they are adjacent to you and are kuffar, right? It's because they're disbelievers. Ibn Taymiyyah rahimahullah and others, they say the Prophet never fought anyone on the basis of religion.
09:04It was always on the basis of aggression. So this ayah also sounds general. Fight those adjacent to you. But this was particularly regarding the empires that had initiated aggression that were next door to
09:17this budding, emergent, nascent Muslim civilization, Rome and Persia. Why Rome and Persia? Because they were tyrannical regimes. You know, structured tyranny had to be broken, had to be fought.
09:32Because if it is not opposed, everybody suffers. This wasn't a hard and fast rule for everyone. We even know there's one hadith in Sunan Abi Dawud, Abu Suqayna radiyallahu anhu wa rahimahullah.
09:46He narrates on behalf of one of the sahaba radiyallahu anhu, where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said, and this requires a little bit of brain power, think with me. He says,
09:57da'ul habasha ma wada'ukum wa utrukut turka ma tarakukum. Leave the Abyssinians alone so long as they leave you alone and leave the Turks alone so long as they leave you alone.
10:12Why these two? So the Abyssinians were a kingdom, the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. They were disbelievers, right? They're Christians. They're not believers in Islam. And they are a regime, sort of, they're a kingdom,
10:26they're a bureaucracy, they're structured. But they were not tyrannical. We know that it was a just kingdom. Clemency was, you know, baked into its policies. The Muslims found asylum there from their persecution. So why fight them?
10:39And the Turks, the Turks are not present-day Turkey. I mean, their roots can go back to that. But, you know, the Turks were nomadic tribes, essentially at the foot of the Himalayas. People in Turkey today are from the Turks. That's why they also call it East Turkistan, right?
10:54Far east at the western border of China. So the Turks were nomadic tribes, even if they were tyrannical. For argument's sake, they were not a regime. Like, they were not suffocating others. You just get up, pick up your tent, and move over five blocks, and you're fine.
11:09Problem solved. And so this reminds you that Islam's stance, what is Islam's stance on warfare? Islam's stance on the use of force. It is the stance of any one nation that has an army,
11:24which is every nation out there. You gotta remember that. Like, at the most fundamental level, every single country of the world agrees that there is a use of force that is justifiable
11:38in their imaginations. Or else why have an army? That sounds like a waste of money otherwise. And so the pacifists in this world, they actually don't exist in the real world. Someone that believes no matter what,
11:53I will never use force. I will never condone violence. There's no such thing as something worth fighting for. Those people don't exist. They are very, very few, and they're not very consequential
12:04because of that purist principle of theirs. So use of force is a given. Warfare being a necessity of life sometimes is a given, or else you get overrun.
12:17Like, what's the real issue here? The issue is what is the justification of the warfare, and then what are the rules of engagement? What does ethical warfare look like? In Islam, the justification,
12:32sometimes we overreach with the issue of defensive versus offensive, and we're too rigid in that classification because sometimes, as I just said, the best defense is a good offense.
12:45So not every offense is sort of oppressive. Not every offense is unjustified. Sometimes the offense is a preemptive strike. It is a form of defense. And so the way I like to frame it
12:58is the justifications in the Qur'an are twofold. Sometimes they're defensive, but they are always protective, even if it means going on the offensive to protect yourself or others. Clear?
13:13Sometimes defensive, always protective. Defensive where? Surah Al-Baqarah, Allah says, وَقَاتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ الَّذِينَ يُقَاتِلُونَكُمْ وَلَا تَعْتَدُوا
13:25And fight in the path of God those who fight you. Self-defense. And do not transgress. You know, if it's like fight the world, then where is don't transgress? That would sort of be incoherent.
13:39That's the first one, defensive. The other one is in Surah An-Nisa, where Allah Azza wa Jal says, وَمَا لَكُمْ لَا تُقَاتِلُونَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ What is with you that you don't fight in the path of Allah?
13:51وَالْمُسْتَضْعَفِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ وَالنِّسَاءِ وَالْوِلْدَانِ And for the sake of the oppressed among the men and the women and the children. الَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا أَخْرِجْنَا مِنْ هَٰذِهِ الْقَرْيَةِ الظَّالِمِ أَهْلُهَا
14:05Those who say, O our Lord, remove us, save us from this wicked town or town of oppressive people. وَاجْعَلْ لَنَا مِنْ لَدُنْكَ وَلِيًّا وَاجْعَلْ لَنَا مِنْ لَدُنْكَ نَصِيرًا
14:19And grant for us a protector from you, grant for us a support from you. That's sort of protecting others. Because self-defense could also be selfish. I only protect myself and I mind my business. Right?
14:32Protective of the vulnerable sectors of society is also a defense of others, a protection of others. And you know, the track record of Islam, we're human beings, Muslims are human too,
14:45but the track record of Islam by and large shines radiant compared to the other major civilizations of the world. You know, one citation I have here for you
14:57is here the citation of a Syrian patriarch, so the head of the Orthodox Church, Michael the Elder. He was a... Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, you know, in Syria.
15:11He writes 500 years after Islamic rule. So Muslims have been in Sham, have conquered Sham, liberated Sham, greater Syria for 500 years. So it's not like, you know, the propaganda before a war, we're coming to bring you guys
15:26freedom or we're coming to bring you guys democracy or we're coming to bring you guys X or Y or Z. This is 500 years into it, right? You know, true colors come out, naivety sort of is gone at that point.
15:38He says, after the Lord of Vengeance witnessed the evils of the Roman Empire, you know, the Roman Empire was Catholic. This patriarch is Orthodox Christian, Eastern Christians, right?
15:51He says, after the Lord of Vengeance witnessed the evils of the Roman Empire, he sent us the Ishmaelites, he means the Arabs, from the south to deliver us from their tyranny.
16:03Deliver the Christians from the tyranny of the Roman Catholics. The Ishmaelites, meaning the Muslims. So the justification, that's the justification. Then there are the rules of engagement, the rules of ethical warfare.
16:18And then Islam sort of, you know, 1400 years ahead of the game. First and foremost, non-combatants, not Geneva Charters, not sort of, you know, the World
16:31League comes together and talks about how to, you know, repatriate after the cessation of hostilities, you know, the war. Non-combatants on the tongue of the Prophet ﷺ, even if they are part of the army, they
16:42are to be treated with exemplary kindness and treatment, kind treatment. So he says, what is Al-Asif? You know, Al-Asif is what? It's like the guy who's part of the army but he's not fighting.
16:52Like the priest that sort of is there to lift the morale of the army and bless them in their sort of liturgy, their religious rituals. The guy shepherding the sheep, who's essentially the chef, brings the animals so that we can slaughter one per day and feed the troops, right?
17:07None of these get touched. And you don't kill a woman and you don't kill a child. And he forbade that we kill animals, for example. You know, animals in Islam are only killed for?
17:21For food. Or you're being attacked by a wild animal and the only way to defend yourself is to kill it, right? That's it. In fact, forget animals, even trees. When Allah ﷻ says in the Qur'an,
17:33مَا قَطَعْتُمْ مِنْ لِيْنَةٍ أَوْ تَرَكْتُمُوهَا قَائِمَةً عَلَىٰ أُصُولِهَا فَبِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ Those trees that you cut down during that battle expedition, it was by Allah's consent.
17:45In other words, it's as if you need Allah's consent to even cut down trees, meaning unless of necessity, Allah does not permit you.
17:55And then, even if you're a combatant, this is of the rules of engagement in Islam, even if you're a combatant and you are promised safety, for whatever reason, right? You're promised safety.
18:09You are granted safety regardless of who promised it to you. You know, this is part of Islam's ethical charter, if you will. The Prophet ﷺ said, وَيَسْعَى بِذِمَّتِهِمْ أَدْنَاهُمْ
18:23The least of the Muslims extends the promise of security, meaning what? You have an eight-year-old, the scholars mention this example in their books.
18:33You have an eight-year-old that said, the commander or my dad or whatever said, come inside, you're safe. They're safe. No one can touch them because Muslims stand by their principles.
18:47Even if this eight-year-old was mistaken, and he should not have done that, we're going to have to honor it. In fact, they said, being put under the presumption of safety is equivalent to safety, otherwise it's going to be said that Muslims are treacherous.
19:01They give an example in the Fiqh books that if a Muslim is standing on top of a fortress like a watchtower, and the combatant enemies are outside, and he says to the man outside,
19:13if you're a man, come inside and face me. And he understands, you're good. Come inside. I promise you'll be all right. Language barrier.
19:23No one's allowed to touch him because he's under the presumption that he's safe. A third example, because I used to collect these from the Fiqh books, they said, if 5,000
19:37enemy combatants each claimed, I was the one that was promised safety, and there is no way to identify which one was actually promised safety, it would have to apply to
19:50all 5,000 of them. You know, people who bring these charges, you know, up to the Muslims, the first thing
20:03you do want to, like, checklist for, inventory for, are they Jewish or Christian? Because if they're Jewish or Christian, you should familiarize them with their books.
20:15Like you just compare this with what Moses supposedly said to the armies in the book of Deuteronomy. He said, when you enter the town, you kill the man, the woman, the child. You kill the ox.
20:30You kill the animals. You will leave nothing behind except the virgin girls who have never laid with a man before. You may take them for yourself.
20:41And then in the book of Joshua, like another prophet in the Bible, right, he commanded on three separate occasions, in Jericho and in two other cities, that when you go there,
20:52you kill every breathing creature, and they in fact did that, 12,001 city and so on and so forth, according to the Bible, and you burn the city to the ground, right?
21:03So like the contrast, like if you make a comparison table about like what are the justifications of war, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and then what are the ethics of war, Islam, Judaism,
21:14Christianity, and then like how do you treat sort of combatants or prisoners of war between these three? The contrast is shocking. Like you sit there and you wonder, like, how in the world could anyone ever speak to us, question us on this stuff?
21:26Like how did the tables get turned so bad on us Muslims? And that brings us to the famous line that you should always remember, whether it's the
21:36charge of oppressing women or the charge of being inherently violent, very often every accusation leveled against us is in fact a what? A confession from them, from them to us.
21:49It's actually them projecting what their civilization is guilty for. So that's hadith one. Hadith two, which is the ninth hadith in the Nawawi collection, where the Prophet ﷺ,
22:03as Abu Hurairah radiAllahu anhu narrated, said to us, مَا نَهَيْتُكُمْ عَنْهُ فَاجْتَنِبُوهُ Whatever I have prohibited you from, فَاجْتَنِبُوهُ avoid it altogether.
22:17جَنْب is a side, meaning put yourself on the complete opposite side of it. Avoid it altogether. وَمَا أَمَرْتُكُمْ بِهِ فَأْتُوا مِنْهُ مَا اسْتَطَعْتُمْ
22:27And whatever I command you with doing, then do of it as much as you can, do of it as best you can. فَإِنَّمَا أَهْلَكَ الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِكُمْ
22:40For nothing destroyed the people before you except كَثْرَةُ مَسَائِلِهِمْ وَاخْتِلَافُهُمْ عَلَىٰ أَنْبِيَائِهِمْ
22:50But their excessive questions, too much questioning, and their disagreements with their prophets. So let's split this into two parts. The first part is, what I've prohibited you from, avoid it altogether.
23:05And what I've commanded you with, do as much of it as you can. What does that sound like? What's more important, fulfilling the commands or abstaining, avoiding the prohibitions? Tell me.
23:19It sounds like abstaining from the prohibitions is more important, right? You're disagreeing. I like.
23:33That is the philosophically seasoned answer. So should a Muslim be more focused on fulfilling the commands, fulfilling the obligations, or avoiding the prohibitions? Few thoughts you want to keep in mind.
23:47First of all, the commands are greater in Islam. Just hold your thought for a second on the hadith. The commands are greater. The scholar said, look at the pillars of Islam. They're almost all dos, not don'ts.
24:01The shahadah is the greatest act. It's a do. Salah is a do. Zakah is a do. Siyam is a don't. Hajj again is a do. Right? For the most part. Or look at salah in particular.
24:14What is more important? Performing the salah or abstaining, avoiding the prohibition of wine. Performing the salah?
24:24Because avoiding wine, the ayah says, it is so that you can be present in your salah. That's of the major objectives of maintaining your sober self, right? Or look at, here's another one.
24:38Look at Iblis, Shaytan, rejecting the command, right? And then Adam, alayhi as-salam, violating the prohibition. Which was worse?
24:52The non-performance of the command of prostration was worse, was a bigger mistake than the failure to abstain from the prohibition of eating from the tree.
25:06And so the commands are greater. That is what caused the scholars to read this hadith and say, this hadith primarily applies to the commands that are not obligatory, because that's the thing.
25:20Commands here doesn't automatically mean obligations, because I can command like I'm emphasizing its importance, recommending it to you emphatically, or I can command, meaning I'm binding it on you, mandatorily. Is that a word?
25:34It is now. So it primarily applies to the sunan. Also, it primarily applies to the sunan, because he said, do of it as much as you can,
25:46and the obligations, we can all do them, right or wrong? Like the obligations in Islam, most of them are within the capacity of most of us, right or wrong?
26:00So that's another reason why. But let us say it applies to the obligations. Even if do as much as you can is referring to obligations, okay, it can still mean, because
26:14the obligations are more important, because in that case, it's as if it's saying, stay with me here. If you can't do the obligation, still do as much of it as you can, because it's that important.
26:29It's not an all or none. And we find that in the command of the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam with praying standing, if you cannot, then don't pray. No, he said, then pray sitting. If you cannot, then pray lying down. So that's of what underscores the importance of the obligations is that if you can't do
26:44them at 100, you're still expected to do them at 90. They don't just go. Okay, now, most of you said, but it seems to be emphasizing the prohibitions here.
26:56So the firmness with the prohibitions, why is there such a firmness, avoid them altogether. The scholar said, it's because the prohibitions are usually never really contingent on capacity.
27:10Like staying away from something doesn't require physical strength, just strength of will. Doesn't require any finances, right? It is just, you're not doing something.
27:22So the firmness on the prohibitions is because it's within all of our capacities to avoid the prohibitions. Is that clear? You know, that's the beauty of this hadith.
27:35That's why this hadith is of the 40 that every Muslim has got to know, because this hadith is telling you, you may think you can't avoid the prohibitions, but you're underestimating yourself. And Allah is telling you, I don't want you to underestimate yourself.
27:46You're far more capable than you think. I can't sort of resist sleep and get up for Fajr. Actually, you really, really can. I promise you, you can.
28:00Just try it and before you pray, just open the window and look at those people outside walking their dog at 5 a.m. before they go to the gym at 5.30, before they get their
28:11coffee at 6 and hit the road for work at 6.20. You're actually far more capable as a human being than you think, right? But you have to be given enough of a reason. Don't tell me you can't wear hijab.
28:26You really, really can. Don't tell me you can't stop visiting those dirty websites. You can. There's just a weakness in your willpower right now, but it's within your capacity to do it. That's a big part of what this hadith is saying.
28:38There's a weakness in your commitment to Islam. There's a moral weakness that you need to work through. That's what this hadith is uncovering for us, peeling away the layers with.
28:50You know, and the firmness with prohibitions is also so valuable because prohibitions are actually the true differentiator between God-fearing people and everyone else.
29:04You see, because people could be fulfilling whatever commands they feel like doing because they feel like doing it. You know, like the good deeds of Islam or even the good deeds that are delivered to us by our reasoning.
29:19It feels good to do good. That's why you will find an atheist doing good, right? But who will stay away from evil? The person observant of God.
29:31That's why firmness on the prohibitions is so emphasized. Sahl ibn Abdillah al-Tustari, rahimahullah, he used to say,
29:40الحسنات يعملها كل بر وفاجر Good deeds are done by the good-doer and the evil-doer. The righteous guy and the corrupt guy all do good deeds.
29:54ولا يجتنب المحرمات إلا صديق And no one stays away from evil deeds except someone who truly believes in this religion and truly confirms that Islam is true.
30:08You get it? No one's going to pick something to do to tell themselves, I'm not so bad, I do X and Y and Z. Even the psychopath will be like, I feed my animals, I never let my dog go hungry.
30:19I always change his litter or whatever else we do for our pets, right? And this is why Abdullah ibn Umar رضي الله عنه, he used to say,
30:27لأن أرد دانقاً من حرام أحب إليّ من أن أتصدق بمائة ألف
30:35For me to refrain from, avoid, which prohibition, an unlawful income in the form of one danaq. Danaq is a currency, one dollar, right?
30:46It's more beloved to me than doing an act of charity with 100,000 of them. I'd rather avoid one haram dollar than donate 100,000 dollars. Why?
30:58Because 100,000 giving them could just be something I do for myself. People do that all the time. But what makes you a worshipper of Allah is the fact that you respect His boundaries.
31:10The Prophet ﷺ said to one man, اتقِ محارم الله تكن أعبد الناس Respect the boundaries of God, you will be the most devout worshipper of all people.
31:25That's the true worshipper. There are people that pray. There are people that donate. There are people that do umrah every year. People that perform hajj all the time, right? But there's no improvement.
31:38So you're doing the actions. You're supposed to be leveraging them to be able to avoid the prohibitions. Don't get sedated or complacent by them. You're going to keep doing them to break your ego,
31:51to sort of get you to submit on better levels to Allah. But how do you measure if you're actually submitting to Allah or yourself? It's the prohibitions. Is it clear? Does that make sense?
32:02These acts should improve you in your recognition of Allah's boundaries. Because if you're just selectively doing what you want from the religion, then you're doing that for you. It's on your terms. That's not called submission. That's not Allah's term.
32:16That's not really observant of Allah عز وجل. You could be doing it for your own sense of, you know, prestige with people. Or forget the people. Doing it for your own sense of self-respect. I see myself above doing this. Right? Moral elevation.
32:30I don't do what other people do. Right? You want to just say it to yourself, even in the dark. And then it went on to say, and it's obviously very related. Your excessive questioning and your disagreeing with your Prophet
32:44is what destroyed you, O people of old. And so this ummah as well has to be aware of this. You know the story of Banu Isra'il? Just as one example. Slaughter a cow. Which cow? That one.
32:59What color? That one. What kind of cow? Retired or sort of like a labor cow. They kept sort of asking question after question after question. Foot dragging. What does it mean, don't ask questions?
33:10He's trying to highlight to them ﷺ that if you were just to keep yourself busy with acting on the previous answers, you wouldn't have much time to ask too many other questions.
33:23Like stop just asking questions for questions. You know Ibn Abbas, the great companion? He said, I've never seen anyone better than the companions of the Prophet ﷺ.
33:35And they only ever asked him for 12 clarifications. They only asked him about 12 issues. And they're all found in the Qur'an. You know there's places in the Qur'an where Allah says, They ask you about the lunar months.
33:50About combat. Menstruation. What do we spend in charity? How much? 12 questions are there. Right?
34:04Questions like this. He said, of course there's other questions. They asked him in the sunnah as well, right? But he's highlighting the scarcity. Like they asked such few questions because whenever they got an answer, it automatically meant what?
34:18A commitment to act on that answer. It wasn't just like, okay, here's my next question. He would actually stipulate that on them ﷺ. Like in Sahih Muslim, Anas ibn Malik said,
34:31We were forbidden from asking questions to the Prophet ﷺ to such an extent that we would love it when a Bedouin man would come into town and ask the things that we were too shy to ask
34:45or sort of didn't find it was our place to ask. In one narration that they actually bribed him with a shirt to go ask a question X or Y or Z because they weren't sure if that question was allowed or not. Also in Sahih Muslim,
34:57An-Nawwas ibn Sam'an said, I lived in Medina for an entire year and nothing prevented me from migrating there. So like declaring my hijrah.
35:10Except the prohibition on asking questions. I wanted to stay an outsider so I had a little bit more leeway with the Prophet ﷺ. Right? In one hadith also, they kept asking him unnecessary questions.
35:24Frivolous questions. He came out to them ﷺ and he said, Ask me whatever you want. And people started asking like wild things. Where's my camel? Who's my father? Where am I going on the Day of Judgment?
35:37And he even mentioned to a man, Your father is actually so-and-so. A man who everyone thought was his dad. And so Umar ibn al-Khattab came and fell on his knees and said, Ya Rasulallah, Ya Rasulallah, we testify you're the Messenger of God. We testify you're the Messenger of God.
35:52Because Umar noticed that this wasn't sort of like okay, question spree, ask whatever you want. Ask me anything. It was actually, you're going to find out how dangerous this is to have a Prophet in your midst
36:06and to act like sacred knowledge is some intellectual luxury. That's not what this knowledge is about. So Umar caught it. And he begged him to sort of like close the door. Sallallahu alayhi wa alihi wa sallam. And so this hadith is really about
36:19learning to ask the right questions. For the right reasons. Not just for the sake of. But to act on them. You know the Qur'an speaks many times about people who used to ask questions to stump.
36:33Right? Oh Jesus, the son of Mary, is your Lord capable of bringing a table spread down upon us from the skies? Surah Al-Ma'idah. Right? Or when Surah Al-Kahf came down,
36:47Allah told us that they are asking you about the story of the boys in the cave. And they themselves are asking to stump you. And they're disputing about frivolous matters in the story. They say three and the dog was four. And they say five and the dog was six.
37:01And they say seven and the dog was eight. Qul rabbi a'lamu bi-'iddatihim. Tell them my Lord knows better how many they were. Allah didn't even tell them the actual number. Because you guys dropped the whole plot at that point. When you're asking questions like this
37:15with the intention of stumping. By the way this can happen in Islam as well. When you learn to stump others. Yes? Also of the questions that are prohibited so we can wind down here is when you ask a question
37:29to escape an obligation. Right? You're seeking to escape obligations. So Abdullah ibn Umar was approached.
37:43He was approached by a man that asks him what should we do with the black stone. He said I saw the messenger of Allah ﷺ yastalimuhu, touching it wayuqabbiluhu and kissing it.
37:57He said to him what if the crowds push me away. Like what if I get there but it's too crowded and so I can't make it to the black stone. He said to him you take what if and toss it in Yemen.
38:11Stop with the what ifs. Stop with the hypotheticals. Focus on what I told you. Go there. If you can't come back and say I wasn't able to. You're going to say but that's not efficient. No it is efficient. Because more often than not with this mentality
38:25you'll be getting things done. Ask about real scenarios. Zayd ibn Thabit as well. He would say, did it take place? They'll say no because when it takes place come ask me.
38:39Another reason why you shouldn't be asking questions is when you're asking out of hyper technicality. You know more righteous than thou. When you're actually not that strict on yourself but you want to
38:53act like you're so strict and pious because of the questions that you ask. This is actually a sign of lack of piety or fake piety. I'll give you a few examples. The Prophet ﷺ
39:07said to the people, Allah has prescribed upon you that you must perform Hajj. A man stood up and said, Ya Rasulullah, every year Why are you asking this? I told you perform Hajj. You perform Hajj.
39:21He said to them, if I would have said yes to the every year question it would have become mandatory and you would not have been able to. Stop. Just perform your Hajj that was asked of you and that's it. Abdullah
39:35ibn Umar he was approached by a man at Hajj and the man said to him what is the ruling on the blood of fleas?
39:49Mosquitoes. Fleas. So Ibn Umar said to him, where are you from? He said, I'm from Iraq. He said to him, you killed the son of the
40:03messenger of Allah ﷺ. You people, your people killed either you directly or you didn't stop them. You killed the grandson of the Prophet ﷺ. You spilled his blood and you're asking me about the blood of fleas.
40:17Right? You need to be honest with yourself. Be a little bit genuine. You're not as strict as you think. We do this a lot. We really do. You talk about, like, halal meat. How halal is this meat?
40:31And you sort of debate into 2am about like halal stickered versus halal certified versus machine slaughter versus hand slaughter but you consume the flesh of human beings all the time with your backbiting. You're not really very careful about haram meat
40:45because you eat human flesh. You're a cannibal. Right? With your ghibah and your namimah. There's something that needs to get checked there. That's the idea. You're asking about the blood of fleas and like you could have snakes in your heart.
40:59You wake up with them in the morning and you go to sleep with them at night and you have no idea what's happening inside. You're acting like you want the extra answer to be extra careful. You're not actually as careful as you claim or as you may think you are.
41:13Like didn't the Prophet ﷺ say for instance, بِحَسْبِ امْرِئٍ مِنَ الشَّرِّ أَنْ يَحْقِرَ أَخَاهُ الْمُسْلِمَ It's enough of evil in a person to despise his Muslim brother. Enough evil
41:27meaning what? To finish you for good. Maybe you're done. Right? Because of what you've left in here of hatred for your fellow Muslim for instance. The person who prays by your side or your own family member and so on and so forth.
41:41This is what this is about. I'll read to you one final narration where Abdullah ibn Mas'ud رضي الله عنه said to the people كيف أنتم إذا لبستم لبستكم فتنة
41:55يهرم فيها الكبير ويربو فيها الصغير What will it be like if you become blanketed one day with such a fitna, such a trial that
42:09the young person in it grows old and the old person in it grows senile meaning you're sort of blanketed with confusion and chaos and widespread misguidance and you can't shake it off
42:23and it stays with you for years on end So they became very scared. They said when would this happen? And he said to them إذا ذهبت علماؤكم وكثرت قراؤكم It will be an age wherein
42:37your scholars will die off and your preachers or reciters will become many وَقَلَّتْ فُقَهَاؤُكُمْ وَكَثُرَتْ أُمَرَاؤُكُمْ
42:51And your jurists those who truly understand the religion not just legal scholars will be few and your leaders will be many Everyone's being a leader, acting like a leader trying to take out the next guy to be a leader
43:05وَقَلَّتْ أُمَنَاؤُكُمْ And the trustworthy among you will become few and scarce وَابْتُغِيَتِ الدُّنْيَا بِعَمَلِ الْآخِرَةِ And the actions of the hereafter will be tokenized
43:19for worldly advancements وَيُتَفَقَّهَ لِغَيْرِ الدِّينِ And people learn for other than their religious commitment They're learning as an intellectual luxury They're learning as a social currency
43:33Not for actually growing in their relationship with their Lord سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى This is why Imam Ahmad رحمه الله They saw him speaking a lot and always sort of praising
43:47a man by the name of Ma'ruf al-Karkhi رحمه الله One of the early Zuhhad and Ubbad great worshippers, devotees, ascetics of his age And they said to him, Imam, you're always talking about Ma'ruf
44:01but Ma'ruf is like he's not known for his knowledge he's not like a tier-one scholar He's all about getting to where Ma'ruf got He has the very basis of knowledge عنده أصل العلم
44:15He said خَشْيَةُ اللَّهِ The fear of God That's what real religiosity looks like Truly God-fearing person We're learning and learning and learning to try to get there He got there And so the bottom line of the hadith
44:28is you know a lot And so, just stay genuine to Allah and get to work with what you have and when you ask questions ask about immediate issues ask for clarifications en route to your commitment
44:41to act on those clarifications and beware of the gap widening between what you know and what you do Make sure you do what Allah commanded of obligations and as much as you can of the recommendations
44:54and to honor and respect and avoid Allah's prohibitions سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى جزاك الله خيراً وصلى الله وسلم وبارك على نبينا محمد والله تعالى أعلم Al-Fatiha
