Captioning provided by MUHSEN (www.muhsen.org)
You know, people always ask you, "What's your story?
What's your explanation?"
Especially, if they're non-Muslim.
And I always catch myself saying things like,
"Oh, but I'm still the same person."
And as soon as I say that,
I just feel so like, "Am I?"
(dramatic music gradually intensifies)
(light switch clicks)
Allahuma innee a'udhu bika min al-faqri wal-qillati
wadh-dhila
wa a'udhu bike min an adhlima aw udhlam
So there's this notion in Islam of liberation
and the more that you immerse yourself in servitude
to Allah Subh'anahu Wa Ta-A'la
in submission to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
the more freedom you actually experience.
And so, let's start with two things.
You've got freedom from the burden of social validation,
the need to be accepted, right?
And then you've got the other side of that coin,
which is the fear of ridicule.
And they both stem from the same place,
but they have different manifestations.
Now in the case of Ibrahim, Alayhis salaam,
his torture, his ridicule,
the harm that comes his way is much later.
You have a whole journey of Da'wah,
of calling his people to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And I want you to think
about how frustrating this could be.
Imam Kathir Rahimahullah Ta'ala says he's
Afsahul anbiya
he's of the most eloquent of the prophets.
He's literally the example of how to do Da'wah, right?
How to call people to God.
You see the way he calls his father.
The methodology is laid out for us.
And now he does Daw'ah to his father
and he has all the tools,
but at the end of the day
they didn't have the hearts for it.
It wasn't a lack of tools on his part.
It was a lack of heart on their part
and their willingness to accept it.
But imagine being in the society and doing everything right
and not having a single person to affirm you.
Lut, Alayhi Salam, his nephew, goes on somewhere else.
His wife Sara does not come until later on in his journey.
So he's got years upon years where it's just him
despite being as eloquent as he is,
despite having the power of those tools
that Allah gave him with a powerful message.
Have you ever been in a situation
where you wanted to do the right thing
but you felt alone in that?
You didn't have anyone to affirm you.
And what do you take from the story?
This idea of trying to do the right thing
but not having anyone around you to affirm you?
- I mean, I was a very vastly different person
before I accepted Islam.
So it was like, "Whoa, you're accepting Islam.
Who will you become now?"
You have to continue to practice.
And that practice comes with some of that adversity.
- So let me ask you this.
Was there a moment in your journey
like you became Muslim where you felt the sweetness
of pleasing Allah when no one else got it?
- Yes.
I mean, every day I read,
I mean I felt like I was a better person in my community.
I felt like I had changed my life.
Like I literally felt like I am a new person.
I can do things differently than the way they were before.
And I can be someone else.
So yeah, that moment of just being there
and then years later going to Hajj
and being like, "Oh man, I really arrived."
Like, I really reached a pinnacle in my deen
where I made a lot of right decisions
and Allah allowed me to make these good decisions
and Islam saved me from, you know, jahiliyah,
whatever it is that was in front of me before Islam.
- Mashallah, beautiful.
Anybody else have anything you wanna share?
Just sort of about that moment
of pleasing Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala?
And I would imagine for sisters in particular
that that's a daily struggle, right?
You walk into a place
and you're the only obviously Muslim person there.
And you sort of learn that, "You know what?
"I'm doing this for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
"and no one else."
- I mean, going off his story about conversion
even as a born-Muslim,
I always think about
how we go through our own conversion in Islam.
I would say just when you move from like teens to adult
and then the next stage in life
there's that epiphany that you get
and you can finally taste that sweetness of pleasing Allah.
And for me I always say,
college can either make it or break you.
Alhamdulillah, I started my whole spiritual growth
was within those college years.
Is when I started wearing hijab.
And the opposite is that
I feel like I fell to that social validation
because as soon as I started wearing hijab,
which was around in the middle of my college years
people always ask you, what's your story?
What's your explanation.
Especially if they're not Muslim.
And I always catch myself saying like,
"Oh, but I'm still the same person."
And as soon as I say that,
I just feel so like "Am I?"
I wore the hijab for a reason.
I wore it to please the one and only creator.
And by saying that,
I feel like I just invalidated everything for society.
And so with hijab,
I'm sure we all have our own journeys.
It's just the common reminder
of why you're wearing the hijab.
it's not just a piece of cloth.
It's how you act and say, and that is what's grown in me.
I wasn't the same person anymore.
I was hopefully someone better in the eyes of Allah.
- Mashallah, that's profound.
And I wonder if there's even a moment of that
for again many of the companions
of the Prophet SallAllahu 'Alaihi Wasallam.
Like with Ibrahim, alayhis salaam,
the prophet's like, "I'm still the person you know."
and that's really what you mean.
It's not that, I have not grown.
It's that what made me beloved to you, my character,
our relationship, that's still there.
And I think that when you take that next step,
whether you're converting to Islam
or whether you are taking the next step in your journey
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
there could be that sort of environment where like,
"Oh, now she's gotten religious.
"Now he's gotten religious.
"Oh, I wonder if we can still talk about this.
"I wonder if we can still talk about that."
At some point, maybe it's like,
"You know what, actually, no.
"You should be uncomfortable
saying and doing certain things around me at this point.
Not because I'm condescending and judgemental
but because I'm principled
and I've got a clear pursuit and purpose
so I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable
but I am trying to make you more purposeful."
And you gotta find that fine line.
And a lot of times it's not that
as you're taking that next step,
that you're becoming harsher.
Hopefully you're not, but that other people
are a little insecure with your growth.
"Well, wait a minute,
how could you take this step without me?
How could you move forward?"
Let me ask you all a question, alright.
Have you ever found, and especially with you Antonio
I think I'll ask you this too,
in particular when you first took that step
and maybe someone was uncomfortable,
but they actually came to respect it.
- Yeah, so for me it was everyone in the neighborhood.
(laughs) So I grew up in DC.
I grew up in a really tough neighborhood, quote unquote.
And so accepting Islam and becoming a Muslim
it was just one of those things
that it happens in the black community
where you're like, man, you're growing,
you're making a conscious decision to be different
from what the group is.
In Islam your actions are your Da'wah.
They speak the loudest.
And that's what people
will be looking to see and understand.
And you want them... they're your family,
they're happy for you.
They see you progressing.
They see you've made an individual decision
to be different from how everyone else has grown up.
You decide to do other more positive things
because of your belief in yourself.
You believe Allah has your back
and now you feel this energy,
this courage and this positivity
and positive reinforcement to go to college
and do things that you normally probably
would not have pursued
had you not had Islam there and reading about Islam.
And all the beauty and the love of Islam.
And so in those situations, yeah,
you just really...
And people are just happy and they come back,
and even years later, like, "Man, I'm just so proud of you.
I know it's been a long time
but from that time to now."
I always give credit to Islam
for allowing me to have that opportunity.
- So, subhanallah.
One of the things that's very beautiful about this story
of Ibrahim, alayhis salaam, is that he becomes so revered.
So loved.
Everyone wants to claim him, right?
The three Abrahamic faiths.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam,
everyone wants to claim Ibrahim, alayhis salaam.
Even the Meccans had a drawing of a Ibrahim, alayhis salaam
in the Kaaba.
Complete pagans, right?
Everyone wants to lay claim to Ibrahim, alayhis salaam.
So he goes on to become beloved.
And of course, more than anything else
look how Allah elevates him, right?
Where it really counts, where it's most meaningful.
And this is a manifestation
of the hadith of the Prophet SallAllahu 'Alaihi Wasallam
where he said that whoever pleases Allah
by displeasing the people,
Allah will be pleased with that person.
And Allah will cause the people
to be pleased with that person as well.
And whoever pleases the people
by displeasing Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
Allah will be displeased with that person.
And Allah will cause the people
to be displeased with that person as well.
And the way the scholars describe that,
is when you're a person of principal
initially people might feel an aversion to you
because they don't like you calling them on their ways.
They don't like feeling challenged by you
even if it's just your trajectory, just your practice.
And maybe they enjoy the messy gossipy person
when that person's talking about someone else
or the person that drags them down when they're down.
But eventually they wanna move away from that person.
And they don't want anything to do with that person.
So it's like the opposite
of what the Prophet SallAllahu 'Alaihi Wasallam said,
man sam'a sam'allahu bihi
Whoever just causes
or seeks to cause people to hear of their good
Allah will cause people to hear of their bad.
And whoever shows off, wa' man yura yur'ilahu bih
whoever tries to show off their good,
Allah shows off their bad.
Allah will make an example out of them in that regard.
And this has implications in the dunya and in the akhirah.
In this life and in the next.
So you look at Ibrahim, alayhis salaam
you look at the prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam, right?
They tried to call him mudhamam,
the one who's humiliated, dispraised.
They did not want his name said in Mecca.
Now ash'haduana Muhammad rasoolullah
is shouted out throughout the world
at every single moment.
SallAllahu 'Alaihi Wasallam is a constant,
sending our peace and blessings upon him.
Allah says WarafaAAna laka thikrak
We have elevated your name
to the point that he is the most famous name in the world,
the most influential man in history
and the most revered man.
SallAllahu 'Alaihi Wasallam
And so you take this journey, this trajectory
and some of the scholars said
the most comprehensive of duas
when Zechariah, alayhis salaam, was praying for his son.
He said, waijAAalhu rabbi radiyya
"Make him oh my Lord, pleasing."
Pleasing to who?
Obviously, first and foremost,
pleasing to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
But if you're pleasing to Allah, then what happens?
If Allah loves you, then all the angels love you.
And all the inhabitants of the heavens love you.
And then the prophet, alayhis salaam, said,
yuddal'lahu qabbul fil'ard
That'll Allah places acceptance in the hearts of people.
Love in the hearts of people for that person.
That's not everybody,
that's people whose love is worth having.
Those are hearts that love for the right reasons.
And so they become pleased with you as well.
And that sort of leads into this journey
of Ibrahim, alayhis salaam.
That he learned from a very early age
to seek no one but Allah,
because he had no one around him
except Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
that was affirming him and praising him
as he was taking this journey to him.
So sister Sarah, how do you navigate
people being on a different path than you
and the pressure and the loneliness that comes with that?
- You know, Subhanallah, it's one of the most
difficult experiences to feel alone when you're trying to do
what you know is right,
but the people around you are not in support of that.
And that loneliness can be a very very difficult experience.
And we see that in the story of Ibrahim, alayhis salaam.
But one of the things that I think is incredibly helpful
when we think about this, is to, number one,
realize that the standard of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is that stability that we're looking for.
And if we're basing our standards
on the standards of society, on the standards of people,
it's going to be a very fluctuating situation.
Our identities are always going to be in flux,
our choices, our actions are always going to be changing
and that instability can be very disconcerting spiritually.
And then also psychologically, right?
So how do we combat that difficulty?
The Rasul, SallAllahu 'Alaihi Wasallam, tells us
that Islam began as something strange
and it will return to being something strange
to give glad tidings to the strangers.
But it's really important to acknowledge
that even though we know
that there are glad tidings given to strangers
to choosing that path,
that's pleasing to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
it's still really hard and it's okay that it's hard.
And that's part of the reward that it's really hard.
So acknowledging that as being the first thing.
And then the second acknowledgement is to realize
that our actions are what we're held accountable for.
So the people who are on a separate path
that we are wanting to not feel so alone in this path.
And we might be tempted toward that path.
In the end we're not going to be asked
about the path that they chose.
We're only going to be held accountable
for the path that we choose.
And so having that self-accountability
that we focus so much on what other people do,
but in the end that's not what matters,
what matters is what we do.
And then finally the third acknowledgement
that I think really helps with that feeling of loneliness,
is to realize that in the end,
when we submit in the way that
Ibrahim, alayhis salaam submitted,
and we choose that difficult path
of walking that path of loneliness,
then in the end realizing that that is for us.
That is that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala doesn't benefit,
or it doesn't take away from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
or benefit Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
which path we follow, but it benefits us.
And so that path is for us.
And when we acknowledge that, that what we're doing
this hardship that we're going through
is actually for our own benefit,
it tends to make that path of loneliness
a little bit easier Inshallah.
- So can you think back to a moment
where you were willing to seek Allah's acceptance
and risk people's judgment,
and how did you get through that moment?
Please share with us in the comments.
Captioning provided by MUHSEN (www.muhsen.org)