So the prophet ﷺ is being warned when people come to you and you give them a verdict make sure that you don't fall into their feelings.
Now it's not to say that the Quran doesn't care about how you feel. The Quran actually is very concerned with the sadness of people.
With the pain of people {وَيَشْفِ صُدُورَ قَوْمٍ مُؤْمِنِينَ} [9:14] Allah would even sometimes give revelation and say
"I gave this revelation so it would it would give cleansing and it would give healing to the feelings of a believing group of people."
Sometimes Allah will give revelation just to give us comfort. And there are many occasions of that in the Quran and the ‏سنة,
but the Shaitan's job is to actually change take everything beautiful and make it ugly. And to take everything ugly and make it beautiful.
So the ‏دين of Allah the laws of Allah actually came to protect us from the harm we can do to ourselves.
Just like a child right? A child has uncontrolled emotions. Uncontrolled desires.
If a child likes chocolate and they have the feeling that they want to eat chocolate all day and you say
"Well that makes them feel good just keep giving it to them." You are killing this child you are causing their dental problems
you are causing them to have stomach aches you are hurting them because you are following their feelings.
Well in a larger sense human beings can be childish. Human beings can actually act like
their feelings are "All I care about is how what I want to do just let me be happy doesn't matter what the word of Allah says."
and when we do that we are actually causing harm to ourselves.
So what Allah does is He teaches us that sometimes our own feelings are actually the biggest danger to ourselves.
The biggest danger to ourselves He says {وَأَمَّا مَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبِّهِ وَنَهَى النَّفْسَ عَنِ الْهَوَىٰ} [79:40]
the one who feared standing in front of his master and was able to stop them their own self from running into one feeling after the other.
Like they stopped their whims from dictating all of their actions. In the world of marketing I've given you this example before
when I was in business school in the world of marketing we studied like grocery stores and in grocery stores
the way they lay them out to this day I mean I studied it in like 1875, but whatever even nowadays it's the same
when you go into a grocery store most people go to the grocery store to get some milk some eggs and some bread
so you would think it's logical that they should put the milk eggs eggs and bread right at the entrance so people can come grab it
and go to the cash register but they put the milk bread and eggs are all the way on the farthest end as far away from the entrance as possible.
And the reason they do that is they want you to go through all of these products and your feeling will come
"I should just grab that I should just put that in here too put that in here too put that in here too."
They're hoping your whims dictate your judgements they're hoping for that. and then you'll notice at the exit it's the most unhealthy
products that taste the sweetest are right there at the cash register. Because as you leave just follow your taste.
Put some more candy in there. Put some tic tacs in there. Put some Twix or chocolate or whatever in there.
You see that? So the idea is that human beings by and large we have a feeling we just want to act on it.
Allah teaches us otherwise. He teaches us to control our emotions. So He says to His prophet
"The first warning is when you give them their judgments don't make your judgements bend to their feelings."
Don't make the judgements that Allah Has given are already taking into the into consideration what's best for you.
Based on your feelings even. He knows better about us than we know about ourselves. In one place in the Quran Allah even says
{أَتُعَلِّمُونَ اللَّهَ بِدِينِكُمْ} [49:16] you're going to teach Allah your religion.
You know better than Allah. Because sometimes we hear something Allah wants us to do and our immediate responses
"But what about..." And there is a counter in our head "No. No give me something else. That's not what I feel like.
It doesn't feel like it's good for me." Our feelings are stronger than even the word of Allah.
We have counters to it. So He warns him "First of all don't fall don't fall into their whims."
Then He says {وَاحْذَرْهُمْ} [5:49] "Be careful about them. Watch out for them."
And these are the people of the book that are coming and asking the prophet ﷺ questions about revelation but also anybody who
comes and ask him He says "Be careful of the ones who ask you." Because the ones who come to the religion sometimes they
become a majority or they become a huge number of people and then they say
"You know what we want this religion to fit in with the majority's opinion. Everybody is more comfortable if the verdict of Islam
was this way or that way. So let's just have enough people that can lobby and we can change the law of Allah just a little bit
or interpret it a little bit differently. So it fits in better with our community. It fits in better with our comfort zone.
But let's reinterpret all of this because we're not so comfortable with the old way of looking at things."
So He says {وَاحْذَرْهُمْ} [5:49] And then He teaches us in the scariest part the warning to the prophet ﷺ and therefore to us
when we seek answers in our religion He says {أَنْ يَفْتِنُوكَ عَنْ بَعْضِ مَا أَنْزَلَ اللَّهُ إِلَيْكَ} [5:49]
that they might actually put you into trial regarding some of the things Allah has revealed to you
they start testing you about some of Allah's revelation. In other words let me put it this way
you know when you're shopping for example if you're shopping for a home you're like "I like the neighborhood I like the first floor,
I'm not so sure about the second floor. I like all of this, I don't like this."
Or when you order food from a restaurant, you like most of what's on the plate, you leave some of the salad behind, you're like
"I'm not crazy about the salad." In other words, you pick. You don't like everything you like some parts. You take some parts
and we become consumers of the parts we like most. And we bring that attitude like a consumer to the religion
and say "I like the prayers. Those are pretty good in Islam but this whole this whole ربا thing you know it's little too inconvenient.
And these certain prohibitions on our diet, that's a little too much. And this is haram and this is mandatory also.
And these inheritance laws, if we follow these inheritance laws then I have to give my brother an equal share as myself
but I don't like my brother. Nobody likes my brother. Let's keep him out of the inheritance.
We can follow other parts of the law. But there are some parts of the law we're not comfortable with.
So let's leave those alone." And you know what people do? People come up with the the greatest scam.
They say "We're going to ignore the word of Allah when it comes to money ignore the word of Allah when it comes to certain halal and haram
but we'll go to ‏عمرة every year and we'll take pictures at the ‏ كعبة selfies with the ‏حرم behind us
because on judgement day we're going to collect those so we'll take a picture at the ‏حرم put ‏احرام on
and show people how spiritual you are because that's really important that's why we go there to take pictures."
Do that so that you feel good that you at least do something for Islam. while at the same time violating the major teachings of the religion
and what people do in in any religion in the psychology of religion Allah describes this in Surah An-Nisa He says
{إِنْ تَجْتَنِبُوا كَبَائِرَ مَا تُنْهَوْنَ عَنْهُ نُكَفِّرْ عَنْكُمْ سَيِّئَاتِكُمْ وَنُدْخِلْكُمْ مُدْخَلًا كَرِيمًا} [04:31] He says if you can stay away from the major sins
then the smaller ones Allah will overlook. The smaller ones you make ‏ استغفار Allah will overlook you know what people do?
They do the smaller good deeds while they want to hold on to major sins.
And they say since I'm doing these smaller good deeds you tell yourself "Then these majors Allah will overlook that
because look at least I'm memorizing the Surah. At least I came to Ramadan. At least I did that."
Like you decide and I decide what part of the word of Allah. What we're going to offer Allah is up to us.
We decide what the priorities are. That's not how this religion works. That actually starts to redefine our entire relationship with Allah.
Allah is the we are the slaves. The master tells us what's important and what's not.
The master tells us what's the mandatory requirement and what is the extra activity.
The master tells us what's absolutely impermissible and what's okay.
He decides that. We don't get to negotiate that on our terms.