The note takers and the admins are very apologetic that these tafseer notes for nights 26 and 27 of Ramadan did not make it to you sooner. We do hope that you can forgive us on this final day of fasting for this delay.

Nightly Notes (27):

Tonight we have alhamdulillah ((all praise is due to Allah (SWT)) have finished reciting the Qur’an from cover to cover during this holy month of Ramadan. Allah (SWT) is the most kind, merciful, loving, compassionate, and highly giving to you and I. Tonight we are in a gathering surrounded by people of our faith who have done good, who are doing good, and who are wishing the best for themselves, their children, and their community. Such a gathering cannot be found just anywhere and everywhere in the world. People today are of the state of mind of “What do I benefit” from doing a given thing.

All of us gathered here tonight have a similar goal: focusing on Allah (SWT) and Rasulullah (SAW).

Tonight we recited Surah Kawthar (Ch. 108, Verse 1). Why was this verse and Surah revealed? Because there were a group of Kuffaar (disbelievers) laughing at Rasulullah (SAW). They were saying close to the following, “You have no sons, your little boys have passed away, what can your girls do?” They thought that ‘we got him ((Rasulullah (SAW)), we got the Muslims. Tomorrow we will be victorious’. Don’t let the disbelievers rejoice. We are 1.7 billion people strong, right? No! We are 1.7 billion people fragmented. Anyone can do whatever they want to Muslims today. Look at the Muslims in Palestine who are being killed and are dying. We keep saying, ‘Why don’t Muslims unite’. There are close to 49 Muslim countries, why can’t they unite? All of us are master texters and email senders. How many of us sent a text or an email to our Congressman, what about to our Senators?

Can anyone provide any proof that they have done this? Nothing! That is what we have done! Nobody (meaning you and I) are defending Muslims so if we can’t help others how can others help us?

This (global) problem began in our very own homes. Nobody stops us from attacking our own brother, sister, or neighbor. We lie about those close to us, we say things like, “You don’t know my brother”, he is like this and he is like that and people enjoy the gossip that we spread; they want to know about the ‘juice’ about this guy or that girl and we make it plenty easy by providing the fodder to attack our own blood brothers and sisters.

The problem then spread from families to communities to state to nation, and now finally, to the entire Ummah.

When will this stop? How long will this continue? We say to our children, you cannot marry so and so, they are not part of our tribe, they are not part of our culture. But yet we allow them to date a Christian boy/girl. ‘I’m going to make them Muslim, mom and dad’. That is what our children say and do and that is what we allow them to say and do. We say, ‘that girl is from Kenya, she’s from Somalia, she’s from Punjab so you can’t marry her’ but yet we allow them to go out with a Christian! Study the statistics of how many people go out of the fold of Islam. How many non-Muslim men and women convert and say, ‘I converted for you (to marry a Muslim), what’s in it for me?’

We have absolutely no problem with converts but at the same time, we must deal with this reality.

All of the problems out there in the world started in our own homes, families, community, society, nation, etc. and now it is like a raging fire burning over 1.7 billion people and we can’t do a DARN thing about it. Mothers and daughters are being killed and people are going to be worried that the Imam used the word ‘darn’. What kind of wimps are we? What kind of oppressors are we?

We need to take an active part in the global problems Muslims are facing all over the world. The time for being passive has long expired and Muslim men, women, children are all dying every single day because of our inactivity and our lack of lifting a finger to even send a text, a tweet, an email to help those in need.

The Jew is not the problem in Syria, Egypt, Palestine, etc. A Jew is doing half of what the Muslims would do to another Muslim. What a Muslim is doing is far more bad than what an outsider can do. It is an outsiders’ job to beat us up, to rip the hijab off of our sisters. But when a Muslim does it, it is a shame and an insult. Not only that but it is the most disgraceful thing. Allah (SWT) is forgiving to you and I, He is the most merciful. Abu Lahab was the most ruthless person, he hated Rasulullah (SAW) with every fiber of his being. But he did one good thing; when Thuwayba (RA) who was a slave girl of his came running breathless with the news that the house has a baby, a boy is born, his name is Muhammad (SAW) (at that point Rasulullah (SAW) was not a Prophet, we are just saying SAW out of respect) that he got so happy, in keeping with the traditions of that time when a bearer of good news came, they would free that slave, Abu Lahab freed her. Today if someone gives us good news we say to them that you are 10 minutes late, go back to work and work harder. We don’t want to give anything or spend anything. We are just takers and takers. Our children can’t even have a good meal. We tell to them, when are you going to get a job, when are you going to do something with your life… is that a father and mother?

Every single day he is punished (tonight we read Surah Lahab, Ch. 111) but on Monday, Allah (SWT) lowers his punishment because he freed Thuwayba (RA). Imagine, the worst of worst people to have ever lived. We’re talking about someone who took an active part in throwing intestines of camels on Rasulullah (SAW)’s back while he was in sajdah (prostration) in Makkah in front of the Holy Ka’aba! Fatima (RA) was 3 or 4 years old, she was just a baby, and with her baby hands while her father was in sajdah, she goes down and starts cleaning up Rasulullah (SAW)’s back from the filth the Kuffaar such as Abu Lahab, threw. Today we can’t send 1 text, 1 email to help Muslims suffering in the world. We want job security but how many of us are actually liquid? We act like we are but we are broke as broke. We have given ourselves a false sense of security with everything just on paper and we are losing our own defense in the process. Allah (SWT) lowers Abu Lahab’s punishment every Monday because of the kindness he showed to Thuwayba (RA) and for freeing her for bringing the good news of the birth of Rasulullah (SAW).

Tonight is an important night, it is part of the last 10 nights of Ramadan. Will there be no ease for us Muslims from Allah (SWT) if even Abu Lahab got ease?

Rasulullah (SAW) was once helping an old woman by carrying some of her things. As he was walking with her, she said, ‘there is a man in this area, he is bewitched, he is crazy, he is a poet, he is ruining our nation’… in short she was just giving it to him. He listens, and listens, and listens. Afterwards she says, ‘your father is blessed, where are you from, nobody helps a woman like me.’ Rasulullah (SAW) responds by saying, ‘I am the very Muhammad (SAW) that you are attacking. Did you see anything wrong with me? Any of your accusations true?’ She got the shock of her life and immediately said the Shahadah (testimony of faith).

If we want people to be a part of our faith it is by our actions, not speeches, not da’wah programs at universities – that all sounds wonderful and looks wonderful on paper. We talk of honesty and trust but we show the non-Muslims around us something else.

There is a hadith that says close meaning, “Beware of jealousy for verily jealousy destroys good deeds like fire destroys wood.” It’s a simple hadith, Rasulullah (SAW) said a little but the meaning was magnificent. Here’s an illustration: if we put a piece of firewood or charcoal in the middle of the masjid and lit it, the carpets would start burning. Then it would spread and before you know it the whole masjid is gone (may Allah protect us). Firefighters with their boots come in and then the respect of the masjid is gone. The entire area becomes consumed in negativity. The same thing is happening in our families. Brother is jealous of brother. Sister is jealous of sister. We say things like, ‘I wish you died, got murdered, when you go overseas I wish the plane goes down’. Nobody is free from this Hadith, even top people, such as scholars, get jealous of one another and do things to one another. Jealousy is consuming us to such a point that it is ruining our society, our culture, it is wiping away all of our good deeds. All of the good deeds we did in this month of Ramadan – giving sadaqah (charity), getting up early, reading Qur’an, giving zakah, praying Salaah, praying Taraweeh, being good to the poor, to the needy, etc. resulted in us increasing our spiritual bank balance.

Tomorrow morning we’ll go back to our lifestyles and give all of our good deeds away that we did this month so we must monitor this aspect of jealousy.

Just like fire destroys houses and masjids, jealousy is destroying our hearts. The remembrance of Allah creates tranquility in the heart and jealousy ruins our heart, our thinking, our body, it creates blood pressure and all sorts of negativity in our body.

The only one who benefits from jealousy is your enemy. The one you hate and are busy thinking about they are relaxing… isn’t this pure stupidity on our parts? Tonight is the 27^th night of Ramadan so we need to reflect on this.

An email was sent from a 19 year old girl who couldn’t come to the masjid tonight and she is crying as she is writing this email. She has 5 tattoos, body piercings, she has done things to herself and she says, “Imam, I know I am wrong, I have lost hope in my Allah (SWT) and in Rasulullah (SAW) and I feel like a disbeliever, but I still believe in La Ilaha ill-Allah” (I testify that there is no god but Allah). There is an ayah in the Qur’an wherein Allah says a very great sinner, a belligerent faasik (one who breaks Islamic law/s), a faajir (a wicked, evil-doer), those that do wrong upon wrong, if their sins piled up from the ground to the skies, if they made a sincere Tawbah (repentance), if they begged Allah (SWT), that they won’t go back to that wrong, Allah (SWT) will wipe out their sins as if nothing happened.

O you who have sinned, who had done every type of wrong, you not only looked at that boy/girl but you were kissing, not just kissing, but touching, not just touching but beyond, you did all that; then you oppressed yourself and went back home and texted, ‘hey babe, you were hot’, etc. and then you remembered Allah (SWT), you remembered you have an Allah (SWT), He is Most kind, He is Most forgiving, He is Most merciful, ‘O Allah it just happened, it was uncontrollable, I’m sorry’. Allah (SWT) says, “I will forgive you” – who is there that can forgive us? We can’t ask others for forgiveness because they will hold us accountable later on. Allah (SWT) is such that he will make you forget that you did that wrong.

Every single one of us has done wrong. There is a Hadith that says close meaning, if we did not do wrong, Allah (SWT) would wipe us out and create a group who would do istighfaar (seeking forgiveness) to Allah.

Let’s address the young boys now that the sisters have been addressed. There was a young boy from Shaam who used to come to the gathering of Umar (RA) and one day he didn’t show up. Umar (RA) asked ‘where is so-and-so’. The people replied, ‘O Umar, why are you asking about him, what is so special about him? He is partying, clubbing, drinking his brains out, he’s drinking like a fish. If you said salaam to him we wouldn’t even recognize you.’ Umar (RA) said to come and bring the scribe. Umar (RA) wrote a letter to the boy, beginning with Assalamu Alaykum, praising Allah and told the people to give the boy this letter when he is sober, do not give him this letter in a drunken state. The writers gave the letter to the boy. In a sober state, the boy started shivering and started going cold, why? Because before Umar (RA) sent that letter he said, ‘Let’s pick up our hands and make du’a that Allah (SWT) guide this young boy’. Before we give da’wah to our sons and daughters, let us pick up our hands and make du’a for ourselves, our community, that tomorrow can be a different light. It all depends on our sincerity. The boy sobered up, was given the letter, and he began reading, “The one that forgives every type of sin, the one that makes and accepts every type of Tawbah (big sin, small sin, big crime, small crime, little charity, a lot of charity) is Allah (SWT). But young man, also know well that while He accepts forgiveness, understand if you play with the system of Allah (interest, haraam, zina, lying, cheating, frauding, etc.) when He punishes, He will punish you so bad that nobody will be able to remove you from that punishment. He can extend and give you both good or bad. Young boy, know full well that Allah is the only one worthy of worship.’ Allah is the Most Merciful, Majestic, Loving, Watchful, responds to everything, Highly Generous, all strength is with Him, Truthful, Organizer, Restorer… He is always living and always will be.

The young boy started crying and made istighfaar that he would never again go to wrong. We are talking about people that sinned like no other. It is time we understand the value of istighfaar, our parents, our masjids, the Qur’an, Salaah, Umrah, Hajj, and doing good things. It is time for us to become kind, loving, and do good under the umbrella of Allah (SWT). If we did that we will enjoy success in both worlds, this world and in the Hereafter insha’Allah.

May Allah (SWT) help us and guide us at all times.