Post on 03-Feb-2020
transcript
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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The Stories of Prophet Musa (as) and Egypt Today: Purifying the Self of the Inner Pharaoh
Dinner blessing: O Allah, thank You for the blessings of the trip, and for the safe
return, for the good works being done by good people, for the efforts of everyone
here in our community to make this work happen, for the fulfillment we feel, and the
fulfillment others feel. Thank You, Allah Swt, for the blessings of two new people
sitting in muraqabah, and for the love and affection of Dr. Aliyah, and we pray for
her health. We ask You, Allah, for the health for the members of our community, and
special prayers for Abdus Salaam and his family. We ask you Allah to give us
strength and means to expand the work and to keep our community whole. Amin
Suhbat: It’s fitting on my return from Egypt that I should be talking about the
Prophet Musa (as). When the Prophet Musa stood at the Red Sea with the less than
benign Pharaoh and his army following him, a corrupt individual at the end of a long
line of Pharaohs, I came to a conclusion while in Egypt about the whole pharaonic
culture, [based on] the very, very good history lesson I was getting from a 22 year
old boy named Abdul Halim. When Prophet Musa (as) stood in front of the Red Sea
with the pharaonic army behind him, my conclusion about the pharaonic culture in
general was that it’s only about death. Everything was preparation for death. Dying
didn’t mean anything except in the upper class people. The different cults would
change: sometimes of the sun, sometimes of night and darkness. Nonetheless, they
were all preparations for death.
Life was only this interruption in eternity. You only had this brief life in order to
prepare for death. In a strange way, one can look at this in a positive sense from an
Islamic / Sufic point of view. But the whole culture to me was very negative in the
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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sense that there was a disregard for life, as opposed to an affirmation of life. I won’t
get into the spaceships that brought the pyramids here…! At that time, as we
understand it, some of the people with Sidna Musa (as) began to question and
separate themselves. Some looked behind and saw only defeat. The Qur’an said:
“And when the two bodies saw each other, the people of Musa said, ‘We are
sure to be overtaken.’” But Musa (as) saw with the eyes of firasa, basira. Through
spiritual eyes, he saw through the illusions of all the difficulties, and the potential
obvious upcoming defeat. With his qalb directly connected to Allah Swt, in the midst
of an impossible situation…which was not uncommon among the ambiyā; we find it
with the Prophet Muhammed (sal) also… he saw Allah and said, “By no means. My
Lord is with me and He will guide me through.” And that is what happened.
Allah says in Qur’an:
Then We told Musa by inspiration, “Strike the sea with your rod.” And so
it divided, and each separate part became like the huge firm mass of a
mountain, and We made the other party approach thither. We delivered
Moses and all who were with him, but We drowned the others.
I just came back from Egypt. The Red Sea has gotten “bigger.” Pretty much everyone
in Egypt now is standing in front of the Red Sea. I don’t know if you want to call him
a tyrant, but there are those forces with an army standing at the back of the good
people. There are some who are very sanguine. Some are very negative about the
future; they don’t see any hope. I talked to some of those people and they say, “Well,
there’s nothing we can do.” But most people feel there’s hope. There are those who
are trying to see through other eyes, through the wall that is across the path of hope
and change. There are some who, even with the different tyrants at their back, as if
the Pharaoh had split into factions (the Salafi, the Iqwani, all the tyrants that are
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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there), there are those who said to me, not exactly in these words but definitely
indeed: “My Lord is with me and He will guide me through.”
At this crossroads in history as least in Egypt, it’s a good time to re-tell the story of
Musa (as). And to realize that things that happened historically in many places in
the world are relevant to today. I wish we were seeking more relevancy today about
what is happening in our own country. Going back just a few hundred years in our
history would be good; but we are not. Again, we are faced with the reality that
these stories are not just stories. These prophetic stories have lasted three, four
thousand years. They are not just stories, and they are not just metaphors. They are
analogical. They are relevant to today because the problems are not unique. They
come in every generation. These stories are an ‘āyat, isharat, as I was telling the
people the other day in Egypt, pointing us in a good direction, giving us a lesson for
the time and place we are living in.
In the next ‘āyat, Allah says: “Verily, in this is a sign, but most of them don’t
believe.” He’s telling us, this is not a story to be told; it’s a sign. Allah knows it will
be told as a story. After all, it’s not every day an ocean separates. It’s a sign of many
things. It’s a sign of the reality of the Divine. It’s a sign of the secrets of the world. It’s
a sign that evil doesn’t win, but is finally overcome, and that all obstacles we are
facing as individuals, challenges, crossroads in our lives are only illusions. They are
there to test us and test our will, and to test our resolve to be good spiritual human
beings, good Muslims, good Sufis, and good servants. They are also there to train us
in how to act, because those who came before us gave examples. And they are also
there for at-tazkiyat, to revive us and purify us. But most of all, they are signs that
goodness and success and fulfillment come from Allah Swt, from surrendering and
trusting in Allah Swt, from accepting that your fate is written to make good choices.
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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Trust in Allah Swt and do not be so attached to the world and worldly things; to the
worldly worries and the worldly desires; to the desires that are justifiable, and the
ones that make perfect sense; to the ones you feel you can have “along with,” or “in
addition to” the spiritual life. Know that the spiritual life always suffers unless you
put it first. And when it suffers to a certain degree, you forget about it. When you
forget about it, you are no better than the Pharaoh. When you forget about it, it is
your firstborn who will be taken. We see that many first-borns were taken in the
last 15 years in the wars in the Middle East that our country was fighting; and many
first-borns will be taken in the future, unless people surrender to Allah and trust in
Allah Swt.
It’s a vision of how one can meet the challenges and come to success, no matter what
the odds are, no matter what it seems to be; especially at the times when you think
your back is at the wall, or to the sea; when you are trapped and defeat is imminent,
when you have very little power against the armies that are assailing you. That’s
what it really seems to be for us. If we are really on the side of Allah, why does
victory not come easily? Some wonder why Allah doesn’t just give the good people
ease without struggle and without sacrifice. Everybody says, “It’s hard. It’s a
struggle. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can face this.” But the answer
is given by Allah. Allah tells us, when we are at these times in our lives—whatever is
driving it: our need for work, surety that we have to do something other than what
we are doing, or go somewhere we don’t really want to go—Allah says, and we
should pay attention:
And We did not send a prophet in a town but we overtook its people
with distress and affliction, in order that they might humble themselves.
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Unless we reach a state of tadaru / humility, we can’t really understand what this
path is about. It may have been over 3,000 years ago with Prophet Musa (as) and
the Pharaoh, but it is also today in someone’s life or in many people’s lives. There is
a purpose to hardship. It is to reach that state of tadaru / humility before Allah. It’s
not just simple humility. To understand the real concept of tadaru / humility,
imagine that you are in the center of a vast sea, and you are all alone on a boat. A
huge storm is coming, and the waves become like mountain surrounding you. Then
you turn to Allah at some point, and you ask Allah for His help. In that state of
submission/islam, in that state of need, awe, or total dependency and total
humility… what degree of need and humility and dependency and awe would you
really be in, if that were the situation for you? That’s tadaru. Your back is to the sea.
Whatever is bothering you: that is the sea, that’s what is coming at you.
Allah Swt says He creates hardship in order to grant us this gift of humility, and He
says, “Inna m’al ‘usri yusrā.” We have to understand, then, that ease is humility.
Ease is not just making things easy. With hardship comes ease. What is ease? Ease
is not necessarily the situation changing, or that the answer comes right away. Ease
is you become humble before Allah. When you become humble before Allah,
whatever the problem is goes away or it is solved. Allah says He creates hardship in
order to give us this blessing of humility, but it doesn’t need to make things hard for
us. He creates those situations in order for us to understand our qadr/ destiny, and
for us to reach a state of nearness to Allah, which otherwise we probably wouldn’t
even attempt to reach. Everything would seem okay. We might think we are a near
as one could come. We might not even think about Allah if everything is fine. That
unique state of humility, and nearness, and total reliance on Allah Swt is probably
what the Egyptian people today are being blessed with, being pushed to, back to
history.
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Allah also tells us there are other reasons for hardship and struggle. He says:
And We divided them throughout the earth into different groups. Of
them, some of them were righteous, and some of them were otherwise.
We tested them with good times and bad that perhaps they would
return to obedience.
This is also the story of the people of Musa (as), the Bani Israel who become
dispersed throughout the world. Where there should be, under normal
demographics, about 500 million at this point in history, there are only 13 million
throughout the whole world. That’s a whole other story. In Surah al-Imran, Allah
Swt says:
If a wound has touched you, be sure that a similar wound has touched
others. Such days of varying fortunes We give to men, and men by
turns, that Allah may know those who believe, and He may take to
Himself from your ranks martyr-witnesses [to Truth]. And Allah loves
not those who do wrong. Allah’s object also is to purify those who are
true in faith, and to deprive of blessing those that resist faith. Did you
think that you would enter heaven without Allah testing those of you
who fought hard in His cause and remained steadfast? (3:140-142)
So, what do you want? Most people opt for ease. Eventually, you realize you have to
make a choice between the spiritual life and the worldly life. If you choose the
worldly life, the spiritual life goes away. You might pray, put your head on the
ground, but the spiritual life goes away. Your reliance on Allah goes away. If you
choose the spiritual life, the worldly life doesn’t go away, because you are living in
this world; but your worldly life is balanced, fulfilled. And whatever comes to you,
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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you slowly learn to trust in Allah. It’s much better than thinking you are a victim. In
this ‘āyat from Surah al-Imran, Allah tells us the purpose of hardship as being
“tamhis.”
Tamhis is the word that is used to describe when you heat gold to purify it, when
you remove the dross. If you don’t heat it, the gold will be full of impurities. By
performing tamhis, it is a process sort of like making ghee out of butter, the
impurities are removed and this is what Allah Swt does with the believers. Through
hardships, believers are purified. If you understand that, you will realize that the
gold comes from inside of you, from the hardships and the difficulties. Instead of
trying to live life running in between the raindrops, and thinking that something is
always wrong when something is difficult or painful or confusing, try to remember
that it is just tamhis/ purification.
Maybe today that is what is happening in Masruh (Egypt). Think about it. Our image
of young people in Egypt before the revolution is this: the best of them went to
college or some technical school, but couldn’t get a job. There was nothing for them;
it was hopeless. Nobody saw any future for them. The regime wasn’t giving them
any help; nothing was happening that was good for them. They were over-educated
and couldn’t get a job, couldn’t find housing, couldn’t get married. Housing was so
expensive. Now, housing is not that expensive, because nobody is coming there. I
was trying to imagine what it was like when all the tourists were there; when the
traffic was already so bad we went 1 foot in 10 minutes. There were people who
thought the young people would just live their lives on the streets, flirting with girls
and sitting in Internet cafes, smoking sheesha. Everybody smokes sheesha, especially
the women.
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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Let me tell you something about sheesha. We met with Dr. Mohammed Abdul Tagy;
he’s come back from Sante Fe to work in a new foundation and base his business
there. We mentioned that we saw all these women smoking sheesha, and how the
culture has shifted. Women used to smoke it in private, if they even did. He told me,
“Now they put everything in aluminum to make it easier so you don’t have to clean
out the clay. But the heat heats up the aluminum, and nano particles get released
into the smoke. So people are getting nano particles of aluminum in their bodies, the
more they smoke sheesha.” If I were to tell you what the symptoms of alumina are,
you’d be really blown away. Look up the mental symptoms of Homeopathic
alumina if you want.
In a strange way, the pharaonic culture used to take people who were alive, and
make them dead. Now this new pharaonic culture is taking young people who were
potentially dead, having nothing to spend their lives on, and through this revolution
has given them purpose. Dina is working from here, Khaled is commenting, others
are involved. They all have a new sense of life. This is the story of Musa (as) in the
modern day – at least part of it. When people stand in the streets in defiance of the
tyrants, or on their knees praying—and they are not extremists but moderate
Muslims—and they are calling out to Allah, not blaming religion or shoving religion
down someone’s throat; and they are commenting on the people in power today; or
when they stood in front of the tanks, and when those in the square defended the
Christians, then this is a new life being brought into an old land.
Instead of leaving with all this hope, I should also tell you that it’s slowed down a lot.
Just like there were hardships in the desert following the Red Sea opening. They
went through; they get on their way to the Promised Land, and they wander for 40
years in the desert, with lots of hardships and doubts and idolatry. Let’s remember
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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that Musa didn’t get his Divine mission until he was in the Sinai after some years. He
went up to the mountain and that’s when he gets his Divine mission. Allah says:
Say, who is it that sustained you in life from the sky and from the earth?
Who is it that has power over hearing and sight? Who is it that brings
out the living from the dead, and the dead from the living? Who is it that
regulates all affairs? They will soon say “Allah.” Say, “Will you not then
show piety toward Him?”
Somehow, in that beautiful ancient culture, where people are very nice and sweet
people, so many people not only maintained their piety, but gained piety during this
time. We see in this country young people who are either leaving Islam because they
just don’t get it, or they are making it all about Sharī’ah and fiqh. I felt the spirit of
Islam in the young people in Masrah. I felt it in the Christian church, also. I felt it
with the Coptic priest, and with Mary Samir Ibrahim. I felt it with those young girls
who swarmed all over us, physically, to get their pictures taken. Every two minutes
this one girl was in front of me. I recognized her by this special blue jacket she was
wearing. I said, “You’ve had your picture taken 6 times!” And she just smiled at me.
Then Mary chased them away saying there were well-behaved until they started
taking pictures.
We shouldn’t think that there’s no purpose in these stories of Sidna Musa (as). We
will talk about the story of Musa and Khdir. We will talk about the companion on
that boat. We don’t usually talk about the companion on the boat, but he had a
companion with him. There is freedom in this hardship, and there is democracy in
this hardship. For how many decades had people lived a life of fear and oppression,
to the point where they don’t even feel they were oppressed anymore, most of the
time. They found some comfortable place, but the fear was still there—whether it’s
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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the Iranians and the fear of the Basiji and the Revolutionary Guard, or the wonderful
Ministry of the Interior which is now a charcoal slab next to the Museum of
Antiquities, which is now the National Party Office. I’m surprised the Museum didn’t
burn down. (People made a human shield with water to protect it). I guess what the
prophets do is make us face our fears and overcome them, at least that is one of the
messages.
Allah makes the Prophets face their fears and overcome them; then they make us
face our fears and overcome them. Certainly, the Prophet Ibrahim had to face his
anxieties and overcome them. Certainly, Nūh had to. Adam had to apologize. And
Prophet Muhammed (sal) came down from the mountain shaking and afraid. Then
he gives strength to others because he found his strength. In a strange way, you
could say that Allah Swt has freed the people of Masrah today, like he freed the Jews
at the time of Musa from the tyranny of Pharaoh. The question is how will people
stay free? We have the keys to be free as Sufis, to make meaning out of our lives, to
live a good life, to have good things, to live in a good way, to have good friends, to
have good marriage partners, to have wonderful children. We have this choice, if we
choose it. Or we can choose to live in anxiety and fear.
The Israelites were freed, but it took them a long time to feel free. A lot of people
died; tribes were destroyed. And guess what? It’s come around again, and they are
not so free. Why? I think because it’s a very secular society. People have lost the
meaning of the dīn, in that case, Judaism, and they have only kept the culture and the
outer accoutrements of it. Let’s see what happens with the people of Masrah,
wandering around in the desert. There was talk that the government might let
Mubarak go because he is sick. In a certain way, he should be thanked. He was the
means through which the Egyptian people may have found their freedom from fear.
He was just this tool.
Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat
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Analogically, we see the same disease throughout Islam. We see the tyrants that are
rulers. We see the rules they make that are nothing Islamic. They built a toilet over
Khadija’s house. They will destroy more of the history of Islam. They have their
reasons and explanations and dogma and justifications. Just like every one of us, as
individuals, have for what we want, to stay in power over our own lives. But you can
see that as you purify yourself, and as inshā’a-Llāh Egypt purifies itself, and Libya,
and Tunisia, and maybe without battles and too much pain, maybe Jordan and
Morocco and other places, maybe this is also a chance for the whole ummah to
become purified and get the prophetic message to move away from autocratic
regimes, ignorance and intolerance, bigotry and bias.
I think it’s very fitting that what started in Iran, and then a year later comes to Egypt
after Tunisia, waking up the young people; I think it is very fitting that the global
ummah might get a prophetic message from what happens in Egypt. It’s possible.
We have to ask ourselves, what is it we are striving for, individually and collectively?
What are we asking Allah? What are we afraid of? What do I stand for? Do I stand
for that just for myself, or for the sake of others? Where are we going? Those of you
who were born here, or lived here most of your lives, you can understand where you
are coming from. You are coming from Tariqah, from Islam, and from the truth.
Whether it’s an individual who is asleep, or in a coma, Allah sends a wakeup call.
The wakeup call is named Adam, Nūh, Ibrahim, Musa, Jesus/ Isa, Muhammed (peace
and blessings on all of them). That’s the Mercy of Allah Swt. He sends to us a rebirth
when there was only dying, and awakening when there was only sleep, waking us up
from our lack of attention, and sending us a sign. We were asleep and He woke us
up. We were worshiping the deities of this life, of this world, and we preferred our
material possessions and our name and fame to a free soul. We were afraid of
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nothing, until we became afraid of Allah in the sense of piety, and then He frees us.
Very few people experience this in a lifetime. Very few people ever experience what
you have experienced already in your life. And you take it for granted; we all do.
How many people are going to experience the opening of the sea, or the defeat of a
tyrant who could overpower you? And shouldn’t we ask who the chosen people
are? They are not the tribes of the Bani Israel.
The chosen people are the ones chosen by Allah to be able to resist the tyrants and
develop the strength, to have trust in Allah, and know Allah is going to handle the
cause. To sit back, and when things are difficult—yes, of course, they will affect you;
and yes, you will worry about them—if you resolve yourself with Allah, then you are
of the chosen people. You are chosen to see and to hear. Then we should ask, “What
is it I am supposed to learn, and how can I change myself?” If you think for one
moment that this is all about the people of Egypt, or that the story of Musa (as) or
the story of Khidr (as) is all about the people of Egypt, then you totally miss the
point.
We were dead and Allah gave us life. We were conditioned to believe that the
enemy was outside of us when the enemy is inside of us, really. It’s our own fears
and our own desires. We felt the enemy had power over us, but that was just an
illusion. The enemy is inside of us, and all the external enemies are only a
manifestation of our own internal enemies. We project them, in other words. They
are projections. If we want to conquer the enemies of disease, poverty, fear, and
doubt, then we have to conquer what’s inside of us, the breeding ground for those
feelings. That’s why Allah says:
Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change
themselves.
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First change what is in your self. First, we have to conquer envy, greed, selfishness
and doubt, and shirk and fear, hope and dependence on anything other than Allah
Swt. Allah shows us that the root of all our diseases and our oppression is within
us. Before we can defeat the Pharaoh of our life in the external, we have to defeat
the Pharaoh inside of us. That’s what’s happening today in Masrah and other places,
in Libya and Tunisia, and more subtley in other countries. People are tired of being
oppressed. You and I have to learn, or had to learn, how to overcome oppressing
ourselves. You oppress yourself every day, but you don’t believe it. Allah Swt is not
oppressing us; we are oppressing ourselves.
Ibn Tirmiyya (not someone I quote that much for historical reasons) answers the
question, “What is oppression?” He says, “The one who is truly imprisoned is the one
whose heart is imprisoned from Allah, and a captivated one is the one whose desires
have enslaved him.” Despite the fact that is Ibn Tirmiyya, it’s true. When you are free
inside, you are free outside. If you are free inside, you never allow anyone to take
your freedom away from you. When you have inner freedom, you can look into the
eyes of the Pharaoh, whatever he looks like: Mubarak, Mursi, or Bin Ali or whoever.
He may look like Cheney, or Ran Paul. He may look like all kinds of people. You can
look them in the eye.
When you are free within yourself, no one can make a slave of you, because you can
only enslave a person who is attached to things. And you can only threaten a person
who is afraid of losing something. You have only power over someone when they
need or want something from you, and you have the ability to either take it away or
not give it. But there is one thing that no person has the power to take away from
you, and that’s Allah. If you let go of Allah and think, “I’ll pray later. I’ll think later.
I’ll do the practices later. I’ll find something different. I’ll find something better. I’ll
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find something I’ll like.” Guess what? You probably won’t. The fight to free the
black people from their de jure enslavement in the 1960’s, a hundred years after
they were freed by Lincoln, was the key for me finding how to free myself. That’s
what was happening. I went out to march for their rights as a do-gooder, and I came
back as someone who had to reflect on the truth, and I found the spiritual path.
That’s what’s happening, inshā’a-Llāh, in Egypt today, and Tunisia and Libya.
Allah gives us the formula for success in Qur’an—sabr (patience and perseverance),
and taqwa (fear of God, but really piety before God), and tawadu (humility). “O you
who have believed, preserved and endured and remained stationed in fear of
Allah alone that you may be successful.” There’s the formula. Those of you who
have believed, persevere and endure, and remained stationed, and fear Allah alone
that you may be successful. If we are watching Egypt, what eyes are you watching
through? Are you watching through pure eyes? Are you watching through the
utmost sincerity? Maybe talking like this allows us to eventually see the sea open,
right before our eyes—just a gift, just the blessing of Allah Swt, just the way He can
prove to us the Divine Presence and purpose in life.
Fareeda: quote from Rabe’ea al Adawiyya: “When I wake up in the morning, and I
have some suffering, I know that Allah loves me. And if I wake up in the morning and
there’s no suffering, I feel he has forgotten me.”
.