as-Sadiq

Below is the fourth part of notes from Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s lecture series entitled “The Poor Man’s Book of Assistance.” The lecture series is named after a book written by  ninth century Moroccan scholar Sidi Ahmed Zarruq. Shaykh Hamza translates and gives commentary on this book in this series of 16 CDs.

We should do this every day, or every month, or every year. Beyond that there’s no hope.

Jumu`ah is a good day because on that day we are encouraged to remind ourselves on that day, speak less, incur our salawat on the Prophet saws, and we are also encouraged to fast one or two days of the week. And we are encouraged to desire to do these things, even if we are not doing them. So that’s also part of this deen too, desiring for improvement.

One should also not make the day they fast like the day they don’t fast, so therefore the things that draw you near to Allah, you should be in a better state than the days you’re not doing that. If the only change that occurs during Ramadan is that you’re not eating and drinking, then something is wrong. Also the Prophet saws encourages us to fast 3 days a month (particularly the ayaam al-beedh but any 3 days will work). If you fast 3 days per month, it’s as if you fast a whole year. And if you fast the 6 days in Shawwal, you also get the reward of fasting for a whole year.

The sunnah of making iti’khaf is that you should be fasting when doing it.

In reality, himmah (spiritual aspiration) can be high (`aaliya) and low (daniya). These can also be further broken down. So if you have himmah `aaliya, it’s for things of the akhirah, but even within that himmah, you can have a low himmah meaning, for ex, that you want hour al-`ayn. The high himmah of the akhirah is that you want to be in the presence of Allah swt; you want to be in Jannat al-Firdaus al-`Ala. The high himmah is to want the highest station in Jannah. So even with the himmah in regards to akhirah, you can have high and low himmah. And then in regards to dunya, you can also have high and low himmah. Like Mawlana Rumi once said, “If you’re going to fornicate, find a princess. If you’re going to steal, steal a pearl. ” This basically means that if you’re going to do something wrong and fornicate, don’t go to a prostitute. If you’re going to have himmah in the dunya, have high dunya himmah. Don’t go to hell for something cheap. A Turkish proverb says that if they’re going to hang you from the tree, demand that they hang you from the highest one. One time Imam al-Junaid was walking by and saw a man that was going to be hung for brigandary, and he stopped by the man and said salams to him. He said, do you show a brigand like that any respect? He said I’m impressed with any man willing to give his life for what he desires. His point was that, he’s willing to give his life for dunya, and we’re not willing to give our lives for the akhirah?

So basically, we should use our himmah to get what we desire. Even if we only have himmah to do 10 minutes of dhikr in the morning and evening, that’s himmah, so utilize it, even if you only have a little bit, don’t waste it. Just the same way, the person with leisure time uses it to seek what he desires. For example, the person that gets upset sitting in the office, they should always have something with them and should never get upset with waiting. It’s `ibaadah to wait in the masjid for salah so they can utilize any of their free time for something useful!

So if he’s really going to take these asbaab, these means, that he’ll remember what has been mentioned and take these means to arrive at it. If you’re serious about this, you’re going to use these means to achieve what you desire to achieve. So if you’re a mutasabbib (somebody in the world), then you’re going to use what has been mentioned, despite the fact that you’re preoccupied with the world, you’re still going to use what has been given to you in accordance to your capability. So for ex, if a student of knowledge is not concerned about anything because they don’t have to work or worry about food, that person is going to make this work the source of their livelihood. The people who Allah has freed of worrying about dunya obligations, they will earn their livelihood with Allah by being people in the dhikr of Allah swt; they won’t waste their time because if Allah has relinquished those concerns from you, even if it’s only for a period of time, whereas people who Allah has given the responsibility of working in the dunya like family or children, those people have an excuse because they genuinely are preoccupied, but people who are not preoccupied like a prisoner in prison who made tawbah, those people have no excuse, so don’t waste your time.

If he’s a seeker of knowledge, he’ll put it in his list of activities because seeking knowledge is not going to preoccupy all of your time. So if you have dars to study, you study your dars but you can’t do that all the time, so you work it out so that you can do this work to change your condition.

The foundation of all good, the source of all the gatherings of righteousness and blessings is only found in 3 things (and if you use these 3 things, it will enable you to do other things):

1. that you have to seek the help of Allah and seek the succor of Allah, and you have to do it on the carpetspread of poverty, of complete divestment, and of humiliation, in other words, you go into a dhaleel (a low state). In front of Allah, you are in a low state. Don’t put yourself before Allah and His Messenger saws; when Allah and His Messenger saws say something, you say sami`na wa ata`na, we hear and we obey. So you have to have isti`aana with Allah (when you seek help, seek help from Allah) and istighaatha with Allah swt (seek istighaatha with Allah because He is al-Ghawth, so He is the one who helps), and you do this through poverty, divestment, and humbleness, even if this is for a moment in the day and night. Just one moment of your day, have faqr before Allah; even if it’s one moment, do it, don’t let a day pass by where you don’t ask Allah for His help because Allah will answer the mu’Tarr (someone who is in a state of daroorah, and that’s how you have to look at your life because the reality is that if that’s the day that nothing will help you but a sound heart, you are in absolute, desperate need to rectify your heart. Traditionally some of the Sufis would wear rags and beg in the streets, which is not encouraged by sunnah, but the point is that those people would do that because those people wanted to break kibr from their hearts completely. A rich minister realized he was arrogant and then he would sit on a garbage heap outside of the city of Fez and people said he went crazy, but that’s not to say we should do that) and that is the type of state where Allah will answer your prayers, when you are a mu’Tarr. Sidi Abdullah Hadi bin `Aashar says that there’s no cure for the nafs except to go with it’tiraar to Allah (to go in a state of daroorah). Many converts will often come to Islam/guidance came when they reach a point where they really felt that they needed help, and they felt a total state of helplessness, and when you ask Allah in that state, the guidance will come because Allah is ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. So the first thing is isti`aana wal istighaatha bilLah.
2. renewing your sincere effort in overcoming those blemishes that are preventing you from arriving to your goal and by singling out your spiritual aspirations without hesitation, without a moment’s neglect. So when you have `azeema (self-discipline), you have to renew your `azeema, and that’s why `azeema is a gift from Allah. And `azeema is either for something high or something low, similar to himmah. So the second thing is to renew your sincere desire to reach your goal and fight those things that are preventing you from getting there.
3. the third thing is that you have hazm in your initiations to reach at what you’re getting once you realize what you need to do. Once you realize what to do, have that discipline, because the way the nafs works is that if you pray `isha at the masjid, you say that you’ll pray shafa`a and witr when you go home, but then you end up talking, and you end up procrastinating. The nafs will always try to get you to procrastinate. For ex, someone who is trying to give up chocolates and someone brings them a box of chocolate, he says I’ll just have one, then he has two, and the nafs will consistently do this whenever it happens. Although it’s very difficult to memorize the Qur’an when in adulthood, a shaykh memorized it when in his 20s because he dedicated the time between maghrib and `isha to memorization, and he would not let anything get in the way of that, nothing. Because what if someone invites you and you want to respond because it’s sunnah, and then you’ve broken your pattern. Turn your back on your studies for a day, and it turns its back on you for a week. Turn your back on your studies for a week, and it turns its back on you for a month. Muslims used to work 7 days a week and 6 hours a day. But in the West, you end up working 8 hours a day, maybe 12 hours to commute, then only 4 more hours of wakefulness. The 2 days of weekend allow you to sleep in, be lazy, etc. and it breaks the pattern when the best things are those that are continuous even if they are small. So have hazm in what you do, even if it’s a little bit. It’s better to do 2 sunnah rakaat every day than 8 rakaat here and there.

These things will all be aided by tawfeeq by Allah, but what will prevent them is being too preoccupied with the details because the nature of tawfeeq, which is from sincerity, is that it’s something which prevents diversification because it’s concerned with al-Haqq, and Haqq is one, Allah swt. You can’t see the forest because of the trees. The nature of the nafs is that it will obsess with the details, and you lose sight what the goal of this is, and the goal of this is Allah swt, and Allah swt can give you the openings, and the most important thing about tawfeeq is ikhlaas, don’t forget that. So more important than all the details he gives is the sincerity behind it. And the reality of every person is always with the consideration of his state. It’s one thing that’s going to manifest in what he knows and what he does. If you remember your wrong actions, don’t ignore some over the others, really look at what’s going on in your life so you can make tawbah. But beware in looking at them in great detail that you become preoccupied in really fixing them in yourself; in other words, your preoccupation with your wrong actions can actually strengthen the wrong actions in yourself. One of the greatest things that Shaytan will make you do to make you feel digusted with yourself so that you go into a state of despair; he’s concerned with ya’as, his name is Iblis. Iblis means ablasa, he despaired. And that state he loves more than any other state to engender in the hearts of the children of Adam (as), so what he will do is he will try to get you to become preoccupied with your past wrongs, especially if they’re things which you are habituated to. So many people have some wrong actions that they have a hard time getting rid of, whatever they are, and what Shaytan will do is that he’ll remind you and whisper that you’re a worthless case, you’re unworthy of being `abd Allah, of being in the presence of Allah, you should just give up. So don’t let this preoccupation and despair happen in order that you are able to remove them. If you do otherwise, you won’t be able to get rid of them. BUT at the same time, don’t just admit that you are a wrongdoer and not look at the individual actions you are committing. When you are doing your muhaasaba, don’t just say astaghfirulLah for every dhunoob. No, look at what you’re actually doing, because this is the way that by making tawbah of these wrong actions, this is how Allah will forgive them and it’s also the way you get them removed. And know that the reminder of the soul is based on what it’s engaged in. So, for ex, a nafs that is very interested in knowledge, hikmah, and wisdom, you won’t be able to be exhorted or reminded with other than those things. The nature of your nafs will determine what affects you when you hear reminders. Some things may even distance you if you hear them, and it can become a nikmah because you end up becoming arrogant. But every nafs that is really ignorant and knows it’s ignorant, any exhortation will get it going. So if that nafs hears any preacher, he’ll say subhan’Allah and then be ready to follow it. But every nafs that has argumentation rooted in it, these types of simple strategies won’t be easy to exhort it. They will want to argue that a hadith is sahih or da’eef, etc. So those types of strategies won’t work for that type of person.

“Call to your Lord with hikmah/yad`oo ila sabilih bil hikmah (for people of intellect), and give maw`idah hassanah to people (for other people you have to present something in a very logical way and why they should be doing something), and jadilahu billati bi ihsan” – so Allah gives different strategies of calling different types of people. Then Allah says that as for the one who takes his caprice as his god, who will guide him after Allah swt, meaning this type of person that’s following his hawaa, these types of strategies won’t benefit him because he’s lost in his passions. No people learns how to argue except that they’re prevented from action, and you have argumentative actions that watch other people how to pray so they can go pick on them and say that certain things aren’t sunnah. These are sicknesses in people’s hearts, you’re dealing with psychological diseases. And that’s why it’s just pathologies, and when you see them, you realize that this person is just sick. Because the people of Allah, they don’t argue, they don’t go to expose people’s faults. There’s two things, if you’re going to `amr bil ma`ruf wa nahya `an-il munkar (enjoining the good and forbidding the wrong), you have to know about khilaaf. You cannot go enjoin the good and forbid the wrong unless you know ijma` and khilaaf, and you also have to have a broad base of knowledge because if you see someone praying with their arms on their sides, you have to know that that’s permissible in a certain madhhab, and thus it would be haram to make inkar of them, you can’t make inkar of that because that is a dominant opinion of one of the rightly guided schools of Islam, and the `ulama have never made inkar of that. There are `ulama that have preferred the other opinion, and that’s what they have written in their books, but the `ulama have never said you can’t do this, they’ve said that it’s better you do the other because the daleel is stronger, but you can’t say that you can’t do this and that it’s not from the sunnah. The imam and school have their adillah. So you have to know the khilafaat, and you have to have a broad base of knowledge. And then also you have to have compassion for the ummah, in otherwise the reason you’re going is because you want to elevate them, you don’t want to debase, humiliate, or argue with them. First of all, you should try to win them over, smile at them, inquire abou them, and start a conversation with them. You don’t just go over there and say ya akhi, haram alayk. The Prophet saws, when the man came and urinated in the masjid, he actually had the Sahaba RA veil him. When someone sneezed in the prayer, and one brother said yarhamakulLah, and all the Muslims were looking at him, and he’s thinking what are you all looking at, what did I do, and then when the prayer was over, the Prophet saws called him over and smiled at him, he said this prayer is a prayer for tasbeeh, tahmeed, it’s for remembering Allah, there’s no speaking during the prayer. The man said wallahi I never saw a teacher before him or after him more sweet to his students than him. This is the sunnah! That’s sunnah, to be nice to your Muslim brother, that’s sunnah. For example, in Egypt, after the prayer the people shake hands and say to one another “haraman” meaning maybe we’ll pray in the Haram or “taqabbal Allah.” So an Egyptian man stuck his hand out and said this to a man next to him, who happened to be from another country, and he responded “hadhehi bid`ah,” to which the Egyptian responded, “Is having bad manners sunnah?” If you really want to educate another person, you should be kind, say thank you that you want to make du`a for me, but you know there is khilaaf, and here is my daleel, etc. But if you just want to insult the person, don’t make it all self-righteous, just say that I’m sick in my heart and I like to be mean to people so get out of my face.

And he means by this, egotistical argumentation (not argumentation in which you want the truth to manifest but rather argumentation in which you want your self to manifest) – and this is why Imam Shafi`i said that I never entered into a debate unless I asked Allah to make the truth manifest on my opponent’s tongue and not on mine so that I could submit to it, and this is a wali of God. Imam al-Ghazali said if you want to say something about the truth, look inside and ask yourself if you want to say this because you want your ego to manifest or because you indeed really want the truth to manifest. What’s the impetus behind your action?

And it gets to the point where he doesn’t benefit neither from his knowledge nor from his actions because he’s got this ostentatiousness, riyaa’, entering into his actions. And this becomes so essential to this person’s reality that he’s not even aware of it because it’s overcome him completely, and if you pointed this out to the person and said you know it seems like this is just your ego, he’ll never accept that and will say no, I want the truth and that’s why I’m doing it, but that’s not really the reason. It’s a psychological sickness, and it’s so deeply rooted in this person that he doesn’t see it like that because the nature of caprice, if it firmly roots itself in the soul, it brings to fruition knowledge that’s in accordance with it. So when your hawaa becomes so firmly rooted, you’ll even end up justifying and your knowledge will be in accordance. So for example, you’ll only study the hadith that are with your opinion, you won’t look at the hadith that are against your opinion. And this definitely happens with people because there are hadith sahih that refute their opinion, but they won’t look at them. They won’t look what the `ulama said about them because it’s not in concordance with their hawaa, and they’ve completely submitted to their hawaa, and they’re convinced that they did this for the sake of Allah, and this is the diseases of the heart, this is the self.

This strategy becomes so great in this person that it’s to the degree that it’s even been said that to dig and carve mountains with your fingernails is easier than removing caprice from the soul, if it’s become firmly rooted. And this quality will end up forcing the wayfarer on this path, it will regress him and pull him back, and it will reduce him to the lowest of the low. And it will actually put the scholar into the company of those heedless ones. And my belief about this is that the majority of creation did not regress after arrival except because they were unaware of this most important principle, so reflect on the words of the hikam when he said, from the ignorance of a seeker of this path is that he does something with bad adab and there’s no punishment that comes from it immediately (in other words it’s delayed or deferred), and then he says if this really was bad adab, Allah would have stopped his imdaal, i.e. he would have removed his help from me and would have distanced me from the state that I’m in because He can remove His maddad (help) from this person from where he’s not even aware of. For example, you can lose all your actions, and you will not even be aware of it. Shaykh al-Hatimi said that if you talk during the adhan, you’ll lose all your good actions and you won’t even be aware of it because Allah said don’t raise your voice over Allah and His Messenger, and the nidaa’ to prayer is from Allah. Allah’s calling us to the prayer. And he could be in a place of distance from Allah and he’s not even aware of it, even to the degree that the only thing He does is that He leaves you in what you desire, in other words, that’s enough to consider yourself distant from Allah is that you’re doing all these things and you’re thinking that they’re all right with Allah.

The khatimah – Now you know, my brother, the path of tawbah and the way to return after you’ve regressed. So if you stand before its door and it is having remorse of the past, realize its existence in your actions in that they’re in accordance with in with consistency, knowing that tawbah from you to Him is tawbah from Him to you. In other words, recognize that your tawbah to Allah is in fact His returning to you, so you should see that; the fact that you’re making tawbah, He opened that door for you, and that in itself is a blessing from Allah swt. So he says, if after you’re firm, you lose it again (you fall back into it), then know that it’s because of something you did (it’s your own fault), but if the tawbah is maintained and consistent, know that it is His generosity to you because your action, this tawbah that you did, is presenting yourself in the presence of the fragrances of His mercy. What you’re doing is you’re exposing yourself to the fragrances of His mercy, so it’s like when you go buy a rose bush, and you stop and you breathe in the fragrance of that rose, what he’s saying is that your tawbah is breathing in the fragrances of His mercy, you’re stopping to inhale the fragrance of His mercy. And your firmness on this is as a result of His gifts, and for this reason, you must return to tawbah whenever you return to your wrong action, keep coming back. There’s a beautiful poem by Mawlana that says, “Come back, come back, whoever you are. Thief, robber, sinner, keep coming back, even if you broke your vows a thousand times, come back. Ours is not a caravan of despair.” This is not a caravan of despair, that’s Iblis’s path. He did something wrong, and then he despaired, he said there’s no hope for me. The children of Adam, they keep doing wrong and they keep coming back. And Allah says that if you keep coming back, He’ll keep coming back to you. So don’t ever despair of the mercy of Allah, no matter how much you do wrong, keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, and insha’Allah the wrong actions will start to become more and more subtle. You have to keep coming back until the day that you die, just keep making tawbah. If they get more and more subtle, that’s the hope. If you’re in kaba’ir, then you start to work on your saghaa’ir.

Because no matter how much of the qualities and the descriptive nature of the servant, they in no way can diminish the character of your Lord. So your wrong actions, no matter how much or how great they are, they don’t diminish the character of His Rahma. So don’t think anything you do has any effect on your Lord. Your Lord stays the same. He’s at-Tawwaab, ar-Rahman, ar-Raheem. And He has promised to show His bounty and His mercy just as He has promised to show His justice, so you have to have hope with fear. You don’t just think that oh, He’s ar-Rahman, I don’t have to worry. No, this is why you have to be concerned, and that’s why you have to make tawbah. If you didn’t have to worry, you wouldn’t have to worry about your wrong actions. No, you should worry about your wrong actions, but don’t let your wrong actions take you to a place of despair. You can’t say one of them is over the other except that Allah swt has decreed that His mercy is over His justice, but don’t put one over the other as long as you’re in this world. Right before you die, you should hope only for the rahma, but in this world you should have them on equal foot. To flee from it is a wrong, and to hasten toward it is guidance in itself, and success from Him is His providence over you, that He is actually taking care of you. And if your shortcomings and your going back to your wrong actions is a great thing, know that returning to His generosity is greater than any great thing that you’ve done. So know that your tawbah is greater than your wrong actions. Be aware of that. Your tawbah is greater than your wrong actions, no matter what you did wrong. No one is considered to be continuous in their wrong actions if they ask forgiveness, even if they return to that action 70 times a day. And Allah swt loves every person that does wrongs continues to turn back and make tawbah – katheera dhamb, katheera tawbah. He has a lot of wrong actions and he has a lot of tawbah, Allah loves that servant. Someone said to Hasan al-Basri that a man will do wrong then he asks forgiveness, he does wrong then he asks forgiveness, at which point does he stop doing that? He responded I consider this nothing other than the character of the believers. And in the hikam, he says never allow any wrong action that you do to cause you to despair from gaining istiqaamah in the future with your Lord, from gaining uprightness with your Lord, because it could be that’s the last wrong action that you do, that’s ever decreed for you, and whoever does not believe that Allah, or considers it very unusual that Allah will save him from his appetites and remove him from the condition of his heedlessness, has done nothing other than considered the Divine Power to be weak. In other words, if you think that Allah can’t take you right now, in the state you’re in, with all your wrong and all your ghaflah, and change you right now and make you upright and make you a wali of God, then you’ve incapacitated Divine Power. Allah is qadir `ala kulli shay. So understand, oh my brother, and really consider this, reflect on it, ponder it, ponder your return to having a good opinion of Allah, and reflect on your `ibaaqiqah (an abiq is a slave that runs away from its Master), reflect on your running away from your Master and your turning away from Him and feeling independent of Him. Innal insana la yatgha, ar-ra’ahus taghna – Man has transgressed his Lord when he deems himself independent of His Lord. You’re completely dependent on Him, so this should cause you to feel inhiyash ilayhi, i.e. you should feel this alienation that you want to remove no matter what your condition, wassalam.