Surah ad Dhariyat, 51.......ayat 41 to ayat 56 [ 'bahasa' ]

qari , shaykh abdul rahman al ausy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXvxXBkZNNo





commentary by ustaz muhammad mustaffa, [ bahasa ], ayat 41 to ayat 56
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR_Gl_m66b0

Surah ad Dhariyat, 51.........Prologue

qari, shaykh mishary rashid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--Ptip1pWY






commentary by the late dr israr ahmad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkXeI-dDxAc

Before We Move On to Surah ad Dhariyat, 50.........'knowing allah'

friends , dato and tansri,


2018 promises nothing bright for the average malaysians actually.
they continue in the ennui of the time added to it a sense of almost total hopelessness.

for the last 8 years or so we are governed by a kleptomaniac of the the highest order.
he seems to be very successful in surrounding himself with a bunch of morons!
to top it up we have a monarchy on top of him who are satisfied to feed from the same trough; having great inertia to revitalise itself and having no urgency to show some relevancy.

for the average raayat at least, from my crystal ball gazing,  it look like they may have to endure this kind of governance for another 5 long years.

people say we deserve the '..it' that we deserve, as a people who cannot change ourselves.
in this time of 'fitnah' let us look into our ugama more deeply and get some much needed solace and hope.

i get very much encouraged and 'mahabbah' when i listen to shaykh hamza yusuf.
this time he was addressing a mixed bunch of mainly people of judeo-christian-secular back ground with a sprinkling of muslims in the audience.

it was at yale university in 2016. the subject was universal........ 'knowing god'!
enjoy him.

not many in malaysia now, especially in the rarefied upper echelon of society, seem to believe there is a life after this life!
at least in practice it seemed that way.
congratulation sir!

[   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG6Q4YzJxZI   ]



dr nik isahak wan abdullah

Surah Qaf.........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1gao_sn-As
recitation by shaykh abu bakr ash shatri





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKXSzIdtsbI
commentary by shaykh tawfique chowdhury

[ 38 : 10 ]...

[ 54 : 20  ].......





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuM4V8IxPGk
a 10 minute zikr session with shakh hasan ali, easily done before your daily prayer or after your standard post prayer wirid.......

as an extension, you can do this beyond prayer session, with each breath that you take during your waking hours....
and that is easily 15,000 time of 'allah allah...' or subha nallah or alhamdullillah, or what ever favourite zikr you like!

try the experiment for month.
call me if after a month you dont feel you have changed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMt6IMYh7cU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8mEispyTb4

about change.....

Before We Move On to Surah Qaf..........' i am fasting because i want to remember the poor..'

friends , dato and tansri,

i must admit here, to be entirely honest, i have a confession to make about this slot.
weeks before the completion of surah al hujurat i have already made a'mental note' to reserve this hiatus in between the surah for a slot on a discourse on 'liberal islam in malaysia'.

i deem it an important subject since it impacts on all of us, and most importantly, on  the deen of our children and cucus, ie if ever these liberal elites become successful in their 'project'.

before we move on to surah qaf i thought it would be an appropriate project for me to make an attempt to at least fatom and enter into the minds, the  likes of individuals  like  zainah anwar, noor faridah ariffin, marina mahathir et al of sisters in islam; or dr musa farouk of islamic rennasiance front,  and luminaries of g25 etc and etc to mention just a a few in the forefront of liberalism in malaysia...famous local liberal islamists of different shade  and colour. 

with the passing of dr kassim ahmad, we have one extreme shade of liberal colouring that insyaallah will fade.......kassim , to give him due respect , in my opinion, was at least an honest 'broker', albeit a naive and ignorant one. 
 he did not hide behind the need to keep up with modernity and secularism.
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2017/10/kassim-ahmad-in-memorium.html

he was a poor and schriveled  old manwhen i saw him in my clinic some 2 years ago
" doc, i just need two years [..to counter those bastards in jakim...]...to finish my book! ''
i was quite sure then that he would not have that two years.
such was his physical frailness....
innalillah , may his soul be amongst the blessed!

in his simple but clouded mind he just wanted to rid the muslims of 'dichotomies'.

he saw a lot of dichotomies and querrels within the muslims because of different interpretation and acceptance of different levels of hadith: sahih, hasan, dhaif and maudu'.
that made him the local proponent of 'let us do away with hadith then, just the qur'an will do!'.

liberal islam is here to stay. there is no lack of local talents and intellectuals.
the public perception is: who due to their  collective  and relative lack of knowledge  and wisdom of their own ugama, mainly due to their educational background lacking in early education in traditional islam, and their overt overexposure to western secular education in their general make up, it became inevitable  for them to get drawn by the lures of 21st century secularism and liberalism. 

marry these two elements  together and one get liberal islam, that is all it is about in a nutshell. but if one is interested in the nitty gritty of details and nuances one  have to take a full course about liberal islam at university malaya. 

there is a prof in theology who is an expert at liberal islam  and i have forgotten his name.
his discourse, given recently runs into hour and hours.
he gets into the academics, the history and into the socio-political and religious implications of the issue.
for guys like you and me, if you attend such course , we will get lost in the labyrinthe and maze.

to simplify things for you guys, i will put it up here and allow things to find its course.
i thought to myself any project on liberal islam, i need to get to know the source of it all: secularism and western derived liberalism .

i visited a prominent academic based in berkeley usa to get some education and back ground.
prof talal asad writes a lot on secularism and islam and he is easily available in the utubes.
he is the the famous son of muhammad asad, the most famous european muslim who reverted to islam at the turn of the 20th century. his dad , muhammad asad, was a jew by birth.

talal asad , by his own admission, rejected islam intellectually at age 14 , and is the product of the best british public school education that money can buy. he went on to oxford to do his m phil and phd.
he writes a great deal on  the interphase of modernity , secularism and islam. he is a social anthropologist of great standing.

i thought to myself , if i want to 'read' zainah , faridah, farouk and g25  et al, i have to understand the whole basis on which liberal islam exist  ie secularism and neocolonialism , and learning it from a well known social anthrolpologist of asad's stature would give me a strong basis before i jump in ....

but lo and behold i stumbled upon lauren booth.....and at the end of her discourse i unashamedly cried along with her....

mashaallah! ....' i am fasting because i want to remember the poor',.......that is too much for me.
i am a tough nut. i did not cry when my mum passed away.
at 66 now i find myself crying.
i am soft after all.

lauren booth hijacked my current project

no! liberal islam and secularism can wait .
let us together listen to ms lauren booth, who unlike the socalled liberal islamists, who want to deconstruct islam along secular lines, lauren on the other hand have touched base, coming into islam, from the outside.

...and we can have shaykh hamza yusuf as a dessert!
enjoy both of them.

what a hijack this is!


dr nik isahak wan abdullah



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkeNlPIOr0w

lauren booth




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU1_ENhrbXs

hamza yusuf

Surah al Hujurat.............Epilogue

friends , dato and tansri,


Be not forward in the presence of Allah and His messenger.

in one way you are just an accident of time, the meeting of two dirty urinary tracts in a coital position.
the most lowly of position, and in the most steamy of circumstances.

but looking in another way, from the subliminal perspective, you are not an accident of time.
yours was decided long before time

Be not  forward in the presence of Allah and His messenger.

your status and heirarchy in this life is not your own doing.
you may not be able to fully comprehend this, but it is all just a test for you.
you may be born with a golden spoon on a golden plate in an istana somewhere in timbuktu or you may be just be one of the millions and billions surviving on scraps in the city of delhi or sao paulo, a fourth generation of the homeless.

you may be bill gates, warren buffet or just nobody son of nobody
you may even be the sultan of brunei or an oil baron from saudi.
or even najib son of tun razak.

it is still a test for you.

...and by the way, don't you worry
and don't you envy these people.
the bigger they are in the 'scheme of things', and your thinking, the greater the test!
instead have some pity for them.
all of them will mostly fail...
this dunya and their nafsu are effective baits...


The (true) believers are those only who believe in Allah and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah. Such are the sincere. 

Would ye teach Allah your religion, when Allah knoweth all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth, and Allah is Aware of all things? 

Deem not your Surrender a favour unto Allah; but Allah doth confer a favour on you, inasmuch as He hath led you to the Faith, if ye are earnest. 

Allah knoweth the Unseen of the heavens and the earth. And Allah is Seer of what ye do. 

....dalam kehidupan ini hang jangan songeng sangat!!
whatever your position and disposition in life, you are just the product of the meeting of two dirty urinary tracts in a coital position, in the most lowly of circumstances!


dr Nik Howk




commentary by shaykh nasir jangda , ayat 11 to 18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ENtKvBttBY



commentary by tuan guru haji dato abdul hadi, ayat 11 to ayat 18  [ bahasa  ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDLz4dRFj8M

[  29 : 25   exceptions to 'mengumpat'....]
[  47 : 20   ummatan wisata...the universalism of islam ]
[  53 : 15   islam , anti slavery......]
[  56 : 10.....ayat 13 ;  australian aborigines and maoris hunted like mad dogs!  ]

[ 1 : 11:20  .....islam, iman and ihsan ]

Surah al Hujurat.....ayat 6 to ayat 10

friends, dato and tansri,

ayat 6 to ayat 10 far transcends nabi's time. it foretold the 21st century when IT connectivity and explosion of information technology and super fast mass communication, make unaccountable poor governance no longer tenable to the masses. words and ill deeds got known very fast and so is misinformation.

i was at a madrsah discourse the other day when the ustaz was discussing about the ills of misinformation related to leadership.
i poses a difficult question to the ustaz:

what if the whole world is of the view that our  government is obviously corrupt, are we as raayat still not able to discuss that in public. are these deviant behaviour not open to public odium and discussion from the muslim perspective?

in the local context, what do we do when we have:

an  inspector general  who thinks jho low is the other name for a pomelo?

or an attorney general who cannot see an elephant in the room?

or much of our scholars and ulama, who not only remain quiet like well-fed kittens, but feel it is ok for numero uno to be found with 900 million rm in his personal account?.

or the august royal houses who certainly can do better but choose to just warm their seats in the comfort of their istanas, thus losing a grand opportunity to be relevant.?
people on the ground expect substantive and vigorous vehemence and anger from their royalties , not an insipid  equivocal  statement of displeasure.
a great opportunity to get rid of one person and save amenu was lost!
instead the august body has allowed it to go on a self destruct mode....
and with so many clowns surrounding numero uno, self destruct amenu would.
it is a pity.
60 years going down the drain, like the congress party of india.

or do we sit still and wait until all the whole world declare us as a pariah state, devoid of 'the rule of law'?

or wait for our neighbours to take the necessary actions for us?

the ustaz was speechless that morning.
but now i got my answer in ayat 9 of surah al hujurat:


And if two parties of believers fall to fighting, then make peace between them. And if one party of them doeth wrong to the other, fight ye that which doeth wrong till it return unto the ordinance of Allah; then, if it return, make peace between them justly, and act equitably. Lo! Allah loveth the equitable.

in this 21st century, one do not have to fight anymore. 
just vote them out at the next general election!
put all those involved in this odious crime against millions of humanity behind bars for the rest of their lives and bring justice to the land.

certainly, islam is about good personal and public behaviour, excellence governance and justice.
the present state of affair is a gross disrespect to islam.
we become a laughing stock to everyone in the world.

dr nik isahak wan abdullah





O ye who believe! If an evil-liver bring you tidings, verify it, lest ye smite some folk in ignorance and afterward repent of what ye did. (6) And know that the messenger of Allah is among you. If he were to obey you in much of the government, ye would surely be in trouble; but Allah hath endeared the faith to you and hath beautified it in your hearts, and hath made disbelief and lewdness and rebellion hateful unto you. Such are they who are the rightly guided. (7) (It is) a bounty and a grace from Allah; and Allah is Knower, Wise. (8) And if two parties of believers fall to fighting, then make peace between them. And if one party of them doeth wrong to the other, fight ye that which doeth wrong till it return unto the ordinance of Allah; then, if it return, make peace between them justly, and act equitably. Lo! Allah loveth the equitable. (9) 

translation by pickthal





commentary by shaykh nasir jangda , ayat 6 to ayat 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVyeAtTZpCw

ayat 9 to ayat 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKtEL0yChfA

Surah al Hujurat......ayat 3 to ayat 5

friends , dato and tansri,


we are spoiled for choice here.
both discourses excellent
if you like details and enjoy arabic linguistic expression, listen to shaykh nasir jangda.

if you like the big picture, a wee bit of local political history of PAS; its struggle from within between kaum muda and kaum tua; like to know more of the nuances of the  wahabis, salafis and neo salafis and shiite; the mutual respect between the four big imams in the past of each other; ugama and its relevance to our political life......then listen to tuan guru hj abdul hadi.

i listen to both, as surah al hujurat, like all other surah, should be looked from many different angles.
and i love tafseer, the more the better world view i get.

al hujurah especially is about muslims and the masses.
it deals with the ethics of proper human behaviour.
and politics cannot be divorce from islam.
the mat salleh in the west who want to subjugate us, like muslims to think that 'church' and 'governance' should be separated because of the nature of their development during the dark ages of their history under the church.

we have a different experience.
under 8 centuries of the ottomans we did not have what the early europeans experienced.
going back seven centuries earlier than the ottoman to the andalucian era, granada was an oasis of light and when elsewhere in paris, london and berlin, these cities were surrounded by pestilence and in darkness.

allahualam.


dr nik isahak wan abdullah





Lo! they who subdue their voices in the presence of the messenger of Allah, those are they whose hearts Allah hath proven unto righteousness. Theirs will be forgiveness and immense reward. (3) Lo! those who call thee from behind the private apartments, most of them have no sense. (4) And if they had had patience till thou camest forth unto them, it had been better for them. And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. (5) 

translation by pickthal




commentary by shaykh nasir jangda, ayat 3 to ayat 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAvlalel3Z0



commentary by tuan guru hj dato seri abdul  hadi, [ bahasa ]; ayat 1 to ayat 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op0_kP1hIek

Surah al Hujurat.......ayat 1 to ayat 2

friends, dato and tansri,

taqwa, seems like a magic word in our life.
in the present  day to day  life of a committed muslim, it percolates down into our daily solah, zikr, fasting, charity and umrah and haj.
but sadly in the average muslim life of today, there is a gross disconnect between our relation with the creator and our relations with his creations. our social ethics are very poor on the average!

right from the very 'untouchable ' top rung individuals who are presidents, dictators  and royalties right down to the road sweepers and coolies.

our maktoums, alwaleds, emir, sheikh and sultans, all competing  in building billion ringgit palaces like they are never going to die one day and resources are unlimited.

at least one political numero uno and his spouse, that i know of, is currently the  world champion in public excesses and gross corruption. every where else within the muslim hinterland, the rest are not doing that badly in the scale of things either.
to make matters worse at least locally here in malaysia even so called ulama and scholars seem to lose their bearing as well.
for scholars at least, keeping quiet and mum is a behaviour , in nabi's time, tantamount to tacit  agreement with the deviants.

at the lowest and middle level our collective public ethics are pariah standard, rock bottom at the current world scale. we are the laughing stock of other nations and ugama.
many of us are failed states!

there seems to be an obvious disconnect and incoherence between personal piety and public behaviour.

it is as if ethics, good public ethics i mean,  does not exist amongst muslims.
this cannot be far from the truth.
islam is all about excellence in both in the public domain and personal: in  behaviour, manners and adab!

our solat, tahajjud, zikr, umrah , hajj, saum and alms are just training ground for excellence in our public life
..

as an obvious example, one can watch the worse of muslims at haj and umrah time.

sadly, our ugama does not translate into our everyday life!

dr nik howk

Surah Al-Hujraat
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

O ye who believe! Be not forward in the presence of Allah and His messenger, and keep your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is Hearer, Knower. (1) O ye who believe! Lift not up your voices above the voice of the Prophet, nor shout when speaking to him as ye shout one to another, lest your works be rendered vain while ye perceive not. (2) 

translation by pickthal

commentary by shaykh nasir jangda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG4ifxTxZl8







http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2017/10/a-day-in-malaysian-history20th.html

Surah al Hujurat [ The Apartments ], chapter 49th......Prologue

your excellency,


surah al hujurat [ the apartments or inner private chambers ] was revealed in the 9th year post hijrah. a late medinan surah, it consisted of only 18 ayat.

the most often quoted, the 13th ayat,

O mankind, surely We have created you from a male and a female, and made you tribes and families that you may know each other. Surely the noblest of you with Allah is the most dutiful of you. Surely Allah is Knowing, Aware....

the 13th ayat has been described by many mufassirun, of the past, and contemporary, as an important definitive indicator that in islam , lineage, geneology , race and social status do not 'maketh a man'.

'in the eye' of allah, the billions and trillion of mankind that sieve  though HIS sand of time are only judged by one criteria, and on just one criteria only, and that is taqwa

and how does one aptly describe taqwa.

.
'the most dutiful' as applied by pickthal here does not do justice,it is not 'fear of allah'.
nor is it ' fear of allah  combined with piety' exactly.

'a high state of the heart, which keeps one conscious of Allah's presence and His Knowledge." which motivates the person who possesses it "to perform righteous deeds" and avoid forbidden activities.
you are almost there already, but not quite exactly there yet!

a close sahabat , ubay bin ka'ab, when asked by another sahabat, the illustrious umar al khattab, striked gold when he opined:

"Have you ever walked on a path that has thorns on it?" Umar said, "Yes." Ubay asked, "What did you do then?" to which Umar replied, "I rolled up my sleeves and struggled." Ubay said, "That is taqwa, to protect oneself from sin through this life’s dangerous journey so that one can successfully complete the journey unscathed by sin."

patik, your goodself tuanku, the late ts ibrahim promet, a good friend of mine  and philantropist of his time, and perhaps, the now world famous proverbial pa' mat nyadap of padang pa' amat; all of us, in the 'eye' of allah, are only judged by taqwa.

whether we are the lowly bangla working the midnight shift for the mppj waste collection or we are king of kings, at the end of our time, taqwa is what it is all about.

yours humbly,

dr nik howk





recitation by qari hazza al balushi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esnv9DyC8lo




recitation by qari sameer al bashiri, with english translation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vjB6qJFCQ8




preview of the surah by ustad nouman ali khan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vjB6qJFCQ8

Before We Move On to Surah al Hujuraat.......' Your Home is Darul Akhirah! '

your excellencies,

you can have your private jets; your butler; your fancy clubs; your  overseas mansions and penthouses; your fine damsels and your enjoyments; your 10-20 % cuts here and there....but please do remember this, your final abode is darul akhirah!.

let us move back in time to 2012, houstoun texas.
shaykh ninowy was giving his discourse on 'the formulla for life' at darul uloom.
shaykh ninowy is one of  my international tok gurus.
an excellent and very knowledgeable one indeed!

dr nik howk

[  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpr0w8_zQUk   ]
shaykh ninowy on 'formulla for life'


ps:

the good shaykh talks about being close to allah.

you can try this small 
experiment as i did the other day.

life , as you all know, is just a collection of breaths, a limited collection.
when you finish your share of  'breaths'  , you are called 'home'.
i was experimenting with breath after listening to rumi's poem , 'only breath', as interpreted by coleman barks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xknm3qKKHKc
rumi's  'only breath'

after your evening prayer and your usual recommended  personal wirid, just get out of your 'convenient ' zone. 
do a wee bit of muraqaba'.
i know some of my friends with wahabbi leanings would say ,'muraqaba', what muraqaba'?, nabi dont do it!!'..as if they and their tok guru lives withn the nabi during his gua hira' days!

while still on your sajadah, close your eyes, breath in slowly in and out.
do zikr with your qalb, say 'allah'  only with your qalb, at every inhalation, and then breathe out slowly.
do this for 15 minutes or so for a week.
next week increase this further and further.

that is just an experiment.
an experiment about presence.
being present with each breath...........

then listen again to the shaykh's same discourse a few weeks later.
if you have not changed, call me................

no! this is not from shaykh ninowy
it is just my experiment.
experiential islam.

if you are not comfortable doing zikr with each breath using asma al husna, do tasbih, tahlil or tahmid.
most important , be present....
initially you may have a big headache trying to synchronise your breath with your zikir, but with practice you will come to enjoy it.

we breath on average 15 to 20 times a minute , that is on average, a healthy individual breath 24,000 times a day.

imam al qushairy [ died 465 hijrah ] in his magnum opus 'al-tahbir fi tazkir' recommended fellow travellers to zikr using zikr ismudz zat [ allah, allah, allah....] minimum 5000 times a day , everyday.

that would just be a fraction of our waking hours! really.
try this for a month.

if you think you have not improve personally in your relation with allah , give me a call at my hospital.
i will belanja you at the nearby golf club, kgns.
i would be curious to know why it does not work with you.



related subject in 'pearls & gem'  :

http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2009/03/exercise-mixing-profane-and-sublime.html

http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2014/11/the-horse-whisperer.html


http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2017/10/kassim-ahmad-in-memorium.html
[  a face of liberal islam in malaysia....'let us do away with the hadith'  ]