Surah as-Sajdah [ The Prostration ] , 32...AtThe End Of Time Party Of God Will Prevail

Recitation of surah as Sajdah from verse 12 to 30 by Shaykh Muhammad al Luhaidan,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XcpUu3XW-I

Islam teaches that time must be organized and managed efficiently. Elsewhere in the Qur'an, God says:
"And have appointed your sleep for repose,  And have appointed the night as a cloak,  And have appointed the day for livelihood." ( an- Naba' : 9 - 11). Human beings need to rest as much as they need to work, and they must constantly remember God in both states. For, we read elsewhere in the Qur'an that: "When ye have performed the act of worship, remember Allah, standing, sitting and reclining. And when ye are in safety, observe proper worship. Worship at fixed times hath been enjoined on the believers. ( an-Nisa' : 103)

One of the problems  which modern societies face today is that prayer is not only neglected but actively discouraged and ignored.  The Qur'an refers to this, saying: " Hast thou seen him who dissuadeth (9) A slave when he prayeth? (10) Hast thou seen if he relieth on the guidance (of Allah) (11) Or enjoineth piety? "( al-Alaq : : 9 - 12) 

The early Muslims had to contend with ignorant and vulgar enemies who had no respect for religious worship and would never appreciate its value. Today, however, they face people with similar inclinations but who hide behind arrogance of industrial and military superiority. There is no avoiding the challenge and facing the consequences , for: "And who doth greater wrong than he who is reminded of the revelations of his Lord, then turneth from them. Lo! We shall requite the guilty." (22)

God then reminded His Messenger, Muhammad, that his predeccessors had suffered much hardship and rejection. He should persevere as they had persevered.

We verily gave Moses the Scripture; so be not ye in doubt of his receiving it; and We appointed it a guidance for the Children of Israel. (23) And when they became steadfast and believed firmly in Our revelations, We appointed from among them leaders who guided by Our command. (24)

The importance of this statement is that leadership is granted only to those who combine steadfastness with unflinching faith. Such was the example set by the Prophet Abraham who earned the title 'leader of humankind' when he passed the test of prophethood on all counts. Attaining greatness demands great sacrifice. 

The surah tells us with certainty that Muhammad would meet with Moses, but we cannot be definite whether that meeting had taken place after Muhammad's death or during his life on the night when he ascended to heaven, lailat al-isra'. All we can say is that the meeting has taken place.

The Tunisian scholar, Fathil ibn Ashur, interprets the meeting of Muhammad and Moses as a reference to their sharing a similar experience in delivering God's message. God is saying to Muhammad that his enemies and detractors would strongly resist his call, just as Moses had been rejected and opposed. The good news is, however, that God's faith would prevail. The surah asserts:

Is it not a guidance for them (to observe) how many generations We destroyed before them, amid whose dwelling places they do walk? Lo! therein verily are portents! Will they not then heed? (26) 




" A Thematic Commentary On The Qur'an "
Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali
[ 1917 - 1998 ]





Reflection and commentary by Ustaz Dr Ismail Lutfi al Patani:[ ayat 19 to ayat 20 ]:

part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=figjFAFxQbU

part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YupRM0s5YVY

part 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMESumawVKQ


part 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r28FOuR3Pno



part 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2qCG26AMDU


part 6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58oovwv0C-8






ayat 21 to ayat 26: Commentary by Ustaz Dr Ismail Lutfi al Patani...

part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc7PJSq67KE



part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOSnfCSova4



part 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AStUR_dl54I

part 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SEwYLAg2kY



part 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWRNx4jFVhc&spfreload=5



part 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgWQRJWoau8

Surah as-Sajdah [ The Prostration ] , 32.....Of Salah, The Night Prayer, Alms Giving, Zikr and Doa

Recitation of verse 11 to verse 14 by Shaykh Muhammad al-Luhaidan ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwW5f91YlNc

The Muslim nation has its own characteristics. Unlike today's Western  civilization which worships its own achievements, the Muslim nation adopts a life order based, first and foremost on tawhid, the Oneness of God whom it reveres and to whom it exclusively directs and dedicates all its actions and activity. Muslims believe in a Day of Judgement and prepares themselves for it, unlike most people today who are totally oblivious to this belief, as the surah points out:

And they say: When we are lost in the earth, how can we then be re-created? Nay but they are disbelievers in the meeting with their Lord. (10)

When the time comes , they shall regret these claims:

Couldst thou but see when the guilty hang their heads before their Lord, (and say): Our Lord! We have now seen and heard, so send us back; we will do right, now we are sure. (12) 

However, it would be too late, and it would be time for them to reap the harvest of their deeds. Only those who believed and did good work would be successful.

One of the practices that distinguish the Muslim community is the observance of the daily prayers, salah, which are performed at various times of the day and night. Night -time, especially in modern society, is traditionally the time for self-indulgence and illicit behavior of all kind., while modern life leaves no time for worship or prayer during the day. But in Muslim societies there will always be believers who: "forsake their beds to cry unto their Lord in fear and hope, and spend of that We have bestowed on them. "(16) 

The surah asks whether there could be a more contrasting picture of the two camps: " Is he who is a believer like unto him who is an evil-liver? They are not alike." (18) 



" A Thematic Commentary On The Qur'an "
Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali
[ 1917 - 1998 ]







Reflection and commentary by Ustaz Haroon Hanif
[ ayat 10 to ayat 15 ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW8-84GH5Ok





Reflection and commentary from Ustaz Dr Ismail Lutfi al-Patani,
[ayat 16 to ayat 18 ]
.......the night prayer
[ Malay ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlqmIKspsOM

Surah as-Sajdah [ The Prostration ], 32....The Universe

The Universe : The Seen and the Unseen; The Measurable and 
                          the Unmeasurable; The Rational and the
                          Supra-rational........



Recitation surah as-Sajdah by Shaykh Salah Bukhatir,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BbH4KZLkeQ

This is a Makkan surah whose opening verses announces the birth of the Muslim nation. The Qur'an, being the incontrovertible word of God, had been revealed to an illiterate community, which as a result has been totally transformed and charged with a universal mission. It refutes the arguments of its detractors:

Or say they: He hath invented it? Nay, but it is the Truth from thy Lord, that thou mayst warn a folk to whom no warner came before thee, that haply they may walk aright. (3)

Before Islam, missions have been assigned to certain groups and communities, but they were short lived and remain localized.
The mission which galvanize the Arabs into a global force  for change, however, was the one brought by Muhammad. It was a universal group befitting its origin: The Creator of  the universe.

Allah it is Who created the heavens and the earth, and that which is between them, in six Days. Then He mounted the Throne. Ye have not, beside Him, a protecting friend or mediator. Will ye not then remember? (4) 

The surah then goes no to elaborates on how the Creator of the vast cosmos is also the force that is charge of its  affairs and controls its destiny.

Our universe is a wonderful, complex and awe-inspiring system. The earth revolves around it s own axis once in every twenty four hours and takes 365 days to complete its orbital journey around the sun. The Milky Way, of which our solar system forms but a small  part, is a galaxy consisting of millions of stars, floating with millions of other galaxies in an expansive, boundless space about which we know very little. Light waves travels the vast distance from the sun to earth in a matter of minutes.

The task of controlling and running such a complex structure would require, from our limited human perspective, hundreds and thousands of years, but for God Almighty it happens in a flash. God wills and God acts, and accordingly things come about in this world of ours. God installs and removes; causes life and causes death; provide  victory and inflicts defeat. The surah says:

He directeth the ordinance from the heaven unto the earth; then it ascendeth unto Him in a Day, whereof the measure is a thousand years of that ye reckon. (5) Such is the Knower of the Invisible and the Visible, the Mighty, the Merciful, (6) 




" A Thematic Commentary On The Qur'an "
Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali



Commentary by Ustaz Haroon Hanif, of Liverpool, UK
[  about ustaz haroon hanif : http://greensvilletrust.org/mm_profiles.php ]

Class 1 :[ intro , muqaddimah]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHJPmN7yT7s



Class 2: [ ayat 1 and ayat 2 ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN57EBe7RZU


Class 3: [ still on ayat 2 ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGADn5jbPXA




Class 4 [ ayat 3 to ayat 5 ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk1hX2mIRUM




Class 5 [ ayat 6 to ayat 9 ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns6tduDJoEI

Surah as-Sajdah [ The Prostration ] , 32......Overview by Abul A'la Maududi

Recitation surah as-Sajdah by Shaykh Mishary Rashid al-Afasy ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaRsDMGQ7hg

Biodata :

Abul A’la Maududi , (September 25, 1903 – September 22, 1979) was a journalist,theologian, Muslim revivalist leader and political philosopher, and a controversial 20th century Islamist thinker in British India, and later Pakistan. He was also a political figure in Pakistan and was the first recipient of King Faisal International Award for his services 1979. He was also the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamic revivalist party.


.....................................................


The Surah has been entitled As-Sajdah after the theme of Sajdah (prostration) as expressed in verse 15.

Period of Revelation :

From the style of the Surah it appears that it was sent down during the middle Makkah period, more particularly in its initial stage, for one does not find in its background that severity of the persecution and tyranny which one finds in the Surahs sent down in the later stages.

Theme and Topics :

The main theme of the Surah is to remove the doubts of the people concerning Tauhid, the Hereafter and the Prophethood, and to invite them to all these three realities. The disbelievers of Makkah, when they talked of the Holy Prophet in private, said to one another, "This person is forging strange things sometimes he gives news of what will happen after death. He says: when you have become dust, you will be called to render your accounts, and there will be Hell and Heaven. Sometimes he says: these gods and goddesses and saints are nonentities: One God alone is the Deity. And sometimes he says: the discourses which I recite are not my own but Allah's Word. All these are strange things which he presents."The answer to these doubts and misgivings forms the theme and subject matter of this Surah.
In this connection, the disbelievers have been told: "Most certainly it is Allah's Word, which has been sent down in order to arouse a people who are sunk in heedlessness, being deprived of the bounties and blessings of Prophethood. How can you call it a fabrication when its having been sent dawn from Allah is manifest and self evident?"


Then, they have been asked, "Use your common sense and judge for yourselves which of the things presented by the Quran is strange and novel?Look at the administration of the heavens and the earth: consider your own creation and structure. Don't these things testify to the teaching which this Prophet is presenting before you in the Quran? Does the system of the universe point to Tauhid or to shirk? When you consider this whole system and your own creation, does your intellect testify that the One Who has given you your present existence, will not be able to create you once again?"


Then a scene of the Hereafter has been depicted, the fruits of belief and the evil consequences of disbelief have been mentioned and the people exhorted to give up disbelief even before they meet their doom and accept the teaching of the Quran, which will be to their own advantage in the Hereafter.


Then they have been told: It is Allah's supreme Mercy that He does not seize man immediately for his errors to punish him finally and decisively but warns him beforehand by afflicting him with small troubles and hardships and calamities and losses and strokes of misfortune so that he may wake up and take admonition.
Then it is said: "This is not the first and novel event of its kind that a Book has been sent down upon a man from God. Before this the Book had been sent upon Moses also, which you all know. There is nothing strange in this at which you should marvel. Be assured that this Book has come down from God, and note it well that the same will happen now as has already happened in the time of Moses. Leadership now will be bestowed only on those who will accept this Divine Book. Those who reject it shall be doomed to failure."
Then the disbelievers of Makkah have been admonished to the effect:"See the end of the doomed communities of the past by whose ruined habitations you pass during your trade journeys. Will you like to meet the same doom yourself? Do not be deluded by the apparent and superficial. Today you see that no one is listening to Muhammad (upon whom be Allah's peace) except a few young men and some slaves and poor men, and he is being made the target of curses and ugly remarks from every side. From this you have formed the wrong impression that his mission will fail. But this is only a deception of your eyes. Don't you see the phenomenon in your daily life that a land previously lying absolutely barren starts swelling with vegetation and plant life everywhere just by a single shower of the rain though before this no one could ever imagine that under the layers of its soil there lay hidden such treasures of greenery and herbage?"


In conclusion, the Holy Prophet has been addressed to the effect: "These people mock at what you say and ask as to when you will attain this decisive victory. Tell them: when the time comes for the final judgment regarding you and us, believing then will not profit you at all. If you have to believe, believe now. But if you intend to await the final judgment, then await it as you please."


Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi

Reflection : 'Akhirat Deficit Syndrome'....Imam Suhaib Webb

It is God's grace that within Islam we have a wide spectrum of believers, with many shades of gray,  and within each shade of grey, there are levels and levels. While the 'sparrows' amongst us have a flight path distinctly lower than the 'eagles', the beauty of God's mercy and grace ensures that  at the 'end of the day' each one of us  is judged at different level according to our innate ability, IQ, EQ, financial and social strata in life etc and etc. The companions of the Prophet who lived with him and see miracles happening around him will be judged differently than a present day scholar fourteen centuries way down the lane. Similarly, one cannot expect the 'sultans' and 'princes' of a country to be judged on the same scale as a road-sweeper with Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur.


At the end of the day though, the common denominator still is the question of taqwa, and nothing in English can fully explain taqwa. In part it encapsulates , ' an admixture of both fear as well as enduring hope for His rahmah and mercy '. Fear and hope as He is ' nearer to us than our jugular ', as the prophetic and Qur'anic expression goes. For Pak Mat Nyadap of Padang Pa' Amat, Kelantan, the simple villager, whose only claim to fame is his goats and one or two cows in the field, he would be asked, beyond his goats and cow of course, as to how he treats his children and wife or wives; how many daily obligatory prayers he had missed and why?; and also whether he manage to pay his yearly zakat  fitrah, which is nominal. The Prime Minister Of Malaysia, numero uno in his land, will be asked a wee bit more apart from his strayings from the five pillars of the faith: " Dear abdi, and why in your 25 years of being the substantive PM in the land, you have not moved an inch towards instituting My 'shariah'. In fact, on your record here, you and your lot seem to be working against Me and the very people who wanted me! ".............and so on and so forth. For mere mortals like you and me , the opening gambit will be " Man Rabbuka? " [ Who Is your Lord ?], followed by " Man nabiuyuka? " [ Who is your 'Penghulu'? ], upon entry into 'Alam Barzark' [ The realm of the grave ].

A Lord and 'penghulu' that we all profess to follow but never quite follow.Further questionings before the 'Sirat', I don't know', but definitely not simple arithmatics or calculus. 

Suffice to say the bottom-most of the heap in the 'eternal furnace' will be inundated by false ulama', scholars and the mufti-class who remained quiet on the side despite their knowledge of the truth;... amidst dictators, past and present day Fir'auns and all the Qaruns put together, etc and etc.

Now back to Imam Suhaib Webb. In this lecture, which was delivered in Kuala Lumpur, he addresses a different issue, the  inevitable issue of sect and sectarianism within Islam, which seem to keep the ummah on hold .....Arab , non -Arabs, Sunni and non-Sunni, Salafis and Wahabis, Sufi and non Sufi's, modernist and post-modernists, and  not to forget.........lastly the 'new animals', they called themselves the liberal-Islamists'. [ by the way, do you consider this 'Mamak Friday', Syed Apakhnamadiadah a 'liberal Islamist'? This chap who wrote some trash on 'The Black Stone worshipers'. This Mamak Friday is thoroughly on a confused spiritual plane,  all his own....]. This new animals some scholars would categorize as being spiritually confused but let us not get further worked up by them. We should all pity them. Now  let us listen to this young man, Imam Suhaib Webb  who despite his relative young age, speaks with distinct clarity of thought :


Imam Suhaib Webb on Akhirat Deficit Syndrome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGNVVYBXGHA

Surah Luqman , 31....Epilogue

THE SURAH GOES ON TO EXPOUND GOD'S grace for which humans should be grateful. It says:

See ye not how Allah hath made serviceable unto you whatsoever is in the skies and whatsoever is in the earth and hath loaded you with His favours both without and within? Yet of mankind is he who disputeth concerning Allah, without knowledge or guidance or a scripture giving light. (20)

It continues in this vein until it says:

Hast thou not seen how the ships glide on the sea by Allah's grace, that He may show you of His wonders? Lo! therein indeed are portents for every steadfast, grateful (heart). (31) 

The surah ends with an affirmation of individual human accountability. It says:

O mankind! Keep your duty to your Lord and fear a Day when the parent will not be able to avail the child in aught, nor the child to avail the parent. Lo! Allah's promise is the very truth. Let not the life of the world beguile you, nor let the deceiver beguile you, in regard to Allah. (33)

The fact of the matter is that every man is a maker of his own destiny; if saved it will be because of his good deeds, or else his evil deeds will bring about his downfall. We read elsewhere in the Qur'an that: " And no burdened soul can bear another's burden, and if one heavy laden crieth for (help with) his load, naught of it will be lifted even though he (unto whom he crieth) be of kin. Thou warnest only those who fear their Lord in secret, and have established worship. He who groweth (in goodness), groweth only for himself, (he cannot by his merit redeem others). Unto Allah is the journeying. "(al-Fatir : 18) 

The surah then goes on to deny that any soothsayer or oracle can see in the future or have prior knowledge of what is to come. It says:

Lo! Allah! With Him is knowledge of the Hour. He sendeth down the rain, and knoweth that which is in the wombs. No soul knoweth what it will earn to-morrow, and no soul knoweth in what land it will die. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware. (34)

Weather forecasting, for example, would not be classified as soothsaying because it is the result of inferences based on the intelligent study of certain physical and meteorological phenomena. Neither would other scientific and medical processes such as ultrasonic scanners to determine the sex of a baby during pregnancy. What the surah refers to is the ability to encompass full and total knowledge of what the female creatures all over the world are likely to carry in their wombs, for all time everywhere.


" A Thematic Commentary On The Qur'an "
Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazal





Commentary by Shaykh Tawfique Chowdhury
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xwrZ65cqSE




Commentary by Ustaz Asim Khan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5kT8Z3VBgk&spfreload=5

Surah Luqman , 31.......Part 2 [ ayat 20 onwards ]

Recitation with  by Shaykh Ahmed al Omrany
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA8P6q2_E-o

Commentary of ayat 21 to ayat 24 by Ustaz Asim Khan :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMN8NhMGNsI