Surah as Saba'......ayat 14 and ayat 15; the sabeans...

[   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArANYO0zWOg   ]

friends, dato and tansri,

daud alaihisalam fasted alternate day as a form of gratitude to allah.

but the obligatory first and foremost, only beyond that, the sunnat........

the concept of gratitude must be understood in its proper concept.

interestingly, verse 14 discusses about sulaiman alaihisalam and construction of masjidil al aqsa and baitul maqdis, indirectly.

also some insights into the jinn world.

ayat 15 went on to discuss about the people of saba', the sabeans, [ circa 8 centuries before christ ],who were ancestors of present  day yemenis near sana'a.

it is also another stark reminder about gratitude and shukr, and its opposite, ingratitude  that stemmed from heedlessness and forgetfulness, ghaflah.

13 prophets were sent to the people of saba'.

they were the 'andalusians' of that period, at a time when the rest of the world were in darkness and plague with pestilence, they already were able to harnest the elements to their benefit.

but human  are human, and from the historical perspective, when we have everything we become forgetful and heedless.
allah gives us more, to the point we become drunken with ghaflah.
and then bang!...we got  hit by the tsunami of whatever, and that is  bala.

there are personal bala and there are societal bala.
one just need to open one's heart and mind to these lessons and look around oneself to realize this.

and as long as human are human this cycle of gratitude/ingratitude, forgetfulness and heedlessness followed by bala continues till doomsday.

doomsday come when they are no longer people in total remembrance of him, waliallah  all disappear from the surface of this earth, people who remind and exhort no longer there; right become wrong, wrong become the norms, then BANG ! comes doomsday....this is the islamic eschatology, i am afraid.

dr nik
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2017/01/just-visiting-part-2.html

Surah as Saba'......ayat 13, on gratitude

[  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1N7CCiYGIA   ]

friends, dato and tansri ,


nabi daud alaihisalam was a commoner before he was conscripted into saul's army and before his epic slaying of goliath.
he went on to being blessed to become nabi and al sultan.

his son, nabi sulaiman, was not only blessed to be al sultan for human, he also had control over the jinns.
his pedigree is impeccable. 
just see how wise daud alaihisalam was by this simple doa of gratitude to his lord over the blessing bestowed upon him:

" oh allah! how can i show enough gratitude to you when that very act of  my gratitude is a great favour from YOU?..."

people like qarun and haman were also blessed.
blessed with  impeccably high iq's, eq's , and the social-cultural  structures of their time to become creme de la creme of the heap.

haman, the substantive chancellor of the exchequer to pharaoh, died when the high tower he build for pharaoh 'to see  moses' god', collapsed!

as for qarun, the donald trump and bill gate all thrown in together of his time, were  swallowed by the earth, along with his dozens of wharehouse of silver, gold and diamonds.

i tried  very hard as i may, looking into old scriptures and hadiths, soheh,hasan, gharib and israelites, the whole lot, to see whether  there was any mention  of serious character fault... whether he was a serial rapist; a tyrant with his people; a secular humanist of his time or whatever...just any blotches in his character.......and there was none.

he was not even involved in any 1Mgedebe,scatter-brained money laundering project, that has found its way into the socio-political and financial fabrics of our time in Malaysia now.

his only character fault was that he was too  proud of his acheivements.
pickthal, the old english qur'an interpreter put is in one word: ' haughty'.

qarun, [ and even probably people like modern day hamans and qaruns  everywhere ], thought he was where he was because he was qarun!

many of us very successful people in malaysia in 2017 have to give serious thought to this : YOU ARE NOT THERE JUST BECAUSE OF YOUR IQ AND EQ!!

you are just bloody lucky, you are chosen to be there. ....long before your time!
give thanks to allah in the proper way.
don't be proud or haughty.

1. arrogantly superior and disdainful.

   
   

   "a look of haughty disdain"

   
   

   synonyms:

   proud, arrogant, vain, conceited, snobbish, superior, self-important, pompous, supercilious, condescending, patronizing; More

elsewhere in the qur'an, we have this admonition from allah, '..you are not as tall as MY mountains, neither your foot steps make any indentation on MY earth!!...'.

ayat 13 in surah as saba' is about blessings, gratitude and shukr.
[  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1N7CCiYGIA   ]


dr nik
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2017/01/al-qalwa-tales-from-crocodile-dundee-to.html

ps:

i wonder whether collective silence, or at the most muted conversation, in the face of over gross injustice and mungkar in and around the top political leadership, as what is happening now in malaysia constitute ingratitude to allah, especially amongst the ilmuans and the shakers and movers of society, the academics and the scholars. the great ' knowing and tidakapathy' majority....the big 'cari makan' group.

have to ask an ulama' over this, but currently the ulama' in malaysia are all mostly behaving as if they are  'tone deaf and dumb'!

as someone put it aptly the other day, we have turn into a nation of eunuchs with testicles!
i dont normally agree with zaib ibrahim usually , but on this score, we are on the same page!

Surah as Saba'.......ayat 11 and ayat 12

[   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQhHxUmV-aI  ]

friends , dato and tansri ,

ayat 11 and ayat 12 are specifically about nabi daud and nabi sulaiman alaihisalam.
they are also about the 'special' gifts bestowed to both of them from allah.
it is also about the alghaiba.
about daud's special ability to mould molten iron with his bare hand and sulaiman's control over the jinns and the animal world.
it is about mukjizat.

listen.

Surah as Saba'......ayat 8 to ayat 11

[   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0VQ3OHvqSw&t=2705s   ]

friends, dato and tansri,

materialism is not a product of the 20th century.

it was age old.

even as early as the 7th century arabia, materialism was already deep seated, as the conversation following ayat 8 showed.

disbelief in the alghaiba is also not the result of the explosion of science.

it is as old as time itself.

it was rampant in nabi's time.

' we live , eat , copulate,enjoy and then we die...and that would be the end of our time.'

13 centuries before richard dawkins and christopher hichen, this credo was already there.

dawkins, hawkings and hichen and the likes of them, if ever they think they are very clever, can forget about it.

they are not original!

materialists who disbelieve are , from time immemorial, usually from the corporate and the ruling elites of societies of that time..

qaruns, hamans, abu jahl, abu lahab , abu suffians etc and etc

abdul rahman bin awf was an elite of his time. 

a top corporate gun with billionaire mentality.

he was however a well known sahabat from day 1.

precisely, the 8th person to enter islam.
he was par excellence at 'wheels and deals'.
even when he was in madinah, he had deals with one makkan associate who looked after his business interest in makkah.
this kind of 'millionaire ' brain already exist during nabi's time.

there is a well known tradition about abdul rahman bin awf which i like to recall offhand here.

this was many years after nabi's[ pbuh] demise.

abdul rahman bin awf's massive 700 camel caravan from sham entered madinah one day.

it was so long that one end of his caravan to the other covered the whole length of madina.

one can imagine the din and the noise it make.

sayeditina aisyha looked out of her private appartment and asked, ' who's caravan is this?', or something to that effect.

her servant told her it belong to abdulrahman bin awf.

' go, tell him that the mother of of the believers sends her regard and tell him that i heard the prophet [pbuh] mentioned that abdul rahman bin awf will enter paradise leaping...'

on receiving the news from the mother of believers, abdul rahman sat down and sob unconsolably.....

he immediately asked his men to distribute all the wealth from the caravan as zakat and sedekah........

' abdul rahman bin awf wants to enter paradise like other close associates of nabi, standing, like the rest of the sahabat!!!'

we move on surah as saba', ayat 8 to 11, with mufti waseem khan of tobago/trinidad

dr nik

Surah as Saba', 34......prologue

Recitation, whole surah  by Shaykh Mishary Rashid al Afasy

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







Commentary by Mufti Waseem Khan of Tobago/Trinidad
[  ayat 1 to ayat 7   ]

[  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD-e4ZPA3P0  ]