SURAH AL-‘IKHLAS
This is our first lecture during the month of Ramadan, the previous week on Monday we had our first Tarawwih and we had still not began with fasting. In fact the month of Ramadan has one particular spiritual nourishment which is highly significant, and Allah Almighty descends to us one particular spiritual nurture which we cannot come across in other periods. We ought to keep something in mind, in Islam there are no days, nights, particular months, each month is the same to the other, but rather there are particular periods in the course of the year, several months, a couple of days, a number of nights upon which a number of significant events had taken place and to this reason due to these important events those days have received one supplement or additional supreme value.
The month of Ramadan beholds significance since in the course of the month of Ramadan the sky has opened and the contact amid the sky and the earth has been reestablished. The month of Ramadan is the month of the descend of the Noble Qur’an, the month of Ramadan is the month of the declaration of the Prophet (PBUH) as a chosen prophet. Hence the contact has been reestablished, and people throughout time, beginning with Jesus (PBUH) had deterred this contact with the sky, we are undergoing a similar situation even nowadays.
Today I attended one commemorative meeting of a close person and 90% of the attendants were Muslim. Could you believe that only 3-4 persons spoke about the man, the one who is sent onto the hereafter to God, and nobody mentioned the name of Allah Almighty, the name of the Prophet, the name of the hereafter; the man has died he has gone into the hereafter, he did not go to Europe or the United States he has gone into the hereafter and this man no longer needs to progress in life, he instead needs prayers. Let me give you an advice, when you will be taking part in a funeral, when you will be participant in a place where somebody has passed away, you should keep in mind that in such places there is no place for speaking about the biological dimension of human beings, they have perished, the biological dimension ends when one person enters his grave. In such cases it is rather better to speak on the ethical dimension of people, their ethical dimension in general, and the ethical dimension among Muslims primarily refers to our faith. The faith which as long as we have not established this contact, we cannot possibly speak about a fruitful society. I have taken part, surely you must have also taken part in commemorative gatherings among Macedonians, Serbians, English, Americans and all of them mention God, on the other hand among us here, the man has died and the person forgot to encounter in his speech the following: may God have mercy on him, may God grant him good in the hereafter, and may He give us all patience.
Precisely to this the month of Ramadan is one occasion upon which we can feed our spirit; we keep our body hungry whereas the nurture descends from above the sky hither our spirit. Even the discussions the remembrances we do to each other are manifestations of the nurture of the sky. As a result in Islam, the one who speaks and the one who listens are one. The Prophet (PBUH) says: “Be either a teacher or a student in seek of knowledge, or be a good listener, do not be the fourth, because it ruins you.” To this reason sometimes it appears that being an active listener is harder than being involved in an active conversation, speaking actively, hence when we speak on a religious matter, the matter of Islam, the matter of the Prophet, we are one entity. This body this entity is thus even more with perspective, in nourishment, especially in the month of Ramadan; we are referring to the entity of essence, the metaphysical body and not the physical domain.
In the previous lecture we stopped at the decoding of the attributes of Allah Almighty. We said that Allah Almighty has His names and attributes, through which we acquaint Him. We also said that we cannot develop friendship with somebody which we do not know, foremost we need to meet them, and to know who that person is, what that person is, how that person functions, and only afterwards we could establish the contact of love, the contact of friendship. Islam and generally other religions as well, but I am specifically referring about Islam since this religion is mostly important to us, in our contemporary world has lost the dimension of love, keep this in mind; mosques have turned into places where only provoking discussions among people are made: how one is prayed, how the other is praying. This has nothing to do with religion or for instance they argue on the matter: I am more religious, you are less religious.
The root element of religion is ashk, it is love, it is deity which we ought to commit towards Allah Almighty. We cannot achieve this level of deity as long as we are not aware how to show deity on Allah Almighty….
The initial attribute upon which we began speaking is the attribute of Vujjud, which means Allah Almighty exists. We are undergoing a period of the iron materialization, let me put it in these words, of the XIX and XX centuries, upon which for the first time in the history of mankind the existence and the subject of God have been attacked. In the previous periods there have been polemics, there have been beliefs in more than one God, but there have not been periods of keen and penetrated atheism, the submergence of God into the material, such a concept had not existed prior, inasmuch beginning with all the cultures, the Ancient Egypt, the Ancient China, the ancient India, Japan, in all these cultures there is a concept of existence of God present, there is possibility to have more than one God present, but neither of these cultures have attacked God and have not sought to abstain God from existence. The initial period in the history of mankind, of the human culture, which has abstained God from the Universe, from existence, is the period of the historical materialism and atheism which is represented through the historical materialism and we have toted this to our days.
The most sensitive element here is that aristocracy has been considered to be what has been transmitted from tradition; keep in mind as you might have noticed in movies even in the novels which you read, aristocrats are usually proud of that which they transmit through from their first kin. The period of the XIX and XX century is the period upon which, especially with the coming of communism, the decay of tradition has been emphasized. Man is traditional, man himself is traditional since its roots arise from a particular source, knowledge is traditional, no matter how rational we would seek to be, we could never create anything from our rationale which did not exist prior, have this also in mind. Let me give you two examples. Most of you attend college in different degrees; science always speaks about discovery, which means, as the word itself suggests, the terminology is being deducted to what we already have in the subconscious. Why don’t we say the creation of light, but instead we say the discovery of light? Why don’t we say the creation of the formula of water but instead we say the discovery of the formula of water? This means and shows that these have been covered, and now we have discovered it. In art and poetry, mainly the term creation is used. Do you know why the term creation is used? Since art corresponds to the spiritual connection; with the revelation and God. Art and poetry, can be created only by those persons who have a spirit, for instance drama, painting, music, architecture are even more difficult fields than medicine, mathematics, IT since one ought to be imaginative on these fields, one ought to create something new.
Precisely to this, the term creation is used in literature, art and poetry since it is in connection to the spirit; art may have various definitions but know that under all domains is it one with einfuhlung (this is one term used by the Germans in aesthetics, which means einfuhlung- the experience of the outer existence in your innerness) for instance the experience of the rose from within. People who do not have a spirit are not flattered by the beauty of gardens, instead only those who have a spirit receive satisfaction from this. Have you noticed for instance how poets, (I speak about poets since mainly we have more poets here with us) and in order to become a poet, one must be either religious or drunk, there is no other way, or the option is for one to be a poet in an artificial way. The poet, the artist ought to activate his spirit in the winch of the spirit, to play and this can be conducted through the tools which adrift the function of the mind. Do you know what it means to be drunk? It means to mesmerize the mind and to let your spirit free, to this reason the drunkards write poetry, since they put their mind astray from control; as long as you have your mind in function, you cannot conduct neither art nor poetry. I am not telling you to drink alcohol, God forbid, but I am suggesting you become religious, we don’t need to drink alcohol to write poetry, it is enough for us to experience God. If we attach ourselves to God, then automatically, the drive begins and the circle of our spirit, to this reason we need to acquaint this God well.
Hazrat Ali (PBUH) would say: “I don’t pray any namaz without seeing God before me” which means that I do not direct myself in namaz without experiencing God in the innerness, as long as the eyes of my heart are not open and I do not experience the existence of Allah Almighty. The last period is one very dangerous period which has had tendency to deter the existence of God and has claimed that God is nowhere, and now imagine, a person unable to conduct his obligations alone, is proud and is willing to contradict the Creator. At times people take all necessary measures to heal from one disease, but again that one person dies, how can we explain this? The philosophy of medicine, the ethics of medicine has one principle, which says that the doctor ought to fight the disease, not death; this person, in general, in his life ought to encourage and add the strive for success; success is thus given by God, whereas people ought to give their outmost for goodness.
There is no doubt that each one of us makes mistake, we have mistakes throughout or lives in general, but every time we will measure this, the good needs to overcome the bad; we are unable to put the entire society on the right path, generally speaking this is improbable, but the percentage of good deed making we can increase. The good nations, or the beautiful, or the righteous, or the progressive are those nations which have a larger portion of the good deed percentage in contrast to the percentage of wickedness, and this percentage of goodness among us Muslims can only be generated through genuine deity on Allah Almighty. Several times previously we have discussed that deity, amid our understanding, does not only refer to formal ibadah which religious seeks from us. Alija Izetbegovic would say: “All the other religions are religions, whereas Islam is a system of life”. Islam seeks from you to be Muslims even when you are asleep, and not only in the mosque. The greatest harm caused to Islam was by the persons who have isolated Islam within the four walls of the mosque. This is an element predilect on the materialistic period, imposed to the church in the West, in Europe, in order for it to be isolated within the walls of the church, and now Christianity has turned into one desolated religion from the domain of worship: within the church, for instance mass is on Sunday, and they must do that in the church, whereas the early prayer of namaz we can even pray in the street, the namaz of jatzi has come, and for instance we can be in the bus, we can still pray in the bus, which means that the element of the isolation of religion within the walls of the mosque is quite dangerous.
Why do I say this? You might have heard one saying: when the Prophet (PBUH) came from Mecca to Medina, when he had reallocate, the first thing he had done was he had built one mosque and you might have heard our colleagues when they would always say, the mosque was the parliament, it was a university, it was this, it was that, and now some are even convinced that we also ought to make a mosque in order for it to represent a university, we need to make it a theater, and we need to make a parliament; this is simply not the message.
The metaphor of the mosque is that within the mosque the social life ought to be present, yet even among the social life the concept and the mosque ought to be present. We cannot abstain religion from our everyday tasks, for instance one hadith of the Prophet (PBUH) says: “the righteous and reliable trader in the hereafter will be together with the witnesses” which reflects that withal how much religion is important for the one who gives his life for Islam, it is beholds the same importance as for the one who spends his days dwelling and thinking about God. Nowadays, especially for those in trade, it is very hard to keep calculations on halal (what is not forbidden) albeit this does not mean that haram (what is forbidden) ought to conquer. Haram cannot simply become usual and normal to us; saying that whichever, halal or haram it does not matter. Believe this would not only have an impinge on our spiritual life but it would have an impact on our physical domain as well, meaning that even the smallest slight obtained without any rights, has an impact on the psychology of man, it influences the biological structure of man; it seems that we are more afraid of this aspect rather than our status in the hereafter.
We were discussing with a friend who is highly educated and a good person. He said, all the fruits and vegetables which we now consume are hormonal and hence cause harm to the body of man, to his organism, there is only one thing which is not hormonal and that is wine. And I said this is even worse since it harms the spirit. Which means that we should not only keep focus on this world, we should primarily preoccupy with the hereafter, and this world for us Muslims is one tool which shall help attain bliss and contentment in the hereafter, and such thing can only be obtained with the true seek and acquaint of Allah Almighty.
There are a number of logical and scientific arguments which speak on the existence of God in the universe (from time to time I shall encounter them in our lectures, but I don’t want to lecture on the logical dimension of the existence of God) yet there is one argument which is important according to me and this is the ontological argument.
Among us mainly it has been used by Sufis, or the Muslim mystics yet this has been greatly used in the West as well, and it is known as the argument of Saint Hanselmen on the truthfulness of God. This argument says that man modifies all the things in the universe according to his character and when the wickedness is encompassed within man, they are filtered there, and subject to that character man decides upon a matter whether it is good or bad. In psychology, especially in the materialistic psychology, we have called this the voice of the conscience and nobody, lamentably, has confessed to us what this voice of conscience is. Moreover for instance, when we break somebody’s heard, we experience one regret in our innerness despite the hinder from our ego, the ego does not allow man to tell the other person that it has broken their heart, yet something from inside us doesn’t let that person be at peace. What is this? This shows that, even within the most decayed person upon whom logic functions, he who plans a robbery with his logic or another ill endeavor, in his innerness he still has a portion which continuously tells him take it easy, you are doing this but this is not a very good thing to do, this voice is exactly the voice of the revelation of man, God apart from His physical dimension has breathed from His own spirit to man, and this breath receives its own voice within man, this is the primary argument which shows us, that there is God. Under no logical, scientific occasion can one argue the voice of conscience on the matter where it arises from, meaning that, a person in society capable of all evil, in his innerness is pure, since the voice slowly says: you are committing to wrong doing. What is this? This is only the nefha-i ilahia- the breath of God, which is within man and could never decay, but it needs to be revealed, to this reason among us, in the Muslim Tasawwuf, dhikr (remembrance of God) is one of the primary codes for the revelation of the spirit, Allah Almighty in the Qur’an says: “So remember Me; I will remember you. And be grateful to Me and do not deny Me.” (Surah Al-Baqarah, verse: 152).
The revelation of this voice, this voice which is within man to be revealed to motion outside its body, into his physics, into his society, is obtained through deity on Allah Almighty.
I encountered this on a previous lecture, the last Sunday at the mosque, that it has become a tradition among us to say that only women say ‘Lā ilāha illā -llāh, muḥammadur rasūlu -llāh (Kalima-I tawheed). Mothers, grandmothers mainly on the three months (Rajab, Sha’ban, Ramadan) 70000 or 90000 times conduct tasbih (a form of dhikr in Islam, repetitive utterances of brief sentences glorifying Allah Almighty), ‘Lā ilāha illā -llāh, and I said to the jamaat (Assembly) not to believe that it is haram for men to also say ‘Lā ilāha illā -llāh, men can also conduct kalimei tawheed.
The things which I here encounter have become foreign, alienated from the contemporary man, however these remembrances of God, create an envision one spiritual path for man upon which one always comes across. Pictures which recall you of God shall always come front you, ones which attract you hither God.
I will tell you one example. It was the eighth year after the Prophet (PBUH) and the Muslims had allocated and had to prepare for one grand war in Tabuk. The Prophet (PBUH) had told the as’habs in the mosque: “Prepare because we are going to war against the Byzantine”. One young man who had just gotten married that evening had heard this call for war. As soon as he had heard this call he had gone directly to the Prophet (PBUH) and had told him that he had also wished to attend war. The Prophet (PBUH) had said: “No! You will stay home since you have gotten married young and you must stay by your wife at home, we cannot take you this time”. He had asked for permission several times and in the end the Prophet (PBUH) had taken him with him but he had told Hazrat Omer and Hazrat Ali to keep him close to themselves, so the young man would not go and fight in the front row, but stay behind instead. They had gone to war and several times Ali and Omer had looked after him, since the word of the Prophet (PBUH) had been much respected to them, but each time this young person had passed over them and at one moment in one duel he fell shahid or Shaheed (witness or martyr), he fell as a witness. When they had gone back, Hazrat Alia and Hazrat Omer were upset they had told the Prophet (PBUH): “Rasul-Allah we could not keep the word we gave you, we could not keep him away, the more we took him back, the more he went in the front facing the enemy”. Then the Prophet (PBUH) told them: “If you could have only seen what he had seen, you would not have kept him away but you would have also gone with him” meaning that one particular sacred beautiful experience had appeared before the young man, that which our poets express; the experience of God from within.
Among us the elderly scholars, even in this small town of Tetovo several of the elderly scholars, when they would have gone to the market to buy things (apples, potatoes), they would have never taken them in pairs, for instance they would have never bought 2 kg, they would have bought 1 kg or 3 kg, due to the respect on the oneness of God, since it is an odd number and when they had bought things in the market they have bought 1 kg of apples or 3 kg or 5 kg, which means that in their innerness they have continuously experienced the existence of Allah Almighty. This is one crucial element, it is the status which enables us the spiritual bliss in namaz, it enables to us the spiritual bliss in the everyday life.
Each one of you is a person who participates in various social activities, Faqir who is here today with you and who altogether with you seeks to comprehend some things, says to you that we do not elope from any circumstance, we shall be at the university as well as at evening gatherings, we will also be at the Stadium (we have football fans here as well) we will be everywhere, but wherever where we shall be we shall be with God, together the person who is with God, experiences the existence of God in his innerness, the devil cannot allure that person into anything, since at the place where God is the devil cannot endure; where goodness shares a presence wickedness cannot survive, and indubitably we ought to conduct this experience through worship, deity, namaz, the reading of the Qur’an and the remembrances of Allah Almighty.
Our essential remembrance is ‘Lā ilāha illā -llāh, muḥammadur rasūlu -llāh, meaning that if throughout the day we say ‘Lā ilāha illā -llāh, muḥammadur rasūlu -llāh, the devil and the wickedness share no stay in our presence. The devil except as a person is moreover the representative of evil, have this in mind. Don’t think that the devil will come and take you somewhere, however the reign of the wickedness as a principle develops a devilish atmosphere within us, it develops one wickedness; in the place where Allah Almighty is, the devil cannot survive, keep this in mind. To this reason we can only attain the experience of God in our innerness only if we continuously remember Allah Almighty, and if we seek to experience Him in our innerness. Thank you.
