The Al-Ikhlas Surah, or in other words honesty, is one chapter that is dedicated to the soul, to man’s heart and in reality, rarely do we have sincere words, through which we can express the meaning of the Al-Ikhlas Surah. This is exactly why sometimes even words are not enough to describe honesty. Honesty is one work and book in itself, tawhid / belief and the experience of the oneness of God in general is one work in itself, with few words said. Hz. Mawlana in his two verses says: “when the pen was supposed to write for love, at that moment the pen broke and was not able to write about it”, because for the adherent who is connected to God and lives together with God, each experience of love contains its final encompassment, that is, love for God. That’s why when Majnun fell in love with Layla, or when Layla fell in love with Majnun, in reality this only shows us that Majnun saw the love for God in Layla; precisely to this he undertook to climb the mountains and left his wealth behind and vice versa Layla perceives the love for God in Majnun. All the other types of love in this world, for the adherent, are symbolic. The only true and real love is the one hither God, because merely in this love there is no place for personal gain, in all other type of relationships there is place for interest and personal benefit. Brothers are of the same blood, but when it comes to separation of wealth they are even able to kill one another; children and parents love one another, but when it comes to their personal gains, they can live without speaking to one another. The work “Tasawwuf and Tarikat” from Salcuk Eraydin, a translated work, speaks of the secondary goals and the primary goals of life of this world. Muslims and adherents ought to never overstep on their primary goals, because of the secondary ones, and vice versa. In the secondary aims we have the good maneuver, earnings, social status love towards our parents, love towards our brothers and other people, love towards the partner, however none of the above does not prevent nor becomes an obstacle for love towards Allah Almighty. The final aim justifies all types of love that are legal and moral.
Al-Ikhlas Surah speaks of such closeness with Allah Almighty, and believe it or not oftentimes we are left speechless when commenting on the Surah Al-Ikhlas. Until now we spoke about the first two verses of the Surah Al-Ikhlas, today we will speak about the two last verses of this surah. In the final verses Allah Almighty makes the distinction to His metaphysical physiognomy, and eliminates all other type of empty beliefs, which throughout history have penetrated the cultures of faith. Lam Yalid, Allah Almighty says, means, he neither begat wa lam yulad / nor was begotten, meaning that He is neither born nor he alone was begotten. We have discussed this earlier as well, and we have said that the verses of the Qur’an and the Qur’an as a whole have descended within 23 years (13 years in Mecca and 10 years in Madina) and the manner of descend of the Qur’an is tadrijiyye / step by step, has not descended all at once and for the descent of each verse there has been an event for which the verse has descended. Even in this verse when it says: “Lam yalid wa lam yulad” “He neither begat nor was begotten” , surely it is an element that Allah Almighty wants to communicate to the adherent.
We are speaking about two elements here that we come across in the mythology and various beliefs which have existed and continue to exist. In the moto of oneness, in believing in Allah Almighty “La ilaha Ilallah Muhammedun Rasulallah” there is an interesting philosophy for example when we say “La” this type of conversation is not human like, it is not included in the human dimension, because man never starts a conversation with negation. We always begin our sentences with an affirmation, whereas Allah Almighty starts his sentences with “La Ilaha Ilallah”. “La Ilaha” with la / no, there is not, it negates all other beliefs except for Allah Almighty. Even in this case when Allah Almighty says “Lam yulid” / He did not begat” it eliminates all beliefs that support the belief present in mythology “God having children”, including the far Eastern and the ancient Egyptian. Later on, even in the Greek methodology and recently in the practice of belief among Christian mentality. In the Christian belief Jesus (PBUH) is seen as a son of God and at the same time there is incarnation, there is God’s involvement in the flesh of man. This type of mentality and thinking was vastly present in the past. You probably have not heard much about the incarnation, rather you have heard the term reincarnation or reincarnation, which means the transfer of the soul from one body to the other body, while the incarnation means the incorporation of the soul of the body within the human body and in the Christianity Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God, that is, that God has carried His spirit to his son.
This issue from the physical and formal aspect is presented through the example of Jesus in the Qur’an, however as a metaphysical and philosophical element it goes beyond this meaning. Oftentimes people consider and feel like “God”; in historic terms the Qur’an speaks of a few prototypes which we experience in every moment in our life. For example, you might have noticed how lately people who have lived a more laic life, turn to religion, and if they are not under the guidance of a religious leader who is a true leader, they become so religious for such a short time that they act as if they monopolized God within themselves. This is a similar mentality, claiming that we should keep God within his Godly limits, within his family, within his group and his thinking. The physical / biological incarnation among Christians is the incarnation of “God”, the father in the son, Jesus. Whereas the meaning of incarnation is that we should all monopolize God within our thinking patterns and say “either think like me, or otherwise you are disbelievers”. In Arabic this is called hulul, and this is a new type of hulul which is strongly forbidden by our Prophet (PBUH). The Prophet (PBUH) says that if we venture and call one person a disbeliever, and the disbelief does not encompass that person, believe me you are the disbeliever in that case. This is the reason why the monopolization of God is not allowed within a person’s subjective thinking. Then, several other prototypes mentioned in the Qur’an are about three people that lived during the time of Moses (PBUH), one is Karun, the second one is Haman and the third person is Pharaoh. Karun is the symbol of wealth, who thinks that through wealth he can achieve all things of this world, to the extent that he even says to the Pharaoh “don’t worry, I will build a castle on which we will both climb with our army and we will fight Moses’s God up there”. Haman is the cleric who, for the sake of wealth and social status, is willing to trade all essential values of life. The Pharaoh is the leader of his people who has declared himself as god and who has thought that if he feeds his people and he lead them he can be their God. Meaning that all these three people are people who wish to experience themselves as God, and this is a very dangerous element. Only religion can prevent some of the unrestrained desires and the greed of man. I have mentioned before that humans have a certain energy that if not controlled through religion can be very reckless. There is Kuwat akliya / rational energy, that some people become so arrogant that they consider themselves God (hasha / may God refrain us from this), as if they know everything. There is kuwwat shehediya / lustful energy, that some people can literary step on anyone just to reach their own personal satisfaction. The third type of energy is is kuwwat dafabiyye / the energy of discontent (imagine the situation of the dying and killing of Muslims in the far east in Turkistan, Sink Jang or China; not only of Muslims but the killings in Africa between those two tribes where around million people were killed). If religion does not step in front of them, then man can become worse than an animal; for this characteristic of humans it is said that “Homo hominis lupus est” Man for man is a wolf”. If a person was put in the position of a wolf and if people in general do not take control of their ego, then the person starts to consider himself or herself as Jesus Christ; people will start to consider the incarnation of God in this world. This is a bit of a harsh scenario that cannot be understood by those not part of this. Take for a moment to analyze people who are leaders and who during their state of leadership and power are able to slander, or if they are in possession of wealth that person is able to cause injustice to everyone else and in this unconscious way, due to the nonexistence of the religious dimension, the character of man can perish. Therefore Allah Almighty says: “Lam Yulid” being God and belonging to God from the physical / biological domain is impossible. Only from the ibadah aspect we can become, we can belong to God. Those who wish to be close to God, to become one with God, to experience the soul, can experience this when they put their heads down in Sajdah; without going to Sajdah the link with God cannot be established. The only closeness that can be created with God is through Ibadah, not through blood, nor any physical or biological closeness. Ibadah, showing deity towards God requires from us to avoid the biological and meaningful incarnation of God in ourselves regardless of which of the three energies we belong to. “Lam yalid wa lam yulad” “He neither begat nor was begotten”. There is an urgency here, an attack on the philosophy of cause-and-effect. Usually if people merely think logically, since logic and this kind of thinking rationally is the lowest form of thinking (I am not referring to logical thinking, but I am referring to logic as science) because then people cannot climb matters beyond logic. These matters are not illogical but they are beyond logical. until the XIX century logic was not considered a science, it was merely a tool even its initial name was Organon which means logic; logic is classified under the sciences in Arabic. Among Muslims logic is considered Ilm’ul alet / science alet (tool) through which we can find the righteous path through another frame of science; but despite this our premises need to arise from somewhere; without the premises we cannot reach the logical result. Now imagine when we speak about religion, God; man treats religion and God without any specific respect, whenever they feel like thinking about it they formulate a thought about God. This is exactly what I mean by logic, in which without any foundation, without any prior information thoughts on God are concluded, unfortunately this is happening and more and more lately all around us. A person who has not read the Qur’an, not even once, a person who does not have any information with a credible source in regard to religion cannot simply state things and interpret them publically on behalf of religion. When Allah Almighty says “Lam yelid wa la yulid” meaning that there is nothing before Him, for which because of something God has occurred. The materialistic philosophy does not accept anything without a cause, everything is considered to have cause, and because of this cause, something arises and occurs. In this verse Allah Almighty tell us that He has no cause before Himself and reminds us that we can approach Him only through adherence.
In the Al Baqarah Surah, Allah Almighty starts the verse with Elif Lam Mim, Elif Lam Mim are three letters of the Arabic alphabet, these letters are elif, l, m, for which we have no knowledge on why they are in the Qur’an. From the beginning of this surah we are told “slow down, you do not have all the information, expect that information that I provide to you. From the beginning of this verse I am telling you that you don’t know anything” (I am saying this in a metaphoric connotation). “Dhalikel kitabu la rejbe fiih” “this is the book for which there is no doubts:”, “Huden lil mutteklin” “it is a guide for the humanly people (for those who understand the humanly dimension) or the devoted” (personally I don’t perceive the word takwa as devotion, according to Fakir takwa is the dimension of humanity, living life as a human is takwa. Who are these muttakin, takwan, who are these people? “they believe in the gayba”, they believe and trust the issues of this life that they are not meant to know, meaning that they believe in the (gayba) the unseen, in the metaphysics, they believe in something beyond their senses. God is present in this gayba, this is the reason why it is expected from us to believe, and instead of saying They know the gayba, it says, they trust the gayba.
At the interval where knowledge ends, faith begins. And then faith comes back to this world through knowledge. This means that until you find God, you try out with knowledge in life. When one finds God, faith should enter, because that’s where knowledge plays no role anymore. Then once the person believes, to go back to the worldly dimension, you need knowledge again. But the matter with faith, is about experiencing God and that’s where we have very little elements of knowledge. That’s why more often we are satisfied with someone who recites the Qur’an in Arabic, even if we don’t understand, but his voice is soothing, instead of someone who recites the Qur’an and we can understand it. The dimension of faith is the dimension of the lightening, break-through, which is born in man. What are supposed to be then? We need to be a sunflower and not a hedgehog, the sunflower follows the sun and it opens towards the sun. If we don’t open to light, light doesn’t penetrate either. There is one saying by one thinker that says: The Sun is not to blame if the bat cannot see at daylight. The bat cannot see because he doesn’t have the courage, not because there is lack of sun; various judgements prevent us to see the truth. In one way when we are afraid and are weak, we become like a hedgehog, and don’t allow for the light to penetrate us. “Wa lam Yuleed” means that He himself is not born and doesn’t have a cause. To understand this one must have a religious moment of experience, in other words, if one person has never kneeled in sajdah, one cannot understand how God doesn’t have a cause in front of him. How can something occur, if it doesn’t have a cause for His existence? What can it be, so it is eternal, not to be born, not to have someone who has enabled his existence into this world? God is like this. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have his attribute of existence in the universe. Now let me tell you a story:
Once an atheist and a believer have met, and the atheist has asked few questions “you say that God exists, but you never show Him to us? You say that the devil is created from fire and again claim that God will punish him with fire, how will the fire burn the fire? And the third question was:” you say that God knows all predestined issues then why we are called to justice?” these questions are asked by those whom I just described a bit earlier; clear logical questions, logical questions without prior knowledge on that matter. The knowledgeable man around him, was keeping a brick of mud in his hands, and hit the atheist on the head with it. The man got a bruise, because the brick was heavy and solid like a rock. The atheist took the man in front of the judge and accused the man for what he had caused. So, the judge asked why he had done that. The atheist said that I asked him three questions and this man hit me with the brick. The judge asked: “why did you hit him?”, the adherent said: “I answered the three questions he asked me.” The judge insisted: “how did you answer, by hitting him?”. The answer he received from the believer was that: “he said, you say that God exists, but you don’t show it to us, I hit this person so now let him show me the pain he has, with what does he argue that I hit him?” the atheist replied: “I don’t have pain, but see how I have a bruise”. The believer said: “if you do not see God, doesn’t the universe encompass signs of His existence?”. If the frown in your face shows that you have pain, doesn’t the Universe then in its own signs tell us there is something else beyond coming? Then the believer continues to say: “he said that we claim that the devil was created from fire, and how will God punish him if he’s created from fire. This one is created from mud, so I hit him with mud, then he must not have pain. Third thing, he paraphrased that God has predestined things, He knows things, then why He calls us to justice”. Why has this man then accused me? Let him accuse God. God has said this is meant to be, and I have hit him”. This shows us that for every shallow logical question, there is a logical answer, however this is not our aim. The aim of the adherent is not for us to win the argument; our aim is not even to create weapons to win the others in battles (generally even when we create the weapons the idea is to self-protect, not to be harmed). Once a well-respected professor of mine asked us: “if you were to develop something more powerful than the atomic bomb, what would it be?” We all started to think that we should come up with something more powerful than the atomic bomb that will be even more destructive. In the end the professor said: “you need to develop something that will neutralize the atomic bomb, because we are not here to kill other humans, we are here to guide humans”. Imagine if the Prophet (PBUH) thought that he had to kill everyone; in the end he would have been left alone, because he was the only one. This is practically the philosophy how we should approach this issue, and if we approach it in this manner, then we might be able to understand how God can exist without a cause. “Wa Lam yakun lahu kufuwan ehad” / “(Nor has He any equal). He has no equal in being, perfection and action. He is One and no one is like Him”. There are many things in this world that wish to consider themselves God, and unconsciously consider themselves God. However, what is most dangerous from the individual aspect is the ego of man. Oftentimes the ego of man will overstep the limits and, in many cases, the individual abandons God and serves his ego, even the adherent does this at times. In the Surah Maun, God says “So woe to those who pray, [But] who are heedless of their prayer – Those who make show [of their deeds]” (verse 4-6), this is merely one element. This tells us that sometimes even namaz and ibadah might be for the sake of idolatry; when this will serve to prove others that we are good, then this namaz / prayer is idolatry. Among us ibadah is not the aim, zakah is not the aim either, not even fasting is our aim; all of these are tools to reach the aim, the aim is reaching God. When these tools will become our aims, then this is in rivalry with God. Look at how deeply we analyze this, not to mention other more trivial matters from this world. This manner of pursue, this mentality of thinking is what saves us, not only in this world but surely in the next one as well.
Have you thought about why people get in depression? Why they have stress? Why people commit suicide? Mainly because they cannot answer the challenges ahead of them, whereas one thinks he can manage everything, and once faced with something not able to cope with, the person tends to end his life. Once a person realizes that he or she has certain opportunities and within these opportunities he or she ought to do the best and then rely on God, only at that state the person will not reach depression; but instead experiences every challenge, every non realization of his desire, as a challenge, or a step towards a higher goal as a truth of God. In most cases we can lose the fight, but this does not mean that we have lost the battle or war.
We have started our lecture here, and perhaps we will not be successful in this, perhaps I might really not know anything about our topic, and speak out of my mind, however note that the one prospective concept that is conducted in full sincerity and for a good aim, is never actually left without its success. Fakir might not succeed in this, but the concept will thrive. Today we are in the month of Muharram, this is one of the sacred months of the Muslims, it is the new year for Muslims. The first days are the days which the nephew of the Prophet (PBUH), Hazrat Husayn (Husayn ibn Ali) has fought the against Yazidi in Karbala and Hazrat Husayn was called to battle in Iraq. In this case Yazid and Husayn are only important as personalities. Hazrat Husayn is the nephew of the Prophet (PBUH), and his family should be a guidance for us; the ones who don’t love the family of the Prophet (PBUH) have issues with their belief. People who don’t appreciate Ehli Bayt, Hazrat Husayn, Hazrat Hasan and who consider Yazid and Husayn the same are not righteously guided in religion, in comparison to the ideology. The concept is important, because Yazid represents the oppressor, the tyrant. Whereas Hazrat Husayn is the representative of the oppressed and when the people of Iraq invited him to fight Yazid system’s, Hazrat Husayn recalled two important moments. His father, Hazrat Ali, told him: “the people of Iraq are hypocrites”. In other words, he tried to tell him not to believe them. His oldest brother Hazrat Hasan in his last moments of life told him: “It seems that Allah Almighty didn’t enable us / nasib neither the prophecy // nubuwyetin nor the leadership / imamet of this country and don’t be bothered with this issue”. But can you imagine what Husain said? “if I do not answer the call of the people of Iraq to go against Yazid, then in history I will be remembered as a person who kneeled down to tyranny. I know I will be killed, I will lose the fight, however my idea is sacred, it is war against tyranny”. And today Hazrat Husayn is recognized as symbol of justice, of the oppressed for whom various poems have been also dedicated. Some of you might have heard of the renewed poem by Naim Frasher regarding the Kerbela; Kerbela is the place where Hazrat Husayn has fell martyr; I recommend for reading. The purpose of the poem is to speak about the oppressed Albanian’s within the various dominions and speak about the personality of Husayn (PBUH) Naim conveys the circumstances that Albanians were put, the various oppressions throughout centuries. For Yazid however there is no poem. There is no song to be sang on his name, whereas for Husayn they exist. This is the element that connects the person directly to Allah Almighty. Even if the battle against Yazid was lost, in the general world plan, Husayn has won the war; because the whole world including us will speak about the sacred idea of the nephew of the Prophet (PBUH) until the day of Judgement. It doesn’t matter if the adherents win the temporary battles, we might lose the battles within time, but it is important to win the war; Mecca to be freed; The Prophet (PBUH) lost the battle in Uhud, but the doors to freeing Mecca have been opened. This is valid for us as well, we might lose certain battles in this life, but if the idea is prudent, the aim is pure, the right methodology, the final aim will be the oneness of Allah Almighty. As it is mentioned and highlighted in the surah Al-Ikhlas, if we accept that He is the only one that cannot be replaced with anything, that he is absolute and “He neither begets nor is born” and has no rival, then relying on Him, we attain the dimension of connection to the true purpose of existence.
Thank you.