The Second of eight Discourses on ‘Amal,
3rd November 2007,
Nizamia Mosque, Tokai, Cape Town, South Africa
We will look at the first eleven Ayats of Surat Luqman:
In the name of Allah, All-Merciful, Most Merciful
Alif Lam Mim
Those are the Signs of the Wise Book – guidance and mercy for the good-doers:
those who establish Salat and pay Zakat
and are certain of the Akhira.
Such people are following guidance from their Lord.
They are the ones who are successful.
But there are some people who trade in distracting tales to misguide people from Allah’s Way
knowing nothing about it and to make a mockery of it.
Such people will have a humiliating punishment.
When Our Signs are recited to such a person,
he turns away arrogantly as if he had not heard,
as if there was a great weight in his ears.
So give him news of a painful punishment.
For those who have Iman and do right actions there are Gardens of Delight,
to remain in them timelessly, for ever.
Allah’s promise is true.
He is the Almighty, the All-Wise.
It is Allah Who created the heavens with no support – you can see them –
and cast firmly embedded mountains on the earth so that it would not move under you,
and scattered about in it creatures of every kind.
And We send down water from the sky and make every generous species grow in it.
This is Allah’s creation.
Show me then what those besides Him have created!
The wrongdoers are clearly misguided.
This Surat is of great importance to us in relation to the theme you remember from our last gathering. We were looking at the understanding of ‘Amal – Ad-Deen al-Mu‘amala. We saw that ‘Amal of itself is a Divine event and that ‘Amal comes from Allah onto the people. So when we take up good action and good behaviour, we are actually embodying a quality that is borrowed from the Divine. For example, Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said that to come out of your house with a smiling face was part of the Deen. He referred to certain qualities as being “a portion of Naba-wiyya”. It is in this sense that all correct action, all courtesy and manners are themselves a showing-forth of a borrowed attribute that Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, has placed on the Muminun.
We see here that Surat Luqman is, you could say, from one point of view because there are many things in it, the ‘Divine Manifesto’ of ‘Amal, of correct behaviour and courtesy. Before we come to the bit that immediately concerns us, we want to look at this prior aspect of this Surat, Surat Luqman, because it is from this that comes the overt statement about ‘Amal. What we find is that throughout the whole of Allah’s creation, He makes distinctions, and we cannot cover over these distinctions, because covering over these distinctions is failing to understand the wisdom, the Hikma, that is absolutely essential to correct understanding, and also for your correct behaviour in turn.
Alif Lam Mim
Those are the Signs of the Wise Book – guidance and mercy for the good-doers:
those who establish Salat and pay Zakat and are certain of the Akhira.
So already, the benefit, the guidance and the mercy is for the good-doers, the Muhsinin. The Muhsin is the one of Ihsan.
Ihsan is a Ruhani condition. If we go to the first Hadith in the collection of Imam Muslim, we find that the Angel Jibril questioned Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, on the three aspects of the Deen: “What is Islam?” “What is Iman?” “What is Ihsan?” He replied: “Ihsan is to worship Allah as though you saw Him, and while you do not see Him, know that He sees you.” This is what the Sufis call the reversal of knowledge and the reversal of the understanding that ignorant people have, because they see themselves as looking out on the world, and they make the judgments on the world, whereas the reality is that Allah sees His people and He makes the judgment:
Allah is with me, Allah sees me, Allah is the Witness of my acts.
Alif Lam Mim
Those are the Signs of the Wise Book –
guidance and mercy for the good-doers.
Ihsan is a Ruhani knowledge. It is an understanding that is against the direct physical experience of existence – you worship as if you saw Him, but the reality is that Allah SEES YOU. Allah is looking on the people of His creation. Then the Muhsin, Allah defines as:
those who establish Salat and pay Zakat and are certain of the Akhira.
So the ones who have this Ruhani quality are defined as the ones who establish Salat and pay Zakat and are certain of the Akhira. Look at the significance of this, and look at the crisis of the Muslims today and understand what it is. It is not a moral crisis, it is not a spiritual crisis, it is a crisis of ‘Amal, of behaviour. Why? It is because throughout the Muslim world, Salat is established by the miracle of Allah. Among the people you see every time you go to Hajj, you see that there are millions of them imbued with the certainty of the Akhira. You can tell, you can see it in the Tawaf, you can see it at the Black Stone, you can see it at the Maqam al-Ibrahim – there are people who are certain of the Akhira. But what is missing is “pay Zakat”, and this is ‘Amal. The ‘Amal of the Muhsin is Salat and Zakat, and this inner certainty of the Next World and the Unseen.
Zakat is not a given Sadaqa. I have to keep repeating it, because the so-called ‘Ulama of the last century have thrown it out the window. They have turned Zakat into a Sadaqa so that it is a gift like any other gift, but it is not. Zakat is a TAKEN Sadaqa. There is one word in the Qur’an which categorically defines Zakat as “Take!” Surat at-Tawba (9:103):
Take Zakat from their wealth.
In other words, Zakat has to be taken. This is the practice of the Muslims, and has been the practice of the Muslims right up until the collapse of Khilafa in the great empires of Islam in the East – of the Mughals and the Osmanli.
When the Amr was removed, Zakat was destroyed. The argument we have with the people of Arabia is not the argument they want to have, which is criticising or worrying that we are somehow not correct in our Adab towards the dead Awliya. This is not the issue! The issue is: you made Bay’at to the Sultan and you broke that Bay’at when you took these rich, rich lands for yourselves, and at that minute you abolished Zakat. The rulers of Arabia said, “We do not want to be Khalif,” when the English said, “Take it!” because already there was in them a belief which stems not from Madinah, which they have never respected, but from the Shi‘a movement. The Shi‘a movement, in its reality, is the denial of Amr. It is the denial of Amr. It exists on there not being a Ruler. They say that the Ruler has gone up the chimney and is hiding in the Unseen and is going to turn up when he is of no use to anybody, when the world is over, when he has nothing to rule! Because then the rule has passed to Allah, in the Judgment.
Thus, this abolition of Zakat took place in Arabia, and at that point the Muslims lost access to the Ruhani virtues that were available to them by this Guidance and Mercy. This is what you see today in the horrible, horrible tragedy of Pakistan – they establish Salat, but they do not pay Zakat, and the price they are paying for not paying Zakat is the most horrific price you can imagine.
This is important because Salat is ‘Amal. Ad-Deen al- Mu‘amala. Deen is ‘Amal. Zakat is ‘Amal. If you remove that, what do you do to the character of a man? A man who worships gains a quality, does he not? Now, the significant thing about paying Zakat is that in paying Zakat, you actually hand it over. You are assessed. Do you see the difference? They are all crying now in the North-West Provinces of Pakistan that they want to restore the Shari‘at, but they do not know what the Shari‘at is! It is not about putting women in black bags, it is about men paying up to their Amir from what they possess – handing it over – which makes them men. That is not at issue there because they have paper money, and the money of the country is worthless.
So you must understand that being assessed, and your paying of Zakat, changes your character. If you give, it can make you feel good, and make you feel that you are excellent. Having it taken from you makes you realise that it did not belong to you in the first place. It belonged to Allah and Allah is taking it back, it is His portion. Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, in a Hadith Qudsi said, “Fasting is Mine.” But also, the property of Zakat is Allah’s, and Zakat is for the poor.
This means a different kind of character. For example, in Cairo, at the point when it was a rich and flourishing Muslim city, the time came to collect Zakat, and there was a very rich merchant and his wife. He did not want to hand over his significant sum of money, so when the Zakat Collectors of the Amir came to the door, he said to the servant, “Let them wait.” Meanwhile, he wrote out a document and signed over all his wealth to his wife. The Collectors then came in and he said to them, “Well, I have very little, I just have this.” They said, “Alright, you owe so much.” But they then said, “We would now like to see your wife.” So the man said, “Just a moment,” and the wife made out a document and signed over all her wealth back to him! She came out to the Collectors and told them, “I just have this.” The Collectors were in this palace, wondering how these enormously rich people could have only these taxable goods!
So the Collectors reported the matter to the Mufti, and the Mufti in turn reported it to the Amir. The Amir said, “What are we to do?” and the Mufti replied, “Bring me the Imam Khatib.” He brought him the Imam Khatib and instructed him what to do. The following Jumu’a, from the Mimbar – which remember is the politics of the Muslims, which is why in this country and in many places in Europe, the Mimbar has been taken away from the Muslims so that the Khutba does not come from the Mimbar which is power, but is reduced to a christian sermon from a christian lectern on the side – so the Imam stood on the Mimbar and said, “Our people have had the Zakat collected from them, and this Hajji so-and-so and his wife so-and-so did this. This is what they did to the Zakat Collectors! In the eyes of the Shari‘at they are cleared. In the eyes of Allah, Allahu A‘lam.” And of course they were disgraced.
When these people say, “We want to bring back Shari‘at!” you cannot bring back Shari‘at unless it is underpinned by ‘Amal, by behaviour, by people to whom these things matter. So when the Mimbar made that judgment, they were disgraced in their community. They were disgraced, but there was no punishment. The Shari‘at in many things which are important does not have punishment because the event happens under the level of punishments with the ‘Amal of how people view things, and how the Muslims approve or disapprove of something. Do you follow?
Here, Allah openly states:
Such people are following guidance from their Lord.
They are the ones who are successful.
Allah is telling us that to have right action, which in Arabic one would call ‘Birr’ – to have an ‘Amal that is pleasing means that you are going to be successful. It is a path of success. The path of correct behaviour is a path of success, it is not something which will bring on you punishment or which will make things hard for you and difficult for you. On the contrary, it unrolls for you a path of success because in doing it, you are in harmony with nature. You are in harmony with existence because the Deen is Fitra. The Deen is the natural state of things.
But there are some people who trade in distracting tales to misguide people from Allah’s Way
knowing nothing about it and to make a mockery of it.
Such people will have a humiliating punishment.
Thus the categoric, functioning law of existence on this planet is that the people who provide the excuses to avoid the Way of Allah and who mock it and do not know what it is – they will have a humiliating punishment. This is a given of history itself. It is very important that you understand this. The people who trade in distracting tales to misguide people from Allah’s Way are the ones who say, “You don’t need this! We can work it all out for ourselves! We will use our reason and we will use our intellects, we will work it out and we won’t need this thing. Everyone can make up his own mind, and everyone can have his own opinion and this is freedom. We can express this all freely and it’ll all work out.”
The ‘working out’ of it, as we have seen in the last two hundred years, is a litany of disasters of greater and greater proportions, until finally, at the beginning of a new century, we are informed that the whole earth is collapsing, the sea is poisoned, the air is toxic and the species are disappearing in front of us – the whole foundation of existence itself is disappearing under us! This is all because of the financial transaction which, again, is disobeying Allah and denying Zakat, and making and taking usury as the principle of finance, which is something that is abhorrent and forbidden, and against Fitra, against nature.
What we are told is that these people will have a humiliating punishment, and we see that a significant portion of the world is getting this humiliating punishment – just on an ecological level, just on a level of governance and justice and absence of justice. Even ancient justices that they had achieved over the centuries have been removed from the statute books in the new dictatorships of the modern State. Now we come to the next Ayat:
When Our Signs are recited to such a person, he turns away arrogantly as if he had not heard,
as if there was a great weight in his ears.
So give him news of a painful punishment.
It is very important for you to take this understanding with you in your ordinary daily procedures of life. For example, when you turn on television – not the frivolous television but the enlightened television – it will tell you that they now have a programme on religion. They have now made this thing called ‘Religion’. These people who trade in distracting tales say, “Pick the one you like! You are free to! It is a personal thing for you, but it must not spill out into the social discourse which is the marketplace and finance.” Part of this distraction these people make is to tell you that all religion is like this, it is something you have for yourself. “It is not a civic matter, and it absolutely must not come into the realm of governance – that, we will look after! You have your religion, but when it comes to government, we will do it. And modern government is that we make sure that you pay your taxes, and we absolutely guarantee that you will have no right to the access of the vastly wealthy who own the commodities of the earth – the gold, the platinum, the silver, the oil. You leave those alone! But you pay your taxes.”
This is the reality we live in. What Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, is saying is: “Give them news of a painful punishment.” We do not say to these people, “Well, we do not agree with you.” No! We say to them, “You are in BIG trouble, in this world and the Next World.”
For those who have Iman and do right actions there are Gardens of Delight,
to remain in them timelessly, for ever.
Allah’s promise is true.
He is the Almighty, the All-Wise.
“For those who have Iman and do right actions” – Iman, and we are back to the Salihun, who are the people of Islah which means to fix, or to put things right. Those who have Iman are those who not only ‘do right actions’ but who put things right, who put things back on the Sirat al-Mustaqim, who put things back to how they should be, in harmony with what Allah has ordained. It is not enough that some noble person destroys Musharraf! The people have to be put back on the right path, and the right path is not being ‘good’ or ‘nice’, it is about what we have been looking at. They establish Salat and pay Zakat. The transaction is honest and straightforward. People evaluate their brother with respect and also evaluate themselves with respect.
The language of the kuffar in our day and in the financial system which dominates all of us – we are all under its tyranny – does not mention that at all. It only mentions how much it costs and how much it is worth. The people who have vast sums of money, undeservedly, then feel, “We must do something!” But giving money does not change the situation. It is not about flying to Africa and adopting ‘a’ child, when there are hundreds and thousands dying across Africa, it is putting things right. How do you put things right? You must ask, “Where is it against what Allah has ordained?” What has Allah ordained? He has ordained that there should be no usury, as Imam Malik said, “Not even to a blade of grass.” That means the financial system has to be removed.
You ask, “How am I to remove the financial system?” First of all, it will be removed by our conviction that Allah is going to help us to move the thing so that when we put out our hand to it, before we have touched it, it has collapsed. It is like the Istikhara which tells you what you are to do, but even in making the Niyyat to do the Istikhara, Allah will tell you what to do before you say, “Allahu akbar,” because the ‘Amal is from the Niyyat.
If you change how you view it and you have trust in Allah, then the Rizq is coming before you put your hand out. That is why there is no person in greater darkness than the Muslim who ties dynamite to his belly, because he has given up believing in the Mercy of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala. Allah can fix it! But He will not fix it until we become the ones who want to put it right. For these people:
there are Gardens of Delight,
to remain in them timelessly, for ever.
Allah’s promise is true.
He is the Almighty, the All-Wise.
Now let us look at the next Ayat:
It is Allah Who created the heavens with no support – you can see them –
and cast firmly embedded mountains on the earth so that it would not move under you,
and scattered about in it creatures of every kind.
And We send down water from the sky and make every generous species grow in it.
In other words, Allah is telling us, “Look! We have given you a cosmic system that works. Under the principles by which Allah has created it, it is functioning.” As Shaykh Ibn al-‘Arabi said, “Allah rules the universe from inside the universe.” He has put the laws in it which do it for Him, subhanahu wa ta‘ala. It is not some primitive thing as the christian idea would have it, that has some kind of interventionist power. There is not a divinity that intervenes and goes ‘Bang!’ Allah has set it up so that the whole thing is moving by laws that He has put in it, and these laws never stop. They never stop. These laws go from everything to the glance, the glance of the eye. Is this not so? Allah knows the glance of the eye.
It is in this situation that we are being given this command to recognise the importance of our behaviour, of our ‘Amal, of how we are in dealing with other people.
This is Allah’s creation.
Show me then what those besides Him have created!
The wrongdoers are clearly misguided.
“This is Allah’s creation.” Khalq, in Arabic, actually means to create forms. Several meanings are contained in this one word. We are going around the outskirts of Divine Revelation!
“This is Allah’s creation.” Khalqullah. Let us make a whole sentence out of it: This is ‘the form on which Allah has set everything up’. Allah has set up the whole thing so that it all absolutely works. The sky, the heavens, the earth, the sea – everything! All the elements have been set up by Divine Law. This Divine Law requires of us our free, spontaneous decision to be people of good action and correct, noble behaviour. We also find this word ‘khalq’ in Surat al-Qalam (68:4):
Indeed you are truly vast in character.
Or, staying with its root identity in the Qur’an, “Indeed you are created on a vast form.” The best form is the one who is the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, who has the best action, the best behaviour. Sayyidatuna ‘Aisha said, “He was the Qur’an walking,” because he embodied all these wisdoms. The three dynamics of the life of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, his three qualities, were generosity, courage and worship. He was always generous because of his Islam, he was never afraid because of his Iman, and his worship was because of his Ihsan. He embodied them. This is YOUR responsibility through your life: to be raised up by performing in that way which is pleasing to Allah. You are on a Path of success and you will have success, and you will have an Iman that lasts until the last day of your life, inshallah.
