Gems Of Ramadan ✔

DAY 6 - CATCH THE BREEZE

Ibn Abi ad-Dunya narrated that Maalik Ibn Dinaar and also Mujaahid said the following statement in one chain, and actually this statement is said by more than these two. With a slight variation, you will find al-Hasan al-Basri, Abu Bakr al-Muzani and others said it. The statement is not a day passes by which does not say O son of Adam I have come to you today and I will never return until the Judgment Day, so be careful of what you do during my stay. When that day passes and leaves and it is done with, it is folded up and sealed, never to be reopened again by anyone until Allah reopens it on the Judgment Day. In another statement, al-Hasan al-Basri compared the days like guests. He said the days say O son of Adam I am your guest and guests always leave thanking or vilifying you. They either say he is generous or cheap, they speak good or bad about you. And likewise the days and nights are just like that, meaning they will either testify for you or against you.

Understand that the night and day are like two treasures chests. Be careful what you do with them and be careful how you spend them. Take care of them like you would take care of a treasure. It is as if you were made up of time. Time is your capital and investment. Time is days, days are your life and life is like road, it will either take you to Jannah or to Jahannam wal-'Iyaathu Billah. Nights and days are for worship but more so the nights, and the days are for the market place.

One time I went with Shaykh Ibn Qa'ood to do Hajj with him. May Allah raise his ranks to Jannah, a true Imaam of our time who spoke the truth. He was among the official 'Ulamaa of Ifta years and years ago, actually it is so far back that I do not think anyone here was born when he was in the official Ifta group. He spoke on some matters and then resigned from the Ifta, or more accurately put he was forced to resign. Many say where are the 'Ulamaa that speak the truth? Alhamdulillah as bad as the situation is, this Ummah has righteous 'Ulamaa but the problem is where those people are looking for them. They are looking for them in the wrong places because they are rejected from satellite channels. They are sidetracked and imprisoned by governments who put them down and crush them and promote other ignorant heads, and unfortunately the masses of the Ummah lost the scale of how to find out the genuine 'Ulamaa from the fake ones.

As to Ibn Qa'ood Rahmatullahi 'Alayhi, one of the matters he spoke about back in the days was TV. Back in the seventies and eighties the TV in Sa'oodiyyah was filth, polluting the pure lands of the Haramayn. When we were in Madinah in 1979, I remember it and I recall it very clearly, we were leaving the Haram one day as we did every single day Alhamdulillahi Rabbil-'Aalameen. The market was right outside the door unlike how it is today, we walked by the shops and we passed by TV shops that had TVs displayed all throughout the store. They had them on the only government channel they had and it was the only channel in the whole country. In 1979, I remember one day we were walking out of the Haram and it was Donny Osmond on their TV. The TV and the situation of the TV was one of the reasons why the 1979 massacre in Makkah happened, that is one of the reasons Juhaymaan mentioned. So to diffuse the situation, the king had a meeting with the high 'Ulamaa because people listen to the 'Ulamaa. He said wal-Hamdulillah we fixed the TV and now it is Da'wah oriented, to convey it to the 'Ulamaa. It was total silence but then the lion, may Allah raise his rank to Firdaws, had to roar. Ibn Qa'ood got up and said no that is not true, and that was the point that started the feud.

The point of mentioning this is when I did Hajj with him, I was sitting by him one time and a man came to him and asked him. He said Shaykh what is the ruling on TV? The man appeared to be a normal person, he was not a Taalib 'Ilm where the Shaykh would go into details so the Shaykh kept it clear, brief and short in a way the man will understand it. And this pertains to our talk today, that is why I mention it. He said is there anyone with his right mind who knows that his every heartbeat, every exhalation and inhalation, every one of those is counted and fixed, does anyone who realises that wastes his time on any of that filth?