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As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullah Qur'an Weekly, this is your brother Wisam Sharieff. With
Allah's mercy, today we are going to start Surah Fil.
We are starting Surah Fil today, and you know this, Surah Fil means elephant. So what's
the big story about the elephant here? Let's take a quick moment to recognize, the surah
is extraordinarily descriptive. So if you're picking up the Qur'an for the first time,
you might feel like, what's going on here? I need a back story. So, let's take a moment
to discuss. Before the Prophet's (salAllahu alayhi wasalam)
birth, we're going to go back thousands of years to the building of this actual, physical
cube of the Ka'aba. Who built it? You know, Ibrahim (alayhi as-salam) with his son Ismael.
We know from Surah Baqarah ayah 127 Surah Baqarah, ayah 127, that as soon as they finished
building monument to God, they stopped and said, ""رَبَّنَا تَقَبَّلْ
مِنَّا " [Rabbanā Taqabbal Minnā] - Oh Allah accept this. You just built the
Ka'aba and you are saying oh Allah accept? This is humility. Then they said in ayah 129
"رَبَّنَا وَابْعَثْ فِيهِمْ رَسُولً" [Rabbanā Wa Ab`ath Fīhim
Rasūlāan] send to this city a Rasul, but then he said, "and leave peace, tranquility,
and prosperity." I want you to hear these words. Peace, tranquility, and prosperity
to the city of Mecca. Now we stop, we celebrate his assurance, his confidence to his Lord, that I'm going
to ask for this today, and thousands of years later, I know my dua will hold true.
As a matter of fact, his dua was put to the test when a man named Abraha, decided to build
a rival to the Ka'aba. He said look, it's a box, it's a cube, everyone goes there, there's
a whole bunch of money to be made. More importantly, there's an honor and dignity that is associated
with being the owner of the house. He went about his ways, and he built a magnificent
house of worship, a temple. By all measurements, it was more grand than this little black box
in the middle of the desert. He built it, and as all have seen as children growing up
in cartoons, he sat in the middle of his palace and said, "Where is everyone?" Realize that
every pilgrimage that was made yearly, was a pilgrimage made to the Ka'aba. Pilgrims
went, made sacrifices, people who didn't even believe in the oneness of God, still came.
Even idolatress came to this. So Abraha said, "Look, I'm going to knock
out the competition here. I'm going to very simply, take my army, go to Mecca, crush this
Ka'aba, tell all the people what's up, and go home. People will then come to my place."
So he did something, which I need you to understand, say the word "fil," fil means elephant. To
you and me, we've gone to the zoo, we've seen them. But there's a missing connection here.
In the middle of the desert, in Mecca, when's the last time you've seen an elephant? You
haven't. So this is the equivalent to war tanks. This is the equivalent of like huge,
massive machines. Your Pacific Rim robot, if you will. This was coming out of nowhere
and they had no idea what was going on. The Meccan society was astonished.
Now I need you to take one big part of the story here. On the decision to come to the
Ka'aba, his own advisor said no way, you can't do this. There's this unspoken rule, there's
something about Mecca. Me and you know that thing is the dua of Ibrahim alayhi as-salam,
but there's just something and we don't mess with it. Abraha was just like, "Look, I"m
not asking for an opinion. Mount up the troops, we're going to crush this." So hours, planning,
days, weeks, getting the army together. Even telling the soldiers they're about to go destroy
the Ka'aba. They head out. They leave on their way, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala picks up
the story. The narration from us, and says now that you know this, let Me remind you
of the awesome effect of this event, and how it affected the people of Mecca.
So Allah starts with alif that grabs your attention and says أَلَمْ تَرَكَيْفَ
فَعَلَ رَبُّكَ بِأَصْحَبِ الْفِيلِ, (alam tara kayfa faAAala
rabbuka bi-as-habialfeel). أَلَمْ, have you not seen? أَلَمْ تَرَكَيْفَ
فَعَلَ, and look at the words. Allah says, have you not seen how your Lord dealt
with. It's not like He made preparations, no, Allah dealt with their huge plan. بِأَصْحَبِ
الْفِيلِ (bi as habialfeel), do you hear Abraha's name? Do you hear any of the
army? Do you hear the size? No. You hear what they thought was going to be the unstoppable
war machine, you see how Allah dealt with بِأَصْحَبِ الْفِيلِ (as
habialfeel: the people of the elephant). عَمَل (AAamal) means to do something with intention.
فَعَل means just to do something. That's how it was for Allah, he dealt with the people
of as habialfeel (people of the elephant). Automatically, the people of Mecca were like,
"Yes, I remember that." أَلَمْ يَجْعَلْ كَيْدَ
هُمْ فِي تَضْلِيلٍ (Alam yajAAal kaydahum fee tadleel), and Allah reminds the
person who's nodding and saying "Yeah, I remember as habialfeel." Allah says, do you know how
we dealt with them? Do you know how we took their plan, their hours in the war room...
فِي تَضْلِيلٍ, we lead it astray. Do you recognize and realize that as the trotted
forward, and as the dust rose up under the horizon of the Meccan, you saw this enormous
army coming through. Do you remember that? And at this point there's a hush, there's
a silence. I remember that. وَأَرْسَلَ عَلَيْهِمْ
طَيْرًاأَبَابِيلَ (Waarsala AAalayhim tayran ababeel). وَأَرْسَلَ
عَلَيْهِمْ (waarsala AAalayhim) And we sent upon them, طَيْرًاأَبَابِيلَ
(tayran ababeel). Have you ever seen a cloud when you're out on a hot day? A cloud just
comes and it blocks out the sun. It's almost like that temporary shade. Allah pulling up
the sunscreen. Can you imagine the entire sky going dark in the middle of the desert,
in the middle of the day? A lot of the steam you have in your army, kind of goes dull.
There's a deadness. The sky just went black. There's nothing left in the sky, you can't
even see. It's night in the middle of the day. Let's be real, all of your skin just
got pulled out. There's a calm, there's a quiet, there's a silence that comes over Abraha,
over the elephants, over the soldiers, and almost over the person reading the surah.
You cannot hear anything, except... تَرْمِيهِم بِحِجَارَةٍ
مِّن سِجِّيلٍ (Tarmeehim bihijaratin minsijjeel). Silence. You're an army, you're
moving forward and you look over to the soldier next to you, and then you look back, and he's
gone. You look over to the elephant behind you, and you look back, and he's gone. Just
nailed to the ground. You can't see this. تَرْمِيهِم بِحِجَارَ (tarmeehim
behijara) small, little baked clay stones are being dropped from the sky, but do you
hear it? You don't hear anything. You just look around like a batman scene. Where there's
a bunch of bad guys, and one by one they drop. Maybe he fell, maybe he's sick, maybe he's
sad. But now the elephants are dropping? And you can't see it. Imagine the horror, the
overwhelming feeling that comes over you. And Allah says, one by one they're being knocked
away. فَجَعَلَهُمْ كَعَصْفٍ
مَّأْكُولِ (FajaAAalahm kaAAasfin ma/kool). Now days have passed. Weeks have
passed. Months have passed. You're sitting in the city of Mecca looking out into this
dead desert, and all you see is the sandstorm blowing away bit by bit, part by part, until
there's nothing left but tumbleweeds blowing through. Allah left them like there was nothing.
As this description is completed, how do you feel? Isn't there a quietness? Isn't there
a sense and a feeling that this event, whether you believed or not, this event shaped Mecca?
I'm asking you to look for two things. Number one, say the word وَأَرْسَلَ (waarsala).
Say it, وَأَرْسَلَ (waarsala). Doesn't it sound like saying ar-rasul? Right? You
can hear Rasul right inside of that. If God could cover the sky with birds, knock out
an entire army, because of the dua of Ibrahim (alayhi as-salam), he couldn't send a Messenger
who brought a revelation of Qur'an? A man couldn't bring a book, but God cover the sky
with birds? You saw it, God covered the sky with birds that dropped stones.
As that settles in, I'm going to ask you this question. What was your fil? What was your
event of astronomical proportion, like you never seen an elephant before? You've never
seen a dinosaur. If I come show up to your house with a dinosaur, what impact is that
going to make? That's what I'm asking us to do. When you find that event, that proof to
you, not rationally or through textual proof; something you saw and said "Look bro, I don't
care, this is God's word." What was that event for you? If you haven't found that yet, maybe
you need to look just a little bit closer in your own life. When did Allah, our Creator
make you feel? We've taken this first step in this first surah. You already know, the
year of the elephant was the year the Prophet (peace be upon him) was born. So there's a
lot of not only backstory, but there's a prelude coming. If this event took place, and now
eight months from now, I tell you there's a man who was born and his name is Muhammad
(pbuh). Twenty years from now, his character blows you away. At the age of forty, that's
forty years from you seeing the sky covered in birds, a man tells you he's the Prophet.
How tough is it to believe that? Everything we learned here is a means to get
closer to our Lord. If this worked for you, if this video was your fil, get up and pray
two rakah. Two full prostrations. Touch your head to the ground, and say Allah I want to
feel. Allah I would like to feel. I'll see you in the next set of videos. I
hope you're taking the opportunity to experience the Qur'an as it's real in it's nature. Let
me give you a closing story here. A'isha (radiAllahu Anha), the mother of the believers, as a young
girl in Mecca, she once saw two blind, wandering beggars. Not the guy that comes around just
once, but the guy that wanders around your city. Maybe you've had one of those. I had
a guy on a tricycle with a fireman's hat just drove around making ring-ring sounds. With
that guy, I always wondered what was his backstory. A'isha (radiAllahu Anha) asked, so who are
these blind guys? She was reminded unequivocally by the people of the town, those two are two
stranded soldiers from the army of Abraha. They lived, but they were blind. What did
Allah take away from them? The ability to look at the Ka'aba. Make Qur'an real in your
life. JazakAllahu Khayran. Wa salamu alaikum wa
rahmatullah