This audio is brought to you by MuslimCentral.com

and then I was asked to give a khudba here and I was extremely nervous. I was 19 years old and the person who calmed my nerves was him and he said it's going to be okay but he didn't realize the reason I was nervous was because he was there because I used to come listen to his khudbas all the time and you had to come very early to attend his khudbas because otherwise you'd be praying on the street so I used to come extra early to listen to him and he's going to reward him for all the work that he's done and all the service that he's given to this community and the dedication that

he has Allah preserve him and his health and give the best to him and his family and also like to start by acknowledging and making dua for all of those that have spent so much of their life savings and have made the journey to khudj this year that is not an easy journey to make not financially not emotionally not physically many of them that are older and age that Allah did not give them a chance to go their entire life for going for the first time many are waiting for many many years and you know it's actually relatively easier for people in the United States

to even go to khudj relatively but there are other places in the world where you don't get enough visas and people have to wait 20-30 years before they can get a chance and they have to get in the waiting list you know when they're maybe 15-16 years old and they won't get a chance until they're 45-50 years old to be able to go and that's a reality for people in the world so those that Allah has given the opportunity to go may Allah has to make that a means of forgiveness for them that all of their sins are forgiven and they have a fresh start when they come back

and Allah bring them back home to their family safely and with a new sense of a renewed sense of iman and commitment to Allah Zawajal and this beautiful deen of Ibrahim al-Hissalam

So what I wanted to talk to you about today is a really powerful expression in the Qur'an very short surahs in the Qur'an they say many things but they say them in very few words

and suratul-balad is an example of that. At the end of suratul-balad Allah Zawajal describes a person who did not believe but instead of saying ma'amun he didn't believe Allah describes not the belief but the result of that belief

So sometimes I want you and I to think about iman our faith as a seed and that seed gives rise to a plant what you see above the ground is the plant and what is under the ground is the seed

So now Allah is talking about what plant never came out because the iman wasn't there the seed wasn't there therefore the plant never emerged

Now what is it that should be the fruit or the plant the flower that buds from this iman that's what Allah is talking about here by way of an imagery

and the imagery you would think in other places in the Qur'an this imagery the result of iman we would think should be worship

right the result of iman should be for example falasaddaqa wa lasallah

right they didn't accept the truth he didn't pray worshipping Allah you know refining your commitment to Allah Zawajal removing all elements of shirk from your heart having complete reliance on Allah

those are all manifestations of iman but here the manifestation of iman is very different like Allah is highlighting a different dimension of what it means to be a believer

and he's criticizing the disbeliever and you would think when Allah criticizes the disbeliever he's going to criticize their shirk, their kufr, their heedlessness, their sins and all of that stuff

but he's describing something else entirely and the language that he uses is pretty remarkable and interesting he starts with falak taham al-Aqaba

very unique phrasing in the Qur'an it's not used anywhere else

and this phrase is commonly in easy English translations they'll say and he he did not scale or he did not climb up the hill

right al-Aqaba is actually the end of a you know an elevated peak so to scale a mountain or to go up and up and up an elevation

when you reach the top of it the montaha of it that's called al-Aqaba so the edge of a cliff even can be called al-Aqaba

so that's the first thing he didn't reach there but the word used is iqtiham and iqtiham will give you some things about its meaning

it actually has to do with when you go and you enter into something difficult like if there's a narrow entrance and you barely squeeze in

...