Secrets of Rajab, Sha`ban and Ramadan
Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani
July 11, 2010 Woking, UK
Shah Jahan Mosque
Nawaytu 'l-arba`een, nawaytu 'l-`itikaaf, nawaytu 'l-khalwah, nawaytu 'l-`uzlah,
nawaytu 'r-riyaadah, nawaytu 's-sulook, lillahi ta`ala fee haadha 'l-masjid.
As-salaamu `alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh. Greetings from our shaykh, Sayyidee Shaykh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani, may Allah give him long life, to all of you, and his greetings bring you peace. We don’t know how much we are grateful to our shaykh because whenever we say we are grateful, he gives more than that.
A`oodhu billahi min ash-Shaytani 'r-rajeem. Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem. Alhamdulillahi Rabbi 'l-`Alameen, was-salaatu was-salaamu `ala ashrafa 'l-Mursaleen, Sayyidina wa Nabiyyina Muhammadin wa`ala aleehi wa sahbeehi ajma`een.
Ati`ullaha wa ati`u 'r-Rasoola wa ooli 'l-amri minkum.
Obey Allah, obey the Prophet, and obey those in authority among you. (4:59)
It is my honor to be here today. Last time they were asking me to come but I couldn't, and I am sorry about that. Alhamdulillah this time Allah made it easy for us to be here, but we are late; sorry for that. If you look into the hall here, you will see many fans running. Every fan is trying to give the utmost respect for everyone to feel a cool breeze, and these are man-made machines. What do you think about the breeze that comes from Heaven, carrying the Divinely Presence with it in order to shower and bless those who are saying, la ilaaha illa-Llah Muhammadun Rasoolullah. There is no point of description between air-conditioning systems and fans, and the system Allah (swt) created for His Paradises, systems of:
yaa nariqooni bardawn’ wa salaaman `ala Ibraaheem.
O fire, be cool and a means of peace for Abraham. (21:69)
And He made fire which burns everything to become cool. Look at the volcano; when it erupts, it closes everything. No one is able to move with the intensity of the heat and the clouds. What do you think about Allah? He turns fire in a second, not even a second, by "koon fa yaa koon," between the kaaf and the noon, it’s done. That made the fire to still be fire, but instead of burning, it became bardan, very cold. In winter when you shiver from cold, in Arabic we say "bardan", freezing cold, like at the North Pole. He changed the fire into freezing and to be salaaman, peaceful. If He didn’t say, "wa salaaman", if He would have only said, yaa nariqooni bardan, meaning “cool down”, without saying salaaman, Sayyidina Ibrahim (a) would have frozen! When Allah (swt) is happy with His servants, He sends them yaa nariqooni bardan wa salaaman `alayhim, may Allah make the burning fire and the freezing cold peaceful on His servants.
This is a peaceful meeting where people are coming only to show respect and love to Allah (swt), His Prophet, Sayyidina Muhammad (s), and to His awliyaullah. If I was not following Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q), I would have never had respect from anyone, so respect to me is coming because of him. Respect depends on whoever you are connected with. Respect is not because of your personality. There are millions and billions of people on this Earth, but you, this group here, your respect is to the one you love. Anyone who says, “I am following that shaykh,” respect to them is because of the respect of their shaykh.
What do you think about those who are connected with the one that Allah (swt) has respected, chosen, and raised his name with His, and ordered everyone to say, la ilaaha illa-Llah Muhammadun Rasoolullah! Our respect is as Muslims, not as individuals; individual doesn't mean anything. You might pray, you might fast, in different religions also they have praying and fasting. But the respect of a Muslim comes from the connection to Prophet (s), the highly respected one, Sayyidina Muhammad (s)! He is the respected one! He is the one on whom Allah (swt) and His angels are praising and sending salawaat! What did He say?
Allah and His angels send blessings on the Prophet. O you that believe! Send blessings on him, and salute him with all respect. (33:56)
What does that verse of the Holy Qur’an mean? Allah commands the angels to give salawaat to Prophet (s), but what kind of salawaat or praises? Allah is al-Khaliq, The Creator. Allah (swt) is sending praises upon Sayyidina Muhammad (s). First of all, we have to know that this order is continuous, non-stop. Allah is praising Prophet (s) in every moment; not the moment of dunya, but the moment of Akhirah.
Scientists wanted to know what a moment is and to calculate the smallest fraction of a second. They found out that you can go all the way down to 10-minus 22. Meaning, 22 zeros after one, that is the calculation of a second nowadays in physics. There is such a small fraction of a time, where time changes and it doesn’t exist anymore, only energy exists. Everything disappears at that moment and only energy exists. So if Allah (swt), the Creator, inna Allah wa mala`ikatahu yusalloon, is praising Prophet (s), sending salawaat, that means in every Heavenly moment Allah is sending praises. Don’t think that the praises He sent in this moment will be the same as the praises He will send in the next moment. If there will be resemblance, Allah’s Greatness does not exist! The meaning of greatness is that every moment is according to His nNme, Allahu Akbar, al-`Azheem, the Infinite, Absolute Greatness to Him. Every time He is sending salawaat, it has to be a different salawaat from the previous one, with no resemblance!
What kind of language is it in? Allah (swt) said that the language of Paradise is Arabic. So it is in Arabic language, but Allah knows best what kind of praises He is praising on His Prophet (s), that the first one doesn’t resemble the second, the second doesn’t resemblance the third, and so on. When did it begin? Not since He created dunya, or since the Prophet's (s) mother brought him to dunya, or since when there were no “since”. It was since He created the light of Muhammad (s), because:
wa raf`ana laka dhikrak.
And raised high your fame (O Muhammad). (94:4)
And angels knew from then what we cannot even call “time,” that Allah (swt) ordered His angels to praise Prophet (s) and He is praising also. Since when was Allah praising? Completely before His angels were praising! Allah ordered His angels to praise Prophet (s), but how many angels are there? Allah said in the Holy Qur’an, inna Allah wa mala`ikatahu, That means “All angels that Allah created,” so He didn’t say it to part of the angels. Does Allah’s creation stop, or is Allah continuously creating angels? This means that angels that are praising Prophet (s), all of them: those who are in Creation and those who will be created, all of them are under the orders of praising Sayyidina Muhammad (s)! If Allah stopped creating angels, that means His Greatness is limited. Haashaa, that cannot be! Allah (swt) is creating, and they are praising.
What are they praising and saying? If one angel is praising in a certain way, the second angel cannot praise in the way of the first or else,Allah’s Greatness diminishes, and that cannot be. Every angel is praising Sayyidina Muhammad (s) with a different praise than other angels, continuously, both those who were created, who are in Creation, and who will be created. And every individual angel cannot repeat the praises that he praised Prophet (s) with the first time, it has to be a different one. If a certain angel, for instance Sayyidina Jibra`eel (a), is under the order of praising the Prophet (s), His praises do not prevent him from his assigned work. These are angels, they are not like humans. Like today, you have analog and digital. Analog can take one, one, and one. Digital can take thousands in the same time, and not one overtakes the other. The angels’ assignments are different, and one assignment will not take over the other that Allah gave. Therefore, angels are praising Prophet (s), and every time, every praise cannot be repeated. What is that? You speak Urdu, can you invent more words? It’s impossible. You might take from different languages if you want to invent some words. Urdu is a combination of different languages such as Persian, Arabic, and Mughal; they all came together and formed a language. But you cannot invent more, it’s finished.
Allah said, lughatu 'l-jannati 'l-`arabiya, “The language of Paradise is Arabic.” What kind of praises then are angels praising that every one is a different praise, a different salawaat? The first one has to be different than the second. In our dunya, how many seeghatu salawaat? wa salloo `ala an- Nabi, different kinds of salawaat we make on Prophet (s)? One hundred, two hundred, five hundred? How many different salawaat do we have? Salaat al-Tunjeena, Darood Shareef, you cannot count more. Are there one thousand, or ten thousand? One angel in one hour of our time, which has 60 minutes and 60 seconds; if there is one salawaat for each second, in one hour there are 3,600 salawaat, and every salawaat is different than the other. Then he cannot repeat it as every salawaat has to be different.
What then did Allah give to Sayyidina Muhammad (s)? wa la-sawfa yu`teeka rabbuka fatardaa, “Allah will be giving you, yaa Muhammad (s), until you say ‘I am satisfied.’”
If I give you a car, you will ask me for a second car. If I give you three cars, you will ask for six cars. If I give you one-million pounds, you will say give me two-million pounds. When Allah said, wa la-sawfa yu`teeka rabbuka fatardaa, do you think Prophet (s) will say “I am happy.” No! He will say, “Give me more,” because what Allah is giving him is for his ummah! Allah is giving him and Prophet (s) is asking for more, and he is distributing to the ummah. That’s why one of his names is "al-Qasim," the one who divides among the ummah of what Allah gives to him.
wa la-sawfa yu`teeka rabbuka fatardaa, what will Prophet (s) be satisfied with? If you are a father with ten children, what will you be happy with? To see them all around you. All of them are living nicely; nice business, nice family, nice work; this is dunya. What does Sayyidina Muhammad (s) want? He wants his ummah with him. He will not go to Paradise without taking his ummah with him, that is what he wants. If we say that Prophet (s) will leave his ummah behind, it contradicts the hadeeth, kullookom ra`ah wa kullokum mas`oora `anra`ayati, “Every one of you is a shepherd, and every shepherd is responsible for his flock.” If Prophet (s) said that, how will he contradict what he said? Meaning he is responsible for his ummah individually, not as a whole.
Do you think that Prophet (s) doesn’t know your names? He is seeing all his ummah sitting together in one place, I think Earth will not fit them all because Ummat an-Nabee (s) is not six billion, it’s not the two billion of Muslim population today, it’s from his time up to the Day of Judgment! Maybe it is in trillions! I’m not speaking about the ummat al-dawah, non-Muslims; I’m speaking of the ummah al-ijawa, those who accepted Prophet (s). I’m not speaking about the ummah who did not accept Prophet (s); and he knows even their names one-by-one, individually, and not one will take the place of the other. If your name is Jamaluddin, and your name is also Jamaluddin, he will know you by your name and your father’s name. Even if the repetition of your names is in the millions, he will know everyone.
Because everyone has a heavenly name, they are known by that name in the Heavens, not the name that your parents gave to you. Prophet (s) said, “I observe the `amal of my ummah.” Who is the ummah? We are here now, and the meaning of the hadith of Prophet (s) is that all we are doing, Prophet (s) is observing. He is seeing and hearing it, haadir wa naadir. He is present and he is looking. (Mawlana stands) As-salaatu was-salaamu `alayka yaa Rasoolullah, yaa Habeebullah, yaa Shafee`al-Muznibeen, yaa Ashraf al-Mursaleen! (Mawlana sits)
So we are here, three or four hundred, or one thousand, whatever; he is observing what everyone is doing. Isn’t there a hadeeth when he said, “If I see good, I say ‘thank you yaa Rabbee,’ if I see other than that, I will ask for forgiveness on their behalf.” Meaning wherever you are, if you are in a masjid, or you are on the street, he is seeing you. If you are in the masjid and doing something good, he is praising Allah (swt) and being thankful by saying, “Yaa Rabbee, shukran, alhumdulillah.” If he sees you on the streets doing something not good, he will ask astaghfar on your behalf, because you are still someone who goes to the masjid and makes prayers, but you make sins, and everyone is making sins. No one can say, “I am not making sins,” not even awliyaullah. Only prophets cannot sin; they are m`asoomoon. Sahaabah (r) are not m`asoomoon, but they are the highest honored people on Earth after prophets. So are we not going to make sin? Even a wali can make a sin, but as Prophet (s) said, “If a judge makes a right decision, he will be given two hasanaat, and if he makes a wrong decision, he will still get one hasanaat, even if it is a wrong decision.” Awliyaullah are protected. But sometimes a wali might give a wrong decision.
So Prophet (s) is observing everyone. He is observing you and seeing if you are okay, and thanking Allah (swt). If now we are a thousand people here, he is seeing everyone individually. “I hear, I know, wherever you are.” That’s why we must not underestimate the power of Sayyidina Muhammad (s). Look what is written there (in this mosque):
allahuma innee asaluka min fadlika.
O Allah! I am asking You from Your favors. (Abu Dawood, Saheeh al-Jaami' # 4591)
We are asking, it is in the Holy Qur’an, Allah is teaching us what to say. We are all asking, Allah is saying to Prophet (s):
وَلَسَوْفَ يُعْطِيكَ رَبُّكَ فَتَرْضَى
wa la-sawfa yu`teeka rabbuka fatardaa,
And soon will thy Guardian-Lord give thee (that wherewith) thou shalt be well-pleased. (ad-Duhaa, 93:5)
“Allah will give you until you say, ‘Yaa Rabbee, I’m happy.’” He won't say, “I want this one or that one;” he will say, “I want everyone in my ummah to be with me.” If one is not with him, then he is still asking. There is a hadeeth from Bukhari that relates that on the Day of Judgment, Prophet (s) will go into sajdah. Prophet (s) said, “Allah will open for me praises that He never opened before,” meaning that Allah will give a kind of praises, not one du`a, that he will ask in sajdah that have never been revealed to him before. What kind of praises? I have been thinking too much on it. If you go to Al-`Aroos, one of the biggest dictionaries of Islam, you can find every word there. But after that, it is finished in 25 volumes. So what kind of letters Allah (swt) will be putting together? They are Arabic letters, but read differently. Like the beginning of some surahs: Alif, Laam, Meem, this is a praise. Kaaf, Haa, Yaa, `Ain, Saad; Haa, Meem, `Ayn, Seen, Qaaf, and these different words that as Arabs, there is no way to understand the meaning, but in reality they are oceans of secrets.
When awliyaaullah want to dive into the ocean of knowledge, they dive into these letters. There are secrets hidden in them and Allah will inspire their hearts. When a wali connects his heart to the main source, he connects through the letters that have been given to him as a code in order to open up this bank of knowledge. When you go to an ATM machine, you put your card, enter the amount of money, but it doesn’t give you until you enter your code, your password. If you don’t put a password, you will get nothing. Awliyaullah have passwords that have been given to them by Prophet (s). Not one wali will take his sainthood without Prophet (s) giving him his password. These sainthood titles are for those who have the password. And passwords are not going to be given to those who are not yet in the rank of manhood. Even someone might be 70 or 80 years of age and an `alim, but he may not be a wali.
There is a big difference. Even if he knows everything of knowledge, he knows Shari`ah, but he didn’t reach the level of wilayah, then he cannot get the password. Passwords will take you to a knowledge that is hidden. Not because they don’t want to give it to you, but because you didn’t do enough to get it. Everyone had a password when they came to dunya. The password is the name that has been given to you in Heaven. When we were souls on the Day of Promises, when Allah said, alastu bi rabbikum qaloo bala, “Am I not your Lord? And we said, ‘Yes," Allah gave all of these souls a name. Ahsaahum wa `addahum `addah, “He counted them one by one,” He knows all of them and counted them. Wa kullun ayteehi yawmal qiyaamatee fardah, “Everyone on the Day of Judgment will be present in front of Allah individually, with his name.” Not the name we are known with. When a wali is given his password, he has been given the name that was for him on the Day of Promises when he was a soul in the presence of Allah, when He asked, “Am I not your Lord?” And all of us said, “Yes!” Names were given.
When you reach the level of knowing your name, you connect with your reality, because your reality is still there. Don’t think your reality came to Earth. What came to Earth is a reflection from the reality that is pure. Allah doesn’t create something that is not pure. That’s why Prophet (s) said, Yooladu 'l-insaanu `ala 'l-fitrah, “Human beings are born on innocence.” They are clean, even non-Muslims' souls are clean. He said that the parents either make them Jewish, or Christian, or Zoroastrian, or something else. He didn’t say “Muslim” because they are born Muslim; they are born on purity but they were misguided.
So know your real name, and you will enter into the direction of diving. Allah said in the Holy Qur’an:
وَلِكُلٍّ وِجْهَةٌ هُوَ مُوَلِّيهَا فَاسْتَبِقُواْ الْخَيْرَاتِ
wa li-kullin wijhatun huwa muwalliha fastabiqoo'l-khayraat.
To each is a goal to which Allah turns him; then strive together (as in a race) Towards all that is good. (2:148 )
Everyone has a different direction. fastabiqoo'l-khayraat, “Compete for the best.” Khayraat here means something good, don’t compete for something bad. Compete to read more Qur’an than the other one, that’s okay. Envy or jealousy is okay in `ibaada. If your brother is reading one juz, read two. Compete, and say to him, “I read two juz today. I’m better than you.” Then the next day he will read two-and-a-half, then the other brother will read three juz. To compete in `ibaadah is okay, but competition, jealousy, and envy for dunya is not. This is according to the hadeeth that, "Dunya doesn’t weigh more than a wing of a mosquito for Allah." Why then are we looking too much after our dunya and not looking for our Akhirah? Sayyidina Abu Yazid al-Bistami (q), a big wali, said, “I look at the young person, I respect them more than respecting myself,” because awliyaullah don’t give respect to their ego. If a wali gives respect to his ego, he’s finished, he’s not a wali anymore. Ego must be under the feet. Ego is what made Sayyidina Adam (a) to go out of Heaven. Ego is what made Iblees to be cursed. When Allah ordered him to make sajda to Adam (a), Iblees said, Qala anaa khayrum min, “I am better than him!" Meaning, "Why do I have to make sajdah to him? I don’t want to.” Allah cursed him. Ego will give you cursing. So we have to try to ride on our ego, not the ego to ride on us.
Abu Yazid al-Bistami (q) said, “I respect the younger one so much.” They asked him, “Why?” He said, “Because they have less sins than me. They are young, and if they find the right way, their sins will diminish,” It means, "They are better than me." He also said, “And I respect the elderly more than others.” They asked him, “Why?” He said, “Because they made `ibaadah more than me.” He means, "I don’t want to pick on anyone. It’s not my hukum, judgment, to say this one is good and that one is not good."
There was once a drought in one of Sayyidina Abu Yazid al-Bistami’s (q) villages. He never stayed in one place; it was his way of spreading tariqah. Awliyaullah travel because they have to spread tariqah everywhere and because you cannot get all of the people in one place, you have to go to them. He was in one village doing seclusion, khalwah, far away from people. Where did he find to make seclusion? He found a dry well. He went 60 meters inside the well, sitting alone doing `ibaadah. He didn’t go up, someone sent him water and a little bit of food, one bowl of lentils everyday, that’s it. If he wanted to make wudu, he would go up and come back down, doing dhikrullah.
The people outside had no crops and there was famine. They came to him and said, “Yaa Abu Yazid (q), we are asking Allah to send us rain. We are asking on Jumu`ah. We have been asking and asking, and there has been no rain. We have no more water or crops, our children are dying, and you are waliullah sitting by yourself.”
He said, “Leave me alone. Don’t come with your dunya matters to me.” They insisted, so he said, “Okay, I cannot do it by myself. I need someone to say ‘ameen.’” He is showing humbleness. “I will make du`a, and I want someone to say ‘ameen.’”
They said, “Oh, Abu Yazid (q), we are all ready to say ‘ameen,’ not one, but hundreds of us!”
He said, “No, I want one who can claim that he did not commit a single sin in his life to say ‘ameen’ or else the du`a will not be accepted.” Even in the well he is teaching them.
From where will they find someone who did not commit a sin? They began looking in the village and then in the nearby villages. They found someone who claimed that he doesn’t have a sin. He said, “I will go,” so they took him. He was another wali, but he didn’t say, “I am a wali.” Like a normal person, he went to Abu Yazid al-Bistami (q).
They said, “Yaa Abu Yazid (q), we found someone to say ‘ameen.’”
He said, “Yaa waladee, O my son, you can say ‘ameen’?”
He said, “Yes.”
Abu Yazid (q) asked, “Did you commit a sin in your life?”
He said, “Yes.”
“What did you do?” asked Abu Yazid (q).
He replied, “One time, I think I committed a sin.”
Abu Yazid (q) asked, “What have you done?”
He said, “Yaa Abu Yazid (q), one day I was going from my home to pray Jumu`ah. And as I was walking, I was passing by some homes."
The adab in Islam is that when you are walking, you look where you put your feet. You don’t look where your eyes take you. Now ask anyone here, where they look when they walk? No one looks at their feet. Adab is to be nazar bar qadam, one of the adab of Naqshbandi Tariqa. It is to look where you put your feet, not right or left, or straight.
He said, “By mistake, Shaytan took my eyes to the right,” and at that time there were no washing machines or dryers. They used to hang up their laundry on the clothesline. “And by mistake I looked and my eyes went on the clothesline, and on it were the neighbors’ underwear. Immediately I went back home, I took a skewer, put it on fire and burned my eye because it looked there. This is what I think I had done.”
Abu Yazid al-Bistami (q) said, “You are the one who can say ‘ameen,’ come here.” So then Abu Yazid (q) was making du`a, and the man was saying “ameen,” and Allah was showering, and showering, and showering, non-stop.
I was in Mecca with Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) in 1967. We were in tawaaf. We did the first tawaaf, then the second, then the third, and at the fourth one Mawlana stood by the Hajr al-Aswad. He said, “Bismillahi 'r-Rahmaani 'r-Raheem, Allahu Akbar.” And he stood, you cannot move him anymore, he was like a person weighing a ton, very heavy. People were passing, he was not moving. He was making du`a, “Yaa Rabbee, shower us, shower us, shower us.” He kept praying and suddenly clouds began to come and rain was coming down until we were flooded in water up to our stomaches. There were no sewers at that time, and the Earth there doesn’t absorb the water. No one could enter or leave Mecca. We were by the Ka`aba for one night with water up to our stomaches. This was before the big renovation.
When awliyaullah make du`a, Allah will accept. We are requesting Allah (swt) to bless us and to give us the barakah of this day, and the barakah of awliyaullah. Prophet (s) said:
Rajab un shahrullah, wa Sha`baan un shahree, wa Ramadanu shahru ummati.
Rajab is the month of Allah, Sha`baan is my month, and Ramadan is the month of my ummah.
Prophet (s) said that on the Israa wa'l-Mi`raaj, he reached a place where he was no longer able to hear the sound of the Pen writing. Because it was Rajab, in this month, angels do not write; Allah takes the `amal of the human beings by himself. So Rajab is ending, and we are asking Allah (swt) to shower us from the barakah of Sayyidina Muhammad (s), his Mi`raj and his Israa, his prayers, his fasting, his hajj, his umrah, his sadaqa, his zakaat, with his everything, yaa Rabbee make us a share in it! Give us and dress us with the barakah of Sayyidina Muhammad (s)! Because without Prophet (s) we are losers and with Prophet (s) we are winners. If you want to win, send praise on Sayyidina Muhammad (s)! If yu want to lose, forget praising.
Yaa Rabbee, don’t let us to forget praising on Your Prophet, Sayyidina Muhammad (s). Sick people come and ask to make du`a, let them make salawaat 100 times on Prophet (s) and inshaa-Allah Allah will take away their problems.
Aqooloo qawlee haadha w 'astaghfirullah al-`azheem lee wa lakum wa li-saairi 'l-mustaghfireen wa yaa fawzan li 'l-mustaghfireen astaghfirullah. Bismillahi 'r-Rahmaani 'r-Raheem. Alhamdulillahi Rabbi 'l-`Alameen, wa 's-salaatu wa 's-salaamu `ala ashrafa 'l-Mursaleen, Sayyidina wa Nabiyyina Muhammadin wa`ala aalihi wa sahbihi ajma`een.
Wa min Allahi 't-tawfeeq, bi hurmati 'l-habeeb, bi hurmati 'l-Fatihah.
